The Vergecast - Tesla Model 3 first drive, iPhone leaks, and a bluetooth salt shaker

Episode Date: August 4, 2017

We are without Nilay Patel on The Vergecast this week, so Dieter Bohn and Paul Miller step up to host with some very special guests: transportation editor Tamara Warren, and tech editor Natt Garun. Tamara was one of the few people who got to test drive the Tesla Model 3 last week, so she brings her expertise to the show to talk about what she knows so far. Also, some of the iPhone’s design and features got leaked out from code in the HomePod, so Natt Garun helps the crew break down all the information we’ve gleaned. There’s a whole lot in between that — like Paul’s segment about the salt shaker Smalt — so listen to it all and you’ll get it all. 01:18 - Tesla Model 3 first drive 31:02 - The next iPhone’s screen design and face unlock apparently confirmed by HomePod firmware 39:52 - This iPhone 8 concept video imagines a touchscreen in the home button 48:33 - Next Level final episode with Lauren Goode 1:10:56 - Paul’s weekly segment “Smalt you later” 1:14:25 - Apple returns to growth as cheaper iPads boost sales 1:15:32 - Fitbit says its long-awaited smartwatch will be ready for the holidays Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of The Verge, a multimedia sensory experience that you can visit on the web or elsewhere. I am not Nilai Patel, lucky for you, but I am joined by other people who are amazing. Nat Garron is here in the podcast. That's me. We also have Paul Miller, of course. Hello. And for the first time on The Vergecast, which blows my mind, Tamara Warren, the transportation editor of Theverge.com. Hi.

Hello. Hi, I'm in the building. Yeah. Every time we have a meeting, we always try and do video conferencing. And Tamara is always dialing in literally from a car. No, you've got to keep it moving. So, Neil is on vacation. It's deserved.

He claims, fine, whatever. I guess he's allowed to have a vacation. But there is this week a ton of news. We've even had a lot of just like hang-in verge casts, and this one will also be a chill hang, but it's a chill hang with a boatload of news. And I think, without a doubt, the most important news of the week was the unveiling or the release,

the, I don't know what we call this thing, the launch, the event for the Tesla Model 3. And Tamara, you were there. I was. They called it a launch, right? Not really. It's not the official launch. What was it? Well, Iran does have SpaceX, so he can't call it a launch because that has a technical meaning for him, right?

Exactly, exactly. And they were very specific that it wasn't precisely a launch. But more of an event celebrating a handoff, as you will, for the first Model 3 customers. Which were company employees. Right. So, yeah, Tesla's on sizzle right now. So it's like a party about a cool employee bonus. Yeah, essentially. Hooray.

But you got the ride in it. I did. I drove it. Oh, that's right. You drove it. I drove the Model 3. How fast did you go? As fast as I could.

I mean, you don't see a spedometer in front of you, so you really don't know how fast you're going. That was my number one question. Please explain me. And also, I mean, in your peripheral vision, you can see the screen on the right. Like on the bottom right hand. corner of what you're, more like if you're staring straight, you can see it without turning your head. I highly recommend driving cars looking at the road and not at a screen. And funny as that sounds, I often notice some people don't look at the road when they're driving.

They'll actually look at you or the screen or something else. But in this case, you literally should look at the road and not the screen on your right. And so you just don't know how fast you're going. Well, I think if had I spent more time in the car and acclimated more to the screen, I probably could have toggled with the settings a bit more to be able to see the speed. But I was more just concentrating on like feedback from the road and what it felt like. But it has so my sense from my sensory perception only, which is just feels, it felt really good. And you have really good power going into full acceleration. and that way it's like it was actually quite impressive. I don't know a lot about cars. So Deeter will have to ask you more car questions, but it felt good to drive.

It felt very good to drive. Good. Okay. Yeah. That's good to know. But like, how good to know. I mean, I don't, I'm not great at cars either, but the, you know, I read your piece about the experience of driving it. But the thing that I want to know is people see that this thing costs 35 grand to start

and of course it goes up and we'll get into that. But did it feel like a luxury car? Did it feel like just a car car? Did it feel like a civic? Did it feel like a BMW? Did it feel like another Tesla? What was the actual vibe you got getting in the car? I'd say what they call like entry level luxury.

So which is kind of where it needs to be. I mean, when you look at the car I drove, it wasn't a $35,000 car. I had like the fully loaded, optioned up, nice, natural looking wood, vernacular. near everything you could possibly want to add to your Model 3 car. And in that way, that's what it felt like, like maybe an entry-level C class or something of like a Mercedes C-class. So I think that that's what it achieves. It achieves a base-level luxury standard.

Is this a civic? Is this the Everyman Accord? No. But I don't know if that's what it needs to be. It's the shake-up car. And that's what I think the function of. thinking about it more and more, I think that's the function of what the Model 3 is. A shake-up car?

It's the car that will continue to push the industry in weird ways, which is what is the function of Tesla. Like, will they be able to make 500,000 cars? I don't know. I mean, if I were a betting woman, I might not, like, you know, put the house on the line or anything like that because there are a lot of questions about understanding supply chain and just it takes a long time to get it right like any of us you know when you try something for the first time it's probably not going to work and so Tesla sets itself up with its

own sort of standards on how fast they need to be able to get something done and they're not achievable goals so they kind of set themselves up for failure which is an interesting business plan I think but but as far as the product goes will the will be 400, 99,000 Tesla Model 3 have the same quality as the fifth Model 3 built? I don't know. I mean, and what happens if you're driving your Tesla Model 3 and you have the 50th Model 3, but something breaks and you need apart? Will they be able to pull something off the line from the 400th?

All those questions are like way in the future. And that's why I think we're still a long way from seeing Model 3s take over the roads. So you're saying they're building these, but they're building these going to kind of a bespoke slow. fashion and by the time they build the 500,000th one, they'll have a true mass manufacturing setup. Well, to get to 500,000 would require that to be in place. And that's a different car. It's a different car and it's complicated and, you know, space is an issue in their factories and what happens when you start accelerating process. I mean, look at what happened to the car companies in the 80s. Like, the more you build, the harder it.

It gets, you know, the... Wait, what happened to the... I mean, you think about quality in American car companies, right? Like, there's a reason that, and I hope I don't offend anybody, but where I grew up, people were like, oh, Ford, fix a repair and delivery. Like, that's what it stands for, right? So, you know, those things like that when you, like, think back, and that's no longer the case. Actually, Ford has really good quality.

They learned their lesson. But I think that what's it essentially happened to the car industry is that when you build more more. It's like everything. And the same with the restaurant. Like how does a restaurant maintain its quality? You know, as soon as there's more and more franchises, it goes down. So that's the logic of manufacturing. And an economist could probably explain it in a more profound way than me. But that's my big question with Tesla is the manufacturing goals just seem ambitious to say the least. But as far as a product goes, to answer your question about why is this car a bit of a game changer as it does weird things that people haven't seen in this space?

And by going on this very minimal route, I think that it is poised to influence a lot of other car makers or at least scare them enough to consider that they've got to watch. And that's what I think the function of Tesla has been. We would not be seeing this race toward autopilot. We would not be seeing the cool factor of electrification. There's so many things that they are directly responsible for. and this car continues down that path as a product. I don't know if it does as a reality. That is yet to be seen.

Could any other company get this cool, like have a huge party where thousands of people are hanging out just to see the company give 30 cars to employees? I don't think so. I mean, I think it's like the music industry used to be that way and now it's no longer. So, you know, this is that culmination of cool factor tech. It's everything. It's going to mar. It's the vision, right? Like, it's branding that is just a part of our time.

And so to not, I mean, that's what they have going for them. And they should use that because what company wouldn't want that cachet. That's what they have. They can't mass manufacture this car, but they have sold this dream very effectively. I think so. I mean. But that's the crazy thing about this launch, right? The whole point of the three is that they can mass, you know, mass produce.

or they claim they can. They've simplified the process for building it compared to previous Tesla's got, you know, how many thousand fewer parts, I forget. But if you're saying that you don't actually buy that yet, can the thing be as disruptive as we hope it is? Because isn't the power of the disruption from the Model 3 the fact that they're going to sell hundreds of thousands of them? Isn't that the point? I think so. But I also think if you look at the history of Tesla, like delivering on time on goals has never really been part of the ethos of what? the brand is, right? So, but having talked with people in the auto industry, I mean, you're going to hear a lot of pushback on the why and the how, but people are watching and listening. And that's because they seem to, by sheer will be willing to figure it out. It just might take it longer than what they're saying. But I think they're on the path there. And it's incredibly complex. There were 5,000 car companies that went out of business in the 20th century because people could not. hang when it came to mass producing cars. And, you know, Model S made everyone stop and listen,

and now they're watching to see what happens with Model 3. We just, I don't know. I mean, I think they will make some. And I think if you have car number 200, you're probably in a good spot. If you're signing up today, you know, you might want a five-year plan in place. I don't know. Literally. I mean, I just think it's a lot of work to build that many cars. And then the myriad of issues that come up when you have scale with quality. Because think about it. Like if your car doesn't, I mean, if you buy this and it's your only car and it doesn't work, you're going to be really mad if there's no loaner car at the dealer for you

or if you can't get to work. Whereas if you have four cars and this is like your fun whimsy car, then it's okay, right? So I don't know. Is it the car that you can depend on? I mean, they have to prove that. And I think they should have to prove that to their customers. I was interested in this, like the wide range of customization and that the default option doesn't even have like the seats don't move under, like, I guess these days when I get into a relatively modern car, it just seems like everything's powered. But that would obviously add a lot of complexity.

But it also seems to me from a manufacturing perspective, like if you wanted to be like more tech company when you're making a car, you just make basically two models, like a basically. with a storage difference or a color, you know, like something really, it seems like it would be way easier to manufacture if you didn't have all these different options. It's not that many options. There's not that many options. No, and it really is two different models,

like a short range and a long range. I mean, you can have different colors, you can have slightly different packages, but there's nothing very, you know, when you look at like the features that are offered compared to the complexity of reading what's out there in other cars. So it is relatively simple compared to other. It's very simple.

It just sounded complicated to me, because like, there's different seat options. Well, what's complicated about it, if you look at the options that are available for cars in general, it's, I mean, you kind of need a degree just to understand what you're buying when you get a new car because there's so many different options available, different engines, heated seats, cooled seats, do you want the long wheelbase version, the short wheel base. There's so many ways you can configure cars. And for a long time, we thought customization was where everything was going,

that you could really make the car like tricked out to your own tastes. But, you know, this is sort of a different approach. This is minimalization, stripping down the choices, stripping down to distraction. It's what I see this car as personally is this is the first step towards an autonomous car that people will want to ride in because there's not that much to look at. Right. Well, that's like the smartphone comparison. It doesn't almost matter what the object looks like because everything that matters is what's on the screen. Well, and if you don't need to look at the road, this is a fine way to ride around because you don't need switches in your face.

So maybe that's the long-term plan, is that maybe they know they're not going to make this now in scale like they need to. But as we hit 20-21 when autonomy is going to start slowly rolling out, they're going to be there already. That's a long time. That's always been the big question to me, like in terms of the importance of the three. like I think of it in terms of, you know, a relatively affordable electric car, but I sort of, for some reason, part of me doesn't actually believe that, you know, one, that can they hit their goal, their manufacturing goals, I don't know. But I don't know how much I believe that they're actually going to be able to hit these autonomy goals. This car seems to, like, it's completely designed to be autonomous and that the fact that it isn't totally yet is just like a shrug they'll get there in a minute. But I don't know, did you get a chance to try any of the auto stuff or was was all that stuff turned off when you drove it?

Oh, no. I didn't get enough time at all. No. Okay. Yeah, I mean, literally it was like a loop around the Fremont campus. So it was more about just driving it and, you know, and just acclimating to the fact that there are no gauges, which, you know, throws you off for a minute when you get into a car and you see nothing except like a smooth sheet of wood and no vents or anything. but all of it was housed in the screen, in the single 15-inch screen to my right, and I would have liked. I mean, and I saw a bit of what the app will look like that people will use.

And also, the autonomous features are not there yet, right? They'll be coming, but I mean, again, not there yet, not there yet. But they had a car. I mean, so that part was actually the most surprising to me. I'm like, wow, this is a car and it's here, and it looks. good and it drives well. So that's sort of what I took away from it. As far as all of the other questions, who knows? But I think that even shocked all of us that were there, you know, in this sort of like Willy Wonka moment where the curtain is peeled back and you're in this room

and you're like, wow, this is, everyone wants to know what's in this car and I'm getting to see it. How cool is that? Lucky me, journalist. Okay, so when are we going to get out of the wait and see mode with Tesla? When are we going to be able to just say, okay, they did it? Or, nope, they're not doing it. Never? No, I... Never, right?

Yeah. Even if they shipped this at scale, by the time they were doing that, they would have some insane promise, like, we'll have you in a flying car in three years. Yeah, I do think so. And I think that's, you know, part of, you know, Musk's personality and how he drives the brand forward is putting new challenges on his overworked engineering team. But they all seem incredibly excited about still. I mean, no one seemed, people, their mood at Tesla was very excited.

They did not exude a weariness, I would have to say, dealing just with, they were excited to show the work they'd been doing and the car that they'd made and hoped to make. There was a story about them scaling back a little bit on the Model Y. Yeah. Like instead of making an all new platform for the Model Y, they're going to use the Model 3's platform? I mean, that's just logical. It sounds really logical. But again. Yeah.

I mean, that's part of, I mean, and these are supply questions. And even with model, I mean, they've said repeatedly that Model X was not a well-planned car from a production perspective. Because why would you change the platform? If you look at other companies as we move into the space, especially where there's like a zillion crossovers, they are using same platforms. Because from a manufacturing perspective, it's much easier to build off platform. So, you know, those those are the thing. And I think also, too, through experience, a lot of this will be learned. Because you can say you're going to do something again, but until you do it, you really don't know what the challenges are.

And even if you have people have experienced before, they've never, all these new moving parts need to work together. Is Tesla a company that learns from mistakes, at least? I think so. I think in some ways, maybe in some departments, yes, and in some departments, no, that's my political answer. Now, I think that, you know, when you look at the fact that they've been able to put products on the road, they have to learn from their mistakes. That's making cars, right? Any functional design object actually function properly. So I think Model S was a learning experience for them that they proved that they did learn.

And Model X, I think retreating from Model X a bit and going in this direction, you do see that they've simplified their process. There's less parts to add less. I mean, even someone recently told me that even screen, this using screens can be cheaper than putting buttons and knobs in a car. One last thing you have to, one less thing you have to attach. Especially this just looks like like a 15-inch laptop screen or something. Yeah. That's basically what it is. It's nothing weird or super custom.

And no buttons or knobs except for the two end the side of the steering wheels. But it's a capacitive screen, right? So if I'm driving in Minnesota, I'm wearing gloves. I'm out of luck. Right? I mean, it was hot in California. And sometimes often, it sounds silly, but that's often a lot of problems that have car companies have that are based in California is that they don't get to do that testing. And I mean, we haven't seen, we don't know.

Are they testing in really inclement conditions how things work in this car? I'd hope so, but you don't know because, I mean, that's sometimes what ends up happening. Do they have voice controls? I didn't use voice controls. I'm assuming they're automated to use voice controls. But again, limited experience. Wait, and the two buttons, are those paddle shifters or are those actual volume button types of things? No, they're scrolling knobs on the side of the wheel.

So it almost feels like a mouse, like two mice. So you have two like scroll wheels? Scroll wheels on the steering wheel. Yeah. But they're circular and the mouse feeling as opposed to what you typically find in a car. Yeah. Oh. Yeah.

And they're like little, they're black and they're on the side of the, I mean. So you could theoretically do everything with them instead of using the touch screen. Yeah. Most things I would imagine. Some things you're still. And I mean. Teas maybe. Yeah.

And also a little bit of hand-eye coordination issues there because the screen is over to your right. And I mean, the screen is beautiful. I mean, it's, it's better. It's not like last year's iPad. Like it's, there's a lot going on there. And like the depth of field was really good. and just of the different views that you could have of your car and to see what's going on. But it has to be because everything is there.

So, you know, but that also sort of shores up like the idea of like their updates and how that will probably even be more fluid on this car, I imagine, because it's just one thing they have to worry about. So, I mean, it's interesting. That part is really interesting to me about the car. What I'd be curious about to you is as Tesla cars become way more software dependent, especially as autonomous driving become a thing. Like, I'm curious what their version of a genius bar will look like, because in add of lead, there's maybe people who are coming to them with, like, software issues or, like, update problems or cracked screens or, you know, just issues.

And it, like, most, where we used to gadgets being on a one-year kind of, like, cycle, where every year there's a new gadget and cars, too. Like, every year there's a new model car. But, like, with Tesla, I'd be super curious to see what, like, a new year model would look like, or, like, what, software update looks like for Tesla and what their customer support is going to be like. Because when you're spending that kind of money, you want the customer support that you expect from a luxury, well, I think it's debatable whether we call it a luxury car. But yeah, to be super curious what their software customer service is going to look like just because there inevitably there's going to be confused by how all this works, especially the whole

wheel thing you just described. I feel like it's going to take a lot of people getting used. to you. Yeah, I think, well, one thing they've said is that they plan on making it where people will actually come to your house to service your car for you. So maybe that's the concierge, like somebody who's right there showing you things and helping you things. I'm not really entirely clear, though, how that works with parts. Like what happens when parts go wrong in the car, like physical parts in the hardware other than just screen issues. So that part, I think, is interesting. I mean, And they say they're going to have more, but, you know, it's kind of intangible right now and a little abstract to me.

I don't really see the process yet, but. Well, I mean, most complex electronics, they basically, you just have to send them back to the factory to get them repaired. Unless it's literally the battery, or I guess with the iPhone, you can replace the screen. Right. But what happens when your brakes go bad or what happens? Like, those things, those are like the issues. You want to be able to go to a typical auto mechanic? The brakes are weird on this compared.

a regular car? Most new cars are now longer serviced at auto mechanics. I mean, it's really a dealer's game now for new cars because so much is tied in to the car computer. This is why I avoid cars.

Stay away. Stay away. Bike for life. My practical problem, I was saying earlier, like we pre-ordered one, but I'm pretty sure we're going to have to cancel it or, you know,

give it away or whatever we're going to do because we live in an apartment in a city and we have parking, but we definitely don't have superchargers. And I have literally no idea how I would actually practically keep this thing on the road and full of electricity because I don't, I don't know where I'd plug it in. I'd have to like find one nearby and like go and park it and hang out and charge it every couple of days or however often I need it and then go park it in my garage. It's like I know they're going to double the number of superchargers or so he said, but I don't know, man.

It's it worries me that that that infrastructure isn't quite. is built out as it needs to be, and I don't know when the chicken and egg problem of that is going to get solved. Not to mention that Tesla superchargers are, my understanding is a Tesla supercharger is different than like what other electric cars are using in some cases too, right? So it's like how, you know, I can go to a gas station, but this thing is a problem for me because I don't live in a house in the suburbs. Well, they say there's going to be more superchargers built, like considerably more superchargers built in the next year. But again, we need to see it all. It's like promises are great, but until you actually see it, car is the second biggest purchase you make, right?

So you're putting a lot on the line for a promise, where if you can afford that and to take a chance on that, then it works out, great. But, you know, I think that's the edge that Tesla has over other car companies because who would even think about doing that? That's a crazy proposition. But, you know, if you get to drive around into Model 3, imagine how sweet you'll be.

Like everyone is just going to think you're amazing on the streets and you're not driving a Ferrari. So, you know, it's cooler than the Model S because it's brand new and no one's seen it and everyone wants to look inside of it. And so that's what you're buying. But as far as like a practical approach at this point, you know, that's the argument with electric cars across the board for city life. I mean, I have the same problem. I live in Brooklyn and where do I, you know, until they have, you know, the portable car automated charging. station that rolls up to my house and charges the car as I'm changing alternate side parking, you know, then that's a new game. But, you know, it's still logistically a bit of a challenge

for city life, I think, unless you have a garage that has a dedicated charger. And you're able, and a lot of these garages have one or two chargers, but there's 200 cars there. So the more electric cars is going to be more of an issue. You know, as supercharger networks expand, this might be different. Again, these are all infrastructure issues, which infrastructure is, you know, a tricky thing because there's great ideas, but actualization of these ideas are always sometimes not as, is not as fluid as we would like as we have seen many times. It seems to me like automation would really solve the problem for, or an automation. What's it called? What's it called when a car drives itself? Self-driving autonomous cars.

Autonomy. There you go. Thank you. Because I lived in Park Slope at one point, and I don't know what neighbor you're in, but the parking situation is so bad. If you could drive your car, because you love driving, drive to your front door, get out of your car, and then tell your car, okay, go park in the parking garage. That's 15 minutes away from here.

And then tomorrow, when I need you, I'll call you 15 minutes before I need you. 15 minutes before I need you to be in front of my house. And then the car can go store itself where all the resources are there to charge it and also decongest your neighbor. I don't know. Well, if you go down the autonomous. Oh, go ahead. You could just get an Uber. What's the point of even having a car? Well, the autonomous theorists, if you go down the school of autonomy, I mean, the idea is the car theoretically will never park itself. And it will. Because it could be. It could be used by somebody else.

Yeah. And that's why ride sharing and car sharing industries are so tied close. And electrification are tied to autonomy because, you know, all the rules have changed. So it opens up this whole new scope of possibilities. And that's why people are so excited about it. And, you know, and I love driving, but no one loves sitting in traffic. So I think it's very clear. We have a major problem.

And, you know, and that's what I do appreciate about Tesla is that at least there's someone who's. shaking things up in the way that we have to start solving some of these problems because they're not going to solve themselves. And as long as people are buying big trucks and kind of not really thinking about their commutes to work as being problematic, which they are. I mean, there has to be some players that are just problematic to the rest of the industry. Now, are they the true competitor to be the number one car company? I don't know if that's really so much the question. And I think that's what people are hyper-focused on.

I don't think that's their role. Maybe the number one electric car company. Or just tech company or whatever. However, I mean, I think competition drives interests, but I don't know if that's always so important. I mean, I think that maybe fuels what their game plan is. But for the rest of us, that's maybe not what their function is, right? Does the coolest, like the coolest people are all of us, like not the most plentiful. Like, they're the trendsetters, right?

So it's a trend setting company. It's a trendy trend setting company. There's not as many, I mean, cool people. aren't usually the ones that we know the most of. Cool people set the trends and they're an idea and then they're gone and they leave the room and the rest of us have to like figure out how to live. So that's Tesla. Yeah, that's me, the one who has to live knowing he's not cool.

All right, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to read an ad. It's going to be great. I'm not going to screw it up at all. And then we have got just a boatload of iPhone rumors and we got we got to talk through all that stuff. So Tamara, thank you so much for telling us about. your experience with Tesla and we'll be right back after this ad.

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Square space. Why not a piece of art? Get a chair. You know, that's interesting. I guess I value comfort over beauty. All right. iPhone. Nat, we have got a million iPhone rumors.

and explain why we know as much as we know about the next fancy iPhone because it is to me hilarious how this happened. So there's like a big firmware leak that happened that was just full of details. Everything from like what the screen is going to look like or like different firmware for like whether or not it's going to have a home button and like different references to all the sensors that it's going to have, which is just insane. and it just spewed like 10 different spin-off posts about what this next iPhone is going to look like. First of all, it seems pretty much confirmed that the home screen button is like dead.

It's basically gone. The rendering of the screen shows a giant screen with no particular button in sight on the bottom. And I will just see the obvious thing in that it looks like an Android phone. It won't function much like an Android phone, but it looks like it. But let's just be real. That is exactly what it looks like. There's a whole bunch of other display stuff. Like it looks like there's going to be a third screen resolution

that's theoretically going to support AR or VR or whatever they're working on now. And there's supposed to be some sensors for facial unlock, which is going to do away with touch ID, which I think is also controversial. There's just a ton of stuff that it's a doozy. Yeah. And the firmware that leaked, to be clear, was the firmware for the HomePod, which is a whole other device, but it happened to have a

complete build of iOS just hanging out in there because the HomePod is basically an iOS device. Yeah, there was a really cool theory about this that the way Apple updates their software internally is they've got like a flag. Like when you're compiling something, you like type in like little flags for like to turn on and off features. And they basically have a flag like, do I hide all of the unreleased products that we have. And because it's a HomePod, it's an unreleased product. It was only going to internal HomePod testing. They didn't hide all those unreleased products.

So all this information about the new iPhone is in it, but then they put it up on a server that was available for other people that download it. And so some intrepid Apple, or no, iOS-type developers have been digging into this and finding just crazy information. like that list. Okay, so yeah. So we should go through some of this stuff feature by feature.

And I mean, man, I don't even know where to start. I guess let's start with the screen. So it's a full front of the phone. And then there's like a cutout for the sensors and the speaker. So it's kind of like the essential phone, but maybe not as Cyclops looking. And no home button on the front.

Right. So 3X resolution means it might be good. We're all assuming it'll be OLED. but if there's not a physical home button, like how's that going to work? We don't think we're getting touched at the end of the screen. Are you going to push down on the bottom

just really hard and that'll be like what Samsung does? Are they going to have a bar at the bottom like Android does with a virtual home button? Like what do you think they're going to do? We've seen some, we've seen some like renders. I mean, I've been like hoping this is what they would do forever ago and I forget I think it should just be a pressure sensitive

home button, but it's context sensitive. And sometimes maybe you're in a camera app and it's a shutter button. And sometimes it's completely invisible when you are, you know, watching a movie. Like I think there's a lot they can do and I don't really think we know what it's going to do. I think Siri already is like showing,

like right now Siri is this like weird little glowy thing at the bottom of your screen when you're talking to Siri. And it looks like if you just, just scoot that little bit down, it's kind of the shape and size of a home button. Like, I just think it will allow Apple specifically to add context to different situations that you're in by using that lower portion of the screen. But I do not believe it will be super accessible to developers, but I could be completely wrong.

But it's like a, it's kind of like a dock or it's kind of like, it's like it's Apple's zone for doing cool new things at the bottom of the phone. but I really doubt it's going to be super available to developers. Like taking your DNA? No. Is this something that you were looking forward to? I mean, there's just so many ways, right? Like, I mean, in the car world, for example, we often hear about retina and like all this new way of identifying yourself.

And at what point does that trickle in to? Well, they are talking about face unlock. And also it should be recognizing your facial expressions, or at least those are other things that they've dug up in the software. That's going to be super weird because I think, as we've seen, it doesn't look like facial recognition in terms of identifying yourself has been super well received. I mean,

it's cool. And is it like, but so far it seems much more like a proof of concept than it is actually secure. I think a lot of security experts have found many ways to spoof this S8, for example. And like, I just don't think it's practical. Like, when are you going to walk down the street and try to,

to buy something and then confirm your purchase by like waving a phone in your face and like blink at it. You know, that just sounds super awkward and it doesn't seem like something that people want or seems natural, but I could be wrong. I mean, like Apple has trained people to you just do things differently before, but I just, I'm not convinced that the recognition as a security factor is it. So the two developers that have been way ahead in in unpacking this stuff It's Steve Trotton Smith and then Guillermo, who's at underscore inside. And he's got a list of like facial expression codes in the code. And there's mouth close, mouth upper up underscore L, mouth roll upper, mouth smile, mouth dimple, mouth stretch, mouth frown L and R, mouth press.

I don't know what that means. Mouth pucker. Mouth funnel. Mouth funnel. What's mouth funnel? Is mouth funnel? Yeah, mouth shrug lower. It's like a pucker when you've like sealed and then a funnel is when you're leaving like.

It's when you really like are thirsty and you just, you've got a deep down body thirst and you're looking for Gatorade. That's a pucker. No, but there's pucker and there's funnel. And then there's mouth shrug lower and mouth shrug upper. That's me every day. How do you? Like I don't think I have that many muscle like talent in my mouth to both. like control my

Tucker and lower lip at the same time. And how do braces or dentures like throw off the formula? Good question. I mean, I get, I theoretically get the idea of what it means to shrug with your mouth. Just go like, hmm. But I don't understand upper and lower. Like that's, that's very strange. But if they have this, like, they're going to recognize all these faces.

Are they just doing it to make like Snapchat like emoji face stuff, you know, face filter things? Are they planning on using it for authentication? What if in order to make a purchase, you have to make a mouthpucker. No. You have to make the fish face in order to use Apple Pay at the store. Sometimes it's kind of a great phone unlock is that you have to make a certain face to unlock it because it's not just like looking at your static face. It's like you got to make a specific face to unlock his phone.

That way someone can't like take a picture of you and point the phone at like your Facebook photo and try to get into your phone. they have been building a lot of stuff to basically give developers out of the box like all of snapchats features like they've got like nose detection and eye detection and all that sort of stuff so i i wouldn't be surprised if this is just apple giving you this is also a company that spent like 30 minutes talking about how their new iLS update will let you tap different words to quickly turn them into emoji so i wouldn't be surprised that they'll spend an entire half hour to talk about like what your facial recognitions can now do in the camera app and like add random filters on top of it in the native camera app right so by the way i found this video uh this

was in uh february um thaddy you brandow how do you think you say that how do you say that Teddo brandow nice close i just made that i don't know so So this is a concept video for an iPhone 8, and this concept has like indentation for the home button, which, you know, maybe is going to... A dimple. A dimple, which is maybe going to go away. But it shows just, like, a lot of cool ideas for, like, what you could do with this sort of virtual home button and, like, you know, scrubbing back and forth. And you could put, like, toolbar, like, icons, like, you know, like, if you're in a photo editing app, you've got your different, like, crop and stuff. You can, it makes so much sense.

I really love this concept video. Please, please look for this. February 2nd by Paul Miller. This iPhone 8 concept video imagines a touchscreen in the home button. Great piece that I wrote in February. And I just love this concept video by Thad Yeats. So my favorite concept is from Max Rudberg, who saw this new notch, you know, screen and put two and two together with iOS 11. So iOS 11 has these giant headers at the top of the screen.

screen, right? But above that, there's the back button to like go up in the category. And then there's like an all categories button. And he's like, if you imagine what the new notched thing looks like, you actually don't want all that extra crap at the top of the screen. It's too hard to reach. You want it at the bottom. And if there's a virtual home button, then there's space on the left and right of it to put other buttons. And they could they could have those big headers at the top. and then they could also have at the bottom that the back button and the all categories button that are typically at the top down there on the left and right of the home button and all of a sudden it feels a lot more like Android a lot less stretch into the top of the screen to get it stuff

yeah all right now also i just want to point out if they start making a gesture area at the bottom of the the screen with like swipes and maybe they you know stick notifications on there if they do any of that i am going to have so many webOS feels that i'm going to have so many webOS fields that i'm going to be the most insufferable person to be around. I'm going to lose my mind. Okay, so here's the big question with the notch. If you got the notch there, right, there's room to the right and left of the notch. So you can put the battery indicator on the right and you can put your signal indicator

on the left. But where do you put the time? Do you put it below the notch? Do you squeeze it under one of the sides? Or what if we just forget about time, you got to buy an Apple Watch. Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's their solution.

I guess that they just don't have the time up there. Or maybe they make it, you know, they probably make it customizable, right? Hopefully. Don't show me my battery life, show me my time. You've got a choice of like, you know, four different things you can put up there and you've got to pick and choose. Maybe like some four-dimensional flick gesture will show you the different things. Okay. So here's my question.

It seems like everybody's assuming that this this bezelist design without the home button and a notch is the iPhone 8 or iPhone Pro type thing, the one that's going to cost more money and possibly be released after this iPhone 7S, which is the true regular next iPhone for regular people who want to spend a normal amount of money for their new iPhones. Do you think that is the case? I do. I think this thing is going to cost. It's going to start. I mean, there's been lots of speculation about the price and they've got to call it an iPhone pro or whatever. I think this thing, I'm pretty well convinced that this thing is going to be pretty expensive and I think it's going to be pretty hard to get until next year. Because I just, I just think that's how it's going to go.

I feel like it's not a rule for all time, but there's something really special about how the iPhone has basically been this device that is a very, it's a very, it's a very, it's. expensive device, but if you have enough money to get an iPhone, you have basically the best technology that exists. And I guess it's been stratified a little bit because the plus has an extra camera or something like that, but it's still kind of a taste issue because maybe you don't want the big phone. But to stratify it like that far where there's a, there's a phone that's $400 more, that's, it just feels weird to me. I mean, I would be more worried about it if I thought there was something in this iPhone that was like,

unbelievably better, but it'll be a nicer phone and it'll feel cooler and I'll have a bigger screen and it'll be more, you know, speeds and feeds the way that Android people love having, you know, crazy high-tech phones. But an iPhone SE and this brand new iPhone, uh, in terms of like apps and like basic utility are going to be so close to each other that I kind of not that stressed out about it. I kind of, the idea that people are going to like be up in arms and be all mad and have umbrage at Apple for daring to make a phone that is better than the one that they've got or that they could go get, you know, today. I don't know.

It's like, let them do it. It's fine. It's, we are due for a little bit of shakeup in the phone market. People have been talking about how phones are boring for a couple of years now, at least. And whatever, sure, they are. but this will help them not be. And that's actually really exciting to me. So essentially they're testing out whether people really will like it

by making it in limited numbers and positing it as a luxury item and rewarding their limited addition customers who are first in line, right? Yeah, the speculation is like there's no way they could make this, you know, iPhone sells 70 million in a quarter. People are assuming there's no way they can make, just produce that. many of them. They've got the same problem Tesla does. And so they're they're going to they're going to price it higher and treat it as a premium luxury product because it will be but also because if it were priced lower, they wouldn't be able to make enough to meet demand.

Right. They're doing a same thing with like the iPad strategy where they like for years had the iPad and also they had the iPad pro and then that leaves them room to sell a more expensive iPad that does basically the same thing, but it's got a little bigger screen and can do a little more thing. And then that gives them room to make a slightly cheaper iPhone in the long run, like they do now with the newest regular iPad. And hopefully they'll sell more because then people will have this like, it's like the same thing when you go to movie theater, right? Like you either buy the small popcorn, you buy the large popcorn. No one buys the medium sized popcorn. Eventually they're going to make a small size iPhone popcorn and that's what people are going to buy more of.

Does this mean that Apple wants to be the luxury phone company? Is that what this is? Oh, yeah. I mean, now the Virtue's gone. They're going to fill the niche. I mean, that's exactly what I'm saying. Apple has been the luxury phone brand. It's just that they have like a cap on the price.

With the watch, they sort of uncapped the price and said, we can go crazy with this. But the iPhone, there's like the most expensive iPhone. phone is like a thousand-ish dollars because it has the maxed-out storage and it's a plus and then that's it. But luxury to me isn't just the price. It's the fact that not everybody can have one. Right. And I feel like that could.

Yeah. I mean, Apple has, you know, since the iPod has basically had like this, like here's our best device, everybody could have one at this price and there's nothing very much cheaper. But, you know, Apple's big growth market right now is these more, like making more iPhone SEs, like making, like phones in India to be bought in India, like expanding its market in that direction. So maybe it sees there's a direction to expand to the luxury. I really just think it's a, it's not wrong of them to do, and there's probably room to grow

there. It's just, it would be a different feel for me of what I expect from Apple. So there are a million other Apple things that I want to talk about. There's earnings. There's this VPN issue in China where they capitulated it and started pulling VPN apps from the store. There's a bunch of stuff. But what's actually going to happen is we're going to throw a bunch of that stuff into the lightning round. Right now, what you're going to hear is the voice of Neely Patel and also the voice of Lauren Good.

I're talking about her final episode of Next Level, which is incredible. You should definitely watch it. And they're going to go behind the scenes and talk about that a little bit. So let's listen to that. and then we'll listen to an ad and then we'll be right back. Hi. I haven't been on the Vergecast this week because I'm on vacation, but I'm here now with Lauren good. Hey, Lauren. Technology is just magical. You're on vacation. I'm working remotely. You're not even on the Vergecast, but now you are.

We're making this happen. The magic of pre-recorded audio. Who knew? Steve Jobs was right. I don't know. I've got a raspberry mic in front of me and my world has changed. So Lauren, congratulations. The first season of Next Level is done. You fought it through. You got four episodes. They're great.

Congrats. Thank you. It's been really, really fun. Yeah. I'm happy that we're making, like, killer quality videos in this moment on the internet and that we have a show that's about innovation in a moment when so much of the news is actually about, like, bad things. I'm just proud that we published a show that's about people trying big, crazy ideas, whether they work or not, they're trying and they're thinking.

And I think that's a neat, it's a neat hook for a show. I agree. And you know what? While we're on the line, I mean, you are my boss. You're the editor-in-chief. So why don't we just do like a quarterly review of the show here? Don't you just tell me, just give me a grade. Like, tell me what you thought. Obviously an A.

I mean, if you're going to put me on a spot in front of an audience, you get an A. We'll talk later, Laura. Thank you. Oh, boy. Thank you. No, the show is great. It was cool. And you pointed out to me yesterday, the whole VARGE team worked on it and thought about it.

And we did, we have a huge team. And for everyone to come together and make a thing is always the best. So that was very cool to see as well. I think that's the thing. I think every time someone has said, great job on the series, in my mind, and I'm not just saying this in my mind, I've thought to myself, oh, no, but Alex and Will did that graphic. And Rachel helped put the research on that one. And Varon and Tyler shot it. And, like, you know, like, I'm not even thinking, like, oh, yeah, I should take the congratulations.

It was such a team effort. It really was. It took the whole verge team to make this thing, but it was really fun. Yeah. Super exciting. So, let's talk about this last episode, which kind of the one product that you looked at that is the closest to being a product, although not quite. Tell me about it. Yeah.

So when we first started out doing this series, we did want to focus on the things that were going on behind the scenes in labs. We made it clear that we wanted to look at prototypes, concepts, things that maybe are still in beta. And that's exactly what this is. We visited Avagant. Avagon is probably best well known for this crazy headset that they released in 2013. It was then called The glyph. You guys might remember this. Dieter reviewed it for Theverge.com.

One of the best photos of Deeter ever, by the way. I think it's one of the best photos of The Verge ever, where Deeter is wearing this retinal, you know, projection. headset and you can literally just see light, but it's video content, being shine directly into his eyeballs. It is such a cool photo. So look up his review of the glyph on the verge. But now that thing is just called the personal video headset. Oh, much better names. Yeah, I know. They really just threw a lot of mud at the wall in the brainstorm room and that one stuck. But this video is not about that. So that was sort of like, okay, if you've heard of Avagampe before, you've heard of them because of that. Now they've been working, they started looking at transparent displays. They

I decided that if they're going to make a headset that offered a really cool mixed reality experience and was something that people could wear all the time and would sort of make sense to their eyeballs, that it would have to be light field display technology. And light field display technology, it's getting a lot of buzz right now because another company you might have heard of called Magic Leap is reportedly working on light field display technology as well. And they've raised more than a billion dollars to work on that tech. So we went to Avagantz offices in Belmont, California, which is a little bit. but north of Silicon Valley, and we saw their new headset prototype that uses light field displays. Yeah. The Magic Leap stuff, it's like crazy, right? Like, it could be a little vapory,

but there's a lot of hype and a bunch of famous people have tried it. But here with Avagon, you actually put the thing on your head and it worked, right? Like that's, we have video of it, which is, which is like a step. It's very much a prototype. Yeah. Right. It's like, you know, you think to yourself, like what they're saying is. is, and a lot of technologists are talking about this right now, is this is the stuff that's going to replace our smartphones. They're saying eventually people are just going to be wearing smart glasses. And everyone wants to know if Apple is going to be making them. And everyone wants to know if HoloLens is going to become more viable in the consumer market. Right. Like, this is like a big

conversation right now. But when you go into the offices or the labs and you see these things, they do still very much feel like prototypes right now. This thing was big. It was kind of clunky. It was tethered to a PC running on Unity. So, you know, there were cameras in the room for tracking purposes. There's a camera directly on the headset itself for tracking purposes. Like, it's not totally refined yet. But this is the kind of stuff. I mean, we're like, we're looking at prototypes. So we kind of go and expecting this. And it did work as promised. I mean, it did, we get like kind of technical in the video. But if you're at all interested in getting like a real human being explanation of light field displays, I would go watch the video because I think we do a

pretty good job of boiling it down. But basically, there is a way that the human eye, naturally perceives light field volumes and naturally sees things. And it's the way in which we focus our eyes. It's the way in which we see volume on things, right? And when you put a headset on generally and you've got this display just kind of smacked in front of your face, you have to do a bunch of technical stuff in order to make your eyes have that same, you know, technical people call it like virgins in accommodation. Like your eyes have to have this same kind of experience. And what the light field displays do, along with some other technology, is they make your eyes feel like they can focus and shift focus and move around and look at digital objects floating in front of your eyes. The same way it would feel

as though I'm looking at the computer screen or the cup of tea that's right in front of me right now. Right. And that is very different from like smartphone AR that people are, you know, you can see all the AR kit examples out there. It's really different from HoloLens where you're just looking at a flat screen that overlays like reality. This is actually tricking your eyes into believing that those objects are in reality with depth, which it's very hard to communicate that on video. I think you guys did a great job because it's such a challenge. And I think it's one of those things where it's impossible.

Until people see it or feel it, it's not going to make a lot of sense. But it is the thing that when you say it could replace your smartphone, it is one of the technologies that because it makes virtual objects seem like they're in physical space, you might be able to just have a virtual smartphone or other virtual objects in the world with you that look like they're real, right? That's the promise, I think. Yeah, that is the promise. You're exactly right. And the big challenge, the technical challenge is trying to figure out, okay, how do we shrink this optical stack or this optical engine?

How do we, you know, if you're going untethered, you have to worry about battery life and you have to worry about how big and heavy you can make this thing if people are supposed to be walking around with it all the time. there are a lot of technical challenges and then there are content challenges too one of the things that magic leap has has shared is that what they're working on is what you call full stack right they're working on um the supposedly the compute system the headset itself the light field display technology they're working with content creators um so they're you know because a lot of times people say well i'm not driven to try a new technology device unless the content and the experience and the apps I'm going to have on it are that, that wonderful, right?

So, like, there are a lot of challenges beyond just engineering, and you have to get, you have to create a virtual reality or a mixed reality experience for people that makes them say to themselves, like, I want to wear this thing on my face. All the time. I just don't think we're there yet. Like, yeah, like, I'm going to carry this around with me, like, I carry around a pair of Warby Parker's

and just be like, hold on, let me put them on now, got to call mom. I don't know, I just, I just think we're, like, very far from there. But a lot of people think this is, this is the future. So when you were wearing the headset, what was it like? It was cool because if you can forget about the fact that it is a rather clunky headset and that you're still tethered, my eyes did shift really naturally.

It was one of the experiences I had was a solar system, which I believe other people have seen. The headset that we tried on was new. No one has tried that on yet. Yeah, you had a little scloose. Is that what we're calling it in media these days? Yeah, we're going to love it. Just like we did a little. We defo had a scloose.

Oh, no. I'm done. That's it. That was a merchkast, everybody. See you next week. Dieter's just going to quit right now. Dieter hates the word defo. Rightfully, rightfully so.

So the headset that we tried was brand new, but some of the apps were not. So one of the apps that I think other people have seen before is the solar system. You're walking around a room and you see Jupiter and Saturn and all the planets and you see moons and asteroids and all this stuff. And so that obviously has a sense of depth, right? They're all kind of like going linear across the room. And so when I shifted my eyes to look from, you know, the moon to the sun to another planet, it felt varying. These are digital objects, like cartoon-like objects floating in front of me. And yet it felt, I shouldn't say cartoon like graphics, right? And it felt natural. I was like, okay, my eyes are just moving.

And the way they're doing that is actually really interesting, too, because they're sending, they're cutting up those images into what they call a multifocal plane approach and sending those images to your eyes at different lengths. So like, like you said earlier, they're kind of like doing these technical things to make your eyes believe that what you're seeing has volume is at a certain distance. But of course it's not because these are not real objects that exist in the real world. It's a kind of crazy. And then there was this one application they showed me where I held up the palm of my hand

and different things would appear in my hand. It might be like a lion or a rhino. And then at one point a syringe just kind of appeared out of nowhere. The syringe went directly into the palm of my hands. Oh, my God. That's so dark. It was pretty bizarre. Yeah. Yeah, it was like, and it made a squishy noise.

Oh, my God. I was like, oh, man, this is, you're all welcome. All of you are in a burst gas who just heard my terrible imitation of a squishy noise. Look, old time radio. We're going to start doing coconut effects now. That's going to be great. I think we need Casey on here to do his old time radio voice. So here's the number one question I saw in sort of other comments.

What was the field of view like? Was it all around you? Was it pretty narrow? Yeah. So in an earlier version of the video, we did include that information. And the video just got so long with us trying to talk about this tech. So we did cut that out. The field of view is about, the optical field of view is about 45 degrees per eye.

And so combined, you get something. that is slightly larger than that. And that is based on what I know, um, bigger than the field of view on the hollow lens, which has been one of the number one, I don't know, complaints, pieces of feedback, you know, things that we've seen about the hollow lens from people who have tried it. And that basically means like, you know, the thing you're looking through, the thing you're looking at has there's a box. There's a box in which the digital objects are, are visible. And then when you start to move out of that frame by moving your head around, you see objects start to get cut off. because they've bumped up against the edge of that frame, the edge of that field of view.

And when it's small, you're like, okay, I can look at this digital solar system in front of my eyes in a very narrow field of view. But in this case, it actually, I did, on occasion, you know, images were cut off, but it felt a little bit, it definitely felt bigger than the HoloLens. Yeah. I mean, I think the question for these things over time is as they get smaller, because obviously you just want glasses. I think Walt used to say it's got to just be glasses and you would wave his glasses around. It happened all the time. But once you get to that point, like, you know, size brings its own restrictions. And so, like, the field of view question to me is, is related to you, well, you want that to get better.

But the constraint you're actually working with is the physical size of the thing on your face. And those things, to me, feel like they're in conflict. Yeah, I think that's going to be a really interesting challenge to solve for. Like, in your experience with HoloLens, when you've tried it, have you, have you, have you thought to yourself, like very sort of actively, this field of view, I'm bumping up into the, in the edges of the frame here. I can't, this isn't a very good experience. You know, I've only tried it in like kind of messy demo environments. It's cool. Like, there's no doubt that it's cool, but I really perceive that as like, there's a screen in front

of my face and like I can see the screen, right? So it hasn't like bothered me because I'm really used to screens, but it also made it just really apparent because I mean, that is that technology. It's just a big screen for on your face, right? Yeah. So like... It feels like a very meta thing. Yeah. It's like... Because right now, like I'm staring at a screen and the screen I'm staring at happens to be a 13 inch diagonal and I see the content and then I see other stuff around it. That is not digital content. And then when you put this thing on your head, you're essentially being served the same thing. You're being served a window through which you can look at things and it's, but there are edges and it's not totally immersive. Right. So I mean it's like it to me it feels like,

I don't know. The closest analog that people listening to this might know is like it feels like the heads-up display in a car. If you've ever been in a car with a heads-up display. Like you're like, oh, there's a bunch of information on this display and I can still see the road. Right. Like, it's just projecting onto glass in front of me. And it's, that is what it is. Like, it is true to itself.

I think that it's not pretending that it's more. I don't think Microsoft even talks about it that way, right? Like, yeah, we put a screen on your head. Go forth. Like, please invent some things. It's actually a full PC. Yeah. Running Windows 10.

Here's a Windows computer. It's on your head now. Like, that's great. I think that there's a long track there of things that I think will be innovative. I think the Lightfield stuff, what magically, you know, the many, many insane demo videos that they've produced, the demos that Avignon is showing you, it feels like that is an attempt to get rid of that screen perception and to put things into space with you. And that, to me, feels like a different track.

where you're going to not try to like layer augment reality, right, like layer information over reality, you're going to try to put stuff into it. They actually call it mixed reality instead, right? Yeah, they're very intent, insistent on calling it mixed reality. And they were quick to point out that they think what HoloLens does, and it does to some extent, is give you sort of a 2D or flat image against your eyes.

And then there's, you know, some stereoscopic 3D technology that's kind of added to, it to try to give it a sense of depth and that what avagon is doing and what magic leap is doing with light field display technology um and by the way avagant's also using a custom built plugin in unity that they're doing something with the software there um that that that is like what is going to give you that true sense of depth so yeah yeah light field displays i mean it's pretty nerdy stuff but it's also it's also very interesting and i would not be entirely surprised if we start to see companies with more familiar names start to get into this. At least that's part of Avagod's plan.

They say that rather than sell directly to consumers like they did with their glyph headset, they are planning on partnering with other hardware makers to get them to buy this optical engine and you use it in some way. Yeah. Because if you think about the stuff they also need to make, they need to make an operating system. They need to make apps. That's a lot of stuff for, I think, a startup. It makes sense to develop the core tech that enables all this stuff and then let other people who are good at that stuff like worry about it, I think. Or you can do it magically is doing

and Magically is doing and Magically does appear to be building a new OS. What Magiolab is doing is just like crazy, right? Like the way they talk about it and promote it seems completely insane. And so we'll see. Like there's like my instincts about that and I've met people who've like worn the Magically iPad set

and they say it's cool, but they seem much farther away than hey, we just built a tech. anybody can license it and build on it on it, which seems to where Avagon is. Right. That's exactly right. You have perfectly sort of explained the differences between the two of them. So I get an A2. Magic Leap is, you get an A2. You get an A2. Everyone's a winner today. Everyone's a winner. You get an A plus for calling in from vacation. The magic of audio. I'm not actually on vacation yet. That's tomorrow. No, no, no. This is time travel. Oh, yeah. I'm working so hard on vacation. So Lauren, your series has come to an end. Next Level is over. It was great.

We're going to do another one. That seems very obvious that we should do another one. Yay. Oh my God. This is an exclusive here that you guys are hearing. That we're doing another one. Exclusi green light here on the Verge cast. What are some things, as you think about spending up the next set of episodes, what are some things that you're thinking about that are some other kinds of prototypes that people should be thinking about? Autonomous vehicle prototypes. No doubt in my mind that I definitely want to do more on that because I think it's, you know, there was this initial wave of press over the past few years, experiential type things where people are, okay, I got a, I got a ride in this new self-driving car from one of the big automakers or I tried out this completely hands-free pod from Google, right? And that's great. I mean, that's like been the first wave. But now I think we're starting to see more. more kind of nuanced or interesting technology come out around self-driving vehicles. And we're also starting to see design change. Like, for example, we just went to the Model 3 event last week in Fremont, California, at Tesla's factory and saw how the Model 3 interior design is completely different because

somewhere in Elon Musk's brain, he thinks that's going to be the autonomous car of the future. And we don't need all the stuff in the interior as we think of a car interior now. We've seen like FCA is doing something, if you know, Chrysler is doing something really interesting around interior design when you've got a fully autonomous vehicle. So I think there's interesting stuff to explore around that. I think biohacking is still a topic that we're really interested in. There's really interesting stuff going on in Silicon right now. A.I. Of course. I mean, we've only just started to sort of scratch the tip of the AI iceberg. So all of these things are topics like I'm really looking forward to diving into. And if you have any ideas, by the way, we're all ears.

So send them in. Yeah. That'd be awesome if you guys send us more ideas. We're always on a hunt. And I will also. What do you think we should focus on? I think the car stuff to me. You know, it's funny. If you just look at like our analytics, there was such, everyone was super interested in what it's like to be in a self-driving car.

And now we publish a, I rode in a self-driving car and like no one cares. Because I think the fact that cars can drive themselves is well known. And the next thing people are interested in is when can I get one? What's it going to like cost me? and what's it going to look and feel like on the inside. And I think that's the next set of things that the industry has yet to figure out. They're far away from that.

I think the basics of this steering wheel is turning itself. You can buy a $25,000 Ford that parks itself, right? Like people, they're used to it. I think the next set is, okay, well, the technology exists. There's all this regulatory stuff, but the technology is going to affect how the cars work and how they're designed and how people experience them. I think that no one knows those answers.

And there's, like you said, there's a bunch of people trying to figure it out. And that stuff to me is absolutely fascinating. Mm-hmm. You're totally right. It's a real. A lot of conflict on this segment of the Verchcast. Heated agreement. I will also tell listeners, Lauren Good's show has come to an end.

But Lauren Grush has got a new show that's going to spin up right on the tail end of next level called Spacecraft, where she is learning how to be an astronaut. So stay tuned for that. It's going to be really cool. We're going to have her on the Vergecast a bunch. just as we've had with Lauren. By the way, if your name is Lauren, we will green light a show.

No questions asked. Just give me a call. But I'm excited. Give us a ring. Oh man. And no, Lauren Rush has been posting the most amazing photos on Twitter too.

Just this morning she posted this great photo of herself getting like strapped into some type of space suit and lying on a table. And I was like, okay, just please come back in one piece. I'm so excited to see her show. I think it's going to be great. I mean, she's basically done a bunch

astronaut training. Like, she's just, like, she's going to go to space. Yeah. Like, see, the last episode is like a lift-off. But, man, I've just made a promise that we definitely can't keep. But maybe we will. Who knows? It's the magic.

Second season of that, TBD. You're going to put on a light field display. We're going to send you to space. But stay tuned for spacecraft. We'll have Lauren on the show when that launches. That's a couple weeks away. And once again, Lauren, congratulations on next level. Terrific series.

And I'm really glad that it got the interest and excitement. around it did, and I can't wait for the second season. Thank you, and thank you for having me on The Vergecast these past few weeks. It's been really fun. Yeah. Okay. Back to vacation, everyone, and we'll turn it back over to Dieter and Paul and Nat. This episode of the Vergecast, it is brought to you by Qualcomm Snapdragon Gigabit

LTE. With download speeds up to seven times faster than typical home Wi-Fi, Snapdragon, Gigabit, LTE can turbocharge all of your connected apps. You can stream 360-degree videos in 4K resolution with minimal buffering. That's bonkers. You can access files in the cloud nearly as fast as you would if they were stored in your phone. You can download hours of movies or music in a matter of seconds. If you would like to learn more about that, you can visit www.

www.spapdragon.com slash gigabit today. And you should. So every week, without fail, without forgetting, Without even calling attention to the fact that we call attention to the fact that we do this every week, Paul has a segment that he does. That is called... Smalt you later. No.

No. No, no, no. That's why it's called every week. Yeah, I wish you would just get, you know, accept it. It comes to terms with the fact that, uh, okay, so this is this device that hit, Indiegogo. Of course it's on Indiegogo. It's called Smalt.

Yeah. It's a smart salt shaker. Right? Okay. And what does that mean? It means that it has Bluetooth connectivity. So it connects to your phone and you can like, you can do. It does a lot of things.

But one of the things it could do, you could shake your phone. So it dispenses salt. But it doesn't dispense salt right out of the food. It dispenses salt into a little tray that then you pull out of the salt shaker. What? Then put on food. Also, it doesn't grind salt. It has to be the specific table salt consistency.

Also, it has... No luxury salts. Unless you grind it to a table salt consistency. Yeah. Could you tell it, I'm eating fish, I need this, and it will, like, figure out how much salt? Can you tell it that... What's the thing you do when you throw salt over your shoulder? Why?

For good luck. For good luck. Does it warn you if you overdue your sodium content? It does. That is actually, interestingly, their true selling point of this is that they can keep track of your sodium intake. Obviously, you'd have to use only sodium from this stupid Bluetooth speaker that also has mood lighting. Also, can be controlled by Amazon Alexa. And you're like, oh, that's convenient.

Another Alexa device in my home. and it's a salt shaker, how nice? No. You have to talk to the Amazon Echo. You say, Alexa, to the Amazon Echo, please dispense salt through my... I want us to build a smart home that only has crap like this in it.

I want the smalt on my table. I want the juicerro on the counter. I want only bad food dispensing pod gadgets in the house. and you have to survive living only on these pod devices for a month. Yeah. That's what I want to see happen. That's not a big mobility problem with salt shakers before because they were normally like when most salt shakers are the size of your palm and this thing is like the size of an echo. So no one's going to pick that up.

And then like no one also wants to like what could you possibly have to say to your salt? Like please. But that's why it has a little tray that you can pull out. It's a, it's odd. And then, like, you ask for too much salt and it, like, turns red or blue, like, in sadness because you're going to die of, like, sodium intake. It's an interactive conversation piece. What about pepper? Why did you buy it?

That's a good point. What about pepper? Is it? Pepper can go screw. I don't care about pepper. All right, lightning round. Nat. Apple sold more iPads.

Heck yeah, they did. The last time I was actually on the verge cats, I'm pretty sure I came on to tell you that I bought one. So I guess I contributed to that. They sold more iPads, and I think they actually made money from the iPads, which I think was the first time in like some crazy amount of quarters. I want to say 10 to 14 quarters, which is insane. And it's largely thanks to the fact that the new iPads were a lot cheaper, a lot more accessible.

It was updated. I think for a lot of customers in growing markets like, parts of Asia. I think Apple said that this new iPad is their first iPad. And also, the timing was just right. You know, like a lot of the very first iPads are now not going to support the latest iOS. So if you want a new iPad that works and it's going to continue working, you end up having to buy a new one. And so it just all worked out really well for Apple. They sold 15% iPads this quarter. And yeah, that is a thing that they did. Fitbit says they're actually going to sell a smartwatch by this holiday.

Believe it when I see it. They had some interesting quote. There's something like, don't worry, we have like a larger vision. Like the specific products don't matter as much. It's about the larger vision. That's the theme of the story, isn't it? Yeah. Okay, Tamara, I got a good one for you.

Arcade Fire says that they've put their new album on a 50. spinner that costs $109. I don't know a question. That's my Lassai. I mean, how is it possible

that having a USB stick on one end is going to keep it spinning like properly? Like this has to be fake. No, it, through the, through the magic of arcade mudfires, orchestral, you know,

uh, music, it will magically just keep spinning. Okay, so this is our 21st century version of the double groove. So back in the day, record companies would release vinyl records where there would be like a record within a record. So like long live the tradition. That's what I say. How do you get to the record within the record? You have to know where the double groove is and to be able to play it. Exactly. That's the whole point. Like there's a groove within the groove. So it's like a second entry point. It'll play outward. Yes. the record would play out.

There was all this vinyl technology cool stuff that you could do or like real geekheads in the record world. And more like a song within a song or codes within music. So to me, that's like it's gimmicky and fun, right? So I don't know. If they actually did it. I think they are just joking.

I think they just photoshopped this. Probably. But I wish it was what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, anything. No, like a, they could like release encoded. They could hide a whole song inside of a song and you'd have to like decode it with some prime numbers or something. Yeah.

Or I mean, but the fidget spinner angle is just, I mean, yeah. It's real cash in. I mean, you're kind of just saying this is pop, right? Because it's going to be over and as soon as the fizzlow goes away. Paul, you won't stop highlighting this in our show notes documents. So I'm going to ask you, fine, MKBHD got to handle a prototype case plus. some weirdness with a red phone, the $1,200

red phone, and it just looks really big. I mean, that's mostly all I wanted to say. He handled three different prototypes. He handled a non-working prototype that shows the size and design of the phone. He handled a prototype that showed

this weird holographic, or sorry, hydrogen display that he didn't really describe what it is doing but it was doing something and he also handled a prototype that had like their

what he calls Moto mods on steroids like a snap on extra camera that he added that they had so and they said in somewhere 30 to 45 days there'll be an actual working prototype

of the actual phone which I will believe when I see. Look I am happy for them to sell 5,000 of these and maybe they'll make money, maybe they won't. The fact that 5,000 of these will exist in the world makes me happy. Everyone's going to say it's a huge failure and what are they doing, blah, blah, blah, but I don't care.

Hey, apparently $1,200 is the hot new amount of money to charge for phones. All right, last one, Nat. We have seen specs for the Note 8. They're totally shocking. Are they? No. I'm not. I convinced.

Yeah. Are you mad about the fingerprint sensor? They're going to be, except the battery's a little smaller because for all these reasons. So, I mean, they're going to be able in about like two and a half weeks. And basically everything is already out there. We all know what is what's going to look like. We saw some variation of colors, which is basically the same colors that we've already seen from previous galaxy phones. And there's the stylist. Nothing shocking about that. The only shocking thing is that it stuck with the note brand. But I mean, I don't know. Fine. I'm glad. I'm not totally

going like I think it would be a bad look for them to just say like all right note seven's food is over we're not going to make them anymore like that's just not going to happen so they kind of just have to keep on trudging on and try to move past the whole fiasco from last year and yeah like I think they owned it enough and they've talked about it enough times about how like horrified they were about the whole thing and I think they're just going to leave that all in the past and move on and we're going to have we're going to have a no date. That is our show. Thank you so much for listening. You should follow people, and I have an instruction for you as well. We are Verge on Twitter and on Snapchat, and especially on Instagram, where we're putting up some really great stories. There's also some really cool stuff from Verge Guidebook showing up on Instagram, so you should keep an eye out for that.

Please go to Apple Podcasts and give us a rating, because that's nice, preferably five stars, or a big like or whatever weird stuff Apple Podcast is doing now. If you want to listen to other shows, you certainly can. In fact, you should. There is too embarrassed ask with Lauren Good over on Recode. They also have Recode, Decode with Carous Swisher, and Recode Media with Peter Kafka. If you want to find more of our shows, they are over at iTunes.com slash The Verge. You may notice that there's just the one Verge podcast, but that's going to change very soon.

If you have ideas for what you would like us to do for another podcast, we've got a couple of our own. But you should tweet at Neelai. at Reckless. If you happen to work in a reference to Wiscond Valley, I would personally appreciate that. You could also follow the rest of us here on Twitter. I am at Backlon, Paul's future Paul, Nat is Nat Garon, and Tamara is Tamara Tam. And Lauren, who's on earlier, is at Lauren Good with an E. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Rock and roll. Rock and roll, Paul, snip, snip. Snip, snip.