The Vergecast - The RED iPhone, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and the new iPad

Episode Date: March 24, 2017

The Vergecast returns to New York! Nilay, Dieter, Natt, and Megan are here to update you with the news of the week. Apple has a new iPhone... kinda! And a new iPad... kinda! Natt got a look at the Android O developer preview, and Megan played Mass Effect: Andromeda. There’s a lot of stuff in between that so listen! 01:40 - Apple’s new products 05:04 - Apple replaces iPad Air 2 with cheaper 9.7-inch iPad 10:38 - Apple bought the best utility app for the iPhone, Workflow 16:52 - Apple’s new Clips app makes social videos for other social networks 21:43 - Android O brings fun customizations that set the stage for bigger changes 30:15 - Android / Chrome tablets 34:33 - Megan’s Kulture Korner 48:33 - Natt’s weekly segment “Did you know hoverboards were still a thing?” 51:32 - Samsung S8 / DeX Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of theverge.com. You weren't expecting that. Anyway, The Verge is a thing. It's a thing you know and love. It's a website. But it's so much more. It's a lifestyle. Well, the New York Times calls us a technology website, and I trust the New York Times.

We upgraded technology blog a few years ago. It was very exciting. Anyway, this is The Vergecast. There's a joke about a vodka that we usually make here, but I'm on the fence with it. I'm Neelai Patel. I'm here. Megan Frochmanish is here. I sure am.

Hey, good, good, good exchange. Dieter Bone is here. Hi. We're not doing great. And Nat Karen is here. Hello. How are things? Things are great.

Nat, after her like big podcast debut, had never done a podcast before, then Nat and Megan hosted a whole episode of the show. They can't hear you when you just shimmy proudly. What Nat just did was like a proud little dance, like a shoulder dance. I'm a very animated person. It's hard to convey that over a podcast, that's for sure. You just got to make little noises.

Well, I'm wearing the big chunky necklace, so maybe if you hear a little like, that's me dancing. Gentle Windchrist. That's great radio. Do you hear the tinkle of joy coming from Nat's microphone? Anyway, we last week, was that last week that we were in Austin? We were at South by. I know. We're at South by.

You got sick. I got sick. I'm still sick. Sorry, everyone. You're on trapped in this room with me. I'm definitely coming down. So Nat, you, Nat will be sick next week. Great.

But we had two great shows. They were live. They were fun. Thank you, everybody, for listening. I will say, bizarrely, those shows super popular. Huh. Lots and lots of people listen to those shows.

So maybe we should do more live shows. Maybe we will. But that's enough about us. There's like news in this world. Dieter, do you want to, it's like, I didn't even know where to start. There's a new iPad. There's a new iPhone of some kind. Yeah.

You reviewed a Chromebook. I did. Although that's not new. It's been around for a couple of months, but we can talk about it. I want to talk about in the context of the Tad S3, which Jake reviewed. You played with Android O. I did. We're just like all over, like where to begin?

So many things. Well, I guess let's begin with Apple. It's kind of what kicked off the week. First, there's a new iPad called iPad. It's cheap. It's like, there's a new iPad called lazy naming. Yeah, well, it's not the iPad because Apple never, they hate the word the, just the most. And we can talk about it, but it's like, it's pretty cheap. It's 9.7 inch. And they basically discontinue the iPad air too. And there's a whole lot of stuff to get in there. They also have a red iPhone. It's a product red. So it supports HIVA. It's more crimson than red. But all of Apple's things have been more crimson than red. I think that's kind of disputed. Our art director, James, went through a bunch of product red offerings and literally just look through all of them. He said most of them are more red than you think, but the iPhone red is definitely more crimson than it is red.

I think that that's a little pedantic. Yeah. Crimson is a type of red. I mean, I love the name crimson. It sounds sophisticated. and I, but product crimson is, there's no ring to it. But I would, I would use a red iPhone. Product crimson sound, it does have a ring, but it's like not, it's not the ring that you want.

No, it sounds like a product that like the NCAA sells like to Harvard students. Oh, I was going to say it sounds like a weapon of mass destruction. It sounds like a really shitty X-Men reboot. Yeah, product crimson. Yeah, a weapon of half destruction. They can have that idea. It's not a name for an iPhone. Well, whatever.

Well, product crimson, but red, but it's red. That's the whole thing. I don't know. Lauren, good. But like, is it, color is just, you know, it's a qualia. Is it, is it, it's, it's not really an intrinsic quality. It's, uh, as Plato would say, no, never mind. Sorry.

No, I think it can be, though. Deter just went for it. Wow, Deeter. I'm just saying. I think it's going to be a lot more popular than you think. Like, in a lot of Asian cultures, red is a really lucky and fortunate color. So I think that it's going to be super, super popular in, like, Asia. Yeah.

I mean, I think it'll be popular everywhere. I mean, the global. Particularly, I feel like people would buy the hell out of it in cultures that really emphasize the color red. Huh, that's fun. I mean, I think they just did it. So it was the 10-year anniversary of their product red partnership. Right. And I think they were finally like, all right, for 10, you get this.

But a lot of people hate that the front part is white. I also hate that the front part is white. I agree. I think it does look a lot better on black. Yeah. So I also hate that it's white, but I got to assume that Apple knows what it's doing with this and know that. what the sales figures are and what user preferences are. And I think the thing, like, it looking black makes the thing just look, like red and black

would look a lot meaner. And I like phones that look mean. But it turns out if you want to buy a mean iPhone 7, there's a matte black one just sitting there you can go get. So, like, maybe they've already saturated the market for mean looking iPhones. I mean, I actually don't, I don't know why they don't make iPhones in like every possible color combination. But it goes.

But anyway, it's a red iPhone. We've spent too much time talking about it. They made it red. We got to talk about clips. You want to talk with the iPad or you want to talk about clips? Let's talk about the iPad. The clips, it's bonkers. There's the whole thing with clips.

It's so bonkers. So the iPad. Yeah. The only thing interesting about it is that it's very cheap. It's 329. Yeah. But they basically updated the first iPad Air, which is like an interesting move. Yeah.

If you compare it to the iPad Air 2, it's a little bit thicker. It has a worse screen. And it has, I think it's up to the A9, processor now. Yeah. So it's faster than the air too. Right. If you look at the physicality of it, it basically is more like an original iPad Air than an iPad Air 2. Right. And when you say a slightly worse screen, the big change to iPad Air 2 was they laminated the display against the glass and now they've gone back to the unlaminous way. I have, when I was like, that's bad. People obviously pointed out that I'm a huge snob. Yeah. It is a very snob. Like, people are still

like rolling out with the iPad 2. Like there are people in this world who are like, this iPad 2 is fine. I'm have it for the rest of my life. And I'm like, the screen isn't laminated. I feel bad. I feel bad about who I am. But I'm also very confident in who I am. So that badness is rooted in a deep sense of security. But they're walking it back. Like, they want the high-end iPad is now the pro. It has the laminated screen, as the A-10 quadillion, whatever it is. It's very fast. It has a stylus. It has a keyboard connector. And then there's this, like, thing for the Netflix people. I will say that what this thing actually is supposed to be for is the education market. It is supposed to be the thing that fends off the Chromebook a little bit, which has been

eating Apple's lunch in the education market because they're so cheap, they're so disposable, and they're so much easier to manage when you've got a bunch of students and you just want to be able to log into a dumb terminal. The iPad does have multiple accounts available to it now finally, but only in the education context. Wait, really? I didn't know that. Yeah. In education, you can set up multiple user accounts on an iPad if they're managed through like the education device management system. Huh. It's a little twitchy. It's not as dead simple as Chrome OS. But to me, if you're making this thing cheap and you're trying to get it into schools, yo, just put a dock connector on it. Put the smart connector on it. Yeah. Why doesn't have a keyboard connector? It's dumb. It doesn't make any sense to me. Right? Yeah. But it makes no sense. They wanted to make it cheap. They had parts sitting around. I don't know.

Yeah, and the parts were the iPad Air. They're like, we just, so I'm like, Johnny I was like, a warehouse. I found one. I can't build a car here. I don't know what he says. What I'm curious about, though, is that it's so much cheaper now, and I think the base model is 329, but the 128 gig iPad Mini is now way more expensive than the iPad Air, the new iPad. I'm curious what's going to happen to the iPad Mini.

Are they going to also make it cheaper, or is that just that Apple just, like, kind of, spelled the end of iPad Mini. Do any of you have an iPad Mini? I have a friend who has one, but they got it as like a Christmas present from their office. I loved the iPad Mini for like a year. And then I got a big phone and I was like, this is stupid. Yeah. And I stopped.

I haven't touched my iPad Mini. I forgot that it existed yesterday or the day before when I Apple stuff came out. Like I tweeted like, the iPad line finally makes sense. And people are like, what about the iPad Mini? And I don't. I've forgotten. Yeah. I don't know an iPad.

You know, I don't know. I don't know on any iPads. Who needs an iPad? I know exactly. What would I do with it? I have a computer and a dumb phone. Yeah. I'm good on Apple products for now.

It's an iPhone 5S. Yeah. And I am afraid to update it because I hear that will make my phone just catch on fire. Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah. My 6S I updated it. Every day it's like, hey, you want to update me? I'm like, no, shut up.

I put it down. That's it. The preeminent Apple blogger in the universe, John Gruber, has written somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 words over the month trying to make sense of the iPad product line and what he's expecting is supposed to happen with the iPad product line. Yeah. And you read all of it and you're just like, yeah, nobody knows. This is, this doesn't make sense. There's like, there's no clarity to it whatsoever. I think they're, I think they're hamstrung by the fact that they, they believe it's the future of computing and it might not be because people just use tablets for Netflix. Yeah. Right? Like,

like, uh, like, well, so, but people just use tablet. for Netflix. There's this grand debate happening like at a meta level at the verge about computers versus tablets and like what kind of stuff you can do with it. And like I am very clearly like the flag bear,

torch bear flag bearer for like I love customizing shit. What is the difference you have flag bear and a torch bearer? Torch bearer has words on. You carry a torch because you love it. And you carry a flag because they're the people that they aim the arrows at when you're in a fight. I thought torchbear was like if you're like going

to like burn somebody's house down. Yeah. That's my interpretation too. You also have a pitchfork. That's how you know. I like that Deeter is like you carry the torch because you love and you carry the flag because you wish to die. Yeah, I'm pretty sure people carry flags when they're representing something and then carry fire when they're trying to kill something. Okay.

You carry a torch for somebody. It's a thing that people say. I carry flags for people. None of this is a thing anybody says. It's just a flag that somebody's face on it. I carry a flag for you. I'm bad at flirting. It's funny about.

Montana stay line of cars. Walking to the bar. They're like, hello. I have a flag and a torch. I don't, I'm kind of anachnistic. I'm set the one on fire. Oh, no. All right, Dieter, keep going.

I'm sorry. Applebot workflow. Applebot workflow. Applebot workflow, which is this iOS utility that's basically if this than that for phones and tablets. That lets you basically connect up a bunch of random shit via like, you know, deep links and web services to basically like, like do stuff on the iPhone that you couldn't otherwise do with button presses. And they like, they were really smart by like jacking into the notification widgets and also the, um, the, the slide up share, uh, sheet thing. Yeah. Like those, those extra things, those extensions.

So Apple bought them. And so it's like, oh, hey, maybe that sort of model is like the future of taking iOS and turning it from a Netflix machine that you can only do what Apple lets you do into a computer where you can do more stuff. So I was really excited. And then they made it free, which is also great because it used to cost three bucks. And then with the update to make it free, they disabled its ability to talk to Google Chrome, Google Maps, and like some other like Uber. There's like a whole bunch of things where they turn it off and they switch the default maps to Apple Maps. That's cute.

That's like the most petty Apple shit in the world. Right. Like we bought your app and people loved it. Like the default thing that people would talk about was like, you could set it up and like when you had an appointment it would screenshot you Google Earth screenshots of where you're going to be like that was the standard example of workflow and Apple bought it and they're like what if we turn that off because fuck you but look I support these companies being extremely petty when it comes to competing right if they can get out all the anger at the petty level and then like you know they walk in the meeting and they like they've worked it all off well they're just going to seal it

They'll just, instead of a Google Earth thing, we'll just have some shitty Apple Maps, like, screenshot for you. And it's like maybe five feet away from where you're supposed to be. Yeah, and the building looks melted. Wait, let's go back to the iPad. So, Deter, you're saying you carry the, you carry a number of objects on fire, draped in cloth, whatever it is. Because you both, because you love. But you carry the torch, whatever, the flaming torch. I carry a flag that's on fire.

For the concept of, like, next generation. I know what you're getting at. Yeah. Right? You're the one who thinks tablets are going to be the thing. Well, I'm the one who thinks that fundamentally there is a ceiling on iPads becoming the future of computing because they just stop you from doing stuff on them. And this, I don't want to like redo. You should just listen to Neely's podcast with Walt about internet appliances.

Like the iPad is the best appliance. Ah, so you agree with me. Walt and I disagreed on that. Well, I think it's a great appliance, but it's definitely like, like, it doesn't cross that line of like, I want to do yet one more thing that this thing doesn't let me do. And I, like, I waffle on whether or not I believe Apple is going to enable that kind of thing. Yeah. Just the dumbest thing in the world, a thing that we all probably do a lot, it's really hard to, like, make a gif of something that you just see on the iPad. Oh.

Right? Like, watching a movie and, like, making a gif out of a scene of a movie is very easy to do on a computer. Giffy caption. It's really easy to do on a note 7 too, speaking of things that are on fire. Rough. Everybody take a minute. Let's just hold on to that one. The Note 7 jokes are going to be over because the S8 will come out.

Yeah. There's a hard deadline on note 7 jokes. Get them in. The S8 is being announced on March 29th. Dude. And you've got to submit all of your note 7 jokes before that day. Unless that phone also explodes, which is a real possibility. When Samsung, if they release a red version of the S8, if it's not named Ember, I'm going to be super pissed.

That's pretty good. Man, for Samsung. We're going to get to that in a minute. Is there anything else? We've got to talk about clips. Just to wrap up the iPad. We are all kind of an agreement that this is just like a desperation. We made a cheaper one.

Hopefully you buy this one kind of move. Well, that's kind of, you kind of have to. There's no more iPad air. If you want an iPad, this is what you get. Or the pro. Yeah. Well, I mean, most people probably aren't going to. to shell out for a pro. So if you want an iPad that you can afford, this is the one you get.

Megan, what's the universe in which you spend $1,000 on an iPad Pro instead of a laptop? The universe in which my laptop breaks, and I don't want to buy a new one. But like if you had a choice, that laptop, say something was to happen to your laptop. Megan's like scooting away from me. That's a real nice laptop you got there. Now say that one is to break. And you have a thousand dollars. Is there a world in which you buy an iPad Pro instead of a lot?

other laptop. No, absolutely not. Like, if I'm going to spend money on a thing, I want it to be like the nicest cheap version of the thing, right? So I'm just going to get a computer. I'm going to get like a shitty laptop air. I don't, laptop air.

It's great. I don't see this is a desperation move from Apple. It's not desperate. They're just like recognizing what the market is. People, you know, if they don't want to spend the money to try and get an iPad pro to replace a computer, they just want a tablet. And so they're just going to go get whatever's cheap. And they made the iPad cheap.

Like, yeah. Turns out that people don't care about having, like we've been saying for years, people don't upgrade their iPads. People don't care about having the fastest one. People don't care about having true color, tone, color, whatever the hell it's called on the screen. They just want a thing to watch Netflix and browse the web. And so Apple's like, all right, here's the cheapest one we could make with a big screen.

Here you go. Yeah, this is true. I'm buying one tomorrow for my mom. Wow. This is Nat's weekly moment to insert her mom into a little. literally every podcast appearance she makes. Two for two. Her birthday's on Saturday, so I'm going to get it for her

because she's traveling back to Thailand soon and she does not have a laptop. She has a desktop, and she just wants something to be able to access the internet with. So that's what she's going to get. Surprise mom. Yeah. My parents travel with her iPad, too. Yeah. But it's literally an iPad too. Yeah, and she was asking whether she should

buy one now, and I'm like, maybe a new one is coming out, and this new one's coming out. It may or may not be as great as the one I could have gotten, but it's cheaper. So who cares? Yeah. All right. Let's talk about Clips.

Clips. So my nightmare scenario was that Apple would build I message stories. Yeah. And I know that they're going to. We all know that they're going to. It's going to happen. But Clips is like the hybrid thing. Or like the baby step.

So it's basically take all the weird, wacky shit that you get to do with Snapchat videos or, I don't know, Instagram or Facebook messenger or stories or whatever, like all the weird filter shit. But then just make that into an app that doesn't actually isn't actually connected up to any social networks. And then you're supposed to take that video, save it, and then send it out to whatever network you want to use. So Apple said, hmm, we're really, all the kids are using all these other social apps. We should make a social app.

But if we made a social app, it would probably fail because most social app fails. And then people would look at us and say that we made a social app that failed. So let's just make all the parts except the social part. And then nobody will blame us if it doesn't succeed. I think it's more like motion still. Like Google made motion stills, and motion stills is great. Yeah. It's a toy that they made, and Apple made a toy.

And I think Apple's really good at, like, video editing toys. Like, they still have that Imovie team that, like, every now and again, they're like, what if the interface for editing movies was crazy? And they did it in Final Cut. They did it again in Imovie. Like, I like the idea they made a little wild and wacky video editor. But I think the real step here is the next iPhone, the rumor from Bloomberg, is that it'll be, like, heavily augmented reality. Yeah. And this is how you make an augmented reality phone that's like layering information in all the video.

You need an app to like make it and share it. And this is, I think, the first step to that app. Interesting. Right? But to me it's super weird because I think of Apple in video editing. It's like professional creatives. And this is like teen. So don't really get it.

Wait, you don't think of Imovie in teens? Not really. I totally think. Like I think of Apple and video editing and I think a bunch of teenagers using Imovie. No. And then getting jobs. and then realizing that every professional environment uses Premiere.

I just agree. In college, back in my day, that's what we used. Premiere? Eye movie, yeah. No, that's what I mean. Like, teenagers and Imovie is, like, the core of the Apple experience. But that's for making, like, a full-on video.

It's not for, like, I'm going to make a funny thing and send it to my friends. If you're going to make a funny thing and send it to your friends, you use Snapchat or Instagram or... Right. I'm saying, like... In, you know, 10 years ago or whatever, kids making videos, they were using iMovie,

and all of that has been replaced by Instagram, Snapchat. So why wouldn't Apple want a piece of that? Because that's still the core of their brand. It's like, you can be creative because you have a Mac. Yeah, I guess the argument here is that, like, IMovie was created. Megan just smiled at me. The argument here is that... She's like, are you making fun of baristas?

I mean, IMovie is good for creating videos. And yes, that's what we all used when we were teens, just screwing around video editing and uploading stupid stuff to Facebook or YouTube. But still, that was sort of like we were trying to make like a movie or like something funny. It wasn't like I made this video so that I can say hi to Megan from like just because like I use Instagram and maybe. I don't personally use Snapchat, but people use Snapchat to like literally just say hi or like, hey, I'm at this place. People are not going to go to Imovie and make like a long winded video just to say hi. I just think the purpose

is completely different. So I don't really know I don't get clips. I'm not going to be able to use clips because I don't have an iPhone. But yeah, I just don't really get it. I think it's to be a fun like Instagram fad. Like there are Instagram fads in this world. Like, like May 2. Is that app like the selfie?

Like it's going to come. I call it the anime app. Yeah. It just turns into a terrifying anime character. Yeah. It's like I don't have any skin. It steals all your data. It steals all your data. Like That's Apple's wedge. We don't steal your data and send it to the Chinese government when user and video app.

I think it's fun. But I do think the move here is for Apple to get people to use this app so that when the new iPhone comes out and it's got a bunch of AR shit in it, like you're already accustomed to making and sharing AR stuff. Right. Or you're already accustomed to using this app to do weird, funky depth tricks with your photos. Uh-huh.

And then you like, you know, they're like, the new iPhone has eight cameras on the back and like senses the world around it and, like, layers information. And you can take a photo with clips and, like, layer in shit. and send it to Instagram. You just see those threads aligning very clearly. And I think you get out clips now. You put it out now so that people want to use it and they're excited about it instead of it's only on the new iPhone.

I don't know. They got to do something. If they do all this AR stuff with the iPhone, they need to find a way to share it. Because if you're not sharing it, it's kind of like not. Otherwise, it's just you walking around with a phone in front of your face being like,

I see data where there was none. And that's like a little terrifying. Let's do a little bit of Google. and they can do an ad. So, Nat, you actually played with Android O. I did. Tell me about it. It's less exciting than when Android and developer preview came out

because I feel like multi-window was immediately kind of like, oh, my God, this is a thing that Samsung's had forever. Like, Android, other Android people can now have it. But now Android O does not have as many consumer-facing features yet. The only two things that you can really play with is the snooze notifications, which I have a lot of problems with. You have to, like, soft-swipe it to either, it left or right and then find the clock to snooze it.

If you swipe a little too far, which most people are probably used to doing with their thumb, you dismiss it permanently. Wow. So that's really annoying for me because I went on Facebook Live earlier today to demonstrate it, and I literally accidentally swiped it away. I'm like, well, got to wait a little bit for new notifications to try that with. But yeah, I mean, hopefully they'll fix it before it rolls out. I'm sure it's just kind of like a trial and error thing for now.

the other thing you can do with it is you can customize the lock screen shortcuts, which is awesome. Right now, if you use a Google phone, your two lock screen shortcuts are either to unlock Google Assistant or open the camera, so three shortcuts. But when you can now customize using the system's UI tuner, which Dieter just told me you can unlock it by holding the cog at the top navigation bar. And yeah, and you can customize literally, you can put anything on it, and it's not just an app. You can literally put, like, compose on Gmail, and it will unlock that feature and take you right to it from the lock screen, which I think is pretty cool. It's not quite like the weather widget that Eddie Robertson wanted, and she wrote a thing about a couple weeks ago, but it's close.

It's getting there. I feel like we're in the right direction in terms of making the lock screen a little more interactive. So I finally have a pixel. I have it, and I haven't switched over to have it be my main phone. You have not? No. Why? I message.

It's like terrifying. It's a terrifying thing to be like I will never talk to my friends and family again. Like it's just something's going to break and all my messages are going to go away. That's how I felt when I moved over from RIP Blackberry. And then I was like, it's fine. It's going to be fine.

It's not fine. They won't talk about it. Especially if there's group chats. It's going to be fine. Especially if you are in any group chats with your family. That's just all. gone. Also, like, baby photos, like

my niece and nephew, like, there's like, there's just, there's giant albums of pictures of them having adventures that everybody in my family sees but me. No, that's so tragic. It's the best locked in the entire industry. See, that's why I have my mom on, oh, mom, that's why I have my mom

on messaging apps. Then we can all, who cares who knows what phones you use, you'll see it. I sent a WhatsApp message to my parents saying, hey, is this still work for you guys? I'd like to use this to talk to you now. And my mom replied an hour later saying, I can't figure out how this works. And I never got the notification. And I only saw it because your dad saw it, but he can't open the app.

And then my dad sent me an email saying, yeah, this doesn't work. I don't know what the deal is. Your mom was very confused by it too. So no. Well, I talked to my mom through Facebook Messenger, which is great because she's a big fan of stickers. And she basically communicates with me. in stickers about 90% of time and she does not ever have to type it's great

I'm gonna try to work up the courage the liquid courage to switch my sim over to my pixel this weekend I just took my sim out of my pixel I took my sim out of my pixel yeah because I broke it because it's cracked so I put it in this Galaxy S7 Edge which had been in a drawer

for like two months and I had to like upgrade it through like eight upgrade cycles to you know get it to be usable. It took me literally 12 hours to get this phone like usable. That's awful.

It's fine now though. But so, is it? Android, oh, like the big, big, big, big change is that Google has finally gone full Apple and is fully restricting background apps. Yeah. They've like, they've, they talk about battery life every iteration. They've walked up to this line a couple of times and been like, we're going to give you options for me.

minimizing what you do in the background. We're going to do this a little bit. We're going to do that a little bit. But this time around they're like, yeah, no, these are the things that apps are allowed to do in the background. These are the things that we're going to just stop or throttle. Sorry goodbye. Which is really interesting. It'll be really great to see what happens there for battery life. I'm really, really curious to see what happens on stuff other than phones where you actually want to have two windows active at the same time. And if maybe limiting everything else means that they can have a couple of apps running at the same time because that's one of the things Jake noticed on the S3 tablet review is the app that isn't the one in focus on an Android tablet and same thing on like Chrome OS

when you have Android apps running. If the Android app isn't like currently the thing that's in focus, it just like freezes. It just stops. And they might be able to like better manage that stuff if they're more aggressive about turning off stuff that's even further in the background. I don't know. We'll see. But like that's probably the for like Android developer.

the biggest change. Yeah. It just seems like, oh, is very iterative. But in the best way, like, more customizations, better notifications, like, the little things that make a phone annoying, they've, like, paid attention to them in a way that Apple, whenever Apple, like, talks about notifications, they just start cringing. It's, like, I assume that no one who works at Apple gets notifications. Yep.

Because there's no excuse for how they handle and manage notifications. There's a whole lot of other notification updates that are supposed to be. to show up soon too. You're supposed to be able to categorize notifications now, which is super cool. So I have, yeah, right? And you can mark some as like marketing. Yeah. Or like just messaging or like just like rent like social apps, I think.

It's vague. So what I want is something like what Gmail or inbox does where I can like say all of these things bundle up into this category. All these apps bundle up into this category. All these apps bundle up into that category. what I think they're actually doing is inside each app, if an app wants to give you five different kinds of notifications, it can bundle those up and then you can tell the app,

I only want to see, you know, high priority stuff for me. But doesn't this presume like an extraordinary amount of good behavior from app developers? Yeah, right. Like this system, like, if you're an app developer, you're like, you know, I'm just going to, I'm going to label these notifications as marketing. And everyone's going to see that. Like, it's never going to happen. No, but like the Android is so much better at giving you control over notifications that you see and don't see anyway that like giving app developers a little bit more power to categorize it.

Like if they are bad, I'll just turn up notifications for their app, you know? Like I don't care. It's fine. Yeah. Screw you, app. Yeah. Don't lie to me. Today's episode is brought to you by Chris.

Oh, no. Today's episode is brought to you by Chrisal. glare lenses. If you wear glasses, then you know that fingerprints, smudges, scratches, and glars can be a constant obstruction to your vision and a huge distraction. Sometimes you end up focusing more on what's in your glasses than what's going on around you. That's why I love

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I've never done a good job of reading the ads. The advertisers keep coming back. I assume it's because my terrible reads people listen to. So they keep coming back. I mean, we sold more Squarespace websites than anybody. Or Squarespace just doesn't know. It's one or the other. You're just waiting for your mail camp moment.

Yeah, it's going to happen. But we have actually gotten notes from like random listeners about the Krizal ads. And then Megan read one last week really well. And she got a compliment. Like someone emailed her. I got a couple compliments. No, people tweeted and emailed me, and I was like, this is weird. It's the weirdest nice thing anybody said to me.

Anyway, buy the glasses. You're going to love them. Crizol.com. All right, so, Deeter, we talked briefly about the tab S3. Yeah. We talked briefly about your Chromebook review. Yeah. I want to talk about that for just one second, because you tweeted that you have a theory

that Android tablets are just going to turn into Chrome tablets. Just walk me through this theory real fast. Android tablets are universally bad. Android apps on tablets are pretty bad as well. I posted a story on Wednesday, which was just block quotes of every major Android tablet review we have ever done. And I just quoted the line where we said Android apps on tablets are bad. Dating to 2011. Dating since 2011, Android apps on tablets have just been big blown up phone apps. No, I think that if Google is going to successfully sell tablets, they need to get. of you some sort of thing that you want that you can't get from an iPad. And they clearly are not going to do it through like better apps. It's just not going to happen. They're probably not going to be able to do it through better hardware because like

the iPad hardware is pretty good, even if it's like, you know, two year old stuff from the parts bin. So they need an advantage. And the advantage that I think is sitting right there in front of them ready to go is just ship it with Chrome OS instead of. Android, and then you can have a full desktop class browser on your tablet, and that solves two problems. It gives you a reason to buy it instead of an iPad because you can do stuff that you can't do in an iPad because its web browser is not as good as what you can get on your desktop.

And it gives you a bunch of web apps, which will fill the gaps in what you're able to do with Android apps because a bunch of more big blown-up phone apps. theoretically, if this works, they'll also sell a bunch of these cheap ChromeOS tablets to schools. Those schools will want to buy them because they want to give their kids tablets instead of laptops, maybe. And that's great because the Chrome OS is really good in education, really easy to log in and out of.

And then maybe, if all of that happens, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe. This sign-doll voice is doing. I don't know what's happening. Maybe there'll be enough install base of ChromeOS stuff running Android. And there'll be enough people using them on Chromebooks that it'll be worth developers' time to optimize and update their apps to work on larger screens. This is the most hopeful conspiracy theory of all time. Yeah.

But I'm into it because I want a tablet to a real browser. If you had a choice between an Android tablet, a ChromeOS tablet, and an iPad, you'd probably pick the iPad. But you might pick the ChromeOS tablet. And if you had a choice between an Android tablet and a ChromeOS tablet, which one would you pick? A ChromeOS tablet. Because it also has all the Android apps you want. Yeah. Except, you know, six.

Right now they work for shit. Well, I mean, they got a solve. That's a big problem to solve. The Netflix is fine. The Microsoft Office is pretty good, right? Like some of the stuff is fine. The main stuff you want on a tablet is like, you get a really good web browser,

you get Netflix, you get Hulu, fine. Yeah. The conspiracy theory by Dieter Bone. I'm telling you, it's, I believe you it's going to happen. I just think that last turn where they start making actually good Android tablet apps. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, who knows. Yeah.

I'm just surprised Samsung made and shipped this thing. Yeah, I know, it's weird, right? Like, if that's the future, like, why? Do they just want to have something in MWC? Like, they were like, well, so this is where I usually put out notes and they tend to next one. So, like, I mean, that's just like how it feels. Like, they just needed something and they're like, here's a thing. Yeah.

It's super, it doesn't make sense why it even exists. Yeah. I don't, I don't know anybody that should go get this. It's the last of its kind. Yeah. Although I will say Samsung makes the giant Galaxy View tablet, which I believe. still runs marshmallow. So it's way behind.

No, the one before that, Kick hat. It's like lollipop or kick hat. It's like super old. Throwback Thursday. But it's like a 17-inch tablet with a kickstand. Yeah. It's amazing.

It has a handle. And it's like just a little, like you're just supposed to carry it in your house and use it as a TV. And I just, I want them to, I just want that thing to be around me more. The battery life is about 40 minutes, I think.

That's all you need. I mean, that's how long. A joke lasts. And then you're like, well, I have an 18-inch tablet. I'm going to go use my phone now. All right. I want to do a thing that I'm calling Megan's Culture Corner. I do not agree to this name.

We're not going to call it that. It's unnamed so far. Well, it's spelled Corner with a K and Culture with a K. Like Mortal Kombat style. Yeah. For extra coolness. So I'm saying I think that's a great name. Coolness.

Very culture. Very coolness with the K. All right, Megan. You want to talk about Mass Effect. I do. I mostly want to shame you for not playing the trilogy. Mess fact Andromeda came out this week. I've spent a lot of time with it, by which I mean, I've spent three hours, all which have been in its character creation system.

Oh, my God. Which is like a hot mess. Really? Wasn't there like, there was some big drama over the animations, right? Yeah, so there's actually been a lot of, quote, unquote, controversy around it because... Is that quote spelled with a K, does you? Duh. I don't even know why I have to say it. In the culture corner.

I assume everything is spelled with a K at this point. No, so there was... I'm sorry. ejecting Neely from this corner also with a cave. We lost that, everybody. We've lost the thread. Okay.

Okay, so Mass Effect Andromeda, there's a lot of drama going on because there are problems with the animations in game. So sometimes your character will be speaking and they're not making any kind of face that a normal human would make or not really reacting properly.

I did play a little bit of the game, And when I started, at one point, there's a guy who goes to, like, punch him in the shoulder, but, like, his fist doesn't actually connect. It's like, there's, like, this weird force field that prevents it from hitting you just because the animations are not great. Or is that just a realistic depiction of awkward social interactions? I was going to say, that sounds like something I would totally do. Dieter goes to Chuck you on the shoulder, misses, falls down, and is like, cool talk. Yeah, so people in the gaming community caught onto this. You just laughed at the concept of the gaming community.

Because there are people in the, not all gamers, not all gamers, they're bad. But there are some people who are fucking atrocious in every sense of the word. And these particular subset of people, when after a woman who they thought was responsible for the lead animations, which I, BioWare hasn't even, like, it's not her fault. I don't even think she was connected to the project. Also, it's an entire team, so you can't pin one entire game's bad animations on a single person. Byware had to put out a statement. Yeah, they put in a statement. What?

Yeah, there's a whole thing. They preemptively put out a statement being like, she didn't work on it. And also stop, stop it. Yeah. Everyone's stop being jerks. So, yeah. I feel like every game publisher should just every now and again release a statement. It's like, stop being jerks.

Reminder. Just a casual reminder. Stop being garbage humans. Yeah, so the game is, it's a huge game. It's not as good so far as the trilogy from all of the reviews. Caviout, I haven't really played that much of it yet. But you haven't played any. of them, have you?

So I've been, here's, I have a thing. Okay, I'm in an emotional place right now. So you start like uncomfortably squirmed. Well, so I made this video, I made a pilot of a video, like, of a thing where I'm, like, going to, like, be YouTubey and, like, rant at the camera. Just go with me on this. You were almost a YouTuber? It's like, we're like, let's try to make new kinds of videos.

It's actually video hack week this week, like, lots of experiments from our video team of new kinds of things we could do. So one they wanted to make with me was like, what if you do, like, YouTubey style, ran to the camera. But we didn't want it to be on the news cycle because we wanted to give them things. So they're like, here's a list of headlines from the verge. And I was like, vaping. Like, that's a thing I think about because I'm addicted to fucking nicotine. So I made this video about vaping. And I was like, this is actually not great because I'm addicted to this now instead of smoking. And this is probably still bad for me. And the best thing to do is probably not to inhale shit into my lungs.

Which I don't think is a controversial statement. How else are people going to know you're cool, though? But the, the vape people found my video. And now the vape people. people are yelling at me. So that is just, that's a dull roar in the background of my life. And I'm going to say some things about video games now and I just don't want to add the game

people to the bait people. The shit game people we talked about earlier. They are all vaping. I bet they're already mad at me. Look, I love you all, listeners. You're my people. Just stop vaping and tweeting at me. Stop it.

Please stop. What does this have to do with Mass Effect? Here's my question. I read all the reviews of Mass Effect. Okay. in preparation for the show, because I knew the culture corner was coming. I knew I'd be backed into this corner. This game seems like it's mostly about wandering around doing stuff you could do in reality.

No, it's in space. Yeah, but it's like, like Andrew's, Andrew's review. Andrew's review ends with like, I didn't remember the gunfights or the battles. I remember talking about religion at the canteen, drinking tea. And it's like, is that what video games are going to just become? is like ever more fantastical settings for mundane activities

that you could perform in real life? I think there's been a push lately into more mundane gameplay because people want to see that stuff represented, right? Like there is something really novel about like having a phone being able to text somebody in a video game.

I don't think it'll always be like that but for now it's interesting. And again, they're aliens, so... So you want to really experience the alien life? I want to watch a movie with an alien. I want to make out with an alien. You get to fuck aliens in that game. Whoa.

I know. It's like a staple of the Mass Effect series. Like, everybody fucks aliens. Yeah. Yeah. Again, Andrew's review was like, it took me like five hours to get a kiss. And I was like, what am I reading here? Like, I don't know. I want to play.

I'm like, I want to shoot things. But I guess you get to shoot things in this game too. You do. I sure did shoot some aliens also. I will say. Oh God. The fucking vape gamers are coming from. It's just, okay.

So the original trilogy, which I love, I think that mess fact two is like one of the best games in the last 20 years. Like, I am a huge fan. But the original trilogy is good because you play as somebody who's already an experienced commander who's essentially trying to, like, save the universe. I don't know, I'm not a space person. Trying to save a lot of people from like this overarching threat.

With Andromeda, you're more of like a younger untested crew. So, I don't know, it's like space babies. You're like babysitting this young group of teenagers and like you land on this first planet and immediately get into a fight with this alien species. And I'm like, you know, we just crashed landed on this planet and we're already like murdering people. Like, this is making a really bad impression. It just, it feels a little.

A little shaky. A little shaky. I don't think it's as strong. And I don't think the lead seems as strong so far. But it's hard because Commander Shepard was so good. And writer is just proving him or herself. Oh, I get what you're saying. Like, it's not, is narratively strong, right?

You don't start into it with the, because you're making a bunch of the decisions. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the idea is more like you're. going to go find a new home for a bunch of humans, the human race, not the entire race, but a ton of them. But people seem obsessed with this game. Because the original games are, I mean, you have to keep in mind, like, the original games have a huge following because, like, they're extremely good games. Like, they have really good combat. They have really deep

relationship building and just a good story. Like, they are space opera epics in a way that we don't really have in any other kind of, in any other video games. This one is, I'm going to reserve any judgment outside of its character creation, which is... Yeah, you spend hours and hours and hours lost now. Okay, here is my thing with any kind of game system where it's like, hey, make your own character. It's a lot of pressure. Do you know how hard it is to be like, I have to stare at this character for the next 50

hours. I better like what they look like. Like, I will like make it, you make your character, you like spend out of the time customizing their face, and then you look a little bit different when you actually get in game. So I'll be like, oh, God, that lipstick is really, ooh, it's bad. or I'm like, oh, why is her chin doing that? You never have to think about what a chin looks like

until you get a really bad one and you have to stir it for like a while. Wow. Dark. So I spent a lot of time making a character and then being like, no, that's bad in resetting. But you can't go back in the game and change it? No, that's the thing. In most games, there are some that'll let you tweak like minor things once you actually make your character. But most games, like once you fill out the canvas or whatever, like that's it. Maybe you can change their hair later.

I mean, I don't know. I don't know why I spent so much time trying to give my poor characters like digital plastic surgery but it's really important to me. I get it, right? I do that too. But I'm bad at video games.

So like that feels like a part of the game in which I can win. Well, it just, it feels like there are so few games that let you play as like non-white, like non-male characters that when I actually get the chance to like make a character

that looks like me, like a Persian woman, I'm like, oh, hell yeah, I'm going to like to take some time, make myself look like this character. And it doesn't usually turn out that way. It's really hard to design video game characters. I don't know if you knew that. No, and apparently this one lady really sucks at it.

Sorry, that's really bad. Get out of the corner. Corner's over. Reminder from BioWare. Don't be a jerk. I really do think every video game company should just put that out. Just periodically, like, you know, speak it to each other. Be nice. Speak it to each other. A reminder from your friends at Sony. And then you have to look at it for half an hour before you're allowed into the PS4.

Well, it's just like, God, if I can barely create a character that I like, I can't imagine what it's like to make an entire video game run. and then let some asshole like me, like tear around through it. It's like, here's a ball of Play-Doh, like, go make a thing, hope you like it. What if they make a video game where you have to punch in and verify your, like, social media, your Twitter account? And then they can look at your Twitter account and see if you're Gamer Gator and if you are, then they won't let you play it. No eggs allowed. No eggs allowed. It's a great game.

Yeah. That's terrible. I have a question. why is everything getting so long? What do you mean? Like, every, like, Iron Fist is like, like, it's just long. It just feels long. Like, it's just a really long slog.

Games are getting longer and longer and longer, right? And, like, they involve many more. Like, I watched a bunch of, like, Zelda speed runs. And by watch, I mean, I clicked to the end. Like, you do. Like, you can beat that game pretty fast. Well, okay, let me ask you this. When was the last time you bought a video game with your own money?

August. Video games are expensive, though, right? Like, I got really spoiled because I worked a polygun for a long time and got my new games for free. And so I forgot what that was like to have to go drop 60 to 70 bucks or whatever on a game. So, yeah, it's like you don't have time to buy a ton of stuff. Like, if you buy this thing, if you pour a lot of money into it, like, don't you want to spend a ton of time in it? No, that's true. I buy that.

It feels like the reaction to more and more attention sapping media from phones is, like, extended narratives in whatever world you're in. Right? So games are getting longer and longer. And I get the value argument. But then, like, all of this other stuff, like, prestige television, like, Mr. Robot, dude just made two extra episodes. See, like, you didn't even tell USA. He was just like, what if from 10 we go to 12?

Because I got more store to tell. And that's, like, fine. And, like, they're good shows. But it just seems like that's, like, a real theme lately. Like, everything's just getting longer and deeper. And particularly, like, I think it just depends, right? You brought up like Iron Fists in Netflix earlier, but I think that like if you look at those shows,

like they're actually pretty short. Like most standard shows on TV have like what, like a good 24 episodes. But like a Netflix season can be those Marvel shows are like 13 episodes, which is really not that long. Yeah. I mean, I personally... They should be eight.

Oh, no, I'm totally with you. I think some of the best shows that you can watch on Netflix are the ones that are short. Like I love the fall, which is, I think I originally airs on BBC. But that's like, what, they're like six episodes total? Yeah. And it's good because like it's such a good. because it's such a good, tight story.

That's why I liked the first season of Mr. Robot because it was a good, tight story. Season two was a lot of weird padding. Yeah, but seriously, like, and we did the after show, and we would just, like, be told, like, you're coming back next week because he made more. It was, like, a very strange moment for us. This episode of the Rushast is brought to you by Squarespace.

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Squarespace.com. Spoiler. culturecoran.com exists. No. It looks like this. Oh, it's fucking terrifying. It's just little dolls. All right, Dieter and Nat and Megan.

Everybody, family. Hi. Let's talk about this phone that's come out next week. So there's like leaks. The whole thing has been leaked. Pretty much the whole thing has been leaked. What? Galaxy S8.

What remains? Yeah. I don't think we've seen details on decks, which is the desktop jibber jabber. Yeah. We were talking a lot about how it's stylized D, E, and capital X, because it's supposed to be short for desktop experience. I want to kill myself.

And I wanted to die. I think that's catchy, you guys. Let's all, wait, I forgot to do something. Before we dive into the desktop experience. Before we leave the culture corner for the desktop experience. Worst candy land ever. Paul is not here, as you may have noticed. So Nat actually comes on and does a segment every week.

Every week she does this segment. It always has the same name, which Nat is. Did you know that hoverboards are still a thing? Hoverboards are still a thing. Mark Cuban apparently is going to release his new hoverboard company on Kickstarter. Why? Dude is rich. That makes sense.

You want to collect the money up front. He's a good businessman. Dude has the money to make the hoverboard. Anyway, it's a hoverboard company. It's called the hoverboard itself. It's called Move. M-O-O-V. No, God.

Yeah, it is. And, yeah, apparently hoverboards are still a thing. I had no idea. Wait, what's his differentiation? It's unclear. Literally, Sean O'Kane, who was just talking to Mark Cuban, about a completely different thing, ended up finding out what his company was, and then he just dug into it and found that he's releasing a hoverboard on Kickstarter.

And then they were like, yeah, confirmed, that's true. And it looks basically just like any other hoverboard, except in the middle, instead of the little divot that goes in, it's just a big straight flat box. That's what it looks like. What? I need to look at photos of this. I don't know.

It's just a big straight line that you step on, kind of like a stair with wheels on the side. I just don't understand. Why can't you just walk? I don't know. Here are the businesses I'm aware of Mark Cuban being involved in. HDNet, which is his cable network that he sold. He used that money to buy the Dallas Mavericks.

then he used that money to invest in the real tequila avion in the fictional universe of entourage, thus turning turtle and an entrepreneur. And now he's using his entourage money to start a hoverboard. What about Shark Tank? That was the thing he did, right? Oh, yeah. He's still doing Shark Tank. Yeah.

But, like, what's a big Shark Tank hit? And also, how does Shark Tank crossover into Entourage? I feel like Shark Tank is more of the move gap. I don't know what the connection is between Entourage and Shark Tank. Wait, do you think Move was a Shark Tank thing? What if he stole from someone? There's like some poor Shark Tank. He's like, it's a board that rolls.

Their tagline is like, start the movement. Oh, God. It's a diet. Cuban has invested in 82 different deals on Shark Tank. Wow. For a total of 19.4 million dollars. Oh, by the way, this company is called Radical Transport, which apparently follows along a theme of his other companies that are just a bunch of radical TKs. Wait, what are the other radicals?

It's like radical investments, radical ventures. a bunch of radical shit that no one cares about. And now we have a radical transport, which is not that radical. It's something that peaked in 2015. I bought a hoverboard for my niece for Christmas, and the first thing that happened when she pulled out of the box was my sister said, don't those explode. And then I had to, like, calm her down.

I was like, no, these are the new ones. This is the good one. I'm very afraid to get on one because I just feel like I will bust my teeth in. Okay, we got to get one. All right, let's talk about decks, just to wrap up the show. So next week, S8 coming out. Yeah. Again, just a whole thing has been leaked.

Evan Blass doing his thing. Evie leaks. So we know what it looks like. It actually looks great. I think it looks great. It looks good. Fingerprint sensor is next to the camera, which seems very stupid to me. Very upset about that as a left-hander.

Yeah, it's just a dirty camera. That's what that phone is going to be known for. I also just think that the position is very not left-hander-friendly. This is extremely uncomfortable to me versus just this. Oh, right, because it's over on the side. Right? I feel like, why don't designers think about left-handers? We exist.

I'm left-handed. Yeah. Yeah. Why don't people care? They don't, no one loves us. Sorry, Nat. I don't have a problem with this. It's fine.

I don't know. Me and Dieter are like, whatever. Yeah, this is great. We can use scissors whenever we want. It's never awkward. I wish companies would design things or, like, do things that don't just benefit them. Like, it would be nice if you did things that benefited everybody. Yeah, but then the only real differentiation here is this Dex thing.

Oh, and Bixby, literally the name of a butler or a small dog. Dan wrote a whole thing about Bixby, which is Samsung's voice assistant. I think Dan and Deter is a collabo burn where Bixby is supposed to solve the hardest problem in tech, which is making Samsung software easier to use, which is pretty good. But it's not supposed to do cloud stuff. It's not supposed to go fetch information for you. Yeah, like you think of a smart assistant, like you always hear like, how tall is the Eiffel Tower?

Where is it? And like, that's, you know, you need to ask those questions all the time. This one is supposed to, like, be the thing that helps you use the thing you're actually using. Right. So, like, you're clicking around. You're like, fuck it, Bixby, send this Instagram. Yeah. That's a way to word.

You do sound like you're yelling at a butler. Right. Fuck it, Bixby. Petch me my mail. Bigsby, bring me the slippers. And it's like, I'm a phone. But it's like interesting, right? They're trying to like hybridize voice and touch in a way that no one else has tried to do.

Like everything's been a pure interface. Well, I mean, if you turn on like the voiceover thing, you know, if you're like, if you have, you know, bad vision on an iPhone, you could actually jam through a bunch of stuff. David Pogue did a really good video like showing somebody just like listen to this hyper speed voice. But there's no. But that is the other way around. It's still tapping. Yeah. I know.

I was getting there, man. I'm just so excited about. Let me just, are you? I mean, I like small dogs. I've always wanted a butler. I feel good. I feel good about it. Yeah, no one's really done that.

Like, Google walked up to it and then ran the fuck away with Google now on tap, right? Yeah. The idea was like, but it wasn't about interacting with the app directly. It was about pulling information out of the app and then doing stuff with it. And then it was just really bad at that. So this is like, this is a weird new interaction model. What's funny is, are people are still like, I don't want to talk to my phone. And like it seems like nobody cares or nobody's got angst about that anymore.

We know how we feel about that now. I don't know. I mean, the things get me about this are one, just reading Dan's piece, like you have to write an app that supports the Bixby API. Yeah. Which means only Samsung's apps will ever support it. So that's awful. But it does strike me as like you're in, you know, you're in their mail app or whatever.

And instead of having to figure out how to like delete an email. you can just be like expeed to see this email. It really does sound like a butler. Every time I say its name out loud. But like that's kind of cool. Like you can't do that with any other phone. Well,

and like just strategically look at where Samsung's at. They like voice is going to be a bigger deal in the home. They don't have a voice product. Do they want to take on Alexa and its giant, you know, group of skills? Do they want to take on Google and Apple

in their like ability to do cloud stuff and like machine learning and like deep search and blah blah blah blah blah they like they need an in they need some kind of wedge to start making a voice product that people actually use because don't forget Samsung doesn't just make phones they make washing machines and microwaves and routers and ships yeah they make big ass boats right yeah and and so they need something they need to do something to make sure that even if it's not a huge success they at least know what the shit they're doing when it comes to voice-controlled stuff. And this seems like as good a wedge as any, and it's smart because it's not trying to

take on the Google Assistant head on because the phone literally has the Google Assistant on it. They're going to make people pick between Samsung's Assistant or the Google Assistant. They've tried that before. Guess what? People picked the Google Assistant. No, I mean, they've also tried it. I'm sure Picksby only works. You can't even say it anymore.

It's just, it's so adorable. Like, it's not that I'm saying it out of embarrassment. It's every time I say it, I literally think of like a small, cute dog wearing shoes. Here's what I'm excited about. Our favorite thing to do is, uh, favorite thing to do our listeners is say, Google Home, check the weather. Alexa, buy me some toilet paper. Yeah. And then everybody who's listening to the podcast now has toilet paper on the way and their home speaker is speaking the weather to them.

Yeah. We are now going to be able to sit here on the podcast and say, Bixby, pause of this podcast. and just stop the podcast. Ultimate self-own. Bixby, end the suffering. Bixby switched to other podcast. I mean, that's great for the Bixby. I can't even.

I just keep picturing the dog in shoes. They're like black. They're shiny buckles. Botei. Boatie, right? It's a little dog bowie. There's a story I read today about how Bixby, the name, might be difficult linguistically in different countries

because in some countries, like, X, right before a B, doesn't really exist as, like, a sound in their language. So that's going to be really interesting, too, to see how, like, if you can't even say it without, like, pausing, I'm curious how other people from who don't speak English as their main language are going to deal with it. Yeah. At least it's better than Google.

Yeah, is it? Yeah. I feel like we need to make a list of acceptable wake words and just like publish it for the industry. Here are the things you can call robots. Okay, that's what next week, 29th? We're blowing it out, right? Big event?

Oh, yeah. Live blog, a whole nine. It's going to be a thing. It's actually interesting. Last year in March, Apple did the iPhone SE. It was like a big event. And they were like, it looks the same, but it's a different. There was an event, right? It was an event.

There was a whole thing. And this year, they just like press released out, like more storage in the SC, a red iPhone, and this iPad. You got to wonder why they went so quiet with it when they were so confident with the S.E. Yeah, I don't know. It's really weird. But Samsung, they're going for it. This is their time.

They got to make people forget that their phones explode. Yeah. And they're going to do it with a tiny dog. What better way to distract everybody. Okay. I think that's it. Is that it? Is there anything else?

That's enough. I think so. Any of the corner? I think we're done. I think we're done. I think we're done. Corners closed. Corners closed.

A truly strange episode of the show. You need something now that Cizzer Bucca has gone, don't you? This is your hate thing. I'm so lonely. Is it gone? Get Mark Cuban on the phone. He invested anything. Tell him it's a hundred board.

Radical vodka. We'll see. You know, I'm still thinking about this vodka every day. I feel like we should upgrade to whiskey. I think we're a whiskey brand. No, we can't upgrade to whiskey because whiskey's hard to make. Is that a deterrent? Yes, vodka is just pure marketing.

You can make vodka on anything. It's garbage, though. Well, right. I can pay vodka with, like, some nail polish remover and, like, a skittal for color. Pretty sure that's not how that works. Wait, what the fuck? Megan's just, like, downing nail polish remover. Don't do that.

He's never seeing these recipes where it's like you take, like, skittles. Bixby, call the paramedic. He's like, I can. I can only do local actions on the phone. No, it's like, you should. take like Skittles and you put it in like vodka and it like adds colors. No, I'm aware of that. It's the nail polish.

It's the nail polish remover. I'm thinking of moonshine. Sorry. Do people drink that? And then your heart stops. Pure acetone. Only real gamers can drink that. Attention, attention vaping eggs. Do we have a recipe for you?

Skiddle acetone. The name just rolls right off the tongue. Skittles acetone definitely sounds like a roller blade person. Like a roller derby name. It sounds pretty radical to me. All right, that's it. That is unfortunately our show.

We're going to do this to you again next week, whether or not you like it. If anyone would like to draw a picture of Bixby the Dog or roller derby champion Skittles Acetone. Please do. Megan's Twitter handle is Megan underscore Nicolette. You got it. Just send that straight to her. Dieter's is Backlon. Nat.

Nat Garin. Matt Garin. Two T's. I'm at reckless. But again, the drawings of Skittl's Acetone and Vicksby, the dog, to Megan Nicolet. Directly to me, yes. Yeah. But no eggs allowed.

Preferably going on an adventure. Yeah. Together. Together. Yeah. Bigsby gets into some hijinks. Skittles is in the middle of a caper. She has to go save him.

She just rolls right over there. Okay. He's chewing on the... All right, all right. We've done enough. It's the end of the show, everybody. There's other shows you can listen to that don't devolve into this. For example, I don't think Kara Swisher has ever said the word Skittles Acetone in a phrase in her life.

But Kara hosts a great show called Recode Decode, which she can listen to. Peter Kafka hosts a great show called Recode Media. Also guarantee you he's never said the word Skittles Aston. Lauren Good, though, suspect. I bet she has. She was too embarrassed to ask, which is great. And Walt and I do a show code control, delete all this is on iTunes. You can find it, search for it.

iTunes.com slash Ferge. It's great. Don't review this episode. I encourage you not to do that. I think this is our best episode yet. That's my review. I think you just lied to my face. That's my review.

Fix me. Put my reviewing. They're not even ending the show well. I'm going to thank our friends who truly are our friends at Crizal Nogel. glare lenses, they sponsor the show. If you wear glasses, then you know fingerprints, smudges, scratches, and glares can be a constant obstruction to your vision and a huge distraction. That's why you should get Krizal no-goer lenses, clearest vision possible by offering

resistance, all that stuff. Go to Krizol.com to learn more. That's C-R-I-Z-A-L dot com. Start Living Life in the Clear. Thanks to them for not listening to the show, but continuing to put the ads on it, because I think those things are related. And we'll be back next week with more of this, what, continues to be the Vergecast.

Rock and roll. Paul. Skittles, acetone.