The Vergecast - The state of Android, smartwatches and Twitter hearts

Episode Date: November 6, 2015

This week brought no shortage of topics to discuss, but one item stood out among the smoke and mirrors. Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Dan Seifert are joined by Nicola Fumo of Racked in the hypeseat to discuss the state of smartwatches, what might happen with Google's two operating systems, and of course, the new branded vape from musical artist The Weeknd. It's not one to miss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, that's a good start for this November 5th, 2015, knowing that's somewhere on the website that you love and co-create with your friends. There's a vicious burn lurking. Hey, at least I didn't mention the Packers in it. I don't want to talk about that. Anyway, so Dieter is here. Hello.

Welcome to the Vergecast, Deeter. He's generally here. But you weren't gone last week, so you're back. Dan Sefer is here. I am. Hello. And then my girl on the hype seat, Nicola Fumo from Ract is here. Hello.

Nicola, how's, what is it, Project Overlord? Dude, Operation Figurehead. Operation Figurehead. Come on. Project Overlord. How's your hashtag slash life strategy going? I mean, you know I've been meeting with your staff. Yes.

Nicola is, this is true. So here's what, here's, I'll just going to set some, like, scenes for people. Please. So we, at Vox Media, we have an office building here in Midtown, New York. we have basically every floor of this office building contains boxmate employees at this point there's a guy in the basement just desperately yeah no yeah SB 1 he's down there right in butt sports um and then so so the verge is on the ninth floor the studio where we're recording this on the eighth floor and then racked and eater and curbed around the 10th floor but i've suddenly noticed

that many many there's a lot of cross floor pollination as nicola has begun to leave she's begun to You'll catch me on eight. I've been on five. What do you even know about five? I've never been to five. What the hell happens on five? You have to take a different elevator to get there. That's all I know.

Yeah, you'll take a different elevator. Wait, so you can't go directly from five to nine? There's one elevator. There's only one central elevator that hits all the floors. This is the worst radio in history. Oh, my God. It's split off at the seventh floor.

Here's what I want you to do. Let's start this all over. No, look. Hello, welcome to the verge cast. Let's talk about elevators. Greetings mobile accomplice. Anyhow, you know, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll, will begin to see her, her, the fruits of her subtle weaving. I don't know what that means.

My operation figurehead. Your operation overlord. Anyhow, Nicola's here. Hi, Nicola. Hi. I have a question for you. Yeah. Since, you know, you're a style editor and all. I walked out of the house wearing this, this thing with like the shirt, not button. And my life is like you look like a shithead, basically. Shithead or no. So I'm wearing the people on the I'm wearing a t-shirt with a shirt over it and then a jacket over the shirt. I don't really know why you did that, but I don't think you look like a shithead. I mean, she was basically like, you can make your own dumb mistakes, Nilai. And like literally like dismissed me.

But those are like exact words, shithead? They came out of Becky's mouth. Becky, I think, she didn't say shithead. But we've been married for some time. And I, you're married, you know. Code words for shit. Yeah, she said something needs to be said for me to hear in my head, shithead. Yeah.

There was a grumbling noise, a series of stomping motions. Was it one of those? So that, huh? Yeah, yeah. It was bad. It was bad. What is an outfit that she likes? She's like, ooh, good work.

Oh, yeah. I mean, she purchases most of my clothes. So, like, that is, that's like a thing. But yeah, she likes it when the shirts are bought and I wear a tie. That's a fact. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You do that often. Yes.

Again, because I'm five and I'm dressed by the woman I'm married to. I always figure you're going somewhere. Like, that's what figureheads do. They have to go places where they have to be creepy. if you were five and dressed by the woman? that you were married to? Well, not physically dressed. But if you were five and married, that seems wrong.

Oh, yeah. Well, as a five-year-old, I married fellow kindergartner. A lovely ceremony at recess. You didn't happen to you? All right, whatever. This is our show. As you may have noticed from this conversation, it's about technology and culture and how they blend together. So there's a reason, Nicholas here.

I think an ultimate... Something's an accident. An ultimate Nicola moment happened this week. Oh, yes. Go ahead. Tell me all about it. Pack the vaporizer, which is the iPhone of vaporizers, to put it short. I don't get paid by them yet.

But they collaborated with the weekend, no third E. How do you denote that when saying something? Dude, my phone is like, it will not learn weekend weekend. How often are you typing that in? to your phone. Too often. Yeah. It's happening.

It seems as though. Yeah. So he, the weekend and Pax, the vaporizer brand, have collaborated on a tour-specific weekend vaporizer that's like, I think it's 325 instead of 280, but it says XO, which is the weekend's brand on it. And it plays, I can't feel in my face, like, when you're smoking the herbal matter. Yeah, so it's a vape that plays pop music at you and you. That you can only buy at weekend shows. Oh. Yeah.

I'm very confused by this tie up because the weekend sings about doing pills all the time. Like every single weekend lyric has a reference to pills. How do you do pills to a vape? Well, I think it's a different version. It's a new way to not feel your face. He's expanding. He's like a pop artist and trying pot. I just think it's amazing that like, A, we talked with us on the show last time you're here.

Yeah. Like, A, it's a gadget that. has made smoking weed totally acceptable all over the place. It's a beautiful gadget. B, the weekend's two major endorsements now are Apple and like a weed computer. And Alexander Wang. He also this week announced he's going to be doing like a collaboration with Alexander Wang.

So he's just like all over the place. Yeah, he's doing it. I mean, ultimate Nicola moment. Like tell me, so when this happened to the Verge, like we all like freaked out. Tell me what happened at Racked when this went down. Yeah. When I got this press release, I just like went into the racked lounge and I was like, we have reached peak Nicola.

these things are happening. We have to write about them right now. And then, you know, someone did because I figured out, I didn't write it myself. Oh, you sent it out. I assigned it. Do you also do this dismissive handwave when you assign stories? Yeah, that's my slack emoji. So hang on.

So he had a hit album and then he immediately turned and partnered with a tech company. No, no. Well, the album came out and the single that was launched off the album was at WWDC. with Apple. If he gets named as a creative director for a tech company, I am officially naming him the next will I am.

But he probably can't because he's too in bed with Apple. So he can't really go anywhere from there. That's true. He can be the creative director for the weed computer company. Yeah. That's acceptable.

Yeah. Natural. I mean, I think that's the most important story of the week in terms of technology culture. That's the verge cast everybody who'd like to follow us on Twitter. Yeah. This is, I mean, but this is the thing, right?

Like here's the big musician partnering with the gadget company and the biggest tech company in the world. Like, I don't know. It's like one of those things. All right. So we got, there's other news we should talk about. Although I think we're, I think we could just be done there. Right. So some minor news, a little stuff.

Google this week. Last week. Is this week or last week? It's a little both. Yeah. Well, no, it's announced I think at the tail end of last week. It came out in a Wall Street Journal story that was suspiciously planted in my opinion. Yeah.

that Android and ChromeOS would something, something. Canoodle. Yeah. Merge. Come together. Kill one another. Right now. Over me.

And so we put up a headline. I'm just going to reveal some inside baseball. So we put up a headline based on some reporting that we had been trying to do for a long time. Yep. Because we had heard this a long time ago that Android would quote kill Chrome OS. Yeah. which is basically what Google was saying, but they're trying very hard not to say.

Yeah. Like five years from now, there will not be a product called ChromeOS. It's like fairly obvious. Yeah. Yeah. At least not a consumer-facing product called ChromeOS. Who the hell knows?

Well, so the question, like, the technical question is, like, what does it even mean to be Android or Chrome OS? And like, what's the foundation of it? And to me, it's like... That's the technical question or the existential question? Both. And it's like, it's like the kernel that, like, does, that makes other things happen, right?

So, like, we talk about, like, TVOS and watchOS is basically fundamentally being iOS. I don't know. Like, so is Android getting packed into Chrome or Chrome OS? Or is Chrome OS the pieces of it that you care about getting packed into Android? And it's like, are they going to build Android up to support it? Or are they going to, like, trim, I don't know that ChromeOS needs that much more trimming down. Are they going to trim Chrome OS down so it can run on other phone type? things.

But anyway, so the backstory is we put it at the side and said kill because we had been, we had been hot on this case. Yep. The story came out in the journal. It looked very much like it had been massaged by a certain large search company.

And that, I mean, whatever, if they wanted to place, yeah, Duck, Duck, go told meek to the journal. I mean,

I don't mean to say there's any, like, malice there. Like, it just looked like it had been placed, you know, like you do. You get a story.

Anyway, we put up kill. everybody freaked out. Everybody being, every one of you we knew at Google. Everybody we knew at Google. Because a lot of people Google read The Verge.

And so there was this instant flurry of conversation about how everything will be fine. They're not killing it. The products will remain separate. They're still selling so many Chromebooks to schools. They're going to sell them forever.

Suddenly Hiroshi Lockheimer is like tweeting. Tweeting. Well, he's been tweeting a while. Yeah, but like if you're, the reason I brought up the it's placed in the journal part is like if you're gonna say the stuff to the wall street journal yeah and get the story in the journal yeah why not just get it right get it right or why not

come out ahead of that story and tell it yourself and let everybody it's there's like a weird sloppy messaging part where it's like they didn't really know what they were wanting to say they said something and now they've been scrambling to correct it ever since yeah including like tweets from hiroshi and also finally a post on the google chrome blog that uh chrome wass is here to stay and If you read through the post, the joke I made on Twitter is that Google is really good at parsing data, and they're also pretty good at parsing words. Ooh. Ooh. Although I will say Google PR is the most notoriously disconnected PR operation.

Yes. It is a hydrahead of PR. It's actually hard to suggest that they have done some, like, careful arranging of words. I would say that it's about average. I've been dealing a lot of PR issues over there. the past while. I would, I would put them in the middle of the past. Oh, yeah, no, they're good.

Yeah. I enjoy work. I'm just saying it's, it's hard to like, assume there's some mastermind plan going on in the background. Because there's not at Google. Google, like, like, Sergey Brin gets an idea and all of a sudden there's like a giant multi-million dollar division, like a week later. And like, are we going to tell anybody about this?

Like, yeah, I guess. Now you can do that more often because he runs alphabet. Right. He's got like 26 letters to play with. Did you see that story, Nicola that Sergey Brin literally renamed the company Alphabet, like on a whim, did no focus testing? or asking of people. No, I didn't see that, but that's tight.

That's very figurehead. That's what I'm saying. That's why I told you. That's inspirational. That's like life goals. Yeah. I don't know, so what do you, what do you, I think this is smart. I actually think Google needs a unified platform.

I did a whole show with Walt yesterday where you talked about Google making its own hardware. Like they, Google needs to get into a different kind of game that isn't just like search. It's, it's very odd that they've had these two separate platforms. developing separate tracks and like for different purposes like when you think about like Apple and Microsoft it kind of makes sense for them to have a desktop OS and a mobile OS because they have a legacy behind them like Google started this less than 10 years ago right for both Android and Chrome OS so for them to have developed along two different tracks is kind of weird and makes complete sense for them to eventually merge them and take

the best of both and put it together so what is Chrome OS fundamentally like what does it depend on as a computing platform the web Merging these two things is a hedge against the death of the web, which Google is terrified of. And they need to make sure that they are prepared to have a computing platform that can compete if the web ends up not being as important as apps in a real way that affects their business.

I don't think the web is dying. You know, there's all this stuff. Yeah. Like, it's hard to kill the web with a product as shitty as Apple News. You know, like, has anybody used Apple News? I do. Do you?

Yeah. Hype check Apple News. I read the Times. briefing on it every morning. So you use Apple News to bypass the New York Times paywall. I guess so. Okay. I mean, that's a totally legitimate news.

But do you use it for anything else? Do you use it to read Ract? Well, it doesn't update. It'll be like a day old. We'll have 19 hours ago stories. And I'm like, we wrote stuff since then. And I asked people hear about it. And they're like, yeah, we can't do anything.

It's them. And I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Everyone just makes that noise. But somehow. the New York Times one is.

It's just emulating a newspaper in that respect. You're getting a stress. But the New York Times one is. And it's like, it's the six o'clock thing is there at six o'clock in the morning. And then I'm reading about Syria when I need to. I try to say current. Yeah.

Now you got to figure out it's got to know. You get that call. You're like, I actually have some deep, deep ideas about Syria right now. No, I actually have heard a lot of people complain from a lot of publications that their stuff doesn't update. Yep.

because it's like a glorified RSS, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. It's the back end. I don't know, we should figure out of the New York Times doing that and then deliver our own Syria news every day at six. Maybe you just have great about Syria. Apple News is super weird every day at six. But you only can catch it for an hour.

Yeah. Wait, wait, wait. So actually hype check Apple News. On a number scale? But however you want to do it. Three stars. Wait, three stars or three likes? Oh, we should talk about that.

That's in the lightning round. Oh, God. The third section of the first cast today. Are we going to talk about Twitter lightning in the lightning round? Maybe. Feelings. Oh, man. Okay.

The way I structured the show today, just so you know. Yeah. Is we've got this, the Google thing. Nicola has 400 smartwatches over there that we should talk about. And then I've added what I consider to be a lightning round. Okay. It's actually, I've also named it the lightning round. So it's beyond consideration.

What else is there to say about Chrome OS and Android? There's kind of a lot, I feel like. I don't know. So you've been reviewing tons of phones lately. Yes. The whole site has been reviewing tons of phones lately. Where's Android at right now? I can't really say that like Android's in a different place now than it would have been a year ago.

It's still the same thing where the best Android experience is on Nexus devices, which come with their own limitations and things like that. I will say that the Nexus devices of today are. are much better than Nexus devices have ever been before in the respect that you can go and buy a Nexus device without a huge compromise. It used to be like a year ago, or even two years ago, or however long, if you were buying a Nexus device, you were compromising the camera, you're compromising the battery,

you're compromising somewhere where, like, if you went and bought Samsung's best phone or HGC's best phone at the time, you got a better experience on those levels, but the Nexus gave you the best software. So now we have, Nexus phones that have the best software. They've got really great cameras, great battery life, et cetera, et cetera. But there's still like niche products, niche things.

It's like that's not changed. So, you know, state of Android is kind of the same. Here's my question about this merging. If Android is not powerful, like, enough, or it has, I don't know, the wrong model, I think. And we haven't seen it on processors powerful enough to run full desktop class Chrome, the way that you see Chrome on Chrome OS, right?

Like, that thing is a heavy beast of an app. And I don't know that Android could lift it. and that but then on the flip side when you look at the kind of processors and stuff that Chromewas typically runs on whether it be Arm or X86 is that power efficient enough to like shrink down put Android on top of it and put it on a phone

I don't think so so like for me the biggest question is like fundamentally what underpinning work do they have to do to make this happen and if an Android ends up being the base we need to see how it runs on like comparable Intel hardware which is why I'm incredibly interested

to see what the Pixel C does. Android also needs, I don't know, windowing or split screen or something built into it. Something that works over on a screen bigger than seven inches. I mean, the state of Android is actually not the same as it ever was

insofar as like the, like, Samsung's not making money hand over fist on it anymore. Right. So like, who's making money on Android? Right. I mean, Samsung is still making money. It's just they are making less money

than before, which is like terrible for the stock market. Right. So, but yeah, I mean, they're, they're not selling their high-end devices like they used to, and people aren't buying them. And it's a bummer because it's the best products they've ever made. But, yeah, who's making money off Android is an excellent question. Is Google really making money off Android?

No, Google makes money off a search. They might make a token thing off Android. I bet they make money off Android. But it's all driven to search. That's why they should make phones. Right. Or tablets or whatever. I know.

Would you buy a Google, laptop over an Apple laptop? Nah. Why? All right. Why? Actually, I did use that Chromebook one day. Yeah. Deeder saved me. And it was fine experience. A little bit to get used to, but it was fine overall.

You didn't know it had a touchscreen as I recall. Oh, no. It took hours before that was revealed to me by me. No, because I'm used, I don't know, because I'm used to this thing and it works good. It's fast. Yeah. Yeah. like I'm ready am I the only one

I'm like I've had this stuff for so long it's worked basically the same for so long you to buy a service book don't buy a service book Windows destroys our calendars yeah yeah that's so we is the viewer listener

whoever you are however you wish to consume us it's a ridiculous phrase may know we run our business on Google apps we have a lot of Windows 10 devices floating around. We plug them in my desk.

We plug them into those Google apps. And they've just been destroying our lives. Like, I don't, there's no easier way to piss off 50 people worldwide than to just change every calendar entry across three calendars. Yeah, that we all need. Just move around, back and forth by an hour. When's the features meeting? I don't know.

Is it three o'clock? Is it canceled? Who the hell knows? Well, when those. Windows 10 doesn't. That's why it keeps fucking it up. And then other programs, and I don't know which, are randomly, like, sending updates that mean nothing. They don't change a calendar, but I would say two or three times a day, like a random staff member sends me an email about a calendar appointment that neither of us are actually going to.

I just get the email. And then because it looks intentional because it's email, people reply to the email of other snippy emails. Like, literally Walt just sent Tom an email that was like the tech meeting. It's not at 1 p.m. Tom. And Tom was like, sorry. I've gotten a lot of those emails. Because it's all because the reality is that Tom and myself are the ones that use the most Windows devices. because we're constantly testing them and reviewing them and whatever.

So frequently, the calendar rearrangement appears to come from my email address. Yeah. And I get emails back from Liz, who's ready to bite my head off the next time the science meeting moves. Literally. Literally. The note was, Dan has never been to the science meeting. Why did he change? Like, it's destroying our lives.

Like, I think of the verge as a family, as a cohesive unit, as a team. is, you know, it's us against the world, you know, whatever. It's us against Mashable forever, you know, but we need our bonds to stay strong. And Windows 10 is just tearing at the fabric of our society. This is so funny because we're the same company, but obviously unracked, like we haven't had this problem at all because everyone has an iPhone. Oh, if you want to take over a rack, you know what you do? You divide and conquer by giving one person a Windows phone.

Just fucking on. Just literally tearing. part. People would be like, what happened to RACT? It was so promising. It was growing. It had all this talent.

And he'd be like, well, Nicola introduced Windows 10. Nicola got interested in tech and bought this weird follow. Nigel had to have that surface book. She had this stupid mission, Operation something. I don't know. So we have to do more research on what the is causing this.

Sure. But it appears to be the native calendar app on Windows 10, which is what you sign into when you use the native mail app on Windows 10. is having all kinds of sync issues with Google Apps accounts. But it moves appointments that you didn't create, but you are going to an hour later. Yes. Consistently.

Which might be related to daylight savings time. Who knows? Right. But it doesn't do it by you interacting with it. It just does it. Just does it. Just when it feels like it. You know, whether I'm designing, presenting, writing, or building,

Dropbox makes it simple to work together on any file. And it doesn't mess up your calendar. Now we're just making promises. Over 400 people 400 people 400 people use Dropbox Like 4,500 people

Technically true 470 people Use Dropbox around the world Around the world Who knew? Over 400 million people around the world

already used Dropbox And now I mean, ring the alarm There's Dropbox just for your business Dropbox for your business helps you work the way you want to work

All of the things you love about Dropbox With Enterprise Grade Security and administrative controls. They help your team work together on any file type, on any device, simply and securely.

If you could move your calendars on Windows to Dropbox, that would be great. Customizable sharing controls like expiration dates and passwords for shares links are dope. That's not a sentence.

Dropbox PR people, think about it. Dropbox for business enables your entire team to work the way they want to work on any file from anywhere. What do I like the best about Dropbox? Do you like anything about Dropbox?

I like a lot of things about Dropbox. Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, I like how it automatically syncs my full. files and makes it relatively easy to share stuff. There you go. Yeah. Yeah, it's good.

Anyway, look, over 100 businesses, over 100,000 businesses already used Dropbox for business. Dropbox for business. It's all yours, Dan, C for it. Yes. We are actually one of those companies that use it. We do. We do. For moving files.

Moving Fox? Yeah. Sinking stuff. We should get Dropbox for business. We have it. Oh, do we? Yeah, dude. See, the thing about fingerheads.

Unlimited storage. I don't do anything. I do some slack in. I do some pointing. I went to the Dropbox. Do some delegating. I prioritized the Dropbox party at South by Southwest because I was like, I love Dropbox so much I want to party with it. Wow.

See, that should have been in the ad. That should, that's, there's bad. How do you party with Dropbox? How do you party without Dropbox? I mean. This is ridiculous. You sync a playlist across a shared folder. Guys, I'm going to, I'm going to have a Vorgecast in a T-shirt.

It is freaking hot in here. Yeah, it was so nice and cool here. Also, my T-shirt doesn't match my overshirt. That's gray, which is. inappropriate. So Nelai has No, Nely's still unbuttoned.

I got the Western buttons. I just like ripped it open. Dan's the only one left. Don't make that move, Dan. Nope. Stand firm. Wow, it's way cooler with just your buttons open.

This is ridiculous. The case being. Let's talk about smart watches. This is super compelling audio content. Fashion tech right here. I mean, we could talk about shirts all day or Nicola could do that fashion tech. A mirrody at the information says,

just posted an article that says that Google recently talked with some microchip makers about developing chips based on Google's own preferred designs. That makes sense. I mean, that's just like increased verticalization. Like Apple makes its own chips. It feels like everybody has to make their own chips. Yep. I, I, there's no way we can ever, ever remember this bet.

But I would bet you five years now Google is fully making its own hardware. They are now in like, we're pretend. Yeah, it's like the pixel, the Chromebo Pixel and Pixel. Pixel C, great. But, like, I mean, they're in the market head-to-head with Apple, their own phones, their own laptops. Yeah. Like, fully integrated and fully consumer. Yeah.

Did you see that story about one of the engineers for Pixel? Because that basically means that they will, Google will kill Sony and Samsung and whoever else uses their operas. I mean, like, they'll be head-to-head with their own OEMs, which has never worked in the history of the world. Why? Yeah, Microsoft is dealing with it right now. Why is it a really good question.

It's like because Google, well, Microsoft is actually the best example. So Microsoft makes Windows their business for years and years and years and years was selling Windows to like Dell and Lenovo and HP. And they made the hardware and Microsoft made the software. The second Microsoft started making hardware, they started outclassing their hardware vendors. And the hardware vendors were doing dumb things like trying to make software as well. So they would like add really bad software on top of Windows. So when you bought a cheap Dell laptop, it would come loaded with garbage because that's how they'd, competed to differentiate Windows.

But Microsoft now makes the surface in the Surface book, and they are objectively better than many of the computers from their own hardware vendors. And so if you're a hardware vendor, you're like, why am I competing with the provider of my software? And you walk away. And so the most famous example of this, which Deeter can probably tell you all about,

is Palm, which used to be a company called Palm. Teeter's going to get another beer. Yeah, we're an alcohol for this one. So there was a company called Palm that made the original Palm Pilot, and split in two companies, one called Palm One and one called Palm Source. Palm Source was going to be

the software company for a whole world of cool Palm devices that ran the Palm OS. One of which was a company in Iowa called Hendango, which made a Palm pilot that had a little expandable memory slot. Oh, my God, this is such a saga. And then another one, there was Handngo and there was Hand Spring. Hand Spring created by the original founders of Palm who were mad at Palm for being bad at their jobs. Yeah, so Palm split, the original founders quit, started handspring. And then Palm one bought

Handspring back. So the founders came back and then they recombine it with Palm Source. Yep. And then somewhere along the line they split that off and sold it to a company called Access. I mean, it was like a disaster. Like at every possible level of this plan,

it was a disaster. There's something important about the visor that I'm trying to think of. The Hanspring Viser was a really, important product for a specific reason. The Hansing Advisor was an important product for a specific reason because it was designed to take the basis of like a

PDA and show that you could modularize stuff so that you could eventually make a phone. It became the trio. It became the trio. Right. So when Palm wanted to go into making phones, they made some of the first ever smartphones by buying Han Spring, their old founders, and became Palm. Right.

By the way, one of the reasons Hanspring couldn't say independent is they bought too much real estate. It's ridiculous. They bought like a vacation house in that. They got a swank-ass headquarters and they're like, oh, we need to sell more phones. This is awkward. Oh, my God. Anyhow, like while all of that is happening, like Sony is licensing the software to make arguably the best handhelds ever in the Cliae because they were the coolest.

Yeah. They never made a phone out of that. They never made a phone. But they made the coolest ones. And all of this was just a wreck, like just wreckage, like industry wrecking. like industry wreckage left and right and somewhere in there like many phones are made

and Dieter began a career. Yep. Wow. Yeah, actually I started my career a little over 13 years ago. Yeah. Writing about the trio. Yeah.

I feel like I learned a little bit about something. There are photos if you know what to Google. What's the point of the story? The point of the story was that a software vendor trying to compete with its own OEMs by making its own hardware is always a bad idea. Right. And there's so much noise in that ecosystem because everyone's mad at each other all the time that nothing ever moves forward.

And so, like, Microsoft is facing it right now. Like all of Microsoft's OEM partners are mad. Like, Lenovo's mad, Dell's mad, whatever. They're all mad because Microsoft made its first laptop. Yeah, but I think Microsoft is going to solve that problem by not caring. Yeah. That's like how they're going to fix that. Unless Google shows up and makes an operating system and says to vendors, like, hey, you can pick this one too.

Yeah. And we're still going to make hardware too. but now you have a choice of like which bad deal are you going to take. Right. But if Google like starts making its own phone and marketing heavily against Samsung, like no one would buy a Samsung phone. Like they will kill Samsung's mobile business. I mean, Apple's already killing Samsung's mobile business.

So like Google would just like put a knife like into the body that's like fallen on the ground. Oh, poor Samsung. The body on the ground just bleeding S apps and services. Just can't do it. Milk music just. Wow. And the S6 and the node five are great. I bought one.

I spent hundreds of dollars on one because it is the best product that they've ever made. Why do you have it in the case, it looks like a checkbook? Because this is my dad's case. It would be amazing if you could open it up and like write a check on the screen and then like printed a check out. So I could in theory because I have the S pen. So I open it up. If you guys ever wanted to hear like the ultimate and Samsung branded content, it's Dan saying I could write a check on my Galaxy Note because I have. have the S-Pen.

We should get money for that. That was an unprompted use of the phrase S-Pen. Yeah, unprompted. Did you see the post we did about the Ariana Grande video with the Note 5? Yeah. The Note 5 commercial slash. That is some of the worst product placement I've ever seen in my life. It's unbelievable.

She also has far better handwriting on a No-5 than I do. Oh my God, I can't wait to watch it. It's for focus, the new track focus. Have you heard or seen this? There's literally a shot of like her standing in a circular room and the camera goes around and she's just taking selfies with the well all the people take photos of her in a circle and she's like it's like ridiculous it's like all all pretense of a plot goes right out the window and i would say kately and tiffany's

post on our side about this thing is one of the best things we've published it's it's pretty hot fire all right all right we're smart watches we're so far from smart watches all right nicolai you've got you reviewed the pebble time round uh yeah yeah today actually they make a lot of shapes uh squares no they make circles no triangles they make oh man triangle

shade octagon shade why have you arranged a box display the word Samsung Gear S2 what is happening over there

this is my kiosk you know you gave me this I brought the fern Nicola is running a mall kiosk in the corner of the

studio do we ever figure out the name of the watch mall kiosk store no somebody please tweet at me there's an opposite of sunglasses

Is it, a watch is the opposite of sunglasses? Sunglass Hut. So there's like a pair, like there's Sunglass Hut and then there's the watch one. Yeah, the copel. And I cannot, for the life of me, remember what the watch one is called. Anyhow. I'm going to throw out the watch connection. Just to throw it out there.

All right. This makes sense. Nicholas Watch connection. We have nine or something watches here and four boxes. So in addition to doing the Pebble Time, you guys also did a pair of this is my next. The best. Well, actually, Mr. Brown did both of them. We did both for iPhone and Android rather than just doing one for both of them.

Because the platforms are so different. And I didn't get to include the Pell Time Round in that. Unfortunately, because of embargoes. I don't know if it would have changed my final. It's not Dakota Watches. That's a brand of watches. Three people have said Dakota Watches today. It might just be Dakota Watch.

No, that's like saying, what is the sunglass store in the mall? And people are like, Ray Ban. Like, that's not Sunglass Hyde. Are you sure? I'm like pretty sure. Anyway, but you said, obviously, the Apple Watch is the best, smart watch for iOS. I'm Googling to code.

And watch station. Does that make any sense? Watch station. Watch out. It should be called watch out. Yeah. So, of course, the Apple Watch is the best for, well, not of course. Actually, not at all, of course.

The Apple Watch is the best for the iPhone. And I think that the best Android-ware watch is the best thing for Android. And I think, for me, the best Android of our watch is the Moto 360, the 2015 edition. Right. But then you say it might be the Pell-A-Rand. No. I do not say that. I like the Pover-Rand.

Time Square. It's called fucking Time Square. Yes, that's so good. Especially if it's a square, if it's a square kiosk in the middle of all. D-D-D-D-D-D-V-Y-Y emoji thing. Shouts to you. You're good at Twitter today. It's called Watch It in Canada.

No, I agree with Dieter's assessment. I think that so much of smart watch, as we know it today, depends on the platform of your smartphone and the watch that has the same platform as your smartphone tends to be the best experience. The pebble time round is a round pebble time. No, no, no, no. It's a round ridiculously thin.

Yes, there are, like, other things, but on a user experience level, it's a round pebble time. Like, the experience is exactly the same, except it's now just fit to a round screen. Yeah. And so, like, all of the pros and cons that come with the pebble platform apply to the time round. Right.

It's really cool. It's good looking. It looks better. It's a step forward. What do you want a smartwatch to do? So last week I asked people to tweet at me what their favorite Apple Watch app is. And like basically everyone was like,

I like notifications. I mean, I think that's what we all know a smart watch to do. And I was thinking before we came on of coming up with like, what is the state of smart watches right now? And right now we're still waiting, we're waiting for the next step in smartwatches. So we have like Androidware and Apple Watch.

introduce platforms to smart watches in ways like we hadn't seen before. The next step is a smart watch that doesn't need your smartphone. And yes, there have been cellular-connected ones in the past. Can we have a step in between where the apps don't suck? I mean, we can- I would like that step. Yeah. But that's just, that's just iterating on what we already have, right?

But no, it's like the Apple Watch has this problem. And the Apple TV has this problem. Like, what is the killer app for the Apple Watch beyond the notification? I don't think there is one. I think that's the struggle for everything. I do like voice commands. I like being able to like leave like, like tell my,

remind myself a little thing. I'm going to blow up Dieter's spot because he does this in the office and he sits two seats down for me and he like holds his watch up to his face and he secretly says like remind me to so and so when I get home. Oh my God.

And it usually takes him three times. No. The only reason it doesn't work the first time is because I start doing it and Dan is like, oh, you're trying to do it again. I'm going to say that between Dieter's secretly talking to his watch and secretly vaping,

he's a super. villain. So if you watch the video for this is my next and you watch like just the first 45 seconds of it, I'm basically talking you out of buying a smartwatch. Like the first 45 seconds are it'll give you notifications and that's cool but the apps kind of suck

and they're hard to use and the battery value. Have you picked a smart watch, Nicola? Yeah, yeah. You've got all these smart watches. Well, you've got a bunch that we've provided to you have you purchased one. No. Which one is the which one do you like over there? Yeah, what's your favorite over there? I like this one.

That's Moto 360. So that is the smaller new Moto 360. Yeah. Yeah. I like this guy. I think it has a good ratio circle to band. It's substantial, but it's not like wildly big. Like this guy is too much.

What's that one? That's the LG watch Urbane. Yeah. This is way too much watch. I think Dieter described that watch best when he said it was a cheap watch that's trying to look not cheap, but still looks cheap. Oh, it's a fossil. Yeah.

And then the one next to it is the Huawei watch, which I said, It was a watch only Gordon Gecko could love. Let's see, wait, hold that one up. So that watch has no style. Yeah, this is just, wait. It helps that they're all dead. Yeah. Oh, so that's the other story of smart watches.

Is that they die all the time? Except for the pebbles. Well, except for the pebbles. Right. The pebble looks like the pared down version of the. Yeah, the pebble round. Say what you said before we were rolling. Oh, well, so today is the launch of H&M's latest designer collaboration.

with Balman and I said that the Pebble Round is the H&M Balman version of the Balman which would be the Moto 360 oh I don't like that at all but I said it but no this one just like this this pebble one doesn't read like it just it looks like a toy

this reads as like a product yeah not toy I'm impressed but the pebble managed to be thin and light and small right I mean I don't know I'm I also I mean, maybe this is on purpose, I guess.

It looks like a regular watch. Yeah. So actually, I think that's a plus that it looks like a regular watch. Because it's like there's no tech company logo on it. It doesn't scream gadget on your wrist. I don't know why my son. From across the room. I think I turned music on somewhere.

It's still paired to my phone. You just turned S music on him. And Dan, Samsung Galaxy, No. 5. Return to the moon. Can you stop? Can you stop? I'm sorry. I'm trying to go elsewhere.

So you guys got a new preview of the latest LVI album, which came out last week. I'm just saying, you can stop it with your S pen. I could stop it with my S pen. Stron, no. And then I will get sabotaged by Nicola across the room. Tomorrow at 6 a.m. So that's a pretty great example. Nicholas just reading your calendar now.

Sunrise at 633 tomorrow. Hyde 75. What do you, wait, are you wearing an Apple Watch? No, so this is the Asus Zen Watch 2. It comes in two sizes. I think it's ugly. It's pretty ugly. My God.

It's brutal. I'll stop, I'll stop, I'll stop. Yes, I put my social events on my wrist calendar. Go ahead and change our staff calendar from the wall. So you,

you picked your favorite out of all the smart watches, but is that like the best among the things you hate, but like you still hate them all or? I mean, all right, it's like, no, no,

this is totally a fine object. As just an object like not knowing really the inner She's holding a 360. Yeah. Fine object. I still think that like overwhelmingly they're definitely designed for traditionally male tastes and also male-sized bodies. So I will say that, yes, you are totally right. The flip side of that is those are all review units that we've called into the, from the companies.

And knowing the author that would be reviewing it was probably going to be male. So we picked the male version. So like the pebble time round actually comes in. a different version that's geared towards women that has a narrower band. As does the Moto 360. As does the Moto 360. The one with a tan strap,

if you want to hold that one up, Nicola. That is the Asuse Zenwatch 2. That's the one that's geared towards women. I have the men's version of that on my wrist. That's the women's version, which has a narrower band, smaller face, et cetera. But yeah, you're totally right. They are all really masculine-looking

and kind of geared towards men for the most part unless you can get an alternative women's model. the thing with even with like the Motorola and the pebble is that yeah then it band is narrower but the face of the watch is still the same size so like it's not dramatically smaller and Lauren Lauren Good who spent some time with the the women's version of the Motorola found that it was still pretty clumsy and clunky on her wrist so yeah I don't I just I'm still struggling to understand what they're for and like I think that's the problem that I think they are for the entire industry like what is it for. Yeah, I totally agree. You can make a really easy, compelling sales pitch for a smartphone in like two minutes. Why every person you know should have a smartphone. And the reasons why they shouldn't are really, really few and far between. You can't make that pitch for a smart watch. Not at least where they are now. Right. And it's just weird because, you know, we all work together

on the Apple Watch review long ago, however many years ago that was. February? Yeah, it was February. So most of the watches, all of the? the watches on that table have, like, come out since the Apple Watch. Like, that, all of those watches are responses to the Apple Watch in some way. Six of them have round faces. And, you know, the biggest response is that, I see is that they come in two sizes now.

They come in two sizes, but they're also round. Like, Android watches are now round. Like, Android Wear has turned into a platform that's sort of headed towards round displays as a default, and Apple seems very content to push people towards its square display. Yeah, the rectangle is weird to me, or square. think it's a rectangle. A square is in fact a rectangle, yes.

A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't a square. We've done a lot of shape conversation on this show today. Like circles and squares. We had a, there was a triangle moment. Don't bring me in if you're not going to do the geometry. These are lucky conversations I have with my four-year-old. Don't bring me in if you're not going to do the geology. That's brutal.

That's some fingerhead shit. Yeah. So that's the 42. that's the larger Apple Watch. Yeah, yeah, but I'm just like, personally, I don't care for the rectangle, like, in general. To me, it's, like, futuristic in, like, a weird bad way. Wait, so you've been, you were telling me last week, I think, that, like, you know, we're past the first Apple Watch moment. It's settled down.

You know, Apple hype this thing is, like, that was their big new product last year, right? Like, it was supposed to be the revolution. They haven't released sales figures on it. it feels like it's not everywhere. I don't see a lot of them unless I'm working with rich people. I see a fair amount of them, but that's also because I notice them.

I mean, I'm paying attention. Apple put them on sale. I don't know if anybody saw this. Sort of, yeah. Sort of on sale. They trial run,

did a trial run of a sale where they're $50 off you bought an iPhone. So if you spent a thousand dollars. It's like ridiculous. So it's like weird, you know, and like there's still not a lot of like, like we don't get a lot of PR for

Apple Watch apps, which is a strange phenomenon. Yep. Right? We just did the Apple TV review. I'm getting inundated with PR for Apple TV apps. And like, who knows? Like maybe that platform will succeed or maybe it will fail. But like, at least right now it's in a moment of ascendancy, the Apple Watch appears in my mind to have plateaued. Here's a question. But then you were telling me, Nicola, that they are now starting to reach out to, like, fashion sites and like fashion people. Yeah, yeah. They definitely did a blast of freebies with the fashion ladies because I like remember

there was like one day on Instagram where all of a sudden like every like other editor that I know had like an Instagram of and it was the exact with the rose gold

with the what I've now learned is called Vintage Rose watch strap and someone at Rack's got one here not myself oh maybe they watched the video we did in February

but yeah clearly there was like gifting involved and then like a few weeks later maybe two weeks later there was the Chloe Sevenier ads that they ran on Instagram,

15 second ads, Chloe Sevenier, like trying on lots of different outfits and having different watches to go with them. They're running those 15 second ads on TV. And it's like, I was just going to say,

I think that the ads for the Apple Watch have been like the worst ads that Apple's produced in two or three years. Because they don't know what it does. They don't, and like, they're these super short, like 15,

maybe 30 second ads that like don't convey anything about the product, about like, what it does. is like, you know when you see like an iPhone billboard and it's just really like a sexy graphic image of an iPhone. Do you know what I mean? It's just like it's in perspective and it doesn't show it doing anything.

It just shows it as an object. And I've noticed that they don't do that with the watch. There's no advertising where it's just like like a traditional watch ad like for a non-smart watch. It's just like a person doing something glamorous that you want to be part of. It's like perfume ads where it because you can't smell it. So it's like they create an. idea of like what this person is or what this life is. And it's weird to me with Apple Watch that they haven't stopped and done like just like a, it's a sexy, beautiful thing on a sexy,

beautiful person doing something sexy and beautiful. It's all this like a mom was stressed out with ice cream who can pay. Like that's literally that. If there's no like romantic like no one's on a yacht, you know, why not? They did some of that at the very beginning, I want to say. Well, in the beginning they're like, here's what I can do. I think the problem. I think the problem that all of these vendors are stuck in is that these things are most useful when you're busy doing something else. Right. Right. They're most useful when you don't have time to pick up your phone.

But it's like phone advertising, the promise of the phone is it will, like, grant you additional capabilities. Right. You get a phone and suddenly you can like book an Airbnb and go to a glamorous place or like look at Twitter and have people talk to you in Kurt, unprofessional tones. You know, you can like open Facebook and like high school. chat with somebody across the world. Yeah, that's better than opening Facebook. Opening Facebook is like, oh, everyone I know from my school is still terrible. My Facebook's weird.

But it's with the watch, it's like it doesn't grant you that many additional capabilities, right? Like, it's just a... It tells you the time. It tells you the time. And then it connects... And then it connects to all the capabilities of your phone. So, like, you have to... All those ads have to be about how somebody else already has a better life.

And they're like, so cool that the watch is, like, helping them do something that they would do with their phone. and there's like a disconnect there because the watch doesn't help them get that life. The watch is like, they're so much cooler than you that they need this watch to like or push this button. They're so cool.

They're Lagerfelding and they haven't even set up the watch. Lagerfeldin for days, brough. From days. Oh, it's so good. It's the best. Really the best. I mean, do you think Carl Lagerfeld has ever set up that watch? No.

Do you think Carl Lagerfeld has ever used a smartphone? They probably like a special person. Like someone like specially went there. and was all nervous and packed and stressed out. You know what I mean? Like they went through this whole thing and then they got there and they just, no. They probably like put it on his wrist, took the picture. What would it take for you to buy a smartwatch?

What would have to happen? What would have to happen? Do you wear a non-smartwatch ever? No. But I wear bracelets. So do I. I mean, that's essentially what that is. Yeah, no.

A longer felt like a smartwatch is a bracelet. Right. And you people made fun of me. It would be cool if I could, sometimes one thing. Oh my God, what are you doing? One thing that takes a lot of time is queuing up the song I'm in the mood for. You know what I mean? Why don't you play it on your phone?

You could just talk to your watch. But it's on Spotify. So I can't be like, you can't pay for every single music service, even the ones you don't use. That's what I do. Except for Google Play Music, which I refuse to you. I'm now just trying to people. Oh, God. I pay for YouTube Red.

Best money I've ever made for. Oh my God. I was on a vacation with a friend and we had a car. Do I have YouTube Red? I have no idea. You should. If you have play music, you do. Okay.

I was on vacation with a plugged-in friend, and he had Google music. And I was like, oh, look at you. I've never seen this before. Out in the wild. I have YouTube. Oh, my God. If you go to YouTube.com slash red and you have it,

it just says straight on the first page, you have YouTube red. It just tells you. And then it redirects you to a porn site. When do you think they're going to release a second Apple Watch? Me? Oh, anybody. when's the next one coming?

My guess would be fall 2016. Yeah, it's a long way away, because they just started selling the Hermes. Yeah. I kind of like the Armez. Like the basic Hermes, like as basic as Armez could be with the single brown leather strap.

I think that looks really nice. But isn't it a double strap? You can get the double strap or you can get a cuff, which is like his style. Or you can get the standard brown. leather strap, which would make it kind of look like the Motorola. Yeah, I think they have a long, they have a long way to go before they...

What's the pricing on that one? Starts at 1100. It goes up to, I think, 1599. That's dumb. It's a deal. You know, it's cheaper, though. Soft layer, motherfuckers. A cloud built for scale.

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Software, one of the only cloud providers that provisions dedicated servers and virtual servers. Otherwise, I believe you all know this now, as known as a public cloud. This comes from a single seamless platform that's on demand, all connect to the same open API, all connected to a global private network. It scales your workloads up and down quickly. There's ample space for your storage intensive tasks. I mean, honestly, if you're into the... cloud. SoftLayer is what you're into. SoftLayer, an IBM company, as I believe everybody knows now.

IBM uses SoftLayer. So if you buy IBM stuff, you get Software on the back end. All of our listeners have the opportunity to get $500 of cloud infrastructure by visiting softlare.com slash podcast. An additional $500 of soft player changes that to software.com slash fuckers. Think about it. You can order bare metal servers, virtual servers, storage, networking, and security services from your choice of data centers. Software has 24 data centers around the world. All of those servers and services are connected to software's unique network of networks, which separates public, private, and management traffic,

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What have we done? I'm sorry. I'm trying, guys. You know, what are you going to do? All right, it's time for the lightning round. What are the rules of the lightning round? I'm just going to say some things, and you guys can just. jump in on the things.

Does it make any sense? I'm going to say some topics. Okay. From the week. But we have to be fast. Yeah, it's a light. We're going to move. We're going to move.

We're going to discuss. I like to hear from all of you on said topics, but I'm just going to throw them out there and you're going to respond. Okay. Lightning round. Hearts versus Stars on Twitter.

Love of Hearts. Faves. Faves for life. Terrible. Terrible. Because a favorite, you can only have one. It makes no sense.

Oh, you are validating Twitter's reasoning for changing this. Greatest all time. It's the worst. I can't stand it. I can't. It's literally a heart's on Twitter. Faving a super,

or putting a heart next to a super sarcastic Casey tweet is so wrong. Yeah. Or like a super terrible AP tweet about like some tragedy. The hearts are treacle, right? It's all just like too sweet. Oh, because a star is like a little,

it's like a punch in the arm. Like, yeah, but a heart is like a. No, but a star is like, I'm going to look at this later. I'm going to remember this. UIMX. It's lightning round. Lightning strikes. Lightning crashes.

Is there a point? New IMAX. Best all the ones you can buy, but if you buy the base model, you're an idiot because they give you that really crappy slow hard drive, so you have to spend a good amount of money to get one.

When does the last time you used a desktop computer? I don't know. My new IMAQ thing is, where the hell is the new cinema display? Come on. Come on. Cinema display, come on. The government does not know

how to regulate self-driving cars and Tesla auto-pilot. Shocker. Yeah. Do you trust self-driving cars? No. No. Who wants that?

I totally want that. No way. That's terrible. If I could like get in a car. The subway is not a self-driving car. If I could get, if there was a robot arm, they could like pick me up out of bed, place me into a cocoon and the cocoon like shot me down the stairs. You put a blizzard on you.

Yeah. And I like shot me in a car and I was in the car and the car driving to work. And then an arm picked me up and like shot me upstairs. And then delivered me at my desk. And the whole time your phone. can read you scientific articles about how sitting is killing you. Big Disney deal with PlayStation View,

ESPN, ABC, Disney Channel, all on PlayStation streaming. Would you give up a TV for that? Give up cable for that. I don't have cable now. I don't have cable. Would you sign up for that to get ESPN, ABC?

No. Would you ever sign up for any kind of TV package you get in your life? I mean, I pay for Hulu Plus. Yeah, I was going to say, you must have Hulu, right? Yeah. You must have Hulu.

Of course she has Hulu. She does it have cable, she's got to have Hulu. I have Hulu Plus and I have Netflix. I'm already paying like almost $20 a month. I think that this view, this view more competitive with Sling TV. Like closer.

Have you ever heard of any of those products? No. Yep. That's their problem. They're never going to spend the money in marketing. Would you give up? No. Okay.

James Bond Spectre. Why aren't you participating in the like round? Because I'm the lighting host. Also, hearts are bullshit. Just to be clear, the only contribution of making this. lightning around is that I believe hearts are bullshit. James Bond Specter. A good blonde movie is only a Spector at this point.

Really? Did you prep that? I can't. I can't. I can't wait. I think that's a tweet already. I just, I don't know anything about it. Is James Bond, is it possible for James Bond to be cool again? Yeah.

Yeah. Totally. Even Daniel Craig could be cool again, but not with the scripts and crap that he's given at this point. I just think it's really hard. I think James Bond is a government agent. I think it is hard for government agents in fiction to be super cool. That's not the problem.

No, because it was cool in Mission Impossible with government agents. The problem is that James Bond is a misogynist. That's what keeps him from being cool. I don't think he is one in this one. Daniel Craig's been doing all these interviews about that's another thing. Cooler? Okay. Well, then, yeah, sure.

But like, even that, like, I just like, he's an agent. It's very out to be a misogynist right now. Very out. I'm bringing it back, though. So if you could just shut up. I mean, the pendulous strings, you know? You could just simmer down. 2017, ladies, can it.

I haven't seen Spector. There's been a lot of... It's so dark. It's like, could you just go make me a sandwich? The kitchen isn't kitchening itself. Wow. I'm sorry, that shouldn't be funny. It's terrible.

There's been a lot of shade thrown at Roger Moore in the aftermath of Spector and all the bad reviews. And I just want to stand up for Roger Moore. I like him. Better than Timothy Dalton. I'll give you that one. Yeah. Okay.

Not hard. I just think, I think James Bond is over. Like, I think it has reached its floor. It's like a gadget nerd that, like, totally kills me. Because, like, James Bond was, like, the movie you watched to see all these, like, crazy, out-of-this-world gadgets. So, hang on. Did you read, did you watch the James Bond gadget supercut that we put on our site? I didn't see that.

So, like, the supercut's great. It's, like, 17 minutes of a gadget, whatever, whatever. But James Vincent, our genius writer in the UK, decided to just name five of the gadgets in the Supercutter. And listen to the names of these gadgets and try not to think of a disturbing sex act. Mousetrap in the pocket. Come on. Head-smashing plaster cast. What?

Fake horse ass. There's a fake duck, too. Bagpipes and person swallowing sofa. Flamethrower bagpipes. My monster truck name. I'm just putting that out there. Okay, lighting around.

Time Warner showing fewer ads to attract cord cutters back to television. If you could buy cable and it would have fewer ads across the board, would you go back to TV? Yep, that's the answer. Time Warner took a... I would enjoy it as a person that still has cable. Time Warner took a beautiful little Greek pastry shop that was on. my corner, ripped it down and replaced it with a giant huge 20,000 square foot

Time Warner store. Doesn't need to exist. Time Warner is a phone number. It's not a store. What do you buy it a Time Warner store? Exactly. It was a lovely little restaurant and now it's like a glass cube where like you talk to a cable rep.

What happens in there? Get the hell out of a story at Time Warner. There was a DJ at the Bedside T-Mobile store and I will tell you it was lit. It was lit. At the T-Mobile store. There's a point in every... They have store experience. You don't know what they're doing there Friday, 5 p.m.

There's a point in every New Yorker's life when New York dies for them. It's a DJ. Dealer had died when the Greek restaurant was taken over by Time Warner. Tony Fidel says Apple's been thinking about a car since 2008. We all been thinking about things since 2008. I have no context. Cars are... Would you buy an apple car?

Are an area of an intense interest. What? Would you buy an Apple car? Probably. Based on things have gone so far. Yeah. It's not unlikely. Okay.

And now, wait, do you have a lightning hour response to Apple Car? Not especially. All right. So then I asked for questions from Twitter. We have, I would say, two minutes. Ooh, fun. Okay. Bob asks, what's your biggest tech purchase regret?

Regret? Yeah. There's so many. Google Nexus 4. Next is 4. Yeah. I hated it the day. I got it.

I just bought this alarm clock that wakes you up with simulated daylight. Oh, I got it. Nexus 9. Okay. And you're going to simulated daylight. Oh. Was it the Phillips one? Yes.

Yes. It's terrible. What? It's so bad. I bought that too. Okay. I don't have returned there. Okay.

Peter asks, how much would Sprint have to pay you to use Sprint? How much is Sprint worth as a company that much? Would you switch to Sprint? Do you have Sprint? I bet you have Sprint. Ryzen. Oh, well. So not the opposite of Sprint.

How much would Sprint have to pay you to switch? I don't know. What's the reputation? It's bad. It's not good. No, I love having a phone that works where I am all the time. So now we've moved right into Verizon branded content. I don't know.

I've been kind of using Project Fy lately, which is almost Sprint. It's the worst lightning around in history. Clint asks if you could voluntarily replace your heart with something better, would you? I have no idea what that means, but I love it. Yes. Love my heart. Yeah, totally. I think that was a heart star.

Like, that's what we're supposed to go there. And then the last one, I guess. I don't, I would replace my heart with a star. Yes, if that was possible. It's a meme. And then somehow I favored Ellis reminding me that Tom has been screened our calendar with Windows phones for years. So that's where I'm at. This is the last chance.

If you have a Twitter question, tweet at me now. Do you remember when Tom was like using Windows 8 a lot and would send email replies and break the entire thread? Yes. That was the worst. Oh, if Windows is known for one thing, it's destroying email threads with blue text. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Somewhere there's a designer Microsoft.

He's like, email should be blue. Oh, and that person, like, doomed a generation. It's also known for, uh, instead of sending a smiley face in email, turning it into a capital J. That's actually Outlook. The J is the worst thing. Specifically Outlook, yeah. Yes, because every PR person uses Outlook.

So they'll be like, can you make it J? And I'm like, what is it? It took me like a year of this working in this industry to like figure out. You reply and tell them that they're sending them and they're like, what are you talking about? Why don't they? No. They don't know. None of them know.

I hate the J. Can't stand the J. There's a hundred people out there. Just nicknamed J being like, just dying right now. All right. So that was our show. Yeah. A good time.

Brought to you by the letter J. And triangles. And triangles. Shame with the day. Triangle. Dan shamelessly shilling for his stylus. Many smart watches. Let me get the tab, guys.

and also brought to you. Okay, it would be dope if you could open that and write a check. Like, just if you could write a check and, like, print it out and hand that to the waiter at the restaurant, like, that's a vision of the future that you never came true. You need a little tiny printer. You could like, what was that little printer? It was called little printer. Sounds great.

But how cool that behavior. You were like, oh, yeah, you know, I will buy this car. Do you like write the check on your phone? That was the future of mobile payments. Right. I thought he checked and put it out of his smartphone. I'm saying there's a vision. There's probably like an old AT&T ad where that's happening.

That's the future. All right, please follow the Verge on Twitter. We're at Verge. You can follow us on Snapchat at the real verge, The Real Verge on Snapchat. Nicola has a captivating Snapchat channel. Nicola Fumo, all one word. You can also rate and review us on iTunes.

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when you tweeted us. Nicola. Nicola underscore Fumo. Dieter. Backlon. I'm reckless. D.C. Seifert.

That was it. I want to thank Brain Tree. once again I was going to say another square word but I think that's that's for soft layer Braintree gives you a full stack

payment solution you can support all the payment types your customers might want except for a printing checks out of your GalaxyS5 or Galaxy Note 5 you can start accepting Android pay

Apple PayPal Bitcoin Venmo cards whatever's next all of a single integration across all of your platforms there's superior fraud protection there's customer service there's fast payouts my God check this out

at Braintreepayments.com slash vergecast that was it That was a show. Thank you so much. Thank you, Nicola. Thanks for having me. Rock and roll. Jeff Hawkins.