The Vergecast - Vaping Alone with Wikipedia

Episode Date: February 20, 2015

Are you ready to settle in for another hard tech episode? I hope so, because that's what we have this week. Nilay, Dieter, Chris, and Sam bring the beef/sweat/swag/hype to the table to discuss Jony Ive, cars, Sony, and the merits of various Matrix sequels. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So this is going to be weird. It's been, I think, 141 episodes of this show. Yep. And we're about to do something I think we've only ever done once before. It was a disaster. It was something. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to read an ad.

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We're rich. Also, the intro music sounded totally wrong to me. It sounded weird. Oh, it was playing back at regular speed, not 1.5. Wow. Podcast production burn. Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast. now that we have advertising, I feel like I have to be a professional.

That's a lie. I don't. This is a show about The Verge and all the stuff that happens on it. I'm Nilai Patel. I'm Dieter Bone. I'm Chris Plant. And I'm Snapchatting right now. Oh, God.

I'm Sam Schaeffer. Hi. Remember when I said we were going to be professionals? I immediately blew it. The hype is under construction. No, no, we're professionals. We're just teens. No.

So here's what I'll say. We seriously, I think it's been, we're professional teens, I said. It's been 141 episodes. Mm-hmm. We have secured cash money for this show. Do they actually pay us in cash? I have no idea. The Squarespace roll in it, just like flip those.

Yeah, Squarespace makes it show up and they make it rain. The whole time just being like, check out our website. News Offer Code Verge. And then they take 10% of the money back. This takes the term dance for dollars. That's how they pay for that discount. No, I have no idea. I mean, one of the glories of Vox Media is that there's a wall between editorial and sales.

So who knows? They're getting all of the money. Who knows? Someone else is like receiving a bag of money upstairs while we sit here huffing it out in front of these microphones. Drink water. Drinking water like trumps. I'm drinking a beer whose brand will not be named and don't tweet at me about it.

Okay. Brand. Yeah, you missed this last week. Definitely missed it last week. So we're back. I will say the Vergecast at episode 141 plus cash money. We're going to try to like be organized. Yeah.

I'm not going to keep this promise. You've already broken this promise. Really bad. All right. You're saying this every episode. Money or not. This is going to mean the one. Hype check.

Money. It runs the world. Oh, God. Oh, wow. Once again, there's tons of news. I'm just getting right. We're getting corporate Sam today. Super corporate Sam.

By the way, we got lots of excellent hype formulas, most of which I would say tracked to my thought. Yeah. That hype over reality. We read a. hype paper on the version of last week. We got a scientific paper. I want to find one of these bad journals that don't have peer review and then submit the paper to the bad journal. Oh, yeah. We have to do that. So we are still in the market for hype check formula. You would like to provide us one. But there's tons of news so we should get right into it.

And I think as it happens, Apple is dominating the news this week in a variety of ways. I think actually two weeks of news domination. And it's weird because they're leading up to the watch, right? They've said the watch is going to come out in April. I believe that means we'll probably see some sort of like event where they show the watch again. There's rumors of a new MacBook. So they're probably going to have some sort of event before the watch is released to sale in April. We have no idea when that's going to be.

But what's interesting is that we're seeing the fruits of the first new open Apple in that New Yorker published a 17,000 word profile of Johnny I, which we should talk about in the structured way in a minute. Yeah, yeah. But then underneath that all has just been this endless drumbeat of rumors about a car. Yeah. Of all of the things. Just an endless.

It started with the Wall Street Journal. It started a while ago with like people and there were rumors about Tesla and like there was like sort of. There was a vague sense of car out there, but nothing got nailed down. And then within the way this usually goes is like either. Reuters or the WSJ will like, sometimes Bloomberg, they're like, one of them break a story, and then we'll have like, bam, bam, bam, like rumor after rumor, like confirming the story in some way.

And so this time around, it started, I want to say what you're right in Wall Street Journal. And then Royters were like a fast-project Titan, and the Reuters came right after. And then Chris got very mad because Mark Newsom, who is one of Apple's designers, famous designers, designed like a Ford concept car a long time ago, which is very cute. It's whatever. So everyone thought that would be... You like it? Yeah, I mean, it looks nice.

Yeah. Looks European. Yeah. Why do you hate... I don't like cute looking cars. I mean, it looks better than iPhone 6. Oh. My God.

Wow. Dude. I thought that was your iPhone 6. I had a dream last night. This is true. I mean, here's a tangent. Okay. I had like a really intense set of dreams last night.

But the one thing that sticks out now that you brought up the iPhone 6 is that I dreamt for a while. that the beard on my face was like crazy antenna lines like the back of the iPhone 6 and I couldn't get rid of it like I was desperately trying to like shave off these antenna beard Wow that's really weird

It was super I woke up like really disturbed And I checked my face Yeah Sorry there's nothing For dinner Huh vodka Okay Now it all makes sense

I'll say you'd strap phones to your face No no it wasn't phones It was that my beard refused to grow in anything but the shape of the iPhone 6th? Like, you know that weird outline that's bad? That was my face. Sorry, there's nothing worse than hearing about other people's dreams. No, that was a great dream.

Thanks, thanks, buddy. There's not really a story arc there, but I'm glad that you appreciate it. But you must appreciate the terror that I felt while asleep. Yeah, that sounds terrible. Because, like, man, do you just cover it up? You know what I mean? I just dreamt that I was on your water and I was never going to get out. You get a Hannibal Lecter mask?

That's your phone case. Welcome to the Dreamcast. Yeah. No, no, my battery life is great, but I looked terrible unless I was in a case. What? That's my half and six joke. It doesn't? The FN6 is the first half of the only looks good.

So the car? The car. Sorry, that was, that was cold. So there's, okay, so here are the things that we have now heard about the car. We have heard that it's called Project Titan. We have heard that it might look like a minivan, which is incredible, resembles a minivan. Resembles a minivan. There is, I would call it.

but it's not disagreement because it's all rumors. There are conflicting reports over whether or not it's self-driving or not. Right, which we can explain. Or Chris Ziegler has explained. Well, explain it pretty well. So the problem with saying is it or isn't a self-driving car is, like, self-driving is a spectrum right now of like completely autonomous goes and does its own thing to pretty good at being autonomous on a freeway to like lane assist and hold the speed.

and they can break when needs. Smart, cruise control. All the way down to just cruise control, all the way down to, like, you know, not autonomous at all. You've got a hand crank to start the damn thing. Right. And so, presumably.

That's the bottom end of the spectrum. Yeah, it's a model T. Yeah. It's like on the self, but that's not even on the spectrum of self-driving. Well, it's the spectrum of cars. It's the baseline. I mean, you don't have to pedal it, right?

There's an engine. Okay. Fine, fine. By self-propelling to, like, robot car that can kill you. That's the spectrum. Right. So you don't have to pedal it. All right.

It's a safe bet that the Apple car, assuming it comes into fruition, by the time it gets out into the world, will have some pretty advanced autonomous driving capabilities. Right. But, like, maybe all cars will by then. Right. Then there's no timeline. This could not happen. Yep. We've been told that there's a former iPhone product manager is running this thing.

He's got like a thousand employees in Skunkworks. The stuff that... Oh, and Apple just today, it's getting... It came out that they're getting sued by. A126? A123. A1213. Something.

A126 is the Amazon thing. The company that makes basically batteries for electric cars and because Apple's poached a bunch of their engineers. Which is wild. Yeah. I have a question for you. If you're a tech company, okay, and let's say that you're like valued at more than $3 billion, you have to have two things in development. no matter what you actually make, right? You have to have a car in development because either electric cars or self-driving cars are going to become a gigillion dollar industry.

And, hey, it would be worth having some hand in maybe somehow scoring that. And you have to have, like, those dogs, those robot dogs who are going to fight all of our wars. Like, it doesn't matter who you are. You're going to. Facebook has you. Facebook has got creepy dogs. No doubt. Facebook has its own, like, Darfur want to be.

that is like going to like go and just share free internet in third world country just you said three billion dollars but just to put that in perspective like apple is it like 800 billion oh for sure i have no doubt like three hundred dollars is like Snapchat on a good day sure no no they're over 10 now they're over 10 so snapchat has a darpa dog it's like ride you to self-driving car i like the phrase darpa dog you know darpa dog um would darper dogs exclusively chase self-driving cars yes oh yeah yeah It'll be our new police. What happens if we have a huge regression and we have these DARPA dogs that are like, you know, horse and buggy kind of thing, but they're DARPA dogs. Oh, and they're like 400 miles per hour. Yeah, but they're pulling the buggies. Yes. I hear what you're saying.

This is the steampunk future we deserve. And there's guys in giant mecca suits kicking the dogs because they run down the house. So I had like a half-formed argument and it's still half-formed, but like basically the idea that Apple feels a need to build a car. is depressing to me. Why? Because I want Apple to build things that are more egalitarian than that, and I feel like we could build better systems for transportation than cars. I think cars are great for wide open spaces.

They're great for the middle class, assuming that they hit a certain price point. But, like, I don't know, man, the Hyperloop seems way more exciting and better for humanity than just more cars. Yeah, I just think that, well, here, there's two things I want to say about. the car thing. The first thing is very glib, but it's, I think it's super true. It is easier for Apple to try to build a robot car than it is for them to make a TV. Like, that is where we have arrived in this industry. Wait, wait, did you not hear though? They're going to announce a new TV. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if you saw the rumors, but I'm pretty sure they're true this time.

Oh, no, no. And it's not going to be ultra HD. It's going to be 1080B because they know how to make a good TV. It's like the equivalent of the original iPhone coming out without 3G. Yeah. No, no. Is it about 1080P? I just, I'm telling you, there's every chance in the world. Apple will release a robot car before they can get Comcasts to do the cable over the top.

Right. Cable subscription they need to launch a TV. And that is like the saddest thing I can think of. Like, try to think of something sadder. I don't know. World hunger is. No, no. That's whatever.

We got Bill Gates solving that stuff on the side every day. It's cool, man. Just like genetically get those seeds up. I don't think it's. genetically get the seeds. On a human scale, I also think, like, making self-driving cars is to be, like, one of the top things you can do for, like, the U.S. right now. Right.

Other than the tremendous damage you'll do to the economy, because I didn't realize that, like, most jobs in the Midwest are drivers, so that causes its own problems. But beyond that, on a, on a pure safety level, that's huge. Oh, yeah. Here's what I will say. But, no, you know, the safety level is not dying. train. No, no, it's not the same. Right? Yeah, but train can't take me to the cafe. I would take the train to the cafe if I could take the train. I am all for the major companies of Silicon Valley fighting over who can build the better, faster, cooler, self-driving car. Yeah. Okay. That's like Google doing it and Uber doing it and Apple doing it and maybe Microsoft has one. Remember Detroit? Microsoft is more like, hey, do you not like putting this on your face? What about putting this on your face? And everyone else is like driving the cars. Remember we used to have those systems where they were like, they're the sci-fi world of like, there were the sci-fi world of like, there were. would be like monorails everywhere.

That's my summation of HoloLens. Little individual pods would like drive along on these rails over the city and so we could actually have like our streets back. Yes, that's Epcot. Right. I'm with you, but here's what. Right. I'm forgetting it was.

Yeah, it was called him People Mover. The experimental prototype city of tomorrow. No, but I'm talking about more recently. Like in the past five years, this guy came up with a pretty reliable plan. People Mover 2.0. Right. Sure. Yeah, PM2.0.

How could we forget? I'm just saying that. The PCOT PM 2.0.0. Maybe, maybe. You're talking about the redesign and popular mechanics right now? Look, I know I'm a communist tippy, but maybe transportation we could start to think of in the same category that we're starting to think of health care. That it's a thing that we should figure out as a society, not as individual people who happen to be able to spend lots of money on a car than Apple makes. Oh, I agree.

I'm just happy right now. And I'm sad because I have family from Ohio, but like Detroit refused to go electric so long ago. And they could imagine. Imagine if Detroit had gone down that route. Imagine they had gone down the technology route with their cars and the safety route with their cars and like what today would look like. And I feel horrible saying that because I desperately wish that was reality versus some of the people who were in charge of what the future of cars could be. Because I don't necessarily know if Silicon Valley is the area. Silicon.

Silicon. I'm from the Midwest. I also say council and roof. Okay. Guys, I know. I know. Okay. Cool. I'll say crick. Do you say nuclear? Nuclear. Let's just hear about... Well, so, but here's my thing about the car. I didn't say the... I said the glib thing and we told a bunch of jokes. Yeah. The other thing that I think is massively important about the car is it's related to the glib thing. It's... Apple needs the next thing. Right? And I think the next thing for them is connecting their phone to, like, the rest of the world. Right? So they're doing it with HomeKit.

They're like building this thing and that'll take some time. They're trying to do it with car play. And car play is just, you're trying to do it with Apple Play, right? Or Apple Pay. Like you shave your phone and things. It turns into a wallet.

The next piece is you get in your car and your car knows about your phone and then stuff happens. Right. And the reality is that most of the car manufacturers are never going to give up like controlling your AC. Like they're not going to give that to Apple.

They're not going to give like core functions of the car to Apple. They're not going to give controlling your speed to Apple or like the windshield wipers or any of the other core functions of the car. Apple's going to get basically a button that launches an app that connects to CarPlay and you can run Spotify and maybe Apple Maps. Right. So they need to build their own car because they can't own the other ecosystem.

They can't own the stack. And I think that is unless there is a car company that's willing to give that up and I walked through CES with, so a thing that I do at CES, I achieve is like I give two. tours to the people who partner with their company. So as we were walking around and some of the people that were from car companies and I was like, this is the challenge. Both Apple and Google have to convince you, car company person,

to give up this piece of the car if they want this to be a good experience. And they were just like, whenever you're getting that up. Just flatly. They just looked at me like, yeah, that's crazy. Why would they do that? And that, I think, if you're Apple, it's funny because they ran into that same wall with Comcast. Yep. But they can't build a cable network. They ran on that same wall with a GM or sob or whatever.

They just build a car. Saab is a dead. dead brand it and I brought up sob. Volvo. What a name. Name some car company. Toyota. They ran into that same wall

with these car companies. Honda. Honda's a good car company. Come on, Bone. No, I mean, I got more. I'm just waiting to interrupt you. Get them all out.

They ran in the same wall with the car companies. Hyundai. And they should build her on car. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Okay, I'm done. Hyundai and Kia, brother,

the upstarts. Yeah. There's a company that's going to give it up, like give up, the stack. It's like one of those. Anyway, did you hear this? The other, we should get into Johnny, but I can't not read this former GM CEO quote, Don Acreson. He said, and I quote, they'd better think carefully if they want to get into the hardcore manufacturing.

We take steel, raw steel, and turn it into a car. They have no idea what they're getting into if they get into that. Doesn't Apple take raw aluminum and turn into like billions of phones? Like, cool, bro. They don't know how to manufacture anything. Oh, man, I... That reads like a car commercial. It does. Like, that guy has been watching too many...

That is his job. It's just like his eyes feel back. No, if you're a car commercial, your entire life, your entire career spent trying to measure up to Lee Ayacocca and that's Chrysler commercials. Yeah. When he was like, I know we sucked.

But now, I promise we won't. Introducing the K-car. Right, I was going to say, like, the best thing about it is he... The K-car. It does. Sam, do you know what K-Car is? Nope.

And this will transition into Johnny. Yeah. In the 80s. A time before I know. Time before your time. Time before time. Leiaikoka. You know who Leiaikoka is?

One of the revered chief executives in American business history. Okay. Saved Chrysler by introducing the K-car, which was great. It was like a masterpiece of mass engineering. Somewhere upstairs, Chris is listening to this in the freaking out. But the K-car ushered in the air. ushered in the era of badge engineering, which is where you would

take a Chevy, and then put a Cadillac badge on it and put leather seats in it, and it would be the same car. Like, literally the same car with a different badge on it. And that, like, destroyed, over time, destroyed the American automotive industry. Right. Like, basically GM was, like, the same car with

50 different brands on it. Yeah, and they would, they'd like, tweak the fender, and then they put in a slightly better stereo, and that was about it. It's like the generic car. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Like when you think of a car, it's like they made this thing that's like a car and you can like modify it if you want to. Right. So that was like and that over time evolved into like what happens now with like car platforms.

Right. So like Toyota owns Lexus. And so the fundamentals of like a Lexus are in many ways similar to the corresponding Toyota model, but they've learned that you can't just badge engineer the car. Right. So they really like you have to make significant changes. When these came out, they would legitimately just slap a badge on here and call it. day and like change of the seats. Not too far off.

So it's just funny like, Leahyakoko is like, I'm saving Chrysler and it's like, and then you gave us this garbage. And I believe, I firmly believe every single car company executive like gets the Leiaiakoka book and I'm like, I'm going to make that ad.

I'm going to talk directly to America about how I'm saving this car company, which is why this guy's like, we take steel, raw steel, turn it into cars. Dude, somewhere Tim Cook's like, yeah,

I take raw silicon and turn it into super computers. no he takes air and I make money yeah that's what he does he effectively does that Square space He takes metal Imagine when it's like when Tim Cook gets super hard Like when he's like just like raw

He's like when he's like mad in a meeting I think the only way you know is like He's like because he's so smooth in public What if he gets quieter? When he's yeah He probably gets quieter But like when he's like raging at Samsung And he's just like Gilma

Like I don't even think he has that in him I don't like I guarantee you. Zero chance. I think every CEO has. You know what I think he does? I think he gets quieter and quieter until it's a whisper. And you have to get close to it.

And then his voice goes full ASMR. And then everybody's like, ah, and they melt. And they just do whatever he wants. All right. That's probably true. So I think the reason, just to get back to actual cars, not Tim Cook's secret ASMR ability. Tim Cook's just crackling face.

Today on the third cast, we're going to bother. I love you. Now I'm cutting the back of your head. Okay. You just watch the binary audio video. This all makes sense. No, so here's the thing. I think the reason we're hearing so much about the car in the lead-up to the watch is that it's a hedge against the watch not being very good.

Yeah. I mean, that's the big question. Whenever stuff about a feature Apple product leaks, you ask, is it Apple leaking it or did someone to legitimately get the story? Right. And I... Mm-hmm. Right? Isn't it always Apple linking it?

No. Sometimes yes and sometimes no. And like I think if they were going to hedge, I don't think you can hedge the watch with like, let's talk about the new MacBook that's coming out or a 13 inch iPad. You think the watch event is going to have the car too? No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. I'm saying we're in the lead up to this event.

Yeah. Right? Which event? There's going to be a watch event. Everybody I talk to you believes that before the thing goes on sale, there'll be a lead up to this. The watch is going on sale in April. Right. You don't think there's just going to be an watch.

event like for the watch as they do with the phones right like it'll it'll be a watch event and they'll also announce a macbook yeah there's a lot of like something there's a lot of like prediction about that right so but in the in this moment now until that event we're in the lead up zone okay what we're not getting leaks about is the watch or the apps or like this macbook we're getting leaks about a car yeah which is crazy yeah right and like what are you hedging it's like why does apple letting the story just kind of get out there in a way that apple never lots of story get out there unless they really want to, right? Every iPhone has leaked to date.

No, no, no, no, that's, like, different. Like, Apple does some of that, right? Apple leaked the two sides of the Wall Street, the iPhone to the Wall Street. Right. Like, duh, that happened, right? But, right, so right now it's happening. Here's the dynamic here. Everybody, like, you go and watch, I don't know, CNBC or some financial show on some other

cable news network channel. They're all like, what's going to be the next iPhone-sized thing for Apple? if they don't get another iPhone-sized thing, they're going to fail. They're doomed, even though they're the most wealthy company in the history of mankind. And so the watch is not going to be

an iPhone-sized business. Right. Maybe never. Probably never. And so when the, like, naybobs look at that, they're like, oh, well, the watches of failure. They're like, but we can pin our hopes

on the next thing. Right. But there's this car, like, Apple's revolutionizing the car. And, like, this is a hedge against that watch event, being like, here's a watch. It's exactly the same as it was before. Now we have some apps that are like glances off the apps on your phone, which is basically what they've announced for the watch so far.

Yeah. And it's just like fascinating to watch Apple play this game right now. And then on top of it, this is what we should like go into. I was going to say. Is this book length profile of Johnny Ive that came out that is basically my reading. It's 17,000 words. Everybody should go read it. In my reading of it, it's Johnny I've Swan Song.

It's hard not to read that. It opens with Johnny Ive looks tired. Like that's the beginning of it. That is the first sentence of this profile. He can't stop talking about how tired he is. He's involved in so much. He's doing so much. He hired his best friend to help him with this watch.

He's redesigning the stores of these fashion people. He's redesigning this campus. It is just like what a, what a strange thing to have in this moment. Also, not for nothing. Johnny Hive has lots of feelings about cars. He has lots of feelings about cars. Yeah. There's like a scene in this profile where he's,

driving down the highway and they see a Toyota Echo and he's like, what is this garbage? Yeah. It's baffling, isn't it? It's just nothing, isn't it? It's just insipid. Is that your Johnny Iva accent? No, I can't do a Johnny Eye accent without being ridiculously like just offensive to British people. You can't be offensive to British people.

You can't. Ouch. What, dude? You ran my country for 200 years. You made my people build railroads. I'm going to do your accent. That's fair. That's how it goes.

It's magical. It's so simple. it's inevitable that was I don't even know what that word was inevitable inevitable oh I think he said like inevitable

it's like a Harry Potter character it's precise it's aluminum aluminum that's what you get that's what you get welcome to the bathroom huh

when they go to the bathroom blue sure that works too I want you to say laboratory laboratory why would they go the bathroom the laboratory

is it's like a lavatory but a laboratory oh you're a weirdo wow Oh, I thought you said... He's a boring. He didn't know anywhere he wants an Apple. In the CNC machine.

Like, I don't know. I don't know what he does. I'm showing my audience. So the profile. The profile just... The pain some is just like this, like... By the way. Like, sad, sad, sad figure.

Yeah. Like, really, like, lonely in a way. Yeah. But, like, he's always talking about how tight his team is and, like, how they're jealously guarded and nobody ever leave. Like, there's just this thing about it that is... Apple's design is not just Johnny Ive. Yeah.

Like, that's... his message to the world is like this isn't just me there's all these great people here we're all working together we're making this thing together i have all this control and power but i it's actually my team who does it all it's an incredible thing to read because if you have ever so i've written a profile of this kind not obviously 17,000 words and certainly not of johnny i've you've written corporate profiles of this time i'm sure you have in your past sam no you've tweeted about companies before that counts uh no like but when you do them The way they work is on the other side is this person,

this story starts with basically, I'm following you around at the Apple event and like write-down observations. Then there's a series of interviews, like structured interviews. And then there's a little bit more following around. And then you like call the person's friends and like do all. It's just interviews. You build all these scenes and recollections out of interviews.

And the thing about interviews, particularly the company that is well-managed as Apple, is that they're structured, so they provide you with the story that they want to tell you. Yep. And it takes a lot of work to get out of that story. Yep. And, like, the New Yorkers are a very good magazine, and this piece is extraordinarily well written.

But if you, like, see it, it's like, this is, there was a story they wanted to tell here. Because Johnny Eib does not tell a reporter, I'm tired unless he wants to. Yeah. And that's kind of just the sense I get of it. Also, he has many, many, many, many, many favorite, like famous friends. Lots and lots and lots of famous friends. Yeah. I mean, him and JJ, talking out those Star Wars lights.

And dude hates the MotoX. yeah he just mean yeah he's mean he's like this is garbage he believes it that it was abdicating a responsibility as a designer um i will say that uh which i disagree i've also hates the walter isaacson steve jobs biography well he's right he's right that thing that book is a piece of though he did do the thing where it's like i haven't read it i've seen i've i've heard some chunks of yeah that's enough i'm that drives me crazy maybe because i don't like commenters making comments That they like don't read, but to do like the like, I have the, the microphone of the New Yorker and I'm willing to dismiss an author entirely off of things I've heard. Right, but like, that's my own personal sensitivity.

Like, it's a bad book. Like, it's not a good, like, how do you write a book about Apple on the iPhone and like not get into like? And like when they were like, and then Apple decided against using Intel chips and decided to use these arm chips and then like just move on. Yeah. And you're like, did you ask him what that meeting was like? that would have been a cool thing to know about it. Nope. Nope.

So what do you think of he thinks of his own profile? What do you think I think of his own profile? Yeah. I bet he, I bet he's pretty happy with it. Yeah. I think it's a fair characterization of him. Right.

I mean, I mean, I'm not that I know Johnny Hive at all. No one does. I think it's like, as the thing that has had the most words about him, I can say that it seems too fair. No, I mean, like,

like he is, like, this is the most anyone that's ever got. and Johnny Ive. Yeah. And the idea that he's like a regular person in a way is like very interesting. And the fact that the only other people who like really know him are people like Bono. Like can you just imagine like man, who should I talk? I want to get a sense of Johnny I like who should Bono.

Bono knows who he is. And then you like have to talk. Like that's bonkers to me. But I will say, let me just point out one thing in this profile and then we can move on to something else because there's other things talk about. This is like a classic Apple story profile moment. when they're like, the watch was always going to be rectangular, right? And there's this line.

I actually think circular basis makes sense really doing on it because a huge part of the function is list and a circle doesn't make any sense. And it's like right there you either buy Apple shit or you don't. Right? Yeah. Like you either buy that they like sat around and considered this or you believe that they probably tried to make a circle and they couldn't and now they're like retconning history. Or you wonder, maybe think about creating watch software that,

doesn't require you to stare at lists on your wrist. Right, but it's just funny. You know what one of the hardest problems in Allotech has been for a long time is making circular LSDs. Yeah. Right? LCDs. LSD is great. Don't take the ovals.

No, it's on the time faster. No, circular LCDs are hard to make. And like, you just know it. Like you read this stuff and you, the three of us have all done it. You ask questions like, why did you make this design decision? And they're like, because the other one, stupid and you literally you either believe it or you don't and a thing that i think is characterized and is here is that this piece believes it like if i had to say the thing about this profile

this lengthy lengthy profile is it at its heart it believes what it was it believes the story i don't i don't think it's that bad i'm not that's not even necessarily bad it's not it's not a it's not a criticism in like a hard way there there are times when you will put a quote on the web on a piece that you've written and you don't say this quote is a lie here's the quote you like you say the quote but like you let the quote sort of hang itself right you like you know that your readers are going to be like what the heck and they're not going to put it on you that they make they think you believe it right and i think that there are places in this piece where it's like you know the reader's not inside a reality distortion field from from johnny ive he's he's seeing

johnny ive turn his nose up at the toe at echo and be like dude like that's there Yeah, no, I hear that. I just think that's, it's worth reading, like, many minutes. Do you read it? You should read it? Everyone should. Have you read it? But come on.

What world do we read? I read, like, literally 30 pieces about it on the version of it. I read, I read art posts about it. Exactly, yeah. No, I just think, I think it's fascinating. It's like, absolutely, if you have any interest in technology, like, it's true. I've has had more influence on design in this world than almost any other human being. It is, go read it.

But, like, keep that in mind. Like, these things come from. place. They come from people having conversations in the real world. And those conversations are not motivated necessarily by like complete transparency. They're motivated often by like, let me tell you the story. I want to tell you. And with I, like, that's in the piece. That is the part of the piece that I agree with. Like the piece repeatedly refers to the fact that I was like very guarded and like hyper aware of what he's saying. And then he's saying things like a rectangular watch wouldn't have made. It is the only choice we could have made. Yeah. But like can't you, I mean,

we should move on. But like, I would say, that giving you that impression about Ive colors what those like other factual things like if you if they if they color them is guarded in one spot maybe you can assume that they you see it that's guarded in another spot right anyway well here here's what I would say I think the extreme positive read on Apple going into the next month is the watch will come out it will be a big success Johnny I have then like a car then the MacBook will come out and that'll be great and then the drum beat of car rumors will like really start to pick up and Johnny I will work there forever

and then he'll put out his car and everything will be great. The extreme negative read is that the watch will come out to kind of epistle and Johnny Ival will retire. Yeah. And like I couldn't, I think right now based on the sort of the media zone that we're in, I couldn't tell you which one's going to be.

With that, it's time to read another advertisement. I was going to make an ingenue monster joke. Oh yeah, and Gene Monster will ride off. He will just like sit on the lawn at Apple just demand. pulling up a sign. Give me my TV.

Seriously, man. TVs are so hard to make Apple made a car. Like, that's like, that's the world we live in. Yep. Okay. Also, TVs aren't going to make you the money that a car is going to make you. Who knows? Bad time.

Who knows, man. That's time. It's time to, let's talk about Squarespace. Building a website can be tough. And even if you do know your way around coding, creating something that looks good and works well is a time-consuming affair. Whether for a business site, a portfolio, a restaurant, or whatever else, in this day and age, you probably need one any.

way. Well, lucky for us, Squarespace makes it easy to build beautiful websites without breaking a sweat. Squarespace provides simple, powerful, and beautiful website templates for you to work with. Not only that, these templates are part of Squarespace's responsive design, which means your website scales to look great on any device, Chris Plant. That's nice. Yeah. Further minimizing the hassles, making a website on your own. What do you think about that? I like Squarespace. Every website you build. Every one.

Comes to the free online store if you need it. You capitalist pig. You just need something minimalist but powerful. Try the cover page feature, which also allows you to set up a beautiful one page online presence and minutes. Have you ever made a website before, Chris? Yeah, I made one in SquareSpace, but I'll tell you about the time I made one without Squarespace.

Yeah, it sounds like a horror story. Yeah, it was. I was 12 and I didn't know shit about HTML. Sorry, Squarespace. You can cut out the shit part. Anyway, I made a sign on GEO. CioCities, and I, I'm not, I'm not gonna lie. GeoCities had its features.

I could make like little, like, particle effects follow the mouse cursor. Yeah. I also had to write in HTML and I broke the site all the time. Yeah. It may have had to been about 007 and Bart Simpson. Whoa. Was Bart Simpson? Well, was he the spy?

Let's just say we had an illegal sound section. Ooh. So, but like I said, did not stay open. very long because my HTML skills were awful. Well, right, but Squarespace gives you 24-7 online support and a beautiful website for only $8 a month. You can even get a free domain if you buy Squarespace for the year. So what are you waiting for?

Start a trial with no credit card required and start building a website today. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You don't need a credit card. So I want to do that. Yeah, I don't have a credit card. As you can tell, we're the same clothes every day. And let's also say that, like, I don't have enough. money.

$8 a month, Chris. Is there like any trick I could do to make a little? Oh, yeah, there's, there's this. When you go to sign up for your credit card-free website. Got it. Use the offer code, Verge. Okay. And you'll get 10% off your first purchase.

Got it. You will also, for better or worse, alert Squarespace to the fact that you have been listening to the show. I'd like to thank them for their support of the show. It is nice. They're very patient. And please just don't do anything weird on Squarespace. Unless you want to make an illegal part.

at Simpson's sound page and then get sued by Denkins. Use offer code verge 10% off. Squarespace.com. Build it beautiful. Oh, God. I did it. We did it. We did it. How do you feel? I feel like I can't believe we've never had ads on the show before. I can't.

That implies that people want to spend money on it. I think they do. I think that they do. We should be thanking them for their pity. That's her new offer code. P-I-T-Y for 10% off. Oh, my God. Wow. All right.

You want to talk about drones or Sony? I think we should do Sony. I've got a lot of things to say about Sony. A lot, a lot, a lot. You guys are all sour. Well, you, actually, I think part of this Sony story. In the past 24 hours, four sad trombone Sony stories. Yeah, wait, actually, I forgot to you something.

Sam. Hype check Apple Car. Give me a number. One to 10. Hype check is now a numerical score. me personally yeah seven come on what is the lowest apple hype rating you've ever given anything seven yeah that's that's probably correct because that's first time our hype check hi check Sony there you go that's that's the realness oh like three wow no four because they have the PlayStation

four there you go wow so I this it's good that plan is here no it's good the plan is here because I think if you are a games fan or PlayStation fan this This is the sweetest revenge in the world. So, Deere, do you want to run us through what's happening with Sony? So Sony basically is not doing super hot. They are making noises about spinning off all sorts of their businesses, including the audio business and the video business. And they've even made noises about wanting to get rid of the smartphone business and what's left of their TV business. And you look at all the stuff that they are looking to spin off and you look at what's left that's actually valuable.

And there's not much. There's the PlayStation. And what else did you say that was? Oh, there's the camera sensor business, right? Because they sell camera sensors to Apple for the iPhone. Yeah. And some insurance. They've already spun.

Insurance actually makes more money than anything. So they've already spun off the TV business into a separate division. Yeah. They are now spinning off AV, which is like home theater stuff and DVD players and stereos and all the rest. of it. They have talked about spinning off cell phones. And they're saying there are three core businesses left that they need to focus on are the Sony Pictures, Hollywood Studio, Sony music, and PlayStation, so the movies and music, PlayStation, and image sensors. And that is such a crazy list of things. Because the reason they spot off TVs, like TVs are still

part of Sony. Yeah. But they were just like, yo, our TV division needs freedom. Right, which is the opposite of what they were saying. Can you define spin-off? So they took, so Sony used to, it's hard to, it's not that hard. Just go with me. Like, there's, there are pedantic things I'm going to gloss over here, but just listeners, please go with me for the purpose of keeping this short. Sony was once a big company with many divisions, and they literally took TVs out of the big

company, made it its own company, completely owned, 100% of the shares are owned by Sony, the old company. but it has its own CEO, its own profit and loss, its own whatever. Right. So it all still rolls up into the broader Sony, but they get to make their own decisions without, like, irritating the people at Sony music or Sony Pictures. Right.

And, like, that's kind of working, right? Like, TV's got a little bit better. They got thinner. They just, like, screw it. We're using Android. The PlayStation Division, like, they just, like, shut down on Sony Music. We're using Spotify. Like, they're doing some interesting stuff.

But they're just going to, one day, they're just, they sold Vio, right? they first they like split it out and they just like sold the PC division yeah once you when you when you split it out you it makes it way easier to just get rid of it later yeah or fire a bunch of people which is another TV

is it similar to what um Microsoft did with Nokia yeah I mean sort I mean they didn't buy it and then like kill it right like like like how would I like to if you were to visually characterize Microsoft Nokia it's like Microsoft had a friend they moved in their friend's house

and they got in the friend's bed and they put their hands around the friend's throat and then they squeezed into the friend's dog and then they just lived in the friend's house that's like different that's like a whole different game right this is like Sony like lived in a house had a big family right that's right and then this is like Sony has a big family and they're like look scooter like it's time to get to fucking out here and that's like but you're still part of the family okay that's like a little bit different uh is that a good comparison Anyway. So anyway, so what they have left is like these two big content businesses, which is crazy and a business and everyone got mad at me for writing this that is predicated on the enormous volume of sensors, image sensors they sell to Apple for the iPhone.

Because Apple sells 72 million iPhones a quarter. Yeah, but you know what Apple has a history of all they're not as good as. As far as building their own chips. Building their own stuff. Yeah. Like, you know, they're not like at Amazon levels of, oh, this seems popular. Let's do it ourselves. But for their components, like, they start doing their own stuff.

And they could do that with cameras. Right. It's still, I mean, this is the part where we say it's insane to me that like anybody that wants to, once the supply, Apple supply runs out, can buy Sony sensors. And they often do and they never, their camera quality still isn't good as the iPhone. Right. So that's something. Right. I don't know how that fits in here.

But. Well, I mean, like the argument I got, so I wrote this piece, like Sony is not longer an electronics company, which is a lot of an electronics company, which is. true because Sony electronics as it was once constituted is now basically spun off. Sony Mobile is still in the mix, but losing tons of money, they're the ones responsible for the phones and Dallas. Just losing money, hand over fist. And Cosferi is out there saying, we're not going to invest in growth in smartphones, which is like, yeah, that sucks.

Like, you're not going to invest in smartphones in. Like, why, if you can't do it, why would you even try to, if you can't invest in growth, like what are you going to invest in? Like, pride? That seems like a terrible way to run your business. it's true I agree so it's just funny

because yeah Sony makes sensors for Nikon and Sony makes a great interchangeable lens camera system and they make the arcs 100 they make all this stuff but if you look at the size of those markets literally it's like every month they sell 300,000 total

interchangeable lens cameras which is peanuts nothing right they sell a million DSRs and those numbers are plummeting so like maybe they have huge margins and maybe that's great. Maybe you have 100% margin and each of those sensors cost, I don't know,

like $1,000. You're still not making any money the way that you can make money, even at a low margin, against 72 million sensors in three months. And like, that's the business. And it's just a crazy fact that that is a third of,

like the third stool or the third leg of the stool. And then you have what I think is the biggest part of their business and the biggest opportunity, which is PlayStation, which plant, I mean, like, do you remember?

Like a few years ago, PlayStation was all but ignored. Yeah, I mean, well, and then Casarai. The former CEO PlayStation took over. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's kind of what happens. I don't know why I'm like, want to be rah-rah Sony. I guess because I like their TVs.

I feel like their TVs have gotten so much better in the last three years. And that is worth the enthusiasm, but again, kind of a separate thing. It's sad to think of PlayStation as like the last hope, though. because knowing the direction video games are facing right now, that's a bad place to put your last hope. Right. Because this could be the end of consoles. Like maybe that's another three or four years.

Maybe it's even six or seven. But like things are going to change fast. And like everyone knows that streaming in some capacity is going to become an important thing. When you talk about the end of console, we're not talking about the end of video games. No, no, no. The end of a box that you buy just to play video games and nothing else. It's very unlikely that that as we know it will be what the next set of video game machines looks like. And seeing how they are just absolutely botching PlayStation now does not put a lot of confidence in me or I would say most people who watch the market closely for what things will look like down the line.

They had the opportunity to get ahead of it. I'm very curious to see what they do with PlayStation View, even though it's about television, because at least it's looking into streaming and streaming technology and just how you deliver content to people in different and interesting ways. I think all those things are great ideas. I think the pace at which they're willing to change those things or try big ideas. Right now, especially with PlayStation Now before anyone else gets on that bandwagon, they should be changing that thing as fast as. they can. If something doesn't work, try a new thing.

Start talking different models for any way you can make money off it. Because there are ways to do it and they're just not trying them. Or maybe they can't. Maybe there's no contracts for it. Maybe video games are going to be totally screwed by, except for anyone who can afford insane contracts like Apple. Well, the question I asked you is just like, I don't see Sony doing anything on phones.

And if I was Sony, I would like build a. huge business of like let's build a PlayStation app for the iPhone with a store in it yeah have that be a place where you go and you like do in-app purchasing and fine apple's going to have 30% but whatever it's still our app here and we're doing the volume because there's so many phones yeah and we we kind of talked about this because they have a thing called PlayStation mobile which is what this should be where it's like a service they I think you can even play some on PlayStation 1 games on it and they have a slew of indie games but it it's a mess and or even let's Let's like, let's bring our IP to phones.

Like, they make Android phones. Yeah. Why don't you make Android games that you leverage PlayStation IP? Like, I just don't get it. Sure. And, well, but the logic then is like that everything is going the way of Sonic, which there's a good piece on the Guardian today about, like, the future of Sonic and Sega is now mobile games. And it's just taking your big name IPs and throwing them on EA's,

what EA does with all of its big properties, throwing them on like endless runners. Yeah. Right. And which is fine, but that's going to last you one generation cycle. before suddenly those IPs are just worthless. So it's like, sure, grab all the money you can, but like if people really don't play anything good from Sonic and don't get me wrong, Sonic's been bad for a while.

But if they play like iPhone garbage for the next 10 years, people are not going to be looking back fondly on Sonic after that. Yeah, but what games are you going to look back fondly on a game? Mario. Well, no, but that's Zelda? No, I meant on mobile. On mobile? Like, who's made in?

The jewel? You're not. I guess that's the problem. I look back fondly on dope wars. I don't know if mobile's necessarily the best place to be long game. I think that's like that needs to be part of it. But like I said, I think Sony has the opportunity to be doing essentially the app thing that you're talking about,

but doing it with TVs. That's what PlayStation TV or PlayStation now is supposed to be. You aren't going to need your PlayStation. This is going to be in every TV. This is all backed by Guy kind, right? Yeah, it's a brilliant idea. Yeah. And it's just not organized or sold properly.

Right. And the good thing is they have such a head start on everyone else that they have probably another two years of like basically no competition to figure it out. Because Microsoft streaming is not nearly as good. I mean, Microsoft streaming doesn't exist. It's not existent. I thought you can do, you can go on a land, right? You can stream locally.

You can go to like your Xbox 2, the PC is coming soon. Yeah. But who knows what they're going to announce at GDC? I'm I'm very very all of this could be very very different in about a week and a half Yeah tell me the rumors of GDC I'm not going to all of them Tell me the rumors of GDCs That we're still working on but

Can I play Xbox on my HoloLens? That's all I want to know Yeah you can definitely do that in nine years It's gonna be great You can play one game on it, it's Minecraft In GDC it sounds like it's gonna be You know what? I'm hoping for old school GDC. For people who know what this is, game developers conference, happens in San Francisco every, like, February or March. I guess even got bumped to April recently. But it used to be crazy. Like, it used to be like this place where like really weird stuff got announced. And there were keynotes where people like really through bows. Like I was thinking, I was talking to Andrew Webster at our site about this earlier today. Because there was writing about how Nintendo is doing free to play games. And man, there's. There was this keynote speech that, I think it was a lot I gave, like, three or four years ago.

And it literally was like, dear indie game makers, please stop. You're making cheap games, and this is not good for us. So please stop. Like, we can't sell games that cheap. So it would be good if you stopped undervaluing things. Yeah. And it's like, what? Like, these are crazy things for heads of these giant companies to get up on

stage and do. And they used to make big announcements were there in hardware announcements and engine announcements. And that kind of slowed down recently. But my sneaking suspicion is that this year will be like a return to form. I think we're going to see a new generation. A new generation, but on top of that, I think they realize now there's this weird moment where E3 became really popular again and everybody thought that's where everything needed to be. And I think there's a great spreading out of news in the industry again. And I think we're going to see crazy things from Windows. I think Val is going to get back in the conversation. I think all of the engine makers

are going to be vicious to one another. Both Epic and Unity, who are powering most of the third-party things that people play, are going to go head-to-head-hard. For people who like watching this weird drama

behind the scenes, I think it's going to be really exciting. I hope. I could be wrong. It could be really boring, but I don't think that'll be the case. Do you think we'll see any morphia stuff here? Because it's just getting back to Stoney, Because they're missing the window. What happened to Morpheus? Right, because they're totally missing.

Like, Oculus is just running away with it now. Here's my big prediction. If you are a... Remember I said, like, if you make over $3 billion, if you make over like $25,000, you're going to have a VR device at GDC. I think everyone's going to be like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, that reminds me. You want to come back and look at her VR device? And you're like, no. But I mean, are we... Are we... I don't want Pink Eye? Two years since they announced Morpias? Wasn't it last?

CES we first saw it? Was it CES? Oh, so a year and a half? Do you know, that was E3? Is it E3? I got to go this up. This is going to end up with you just buying a project Morpheus. Actually, that might have even been last year.

But you can't just type Morpheus into Google. It just doesn't help. The first result is Morpheus, the Matrix. Nice. Oh, no, Red Pills. I'm just going to go ahead and read this Wikipedia entry. He's portrayed by Lawrence Fish for in the film. No, I thought you're going to read the good one.

Don't do that. So, yeah, I think it was last. GDC. It was last GDC. It was last GDC. Okay. And also also Sony just did their own Google Glass competitor like this week or last week

also. That $800 piece of crap that no one's going to buy. Oh yeah. Can you imagine? Yeah, those glasses are just come. Yeah. So the thing is with those glasses with the Sony Smartwatch 3,

even I'm starting to worry with Morpheus. Sometimes big electronics companies just make stuff because they can for the hell of it. Like Sony has a e-reader business for a long time, and I guess they still do. I don't even know. No, I think they shut a town. But, like, they're just because

they know that people are going to walk into Best Buy and say, I need a blah. Oh, Sony makes a blah. I trust Sony. I'm going to buy a blah. It's basically free money for them. Yeah, they shut out of town. But glasses?

Just because? Yeah, everyone, everyone's like, I love those Google glasses. Yeah. I hope Sony makes them. Not. Here's the thing I want. our listeners to help us do.

I want our listeners to help make Project Morpheus real. I want them to find me the person who wrote the Wikipedia entry entitled Personality for the Character Morpheus and Matrix. Yeah. I just want to know what that person's like. You can look at the revision history. His strong, almost single-minded belief in Neo is the one has a very strong biblical correlation to that of John the Baptist belief in the prophecy of the Messiah.

Like somebody did that. Why? Why does that make you hurt? It's so connected to, like, everything that makes the cringe about the internet. I'm proud of you for seeing it. Because it came out when I was nine. Oh, God. It did.

I've seen that movie like 10 times. Yeah. Matrix is a great film. The next two. I saw my first week of college. Now I just for real. Now you're old. No.

Reloaded was like just full of action and, and, wait, I've checked Matrix revolutions. Oh, revolutions. That's the last one. That's like... One to 10. Remember.

Hipe now exists on a little 10 scale. It's actually the paper The paper last week established that it was A ratio and it was... It's too complicated. It's centered on one. Too complicated for my Vergecast Brae. I check Matrix Revelations on a scale

of 1 to 10. It's like a 5 or 6. That's generous. Just like when Neo like goes into Trinity's heart and like... You're getting Revolutions of 6 and the Apple Car is 7? Hell yeah. That's rough. It's not rough. Is this like the original Matrix?

It has an exponential scale? It's between 5 and 10. No. Now now like who gives the crap about the third matrix movie? Like Morpheus is 7, 10 times more hype than six. About the imminent return of the one into the Matrix. John was preaching in the desert of the messiah's imminent return and actively searched in the society to come to deliver as people from bondage.

Because you think it's ridiculous or because it's too obvious. Who did this? Someone who saw an obvious thing and wrote it down. Someone that wasn't plant. It's plant, by the way, has been leaving Bible illusions in all sci-fi. No, no, I hate this. Don't talk about this. It's just amazing. Who is this person?

Like, let's just hang out. Like, let's get a beer. I don't think that person gets a beer. Let's talk about the Bible. They take LSD. There's nothing remarkable about that. I'm not saying it's remarkable. It's remarkable than it exists.

It's the thoughts. If you were the Wikipedia editor out there listening to this. There's like books on the philosophy of the Matrix. Eli, do you want to hang out with the Wikipedia? Every time there's a popular movie, like a bunch of like out of work adjunct professors get together and write a book of philosophy about that movie. I get it. No, I understand.

But then they're not like, yo. to the Wikipedia screen. No, they are because they can put a citation, and that's their only form of advertisement. I'm just saying, here's what I would like to do as a series, right? We had a number of pitch meetings today. Oh, God.

Don't copy. It's interviewing. If you are like a hardcore Wikipedia movie, this is how I watch movies. I don't know how you guys watch movies. I usually watch them with my eyes. Actually, the people that I want to interview are the people that put the plots of video games into Wikipedia. No, that's super important to me.

playing a video game, you're like, set that thing down. Like, oh, God, I got to make sure this is recorded for posterity. I'm going to put it in Wikipedia. Who does that? Wait, so, this is how I watch movies. I don't like to read reviews before I watch a movie. Me too. I'm the same exact way.

I watch the movie. Then I Wikipedia of the movie. Then I read the whole Wikipedia. Then I read all of the reviews. Oh, no. You're missing. And it's like, four in the morning. My wife is like, I've gone to bed hours ago.

Yeah. You should have, you should have just talked to me your human wife or wife or girlfriend immediately goes to IMDB and reads all the, like, cute anecdotes and quotes about the movie and, like, weird production things that happened. Becky, no, Becky's just like, nope, she's like, you're doing it, then she leaves.

Yeah, no, like, like, you're doing it again. You need to, see you later. You need to insert the IMDB anecdotes into your process. You really do. For sure. Enjoy your night, vaping alone, reading Wikipedia, nerd.

Like, that's basically what my relationship is like. On your, on your beautiful Kiro told it. It's good. We make it work. It's great. vaping alone. There's no way to transition away from the direction of this conversation. Use offer code.

Just sitting here weeping silently. Hey, do you like podcast? There you go. Might not know this. Verge. iTunes.com. Killing me. Do we have iTunes.com slash what's tech?

Do we? Yes. Wait. Not yet. Who said you get to plug your podcast? It's time. It's in the script. Do you know how to read?

Wait, how do you read? Oh. So I have a new show. It's a great new show. It's much shorter. If there's one thing I can tell you is it's a short show about what technology is and isn't. Every week we have a new topic and a new guest. We've had some great guests so far.

I have both of you have episodes coming up. I think your episode might be next week. Really? I don't know if I can recommend it. I can recommend the first three. They are stupendous. I can recommend it as he's being honest. It's called What's Tech?

and it's about the year episode's about smartphones. Yes. And where can you listen slash download this from? Here's what I recommend you do. I recommend you go to the iTunes page. Even if you can't use it, download it there. Give it a five-star rating. Give it a review.

Say whatever you want. You know, if you want to pick on me, I understand. I'm not always the most likeable person. But give the five stars. But damn it, give that five-star. iTunes.com slash the verse. The verge. Everyone's freaked out.

You can also go and find it on like soundcloud. SoundCloud's great. Or you can come to Theverge.com. We have it. We're going to get a better organizational tool for people finding it on the front page of the website. As he stares deeply to the eyes of the end, very chief. You know what else you can find at that iTunes.com slash a Verge? You can find this very podcast.

And now is it my turn? Is this the transition where I do this? This is a social corner? By the way, and I just want to say the listeners, we hotly negotiated the amount of engagements that Sam can engage with. I wanted five. Eli gave me three. The deal has changed.

Next week, it's two if you don't do this. Wow. Okay. I'm renegotiating. This is how we do business around here. Deli, just yells. Pray I don't change it again is what you're going for.

You should, if you don't already, like us on Facebook. We are facebook.com slash verge. And if you'll notice, we have been hot and heavy on giveaways. We gave away to really rare 3DSs the past few days. and you should do, and Deter's still shaking his head of my house. That counts as an engagement.

Okay, that's one. No, that's two. That's one. You should go to YouTube.com slash The Verge. You should a thousand percent watch the binaural audio video. You should take your headphones,

put them on. I seriously hit play. That video is dope and the view count speaks for itself. It's got, I want to say it has over, definitely has over 100,000 already, which is awesome.

So YouTube.com slash The Verge. Check out the dead mouse video also. And the third thing, obviously Snapchat. We are the real. Verge on Snapchat. Got called out by NPR today.

Yes. As being as a hot Snapchat channel. It's the only Snapchat channel. I say this on all of our shows. It's, it's embarrassing. I'm sorry. It's embarrassing how like nobody is good at Snapchat as Sam and Helen are.

Yeah. It's, it's so much better. It's literally the only reason I even get Snapchat out. I have no problem being hyperbolic about it because it is hands down. You like one of the cool, well, now I'm going to say the coolest things that happen at the verge. because no one else is doing it in media.

Yeah. It's crazy to see somebody that could add. Now you have to hype What's Tech on Snapchat. By the way, What's Tech is a pretty good show to you. I don't know if you've been listening to it. Well, no, I'm out. That's my three things.

Back to you. That's it. Oh, sorry. Damn it. Joey got so close. Bye. No, no. Eli hell-a-cursed before.

It already happened. I did? Yeah. When I fucking did that? Rock and roll. Oh, man. Is that the end? That's the end.

the end. Bye. Oh, God.