The Vergecast - What do you own?

Episode Date: June 5, 2015

On this week's show, Nilay Patel has some thoughts on ownership, Dieter Bohn offers some feelings about Google, Adi Robertson makes assertions about Ingress, and Sam Sheffer spends the whole hour downloading illegal ROMs. There's also some talk about Recode, Google I/O, and WWDC predictions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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which follows a man who must make an unthinkable choice to save his marriage. Constant Fear and Desperate are on sale wherever books are sold, and at Kensingtonbooks.com. That is the best ad we've ever had. This is the Birchcast. Hello?

Seriously, though. That was a great ad. Yeah. I mean, really. I mean, at first I did think the book was just one book called Desperate and Call. constant fear. Which is a perfect name for a book.

Or just my general situation. What if he decides to make it a trilogy, and that's what he calls the third book? Desperate, constant fear, and then desperate and constant fear. I mean. Well, or he breaks up all of it, and it's four books, and one of them is called and. Oh. That's lovely. The last one is just called Fear.

That's good. Hello, welcome to the Redcast. Today is June 4th, 2015. Feels comfortable to say the actual day that we're. we're recording, uh, instead of the week, but I'm trying out. My beer has made a little hat for itself. No one can see this, but the very strange situation of my beer, just launching, launching foam into space right now. Yeah. That was, uh, excellent audio programming that I just did. Uh-huh. Just imagine a beer with a hat on it, and that's what's happening. Tiny little hat.

Uh, the person that is continuing to talk before being introduced is to your bone. Sorry. Hi. Hi. And then to my left is Addie Robertson. Hi. Okay. Your beard, no hat. I'm scared you're going to knock it off the table, so I'm holding it. Oh, but I can't even get over there. He does justiculate wildly.

That's how levers work. His Twitter handle is reckless. I see. Oh, my God. And that person, for better or worse. Hi, hello. In the hype seat. Hi.

Sam Shepher. Hi. How's it going on? I'm good. How was last week? You were on the show last week? I was. It was good.

We I-Oed the hell out of the Vergecast. Yeah. Yeah. But there's still more I-O to talk about because we, it was on Thursday, so it was only day one of I-O. so Dieter saw all this A-TAP stuff and not to like jump into the Vergecast but we should jump into things well actually let me talk about why I wasn't here last week

really briefly this is like some meta-verge stuff Oh yes yes yes yes So last week I personally bought RICOad With the change in your pocket It was amazing It was actually it wasn't it was way more than Change my pocket it was a gigantic novelty check

presented to Walt Mossberg God that would have been amazing No our company I didn't do it Our company, Vox Media, bought Recode, which is a website that most people listening to Vergecast, I imagine, would know. It's Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg used to run All Things D with the Wall Street Journal. Then they left about a year and a half ago, started Recode with their conference called the Code Conference. And there was a deeply hilarious moment last week where the CEO of our company stepped on stage at the Code Conference and said, I know this is very exclusive and I couldn't get a ticket, so I told Kara I was going to buy the whole thing.

And then I did. And then, like, a room full of people that could applaud it. It was one of those moments Jim Bankoff where I was like, said him later, I was like, how many times did you like on the plane on the way here? Did you just, did you walk yourself through that one? Major flex on his part. Yeah, it was good. It was good. Tiny, tiny foam beer hat update.

It's drooping. Oh, no. I don't want to tell you what it looks like right now. I'm going to do this. Okay. Yeah. Well, that was a moment on the Vodcast that we'll remember forever. No, so we bought Recode, which is great.

Right. Recode obviously consists of a website that covers tech news, which we do at the verge. So that's interesting. I'm assuming you guys might have some questions about that. So here's a simple answer. Recode right now is a very, like, business-focused site, right? They cover Kara Swishers, I think one of the most important journalists in all of tech. Certainly one of the most influential and one of the best sourced.

But she does a lot of business news. She covers executives leaving Yahoo. She covers Yahoo, which we barely do. She covers executives leaving AOL. She covers AOL, which we barely do. And she's deep in Silicon Valley, investors, VCs. Well connected. Peter Kafka, who I think is one of the best media reporters in the game,

covers the business of media, covers advertising. We are bad at covering advertising. So Recode is going to stay recode. They're going to do their business thing. They're going to run the code conference. There's your answer, listeners. Yep. So they're going to stay right where they are.

They're going to be, obviously we're going to work together. If you've noticed at Vox Media, we're very good at our verticals working together. work with theater, we worked with RAC, we work with SB Nation, we're going to work with Recode. But then Walt and the reviewers who review Consumer Tech, they're going to roll over, and Walt is going to work for both Recode and the Verge. But the reviewers are going to join the Verge, and we're going to build out our review program, which is going to be really cool. So what you're saying is that Walt's going to be on the Vergecast. We're going to actually...

That seems like a real... Walt and Tara both want to be in the Vergecast, which is going to be amazing. Yes. But... But the really important, fun thing is that Walt and I are going to be going to be. do a podcast, a Walt show. He, that veers up and down in terms of how much he wants to do it. I can tell you that it was really high until Casey Newton suggested to do him that it'd be called Podberg. Then the meter went down.

And so now we're building back up. But, so that is something we're thinking about. The deal is, you know, it's still, it was announced. We got to finish it. Nothing's going to happen for a long time, right? There's two staffs. We got to, everybody's got to meet each other. That hasn't happened.

We have 50 people. They have 44. It's like a lot of introductions that need to happen. A lot of thinking about how we're going to work together. But it is very exciting. And I can tell you, kind of like baseline. I've known Walton Cara for a long time. We've known a bunch of people who work over there for a long time.

Inifreet who covers mobile there is like, I've seen her at every event for like. She's been beating me at scoops for literally 10 years. So there's a lot of just mutual sort of affection and respect. And I think it's going to be really fun working with those guys. But for the most part, Recode is going to do business stuff and we're going to do fun. consumer left style stuff. And there's a ton of overlap there. Those aren't hard lines, right?

We are going to work together. But I think it's to be fun. And then Podberg. Coming to... It's never going to call Bobberg. Like, literally, I think the deal is off if I say Podberg one more time. But that's the story. And if you have any questions, you can tweet at me, you can tweet it while.

You can tweet Kara. Like, we're excited to work together. And I think it's to be fun. So that is the Verge News. But we should get into, like, real news. Yeah. You don't talk about... We should talk about title.

We should just do that, I think. Because one of the title and then I.O. And then WWDC. I like that order. That order. Yeah. Feels good. Hype check recode deep in my heart.

Now that they're under the box media umbrella. Now that they're no longer a competitor. Right. I mean, you know, eight, eight and a half. We're going to take them to 13. That's right. Whatever scale you're on. Burn it all down.

We're not to do that. That would be fun. And I think Walt on the verge is going to be, that's going to be a situation. I check that. It'll be Walt Tastic. Wow. That's bad. That's even worse than Popberg.

Let's talk about title. T-I-D-A-L. Title, J-Z's music service. Music streaming service. Well, no, it's like a music. Music and everything. Yeah, it's like a music 360 service. So, Adi, tell me, before, I don't know if you read Micah's piece, I'm assuming you did.

Yeah. You're like, at least scrolled through it really fast. What were your thoughts in title before we published this big thing? because Micah published a huge profile of title yesterday. He's been added for a week. So Micah, if you don't know, lives in Nashville. Hotbedded music action. I mean, it is.

I said it's Knoxville, not Nashville. Oh, Knoxville. Yeah. Even more so then. Yeah. But he's been flying up and down to New York constantly. If you've seen him on the show recently, it's because he's been reporting out the stuff.

So Rock Nation's offices are just on the street from us here in New York. So he's just been going over there and, like, reporting and meeting people. And he published this huge profile yesterday. but I think his one of his big points was everyone thinks this is already a failure and it's six weeks old so I'm curious before you read it what do you think I mean it's kind of weird that it's a tiny service that already seems like the big like overdog like they have no they're they've just launched and they just seem like these big artists who are trying to destroy everyone else but also it's totally irrelevant to me because I'm the opposite of an audio file right I use like

eight dollar earbuds I don't think I could actually even like there is no benefit in title for me I I haven't gone to a concert for years. Really? Mm-hmm. But do you listen to music? What apps to use? I use Spotify. I basically use exclusively Spotify because before that I only pirated music.

Right. This is actually like a step up. Yeah. I mean, that is like Spotify's major argument, right? Is if people who only pirated music will just pay us a little bit of money, we'll make you a little bit of money. Well, I think that's argument for the free tier, right? No, I mean, I actually pay for it so that I can listen to stuff offline because I only listen

to things on the subway. Right. But no, it's actually streaming services have been kind of amazing at getting me off piracy. It's weird. Yeah. And in markets in Europe where, like, piracy is completely destroyed the music industry. Spotify's like, but we make a little bit of money. Yeah.

Right? Like, that's wild. So that's interesting. So that's Spotify. And Spotify has turned into, you know, Jay-Z had this concert. And he's quoted in Micah's piece where he's like, Apple, you, like, you buy nine iPhones and Steve Jobs is rich. And Spotify is $9 billion, but they don't say shit.

And it's like, yeah, but the more money they make, the more money they lose. Like, they haven't proven this model at all. Right. I know, what did you think of title beforehand? So what I thought of title beforehand is basically completely formed, not from using the service, but from their little introduction video. Oh, God. Where they had a whole bunch of incredibly rich, incredibly famous musicians in this, like, fake, like, conference room where they were, like, talking about how important it was that they were these, they were going to save them.

music industry. And it was like, oh, so title is about like a dozen superstars and nothing else. And like, no, like there was a line where Madonna says, this is about art, not tech, art. And it's like, oh man, you and I could not have more different world views. I mean, weirdly, this kind of seems like that point where artists started giving stuff away for free. Right. And then obviously it was these big names that everyone would pay for. Like Amanda Palmer's Kickstarter. Yeah, well, it's exactly. Like, it's really hard for me to have a ton of sympathy for people that are, like, ridiculously already wealthy, asking me to, like, stick it to, I don't know, Spotify. Like, in a fight, if they're trying to get me to like them because they're the underdogs,

like, Jay-Z and Madonna are not underdogs relative to Spotify in my mind, right? I mean, the thing is, I don't actually know enough about the music industry to understand if they get unknown artists on this platform, if they actually have. a leg up over something like Spotify? Right. So there's so many threads here. And there's so much. So I don't know.

Well, I want to keep going on the line. Sam, what did you think of title before we did this thing? I think there's a lot of general negativity against it. Because a lot of people don't know what it is yet. And people in our industry are like, oh, it's a failure. And I just, I think how can you peg it as a failure when it hasn't had time to like breathe yet. Like companies don't just, I mean, companies do ignite over, do ignite overnight, but

Chris has a subscription. Scott has a subscription. Like, yes, we are a tech company. Chris Ziegler is a man. Scott Kellum is a developer at Foxxby. Right. So that's what I'm saying. It's like the market that they're going for.

By the way, I just described Chris Sigler is a man. A man. Chris Sigler is one of our editors. What you meant at the end of that sentence is Chris Siegler is a man who spends hundreds of on USB digital audio converters? The other day Chris Ziegler sent an email to our entire staff saying, have you seen this cable? It's very expensive.

And it was literally a cable that went from, what is a quarter inch headphone jack to two mini XLR cables, which is the weirdest cable in history. And I asked him what it was for. And it was like, it's for my $3,000 headphones. Yeah. He's an audio hype beast. He's maniac.

I think we need to give title a chance to survive. All right. So this is what I think. And I was reading Micah's piece. And it's great. And you should read it in like Jay-Z called Micah, which is amazing. And then Micah, like, spent a bunch of time with a lot of people. But their whole point is we basically, that way, they screwed up when they launched this thing, right?

And instead of talking about what the services or what it can do or what they wanted to do, they basically just had famous musicians being like, we're changing the world. Right. And then they literally showed off a product that they had purchased that had already been on the market for years. Yeah. So, I mean, to their credit, like, first of all, yes, they're really. right they screwed up that launch really badly but when the video is an incredible document in time what they had on offer when you look at like the the array of streaming services that are available

Spotify RDO want want the the zombie of groove shark Google play music and I guess like beats music and then we assume is coming with Apple music what they have basically isn't feature differentiated right in a major way other than like we've got really high audio quality and right But the music videos. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, Google Played Music has that. The small artist's credit also.

Right. Like, actually make money cred. Right. But no, you're right. So their product, they didn't even redesign it. It still looks the same as title did before. Right.

So they're like, we bought this and because now we're associated with it, it's better. And that is like a, that's weird, right? That's a weird thing to think or say or hype. and then when you look at the product

like they just launched new apps and their apps are basically like web rappers around the website right right right like they're not they're not really pushing out into like deep crazy innovation they're just doing stuff and I think and this is what I think is kind of like what everyone's point is

is we're at a place and I think I've been talking about this show for weeks now where the music industry is about to change Apple's going to do its thing next week YouTube is obviously like this dominant force and I think people we're at a place where streaming and distributing the music is now a commodity. So the artists are saying, well, you're just doing what we could do.

So we're just going to buy this thing and do it ourselves. Right. But all of us basically know that these things are not the same. And these tiny little differences, like, matter a lot. And the one sense I got from Micah, by the way, if you ever have the pleasure of editing Micah Singleton, just know it is a battle. He will wreck you. He's a monster.

But Mike and I, like, talk about it. talked a lot. We're like, there's a long edit. And I was like, if we had more time, I would send you back and make you rewrite this, and the story would just be JZ versus technology. Because you can tell that he doesn't like it. He doesn't like it. What there's, um, what's his line? He's like, guns on your tumblers. And he was like, there's, he makes some crack about Instagram and Made in America. Um, and like, all through this thing, he's like, we're not a hardware company. We don't sell advertising. We're about art. We're about music. And there's just this deep perception that I have in reading this and then like listening to his work and like his hearing

him talk about technology that he is mad that all of these tech companies get rich off music without contributing to the music in any significant way. And I think that's why he like did his deal with Samsung. He's like, yeah, sure, take my music and spit it out to all these phones. And then the deal went bad because no one, he didn't, it didn't occur to him that he had to make sure they did a good job, right? Because it's, it's a commodity. Right. And so, So, like, if you told me Samsung is going to make an app that distributes a new album to every Galaxy phone, the first thing I would say is, well, Samsung's really bad at software. Yeah, but make sure that they don't know what the hell they're doing.

Yeah. But, like, I don't, that is like, that is one level of understanding here that's gone. So when I think when our listeners or readers or audience here is Jay-Z is building a music service, the first thing I think is, well, it's probably going to be bad software. And no one here cares about bad software. And I think that's where the perception that's a failure from came from. because they don't talk about why their software is better or why their service is better.

It's just the music that they have. Right. It's a commodity. Well, so, but that's the thing is, like, there's a promise, whether implicit or explicit, that there's going to be stuff on title that you can't get anywhere else. Oh, there is.

Right? Yeah. If you want to stream it. And so is it the, you say, well, there is right now. Lil Wayne yesterday announced a new single to go, right? They had a bunch of news yesterday that we timed our feature to.

So they have new apps. They're announced that they have a partnership with Ticketmaster. You can buy concert tickets from it. Maybe exclusive concert tickets. That's crazy. And then Loeane's like dropped it. He signed up for title and like dropped a new single on it.

So but the argument that music is a commodity means that like all of these music services get to compete on the quality of their technology. And that's not the case that they're making at all. They can meet minimum viable product for the streaming service for the software. Then the thing that sells you is that you can get Loe Wayne and Taylor Swift and Beyonce and whoever else will not beaunt. I was like, you know, that's a really good formulation, right? Is music the commodity or is the software commodity? Right. Well, that's exactly what video has done, because the whole point of Amazon and Netflix

and everything is that they've split up everything into these little, like, claves that you have to go and buy a bunch of services for it. Right, right. But, I mean, isn't that, that was true of, like, broadcast channels as well at one point. But, like, I... But music has been less that so far. You think so? I feel like it has been, yeah.

Like, Google Play, like, obviously there will be differences, but I feel like if I switched from Spotify to Google Play, I wouldn't be like, God, I'm missing all these things. Right. But if you switch from Netflix to Amazon, you would know. Yeah. That's really, because I think, what's crazy to me, I think, and I use mostly use an Apple TV,

is that the interface differences between the services are so minimal on an Apple TV, because Apple abstracts them out to sort of the same app aesthetic, that it's like, I don't even perceive the differences between them really. I just know that like, the back end of Showtime is noticeably jankier than the back end of HBO. I like, I like, see it.

I'm like, huh, this is garbage. But it's just like, that's all, it's like, you know, Apple has this, WDCs next weekend, there's been tons of rumors about whether or not they're going to do a new Apple TV. And one of their things is they're saying to the providers, like, you're responsible for streaming the video. We're not going to do it for you. Right. Because that's a commodity now. You can just call up MLB advanced media like HBO did for HBO now and say, do it for us. But I think the streaming services don't do that.

I mean, and that's like it. That's what I mean by Jay Z versus technology, right? It's like on one end you have Jay Z saying my art is not a commodity. It can't be a commodity. You have to treat it better. And on the other hand, you have basically everyone else being like, but I can get music on all the services. Right. So build me a best service.

Yep. I mean, that's where my head is at. But if we run into a world where like I need to pick the music, the music that I want and then pick the service after that, like, I'm not looking forward to that world at all. I'd much rather pick the service of the best technology, which I've done with Google Play Music. Oh, my God. If I get any more emails with Google plans. It's weird. You know, we talk about, I think we've talked about music on this show nonstop.

Right? Yes. Yeah. For weeks. Yep. I'm obsessed with it. Because it's, like, it's just going through. The metamorphosis right now.

It's just such a move. I really want to go back to CDs. You have a CD rack in my house? That's why. I don't know. That's exactly what Becky says to me. Do you, CDs? Like, just do you have anything?

Like the ones that you're buying still? No, no. Are they? alphabetical order. No, they're just a mess. It's just a big, messy CD. Do you have something that can play those discs that are compact? I guess.

They have an Xbox, I have a PS3. I mean, I have an Xbox one and a 360 so I can play. I can double up my Xbox CD action. What was the last time you opened a CD case, a jewel case, and played one? And does that happen anywhere and ever? I mean, here's a thing. Hold on, guys. Sam time.

No, no, no. You'll make fun of this in like four seconds. I recently moved and I moved in with my younger brother and he has a record player and we play records in my apartment. We don't listen to like Spotify music with like an auxiliary cable. We listen to records. Yeah, but records already, records are like their own thing. CDs are not a thing. Right.

Okay. Records like this big like. Records are cool. Yeah. Like I wish I had rid of my apartment. I feel like. Yeah. CDs were really scratched.

Scratch. Yes. Yes. Also, I mean. the plastic and CDs were not designed to last. Yeah, they also cracked. Which is why the Library of Congress has like a horrible time with games and any, yeah. There's a company a few years ago that promised to make a CD or a DVD that could last,

I think it was 100 years and that was like a huge innovation. No, like they did it, but nobody cared. And like Facebook is really proud that it's got CDs or DVDs that can last like 50 years. And it's like, you guys, paper is fine. It lasts long. Yeah, you have to feed punch cards in. Punch cards will be safe. Punch cards.

we should switch everything to punch cards. Speaking of punch cards. What? Google I. No, not yet. No. I tried. No, I just like, the records thing is interesting.

I wish I had room for record. I used to, when I was in Chicago, I had a record player and all the records. I just miss, like, I think there's something really valuable to, like, having yours. Like, these are mine, and I'm going to, like, pick them. I agree. And, like, streaming is just completely taken that away. Yeah. That's so weird.

I haven't thought. I, maybe. music piracy did this, that like everything was transient. Yes. But I haven't thought about the idea of really owning anything since for like 10 years. What do you own? That's a really hard question. No, I don't.

I literally, I left all my CDs behind when I went to college. I don't, I think I lost a bunch of stuff on a hard drive. I don't own a single disc. I don't have anything that can play a disc, actually. Do you have any books? I have books. I mostly bought them at like the Ithaca book sale, which was everything was really cheap. I occasionally buy them.

I buy reference books sometimes. You buy video games? No, I don't. I mean, not physical ones. I've bought like one disc ever and it was Dicatana and it was a dollar. I own a million games on Steam and Gog and everything, but I download them off that service and I'm switching computers constantly. Yeah. So like I don't know.

I don't have this sense that I own, like I own things, but I own access to things. Right. Sam, what do you own? I own my body. Oh, my God. I mean, I bought my iPhone. I bought my iPhone out right. Like that, not like that.

Not hardware. What content? What content you own? Don't say your body. I bought, I bought, uh, what the hell was that movie? The, the, the, the, the, you get, you get suckered into buying movies on Apple TV, is what you're saying. I don't own an Apple TV or whatever. I just bought that thing.

You bought the interview. I bought the interview. I bought the interview. I bought the interview. So, but that's the thing is you, you, you own the access to you. All right. I know, I don't own the content. So the question is, if you down the movie.

Owning a movie on YouTube, maybe it might be. like the lowest form of the ownership of possible. You don't own CDs. You don't own DVDs. You can't even play them on stuff unless you get a Kodak. Half the time they're like copy protected. You haven't owned the stuff for a long time.

Reach. Oh my God. We're going to go walk. Angry by the way. You don't you can't, you didn't see this in your car in your head. But Addy just like dropped the mic and then took like an angry swing of beer.

It was a perfect moment. What is owning something mean in 2015? Okay. No, so Adi has a point. Right, right? You've never actually owned the music on the CD. You don't own the, you own the, you own the DVD. You were closer to owning tapes. You're pretty close to owning records. Yep. That's still a lot to say. I mean, they're technologically mediated, but like, there's no way that someone can take away that access to it. Yeah, you, but there's a way that someone can take away the access to a CD player, they can't just, like, drop in. No, software updates can. No, but like, if you have, if you have the CD player that I had, or Discman. Right. But, like, Inspector Gadget isn't going to show up in like. But until the, until the, Raid your disc man. Until the patent on CD, whatever the CD codec is gone, whatever,

is anybody allowed to build one? In 100 years, you know, will you be able to buy one? Like, in 100 years, somebody will know how to make a record player, but unless they're legally allowed to make a CD card. Okay, time out. Okay, only books and folk games, actually. We're not to get to a real format war. This is literally, I just want to point this out.

This is literally a format war. That's what's happening. So do you own... Wait, time out. You're completely wrong about records. Just 100% wrong. Why? There were massive, massive record format wars.

Yeah, but then we waited them out and we're fine now. Yeah, but like those are all patented. They were all locked down, right? The difference between 33 and 45 RPM is literally a format war. And I will feel better about CDs once we're beyond that format war zone. The first record players, do you know the first record players ran at like 120 RPM? By the time, like, super fast. By the time the format war is over on CDs, they'll stop working.

Sorry, Neil and I were having like a bro to bro. Man, welcome to cross talk. So is ownership just a question of technological mediation then? I think so. No, but if you can't. Do you own the clothes you buy? I think that if you have a physical object in your home, you are much closer to owning it. Like you are far less technologically mediated if you have a CD than if you have a

streaming service. If you have a bit that's flipped on a YouTube server somewhere that says you can What's the difference there, though? I think Richard Stallman with an og file on his completely open source free software computer is closer to owning it than you having a CD in your house. True ownership is coding your own operating system. Look, what about those like AR fiduciaries or something? Like the physical, do you own like an amoebo?

Like, do you own the content on that amoebo? Like, is it more real than? I don't think, but you never own the content. That is like the root issue here, right? Do you own a video game more if somebody gives you like a trinket with it? Yes. Isn't the whole thing with like with pirating games you're not supposed to download a game unless you own a copy yourself? Isn't that no, that's not even a rule?

That's like some shit people made up on Reddit and that was like this is like part of the series of things you can make yourself do to feel better about piracy. If you were to go on like coolroms.com it's like you may only tell you this game if you own it. But also illegal. By the way, how often you go to coolrombs.com? When was the last segment to coolrombs.com at work? Let's be real. Sam's on it right now. He's like,

downloading my wrongs. No, that's all lies, right? Like, it's lies. Like, it's all copyright.

So then what do you own? Seriously, what, what digital content do you actually own versus, like, again, I own the shirt. The shirt is mine.

There's, okay, no, we'll do this and then we got to, we got to move on. But like, I want to understand that. But here's the thing,

like here's a thing for, to think about. And I think this is the difference, right? If you buy a book, like a hard copy book, or paperback, whichever one you prefer.

You have the book, right? You have the whole thing. You have the whole copy in your hand. You have it unless it has like an app with it. Unless it has an app with it or there's some sort of software lock or inspector gadget shows up to your house. It's like you own the Kindle book that you bought? Right, right.

Wait, hold on. Hold on. So you have the whole copy and it's yours. You can move it around. We have this whole legal system of rights and fair use and first sale. I mean, we don't really, but okay. I don't know. Format shifting, like, format shifting took a long time.

We should always have Addy on the show. This is the most amazing thing. No, but whatever. If you have the physical copy of the whole thing. If you have a CD, you have a whole copy. You can do stuff. You have a record. You have a VHS tape, whatever the fuck.

If you have, and we would agree that in that economy, without digital goods, to sell one more copy, you have to make one more copy. So if I have a book and you want to buy a book, you have to make one more book. I see where you're going. Yeah. Yes.

But it's true. Yes, that is true. If Sam and I want books in a world of only physical goods, you probably have to manufacture one more book. Yes. Or Sam has to pay me whatever price I say, but ideally you just make one more book and whatever. In a digital world, I think it would be insane for us to say, well, I bought a song from Amazon and I want to stream into my phone.

But Sam wants to stream the same song, so Amazon has to duplicate the bits over. Right? But that is actually where the law got us to. Right. Right. Everyone was uploading their own digital locker music. Yeah, exactly. Digital lockers were a total mess.

Right. So if you uploaded your music library to Amazon Cloud Locker, whatever the hell it was called. You can only stream it on Amazon. You could only stream it on Amazon, but I could only stream my songs. So if I uploaded, I don't know, trained in Maine by the Clash, and then you did it, there would be two copies on Amazon of that song. Right. Which is extraordinarily wasteful because it makes no sense.

Because you don't need two copies. I see. So then wouldn't it make sense to just stream it from some sort of, like mothership. Yeah. Right. Right. And so that is where it turns. Because now if you want a thing and I want a thing, we don't need more things. Right. Can't you just

pull it from the same thing? Sam's doing like a whole little dance from the corner. Grabbing it from the cloud. And I think that's the turn. Right. That's the turn where for music and for books and for whatever, that's where the stuff became a commodity, the content became a commodity. Because now what you're talking about is how well can you deliver that stuff to all of the people

faster, better through a cooler interface to let them see more stuff because our access is completely wide open. And I think the artists now are seeing that and they're saying, hold on, like our stuff, the art is not the commodity. You're the commodity because you're just distributing things. And I think that tension is forever.

Yeah. Right? And I just don't, I don't think there's an answer. But I think it is the most fascinating thing that happens in all of technology. It's a total cycle. Right. It's Steve Jobs saying, hey, I know how to sell music on the internet. have you seen this thing called the iPod?

And then he had all the power for a minute. And then the label said, well, this is a commodity now. We don't want you to sell all of our songs for 99 cents. So we want variable pricing. And then they want the power back. And now Spotify showed up and said, we're going to do streaming. And YouTube showed up and said, we're going to do streaming. And Apple saying, we're going to streaming.

And they had the power for a minute. So they got everything they wanted. And now the artist are saying, hold on, that's a commodity. We want the power back. And that, I think Yin and Yang is like the most fascinating thing that. Maybe that's why I wanted to be a copy-eering attorney. Unfortunately, Addy thinks everything I think is wrong. So here's what I want to do.

I think you're overly optimistic. Addie is the first person in history of the verge cast to call me overly optimistic. Addy and I are going to host a podcast with you where we're going to discuss the copyright implications of Packers' playoffs onside kicks. Oh, that is a wreck right there. I'm 100% reading this ad right now. I don't know what that even means. Yes. Shaving can be a pain.

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Thank you, very much. All right. Very kind. So, Goog, the big gig. I almost called Dieter Google. So Google. Listen, Google. Well, no, there's,

so the loose ends to tie up on Google. And I think, Adi, this is a lot to do with you. It's like, they're making a big push into VR. They're making a big push with, what, Spotlight Stories? Yeah. So you were there. Deider wrote the world's biggest Google feature.

Tell us about it. But, like, there's three things that they're, like, they talked about at I.O. There's cardboard. There's, like, the new things that they're doing there. And then the promise that we've got a huge team working on something massive. There's Project Tango, which is AR and, like, what's, called Addy, the slam, the situational

location and mapping? Oh yeah, so you know where you are in space at real time. I wrote that head on it. It confused so many people. Slam dance? Yeah. And then there's the spotlight stories which are technically not VR. Their 360 degree

video. And then you have this promise both from the cardboard team and from Sundar Pichai that like, yeah, we've got plans for VR. So that's sort of the groundwork. And Eddie weren't there, but I know that you have lots of opinions, especially about cardboard. I mean, yeah, I'm always torn between thinking that cardboard is actually a good idea and it's fun.

And I love that people are trying VR and thinking that I really hate using it. Like, I've watched music videos on it. It's fun, but I really just want to do stuff in VR. And so it's always really frustrating to have to hold it up to my face and then it's done in a second. Well, I don't think so include straps. Because they don't want you to be able to use. it for long enough that you'll get motion sick or turn your head fast enough. That's it.

They don't, it's mostly that's turning your head fast thing. Android phones aren't good enough to let you turn. Wait, no, it's like the QWERTY key. I mean, I don't think actually the cordy keyboard,

but like the urban legend of the QWERTY keyboard that you had to make it slow. Right. So, wait, so, but how is the Gear VR good then? The gear VR isn't good. If you were to whip your head around and the gear VR.

Well, the gear VR, for one thing only works with one phone where they can control all the software. Like, that's why Carmick went and like went on this amazing rant about middleware like last year or something. So they can make things work really well and make sure everything works. So that's why they don't include the straps is because there's a lag.

Yeah, because think about how fast you can turn your head. Now hold your hands up and hold a thing to your face and think about how fast you can't turn as fast. So the things personally, I do think they're being a little over conscious. They're being just a little bit overcautious because I genuinely don't think there's that much lag. Like I've tried other cardboardy headsets with straps. Part of it, like, they get, the Google people got real, I don't know, haughty, real unhappy when I kept coming up. But like, I feel like not putting a strap on it also makes it feel like more of an experiment.

Like, it's made out of cardboard. It's not threatening. It's made out of cardboard. It's fun. It's weird. We're just trying stuff. Yeah. But like, stop trying stuff and start doing stuff.

And so they insist that they're doing stuff, but what they're actually showing is cardboard, which is like inherently like seems like low stakes, low threatening. Yes. Now the flip side of that is they've got the, you know, the classroom kit and they say, you know, look, we've shipped a million of these things. So back up. We're cool. But I just don't know. Like, we know what Oculus is doing. I don't know if we know what Facebook is doing.

We don't really know what Oculus is doing. Well, we know enough. We don't know the input thing that they're going to do, which is a really important part of what they're doing. We don't know how much it's going to cost really. We don't know what they're going to do with Gear VR next generation, although it's going to be a big thing. Morpheus. Do we know anything? Not enough.

I feel like we kind of, I feel like Andrew kind of checked out the thing that Morpheus was going to be and it seemed maybe neat. And the move controllers are better. But it's mostly, it's basically just content now for VR. When do I get to say, okay, you guys, VR is here. This is, this is VR now. It's not like, oh, you guys, VR's coming. And it's, under 2016 for me. That's when everything will be out.

All right. Okay. So, so Oculus is doing their input thing, which they have just sort of started talking about, right? Like they've been. They've been talking about how they need to figure it out a lot. A lot. Yeah. I think they're like very strong rumors now that it's going to be at E3, although we've heard those before, too.

Right. But isn't the, my question is, and this is like the cardboard argument, is Oculus is going to be, you need like a $3,000 PC through an Oculus. No, not that much. Yeah. Yeah, it's only a thousand. I mean, it's only a thousand. I mean, it's a little more than a thousand, but it's around there.

Okay. So you need a thousand. I thought it was three. No, it's like a high mid-range PC. I think I'm thinking of the GoPro. I saw last week. That maybe is right. Yeah, that's something else in time.

Oh, that's the, yeah, there's two GoPro rigs, though. Yeah, I'm thinking of the GoPro stuff. Sorry, there was a lot of pricing around VR last week floating around. So Oculus, you need a $1,000 PC. For the Rift, though, they have the gear VR too. That's their whole strategy is that it's differentiated. Well, or you need a Galaxy Gear, or not a Galaxy Note. Or an S6, I think it works with...

Think it'll work with an S6? I think there's a version that's coming out for the S6 or something. Yeah, yeah. Right. Anyway, so you need one of two phones. You need one of two phones. And right. People are emailing us right now.

What? Or are they? Yeah. Are they tweeting? Usually this is when my Twitter's, right? When I get something wrong with this. Anyway, my point is, more broadly, you need some very specialized hardware across the board. Yeah.

For Oculus to work. But Google's point is like, you just need this cardboard box for our phone. You have a phone in your pocket already. Strap it in, you're good. Right. Is that not more powerful in some way? Or is that still just, like, kind of garbage? Well, that's the thing is that I really don't think it's.

about the technology anymore. I think it's about like what people are going to do with it. And I think that they are in a good position to maybe show really compelling stuff, but maybe not. And a lot of the stuff I've seen so far that is for just vanilla mobile is really not super compelling to me. It might be to other people. I know some of it is definitely, but a lot of it is not. The input thing is a real mess on cardboard. Yeah. Or at least the current, maybe not the new one. Do you know how the new one works? No. It has a little lever and it has a conductive foam. So there's a little metal mesh on the outside and you push on it and it pushes a lever and then a tiny little

foam metal mesh thing pushes on the screen or pushes on the screen. I mean I find that totally adorable. That's like when those... We've got one here. We should have brought it down. I should have brought down. I meant to bring them. That's like when the first gloves that worked with capacitive touch screens and they're just like, here's a piece of tinfoil.

Yep. We'll just glue it into the finger. All right. That's ridiculous. Wait, so Deeter, so you saw that stuff and then you did Atap with Horgina Dugan who is kind of like a certified badass. Yeah. Well, I mean, like she calls our whole team badass pirates. Like, so we sat,

you know, she walked me through the ATAPS innovation model, which should be the most boring thing on planet Earth, but it's not. They're actually really cool. This is advanced technologies and projects at Google. Yeah. The one thing they kept of Motorola. And they're responsible for things like Project Aura. Yeah. So, like, Project

ARA, Project Tango. They announced a bunch of crazy other things. They have, in fact, graduated actual projects, into Google and like into real products. But what? Well, so tango's into Google, but it's not quite real. But you can.

tango is the weird tablet. It's the weird. They're, yeah. They've done some like, man, what was it? They're like, there's like three other things that they won't talk about them because they're not like public. Right.

Basically. But like the big question is like, can ATAP make a thing that we'll all be buying? And we're not quite there yet. Our is launching in Puerto Rico. And like they're just working on other. stuff. But the stuff that they're working on is like legit cool and they're doing it from like we promise we're trying to make this real product. We're not just screwing around. And so sometime in the next, you know, 12 to 18 months, like basically we need to cash that check.

Right. Right. So I'm actually really curious. Are they going to try to integrate Tango into phones that then you could use with cardboard? Yeah. That's I think the plan. They've got a reference design that Qualcomm is making that has it built into just a phone now. And that's the long-term goal is. They want it to be as ubiquitous in phones as GPS is now. But the question, there's a chicken and egg problem there. Like, it won't be ubiquitous until we all want it, but we won't want it until we know we can do with it. But no one's going to bother making

stuff to do with it until all of us have it. Isn't that kind of what NFC was? Yeah, except NFC is lame. No, NFC is that, I mean, like, it was until Apple did it. Well, exactly. Right? And not only that, but like there's only one use case for NFC that really matters. And we all knew what it was. It was payments. I used my hand. I can't buy an iPhone because of my hand.

Wait, what? My hand, I mean, NFC implant, because it's locked, Apple's locks its stuff to payment. So I can't actually open anything on it. And I certainly can't write or reprogram to it. Yeah. Addie, can you just explain exactly why? I implanted an NFC chip in my hand. And so I can read and write to it with my phone.

I can't remember what it does right now. I think it opens my Twitter account. Don't you also have a magnet in your finger? Yeah. Okay. So I have a few things. confirmed. So anyways, yeah, that's the problem. That's what's really frustrating about Apple. And that's what I do like about Google is that it is willing to like do things that it doesn't know what to do with

them because it lets other people do stuff. Right. Even if that stuff is mostly incredibly special. So you just, you like open Twitter on your phone and you hold your hand to the back of it and it unlocks your Twitter? No, I open, I mean, I can unlock my phone with it if I rewrite it. But no, I hold it to a phone. theoretically any phone with NFC and my Twitter, it opens in like Chrome or whatever the default browser is. Oh, wild. The problem is that I don't know why, but it's really finicky because I don't know where the sensor is. Like, I don't know where the NFC chip is on any phone. So it's a bunch of like rubbing it all over things.

That's pretty wild. I will say that when I'm carrying around my iPhone with anything that has NFC on it, I'll randomly look down and Apple Pay will just be there. Oh, yeah, all the time. All the time. It's just like, do you want to pay this other phone? No, I really don't want to do that. Wait, when did you get the NFC implant? I feel like we should have done a whole show on this.

No, no, I wrote a piece on it. It was before E3. So it would have been like June last year. Okay. Had it about a year. Wow. And you just, for fun? Yeah.

It was way easier than the magnet. I feel like the magnet thing was like, it was really out there. Like people, you have one, Ben has one. They've gotten a lot more common. Yeah. Do you still use your magnet? I mean, it's not like a use thing as much as I just feel stuff with it still. Do you really?

Yeah, I'm feeling my, what I guess is my hard driver? I don't know right now. There's something over my enterkey. And I can put, no. It wouldn't be the hard drive. I can put my... Yeah, no, I don't know what it is. It might be like a speaker.

There are magnet sensors in here that put a... Yeah, I know. That's why I'm really glad I got it on my right hand. Right. Because I used to accidentally put it to sleep. My phone is the worst because it's got a sensor on the back that let's, like, some kind of smart thing. And so I'm turning it off constantly if I hold it in this.

Oh, yeah. I know. You see it has those smart covers. It's terrible. Yeah. Whoa. Robot problems. Well, so the question I really want to ask, Annie. And I think this is the most interesting.

question of this whole like time is there is there's definitely a divide between vr and a r right it's like right like Microsoft is doing HoloLens but then Sony's doing morphias and then Oculus is doing this yeah Google's doing tango and cardboard and glass and glass is dead like no way no way do you know how many like okay it wasn't a lot it was not a lot of emails but I would say the amount of vitriol in the emails I got about why we didn't put glass in our Google feed was like through the roof. And I was like, because it's dead. They refused to mention.

They did nothing. Also, the title of our piece was is Sundar's Google and glasses owned by Tony Fidel. Yeah, I'm holding out for him. Sundar, what do you think of Tony's project? It's like not a good question. I mean, I genuinely don't know

how I would wear glass now because the like weirdness of wearing something that cost $1,500 on my face is like it feels like it'd just be like wearing a giant engagement ring. But glass isn't AR. Glass is just a display. That's a terrible.

terrible AR. Yeah. How is it AR? What is it? The idea that you can do navigation, like turn-by-turn directions. I mean, you could never really do it because the battery would go dead within like 10 minutes. Well, yeah, but it's a heads-up display that it doesn't have to like touch your environment. It responds to your environment.

It responds to where you are. Air doesn't have to be mapped onto the physical environment. Like if it can look at a thing and like translated for you. I think that I'm an AR purist. And I think AR has to map to the environment instead of just being a display in front of it. But it is mapping to the environment. It's just not visually mapping to the environment. Because it's actually a map.

Okay, fine. You caught me in the map. Do you own the augmented reality objects that you see in your head of the story? Do you own your eyeballs? Okay, but anyways, there's a divide between VR and AR. No, whatever. Let's leave glass aside.

I think we can all agree that argue my glass is a waste of time. Yes. But I'm just saying, I think that's split. I think there's a lot of desire to confuse AR and VR right at this moment. It's like stuff you wear on your face and look at. I mean, Oculus really wants them to be the same thing. Lots of people want them to be the same thing. It's just that the technology is incredibly difficult.

So I saw one demo at Tango that made me, that like actually connected those two things together in a way that I'd never experienced before. And I don't know if this is, this means anything for the connection between AR and VR, but it was a VR experience. So I like, I wore literally the seven-inch tablet as a VR thing, which was nuts.

It was heavy and bulky and whatever. That was pretty great to watch it. Yeah, God. But it was, it did AR in the space. So it mapped the floor to the floor. It mapped like a tree to the middle of the room and I could walk around it physically. But I was in VR. I could only see VR.

And then I could see little floating heads in VR, but they were mapped via AR to other actual people that were also wearing ridiculous headsets. Right. So I don't, I didn't know what to call it. Is it AR? Is it VR? I mean, those things like exist. Like, uh, there's a service called Alder. space and the idea is it's virtual and you're wearing, you use motion controls in it.

Right. And it checks, it tracks your head and you move through space with other people and you see them. Okay. So I feel like that's, it's, it's a blurry distinction. Like, is there anything that responds to your environment or is it something that lets you see your environment and a thing and those things interact? I didn't see my environment at all, unless I peaked out. Which would make it via or like by that definition.

Right. But it's weird. I just think the difference to me is like VR is it takes you to another place, another environment. And even an environment looks exactly like the one you're in, which is crazy. Like that's the mind explosion. There's apparently an amazing stand for demo where it maps,

it looks exactly like the room you're in, but a giant hole opens in the floor and you have to walk and you have to like step there and fall through it and it's really hard. I keep hearing about these demos where VR makes you not able to do things and I keep wanting to, I've never tried one. I got to get more. No, it's hard because you need like something with lots of

spatial mapping. Right. Well, no, but there's but you're still in a different space, definitely. I was definitely reading the Oculus one where they're like, you stand on a ledge and they keep on insisting that you take a step off the ledge and people won't do it. Yeah, no, it's generally known as the, like, the pit demo. I've done one. It was hard

the first time. Really? Easier the second time. Because you're like, you didn't fall down. Yeah. But I just think, so I think VR takes you another place, but an AR is about, like, layering more useful information into your environment. Right. And I think it just feels like that's going to happen first. I mean... I think it's way easier to do

stuff with, like, a whole... I feel like I can see much more immediate applications. Not like more things that would be cool with it, but more things I could imagine people being able to do. Right. But the field of you sucks. Does Amazon echo augmented reality? If we're saying glass is augmented reality.

Well, no, technically any computer, I guess, is augmented reality. No. If it's... Why not? It augments your soundscape. Well, look, I mean, I guess every... Like, my phone, my watch is augmented reality. Okay, maybe that's a stretch.

But my computer is. Anything that, like, vaguely can respond to things. Phones are augmented reality. which look actually that was what augmented reality was for a long time which was why the term sucks so much now because it was like you opened your phone and you were like I can see where a Wikipedia page is speaking of Wikipedia augmented reality is a live direct or indirect view of a physical real world environment whose elements are augmented or supplemented by computer generation what I just put that there to win this argument you're troll that's my new response to all Wikipedia arguments I just I just I just I just That was me. That put it in there, yeah, right now. Wait, so, Heidi, why does the term suck? And then we got to read now. Okay, the term sucks because augmented reality was a really big deal when phones were, like,

smartphones were first there. Google goggles was an augmented reality app. And the deal was that it would just pass through camera stuff. You always had to use a phone and stare up. And the apps were just terrible. Like there was a, you know, look at aliens, incredibly crude aliens and they will shoot something and watch it. There's the, the, yeah, people would do Yelp ones. People would do like Wikipedia landmarks. Like, Ingress. is maybe the coolest example of that kind of AR. Hang on. If Ingress is the coolest example of anything, then you know you're at that. I thought Ingress had potential.

Is Ingress popular? I feel like once every couple months we get like an Ingress story. Can we tell listeners what Ingress is? Isn't it Ingress? Wait, go ahead, Daddy. I don't know. It's an augmented reality. It's a phone game where there's like energy balls around you and you have to walk real places

to pick them up and you walk to like real points and capture nodes. But there's teams. Yeah, there's the... What are they called? There's the enlightened and the something else. The ideal is that there are smart aliens invading and you're either on the side of the aliens who want to like enlighten humanity and make it post-human

or the humans. Who are dumb and I don't know why anyone wants to be on their side. Yeah, who... No one picks that. It's a really cool thing and there's some people that were super into it. I have no idea how much... No, I really liked it. It just killed the battery in my phone so much

that it was not feasible at that time. And also apparently, like there's weird stalking stuff. Like, if someone... can match you to your Ingress name. They know where you are all the time. And they can find you. Oh, wow. There's the Enlightened and then there's the resistance.

Yes. We're deep. Well, anyways, that's Ingris. Ingris was the coolest example. So the point was that AR, it just, it turned it into like a thing you look out on your phone or like an IKEA catalog where you look and you look down and it's on your phone and it's animated. Right.

Like it was just not fun. Right. Like it was not futuristic. No. But that's what I mean. I think like HoloLens is probably the best. Yeah, definitely. thing that I've seen out of all this stuff.

Oh, yeah, it's great. I mean, especially, glass was the same kind of disappointment, honestly. No, but glass had the thing where, like, every time I wear glass, people would straight up be like, can you see through clothes? Because it was like, that was. Wait, seriously? Every time. It was the number one question I got when I wore glass.

And it was like, half a joke and half, I think, like, what was it? What was this? People would ask me if I could see through clothes. It was just without question. Half serious. Half kind of like, I'm hoping you say yes. Like, just sleazy, just in general. But like, across the ward, men.

women, whoever, it was always like, because I think that the expected benefit of looking like that much of a nerd is that you can see naked people. People just do the math in their head. They're like, what would it take for me to wear that on my face? And it's nudity. Man, the best was trans-metropolitan where you could take pictures all the time. Oh, man. It's just creepy all around. But anyway.

Okay, ad read. It's time. Let's go in the ad zone. And the answer is nudity. Hold on. after this, WWC, right? Yeah. Appreciate us.

You know, podcasting is all about great stories. That is. We're into it now. You have to be good. Okay. It is. That's what podcasting is.

It's us just sitting around telling stories, talking over each other. Addie telling us about... Talking over each other. Daddy telling us about talking over each other. Reprogramming her NFC chip. That's podcasting. Stories.

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64% of marketers say that producing enough content is their biggest challenge. So don't be one of them. Visit newscred.com slash verge to learn why companies like Pepsi, IBM, Visa, and Johnson Johnson, rely on Newsread every day. And you can request a free trial. That's newscred.com slash verge. N-E-W-S-C-R-E-D dot com slash verge. I maintain a different voice. I'm going to start doing it totally, like a different register. So what I'm back, you know I'm really bad.

So when the vocal fry is back, then we're actually podcasting. Is that the rule? Yes. I'm going to start to. What's the other one? What's the one where you go up? Up-talk. Up-talk.

Can you up talk and vocal fry? Oh, I don't know. What's up talk? God damn it. I can make this sound at you. All right, we were recording this on... We're recording this on June the 4th. John's going to kill me.

On June 8th. Hey, what if we clapped into the microphone right now? Nope. Okay. What if we whistled? So on Sunday. And Sunday, we're going to arrive. And then on Monday, the 8th.

We're going to be at WWDC. We're going to be at... Sunday, D-H. Fly developer conference. Dieternerner flying on Sunday. Along with James Shelton. If you're... And Westreel.

If you're in the air on Sunday, know that you're in the air with me. That was. That was deep. It was. We'll be in the air at the same time. So, I got a layover. Technically, I'm in the air right now.

I'm going to stop home for like a half an hour. Aren't you? I guess. You ever exist not in the air? What is anything? All right. WPDC. So the big news about WWDC is everybody is hoping for an Apple TV streaming service and a new Apple TV with a fancy remote and revamped interface that isn't horrible.

And apparently that's all off the table. It's horrible. No way. Apple the universe is hot. Hot garbage. Whatever. Continue. This from the guy who thinks Spotify has a wonderful interface.

I never said Spotify is wonderful. I said Spotify works. You know, I hung out with the guys from Spotify at code. And do they punch you? We had a good time together. We were hanging out. Went to parties together. It was fun.

It was like the whole time. I'm like, man, I hope you never listened. Clearly they did it because they hung out with you. It was fun. I was just like, down direct. They're like, oh, you have a podcast? I was like, no. Sorry, Peter.

Sorry. So don't hold out hope for Apple TVM on day. But. And Apple definitely like leaked that at the times, right? Yeah. Yeah. And Recode confirmed it. Yeah.

So it sounds like it's going to be watch apps. Well, iOS 9 and OS 11. Yeah, OS whatever. OS 1011. Yeah, 1011. Yeah, I think so. So, but the thing about iOS 9 that's interesting is apparently Apple's finally going to take on like predictive assistant stuff. They're going to take on Google now is the rumor.

And then of course we are also assuming we'll see music. But right. And hopefully. Yeah. We'll see. I mean, the music thing is we can go into everything. But like the big story. leading up to it is Tim Cook, especially with, I don't know, about the predictive stuff.

Like, Tim Cook, like, basically pretty publicly tried to lay a smackdown on Google photos by saying, you know, the standard line of, you know, if you're not paying for it, then you're the customer and you can't trust Google with your photos. Yeah. He never said the word Google, but it was pretty obvious what he was talking about. Right. So I don't know what that means for Apple's ability to make a assistant, because the thing that makes Google now work is that it creepily looks at everything that I do all the time. Well, Google Now is enabled by the Google ecosystem. Right. So you use Gmail both at work in your personal life, as do I.

You use Google Calendar. It's Google Search. A lot of people are going to start using Google Photos, which appears to be incredible that I haven't tried yet. I use it. Google Maps is the creepiest Google Now feature and is also kind of a major one. Right. Yep.

Like how long it will take to get to the place that Google has identified as your home. By the long as we're talking about pulling stuff out of Google Plus, Google still thinks that the way that I want to share my location with people is via Google Plus. Nope. N-O-P-E-N-O-P-E-N-P. I think Google Plus is just going to be the zombie Google product that eventually has no limbs and no features and no brain. No, it's just going to be to change your password for logging into Google. That's the point of Google Plus.

Not even fun like Wave. Wave was fun. Yeah, right? I miss Wave. I've been thinking a lot about what I would use Wave now in the post Slack world. Remember Google Buzz? Huh? I think we're done

I think that was the entirety Addie just backhanded me with her NSC chip That was the entirety of our WWC preview Addie's going to be on the show every week And I'm not going to talk

And the two of you are just going to talk And it's going to be the best That was amazing Oh boy Okay so seriously That was the best reaction To Sam I've ever heard My entire life

It's beautiful No wow So okay sorry So who knows Tim Cook Cool it off Cloud Services what you're saying.

Yeah. Can Apple do what Google did with like their stance on, with their inability to track everything that I do and their stance on privacy, which is admirable. Yeah. Yeah. But so the point I was making is like, I don't use Apple Mail. Yeah, but I don't use Apple Maps. Is there really privacy at all?

No. Do you own your privacy? No, seriously. The NSA has everything. I don't want to hear any of these companies bullshit. Well, that's one. No, no. That's one as screw it.

probably I don't care too far. No, no, no, I'm not saying I don't care. It's like there are companies making promises to their customers that are saying, oh, we care about your data. But it's like, you gave the NSA a back to order this and you're lying to our faces. I don't think Apple was ever accused. Yes, they were. Yes, they were.

It's every single big tech company has been accused. But Apple also took, I think. There's more stuff today. They had the harder reaction than anybody else. When there were more Snowden documents today? I saw no word. I just, I have a very hard time believing that anything is really private. Well, but this is the problem is that privacy isn't, like, there are layers, because honestly, I care less about the government having my information than about somebody leaking my address to Gamergate.

Yeah, right. Because honestly, the NSA is probably much less likely to fucking murder me. The government is also better at Twitter, much more point on Twitter. Just saying, that's a problem. OS 10's going to have a new system font. Yes. We're done. No, I mean, like, the photos thing is real.

Like, their whole thing where they took photos out of Google Plus, because. that freaked people out to upload all of your photos to a social network, I think is real. Or like, now this is a silo. Well, that's weird, though, because you know what the biggest photo archive on the planet is in history? Facebook. Yeah. And people don't give a crap about applying to Facebook. But you don't upload all of your photos to Facebook.

You know the thing about Facebook, like people worry about advertising on Facebook? It's like Facebook is advertising for yourself. Right. You curate like a very distinct. You're like, here are my photos. Like, I had such a great time. You don't put on photos on. Facebook of like this was the bad selfie where I made a face like you know just don't do yeah that's that's the

Facebook is for happiness and Twitter is for sadness I mean that's actually really I thought about that way anger I just but I think like Apple doing predictive cloud stuff like that only works to collate it all in one place if you're bought into all of their other services right and I just don't that's really hard that's like a hard ask across anything yeah I don't actually amazing that Google managed to get as much of my like online life as it has. But that's because of your work. Right. I think if Microsoft is coming from me right now or a different company that was all exchange

driven, Google now would basically useless for me. Yeah. It's only because all of my work is in a Google app that Google now is as useful as it is. Right. Because it has my calendar. I'm telling you Microsoft is coming. Like they just bought Wonderless. They've got the best mobile calendar app, the best mobile to-do app.

I think like Wonderless is better on a phone than To-Doist or any do. Right. Which pains me to say I could talk about To-Do list for a long time if you guys wanted me to. Do you want me to? Shut up. Right now? That's the new version. And they bought the best Gmail app.

You know, they bought a COMPLEE. So, like, they're coming. I'm going to, I'm switching. No, I see that. Anyway, we're trying to talk about Apple. That's the problem is that nothing Apple is doing is more interesting to me than speculating about, like, I don't know. Like, I don't know.

Addie, seriously, you're going to leave this Vurchase is the most popular person who's ever been on the verge cast. It's going to be amazing. Like, look, I love Apple's products. They're just, they don't have great. events anymore. No, they don't have great. I mean, that's true. And them not doing TV at this event and potentially not doing music because

they don't do music either. Yeah. It's going to be like, because like the big, the big stuff for both, I think, at least iOS 9 and potentially iOS 10 is going to be like, we're going to fix a bunch of stuff. Because like it's a standard OS TikTok, huge crazy new feature release. You know, every two, three years, they go like, you know, we need to like chill out and fix it. But they did. That was iOS 8.

iOS 7 was big crazy. say it was like fixed bunch of stuff. OS 10, whatever thing, whatever location it was before was like add a bunch of features and then this one was like The change the look of it but they changed the look

a little bit but they added continuity they did all this other stuff. I don't know. I just like all the way that the rumors are looking right now, the most interesting software stuff will be Apple Watch apps that don't suck from third parties.

And this predictive thing and then split screen multitasking on an iPad. If they actually do that, I'll be pretty happy. I don't think they're going to do splits screen multitasking unless they put out a bigger iPad. Right. That's going to be the feature that sells whatever next iPad. Right. That's what I figured too,

which is why I'm a crazy person. What if they put out the big? Is there any rumors they're going to do a big iPad at this? iPad Pro. I mean, it's not for this event, but there's rumors that it exists. Yeah. I mean, they're having for a while, but they picked up, I want to say a couple of months ago, but I don't think that anybody has been speculating it will come the next week.

All right. Well, we'll be there. Yeah. I'm really hoping they do the music thing. Just because if they do the music thing, that means I probably get to talk to Jimmy Ivey. He's, like, my favorite. Yeah. Because he's a maniac.

I am, like, genuinely curious what they'll do with Apple Watch with apps because I want to see how people think they're useful now. I mean, people I'm wearing one now. This one's dead. I'm still Lagerfelding one. Lagerfelding is a tournament made up for when you wear an unactivated Apple Watch and just shows you the activation screen because that's how Carl Lagerfeld wears is. Since the 01 update for the Apple Watch, when they, like, reduce the heart rate reading,

my battery life is good enough for, like, I kind of want to have the option to leave the screen on all the time. Same. Batteries good. They really need to figure out the way to leave the screen all the time. But if they add apps, they just... No, it's all that. They can do the, like, the thing that Android Wear does. Just go to, like, a, you know, hibernation mode or whatever mode that, like, just shows just, like, basic black and white colors.

I mean, they have the faces to do it. Yeah. Interesting. I just want to interrupt this and say that we have just hit 100,000 Instagram followers, like to the T right now just happen. I've been refreshing it. Yeah, I have it right here. Well, now you, if only we had party noises. Isn't that right, John Logger, Marcino?

It just happened right now. Like, I was refreshing when it was 9, 9, 9, 99. John is like moving towards the mic with great speed to yell in my ear that we shouldn't do that. Okay, that's our show. We're going, we'll be at WDC next week. We'll be back in time to Vergecast, I hope. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not up here at the Vurchase next week.

I'm supposed to be at our product conference in Philly. Will you be here? You'll be here. Yeah. How come I don't get to go to the product conference in Philly? We all get to go. Everybody go to Vax. We'll do some hacking.

That's how. How we do things. That's how that works. Wait, what am I supposed to do? Sam, engage. Okay. So if you're listening to this Vergecast, that means you have just heard me say that we hit 100,000 followers on Instagram, but that is not enough.

If you're listening to this Vergecast, you should follow us on Instagram because We post all of our best photos from the site on Instagram. We're Instagram.com slash verge. You should also hit us up on Periscope and Snapchat. On Snapchat, we're the real Verge. We're taking Snapchat to WWDC. It's going to be awesome. We continue doing Snapchat shows every day.

We're growing and doing fun things there. You should definitely follow us. And if you have feedback, please email me, samathvurge.com. I appreciate it, and I read everything. And on Periscope, I try and Periscope every day in the office. You get to see us working, doing fun, cool, quirky things. We're bringing that to WWDC. Also, we are just at Verge on Periscope. And back to you, Nelai. Periscope. The next beat. Is the future? It is. It is. I could really, we should have Casey on the

show to get deep on Periscope. I would love that. I'm fascinated by it. Anyway, that's it. Those are some social networks. I want you to go to iTunes right now and leave us five stars. We are so, so close to a thousand five star reviews. Please go to there and then tell me, I don't know, Tell me why you're excited about WWC. That's what I want to know. Tell us. And tell us what you own. That's it.

Go to iTunes, leave us five stars, and tell me what you own. I think that's a wild question. Also, then go to the bar and just walk up to random people and ask them what they own. It might not work well. And periscope it. And periscope it. That'd be wild. Anyway, go to iTunes, get us 2,0005 stars.

They're so close. We launched a new podcast, which is awesome, called Verge ESP, Verge Entertainment and Science Podcast with Emily Yoshita and Liz Lapato our entertainment editor or science editor. It is really cool. You should listen to it.

They're coming out every other week while they establish a rhythm and then hopefully we'll start going every week. The first episode was an interview with the show creators behind Halt and Catch Fire which is on Netflix now and if you're not watching it, you're crazy because it's great and then you're going to watch it

and you really ought to listen to this first episode of it because they're really nice guys. They're smart. Yeah. And we did the interview actually was in the main Virdcast feed, so you might have heard that. But VirGSP is a big thing. We also have watched.

attack with Chris Plant, which is just steaming along, hugely popular, super fun. You can find all that at iTunes.com slash The Verge. You can also find us on Twitter, where I encourage you to behave yourself for once in your goddamn life. Sam is Sam Schaeffer, Dieter's Backlon, Addy is at the dexterity. Yes. And I am reckless. That's a thing.

I'd also like to thank Newsread for sponsoring today's episode of The Vergecast. 64% of marketers say that producing enough content is their biggest challenge. Newsread makes it easy. visit newscred.com slash verge to learn my companies like Pepsi, IBM, Visa, and Johnson and Johnson rely on NewsCred every day into request a free trial. That's N-E-W-S-C-R-E-D dot com slash verge. That was it. That was Vergecast. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week.

Rock and roll. Bye.