The Vergecast - Why is Offline So Hard

Episode Date: May 8, 2015

How do you augment reality? With music? With the Microsoft HoloLens? With insane superhero Avengers mythology? Yes, yes, and yes. All those topics and more in this week's podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of May 4th. This is the Vergecast, a show that you're listening to right now at home. We're in your ears. This second. Or we're on your Mona. I am Eli Patel, that person that is talking, is Tom Warren, who has come to us from London. A far away plan. To my right, seated directly to my right is Dieter Bone.

Hello. And seated directly to my front. Is the height man himself. Maybe not directly to your front. Hello. Seated, off access. Always off. 10 degrees to my front.

Hey. On the construction. Sammy and the Hyped desk. Hey. No, I feel like this being a loose show. It's been like a fun week. It's been like a lot of stuff happening.

It's warm outside. It's great. They, they, they, they, uh, they fix some like weird RSS issues we've, we even have in.

So like, our traffic is up. I gotta say, Idris Elba broke a land speed record and a Bentley. Yeah. James Bond went really fast in a car. Although, This drawing is going really.

Oh, yeah. Said he shouldn't be James Bond. Well, he should be. But he should also be Buccaru Bonsai. Ooh. Remake Buccar Bonsai with him. You're on a real string lately of wanting to bring old things back. Yeah.

I saw you last time. Last night. Everybody was real mad at me last night. About Polly Pocket? Yeah, Polly Pocket's awesome. I don't know, man. I don't know. Whatever.

And then just in general, a big week. We've been breaking news on the site. Yeah. Micah Singleton. We've been basically flying him into Newark like every other day. because he's got a new hot music. We'll talk about that too, but Michael's been hard on the music beat. We were going to have him on the show today, but he's out.

He's out in the cities. Getting the beats. Yeah. Getting the beats. Well, he's not getting beats. He's not getting beats. He's giving up the people who won't talk to Micah right now. The beats people are not.

But we'll get into that. But, and then just generally, it's like summer. Yeah. I feel good. Nice. This is a, I don't know if you guys follow the lunar calendar like I do, but this is the first official Vergecast of the summer. summer the longest it's not

Sam's looking at me like he just doesn't want that joke to happen no it's not the summer yet yeah it is no summer starts June 21st yeah what is this period this is spring this is spring what is this period no this is like a cool like a no like a pre summer

it's like summer and beta this is how hot it gets in London this is the max it's like 80 degrees in New York yeah it's about as it's a hot as it gets in but it's always raining in London not always but yeah Consumed a weird amount at the time. What is Harry Potter wear in the summer? Just the same all around.

He's all good. He just magics himself cool. Just flies around. Do you hang out with Hermione on a regular base? Yes, because Friday night, Saturday. That's my new question for all English people. Do you have Hermione's phone number? Oh, boy.

No, no, Hermione, the character. I'm like, I'm not even... Like, Emma Watson's cool. Like, that's great. I'm sure she's lovely. But... The character. For me, it's actually Hermione.

Like, straight up. Sam. No, I just, I haven't seen Harry Potter movies, so I can't really. I'm just saying, you've never seen a Harry Potter movie? I've seen the first one. I think if we're going to talk about movies, we have to talk about Avengers, but no one else in this room has seen. I haven't. Age Beltron?

No. But it is like, the fatigue is real. We have two posts on the site today, both massively popular. Yep. Like some of the most popular stuff we've written in a long time. One is explaining the infinity gauntlet. Right. Okay.

And infinity. No, but actually, like, this is relevant. Sure. It's not relevant. No, it's relevant to, like, the Marvel universe is so complicated. A thing explaining, like, the basic, like, plot device of every single movie now, people desperately need it. Right. And then, so this is the other post.

So Ross wrote the like, what the hell is going on? Yeah, what the hell here? What are these rocks, basically? What are these rocks? Virgin News, explain the rocks. Yeah. And then Brian wrote one that, you know, Brian's a great reporter. It's well done.

It's like well written. But if you broke down Brian's post to, it's like fundamental atomic unit of what it is, it's just a list of characters that will be in the next movie. Yeah. Right? Like, and I say this not, like, I love Brian and he, it's tremendous work. But like, I'm reading this. I'm like, this fundamentally one of the most popular posts on the verge in a long while.

Yeah. Is just a list. Yeah. For example, I'm just going to read the list. It's a list with an angle. Here's a, yeah, it's a list with an angle. And really isn't that journalist. It's a Captain America Civil War.

We'll have Iron Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Falcon, War Machine, the Vision, Scarlet Witch. Ant-Man. No, there's more. Black Panther, Agent 13, Crossbones, General Thunderbolt Ross, Daniel Brule is playing somebody,

and so is Martin Freeman. Yeah, I'm just, like, are we, okay, let me say some things, and they're both going to be controversial, and I'm sure the people in our forums will start lengthy threads about how I should not talk about things I don't know about.

But here's what I know. Okay. Oh, here we go. Avengers 2 is bad. It is bad. Age of Ultron. Is it called Avengers 2? No, it's called Avengers Age of Ultron.

I mean, is there a world in which it is not the second Avengers movie? Well, I mean, every other movie in between the Avengers and this movie was also an Avengers movie. Yeah. But yes, the sequel to the sequel to Avengers. That sound you hear is me flipping a table. Yes, Eli, yes. It is the sequel to Avengers. Yes.

Yeah. If somebody starts a pedantic forum thread where they're like, it's not called Avengers 2, you don't know any. Yep. That sound you hear is me flipping a table. So here's a secret when you visit a website, a webpage, look at the actual URL, and you'll often see, like, the author's true thoughts.

And the URL for this post of Brian wrote is, Captain America, Civil War, Avengers, Marvel, Ant Man, burnout. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just saying, like, we're at a place. So Avengers 2, like, it struggles under the weight of all of the things it has to do. Right.

It's like the worst X-Men movies. Didn't it make a lot of money? It didn't make as much money as the First Avengers, and it didn't make as much money, I think, as Guardians of the Galaxy. Like, I've seen a couple, like, opening weekend not as big as, definitely not as biggest guardians. You know what? It did make, though, it was a lot of money.

Of course I made a lot of money. But, like, I think we're just at the point where, like, that movie is good. And it's, it's, like, entertaining. Like, I went to the theater. I ate the popcorn. Oh, so you've seen it. I've seen it. Oh, that's great.

But you said it was bad. It's bad. Okay. Like, it's, it's great in the sense that, like, I had an experience, and that experience didn't harm me. That's my bar for great. Was I physically or emotionally injured? Oh, no, it's great.

But that's where we've gotten to with Marvel crap. Right. Right? It's like, this movie entertained me. And it's, it's just, everyone's so thirsty for, like, comic book stuff to happen that that's the bar. Unless you're really into it. you follow every little thing.

It's just, it's going to entertain you. It's like, it's literally a wall of noise. And at some point, like, Thor's like, I'm in a, I'm in a puddle.

Like, I'm not even kidding. At one point, Thor's like, I've got to go to the puddle. And then he's like, in the puddle. And, like, lightning hits the puddle. He's like,

I get it now. Yeah. And it's like, what the hell just happened here? Like, I'm not a huge comics nerd. And I get that there's 15 movies that you have to set up. Yeah.

But this is dumb. Mm-hmm. Right? No one disagrees with you. No, but so the question is, how long can they maintain this? Years. No. No. So here's my theory.

Yes. No. Well, I mean, of course. I've got the whole universe happening. Look at, look at Fast and Furious. Look at Harry Potter. Look at Star Wars. Fast and Furious.

Has a limited character set. Yeah, that's fine. Wait. That's not entirely true. Like Fast and Furious, like, literally is like, but here's a new member of the family that you and older. Yeah. We got down in El Salvador that one time.

It's like when? But it's literally documented every year of your life in extreme. It's one per movie. It's one per movie. I just, I think that the road for comic book success is unlimited. No. So I disagree. Have you seen the X-Men movies before they rebooted it?

Yeah. Right. No, I think this is happening. I think we're about to hit a crash. Like, I think all of these Marvel, it's getting too complicated. and they're about to have to like really do aliens because that's the whole infinity gauntlet thing yeah right like the murder gorilla Thanos is going to show up yeah I called him the murder gorilla today because Josh Roland and his make anyway like he's got to show up

and it that's like you're going to just lose people you're going to run into the Superman problem which is like your fun movie about like superheroes is going to turn into an alien movie and that is like the end of that's the end of good stuff for you. That's why, let's say Iron Man was good. The first Iron Man movie I think is my favorite of all these Marvel movies because there's like it's a very much a comic movie. It's very crazy. Yeah.

But it has like a, it has a scope. It's like contained. Like here's the world it exists in. Yeah. And now suddenly that world has expanded all the way to like there's a blue monkey with a glove and he's going to fuck you up. And it's like I don't, I'm just not, I'm not going there with you. you. Like, we're making up African

countries now. Like, what are we, can we just pull it back? I just think that they'll make these movies and people are going to see them. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. The comic movies too, Avengers, whatever, Avengers Colin some words was great because

it caused me no actual harm. That's what they're going to make these movies and people are going to see them are. It's like Daredevil. Like Daredevil is fine. It's a fine show. I'm afraid to commit to it. I just don't want another... You know what's really bad? Like much of the acting in Daredevil.

Like much of the story is like, here's a guy who beats the crap. It's like Dick Cheney's adventure time. Like, how do I get information with torture? Mostly with torture. I mostly torture people. And it's structured like a video game. Right? There's like, have you guys seen I haven't seen one episode? No. I don't know. I'm not even remotely giving it. I'm not even remotely giving anything away by saying this. It is structured like a video game. And at the end there's like a boss battle. Oh, right? Like, do you know I mean?

Like, there's like an escalating series of torturing. And then at the end there's like the most torture that he can do. And it's just like, what? Like, is that all that we want out of these shows? Look. Also, like... You're banging the table. You're real mad.

I'm tired of comic books. Like, I think I have total comic book burnout. Like, I don't think that... understanding the biggest movies, like, at the cinema right now, should require, like, reading, like, endless Wikipedia. That, I hear that. Someone's outfit in 1961. I couldn't go to the movies and just see age Voltron.

I would need to see. You just, like, I have a good time. Yes, I could. In theory, I could, yes, but I would have no idea what's happening. And that's fine. It's like me with the entourage movie. I think, I think the cult, the cult is, is only getting stronger. the comic book cult, especially in 2015, with, they're just making so many movies and there's so much, there's so much to consume and they know people will consume it.

Right, but like the stakes of all these movies, like Batman versus Superman. Yeah, it's going to come out. And I'm going to watch the hell out of that. Yeah, that's going to be dope. And hopefully Superman dies at the end. That's my personal belief. Ouch. I hate Superman.

Screw that guy. But like, there's no stakes. There can never be any stakes that are appropriate. to like these characters right right yeah here's a guy who's really fast and here's like the guy who's an indestructible but I suppose so the the ironic

thing is that was the whole appeal of Marvel in the first place is they actually added stakes that's like why Spider-Man it matters because he wasn't just like a superhero that you couldn't relate to he was like a awkward gangly teenager right right the normal guys who but turn into superheroes yeah so

I mean they all have like basically they all have villain problems. Like, right? Like, Ultron is like, they don't do a good job of making him a great villain. I don't know. I haven't seen.

You got to see it, but you'll see, like... You've seen the movie? Right. You saw it? Yeah. Where you been?

And you saw the first one. I don't want to like harsh on it too much because I want everybody... You see the first one too also or no? Of course I saw the first one. So, okay, is the solution to the burnout... What was that big side?

That we stopped going to these movies? I feel like, I feel like there's, there are people that can experience these movies and just have fun and have joy with this. We, like, scrutinize them to death, you know?

They're going to keep making Marvel movies and people are going to watch the F out of them. Like, that's the reality of the situation. Yeah, but we, don't we have some, like,

I mean, we run a cultural website. Yeah, like, we care about art and culture. And, like, the idea that this level of, of,

frankly, like, medium good storytelling passes for the most popular stuff that we have. Yeah, I see what you're saying. It's like,

it's not good. Like, here's what, here's what, If you're writing a story about the most technologically advanced people in the universe and, like, a high-end robot guy who wants to kill the world, like, maybe your character shouldn't say things like, he's escaped under the net. Don't do that. Like, you've blown it. Like, you automatically, like, you've lost some points about, like, how well you're going to tell these stories.

Oh, that is a thing with the singularity is you don't want to let the computer escape onto the net. Under the net. Yeah. The internet. At one point, one of the characters is like, oh, don't worry, we burned him off the net. Like, I'm not, it's not even a spoiler. No. It's not, it's not even a really spoiler.

It's like, it's a Marvel movie. So, like, deep commentary on what they believe the nature of AI is going to be, though, that it's possible to burn it off the net. It's like, oh, like, there was a problem in the Marvel. Did it get solved two minutes later? Because Thor has to jump in his fucking puddle. I think they're going to continue blast them out for years. Oh, yeah.

They've got this whole thing. And people are going to hate me for this comment I'm telling you right now people are getting real mad at me for this So I think that's, they'll be popular in like five years. That's why we should start talking about Microsoft. There's a threat in the forums right now talking about how, You've been a bad man. How badly you and I are,

or how badly you and I bungled the Microsoft conversation. No, you and TC with them that, I think. There's being TC and Sam. And Sam, you apparently are able to hold a surface in your hands. I've come to and not even say what it is. Tom's here to fix it. flown in an airplane. But he's got to do it with an English accent.

Was it in meta or was it in, I want to find this thread. It was in probably the tribe. In the tribe. Man, remember you're naming these things? Microsoft Tribe. Microsurfs. Microsurfs. Yeah.

Yeah, it's old school. Back in the day. Back in the day. Do you want to talk, you want to talk, you want to talk Microsoft or do you want to make some money? Or you want to talk Tesla? So many options. Well, no, we'll save the cash with you through a little bit.

We'll do one more, and then we'll do an ad. I don't know. Tom, you're here. Let's get into Mike. We waited last week until the very end of Microsoft. Let's do Microsoft now. We'll do the ad. Then we'll do Tesla, and then we'll talk about Apple and some other stuff.

All right, Tom. So here, let me ask you this question. I'm basically just going to interview you. You were at Billed. And you have to answer every question in an American accent. All right. So, wow. I'm going to do my American accent.

This is the last time I'm going to do it. It's going to be very exaggerated. Hopefully not the last time. And it comes from American Tale. Oh, this is your fival accent. This is my American accent. All right. Hello, I'm an editor American mouse.

That's my American accent. That, I don't know what that was. Tom is a... Tom is a secret voice actor. What just happened? We started the show. Is it? Is that what we all sound like to you?

Yeah. Okay. Well, you two started before we started the show, these two are doing duck impressions. That's true. Not doing it again. So, Tom. Tom.

That's actually doing Donald impression. It's not Duck impressions. Donald. Can somebody give me a beer? Who wants to drink a bunch and continue railing about Marvel movies? So you were a build. You were there. I was there last week.

Or they showed Avengers Age of Ultron. They did. Yeah. Yeah. Do they use Windows 10 to burn the scourge off the net? No. So here, I'm just going to ask you a bunch of questions. And the first one is what the people in the tribe think we got wrong.

And I know what- That was about Android and iOS. Yeah, so I know what T.C. was trying to say, right? Yeah, he was being metaphorical. But he very pedantically, T.C. said, it sounds like they're just building emulators for everything. Yeah. And very pedantically, people said it's not emulation. So Windows 10 is going to be able to somehow do something with Android and iOS applications.

Yeah. So. What are the things? It will effectively run Android apps natively, because it has its own Android subsystem, running on the phone. But in reality, developers will have to get their app

and sort of tweak it, because you can't just take it. It sounds like the BlackBerry thing. It's not quite, because everything was emulation. So it wasn't native code running on a device. You couldn't just bring your code across and package it into the BlackBoh.

I can tell you what it is, but you're going to hate me. Go ahead. It's like the, WebOS thing. Yeah, it's more than No, it's actually exactly because when WebOS first introduced 3D games,

they basically are like, here, do this. It's called the game developer kit. Yeah. And all it was was just ports of iOS games. They just like tweaked three things and ran them on the pre. And that's what they're doing is you'll take your code and instead

of using all the Apple hooks, you'll like just swap them over for the Microsoft hooks and Microsoft's kit will help you do that and you don't have to rewrite a whole bunch of stuff. So it's really good, good for games, but the question is, will they have enough, like, hooks and ecosystems and copying what Apple's got on the iPhone around it to support them? And then, two, you know, will it work beyond a relatively limited set of things that, like, basically don't need to know that the rest

of the phone exists, right? Like, a game doesn't need to know the rest of the phone exists, other than, like, talking to Game Center. Games should be theoretically the more easy option to port. But so Microsoft is going further than WebOS did because they're doing other stuff with the the UI, right? Like, they get other, the other apps will be easier to port. Yeah. So they built their own sort of versions of Apple's,

um, was their UI kit? I think it's UI kit. Yeah. They built effectively their own. Actually, the technology, they didn't build anything.

This made that clear on the Apple side. Yeah. Microsoft bought, rather than built. Yeah. Um, so they bought in a company that used to, the guys that co-founded the company used to work at,

um, at BlackBerry. So it is the BlackBerry thing. So they, so they kind of, pitched the idea of iOS apps running on BlackBerry natively back in like, I don't know, like two, three years ago, maybe even longer than that. They pitched it to Samsung, a bunch of different companies, and obviously Microsoft's gone and acquired them.

And effectively, I think that's the more exciting announcement out of the two, actually, because the Android stuff is only for the phones, whereas the iOS stuff will bring all of your Objective C code and then effectively run it natively. You have to do some UI stuff on top, and obviously all that sort of stuff. But effectively, you'd be able to take your object to see code and then run on Windows 10. Is this a good idea? Essentially doing the same thing with Android apps? No, Android apps.

It's like there's an Android phone sitting there. Oh, so that's like the BlackBerry? Yes. Okay. That's what I meant. Well, kind of. They're both very similar, but the Android apps, it's not emulating the app. It's just running the app on Android.

It's running the app on Android. That's how BlackBerry works. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess. It's the best of BlackBerry and WebBlack. I mean, basically. Yeah. All right. This is a good idea.

The iOS stuff is more interesting because that stuff is across the whole spectrum, not just on the phone. So you could get an iPad app across. You could get that iPad app that people are developing could then scale up to the TV. I think all of it's interesting, but it's curious in that they can have to keep up with all the APIs and all changes. And especially on the Apple side, Apple developers change things quite rapidly with updates anyway. and Apple changes their API set quite a lot as well. And obviously you can write to older versions of iOS because not everyone upgrades straight away,

but it's still Microsoft going to have to keep on top of that pretty quickly. It'll be interesting. Well, I mean, yeah, they had this problem with Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone 8. Like, they would get, like, the apps, and then they would just fly out of it. So what's the vibe at Bill? Are people excited about this? Like, it seems like...

I think people, well, in the crowd, people were way more excited about the mention of iOS than Android. I think that probably stems from the fact that most developers still create an iOS app first and then port it to Android or think about Android second. That still kind of happens rather than being like fully native on both. So yeah, I think that's kind of the exciting thing. We're still sort of talking to developers and sort of figuring out, you know, will this make a difference?

Yeah. So I guess the vibe is it's interesting. Yeah. Are you going to, so here's my dream. Are you going to be able to, like, take an iOS app and run it on touchscreen Windows tablet? Yes and no. You can take all of the code, but then you're going to still have to, like, you're not going to have, like, iOS has hamburger menus and stuff and UI controls that are different to Windows. You know, they're not going to show up automatically on Windows, right? So you're going to have to, Microsoft's sort of coding kits is going to have to, like, change those for their hamburger menu.

But then it might be, like, the way that Microsoft draws it is slightly different to iOS, and they're going to have to do little, tweaks. It's not going to be like you copy a code and you hit a button. No, not like that. I guess that's how it meant. Like, I think the example I used with last week with Sam was like Instagram. Like, I think it would be dope to have an Xbox 13 that's like my computer and

in Instagram, basically the phone app is like in the corner. Yeah, I mean, they basically showed that with... I think they showed it with Wii chat or one of those apps and it was the phone app running on Windows 10. Have you just... I think that's cool. Go to www.dub, www. Instagram.com. That's not the Instagram web app.

Hype check Instagram web app. I mean, I use it. Oh, man, we did this last week, too. Yeah, we did do this last week. Everybody hates the web except for me. That's just... Everybody hates the web. The web is over.

Okay. The web is the past of storytelling. Apps of the new comic books. Yeah. That's true. That's the new comic books. So then another big news of it, Bill, was Holland. So you were there. Like, you get to try to Holland?

Yeah. So yeah, I tried HoloLens and Andy put up a good piece about it. It's pretty much my feelings as well. So we saw it in January, Deer and I. And it was, it was way more immersive. It wasn't like immersive in a sense of VR, but it felt like stuff was in the room around you rather than just in this space in front of it. You had, you had a holl, I mean, okay, pedants, pedants, pedant. First of all, if you're pedantic, that's the one.

One, if you're a pedant, is that it? Pedant? If you're a pedantic person is a. A pedant. Piedant. The best thing about that word is that only a pedantic person would know how to say it. It's pronounced pedant. Where is it going?

You could see things out of your peripheral vision. Okay, they're not technically holograms. You could see holograms move beyond your peripheral vision. So it wasn't VR because you could stall the world and it wasn't completely cover, but it was there. but you, with the actual... Did you use the actual production, or was it still a beta? Well, I mean, who knows? Because they're not really saying.

But we used the actual headset, rather than the crazy goggles and the thing you hang around your neck. The giant computer you had to wear, yeah. So we used the actual headset. So, yeah, I guess it's production or near to, like... Let's just say it's near final hardware. And, yeah, and it was like, you got the visor and stuff. And then it just felt like you had the...

Like you were wearing glasses, but then only like a certain... section of it you could actually see the holograms in like a square it's i don't know if you had a piece of paper you'd have like a square a four piece of paper you'd only be like a section like a letter box like a letter box in the middle of it you could see where the screen is yes you'd have so it's like the demo it took me like 50 50% of the time of the initial demo we were like trying to code apps it was literally me going like this trying to figure out if this head was set was broken because i thought it was broken because i'd obviously seen it before right So I was like, this is not right.

It keeps clipping off. And they were like, oh. Good Microsoft impression. It was just like one of the dudes just helping his code. You know, I got to say like Holland seems so exciting. And then the gulf between what they're showing on these demos on a live stream, which is basically like people walking around in completely virtual worlds just like doing stuff. Yeah.

And like cute little robots. That kind of stuff like I would have said, yes, they could have done. that when I saw the January demo because it felt like that was kind of the way that they were heading. But now I'm like, yeah, it doesn't quite work like that. You have to kind of look to see the hologram. Like if you were a hologram here and I was looking over here, I wouldn't see. Right. And that's kind of not what they're showing. They're showing like you got stuff on the walls. You're interacting with one over here on your left. Right. So it's just whatever. It's like whatever that screen can see. Right. Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. But is it programmed? Is it programmed? Are

all living in that virtual space already, or is it sort of like, I don't really understand how it works. Because in the previous, like, I was, I did a Periscope with Addy yesterday and she explained this, but I still don't fully grasp. Because when you have glass, right, it just lives in the prism, the thing that lives in the prism in that one spot. But with HoloLens, is the stuff programmed so like you, you turn your head and then the screen will sort of like appear in your field or is it, is it there already? No, it will be, it will be here. Right. And it matter where you're staring, you'll, you'll find it. So it's like an object, like, this beer, this beer would not move. They have object persistence.

Yeah. It's like top of the technology. And I could walk around, I could walk around the back of the beer and then see the back of the bear. Like, it doesn't move. It's supposed to be. So the beer stays here, but unless you look right at it, you know, it's not, it like, clips into your reality. I see. I see. That's kind of crappy. Yeah. It's like, it's like, amazing, but it's also, like, kind of crappy. Yeah. It's like, The amazing stuff is just the way it interacts. Like, say, I think one of the demos was like a little ball. And if I was looking at his table and I dropped the ball, like you air tap,

just like the coolest gesture. It drops onto the table and off the table. Like it senses that the table's there and the holograms interact with real world objects around it. Like that stuff is like, can you interact with it with your hands? Like can you tap it drop it and have it hit your hand? No. Well, I guess you perhaps might do it. If you get really close to holograms, they kind of just sort of...

Like what happens in Star Wars? They feel your entire vision, right? Ah. So if you get too close, it's just sort of like... Yeah, it kind of goes out of... Yeah, you don't really see it anymore. But yeah, I mean, it's cool. Like, everything that it does is mind-blown.

Any word on consumer release at all? I think they're still kind of saying this year, but... Really? I don't know. Yeah, right. Oculus finally came out with a date. Yeah, 2016. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Sometime in the first quarter of 2016, which could be like January 1st or March. Yeah. And Addie's piece, just to be clear, Adi's piece was great.

It's all about, like, which way it was around. It's like FIRs for building environments and airs for like storytelling. Yeah. And you just see Microsoft did show. Well,

ARA is also getting for getting work done. Yeah. Like architecture. That's what you're saying. Architecture is going to be something that's, uh, very much utilized with HoloLens. Yeah.

Because you can like, you know, look at blueprints and like go inside design. That was one of the demos we did. That stuff's impressive. But the field of view is not impressive. First-gen product. That seems like an easy thing to fix.

You know what's weird? We're in this age of first-gen products. As Seam checks is Apple Watch. And Tom has one too. Tom has one. Deeter's wearing Android Wear over here. Are you allowed to talk about what you're running? Yeah, this is an LG Watcherbane super ugly.

Yep. Just going to be just, I will say that the LG G. is it G-Watcherbane? It's, I think it's just LG Watcherbane. Oh my God. So, miserably named product, first of all. And then it has caused no end of controversy in this case. No, it's just one.

There's one person at our office, Chris Ziegler, who thinks it looks good. And the rest of us don't. Chris is dumb. That's the answer. No, but it's got all the cool new Androidware. It's got all the cool new Androidware stuff. I'll say Androidware. I'm going to send you a poop emoji right now.

Oh, my gosh. Having now worn Androidware a little bit again, and then the Apple Watch, like, both, it's such a classic Apple Google moment where Apple's doing what they do, which everything seems very local on the Apple Watch. Like, everything is happening on the watch. All the software is there. All the smarts are there. That's where Apple puts all their time and effort.

And then everything on Android Wear is, like, happening on a Google server somewhere. That's what, well. It's not actually true, but that's, like, how both platforms, like, feel. I will say that apps on Android Wear, they're, like, straight up and this is, this is going to be weird. there are a bunch, and I don't know what the exact numbers are, but it feels like there aren't as many on Androidware as there are on the Apple Watch, because there's more like big name apps that are just there in the Apple Watch. Right, so apps on Android Wear, by and large, or not.

Like, I've got a voice recorder app that is like fully native on Android Wear and it actually works. I can't believe there's not a voice recorder app on Apple Watch. There it is where I'm recording. Like, here we go. I'm good. Because I was like, I'll wear my Apple Watch whilst I go and do HoloLens and I'll record whatever I hear. But I was like,

the reporter's secret. Yeah, can't be doing that because there's no app. That's Apple's. Apple's culture of secrecy bites us again. No secret voice recorder

app on the Apple Watch. Like, I don't know. Anyway, do you watch Urbane, first of all? Do you watcherbane? It's ugly. Hidious. Or watcherbane. LG, LG, it's just the

watcherbane. Yeah, you get faster access your apps. You can draw emoji and you can flick your wrist to switch between stuff. And, oh, it works. over Wi-Fi.

And it works over any Wi-Fi network. I'm saying my phone could be at home. The physical... Androidware is... You see the improvement. Yeah. But it's still like kind of a first-generation product. My problem with those sort of devices...

Well, it's because all the... Yeah. It needs to bleed into the rest of the device. The screen needs to bleed. That's the best thing with the Apple Watch. Yeah. Like, I don't want a bezel in the way that I'm... Can't possibly flicking.

Right. That's like... That's why everybody likes the Moto 360s because it has the least amount of bezel. It's just the battery life on that thing is... about 360s. is too big. That's what I've come to. All right, I got to do an ad.

But here's what I was saying. We're in the age. This is weird. We're in a weird moment where everything cool is a first generation product. And I have never seen it like this where everybody knows what that means. It is not like ultra hype. Right. Right.

Do you remember like when Android and iOS were first coming out, every new phone was like, it's going to be a revolution. It's going to kill the iPhone. And now it's like, here's HoloLens. which is like, could be a revolution. Oculus, revolutionary product. Apple Watch, maybe will be revolutionary product. Android wear, same thing.

And everyone's just like, we're going to wait. We're going to wait. Do you see the picture of the Apple Watch and the original iPhone, side by side? Yeah. Wait, what? The picture of an Apple Watch. Yeah. I told you it looked like an original iPhone.

I've been saying it since first time. All right, money time. Today's episode of the Vergecast was brought to you by Tripcase. Tripcase helps brilliant people take over 30 million trips last year by collecting their flight, hotel, and other trip items, and do a single app on your phone or tablet. You get free flight notifications if you're delayed or your gate changes. You get support for Pebble and Android Wear.

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there's free flight alerts Tom that would be good for you because you're chronically late it's that true trip case I don't know whatever tripcase automatically alerts you changes to your trips like a flight delay or gate change by pinging basically everything in your life your phone your tablet your smart watch one day it'll it'll buzz your brain directly in your hollow lens perfect you can share your trip so in tom you just show up in New York like you've been doing lately you can send me a goddamn note and tell me you're going to be here you can find out whether your flight is delayed you can tell people how much fun you're having, just in general. Sam, how much fun you having over there?

Too much. You should have used Tripcase to tell me, way to blow it. You can remember this place. You can save restaurants you find on your trip. You can remember it the next time you're in town. You can show that to your friends. You can look at the weather. You can check out seat maps. You can do all sorts of stuff that is what you need to do on a trip. Go to tripcase.com slash Vergecast. Check it out today. And that is how you do it. I'm going to use Tripcase. You would make a good salesman. I do. I do what I can. All right, we got to talk about Apple music. And then we got to talk about Tesla and we got to talk about Google. Those are the...

We'll see. We'll see if you can get to all that. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. So Apple music, I didn't... This is the big one. There's like, there's just a ton happening. So, okay, I know you've got way more to say than I do. So I'm going to set the stage. Yeah. We are all expecting a relaunch of beats music, whatever we're going to call it at WWDC in early June. And it seems like whenever there's a big new streaming service audio or video

apparently there's a whole bunch of froth in the industry before it happens. Things get frothy. There's deals that don't get made until the last minute. There's like machinations. There's like oh man we got to announce our thing before the other

thing happens. And so in the run up to everybody knowing or believing that Apple's going to announce a big important new streaming music service a whole bunch of shit happened. Like GrooShark just like finally up and is like, no, we're dead. And then like some random person said, oh, just kidding.

I backed up the whole service and here it is over here as a pirate service. We're back. Spotify is like, hey, guys, we're going to have an announcement of the 20th. And then it comes out from the Wall Street Journal that it might be a video service, which is like, what? And then on top of that, Michael Singleton has been chasing down story after story. Yeah. And this is right. I panned it off.

Micah Scott had two big scoops this week, and they're more coming. So here, here, I think, is like the thing that you're saying is true, right? Everyone expects beats music to relaunch at WWDC. Right. As, you know, Apple's next generation of iTunes, they have Jimmy Ivy and they have Dr. Dre. They're, like, out there in the world, they're pushing for deals. And that means, and I think the music industry of all of the industries that sort of intersects with tech is the most leaky. Yeah.

So that means people are out there, people are mad, people want what they want, you know. And what is true, what is particularly true, the only two streaming music services that are like truly game-changing successful are Spotify and YouTube, right? Yeah. I wish RDO was better. It's just like that's the... I mean, I use Google Play Music, which is like... I'm like the nerd. Yeah, but the...

It doesn't... It doesn't matter. music. Right, but like both of those services. They shut down the down the free. Yeah. Yeah. Probably because they got Apple,

probably beat them up. Yeah. And then there's Pandora, but like none of those services are like have people, people don't see any of those services having the potential to like fundamentally alter the nature of the music industry. Right. But people know Apple's done it before and they believe that they could do it again.

Right. And I would say Google Play All Access is an interesting sort of like it's there. But what it should be more connected to and what is more important. is YouTube. And like one of the best... No, it's fully integrated with YouTube's music thing now. Yeah, but that's not... Like, it is, but like, Google Play All Access

isn't the product people care about. They care about YouTube. Right. That's what I mean. Yeah, yeah. Right, like the best part of Google Play All Access for me is I pay for it. I have it, and it's cool.

It's all about... And then I get ad for YouTube. Right. It's all about wherever the teens get the music from, really. Well, no, it's also about these business lines. Which is YouTube and Spotify. Well, yeah, and it's, it's like,

YouTube is this, like, massive thing. Sam, how much music do you watch on YouTube? YouTube or listen to him YouTube. I use Spotify. Pay for Spotify Premium. But when you want to share a song with somebody, where do you go? Depends who, but yes, I use YouTube for music. Absolutely.

And a lot of people around the world do it too. Right. It's huge. No, I mean, like, when I'm like, hey, you should listen to this. Yeah, send me YouTube. Absolutely. It's just always, always always turn on HD. But yes.

Remember when you used to be able to send it, what was it, Lala? Oh, yeah, Apple bought that. They turned it to ping. Yeah, but back in the day, it was like, you could just send those links and they were just, they would just work. Anyway, so what I'm saying is like the state of the land. Yes. The state of the land is wonderful. It's aerated.

It's perfect for farming. You walk around it and you're like, oh, those poopies? Oh, no, it's just aerated. Are those poopies? Would you aerate the lawn? No, I'm with you. I just poopies. That's really weird.

Because they're small. They're just tiny little. I'm with you. I got it. They look like. poops. 100% clear.

I'm going to send you another poop emojis. I want to just to illustrate welcome to the poop cast. Oh my God.

All right. So here's what's happening. So Spotify. So YouTube is disruptive because it's free. It's so popular.

And they have this deal with Vivo. So that's like a whole bundle of things. I'm going to send a seashell. Spotify is disrupting. They were

first to streaming. They have the free service people like. They're the most well known. They're growing. In European countries,

they're enormous. in some European countries that have like massive piracy, they are the music industry, right? And so in the United States, it's not yet true. And then you've got all these forces arrayed in the music business, like looking at this and saying, how do we fix it and make sure we get money out of the situation? So you have artists like Taylor Swift being like screw Spotify. You've got to buy my record from Apple. You've got Jay Z being like screw Spotify. I'm starting title on my own.

Well, he bought it. But he started, the title was called, right? Like, there was a Spiro and they named it and they rebranded it and they relaunched it. Like title is a new thing now because of Jay-Z. Right. And then you've got Apple with Dr. Like, it's Dr. Dre versus Jay-Z. It's like a crazy phenomenon. Apple's got Jimmy Iveen and Dr. Dre saying we're beats.

Like what we offer is human curation, what we offer is all this stuff. And we have these industry relationships. And we're the ones who are going to go in and fix the. economics of streaming. And so they're out there. We know that they're out there trying to get deals for the streaming service. We've, there's the other reporting, which is the Wall Street Journal says they're out there trying to get deals and they don't have the deals yet. There's our reporting saying they're being, you know, they're Apple, they're hyper competitive. Yeah. So they're out there in the market saying, do these deals with us, your iTunes sales, your download purchase sales,

those deals might be expiring. If you want favorable terms on your download sales, which we We're the biggest player in the market. You got to play ball with us on the streaming deals. There's like definitely an FTC investigation. We reported it. Bloomberg reported it. It's out there in the mix. And you just see, like just totally see all of these forces arrayed around who's going to get paid when people listen to music.

And what is absolutely true is that Apple controls this massive platform. Yep. And they, one way or another will be the gatekeeper to iOS users on music, right? This is kind of like indicative of Apple's business practices. They've always sought to fort the competition or, you know, in their, but their own segment where they haven't had mass market and they can't be deemed anti-competitive. Whereas this, they can be deemed. We don't know. That's like, how do you slice the market?

And that's like, you know, as Mike is doing is reporting, a thing that we keep on talking about is like, is like, Apple doesn't have overwhelming smart phone market share. But if you look at a different slice, that's Android. Just on the music side, surely they have a good percentage of that, right? Of the sales? Yes, right? They own most of the download market.

But that's across desktop and mobile. So, like, you've got to slice the market. You've got to, like, you've got to figure out what market you're talking about and then whether Apple's into it. And so, like, that first argument is about cutting the market into just saying, here are the boundaries to market. And so Micah's first story was just revealing there's FTC or DOJ investigation. And, you know, we're talking to a lot of people.

A lot of people are mad. And then the next story, which I think is super fascinating, is the other services are really super mad about the app store pricing. So when you've got a paid app in the store, Apple takes 30% no matter what. Yeah, they take 30% of your subscription costs. Right. Right. So if you're Spotify or your title or your already.

if you want to sell premium in the store, you've got to either eat Apple's 30% cut, which they can't afford to do. Which they can't afford to do yet. Or you've got to raise your price for iOS users above. Yep. Microsoft poke the bear with that one as well. So they tested it with OneDrive with Apple,

and then they were trying to talk around some sort of deal with Office, and hence why Office kind of didn't come as quick as. Right. Yeah, because they were trying to test some sort of backdoor. deal with them or whatever. So then Apple's at $8 or $9 and then Spotify's at 12, only because Apple gets the money. Right. And like that pricing model, yeah, Apple needs some money for like how to paying to run the store.

But we all know that that doesn't cost 30% anymore for them, I don't think, to run the app store. Who knows? But like, but like the reason, but it's about leverage because we also know on the Apple TV, there are a lot of channels that are not paying that 30%. Do we know that? Yeah, Peter Kafka reported it. That the margins were different on the Apple TV for subscription service. Interesting.

They were. They will be there, when they, to get them to develop an app for Apple TV. Like, HBO is definitely not paying Apple 30% for now. That's fascinating. Yeah. And so, but there's, but Apple has way more leverage in the music industry. I mean, it could be other reasons, but that's my guess. Fundamentally, that's the economics of it.

Yeah. I mean. But the 30% thing comes in on. sort of the phone side more than anything. And that's the side where they don't have you know, dominance or control over the market. Whereas on the iTunes side, they do. So right.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a 15% fee for TV networks on Apple TV. Yeah, I mean, I just like, here's what I see happening, right? Like, I am personally like super eager for Apple to do beats right.

Like, my music situation today is so crappy. Why? It just is. Like I just I'm like wistful for 2008. I'm wistful for RDI on when all my friends were using the same service. No, like that's whatever. I'm like

wistful for like that you know there's that one moment you had when you had like a dumb phone and an iPod. Yeah and you were good at music that one moment. Yeah, I was good at music. I was like my this is my iPod. It's full of music. I'm like I spent a lot of time my iTunes like curating my playlist and buying music and ripping

CDs and like it all worked in this place. Here it is. Here's my music. Like it's it all made sense. And then the iPhone came out and now iTunes is like this like garbage fire. Yeah, no one uses iTunes. Just use Spotify. So then I switched. Normals use iTunes.

Normals use iTunes and I switch to Spotify. Spotify doesn't have all the music. So like What music? Like seriously like I don't know last year this. Beyonce came record came out and like I had to buy it in iTunes and like the Taylor Swift record came out and I had to buy it. So now I've got like now my iTunes is a bunch of like punk rock records from the like 80s a bunch of like new wave

records a bunch of like 2000s era pop music that I like downloaded then and then like Beyonce and Taylor Swift it's a mess you just imported to Spotify but you don't get it on mobile it doesn't work no it doesn't work what no Spotify is broken as hell not right close no way do you know how many how many imported MP3s I have like my friends bands from like home and stuff that It just breaks to again. It breaks. It plays nothing. I haven't ever had experience like that.

I'm just saying all that. I've had good luck with Google Play. He's uploading stuff. And then Spotify stuff comes and goes. Like, Jay Z is just like, you know what? I don't want my record on Spotify anymore and it's gone. Yep.

Right? Like, all of that's a mess. And Spotify's UI is a mess. Their mobile app is a garbage. Like, I disagree. It's not a good. You think Spotify's mobile app is good.

It's fine. Hype check the Spotify mobile app. It's fine. It's totally. I think everything is fine. I use it twice a day every single day. I use it. One to ten,

World of No Sevens. It's an eight. You think Spotify's mobile app is an eight? Yes. Are you crazy? I use it. That's like saying you, I saw Avengers too and my body didn't get harmed.

Like, let me, let me just put, like, Google's music app on iOS is better than Spotify. Spotify. But you can't just like use it. Like,

I get it. It's an app that runs on your phone. Yeah, you have like your music. Then you have playlists. You are legitimate. I'm not saying that app is an 8. Yeah, it's really smooth.

It works. It's got good design elements. It used to suck. It's gotten much better over the years. But I'm asking you're on an airplane. Yeah. How do you find a list of all the local music on your phone? Where does that live?

I don't have local music. So you're just not listing the music on a plane. I have local music. I have a few playlists that I've downloaded that I want on the subway specifically. But you want to do the thing. So then I prepare. When I prepare. So you prepare.

Yeah, you just, you hit the offline, or you hit the offline button and it downloads all of the music to your phone. But it just lists all your playlists, even if they're offline or not. But you can't just look at what here's all the music that's on my phone right now. How do you do that? This is the most jankiest thing about Spotify on the highways. You need to switch to Google Play music because it has everything you want. And it has really good songs and recommendations. Except a good interface.

Yeah, no, it's fine. It's good. I've gone into flight mode. Oh, my God. We're doing this. Yeah. And if you go into flight mode. mode and then you go into offline mode on Spotify.

Call their... I was... Yeah, whatever. Flight mode. I've got to jam. He's like, I'm leaving my family behind. I'm telling you. I'm telling you, you should...

You want... I know all about... Wait, Tom. I'm in offline mode. Yeah. And then I go into Spotify. Yeah. And I get this janky pop-up, which says... Turn off airplane mode. Yeah, no, that's across... Now, wait, but...

So interrupt the American accent. Say it like a cowboy. No, it's like, turn off airplane mode or use Wi-Fi to action. Data. Why don't you wrap that? That's gold coming to ears. I told you it's offline mode. And it pops up every time you go back into it.

I'm just, I'm, everything is a mess. I will say somebody, what's it called? Radiant Players, the native Mac app for Google Play Music. There's, I've thought about making this.

I've thought about it. There are plenty of people that will agree with me that Spotify is perfectly fine for our needs. Spotify is good for us. Maybe, maybe you're just, you know, getting a little.

It's like a subsistence level. Yes, Spotify is the thin, gruel of music apps. It keeps you alive. It's there. Yeah. It's not good. What is not good about it? The thing I just said, you get on an airplane. You want to see all of your offline music. That is like, I just want to be able to look at my music. I hate it so much when you fight. No, we're not fighting. It's on your fight. That's the thing that you do. No, you're the only person that does that. Are you kidding me? I really think you're the only thing. I just want to like, I just want to listen to something. What's on here? It's like, it's like the idea of your click.

wheel iPod where you go into just music and then you just have like an endless revolutionize the music industry. It was a good idea. Look, I manage my music with playlists. You manage your music by like lightning a fat blunt and like going in random mode. Like I don't know what you do. Just like,

look, I think we can all agree that Sam needs to staff Nelai's lawn. I'm just saying. It's just not, anyway, I'm excited. The point I was to make it. Oh, yeah, right here, right here, playlists. You're on a playlist and you go to local files, boom, Don. Oh, but you're saying the ones that you synced offline.

Yes. I don't know. Yes. Who cares? You can't. I just want that classic view back. The artist albums, here's what's here view. And Spotify is too dumb to give it to you.

And they're too dumb to reconcile the things you've synced to what's on your playlist. It's bad. Like underneath all of that, what you think is good design is a rat's nest of hacks and bullshit. Oh my goodness. It's just so obviously true. All right. Anyway, my point was Apple's going to fix it.

Apple's going to fix it all. I am generally excited for Apple's like situation, right? For like beats to come in, for them to roll it in iTunes, for a glorious return to the past. We just got schooled by Chris Welch writer at the verge.com. Offline mode. No, that's not. That's turning on offline mode. It doesn't tell you which songs are singed.

Only be it you made available for offline listening. playable. It'll just filter everything off. You'll show you who you'll play this. No, but where they, they, they, Neely specifically wants all of the music that you synced offline in one list. This happens to me like all the time. But like, what kind of a heighter are you that

you need that? Wait, what I mean? It's like, yo, let me look at all of my music at once, bro. What I want is to go to the list of 8,000 songs. No. No, sort by artists. People, they used to sell 160 gig iPons because people like that. No, but you, I have a warrant.

CDs in my Who Who is goes into view all mode You that's I Patel view all mode Fucking population of one Gaze upon my empire Like

Yeah Also if I'm in offline mode Don't show me music I can't play That's just me Yeah that's what it does I gotta read another thing Yes

That was a fun conversation I like this one Because you love being wrong That's just You're gonna Oh Ha ha ha ha ha Wait do this

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Do your thing, bro? Do it. Here's what I'm worried about. I think Apple will integrate streaming and purchases in a way that makes, like, that I am excited about, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I think that this garbage. Okay, I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm with you. Wait, wait, wait, now I finish with the law. Huh? Keep on.

No, I'm saying, like, I'm excited. I think that's a thing that I want, right? where I'm like, I'm streaming a bunch of stuff. I'm like sampling, I'm snacking. I'm like looking at stuff. It'll be native. And then I just like, I'm like, you know, I really like this record. I want to pay the artist.

Like, I want to buy it. Or, you know, whatever record comes out and like, it's not available for streaming yet, but you can get it and I can push it. And it's all integrated into my library. All of that sounds great to me. Sure. Of all the companies out there, like Apple has sort of the most intelligence about how to make that a good experience. Like top to bottom, right?

They've done iTunes. They've got the people. already. I love the idea of like beats curation in the radio. All of this is great. What I fear is that Apple is going to get too cocky. They're going to be too aggressive. They're going to be too anti-competitive.

And they're going to come out of it with like basically a bad deal. Yes. Like how so? Like they'll fight with titles so hard that they won't get titles artists. Right. Right. Would that mean they will the artists that are on title will pull from...

Not the titles artists, but you know. Right. But like like Jay-Z and Beyonce and whoever else is on there, will they all remove themselves from iTunes then? Or will iTunes even exist? Or they won't be part of the streaming or sales. So you're saying you don't want them to screw up the deals because what matters is the music at the end of the day. Yeah. Right. It's all about the music, man.

Yeah, baby. No matter how you're streaming it, no matter what jank-ass playlist system you use. True fact. Tonight's Vergecast will be played out by John Mayer after we're done. That'd be great. That's great. You know, he's one of the best artists. of our lifetime. I'm surprised that you genuinely think Apple's gonna do this well. They did it well. There was a time when they were the best,

like the undisputed best at this. But they don't do web services well at all. Mm, that's true. Yeah, pretty good at that. Hold on, hold on, hold on. I personally be a little bit worried about it. I mean, I just, I want them to do it well. One small anecdote.

Yeah. This hoopla around the fact that, and this is not me shilling for Apple, legitimately, I added a new phone number. I got an I message from a new phone number. phone number on my MacBook. I added that phone number to my contacts on my MacBook. On my Apple Watch, it instantly updated the contact on my Apple Watch and did the same thing on my phone. That is pretty damn impressive to me. I had to touch nothing on my iPhone. Didn't even have to go

into my iPhone. Out of the contact on the computer showed up on the phone. Dude, that's table stakes. Yeah. It's not. It's not. Also, like, like, notes, you have it synced with I cloud. Table stakes. Dude, this is like I updated a link in my browser bookmark. and Chrome fixed it. No, but why is Apple bad at... But you've been into doing to do that in corporate environments for like 10, 15 years. Yeah. It's just, no, but you could do...

No, but there's... Sam, are you telling us that you're impressed by contact syncing, and that's why Apple's music service is going to be good? I just... What is everyone says Apple's bad at online services? Apple is bad at online. Have you loaded iTunes? No, I don't use iTunes. Yeah, because it's a bad online web service.

It's... it's like an app to buy music on. What else? The next example, I don't use iTunes. Mobile me. Because it's bad. Mobile me,

that's old. That's dead. Like cloud? I don't exactly. Do you use I cloud drive? Do you store all your files in I cloud drive? No. Why not?

I use an external hard drive. Do you use Dropbox? I don't use Dropbox. Every week's tan takes an external hard drive. He puts it on a drone and he flies it to the sky. It's in the cloud. It's in the cloud, mommy. All right.

We got to, we got to like. Put a bow. I'm just saying, Sam, I hear, like, they're getting better

at these clouds services. Yes, they are. They are not bad. But like, Google is the undisputed leader of like great cloud services. Sure.

Right. So like Google now versus Siri. Oh, there's no contest there. But that's like, that's a hundred percent like a cloud service. Like you build a data center. There's a lot of intelligence in it.

You're doing all this. Like Apple's not great at that. Now iTunes and the app store are like good cloud services. Like the app stores a, reasonably good cloud service. Yeah. But really all it does is like pipe data to you. Sure.

Yeah. It doesn't do any sort of computational. Right. No cloud processing really in the background. Let's do, Deere, you got to pick one or two. We got to do Tesla in the next 10 or, uh, um. Well, we should talk about Tesla. Yeah, we should.

Right. This is a big deal. So, um, did you guys watch the keynote? The, the presentation or whatever? I actually didn't get a chance. It was, it was a lot of it was a lot of it was a lot. It was Elon Musk getting up and like just like giving like a short 20 minute talk about like why he thinks that putting a battery in your garage is a good idea. And he was very nervous and laughing because kind of like a guy.

And there were a lot of idiots in the audience shouting stuff. Yeah. And he was like he dealt with the people going. Oh, I love you. Yeah. Pretty well. He was good. Yeah.

And then, you know, like it's like a legitimately exciting idea. It's you can get a seven or 10 kilowatt hour battery in your house. you hook it up to some solar panels. You're leasing both so you don't have to outlay a bunch of money to start with. And then the sun charges up the battery and then you use the battery. And then you can eventually go off grid or use less of the grid. Right. So that's the concept.

And he's like laid it out very clear. And he's like actually turns out that like if you just make enough batteries, we can solve a lot of our energy problems. We just need to make more batteries. Yeah. Give us batteries the size of like he like showed this thing that was like basically a little bit bigger than the Oklahoma panhandle, the little thing, Mokalama.

Like, you make that many batteries. That's a lot of batteries, but he's like, no, it's just one little pixel, but that's a lot of batteries. You make that many batteries to, like, solve energy. That's just done. Yeah. No, it was that many solar panels and then, like, however many battery. I forget the thing.

Anyway, it was a pretty good, it was a pretty good little presentation he gave. T.C. said it was the best one ever. Yeah, I don't know if it's the best one ever. That's what he said. It was pretty good. But so the question then is, like, you know, it's like, it's a, he makes a logical. case, but at the end of the day, the batteries are like $3,500, $5,000, depending on what size you get.

The solar city one, you can only get the seven or the ten, and then that means that you shouldn't actually recharge it that much. And really, the economics are best for you to just sell your excess electricity back to the grid anyway. And so, like, the battery isn't really that useful. But also, none of this stuff works really is really economically viable unless you're in, like, Hawaii or California, Arizona right now. And then also, you know, like, it's like there's a lot of stuff. But, but they do have, they're doing it.

They do have lots of big battery centers that they're selling to corporations, which where the economics do make a bit more sense. But why do you want a battery in your house? So it's instead of a generator. And it's so you don't have to, you get free electricity. Yeah, you don't have to burn gas. You have a solar panel. There's a solar panels.

Charges the battery. Mm-hmm. And then the battery, you use the battery when you need to. Can you donate stuff back to the grid? And you can donate stuff back to the grid, but the idea is the battery gets charged from the solar panels. Can you use that instead of like a gas burner or to heat your house or to power your television? Yeah, you can use it to do all that. Okay.

But you got to, you know, you need to measure. You have to route it properly and have all the infrastructure. Yeah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So like, I think like the truth is that, I don't know this, but my theory is basically, look, for most homeowners. So the vast majority of homeowners is like not a good purchase. But, like, there are people who are going to buy it anyway because it's cool and because they, like, living in the future and they like the idea of solar panels and they want to see. And from that perspective, releasing this product instead of to be like, yo, we're selling batteries to corporations was a really smart move. The question is, can they get enough other companies to follow along with them, making a ton of batteries to start changing the economics of powering your house?

Right. And I just think like They They have to prove that like I mean this only works if you have enough sun and you have solar and you're feeding back into the grid Right But no so the deal is that you don't really need the grid If your battery set up is good enough and if you've got enough sun

So like you can set up a fully functioning households with one of these batteries in a solar panel in I don't know Sub-Saharan Africa and you don't need the grid Right But the solar panels need to be more effective. The batteries need to be more effective. They need to be bigger. They need to be cheaper. Like that vision of how power and electricity works, like where the grid becomes less and less important.

It makes sense if you buy into it. But there's a whole bunch of preconditions to get there. So how is it different to any solar panel solutions as they exist today, apart from it's got a Tesla? Well, solar panel solutions as they exist today, you charge off them and you feed them back into the grid. but you're not in charge of storing that electricity by and large at the scale that this stores it. So the solar panel, you'll use it, and then, like, you know, two days later, it's dark out. You're like, where is my electricity? Well, with this, the idea is that the battery would get you through the walls.

All right. And so this is a UPS, right? Yeah, but, like, I mean, I assume. I don't know. But, like, it's economically not really viable for a household. people are probably going to be freaking out of me right now. The amount of like crazy math I've seen around these batteries is like crazy. It's crazy.

Like there's you have to, if you are in a perfect world and you've got like a great solar panel and you're like a sunny country. Yeah. There's like a whole place like Germany is like a sunny enough country that this would like work for you. Yeah. But so the model is so interesting that it's paired with Solar City. Like Solar City I think is the most interesting company around right now. well, they're up there because they went from like the story of solar panels in America went from like, you know, Obama and so Cylindra was it? Oh my God.

And like, and like it's an abysmal failure. And all of a sudden like this one company is like, you know, it's actually not that bad. We're going to start leasing them and we'll just see how it goes. And like they're, it's like super popular. And now they're, you know, they're going to piggyback off that and do batteries. I don't know. We'll see. I think that realistically like a bunch of like super.

fans and like crazy fun people that love nerdy things will buy them and that'll hopefully that the idea is that'll run a hype cycle. I think for the majority. Hype check hype cycle. I think the biggest block is for like, I don't know what it's like in US being in the UK and like our generation is like owning your own house is like almost unachievable unless you're not in a major city. Right.

So it's like when what happens when landlords are going to steal these things and they're never going to do that because it's just an extra expense, right? Right. And they particularly passed that expense on to you. Yeah. I know, someone just tweeted me that this is yet another 1.0 product. I was just going to say that. Oh, that's a really good point. I was just going to say that.

We're just at this end. Like, it's, it's, it's crazy. It's like, it's a renaissance. It really is. A renaissance of 1.0's. Yeah. There's so many 1.0 products. You should write something about this.

Everyone can sort of see what the future is going to be, but people are putting it out now because they can put it out now. Yeah. Right. It's interesting. Yeah. It's kind of like the 1.0issance. 1.0s. It's something.

Do you want to do five minutes? We're 15 over. You want to do two minutes on I. O and then we can do close up. The schedule got released. In the schedule, Google screwed up and put Android M in it. I mean,

that's not a surprise. Marzapam. They've got a license M&M. Are you kidding me? Yeah. They did it with Kit Katz. How do you not license M&Ms for Android M? Because meringue is better.

No. Also, it's usually lemon meringue, right? Yeah. That's what you want. So maybe it's a very small upgrade from L. It's just a little bit of stuff on top of L. They announced it was Android L.

last year. Yeah. Yeah. They didn't announce lollipop until later in the year last year. Right. Yeah. So they're just going to say Android M. They might announce Android M.

Sorry. What's a dull iteration? Go outside. Bye. There's going to be a new spotlight story that is actually. even Levy wrote a story about this last November. It's live action. So, you know, Spotlight story?

Like, you put your camera on and you see the little mouse jumping around, whatever. They're doing that with a live action chase scene with a woman in a race car and a helicopter and whatever, like actual live action. Directed by the Fast and Furious director, Jason Lynn. Justin Lynn. Justin Lynn. That's what I said. You said Jason. No, I didn't.

Sure. Okay. He said Jason. Get out. I thought you left. Just going to play you Spotify out. Go. Go to some place where there's no Wi-Fi and try to find some goddamn songs.

I don't know what else happening. There's like some other developer stuff. Someone just, by the way, tweeted at me that you can like click and do a menu and filter all offline songs when you're in that artist, that music view. But you know what that doesn't show you? What? Songs you've downloaded on the playlist because Spotify is garbage. I use it. I pay for it.

It's the one I use the most because everything else is a little bit crappier. That's my endorsement. I disagree. If Spotify ever buys an ad. on this show. That's what I'm going to read. That's crappy. All right. Take us through the engagement zone. I just wanted, we should just tell the people listening to this.

Google I.O. May 28th, 1230 Eastern. Dieter, you're going. Oh, yeah. We're going to live blog the hell out of that thing. Yeah, that's be fun. Google's live blog or WDC. It's two and a half hours long. I.O. is one of my favorite events of the year. It's awesome.

There's so much news that happens. Okay, social stuff. Snapchat, do it. If you watch Snapchat this. If you watched Snapchat this week, Sean wrote about this self-driving, like, truck. A big rig. A big rig. And he was at the Hoover Dam, and he snapped, and it was an awesome story.

I hope you got to see that. It's gone now. You should add us on Snapchat, The Real Verge. Type it in and find us snap every day. There's good stuff there. And you should also find us on Periscope. We are at Verge on Periscope. it ties into Twitter really well

you should also turn on notifications because when we broadcast it's always a good time back to you Nelai I will say that we're getting to a place we just brought on our third social media person Caitlin who's upstairs yeah it's her first vergecast mentioned we'll put her on hype seat one of these things

but we're getting a place where like our non like YouTube non regular video stuff on Snapchat and Periscope platform video yeah it's a it's They're all on the platform. I mean, our like modern,

our like post modern video stuff. Our one point oh future. Our one point. Our like next generation of video stuff that we do. It's all in beta. Yeah. Like this is like the beta of a periscope. So some of the periscope stuff

we're thinking about doing is crazy. So Sam is going to be doing a lot more video stuff on these like other crazy. I get, I get that the offline view is available in all the views, but there's no one. There's no catch all.

There's no catch all. It wouldn't surprise me. It wouldn't surprise me. Google play music. It wouldn't surprise me if Spotify had an update like next week with this. That would be amazing. It would be. Winham.

May 20th. Just to address. Sam's doing cool stuff on Periscope and Twitter and Snapchat. Yeah. Like it's that stuff to me is very exciting. We're going to be pushing on it. So that is actually what I want people to do. By the way, we're like 50 reviews away from a thousand

five-star reviews in iTunes. Wow. It's getting closer, so I'd appreciate a little push to get to a thousand five-star reviews. So please go on iTunes, hit us with the five stars. What's the question? Tell us what you want to see on Periscope and Snapchat. Like, go on those things and let us know how we're doing, what you're interested in. Tell us, you can tell me why Spotify is great.

It's from the very Spotify employees that are listening, angrily tweeting me right now. And then also check out What's Tech with Chris Plant. That show is awesome lately. the line here says it's about the singularity which has been the line on this sheet for like easily four weeks now. Chris has been talking about the singularity for a lot. The last one's about the Marvel Coppic universe.

Oh God. The dystopian feeling of it. The next one is I'm murdering myself. So check out what's that I could give that some good feels as well. I am reckless. Thomas Tom Morin. Sam is Sam Schaeffer. Dieter is backlon on Twitter.

Follow us all. Follow us all. Follow the verge. Do some good stuff. Thank you so much to Tripcase. Go to Tripcase.com slash vergecast. Check it out today. And again, the show today was brought to you by Linda.com. Your Linda.com membership gives you unlimited access to training on hundreds of topics, all for one flat rate. If you're looking to be an industry expert, you're passionate about a hobby, you just want to learn something new.

Please visit Linda.com slash vergecast. Sign up for a free 10-day trial. That is L-Y-N-D-A.com slash verge cast. That is today's show. I think it was a good one. No thanks to Tom. I feel great. Tom, Tom, say goodbye in an American accent.

Goodbye. Oh, my God. Rock and roll. Paul. I'm gonna.