 Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of August 27, 2012. I'm Josh Dupolsky. I'm Paul Miller. How many live to tell? And we're back. We're back and we have no microphones. We have microphones. Why are you looking at me? Hold on a second. I was down here. You look at me like, I'm not sure you're Paul Miller. We're back and we're of course here to talk about the week in technology culture. That's why. And what a week. By the way, we have somebody on the line. Oh, we have somebody on the line. Vlad Savov. Can you not say hello? Hello. I thought, oh, there he is. There he is. Look at him. So pretty. Wow. That is handsome. By the way, I just want to say that I just saw a video of Vlad. He was in yesterday's 90 seconds on the Verge and he is like 20 pounds lighter than in that video. That's not a video. Oh, the muscle is still here. All the important stuff is still here, guys. Don't worry about it. You still have butt, correct? I'm sorry? Your buttocks are still in place. That is very much accurate. We can now confirm Vlad Savov's buttocks remain in exactly the same location and are part of his body. Wow. That's breaking. High priority. That location will be in Berlin in Germany. But now his buttocks are in Berlin with the other parts of his body, not by themselves. They're not just out there at a disco. This is the worst. Why? You don't like this? I don't know. You seem to be enjoying yourself. Absolute worst. I'm going to go get some Diet Coke. Great. We have a sponsor this week, don't we? I thought I was told. Who should we be sponsored by? Who are we sponsored by? Are we sponsored by Diet Coke? I've been dying for Diet Coke sponsorship. We could do one of those where I sell out and I get my free Diet Coke for us to buy. I want to be sponsored by like a chamber of commerce. Really like a broad-reaching, small bit, job creators. Wait, who? We could go with like the... Job creators. Like the Waukesha Better Business Bureau. Like Walmart. No, Walmart's not a small business. What? I'm saying a number of small businesses that have banded together to lobby for... The Kenosha Rotaries. No, that's a club. You're talking about like a... A chamber of commerce. Chamber of commerce. Better Business Bureau. That's the first thing I was thinking. Well, actually, if you want to get in touch with some small business owners, I know some people in... I'm just saying like the Rotary Club in my hometown sponsors... Anyhow, we're here to discuss a week in technology culture and what a week it's been. We'll just cut that. I think... We'll just edit that right in so it's seamless. Neelay, you've got a list of topics. Oh, wait, should we address... Oh, Vlad's here. And Vlad is here. Vlad's in Berlin. Yeah. Are you okay? And his butt. And his butt. Vlad is in Berlin at IFA covering... He's covering IFA and we have the whole crew there. Why don't we just jump right into IFA? Whatever you want to do. What do you want to talk about? Vlad, who's with you? Why don't you just go through? Didn't we want... Weren't we... Did you want to address the controversy? This is weird with that microphone. Did you want to address the controversy that just exploded on the internet? Which one? That Gruber questioned our... I love talking about Gruber on The Verge. No, Gruber... He questioned our integrity for not pointing out that a Samsung laptop looked like that. Samsung... Vlad, I just called you Samsung. Well, he's being paid by them, so might as well... Vlad, let me ask you a question. Have you seen the Samsung Series 5 and or Samsung Series 7 slates in person? In person, no. Okay. Well, you're not... What good are you? You're really not any use at all. Look, so here's the situation. My parents went away on a week's vacation. They left the keys to their brand new Porsche. I don't know if that's... Is that just a video for parents to understand? You've never heard parents just don't understand? No. Yeah, okay. Well, you're never going to because you're off the internet. My parents were actually really understanding. Wait, I have a question for our readers. Is there a way for Paul to hear parents just don't understand without using the internet in 2012? Yeah, if we had a CD of it and a CD player. Does anybody have a single? What's the album? If somebody burned a CD in there and gave it to you to play on your computer, we could listen to it. It's Deena Jazz and Jeff and the Fresh Prince. They'd have to get it off the internet. Anyway, look. Let's just keep moving. So look, here's what... I'm going to give you a little bit of a situation. Can we just... I just wanted this to be like a one second mention. Yeah. Why can't you just say... Well, Vlad's at IFA, so this is a good lead into IFA. Samsung put out a bunch of products at IFA yesterday. Samsung and Sony both had keynotes yesterday. Big keynotes. Actually, surprisingly big announcements for... Huge suites of products for Samsung....what I was expecting. We'll get into it in more detail. But Samsung also, they announced as part of it new Windows 8 products, which are called the Ativ in Europe, which is a terrible name. Easy to say, easy to spell. Yeah. Looks good. It sounds like a yogurt. I don't know what the problem is with that. Oh, man. I would definitely eat some blueberry Ativ. I think it sounds like a yogurt. Probiotic? I think it sounds like a yogurt because there's a yogurt with a... Called Activia. Activia, which is most of the same letters in basically the same arrangement. Most of the same nutrients. And it also looks like a MacBook Air. Right. So this is the deal. The Series 5 in particular looks like kind of has an 11-inch Air vibe. The keyboard design admittedly is like shamelessly, it's a chiclet keyboard. As by the way, I think it's worth saying that many, many, many, many keyboards... They all trended their way towards this....many, many keyboards look like the MacBook Air. But so it's a... Hold on a second. I have a question here. Yeah. Did we actually cover the Series 5 and Series 7? Were they actually announced here at IFA? They were announced as the Ativ at IFA. Oh. We have coverage of them on the website. We have coverage of them. Which is where we're leading towards this point of controversy. So wait, the Ativ is a rebrand of those laptops? Vlad, are you in Germany right now? Have you seen the news? Yes. This is the point. Yes. It is. It's kind of an important point to make. That's answer. In Europe, they're called the Ativ, whatever they're called. In the United States at the moment, they're called the Series 5 and Series 7. I strongly believe that when these products actually come out in the United States, that they will be called the Ativ because Samsung is making a big push for a universal brand. All right. So that's where we're at. I just want to get to this... Such a minor... I had a minor joke to make, then I wanted to move on and I unfortunately have now... Well, we're right in the middle. We're so far down the rabbit hole. You have to hear what Gruber said before I can... Right. So anyway, so here's some pictures on the website of these things. I think if you look at them from a distance, they do resemble a MacBook Air, although you get closer to different... They look similar, yeah. They're silver laptops with black keys. They look like a MacBook Air. So Gruber, serious question for The Verge. How do you write an article about these things without mentioning that the industrial design is a blatant rip of the MacBook Air? Who has less integrity, Samsung for quote unquote designing these or The Verge for pretending it's legitimate, which implies that we're somehow complicit? And I have to say, I question our integrity as well, having seen this blatant disregard for calling out Samsung for their ripped off design. If only we'd spent like a month or something... It wasn't worth it.... deeply talking about whether or not Samsung copied design too much. I feel like they haven't talked about it or not. We have a large document at The Verge. I don't know if everybody knows this. It's a PDF we pass around. Side by side comparisons. It's Samsung's failures of integrity next to ours. And we're trying to see if we... And our numbers just went way up. We don't just copy... We try to tweak, but sometimes when you're trying to fail at integrity, there's only one way to fail at integrity. I like Gruber. I think he's a great guy, very funny. But I think it's hilarious that now it's going to be a thing like because Apple won a case about them ripping off Apple that every time they rip off Apple, we're going to have to hear about it. Guess what? HP is ripping off Apple too. When's Apple going to bring the case against their blatant MacBook? By the way, which we mentioned and have talked about in... All these laptops look like MacBook Airs for like three years. That's the thing. That's why there's no point in saying it. Look at the line of Ultrabooks that just came out. All these are the last year of Ultrabooks. There's some of them, if you put them in a lineup with Air, it would be... This is Joanna Stern saying for $200 more you can get a MacBook Air for six months in a row. Right. It's just such a weird thing. Anyway, so Vlad, have you seen the Ativ? Which I... Well, this is the point I was going to raise earlier. First of all, the very idea that Samsung would launch a Series 5 and a Series 7 and that would basically slip under my radar is not evidence of me slacking on the job. It's just evidence of Samsung being just so driven to just saturate us as human beings with information and products, which they struggle to differentiate amongst themselves. So the Ativ is what you covered and the Series 5 and Series 7 slates. There's a bunch of Ativs. There's the Ativ tab, which is Windows RT based and Snapdragon S4 ARM based. While I was taking pictures of that, then I saw a Windows tablet in a dock and I thought, wow, it has a dock. I need to go and take pictures of it. I closed it up and I saw vents on the outside. It turned out to be an Intel based. That's the Ativ Smart PC Pro. And then it turns out there's also the Ativ Smart PC, which is Atom based. And it's just over saturation. Ultimately, if Samsung wants to copy Apple in any respect, I really think they should copy the narrow product line. That's great. I agree with you. But the other thing is that Microsoft isn't helping by having, you know, if Samsung wants to sell Windows 8, they'd have to do an RT and they have to do a Pro. So you have to make double the amount of products. Well, not double, but you've got to add some extra products to the mix. So anyhow, Gruber's right. Our integrity is down the toilet. But let's, I mean, no question, I don't have any respect left for anybody, including myself at The Verge. Let's talk about the things that are... Yeah, Vlad, why don't you take us through yesterday? Let's talk about IFA, which in case you don't know, if you've just joined the technology world, and you don't know, IFA is a big trade show. It's kind of like CES for Europe. And they announced a lot of, there was a lot of stuff yesterday. Let's go through some of the stuff. Vlad, you were there. What did you see? What did you like? Share with us. Let's all share together. I mean, the first thing to say about yesterday is that it wasn't even day one at IFA. It was day minus two. I mean, IFA opens up tomorrow. So most of our venturing through the halls around here, just to give you a flavor of what the show is like, is it's kind of like a movie back lot. You have these massive halls. They have numbers on them. And nothing is fully constructed. But it was still a massive day yesterday because Sony and Samsung just dominated the life of every single tech journalist in the city. They just owned us basically from breakfast until dinner. Samsung introduced every single conceivable device that you could think of. That's right. Actually, on that mobile show, we were discussing the idea of a Samsung Android camera. And I was actually saying that would make a lot of sense because camera software generally is really dumb. Apart from doing the automated things, which are sophisticated, it tends to be really dumb and based in the text-based menus and horrible, et cetera, written by people who don't speak native English. So sticking Android on that made a lot of sense. And Samsung went and did it. They did the Galaxy camera, which to me is probably one of the biggest highlights. And so, sorry, I just had to get this out. My new Samsung Series 5. My Samsung Ativ. So take us through, like run through the Samsung stuff. What did they announce? I mean, obviously, we have it all on the site. I just kind of want to go through and get your reaction on them. So the first thing we saw yesterday, was it announced with the Galaxy Note 2? They did announce that, right, on stage? But we had a leak of it. So obviously, I know what the Galaxy Note is. What is new about the Galaxy Note 2? What is new, what is new about the Galaxy Note? Run us through that. Well, the original Galaxy Note had a 1280 by 800 resolution screen. It also has a 1280 by 720 resolution. So 16 by 9. It's thinner, it's lighter, it has a quad core processor, 1.6 gigahertz. But really, if you think about it, it's closer to the Galaxy S3 than the Galaxy Note. It's the Galaxy S3, but just enlarged, stretched out, and with a new stylus, a redesigned stylus. It's kind of an evolution. It's not really that. But how is it closer to the Galaxy S3 than the Galaxy Note? It still has like the... It's the software. Yeah. Oh, the software one. Yeah, it's the software. It's also the physical design, the materials used. It really... I mean, you put it in your hand and you think it's a Galaxy S3 stretched out to an even crazier dimension. I mean, I still don't know if it's better. The drawing works really well, right? I'm sorry, what was that? How's the drawing? Paul wants to know how the drawing is on it. Yeah, the stylus works very well. Do you mean the spin? Spin. The S-pen. The S-pen? Is that what you're calling it? I called it the spin. The spin. The S-pen. Yeah. Is it called the S-pen? Yeah, do you want to hear something, Graham? Let's see. Yeah, it's the S-pen. Do you want to hear something, Graham, about Samsung? Here's one of my favorite pieces of news from the past couple days. Samsung for Windows 8, they know people are unhappy about losing the start menu, so they've added it back. No way. It's called the S-Launcher. No way. The S-Launcher. And it looks pretty much like the OS X dock. Wait, what? Well, Dell has an OS X dock as well. Slauncher. Slauncher. Is it the S-Launcher? It's OS X dock in Windows 8? I don't know. I haven't seen Dell stuff. Slauncher. Oh, man. All right, so they do the Galaxy Note 2. Then what? What else do they do? They had the- Oh, yeah, sure. The Windows 8 phone, which I- The Ativ. The Ativ. The Ativ. Galaxy. No, it's not. No Galaxy. Universe. G. Galaxy. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's called the Ativ S. The Ativ S. Yeah, it's the Ativ S. I'm actually quite smug about this. Nokia retweeted me when I asked on Twitter why people are excited about this. The design is uninspired. I'm pretty sure- Okay, and you know what? Groovy should be happy with me on this one. I'm pretty sure there is an HTC Windows phone somewhere in the past, which I couldn't dig up, which has the exact same loudspeaker on the back as the Ativ S from Samsung. Was it the- But I think the reason that people got excited about this is first off, we haven't seen any Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 devices, so that's something. It's got a higher resolution display, bigger screen. It's obviously more powerful. It's like the next generation Windows Phone 8. What's new about the operating system, is there anybody saying? It's Windows Phone 8. Yeah, but what is... I don't know anything about Windows Phone 8 yet. It's got a new home screen with smaller tiles, and it's like a bunch of stuff. I mean, it's so- The kernel is shared with Windows 8. We can't go into this now. It is shared? When was all of this announced? Well, I am surprised you didn't read it in your Wall Street Journal or your New York Times. Yeah, I don't know anything about this at all. I'm just reading about- Or your Bloomberg Businessweek or your Time Magazine or your- The Republican Convention, basically. Oh, God. But it just happened months ago. It did? A month ago. Yeah, okay. We've been talking about this for a long time. It's no big deal. It's no big deal you don't have any idea what's going on. It's just a minor problem. It's not any big- I apologize. We don't have to be concerned. Everyone at home who's tuned in right now, don't be concerned. But this is the first Windows Phone 8 device we've seen. This is the first Windows Phone 8 device we've seen, and I think the excitement is purely like, it's a new Windows Phone device that seems to be like at parity with the current line of- They have no processor, right? They haven't said what it is yet. I'm not sure about that. All right, but- But also, let me say, we technically haven't seen it because Samsung just announced it. They did their whole spiel, but then it was nowhere to be found at IFA. And the reason given was, well, Microsoft still hasn't announced Windows Phone 8 properly, so it hasn't given it its proper launch, which we all know is going to happen together with Nokia on September 5th, and Samsung is just trying to steal some thunder. They're doing an event here on the 5th, September 5th, and they're obviously going to do a big launch of all the devices. Well, maybe The Wall Street Journal will cover that. The Verge will cover it, but The Verge is on the internet, so unfortunately, you'll be incapable of seeing that coverage. But at least you'll be able to watch a soap opera on television. That's fine. So, look, so there was the Galaxy Camera, there was these Ativ products. So it seems like the Galaxy brand is for Android, the Ativ stuff is for Windows. That seems to be where the distinction lies. Is that right? Yes. I guess. Galaxy Cam, Ativ Phone, no, Ativ S? Ativ S is the phone. Galaxy Cam. Galaxy is Android. Galaxy Camera. Ativ is Windows, Galaxy is- Yes, Galaxy is Android, Ativ is Windows. Here's what I understand, how did a company come out with a Galaxy Tab and then not get to Galaxy Cam? They're Galaxy Camera, that's what it's called. Which is a terrible name. But it runs Android, it's very cool, it follows up with Nikon doing an Android camera last week. This is like a thing now. This is officially like- I do not think this helps anybody. The reason why people like a camera mixed with a phone operating system is because that phone operating system is connected to a phone that allows you to put the stuff on the internet. I don't see, unless you have Photoshop and Android for some reason. But even then, I don't like it on my camera. Vlad, so you said the Galaxy Camera is your highlight. What's going on there? Well, it's one of my highlights. I fell in love with Ultrabook, but that's a whole other story. It's very personal. The Galaxy Camera, well, Po says, yes, you can put it on the internet, which in his world is probably irrelevant. But to me, isn't that enough? No, but it's not a phone. This is what I'm saying. It's not a 3G phone, is it? The idea is that like, look- Oh, it is. It is. You can get HSPA Plus up to 21.1. You can put a SIM card in it. Yeah. Which is stupid. But the idea is really that you have a camera, a point and shoot made by Samsung. They make decent point and shoots. Wouldn't it be better if the camera could do more and had a better user interface and could upload your photos automatically when you take pictures? Well, I didn't know about the 3G aspect. That makes more sense. But even without 3G, it's still like, I'd rather have something that just connects to my Wi-Fi network when I get home and uploads all my pictures. And I know the iFi does that, but there are things, there are issues with that. And I think I'd rather have like a native, kind of a more native option to do it. I guess so. Yeah, and I mean, myself personally, I've always felt with these compact cameras, the missing feature and the one I couldn't explain to myself is why don't they all just have Wi-Fi in them? And Sony also just announced the NEX5R, which is essentially just a new NEX series camera like the NEX5 and doesn't change too much, but it has Wi-Fi. And that's a selling point to me. And the Galaxy camera, the difference about it is that everything is pretty high spec, pretty much everything. It's got 4.8 inch LCD display, it's high resolution, there's almost no bezel on the back. And when you're actually holding it up in portrait mode and you forget the fact that it's such a chunky thing compared to most phones, it operates very much like any Android device. And it is smooth and responsive and all of those things. And then you flip it in landscape and you have a really good camera. Can you check your Gmail? It's a compromise, but it's a good compromise. Can you just use regular apps like Gmail? Yeah, and it's Jelly Bean. Yeah. Jelly Bean. But it's like... In your camera. In your camera. Think about it. And it's mostly stock. Instagram. Dude, Instagram. Right. Wrap your head around that idea. So I have a question. If it's cheating to take a real camera picture and put it through Instagram, is it double cheating to have a real camera that runs Instagram? Or is it the future? That's my question. I don't know what you're cheating. It is definitely cheating if you take a DSLR picture and get it into Instagram. Oh, I see what you're saying. That is 100% cheating. You're saying that if I take my D90 or whatever and I go shoot amazing photos with it and then I put them on my phone and upload them to Instagram and put an effect on them. And they look incredible. Obviously, it's cheating. Super cheating. I agree that it's cheating. The whole point of Instagram is that you're snapping a photo as it happens and then you've got to throw it up there on the internet. But now you can do that with an Android camera. But now you've got this Android camera. But the Android camera is running Instagram. I don't think that's cheating. I don't think it's cheating. I think the iPhone got money. Let's say the iPhone or Android phone got a much, much better camera, but it's still the phone. It wouldn't be cheating. Would it be cheating? It's winning. What's cheating is when you go from device to device, I think. So that's the line. That's what the police should come. I think the Instagram, I think the police- Hashtag police. I think the police should have the rights to not kick in the door of anybody who takes a photo on a dedicated camera and then transfers it to a phone and uploads it to Instagram. I believe the police, and they should be able to use lethal force, I think, if the person motions for their camera. Or tries to do it like quick. Or tries to delete files from their camera so you don't have any evidence. If there's any sudden motion, I think lethal force is completely acceptable. I don't know. It's just me. That's your rule. It's just me. By the way, I'm pretty sure that's part of the Republican platform, the new platform they have. That's right. Well, I read that in the Wall Street Journal. That's in the Wall Street Journal. Internet freedom and lethal force if someone tries to fake an Instagram photo with a good camera. Fine by me. I'm all straight ticket, straight party ticket on that one. Lethal force. Lethal force. Let's keep going. I'm just wondering like... RNC is on my mind, by the way. It's going to come up. There's no escaping it. I'm going to talk about abortion on this VirgCast. I'm kidding. I'm not. I'm not going to. I did. I mean, it just happened. But that's it. Don't try to engage me in an abortion conversation. So people in the chat are asking how fast the camera can turn on because it runs Android. So I don't know. What do you mean turn on? Well, booting up Android phone is not fast. But I imagine it's always on. That's a good point. Pretty much the power button turns it on and off exactly as a usual Android phone. So it's always on. That is a question, but it's not one that we could answer immediately because Samsung was very quick to say it's not final software. We're going to release this in the fourth quarter of this year. Nikon has basically two operating systems on their Android camera. You boot it up, it's a camera. Turns on, you use the camera. You push the button, it switches into Android. Android's been booting up in the background. Kludgy. Isn't it Kludgy? This is a big argument. I don't think it's Kludgy. Anyway, so then you flip the switch and Android can get all your pictures. K-L-U-D-G-Y? I always say Kludgy, but I hear Kludgy all over the place. No. It's like GIF and GIF. Well, one of them is right. What is everybody saying? I'm wrong? No, you get a lot of Kludgies. Kludgy. Whatever. I'm sorry, that's how we say it in England. My iPad's battery lasts forever because that's not on Wi-Fi. If I have the Bluetooth off, all the radios are off and the screen is off, I can walk away, come back three days later, and instead of being at 100, it's 93%. You could do that with an Android phone. If there's no radios on, but the whole point of this is that you'd have the radios on. Geofences. No, wait, wait, wait. Geofences. That's not an argument. Just put a geographical fence around it made of geography. But if the camera is off, then all the radios, everything is totally asleep. Correct. If you leave it on, then maybe it pops up, looks around every once in a while. You're still when it's on. This idea that there's going to be a... Vlad, are you going to buy a SIM card for your Galaxy camera? In Europe, probably, because you can. Well, that presumes I'll buy a Galaxy camera, which I probably wouldn't do. This is my best of show. Definitely not going to buy this. Yeah, right. How is that best of show if you're not actually... All right. Look, this is Samsung. We should talk... I mean, the one thing we should talk about is they are trying. They said over and over again, Samsung said, we're the one company that can do the whole ecosystem. We're building the phones, we're building the computers. The TV. That's true. They are really... They build every device in the ecosystem. They are the one company that can do the entire ecosystem, except for... Except for building the operating system on any of these phones. Except for software and content. Other than that, they're all set. LG does almost all the same things. Yes. Except for software and content. They almost do. This is what I'm getting at. I want to ask what the situation on the ground there is, because it's like... That definitely sounds like Vlad's at a war zone. All right, Vlad, can you give us an update on what is the situation on the ground? I understand you're currently pinned down in a luxurious hotel near a Berlin convention center. No, let me ask this question. It seems to me like Samsung, they finally realized they need to have an ecosystem. They've pulled out a bunch of products that they've already kind of half announced here and there, gave them some new branding, so they run Windows 8. They gave them a name, and they said, this is an ecosystem. They put an S pen. Stevia. They put the S pen on everything. Stevia. They put Stevia. They said everything has the S pen. Yes. Okay. Everything has the S pen now? Pretty fast. I mean, not the TVs, not the... But that is coming. Not the phone. I guarantee you. Vlad? I'm sorry, not the camera. Not the camera. Not the latest line of S3s. The Windows 8 product has the S pen. Wait, the Windows 8 tablet has the... And the Note 2, which was their big launch there, has the S pen. Windows 8 tablet has the S pen. Yes. The Ativ has a S pen. Okay. I said that word. They're implementing... So is this an ecosystem? Vlad, do you think this is like an actual ecosystem, or are they just sort of crowing about it because now they can't just produce Windows machines? We should slide this back here on the screen. Can we get Vlad on the screen back here? Yeah. Why aren't we doing video with him? No bandwidth. Vlad, what's up? Talk to me. Talk to me about the ecosystem. Sorry. First of all, the better bandwidth is it is a war zone in terms of connectivity. For whatever reason, it's been an absolute nightmare over here. That's a problem. That's weird because... And that's the only bad thing I can say about Berlin, which has been a wonderful city. You love Berlin. I do. I hear it's very cool. I love Berlin like a brother. You wouldn't... You don't want to live there, but you'd hang out with your family for hours. And yet, America is some sort of technological backbone. Okay, so hold on. Let me answer Neil I's question. Yes, please do. That's what I was going to say. Let me try to answer Neil I's question. I think Neil I is spot on that Samsung is aware it needs an ecosystem, but I also feel like Samsung's approach to doing it is like stumbling blind in the dark. They have no idea how to put one together and they're cobbling things together. Just speaking with some of the guys on the Galaxy side of things, the Android side of things, Neil I is spot on. Galaxy means Android. That is straight and clear and straightforward. But within the Galaxy range, Samsung has its own Stratos. So you have the Galaxy devices like the Galaxy 3, which is smart phones and flagships, and then you have the Note platform. That's how they spoke of it, the Note platform, which is the Galaxy Note 10.1, which Neil I loved, the Galaxy Note 2, and whatever else gets a little span to keep with your nomenclature. And yeah, now we have this tea thing going on, which as I say is completely confusing. The thing is, if you're going to confuse us, the tech journalists, the guys who are supposed to have some sort of expertise, whether fake or real, it's going to be a nightmare for consumers, particularly this whole distinction between Intel and ARM processors. That's what I was saying yesterday when we were trying to figure out what the Series 5 was and what the Ativ was. I was like, if the Verge editor's IRC room is this deeply confused, your strategy is doomed. There's no way. If you get eight people and Tom Warren and people at IFA and they're like, we don't know what's going on with Samsung's Windows products, there's no way you can communicate that. When you have all of the ecosystem but the software, what else can you do? They're slaves to many masters, basically. They have to be in Android. Presumably their business will not be thriving if they're not in Android in some meaningful way. They're not going to be in Microsoft because they're Microsoft and they want to sell laptops. What do you do there if you're Samsung? How do you get out of that? How do you differentiate your products enough so that... The only thing you can do is have just wildly different products. Then that would require them to have double the R&D budget. This is why I just love the Note line because the Note was super successful for them and it's differentiated. Has it been super successful? Yes, it's been wildly successful. Are people happy with the Note? Yes. Here's the thing. How come you didn't buy a Note? It's different. You love pens. Yeah, but I had a seven inch tablet at the time. Oh my God. Crayton will answer this question in a moment. He owned a flyer, just to put it in perspective. Just so you understand what's going on. Are you on? Can we hear him? Yeah. Hi. Is this Crayton? Can the reader? Sorry, the viewer and listener hear him? Yes, they can hear me. Okay. Crayton, you owned a flyer. Correct. When I met you, you were taking notes on a flyer as if it was a very casual thing that everybody did. It was very normal. You got rid of your flyer. You bought an iPad and got a stylus. When you saw the Note, why did you not think this is it? I was still using a flyer, I think, when the Note came out. The jump from a five inch phone to a seven inch tablet was silly. I was happier with my seven inch phone. Also, they probably had the same resolution. Yeah, probably. Could you put the flyer... Did you put the flyer in your pocket? I did. It fit in my back pocket of my Levi's 527 jeans. Wow. Did you just do an advertisement? Is that our sponsor? Is Levi's our sponsor? Is that what's going on? What other Levi's did they fit in? Today's show is brought to you by the number 527. Yeah. And Levi's. Oh, this is the new Diet Coke can. Look at this. Isn't that nice? Also by Diet Coke. It's refreshing and highly addictive. It's been out for like a year. Please stop dissing this can. It's great though. I love it. The thing about the Note is everybody I know who has a Note never uses a stylus. They just like having a giant phone. I don't know why. I don't believe that. I know a lot of people have Notes. They just enjoy having a giant phone. It's different. Let's move on. Samsung is starting to make me depressed. Can we get... I'll go to... This is so much weird. Their presentation. Can I just say this? Samsung has this history of insane presentations. Vlad, I mean you were there. Just tell us about the magician. The magician, I think I had a really good analogy about the magician. They kicked off with this guy who was doing card tricks, magic card tricks. To me, that just went completely in the opposite direction of what a supposedly high technology forward facing company is supposed to be doing because those tricks were popular back when Walkman was the number one consumer electronics product. There's no connection. There's no like, here's magic card tricks and now there's a guy with a wand and he wears the wand and it's just a normal screen behind him. Those little sparkles. We're all 12 years old and we're all stressed out. It's just like Samsung's ecosystem is an illusion. Haven't you ever seen David? That. But all magic is an illusion. Haven't you ever seen David Blaine? I mean he's not really doing those pieces of magic. He doesn't really, just like how Samsung's not really making an ecosystem. That's right. He doesn't really know what card you have. That's a great analogy. What? I'm saying that's a great analogy. It is actually a good analogy. I'm just saying Samsung would be like, they would yell like, they'd be like, Jink and Shin and then like, dude would come out like swelling crescendos of music. That is like a Street Fighter introduction. Yeah, that's what it was like. These huge crescendos of music and then he would say whatever and then he would leave and be like, give it up for J.K. Shin while like videos of like card tricks would happen on the screen. That's cool. That's an analogy. That's what's going on. Let me direct you to a little known film called The Prestige featuring Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale and a number of other British people. One of those people is actually Australian. Oh, and David Bowie and Michael Caine. Or as I like to refer to him, Michael Caine. Anyhow, in that film, magicians battle for supremacy. They battle for the prestige and the love of the audience and the love of a beautiful woman. Is that Scarlett Johansson? She is in it at some point. So they, you know, like Sony and Samsung and IFA, worked hard to create different illusions that would wow and impress an audience that would delight them with the mystery. Is Samsung Christian Bale or is Samsung Hugh Jackman? I would say Samsung is definitely Christian Bale. Right? You agree. Samsung is Bale and Hugh Jackman is Sony. Are you allowed to spoil this movie at this point? I spoiled it in a great ending of, we had a, you remember when the Tesla museum was, people were trying to fund the Tesla museum. I had a great joke that got cut from my 90 seconds on the verge, which I'll never let anybody. Do we have it? Can we roll it? Can we put it on somewhere? Now? Is it? No, just in general. Wait, is that The Prestige or The Illusionist? The Prestige. The Illusionist is the one with Paul Giamatti that I didn't see. Yeah, I never saw The Illusionist. No one saw The Illusionist. I saw them both. I mean, presumably Paul Giamatti and the people who made it had to go to a premiere. And they were like, Paul, the premiere for The Illusionist is today. It's like, I'm sorry, I'm going to The Prestige. I hear it's very good. I hear there's a twist ending. Yeah. There is. Yeah. Everyone's dead in it. I have these movies so thoroughly confused in my mind. Oh, you saw both? Yes. You're like, oh, no. I have no idea what's going on. But I believe I was making a point, which is- Samsung is Hugh Jackman. Hugh Jackman, no. Samsung is- Or Sony is Hugh Jackman. Christian Bale. And of course, Christian Bale's a nemesis in the film, an opponent is Hugh Jackman, aka Sony. Yeah. Aka Wolverine. Aka Wolverine. Vlad, can you tell us about Sony's presentation? If they had anything? Great segue. I love it. I love it. Yes. Well, Sony's presentation was actually fundamentally different from Samsung's. It was pretty much none of that fluff. Cassie Wright took the stage and he let nobody on it. I mean, literally let nobody on it. There was a guy with a broken leg that you thought he was going to bring up. And then he was like, just kidding, his leg is broken. Let me continue. It was like, let me introduce him. Then he didn't introduce him. And he kept going. Wait, what do you mean? There was a guy with a broken leg who was one of their executives who was supposedly going to get up on stage and talk about something. But he got up, like limped up with his crotch. And he was like, oh, just kidding. He can't get up here. Let me keep going. So that was his joke or was that like, he had to improvise? Can you describe what happened? Yeah. I mean, I think, yes, that was Cassie's joke. The guy did actually have a broken leg, had crutches. He stood up, he took a bow and everyone was like, hey, well done. You have a high ranking position at Sony and Cass carried on. I mean, I would say well done for having a high ranking position. The funny joke was you have a broken leg so you can't get up on stage. He definitely said something like, I'd like to invite up so and so. And then he stood up and he was like, well, as you can see, he's not going to be coming up here. But then what happened is that Cass mentioned the guy who's in charge of Sony's mobile division who didn't have any leg impediments. Also just stood up, took a bow and sat back down. That's very strange. I just dropped my pen. Let's talk about what the answer is. So, Sony did- I love how you did it. He was just like, and here's so and so. Sit back down. I got worse. This is Cass' big show. This is his first one in Sony. He's coming out. He's coming out party. So, he's got to have this. I thought Sony looked pretty good yesterday. Super boring. I was only half paying attention. So, what is, Vlad, tell me if I missed anything. So they had the 84 inch 4K TV, which I saw in New York yesterday, which was beautiful, but there's no 4K content. So that's- Yeah, I mean everybody- Also it's going to cost $20,000. Did Samsung also have a 4K TV there? No, LG did. Oh, LG, right. But so 4K is now- And Toshiba. And Toshiba. But Toshiba had it at MVC. 4K is a thing that now is where it's happening. There's no 4K distribution, but every single film is in 4K right now, like has been converted to 4K because it's 4K in movie theaters right now. Yeah. I mean that's- And Sony put out a camera. But Sony's answer to how do you get 4K on it, if you buy this TV for what I believe will be around $20,000, how do you put native 4K on it? They're like, well, you could buy a 2K Blu-ray and this Blu-ray player we made in an upscale. Is this- It's like that and you're crazy. Could this be the magic, the secret to getting first run content? It's like if you own a 4K TV, you'll have access to first run. When they did 1080p, it was like, hey, you'll shoot it on your own camera and- Yeah, exactly. There was no 1080p content when they came out with 1080p TVs. They'll get there. So anyway, so they did- I'm thrilled. 4K TV. 4K couldn't be happier. They did- Could not be happier. It would be impossible. The Nex 5R- If only it was running Android. The Nex 5R, which has Android, or which has wifi, not Android. It has wifi so you can upload it to your- That's a, what is that? It's a camera. It's a camera, that's right. It's a micro four thirds. That's right. They did the new Tablet S, which is a new Android tablet, way thinner. I think it actually looks pretty nice. No, no, I agree. I agree. I mean, it's got like the Surface keyboard. Yeah, it's got a touch- It also has- Does it have the fold over? Yeah, it has a little bit of the fold over, but it also has like this crazy stand. Yeah, which is like- It's like a pole, you can put it on, and it's like a little 10 inch monitor on a stand. It's kind of awesome. They refer to that. The official name for that stand is the Fancy Stand. Is the Fancy Stand? Are you serious? Is it Campbell Case Fancy Stand? They were going through the presentation in New York, and David and I are sitting there, and he's like, and so we have a number of covers, we have the keyboard cover, we have our stand. They really call it the Fancy Stand? He goes- The Fancy Stand. The Fancy Stand for lack of a better name, and he's like- Yeah, you know, but here's the thing. The Fancy Stand. You know the thing about Sony, you're Sony, you're not supposed to say for lack of a better name. You're supposed to say, we gave it a better name than Fancy Stand. For lack of a better name is like before you show it to people. Yeah, the Fancy Stand. The Fancy Stand is ready, now it needs a name. Oh, we've got to give it one, or it will lack a better name. And then this guy's going to have to go on stage and look like a schmuck. And this is the stand we couldn't name. Fancy Stand. Call it the S Stand. Yeah, the Stand. By the way- The Stand. Yesterday on Twitter I said it was inevitable that Samsung would rebrand itself as Samsung, and somebody said, is that more or less inevitable than Samsung putting out a phone called the Samsung Inevitable? By the way, during the special verdict- Yeah, the S verdict. During the S verdict broadcast, I was talking about the vibe and the impact of Samsung. And I was like, which by the way may be Samsung phones? Vibe and impact? Both Samsung phones. Both. Of course. Anyhow, the Samsung Inevitable. Anyway, so back to Sony. New tablet S. It's an Android tablet. They put a bunch of mini apps. Phil Molyneux told me that they canceled the clamshell tablet P. I was like, you know, you've upgraded the old tablet S. They canceled it. Didn't they release it? They put it out, but they're not- They're not discontinued. There's no new version. Discontinued. Discontinued. Oh, really? They discontinued the piece of crap product that nobody wanted? That's a change. He looked at me and he goes, well, it was very innovative and consumers didn't embrace it. It was not innovative and consumers didn't embrace it for that reason. Yeah. Also, I mean, oh God, how? How is that? Somebody in the comments at the post when I wrote it, somebody was like, you mean consumers didn't want a plastic burrito that ran out? I have a serious question though for Sony. How did that get out of the lab with you thinking- Consumers are really going to embrace this. You should fire all of the people who told you it was good. You should fire everyone at the company who was like, this is a cool product. We should work on it and promote it and sell it because consumers will love it. It was clear that that was not- I think this is the Caserai that you're seeing. I think we saw Sony- Caserai, you're a company with a street sweeper. This is like when Steve Jobs went back to Apple, he canceled a bunch of products that we had to focus. It's not quite that drastic, but it's like they only showed four products in New York yesterday. Then the two additional products they had at IFA were this Vio Mini Duo, which is a slider Windows 8 PC. This is tap 20. It's regular Windows, Core i5. It's tap 20 giant tabletop. I was like, where are those? Wait, didn't they have an RT? I don't believe they have an RT. Sony doesn't have an RT product? As far as I know, Vlad, right? No, no, no, no. Yeah, it was just those two. I said, where are those two? Those are the interesting ones. I was told, look, we're announcing these four in the United States. These are the four products, the two cameras, the tablet, and the TV. Focus on these. We're going to do a focus thing for the- Can I just say that looks really attractive to me. That keyboard, that's the tablet S with the keyboard. This is an Android product. It's an Android product. What is this interface that looks like Windows 8? That's a remote control app. Well, somebody should tell the remote control app that it looks like Windows 8 exactly. Yeah. That's a really misleading photo. The tablet S ultimately is the world's most expensive IR blaster. No, it does other things. It does other things, but the two features that it has that Sony is very proud of is one is a universal remote control with macros. Which is cool. It's an IR blaster. Then the other one- But it has IR. Wait, because that's how it works. You have a fancy universal controller. Yeah, I do. I understand. That's the wrong solution. The other app is you tell it where you live and what cable company you have. It shows you all the shows on TV. You push it. There's a big swoopy animation, which is cool, which really is cool. Then it says, do you want to watch this? You can swipe it up towards the TV. It'll type in the right channel. Wait a second. That'll find live programming? Yeah. You're like, I live in Brooklyn. I have Fios. It'll show you all the things that are on TV. It's like a channel guide. It's a channel guide. Is it like a fan hat? Do you know the fan hat? Yeah, it's like that. You can swipe up the shows. That's actually awesome because I actually use fan hat all the time. What's fan hat? Fan hat is an app that, and I think it's actually kind of brilliant, but it's not well integrated with the experience of watching, which is maybe this will help with. Fan hat is this app where I'm like, I want to watch, I don't know, Ghosts of Mars. Don't watch that because it's a bad John Carpenter movie, but I want to watch Ghosts of Mars. Where can I get it? Is it on Netflix? Is it on iTunes? Is it on Amazon? I had this idea like years ago. It'll go through all that stuff and show you how you can watch it, which is really, really helpful considering that we have no consolidated way to find anything. That stuff is great, but this is like, I mean, this is way more limited. This is literally what's on cable right now on all of your channels. But that's still better than whatever time, whatever that is. The mechanic is cool because it's just a big, pretty list of... Flipping it. It's like Windows 8, right? It's a big, pretty list of icons. You can flick them up. Somebody noted in chat that Ghosts of Mars, Ice Cube is in Ghosts of Mars. And John Carpenter has a lot of great films. That is not one of them. So Vlad, did you get to play with the stuff, the mini duo and the tap 20? I personally didn't. I attended the presentation and as soon as it was finished, I sped over to Samsung. And that's the other thing. Samsung made every single possible effort to sabotage journalists being at both events at the same time. I wonder why. How is that possible? If I can just bring this back to Kaz, though, and his presentation. Because there is one thing that struck me and the real fundamental difference that I found with Samsung, which was all glossy and shiny and all that glitz and glamour that people liked decades ago. With Samsung, I feel Kaz kept the stage not because he wanted to be- You mean Sony. He wasn't hoarding it for himself, but because he also wanted, firstly, he wanted to assert himself, as Neil I was saying, as the CEO, as the leader of Sony. And he reiterated the whole idea of a one Sony, which we've seen, it's kind of been rough on Sony's own employees because it's one Sony, but a whole bunch of employees have been cut and things are being trimmed. And as Neil I said, product lines are being trimmed. And he didn't dodge the issues. He did say that Sony needs to execute faster. He did say that it needs to be more focused. He addressed those points, which a whole bunch of people have been saying. It's just the one thing that I noticed as well is that the things that were behind him on the backdrop were just a whole bunch of pretty pictures, a whole bunch of pretty ideas. But I still don't think Sony has the proper sense of urgency because even though they're trimming the product lines and Neil I saw a limited number of products for the US, over here in Europe, we saw one of those cringe-worthy moments where Sony decided, oh, and we're doing three new Android phones. And we're just going to call them the T, the Xperia T, the Xperia J, and the Xperia, do we have a list available? Yeah, that one. Do that one. It's the TVJ, the T, the V, and the J. I think it's the Jenny, the Sony Xperia. The Sony Xperia Jenny would be good. She's starting to name them after old girlfriends. First one's the Alice. Yeah, I mean, I feel like Sony still has all of that potential left in it, all of that stuff that made those of us who grew up in the 90s kind of fall in love with the company. But it just lacks a sense of urgency to start doing more extreme. In what way does it have the potential? Where is the potential just because it still has the Sony brand name? Where's the potential there? Well, not just that. Sony is still leading other companies in terms of engineering. If you think about the next series of cameras, I mean, Neil, I undersold it earlier when he said Micro Four Thirds. It's an APS-C size sensor. It's a bigger sensor, much better image quality, and Sony do it better than anybody else. These compact cameras that go between DSLR and point and shoots and try and balance the two, the next series is hands down the best, in my opinion. So that's cameras. And they've got other things, but you know what, it's half past midnight and I can't record it. That's not really important. The point is they have a technological lead, but they're not pushing it the way that Sony used to do and with the same sort of bravado back in the day. I mean, the Vio X is a great example that I thought about today because the Vio X was just this extremely ultra-thin laptop that actually made zero sense because it had no processor, no battery. I mean, Sony lost a ton of laptop talent to Apple. Yeah, because Sony used to build Apple's laptops for them. Right, and like Sony doesn't have any demonstrable talent in its music players. I guess the TV, at least they're doing 4K, so that's nice. They still have some skill there. I mean, I think Sony makes really good cameras. They make everybody's camera sensor, right? They make really good TVs. They don't really have software talent. They've never really had software talent. I mean, to me, it was the version of the IFA events that I got was here's the next 5R with Wi-Fi. We think this is really important. Here's the action cam. We're going to go after the GoPro because we have a nice camera sensor. We made it small. And here's our TV. I've never seen a room full of journalists go from, wow, look at that beautiful TV, to just basically yelling, like berating Sony executives for how are you going to get content on it? What's your cost? What is your strategy for it? They didn't prove the answer. Nobody can. That's not just Sony's problem. Nobody can do it. But let's also talk industrial design. Let's not undersell Sony industrial design. The Xperia 10 or X10 or whatever it was, a couple of years back, the one that was stuck on Android 1.6 for a couple of decades, that was a really beautifully designed phone. And it's things like the Xperia Ray and the Xperia Mini Pro, which we keep talking about. And there's the Sony Ericsson WA10i. And you know Sony designed that, not Ericsson, which Neil and I personally loved. It was a great phone. As far as I'm concerned, the best industrial designers in our broader industry are Apple, Nokia, and Sony. Maybe I overrate industrial design, but I still consider it really important. And just quickly to mention my love for Acer and my best show is the Aspire S7 from Acer, which I totally did not expect Acer to produce. Paul, you were here at Acer last year, and you destroyed Acer for the W4. Do you remember this post? You probably don't even remember writing it. Was this the why thing? No, it was just a really crappy Acer Windows phone. And you were like, Acer, why did you make this? How much does this panel cost you? 10 cents? You should have tried harder. You just demolished this phone. Oh yeah, I remember that. It was harsh. And then you put a disclaimer at the bottom about how little sleep you've gotten. You can't be held responsible for anything. That was it. And you also embedded that, forget it. What? You embedded that Verve Pipe song. Oh my god, really? What? Forget it. You said you can't be held responsible. It's one of the lyrics of the song. It's so obscure. I mean, the song's not. It was a big hit. No, the Freshman is not an obscure song. No, no, no, no, no. The reference is obscure. I've gotten, I did. The song is... And you're joke deep, Nick. I'm not joking. You're deep. I'm not joking. You cry. You cry. You cry. Makeouts to the song about what the Freshman is about? I don't think that's a cool makeout song. It's not a cool makeout song. It was a Freshman. It's not a cool song. Period. It's just I want to state for the record, nothing cool about that band or the song, but... I didn't say his song was cool. Also not a cool makeout song. Especially not a cool makeout song. This guy's house was littered with IR blasters. He can't be held responsible for what he's listening to while he's making out with people. We were only Freshman. Oh my god. Why did I say that? Now that song's gonna be stuck in my head. Anyhow, Vlad has no idea what we're talking about. Here's the thing. Vlad has never heard the song. I don't know what you're talking about. That's okay. But Vlad, true or false, you don't know what the song The Freshman is by The Verve Pipe? I might have heard it, but I don't really care about songs' names. I don't really care about songs' names, is what Vlad said. He's like, I'm above it. Can we get a hipster Vlad? So what's the aspire thing? Or Jif? Okay, well, this aspire thing, yes. Here's the thing. We never planned on it. We have a hit list for things that we want to address while we're here. It doesn't even pop up on it because it was shown off at Computex for the first time. But I had never gotten to see it in person. And I was just walking through Aces' booth this morning, and as I say, it's still a construction site everywhere. And I'm glancing around, and look at this thing. I thought it was a tablet at first. I honestly thought it was a tablet, and it had one of those Ultra thing keyboard attachments, whether they're copying Microsoft or the Apple Smart Cover, whatever. And I open it up, and it's just a straight laptop. And there's no complication. This is the dock, and then this is the flipping hinge, and then this is how it converts into something else. There's no confusion. It's just a straight 11-inch laptop, but it's just so beautifully and simply designed. And it has this crosshatch pattern on the top. It has an aluminum and magnesium top cover. It has a touch screen. Yeah. And it has a touch screen. It's running Windows 8? Yes. But no fancy hinge shenanigans. Oh, you can't. You can't. And it's running it on a Core i7 1.9 gigahertz. Because I wanted to say earlier, I wanted to say everybody's like, we could just do whatever we want hinges, because now that instead of it's Windows 7, now that it's Windows 8, now that there's one more digit in the name of the operating system, all rules about hinges are out the window. And so this is exciting to hear that somebody is just like, you know what? We're going to make a real laptop. Ross was telling me yesterday that they are seriously considering making just a mashup video of all of the bad hinges. That's exciting. Please do that. Can I say something? Please do that. Because I use my iPad all the time. Is this an RT? No, this is not an RT. My iPad's like this, right? And I've got a keyboard like this. And I touch it. But the problem is, you know, it's not a real problem. Oh my god, you just broke it. It's a real problem. But it is actually attached to a keyboard. Can I say something? I think this is a really nice looking laptop. And it reminds me of... I mean, Vi basically wrote a love letter. No, no, I know that. And it reminds me of... What is the company? I want to say it's Toshiba. They put out these like mini laptops. They were almost... Yeah, the Portage, yeah. Is that what I'm thinking of? And they're very Japanese looking. At least in Europe they're called the Portage. They were the thinnest Intel-based laptops. This is very reminiscent of it. And I like it a lot. It looks like something from... It looks like it's like kind of devoid of branding and design. Like it's not been designed. It's almost like the opposite. It's like they backed off of designing it. This is very exciting to me. And just let the... Vlad, can you mail me... Just let the form speak for itself. Vlad, can you mail me an SD card just full of pictures of this? I have to say I do like this. I do like it. I'm looking at it now. But it's silver, right? Yes. That's my only gripe. I'm tired of silver stuff. You want white. You want that thing to be white. White. I want it to be white. Yes. Or black. Yeah, but you know... Or color. Or matte chromebook. Yes, the matte chromebook. Like the soft touch black. Which by the way chips off. Oh, that's great. Just so you know. Why are you using a chromebook? Are you just turning it on? Uh oh. Violation. I gave the chromebook to my sister for a long time and she was using it and I got it back. My only gripe about... This is a beautiful piece of hardware. Actually, can I say this? Both Chris Ziegler and Adrian Jeffries insist that they use a chromebook as a primary computing device all the time. Chris Ziegler? Well, I don't... And when does he say that? When does he say that? When does he say that? Are you saying... Wait, Vlad, you too? I stayed with Chris Ziegler for multiple days at his apartment and I did not see him use a chromebook. Well, he probably didn't want to ruin your life by showing you what a glorious his chromebook is. He has an iMac. Who doesn't have an iMac? He's not using a chromebook. Here's my only thing about this Acer is that... That's what he said. Chris, you're a liar. I just...I want the experience to be improved on the software. I want to open up a new Acer like this and have a greatly improved software experience. And I don't know yet if I will. Because of Windows 8? Well, I don't know because there's no... I haven't gotten to use the new hardware. This is a touchscreen. Yeah. Right. I don't know if I'll find a way of interacting with brand new software, but will I be just delighted? So, it's a lot of new, but is it the future? It's a lot of new, but is it good? Well, you know, so... You know, new is not...new doesn't equal good. New just means new. So, here's the... Let's not change... Let's not have change just because we're dissatisfied with what we have now. Right. Let's not change things just because we think the next thing will be better than the last thing. Because the last thing before the now was so bad, and then the current thing has a lot to make up for. Is this a better floor for the election or not? Is that what's happening here? You know, you actually... You make a good point. When you look at something like Vista, it was so bad. So Vista is Georgia... Windows 7 had a lot to make up for. It had a lot to make up for, and it didn't... You could almost say it had a future deficit. It didn't fix everything. Yeah. It didn't... It couldn't fix everything. No. It is. Not in only four years. Four years is no amount of time when you're talking about operating systems. Four years is no amount of time when you're talking about operating systems. It was really more like two years when you think about it. Yeah. Because you got to start building the next operating system for the next two years. But it doesn't mean that you just... Because you see something new off in the distance, you know, with a great head of hair. Some kind of facelift. You don't just... T90X all over the place. You don't just, you know, with a hot new body. You don't just get rid of the old thing because you think the new thing will be better without really knowing what the new thing stands for. Right. And what its stance on abortion is. Chris says he uses Chrome fairly often. Can I just... We're sorry, man.... wrap up this point that I started like 40 minutes ago. It's long-winded. Go on. But what I just wanted to get at, and the thing that reminded me about the Viyawex was this Aspira 7. And if you think about the Viyawex and the fact that it was so thin and skinny and it still inspired everybody to take a deep breath, be like really impressed with it. Well, this Aspira 7 basically fixes every one of those problems. The fact that it didn't have a processor, it has some sort of battery now, whereas it had zero battery life before, it has a better keyboard, etc., etc. And it has a touchscreen, it has a brand new operating system, which as you guys are saying, we don't know yet how good it will be. And the thing that bothers me from Sony's perspective is this Aspira 7 should have come from Sony. Sony should have been the one to fix the Viyawex instead of just leave it off as this over ambitious project or whatever. It shouldn't be Asus sorting these things out because if Sony wants to remain the big power that it used to be, it needs to be doing these things. Yeah. Well, so here's actually the two big takeaways I got from yesterday were Samsung is the new Sony. I think that to me... Do we have to do that? Well, no. I mean, Sony was this powerhouse of like they made everything, right? And now Samsung is in that position. They're in the driver's seat in consumer electronics that is not Apple. They make the TVs, they make the laptops, they're doing all this stuff. Sony is trying to find an identity and catch up. And I think that balance of power has shifted pretty clearly. The second thing is all these companies are making these Windows 8 PCs and Dieter had a really great line. He said, usually these huge trade shows, the elephant in the room is like Apple and all these new products competing against whatever Apple's doing. And this year at IFA, the elephant in the room is Surface. These companies are making all these products and they've got to compete against the person who's making their software. And Nokia. But Nokia is like they're not making a tablet yet. Microsoft is like, here's these great tablets. With the phones, they know Microsoft and Nokia are going to be buddy buddy and they're going to try to come out with the absolute best standard phone and you just have to guess and hope you get the good second best. I don't think that Samsung believes that. I don't think Samsung believes that Nokia and Microsoft are going to make the best phone. I think they think that they're going to make the phone that is talked about most by Microsoft and that maybe will have the most unique design or a unique design. But I don't think that Samsung goes into it thinking like, well, we're not going to make as good a phone. They're going into it thinking like, we can make just as good a phone if not better and we know how to get stuff into the market and sell it in the market and so we're going to do a great job here. I have to believe Samsung's saving its best work or just based on allotment of its own resources has to be spending more time and money on Android. I think they're spending more time and money on what sells. But I do think that like, I do feel like the phone they showed begins to suggest that they may be taking Windows Phone 8 a little more seriously. But then again, they can because they're not strapped to this old chassis. I mean, that's what was going on with the last generation. If you're Samsung and you're doing dual-core or quad-core CPUs or SoCs on Android phones and HD displays and you kind of go in like bonkers with NFC and then you have Windows Phone 7, which is single-core, limited screen resolution, limited camera options. I just feel like you can't really go all out. How can you? I just think the biggest problem with Samsung and Sony and you have a lot of evidences on both sides of this sort of like, you know, broken clock is right twice a day or like, you know, throwing something against the wall and hoping it sticks. They just put out products. They don't have any core conviction that this is the best single product that everybody needs to get. They just put out products and they put out little burritos that are Android and they do just so many random things. I understand Samsung kind of needs to play both sides, but it's kind of weird to me that you have multiple operating systems in your phones, you know? Well, I mean, that's what they have to... And Microsoft has required them to have multiple operating systems in their tablets, but really they have three operating systems in their tablets. Because they have that Android too. Android. Well, they have to hedge their bets. I think, so we need to move on from IFA. I mean, we've spent a lot of time talking about it and there's other stuff. We have remaining topics and Crayton has just given me a note that we have to, you know, move through them quickly or else... Galaxy now? The belt. I'll get the belt again. He's taking his belt off right now. No, he's literally taking off his belt. Wow. This is graphic. This is very graphic. All right. Vlad, I think we're going to have to send you back to the luxurious... Did you get to make the point you were trying to make about Sony that we kept interrupting? Yeah, I did. And also I just noticed we posted a story about the PS Vita and I'm going to use that as evidence when I was saying that Sony has an edge. The Vita backwards. Yes, I saw that. What's the new thing about the Vita? Nothing. It's some news about the PS1. Actually we have bigger news on the site. We just broke a story. We have images of a new Kindle. I know we had this Kindle Fire image from earlier today. We have images of a new Kindle on the site right now with a paper white display. It's a brand name apparently with what appears to be a backlit display. Who was I just talking to? The other guy in the sci-fi bookstore, his one thing he wants in life is a backlit ink. Guess what? Well that exists. There's the Barnes and Noble... By Kindle. Oh, by Amazon. By Kindle. All right, so Vlad, I love you man. Go do stuff in Berlin. Thank you for joining us. We know it's very late there or very early. Are you going to that Vietnamese place? No. We found a really nice steak bar actually. People are complaining. Steak bar? Steak bar? Can I say people are complaining by the way that we keep showing the picture of Vlad. They're like, we get it. We know what Vlad looks like. They're like, this is the future A. Somebody said it was like, this is the future A still photo in the live video stream on the verge. All right, Vlad, go have some steak at the steak bar. We're going to power through. Whatever the hell that is. What's a steak bar? I don't know man. I don't know. Berlin is a city that never sleeps. No. No. Berlin steak bar thing just shuts down there. Pretty sure. Vlad goodbye. That's true. It does sometimes close. Bye guys. I love you. Thank you Vlad. How's that? How's that? I was at an Absinthe bar in Berlin. They shut down at like nine. Did it have steak? No, it had no steak. You know, Paul and I are, when we were at Engadget, when I first was at Engadget, my first trip. I have a story about this too. My first trip was with Paul to Berlin for IFA. I've been to IFA like five or six times. And then just a little, you came back and we were doing rooms for like CES afterwards because we were sharing rooms at the time. And we were doing roommates and I just remember Josh saying, I want a room with Paul. He knows my habits. It's like a very distinct memory that I have. The man was very comfortable with my constant nudity in the room. You know, and that's a, not everybody would be as comfortable. Yeah. Let's talk about, we should just talk about all this Amazon news we broke today. Oh my God. Amazon. Amazon. Amazon.com. So, we received images this morning, was it this morning? This afternoon of a new Kindle Fire, which appears to be a new Kindle Fire. Not four. Or a, I mean, we've heard, so we actually had another, yeah, could you move that? Can we put that on something else? Yeah. I heard there was supposed to be multiple Kindle Fires. So what we've heard also is there are multiple Kindle Fires. We have a picture of, and we're not sure what the origin of this picture is. I mean, we're not sure of the, sorry, not of the origin, but of the model. And if it is, it's very noisy. Can you stop that? Maybe let Creighton do it since he's an expert and knows how to put a mic on. Why does your shirt just keep, you keep talking. You're just an amateur. Well, it's very noisy, very distracting. I've muted it up. Can we put that image of Vlad up on the screen while we do this? No. Okay, so everybody. We're getting the real mics back. No, no, no. I kind of like this mic. All right, all right. There's nothing between me and you. That's the problem. And Josh and this story. There's nothing between me and this story. Except ourselves. Sorry, can we refocus and talk about the Kindle? I hope so. Let's shut this down over here. So we have some images, some that we couldn't publish. And this one that we did publish. It's unclear if this is a, right now we don't know if this was a prototype. Is the actual production version or is one of multiple or a couple different. What's most interesting about it is this refined user interface, right? It's different than the one on the current Fire. And we saw another image with a kind of a more streamlined user interface. It's not a dramatic. Well, it's got this like charms bar thing kind of happening on the side. I think that's in the browser. Maybe not though. I was told it looks more like the HP touchpad now. Yes, it looks like the touchpad. And it has a front facing camera in the center in landscape. I mean, again, we're still working on getting more information. We spoke to another source who said, I've seen the final or a different version of this that looks different. So it looks more like a zoom. Which we have in there, which looks more like the zoom, which I'm trying to think of what the zoom looks like. The original zoom looked like had rounded edges. And I don't know. So I don't know what. What about the sideboard? If you saw the zoom front on, it would look just like this. You say it looks like there's like a screen and then there's black edges around the screen. Yeah, there's a black bar around it. Yeah. But then corners perfectly squared off or are they just like a little rounded? They're rounded. Oh, really? Yeah. And then and then and then so we have this other Kindle story up right now, which is definitely. That's real. It's well, it's it's definitely something. There are multiple images and there is language that references. I mean, it's a different kind of Kindle we haven't seen. It's clearly a touch screen from what I can tell. And there's language here that references in these images, references this paper white screen. So that's a thing. Yeah. So there's that. I don't know what to say about it. There's an Amazon event on the 6th. So they're probably going to announce a bunch of new products at this Amazon event. Yeah, I've been reading a lot. It's likely they wouldn't call people out to L.A. on my iPad, Wall Street Journal. And I just cannot, cannot stand the glare. There's always one light bulb somewhere. You have to wait a year to get the new Kindle right in my face. I'm always trying to move the light bulb away from the text that I want to be wonderful to have. I'm just done with it to have a new Kindle with the new paper white screen. It would be great. But unfortunately, you'll have to wait because you wouldn't be able to put any content on it or register it. It's true. Oh, well, your loss, I guess. We'll be reading. I'm excited about this just because I received a Kindle, the seventy nine dollar Kindle for Christmas, the holidays, my birthday, holidays, close to each other and Becky immediately stole it but never registered it to herself. So now Amazon thinks I love chick lit. So I'm really hoping I can get this one. Neely has registered to her. Read all of the Fifty Shades of Grey books. Yeah. No, I'm hoping I can get this one to register to her account. Let me ask you a serious question. I'm going to delve into your private life. Is Fifty Shades of Grey in the list? So you're trying to ask if Neely's wife has read Fifty Shades of Grey. That is what I'm asking. So she runs every morning. So she bought she buys audiobooks. So she bought an audiobook and was running and Fifty Shades of Grey on audio. Yeah. She couldn't do it. She turned it off. She's like, I can't I can't listen to this at all. That is so she has not delved back into it. You know, one of the worst stuff, one of the worst mistakes I ever made in my life was getting naked lunch on on audiobooks. Oh, yeah. I don't really know very much about it. It was a classic. That was disturbing. It's kind of a classic, though. Yeah. I mean, kind of like a classic for weirdos. It's a counterculture. Yeah, it's like it's like if you it's like if if you're not in a normal guy, this is a classic. No, it's not like I'm really two cities. Well, I guess I guess I'm a little too normal for naked. Are you good? Yeah, you're live to you. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Take take take keep an eye out for sensible Mad Men's live tweet of his reading of a tale of two cities. Oh, Twitter account. What's the Twitter account? I think it's a you don't know what it is. You know, I will just get it for me for the end. OK, so so what else? So the last one, I know you want to talk politics bad, so I'm just gonna do it. Oh, Obama went on the Reddit yesterday. Would you say went on the Reddit? What? He hit the Reddit yesterday. I thought you said he went on the Reddit. Oh, you don't know. It's about time. Obama went on Reddit yesterday to do an AMA. No way. Yes. What did he say? AMA Obama? No, this is President Obama. Ask me. And there's a picture of him reading like on a Mac on a MacBook. Yeah. With his tie a little bit loose. And I don't drop any gifts in. No, actually, mouse. He's left. I know if you could see this. He answered 10. So can I just say, yeah. Can I just say something? His his team did a page for donations, redditors for Obama, and it looks just like an Obama page, but it has a picture of him on a computer and it says is the president of the United States does an AMA. Yeah. Like with impact. Like it's a it's amazing. Yeah, it's great. Is the president, you know, like the Reddit thing. The United States. You've been on Reddit for too long. It's like is the president of the United States does an AMA. Is there anything worse than trying to describe a Reddit image macro to Paul Miller? Like, well, give me another example that's not the president. Can you guys in chat, can you help us out here? Paul needs an example that is not the president. Is this like the like the the lamb roommate and the cool roommate? No. Good guy. Good guy. And like lamb guy. Yeah. I mean, I don't even know. I could just read you any number of nonsensical. Is the president of the United States does an AMA. I don't know how you go. It's not quite two sentences. Right. He is the president. This guy is the president. Really? He's doing an AMA. That's not funny. This is a funny joke. I don't know if you guys know about this, but there's really funny in real books. The point in real books that not in the Wall Street Journal. I don't think you understand the point that I'm making is that is his cool hip with it team did like a Reddit meme of Obama on an Obama donation page. It was cool because the president normally doesn't have his people do memes of him. They should do a meme like is the is the. It wasn't guffaw worthy. Is the team of the president of the United States that's young and hip does a meme for the president. I didn't fall to my knees. That's a good one actually. Somebody should make that meme. What is it? What is it? Is the team for the president of the United States makes a meme? A picture of guys in the office. No people weren't guffawing out loud at it. They were just like, oh, cool, Obama has a meme here put together by his team. That's unusual for a sitting president. No one's ever done it before. And then they asked you for money, which is not unusual. Not money wants to get reelected. So the interesting thing about this is Adrian wrote a great piece, which was people are doing them now. This is the RNC this week. It's like Romney's big wrote like literally they're like booting him up. They're rolling him out. I've heard of the RNC. People are now making fun of you. They're saying, is Paul Miller doesn't get an internet reference. It's been a long four months for you. I'm having a great time. Yeah. Because you know what? Not a lot of lame jokes. Do you wheel out that flash drive? That was a real fragment. That was a real fragment of a sentence. It was like, I'm having a great time. You know what? Not a lot of lame jokes. But do you still have that having a great time off the internet? Not a lot of lame jokes. Kind of. Close. Sort of. No. What are you doing on the internet? You think you're going to start talking like Victorian English by the time this is all over? I've been writing tweets. You've got them all stored up. You've been writing tweets? Yeah, you didn't know that? Can I take over at Future Paul and like post pictures of tweets you've written down? No. I feel like that's cheating. Can I do that? I can read you the tweets right now. Can you read us some tweets? No. Okay guys, archived, archived, self-archived tweets. I was just going to tweet all these when I got back. Well, now's your chance to tweet. So you've been keeping a list. Well, pick a good one. I'll pick a good one. Just one. Are you responding to things that are happening? I have a list of these on my Macbook. You heard it here first. I mean this document, by the way, is literally called the iPad tweets. Is glocal still a thing? No. No? What is glocal? No one knows. What else do you have? The only movie I have on my iPad is Twilight. I made the right choice. Inside the Lonely Days and Nights of All of Us. One day we will all wear jackets. That was pretty good. No, it's terrible. Let's hear one more. Maybe you'll redeem yourself with this final one. No, all the best ones are on my Macbook apparently. I wrote one about Judge Dredd, but it was just jamming Judge Dredd, Dredd, Dredd, Dredd, Dredd, Dredd. Oh, it's kind of a visual thing. Yeah. Well, this was a depressing segment. This was not one of our funnier or... Look, I'm sorry, but my tweets aren't hip with it relevant modern references. This might have been the loneliest four minutes of the first cast. I feel a growing gulf. I feel a growing... I could download a hundred albums from iTunes in the time it takes me to open a CD's packaging and rip it. It's as if we're standing on one side of a riverbank. On our side behind us is a majestic steel and glass city that rises up as far as the eye can see and into the clouds filled with life and light and technology. And then you're on the other side with a hut. And the hut looks like it might have a roof. The roof is leaking. Yeah. Someone accidentally turned off the lights in the food court for five seconds. Okay. Is this not funny? What's that? I just wanted to finish the Obama thing. That's it? And then we're done? That was it. There was some other crap that I don't talk about. No other topics? Creighton? You seem to say you thought we had a lot of news. There was a couple more on that list. Yeah, we did the dubstep piece, which was amazing. Oh, dubstep. You got to read that. There you go. Can I just say something? We did... I've been so excited about the dubstep. Joe Flatley, one of our great writers, wrote a history of dubstep. And it has, I think, the best headlining we've ever done. The best we've ever done. It's called Beyond Lies the Wub, a history of dubstep. Beyond Lies the Wub is Phil K. Dick's first published short story. It's got dual meaning because it's a Phil K. Dick story and it has the word wub in it. Thank you for letting that out. Which is the sound of the dub bass line. You should read it. You should really read it. It's short. It won't take you a very long time. It's a really depressing story. I have to say Beyond Lies the Wub, I recommend everybody reads it. It's very upsetting. Deeply upsetting. Was this back in the 50s? Yeah, I think 50s or early 60s. And then we also did... We've had a crazy week of just reports and news. We did this really cool today. If you haven't seen it, Ryan Johnson, the director of Looper, Brick, The Brothers Bloom, and also, which I didn't know until today, directed a bunch of Breaking Bad episodes, including the episode Fly, which is one of the craziest, weirdest, best episodes of the show. Also, the newest Looper trailer that I saw before, Premium Rush, has dubstep in it. You saw Premium Rush? Yeah. Wow. Premium Rush was amazing. Everybody needs to see it. Oh, it was amazing. I don't know it was amazing. Right now. That is not a treat, you should say. Okay, so we have a great interview. It's actually more of a feature about Ryan Johnson. He talks about gadgets he's into and sort of his attitude on where film is headed. It's very cool. We did... Last night, Adrian wrote a piece about the Obama-Reddit thing called Party Crasher. What is the full headline? It's like Party Crasher, Obama brings down Reddit during Romney's big week. Yeah. And it's really interesting because yesterday we also did a story that Romney's campaign bought a hashtag and they're the first ever political party to buy a hashtag on Twitter. What's the hashtag? We don't know yet. Oh. And Laura speculated, we were talking about it last night, she thinks it's going to be like something's going to happen. He's going to say something during his speech tonight or whatever. Hashtag Bieber. And it's going to be like hashtag we can do better or whatever. I hope it's not we can do better because that's the... They had like the first day of the RIT, they had a big sign. It was like we can do better. It's like... That's not that inspiring. Who's the subject of this sentence? Yeah, like it's just not inspiring anyhow. But so it was an interesting... Actually Adrian had a great ending to it, which is like kind of juxtaposition that Obama's definitely like his team definitely gets the internet in a very clear way and that maybe the Republicans are still playing a little catch up there. But her ending line was wants to win the internet buys a hashtag on Twitter. I made that meme into the content. Yeah. It's a beautiful image. Based on this structure, which you don't understand. What else this week? I'm forgetting. Oh my God. Sean's on live piece. Was that from this week? Yeah. God, this week was crazy. By the way, internally, we've just been calling Sean live. Sean live. Sean wrote this great, great online report. Sorry, on live report. If you haven't read it, it's also online. If you haven't read it, you should read it. It basically talks about how that company fell apart just days after it happened. And it is great reporting. He spent a bunch of time on it. I'm forgetting to forget other things that we wrote this week. We did so much stuff. OP1 thing that happened? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We have a great piece on teenage engineering. You should check it out. They're due to make the OP1 is this crazy thing that if you haven't seen it, I took it on late night one time, but a bunch of people use them. They make awesome music with them, but they created the company that makes the OP1 teenage engineering created a bunch of accessories and the accessories, they updated the software, the accessories are like physical accessories. I was seeing this demo. It's so great. Yeah. Like a thing you put over a knob to crank it and you can, they have new software so you can like basically create, like he said he wanted to do an endless solo so you can play like step sequence notes and then you can jam on the crank at different speeds and you can basically do like a freeform guitar soul. Like if it's in a scale, it's very, very cool. And they, they made a pitch bend thing that has a rubber band that attaches, but they also made an attachment that lets you put, lets you connect Lego Mindstorm pieces, like mechanized pieces so you can play, physically play the knob with another piece of, it's just really crazy. And then Neelai had a piece today, which kind of debunks, there's been a lot of talk about how Apple's going to start, you know, forcing people to pull pinch to zoom from their devices. And that's, it's all wrong. It's all wrong. And everybody's gotten it wrong everywhere. And so we kind of like explained it. Well, not we, Neelai explained it. The myth of pinch to zoom, how confused media gave Apple something it doesn't own. And I think this is actually really important because the biggest fear I think about this patent case was like suddenly our devices will lose all this obvious functionality that everybody's become so used to. Yeah, the most important thing to me about that is I just called Google and I was like, Hey, what is this patent in Jelly Bean? And they're like, no, we designed around it. And nobody else did that. Like it was, they just gave me the statement. Like I didn't like fight them for it. I was like, Hey, is this true? Just call them up. Yeah. It's not implemented in Android Jelly Bean. So yet it's everywhere else. I just want to feel two things in chat. One to me, that's why I was rushing through things. Like we're not, I'm just kind of talking about pieces that we published this week that I want you guys to go read. We're not like, I can't talk about the history of Dubstep. I don't think you would find that interesting. I mean, I don't read the piece if you want to know about the history of Dubstep. Don't listen to me. I mean, sure. I invented the genre, but don't take my word for it. Don't take my word for it. But then somebody else asked if I was good at basketball and I actually have a story that can give you a little, a little, well, I, I went to a, I went to the Duchess County Fair last weekend. Oh, Laura was telling me about this. In near Rheinbeck, I guess, or wherever. And pregnant cows. I spent, there were pregnant cows there. But I, and duck dogs. Do you know, a duck dog, sorry, duck dogs. Do you know what duck dogs are? Duck dogs are dogs that take a, they run really quickly and then leap off of a dock to catch something and they're gauged on how far they go flying through the air. Wait, is that a competition? It's a competition. Oh wow. And they like, they run and they jump off the dock and they go flying. It's like a long jump for dogs. Into, into, into water. Dog Olympics. Yeah, but into water. Right. And the dogs love it. And so do the people, so do the humans. Right. And so, but I played a game, I played a lot of the carnival games there in hopes that I could win. They had these giant, giant Rasta bananas. It was a banana. With dreads? Yes. Like, like as half as tall as me or taller. Right. It was a banana with dreads and like a Rasta hat on. Okay. They also had like a Rasta Winnie the Pooh and like a Rasta, like they had a bunch of Rasta stuff. Most of it seemed vaguely racist to me. I'll be honest with you. At a state fair. At a state fair. Yeah. And you could win them from, you know, these games that presumably are winnable. Right. And I spent, I must have spent like $75. I could not win anything. And the final game that I won, I was, we were, I was there with Lauren and a couple of other people that, I was with my friend Patrick and I played the, I was playing this game where you just have to shoot hoops. You just have to get the basketball in a hoop. One, one shot in the hoop, you get the, you get the Rasta. You're shooting, one shot in the hoop, you get the Rasta. You get the Rasta banana. Right. One shot in the hoop. I spent like $35. It was three balls for five bucks. I spent like $35 and got none of them in. It's like an oval. It is a small. The hoops are weird. They are, I think they are trickily, trickily shaping. Trickily. Trickily shaping? Not a word. It's like a prestige. It's like the prestige. Yeah. They're bent backwards and they're a different weird shape. They're small. Trickily shaping just sounds like an infant's fair. Sounds like an album by Rasta Banana. Trickily shaping. You know, the new Rasta banana album, trickily shaping. No, it just sounds like a character in like the Phantom told me. Anyhow. Trickily shaping. Anyhow, Patrick walked up to me. The Mr. Who lives in the Outlet City. Walked up next to me, put his five bucks down, got a Rasta banana like that. What? There's actually a photo. Oh, I also got a hat there because it was so sunny. I got a hat that was airbrushed with my name on it and a dolphin. It looks pretty amazing. You really went on a spirit journey. I went on a trip and I came back with no Rasta bananas and I was not happy. All right, I think we need to wrap up. I think we need to wrap up. Yes, I agree. All right, that's the Vergecast for this week. If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us at vergecast at theverge.com. You can find us on Twitter at at Verge or you can leave a comment in the post when it goes up. The people you see here are also available on Twitter. That's it for that guy. I'm Josh Wytopolsky. Neal I is reckless and Paul is future Paul, though he can't respond to your tweets right now, but in a year. I'm sure they're great memes. Yeah, a little less than a year in a year. You should respond to every tweet that you get with a saved tweet. With a what? With a saved tweet. Yeah, I don't have that many saved tweets. Do you think you can go through your whole list at the end of your journey? Most of my saved tweets are like the first I'm on. Anyhow, we'll be back next week. You can write me, it's Vlad's... Vlad Savov. Oh yeah, Vlad Savov is Vlad Savov on Twitter, just the way it sounds. You can mail me at P.O. Box 501, New York, New York 10276. How much mail are you getting? I probably send, on average, a letter a week and I probably get about 10 a week. I'm not winning. Anything good? Yeah, some great stuff. Some really incredible stuff. Nice. Any romantic letters? Some very romantic stuff. My favorite letter, I got this letter from somebody who's... She, like 20 years ago, went on her whole Europe trip after college and she was just totally out of touch with everybody and she couldn't really... It was too expensive to call and she'd give people an address where she'd be at a hotel but would miss people. She was missing out a lot and she told me she really learned a lot. So that was cool. That's a great story. Really good way to end this. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next week and as always, I wish you and yours the very best for the weekend ahead. Oh, and by the way, it's a holiday weekend. Labor Day is on Monday so be sure to get real, real drunk and embarrass yourself. Rock and roll. Maybe get a hat, like a hat with your name on it. Paul the dolphin. Get a Rasta banana. Paul, you still can. Paul, Paul, Paul. Wait, you can't say Paul right at the start. They didn't know how to get us out of this.
 Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of August 27, 2012.
 I'm Josh Dupolsky.
 I'm Paul Miller.
 How many live to tell?
 And we're back.
 We're back and we have no microphones.
 We have microphones.
 Why are you looking at me?
 Hold on a second.
 I was down here.
 You look at me like, I'm not sure you're Paul Miller.
 We're back and we're of course here to talk about the week in technology culture.
 That's why.
 And what a week.
 By the way, we have somebody on the line.
 Oh, we have somebody on the line.
 Vlad Savov.
 Can you not say hello?
 Hello.
 I thought, oh, there he is.
 There he is.
 Look at him.
 So pretty.
 Wow.
 That is handsome.
 By the way, I just want to say that I just saw a video of Vlad.
 He was in yesterday's 90 seconds on the Verge and he is like 20 pounds lighter than in that
 video.
 That's not a video.
 Oh, the muscle is still here.
 All the important stuff is still here, guys.
 Don't worry about it.
 You still have butt, correct?
 I'm sorry?
 Your buttocks are still in place.
 That is very much accurate.
 We can now confirm Vlad Savov's buttocks remain in exactly the same location and are part
 of his body.
 Wow.
 That's breaking.
 High priority.
 That location will be in Berlin in Germany.
 But now his buttocks are in Berlin with the other parts of his body, not by themselves.
 They're not just out there at a disco.
 This is the worst.
 Why?
 You don't like this?
 I don't know.
 You seem to be enjoying yourself.
 Absolute worst.
 I'm going to go get some Diet Coke.
 Great.
 We have a sponsor this week, don't we?
 I thought I was told.
 Who should we be sponsored by?
 Who are we sponsored by?
 Are we sponsored by Diet Coke?
 I've been dying for Diet Coke sponsorship.
 We could do one of those where I sell out and I get my free Diet Coke for us to buy.
 I want to be sponsored by like a chamber of commerce.
 Really like a broad-reaching, small bit, job creators.
 Wait, who?
 We could go with like the...
 Job creators.
 Like the Waukesha Better Business Bureau.
 Like Walmart.
 No, Walmart's not a small business.
 What?
 I'm saying a number of small businesses that have banded together to lobby for...
 The Kenosha Rotaries.
 No, that's a club.
 You're talking about like a...
 A chamber of commerce.
 Chamber of commerce.
 Better Business Bureau.
 That's the first thing I was thinking.
 Well, actually, if you want to get in touch with some small business owners, I know some
 people in...
 I'm just saying like the Rotary Club in my hometown sponsors...
 Anyhow, we're here to discuss a week in technology culture and what a week it's been.
 We'll just cut that.
 I think...
 We'll just edit that right in so it's seamless.
 Neelay, you've got a list of topics.
 Oh, wait, should we address...
 Oh, Vlad's here.
 And Vlad is here.
 Vlad's in Berlin.
 Yeah.
 Are you okay?
 And his butt.
 And his butt.
 Vlad is in Berlin at IFA covering...
 He's covering IFA and we have the whole crew there.
 Why don't we just jump right into IFA?
 Whatever you want to do.
 What do you want to talk about?
 Vlad, who's with you?
 Why don't you just go through?
 Didn't we want...
 Weren't we...
 Did you want to address the controversy?
 This is weird with that microphone.
 Did you want to address the controversy that just exploded on the internet?
 Which one?
 That Gruber questioned our...
 I love talking about Gruber on The Verge.
 No, Gruber...
 He questioned our integrity for not pointing out that a Samsung laptop looked like that.
 Samsung...
 Vlad, I just called you Samsung.
 Well, he's being paid by them, so might as well...
 Vlad, let me ask you a question.
 Have you seen the Samsung Series 5 and or Samsung Series 7 slates in person?
 In person, no.
 Okay.
 Well, you're not...
 What good are you?
 You're really not any use at all.
 Look, so here's the situation.
 My parents went away on a week's vacation.
 They left the keys to their brand new Porsche.
 I don't know if that's...
 Is that just a video for parents to understand?
 You've never heard parents just don't understand?
 No.
 Yeah, okay.
 Well, you're never going to because you're off the internet.
 My parents were actually really understanding.
 Wait, I have a question for our readers.
 Is there a way for Paul to hear parents just don't understand without using the internet
 in 2012?
 Yeah, if we had a CD of it and a CD player.
 Does anybody have a single?
 What's the album?
 If somebody burned a CD in there and gave it to you to play on your computer, we could
 listen to it.
 It's Deena Jazz and Jeff and the Fresh Prince.
 They'd have to get it off the internet.
 Anyway, look.
 Let's just keep moving.
 So look, here's what...
 I'm going to give you a little bit of a situation.
 Can we just...
 I just wanted this to be like a one second mention.
 Yeah.
 Why can't you just say...
 Well, Vlad's at IFA, so this is a good lead into IFA.
 Samsung put out a bunch of products at IFA yesterday.
 Samsung and Sony both had keynotes yesterday.
 Big keynotes.
 Actually, surprisingly big announcements for...
 Huge suites of products for Samsung.
...what I was expecting.
 We'll get into it in more detail.
 But Samsung also, they announced as part of it new Windows 8 products, which are called
 the Ativ in Europe, which is a terrible name.
 Easy to say, easy to spell.
 Yeah.
 Looks good.
 It sounds like a yogurt.
 I don't know what the problem is with that.
 Oh, man.
 I would definitely eat some blueberry Ativ.
 I think it sounds like a yogurt.
 Probiotic?
 I think it sounds like a yogurt because there's a yogurt with a...
 Called Activia.
 Activia, which is most of the same letters in basically the same arrangement.
 Most of the same nutrients.
 And it also looks like a MacBook Air.
 Right.
 So this is the deal.
 The Series 5 in particular looks like kind of has an 11-inch Air vibe.
 The keyboard design admittedly is like shamelessly, it's a chiclet keyboard.
 As by the way, I think it's worth saying that many, many, many, many keyboards...
 They all trended their way towards this.
...many, many keyboards look like the MacBook Air.
 But so it's a...
 Hold on a second.
 I have a question here.
 Yeah.
 Did we actually cover the Series 5 and Series 7?
 Were they actually announced here at IFA?
 They were announced as the Ativ at IFA.
 Oh.
 We have coverage of them on the website.
 We have coverage of them.
 Which is where we're leading towards this point of controversy.
 So wait, the Ativ is a rebrand of those laptops?
 Vlad, are you in Germany right now?
 Have you seen the news?
 Yes.
 This is the point.
 Yes.
 It is.
 It's kind of an important point to make.
 That's answer.
 In Europe, they're called the Ativ, whatever they're called.
 In the United States at the moment, they're called the Series 5 and Series 7.
 I strongly believe that when these products actually come out in the United States, that
 they will be called the Ativ because Samsung is making a big push for a universal brand.
 All right.
 So that's where we're at.
 I just want to get to this...
 Such a minor...
 I had a minor joke to make, then I wanted to move on and I unfortunately have now...
 Well, we're right in the middle.
 We're so far down the rabbit hole.
 You have to hear what Gruber said before I can...
 Right.
 So anyway, so here's some pictures on the website of these things.
 I think if you look at them from a distance, they do resemble a MacBook Air, although
 you get closer to different...
 They look similar, yeah.
 They're silver laptops with black keys.
 They look like a MacBook Air.
 So Gruber, serious question for The Verge.
 How do you write an article about these things without mentioning that the industrial design
 is a blatant rip of the MacBook Air?
 Who has less integrity, Samsung for quote unquote designing these or The Verge for
 pretending it's legitimate, which implies that we're somehow complicit?
 And I have to say, I question our integrity as well, having seen this blatant disregard
 for calling out Samsung for their ripped off design.
 If only we'd spent like a month or something...
 It wasn't worth it.
... deeply talking about whether or not Samsung copied design too much.
 I feel like they haven't talked about it or not.
 We have a large document at The Verge.
 I don't know if everybody knows this.
 It's a PDF we pass around.
 Side by side comparisons.
 It's Samsung's failures of integrity next to ours.
 And we're trying to see if we...
 And our numbers just went way up.
 We don't just copy...
 We try to tweak, but sometimes when you're trying to fail at integrity, there's only
 one way to fail at integrity.
 I like Gruber.
 I think he's a great guy, very funny.
 But I think it's hilarious that now it's going to be a thing like because Apple won a case
 about them ripping off Apple that every time they rip off Apple, we're going to have to
 hear about it.
 Guess what?
 HP is ripping off Apple too.
 When's Apple going to bring the case against their blatant MacBook?
 By the way, which we mentioned and have talked about in...
 All these laptops look like MacBook Airs for like three years.
 That's the thing.
 That's why there's no point in saying it.
 Look at the line of Ultrabooks that just came out.
 All these are the last year of Ultrabooks.
 There's some of them, if you put them in a lineup with Air, it would be...
 This is Joanna Stern saying for $200 more you can get a MacBook Air for six months in
 a row.
 Right.
 It's just such a weird thing.
 Anyway, so Vlad, have you seen the Ativ?
 Which I...
 Well, this is the point I was going to raise earlier.
 First of all, the very idea that Samsung would launch a Series 5 and a Series 7 and that
 would basically slip under my radar is not evidence of me slacking on the job.
 It's just evidence of Samsung being just so driven to just saturate us as human beings
 with information and products, which they struggle to differentiate amongst themselves.
 So the Ativ is what you covered and the Series 5 and Series 7 slates.
 There's a bunch of Ativs.
 There's the Ativ tab, which is Windows RT based and Snapdragon S4 ARM based.
 While I was taking pictures of that, then I saw a Windows tablet in a dock and I thought,
 wow, it has a dock.
 I need to go and take pictures of it.
 I closed it up and I saw vents on the outside.
 It turned out to be an Intel based.
 That's the Ativ Smart PC Pro.
 And then it turns out there's also the Ativ Smart PC, which is Atom based.
 And it's just over saturation.
 Ultimately, if Samsung wants to copy Apple in any respect, I really think they should
 copy the narrow product line.
 That's great.
 I agree with you.
 But the other thing is that Microsoft isn't helping by having, you know, if Samsung wants
 to sell Windows 8, they'd have to do an RT and they have to do a Pro.
 So you have to make double the amount of products.
 Well, not double, but you've got to add some extra products to the mix.
 So anyhow, Gruber's right.
 Our integrity is down the toilet.
 But let's, I mean, no question, I don't have any respect left for anybody, including myself
 at The Verge.
 Let's talk about the things that are...
 Yeah, Vlad, why don't you take us through yesterday?
 Let's talk about IFA, which in case you don't know, if you've just joined the technology
 world, and you don't know, IFA is a big trade show.
 It's kind of like CES for Europe.
 And they announced a lot of, there was a lot of stuff yesterday.
 Let's go through some of the stuff.
 Vlad, you were there.
 What did you see?
 What did you like?
 Share with us.
 Let's all share together.
 I mean, the first thing to say about yesterday is that it wasn't even day one at IFA.
 It was day minus two.
 I mean, IFA opens up tomorrow.
 So most of our venturing through the halls around here, just to give you a flavor of
 what the show is like, is it's kind of like a movie back lot.
 You have these massive halls.
 They have numbers on them.
 And nothing is fully constructed.
 But it was still a massive day yesterday because Sony and Samsung just dominated the life of
 every single tech journalist in the city.
 They just owned us basically from breakfast until dinner.
 Samsung introduced every single conceivable device that you could think of.
 That's right.
 Actually, on that mobile show, we were discussing the idea of a Samsung Android camera.
 And I was actually saying that would make a lot of sense because camera software generally
 is really dumb.
 Apart from doing the automated things, which are sophisticated, it tends to be really dumb
 and based in the text-based menus and horrible, et cetera, written by people who don't speak
 native English.
 So sticking Android on that made a lot of sense.
 And Samsung went and did it.
 They did the Galaxy camera, which to me is probably one of the biggest highlights.
 And so, sorry, I just had to get this out.
 My new Samsung Series 5.
 My Samsung Ativ.
 So take us through, like run through the Samsung stuff.
 What did they announce?
 I mean, obviously, we have it all on the site.
 I just kind of want to go through and get your reaction on them.
 So the first thing we saw yesterday, was it announced with the Galaxy Note 2?
 They did announce that, right, on stage?
 But we had a leak of it.
 So obviously, I know what the Galaxy Note is.
 What is new about the Galaxy Note 2?
 What is new, what is new about the Galaxy Note?
 Run us through that.
 Well, the original Galaxy Note had a 1280 by 800 resolution screen.
 It also has a 1280 by 720 resolution.
 So 16 by 9.
 It's thinner, it's lighter, it has a quad core processor, 1.6 gigahertz.
 But really, if you think about it, it's closer to the Galaxy S3 than the Galaxy Note.
 It's the Galaxy S3, but just enlarged, stretched out, and with a new stylus, a redesigned stylus.
 It's kind of an evolution.
 It's not really that.
 But how is it closer to the Galaxy S3 than the Galaxy Note?
 It still has like the...
 It's the software.
 Yeah.
 Oh, the software one.
 Yeah, it's the software.
 It's also the physical design, the materials used.
 It really...
 I mean, you put it in your hand and you think it's a Galaxy S3 stretched out to an even
 crazier dimension.
 I mean, I still don't know if it's better.
 The drawing works really well, right?
 I'm sorry, what was that?
 How's the drawing?
 Paul wants to know how the drawing is on it.
 Yeah, the stylus works very well.
 Do you mean the spin?
 Spin.
 The S-pen.
 The S-pen?
 Is that what you're calling it?
 I called it the spin.
 The spin.
 The S-pen.
 Yeah.
 Is it called the S-pen?
 Yeah, do you want to hear something, Graham?
 Let's see.
 Yeah, it's the S-pen.
 Do you want to hear something, Graham, about Samsung?
 Here's one of my favorite pieces of news from the past couple days.
 Samsung for Windows 8, they know people are unhappy about losing the start menu, so they've
 added it back.
 No way.
 It's called the S-Launcher.
 No way.
 The S-Launcher.
 And it looks pretty much like the OS X dock.
 Wait, what?
 Well, Dell has an OS X dock as well.
 Slauncher.
 Slauncher.
 Is it the S-Launcher?
 It's OS X dock in Windows 8?
 I don't know.
 I haven't seen Dell stuff.
 Slauncher.
 Oh, man.
 All right, so they do the Galaxy Note 2.
 Then what?
 What else do they do?
 They had the-
 Oh, yeah, sure.
 The Windows 8 phone, which I-
 The Ativ.
 The Ativ.
 The Ativ.
 Galaxy.
 No, it's not.
 No Galaxy.
 Universe.
 G.
 Galaxy.
 Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's called the Ativ S.
 The Ativ S.
 Yeah, it's the Ativ S.
 I'm actually quite smug about this.
 Nokia retweeted me when I asked on Twitter why people are excited about this.
 The design is uninspired.
 I'm pretty sure-
 Okay, and you know what?
 Groovy should be happy with me on this one.
 I'm pretty sure there is an HTC Windows phone somewhere in the past, which I couldn't dig
 up, which has the exact same loudspeaker on the back as the Ativ S from Samsung.
 Was it the-
 But I think the reason that people got excited about this is first off, we haven't seen any
 Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 devices, so that's something.
 It's got a higher resolution display, bigger screen.
 It's obviously more powerful.
 It's like the next generation Windows Phone 8.
 What's new about the operating system, is there anybody saying?
 It's Windows Phone 8.
 Yeah, but what is... I don't know anything about Windows Phone 8 yet.
 It's got a new home screen with smaller tiles, and it's like a bunch of stuff.
 I mean, it's so-
 The kernel is shared with Windows 8.
 We can't go into this now.
 It is shared?
 When was all of this announced?
 Well, I am surprised you didn't read it in your Wall Street Journal or your New York
 Times.
 Yeah, I don't know anything about this at all.
 I'm just reading about-
 Or your Bloomberg Businessweek or your Time Magazine or your-
 The Republican Convention, basically.
 Oh, God.
 But it just happened months ago.
 It did?
 A month ago.
 Yeah, okay.
 We've been talking about this for a long time.
 It's no big deal.
 It's no big deal you don't have any idea what's going on.
 It's just a minor problem.
 It's not any big-
 I apologize.
 We don't have to be concerned.
 Everyone at home who's tuned in right now, don't be concerned.
 But this is the first Windows Phone 8 device we've seen.
 This is the first Windows Phone 8 device we've seen, and I think the excitement is purely
 like, it's a new Windows Phone device that seems to be like at parity with the current
 line of-
 They have no processor, right?
 They haven't said what it is yet.
 I'm not sure about that.
 All right, but-
 But also, let me say, we technically haven't seen it because Samsung just announced it.
 They did their whole spiel, but then it was nowhere to be found at IFA.
 And the reason given was, well, Microsoft still hasn't announced Windows Phone 8 properly,
 so it hasn't given it its proper launch, which we all know is going to happen together with
 Nokia on September 5th, and Samsung is just trying to steal some thunder.
 They're doing an event here on the 5th, September 5th, and they're obviously going to do a big
 launch of all the devices.
 Well, maybe The Wall Street Journal will cover that.
 The Verge will cover it, but The Verge is on the internet, so unfortunately, you'll
 be incapable of seeing that coverage.
 But at least you'll be able to watch a soap opera on television.
 That's fine.
 So, look, so there was the Galaxy Camera, there was these Ativ products.
 So it seems like the Galaxy brand is for Android, the Ativ stuff is for Windows.
 That seems to be where the distinction lies.
 Is that right?
 Yes.
 I guess.
 Galaxy Cam, Ativ Phone, no, Ativ S?
 Ativ S is the phone.
 Galaxy Cam.
 Galaxy is Android.
 Galaxy Camera.
 Ativ is Windows, Galaxy is-
 Yes, Galaxy is Android, Ativ is Windows.
 Here's what I understand, how did a company come out with a Galaxy Tab and then not get
 to Galaxy Cam?
 They're Galaxy Camera, that's what it's called.
 Which is a terrible name.
 But it runs Android, it's very cool, it follows up with Nikon doing an Android camera last
 week.
 This is like a thing now.
 This is officially like-
 I do not think this helps anybody.
 The reason why people like a camera mixed with a phone operating system is because that
 phone operating system is connected to a phone that allows you to put the stuff on the internet.
 I don't see, unless you have Photoshop and Android for some reason.
 But even then, I don't like it on my camera.
 Vlad, so you said the Galaxy Camera is your highlight.
 What's going on there?
 Well, it's one of my highlights.
 I fell in love with Ultrabook, but that's a whole other story.
 It's very personal.
 The Galaxy Camera, well, Po says, yes, you can put it on the internet, which in his world
 is probably irrelevant.
 But to me, isn't that enough?
 No, but it's not a phone.
 This is what I'm saying.
 It's not a 3G phone, is it?
 The idea is that like, look-
 Oh, it is.
 It is.
 You can get HSPA Plus up to 21.1.
 You can put a SIM card in it.
 Yeah.
 Which is stupid.
 But the idea is really that you have a camera, a point and shoot made by Samsung.
 They make decent point and shoots.
 Wouldn't it be better if the camera could do more and had a better user interface and
 could upload your photos automatically when you take pictures?
 Well, I didn't know about the 3G aspect.
 That makes more sense.
 But even without 3G, it's still like, I'd rather have something that just connects to
 my Wi-Fi network when I get home and uploads all my pictures.
 And I know the iFi does that, but there are things, there are issues with that.
 And I think I'd rather have like a native, kind of a more native option to do it.
 I guess so.
 Yeah, and I mean, myself personally, I've always felt with these compact cameras, the
 missing feature and the one I couldn't explain to myself is why don't they all just have
 Wi-Fi in them?
 And Sony also just announced the NEX5R, which is essentially just a new NEX series camera
 like the NEX5 and doesn't change too much, but it has Wi-Fi.
 And that's a selling point to me.
 And the Galaxy camera, the difference about it is that everything is pretty high spec,
 pretty much everything.
 It's got 4.8 inch LCD display, it's high resolution, there's almost no bezel on the
 back.
 And when you're actually holding it up in portrait mode and you forget the fact that
 it's such a chunky thing compared to most phones, it operates very much like any Android
 device.
 And it is smooth and responsive and all of those things.
 And then you flip it in landscape and you have a really good camera.
 Can you check your Gmail?
 It's a compromise, but it's a good compromise.
 Can you just use regular apps like Gmail?
 Yeah, and it's Jelly Bean.
 Yeah.
 Jelly Bean.
 But it's like...
 In your camera.
 In your camera.
 Think about it.
 And it's mostly stock.
 Instagram.
 Dude, Instagram.
 Right.
 Wrap your head around that idea.
 So I have a question.
 If it's cheating to take a real camera picture and put it through Instagram, is it double
 cheating to have a real camera that runs Instagram?
 Or is it the future?
 That's my question.
 I don't know what you're cheating.
 It is definitely cheating if you take a DSLR picture and get it into Instagram.
 Oh, I see what you're saying.
 That is 100% cheating.
 You're saying that if I take my D90 or whatever and I go shoot amazing photos with it and
 then I put them on my phone and upload them to Instagram and put an effect on them.
 And they look incredible.
 Obviously, it's cheating.
 Super cheating.
 I agree that it's cheating.
 The whole point of Instagram is that you're snapping a photo as it happens and then you've
 got to throw it up there on the internet.
 But now you can do that with an Android camera.
 But now you've got this Android camera.
 But the Android camera is running Instagram.
 I don't think that's cheating.
 I don't think it's cheating.
 I think the iPhone got money.
 Let's say the iPhone or Android phone got a much, much better camera, but it's still
 the phone.
 It wouldn't be cheating.
 Would it be cheating?
 It's winning.
 What's cheating is when you go from device to device, I think.
 So that's the line.
 That's what the police should come.
 I think the Instagram, I think the police-
 Hashtag police.
 I think the police should have the rights to not kick in the door of anybody who takes
 a photo on a dedicated camera and then transfers it to a phone and uploads it to Instagram.
 I believe the police, and they should be able to use lethal force, I think, if the person
 motions for their camera.
 Or tries to do it like quick.
 Or tries to delete files from their camera so you don't have any evidence.
 If there's any sudden motion, I think lethal force is completely acceptable.
 I don't know.
 It's just me.
 That's your rule.
 It's just me.
 By the way, I'm pretty sure that's part of the Republican platform, the new platform
 they have.
 That's right.
 Well, I read that in the Wall Street Journal.
 That's in the Wall Street Journal.
 Internet freedom and lethal force if someone tries to fake an Instagram photo with a good
 camera.
 Fine by me.
 I'm all straight ticket, straight party ticket on that one.
 Lethal force.
 Lethal force.
 Let's keep going.
 I'm just wondering like...
 RNC is on my mind, by the way.
 It's going to come up.
 There's no escaping it.
 I'm going to talk about abortion on this VirgCast.
 I'm kidding.
 I'm not.
 I'm not going to.
 I did.
 I mean, it just happened.
 But that's it.
 Don't try to engage me in an abortion conversation.
 So people in the chat are asking how fast the camera can turn on because it runs Android.
 So I don't know.
 What do you mean turn on?
 Well, booting up Android phone is not fast.
 But I imagine it's always on.
 That's a good point.
 Pretty much the power button turns it on and off exactly as a usual Android phone.
 So it's always on.
 That is a question, but it's not one that we could answer immediately because Samsung
 was very quick to say it's not final software.
 We're going to release this in the fourth quarter of this year.
 Nikon has basically two operating systems on their Android camera.
 You boot it up, it's a camera.
 Turns on, you use the camera.
 You push the button, it switches into Android.
 Android's been booting up in the background.
 Kludgy.
 Isn't it Kludgy?
 This is a big argument.
 I don't think it's Kludgy.
 Anyway, so then you flip the switch and Android can get all your pictures.
 K-L-U-D-G-Y?
 I always say Kludgy, but I hear Kludgy all over the place.
 No.
 It's like GIF and GIF.
 Well, one of them is right.
 What is everybody saying?
 I'm wrong?
 No, you get a lot of Kludgies.
 Kludgy.
 Whatever.
 I'm sorry, that's how we say it in England.
 My iPad's battery lasts forever because that's not on Wi-Fi.
 If I have the Bluetooth off, all the radios are off and the screen is off, I can walk
 away, come back three days later, and instead of being at 100, it's 93%.
 You could do that with an Android phone.
 If there's no radios on, but the whole point of this is that you'd have the radios on.
 Geofences.
 No, wait, wait, wait.
 Geofences.
 That's not an argument.
 Just put a geographical fence around it made of geography.
 But if the camera is off, then all the radios, everything is totally asleep.
 Correct.
 If you leave it on, then maybe it pops up, looks around every once in a while.
 You're still when it's on.
 This idea that there's going to be a...
 Vlad, are you going to buy a SIM card for your Galaxy camera?
 In Europe, probably, because you can.
 Well, that presumes I'll buy a Galaxy camera, which I probably wouldn't do.
 This is my best of show.
 Definitely not going to buy this.
 Yeah, right.
 How is that best of show if you're not actually...
 All right.
 Look, this is Samsung.
 We should talk...
 I mean, the one thing we should talk about is they are trying.
 They said over and over again, Samsung said, we're the one company that can do the whole
 ecosystem.
 We're building the phones, we're building the computers.
 The TV.
 That's true.
 They are really...
 They build every device in the ecosystem.
 They are the one company that can do the entire ecosystem, except for...
 Except for building the operating system on any of these phones.
 Except for software and content.
 Other than that, they're all set.
 LG does almost all the same things.
 Yes.
 Except for software and content.
 They almost do.
 This is what I'm getting at.
 I want to ask what the situation on the ground there is, because it's like...
 That definitely sounds like Vlad's at a war zone.
 All right, Vlad, can you give us an update on what is the situation on the ground?
 I understand you're currently pinned down in a luxurious hotel near a Berlin convention
 center.
 No, let me ask this question.
 It seems to me like Samsung, they finally realized they need to have an ecosystem.
 They've pulled out a bunch of products that they've already kind of half announced here
 and there, gave them some new branding, so they run Windows 8.
 They gave them a name, and they said, this is an ecosystem.
 They put an S pen.
 Stevia.
 They put the S pen on everything.
 Stevia.
 They put Stevia.
 They said everything has the S pen.
 Yes.
 Okay.
 Everything has the S pen now?
 Pretty fast.
 I mean, not the TVs, not the...
 But that is coming.
 Not the phone.
 I guarantee you.
 Vlad?
 I'm sorry, not the camera.
 Not the camera.
 Not the latest line of S3s.
 The Windows 8 product has the S pen.
 Wait, the Windows 8 tablet has the...
 And the Note 2, which was their big launch there, has the S pen.
 Windows 8 tablet has the S pen.
 Yes.
 The Ativ has a S pen.
 Okay.
 I said that word.
 They're implementing...
 So is this an ecosystem?
 Vlad, do you think this is like an actual ecosystem, or are they just sort of crowing
 about it because now they can't just produce Windows machines?
 We should slide this back here on the screen.
 Can we get Vlad on the screen back here?
 Yeah.
 Why aren't we doing video with him?
 No bandwidth.
 Vlad, what's up?
 Talk to me.
 Talk to me about the ecosystem.
 Sorry.
 First of all, the better bandwidth is it is a war zone in terms of connectivity.
 For whatever reason, it's been an absolute nightmare over here.
 That's a problem.
 That's weird because...
 And that's the only bad thing I can say about Berlin, which has been a wonderful city.
 You love Berlin.
 I do.
 I hear it's very cool.
 I love Berlin like a brother.
 You wouldn't...
 You don't want to live there, but you'd hang out with your family for hours.
 And yet, America is some sort of technological backbone.
 Okay, so hold on.
 Let me answer Neil I's question.
 Yes, please do.
 That's what I was going to say.
 Let me try to answer Neil I's question.
 I think Neil I is spot on that Samsung is aware it needs an ecosystem, but I also feel
 like Samsung's approach to doing it is like stumbling blind in the dark.
 They have no idea how to put one together and they're cobbling things together.
 Just speaking with some of the guys on the Galaxy side of things, the Android side of
 things, Neil I is spot on.
 Galaxy means Android.
 That is straight and clear and straightforward.
 But within the Galaxy range, Samsung has its own Stratos.
 So you have the Galaxy devices like the Galaxy 3, which is smart phones and flagships, and
 then you have the Note platform.
 That's how they spoke of it, the Note platform, which is the Galaxy Note 10.1, which Neil
 I loved, the Galaxy Note 2, and whatever else gets a little span to keep with your nomenclature.
 And yeah, now we have this tea thing going on, which as I say is completely confusing.
 The thing is, if you're going to confuse us, the tech journalists, the guys who are supposed
 to have some sort of expertise, whether fake or real, it's going to be a nightmare for
 consumers, particularly this whole distinction between Intel and ARM processors.
 That's what I was saying yesterday when we were trying to figure out what the Series
 5 was and what the Ativ was.
 I was like, if the Verge editor's IRC room is this deeply confused, your strategy is
 doomed.
 There's no way.
 If you get eight people and Tom Warren and people at IFA and they're like, we don't know
 what's going on with Samsung's Windows products, there's no way you can communicate that.
 When you have all of the ecosystem but the software, what else can you do?
 They're slaves to many masters, basically.
 They have to be in Android.
 Presumably their business will not be thriving if they're not in Android in some meaningful
 way.
 They're not going to be in Microsoft because they're Microsoft and they want to sell laptops.
 What do you do there if you're Samsung?
 How do you get out of that?
 How do you differentiate your products enough so that... The only thing you can do is have
 just wildly different products.
 Then that would require them to have double the R&D budget.
 This is why I just love the Note line because the Note was super successful for them and
 it's differentiated.
 Has it been super successful?
 Yes, it's been wildly successful.
 Are people happy with the Note?
 Yes.
 Here's the thing.
 How come you didn't buy a Note?
 It's different.
 You love pens.
 Yeah, but I had a seven inch tablet at the time.
 Oh my God.
 Crayton will answer this question in a moment.
 He owned a flyer, just to put it in perspective.
 Just so you understand what's going on.
 Are you on?
 Can we hear him?
 Yeah.
 Hi.
 Is this Crayton?
 Can the reader?
 Sorry, the viewer and listener hear him?
 Yes, they can hear me.
 Okay.
 Crayton, you owned a flyer.
 Correct.
 When I met you, you were taking notes on a flyer as if it was a very casual thing that
 everybody did.
 It was very normal.
 You got rid of your flyer.
 You bought an iPad and got a stylus.
 When you saw the Note, why did you not think this is it?
 I was still using a flyer, I think, when the Note came out.
 The jump from a five inch phone to a seven inch tablet was silly.
 I was happier with my seven inch phone.
 Also, they probably had the same resolution.
 Yeah, probably.
 Could you put the flyer... Did you put the flyer in your pocket?
 I did.
 It fit in my back pocket of my Levi's 527 jeans.
 Wow.
 Did you just do an advertisement?
 Is that our sponsor?
 Is Levi's our sponsor?
 Is that what's going on?
 What other Levi's did they fit in?
 Today's show is brought to you by the number 527.
 Yeah.
 And Levi's.
 Oh, this is the new Diet Coke can.
 Look at this.
 Isn't that nice?
 Also by Diet Coke.
 It's refreshing and highly addictive.
 It's been out for like a year.
 Please stop dissing this can.
 It's great though.
 I love it.
 The thing about the Note is everybody I know who has a Note never uses a stylus.
 They just like having a giant phone.
 I don't know why.
 I don't believe that.
 I know a lot of people have Notes.
 They just enjoy having a giant phone.
 It's different.
 Let's move on.
 Samsung is starting to make me depressed.
 Can we get... I'll go to... This is so much weird.
 Their presentation.
 Can I just say this?
 Samsung has this history of insane presentations.
 Vlad, I mean you were there.
 Just tell us about the magician.
 The magician, I think I had a really good analogy about the magician.
 They kicked off with this guy who was doing card tricks, magic card tricks.
 To me, that just went completely in the opposite direction of what a supposedly high technology
 forward facing company is supposed to be doing because those tricks were popular back when
 Walkman was the number one consumer electronics product.
 There's no connection.
 There's no like, here's magic card tricks and now there's a guy with a wand and he wears
 the wand and it's just a normal screen behind him.
 Those little sparkles.
 We're all 12 years old and we're all stressed out.
 It's just like Samsung's ecosystem is an illusion.
 Haven't you ever seen David?
 That.
 But all magic is an illusion.
 Haven't you ever seen David Blaine?
 I mean he's not really doing those pieces of magic.
 He doesn't really, just like how Samsung's not really making an ecosystem.
 That's right.
 He doesn't really know what card you have.
 That's a great analogy.
 What?
 I'm saying that's a great analogy.
 It is actually a good analogy.
 I'm just saying Samsung would be like, they would yell like, they'd be like, Jink and
 Shin and then like, dude would come out like swelling crescendos of music.
 That is like a Street Fighter introduction.
 Yeah, that's what it was like.
 These huge crescendos of music and then he would say whatever and then he would leave
 and be like, give it up for J.K.
 Shin while like videos of like card tricks would happen on the screen.
 That's cool.
 That's an analogy.
 That's what's going on.
 Let me direct you to a little known film called The Prestige featuring Hugh Jackman, Christian
 Bale and a number of other British people.
 One of those people is actually Australian.
 Oh, and David Bowie and Michael Caine.
 Or as I like to refer to him, Michael Caine.
 Anyhow, in that film, magicians battle for supremacy.
 They battle for the prestige and the love of the audience and the love of a beautiful
 woman.
 Is that Scarlett Johansson?
 She is in it at some point.
 So they, you know, like Sony and Samsung and IFA, worked hard to create different illusions
 that would wow and impress an audience that would delight them with the mystery.
 Is Samsung Christian Bale or is Samsung Hugh Jackman?
 I would say Samsung is definitely Christian Bale.
 Right?
 You agree.
 Samsung is Bale and Hugh Jackman is Sony.
 Are you allowed to spoil this movie at this point?
 I spoiled it in a great ending of, we had a, you remember when the Tesla museum was,
 people were trying to fund the Tesla museum.
 I had a great joke that got cut from my 90 seconds on the verge, which I'll never let
 anybody.
 Do we have it?
 Can we roll it?
 Can we put it on somewhere?
 Now?
 Is it?
 No, just in general.
 Wait, is that The Prestige or The Illusionist?
 The Prestige.
 The Illusionist is the one with Paul Giamatti that I didn't see.
 Yeah, I never saw The Illusionist.
 No one saw The Illusionist.
 I saw them both.
 I mean, presumably Paul Giamatti and the people who made it had to go to a premiere.
 And they were like, Paul, the premiere for The Illusionist is today.
 It's like, I'm sorry, I'm going to The Prestige.
 I hear it's very good.
 I hear there's a twist ending.
 Yeah.
 There is.
 Yeah.
 Everyone's dead in it.
 I have these movies so thoroughly confused in my mind.
 Oh, you saw both?
 Yes.
 You're like, oh, no.
 I have no idea what's going on.
 But I believe I was making a point, which is-
 Samsung is Hugh Jackman.
 Hugh Jackman, no.
 Samsung is-
 Or Sony is Hugh Jackman.
 Christian Bale.
 And of course, Christian Bale's a nemesis in the film, an opponent is Hugh Jackman,
 aka Sony.
 Yeah.
 Aka Wolverine.
 Aka Wolverine.
 Vlad, can you tell us about Sony's presentation?
 If they had anything?
 Great segue.
 I love it.
 I love it.
 Yes.
 Well, Sony's presentation was actually fundamentally different from Samsung's.
 It was pretty much none of that fluff.
 Cassie Wright took the stage and he let nobody on it.
 I mean, literally let nobody on it.
 There was a guy with a broken leg that you thought he was going to bring up.
 And then he was like, just kidding, his leg is broken.
 Let me continue.
 It was like, let me introduce him.
 Then he didn't introduce him.
 And he kept going.
 Wait, what do you mean?
 There was a guy with a broken leg who was one of their executives who was supposedly
 going to get up on stage and talk about something.
 But he got up, like limped up with his crotch.
 And he was like, oh, just kidding.
 He can't get up here.
 Let me keep going.
 So that was his joke or was that like, he had to improvise?
 Can you describe what happened?
 Yeah.
 I mean, I think, yes, that was Cassie's joke.
 The guy did actually have a broken leg, had crutches.
 He stood up, he took a bow and everyone was like, hey, well done.
 You have a high ranking position at Sony and Cass carried on.
 I mean, I would say well done for having a high ranking position.
 The funny joke was you have a broken leg so you can't get up on stage.
 He definitely said something like, I'd like to invite up so and so.
 And then he stood up and he was like, well, as you can see, he's not going to be coming
 up here.
 But then what happened is that Cass mentioned the guy who's in charge of Sony's mobile
 division who didn't have any leg impediments.
 Also just stood up, took a bow and sat back down.
 That's very strange.
 I just dropped my pen.
 Let's talk about what the answer is.
 So, Sony did-
 I love how you did it.
 He was just like, and here's so and so.
 Sit back down.
 I got worse.
 This is Cass' big show.
 This is his first one in Sony.
 He's coming out.
 He's coming out party.
 So, he's got to have this.
 I thought Sony looked pretty good yesterday.
 Super boring.
 I was only half paying attention.
 So, what is, Vlad, tell me if I missed anything.
 So they had the 84 inch 4K TV, which I saw in New York yesterday, which was beautiful,
 but there's no 4K content.
 So that's-
 Yeah, I mean everybody-
 Also it's going to cost $20,000.
 Did Samsung also have a 4K TV there?
 No, LG did.
 Oh, LG, right.
 But so 4K is now-
 And Toshiba.
 And Toshiba.
 But Toshiba had it at MVC.
 4K is a thing that now is where it's happening.
 There's no 4K distribution, but every single film is in 4K right now, like has been converted
 to 4K because it's 4K in movie theaters right now.
 Yeah.
 I mean that's-
 And Sony put out a camera.
 But Sony's answer to how do you get 4K on it, if you buy this TV for what I believe
 will be around $20,000, how do you put native 4K on it?
 They're like, well, you could buy a 2K Blu-ray and this Blu-ray player we made in an upscale.
 Is this-
 It's like that and you're crazy.
 Could this be the magic, the secret to getting first run content?
 It's like if you own a 4K TV, you'll have access to first run.
 When they did 1080p, it was like, hey, you'll shoot it on your own camera and-
 Yeah, exactly.
 There was no 1080p content when they came out with 1080p TVs.
 They'll get there.
 So anyway, so they did-
 I'm thrilled.
 4K TV.
 4K couldn't be happier.
 They did-
 Could not be happier.
 It would be impossible.
 The Nex 5R-
 If only it was running Android.
 The Nex 5R, which has Android, or which has wifi, not Android.
 It has wifi so you can upload it to your-
 That's a, what is that?
 It's a camera.
 It's a camera, that's right.
 It's a micro four thirds.
 That's right.
 They did the new Tablet S, which is a new Android tablet, way thinner.
 I think it actually looks pretty nice.
 No, no, I agree.
 I agree.
 I mean, it's got like the Surface keyboard.
 Yeah, it's got a touch-
 It also has-
 Does it have the fold over?
 Yeah, it has a little bit of the fold over, but it also has like this crazy stand.
 Yeah, which is like-
 It's like a pole, you can put it on, and it's like a little 10 inch monitor on a stand.
 It's kind of awesome.
 They refer to that.
 The official name for that stand is the Fancy Stand.
 Is the Fancy Stand?
 Are you serious?
 Is it Campbell Case Fancy Stand?
 They were going through the presentation in New York, and David and I are sitting there,
 and he's like, and so we have a number of covers, we have the keyboard cover, we have
 our stand.
 They really call it the Fancy Stand?
 He goes-
 The Fancy Stand.
 The Fancy Stand for lack of a better name, and he's like-
 Yeah, you know, but here's the thing.
 The Fancy Stand.
 You know the thing about Sony, you're Sony, you're not supposed to say for lack of a better
 name.
 You're supposed to say, we gave it a better name than Fancy Stand.
 For lack of a better name is like before you show it to people.
 Yeah, the Fancy Stand.
 The Fancy Stand is ready, now it needs a name.
 Oh, we've got to give it one, or it will lack a better name.
 And then this guy's going to have to go on stage and look like a schmuck.
 And this is the stand we couldn't name.
 Fancy Stand.
 Call it the S Stand.
 Yeah, the Stand.
 By the way-
 The Stand.
 Yesterday on Twitter I said it was inevitable that Samsung would rebrand itself as Samsung,
 and somebody said, is that more or less inevitable than Samsung putting out a phone called the
 Samsung Inevitable?
 By the way, during the special verdict-
 Yeah, the S verdict.
 During the S verdict broadcast, I was talking about the vibe and the impact of Samsung.
 And I was like, which by the way may be Samsung phones?
 Vibe and impact?
 Both Samsung phones.
 Both.
 Of course.
 Anyhow, the Samsung Inevitable.
 Anyway, so back to Sony.
 New tablet S. It's an Android tablet.
 They put a bunch of mini apps.
 Phil Molyneux told me that they canceled the clamshell tablet P. I was like, you know,
 you've upgraded the old tablet S.
 They canceled it.
 Didn't they release it?
 They put it out, but they're not-
 They're not discontinued.
 There's no new version.
 Discontinued.
 Discontinued.
 Oh, really?
 They discontinued the piece of crap product that nobody wanted?
 That's a change.
 He looked at me and he goes, well, it was very innovative and consumers didn't embrace
 it.
 It was not innovative and consumers didn't embrace it for that reason.
 Yeah.
 Also, I mean, oh God, how?
 How is that?
 Somebody in the comments at the post when I wrote it, somebody was like, you mean consumers
 didn't want a plastic burrito that ran out?
 I have a serious question though for Sony.
 How did that get out of the lab with you thinking-
 Consumers are really going to embrace this.
 You should fire all of the people who told you it was good.
 You should fire everyone at the company who was like, this is a cool product.
 We should work on it and promote it and sell it because consumers will love it.
 It was clear that that was not-
 I think this is the Caserai that you're seeing.
 I think we saw Sony-
 Caserai, you're a company with a street sweeper.
 This is like when Steve Jobs went back to Apple, he canceled a bunch of products that
 we had to focus.
 It's not quite that drastic, but it's like they only showed four products in New York
 yesterday.
 Then the two additional products they had at IFA were this Vio Mini Duo, which is a
 slider Windows 8 PC.
 This is tap 20.
 It's regular Windows, Core i5.
 It's tap 20 giant tabletop.
 I was like, where are those?
 Wait, didn't they have an RT?
 I don't believe they have an RT.
 Sony doesn't have an RT product?
 As far as I know, Vlad, right?
 No, no, no, no.
 Yeah, it was just those two.
 I said, where are those two?
 Those are the interesting ones.
 I was told, look, we're announcing these four in the United States.
 These are the four products, the two cameras, the tablet, and the TV.
 Focus on these.
 We're going to do a focus thing for the-
 Can I just say that looks really attractive to me.
 That keyboard, that's the tablet S with the keyboard.
 This is an Android product.
 It's an Android product.
 What is this interface that looks like Windows 8?
 That's a remote control app.
 Well, somebody should tell the remote control app that it looks like Windows 8 exactly.
 Yeah.
 That's a really misleading photo.
 The tablet S ultimately is the world's most expensive IR blaster.
 No, it does other things.
 It does other things, but the two features that it has that Sony is very proud of is
 one is a universal remote control with macros.
 Which is cool.
 It's an IR blaster.
 Then the other one-
 But it has IR.
 Wait, because that's how it works.
 You have a fancy universal controller.
 Yeah, I do.
 I understand.
 That's the wrong solution.
 The other app is you tell it where you live and what cable company you have.
 It shows you all the shows on TV.
 You push it.
 There's a big swoopy animation, which is cool, which really is cool.
 Then it says, do you want to watch this?
 You can swipe it up towards the TV.
 It'll type in the right channel.
 Wait a second.
 That'll find live programming?
 Yeah.
 You're like, I live in Brooklyn.
 I have Fios.
 It'll show you all the things that are on TV.
 It's like a channel guide.
 It's a channel guide.
 Is it like a fan hat?
 Do you know the fan hat?
 Yeah, it's like that.
 You can swipe up the shows.
 That's actually awesome because I actually use fan hat all the time.
 What's fan hat?
 Fan hat is an app that, and I think it's actually kind of brilliant, but it's not well integrated
 with the experience of watching, which is maybe this will help with.
 Fan hat is this app where I'm like, I want to watch, I don't know, Ghosts of Mars.
 Don't watch that because it's a bad John Carpenter movie, but I want to watch Ghosts of Mars.
 Where can I get it?
 Is it on Netflix?
 Is it on iTunes?
 Is it on Amazon?
 I had this idea like years ago.
 It'll go through all that stuff and show you how you can watch it, which is really, really
 helpful considering that we have no consolidated way to find anything.
 That stuff is great, but this is like, I mean, this is way more limited.
 This is literally what's on cable right now on all of your channels.
 But that's still better than whatever time, whatever that is.
 The mechanic is cool because it's just a big, pretty list of...
 Flipping it.
 It's like Windows 8, right?
 It's a big, pretty list of icons.
 You can flick them up.
 Somebody noted in chat that Ghosts of Mars, Ice Cube is in Ghosts of Mars.
 And John Carpenter has a lot of great films.
 That is not one of them.
 So Vlad, did you get to play with the stuff, the mini duo and the tap 20?
 I personally didn't.
 I attended the presentation and as soon as it was finished, I sped over to Samsung.
 And that's the other thing.
 Samsung made every single possible effort to sabotage journalists being at both events
 at the same time.
 I wonder why.
 How is that possible?
 If I can just bring this back to Kaz, though, and his presentation.
 Because there is one thing that struck me and the real fundamental difference that I
 found with Samsung, which was all glossy and shiny and all that glitz and glamour that
 people liked decades ago.
 With Samsung, I feel Kaz kept the stage not because he wanted to be-
 You mean Sony.
 He wasn't hoarding it for himself, but because he also wanted, firstly, he wanted to assert
 himself, as Neil I was saying, as the CEO, as the leader of Sony.
 And he reiterated the whole idea of a one Sony, which we've seen, it's kind of been
 rough on Sony's own employees because it's one Sony, but a whole bunch of employees have
 been cut and things are being trimmed.
 And as Neil I said, product lines are being trimmed.
 And he didn't dodge the issues.
 He did say that Sony needs to execute faster.
 He did say that it needs to be more focused.
 He addressed those points, which a whole bunch of people have been saying.
 It's just the one thing that I noticed as well is that the things that were behind him
 on the backdrop were just a whole bunch of pretty pictures, a whole bunch of pretty ideas.
 But I still don't think Sony has the proper sense of urgency because even though they're
 trimming the product lines and Neil I saw a limited number of products for the US, over
 here in Europe, we saw one of those cringe-worthy moments where Sony decided, oh, and we're
 doing three new Android phones.
 And we're just going to call them the T, the Xperia T, the Xperia J, and the Xperia, do
 we have a list available?
 Yeah, that one.
 Do that one.
 It's the TVJ, the T, the V, and the J.
 I think it's the Jenny, the Sony Xperia.
 The Sony Xperia Jenny would be good.
 She's starting to name them after old girlfriends.
 First one's the Alice.
 Yeah, I mean, I feel like Sony still has all of that potential left in it, all of that
 stuff that made those of us who grew up in the 90s kind of fall in love with the company.
 But it just lacks a sense of urgency to start doing more extreme.
 In what way does it have the potential?
 Where is the potential just because it still has the Sony brand name?
 Where's the potential there?
 Well, not just that.
 Sony is still leading other companies in terms of engineering.
 If you think about the next series of cameras, I mean, Neil, I undersold it earlier when
 he said Micro Four Thirds.
 It's an APS-C size sensor.
 It's a bigger sensor, much better image quality, and Sony do it better than anybody else.
 These compact cameras that go between DSLR and point and shoots and try and balance the
 two, the next series is hands down the best, in my opinion.
 So that's cameras.
 And they've got other things, but you know what, it's half past midnight and I can't
 record it.
 That's not really important.
 The point is they have a technological lead, but they're not pushing it the way that Sony
 used to do and with the same sort of bravado back in the day.
 I mean, the Vio X is a great example that I thought about today because the Vio X was
 just this extremely ultra-thin laptop that actually made zero sense because it had no
 processor, no battery.
 I mean, Sony lost a ton of laptop talent to Apple.
 Yeah, because Sony used to build Apple's laptops for them.
 Right, and like Sony doesn't have any demonstrable talent in its music players.
 I guess the TV, at least they're doing 4K, so that's nice.
 They still have some skill there.
 I mean, I think Sony makes really good cameras.
 They make everybody's camera sensor, right?
 They make really good TVs.
 They don't really have software talent.
 They've never really had software talent.
 I mean, to me, it was the version of the IFA events that I got was here's the next 5R with
 Wi-Fi.
 We think this is really important.
 Here's the action cam.
 We're going to go after the GoPro because we have a nice camera sensor.
 We made it small.
 And here's our TV.
 I've never seen a room full of journalists go from, wow, look at that beautiful TV, to
 just basically yelling, like berating Sony executives for how are you going to get content
 on it?
 What's your cost?
 What is your strategy for it?
 They didn't prove the answer.
 Nobody can.
 That's not just Sony's problem.
 Nobody can do it.
 But let's also talk industrial design.
 Let's not undersell Sony industrial design.
 The Xperia 10 or X10 or whatever it was, a couple of years back, the one that was stuck
 on Android 1.6 for a couple of decades, that was a really beautifully designed phone.
 And it's things like the Xperia Ray and the Xperia Mini Pro, which we keep talking about.
 And there's the Sony Ericsson WA10i.
 And you know Sony designed that, not Ericsson, which Neil and I personally loved.
 It was a great phone.
 As far as I'm concerned, the best industrial designers in our broader industry are Apple,
 Nokia, and Sony.
 Maybe I overrate industrial design, but I still consider it really important.
 And just quickly to mention my love for Acer and my best show is the Aspire S7 from Acer,
 which I totally did not expect Acer to produce.
 Paul, you were here at Acer last year, and you destroyed Acer for the W4.
 Do you remember this post?
 You probably don't even remember writing it.
 Was this the why thing?
 No, it was just a really crappy Acer Windows phone.
 And you were like, Acer, why did you make this?
 How much does this panel cost you?
 10 cents?
 You should have tried harder.
 You just demolished this phone.
 Oh yeah, I remember that.
 It was harsh.
 And then you put a disclaimer at the bottom about how little sleep you've gotten.
 You can't be held responsible for anything.
 That was it.
 And you also embedded that, forget it.
 What?
 You embedded that Verve Pipe song.
 Oh my god, really?
 What?
 Forget it.
 You said you can't be held responsible.
 It's one of the lyrics of the song.
 It's so obscure.
 I mean, the song's not.
 It was a big hit.
 No, the Freshman is not an obscure song.
 No, no, no, no, no.
 The reference is obscure.
 I've gotten, I did.
 The song is...
 And you're joke deep, Nick.
 I'm not joking.
 You're deep.
 I'm not joking.
 You cry.
 You cry.
 You cry.
 Makeouts to the song about what the Freshman is about?
 I don't think that's a cool makeout song.
 It's not a cool makeout song.
 It was a Freshman.
 It's not a cool song.
 Period.
 It's just I want to state for the record, nothing cool about that band or the song,
 but...
 I didn't say his song was cool.
 Also not a cool makeout song.
 Especially not a cool makeout song.
 This guy's house was littered with IR blasters.
 He can't be held responsible for what he's listening to while he's making out with people.
 We were only Freshman.
 Oh my god.
 Why did I say that?
 Now that song's gonna be stuck in my head.
 Anyhow, Vlad has no idea what we're talking about.
 Here's the thing.
 Vlad has never heard the song.
 I don't know what you're talking about.
 That's okay.
 But Vlad, true or false, you don't know what the song The Freshman is by The Verve Pipe?
 I might have heard it, but I don't really care about songs' names.
 I don't really care about songs' names, is what Vlad said.
 He's like, I'm above it.
 Can we get a hipster Vlad?
 So what's the aspire thing?
 Or Jif?
 Okay, well, this aspire thing, yes.
 Here's the thing.
 We never planned on it.
 We have a hit list for things that we want to address while we're here.
 It doesn't even pop up on it because it was shown off at Computex for the first time.
 But I had never gotten to see it in person.
 And I was just walking through Aces' booth this morning, and as I say, it's still a construction
 site everywhere.
 And I'm glancing around, and look at this thing.
 I thought it was a tablet at first.
 I honestly thought it was a tablet, and it had one of those Ultra thing keyboard attachments,
 whether they're copying Microsoft or the Apple Smart Cover, whatever.
 And I open it up, and it's just a straight laptop.
 And there's no complication.
 This is the dock, and then this is the flipping hinge, and then this is how it converts into
 something else.
 There's no confusion.
 It's just a straight 11-inch laptop, but it's just so beautifully and simply designed.
 And it has this crosshatch pattern on the top.
 It has an aluminum and magnesium top cover.
 It has a touch screen.
 Yeah.
 And it has a touch screen.
 It's running Windows 8?
 Yes.
 But no fancy hinge shenanigans.
 Oh, you can't.
 You can't.
 And it's running it on a Core i7 1.9 gigahertz.
 Because I wanted to say earlier, I wanted to say everybody's like, we could just do
 whatever we want hinges, because now that instead of it's Windows 7, now that it's
 Windows 8, now that there's one more digit in the name of the operating system, all rules
 about hinges are out the window.
 And so this is exciting to hear that somebody is just like, you know what?
 We're going to make a real laptop.
 Ross was telling me yesterday that they are seriously considering making just a mashup
 video of all of the bad hinges.
 That's exciting.
 Please do that.
 Can I say something?
 Please do that.
 Because I use my iPad all the time.
 Is this an RT?
 No, this is not an RT.
 My iPad's like this, right?
 And I've got a keyboard like this.
 And I touch it.
 But the problem is, you know, it's not a real problem.
 Oh my god, you just broke it.
 It's a real problem.
 But it is actually attached to a keyboard.
 Can I say something?
 I think this is a really nice looking laptop.
 And it reminds me of...
 I mean, Vi basically wrote a love letter.
 No, no, I know that.
 And it reminds me of...
 What is the company?
 I want to say it's Toshiba.
 They put out these like mini laptops.
 They were almost...
 Yeah, the Portage, yeah.
 Is that what I'm thinking of?
 And they're very Japanese looking.
 At least in Europe they're called the Portage.
 They were the thinnest Intel-based laptops.
 This is very reminiscent of it.
 And I like it a lot.
 It looks like something from...
 It looks like it's like kind of devoid of branding and design.
 Like it's not been designed.
 It's almost like the opposite.
 It's like they backed off of designing it.
 This is very exciting to me.
 And just let the...
 Vlad, can you mail me...
 Just let the form speak for itself.
 Vlad, can you mail me an SD card just full of pictures of this?
 I have to say I do like this.
 I do like it.
 I'm looking at it now.
 But it's silver, right?
 Yes.
 That's my only gripe.
 I'm tired of silver stuff.
 You want white.
 You want that thing to be white.
 White.
 I want it to be white.
 Yes.
 Or black.
 Yeah, but you know...
 Or color.
 Or matte chromebook.
 Yes, the matte chromebook.
 Like the soft touch black.
 Which by the way chips off.
 Oh, that's great.
 Just so you know.
 Why are you using a chromebook?
 Are you just turning it on?
 Uh oh.
 Violation.
 I gave the chromebook to my sister for a long time and she was using it and I got it back.
 My only gripe about...
 This is a beautiful piece of hardware.
 Actually, can I say this?
 Both Chris Ziegler and Adrian Jeffries insist that they use a chromebook as a primary computing
 device all the time.
 Chris Ziegler?
 Well, I don't...
 And when does he say that?
 When does he say that?
 When does he say that?
 Are you saying...
 Wait, Vlad, you too?
 I stayed with Chris Ziegler for multiple days at his apartment and I did not see him use
 a chromebook.
 Well, he probably didn't want to ruin your life by showing you what a glorious his chromebook
 is.
 He has an iMac.
 Who doesn't have an iMac?
 He's not using a chromebook.
 Here's my only thing about this Acer is that...
 That's what he said.
 Chris, you're a liar.
 I just...I want the experience to be improved on the software.
 I want to open up a new Acer like this and have a greatly improved software experience.
 And I don't know yet if I will.
 Because of Windows 8?
 Well, I don't know because there's no...
 I haven't gotten to use the new hardware.
 This is a touchscreen.
 Yeah.
 Right.
 I don't know if I'll find a way of interacting with brand new software, but will I be just
 delighted?
 So, it's a lot of new, but is it the future?
 It's a lot of new, but is it good?
 Well, you know, so...
 You know, new is not...new doesn't equal good.
 New just means new.
 So, here's the...
 Let's not change...
 Let's not have change just because we're dissatisfied with what we have now.
 Right.
 Let's not change things just because we think the next thing will be better than the last
 thing.
 Because the last thing before the now was so bad, and then the current thing has a lot
 to make up for.
 Is this a better floor for the election or not?
 Is that what's happening here?
 You know, you actually...
 You make a good point.
 When you look at something like Vista, it was so bad.
 So Vista is Georgia...
 Windows 7 had a lot to make up for.
 It had a lot to make up for, and it didn't...
 You could almost say it had a future deficit.
 It didn't fix everything.
 Yeah.
 It didn't...
 It couldn't fix everything.
 No.
 It is.
 Not in only four years.
 Four years is no amount of time when you're talking about operating systems.
 Four years is no amount of time when you're talking about operating systems.
 It was really more like two years when you think about it.
 Yeah.
 Because you got to start building the next operating system for the next two years.
 But it doesn't mean that you just...
 Because you see something new off in the distance, you know, with a great head of hair.
 Some kind of facelift.
 You don't just...
 T90X all over the place.
 You don't just, you know, with a hot new body.
 You don't just get rid of the old thing because you think the new thing will be better without
 really knowing what the new thing stands for.
 Right.
 And what its stance on abortion is.
 Chris says he uses Chrome fairly often.
 Can I just...
 We're sorry, man.
... wrap up this point that I started like 40 minutes ago.
 It's long-winded.
 Go on.
 But what I just wanted to get at, and the thing that reminded me about the Viyawex was
 this Aspira 7.
 And if you think about the Viyawex and the fact that it was so thin and skinny and it
 still inspired everybody to take a deep breath, be like really impressed with it.
 Well, this Aspira 7 basically fixes every one of those problems.
 The fact that it didn't have a processor, it has some sort of battery now, whereas it
 had zero battery life before, it has a better keyboard, etc., etc.
 And it has a touchscreen, it has a brand new operating system, which as you guys are saying,
 we don't know yet how good it will be.
 And the thing that bothers me from Sony's perspective is this Aspira 7 should have come
 from Sony.
 Sony should have been the one to fix the Viyawex instead of just leave it off as this over
 ambitious project or whatever.
 It shouldn't be Asus sorting these things out because if Sony wants to remain the big
 power that it used to be, it needs to be doing these things.
 Yeah.
 Well, so here's actually the two big takeaways I got from yesterday were Samsung is the new
 Sony.
 I think that to me...
 Do we have to do that?
 Well, no.
 I mean, Sony was this powerhouse of like they made everything, right?
 And now Samsung is in that position.
 They're in the driver's seat in consumer electronics that is not Apple.
 They make the TVs, they make the laptops, they're doing all this stuff.
 Sony is trying to find an identity and catch up.
 And I think that balance of power has shifted pretty clearly.
 The second thing is all these companies are making these Windows 8 PCs and Dieter had
 a really great line.
 He said, usually these huge trade shows, the elephant in the room is like Apple and all
 these new products competing against whatever Apple's doing.
 And this year at IFA, the elephant in the room is Surface.
 These companies are making all these products and they've got to compete against the person
 who's making their software.
 And Nokia.
 But Nokia is like they're not making a tablet yet.
 Microsoft is like, here's these great tablets.
 With the phones, they know Microsoft and Nokia are going to be buddy buddy and they're going
 to try to come out with the absolute best standard phone and you just have to guess
 and hope you get the good second best.
 I don't think that Samsung believes that.
 I don't think Samsung believes that Nokia and Microsoft are going to make the best phone.
 I think they think that they're going to make the phone that is talked about most by Microsoft
 and that maybe will have the most unique design or a unique design.
 But I don't think that Samsung goes into it thinking like, well, we're not going to make
 as good a phone.
 They're going into it thinking like, we can make just as good a phone if not better and
 we know how to get stuff into the market and sell it in the market and so we're going to
 do a great job here.
 I have to believe Samsung's saving its best work or just based on allotment of its own
 resources has to be spending more time and money on Android.
 I think they're spending more time and money on what sells.
 But I do think that like, I do feel like the phone they showed begins to suggest that they
 may be taking Windows Phone 8 a little more seriously.
 But then again, they can because they're not strapped to this old chassis.
 I mean, that's what was going on with the last generation.
 If you're Samsung and you're doing dual-core or quad-core CPUs or SoCs on Android phones
 and HD displays and you kind of go in like bonkers with NFC and then you have Windows
 Phone 7, which is single-core, limited screen resolution, limited camera options.
 I just feel like you can't really go all out.
 How can you?
 I just think the biggest problem with Samsung and Sony and you have a lot of evidences on
 both sides of this sort of like, you know, broken clock is right twice a day or like,
 you know, throwing something against the wall and hoping it sticks.
 They just put out products.
 They don't have any core conviction that this is the best single product that everybody
 needs to get.
 They just put out products and they put out little burritos that are Android and they
 do just so many random things.
 I understand Samsung kind of needs to play both sides, but it's kind of weird to me that
 you have multiple operating systems in your phones, you know?
 Well, I mean, that's what they have to...
 And Microsoft has required them to have multiple operating systems in their tablets, but really
 they have three operating systems in their tablets.
 Because they have that Android too.
 Android.
 Well, they have to hedge their bets.
 I think, so we need to move on from IFA.
 I mean, we've spent a lot of time talking about it and there's other stuff.
 We have remaining topics and Crayton has just given me a note that we have to, you know,
 move through them quickly or else...
 Galaxy now?
 The belt.
 I'll get the belt again.
 He's taking his belt off right now.
 No, he's literally taking off his belt.
 Wow.
 This is graphic.
 This is very graphic.
 All right.
 Vlad, I think we're going to have to send you back to the luxurious...
 Did you get to make the point you were trying to make about Sony that we kept interrupting?
 Yeah, I did.
 And also I just noticed we posted a story about the PS Vita and I'm going to use that
 as evidence when I was saying that Sony has an edge.
 The Vita backwards.
 Yes, I saw that.
 What's the new thing about the Vita?
 Nothing.
 It's some news about the PS1.
 Actually we have bigger news on the site.
 We just broke a story.
 We have images of a new Kindle.
 I know we had this Kindle Fire image from earlier today.
 We have images of a new Kindle on the site right now with a paper white display.
 It's a brand name apparently with what appears to be a backlit display.
 Who was I just talking to?
 The other guy in the sci-fi bookstore, his one thing he wants in life is a backlit ink.
 Guess what?
 Well that exists.
 There's the Barnes and Noble...
 By Kindle.
 Oh, by Amazon.
 By Kindle.
 All right, so Vlad, I love you man.
 Go do stuff in Berlin.
 Thank you for joining us.
 We know it's very late there or very early.
 Are you going to that Vietnamese place?
 No.
 We found a really nice steak bar actually.
 People are complaining.
 Steak bar?
 Steak bar?
 Can I say people are complaining by the way that we keep showing the picture of Vlad.
 They're like, we get it.
 We know what Vlad looks like.
 They're like, this is the future A. Somebody said it was like, this is the future A still
 photo in the live video stream on the verge.
 All right, Vlad, go have some steak at the steak bar.
 We're going to power through.
 Whatever the hell that is.
 What's a steak bar?
 I don't know man.
 I don't know.
 Berlin is a city that never sleeps.
 No.
 No.
 Berlin steak bar thing just shuts down there.
 Pretty sure.
 Vlad goodbye.
 That's true.
 It does sometimes close.
 Bye guys.
 I love you.
 Thank you Vlad.
 How's that?
 How's that?
 I was at an Absinthe bar in Berlin.
 They shut down at like nine.
 Did it have steak?
 No, it had no steak.
 You know, Paul and I are, when we were at Engadget, when I first was at Engadget, my
 first trip.
 I have a story about this too.
 My first trip was with Paul to Berlin for IFA.
 I've been to IFA like five or six times.
 And then just a little, you came back and we were doing rooms for like CES afterwards
 because we were sharing rooms at the time.
 And we were doing roommates and I just remember Josh saying, I want a room with Paul.
 He knows my habits.
 It's like a very distinct memory that I have.
 The man was very comfortable with my constant nudity in the room.
 You know, and that's a, not everybody would be as comfortable.
 Yeah.
 Let's talk about, we should just talk about all this Amazon news we broke today.
 Oh my God.
 Amazon.
 Amazon.
 Amazon.com.
 So, we received images this morning, was it this morning?
 This afternoon of a new Kindle Fire, which appears to be a new Kindle Fire.
 Not four.
 Or a, I mean, we've heard, so we actually had another, yeah, could you move that?
 Can we put that on something else?
 Yeah.
 I heard there was supposed to be multiple Kindle Fires.
 So what we've heard also is there are multiple Kindle Fires.
 We have a picture of, and we're not sure what the origin of this picture is.
 I mean, we're not sure of the, sorry, not of the origin, but of the model.
 And if it is, it's very noisy.
 Can you stop that?
 Maybe let Creighton do it since he's an expert and knows how to put a mic on.
 Why does your shirt just keep, you keep talking.
 You're just an amateur.
 Well, it's very noisy, very distracting.
 I've muted it up.
 Can we put that image of Vlad up on the screen while we do this?
 No.
 Okay, so everybody.
 We're getting the real mics back.
 No, no, no.
 I kind of like this mic.
 All right, all right.
 There's nothing between me and you.
 That's the problem.
 And Josh and this story.
 There's nothing between me and this story.
 Except ourselves.
 Sorry, can we refocus and talk about the Kindle?
 I hope so.
 Let's shut this down over here.
 So we have some images, some that we couldn't publish.
 And this one that we did publish.
 It's unclear if this is a, right now we don't know if this was a prototype.
 Is the actual production version or is one of multiple or a couple different.
 What's most interesting about it is this refined user interface, right?
 It's different than the one on the current Fire.
 And we saw another image with a kind of a more streamlined user interface.
 It's not a dramatic.
 Well, it's got this like charms bar thing kind of happening on the side.
 I think that's in the browser.
 Maybe not though.
 I was told it looks more like the HP touchpad now.
 Yes, it looks like the touchpad.
 And it has a front facing camera in the center in landscape.
 I mean, again, we're still working on getting more information.
 We spoke to another source who said, I've seen the final or a different version of this
 that looks different.
 So it looks more like a zoom.
 Which we have in there, which looks more like the zoom, which I'm trying to think of what
 the zoom looks like.
 The original zoom looked like had rounded edges.
 And I don't know.
 So I don't know what.
 What about the sideboard?
 If you saw the zoom front on, it would look just like this.
 You say it looks like there's like a screen and then there's black edges around the screen.
 Yeah, there's a black bar around it.
 Yeah.
 But then corners perfectly squared off or are they just like a little rounded?
 They're rounded.
 Oh, really?
 Yeah.
 And then and then and then so we have this other Kindle story up right now, which is
 definitely.
 That's real.
 It's well, it's it's definitely something.
 There are multiple images and there is language that references.
 I mean, it's a different kind of Kindle we haven't seen.
 It's clearly a touch screen from what I can tell.
 And there's language here that references in these images, references this paper white
 screen.
 So that's a thing.
 Yeah.
 So there's that.
 I don't know what to say about it.
 There's an Amazon event on the 6th.
 So they're probably going to announce a bunch of new products at this Amazon event.
 Yeah, I've been reading a lot.
 It's likely they wouldn't call people out to L.A. on my iPad, Wall Street Journal.
 And I just cannot, cannot stand the glare.
 There's always one light bulb somewhere.
 You have to wait a year to get the new Kindle right in my face.
 I'm always trying to move the light bulb away from the text that I want to be wonderful
 to have.
 I'm just done with it to have a new Kindle with the new paper white screen.
 It would be great.
 But unfortunately, you'll have to wait because you wouldn't be able to put any content on
 it or register it.
 It's true.
 Oh, well, your loss, I guess.
 We'll be reading.
 I'm excited about this just because I received a Kindle, the seventy nine dollar Kindle for
 Christmas, the holidays, my birthday, holidays, close to each other and Becky immediately
 stole it but never registered it to herself.
 So now Amazon thinks I love chick lit.
 So I'm really hoping I can get this one.
 Neely has registered to her.
 Read all of the Fifty Shades of Grey books.
 Yeah.
 No, I'm hoping I can get this one to register to her account.
 Let me ask you a serious question.
 I'm going to delve into your private life.
 Is Fifty Shades of Grey in the list?
 So you're trying to ask if Neely's wife has read Fifty Shades of Grey.
 That is what I'm asking.
 So she runs every morning.
 So she bought she buys audiobooks.
 So she bought an audiobook and was running and Fifty Shades of Grey on audio.
 Yeah.
 She couldn't do it.
 She turned it off.
 She's like, I can't I can't listen to this at all.
 That is so she has not delved back into it.
 You know, one of the worst stuff, one of the worst mistakes I ever made in my life was
 getting naked lunch on on audiobooks.
 Oh, yeah.
 I don't really know very much about it.
 It was a classic.
 That was disturbing.
 It's kind of a classic, though.
 Yeah.
 I mean, kind of like a classic for weirdos.
 It's a counterculture.
 Yeah, it's like it's like if you it's like if if you're not in a normal guy, this is
 a classic.
 No, it's not like I'm really two cities.
 Well, I guess I guess I'm a little too normal for naked.
 Are you good?
 Yeah, you're live to you.
 Yeah.
 Oh, yeah.
 Take take take keep an eye out for sensible Mad Men's live tweet of his reading of a tale
 of two cities.
 Oh, Twitter account.
 What's the Twitter account?
 I think it's a you don't know what it is.
 You know, I will just get it for me for the end.
 OK, so so what else?
 So the last one, I know you want to talk politics bad, so I'm just gonna do it.
 Oh, Obama went on the Reddit yesterday.
 Would you say went on the Reddit?
 What?
 He hit the Reddit yesterday.
 I thought you said he went on the Reddit.
 Oh, you don't know.
 It's about time.
 Obama went on Reddit yesterday to do an AMA.
 No way.
 Yes.
 What did he say?
 AMA Obama?
 No, this is President Obama.
 Ask me.
 And there's a picture of him reading like on a Mac on a MacBook.
 Yeah.
 With his tie a little bit loose.
 And I don't drop any gifts in.
 No, actually, mouse.
 He's left.
 I know if you could see this.
 He answered 10.
 So can I just say, yeah.
 Can I just say something?
 His his team did a page for donations, redditors for Obama, and it looks just like an Obama
 page, but it has a picture of him on a computer and it says is the president of the United
 States does an AMA.
 Yeah.
 Like with impact.
 Like it's a it's amazing.
 Yeah, it's great.
 Is the president, you know, like the Reddit thing.
 The United States.
 You've been on Reddit for too long.
 It's like is the president of the United States does an AMA.
 Is there anything worse than trying to describe a Reddit image macro to Paul Miller?
 Like, well, give me another example that's not the president.
 Can you guys in chat, can you help us out here?
 Paul needs an example that is not the president.
 Is this like the like the the lamb roommate and the cool roommate?
 No.
 Good guy.
 Good guy.
 And like lamb guy.
 Yeah.
 I mean, I don't even know.
 I could just read you any number of nonsensical.
 Is the president of the United States does an AMA.
 I don't know how you go.
 It's not quite two sentences.
 Right.
 He is the president.
 This guy is the president.
 Really?
 He's doing an AMA.
 That's not funny.
 This is a funny joke.
 I don't know if you guys know about this, but there's really funny in real books.
 The point in real books that not in the Wall Street Journal.
 I don't think you understand the point that I'm making is that is his cool hip with it
 team did like a Reddit meme of Obama on an Obama donation page.
 It was cool because the president normally doesn't have his people do memes of him.
 They should do a meme like is the is the.
 It wasn't guffaw worthy.
 Is the team of the president of the United States that's young and hip does a meme for
 the president.
 I didn't fall to my knees.
 That's a good one actually.
 Somebody should make that meme.
 What is it?
 What is it?
 Is the team for the president of the United States makes a meme?
 A picture of guys in the office.
 No people weren't guffawing out loud at it.
 They were just like, oh, cool, Obama has a meme here put together by his team.
 That's unusual for a sitting president.
 No one's ever done it before.
 And then they asked you for money, which is not unusual.
 Not money wants to get reelected.
 So the interesting thing about this is Adrian wrote a great piece, which was people are
 doing them now.
 This is the RNC this week.
 It's like Romney's big wrote like literally they're like booting him up.
 They're rolling him out.
 I've heard of the RNC.
 People are now making fun of you.
 They're saying, is Paul Miller doesn't get an internet reference.
 It's been a long four months for you.
 I'm having a great time.
 Yeah.
 Because you know what?
 Not a lot of lame jokes.
 Do you wheel out that flash drive?
 That was a real fragment.
 That was a real fragment of a sentence.
 It was like, I'm having a great time.
 You know what?
 Not a lot of lame jokes.
 But do you still have that having a great time off the internet?
 Not a lot of lame jokes.
 Kind of.
 Close.
 Sort of.
 No.
 What are you doing on the internet?
 You think you're going to start talking like Victorian English by the time this is all
 over?
 I've been writing tweets.
 You've got them all stored up.
 You've been writing tweets?
 Yeah, you didn't know that?
 Can I take over at Future Paul and like post pictures of tweets you've written down?
 No.
 I feel like that's cheating.
 Can I do that?
 I can read you the tweets right now.
 Can you read us some tweets?
 No.
 Okay guys, archived, archived, self-archived tweets.
 I was just going to tweet all these when I got back.
 Well, now's your chance to tweet.
 So you've been keeping a list.
 Well, pick a good one.
 I'll pick a good one.
 Just one.
 Are you responding to things that are happening?
 I have a list of these on my Macbook.
 You heard it here first.
 I mean this document, by the way, is literally called the iPad tweets.
 Is glocal still a thing?
 No.
 No?
 What is glocal?
 No one knows.
 What else do you have?
 The only movie I have on my iPad is Twilight.
 I made the right choice.
 Inside the Lonely Days and Nights of All of Us.
 One day we will all wear jackets.
 That was pretty good.
 No, it's terrible.
 Let's hear one more.
 Maybe you'll redeem yourself with this final one.
 No, all the best ones are on my Macbook apparently.
 I wrote one about Judge Dredd, but it was just jamming Judge Dredd, Dredd, Dredd, Dredd,
 Dredd, Dredd.
 Oh, it's kind of a visual thing.
 Yeah.
 Well, this was a depressing segment.
 This was not one of our funnier or...
 Look, I'm sorry, but my tweets aren't hip with it relevant modern references.
 This might have been the loneliest four minutes of the first cast.
 I feel a growing gulf.
 I feel a growing...
 I could download a hundred albums from iTunes in the time it takes me to open a CD's packaging
 and rip it.
 It's as if we're standing on one side of a riverbank.
 On our side behind us is a majestic steel and glass city that rises up as far as the
 eye can see and into the clouds filled with life and light and technology.
 And then you're on the other side with a hut.
 And the hut looks like it might have a roof.
 The roof is leaking.
 Yeah.
 Someone accidentally turned off the lights in the food court for five seconds.
 Okay.
 Is this not funny?
 What's that?
 I just wanted to finish the Obama thing.
 That's it?
 And then we're done?
 That was it.
 There was some other crap that I don't talk about.
 No other topics?
 Creighton?
 You seem to say you thought we had a lot of news.
 There was a couple more on that list.
 Yeah, we did the dubstep piece, which was amazing.
 Oh, dubstep.
 You got to read that.
 There you go.
 Can I just say something?
 We did...
 I've been so excited about the dubstep.
 Joe Flatley, one of our great writers, wrote a history of dubstep.
 And it has, I think, the best headlining we've ever done.
 The best we've ever done.
 It's called Beyond Lies the Wub, a history of dubstep.
 Beyond Lies the Wub is Phil K. Dick's first published short story.
 It's got dual meaning because it's a Phil K. Dick story and it has the word wub in it.
 Thank you for letting that out.
 Which is the sound of the dub bass line.
 You should read it.
 You should really read it.
 It's short.
 It won't take you a very long time.
 It's a really depressing story.
 I have to say Beyond Lies the Wub, I recommend everybody reads it.
 It's very upsetting.
 Deeply upsetting.
 Was this back in the 50s?
 Yeah, I think 50s or early 60s.
 And then we also did...
 We've had a crazy week of just reports and news.
 We did this really cool today.
 If you haven't seen it, Ryan Johnson, the director of Looper, Brick, The Brothers Bloom,
 and also, which I didn't know until today, directed a bunch of Breaking Bad episodes,
 including the episode Fly, which is one of the craziest, weirdest, best episodes of the
 show.
 Also, the newest Looper trailer that I saw before, Premium Rush, has dubstep in it.
 You saw Premium Rush?
 Yeah.
 Wow.
 Premium Rush was amazing.
 Everybody needs to see it.
 Oh, it was amazing.
 I don't know it was amazing.
 Right now.
 That is not a treat, you should say.
 Okay, so we have a great interview.
 It's actually more of a feature about Ryan Johnson.
 He talks about gadgets he's into and sort of his attitude on where film is headed.
 It's very cool.
 We did...
 Last night, Adrian wrote a piece about the Obama-Reddit thing called Party Crasher.
 What is the full headline?
 It's like Party Crasher, Obama brings down Reddit during Romney's big week.
 Yeah.
 And it's really interesting because yesterday we also did a story that Romney's campaign
 bought a hashtag and they're the first ever political party to buy a hashtag on Twitter.
 What's the hashtag?
 We don't know yet.
 Oh.
 And Laura speculated, we were talking about it last night, she thinks it's going to be
 like something's going to happen.
 He's going to say something during his speech tonight or whatever.
 Hashtag Bieber.
 And it's going to be like hashtag we can do better or whatever.
 I hope it's not we can do better because that's the...
 They had like the first day of the RIT, they had a big sign.
 It was like we can do better.
 It's like...
 That's not that inspiring.
 Who's the subject of this sentence?
 Yeah, like it's just not inspiring anyhow.
 But so it was an interesting...
 Actually Adrian had a great ending to it, which is like kind of juxtaposition that Obama's
 definitely like his team definitely gets the internet in a very clear way and that maybe
 the Republicans are still playing a little catch up there.
 But her ending line was wants to win the internet buys a hashtag on Twitter.
 I made that meme into the content.
 Yeah.
 It's a beautiful image.
 Based on this structure, which you don't understand.
 What else this week?
 I'm forgetting.
 Oh my God.
 Sean's on live piece.
 Was that from this week?
 Yeah.
 God, this week was crazy.
 By the way, internally, we've just been calling Sean live.
 Sean live.
 Sean wrote this great, great online report.
 Sorry, on live report.
 If you haven't read it, it's also online.
 If you haven't read it, you should read it.
 It basically talks about how that company fell apart just days after it happened.
 And it is great reporting.
 He spent a bunch of time on it.
 I'm forgetting to forget other things that we wrote this week.
 We did so much stuff.
 OP1 thing that happened?
 Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
 We have a great piece on teenage engineering.
 You should check it out.
 They're due to make the OP1 is this crazy thing that if you haven't seen it, I took
 it on late night one time, but a bunch of people use them.
 They make awesome music with them, but they created the company that makes the OP1 teenage
 engineering created a bunch of accessories and the accessories, they updated the software,
 the accessories are like physical accessories.
 I was seeing this demo.
 It's so great.
 Yeah.
 Like a thing you put over a knob to crank it and you can, they have new software so
 you can like basically create, like he said he wanted to do an endless solo so you can
 play like step sequence notes and then you can jam on the crank at different speeds and
 you can basically do like a freeform guitar soul.
 Like if it's in a scale, it's very, very cool.
 And they, they made a pitch bend thing that has a rubber band that attaches, but they
 also made an attachment that lets you put, lets you connect Lego Mindstorm pieces, like
 mechanized pieces so you can play, physically play the knob with another piece of, it's
 just really crazy.
 And then Neelai had a piece today, which kind of debunks, there's been a lot of talk about
 how Apple's going to start, you know, forcing people to pull pinch to zoom from their devices.
 And that's, it's all wrong.
 It's all wrong.
 And everybody's gotten it wrong everywhere.
 And so we kind of like explained it.
 Well, not we, Neelai explained it.
 The myth of pinch to zoom, how confused media gave Apple something it doesn't own.
 And I think this is actually really important because the biggest fear I think about this
 patent case was like suddenly our devices will lose all this obvious functionality that
 everybody's become so used to.
 Yeah, the most important thing to me about that is I just called Google and I was like,
 Hey, what is this patent in Jelly Bean?
 And they're like, no, we designed around it.
 And nobody else did that.
 Like it was, they just gave me the statement.
 Like I didn't like fight them for it.
 I was like, Hey, is this true?
 Just call them up.
 Yeah.
 It's not implemented in Android Jelly Bean.
 So yet it's everywhere else.
 I just want to feel two things in chat.
 One to me, that's why I was rushing through things.
 Like we're not, I'm just kind of talking about pieces that we published this week that I
 want you guys to go read.
 We're not like, I can't talk about the history of Dubstep.
 I don't think you would find that interesting.
 I mean, I don't read the piece if you want to know about the history of Dubstep.
 Don't listen to me.
 I mean, sure.
 I invented the genre, but don't take my word for it.
 Don't take my word for it.
 But then somebody else asked if I was good at basketball and I actually have a story
 that can give you a little, a little, well, I, I went to a, I went to the Duchess County
 Fair last weekend.
 Oh, Laura was telling me about this.
 In near Rheinbeck, I guess, or wherever.
 And pregnant cows.
 I spent, there were pregnant cows there.
 But I, and duck dogs.
 Do you know, a duck dog, sorry, duck dogs.
 Do you know what duck dogs are?
 Duck dogs are dogs that take a, they run really quickly and then leap off of a dock to catch
 something and they're gauged on how far they go flying through the air.
 Wait, is that a competition?
 It's a competition.
 Oh wow.
 And they like, they run and they jump off the dock and they go flying.
 It's like a long jump for dogs.
 Into, into, into water.
 Dog Olympics.
 Yeah, but into water.
 Right.
 And the dogs love it.
 And so do the people, so do the humans.
 Right.
 And so, but I played a game, I played a lot of the carnival games there in hopes that
 I could win.
 They had these giant, giant Rasta bananas.
 It was a banana.
 With dreads?
 Yes.
 Like, like as half as tall as me or taller.
 Right.
 It was a banana with dreads and like a Rasta hat on.
 Okay.
 They also had like a Rasta Winnie the Pooh and like a Rasta, like they had a bunch of
 Rasta stuff.
 Most of it seemed vaguely racist to me.
 I'll be honest with you.
 At a state fair.
 At a state fair.
 Yeah.
 And you could win them from, you know, these games that presumably are winnable.
 Right.
 And I spent, I must have spent like $75.
 I could not win anything.
 And the final game that I won, I was, we were, I was there with Lauren and a couple of other
 people that, I was with my friend Patrick and I played the, I was playing this game
 where you just have to shoot hoops.
 You just have to get the basketball in a hoop.
 One, one shot in the hoop, you get the, you get the Rasta.
 You're shooting, one shot in the hoop, you get the Rasta.
 You get the Rasta banana.
 Right.
 One shot in the hoop.
 I spent like $35.
 It was three balls for five bucks.
 I spent like $35 and got none of them in.
 It's like an oval.
 It is a small.
 The hoops are weird.
 They are, I think they are trickily, trickily shaping.
 Trickily.
 Trickily shaping?
 Not a word.
 It's like a prestige.
 It's like the prestige.
 Yeah.
 They're bent backwards and they're a different weird shape.
 They're small.
 Trickily shaping just sounds like an infant's fair.
 Sounds like an album by Rasta Banana.
 Trickily shaping.
 You know, the new Rasta banana album, trickily shaping.
 No, it just sounds like a character in like the Phantom told me.
 Anyhow.
 Trickily shaping.
 Anyhow, Patrick walked up to me.
 The Mr. Who lives in the Outlet City.
 Walked up next to me, put his five bucks down, got a Rasta banana like that.
 What?
 There's actually a photo.
 Oh, I also got a hat there because it was so sunny.
 I got a hat that was airbrushed with my name on it and a dolphin.
 It looks pretty amazing.
 You really went on a spirit journey.
 I went on a trip and I came back with no Rasta bananas and I was not happy.
 All right, I think we need to wrap up.
 I think we need to wrap up.
 Yes, I agree.
 All right, that's the Vergecast for this week.
 If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us at vergecast at theverge.com.
 You can find us on Twitter at at Verge or you can leave a comment in the post when it
 goes up.
 The people you see here are also available on Twitter.
 That's it for that guy.
 I'm Josh Wytopolsky.
 Neal I is reckless and Paul is future Paul, though he can't respond to your tweets right
 now, but in a year.
 I'm sure they're great memes.
 Yeah, a little less than a year in a year.
 You should respond to every tweet that you get with a saved tweet.
 With a what?
 With a saved tweet.
 Yeah, I don't have that many saved tweets.
 Do you think you can go through your whole list at the end of your journey?
 Most of my saved tweets are like the first I'm on.
 Anyhow, we'll be back next week.
 You can write me, it's Vlad's...
 Vlad Savov.
 Oh yeah, Vlad Savov is Vlad Savov on Twitter, just the way it sounds.
 You can mail me at P.O. Box 501, New York, New York 10276.
 How much mail are you getting?
 I probably send, on average, a letter a week and I probably get about 10 a week.
 I'm not winning.
 Anything good?
 Yeah, some great stuff.
 Some really incredible stuff.
 Nice.
 Any romantic letters?
 Some very romantic stuff.
 My favorite letter, I got this letter from somebody who's... She, like 20 years ago,
 went on her whole Europe trip after college and she was just totally out of touch with
 everybody and she couldn't really... It was too expensive to call and she'd give people
 an address where she'd be at a hotel but would miss people.
 She was missing out a lot and she told me she really learned a lot.
 So that was cool.
 That's a great story.
 Really good way to end this.
 Thanks for tuning in.
 We'll see you next week and as always, I wish you and yours the very best for the weekend
 ahead.
 Oh, and by the way, it's a holiday weekend.
 Labor Day is on Monday so be sure to get real, real drunk and embarrass yourself.
 Rock and roll.
 Maybe get a hat, like a hat with your name on it.
 Paul the dolphin.
 Get a Rasta banana.
 Paul, you still can.
 Paul, Paul, Paul.
 Wait, you can't say Paul right at the start.
 They didn't know how to get us out of this.