 Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of June 11th, 2012. I'm Josh Tapolsky. I'm David Pierce. I'm Ross Miller. I'm Ross and we are back on time, right? On time? Are we back on time? Hold on. I think we are on time for the first time. What's happening with this weird tentacle hair? I got to do something about this. I don't want to question your knowledge of tentacles, but I don't think that's tentacle hair. It's like an octopus tentacle hanging off of my head. It's a tendril of some sort. It's a tendril. It's a tendril. We're back on the Vergecast where we discuss the week in technology culture. I of course am Josh Tapolsky and Neely and Paul are not here, but I think to be honest with you, I don't want to insult Neely and Paul, but I feel like we've got a superior set of people here. I mean you can insult them. People will know. I feel energized with a totally new set because sometimes it's like Ross will be here instead of Paul and somebody will be here instead of Neely or whatever. This is a completely different... We don't know what's going to happen. Plus I feel like this picture of me in the post, I think I look better with Neely's body than Neely does. I'm going to be honest. It's a disturbing photo if you haven't seen it. Anyhow, but it's going to be exciting. It's going to be great. Okay, here's what we're doing. Neely's wedding is this weekend. Everybody's traveling. We have a hard stop at four. I know you guys don't want to hear that, but we're doing an hour. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We started on time. That's right. We're ending on time. We're going to end on time. It's a completely anomalous- It's never going to happen again. Completely anomalous hell world. Do not expect it to happen again. But we have basically two topics right now the way I see it. Two big ones. Apple and Microsoft. The end. That's our show. Thanks for watching. All right. That's great. You guys really- You went all- You committed. You committed on that. We did. You went all the way. You were ready to take off your headphones. Okay, so the first thing we're going to talk about, as you can see, Ross, and we'll take some calls towards the end because I want to talk about Microsoft. So just if you're wondering why we're going to talk about Microsoft, they announced today they're having an event in Los Angeles, which we've been invited to. It's a media event. It's apparently a big deal. No one knows what it's for. And they've asked me to fly. I'm actually leaving Neely's wedding on Sunday. They're like, you should come. And I was like, really? You're doing an event? They said this is better than Neely's wedding. They're like, you got to be there. And so we don't know what it's for. And we're going to do some conspiracy theorizing, as they say in Alabama. Because that's what we do best. Where they talk about conspiracies a lot. The first one's about Apple. Apple had a big week. They announced some stuff. They released some stuff. We have some of their new stuff sitting right there. WWDC on Monday, some big announcements. New version of iOS. Didn't see that coming. New version of OS 10. Didn't see that coming. Mountain Lion, which we've actually already previewed in our Mountain Lion preview. Check it out on theverge.com. Slash 0678. It's like it's scripted. Just down to an art. It is. It is down to an art. But they had some new maps. They're getting rid of Google Maps for iOS. They're putting it into, I assume they're going to have it everywhere where Google Maps was on any part of their software. And some weird new things. Passbook, which I think is an odd new technology to collect your passes for things. Honestly, it feels like a precursor to Wallet. It doesn't look like normal iOS. I agree. I think it is kind of like this. I think pretty soon it'll be like, I actually think here's where they're going with it. They're like, we have your credit card information. We have your movie, your Starbucks card, your movie card. Put your credit cards in here. Other credit cards, maybe. Or maybe just do NFC stuff with whatever card you have in our system. And I feel like potentially it's going to be like ID. I think they're going to be like, we're working with governments to see you can put your passport and your ID in this. And Apple already has- Which is, by the way, insane and scary. But Apple already- They already have all your credit card information. They do. Right through your iTunes account. They have a credit card. I'm talking about something where you have all of your cards. They have facial recognition software. They can say, this is definitely you. You picked it up. Yes. I feel like, I mean, something like that. I feel like they're heading towards, we're going to get rid of the Wallet. Right. And then they'll have a great opportunity to talk to, use the word Wallet as like, the wallet is dead. Wallet is yesterday's news. Passbook is a terrible name for that, though. That's the only thing. Is it? Like what does that even- Well, think about it. Passport. Checkbook. Yeah. I think it's, you just nailed it. Yeah, done. Passport, checkbook. That's exactly what it is. Because I carry my checkbook around all the time right now. This sounds like the beginning of a rap. Passport, checkbook. I'm going to say something else. Like Super Nintendo Sega Genesis. When I was dead broke. And I couldn't picture this. Now you dropped the mic. Now I detached the mic and dropped it. But anyhow, the biggest real news that came out of it was, besides the Google Maps thing, which I think is kind of a huge deal, and we should talk about that a little bit. They released this new, of course they updated the Airs and the Pros, but they released this new MacBook Pro's retina display. It's sitting right here. And Ross, you reviewed it. And David, you participated in that. I stole it from Ross. Dante participated. Everybody, because we bought a few. This one we reviewed. And then everybody in the office was like... Yeah, they all bought one. Like Dante, I saw him in the elevator the first day I got back. And he's just carrying two in his hands. He's a big man. So it's not hard for him to do this. Yeah, he went. He was like, oh, we're going to run to the office. He's like, I'm going to go get it. And then comes back and he's like, oh, I got one for me. Yeah, why not? Why not? So yeah, I played around with it. It's big. Let's talk about it. First off, did you read the review yet? I read the review. Did you notice anything about it? How sick it was? How totally dope your review was? Did you notice the... I might have skimmed. You might have skimmed. I trust you. You may not have... David and I did an Easter egg for it. You did? We did a little bit of music. What is it? Do you want to tell me? What is it? And people noticed immediately. Yeah, people... Is it that shot? Is it in the video? No, it's in the reviews. No, it's on the video. It's in the layout. It's in the text. I don't know what it is. See, we should have used your body as a one-way. And then he would have gotten it like that. Have I used that? Why Georgia? Yeah. It wouldn't make sense. Can you tell me what it is? Here, let's go ahead. Do you want to just quote it? Do you have it up? Sure. So the various pull quotes in this... The first one is, "'Cause I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for." Next we've got, followed by, I don't remember you looking any better. Are you seriously... Followed by, today I finally overcame trying to fit the world inside a picture frame. Are these John Mayer quotes? Every single pull quote is a John Mayer lyric. Are you joking? I'm not joking here. Why? I'm going to be honest. I don't understand. I was editing this review with Ross. I spent more time looking for John Mayer lyrics than anything else. Can you explain the reasoning behind this? Well, first off, I had not slept for a week and a half. By the way, by the way, I think this is a wonderful... I think this is wonderful and very cute. Also a little disturbing. Literally it was like David and I were at the office at night, just completely exhausted, traveling, working, all that. Then I was like, what's a good way of wrapping up the conclusion? I was like, well, it's kind of like the written iPad. Nothing's ready for us. We're like, oh, waiting on the world to change, that John Mayer lyric. Wow. Which we challenged each other, can you make every pull quote a John Mayer lyric? It was like a joke and then it wasn't a joke anymore. We each came with two or three. David came with five or six really good ones. It's pretty solid. This reminds me, you know, this kind of reminds me of... I'm really pleased to hear about it. I'm sure Apple is also thrilled that the review is peppered with John Mayer quotes. Who has performed at Apple events. He is a noted Apple fan. I'm pretty sure I made fun of him at an Apple event. I got a lot of hate tweets. But John Mayer is... I'm a big fan of John Mayer's work. I don't think that's any... I don't think anybody is surprised by hearing that. You know, Your Body is a Wonderland is one of the most romantic songs. I mean, whenever I make love, that's the song that is on. It's art. We never did buzzing like neon. Oh, that's true. You could have made that work. No, but that one sounds bad. Sounds very negative, like it's making a buzzing noise and it doesn't make a buzzing noise. But you know, this reminds me of when we were at Engadget, before I was editor in chief, on Friday the 13th, they still continue this tradition to this day, which is very sweet of them. On a Friday the 13th, I started sneaking photo shops of Jason Voorhees into posts without telling anybody. Were you there? You weren't there yet. I wasn't there yet. You weren't there yet. I read it from a distance. Without telling anybody. I didn't tell anybody at the time. I didn't tell him. And I thought, well, if somebody notices, I'll explain how hilarious and awesome it is and they won't have a problem with it. And then finally somebody noticed and everybody was like, this is awesome. And so we started it as a tradition. Any Friday the 13th at Engadget, and you'll see if you go back and look, starting in like 2007, maybe late 2007, I don't remember when the first one was, every Friday the 13th has, if you look at the days, you'll see Jason Voorhees in a variety or things that were associated with him, like blood on a chip or just random like... A text message from Camp Crystal Lake. Yes, yes, yes. We did one. I remember the first day we did one that was like we rearranged the letters on a keyboard of a shot of Adele to say Jason instead of like the actual ASDFJKLSAM. There were some very clever photo shops. There were some really good ones. And that was a problem for afterwards when you're looking for assets really quickly and you start Jason's. Yeah, and in fact, Autoblog took, we did a post about an electric car and I put Voorhees in the passenger seat. Or it was like a shot of the car and Jason Voorhees was just kind of sitting there like this in the seat. Because you can do, you can get a lot of shots of him from like the chest up and it's easy to put that places. And it was on Autoblog like the same day because they reblogged it. I think it was six hours before we realized and like kind of let them know. Yeah. I think it's still there actually. I don't think they changed it. They're cool. Yeah, but so thank you for Easter egging the, Easter egging, is that a thing? Can you say that? Thank you for Easter egging the MacBook. And thank you for not looking over it before we published. You would have lost it. In all honesty, it's been a crazy couple of weeks and that kind of, that was in your hands and I let you run with it. That was a mistake. And what I read of it is a great review. So you gave it a nine. Yeah. You think this is an excellent laptop. I think. You freaking disgusting fan boy. This signals. This signals. I'm not listening to you. I'm just going to pretend. No, no, no. Keep going. The best is to not listen to me. It's the best thing you can do. I've done this for years. I made a career out of it. That's right. That's exactly right. No, I mean this is basically singling the end of the regular MacBook Pro. There's no reason to get one. Death of the Pro. Death of the Pro. You had a good run. It was good. You know what? You can't stay Pro forever. Either back to the farm leagues or. Is that a John Mayer there? Retirement. No, just keep going. Just keep going. I don't know what's going on. Okay. So I realize no one at home can hear the echoing. People, I don't know if they're laughing at my hilarious sports joke. I think they must have. Or sports. Sports. Go ahead. All right. Yeah. No. So I mean, spec for spec. By the way, at a half an hour, we're stopping and switching to Microsoft. So I just want you guys to know that. I don't believe you. No, we are. I do not believe you. Go ahead. Do it. All right. Do it. Punch it. Yeah. No, I think it's worth a nine. I think it's one of the best laptops ever made. The screen is absolutely the best one I've ever seen on a laptop with the apps that run it, of course. We'll get back to that in a second. Spec for spec, it's actually cheaper than the MacBook Pro if you're getting flash storage, if you're getting all that RAM. The catch is you don't get a CD, a ROM or DVD drive. An optical drive? An optical drive. Yeah. I'm still not sleeping. Can you remember the last time you put a CD, a DVD in your computer? Sounds dirty. No. When's the last time you slid a DVD into your computer? That's kind of a personal question. Don't you think? Is it? Is it? Did somebody else slide a DVD into your computer? They were... I'll just... I don't know if you guys want to just... Is this making you uncomfortable? Yeah. To be clear, to be clear, I consented to let them put the disc in, in the drive of my laptop. I'm just going to apologize to everyone in chat. By the way, I just thought of something totally unrelated, totally unrelated to this. But you have to explain how your brain got there. It's a long story. I'm not going to bring it up right now, but at the end of this, I'm going to introduce a beef into the world of technology between me and somebody else. Deal. Get ready. Anyway. Okay, we're going to save two minutes for that at the end. Okay, save two minutes. Don't forget that, Michael. So when you lose the disc drive, you lose the Ethernet port to a dongle, but instead you get a very thin machine, 0.71 inches. Actually thanks to the rubber stops, it sits up... Hold on. I changed my mind. I'm not going to introduce a beef into the world of technology. You're such a tease. No, no, no. Go ahead. Keep going. Seriously. I changed my mind. We stopped everything so you could think. You know what I'm about? I'm about good vibes and good friends and good people and having a good time and loving life and living it up. It's like I don't even know you anymore. I feel good. I'm feeling good right now. You're on drugs. I just smoked a ton of weed before I got here. He's buzzing like no one. I'm buzzing like the yacht. It is because of the pure MDMA that I snorted right before we did here. Anyway, go ahead. Talk about it. Anyway, so it's extremely light. It actually sits a little shorter than the top end of the air just because the rubber stops. Yeah, it is a lot thinner. It's great. It feels great. It's easy to hold. It still feels heavy and big compared to the Air, though. Well, if you're getting a Pro, though. I mean, I'll say this. The screen is insane. It looks really, really good. I mean, it's not like Apple's going to do this and not have the screen be awesome. It feels a lot bigger. It feels a lot bigger than the Air. I'm using a 13-inch Air, which I have come to be totally in love with. I mean, I love everything about it. It's light. It's fast. I mean, it's fast enough. It's the netbook of Apple computers. It's light. It's small. It's fast. Battery life is outstanding in my experience. I hardly ever worry about where's the... I got to charge. I charge it, but it's not something that I'm stressing out about. I mean, this is not going to end the whole Pro versus Air debate. That's not what... No, this is not. This is a premium machine. This is a 13 or 11-inch Air, this is not... you're not going to up... I mean, unless you need the power and that resolution, you're not going to this unless you just have a lust for the new thing. No, this was kind of built at the beginning as the Pro in an Air's body. It's definitely a step down in a Pro. It's supposed to be a replacement for the 17, essentially, right? I mean, that's the idea. They got rid of the 17-inch. Right. Implicitly, they're like, well, there's no more 17. Well, actually, they didn't even said that. They just said, this is the new Pro tier. They're like, here it is. This is for like... If you're a video editor, this is the new laptop you're going to go buy. It's not even the new Pro tier because if you spec'd out a standard MacBook Pro, that's actually pound for pound. It's going to be a little more expensive if you want flash. My impression is... This is the replacement. They just don't want to save it. My guess is that Apple has not been selling a lot of 17-inch laptops. I can't imagine that. My guess is that they were like, this is a really niche market. We're not selling a bunch of these. We can do something cooler and better that may still... I think this will appeal to people who maybe aren't Pros. They don't need... They're not doing hardcore photoshopping, but they're like, this is a pretty sexy machine and I was going to get the 15-inch and I spend a little bit more money and I get this thing and it's super awesome. I feel like that's kind of a place they're playing with as well. I used to know a bunch of graphic designers who had the 17-inch. They hated carrying around, but they needed something portable, but they needed a little more resolution than the 15-inch. That's the only reason they got it. I think this is more portable. 17-inches were not portable, but you still get... You get a lot of visuals on this. Especially there's the space. There's the more space display setting. At that point, you basically have at least that much actual screen. 17 never went up to 1920. I don't think so. I think... Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't remember. I never had one because I think they're ridiculously... At that point, you get an idea. I think they're the most monstrous machine in the history of... Any 17-inch laptop can just get out of my face. Don't step to me if you're a 17-inch laptop because I will cut you. There's always this weird gray area between device classes where it makes no sense. Between laptop and desktop, if you're at 17 inches... You have to jump over. Yeah, you have to be like the desktop replacement, which just doesn't mean anything. There may be the person out there who needs that 17-inch laptop. Have you seen Kimber's laptop? One of our news writers, Kimber Streams? Her laptop is the biggest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. Can I just say? I'm not sure what it is. It's a gaming laptop, but it solidly weighs at least 150 pounds. Laura has been using a new gaming laptop, the Envy, to check out something. It's big. It's ridiculous. It's absurd. It's gonna get out of my face. And the thing is, they're so heavy, too. I'll cut that. They're heavy, they're big, they're ugly. 17-inch laptops should not exist. I would want to stamp them out. I'm gonna make it my life's mission. You made Apple discontinue the 17-inch. I called up Tim Cook and I said, listen, Cookie, which is my nickname. To which he said, I'm listening. I said, Cookie, listen, I know you guys are selling a few of these here and there, but it's embarrassing. No reason you should be making a laptop of this size. He said, you know what? So you know what, man? Hey. This is all part of his campaign project, Tim Cookie Monster. You're right. That's a great point. I'm gonna double down on getting rid of the 17-inch. Then he doubled down. He doubled the F down on it. That's F is short for a swear word. I'm not gonna tell you what it is. You gotta figure it out on your own. I'm lost. It's nasty. It's a nasty swear word. Anyhow, but you really like it as a straight up 15-inch laptop. You think this thing is... Yeah. It's a nine. It's a nine. It's great to have a score. It is so wonderful. It's helpful to know exactly what you think about it. I have found that people love scores. People love scores. They love numbers. They're so respectful of quantitative analysis. Good thing you didn't give that a seven. Good thing you didn't give that a seven. Boy, would you be in trouble. I'd be dead. Can you imagine? No, didn't you? So you left. Sorry. You had a meeting right as the review went up, and then you came back and you sat down and like two seconds later, we're like, oh, I already have an email. Somebody being like, you should change your score. Yeah. The type of email was, please reconsider your score. Why? What was wrong with your score? It was too high. Yeah. I mean, but for a fan boy, what's too high? I'm surprised you didn't give it a 10. You know? Well, what? Okay. We can talk. We can't win. Let's do it. You're perfect for this. What is a 10? Is it perfect? A 10? Yeah. A 10 is a product that is... We've never given a 10 to anything. No. It's possible. Here's what 10 is about. 10 is I believe in my heart there's a product that's a 10. I think a 10 can exist. I just haven't seen a 10 yet. How many 10s have we seen in our lifetime? Of anything. What exists where you go, this is perfect. Let's think of a thing that exists that you think, this is perfect, and it doesn't need to change at all. Seltzer. Seltzer is a 10. Seltzer is a 10. Well, I will say this, canned seltzer is like a nine. Yeah, sure. Plastic bottles, they're like an eight. Okay. The concept is seltzer. Hold on. Seltzer delivery system. The concept is a 10, no question. Okay. But the delivered straight up real glass bottle, compressed. Yes. Yes. That's a 10. That is a 10. And by the way- Metaphysical perfection. By the way, in Brooklyn, you can still get that delivered and I do. Have I talked about this before? I probably have. No. What? I love this guy. Have you had it? I have. I went on vacation. That's right. And part of it was playing with a dog all weekend. You went to town on that. Second, your seltzer guy came by. Ronnie. Ronnie. And fresh bottles of seltzer and just went to town on those. Just drank. You got to hear- When you live a seltzer guy, you made it. You're the best seltzer ever. Is that 30? Are we at 30? What's going on? We're at 20. We're at 20. Let me tell you something. Ronnie is our guy. He's like by the guy in Brooklyn. He literally is one dude out there. Wasn't there a New York Times article about him at some point? There was a New York Times article about him. In fact, he was injured recently. He slipped and broke his- Got messed up, broke his leg. This was a while ago. A couple years ago. And he even came with the leg brace and a neck brace and was with the things of seltzer. He's awesome. I just want to shout out. That is awesome. I want to say Ronnie is the man. But the- So yeah, he delivers them every two weeks. And when we first got them- I feel like I've told this story before. Maybe I just told it to someone on the team. When we first got them, we were like, Laura and I were like, oh my God, real seltzer. This is crazy. Let's do it. And we got them and we shot some seltzer into a glass and it was kind of flat. And we're like, what? This is so lame and disappointing. So what we didn't know is you have to get them cold for them to fizz up. And once you get them cold, oh man. Ten out of ten. That is the shit. It really is. A cold, cold glass of seltzer from the real bottle. It is painful. It is joyful. It is heaven and hell. It's like the carbonated, like your eyes water a little bit. It's like- It hurts so good. It's like the John Mellencamp. Is that John Cougar Mellencamp? Yeah, different John. Similar to Mayer, but way better in every way. Mellencamp. I'm thinking about this. Hold on. Mellencamp for the win. Cougar for the win. Cougar's- No, Cougar for the win. Team Mellencamp. So let's reel this back. Yes, do. Seltzer was a ten. We're talking about ten reviews first. Oh, ten. What are things that- Do you think there's a device or a computer or anything you've ever used that was a ten? So a couple people in chat said Super Nintendo, and I could actually get behind that. I can't. Super Nintendo? When it first- That blew my mind apart. Genesis, maybe. Please. No. Come on, dude. Altered Beast. When you first played Altered Beast at home on a 16-bit system, you don't even know. When they were like Rise from Your Grave and it sounded just like the arcade. I don't think it's a ten. For me, TurboGrafx-16 would be a ten. TurboDuo actually, and like some of- Because they actually did stuff to the PC Engine in Japan that they didn't do here. You know, whatever. I'll tell you. You know what's a perfect ten? What? A ten to me. Dracula X for the PC Engine. If you've ever played it. I've never played it. It's Castlevania. It's Castlevania X. No, no, no. We're not talking about gadgets anymore. We're talking about software. Now we're talking about software. Right. Okay, we're talking about gadgets. Let me think. We're talking about gadgets in our lifetime. Sure. Oh, I think so. Okay. You can't say like the telegraph. Well, I was going to say like- It's cheating. Yeah, you're like the telephone. I'm a big fan of the photograph. I mean, how granular can you get? Like that's the question because like- You tell me. You still have said nothing. So what am I going to knock down? PC Engine, I said. I mean TurboGrafx. All right. That's something. I don't know. I don't know. Was it really a ten? If I reviewed it now? I mean, to me, a ten is utopic, which is one part perfect, two parts imaginary. I don't think it has to be imaginary. There are things that are a ten in life. The only thing- Bo Derek, for instance. Nobody knows who Bo Derek is. I know who Bo Derek is. You do? You're down with ten? Okay, cool. What are people saying? What else are they saying in chat? So I'm seeing the pad phone because obviously- That's stupid. CRT televisions. That's also stupid. The pen, which seems kind of like cheating. But the pen, yeah, the idea of a pen is a ten. The original Game Boy, which isn't bad. Chocolate milk, peanut butter and jelly. Pornography. It's not at all a ten. I don't know what he's watching. I think peanut butter and jelly is a ten. I agree with that. Crunchy or creamy peanut butter? Creamy for me. All right, nope. It's a nine at best. No, I disagree. It's a nine at best. I'll tell you what's a ten when it's done right, ranch dressing. Yes. That's a freaking ten. That's an 11. What's that face for? John, you disagree? Oh, you really? Well, you've never had the ranch I've had. You don't know what I know, okay? I'm kind of a ranch buff. Is that cool? Is that a cool thing to admit to people? Ranch connoisseur? I think it's fine. On a national and international level? I don't think blue cheese fanboys are going to rise up and discuss for your ranch fanaticism. All right, you know what? Let's take a couple calls. Get the number up on the screen. That's the wrong thing. Get the number up on the screen or I will come in there and cut you. So while we're getting the number up, last expense, other announcements. Wait, we talked about everything. I mean, we can talk about all the... Okay, 888-418-4074. I want to know something real quick before we take a call. I want to hear what you think is a ten. I want to hear what your ten is. I have a quick question before we take a call. Why is maps such a big deal? Okay, so maps is a big deal because... Well, it's a big deal to Apple because they want to get Google out of their face, right? And they want to burn Google. And this is a big burn to Google. Now, I actually think maps is one of the biggest gambles that Apple has made ever in iOS because maps are really important. I mean, I use maps all the time. Laura uses maps for walking directions, for street view. She uses it for driving directions, for transit stuff all the time. They are biting off a big, big thing. Like, when you look... I mean, if you look at what Yelp gives you versus what Google gives you on a map. If you look at the information you can get from Yelp, because that's what they're using right now and they have some data from TomTom, the roads will be fine. I'm not worried about their mapping of the roads. I'm worried about the stuff. Google does amazing stuff. On my Galaxy Nexus, when I need transit directions, I mean, it gives me train times. It gives me detailed transit directions with train times and they are correct. Every business in my neighborhood is identified on there. There's a phone number, there's hours. It's like an incredible... They've compiled so much data. They've got zag it ratings, which I find really super useful for restaurants. There's so much... I mean, I'll take a zag it rating over Yelp personally. So they really have to... This is a big challenge. I mean, between now and the fall, Apple has a huge... They're making... They're really rolling the dice. This isn't a super satisfying experience for their users. I think people will be like, you had a great maps experience and now I'm like, can't find the things I used to find. Because they have to make sure it's a feature parity or better by that time. The 3D stuff is cool, beautiful, but its utility is literally to show off. There's no utility to a 3D flyover. It looks cool. It looks cool based on what they showed. Well, it's the same utility as Google Earth, which is to be like, oh my God, this is amazing. Right. That's what they're doing. All right. So I think it's a big deal because I think that first off, it's a big burn to Google because it's on a lot of devices. Believe me, they get a lot of... They see a lot of activity on their maps from that. And it's plugged into every API that everybody who's using the maps API plugs into Google on the phone for the most part in an app. So I think it's a big deal and it's also a big gamble for Apple and they really need to make this thing tight when it's out there. It cannot be Siri beta. It needs to be like full on. And I have no doubt Apple is aware of the... They're aware of the score, but it's a big gamble, I think. Call, you're on the line. What's your name? What's a 10? Oh, hi. There are a couple of things that are 10. First, I would have to say the type, Asus Tai Chi that I just saw. Hold on. Hold on. You think a thing you've never used and just saw in photos is a 10? How could you possibly make that determination? There's no way you can... That's crazy. That's like me saying I saw a phone and it's a 10. Courier is a 10. Courier is a 10. Courier is a 10. I think I'm not going to allow that. Okay. What else do you have? What else? All right. I mean, it's just product finally. Anything in your life. What's a 10? Captain's eyes. Captain gifts. What? Anything with cats. Cats? Cats? I mean, I like cats. I can't hear. You're very hard to understand. Like Nyan? What kind of... I'm very... I just got a new phone today, so... What is it? What kind of phone? We'll take it off speaker. What is the phone? It's a flip phone because my old phone died, so it's a replacement. So what do you say? It's an Asus Tai Chi. What is the thing you just said was a 10? Cat gifts. Cat gifts. Cat gifts. Cat gifts. Cat gifts. Cat gifts. Cat gifts. Cat gifts. Cat gifts. Cat gifts. Cat gifts. I'm in on that. I mean, if they're good. Just like as a whole. Yeah. Yeah. What else? Anything else? You got one more. I don't know. My plastic surgery maybe. I don't... I guess that is probably true if you have had plastic surgery and you're happy with it. Yeah. So I'll allow that. Congratulations. That I will... I will throw it up. Hey, thanks for calling in. We appreciate it. Yep. No problem. Caller, you're on the air. What's your name? What's a 10? I'd say that my 10 is the KFC Double Down. Wow. I've had a Double Down, by the way. I've never had one. Is it like... I gotta admit, it was pretty tasty. And then I started throwing up. Violently throwing up everywhere after I ate it. No, it's a very tasty sandwich if you're a meat eater. I'll never have a Double Down again, unfortunately. Or fortunately for the animal that would have been in it. What else? You got anything else besides the Double Down? Yeah, the original Macintosh. You think the original... The Mac. Like the... Yeah, like the 1984 Mac. That's interesting. I think that's possible. I think that's allowable. I think that could be a 10. I bet back then I would have found something really wrong with it, though. If I had been reviewing it. Yeah. I mean, I was born in 1992. So it's...I have never used one, but... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Again, I can't allow that. I can't allow that. This is personal 10. Personal 10. You had to have used it. Personal 10. You don't have any...what else do you got? Okay, fine. Double Down. The Double Down you've used. I'm on Windows 95. I'm on Windows 95. That seems like a real stretch. Reviewed at time of launch or reviewed at legacy time? What do you mean? I don't know how you say 95 is a 10. Okay, 98. No, forget it. We can't just play this game, okay? If you don't have a real 10 in your heart. Anything else? Okay, Game Boy Color. Game Boy Color. Game Boy Color. Interesting. Yeah, that's good. You think? Yeah, and... Pokemon Balloon Red. Anyone colorize all games. I would say original Game Boy as well could be in Fall Into the 10 category. Though it would have been nice to have a backlight. Well, there was all those people who would like hack a backlight. Well, they also made those adapters with the magnifying glass. Okay, all right, Collar, thank you so much for giving us your 10. Really appreciate it. Is there anyone else who... There's no one else on the line. Fine. Okay, let's do the 10. See, this is why we've never had... That's good. We're at the half hour mark, are we not? 3.30 on the mark. Let's do it. 3.30 on the mark. Perfect. Look at that. Here we go. Microsoft. So today, we got an invitation from Microsoft. And do you think we'll be able to do a whole half an hour on our conspiracy theories? No. Well, we'll take calls on it. Don't you have a beef or something? They did a whole... No, I'm not doing the beef. They had an announcement today. They said, we're doing a big event. It's in Los Angeles. They didn't say what it is for. My indications I've heard, the indications I've received from sources familiar with the matter is that this is a big event. It's a meaningful event. They're making you leave Nilay's wedding for it. But it's on a Sunday, so they're making... No, it's on a Monday. It's on a Monday, okay. Yes. You're really messed up on this date. I'm leaving Nilay's... So, Nilay's wedding is this weekend. He's going to be... He'll no longer refer to Becky as his fiance after this weekend. Yes, he will. But he'll forget. But he'll be wrong. Yeah. And I'm leaving Sunday from his wedding in Chicago to LA to go to this thing. And it's a very last minute. I mean, they just... It's like... You got your invite today, right? Yeah. I mean, it's an extremely last minute. So what is it? What is it? So here's the things we were talking about before we went on the air. I'm going to throw out some points that are being speculated upon. Okay. I'm just going to... So some people said, it'll be office on iPad. Okay. I don't get that. First off, you're not going to drag me across the freaking United States of America for office on iPad. You're not going to drag anybody. Why would you do that? I mean, it's cool, but is it worth a cross country flight for journalists? I feel like you wouldn't ask people to do that. Microsoft. I'm speaking to you, Microsoft, as an entity. Because corporations are citizens, people, humans. They're humans. You're talking to Steve Ballmer. What do you think? Office on iPad. Does that sound even remotely... I mean, I think it's possible. I think it's coming. But I don't think it'll be this. Why LA for office on iPad? It won't be this. It won't be this. What do you think? Is it possible? I think it's possible just because... I'm only saying that because I want you to get into a fist fight with PR. I mean, I will... After you find out, you get so angry. I will... Let me just tell you this right now. And I think... By the way, I don't think I'm the only journalist who will feel this way. If Microsoft is asking us to come to LA to announce office on iPad, I will punch someone in the face at Microsoft, a person who works in PR. I will punch them. I will go to jail. Stamped. I think I'll have a lot of backup too, personally. I think they'll... I'll get a lot of people to help me to hold the person. I promise you, if you go to jail and tweet about it, I will retweet. And that's the extent of my help. It's going to be a female PR person. It's terrible. And then you will run. No, I won't punch anybody, but I will be really upset. I think office on iPad is actually a huge deal, but it's a weird thing to have a whole big event for. I don't think it's that huge of a deal at the end of the... I mean, it's a big deal, but is it cross country flight a big deal? No. Also, it really preempts the excitement over Windows 8. I feel like you're going to want to wait until Windows 8 is out. It comes at a very odd time, because like you're saying, it's right before Windows 8, it's right after E3. Yeah. Or if they want to make any Xbox-related announcement, they would. But it's not Xbox-related. No. But they've got these two pillars. Okay, so what else? So what else could there be? Windows Phone? And we went through this process backstage. We already did. We talked Courier. We're going to get to Courier, okay? Cray-shawn. Windows Phone. Well, I don't think this is Windows Phone. Why LA? Why last minute? Isn't there another event going on? A Microsoft event of some type centered around Windows Phone? Is there? Is there not? I don't know. I have no idea. I don't know either. Well, we just put on the site some leaked Apollo screenshots recently. And they look nice, but they don't look like this world-changing difference. It could be Windows Phone. It could be Windows Phone. Something in my heart tells me that it's not. Yeah, because even then, they went and planned it four days in advance. No, no, that's the thing. That's what's so weird about it. So that's what's really weird about it. So okay, they're doing it in LA. What's in LA? I think it could be an entertainment-related thing, right? Maybe I'm spitballing. This is just me riffing. Microsoft buying a studio. Like a movie studio? Yeah, like a movie studio. So what does that get Microsoft, though? Great access to original content for their new entertainment service, aka Xbox. It could be part of them entering the music thing. It could be music. It could be music. Yeah, I mean, it could be something with a label or labels. But again, it's a huge announcement for last minute. I feel like music is not the place where there's a lot of friction right now. I feel like it's got to be something that's like, you didn't see this coming, and this is a big deal. So like Microsoft buys HBO, and they're like, hey, we have all this content you can only get on your Xbox now. But something like that. Or cable stuff, like TV stuff. We're doing a deal with Comcast, or we're doing a deal with Time Warner, or somehow you can get cable over your Xbox. By the way, spitballing again. Xbox as a set top box, instead of buying your Comcast DVR, you get an Xbox, and it has Comcast somehow. But even that feels like they'd have some time to plan. I always feel like- Yeah, but I mean, unless it's been so under wraps, that's such a big secret. But they would still send an invite out more than five days in advance. Four days. No, maybe not. Maybe they just want to cut down on any attempt at speculation. Maybe they don't want people out there sniffing around. They're like, it's a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, everybody's gone. Everybody's gone on Friday to Sunday, and then Monday's the event. And who's going to have time to make, nobody's going to be in an office. You can't make phone calls. You can't sniff around. True. You know? Okay, that's one theory. I'm throwing it out there. And it's kind of weirdly late in the day, isn't it? I think it's at 3.30 or something. Which East Coast time is late. I have a red eye going back that night, and I'm concerned that I will not be able to make it. So, LA people, I'm coming at you again. Get ready. Get ready. Don't get your bike stolen. My bike. I won't be getting a bike in LA. Only if I'm in LA. Only a fool would get a bike in LA. Paul won't hear me call him a fool for years. For a year. Well, so this makes your mergers and acquisitions theory. That's the other thing. Mergers, that's the other thing. Mergers and acquisitions. So, the other thing is like Microsoft's buying Twitter. Right. Or Microsoft's buying Facebook. And that makes sense. They're not doing that. But, you know, but like Facebook is buying Microsoft. But the merger makes sense, though. The buying of a big company. Yeah. Because you have to do SEC filing. You just announce intent to purchase. Both sides are in agreement. Right. And they could have closed the deal yesterday or something. Or not even closed the deal. Just done like, you know, the deal memo. Well, enough that both sides agree to it. Right. And then the next thing is the government thing. Once you file in the government, everyone's going to know. What's in LA that's desirable? I mean, we don't know if it necessarily is in LA. It might just be the right place to do it. Like, for instance, let's just say it was Twitter. Okay. Let's just say for the sake of the argument, Microsoft somehow struck a deal with Twitter and they're going to buy them. Okay. I just want you to roll with this. Somebody just wrote a post called Microsoft bought Twitter. Somebody's writing a post right now. No, no, no. They put a question mark on the end. It's okay. Right. That's right. So, why LA? It would be your first question. Why not do it in San Francisco at Twitter headquarters or something? Well, that's conspicuous first off. Second, celebrities, Ashton, you know, whoever, get Lady Gaga up on stage, get Katy Perry. Okay. I'm riffing again. This may not be, I said we were going to do conspiracy theories. I'm actually going to see on Lady Gaga's tour schedule. What's chat saying? What's the chat saying? I want to know how they're... Bing. Big Bing event. What? Big Bing event? No, maybe if Bing is merging, maybe Twitter is merged into Bing. You know, or some other, you know, Yammer, there were these rumors that they're going to buy, humors, these rumors they're going to buy Yammer. I don't think Yammer is big enough to hold an event like this. Certainly not big enough that they're going to say to like journalists fly across the country for this Yammer. Yammer is not like a splashy purchase. That's like a press release. Like it actually kind of makes sense for Microsoft to buy Yammer because their enterprise things are huge. Courier. Courier. Courier would be amazing. I mean, that would be insane, right? If they were like, we're doing the Courier in stores. As soon as the Courier becomes official, it's going to become the most disappointing product. Maybe unless they really cooked up something amazing. I mean, and the thing is like Courier with Windows 8 actually makes tons of sense. It would be Metro, the Metro interface, but they'd have like a Courier. There it is. They'd have like a Courier set of apps, you think? It's like, this is our Nexus Windows RT device. I have to say, man. But why LA? Oh, and to come at your point, Lady Gaga is going to be in Australia at that moment, so she will not be part of the event. Great. What about Katy Perry? Where's Ashley going to be? He's filming. He's currently filming the Steve Jobs biopic. Yeah, I think he's going to be around. I, Jobs. They keep coming up with horrible names for that movie. I think the latest one is lowercase I, all uppercase Jobs. Who's playing Waz again? It should just be called I. This dude whose name I can't think of who's actually a pretty good actor and is a pretty good choice for Waz. I like him. All right. I think I'm running low on ideas here. Josh Gad. Well, wait. The other one is- What is that? Book of Mormon guy. The other possibility was a hardware maker like Nokia or RIM or somebody like that. Oh, those are the other ones. So Nokia, they're buying Nokia. You call it a hardware maker, I call it patent portfolio. Yeah. Well, both, but both. Yeah. Or, and this is the one that I think is actually somewhat could be the deal, which would be insane is RIM. Can you imagine? It would be insane. Can you imagine that? I mean, that would be nuts. I mean, a Windows phone with a QWERTY keyboard that as good as theirs, IT in. Yeah. They have to scrap Blackberry 10, but I mean, I think that what we've learned is like, it doesn't matter if they scrap it or not. Well, and all we got, so being at Blackberry World, like all we got was this impression that they just kept saying like, oh, we're just going to roll it out over time. And it just seemed like all they were saying was like, we're going to keep making it unless somebody tells us to stop making it. And like, that could be this. The question is this. The question is Nokia had no impact in terms of like, suddenly we're selling a ton of Windows phone handsets. I don't think there's any impact there. Would RIM, first off, the patent portfolio is obviously very valuable. I think there are a lot of valuable assets at RIM. Their security is clearly, you know, very valuable. They still have something of a foothold with business, which Microsoft is afraid of losing. And they had so much with Windows. And Microsoft then gets to make this super compelling case with Windows 8 where they say, hey, your phone and your tablet and your computer all run our thing and you can manage them all from the same place and it all makes sense. Got a very exciting situation here. What time is it? 3.41. 3.41. Nealise wants to call in on Skype. Let's get him up on the big screen. Is he going to be wearing his traditional Indian garb that he'll be wearing to his wedding? Which I've seen. Oh, he tweeted it? It looks good. Is it the photo of the gold one? No, no, he's just like sitting down in the pants. I can't see that. Do we get to watch Becky beating him for doing this? He sent me. While we're setting up, Katy Perry is not on tour until September. Yeah. Who's that? I can hear you. Whoever that was. That's Brandon. Nealise looks amazing. He looks good. Look how happy he looks. I shouldn't show your screen. Who knows what's on here? There's not no nasty porn on here, Christian. Really? Cows. I didn't see that. Would you give that porn a 10 out of 10? We were asking earlier. Oh, my God. Oh, it's so heavy. So heavy. Can we get him on or what? By the way, hard stop at four. So whatever Nealise has to say better be not taking the piss. I'm going to be on the phone. I'm going to be on the phone. I'm going to be on the phone. I'm going to be on the phone. I'm going to be on the phone. I'm going to be on the phone. I'm going to be on the phone. Well, is there anything else you want to say about Microsoft? No, I don't know what the event's about, and we're going to be there covering it live. We're going to be full force, brand new live blogging tool. By the way, I don't know if you saw, we have a new live blogging tool called Syllabus, which we used for the WWDC live blog. I have to say. Which was our second highest traffic day ever. The highest was the iPad event. But it was all, can I say a shit ton of traffic? Hello. Very bad connection. Oh, man. Very bad, weird connection. We got slideshow mode. But I just want to say really quickly, our developers, the Vox product team, the guys who make Chorus our platform, and who have now added onto Chorus with the live blogging tool, incredible work from them. They turned it around. Super fast. After the iPad event, we were like, we're not using Scribble Live. We have to get away from Scribble Live. It just went down on us too many times. And that sounds bad. You know what I mean. Forget, you can edit that, right? Oh, Neelai liked that. Good. Maybe we should switch to only audio with you, Neelai, because your video is frankly disturbingly bad. Yeah, so can we just put that picture from Neelai's Twitter up, and then just use the audio? Neelai, can you hear us? I can hear nothing. Yeah, you're very, what? Oh my God. Oh, what's happening? What? That was awesome. Neelai, what kind of internet are you on? I'm on a cable from Wisconsin. You'd be better if you run, I think it'd be better if you called in on a phone, honestly. You sound like total garbage. I like to imagine that he's on like an AOL dial-up. Can we get him on the phone? Paul's on line three if you want to call him. Okay, great. This is insane. Paul's on line three. Neelai, call back in and we'll get you on the other line. Okay, Paul Miller, welcome to the Vergecast. How are you? Hey, thanks for having me. Paul, what do you think of Microsoft buying Yammer? Yammer? Yeah, they bought Yammer. You don't know anything about this, do you? You don't know anything about what's going on right now, do you? Are you in the office? No, you're not in the office, are you? You in Chicago? Chicago, I'm staying with Chris Ziegler. Okay. Do you know what's going on? Did you hear about this Microsoft thing? I heard my son bought Yammer. Yeah, they bought Yammer. No, they didn't buy Yammer. Shut up. He's not going to know. Don't lie. No, but they're holding a mysterious, huge event on Monday. I have to go back out to LA to cover this event. Oh, God. Yeah, they're like, it's a major event, and it's invite-only. What do you think it's going to be? Do you have any theories? They're going to do Windows Phone 8. You think that's what it's going to be? That's so boring. What else would be a big deal? Why LA? Do I just press it and he'll be on? Okay. Neelai, you're on now, too. Why Windows 8 in LA, though? No, Windows Phone 8. Did I say Windows 8? That's what I mean. Windows Phone 8. Okay, fine. Why LA? I don't know. Cool theory. Is Paul on the phone, too? Yeah, Paul's on the phone as well. Wow. Paul, are you on a landline? I'm on a landline. You're both in Chicago, too, which is weaker. You could literally be in this. No, I'm not in Chicago. I'm in Racine, Wisconsin. I'm at my parents' house. When are you going to Chicago? Which is why the Internet is so terrible here. It's like a connectivity-free zone. This sounds great. Can you hear him, Paul? Yeah, I can hear him great. This is an insane, outright. Okay, we have 15 minutes. Neelai, do you want to talk about this? Your conspiracy theories about Microsoft? What's going on with them in LA with this crazy event? Yeah. I mean, I really think that they're going to do something really content-heavy. I'm sure that you guys already talked about this. Yeah. My guess is that they're going to do something really wild and content-heavy with studios. They might do IPTV on the Xbox. They already do it in Europe. That's what I said. There's no reason I couldn't start to do it in the States a little bit. That's what I said. But they need to announce major... But I also said every other idea, too. No, but so what about this? Microsoft buying RIM? No way. Why would they announce it in LA? And why do they need to buy RIM? Why not? Patents. Shits and giggles. Yeah, exactly. I mean, they might as well buy Nokia, too. They might as well just collect them all. Patent parts. Maybe they can buy Nokia, RIM, and Palm all at the same time. They don't want Palm. They don't need Palm. So we went through all the different possibilities. I think it could be something crazy like they're buying Twitter. Right. There's a Nokia Theater right next to the table center. That's true. That's where Nintendo has its press conference. I don't think they're doing anything... So Microsoft could do a Windows Phone 8 announcement with Nokia at the Nokia Theater. Or they could buy RIM at the Nokia Theater. Now that's a big FU. And then like burn it down at the end. I don't think... Let me tell you something. I'm going to tell you about the event right now. They could rename it to the Microsoft Theater. That would be awesome. I don't think it's... It doesn't say where it is. Oh, is Hulu in LA? Someone just said that. Hulu. Hulu. That doesn't seem like... Hulu would be very interesting. But they already have Hulu on the platform. But Hulu has been looking for a buyer, I thought. Oh, I see. Yeah, that's been out there for a while now. Hulu is interesting. Is Hulu based? They're in Los Angeles. They are. Uh-oh. Commenter, you're brilliant. You may be wrong, but you're brilliant. Where else does Microsoft do big announcements? They do them in New York sometimes. And then they do them at trade shows. Which they're backing away from, too. Why not LA? Why not LA? Nobody's going to go up to Seattle for a town hall meeting and Mike there in Seattle. Well, I think people might go up to Seattle. But where is the event? I'm sorry. I don't know. I don't think it says in the invitation. I don't know yet. Okay. So that's cool. I mean, Mike... I love going to Hollywood and not knowing where I'm going. Yeah, it's on the streets of Hollywood. I'm going to be at... I'll be at Matt and Tussauds Wax Museum just waiting. For someone to tell me where to go. I'll be at the outside... What if it's a new... Go ahead. What if it's a new version of Skype? That would be amazing. Maybe they're going to add a new thing to Skype called Skype Time. Skype Time? Which is... Interacts with Facebook. Yeah. I love the advertising thing on Skype, by the way. What is it? It's going to show ads. So I have Skype calls. Oh, yeah. I like that. I hope... Will it listen to you? You'll be like, boy, we really need to get some... I don't know. Ovaltine. Yeah, you got to get some Ovaltine. They're like... I feel like I'm so hungry. A cup of Ovaltine comes up on the screen. Like a person superimposed drinking Ovaltine in the Skype window. I just don't think they're going to be doing enough. I think they need to actually add audio ads, too. Can we superimpose a person drinking Ovaltine onto the Vergecast right now? Is that possible? Do we have the technology to do that? Well, at any rate, Neelai, I'm now leaving... Me and Dieter are leaving your wedding to go to Microsoft's event. You're leaving on Sunday. No, yes. We're leaving on Sunday. I mean, we're leaving from Chicago, though, and we're going to... Well, I promise I'll have the bartenders at the reception cut you off way early. Well, my flight's at like 3.30, so I can get completely hammered and be drunk. Just don't stop. And be... Yeah. Just go straight to the airport. Yeah. That's right. That was my strategy at every wedding I went to in my 20s, was to just party through to my flight at like 7 a.m. That's the worst. I did that one time I went to England and I just really got drunk and had a flight at like 9 in the morning back to America. It was, without a doubt, the worst, most heinous flight I've ever been on. I mean, being hung over on a transcontinental flight is a real... Kids, don't make the mistake that I made. If you're in England and you're getting plastered, just move your flight. It'll be worth it. It'll be worth it. That's some really specific advice, I have to say. Wow. This is freaking incredible. I wish you guys could see what's happening right now. I think they can. Can you leave that up? Just leave that up. What are you looking at? Well, Paul can't see it. We have an Ovaltine ad right next to Josh. There's an Ovaltine ad overlaid. She looks very happy. She's toasting Josh's head with the Ovaltine. I don't mind if I do. Crap. This is tough, I'll tell you. I can't...I don't know. Can I say something a little off topic? Yeah. Oh, we'd love for you to. We haven't been off topic at all on this podcast. We got 10 minutes. That's all right. I was at Wicker Park and there's a reckless record on Milwaukee. I just wanted to ask Neely if there's...that has anything to do with his Twitter handle. No, it doesn't. But I am a...well, I was a frequent and avid patron of reckless records. Reckless records. Can we get an overlay of an ad for them on top of the VIRG cast? On top of the Ovaltine ad. By the way, by the way, Chrashon, do we have a sponsor this week? I emailed you about it. Oh, oh, cool. This is great. Perfect. This is perfect. We're supposed to...yeah. That's okay. We'll say it extra hard at the end. So, so, all right. I have to go back to my wedding and I'm going to drop off. No, that's fine. That's fine. I'll see most of you... We'll see you in a couple days....tomorrow. Yes, Neely, we'll see you tomorrow. Oh, shoot. Tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow. Tomorrow evening, we're ready to party with you. Josh, I'm putting you in some serious Indian clothes. No, listen, I want to say something. Hold on. I want to say something about the Indian clothes. Yeah. I liked what I saw in that photo you sent. I want to do something that's a little bit, you know, kind of classy, monochromatic if possible. Like... Oh, I got you. Don't worry about it. You got something like... India clothes only come in one size, which is gigantic and embarrassing. I don't want to be like weird short sleeves and it's like you can see all my ankles and everything. I don't want it to be... I don't want to be the odd man out. So if you don't have traditional... You know what I like about this conversation is that you believe that at my wedding everyone will be looking at you. No, I don't. But there's going to be photos and stuff and it'll be like... But there's a bride there. I'm just saying there's going to be photos and everybody will be wearing... Mostly of the bride and groom. Everybody will be wearing their traditional... You know, look good in their properly sized Indian clothing and then they'll be like, oh, look, like Hodor from Game of Thrones is wearing an Indian getup. What's going on with that? No, we will... Trust me, I feel very comfortable that literally they only come in one size, which is gigantic. Great. You'll be fine. I'm just going to walk down the aisle carrying Neelay muttering, Hodor, Hodor, Tupolsky. Hodor. Hodor. Hodor. Okay. How are we doing on time? All right. I'll talk to you guys later. Thanks, Neelay. Talk to you later. I don't know which line he's on. I think he's on that line. Paul, are you still with us? Yeah. What's up? Okay, cool. All right. Do you want to take some calls? People with conspiracy theories about Microsoft. Paul, are you going to hang on for this or what? What do you want to do? Sure. Okay. If you want to talk to Microsoft, call in 888-418-4074. I want to hear what you, the public, thinks will happen at Microsoft's next event. I also want to know if- We have seven minutes, I'm told. I want to know if Paul has a 10 gadget. Yeah. Paul, do you have a gadget that you think is a 10 that was a 10? Like you would give it a 10? You mean like in history that there was a 10? Yeah. Any gadget or any video game system, something you use, a computer where you're like, that's a 10. I'd give it a 10. Hmm. I'll have to think about that. All right. We're going to take a call. Paul, you're on the air. What do you think is going to happen? What's your name and what do you think is going to happen at this crazy Microsoft event? Hi. My name is Dave and I don't think Microsoft's going to buy RIM. I don't think that's going to happen. It's a bit out there. But I do think that they could do something in the hardware space. I think maybe like a Nexus tablet for Microsoft. Like they're going to produce- They could have built a Nexus. Yeah. Or a Zune tablet. A Zune? No, they're not going to call it a Zune tablet. That's interesting though. But they're kind of like, yeah, but to show people like a reference. I mean, I guess it would be an actual product, like a KIN. A KIN tablet. Maybe they'll revive the KIN brand. How far along- I mean, when did we find out about KIN? Like in terms of invite to- A month maybe. Yeah, we had a little more of a heads up. Yeah, I think we did. Interesting theory though. That's an interesting theory. Anything else or is that it? Is that your only theory? Well, I don't really have anything else, but I was actually at a BlackBerry developer event today and- Oh, you were? They seem pretty keen on developing BB10. How's 10 seem to you? It seems pretty good. Yeah. I mean, it seems like it's coming along. There's a lot of enterprise apps being developed for it. Not what I kind of expected. I work in the consumer space for large scale applications, so not much of that going on. Do you think they have an opportunity to get back in the game? For enterprise, they'll probably be back to number one, I think. Really? Not in the consumer space. Over Apple, you don't think Apple's going to keep pushing there? No, I think that these developers want to develop for the corporate environment and BlackBerry have a good foothold there and they're going to leverage everything they've got in the corporate space. I think that developers want to push there and they don't want to develop for iOS as much as they did for BB10. That's where the development's going. Okay, cool. Thanks for the conspiracy theory. I think it's very interesting and thanks for calling in. This tablet thing is super interesting, actually. They have Windows RT to show off. They have SmartGlass to show off. They have all this new media stuff, even the stuff that they have on C3. We have five minutes. Anybody have any other conspiracy theories? What do I think someone else pointed out before we take the call? Adobe also holds a ton of events in Los Angeles. Interesting. I think Adobe could be a possibility. Yeah, but what? If we're on the buyout idea. I mean, this is big. Buying Adobe would be big. I hope they intended to make it seem as hyped up as it is right now because I'm really curious and I'm a little upset. Heavy breath caller, you're on the line. That's Paul Miller. Oh, hi. All right, hold on. Let me get another caller. Caller, you're on the line. What's your name and what is your Microsoft conspiracy theory? My name is Josh and- Great name. What do you think about buying a game studio? Oh, that's interesting. That's very interesting. A game studio. Maybe who would they be buying? Who's in LA? Nobody's in LA. Good question. I mean, but they just had E3. If you're going to buy a game studio and you're going to announce it in LA, whoa. What was that? What is happening? Well, they want to dominate the news cycle by themselves, right? Can you mute your sound if I'm coming through on your side? It was perfectly in sync. Okay. Why not announce it at E3? Well, maybe they brokered the deal at E3. That seems insane. I mean, to announce it this quickly, yes, it does, but- Hey, everybody. We know you were just here, but we brokered a deal with Ubisoft while we were here and we thought we wanted to get you back. It just seems crazy to me. Let's see. But that's interesting. A game studio. What if they didn't want to let it get lost in the rest of the E3 news? Yeah, it wouldn't get lost, though. Blizzard console? No, right. I mean, if you were Microsoft and you went up on stage at your event and you were like, well, here's all our stuff at Owen, by the way- We bought EA. We bought EA. Okay, hold on. Believe me, it would be the news of the event. Yeah. Creighton wants to interrupt with something we talked about before the show. He wants us to say, Halo movie. Oh, Halo movie. We already said Halo movie. An event across the country for the Halo movie for journalists, tech journalists? Didn't they learn that the hard way? I don't think so. Yeah. All right, Caller. Thank you for the theory. It's very interesting. A game studio is definitely a possibility, but what I wonder is why they wouldn't have announced it at E3. But that's a cool theory. Thank you for calling in. I actually just mentioned Steam in chat, which is pretty interesting. Oh my God. That would be Seattle though. Would it? Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. But you know, Blizzard is in Irvine, which is close to Los Angeles. They've never worked on a game schedule. Maybe they're just announcing Diablo 3 for Xbox. That would be a huge deal. No, but really? A big enough deal to fly across the country? The first Blizzard console game? I think that's... I don't think it's a big enough deal. Right. I mean, we haven't heard any games guys getting in. Right, we haven't heard games. Is Polygon flying out there? I don't think so. Not that I know of. I haven't heard a single game that are getting in by E3. I don't think it's games. I don't think it's games related. I think it's too close to E3 to be games related. And on that note, we have to wrap up because we have like two minutes left and I want to end on time. This is the first ever started on time, ended on time. That's ridiculous. It is ridiculous, right? We started right at three, we're ending right at four. Isn't that incredible? I go out of town and I get around the country and then you start ending podcasts on time. I think it might be because you're not here. All right, final hold record. What do you think it is? One prediction. Let's hold you to it. I got one go? Yeah, one go. I think they're going to announce a major partnership to deliver. If I had to put all my change in one pocket or whatever, I think a major partnership to deliver TV through the Xbox would be my guess. It's going to be like instead of your cable box, you can do this now with it's like everything on the Xbox. All right, David. I'm going with our caller and saying it's a WinRT tablet. I'm going to go ahead and say they're buying Hulu. That's my guess. They're buying what? Hulu. Hulu. So, similar to, we might be on the same track there. Right, maybe both. Okay, cool. That is the Vergecast. Paul, do you want to give your... Yeah, yeah. Paul? Windows 8, but I'm trying to think of a perfect game gadget and it's either Power Pro or... I can't hear what you're saying, you're breaking up. You mean Windows Phone 8, right? Windows Phone 8 and as far as the perfect game gadget, for me it would probably be my PowerBook G3 Pismo. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Pismo was awesome. I had one as well. Okay, on that note, 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 leave a comment in the post when it goes up or you can find us on Twitter. I'm Josh Witopolsky. David is pierceddavid. Ross is ohnorosco, no E on the end. Paul's future Paul, but it doesn't matter. Neelai is reckless and the Verge is at Verge, of course. I also want to say that our Vergecast this week was sponsored by Internet Explorer 9, which is a fitting sponsorship considering that we're talking about Microsoft here. But none of us predicted Internet Explorer. And by the way, Internet Explorer, they've been running ads on the site, which I think look very nice. They're very nice looking ads. I also like the song at the beginning of their pre-roll. They're like... It's like dubstep. It's like IE9 dubstep. I love dubstep. IE9 dubstep. IE9 dubstep. And yeah, that's Vergecast. Thank you guys for listening and watching. We'll be back next week. And until then, rock and roll. You stay classy, Internet. Paul. I believe something is개
 Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of June 11th, 2012.
 I'm Josh Tapolsky.
 I'm David Pierce.
 I'm Ross Miller.
 I'm Ross and we are back on time, right?
 On time?
 Are we back on time?
 Hold on.
 I think we are on time for the first time.
 What's happening with this weird tentacle hair?
 I got to do something about this.
 I don't want to question your knowledge of tentacles, but I don't think that's tentacle
 hair.
 It's like an octopus tentacle hanging off of my head.
 It's a tendril of some sort.
 It's a tendril.
 It's a tendril.
 We're back on the Vergecast where we discuss the week in technology culture.
 I of course am Josh Tapolsky and Neely and Paul are not here, but I think to be honest
 with you, I don't want to insult Neely and Paul, but I feel like we've got a superior
 set of people here.
 I mean you can insult them.
 People will know.
 I feel energized with a totally new set because sometimes it's like Ross will be here instead
 of Paul and somebody will be here instead of Neely or whatever.
 This is a completely different... We don't know what's going to happen.
 Plus I feel like this picture of me in the post, I think I look better with Neely's body
 than Neely does.
 I'm going to be honest.
 It's a disturbing photo if you haven't seen it.
 Anyhow, but it's going to be exciting.
 It's going to be great.
 Okay, here's what we're doing.
 Neely's wedding is this weekend.
 Everybody's traveling.
 We have a hard stop at four.
 I know you guys don't want to hear that, but we're doing an hour.
 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
 We started on time.
 That's right.
 We're ending on time.
 We're going to end on time.
 It's a completely anomalous- It's never going to happen again.
 Completely anomalous hell world.
 Do not expect it to happen again.
 But we have basically two topics right now the way I see it.
 Two big ones.
 Apple and Microsoft.
 The end.
 That's our show.
 Thanks for watching.
 All right.
 That's great.
 You guys really- You went all- You committed.
 You committed on that.
 We did.
 You went all the way.
 You were ready to take off your headphones.
 Okay, so the first thing we're going to talk about, as you can see, Ross, and we'll take
 some calls towards the end because I want to talk about Microsoft.
 So just if you're wondering why we're going to talk about Microsoft, they announced today
 they're having an event in Los Angeles, which we've been invited to.
 It's a media event.
 It's apparently a big deal.
 No one knows what it's for.
 And they've asked me to fly.
 I'm actually leaving Neely's wedding on Sunday.
 They're like, you should come.
 And I was like, really?
 You're doing an event?
 They said this is better than Neely's wedding.
 They're like, you got to be there.
 And so we don't know what it's for.
 And we're going to do some conspiracy theorizing, as they say in Alabama.
 Because that's what we do best.
 Where they talk about conspiracies a lot.
 The first one's about Apple.
 Apple had a big week.
 They announced some stuff.
 They released some stuff.
 We have some of their new stuff sitting right there.
 WWDC on Monday, some big announcements.
 New version of iOS.
 Didn't see that coming.
 New version of OS 10.
 Didn't see that coming.
 Mountain Lion, which we've actually already previewed in our Mountain Lion preview.
 Check it out on theverge.com.
 Slash 0678.
 It's like it's scripted.
 Just down to an art.
 It is.
 It is down to an art.
 But they had some new maps.
 They're getting rid of Google Maps for iOS.
 They're putting it into, I assume they're going to have it everywhere where Google Maps
 was on any part of their software.
 And some weird new things.
 Passbook, which I think is an odd new technology to collect your passes for things.
 Honestly, it feels like a precursor to Wallet.
 It doesn't look like normal iOS.
 I agree.
 I think it is kind of like this.
 I think pretty soon it'll be like, I actually think here's where they're going with it.
 They're like, we have your credit card information.
 We have your movie, your Starbucks card, your movie card.
 Put your credit cards in here.
 Other credit cards, maybe.
 Or maybe just do NFC stuff with whatever card you have in our system.
 And I feel like potentially it's going to be like ID.
 I think they're going to be like, we're working with governments to see you can put your passport
 and your ID in this.
 And Apple already has-
 Which is, by the way, insane and scary.
 But Apple already-
 They already have all your credit card information.
 They do.
 Right through your iTunes account.
 They have a credit card.
 I'm talking about something where you have all of your cards.
 They have facial recognition software.
 They can say, this is definitely you.
 You picked it up.
 Yes.
 I feel like, I mean, something like that.
 I feel like they're heading towards, we're going to get rid of the Wallet.
 Right.
 And then they'll have a great opportunity to talk to, use the word Wallet as like, the
 wallet is dead.
 Wallet is yesterday's news.
 Passbook is a terrible name for that, though.
 That's the only thing.
 Is it?
 Like what does that even-
 Well, think about it.
 Passport.
 Checkbook.
 Yeah.
 I think it's, you just nailed it.
 Yeah, done.
 Passport, checkbook.
 That's exactly what it is.
 Because I carry my checkbook around all the time right now.
 This sounds like the beginning of a rap.
 Passport, checkbook.
 I'm going to say something else.
 Like Super Nintendo Sega Genesis.
 When I was dead broke.
 And I couldn't picture this.
 Now you dropped the mic.
 Now I detached the mic and dropped it.
 But anyhow, the biggest real news that came out of it was, besides the Google Maps thing,
 which I think is kind of a huge deal, and we should talk about that a little bit.
 They released this new, of course they updated the Airs and the Pros, but they released this
 new MacBook Pro's retina display.
 It's sitting right here.
 And Ross, you reviewed it.
 And David, you participated in that.
 I stole it from Ross.
 Dante participated.
 Everybody, because we bought a few.
 This one we reviewed.
 And then everybody in the office was like...
 Yeah, they all bought one.
 Like Dante, I saw him in the elevator the first day I got back.
 And he's just carrying two in his hands.
 He's a big man.
 So it's not hard for him to do this.
 Yeah, he went.
 He was like, oh, we're going to run to the office.
 He's like, I'm going to go get it.
 And then comes back and he's like, oh, I got one for me.
 Yeah, why not?
 Why not?
 So yeah, I played around with it.
 It's big.
 Let's talk about it.
 First off, did you read the review yet?
 I read the review.
 Did you notice anything about it?
 How sick it was?
 How totally dope your review was?
 Did you notice the...
 I might have skimmed.
 You might have skimmed.
 I trust you.
 You may not have...
 David and I did an Easter egg for it.
 You did?
 We did a little bit of music.
 What is it?
 Do you want to tell me?
 What is it?
 And people noticed immediately.
 Yeah, people...
 Is it that shot?
 Is it in the video?
 No, it's in the reviews.
 No, it's on the video.
 It's in the layout.
 It's in the text.
 I don't know what it is.
 See, we should have used your body as a one-way.
 And then he would have gotten it like that.
 Have I used that?
 Why Georgia?
 Yeah.
 It wouldn't make sense.
 Can you tell me what it is?
 Here, let's go ahead.
 Do you want to just quote it?
 Do you have it up?
 Sure.
 So the various pull quotes in this...
 The first one is, "'Cause I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for."
 Next we've got, followed by, I don't remember you looking any better.
 Are you seriously...
 Followed by, today I finally overcame trying to fit the world inside a picture frame.
 Are these John Mayer quotes?
 Every single pull quote is a John Mayer lyric.
 Are you joking?
 I'm not joking here.
 Why?
 I'm going to be honest.
 I don't understand.
 I was editing this review with Ross.
 I spent more time looking for John Mayer lyrics than anything else.
 Can you explain the reasoning behind this?
 Well, first off, I had not slept for a week and a half.
 By the way, by the way, I think this is a wonderful...
 I think this is wonderful and very cute.
 Also a little disturbing.
 Literally it was like David and I were at the office at night, just completely exhausted,
 traveling, working, all that.
 Then I was like, what's a good way of wrapping up the conclusion?
 I was like, well, it's kind of like the written iPad.
 Nothing's ready for us.
 We're like, oh, waiting on the world to change, that John Mayer lyric.
 Wow.
 Which we challenged each other, can you make every pull quote a John Mayer lyric?
 It was like a joke and then it wasn't a joke anymore.
 We each came with two or three.
 David came with five or six really good ones.
 It's pretty solid.
 This reminds me, you know, this kind of reminds me of...
 I'm really pleased to hear about it.
 I'm sure Apple is also thrilled that the review is peppered with John Mayer quotes.
 Who has performed at Apple events.
 He is a noted Apple fan.
 I'm pretty sure I made fun of him at an Apple event.
 I got a lot of hate tweets.
 But John Mayer is...
 I'm a big fan of John Mayer's work.
 I don't think that's any...
 I don't think anybody is surprised by hearing that.
 You know, Your Body is a Wonderland is one of the most romantic songs.
 I mean, whenever I make love, that's the song that is on.
 It's art.
 We never did buzzing like neon.
 Oh, that's true.
 You could have made that work.
 No, but that one sounds bad.
 Sounds very negative, like it's making a buzzing noise and it doesn't make a buzzing noise.
 But you know, this reminds me of when we were at Engadget, before I was editor in chief,
 on Friday the 13th, they still continue this tradition to this day, which is very sweet
 of them.
 On a Friday the 13th, I started sneaking photo shops of Jason Voorhees into posts without
 telling anybody.
 Were you there?
 You weren't there yet.
 I wasn't there yet.
 You weren't there yet.
 I read it from a distance.
 Without telling anybody.
 I didn't tell anybody at the time.
 I didn't tell him.
 And I thought, well, if somebody notices, I'll explain how hilarious and awesome it
 is and they won't have a problem with it.
 And then finally somebody noticed and everybody was like, this is awesome.
 And so we started it as a tradition.
 Any Friday the 13th at Engadget, and you'll see if you go back and look, starting in like
 2007, maybe late 2007, I don't remember when the first one was, every Friday the 13th has,
 if you look at the days, you'll see Jason Voorhees in a variety or things that were
 associated with him, like blood on a chip or just random like...
 A text message from Camp Crystal Lake.
 Yes, yes, yes.
 We did one.
 I remember the first day we did one that was like we rearranged the letters on a keyboard
 of a shot of Adele to say Jason instead of like the actual ASDFJKLSAM.
 There were some very clever photo shops.
 There were some really good ones.
 And that was a problem for afterwards when you're looking for assets really quickly and
 you start Jason's.
 Yeah, and in fact, Autoblog took, we did a post about an electric car and I put Voorhees
 in the passenger seat.
 Or it was like a shot of the car and Jason Voorhees was just kind of sitting there like
 this in the seat.
 Because you can do, you can get a lot of shots of him from like the chest up and it's easy
 to put that places.
 And it was on Autoblog like the same day because they reblogged it.
 I think it was six hours before we realized and like kind of let them know.
 Yeah.
 I think it's still there actually.
 I don't think they changed it.
 They're cool.
 Yeah, but so thank you for Easter egging the, Easter egging, is that a thing?
 Can you say that?
 Thank you for Easter egging the MacBook.
 And thank you for not looking over it before we published.
 You would have lost it.
 In all honesty, it's been a crazy couple of weeks and that kind of, that was in your hands
 and I let you run with it.
 That was a mistake.
 And what I read of it is a great review.
 So you gave it a nine.
 Yeah.
 You think this is an excellent laptop.
 I think.
 You freaking disgusting fan boy.
 This signals.
 This signals.
 I'm not listening to you.
 I'm just going to pretend.
 No, no, no.
 Keep going.
 The best is to not listen to me.
 It's the best thing you can do.
 I've done this for years.
 I made a career out of it.
 That's right.
 That's exactly right.
 No, I mean this is basically singling the end of the regular MacBook Pro.
 There's no reason to get one.
 Death of the Pro.
 Death of the Pro.
 You had a good run.
 It was good.
 You know what?
 You can't stay Pro forever.
 Either back to the farm leagues or.
 Is that a John Mayer there?
 Retirement.
 No, just keep going.
 Just keep going.
 I don't know what's going on.
 Okay.
 So I realize no one at home can hear the echoing.
 People, I don't know if they're laughing at my hilarious sports joke.
 I think they must have.
 Or sports.
 Sports.
 Go ahead.
 All right.
 Yeah.
 No.
 So I mean, spec for spec.
 By the way, at a half an hour, we're stopping and switching to Microsoft.
 So I just want you guys to know that.
 I don't believe you.
 No, we are.
 I do not believe you.
 Go ahead.
 Do it.
 All right.
 Do it.
 Punch it.
 Yeah.
 No, I think it's worth a nine.
 I think it's one of the best laptops ever made.
 The screen is absolutely the best one I've ever seen on a laptop with the apps that run it,
 of course.
 We'll get back to that in a second.
 Spec for spec, it's actually cheaper than the MacBook Pro if you're getting flash storage,
 if you're getting all that RAM.
 The catch is you don't get a CD, a ROM or DVD drive.
 An optical drive?
 An optical drive.
 Yeah.
 I'm still not sleeping.
 Can you remember the last time you put a CD, a DVD in your computer?
 Sounds dirty.
 No.
 When's the last time you slid a DVD into your computer?
 That's kind of a personal question.
 Don't you think?
 Is it?
 Is it?
 Did somebody else slide a DVD into your computer?
 They were...
 I'll just...
 I don't know if you guys want to just...
 Is this making you uncomfortable?
 Yeah.
 To be clear, to be clear, I consented to let them put the disc in, in the drive of my laptop.
 I'm just going to apologize to everyone in chat.
 By the way, I just thought of something totally unrelated, totally unrelated to this.
 But you have to explain how your brain got there.
 It's a long story.
 I'm not going to bring it up right now, but at the end of this, I'm going to introduce
 a beef into the world of technology between me and somebody else.
 Deal.
 Get ready.
 Anyway.
 Okay, we're going to save two minutes for that at the end.
 Okay, save two minutes.
 Don't forget that, Michael.
 So when you lose the disc drive, you lose the Ethernet port to a dongle, but instead
 you get a very thin machine, 0.71 inches.
 Actually thanks to the rubber stops, it sits up...
 Hold on.
 I changed my mind.
 I'm not going to introduce a beef into the world of technology.
 You're such a tease.
 No, no, no.
 Go ahead.
 Keep going.
 Seriously.
 I changed my mind.
 We stopped everything so you could think.
 You know what I'm about?
 I'm about good vibes and good friends and good people and having a good time and loving
 life and living it up.
 It's like I don't even know you anymore.
 I feel good.
 I'm feeling good right now.
 You're on drugs.
 I just smoked a ton of weed before I got here.
 He's buzzing like no one.
 I'm buzzing like the yacht.
 It is because of the pure MDMA that I snorted right before we did here.
 Anyway, go ahead.
 Talk about it.
 Anyway, so it's extremely light.
 It actually sits a little shorter than the top end of the air just because the rubber
 stops.
 Yeah, it is a lot thinner.
 It's great.
 It feels great.
 It's easy to hold.
 It still feels heavy and big compared to the Air, though.
 Well, if you're getting a Pro, though.
 I mean, I'll say this.
 The screen is insane.
 It looks really, really good.
 I mean, it's not like Apple's going to do this and not have the screen be awesome.
 It feels a lot bigger.
 It feels a lot bigger than the Air.
 I'm using a 13-inch Air, which I have come to be totally in love with.
 I mean, I love everything about it.
 It's light.
 It's fast.
 I mean, it's fast enough.
 It's the netbook of Apple computers.
 It's light.
 It's small.
 It's fast.
 Battery life is outstanding in my experience.
 I hardly ever worry about where's the...
 I got to charge.
 I charge it, but it's not something that I'm stressing out about.
 I mean, this is not going to end the whole Pro versus Air debate.
 That's not what...
 No, this is not.
 This is a premium machine.
 This is a 13 or 11-inch Air, this is not... you're not going to up...
 I mean, unless you need the power and that resolution, you're not going to this unless
 you just have a lust for the new thing.
 No, this was kind of built at the beginning as the Pro in an Air's body.
 It's definitely a step down in a Pro.
 It's supposed to be a replacement for the 17, essentially, right?
 I mean, that's the idea.
 They got rid of the 17-inch.
 Right.
 Implicitly, they're like, well, there's no more 17.
 Well, actually, they didn't even said that.
 They just said, this is the new Pro tier.
 They're like, here it is.
 This is for like...
 If you're a video editor, this is the new laptop you're going to go buy.
 It's not even the new Pro tier because if you spec'd out a standard MacBook Pro, that's
 actually pound for pound.
 It's going to be a little more expensive if you want flash.
 My impression is...
 This is the replacement.
 They just don't want to save it.
 My guess is that Apple has not been selling a lot of 17-inch laptops.
 I can't imagine that.
 My guess is that they were like, this is a really niche market.
 We're not selling a bunch of these.
 We can do something cooler and better that may still...
 I think this will appeal to people who maybe aren't Pros.
 They don't need...
 They're not doing hardcore photoshopping, but they're like, this is a pretty sexy machine
 and I was going to get the 15-inch and I spend a little bit more money and I get this thing
 and it's super awesome.
 I feel like that's kind of a place they're playing with as well.
 I used to know a bunch of graphic designers who had the 17-inch.
 They hated carrying around, but they needed something portable, but they needed a little
 more resolution than the 15-inch.
 That's the only reason they got it.
 I think this is more portable.
 17-inches were not portable, but you still get...
 You get a lot of visuals on this.
 Especially there's the space.
 There's the more space display setting.
 At that point, you basically have at least that much actual screen.
 17 never went up to 1920.
 I don't think so.
 I think...
 Correct me if I'm wrong.
 I don't remember.
 I never had one because I think they're ridiculously...
 At that point, you get an idea.
 I think they're the most monstrous machine in the history of...
 Any 17-inch laptop can just get out of my face.
 Don't step to me if you're a 17-inch laptop because I will cut you.
 There's always this weird gray area between device classes where it makes no sense.
 Between laptop and desktop, if you're at 17 inches...
 You have to jump over.
 Yeah, you have to be like the desktop replacement, which just doesn't mean anything.
 There may be the person out there who needs that 17-inch laptop.
 Have you seen Kimber's laptop?
 One of our news writers, Kimber Streams?
 Her laptop is the biggest thing I've ever seen in my entire life.
 Can I just say?
 I'm not sure what it is.
 It's a gaming laptop, but it solidly weighs at least 150 pounds.
 Laura has been using a new gaming laptop, the Envy, to check out something.
 It's big.
 It's ridiculous.
 It's absurd.
 It's gonna get out of my face.
 And the thing is, they're so heavy, too.
 I'll cut that.
 They're heavy, they're big, they're ugly.
 17-inch laptops should not exist.
 I would want to stamp them out.
 I'm gonna make it my life's mission.
 You made Apple discontinue the 17-inch.
 I called up Tim Cook and I said, listen, Cookie, which is my nickname.
 To which he said, I'm listening.
 I said, Cookie, listen, I know you guys are selling a few of these here and there, but
 it's embarrassing.
 No reason you should be making a laptop of this size.
 He said, you know what?
 So you know what, man?
 Hey.
 This is all part of his campaign project, Tim Cookie Monster.
 You're right.
 That's a great point.
 I'm gonna double down on getting rid of the 17-inch.
 Then he doubled down.
 He doubled the F down on it.
 That's F is short for a swear word.
 I'm not gonna tell you what it is.
 You gotta figure it out on your own.
 I'm lost.
 It's nasty.
 It's a nasty swear word.
 Anyhow, but you really like it as a straight up 15-inch laptop.
 You think this thing is...
 Yeah.
 It's a nine.
 It's a nine.
 It's great to have a score.
 It is so wonderful.
 It's helpful to know exactly what you think about it.
 I have found that people love scores.
 People love scores.
 They love numbers.
 They're so respectful of quantitative analysis.
 Good thing you didn't give that a seven.
 Good thing you didn't give that a seven.
 Boy, would you be in trouble.
 I'd be dead.
 Can you imagine?
 No, didn't you?
 So you left.
 Sorry.
 You had a meeting right as the review went up, and then you came back and you sat down
 and like two seconds later, we're like, oh, I already have an email.
 Somebody being like, you should change your score.
 Yeah.
 The type of email was, please reconsider your score.
 Why?
 What was wrong with your score?
 It was too high.
 Yeah.
 I mean, but for a fan boy, what's too high?
 I'm surprised you didn't give it a 10.
 You know?
 Well, what?
 Okay.
 We can talk.
 We can't win.
 Let's do it.
 You're perfect for this.
 What is a 10?
 Is it perfect?
 A 10?
 Yeah.
 A 10 is a product that is...
 We've never given a 10 to anything.
 No.
 It's possible.
 Here's what 10 is about.
 10 is I believe in my heart there's a product that's a 10.
 I think a 10 can exist.
 I just haven't seen a 10 yet.
 How many 10s have we seen in our lifetime?
 Of anything.
 What exists where you go, this is perfect.
 Let's think of a thing that exists that you think, this is perfect, and it doesn't need
 to change at all.
 Seltzer.
 Seltzer is a 10.
 Seltzer is a 10.
 Well, I will say this, canned seltzer is like a nine.
 Yeah, sure.
 Plastic bottles, they're like an eight.
 Okay.
 The concept is seltzer.
 Hold on.
 Seltzer delivery system.
 The concept is a 10, no question.
 Okay.
 But the delivered straight up real glass bottle, compressed.
 Yes.
 Yes.
 That's a 10.
 That is a 10.
 And by the way- Metaphysical perfection.
 By the way, in Brooklyn, you can still get that delivered and I do.
 Have I talked about this before?
 I probably have.
 No.
 What?
 I love this guy.
 Have you had it?
 I have.
 I went on vacation.
 That's right.
 And part of it was playing with a dog all weekend.
 You went to town on that.
 Second, your seltzer guy came by.
 Ronnie.
 Ronnie.
 And fresh bottles of seltzer and just went to town on those.
 Just drank.
 You got to hear- When you live a seltzer guy, you made it.
 You're the best seltzer ever.
 Is that 30?
 Are we at 30?
 What's going on?
 We're at 20.
 We're at 20.
 Let me tell you something.
 Ronnie is our guy.
 He's like by the guy in Brooklyn.
 He literally is one dude out there.
 Wasn't there a New York Times article about him at some point?
 There was a New York Times article about him.
 In fact, he was injured recently.
 He slipped and broke his- Got messed up, broke his leg.
 This was a while ago.
 A couple years ago.
 And he even came with the leg brace and a neck brace and was with the things of seltzer.
 He's awesome.
 I just want to shout out.
 That is awesome.
 I want to say Ronnie is the man.
 But the- So yeah, he delivers them every two weeks.
 And when we first got them- I feel like I've told this story before.
 Maybe I just told it to someone on the team.
 When we first got them, we were like, Laura and I were like, oh my God, real seltzer.
 This is crazy.
 Let's do it.
 And we got them and we shot some seltzer into a glass and it was kind of flat.
 And we're like, what?
 This is so lame and disappointing.
 So what we didn't know is you have to get them cold for them to fizz up.
 And once you get them cold, oh man.
 Ten out of ten.
 That is the shit.
 It really is.
 A cold, cold glass of seltzer from the real bottle.
 It is painful.
 It is joyful.
 It is heaven and hell.
 It's like the carbonated, like your eyes water a little bit.
 It's like- It hurts so good.
 It's like the John Mellencamp.
 Is that John Cougar Mellencamp?
 Yeah, different John.
 Similar to Mayer, but way better in every way.
 Mellencamp.
 I'm thinking about this.
 Hold on.
 Mellencamp for the win.
 Cougar for the win.
 Cougar's- No, Cougar for the win.
 Team Mellencamp.
 So let's reel this back.
 Yes, do.
 Seltzer was a ten.
 We're talking about ten reviews first.
 Oh, ten.
 What are things that- Do you think there's a device or a computer or anything you've
 ever used that was a ten?
 So a couple people in chat said Super Nintendo, and I could actually get behind that.
 I can't.
 Super Nintendo?
 When it first- That blew my mind apart.
 Genesis, maybe.
 Please.
 No.
 Come on, dude.
 Altered Beast.
 When you first played Altered Beast at home on a 16-bit system, you don't even know.
 When they were like Rise from Your Grave and it sounded just like the arcade.
 I don't think it's a ten.
 For me, TurboGrafx-16 would be a ten.
 TurboDuo actually, and like some of- Because they actually did stuff to the PC Engine in
 Japan that they didn't do here.
 You know, whatever.
 I'll tell you.
 You know what's a perfect ten?
 What?
 A ten to me.
 Dracula X for the PC Engine.
 If you've ever played it.
 I've never played it.
 It's Castlevania.
 It's Castlevania X.
 No, no, no.
 We're not talking about gadgets anymore.
 We're talking about software.
 Now we're talking about software.
 Right.
 Okay, we're talking about gadgets.
 Let me think.
 We're talking about gadgets in our lifetime.
 Sure.
 Oh, I think so.
 Okay.
 You can't say like the telegraph.
 Well, I was going to say like-
 It's cheating.
 Yeah, you're like the telephone.
 I'm a big fan of the photograph.
 I mean, how granular can you get?
 Like that's the question because like-
 You tell me.
 You still have said nothing.
 So what am I going to knock down?
 PC Engine, I said.
 I mean TurboGrafx.
 All right.
 That's something.
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 Was it really a ten?
 If I reviewed it now?
 I mean, to me, a ten is utopic, which is one part perfect, two parts imaginary.
 I don't think it has to be imaginary.
 There are things that are a ten in life.
 The only thing-
 Bo Derek, for instance.
 Nobody knows who Bo Derek is.
 I know who Bo Derek is.
 You do?
 You're down with ten?
 Okay, cool.
 What are people saying?
 What else are they saying in chat?
 So I'm seeing the pad phone because obviously-
 That's stupid.
 CRT televisions.
 That's also stupid.
 The pen, which seems kind of like cheating.
 But the pen, yeah, the idea of a pen is a ten.
 The original Game Boy, which isn't bad.
 Chocolate milk, peanut butter and jelly.
 Pornography.
 It's not at all a ten.
 I don't know what he's watching.
 I think peanut butter and jelly is a ten.
 I agree with that.
 Crunchy or creamy peanut butter?
 Creamy for me.
 All right, nope.
 It's a nine at best.
 No, I disagree.
 It's a nine at best.
 I'll tell you what's a ten when it's done right, ranch dressing.
 Yes.
 That's a freaking ten.
 That's an 11.
 What's that face for?
 John, you disagree?
 Oh, you really?
 Well, you've never had the ranch I've had.
 You don't know what I know, okay?
 I'm kind of a ranch buff.
 Is that cool?
 Is that a cool thing to admit to people?
 Ranch connoisseur?
 I think it's fine.
 On a national and international level?
 I don't think blue cheese fanboys are going to rise up and discuss for your ranch fanaticism.
 All right, you know what?
 Let's take a couple calls.
 Get the number up on the screen.
 That's the wrong thing.
 Get the number up on the screen or I will come in there and cut you.
 So while we're getting the number up, last expense, other announcements.
 Wait, we talked about everything.
 I mean, we can talk about all the...
 Okay, 888-418-4074.
 I want to know something real quick before we take a call.
 I want to hear what you think is a ten.
 I want to hear what your ten is.
 I have a quick question before we take a call.
 Why is maps such a big deal?
 Okay, so maps is a big deal because...
 Well, it's a big deal to Apple because they want to get Google out of their face, right?
 And they want to burn Google.
 And this is a big burn to Google.
 Now, I actually think maps is one of the biggest gambles that Apple has made ever in iOS because
 maps are really important.
 I mean, I use maps all the time.
 Laura uses maps for walking directions, for street view.
 She uses it for driving directions, for transit stuff all the time.
 They are biting off a big, big thing.
 Like, when you look...
 I mean, if you look at what Yelp gives you versus what Google gives you on a map.
 If you look at the information you can get from Yelp, because that's what they're using
 right now and they have some data from TomTom, the roads will be fine.
 I'm not worried about their mapping of the roads.
 I'm worried about the stuff.
 Google does amazing stuff.
 On my Galaxy Nexus, when I need transit directions, I mean, it gives me train times.
 It gives me detailed transit directions with train times and they are correct.
 Every business in my neighborhood is identified on there.
 There's a phone number, there's hours.
 It's like an incredible...
 They've compiled so much data.
 They've got zag it ratings, which I find really super useful for restaurants.
 There's so much...
 I mean, I'll take a zag it rating over Yelp personally.
 So they really have to...
 This is a big challenge.
 I mean, between now and the fall, Apple has a huge...
 They're making...
 They're really rolling the dice.
 This isn't a super satisfying experience for their users.
 I think people will be like, you had a great maps experience and now I'm like, can't find
 the things I used to find.
 Because they have to make sure it's a feature parity or better by that time.
 The 3D stuff is cool, beautiful, but its utility is literally to show off.
 There's no utility to a 3D flyover.
 It looks cool.
 It looks cool based on what they showed.
 Well, it's the same utility as Google Earth, which is to be like, oh my God, this is amazing.
 Right.
 That's what they're doing.
 All right.
 So I think it's a big deal because I think that first off, it's a big burn to Google
 because it's on a lot of devices.
 Believe me, they get a lot of...
 They see a lot of activity on their maps from that.
 And it's plugged into every API that everybody who's using the maps API plugs into Google
 on the phone for the most part in an app.
 So I think it's a big deal and it's also a big gamble for Apple and they really need
 to make this thing tight when it's out there.
 It cannot be Siri beta.
 It needs to be like full on.
 And I have no doubt Apple is aware of the...
 They're aware of the score, but it's a big gamble, I think.
 Call, you're on the line.
 What's your name?
 What's a 10?
 Oh, hi.
 There are a couple of things that are 10.
 First, I would have to say the type, Asus Tai Chi that I just saw.
 Hold on.
 Hold on.
 You think a thing you've never used and just saw in photos is a 10?
 How could you possibly make that determination?
 There's no way you can...
 That's crazy.
 That's like me saying I saw a phone and it's a 10.
 Courier is a 10.
 Courier is a 10.
 Courier is a 10.
 I think I'm not going to allow that.
 Okay.
 What else do you have?
 What else?
 All right.
 I mean, it's just product finally.
 Anything in your life.
 What's a 10?
 Captain's eyes.
 Captain gifts.
 What?
 Anything with cats.
 Cats?
 Cats?
 I mean, I like cats.
 I can't hear.
 You're very hard to understand.
 Like Nyan?
 What kind of...
 I'm very...
 I just got a new phone today, so...
 What is it?
 What kind of phone?
 We'll take it off speaker.
 What is the phone?
 It's a flip phone because my old phone died, so it's a replacement.
 So what do you say?
 It's an Asus Tai Chi.
 What is the thing you just said was a 10?
 Cat gifts.
 Cat gifts.
 Cat gifts.
 Cat gifts.
 Cat gifts.
 Cat gifts.
 Cat gifts.
 Cat gifts.
 Cat gifts.
 Cat gifts.
 Cat gifts.
 I'm in on that.
 I mean, if they're good.
 Just like as a whole.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 What else?
 Anything else?
 You got one more.
 I don't know.
 My plastic surgery maybe.
 I don't...
 I guess that is probably true if you have had plastic surgery and you're happy with
 it.
 Yeah.
 So I'll allow that.
 Congratulations.
 That I will...
 I will throw it up.
 Hey, thanks for calling in.
 We appreciate it.
 Yep.
 No problem.
 Caller, you're on the air.
 What's your name?
 What's a 10?
 I'd say that my 10 is the KFC Double Down.
 Wow.
 I've had a Double Down, by the way.
 I've never had one.
 Is it like...
 I gotta admit, it was pretty tasty.
 And then I started throwing up.
 Violently throwing up everywhere after I ate it.
 No, it's a very tasty sandwich if you're a meat eater.
 I'll never have a Double Down again, unfortunately.
 Or fortunately for the animal that would have been in it.
 What else?
 You got anything else besides the Double Down?
 Yeah, the original Macintosh.
 You think the original...
 The Mac.
 Like the...
 Yeah, like the 1984 Mac.
 That's interesting.
 I think that's possible.
 I think that's allowable.
 I think that could be a 10.
 I bet back then I would have found something really wrong with it, though.
 If I had been reviewing it.
 Yeah.
 I mean, I was born in 1992.
 So it's...I have never used one, but...
 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
 Again, I can't allow that.
 I can't allow that.
 This is personal 10.
 Personal 10.
 You had to have used it.
 Personal 10.
 You don't have any...what else do you got?
 Okay, fine.
 Double Down.
 The Double Down you've used.
 I'm on Windows 95.
 I'm on Windows 95.
 That seems like a real stretch.
 Reviewed at time of launch or reviewed at legacy time?
 What do you mean?
 I don't know how you say 95 is a 10.
 Okay, 98.
 No, forget it.
 We can't just play this game, okay?
 If you don't have a real 10 in your heart.
 Anything else?
 Okay, Game Boy Color.
 Game Boy Color.
 Game Boy Color.
 Interesting.
 Yeah, that's good.
 You think?
 Yeah, and...
 Pokemon Balloon Red.
 Anyone colorize all games.
 I would say original Game Boy as well could be in Fall Into the 10 category.
 Though it would have been nice to have a backlight.
 Well, there was all those people who would like hack a backlight.
 Well, they also made those adapters with the magnifying glass.
 Okay, all right, Collar, thank you so much for giving us your 10.
 Really appreciate it.
 Is there anyone else who...
 There's no one else on the line.
 Fine.
 Okay, let's do the 10.
 See, this is why we've never had...
 That's good.
 We're at the half hour mark, are we not?
 3.30 on the mark.
 Let's do it.
 3.30 on the mark.
 Perfect.
 Look at that.
 Here we go.
 Microsoft.
 So today, we got an invitation from Microsoft.
 And do you think we'll be able to do a whole half an hour on our conspiracy theories?
 No.
 Well, we'll take calls on it.
 Don't you have a beef or something?
 They did a whole...
 No, I'm not doing the beef.
 They had an announcement today.
 They said, we're doing a big event.
 It's in Los Angeles.
 They didn't say what it is for.
 My indications I've heard, the indications I've received from sources familiar with the
 matter is that this is a big event.
 It's a meaningful event.
 They're making you leave Nilay's wedding for it.
 But it's on a Sunday, so they're making...
 No, it's on a Monday.
 It's on a Monday, okay.
 Yes.
 You're really messed up on this date.
 I'm leaving Nilay's...
 So, Nilay's wedding is this weekend.
 He's going to be...
 He'll no longer refer to Becky as his fiance after this weekend.
 Yes, he will.
 But he'll forget.
 But he'll be wrong.
 Yeah.
 And I'm leaving Sunday from his wedding in Chicago to LA to go to this thing.
 And it's a very last minute.
 I mean, they just...
 It's like...
 You got your invite today, right?
 Yeah.
 I mean, it's an extremely last minute.
 So what is it?
 What is it?
 So here's the things we were talking about before we went on the air.
 I'm going to throw out some points that are being speculated upon.
 Okay.
 I'm just going to...
 So some people said, it'll be office on iPad.
 Okay.
 I don't get that.
 First off, you're not going to drag me across the freaking United States of America for
 office on iPad.
 You're not going to drag anybody.
 Why would you do that?
 I mean, it's cool, but is it worth a cross country flight for journalists?
 I feel like you wouldn't ask people to do that.
 Microsoft.
 I'm speaking to you, Microsoft, as an entity.
 Because corporations are citizens, people, humans.
 They're humans.
 You're talking to Steve Ballmer.
 What do you think?
 Office on iPad.
 Does that sound even remotely...
 I mean, I think it's possible.
 I think it's coming.
 But I don't think it'll be this.
 Why LA for office on iPad?
 It won't be this.
 It won't be this.
 What do you think?
 Is it possible?
 I think it's possible just because...
 I'm only saying that because I want you to get into a fist fight with PR.
 I mean, I will...
 After you find out, you get so angry.
 I will...
 Let me just tell you this right now.
 And I think...
 By the way, I don't think I'm the only journalist who will feel this way.
 If Microsoft is asking us to come to LA to announce office on iPad, I will punch someone
 in the face at Microsoft, a person who works in PR.
 I will punch them.
 I will go to jail.
 Stamped.
 I think I'll have a lot of backup too, personally.
 I think they'll...
 I'll get a lot of people to help me to hold the person.
 I promise you, if you go to jail and tweet about it, I will retweet.
 And that's the extent of my help.
 It's going to be a female PR person.
 It's terrible.
 And then you will run.
 No, I won't punch anybody, but I will be really upset.
 I think office on iPad is actually a huge deal, but it's a weird thing to have a whole
 big event for.
 I don't think it's that huge of a deal at the end of the...
 I mean, it's a big deal, but is it cross country flight a big deal?
 No.
 Also, it really preempts the excitement over Windows 8.
 I feel like you're going to want to wait until Windows 8 is out.
 It comes at a very odd time, because like you're saying, it's right before Windows 8,
 it's right after E3.
 Yeah.
 Or if they want to make any Xbox-related announcement, they would.
 But it's not Xbox-related.
 No.
 But they've got these two pillars.
 Okay, so what else?
 So what else could there be?
 Windows Phone?
 And we went through this process backstage.
 We already did.
 We talked Courier.
 We're going to get to Courier, okay?
 Cray-shawn.
 Windows Phone.
 Well, I don't think this is Windows Phone.
 Why LA?
 Why last minute?
 Isn't there another event going on?
 A Microsoft event of some type centered around Windows Phone?
 Is there?
 Is there not?
 I don't know.
 I have no idea.
 I don't know either.
 Well, we just put on the site some leaked Apollo screenshots recently.
 And they look nice, but they don't look like this world-changing difference.
 It could be Windows Phone.
 It could be Windows Phone.
 Something in my heart tells me that it's not.
 Yeah, because even then, they went and planned it four days in advance.
 No, no, that's the thing.
 That's what's so weird about it.
 So that's what's really weird about it.
 So okay, they're doing it in LA.
 What's in LA?
 I think it could be an entertainment-related thing, right?
 Maybe I'm spitballing.
 This is just me riffing.
 Microsoft buying a studio.
 Like a movie studio?
 Yeah, like a movie studio.
 So what does that get Microsoft, though?
 Great access to original content for their new entertainment service, aka Xbox.
 It could be part of them entering the music thing.
 It could be music.
 It could be music.
 Yeah, I mean, it could be something with a label or labels.
 But again, it's a huge announcement for last minute.
 I feel like music is not the place where there's a lot of friction right now.
 I feel like it's got to be something that's like, you didn't see this coming, and this
 is a big deal.
 So like Microsoft buys HBO, and they're like, hey, we have all this content you can only
 get on your Xbox now.
 But something like that.
 Or cable stuff, like TV stuff.
 We're doing a deal with Comcast, or we're doing a deal with Time Warner, or somehow
 you can get cable over your Xbox.
 By the way, spitballing again.
 Xbox as a set top box, instead of buying your Comcast DVR, you get an Xbox, and it has Comcast
 somehow.
 But even that feels like they'd have some time to plan.
 I always feel like-
 Yeah, but I mean, unless it's been so under wraps, that's such a big secret.
 But they would still send an invite out more than five days in advance.
 Four days.
 No, maybe not.
 Maybe they just want to cut down on any attempt at speculation.
 Maybe they don't want people out there sniffing around.
 They're like, it's a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, everybody's gone.
 Everybody's gone on Friday to Sunday, and then Monday's the event.
 And who's going to have time to make, nobody's going to be in an office.
 You can't make phone calls.
 You can't sniff around.
 True.
 You know?
 Okay, that's one theory.
 I'm throwing it out there.
 And it's kind of weirdly late in the day, isn't it?
 I think it's at 3.30 or something.
 Which East Coast time is late.
 I have a red eye going back that night, and I'm concerned that I will not be able to make
 it.
 So, LA people, I'm coming at you again.
 Get ready.
 Get ready.
 Don't get your bike stolen.
 My bike.
 I won't be getting a bike in LA.
 Only if I'm in LA.
 Only a fool would get a bike in LA.
 Paul won't hear me call him a fool for years.
 For a year.
 Well, so this makes your mergers and acquisitions theory.
 That's the other thing.
 Mergers, that's the other thing.
 Mergers and acquisitions.
 So, the other thing is like Microsoft's buying Twitter.
 Right.
 Or Microsoft's buying Facebook.
 And that makes sense.
 They're not doing that.
 But, you know, but like Facebook is buying Microsoft.
 But the merger makes sense, though.
 The buying of a big company.
 Yeah.
 Because you have to do SEC filing.
 You just announce intent to purchase.
 Both sides are in agreement.
 Right.
 And they could have closed the deal yesterday or something.
 Or not even closed the deal.
 Just done like, you know, the deal memo.
 Well, enough that both sides agree to it.
 Right.
 And then the next thing is the government thing.
 Once you file in the government, everyone's going to know.
 What's in LA that's desirable?
 I mean, we don't know if it necessarily is in LA.
 It might just be the right place to do it.
 Like, for instance, let's just say it was Twitter.
 Okay.
 Let's just say for the sake of the argument, Microsoft somehow struck a deal with Twitter
 and they're going to buy them.
 Okay.
 I just want you to roll with this.
 Somebody just wrote a post called Microsoft bought Twitter.
 Somebody's writing a post right now.
 No, no, no.
 They put a question mark on the end.
 It's okay.
 Right.
 That's right.
 So, why LA?
 It would be your first question.
 Why not do it in San Francisco at Twitter headquarters or something?
 Well, that's conspicuous first off.
 Second, celebrities, Ashton, you know, whoever, get Lady Gaga up on stage, get Katy Perry.
 Okay.
 I'm riffing again.
 This may not be, I said we were going to do conspiracy theories.
 I'm actually going to see on Lady Gaga's tour schedule.
 What's chat saying?
 What's the chat saying?
 I want to know how they're...
 Bing.
 Big Bing event.
 What?
 Big Bing event?
 No, maybe if Bing is merging, maybe Twitter is merged into Bing.
 You know, or some other, you know, Yammer, there were these rumors that they're going
 to buy, humors, these rumors they're going to buy Yammer.
 I don't think Yammer is big enough to hold an event like this.
 Certainly not big enough that they're going to say to like journalists fly across the
 country for this Yammer.
 Yammer is not like a splashy purchase.
 That's like a press release.
 Like it actually kind of makes sense for Microsoft to buy Yammer because their enterprise
 things are huge.
 Courier.
 Courier.
 Courier would be amazing.
 I mean, that would be insane, right?
 If they were like, we're doing the Courier in stores.
 As soon as the Courier becomes official, it's going to become the most disappointing product.
 Maybe unless they really cooked up something amazing.
 I mean, and the thing is like Courier with Windows 8 actually makes tons of sense.
 It would be Metro, the Metro interface, but they'd have like a Courier.
 There it is.
 They'd have like a Courier set of apps, you think?
 It's like, this is our Nexus Windows RT device.
 I have to say, man.
 But why LA?
 Oh, and to come at your point, Lady Gaga is going to be in Australia at that moment, so
 she will not be part of the event.
 Great.
 What about Katy Perry?
 Where's Ashley going to be?
 He's filming.
 He's currently filming the Steve Jobs biopic.
 Yeah, I think he's going to be around.
 I, Jobs.
 They keep coming up with horrible names for that movie.
 I think the latest one is lowercase I, all uppercase Jobs.
 Who's playing Waz again?
 It should just be called I.
 This dude whose name I can't think of who's actually a pretty good actor and is a pretty
 good choice for Waz.
 I like him.
 All right.
 I think I'm running low on ideas here.
 Josh Gad.
 Well, wait.
 The other one is-
 What is that?
 Book of Mormon guy.
 The other possibility was a hardware maker like Nokia or RIM or somebody like that.
 Oh, those are the other ones.
 So Nokia, they're buying Nokia.
 You call it a hardware maker, I call it patent portfolio.
 Yeah.
 Well, both, but both.
 Yeah.
 Or, and this is the one that I think is actually somewhat could be the deal, which would be
 insane is RIM.
 Can you imagine?
 It would be insane.
 Can you imagine that?
 I mean, that would be nuts.
 I mean, a Windows phone with a QWERTY keyboard that as good as theirs, IT in.
 Yeah.
 They have to scrap Blackberry 10, but I mean, I think that what we've learned is like, it
 doesn't matter if they scrap it or not.
 Well, and all we got, so being at Blackberry World, like all we got was this impression
 that they just kept saying like, oh, we're just going to roll it out over time.
 And it just seemed like all they were saying was like, we're going to keep making it unless
 somebody tells us to stop making it.
 And like, that could be this.
 The question is this.
 The question is Nokia had no impact in terms of like, suddenly we're selling a ton of Windows
 phone handsets.
 I don't think there's any impact there.
 Would RIM, first off, the patent portfolio is obviously very valuable.
 I think there are a lot of valuable assets at RIM.
 Their security is clearly, you know, very valuable.
 They still have something of a foothold with business, which Microsoft is afraid of losing.
 And they had so much with Windows.
 And Microsoft then gets to make this super compelling case with Windows 8 where they
 say, hey, your phone and your tablet and your computer all run our thing and you can manage
 them all from the same place and it all makes sense.
 Got a very exciting situation here.
 What time is it?
 3.41.
 3.41.
 Nealise wants to call in on Skype.
 Let's get him up on the big screen.
 Is he going to be wearing his traditional Indian garb that he'll be wearing to his wedding?
 Which I've seen.
 Oh, he tweeted it?
 It looks good.
 Is it the photo of the gold one?
 No, no, he's just like sitting down in the pants.
 I can't see that.
 Do we get to watch Becky beating him for doing this?
 He sent me.
 While we're setting up, Katy Perry is not on tour until September.
 Yeah.
 Who's that?
 I can hear you.
 Whoever that was.
 That's Brandon.
 Nealise looks amazing.
 He looks good.
 Look how happy he looks.
 I shouldn't show your screen.
 Who knows what's on here?
 There's not no nasty porn on here, Christian.
 Really?
 Cows.
 I didn't see that.
 Would you give that porn a 10 out of 10?
 We were asking earlier.
 Oh, my God.
 Oh, it's so heavy.
 So heavy.
 Can we get him on or what?
 By the way, hard stop at four.
 So whatever Nealise has to say better be not taking the piss.
 I'm going to be on the phone.
 I'm going to be on the phone.
 I'm going to be on the phone.
 I'm going to be on the phone.
 I'm going to be on the phone.
 I'm going to be on the phone.
 I'm going to be on the phone.
 Well, is there anything else you want to say about Microsoft?
 No, I don't know what the event's about, and we're going to be there covering it live.
 We're going to be full force, brand new live blogging tool.
 By the way, I don't know if you saw, we have a new live blogging tool called Syllabus,
 which we used for the WWDC live blog.
 I have to say.
 Which was our second highest traffic day ever.
 The highest was the iPad event.
 But it was all, can I say a shit ton of traffic?
 Hello.
 Very bad connection.
 Oh, man.
 Very bad, weird connection.
 We got slideshow mode.
 But I just want to say really quickly, our developers, the Vox product team, the guys
 who make Chorus our platform, and who have now added onto Chorus with the live blogging
 tool, incredible work from them.
 They turned it around.
 Super fast.
 After the iPad event, we were like, we're not using Scribble Live.
 We have to get away from Scribble Live.
 It just went down on us too many times.
 And that sounds bad.
 You know what I mean.
 Forget, you can edit that, right?
 Oh, Neelai liked that.
 Good.
 Maybe we should switch to only audio with you, Neelai, because your video is frankly
 disturbingly bad.
 Yeah, so can we just put that picture from Neelai's Twitter up, and then just use the
 audio?
 Neelai, can you hear us?
 I can hear nothing.
 Yeah, you're very, what?
 Oh my God.
 Oh, what's happening?
 What?
 That was awesome.
 Neelai, what kind of internet are you on?
 I'm on a cable from Wisconsin.
 You'd be better if you run, I think it'd be better if you called in on a phone, honestly.
 You sound like total garbage.
 I like to imagine that he's on like an AOL dial-up.
 Can we get him on the phone?
 Paul's on line three if you want to call him.
 Okay, great.
 This is insane.
 Paul's on line three.
 Neelai, call back in and we'll get you on the other line.
 Okay, Paul Miller, welcome to the Vergecast.
 How are you?
 Hey, thanks for having me.
 Paul, what do you think of Microsoft buying Yammer?
 Yammer?
 Yeah, they bought Yammer.
 You don't know anything about this, do you?
 You don't know anything about what's going on right now, do you?
 Are you in the office?
 No, you're not in the office, are you?
 You in Chicago?
 Chicago, I'm staying with Chris Ziegler.
 Okay.
 Do you know what's going on?
 Did you hear about this Microsoft thing?
 I heard my son bought Yammer.
 Yeah, they bought Yammer.
 No, they didn't buy Yammer.
 Shut up.
 He's not going to know.
 Don't lie.
 No, but they're holding a mysterious, huge event on Monday.
 I have to go back out to LA to cover this event.
 Oh, God.
 Yeah, they're like, it's a major event, and it's invite-only.
 What do you think it's going to be?
 Do you have any theories?
 They're going to do Windows Phone 8.
 You think that's what it's going to be?
 That's so boring.
 What else would be a big deal?
 Why LA?
 Do I just press it and he'll be on?
 Okay.
 Neelai, you're on now, too.
 Why Windows 8 in LA, though?
 No, Windows Phone 8.
 Did I say Windows 8?
 That's what I mean.
 Windows Phone 8.
 Okay, fine.
 Why LA?
 I don't know.
 Cool theory.
 Is Paul on the phone, too?
 Yeah, Paul's on the phone as well.
 Wow.
 Paul, are you on a landline?
 I'm on a landline.
 You're both in Chicago, too, which is weaker.
 You could literally be in this.
 No, I'm not in Chicago.
 I'm in Racine, Wisconsin.
 I'm at my parents' house.
 When are you going to Chicago?
 Which is why the Internet is so terrible here.
 It's like a connectivity-free zone.
 This sounds great.
 Can you hear him, Paul?
 Yeah, I can hear him great.
 This is an insane, outright.
 Okay, we have 15 minutes.
 Neelai, do you want to talk about this?
 Your conspiracy theories about Microsoft?
 What's going on with them in LA with this crazy event?
 Yeah.
 I mean, I really think that they're going to do something really content-heavy.
 I'm sure that you guys already talked about this.
 Yeah.
 My guess is that they're going to do something really wild and content-heavy with studios.
 They might do IPTV on the Xbox.
 They already do it in Europe.
 That's what I said.
 There's no reason I couldn't start to do it in the States a little bit.
 That's what I said.
 But they need to announce major...
 But I also said every other idea, too.
 No, but so what about this?
 Microsoft buying RIM?
 No way.
 Why would they announce it in LA?
 And why do they need to buy RIM?
 Why not?
 Patents.
 Shits and giggles.
 Yeah, exactly.
 I mean, they might as well buy Nokia, too.
 They might as well just collect them all.
 Patent parts.
 Maybe they can buy Nokia, RIM, and Palm all at the same time.
 They don't want Palm.
 They don't need Palm.
 So we went through all the different possibilities.
 I think it could be something crazy like they're buying Twitter.
 Right.
 There's a Nokia Theater right next to the table center.
 That's true.
 That's where Nintendo has its press conference.
 I don't think they're doing anything...
 So Microsoft could do a Windows Phone 8 announcement with Nokia at the Nokia Theater.
 Or they could buy RIM at the Nokia Theater.
 Now that's a big FU.
 And then like burn it down at the end.
 I don't think...
 Let me tell you something.
 I'm going to tell you about the event right now.
 They could rename it to the Microsoft Theater.
 That would be awesome.
 I don't think it's...
 It doesn't say where it is.
 Oh, is Hulu in LA?
 Someone just said that.
 Hulu.
 Hulu.
 That doesn't seem like...
 Hulu would be very interesting.
 But they already have Hulu on the platform.
 But Hulu has been looking for a buyer, I thought.
 Oh, I see.
 Yeah, that's been out there for a while now.
 Hulu is interesting.
 Is Hulu based?
 They're in Los Angeles.
 They are.
 Uh-oh.
 Commenter, you're brilliant.
 You may be wrong, but you're brilliant.
 Where else does Microsoft do big announcements?
 They do them in New York sometimes.
 And then they do them at trade shows.
 Which they're backing away from, too.
 Why not LA?
 Why not LA?
 Nobody's going to go up to Seattle for a town hall meeting and Mike there in Seattle.
 Well, I think people might go up to Seattle.
 But where is the event?
 I'm sorry.
 I don't know.
 I don't think it says in the invitation.
 I don't know yet.
 Okay.
 So that's cool.
 I mean, Mike...
 I love going to Hollywood and not knowing where I'm going.
 Yeah, it's on the streets of Hollywood.
 I'm going to be at...
 I'll be at Matt and Tussauds Wax Museum just waiting.
 For someone to tell me where to go.
 I'll be at the outside...
 What if it's a new...
 Go ahead.
 What if it's a new version of Skype?
 That would be amazing.
 Maybe they're going to add a new thing to Skype called Skype Time.
 Skype Time?
 Which is...
 Interacts with Facebook.
 Yeah.
 I love the advertising thing on Skype, by the way.
 What is it?
 It's going to show ads.
 So I have Skype calls.
 Oh, yeah.
 I like that.
 I hope...
 Will it listen to you?
 You'll be like, boy, we really need to get some...
 I don't know.
 Ovaltine.
 Yeah, you got to get some Ovaltine.
 They're like...
 I feel like I'm so hungry.
 A cup of Ovaltine comes up on the screen.
 Like a person superimposed drinking Ovaltine in the Skype window.
 I just don't think they're going to be doing enough.
 I think they need to actually add audio ads, too.
 Can we superimpose a person drinking Ovaltine onto the Vergecast right now?
 Is that possible?
 Do we have the technology to do that?
 Well, at any rate, Neelai, I'm now leaving...
 Me and Dieter are leaving your wedding to go to Microsoft's event.
 You're leaving on Sunday.
 No, yes.
 We're leaving on Sunday.
 I mean, we're leaving from Chicago, though, and we're going to...
 Well, I promise I'll have the bartenders at the reception cut you off way early.
 Well, my flight's at like 3.30, so I can get completely hammered and be drunk.
 Just don't stop.
 And be...
 Yeah.
 Just go straight to the airport.
 Yeah.
 That's right.
 That was my strategy at every wedding I went to in my 20s, was to just party through to
 my flight at like 7 a.m.
 That's the worst.
 I did that one time I went to England and I just really got drunk and had a flight at
 like 9 in the morning back to America.
 It was, without a doubt, the worst, most heinous flight I've ever been on.
 I mean, being hung over on a transcontinental flight is a real...
 Kids, don't make the mistake that I made.
 If you're in England and you're getting plastered, just move your flight.
 It'll be worth it.
 It'll be worth it.
 That's some really specific advice, I have to say.
 Wow.
 This is freaking incredible.
 I wish you guys could see what's happening right now.
 I think they can.
 Can you leave that up?
 Just leave that up.
 What are you looking at?
 Well, Paul can't see it.
 We have an Ovaltine ad right next to Josh.
 There's an Ovaltine ad overlaid.
 She looks very happy.
 She's toasting Josh's head with the Ovaltine.
 I don't mind if I do.
 Crap.
 This is tough, I'll tell you.
 I can't...I don't know.
 Can I say something a little off topic?
 Yeah.
 Oh, we'd love for you to.
 We haven't been off topic at all on this podcast.
 We got 10 minutes.
 That's all right.
 I was at Wicker Park and there's a reckless record on Milwaukee.
 I just wanted to ask Neely if there's...that has anything to do with his Twitter handle.
 No, it doesn't.
 But I am a...well, I was a frequent and avid patron of reckless records.
 Reckless records.
 Can we get an overlay of an ad for them on top of the VIRG cast?
 On top of the Ovaltine ad.
 By the way, by the way, Chrashon, do we have a sponsor this week?
 I emailed you about it.
 Oh, oh, cool.
 This is great.
 Perfect.
 This is perfect.
 We're supposed to...yeah.
 That's okay.
 We'll say it extra hard at the end.
 So, so, all right.
 I have to go back to my wedding and I'm going to drop off.
 No, that's fine.
 That's fine.
 I'll see most of you...
 We'll see you in a couple days.
...tomorrow.
 Yes, Neely, we'll see you tomorrow.
 Oh, shoot.
 Tomorrow.
 Yeah, tomorrow.
 Tomorrow evening, we're ready to party with you.
 Josh, I'm putting you in some serious Indian clothes.
 No, listen, I want to say something.
 Hold on.
 I want to say something about the Indian clothes.
 Yeah.
 I liked what I saw in that photo you sent.
 I want to do something that's a little bit, you know, kind of classy, monochromatic if
 possible.
 Like...
 Oh, I got you.
 Don't worry about it.
 You got something like...
 India clothes only come in one size, which is gigantic and embarrassing.
 I don't want to be like weird short sleeves and it's like you can see all my ankles and
 everything.
 I don't want it to be...
 I don't want to be the odd man out.
 So if you don't have traditional...
 You know what I like about this conversation is that you believe that at my wedding everyone
 will be looking at you.
 No, I don't.
 But there's going to be photos and stuff and it'll be like...
 But there's a bride there.
 I'm just saying there's going to be photos and everybody will be wearing...
 Mostly of the bride and groom.
 Everybody will be wearing their traditional...
 You know, look good in their properly sized Indian clothing and then they'll be like,
 oh, look, like Hodor from Game of Thrones is wearing an Indian getup.
 What's going on with that?
 No, we will...
 Trust me, I feel very comfortable that literally they only come in one size, which is gigantic.
 Great.
 You'll be fine.
 I'm just going to walk down the aisle carrying Neelay muttering, Hodor, Hodor, Tupolsky.
 Hodor.
 Hodor.
 Hodor.
 Okay.
 How are we doing on time?
 All right.
 I'll talk to you guys later.
 Thanks, Neelay.
 Talk to you later.
 I don't know which line he's on.
 I think he's on that line.
 Paul, are you still with us?
 Yeah.
 What's up?
 Okay, cool.
 All right.
 Do you want to take some calls?
 People with conspiracy theories about Microsoft.
 Paul, are you going to hang on for this or what?
 What do you want to do?
 Sure.
 Okay.
 If you want to talk to Microsoft, call in 888-418-4074.
 I want to hear what you, the public, thinks will happen at Microsoft's next event.
 I also want to know if-
 We have seven minutes, I'm told.
 I want to know if Paul has a 10 gadget.
 Yeah.
 Paul, do you have a gadget that you think is a 10 that was a 10?
 Like you would give it a 10?
 You mean like in history that there was a 10?
 Yeah.
 Any gadget or any video game system, something you use, a computer where you're like, that's
 a 10.
 I'd give it a 10.
 Hmm.
 I'll have to think about that.
 All right.
 We're going to take a call.
 Paul, you're on the air.
 What do you think is going to happen?
 What's your name and what do you think is going to happen at this crazy Microsoft event?
 Hi.
 My name is Dave and I don't think Microsoft's going to buy RIM.
 I don't think that's going to happen.
 It's a bit out there.
 But I do think that they could do something in the hardware space.
 I think maybe like a Nexus tablet for Microsoft.
 Like they're going to produce-
 They could have built a Nexus.
 Yeah.
 Or a Zune tablet.
 A Zune?
 No, they're not going to call it a Zune tablet.
 That's interesting though.
 But they're kind of like, yeah, but to show people like a reference.
 I mean, I guess it would be an actual product, like a KIN.
 A KIN tablet.
 Maybe they'll revive the KIN brand.
 How far along-
 I mean, when did we find out about KIN?
 Like in terms of invite to-
 A month maybe.
 Yeah, we had a little more of a heads up.
 Yeah, I think we did.
 Interesting theory though.
 That's an interesting theory.
 Anything else or is that it?
 Is that your only theory?
 Well, I don't really have anything else, but I was actually at a BlackBerry developer event
 today and-
 Oh, you were?
 They seem pretty keen on developing BB10.
 How's 10 seem to you?
 It seems pretty good.
 Yeah.
 I mean, it seems like it's coming along.
 There's a lot of enterprise apps being developed for it.
 Not what I kind of expected.
 I work in the consumer space for large scale applications, so not much of that going on.
 Do you think they have an opportunity to get back in the game?
 For enterprise, they'll probably be back to number one, I think.
 Really?
 Not in the consumer space.
 Over Apple, you don't think Apple's going to keep pushing there?
 No, I think that these developers want to develop for the corporate environment and
 BlackBerry have a good foothold there and they're going to leverage everything they've
 got in the corporate space.
 I think that developers want to push there and they don't want to develop for iOS as
 much as they did for BB10.
 That's where the development's going.
 Okay, cool.
 Thanks for the conspiracy theory.
 I think it's very interesting and thanks for calling in.
 This tablet thing is super interesting, actually.
 They have Windows RT to show off.
 They have SmartGlass to show off.
 They have all this new media stuff, even the stuff that they have on C3.
 We have five minutes.
 Anybody have any other conspiracy theories?
 What do I think someone else pointed out before we take the call?
 Adobe also holds a ton of events in Los Angeles.
 Interesting.
 I think Adobe could be a possibility.
 Yeah, but what?
 If we're on the buyout idea.
 I mean, this is big.
 Buying Adobe would be big.
 I hope they intended to make it seem as hyped up as it is right now because I'm really curious
 and I'm a little upset.
 Heavy breath caller, you're on the line.
 That's Paul Miller.
 Oh, hi.
 All right, hold on.
 Let me get another caller.
 Caller, you're on the line.
 What's your name and what is your Microsoft conspiracy theory?
 My name is Josh and-
 Great name.
 What do you think about buying a game studio?
 Oh, that's interesting.
 That's very interesting.
 A game studio.
 Maybe who would they be buying?
 Who's in LA?
 Nobody's in LA.
 Good question.
 I mean, but they just had E3.
 If you're going to buy a game studio and you're going to announce it in LA, whoa.
 What was that?
 What is happening?
 Well, they want to dominate the news cycle by themselves, right?
 Can you mute your sound if I'm coming through on your side?
 It was perfectly in sync.
 Okay.
 Why not announce it at E3?
 Well, maybe they brokered the deal at E3.
 That seems insane.
 I mean, to announce it this quickly, yes, it does, but-
 Hey, everybody.
 We know you were just here, but we brokered a deal with Ubisoft while we were here and
 we thought we wanted to get you back.
 It just seems crazy to me.
 Let's see.
 But that's interesting.
 A game studio.
 What if they didn't want to let it get lost in the rest of the E3 news?
 Yeah, it wouldn't get lost, though.
 Blizzard console?
 No, right.
 I mean, if you were Microsoft and you went up on stage at your event and you were like,
 well, here's all our stuff at Owen, by the way-
 We bought EA.
 We bought EA.
 Okay, hold on.
 Believe me, it would be the news of the event.
 Yeah.
 Creighton wants to interrupt with something we talked about before the show.
 He wants us to say, Halo movie.
 Oh, Halo movie.
 We already said Halo movie.
 An event across the country for the Halo movie for journalists, tech journalists?
 Didn't they learn that the hard way?
 I don't think so.
 Yeah.
 All right, Caller.
 Thank you for the theory.
 It's very interesting.
 A game studio is definitely a possibility, but what I wonder is why they wouldn't have
 announced it at E3.
 But that's a cool theory.
 Thank you for calling in.
 I actually just mentioned Steam in chat, which is pretty interesting.
 Oh my God.
 That would be Seattle though.
 Would it?
 Yeah.
 Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
 But you know, Blizzard is in Irvine, which is close to Los Angeles.
 They've never worked on a game schedule.
 Maybe they're just announcing Diablo 3 for Xbox.
 That would be a huge deal.
 No, but really?
 A big enough deal to fly across the country?
 The first Blizzard console game?
 I think that's...
 I don't think it's a big enough deal.
 Right.
 I mean, we haven't heard any games guys getting in.
 Right, we haven't heard games.
 Is Polygon flying out there?
 I don't think so.
 Not that I know of.
 I haven't heard a single game that are getting in by E3.
 I don't think it's games.
 I don't think it's games related.
 I think it's too close to E3 to be games related.
 And on that note, we have to wrap up because we have like two minutes left and I want to
 end on time.
 This is the first ever started on time, ended on time.
 That's ridiculous.
 It is ridiculous, right?
 We started right at three, we're ending right at four.
 Isn't that incredible?
 I go out of town and I get around the country and then you start ending podcasts on time.
 I think it might be because you're not here.
 All right, final hold record.
 What do you think it is?
 One prediction.
 Let's hold you to it.
 I got one go?
 Yeah, one go.
 I think they're going to announce a major partnership to deliver.
 If I had to put all my change in one pocket or whatever, I think a major partnership to
 deliver TV through the Xbox would be my guess.
 It's going to be like instead of your cable box, you can do this now with it's like everything
 on the Xbox.
 All right, David.
 I'm going with our caller and saying it's a WinRT tablet.
 I'm going to go ahead and say they're buying Hulu.
 That's my guess.
 They're buying what?
 Hulu.
 Hulu.
 So, similar to, we might be on the same track there.
 Right, maybe both.
 Okay, cool.
 That is the Vergecast.
 Paul, do you want to give your...
 Yeah, yeah.
 Paul?
 Windows 8, but I'm trying to think of a perfect game gadget and it's either Power Pro or...
 I can't hear what you're saying, you're breaking up.
 You mean Windows Phone 8, right?
 Windows Phone 8 and as far as the perfect game gadget, for me it would probably be my
 PowerBook G3 Pismo.
 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
 The Pismo was awesome.
 I had one as well.
 Okay, on that note, 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 leave a comment in the post when it goes up or you can find us on Twitter.
 I'm Josh Witopolsky.
 David is pierceddavid.
 Ross is ohnorosco, no E on the end.
 Paul's future Paul, but it doesn't matter.
 Neelai is reckless and the Verge is at Verge, of course.
 I also want to say that our Vergecast this week was sponsored by Internet Explorer 9,
 which is a fitting sponsorship considering that we're talking about Microsoft here.
 But none of us predicted Internet Explorer.
 And by the way, Internet Explorer, they've been running ads on the site, which I think
 look very nice.
 They're very nice looking ads.
 I also like the song at the beginning of their pre-roll.
 They're like...
 It's like dubstep.
 It's like IE9 dubstep.
 I love dubstep.
 IE9 dubstep.
 IE9 dubstep.
 And yeah, that's Vergecast.
 Thank you guys for listening and watching.
 We'll be back next week.
 And until then, rock and roll.
 You stay classy, Internet.
 Paul.
 I believe something is개