 So, outside my new office, there's this place called Rug Depot. It's totally interesting. They don't sell rugs at all. I don't know what they do, but they smoke a lot. They're outside smoking all the time. And it occurs to me, and I know I'm not the first person to have thought of this, that cell phones today occupy the exact same social space that cigarettes occupied in the 50s. They're probably going to cause you cancer for you later down the road. And they're this interesting mix of social and introverted. When you're on a phone, it's just about you, just like a cigarette. It's just about the drugs going into your lungs, the sweet, sweet nicotine. But it's also social because you go out, you do it in a group, you're actually talking to other people. It's the same thing, basically. So we're going to talk about, actually we're not going to talk about that at all, but you should still stay tuned for The Verge Mobile Show. Hi, I'm Deerbone. I'm Blaise Haro. And I'm Chris Stigler. And welcome to episode three of The Verge Mobile Show for the week of June 11th. We are sponsored by the Samsung Galaxy Note. And I'm having a really hard time with this decision to quit smoking. I think that you need to just pull the trigger. I really do. Just pull the trigger. Just go back to smoking. I should smoke in the office during The Verge Mobile Show. That would be no, no, no. Well, that would be cool. That would. Yeah, that would actually be pretty boss if you smoked while you were on the mobile show. But no, I actually meant that you should pull the trigger on quitting cold turkey. That's what I meant. Oh, no, I did. I mean, I stopped using the lozenges. You know, I'll bum a cigarette every now and then. But you know, I mean, the thing about quitting smoking is it's so painful. I just don't understand why I keep doing it over and over again. Well, you just want to do it once. Get it over with. What's that, Vlad? The quitting part is a painful one. Right. I just keep doing it. Yeah, you're right. So just do it once. Well, you know what? We're not going to quit. Any of us is cell phones. That's right. Whether they cause cancer or not. Right. It's you know, I think that we are all too far gone at this point. Even if we quit phones cold turkey, we would probably get some weird stuff on our faces from having actually not on our faces because none of us actually use phones to talk anymore. We get hand cancer. Is that such that I don't know if there is such a thing as hand cancer, but, you know, there will be. Stop talking about cancer in hands. This is getting weird. We should stop talking about other things that are cancerous, specifically iOS six. Nice thing. That was cheap. Listen, so WWDC is this week here in sunny, beautiful, freakishly, strangely beautiful and sunny San Francisco. And Tim Cook got on stage. She announced a whole bunch of stuff. New MacBooks, MacBook with Retina. And they gave a I don't want to call it a preview. They talked about features on iOS six and they said that iOS six is going to exist. So I mean, we need to run down the features that they talked about. But the reason I call it cancerous is I overall, with what they showed with iOS six, am underwhelmed and disappointed. And I dearly hope that all this was was a teaser about features and not an actual preview of what I was six is going to look like and be. My eyes leave pretty strongly. No, I believe pretty strongly that they are they are holding iOS six very close to the chest right now because they're probably going to do some interesting things with the next iPhone hardware that will tie into the software. And I even think that we might see a new UI altogether, significantly re skinned UI. And I say that because if you look at the Passbook app, which we should talk a lot about, I get the impression that that is a very different UX than what we're accustomed to seeing on iOS going all the way back to 2007 until now. And and there are some tweaks in the app store that kind of foretell where they might be thinking the UI is going to go. So so, yeah, I'm cautiously optimistic that this is going to be a very different looking OS by the time fall rolls around. I mean, we discussed this on the previous podcast, so perhaps the one before that as well, about how this four inch iPhone with a new aspect ratio is going to affect the introduction of iOS six and the new software. And it does seem to be the case that Apple is kind of firewalled the stuff that has to do with the expanded vertical resolution. One of the one of the things that we kind of expected and didn't show up at WWDC this week is new widgets. So if Apple ends up using that vertical resolution primarily to introduce widgets, primarily to introduce new functionality, that is why we're not seeing it today, because Apple has essentially said, we'll take that. We won't tell anybody about it yet. We'll tell the guys about all the other new features. Among which, actually, by the way, here's the source by doom and gloom. The widgets, like that's exactly the thing that makes me concerned, because this would have been it's a developer event. This would have been the time to talk up. Here's how to add your own widgets to the notification. Even if they're going to do it differently later, that's fine. They should have at least like put out some APIs for it. The second thing about widgets is they introduced two new buttons into the notification center, the tweet button and the post to Facebook button. And I got to say, like, that's really troubling. That's like, I don't know, it's like a Microsoft move. Let's just randomly stick some buttons in the notification center, because we've got Twitter and Facebook. And sure, maybe some people want quick buttons to tweet and to post to Facebook, but to stick it in the core of your UI, just slap two buttons into the notification center, that just seems like a really scattershot thing. And if they're really planning on getting on like overhauling the whole UI, then why would you even bother like, you know, putting these things that you're going to get rid of later? Like, they mean to put those buttons in the notification center. And I think that it's indicative of a lack of thought about the iOS core UI. Maybe, but when I say I want to clarify them, I want to clarify them for myself. So how do they function, because the thing about covering the WWDC live event is you end up focusing on particular issues, particular topics, and then you miss out like half the events while you're writing about them. So the basically news to me, is the idea that you essentially drop down the notifications pane and then tweet whatever you're doing at the moment, whether it's a thing in an application or a browser page, whatever, or you share it via Facebook, is that what it's supposed to be? No, that happens via the share button. There's a universal share functionality that I think is going to let you share via the services you want to share by. No, this is just a quick tweet or quick Facebook update button in your notification. So it's just a social update button in the notifications pane? Right. Which, by the way- Yeah, that does seem like pretty superfluous stuff. It's also- We don't know that those can be removed. Go ahead, Chris. I was just going to say, we don't know that those can't be removed. I'll bet you that those can be turned off in- I hope so. But the thing that drives me crazy about it is that's not the best way to do it. If you want to have really quick social updates, do it with your just type. I guess I'm asking from a West, but that's a much better system. You just type out the status updates you want, you attach the picture, and then you pick the services you want to post to, rather than having just random buttons thrown in the notification pane. I'll get off this hobby horse, but it really does bother me. It really does make me concerned. Well that's actually how- Make me feel concerned that they're not thinking through it like they ought to be. Your suggestion is also how Windows Phone works. When you want to post a status update, there are some check boxes. You want to post this to Windows Live, Facebook, or Twitter, I think, are the options. Yeah. It's a much more- Yeah. I guess it also gives some credit to Windows Phone for the addition of deep linking within applications. The fact that you can take a subsection of an application and pin that to your home screen in your lifetime. Yeah. In Manga, yeah. Yeah. My thinking is that's exactly the sort of thing that Apple and Android should be looking to emulate. I think some applications and some things in Android allow you to do that, particularly with accessing your contacts immediately and all of that stuff. But Apple's iOS has been really limited in that respect. I mean this is why we're also talking about widgets. Well, John Gruber actually wrote about this recently, the fact that Android and Windows 8 both have this notion of... Windows 8 calls them contracts, I believe, and Android calls them activities. Yes. And they're things that... They're functionalities that applications can expose to other parts of the system and other applications so that they know automatically how to interact with one another. That's one thing that iOS has lacked, and I totally agree. It's something that is putting them further and further behind in some regards. And we're seeing them catch up a little bit with the share functionality that you talked about, Dieter, but I think that they could go further. And I want to believe... I mean this is probably overly optimistic, but I want to believe that we're going to see a lot of additional iOS 6 news before the next iPhone is actually released. I hope so. I hope we don't. This is totally an underwhelming... Why are they calling this iOS 6? It should be iOS 5.5. Take Siri out of beta, replace the maps app- But then again- Hope it exposes something new to the IP... The counter argument, though, is don't we go through this same range of emotions every single year with iOS where we're underwhelmed with it, and then we're like, oh yeah, this is pretty cool, and then it gets us through another year? It happens every year. It happens every five. Yeah. I'm not so sure. What happened with 4.5 got me through the year just because it was like, okay, I accept that you polished off the edges and filled out all the features, but I just have a really hard time thinking that basically iOS 5 refresh, if that's what iOS 6 is, is really not going to be boring to a large group of people. iOS 5 got boring to me, but that's because I'm an insane person who's addicted to mobile phones, and so I love trying new UIs. I think that non-insane regular people are going to be like, really? This doesn't feel as fluid and elegant and interesting as some of the other UIs that are out there. I just think it's going to happen. I agree with you, but let's not go too far. Fluid and elegant is probably going to be something that Apple continues to keep up with iOS. I think the issue is that the last really major and notable upgrade to iOS came with iOS 4, in my opinion. When that was introduced, iOS 5 was really like, okay, we'll do notifications pane because we need to catch up with Android, and we won't do it as well as Android. I'm still not impressed, and honestly, I can't be the only person who absolutely loathes the stupid pattern that Apple has on its notification pane. This is consistent across the iPad, the iPhone, the Mac as well. There is one thing, I mostly agree with you, Vlad. There's one thing, however, that Apple does really well with notifications, and that's the granular control on a per-application basis of how you want those notifications to appear. I wish they had that on Android. Okay, but also, if you look at your notifications, and if you look at your notifications pane on your iPhone, actually, it really doesn't make particularly good use of the space. It's already a small screen, and then you have a title for Twitter, and then you have a subtitle for the other thing, and then I think it's you press the X, and then you have to press clear to confirm in order to clear away, as you say, a subset, let's say all the tweets, all the Twitter mentions, things like that. That's not particularly good implementation. I just find, particularly with Ice Cream Sandwich, I just find the look is so much slicker now. Do you feel like iOS needs to get away from all of this, all these, what was the word, skeuomorphisms? Yeah. Skeuomorphisms. Well, great. I was just guessing, and I got the word right. But yeah, it's all of this chrome that they stick in there, which is just outdated, and it's part of Mac OS 9 or whatever. It's really ancient stuff, and Apple needs to get away from it. I think Google is going really in the right direction with the visual look of Ice Cream Sandwich, the stock Ice Cream Sandwich, and Apple hasn't really caught up with that. I also totally agree with Dieter, where he's saying it's kind of moving into this area where it's adding features that we don't necessarily need. I've also got this vibe with the Mountain Lion reintroduction, that iCloud is being pushed so hard when not too many people are all that thrilled or excited about it. I'm not, for example. I don't see any reason to be using iCloud, whereas with Mountain Lion, it's everywhere. It's ubiquitous, it's kind of being pushed on you. I do fear that Apple might get into this area where it's trying to push its features on you too hard, which are not all that useful and not all that beneficial. Well, there is one specific example where I think that they're stepping on Facebook's toes a little bit with the shared photo streams. It's one of the features that we should talk about, but I don't understand why they would both push Facebook integration very hard in iOS 6, which obviously is a headline feature for this platform, and then in the same breath, announce that you're going to be able to share your photo stream with friends or selected photos out of your photo stream with friends and they can comment on those photos. Right. But I mean... Very two-faced announcement. So let's talk about some of the other features. I mean, the photo stream thing, I mean, I feel the same way that I feel about iCloud. It's super interesting, but I really don't have any idea what the uptake is going to be. It's sort of like iMessage. I don't know what the uptake... I mean, they gave stats on iMessage, but it didn't really seem like, whoa, insane to me. Well, the thing about iMessage, the thing about iMessage is that if you're an iPhone user, you're pretty much an iMessage user, right? They did such a good job about automatically pulling iPhone users into the iMessage ecosystem. It was brilliant. It was a master stroke on their part, I think, that they can claim pretty big numbers for that system. And of course, FaceTime is now getting pulled into that with the integrated phone Apple ID thing that they're doing, which I think is also very smart and a big slap in the face to carriers. But it's another story altogether. Apple has a long track record. Well, no, let's talk about that. Why is it... Why are they still two separate apps? I mean, at least they're unifying it, right? So I mean, that's important. They had to have done that. But they could go a little bit further with this. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think it's just a matter of time. I think that there's still... They're invading the carrier's space and turning them into dumb pipes so slowly that the carrier is barely perceive it. So FaceTime was introduced in 2010, right? And we're just now seeing them turn it on for cellular. And the next step is going to be using FaceTime as a voice only application. And then pretty soon, Apple's going to own the entire communications stack. That's pretty realistic, I guess. I like this idea of Apple just kind of sneaking it in under their radar. Yeah. They're just being very slowly. It's like the video of the ninja cat where every time you look away and look back, the cat's a little bit closer. You're like, oh, it's not that far. That's Apple. Yes. Yes. That's Apple with FaceTime and iMessage in order of this strategy that doesn't seem to make sense until it's like right up on top of you and you're like, uh-oh. They got me. Yeah. But that's okay because we hate carriers. That's cool. Okay. We got to talk about Siri because that was a big part of what they announced. Yes. That's the one aspect of iOS that I covered in extreme depth and then completely ignored everything else. But Siri has been just overhauled to the high heavens, honestly. I don't know if it's still in beta. Why is it that every podcast, they have to say beta or beta? I need to start talking about pre-software at this stage. I don't know if it left the B stage yet and if it's an official, proper Apple application at this point. But there was just a massive stack of new announcements with Siri. Starting off with now they have support scores from Yahoo Sports. They have player bios. They have stats, data. A whole bunch of sports introductions. They have Rotten Tomatoes, Open Table. What was the other one? Yelp. They have a whole bunch of third party partners. They've added the ability to tweet via Siri. So now you can do it completely hands-free. Which is the way that- They've added a new ice-free option. An ice-free button. They have nine car companies as partners which are going to integrate the button into the steering wheel so you can activate Siri without using your hands to actually hold down the button on the- Now that was- I want a deep dive on that particular announcement because I think that Apple was mincing words there. If you looked at the slides that they were showing, they had a circle. Virtually every car on the market now has a button with a talking face on it. For its Bluetooth connection. And that's just like a talk button on a Bluetooth headset. It's the exact same functionality. In the slide that they showed, they had that button circled on the steering wheel in the same breath that Tim Cook was announcing that they were working with these nine car companies. So what I think is going to happen, it's possible that they'll rebrand that button as a quote unquote Siri button on these manufacturers. But I think that with other car companies, with any car that has Bluetooth integration, you're going to be able to press the Bluetooth talk button and activate Siri. In fact, you can now, can't you? That's already a feature in iOS 5. The question is, what does the Bluetooth talk button map to on iOS? I'm pretty sure it maps to Siri now. But I guess I haven't used it in so long, I could be dead wrong about this. What they're showing off there is pretty stupid. Now it could be that the standard protocol for the Bluetooth talk button isn't that compatible with Siri just because I think that protocol kind of sucks. And so maybe they're working to create a custom protocol for Siri that manufacturers can map to that button, I guess. It could go a bunch of different ways. I do take Apple at their word that they're doing something to make it more compatible. So I don't think they're just lying that they're not working with these companies to do something. But whether it's just making it work a little bit better with the standard Bluetooth talk button or if it's like we're going to give these companies money to put a Siri logo on their steering wheel. Yeah, no, I just looked it up and it already works with the Bluetooth call button. So OK. And I was fine. So I don't I don't know if there's actually anything new here other than, like you say, maybe a Siri rebranding of that button, which is going to be insane if you buy a car with like generic Bluetooth compatibility and then your Bluetooth talk button is going to have a Siri logo on it or maybe the Bluetooth will be engineered in such a way that it's only compatible with the iPhone. I don't know how this is going to play out. I'm not sure the car companies do yet either. So it was just a very, very like hand wavy kind of announcement that part. I just want to point that out. Sorry to interrupt you. That is that's OK. I mean, I do admit ignorance in this respect because I see you haven't even got a driver's license that alone the car in which to install Bluetooth buttons. And it's true. I know it's a big revelation. Come on, no driver's license. There's no time. How is this going to work when I when I come to the UK and I'm like, but show me show me your England. Like let's let's show me Wales. Let's go to Wales. Like, how are you going to drive me to Wales and we'll drive through the Welsh countryside? How is that going to work? We use my chauffeur. We have to slum it. Yeah. OK. Take the trip. But yeah, but aside from that, aside from that, this is the funny thing about Siri announcements. I don't know why Apple left this right until the end, but Siri is now going to be available for the iPad as part of iOS 6. Which in itself is probably enough of a big Siri announcement because, hey, the iPad, we kind of expected anticipated it now is being rolled out. But I also I don't know how excited or interested in this we should be. Do you guys think Siri might be more useful on the iPad, you know, aside from all of these extra features than it is with the iPhone or no? No, I don't think so. I think that it's a much it's a much more interesting concept on a phone than it is on a tablet. I mean, I'm glad it's on the tablet. I mean, I'll use it on my iPad. But I think, you know, in terms of hands free use and just, you know, quickly launching things and searching for stuff, it's much more interesting on a phone. I mean, the thing that actually I like about Siri is that it sucks slightly less than Apple's, you know, search on the iPhone, which for some reason it just takes too long for me to like initiate the search. But now that Siri can actually search apps, which I can't believe it didn't do this before, you can actually use it as kind of a quick universal launcher or universal do stuff on your phone, which it wasn't before. And so it's it might not be 100 percent there, but the fact that you can tweet from it, that you can launch an app, then you can do general Google searches like I would say. I don't know, 20 to 30 percent of the times I'm pulling my phone out of my pocket, I'm looking to do one of those things, maybe more actually. And so the fact that Siri is now actually able to do that stuff makes it really compelling and means that I won't have to worry about the tiny bit of lag that there is on the universal search thing that on the left hand home screen. I mean, my biggest problem with Siri on a mobile phone is the fact that when I'm actually using a phone and when I'm in a hurry to achieve something, it's usually in public or surrounded by a few other people with who I'm not necessarily comfortable to have a conversation with my phone in their presence. So you know, Siri, Google, such and such. I don't know. I mean, maybe you American guys are more relaxed and less uptight than us over here in Britain, but it's just not something I would necessarily think to do or be comfortable with doing on a daily basis. Yeah, we just put it on. The one thing I'll say about iPad integration is that they might be able to do some interesting things with the Siri UI that they can't do on the phone because you have more screen real estate. But they're not doing that. They're popping it up in a small window, right? Right. So the notification center on the iPad is like a little it's got a set width. I think the Siri thing is the same set width because then I don't have to redo all the assets for the iPad. I thought I saw a screenshot of like the microphone taking up the full screen. Am I crazy? Am I imagining that? You're pretty crazy. You're pretty much imagining that. Okay. It's possible. The only thing I can think of is the voice recorder app. That's the one that dominates the whole screen. The microphone. Yeah, that could be. Yeah. No, you're pretty much insane. Listen. Look, don't get me wrong. When I had an iPhone 4S, I don't right now, but I used to have a 4S. I loved, like I was surprised at how into Siri I got, mainly for setting alarms. Like 90% of my usage was for setting alarms. But that usage alone, like the, the, the difference in workload between setting an alarm on your phone using Siri and, and setting it on like an Android device where you're fiddling with it for like 10 minutes and you screw up the time and you have to go back in and set it again is immense. And you multiply that by five or seven times a week. And yeah, that alone makes it worthwhile. So I'm, I'm excited to see Apple push. Even if, if Samsung's implementation is a, is a pretty blatant rip, I'm still glad that Apple's introduction of Siri is pushing manufacturers in the direction of having to launch it. And in fact, I think even going back to before the Android 4.0 launch, there were rumors that that Google was going to introduce a Siri like service. And maybe we'll see that at IO this, this month. Who knows? It's possible. I mean, we haven't actually touched on the big Google, Apple point of contention, which is actually maps, right? Yeah. We should definitely talk about maps. They look so I, maps and iOS 6 looks like a combination of awesome and a little bit underwhelming. So, but I mean, we're comparing it against Google maps. Underwhelming awesome? Which is yeah, underwhelming and awesome, but Google maps is the same thing. And a lot of the other, so what's awesome. The turn by turn directions look better than anything else I've used in iOS. And maybe that's damning with faint praise, but it looks really solid. And the fact that it's integrated deeply into the OS, so it shows up on the lock screen and, you know, it's Siri can do turn by turn navigation. Like it looks like it, people are going to deeply, deeply love this and they're probably not going to be unhappy about the loss of Google maps on iOS cause I always there are Google apps and iOS didn't do turn by turn. So I have to think that the vast majority of people are going to look at this as a huge upgrade, even though I think so. What is it lacking? It doesn't have proper street view, right? Right. Doesn't have street view, but they're working on a traffic solution, which is important. And they're crowdsourcing it like Google does, which means that it's going to be very accurate, very quickly when you roll that out to a few million iPhones, which is good. And I'll tell you what, if, if, if the, if a turn by turn navigation in Google maps on Android, it didn't kill the PND market dead. This certainly will. Like if I were, if I were Garmin, if I were Garmin, I guess not Tom Tom, they only have to worry since they have this, this deal with Apple. But if I were Garmin right now, I would be going number two in my pants. I mean, it's, it's, it's serious for those guys right now. It is not looking good. And don't get me wrong. Garmin has this huge non-consumer business, right? Like they're deeply embedded in the aviation industry and in, in the, in the boating industry. And I'm sure that they can survive on those divisions alone. But the consumer side of their business is going to start to become very bleak, I think. So Tom Tom should be worried too. I mean, the fact that some of this map data is coming from Tom Tom, like it's like, it's like Tom Tom is selling the parts to a burglar to eventually shoot him. Like, Oh, you want to, you want a clip for that gun? Yeah, I got a clip. Oh, you want a, you know, a hammer? Yeah, sure. I got a hammer. Oh, you want a trigger? Yeah, I guess I can give you a trigger. Oh, you want some bullets? Sure. Here's some bullets. And then, you know, example of that. Here's a perfect example of that happening in real life is sky hook. Sky hook was providing a wifi location service to both Apple and Google. And do either of those guys use sky hook anymore? Nope. Cause while they were, you know, they, they used them for a couple of years to get them, you know, while they could ramp up and, you know, God only knows if they actually stole sky hooks data, I would have to presume like, even if it was completely accidental, I would have to believe that there was some stealing of that data going on. But in the meantime, they've, they ramped up their own services. So now they don't need sky hook anymore. Yeah, I mean, the only, the only question in my mind is whether open street map gets to survive or if, you know, Apple and Google stopped giving information open street map. But there's no way that they're planning on, you know, licensing maps from, from Navtech and TomTom and whomever, you know, they they're getting these maps from long term. They're not going to need to. Right. But there's a point to be made here, guys. And that's the same one that relates to Nintendo becoming a software vendor for smartphones. Yeah, the other, the other, that's a that's a whole other and bigger conversation. But just because TomTom, let's say, wants to move into software doesn't mean that TomTom is signing a death warrant. Like you just can't sell dedicated PNDs anymore. You can't sell sat nav units the same way you can't sell PMPs. I mean, Apple in the iPod touch is still the pinnacle of what's been the most generation, most successful, you know, portable media player we've ever seen. Right. But every single quarter, in spite of all the growing sales that Apple has, iPod touch sales are going down. iPod sales in general going down is just not a category that really has any reason to exist anymore. So TomTom's best idea is actually to become a software and services vendor. And this is the biggest deal that TomTom can get, the biggest deal that anybody can get in this business. And you're like, good, get that deal. And what you need to do from there is actually continue to evolve and continue to be ahead of the other guys. Like, it's really complacent to think that just because you do one deal and you let these guys have access to your data, they will somehow, you know, beat you or advance ahead of you. I mean, Apple is a good example. Yeah, but TomTom isn't going to be able to pull that off. TomTom was literally years ahead of everybody else in mobile mapping. There was the Copilot, there was NavTag, whatever it was. But TomTom on Windows Mobile and Palm OS was an incredible experience. They managed to get a mapping and turn-by-turn navigation experience on those old slow platforms. That was great. And what have they done since then? They've turned into a company that licenses map data and still tries to sell some software a little bit, some GPS devices a little bit. But they're licensing the map data to the companies that are going to kill them. I just don't see any way around that. What direction could they possibly innovate towards to stay around at this point? This is the thing. The fact that they're licensing the data out isn't the thing that's dragging TomTom down. The thing that's dragging TomTom down is that the company hasn't done anything innovative or interesting over the past two or three years. But what are they going to do? Nothing. Maybe they shouldn't have licensed it out. Maybe they should have not taken that money and kept the maps proprietary and made really good software. And then Apple would be playing Google off of TomTom for their mapping solution instead of just rolling their own. Right. Sure. That's certainly the better solution if TomTom is doing better. All I'm trying to point out is that TomTom's demise right now is owing to the company's own complacency, at least in my judgment. I recall maybe a year ago, maybe even longer than that, they did a presentation about doing some really live up to the minute traffic updates and monitoring in a really grand scale, like all across Europe. So you sign up with TomTom, you get the GPS navigation unit. And I think it was something like live traffic or live traffic plus, live traffic HD. It was some really terrible branding name, whatever. But the point was, it was ambitious and it was like, we're going to get you because we have so many people using our sat-nav units, we're going to get you, you know, the most up to the minute, most accurate data about traffic everywhere. Right. Right. And that was like a big vision of theirs. And what's happened of it? Nothing really. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Nobody's going to buy a D&D based on that. Yeah, fine. I mean, granted, but to Dieter's point, if you could develop that and then put it on a phone, if you could be the person or the company in charge of that piece of software, if you turn that into an app, then you have a business model. And it's a very viable business model. Well, I mean, Waze is trying to do that right now. Telenev is trying to do that right now. We'll see if any of them, either of them are able to be successful. But you can't fight Apple's own crowdsourced data. They have millions of iPhones in the field. There's no way around that fact. And as much as the app store has changed the whole industry, the bottom line is being on deck matters. Being the default app on the home screen that you see without having to install something matters. And this is just going to, I mean, there's going to be so little money in this space. But hang on, Chris. You say Apple's number of devices in the field. I don't know how useful they are relative to TomTom's GPS units. Because when a TomTom GPS unit is enabled, when it's in use, it's in a car. Whereas most of the iPhones, when they're in use, aren't being driven around. So I mean, how does that, how does the millions and millions of iPhones out in the field outweigh TomToms? Because where is your phone when you're driving? It's in your pocket, yo. Well, it's with you. Or it's on the dashboard. Yeah. Right. Right. OK. But I mean, I'm just trying to understand also how Apple is going to filter that information. Because what if you're cycling, for example, and you're moving along a road? Or then you might get it. These are all basic big data problems. They can see that there are slow iPhones and fast iPhones adjacent to each other. And they can deduce that the slow iPhone is a pedestrian or a biker and the fast iPhone is a car. I mean, Google is there are many other companies already doing this, most notably Google, which integrates this into every Android device sold, as far as I know. I mean, like in downtown Chicago, when I pull up my when I pull up Google Maps and turn on traffic, like every single street in the city is color coded by how fast the traffic is currently moving. And that's because there are hundreds of thousands of Android devices going up and down the streets all day. That was a bit of education for me. So we go back to our original point, which is that TomTom is doomed. Yeah, I don't disagree there at all. We all agree that TomTom is totally screwed right now. I'm really sad because it's a freaking European company. And we need more of those. And to be fair, to be very fair, put yourself in the shoes of TomTom CEO or CFO where you have two options. You can either take Apple's blood money. This, you know, God knows how much they were paid. I'm sure it was in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars for this deal or let it go to Nav Tech or I don't know who else. But someone is getting that money. Yes, we might as well be you. I totally agree. But speaking of money, let's talk about Verizon and what they've announced today. Wait, wait, we have to talk about Passbook. We have. Oh, yeah, no, we totally need to. Yeah. By the way, one one really quick coda. Google had their their Android maps, their maps and Google Earth event like a week before WWDC, just so they could get it in and not look ridiculous. And I just want to point out that like the offline feature for Android maps is not new. It's there and it has been there for over a year in labs. All they've done is like clean up the UI and put it on the main app. So like Google's not feeling very good about their incoming map data either right now. I look, you know, I don't I don't often agree with MG Siegler, but I have to say he he wrote a post after the event that I think hit the nail on the head, which is that they had nothing to announce and they put them they looked really weak. I mean, they are in a position of power, right? Like Google Maps is dominant in the industry. Like when you right now, when you think online maps, when you think real time traffic, when you think turn by turn on a phone, you think about Google Maps. They have all the power. Apple has everything to prove. They made themselves look really weak and desperate by throwing together an event where it was patently obvious that they had nothing to announce a week before Apple's event because they knew that Apple was going to break free of Google. It was not the right move. No. OK, so passbook. We got it. So so the the basic functionality of the app is what you can get like your your membership rewards cards and like get them save that information in this app so that you can like, you know, flip a QR code instead of having to pull the card out of your wallet. Is that what the app does? Am I wrong? That's what the app that is. And all it does is boarding passes and movie tickets. Right. Oh, and and like sports tickets. Like I think basically anything that that will accept admission via barcode can be like put into passbook. Right. So what in and of itself, this app is like, are there a million? Is this a huge problem that people have that they have got too many apps for their different ticketing systems and the reward card systems? Is this a huge money making market? I mean, this app is all about what this app has the potential to be, not what this app is. Right. I mean, exactly. Very much. This is the same. This is the exact same play as FaceTime and iMessage where there is the stealth cat all over again. Yeah. Where within a generation or two, all of a sudden, passbook passbook is going to magically tie in to these 400 million credit cards that they have stored in Apple IDs and then boom, Apple suddenly has the most pervasive mobile payments network on the planet. Think about it. No, that's true. I mean, the the immediate thing that I think of when I hear about this new application is where's the NFC? And it's I mean, it really does tease toward the next iPhone having NFC because everybody else is doing it, essentially, and it's growing into a hardware standard, if not necessarily an industry standard, because everybody's trying to have their mobile wallet. So that does seem like the yeah, exactly. They're laying the foundation. They're building up to some big announcement. Not just NFC, but like with geofencing. So Apple could do this tomorrow if they wanted to. Well, they'd have to examine. They say, here's your iPad and here is the Apple approved checkout system. Here's how you can use iOS to have it be your cash register and you can click this checkbox. And when you click this checkbox, we will automatically create a geofence around the iPad that you're using to take payments. And people that walk into that geofence can pay automatically when they walk in, get something and leave. Like the same thing that Square and PayPal and all those guys are doing for their touchless, just walk in and say hi to your barista and get your coffee and leave thing. Apple is already doing that. Apple's already doing that with the Apple Store app, right? Right. So yeah, I mean, I totally believe it. So yeah, this is going to be this is this is the start. Chris is exactly right. It's the it's the ninja cat of them getting into mobile payments. The only question is we haven't seen the other shoe drop of who are they going to partner with? Who's going to win? Who's going to lose? Is this going to involve ISIS or not? It's basically what I'm getting at. And to be honest, the I'm getting kind of tired of NFC. Like it's at the end of the day, NFC is as interesting to me as a magnetic stripe. All it is is a way to transfer a number and it's relatively secure. So even if the next iPhone doesn't have NFC, I don't care. I think that this past book is a sign that they're getting into mobile payments. And everybody from Square to PayPal to Visa has been put on notice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can I also raise another point, which is that I am actually really reluctant if Apple doesn't announce a big partnership with a wider industry conglomerate like ISIS or does something with Visa that you can use more expensively than just within the Apple ecosystem, if it is indeed something that Apple tries to keep as close to in-house as possible. I am really, really reluctant to get into it. Like I've been thinking about this and the limitations that Apple imposes on you in both in software and hardware are just really annoying and frustrating to me. And one particular one is I've been working with some multi monitor setups on the desktop recently and it's so freaking frustrating to not be able. You know, I have three extra monitors hanging around my living room slash office at the moment. So frustrating not to be able to just get one of those and plug it into the iMac. The reason I can't do it is because the iMac is so freaking advanced that it can only accept video or output video to other Thunderbolt equipped displays or machines, which essentially means Apple only. And it's just really, really dumb. And all of these limitations that the company is making and imposing on people are just, you know, starting to get on my nerves. And if Apple does this with mobile payments as well, it defeats the entire focus of doing this. Like, OK, you take all of my loyalty cards, of which I have like zero, but let's assume I have loads. You summarize them, you put them together, you make my life easier, but then you won't let me take that and transfer it along to, let's say, I decide to go to an Android phone. What is the point in me committing myself to you? Like, this is just building more user dependencies as far as I'm concerned. And that actually makes me nervous. I am a little bit worried that I'm going to not be able to have equivalent services on Android to what Apple is doing because Apple has got enough power to become, say, the standard for mobile payments. And if they don't join ISIS, then I need to use an iPhone or I don't get to do mobile payments until five years down the road when everybody else gets their act together. There might be other areas where that's a concern. iMessage is certainly one. People might be like, you know what? I'm turning off SMS. If you don't use an iPhone, I'm not going to text you. Maps is possibly another one, but probably won't. Like, none of that stuff has actually come to pass. But it's not crazy to think that that could happen in any one of those categories. And that bothers me. Yeah, I was the only I was the only ecosystem where that is a risk because Android, I mean, like I message is a perfect example. Android does not seek to replace SMS. And the funny thing to me is that Google's had I mean, Google's been sitting on Google Talk since before long before Android existed. And they could have very easily turned Google Talk into I message long before Apple even dreamed of the iPhone. But but they didn't. And and so, yeah, I think that that I was I mean, like, you know, in my social circle, I'd estimate between 60 and 70 percent of my friends and family have iPhones so that they are they are clearly the only ecosystem that stands a chance of of really locking out the entire industry in key areas like mobile payments in a very frustrating way. Yeah. But since we're talking about the industry, I want to try and reboot my segue from earlier on. Yes. And talk about it's not a segue anymore, though, because you just brought it if you identify it as a segue, is it a segue? It's only a segue. If you identify it as a segue, it's only a segue if you're segueing to talk about segues. Fair enough. I cannot argue with that argument, either. You are the victor and champion. But seriously, I want to know about Verizon because this is this is actually some really major news and Chris covered it. But as usual and predictably, it's not as good as it sounded from the initial announcement. So, Chris, please tell us about it. So I just like to point out that this announcement this morning fired me up so quickly and completely that I wrote an editorial in 14 minutes. You said it was going to take you 14, not 14. Wow. Yeah, no, 14. Actually, it's 14 to change, but it's under 15. I like I just banged it out and got it up because it was. Yeah, I mean, it's what what happened was, you know, we've been hearing about the promise of shared data on American carriers for a long time. The idea is very simple, right? You'd have a bucket of data that you could share among multiple devices in your household, whether it be other family members or, you know, you yourself have a laptop, a tablet, a smartphone and maybe a car that uses data because that's a thing now, right? Like I would use have 3G connections for Google Maps, for instance. So it makes a lot of sense to be able to share a single bucket of data amongst all those devices. What Verizon has done is bastardize that concept by attacking unlimited minutes and text into that concept, which gives them essentially carte blanche to charge ridiculous amounts of money for each additional device that you add to the bucket. It's almost as much as just, you know, having a separate plan. So like if you had a you had a second smartphone to a shared bucket of data on Verizon, it's forty dollars. Are you kidding me? Like it is. So and to put that in perspective, they have a one gigabyte shared bucket plan that is fifty dollars. It's unlimited. The the cheapest plan you can get is unlimited voice, unlimited text, one gig of data for fifty dollars. So if you have two smartphones, you're paying ninety dollars to share one gigabyte of data between those two devices. It's a joke. It is a complete joke. And nobody should be surprised. I certainly wasn't that Verizon screwed this up this badly because they did so intentionally. I mean, this was their plan all along. And I'm sure that AT&T is going to do exactly the same thing. AT&T is going to do if they do exactly the same thing, they're essentially doing nothing. I have two lines in AT&T and we share a bucket of minutes and each phone has to pay for its own data and text messaging. And I'm pretty sure that like the data and text messaging together comes out to like forty five bucks. So like this is basically just a glorified family plan. Right. I mean, it's kind of interesting that you can add, you know, tablets and USB sticks relatively cheaply. And so I'm a little bit tempted by that. And I hope AT&T follows suit. But it's I mean, I have no more analysis to put on it other than my collaborative exasperation. Yeah, it's it sucks. Like I mean, I guess it's cool that now you can have like a smartphone and a USB stick on Verizon for 70 bucks. Like I guess that's cool if you want one gig of data to split between them. But but still, this is I think this is a slap in the face to people who have been advocating for shared buckets for years now. And Rogers, correct me if I'm wrong, I think Rogers does. In fact, they were the first North American carrier to introduce shared data. And I think they do it in a more logical and sensible way. Some Canadians might have to correct me in comments, but I think that they do something that makes a lot more sense than this. So but again, it shouldn't surprise anyone that this happened. AT&T will follow suit. T-Mobile and Sprint will probably do something more reasonable. It's just the way the industry works. Yeah. But they also feel like Verizon is specifically trolling all of the guys who've been saying, give us shared data, give us shared data. It makes so much sense because like the actual announcement was like a very direct not its wording or phrasing necessarily, but it was a very direct response to that demand from people. So Verizon might very well be just trying to manage the conversation. So previously, we could all kind of gather around this idea that shared data among devices makes sense. You should only pay for the data. The carrier shouldn't care about which device you're using it with. That makes sense. It's a step in the right direction, et cetera, et cetera. So now Verizon can literally say that it's taking the step in the right direction that all of us have been advocating, while at the same time making absolutely no difference in terms of how much it charges you and how much it essentially abuses your wallet while it's providing you the service. So all in all, I mean, it's a pretty villainous play. And make no mistake, neither Verizon or AT&T in particular, really any publicly traded company, but these guys in particular are never going to do anything to jeopardize their profits or to put their earnings in harm's way. If this stood to save a lot of people a lot of money on their monthly bill, it simply wouldn't happen. And indeed, it hasn't happened because they can't. I mean, the executives know that they can't put that money in jeopardy. So this should absolutely come as no surprise to anybody. It's disappointing, yes, but not a surprise. So it's not a new plan. It's just a marketing rebranding is how we should think of it. But we've been told by both AT&T and Verizon for the past year because their executives have been saying for a long time that this is coming. And of course, they didn't give any details on exactly how it was going to work or how much it would cost. And they led the world to believe that there was a lot of work to be done on figuring out the logistics, the behind the scenes infrastructure stuff on how to share a single bucket amongst multiple devices. And perhaps that's true. But to have this be the end result of that effort is very disappointing. But to your point earlier, Dieter, and I said this in the editorial as well, really is just a glorified family plan. Because the concept that they're presenting is the same thing that already exists in family plans. The only difference is that they're adding on data now, which they didn't before. That's it. All right. Well, we can move on. I haven't actually seen our topic list, and I have no recollection of any other bubble news. One of the things I wanted to bring up, and we don't need to get into this for very long, but it is interesting. This went up late last night in US time. The HTC One S is being sold in basically everywhere in Asia except South Korea and Japan and certain European countries, and actually, I think, Eastern European countries specifically. It's being sold with the S3 processor instead of the Qualcomm S4 processor. Basically the reason is the S4 processor is just really hard to come by because every single LTE phone needs to use the thing. It's hard to justify putting it in a non-LTE phone when they're just not around. HTC has basically swapped in the S3, cranked the clock speed from 1.5 to 1.7 gigahertz, and is selling it. It's not a bait and switch because they are labeling the phone as an S3, but if you're in one of these regions, you should look at the box before you buy and decide if you care about having an S4 processor. As far as I know- Go ahead. I was just going to say, as far as I know, TSMC is still having some 22 nanometer ramp up problems. I think that's the root cause here because S4 is 22 nanometer and S3 is not as far as I know. Right. I think that this could become a thing at some point that it could be, we might be seeing just a difficulty getting LTE phones with the S4 processor. Is that crazy to worry about that? I think it might be because the thing with ramping issues is that they don't tend to get worse over time. They tend to get better. Whatever limitations of supply we're seeing right now, I don't think they would last long enough for... Supply probably isn't so much limited as it's not growing as fast as demand is growing because as the HT1S is being rolled out internationally, a whole bunch of other companies are rolling out their phones, LTE phones. The Galaxy S3 is about to come out with LTE and the S4 in the USA. It's going to sell like hotcakes presumably. My impression is that this might last like a month or two, but then actually after that, HTC might choose to just continue with the S3 because the territories that you've mentioned are generally... Was the politically correct to putting this? Markets with less of a disposable income. Okay. Are they charging less for... This was actually brought up in chat here. Are they charging less for the S3 variant? I don't think that they are. Someone said we definitely need to bring that up. I don't know. I don't think that they are, but I could be wrong. Jeff is a HTC guy and he doesn't miss a local show. I'm sure I've got an email waiting for him right now. I'm sure he's sending some telegram right now. Let me ask you guys a very controversial question that might stir some debate. Do you think that the FTC should investigate Qualcomm for antitrust concerns regarding its treatment of LTE modems? Do you think that there is some collusion between Qualcomm and carriers to make sure that they are preferring Qualcomm modems in the marketplace? Because that's ultimately what's screwing Tegra 3 and other Exynos, specifically, in LTE markets. The question is, are Nvidia and Samsung getting the cooperation that they need in order to solve the technical issues of communicating with Qualcomm's modems with their own processors? At least it seems to me. That's not it. It's that Qualcomm is giving them the middle finger. We have the best LTE modem and we make our own processors so FU. I know this for a fact. This LTE issue was a big topic for me to snoop around while at MWC and I asked Nvidia a million questions about it. They were saying, we would love to have Qualcomm LTE modems in our phones. We love them. We love them the best. They're not even making any bones about it. Obviously because Nvidia's LTE modem isn't coming until next year. So they're not competing directly at the moment. They say, we would love to have Qualcomm LTE modems in our phones or phones with Tegra. It's just that Qualcomm won't cooperate with us. It won't work with us. Qualcomm says, if you want an LTE modem, you better have a Qualcomm applications processor in there with it. To me, that is actually fair enough. Being one of the Verge's resident communists, I shouldn't be arguing about free market capitalism like this, but actually Qualcomm's LTE modems are the freaking best. If you're making the best modem, why would you not be allowed to exploit it to improve your market position in order to keep going with your leadership? It just makes the most sense to me. I don't really think that carriers are the ones preferring Qualcomm's LTE modems. Samsung is essentially forced into it. Nvidia is definitely forced into it because it doesn't have a proper solution with Tegra into using Qualcomm's modems and applications processors. They're just tough. Others make LTE modems. They just don't make them well enough, clearly. Samsung is going to sell the Qualcomm Exynos processor with its own LTE modem in the United States? No, in Korea. It's doing that there. What is the point? Let me ask you this. What is the point of Qualcomm continuing to sell MDMs versus integrated MSMs if they're not going to work with any processors except APQs? Why are they even two separate units at that point? Stop pretending you can buy this MDM and not connect it to a Snapdragon. That's fair enough. But then again, maybe this is just a short-term situation. I do expect this to be short-lived, to be honest. Others are going to catch up with Qualcomm. This is something that's really arisen over the past couple of months. And also, let's not forget that the Snapdragon S4 is a really nice chip in terms of performance. No, it is. It is. A lot of companies might see it. I don't see it as being a lot different than when Microsoft got into all sorts of hot water over bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. I don't see it as being a lot different than that. No, no. It is. It is because the S4 is good. It's an Explorer. Not so much. At that time, Internet Explorer was not bad. At that time. Internet Explorer was actually pretty good at that time. But here's the thing. Because the Snapdragon S4 is very strong in terms of performance, applications processor, and because of its great power efficiency, people actually like it. And they look at the other processors and they say, well, I'm not really losing anything by using Qualcomm's option. So what Qualcomm actually has is a really strong applications processor and the best LTE modem. So of course, Qualcomm is going to try and force people into that combination. And of course, people are accepting it because they don't see that much of a loss. It's just kind of a confluence of events, or maybe just Qualcomm kicking everyone's ass and being better than everyone. That leads to the fact that everybody's buying into Qualcomm's hardware. I feel like Qualcomm is going to continue selling its LTE modems individually in the future when others start to actually compete with it, whether by having much better application processors or by having equally good LTE modems. And that's when Qualcomm won't be able to force people. I mean, I think what would cause me- I think what would cause me in Internet Explorer on Windows 95 or whatever it was back in the day is that it's using your dominance in one market to unfairly compete in another market. And so the question is, is dominance in one type of cell phone chip mean that you shouldn't be allowed to leverage that for dominance in another type of cell phone chip? And so you might look at it, regulars might look at that and go, they're processors and cell phones. I don't know. I don't care. Or they might look at it the way that they looked at Internet Explorer and be like, well, yeah, actually it is a little bit unfair for them to dominate in the processor market because they dominated the LTE radio market. I guess, I don't know. I guess I'm with Vlad. Like I kind of am not worried about it because I'm still able to get the S4. I think it's one of the better processors out there right now. And that's totally amoral of me. But there it is. I think that what really caused me to think about this was that I knew this was a problem and I didn't think anything of it last year in the Tegra 2 slash OMAP 4 days. And to have that continue into and the Exynos days, I should say, the original Exynos. But now to have that continue into 2012 with the next generation Samsung and Nvidia processors, that's when the alarm bells start to go off for me. And I think that, I mean, you guys are right. Like if Qualcomm legitimately has the best processor and modem, great. And carriers are demanding that modem just because they know it's the best, that's fine. But within a generation or two of these processors, I think the FTC is going to have to start saying, yeah, something's not right here. We need to take a look at it. If they don't maintain a leadership. Right. I feel like Microsoft, gosh, I don't know. Because yes, Microsoft getting investigated for Internet Explorer came up when Internet Explorer was sucking so bad and Microsoft was essentially forcing a bad user experience to people. But at the same time, the EU is also investigating Google for allegedly having antitrust infringing practices with its search, which is just bonkers to me. Because Google also, exactly like Qualcomm, has the best web services, images, Google images, Google Maps. So I actually want those. My user experience improves when Google integrates its other vertical web services into its search results. Except for Google+. Yeah, it's not the best. But you're right, Chris. Antitrust regulators are a bit more sensitive to these things, as they should be, than we are. It's true. Should we talk about the Padfone just really quickly? It's finally out and it was reviewed. And as expected, it nails the idea, but it misses on the execution, is the quote from the review that I think pretty much wraps it up. I mean, how long have we been waiting for this Padfone? Exactly. Yeah, that's right. Yep. And it went through a big revision since then, right? Right. I still want to review this concept. I really do. That's why this Padfone is still compelling to me. You're crazy, man. DOA. DOA. Actually, there was a rumor going around last week, completely unsubstantiated, that AT&T was going to be carrying the Padfone or some variation of it. And I don't know what happened to that. I think that rumor evaporated into thin air. But if AT&T carries this thing, I'm going to LOL. You're going to flip a Padfone? I'm going to flip a Padfone. They're not going to. I mean, I don't know how they're going to sell it. I don't understand the concept. I hate this thing. Get it out of my face. I hate the concept so much. Let's break it down quickly because not every one of us has been waiting for this for a year. I think a lot of us haven't actually been waiting for it for a year. It's just taken ASUS that long to bring to the market. And the concept is that you have your phone and I believe it's HDMI and mini USB connectors slot into a tablet which has a 10 inch tablet which has a little port at the back of it where the phone slides into. And then that in turn turns it into a tablet. So the processor and the 3G modem inside the phone also function to power up the tablet which in itself is just a display with a large battery and some speakers in it and some extra ports. That's the whole idea. I really do think though that nobody should be surprised by the fact that the execution is not good enough. As concepts go and as ideas go, this is one of those really, really futuristic ones. It's kind of like back in the day when I was really excited about consoles and what the next generation of consoles might bring, I used to think about controllers that you could like collapse into smaller shapes, kind of like collapsible bikes. And the reason we don't have those controllers nowadays and every controller is kind of just molded out of plastic is because they're horribly, horribly difficult to execute and to build correctly. This is why these things don't exist. I think these things don't exist because nobody would ever want a collapsible controller. What problem does that solve? Space. Is your apartment that small that you don't have space for an Xbox controller? I'm really confused. I was a teenager. I had a wild imagination. I think I had a dream about this. It was like a PlayStation controller that you could, I don't know, it was kind of like a Rubik's cube or something. You could just do things with it and make it smaller or like a cube and it would just be like really good looking and then just unwind it again and it's a controller again. I mean, come on, let's be honest. If you're going to move your console around and maybe you want to carry in a backpack, I mean, these are big consoles nowadays, but back in the day, consoles used to be smaller. So they could collapsible console, not a collapsible controller. Okay, well, fine. Collapsible consoles are also really hard to execute. Stop taking issue with my teenage concept, okay? I know it doesn't exist, but it's the same kind of thing. It's like in your imagination, it's like, yes, we're going to do this. It sounds awesome. It's a really awesome idea. And stop saying that my idea isn't awesome. But this is what a pad phone represents. It's one of those things that a lot of people can, or one of those things that really resonates with a lot of people because they see the idea of, I'll take my phone, I'll plug it into this tablet. Oh, that's the other thing. Now there's also a transformer part to it. So you can plug the phone into the tablet and then plug the tablet into a keyboard. And the keyboard itself also has a battery. So I mean, you can get some stupendous battery life out of the whole thing. David gave this a 10 out of 10 for battery life. So that's a point for credit. Okay? Isn't Motorola going in the same direction with the next Atrix? Or are they doing that now where the stupid laptop thing is basically just the same thing, just ice cream sandwich just blown up? The thing that kills me about the execution being so bad on this is Android seems like it's at the point where the execution doesn't need to be inherently bad about this. You don't need to have anything insane and crazy and magical to make it feel elegant. Just tell Android that it has a different screen resolution and you're done. Right? I mean, is that so hard? I want to believe this can work and that there's no inherent reason that we can't just have this work. Resolution independence is one of Android's great strengths and great weaknesses because that is one of the main reasons that Android apps look like crap is because the app is putting too much effort or not the app, the framework, the application framework is putting too much effort into ensuring resolution independence. So you can scale this to anywhere from HVGA to a tablet. And so I personally think that that is, I mean, look, Google has to obviously support very, very rich resolution independence in Android. There's no way around it. But I also think that's one of Apple's great strengths in iOS is the fact that they don't have to. Well, don't you quote your message about how apps on Android look, Chris. Wow. I said they look like crap. I know. That's about right, actually. Hey, come on. I use Android apps every day. Sasha Segan, actually, we should find this link for our listeners. Sasha Segan of PC Magazine put together a really awesome gallery and article a couple months ago. In fact, we wrote about it on our site about how bad Android tablet apps look and going into the details of the resolution independence. But he's talking about just tablet apps? You're talking about just tablet apps here? Well, I'm talking about the resolution independent nature of Android and the fact that in many cases you're running the same apps on a 4.3 inch display. The iPad wins because Android tablet apps suck. An illustrated guide. And it's really good. It's a great thing. We can't disagree with that. That much is valid and fair enough. But then, hey, Google iOS is coming. One time. Google I.O. does mean that Android tablets can matter beyond Kindle. We'll be in attendance. We'll probably get one of those Asus 7-inch Nexus tablets that nobody wants to announce, but everybody knows is going to run Tegra 3. And Jelly Bean? Yeah, and Jelly Bean. And JB? Oh, these names. I hate these names. So, let me just say one more thing. Ask for sandwich and jelly bean, man. I mean, how can you feel a professional in your industry if you spend half your time talking about these things? No, and the worst part is that it brings everybody else down. So during the WWDC keynote, somebody at Apple, they were making fun, rightfully so, of iOS is on a huge percentage of devices, iOS 5, whereas Android 4 is on a very tiny percentage of devices. And they referred to it as a dairy product. And I'm sorry, you're above that pun, Apple. You are better than that pun. And the fact that Google's picking these cutesy names means that everybody gets forced to make these sad jokes. It's like calling the iPhone the fruit phone. It's like, come on, really? It's okay to just call it the iPhone. It's okay to just call it ice cream sandwich. What's the problem with dairy? I'm missing ice cream. Ice cream sandwich, dairy. Yeah, but why would the other part be- They called it a dairy product because they were trying to be clever and not refer to it by name because I don't know. Oh, okay. Well, that's not really a pun. It's kind of a pun. And as an English resident, I think I am an authority on puns. Okay. It's kind of a euphemism to avoid talking about. It's like a collapsible pun. It was a pun, but then it got broken down and it's really hard to get those right. And so I just, I missed the mark on it. It's a pun phone. Everybody in chat thinks that Vlad and I hate each other and it could be further from the truth. The truth is that I'm just simply afraid of Vlad because he is so powerful. I've seen these two fist fight before. It's come to blows before. It got crazy at CES. It was out of control. I think he came to hugs again. The pad phone is, is the kind of device that everybody thinks they, they want or, you know, everybody thinks they like the concept, but nobody buys same thing with web top. How many web top docs do you think Motorola has sold? I would guess it's under 5,000 total. That's probably true. No, they must've, they must have snookered some corporation into buying like 10,000 of them for their entire fleet. I guarantee you. Yeah, maybe. But it, but remember when the Atrix was announced, when the Atrix was announced at CES 2011, everyone was like, wow, that's pretty cool. And then they went on to sell none of them. So I, I think, I think that the pad phone is the same thing. It's something that we liked the concept of, or at least you guys do. I think it's stupid. But, but when this thing hits the, hits the market, why do you think it's stupid? Because there's no, there is literally no advantage to putting the phone inside the tablet. Just have a phone and have a tablet. Just do it. Dude, you save money on RAM, on processor, on storage. You save money on the board to put all that stuff together. You don't have to worry about syncing stuff anymore. It's all just on the phone. You don't have to worry about cloud services. So you save money on data. It's just, it's all, it's your one device and that's all you have to worry about. And then you just have different terminals that you plug it into to get a bigger screen if you want it. Like I don't see what's not compelling about that dream. Y'all be tripping. Good argument, guys. I can't, I can't give you the victory on it, but it's a good argument. I'll give you that. But there's another point though, which is taking the longer term and also the environmental view on this, which is that we're sticking processors into way too many things and way too many things that suck. That's the other thing that really, really annoys me. Like the Galaxy Ace and the Galaxy Mini 11T. Just stop making those phones. Just stop it. Make cheap phones that people who can't afford smartphones can buy and then make good high quality smartphones and make like one or two of them. I'm so freaking tired of guys like OG. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's actually a good thing. I mean, why does LG need something like seven smartphones with Android, which are interchangeable? But anyway, besides that point, if you could actually buy into Asus and trust Asus to that degree, which I don't think anybody can do with hardware outside of Apple, you could make the argument with a pad phone that you buy this once, two or three years pass, the phone gets outdated, you throw away the phone, you keep the other parts, particularly the keyboard. I feel like you can buy a really solid keyboard attachment and so long as the connection is something long term, something like HDMI and USB, which is hopefully going to be around for a while, you can then keep interchanging with new additions upgraded every couple of years, let's say, provided the company in question is actually reliable. Yeah. I mean, and let's be clear, I would say that if you just do this over a wireless standard, then you definitely could keep that tablet thing for a while. But we've now seen two attempts at making this work that have both failed spectacularly. That's true. The Oreo, obviously, and then the BlackBerry PlayBook. Just I mean, but it's hard to know. Maybe the PlayBook would have been crazily successful. People would have been all over BlackBerry Connect if people were excited about either the tablet or the smartphone, which they're not in both cases. Right. Yeah. I just want to talk about- This is a really depressing thing to say. Let's not talk about it. It really is. You brought us all down, Peter. I'm sorry. You were riding that high until you brought up the damn PlayBook. Yeah. And now it's all done. Let's just end on a high note. The high note is that Apple versus Motorola, some patent case there, just got straight up dismissed by the judge, who basically said, you guys have no reason to have court case right now. Just figure out the settlement and you're not coming to court. Threw his microphone down, walked off the stage. It was pretty amazing. He rage quit the case. It was amazing. Wait, did this literally just happen? This happened on Friday, right? Yeah, on the 7th. Okay. We're good. Yeah. I have totally decided the case should be dismissed with prejudice because neither party can establish a right to relief. That's lawyer speak for screw you guys, I'm going home. Yeah. I mean, screw you guys. I have very little to say about this because the legal world is a complete black box to me. But we've had a few contentious patent discussions on this podcast before. And I will say that I think that there is much to be done to avoid this mess in the future. I think we're going to continue to be in a mess, especially as long as I mean, there's and don't get me wrong, there's still a ton of cases going on, right? We have situations in Europe between Microsoft and Google and Apple and Samsung. I mean, there's still a million cases going on. This is the tip of the iceberg. But but yeah, we could use more like that's the problem is we don't have a good we don't have the equivalent. Let's go back to it equivalent to the Microsoft monopoly case. Now we've got a thousand cases to track instead of like one big case that everybody knows is important and knows is going to set standards for the industry. You know, now, you know, it's everywhere and there's lots of standards to be set and, you know, lots and lots of different courts to fight this out in. Right. What we need is a big, giant, scary case to bring it all together. I think I think the government should just sue Apple and Google together, just put them all in a room and just everybody yell at each other for a few months. And then whatever comes out of that, that's that's the end of it. No more cases. Actually, we should just have a gladiator fight. Tim Cook and Sergey Brin and Juliusz Genachowski, we should just put them in a giant stadium with swords and spears and release some tigers in there. And whoever comes out wins. I totally agree. And who would be who would be the the emperor giving the thumbs up, thumbs down and is from his, you know, his shaded luxury box in the Coliseum? Clearly that would be Vlad. That would be Vlad. Yeah, I would go to suggest Mark Zuckerberg is a democratically elected president of 900 million people. But I'm OK. Facebook held a vote last week for their new data policy and privacy policy, although they don't call it a privacy. It's a mess. Anyway, they had this governance rule where they would make the public vote binding and Facebook would be forced to comply with it if 30 percent of their user base participated in the election. And like three people voted. Yeah, that would be 270 million people. That would be it wasn't the biggest election of all time. I went to India a few years ago, but it'd be like in the top three or four biggest elections of all time in the history of man. So obviously they knew that wasn't going to happen. And so I think the actual vote was like, I don't know, three hundred seventy thousand, something like that. And this was after like a whole bunch of sites, including us linking to it. So yeah, to say Zuckerberg is democratically elected, anything is not quite true. See, all they needed to do was bundle it during American Idol and have people vote with their phones, I guarantee you they would have blown past 270 million. No, Vlad, you make a much better emperor than Zuckerberg. I really deeply believe that. I mean, could you imagine the emperor wearing a hoodie? I couldn't. That wouldn't be cool. No. Well, thank you. Thank you, Dieter. Although I do think I do suspect you're thinking of me as the emperor in the actual Gladiator movie, who is a sadistic guy who died a miserable death at the end. But OK, thank you. Yeah. Oh, but the one thing I am thinking that he was also in that movie that he had the best line of all time in that movie. He vexes me. I'm terribly vexed. I mean, that's just that terribly vexed. Come on. And, you know, like Joaquin Phoenix, you will later go through a period where you grow a really long, disheveled beard and wear wayfarers at all times, really dark wayfarers and and mumble incoherently on the David Letterman program. And this is your future. I am actually working on the beard right now by complete accident. I have to admit. OK, see, step one is down. Now you just need to book your David Letterman showing and you're you're you're good to go. Yeah. I need to actually buy my first set of sunglasses ever. But what? It's true. You're going to have cataracts by like age 40, dude. No, dude, I borrow other people's sunglasses, but I'm just too picky and I've never bought one of my own. Oh, my God. That's insane. That and a driver's license. Yeah, please. Do you think I'm missing in life? Yeah. You got to work on this. OK, I will. Well, we have been podcasting for a really, really super long time. And so I'm going to say that we're going to stop doing that now. Actually, it hasn't been a podcast, it's been a show, the Verge mobile show. We're going to end it right now. And so we want to thank you for listening and are watching. And if you want to get in touch with us, you can email us. It's mobile show at the verge dot com. We're also on Twitter. I am at back on Chris's at Z power. Vlad is at Vlad Samov. And we are all at Verge. And we'll see you guys next week. Bye guys.
 So, outside my new office, there's this place called Rug Depot.
 It's totally interesting.
 They don't sell rugs at all.
 I don't know what they do, but they smoke a lot.
 They're outside smoking all the time.
 And it occurs to me, and I know I'm not the first person to have thought of this, that
 cell phones today occupy the exact same social space that cigarettes occupied in the 50s.
 They're probably going to cause you cancer for you later down the road.
 And they're this interesting mix of social and introverted.
 When you're on a phone, it's just about you, just like a cigarette.
 It's just about the drugs going into your lungs, the sweet, sweet nicotine.
 But it's also social because you go out, you do it in a group, you're actually talking
 to other people.
 It's the same thing, basically.
 So we're going to talk about, actually we're not going to talk about that at all, but you
 should still stay tuned for The Verge Mobile Show.
 Hi, I'm Deerbone.
 I'm Blaise Haro.
 And I'm Chris Stigler.
 And welcome to episode three of The Verge Mobile Show for the week of June 11th.
 We are sponsored by the Samsung Galaxy Note.
 And I'm having a really hard time with this decision to quit smoking.
 I think that you need to just pull the trigger.
 I really do.
 Just pull the trigger.
 Just go back to smoking.
 I should smoke in the office during The Verge Mobile Show.
 That would be no, no, no.
 Well, that would be cool.
 That would.
 Yeah, that would actually be pretty boss if you smoked while you were on the mobile show.
 But no, I actually meant that you should pull the trigger on quitting cold turkey.
 That's what I meant.
 Oh, no, I did.
 I mean, I stopped using the lozenges.
 You know, I'll bum a cigarette every now and then.
 But you know, I mean, the thing about quitting smoking is it's so painful.
 I just don't understand why I keep doing it over and over again.
 Well, you just want to do it once.
 Get it over with.
 What's that, Vlad?
 The quitting part is a painful one.
 Right.
 I just keep doing it.
 Yeah, you're right.
 So just do it once.
 Well, you know what?
 We're not going to quit.
 Any of us is cell phones.
 That's right.
 Whether they cause cancer or not.
 Right.
 It's you know, I think that we are all too far gone at this point.
 Even if we quit phones cold turkey, we would probably get some weird stuff on our faces
 from having actually not on our faces because none of us actually use phones to talk anymore.
 We get hand cancer.
 Is that such that I don't know if there is such a thing as hand cancer, but, you know,
 there will be.
 Stop talking about cancer in hands.
 This is getting weird.
 We should stop talking about other things that are cancerous, specifically iOS six.
 Nice thing.
 That was cheap.
 Listen, so WWDC is this week here in sunny, beautiful, freakishly, strangely beautiful
 and sunny San Francisco.
 And Tim Cook got on stage.
 She announced a whole bunch of stuff.
 New MacBooks, MacBook with Retina.
 And they gave a I don't want to call it a preview.
 They talked about features on iOS six and they said that iOS six is going to exist.
 So I mean, we need to run down the features that they talked about.
 But the reason I call it cancerous is I overall, with what they showed with iOS six, am underwhelmed
 and disappointed.
 And I dearly hope that all this was was a teaser about features and not an actual preview
 of what I was six is going to look like and be.
 My eyes leave pretty strongly.
 No, I believe pretty strongly that they are they are holding iOS six very close to the
 chest right now because they're probably going to do some interesting things with the next
 iPhone hardware that will tie into the software.
 And I even think that we might see a new UI altogether, significantly re skinned UI.
 And I say that because if you look at the Passbook app, which we should talk a lot about,
 I get the impression that that is a very different UX than what we're accustomed to seeing on
 iOS going all the way back to 2007 until now.
 And and there are some tweaks in the app store that kind of foretell where they might be
 thinking the UI is going to go.
 So so, yeah, I'm cautiously optimistic that this is going to be a very different looking
 OS by the time fall rolls around.
 I mean, we discussed this on the previous podcast, so perhaps the one before that as
 well, about how this four inch iPhone with a new aspect ratio is going to affect the
 introduction of iOS six and the new software.
 And it does seem to be the case that Apple is kind of firewalled the stuff that has to
 do with the expanded vertical resolution.
 One of the one of the things that we kind of expected and didn't show up at WWDC this
 week is new widgets.
 So if Apple ends up using that vertical resolution primarily to introduce widgets, primarily
 to introduce new functionality, that is why we're not seeing it today, because Apple has
 essentially said, we'll take that.
 We won't tell anybody about it yet.
 We'll tell the guys about all the other new features.
 Among which, actually, by the way, here's the source by doom and gloom.
 The widgets, like that's exactly the thing that makes me concerned, because this would
 have been it's a developer event.
 This would have been the time to talk up.
 Here's how to add your own widgets to the notification.
 Even if they're going to do it differently later, that's fine.
 They should have at least like put out some APIs for it.
 The second thing about widgets is they introduced two new buttons into the notification center,
 the tweet button and the post to Facebook button.
 And I got to say, like, that's really troubling.
 That's like, I don't know, it's like a Microsoft move.
 Let's just randomly stick some buttons in the notification center, because we've got
 Twitter and Facebook.
 And sure, maybe some people want quick buttons to tweet and to post to Facebook, but to stick
 it in the core of your UI, just slap two buttons into the notification center, that just seems
 like a really scattershot thing.
 And if they're really planning on getting on like overhauling the whole UI, then why
 would you even bother like, you know, putting these things that you're going to get rid
 of later?
 Like, they mean to put those buttons in the notification center.
 And I think that it's indicative of a lack of thought about the iOS core UI.
 Maybe, but when I say I want to clarify them, I want to clarify them for myself.
 So how do they function, because the thing about covering the WWDC live event is you
 end up focusing on particular issues, particular topics, and then you miss out like half the
 events while you're writing about them.
 So the basically news to me, is the idea that you essentially drop down the notifications
 pane and then tweet whatever you're doing at the moment, whether it's a thing in an
 application or a browser page, whatever, or you share it via Facebook, is that what it's
 supposed to be?
 No, that happens via the share button.
 There's a universal share functionality that I think is going to let you share via the
 services you want to share by.
 No, this is just a quick tweet or quick Facebook update button in your notification.
 So it's just a social update button in the notifications pane?
 Right.
 Which, by the way-
 Yeah, that does seem like pretty superfluous stuff.
 It's also-
 We don't know that those can be removed.
 Go ahead, Chris.
 I was just going to say, we don't know that those can't be removed.
 I'll bet you that those can be turned off in-
 I hope so.
 But the thing that drives me crazy about it is that's not the best way to do it.
 If you want to have really quick social updates, do it with your just type.
 I guess I'm asking from a West, but that's a much better system.
 You just type out the status updates you want, you attach the picture, and then you pick
 the services you want to post to, rather than having just random buttons thrown in the notification
 pane.
 I'll get off this hobby horse, but it really does bother me.
 It really does make me concerned.
 Well that's actually how-
 Make me feel concerned that they're not thinking through it like they ought to be.
 Your suggestion is also how Windows Phone works.
 When you want to post a status update, there are some check boxes.
 You want to post this to Windows Live, Facebook, or Twitter, I think, are the options.
 Yeah.
 It's a much more-
 Yeah.
 I guess it also gives some credit to Windows Phone for the addition of deep linking within
 applications.
 The fact that you can take a subsection of an application and pin that to your home screen
 in your lifetime.
 Yeah.
 In Manga, yeah.
 Yeah.
 My thinking is that's exactly the sort of thing that Apple and Android should be looking
 to emulate.
 I think some applications and some things in Android allow you to do that, particularly
 with accessing your contacts immediately and all of that stuff.
 But Apple's iOS has been really limited in that respect.
 I mean this is why we're also talking about widgets.
 Well, John Gruber actually wrote about this recently, the fact that Android and Windows
 8 both have this notion of... Windows 8 calls them contracts, I believe, and Android calls
 them activities.
 Yes.
 And they're things that... They're functionalities that applications can expose to other parts
 of the system and other applications so that they know automatically how to interact with
 one another.
 That's one thing that iOS has lacked, and I totally agree.
 It's something that is putting them further and further behind in some regards.
 And we're seeing them catch up a little bit with the share functionality that you talked
 about, Dieter, but I think that they could go further.
 And I want to believe... I mean this is probably overly optimistic, but I want to believe that
 we're going to see a lot of additional iOS 6 news before the next iPhone is actually
 released.
 I hope so.
 I hope we don't.
 This is totally an underwhelming... Why are they calling this iOS 6?
 It should be iOS 5.5.
 Take Siri out of beta, replace the maps app-
 But then again-
 Hope it exposes something new to the IP...
 The counter argument, though, is don't we go through this same range of emotions every
 single year with iOS where we're underwhelmed with it, and then we're like, oh yeah, this
 is pretty cool, and then it gets us through another year?
 It happens every year.
 It happens every five.
 Yeah.
 I'm not so sure.
 What happened with 4.5 got me through the year just because it was like, okay, I accept
 that you polished off the edges and filled out all the features, but I just have a really
 hard time thinking that basically iOS 5 refresh, if that's what iOS 6 is, is really not going
 to be boring to a large group of people.
 iOS 5 got boring to me, but that's because I'm an insane person who's addicted to mobile
 phones, and so I love trying new UIs.
 I think that non-insane regular people are going to be like, really?
 This doesn't feel as fluid and elegant and interesting as some of the other UIs that
 are out there.
 I just think it's going to happen.
 I agree with you, but let's not go too far.
 Fluid and elegant is probably going to be something that Apple continues to keep up
 with iOS.
 I think the issue is that the last really major and notable upgrade to iOS came with
 iOS 4, in my opinion.
 When that was introduced, iOS 5 was really like, okay, we'll do notifications pane because
 we need to catch up with Android, and we won't do it as well as Android.
 I'm still not impressed, and honestly, I can't be the only person who absolutely loathes
 the stupid pattern that Apple has on its notification pane.
 This is consistent across the iPad, the iPhone, the Mac as well.
 There is one thing, I mostly agree with you, Vlad.
 There's one thing, however, that Apple does really well with notifications, and that's
 the granular control on a per-application basis of how you want those notifications
 to appear.
 I wish they had that on Android.
 Okay, but also, if you look at your notifications, and if you look at your notifications pane
 on your iPhone, actually, it really doesn't make particularly good use of the space.
 It's already a small screen, and then you have a title for Twitter, and then you have
 a subtitle for the other thing, and then I think it's you press the X, and then you have
 to press clear to confirm in order to clear away, as you say, a subset, let's say all
 the tweets, all the Twitter mentions, things like that.
 That's not particularly good implementation.
 I just find, particularly with Ice Cream Sandwich, I just find the look is so much slicker now.
 Do you feel like iOS needs to get away from all of this, all these, what was the word,
 skeuomorphisms?
 Yeah.
 Skeuomorphisms.
 Well, great.
 I was just guessing, and I got the word right.
 But yeah, it's all of this chrome that they stick in there, which is just outdated, and
 it's part of Mac OS 9 or whatever.
 It's really ancient stuff, and Apple needs to get away from it.
 I think Google is going really in the right direction with the visual look of Ice Cream
 Sandwich, the stock Ice Cream Sandwich, and Apple hasn't really caught up with that.
 I also totally agree with Dieter, where he's saying it's kind of moving into this area
 where it's adding features that we don't necessarily need.
 I've also got this vibe with the Mountain Lion reintroduction, that iCloud is being
 pushed so hard when not too many people are all that thrilled or excited about it.
 I'm not, for example.
 I don't see any reason to be using iCloud, whereas with Mountain Lion, it's everywhere.
 It's ubiquitous, it's kind of being pushed on you.
 I do fear that Apple might get into this area where it's trying to push its features on
 you too hard, which are not all that useful and not all that beneficial.
 Well, there is one specific example where I think that they're stepping on Facebook's
 toes a little bit with the shared photo streams.
 It's one of the features that we should talk about, but I don't understand why they would
 both push Facebook integration very hard in iOS 6, which obviously is a headline feature
 for this platform, and then in the same breath, announce that you're going to be able to share
 your photo stream with friends or selected photos out of your photo stream with friends
 and they can comment on those photos.
 Right.
 But I mean...
 Very two-faced announcement.
 So let's talk about some of the other features.
 I mean, the photo stream thing, I mean, I feel the same way that I feel about iCloud.
 It's super interesting, but I really don't have any idea what the uptake is going to
 be.
 It's sort of like iMessage.
 I don't know what the uptake...
 I mean, they gave stats on iMessage, but it didn't really seem like, whoa, insane to me.
 Well, the thing about iMessage, the thing about iMessage is that if you're an iPhone
 user, you're pretty much an iMessage user, right?
 They did such a good job about automatically pulling iPhone users into the iMessage ecosystem.
 It was brilliant.
 It was a master stroke on their part, I think, that they can claim pretty big numbers for
 that system.
 And of course, FaceTime is now getting pulled into that with the integrated phone Apple
 ID thing that they're doing, which I think is also very smart and a big slap in the face
 to carriers.
 But it's another story altogether.
 Apple has a long track record.
 Well, no, let's talk about that.
 Why is it...
 Why are they still two separate apps?
 I mean, at least they're unifying it, right?
 So I mean, that's important.
 They had to have done that.
 But they could go a little bit further with this.
 Oh, yeah.
 Yeah.
 I think it's just a matter of time.
 I think that there's still...
 They're invading the carrier's space and turning them into dumb pipes so slowly that the carrier
 is barely perceive it.
 So FaceTime was introduced in 2010, right?
 And we're just now seeing them turn it on for cellular.
 And the next step is going to be using FaceTime as a voice only application.
 And then pretty soon, Apple's going to own the entire communications stack.
 That's pretty realistic, I guess.
 I like this idea of Apple just kind of sneaking it in under their radar.
 Yeah.
 They're just being very slowly.
 It's like the video of the ninja cat where every time you look away and look back, the
 cat's a little bit closer.
 You're like, oh, it's not that far.
 That's Apple.
 Yes.
 Yes.
 That's Apple with FaceTime and iMessage in order of this strategy that doesn't seem to
 make sense until it's like right up on top of you and you're like, uh-oh.
 They got me.
 Yeah.
 But that's okay because we hate carriers.
 That's cool.
 Okay.
 We got to talk about Siri because that was a big part of what they announced.
 Yes.
 That's the one aspect of iOS that I covered in extreme depth and then completely ignored
 everything else.
 But Siri has been just overhauled to the high heavens, honestly.
 I don't know if it's still in beta.
 Why is it that every podcast, they have to say beta or beta?
 I need to start talking about pre-software at this stage.
 I don't know if it left the B stage yet and if it's an official, proper Apple application
 at this point.
 But there was just a massive stack of new announcements with Siri.
 Starting off with now they have support scores from Yahoo Sports.
 They have player bios.
 They have stats, data.
 A whole bunch of sports introductions.
 They have Rotten Tomatoes, Open Table.
 What was the other one?
 Yelp.
 They have a whole bunch of third party partners.
 They've added the ability to tweet via Siri.
 So now you can do it completely hands-free.
 Which is the way that-
 They've added a new ice-free option.
 An ice-free button.
 They have nine car companies as partners which are going to integrate the button into the
 steering wheel so you can activate Siri without using your hands to actually hold down the
 button on the-
 Now that was-
 I want a deep dive on that particular announcement because I think that Apple was mincing words
 there.
 If you looked at the slides that they were showing, they had a circle.
 Virtually every car on the market now has a button with a talking face on it.
 For its Bluetooth connection.
 And that's just like a talk button on a Bluetooth headset.
 It's the exact same functionality.
 In the slide that they showed, they had that button circled on the steering wheel in the
 same breath that Tim Cook was announcing that they were working with these nine car companies.
 So what I think is going to happen, it's possible that they'll rebrand that button as a quote
 unquote Siri button on these manufacturers.
 But I think that with other car companies, with any car that has Bluetooth integration,
 you're going to be able to press the Bluetooth talk button and activate Siri.
 In fact, you can now, can't you?
 That's already a feature in iOS 5.
 The question is, what does the Bluetooth talk button map to on iOS?
 I'm pretty sure it maps to Siri now.
 But I guess I haven't used it in so long, I could be dead wrong about this.
 What they're showing off there is pretty stupid.
 Now it could be that the standard protocol for the Bluetooth talk button isn't that compatible
 with Siri just because I think that protocol kind of sucks.
 And so maybe they're working to create a custom protocol for Siri that manufacturers can map
 to that button, I guess.
 It could go a bunch of different ways.
 I do take Apple at their word that they're doing something to make it more compatible.
 So I don't think they're just lying that they're not working with these companies to do something.
 But whether it's just making it work a little bit better with the standard Bluetooth talk
 button or if it's like we're going to give these companies money to put a Siri logo on
 their steering wheel.
 Yeah, no, I just looked it up and it already works with the Bluetooth call button.
 So OK.
 And I was fine.
 So I don't I don't know if there's actually anything new here other than, like you say,
 maybe a Siri rebranding of that button, which is going to be insane if you buy a car with
 like generic Bluetooth compatibility and then your Bluetooth talk button is going to have
 a Siri logo on it or maybe the Bluetooth will be engineered in such a way that it's only
 compatible with the iPhone.
 I don't know how this is going to play out.
 I'm not sure the car companies do yet either.
 So it was just a very, very like hand wavy kind of announcement that part.
 I just want to point that out.
 Sorry to interrupt you.
 That is that's OK.
 I mean, I do admit ignorance in this respect because I see you haven't even got a driver's
 license that alone the car in which to install Bluetooth buttons.
 And it's true.
 I know it's a big revelation.
 Come on, no driver's license.
 There's no time.
 How is this going to work when I when I come to the UK and I'm like, but show me show me
 your England.
 Like let's let's show me Wales.
 Let's go to Wales.
 Like, how are you going to drive me to Wales and we'll drive through the Welsh countryside?
 How is that going to work?
 We use my chauffeur.
 We have to slum it.
 Yeah.
 OK.
 Take the trip.
 But yeah, but aside from that, aside from that, this is the funny thing about Siri announcements.
 I don't know why Apple left this right until the end, but Siri is now going to be available
 for the iPad as part of iOS 6.
 Which in itself is probably enough of a big Siri announcement because, hey, the iPad,
 we kind of expected anticipated it now is being rolled out.
 But I also I don't know how excited or interested in this we should be.
 Do you guys think Siri might be more useful on the iPad, you know, aside from all of these
 extra features than it is with the iPhone or no?
 No, I don't think so.
 I think that it's a much it's a much more interesting concept on a phone than it is
 on a tablet.
 I mean, I'm glad it's on the tablet.
 I mean, I'll use it on my iPad.
 But I think, you know, in terms of hands free use and just, you know, quickly launching
 things and searching for stuff, it's much more interesting on a phone.
 I mean, the thing that actually I like about Siri is that it sucks slightly less than Apple's,
 you know, search on the iPhone, which for some reason it just takes too long for me
 to like initiate the search.
 But now that Siri can actually search apps, which I can't believe it didn't do this before,
 you can actually use it as kind of a quick universal launcher or universal do stuff on
 your phone, which it wasn't before.
 And so it's it might not be 100 percent there, but the fact that you can tweet from it, that
 you can launch an app, then you can do general Google searches like I would say.
 I don't know, 20 to 30 percent of the times I'm pulling my phone out of my pocket, I'm
 looking to do one of those things, maybe more actually.
 And so the fact that Siri is now actually able to do that stuff makes it really compelling
 and means that I won't have to worry about the tiny bit of lag that there is on the universal
 search thing that on the left hand home screen.
 I mean, my biggest problem with Siri on a mobile phone is the fact that when I'm actually
 using a phone and when I'm in a hurry to achieve something, it's usually in public or surrounded
 by a few other people with who I'm not necessarily comfortable to have a conversation with my
 phone in their presence.
 So you know, Siri, Google, such and such.
 I don't know.
 I mean, maybe you American guys are more relaxed and less uptight than us over here in Britain,
 but it's just not something I would necessarily think to do or be comfortable with doing on
 a daily basis.
 Yeah, we just put it on.
 The one thing I'll say about iPad integration is that they might be able to do some interesting
 things with the Siri UI that they can't do on the phone because you have more screen
 real estate.
 But they're not doing that.
 They're popping it up in a small window, right?
 Right.
 So the notification center on the iPad is like a little it's got a set width.
 I think the Siri thing is the same set width because then I don't have to redo all the
 assets for the iPad.
 I thought I saw a screenshot of like the microphone taking up the full screen.
 Am I crazy?
 Am I imagining that?
 You're pretty crazy.
 You're pretty much imagining that.
 Okay.
 It's possible.
 The only thing I can think of is the voice recorder app.
 That's the one that dominates the whole screen.
 The microphone.
 Yeah, that could be.
 Yeah.
 No, you're pretty much insane.
 Listen.
 Look, don't get me wrong.
 When I had an iPhone 4S, I don't right now, but I used to have a 4S.
 I loved, like I was surprised at how into Siri I got, mainly for setting alarms.
 Like 90% of my usage was for setting alarms.
 But that usage alone, like the, the, the difference in workload between setting an alarm on your
 phone using Siri and, and setting it on like an Android device where you're fiddling with
 it for like 10 minutes and you screw up the time and you have to go back in and set it
 again is immense.
 And you multiply that by five or seven times a week.
 And yeah, that alone makes it worthwhile.
 So I'm, I'm excited to see Apple push.
 Even if, if Samsung's implementation is a, is a pretty blatant rip, I'm still glad that
 Apple's introduction of Siri is pushing manufacturers in the direction of having to launch it.
 And in fact, I think even going back to before the Android 4.0 launch, there were rumors
 that that Google was going to introduce a Siri like service.
 And maybe we'll see that at IO this, this month.
 Who knows?
 It's possible.
 I mean, we haven't actually touched on the big Google, Apple point of contention, which
 is actually maps, right?
 Yeah.
 We should definitely talk about maps.
 They look so I, maps and iOS 6 looks like a combination of awesome and a little bit underwhelming.
 So, but I mean, we're comparing it against Google maps.
 Underwhelming awesome?
 Which is yeah, underwhelming and awesome, but Google maps is the same thing.
 And a lot of the other, so what's awesome.
 The turn by turn directions look better than anything else I've used in iOS.
 And maybe that's damning with faint praise, but it looks really solid.
 And the fact that it's integrated deeply into the OS, so it shows up on the lock screen
 and, you know, it's Siri can do turn by turn navigation.
 Like it looks like it, people are going to deeply, deeply love this and they're probably
 not going to be unhappy about the loss of Google maps on iOS cause I always there are
 Google apps and iOS didn't do turn by turn.
 So I have to think that the vast majority of people are going to look at this as a huge
 upgrade, even though I think so.
 What is it lacking?
 It doesn't have proper street view, right?
 Right.
 Doesn't have street view, but they're working on a traffic solution, which is important.
 And they're crowdsourcing it like Google does, which means that it's going to be very accurate,
 very quickly when you roll that out to a few million iPhones, which is good.
 And I'll tell you what, if, if, if the, if a turn by turn navigation in Google maps on
 Android, it didn't kill the PND market dead.
 This certainly will.
 Like if I were, if I were Garmin, if I were Garmin, I guess not Tom Tom, they only have
 to worry since they have this, this deal with Apple.
 But if I were Garmin right now, I would be going number two in my pants.
 I mean, it's, it's, it's serious for those guys right now.
 It is not looking good.
 And don't get me wrong.
 Garmin has this huge non-consumer business, right?
 Like they're deeply embedded in the aviation industry and in, in the, in the boating industry.
 And I'm sure that they can survive on those divisions alone.
 But the consumer side of their business is going to start to become very bleak, I think.
 So Tom Tom should be worried too.
 I mean, the fact that some of this map data is coming from Tom Tom, like it's like, it's
 like Tom Tom is selling the parts to a burglar to eventually shoot him.
 Like, Oh, you want to, you want a clip for that gun?
 Yeah, I got a clip.
 Oh, you want a, you know, a hammer?
 Yeah, sure.
 I got a hammer.
 Oh, you want a trigger?
 Yeah, I guess I can give you a trigger.
 Oh, you want some bullets?
 Sure.
 Here's some bullets.
 And then, you know,
 example of that.
 Here's a perfect example of that happening in real life is sky hook.
 Sky hook was providing a wifi location service to both Apple and Google.
 And do either of those guys use sky hook anymore?
 Nope.
 Cause while they were, you know, they, they used them for a couple of years to get them,
 you know, while they could ramp up and, you know, God only knows if they actually stole
 sky hooks data, I would have to presume like, even if it was completely accidental, I would
 have to believe that there was some stealing of that data going on.
 But in the meantime, they've, they ramped up their own services.
 So now they don't need sky hook anymore.
 Yeah, I mean, the only, the only question in my mind is whether open street map gets
 to survive or if, you know, Apple and Google stopped giving information open street map.
 But there's no way that they're planning on, you know, licensing maps from, from Navtech
 and TomTom and whomever, you know, they they're getting these maps from long term.
 They're not going to need to.
 Right.
 But there's a point to be made here, guys.
 And that's the same one that relates to Nintendo becoming a software vendor for smartphones.
 Yeah, the other, the other, that's a that's a whole other and bigger conversation.
 But just because TomTom, let's say, wants to move into software doesn't mean that TomTom
 is signing a death warrant.
 Like you just can't sell dedicated PNDs anymore.
 You can't sell sat nav units the same way you can't sell PMPs.
 I mean, Apple in the iPod touch is still the pinnacle of what's been the most generation,
 most successful, you know, portable media player we've ever seen.
 Right.
 But every single quarter, in spite of all the growing sales that Apple has, iPod touch
 sales are going down.
 iPod sales in general going down is just not a category that really has any reason to exist
 anymore.
 So TomTom's best idea is actually to become a software and services vendor.
 And this is the biggest deal that TomTom can get, the biggest deal that anybody can get
 in this business.
 And you're like, good, get that deal.
 And what you need to do from there is actually continue to evolve and continue to be ahead
 of the other guys.
 Like, it's really complacent to think that just because you do one deal and you let these
 guys have access to your data, they will somehow, you know, beat you or advance ahead of you.
 I mean, Apple is a good example.
 Yeah, but TomTom isn't going to be able to pull that off.
 TomTom was literally years ahead of everybody else in mobile mapping.
 There was the Copilot, there was NavTag, whatever it was.
 But TomTom on Windows Mobile and Palm OS was an incredible experience.
 They managed to get a mapping and turn-by-turn navigation experience on those old slow platforms.
 That was great.
 And what have they done since then?
 They've turned into a company that licenses map data and still tries to sell some software
 a little bit, some GPS devices a little bit.
 But they're licensing the map data to the companies that are going to kill them.
 I just don't see any way around that.
 What direction could they possibly innovate towards to stay around at this point?
 This is the thing.
 The fact that they're licensing the data out isn't the thing that's dragging TomTom down.
 The thing that's dragging TomTom down is that the company hasn't done anything innovative
 or interesting over the past two or three years.
 But what are they going to do?
 Nothing.
 Maybe they shouldn't have licensed it out.
 Maybe they should have not taken that money and kept the maps proprietary and made really
 good software.
 And then Apple would be playing Google off of TomTom for their mapping solution instead
 of just rolling their own.
 Right.
 Sure.
 That's certainly the better solution if TomTom is doing better.
 All I'm trying to point out is that TomTom's demise right now is owing to the company's
 own complacency, at least in my judgment.
 I recall maybe a year ago, maybe even longer than that, they did a presentation about doing
 some really live up to the minute traffic updates and monitoring in a really grand scale,
 like all across Europe.
 So you sign up with TomTom, you get the GPS navigation unit.
 And I think it was something like live traffic or live traffic plus, live traffic HD.
 It was some really terrible branding name, whatever.
 But the point was, it was ambitious and it was like, we're going to get you because we
 have so many people using our sat-nav units, we're going to get you, you know, the most
 up to the minute, most accurate data about traffic everywhere.
 Right.
 Right.
 And that was like a big vision of theirs.
 And what's happened of it?
 Nothing really.
 But it doesn't matter.
 It doesn't matter.
 Nobody's going to buy a D&D based on that.
 Yeah, fine.
 I mean, granted, but to Dieter's point, if you could develop that and then put it on
 a phone, if you could be the person or the company in charge of that piece of software,
 if you turn that into an app, then you have a business model.
 And it's a very viable business model.
 Well, I mean, Waze is trying to do that right now.
 Telenev is trying to do that right now.
 We'll see if any of them, either of them are able to be successful.
 But you can't fight Apple's own crowdsourced data.
 They have millions of iPhones in the field.
 There's no way around that fact.
 And as much as the app store has changed the whole industry, the bottom line is being on
 deck matters.
 Being the default app on the home screen that you see without having to install something
 matters.
 And this is just going to, I mean, there's going to be so little money in this space.
 But hang on, Chris.
 You say Apple's number of devices in the field.
 I don't know how useful they are relative to TomTom's GPS units.
 Because when a TomTom GPS unit is enabled, when it's in use, it's in a car.
 Whereas most of the iPhones, when they're in use, aren't being driven around.
 So I mean, how does that, how does the millions and millions of iPhones out in the field outweigh
 TomToms?
 Because where is your phone when you're driving?
 It's in your pocket, yo.
 Well, it's with you.
 Or it's on the dashboard.
 Yeah.
 Right.
 Right.
 OK.
 But I mean, I'm just trying to understand also how Apple is going to filter that information.
 Because what if you're cycling, for example, and you're moving along a road?
 Or then you might get it.
 These are all basic big data problems.
 They can see that there are slow iPhones and fast iPhones adjacent to each other.
 And they can deduce that the slow iPhone is a pedestrian or a biker and the fast iPhone
 is a car.
 I mean, Google is there are many other companies already doing this, most notably Google, which
 integrates this into every Android device sold, as far as I know.
 I mean, like in downtown Chicago, when I pull up my when I pull up Google Maps and turn
 on traffic, like every single street in the city is color coded by how fast the traffic
 is currently moving.
 And that's because there are hundreds of thousands of Android devices going up and down the streets
 all day.
 That was a bit of education for me.
 So we go back to our original point, which is that TomTom is doomed.
 Yeah, I don't disagree there at all.
 We all agree that TomTom is totally screwed right now.
 I'm really sad because it's a freaking European company.
 And we need more of those.
 And to be fair, to be very fair, put yourself in the shoes of TomTom CEO or CFO where you
 have two options.
 You can either take Apple's blood money.
 This, you know, God knows how much they were paid.
 I'm sure it was in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars for this deal or let it
 go to Nav Tech or I don't know who else.
 But someone is getting that money.
 Yes, we might as well be you.
 I totally agree.
 But speaking of money, let's talk about Verizon and what they've announced today.
 Wait, wait, we have to talk about Passbook.
 We have.
 Oh, yeah, no, we totally need to.
 Yeah.
 By the way, one one really quick coda.
 Google had their their Android maps, their maps and Google Earth event like a week before
 WWDC, just so they could get it in and not look ridiculous.
 And I just want to point out that like the offline feature for Android maps is not new.
 It's there and it has been there for over a year in labs.
 All they've done is like clean up the UI and put it on the main app.
 So like Google's not feeling very good about their incoming map data either right now.
 I look, you know, I don't I don't often agree with MG Siegler, but I have to say he he wrote
 a post after the event that I think hit the nail on the head, which is that they had nothing
 to announce and they put them they looked really weak.
 I mean, they are in a position of power, right?
 Like Google Maps is dominant in the industry.
 Like when you right now, when you think online maps, when you think real time traffic, when
 you think turn by turn on a phone, you think about Google Maps.
 They have all the power.
 Apple has everything to prove.
 They made themselves look really weak and desperate by throwing together an event where
 it was patently obvious that they had nothing to announce a week before Apple's event because
 they knew that Apple was going to break free of Google.
 It was not the right move.
 No.
 OK, so passbook.
 We got it.
 So so the the basic functionality of the app is what you can get like your your membership
 rewards cards and like get them save that information in this app so that you can like,
 you know, flip a QR code instead of having to pull the card out of your wallet.
 Is that what the app does?
 Am I wrong?
 That's what the app that is.
 And all it does is boarding passes and movie tickets.
 Right.
 Oh, and and like sports tickets.
 Like I think basically anything that that will accept admission via barcode can be like
 put into passbook.
 Right.
 So what in and of itself, this app is like, are there a million?
 Is this a huge problem that people have that they have got too many apps for their different
 ticketing systems and the reward card systems?
 Is this a huge money making market?
 I mean, this app is all about what this app has the potential to be, not what this app
 is.
 Right.
 I mean, exactly.
 Very much.
 This is the same.
 This is the exact same play as FaceTime and iMessage where there is the stealth cat all
 over again.
 Yeah.
 Where within a generation or two, all of a sudden, passbook passbook is going to magically
 tie in to these 400 million credit cards that they have stored in Apple IDs and then boom,
 Apple suddenly has the most pervasive mobile payments network on the planet.
 Think about it.
 No, that's true.
 I mean, the the immediate thing that I think of when I hear about this new application
 is where's the NFC?
 And it's I mean, it really does tease toward the next iPhone having NFC because everybody
 else is doing it, essentially, and it's growing into a hardware standard, if not necessarily
 an industry standard, because everybody's trying to have their mobile wallet.
 So that does seem like the yeah, exactly.
 They're laying the foundation.
 They're building up to some big announcement.
 Not just NFC, but like with geofencing.
 So Apple could do this tomorrow if they wanted to.
 Well, they'd have to examine.
 They say, here's your iPad and here is the Apple approved checkout system.
 Here's how you can use iOS to have it be your cash register and you can click this checkbox.
 And when you click this checkbox, we will automatically create a geofence around the
 iPad that you're using to take payments.
 And people that walk into that geofence can pay automatically when they walk in, get something
 and leave.
 Like the same thing that Square and PayPal and all those guys are doing for their touchless,
 just walk in and say hi to your barista and get your coffee and leave thing.
 Apple is already doing that.
 Apple's already doing that with the Apple Store app, right?
 Right.
 So yeah, I mean, I totally believe it.
 So yeah, this is going to be this is this is the start.
 Chris is exactly right.
 It's the it's the ninja cat of them getting into mobile payments.
 The only question is we haven't seen the other shoe drop of who are they going to partner
 with?
 Who's going to win?
 Who's going to lose?
 Is this going to involve ISIS or not?
 It's basically what I'm getting at.
 And to be honest, the I'm getting kind of tired of NFC.
 Like it's at the end of the day, NFC is as interesting to me as a magnetic stripe.
 All it is is a way to transfer a number and it's relatively secure.
 So even if the next iPhone doesn't have NFC, I don't care.
 I think that this past book is a sign that they're getting into mobile payments.
 And everybody from Square to PayPal to Visa has been put on notice.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Can I also raise another point, which is that I am actually really reluctant if Apple doesn't
 announce a big partnership with a wider industry conglomerate like ISIS or does something with
 Visa that you can use more expensively than just within the Apple ecosystem, if it is
 indeed something that Apple tries to keep as close to in-house as possible.
 I am really, really reluctant to get into it.
 Like I've been thinking about this and the limitations that Apple imposes on you in both
 in software and hardware are just really annoying and frustrating to me.
 And one particular one is I've been working with some multi monitor setups on the desktop
 recently and it's so freaking frustrating to not be able.
 You know, I have three extra monitors hanging around my living room slash office at the
 moment.
 So frustrating not to be able to just get one of those and plug it into the iMac.
 The reason I can't do it is because the iMac is so freaking advanced that it can only accept
 video or output video to other Thunderbolt equipped displays or machines, which essentially
 means Apple only.
 And it's just really, really dumb.
 And all of these limitations that the company is making and imposing on people are just,
 you know, starting to get on my nerves.
 And if Apple does this with mobile payments as well, it defeats the entire focus of doing
 this.
 Like, OK, you take all of my loyalty cards, of which I have like zero, but let's assume
 I have loads.
 You summarize them, you put them together, you make my life easier, but then you won't
 let me take that and transfer it along to, let's say, I decide to go to an Android phone.
 What is the point in me committing myself to you?
 Like, this is just building more user dependencies as far as I'm concerned.
 And that actually makes me nervous.
 I am a little bit worried that I'm going to not be able to have equivalent services on
 Android to what Apple is doing because Apple has got enough power to become, say, the standard
 for mobile payments.
 And if they don't join ISIS, then I need to use an iPhone or I don't get to do mobile
 payments until five years down the road when everybody else gets their act together.
 There might be other areas where that's a concern.
 iMessage is certainly one.
 People might be like, you know what?
 I'm turning off SMS.
 If you don't use an iPhone, I'm not going to text you.
 Maps is possibly another one, but probably won't.
 Like, none of that stuff has actually come to pass.
 But it's not crazy to think that that could happen in any one of those categories.
 And that bothers me.
 Yeah, I was the only I was the only ecosystem where that is a risk because Android, I mean,
 like I message is a perfect example.
 Android does not seek to replace SMS.
 And the funny thing to me is that Google's had I mean, Google's been sitting on Google
 Talk since before long before Android existed.
 And they could have very easily turned Google Talk into I message long before Apple even
 dreamed of the iPhone.
 But but they didn't.
 And and so, yeah, I think that that I was I mean, like, you know, in my social circle,
 I'd estimate between 60 and 70 percent of my friends and family have iPhones so that
 they are they are clearly the only ecosystem that stands a chance of of really locking
 out the entire industry in key areas like mobile payments in a very frustrating way.
 Yeah.
 But since we're talking about the industry, I want to try and reboot my segue from earlier
 on.
 Yes.
 And talk about it's not a segue anymore, though, because you just brought it if you
 identify it as a segue, is it a segue?
 It's only a segue.
 If you identify it as a segue, it's only a segue if you're segueing to talk about
 segues.
 Fair enough.
 I cannot argue with that argument, either.
 You are the victor and champion.
 But seriously, I want to know about Verizon because this is this is actually some really
 major news and Chris covered it.
 But as usual and predictably, it's not as good as it sounded from the initial announcement.
 So, Chris, please tell us about it.
 So I just like to point out that this announcement this morning fired me up so quickly and completely
 that I wrote an editorial in 14 minutes.
 You said it was going to take you 14, not 14.
 Wow.
 Yeah, no, 14.
 Actually, it's 14 to change, but it's under 15.
 I like I just banged it out and got it up because it was.
 Yeah, I mean, it's what what happened was, you know, we've been hearing about the promise
 of shared data on American carriers for a long time.
 The idea is very simple, right?
 You'd have a bucket of data that you could share among multiple devices in your household,
 whether it be other family members or, you know, you yourself have a laptop, a tablet,
 a smartphone and maybe a car that uses data because that's a thing now, right?
 Like I would use have 3G connections for Google Maps, for instance.
 So it makes a lot of sense to be able to share a single bucket of data amongst all those
 devices.
 What Verizon has done is bastardize that concept by attacking unlimited minutes and text into
 that concept, which gives them essentially carte blanche to charge ridiculous amounts
 of money for each additional device that you add to the bucket.
 It's almost as much as just, you know, having a separate plan.
 So like if you had a you had a second smartphone to a shared bucket of data on Verizon, it's
 forty dollars.
 Are you kidding me?
 Like it is.
 So and to put that in perspective, they have a one gigabyte shared bucket plan that is
 fifty dollars.
 It's unlimited.
 The the cheapest plan you can get is unlimited voice, unlimited text, one gig of data for
 fifty dollars.
 So if you have two smartphones, you're paying ninety dollars to share one gigabyte of data
 between those two devices.
 It's a joke.
 It is a complete joke.
 And nobody should be surprised.
 I certainly wasn't that Verizon screwed this up this badly because they did so intentionally.
 I mean, this was their plan all along.
 And I'm sure that AT&T is going to do exactly the same thing.
 AT&T is going to do if they do exactly the same thing, they're essentially doing nothing.
 I have two lines in AT&T and we share a bucket of minutes and each phone has to pay for its
 own data and text messaging.
 And I'm pretty sure that like the data and text messaging together comes out to like
 forty five bucks.
 So like this is basically just a glorified family plan.
 Right.
 I mean, it's kind of interesting that you can add, you know, tablets and USB sticks
 relatively cheaply.
 And so I'm a little bit tempted by that.
 And I hope AT&T follows suit.
 But it's I mean, I have no more analysis to put on it other than my collaborative exasperation.
 Yeah, it's it sucks.
 Like I mean, I guess it's cool that now you can have like a smartphone and a USB stick
 on Verizon for 70 bucks.
 Like I guess that's cool if you want one gig of data to split between them.
 But but still, this is I think this is a slap in the face to people who have been advocating
 for shared buckets for years now.
 And Rogers, correct me if I'm wrong, I think Rogers does.
 In fact, they were the first North American carrier to introduce shared data.
 And I think they do it in a more logical and sensible way.
 Some Canadians might have to correct me in comments, but I think that they do something
 that makes a lot more sense than this.
 So but again, it shouldn't surprise anyone that this happened.
 AT&T will follow suit.
 T-Mobile and Sprint will probably do something more reasonable.
 It's just the way the industry works.
 Yeah.
 But they also feel like Verizon is specifically trolling all of the guys who've been saying,
 give us shared data, give us shared data.
 It makes so much sense because like the actual announcement was like a very direct not its
 wording or phrasing necessarily, but it was a very direct response to that demand from
 people.
 So Verizon might very well be just trying to manage the conversation.
 So previously, we could all kind of gather around this idea that shared data among devices
 makes sense.
 You should only pay for the data.
 The carrier shouldn't care about which device you're using it with.
 That makes sense.
 It's a step in the right direction, et cetera, et cetera.
 So now Verizon can literally say that it's taking the step in the right direction that
 all of us have been advocating, while at the same time making absolutely no difference
 in terms of how much it charges you and how much it essentially abuses your wallet while
 it's providing you the service.
 So all in all, I mean, it's a pretty villainous play.
 And make no mistake, neither Verizon or AT&T in particular, really any publicly traded
 company, but these guys in particular are never going to do anything to jeopardize their
 profits or to put their earnings in harm's way.
 If this stood to save a lot of people a lot of money on their monthly bill, it simply
 wouldn't happen.
 And indeed, it hasn't happened because they can't.
 I mean, the executives know that they can't put that money in jeopardy.
 So this should absolutely come as no surprise to anybody.
 It's disappointing, yes, but not a surprise.
 So it's not a new plan.
 It's just a marketing rebranding is how we should think of it.
 But we've been told by both AT&T and Verizon for the past year because their executives
 have been saying for a long time that this is coming.
 And of course, they didn't give any details on exactly how it was going to work or how
 much it would cost.
 And they led the world to believe that there was a lot of work to be done on figuring out
 the logistics, the behind the scenes infrastructure stuff on how to share a single bucket amongst
 multiple devices.
 And perhaps that's true.
 But to have this be the end result of that effort is very disappointing.
 But to your point earlier, Dieter, and I said this in the editorial as well, really is just
 a glorified family plan.
 Because the concept that they're presenting is the same thing that already exists in family
 plans.
 The only difference is that they're adding on data now, which they didn't before.
 That's it.
 All right.
 Well, we can move on.
 I haven't actually seen our topic list, and I have no recollection of any other bubble
 news.
 One of the things I wanted to bring up, and we don't need to get into this for very long,
 but it is interesting.
 This went up late last night in US time.
 The HTC One S is being sold in basically everywhere in Asia except South Korea and Japan and certain
 European countries, and actually, I think, Eastern European countries specifically.
 It's being sold with the S3 processor instead of the Qualcomm S4 processor.
 Basically the reason is the S4 processor is just really hard to come by because every
 single LTE phone needs to use the thing.
 It's hard to justify putting it in a non-LTE phone when they're just not around.
 HTC has basically swapped in the S3, cranked the clock speed from 1.5 to 1.7 gigahertz,
 and is selling it.
 It's not a bait and switch because they are labeling the phone as an S3, but if you're
 in one of these regions, you should look at the box before you buy and decide if you care
 about having an S4 processor.
 As far as I know-
 Go ahead.
 I was just going to say, as far as I know, TSMC is still having some 22 nanometer ramp
 up problems.
 I think that's the root cause here because S4 is 22 nanometer and S3 is not as far as
 I know.
 Right.
 I think that this could become a thing at some point that it could be, we might be seeing
 just a difficulty getting LTE phones with the S4 processor.
 Is that crazy to worry about that?
 I think it might be because the thing with ramping issues is that they don't tend to
 get worse over time.
 They tend to get better.
 Whatever limitations of supply we're seeing right now, I don't think they would last long
 enough for... Supply probably isn't so much limited as it's not growing as fast as demand
 is growing because as the HT1S is being rolled out internationally, a whole bunch of other
 companies are rolling out their phones, LTE phones.
 The Galaxy S3 is about to come out with LTE and the S4 in the USA.
 It's going to sell like hotcakes presumably.
 My impression is that this might last like a month or two, but then actually after that,
 HTC might choose to just continue with the S3 because the territories that you've mentioned
 are generally... Was the politically correct to putting this?
 Markets with less of a disposable income.
 Okay.
 Are they charging less for... This was actually brought up in chat here.
 Are they charging less for the S3 variant?
 I don't think that they are.
 Someone said we definitely need to bring that up.
 I don't know.
 I don't think that they are, but I could be wrong.
 Jeff is a HTC guy and he doesn't miss a local show.
 I'm sure I've got an email waiting for him right now.
 I'm sure he's sending some telegram right now.
 Let me ask you guys a very controversial question that might stir some debate.
 Do you think that the FTC should investigate Qualcomm for antitrust concerns regarding
 its treatment of LTE modems?
 Do you think that there is some collusion between Qualcomm and carriers to make sure
 that they are preferring Qualcomm modems in the marketplace?
 Because that's ultimately what's screwing Tegra 3 and other Exynos, specifically, in
 LTE markets.
 The question is, are Nvidia and Samsung getting the cooperation that they need in order to
 solve the technical issues of communicating with Qualcomm's modems with their own processors?
 At least it seems to me.
 That's not it.
 It's that Qualcomm is giving them the middle finger.
 We have the best LTE modem and we make our own processors so FU.
 I know this for a fact.
 This LTE issue was a big topic for me to snoop around while at MWC and I asked Nvidia a million
 questions about it.
 They were saying, we would love to have Qualcomm LTE modems in our phones.
 We love them.
 We love them the best.
 They're not even making any bones about it.
 Obviously because Nvidia's LTE modem isn't coming until next year.
 So they're not competing directly at the moment.
 They say, we would love to have Qualcomm LTE modems in our phones or phones with Tegra.
 It's just that Qualcomm won't cooperate with us.
 It won't work with us.
 Qualcomm says, if you want an LTE modem, you better have a Qualcomm applications processor
 in there with it.
 To me, that is actually fair enough.
 Being one of the Verge's resident communists, I shouldn't be arguing about free market capitalism
 like this, but actually Qualcomm's LTE modems are the freaking best.
 If you're making the best modem, why would you not be allowed to exploit it to improve
 your market position in order to keep going with your leadership?
 It just makes the most sense to me.
 I don't really think that carriers are the ones preferring Qualcomm's LTE modems.
 Samsung is essentially forced into it.
 Nvidia is definitely forced into it because it doesn't have a proper solution with Tegra
 into using Qualcomm's modems and applications processors.
 They're just tough.
 Others make LTE modems.
 They just don't make them well enough, clearly.
 Samsung is going to sell the Qualcomm Exynos processor with its own LTE modem in the United
 States?
 No, in Korea.
 It's doing that there.
 What is the point?
 Let me ask you this.
 What is the point of Qualcomm continuing to sell MDMs versus integrated MSMs if they're
 not going to work with any processors except APQs?
 Why are they even two separate units at that point?
 Stop pretending you can buy this MDM and not connect it to a Snapdragon.
 That's fair enough.
 But then again, maybe this is just a short-term situation.
 I do expect this to be short-lived, to be honest.
 Others are going to catch up with Qualcomm.
 This is something that's really arisen over the past couple of months.
 And also, let's not forget that the Snapdragon S4 is a really nice chip in terms of performance.
 No, it is.
 It is.
 A lot of companies might see it.
 I don't see it as being a lot different than when Microsoft got into all sorts of hot water
 over bundling Internet Explorer with Windows.
 I don't see it as being a lot different than that.
 No, no.
 It is.
 It is because the S4 is good.
 It's an Explorer.
 Not so much.
 At that time, Internet Explorer was not bad.
 At that time.
 Internet Explorer was actually pretty good at that time.
 But here's the thing.
 Because the Snapdragon S4 is very strong in terms of performance, applications processor,
 and because of its great power efficiency, people actually like it.
 And they look at the other processors and they say, well, I'm not really losing anything
 by using Qualcomm's option.
 So what Qualcomm actually has is a really strong applications processor and the best
 LTE modem.
 So of course, Qualcomm is going to try and force people into that combination.
 And of course, people are accepting it because they don't see that much of a loss.
 It's just kind of a confluence of events, or maybe just Qualcomm kicking everyone's
 ass and being better than everyone.
 That leads to the fact that everybody's buying into Qualcomm's hardware.
 I feel like Qualcomm is going to continue selling its LTE modems individually in the
 future when others start to actually compete with it, whether by having much better application
 processors or by having equally good LTE modems.
 And that's when Qualcomm won't be able to force people.
 I mean, I think what would cause me-
 I think what would cause me in Internet Explorer on Windows 95 or whatever it was back in the
 day is that it's using your dominance in one market to unfairly compete in another market.
 And so the question is, is dominance in one type of cell phone chip mean that you shouldn't
 be allowed to leverage that for dominance in another type of cell phone chip?
 And so you might look at it, regulars might look at that and go, they're processors and
 cell phones.
 I don't know.
 I don't care.
 Or they might look at it the way that they looked at Internet Explorer and be like, well,
 yeah, actually it is a little bit unfair for them to dominate in the processor market because
 they dominated the LTE radio market.
 I guess, I don't know.
 I guess I'm with Vlad.
 Like I kind of am not worried about it because I'm still able to get the S4.
 I think it's one of the better processors out there right now.
 And that's totally amoral of me.
 But there it is.
 I think that what really caused me to think about this was that I knew this was a problem
 and I didn't think anything of it last year in the Tegra 2 slash OMAP 4 days.
 And to have that continue into and the Exynos days, I should say, the original Exynos.
 But now to have that continue into 2012 with the next generation Samsung and Nvidia processors,
 that's when the alarm bells start to go off for me.
 And I think that, I mean, you guys are right.
 Like if Qualcomm legitimately has the best processor and modem, great.
 And carriers are demanding that modem just because they know it's the best, that's fine.
 But within a generation or two of these processors, I think the FTC is going to have to start
 saying, yeah, something's not right here.
 We need to take a look at it.
 If they don't maintain a leadership.
 Right.
 I feel like Microsoft, gosh, I don't know.
 Because yes, Microsoft getting investigated for Internet Explorer came up when Internet
 Explorer was sucking so bad and Microsoft was essentially forcing a bad user experience
 to people.
 But at the same time, the EU is also investigating Google for allegedly having antitrust infringing
 practices with its search, which is just bonkers to me.
 Because Google also, exactly like Qualcomm, has the best web services, images, Google
 images, Google Maps.
 So I actually want those.
 My user experience improves when Google integrates its other vertical web services into its search
 results.
 Except for Google+.
 Yeah, it's not the best.
 But you're right, Chris.
 Antitrust regulators are a bit more sensitive to these things, as they should be, than we
 are.
 It's true.
 Should we talk about the Padfone just really quickly?
 It's finally out and it was reviewed.
 And as expected, it nails the idea, but it misses on the execution, is the quote from
 the review that I think pretty much wraps it up.
 I mean, how long have we been waiting for this Padfone?
 Exactly.
 Yeah, that's right.
 Yep.
 And it went through a big revision since then, right?
 Right.
 I still want to review this concept.
 I really do.
 That's why this Padfone is still compelling to me.
 You're crazy, man.
 DOA.
 DOA.
 Actually, there was a rumor going around last week, completely unsubstantiated, that AT&T
 was going to be carrying the Padfone or some variation of it.
 And I don't know what happened to that.
 I think that rumor evaporated into thin air.
 But if AT&T carries this thing, I'm going to LOL.
 You're going to flip a Padfone?
 I'm going to flip a Padfone.
 They're not going to.
 I mean, I don't know how they're going to sell it.
 I don't understand the concept.
 I hate this thing.
 Get it out of my face.
 I hate the concept so much.
 Let's break it down quickly because not every one of us has been waiting for this for a
 year.
 I think a lot of us haven't actually been waiting for it for a year.
 It's just taken ASUS that long to bring to the market.
 And the concept is that you have your phone and I believe it's HDMI and mini USB connectors
 slot into a tablet which has a 10 inch tablet which has a little port at the back of it
 where the phone slides into.
 And then that in turn turns it into a tablet.
 So the processor and the 3G modem inside the phone also function to power up the tablet
 which in itself is just a display with a large battery and some speakers in it and some extra
 ports.
 That's the whole idea.
 I really do think though that nobody should be surprised by the fact that the execution
 is not good enough.
 As concepts go and as ideas go, this is one of those really, really futuristic ones.
 It's kind of like back in the day when I was really excited about consoles and what the
 next generation of consoles might bring, I used to think about controllers that you could
 like collapse into smaller shapes, kind of like collapsible bikes.
 And the reason we don't have those controllers nowadays and every controller is kind of just
 molded out of plastic is because they're horribly, horribly difficult to execute and to build
 correctly.
 This is why these things don't exist.
 I think these things don't exist because nobody would ever want a collapsible controller.
 What problem does that solve?
 Space.
 Is your apartment that small that you don't have space for an Xbox controller?
 I'm really confused.
 I was a teenager.
 I had a wild imagination.
 I think I had a dream about this.
 It was like a PlayStation controller that you could, I don't know, it was kind of like
 a Rubik's cube or something.
 You could just do things with it and make it smaller or like a cube and it would just
 be like really good looking and then just unwind it again and it's a controller again.
 I mean, come on, let's be honest.
 If you're going to move your console around and maybe you want to carry in a backpack,
 I mean, these are big consoles nowadays, but back in the day, consoles used to be smaller.
 So they could collapsible console, not a collapsible controller.
 Okay, well, fine.
 Collapsible consoles are also really hard to execute.
 Stop taking issue with my teenage concept, okay?
 I know it doesn't exist, but it's the same kind of thing.
 It's like in your imagination, it's like, yes, we're going to do this.
 It sounds awesome.
 It's a really awesome idea.
 And stop saying that my idea isn't awesome.
 But this is what a pad phone represents.
 It's one of those things that a lot of people can, or one of those things that really resonates
 with a lot of people because they see the idea of, I'll take my phone, I'll plug it
 into this tablet.
 Oh, that's the other thing.
 Now there's also a transformer part to it.
 So you can plug the phone into the tablet and then plug the tablet into a keyboard.
 And the keyboard itself also has a battery.
 So I mean, you can get some stupendous battery life out of the whole thing.
 David gave this a 10 out of 10 for battery life.
 So that's a point for credit.
 Okay?
 Isn't Motorola going in the same direction with the next Atrix?
 Or are they doing that now where the stupid laptop thing is basically just the same thing,
 just ice cream sandwich just blown up?
 The thing that kills me about the execution being so bad on this is Android seems like
 it's at the point where the execution doesn't need to be inherently bad about this.
 You don't need to have anything insane and crazy and magical to make it feel elegant.
 Just tell Android that it has a different screen resolution and you're done.
 Right?
 I mean, is that so hard?
 I want to believe this can work and that there's no inherent reason that we can't just have
 this work.
 Resolution independence is one of Android's great strengths and great weaknesses because
 that is one of the main reasons that Android apps look like crap is because the app is
 putting too much effort or not the app, the framework, the application framework is putting
 too much effort into ensuring resolution independence.
 So you can scale this to anywhere from HVGA to a tablet.
 And so I personally think that that is, I mean, look, Google has to obviously support
 very, very rich resolution independence in Android.
 There's no way around it.
 But I also think that's one of Apple's great strengths in iOS is the fact that they don't
 have to.
 Well, don't you quote your message about how apps on Android look, Chris.
 Wow.
 I said they look like crap.
 I know.
 That's about right, actually.
 Hey, come on.
 I use Android apps every day.
 Sasha Segan, actually, we should find this link for our listeners.
 Sasha Segan of PC Magazine put together a really awesome gallery and article a couple
 months ago.
 In fact, we wrote about it on our site about how bad Android tablet apps look and going
 into the details of the resolution independence.
 But he's talking about just tablet apps?
 You're talking about just tablet apps here?
 Well, I'm talking about the resolution independent nature of Android and the fact that in many
 cases you're running the same apps on a 4.3 inch display.
 The iPad wins because Android tablet apps suck.
 An illustrated guide.
 And it's really good.
 It's a great thing.
 We can't disagree with that.
 That much is valid and fair enough.
 But then, hey, Google iOS is coming.
 One time.
 Google I.O. does mean that Android tablets can matter beyond Kindle.
 We'll be in attendance.
 We'll probably get one of those Asus 7-inch Nexus tablets that nobody wants to announce,
 but everybody knows is going to run Tegra 3.
 And Jelly Bean?
 Yeah, and Jelly Bean.
 And JB?
 Oh, these names.
 I hate these names.
 So, let me just say one more thing.
 Ask for sandwich and jelly bean, man.
 I mean, how can you feel a professional in your industry if you spend half your time
 talking about these things?
 No, and the worst part is that it brings everybody else down.
 So during the WWDC keynote, somebody at Apple, they were making fun, rightfully so, of iOS
 is on a huge percentage of devices, iOS 5, whereas Android 4 is on a very tiny percentage
 of devices.
 And they referred to it as a dairy product.
 And I'm sorry, you're above that pun, Apple.
 You are better than that pun.
 And the fact that Google's picking these cutesy names means that everybody gets forced to
 make these sad jokes.
 It's like calling the iPhone the fruit phone.
 It's like, come on, really?
 It's okay to just call it the iPhone.
 It's okay to just call it ice cream sandwich.
 What's the problem with dairy?
 I'm missing ice cream.
 Ice cream sandwich, dairy.
 Yeah, but why would the other part be-
 They called it a dairy product because they were trying to be clever and not refer to
 it by name because I don't know.
 Oh, okay.
 Well, that's not really a pun.
 It's kind of a pun.
 And as an English resident, I think I am an authority on puns.
 Okay.
 It's kind of a euphemism to avoid talking about.
 It's like a collapsible pun.
 It was a pun, but then it got broken down and it's really hard to get those right.
 And so I just, I missed the mark on it.
 It's a pun phone.
 Everybody in chat thinks that Vlad and I hate each other and it could be further from the
 truth.
 The truth is that I'm just simply afraid of Vlad because he is so powerful.
 I've seen these two fist fight before.
 It's come to blows before.
 It got crazy at CES.
 It was out of control.
 I think he came to hugs again.
 The pad phone is, is the kind of device that everybody thinks they, they want or, you know,
 everybody thinks they like the concept, but nobody buys same thing with web top.
 How many web top docs do you think Motorola has sold?
 I would guess it's under 5,000 total.
 That's probably true.
 No, they must've, they must have snookered some corporation into buying like 10,000 of
 them for their entire fleet.
 I guarantee you.
 Yeah, maybe.
 But it, but remember when the Atrix was announced, when the Atrix was announced at CES 2011,
 everyone was like, wow, that's pretty cool.
 And then they went on to sell none of them.
 So I, I think, I think that the pad phone is the same thing.
 It's something that we liked the concept of, or at least you guys do.
 I think it's stupid.
 But, but when this thing hits the, hits the market, why do you think it's stupid?
 Because there's no, there is literally no advantage to putting the phone inside the
 tablet.
 Just have a phone and have a tablet.
 Just do it.
 Dude, you save money on RAM, on processor, on storage.
 You save money on the board to put all that stuff together.
 You don't have to worry about syncing stuff anymore.
 It's all just on the phone.
 You don't have to worry about cloud services.
 So you save money on data.
 It's just, it's all, it's your one device and that's all you have to worry about.
 And then you just have different terminals that you plug it into to get a bigger screen
 if you want it.
 Like I don't see what's not compelling about that dream.
 Y'all be tripping.
 Good argument, guys.
 I can't, I can't give you the victory on it, but it's a good argument.
 I'll give you that.
 But there's another point though, which is taking the longer term and also the environmental
 view on this, which is that we're sticking processors into way too many things and way
 too many things that suck.
 That's the other thing that really, really annoys me.
 Like the Galaxy Ace and the Galaxy Mini 11T.
 Just stop making those phones.
 Just stop it.
 Make cheap phones that people who can't afford smartphones can buy and then make good high
 quality smartphones and make like one or two of them.
 I'm so freaking tired of guys like OG.
 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 And that's actually a good thing.
 I mean, why does LG need something like seven smartphones with Android, which are interchangeable?
 But anyway, besides that point, if you could actually buy into Asus and trust Asus to that
 degree, which I don't think anybody can do with hardware outside of Apple, you could
 make the argument with a pad phone that you buy this once, two or three years pass, the
 phone gets outdated, you throw away the phone, you keep the other parts, particularly the
 keyboard.
 I feel like you can buy a really solid keyboard attachment and so long as the connection is
 something long term, something like HDMI and USB, which is hopefully going to be around
 for a while, you can then keep interchanging with new additions upgraded every couple of
 years, let's say, provided the company in question is actually reliable.
 Yeah.
 I mean, and let's be clear, I would say that if you just do this over a wireless standard,
 then you definitely could keep that tablet thing for a while.
 But we've now seen two attempts at making this work that have both failed spectacularly.
 That's true.
 The Oreo, obviously, and then the BlackBerry PlayBook.
 Just I mean, but it's hard to know.
 Maybe the PlayBook would have been crazily successful.
 People would have been all over BlackBerry Connect if people were excited about either
 the tablet or the smartphone, which they're not in both cases.
 Right.
 Yeah.
 I just want to talk about-
 This is a really depressing thing to say.
 Let's not talk about it.
 It really is.
 You brought us all down, Peter.
 I'm sorry.
 You were riding that high until you brought up the damn PlayBook.
 Yeah.
 And now it's all done.
 Let's just end on a high note.
 The high note is that Apple versus Motorola, some patent case there, just got straight
 up dismissed by the judge, who basically said, you guys have no reason to have court case
 right now.
 Just figure out the settlement and you're not coming to court.
 Threw his microphone down, walked off the stage.
 It was pretty amazing.
 He rage quit the case.
 It was amazing.
 Wait, did this literally just happen?
 This happened on Friday, right?
 Yeah, on the 7th.
 Okay.
 We're good.
 Yeah.
 I have totally decided the case should be dismissed with prejudice because neither party
 can establish a right to relief.
 That's lawyer speak for screw you guys, I'm going home.
 Yeah.
 I mean, screw you guys.
 I have very little to say about this because the legal world is a complete black box to
 me.
 But we've had a few contentious patent discussions on this podcast before.
 And I will say that I think that there is much to be done to avoid this mess in the
 future.
 I think we're going to continue to be in a mess, especially as long as I mean, there's
 and don't get me wrong, there's still a ton of cases going on, right?
 We have situations in Europe between Microsoft and Google and Apple and Samsung.
 I mean, there's still a million cases going on.
 This is the tip of the iceberg.
 But but yeah, we could use more like that's the problem is we don't have a good we don't
 have the equivalent.
 Let's go back to it equivalent to the Microsoft monopoly case.
 Now we've got a thousand cases to track instead of like one big case that everybody knows
 is important and knows is going to set standards for the industry.
 You know, now, you know, it's everywhere and there's lots of standards to be set and, you
 know, lots and lots of different courts to fight this out in.
 Right.
 What we need is a big, giant, scary case to bring it all together.
 I think I think the government should just sue Apple and Google together, just put them
 all in a room and just everybody yell at each other for a few months.
 And then whatever comes out of that, that's that's the end of it.
 No more cases.
 Actually, we should just have a gladiator fight.
 Tim Cook and Sergey Brin and Juliusz Genachowski, we should just put them in a giant stadium
 with swords and spears and release some tigers in there.
 And whoever comes out wins.
 I totally agree.
 And who would be who would be the the emperor giving the thumbs up, thumbs down and is from
 his, you know, his shaded luxury box in the Coliseum?
 Clearly that would be Vlad.
 That would be Vlad.
 Yeah, I would go to suggest Mark Zuckerberg is a democratically elected president of 900
 million people.
 But I'm OK.
 Facebook held a vote last week for their new data policy and privacy policy, although
 they don't call it a privacy.
 It's a mess.
 Anyway, they had this governance rule where they would make the public vote binding and
 Facebook would be forced to comply with it if 30 percent of their user base participated
 in the election.
 And like three people voted.
 Yeah, that would be 270 million people.
 That would be it wasn't the biggest election of all time.
 I went to India a few years ago, but it'd be like in the top three or four biggest elections
 of all time in the history of man.
 So obviously they knew that wasn't going to happen.
 And so I think the actual vote was like, I don't know, three hundred seventy thousand,
 something like that.
 And this was after like a whole bunch of sites, including us linking to it.
 So yeah, to say Zuckerberg is democratically elected, anything is not quite true.
 See, all they needed to do was bundle it during American Idol and have people vote with their
 phones, I guarantee you they would have blown past 270 million.
 No, Vlad, you make a much better emperor than Zuckerberg.
 I really deeply believe that.
 I mean, could you imagine the emperor wearing a hoodie?
 I couldn't.
 That wouldn't be cool.
 No.
 Well, thank you.
 Thank you, Dieter.
 Although I do think I do suspect you're thinking of me as the emperor in the actual Gladiator
 movie, who is a sadistic guy who died a miserable death at the end.
 But OK, thank you.
 Yeah.
 Oh, but the one thing I am thinking that he was also in that movie that he had the best
 line of all time in that movie.
 He vexes me.
 I'm terribly vexed.
 I mean, that's just that terribly vexed.
 Come on.
 And, you know, like Joaquin Phoenix, you will later go through a period where you grow a
 really long, disheveled beard and wear wayfarers at all times, really dark wayfarers and and
 mumble incoherently on the David Letterman program.
 And this is your future.
 I am actually working on the beard right now by complete accident.
 I have to admit.
 OK, see, step one is down.
 Now you just need to book your David Letterman showing and you're you're you're good to go.
 Yeah.
 I need to actually buy my first set of sunglasses ever.
 But what?
 It's true.
 You're going to have cataracts by like age 40, dude.
 No, dude, I borrow other people's sunglasses, but I'm just too picky and I've never bought
 one of my own.
 Oh, my God.
 That's insane.
 That and a driver's license.
 Yeah, please.
 Do you think I'm missing in life?
 Yeah.
 You got to work on this.
 OK, I will.
 Well, we have been podcasting for a really, really super long time.
 And so I'm going to say that we're going to stop doing that now.
 Actually, it hasn't been a podcast, it's been a show, the Verge mobile show.
 We're going to end it right now.
 And so we want to thank you for listening and are watching.
 And if you want to get in touch with us, you can email us.
 It's mobile show at the verge dot com.
 We're also on Twitter.
 I am at back on Chris's at Z power.
 Vlad is at Vlad Samov.
 And we are all at Verge.
 And we'll see you guys next week.
 Bye guys.