 Hello. How are you doing? Welcome to the Vergecast. That's usually the next line. I don't know. He was doing a thing. Yeah. You gotta, hello, welcome to the Vergecast. This is our show. It is a show about just a bunch of guys having a good time. I don't know. Is that what it's about? No. What is life about? It's a show about me having a small existential crisis once a week with good friends. That's right. And technology and news and pretty much us arguing at the end of Breaking Bad, which I've discovered recently can just send us into a tailspin of disaster, and other ideas. In fact, in figures, emotions. This is the Vergecast. Look at all this negotiation I have to do to get this beer up to my mouth. Yeah. It's really bad. Here's what I'm saying about the Vergecast. It's back. We've been gone for a long time. We did a Hack Week podcast. We threw together one last week and now we're just back. It's just gonna keep happening. We've got kind of a different set going on here based on- The French Cafe set. The French- It's very nice. It's a salon. We kind of looked at our numbers and like how people were consuming the Vergecast. We realized most of you were downloading it on audio, so we're gonna be focused on making a really great sort of like audio thing. Are we unattractive? No. Is this- No, I have a theory about the internet. Do you? This is the only one you have. No, I think, I believe the internet has radically changed consumption media. Fact. That's true. Don't even argue with me. Are we gonna talk about Taylor Swift right now? We can. We can in a minute. But if you think about how people used to consume information in their lives, it was they would wake up in the morning and read a newspaper and they would go to work and presumably be productive and then they would come home at night and like watch television. Right? And if you just look- I just- That happened. Just keep going. I feel like there was a lot of Minesweeper in the middle of there. Yeah, but like, whatever. But then what happened, then the internet arrived and now everybody wakes up in the morning and like plays with their phone and they get to work and read our website all day long. Bless you. Which is true. Our highest like traffic is like at noon. Yeah. And then they go home and like play games and like all of information is like we've moved it from like the beginning end of the day to like the dead center of the day. And that is what to do with podcasting? Well, hear me out. I think people listen to podcasts on their way to work. They listen to podcasts at work while they're ignoring their jobs and then they listen to it on the way home from work. Yeah. And those are all bad places to watch video. And when they're doing dishes. And apparently dishes. Yep. Basically you listen- Big podcasting time. Whenever you are- Whenever you should be doing something else, you should be listening to a podcast. I mean that's definitely when I listen to podcasts. Like I listen to one- Basically one podcast a day in three chunks. It's like when I'm getting ready in the morning on my way to work and on my way home from work. Yeah. You know an hour and ten minutes every time. Do you listen at regular speed or do you speed it up? See I listen at regular speed. I speed it up. I speed it up. Yeah. It's actually pretty good. Like the- What is it? Pocketcast that I use is like it- People don't sound crazy. I use an app that people made people just sound horrible. So you know that Marco Amens podcast thing. It speeds it up but it also removes the silences. And so it sounds really natural. Apparently really neat. That is neat. But yeah we should just talk 1.5 speed just to troll the people that listen. I mean I have friends who basically talk at 1.5 speed. I feel like we all talk at 1.5 speed. Everyone I know is like please stop talking so fast. But I have so many facts and figures. So anyway the point of that digression was that we know most people are consuming us on audio. So we are gonna figure out what to do with video. I think what we should do is we should let this be a podcast. And then when we want to make TV shows or video shows or whatever shows we should make those differently. Which is a radical idea I know. Let each media be true to itself he proclaimed. Although we are starting this audio only format with a live show that is on camera. But if you want to see us sitting around being jerks. Revealing the lie behind all language. No this is like yes right. Everything is a symbol that means we are gonna die. No but if you want to watch us be goofballs together you can tune into us live and we will have the replays on livestream. So if you want to hang out with us now. Now is a good time. 4.30 pm eastern on Thursdays. Anyway Vergecast is back. Those are some facts about the Vergecast. Tell me some figures about the Vergecast. There are three of them on it right now. There are three people on the Vergecast. It is very tall. It is 12 feet tall. Very wide. It has a blue ox as a pet. It is straight to Paul Bunyan. What? Deeders from Minnesota. He always immediately references something Minnesota. Everything in Minnesota is either Prince or Paul Bunyan. And Prince isn't very tall. Funny story. Same guy. Huge. Actually Prince is very small. Tiny man. Paul Bunyan by the way. Is it like two princes stacked on top of each other with a trench coat is Paul Bunyan? No one gives Paul Bunyan credit for being an excellent guitarist. I mean he is really good with an axe. Alright we are done. Shut it down. We are never doing this again. Okay let's talk about speaking of enormous things. There is actually a lot of news to talk about this week. I am holding a gigantic iPhone. I have a less gigantic iPhone. I don't have an iPhone. Do you want like a little iPhone? I am taking this one out of the case. That is my 5S. Does this have a big crack in the middle? Here is my plan with the 5S. I am not going to switch it, my SIM card, until that phone explodes. Because it is so close. You are on your way to that happening. It is so close to being completely trashed. Anyway so this was reviews week for us with the iPhones. iOS 8 review is coming next week because there is so much to unpack there. Yeah it was really like, and we kind of thought this was going to be the case and it totally proved out that like so much of iOS 8 didn't get unlocked until all these developers started updating their apps. And like there is all kinds of cool stuff going on that was not there for us before. So like iOS feels, even now like I am still waiting for a bunch of widgets that I know are coming and I really want to use. And like it is starting to finish now which is cool. But yeah so that is coming Monday. I would say most of the apps, we should get into the actual reviews but a lot of the apps that have updated have not updated for the 6 plus yet. I think developers were actually surprised by the screen size. Interesting. Which is weird. Yeah because you are just saying you are still getting four tweets on Twitter. Yeah my Twitter is like literally to show you four. Oh so it looks like Twitter on the iPad. Yeah it is very. Which is just. Twitter. Other than that they just rolled out a bunch of new stuff. Anyway let's talk about these reviews and then Dieter you played with a bunch of Amazon new stuff yesterday. Yeah yeah. And there is all kinds of stuff going on with the website. Wait so okay here is where we need to start because I feel like this is the only question anybody wants to ask and we should actually just talk about it is like which one should people buy? The 6 or the 6 plus? The big one. The 6 plus. Why? So I am. Plus. Here the 6 plus. Thanks Dieter. So also wait can I just back up real quick. So my favorite thing about this phone is that everyone almost everyone picks it up and immediately knows which one they want. Right like you pick up the big one and you are like this is way too big or you are like this is perfect. Let me tell you a story about the 6 plus. Hold on let me finish. Damn it. Except for Dieter Boehn. He picked it up and just immediately had a panic attack. It happens when I pick up everything though. It is not the iPhone's fault. Oh my God what do I do? This is the existential crises I have watched you go through over the last week. I settled on just the 6 and I immediately regretted it. Oh you pre-ordered one. Yeah yeah. Which one did you get? The 6. You should have gotten the 6 plus. Again but I regret it. But I got the right color. Yeah black. Space gray. Space gray. Well black. Yeah the white I think the white makes the phones look bigger than they are and the gold I think looks terrible. Fair. That is just where I am at. So apparently and this is totally anecdotal and may not be true but is what I have seen is that people who got gold got it immediately which is the exact opposite of last year. There was no wait people came on a day late. Yeah there was only like 10 people wanted them. Well but last year there weren't any. Right. But I guess there was a supply shortage so I don't know. But space gray is a little bit delayed and silver is super delayed. Yeah. Which is really weird and not at all what I would have guessed. Yeah I just don't think the white looks great. Well white and silver. I think the space gray is where it is at because if they are bigger you want them to look smaller. I think the gold looks terrible. Yeah I agree but I thought that last year and lots of people liked it. No last year the gold was like flashy and new and it worked with the design and it was all angled and Johnny was like it looks like jewelry. You know like I don't know why he's a mobster. He's definitely a mobster. He's gone through a rough patch in his life. He needed the money and then he joined the mob. He doesn't need the money. I don't know. That joke makes no sense. Well let's talk about the design. Let's just start. So I think the answer is a six plus. I have many reasons for this. I will say that today I went to lunch with Trey Brindrette our product officer at Fox and I pulled out the phone and we drew a crowd. People like we were just standing in line to like order hamburgers. I thought you meant you literally like held it and drew a crowd. Yeah I was like Trey let me show you what I'd like my friends to look like and I drew a picture of people that I thought were my friends. I want this many friends. You're an engineer right? Make me friends. No it was like we know like people crowded around us and like played with the phone and asked us about it and they're like how do you have it already? And like it was like we were doing shtick like Trey put his like iPhone 4 on it and like the screen is bigger than an entire iPhone 4. People are very excited about a gigantic iPhone and I think the big iPhone the six plus is like it's the first time I've gotten an iPhone where I thought to myself this is a new experience. Right. Whereas with Android phones because you switch manufacturers you switch skins you whatever every time you get your Android phone it's like kind of a new experience. With the iPhone it's like this is slightly nicer. Nothing is different now. Yeah I mean even the 3.5 to 4 inch screen difference was like nice but didn't actually meaningfully change anything. Right and I think the six plus is like it's exciting because it is so different. Right but difference not always good like you like different for different sake. Yeah. Like you think it's hilarious that it's humongous and I mean it's like walking around. It's a really simple like decision. Do you want a phone or do you want a little like everything computer almost tablet thing that you can run more most of your life off of. I mean do you want something that you can conceivably use as both a ping pong paddle and like a deadly weapon and a laptop. When you put it like that it's kind of. It is this is this thing is comically huge. I said in an interview I think the Galaxy Note 3 is actually easier to hold because it's a little bit thicker. It is squatter it's like square. Yeah this is really it's top heavy in a weird way. Well because you're holding it feels like it's going to just slip out of my head. They kept the home button the same and so it's got the big thing at the top and the bottom so it looks symmetrical. But that means it just feels super tall. Right and it's ridiculous that the speaker is still like there's just the one speaker on the bottom. Like Apple took their hardware design and like literally did a pinch zoom. We made a big phone everybody. Yeah I think it is. I think the iPhone 3G and 3G S are like by far the ugliest iPhones ever made. Agreed. But I would put this like this is in that pantheon. Like I don't think it's really. I do not. I mean I don't think it's anywhere near as beautiful as the 5 and 5S but like I don't think it's ugly. I hate the outlines on the back. I mean these outlines on the back are. Like this is like Johnny I was like hammered. He was like look I have to go drive my Jaguar and then he like left and they were like no just do the lines. He handed somebody a magic marker. Did you read the big business week profile on Apple that came out yesterday that they hilariously called an interview. It's very confusing. No interview. But it was a profile of Tim Cook and Apple. It was a good piece and it was great. Really well done. Brad Stone and somebody else. But really like really well done piece. And the criticism of Tim Cook's reign at Apple is things that you like designers have left in a specific complaint that they said the business week was where I used to sit in like a meeting with Steve Jobs and we would like hash out like button design. Right. Yeah. I have these tiny particulars of icons right now. We have these like gigantic sprawling teams and things are less focused than before. And I could not tell you if that affected the design of the iPhone 6 and the 6 plus but I can tell you that I wouldn't be surprised if like that's how we got this intended design. Sure. Right. Because it's not. I just don't. I don't see this happening. Right. But if you look at the iPhone 4 it's like just a beautiful thing. If you look at the iPhone 5 and 5S it is there. They're beautiful in their way although far less durable in my opinion the iPhone 4. Yeah. Really? Yeah. All right. Fair. They just like the iPhone 5 like the black one just like turned silver over time. I mean I've dinged my 5S to hell. So I will defend the 6 and the 6 plus from a design standpoint in that they're not as beautiful as the 5 and the 4 but I think they're way more approachable. Like the 5 and the 4 are like I am an art object and you must like bow to me and this is like I'm designed for you to hold in your hand. The 5 got nice curved sides and a really like natural feeling screen and it just they feel like because they made them so big if they had stuck with that like stark design I think they would have felt insanely imposing. Right. I said this to I asked some folks at Apple about this was like because the big question we went in with was why don't you just make it thicker and make the battery longer. That's the question for Apple. Right. Well and I have this camera bulge. Well yeah. But that's a separate thing. What camera bulge? I don't see any camera bulge on Apple's website. I don't know what you're talking about. So I asked them this and the answer and the answer I got from two different people was it would have been horrible. And like whether or not that's true I don't know but they were like we played with or they you know they looked at just blowing up the design of the 5S because everybody liked it presumably including Apple. And what they found was that you're exactly right that a phone that looks like that and is that sort of stark and sharp and rectangular bigger would just feel like crap. I will say that which I agree with. We ask a lot of questions of a lot of like product managers and product designers and the one answer that I always am like I believe you. I accept it and don't immediately assume it's total garbage is we tried that and it sucked. Right. Yeah. I mean I don't know. Here's the thing. You know we read a lot of reviews of the phone because once you're recently want to read everybody else's reviews and everybody talks about these phones in terms of Apple had to do this to catch up the competition. Even iOS 8 in many ways it's like they had to start adding sensibility. They start they had to start adding third party technology. Words and like widgets and like actual notifications like they had fallen behind in a way and just here with the sheer screen size of the thing they felt we had David. I had an argument because his review we were editing each other's reviews. Your view is like Apple had to make a big phone and I was like no they had to make a regular phone. Right. What they were making the whole time was a smartphone. Right. And they had to just get to normal. They're still smaller than the S5. They're still smaller than the Nexus 5. They're still smaller than any. Everyone else's flagship phone is bigger than the iPhone. Yeah somewhere between 5 and 5.2 now. Yeah everyone like that's just where they planted and then the Android big phone market is even bigger than this right. The Note 4 is 5.7. Right. They've like Apple's just gotten to parity with everybody. Right. And that's like that is kind of the story of these phones. Right. Like they're just they've caught up now. It's also like the I mean that that's half the story right. The other half is like Apple has all these entrenched advantages that it's been winning with for so long like the camera and the app store and like the general polish of iOS that doesn't exist in Android. Right. And so like in some cynical way they're like OK well we have we do these four things better than anybody. If we do everything else exactly as well as everybody we're going to do these four things better and thus be the best. Right. And it's like that's a deeply boring way to design a phone which is kind of what I think they did here. But it does work. Yeah. Like it's a successful strategy. Right. And what's I mean they're I mean like for example like the Note 4 screen is beautiful. Yes it is. The there's other beautiful screens in the world. Lots of them. LG makes a beautiful screen. HTC makes a beautiful screen. This screen is really like it's really good. Yeah it is. It's less pixels per inch than just about everybody. Actually it's less than everybody. Everyone else is like 441. Yeah. This is 401. But they like Apple like what the small stuff like this is a joke I made in the review like everyone else is in a pixel resolution race and a pixel density race. And nobody is in a how thin is your lamination race. Right. Because there are no specs. How close can you get to the glass race. Right. And it's like if there is only a spec. Yeah. If only Apple would be like we have X nanometers precision lamination so that Samsung would be like yeah we beat that. Yeah. But because they don't like Samsung's like whatever and like the Note the Note 3 screen definitely looks sunk below a layer of glass. The Note 4 I think is a little bit the same. And it's like Apple's just really good at the little like that little thing makes this screen great. Yeah. Well and I mean it's little things like we've talked about this too with the fact that it just curves a little right at the edge like. Yeah. There's nothing I can't explain that to somebody. But like you pick it up and it just feels right. So 20 degree radial curve. Come on Samsung. What Apple needs 46 degrees makeup. They need to make up fake tech specs. Yeah. Just like pretend stuff so that Samsung loses their mind trying to beat them. I mean retina. Well they did that. They need to do it more. I mean it worked like Apple did it and then Samsung was like oh right. What about 11 times retina in your face. No one can see it in the app scale. But try this out. Look at all those pixels. And that's it. So the thing with the six is like it is just the next iPhone right. And Apple's really good at putting up the next iPhone right. And they bumped a spec and they like the app scale and it's fine. Like it's not I don't think it's perfect but it's fine. Like the scaling you mean. Yeah. If you look for it it's there. Right. But for the most part it's fine. It's like the 6 plus in Chrome. It's the same thing as I tell everybody. It's like you're like this is too big but it's not a problem. Right. You never notice. And then you know the apps get updated and whatever. Right. With the 6 plus the scaling I think looks terrible. Well what was it the dialer that is just hilariously full of white space now. I mean this phone is comedy gold. Just let me be clear. It is very much points to a future of like hybrid devices. It like has a brilliant camera. It has a great screen. Like all these things. The battery is great. There are many reasons why it's the phone I want to buy. And then there are many reasons like I'm literally sitting here giggling it like how doofy it is all the time. Doofy. You keep walking on it. I'm just like you are not caught up with the doofy stuff. I mean it's just like. 2.5 more doofies. Give it a minute. I mean here it is. Like do do do. Like that's the phone. Like do do do. Like it's just a big lumbering beast of a phone. And like the apps like the Kindle app like is like gives you a headache. The scaling in the Kindle app is so bad it's like this is blurry. It's like looking through. What's the thing like it's like the wavy text on a TV screen. Like it's blurry. It's just like headache inducing. The Twitter app just got updated and they updated it in so far as the menu bar doesn't scale the status bar doesn't scale now but like it still shows you four tweets. The landscape keyboard is like I don't even know what sort of like comedy moment Apple was going for with that. The landscape keyboard is a perfect example of like just because you have more space doesn't mean that you should fill it. And they were really good especially with iOS 7 at not doing that. They're like it's okay to have white space. Right. But they're like oh it's a keyboard. That's like a functional area. We should cram it full of crap. Well here's like a decision on the landscape. There's two decisions on the landscape keyboard that are just mystifying. One is the paste icon which is to be clear is an icon of a bottle of glue. And Apple thinks you the consumer do not understand the difference between paste and glue. And I think that is probably accurate because I do not understand. I was going to ask you to explain it to me. But I know paste you it's got a little. Right I know that paste does not come out of a glue bottle like that. It's just obviously true. Right it's just something I know. Well I mean like right like paste is like a dip whatever. And then there is the fact that of all of the formatting choices you can put in a button they picked bold. There's a button just to bold text. And I look at it and it's just a bold B. It's just a bold B. Which is going to be cool because you know it's going to happen a lot. People are going to go to type B and it's just going to do nothing. They're going to be like that's a B. I would like to type that. It's like you get the feeling that Tim Cook personally sends a lot of emails with bold text in it. And he was just like listen Johnny. I know you're in charge of design. I know Steve Jobs structured this company so that you know and can tell you what to do. But I want a fucking bold button. And there it is. It's just so confusing. And then the keyboard trolls the hell out of you. Because when you rotate it from portrait to landscape the position of the emoji button the emoji keyboard button and they switch to numbers and symbols literally flips from portrait to landscape. No way. It's numbers on the outside emoji on the inside. Yeah. And then you turn it and it switches. Just click on my account. There you go. Just click on my face. Click on my face. Just click on your face. No it's just like that to me is like they made this keyboard and like they made it. They had to figure out how to now rotate it. Come on. Like I don't understand that at all. Wait a minute. No the emoji stays on the left. Oh yeah but they do flip. Yeah. Just to confuse you a little bit more. Also this is not rotating super fast. No I did. I don't know. Can I tweet from your account right now? No please please not do that. I mean yeah there are definitely things about pooping. You can pay. If I poop into you live on the Vergecast. Stay away from my property. Get off my lawn. I'm just saying like I'm like these are all my complaints about the iPhone 6 Plus. You've just heard all of them. You just ran out of big lists and then you're like buy like it's stupid and weird and there's bad software. Buy it. Well the bad software is like. Don't buy the one that doesn't have any of those problems. For every other company when they put out a phone with bad software I'm like don't buy it. I'd kill them for bad software. Sure. Samsung puts out a phone on AT&T of bad software. I'm like you are doomed for six months to experience this bad software. With Apple it's like probably in two weeks all the apps will be updated and Apple will like fix that keyboard issue. Well actually no. They didn't fix the shift key button. Yeah. So I have no faith. Still insane. Whatever. Don't buy an iPhone. Here's what you should do. Throw away all your phones. Go on eBay. Look up RAZR. Yeah. Buy a Sony Ericsson W810i. Yes. Yes. And just live a life knowing that that is the pinnacle of technology. Yeah I can't disagree with that at all. I mean it's a phone and a Walkman. So do you try to use a six plus one handed? Because that's the reason I didn't get it. Yeah. Is like I've got big enough hands to do it but it's awkward and I would just drop the thing and I've shattered two phones in the past month and so it was time for me to admit that I am a huge klutz. Yeah. And I would drop that and I'm less likely to drop a small one. That's why I got the small one. I actually wrote the exact, independently wrote the exact same paragraph in our reviews which was these are the first iPhones that are better in cases. Yeah. And I'm just gonna say it. I've never had a case on my phone before. Ever. Never. And like you kind of need to do it. Yeah. I mean I'm just gonna say it. When you put the big one in a case it looks like a Samsung phone. Yeah it does. Like just does. Yep. There's like there's an element of I mean it's like the way the cases are shaped and like the white and the color like that's how Samsung phones. So we got a close up on the camera there. Let's struggle to put a phone in a case. Yay. Yay. These cases feel really nice by the way. I got a lot of questions about like how they're gonna hold up over time and the answer is I have no idea but they feel really nice. Yeah. Yeah. The leather. I'm into the leather. The leather on the Moto X. I'm really happy. The leather on this like it's really nice. Yeah. Now let's look here. It's a Samsung phone. Yeah flip it over like you cannot tell that that's not a Samsung phone. Right. And well it's a case. Yeah. But there's like an element to this this specific aesthetic of the phone that is very Samsungy. Yeah. Which because it's a giant phone in the case. Samsung. Look here's the thing. All of these complaints aside what I know about this phone is that I'm never gonna use my iPad mini again and never even consider buying another iPad mini. There is a shot in our video you should go watch it where if you watch a 16 by 9 video on the iPad mini the actual because it's letterboxed the actual size of the video you're watching is only marginally bigger than a video on this phone which is like that's the game. That's why I have an iPad mini. Right. Because I want to like watch things in a bigger screen. I have an iPad Air which I like very fond of. I am struggling to think of reasons to like get it now because it's all it really offers me is a yet another bigger screen and I think that's like super interesting. Yeah. But we need to see iOS on the iPad Air start to do some like proper stuff. No that's what I'm saying. I think there's a world in which the little phone becomes like a little phone. This becomes a primary computing platform thing and the iPad becomes like a truck. To like stretch that metaphor. The iPad becomes they focus on actual productivity with the iPad the way that Microsoft quite frankly has been focused on with the Surface Pro this whole time. Well that's when the like split screen multitasking comes in. Or maybe user switching. Which is the thing that this is not big enough to pull off. Yeah. That would be great. Just come on. Yeah. I mean I'm telling you Dieter and you're engaged now and you just don't you just don't want to share that device. Nope. I'm kidding. I have no idea. Because at least it's always like pooping. No if you give it to your kid. Whatever. I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on the 6? I feel like I've rambled on about the 6 Plus. I mean my thing about the 6 is like it's the 6 Plus is way more interesting in terms of like what it could and might someday be. I mean what you said that I've been thinking about a lot about over the last few days is that your argument is that in three years this will just be the iPhone. Yeah. That there won't be a smaller one. It'll just be that that you buy. Yeah. And like I actually think you're right. I hope you're not but I think you are. But for me it's like this is like there are a lot of bad things about the fact that this is just another iPhone. But it's also like I don't need something else. Right. Like I sit at my laptop all the time and when I'm on the subway I want like a thing I can hold in one hand and like play games on or read on or whatever and this is that. Right. Like I don't need this giant productivity machine. Well actually you kind of do because you've been slacking. That's more reviews. I think the like this makes sense to me in a lot of markets where for most people their phones are already their primary computers and that's just like a thing and that's a growing thing in the world. But for me personally that's just not how I operate. I'm excited for this to become my primary computer. Yes. I think that's insane. No. Why is that insane? It's only insane because the software isn't good enough for it to be that yet. That's the only reason it's insane. Right. And like Samsung's like trying to do that with a note. I mean the problem just straight out is that Samsung is not as good at software. Right. Like they have really interesting ideas about how to do all that stuff on the note and I actually I mean I like the note. Every time I see one on the subway or out in the world I'm like I love big screens and then I like play with the software. I'm like I hate your software. Yeah. And that's that's the only problem with the note is that yeah it's cool to do split screen and like resize the apps and do the swipey thing to make a little phone on the screen and use it like that would all be great if it was like smooth and worked well. Well that's what I'm saying like Samsung is at least trying and like I forever will think that the Samsung Note Edge is the most interesting phone that's come out recently because it's weird and probably not going to work but it's different and they're trying stuff. Yeah. Like Samsung you can say a lot of things about Samsung but they try stuff. Yeah. And they're not trying anything here. Like this is literally all this is is like you're getting a slightly bigger version of the video that I'm getting on here. And what I'm getting is like a more ergonomic thing that actually fits in my pocket. And that doesn't obscure your face when I try to take a picture. But that for me is a really easy trade off. So like in three years I might be happy to buy this. And I when it when they make it worth being slightly bigger or when the watch comes out and makes it so that I'm not taking my phone out of my bag very often. Great. And there are a million reasons this is useful to have. But for right now for like a thing I use constantly in short bursts all the time I'd rather have the thing that fits if the experience is the same and the experience is the same. Right. They haven't done enough with the software to make the experience different. No. All you get is like a two paned messages window which doesn't really do anything for me. Yeah. I mean they are. That's the thing. I like the feeling Apple like made some concessions to how big the phone was instead of having a plan. Right. And the email I've gotten a few times is that like that's that's the talk. Right. Like this is the tech where they're like here's this crazy weird new thing and then the next time they're going to come out and like here's stuff to do with it. Yeah. And that's that may well be the case but that's. It doesn't make this better now. That's why I think I'll get that one when they when they get the right. Like in three years I will gladly buy this phone. But for right now it's like it's not worth the trade off of it. Have we talked you out of this phone yet. No sitting awkwardly. I have one more trump card. Oh here it is. Which is the camera slightly better. And that and I the experience of taking photos like I like using this phone has made me understand why people take photos with tablets because it's like wow I just became a much better photographer just by having the ability to frame stuff better. It's true. You should get glasses. Well no I should get a gigantic screen. Super easy. I should wear glasses like a nerd or I can get a huge phone like a bigger. Why wear glasses. Nailed it. You know I know I'm wearing contact lenses now. I'm sorry. Do you want to try my giant phone. If you try and hand that phone to me now I'll drop it. I can't see anything. Who's that laughing at me over there. What's going on. I mean look I'm just saying I think this is the one. Like oh mostly for the fact that it is so different and I you're right. I appreciate different. Well you just appreciate different because you haven't had different because you've been no I like I love my Nexus 5. I think that's a great phone. If that phone had a great camera I don't know. Nexus 5 that apparently is prone to the screen chattering. Yeah people mean when you drop it on the ground it shatters. I dropped it like a foot. If you buy it from Google Play like that you can like the people on Twitter told me about this you can like trick your way into like having them just fix that for you. Yeah fair. So here's what I think is which like we have you know differences of opinion but which is going to sell better. Where they they pre-ordered four million of them. The big one. The small one. I think it's the small one. I don't even think it's going to be close. I think a lot of people are going to return the big one and get the small one. Really. That's what I think. I think a lot of people don't understand how much bigger than their iPhone 5 this is. I mean it is like the screen is as tall as an entire iPhone 5. Yeah I mean it's like this is comedy. Like I'm talking to. No and I think like there are a lot of people at least people that I know who are going to be upgrading from like a 4s to this and it's going to feel terrible. And I think people will like would get used to it. But in the 15 day return period are going to take it back and get a 6. I disagree. Because I've had so many people who I hand this to and they're like oh my god that's way too big. And it's like that's the small one. Sorry about your life. There's no I mean this is barely even perceptible to me. If I wasn't holding a 5s in one hand and a 6 in the other I would just tell you this is a 5 like the same size of a 5. I don't know. That's my. So other than other than the adapting to screen size how do you guys feel about iOS 8? I haven't used it yet. I've been waiting for the 6 to come so I can get it. iOS 8 it definitely just feels like they thought it through this time. Mm-hmm. Right and it's like David saying this stuff we're just now seeing the apps take advantage of it. Right. And all the keyboard people are ready to go which is like adorable. I know. But I think like understanding how photo apps are going to plug into the extensibility I think until Yosemite comes out and we can play with like handoff and continuity and all that stuff. I mean that's the one thing like we kind of said this is WWDC that like that's the one thing that's game changing. Everything else is like cool and should have been there and my thing is like I love almost everything about iOS 8 and it doesn't make any sense to me why they didn't release it a year ago. But handoff and continuity are the two things that are like no one is doing that and that's like if that's why you buy into an Apple ecosystem is for that stuff. Right. And that's huge. Taking a phone call from a Mac is like it will just bring the pain of making a phone call on AT&T to every part of my life. Yeah I mean I do this like jacked up thing all the time where I'll open a Google Maps link on Chrome on my computer and then I go to Chrome on my phone and then open up Chrome and then I'm like oh there are devices and then I wait for it to refresh and then I open that tab up again and just being able to go and like swipe up from the bottom left corner and there's my map is huge. Yeah. That's amazing. Too bad it's Apple Maps. Yeah so I won't get where I'm going. I know. But at least it'll look cool. No I mean that's the stuff like iOS 8 is like a clear like iOS 7 was very messy in places. Yeah. I think everyone just admits it now. iOS 8 clearly refines all the broken parts of it and makes it more extensible and bigger but it's as with all of these things it's like when will the app developers show up and the answer right now appears to be right away. Yeah. Yeah. I mean this is why they did this is why they talked about our WWDC right they were like go build this stuff we can't tell you why but it's gonna be great. I will say the iOS 8 on my 5s feels very small. Yeah. Like the adding the extra row of predictive text about the keyboard the keyboard now takes up you know 55% of the screen which is crazy and then like you pull down and if I have like eight widgets and it takes like an hour and a half to scroll through them all and all this stuff is like it's clearly designed for bigger devices which makes sense that's what they sell now. Yeah. But it's like it updating was. My phone my 5s won't update. Why I don't know just erroring out. It just hates you? Yeah whatever I mean it's so broken it knows it's not long for this world I mean I'm sorry. I'm legitimately worried to know what my iPad mini is gonna do with iOS 8. It's gonna die. Whatever. It's gonna die. They want you to buy a new one or they want you to buy a Kindle tablet hey. Oh. All right you played with a bunch of the Amazon stuff. Yeah Amazon announced like 50 things yesterday. Yeah. So there's a new HDX 8.9 inch tablet it's a spec bump I don't care about it. I'm sorry. They announced new HD HD 7 and HD 6 tablets so it's like super low end tablets and the HD 6 which is like bordering on can you even call it a tablet. Yeah. 6 inch screen. It's 99 bucks. It's an iPod touch. It's an iPod touch. It's the iPod touch. It's actually kind of insane for 99 bucks and you got already on Amazon Prime membership because of course you do. You've got like a hundred dollar thing that you can watch Amazon video on you can like chuck it and it's more durable than other Android tablets. It's like relatively sturdy and if you lose it it's a hundred bucks. Yeah I mean this is what I've been saying forever is like and this is the you know the logic of Amazon giving away for free and in a real way a hundred dollars is like a huge step in that direction but like Amazon has this big trove of content. Yeah. And if you pay a hundred dollars a year it's all free. Yeah. Right. And so nobody is more set up to have an iPod touch than Amazon. Yeah. So the thing about the 6 and the 7 is like they're low end Android tablets are running some media tech processor. It's the truest sign of quality. Well it might they might be terrible but I think when I think good user experience I think media tech. But FireOS seems smooth on it but who knows. Like Amazon has crappy games and a media tech processor will stream your video and music and the end. So the thing is slow and jaggy and whatever as long as it will play that video I don't care. Right. It's a hundred dollars and I'm gonna be able to pull it out on a plane and watch the Amazon Prime video that I have downloaded. Because you can watch that you can watch that download you can download Amazon Prime videos or a bunch of them. I mean I'm just saying I don't understand like I think Amazon software strategy is not good. It's not great. The content strategy is really good and their content strategy is also not going anywhere so their kids strategy is better than anybody else's and it's super weird but so you can buy the kid version of these tablets fifty bucks more. You get this giant bouncy case that kids can hold but you also get a two year warranty like literally you can take the tablet smash with the ball peen hammer send it back. They'll send you a new one saw it in half. Make sure you send at least fifty one percent back. They'll send you a new one for two years. No questions we don't care. So like you can buy this thing for a hundred bucks turn on all the parental controls of like what kind of apps you can use no in app purchases blah blah blah. Get the free year of like you get to watch Dora or whatever. Yeah. What are Nickelodeon. They got a bunch of stuff. I think they got Disney in free time. Yeah. Yeah. It's not just like here's a hundred dollar tablet and you are free to destroy it. Go away. The best parenting tool in the history of time. And then America. All good things end with you telling your kids go away. Yeah. Go child. Yeah. Learn from this tablet. No explore. Teaches people how to speak Spanish. So don't you hate on door. Teaches people the Diego is just useless. Really. I'm just saying like I've watched a lot of Dora with my niece and nephew. There were well your niece and nephew. Thankfully there's time. Man Diego dude get it together. Just like get your shit together Diego. Like you're always lost. So like you're just you're never in the right place. Tell me the truth about the swiper. The swiper actually like scary. No I was a kid. I was like a wreck. Villains were like scary. No swipers are getting adorable raccoon. He's like whatever. And doors like oh man you're swiping like whatever door. I have a question. Yeah. Can we pivot this podcast just be recaps of door to the Explorer. Oh oh. Really. Large untapped mark. I know. Dora Dora and Diego go to a place. Diego screws up catastrophically. Someone else swiper no swiping and then everything is resolved. Well Dora uses her bilingual skills. And she says pack pack. Right. I mean Dora is legit. Like yeah. Like as a lady like she's like she's on her game right. Like hold on. I'm just gonna take that. What. What. I'm saying like Dora. It's clear that children should idolize Dora. Yeah. I'm saying that if you're if you are into Diego you are headed down a life of misery. Right. That's your wrong role model. So I flushed along. It's just a thing that happened in my life. No keep going. I feel like this has been waiting inside you for a long time. Diego's bullshit. That's all right. The best thing Amazon announced was the Voyage the Kindle Voyage. Yeah. It's really good. Okay wait. I don't understand because I have a paper way and it's a pile of garbage. Perfect. It is. I have zero problem. I've never had fewer problems with a device. So many problems. Why? It is slow. The screen is not flushed. The screen is plastic and scratches easily. And it does scratch easily. It's not too heavy. It's too thick. It's too heavy. Uh huh. Is this the game we're about to play? And like paper white is too heavy. Yes. Crap. You're crazy. And the screen is not 300 pixels per inch. That's true. I'll give you that. And it refreshes too slowly. And it doesn't have physical buttons that you can just like squeeze it. Yeah wait. How does that actually work? I don't understand that. That's it. That's like there's no bezel physically. You like physically just like give a little tiny squeeze to the bezel like not too hard and then there's like haptic feedback. The other reason your paper white sucks is it doesn't have auto adjusting on the brightness. And even if it did, it still sucks because if you're reading in bed in the dark, it doesn't get dimmer over time because it knows your eyes are adjusting to the darkness. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I ordered one. Did you? Yeah. Zeder texted me last night and he's like, I bought a voyage and then I felt, I would say like a deep American materialistic, like a what? A purchase can be made and I haven't, I'm not, the president might know that I haven't done my duty. My Cadillac has bigger fins on it than yours. Here's, here's my dream fleet right now. 2001 Escalade, used Escalade. I saw one on a weekend trip for a sale for $9,000 and I thought to myself, I bet I could talk to the $7,000 and then it would be a deal. And seriously, they've like been eBay on eBay motors looking at 2001 Escalades for some time now. Why would you want dude? I don't know. Impala Impala. No, no. The slate is like a critical element of a fleet. And then a new Mustang. The 2015 Mustang? Yeah. You will, you will drive. The only time you will drive it is when you're moving parking spots because you live in New York. No, I'll drive the Mustang to the garage with a 2001 Escalade that's constantly being repaired. And then you'll just roll down the East side. I'm just saying like, I think the verge should own an Escalade. I'm fine with that. What? Cause then we can all get in it and like go places. Only if you convert it to run off of like, like crickets or like biodiesel biodiesel. No crickets. Crickets. Crickets is like hard. Just crickets. Biodiesel is like, isn't, you can like just roll up like, and that like, let me paint you a scene. We're all in our suite Escalade. Okay, hold on. I'm going to close my eyes. All right. And then we just like, we're like driving around. It smells like French fries because we're doing biodiesel. Who's driving? It doesn't matter. We all take turns, right? And then like the rest of us are just like hanging out. Your eyes are open. And then we were like, man, we're like out of gas. And then we like roll up behind a McDonald's and like steal their oil. And then like, that's how we, no. Okay. It got weird at the end. I was with you for so long there. That's the biodiesel stories. Like you're constantly like going to McDonald's or like fusion powered. We could do fusion like a mystery. We need mr. Fusion. Yeah. What if, what if we get on 2001 escalate to over to like pimp my ride style or 2001. We should actually talk about it. So Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are like in a rocket ship war, right? Like didn't, didn't, uh, Bezos did something else with like spaceship blue or whatever something is called. Uh, and then Elon Musk, like I love the idea that like billionaires desperately want to go to space. Is this a place where, um, that's right. They is this a place where like capitalism and competition is the best thing? Yeah. I mean it is, but like maybe if they worked together, it would be cheaper and we would get up there faster with cooler stuff. No, but they want to each be in their own. I mean like they're, they're like months away from like mounting guns on one of our spaceship and like having like billion hair laser fights in space. That would be so sick. I mean that is definitely like a sci-fi show waiting to happen. I mean, yeah, I'm kind of in the idea of Elon Musk, my ride moon. Yeah, it's called moon raker. No, here's an idea. This one's free for everybody. You get billionaires and you make him play laser tech. That's the whole show. Billionaire laser fight. Do they get to like design their own laser tag as a kid? I was not allowed to have laser tag as a kid, but I was allowed to have the version of laser tag that was with like an actual like replica Beretta. It looked like a gun, like a real gun. You and I grew up in the era where guns were allowed to look like guns. We like, we want it. We played guns. That was what you did as a kid. They didn't have like orange caps. No, no, no. They would, they would, it looked like, it looked like a gun. Yeah. I actually just owned it. It was actually, it was just an unloaded fire on the toilet. Uh, no, I had my nest zapper was gray. And then like two years later they made them all orange. Yeah. No, but I was not allowed to own laser tag, but there are many laser tech facilities in the region. Oh yeah. That's what we had too. Yeah. But did you play the laser tag where you shoot each other or the laser tag where you all just shoot at targets? Uh, each other. Of course each other. Cause it was like, we shoot at targets. Now all it is is targets. That sucks. Yeah. It's like, let's run around and look at each other while we shoot at targets. Yeah. And if there's fun laser tag out there, I will go anywhere in America to play fun laser tag in our 2000. Yes. That gets phenomenal gas mileage. Uh, but yeah, there's like targets up in the corner of the room and you just run around and shoot those. Yeah. Which just sounds horrible. How do you, so you just become the first person they've ruined laser tag. Well, like they can still shoot you, but you don't get points by shooting them. Like if, if, if you're shooting at the target, I shoot you and then you have to like go away and recharge and then come back and keep shooting the target instead of like, how many people did you kill? So you can be like, so you can be like the world's ultimate griefer. Basically like not shoot the targets, just kill everybody. Yes. Cool. Oh, we should talk about minecraft. Speaking of grievers, that's all. Let's wrap up on minecraft. So somebody explained minecraft to me. Uh, the game or the event that happened surrounding it? All of it. Uh, the game is awesome and you should play it. Yeah. It's fun and creative and helps kids learn and helps you build castles in the sky. Okay. Here's the question. I don't know the answer to. How does minecraft make money? They, they sell games. Yeah. They sell expansion packs. That, that was like the basics of minecraft is free, right? Right. But they sell more, right? And they also like license like collectibles. Yeah. It's a, just a franchise. Right. But is that, is that worth a 2 billion? It was $2 billion, right? Yeah. 2.5. Oh, that's right. It was 2.5. So it's like $2 billion to Microsoft. Uh, because it's like, it's the, it's the future of Lego. Like it's like the, like the number. Is it like minecraft can be cool for 50 years? Yes. Really? Yeah. I don't know, man. I know. Like if you talk to all of the various VOX dads who like play Minecraft with their kids, they're like all super into it. Yeah. No, that's definitely true is there's like this whole army of nine year olds who are super obsessed with Minecraft. Yeah. And they have like their own servers and like their own communities and like that all I get it's just, I maybe I should play the game more. Here's my dream. I've been thinking about this. Uh, so notch quit mojang, right? Uh, when they sold it to Microsoft, he said, I don't want to be responsible. By the way, Minecraft is not free on every platform. It's like depending on the platform or cost. Oh really? Okay, fair enough. Um, so notch quit, he wrote this like very emotional letter about like, I don't want to be a part of this. Like I don't want to take responsibility. I just want to play games. And he's like, but like, it's like, it's a really easy thing to write after you sell your company for $2.5 billion. Like not to be cynical about it, but like if, if you're like, I don't want to be part of this, then just leave. Don't sell for $2.5 billion. What are you going to do? Like, would you rather he just like lit the whole thing on fire? No, but like you don't get to take, no, no, that was his, that's like why he sold it. Yeah. He sold it because he was in charge and he was like, I, this needs a steward. Right. And the only steward is like this company. So I'm selling it and that's fine. It's all, that's fine. Well, and it just felt, I don't know, the, the letter felt very holier than vow to me in a way that I don't think it needed to watch the, I mean the, he, he referenced that, that the 20 minute video or about Phil fish or 10 minute video about Phil fish about like how he's become a symbol of like the internet's ability to like hate famous people on the internet. Oh yeah. Yeah. And like, it's actually, it's a really smart thing. And so if this guy like is honest and he says, I do not want to be the figurehead in charge of this game and also manage this whole game, like selling it to me seems like a relatively virtuous thing to do. All right. That's fair. That's fair. If that's legit. Yeah. If that's what he was after, that's fine. I'm just saying, I think we should get, we should get Paul Miller to interview Notch and just talk about like leaving. Yeah. Yeah. Like the vibe to me was very much. Paul Miller invented the internet and then left. It's true. He wired the first ethernet cables. No, the vibe, when I read that letter, the vibe was very much when Paul left the internet and I was like, we should get these people in the room. Paul, if you're out there, I know that you are. Paul. Love you buddy. Notch, I don't know what you're doing now. Probably reclining on a bed of money. Not feeling not responsible for anything. Talk to me. Let's get at me. Yeah. Let's all, let's all be in a room together talking. It won't be awkward at all. No one will bring up Dora or Escalades. What else? Anything else going on? There's some Windows stuff coming up at the end of the month. Yeah. Windows 9. Yeah. We had a little preview and then we also, Tom Warren put up some, we had some screenshots of an upcoming version of Office that has a little help box that is reminiscent, although not cartoony of Clippy. New Clippy? Yeah. Not Clippy. It's like Clippy-esque. It's new Clippy. It's Clippy-esque. I mean, can Microsoft get away with doing anything Clippy-esque without people calling it Clippy? No. No. Tom will be here next week. We should put him on the show. That's true. We can do it. We'll do a long Windows preview with Tom Warren. Yeah. It looks good. Did you see, he retweeted somebody's Vine where it's like, I got a copy of Windows 9 and you open it up and it's a Windows 7 DVD with a, sorry for Windows 8. It's pretty great. Man, Windows 8. Yeah. You know, I have a Surface Pro 2 in my house. I was playing with it the other day. I just had one. And man, that's so close, so far. Like, so close. I like the Surface Pro 3. Do you know what I mean? You know my theory about like Apple fanboys? I think Apple fanboys are beginning to root for Microsoft because they're tired of being like the big dogs and they hate Google and they need a new underdog to replace Google. That's interesting. It's like a psychological theory that I have. I mean, I also think that, and we've been saying this for a long time, that I think Microsoft is attempting to do a lot of the right things. Yeah, like this is why I- Like what Apple is doing, like the story you tell about this is the same story that Microsoft tells about the Surface, they just did it wrong. Yeah. And it's like if Windows 9 is them figuring out how to do it, that's awesome. It's not. It's them walking Windows 8 all the way back. Just all the way back. You think so? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a start menu again. Like it's all this stuff. They're taking all the ideas from Windows 8 and putting them in a box inside the start menu. Like how is that not the best metaphor? Oh man. Oh, Microsoft. You're going to get there someday, I promise you. Before we go, I want to talk about the Apple Watch, because we haven't talked about the watch yet. We talked about the watch all last week. You just weren't here. Oh, I wasn't here. I will say, I'm going to actually- Have you changed your mind? I have not changed my mind. Actually, I am more and more convinced the watch is a disaster the more and more I think about it. Wow. I have approximately 23 opinions about the watch, and I want to just put them all on a page. I just haven't done it. Fair enough. I cannot get away from the idea that it is a watch with a right click. That is just weird to me. I don't understand it. Force Touch, bad brand. It's just a collection of- Fair enough. This is going to sound really weird. Here's the thing. I look at the watch, and I think of the incredible collection of A-player talent they've assembled. Now freely, obviously, enter the fashion market with the watch. The thing I'm thinking about is all of these people are in charge. You can't hire the CEO of Burberry and the CEO of Yves Saint Laurent and a VP from Adobe. The Businessweek article said Tim Cook had his number one guy be in charge. Johnny Ive is still there, and Phil Schiller is still there. None of those people are... All of them are in charge, and none of them are in charge. That is the clear- Yeah, you don't hire those people by saying you work for so and so. Right. Maybe they're in charge of slices, but there isn't one person. That's what I think about the watch. It looks to me like one person wasn't in charge. That is just expressed in the idea that you can force touch it, which is it is just a weird interaction paradigm, and it is not the right one. Dude, Force Touch is coming to iOS. It's the worst name. It's coming to the iPhone. Dude, this is the thing. Get ready. It's coming. If you described it as a screen technology, that is the next thing they're going to do for screen technology. No, but you know how you make a big screen work better in one hand is Force Touch. You let you do more things by touching the parts of the screen that you can touch. This is a company that literally only had one button on its mice for 20 years. That's what I mean. Philosophically, I don't understand this paradigm. Oh, sure. I'm just agreeing with Dieter. Force Touch is coming to the iPhone. You're disagreeing or just agreeing? No, I'm agreeing with Dieter. You're just agreeing. No, I'm just like, that's fine. Yeah, I use right click on my Mac all the time now. Long pressing isn't interesting, but I just cannot get away from the idea, and this is somebody very smart said this to me, smaller screens demand fewer interaction methods. Sure. This one has so... That's why they invented multitouch. It's the smallest screen and it has the most interaction methods. That's why they used multitouch. Can you pinch to zoom on the Apple Watch? No, you have to use the crown. You use a dial, but can you also pinch to zoom? I think you can also pinch to zoom. That's great. I'm just saying all of that, and I understand the argument that they haven't shown us all the software, that they're still working on it. I don't think it's going to come out for a long time. I understand that maybe it's really expensive and it's a market, whatever. What I do absolutely know is that it is impossible from what we have seen so far to explain to somebody how to use it, and that is crazy. That is not... That's so far out of the zone for Apple that I... People pick up an iPhone and they figured out how to use it instantly. I was actually thinking about this. When the iPhone first got announced and then it came out, they had that however many month period where they were just blasting commercials and all the commercials were was, here's the iPhone, here's how to do stuff on it. But here's the thing about those commercials. Every single one of them was like, holy crap, that looks awesome. I need to do that. Those are things I like to do. I see how easy that is. Give me that. Yeah. The commercial, they weren't instructions. Yeah. They were like, look at how easy it is. Yeah. They were instructions that were also like advertisements for a thing that you want. Right. I don't know how those commercials would work for the Apple Watch. You've got this watch and you really want to look at a map on it. I don't know. I'm just like, I... It's the photos that gets me every time. They're like, we've found ways for you to carry your photos around. And then he scrolls out and it's just a million one pixel icons of photos. I don't know. I'm wearing a watch. You know who that's useful to? It's Justin. Yeah. This watch is a crown. It's like the last thing I want to do is monkey with this knob on my watch. You're not supposed to monkey with it all that often. I don't know. I am deeply, deeply skeptical. It's not because Apple didn't have a killer app. It's not because I think it should be cheaper. None of that stuff. I'm skeptical because I think there's too many ways to interact with it. And I think that all seems really messy to me. I mean luckily, they have probably what, 10 months to figure it out. Maybe they will. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I don't think it's going to be until June. I kind of doubt it. But we'll see. I mean, they're not shying away from the fact that this is historic. Tim Cook is betting his legacy on this watch. So he has proven to be a smart CEO in the past. I'm assuming that he's putting resources against this. Yeah. I mean, they're not going to bail on this. Like they'll- Just kidding. Yeah. The first one, they're like, sorry guys. Bad move. We're done. Right. But- Just put it on the shelf next to your folio. Right. But you kind of hope that in Tim Cook's office, there's like a huge glass display case. And in it, there's just two objects. There's a Newton and there's an iPhone. And he's like, man, we got to do this one. Because the Newton was a great idea and it had tons of potential. And another CEO made it who wasn't Steve Jobs. And if they had just kept grinding on the Newton, it would have turned into something. It probably would have turned into the iPhone. I don't know about that. But Steve Jobs came back- It would have turned into the trio. Right. It was a lot of really good ideas about that paradigm. And it would have just kept going. And nobody would have faulted them for continuing. And then there's the iPhone, which was like a revolution. Right. And you just have to think- So Apple could have either been Blackberry or Apple. Right. Exactly. You have to think, this watch, we know so little about it. It's either the world's best Moto 360 or the world's best Pebble, or it's a revolution. And you just hope that Tim Cook is actually thinking in those terms. Yeah. Fair. Because what he's saying over and over again is this is a revolution. And then you look at it and it's like, but why is it that thing? It's just a pretty good- That, as far as I can tell, is not the answer at all. We want a revolution. And Apple is the... They're all doing what they can. Right. We're done. This is over. I'm getting in my 2001 escalator. I'm going home. I'm sorry. We were listening to U2 album. It was right there. All right. Are we going to talk about the U2 album? No. I mean- No. That's fine. The U2 album is like, it is like a year ago if Apple had given everybody a free U2 album, nobody would have cared. Yeah. But after the NSA and iCloud leaks and like, was the government looking... Apple just dumping stuff on your phone is terrifying. Yeah. Right? If Dropbox, everybody's Dropbox, now has a U2 album in it, nobody would have cared. I would have cared. Not if they didn't take your storage and you could just like, here's a link and you can open it and it's just there. Or they didn't take your storage, I suppose. But if they shot that stuff, shit down to my computer, because that's how Dropbox works, it syncs to your computer. That's fair. That's like, to me, that's probably the U2 album is like, that's like 20 megabytes of stuff that I would like to keep on open for pictures. Yeah. I mean, also the album is bad. Also the idea that what people, like Apple thinks what people want is like to download MP3 files. Yeah. Yeah. There's many things about that. I mean like- Well, the other thing- Yeah. I mean, why didn't Jimmy Iovine stop this? Why didn't they put it on Beats Music? Yeah. Just put it on Beats. Because they probably can't yet. Because- Well, but Apple's already- What Apple wanted- They're talking a lot about Beats Music. Yeah. Like Tim Cook went on Charlie Rose and talked a lot about Beats Music. It was in this Business Week profile. Right. They're just not ready. It's on Apple TV now. That's a thing. That's what I thought. It could have been, even if you don't subscribe to Beats, you can listen to this U2 album on the Beats app for free for eternity. Yeah. Go ahead and make sure you open your Beats app. Right. Because that doesn't make U2 any money. That's what it's about. At the end of the day- No, what makes U2- At the end of the day is Apple. I mean, don't you think Apple paid U2 for this? Apple made U2 money. Yeah. No, but U2 wants to run out. It's like objects. I mean, U2 wants reach. They want 500 million people to have their phone home. They want all the people to have it. Right. They want like, Beats Music is in every country. They have the new show, blah, blah, blah. And they want to be able to say, this is the most downloaded album ever. Right. Or the biggest selling album since X. And Apple paid them for that. They gave them that marketing. They got in trouble for it, but at least they tried and they put it on Beats. It's like U2 sold out to sell Beats. And that is a different... You know, but the Samsung deal with the Jay-Z? Yeah. Didn't hurt him. Well, he's Jay-Z. Yeah, he's Jay-Z. No, honestly, if there's anyone on earth who's immune to that, it's Jay-Z. But at the same time, nobody's mad at U2. I'm not saying... I mean, the album sucks, but I'm not saying anybody's using U2. When I see memes, it's always like Bono's head with a little speech bubble. Yeah. Coming out of it going, ha ha. That's all I see. Well, U2 got paid, like whatever. They made a pretty mediocre record and they got paid. Good for U2. Pretty mediocre is the kindest thing that I've said about that record. This is the most mediocre. It's right there in the middle. Well, I heard... My favorite solution to this whole problem was... I forget where I heard it, but somebody was like, what if they just put better U2 albums on instead? Everybody gets the Joshua Tree. We'll solve this by giving you other U2 albums. No, I mean, it's U2, man. It's fine. It's just nothing. U2 came after a credit card service. Yeah. In the scope of that presentation, it was like, we're gonna change the world with Mastercard and Amex and Visa and here's U2, everybody. This is weird. The Edge's guitar tone is the best, though. That's wonderful. It was so good. I was out of the room by then. I stayed for eight seconds just to let him envelope me in his Vox AC30. It was really... And you wept. It was great. And then you left. It was very nice. It was a very nice guitar sound. But whatever, U2. Apple needs to get to Beats Music. They need to get to a place with Beats Music where U2 wants to put out free albums on there instead of being like, let's pump them through iTunes. But how do you... They are just not there yet. Right, but there's no way to do that but to do it. If Apple has proven one thing, it's that it, in four seconds, can make something huge. No, not that yet. Why? Just not yet. Why? It took them five years to make iTunes radio. It's like I talked to Jimmy Iovine at that event. They're slow, but this is what I'm saying. If they take a thing... But you just said they're fast. No, they're fast at taking something that exists and making it mainstream. They came out with Apple Pay, which everyone has already done, and they said, Apple Pay, and then suddenly... Right, but it took them years. We'll see. I saw Jimmy Iovine at the event, and I was like, how's it going? And he's like, it's my sixth week. Right. Fair. Sixth week being the editor-in-chief of The Verge, and then we had a hilarious fish out of water story moment. Can you just stop with the Jimmy Iovine humblebrags, please? Just for a minute. I'm a big fan of Jimmy Iovine. You guys fucked Jimmy Iovine. I got Gwen Stefani hitting me in the shoulder when she walked by. She was shooting me out of the way. You guys are friends now? No, it was a get the hell out of my way, useless, nobody. That's fair. Yeah. Right. I was friends with the guy in Sublime. That's what Gwen Stefani is thinking of herself all the time. Like, I need that dude, and you never can. I'm awesome. I'm awesome, because I would like to know that guy. I went through a Sublime phase. It's super dark. It's not that dark. I just listened to that record again recently. I was like, 40 Hours of Freedom? Yeah. It's a good record. That one and then the Sublime record. It just came on. It was like we were in a house. It was beachy. I was like, we should listen to some Sublime. And then we did, and that was great. Sweet story. I knew that story, everybody. No, I tried super hard to creep on Angela Aaron's talking to Will.i.am. And it was just impossible. I feel like there's a force field around that. It's a force field of tall, terrifying women who just sort of like just crowd you. They just get up on you and they're like, oh, I'm not allowed to stand here anymore. I guess I'll go. Okay, that was Vergecast. Thank you for listening to us. That's always nice. We never introduced ourselves. I just realized that. Oh, at the end. Yeah, I'm Neil. We're going to introduce ourselves. Yeah, introductions. Yeah, this is I'm Neal. I'm David. I am Dieter. Yeah. You can find us on Twitter. He's Pierce David. He's reckless. I'm Backlund. Yeah. And this is Vergecast every Thursday, 430 streaming on our site. And then we'll have the audio up very shortly after. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week.
 Hello. How are you doing? Welcome to the Vergecast. That's usually the next line.
 I don't know. He was doing a thing. Yeah. You gotta, hello, welcome to the
 Vergecast. This is our show. It is a show about just a bunch of guys having a good
 time. I don't know. Is that what it's about? No. What is life about? It's a show
 about me having a small existential crisis once a week with good friends.
 That's right. And technology and news and pretty much us arguing at the end of
 Breaking Bad, which I've discovered recently can just send us into a
 tailspin of disaster, and other ideas. In fact, in figures, emotions. This is the
 Vergecast. Look at all this negotiation I have to do to get this beer up to my mouth.
 Yeah. It's really bad. Here's what I'm saying about the Vergecast. It's back. We've been
 gone for a long time. We did a Hack Week podcast. We threw together one last week
 and now we're just back. It's just gonna keep happening. We've got kind of a
 different set going on here based on- The French Cafe set. The French- It's very nice.
 It's a salon. We kind of looked at our numbers and like how people were
 consuming the Vergecast. We realized most of you were downloading it on audio, so
 we're gonna be focused on making a really great sort of like audio thing.
 Are we unattractive? No. Is this- No, I have a theory about the internet.
 Do you? This is the only one you have. No, I think, I believe the internet has
 radically changed consumption media. Fact. That's true. Don't even argue with me.
 Are we gonna talk about Taylor Swift right now? We can. We can in a minute. But if you
 think about how people used to consume information in their lives, it was they
 would wake up in the morning and read a newspaper and they would go to work and
 presumably be productive and then they would come home at night and like watch
 television. Right? And if you just look- I just- That happened. Just keep going. I
 feel like there was a lot of Minesweeper in the middle of there. Yeah, but like, whatever.
 But then what happened, then the internet arrived and now everybody
 wakes up in the morning and like plays with their phone and they get to work and read
 our website all day long. Bless you. Which is true. Our highest like traffic is like at
 noon. Yeah. And then they go home and like play games and like all of information
 is like we've moved it from like the beginning end of the day to like the
 dead center of the day. And that is what to do with podcasting? Well,
 hear me out. I think people listen to podcasts on their way to work. They listen
 to podcasts at work while they're ignoring their jobs and then they listen
 to it on the way home from work. Yeah. And those are all bad places to watch video.
 And when they're doing dishes. And apparently dishes. Yep. Basically you listen-
 Big podcasting time. Whenever you are- Whenever you should be doing something else,
 you should be listening to a podcast. I mean that's definitely when I listen to podcasts.
 Like I listen to one- Basically one podcast a day in three chunks. It's like
 when I'm getting ready in the morning on my way to work and on my way home from
 work. Yeah. You know an hour and ten minutes every time. Do you listen at regular speed or do you speed it up?
 See I listen at regular speed. I speed it up. I speed it up. Yeah. It's actually pretty good. Like the- What is it? Pocketcast that I use is like it-
 People don't sound crazy. I use an app that people made people just sound horrible.
 So you know that Marco Amens podcast thing. It speeds it up but it also removes the silences.
 And so it sounds really natural. Apparently really neat. That is neat. But yeah we should just talk
 1.5 speed just to troll the people that listen. I mean I have friends who basically talk at 1.5 speed.
 I feel like we all talk at 1.5 speed. Everyone I know is like please stop talking so fast. But I have so many facts and figures.
 So anyway the point of that digression was that we know most people are consuming us on audio.
 So we are gonna figure out what to do with video. I think what we should do is we should let this be a podcast.
 And then when we want to make TV shows or video shows or whatever shows we should make those differently.
 Which is a radical idea I know. Let each media be true to itself he proclaimed.
 Although we are starting this audio only format with a live show that is on camera.
 But if you want to see us sitting around being jerks. Revealing the lie behind all language.
 No this is like yes right. Everything is a symbol that means we are gonna die.
 No but if you want to watch us be goofballs together you can tune into us live and we will have the replays on livestream.
 So if you want to hang out with us now. Now is a good time. 4.30 pm eastern on Thursdays.
 Anyway Vergecast is back. Those are some facts about the Vergecast. Tell me some figures about the Vergecast.
 There are three of them on it right now. There are three people on the Vergecast.
 It is very tall. It is 12 feet tall. Very wide. It has a blue ox as a pet.
 It is straight to Paul Bunyan. What? Deeders from Minnesota. He always immediately references something Minnesota.
 Everything in Minnesota is either Prince or Paul Bunyan. And Prince isn't very tall. Funny story. Same guy.
 Huge. Actually Prince is very small. Tiny man. Paul Bunyan by the way.
 Is it like two princes stacked on top of each other with a trench coat is Paul Bunyan?
 No one gives Paul Bunyan credit for being an excellent guitarist.
 I mean he is really good with an axe. Alright we are done. Shut it down.
 We are never doing this again. Okay let's talk about speaking of enormous things.
 There is actually a lot of news to talk about this week. I am holding a gigantic iPhone.
 I have a less gigantic iPhone. I don't have an iPhone. Do you want like a little iPhone?
 I am taking this one out of the case. That is my 5S. Does this have a big crack in the middle?
 Here is my plan with the 5S. I am not going to switch it, my SIM card, until that phone explodes.
 Because it is so close. You are on your way to that happening.
 It is so close to being completely trashed. Anyway so this was reviews week for us with the iPhones.
 iOS 8 review is coming next week because there is so much to unpack there.
 Yeah it was really like, and we kind of thought this was going to be the case and it totally proved out that like so much of iOS 8 didn't get unlocked until all these developers started updating their apps.
 And like there is all kinds of cool stuff going on that was not there for us before.
 So like iOS feels, even now like I am still waiting for a bunch of widgets that I know are coming and I really want to use.
 And like it is starting to finish now which is cool. But yeah so that is coming Monday.
 I would say most of the apps, we should get into the actual reviews but a lot of the apps that have updated have not updated for the 6 plus yet.
 I think developers were actually surprised by the screen size. Interesting. Which is weird.
 Yeah because you are just saying you are still getting four tweets on Twitter.
 Yeah my Twitter is like literally to show you four. Oh so it looks like Twitter on the iPad.
 Yeah it is very. Which is just. Twitter. Other than that they just rolled out a bunch of new stuff.
 Anyway let's talk about these reviews and then Dieter you played with a bunch of Amazon new stuff yesterday.
 Yeah yeah. And there is all kinds of stuff going on with the website.
 Wait so okay here is where we need to start because I feel like this is the only question anybody wants to ask and we should actually just talk about it is like which one should people buy?
 The 6 or the 6 plus? The big one. The 6 plus. Why?
 So I am. Plus. Here the 6 plus. Thanks Dieter.
 So also wait can I just back up real quick. So my favorite thing about this phone is that everyone almost everyone picks it up and immediately knows which one they want.
 Right like you pick up the big one and you are like this is way too big or you are like this is perfect.
 Let me tell you a story about the 6 plus. Hold on let me finish. Damn it.
 Except for Dieter Boehn. He picked it up and just immediately had a panic attack.
 It happens when I pick up everything though. It is not the iPhone's fault. Oh my God what do I do?
 This is the existential crises I have watched you go through over the last week.
 I settled on just the 6 and I immediately regretted it.
 Oh you pre-ordered one. Yeah yeah. Which one did you get? The 6.
 You should have gotten the 6 plus. Again but I regret it. But I got the right color. Yeah black. Space gray.
 Space gray. Well black. Yeah the white I think the white makes the phones look bigger than they are and the gold I think looks terrible.
 Fair. That is just where I am at.
 So apparently and this is totally anecdotal and may not be true but is what I have seen is that people who got gold got it immediately which is the exact opposite of last year.
 There was no wait people came on a day late. Yeah there was only like 10 people wanted them.
 Well but last year there weren't any. Right. But I guess there was a supply shortage so I don't know.
 But space gray is a little bit delayed and silver is super delayed. Yeah.
 Which is really weird and not at all what I would have guessed.
 Yeah I just don't think the white looks great. Well white and silver. I think the space gray is where it is at because if they are bigger you want them to look smaller.
 I think the gold looks terrible. Yeah I agree but I thought that last year and lots of people liked it.
 No last year the gold was like flashy and new and it worked with the design and it was all angled and Johnny was like it looks like jewelry.
 You know like I don't know why he's a mobster. He's definitely a mobster. He's gone through a rough patch in his life.
 He needed the money and then he joined the mob. He doesn't need the money. I don't know. That joke makes no sense.
 Well let's talk about the design. Let's just start. So I think the answer is a six plus. I have many reasons for this.
 I will say that today I went to lunch with Trey Brindrette our product officer at Fox and I pulled out the phone and we drew a crowd.
 People like we were just standing in line to like order hamburgers. I thought you meant you literally like held it and drew a crowd.
 Yeah I was like Trey let me show you what I'd like my friends to look like and I drew a picture of people that I thought were my friends.
 I want this many friends. You're an engineer right? Make me friends.
 No it was like we know like people crowded around us and like played with the phone and asked us about it and they're like how do you have it already?
 And like it was like we were doing shtick like Trey put his like iPhone 4 on it and like the screen is bigger than an entire iPhone 4.
 People are very excited about a gigantic iPhone and I think the big iPhone the six plus is like it's the first time I've gotten an iPhone where I thought to myself this is a new experience.
 Right.
 Whereas with Android phones because you switch manufacturers you switch skins you whatever every time you get your Android phone it's like kind of a new experience.
 With the iPhone it's like this is slightly nicer. Nothing is different now.
 Yeah I mean even the 3.5 to 4 inch screen difference was like nice but didn't actually meaningfully change anything.
 Right and I think the six plus is like it's exciting because it is so different.
 Right but difference not always good like you like different for different sake.
 Yeah.
 Like you think it's hilarious that it's humongous and I mean it's like walking around.
 It's a really simple like decision. Do you want a phone or do you want a little like everything computer almost tablet thing that you can run more most of your life off of.
 I mean do you want something that you can conceivably use as both a ping pong paddle and like a deadly weapon and a laptop.
 When you put it like that it's kind of.
 It is this is this thing is comically huge. I said in an interview I think the Galaxy Note 3 is actually easier to hold because it's a little bit thicker.
 It is squatter it's like square.
 Yeah this is really it's top heavy in a weird way.
 Well because you're holding it feels like it's going to just slip out of my head.
 They kept the home button the same and so it's got the big thing at the top and the bottom so it looks symmetrical.
 But that means it just feels super tall.
 Right and it's ridiculous that the speaker is still like there's just the one speaker on the bottom.
 Like Apple took their hardware design and like literally did a pinch zoom.
 We made a big phone everybody.
 Yeah I think it is.
 I think the iPhone 3G and 3G S are like by far the ugliest iPhones ever made.
 Agreed.
 But I would put this like this is in that pantheon.
 Like I don't think it's really.
 I do not.
 I mean I don't think it's anywhere near as beautiful as the 5 and 5S but like I don't think it's ugly.
 I hate the outlines on the back.
 I mean these outlines on the back are.
 Like this is like Johnny I was like hammered.
 He was like look I have to go drive my Jaguar and then he like left and they were like no just do the lines.
 He handed somebody a magic marker.
 Did you read the big business week profile on Apple that came out yesterday that they hilariously called an interview.
 It's very confusing.
 No interview.
 But it was a profile of Tim Cook and Apple.
 It was a good piece and it was great.
 Really well done.
 Brad Stone and somebody else.
 But really like really well done piece.
 And the criticism of Tim Cook's reign at Apple is things that you like designers have left in a specific complaint that they said the business week was where I used to sit in like a meeting with Steve Jobs and we would like hash out like button design.
 Right.
 Yeah.
 I have these tiny particulars of icons right now.
 We have these like gigantic sprawling teams and things are less focused than before.
 And I could not tell you if that affected the design of the iPhone 6 and the 6 plus but I can tell you that I wouldn't be surprised if like that's how we got this intended design.
 Sure.
 Right.
 Because it's not.
 I just don't.
 I don't see this happening.
 Right.
 But if you look at the iPhone 4 it's like just a beautiful thing.
 If you look at the iPhone 5 and 5S it is there.
 They're beautiful in their way although far less durable in my opinion the iPhone 4.
 Yeah.
 Really?
 Yeah.
 All right.
 Fair.
 They just like the iPhone 5 like the black one just like turned silver over time.
 I mean I've dinged my 5S to hell.
 So I will defend the 6 and the 6 plus from a design standpoint in that they're not as beautiful as the 5 and the 4 but I think they're way more approachable.
 Like the 5 and the 4 are like I am an art object and you must like bow to me and this is like I'm designed for you to hold in your hand.
 The 5 got nice curved sides and a really like natural feeling screen and it just they feel like because they made them so big if they had stuck with that like stark design I think they would have felt insanely imposing.
 Right.
 I said this to I asked some folks at Apple about this was like because the big question we went in with was why don't you just make it thicker and make the battery longer.
 That's the question for Apple.
 Right.
 Well and I have this camera bulge.
 Well yeah.
 But that's a separate thing.
 What camera bulge?
 I don't see any camera bulge on Apple's website.
 I don't know what you're talking about.
 So I asked them this and the answer and the answer I got from two different people was it would have been horrible.
 And like whether or not that's true I don't know but they were like we played with or they you know they looked at just blowing up the design of the 5S because everybody liked it presumably including Apple.
 And what they found was that you're exactly right that a phone that looks like that and is that sort of stark and sharp and rectangular bigger would just feel like crap.
 I will say that which I agree with.
 We ask a lot of questions of a lot of like product managers and product designers and the one answer that I always am like I believe you.
 I accept it and don't immediately assume it's total garbage is we tried that and it sucked.
 Right.
 Yeah.
 I mean I don't know.
 Here's the thing.
 You know we read a lot of reviews of the phone because once you're recently want to read everybody else's reviews and everybody talks about these phones in terms of Apple had to do this to catch up the competition.
 Even iOS 8 in many ways it's like they had to start adding sensibility.
 They start they had to start adding third party technology.
 Words and like widgets and like actual notifications like they had fallen behind in a way and just here with the sheer screen size of the thing they felt we had David.
 I had an argument because his review we were editing each other's reviews.
 Your view is like Apple had to make a big phone and I was like no they had to make a regular phone.
 Right.
 What they were making the whole time was a smartphone.
 Right.
 And they had to just get to normal.
 They're still smaller than the S5.
 They're still smaller than the Nexus 5.
 They're still smaller than any.
 Everyone else's flagship phone is bigger than the iPhone.
 Yeah somewhere between 5 and 5.2 now.
 Yeah everyone like that's just where they planted and then the Android big phone market is even bigger than this right.
 The Note 4 is 5.7.
 Right.
 They've like Apple's just gotten to parity with everybody.
 Right.
 And that's like that is kind of the story of these phones.
 Right.
 Like they're just they've caught up now.
 It's also like the I mean that that's half the story right.
 The other half is like Apple has all these entrenched advantages that it's been winning with for so long like the camera and the app store and like the general polish of iOS that doesn't exist in Android.
 Right.
 And so like in some cynical way they're like OK well we have we do these four things better than anybody.
 If we do everything else exactly as well as everybody we're going to do these four things better and thus be the best.
 Right.
 And it's like that's a deeply boring way to design a phone which is kind of what I think they did here.
 But it does work.
 Yeah.
 Like it's a successful strategy.
 Right.
 And what's I mean they're I mean like for example like the Note 4 screen is beautiful.
 Yes it is.
 The there's other beautiful screens in the world.
 Lots of them.
 LG makes a beautiful screen.
 HTC makes a beautiful screen.
 This screen is really like it's really good.
 Yeah it is.
 It's less pixels per inch than just about everybody.
 Actually it's less than everybody.
 Everyone else is like 441.
 Yeah.
 This is 401.
 But they like Apple like what the small stuff like this is a joke I made in the review like everyone else is in a pixel resolution race and a pixel density race.
 And nobody is in a how thin is your lamination race.
 Right.
 Because there are no specs.
 How close can you get to the glass race.
 Right.
 And it's like if there is only a spec.
 Yeah.
 If only Apple would be like we have X nanometers precision lamination so that Samsung would be like yeah we beat that.
 Yeah.
 But because they don't like Samsung's like whatever and like the Note the Note 3 screen definitely looks sunk below a layer of glass.
 The Note 4 I think is a little bit the same.
 And it's like Apple's just really good at the little like that little thing makes this screen great.
 Yeah.
 Well and I mean it's little things like we've talked about this too with the fact that it just curves a little right at the edge like.
 Yeah.
 There's nothing I can't explain that to somebody.
 But like you pick it up and it just feels right.
 So 20 degree radial curve.
 Come on Samsung.
 What Apple needs 46 degrees makeup.
 They need to make up fake tech specs.
 Yeah.
 Just like pretend stuff so that Samsung loses their mind trying to beat them.
 I mean retina.
 Well they did that.
 They need to do it more.
 I mean it worked like Apple did it and then Samsung was like oh right.
 What about 11 times retina in your face.
 No one can see it in the app scale.
 But try this out.
 Look at all those pixels.
 And that's it.
 So the thing with the six is like it is just the next iPhone right.
 And Apple's really good at putting up the next iPhone right.
 And they bumped a spec and they like the app scale and it's fine.
 Like it's not I don't think it's perfect but it's fine.
 Like the scaling you mean.
 Yeah.
 If you look for it it's there.
 Right.
 But for the most part it's fine.
 It's like the 6 plus in Chrome.
 It's the same thing as I tell everybody.
 It's like you're like this is too big but it's not a problem.
 Right.
 You never notice.
 And then you know the apps get updated and whatever.
 Right.
 With the 6 plus the scaling I think looks terrible.
 Well what was it the dialer that is just hilariously full of white space now.
 I mean this phone is comedy gold.
 Just let me be clear.
 It is very much points to a future of like hybrid devices.
 It like has a brilliant camera.
 It has a great screen.
 Like all these things.
 The battery is great.
 There are many reasons why it's the phone I want to buy.
 And then there are many reasons like I'm literally sitting here giggling it like how doofy it
 is all the time.
 Doofy.
 You keep walking on it.
 I'm just like you are not caught up with the doofy stuff.
 I mean it's just like.
 2.5 more doofies.
 Give it a minute.
 I mean here it is.
 Like do do do.
 Like that's the phone.
 Like do do do.
 Like it's just a big lumbering beast of a phone.
 And like the apps like the Kindle app like is like gives you a headache.
 The scaling in the Kindle app is so bad it's like this is blurry.
 It's like looking through.
 What's the thing like it's like the wavy text on a TV screen.
 Like it's blurry.
 It's just like headache inducing.
 The Twitter app just got updated and they updated it in so far as the menu bar doesn't
 scale the status bar doesn't scale now but like it still shows you four tweets.
 The landscape keyboard is like I don't even know what sort of like comedy moment Apple
 was going for with that.
 The landscape keyboard is a perfect example of like just because you have more space doesn't
 mean that you should fill it.
 And they were really good especially with iOS 7 at not doing that.
 They're like it's okay to have white space.
 Right.
 But they're like oh it's a keyboard.
 That's like a functional area.
 We should cram it full of crap.
 Well here's like a decision on the landscape.
 There's two decisions on the landscape keyboard that are just mystifying.
 One is the paste icon which is to be clear is an icon of a bottle of glue.
 And Apple thinks you the consumer do not understand the difference between paste and glue.
 And I think that is probably accurate because I do not understand.
 I was going to ask you to explain it to me.
 But I know paste you it's got a little.
 Right I know that paste does not come out of a glue bottle like that.
 It's just obviously true.
 Right it's just something I know.
 Well I mean like right like paste is like a dip whatever.
 And then there is the fact that of all of the formatting choices you can put in a button
 they picked bold.
 There's a button just to bold text.
 And I look at it and it's just a bold B. It's just a bold B.
 Which is going to be cool because you know it's going to happen a lot.
 People are going to go to type B and it's just going to do nothing.
 They're going to be like that's a B. I would like to type that.
 It's like you get the feeling that Tim Cook personally sends a lot of emails with bold
 text in it.
 And he was just like listen Johnny.
 I know you're in charge of design.
 I know Steve Jobs structured this company so that you know and can tell you what to
 do.
 But I want a fucking bold button.
 And there it is.
 It's just so confusing.
 And then the keyboard trolls the hell out of you.
 Because when you rotate it from portrait to landscape the position of the emoji button
 the emoji keyboard button and they switch to numbers and symbols literally flips from
 portrait to landscape.
 No way.
 It's numbers on the outside emoji on the inside.
 Yeah.
 And then you turn it and it switches.
 Just click on my account.
 There you go.
 Just click on my face.
 Click on my face.
 Just click on your face.
 No it's just like that to me is like they made this keyboard and like they made it.
 They had to figure out how to now rotate it.
 Come on.
 Like I don't understand that at all.
 Wait a minute.
 No the emoji stays on the left.
 Oh yeah but they do flip.
 Yeah.
 Just to confuse you a little bit more.
 Also this is not rotating super fast.
 No I did.
 I don't know.
 Can I tweet from your account right now?
 No please please not do that.
 I mean yeah there are definitely things about pooping.
 You can pay.
 If I poop into you live on the Vergecast.
 Stay away from my property.
 Get off my lawn.
 I'm just saying like I'm like these are all my complaints about the iPhone 6 Plus.
 You've just heard all of them.
 You just ran out of big lists and then you're like buy like it's stupid and weird and there's
 bad software.
 Buy it.
 Well the bad software is like.
 Don't buy the one that doesn't have any of those problems.
 For every other company when they put out a phone with bad software I'm like don't buy
 it.
 I'd kill them for bad software.
 Sure.
 Samsung puts out a phone on AT&T of bad software.
 I'm like you are doomed for six months to experience this bad software.
 With Apple it's like probably in two weeks all the apps will be updated and Apple will
 like fix that keyboard issue.
 Well actually no.
 They didn't fix the shift key button.
 Yeah.
 So I have no faith.
 Still insane.
 Whatever.
 Don't buy an iPhone.
 Here's what you should do.
 Throw away all your phones.
 Go on eBay.
 Look up RAZR.
 Yeah.
 Buy a Sony Ericsson W810i.
 Yes.
 Yes.
 And just live a life knowing that that is the pinnacle of technology.
 Yeah I can't disagree with that at all.
 I mean it's a phone and a Walkman.
 So do you try to use a six plus one handed?
 Because that's the reason I didn't get it.
 Yeah.
 Is like I've got big enough hands to do it but it's awkward and I would just drop the
 thing and I've shattered two phones in the past month and so it was time for me to admit
 that I am a huge klutz.
 Yeah.
 And I would drop that and I'm less likely to drop a small one.
 That's why I got the small one.
 I actually wrote the exact, independently wrote the exact same paragraph in our reviews
 which was these are the first iPhones that are better in cases.
 Yeah.
 And I'm just gonna say it.
 I've never had a case on my phone before.
 Ever.
 Never.
 And like you kind of need to do it.
 Yeah.
 I mean I'm just gonna say it.
 When you put the big one in a case it looks like a Samsung phone.
 Yeah it does.
 Like just does.
 Yep.
 There's like there's an element of I mean it's like the way the cases are shaped and
 like the white and the color like that's how Samsung phones.
 So we got a close up on the camera there.
 Let's struggle to put a phone in a case.
 Yay.
 Yay.
 These cases feel really nice by the way.
 I got a lot of questions about like how they're gonna hold up over time and the answer is I
 have no idea but they feel really nice.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 The leather.
 I'm into the leather.
 The leather on the Moto X.
 I'm really happy.
 The leather on this like it's really nice.
 Yeah.
 Now let's look here.
 It's a Samsung phone.
 Yeah flip it over like you cannot tell that that's not a Samsung phone.
 Right.
 And well it's a case.
 Yeah.
 But there's like an element to this this specific aesthetic of the phone that is very Samsungy.
 Yeah.
 Which because it's a giant phone in the case.
 Samsung.
 Look here's the thing.
 All of these complaints aside what I know about this phone is that I'm never gonna use
 my iPad mini again and never even consider buying another iPad mini.
 There is a shot in our video you should go watch it where if you watch a 16 by 9 video
 on the iPad mini the actual because it's letterboxed the actual size of the video you're watching
 is only marginally bigger than a video on this phone which is like that's the game.
 That's why I have an iPad mini.
 Right.
 Because I want to like watch things in a bigger screen.
 I have an iPad Air which I like very fond of.
 I am struggling to think of reasons to like get it now because it's all it really offers
 me is a yet another bigger screen and I think that's like super interesting.
 Yeah.
 But we need to see iOS on the iPad Air start to do some like proper stuff.
 No that's what I'm saying.
 I think there's a world in which the little phone becomes like a little phone.
 This becomes a primary computing platform thing and the iPad becomes like a truck.
 To like stretch that metaphor.
 The iPad becomes they focus on actual productivity with the iPad the way that Microsoft quite
 frankly has been focused on with the Surface Pro this whole time.
 Well that's when the like split screen multitasking comes in.
 Or maybe user switching.
 Which is the thing that this is not big enough to pull off.
 Yeah.
 That would be great.
 Just come on.
 Yeah.
 I mean I'm telling you Dieter and you're engaged now and you just don't you just don't want
 to share that device.
 Nope.
 I'm kidding.
 I have no idea.
 Because at least it's always like pooping.
 No if you give it to your kid.
 Whatever.
 I don't know.
 Do you have any thoughts on the 6?
 I feel like I've rambled on about the 6 Plus.
 I mean my thing about the 6 is like it's the 6 Plus is way more interesting in terms of
 like what it could and might someday be.
 I mean what you said that I've been thinking about a lot about over the last few days is
 that your argument is that in three years this will just be the iPhone.
 Yeah.
 That there won't be a smaller one.
 It'll just be that that you buy.
 Yeah.
 And like I actually think you're right.
 I hope you're not but I think you are.
 But for me it's like this is like there are a lot of bad things about the fact that this
 is just another iPhone.
 But it's also like I don't need something else.
 Right.
 Like I sit at my laptop all the time and when I'm on the subway I want like a thing I can
 hold in one hand and like play games on or read on or whatever and this is that.
 Right.
 Like I don't need this giant productivity machine.
 Well actually you kind of do because you've been slacking.
 That's more reviews.
 I think the like this makes sense to me in a lot of markets where for most people their
 phones are already their primary computers and that's just like a thing and that's a
 growing thing in the world.
 But for me personally that's just not how I operate.
 I'm excited for this to become my primary computer.
 Yes.
 I think that's insane.
 No.
 Why is that insane?
 It's only insane because the software isn't good enough for it to be that yet.
 That's the only reason it's insane.
 Right.
 And like Samsung's like trying to do that with a note.
 I mean the problem just straight out is that Samsung is not as good at software.
 Right.
 Like they have really interesting ideas about how to do all that stuff on the note and I
 actually I mean I like the note.
 Every time I see one on the subway or out in the world I'm like I love big screens and
 then I like play with the software.
 I'm like I hate your software.
 Yeah.
 And that's that's the only problem with the note is that yeah it's cool to do split screen
 and like resize the apps and do the swipey thing to make a little phone on the screen
 and use it like that would all be great if it was like smooth and worked well.
 Well that's what I'm saying like Samsung is at least trying and like I forever will think
 that the Samsung Note Edge is the most interesting phone that's come out recently because it's
 weird and probably not going to work but it's different and they're trying stuff.
 Yeah.
 Like Samsung you can say a lot of things about Samsung but they try stuff.
 Yeah.
 And they're not trying anything here.
 Like this is literally all this is is like you're getting a slightly bigger version of
 the video that I'm getting on here.
 And what I'm getting is like a more ergonomic thing that actually fits in my pocket.
 And that doesn't obscure your face when I try to take a picture.
 But that for me is a really easy trade off.
 So like in three years I might be happy to buy this.
 And I when it when they make it worth being slightly bigger or when the watch comes out
 and makes it so that I'm not taking my phone out of my bag very often.
 Great.
 And there are a million reasons this is useful to have.
 But for right now for like a thing I use constantly in short bursts all the time I'd rather have
 the thing that fits if the experience is the same and the experience is the same.
 Right.
 They haven't done enough with the software to make the experience different.
 No.
 All you get is like a two paned messages window which doesn't really do anything for me.
 Yeah.
 I mean they are.
 That's the thing.
 I like the feeling Apple like made some concessions to how big the phone was instead of having
 a plan.
 Right.
 And the email I've gotten a few times is that like that's that's the talk.
 Right.
 Like this is the tech where they're like here's this crazy weird new thing and then the next
 time they're going to come out and like here's stuff to do with it.
 Yeah.
 And that's that may well be the case but that's.
 It doesn't make this better now.
 That's why I think I'll get that one when they when they get the right.
 Like in three years I will gladly buy this phone.
 But for right now it's like it's not worth the trade off of it.
 Have we talked you out of this phone yet.
 No sitting awkwardly.
 I have one more trump card.
 Oh here it is.
 Which is the camera slightly better.
 And that and I the experience of taking photos like I like using this phone has made me understand
 why people take photos with tablets because it's like wow I just became a much better
 photographer just by having the ability to frame stuff better.
 It's true.
 You should get glasses.
 Well no I should get a gigantic screen.
 Super easy.
 I should wear glasses like a nerd or I can get a huge phone like a bigger.
 Why wear glasses.
 Nailed it.
 You know I know I'm wearing contact lenses now.
 I'm sorry.
 Do you want to try my giant phone.
 If you try and hand that phone to me now I'll drop it.
 I can't see anything.
 Who's that laughing at me over there.
 What's going on.
 I mean look I'm just saying I think this is the one.
 Like oh mostly for the fact that it is so different and I you're right.
 I appreciate different.
 Well you just appreciate different because you haven't had different because you've been
 no I like I love my Nexus 5.
 I think that's a great phone.
 If that phone had a great camera I don't know.
 Nexus 5 that apparently is prone to the screen chattering.
 Yeah people mean when you drop it on the ground it shatters.
 I dropped it like a foot.
 If you buy it from Google Play like that you can like the people on Twitter told me about
 this you can like trick your way into like having them just fix that for you.
 Yeah fair.
 So here's what I think is which like we have you know differences of opinion but which
 is going to sell better.
 Where they they pre-ordered four million of them.
 The big one.
 The small one.
 I think it's the small one.
 I don't even think it's going to be close.
 I think a lot of people are going to return the big one and get the small one.
 Really.
 That's what I think.
 I think a lot of people don't understand how much bigger than their iPhone 5 this is.
 I mean it is like the screen is as tall as an entire iPhone 5.
 Yeah I mean it's like this is comedy.
 Like I'm talking to.
 No and I think like there are a lot of people at least people that I know who are going
 to be upgrading from like a 4s to this and it's going to feel terrible.
 And I think people will like would get used to it.
 But in the 15 day return period are going to take it back and get a 6.
 I disagree.
 Because I've had so many people who I hand this to and they're like oh my god that's
 way too big.
 And it's like that's the small one.
 Sorry about your life.
 There's no I mean this is barely even perceptible to me.
 If I wasn't holding a 5s in one hand and a 6 in the other I would just tell you this
 is a 5 like the same size of a 5.
 I don't know.
 That's my.
 So other than other than the adapting to screen size how do you guys feel about iOS 8?
 I haven't used it yet.
 I've been waiting for the 6 to come so I can get it.
 iOS 8 it definitely just feels like they thought it through this time.
 Mm-hmm.
 Right and it's like David saying this stuff we're just now seeing the apps take advantage
 of it.
 Right.
 And all the keyboard people are ready to go which is like adorable.
 I know.
 But I think like understanding how photo apps are going to plug into the extensibility I
 think until Yosemite comes out and we can play with like handoff and continuity and
 all that stuff.
 I mean that's the one thing like we kind of said this is WWDC that like that's the one
 thing that's game changing.
 Everything else is like cool and should have been there and my thing is like I love almost
 everything about iOS 8 and it doesn't make any sense to me why they didn't release it
 a year ago.
 But handoff and continuity are the two things that are like no one is doing that and that's
 like if that's why you buy into an Apple ecosystem is for that stuff.
 Right.
 And that's huge.
 Taking a phone call from a Mac is like it will just bring the pain of making a phone
 call on AT&T to every part of my life.
 Yeah I mean I do this like jacked up thing all the time where I'll open a Google Maps
 link on Chrome on my computer and then I go to Chrome on my phone and then open up Chrome
 and then I'm like oh there are devices and then I wait for it to refresh and then I open
 that tab up again and just being able to go and like swipe up from the bottom left corner
 and there's my map is huge.
 Yeah.
 That's amazing.
 Too bad it's Apple Maps.
 Yeah so I won't get where I'm going.
 I know.
 But at least it'll look cool.
 No I mean that's the stuff like iOS 8 is like a clear like iOS 7 was very messy in places.
 Yeah.
 I think everyone just admits it now.
 iOS 8 clearly refines all the broken parts of it and makes it more extensible and bigger
 but it's as with all of these things it's like when will the app developers show up
 and the answer right now appears to be right away.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 I mean this is why they did this is why they talked about our WWDC right they were like
 go build this stuff we can't tell you why but it's gonna be great.
 I will say the iOS 8 on my 5s feels very small.
 Yeah.
 Like the adding the extra row of predictive text about the keyboard the keyboard now takes
 up you know 55% of the screen which is crazy and then like you pull down and if I have
 like eight widgets and it takes like an hour and a half to scroll through them all and
 all this stuff is like it's clearly designed for bigger devices which makes sense that's
 what they sell now.
 Yeah.
 But it's like it updating was.
 My phone my 5s won't update.
 Why I don't know just erroring out.
 It just hates you?
 Yeah whatever I mean it's so broken it knows it's not long for this world I mean I'm sorry.
 I'm legitimately worried to know what my iPad mini is gonna do with iOS 8.
 It's gonna die.
 Whatever.
 It's gonna die.
 They want you to buy a new one or they want you to buy a Kindle tablet hey.
 Oh.
 All right you played with a bunch of the Amazon stuff.
 Yeah Amazon announced like 50 things yesterday.
 Yeah.
 So there's a new HDX 8.9 inch tablet it's a spec bump I don't care about it.
 I'm sorry.
 They announced new HD HD 7 and HD 6 tablets so it's like super low end tablets and the
 HD 6 which is like bordering on can you even call it a tablet.
 Yeah.
 6 inch screen.
 It's 99 bucks.
 It's an iPod touch.
 It's an iPod touch.
 It's the iPod touch.
 It's actually kind of insane for 99 bucks and you got already on Amazon Prime membership
 because of course you do.
 You've got like a hundred dollar thing that you can watch Amazon video on you can like
 chuck it and it's more durable than other Android tablets.
 It's like relatively sturdy and if you lose it it's a hundred bucks.
 Yeah I mean this is what I've been saying forever is like and this is the you know the
 logic of Amazon giving away for free and in a real way a hundred dollars is like a huge
 step in that direction but like Amazon has this big trove of content.
 Yeah.
 And if you pay a hundred dollars a year it's all free.
 Yeah.
 Right.
 And so nobody is more set up to have an iPod touch than Amazon.
 Yeah.
 So the thing about the 6 and the 7 is like they're low end Android tablets are running
 some media tech processor.
 It's the truest sign of quality.
 Well it might they might be terrible but I think when I think good user experience I
 think media tech.
 But FireOS seems smooth on it but who knows.
 Like Amazon has crappy games and a media tech processor will stream your video and music
 and the end.
 So the thing is slow and jaggy and whatever as long as it will play that video I don't
 care.
 Right.
 It's a hundred dollars and I'm gonna be able to pull it out on a plane and watch the Amazon
 Prime video that I have downloaded.
 Because you can watch that you can watch that download you can download Amazon Prime videos
 or a bunch of them.
 I mean I'm just saying I don't understand like I think Amazon software strategy is not
 good.
 It's not great.
 The content strategy is really good and their content strategy is also not going anywhere
 so their kids strategy is better than anybody else's and it's super weird but so you can
 buy the kid version of these tablets fifty bucks more.
 You get this giant bouncy case that kids can hold but you also get a two year warranty
 like literally you can take the tablet smash with the ball peen hammer send it back.
 They'll send you a new one saw it in half.
 Make sure you send at least fifty one percent back.
 They'll send you a new one for two years.
 No questions we don't care.
 So like you can buy this thing for a hundred bucks turn on all the parental controls of
 like what kind of apps you can use no in app purchases blah blah blah.
 Get the free year of like you get to watch Dora or whatever.
 Yeah.
 What are Nickelodeon.
 They got a bunch of stuff.
 I think they got Disney in free time.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 It's not just like here's a hundred dollar tablet and you are free to destroy it.
 Go away.
 The best parenting tool in the history of time.
 And then America.
 All good things end with you telling your kids go away.
 Yeah.
 Go child.
 Yeah.
 Learn from this tablet.
 No explore.
 Teaches people how to speak Spanish.
 So don't you hate on door.
 Teaches people the Diego is just useless.
 Really.
 I'm just saying like I've watched a lot of Dora with my niece and nephew.
 There were well your niece and nephew.
 Thankfully there's time.
 Man Diego dude get it together.
 Just like get your shit together Diego.
 Like you're always lost.
 So like you're just you're never in the right place.
 Tell me the truth about the swiper.
 The swiper actually like scary.
 No I was a kid.
 I was like a wreck.
 Villains were like scary.
 No swipers are getting adorable raccoon.
 He's like whatever.
 And doors like oh man you're swiping like whatever door.
 I have a question.
 Yeah.
 Can we pivot this podcast just be recaps of door to the Explorer.
 Oh oh.
 Really.
 Large untapped mark.
 I know.
 Dora Dora and Diego go to a place.
 Diego screws up catastrophically.
 Someone else swiper no swiping and then everything is resolved.
 Well Dora uses her bilingual skills.
 And she says pack pack.
 Right.
 I mean Dora is legit.
 Like yeah.
 Like as a lady like she's like she's on her game right.
 Like hold on.
 I'm just gonna take that.
 What.
 What.
 I'm saying like Dora.
 It's clear that children should idolize Dora.
 Yeah.
 I'm saying that if you're if you are into Diego you are headed down a life of misery.
 Right.
 That's your wrong role model.
 So I flushed along.
 It's just a thing that happened in my life.
 No keep going.
 I feel like this has been waiting inside you for a long time.
 Diego's bullshit.
 That's all right.
 The best thing Amazon announced was the Voyage the Kindle Voyage.
 Yeah.
 It's really good.
 Okay wait.
 I don't understand because I have a paper way and it's a pile of garbage.
 Perfect.
 It is.
 I have zero problem.
 I've never had fewer problems with a device.
 So many problems.
 Why?
 It is slow.
 The screen is not flushed.
 The screen is plastic and scratches easily.
 And it does scratch easily.
 It's not too heavy.
 It's too thick.
 It's too heavy.
 Uh huh.
 Is this the game we're about to play?
 And like paper white is too heavy.
 Yes.
 Crap.
 You're crazy.
 And the screen is not 300 pixels per inch.
 That's true.
 I'll give you that.
 And it refreshes too slowly.
 And it doesn't have physical buttons that you can just like squeeze it.
 Yeah wait.
 How does that actually work?
 I don't understand that.
 That's it.
 That's like there's no bezel physically.
 You like physically just like give a little tiny squeeze to the bezel like not too hard
 and then there's like haptic feedback.
 The other reason your paper white sucks is it doesn't have auto adjusting on the brightness.
 And even if it did, it still sucks because if you're reading in bed in the dark, it doesn't
 get dimmer over time because it knows your eyes are adjusting to the darkness.
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 I mean, I ordered one.
 Did you?
 Yeah.
 Zeder texted me last night and he's like, I bought a voyage and then I felt, I would
 say like a deep American materialistic, like a what?
 A purchase can be made and I haven't, I'm not, the president might know that I haven't
 done my duty.
 My Cadillac has bigger fins on it than yours.
 Here's, here's my dream fleet right now.
 2001 Escalade, used Escalade.
 I saw one on a weekend trip for a sale for $9,000 and I thought to myself, I bet I could
 talk to the $7,000 and then it would be a deal.
 And seriously, they've like been eBay on eBay motors looking at 2001 Escalades for some
 time now.
 Why would you want dude?
 I don't know.
 Impala Impala.
 No, no.
 The slate is like a critical element of a fleet.
 And then a new Mustang.
 The 2015 Mustang?
 Yeah.
 You will, you will drive.
 The only time you will drive it is when you're moving parking spots because you live in New
 York.
 No, I'll drive the Mustang to the garage with a 2001 Escalade that's constantly being repaired.
 And then you'll just roll down the East side.
 I'm just saying like, I think the verge should own an Escalade.
 I'm fine with that.
 What?
 Cause then we can all get in it and like go places.
 Only if you convert it to run off of like, like crickets or like biodiesel biodiesel.
 No crickets.
 Crickets.
 Crickets is like hard.
 Just crickets.
 Biodiesel is like, isn't, you can like just roll up like, and that like, let me paint
 you a scene.
 We're all in our suite Escalade.
 Okay, hold on.
 I'm going to close my eyes.
 All right.
 And then we just like, we're like driving around.
 It smells like French fries because we're doing biodiesel.
 Who's driving?
 It doesn't matter.
 We all take turns, right?
 And then like the rest of us are just like hanging out.
 Your eyes are open.
 And then we were like, man, we're like out of gas.
 And then we like roll up behind a McDonald's and like steal their oil.
 And then like, that's how we, no.
 Okay.
 It got weird at the end.
 I was with you for so long there.
 That's the biodiesel stories.
 Like you're constantly like going to McDonald's or like fusion powered.
 We could do fusion like a mystery.
 We need mr.
 Fusion.
 Yeah.
 What if, what if we get on 2001 escalate to over to like pimp my ride style or 2001.
 We should actually talk about it.
 So Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are like in a rocket ship war, right?
 Like didn't, didn't, uh, Bezos did something else with like spaceship blue or whatever
 something is called.
 Uh, and then Elon Musk, like I love the idea that like billionaires desperately want to
 go to space.
 Is this a place where, um, that's right.
 They is this a place where like capitalism and competition is the best thing?
 Yeah.
 I mean it is, but like maybe if they worked together, it would be cheaper and we would
 get up there faster with cooler stuff.
 No, but they want to each be in their own.
 I mean like they're, they're like months away from like mounting guns on one of our spaceship
 and like having like billion hair laser fights in space.
 That would be so sick.
 I mean that is definitely like a sci-fi show waiting to happen.
 I mean, yeah, I'm kind of in the idea of Elon Musk, my ride moon.
 Yeah, it's called moon raker.
 No, here's an idea.
 This one's free for everybody.
 You get billionaires and you make him play laser tech.
 That's the whole show.
 Billionaire laser fight.
 Do they get to like design their own laser tag as a kid?
 I was not allowed to have laser tag as a kid, but I was allowed to have the version of laser
 tag that was with like an actual like replica Beretta.
 It looked like a gun, like a real gun.
 You and I grew up in the era where guns were allowed to look like guns.
 We like, we want it.
 We played guns.
 That was what you did as a kid.
 They didn't have like orange caps.
 No, no, no.
 They would, they would, it looked like, it looked like a gun.
 Yeah.
 I actually just owned it.
 It was actually, it was just an unloaded fire on the toilet.
 Uh, no, I had my nest zapper was gray.
 And then like two years later they made them all orange.
 Yeah.
 No, but I was not allowed to own laser tag, but there are many laser tech facilities in
 the region.
 Oh yeah.
 That's what we had too.
 Yeah.
 But did you play the laser tag where you shoot each other or the laser tag where you all
 just shoot at targets?
 Uh, each other.
 Of course each other.
 Cause it was like, we shoot at targets.
 Now all it is is targets.
 That sucks.
 Yeah.
 It's like, let's run around and look at each other while we shoot at targets.
 Yeah.
 And if there's fun laser tag out there, I will go anywhere in America to play fun laser
 tag in our 2000.
 Yes.
 That gets phenomenal gas mileage.
 Uh, but yeah, there's like targets up in the corner of the room and you just run around
 and shoot those.
 Yeah.
 Which just sounds horrible.
 How do you, so you just become the first person they've ruined laser tag.
 Well, like they can still shoot you, but you don't get points by shooting them.
 Like if, if, if you're shooting at the target, I shoot you and then you have to like go away
 and recharge and then come back and keep shooting the target instead of like, how many people
 did you kill?
 So you can be like, so you can be like the world's ultimate griefer.
 Basically like not shoot the targets, just kill everybody.
 Yes.
 Cool.
 Oh, we should talk about minecraft.
 Speaking of grievers, that's all.
 Let's wrap up on minecraft.
 So somebody explained minecraft to me.
 Uh, the game or the event that happened surrounding it?
 All of it.
 Uh, the game is awesome and you should play it.
 Yeah.
 It's fun and creative and helps kids learn and helps you build castles in the sky.
 Okay.
 Here's the question.
 I don't know the answer to.
 How does minecraft make money?
 They, they sell games.
 Yeah.
 They sell expansion packs.
 That, that was like the basics of minecraft is free, right?
 Right.
 But they sell more, right?
 And they also like license like collectibles.
 Yeah.
 It's a, just a franchise.
 Right.
 But is that, is that worth a 2 billion?
 It was $2 billion, right?
 Yeah.
 2.5.
 Oh, that's right.
 It was 2.5.
 So it's like $2 billion to Microsoft.
 Uh, because it's like, it's the, it's the future of Lego.
 Like it's like the, like the number.
 Is it like minecraft can be cool for 50 years?
 Yes.
 Really?
 Yeah.
 I don't know, man.
 I know.
 Like if you talk to all of the various VOX dads who like play Minecraft with their kids,
 they're like all super into it.
 Yeah.
 No, that's definitely true is there's like this whole army of nine year olds who are
 super obsessed with Minecraft.
 Yeah.
 And they have like their own servers and like their own communities and like that all I
 get it's just, I maybe I should play the game more.
 Here's my dream.
 I've been thinking about this.
 Uh, so notch quit mojang, right?
 Uh, when they sold it to Microsoft, he said, I don't want to be responsible.
 By the way, Minecraft is not free on every platform.
 It's like depending on the platform or cost.
 Oh really?
 Okay, fair enough.
 Um, so notch quit, he wrote this like very emotional letter about like, I don't want
 to be a part of this.
 Like I don't want to take responsibility.
 I just want to play games.
 And he's like, but like, it's like, it's a really easy thing to write after you sell
 your company for $2.5 billion.
 Like not to be cynical about it, but like if, if you're like, I don't want to be part
 of this, then just leave.
 Don't sell for $2.5 billion.
 What are you going to do?
 Like, would you rather he just like lit the whole thing on fire?
 No, but like you don't get to take, no, no, that was his, that's like why he sold it.
 Yeah.
 He sold it because he was in charge and he was like, I, this needs a steward.
 Right.
 And the only steward is like this company.
 So I'm selling it and that's fine.
 It's all, that's fine.
 Well, and it just felt, I don't know, the, the letter felt very holier than vow to me
 in a way that I don't think it needed to watch the, I mean the, he, he referenced that, that
 the 20 minute video or about Phil fish or 10 minute video about Phil fish about like
 how he's become a symbol of like the internet's ability to like hate famous people on the
 internet.
 Oh yeah.
 Yeah.
 And like, it's actually, it's a really smart thing.
 And so if this guy like is honest and he says, I do not want to be the figurehead in charge
 of this game and also manage this whole game, like selling it to me seems like a relatively
 virtuous thing to do.
 All right.
 That's fair.
 That's fair.
 If that's legit.
 Yeah.
 If that's what he was after, that's fine.
 I'm just saying, I think we should get, we should get Paul Miller to interview Notch
 and just talk about like leaving.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 Like the vibe to me was very much.
 Paul Miller invented the internet and then left.
 It's true.
 He wired the first ethernet cables.
 No, the vibe, when I read that letter, the vibe was very much when Paul left the internet
 and I was like, we should get these people in the room.
 Paul, if you're out there, I know that you are.
 Paul.
 Love you buddy.
 Notch, I don't know what you're doing now.
 Probably reclining on a bed of money.
 Not feeling not responsible for anything.
 Talk to me.
 Let's get at me.
 Yeah.
 Let's all, let's all be in a room together talking.
 It won't be awkward at all.
 No one will bring up Dora or Escalades.
 What else?
 Anything else going on?
 There's some Windows stuff coming up at the end of the month.
 Yeah.
 Windows 9.
 Yeah.
 We had a little preview and then we also, Tom Warren put up some, we had some screenshots
 of an upcoming version of Office that has a little help box that is reminiscent, although
 not cartoony of Clippy.
 New Clippy?
 Yeah.
 Not Clippy.
 It's like Clippy-esque.
 It's new Clippy.
 It's Clippy-esque.
 I mean, can Microsoft get away with doing anything Clippy-esque without people calling
 it Clippy?
 No.
 No.
 Tom will be here next week.
 We should put him on the show.
 That's true.
 We can do it.
 We'll do a long Windows preview with Tom Warren.
 Yeah.
 It looks good.
 Did you see, he retweeted somebody's Vine where it's like, I got a copy of Windows
 9 and you open it up and it's a Windows 7 DVD with a, sorry for Windows 8.
 It's pretty great.
 Man, Windows 8.
 Yeah.
 You know, I have a Surface Pro 2 in my house.
 I was playing with it the other day.
 I just had one.
 And man, that's so close, so far.
 Like, so close.
 I like the Surface Pro 3.
 Do you know what I mean?
 You know my theory about like Apple fanboys?
 I think Apple fanboys are beginning to root for Microsoft because they're tired of being
 like the big dogs and they hate Google and they need a new underdog to replace Google.
 That's interesting.
 It's like a psychological theory that I have.
 I mean, I also think that, and we've been saying this for a long time, that I think
 Microsoft is attempting to do a lot of the right things.
 Yeah, like this is why I-
 Like what Apple is doing, like the story you tell about this is the same story that Microsoft
 tells about the Surface, they just did it wrong.
 Yeah.
 And it's like if Windows 9 is them figuring out how to do it, that's awesome.
 It's not.
 It's them walking Windows 8 all the way back.
 Just all the way back.
 You think so?
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 I mean, there's a start menu again.
 Like it's all this stuff.
 They're taking all the ideas from Windows 8 and putting them in a box inside the start
 menu.
 Like how is that not the best metaphor?
 Oh man.
 Oh, Microsoft.
 You're going to get there someday, I promise you.
 Before we go, I want to talk about the Apple Watch, because we haven't talked about the
 watch yet.
 We talked about the watch all last week.
 You just weren't here.
 Oh, I wasn't here.
 I will say, I'm going to actually-
 Have you changed your mind?
 I have not changed my mind.
 Actually, I am more and more convinced the watch is a disaster the more and more I think
 about it.
 Wow.
 I have approximately 23 opinions about the watch, and I want to just put them all on
 a page.
 I just haven't done it.
 Fair enough.
 I cannot get away from the idea that it is a watch with a right click.
 That is just weird to me.
 I don't understand it.
 Force Touch, bad brand.
 It's just a collection of-
 Fair enough.
 This is going to sound really weird.
 Here's the thing.
 I look at the watch, and I think of the incredible collection of A-player talent they've assembled.
 Now freely, obviously, enter the fashion market with the watch.
 The thing I'm thinking about is all of these people are in charge.
 You can't hire the CEO of Burberry and the CEO of Yves Saint Laurent and a VP from Adobe.
 The Businessweek article said Tim Cook had his number one guy be in charge.
 Johnny Ive is still there, and Phil Schiller is still there.
 None of those people are... All of them are in charge, and none of them are in charge.
 That is the clear-
 Yeah, you don't hire those people by saying you work for so and so.
 Right.
 Maybe they're in charge of slices, but there isn't one person.
 That's what I think about the watch.
 It looks to me like one person wasn't in charge.
 That is just expressed in the idea that you can force touch it, which is it is just a
 weird interaction paradigm, and it is not the right one.
 Dude, Force Touch is coming to iOS.
 It's the worst name.
 It's coming to the iPhone.
 Dude, this is the thing.
 Get ready.
 It's coming.
 If you described it as a screen technology, that is the next thing they're going to do
 for screen technology.
 No, but you know how you make a big screen work better in one hand is Force Touch.
 You let you do more things by touching the parts of the screen that you can touch.
 This is a company that literally only had one button on its mice for 20 years.
 That's what I mean.
 Philosophically, I don't understand this paradigm.
 Oh, sure.
 I'm just agreeing with Dieter.
 Force Touch is coming to the iPhone.
 You're disagreeing or just agreeing?
 No, I'm agreeing with Dieter.
 You're just agreeing.
 No, I'm just like, that's fine.
 Yeah, I use right click on my Mac all the time now.
 Long pressing isn't interesting, but I just cannot get away from the idea, and this is
 somebody very smart said this to me, smaller screens demand fewer interaction methods.
 Sure.
 This one has so...
 That's why they invented multitouch.
 It's the smallest screen and it has the most interaction methods.
 That's why they used multitouch.
 Can you pinch to zoom on the Apple Watch?
 No, you have to use the crown.
 You use a dial, but can you also pinch to zoom?
 I think you can also pinch to zoom.
 That's great.
 I'm just saying all of that, and I understand the argument that they haven't shown us all
 the software, that they're still working on it.
 I don't think it's going to come out for a long time.
 I understand that maybe it's really expensive and it's a market, whatever.
 What I do absolutely know is that it is impossible from what we have seen so far to explain to
 somebody how to use it, and that is crazy.
 That is not... That's so far out of the zone for Apple that I... People pick up an iPhone
 and they figured out how to use it instantly.
 I was actually thinking about this.
 When the iPhone first got announced and then it came out, they had that however many month
 period where they were just blasting commercials and all the commercials were was, here's the
 iPhone, here's how to do stuff on it.
 But here's the thing about those commercials.
 Every single one of them was like, holy crap, that looks awesome.
 I need to do that.
 Those are things I like to do.
 I see how easy that is.
 Give me that.
 Yeah.
 The commercial, they weren't instructions.
 Yeah.
 They were like, look at how easy it is.
 Yeah.
 They were instructions that were also like advertisements for a thing that you want.
 Right.
 I don't know how those commercials would work for the Apple Watch.
 You've got this watch and you really want to look at a map on it.
 I don't know.
 I'm just like, I...
 It's the photos that gets me every time.
 They're like, we've found ways for you to carry your photos around.
 And then he scrolls out and it's just a million one pixel icons of photos.
 I don't know.
 I'm wearing a watch.
 You know who that's useful to?
 It's Justin.
 Yeah.
 This watch is a crown.
 It's like the last thing I want to do is monkey with this knob on my watch.
 You're not supposed to monkey with it all that often.
 I don't know.
 I am deeply, deeply skeptical.
 It's not because Apple didn't have a killer app.
 It's not because I think it should be cheaper.
 None of that stuff.
 I'm skeptical because I think there's too many ways to interact with it.
 And I think that all seems really messy to me.
 I mean luckily, they have probably what, 10 months to figure it out.
 Maybe they will.
 Yeah.
 I mean, yeah.
 I don't think it's going to be until June.
 I kind of doubt it.
 But we'll see.
 I mean, they're not shying away from the fact that this is historic.
 Tim Cook is betting his legacy on this watch.
 So he has proven to be a smart CEO in the past.
 I'm assuming that he's putting resources against this.
 Yeah.
 I mean, they're not going to bail on this.
 Like they'll-
 Just kidding.
 Yeah.
 The first one, they're like, sorry guys.
 Bad move.
 We're done.
 Right.
 But-
 Just put it on the shelf next to your folio.
 Right.
 But you kind of hope that in Tim Cook's office, there's like a huge glass display case.
 And in it, there's just two objects.
 There's a Newton and there's an iPhone.
 And he's like, man, we got to do this one.
 Because the Newton was a great idea and it had tons of potential.
 And another CEO made it who wasn't Steve Jobs.
 And if they had just kept grinding on the Newton, it would have turned into something.
 It probably would have turned into the iPhone.
 I don't know about that.
 But Steve Jobs came back-
 It would have turned into the trio.
 Right.
 It was a lot of really good ideas about that paradigm.
 And it would have just kept going.
 And nobody would have faulted them for continuing.
 And then there's the iPhone, which was like a revolution.
 Right.
 And you just have to think-
 So Apple could have either been Blackberry or Apple.
 Right.
 Exactly.
 You have to think, this watch, we know so little about it.
 It's either the world's best Moto 360 or the world's best Pebble, or it's a revolution.
 And you just hope that Tim Cook is actually thinking in those terms.
 Yeah.
 Fair.
 Because what he's saying over and over again is this is a revolution.
 And then you look at it and it's like, but why is it that thing?
 It's just a pretty good-
 That, as far as I can tell, is not the answer at all.
 We want a revolution.
 And Apple is the...
 They're all doing what they can.
 Right.
 We're done.
 This is over.
 I'm getting in my 2001 escalator.
 I'm going home.
 I'm sorry.
 We were listening to U2 album.
 It was right there.
 All right.
 Are we going to talk about the U2 album?
 No.
 I mean-
 No.
 That's fine.
 The U2 album is like, it is like a year ago if Apple had given everybody a free U2 album,
 nobody would have cared.
 Yeah.
 But after the NSA and iCloud leaks and like, was the government looking...
 Apple just dumping stuff on your phone is terrifying.
 Yeah.
 Right?
 If Dropbox, everybody's Dropbox, now has a U2 album in it, nobody would have cared.
 I would have cared.
 Not if they didn't take your storage and you could just like, here's a link and you can
 open it and it's just there.
 Or they didn't take your storage, I suppose.
 But if they shot that stuff, shit down to my computer, because that's how Dropbox works,
 it syncs to your computer.
 That's fair.
 That's like, to me, that's probably the U2 album is like, that's like 20 megabytes of
 stuff that I would like to keep on open for pictures.
 Yeah.
 I mean, also the album is bad.
 Also the idea that what people, like Apple thinks what people want is like to download
 MP3 files.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 There's many things about that.
 I mean like-
 Well, the other thing-
 Yeah.
 I mean, why didn't Jimmy Iovine stop this?
 Why didn't they put it on Beats Music?
 Yeah.
 Just put it on Beats.
 Because they probably can't yet.
 Because-
 Well, but Apple's already-
 What Apple wanted-
 They're talking a lot about Beats Music.
 Yeah.
 Like Tim Cook went on Charlie Rose and talked a lot about Beats Music.
 It was in this Business Week profile.
 Right.
 They're just not ready.
 It's on Apple TV now.
 That's a thing.
 That's what I thought.
 It could have been, even if you don't subscribe to Beats, you can listen to this U2 album on
 the Beats app for free for eternity.
 Yeah.
 Go ahead and make sure you open your Beats app.
 Right.
 Because that doesn't make U2 any money.
 That's what it's about.
 At the end of the day-
 No, what makes U2-
 At the end of the day is Apple.
 I mean, don't you think Apple paid U2 for this?
 Apple made U2 money.
 Yeah.
 No, but U2 wants to run out.
 It's like objects.
 I mean, U2 wants reach.
 They want 500 million people to have their phone home.
 They want all the people to have it.
 Right.
 They want like, Beats Music is in every country.
 They have the new show, blah, blah, blah.
 And they want to be able to say, this is the most downloaded album ever.
 Right.
 Or the biggest selling album since X.
 And Apple paid them for that.
 They gave them that marketing.
 They got in trouble for it, but at least they tried and they put it on Beats.
 It's like U2 sold out to sell Beats.
 And that is a different...
 You know, but the Samsung deal with the Jay-Z?
 Yeah.
 Didn't hurt him.
 Well, he's Jay-Z.
 Yeah, he's Jay-Z.
 No, honestly, if there's anyone on earth who's immune to that, it's Jay-Z.
 But at the same time, nobody's mad at U2.
 I'm not saying...
 I mean, the album sucks, but I'm not saying anybody's using U2.
 When I see memes, it's always like Bono's head with a little speech bubble.
 Yeah.
 Coming out of it going, ha ha.
 That's all I see.
 Well, U2 got paid, like whatever.
 They made a pretty mediocre record and they got paid.
 Good for U2.
 Pretty mediocre is the kindest thing that I've said about that record.
 This is the most mediocre.
 It's right there in the middle.
 Well, I heard...
 My favorite solution to this whole problem was...
 I forget where I heard it, but somebody was like, what if they just put better U2 albums
 on instead?
 Everybody gets the Joshua Tree.
 We'll solve this by giving you other U2 albums.
 No, I mean, it's U2, man.
 It's fine.
 It's just nothing.
 U2 came after a credit card service.
 Yeah.
 In the scope of that presentation, it was like, we're gonna change the world with Mastercard
 and Amex and Visa and here's U2, everybody.
 This is weird.
 The Edge's guitar tone is the best, though.
 That's wonderful.
 It was so good.
 I was out of the room by then.
 I stayed for eight seconds just to let him envelope me in his Vox AC30.
 It was really...
 And you wept.
 It was great.
 And then you left.
 It was very nice.
 It was a very nice guitar sound.
 But whatever, U2.
 Apple needs to get to Beats Music.
 They need to get to a place with Beats Music where U2 wants to put out free albums on there
 instead of being like, let's pump them through iTunes.
 But how do you...
 They are just not there yet.
 Right, but there's no way to do that but to do it.
 If Apple has proven one thing, it's that it, in four seconds, can make something huge.
 No, not that yet.
 Why?
 Just not yet.
 Why?
 It took them five years to make iTunes radio.
 It's like I talked to Jimmy Iovine at that event.
 They're slow, but this is what I'm saying.
 If they take a thing...
 But you just said they're fast.
 No, they're fast at taking something that exists and making it mainstream.
 They came out with Apple Pay, which everyone has already done, and they said, Apple Pay,
 and then suddenly...
 Right, but it took them years.
 We'll see.
 I saw Jimmy Iovine at the event, and I was like, how's it going?
 And he's like, it's my sixth week.
 Right.
 Fair.
 Sixth week being the editor-in-chief of The Verge, and then we had a hilarious fish out
 of water story moment.
 Can you just stop with the Jimmy Iovine humblebrags, please?
 Just for a minute.
 I'm a big fan of Jimmy Iovine.
 You guys fucked Jimmy Iovine.
 I got Gwen Stefani hitting me in the shoulder when she walked by.
 She was shooting me out of the way.
 You guys are friends now?
 No, it was a get the hell out of my way, useless, nobody.
 That's fair.
 Yeah.
 Right.
 I was friends with the guy in Sublime.
 That's what Gwen Stefani is thinking of herself all the time.
 Like, I need that dude, and you never can.
 I'm awesome.
 I'm awesome, because I would like to know that guy.
 I went through a Sublime phase.
 It's super dark.
 It's not that dark.
 I just listened to that record again recently.
 I was like, 40 Hours of Freedom?
 Yeah.
 It's a good record.
 That one and then the Sublime record.
 It just came on.
 It was like we were in a house.
 It was beachy.
 I was like, we should listen to some Sublime.
 And then we did, and that was great.
 Sweet story.
 I knew that story, everybody.
 No, I tried super hard to creep on Angela Aaron's talking to Will.i.am.
 And it was just impossible.
 I feel like there's a force field around that.
 It's a force field of tall, terrifying women who just sort of like just crowd you.
 They just get up on you and they're like, oh, I'm not allowed to stand here anymore.
 I guess I'll go.
 Okay, that was Vergecast.
 Thank you for listening to us.
 That's always nice.
 We never introduced ourselves.
 I just realized that.
 Oh, at the end.
 Yeah, I'm Neil.
 We're going to introduce ourselves.
 Yeah, introductions.
 Yeah, this is I'm Neal.
 I'm David.
 I am Dieter.
 Yeah.
 You can find us on Twitter.
 He's Pierce David.
 He's reckless.
 I'm Backlund.
 Yeah.
 And this is Vergecast every Thursday, 430 streaming on our site.
 And then we'll have the audio up very shortly after.
 Thank you for listening.
 We'll be back next week.