 Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of May 28th. Yeah, 2012. I'm Josh Topolsky. I'm Nilay Patel. I'm Ross Miller. Actually scared by the large floating head behind me. Yeah, this is weird. I don't know what I can do. I can downsize the head. You can scale it by moving it backwards. This is like Hollywood style. Which size looks appropriate? Go back. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, go back farther. Keep going. I just like doing it. I'm just gonna keep doing this. Wow, that's not even more creepy. It's good. Does it seem like I'm moving it or does it seem like it's just moving by itself? Yeah, it seems like you're in a chair that's rolling back and forth. Well, I wish I was, but I was actually moving the laptop. I got you. I look really polarized, like green and blue, don't I? Yeah, a little bit. Where are you? You tell the people where you are. I am in Beverly Hills right now. I'm in Los Angeles. That's right. I'm... Shannon Doherty is on her way over here. We're gonna go to the Peach Pit. We're going to the Peach Pit together. We're going to Peach Pit after dark. Yeah, Dylan and... I was gonna say Ian Ziering. I'm just interchangeably like character names and actual names. No, it's absolutely... that's how it works. Who is the blonde one? Well, there are two blondes. There's Jenny Garth. That's Jenny Garth. And then there was also a Tori Spelling played character whose name I can't remember. Am I okay to admit this is before my time? I never saw the original 90210. I'm really missing out on nothing. No, it's... the original 90210 is actually really amazing and everybody should watch it. Anyhow, this is the Vergecast where we discuss the week in technology, culture and, you know, in 90210. Early 90s television. 90s TV and 80s movies. But it's been a very eventful week for us. We have a very eventful week coming next week, which is the week of E3. And Computex? Oh, and Computex. And then the week after that is WWDC and then we get a break, but we go to Neely's wedding for that. Yeah. And then we back out for Google IO. June is crazy. It's the craziest month that we've seen so far. You had to get married in June. I just figured I'd put it right in the middle. I was assuming that like Apple would screw me over. You really should have waited. Can you put it off a little bit longer? July might be nice. Do you want to know the real story about how my wedding was scheduled? Becky's dad is a farmer. He's a corn farmer. He owns 5,000 acres of corn. And we had to schedule our wedding around we couldn't get married in the spring because he was planting the corn. Is this what the farmer's almanac told you? We had to look at the farmer's almanac and he told us when the harvest would begin. It was a dead true story. The whole family is farmers. So the harvest begins after Google IO. Yeah. Google also plans it around the farmer's almanac. It was a very strange conversation. And you wonder why they didn't do Android corn. Yeah. They didn't have to. So he was saying that they had to harvest and that would have been a conflict. The family couldn't come if they had to. By the way, we have to do a thing on their tractors basically. Every time I go to the farm, I wait for it to transform. Because it drives itself. It's crazy. This is completely irrelevant. Can we get Billy out there? He'll love to shoot this. Let's talk about the technology. I have to say, by the way, very disorienting to be why is somebody calling my room? Wow. I bet I know who that is. We're going to watch you get offed on this stream. Hello? You realize you're going to die now. Let's go shut this window. It's open. And I'm worried that a man with a gun... Laser sight. Well, let's go through the windows. Let's talk about why we're afraid for Josh's life. You want to just talk about it, Josh? What happened to you? Let's get out of the way. So the D conference was this week, which is if you don't know, the guys from All Things D hold this big technology conference. It's mostly like billionaires, titans of industry. Aaron Sorkin was there this year. You had Larry Ellison. All these people come up and they do interviews with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher from All Things D. We go and cover it. Tim Cook was there, the CEO of Apple. It was good. There's a ton of stuff that comes out of it. It's not like hard-hitting news, but it's some really interesting stories. Anyhow, on the night before their last day, the penultimate day, they ended the day with a sit-down with a guy named Ari Emanuel, who a lot of people I think probably in our world don't know that well. He's the guy who the character of Ari Gold on Entourage is based on. He's a very powerful Hollywood agent. His brother is Rahm Emanuel, who's the mayor of Chicago and was the chief of staff when Obama took office. Now, someone else is calling me. I'm really popular. He's a powerful guy in Hollywood. He sat down with Walt and Kara to talk about the changing landscape of media and entertainment thanks to technology. Very nervous here. He talked a lot during the—he was a supporter of SOPA. He seemed very agitated that SOPA had been shut down. He seemed very dismissive of the technology industry's efforts in piracy because he's very worried about piracy, which of course he would be. He said, look, Verizon, AT&T, and Google have to do something about this. They have to stop people from getting to these pirated pieces of content. I don't think that's the way to fix the problem. I don't think you tell Google to block a link or Verizon to block a link somewhere and you fix the problem of piracy. That was essentially the gist of SOPA in many ways. Was it not, Neelay, that we could— Yeah, it was beyond Google. It was at the ISP level. It was at the Verizon, AT&T, Comcast level where you say, this site in Russia, this server in Russia hosts pirated movies. Take it off the internet for people in the United States. Stop people from accessing that. Sure. Close enough. It was take it off the DNS. This sky flag, by the way, is killing us right now. It just means he can't yell as much. I'm enjoying this. Sure. Anyway, keep going. I thought that the idea that it was Verizon, AT&T, or Google's job—and I think everybody agrees, to solve this problem is really short-sighted. I got up and I asked—I began to ask a question, and I started with an analogy, which was, you're saying somebody robbed my house and they drove down a road to get there, so we got to do something about this road. I think the problem is much more nuanced than that. He didn't like my analogy, and he started basically screaming at me that my question was stupid. He called you a name. He called me a—well, he— It's okay. You're with friends. No, no. He said I was a fucking idiot. Twice, I think. Twice is what I hear. Anyhow, I didn't get to make the point. We didn't have the conversation. He shouted me down, and he was on stage, and I was on the floor at a mic that had basically been turned off at some point, because that's what they do after you ask a question. Joanna will tell you all about it. I went back to my seat. Afterwards, by the way, the audience was scared. Here's what I think. Walt and Kara were scared of Ari. I think the audience was largely scared of him because he's a very intimidating guy. Afterwards, everybody I talked to there was like, I'm so mad. You should have finished your question. You're so right. He's wrong about what he's thinking. Everybody was very supportive, which I took as a great sign. I stewed on it for a day, and I was thinking about it. Oh, I forgot. He ended the conversation with, we had finished our argument, because I was actually yelling at him without him, which you can't hear in the video, but I'm actually yelling back and forth with him. Then he ended the argument with, he asked, where do you work? As if he was going to come down and get me fired. He asked me to fire you. Whatever. I don't know what he does. He's going to take us off the internet. He's going to call Google. I wrote this thing today, and I said, here's where I work. I said, here's the problem. This is why you didn't want to hear what I had to say. This is the problem with, I think, at least part of the problem with the movie industry. You've got to get smart about what's happening. You don't just copyright. He compared copyright infringement to child pornography. They're not the same thing. Everybody agrees they're not the same thing. Stopping them has to be handled differently. It's a much more nuanced, much more complicated affair. People from Google said the exact same thing the next day. Anyhow, I wrote this thing about it, and I said, that's the case. It's a lot more complicated than you make it out to be. Your method, the SOPA method, was not the right way. To continue to endorse that is very foolish. These are the things that I think. I said at the end of my article, and I'll continue to say it, the entertainment industry doesn't want their industry to change. It has to change. I believe the model has to change to keep moving forward. I don't think that we can sustain the same exact model in perpetuity. Our entire relationship with entertainment, with movies, with TV has changed. If they don't recognize it and adapt to it, they're going to continue to have piracy. Even if they do adapt to it, they're going to continue to have piracy, because that's the world. Everybody steals. Not everybody, but in every facet there is theft, in every facet of our society. You can diminish that if you change your model and adapt to what people want, which they haven't done, and they don't know how to do. Well, they've done to an extent. You have to give credit to Hulu, to Netflix. Well, Netflix. Hulu is them. They try to choke off Hulu wherever they can. It's ridiculous. It's a step. It's more of a step than RIA did at this point in their downfall or demise, their transition. Sure. I think what's interesting is Daniel Ek and Sean Parker from Spotify were on the day before. No, sorry, the same day. They said something really interesting. They said, first off, the music industry didn't just bounce back from what happened. What happened was their model had to change. What they discovered in the new model is that it wasn't as profitable for music labels as it was previously. They're not making the same kind of money. Some have gone out of business. Some have merged. That's the new world. Things change. It's the same with publishing. Magazines and newspapers used to rule the roost. They controlled every part of that process. New media came along and it changed everything. Now, some of that is falling apart and changing. It will be changed forever. It doesn't go back. You don't go back to the way it was. The thing that you have to realize is – and Neelay and I talked about this. TechDirt actually wrote something that I thought was pretty smart on it. The model has to change. That model may be really different than your old model. It may not be as profitable. I don't think they're being smart or being proactive about how to change it. I think that's where the fix is going to come in for them. That's where they're going to be able to fix. You wrote the piece and then Ari commented in the piece. Then he wrote a letter to All Things D. Yeah. He wrote a letter to All Things D in Google and he basically said, I think I will agree with you, Soap. It was bad and we need to all figure this out together. I want to sit down with you whenever, wherever. Then he also left a comment on our piece and reached out and I reached back out. Your fingers gently touched. Yeah. You're looking a little nervous. We're going to talk. I mean we're going to talk. The window is still open. He doesn't know. At any moment he could be attacked. I think we'll talk. Right there. Yeah. You're dropping out on us. You're being soaped a little bit. Yes. Maybe. I think we're going to talk and he's going to talk to Google and other people and people are going to, you know, hopefully he'll get something. You know, he's one man, but he's a powerful man. Maybe he can get something. Get people thinking about this the right way. Can you hear me right now or am I just like digital noise? Well, you're both. You're very intelligent sounding digital noise. So here's what I think is really interesting about this. I mean there's a lot, obviously there's a lot of things I think that is interesting about it. But Google's chief copyright counsel a year or two ago wrote a book called Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars. That was the title. And he said basically the thesis of the book is every time technology changes, copyright law is affected, the copyright industries, the content industries freak out and they cast the technological change as a moral dilemma. Right. So when tapes came out, they said kids are going to like do drugs basically. Right. And what's funny is that's the big thesis of the book. It's a great book. Everybody should read it. It's very accessible. But the very first chapter of the book is about the danger of metaphor when you're discussing copyright law because you literally you get to say, well no, I mean it's true because winning a legal argument with like metaphor is like kissing your sister. You can make any metaphor work any way you want but you've accomplished nothing. Wait, wait, wait. How is this kissing your sister? Well no, not yours. I mean the child pornography argument, right? Oh, right on. Well no, I mean like the argument that you're blowing up the road, like whatever. Maybe the internet is a road. Maybe it's not. It isn't that thing. I still don't get the whole kissing your sister thing. Because you haven't won anything. You haven't accomplished a goal. You've just done something kind of gross. Something's happening. Yeah, something's happening but you're like, I don't know. No, it is. It's like a tie. Anyway. Go ahead. No, you can say copyright infringement is like child pornography and stop it but you're missing the nuance and the critical nuance is all child pornography is bad. So you can develop an algorithm that can identify this thing. You say blunt force, go away. You cannot and this was Mike Mazdick's point on Tech Dirt. You cannot do that with copyright infringement. You can't say this is fair use and have a computer decide because it takes courts years of efforts to draw the boundaries of fair use. And on top of it, it's like a core free speech issue, right? If you start saying you can copy this much, you can comment on this piece of a news article, you can take this much of a video to copy into a remix, you're making decisions about free speech. And so you don't want – and the thing about the Internet that's really powerful and really different and which ultimately makes every metaphor and every analogy fall apart is that the Internet isn't – the Internet is the first time we've had a public commons where you can technologically enforce the law. So I can tell you that there's a law against driving over 55 miles an hour, but you can still go faster than that, right? On the Internet, I can shut your computer down. I can say you cannot do this. And that sort of restriction on liberty is – if I started selling cars that were rate limited at 55 miles an hour, people would freak out. But that is a conversation we're having about the Internet all the time. No, and those are the two – I think there's two sides of this that are going to need to be considered to really make it – to make anything change. The first side is the content creators – and by the way, we're content creators, so I'm very much on the side of content creators, okay? The content creators will have to understand that you can't just paint with this huge – with this huge brush to identify – say this is copyright infringement. You can't just make these like big changes and make snap decisions. What is going on here? Ari really needs to talk to you right now. Why am I being called? Why am I being called? Hold on. Hello? Yes. This is he. Yes. Yes. No, not right now. That's fine. Okay, thanks. Bye. Is that your champagne? Housekeeping – they wanted to know if I needed this room to get clean because I had the privacy sign on. Anyway, very important. Very good stuff. This is what happens when you're traveling. Okay, two things is you've got – the way we identify what is copyright infringement has to be as nuanced as is required because if it's not, you're tempting fate. I mean you really are screwing with something that should not be screwed with, which is how the internet functions, which is how people get information on the internet. I'm not a bleeding heart like hippie here. It's important. It's really important. It's the thing that allows us to do all of the new things, all of the amazing things that we are doing, the things that will become like the new industry in America. If we screw up the internet, we're really done for. The other side of it is the model has to change. The model has to be – you have to accept that people are stealing your shit for a reason. Some people will continue to steal, but there are a lot of people who steal out of desperation or frustration or laziness. If you give them a better option – I mean let's put it this way. Neelay, you went to get a torrent, Snow White and the Huntsman, right? You can download it today. By the way, let's just clarify. This is hypothetical. We just wanted to see if I could do it. I wasn't like, I got to watch Snow White and the Huntsman right now. We went to find it. We found it instantly. So, sorry, very thirsty. So the thing is if you truly want to see Snow White and the Huntsman, I would argue there are a lot of people who don't want to go to a theater, who don't like the experience, they think it costs too much money, they find it inconvenient, and they've got a killer TV and a killer sound system at home, and their movie watching experience is as good as it is in their minds as it would be at a theater. And they want to watch it at home. Now, if it were me, if I could watch Snow White and the Huntsman tonight, if Laura and I could stream it, I'd pay $25 for that. I would. And I'd pay $25 for every movie that came out that I don't go to see in the theater that I want to see, but I'm not going to go to a theater to see. And just something like that, if they did that day of release, I mean, maybe it would change the model of theaters. And you know what? Maybe the model of theaters has to change. There's no sacred cows. It's like we have to be able to decide to move forward. And if these guys don't want to move forward, they're going to get crushed under the wheel of innovation. What's the example everyone uses? Well, can I push back, Ross, what you think of your example? Yes. All right. Well, that's great, but you can charge $25 for you and Laura to watch a movie, and you get around the price of a movie ticket each. But there's nothing stopping you from inviting 50 people over to your house. And that's a real hit to revenue. And that's a real, I mean, people work at movie theaters. A lot of people worked on this movie. I mean, there's a common. It's not going to be a common thing. I don't believe that's going to be common. But four people, five people, that would be very common. I would invite people over to watch a movie. The model has to change. I get that. But that's like, hey, you know what? The newspapers wanted to be the only place where you could get your news from. It didn't happen. No, I'm saying the resistance. But the resistance to that is if you start saying, we're going to take away guaranteed revenue and we're going to, I don't know the answer. I'm just telling you, I understand that resistance. A lot of people work on those movies. They've got to all get paid, you know? I understand that it's possible that the financials of that model have to change. That's what I'm saying. But the hard pill to swallow is you can fight it and it will happen or you can embrace it and try to ride the wave and find something in there that is valuable to you. I just don't think what you're saying is let's try to not change for as long as possible even if the public demands it or behavior demands it. No, I don't think you're saying that, but that's what that person is saying, isn't ready to try to find new ways to address the issue. That's the thing that is going to be the toughest for these guys to understand. This is what I was getting back to about the Spotify thing. Basically what Sean Parker and Daniel Ek were saying was people who would pay for music definitely began paying for music on iTunes. There's a pretty good amount of people who will do that and that has helped the music industry sustain itself. But there's an age group, 12 to 20, that's still pirate music and their model is trying to serve those people. You pay $10 a month in streaming, somebody is getting paid versus not getting paid at all. The music industry didn't recover from, it didn't go back. It wasn't up here and then it went down here and then once iTunes happened, it went back up. It changed. It was fundamentally disrupted and altered by technology and that is probably what will happen in the movie and TV industry. But that works both ways. There are disruptions in how we produce movies and TV. There are disruptions in how you distribute movies and TV. And those disruptions work to the advantage of these people, to these studios, if they understand how to use them and harness them. You know what the key critical terrifying difference is? Is that the music companies weren't owned by Comcast in Time Warner. These deep partnerships with the pipes, the cable industry owns the content companies in a lot of really meaningful ways. And that means Comcast wants to do things like charge Netflix for access to its network and they're going to do it. AT&T wants to have deep partnerships with its network partners and say we're not going to let Netflix run over our pipes. And they're going to do it. And they're doing these caps. At some point the FCC has to step in and regulate a free and open Internet for everybody. And if they don't do that then our society is screwed. That's all there is to it. And look, if it's happening, and I'm sure it is, I'm sure you're right, and we know it is, we've reported on it, at some point it has to be regulated. Somebody has to step in and say this is not the way you're going to do it. If our government wants to let Comcast run the Internet for America, then we're screwed. And believe me, pirating will look like child's play compared to what comes after a really restricted Internet. That's what I think. Yeah, right, because people will set up their own networks with even fewer regulations, fewer, like less oversight. Let's talk about when people can set up mesh networks that are really effective amongst a large group of people that you literally have, you need like an EMP to shut it down. Seriously, what would you do? How do you shut down somebody's private mesh network? I mean, you're talking about a whole different frontier that we probably don't want to go into. But I'm just saying, we're not there yet, right? I mean, there is some middle ground. And by the way, I don't think we're going to get there because of Hollywood. I really don't. They're important. They're very important. But there are a lot of other big important businesses in the world. Larry Ellison runs a big important business. Tim Cook runs a big important business. Tim Cook, he can run around and buy all of Hollywood, right? I mean, he literally could. I mean, we know that financially speaking that he could if he wanted to. I'm just saying, I don't think it's to get to that. I think it could get somewhere better and people would say, yeah, I like this, you know, but there's going to be hits on both sides. And if you don't take the hits, then you're going to be victimized if you're not willing to adapt. I said it in my post. I said adapt or die. And I really believe that. I really believe that adapt or die is the one thought you should have when you're doing anything. In life or in business is – I'm not going to quote Ballmer, but he is right in the sense that like you move forward or you die. I think it's more specifically it's you adapt or you die, you change or you die. And I don't see anywhere where people just kept doing the same thing. You know, look, Coca-Cola has had to change the way it does its business. Their formula may be the same, but they've definitely changed the way they do business. And you can be sure they'll continue to do that. The car – you know, the automakers have done that and they'll continue to do it. And you know, the movie industry will do it and they'll have to. So that's it. I'm done. Are you going to be the new Republican nominee for president or what? I mean, still do it. I hope so. Well, I said I have a lot of questions about Obama's birth certificate. Okay, so let's talk about some other stuff at D. Well, I mean, there's a lot of other news. I think Tim Cook, a lot of iPhone rumors this week. I think Cook said a bunch of stuff. I have a lot of thoughts on the TV situation. But first, let's hear what you got away from Tim Cook. You took away, got away? I don't know what I'm talking about. I got away. I stole some stuff from him. I pirated his content. Tim Cook I thought was really affable, funny, you know, obviously super smart. But I didn't get a good sense of anything about what he'll do. There were little tidbits of things that he'll do like, you know, MG Siegler wrote something today about Facebook integration coming to iOS, which, you know, he said, stay tuned, we think we can do more. He'd already said that before. You know, Walton Carah asked him about why Microsoft's idea of a convertible or, you know, some kind of hybrid of a laptop and a tablet doesn't work. And he kind of, I felt like he kind of stumbled on the answer in it. He didn't really have a great answer. He basically ended up with, well, it won't look as cool. And I actually thought that was like not, he didn't really fully explain why they couldn't do something that was half iPad, half, you know, laptop. And I think they probably could if they wanted to and it would be great. But, you know, what I walked away with just overall was I think he's a really interesting smart guy, but I don't have an idea of what his vision or what his passions are like at Apple. You know, I don't have an idea of what his vision for Apple is, and I don't have an idea of what his passions are. He seems interested in a lot of stuff. He loves the company, obviously. But it wasn't like, you know, when the last time Jobs was at D, there were things he was angry about. There were things that he was really excited about. And he talked about them in a way that was very unguarded, I thought. He actually was really expressive about that stuff. And Tim was very, I think he was very guarded. He was very funny and very open, but in a guarded way. And so, you know, but there were things he talked about that he made some comments about fragmentation in regards to screen resolution on the iPhone that I thought was interesting since there's been a lot of talk about the resolution changing. I mean, he specifically said we have one, you know, basically one resolution, one screen size. I forget the exact quote, but, you know, it was fairly direct. And then the Facebook stuff, you know, Joanna Stern asked him a question about ping. He basically said like maybe we'll keep kill ping, we don't know. I asked him about gaming in the living room specifically, and he didn't say we're not interested in that. He actually said that that might be interesting or I'd be interested in that or something like, you know, he said we're in the gaming space in mobile, but we may be interested in, he said, the indication was they weren't not looking at gaming. Right. The only thing he didn't want to do was the traditional console, right, which is kind of a throwaway comment. He's like, why would he make a console? I mean, they make iPads and laptops and desktops and I don't think a console. Yeah, they don't need one big Apple TV. And frankly, there are, I can think of 10 different ways that you could combine an iPad and iPhone and an Apple TV to create a really interesting gaming experience in the living room. And they're not doing it right now. They're doing mirroring, which doesn't really, you know, serve the same purpose. And then he said, and then I think this is really interesting. He said, we're going to double down on secrecy, thus saying double down, which is the buzzword of D. It's a virus throughout our community right now. Double down on secrecy and then literally the next day there were a bunch of leaks everywhere. Almost as if they took it as a challenge. Here's what I hope. Yeah. My theory is that the, and this could be totally wrong, by the way. Yeah. It really is, but my theory is that the stuff we're seeing is like a, is like a fake product that Apple is, that is purposely leaking. I mean, it looks exactly like the existing iPhone only taller. Like, see an iPhone, which is to me is a huge, I think it's a huge misstep for them. I heard, I'll be honest with you. I talked to a lot of people at D just, you know, in the industry, not journalists, not critics of technology who were like, man, iOS is looking really old and their hardware is looking really old. And they're like, you know, people talking about the Galaxy S3 and other devices, I might switch. I heard plenty of people who had an iPhone in their hands say stuff like that. Right. You know, they were kind of bored of iOS. I think that's a real sentiment, like not just amongst those people, but also amongst like your average consumer. So my like secret hope is that this phone we're seeing is like kind of a red herring. It's kind of like a, you know, to get you off of the trail of the real phone. Yeah. But I have no idea if that's the case or not. Well, it's funny because there were a lot of leaks. A lot of leaks. WWDC is coming right up. I think we're all fairly convinced that there's not going to be a new phone at WWDC. No, but I was thinking about this morning. What if, like if they have to have a new resolution, like not just twice resolution, do the developers have to have time to build for this? What if they could comment about it at WWDC? I mean, what if they do what they did with the original iPhone where they show it and say this is the new phone and it's coming in September? Right. They kill the sales of their existing phone. I mean. Maybe they don't care. I think they care. I mean. Well. I don't think, I mean, that's like the, what's it, the Osborne effect? Do you know about this? Yes, the Osborne. The Osborne effect where you kill the sales of your existing product by announcing the next one. I don't think Apple's that dumb. And you don't think people are already saying I'm not going to buy, I want to wait for the iPhone 5? Because I know people who definitely are. Yeah, but millions upon millions of other people are buying the 4S. I mean, every quarter sales are higher than the 4S. Not everyone realizes year after year it's the exact same schedule. Right. I think we just know a lot of nerds. Well, that's unquestionably true. I mean, I think what we're seeing is, I agree with you, I think it's some other crap that is like out in the open. I don't think you say we're going to double down on secrecy and then have a bunch of leaks. I think, I mean, maybe if you're not actually effective in doubling down on secrecy, I mean, that's, I mean, I think when you say doubling down on anything, in my experience, that has always been, it's almost like you're admitting that you're not going to do that thing. I mean, seriously, can you remember a time when somebody said we're doubling down on X and it turned out to be correct? You know what this all comes back to? Is HP saying it was going to double down on web OS. That was the first time. Web OS. That was literally, that was the first time I think I've heard that phrase in kind of the recent context. It's certainly the first time we've ever used it in the headline. Yeah, well, you put it in the headline. It didn't catch it. Peter showed me the link from 2010. It was from D, I think. Was it from D? No, it was an interview with you. They bought it and then you had a call with Ruby and somebody else. And I think it was Todd Bradley said we're going to double down on web OS. And then just over two years later. Everyone's doubling down. I mean, I really think there's like this thing in the industry where we have to stop using the phrase double down. That's a kiss of death. It's a kiss of death. Also, like, I don't know what the actual, what I'm supposed to expect from that. Like, are you, you know, what are the material, I get what you're trying to say. Like, you're all in, which is another thing that people say. We're all in on this. I feel like it's kind of a thing that people say when they're just making stuff up. Yeah, they're not actually saying anything. Yeah, yeah. Double down. As a joke yesterday, I tweeted that I was doubling down and getting back to New York. And I was afraid the plane was going to crash. I mean, it is, it's at that level of like, like just bad omen. So the other thing Tim Cook talked about at D was the television. And the rumors of the TV are rampant. They're everywhere. I think Boy Genius had a rumor this week that they're going to show off the TV OS at WWDC and give developers time to prepare for it. We've heard, you know, endless, endless rumors of LCD screens being cut or some new technology that doesn't exist yet being developed. I have to say, I don't think any of it's true. I don't think they're anywhere near putting out a TV. And I don't think they've solved the core problem of the television market. The number one core problem is you got to put TV on it. And I don't think that they have shown any. I think if they were out there talking to RCN and Comcast and Cablevision and Time Warner and all the people you got to talk to to put television on TV, I think we'd hear about it a lot. And not to mention the technology TV, like LCDs, LEDs, plasma. Like that's still not quite the quality that I want. I think they're poking around. And I think the other thing is, we talked a bunch about it at CS. I think there's a core interface problem with television. And they've changed Apple TV how many times and however many years. I think the current iteration is the worst thing I've ever seen. If you showed me the Apple TV as exists right now with that screen, that interface, Apple's going to reinvent TV. I'd be like, they have no idea what they're doing. Because it's a piece. It's a great product. I use it for AirPlay nonstop. Everything else about it is like ugly or broken. I think that they'll do something better with the interface. I think that is going to happen. I think as to the question about whether or not they're going to make a TV, look, if Apple wants to be in some market at this point, like no one's going to tell them no and no one's going to stop them and they'll probably be successful in it. They'll have some success. Even the Apple TV is starting to become a little bit successful for them. But I don't think it's as successful as they want it to be. And I don't think that Tim Cook, a guy who was in charge prior to this of deciding how these products get built and how much it costs to build them and how quickly you can build them, I don't think he looks at that business right now and says, this is a slam dunk. Unless they have some wild revolutionary ace in the hole. And look, if Ari Emanuel is any indication of where the industry that they have to partner with is at, I don't think they have some revolutionary ace in the hole that's going to change the game right now. And I think that's the real… Cook said we're not looking to be in the content business right now. He said we're not going to go and buy a studio. We're not going to buy Universal or whatever it is. And that means they have to partner with these guys. And in that industry, there is no AT&T. There's no giant national company that will do what you want because they need to compete. And even when you use AT&T, you're still pretty much everywhere. That's the content pipe. Right, but the content for a cell phone is you get data and voice. And then you can go and do whatever you want. The content for a television is television. And that is, I mean, you think the content industry is weird and paranoid and closed off. The cable industry is notoriously like insular. You know how you get a cable card certification? You go and ask Cable Labs. You know who owns Cable Labs? The cable companies. There's no way you can like get in that market that way. So here's something that Ari was talking about that I actually had a… I would have liked to have a conversation with him about, maybe I will at some point. He was talking about the syndication model. And he was talking about, you know, Walt and I actually talked about this after the interview because Walt thought this was a place where, you know, Ari said there aren't any cord cutters and that, you know, Walt said, well, there's people who are never getting cable. And, you know, Ari didn't think that that was correct. And there definitely are. There definitely is a generation of people who are like, I don't need cable because I have a bunch of other ways to get this content. But he talked about syndication, how lucrative syndication was on television, you know, the licensing of, you know, the first round of syndication, the second round. It's very lucrative. So what happens to syndication in the world where programming is no longer a thing, you know, where like this thing is on at this time, right? Because I think that we're approaching this mindset where you want to be able to get your stuff when you want it. Like maybe I'll subscribe to a show and pay for that or I'll subscribe to a network and get a certain number of shows on that network. But, you know, I don't watch Game of Thrones when it airs. And I don't know anybody else who does. And in a world where like syndication is outmoded because you're not like stumbling on a thing because you're not flipping through channels because you're not watching scheduled programming, like when you think about what has to happen to this model and what will happen, like I just think, you know, Apple has to find somewhere that's really revolutionary and will change what we do now. And the industry doesn't want that. And so I don't see how they have some big, you know, I don't know what their big content deal is, short of like you can rent a movie and you can buy an episode of a TV show, which is not, and like you said, the cable companies aren't going to let go of the monopoly they have, which allows things like syndication deals to be so lucrative. Even if you get Comcast, let's say Apple wins, they get Comcast, that's 30% of the country. That's not everybody. That's not a big market. Also, we don't have our bandwidth, the pipes are not big enough right now into most people's homes to make this a really satisfying experience, you know, every day. I don't believe we're there with bandwidth at all. I mean, I have Time Warner Doxxis in New York and it is not there yet to really do, you know, multi-room streaming in HD. Like that's not going to happen. My Fios is getting upgraded in June. Oh, is it really? To 75 up and like 35 down. You're kind of an asshole right now. I feel pretty, the top tier, the top tier Fios in June will be 300 up and 70, or 300 down and 75 up, which is ridiculous. I mean, I really, there are a lot of reasons to dislike you. That one is at the top. Pretty big one. I'm really hesitant to move. Ross can tell you, I talk about moving and finding you a partner all the time. You're not convenient at all. Fios keeps me there. I'm always waiting. I think it's a great example of part of the problem. You know, like look at all the factors. It's like Apple is a factor, the studios are a factor, the cable companies are a factor. The cable companies are a factor for two reasons. It's about where the cable is coming from, whether it's the dumb pipe that sends your cable down to your DVR or the other pipe that is the internet. And then like even looking at that pipe, you've got a bunch of other problems where it's like the bandwidth isn't enough. You can't get it certain places and it's not enough. There's caps. They're capping it. It's not even a utility really. I mean, we don't even regulate it like a utility, which is what it is, you know. I mean, we're not regulating internet like electricity. No. We should be. You know, that was the, should I just do this thing? That was the net neutrality fight. Literally the FCC said we're going to move broadband access under the same part of the law, Title II, as the phone, like phone service, because we regulate phone service as a utility, and the phone companies are common carriers and they have to abide by these rules and it's all neutral, and the internet companies freaked out, and they won. They basically just won. Yes. They didn't have, the FCC tried to do. Which is why the FCC. And you know, the FCC is trying to do, actually right now, we, TC had a report on it last week. The FCC is trying to do the same thing right now with the cable companies and like companies like Aereo, where they're saying we have an entire, this is such a wonky thing, they have an entire thing where if you run a cable company, you're called an MVPD, a multiple video provider, distributor, something like that, and if you're that thing, the networks have to sell you content at a fair rate. Which almost comes like the syndication issue again. And so they're saying, well, we want the internet services to be classified under that. We want to sneak them in under this other law so that the content owners have to sell them the stuff at the fair rate, and the content owners are fighting it with maybe the most pedantic arguments. Like ABC is out there saying, when people think of a channel, they think of the specific RF frequencies that are associated with a channel on their local television dial. It's like, no they're not, dude. They barely even think of a number. They think of three letters and content coming to them. I bet most of them would prefer to think of abc.com, which has nothing to do with RF frequency. And at the end of the day, what they really think of, I actually just had this conversation this week with somebody very smart. What consumers really think of, and this goes to your point, they think of shows. They don't think of networks. You don't have a loyalty to NBC or ABC or Fox. You have a loyalty to the show that you want to watch. And the only network I can think of that has broad consumer loyalty as a network is ESPN. I can't think of another one, because people just turn on ESPN and they leave it running all day. Maybe CNN, but even then CNN is like... CNN. Yeah, but CNN is like... If you replace CNN with something better, you'd be like, okay, that's fine. It's more talking head news, right? Right. CNN is mostly garbage. I mean, during the day. Right, but ESPN, people want the product of ESPN. They want whatever it is to be on, and they think it's a good product. Well, I mean, this is Barry Diller... I realize that I'm sitting here in like SB Nation Studios, and I think this product is way better out here. Right, way better. No, Barry Diller made this point about some people want ESPN really badly, and some people don't want it at all. And the people who want it really badly will subsidize, will really honestly subsidize it for the people who don't. I mean, right now I'm subsidizing it for people who want it. I don't want it. If you told me I'm going to take ESPN off of your cable and it'll reduce the price of your contract X amount of dollars, I'd say, that's great, go ahead and do that. And the other people, if they said it's going to increase it X amount of dollars, they'd probably be like, well, I need to have ESPN, but I don't want E, and I don't want Bravo, and I don't want... But this is the thing, this gets back to the Ari Emanuel argument, which is we have the system, and it works this way. We make movies this way, we make TV this way, they go on channels, they get syndicated, and it makes money for everybody, we have an industry to support, we have people who work and do this stuff. And if you change that, jobs will be lost, money will be lost, and it will irreparably alter how we do business. And this is what I'm saying, yes, that's what's going to happen. It is what's going to happen, it is what always happens, almost without fail, when technology changes. And when... I mean, it happens everywhere. The thing that's hard is to accept that it's happening. The thing that's hard is to go, I can try to fight to protect this thing that I have, which by the way, is an incredible thing. What nobody says, what they'll tell you is we're struggling. And look, there are places where the margins are very low. But the entertainment industry is enormously profitable and has a lot of money to play with. It's a large industry. And what you'll do is you say, I don't want to lose this, I don't want to lose this thing that I have, it's very valuable. And that's true, it is very valuable, but it has to change. It cannot change. The horse-drawn carriage was valuable to someone at some point too, and then somebody invented a car and people were like, wait a second, the car works way better, it makes a lot more sense for me. And at first they were really expensive and hard to get, and not everybody had one, and both things were on the road. And then at some point, horse-drawn carriages, you only see them in the middle of Pennsylvania. The Amish are riding them. And it's like, even now, I don't know if the Amish use them anymore. Like sneaking around in cars dressed up like horse-drawn carriages. Let me put it to you this way. If somebody tomorrow said, hey, you know what, iPad magazines, iPad, like you download them, they're wired, and you know, Engadget does distro and all these different like kind of static documents, that's what everybody's reading now. They don't want to read online. They don't want to tweet, they don't want to comment. The whole model has shifted. What are you going to do? Would I say, well, I'm going to keep doing this thing because I think it can get, someday it's going to fight back to relevance, or people won't just avoid it, they're going to use it because my product is better or whatever. Or would I go, all right, well, I got to make some changes because I want to still be in the game. I would say I'm going to make some changes. And some of those changes might be, I'm going to have less of a staff, or I'm going to lose developers, or, you know, I have to think differently about the way we do our content because it's a new format. But would I rather adapt to the thing where the culture is going, or would I rather try to sit on what I have and hope for the best, you know? And that's the hard decision that like nobody wants to, this is, you know, somebody just tweeted at me, they said, your article is wrong because the music industry didn't go back to normal. They lost a bunch of money, and the Thieves won. This is what they said. Post is pompous, and you're fundamentally wrong about the music biz. It lost half its value. Problem wasn't solved. Thieves won. Here's what happened. The market demand won. The industry was changed, and it lost value. And that's what happens when things change sometimes. You know, the music industry couldn't sustain, couldn't be sustained the way it was running. Like, I don't have a problem with that equation. You know, do I think that we'll get to a point where we can't support art and artistic endeavors? No, I don't think we're anywhere near that point. I actually think that we're seeing an explosion of that stuff, and a lot of it has to do with technology. And I think that'll happen even more when these companies start to really embrace this stuff and say like, we're changing. We're going to change. We're going to adapt. And, you know, maybe I'm wrong. We'll see. You're probably wrong. Probably. That's my guess. Also, Ross, we're making an iPad magazine and you're fired. I don't know if you got that from Josh's impassioned speech. It's fine. I'm going to go make an iPhone magazine. Ever smaller. All y'all. You know, the thing about that is the demand changed, but the kind of demand didn't change. And I think that we should move on, but we've talked about this for a long time. But the kind of demand didn't change, but the amount of demand increased. And I think if you're running any kind of business and you're seeing demand increase when your profits go down, you're like, what is broken here? You know, what I want to say is, what I want to say about music is this. And by the way, I worked in the music industry. I got paid by people in the music industry. I have signed contracts in the music industry. So I have some idea of how this works. What happened is there were people who were making a lot of money. A smaller amount of people were making a lot of money. So what happened now is a lot more people are making music. There's more music than there has ever been. It's easier to get than it's ever been. A person who is an artist who's just starting has a way to be discovered they would have never had in the old model. So more music is being heard and the consumer is better for it. And our world is better for it. I believe that it's better to have more people creating art than less people, than fewer people. And, you know, what happened though is those places where it was pooled, those places where people were making a lot of money changed. They got disrupted. They're not the same. And yeah, that's really hard for them. But the world changed. The world will change. You know, there was a time in this country when women couldn't vote. There was a time in this country when blacks couldn't vote. I mean, stuff has to change. What's going on over there? Sorry, there's like people walking by the window here. Hang on. I'm just going to shut the window. Josh is definitely going to get murdered right now. I mean, without question. We've gone from, I just want to be clear, we've gone from copyright law to music. To suffrage. To women's suffrage. Yeah, that happened. All suffrage really, yeah. Wow. I mean, is he coming back? Oh, he's back. We were legitimately worried for your safety. Also, Ross pointed out that we went from Ari Emanuel to women's suffrage in like three moves, which is pretty impressive for us. Even for us, that is impressive. Adapt or die. Do you want to talk about anything else that happened at D10? The CEO of Skype was on. You talked about the Spotify guys. Anything else from the conference you want to touch on? Wait, on what? The Skype guys? They said that I told them that the design was terrible. I said the new Skype design is terrible and everybody I know who uses it thinks it's terrible and are you going to do anything about it? And he said we have a lot of users that think it's great. But then later I heard from someone, sources familiar with the matter that they are actually working on a new design. Good. Which I haven't reported yet. I'm so busy writing about Ari Emanuel. Let's talk about the Chromebook and Chromebox that came out this week. Because you helped on the reviews with David. I love them. You do. You were really stoked on the Chromebook. You were initially very, and I still think it's ridiculous, a ridiculous product. Second. I think the new Chromebook is actually a lot more useful and usable than any other Chromebook that's ever existed. That doesn't say much. It's like saying it's the best Blackberry ever. Still Blackberry. No, but they're really doing something interesting. They're doing something really fascinating. They are going in a direction that I believe is a true real new direction for computing, which is like literally it is all cloud-based. I mean the apps are webpages. They're HTML5 apps and some are Flash-based. They'll move away from that as HTML5 and other stuff gets more advanced. But I think it's a really exciting idea. And I think they actually made it a lot better because they did some things that allowed me to bridge the gap easier. So I'm used to working in Windows. I like Windows. Not the software but the actual things. Oh, God forbid. I was actually in a Microsoft store yesterday. And there were some pretty nice laptops there actually. I was like pretty tempted to buy one. There's also a Sony store here, which I haven't been in a Sony store in ages. And they have got to say their ID is really nice. They still make some really good movies. Sorry, not to get off track. I'd like them to make a Chromebook. But it does these things now where you can run Windows for your apps. You can switch between them like you would in a normal computing environment. And it's much faster. They fixed the Typekit issue at our request, by the way. I just want to say you're welcome. Everybody who is using a Chromebook and wondering why sites look like crap. I told the guys on the Chromebook team, I was like, you know it doesn't display Typekit properly. And they were like, you're the first person that's ever told us that, which I was surprised. Because we live in a cave and never talk to humans who use the Internet. Unless they have Project Amazon. I don't see how that's possible. So yeah, I actually think it gets closer to bridging the gap between the cloud experience and the traditional PC experience. And I could see it being used for a casual user. It's a pretty good day-to-day device. I really believe that. I think it's a lot less computer than a Mac or a decently stacked PC. Too much money. For some people, they need a price of like $250. Even $300 would be like this. It's a lot of computer for them. So that puts it at the range of Android tablets. Is Chrome OS justifiable as a second Google OS? That's what I'm asking. Actually, the bigger problem is it puts it in the range of an iPad. And if you're a person who wants to do some casual computing and you want an interface that's kind of app-based, that's sort of all about these full-screen windows you look at, does it make sense to spend $550 on that or does it make sense to spend $500 or $400 on an iPad 2 and get a nice keyboard dock for it or something? And I think that's the problem with the Chromebook right now. Why would I spend $450 on it? And I don't think they have a great answer. Yeah, I don't think they have. There's no value proposition there. I don't know why I'd buy one. And the Chromebox to me is even crazier. I mean you can buy a small Windows PC for nothing, for $0. Would it be cool if they had done something with the Chromebox where they had some great media playback options or made it like a part Google TV, part Chromebox or something? I don't know. That's so unclear. I mean I was in a Walmart the other day and I definitely saw a netbook that was like $278. And it was a Windows PC. It was really sad. It was an HP and it had a Discover WebOS icon on the desktop. And I was like, oh man, that's so cute. I think what they want to do with Chromeboxes is they're looking at enterprise. I think they want thin clients for enterprise that can be updated easily, that are virus free, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, but why the hell does it have like six USB ports and why does it look so shamelessly like a Mac Mini? Maybe there's an enterprise need for the ports. Yeah, some CIO somewhere is like, look, I need a computer that can only run a web browser but has six USB ports. Well, think about what you can do if it's all a web based environment. I mean for enterprise. I mean I think that like there's a real – Schmitt's dream. I don't think they're there. Yeah, Schmitt's dream, exactly. I don't think they're there yet, but I think that's where they're targeting the desktop. But I honestly think the new version is cool. And if it were less money, I would really – I could really recommend it to casual users. If it were 300 bucks, I'd say like this is a really cool computer to have for $300. The screen looks good. The hardware is decent. It's kind of plasticky, but the keyboard is really good. The software is fast. The browsing is fast. The trackpad responsiveness was really good. And I think at the right price point, it's a cool computer. I could recommend it over like a netbook. Would you buy it with ads? Because we heard some stuff that they're going to do it with ads, right? They're going to lower the price and put ads on it and subsidize it. Because I have a Kindle with ads, and I don't care. I actually have a Ferd, honestly. I don't know. Would that be like I'm browsing and I get a special interstitial, like a full screen interstitial while I'm browsing a page or something? I don't know. I don't think Google knows better than to do that kind of crap. But they would do something. Well, I hate ads. I hate ads that are in my interface. I like good advertising. What I don't like is cluttery ads. When I see the ads in Gmail in my regular Gmail account, it drives me crazy. And I never click on them, obviously, because I'm in my email, and I don't want to be advertised to. So it would have to be done in a way that was non-intrusive, and I don't know how you do that on a computer. Right. So I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't pay less for something with ads. I would pay more for something without ads. Right. That's just me. Well, you probably get both options. So let's swing back all the way. Windows 8 release preview put out this week. David and Tom did a huge hands-on preview of it. Some kind of huge changes. They put a special version of Flash in the Metro version of IE. One that does just videos. Yeah, it's limited. It only does videos. And Microsoft maintains a whitelist of sites that are allowed to use Flash. That is the craziest part to me. But that version of Flash will also be on the ARM tablets, which to me sounds like death, because Flash on ARM has traditionally sucked about as hard as any product has ever sucked. They just say it's going to save battery if it's just video somehow. Yeah, you know what's great at playing videos off the Internet in a mobile device is iOS and Android, and they don't need Flash to do it. So I don't know what they're thinking there. A bunch of other changes, a lot of new apps. And then Tom reported that Microsoft is taking out all of the ability for third-party hacks to put the start menu back on the desktop. So not only are they saying we're taking away the start menu from normal people, they're removing all the hooks and all the bits and pieces of legacy code that would let you put the start menu back, which I think is a very aggressive move on Microsoft's part. There's a part of me that really wants to cheer them on, like break with the past and go for it, and there's a part of me like, huh, you're going to make a lot of people really angry. And if you look in our forums and you look around, yeah. Wait a second. What are they doing? What is this? So right now in the consumer preview, and I believe in release preview, I was traveling too, so I haven't really gotten a chance to play with it, but you can hack Windows 8 to put the start menu back in the traditional desktop view. Right. So you can get the desktop back to it, and then you can go to Metro and do whatever you want. In the new version, Tom is reporting that the final build, they're taking out all the bits of code and all the things that enable those hacks to work, so that you will never get a start menu back in Windows 8. And I think it's a very ballsy move. It's courageous. I appreciate it. It's rough. But in our forums, there are people who are pissed off about it. Tom is saying that the broader Microsoft community is kind of angry about it. To me, it's like Microsoft is, they're going for it with Windows 8. They're trying to do something new. I've read a few pretty interesting articles over the week, people basically saying this is a huge inflection point for Microsoft. They're betting the company on this. This is a bigger deal than we're making it out to be. And I think that little thing, that removal of the start button, I think, kind of just, it's like the cherry on top of the risk Sunday. Right. Well, Metro Design itself is a unification across not just Windows, but the phone, even Xbox. Every platform they have is kind of converging. Yeah, I don't know. If I was a traditional Windows user, we've seen however many stories of people used to Windows now, trying to use Windows 8 and trying to figure out what to do. And that learning curve is like, Microsoft has to explain how they're going to teach people to use this product. Because once you get it, it makes a little bit of sense, and you can flow into it. I've been using it on a laptop at home. It's because we grew up with Windows. It's not exactly a simple, easy-to-use design. Someone who's not used Windows, but comes over to Windows 8, sees the Metro Design, is that easier for them? I don't know. I'm a little too far removed to be able to kind of figure that out. Right. And my number one kind of confusion with Metro remains, is it, quote, beautiful handcuffs. Can you tell app developers, this is how everything has to look, this is the kind of set of expectations. And Metro apps that are beautiful are among the most beautiful apps ever created. Metro apps that fake it are among the worst ever made. And I just don't know the answers. Mr. Tupolsky? Can you guys, can you still see me and hear me? Yeah, there you go. Because it's like my bandwidth went way down. You're getting throttled by the hotel. Comcast is complaining. I probably am being throttled by the hotel actually. But I actually talked to some people at D about Windows 8 and how big of a gamble it was. And I have to say the sentiment there, even with people who are very familiar with the matter, was that it is a big gamble for them. And that it is, they have, this is going to be a big moment for Microsoft, for Microsoft Windows. I'm very curious to see how it's going to roll out. There's a certain segment of the market that's going to go buy these new machines. The question is how big and how does Microsoft position it? And will the experience be satisfying and enjoyable? At this point, you got to go beyond like, hey, it's Windows, right? If you're like, hey, look at this new version of Windows, you have to go beyond that and be like, Windows is all new. So you not only have to give them a satisfying Windows experience, but you have to go, I think with the competition, you have to go beyond that and give them this like, whoa, I didn't know Windows could be like this experience. And I don't know if they're there yet. I need to spend a lot of time with this thing because I feel like all the hardware that it's running on right now is like a hack basically to some extent. So I'm very curious to see what the real convertibles will be like or the real tablets that they're going to bring out. And then there's the Intel market. I mean, people are going to upgrade to Windows 8. The missing start button is going to be a real mystery to a lot of people though. I think you're going to be really, really upset. And I don't know how you get around that. Yeah, to me, it's, I mean, if you're going to use the phrase double down, that's it. You're doubling down on that. If you're going to change as much as removing the start menu, maybe you ought to change it even more than that. I guess is my thought. Like don't let people feel like they're in a familiar place if the place you want them to be is unfamiliar. There's a really great article by this guy, Michael Mace. Michael Mace, Mobile Opportunity. It's a good name. He wrote, effectively, Windows 8 is Metro with a Windows 7 emulator. It's actually a great piece. You should read it. Maybe we'll throw in the notes or something. But it's really interesting. I mean, the amount of like hand wringing about Windows 8 right now is much more, you know, Windows 7, you remember Windows 7 came out. It was like everyone was like kind of like overjoyed. They're like, okay, they took Vista, they cleaned it up. It's pretty. It's like beautiful. It's going to work. Everyone was happy. They sold more copies of Windows 7. With Windows 8, there's a lot of like, there's a lot of deep excitement about all this new stuff and a lot of like, but why? That question just keeps coming up. Like why do you, and like, you know, why is there a desktop? That's going to be there forever. And the more they cripple the desktop on the Intel side, or the x86 side, I should say, that question is going to come up on that side too. It's like what you're saying. If you're going to do this, if you're going to say, if you're going to make it so uncomfortable to use the desktop and so different and push people into Metro, why not provide a product that is just Metro from the ground up? And I, you know, we've been asking that question for months. But you know, to me, this new version, and kind of Tom's report, you know, David and Tom looked at the new version. They said it's beautiful and fast and stable. And David said, I don't want to use the desktop unless I'm forced to, which is wild. Right. Well, I do think you got it. I think they should go all in on that. Double down. They should double down on Metro. They got to double down on Metro and they're not totally doing it. And you know, I think there's a different way to do this. But maybe I'll be proven wrong. You know, when I get to this thing in my hands and use it, maybe the fluidity will work in a way that is super great. You know, I don't know. I'm actually, despite what my critics will tell you, I actually have a completely open mind about what this experience will be like. Like I am ready for it to be really good. Like I'm prepared to have that happen. I don't have any judgment on it right now in terms of what it will be. I mean, look, there are a lot of people. Sanofsky is not a dumb guy. Okay. Sanofsky is a very smart guy. And there are a lot of very smart people who've worked on this project. And I've talked to a bunch of people at Microsoft who've worked on it. And I don't think they're not aware of what they're doing. You know, and so I think that there's a real possibility that once this thing is like in play and you're using it and it's on the right hardware, it could be an amazing experience. You know? Yeah. I mean, it's a great way to get your hands on it. You know, what do you think is going to happen with that? You go to Metro. I think... No, no. What's that? That's what will happen. It will take you to Metro. No, I understand that. But you're used to clicking this thing in the corner. But maybe people will be used to hitting the start button. And there will be ways of arranging your apps that feels really natural. And so maybe it won't be this big like, what the hell, like I can't use this thing anymore. I'm just saying that I haven't seen the hardware that people are putting it on. Am I okay? Can you guys hear me? Yeah, the sports guys are having some kind of a party out there. You're not getting shot by Ari Emanuel. But I'm just saying my mind is open on this. But I agree that there is a lot of... There are a lot of people in the industry who have expressed like, from what I can tell, a real concern over whether this is going to be a home run or a swing and a miss for them. Yeah, I mean, we'll find out. Did we... October, is that the latest rumor? I think so. October that this thing is happening. I thought that somebody didn't want to the Microsoft beat people like Therot or Foley or somebody say that Sanofsky mentioned it? Or am I hallucinating? I think we reported October. It's going to be hard for me to find out. We have a release preview, which is what we have now. A day ago, we reported Microsoft hints at October release. That's what I thought. I mean, they're in line with their schedule, with their traditional schedule. Yeah, they've got to hit back to school and all that stuff and that's right around there. I guess that's not actually. It's holidays. It's holidays. Yeah, we just bought your computer for back to school and now... Well, how cool is it in the holiday season to get all these crazy new tablets and convertibles and things to buy for people? I think if you miss that window, it would be very foolish. Yeah. Also, $14 upgrades I think after now. If you buy a computer now, you get a $14 upgrade to Windows 8. Is that anything after June 2nd? Yeah. That's what they told me. What they need to do is make the upgrade as cheap as Apple makes their upgrades. That is cheaper. Apple's upgrades are 29. You buy a computer now, but if you have one you bought two months ago... Okay, so let's talk about... We can... Let's see if I can keep segueing. I've been doing pretty good. Yes. Microsoft makes the Xbox. That was awful. That was the worst segue I've ever delivered. Microsoft makes the Xbox. I'm intrigued. Fact. The Xbox plays video games. Well, I mean, kind of. It does some other stuff too. A little bit. And there's an enormous video game show coming up and Ross, you're leaving what, tomorrow? Sunday. You're leaving Sunday? E3. Sunday's the big day. We have a party. Forget about that. Forget about E3. We have a party on Sunday here. Yeah, with Polygon. Are you and Chris Grant going to go shot for shot in the middle of the Polygon party? There's free alcohol. Free booze all night. We have games. It's sponsored by Qualcomm. We have games. We have booze. Free booze. And it's going to be a good time. It's a place we're doing this really now. Yeah. What's that? I should have stayed out there. I was just on my third day, but I missed it. You can RSVP for it on the internet, I think. Yeah. And that's Comcast filters here. I'm going to tell you where. By the way, I hate doing this on Skype. I'm never doing this on Skype again. Because of the delay. The terrible delay. The delay and everything's fuzzy and the green coloring of this situation here. Yeah. What is this green light that's going on? Everything in this hotel room is fluorescent lighting. This is what fluorescent light looks like. You don't know. It's disgusting. It's sickening. It's bad. Did you white balance your computer? Because you look like a normal. Actually, you look a little healthier than normal. Well, I actually think, see, wait, are you guys white balancing Josh? No? You do. I mean, you have some tint, I guess. All right, fine. I'm wearing makeup. I admit it, okay? I'm covered in makeup. Saras, walk us through E3. You're a man on the ground. What is going to happen at E3 this year? I feel like we're going to see more of the Wii U and there aren't going to be any big surprises. Am I crazy? Well, we don't know exactly what's going to happen so Nintendo has gone out and just said, we're going to show the final format. We're going to show you that launch line-up or a bunch of the software titles for the launch. We're not going to tell you when it comes out. Probably sometime into the year. Nintendo's done. That's pretty much it. It's probably going to look exactly like we saw before. Weren't they changing it? I thought they were changing the controller. They're going to tweak it, which means they may move the D-pad around. I don't think it's going to be anything drastic. I think it's just going to be kind of what we saw. Nintendo's slow slide into irrelevance continues. The thing about Nintendo is, they don't really make great hardware. They never really have, but they've made games people want to play. That's what's mattered. It's the content. Do you want to play Mario again? Do you want to play Pikmin again? I had a lot of doubts about the Wii. I think ultimately the Wii wasn't for me, but it was for other people. Except now, there are a lot of really innovative things going on in gaming. You've got Kinect, which is extremely innovative, and people have seemed to get into. You've got mobile gaming. You've got what Apple's doing, which is like, hey, you have a tablet in your lap, and you're using it to play a game. You can move the tablet around. You can move stuff on screen. I think they're going to do some cool things, but the demo videos I've seen with the Wii U hasn't looked like anything I'm that interested in. Am I crazy? Maybe I am. I think it's a universal feeling. Nintendo's Wii U is supposed to more cater to the hardcore market, but it really doesn't. It's like a casual system that's going to be a little pricey and a little more complicated. I'm not sure who they're reaching out for anymore. And internals are still fairly dated compared to Xbox. The demos we saw looked pretty bad. They looked like the Xbox 360. My impression is this should be like, guess what, Microsoft? You're going to have to launch a new console to catch up with us in the graphics department. No. That's never Nintendo's fault. But then it doesn't matter anymore. When has Nintendo ever done that? Maybe the N64. N64, GameCube. Back then, it mattered. Right. You could argue that Wii was their first large step back out of the graphics race. And it worked for them. Because of the iPad and the iPod Touch or whatever. But actually, people are making some pretty graphically beautiful games given the really quite limited hardware that they have. That's not a console at all. That's not technical graphics. That's design. That's largely just design. Well, yeah. But I'm saying there are also games like Nova or whatever that are pretty graphically intense. They look really good. They look almost like console games. Yeah, they do look good. And I feel like they're not going to stop doing that. Those are going to get better. And so they're not just competing from up here. They're also competing from the bottom up. So I think that they're in a weird place. I feel like they need to really blow people away. And I don't see that happening right now with the Wii U. Yeah, I think Nintendo's day of dominating the console market. Apple, who is not going to be 83, which is giving their influence on gaming society, it's like it's that elephant in the room. Or the elephant not going to be in the room. But the elephant will be around the room. The elephant will be there. It's in everyone's pocket. There will be iOS booths, gaming booths, and the shape of an elephant. Let's keep going. Sony. So Sony, there have been a couple weird rumors coming out, especially recently, about what's going to be shown. So don't even worry about it. Don't think about it. Why would you do that? You could do 50 more riffs than the PS3. Of course. You can do everything. Sorry. The rumor that came out today, which I thought was interesting, but I don't really believe it all. It's too good to be true, those kind of rumors. Some streaming company is going to help Sony make a streaming service where they stream PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 1 games to the PS3. If that involves a backwards compatibility issue, you just stream it like you would in online. Is that still an issue? They took out compatibility. Did anybody care? I bought a used original PS3 so I could play pretty much NBA Jam. If you could stream that, you could probably also stream PSN games. Sure, okay. It's not going to matter now. It will matter for PS4, because chances are, I don't think Sony's going to go back to the cell processor. That's interesting. I think streaming games is going to become a thing at some point. I don't know if it's short term or long term future. Cloud. That idea is really interesting. What you're talking about is backwards compatibility, but in a way that nobody ever considered it how it would work. To me, that is a really revolutionary concept. First off, I don't know how much, how big of a thing it is at this point, backwards compatibility. I know there's a certain segment of people who are going to be using Neeliby in one of them. But I also think that if you had the option, and it didn't require maybe even having the physical media in front of you, that's a really interesting proposition. Again, this goes back to the bandwidth thing. You've got to have the bandwidth for that, and the services have to be essentially zero. The latency has to be so low that it's able to set it up. Online's pretty good. And Gaikai is okay. Wall Street Journal actually on that note, reported that Sony considered a streaming only PS3 successor, but then they decided against it and went with the disc. You know who we had a lot to say about this, although we haven't done the video yet? John Carmack. Yeah, you just hung out with John Carmack. He is an insane, brilliant man who does not think like human beings do. He does not. Go figure. We had six hours where we just hung out with him at his rocket factory, which is exactly what you think. And so we brought up cloud computing. How's your rocket factory doing, Josh? Is it doing well? Really good, great. There's some great rockets coming out of there, some great stuff. There are prevailing themes throughout everything. So we talked about cloud gaming. Sean really wanted me to bring it up. And he's like, you know, it's happening. It's going to happen. I'm very excited by it. And the idea that there's a connection issue is so, it's like, I can tell you exactly where to cut off 30 milliseconds with your TV, with your console, with your controller. I will make it work. And it looks just like it does with this stuff. It's like, why don't you do it. I don't really care, Jim. He laid out exactly what you're doing. And then he goes, I don't care. Well, he's like, I'm busy working on this insane virtual reality headset, so I can't do it. about this headset? So it's something he's been working on like for six months he said just as a hobby like he thought it was interesting he saw some headsets he bought himself one of the Sony headsets there was the HMX one the one we reviewed yeah and he looked at it and he played with it he goes it it's super it's impressive especially for the price which is like 500. Can I interrupt you for a second? Yeah go for it. I'm getting Ross all the way back. I'm actually getting you. Yeah we're echoing. Is it me? Yeah it's you. It's me? Testing. Hello. Hello. Testing. All right I don't I only hear me now which is fine not like twice me I'm not doubling down on my voice. I think we're good. Okay keep going. Tell me about tell me about the HMX one. So to start from scratch okay so about six months ago John Carmack for whatever reason decided to buy the Sony headset cuz he thought it looked cool. He didn't decide he just went to the store and was like I have enough money to buy everything one of everything please. All right and then continue. Anyway so he did that he's like this is impressive such for the price but here's what's wrong with it he's like well it's the latency is an issue it's too slow connecting to what you're seeing. The field of view is terrible like it's I think 45 50 degrees you don't have an immersion experience because you know there's things around you. So he started researching he started trying to find a headset he found a guy who was kind of just screwing around with something it's a single LCD panel they split the screen just like you do a picture in picture and it's a polar picture like doesn't look right but if you put a polar lens up to it it looks like just one island so he puts two polar lenses on a single LCD screen and you've got a 90 degree field of view so all you can see is the screen there's no so it's 90 degrees from here yeah it's like this yeah so it's a really wide field of view really tall field of view so you just can't see anything else not just like black bars just it covers everything around you. So it's like that's important let's make it fast and then resolutions kind of like the fourth or third tier we'll figure that one out later. Okay that makes sense. So he did his little magic he tweaked a shit ton of stuff with the algorithms like he had this hardware he tweaked the hardware then he wrote like entirely new engine for it put it on Doom 3 and so Doom 3 it comes out with BFG editions like this anniversary edition that's on everything if you have the PC you can you have headset support and later in the year they're considering kind of bringing this headset not maybe with it but as a compatible system. But where do you get the headset? I mean so the headset he used is actually going on Kickstarter like this week I think really today. Some guy really Palmer Lucky I think is his name. Palmer Lucky? Palmer Lucky. I wish I was kidding something like that um the product the product is called the Oculus Rift. No it's Palmer Lucky's Oculus Rift. You get the Oculus Rift of course I do yes that's a great product everybody's using. From Palmer Lucky. So is it a virtual reality it's a pair of it's virtual reality goggles yeah it's 3d virtual reality goggles with a huge field of view. You used it like did it feel like you were in the game? I mean it really did cuz like you couldn't see away from it you had a great field of view it's about as wide as I feel now. Yeah really? Yeah it was really good I'm impressed. So like to here. Was it scary? Did you get freaked out at any point? Were you like getting attacked by an actual person? I had a spider robot with me and vision and that helped. I think the other thing is also that this prototype was a very early prototype there's duct tape everywhere it worked well it was also like maybe two pounds. When you move your when you move your head just I want to be clear so when you're playing the game you've got now are you at a keyboard or did you have some kind of controller? I had an Xbox controller. Okay so Xbox controller so like so when you look to when you look to the left in the game when you moved your head it worked like it was completely in sync with your movement. It had an accelerometer and a gyroscope so it was like that was nothing the latency was an issue so like it was completely in sync with me moving like this up and down tilting my head. There's no latency no latency. I mean it was maybe sub 20 milliseconds I couldn't tell and like that was his thing he wanted like much much how much is that is the head second and cost? It's okay to be clear the headset idea is still like he wants it for hobbyists so like it's gonna be like a $500 range for a do-it-yourself kit. I'm buying no I want to buy one really badly. Yeah this is my dream. Since I was like since I was 12 and read my first like mod in 2000 like this is what this is what I've been waiting for is an actual virtual reality. We talked like his idea was like holodeck he wants to make the holodeck and like this is as close as we're gonna get right now is a headset. If you could pull off a headset that actually functions really well they would be nobody's done it that is even remotely consumer priced like it would be unbelievable. Right I mean the trade-off the trade-off we had was low resolution so it's just it's what's the red I was 1280 by 800 total but split in two right yeah so 640 by 800 he wants it higher but again he wanted to get everything else right first and then work on the resolution he was talking about different like a Radies yeah like he was on a different resolution types he wants only LD eventually or lead sorry oh yeah LD LD I like it because he he welcome welcome to technology so yeah he he hates plasma hates LCD hates LED it's just not good enough for him it's like OLED is what he wants to do with this eventually but uh right now he thinks it's hobbyist territory because technology isn't quite up to the level where like you pick it up yeah if you're not forgiving by a few things you're gonna hate it right but even then like that I was super impressive that's you should see that you guys should see the video in the story the roster it's a lot of Ross and the giant head such as sleeping around polygon polygon did stuff on on on the game right yeah yeah so I know I had Russ pits down with me who did a much more detail on the BFG edition kind of the history of doom or doing three at least it's a little bit of a catch-up to like where they've been the last few years it's a fascinating I mean it software itself is a very fascinating backstory going from yeah really 22 years now 23 years that's all was their first game Wolfenstein the first game was commander Keane actually which is like nothing like anything else they've made it's a side scroller well the made a Mario 3 clone try to get Nintendo to like have them do the port of Mario 3 for the PC they said no obviously like okay so we'll take this idea we'll make our own design we'll use this engine we just built and we'll make a game so that became commander Keane and then from there I did went to Wolfenstein 3d Wow I love it so it's real quick Microsoft 83 so if all goes according to plan Tom Warren has ruined all the Microsoft announcements Microsoft reporter has been going crazy in the last couple months the things that we've reported on project Woodstock which is Xbox Music Center maybe which is their Spotify service yeah which is kind of what the Zune should have been and almost was before Spotify it sounds like they're gonna come out maybe do that I don't know that's a three or not but that's something they're definitely the late stages of planning for the other thing is connect play fit which is like their exercise thing with connect Microsoft Xbox 360 connect play fit Windows Music Center but the interesting yeah is the jewel as like energy a jewel heart rate monitor oh yeah because these are like big now yeah yeah I think it's if I understand the rumor correctly it's just like a wrist thing kind of like a Nike field band yeah so a wearable heart rate monitor that might go with this play fits it gives you some kind of either wire playing or maybe even like why you're just walking around kind of addition to your fitness cycle if they pull that off I mean speaking as a Fitbit obsessive I'd be excited you know I bought the I bought the Fitbit RAS scale oh really yeah I use it that much right I'd step on the scale and then the computer reminds me that I should know I'm where I bought one as well and I have yet to set it up so I have an analog scale I just it does remind me that Becky is much more fit than me at every available opportunity well she actually Becky you can also just look at her that would be you don't have to look at the scale there's a lot of evidence the other the other big anyhow was a lot for and the new Gears of War has been kind of hinted at yeah so well no I thought sorry am I am I allowed to not be excited about Halo 4 okay okay yeah I'm intrigued because it's a completely new like team behind like it's the all-star team of like game vets or like the old oh you know what I'll tell you what I'm excited about some things there though what some games what is the new Bethesda title it's called what is it called are you having dishonored dishonored yes that's looks I don't know publisher arcane studios yeah it's like a steampunk like no but it is a it is a Bethesda game I mean it is a is there just there to their distributed as any Max who owns Bethesda is the publisher distributor okay but they don't know someone to publish like Skyrim so yeah same family right I don't know what the game is actually gonna be like but the trailer for it looks incredible it looks really and there's something else the other team I care about is a Dead Space 3 that may come out kind of I have to play to play Dead Space 2 first and Star Wars 1313 was announced last night yeah I saw I got that PR yeah the the mature Star Wars game 13 so what does that mean can you tell me what is that is it first off what how is it played is it first person who gets nude we don't know under the helmet with I don't know so those students nudity in it I'm there don't even care I can't I can't top that now anyway so 1313 is a reference as far as we can tell us to I was it Fett bounty hunter Boba Fett oh I see Boba Fett remember the first name I'm live on networks all of this makes me really tired I have to say like makes me want to play the great new Lucasfilm game 1313 starring Boba Fett nerdy inside Star Wars games are like okay you know I'm in this wrecked like deal cards that's what all that sounds like to me I hate to cut this short but we haven't taken any calls they were just asking about it in the chat and I was saying that we have so many latency issues with you we can try there and are there any topics we haven't covered that we need to cover no not really the last thing I had yeah the last thing on my list yeah is really lame it's Facebook but who cares yeah by the way Facebook stocks still not a good buy let's take one let's take let's take a call put it up I don't know like what should we do let's let's and what do we what do we tell what's the topic just wild card whatever you want to talk about ladies choice wild card whatever you want to talk about we'll take a couple of calls or something and then and then I think the people in the channel asked me to talk about gore here here's the gorycle update the judge ruled they Allison oh listen wait let me know before you talk about that so I just say something at Larry Ellison was on stage at d10 now I'm not a I was I actually thought Larry Ellison I think I've even talked about it on the verge cast that he I thought he seemed like a kind of a creep yeah he is so awesome because he is like Tony Stark I mean he talks like he talks like Robert Downey jr. like he's like just just like cracking jokes left right center and they're like pretty funny jokes now admittedly I mean from a business standpoint I'm sure he's horrible but um you know I'm sure he's a terrible man but as a as a as a as an interview yeah he is hilarious and I was not it was not aware and not prepared for that whatsoever and there are other people in the room like Dan Fromer was like just like he's amazing like everybody was like wow Larry Ellison is really funny so I was weird because you don't the guy who runs like the data you know whatever the database yeah come to see very fun no sorry I was I was flying back from I'm getting echo again hombres I can action style I was a flying back from LA for I was in LA for different reason and the person next to me was an analyst coming back from D and I looked at she was like taking notes and she had written Larry Ellison exclamation like three exclamation points and then wow what a firecracker and I was like oh man like yeah this is what analysts get paid to do like why don't I get paid to do that you can all you have to do is leave your job as a journalist I do yeah it's true I'm calling Gartenberg tonight Michael I need a job we've got an approved call here okay you're blinking it's the button on the right checkbox there's a checkbox you know there's two different rows there you can it's where's a blinking yeah okay all right are we on the air hello hello man you're on who's what's your name and what's your what's your top what's your sign Ross yeah Damon and I'm from Texas MoMont Texas hello are you are you on AT&T ah yes I am don't figure hold on yeah I could step outside we are stuck between two really bad connections right now take your time take your time away no problem hello I like this live get into a good look you can do a call guys yeah what up I want to talk about copyright okay what's your name first of all my name's Damon and I'm from Beaumont Texas okay I couldn't tell copyright go for it no running around on Josh's kind of point I mean he's kind of talking about well the industry changing and I kind of think he brought this up at one point how people need to kind of look at you know we're getting everything cheap or free you know I think in some ways we can have to change the way that we view media or you know are we can't consider everything free and so in some ways we have to change don't you know wait what what do you mean we consider everything free well not free I think that people now know we're so used to like free services or you know I mean social networking is free streaming it's free in many ways I mean wait how is how is streaming free you pay for Netflix you pay for spot I think he means I think he means like you're talking about like Hulu or YouTube or something where you have at but you actually pay for that stuff through advertising so that is not free stuff it's being paid for but we're wanting something very inexpensive you know and and I understand that but I think in some ways and some ways we're kind of looking at in a socialized way so we want we want everybody to be able to reach and have full access to everything and and we kind of don't want to have to pay for it you know but I think that we gotta stop Obama's what you're saying look look I hear I hear what you're saying there is any okay there is I think there's something we need to look at in terms of who we are as as the members of society and in I'm speaking as a member of the US Society that we may have to say to ourselves everything is not going to be cheap or free right you have to pay for things and we I think we all are paying for things I'll actually pay for a lot of things but you're right you know you may not be like we can't all drive the BMW right I think that's what you're getting at not everybody can drive the BMW you're not gonna always be able to watch every movie you want for free whenever you want it that's one way to look at it but there are a lot of people who don't think that things are supposed to be free who can buy the BMW and those people will spend money on things and so I think you can balance it you can have models that are ad supported models you can have you can have models that are you know pay as you go or or monthly payment models you can have models that are pay per piece of content and that can go in a wide range but you know if you if you're if your if your solution is stop thinking you can watch so much TV I don't think that's I don't think that's a real viable I don't think people are gonna that's not well first off there's too much I mean I think part of your what you're saying is people think they can have everything all the time for free but there's also like a lot of crap you know and our filtering system I don't think that in our I don't think you solve the problem of media by remove like reducing the amount of demand I don't think I don't think you say this business is out of control we have to figure out how to make money let's let's not figure out how to monetize all of this yawning demand for everything all the time and let's just tell people to want less like that's that's generally a bad like Ford isn't like oh my god everybody wants a Mustang we should tell them to not want our caller is desperately trying to talk that's what he said I mean they can walk I mean they want a Mustang I mean yeah they can pay for you know I mean but you don't lower the price of the Mustang so somebody can pay for it and then and upset the value of the Mustang you know you don't change the Mustang so everybody can actually let me raise a point here there is a time there is a time when most people couldn't buy a car and they actually did lower the price of the Mustang they made cars they learned to make cars in a more affordable way so more people can own them they learned to make houses in a more affordable way so more people could own them and in fact almost in every part of our culture they have figured out ways to make things for less money in fact if you wonder why your iPhone is made in China part of the reason is because they figured out there's a way they could make them cheaper in other places so more people could own them so so what you're actually describing is not is not accurate there's there are strata of of things right but but I'll tell you now there are probably more people with a car like per capita or you know I'll bet you there are more people with a car than there have ever been in the history you know if you look at the if you you know great on a curve here or whatever it is you do in math to make that make sense but Josh Dabowski does math on the verge cast what I'm saying is like actually this has happened everywhere they have found ways to make things cheaper so more people can have them and that's part of the problem now we're getting into like a scorched earth we need to have a nuclear nuclear conflagration why does this happen every time you and I talk about copyright have you noticed this hey caller we're gonna we're gonna let you go because we have I've got another blinking checkbox here but thank you for calling in I mean you're right you know everybody has to change at all times I'm pushing this button stop stop hi this is our next call what's your name and what's your wild card topic hello yes this is George hey George where are you at yes my topic was I heard you mentioned Facebook and how it went on IPO and I was wondering if you think that would hurt their image because basically a lot of the a lot of people have been burned by it I was wondering what do you think about that I don't I don't think the average person who uses Facebook cares about its share price yeah I mean who's been burned by it people who care about stocks it's a very small number compared like Facebook's actual populace yeah people who want to buy mustangs now have to buy three less I think I think I think Facebook's risk is not I mean there is it there is a a network effect or an echo effect of you know if people talk about it enough like hey what's what's going on with Facebook maybe something's wrong with their business but most people aren't thinking about Facebook's business I think what will hurt Facebook more is they have like an 80-minute outage the other day yeah and that is the kind of thing that would be detrimental to Facebook so you know I feel like the stock thing I think at the end of the day it's going to level out it's wherever it wherever it should be I don't think it's I don't think it was unnaturally inflated I don't think it was necessarily unnaturally deflated I think it's in flux right now because it's brand new and there are a lot of questions that have yet to be answered and I think at some point you know it's gonna flatten out and there won't be you know right now it's it's thought everybody's talking about everybody wants to talk about you know whether Zuckerberg can make it happen will Facebook be a tenable company are they gonna survive and that's what everybody talks about when there's a when there's a new right you know Ben Ben did a really interesting Ben Popper did a really interesting report today about how the world is moving to mobile and the ad dollars that have traditionally funded the internet and all these services aren't going aren't going to mobile in the same way haven't caught up like they're trying very very and that's Facebook's problem you know and that sucks because that is like it sucks for you know it sucks for Facebook because they got to figure out how to make money as people use the phone app it might suck for us because if the answer is more intrusive advertising on mobile that is the worst outcome I can possibly think of this actually kind of touches on this actually touches on the last caller a little bit but you're right that they need to get into a space where they're they can properly monetize mobile right because a lot more people are using mobile devices to view this content and right now they monetize through advertising right and and that's how we we monetize through advertising as well there's a big the big question right now is how and by the way they talk about talk about industries being disrupted the big question right now is how will average the advertising industry adapt to this new world I mean they haven't really adapted that well to the web and vice versa the web hasn't adapted that well to advertising the changing habits of TV viewers has been a real conundrum for the advertising industry how do you adapt to that they haven't figured that out yet and print obviously is the same but shrinking so you know it's a big challenge right now for people to under to for these guys are they have to figure out like how do we advertise and make it worthwhile for the consumer worthwhile for the for the property that we're advertising on and worthwhile for the for the advertiser and that's one that is they have yet to crack that nut fully so so you know Facebook Facebook is part of that you know we're part of that that's that's something that any ad supported model is part of and you know by the way we're all convinced that ad supported models are the only way to do it there may be other ways to do it that we haven't figured out yet if you want to get into go back to our disruption conversation you know and I don't think it's a pay wall either would you pay would you pay two dollars a month to use Facebook on mobile personally no I wouldn't pay to use Facebook but the question is for me also is like whether the whether the advertising model is actually gonna be effective because you know a lot of you know there's been a lot of news whether if it's really effective on a grand scale like that well I think I think so the bigger question is is advertising online as effective as advertising was on television because that's like or in print and that's the that's where we're coming from and I think the answer that we're discovering is that it isn't is that people are or more numb to it people are less interested in it they're not as much they're not as often forced to watch it or see it so that's a problem so and then incentive for the advertising to become kind of more insidious right I mean there's more advertorial online than there ever has been before there was the FTC but the FTC like a few years ago had like cracked down on like mommy bloggers like all these like moms because they didn't know that they weren't allowed to like take free junkets or they shouldn't be allowed to take free junkets and write about it in a way that affected the product there's all this stuff going on or I don't believe advertorial is a sustainable model I think advertorial is it as a desperation just a move of desperation on advertisers parts like I think that I think that it's a stopgap not desperation I just think it's a stopgap I don't think that's where we're going we're like hey I'm reading an article but it's not an article you know and also we're just talking about like in journalism but this goes across everything you know it's like TV and movies and and everywhere else and I think there's some really clever stuff going on in advertising right now like some of the product placement of 30 rock did and some of the movie placement stuff and and integrating in ways that are not deceptive but actually like quite clever I think is is really is getting good in some areas right all right call or anything else do you want to take another one Josh do you want to thanks man I think we should wrap up I think we I haven't eaten anything today and so okay if I don't eat soon I'm gonna die that's how we had all bird with me saying I'm stupid I don't take care of myself did you take another call just now I don't know what I did now there's a lock icon on the line is there someone listening in hello I've literally no idea are you listening Josh you want you want to take us oh Oracle then I just say what happened in Oracle real quick they're asking me um judge ruled API is not copyrightable unless the owner so Oracle lost basically at every level of this case oh well I'm sure they're going to appeal and the appeals court laughs something to say but the judge who is a programmer himself said a list of instructions is not copyrightable unless the steps that are taken after the instructions are issued are the same so I can say go break bake me a loaf of bread and you can tell Josh the same thing and it's not copyright infringement unless you carry out the same steps that's the Gora so so Google won this thing running away basically you're probably just excited about bread cuz you're hungry yeah you really had to use the food metaphor I have to say your analogy is was a huge mistake great metaphors and now anyway yeah so Google one one running away but it will I don't think Larry Allison's gonna not appeal so they asked they asked Kara asked him he was like well we won we had an injunction against whatever and then he was like he couldn't he couldn't really yeah anyway so all right when big win for Android that's the that I didn't put on the on the topic list cuz it's like they won it's great we all kind of knew that they would okay Josh you wanna take us out all right we done yeah yes yes well that's our verge cast for the week if you'd like to get in touch with us I really like smart me look I love the verge I don't mind telling you idiot no that is that is our verge cash that we can of course if you want to get in touch with us you can email us at verge cast at the verge calm you can leave a comment on the post when it goes up which we love and you can also find us on Twitter the verge is at verge Nellie is reckless Ross is Oh No Roscoe no e on the end and I'm Joshua Topolski and yeah we'll be back next week are we gonna be in person I believe so I don't know where you go what would the date well I I'll have may or may not be three maybe I should just I'll do it at e3 I don't know I can't think about this I'm so hungry I my brain can't process this anyhow we'll be back in some capacity next week I'm probably at our regular time maybe Thursday hopefully Thursday Thursday yeah and and until then I wish you and yours the very best for the coming days and weeks ahead you
 Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of May 28th.
 Yeah, 2012. I'm Josh Topolsky. I'm Nilay Patel. I'm Ross Miller. Actually
 scared by the large floating head behind me. Yeah, this is weird. I don't know what I can do.
 I can downsize the head. You can scale it by moving it backwards. This is like Hollywood style.
 Which size looks appropriate? Go back. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, go back farther. Keep going.
 I just like doing it. I'm just gonna keep doing this. Wow, that's not even more creepy. It's good.
 Does it seem like I'm moving it or does it seem like it's just moving by itself?
 Yeah, it seems like you're in a chair that's rolling back and forth.
 Well, I wish I was, but I was actually moving the laptop. I got you.
 I look really polarized, like green and blue, don't I? Yeah, a little bit.
 Where are you? You tell the people where you are. I am in Beverly Hills right now.
 I'm in Los Angeles. That's right. I'm... Shannon Doherty is on her way over here.
 We're gonna go to the Peach Pit. We're going to the Peach Pit together.
 We're going to Peach Pit after dark. Yeah, Dylan and... I was gonna say Ian Ziering.
 I'm just interchangeably like character names and actual names.
 No, it's absolutely... that's how it works. Who is the blonde one?
 Well, there are two blondes. There's Jenny Garth. That's Jenny Garth.
 And then there was also a Tori Spelling played character whose name I can't remember.
 Am I okay to admit this is before my time? I never saw the original 90210.
 I'm really missing out on nothing. No, it's... the original 90210 is actually really amazing
 and everybody should watch it. Anyhow, this is the Vergecast where we discuss the week
 in technology, culture and, you know, in 90210. Early 90s television.
 90s TV and 80s movies. But it's been a very eventful week for us.
 We have a very eventful week coming next week, which is the week of E3.
 And Computex? Oh, and Computex. And then the week after
 that is WWDC and then we get a break, but we go to Neely's wedding for that.
 Yeah. And then we back out for Google IO.
 June is crazy. It's the craziest month that we've seen so far.
 You had to get married in June. I just figured I'd put it right in the middle.
 I was assuming that like Apple would screw me over.
 You really should have waited. Can you put it off a little bit longer?
 July might be nice. Do you want to know the real story about
 how my wedding was scheduled? Becky's dad is a farmer. He's a corn farmer.
 He owns 5,000 acres of corn. And we had to schedule our wedding around
 we couldn't get married in the spring because he was planting the corn.
 Is this what the farmer's almanac told you? We had to look at the farmer's almanac and
 he told us when the harvest would begin. It was a dead true story.
 The whole family is farmers. So the harvest begins after Google IO.
 Yeah. Google also plans it around the farmer's almanac.
 It was a very strange conversation. And you wonder why they didn't do Android
 corn. Yeah. They didn't have to.
 So he was saying that they had to harvest and that would have been a conflict.
 The family couldn't come if they had to. By the way, we have to do a thing on their
 tractors basically. Every time I go to the farm, I wait for it to transform.
 Because it drives itself. It's crazy. This is completely irrelevant.
 Can we get Billy out there? He'll love to shoot this.
 Let's talk about the technology. I have to say, by the way, very disorienting
 to be why is somebody calling my room? Wow. I bet I know who that is.
 We're going to watch you get offed on this stream.
 Hello? You realize you're going to die now.
 Let's go shut this window. It's open. And I'm worried that a man with a gun...
 Laser sight. Well, let's go through the windows.
 Let's talk about why we're afraid for Josh's life.
 You want to just talk about it, Josh? What happened to you?
 Let's get out of the way. So the D conference was this week, which
 is if you don't know, the guys from All Things D hold this big technology conference.
 It's mostly like billionaires, titans of industry.
 Aaron Sorkin was there this year. You had Larry Ellison.
 All these people come up and they do interviews with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher from All
 Things D. We go and cover it. Tim Cook was there, the CEO of Apple.
 It was good. There's a ton of stuff that comes out of it.
 It's not like hard-hitting news, but it's some really interesting stories.
 Anyhow, on the night before their last day, the penultimate day, they ended the day with
 a sit-down with a guy named Ari Emanuel, who a lot of people I think probably in our world
 don't know that well. He's the guy who the character of Ari Gold
 on Entourage is based on. He's a very powerful Hollywood agent.
 His brother is Rahm Emanuel, who's the mayor of Chicago and was the chief of staff when
 Obama took office. Now, someone else is calling me.
 I'm really popular. He's a powerful guy in Hollywood.
 He sat down with Walt and Kara to talk about the changing landscape of media and entertainment
 thanks to technology. Very nervous here.
 He talked a lot during the—he was a supporter of SOPA.
 He seemed very agitated that SOPA had been shut down.
 He seemed very dismissive of the technology industry's efforts in piracy because he's
 very worried about piracy, which of course he would be.
 He said, look, Verizon, AT&T, and Google have to do something about this.
 They have to stop people from getting to these pirated pieces of content.
 I don't think that's the way to fix the problem.
 I don't think you tell Google to block a link or Verizon to block a link somewhere
 and you fix the problem of piracy. That was essentially the gist of SOPA in many
 ways. Was it not, Neelay, that we could—
 Yeah, it was beyond Google. It was at the ISP level.
 It was at the Verizon, AT&T, Comcast level where you say, this site in Russia, this server
 in Russia hosts pirated movies. Take it off the internet for people in the
 United States.
 Stop people from accessing that.
 Sure. Close enough. It was take it off the DNS.
 This sky flag, by the way, is killing us right now.
 It just means he can't yell as much. I'm enjoying this.
 Sure. Anyway, keep going.
 I thought that the idea that it was Verizon, AT&T, or Google's job—and I think everybody
 agrees, to solve this problem is really short-sighted. I got up and I asked—I began to ask a question,
 and I started with an analogy, which was, you're saying somebody robbed my house and
 they drove down a road to get there, so we got to do something about this road.
 I think the problem is much more nuanced than that. He didn't like my analogy, and he started
 basically screaming at me that my question was stupid.
 He called you a name.
 He called me a—well, he—
 It's okay. You're with friends.
 No, no. He said I was a fucking idiot.
 Twice, I think.
 Twice is what I hear. Anyhow, I didn't get to make the point. We didn't have the conversation.
 He shouted me down, and he was on stage, and I was on the floor at a mic that had basically
 been turned off at some point, because that's what they do after you ask a question.
 Joanna will tell you all about it. I went back to my seat. Afterwards, by the way,
 the audience was scared. Here's what I think. Walt and Kara were scared of Ari.
 I think the audience was largely scared of him because he's a very intimidating guy.
 Afterwards, everybody I talked to there was like, I'm so mad. You should have finished
 your question. You're so right. He's wrong about what he's thinking.
 Everybody was very supportive, which I took as a great sign.
 I stewed on it for a day, and I was thinking about it.
 Oh, I forgot. He ended the conversation with, we had finished our argument, because I was
 actually yelling at him without him, which you can't hear in the video, but I'm actually
 yelling back and forth with him. Then he ended the argument with, he asked, where do you
 work? As if he was going to come down and get me fired.
 He asked me to fire you.
 Whatever. I don't know what he does.
 He's going to take us off the internet. He's going to call Google.
 I wrote this thing today, and I said, here's where I work. I said, here's the problem.
 This is why you didn't want to hear what I had to say. This is the problem with, I think,
 at least part of the problem with the movie industry. You've got to get smart about what's
 happening. You don't just copyright. He compared copyright infringement to child pornography.
 They're not the same thing. Everybody agrees they're not the same thing. Stopping them
 has to be handled differently. It's a much more nuanced, much more complicated affair.
 People from Google said the exact same thing the next day.
 Anyhow, I wrote this thing about it, and I said, that's the case. It's a lot more complicated
 than you make it out to be. Your method, the SOPA method, was not the right way. To continue
 to endorse that is very foolish. These are the things that I think. I said at the end
 of my article, and I'll continue to say it, the entertainment industry doesn't want their
 industry to change. It has to change. I believe the model has to change to keep moving forward.
 I don't think that we can sustain the same exact model in perpetuity. Our entire relationship
 with entertainment, with movies, with TV has changed. If they don't recognize it and adapt
 to it, they're going to continue to have piracy. Even if they do adapt to it, they're going
 to continue to have piracy, because that's the world. Everybody steals. Not everybody,
 but in every facet there is theft, in every facet of our society. You can diminish that
 if you change your model and adapt to what people want, which they haven't done, and
 they don't know how to do.
 Well, they've done to an extent. You have to give credit to Hulu, to Netflix.
 Well, Netflix. Hulu is them. They try to choke off Hulu wherever they can.
 It's ridiculous. It's a step. It's more of a step than RIA did at this point in their
 downfall or demise, their transition.
 Sure.
 I think what's interesting is Daniel Ek and Sean Parker from Spotify were on the day before.
 No, sorry, the same day. They said something really interesting. They said, first off,
 the music industry didn't just bounce back from what happened. What happened was their
 model had to change. What they discovered in the new model is that it wasn't as profitable
 for music labels as it was previously. They're not making the same kind of money. Some have
 gone out of business. Some have merged. That's the new world. Things change. It's the same
 with publishing. Magazines and newspapers used to rule the roost. They controlled every part
 of that process. New media came along and it changed everything. Now, some of that is
 falling apart and changing. It will be changed forever. It doesn't go back. You don't go
 back to the way it was.
 The thing that you have to realize is – and Neelay and I talked about this. TechDirt actually
 wrote something that I thought was pretty smart on it. The model has to change. That
 model may be really different than your old model. It may not be as profitable. I don't
 think they're being smart or being proactive about how to change it. I think that's where
 the fix is going to come in for them. That's where they're going to be able to fix.
 You wrote the piece and then Ari commented in the piece. Then he wrote a letter to All
 Things D.
 Yeah. He wrote a letter to All Things D in Google and he basically said, I think I will
 agree with you, Soap. It was bad and we need to all figure this out together. I want to
 sit down with you whenever, wherever. Then he also left a comment on our piece and reached
 out and I reached back out.
 Your fingers gently touched.
 Yeah. You're looking a little nervous.
 We're going to talk. I mean we're going to talk.
 The window is still open. He doesn't know. At any moment he could be attacked.
 I think we'll talk.
 Right there.
 Yeah. You're dropping out on us.
 You're being soaped a little bit.
 Yes. Maybe.
 I think we're going to talk and he's going to talk to Google and other people and people
 are going to, you know, hopefully he'll get something. You know, he's one man, but he's
 a powerful man. Maybe he can get something. Get people thinking about this the right way.
 Can you hear me right now or am I just like digital noise?
 Well, you're both. You're very intelligent sounding digital noise.
 So here's what I think is really interesting about this.
 I mean there's a lot, obviously there's a lot of things I think that is interesting about it.
 But Google's chief copyright counsel a year or two ago wrote a book called Moral Panics
 and the Copyright Wars. That was the title. And he said basically the thesis of the book is
 every time technology changes, copyright law is affected, the copyright industries, the content
 industries freak out and they cast the technological change as a moral dilemma.
 Right. So when tapes came out, they said kids are going to like do drugs basically.
 Right.
 And what's funny is that's the big thesis of the book. It's a great book.
 Everybody should read it. It's very accessible.
 But the very first chapter of the book is about the danger of metaphor when you're discussing
 copyright law because you literally you get to say, well no, I mean it's true because
 winning a legal argument with like metaphor is like kissing your sister.
 You can make any metaphor work any way you want but you've accomplished nothing.
 Wait, wait, wait. How is this kissing your sister?
 Well no, not yours. I mean the child pornography argument, right?
 Oh, right on.
 Well no, I mean like the argument that you're blowing up the road, like whatever.
 Maybe the internet is a road. Maybe it's not. It isn't that thing.
 I still don't get the whole kissing your sister thing.
 Because you haven't won anything. You haven't accomplished a goal.
 You've just done something kind of gross.
 Something's happening.
 Yeah, something's happening but you're like, I don't know.
 No, it is. It's like a tie. Anyway.
 Go ahead.
 No, you can say copyright infringement is like child pornography and stop it but you're
 missing the nuance and the critical nuance is all child pornography is bad.
 So you can develop an algorithm that can identify this thing.
 You say blunt force, go away.
 You cannot and this was Mike Mazdick's point on Tech Dirt.
 You cannot do that with copyright infringement.
 You can't say this is fair use and have a computer decide because it takes courts
 years of efforts to draw the boundaries of fair use.
 And on top of it, it's like a core free speech issue, right?
 If you start saying you can copy this much, you can comment on this piece of a news article,
 you can take this much of a video to copy into a remix, you're making decisions about free speech.
 And so you don't want – and the thing about the Internet that's really powerful and really
 different and which ultimately makes every metaphor and every analogy fall apart is that
 the Internet isn't – the Internet is the first time we've had a public commons where you can
 technologically enforce the law.
 So I can tell you that there's a law against driving over 55 miles an hour,
 but you can still go faster than that, right?
 On the Internet, I can shut your computer down.
 I can say you cannot do this.
 And that sort of restriction on liberty is – if I started selling cars that were rate limited
 at 55 miles an hour, people would freak out.
 But that is a conversation we're having about the Internet all the time.
 No, and those are the two – I think there's two sides of this that are going to need to be considered
 to really make it – to make anything change.
 The first side is the content creators – and by the way, we're content creators,
 so I'm very much on the side of content creators, okay?
 The content creators will have to understand that you can't just paint with this huge –
 with this huge brush to identify – say this is copyright infringement.
 You can't just make these like big changes and make snap decisions.
 What is going on here?
 Ari really needs to talk to you right now.
 Why am I being called?
 Why am I being called?
 Hold on.
 Hello?
 Yes.
 This is he.
 Yes.
 Yes.
 No, not right now.
 That's fine.
 Okay, thanks.
 Bye.
 Is that your champagne?
 Housekeeping – they wanted to know if I needed this room to get clean because I had the privacy sign on.
 Anyway, very important.
 Very good stuff.
 This is what happens when you're traveling.
 Okay, two things is you've got – the way we identify what is copyright infringement
 has to be as nuanced as is required because if it's not, you're tempting fate.
 I mean you really are screwing with something that should not be screwed with,
 which is how the internet functions, which is how people get information on the internet.
 I'm not a bleeding heart like hippie here.
 It's important.
 It's really important.
 It's the thing that allows us to do all of the new things, all of the amazing things that we are doing,
 the things that will become like the new industry in America.
 If we screw up the internet, we're really done for.
 The other side of it is the model has to change.
 The model has to be – you have to accept that people are stealing your shit for a reason.
 Some people will continue to steal, but there are a lot of people who steal out of desperation or frustration or laziness.
 If you give them a better option – I mean let's put it this way.
 Neelay, you went to get a torrent, Snow White and the Huntsman, right?
 You can download it today.
 By the way, let's just clarify.
 This is hypothetical.
 We just wanted to see if I could do it.
 I wasn't like, I got to watch Snow White and the Huntsman right now.
 We went to find it.
 We found it instantly.
 So, sorry, very thirsty.
 So the thing is if you truly want to see Snow White and the Huntsman,
 I would argue there are a lot of people who don't want to go to a theater,
 who don't like the experience, they think it costs too much money, they find it inconvenient,
 and they've got a killer TV and a killer sound system at home,
 and their movie watching experience is as good as it is in their minds as it would be at a theater.
 And they want to watch it at home.
 Now, if it were me, if I could watch Snow White and the Huntsman tonight,
 if Laura and I could stream it, I'd pay $25 for that.
 I would.
 And I'd pay $25 for every movie that came out that I don't go to see in the theater that I want to see,
 but I'm not going to go to a theater to see.
 And just something like that, if they did that day of release,
 I mean, maybe it would change the model of theaters.
 And you know what?
 Maybe the model of theaters has to change.
 There's no sacred cows.
 It's like we have to be able to decide to move forward.
 And if these guys don't want to move forward,
 they're going to get crushed under the wheel of innovation.
 What's the example everyone uses?
 Well, can I push back, Ross, what you think of your example?
 Yes.
 All right.
 Well, that's great, but you can charge $25 for you and Laura to watch a movie,
 and you get around the price of a movie ticket each.
 But there's nothing stopping you from inviting 50 people over to your house.
 And that's a real hit to revenue.
 And that's a real, I mean, people work at movie theaters.
 A lot of people worked on this movie.
 I mean, there's a common.
 It's not going to be a common thing.
 I don't believe that's going to be common.
 But four people, five people, that would be very common.
 I would invite people over to watch a movie.
 The model has to change.
 I get that.
 But that's like, hey, you know what?
 The newspapers wanted to be the only place where you could get your news from.
 It didn't happen.
 No, I'm saying the resistance.
 But the resistance to that is if you start saying,
 we're going to take away guaranteed revenue and we're going to,
 I don't know the answer.
 I'm just telling you, I understand that resistance.
 A lot of people work on those movies.
 They've got to all get paid, you know?
 I understand that it's possible that the financials of that model have to change.
 That's what I'm saying.
 But the hard pill to swallow is you can fight it and it will happen
 or you can embrace it and try to ride the wave
 and find something in there that is valuable to you.
 I just don't think what you're saying is let's try to not change for as long as possible
 even if the public demands it or behavior demands it.
 No, I don't think you're saying that, but that's what that person is saying,
 isn't ready to try to find new ways to address the issue.
 That's the thing that is going to be the toughest for these guys to understand.
 This is what I was getting back to about the Spotify thing.
 Basically what Sean Parker and Daniel Ek were saying was people who would pay for music
 definitely began paying for music on iTunes.
 There's a pretty good amount of people who will do that
 and that has helped the music industry sustain itself.
 But there's an age group, 12 to 20, that's still pirate music
 and their model is trying to serve those people.
 You pay $10 a month in streaming, somebody is getting paid versus not getting paid at all.
 The music industry didn't recover from, it didn't go back.
 It wasn't up here and then it went down here and then once iTunes happened, it went back up.
 It changed.
 It was fundamentally disrupted and altered by technology
 and that is probably what will happen in the movie and TV industry.
 But that works both ways.
 There are disruptions in how we produce movies and TV.
 There are disruptions in how you distribute movies and TV.
 And those disruptions work to the advantage of these people, to these studios,
 if they understand how to use them and harness them.
 You know what the key critical terrifying difference is?
 Is that the music companies weren't owned by Comcast in Time Warner.
 These deep partnerships with the pipes,
 the cable industry owns the content companies in a lot of really meaningful ways.
 And that means Comcast wants to do things like charge Netflix for access to its network
 and they're going to do it.
 AT&T wants to have deep partnerships with its network partners
 and say we're not going to let Netflix run over our pipes.
 And they're going to do it.
 And they're doing these caps.
 At some point the FCC has to step in and regulate a free and open Internet for everybody.
 And if they don't do that then our society is screwed.
 That's all there is to it.
 And look, if it's happening, and I'm sure it is, I'm sure you're right,
 and we know it is, we've reported on it,
 at some point it has to be regulated.
 Somebody has to step in and say this is not the way you're going to do it.
 If our government wants to let Comcast run the Internet for America,
 then we're screwed.
 And believe me, pirating will look like child's play compared to what comes after
 a really restricted Internet.
 That's what I think.
 Yeah, right, because people will set up their own networks with even fewer regulations,
 fewer, like less oversight.
 Let's talk about when people can set up mesh networks that are really effective
 amongst a large group of people that you literally have,
 you need like an EMP to shut it down.
 Seriously, what would you do?
 How do you shut down somebody's private mesh network?
 I mean, you're talking about a whole different frontier that we probably don't want to go into.
 But I'm just saying, we're not there yet, right?
 I mean, there is some middle ground.
 And by the way, I don't think we're going to get there because of Hollywood.
 I really don't.
 They're important.
 They're very important.
 But there are a lot of other big important businesses in the world.
 Larry Ellison runs a big important business.
 Tim Cook runs a big important business.
 Tim Cook, he can run around and buy all of Hollywood, right?
 I mean, he literally could.
 I mean, we know that financially speaking that he could if he wanted to.
 I'm just saying, I don't think it's to get to that.
 I think it could get somewhere better and people would say,
 yeah, I like this, you know, but there's going to be hits on both sides.
 And if you don't take the hits, then you're going to be victimized if you're not willing to adapt.
 I said it in my post.
 I said adapt or die.
 And I really believe that.
 I really believe that adapt or die is the one thought you should have when you're doing anything.
 In life or in business is – I'm not going to quote Ballmer,
 but he is right in the sense that like you move forward or you die.
 I think it's more specifically it's you adapt or you die, you change or you die.
 And I don't see anywhere where people just kept doing the same thing.
 You know, look, Coca-Cola has had to change the way it does its business.
 Their formula may be the same, but they've definitely changed the way they do business.
 And you can be sure they'll continue to do that.
 The car – you know, the automakers have done that and they'll continue to do it.
 And you know, the movie industry will do it and they'll have to.
 So that's it.
 I'm done.
 Are you going to be the new Republican nominee for president or what?
 I mean, still do it.
 I hope so.
 Well, I said I have a lot of questions about Obama's birth certificate.
 Okay, so let's talk about some other stuff at D.
 Well, I mean, there's a lot of other news.
 I think Tim Cook, a lot of iPhone rumors this week.
 I think Cook said a bunch of stuff.
 I have a lot of thoughts on the TV situation.
 But first, let's hear what you got away from Tim Cook.
 You took away, got away?
 I don't know what I'm talking about.
 I got away.
 I stole some stuff from him.
 I pirated his content.
 Tim Cook I thought was really affable, funny, you know, obviously super smart.
 But I didn't get a good sense of anything about what he'll do.
 There were little tidbits of things that he'll do like, you know,
 MG Siegler wrote something today about Facebook integration coming to iOS,
 which, you know, he said, stay tuned, we think we can do more.
 He'd already said that before.
 You know, Walton Carah asked him about why Microsoft's idea of a convertible
 or, you know, some kind of hybrid of a laptop and a tablet doesn't work.
 And he kind of, I felt like he kind of stumbled on the answer in it.
 He didn't really have a great answer.
 He basically ended up with, well, it won't look as cool.
 And I actually thought that was like not, he didn't really fully explain
 why they couldn't do something that was half iPad, half, you know, laptop.
 And I think they probably could if they wanted to and it would be great.
 But, you know, what I walked away with just overall was I think he's a really
 interesting smart guy, but I don't have an idea of what his vision
 or what his passions are like at Apple.
 You know, I don't have an idea of what his vision for Apple is,
 and I don't have an idea of what his passions are.
 He seems interested in a lot of stuff.
 He loves the company, obviously.
 But it wasn't like, you know, when the last time Jobs was at D,
 there were things he was angry about.
 There were things that he was really excited about.
 And he talked about them in a way that was very unguarded, I thought.
 He actually was really expressive about that stuff.
 And Tim was very, I think he was very guarded.
 He was very funny and very open, but in a guarded way.
 And so, you know, but there were things he talked about that he made some
 comments about fragmentation in regards to screen resolution on the iPhone
 that I thought was interesting since there's been a lot of talk about
 the resolution changing.
 I mean, he specifically said we have one, you know, basically one
 resolution, one screen size.
 I forget the exact quote, but, you know, it was fairly direct.
 And then the Facebook stuff, you know, Joanna Stern asked him a question
 about ping.
 He basically said like maybe we'll keep kill ping, we don't know.
 I asked him about gaming in the living room specifically, and he didn't say
 we're not interested in that.
 He actually said that that might be interesting or I'd be interested in that
 or something like, you know, he said we're in the gaming space in mobile,
 but we may be interested in, he said, the indication was they weren't
 not looking at gaming.
 Right.
 The only thing he didn't want to do was the traditional console, right,
 which is kind of a throwaway comment.
 He's like, why would he make a console?
 I mean, they make iPads and laptops and desktops and I don't think a
 console.
 Yeah, they don't need one big Apple TV.
 And frankly, there are, I can think of 10 different ways that you could
 combine an iPad and iPhone and an Apple TV to create a really interesting
 gaming experience in the living room.
 And they're not doing it right now.
 They're doing mirroring, which doesn't really, you know, serve the same purpose.
 And then he said, and then I think this is really interesting.
 He said, we're going to double down on secrecy, thus saying double down,
 which is the buzzword of D.
 It's a virus throughout our community right now.
 Double down on secrecy and then literally the next day there were a bunch of leaks everywhere.
 Almost as if they took it as a challenge.
 Here's what I hope.
 Yeah.
 My theory is that the, and this could be totally wrong, by the way.
 Yeah.
 It really is, but my theory is that the stuff we're seeing is like a,
 is like a fake product that Apple is, that is purposely leaking.
 I mean, it looks exactly like the existing iPhone only taller.
 Like, see an iPhone, which is to me is a huge, I think it's a huge misstep for them.
 I heard, I'll be honest with you.
 I talked to a lot of people at D just, you know, in the industry, not journalists,
 not critics of technology who were like, man,
 iOS is looking really old and their hardware is looking really old.
 And they're like, you know, people talking about the Galaxy S3 and other devices, I might switch.
 I heard plenty of people who had an iPhone in their hands say stuff like that.
 Right.
 You know, they were kind of bored of iOS.
 I think that's a real sentiment, like not just amongst those people,
 but also amongst like your average consumer.
 So my like secret hope is that this phone we're seeing is like kind of a red herring.
 It's kind of like a, you know, to get you off of the trail of the real phone.
 Yeah.
 But I have no idea if that's the case or not.
 Well, it's funny because there were a lot of leaks.
 A lot of leaks.
 WWDC is coming right up.
 I think we're all fairly convinced that there's not going to be a new phone at WWDC.
 No, but I was thinking about this morning.
 What if, like if they have to have a new resolution, like not just twice resolution,
 do the developers have to have time to build for this?
 What if they could comment about it at WWDC?
 I mean, what if they do what they did with the original iPhone where they show it
 and say this is the new phone and it's coming in September?
 Right.
 They kill the sales of their existing phone.
 I mean.
 Maybe they don't care.
 I think they care.
 I mean.
 Well.
 I don't think, I mean, that's like the, what's it, the Osborne effect?
 Do you know about this?
 Yes, the Osborne.
 The Osborne effect where you kill the sales of your existing product by announcing the next one.
 I don't think Apple's that dumb.
 And you don't think people are already saying I'm not going to buy, I want to wait for the iPhone 5?
 Because I know people who definitely are.
 Yeah, but millions upon millions of other people are buying the 4S.
 I mean, every quarter sales are higher than the 4S.
 Not everyone realizes year after year it's the exact same schedule.
 Right.
 I think we just know a lot of nerds.
 Well, that's unquestionably true.
 I mean, I think what we're seeing is, I agree with you,
 I think it's some other crap that is like out in the open.
 I don't think you say we're going to double down on secrecy and then have a bunch of leaks.
 I think, I mean, maybe if you're not actually effective in doubling down on secrecy, I mean, that's,
 I mean, I think when you say doubling down on anything, in my experience, that has always been,
 it's almost like you're admitting that you're not going to do that thing.
 I mean, seriously, can you remember a time when somebody said we're doubling down on X and it turned out to be correct?
 You know what this all comes back to?
 Is HP saying it was going to double down on web OS.
 That was the first time.
 Web OS.
 That was literally, that was the first time I think I've heard that phrase in kind of the recent context.
 It's certainly the first time we've ever used it in the headline.
 Yeah, well, you put it in the headline.
 It didn't catch it.
 Peter showed me the link from 2010.
 It was from D, I think.
 Was it from D?
 No, it was an interview with you.
 They bought it and then you had a call with Ruby and somebody else.
 And I think it was Todd Bradley said we're going to double down on web OS.
 And then just over two years later.
 Everyone's doubling down.
 I mean, I really think there's like this thing in the industry where we have to stop using the phrase double down.
 That's a kiss of death.
 It's a kiss of death.
 Also, like, I don't know what the actual, what I'm supposed to expect from that.
 Like, are you, you know, what are the material, I get what you're trying to say.
 Like, you're all in, which is another thing that people say.
 We're all in on this.
 I feel like it's kind of a thing that people say when they're just making stuff up.
 Yeah, they're not actually saying anything.
 Yeah, yeah.
 Double down.
 As a joke yesterday, I tweeted that I was doubling down and getting back to New York.
 And I was afraid the plane was going to crash.
 I mean, it is, it's at that level of like, like just bad omen.
 So the other thing Tim Cook talked about at D was the television.
 And the rumors of the TV are rampant.
 They're everywhere.
 I think Boy Genius had a rumor this week that they're going to show off the TV OS at WWDC
 and give developers time to prepare for it.
 We've heard, you know, endless, endless rumors of LCD screens being cut
 or some new technology that doesn't exist yet being developed.
 I have to say, I don't think any of it's true.
 I don't think they're anywhere near putting out a TV.
 And I don't think they've solved the core problem of the television market.
 The number one core problem is you got to put TV on it.
 And I don't think that they have shown any.
 I think if they were out there talking to RCN and Comcast and Cablevision and Time Warner
 and all the people you got to talk to to put television on TV,
 I think we'd hear about it a lot.
 And not to mention the technology TV, like LCDs, LEDs, plasma.
 Like that's still not quite the quality that I want.
 I think they're poking around.
 And I think the other thing is, we talked a bunch about it at CS.
 I think there's a core interface problem with television.
 And they've changed Apple TV how many times and however many years.
 I think the current iteration is the worst thing I've ever seen.
 If you showed me the Apple TV as exists right now with that screen, that interface,
 Apple's going to reinvent TV.
 I'd be like, they have no idea what they're doing.
 Because it's a piece.
 It's a great product.
 I use it for AirPlay nonstop.
 Everything else about it is like ugly or broken.
 I think that they'll do something better with the interface.
 I think that is going to happen.
 I think as to the question about whether or not they're going to make a TV,
 look, if Apple wants to be in some market at this point,
 like no one's going to tell them no and no one's going to stop them
 and they'll probably be successful in it.
 They'll have some success.
 Even the Apple TV is starting to become a little bit successful for them.
 But I don't think it's as successful as they want it to be.
 And I don't think that Tim Cook, a guy who was in charge prior to this
 of deciding how these products get built and how much it costs to build them
 and how quickly you can build them,
 I don't think he looks at that business right now and says,
 this is a slam dunk.
 Unless they have some wild revolutionary ace in the hole.
 And look, if Ari Emanuel is any indication of where the industry
 that they have to partner with is at,
 I don't think they have some revolutionary ace in the hole
 that's going to change the game right now.
 And I think that's the real…
 Cook said we're not looking to be in the content business right now.
 He said we're not going to go and buy a studio.
 We're not going to buy Universal or whatever it is.
 And that means they have to partner with these guys.
 And in that industry, there is no AT&T.
 There's no giant national company that will do what you want
 because they need to compete.
 And even when you use AT&T, you're still pretty much everywhere.
 That's the content pipe.
 Right, but the content for a cell phone is you get data and voice.
 And then you can go and do whatever you want.
 The content for a television is television.
 And that is, I mean, you think the content industry is weird
 and paranoid and closed off.
 The cable industry is notoriously like insular.
 You know how you get a cable card certification?
 You go and ask Cable Labs.
 You know who owns Cable Labs?
 The cable companies.
 There's no way you can like get in that market that way.
 So here's something that Ari was talking about that I actually had a…
 I would have liked to have a conversation with him about,
 maybe I will at some point.
 He was talking about the syndication model.
 And he was talking about, you know,
 Walt and I actually talked about this after the interview
 because Walt thought this was a place where, you know,
 Ari said there aren't any cord cutters and that, you know,
 Walt said, well, there's people who are never getting cable.
 And, you know, Ari didn't think that that was correct.
 And there definitely are.
 There definitely is a generation of people who are like,
 I don't need cable because I have a bunch of other ways
 to get this content.
 But he talked about syndication,
 how lucrative syndication was on television, you know,
 the licensing of, you know, the first round of syndication,
 the second round.
 It's very lucrative.
 So what happens to syndication in the world where programming
 is no longer a thing, you know,
 where like this thing is on at this time, right?
 Because I think that we're approaching this mindset
 where you want to be able to get your stuff when you want it.
 Like maybe I'll subscribe to a show and pay for that
 or I'll subscribe to a network and get a certain number of shows
 on that network.
 But, you know, I don't watch Game of Thrones when it airs.
 And I don't know anybody else who does.
 And in a world where like syndication is outmoded
 because you're not like stumbling on a thing
 because you're not flipping through channels
 because you're not watching scheduled programming,
 like when you think about what has to happen to this model
 and what will happen, like I just think, you know,
 Apple has to find somewhere that's really revolutionary
 and will change what we do now.
 And the industry doesn't want that.
 And so I don't see how they have some big, you know,
 I don't know what their big content deal is,
 short of like you can rent a movie
 and you can buy an episode of a TV show, which is not,
 and like you said, the cable companies aren't going to let go
 of the monopoly they have, which allows things
 like syndication deals to be so lucrative.
 Even if you get Comcast, let's say Apple wins,
 they get Comcast, that's 30% of the country.
 That's not everybody.
 That's not a big market.
 Also, we don't have our bandwidth,
 the pipes are not big enough right now into most people's homes
 to make this a really satisfying experience, you know, every day.
 I don't believe we're there with bandwidth at all.
 I mean, I have Time Warner Doxxis in New York
 and it is not there yet to really do, you know,
 multi-room streaming in HD.
 Like that's not going to happen.
 My Fios is getting upgraded in June.
 Oh, is it really?
 To 75 up and like 35 down.
 You're kind of an asshole right now.
 I feel pretty, the top tier, the top tier Fios in June
 will be 300 up and 70, or 300 down and 75 up, which is ridiculous.
 I mean, I really, there are a lot of reasons to dislike you.
 That one is at the top.
 Pretty big one.
 I'm really hesitant to move.
 Ross can tell you, I talk about moving and finding you a partner all the time.
 You're not convenient at all.
 Fios keeps me there.
 I'm always waiting.
 I think it's a great example of part of the problem.
 You know, like look at all the factors.
 It's like Apple is a factor, the studios are a factor,
 the cable companies are a factor.
 The cable companies are a factor for two reasons.
 It's about where the cable is coming from,
 whether it's the dumb pipe that sends your cable down to your DVR
 or the other pipe that is the internet.
 And then like even looking at that pipe,
 you've got a bunch of other problems where it's like the bandwidth isn't enough.
 You can't get it certain places and it's not enough.
 There's caps.
 They're capping it.
 It's not even a utility really.
 I mean, we don't even regulate it like a utility, which is what it is, you know.
 I mean, we're not regulating internet like electricity.
 No.
 We should be.
 You know, that was the, should I just do this thing?
 That was the net neutrality fight.
 Literally the FCC said we're going to move broadband access
 under the same part of the law, Title II, as the phone, like phone service,
 because we regulate phone service as a utility,
 and the phone companies are common carriers
 and they have to abide by these rules and it's all neutral,
 and the internet companies freaked out, and they won.
 They basically just won.
 Yes.
 They didn't have, the FCC tried to do.
 Which is why the FCC.
 And you know, the FCC is trying to do, actually right now,
 we, TC had a report on it last week.
 The FCC is trying to do the same thing right now with the cable companies
 and like companies like Aereo,
 where they're saying we have an entire, this is such a wonky thing,
 they have an entire thing where if you run a cable company,
 you're called an MVPD, a multiple video provider, distributor, something like that,
 and if you're that thing, the networks have to sell you content at a fair rate.
 Which almost comes like the syndication issue again.
 And so they're saying, well, we want the internet services to be classified under that.
 We want to sneak them in under this other law
 so that the content owners have to sell them the stuff at the fair rate,
 and the content owners are fighting it with maybe the most pedantic arguments.
 Like ABC is out there saying, when people think of a channel,
 they think of the specific RF frequencies that are associated with a channel
 on their local television dial.
 It's like, no they're not, dude.
 They barely even think of a number.
 They think of three letters and content coming to them.
 I bet most of them would prefer to think of abc.com,
 which has nothing to do with RF frequency.
 And at the end of the day, what they really think of,
 I actually just had this conversation this week with somebody very smart.
 What consumers really think of, and this goes to your point, they think of shows.
 They don't think of networks.
 You don't have a loyalty to NBC or ABC or Fox.
 You have a loyalty to the show that you want to watch.
 And the only network I can think of that has broad consumer loyalty as a network is ESPN.
 I can't think of another one, because people just turn on ESPN
 and they leave it running all day.
 Maybe CNN, but even then CNN is like...
 CNN.
 Yeah, but CNN is like...
 If you replace CNN with something better, you'd be like, okay, that's fine.
 It's more talking head news, right?
 Right. CNN is mostly garbage.
 I mean, during the day.
 Right, but ESPN, people want the product of ESPN.
 They want whatever it is to be on, and they think it's a good product.
 Well, I mean, this is Barry Diller...
 I realize that I'm sitting here in like SB Nation Studios,
 and I think this product is way better out here.
 Right, way better.
 No, Barry Diller made this point about some people want ESPN really badly,
 and some people don't want it at all.
 And the people who want it really badly will subsidize,
 will really honestly subsidize it for the people who don't.
 I mean, right now I'm subsidizing it for people who want it.
 I don't want it.
 If you told me I'm going to take ESPN off of your cable
 and it'll reduce the price of your contract X amount of dollars,
 I'd say, that's great, go ahead and do that.
 And the other people, if they said it's going to increase it X amount of dollars,
 they'd probably be like, well, I need to have ESPN,
 but I don't want E, and I don't want Bravo, and I don't want...
 But this is the thing, this gets back to the Ari Emanuel argument,
 which is we have the system, and it works this way.
 We make movies this way, we make TV this way,
 they go on channels, they get syndicated,
 and it makes money for everybody, we have an industry to support,
 we have people who work and do this stuff.
 And if you change that, jobs will be lost, money will be lost,
 and it will irreparably alter how we do business.
 And this is what I'm saying, yes, that's what's going to happen.
 It is what's going to happen, it is what always happens,
 almost without fail, when technology changes.
 And when... I mean, it happens everywhere.
 The thing that's hard is to accept that it's happening.
 The thing that's hard is to go,
 I can try to fight to protect this thing that I have,
 which by the way, is an incredible thing.
 What nobody says, what they'll tell you is we're struggling.
 And look, there are places where the margins are very low.
 But the entertainment industry is enormously profitable
 and has a lot of money to play with.
 It's a large industry.
 And what you'll do is you say, I don't want to lose this,
 I don't want to lose this thing that I have, it's very valuable.
 And that's true, it is very valuable, but it has to change.
 It cannot change.
 The horse-drawn carriage was valuable to someone at some point too,
 and then somebody invented a car and people were like, wait a second,
 the car works way better, it makes a lot more sense for me.
 And at first they were really expensive and hard to get,
 and not everybody had one, and both things were on the road.
 And then at some point, horse-drawn carriages,
 you only see them in the middle of Pennsylvania.
 The Amish are riding them.
 And it's like, even now, I don't know if the Amish use them anymore.
 Like sneaking around in cars dressed up like horse-drawn carriages.
 Let me put it to you this way.
 If somebody tomorrow said, hey, you know what, iPad magazines,
 iPad, like you download them, they're wired, and you know,
 Engadget does distro and all these different like kind of static documents,
 that's what everybody's reading now.
 They don't want to read online.
 They don't want to tweet, they don't want to comment.
 The whole model has shifted.
 What are you going to do?
 Would I say, well, I'm going to keep doing this thing because I think it can get,
 someday it's going to fight back to relevance,
 or people won't just avoid it, they're going to use it because my product is better or whatever.
 Or would I go, all right, well, I got to make some changes because I want to still be in the game.
 I would say I'm going to make some changes.
 And some of those changes might be, I'm going to have less of a staff,
 or I'm going to lose developers, or, you know,
 I have to think differently about the way we do our content because it's a new format.
 But would I rather adapt to the thing where the culture is going,
 or would I rather try to sit on what I have and hope for the best, you know?
 And that's the hard decision that like nobody wants to, this is, you know,
 somebody just tweeted at me, they said, your article is wrong because the music industry didn't go back to normal.
 They lost a bunch of money, and the Thieves won.
 This is what they said.
 Post is pompous, and you're fundamentally wrong about the music biz.
 It lost half its value.
 Problem wasn't solved. Thieves won.
 Here's what happened.
 The market demand won.
 The industry was changed, and it lost value.
 And that's what happens when things change sometimes.
 You know, the music industry couldn't sustain, couldn't be sustained the way it was running.
 Like, I don't have a problem with that equation.
 You know, do I think that we'll get to a point where we can't support art and artistic endeavors?
 No, I don't think we're anywhere near that point.
 I actually think that we're seeing an explosion of that stuff,
 and a lot of it has to do with technology.
 And I think that'll happen even more when these companies start to really embrace this stuff
 and say like, we're changing.
 We're going to change. We're going to adapt.
 And, you know, maybe I'm wrong. We'll see.
 You're probably wrong.
 Probably.
 That's my guess.
 Also, Ross, we're making an iPad magazine and you're fired.
 I don't know if you got that from Josh's impassioned speech.
 It's fine. I'm going to go make an iPhone magazine.
 Ever smaller.
 All y'all.
 You know, the thing about that is the demand changed, but the kind of demand didn't change.
 And I think that we should move on, but we've talked about this for a long time.
 But the kind of demand didn't change, but the amount of demand increased.
 And I think if you're running any kind of business and you're seeing demand increase
 when your profits go down, you're like, what is broken here?
 You know, what I want to say is, what I want to say about music is this.
 And by the way, I worked in the music industry.
 I got paid by people in the music industry.
 I have signed contracts in the music industry.
 So I have some idea of how this works.
 What happened is there were people who were making a lot of money.
 A smaller amount of people were making a lot of money.
 So what happened now is a lot more people are making music.
 There's more music than there has ever been.
 It's easier to get than it's ever been.
 A person who is an artist who's just starting has a way to be discovered
 they would have never had in the old model.
 So more music is being heard and the consumer is better for it.
 And our world is better for it.
 I believe that it's better to have more people creating art than less people,
 than fewer people.
 And, you know, what happened though is those places where it was pooled,
 those places where people were making a lot of money changed.
 They got disrupted. They're not the same.
 And yeah, that's really hard for them.
 But the world changed. The world will change.
 You know, there was a time in this country when women couldn't vote.
 There was a time in this country when blacks couldn't vote.
 I mean, stuff has to change.
 What's going on over there?
 Sorry, there's like people walking by the window here.
 Hang on. I'm just going to shut the window.
 Josh is definitely going to get murdered right now.
 I mean, without question.
 We've gone from, I just want to be clear, we've gone from copyright law to music.
 To suffrage.
 To women's suffrage.
 Yeah, that happened.
 All suffrage really, yeah.
 Wow. I mean, is he coming back? Oh, he's back.
 We were legitimately worried for your safety.
 Also, Ross pointed out that we went from Ari Emanuel to women's suffrage in like three moves,
 which is pretty impressive for us.
 Even for us, that is impressive.
 Adapt or die.
 Do you want to talk about anything else that happened at D10?
 The CEO of Skype was on.
 You talked about the Spotify guys.
 Anything else from the conference you want to touch on?
 Wait, on what? The Skype guys?
 They said that I told them that the design was terrible.
 I said the new Skype design is terrible and everybody I know who uses it thinks it's terrible
 and are you going to do anything about it?
 And he said we have a lot of users that think it's great.
 But then later I heard from someone,
 sources familiar with the matter that they are actually working on a new design.
 Good.
 Which I haven't reported yet.
 I'm so busy writing about Ari Emanuel.
 Let's talk about the Chromebook and Chromebox that came out this week.
 Because you helped on the reviews with David.
 I love them.
 You do.
 You were really stoked on the Chromebook.
 You were initially very, and I still think it's ridiculous, a ridiculous product.
 Second.
 I think the new Chromebook is actually a lot more useful and usable
 than any other Chromebook that's ever existed.
 That doesn't say much.
 It's like saying it's the best Blackberry ever.
 Still Blackberry.
 No, but they're really doing something interesting.
 They're doing something really fascinating.
 They are going in a direction that I believe is a true real new direction for computing,
 which is like literally it is all cloud-based.
 I mean the apps are webpages.
 They're HTML5 apps and some are Flash-based.
 They'll move away from that as HTML5 and other stuff gets more advanced.
 But I think it's a really exciting idea.
 And I think they actually made it a lot better
 because they did some things that allowed me to bridge the gap easier.
 So I'm used to working in Windows.
 I like Windows.
 Not the software but the actual things.
 Oh, God forbid.
 I was actually in a Microsoft store yesterday.
 And there were some pretty nice laptops there actually.
 I was like pretty tempted to buy one.
 There's also a Sony store here, which I haven't been in a Sony store in ages.
 And they have got to say their ID is really nice.
 They still make some really good movies.
 Sorry, not to get off track.
 I'd like them to make a Chromebook.
 But it does these things now where you can run Windows for your apps.
 You can switch between them like you would in a normal computing environment.
 And it's much faster.
 They fixed the Typekit issue at our request, by the way.
 I just want to say you're welcome.
 Everybody who is using a Chromebook and wondering why sites look like crap.
 I told the guys on the Chromebook team, I was like,
 you know it doesn't display Typekit properly.
 And they were like, you're the first person that's ever told us that,
 which I was surprised.
 Because we live in a cave and never talk to humans who use the Internet.
 Unless they have Project Amazon.
 I don't see how that's possible.
 So yeah, I actually think it gets closer to bridging the gap
 between the cloud experience and the traditional PC experience.
 And I could see it being used for a casual user.
 It's a pretty good day-to-day device.
 I really believe that.
 I think it's a lot less computer than a Mac or a decently stacked PC.
 Too much money.
 For some people, they need a price of like $250.
 Even $300 would be like this.
 It's a lot of computer for them.
 So that puts it at the range of Android tablets.
 Is Chrome OS justifiable as a second Google OS?
 That's what I'm asking.
 Actually, the bigger problem is it puts it in the range of an iPad.
 And if you're a person who wants to do some casual computing
 and you want an interface that's kind of app-based,
 that's sort of all about these full-screen windows you look at,
 does it make sense to spend $550 on that
 or does it make sense to spend $500 or $400 on an iPad 2
 and get a nice keyboard dock for it or something?
 And I think that's the problem with the Chromebook right now.
 Why would I spend $450 on it?
 And I don't think they have a great answer.
 Yeah, I don't think they have.
 There's no value proposition there.
 I don't know why I'd buy one.
 And the Chromebox to me is even crazier.
 I mean you can buy a small Windows PC for nothing, for $0.
 Would it be cool if they had done something with the Chromebox
 where they had some great media playback options
 or made it like a part Google TV, part Chromebox or something?
 I don't know.
 That's so unclear.
 I mean I was in a Walmart the other day
 and I definitely saw a netbook that was like $278.
 And it was a Windows PC.
 It was really sad.
 It was an HP and it had a Discover WebOS icon on the desktop.
 And I was like, oh man, that's so cute.
 I think what they want to do with Chromeboxes
 is they're looking at enterprise.
 I think they want thin clients for enterprise
 that can be updated easily, that are virus free, blah, blah, blah.
 Yeah, but why the hell does it have like six USB ports
 and why does it look so shamelessly like a Mac Mini?
 Maybe there's an enterprise need for the ports.
 Yeah, some CIO somewhere is like, look, I need a computer
 that can only run a web browser but has six USB ports.
 Well, think about what you can do if it's all a web based environment.
 I mean for enterprise.
 I mean I think that like there's a real –
 Schmitt's dream.
 I don't think they're there.
 Yeah, Schmitt's dream, exactly.
 I don't think they're there yet,
 but I think that's where they're targeting the desktop.
 But I honestly think the new version is cool.
 And if it were less money, I would really –
 I could really recommend it to casual users.
 If it were 300 bucks, I'd say like this is a really cool computer to have for $300.
 The screen looks good.
 The hardware is decent.
 It's kind of plasticky, but the keyboard is really good.
 The software is fast.
 The browsing is fast.
 The trackpad responsiveness was really good.
 And I think at the right price point, it's a cool computer.
 I could recommend it over like a netbook.
 Would you buy it with ads?
 Because we heard some stuff that they're going to do it with ads, right?
 They're going to lower the price and put ads on it and subsidize it.
 Because I have a Kindle with ads, and I don't care.
 I actually have a Ferd, honestly.
 I don't know.
 Would that be like I'm browsing and I get a special interstitial,
 like a full screen interstitial while I'm browsing a page or something?
 I don't know.
 I don't think Google knows better than to do that kind of crap.
 But they would do something.
 Well, I hate ads.
 I hate ads that are in my interface.
 I like good advertising.
 What I don't like is cluttery ads.
 When I see the ads in Gmail in my regular Gmail account, it drives me crazy.
 And I never click on them, obviously, because I'm in my email,
 and I don't want to be advertised to.
 So it would have to be done in a way that was non-intrusive,
 and I don't know how you do that on a computer.
 Right.
 So I don't know.
 I mean, I wouldn't pay less for something with ads.
 I would pay more for something without ads.
 Right.
 That's just me.
 Well, you probably get both options.
 So let's swing back all the way.
 Windows 8 release preview put out this week.
 David and Tom did a huge hands-on preview of it.
 Some kind of huge changes.
 They put a special version of Flash in the Metro version of IE.
 One that does just videos.
 Yeah, it's limited.
 It only does videos.
 And Microsoft maintains a whitelist of sites that are allowed to use Flash.
 That is the craziest part to me.
 But that version of Flash will also be on the ARM tablets,
 which to me sounds like death,
 because Flash on ARM has traditionally sucked about as hard as any product has ever sucked.
 They just say it's going to save battery if it's just video somehow.
 Yeah, you know what's great at playing videos off the Internet in a mobile device
 is iOS and Android, and they don't need Flash to do it.
 So I don't know what they're thinking there.
 A bunch of other changes, a lot of new apps.
 And then Tom reported that Microsoft is taking out all of the ability for third-party hacks
 to put the start menu back on the desktop.
 So not only are they saying we're taking away the start menu from normal people,
 they're removing all the hooks and all the bits and pieces of legacy code
 that would let you put the start menu back,
 which I think is a very aggressive move on Microsoft's part.
 There's a part of me that really wants to cheer them on,
 like break with the past and go for it,
 and there's a part of me like, huh, you're going to make a lot of people really angry.
 And if you look in our forums and you look around, yeah.
 Wait a second.
 What are they doing? What is this?
 So right now in the consumer preview, and I believe in release preview,
 I was traveling too, so I haven't really gotten a chance to play with it,
 but you can hack Windows 8 to put the start menu back in the traditional desktop view.
 Right.
 So you can get the desktop back to it, and then you can go to Metro and do whatever you want.
 In the new version, Tom is reporting that the final build,
 they're taking out all the bits of code and all the things that enable those hacks to work,
 so that you will never get a start menu back in Windows 8.
 And I think it's a very ballsy move. It's courageous. I appreciate it.
 It's rough.
 But in our forums, there are people who are pissed off about it.
 Tom is saying that the broader Microsoft community is kind of angry about it.
 To me, it's like Microsoft is, they're going for it with Windows 8.
 They're trying to do something new.
 I've read a few pretty interesting articles over the week,
 people basically saying this is a huge inflection point for Microsoft.
 They're betting the company on this.
 This is a bigger deal than we're making it out to be.
 And I think that little thing, that removal of the start button,
 I think, kind of just, it's like the cherry on top of the risk Sunday.
 Right. Well, Metro Design itself is a unification across not just Windows,
 but the phone, even Xbox.
 Every platform they have is kind of converging.
 Yeah, I don't know.
 If I was a traditional Windows user,
 we've seen however many stories of people used to Windows now,
 trying to use Windows 8 and trying to figure out what to do.
 And that learning curve is like,
 Microsoft has to explain how they're going to teach people to use this product.
 Because once you get it, it makes a little bit of sense,
 and you can flow into it.
 I've been using it on a laptop at home.
 It's because we grew up with Windows.
 It's not exactly a simple, easy-to-use design.
 Someone who's not used Windows, but comes over to Windows 8, sees the Metro Design,
 is that easier for them?
 I don't know.
 I'm a little too far removed to be able to kind of figure that out.
 Right.
 And my number one kind of confusion with Metro remains,
 is it, quote, beautiful handcuffs.
 Can you tell app developers,
 this is how everything has to look,
 this is the kind of set of expectations.
 And Metro apps that are beautiful are among the most beautiful apps ever created.
 Metro apps that fake it are among the worst ever made.
 And I just don't know the answers.
 Mr. Tupolsky?
 Can you guys, can you still see me and hear me?
 Yeah, there you go.
 Because it's like my bandwidth went way down.
 You're getting throttled by the hotel.
 Comcast is complaining.
 I probably am being throttled by the hotel actually.
 But I actually talked to some people at D
 about Windows 8 and how big of a gamble it was.
 And I have to say the sentiment there,
 even with people who are very familiar with the matter,
 was that it is a big gamble for them.
 And that it is,
 they have, this is going to be a big moment for Microsoft,
 for Microsoft Windows.
 I'm very curious to see how it's going to roll out.
 There's a certain segment of the market
 that's going to go buy these new machines.
 The question is how big and how does Microsoft position it?
 And will the experience be satisfying and enjoyable?
 At this point, you got to go beyond like,
 hey, it's Windows, right?
 If you're like, hey, look at this new version of Windows,
 you have to go beyond that and be like,
 Windows is all new.
 So you not only have to give them a satisfying Windows experience,
 but you have to go, I think with the competition,
 you have to go beyond that and give them this like,
 whoa, I didn't know Windows could be like this experience.
 And I don't know if they're there yet.
 I need to spend a lot of time with this thing
 because I feel like all the hardware that it's running on right now
 is like a hack basically to some extent.
 So I'm very curious to see what the real convertibles will be like
 or the real tablets that they're going to bring out.
 And then there's the Intel market.
 I mean, people are going to upgrade to Windows 8.
 The missing start button is going to be a real mystery
 to a lot of people though.
 I think you're going to be really, really upset.
 And I don't know how you get around that.
 Yeah, to me, it's, I mean, if you're going to use the phrase double down,
 that's it. You're doubling down on that.
 If you're going to change as much as removing the start menu,
 maybe you ought to change it even more than that.
 I guess is my thought.
 Like don't let people feel like they're in a familiar place
 if the place you want them to be is unfamiliar.
 There's a really great article by this guy, Michael Mace.
 Michael Mace, Mobile Opportunity.
 It's a good name.
 He wrote, effectively, Windows 8 is Metro with a Windows 7 emulator.
 It's actually a great piece. You should read it.
 Maybe we'll throw in the notes or something.
 But it's really interesting.
 I mean, the amount of like hand wringing about Windows 8 right now is much more,
 you know, Windows 7, you remember Windows 7 came out.
 It was like everyone was like kind of like overjoyed.
 They're like, okay, they took Vista, they cleaned it up.
 It's pretty. It's like beautiful.
 It's going to work.
 Everyone was happy.
 They sold more copies of Windows 7.
 With Windows 8, there's a lot of like,
 there's a lot of deep excitement about all this new stuff
 and a lot of like, but why?
 That question just keeps coming up.
 Like why do you, and like, you know,
 why is there a desktop?
 That's going to be there forever.
 And the more they cripple the desktop on the Intel side,
 or the x86 side, I should say,
 that question is going to come up on that side too.
 It's like what you're saying.
 If you're going to do this, if you're going to say,
 if you're going to make it so uncomfortable to use the desktop and so different
 and push people into Metro,
 why not provide a product that is just Metro from the ground up?
 And I, you know, we've been asking that question for months.
 But you know, to me, this new version,
 and kind of Tom's report,
 you know, David and Tom looked at the new version.
 They said it's beautiful and fast and stable.
 And David said, I don't want to use the desktop unless I'm forced to, which is wild.
 Right.
 Well, I do think you got it.
 I think they should go all in on that.
 Double down.
 They should double down on Metro.
 They got to double down on Metro
 and they're not totally doing it.
 And you know,
 I think there's a different way to do this.
 But maybe I'll be proven wrong.
 You know, when I get to this thing in my hands and use it,
 maybe the fluidity will work in a way that is super great.
 You know, I don't know.
 I'm actually,
 despite what my critics will tell you,
 I actually have a completely open mind about what this experience will be like.
 Like I am ready for it to be really good.
 Like I'm prepared to have that happen.
 I don't have any judgment on it right now in terms of what it will be.
 I mean, look, there are a lot of people.
 Sanofsky is not a dumb guy.
 Okay.
 Sanofsky is a very smart guy.
 And there are a lot of very smart people who've worked on this project.
 And I've talked to a bunch of people at Microsoft who've worked on it.
 And I don't think they're not aware of what they're doing.
 You know, and so I think that there's a real possibility
 that once this thing is like in play and you're using it
 and it's on the right hardware,
 it could be an amazing experience.
 You know?
 Yeah.
 I mean, it's a great way to get your hands on it.
 You know, what do you think is going to happen with that?
 You go to Metro.
 I think...
 No, no.
 What's that?
 That's what will happen.
 It will take you to Metro.
 No, I understand that.
 But you're used to clicking this thing in the corner.
 But maybe people will be used to hitting the start button.
 And there will be ways of arranging your apps that feels really natural.
 And so maybe it won't be this big like,
 what the hell, like I can't use this thing anymore.
 I'm just saying that I haven't seen the hardware
 that people are putting it on.
 Am I okay?
 Can you guys hear me?
 Yeah, the sports guys are having some kind of a party out there.
 You're not getting shot by Ari Emanuel.
 But I'm just saying my mind is open on this.
 But I agree that there is a lot of...
 There are a lot of people in the industry who have expressed like,
 from what I can tell,
 a real concern over whether this is going to be a home run
 or a swing and a miss for them.
 Yeah, I mean, we'll find out.
 Did we... October, is that the latest rumor?
 I think so.
 October that this thing is happening.
 I thought that somebody didn't want to the Microsoft beat people
 like Therot or Foley or somebody say that Sanofsky mentioned it?
 Or am I hallucinating?
 I think we reported October.
 It's going to be hard for me to find out.
 We have a release preview, which is what we have now.
 A day ago, we reported Microsoft hints at October release.
 That's what I thought.
 I mean, they're in line with their schedule,
 with their traditional schedule.
 Yeah, they've got to hit back to school and all that stuff
 and that's right around there.
 I guess that's not actually.
 It's holidays.
 It's holidays.
 Yeah, we just bought your computer for back to school
 and now...
 Well, how cool is it in the holiday season
 to get all these crazy new tablets and convertibles
 and things to buy for people?
 I think if you miss that window, it would be very foolish.
 Yeah.
 Also, $14 upgrades I think after now.
 If you buy a computer now, you get a $14 upgrade to Windows 8.
 Is that anything after June 2nd?
 Yeah.
 That's what they told me.
 What they need to do is make the upgrade as cheap as Apple makes their upgrades.
 That is cheaper.
 Apple's upgrades are 29.
 You buy a computer now,
 but if you have one you bought two months ago...
 Okay, so let's talk about...
 We can...
 Let's see if I can keep segueing.
 I've been doing pretty good.
 Yes.
 Microsoft makes the Xbox.
 That was awful.
 That was the worst segue I've ever delivered.
 Microsoft makes the Xbox.
 I'm intrigued.
 Fact.
 The Xbox plays video games.
 Well, I mean, kind of.
 It does some other stuff too.
 A little bit.
 And there's an enormous video game show coming up
 and Ross, you're leaving what, tomorrow?
 Sunday.
 You're leaving Sunday?
 E3.
 Sunday's the big day.
 We have a party.
 Forget about that.
 Forget about E3.
 We have a party on Sunday here.
 Yeah, with Polygon.
 Are you and Chris Grant going to go shot for shot
 in the middle of the Polygon party?
 There's free alcohol.
 Free booze all night.
 We have games.
 It's sponsored by Qualcomm.
 We have games.
 We have booze.
 Free booze.
 And it's going to be a good time.
 It's a place we're doing this really now.
 Yeah.
 What's that?
 I should have stayed out there.
 I was just on my third day, but I missed it.
 You can RSVP for it on the internet, I think.
 Yeah.
 And that's Comcast filters here.
 I'm going to tell you where.
 By the way, I hate doing this on Skype.
 I'm never doing this on Skype again.
 Because of the delay.
 The terrible delay.
 The delay and everything's fuzzy
 and the green coloring of this situation here.
 Yeah.
 What is this green light that's going on?
 Everything in this hotel room is fluorescent lighting.
 This is what fluorescent light looks like.
 You don't know.
 It's disgusting.
 It's sickening.
 It's bad.
 Did you white balance your computer?
 Because you look like a normal.
 Actually, you look a little healthier than normal.
 Well, I actually think, see,
 wait, are you guys white balancing Josh?
 No?
 You do.
 I mean, you have some tint, I guess.
 All right, fine.
 I'm wearing makeup.
 I admit it, okay?
 I'm covered in makeup.
 Saras, walk us through E3.
 You're a man on the ground.
 What is going to happen at E3 this year?
 I feel like we're going to see more of the Wii U
 and there aren't going to be any big surprises.
 Am I crazy?
 Well, we don't know exactly what's going to happen
 so Nintendo has gone out and just said,
 we're going to show the final format.
 We're going to show you that launch line-up
 or a bunch of the software titles for the launch.
 We're not going to tell you when it comes out.
 Probably sometime into the year.
 Nintendo's done.
 That's pretty much it.
 It's probably going to look exactly like we saw before.
 Weren't they changing it?
 I thought they were changing the controller.
 They're going to tweak it,
 which means they may move the D-pad around.
 I don't think it's going to be anything drastic.
 I think it's just going to be kind of what we saw.
 Nintendo's slow slide into irrelevance continues.
 The thing about Nintendo is,
 they don't really make great hardware.
 They never really have,
 but they've made games people want to play.
 That's what's mattered.
 It's the content.
 Do you want to play Mario again?
 Do you want to play Pikmin again?
 I had a lot of doubts about the Wii.
 I think ultimately the Wii wasn't for me,
 but it was for other people.
 Except now,
 there are a lot of really innovative things going on in gaming.
 You've got Kinect, which is extremely innovative,
 and people have seemed to get into.
 You've got mobile gaming.
 You've got what Apple's doing,
 which is like,
 hey, you have a tablet in your lap,
 and you're using it to play a game.
 You can move the tablet around.
 You can move stuff on screen.
 I think they're going to do some cool things,
 but the demo videos I've seen with the Wii U
 hasn't looked like anything I'm that interested in.
 Am I crazy?
 Maybe I am.
 I think it's a universal feeling.
 Nintendo's Wii U is supposed to more cater
 to the hardcore market, but it really doesn't.
 It's like a casual system that's going to be a little pricey
 and a little more complicated.
 I'm not sure who they're reaching out for anymore.
 And internals are still fairly dated compared to Xbox.
 The demos we saw looked pretty bad.
 They looked like the Xbox 360.
 My impression is this should be like,
 guess what, Microsoft?
 You're going to have to launch a new console
 to catch up with us in the graphics department.
 No.
 That's never Nintendo's fault.
 But then it doesn't matter anymore.
 When has Nintendo ever done that?
 Maybe the N64.
 N64, GameCube.
 Back then, it mattered.
 Right.
 You could argue that Wii was their first large step back
 out of the graphics race.
 And it worked for them.
 Because of the iPad and the iPod Touch or whatever.
 But actually, people are making some pretty graphically beautiful games
 given the really quite limited hardware that they have.
 That's not a console at all.
 That's not technical graphics.
 That's design.
 That's largely just design.
 Well, yeah.
 But I'm saying there are also games like Nova or whatever
 that are pretty graphically intense.
 They look really good.
 They look almost like console games.
 Yeah, they do look good.
 And I feel like they're not going to stop doing that.
 Those are going to get better.
 And so they're not just competing from up here.
 They're also competing from the bottom up.
 So I think that they're in a weird place.
 I feel like they need to really blow people away.
 And I don't see that happening right now with the Wii U.
 Yeah, I think Nintendo's day of dominating the console market.
 Apple, who is not going to be 83, which is giving their influence
 on gaming society, it's like it's that elephant in the room.
 Or the elephant not going to be in the room.
 But the elephant will be around the room.
 The elephant will be there.
 It's in everyone's pocket.
 There will be iOS booths, gaming booths, and the shape of an elephant.
 Let's keep going.
 Sony.
 So Sony, there have been a couple weird rumors coming out,
 especially recently, about what's going to be shown.
 So don't even worry about it.
 Don't think about it.
 Why would you do that?
 You could do 50 more riffs than the PS3.
 Of course.
 You can do everything.
 Sorry.
 The rumor that came out today, which I thought was interesting,
 but I don't really believe it all.
 It's too good to be true, those kind of rumors.
 Some streaming company is going to help Sony
 make a streaming service where they stream PlayStation 2
 and PlayStation 1 games to the PS3.
 If that involves a backwards compatibility issue,
 you just stream it like you would in online.
 Is that still an issue?
 They took out compatibility.
 Did anybody care?
 I bought a used original PS3 so I could play pretty much NBA Jam.
 If you could stream that, you could probably also stream PSN games.
 Sure, okay.
 It's not going to matter now.
 It will matter for PS4, because chances are,
 I don't think Sony's going to go back to the cell processor.
 That's interesting.
 I think streaming games is going to become a thing at some point.
 I don't know if it's short term or long term future.
 Cloud.
 That idea is really interesting.
 What you're talking about is backwards compatibility,
 but in a way that nobody ever considered it how it would work.
 To me, that is a really revolutionary concept.
 First off, I don't know how much,
 how big of a thing it is at this point, backwards compatibility.
 I know there's a certain segment of people
 who are going to be using Neeliby in one of them.
 But I also think that if you had the option,
 and it didn't require maybe even having the physical media in front of you,
 that's a really interesting proposition.
 Again, this goes back to the bandwidth thing.
 You've got to have the bandwidth for that,
 and the services have to be essentially zero.
 The latency has to be so low that it's able to set it up.
 Online's pretty good.
 And Gaikai is okay.
 Wall Street Journal actually on that note,
 reported that Sony considered a streaming only PS3 successor,
 but then they decided against it and went with the disc.
 You know who we had a lot to say about this,
 although we haven't done the video yet?
 John Carmack.
 Yeah, you just hung out with John Carmack.
 He is an insane, brilliant man who does not think like human beings do.
 He does not.
 Go figure.
 We had six hours where we just hung out with him
 at his rocket factory, which is exactly what you think.
 And so we brought up cloud computing.
 How's your rocket factory doing, Josh?
 Is it doing well?
 Really good, great.
 There's some great rockets coming out of there, some great stuff.
 There are prevailing themes throughout everything.
 So we talked about cloud gaming.
 Sean really wanted me to bring it up.
 And he's like, you know, it's happening.
 It's going to happen.
 I'm very excited by it.
 And the idea that there's a connection issue is so,
 it's like, I can tell you exactly where to cut off 30 milliseconds with your TV,
 with your console, with your controller.
 I will make it work.
 And it looks just like it does with this stuff.
 It's like, why don't you do it.
 I don't really care, Jim.
 He laid out exactly what you're doing.
 And then he goes, I don't care.
 Well, he's like, I'm busy working on this insane virtual reality headset,
 so I can't do it.
 about this headset? So it's something he's been working on like for six months
 he said just as a hobby like he thought it was interesting he saw some headsets
 he bought himself one of the Sony headsets there was the HMX one the one
 we reviewed yeah and he looked at it and he played with it he goes it it's
 super it's impressive especially for the price which is like 500. Can I interrupt
 you for a second? Yeah go for it. I'm getting Ross all the way back. I'm actually getting
 you. Yeah we're echoing. Is it me? Yeah it's you. It's me? Testing. Hello. Hello.
 Testing. All right I don't I only hear me now which is fine not like twice me I'm
 not doubling down on my voice. I think we're good. Okay keep going. Tell me about
 tell me about the HMX one. So to start from scratch okay so about six months ago John Carmack for
 whatever reason decided to buy the Sony headset cuz he thought it looked cool.
 He didn't decide he just went to the store and was like I have enough money to buy
 everything one of everything please. All right and then continue. Anyway so he did that
 he's like this is impressive such for the price but here's what's wrong
 with it he's like well it's the latency is an issue it's too slow connecting to
 what you're seeing. The field of view is terrible like it's I think 45 50 degrees
 you don't have an immersion experience because you know there's things around
 you. So he started researching he started trying to find a headset he found a guy
 who was kind of just screwing around with something it's a single LCD panel
 they split the screen just like you do a picture in picture and it's a polar
 picture like doesn't look right but if you put a polar lens up to it it looks
 like just one island so he puts two polar lenses on a single LCD screen and
 you've got a 90 degree field of view so all you can see is the screen there's no
 so it's 90 degrees from here yeah it's like this yeah so it's a really wide
 field of view really tall field of view so you just can't see anything else not
 just like black bars just it covers everything around you. So it's like that's
 important let's make it fast and then resolutions kind of like the fourth or
 third tier we'll figure that one out later. Okay that makes sense. So he did
 his little magic he tweaked a shit ton of stuff with the algorithms like he had
 this hardware he tweaked the hardware then he wrote like entirely new engine
 for it put it on Doom 3 and so Doom 3 it comes out with BFG editions like this
 anniversary edition that's on everything if you have the PC you can you have
 headset support and later in the year they're considering kind of bringing
 this headset not maybe with it but as a compatible system. But where do you get
 the headset? I mean so the headset he used is actually going on
 Kickstarter like this week I think really today. Some guy really Palmer Lucky I
 think is his name. Palmer Lucky? Palmer Lucky. I wish I was kidding something like
 that um the product the product is called the Oculus Rift. No it's Palmer
 Lucky's Oculus Rift. You get the Oculus Rift of course I do yes that's a great
 product everybody's using. From Palmer Lucky. So is it a virtual reality it's a
 pair of it's virtual reality goggles yeah it's 3d virtual reality goggles
 with a huge field of view. You used it like did it feel like you were in the
 game? I mean it really did cuz like you couldn't see away from it you had a
 great field of view it's about as wide as I feel now. Yeah really? Yeah it was really
 good I'm impressed. So like to here. Was it scary? Did you get freaked out at any
 point? Were you like getting attacked by an actual person? I had a spider robot
 with me and vision and that helped. I think the other thing is also that this
 prototype was a very early prototype there's duct tape everywhere it worked
 well it was also like maybe two pounds. When you move your when you move your
 head just I want to be clear so when you're playing the game you've got now
 are you at a keyboard or did you have some kind of controller? I had an Xbox controller.
 Okay so Xbox controller so like so when you look to when you look to the left in
 the game when you moved your head it worked like it was completely in sync
 with your movement. It had an accelerometer and a gyroscope so it was like that was
 nothing the latency was an issue so like it was completely in sync with me moving
 like this up and down tilting my head. There's no latency no latency. I mean it
 was maybe sub 20 milliseconds I couldn't tell and like that was his thing he
 wanted like much much how much is that is the head second and cost? It's okay to
 be clear the headset idea is still like he wants it for hobbyists so like it's
 gonna be like a $500 range for a do-it-yourself kit. I'm buying no I want
 to buy one really badly. Yeah this is my dream. Since I was like since I was 12 and read my first like
 mod in 2000 like this is what this is what I've been waiting for is an actual
 virtual reality. We talked like his idea was like holodeck he wants to make the
 holodeck and like this is as close as we're gonna get right now is a headset.
 If you could pull off a headset that actually functions really well they
 would be nobody's done it that is even remotely consumer priced like it would
 be unbelievable. Right I mean the trade-off the trade-off we had was low
 resolution so it's just it's what's the red I was 1280 by 800 total but split in
 two right yeah so 640 by 800 he wants it higher but again he wanted to get
 everything else right first and then work on the resolution he was talking
 about different like a Radies yeah like he was on a different resolution types
 he wants only LD eventually or lead sorry oh yeah LD LD I like it because he
 he welcome welcome to technology so yeah he he hates plasma hates LCD hates LED
 it's just not good enough for him it's like OLED is what he wants to do with
 this eventually but uh right now he thinks it's hobbyist territory because
 technology isn't quite up to the level where like you pick it up yeah if you're
 not forgiving by a few things you're gonna hate it right but even then like
 that I was super impressive that's you should see that you guys should see the
 video in the story the roster it's a lot of Ross and the giant head such as
 sleeping around polygon polygon did stuff on on on the game right yeah yeah
 so I know I had Russ pits down with me who did a much more detail on the BFG
 edition kind of the history of doom or doing three at least it's a little bit
 of a catch-up to like where they've been the last few years it's a fascinating
 I mean it software itself is a very fascinating backstory going from yeah
 really 22 years now 23 years that's all was their first game Wolfenstein the
 first game was commander Keane actually which is like nothing like anything else
 they've made it's a side scroller well the made a Mario 3 clone try to get
 Nintendo to like have them do the port of Mario 3 for the PC they said no
 obviously like okay so we'll take this idea we'll make our own design we'll use
 this engine we just built and we'll make a game so that became commander Keane
 and then from there I did went to Wolfenstein 3d Wow I love it
 so it's real quick Microsoft 83 so if all goes according to plan Tom Warren
 has ruined all the Microsoft announcements Microsoft reporter has
 been going crazy in the last couple months the things that we've reported on
 project Woodstock which is Xbox Music Center maybe which is their Spotify
 service yeah which is kind of what the Zune should have been and almost was
 before Spotify it sounds like they're gonna come out maybe do that I don't
 know that's a three or not but that's something they're definitely the late
 stages of planning for the other thing is connect play fit which is like their
 exercise thing with connect Microsoft Xbox 360 connect play fit Windows Music
 Center but the interesting yeah is the jewel as like energy a jewel heart rate
 monitor oh yeah because these are like big now yeah yeah I think it's if I
 understand the rumor correctly it's just like a wrist thing kind of like a Nike
 field band yeah so a wearable heart rate monitor that might go with this play
 fits it gives you some kind of either wire playing or maybe even like why
 you're just walking around kind of addition to your fitness cycle if they
 pull that off I mean speaking as a Fitbit obsessive I'd be excited you know
 I bought the I bought the Fitbit RAS scale oh really yeah I use it that much
 right I'd step on the scale and then the computer reminds me that I should know
 I'm where I bought one as well and I have yet to set it up so I have an
 analog scale I just it does remind me that Becky is much more fit than me at
 every available opportunity well she actually Becky you can also just look at
 her that would be you don't have to look at the scale there's a lot of evidence
 the other the other big anyhow was a lot for and the new Gears of War has been
 kind of hinted at yeah so well no I thought sorry am I am I allowed to not
 be excited about Halo 4 okay okay yeah I'm intrigued because it's a completely
 new like team behind like it's the all-star team of like game vets or like
 the old oh you know what I'll tell you what I'm excited about some things
 there though what some games what is the new Bethesda title it's called
 what is it called are you having dishonored dishonored yes that's looks I
 don't know publisher arcane studios yeah it's like a steampunk like no but it is
 a it is a Bethesda game I mean it is a is there just there to their distributed
 as any Max who owns Bethesda is the publisher distributor okay but they
 don't know someone to publish like Skyrim so yeah same family right I don't
 know what the game is actually gonna be like but the trailer for it looks
 incredible it looks really and there's something else the other team I care
 about is a Dead Space 3 that may come out kind of I have to play to play Dead
 Space 2 first and Star Wars 1313 was announced last night yeah I saw I got
 that PR yeah the the mature Star Wars game 13 so what does that mean can you
 tell me what is that is it first off what how is it played is it first person
 who gets nude we don't know under the helmet with I don't know so those
 students nudity in it I'm there don't even care I can't I can't top that now
 anyway so 1313 is a reference as far as we can tell us to I was it Fett bounty
 hunter Boba Fett oh I see Boba Fett remember the first name I'm live on
 networks all of this makes me really tired I have to say like makes me want
 to play the great new Lucasfilm game 1313 starring Boba Fett nerdy inside
 Star Wars games are like okay you know I'm in this wrecked like deal cards
 that's what all that sounds like to me I hate to cut this short but we haven't
 taken any calls they were just asking about it in the chat and I was saying
 that we have so many latency issues with you we can try there and are there
 any topics we haven't covered that we need to cover no not really the last
 thing I had yeah the last thing on my list yeah is really lame it's Facebook
 but who cares yeah by the way Facebook stocks still not a good buy let's take
 one let's take let's take a call put it up I don't know like what should we do
 let's let's and what do we what do we tell what's the topic just wild card
 whatever you want to talk about ladies choice wild card whatever you want to
 talk about we'll take a couple of calls or something and then and then I think
 the people in the channel asked me to talk about gore here here's the
 gorycle update the judge ruled they Allison oh listen wait let me know
 before you talk about that so I just say something at Larry Ellison was on stage
 at d10 now I'm not a I was I actually thought Larry Ellison I think I've even
 talked about it on the verge cast that he I thought he seemed like a kind of a
 creep yeah he is so awesome because he is like Tony Stark I mean he talks like
 he talks like Robert Downey jr. like he's like just just like cracking jokes
 left right center and they're like pretty funny jokes now admittedly I mean
 from a business standpoint I'm sure he's horrible but um you know I'm sure he's a
 terrible man but as a as a as a as an interview yeah he is hilarious and I was
 not it was not aware and not prepared for that whatsoever and there are other
 people in the room like Dan Fromer was like just like he's amazing like
 everybody was like wow Larry Ellison is really funny so I was weird because you
 don't the guy who runs like the data you know whatever the database yeah come
 to see very fun no sorry I was I was flying back from I'm getting echo again
 hombres I can action style I was a flying back from LA for I was in LA for
 different reason and the person next to me was an analyst coming back from D and
 I looked at she was like taking notes and she had written Larry Ellison
 exclamation like three exclamation points and then wow what a firecracker
 and I was like oh man like yeah this is what analysts get paid to do like why
 don't I get paid to do that you can all you have to do is leave your job as a
 journalist I do yeah it's true I'm calling Gartenberg tonight Michael I need
 a job we've got an approved call here okay you're blinking it's the button on
 the right checkbox there's a checkbox you know there's two different rows
 there you can it's where's a blinking yeah okay all right are we on the air
 hello hello man you're on who's what's your name and what's your what's your
 top what's your sign Ross yeah Damon and I'm from Texas
 MoMont Texas hello are you are you on AT&T ah yes I am
 don't figure hold on yeah I could step outside we are stuck between two really
 bad connections right now take your time take your time away no problem hello
 I like this live get into a good look you can do a call guys yeah what up I
 want to talk about copyright okay what's your name first of all my name's Damon
 and I'm from Beaumont Texas okay I couldn't tell copyright go for it no
 running around on Josh's kind of point I mean he's kind of talking about well the
 industry changing and I kind of think he brought this up at one point how people
 need to kind of look at you know we're getting everything cheap or free you
 know I think in some ways we can have to change the way that we view media or you
 know are we can't consider everything free and so in some ways we have to
 change don't you know wait what what do you mean we consider everything free
 well not free I think that people now know we're so used to like free services
 or you know I mean social networking is free streaming it's free in many ways I
 mean wait how is how is streaming free you pay for Netflix you pay for spot I
 think he means I think he means like you're talking about like Hulu or
 YouTube or something where you have at but you actually pay for that stuff
 through advertising so that is not free stuff it's being paid for but we're
 wanting something very inexpensive you know and and I understand that but I
 think in some ways and some ways we're kind of looking at in a socialized way
 so we want we want everybody to be able to reach and have full access to
 everything and and we kind of don't want to have to pay for it you know but I
 think that we gotta stop Obama's what you're saying look look I hear I hear
 what you're saying there is any okay there is I think there's something we
 need to look at in terms of who we are as as the members of society and in I'm
 speaking as a member of the US Society that we may have to say to ourselves
 everything is not going to be cheap or free right you have to pay for things
 and we I think we all are paying for things I'll actually pay for a lot of
 things but you're right you know you may not be like we can't all drive the BMW
 right I think that's what you're getting at not everybody can drive the BMW
 you're not gonna always be able to watch every movie you want for free whenever
 you want it that's one way to look at it but there are a lot of people who don't
 think that things are supposed to be free who can buy the BMW and those
 people will spend money on things and so I think you can balance it you can have
 models that are ad supported models you can have you can have models that are
 you know pay as you go or or monthly payment models you can have models that
 are pay per piece of content and that can go in a wide range but you know if
 you if you're if your if your solution is stop thinking you can watch so much
 TV I don't think that's I don't think that's a real viable I don't think
 people are gonna that's not well first off there's too much I mean I think part
 of your what you're saying is people think they can have everything all the
 time for free but there's also like a lot of crap you know and our filtering
 system I don't think that in our I don't think you solve the problem of media by
 remove like reducing the amount of demand I don't think I don't think you
 say this business is out of control we have to figure out how to make money
 let's let's not figure out how to monetize all of this yawning demand for
 everything all the time and let's just tell people to want less like that's
 that's generally a bad like Ford isn't like oh my god everybody wants a Mustang
 we should tell them to not want our caller is desperately trying to talk
 that's what he said I mean they can walk I mean they want a Mustang I mean yeah
 they can pay for you know I mean but you don't lower the price of the Mustang so
 somebody can pay for it and then and upset the value of the Mustang you know
 you don't change the Mustang so everybody can actually let me raise a
 point here there is a time there is a time when most people couldn't buy a car
 and they actually did lower the price of the Mustang they made cars they learned
 to make cars in a more affordable way so more people can own them they learned to
 make houses in a more affordable way so more people could own them and in fact
 almost in every part of our culture they have figured out ways to make things for
 less money in fact if you wonder why your iPhone is made in China part of the
 reason is because they figured out there's a way they could make them
 cheaper in other places so more people could own them so so what you're
 actually describing is not is not accurate there's there are strata of of
 things right but but I'll tell you now there are probably more people with a
 car like per capita or you know I'll bet you there are more people with a car
 than there have ever been in the history you know if you look at the if you you
 know great on a curve here or whatever it is you do in math to make that make
 sense but Josh Dabowski does math on the verge cast what I'm saying is like
 actually this has happened everywhere they have found ways to make things
 cheaper so more people can have them and that's part of the problem now we're
 getting into like a scorched earth we need to have a nuclear nuclear
 conflagration why does this happen every time you and I talk about copyright
 have you noticed this hey caller we're gonna we're gonna let you go because we
 have I've got another blinking checkbox here but thank you for calling in I mean
 you're right you know everybody has to change at all times I'm pushing this
 button stop stop hi this is our next call what's your name and what's your
 wild card topic hello yes this is George hey George where are you at yes my topic
 was I heard you mentioned Facebook and how it went on IPO and I was wondering
 if you think that would hurt their image because basically a lot of the a lot of
 people have been burned by it I was wondering what do you think about that I
 don't I don't think the average person who uses Facebook cares about its share
 price yeah I mean who's been burned by it people who care about stocks it's a
 very small number compared like Facebook's actual populace yeah people
 who want to buy mustangs now have to buy three less I think I think I think
 Facebook's risk is not I mean there is it there is a a network effect or an
 echo effect of you know if people talk about it enough like hey what's what's
 going on with Facebook maybe something's wrong with their business but most people
 aren't thinking about Facebook's business I think what will hurt Facebook
 more is they have like an 80-minute outage the other day yeah and that is
 the kind of thing that would be detrimental to Facebook so you know I
 feel like the stock thing I think at the end of the day it's going to level out
 it's wherever it wherever it should be I don't think it's I don't think it was
 unnaturally inflated I don't think it was necessarily unnaturally deflated I
 think it's in flux right now because it's brand new and there are a lot of
 questions that have yet to be answered and I think at some point you know it's
 gonna flatten out and there won't be you know right now it's it's thought
 everybody's talking about everybody wants to talk about you know whether
 Zuckerberg can make it happen will Facebook be a tenable company are they
 gonna survive and that's what everybody talks about when there's a when there's
 a new right you know Ben Ben did a really interesting Ben Popper did a
 really interesting report today about how the world is moving to mobile and
 the ad dollars that have traditionally funded the internet and all these
 services aren't going aren't going to mobile in the same way haven't caught up
 like they're trying very very and that's Facebook's problem you know and that
 sucks because that is like it sucks for you know it sucks for Facebook because
 they got to figure out how to make money as people use the phone app it might
 suck for us because if the answer is more intrusive advertising on mobile
 that is the worst outcome I can possibly think of this actually kind of touches
 on this actually touches on the last caller a little bit but you're right
 that they need to get into a space where they're they can properly monetize
 mobile right because a lot more people are using mobile devices to view this
 content and right now they monetize through advertising right and and that's
 how we we monetize through advertising as well there's a big the big question
 right now is how and by the way they talk about talk about industries being
 disrupted the big question right now is how will average the advertising industry
 adapt to this new world I mean they haven't really adapted that well to the
 web and vice versa the web hasn't adapted that well to advertising the
 changing habits of TV viewers has been a real conundrum for the advertising
 industry how do you adapt to that they haven't figured that out yet and print
 obviously is the same but shrinking so you know it's a big challenge right now
 for people to under to for these guys are they have to figure out like how do
 we advertise and make it worthwhile for the consumer worthwhile for the for the
 property that we're advertising on and worthwhile for the for the advertiser
 and that's one that is they have yet to crack that nut fully so so you know
 Facebook Facebook is part of that you know we're part of that that's that's
 something that any ad supported model is part of and you know by the way we're
 all convinced that ad supported models are the only way to do it there may be
 other ways to do it that we haven't figured out yet if you want to get into
 go back to our disruption conversation you know and I don't think it's a pay
 wall either would you pay would you pay two dollars a month to use Facebook on
 mobile personally no I wouldn't pay to use Facebook but the question is for me
 also is like whether the whether the advertising model is actually gonna be
 effective because you know a lot of you know there's been a lot of news whether
 if it's really effective on a grand scale like that well I think I think so
 the bigger question is is advertising online as effective as advertising was
 on television because that's like or in print and that's the that's where we're
 coming from and I think the answer that we're discovering is that it isn't is
 that people are or more numb to it people are less interested in it they're
 not as much they're not as often forced to watch it or see it so that's a
 problem so and then incentive for the advertising to become kind of more
 insidious right I mean there's more advertorial online than there ever has
 been before there was the FTC but the FTC like a few years ago had like
 cracked down on like mommy bloggers like all these like moms because they didn't
 know that they weren't allowed to like take free junkets or they shouldn't be
 allowed to take free junkets and write about it in a way that affected the
 product there's all this stuff going on or I don't believe advertorial is a
 sustainable model I think advertorial is it as a desperation just a move of
 desperation on advertisers parts like I think that I think that it's a stopgap
 not desperation I just think it's a stopgap I don't think that's where we're
 going we're like hey I'm reading an article but it's not an article you know
 and also we're just talking about like in journalism but this goes across
 everything you know it's like TV and movies and and everywhere else and I
 think there's some really clever stuff going on in advertising right now like
 some of the product placement of 30 rock did and some of the movie placement
 stuff and and integrating in ways that are not deceptive but actually like
 quite clever I think is is really is getting good in some areas right all
 right call or anything else do you want to take another one Josh do you want to
 thanks man I think we should wrap up I think we I haven't eaten anything today
 and so okay if I don't eat soon I'm gonna die that's how we had all bird
 with me saying I'm stupid I don't take care of myself
 did you take another call just now I don't know what I did now there's a lock
 icon on the line is there someone listening in hello I've literally no
 idea are you listening Josh you want you want to take us oh Oracle then I just
 say what happened in Oracle real quick they're asking me um judge ruled API is
 not copyrightable unless the owner so Oracle lost basically at every level of
 this case oh well I'm sure they're going to appeal and the appeals court laughs
 something to say but the judge who is a programmer himself said a list of
 instructions is not copyrightable unless the steps that are taken after the
 instructions are issued are the same so I can say go break bake me a loaf of
 bread and you can tell Josh the same thing and it's not copyright infringement
 unless you carry out the same steps that's the Gora so so Google won this
 thing running away basically you're probably just excited about bread cuz
 you're hungry yeah you really had to use the food metaphor I have to say your
 analogy is was a huge mistake great metaphors and now anyway yeah so Google
 one one running away but it will I don't think Larry Allison's gonna not appeal
 so they asked they asked Kara asked him he was like well we won we had an
 injunction against whatever and then he was like he couldn't he couldn't really
 yeah anyway so all right when big win for Android that's the that I didn't put
 on the on the topic list cuz it's like they won it's great we all kind of knew
 that they would okay Josh you wanna take us out all right
 we done yeah yes yes well that's our verge cast for the week if you'd like to
 get in touch with us I really like smart me look I love the verge I don't mind
 telling you idiot no that is that is our verge cash that we can of course if you
 want to get in touch with us you can email us at verge cast at the verge calm
 you can leave a comment on the post when it goes up which we love and you can
 also find us on Twitter the verge is at verge
 Nellie is reckless Ross is Oh No Roscoe no e on the end and I'm Joshua Topolski
 and yeah we'll be back next week are we gonna be in person I believe so I don't
 know where you go what would the date well I I'll have may or may not be three
 maybe I should just I'll do it at e3 I don't know I can't think about this I'm
 so hungry I my brain can't process this anyhow we'll be back in some capacity
 next week I'm probably at our regular time maybe Thursday hopefully Thursday
 Thursday yeah and and until then I wish you and yours the very best for the
 coming days and weeks ahead
 you