 Hello. That was good. Welcome to the Vergecast. Six out of ten. Six. It's a six. The six. Your intro is a six. I'm Neelay Patel. This is the Vergecast. I'm in Neelay Patel's seat. Yeah, you are also Neelay Patel. Who are you? I'm TC Sotic. Former... Get out. Get out. This is a Neelay Patel only room, sir. Yes. Well, this is Ross Miller. I am Ross Miller. That's TC Sotic. I did think your name was pronounced Sotac for about six months. Yeah, people have been calling me that. You were hired because it was Sotac. Yeah, that's why we hired you. I hired him. As you may have noticed, Josh Topolsky is not here. I don't know what he's doing. I think he's road tripping or just tripping or robo tripping. Adderall tripping. Actually, it's not so far off. No, Josh is out. He's taking some much deserved time to go party or relax or sleep party, whatever he does. We're doing the Vergecast. Got Ross, got TC. It's going to be awesome. Ross is filling in my role, so you have to be super annoying. I won't pay attention to you. Patton's, Patton's, Patton's, law and legal system, net neutrality. Let's take some calls. That was the Vergecast. All right. Thank you, everybody. We were the best one ever. If you don't know, this is the Vergecast. I'm trying to remember all the stuff Josh does because I usually am not paying attention to this part. I've heard it for like five years. Just start beefing. If you don't know, this is the Vergecast. We're going to discuss the week in technology news and culture news, apparently in financial news this week according to Ross's chart of stories. I'm sorry. We have nothing but earnings on this topic list. TC is drinking at noon. It's my day off, man. That's true. Technically. If you guys don't know, TC runs the site on the weekends for us, so Friday is technically his day off. He was here yesterday to hang out and do 90 seconds and come on the Verge. Yeah, it was fun. We're making him work. In retaliation, he's getting hammered. That's right. Get ready. I'm not so opposed to a noon beer on a Friday myself. Is Michael Shane here? Michael Shane is not here. Without Josh, there is no Michael. If you guys don't know, Neelai has literally an army of interns that their only job is to get him in Maker's Mark. Yeah. Actually, I wasn't allowed. This is a ridiculous story. Anyway, let's talk about tech news. Let's talk about tech news. There are so many tangential stories I could tell about Maker's Mark, referring to things as a six. To do that would be Vergecast Classic. It would, but let's try. Let's start with Google Fiber. Google Fiber. Google Fiber. Go. Begin. We're off to a great start. The person in this chair- This is what you actually do is talk about this because I've been in this seat my whole time. Yeah. No, this is how it works. I just don't do anything. This seat says the story. It's a seat of power. The Neelai seat says the story. The Josh seat reacts to the story. The Ross slash Paul seat reacts to the story. I do come in and come in the middle of the seat. Yeah, you tell them jokes. Yeah. Or Paul just talks about Christian Scott. I think we might have to switch seats. I'm like Dennis. No, no, no. This is you, Ross. Go. Actually, I actually want TC to do this because he did it yesterday at 90 seconds. You summed up Google Fiber really quickly. So let's break it down. What is it? Anarchy? Go ahead. I'm changing the rules, man. Fine, man. The long and short of it is that Google just made every ISP in the country look like they're not doing their job. Is that their goal? So here's what I... We actually asked this. So Dieter Bohn went to Kansas City. They launched Google Fiber in Kansas City, both Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri. In a touching gesture, they had both mayors on stage, which I thought was the best part of the entire- And only one has good penmanship. The other one is just really weird chalk. The mayor of the town next to it, Branson, Kansas, that city in Kansas. Branson, Kansas. He just stayed at home and cried. He was sad. And the new mayor, Eric Schmidt. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Also, the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri was murdered in replace of Eric Schmidt. Kansas City, my free mayor. So Dieter went, and before he went, like we do, he's like, I'm going to cover the store. Are there any outstanding questions I should think of? My biggest question was, what is Google's plan? Is there a plan just to make Comcast feel bad about itself? And it seems like that's the plan, actually. Because the internet service is 1,000 up, 1,000 down, which is bonkers. It's pretty cheap. It's like 70 bucks a month. You've got to pay, what, $300 to get it installed. Which is waived if you get a two-year commitment. Oh, it is? Yeah. Yeah. So they've learned- It's pretty much nothing. Right. Because nobody's going to be like, I only want a year of super fast internet. I want to pay more for 20 times slower internet from Time Warner. But at the same time, too, if you just get the installation just done, it's free internet. It's five down, one up. Not great, but it's free. Right. And then the way they're building it is they're doing these rallies. And I think the rallies- The fiber hoods. The fiber hoods. I mean, that sounds to me like Google also wants to see what it's like when a city tries to tear itself apart. So the way it works is they've plotted out these different neighborhoods. They can put the fiber in. Are they? They can rally your neighborhood so everybody signs up. And if you have the most signups, you get it first. Question, is it possible to have fiber hood gerrymandering? I would hold my neighbors at gunpoint to make them sign up for this. If I was in Kansas City, I would literally be crawling, like walking the streets at night with a gun. Well, to be fair, $1,000 out of your pocket is 100 neighbors. Not a gun. Well, I'm not a good shot. So I wouldn't... I mean, I enjoy firing a gun, but I'm terrible at it. So maybe I would just have a really loud horn. Look, so that's how we're building it out. That's an interesting strategy. I mean, it's probably a good one considering the fact that Time Warner and Comcast, AT&T, all the major ISPs in the country pretty much dominate all the local chambers of commerce and politics and everything. So TC and I, if you don't know this, every day TC and I have a little conversation about how telecom companies have taken over all of American politics. And it's our goal to expose it. Yeah, I was just looking today, AT&T is like... As we were talking before the show, could someone like Apple buy AT&T with all their cash on hand? Because Apple has, what, 100 billion plus? Yeah. Well, AT&T makes more than that every year in revenue. So they'd be at least, what, 500 billion to buy out? Yeah. Sure. They're like, $1 trillion in assets. You just must buy it by five. I mean, that's the standard financial method. Everyone does that. No one can... Unless an oil company wants to buy a telecom. Apple should buy an oil company. Let's go back to... Wouldn't that be like Exxon sponsored by Apple and it would just like the ads would just be like a white background with like gushing oil? It's a white, black silhouette. It's beautiful. To your point, Time Warner Cable... Pollutionary. Never mind. I quit. This is the pollutionist Exxon yet. Goodbye. Go ahead. So actually, to your point, Time Warner Cable, this is an interesting story, not this week, but last week, maybe two weeks ago, Time Warner Cable was actually paying Kansas City employees to snoop on Google. They were feeling the burn. Did you see this? No. That's bonkers. I was looking up for a research the other day. Yeah. It's like this poster that says, AT&T employees share tips, rumors, and rumblings about Google construction for $50 gift cards. That's amazing. Clearly, they're feeling the burn. I love it. And the best part is that the Time Warner Cable logo is basically a giant eye of Sauron. It's looking over everything. So that's the broadband. Well, here's the thing that I think is interesting. That's the broadband piece of it. And that's awesome. And then there's this cable TV piece, which to me is super boring. And it's like, okay, you've given people really fast broadband. And the way they're going to distribute it in the home, if you get TV, is really interesting. Most people's routers can't handle 1,000 up, 1,000 down. There's a router called the network box, and it has Wi-Fi. It has ethernet jacks. It's super ugly because all cable boxes by requirement. That's not the cable box, right? It is and it isn't. Let me get through this. So there's the network box, which has that stuff. Then there are little boxes that you put at each of your televisions that turn your TVs that are themselves Wi-Fi access points, which is like, that's such a Google problem to have. Like, oh my God, my giant billionaire's mansion needs more Wi-Fi access points. But anyway, so that's a cool idea. They all interlink to the network box, which when you buy the TV service, can serve as a DVR, can record up to eight shows at once, and store them on a two terabyte storage box, which is separate. That all is a little clunky, but I get it because they're selling both TV and internet, so you have to split up the devices. But it's like the internet stuff is, and you get a terabyte of Google Drive, which at 1,000 down is kind of like local storage, which is cool. But it's like the internet stuff is so interesting, just because of how fast it is. And then the TV stuff is so boring, except for you get eight channels, a slightly better interface or eight tuners, a slightly better interface, and they're giving you a Nexus 7 user as a remote. But the pricing for the TV and the bundles and all that stuff is cable TV, and they don't have Disney shows. They don't have Time Warner shows, I don't think. They did get Viacom to sign up, which was pretty hilarious. I thought it was pretty awesome. Because they are constantly in lawsuits against Viacom. So they don't have CNN, they don't have the Disney channel. They don't have ESPN, which is the worst one. Yeah. AMC's also. Well, no, it's great. Kansas City, you should watch SB Nation on YouTube, a Google service. I'm just pimping for our company. Live TV, yeah. Anyway. I'm doing what I can. Good job, it's good. I get a bonus now. Do you? Yeah, I think. Can I get a bonus? 10 shillings. Jim, can I call? Anyway, continue. Yeah, but also AMC is also not a part of this. So again, no one gets a Breaking Bad in Kansas City. Yeah, you can get that on Netflix, whatever. It's fine. Thousand down. Stream it. Stream all the episodes. Didn't you watch all Breaking Bad? Would that just be too horrible to watch all the episodes of Breaking Bad? I watched. That's the only way I watch TV. Yeah, I'll say. Is to watch everything in a binge in a weekend. I think I did 10 episodes. No, I do that. But that's linear. I'm saying you get eight TVs and you watch eight episodes of Breaking Bad at once. I might want to kill myself after that. And I love Breaking Bad. But I get so depressed after watching just one episode. Yeah. To watch eight at the same time. And I really think like the writers of that show sit around me like that character. People like him. Let's kill him. Killing would be easy. Let's. I also feel that way about Game of Thrones. I feel like and I'm not to spoil anything about Game of Thrones. I've never seen one episode of Game of Thrones. But Game of Thrones is literally there is never any payoff in that show. It's like they build and they build and they build. They're like they build this fantastic machine. There is nothing. And finally at the moment when they're going to switch on the machine, you're like finally months of setup for this machine. Oh, and we killed the guy. And it happens over and over and over again. But there's a lot of sex and weird monologues during sex, between sex, after sex. Yeah. It's my kind of weird. Finally. And then they kill the guy. Okay. So, I mean, that's Google Fiber. Anything else we need to know about Google Fiber? I mean, I think I feel like the with the channel issue, Google might have more leverage if they expand beyond Kansas City. But that's how do they do it? I think that's the real question. And I'm kind of not answering that question. Well, it seems like they're building a citizen army to demand Google Fiber in their neighborhoods. But at the same time, it's a very long term thing for them because they can't be making that much money off of this. And they're dipping their toes in some industries that they're having to learn. Like are they really going to become a cable company in the long term or are they just kind of dicking around? Well, right. And then there's also not the... I can turn anything into a neutrality conversation. But like... There we go. But no, I mean, they are doing this weird thing where they're a content provider, they're a technology company, now they own the pipe. And they're promising no overages, no caps. I mean, again, it's like are you... This only works if Google shows up in every city in America, which is prohibitively expensive even for Google. Right. And they say... And basically, they make Comcast feel bad about itself and Time Warner feel bad about itself for not providing comparable service. And it's like, you know who was never able to do that? Verizon. Verizon offered five years ago, Fios, which hasn't been developed. But that's what Fios is. It always has been faster than cable internet with much fewer restrictions. Some exceptions like my apartment. Do you have Fios and it's slow? I have Fios. I think I literally have the only building in Baltimore that has Fios. And it sucks? Yeah. Why does it... Because they run it through... It's not fiber, the last mile, I don't think. They run it through a third party. And I found out the hard way after they installed... So it's actually like a DSL line? Yeah. They just ran Fios. Oh, that sucks. That's awful. I'm sorry for you, man. Just keep drinking. I'm going to. Well, I mean, I just feel like what... Does Google want to build internet everywhere? Are they going to go after... Are they going to have a next city? Are they going to... Is this the same... Are they going to succumb to the same temptation as every other provider and prioritize Google Play? I mean, there's a lot of stuff you can do. At the moment, what's weird is that they're not integrating anything. So Google Play isn't integrated into the TV offerings and the on-demand offerings. Google TV isn't the TV, which is the most insane thing. It's another platform to go with TV and Q and Chromebox. They own Motorola, but as far as I know, Motorola didn't make the cable boxes. Nope. I mean, there's just like... You have to imagine at Google, people just walk around. They're like, you know what I want to do is build fiber in Kansas City. And someone's like, you do that. Don't talk to anybody else about it though. Just keep it a secret. Remember when we spent billions trying to get that spectrum? Okay, man, let's get cables now. Wow, F-bomb. We're not allowed to go in here? I don't know. You're literally our boss. You just tell us whether. If you don't know... I usually sit in that chair. That's the Freedom Chair. F for Freedom. Yes. The Freedom Chair. Freedom. Actually, I think your chair is the Freedom Chair. Yeah. I mean, the Paul Miller chair is literally like, I don't know what's going on. But Paul Miller is too polite to drop that bomb. That's why he gets the Freedom Chair. With great power, he's seen. He gets freedom bombs. What the freedom? Anything else with Google Fiber? Anything we're missing? Is the chatroom exploding with stuff that we've left out? I'm super interested in it and I hope Google brings it across the country because... I mean, but also it could be just like Google saying like, okay, these speeds are possible. Why isn't this public? Are they going to... I think the big question is, is Google making money on this? I don't think they can be. I don't know if they need to. This might be a strategy that has nothing to do with actually providing... They just want to completely... Well, if they want net neutrality. If you look back at all the lobbying money that AT&T and the other big telecoms have put into Washington, it's billions of dollars over that. Google might figure, well, let's build our own network and then we don't have to lobby to get these guys to manage their own networks the way we want to. What's funny is they should just buy Sprint. Can you imagine if they just bought Sprint and they were like, we're running our own carrier? I mean, at this point, why not? I'm okay with that if they keep Dan Hesse because he's just a handsome guy. Wouldn't it be crazy if Google bought Motorola and then they bought Sprint and then they just created their own and then they completely sealed off Kansas City and I was just like, you could enter the Google dome and everything is perfect, but everything you did would be tracked. It would be like that big glass dome in Battlefield Earth. Yeah. That'd be great. It'd be like the ultimate in fascist states, I suppose. It's funny because Google has its hands everywhere and it does have a TV station now and it has Google TV and it has Chromebox and it has Q. Wait, what's its TV station? I don't know if it's fiber TV or whatever it is. Oh, I thought they owned a local TV station in Kansas City too. I would not be surprised. It's like all these groups are not working together. There's no unification. Do you think Marissa Meyer quit because they were going to make her do the weather? That would be amazing if Sergey and Larry were like the anchors. He's like, today's top story, I'm still wearing weird shoes. Take it away. I'm coming to you live from my Google last handset. I am looking at Marissa Meyer. Eyes up. Yes, we're doing this right. Wow. Wow. Got weird again. Go ahead, TC. Say something smart about policy. Larry Page would do that or no, Sergey Brin would do that just for the opportunity to jump out of the blue. Is this what it's like to have Creighton tell you that you... Let's move on. Creighton's doing this to me. If I was really Josh, I would just ignore you. I just want you to know. I wouldn't wrap this up. I'd be like, let's take some calls. All right, let's move on. Let's take some calls. You want to take calls? Are we taking calls? About what? If you want to be verbally harassed. Is there anybody in Kansas City? I will take a call from somebody who is actually in Kansas City. If those persons... If such persons are available. Hi, Kansas City. You're on the bone zone. All right. Let's move on while we wait for calls to come in. Let's talk about OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion because that's not confusing to say. Those names are not getting unwieldy at all. It came out this week. I did a review. What's actually interesting about our review is we were given a review unit, Retina Display MacBook Pro from Apple with Mountain Lion on it that had some features, one specific feature that isn't on the release, which is Facebook integration. We wrote about it. Then people are like, you are lying. This isn't completely... We have pictures of the Facebook book on there. I'm getting angry emails from people who are like, you're lying. Apple lied. They pulled it at the last minute. They hate Facebook. I'm like, just read the review. It's coming out. The Facebook stuff is coming out with iOS 6. I thought you had the same build as everyone else. I remember Tom was trying to check. No. I have the one I bought. Okay. I have Mountain Lion on my regular work computer. Then I have a review unit, which I have to send back. The review unit has Facebook stuff in it. Okay. That's great. We played with it. Josh and I both made accounts and imported our Facebook. The Facebook stuff is awful. Flat out, it's not ready yet. I hope that in these next few months they fix it because it doesn't respect anything about Facebook. It treats Facebook as a vast database of contacts that you want with you all the time. For me, Facebook is not that thing. Facebook is a collection of relationships that I've allowed to deteriorate over the years. Now I just stock people from afar. That's I believe what Facebook is meant to be. I'm not 100% sure. No, it isn't. No, Facebook is fundamentally a system for voyeuristic college kids that want to spy on each other. Yes. I actually remember a point when I left school and my social circle all grew up and got jobs. One of my friends remarked to me that Facebook had gotten incredibly boring because no one went on spring break anymore. So anyway, I hope... We don't need to talk about it at length, but it dumps everything into your contacts with no regard for who's on your family list or whatever. You mean they didn't learn from Palm with Synergy? They did not learn from Palm with Synergy, which is funny because we complained about that at length. Past is prologue. It's awful. It's really terrible. It dumps everybody's birthday into your calendar. So Josh is like... Josh just friends everybody on Facebook because he just friends everybody. You can be Josh's Facebook friend. It's really weird too because- He has 2,900 Facebook friends and they're all on his birthday calendar. So you can just turn it off. I mean it's fine. You can just turn it off. It all goes away. It doesn't ruin anything. It's not permanent, but it's a little bit broken. They have months to go. The rest of it though I think is great. What I was saying to Paul yesterday on The Verge was it feels like Apple did this thing where in 2006 they said that the Mac is the digital hub. It's the center of your world. Everything feeds into the Mac and everything comes back out. I think that's a lot of pressure on the OS X team. It's got to actually be that thing. Then when they introduced iCloud they said, we're demoting the Mac and the PC to just another client of the Cloud. Maybe that's true and maybe that's working. But it feels like the OS X team had that pressure removed to be the hub and they could focus on making it work better with the Internet. So you get share buttons everywhere. There's all this iCloud integration everywhere. iCloud to me still feels really unfocused. It hasn't kind of decided what it wants to be when it grows up and there's no place to go. I think that's the main thing about iCloud that is confusing to people. You're like, I have this product with iCloud. What do I do? I'm like, don't worry, it just makes everything better. It saves files. Where? In the Cloud. In your hard drive. I think Apple needs to build a central window. Just to let you know what it's doing. Here's iCloud. Open it up and here it is. Photo stream, for example. There's really no way to manage photo stream. I had to delete. I had to go into the iCloud settings on the web the other day and completely zero out my photo stream because all my machines are out of sync. So I delete an image from one machine and put it to sleep and then open it again. That sync hadn't hit my other computer, so it would sync the image back. It was a really embarrassing image, too. I was drunk. So it's like... It was like most of my images. It's like every image you have. Drunk. Drunk. Whispering drunk. Quiet noises. I'm sober. I'm not a whisper drunk. I have a friend who is a really whispery... He's like, I have a secret. And I'm like, it's a secret that you've been drinking for eight hours. Yes, it is. Now, you know for a fact I am a very loud, obnoxious drunk. You're drunk right now. I'm too quiet to be drunk. How's it going over there, TC? Speaking of... I don't know, man. This isn't Makers. It's not doing it for me. All right. So let's get back on track. So the iCloud stuff is great. I think they need to build it out. The messages, iMessages, another big feature. It works really well if you live in a completely contained world of iMessage, which you can not do right now. Because if you have an iPhone, for example, your iMessage is tied to your phone number, and on the computer it's tied to your email address, and those things are not compatible. Again, iOS 6, it's coming out. They're going to unify the accounts. So then it's possible you could live in a completely unified iMessage world. And I think that could be really cool. Right now it's a little disjointed, but I tend to use ADM anyway for the other services. So if Messages kind of just figures it out with iMessage, that would be awesome. That would be great. I think, for example, right now I'm using ADM or Addy. I'm not sure which way it is. I use it for Google Talk, and now I'm carrying an Android phone. It does sync everything up. It's sent and received. And I love that. I actually love that with my Android phone now is that I can actually take a chat and just take it with me on the go. Thus not needing text messages, not worry about that. Can I just say this is one of the features I liked about Palm WebOS when it was in its prime? I'm never going to stop talking about Palm. Did it ever have a prime? Welcome to the Vergecast. You're going to fit right in here. Did WebOS ever have a prime? A prime? Like in its prime? Was there ever a period that you could refer to as WebOS's prime? At the CES Kino when it was introduced. Yeah, like June 2008. Such a good day. Not June 2008. It was like January 2009. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it says Mountain Lion, but it's $20. And you get, you know, it's I hated Lion. Hated it. Couldn't stand it. Why did you hate Lion? It was a piece of junk. What else is there? It was slow. Okay, the thing about... Mountain Lion was like, you know what's better than using a computer? Just waving your hand rationally over a trackpad. I don't even know if, what am I running on this? I don't even know. So the thing about these is like they're very... That's got to be Lion. Isn't that new? I think it's new. Yeah. It's yeah, Mountain Lion. Yeah. You don't even know. Or Lion. Dude, I don't know Mountain Lion. I'm drunk. Yeah. Dude, I have a secret. I upgraded to Mountain Lion. Why are you quiet Batman? Where's Haku? I'm drunk. Did you upgrade? I upgraded, yes. I mean, you know what? It didn't break any workflows. It has enough little things. It's fine. If you have a Mac, you should upgrade. But what I think is interesting is that we're at this point where I think Snow Leopard was the pinnacle of the desktop operating system. Apple runs a little bit faster. They're doing yearly now. And Microsoft is on this three-year cycle. So what we're seeing now with I think Windows 8 is Microsoft is saying, okay, we hit the peak of what you could do with the desktop. Let's just throw that away. And here's a bunch of squares. And that'll be our tablet. Terrifying. And on the PC, you can do both. And I think that's really interesting. I think that's Microsoft saying, here's our vision of the future. I think Apple's vision of the future is very much like, how do we make this, if we're going to call this just a client of the cloud, how do we make it the best client of the cloud for its form factor? And what I think is even more interesting is that they're really not going to put touch screens and laptops for the foreseeable future as far as I can tell. Because they talk trash about it all the time. They say the trackpad is the best touch input device for this form factor. Right, because you don't want to be typing and then like, switch your hand up. Maybe you do. I don't think you do. Or doesn't mean you want to. Until it does. Microsoft's saying that's a great idea, right? Of course. But Apple, the most interesting thing to me about Mountain Lion is it feels most at home on a MacBook Air. In particular, not even the 13 inch, on an 11 inch. Because you have a lot of full screen apps, you're doing all the swiping, there's notification center. It's designed to basically feel like an iPad Pro. Yeah, I mean, we keep talking about the iOSification, or however you want to say it, of OS X. Or if you want to go back to your earlier analogy, iCloud is a new platform, iOS, OS X are maybe just portals into that. And the one thing about Mountain Lion that they're doing is they're now sandboxing apps. They're asking you to sandbox apps. Put it in the Mac App Store, we'll get you some. Yeah, they're turning PCs into basically just like, really fancy smartphones. Which is good and bad. But it's funny because they're turning, I think these, 70% of their sales for laptops. And I think they're optimizing OS X. They're optimizing OS X for laptops. Like if you want to see the dumbest thing in the world, open text edit, full screen app mode on a 27 inch iMac. With two monitors, which I have at home, two monitors. And it's like a giant text editing window. No menu bar, and then linen on the other display. It's like, this button makes my computer more useless than if I just turned it off. You literally cannot do anything with it. It's just on. It's just humming at you, creating heat. Right, I mean, even their hardware designs on desktop are all based on laptop design. It's a trackpad. No, there is no mouse. They're shipping the mouse. I keep asking when they're going to swap out the magic trackpad to be the default on the iMac. And they're always like, well, I mean, it's coming. It has to come. It's happening. Maybe the next round of iMacs. But I think that's what, that is the interesting thing about Mountain Lion. Like, in terms of like, should you buy it? You should buy it. It's a good operating system. I hated Lion. I love Snow Leopard. I really like Mountain Lion. I think most people that I've talked to have upgraded. TC didn't even know what he was running. It's just like a ninja update. But I mean, he must have been a PC guy. These are also iterative updates. They're evolutionary. They're not revolutionary. We're still using basically the same formula. But I think this one is, it's Apple's, so that's the thing. It's Apple take these one year little steps. Right. Right. And they're headed down this path to making their PCs more like friendly embedded devices. And I think the PCs are going to get smaller. I think, I think this 13 inch MacBook Air is like, this is their consumer device. If you're buying a PC from Mac, they expect you to buy this one. Yes. I think they expect a lot of people to buy that 11 inch one. I don't think they expect a lot of people to buy the iMac. I just don't. I mean, the operating system isn't kind of built for it. Like it works really well, but it also feels like snow leopard in a way. Because you're not, you can't use all of these interface features and stuff with it. Microsoft, you know, they're taking bigger jumps every time. And I, you know, actually Mary Jo Foley said to us on the show and on the verge last night that she thinks Microsoft will start speeding up to be more iterative. So Microsoft has to take bigger jumps to make them more noticeable. But this is like the moment, right? When the age of the classic desktop operating system is like over and it's over because Apple has taken one more little step in that direction. Microsoft's about to take a huge step in that direction. And that's, that to me is what's interesting, not a $20 service pack to Lion. Right. But I mean, it's also things like we have all these phones and tablets that we use almost as work devices. There's certainly what we use more than laptops now. I fire somebody from my phone every day. That's my only job. We have a special verge app for firing. That would be amazing. Available now on the app store. With the new update, you can actually fire multiple people at the same time. Group firing. Threatened firing. Oh my God. Is this somebody from Kansas City? Oh, nice. Yes, we have a caller from Kansas City. How do I do this? I just push this button? Oh, and while we're doing that, we actually, I got someone told me on Twitter, Luke Chambers, who does a bunch of our verge gifts for fun. He was telling me that Google does, Google has said they're going to make profit off the fiber network and TV. Profit. Profit. You know what it is, if they're going to layer pages, they're going to move to Kansas City and pay more than everybody else. So I just push this button to the left? And then how do I, really crucial, how do I hang up on this person if they turn out to be a maniac? There's a button that says drop in the same column. There's a button marked drop? Drop. Okay, here we go. The squirrel looks fun. Kansas City, you're on the line. Yeah. Hi. This is Spencer from Kansas City, Missouri. Oh, is that, so is there, let's clear something up. Which one is better? I'd say the Missouri sign. Why is that? Can you, I mean, this is very confusing to me. Can you explain to me the difference? I actually don't ever go to the Kansas side a whole lot. I don't really know. Is that the other side of the tracks? Are Kansas City, Missouri people allowed to even talk to Kansas City, Kansas people? Is there like a rivalry? Is this a Cobras and Panthers thing? Not that I know of. I mean, I haven't been in Kansas City for too long. I just started going to school here actually. I got you. Yeah. Would you say your side, the Missouri side has the good reputation or the bad reputation? The Missouri side has a good reputation. Oh, okay. All right, goody two shoes. Talk to us. What? Nothing. Tell me about Google Fiber. What are your thoughts? Are you signed up? Did you pre-register? Yeah, I pre-registered. I signed up. Yeah, I pre-registered. My apartment actually didn't show up whenever I went on because I live in an apartment and didn't show up. So I had to like make up some apartment number if you could. Well, you're fading out. We lost you. Do you have AT&T by chance? I'm fading out. Yeah, I'm on AT&T. I am, yeah. They all do. Yeah. Okay, so you registered a fake apartment number. What happened? Kind of. It worked. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen whenever they actually come to install it. So we'll see how that happens. Are you going to go door to door asking all your friends and neighbors to sign up for your Fiberhood? I'd like to. We're getting close to reaching the goal already. Oh, really? Just like organically? What you really need to do is incorporate a small business and resell Google Fiber to all your apartment neighbors. That's what Steve Wozniak would do. Yeah. Yeah. I thought about that actually. You would. I'm not even... I'm dead serious. That's what Steve Wozniak would do. Just organically, you're reaching your neighborhood's goal. Are people talking about it? What's the vibe on the street? Is that what they say? Yeah. Well, pretty much everybody's been talking about it for a long time, waiting for it to come and now it's finally actually starting to come. People are pretty excited about it. Has anyone actually been worried about this giant company coming in and trying to add wires and everything everywhere? Is there any concern over big corporation talking to medium to little sized city and all that? Not that I've heard mostly just good things at all. I've heard at my school, we have pretty terrible internet there. They have a thing where if there's a school or something nearby, if they get enough people to pre-register, then that school will get it for free, Google Fire for free. I'm hoping my school gets that too. That's awesome. That's the sort of thing. But that's... I think what Ross is asking, I'm curious if you've noticed this at all. Is there any worried the government is too cozy? The government of Kansas City is too cozy with Google? That's what TC and I always worry about is like, the government's too cozy with AT&T. It does keep you up at night. Panicked 5 a.m. phone calls from TC saying AT&T is coming for the government. It's weird. I'm like TC, don't go back to sleep. They already came. They already won. Is there any concern that Google's having too much of an influence in Kansas City? No, not that I've heard. I've just heard lots of mostly positive things and everybody supports it. Let me ask you, what kind of internet do you have now? I have a time Warner. What are your speeds? I have 20 megabits per second. Up and down? Not up. I think just down, not up, no. Do you actually get that? Do I actually get that sometimes? Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. If Google actually delivers a thousand... What's funny is that Google has so much more headroom. If they promise you a thousand and deliver you 700, no one's going to complain. Well, that's really interesting. You're cool with... Are you going to $300 two-year fee? You're cool with all that stuff or two-year contract? Well, yeah, I'm going to do a two-year contract. I'll probably just get the internet, not the TV service. I don't really care about that a whole lot. Yeah, so are you going to... Do you have TV right now? Are you going to keep Time Warner for TV? No. No, you're not. You're just going to... I don't even have cable. I just stream everything. You're just going to BitTorrent everything so fast? Okay, so last question before we let you go. Are you hearing that from a lot of people that they're going to do internet only or most people getting both? Do you know? I haven't heard much. I mean, I haven't talked to anybody since they've announced the plans really about it. So I mean, I would assume most people would just do the internet. I mean, most of my friends don't really want to hold onto TV. They just stream stuff. What an odd distinction. It's almost like it's arbitrary. You're not Kim Dotcom, right? Calling us from Kansas City. Oh, God, that'd be so awesome if Kim Dotcom had a mansion in Kansas City with Google Fiber. He's like, we're trying to say he is seeking asylum in Kansas City right now. He's like, this is the new home of Mega Upload. I'm getting a standard Google Fiber connection thrown down. Okay, man. Well, it was really good to have you call in. I don't know how Josh ends these usually, so I'm just going to hang up on you. Good luck deceiving Google with your address, even though they know literally everything about you. Good luck getting Google Fiber. So you're saying your house isn't on Google Maps? Well, it shows up. I can search for it on Google Maps and it shows up on there. But then whenever I try to do it on there... Oh, they just hung up on me. Caller, we're sorry. What did you think the drop button did? I don't know. It's not base. I'm sorry. I guess I was hoping it would drop a piece. Caller, we love you. I'm sorry. Spencer, I'm really sorry. Womp, womp. Google finds... Can do this for me because I just killed Spencer. Google find his home, which I'm sure you already... What was his address? I don't remember what his address was. I don't think we want to be telling this address on the broadcast. Wait, so are they not doing apartments? I don't know. But if his house is on Google Maps, but this is like another total... They built this in isolation, like in a bunker somewhere at Google. They're like, here it is. We didn't use any of our other products. I mean, quite frankly, it's not just like Android is frightening. I'm so sorry that I hung up on you. You can come back and say a whole bunch of other words if you want. We just won't be on the air when you do it. Google itself is a fragmented company. There's no part of it that seems to be talking to one another. And the other thing I was thinking about too, because Google's good about like, oh, we do a bunch of projects, we get bored with them, spring cleaning, it's gone. Dude, if they shut down Google Fiber in Kansas City, it's like... 10 years from now, it's spring cleaning. Guys, we're bored. Sorry. We got a year. Eric calls the mayor. He's like, have you ever heard of Google Wave? Because you're about to know the pain. He's calling both mayors at once. Okay. Because he doesn't know how to do a conference call. No Google Hangout. Can you guys hear each other through my brain? That'd be such an Eric Schmidt thing to do. I don't know why it would be an Eric Schmidt thing to do, but I just think he's trying to do some conference call with Google Glass, jumping out of a blimp or something. Guys. And then the next day they would do it again. Yeah. Guys, it's Eric on 5 Miles Out. What's our next topic? Up. Yeah. These crazy Apple. Next topic, speaking of Apple, was a transition I was going to give 10 minutes ago. We had Spencer. I know, Spencer. I'm happy for it. Sorry. It's all about Apple versus Samsung for the rest of the podcast. Is it really? It is. You know, we've named it. It's called Snapple. Snapple. Are you serious? That's unacceptable. Yeah, because we had Oracle. Well, it was going to... This is such a stupid story. Can we be clear that... So we had Oracle. This is a stupid story. Let's go through it. Well, we had... You need to know because we're going to... So we had Oracle. Yes. Which was great. Google plus Oracle. And then Brian Bishop spent a month and a half at the Oracle trial, and he's going to spend another month and a half at the Samsung trial. So we're preparing for it, we're having all these meetings. And Matt McCary, who's our other legal correspondent, said, we need a name like Oracle so we can file this stuff. And his first idea was Sam Supple. And that actually was... It lasted for like two days. It was really weird. And finally Brian was like, let's Snapple. But AppSung. Yeah, I was like... AppSung is good. It's a police-icle. Where does the N come from in Snapple? I don't know. I don't know. Snapple is good though. I like Snapple. It's catchy. And it's delicious. In case anybody would like to bring me a Snapple. Mac and Sung. So out of... What? This man is drunk. He's hosted the podcast. I love my vodkastables. Okay. Yes. So there was two things that came out of it. One fun, one more interesting. I like this. I like being the one who gets bored by the legal story. Oh, that's great. I don't want Josh to have such a look of glee. Let's talk about the fun part first, which is a bunch of iPad and iPhone prototypes. Yes. We had iPads with kickstands. Can I stop you and tell the people where they came from? Yes, please. Legal this. Okay. So before they go to trial, both sides file their trial briefs, which is like an outline of their arguments. They basically tell the judge what they're going to do. Here's our trial brief. So when you're ruling on stuff, you can say what's going on. Most of those briefs were completely sealed, full of secret information, all redacted and blacked out. At some point, the judge decided to unredact them. And at three o'clock in the morning yesterday, piles of PDFs hit the court's filing system. Do we know what was coming yesterday at 3 AM? Were we aware ahead of time or is it just kind of- It just happened. Okay. And so people have been going through them like crazy and there's so much stuff in them. And there's all these pictures of old iPhone and iPad prototypes. So let me ask this. Did Samsung say, we want to see Apple's old prototypes to use them against them? Like how does that work? Oh yeah. So the way this works is both early in the process, before the trial, they do what's called discovery. And discovery is usually where you settle a case because both sides ask each other for information. It costs a lot of money. It takes forever. And somewhere in there you say, this is just not worth it. Let's settle. Which is what Apple and Samsung should have done. And it's insane to me that there's going to be a trial one day. We're seeing this because it went past discovery. It went past discovery. And so Samsung sent Apple a letter saying, we want all relevant information regarding the development of the iPhone. You have to have, you can't be overbroad. You can't just say, give us all your emails. So they can literally send them search terms. They can send them all kinds of very specific requests. Apple does the same to Samsung. We want all of your marketing information for the Galaxy S, whatever it is. And they trade them back and forth and then they construct, the other sides get to construct arguments with it. So we're looking at, the Apple stuff that we're looking at is Samsung has carefully selected out of all the discovery they received, they've selected the things that make their case look the best. And so what they're showing, and Samsung's big argument is in 2006 when Apple was developing the iPhone, we were doing the exact same thing with our phones and we were headed towards the same place. So all of these design patents Apple has on like a square basically, they're invalid because we were developing concurrent, we're not copying them. All this development is happening in parallel. And Apple's even looking to other companies like Sony to see, in their minds to imagine how Sony would design an iPhone. And they pulled out these old renders, which are crazy where, Johnny Ive basically directed one of his designers to imagine how Sony would build their phone. And they came up with what looks like what would have happened if Sony built the phone. It has a jog wheel on the side, like crazy stuff, right? It does look very eerily similar to the iPhone 4. It looks a lot like the iPhone 4. And so that's, I think that that's all fine, right? I mean, that's why this is silly. You know, Samsung definitely has a point here. Then you know, and some of the other renders are crazy. There's iPad with a kickstand. There's an iPod touch that is actually an iPod with like a hard drive in it. It's like this thick. It's just crazy stuff on there. So when I'm looking at it, I see three distinct like design ideas. One is the iPhone 4 one we keep seeing. The other one is this like Battlestar Galactica corners cut thing. That looks like a Motorola essentially. I have a source by the way, who says all of these, these are all just like riffs. Like they were just spitting out ideas and none of them made it past. They were quote, none of them passed the sniff test. But there was one beyond that that was so interesting to me. It was on the iPhone and the iPad. It looks just like the Lumia 900. Yeah, that one. That is so insane. That one was, they were basing it on the iPod mini. It was their extruded design they were calling it. So I mean, I think that's a really valid, on Samsung's part, very valid to say they're going through ideas or only so many ideas. They're hitting on all these notes. What I think is really interesting is like you're saying, like they definitely hit on design ideas that we are now seeing. But one of the cut corners about us and that looks like any number of Motorola phones, right? It does. What's funny of course is that Apple rejected all these ideas and haven't picked up. But that's, I think Samsung has a super valid point there, right? Apple did all this design. And you know, if you look at the patents Apple is asserting, you know, the design patent for the iPad really is like a rectangle, you know? And it's like, you know? It's a slate without a keyboard. Yeah, you know, I think Samsung has referred to it as Apple's black rectangle problem. And I think that's what they're going to present to the jury, right? Is that you can't have a patent on a black rectangle. And I think they're going to say that pretty loudly to the jury. I think they're going to make that point pretty clear. On the flip side, Apple's, the documents Apple has taken from Samsung is presenting a case with show that Samsung is laser focused on Apple. And they are, I mean, Samsung's strategy according to these documents was the beat Apple strategy. And they pay endless attention to what Apple's doing. They have outside designers and consultants including Google, say your products look too much like Apple's products. There's a survey from Best Buy, they figured out why people were returning the Galaxy Tab to Best Buy. The number one reason people were returning Galaxy Tabs to Best Buy was they thought it was an iPad 2, which is like super damning, right? It wasn't. So I think seven out of 30 stores said lack of product knowledge. One of those stores said we thought it was an iPad 2. So like we don't know like if they can draw it out any further, that's hugely stemming. But it's also the key next problem. We also just don't know if people just associate tablet with an iPad. I mean, that could be the case. Yeah, but I'm saying with the standard for these design patents, assuming there's two ways for Samsung to fight Apple's patents. One is to say the patent is invalid, which is the black rectangle problem. You can't patent a black rectangle. Fine. So there's that. I think they're going to do that as hard as they can. The second is to say, well, even if you can, we're not infringing it. And the standard for infringing is if you're deceiving people into thinking, if you've taken design elements and you're deceiving people into believing that your product is the other product by your use of those design elements. And if you've got data and if you've got data that people actually believe that your product is the other product and they're making a mistake in purchasing, then Apple has a case. And maybe you should not be able to make such a case. But that's what the law says. And the law has always said that for a long time. And Apple has that case, if that is true. So of the patents that are still in play, because I know they dropped a few before this went to trial, is it just hardware or is it hardware and software? We're talking about the blips, the iconography. I believe Apple has, and Apple's patents are dumb and Samsung's patents are equally dumb. So, I mean, they are. Just the fact that this is happening is, again, stupid. So Apple's patents are a bunch of design patents, a lot of stuff on the iPhone design, a lot of stuff on the iPad design, and a bunch of utility patents. So the scroll back patent, there's a pinch to zoom related patent. It's not the actual thing of pinch to zoom, but one that's related to how it works and something else. Samsung's patents are like three patents of like 3G technologies, which are these fran standards patents that governments are involved in arguing about now. So the three on the 3G, and then they have their own insane utility patents on things like you are using a menu while your phone also plays music. And it's like, you know, those patents are just as dumb, right? I mean, I get it. You have to file a lawsuit, but just at a holistic level, you look at the things that these companies are claiming are costing them millions of dollars in lost sales. And it's like, all of this is dumb. What about texting and watching a video at the same time? They also have a patent on texting and watching video at the same time. And yet I'm doing it. He's really doing it. Nice. Wow. Thank you, Creighton. I don't know if they have a patent on texting and watching video at the same time, but if they don't, I would say they're missing a golden opportunity. I've only seen baristas do that. Now, here's part of the findings that just got released that I thought was actually kind of interesting. AT&T, even AT&T went, you guys are going too far with this stupid stuff. Yeah, with the ads, the fanboy ads. Yeah, AT&T said, like, we are opposed to your fanboy ads. We were just making fun of fanboys for either side or whatever. Right. Well, I mean, that's like, why should AT&T tell Samsung what to do? I know. It seems like we're selling both phones, so obviously you don't want that economy. But like, there is a lot of vitriol that went along into this. I think there is. But that's not illegal to be angry. If the result of this, I mean, if the result of this, at the end of the day, if the result of this is that Samsung stops paying attention to Apple because they have gotten slapped on the wrist by a lawsuit, which is costing a lot of money in sort of the absolute sense, but relative to Samsung, like, whatever. If the end result is that they learn to not copy Apple, which they have done in many ways for a long time, then the S3 is a really great example. The S3 does not look like an iPhone. No one's going to confuse it for it at this point. Samsung has so much market share that they've done a great job of saying, this is a Samsung product. You will not confuse it anymore. Right. And if that's the thing that they've learned, then that's great. I actually think it's the way better looking phone in person than it looked when I saw it online. Oh, yeah. Do you remember when it came out, there's all those pictures that said this was the first phone designed by a lawsuit? And that's really ridiculous, right? I mean, that's Samsung's design. If that's true, then Samsung's designers should all be fired. Because there are so many phones on the market. They all look radically different. And there might only be X amount of ideas, but Apple only picked one. And they definitely put out one phone a year. So like all those other ideas are still out in that extruded shape that they didn't use it. Nokia is using is actually really good. Everyone likes that one. Two cameras, man. What is that thing? It's the EVO 3D. Why do you have that? My problem is why couldn't you do two cameras and a kickstand? Why do you have an EVO 3D? And that would be the most perfect. Is that what's hip in Baltimore? It's totally everywhere. Is everyone in Baltimore just taking 3D pictures? I got to take 3D pictures of the police when they're beating people so I can be more realistic. The wire, 3D. Right. EVO be coming, yo. Wow. Ross is fired. Super fired. No, I mean, like if that's the takeaway from this, then they should do it. But what they should really do is not have a trial. Do you know how much this trial is going to get absurdly nasty? They're going to drag each other through the mud in the worst possible way. What's great for us and super exciting is that we're going to see all of these internal documents. We're going to see all these emails from Apple executives directing the design of these products, which is fascinating. We're already seeing all this stuff from Samsung about how they relentlessly focus on Apple. Apple has a conference room. This is also in the documents. Apple has a conference room called the Android War Room where all they do is they do competitive analysis of Android products in their marketing. That's fascinating. Right. But it's also like a waste. It's an argument. What you want the argument to be about is here are two products, which one is better, which one of them helps most people do more things better. This is going to be a month and a half sideshow over the Android War Room and whether or not Samsung was too focused on Apple. It's fascinating for us because it's just, it's cool to see the inside of these companies. No, I'm ready. I'm actually really jealous that I'm not going to San Jose for the trial. I'm super fascinated. I'm not even a legal person, but I love going through these documents. You are not a legal, you're an illegal person. I immigrated to this country from- Too sexy. I know. So drunk. Anyway, and other companies, Sony, Motorola, Google itself, get this insight into Apple that they never had and this insight into Samsung. That is a pressure for both of them to settle. This is going down on Monday. I think Matt is working on a huge piece talking about, he's going to break down all of the patents that are at stake, all of the trade dress claims that are at stake on an Apple side and Samsung's patents. The next month is, I think Monday is jury selection. Samsung I believe is going to ask potential jurors what kind of phones they use and how many Apple products they own, which is fascinating. That's one thing I was thinking about is there could be nationalism at play here too. This is taking place in an American- Oh, can I say something really quick about that? There was a huge groundswell of impeach Judge Lucy Coe a couple of weeks ago when she handed down the injunction against the Galaxy Nexus and the Galaxy Tab. It was like, she's a bad judge, she's in Apple's pocket, she's a fangirl. All this terrible stuff to a judge who was appointed by the United States Congress to make a federal district court, which is crazy. I cannot stress how stupid that is, just fundamentally dumb because a month before this, she handed down a string of rulings against Apple for Samsung and there was a wave of stuff saying that she was biased because she's Korean, which is insane. On top of all of that, this is Apple and Samsung, their lawyers are there. If Judge Lucy Coe has some improper bias, it's their job to file the motion and say this judge has to go. The story wouldn't be she's biased against Apple, the story would be Samsung's lawyers are blowing it. If you know things that's true, Apple's had law firms removed from its case because Samsung has complained about really trivial conflicts. A lawyer on this firm used to be at another law firm and at that law firm, that law firm, another lawyer participated in one of our cases. That was enough of a chain to have a law firm kicked off Apple's side. The Galaxy Nexus, the ban, she actually initially denied it and it got appealed up and the appeals court told her to re-decide the case because they decided that she had misinterpreted the law. She only did it after the appeals court basically told her to. I'm just saying, all that stuff about Lucy Coe is like, we're going to spend a lot of time paying attention when it goes on in this courtroom and I think everyone's going to get a lot better idea of what she's like as a judge because we're going to cover it. From the outset, she's been basically as irritated with both Apple and Samsung as all the rest of us are. I don't know how much normal law cases are like, but there's so much pettiness and weird kind of antics both sides seem to be doing. Like filing injunctions for this and motions against this. You know what they're arguing about right now? This is how petty it is. Right now, what they're arguing about is the instructions to be given the jury. The jury doesn't know anything about patent law, so the lawyer's basically teaching them and at the end, the court will hand them a sheet of paper saying, if Apple proved X, Y, and Z, Samsung committed patent infringement. They're literally arguing over what those lines will say. It's a big deal because how you word it could be a leading, but that's the level at which these two parties are fighting. If Lucy Coe is taking back room money from Apple and Samsung misses it, it's like Samsung is blowing it. I don't think that's happening at all, but it might be happening. What makes it seem really petty is if you look at the Forbes 100 biggest public companies list, Apple's number 22 and Samsung's number 26. It's not like they're stealing bread out of each other's mouths. They're both massive companies that sell millions of phones. I told Samsung they should promise every juror a free washing machine. Only if it's got a phone in it. Yeah, when they control the phone. Okay, so that's Snapple. Any outstanding questions? Anything the chat wants to know? I think we're good on that one. Of course, again, come Monday, we'll have a match report, the trials will start, and it's going to be insane. We'll get Brian to do some man on the street stuff. I'm just going to say I'm probably not going to be paying attention because I'm enjoying my new Galaxy Nexus 7. Galaxy Nexus 7? Do you work for The Verge? I do. Just call it the Nexus 7. Nexus 7? Yeah. When did you get that? It's a live wallpaper, man. You've got a Galaxy on it. He's been staring at this for hours. Really? Like before you showed up. It's my new toy. It's good. Do you like the screen? I think the screen kind of blows. Yeah. I'm getting that lifted edge problem, actually. Oh, really? I just think it looks really washed out. But I haven't been looking at EVO 3D for the past year. I don't know what you're doing. Can I give you the bird on the air? Do you get a headache every time you take a phone call? Like, why don't you just leave it on? My phone calls are actually in 3D. I'm just saying, man. All right. So, next topic. Don't they have the Galaxy Nexus on Sprint? Yes. Don't they have the EVO 4G on Sprint? I don't need to buy a phone every six months. I can't understand these people that do that. Like the bone zones. They're called Verge employees. Yeah. The bone zones. All right. Next topic. Next topic is earnings reports. Oh, good. I'm so sorry. We have quite a few. I'll give you the list. You tell me where you want to start. All right. Apple, Microsoft, Facebook. All did badly. I think Facebook slightly beat, right? Facebook came up slightly ahead. But the stock dropped to an all-time low. Right. They're at 23 now, actually. I just read a really salacious business insider headline that was like, Zuckerberg loses half of money. And it's like he still has $12 billion. So let's just go through them. Apple. What happened to Apple? Apple, well, again, they made a profit. They made earnings. They had what they called record iPad sales, $17 million. But the street, this evil organization of ill repute. Those guys, the 1%. The 1%ers thought they were going to make more money. So this was, quote unquote, a rare miss, a disappointment. But they still grew like 23% from last year. Yeah. They added like, I think, what, $17 billion to their war chest? They're over 120 billion, I think, now. Anyway, factors that are interesting, iPhone sales are down. Because I think everyone has caught on to the fact that there's a new iPhone every year. So Becky has my old iPhone 4, and it's complete garbage now. I don't know what this woman has done to it. But the camera lens and only the camera lens is completely scratched. The rest of the phone is fine on the back. The rest of the glass phone is fine. The camera lens is so destroyed that she can't take pictures anymore. It crashed. It's a piece of junk. I'm like, why don't you go get a new phone? And she's like, I'm waiting for the 5. I'm going to put my dead iPhone down here, too. Everybody has a dead iPhone. They're the new hip. I'll just carry it around. One day I'm going to make it to the Apple store and get it fixed. How many cameras does that iPhone have? I'm just curious. What? It has two. TC. One in the front, one in the back. How many cameras do you have? That seems like one less camera than the Evo 3D here. See, it's got two cameras in the back, and it's got one in the front. Congratulations, you have a camera mullet. That's awful. That's terrible. Creighton's dying, though. Creighton just lost it, a camera mullet. Okay, I think everybody's waiting for the 5. I think that's the story of Apple's quarter. The biggest chunk of the revenue comes from the iPhone. Everybody's waiting for the new iPhone. The end. Yeah, so much comes from the iPhone. The iPad's gaining steam. The iPod is still dropping, but it didn't drop as much as they expected, so that's actually a positive this quarter. And Mac sales are just laughably small compared to everything else. Yeah, but they're still doing this. The laptops are doing this. The desktops are doing this. If you actually break down the Mac sales- That's what I'm saying. Nobody wants- No one wants a desktop. I want a desktop. I have three desktops. Do you have three home-brew PCs? I have three of everything. I have a problem. I have three monitors. You've built PCs at home. Tell me about your PCs. They're more interesting to me than Microsoft Linux. No, I'm afraid for Windows 8 because I'm so used to the Windows desktop. But you still have it. You'll have it. Can we just- I want to talk about what Gabe Newell said about Microsoft. Oh, yeah. That was actually really good. This is a good segue into Microsoft. It is, but let's do Microsoft quickly and then we can talk about that, and we can skip Facebook because honestly- Who cares? Yeah. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Microsoft had a net loss of $492 million. It had record revenue though, best ever. Microsoft. Microsoft. Microsoft. Sorry. We're skipping Facebook. Go ahead. Facebook did some stuff. I'm talking about Microsoft money here. I think I just said Facebook. Oh, okay. Facebook had a- Oh, yeah. You're right. You're right. I'm looking at Balmer's face and thinking, Facebook. That's not right. Microsoft lost money. Microsoft lost half a million dollars, which they don't actually do losses that often, so it's a big deal. Yeah. They lost record revenue this quarter. The reason it was so little, the difference was this write-off, they acquired what? AQanative? AQanative, like an ad metrics firm. Something for $6.2 billion. I will say this. There is a flurry of web... Let's call it the web 1.5 era. There's a flurry of acquisitions of these ad companies and search companies for Microsoft, for AOL, for all these dinosaur web 1.0 companies. They all said, we've got to take on Google and Yahoo, which is laughable because it turned out they didn't have to take on Yahoo at all. They all bought all these crazy web metrics. When they all thought they were going to be content companies and they were going to sell content on the web, Microsoft is getting out of that business. They just sold off that part of MSNBC. They're selling off this other AQanative company, which honestly no consumer has ever heard of because they sell ad tracking units or whatever. This is like, I would say this is the last of the Gates era for Microsoft. What I think is really interesting is that the Balmer... We keep talking about whether Balmer needs to go, but it seems like all he's really been doing for the past however many years is shutting down bad Bill Gates ideas. This is the year when Balmer comes into focus. While you can argue that Balmer doesn't make them. He's true. He knows what he's doing. He's revving every product ever for Microsoft. Every... There's going to be a new Xbox. Within the next year, there's going to be a new Xbox. Mary Jo was saying this on the show last night. You should watch the show when it comes out. There's going to be a new Xbox. There's new Windows, new Windows phone. Every... Probably a new Office. Why not? There is a new Office. Every major piece of Microsoft is getting a huge update in some way. A lot of people do not want to give Balmer credit for it, but let's say this. It's not his idea, but he's letting the right people do these things. Right. Well, he just eats steak. Well, he is the spokesperson. He is the flagship of the company. He's out there being enthusiastic more than any other human being I've ever seen. Yeah. He loves this company. He loves the company. Developers. No, you're right. They're doing Surface, which is... I think they're not... I think Surface is going to represent an enormous break for Microsoft. Their OEMs are not happy about it. Microsoft said it in their earnings statement. We're now competing directly with our customers. That's a huge risk for us. I think they understand that Surface goes one of two ways. One, they do what their OEMs never did, and it makes Windows look good. Or two, the challenge... Are you just looking at pictures of Balmer over there? Can I tell you, no more fun than you can have- Crayton, show me your hands.... than two men in a dark room looking at photos of Steve Balmer. All right. Continue. Or two, it challenges the OEMs to do something actually worth a damn that, again, makes Windows look good. It's a win-win for Microsoft. They may play it down as like, oh, we're sorry. We're upsetting you, but... What are their OEMs going to do? I know. Nothing. It's not Enterprise. Right. What are they going to do? They're going to sell Windows 7 for a decade while they figure out Windows 8, just like they did with XP. Right. Let's talk about Windows 8 and this Gabe Newell quote. Gabe? Vince? Gabe Newell. That's not Vince. Not Vince at all. Vince Newell. Gabe Newell, who runs Valve... Oh, it's Valve. It's not Vince. Gabe Newell, who runs Valve, said, Windows 8 is going to be a catastrophe. I'm not getting this... I'm just riffing on this quote. He said, Windows 8 is going to be a catastrophe. OEMs are going to leave the market. What's the actual... Do you have it? I'm looking for the... He talked a lot. He's not a public speaker, so it was a long, long quote. Right. Yeah, the point was, Windows 8 is a catastrophe. OEMs, some OEMs are going to leave the market. And go to Linux or something. And Linux's problem is there's not enough gaming on there. Yeah, that's Linux's problem. That's just one of many, but... Well, his thing with Microsoft is becoming too restrictive. He's not an Apple fan. And he thinks Microsoft's too restrictive. And the same thing. But the thing is, where do you go? So what was interesting is Mary Jo was on the show last night, and she said, until I saw the Surface, I agree. The Surface is a thing that will make this work. It's the right device for the software. It doesn't work on a laptop. It doesn't work on a desktop. I've heard this a lot now. It's not me. It's not Poison Topolsky. It's this... He's never going to live that down. No, never. Never. But it's this cabal of... Cabal? That's not the right word. Group. That's a much evil word for a collection of people. Syndicate. Yeah, it's a syndicate. No, it's this group of people, very respected Microsoft watchers. Gabe Newell has a big stake in what Microsoft does, because he runs Steam, who are saying, this doesn't work on laptops and desktops. And maybe they're wrong. There's a huge chance it could all be wrong, and Microsoft hasn't figured it out, and people are going to love it. But that's what they're all saying right now. That groundswell of antipathy for Windows 8 on a laptop is there. It's just there. And until the next round of Ultrabooks come out with touch screens and it all makes sense, I think it will remain there. Because right now, using it with a keyboard and mouse doesn't make a lot of sense, and the lack of the start menu on the desktop. That's what I'm getting at with Mountain Lion. Apple's taking these iterative steps to rid you of the desktop with all these full screen apps and launchpad and all this stuff. Microsoft is like, we just took it away. We took the start menu away. Every time you want to do anything, you have to look at the R other interface. The overall thematic differences between Apple, Google, and Microsoft are very interesting to me. Apple is staying the course. They have an idea. They know where they're going with it. We think. We think. They appear to know where they're going. They appear. But it's also what Microsoft's doing. They're unifying everything under Metro. Right. And then Google is like, fragmenting everywhere. So in terms of having an idea and knowing where they're going with it, I think Microsoft is way more aggressive. Right? They're questioning. They're finally doing stuff that people have been asking them to do for years, which is like integrate Xbox with their other products. And it's, I mean, I see. I mean, IE9 on Xbox is not really integrating it. Right? It's like, they're getting there. They're inching closer to it. And they're making a lot of smart moves with Windows Phone, with Windows, and with Xbox. Yeah. And trying to find some way unifying, not this generation, but I would not be surprised if next generation, it was all one platform. This was Game of Thrones. Like, right at this moment, somebody would kill Steve Ballmer. I'm just saying. You'd be like, yes, finally, it's coming together. I waited so long for this. Oh my God. They just killed him for no reason. We just launched Zune. Oh my God. Now we have to do another eight episode story arc on a character you're going to murder. You, Peter Dinklage, you're now playing the role of Steven Sanofsky. Go forth. He would be good. He's ruthless. He's very good. Yeah. He's very cunning. Very small. What? Both of those things are true. I actually don't know if you're Peter Cunning. Peter Dinklage is cunning in real life, but his character is cunning. He plays a lot of cunning characters, which I believe you can only do in a realistic way if you yourself are cunning. Logic man, look it up. Should I just say something? Craig's doing this again. Should I just say something really stupid? Go back to your Ballmer pictures, D. Simone. What's next? Do we have anything else to talk about? How long has this been? Should we take some calls? I mean, that should be, I think- I would love to verbally abuse our readers. All right. Let's take a couple of calls, free for all. Then we'll take three and we'll be done. It takes a second for you to get out of the stream. Oh. TC freestyle. What? What? Don't do that. He said freestyle. Really? I didn't say- Drop. Oh snap. He dropped in the cold. Oh God. Ross is so fired up all the time. Ross, we could just do- I'm tired. Make gif material. I mean, what worries me is that we've put you in charge of 90 seconds on the verge. And I see where your mind immediately goes. And then I'm like, I'm not going to worry about it. He'll just do it all. He's taking hands off. If mine- Because I'm shooting it later. We're shooting it today, yes. Did you write me an entire script in rap? I haven't had a chance to write it yet. But if you want to- Here we go. What are these boxes? Who are these people? Wait for a checkbox. Wait for a checkbox? Oh, I got a checkbox. Do it. Did you just hang up on line one? Do they not meet your criteria, Brendan? Okay. Here we go. Checkbox this. Caller, you're on the air. Ross, you have to stop that. All right. I'm sorry. Caller, talk to me. Hey, how's it going? What up? All right. So I'm with Calvin. Where are you calling from, Calvin? I should call from Greenville, South Carolina. Nice. How is it? Is it nice there? Are you on the beach? Well, not really that close to the beach, but it's pretty warm. Every time I go to South Carolina, I have to go to the beach. I'm not sure if I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach, but it's pretty warm. Every time I go to South Carolina, I end up on the beach. So I just figured I'd ask. Anyway, what's up? How often do you go to South Carolina? Like once a year. I'm actually saying North Carolina. It's not important. Calvin, tell me about your life. Well, I'm actually using the Windows 8 release preview right now, and I wanted to go ahead and kind of talk about it. I know you guys were saying how it's not really desktop, laptop oriented there. But my thing is this is when I use it, I actually have it on a HP TouchSmart and I also have it on a regular HP laptop. When I use it on the laptop, I actually use it completely different from when I use it on a TouchSmart. Are you using all the Touch stuff? Are you using it as a touch computer on the TouchSmart? Yeah, exactly. I'm using it as a touch computer on the TouchSmart and more like a tablet. I kind of stay on the start menu and go through all the metrics. But when it comes to the laptop, what I do is I actually just go to the desktop and I'll stay there. I actually only go to the start menu to do a quick search for an app and then I'll go right back to the one on the desktop. So you're not using any of the new interface stuff? You might even argue that... I am, but I'm using it in a more conventional way like I used to use it on Windows 7. Like with Windows 7, I would go to start, I would do a search or search for a really quick program, then I'd be done with it. But when it comes to it on the laptop for Windows 8, I'm using it almost the same way, even though I also can use the live tiles too. What do you use the live tiles for? That's kind of how I'm using it. I feel like the live tiles on a laptop, the live tiles are like the same. They're the same as like what OS X does with widgets. They're there and it's cool. It's like, that's what the weather is. And I go right back to actually using it. Do you actually use it for the weather? I do use it for the weather. Yeah, that's exactly how I use it too. It's like you go onto the start real quickly, you say, oh hey, that's the weather. Okay, that's the Facebook update and I'm done. It's almost like the desktop computing paradigm was designed for the form factor of the PC that you're using and introducing an entirely new metaphor doesn't work unless you change the form factor. But let's also be clear here though. I mean, what do I know? I'm just riffing on core concepts of computing design. We're downplaying the live tiles, but I mean, he checked weather really fast and moved on with his life. So efficient use of live tiles. I'm defending this. You just take that dirty money from Microsoft, man. You just fill your pockets. So let me ask you a question, Calvin. So you've got these two different things that you're doing and they're very different kinds of interfaces. Which one do you like better? It's hard to say because I actually like the TouchSmart interface with the touch oriented stuff. Even my kids are able to use the games and everything touch oriented. So it's really perfect for that. But for a laptop, it's where I kind of, I guess, go to work. I'll sit down with it. I go into office or do whatever I have to do for my job and I come out. So it works flawlessly on both of them, but just in different ways. Can I ask you, what were you using before you installed the consumer preview? 7, Vista, Windows ME? I used the... I haven't had it. I've lost that in a while. It's such an easy laugh line. You're like, hey, Windows ME. What's a bigger laugh to you? A Windows ME or a Zune? Dude, the Zune HD was cool. Oh no. Okay. Calvin, which one were you using before? Yeah. Let's go back on track, which we're so good at doing. I used to use actually Windows... Well, I use almost every version of Windows now, but I used Windows 7 beforehand and then I was kind of hesitant. So I did a partition for Windows 8 and Windows 7 on the same hard drive. And as I started using Windows 8, I was like, wow, this is just so much faster. Why am I using Windows 7? So you just switched over. So was there a learning curve for you between 7 and 8? I think that's something a lot of people... Go ahead. Oh yeah. It was small, but I'm a pretty heavy power user. But I guess what I had to learn was that if you use Windows 8, like it's supposed to be... Well, I think it's supposed to be used like Windows 7 on a laptop and then use it for like touching on other stuff on like a touch computer or like a tablet, it works wonderfully once you get used to that. I want you to know which one is supposed to be for which. I guess is the best way to put it. Cool. So are you going to buy a Surface? I have to see what the price is because I also like the Asus Windows 8 tablets that they're coming out with too. Yeah. But both of them look really great. So yeah, I'm probably going to buy one of them. If you were going to buy a Surface, would it be the Pro model or the... Isn't the Pro model Intel? You'd buy the Intel one. I definitely would do the Pro one just because I also want to take my tablet and get all my work done. And I think that's going to be the best way to kind of segue into that. Not to say that the other one won't work with other things, but since it can install certain programs, I think it would be better for me personally to have Pro and go forth from there. Gotcha. All right, Calvin, we're going to have to go. All right, let's take another one of these. Drop. Yes. I just like pushing the button. All right. Caller, you're on the line. Who are you? Where did you come from? Hey, what's going on, guys? My name is Eric. How are you? Hey, Eric. Where are you, Eric? Exeter, Rhode Island, middle of nowhere in Rhode Island. Do you actually attend Exeter? Are you the 1%? What's that? Do you attend Exeter? No, it's just a town. Oh, Andover Man. You're getting hostile with this guy. He just got on the phone. What, man? We promised verbal abuse. Yeah, that's true. Go ahead. I'm just playing the role of Josh, you know? Yeah, I'm being... Yeah, so you're the friendly one. Ross doesn't... Go ahead, man. I have a question about Google Fiverr. Just dead silent for that one. Yeah, what's up? Does anyone know, does the TV delivery happen over the IP network or are they doing a separate delivery for the TV network? That's a good question. They didn't tell us. I actually asked Dieter to ask that question and I'm assuming it's a separate network. That is my baseline assumption, but we don't know. Right. Okay, that was my main question. I did want to say one thing about Windows 8 and the last crawler. I tried to use it and on a desktop, it's not fast, especially if you're using multiple monitors. You got to memorize your window keys. That went back to seven. You went back to seven. Wow. I have three monitors, man. I'm screwed. Yeah. You know what would be awesome? If you open text that at one of them, they'll just show you winning. That's a problem when you use iFinity because when you actually play games and stuff on all three, it's one thing. Do you actually wear a crown that says King of the Nerds when you just game on your iFinity? I do. Do you think multiple monitors are dead? I mean, none of these operating systems are good at them. It kills me when I'm trying to do full screen apps. Maybe. I mean, if you spend the time to set it up. Wait, which operating system? Linux. If you spend time to set up multiple monitors. You can do anything with Linux if you set a time. You can fly a 747 in space. All right. It's true, by the way. I did that yesterday. No, you didn't. It's not true. I did that yesterday. You can't stop. Guys, you can't fly a 747 in space. Really? Eric, any other questions? Anything else we should talk about? No, man. Thank you for your time. Thanks for calling in. All right, let's take one more. All right, caller, you're on the line. You're the last call of the day. Make it good. Where are you? Who are you? Hey, I'm actually in the Republic of Georgia. Sorry, the what? You mean the one in Eastern Europe, not the secessionary state in the south? Yeah, yeah. Not US, yeah. I'm from the US. I'm from Seattle. You're in the Republic of Georgia right now. What time is there? It's like 10 o'clock at night and 11, I don't know. Okay, what's up? I woke up four hours ago. Oh my God. Hey, I wanted to point out that the Google Fiber stuff in Kansas City is actually a case study for the future. Google wanted like a centrally located place that they could use to make their searches faster. And then they also wanted to see how people would react to having speeds that are 10, 20 times faster than what's commercially available today. And you guys completely missed that on your cats. You're like, oh, they're just around. But like really Google is using this. You know what I didn't miss? I didn't miss your F bomb. Caught it. No, no, I get that. You know, I think I get what you're saying. I mean, I think you're right. Google's experimenting to see what the future should be like. But they're also pretending that they're running a business. And I think that's the thing we're focused on is I don't believe that they're actually running a business. They're saying they're going to turn a profit. They're saying they can do it. I think what they want to prove to this is what I'm saying. They want Comcast to feel bad about itself. They want Time Warner to feel bad about itself. Well, if they just wanted to do a case study, they could have picked a small town from anywhere that was way smaller than Kansas City. Well, they're trying to progress the market. Well, I mean, they are and they aren't. You progress the market by actually competing. They're trying to progress the market and show, hey, this is possible. This is how you do it. Here's a viable business model. But if that were true, I think they would actually run a real business out of it. You know, I agree with you. I completely agree with you. But what I think is that, I mean, they're saying all this stuff, right? They're delivering this product. But what they're really delivering, what the real innovation is for them is they're giving people really fast Internet. And that's it. That's the core of what they're doing. All of this TV stuff is the same product that you can already get from Time Warner, right? It just has a nicer interface. You know what would make it really interesting to me? If the TV interface, if you could plug in any DVR, if Google said, we've invited Acer and HP and I'm picking random companies, but we're inviting these companies. We may, HTC, make us a cable box. Do something wild with Android. And any of you can plug in and we have 15 different hardware vendors and all these different interface ideas to plug in a cable and really revolutionize television on top of a thousand Mbits Internet. I think that would be wild. They didn't do that. And I think the case study of what will people do with faster Internet is we're already living through that case study in real time. It's just happening very slowly. Because five years ago my Internet was really slow. Ten years ago I had one Mbit up and down. Now I have 50, right? So we're living through that much more slowly. Google accelerating that case study is really cool. But I think they missed the opportunity to reinvent television at the same time. To me that's a little bit disappointing. I mean, maybe you disagree with me. But you don't think, like explore what television could be in the future with Kansas City and maybe they've made a few missteps with having this set top box which is basically a Tivo with a Google logo. I think they're turned to both. At the same time, I think they've been at odds basically with YouTube against content providers and trying to kind of invite them into the future along with Google saying, hey, you can still make money. The Internet is not going to cut into your profits necessarily. Here's how it's going to cut. Well, of course it's not going to cut into their profits, right? Because they're selling the same package that they get from Time Warner. So it's the same business model. So I get what you're saying. I think it's interesting. I think you're right. They're building, they're doing the slow burn of a relationship bill. Come in, come into our service, maybe a year from now let's reevaluate what people are doing. I get that. I think that's probably very accurate and I think that's the only way they could get the TV providers to play ball. But the real innovation comes from the thing. But the real innovation is going to come from what the people want, which is to not have a cable company, which is to say I want AMC delivered over my thousand MBIT Google connection or I want HBO delivered, not I have a bundle of packages from the Disney channel because I want ESPN. Yeah, because the real difference is based on the Telecommunications Act, right? It's not, I mean the distinction between internet pipes and private cable networks. Can we just go to Washington, you and me, and just- Can we please? Just do it. Let's just do it. Revolution in the streets. Can I ask you a question? Yeah. Are RTC and I going to make out after the show? Very probably. Yes. Why am I sitting between you two? Just really quick, I just want to hear your opinion on this. What do you think the future for commercials are? Do you think that there will be a pain available to people like kind of the HBO business model for network television where I can just have my show if I pay a little bit more money? No. That's what I get right now on BitTorrent. People are always going to need to advertise. That's what we have to deal with as far as competition. But so what you're getting on BitTorrent doesn't pay for anything. You know, and that's the simple fact of the matter. Well, that's the competition. That's the outlook of it, right? Yeah, but fine. You know, you can keep not watching commercials on BitTorrent, but like that means people don't get paid. You know, and that's it. That is the simple truth. And you can try to say, and this is the argument, the non-stop argument. You can say, I would pay $20 to watch a show without commercials. But no, you won't because the competition from BitTorrent will still be there. And the vast majority of people will still go to the free option and they will still not watch the commercials or skip the commercials. And the biggest market for network television, network television programming is over the air antenna watching. It's people with TVs in their homes and that is still bigger than the entire cable market. And so as long as they have to monetize broadcast television, there will be commercials. I don't think you're always correct though, because if I want to, if I want to BitTorrent something, right, I have to figure out when that show happens every week. And then I have to go and make a few clicks and I have to think about it every single week. And I can't just forget about the show. Well, let me ask you a question. How many $1.99 episodes of TV do you buy from iTunes? No, no. How many $2 episodes of television do you buy from iTunes? Or $25 season passes that automatically download. Yeah. How many $40 season passes of shows do you buy from iTunes? You can do this. No one does it. I mean, that's, that's the reality is that to make the money the way they want to make the money, they have to raise the prices. Once you raise the price, piracy is not a technological, it's not a behavioral problem. It's a pricing problem. And the problem is the competing price is always free. No matter what you set the prices that you can, you can distribute it any way you want. iTunes is probably the most single, most convenient way to like get content on your computer. Amazon is equally convenient, but there's like more steps, right? There's, there's, there's like helper apps and stuff. iTunes is like, you open the app, you press the button, you're watching the thing. And I have never, I think I bought maybe five episodes of TV from iTunes period. And most of them are like, I don't think I look at Valves steam platform for the PC for PC gaming. Why does steam works? Steam works because it's super wrapped in DRM and you can't, there's no piracy alternative to steam. And the UI is so easy. Search, click, download. Because in the DRM and the DRM on the gaming side is getting worse, right? What's the game where you have to be logged in? Huh? Anything that Ubisoft makes and the EA origin also pretty bad. Right? You have to play a PC game. Now you have to ping a DRM server because the piracy problem is so bad. They're forcing you to buy the games. I don't think anybody wants that from TV. And I mean, that's, that to me is like, you can say a BitTorrent is like a valid option for watching TV. And I joke about it all the time and I firmly believe that you should be allowed to BitTorrent shows that have been broadcast on network television because of all this wonky copyright theory that I have in my head. But at the end of the day, you've got to pay the people, right? Community isn't on the air because NBC wasn't making enough money from it. Sixth season of the movie. I mean, like there's a whole big world out there, right? That's not the US. Yeah. I mean, where am I going to pay for these programs? Like I'm in the Republic of Georgia. So then you should have more ads. I don't know, man. Well, no, but that's an interesting argument too, because there's content in Britain that I want to see. I can still buy my games on Steam from the Republic of Georgia. No problem. If I want to go watch a Game of Thrones, good luck, right? I have no option. Well, that's true in the US also. It's good luck to get it here. Yeah. Well, look, man, I can't tell you the structural problems of like licensing media rights in different countries. I can tell you that the problem isn't solved even in the US. As far as I can tell, it is not solved in any country in the world. And like you can't solve the global problem unless you create a model somewhere that you can expand. And so like, yeah, I have a US-centric perspective. That's the law. I understand the best. But you know, it's really hard to walk. I can imagine what it's like for an Apple executive to walk into, or Amazon executive, to walk into, or Microsoft executive, to walk into HBO's offices and say, giving your content to sell everywhere around the world for free, or for any price that I choose, don't worry it'll all work. Because that's not a really good argument. It's not a good pitch. And if you are the content creator, and you know, it's funny, for me, we sell our content, we monetize our site with ads, right? But I'm still very protective of the content we create because we work hard to make it. And so if you're any content creator that works hard to make it, and somebody says, let me monetize this for you, don't worry, I'll just make you the money. And we get pitches like that all the time. People ask to syndicate our podcast, people ask to syndicate our content on our site, our features, and we turn them down all the time. Because we want to be in control of what we make. Why don't you release a version of the Vergecast video on BitTorrent? I know that's been a huge drive for your viewership to do that. Why haven't you done that? You know, I don't know. We used to, we can talk about it. You know, the way we monetize the show is we just say the ads, so it's fine. But we used to do, didn't we used to do On the Verge and BitTorrent, Creighton? And we used to do- And Gadget Show too, I think. We did the Engadget Show and BitTorrent. So we experiment with this stuff, but you know, it's packaging content in different ways is overhead and work for us. And we've got a lot of stuff to do. I can tell you the reason why we don't. Oh, Creighton, he's talking to this mic. No, you've got the file, just throw it up on a torrent site later. Hold on, Creighton's going to talk without listening. I mean, I can tell you the reason why we don't BitTorrent the show anymore. It is because of sales. Most of the people are watching it on the website and that's, well, there's pre-roll there. Yeah, that's how we make our money. And regardless of, I mean, we also put it on YouTube. And even though Josh, we run an ad mid-roll and we run a, Josh thanks the sponsor at the beginning of the end of the show, those don't count. Those YouTube views don't count. No, thanks. With a, with a th. Yeah. Because there's, they need to look at numbers of it. And that's what it looks like. I'll just come down here. You're producing from. Yeah, I guess I keep talking. Yeah. Cause they need that, that counter on the pre-roll and the post-roll. That's why we don't do it. Could I respond to it? I mean, also you read any of the comments, someone has been torrenting it. Yeah. So let me just time out. Let me just end this conversation here. Yeah. We can't change that aspect of our, like I would love to, I would love to change it tomorrow and say, count all the views. But like, that's reality. Go back, go back producer, man. Get out of here. That's just reality. And that's reality for all of these companies. Right. Could I respond really quick? Sure. Sure. Look, so like I'm in Georgia. Like if I believe to briefly that I don't have internet access and I'm a pretty big birch fan. If I go to my village, I used to have internet access, so I can't watch your show. I'm just going to watch the most recent show. I'm not going to go back and watch the, the three shows that I miss, rise in my village. I'm just going to watch the most recent one. And you just lost three views. Where like, I would like to know what you said. You know, like people are going to migrate to BitTorrent from your, from your site. People like enjoy watching it streaming. They want a downloadable option and the easiest free way to do that for you guys is BitTorrent. You're not going to like lower your numbers there. In fact, I would argue that you could raise your, but so I, I, uh, Crayton's got up, you're right. So chill out for a second. Uh, I get, I get what you're saying. Everyone agrees with you. I think that's the core of this thing. If you want, I can do a private show for you on BitTorrent. No, but every, everybody, I'm just going to put a microphone in front of you and just let you feel better. Yeah. I'm just going to use an Aesthetic. Uh, that's gross. Um, everyone agrees with you, man. Uh, and I would love to do that. You know, we initially started doing that. No, but that's what I'm saying. Our initial. Yeah. And you're, you're talking about, you're addressing much different like issues like international copyright method of, you know, monetization connectivity. I think he's addressing an important issue. All of those constructs that manage that stuff is a complication. People that's tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not today. I make, I make, I make, I make, I make, I make, I make, I make, I make, I make, I make, I make my money in American green bags. Uh, and that's real, you know, and like, that's the thing, you know, are the people who pay us to roll ads. I mean, I am an really quick poll. Money talks, but torrent walks. Uh, no, look, this is what I'm saying. Even in this scenario circumstance where the people who make the verge, uh, would love to, we initially put it on BitTorrent. We did it. We made that happen. Uh, the people who pay for the show, uh, they want, they wanted to count their ads that way. And so we restricted it. And I'm not saying it's a great idea. I'm not saying it's a great outcome, but it's true. And that's a little problem for us because we can put most of our content everywhere and we want to put all of our content everywhere. But when you run a bigger business, when you're HBO, when that's your entire business is how you distribute content, how you monetize it. When you're NBC and running ads against your content is the biggest part of your business. You pay even more attention, uh, and you make even more restrictions and you segment the markets even more because literally that is your revenue stream. And until you can figure out that that has failed for them, I mean, they make a ton of money. What are you talking about? They make so much money. Like you can argue that it's failing. Huh? It's an age show. I don't know what you're saying. Some people pay for it if they, if they had the option, I think they would because people ultimately do have a conscience and want to. Yeah, but the money they make from that will not equal to the money they get getting license to fees from the cable companies. I think we're kind of going in circles here. Look, everybody agrees with you and everybody wants to live in utopia. Um, and you know, if we can all make content for free and make the best thing for free, if only everybody had three cameras, we all hand, handheld device to do three beers and a Sonic and 3d on bit torrent tonight. Yeah. So yeah, to your point, it is a tomorrow thing, but we're not there yet. No, you guys didn't understand me. I'm not saying make content free. I'm just saying make HBO go, uh, free of like country boundaries and free of, uh, like, uh, this, uh, between like, you know, there was a huge, like a brew, haha, between Time Warner and HBO. I was paying for cable back in the States and I couldn't get my HBO go on my Android or my, or my zoom because, uh, because, uh, I'm warning. I couldn't wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. There's your problem. You got really the credibility, the credibility of demanding HBO. So go on your soon is, uh, wait, zoom, zoom tablet. Oh, I thought that'd be awesome. By the way, if you were, if you were demanding it, uh, look, I hear you. There's just layers of rights to manage there. I mean, when you make something, you sell it. The person who makes the show sells it to HBO. HBO sells it to the network. It's complicated and I wish we could solve it. I wish I was, look, vote for the world. Okay. I will solve it for you. Why are you still yelling at me in the game of HBO? Go Neal. I'm sorry. I am. I'm apologizing to you. I'm sorry that I'm aware of what's happening. Still made it work. Huh? Still made it work. So can't, why can't other content writers just, I know exactly what, because, because the game publishers provide their content to steam directly and the contract for steam from the outset, steam was five years old. The contract from steam for steam in the five years that it's existed has always specified global distribution. That is not how television work. That's not how movies work and those industries are much older and have much more. A lot of this has, has, is like perfect hindsight too. Like of course we know all of these great devices that are available now and there are potentially innovative ways to distribute this content. I'm not saying it's right, but all, but Hollywood and the cable operators and all of their partners have had, you know, these complicated business relationships that have developed over decades and they're not just going to throw that away because there's a potential to syndicate HBO on an Android device. And I'm telling you the reality of steam and the reality of online games distribution is now insane DRM. And that if you are willing to accept that, that you can probably get there with all this media, but I don't know that anyone's willing to accept it with, with traditional, with movies and TVs and music. Wait, wait, have you played a game on steam lately? It's really easy. But it's wrapped in layers of DRM, right? I mean, are you discounting the fact that steam wraps all their games in crazy DRM? Are you, I mean, all of Ubisoft game are wrapped in DRM. I mean like that's reality. If you want that to exist, the devil's choice is you can have all this freedom of distribution, but you have to have the DRM and that's Spotify to you, right? Spotify, access to all the world's music. It's great. Crazy DRM all over Spotify. And that's just the way it is. We're going to wrap up. Creighton, why aren't you doing this? All right, dude. Sorry. I really enjoyed this conversation. Here's my problem. I love to argue. And I will argue about worldwide distribution rights of Game of Thrones all day long. And right when you think I'm going to, they're going to kill me. I think it's a legal issue at this point, international law. Yeah. It's complicated and I wish it could work. And it's funny because you started, it's the number of things that you've yelled at me about in this conversation are amazing. You know, but right. Maybe Google Fiber will change the mechanics of distribution because it'll be easier to get things to people directly. And I think I think it's a great thing. It's a great thing to do. And I think that's the hope, right? If HBO says in Kansas city, we will sell directly to the market because it's fast and cheap and easier to get content over the internet to people than it is over the cable. That'd be great. I'm going to hang up on you. I love talking to you. Every minute of this has been a joy. Yeah. Take care. Thanks for watching. Keep BitTorrenting our show. I encourage you to do it. I'll tell Sam something you watched. By the way, text and watch the video at the same time. Bye. Okay. Let's wrap this up. I've gotten what the hell are we talking about? I don't know. I can't. These people, they talk to me and then I'm like, I'll talk to you. Samsung Nexus seven. It's a great tablet. The Samsung. You are so I will point out to you with my Samsung Galaxy S3. I will point and text. Let's read out this troll. I don't know how long this is. It's five hours and we can keep it going. I blacked out there. I was like, I have my car until the statue to van. I like that we had Creighton come in to talk revenue models. I just like Creighton sitting on my lap. We can put the show on BitTorrent if everybody sends me a dollar. Huh? Longer than an hour and a half. Yeah. Yeah. We should wrap it up. So that was the verge cast. That was some version of the verge cast. I'm Josh DePolsky. I am Josh DePolsky. No, it's not true. I'm Neelay Patel. We don't say the names at the end. I say you can. So you know my name already. You can come at me, bro. How many seconds is two hours? This has been 8,000 seconds on the first. Our inability to do math persists regardless of host. So that's been the verge cast. You can talk to us on Twitter. You can send us. Or you can join us in our Minecraft server, which everyone is asking me to plug right now. I never actually do this party. I never pay attention. I'm at reckless. I'm at reckless. I don't know Roscoe. With no E. With no E. And I'm at laughing stoic. What the hell? It's a nickname. Laughing stoic. It's a laughing stoic. Verge is at verge. You can email us. You can email us. At podcast. At podcast. Oh my God. Ultimate troll. You can email us at vergecast at the verge.com. You can leave a comment. We used to have an 800 number or something. So just call one of those. Talk to them about the verge cast. Call every 800 number until you get to us. We'll be back next week. I believe Josh will be back in this chair. I'll be back in my rifle position. And I'll be sitting on the couch. He'll be outside. I'll be alone. I'll be in a ditch with a zero 3D. And that's it. Thank you for watching. Thank you for yelling at me from across the world. Thank you. Just, I love you. Rock and roll. Good night. Fall. No one's helping. Rock and roll.
 Hello.
 That was good.
 Welcome to the Vergecast.
 Six out of ten.
 Six.
 It's a six.
 The six.
 Your intro is a six.
 I'm Neelay Patel.
 This is the Vergecast.
 I'm in Neelay Patel's seat.
 Yeah, you are also Neelay Patel.
 Who are you?
 I'm TC Sotic.
 Former...
 Get out.
 Get out.
 This is a Neelay Patel only room, sir.
 Yes.
 Well, this is Ross Miller.
 I am Ross Miller.
 That's TC Sotic.
 I did think your name was pronounced Sotac for about six months.
 Yeah, people have been calling me that.
 You were hired because it was Sotac.
 Yeah, that's why we hired you.
 I hired him.
 As you may have noticed, Josh Topolsky is not here.
 I don't know what he's doing.
 I think he's road tripping or just tripping or robo tripping.
 Adderall tripping.
 Actually, it's not so far off.
 No, Josh is out.
 He's taking some much deserved time to go party or relax or sleep party, whatever he
 does.
 We're doing the Vergecast.
 Got Ross, got TC.
 It's going to be awesome.
 Ross is filling in my role, so you have to be super annoying.
 I won't pay attention to you.
 Patton's, Patton's, Patton's, law and legal system, net neutrality.
 Let's take some calls.
 That was the Vergecast.
 All right.
 Thank you, everybody.
 We were the best one ever.
 If you don't know, this is the Vergecast.
 I'm trying to remember all the stuff Josh does because I usually am not paying attention
 to this part.
 I've heard it for like five years.
 Just start beefing.
 If you don't know, this is the Vergecast.
 We're going to discuss the week in technology news and culture news, apparently in financial
 news this week according to Ross's chart of stories.
 I'm sorry.
 We have nothing but earnings on this topic list.
 TC is drinking at noon.
 It's my day off, man.
 That's true.
 Technically.
 If you guys don't know, TC runs the site on the weekends for us, so Friday is technically
 his day off.
 He was here yesterday to hang out and do 90 seconds and come on the Verge.
 Yeah, it was fun.
 We're making him work.
 In retaliation, he's getting hammered.
 That's right.
 Get ready.
 I'm not so opposed to a noon beer on a Friday myself.
 Is Michael Shane here?
 Michael Shane is not here.
 Without Josh, there is no Michael.
 If you guys don't know, Neelai has literally an army of interns that their only job is
 to get him in Maker's Mark.
 Yeah.
 Actually, I wasn't allowed.
 This is a ridiculous story.
 Anyway, let's talk about tech news.
 Let's talk about tech news.
 There are so many tangential stories I could tell about Maker's Mark, referring to things
 as a six.
 To do that would be Vergecast Classic.
 It would, but let's try.
 Let's start with Google Fiber.
 Google Fiber.
 Google Fiber.
 Go.
 Begin.
 We're off to a great start.
 The person in this chair-
 This is what you actually do is talk about this because I've been in this seat my whole
 time.
 Yeah.
 No, this is how it works.
 I just don't do anything.
 This seat says the story.
 It's a seat of power.
 The Neelai seat says the story.
 The Josh seat reacts to the story.
 The Ross slash Paul seat reacts to the story.
 I do come in and come in the middle of the seat.
 Yeah, you tell them jokes.
 Yeah.
 Or Paul just talks about Christian Scott.
 I think we might have to switch seats.
 I'm like Dennis.
 No, no, no.
 This is you, Ross.
 Go.
 Actually, I actually want TC to do this because he did it yesterday at 90 seconds.
 You summed up Google Fiber really quickly.
 So let's break it down.
 What is it?
 Anarchy?
 Go ahead.
 I'm changing the rules, man.
 Fine, man.
 The long and short of it is that Google just made every ISP in the country look like they're
 not doing their job.
 Is that their goal?
 So here's what I... We actually asked this.
 So Dieter Bohn went to Kansas City.
 They launched Google Fiber in Kansas City, both Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri.
 In a touching gesture, they had both mayors on stage, which I thought was the best part
 of the entire-
 And only one has good penmanship.
 The other one is just really weird chalk.
 The mayor of the town next to it, Branson, Kansas, that city in Kansas.
 Branson, Kansas.
 He just stayed at home and cried.
 He was sad.
 And the new mayor, Eric Schmidt.
 Yeah.
 Yeah, exactly.
 Also, the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri was murdered in replace of Eric Schmidt.
 Kansas City, my free mayor.
 So Dieter went, and before he went, like we do, he's like, I'm going to cover the store.
 Are there any outstanding questions I should think of?
 My biggest question was, what is Google's plan?
 Is there a plan just to make Comcast feel bad about itself?
 And it seems like that's the plan, actually.
 Because the internet service is 1,000 up, 1,000 down, which is bonkers.
 It's pretty cheap.
 It's like 70 bucks a month.
 You've got to pay, what, $300 to get it installed.
 Which is waived if you get a two-year commitment.
 Oh, it is?
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 So they've learned-
 It's pretty much nothing.
 Right.
 Because nobody's going to be like, I only want a year of super fast internet.
 I want to pay more for 20 times slower internet from Time Warner.
 But at the same time, too, if you just get the installation just done, it's free internet.
 It's five down, one up.
 Not great, but it's free.
 Right.
 And then the way they're building it is they're doing these rallies.
 And I think the rallies-
 The fiber hoods.
 The fiber hoods.
 I mean, that sounds to me like Google also wants to see what it's like when a city tries
 to tear itself apart.
 So the way it works is they've plotted out these different neighborhoods.
 They can put the fiber in.
 Are they?
 They can rally your neighborhood so everybody signs up.
 And if you have the most signups, you get it first.
 Question, is it possible to have fiber hood gerrymandering?
 I would hold my neighbors at gunpoint to make them sign up for this.
 If I was in Kansas City, I would literally be crawling, like walking the streets at night
 with a gun.
 Well, to be fair, $1,000 out of your pocket is 100 neighbors.
 Not a gun.
 Well, I'm not a good shot.
 So I wouldn't...
 I mean, I enjoy firing a gun, but I'm terrible at it.
 So maybe I would just have a really loud horn.
 Look, so that's how we're building it out.
 That's an interesting strategy.
 I mean, it's probably a good one considering the fact that Time Warner and Comcast, AT&T,
 all the major ISPs in the country pretty much dominate all the local chambers of commerce
 and politics and everything.
 So TC and I, if you don't know this, every day TC and I have a little conversation about
 how telecom companies have taken over all of American politics.
 And it's our goal to expose it.
 Yeah, I was just looking today, AT&T is like...
 As we were talking before the show, could someone like Apple buy AT&T with all their
 cash on hand?
 Because Apple has, what, 100 billion plus?
 Yeah.
 Well, AT&T makes more than that every year in revenue.
 So they'd be at least, what, 500 billion to buy out?
 Yeah.
 Sure.
 They're like, $1 trillion in assets.
 You just must buy it by five.
 I mean, that's the standard financial method.
 Everyone does that.
 No one can...
 Unless an oil company wants to buy a telecom.
 Apple should buy an oil company.
 Let's go back to...
 Wouldn't that be like Exxon sponsored by Apple and it would just like the ads would just
 be like a white background with like gushing oil?
 It's a white, black silhouette.
 It's beautiful.
 To your point, Time Warner Cable...
 Pollutionary.
 Never mind.
 I quit.
 This is the pollutionist Exxon yet.
 Goodbye.
 Go ahead.
 So actually, to your point, Time Warner Cable, this is an interesting story, not this week,
 but last week, maybe two weeks ago, Time Warner Cable was actually paying Kansas City employees
 to snoop on Google.
 They were feeling the burn.
 Did you see this?
 No.
 That's bonkers.
 I was looking up for a research the other day.
 Yeah.
 It's like this poster that says, AT&T employees share tips, rumors, and rumblings about Google
 construction for $50 gift cards.
 That's amazing.
 Clearly, they're feeling the burn.
 I love it.
 And the best part is that the Time Warner Cable logo is basically a giant eye of Sauron.
 It's looking over everything.
 So that's the broadband.
 Well, here's the thing that I think is interesting.
 That's the broadband piece of it.
 And that's awesome.
 And then there's this cable TV piece, which to me is super boring.
 And it's like, okay, you've given people really fast broadband.
 And the way they're going to distribute it in the home, if you get TV, is really interesting.
 Most people's routers can't handle 1,000 up, 1,000 down.
 There's a router called the network box, and it has Wi-Fi.
 It has ethernet jacks.
 It's super ugly because all cable boxes by requirement.
 That's not the cable box, right?
 It is and it isn't.
 Let me get through this.
 So there's the network box, which has that stuff.
 Then there are little boxes that you put at each of your televisions that turn your TVs
 that are themselves Wi-Fi access points, which is like, that's such a Google problem to have.
 Like, oh my God, my giant billionaire's mansion needs more Wi-Fi access points.
 But anyway, so that's a cool idea.
 They all interlink to the network box, which when you buy the TV service, can serve as
 a DVR, can record up to eight shows at once, and store them on a two terabyte storage box,
 which is separate.
 That all is a little clunky, but I get it because they're selling both TV and internet,
 so you have to split up the devices.
 But it's like the internet stuff is, and you get a terabyte of Google Drive, which at 1,000
 down is kind of like local storage, which is cool.
 But it's like the internet stuff is so interesting, just because of how fast it is.
 And then the TV stuff is so boring, except for you get eight channels, a slightly better
 interface or eight tuners, a slightly better interface, and they're giving you a Nexus
 7 user as a remote.
 But the pricing for the TV and the bundles and all that stuff is cable TV, and they don't
 have Disney shows.
 They don't have Time Warner shows, I don't think.
 They did get Viacom to sign up, which was pretty hilarious.
 I thought it was pretty awesome.
 Because they are constantly in lawsuits against Viacom.
 So they don't have CNN, they don't have the Disney channel.
 They don't have ESPN, which is the worst one.
 Yeah.
 AMC's also.
 Well, no, it's great.
 Kansas City, you should watch SB Nation on YouTube, a Google service.
 I'm just pimping for our company.
 Live TV, yeah.
 Anyway.
 I'm doing what I can.
 Good job, it's good.
 I get a bonus now.
 Do you?
 Yeah, I think.
 Can I get a bonus?
 10 shillings.
 Jim, can I call?
 Anyway, continue.
 Yeah, but also AMC is also not a part of this.
 So again, no one gets a Breaking Bad in Kansas City.
 Yeah, you can get that on Netflix, whatever.
 It's fine.
 Thousand down.
 Stream it.
 Stream all the episodes.
 Didn't you watch all Breaking Bad?
 Would that just be too horrible to watch all the episodes of Breaking Bad?
 I watched.
 That's the only way I watch TV.
 Yeah, I'll say.
 Is to watch everything in a binge in a weekend.
 I think I did 10 episodes.
 No, I do that.
 But that's linear.
 I'm saying you get eight TVs and you watch eight episodes of Breaking Bad at once.
 I might want to kill myself after that.
 And I love Breaking Bad.
 But I get so depressed after watching just one episode.
 Yeah.
 To watch eight at the same time.
 And I really think like the writers of that show sit around me like that character.
 People like him.
 Let's kill him.
 Killing would be easy.
 Let's.
 I also feel that way about Game of Thrones.
 I feel like and I'm not to spoil anything about Game of Thrones.
 I've never seen one episode of Game of Thrones.
 But Game of Thrones is literally there is never any payoff in that show.
 It's like they build and they build and they build.
 They're like they build this fantastic machine.
 There is nothing.
 And finally at the moment when they're going to switch on the machine, you're like finally
 months of setup for this machine.
 Oh, and we killed the guy.
 And it happens over and over and over again.
 But there's a lot of sex and weird monologues during sex, between sex, after sex.
 Yeah.
 It's my kind of weird.
 Finally.
 And then they kill the guy.
 Okay.
 So, I mean, that's Google Fiber.
 Anything else we need to know about Google Fiber?
 I mean, I think I feel like the with the channel issue, Google might have more leverage if
 they expand beyond Kansas City.
 But that's how do they do it?
 I think that's the real question.
 And I'm kind of not answering that question.
 Well, it seems like they're building a citizen army to demand Google Fiber in their neighborhoods.
 But at the same time, it's a very long term thing for them because they can't be making
 that much money off of this.
 And they're dipping their toes in some industries that they're having to learn.
 Like are they really going to become a cable company in the long term or are they just
 kind of dicking around?
 Well, right.
 And then there's also not the...
 I can turn anything into a neutrality conversation.
 But like...
 There we go.
 But no, I mean, they are doing this weird thing where they're a content provider, they're
 a technology company, now they own the pipe.
 And they're promising no overages, no caps.
 I mean, again, it's like are you...
 This only works if Google shows up in every city in America, which is prohibitively expensive
 even for Google.
 Right.
 And they say...
 And basically, they make Comcast feel bad about itself and Time Warner feel bad about
 itself for not providing comparable service.
 And it's like, you know who was never able to do that?
 Verizon.
 Verizon offered five years ago, Fios, which hasn't been developed.
 But that's what Fios is.
 It always has been faster than cable internet with much fewer restrictions.
 Some exceptions like my apartment.
 Do you have Fios and it's slow?
 I have Fios.
 I think I literally have the only building in Baltimore that has Fios.
 And it sucks?
 Yeah.
 Why does it...
 Because they run it through...
 It's not fiber, the last mile, I don't think.
 They run it through a third party.
 And I found out the hard way after they installed...
 So it's actually like a DSL line?
 Yeah.
 They just ran Fios.
 Oh, that sucks.
 That's awful.
 I'm sorry for you, man.
 Just keep drinking.
 I'm going to.
 Well, I mean, I just feel like what...
 Does Google want to build internet everywhere?
 Are they going to go after...
 Are they going to have a next city?
 Are they going to...
 Is this the same...
 Are they going to succumb to the same temptation as every other provider and prioritize Google
 Play?
 I mean, there's a lot of stuff you can do.
 At the moment, what's weird is that they're not integrating anything.
 So Google Play isn't integrated into the TV offerings and the on-demand offerings.
 Google TV isn't the TV, which is the most insane thing.
 It's another platform to go with TV and Q and Chromebox.
 They own Motorola, but as far as I know, Motorola didn't make the cable boxes.
 Nope.
 I mean, there's just like...
 You have to imagine at Google, people just walk around.
 They're like, you know what I want to do is build fiber in Kansas City.
 And someone's like, you do that.
 Don't talk to anybody else about it though.
 Just keep it a secret.
 Remember when we spent billions trying to get that spectrum?
 Okay, man, let's get cables now.
 Wow, F-bomb.
 We're not allowed to go in here?
 I don't know.
 You're literally our boss.
 You just tell us whether.
 If you don't know...
 I usually sit in that chair.
 That's the Freedom Chair.
 F for Freedom.
 Yes.
 The Freedom Chair.
 Freedom.
 Actually, I think your chair is the Freedom Chair.
 Yeah.
 I mean, the Paul Miller chair is literally like, I don't know what's going on.
 But Paul Miller is too polite to drop that bomb.
 That's why he gets the Freedom Chair.
 With great power, he's seen.
 He gets freedom bombs.
 What the freedom?
 Anything else with Google Fiber?
 Anything we're missing?
 Is the chatroom exploding with stuff that we've left out?
 I'm super interested in it and I hope Google brings it across the country because...
 I mean, but also it could be just like Google saying like, okay, these speeds are possible.
 Why isn't this public?
 Are they going to...
 I think the big question is, is Google making money on this?
 I don't think they can be.
 I don't know if they need to.
 This might be a strategy that has nothing to do with actually providing...
 They just want to completely...
 Well, if they want net neutrality.
 If you look back at all the lobbying money that AT&T and the other big telecoms have
 put into Washington, it's billions of dollars over that.
 Google might figure, well, let's build our own network and then we don't have to lobby
 to get these guys to manage their own networks the way we want to.
 What's funny is they should just buy Sprint.
 Can you imagine if they just bought Sprint and they were like, we're running our own
 carrier?
 I mean, at this point, why not?
 I'm okay with that if they keep Dan Hesse because he's just a handsome guy.
 Wouldn't it be crazy if Google bought Motorola and then they bought Sprint and then they
 just created their own and then they completely sealed off Kansas City and I was just like,
 you could enter the Google dome and everything is perfect, but everything you did would be
 tracked.
 It would be like that big glass dome in Battlefield Earth.
 Yeah.
 That'd be great.
 It'd be like the ultimate in fascist states, I suppose.
 It's funny because Google has its hands everywhere and it does have a TV station now and it has
 Google TV and it has Chromebox and it has Q.
 Wait, what's its TV station?
 I don't know if it's fiber TV or whatever it is.
 Oh, I thought they owned a local TV station in Kansas City too.
 I would not be surprised.
 It's like all these groups are not working together.
 There's no unification.
 Do you think Marissa Meyer quit because they were going to make her do the weather?
 That would be amazing if Sergey and Larry were like the anchors.
 He's like, today's top story, I'm still wearing weird shoes.
 Take it away.
 I'm coming to you live from my Google last handset.
 I am looking at Marissa Meyer.
 Eyes up.
 Yes, we're doing this right.
 Wow.
 Wow.
 Got weird again.
 Go ahead, TC.
 Say something smart about policy.
 Larry Page would do that or no, Sergey Brin would do that just for the opportunity to
 jump out of the blue.
 Is this what it's like to have Creighton tell you that you... Let's move on.
 Creighton's doing this to me.
 If I was really Josh, I would just ignore you.
 I just want you to know.
 I wouldn't wrap this up.
 I'd be like, let's take some calls.
 All right, let's move on.
 Let's take some calls.
 You want to take calls?
 Are we taking calls?
 About what?
 If you want to be verbally harassed.
 Is there anybody in Kansas City?
 I will take a call from somebody who is actually in Kansas City.
 If those persons... If such persons are available.
 Hi, Kansas City.
 You're on the bone zone.
 All right.
 Let's move on while we wait for calls to come in.
 Let's talk about OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion because that's not confusing to say.
 Those names are not getting unwieldy at all.
 It came out this week.
 I did a review.
 What's actually interesting about our review is we were given a review unit, Retina Display
 MacBook Pro from Apple with Mountain Lion on it that had some features, one specific
 feature that isn't on the release, which is Facebook integration.
 We wrote about it.
 Then people are like, you are lying.
 This isn't completely... We have pictures of the Facebook book on there.
 I'm getting angry emails from people who are like, you're lying.
 Apple lied.
 They pulled it at the last minute.
 They hate Facebook.
 I'm like, just read the review.
 It's coming out.
 The Facebook stuff is coming out with iOS 6.
 I thought you had the same build as everyone else.
 I remember Tom was trying to check.
 No.
 I have the one I bought.
 Okay.
 I have Mountain Lion on my regular work computer.
 Then I have a review unit, which I have to send back.
 The review unit has Facebook stuff in it.
 Okay.
 That's great.
 We played with it.
 Josh and I both made accounts and imported our Facebook.
 The Facebook stuff is awful.
 Flat out, it's not ready yet.
 I hope that in these next few months they fix it because it doesn't respect anything
 about Facebook.
 It treats Facebook as a vast database of contacts that you want with you all the time.
 For me, Facebook is not that thing.
 Facebook is a collection of relationships that I've allowed to deteriorate over the
 years.
 Now I just stock people from afar.
 That's I believe what Facebook is meant to be.
 I'm not 100% sure.
 No, it isn't.
 No, Facebook is fundamentally a system for voyeuristic college kids that want to spy
 on each other.
 Yes.
 I actually remember a point when I left school and my social circle all grew up and got jobs.
 One of my friends remarked to me that Facebook had gotten incredibly boring because no one
 went on spring break anymore.
 So anyway, I hope... We don't need to talk about it at length, but it dumps everything
 into your contacts with no regard for who's on your family list or whatever.
 You mean they didn't learn from Palm with Synergy?
 They did not learn from Palm with Synergy, which is funny because we complained about
 that at length.
 Past is prologue.
 It's awful.
 It's really terrible.
 It dumps everybody's birthday into your calendar.
 So Josh is like... Josh just friends everybody on Facebook because he just friends everybody.
 You can be Josh's Facebook friend.
 It's really weird too because-
 He has 2,900 Facebook friends and they're all on his birthday calendar.
 So you can just turn it off.
 I mean it's fine.
 You can just turn it off.
 It all goes away.
 It doesn't ruin anything.
 It's not permanent, but it's a little bit broken.
 They have months to go.
 The rest of it though I think is great.
 What I was saying to Paul yesterday on The Verge was it feels like Apple did this thing
 where in 2006 they said that the Mac is the digital hub.
 It's the center of your world.
 Everything feeds into the Mac and everything comes back out.
 I think that's a lot of pressure on the OS X team.
 It's got to actually be that thing.
 Then when they introduced iCloud they said, we're demoting the Mac and the PC to just
 another client of the Cloud.
 Maybe that's true and maybe that's working.
 But it feels like the OS X team had that pressure removed to be the hub and they could focus
 on making it work better with the Internet.
 So you get share buttons everywhere.
 There's all this iCloud integration everywhere.
 iCloud to me still feels really unfocused.
 It hasn't kind of decided what it wants to be when it grows up and there's no place to
 go.
 I think that's the main thing about iCloud that is confusing to people.
 You're like, I have this product with iCloud.
 What do I do?
 I'm like, don't worry, it just makes everything better.
 It saves files.
 Where?
 In the Cloud.
 In your hard drive.
 I think Apple needs to build a central window.
 Just to let you know what it's doing.
 Here's iCloud.
 Open it up and here it is.
 Photo stream, for example.
 There's really no way to manage photo stream.
 I had to delete.
 I had to go into the iCloud settings on the web the other day and completely zero out
 my photo stream because all my machines are out of sync.
 So I delete an image from one machine and put it to sleep and then open it again.
 That sync hadn't hit my other computer, so it would sync the image back.
 It was a really embarrassing image, too.
 I was drunk.
 So it's like...
 It was like most of my images.
 It's like every image you have.
 Drunk.
 Drunk.
 Whispering drunk.
 Quiet noises.
 I'm sober.
 I'm not a whisper drunk.
 I have a friend who is a really whispery...
 He's like, I have a secret.
 And I'm like, it's a secret that you've been drinking for eight hours.
 Yes, it is.
 Now, you know for a fact I am a very loud, obnoxious drunk.
 You're drunk right now.
 I'm too quiet to be drunk.
 How's it going over there, TC?
 Speaking of...
 I don't know, man.
 This isn't Makers.
 It's not doing it for me.
 All right.
 So let's get back on track.
 So the iCloud stuff is great.
 I think they need to build it out.
 The messages, iMessages, another big feature.
 It works really well if you live in a completely contained world of iMessage, which you can
 not do right now.
 Because if you have an iPhone, for example, your iMessage is tied to your phone number,
 and on the computer it's tied to your email address, and those things are not compatible.
 Again, iOS 6, it's coming out.
 They're going to unify the accounts.
 So then it's possible you could live in a completely unified iMessage world.
 And I think that could be really cool.
 Right now it's a little disjointed, but I tend to use ADM anyway for the other services.
 So if Messages kind of just figures it out with iMessage, that would be awesome.
 That would be great.
 I think, for example, right now I'm using ADM or Addy.
 I'm not sure which way it is.
 I use it for Google Talk, and now I'm carrying an Android phone.
 It does sync everything up.
 It's sent and received.
 And I love that.
 I actually love that with my Android phone now is that I can actually take a chat and
 just take it with me on the go.
 Thus not needing text messages, not worry about that.
 Can I just say this is one of the features I liked about Palm WebOS when it was in its
 prime?
 I'm never going to stop talking about Palm.
 Did it ever have a prime?
 Welcome to the Vergecast.
 You're going to fit right in here.
 Did WebOS ever have a prime?
 A prime?
 Like in its prime?
 Was there ever a period that you could refer to as WebOS's prime?
 At the CES Kino when it was introduced.
 Yeah, like June 2008.
 Such a good day.
 Not June 2008.
 It was like January 2009.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 I mean, it says Mountain Lion, but it's $20.
 And you get, you know, it's I hated Lion.
 Hated it.
 Couldn't stand it.
 Why did you hate Lion?
 It was a piece of junk.
 What else is there?
 It was slow.
 Okay, the thing about...
 Mountain Lion was like, you know what's better than using a computer?
 Just waving your hand rationally over a trackpad.
 I don't even know if, what am I running on this?
 I don't even know.
 So the thing about these is like they're very...
 That's got to be Lion.
 Isn't that new?
 I think it's new.
 Yeah.
 It's yeah, Mountain Lion.
 Yeah.
 You don't even know.
 Or Lion.
 Dude, I don't know Mountain Lion.
 I'm drunk.
 Yeah.
 Dude, I have a secret.
 I upgraded to Mountain Lion.
 Why are you quiet Batman?
 Where's Haku?
 I'm drunk.
 Did you upgrade?
 I upgraded, yes.
 I mean, you know what?
 It didn't break any workflows.
 It has enough little things.
 It's fine.
 If you have a Mac, you should upgrade.
 But what I think is interesting is that we're at this point where I think Snow Leopard was
 the pinnacle of the desktop operating system.
 Apple runs a little bit faster.
 They're doing yearly now.
 And Microsoft is on this three-year cycle.
 So what we're seeing now with I think Windows 8 is Microsoft is saying, okay, we hit the
 peak of what you could do with the desktop.
 Let's just throw that away.
 And here's a bunch of squares.
 And that'll be our tablet.
 Terrifying.
 And on the PC, you can do both.
 And I think that's really interesting.
 I think that's Microsoft saying, here's our vision of the future.
 I think Apple's vision of the future is very much like, how do we make this, if we're going
 to call this just a client of the cloud, how do we make it the best client of the cloud
 for its form factor?
 And what I think is even more interesting is that they're really not going to put touch
 screens and laptops for the foreseeable future as far as I can tell.
 Because they talk trash about it all the time.
 They say the trackpad is the best touch input device for this form factor.
 Right, because you don't want to be typing and then like, switch your hand up.
 Maybe you do.
 I don't think you do.
 Or doesn't mean you want to.
 Until it does.
 Microsoft's saying that's a great idea, right?
 Of course.
 But Apple, the most interesting thing to me about Mountain Lion is it feels most at home
 on a MacBook Air.
 In particular, not even the 13 inch, on an 11 inch.
 Because you have a lot of full screen apps, you're doing all the swiping, there's notification
 center.
 It's designed to basically feel like an iPad Pro.
 Yeah, I mean, we keep talking about the iOSification, or however you want to say it, of OS X.
 Or if you want to go back to your earlier analogy, iCloud is a new platform, iOS, OS
 X are maybe just portals into that.
 And the one thing about Mountain Lion that they're doing is they're now sandboxing apps.
 They're asking you to sandbox apps.
 Put it in the Mac App Store, we'll get you some.
 Yeah, they're turning PCs into basically just like, really fancy smartphones.
 Which is good and bad.
 But it's funny because they're turning, I think these, 70% of their sales for laptops.
 And I think they're optimizing OS X.
 They're optimizing OS X for laptops.
 Like if you want to see the dumbest thing in the world, open text edit, full screen
 app mode on a 27 inch iMac.
 With two monitors, which I have at home, two monitors.
 And it's like a giant text editing window.
 No menu bar, and then linen on the other display.
 It's like, this button makes my computer more useless than if I just turned it off.
 You literally cannot do anything with it.
 It's just on.
 It's just humming at you, creating heat.
 Right, I mean, even their hardware designs on desktop are all based on laptop design.
 It's a trackpad.
 No, there is no mouse.
 They're shipping the mouse.
 I keep asking when they're going to swap out the magic trackpad to be the default on the
 iMac.
 And they're always like, well, I mean, it's coming.
 It has to come.
 It's happening.
 Maybe the next round of iMacs.
 But I think that's what, that is the interesting thing about Mountain Lion.
 Like, in terms of like, should you buy it?
 You should buy it.
 It's a good operating system.
 I hated Lion.
 I love Snow Leopard.
 I really like Mountain Lion.
 I think most people that I've talked to have upgraded.
 TC didn't even know what he was running.
 It's just like a ninja update.
 But I mean, he must have been a PC guy.
 These are also iterative updates.
 They're evolutionary.
 They're not revolutionary.
 We're still using basically the same formula.
 But I think this one is, it's Apple's, so that's the thing.
 It's Apple take these one year little steps.
 Right.
 Right.
 And they're headed down this path to making their PCs more like friendly embedded devices.
 And I think the PCs are going to get smaller.
 I think, I think this 13 inch MacBook Air is like, this is their consumer device.
 If you're buying a PC from Mac, they expect you to buy this one.
 Yes.
 I think they expect a lot of people to buy that 11 inch one.
 I don't think they expect a lot of people to buy the iMac.
 I just don't.
 I mean, the operating system isn't kind of built for it.
 Like it works really well, but it also feels like snow leopard in a way.
 Because you're not, you can't use all of these interface features and stuff with it.
 Microsoft, you know, they're taking bigger jumps every time.
 And I, you know, actually Mary Jo Foley said to us on the show and on the verge last night
 that she thinks Microsoft will start speeding up to be more iterative.
 So Microsoft has to take bigger jumps to make them more noticeable.
 But this is like the moment, right?
 When the age of the classic desktop operating system is like over and it's over because
 Apple has taken one more little step in that direction.
 Microsoft's about to take a huge step in that direction.
 And that's, that to me is what's interesting, not a $20 service pack to Lion.
 Right.
 But I mean, it's also things like we have all these phones and tablets that we use almost
 as work devices.
 There's certainly what we use more than laptops now.
 I fire somebody from my phone every day.
 That's my only job.
 We have a special verge app for firing.
 That would be amazing.
 Available now on the app store.
 With the new update, you can actually fire multiple people at the same time.
 Group firing.
 Threatened firing.
 Oh my God.
 Is this somebody from Kansas City?
 Oh, nice.
 Yes, we have a caller from Kansas City.
 How do I do this?
 I just push this button?
 Oh, and while we're doing that, we actually, I got someone told me on Twitter, Luke Chambers,
 who does a bunch of our verge gifts for fun.
 He was telling me that Google does, Google has said they're going to make profit off
 the fiber network and TV.
 Profit.
 Profit.
 You know what it is, if they're going to layer pages, they're going to move to Kansas City
 and pay more than everybody else.
 So I just push this button to the left?
 And then how do I, really crucial, how do I hang up on this person if they turn out
 to be a maniac?
 There's a button that says drop in the same column.
 There's a button marked drop?
 Drop.
 Okay, here we go.
 The squirrel looks fun.
 Kansas City, you're on the line.
 Yeah.
 Hi.
 This is Spencer from Kansas City, Missouri.
 Oh, is that, so is there, let's clear something up.
 Which one is better?
 I'd say the Missouri sign.
 Why is that?
 Can you, I mean, this is very confusing to me.
 Can you explain to me the difference?
 I actually don't ever go to the Kansas side a whole lot.
 I don't really know.
 Is that the other side of the tracks?
 Are Kansas City, Missouri people allowed to even talk to Kansas City, Kansas people?
 Is there like a rivalry?
 Is this a Cobras and Panthers thing?
 Not that I know of.
 I mean, I haven't been in Kansas City for too long.
 I just started going to school here actually.
 I got you.
 Yeah.
 Would you say your side, the Missouri side has the good reputation or the bad reputation?
 The Missouri side has a good reputation.
 Oh, okay.
 All right, goody two shoes.
 Talk to us.
 What?
 Nothing.
 Tell me about Google Fiber.
 What are your thoughts?
 Are you signed up?
 Did you pre-register?
 Yeah, I pre-registered.
 I signed up.
 Yeah, I pre-registered.
 My apartment actually didn't show up whenever I went on because I live in an apartment and
 didn't show up.
 So I had to like make up some apartment number if you could.
 Well, you're fading out.
 We lost you.
 Do you have AT&T by chance?
 I'm fading out.
 Yeah, I'm on AT&T.
 I am, yeah.
 They all do.
 Yeah.
 Okay, so you registered a fake apartment number.
 What happened?
 Kind of.
 It worked.
 I mean, I don't know what's going to happen whenever they actually come to install it.
 So we'll see how that happens.
 Are you going to go door to door asking all your friends and neighbors to sign up for
 your Fiberhood?
 I'd like to.
 We're getting close to reaching the goal already.
 Oh, really?
 Just like organically?
 What you really need to do is incorporate a small business and resell Google Fiber to
 all your apartment neighbors.
 That's what Steve Wozniak would do.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 I thought about that actually.
 You would.
 I'm not even...
 I'm dead serious.
 That's what Steve Wozniak would do.
 Just organically, you're reaching your neighborhood's goal.
 Are people talking about it?
 What's the vibe on the street?
 Is that what they say?
 Yeah.
 Well, pretty much everybody's been talking about it for a long time, waiting for it to
 come and now it's finally actually starting to come.
 People are pretty excited about it.
 Has anyone actually been worried about this giant company coming in and trying to add
 wires and everything everywhere?
 Is there any concern over big corporation talking to medium to little sized city and
 all that?
 Not that I've heard mostly just good things at all.
 I've heard at my school, we have pretty terrible internet there.
 They have a thing where if there's a school or something nearby, if they get enough people
 to pre-register, then that school will get it for free, Google Fire for free.
 I'm hoping my school gets that too.
 That's awesome.
 That's the sort of thing.
 But that's...
 I think what Ross is asking, I'm curious if you've noticed this at all.
 Is there any worried the government is too cozy?
 The government of Kansas City is too cozy with Google?
 That's what TC and I always worry about is like, the government's too cozy with AT&T.
 It does keep you up at night.
 Panicked 5 a.m. phone calls from TC saying AT&T is coming for the government.
 It's weird.
 I'm like TC, don't go back to sleep.
 They already came.
 They already won.
 Is there any concern that Google's having too much of an influence in Kansas City?
 No, not that I've heard.
 I've just heard lots of mostly positive things and everybody supports it.
 Let me ask you, what kind of internet do you have now?
 I have a time Warner.
 What are your speeds?
 I have 20 megabits per second.
 Up and down?
 Not up.
 I think just down, not up, no.
 Do you actually get that?
 Do I actually get that sometimes?
 Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
 If Google actually delivers a thousand...
 What's funny is that Google has so much more headroom.
 If they promise you a thousand and deliver you 700, no one's going to complain.
 Well, that's really interesting.
 You're cool with...
 Are you going to $300 two-year fee?
 You're cool with all that stuff or two-year contract?
 Well, yeah, I'm going to do a two-year contract.
 I'll probably just get the internet, not the TV service.
 I don't really care about that a whole lot.
 Yeah, so are you going to...
 Do you have TV right now?
 Are you going to keep Time Warner for TV?
 No.
 No, you're not.
 You're just going to...
 I don't even have cable.
 I just stream everything.
 You're just going to BitTorrent everything so fast?
 Okay, so last question before we let you go.
 Are you hearing that from a lot of people that they're going to do internet only or
 most people getting both?
 Do you know?
 I haven't heard much.
 I mean, I haven't talked to anybody since they've announced the plans really about it.
 So I mean, I would assume most people would just do the internet.
 I mean, most of my friends don't really want to hold onto TV.
 They just stream stuff.
 What an odd distinction.
 It's almost like it's arbitrary.
 You're not Kim Dotcom, right?
 Calling us from Kansas City.
 Oh, God, that'd be so awesome if Kim Dotcom had a mansion in Kansas City with Google Fiber.
 He's like, we're trying to say he is seeking asylum in Kansas City right now.
 He's like, this is the new home of Mega Upload.
 I'm getting a standard Google Fiber connection thrown down.
 Okay, man.
 Well, it was really good to have you call in.
 I don't know how Josh ends these usually, so I'm just going to hang up on you.
 Good luck deceiving Google with your address, even though they know literally everything
 about you.
 Good luck getting Google Fiber.
 So you're saying your house isn't on Google Maps?
 Well, it shows up.
 I can search for it on Google Maps and it shows up on there.
 But then whenever I try to do it on there...
 Oh, they just hung up on me.
 Caller, we're sorry.
 What did you think the drop button did?
 I don't know.
 It's not base.
 I'm sorry.
 I guess I was hoping it would drop a piece.
 Caller, we love you.
 I'm sorry.
 Spencer, I'm really sorry.
 Womp, womp.
 Google finds...
 Can do this for me because I just killed Spencer.
 Google find his home, which I'm sure you already...
 What was his address?
 I don't remember what his address was.
 I don't think we want to be telling this address on the broadcast.
 Wait, so are they not doing apartments?
 I don't know.
 But if his house is on Google Maps, but this is like another total...
 They built this in isolation, like in a bunker somewhere at Google.
 They're like, here it is.
 We didn't use any of our other products.
 I mean, quite frankly, it's not just like Android is frightening.
 I'm so sorry that I hung up on you.
 You can come back and say a whole bunch of other words if you want.
 We just won't be on the air when you do it.
 Google itself is a fragmented company.
 There's no part of it that seems to be talking to one another.
 And the other thing I was thinking about too, because Google's good about like, oh, we do
 a bunch of projects, we get bored with them, spring cleaning, it's gone.
 Dude, if they shut down Google Fiber in Kansas City, it's like...
 10 years from now, it's spring cleaning.
 Guys, we're bored.
 Sorry.
 We got a year.
 Eric calls the mayor.
 He's like, have you ever heard of Google Wave?
 Because you're about to know the pain.
 He's calling both mayors at once.
 Okay.
 Because he doesn't know how to do a conference call.
 No Google Hangout.
 Can you guys hear each other through my brain?
 That'd be such an Eric Schmidt thing to do.
 I don't know why it would be an Eric Schmidt thing to do, but I just think he's trying
 to do some conference call with Google Glass, jumping out of a blimp or something.
 Guys.
 And then the next day they would do it again.
 Yeah.
 Guys, it's Eric on 5 Miles Out.
 What's our next topic?
 Up.
 Yeah.
 These crazy Apple.
 Next topic, speaking of Apple, was a transition I was going to give 10 minutes ago.
 We had Spencer.
 I know, Spencer.
 I'm happy for it.
 Sorry.
 It's all about Apple versus Samsung for the rest of the podcast.
 Is it really?
 It is.
 You know, we've named it.
 It's called Snapple.
 Snapple.
 Are you serious?
 That's unacceptable.
 Yeah, because we had Oracle.
 Well, it was going to...
 This is such a stupid story.
 Can we be clear that...
 So we had Oracle.
 This is a stupid story.
 Let's go through it.
 Well, we had...
 You need to know because we're going to...
 So we had Oracle.
 Yes.
 Which was great.
 Google plus Oracle.
 And then Brian Bishop spent a month and a half at the Oracle trial, and he's going to
 spend another month and a half at the Samsung trial.
 So we're preparing for it, we're having all these meetings.
 And Matt McCary, who's our other legal correspondent, said, we need a name like Oracle so we can
 file this stuff.
 And his first idea was Sam Supple.
 And that actually was...
 It lasted for like two days.
 It was really weird.
 And finally Brian was like, let's Snapple.
 But AppSung.
 Yeah, I was like...
 AppSung is good.
 It's a police-icle.
 Where does the N come from in Snapple?
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 Snapple is good though.
 I like Snapple.
 It's catchy.
 And it's delicious.
 In case anybody would like to bring me a Snapple.
 Mac and Sung.
 So out of...
 What?
 This man is drunk.
 He's hosted the podcast.
 I love my vodkastables.
 Okay.
 Yes.
 So there was two things that came out of it.
 One fun, one more interesting.
 I like this.
 I like being the one who gets bored by the legal story.
 Oh, that's great.
 I don't want Josh to have such a look of glee.
 Let's talk about the fun part first, which is a bunch of iPad and iPhone prototypes.
 Yes.
 We had iPads with kickstands.
 Can I stop you and tell the people where they came from?
 Yes, please.
 Legal this.
 Okay.
 So before they go to trial, both sides file their trial briefs, which is like an outline
 of their arguments.
 They basically tell the judge what they're going to do.
 Here's our trial brief.
 So when you're ruling on stuff, you can say what's going on.
 Most of those briefs were completely sealed, full of secret information, all redacted and
 blacked out.
 At some point, the judge decided to unredact them.
 And at three o'clock in the morning yesterday, piles of PDFs hit the court's filing system.
 Do we know what was coming yesterday at 3 AM?
 Were we aware ahead of time or is it just kind of-
 It just happened.
 Okay.
 And so people have been going through them like crazy and there's so much stuff in them.
 And there's all these pictures of old iPhone and iPad prototypes.
 So let me ask this.
 Did Samsung say, we want to see Apple's old prototypes to use them against them?
 Like how does that work?
 Oh yeah.
 So the way this works is both early in the process, before the trial, they do what's
 called discovery.
 And discovery is usually where you settle a case because both sides ask each other for
 information.
 It costs a lot of money.
 It takes forever.
 And somewhere in there you say, this is just not worth it.
 Let's settle.
 Which is what Apple and Samsung should have done.
 And it's insane to me that there's going to be a trial one day.
 We're seeing this because it went past discovery.
 It went past discovery.
 And so Samsung sent Apple a letter saying, we want all relevant information regarding
 the development of the iPhone.
 You have to have, you can't be overbroad.
 You can't just say, give us all your emails.
 So they can literally send them search terms.
 They can send them all kinds of very specific requests.
 Apple does the same to Samsung.
 We want all of your marketing information for the Galaxy S, whatever it is.
 And they trade them back and forth and then they construct, the other sides get to construct
 arguments with it.
 So we're looking at, the Apple stuff that we're looking at is Samsung has carefully
 selected out of all the discovery they received, they've selected the things that make their
 case look the best.
 And so what they're showing, and Samsung's big argument is in 2006 when Apple was developing
 the iPhone, we were doing the exact same thing with our phones and we were headed towards
 the same place.
 So all of these design patents Apple has on like a square basically, they're invalid because
 we were developing concurrent, we're not copying them.
 All this development is happening in parallel.
 And Apple's even looking to other companies like Sony to see, in their minds to imagine
 how Sony would design an iPhone.
 And they pulled out these old renders, which are crazy where, Johnny Ive basically directed
 one of his designers to imagine how Sony would build their phone.
 And they came up with what looks like what would have happened if Sony built the phone.
 It has a jog wheel on the side, like crazy stuff, right?
 It does look very eerily similar to the iPhone 4.
 It looks a lot like the iPhone 4.
 And so that's, I think that that's all fine, right?
 I mean, that's why this is silly.
 You know, Samsung definitely has a point here.
 Then you know, and some of the other renders are crazy.
 There's iPad with a kickstand.
 There's an iPod touch that is actually an iPod with like a hard drive in it.
 It's like this thick.
 It's just crazy stuff on there.
 So when I'm looking at it, I see three distinct like design ideas.
 One is the iPhone 4 one we keep seeing.
 The other one is this like Battlestar Galactica corners cut thing.
 That looks like a Motorola essentially.
 I have a source by the way, who says all of these, these are all just like riffs.
 Like they were just spitting out ideas and none of them made it past.
 They were quote, none of them passed the sniff test.
 But there was one beyond that that was so interesting to me.
 It was on the iPhone and the iPad.
 It looks just like the Lumia 900.
 Yeah, that one.
 That is so insane.
 That one was, they were basing it on the iPod mini.
 It was their extruded design they were calling it.
 So I mean, I think that's a really valid, on Samsung's part, very valid to say they're
 going through ideas or only so many ideas.
 They're hitting on all these notes.
 What I think is really interesting is like you're saying, like they definitely hit on
 design ideas that we are now seeing.
 But one of the cut corners about us and that looks like any number of Motorola phones,
 right?
 It does.
 What's funny of course is that Apple rejected all these ideas and haven't picked up.
 But that's, I think Samsung has a super valid point there, right?
 Apple did all this design.
 And you know, if you look at the patents Apple is asserting, you know, the design patent
 for the iPad really is like a rectangle, you know?
 And it's like, you know?
 It's a slate without a keyboard.
 Yeah, you know, I think Samsung has referred to it as Apple's black rectangle problem.
 And I think that's what they're going to present to the jury, right?
 Is that you can't have a patent on a black rectangle.
 And I think they're going to say that pretty loudly to the jury.
 I think they're going to make that point pretty clear.
 On the flip side, Apple's, the documents Apple has taken from Samsung is presenting a case
 with show that Samsung is laser focused on Apple.
 And they are, I mean, Samsung's strategy according to these documents was the beat Apple strategy.
 And they pay endless attention to what Apple's doing.
 They have outside designers and consultants including Google, say your products look too
 much like Apple's products.
 There's a survey from Best Buy, they figured out why people were returning the Galaxy Tab
 to Best Buy.
 The number one reason people were returning Galaxy Tabs to Best Buy was they thought it
 was an iPad 2, which is like super damning, right?
 It wasn't.
 So I think seven out of 30 stores said lack of product knowledge.
 One of those stores said we thought it was an iPad 2.
 So like we don't know like if they can draw it out any further, that's hugely stemming.
 But it's also the key next problem.
 We also just don't know if people just associate tablet with an iPad.
 I mean, that could be the case.
 Yeah, but I'm saying with the standard for these design patents, assuming there's two
 ways for Samsung to fight Apple's patents.
 One is to say the patent is invalid, which is the black rectangle problem.
 You can't patent a black rectangle.
 Fine.
 So there's that.
 I think they're going to do that as hard as they can.
 The second is to say, well, even if you can, we're not infringing it.
 And the standard for infringing is if you're deceiving people into thinking, if you've
 taken design elements and you're deceiving people into believing that your product is
 the other product by your use of those design elements.
 And if you've got data and if you've got data that people actually believe that your product
 is the other product and they're making a mistake in purchasing, then Apple has a case.
 And maybe you should not be able to make such a case.
 But that's what the law says.
 And the law has always said that for a long time.
 And Apple has that case, if that is true.
 So of the patents that are still in play, because I know they dropped a few before this
 went to trial, is it just hardware or is it hardware and software?
 We're talking about the blips, the iconography.
 I believe Apple has, and Apple's patents are dumb and Samsung's patents are equally dumb.
 So, I mean, they are.
 Just the fact that this is happening is, again, stupid.
 So Apple's patents are a bunch of design patents, a lot of stuff on the iPhone design, a lot
 of stuff on the iPad design, and a bunch of utility patents.
 So the scroll back patent, there's a pinch to zoom related patent.
 It's not the actual thing of pinch to zoom, but one that's related to how it works and
 something else.
 Samsung's patents are like three patents of like 3G technologies, which are these fran
 standards patents that governments are involved in arguing about now.
 So the three on the 3G, and then they have their own insane utility patents on things
 like you are using a menu while your phone also plays music.
 And it's like, you know, those patents are just as dumb, right?
 I mean, I get it.
 You have to file a lawsuit, but just at a holistic level, you look at the things that
 these companies are claiming are costing them millions of dollars in lost sales.
 And it's like, all of this is dumb.
 What about texting and watching a video at the same time?
 They also have a patent on texting and watching video at the same time.
 And yet I'm doing it.
 He's really doing it.
 Nice.
 Wow.
 Thank you, Creighton.
 I don't know if they have a patent on texting and watching video at the same time, but if
 they don't, I would say they're missing a golden opportunity.
 I've only seen baristas do that.
 Now, here's part of the findings that just got released that I thought was actually kind
 of interesting.
 AT&T, even AT&T went, you guys are going too far with this stupid stuff.
 Yeah, with the ads, the fanboy ads.
 Yeah, AT&T said, like, we are opposed to your fanboy ads.
 We were just making fun of fanboys for either side or whatever.
 Right.
 Well, I mean, that's like, why should AT&T tell Samsung what to do?
 I know.
 It seems like we're selling both phones, so obviously you don't want that economy.
 But like, there is a lot of vitriol that went along into this.
 I think there is.
 But that's not illegal to be angry.
 If the result of this, I mean, if the result of this, at the end of the day, if the result
 of this is that Samsung stops paying attention to Apple because they have gotten slapped
 on the wrist by a lawsuit, which is costing a lot of money in sort of the absolute sense,
 but relative to Samsung, like, whatever.
 If the end result is that they learn to not copy Apple, which they have done in many ways
 for a long time, then the S3 is a really great example.
 The S3 does not look like an iPhone.
 No one's going to confuse it for it at this point.
 Samsung has so much market share that they've done a great job of saying, this is a Samsung
 product.
 You will not confuse it anymore.
 Right.
 And if that's the thing that they've learned, then that's great.
 I actually think it's the way better looking phone in person than it looked when I saw
 it online.
 Oh, yeah.
 Do you remember when it came out, there's all those pictures that said this was the
 first phone designed by a lawsuit?
 And that's really ridiculous, right?
 I mean, that's Samsung's design.
 If that's true, then Samsung's designers should all be fired.
 Because there are so many phones on the market.
 They all look radically different.
 And there might only be X amount of ideas, but Apple only picked one.
 And they definitely put out one phone a year.
 So like all those other ideas are still out in that extruded shape that they didn't use
 it.
 Nokia is using is actually really good.
 Everyone likes that one.
 Two cameras, man.
 What is that thing?
 It's the EVO 3D.
 Why do you have that?
 My problem is why couldn't you do two cameras and a kickstand?
 Why do you have an EVO 3D?
 And that would be the most perfect.
 Is that what's hip in Baltimore?
 It's totally everywhere.
 Is everyone in Baltimore just taking 3D pictures?
 I got to take 3D pictures of the police when they're beating people so I can be more realistic.
 The wire, 3D.
 Right.
 EVO be coming, yo.
 Wow.
 Ross is fired.
 Super fired.
 No, I mean, like if that's the takeaway from this, then they should do it.
 But what they should really do is not have a trial.
 Do you know how much this trial is going to get absurdly nasty?
 They're going to drag each other through the mud in the worst possible way.
 What's great for us and super exciting is that we're going to see all of these internal
 documents.
 We're going to see all these emails from Apple executives directing the design of these products,
 which is fascinating.
 We're already seeing all this stuff from Samsung about how they relentlessly focus on Apple.
 Apple has a conference room.
 This is also in the documents.
 Apple has a conference room called the Android War Room where all they do is they do competitive
 analysis of Android products in their marketing.
 That's fascinating.
 Right.
 But it's also like a waste.
 It's an argument.
 What you want the argument to be about is here are two products, which one is better,
 which one of them helps most people do more things better.
 This is going to be a month and a half sideshow over the Android War Room and whether or not
 Samsung was too focused on Apple.
 It's fascinating for us because it's just, it's cool to see the inside of these companies.
 No, I'm ready.
 I'm actually really jealous that I'm not going to San Jose for the trial.
 I'm super fascinated.
 I'm not even a legal person, but I love going through these documents.
 You are not a legal, you're an illegal person.
 I immigrated to this country from- Too sexy.
 I know.
 So drunk.
 Anyway, and other companies, Sony, Motorola, Google itself, get this insight into Apple
 that they never had and this insight into Samsung.
 That is a pressure for both of them to settle.
 This is going down on Monday.
 I think Matt is working on a huge piece talking about, he's going to break down all of the
 patents that are at stake, all of the trade dress claims that are at stake on an Apple
 side and Samsung's patents.
 The next month is, I think Monday is jury selection.
 Samsung I believe is going to ask potential jurors what kind of phones they use and how
 many Apple products they own, which is fascinating.
 That's one thing I was thinking about is there could be nationalism at play here too.
 This is taking place in an American- Oh, can I say something really quick about
 that?
 There was a huge groundswell of impeach Judge Lucy Coe a couple of weeks ago when she handed
 down the injunction against the Galaxy Nexus and the Galaxy Tab.
 It was like, she's a bad judge, she's in Apple's pocket, she's a fangirl.
 All this terrible stuff to a judge who was appointed by the United States Congress to
 make a federal district court, which is crazy.
 I cannot stress how stupid that is, just fundamentally dumb because a month before this, she handed
 down a string of rulings against Apple for Samsung and there was a wave of stuff saying
 that she was biased because she's Korean, which is insane.
 On top of all of that, this is Apple and Samsung, their lawyers are there.
 If Judge Lucy Coe has some improper bias, it's their job to file the motion and say
 this judge has to go.
 The story wouldn't be she's biased against Apple, the story would be Samsung's lawyers
 are blowing it.
 If you know things that's true, Apple's had law firms removed from its case because Samsung
 has complained about really trivial conflicts.
 A lawyer on this firm used to be at another law firm and at that law firm, that law firm,
 another lawyer participated in one of our cases.
 That was enough of a chain to have a law firm kicked off Apple's side.
 The Galaxy Nexus, the ban, she actually initially denied it and it got appealed up and the appeals
 court told her to re-decide the case because they decided that she had misinterpreted the
 law.
 She only did it after the appeals court basically told her to.
 I'm just saying, all that stuff about Lucy Coe is like, we're going to spend a lot of
 time paying attention when it goes on in this courtroom and I think everyone's going to
 get a lot better idea of what she's like as a judge because we're going to cover it.
 From the outset, she's been basically as irritated with both Apple and Samsung as all the rest
 of us are.
 I don't know how much normal law cases are like, but there's so much pettiness and weird
 kind of antics both sides seem to be doing.
 Like filing injunctions for this and motions against this.
 You know what they're arguing about right now?
 This is how petty it is.
 Right now, what they're arguing about is the instructions to be given the jury.
 The jury doesn't know anything about patent law, so the lawyer's basically teaching them
 and at the end, the court will hand them a sheet of paper saying, if Apple proved X,
 Y, and Z, Samsung committed patent infringement.
 They're literally arguing over what those lines will say.
 It's a big deal because how you word it could be a leading, but that's the level at which
 these two parties are fighting.
 If Lucy Coe is taking back room money from Apple and Samsung misses it, it's like Samsung
 is blowing it.
 I don't think that's happening at all, but it might be happening.
 What makes it seem really petty is if you look at the Forbes 100 biggest public companies
 list, Apple's number 22 and Samsung's number 26.
 It's not like they're stealing bread out of each other's mouths.
 They're both massive companies that sell millions of phones.
 I told Samsung they should promise every juror a free washing machine.
 Only if it's got a phone in it.
 Yeah, when they control the phone.
 Okay, so that's Snapple.
 Any outstanding questions?
 Anything the chat wants to know?
 I think we're good on that one.
 Of course, again, come Monday, we'll have a match report, the trials will start, and
 it's going to be insane.
 We'll get Brian to do some man on the street stuff.
 I'm just going to say I'm probably not going to be paying attention because I'm enjoying
 my new Galaxy Nexus 7.
 Galaxy Nexus 7?
 Do you work for The Verge?
 I do.
 Just call it the Nexus 7.
 Nexus 7?
 Yeah.
 When did you get that?
 It's a live wallpaper, man.
 You've got a Galaxy on it.
 He's been staring at this for hours.
 Really?
 Like before you showed up.
 It's my new toy.
 It's good.
 Do you like the screen?
 I think the screen kind of blows.
 Yeah.
 I'm getting that lifted edge problem, actually.
 Oh, really?
 I just think it looks really washed out.
 But I haven't been looking at EVO 3D for the past year.
 I don't know what you're doing.
 Can I give you the bird on the air?
 Do you get a headache every time you take a phone call?
 Like, why don't you just leave it on?
 My phone calls are actually in 3D.
 I'm just saying, man.
 All right.
 So, next topic.
 Don't they have the Galaxy Nexus on Sprint?
 Yes.
 Don't they have the EVO 4G on Sprint?
 I don't need to buy a phone every six months.
 I can't understand these people that do that.
 Like the bone zones.
 They're called Verge employees.
 Yeah.
 The bone zones.
 All right.
 Next topic.
 Next topic is earnings reports.
 Oh, good.
 I'm so sorry.
 We have quite a few.
 I'll give you the list.
 You tell me where you want to start.
 All right.
 Apple, Microsoft, Facebook.
 All did badly.
 I think Facebook slightly beat, right?
 Facebook came up slightly ahead.
 But the stock dropped to an all-time low.
 Right.
 They're at 23 now, actually.
 I just read a really salacious business insider headline that was like, Zuckerberg loses half
 of money.
 And it's like he still has $12 billion.
 So let's just go through them.
 Apple.
 What happened to Apple?
 Apple, well, again, they made a profit.
 They made earnings.
 They had what they called record iPad sales, $17 million.
 But the street, this evil organization of ill repute.
 Those guys, the 1%.
 The 1%ers thought they were going to make more money.
 So this was, quote unquote, a rare miss, a disappointment.
 But they still grew like 23% from last year.
 Yeah.
 They added like, I think, what, $17 billion to their war chest?
 They're over 120 billion, I think, now.
 Anyway, factors that are interesting, iPhone sales are down.
 Because I think everyone has caught on to the fact that there's a new iPhone every year.
 So Becky has my old iPhone 4, and it's complete garbage now.
 I don't know what this woman has done to it.
 But the camera lens and only the camera lens is completely scratched.
 The rest of the phone is fine on the back.
 The rest of the glass phone is fine.
 The camera lens is so destroyed that she can't take pictures anymore.
 It crashed.
 It's a piece of junk.
 I'm like, why don't you go get a new phone?
 And she's like, I'm waiting for the 5.
 I'm going to put my dead iPhone down here, too.
 Everybody has a dead iPhone.
 They're the new hip.
 I'll just carry it around.
 One day I'm going to make it to the Apple store and get it fixed.
 How many cameras does that iPhone have?
 I'm just curious.
 What?
 It has two.
 TC.
 One in the front, one in the back.
 How many cameras do you have?
 That seems like one less camera than the Evo 3D here.
 See, it's got two cameras in the back, and it's got one in the front.
 Congratulations, you have a camera mullet.
 That's awful.
 That's terrible.
 Creighton's dying, though.
 Creighton just lost it, a camera mullet.
 Okay, I think everybody's waiting for the 5.
 I think that's the story of Apple's quarter.
 The biggest chunk of the revenue comes from the iPhone.
 Everybody's waiting for the new iPhone.
 The end.
 Yeah, so much comes from the iPhone.
 The iPad's gaining steam.
 The iPod is still dropping, but it didn't drop as much as they expected, so that's actually
 a positive this quarter.
 And Mac sales are just laughably small compared to everything else.
 Yeah, but they're still doing this.
 The laptops are doing this.
 The desktops are doing this.
 If you actually break down the Mac sales- That's what I'm saying.
 Nobody wants- No one wants a desktop.
 I want a desktop.
 I have three desktops.
 Do you have three home-brew PCs?
 I have three of everything.
 I have a problem.
 I have three monitors.
 You've built PCs at home.
 Tell me about your PCs.
 They're more interesting to me than Microsoft Linux.
 No, I'm afraid for Windows 8 because I'm so used to the Windows desktop.
 But you still have it.
 You'll have it.
 Can we just- I want to talk about what Gabe Newell said about Microsoft.
 Oh, yeah.
 That was actually really good.
 This is a good segue into Microsoft.
 It is, but let's do Microsoft quickly and then we can talk about that, and we can skip
 Facebook because honestly- Who cares?
 Yeah.
 It doesn't matter.
 Yeah.
 Microsoft had a net loss of $492 million.
 It had record revenue though, best ever.
 Microsoft.
 Microsoft.
 Microsoft.
 Sorry.
 We're skipping Facebook.
 Go ahead.
 Facebook did some stuff.
 I'm talking about Microsoft money here.
 I think I just said Facebook.
 Oh, okay.
 Facebook had a- Oh, yeah.
 You're right.
 You're right.
 I'm looking at Balmer's face and thinking, Facebook.
 That's not right.
 Microsoft lost money.
 Microsoft lost half a million dollars, which they don't actually do losses that often,
 so it's a big deal.
 Yeah.
 They lost record revenue this quarter.
 The reason it was so little, the difference was this write-off, they acquired what?
 AQanative?
 AQanative, like an ad metrics firm.
 Something for $6.2 billion.
 I will say this.
 There is a flurry of web... Let's call it the web 1.5 era.
 There's a flurry of acquisitions of these ad companies and search companies for Microsoft,
 for AOL, for all these dinosaur web 1.0 companies.
 They all said, we've got to take on Google and Yahoo, which is laughable because it turned
 out they didn't have to take on Yahoo at all.
 They all bought all these crazy web metrics.
 When they all thought they were going to be content companies and they were going to sell
 content on the web, Microsoft is getting out of that business.
 They just sold off that part of MSNBC.
 They're selling off this other AQanative company, which honestly no consumer has ever heard
 of because they sell ad tracking units or whatever.
 This is like, I would say this is the last of the Gates era for Microsoft.
 What I think is really interesting is that the Balmer... We keep talking about whether
 Balmer needs to go, but it seems like all he's really been doing for the past however
 many years is shutting down bad Bill Gates ideas.
 This is the year when Balmer comes into focus.
 While you can argue that Balmer doesn't make them.
 He's true.
 He knows what he's doing.
 He's revving every product ever for Microsoft.
 Every... There's going to be a new Xbox.
 Within the next year, there's going to be a new Xbox.
 Mary Jo was saying this on the show last night.
 You should watch the show when it comes out.
 There's going to be a new Xbox.
 There's new Windows, new Windows phone.
 Every... Probably a new Office.
 Why not?
 There is a new Office.
 Every major piece of Microsoft is getting a huge update in some way.
 A lot of people do not want to give Balmer credit for it, but let's say this.
 It's not his idea, but he's letting the right people do these things.
 Right.
 Well, he just eats steak.
 Well, he is the spokesperson.
 He is the flagship of the company.
 He's out there being enthusiastic more than any other human being I've ever seen.
 Yeah.
 He loves this company.
 He loves the company.
 Developers.
 No, you're right.
 They're doing Surface, which is... I think they're not... I think Surface is going to
 represent an enormous break for Microsoft.
 Their OEMs are not happy about it.
 Microsoft said it in their earnings statement.
 We're now competing directly with our customers.
 That's a huge risk for us.
 I think they understand that Surface goes one of two ways.
 One, they do what their OEMs never did, and it makes Windows look good.
 Or two, the challenge... Are you just looking at pictures of Balmer over there?
 Can I tell you, no more fun than you can have-
 Crayton, show me your hands.
... than two men in a dark room looking at photos of Steve Balmer.
 All right.
 Continue.
 Or two, it challenges the OEMs to do something actually worth a damn that, again, makes Windows
 look good.
 It's a win-win for Microsoft.
 They may play it down as like, oh, we're sorry.
 We're upsetting you, but...
 What are their OEMs going to do?
 I know.
 Nothing.
 It's not Enterprise.
 Right.
 What are they going to do?
 They're going to sell Windows 7 for a decade while they figure out Windows 8, just like
 they did with XP.
 Right.
 Let's talk about Windows 8 and this Gabe Newell quote.
 Gabe?
 Vince?
 Gabe Newell.
 That's not Vince.
 Not Vince at all.
 Vince Newell.
 Gabe Newell, who runs Valve... Oh, it's Valve.
 It's not Vince.
 Gabe Newell, who runs Valve, said, Windows 8 is going to be a catastrophe.
 I'm not getting this... I'm just riffing on this quote.
 He said, Windows 8 is going to be a catastrophe.
 OEMs are going to leave the market.
 What's the actual... Do you have it?
 I'm looking for the... He talked a lot.
 He's not a public speaker, so it was a long, long quote.
 Right.
 Yeah, the point was, Windows 8 is a catastrophe.
 OEMs, some OEMs are going to leave the market.
 And go to Linux or something.
 And Linux's problem is there's not enough gaming on there.
 Yeah, that's Linux's problem.
 That's just one of many, but...
 Well, his thing with Microsoft is becoming too restrictive.
 He's not an Apple fan.
 And he thinks Microsoft's too restrictive.
 And the same thing.
 But the thing is, where do you go?
 So what was interesting is Mary Jo was on the show last night, and she said, until I
 saw the Surface, I agree.
 The Surface is a thing that will make this work.
 It's the right device for the software.
 It doesn't work on a laptop.
 It doesn't work on a desktop.
 I've heard this a lot now.
 It's not me.
 It's not Poison Topolsky.
 It's this...
 He's never going to live that down.
 No, never.
 Never.
 But it's this cabal of... Cabal?
 That's not the right word.
 Group.
 That's a much evil word for a collection of people.
 Syndicate.
 Yeah, it's a syndicate.
 No, it's this group of people, very respected Microsoft watchers.
 Gabe Newell has a big stake in what Microsoft does, because he runs Steam, who are saying,
 this doesn't work on laptops and desktops.
 And maybe they're wrong.
 There's a huge chance it could all be wrong, and Microsoft hasn't figured it out, and people
 are going to love it.
 But that's what they're all saying right now.
 That groundswell of antipathy for Windows 8 on a laptop is there.
 It's just there.
 And until the next round of Ultrabooks come out with touch screens and it all makes sense,
 I think it will remain there.
 Because right now, using it with a keyboard and mouse doesn't make a lot of sense, and
 the lack of the start menu on the desktop.
 That's what I'm getting at with Mountain Lion.
 Apple's taking these iterative steps to rid you of the desktop with all these full screen
 apps and launchpad and all this stuff.
 Microsoft is like, we just took it away.
 We took the start menu away.
 Every time you want to do anything, you have to look at the R other interface.
 The overall thematic differences between Apple, Google, and Microsoft are very interesting
 to me.
 Apple is staying the course.
 They have an idea.
 They know where they're going with it.
 We think.
 We think.
 They appear to know where they're going.
 They appear.
 But it's also what Microsoft's doing.
 They're unifying everything under Metro.
 Right.
 And then Google is like, fragmenting everywhere.
 So in terms of having an idea and knowing where they're going with it, I think Microsoft
 is way more aggressive.
 Right?
 They're questioning.
 They're finally doing stuff that people have been asking them to do for years, which is
 like integrate Xbox with their other products.
 And it's, I mean, I see.
 I mean, IE9 on Xbox is not really integrating it.
 Right?
 It's like, they're getting there.
 They're inching closer to it.
 And they're making a lot of smart moves with Windows Phone, with Windows, and with Xbox.
 Yeah.
 And trying to find some way unifying, not this generation, but I would not be surprised
 if next generation, it was all one platform.
 This was Game of Thrones.
 Like, right at this moment, somebody would kill Steve Ballmer.
 I'm just saying.
 You'd be like, yes, finally, it's coming together.
 I waited so long for this.
 Oh my God.
 They just killed him for no reason.
 We just launched Zune.
 Oh my God.
 Now we have to do another eight episode story arc on a character you're going to murder.
 You, Peter Dinklage, you're now playing the role of Steven Sanofsky.
 Go forth.
 He would be good.
 He's ruthless.
 He's very good.
 Yeah.
 He's very cunning.
 Very small.
 What?
 Both of those things are true.
 I actually don't know if you're Peter Cunning.
 Peter Dinklage is cunning in real life, but his character is cunning.
 He plays a lot of cunning characters, which I believe you can only do in a realistic way
 if you yourself are cunning.
 Logic man, look it up.
 Should I just say something?
 Craig's doing this again.
 Should I just say something really stupid?
 Go back to your Ballmer pictures, D. Simone.
 What's next?
 Do we have anything else to talk about?
 How long has this been?
 Should we take some calls?
 I mean, that should be, I think- I would love to verbally abuse our readers.
 All right.
 Let's take a couple of calls, free for all.
 Then we'll take three and we'll be done.
 It takes a second for you to get out of the stream.
 Oh.
 TC freestyle.
 What?
 What?
 Don't do that.
 He said freestyle.
 Really?
 I didn't say- Drop.
 Oh snap.
 He dropped in the cold.
 Oh God.
 Ross is so fired up all the time.
 Ross, we could just do- I'm tired.
 Make gif material.
 I mean, what worries me is that we've put you in charge of 90 seconds on the verge.
 And I see where your mind immediately goes.
 And then I'm like, I'm not going to worry about it.
 He'll just do it all.
 He's taking hands off.
 If mine- Because I'm shooting it later.
 We're shooting it today, yes.
 Did you write me an entire script in rap?
 I haven't had a chance to write it yet.
 But if you want to- Here we go.
 What are these boxes?
 Who are these people?
 Wait for a checkbox.
 Wait for a checkbox?
 Oh, I got a checkbox.
 Do it.
 Did you just hang up on line one?
 Do they not meet your criteria, Brendan?
 Okay.
 Here we go.
 Checkbox this.
 Caller, you're on the air.
 Ross, you have to stop that.
 All right.
 I'm sorry.
 Caller, talk to me.
 Hey, how's it going?
 What up?
 All right.
 So I'm with Calvin.
 Where are you calling from, Calvin?
 I should call from Greenville, South Carolina.
 Nice.
 How is it?
 Is it nice there?
 Are you on the beach?
 Well, not really that close to the beach, but it's pretty warm.
 Every time I go to South Carolina, I have to go to the beach.
 I'm not sure if I'm going to the beach.
 I'm going to the beach.
 I'm going to the beach.
 I'm going to the beach.
 I'm going to the beach, but it's pretty warm.
 Every time I go to South Carolina, I end up on the beach.
 So I just figured I'd ask.
 Anyway, what's up?
 How often do you go to South Carolina?
 Like once a year.
 I'm actually saying North Carolina.
 It's not important.
 Calvin, tell me about your life.
 Well, I'm actually using the Windows 8 release preview right now, and I wanted to go ahead
 and kind of talk about it.
 I know you guys were saying how it's not really desktop, laptop oriented there.
 But my thing is this is when I use it, I actually have it on a HP TouchSmart and I also have
 it on a regular HP laptop.
 When I use it on the laptop, I actually use it completely different from when I use it
 on a TouchSmart.
 Are you using all the Touch stuff?
 Are you using it as a touch computer on the TouchSmart?
 Yeah, exactly.
 I'm using it as a touch computer on the TouchSmart and more like a tablet.
 I kind of stay on the start menu and go through all the metrics.
 But when it comes to the laptop, what I do is I actually just go to the desktop and I'll
 stay there.
 I actually only go to the start menu to do a quick search for an app and then I'll go
 right back to the one on the desktop.
 So you're not using any of the new interface stuff?
 You might even argue that...
 I am, but I'm using it in a more conventional way like I used to use it on Windows 7.
 Like with Windows 7, I would go to start, I would do a search or search for a really
 quick program, then I'd be done with it.
 But when it comes to it on the laptop for Windows 8, I'm using it almost the same way,
 even though I also can use the live tiles too.
 What do you use the live tiles for?
 That's kind of how I'm using it.
 I feel like the live tiles on a laptop, the live tiles are like the same.
 They're the same as like what OS X does with widgets.
 They're there and it's cool.
 It's like, that's what the weather is.
 And I go right back to actually using it.
 Do you actually use it for the weather?
 I do use it for the weather.
 Yeah, that's exactly how I use it too.
 It's like you go onto the start real quickly, you say, oh hey, that's the weather.
 Okay, that's the Facebook update and I'm done.
 It's almost like the desktop computing paradigm was designed for the form factor of the PC
 that you're using and introducing an entirely new metaphor doesn't work unless you change
 the form factor.
 But let's also be clear here though.
 I mean, what do I know?
 I'm just riffing on core concepts of computing design.
 We're downplaying the live tiles, but I mean, he checked weather really fast and moved on
 with his life.
 So efficient use of live tiles.
 I'm defending this.
 You just take that dirty money from Microsoft, man.
 You just fill your pockets.
 So let me ask you a question, Calvin.
 So you've got these two different things that you're doing and they're very different kinds
 of interfaces.
 Which one do you like better?
 It's hard to say because I actually like the TouchSmart interface with the touch oriented
 stuff.
 Even my kids are able to use the games and everything touch oriented.
 So it's really perfect for that.
 But for a laptop, it's where I kind of, I guess, go to work.
 I'll sit down with it.
 I go into office or do whatever I have to do for my job and I come out.
 So it works flawlessly on both of them, but just in different ways.
 Can I ask you, what were you using before you installed the consumer preview?
 7, Vista, Windows ME?
 I used the...
 I haven't had it.
 I've lost that in a while.
 It's such an easy laugh line.
 You're like, hey, Windows ME.
 What's a bigger laugh to you?
 A Windows ME or a Zune?
 Dude, the Zune HD was cool.
 Oh no.
 Okay.
 Calvin, which one were you using before?
 Yeah.
 Let's go back on track, which we're so good at doing.
 I used to use actually Windows...
 Well, I use almost every version of Windows now, but I used Windows 7 beforehand and then
 I was kind of hesitant.
 So I did a partition for Windows 8 and Windows 7 on the same hard drive.
 And as I started using Windows 8, I was like, wow, this is just so much faster.
 Why am I using Windows 7?
 So you just switched over.
 So was there a learning curve for you between 7 and 8?
 I think that's something a lot of people...
 Go ahead.
 Oh yeah.
 It was small, but I'm a pretty heavy power user.
 But I guess what I had to learn was that if you use Windows 8, like it's supposed to be...
 Well, I think it's supposed to be used like Windows 7 on a laptop and then use it for
 like touching on other stuff on like a touch computer or like a tablet, it works wonderfully
 once you get used to that.
 I want you to know which one is supposed to be for which.
 I guess is the best way to put it.
 Cool.
 So are you going to buy a Surface?
 I have to see what the price is because I also like the Asus Windows 8 tablets that they're
 coming out with too.
 Yeah.
 But both of them look really great.
 So yeah, I'm probably going to buy one of them.
 If you were going to buy a Surface, would it be the Pro model or the...
 Isn't the Pro model Intel?
 You'd buy the Intel one.
 I definitely would do the Pro one just because I also want to take my tablet and get all
 my work done.
 And I think that's going to be the best way to kind of segue into that.
 Not to say that the other one won't work with other things, but since it can install certain
 programs, I think it would be better for me personally to have Pro and go forth from
 there.
 Gotcha.
 All right, Calvin, we're going to have to go.
 All right, let's take another one of these.
 Drop.
 Yes.
 I just like pushing the button.
 All right.
 Caller, you're on the line.
 Who are you?
 Where did you come from?
 Hey, what's going on, guys?
 My name is Eric.
 How are you?
 Hey, Eric.
 Where are you, Eric?
 Exeter, Rhode Island, middle of nowhere in Rhode Island.
 Do you actually attend Exeter?
 Are you the 1%?
 What's that?
 Do you attend Exeter?
 No, it's just a town.
 Oh, Andover Man.
 You're getting hostile with this guy.
 He just got on the phone.
 What, man?
 We promised verbal abuse.
 Yeah, that's true.
 Go ahead.
 I'm just playing the role of Josh, you know?
 Yeah, I'm being...
 Yeah, so you're the friendly one.
 Ross doesn't...
 Go ahead, man.
 I have a question about Google Fiverr.
 Just dead silent for that one.
 Yeah, what's up?
 Does anyone know, does the TV delivery happen over the IP network or are they doing a separate
 delivery for the TV network?
 That's a good question.
 They didn't tell us.
 I actually asked Dieter to ask that question and I'm assuming it's a separate network.
 That is my baseline assumption, but we don't know.
 Right.
 Okay, that was my main question.
 I did want to say one thing about Windows 8 and the last crawler.
 I tried to use it and on a desktop, it's not fast, especially if you're using multiple
 monitors.
 You got to memorize your window keys.
 That went back to seven.
 You went back to seven.
 Wow.
 I have three monitors, man.
 I'm screwed.
 Yeah.
 You know what would be awesome?
 If you open text that at one of them, they'll just show you winning.
 That's a problem when you use iFinity because when you actually play games and stuff on all
 three, it's one thing.
 Do you actually wear a crown that says King of the Nerds when you just game on your iFinity?
 I do.
 Do you think multiple monitors are dead?
 I mean, none of these operating systems are good at them.
 It kills me when I'm trying to do full screen apps.
 Maybe.
 I mean, if you spend the time to set it up.
 Wait, which operating system?
 Linux.
 If you spend time to set up multiple monitors.
 You can do anything with Linux if you set a time.
 You can fly a 747 in space.
 All right.
 It's true, by the way.
 I did that yesterday.
 No, you didn't.
 It's not true.
 I did that yesterday.
 You can't stop.
 Guys, you can't fly a 747 in space.
 Really?
 Eric, any other questions?
 Anything else we should talk about?
 No, man.
 Thank you for your time.
 Thanks for calling in.
 All right, let's take one more.
 All right, caller, you're on the line.
 You're the last call of the day.
 Make it good.
 Where are you?
 Who are you?
 Hey, I'm actually in the Republic of Georgia.
 Sorry, the what?
 You mean the one in Eastern Europe, not the secessionary state in the south?
 Yeah, yeah.
 Not US, yeah.
 I'm from the US.
 I'm from Seattle.
 You're in the Republic of Georgia right now.
 What time is there?
 It's like 10 o'clock at night and 11, I don't know.
 Okay, what's up?
 I woke up four hours ago.
 Oh my God.
 Hey, I wanted to point out that the Google Fiber stuff in Kansas City is actually a case
 study for the future.
 Google wanted like a centrally located place that they could use to make their searches
 faster.
 And then they also wanted to see how people would react to having speeds that are 10,
 20 times faster than what's commercially available today.
 And you guys completely missed that on your cats.
 You're like, oh, they're just around.
 But like really Google is using this.
 You know what I didn't miss?
 I didn't miss your F bomb.
 Caught it.
 No, no, I get that.
 You know, I think I get what you're saying.
 I mean, I think you're right.
 Google's experimenting to see what the future should be like.
 But they're also pretending that they're running a business.
 And I think that's the thing we're focused on is I don't believe that they're actually
 running a business.
 They're saying they're going to turn a profit.
 They're saying they can do it.
 I think what they want to prove to this is what I'm saying.
 They want Comcast to feel bad about itself.
 They want Time Warner to feel bad about itself.
 Well, if they just wanted to do a case study, they could have picked a small town from anywhere
 that was way smaller than Kansas City.
 Well, they're trying to progress the market.
 Well, I mean, they are and they aren't.
 You progress the market by actually competing.
 They're trying to progress the market and show, hey, this is possible.
 This is how you do it.
 Here's a viable business model.
 But if that were true, I think they would actually run a real business out of it.
 You know, I agree with you.
 I completely agree with you.
 But what I think is that, I mean, they're saying all this stuff, right?
 They're delivering this product.
 But what they're really delivering, what the real innovation is for them is they're giving
 people really fast Internet.
 And that's it.
 That's the core of what they're doing.
 All of this TV stuff is the same product that you can already get from Time Warner, right?
 It just has a nicer interface.
 You know what would make it really interesting to me?
 If the TV interface, if you could plug in any DVR, if Google said, we've invited Acer
 and HP and I'm picking random companies, but we're inviting these companies.
 We may, HTC, make us a cable box.
 Do something wild with Android.
 And any of you can plug in and we have 15 different hardware vendors and all these different
 interface ideas to plug in a cable and really revolutionize television on top of a thousand
 Mbits Internet.
 I think that would be wild.
 They didn't do that.
 And I think the case study of what will people do with faster Internet is we're already living
 through that case study in real time.
 It's just happening very slowly.
 Because five years ago my Internet was really slow.
 Ten years ago I had one Mbit up and down.
 Now I have 50, right?
 So we're living through that much more slowly.
 Google accelerating that case study is really cool.
 But I think they missed the opportunity to reinvent television at the same time.
 To me that's a little bit disappointing.
 I mean, maybe you disagree with me.
 But you don't think, like explore what television could be in the future with Kansas City and
 maybe they've made a few missteps with having this set top box which is basically a Tivo
 with a Google logo.
 I think they're turned to both.
 At the same time, I think they've been at odds basically with YouTube against content
 providers and trying to kind of invite them into the future along with Google saying,
 hey, you can still make money.
 The Internet is not going to cut into your profits necessarily.
 Here's how it's going to cut.
 Well, of course it's not going to cut into their profits, right?
 Because they're selling the same package that they get from Time Warner.
 So it's the same business model.
 So I get what you're saying.
 I think it's interesting.
 I think you're right.
 They're building, they're doing the slow burn of a relationship bill.
 Come in, come into our service, maybe a year from now let's reevaluate what people are
 doing.
 I get that.
 I think that's probably very accurate and I think that's the only way they could get
 the TV providers to play ball.
 But the real innovation comes from the thing.
 But the real innovation is going to come from what the people want, which is to not have
 a cable company, which is to say I want AMC delivered over my thousand MBIT Google connection
 or I want HBO delivered, not I have a bundle of packages from the Disney channel because
 I want ESPN.
 Yeah, because the real difference is based on the Telecommunications Act, right?
 It's not, I mean the distinction between internet pipes and private cable networks.
 Can we just go to Washington, you and me, and just-
 Can we please?
 Just do it.
 Let's just do it.
 Revolution in the streets.
 Can I ask you a question?
 Yeah.
 Are RTC and I going to make out after the show?
 Very probably.
 Yes.
 Why am I sitting between you two?
 Just really quick, I just want to hear your opinion on this.
 What do you think the future for commercials are?
 Do you think that there will be a pain available to people like kind of the HBO business model
 for network television where I can just have my show if I pay a little bit more money?
 No.
 That's what I get right now on BitTorrent.
 People are always going to need to advertise.
 That's what we have to deal with as far as competition.
 But so what you're getting on BitTorrent doesn't pay for anything.
 You know, and that's the simple fact of the matter.
 Well, that's the competition.
 That's the outlook of it, right?
 Yeah, but fine.
 You know, you can keep not watching commercials on BitTorrent, but like that means people
 don't get paid.
 You know, and that's it.
 That is the simple truth.
 And you can try to say, and this is the argument, the non-stop argument.
 You can say, I would pay $20 to watch a show without commercials.
 But no, you won't because the competition from BitTorrent will still be there.
 And the vast majority of people will still go to the free option and they will still
 not watch the commercials or skip the commercials.
 And the biggest market for network television, network television programming is over the
 air antenna watching.
 It's people with TVs in their homes and that is still bigger than the entire cable market.
 And so as long as they have to monetize broadcast television, there will be commercials.
 I don't think you're always correct though, because if I want to, if I want to BitTorrent
 something, right, I have to figure out when that show happens every week.
 And then I have to go and make a few clicks and I have to think about it every single
 week.
 And I can't just forget about the show.
 Well, let me ask you a question.
 How many $1.99 episodes of TV do you buy from iTunes?
 No, no.
 How many $2 episodes of television do you buy from iTunes?
 Or $25 season passes that automatically download.
 Yeah.
 How many $40 season passes of shows do you buy from iTunes?
 You can do this.
 No one does it.
 I mean, that's, that's the reality is that to make the money the way they want to make
 the money, they have to raise the prices.
 Once you raise the price, piracy is not a technological, it's not a behavioral problem.
 It's a pricing problem.
 And the problem is the competing price is always free.
 No matter what you set the prices that you can, you can distribute it any way you want.
 iTunes is probably the most single, most convenient way to like get content on your computer.
 Amazon is equally convenient, but there's like more steps, right?
 There's, there's, there's like helper apps and stuff.
 iTunes is like, you open the app, you press the button, you're watching the thing.
 And I have never, I think I bought maybe five episodes of TV from iTunes period.
 And most of them are like, I don't think I look at Valves steam platform for the PC for
 PC gaming.
 Why does steam works?
 Steam works because it's super wrapped in DRM and you can't, there's no piracy alternative
 to steam.
 And the UI is so easy.
 Search, click, download.
 Because in the DRM and the DRM on the gaming side is getting worse, right?
 What's the game where you have to be logged in?
 Huh?
 Anything that Ubisoft makes and the EA origin also pretty bad.
 Right?
 You have to play a PC game.
 Now you have to ping a DRM server because the piracy problem is so bad.
 They're forcing you to buy the games.
 I don't think anybody wants that from TV.
 And I mean, that's, that to me is like, you can say a BitTorrent is like a valid option
 for watching TV.
 And I joke about it all the time and I firmly believe that you should be allowed to BitTorrent
 shows that have been broadcast on network television because of all this wonky copyright
 theory that I have in my head.
 But at the end of the day, you've got to pay the people, right?
 Community isn't on the air because NBC wasn't making enough money from it.
 Sixth season of the movie.
 I mean, like there's a whole big world out there, right?
 That's not the US.
 Yeah.
 I mean, where am I going to pay for these programs?
 Like I'm in the Republic of Georgia.
 So then you should have more ads.
 I don't know, man.
 Well, no, but that's an interesting argument too, because there's content in Britain that
 I want to see.
 I can still buy my games on Steam from the Republic of Georgia.
 No problem.
 If I want to go watch a Game of Thrones, good luck, right?
 I have no option.
 Well, that's true in the US also.
 It's good luck to get it here.
 Yeah.
 Well, look, man, I can't tell you the structural problems of like licensing media rights in
 different countries.
 I can tell you that the problem isn't solved even in the US.
 As far as I can tell, it is not solved in any country in the world.
 And like you can't solve the global problem unless you create a model somewhere that you
 can expand.
 And so like, yeah, I have a US-centric perspective.
 That's the law.
 I understand the best.
 But you know, it's really hard to walk.
 I can imagine what it's like for an Apple executive to walk into, or Amazon executive,
 to walk into, or Microsoft executive, to walk into HBO's offices and say, giving your content
 to sell everywhere around the world for free, or for any price that I choose, don't worry
 it'll all work.
 Because that's not a really good argument.
 It's not a good pitch.
 And if you are the content creator, and you know, it's funny, for me, we sell our content,
 we monetize our site with ads, right?
 But I'm still very protective of the content we create because we work hard to make it.
 And so if you're any content creator that works hard to make it, and somebody says,
 let me monetize this for you, don't worry, I'll just make you the money.
 And we get pitches like that all the time.
 People ask to syndicate our podcast, people ask to syndicate our content on our site,
 our features, and we turn them down all the time.
 Because we want to be in control of what we make.
 Why don't you release a version of the Vergecast video on BitTorrent?
 I know that's been a huge drive for your viewership to do that.
 Why haven't you done that?
 You know, I don't know.
 We used to, we can talk about it.
 You know, the way we monetize the show is we just say the ads, so it's fine.
 But we used to do, didn't we used to do On the Verge and BitTorrent, Creighton?
 And we used to do-
 And Gadget Show too, I think.
 We did the Engadget Show and BitTorrent.
 So we experiment with this stuff, but you know, it's packaging content in different
 ways is overhead and work for us.
 And we've got a lot of stuff to do.
 I can tell you the reason why we don't.
 Oh, Creighton, he's talking to this mic.
 No, you've got the file, just throw it up on a torrent site later.
 Hold on, Creighton's going to talk without listening.
 I mean, I can tell you the reason why we don't BitTorrent the show anymore.
 It is because of sales.
 Most of the people are watching it on the website and that's, well, there's pre-roll
 there.
 Yeah, that's how we make our money.
 And regardless of, I mean, we also put it on YouTube.
 And even though Josh, we run an ad mid-roll and we run a, Josh thanks the sponsor at the
 beginning of the end of the show, those don't count.
 Those YouTube views don't count.
 No, thanks.
 With a, with a th.
 Yeah.
 Because there's, they need to look at numbers of it.
 And that's what it looks like.
 I'll just come down here.
 You're producing from.
 Yeah, I guess I keep talking.
 Yeah.
 Cause they need that, that counter on the pre-roll and the post-roll.
 That's why we don't do it.
 Could I respond to it?
 I mean, also you read any of the comments, someone has been torrenting it.
 Yeah.
 So let me just time out.
 Let me just end this conversation here.
 Yeah.
 We can't change that aspect of our, like I would love to, I would love to change it tomorrow
 and say, count all the views.
 But like, that's reality.
 Go back, go back producer, man.
 Get out of here.
 That's just reality.
 And that's reality for all of these companies.
 Right.
 Could I respond really quick?
 Sure.
 Sure.
 Look, so like I'm in Georgia.
 Like if I believe to briefly that I don't have internet access and I'm a pretty big
 birch fan.
 If I go to my village, I used to have internet access, so I can't watch your show.
 I'm just going to watch the most recent show.
 I'm not going to go back and watch the, the three shows that I miss, rise in my village.
 I'm just going to watch the most recent one.
 And you just lost three views.
 Where like, I would like to know what you said.
 You know, like people are going to migrate to BitTorrent from your, from your site.
 People like enjoy watching it streaming.
 They want a downloadable option and the easiest free way to do that for you guys is BitTorrent.
 You're not going to like lower your numbers there.
 In fact, I would argue that you could raise your, but so I, I, uh, Crayton's got up, you're
 right.
 So chill out for a second.
 Uh, I get, I get what you're saying.
 Everyone agrees with you.
 I think that's the core of this thing.
 If you want, I can do a private show for you on BitTorrent.
 No, but every, everybody, I'm just going to put a microphone in front of you and just
 let you feel better.
 Yeah.
 I'm just going to use an Aesthetic.
 Uh, that's gross.
 Um, everyone agrees with you, man.
 Uh, and I would love to do that.
 You know, we initially started doing that.
 No, but that's what I'm saying.
 Our initial.
 Yeah.
 And you're, you're talking about, you're addressing much different like issues like international
 copyright method of, you know, monetization connectivity.
 I think he's addressing an important issue.
 All of those constructs that manage that stuff is a complication.
 People that's tomorrow.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 But it's not today.
 I make, I make, I make, I make, I make, I make, I make, I make, I make, I make, I make,
 I make my money in American green bags.
 Uh, and that's real, you know, and like, that's the thing, you know, are the people who pay
 us to roll ads.
 I mean, I am an really quick poll.
 Money talks, but torrent walks.
 Uh, no, look, this is what I'm saying.
 Even in this scenario circumstance where the people who make the verge, uh, would love
 to, we initially put it on BitTorrent.
 We did it.
 We made that happen.
 Uh, the people who pay for the show, uh, they want, they wanted to count their ads that
 way.
 And so we restricted it.
 And I'm not saying it's a great idea.
 I'm not saying it's a great outcome, but it's true.
 And that's a little problem for us because we can put most of our content everywhere
 and we want to put all of our content everywhere.
 But when you run a bigger business, when you're HBO, when that's your entire business is how
 you distribute content, how you monetize it.
 When you're NBC and running ads against your content is the biggest part of your business.
 You pay even more attention, uh, and you make even more restrictions and you segment the
 markets even more because literally that is your revenue stream.
 And until you can figure out that that has failed for them, I mean, they make a ton of
 money.
 What are you talking about?
 They make so much money.
 Like you can argue that it's failing.
 Huh?
 It's an age show.
 I don't know what you're saying.
 Some people pay for it if they, if they had the option, I think they would because people
 ultimately do have a conscience and want to.
 Yeah, but the money they make from that will not equal to the money they get getting license
 to fees from the cable companies.
 I think we're kind of going in circles here.
 Look, everybody agrees with you and everybody wants to live in utopia.
 Um, and you know, if we can all make content for free and make the best thing for free,
 if only everybody had three cameras, we all hand, handheld device to do three beers and
 a Sonic and 3d on bit torrent tonight.
 Yeah.
 So yeah, to your point, it is a tomorrow thing, but we're not there yet.
 No, you guys didn't understand me.
 I'm not saying make content free.
 I'm just saying make HBO go, uh, free of like country boundaries and free of, uh, like,
 uh, this, uh, between like, you know, there was a huge, like a brew, haha, between Time
 Warner and HBO.
 I was paying for cable back in the States and I couldn't get my HBO go on my Android
 or my, or my zoom because, uh, because, uh, I'm warning.
 I couldn't wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
 There's your problem.
 You got really the credibility, the credibility of demanding HBO.
 So go on your soon is, uh, wait, zoom, zoom tablet.
 Oh, I thought that'd be awesome.
 By the way, if you were, if you were demanding it, uh, look, I hear you.
 There's just layers of rights to manage there.
 I mean, when you make something, you sell it.
 The person who makes the show sells it to HBO.
 HBO sells it to the network.
 It's complicated and I wish we could solve it.
 I wish I was, look, vote for the world.
 Okay.
 I will solve it for you.
 Why are you still yelling at me in the game of HBO?
 Go Neal.
 I'm sorry.
 I am.
 I'm apologizing to you.
 I'm sorry that I'm aware of what's happening.
 Still made it work.
 Huh?
 Still made it work.
 So can't, why can't other content writers just, I know exactly what, because, because
 the game publishers provide their content to steam directly and the contract for steam
 from the outset, steam was five years old.
 The contract from steam for steam in the five years that it's existed has always specified
 global distribution.
 That is not how television work.
 That's not how movies work and those industries are much older and have much more.
 A lot of this has, has, is like perfect hindsight too.
 Like of course we know all of these great devices that are available now and there are
 potentially innovative ways to distribute this content.
 I'm not saying it's right, but all, but Hollywood and the cable operators and all of their partners
 have had, you know, these complicated business relationships that have developed over decades
 and they're not just going to throw that away because there's a potential to syndicate HBO
 on an Android device.
 And I'm telling you the reality of steam and the reality of online games distribution is
 now insane DRM.
 And that if you are willing to accept that, that you can probably get there with all this
 media, but I don't know that anyone's willing to accept it with, with traditional, with
 movies and TVs and music.
 Wait, wait, have you played a game on steam lately?
 It's really easy.
 But it's wrapped in layers of DRM, right?
 I mean, are you discounting the fact that steam wraps all their games in crazy DRM?
 Are you, I mean, all of Ubisoft game are wrapped in DRM.
 I mean like that's reality.
 If you want that to exist, the devil's choice is you can have all this freedom of distribution,
 but you have to have the DRM and that's Spotify to you, right?
 Spotify, access to all the world's music.
 It's great.
 Crazy DRM all over Spotify.
 And that's just the way it is.
 We're going to wrap up.
 Creighton, why aren't you doing this?
 All right, dude.
 Sorry.
 I really enjoyed this conversation.
 Here's my problem.
 I love to argue.
 And I will argue about worldwide distribution rights of Game of Thrones all day long.
 And right when you think I'm going to, they're going to kill me.
 I think it's a legal issue at this point, international law.
 Yeah.
 It's complicated and I wish it could work.
 And it's funny because you started, it's the number of things that you've yelled at me
 about in this conversation are amazing.
 You know, but right.
 Maybe Google Fiber will change the mechanics of distribution because it'll be easier to
 get things to people directly.
 And I think I think it's a great thing.
 It's a great thing to do.
 And I think that's the hope, right?
 If HBO says in Kansas city, we will sell directly to the market because it's fast and cheap
 and easier to get content over the internet to people than it is over the cable.
 That'd be great.
 I'm going to hang up on you.
 I love talking to you.
 Every minute of this has been a joy.
 Yeah.
 Take care.
 Thanks for watching.
 Keep BitTorrenting our show.
 I encourage you to do it.
 I'll tell Sam something you watched.
 By the way, text and watch the video at the same time.
 Bye.
 Okay.
 Let's wrap this up.
 I've gotten what the hell are we talking about?
 I don't know.
 I can't.
 These people, they talk to me and then I'm like, I'll talk to you.
 Samsung Nexus seven.
 It's a great tablet.
 The Samsung.
 You are so I will point out to you with my Samsung Galaxy S3.
 I will point and text.
 Let's read out this troll.
 I don't know how long this is.
 It's five hours and we can keep it going.
 I blacked out there.
 I was like, I have my car until the statue to van.
 I like that we had Creighton come in to talk revenue models.
 I just like Creighton sitting on my lap.
 We can put the show on BitTorrent if everybody sends me a dollar.
 Huh?
 Longer than an hour and a half.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 We should wrap it up.
 So that was the verge cast.
 That was some version of the verge cast.
 I'm Josh DePolsky.
 I am Josh DePolsky.
 No, it's not true.
 I'm Neelay Patel.
 We don't say the names at the end.
 I say you can.
 So you know my name already.
 You can come at me, bro.
 How many seconds is two hours?
 This has been 8,000 seconds on the first.
 Our inability to do math persists regardless of host.
 So that's been the verge cast.
 You can talk to us on Twitter.
 You can send us.
 Or you can join us in our Minecraft server, which everyone is asking me to plug right
 now.
 I never actually do this party.
 I never pay attention.
 I'm at reckless.
 I'm at reckless.
 I don't know Roscoe.
 With no E.
 With no E.
 And I'm at laughing stoic.
 What the hell?
 It's a nickname.
 Laughing stoic.
 It's a laughing stoic.
 Verge is at verge.
 You can email us.
 You can email us.
 At podcast.
 At podcast.
 Oh my God.
 Ultimate troll.
 You can email us at vergecast at the verge.com.
 You can leave a comment.
 We used to have an 800 number or something.
 So just call one of those.
 Talk to them about the verge cast.
 Call every 800 number until you get to us.
 We'll be back next week.
 I believe Josh will be back in this chair.
 I'll be back in my rifle position.
 And I'll be sitting on the couch.
 He'll be outside.
 I'll be alone.
 I'll be in a ditch with a zero 3D.
 And that's it.
 Thank you for watching.
 Thank you for yelling at me from across the world.
 Thank you.
 Just, I love you.
 Rock and roll.
 Good night.
 Fall.
 No one's helping.
 Rock and roll.