 Post is going live. All right, well, we're not live until people know where to see us. We're live in secret. Hi, everyone. Hi, Scott. What is that terrible noise? You guys literally know that I could die at any second. The Statue of Liberty could come flying through this window and kill me. Wait, wait, wait. Where exactly are you in New York City? Because I could die too. I may actually die first. I'm at a hotel in Murray Hill. So let's not ever lie. We'll die together. Yeah, I'm going to tweet this link, and then we can start. Eight comments already. Not the other one. Tweet the YouTube link, not the post? Not the, well, no. Tweet the post. Don't tweet the special plus sign-in link thing. I don't see the post. Am I crazy? Where's the post? It's on the front page. You're lying to me. Look for your face. I can count the number of times I've been told that in my life. I tweeted. OK. I'm going to start this. Gentlemen, bros. Yo. My people. Is that how we talk? Am I, is this camera on me? How do I make the camera go on me? Hi. Keep talking. OK, here I am. Hello. It's not switching to me. What's happening? I see you. Do you see me? I just see Ross. Whatever. Is that a problem? OK, I'm just going to start. We can turn this into the beginning. Hi, everybody, and welcome to a very special Hurricane edition of the Vergecast. Our studio in New York City is closed, so we can't go to it. I've actually been evacuated from my home, which is cool. I'm at a hotel. Ross is actually flooded at any moment. And Chris Sigler's here. Hopefully a tornado will hit his home in Chicago. Well, to be absolutely clear, I'm like a few blocks down from you, so if I go, we're going together. Yeah. And I was on literally the last flight out of New York from Newark last night before they shut down the airport. So I'm feeling pretty good about that. I should have come with you. I don't know what I was thinking. But so this is the second time I've now been evacuated for a hurricane. So let me just apologize to everyone. I'm sorry that I'm in a hotel room and weirdly lit. But you can sense my panic and fear with me. And I hope that you do. I'm sitting in front of a window and watching the crazy sideways rain. So basically if something comes flying through this window and murders me, you'll be the first to know. And I think that is truly the Vergecast experience, waiting for a murder and then knowing about it. That's breaking news. That's news as it happens. Absolutely breaking news. Tweet about that. So the reason we wanted to put on the show, even under our constrained circumstances, is that today was an absolutely bonkers day of news. If you didn't pay attention to anything but the hurricane, you probably know everything that's going on. We wanted to kind of unpack it all a little bit. So this morning started out with Google. And Google is actually going to have, it's amazing how many events were canceled in the city by the hurricane. And so Google was supposed to have an event today that I was supposed to live vlog. And reporters are going to go to it, and there will be hundreds of people there. But they had to cancel it because of the hurricane. It was supposed to be held at Pier 38, so that's a terrible place to hold an event. And they were scrambling. They were trying to find an alternate way to do it. And they decided they just couldn't. There's no structural way unless they waited out the hurricane for them to make the announcement. So they just decided to publish with a blog post. So that went up today. The Nexus 4 was announced, running Android 4.2. The Nexus 4 doesn't have LTE, which I have a lot of things to say about. But in every other way, it's a very high-end device. There's a Nexus 10, also running Android 4.2. It's a 10-inch tablet made by Samsung. Ridiculous display, 2560 by 1600, 300 PPI, the crazy display, and the new Nexus 7 with 3G connectivity, with Nexus 7 with mobile, I think they're calling it. So a huge number of announcements there. And then later in the day, a couple hours after Google, Microsoft held its Windows Phone 8 event, announced some major new features for Windows Phone 8, which I don't know anything about because I was busy talking about Google. But that's why Chris is here. Chris, that's why you're here, man. What happened with Windows Phone 8? CHRIS DIBONA SONIORI, M.D. EDITOR, C.P.E. We kind of got a sneak preview of Windows Phone 8 back at that developer event a few months ago. And then they went strangely silent for a very long time. Developers haven't had access to the SDK. There have been some weird kind of nebulous PR releases that have come out saying these phones are going to be available in the coming weeks. But they've been very vague about what the exact date is going to be and what the prices are going to be, what carriers in some cases. So today was the day where they kind of came clean with all that consumer-facing information. And that leads into Build, which is their developer event where they're really going to get into the nitty-gritty details of what developers need to do to target this platform. And presumably, the SDK will be released there, too. OK, wait, wait, wait a second. So this isn't an extra. I don't think I realize so much. So the SDK has been in the dark for a lot of people even up until this day? Yep, yep, which is very different than the way they handled both Windows Phone 7 and 7.5. And it launches this weekend. Yes, it launches this weekend. So to hear Microsoft tell it, well, they don't have a story around that, really. But what we've heard, we've heard some people tell us that there really haven't been the metrics to prove that there isn't an advantage to releasing the SDK early in terms of app uptake, app availability, app product launch. And I don't think they were ready with the SDK ahead of time. I don't think it was in a state where they felt comfortable giving it to everybody. And of course, there's the iOS effect where the SDK comes out early. And then everything that's under NDA is immediately known, because people are talking about it. So there was that concern as well. Is that a terrible trade-off to having apps at launch? The Windows Store now has 120,000 apps, which is great. They've got Pandora. They've got Facebook, Twitter. That's also awesome. I didn't want to get back into that later. But is that really the best trade-off? I mean, at what point are we going to start seeing a huge deluge of apps that come from the SDK coming out now? No, I agree with you. But keep a couple things in mind. For one thing, there aren't that many app-facing features in Windows Phone 8 that major apps need to take advantage of in order to target the platform overall, meaning like, I'm trying to think of a good example. Like Pandora, there isn't much in Windows Phone 8 that an app like Pandora needs to be successful. There's some cool new live tile stuff. There's VoIP integration. I can't believe I just called it VoIP VoIP. But that's going to come in Skype, which isn't out yet. And then they're able to do things like track location in the background now, which they couldn't do before. So that'll allow developers to push interesting stuff to your live tiles based on your current location. So there are a few things. But there's nothing preventing a 7.5 app from being compelling on 8.0 right now. And a lot of the apps that I tested looked great. One notable exception was 1Password, which looks really, really terrible on Windows Phone 8. And I think that might just have to do with the resolution of the screen and the aspect ratio. But by and large, it's not bad. So they've had some big core apps, though. I feel like the Facebook app looks really nice. It's got the live app functionality. The Twitter app was really nice. I was looking at Twitter last night, or maybe a couple days ago, I saw Eric Lin from HTC. He switched back from Windows Phone device to an Android device, and he was like, oh my god, I forgot there are apps for everything on Android. Which is a big problem. The OEM is like, holy crap, there's so many more apps for Android. But they've got to make this push. This is their moment. I will say Microsoft did something really crazy and embarrassing when it had Jessica Alba up on stage. I watched that part of the stream. And I'm one of these people that if I see something embarrassing on TV, I have to turn it off. Does anybody have that? Do you know what I'm talking about? If something really bad is happening, like on a sitcom, I'll cover my ears because I can't take it. And Jessica Alba on the Microsoft stage was like, it was that level of cringey, terrible. I hate to disagree with you. No, I agree and I don't. It was terrible. I mean, at one point, JoBell Fiore was like, so tell us how much you like Windows Phone. And she was like, I like Windows Phone. I mean, it was ridiculous. Now remember, you and I have gone to the Sony events where Will Smith has come on stage and shilled for other singers. No, that stuff is embarrassing too. Don't get me wrong. It's all terribly embarrassing. I want to rank this properly. Well, so Sony is like, Sony would have the celebrities come on with Sir Howard Stringer, who is like, that man doesn't know how to operate to a script. And he's constantly just saying whatever he wants. So the celebrities would come out and be like, look at you. I paid you a lot of money to stand here. And that's hilarious. Microsoft does this thing, whether it's paid actors or not, where they have this hokey, real world. They don't know how to interact with each other like human beings would. So they hired a teenager to write them a script. And they have to follow it. So last night, I was talking to my friend. You relate to that, right? And I decided to use this app to do this totally normal thing I was going to do. And the other person's like, yeah, I do that totally normal thing all the time. It's like, just stop. Please, God. And anyway, the idea that they would loop Jessica Alba into that exact type of environment, but her totally normal things are like normal things for Jessica Alba. I was shooting a movie when my kids tweeted to four million of my followers by accident in Kids Connect or whatever. That could really help me with that problem. Is that a totally normal problem that you have? I'm like, no, it's not. I mean, no. I don't know what you're talking about. But I mean, the phone looks good. I'm sorry, Chris. You can continue talking about substantive problems. But I just watched that part. It's like, why do you always do this? Yeah, no. I think that the notion, in general, the notion of paying a famous person to talk about your product is, I don't think that works in this business. I think that works when you're talking about Gatorade. I don't think it works when you're talking about Windows Phone. And I don't think they're going to get a return on their investment from that particular hire. But I could be wrong. But no. So I feel like, going all the way back to Windows Phone 7.5, Microsoft has had this thing where people complain about there being no apps. And they're like, what are you talking about? We have tons of apps. What do you want? You want a camera filter app? And just yesterday, I came up with three very specific examples, which I talked about in the review of apps that I needed, well, not needed, but very strongly desired that I didn't have access to on the 8X that I was testing with. A United app, because I was stuck in New York with no way to get out, and I needed to check flight statuses. Uber, because I needed to get the hell out of lower Manhattan. And a real Starbucks app. Now, there are a few really shady third-party Starbucks apps where you can enter your card number, and then it creates the 2D barcode on the screen. But it's not the real deal. And speaking of Starbucks, I want to talk about this, because it cracked me up. I was standing outside my hotel on Wall Street, literally on Wall Street, and no, not on Wall Street, around the corner from Wall Street. And I entered Starbucks into the Maps app. It zoomed out to all of Manhattan Island and showed me eight Starbucks, none of which were within a 16-block radius of where I was standing, when in fact, I was actually standing within walking distance of three Starbucks. So I know that Microsoft has talked a lot about the fact that they're now using Nokia mapping technologies in Windows Phone 8, but I'm not seeing the benefits of that yet. Yeah. I mean, look, we have the devices. We're going to be reviewing a bunch of them. I think this is like we were, it's the same thing we've been saying, I think, with Windows 8 itself. It's Microsoft is in this perpetual transition period, and they've hit another endpoint with Windows Phone 8. But they're clearly not there yet. And I think they finally have these foundations to build on, and they've got some really nice hardware to show off those foundations. And now it's like, OK, you've finally caught up in the way that you said you were going to. Interesting ideas there. Live apps on the home screen are cool. But they've got a lot of work to do to build that platform into something viable against iOS, which I think has entered a period of iterative refinement, not radical change. And I think we can talk about Google a little bit. Again, it's Google, which is doing some crazy stuff with Android 4.2. But Google's challenge is filtering that stuff down into the mass market of Android devices and not limiting it to nice Nexus phones that don't have LTE. I mean, there's challenges at every part of the market. But Microsoft, they've brought themselves out to a competitive level. But they've got to work really fast getting app developers on Windows 8 and adding some of the stuff to Windows 8 that desperately needs. Yeah, we were talking about this on the mobile show last week. You compare the 920 or the 8X to the Lumia 900 from six months ago. And it's a compelling product. And if you look at the specs line item by line item, you can see that it's a great, great product, a much better product. But convincing somebody that's walking into an AT&T store that this $149.99 Lumia 920 is worth $50 more than the Lumia 900 that you didn't want to buy six months ago. Chris, I love you. Ed, are you in a German disco right now? Where are you, Ed? What is happening? I'm here hanging out at the Microsoft event. There's the stage that we just live-blogged from. Oh, wow. I don't know who that is. It's not Dieter because he's not wearing Dieter's glasses. That's good. With the hair, Dieter, you're doing this floppy. I mean, you look more like the English major who tried to steal my girlfriend at every party in college now more than I ever did. Let's seal the deal. Dieter, are you wearing a cardigan or a sweater vest? I saw a cardigan. Oh, nice. Nice. It's good. It's good stuff. Dieter, are you taking off your pants? What are you doing? No, I was zipping my sweater back. All right, Dieter, we were just talking on Microsoft. You were there. What are your live on the spot impressions of what's happening at Microsoft? I think that this feels like the 15th time that we've had Windows Phone 8 announced. And I know that this is the official announcement and that general consumer is this is what they're going to see, apparently. But there wasn't any big blow-you-away moments. The thing that really stood out to me is they showed off rooms, and they showed off Kids Corner. And then they brought out Jessica Alba on stage. And all three of those things are Microsoft saying, look, we can't get any of the traditional smartphone buyers that we can, but we do have a shot with families. And it seems like families is dog whistling for moms, basically. And we've seen other smartphone manufacturers try and market to moms and fail terribly. But they're being much more subtle here. And I think they might have a chance to maybe pick up some real attention with that stuff. But that's a relatively small thing. And so I don't really think that it's going to blow anybody away, the stuff they announced here. They spend most of their time re-architecting the OS, not adding new features. Right. Right. I think that point about we've seen this presentation so many times, that's like Joe Elfiori's move now, is to show up at events and give the Windows Phone presentation. Which is like, have you heard of LiveTiles? And you've got to move beyond LiveTiles. Dan, I see Dan Seifert has joined us. I'm trying, if you can hear me. Dan's in much more like Hurricane. You're in upstate New York, right? And you're like, as far as I know, you live in a farm. Do you have a windmill that's going crazy? Well, you know what? We're earning all of our electricity right now for the rest of the year. I like it. As soon as I can actually, there we go. Oh, Jesus. Tom. Wow. Tom, why don't you just go stand next to Dieter? He's drunk. That's so fun. What are you doing? This is ridiculous. We're invading. I need to turn more lights on. This first cast has quickly gone to an insane party with two people. Add some, Dan, Dan, you're killing me, man. Or whatever that noise is. Tom, are you typing? No. This is what happens when you try to podcast from a hurricane. You lose all control. Tom, do you want to tell us what your thoughts on this Microsoft event were, since you're there? Clearly are there. It's kind of similar to how they did the surface and the window taster. It's kind of like they're really doing the whole consumer marketing play and stuff. It's not really new stuff for us. And it's like the time. I love Dieter's giving you a B-roll right now. I would have liked to see more apps, Instagram, all that sort of stuff. Yeah. It was kind of, mm. So pretty anticlimactic. That's what I'm getting, is that you guys were there and they showed you a bunch of stuff you've seen. So Tom, we were discussing the fact that Microsoft has kept Windows 7 a secret for a long time. And they've actually said, I've heard Joe Balfiore say many times, we're not showing all of the OSs that are available, we're going to show you all of the OSs later. And today they showed what presumably is the entire OS. And they've got a handful of features that are new. Again, I think live apps in Kids Corner are the big ones, as far as I can tell. Yeah. Data shared mirror. The data management stuff. But that's like carrier enabled. Yeah. That's not hitting right now. That's hitting down the road. We really need to know more about that data center stuff. It's built in, but it's not built in. It's the carrier's control. And it's kind of an interesting aspect that we weren't fully aware of how they were implemented. But was there anything else truly new today for Microsoft? Not really. I mean, Kids Corner and rooms, we kind of knew that. All I know is that whenever I see somebody with a Windows phone from now on, I'm taking their phone, enabling Kids Corner, and not telling them. And that's like, sorry, bro. No more Windows phone for you. Here's what kills me about Kids Corner. Why is it not just a generic guest mode so that you can hand your phone to anybody on the street and say if they need to make a call, if they need to do anything, so you don't need to give them access to all your email and your text messages that inevitably have swear words in them? Because this is easier to market, this is more interesting. Instead of guest mode, it's just a lot more interesting. Guest mode, it's Kids Corner, and it appeals to families. Right. I mean, that's the whole bag. Do you know, I have to say your line about marketing to moms being a complete fail is like, it is so true. It's not a real segment of the market. Like, because that's 50% of people. You know, like, here's women is a thing. But it has never worked for anyone. Like, Palm tried it. They put the stupid mirror in the back of the tree, and they were like, check it out, babes. Just stupid. It's bad. It's like, there are no features on a smartphone that you can actually say to somebody, men want this and women want that. You know what you want? You want a good phone. Yeah, but so the thing is, Microsoft isn't being ham-fisted about it. They're talking about families and Kids Corner. And so I don't think it's going to hurt them. I think it's just an interesting strategy that they're taking, because what else can they do? I think they're trying to find all these different areas where they can try and sell Windows, and now family is the latest area. And like, trying to be a people thing. I think that stuff, to me, that stuff plays better on tablets, right? Because you can give the kid a tablet. Play with this, don't screw with anything else. I've handed my phones to my niece and nephew all the time. And they want to do one thing. They want to play one game. It's like that works for babies. It doesn't work for kids who are like, I want to play the game that I want to play. I mean, we'll see. I don't have any kids. And I hope I never do. Our species is doomed. I don't want to. I'm never using Kids Corner. I'm never, I mean, like I'm saying, I'll use it to troll people. OK, let's actually, I think this is a really interesting transition to Google. Microsoft did a lot of stuff today, but a lot of stuff we've seen already. And I think Google is, the stuff is so new and so crazy, even though a bunch of it has been leaked. But I mean, that's, for example, that's one of the features of Android 4.2 on tablets is multiple user accounts that you can share with the tablet. And it's such a blindingly good idea to do that for real at the operating system level. I think that Google's making a play for the tablet as a pure consumption device that's very entertaining, because they can't tell the story of the tablet as a laptop replacement, which is the story that Microsoft is selling with Surface, the story that Apple is increasingly telling with the iPad. And they just can't do it. So they're much more of the leave it lying around, pick it up, play with it, kind of different apps and different games, and I think that's very smart. But at the same time, the Nexus 10 doesn't have any wireless capabilities. It doesn't have LTE, it doesn't even have 3G. The Nexus 7 has 3G, but I don't want to pay for 3G on a seven-inch tablet. It just doesn't feel right. And obviously, the Nexus 4 doesn't have LTE. So Dieter, you and I wrote a long piece on the LTE situation with the Nexus 4. Do you want to go through it a little bit? I think there was some perception that we were, in some way, trying to explain for Google what the problems were, but my intention was to actually point out how deeply fucked up the world is that a company of Google's size can't make the right decision. I think Google made a huge mistake. I want to be very clear with this. They should not have done this. And I think if at the end of the day, the other bad option for them was produce unlocked AT&T LTE handsets and sell them at a loss, they should have done it and just lied and said, we're out of stock or something, rather than produce 1,000 of them and be like, oh, out of stock. Chipsets are too fancy, instead of saying, we can't do this. So that's where I'm at. But the structural problems are also really intense. And really, to me, just as irritating and anger-causing. Yeah, basically, Google, they're like, we want to have the Nexus program be about shipping software updates without any carrier intervention, period. And therefore, we can't be on CDMA devices. This is basically the argument that we inferred from talking to them. And OK, that's a very morally pure stance that you've taken. But get your hands dirty and talk to the carriers and do what you need to do to get your phone launched. And frankly, do what Apple has managed to do and get your software updates out there in a more timely fashion. The joke that I made earlier this morning is that it's not so much that it's the Nexus 4, it's that it's the Nexus petulance. Google basically took its ball and went home and refused to do the really dirty, crappy, scummy work of cutting deals with US wireless carriers to get the phone on the network with LTE. Instead, they're taking the morally pure high ground, which is great for people that don't care about LTE, don't have LTE in their area or whatever. But it makes the phone not feel like a true flagship phone, because it's not, because it doesn't have LTE. Right. And I don't think, go ahead, Dan. Well, I was just going to say, because it's lacking LTE, and even though it's being picked up by T-Mobile, as far as sales success, the thing is essentially dead on arrival. Because even though it's unlocked, AT&T is not going to sell this phone. Verizon's not going to sell this phone. Between the two of them in the US, that's 200 million users that aren't going to be exposed to this phone at all. Does Google want the Nexus phones to be big sellers or not? It seems like they can't decide. It seems like they made a real go of it with the Galaxy Nexus. And now they clearly don't think that they're going to have this thing take over the planet. And do they want to sell a ton of these or not? I can't tell. I think that they have a very high and mighty view, both with the Nexus line and also with Chromebooks, that they think that they are way out of the curve. They are several years ahead of the curve in this part of the market where they're not selling devices in mass. They're selling devices the way they think that they're supposed to be. I mean, seriously, I've never seen a Chromebook anywhere on the street. Nexuses I do see, but only because of the Verizon Galaxy Nexus. It's not like I see Nexus 1s every day or Nexus Ss. If you saw Nexus 1s every day, I'd be like, where are you? You should leave there. But Dieter, back to your point about getting their hands dirty and talking to carriers, I think that the answer is not to get their hands dirty and talk to carriers. It's to completely ignore the carriers, go straight to the source of the radios and straight to the sources of the chipsets and just make the phone. Like, just do it. Right. Dieter, AT&T told you if you bring an LTE phone that supports our bands to us, we'll sell you a SIM and it'll work. Maybe there'll be some problems with it. All the features might not be enabled, blah, blah, blah, hotspot, video calling, whatever AT&T crap we're going to do, we'll do it. But at the end of the day, you'll get data for 90% of your phone. Build that phone. You know what? And the thing is, LG has already built that phone. Right? The office machine exists. So I don't know. I'm very confused as to why. You've got to go, Dieter. I've got to go. The room is about to actually murder you. Like, GLaDOS just came on. That's over, man. There's seriously a little British Sphere robot dropping out of the ceiling over there asking me to run away with him. So I've got to go, guys. Thanks for the fun. Thank you. Thank you for that image. So Neil, here's my question to that. If you did have the LTE chips, your dream scenario, how much would it cost? That's a better Chris question, I think. But I would say it would be $650, $700, whatever. That's how much the online iPhone is, right? So right now it's $300, unlocked, off contract. You don't have to worry about the carrier stuff. It would cost $300 more if you put LTE radio chips in there. Those chips are bonkers expensive. Chris, you want to talk to this a little bit? Yeah, no. It's just a scale thing, right? And a chipset maturity thing. Like, these HSPA chipsets that they're working with now have literally been around for generations and generations of products, and they're basically free. The same thing is happening to them now that happened to the GSM Edge chipsets five years ago, and LTE is not there yet. So yeah, it would be a big premium. But I mean, regardless, that's a phone that I still think that they need. If they really want to take the principled stance, part of taking that principled stance is going out on a limb and making that LTE product. Right now they're half-assing it. They're not taking a principled stance on anything, because anyone can make an unlocked HSPA device. So what? Right. Cool, Chris. I think if we wanted to have an idea of the price difference between LTE and non-LTE, we could just take a look at devices on the market that already have a Wi-Fi only version and an LTE version. The iPad, it's $130 difference. The Kindle Fire HD, the difference between the LTE model and the Wi-Fi model, I think is over $200. So it's a significant cost factor. Amazon sells its tablets at cost. So if it was not a $200 cost increase, it wouldn't be a $200 cost increase for the Kindle Fire. So it definitely would push the cost higher. But like Chris said, that's where the level of high-end phones are. The iPhone is over $600 unlocked. The 920 and the other high-end Windows phones are going to be in that neighborhood for an unlocked device. So if Google really wants to have a competing device, it's got to put the specs there. And if it pushes the price there, so be it. Right. Let me just tell you this. So Josh was in San Francisco. We did a big feature on the Nexus program. It's really great. You should go see it. Dieter did a big feature on Google Now, which we should talk about, because it's awesome. It's really cool now. So you should go look at that stuff. But I know that when Josh and Dieter found out about no LTE in San Francisco, they basically freaked out at Google, like this is what you should just say. And then when Google was in New York, and we were doing some other stuff here, Josh and I were talking to them. And we basically freaked out at them again. And we're like, this is a huge step back. We did a speed test. I had my iPhone 5 on LTE. Josh had his AT&T Galaxy Nexus. And they had a Nexus 4 that was running on T-Mobile. And just very informal, like kind of take this for what it is. But my iPhone got 15 megabits down on AT&T LTE. The Josh's Galaxy Nexus got like 0.02, which is just sad. And the T-Mobile phone, the Nexus 4, got four down. So it's an improvement over what has been terrible. Josh, we're just talking about LTE. What's up, buddy? What's going on? What's happening? How's your hurricane? Is this working? Am I on the internet? Hello. Is this publicly available to people? Yeah, people are all over this, man. The human beings, are they watching it right now? I should tweet to tell people this is a fact. You should tweet. How's your hurricane, man? You know, I think that this hurricane has been wrongly accused of murder, for murder that I could prove that on the night that it happened that this hurricane was nowhere near the event. The entire east coast of the United States. That's right. Does anybody understand my reference? I don't know if this may be a little bit too high level for some of the people in the Hangout, Chris Ziegler. I'm kidding. You're a wonderful man. Josh, I was just telling the story of when we were with Google and we did some speed tests on the phones because they were like, T-Mobile's great. And I was saying, my phone got 15 down, my iPhone with LTE. Your phone, your Galaxy Nexus and AT&T got like 0.02 or something really terrible. Yeah, it's really bad. And the Nexus 4 and T-Mobile got four down. So there's a little bit of a jump if you're on T-Mobile, but it's nowhere close to LTE. And these, again, these are kind of like second generation LTE products. So the hope is that that network will get even faster, whereas T-Mobile's definitely maxed out. So yeah, I actually have just been sitting here on my phone trying to tweak. I'm like, maybe I'm doing something wrong. I've been tweaking my APN settings, which by the way is like, it's maybe second only to flashing the phone with a ROM in the list of things that I don't want to do with my phone ever. When people are like, you were just flashed, as soon as they say you can just flash like that, I punch them in the face and run out of the room screaming in terror. And I'm crying and I'm upset. And they're, of course, injured. Here's the thing. Google has this story about their LTE. Here's what I think happened. I think Google's very hurt and mad and disappointed about their experience with the Galaxy Nexus. I think that they somehow saw this as getting back at the carriers. But the truth is it just makes them look bad. Their reasons are like, we want to make a phone that we have control over, basically. And the thing that is the problem is that, how come Google doesn't have any power? Yeah. This is another sales. That's why. Samsung has the power. And the thing about Samsung. Nobody buys flagship devices. They just don't sell flagship devices. I think when we were reporting on one of these injunctions, they said what the sales of the Galaxy Nexus were, and they were like some infinitesimal number, some tiny thing. Samsung's most popular handset in the US was this prepaid phone on Boost Mobile, the Galaxy Corveo. They sold like two million of those, and nothing else even came close, not the Galaxy S2 or anything like that. It's just that the balance of power through the carriers is who's going to make us the most money. And the answer is Samsung. It has been Samsung. And it's great that Google provides this operating system, but that doesn't actually generate any revenue for the carriers. So it seems like they're not willing to. And Google, with the flagship devices, even with the Galaxy Nexus, they had to take Google Wallet off the phone for Verizon. They had to preload some other crappy thing for Verizon, if I remember correctly. And Verizon held it back because they wanted to sell the Droid Razr instead. And they held it back for months. They announced the thing in October, and the Galaxy Nexus didn't hit until December on Verizon. But I just want to say, I mentioned this in the piece that I did, the feature piece, about the fact that when you get right down to it for Google, it's an economics question. They're not going to be able to sell enough of these phones on a carrier to convince a carrier to play ball with them, and they can't just make the phone with LT radios. No, they can. They can. That's the whole point. They can make it for AT&T. That's what we're saying. Look, they already gave away the operating system for Verizon. I understand they can make it for AT&T. But economically for them, it doesn't make sense for them to make the more expensive LTE device and try to sell, what, a few hundred thousand? Because that's how many they'll sell. Yeah, but they're trying to. The whole thing about this HSPA move is that they're trying to take a principled stance. And the only way they can take a principled stance is by taking that loss. By making an HSPA phone, nobody's impressed. Anybody can make an HSPA phone at this point. It's cheap. It's easy. LTE is not. But I'm saying LG makes the LTE phone. The Optimus G on AT&T has LTE. So part of that work has clearly been done. Right. But I think it is a different phone. They have to produce it. Google has to justify it economically. They have to be able to say, we can sell enough of these that it makes sense for us to actually spend the money and the time and have our partners spend the money and the time to make them. But what I'm saying is they have made that justification for the whole of Android. Yeah. This thing, it's a nightmare. Let's not even talk about their reasoning. Let's talk about what might be. I have a question. I mean, we're all on the same page that an off-contract phone in the US with no LTE makes no sense in a country where everyone just gets it on contract anyway. What about international? Yeah. I was going to say this. What about off-contract international? This approach might be very successful in Europe, where Chris was saying how Google is trying to be years ahead of where everyone else is as far as selling phones. If you look at the structure of contracts and carriers in Europe, they are already essentially years ahead of what we have here in the US. So this type of thing might be very, very successful in Europe, where there's only a smattering of LTE networks in a handful of places. So the vast majority of users don't care if it has LTE or not, and they buy their phones unlocked anyways. But if we're looking from a US perspective, it's hard to see that. No. I mean, from the US perspective, I think that that's the thing is they're just like, we're not looking at this from a US perspective. I'm not defending them, because this is what I wanted to say next is, what is my next phone going to be? Because I swore to. So I was juggling the Verizon Galaxy Nexus and the AT&T Galaxy Nexus. And I want to have a single phone. I do not want to be swapping two phones. I do not want to be doing any SIM swapping or anything else. I want a single phone that will do everything that I want it to do on LTE. What am I buying? Does anybody know? I'm not buying this. I'm buying the Galaxy S3. Galaxy S3. That's what you're buying. What else are you going to do? It's something with Galaxy in it. I won't have another Pentile display. No, no, no, no, no, no. The Galaxy S3 display is beautiful. Pentile is a non-issue on the GS3. It really is. You're saying Galaxy S3? So the only thing about the GS3 for you is that it's not stock Android, right? We were talking about this a few weeks ago. Honestly, I think I'm just going to get an iPhone. It's the only device on the market that is not compromised in some way. Lumia 920. Actually, in all honesty, watching the HTC stuff today and reading the review and reading the Windows Phone 8 review and just thinking about it, it is somewhat attractive. But I don't know. If I'm going to get away from the Android ecosystem, if I'm going to not use the best Gmail experience and the best calendar experience and Google Talk and whatever else, I'm not going to go further away. I'm going to go to something that I'm more familiar with. Yeah. Well, Josh, let me ask you something. I want to ask you too something because I've been trying to figure out if I want to stick with Android. Is 4.2 that much better than 4.1? Or should I just go with what Chris says and just get a jelly bean S3? I think that some of the conveniences in 4.2 are really great. I think the new camera stuff is really cool. I think the widget stuff is obviously a really cool feature, but is it like deal breaker? Samsung's actually made a lot of changes to the software. Some of them are not completely terrible. I'm just trying to imagine a world where that is the phone that I use. Yeah, it's a terrible world, man. No, can I say this? It seems like the defining feature of the Nexus 4 is what it doesn't have. But what it does have as a phone is actually very impressive. It is a surprisingly nice piece of hardware. And I was very unimpressed by all the leaks that we saw, all the pictures. But having actually held it and played with it a little bit, the back is really cool. It's kind of funny that they made it out of glass, which is like, so it goes. Actually, the more I was thinking about it when we were working on that hands-on post last night, Josh, the more to me it feels, it has that vibe of an old high-end Blackberry used to give me, where it's very professional and executive. It's cool. And then you flip it over and it sparkles at you. It's that kind of 1980s executive. Yeah, there's only one problem, which is it's a horrible lack of LTE. Yeah. I will say this. We don't have any other problems. We don't have any other problems. But can I just say one more thing? And the screen is incredible. Going from the Galaxy Nexus, which is like the phone that I was going to switch to Android, that would be the phone that I would have gotten. And I really, really dislike that screen. This screen is like, it is on par with any other display in the industry, iPhone, whatever Nokia is doing with Lumia, 320 DPI. It's using a new technology, so the pixels are closer to the top of the screen. The iPhone 5 uses in-cell touch, and this uses G2. They've gotten rid of the layer of the screen where the touch sensor is and integrated it with the actual screen. It is a very nice phone. And it has a great CPU. It's got the Snapdragon S4. So what you're getting for $300, or whatever it is, is great, but it's missing the thing that you want in your next flagship phone. I think if you live in Europe or a place where LT is not deployed, it's a really awesome phone. I just think it's really hard to accept. On the other hand, Apple did this with 3G with the original iPhone. I'm not saying it's the same justification, even though Google is essentially saying similar stuff, like battery life and whatever. The iPhone 5 has LTE and a bigger screen and the same size battery as the previous one. The chip sets are there. I'm not defending it. I'm just saying that there is some precedent for this stuff. I mean, let's put it this way. I really would like to have this phone be my next phone. I'm obviously a big fan of the newest versions of Android. And my gut feeling is no matter how good the phone is, no matter how good the software is, it's going to be really hard for me to consider going another year with my main phone not having the fastest possible network in America. I mean, it just seems insane to me. Because the difference is not like, oh, I get five on this thing and eight on this thing. It's like, I get two on this thing and 15 on this thing. That's a huge, huge difference. And so their play for Europe may be fine, but it's really, really difficult for me to imagine that this is the phone that I stick with for an entire year. But there's no alternative. I mean, the alternatives suck. And I say this in my piece, that the double-edged sword of Google's openness, that they work with a lot of people, and they work with a lot of manufacturers, and they work with a lot of carriers. And anybody can take their software and make a phone. But the double-edged that is they don't really exert control over any of that stuff. I mean, it's insane to me that there's not a single device. You can't buy a single device with stock Android and LTE except the Galaxy Nexus. And that's always a step behind the actual releases. It's just crazy to me they can't do one phone that is on their release schedule. I remember having a conversation with Drew Bamford, who is HTC's lead designer on the software side. He's sort of Scott Croyle's counterpart on the software side. And I asked him, why don't you release a stock Android device? And he said, because we want to differentiate. We want something that's different. And I said, well, guess what? If you release a stock Android device, that would be different, because nobody does stock Android. Right. Right. I agree. I mean, I just think that, here's the problem. Look, even if HTC releases a stock Android device, they still aren't going to get updates on the schedule. I mean, for some reason, Apple is the only company that has found a way to bully carriers or to force carriers into letting them do what they want. I mean, and by the way, they didn't start this way. I mean, the iPhone, the first iPhone was not just a runaway hit in everybody's mind. I mean, it was a runaway hit. But before it was sold, it wasn't like all the carriers were going, oh, yeah, this is going to just be the best. Verizon rejected it. That's right. Verizon rejected it. AT&T picked up the scraps. And of course, it was obviously a huge hit. And Apple was right. What's weird is that nobody can repeat what they're doing. It's very frustrating, I think, as an industry, to see an industry that is hamstrung in this way. So Microsoft, their strategy is actually close. It's not as good as Apple's. But what they do is they say that carriers can reject individual updates for Windows Phone. But if they do so, the next time they do pick up an update, it will roll up everything in every previous release. So ultimately, at some point, they need to pull the trigger and come up to speed. Well, one thing I will say is that with Windows Phone, they've been pretty good about actually getting those updates to the devices. Obviously, I'm not using every device, so I can't speak for every person's experience. But I will say that it seems to me that they've actually gotten their act together on getting those updates out. And they're not selling phones that are wildly stock. Essentially, they're stock with a couple of extra apps. And correct me if I'm wrong, Chris, and anybody else can correct me if I'm wrong, but my memory is you can actually just delete any app. You can uninstall any app you don't want. It's not like disabling. You can just straight up take it off the phone. On Windows Phone devices, yeah. So if you buy an AT&T phone that's got a bunch of AT&T carrier-branded apps, you can just go one by one and uninstall them completely. So I'm actually about to uninstall HTC's included app right now. You can see on it. Well, you probably can't see, but uninstall is not grayed out. So yeah. I wrote a piece in July arguing that it was like five years after the iPhone was announced or came on sale. And I feel like that was a moment when it felt like there'd be this huge explosion of innovation in mobile, particularly with the transition to LTE. And I think this phone is kind of a breaking point for LTE in terms of making it clear what's happening. The transition to LTE was hard fought. Verizon bought this spectrum at auction from the FCC. There were rules in place that required them to make it open. The exact phrase was any app, any device. You're not allowed to block anything from your 700-megabyte LTE. Google fought Verizon. They were in court against each other. They were in court with the FCC. Google had to participate in the auction because there was like if the price didn't go to a certain level, the rules wouldn't kick in. So Google was actually bidding on the spectrum to make sure Verizon's price was high enough to trigger the rules. All of this stuff happened. This was like a massive story in the industry. And it's been completely co-opted by Verizon. Right? They have these groups. Hey, can you lie? They have these like funky. Yeah, am I still here? Do that just completely drop for a second? No, it wasn't just me. It drops because of. Yeah, you're back. But you missed like the last two sentences. I'm using a Verizon MyFida Connect, so I'm probably being. We didn't hear anything that said the last 10, 15, 12 seconds were just like you. It was very dramatic. We all just kind of cut out and swiped. No, I think we were all under the impression that we were freezing out. I was thinking you were going, oh, this story. I saw a tree fly by my window, so I figured it was me. I'm sure. I was ranting about Verizon and open access. And I'm convinced that my LG MyFida is straight. They're pulling a huge switch somewhere that says, has Nilay Patel labeled on it? They're like geo-targeting you for a shutdown? No, but you're right to your point, what little of it we heard. I do hope this draws some attention to the fact. But it's not just like, hey, the industry won't let Google do it. Google doesn't have the power to do some things they need to do. But what is increasingly and constantly crazy to me is that we don't have, it's like you can't just buy a phone and put it on a network. Explain to me, by the way, I just want to be clear. How many skews does Apple actually make in terms of the different radios? Are there different radios in the Verizon iPhone 5 versus the AT&T iPhone 5? What's the breakdown? So I think I wrote this piece up when the iPhone 5 was announced, and essentially there's three different model numbers for the iPhone 5. There's an AT&T version that has AT&T HSPA plus support. Hey guys, guys, am I back? Can you hear me? Yes, you're back. News is breaking all over the internet right now that Scott Forstall is leaving Apple next year. What? Yeah, our chat room is going insane right at the second. Which is crazy. You know what? Actually, I'm not surprised. After the Maps thing, after Siri became a disappointment, I'm not surprised as he kind of. Yeah, reported by Bloomberg. Scott Forstall leaving Apple next year. Boy, he fell out in a hurry. Yeah, well, Maps is a public apology. That's rare. That is crazy. Yeah, once you start issuing public apologies, I think your time is up. That's a big, big deal. Wow. That is, I wonder, this is real life reactions here. This is interesting. We've been talking about this, but I wonder how much of this is, I mean, maybe he just wants to retire or leave Apple. But there's been a lot of, I think, heat on him for the Maps stuff, for the lack of iOS, seeming lack of iOS innovation. I mean, he's the software guy, right? So I wonder how much of this is actually blowback. I mean, Maps has obviously been a huge embarrassment for Apple. And I don't think that any of the other stuff helped. I mean, I think my biggest negative in the review is, I love the phone. It's really, really good. But software-wise, development seems to have stalled out. Yeah. Neil Ives writing the post right now. Yeah. This is like we're live. It's like live streaming a guy writing a post. No, I'm just helping. Don't forget to mention his crazy stare. Use the swagger shot we took from Wave. Oh, there it is. Yeah, we have it. We're doing that? Yeah. This is good. This is like a live stream of something coming together. Can I just say this? Can I just point out? Apple announced this during a hurricane. This is the ultimate moment of tying the news cycle for Mad News. On a day with Google already announcing something, and Microsoft is like, oh, the markets are closed. The markets are closed. The markets are closed because there's a hurricane. Come on. Is there actually news? What? Is there actually a piece of PR from them or something? It hit the Bloomberg terminal, and then my Twitter exploded. So I think a press release is probably coming, forthcoming. Google News has nothing. How does Michael Bloomberg have time to worry about Apple? Yeah, how does? Mayor Bloomberg had to sit there and type this out. He got the memo from Apple, and he's like, all right, I've got to go do a hurricane. He's reading the ticker tape. And I've got to go do a hurricane now. I have the PR right here. I have the announcement. Apple today announced executive management changes will encourage even more collaboration between the companies World Cross hardware, software, and services team. As far as these changes, Johnny Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddie Kuehn, and Craig Fegare, will add more responsibilities to the roles. Apple also announced that Scott Forstall will be leaving Apple next year and serve as an advisor to Google. So this is what Bob Mansfield did. I think we lost Nilay again. Did we? Well, it's OK. What he had to say wasn't very interesting or important anyhow. I'm here. I can hear you. Guys, Nilay is gone, and we just have to accept that he's not going to be with us during this Hangout. All of you are fired. And move on with our lives. What can we say? Can I just say this press release, the way it's written is so crazy. He was a wonderful man, but he just didn't have what it took to take him to the hurricane. Who, Scott Forstall or Nilay? Nilay. Also Scott Forstall. What I don't want to tell you is that he's missing due to the hurricane. He's been blown away with all of the house. Hey, can you guys hear me? Eddie Kuehn will take on the additional responsibility to Siri and Maps, placing all of our online services in one group. Johnny Ive will provide leadership and direction for human interface. Queued up. They got this thing queued up. So Johnny Ive is doing software now? Yeah, Johnny Ive. Is that his first software role? Wow. Wait, really? Where is this report, Nilay? It's a PR. Where? Swire. Yeah. It's in our chat. I dropped a link in our chat. Oh, I got it. I got it. I got it. There's the only way to get a good picture of this. The only way to, this is a massive shakeup. This is a huge shakeup. This is crazy. This is crazy. Is that Nilay again, or was that me? I don't know. That was Nilay dropping out again. Damn it, Nilay. Stop dropping the mic, Nilay. I know you've got a lot of points to make, but. Wait. Wait, wait a second. John Browett is leaving Apple. And he's only been there since. Out of retail. So the head of retail just got there. So he got canned. The head of retail got canned. Wait a second. This is zany. Head of retail has gone also. Wow. Well, you know what? This is like seriously insane. Are they bringing back the JC Penney guy? Oh, I hope so. No, he's busy with JC Penney. I mean, this is like, they will pay money. They'll throw money to bring him back. No, here's what it says. It says, Apple's retail organization has an incredibly strong network of leaders at the store and regional level who will continue the excellent work that has been done over the past decade to revolutionize retail with unique, innovative strategies for customers. This is blowing my mind right now. The Johnny Ive human interface stuff is crazy. By the way, this also puts Johnny Ive much, much closer to the position that Steve Jobs would have had in the sense that he's had an eye on software and hardware as a holistic thing. I think that is a pretty monumental piece of news today. I mean, to me, this is actually a much bigger piece of news than probably anything else that we reported on today, which is ironic because there's a lot of big news. Well, we talked about the fact that Tim Cook is a numbers man. He's a great, like a traditional CEO, but he is not a visionary in the same sense that Steve Jobs was. They've been lacking that. And to unify that under Johnny Ive probably makes a lot of sense. Here's a prediction. Here's a prediction for you. Soon, many, many good designers and engineers from Google will be leaving for new jobs elsewhere. That's my prediction. Because I feel like Ive's sensibilities are actually a lot more in line with what they've been doing with Android in terms of design than what Apple has been doing. I mean, if you look at Apple hardware, if you look at Windows Phone or Android, that seems like it's much better matched to this extremely streamlined, minimal, sophisticated hardware than anything they've been doing on the software side. I wouldn't be surprised, honestly, if in some way Jobs was kind of a stickler for some of the stuff that Ive probably wasn't that into. I mean, when you think about the generational gap there, because there is a gap. And when you think about what Johnny Ive brought hardware wise, it seems like a different aesthetic in a lot of ways, you know? Anyhow, I'm speculating. I have to say, there's the fact of the news. And then there's the timing of when it's being delivered. They knew we were hanging out. And they were like, we'll catch them off guard. They'll blow up this time of year. Tomorrow, too, right? They have two days of market downtime to let this news begin. What's weird is that Eddie Q, or sorry, Bob Mansfield left. I mean, he quit, right? He retired. And it says he's going to lead a new group called Tech. Called what? Neely? Neely's gone, isn't he? Yeah, he's just. Now I'll never know the name of that group. Dramatic pause. I can still see his freeze frame, just looking dead into the camera. With his mouth slightly agape. He was about to tell us of incredible importance. I think he's alive because the weather's still fine. I'm actually facing the light right now. He's fine. Technologies, that's the new group. Technologies. All I had to do was read this Newswire release. So what do you know? Crazy, crazy piece of news. Just wild. I mean, Google, Microsoft had a day in the news cycle. Apple decided just to take it over for the next two, three days. How many times is that going to happen this fall? Because literally every single time Microsoft announces something, Apple just comes in and just cuts them off at their knees with. You can be sure that this was not an accident. And by the way, if I'm not mistaken, I think this just popped on Apple's site. Yeah. Oh, there we go. Oh, hold on. This is different. No, it's the same. Is it the same? Yeah. Exactly the same? Yeah. OK. So this is a big, by the way, this is a huge, this is just nuts. I'm almost speechless. I'm just trying to take in what this means. I think this means big, big changes for Apple next year in terms of what they're doing in software. I mean, huge changes. I just hope this means that we no longer see stitch leather and awful skeuomorphic ideas. Maybe? There's no way that this is not going to, I think the stitch leather is going to go. Yeah. It's got to go. It's been a kind of. Stitch leather at Game Center just need to be totally revamped. If you're a Johnny Ives, and you see that stitch leather on your device, does it not make you cringe a little bit? You're like, I created a whole new process for putting a screen under glass, and you put stitch leather on that screen. So I think the other thing, and I've got William's side telling me about this. Not only was it Siri and maps are kind of issues, but apparently rumor has it Bob Mansfield hated Scott Forstall so much, this is kind of one of the carrots that gave Bob to stay. You know, like Scott's on the way out, you should definitely stay with us. Don't casually retire out. Yeah. Interesting. Well, then that might make sense that Bob Mansfield is kind of back in. Right. But so Forstall is leaving immediately, or basically like in January. I mean, there's only a couple months here. It says he's leaving next year and will serve as an advisor to CEO Tim Cook in the interim. Welcome back. Which means that he's already gone. So Forstall is essentially gone, according to this, and he's serving right now as an advisor to Tim Cook, and then he'll be officially gone next year. Yeah. I doubt that he's actually doing anything. I just heard a loud noise in my house. Nothing? It's nothing? OK. I'll bet you that Forstall isn't actually doing anything. It probably has something to do with options, maturity, or something. I doubt that he's probably on a beach somewhere. Who, Forstall? Oh, you don't think he's actually advising right now? He's not sitting next to Tim Cook telling him how to do something? He's probably just sipping margaritas on the beach. With Rubenstein. Yeah, with Rubenstein. Maybe Forstall and Rubenstein will start a new phone company together. Called Han? Spring. Wait, no, guys, guys, RF. There it is. Called Loungen. Yeah, Margarita Mobile. Yeah, Margarita Mobile. It would be a bunch of poorly made devices with terrible skeuomorphic software. I like it. It's like a device, an Oreo. It's like made to do an Oreo. And then like, oh, no, no, no. It Oreos like the pre-did, and then when you Oreo it open, it has an Oreo, like an Oreo on the screen, which is very photorealistic. It's like skeuomorphic. I mean, it's a little bit cartoony, of course. And then you Oreo the Oreo, and then that's where the apps are inside the Oreo. That's your unlock gesture is Oreo ruin. You can dip the Oreo in something. Turn off Wi-Fi, you dip it in different milk, like strawberry milk and chocolate milk that does different settings. Think about it. Just contemplate that for a moment. I want you to really get your head around that idea. I wonder if we need to be doing anything site-wise while this huge news is breaking. Can you tell me? Can anybody tell me? Yeah, we should have a discussion about that. I'm not sure if we should be doing it live on the air, though. I don't think live on the air is the way to do it. I don't know whose idea this idea, this Hangout was anyhow. It was actually Michael Shane's idea. Well, Michael Shane is unfortunately now looking for a new job. We wanted to do a live broadcast. We wanted to do a live broadcast for all these announcements, like we did for Apple. But our studio is shut down because of the hurricane. So this was the next best option. Josh, I think what you meant to say is that Michael Shane is advising Joshua Topolsky until the end of the year. Yeah. That sounds about right. Does that mean he can cook? That's interesting. I think we're still trash-talking stock, apparently. It took almost $39 million. That doesn't seem like a lot, though. I'm sure it's more than enough. If you're Scott Forstall? I don't know. It is like $40 million. Is that not enough for you? How much did Tim Cook get when he became CEO? There was a number there, too. What's that? How much did Tim Cook get? Tim Cook had some huge stock when he became CEO. What was that? His current total compensation package is $378 million. That's not bad. Yeah, not bad. I have to say, my Twitter stream right now is this insane combination of people freaking out about the hurricane and people freaking out about Apple. And I can't tell who is more intensely worried about the state of the world. But it's like, here's a picture of Hurricane Sandy coming over the East Coast. And then someone's like, here's a picture of Scott Forstall looking sad. I was like, so here's something we haven't talked too much is Craig Federe, am I saying that name right? He's not doing iOS and OS 10. He's overseeing portions of both at this point. Further proof that they're combining over time. Yeah, I think we need to hang on one second. Sorry, you guys go ahead and get your phones. Sorry, you guys go ahead and keep talking. I need to type something to our team. This is the worst, by the way, worst fucking timing ever, Frank. Or it's the best fucking timing. People get to see behind the scenes of us freaking out about new things. Maybe, maybe. It's just funny because there was so much other Google stuff to talk about, and now none of it actually seems very important. It's like they put out a new tablet. But you know what happened? Apple fired everyone. Sorry. I mean, I have to say this is a pretty astounding set of moves. Especially because the way Apple was set up, the way it was telling the story about the company, Post Jobs, was that it had this deep, deep bench of people who could absolutely rely on to carry forward the spirit of Apple. This leadership had been personally selected and trained by Jobs to do this thing. And it's like they're carrying down that path. But the products that we've seen thus far, they were products in the pipeline. The reporting was the iPhone 5 was the last phone that Steve Jobs had personally had a hand in. And this is about the future. And I want to put this in perspective. There was an article in Bloomberg a couple months ago right after Jobs died, and it was like, Forrestal is the heir apparent. It was like Forrestal is the guy. This team was touted. There was this tight-knit team of people that were doing things, everybody in their place. And to have blown it apart this majorly, I think, speaks volumes. It either means things are going to start working in a very different way and working well, or they're going to start working in a very different way and maybe not working that well. I don't know if this is house cleaning or if this is chaos. That's the question that has to be answered. Let's put things in perspective, though, because this has happened before with Rubenstein. It's happened with Fidel. This isn't without precedent. It's without precedent in the post-Jobs era. Right. Well, yeah, but the thing, it happened with Paper Master, who came in. They fought IBM to hire him. Then he did the antenna for the iPhone 4, and they got rid of him. That's fine. And I know it's happened before, but I think the level to which they are completely reorganizing their executive ranks has not happened before. And the thing with Ruby and the thing with Fidel was that they were driven out by Scott Forstall. That was the personality clash. With the phone, with Forstall and Fidel, it was they were going to, they were deciding whether to build the phone based on the iPod, or they decided whether to build up the iPod or bring down the Mac. And they went with Forstall's, let's bring down OS X. And that clash drove Fidel out of the company. With Rubenstein, he was in charge of everything for a minute, and then iOS became more important, and he left the company. Do you want to build a competitor to iOS? So those changes happened, but they happened in the sense that Scott Forstall expanded to fill those voids. And that was very clear that that was happening. He's leaving, and to fill the void of Scott Forstall, they have to expand eight people to take over all of his jobs. I will say this. I'm just looking at this release. What's very interesting to me is that EdEQ is taking over Siri and Maps. Because I hesitate to call Siri a failure, but those are the two trouble spots. But not a runaway success. Those are the two big, huge, splashy launch features for two versions of the OS. Yeah, so he was not loved by the people. He made some really boneheaded moves. Browitt, we're talking about. Yeah, exactly. Made some really boneheaded moves. Go ahead. I want to talk about two things. One, to the point earlier, you talked about the Bloomberg piece, I don't want to discount that this isn't just like a trend. Like, this is just two people that, quite frankly, had it coming. To go back to the Bloomberg Businessweek article, here's a quote from it. Quote, some former associates of Forstall, none of whom would comment, of course, say he routinely takes credit for collateral successes and to flex blame for mistakes. So even if he was on a winning streak, he was just liable. So you're saying he did exactly what Jobs did? He did exactly what Jobs did, but he didn't do it well. Well-documented. Well, I mean, you're not everybody's jobs, you know? Exactly. Look, this is Forstall's next period. I mean, I think, what are you doing? He's rattling his Gatling gun, apparently. There is a mute button on the top right. I'm going on mute. Because I've got stuff I've got to take care of, so you guys carry on. Yeah, by the way, my house is literally starting to shake with the winds getting really bad here. So I am going to split in a second. But I do want to say, I don't think that we should underestimate how big of a deal it is that Johnny Ive is taking this human interface role. I mean, which I assume will have, and I don't know the extent of that role or what it actually covers. My guess is that it's going to touch on a bunch of software stuff. It makes me, frankly, very, very excited about what Apple may do in the future software-wise. There has not been a new hand on the wheel there for a while. And I don't know how much this role is actually in the nuts and bolts of the software. But if Johnny Ive has the kind of role that he has, anything like what he has in hardware and software, we could see a sea change in some of their software, some of how their software functions. Which I think is extremely exciting. How quickly do you think he'll take the faux leather out of the calendar app? That's all I need to know. Do you think it's six months? Do you think it's two years? Let me put it to you this way. If I were at Apple right now, they would be creating some very, very clever gestures and some very good user interface ideas. But I would be looking at what people are doing with gestures. The stuff that Google showed us with the camera, where it's this one-handed, this circular menu that you can reach with just one thumb from anywhere on the screen, this stuff is wild, futuristic, new interface ideas. And Apple is so far away from that right now. They're so locked into what they've created. I think that they've got a gigantic opportunity to look around and to innovate on what other people are doing. And Johnny Ive is a guy who can obviously take something that is a familiar form and make it very new. So I'm actually kind of psyched about this. I mean, this is a cool, weird move. I think that it says a lot about what Apple wants to do. I think it says that they are hearing some of the criticisms. They're obviously not happy with the map situation and some of the other stuff they've gotten hell from the press for and from users. And I think that putting Johnny Ive in this role means they're taking a different look at it. They're taking a different angle, which is exciting. I mean, I think it's really different. I think the interesting thing, too, is Eddie Q's now taking maps in Siri. He also did MobileMe. I mean, those things are arguably platform agnostic. And Craig is now controlling iOS and OS10. I mean, it's clearly like there's a unification going on, not just with the corporate personnel, but also with the platforms itself. Yeah. I mean, here's my question. Eddie Q is responsible for iTunes, right? Yeah. Why is he not going out with Forrest Dahl? Eddie Q should have left Apple five years ago. Why? Because iTunes is a flaming pile of garbage. He's not in charge of the app. Not the app. He's in charge of the store. So basically anything with a server component belongs to Eddie Q. You mean the infrastructure. Yeah, yeah. The store. The code store. So that actually makes sense that he would take Siri and Maps on because they're both infrastructure problems, essentially. So who's responsible for the front end? Probably Forrest Dahl. By an iTunes app team. Yeah, probably Forrest Dahl. I mean, Forrest Dahl must have some hand in it, right? If he's leading the software design for iOS. I mean, he is, right? Right. And I have to say, Eddie Q has a different vibe to him than any other Apple executive. He's the guy who makes the deals with other people. And he's clearly very good at it. So what Apple needs to improve Siri and Maps is they've got to go make the deals. They've got to make deals for better map data or figure out how to hire people to build better map data. And with Siri, they've got to make the deals for additional content sources to make the service actually useful. And that's what Eddie Q does. And I have to say, he's also my favorite Apple presenter because he's like, look at all the shit we did. It's great. He's laid back. He's laid back is what you're saying. But Chris, what's your point? I just want to say, I've got to go because I think there's some hatches here. Yeah. There's a hurricane going on. Like, unbelievable, Apple. This does seem to be a day that we will not likely forget any time in the near future. And I want to leave you with well wishes. If you guys don't make it, it was great knowing you, great working with you. And I hope you don't get forced all the time. You want to just take this home, Josh, and we can wrap this up? I think we've exhausted everything we can do. You want me to do it with a song? What do you mean take it home? It's a Vergecast. Say goodbye to the Vergecast. OK. Well, that's our Vergecast for the week, I guess. I mean, is this an actual Vergecast? This is a special edition Vergecast. We'll do one next week. We'll do a real one next week, if the studio is still there. Next week we have our anniversary Vergecast, do we not? Yeah. I think it's going to be Friday. I don't know if you guys realize this, whoever is you guys, not everybody here, because you guys realize this. But November 1 will be our one year birthday of the Verge, which is crazy. So what a way to go out. What a month to go out on, right? I'm so happy this hurricane will kill me. We're getting completely destroyed by the hurricane. And we had pretty much news is over now. This is the end of technology news, as we know it. Do I need to do a proper wrap up here? You don't actually. I think we're done. We're done. Very good. It was great hanging out with you guys. I really enjoyed it. I look forward to our next episode. I hope I survive the night. Thank you everybody for tuning in. I know this was a hack together, but it was a lot of fun. Let's go to Redstone News. All right, cool.
 Post is going live.
 All right, well, we're not live until people know where
 to see us.
 We're live in secret.
 Hi, everyone.
 Hi, Scott.
 What is that terrible noise?
 You guys literally know that I could die at any second.
 The Statue of Liberty could come flying through this
 window and kill me.
 Wait, wait, wait.
 Where exactly are you in New York City?
 Because I could die too.
 I may actually die first.
 I'm at a hotel in Murray Hill.
 So let's not ever lie.
 We'll die together.
 Yeah, I'm going to tweet this link, and then we can start.
 Eight comments already.
 Not the other one.
 Tweet the YouTube link, not the post?
 Not the, well, no.
 Tweet the post.
 Don't tweet the special plus sign-in link thing.
 I don't see the post.
 Am I crazy?
 Where's the post?
 It's on the front page.
 You're lying to me.
 Look for your face.
 I can count the number of times I've
 been told that in my life.
 I tweeted.
 OK.
 I'm going to start this.
 Gentlemen, bros.
 Yo.
 My people.
 Is that how we talk?
 Am I, is this camera on me?
 How do I make the camera go on me?
 Hi.
 Keep talking.
 OK, here I am.
 Hello.
 It's not switching to me.
 What's happening?
 I see you.
 Do you see me?
 I just see Ross.
 Whatever.
 Is that a problem?
 OK, I'm just going to start.
 We can turn this into the beginning.
 Hi, everybody, and welcome to a very special Hurricane
 edition of the Vergecast.
 Our studio in New York City is closed, so we can't go to it.
 I've actually been evacuated from my home, which is cool.
 I'm at a hotel.
 Ross is actually flooded at any moment.
 And Chris Sigler's here.
 Hopefully a tornado will hit his home in Chicago.
 Well, to be absolutely clear, I'm like a few blocks down
 from you, so if I go, we're going together.
 Yeah.
 And I was on literally the last flight out of New York
 from Newark last night before they shut down the airport.
 So I'm feeling pretty good about that.
 I should have come with you.
 I don't know what I was thinking.
 But so this is the second time I've now been
 evacuated for a hurricane.
 So let me just apologize to everyone.
 I'm sorry that I'm in a hotel room and weirdly lit.
 But you can sense my panic and fear with me.
 And I hope that you do.
 I'm sitting in front of a window and watching the crazy
 sideways rain.
 So basically if something comes flying through this
 window and murders me, you'll be the first to know.
 And I think that is truly the Vergecast experience, waiting
 for a murder and then knowing about it.
 That's breaking news.
 That's news as it happens.
 Absolutely breaking news.
 Tweet about that.
 So the reason we wanted to put on the show, even under our
 constrained circumstances, is that today was an absolutely
 bonkers day of news.
 If you didn't pay attention to anything but the hurricane,
 you probably know everything that's going on.
 We wanted to kind of unpack it all a little bit.
 So this morning started out with Google.
 And Google is actually going to have, it's amazing how many
 events were canceled in the city by the hurricane.
 And so Google was supposed to have an event today that I
 was supposed to live vlog.
 And reporters are going to go to it, and there will be
 hundreds of people there.
 But they had to cancel it because of the hurricane.
 It was supposed to be held at Pier 38, so that's a terrible
 place to hold an event.
 And they were scrambling.
 They were trying to find an alternate way to do it.
 And they decided they just couldn't.
 There's no structural way unless they waited out the
 hurricane for them to make the announcement.
 So they just decided to publish with a blog post.
 So that went up today.
 The Nexus 4 was announced, running Android 4.2.
 The Nexus 4 doesn't have LTE, which I have a lot of things
 to say about.
 But in every other way, it's a very high-end device.
 There's a Nexus 10, also running Android 4.2.
 It's a 10-inch tablet made by Samsung.
 Ridiculous display, 2560 by 1600, 300 PPI, the crazy
 display, and the new Nexus 7 with 3G connectivity, with
 Nexus 7 with mobile, I think they're calling it.
 So a huge number of announcements there.
 And then later in the day, a couple hours after Google,
 Microsoft held its Windows Phone 8 event, announced some
 major new features for Windows Phone 8, which I don't know
 anything about because I was busy talking about Google.
 But that's why Chris is here.
 Chris, that's why you're here, man.
 What happened with Windows Phone 8?
 CHRIS DIBONA SONIORI, M.D. EDITOR, C.P.E.
 We kind of got a sneak preview of Windows Phone 8 back at
 that developer event a few months ago.
 And then they went strangely silent for a very long time.
 Developers haven't had access to the SDK.
 There have been some weird kind of nebulous PR releases
 that have come out saying these phones are going to be
 available in the coming weeks.
 But they've been very vague about what the exact date is
 going to be and what the prices are going to be, what
 carriers in some cases.
 So today was the day where they kind of came clean with
 all that consumer-facing information.
 And that leads into Build, which is their developer event
 where they're really going to get into the nitty-gritty
 details of what developers need to do to
 target this platform.
 And presumably, the SDK will be released there, too.
 OK, wait, wait, wait a second.
 So this isn't an extra.
 I don't think I realize so much.
 So the SDK has been in the dark for a lot of people even
 up until this day?
 Yep, yep, which is very different than the way they
 handled both Windows Phone 7 and 7.5.
 And it launches this weekend.
 Yes, it launches this weekend.
 So to hear Microsoft tell it, well, they don't have a story
 around that, really.
 But what we've heard, we've heard some people tell us that
 there really haven't been the metrics to prove that there
 isn't an advantage to releasing the SDK early in
 terms of app uptake, app availability,
 app product launch.
 And I don't think they were ready with the
 SDK ahead of time.
 I don't think it was in a state where they felt
 comfortable giving it to everybody.
 And of course, there's the iOS effect where the SDK comes
 out early.
 And then everything that's under NDA is immediately
 known, because people are talking about it.
 So there was that concern as well.
 Is that a terrible trade-off to having apps at launch?
 The Windows Store now has 120,000 apps, which is great.
 They've got Pandora.
 They've got Facebook, Twitter.
 That's also awesome.
 I didn't want to get back into that later.
 But is that really the best trade-off?
 I mean, at what point are we going to start seeing a huge
 deluge of apps that come from the SDK coming out now?
 No, I agree with you.
 But keep a couple things in mind.
 For one thing, there aren't that many app-facing features
 in Windows Phone 8 that major apps need to take advantage of
 in order to target the platform overall, meaning like, I'm
 trying to think of a good example.
 Like Pandora, there isn't much in Windows Phone 8 that an
 app like Pandora needs to be successful.
 There's some cool new live tile stuff.
 There's VoIP integration.
 I can't believe I just called it VoIP VoIP.
 But that's going to come in Skype, which isn't out yet.
 And then they're able to do things like track location in
 the background now, which they couldn't do before.
 So that'll allow developers to push interesting stuff to your
 live tiles based on your current location.
 So there are a few things.
 But there's nothing preventing a 7.5 app from being
 compelling on 8.0 right now.
 And a lot of the apps that I tested looked great.
 One notable exception was 1Password, which looks really,
 really terrible on Windows Phone 8.
 And I think that might just have to do with the resolution
 of the screen and the aspect ratio.
 But by and large, it's not bad.
 So they've had some big core apps, though.
 I feel like the Facebook app looks really nice.
 It's got the live app functionality.
 The Twitter app was really nice.
 I was looking at Twitter last night, or maybe a couple days
 ago, I saw Eric Lin from HTC.
 He switched back from Windows Phone device to an Android
 device, and he was like, oh my god, I forgot there are apps
 for everything on Android.
 Which is a big problem.
 The OEM is like, holy crap, there's so many
 more apps for Android.
 But they've got to make this push.
 This is their moment.
 I will say Microsoft did something really crazy and
 embarrassing when it had Jessica Alba up on stage.
 I watched that part of the stream.
 And I'm one of these people that if I see something
 embarrassing on TV, I have to turn it off.
 Does anybody have that?
 Do you know what I'm talking about?
 If something really bad is happening, like on a sitcom,
 I'll cover my ears because I can't take it.
 And Jessica Alba on the Microsoft stage was like, it
 was that level of cringey, terrible.
 I hate to disagree with you.
 No, I agree and I don't.
 It was terrible.
 I mean, at one point, JoBell Fiore was like, so tell us
 how much you like Windows Phone.
 And she was like, I like Windows Phone.
 I mean, it was ridiculous.
 Now remember, you and I have gone to the Sony events where
 Will Smith has come on stage and shilled for other
 singers.
 No, that stuff is embarrassing too.
 Don't get me wrong.
 It's all terribly embarrassing.
 I want to rank this properly.
 Well, so Sony is like, Sony would have the celebrities come
 on with Sir Howard Stringer, who is like, that man doesn't
 know how to operate to a script.
 And he's constantly just saying whatever he wants.
 So the celebrities would come out and be like, look at you.
 I paid you a lot of money to stand here.
 And that's hilarious.
 Microsoft does this thing, whether it's paid actors or
 not, where they have this hokey, real world.
 They don't know how to interact with each other like
 human beings would.
 So they hired a teenager to write them a script.
 And they have to follow it.
 So last night, I was talking to my friend.
 You relate to that, right?
 And I decided to use this app to do this totally normal
 thing I was going to do.
 And the other person's like, yeah, I do that totally normal
 thing all the time.
 It's like, just stop.
 Please, God.
 And anyway, the idea that they would loop Jessica Alba into
 that exact type of environment, but her totally
 normal things are like normal things for Jessica Alba.
 I was shooting a movie when my kids tweeted to four million
 of my followers by accident in Kids Connect or whatever.
 That could really help me with that problem.
 Is that a totally normal problem that you have?
 I'm like, no, it's not.
 I mean, no.
 I don't know what you're talking about.
 But I mean, the phone looks good.
 I'm sorry, Chris.
 You can continue talking about substantive problems.
 But I just watched that part.
 It's like, why do you always do this?
 Yeah, no.
 I think that the notion, in general, the notion of paying
 a famous person to talk about your product is, I don't think
 that works in this business.
 I think that works when you're talking about Gatorade.
 I don't think it works when you're
 talking about Windows Phone.
 And I don't think they're going to get a return on their
 investment from that particular hire.
 But I could be wrong.
 But no.
 So I feel like, going all the way back to Windows Phone 7.5,
 Microsoft has had this thing where people complain about
 there being no apps.
 And they're like, what are you talking about?
 We have tons of apps.
 What do you want?
 You want a camera filter app?
 And just yesterday, I came up with three very specific
 examples, which I talked about in the review of apps that I
 needed, well, not needed, but very strongly desired that I
 didn't have access to on the 8X that I was testing with.
 A United app, because I was stuck in New York with no way
 to get out, and I needed to check flight statuses.
 Uber, because I needed to get the hell out
 of lower Manhattan.
 And a real Starbucks app.
 Now, there are a few really shady third-party Starbucks
 apps where you can enter your card number, and then it
 creates the 2D barcode on the screen.
 But it's not the real deal.
 And speaking of Starbucks, I want to talk about this,
 because it cracked me up.
 I was standing outside my hotel on Wall Street, literally on
 Wall Street, and no, not on Wall Street, around the corner
 from Wall Street.
 And I entered Starbucks into the Maps app.
 It zoomed out to all of Manhattan Island and showed me
 eight Starbucks, none of which were within a 16-block radius
 of where I was standing, when in fact, I was actually
 standing within walking distance of three Starbucks.
 So I know that Microsoft has talked a lot about the fact
 that they're now using Nokia mapping technologies in
 Windows Phone 8, but I'm not seeing the
 benefits of that yet.
 Yeah.
 I mean, look, we have the devices.
 We're going to be reviewing a bunch of them.
 I think this is like we were, it's the same thing we've been
 saying, I think, with Windows 8 itself.
 It's Microsoft is in this perpetual transition period,
 and they've hit another endpoint with Windows Phone 8.
 But they're clearly not there yet.
 And I think they finally have these foundations to build on,
 and they've got some really nice hardware to show off
 those foundations.
 And now it's like, OK, you've finally caught up in the way
 that you said you were going to.
 Interesting ideas there.
 Live apps on the home screen are cool.
 But they've got a lot of work to do to build that platform
 into something viable against iOS, which I think has entered
 a period of iterative refinement, not radical
 change.
 And I think we can talk about Google a little bit.
 Again, it's Google, which is doing some crazy stuff with
 Android 4.2.
 But Google's challenge is filtering that stuff down into
 the mass market of Android devices and not limiting it to
 nice Nexus phones that don't have LTE.
 I mean, there's challenges at every part of the market.
 But Microsoft, they've brought themselves out to a
 competitive level.
 But they've got to work really fast getting app developers
 on Windows 8 and adding some of the stuff to Windows 8 that
 desperately needs.
 Yeah, we were talking about this on the mobile
 show last week.
 You compare the 920 or the 8X to the Lumia 900 from six
 months ago.
 And it's a compelling product.
 And if you look at the specs line item by line item, you
 can see that it's a great, great product, a much better
 product.
 But convincing somebody that's walking into an AT&T store
 that this $149.99 Lumia 920 is worth $50 more than the Lumia
 900 that you didn't want to buy six months ago.
 Chris, I love you.
 Ed, are you in a German disco right now?
 Where are you, Ed?
 What is happening?
 I'm here hanging out at the Microsoft event.
 There's the stage that we just live-blogged from.
 Oh, wow.
 I don't know who that is.
 It's not Dieter because he's not wearing Dieter's glasses.
 That's good.
 With the hair, Dieter, you're doing this floppy.
 I mean, you look more like the English major who tried to
 steal my girlfriend at every party in college now more than
 I ever did.
 Let's seal the deal.
 Dieter, are you wearing a cardigan or a sweater vest?
 I saw a cardigan.
 Oh, nice.
 Nice.
 It's good.
 It's good stuff.
 Dieter, are you taking off your pants?
 What are you doing?
 No, I was zipping my sweater back.
 All right, Dieter, we were just talking on Microsoft.
 You were there.
 What are your live on the spot impressions of what's
 happening at Microsoft?
 I think that this feels like the 15th time that we've had
 Windows Phone 8 announced.
 And I know that this is the official announcement and that
 general consumer is this is what they're
 going to see, apparently.
 But there wasn't any big blow-you-away moments.
 The thing that really stood out to me is they showed off
 rooms, and they showed off Kids Corner.
 And then they brought out Jessica Alba on stage.
 And all three of those things are Microsoft saying, look,
 we can't get any of the traditional smartphone buyers
 that we can, but we do have a shot with families.
 And it seems like families is dog whistling for
 moms, basically.
 And we've seen other smartphone manufacturers try
 and market to moms and fail terribly.
 But they're being much more subtle here.
 And I think they might have a chance to maybe pick up some
 real attention with that stuff.
 But that's a relatively small thing.
 And so I don't really think that it's going to blow anybody
 away, the stuff they announced here.
 They spend most of their time re-architecting the OS, not
 adding new features.
 Right.
 Right.
 I think that point about we've seen this presentation so
 many times, that's like Joe Elfiori's move now, is to show
 up at events and give the Windows Phone presentation.
 Which is like, have you heard of LiveTiles?
 And you've got to move beyond LiveTiles.
 Dan, I see Dan Seifert has joined us.
 I'm trying, if you can hear me.
 Dan's in much more like Hurricane.
 You're in upstate New York, right?
 And you're like, as far as I know, you live in a farm.
 Do you have a windmill that's going crazy?
 Well, you know what?
 We're earning all of our electricity right now for the
 rest of the year.
 I like it.
 As soon as I can actually, there we go.
 Oh, Jesus.
 Tom.
 Wow.
 Tom, why don't you just go stand next to Dieter?
 He's drunk.
 That's so fun.
 What are you doing?
 This is ridiculous.
 We're invading.
 I need to turn more lights on.
 This first cast has quickly gone to an insane party with
 two people.
 Add some, Dan, Dan, you're killing me, man.
 Or whatever that noise is.
 Tom, are you typing?
 No.
 This is what happens when you try to
 podcast from a hurricane.
 You lose all control.
 Tom, do you want to tell us what your thoughts on this
 Microsoft event were, since you're there?
 Clearly are there.
 It's kind of similar to how they did the surface and the
 window taster.
 It's kind of like they're really doing the whole consumer
 marketing play and stuff.
 It's not really new stuff for us.
 And it's like the time.
 I love Dieter's giving you a B-roll right now.
 I would have liked to see more apps, Instagram, all that sort
 of stuff.
 Yeah.
 It was kind of, mm.
 So pretty anticlimactic.
 That's what I'm getting, is that you guys were there and
 they showed you a bunch of stuff you've seen.
 So Tom, we were discussing the fact that Microsoft has kept
 Windows 7 a secret for a long time.
 And they've actually said, I've heard Joe Balfiore say
 many times, we're not showing all of the OSs that are
 available, we're going to show you all of the OSs later.
 And today they showed what presumably is the entire OS.
 And they've got a handful of features that are new.
 Again, I think live apps in Kids Corner are the big ones,
 as far as I can tell.
 Yeah.
 Data shared mirror.
 The data management stuff.
 But that's like carrier enabled.
 Yeah.
 That's not hitting right now.
 That's hitting down the road.
 We really need to know more about that data center stuff.
 It's built in, but it's not built in.
 It's the carrier's control.
 And it's kind of an interesting aspect that we
 weren't fully aware of how they were implemented.
 But was there anything else truly new today for Microsoft?
 Not really.
 I mean, Kids Corner and rooms, we kind of knew that.
 All I know is that whenever I see somebody with a Windows
 phone from now on, I'm taking their phone, enabling Kids
 Corner, and not telling them.
 And that's like, sorry, bro.
 No more Windows phone for you.
 Here's what kills me about Kids Corner.
 Why is it not just a generic guest mode so that you can
 hand your phone to anybody on the street and say if they
 need to make a call, if they need to do anything, so you
 don't need to give them access to all your email and your
 text messages that inevitably have swear words in them?
 Because this is easier to market, this is more
 interesting.
 Instead of guest mode, it's just a lot more interesting.
 Guest mode, it's Kids Corner, and it appeals to families.
 Right.
 I mean, that's the whole bag.
 Do you know, I have to say your line about marketing to
 moms being a complete fail is like, it is so true.
 It's not a real segment of the market.
 Like, because that's 50% of people.
 You know, like, here's women is a thing.
 But it has never worked for anyone.
 Like, Palm tried it.
 They put the stupid mirror in the back of the tree, and they
 were like, check it out, babes.
 Just stupid.
 It's bad.
 It's like, there are no features on a smartphone that
 you can actually say to somebody, men want this and
 women want that.
 You know what you want?
 You want a good phone.
 Yeah, but so the thing is, Microsoft isn't being
 ham-fisted about it.
 They're talking about families and Kids Corner.
 And so I don't think it's going to hurt them.
 I think it's just an interesting strategy that
 they're taking, because what else can they do?
 I think they're trying to find all these different areas
 where they can try and sell Windows, and now family is the
 latest area.
 And like, trying to be a people thing.
 I think that stuff, to me, that stuff plays better on
 tablets, right?
 Because you can give the kid a tablet.
 Play with this, don't screw with anything else.
 I've handed my phones to my niece and nephew all the time.
 And they want to do one thing.
 They want to play one game.
 It's like that works for babies.
 It doesn't work for kids who are like, I want to play the
 game that I want to play.
 I mean, we'll see.
 I don't have any kids.
 And I hope I never do.
 Our species is doomed.
 I don't want to.
 I'm never using Kids Corner.
 I'm never, I mean, like I'm saying, I'll
 use it to troll people.
 OK, let's actually, I think this is a really interesting
 transition to Google.
 Microsoft did a lot of stuff today, but a lot of stuff
 we've seen already.
 And I think Google is, the stuff is so new and so crazy,
 even though a bunch of it has been leaked.
 But I mean, that's, for example, that's one of the
 features of Android 4.2 on tablets is multiple user
 accounts that you can share with the tablet.
 And it's such a blindingly good idea to do that for real
 at the operating system level.
 I think that Google's making a play for the tablet as a pure
 consumption device that's very entertaining, because they
 can't tell the story of the tablet as a laptop replacement,
 which is the story that Microsoft is selling with
 Surface, the story that Apple is increasingly
 telling with the iPad.
 And they just can't do it.
 So they're much more of the leave it lying around, pick
 it up, play with it, kind of different apps and different
 games, and I think that's very smart.
 But at the same time, the Nexus 10 doesn't have any
 wireless capabilities.
 It doesn't have LTE, it doesn't even have 3G.
 The Nexus 7 has 3G, but I don't want to pay for 3G on a
 seven-inch tablet.
 It just doesn't feel right.
 And obviously, the Nexus 4 doesn't have LTE.
 So Dieter, you and I wrote a long piece on the LTE
 situation with the Nexus 4.
 Do you want to go through it a little bit?
 I think there was some perception that we were, in
 some way, trying to explain for Google what the problems
 were, but my intention was to actually point out how deeply
 fucked up the world is that a company of Google's size can't
 make the right decision.
 I think Google made a huge mistake.
 I want to be very clear with this.
 They should not have done this.
 And I think if at the end of the day, the other bad option
 for them was produce unlocked AT&T LTE handsets and sell
 them at a loss, they should have done it and just lied
 and said, we're out of stock or something, rather than
 produce 1,000 of them and be like, oh, out of stock.
 Chipsets are too fancy, instead of saying,
 we can't do this.
 So that's where I'm at.
 But the structural problems are also really intense.
 And really, to me, just as irritating and anger-causing.
 Yeah, basically, Google, they're like, we want to have
 the Nexus program be about shipping software updates
 without any carrier intervention, period.
 And therefore, we can't be on CDMA devices.
 This is basically the argument that we inferred from talking
 to them.
 And OK, that's a very morally pure stance that you've taken.
 But get your hands dirty and talk to the carriers and do
 what you need to do to get your phone launched.
 And frankly, do what Apple has managed to do and get your
 software updates out there in a more timely fashion.
 The joke that I made earlier this morning is that it's not
 so much that it's the Nexus 4, it's that it's the Nexus
 petulance.
 Google basically took its ball and went home and refused to
 do the really dirty, crappy, scummy work of cutting deals
 with US wireless carriers to get the phone on the network
 with LTE.
 Instead, they're taking the morally pure high ground,
 which is great for people that don't care about LTE, don't
 have LTE in their area or whatever.
 But it makes the phone not feel like a true flagship
 phone, because it's not, because it doesn't have LTE.
 Right.
 And I don't think, go ahead, Dan.
 Well, I was just going to say, because it's lacking LTE, and
 even though it's being picked up by T-Mobile, as far as
 sales success, the thing is essentially dead on arrival.
 Because even though it's unlocked, AT&T is not going to
 sell this phone.
 Verizon's not going to sell this phone.
 Between the two of them in the US, that's 200 million users
 that aren't going to be exposed to this phone at all.
 Does Google want the Nexus phones to be big sellers or
 not?
 It seems like they can't decide.
 It seems like they made a real go of it with the Galaxy Nexus.
 And now they clearly don't think that they're going to
 have this thing take over the planet.
 And do they want to sell a ton of these or not?
 I can't tell.
 I think that they have a very high and mighty view, both
 with the Nexus line and also with Chromebooks, that they
 think that they are way out of the curve.
 They are several years ahead of the curve in this part of
 the market where they're not selling devices in mass.
 They're selling devices the way they think that they're
 supposed to be.
 I mean, seriously, I've never seen a Chromebook
 anywhere on the street.
 Nexuses I do see, but only because of the
 Verizon Galaxy Nexus.
 It's not like I see Nexus 1s every day or Nexus Ss.
 If you saw Nexus 1s every day, I'd be like, where are you?
 You should leave there.
 But Dieter, back to your point about getting their hands
 dirty and talking to carriers, I think that the answer is not
 to get their hands dirty and talk to carriers.
 It's to completely ignore the carriers, go straight to the
 source of the radios and straight to the sources of the
 chipsets and just make the phone.
 Like, just do it.
 Right.
 Dieter, AT&T told you if you bring an LTE phone that
 supports our bands to us, we'll sell you a
 SIM and it'll work.
 Maybe there'll be some problems with it.
 All the features might not be enabled, blah, blah, blah,
 hotspot, video calling, whatever AT&T crap we're going
 to do, we'll do it.
 But at the end of the day, you'll get data for
 90% of your phone.
 Build that phone.
 You know what?
 And the thing is, LG has already built that phone.
 Right?
 The office machine exists.
 So I don't know.
 I'm very confused as to why.
 You've got to go, Dieter.
 I've got to go.
 The room is about to actually murder you.
 Like, GLaDOS just came on.
 That's over, man.
 There's seriously a little British Sphere robot dropping
 out of the ceiling over there asking me to
 run away with him.
 So I've got to go, guys.
 Thanks for the fun.
 Thank you.
 Thank you for that image.
 So Neil, here's my question to that.
 If you did have the LTE chips, your dream scenario, how much
 would it cost?
 That's a better Chris question, I think.
 But I would say it would be $650, $700, whatever.
 That's how much the online iPhone is, right?
 So right now it's $300, unlocked, off contract.
 You don't have to worry about the carrier stuff.
 It would cost $300 more if you put LTE radio chips in there.
 Those chips are bonkers expensive.
 Chris, you want to talk to this a little bit?
 Yeah, no.
 It's just a scale thing, right?
 And a chipset maturity thing.
 Like, these HSPA chipsets that they're working with now have
 literally been around for generations and generations of
 products, and they're basically free.
 The same thing is happening to them now that happened to the
 GSM Edge chipsets five years ago, and LTE is not there yet.
 So yeah, it would be a big premium.
 But I mean, regardless, that's a phone that I still think
 that they need.
 If they really want to take the principled stance, part of
 taking that principled stance is going out on a limb and
 making that LTE product.
 Right now they're half-assing it.
 They're not taking a principled stance on anything,
 because anyone can make an unlocked HSPA device.
 So what?
 Right.
 Cool, Chris.
 I think if we wanted to have an idea of the price
 difference between LTE and non-LTE, we could just take a
 look at devices on the market that already have a Wi-Fi
 only version and an LTE version.
 The iPad, it's $130 difference.
 The Kindle Fire HD, the difference between the LTE
 model and the Wi-Fi model, I think is over $200.
 So it's a significant cost factor.
 Amazon sells its tablets at cost.
 So if it was not a $200 cost increase, it wouldn't be a $200
 cost increase for the Kindle Fire.
 So it definitely would push the cost higher.
 But like Chris said, that's where the level of high-end
 phones are.
 The iPhone is over $600 unlocked.
 The 920 and the other high-end Windows phones are going to be
 in that neighborhood for an unlocked device.
 So if Google really wants to have a competing device, it's
 got to put the specs there.
 And if it pushes the price there, so be it.
 Right.
 Let me just tell you this.
 So Josh was in San Francisco.
 We did a big feature on the Nexus program.
 It's really great.
 You should go see it.
 Dieter did a big feature on Google Now, which we should
 talk about, because it's awesome.
 It's really cool now.
 So you should go look at that stuff.
 But I know that when Josh and Dieter found out about no LTE
 in San Francisco, they basically freaked out at
 Google, like this is what you should just say.
 And then when Google was in New York, and we were doing some
 other stuff here, Josh and I were talking to them.
 And we basically freaked out at them again.
 And we're like, this is a huge step back.
 We did a speed test.
 I had my iPhone 5 on LTE.
 Josh had his AT&T Galaxy Nexus.
 And they had a Nexus 4 that was running on T-Mobile.
 And just very informal, like kind of take
 this for what it is.
 But my iPhone got 15 megabits down on AT&T LTE.
 The Josh's Galaxy Nexus got like 0.02, which is just sad.
 And the T-Mobile phone, the Nexus 4, got four down.
 So it's an improvement over what has been terrible.
 Josh, we're just talking about LTE.
 What's up, buddy?
 What's going on?
 What's happening?
 How's your hurricane?
 Is this working?
 Am I on the internet?
 Hello.
 Is this publicly available to people?
 Yeah, people are all over this, man.
 The human beings, are they watching it right now?
 I should tweet to tell people this is a fact.
 You should tweet.
 How's your hurricane, man?
 You know, I think that this hurricane has been wrongly
 accused of murder, for murder that I could prove that on the
 night that it happened that this hurricane was nowhere
 near the event.
 The entire east coast of the United States.
 That's right.
 Does anybody understand my reference?
 I don't know if this may be a little bit too high level for
 some of the people in the Hangout, Chris Ziegler.
 I'm kidding.
 You're a wonderful man.
 Josh, I was just telling the story of when we were with
 Google and we did some speed tests on the phones because
 they were like, T-Mobile's great.
 And I was saying, my phone got 15 down, my iPhone with LTE.
 Your phone, your Galaxy Nexus and AT&T got like 0.02 or
 something really terrible.
 Yeah, it's really bad.
 And the Nexus 4 and T-Mobile got four down.
 So there's a little bit of a jump if you're on T-Mobile,
 but it's nowhere close to LTE.
 And these, again, these are kind of like second
 generation LTE products.
 So the hope is that that network will get even faster,
 whereas T-Mobile's definitely maxed out.
 So yeah, I actually have just been sitting here on my phone
 trying to tweak.
 I'm like, maybe I'm doing something wrong.
 I've been tweaking my APN settings, which by the way is
 like, it's maybe second only to flashing the phone with a
 ROM in the list of things that I don't want to do with my
 phone ever.
 When people are like, you were just flashed, as soon as they
 say you can just flash like that, I punch them in the face
 and run out of the room screaming in terror.
 And I'm crying and I'm upset.
 And they're, of course, injured.
 Here's the thing.
 Google has this story about their LTE.
 Here's what I think happened.
 I think Google's very hurt and mad and disappointed about
 their experience with the Galaxy Nexus.
 I think that they somehow saw this as getting
 back at the carriers.
 But the truth is it just makes them look bad.
 Their reasons are like, we want to make a phone that we
 have control over, basically.
 And the thing that is the problem is that, how come
 Google doesn't have any power?
 Yeah.
 This is another sales.
 That's why.
 Samsung has the power.
 And the thing about Samsung.
 Nobody buys flagship devices.
 They just don't sell flagship devices.
 I think when we were reporting on one of these
 injunctions, they said what the sales of the Galaxy Nexus
 were, and they were like some infinitesimal number, some
 tiny thing.
 Samsung's most popular handset in the US was this
 prepaid phone on Boost Mobile, the Galaxy Corveo.
 They sold like two million of those, and nothing else even
 came close, not the Galaxy S2 or anything like that.
 It's just that the balance of power through the carriers is
 who's going to make us the most money.
 And the answer is Samsung.
 It has been Samsung.
 And it's great that Google provides this operating
 system, but that doesn't actually generate any revenue
 for the carriers.
 So it seems like they're not willing to.
 And Google, with the flagship devices, even with the Galaxy
 Nexus, they had to take Google Wallet off the phone
 for Verizon.
 They had to preload some other crappy thing for Verizon, if I
 remember correctly.
 And Verizon held it back because they wanted to sell
 the Droid Razr instead.
 And they held it back for months.
 They announced the thing in October, and the Galaxy Nexus
 didn't hit until December on Verizon.
 But I just want to say, I mentioned this in the piece
 that I did, the feature piece, about the fact that when you
 get right down to it for Google, it's an economics
 question.
 They're not going to be able to sell enough of these phones
 on a carrier to convince a carrier to play ball with
 them, and they can't just make the phone with LT radios.
 No, they can.
 They can.
 That's the whole point.
 They can make it for AT&T.
 That's what we're saying.
 Look, they already gave away the operating system for
 Verizon.
 I understand they can make it for AT&T. But economically for
 them, it doesn't make sense for them to make the more
 expensive LTE device and try to sell, what, a few hundred
 thousand?
 Because that's how many they'll sell.
 Yeah, but they're trying to.
 The whole thing about this HSPA move is that they're
 trying to take a principled stance.
 And the only way they can take a principled stance is by
 taking that loss.
 By making an HSPA phone, nobody's impressed.
 Anybody can make an HSPA phone at this point.
 It's cheap.
 It's easy.
 LTE is not.
 But I'm saying LG makes the LTE phone.
 The Optimus G on AT&T has LTE.
 So part of that work has clearly been done.
 Right.
 But I think it is a different phone.
 They have to produce it.
 Google has to justify it economically.
 They have to be able to say, we can sell enough of these
 that it makes sense for us to actually spend the money and
 the time and have our partners spend the money and the time
 to make them.
 But what I'm saying is they have made that justification
 for the whole of Android.
 Yeah.
 This thing, it's a nightmare.
 Let's not even talk about their reasoning.
 Let's talk about what might be.
 I have a question.
 I mean, we're all on the same page that an off-contract
 phone in the US with no LTE makes no sense in a country
 where everyone just gets it on contract anyway.
 What about international?
 Yeah.
 I was going to say this.
 What about off-contract international?
 This approach might be very successful in Europe, where
 Chris was saying how Google is trying to be years ahead of
 where everyone else is as far as selling phones.
 If you look at the structure of contracts and carriers in
 Europe, they are already essentially years ahead of what
 we have here in the US.
 So this type of thing might be very, very successful in
 Europe, where there's only a smattering of LTE networks in
 a handful of places.
 So the vast majority of users don't care if it has LTE or
 not, and they buy their phones unlocked anyways.
 But if we're looking from a US perspective, it's hard to see
 that.
 No.
 I mean, from the US perspective, I think that that's
 the thing is they're just like, we're not looking at this
 from a US perspective.
 I'm not defending them, because this is what I wanted
 to say next is, what is my next phone going to be?
 Because I swore to.
 So I was juggling the Verizon Galaxy Nexus and the AT&T
 Galaxy Nexus.
 And I want to have a single phone.
 I do not want to be swapping two phones.
 I do not want to be doing any SIM swapping or anything else.
 I want a single phone that will do everything that I want
 it to do on LTE.
 What am I buying?
 Does anybody know?
 I'm not buying this.
 I'm buying the Galaxy S3.
 Galaxy S3.
 That's what you're buying.
 What else are you going to do?
 It's something with Galaxy in it.
 I won't have another Pentile display.
 No, no, no, no, no, no.
 The Galaxy S3 display is beautiful.
 Pentile is a non-issue on the GS3.
 It really is.
 You're saying Galaxy S3?
 So the only thing about the GS3 for you is that it's not
 stock Android, right?
 We were talking about this a few weeks ago.
 Honestly, I think I'm just going to get an iPhone.
 It's the only device on the market that is not
 compromised in some way.
 Lumia 920.
 Actually, in all honesty, watching the HTC stuff today
 and reading the review and reading the Windows Phone 8
 review and just thinking about it, it is somewhat attractive.
 But I don't know.
 If I'm going to get away from the Android ecosystem, if I'm
 going to not use the best Gmail experience and the best
 calendar experience and Google Talk and whatever else, I'm
 not going to go further away.
 I'm going to go to something that I'm more familiar with.
 Yeah.
 Well, Josh, let me ask you something.
 I want to ask you too something because I've been
 trying to figure out if I want to stick with Android.
 Is 4.2 that much better than 4.1?
 Or should I just go with what Chris says and just get a
 jelly bean S3?
 I think that some of the conveniences in 4.2 are really
 great. I think the new camera stuff is really cool.
 I think the widget stuff is obviously a really cool
 feature, but is it like deal breaker?
 Samsung's actually made a lot of changes to the software.
 Some of them are not completely terrible.
 I'm just trying to imagine a world where that is the phone
 that I use.
 Yeah, it's a terrible world, man.
 No, can I say this?
 It seems like the defining feature of the Nexus 4 is what
 it doesn't have.
 But what it does have as a phone is
 actually very impressive.
 It is a surprisingly nice piece of hardware.
 And I was very unimpressed by all the leaks that we saw,
 all the pictures.
 But having actually held it and played with it a little
 bit, the back is really cool.
 It's kind of funny that they made it out of glass, which is
 like, so it goes.
 Actually, the more I was thinking about it when we were
 working on that hands-on post last night, Josh, the more to
 me it feels, it has that vibe of an old high-end Blackberry
 used to give me, where it's very professional and
 executive.
 It's cool.
 And then you flip it over and it sparkles at you.
 It's that kind of 1980s executive.
 Yeah, there's only one problem, which is it's a
 horrible lack of LTE.
 Yeah.
 I will say this.
 We don't have any other problems.
 We don't have any other problems.
 But can I just say one more thing?
 And the screen is incredible.
 Going from the Galaxy Nexus, which is like the phone that I
 was going to switch to Android, that would be the
 phone that I would have gotten.
 And I really, really dislike that screen.
 This screen is like, it is on par with any other display in
 the industry, iPhone, whatever Nokia is doing with
 Lumia, 320 DPI.
 It's using a new technology, so the pixels are closer to
 the top of the screen.
 The iPhone 5 uses in-cell touch, and this uses G2.
 They've gotten rid of the layer of the screen where the
 touch sensor is and integrated it with the actual screen.
 It is a very nice phone.
 And it has a great CPU.
 It's got the Snapdragon S4.
 So what you're getting for $300, or whatever it is, is
 great, but it's missing the thing that you want in your
 next flagship phone.
 I think if you live in Europe or a place where LT is not
 deployed, it's a really awesome phone.
 I just think it's really hard to accept.
 On the other hand, Apple did this with 3G with the
 original iPhone.
 I'm not saying it's the same justification, even though
 Google is essentially saying similar stuff, like battery
 life and whatever.
 The iPhone 5 has LTE and a bigger screen and the same
 size battery as the previous one.
 The chip sets are there.
 I'm not defending it.
 I'm just saying that there is some precedent for this stuff.
 I mean, let's put it this way.
 I really would like to have this phone be my next phone.
 I'm obviously a big fan of the newest versions of Android.
 And my gut feeling is no matter how good the phone is,
 no matter how good the software is, it's going to be
 really hard for me to consider going another year with my
 main phone not having the fastest possible
 network in America.
 I mean, it just seems insane to me.
 Because the difference is not like, oh, I get five on this
 thing and eight on this thing.
 It's like, I get two on this thing and 15 on this thing.
 That's a huge, huge difference.
 And so their play for Europe may be fine, but it's really,
 really difficult for me to imagine that this is the phone
 that I stick with for an entire year.
 But there's no alternative.
 I mean, the alternatives suck.
 And I say this in my piece, that the double-edged sword of
 Google's openness, that they work with a lot of people,
 and they work with a lot of manufacturers, and they work
 with a lot of carriers.
 And anybody can take their software and make a phone.
 But the double-edged that is they don't really exert
 control over any of that stuff.
 I mean, it's insane to me that there's not a single device.
 You can't buy a single device with stock Android and LTE
 except the Galaxy Nexus.
 And that's always a step behind the actual releases.
 It's just crazy to me they can't do one phone that is on
 their release schedule.
 I remember having a conversation with Drew
 Bamford, who is HTC's lead designer on the software side.
 He's sort of Scott Croyle's counterpart
 on the software side.
 And I asked him, why don't you release a stock Android device?
 And he said, because we want to differentiate.
 We want something that's different.
 And I said, well, guess what?
 If you release a stock Android device, that would be
 different, because nobody does stock Android.
 Right.
 Right.
 I agree.
 I mean, I just think that, here's the problem.
 Look, even if HTC releases a stock Android device, they
 still aren't going to get updates on the schedule.
 I mean, for some reason, Apple is the only company that has
 found a way to bully carriers or to force carriers into
 letting them do what they want.
 I mean, and by the way, they didn't start this way.
 I mean, the iPhone, the first iPhone was not just a runaway
 hit in everybody's mind.
 I mean, it was a runaway hit.
 But before it was sold, it wasn't like all the carriers
 were going, oh, yeah, this is going to just be the best.
 Verizon rejected it.
 That's right.
 Verizon rejected it.
 AT&T picked up the scraps.
 And of course, it was obviously a huge hit.
 And Apple was right.
 What's weird is that nobody can repeat what they're doing.
 It's very frustrating, I think, as an industry, to see
 an industry that is hamstrung in this way.
 So Microsoft, their strategy is actually close.
 It's not as good as Apple's.
 But what they do is they say that carriers can reject
 individual updates for Windows Phone.
 But if they do so, the next time they do pick up an
 update, it will roll up everything in every previous
 release.
 So ultimately, at some point, they need to pull the trigger
 and come up to speed.
 Well, one thing I will say is that with Windows Phone, they've
 been pretty good about actually getting those updates
 to the devices.
 Obviously, I'm not using every device, so I can't speak for
 every person's experience.
 But I will say that it seems to me that they've actually
 gotten their act together on getting those updates out.
 And they're not selling phones that are wildly stock.
 Essentially, they're stock with a couple of extra apps.
 And correct me if I'm wrong, Chris, and anybody else can
 correct me if I'm wrong, but my memory is you can actually
 just delete any app.
 You can uninstall any app you don't want.
 It's not like disabling.
 You can just straight up take it off the phone.
 On Windows Phone devices, yeah.
 So if you buy an AT&T phone that's got a bunch of AT&T
 carrier-branded apps, you can just go one by one and
 uninstall them completely.
 So I'm actually about to uninstall HTC's included app
 right now.
 You can see on it.
 Well, you probably can't see, but uninstall is not grayed
 out.
 So yeah.
 I wrote a piece in July arguing that it was like five
 years after the iPhone was announced or came on sale.
 And I feel like that was a moment when it felt like
 there'd be this huge explosion of innovation in mobile,
 particularly with the transition to LTE.
 And I think this phone is kind of a breaking
 point for LTE in terms of making it
 clear what's happening.
 The transition to LTE was hard fought.
 Verizon bought this spectrum at auction from the FCC.
 There were rules in place that required
 them to make it open.
 The exact phrase was any app, any device.
 You're not allowed to block anything from
 your 700-megabyte LTE.
 Google fought Verizon.
 They were in court against each other.
 They were in court with the FCC.
 Google had to participate in the auction because there was
 like if the price didn't go to a certain level, the rules
 wouldn't kick in.
 So Google was actually bidding on the spectrum to make sure
 Verizon's price was high enough to trigger the rules.
 All of this stuff happened.
 This was like a massive story in the industry.
 And it's been completely co-opted by Verizon.
 Right?
 They have these groups.
 Hey, can you lie?
 They have these like funky.
 Yeah, am I still here?
 Do that just completely drop for a second?
 No, it wasn't just me.
 It drops because of.
 Yeah, you're back.
 But you missed like the last two sentences.
 I'm using a Verizon MyFida Connect, so I'm
 probably being.
 We didn't hear anything that said the last 10, 15, 12
 seconds were just like you.
 It was very dramatic.
 We all just kind of cut out and swiped.
 No, I think we were all under the impression that we were
 freezing out.
 I was thinking you were going, oh, this story.
 I saw a tree fly by my window, so I figured it was me.
 I'm sure.
 I was ranting about Verizon and open access.
 And I'm convinced that my LG MyFida is straight.
 They're pulling a huge switch somewhere that says, has
 Nilay Patel labeled on it?
 They're like geo-targeting you for a shutdown?
 No, but you're right to your point, what
 little of it we heard.
 I do hope this draws some attention to the fact.
 But it's not just like, hey, the industry
 won't let Google do it.
 Google doesn't have the power to do some
 things they need to do.
 But what is increasingly and constantly crazy to me is that
 we don't have, it's like you can't just buy a phone and put
 it on a network.
 Explain to me, by the way, I just want to be clear.
 How many skews does Apple actually make in terms of the
 different radios?
 Are there different radios in the Verizon iPhone 5 versus
 the AT&T iPhone 5?
 What's the breakdown?
 So I think I wrote this piece up when the iPhone 5 was
 announced, and essentially there's three different model
 numbers for the iPhone 5.
 There's an AT&T version that has AT&T HSPA plus support.
 Hey guys, guys, am I back?
 Can you hear me?
 Yes, you're back.
 News is breaking all over the internet right now that Scott
 Forstall is leaving Apple next year.
 What?
 Yeah, our chat room is going insane right at the second.
 Which is crazy.
 You know what?
 Actually, I'm not surprised.
 After the Maps thing, after Siri became a disappointment,
 I'm not surprised as he kind of.
 Yeah, reported by Bloomberg.
 Scott Forstall leaving Apple next year.
 Boy, he fell out in a hurry.
 Yeah, well, Maps is a public apology.
 That's rare.
 That is crazy.
 Yeah, once you start issuing public apologies, I think
 your time is up.
 That's a big, big deal.
 Wow.
 That is, I wonder, this is real life reactions here.
 This is interesting.
 We've been talking about this, but I wonder how much of this
 is, I mean, maybe he just wants to retire or leave Apple.
 But there's been a lot of, I think, heat on him for the
 Maps stuff, for the lack of iOS, seeming lack of iOS
 innovation.
 I mean, he's the software guy, right?
 So I wonder how much of this is actually blowback.
 I mean, Maps has obviously been a huge
 embarrassment for Apple.
 And I don't think that any of the other stuff helped.
 I mean, I think my biggest negative in the review is,
 I love the phone.
 It's really, really good.
 But software-wise, development seems to have
 stalled out.
 Yeah.
 Neil Ives writing the post right now.
 Yeah.
 This is like we're live.
 It's like live streaming a guy writing a post.
 No, I'm just helping.
 Don't forget to mention his crazy stare.
 Use the swagger shot we took from Wave.
 Oh, there it is.
 Yeah, we have it.
 We're doing that?
 Yeah.
 This is good.
 This is like a live stream of something coming together.
 Can I just say this?
 Can I just point out?
 Apple announced this during a hurricane.
 This is the ultimate moment of tying the
 news cycle for Mad News.
 On a day with Google already announcing something, and
 Microsoft is like, oh, the markets are closed.
 The markets are closed.
 The markets are closed because there's a hurricane.
 Come on.
 Is there actually news?
 What?
 Is there actually a piece of PR from them or something?
 It hit the Bloomberg terminal, and then my Twitter exploded.
 So I think a press release is probably coming, forthcoming.
 Google News has nothing.
 How does Michael Bloomberg have time to worry about Apple?
 Yeah, how does?
 Mayor Bloomberg had to sit there and type this out.
 He got the memo from Apple, and he's like, all right, I've
 got to go do a hurricane.
 He's reading the ticker tape.
 And I've got to go do a hurricane now.
 I have the PR right here.
 I have the announcement.
 Apple today announced executive management changes
 will encourage even more collaboration between the
 companies World Cross hardware, software, and
 services team.
 As far as these changes, Johnny Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddie
 Kuehn, and Craig Fegare, will add more responsibilities to
 the roles.
 Apple also announced that Scott Forstall will be leaving
 Apple next year and serve as an advisor to Google.
 So this is what Bob Mansfield did.
 I think we lost Nilay again.
 Did we?
 Well, it's OK.
 What he had to say wasn't very interesting or
 important anyhow.
 I'm here.
 I can hear you.
 Guys, Nilay is gone, and we just have to accept that he's
 not going to be with us during this Hangout.
 All of you are fired.
 And move on with our lives.
 What can we say?
 Can I just say this press release, the way it's written
 is so crazy.
 He was a wonderful man, but he just didn't have what it took
 to take him to the hurricane.
 Who, Scott Forstall or Nilay?
 Nilay.
 Also Scott Forstall.
 What I don't want to tell you is that he's missing due to
 the hurricane.
 He's been blown away with all of the house.
 Hey, can you guys hear me?
 Eddie Kuehn will take on the additional responsibility to
 Siri and Maps, placing all of our online
 services in one group.
 Johnny Ive will provide leadership and direction for
 human interface.
 Queued up.
 They got this thing queued up.
 So Johnny Ive is doing software now?
 Yeah, Johnny Ive.
 Is that his first software role?
 Wow.
 Wait, really?
 Where is this report, Nilay?
 It's a PR.
 Where?
 Swire.
 Yeah.
 It's in our chat.
 I dropped a link in our chat.
 Oh, I got it.
 I got it.
 I got it.
 There's the only way to get a good picture of this.
 The only way to, this is a massive shakeup.
 This is a huge shakeup.
 This is crazy.
 This is crazy.
 Is that Nilay again, or was that me?
 I don't know.
 That was Nilay dropping out again.
 Damn it, Nilay.
 Stop dropping the mic, Nilay.
 I know you've got a lot of points to make, but.
 Wait.
 Wait, wait a second.
 John Browett is leaving Apple.
 And he's only been there since.
 Out of retail.
 So the head of retail just got there.
 So he got canned.
 The head of retail got canned.
 Wait a second.
 This is zany.
 Head of retail has gone also.
 Wow.
 Well, you know what?
 This is like seriously insane.
 Are they bringing back the JC Penney guy?
 Oh, I hope so.
 No, he's busy with JC Penney.
 I mean, this is like, they will pay money.
 They'll throw money to bring him back.
 No, here's what it says.
 It says, Apple's retail organization has an incredibly
 strong network of leaders at the store and regional level
 who will continue the excellent work that has been
 done over the past decade to revolutionize retail with
 unique, innovative strategies for customers.
 This is blowing my mind right now.
 The Johnny Ive human interface stuff is crazy.
 By the way, this also puts Johnny Ive much, much closer
 to the position that Steve Jobs would have had in the
 sense that he's had an eye on software and hardware as a
 holistic thing.
 I think that is a pretty monumental piece of news today.
 I mean, to me, this is actually a much bigger piece
 of news than probably anything else that we reported on
 today, which is ironic because there's a lot of big news.
 Well, we talked about the fact that Tim
 Cook is a numbers man.
 He's a great, like a traditional CEO, but he is not
 a visionary in the same sense that Steve Jobs was.
 They've been lacking that.
 And to unify that under Johnny Ive probably
 makes a lot of sense.
 Here's a prediction.
 Here's a prediction for you.
 Soon, many, many good designers and engineers from
 Google will be leaving for new jobs elsewhere.
 That's my prediction.
 Because I feel like Ive's sensibilities are actually a
 lot more in line with what they've been doing with
 Android in terms of design than what Apple has been
 doing.
 I mean, if you look at Apple hardware, if you look at
 Windows Phone or Android, that seems like it's much
 better matched to this extremely streamlined,
 minimal, sophisticated hardware than anything they've
 been doing on the software side.
 I wouldn't be surprised, honestly, if in some way Jobs
 was kind of a stickler for some of the stuff that Ive
 probably wasn't that into.
 I mean, when you think about the generational gap there,
 because there is a gap.
 And when you think about what Johnny Ive brought hardware
 wise, it seems like a different aesthetic in a lot
 of ways, you know?
 Anyhow, I'm speculating.
 I have to say, there's the fact of the news.
 And then there's the timing of when it's being delivered.
 They knew we were hanging out.
 And they were like, we'll catch them off guard.
 They'll blow up this time of year.
 Tomorrow, too, right?
 They have two days of market downtime to
 let this news begin.
 What's weird is that Eddie Q, or sorry,
 Bob Mansfield left.
 I mean, he quit, right?
 He retired.
 And it says he's going to lead a new group called Tech.
 Called what?
 Neely?
 Neely's gone, isn't he?
 Yeah, he's just.
 Now I'll never know the name of that group.
 Dramatic pause.
 I can still see his freeze frame, just looking dead into
 the camera.
 With his mouth slightly agape.
 He was about to tell us of incredible importance.
 I think he's alive because the weather's still fine.
 I'm actually facing the light right now.
 He's fine.
 Technologies, that's the new group.
 Technologies.
 All I had to do was read this Newswire release.
 So what do you know?
 Crazy, crazy piece of news.
 Just wild.
 I mean, Google, Microsoft had a day in the news cycle.
 Apple decided just to take it over for the next two, three
 days.
 How many times is that going to happen this fall?
 Because literally every single time Microsoft announces
 something, Apple just comes in and just cuts them off at
 their knees with.
 You can be sure that this was not an accident.
 And by the way, if I'm not mistaken, I think this just
 popped on Apple's site.
 Yeah.
 Oh, there we go.
 Oh, hold on.
 This is different.
 No, it's the same.
 Is it the same?
 Yeah.
 Exactly the same?
 Yeah.
 OK.
 So this is a big, by the way, this is a huge, this is just
 nuts.
 I'm almost speechless.
 I'm just trying to take in what this means.
 I think this means big, big changes for Apple next year in
 terms of what they're doing in software.
 I mean, huge changes.
 I just hope this means that we no longer see stitch leather
 and awful skeuomorphic ideas.
 Maybe?
 There's no way that this is not going to, I think the
 stitch leather is going to go.
 Yeah.
 It's got to go.
 It's been a kind of.
 Stitch leather at Game Center just need to be totally
 revamped.
 If you're a Johnny Ives, and you see that stitch leather on
 your device, does it not make you cringe a little bit?
 You're like, I created a whole new process for putting a
 screen under glass, and you put stitch
 leather on that screen.
 So I think the other thing, and I've got William's side
 telling me about this.
 Not only was it Siri and maps are kind of issues, but
 apparently rumor has it Bob Mansfield hated Scott
 Forstall so much, this is kind of one of the carrots that
 gave Bob to stay.
 You know, like Scott's on the way out, you should definitely
 stay with us.
 Don't casually retire out.
 Yeah.
 Interesting.
 Well, then that might make sense that Bob Mansfield is
 kind of back in.
 Right.
 But so Forstall is leaving immediately, or basically like
 in January.
 I mean, there's only a couple months here.
 It says he's leaving next year and will serve as an advisor
 to CEO Tim Cook in the interim.
 Welcome back.
 Which means that he's already gone.
 So Forstall is essentially gone, according to this, and
 he's serving right now as an advisor to Tim Cook, and then
 he'll be officially gone next year.
 Yeah.
 I doubt that he's actually doing anything.
 I just heard a loud noise in my house.
 Nothing?
 It's nothing?
 OK.
 I'll bet you that Forstall isn't actually doing anything.
 It probably has something to do with options,
 maturity, or something.
 I doubt that he's probably on a beach somewhere.
 Who, Forstall?
 Oh, you don't think he's actually advising right now?
 He's not sitting next to Tim Cook telling him how to do
 something?
 He's probably just sipping margaritas on the beach.
 With Rubenstein.
 Yeah, with Rubenstein.
 Maybe Forstall and Rubenstein will start a new phone
 company together.
 Called Han?
 Spring.
 Wait, no, guys, guys, RF.
 There it is.
 Called Loungen.
 Yeah, Margarita Mobile.
 Yeah, Margarita Mobile.
 It would be a bunch of poorly made devices with terrible
 skeuomorphic software.
 I like it.
 It's like a device, an Oreo.
 It's like made to do an Oreo.
 And then like, oh, no, no, no.
 It Oreos like the pre-did, and then when you Oreo it open, it
 has an Oreo, like an Oreo on the screen, which is very
 photorealistic.
 It's like skeuomorphic.
 I mean, it's a little bit cartoony, of course.
 And then you Oreo the Oreo, and then that's where the
 apps are inside the Oreo.
 That's your unlock gesture is Oreo ruin.
 You can dip the Oreo in something.
 Turn off Wi-Fi, you dip it in different milk, like
 strawberry milk and chocolate milk that does different
 settings.
 Think about it.
 Just contemplate that for a moment.
 I want you to really get your head around that idea.
 I wonder if we need to be doing anything site-wise while
 this huge news is breaking.
 Can you tell me?
 Can anybody tell me?
 Yeah, we should have a discussion about that.
 I'm not sure if we should be doing it live on the air,
 though.
 I don't think live on the air is the way to do it.
 I don't know whose idea this idea, this Hangout was anyhow.
 It was actually Michael Shane's idea.
 Well, Michael Shane is unfortunately now
 looking for a new job.
 We wanted to do a live broadcast.
 We wanted to do a live broadcast for all these
 announcements, like we did for Apple.
 But our studio is shut down because of the hurricane.
 So this was the next best option.
 Josh, I think what you meant to say is that Michael Shane is
 advising Joshua Topolsky until the end of the year.
 Yeah.
 That sounds about right.
 Does that mean he can cook?
 That's interesting.
 I think we're still trash-talking stock,
 apparently.
 It took almost $39 million.
 That doesn't seem like a lot, though.
 I'm sure it's more than enough.
 If you're Scott Forstall?
 I don't know.
 It is like $40 million.
 Is that not enough for you?
 How much did Tim Cook get when he became CEO?
 There was a number there, too.
 What's that?
 How much did Tim Cook get?
 Tim Cook had some huge stock when he became CEO.
 What was that?
 His current total compensation package is $378 million.
 That's not bad.
 Yeah, not bad.
 I have to say, my Twitter stream right now is this
 insane combination of people freaking out about the
 hurricane and people freaking out about Apple.
 And I can't tell who is more intensely worried about the
 state of the world.
 But it's like, here's a picture of Hurricane Sandy
 coming over the East Coast.
 And then someone's like, here's a picture of Scott
 Forstall looking sad.
 I was like, so here's something we haven't talked
 too much is Craig Federe, am I saying that name right?
 He's not doing iOS and OS 10.
 He's overseeing portions of both at this point.
 Further proof that they're combining over time.
 Yeah, I think we need to hang on one second.
 Sorry, you guys go ahead and get your phones.
 Sorry, you guys go ahead and keep talking.
 I need to type something to our team.
 This is the worst, by the way, worst fucking
 timing ever, Frank.
 Or it's the best fucking timing.
 People get to see behind the scenes of us
 freaking out about new things.
 Maybe, maybe.
 It's just funny because there was so much other Google stuff
 to talk about, and now none of it actually
 seems very important.
 It's like they put out a new tablet.
 But you know what happened?
 Apple fired everyone.
 Sorry.
 I mean, I have to say this is a pretty
 astounding set of moves.
 Especially because the way Apple was set up, the way it
 was telling the story about the company, Post Jobs, was
 that it had this deep, deep bench of people who could
 absolutely rely on to carry forward the spirit of Apple.
 This leadership had been personally selected and
 trained by Jobs to do this thing.
 And it's like they're carrying down that path.
 But the products that we've seen thus far, they were
 products in the pipeline.
 The reporting was the iPhone 5 was the last phone that Steve
 Jobs had personally had a hand in.
 And this is about the future.
 And I want to put this in perspective.
 There was an article in Bloomberg a couple months ago
 right after Jobs died, and it was like,
 Forrestal is the heir apparent.
 It was like Forrestal is the guy.
 This team was touted.
 There was this tight-knit team of people that were doing
 things, everybody in their place.
 And to have blown it apart this majorly, I think, speaks
 volumes.
 It either means things are going to start working in a
 very different way and working well, or they're going to
 start working in a very different way and maybe not
 working that well.
 I don't know if this is house cleaning or if this is chaos.
 That's the question that has to be answered.
 Let's put things in perspective, though, because
 this has happened before with Rubenstein.
 It's happened with Fidel.
 This isn't without precedent.
 It's without precedent in the post-Jobs era.
 Right.
 Well, yeah, but the thing, it happened with Paper Master,
 who came in.
 They fought IBM to hire him.
 Then he did the antenna for the iPhone 4,
 and they got rid of him.
 That's fine.
 And I know it's happened before, but I think the level
 to which they are completely reorganizing their executive
 ranks has not happened before.
 And the thing with Ruby and the thing with Fidel was that
 they were driven out by Scott Forstall.
 That was the personality clash.
 With the phone, with Forstall and Fidel, it was they were
 going to, they were deciding whether to build the phone
 based on the iPod, or they decided whether to build up
 the iPod or bring down the Mac.
 And they went with Forstall's, let's bring down OS X. And
 that clash drove Fidel out of the company.
 With Rubenstein, he was in charge of everything for a
 minute, and then iOS became more important, and he left
 the company.
 Do you want to build a competitor to iOS?
 So those changes happened, but they happened in the sense
 that Scott Forstall expanded to fill those voids.
 And that was very clear that that was happening.
 He's leaving, and to fill the void of Scott Forstall, they
 have to expand eight people to take over all of his jobs.
 I will say this.
 I'm just looking at this release.
 What's very interesting to me is that EdEQ is taking over
 Siri and Maps.
 Because I hesitate to call Siri a failure, but those are
 the two trouble spots.
 But not a runaway success.
 Those are the two big, huge, splashy launch features for two
 versions of the OS.
 Yeah, so he was not loved by the people.
 He made some really boneheaded moves.
 Browitt, we're talking about.
 Yeah, exactly.
 Made some really boneheaded moves.
 Go ahead.
 I want to talk about two things.
 One, to the point earlier, you talked about the Bloomberg
 piece, I don't want to discount that this isn't just
 like a trend.
 Like, this is just two people that, quite
 frankly, had it coming.
 To go back to the Bloomberg Businessweek article, here's
 a quote from it.
 Quote, some former associates of Forstall, none of whom
 would comment, of course, say he routinely takes credit for
 collateral successes and to flex blame for mistakes.
 So even if he was on a winning streak, he was just
 liable.
 So you're saying he did exactly what Jobs did?
 He did exactly what Jobs did, but he didn't do it well.
 Well-documented.
 Well, I mean, you're not everybody's jobs, you know?
 Exactly.
 Look, this is Forstall's next period.
 I mean, I think, what are you doing?
 He's rattling his Gatling gun, apparently.
 There is a mute button on the top right.
 I'm going on mute.
 Because I've got stuff I've got to take care of, so you
 guys carry on.
 Yeah, by the way, my house is literally starting to shake
 with the winds getting really bad here.
 So I am going to split in a second.
 But I do want to say, I don't think that we should
 underestimate how big of a deal it is that Johnny Ive is
 taking this human interface role.
 I mean, which I assume will have, and I don't know the
 extent of that role or what it actually covers.
 My guess is that it's going to touch on a
 bunch of software stuff.
 It makes me, frankly, very, very excited about what Apple
 may do in the future software-wise.
 There has not been a new hand on the wheel there for a while.
 And I don't know how much this role is actually in the nuts
 and bolts of the software.
 But if Johnny Ive has the kind of role that he has, anything
 like what he has in hardware and software, we could see a
 sea change in some of their software, some of how their
 software functions.
 Which I think is extremely exciting.
 How quickly do you think he'll take the faux leather out of
 the calendar app?
 That's all I need to know.
 Do you think it's six months?
 Do you think it's two years?
 Let me put it to you this way.
 If I were at Apple right now, they would be creating some
 very, very clever gestures and some very good user
 interface ideas.
 But I would be looking at what people are doing with
 gestures.
 The stuff that Google showed us with the camera, where it's
 this one-handed, this circular menu that you can reach with
 just one thumb from anywhere on the screen, this stuff is
 wild, futuristic, new interface ideas.
 And Apple is so far away from that right now.
 They're so locked into what they've created.
 I think that they've got a gigantic opportunity to look
 around and to innovate on what other people are doing.
 And Johnny Ive is a guy who can obviously take something
 that is a familiar form and make it very new.
 So I'm actually kind of psyched about this.
 I mean, this is a cool, weird move.
 I think that it says a lot about what Apple wants to do.
 I think it says that they are hearing some of the
 criticisms.
 They're obviously not happy with the map situation and
 some of the other stuff they've gotten hell from the
 press for and from users.
 And I think that putting Johnny Ive in this role means
 they're taking a different look at it.
 They're taking a different angle, which is exciting.
 I mean, I think it's really different.
 I think the interesting thing, too, is Eddie Q's now taking
 maps in Siri.
 He also did MobileMe.
 I mean, those things are arguably platform agnostic.
 And Craig is now controlling iOS and OS10.
 I mean, it's clearly like there's a unification going
 on, not just with the corporate personnel, but also
 with the platforms itself.
 Yeah.
 I mean, here's my question.
 Eddie Q is responsible for iTunes, right?
 Yeah.
 Why is he not going out with Forrest Dahl?
 Eddie Q should have left Apple five years ago.
 Why?
 Because iTunes is a flaming pile of garbage.
 He's not in charge of the app.
 Not the app.
 He's in charge of the store.
 So basically anything with a server component
 belongs to Eddie Q.
 You mean the infrastructure.
 Yeah, yeah.
 The store.
 The code store.
 So that actually makes sense that he would take Siri and
 Maps on because they're both infrastructure
 problems, essentially.
 So who's responsible for the front end?
 Probably Forrest Dahl.
 By an iTunes app team.
 Yeah, probably Forrest Dahl.
 I mean, Forrest Dahl must have some hand in it, right?
 If he's leading the software design for iOS.
 I mean, he is, right?
 Right.
 And I have to say, Eddie Q has a different vibe to him than
 any other Apple executive.
 He's the guy who makes the deals with other people.
 And he's clearly very good at it.
 So what Apple needs to improve Siri and Maps is they've got
 to go make the deals.
 They've got to make deals for better map data or figure out
 how to hire people to build better map data.
 And with Siri, they've got to make the deals for additional
 content sources to make the service actually useful.
 And that's what Eddie Q does.
 And I have to say, he's also my favorite Apple presenter
 because he's like, look at all the shit we did.
 It's great.
 He's laid back.
 He's laid back is what you're saying.
 But Chris, what's your point?
 I just want to say, I've got to go because I think there's
 some hatches here.
 Yeah.
 There's a hurricane going on.
 Like, unbelievable, Apple.
 This does seem to be a day that we will not likely
 forget any time in the near future.
 And I want to leave you with well wishes.
 If you guys don't make it, it was great knowing you, great
 working with you.
 And I hope you don't get forced all the time.
 You want to just take this home, Josh, and we can wrap
 this up?
 I think we've exhausted everything we can do.
 You want me to do it with a song?
 What do you mean take it home?
 It's a Vergecast.
 Say goodbye to the Vergecast.
 OK.
 Well, that's our Vergecast for the week, I guess.
 I mean, is this an actual Vergecast?
 This is a special edition Vergecast.
 We'll do one next week.
 We'll do a real one next week, if the
 studio is still there.
 Next week we have our anniversary
 Vergecast, do we not?
 Yeah.
 I think it's going to be Friday.
 I don't know if you guys realize this, whoever is you
 guys, not everybody here, because you guys realize this.
 But November 1 will be our one year birthday of the Verge,
 which is crazy.
 So what a way to go out.
 What a month to go out on, right?
 I'm so happy this hurricane will kill me.
 We're getting completely destroyed by the hurricane.
 And we had pretty much news is over now.
 This is the end of technology news, as we know it.
 Do I need to do a proper wrap up here?
 You don't actually.
 I think we're done.
 We're done.
 Very good.
 It was great hanging out with you guys.
 I really enjoyed it.
 I look forward to our next episode.
 I hope I survive the night.
 Thank you everybody for tuning in.
 I know this was a hack together, but it was a lot of
 fun.
 Let's go to Redstone News.
 All right, cool.