 Hey and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of November 14th 2011. I'm Josh Topolsky. I'm Paul Miller. I'm Nila Patel. And we are back. I don't know. I don't... Should I be looking at this? We are back but I'm staring into the... I'm staring at the internet. I'm looking at you. I'm looking at the internet right now and it is... It's full of stars. D-list stars though which is lame. Anyhow this is the Vergecast where we discuss the week in technology news, consumer electronics, technology culture, gadgets, feelings, emotions. Emotions and feelings. Are they the same thing? We'll be talking about that. That's one of the topics we'll be covering. And we had a crazy week. I mean you know I always say that. It's actually something I say every single time we do. We had a sane week. I don't think I've ever wanted to go to sleep as much as I have, as I do at the end of this week. We had a completely normal week. Nothing happened. Nothing interesting happened. Anyhow we had a really crazy week. It's Thursday. If you're listening to this recorded it'll be Friday or if you're in like I don't know Japan or something. The good news is we're about to declare martial law in New York so we all get an early weekend. Yeah if you hear any screaming or chanting... Why? What's going on? They've decided to just occupy New York now because they were kicked out of Wall Street. So they're just going... I mean I don't think it's any secret that I'm into that. Yeah, no it's cool. That's fine. This is the zombie apocalypse that you've always wanted. It's time to stick it to the 1%. Which is us. The 1% of zombies. No is that really what's happening? They're gonna do martial law? No they're not gonna do martial law but they took over all the subways. That's where they started doing karate on everybody. It was like a day of protest on the subways today. That's good. Yeah. You know what? Sometimes it takes a little civil unrest to get what you need. That's how I got the editor-in-chief job. I remember that. Remember Occupy Cubicle 7? That was great. Anyhow we should talk about technology instead of occupation because I don't think we have anything really good to say about occupations except that it's wrong or it's right and useful. I don't know. Let's talk about what happened this week in technology. I think something happened to you. I can't say this week in technology. I think you... That's a patented term. No. This week in tech. Let's talk about what happened, huh? Leo? Just kidding. I love that guy. I think something happened to you. I think you found a love that dares speak its name. That dares speak it in thousands of words. I did find... I did fall in love a little bit. I reviewed... I did review the Galaxy... Are you talking about the Galaxy Nexus? I don't know. Sideway new mistress. We had a lot of affairs this week. Vanessa. Hello. Yeah, no. I reviewed the Galaxy Nexus. It went up today. I have, you know, we've... I had a couple encounters with it over the past few months. To me it feels like this is the longest thing ever because I saw this phone when I interviewed Matthias and played around with it at... Poor Josh. Saw the phone so early. Had to wait. I'm not trying to, you know, I'm not trying to be cool but I'm just saying it was hard because I knew that at some point... It's a humble brag. No, a humble brag is like... Yeah, I guess it is. Yeah, I know what that is. I can't take waiting for the secret thing I saw to come out. Well, I want to just come out already. It's so lame. You know what I mean, guys? Anyhow, but no, but I saw I've been waiting for this phone for a long time and I wanted like a really good Android phone that didn't suck. Yeah. And that's hard to come by if you ask me. And is that what you got? I think so. I hope. Yeah. We'll see. Check back in a month. Remember when you liked the Atrix? You know what? I was always... I always knew in the back of my mind that the Atrix was I was dancing with... I was dancing... Playing with fire. Yeah. Because it's got MotoBook. And I always knew I was being a little like dishonest with myself that it was really as great as I thought it was. Did the Nexus S degrade with time for you? Here's the interesting thing about the Nexus S. I really didn't... Wasn't that crazy about the Nexus S when it came out. Remember my review? I gave it like a 7. I thought it was very mediocre. Yeah. As far as like phones go. And I actually still think it is. But like it's the only phone you can get with pure Android. It's the only... It's your flagship phone. So they update it and it's pure Android. And Chris was always like, oh, I bought another Nexus S. I mean Chris literally has purchased like four separate purchase sell purchase sell sessions of Nexus S. So that's why I bought it. Because I wanted a pure Google experience. Is that so crazy? I just wanted to be you know on the upgrade list. I can't do it on Delta. I'm looking at you Delta. Think about it huh? This guy needs an upgrade. Six foot four. But I am not on their upgrade list. And Virgin America huh? Think about it. I don't know who I'm talking to. Are you just begging for a sponsor? No I'm begging for more leg room on a flight. I have no idea who I'm speaking to either by the way looking in this camera. It's like I'm gazing into the abyss. That's what it is. And it's like a $400 camcorder. Yeah. What was I talking about? By the way I didn't really sleep last night. You were talking about the Nexus S. Yeah it's pretty tight. Yeah. Well it's not actually. You know I did a live Q&A for the Galaxy Nexus review and a bunch of people were asking me is it better than the Nexus S? And I answered a bunch of them and people were like can you please stop answering. But the Nexus S is a piece of crap compared to the Galaxy Nexus. Really? That much? Yeah. Oh yeah. If you own a Nexus S and I do and I paid like a retail price for it. Yeah. You are gonna be sorry when you see the Galaxy Nexus. Yeah. I'm like ready to get one just having played with your... You played with it yesterday and you were like into it right? Yeah I just don't like the hardware. I think the hardware is fairly... When I say the hardware I mean like not the internals or the specifications but just sort of the feel of the hardware. So having used an Nexus S this is like a Rolls Royce. That's like driving a Yugo and this is a Rolls Royce. But of course just think in a year this will be like a Yugo. Right. Does anybody even know what a Yugo is? Yeah. Yeah people do. They got it. Do you guys know what a Yugo is? It's the default hilarious car in the world. Yeah okay good. Right okay. There's a Rush Limbaugh parody of In the Ghetto but it's in a Yugo. Oh god. It's about liberals and their small cars. Oh yeah I wonder how that's working for him now. When's that from? It's a morality... What do you mean the song? Yeah. Wait wait wait wait. Rush Limbaugh's parody songs? Rush Limbaugh's a multi-faceted entertainer. No. It's from the 90s? Yeah. Do you think he stands behind that song? I mean I know he probably does but I think we've proven that like big cars are not really a great idea. Gets nine miles a gallon. Yeah. I still own a Suburban. Or not a Suburban. I wish I had an Escalade. Can I see the... Yeah. So the thing I played with it just a little bit and it looks kind of junky in the back but it's really... I think you look kind of junky in the back. It's really comfortable. No it feels... It's a really good... It's like a balance. And it's surprisingly like you think it's gonna feel like a huge thing in your hands. Well who knew that putting the weight at the bottom was a smart thing to do. Right. Like do you know how it's like a teardrop? It's like it won't even it won't even leave my hand it's just like... I want it to leave your hand and come into my hand. Did you notice that it's that it has a kind of teardrop shape? Yeah. I noticed it. Yeah. I know what you're saying. Hey. Every teardrop is waterfall. Which by the way is now available as a free download on the Google Music Store. Is that on our list of top? It is. I hope so. Is this button as annoying as it is on the S? A side button is always annoying but on a big phone like that you don't want the button up top I think. Right. Personally. I don't know. I like it. I like it a lot. Honestly I honestly think that my score would have been higher than the iPhone 4s if the camera were a little bit better. Yeah. Because that's the one thing that I felt like... I feel like it's competitive. I mean it's a good camera. It's not bad or anything. But I feel like it's really competitive with what I consider to be probably the best phone which is the iPhone 4s right now. In terms of hardware and software and just the whole ecosystem, the whole package. But this is an awesome phone in my opinion. It's got a lot going for it except that the camera is like... Sometimes I could get great photos with it and sometimes it was just like a mess. And low light was terrible. Is it mostly the low light? Well it's the low light but it's also... You know they have this like... They advertise that well it has no shutter lag. You snap and it's taking the picture. It almost seems like it's too fast. Like it doesn't take enough time to compose. Yeah. They like crank the ISO to compensate for the shutter speed. And it doesn't have a preview. As far as I know there's no... I couldn't find a setting to add a preview so like when you snap a photo it just... It's exactly like webOS actually if you remember. WebOS was no shutter lag, no preview. So it would just take the picture and go... But you never get to look at it. And jam down into your library. Well you know what's interesting is that on the show... Thank God I have it back. On The Verge, Matthias was talking about how... Oh my God. If you think that looks weird on camera... I want to see what that looks like. Now I get to watch it on the playback. I can't tell you how weird that was in person. No but Matthias was talking about how you know camera settings are like for the weak and stupid. And what you really want to do is take a picture. And if the phone can't figure it all out for you then it's a bad piece of technology. And it's almost like they're rushing. You know that they want you to just generate imagery without thinking about it. I'm watching people react now to the... Yeah no I mean that was basically... I don't know what it looked like because my video is totally frozen. There's some... Developers will be able to come up with apps that allow you to have settings right? I'm sure. For that camera. I hope. Like lower the ISO. I hope. Raise the shutter. There aren't any... There really aren't that many good camera apps like that are like hey use the camera and like tweak it make it awesome for Android. But I will say that when I talked to Matthias he made it sound like they're gonna be harder on developers or at least kind of give them more guidelines. And something else speaking of that this has not been... Nobody's talked about this and I actually was gonna add this to the review and I haven't gotten around to it. There's a setting. So this has a developers menu in it. And there's a setting that you can force hardware acceleration. And if you turn it on it makes every app that doesn't use hardware acceleration really super smooth. Like the Twitter app on Android is kind of a little bit choppy on a regular phone. And on this and it's a little bit... It's not choppy but it's like not super smooth and responsive like the way it is on iOS. And if you turn on this force hardware acceleration it's buttery. Why don't they just turn it on? I don't know. I was talking to a Google rep and he said it's one line of XML. Well it's probably something they have to retest their whole app just to make sure there aren't any bugs. And I think the other issue is that I don't know maybe it's different for different devices. Maybe it's conspiracy. Talked to Raj Limbaugh about this. Does that make the Twitter app... Because I played some with... It makes the Twitter app feel like the iOS Twitter app. Well I played some with the primary UI of the phone. Yeah. Actual ice cream sandwich. And that's like perfectly responsive. It's really good. I felt a little bit like a like I was like a wounded animal and I was a little shy to like... I wasn't expecting it to be instantaneous. My iPhone is instantaneous. It has good days and bad days. But that was really responsive. So I mean they... I really think this is a huge, huge seismic shift for what Android is in my opinion. I mean it is like all the stuff that has been driving me insane about Android. Like the little the last bit. And then you know it's kind of like a one-two punch was that Tiny Towers is released. Is it Tiny Tower or Tower? Tiny Tower. Tower. Yeah. Which by the way I don't play. But Laura plays it. Joanna freaked out. No, no. I know everybody's super into it. But the fact is it's a real game that people play on iOS and all of a sudden like it just appeared today. And Minecraft is like now available. I know Minecraft is available for iOS now but it became available recently for all Android phones. I mean I will say this. Joanna... First she freaked out that it was out. Tiny Tower is out for Android. Then she suggested that we write the story and put it in our first big hero slot. She was so excited. And then like five minutes later she came back and said and I quote Tiny Tower fragmentation is real. She couldn't download it on like two of her phones. Oh well it downloads on this and it's good. It's fun. On iOS you can visit your buddies towers over Game Center. Here's disturbing about it actually. Can you not do that on Android? Here's the bugging me about it. It doesn't have Game Center. It maybe has open... It's open faint. Here's what's freaking me out. It's not open faint. It's something else. But here's the deal. So I downloaded it. This is actually kind of freaking me out. I downloaded it and it's like you need to have an account to play this game or whatever. And I was like okay well I'll make one. And it was like sorry that name is taken. Which was Josh Witzepolsky. Pretty original. And I was like what? Somebody took my name on this. And then I was like you know I'll just try to log in with using my name and password which I used you know in a couple of different... on a couple different game sites. And it worked. And I don't recall ever making... You signed up for this service before. I have to imagine I signed up for it or I'm the victim of some kind of crazy hacking scheme. Have you done any other multiplayer Android games? It's possible. I mean I've downloaded a lot of software that I don't... and I don't fully remember. You kind of spread yourself thin over the years. I mean you have to understand. You have to understand when I think about how many phones I've tested over the last couple of years. I mean when I look at my Kindle list of registered devices it's like... Oh yeah. It's like Joshua's 25th Android phone. Like that's how they name it. Yeah. It's really messed up. And I have books like Storm of Swords I've been trying to read on on other devices that I get and I can't because I've run out of licenses. You get like five and they're like you have to deregister these other devices and delete the content. I'm like that phone got sent back. I don't know how I do that now. Is that the fourth book? It's the third book. The third book? What's the fourth book? I've been listening to the Game of Thrones books on Audible. What have you what have you listened to so far? I can't remember if it's two books or three. Well I'll tell you what the first books are. It's Game of Thrones is the first one. The second one is A Clash of Kings. And then A Storm of Swords. Wait am I right? Yeah. I can't remember which it is. I think I've only read the first two. And the third one they changed the guy who narrates it on Audible. Oh okay. He's like a completely like monotone jerk. Really? And so now I ran out of money. Now I have to read this book with my eyes and it's... I have to read this book with my eyes. I thought like hey you know you should read it on. Galaxy Nexus. Great pixel density. Actually though... You want to talk about the screen? Because I'm like eager to talk about the screen. Did you so you do we ever we didn't do anything? I sent you a crazy... No I know I know I know. You used it, you hurt my feelings. No no I was gonna put it in. You don't understand I was rushing to get this I wanted to finish the core of the review and we're gonna update it because we got to talk about the LTE device. Oh yeah. That's a that'll be an interesting problem for us to tackle both on the... Do you even know when you're getting that? No idea. Verizon so can I just say something's wrong with Verizon. They have the best Android phone in the world. And they're doing the droid razor. In Josh DePulsey's opinion, one man's opinion. And they're like pushing yeah they're pushing the droid razor. I think there's something really funky going on Verizon like they don't want to sell this phone. And the Nexus is available now in the UK. Yeah and and just listen internet and you guys as well you can listen if you want. The version that's available in the UK if you can get an unlocked phone is AT&T T-Mobile ready and also the fastest I don't know why this is the fastest phone I've tested for download speeds on AT&T. Maybe ever. I definitely buy this phone. No did you see the speed test? Yeah I saw it. It's like it's like four and five down. That's ridiculous. It is ridiculous. Yeah. In my neighborhood I never get that. It's 4G. I get on the iPhone 4S I got 2.2 was like it maxed out. I've gotten like three three and a half. Well I'm just telling you it's fast and I've downloaded like large files quickly while like in a car going into Manhattan. That's awesome. You know it is awesome. It's just so big it has a gigantic antenna. That's what happens. Maybe just it just I don't know. I mean that's awesome. That's what happens when you get an unlocked device. You know what's funny is that I would you know I would seriously consider buying a Verizon Galaxy Nexus and because they won't do it like they won't let me buy it I was gonna buy the unlock. I was planning on buying a Galaxy Nexus on I was gonna switch because I'm on AT&T. I was gonna make the you know screw this. Like a full switch? Yeah full switch. Well I did contemplate getting a new line because yeah I tell you a lot of people a lot of people have my phone number now a lot of crazy PR people. PR people who are like I'm not gonna name names but some people will just war dial you. Yeah. Do you know what war dialing is? Yes. Do you know what war dialing is? No. Really? No not the term. War dialing is a it's like an old hacker term for when you would I know about war. You get like a batch of like you get like a batch of like a string of numbers basically and dial them to find where there were to find where there were modems so you could hack into them you know all war game style. You have a lot of people like hacking into your phone. Anyhow I refer to it I refer to when people call me a lot as war dialing. Okay. Because it does feel like a an offensive move. Right. But I'm just saying a lot of people have my phone number now. So you're gonna get a new Verizon. I thought about getting a second phone that isn't like for everybody. I'm like 90% sure I'm gonna get an unlocked Nexus on T-Mobile. So I just realized that somebody in conf chat whatever it's called is you has the name Tasha with Jopolsky. That's pretty good. It's just I was like who why am I saying that? It's pretty good. Yeah we should talk about when Google Music when we get to that. We should. How they basically trolled you. Is there anything else we need to talk about? I just want to quickly talk about the display. So yeah let's I caused a huge ruckus with calling the Droid Razor display bad and I'm telling you it's bad. This display is Pentile and it looks great to me. I think the color shift is still a little there just because there are no true white pixels. It could be brighter. Where's the image? Let me let me find the image. I can put it up. I mean I took it. I have it somewhere in my life. I don't have anything to do. I don't have any images on my computer. Go take me to the screen. What is wrong with us? What's happening? Is your like personal email gonna be on there? No. Hey don't forget to shoot that person I told you to kill. I have the PSD. It's the full reds. So if you're looking at this. The Ustream what? Where is this? It's well now it's on the video. I don't see it. Oh there it is. We're just gonna wait for it. Let's see. So you look at it. I mean it's different. They're obviously different fonts because the Nexus uses Roboto but you can see there's just more pixels making up the letters. Wow this is fundamentally more pixels. This is disturbing. And at a high distance they actually blend into white which is the whole idea of Pentile and the Razer doesn't have enough like it doesn't have the density. So I don't understand what's the Resound has a what? The Resound has a standard LCD display. Right so that but so it's bad it's a battery sucker. Well a little bit. I mean but here's the thing about this image I mean this is obviously like pretty shocking but the display looks really good to the naked eye. Right and it's because there if you look at like the O or the G right you can see there are more pixels like just physically more pixels making up the letter forms so when you pull out they blend into a more cohesive like white. Right. Whereas with the Razer there's so few and you can see there's like ragged edges of like blue and red there. When you when you look at it from far away I can see like the ragged pixels making up the letter forms on the Razer and it's really distracting. So there's there's something there is a say that the Galaxy Nexus is still a little dimmer than something. No no the problem with the Galaxy Nexus is that it has a very harsh auto brightness setting which just makes it super dim. Like you could turn that off. You could turn it off yeah it looks really great when you have it at a regular brightness but it wants it to be way down and I think it's obviously a battery conserving move but um to me this is kind of like knowing how the sausage is made this is one of those situations where it's like if you take it at at the at the ultra granular level you're gonna look at it and go well this looks terrible but actually I mean I can tell you I mean I've been looking at the screen and it does look good. No I think it looks good too. It's like a rainbow bright. Right. It does look exactly like a rainbow bright. No and I agree you know I think that there is a level where the pen tile layout like just hurts you and I think on the old Galaxy S phones which use pen tile displays I think they looked bad. The Nexus S is one of them I think that screen kind of looks bad. Kind of. The Droid I think the Droid Razr I think it just looks bad and you know I've been keep using the Droid Razr because it's the only 4G LTE phone I have right now. What is the deal? It hurts my eyes. It's just a battery conservation move? So with the Razr it's it doesn't need a backlight so they could make the entire phone thinner right but not having the LCD backlight so the ReSound is like literally twice as thick and you know Chris said the ReSound screen is like the best screen he's ever seen. He's like there are no you cannot complain about this display. Really? It's too good. You know he actually we should talk about that just a little bit he reviewed the ReSound. Yeah. Said it's a great phone, senses way over the top, great hardware, super thick but you know it if you're on Verizon and when this phone comes out I think that's why they're holding on to it. I mean Verizon has two super high-end phones it's pushing. The ReSound and the Razr and it's from partners who they play a little bit more ball with Verizon right. I don't think Google and Samsung like played ball with the Galaxy Nexus. I don't think they asked Verizon what do you want this phone to be. No in fact Google's going around going you can delete anything you want off of the phone. Right and I mean I think that's it. I think the carriers they want to determine what's on their network. I think Verizon you know they signed the open access provisions for LTE. I don't think they've done anything. You know Google needs to do is they need to they need to make a Galaxy Nexus with special offers. You do and just subsidize it and sell it on their own. Say put it on whatever carrier you want. Galaxy Nexus with special offers. Pull a candle fire. Yeah that's exactly what I'm suggesting. Like literally verbatim what I'm suggesting. You know I think there's a like just a problem in the world when you can buy an iPad for $499 and a full-on like laptop computer for like $300 and every cellphone unlocked is still $700 and it's because there's no market. I can start ranting about carriers right now. No no that's not in time. I mean there's no market for unlocked cellphones. Sometimes it's more expensive to make something that's small. Like LCDs are more expensive on phones than on a large tablet. I hear you saying but there's no there's no price pressure for phones the way there has been for every other piece of electronic. At least in the US. Well right but that's where I live so that sucks for me. It's true. Right. I can start ranting. I mean this is like the thing. You should buy a phone in the UK. I'm gonna buy that phone in the UK and unlock it. Yeah but at full price. And I think that's probably the other reason why Verizon is really like whatever. They don't want to promote a phone that you can easily buy unlocked and then put on another carrier. Well the thing about the thing about phone is. Which is funny because they do with the iPhone. The phone is like a commodity item. I mean it's not like a tablet. People need phones. Tablets are a luxury item. I mean you need. That phone is very much a luxury item. Well yeah sure but I mean but the model is built around the concept of the necessity of a phone. It's built. It kind of built on the model of. I mean it's not really built on the model of but it's I feel like it's an extension of the landline in a sense where it's like you got to have one of these so you'll jump through all kinds of insane hoops to get one. Sure but yes I want you to do whatever it is you you think I don't want you to. I'm just gonna start ranting about net neutrality. That's what I'm gonna do right now. I'll let you guys just go at this. Well no I mean like that's what happened with with look there was this brief period of like super innovation in like cordless phones. We have so many topics to get to. I know. I'm just saying look if Verizon just let you bring phones to its network and AT&T just let you bring the phones to its network that are compatible. Innovation would explode. It would be even faster. The price would come down. The consumer would win but who wants that? Not the 1% That's why we got to go out and occupy those trains. Right. Or whatever it is they're occupying. It's the city. It's literally the city. I noticed I was out there it seemed pretty tame to me. I only drove through the super rich neighborhoods though where they can't get to. Can I just say one more thing? Yes. The landline thing that you're talking about is that the government literally said AT&T you don't know the lines but you have to open them up. It was the Carter phone rule. Yeah. You have to let people plug in whatever phones you want and then literally phone innovation like exploded and wireless phones. I'm with you. You're preaching to the converted. Anyway. The end. I'm sorry Paul. Paul doesn't care. He's cool. He's googling something. Yeah. He wants a phone on T-Mobile that he can't have. He's checking out how much he can get it unlocked. I'm trying to figure out. Taylor Swift tweeted this photo. I'm just trying to figure out. Taylor Swift tweeted this photo. What's happening in this photo? I think it's pretty obvious. She's like meeting a magi. That's obviously what's happening. That guy's not a magi. No. She was at a Knights Templar reunion. It might have something to do with the Shriners. I don't know. I don't know. Let's move on. You want to talk about Google Music? Wait. Is there anything else to talk about with the Nexus? No. We did the Nexus and the Resound. What percentage of this is the hardware and what percentage of this is Ice Cream Sandwich for you? 70-30. Software. But the hardware is great. I mean obviously I'd love whatever they're using for the retina display to be a 720p display on this. Does it have a turn off thing? Yeah. You could get the Resound which is just a little bit thicker but the same display LCD. I don't want the Resound though. Do you understand? Because it has the buttons. Well first off it has the buttons but more importantly than that I don't care if it has sense but it will never be first in line for the latest innovations and updates from Google.com. Okay. And that's the problem. They make it. They build it. They do the new stuff. When there's a push it doesn't go to the Resound. Six months later Resound people are going I can't believe I'm still on Froyo. That's what happens. That's the reality of Android. So I want the device that is blessed by Google and this is the device that's blessed by Google and it just happens to be also a pretty good phone. So what you're talking about right now is literally the specific danger that when we were at Engadget and we talked about the Google phone that Michael Gartenberg always talked about. That he would always say you can't compete with your licensees because eventually you will make the superior product and everyone will know it. But the truth is you can if a bunch of people who buy your stuff don't care about having the premier Halo product. But you're saying this is the best Android phone. But you speak to the consumer. Well I speak to the consumer but not every consumer. Let's put it that way. And this is a 250 on Verizon. It's a $250 phone probably. There are a lot of people on Verizon who want the $50 phone or the free phone and those are going to happen to the Android as well. What do you say to Motorola? What does Google say to Motorola who they own which is insane. It's a growing market. And what do they say to HTC? They say it's a booming market. Your profits are higher than ever. But not them. Motorola is losing money lots of times. Motorola just got bought by Google. I don't think that's a problem. But HTC is having record numbers. And you know why? Android. That's why. Google just announced 200 million Android handsets activated. And believe me 199 million of them are not the Nexus S. They're that boost mobile one that's $25. I'm just saying it doesn't matter when it's everywhere. When it's ubiquitous you don't have to worry about that. You don't have to compete with yourself because you're not. Because you're not going to compete. There's only like five handsets that are going to compete for the top tier position. And the market is growing. We're in a boom period of the smartphone market. What is the percentage of ownership? I know it was 30% a couple of years ago. It's probably what? I'm just saying at what point, particularly in this situation where the three newest high-end Android handsets are all in the same carrier. The carrier is having problems trying to figure out how to... They're not promoting the best one of them. Well, they're not promoting the one that they like. They're not promoting the one that we like the best. They're promoting the one that they like the best. Which is arguably the worst of the both. I happen to think that my opinion is the only opinion that matters. Verizon probably thinks that the Razr... There are a lot of great... I'm sure that they pay less for the Razr, right? I don't know. I have no idea. I'm saying I'm sure there's like a lot of... But there are variables, right? There are like, hey, you know what? People really want this. They want the phone with those weird edges. That's just a thing. Or on corners. Right. That's just a thing that people are going to be attracted to. You don't want it to be thin. We had this long conversation last night about the ads, the mortgage ads with the dancing, 3D dancing people in them. Lower My Bills. There's like a woman in a gray suit. She's like a 3D sim, really gross dancing. And there's an alien. There's a female alien, which Paul found, which is like an alien wearing a bikini and has blonde hair. But it's the same alien. Same alien. And it's doing really gross dancing, right? And the thing is that people, for some reason, are attracted to that. They click on it. It's working, right? It catches their eye. I think that's why horrible laptop designs do so well at Best Buy. It's like Reeboks. It's like Nike. I've talked about basketball shoes. No, it's like tacky design is appealing to a large swath of people. I mean, there's not a lot of great taste out there. That's why when people make really crazy looking things, people are like, whoa, that's insane. I never thought of that because most people aren't thinking of it and they're not interested in it. They're buying the dancing aliens. It's not even like people don't click on lower my bills dot com because they think it's a well-designed ad. It's just their eyeballs. I don't think they were right. I bought that because my eyeballs saw it. It's like an instinct. It's almost an animal reaction. This weird synth that you're like, I want to read it with my eye and my eyeballs. He's right. But he's right. It's an animal reaction to it. I think that's what you're saying. Unless I'm wrong. But but it is like a visceral reaction. So what I'm saying is like the droid razor may appeal to people on some visceral level that is very profitable for Verizon. Whereas a great well-designed phone running the latest version. There's one extreme counter example to this, which is Apple. That's an anomaly. That's like that's like that's like that's an X-Man. Apple's an X-Man? Yeah. What do you mean? It's a it's a it's a genetic anomaly. You know, most people are just regular people, but some guys can shoot lasers out of their eyes. That's Apple. Apple is Cyclops. They're the only people who can sell good design. And everybody else is like just everybody else. I don't think Apple is the only company that can sell good design. No, no, I don't. I don't. But they're one of well, there's some there's a bunch of X-Men, right? Professor X? That's what I was wondering. Yeah, right. You know, Beast. There's all kinds of X-Men. But you're saying... But there's way less X-Men than everybody else. So you're saying companies that profit off of like really high end design are mutants. I mean, are we completely authorizing? Who's Professor X? Well, OK, let's just get you want to get down into this? Yeah, I think Android is a good candidate for Wolverine. I think Android is a good candidate for... Yeah, you might be right. Wait, how is Android? Well, no, I get it. They're reckless. Wait, wait, wait. Time out. Hold on. Android is a thing that people make the most tacky. Google. Google. Google is Wolverine. Google as a whole because they're kind of like unpredictable and wild. Who's the girl who could look like a bunch of different people? That's... What's her name? Mystique? I think. Who's Mystique? That's like HGC. That's the nation of China. Apple is Professor X. Mystique is... Oh, this makes perfect sense. Mystique is Samsov pretending to be Apple. Or no. No, no, no, no. I think Apple is Magneto. Apple's Magneto. How are they evil? Oh, because they're trying to make everybody into them. No, they believe there's a... Draw a line in the sand. Put your foot in the sand. The first X-Men movie looks like Magneto in an Apple store. Apple's Magneto and... He's in prison. He's in a plastic prison. Yeah. And I'm trying to think of where Microsoft fits into this thing. I was going to say their Professor X, but I don't think so. Is there like a clumsy... No, Professor X is like the EFF or something. They're not even in this. That does not make any sense. It's not even... Because they're like doing something else. Professor X is doing something else? He's not like... He's not Magneto. Let's put it that way. Right. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Who would that be? In terms of technology, companies... Just the way his attitude is, it's not... This is so... This conversation is so out there. It doesn't make any sense at all. I think it makes a little sense. I'd like to continue it. I don't know if we could do... The fact that we started with Apple and X-Men because they sell good design is, first of all, problematic. Our Ustream has some pretty good ideas here. Professor X is the FCC. That doesn't make any sense. That doesn't make any sense at all. Microsoft is Nightcrawler. I can... No. No. Is there like a clumsy mutant that has a lot of good ideas but can't make them happen? He's like, I'm going to turn into a plane. And he falls down. No, not really. No, Beast isn't clumsy. He's like... He's super smart, though. He does... Well, let's see. He's not like... I don't think this is going to work. He looks like a big animal, but really he's just wants to talk about smart stuff. He's super smart. Like Balmer. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's the one Jubilee. It's not the... Rogue. Everything it touches, it like dies. It sucks the power out of it. She sucks like... But then they die. Not necessarily. But that's classic like old 90s Microsoft. I don't think that works. Maybe. I mean... That's like RIM. It's more malicious, though, don't you think? No, no, no. She has really great intention. She just wants to touch you, man. I don't think so. She just wants to give you a hug. All right. We got to move on. Thanks for all your power, Wade. We got to... We got to... Can we pull out of this nosedive? Can we edit that part out? Can we get the plane back into... We can. Yeah. An altitude that's safe? Speaking of RIM. Nice. What? Who would RIM be? Hold on. Who would RIM be? RIM is like... Can I just say RIM is like... They're not like an X-Men that I can think of off the top of my head, but they are like the Dungeons and Dragons chaotic neutral. Do you know chaotic neutral is the unplayable alignment, right? Because it's... Well, it's like no allegiance to anybody and you'll just do anything at the drop of a hat. It's like you can't play it truly because nobody can really play like that unless they're totally off the rocker. And if that's the case, why are they playing Dungeons and Dragons anyhow? But RIM is like the chaotic neutral of the smartphone world. Anyhow. That's good. Let's keep going. I know what happened. You want to talk about Google Music? No. I mean, we could talk about Google Music, but... That's the last Google thing. All right. We can talk about it. And then we can get back to RIM. But we got a BlackBerry thing coming. I just want everybody to know. All right. Google Music happened. I will say that Paul was on the edge of his seat because the invite had T-Mobile on it. He was on the edge of his seat for the entire event waiting for them to announce the T-Mobile Galaxy Nexus. That was so painful. And then the T-Mobile guy got on stage and he's like, we're so pleased to announce... Oh, no, no, no. And Paul like steeled up. People kept on like talking up T-Mobile was our first partner. And like T-Mobile's got some of the best data out there. Closed relationship. Yeah, we got a great relationship with T-Mobile. Carrier's the ones who are making this all happen. Oh, my gosh. And then the T-Mobile guys. They really happened to be here. It really felt like it was just right on the edge. What was even the point? They got some exclusive albums or something? No, no. They got nothing. They were like, you can buy music on your... Carrier billing. Oh, yeah. Carrier billing. And they were like, we're so excited to be here. We have a great announcement. Yeah. You guys are... Your minds are gonna be blown. You'll be able to buy a song on your bill. You still have to pay for it the same way with money, but it'll be delayed. In my dream world, here's what happened. T-Mobile was totally gonna get the Nexus and they were gonna announce Verizon the same day. But then Verizon's like, wait, wait, wait, wait. We're playing Tiny Tower. We can't get the phone ready in time. And so... I don't think anybody at Verizon is playing any games. So they made T-Mobile hold back. Yeah. I think... The only game Verizon is playing is Monopoly. I'm done. That's it. Podcast is over. Goodbye. That's definitely the coolest thing I've ever said on a podcast. I mean, look, Occupy, man. Get out there. Okay. Anyhow, yeah, Google Music. I'm excited about it. Here's the deal. No, no, listen. Look and listen. Look and listen. I'm listening. Why am I yelling? Google Music is... It completes the circle. The Android circle? The Google Plus circle of content. That is definitely the best feature. No, it's... It is a good feature. No, no, no, but I meant in a more esoteric kind of way, it completes the circle of content from Google, right? Right. They now have a full... Well they have a full array of stores. They don't have a full range of content, right? They have some music in the store. I mean, they're missing Warner Brothers. I mean, they're pretty good. I downloaded some calm trues, no problem. That was surprising. You gotta start somewhere. And they have all the stores now. But I love what they're doing with Google Plus, which is... Let me tell you something. Yeah, sorry, go ahead. Every time you buy an album, all of your friends on Google Plus can listen to all of those songs once. I mean, that's...It's like the return of Lala. You just have to know people who buy music from Google, which is a problem. Well, now people will start following people who buy music. I just think that this was something they didn't have. There was no... Amazon has it, right? Apple has it. Microsoft has it. Yeah. You're gonna have it. I've got it. I'm sorry about music purchases. No, but they didn't have it, right? I mean, Google has transitioned from search to content provider, and music is kind of one of those big ones, right? I mean, it would have been cool if they just bought RDO maybe or... Yeah, that's the biggest... I think we've been talking... That's the future. I think these models... But their model is the future. No, it's not. There's no subscription there. You just have to buy songs and throw them in the cloud. Well, not now. Not now. But there could be a subscription. Well, that's where you got it. There could be anything. They could do anything, but they didn't do it. You know, that's a good point, Josh. There could be a subscription. There could. It's like, well, Apple could have a subscription, too. I'm just saying... That's right, they could. And you know, this whole, like, you get the one free play in your Google+. Yeah. Like, that's great. You know what would be better? If Google+, was actually a subscription service. Maybe it's possible that the subscription services aren't that profitable. Is that possible? I mean, Spotify seems to be doing all right. Are they? Yeah. Really? I mean, they're a startup. I mean, they've been in business for like three, two years or something. Right. Let's see them in ten years. Is it a sustainable model? I don't know. All right. You know, the only model there's to look at is like, Zoom. Rhapsody? Rhapsody. Rhapsody's been around forever. How are they doing? They continue to be around. Well, what's going on? They had a tiny... Probably because they're offset by sales on iTunes. Rhapsody? Yeah, do you understand? How are they offset? Well, labels sell music on iTunes. So it's probably a rounding error to give the music to Rhapsody for subscribers. Yeah, but Rhapsody has a business to run. No, no. Do you understand what I'm saying? I'm saying like without the model of buying the music, you can't have the model of subscribing to the music. And this is really true. Because at what point... No, because if you make it a $20 a month, let's say $20 a month for every person who buys music, I mean, are you saying on average if everybody who buys music, like they're not gonna... Like you can just average it out, the $20 a month will make that all profitable. So there's a chart somewhere, I forget where I saw it, but that kind of breaks down how much an artist gets and how much a label gets and how much of a cut the company takes for each music purchase or listen. And there's obviously... If an artist sells something directly and gets the whole 99 cents, that's great. iTunes, I think the artist gets something like 20 cents. But on a subscription service, you get like 0.0000 something of a cent every play. Yeah, because you pay per stream. And no, but the problem with that, it's like... So they break down how many song sales you need to be profitable as an artist to make like a thousand bucks a month. And you need like 500,000 song plays to make a thousand bucks a month. And like Lil Wayne gets like 500,000. I looked on... You mean Lil Wayne, right? Little Wayne. Little Wayne. Yeah. Little Wayne. Little Wayne. Most artists are getting like 50,000 total plays if they're lucky. They're not making enough money off of the subscription services to be totally viable. And people would argue that, well, the new profitable model is just concerts and stuff. But right now, if you wanna sell your music online, you still need to actually sell your music to be profitable. Can I... I just wanna pause you there for a second because I just happened to glance at you streaming. I don't mean to get back to this, but somebody said that they asked me a question today during the live Q&A of the Galaxy Nexus and I refused to answer them. So I wanna know what the... I wanna know what the question was. I may still refuse to answer you here. So I'm sorry, I don't mean to get off track because this is a very interesting conversation, but I wanna address this right now. Okay, here we go. Who was the person? Holyoaked. Oh, yeah. The question was all caps. I think Holyoaked is an armor type in Skyrim. Wow, Holyoaked. Really? It's a spell you can cast. You get like... You're on the stage, buddy. It's like plus 40. Everybody's... That's your question? You refuse to answer that question? It's really controversial. As far as I know, you can't sort folders alphabetically. That was it? I don't think there's a setting to auto sort, but you could use your brain to sort them alphabetically. How did anybody refuse to answer your question? I don't think I refuse. You don't know, but you guys don't know, but there were... When I was doing the live Q&A by myself, thanks for nothing, Paul and Eli, for helping to sort questions, there were like five, literally 5,000 people watching the live Q&A and asking questions. It was kind of overwhelming. So I didn't refuse to answer you. I just... There were so many questions, I could not keep up with them. Just thought I'd let you know that. You're fired, Holyoak. You're done. Yeah, Holyoak, I thought you were cool and you wasted everybody's time. So to get back to this, Spotify was profitable last year, by the way. Spotify is profitable, sure. How? I mean, from my perspective, look, they have a better service for me. No, I love it as a consumer. I'm just saying, ultimately... Also like, was it Coldplay decided not to put its album on the streaming services just recently? I think there's gonna slowly be more of a back... As the streaming services... But Coldplay is available on Google Music. Right, no. So as long as the streaming services were just a rounding error, it wasn't a big deal. But as they grow in popularity, I think more and more artists are going to get off of the streaming services because they don't make money on them. But everything is moving... Right, that's exactly... Everything is moving towards like, can I just get it for free? Right. And I'm just saying, I don't believe things should be... As long as we agree that we're gonna have a capitalist economy where people make money off of doing the things they do... And at any moment, Bloomberg could just say, no more. Right, that may happen. But until that happens... Wait, is that right? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, martial law in New York City. Martial law, right. And then no... We declare sovereignty. We declare extreme liberalism all over the place, even though Bloomberg, really kind of Republican. But let me just get back on my point, okay? Okay. I'm hurting inside. But as long as we have... About that? Yeah. Okay. As long as we have agreed that we have... We're in a capitalist economy where I'm going to produce something or do something or whatever and you're gonna pay me for it and whatever, there's gonna be this 1% 99, you know how it goes. I've lost my train of thought completely. One percent controls all of the music streams. But there has to be... Yeah, there's a really simple solution to this. That we can't give everything away. This is not Star Trek. Right. But Spotify isn't giving it away, right? They sell ads. They're selling subscriptions. And they sell subscriptions. They raise the price of subscriptions to meet their revenue goals. But at some point when you raise... The people who make the music. No, but at some point when you raise the price of subscriptions, people who want it for free go, I'm not gonna pay for that. Oh, you raise it to $35 a month? I don't think so. I'm gonna start pirating music again. Because you can do that. But you have to compete with that. I mean, they can't not compete with that. You can't compete with stealing. I mean, Apple's entire let's have a music store was all about that. Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, they're doing a good job. And Spotify... But now... But stealing still exists. Stealing still exists, but also... Stealing always exists. No, no, but also... Yeah, but not this way. Stealing exists. Like I had to run up to a shop and steal a loaf of bread. That's a physically difficult thing to do. This is like I need to open a program and click something and I have it. This is the low level... This is what you're saying is like what Hollywood never figured out. What the music industry just recently figured out. I'm saying give people something to buy and they'll buy it. But there's always going to be the same, but they want it to be cheaper. And that's why they buy the free Android phone. But you know what people love? They love the feeling that it's free. That's why they love Netflix, right? You pay Netflix, it feels free. It's like the argument that free food tastes better. Right. And you pay Spotify, but it feels a little free. I don't think that's it. No, I really do think so. No, I think it feels like... It's like all you can eat. No, no, I think it's... Well, that's the thing is that it's the all you can eat feeling. It's not that it feels... It's not that it's like it's free. It feels like I'm paying a reasonable amount of money and getting a lot of value. Right? Like when I... I pay for RDO. Right. I pay for them both. And I think that I'm paying a reasonable... Like Hulu Plus at some point, it's kind of stopped me feeling this way. But at some point it was like $8 a month and I feel like I'm getting a reasonable amount of value. I'm only going to watch ultimately like four shows or something. But I feel like I'm getting value, big value, Netflix, right? $8, $9 a month or whatever for one disc, streaming or just streaming. That is a better proposition to almost everybody that has come across it than keep buying songs and not answering to music. But is everybody... But if everybody is paying the $9, is it still profitable? I think if everybody pays the $9, the music industry will make a ton more money. Is there any data to back that up? You can't... You have to average out. How much money do you spend on music before RDO? I was really erratic. Some months I would spend $40, some months I would spend zero. I mean I'm a bad person to ask because I'm not like a normal music listener. I won't consume... I'm not going to download the new Pink album. So my fiance, Becky, she buys three songs a month, right? She's on RDO. She's spending more money on music total. Now it's up to the industry and the services to decide how they're going to allocate that money and to decide if $9 a month is an appropriate amount of money. But they're getting it at a regular interval from her where they were not getting that money at a regular interval before. You can't figure out how to make money doing that. You're a bad business person. Well, but I do think there is the ever increasing desire for freeness. Like, musical artists are bad business people. Right, they are. I just think... No, but let's just be clear. The goal is... Can I just say something? The music industry is one of the worst industries because I've been in it and I don't think it's a good industry. It is an industry of people who are... Their desire is to backstab as many people as they can to get more money. And I have this feeling, I don't have all the facts to back it up, but I'm starting to get the impression that the streaming services are 100% profit maker for the labels, but I don't think that really trickles down at all right now. To the artists, you mean? Yeah. Well, I mean, the labels have deals with artists. I think it's considered under a promotional license. Like, we're putting this out there to promote you. If that's real, then that model is completely broken. If that... And I don't know that that's... I mean, if that's... Well, the margins are so low for the artists that you could never be profitable with it. I mean, if that's the case, if it really is like, hey, we think of this as a promotional tool because they don't understand the power of it... There's no way that the labels are blind to what Spotify is gonna do with music. Really? You mean like they weren't blind to what Napster was gonna do to music? So that's the thing. I think there's a new generation of executives at the labels, because the old guys got hosed, right? And I think everybody in charge knew that those companies were failing because the old guys couldn't see what the internet was doing to them. I mean, the people who run the labels, the business side of labels, they're us now. I mean, they're like our age and a little bit older. Like, they use Napster. They're using the services. I mean... I'm sure... No, I'm sure the labels have figured out a way to make money off of this. I'm just not sure it's gonna be tenable for artists. I'm concerned. Somebody just said this is a... Well, this is a really great segue into a piece of... I just wanna say, somebody said this is the weirdest podcast ever. Do you agree with it? We're out there, yeah. Are we? We're doing some weird stuff. We are? Yeah. I just think we're talking about stuff that's relevant to my interest. Look, the FCC needs to regulate music sales in America. I think we need a... The FCC is Wolverine. The FCC is Professor X, I thought. Anyhow, but I just think we're just talking about big ideas. This is jamming. Look, this actually relates to Google Music... I'm the only person drinking on this podcast too, which is great. Actually, I asked for a drink and... Nobody's there to help you. Where's the stuff? Patrick's like, no, I'm doing something. Can I get some brownie? Modding. I'm over there. I got it. Thank you. You can deliver a beer. Just... Underage. We should keep it moving. Can I talk about this piece of Google Music? Keep going. So they... Keep going. Google did one thing that is very different from what the other services are doing. They're letting artists sign up directly with Google and promote their songs, get a cut. It's like $25 to set up your page. It's like Bandcamp. But it's not because Bandcamp is like a quasi-label. Tuning tour. This is Google being directly the distributor of the music. What's happening? Everybody left to get drinks. I forgot to tell them. Whatever. It doesn't matter. It's fine. I think that's interesting. I mean, this is like Google basically doing the Android market model for their music store, right? Right. Where you can sign up and do whatever you want. Which makes a lot of sense. You're killing me right now. What? Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. Let's just wait it out. Keep going. It's just interesting that it's Google saying to indie artists. I mean, they ran this hilarious video during the event, which was a bunch of pretty bands, like band guys with feathered out hair being like, I live in my van and I have to wash dishes for the love of the music. Oh, that guy. He works in a soup kitchen. One of the guys that works in a soup kitchen. Yeah, I work in a soup kitchen. That's great. Right. That's great. Sometimes I have to steal soup from the other poor people. Right. Sometimes I'm not just working there. Yeah, it's like, wow, your bands are, you are really bad business people. No, like Monogold. Yeah. And Shinobi Ninja. You know, the problem is that's a band, right? That's one of those bands. Yeah, I've heard of Monogold because they're from Williamsburg. They are. They're from Brooklyn, yeah. At least I've seen their posters up. Monogold feels like a name of a band that was created in a laboratory. Yeah. Do you sound like the name of a band? No, that's Shinobi Ninja. An indie band. Shinobi Ninja. I mean, it just sounds like Linkin Park's management wanted to get some like new projects together. Yeah. Like, I don't know, what do you think? And like somebody from Linkin Park was like, what about Shinobi Ninja? Because they were high in playing Shinobi. Yeah. Next thing you know, like that's an actual band. I just lost the stream. No, it's back. Okay, go ahead. I mean, it's just, you know, Google's like, they're trying one thing that's different. I remember when the iTunes store was like at the peak of its popularity, the question was always, is Apple going to start its own label and remove the labels and distributors from the equation? Because they're the most popular store and they never did it. I think probably to their benefit. They also like swore up and down to Apple records that they would never do anything to do with music. It's happening. Occupy! Is it? Is it? Blueberg is charging down Fifth Avenue. I'm just glad that we can wait out the end of everything with our podcast listeners right now. My phone's ringing. Oh my God. My least favorite ring of all time. Without question. Occupy! Without question. I don't need to answer it. You can just put it on silent, by the way. You guys don't know. You guys don't know what's happening here. You answered it. That was my mother and you answered it, by the way. Great. By the way, I met Neely's mother at the first. My parents love Josh. At the first On The Verge. It's a very, very strange situation. And I had a great time with... This is a gift for you here. I had a great time hanging out with Neely's parents, his aunt and uncle. Patrick, can you do me a favor? Can you refresh this? This whole Trent... Trent decided this out. Just all of this needs to go. Just for the people who are watching now, though, you can never unsee it, can you? That's a vodka soda. Do you know how to make a vodka soda? Can you... Thank you. These sirens have not stopped. You know what? You know what? I'm fine with this. Yeah. I'm fine with where we're at right now. We're having a good time. As a nation, we're hanging. The listeners are having a good time. We don't have to apologize to anybody. No. No. This is America. Freedom of expression rules here. So far. Unless you're occupying Wall Street, which case, you're going to jail. Yeah. And there's going to be martial law in the entire city. But here in our ivory tower on Fifth Avenue... That's right. They can't get in here. The elevator's locked. Our goblets are fine. There's no way they'll get out here. Anyhow, what were we talking about? Google Music started playing. Google Music, yeah. Shinobi Ninja. Just doing it. Doing it. Come on. Don't talk about Shinobi Ninja like that, okay? Do you want to move on? Let's talk about this BlackBerry. By the way, I just want to say that Paul and I were like, before the podcast, we were like, we got to just keep it to an hour. It was definitely going to be an hour podcast. I was up all night. We were here late. We just got to keep it to an hour. And now here we are. Yeah. This is a cool move. I don't know what you're doing, man. It's like you're literally holding onto it for support and comfort. I am. This is the galaxy nexus. Go ahead. BlackBerry. Oh, yeah. This is a crazy story, actually. We had a crazy week this week. So we spoke to a source who had an image, which was at first was completely bonkers. I was like... We spent Monday morning magnifying glass. I was full on level effects. It was out of control. It looks like a movie prop. It looks like a phone. And the table it's on looks super weird. It looks like the phone that Tom Cruise uses in Minority Report. And there's a 3D interface and he dials from really far away from the phone. But it's still a rotary dialer because old stuff is cool, like an analog clock. But anyhow... So we talked to a source of ours. They had some information. And it seemed kind of crazy. And we continued the conversation. There were pieces of it that began to align. And I said, you know what? I think this is the real deal. Even though it seems totally insane. We were seriously doing crazy Photoshop stuff. We were doing a lot of investigation. And we ran this photo of... And with the specs because we'd heard a bunch of other stuff about it. We ran this photo of this device called the... The London. The London. The Blackberry London. I mean, it's obviously a code name. But unless they want to get real fancy... And what we heard is earlier it was the Colt, right? That was the code name of the first BBX phone. And we've heard that it's since... I think BGR corroborated our report. So we had some... I think we had some pretty solid information. But then Boyd Genius, who is a... He's pretty into Blackberry devices. I don't know if you know that or not. But I think that he talked to some people and they were like, yeah, this thing is real. Right. And they canceled the Colt, which is apparently gonna be just a scaled down playbook. Right? And that seems like a bad idea. I just feel like... Yeah, I just don't know. Go ahead. There's an interesting spin to this story. Pocket Lint recently talked with Todd Wood, who is the senior vice president of industrial design at RIM. And he was saying, Blackberry was just functional before, but we realize people want beautiful things. So we're working on that. And that the new Blackberries are gonna be charming, whimsical, and fun. And then he said, the design team headed to different locations around the world to draw inspiration for the phone design. The 9900 was inspired by the Bellagio in Italy. What? That doesn't make any sense. The team went to Sweden for their latest workshop. I mean, London, this phone was inspired by London. That makes sense. That makes sense. It makes sense, but the 9900 looks like every other Blackberry. I just blew your mind. Just confess. I mean, it's good. I hear what you're saying and I like it, but... Thank you. Have fun. Did you go crazy on the content here? I like having an intern. It's good. Patrick, good work. Thank you, sir. Yeah. Have you ever made one of these before? Didn't William make it? Who made this? Me. You did? Yeah. A lot of bug in there. I know. It's cool. It's no problem. It's smooth. So the other thing is that this looks like this crazy Porsche phone. Yeah. Which is super weird. That's the weird thing. That was one of our big points of doubt was why would they design a phone that looks like a slate version of the Porsche phone? But at this point, maybe it's just like, safety's off. Right? Fire at will. Fire at will. Lock and load. Rock and roll. I mean, at RIM, who knows? At this point, Lazaridis is like in an opium den somewhere. I mean, that's what I'm at. Chaotic neutral. Yeah, chaotic neutral. RIM is chaotic. Thank you for bringing it. It's so good. You brought it right back around. RIM is chaotic neutral right now. Maybe they're just going... Maybe the next one will look like some kind of weird sword. Plus one perseverance. Yeah, exactly. Whatever stats. It could be a club. It could be a magic spell. Their next phone might look like a magic spell. There's no telling. There's no telling. Can I steal your power? You have to like LARP to make calls. Yeah. What do you mean? Come on. Do an air raid. It destroys my battery. Get an air because they last forever. Like the one that you need to plug in right now? Well, I mean, I bet I haven't had it plugged in for ages. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Like I barely know it for ages. We should talk about specs. Mattering. We could talk about that. You had quite an argument. No, no. I didn't have an argument. There's been a lot of talk this week about how specs don't matter, and I was thinking like... Remember how nobody wanted to buy a MacBook Air before the specs were better? Yeah. You know, specs do matter. The MacBook Air got better. That's demonstrable through specs. The Core i7 is a better processor. You into that? William's into that. No, but it's true. stuff is valuable it has its place though you have to know its place but specs speak to experience people were like the experience the only thing that matters is like well how do you get to experience right I was I was very fired up about this because I think I agree I think it's a pedantic viewpoint that somehow we can disregard the you want to just get right into what happened the materials that make something and assume that just because you know it's like it's like hey look at this beautiful house I built and it's it's Jersey a sad if you hug John Gruber you would both just explain I like John I love John Gruber things have really intelligent I don't think he's also I don't think he initiated I wasn't actually like responding to him I don't think he initiated this I think he was just kind of quoting other people were talking about it but but not counting not thinking about specter thinking that they're important is like thinking that the Western towns that you see in old West movies are not just the fronts of buildings held up by two-by-fours I mean that's basically it you know his experience what I'm trying to experience it's the experience of an old West town but you can't go into the saloon because it doesn't exist right you need to be able to go into the saloon and get a drink and that excuse me and that is a core i7 processor is getting a drink at the saloon it's at least the door functions I mean right who's the sheriff Xavier you see space and time everybody boom no you know and I think particularly that argument I agree it was a multi-facet argument but they're like this is that mattered for Windows phones because everything was the Windows computers because everything was the same so it's like have you seen Android no how do you measure that you can definitely measure the performance of Android devices no but that's exactly right and you can definitely look there's a little resolution like I think they were somehow using the Kindle as an example of like look specs don't matter but guess what the Kindles performance blows it's not that good well isn't it it's a 1.2 gigahertz dual core processor right yeah but but I'm saying but it's low but it's lower spec than a lot of other stuff as is the nook tablet right which is why they're selling them for $250 right no I mean $200 but it's like it's bad for like a variety of reasons and software I think is one of them right Android has traditionally been right kind of laggy and right that way and you know what's really helpful to software is when you have like a really great hardware chassis to throw it on to I mean I'm just saying like it's all it's you know it things to say like whenever there's a bold pronouncement about a thing that exists you know like the a car gasoline powered car is dead like that's the that's the way I think of it like is it dead or is it changing is it evolving I mean ultimately gasoline powered cars are gonna be dead at some point specs don't matter man well I'm just you know actually cars is a good example of respects you know do matter right let's see what you're saying it's the material raw potential of something is like it definitely affects the overall experience well no yeah but more than that I'm gonna it speaks to I got real knowledge here potential okay serious knowledge yeah drops of knowledge it's like you have an engine no and the engine has a certain number of horses horsepower horsepower yeah and the car horsepower is it can use a certain weight and so depending on how it's like a ratio if you have a really like car you can get away with a smaller engine speed yeah but if you've got a really heavy car to get the same amount of acceleration I see so the weight of the car is a software yeah yeah yeah I'm with you okay I see what I don't you know I just it's a tan I'm on a tangent here but I think we have it since we stand gentle yeah but I think that um I just think you know you can't the specs are significant they speak to experience and potential to understand the potential something you have to understand the raw materials is built from and I think that some of those some are face value understandable and some are hidden that software in a lot of ways is hidden potential but here's a perfect example the hardware acceleration the software wasn't taking advantage of it right away but you turn on development mode and now Twitter's faster that's right because the hardware was there that's because it had the possibility of hardware acceleration which you would want to know as a developer and as a user if that was gonna be possible but it's not just that it's not just the possibility some things are just better than others it's not a it's not up for debate more RAM is better than less RAM apples better than Google Apple Apple rules everybody else drools I mean that's just a fact all right let's get back onto our list yes I'm a thermostat I like by the way can I just say I know I know these I know these people are in the minority but there are people who are like come on six hour verge cat really what would we be like in our sixth hour awesome that's what would be like awesome yes is coming man it's happened before that's true but this year we got those music festivals where people are being carried away on stretchers because of dehydration or like or like a snake handling you know like biblical like you know church you know there's like churches where you can handle snakes and drink strec-9 and stuff and get all messed up for six hours well I assume it goes on for quite a while I would imagine you know just go there that's like a whole day event yeah snake handling day maybe that's not a good analogy it's no snake date the local church it's like occupy Wall Street sirens back let's occupy thermostats can we let's talk about the nest uh about a nest nest you know I think the nest is a very interesting product I mean I rose the thermostat and the fact that it's a thermostat doesn't stand for anything does it now because it was like neuro yeah energy style to near all energy saving thermostat yeah what is the what is the the end we have to change the end you know lies energy saving thermostat energy saving thermostat is good so you just need a good end so what would it be natural natural no naughty you knew new energy saving thermostat that's what Ness stands for I think naughty is pretty good go on no sense uh you know it's one of these devices where it's kind of like we know we met with Tony twice Tony Fidel who created the iPod and actually that's pretty disputed little story whether it was him or John Rubenstein his Rubenstein found the hard drive like made it happen yeah Laura was like this is very debatable she was talking about your headlight or something well but he's the one who like built it like he like he was like I take this you know what what is the saying success has many fathers has just one dude is that what it is I don't see that exact saying anyhow go on anyway look it's kind of crazy that he has a team of people including a MacArthur genius grant like artificial intelligence researcher figuring out how to build a thermostat and like I want one so he's admonishing me for looking at the screen during this sorry you guys are just really interested in and wonderful to watch I I won't pay any more attention to you you know actually you can read it's a long feature you can read it the cool part was when Tony was just talking about his time at Apple which is like not in the piece but like you know his stories about working with Steve Jobs are like crazy I mean he did 18 generations he was the head of that team great and when he left Rubenstein took over that 18 generations of what the iPod and he did three he led three generations of the iPhone so like he has all these crazy stories and like his story about like when they first presented the iPod to Steve it's like you know there's that famous stories like you know let's make sure we have three and then we show them the one we like the best you know pick that his story is like pretty different he's like we made three mock-ups we like you know the one you know we should put it all together and he Steve said that one like that's the one I like and then Phil Schiller looked at me and goes well we have some you know he asked Steve what can I show it to him and he came back with a scroll wheel and said we want to control with the scroll wheel and that's like kind of insane to think about that meeting and he's like and we were trying to recruit people from across Apple and like I had problems recruiting guys from the server team who made the X serves yeah because they thought the extra was gonna be more successful than the iPod I'm surprised it wasn't I mean it was just cool to hang out with him he's like he's a kind of a crazy dude and he's like seriously trying to build a thermostat no I think it's great it's a wild product innovation starts at home does it that's I just made that up that doesn't make any sense but now it does thanks to the nest but you're the only person I know the thermostat I will so I actually have three thermostats my so that you know they all connect and talk to each other that's what I need so I have on each floor of my house I have a separate thermostat and that's not like an opulent by choice situation that's just is how the house came it's from 1890 something and I don't think they just they didn't have the tools to make it happen I would love to have something a little bit more intelligent let's hook these up in my house why aren't we doing this because they're actually out if you have three thermostats do they talk to each other to see which one is like doing the best job like no I imagine they try to like should really really amp it up downstairs but I don't need to worry I would think like as that you reheat the bottom floor okay can I just tell you the answer yeah so it knows your schedule so it has all these motion detectors so this thermostat has two motion detectors one's far range one's close range and the thermo all three of them talk and they construct a schedule of where you are in the house so it knows that like you wake up in the morning you're upstairs I was like over and over a lane of time yeah so after a week they'll program each other and so if you have a really erratic schedule this is actually what he said to me she's like you know this would totally not work for you right they would like blow up I don't know he's got it up but for he's going to bed at 4 I can't figure it out that's like pretty accurate the old woman yeah yeah so all three of them will talk and they would they would regulate the parts of your house that they believe you're gonna be in and you're erratic but yeah I think you probably mostly work like in your office or downstairs right hard to say over time though you'd build a model right anyway it like that's the idea is and then you could you could use that information when sky net becomes self-aware the term is the information of what room you're in to send a Terminator to kill you right great thanks a lot Tony Fidel the thermostats have reported that he's upstairs yeah exactly no way to go Fidel way to kill everybody on the planet with your stupid thermostat but you know it's interesting okay it's actually it is actually I played with it very bad but but it's a it's a it's a click wheel just to be clear it's real mad when you point out that he made another wheel well he did what is the obsession with a wheel like a wheel such a great like a rotary phone was yeah it's funny because he had nine you know he showed me the keyboard it's a little bit more now he's like this was the first design for the iPhone keyboard when we were just gonna extend the iPod and it was a wheel yeah he was like were you sure and you select a letter there were a lot of mock-ups of that in the run-up also I think the you know the the hilarious onion piece about the I wheel or whatever it's called yeah we were all your typing was with that like yeah we're like riding in the streets because they're so happy that they could spell everything out with a rotary dial I mean it makes sense for a thermostat because you're really you're adjusting it kind of yeah but I actually feel like this would make more sense that's like a slider yeah that makes a lot more sense to me yeah multi-touching you could like pinch to select a range all right Tony you're coming what about what about up and down since it's like it low that's colder hotter like a little bit of like a like an actual scrolling like an actual thermometer huh I gotta get you on the phone coast to a stop I like how someone's like something it should run web OS what is this every everywhere I go everything I do I this web OS people cropping up like do you think the end is do you think web OS is dead or like just like this would be great if it ran web OS as an example here listen I gotta tell you guys something and as I'm speaking as a person who really loved web OS and I don't know if it's gonna happen you know if you say something's dead it's just more alive than I'm not saying it's dead I didn't say it's dead I just don't know if it's gonna be the way we wanted it to be with web OS I think it's gonna be on a copier yeah at Kinko's that's three dollars a copy you know it's one week down for Meg Whitman by the way it's two weeks left she said three to four weeks are we talking about age this HP stuff we already talked about this you know I'm just saying Meg Whitman is my time this time's gonna by the way one eight one cool thing HP did this week they put out the new I'm looking at the screen again they put out the new Envy's and actually they have they look exactly like Mack with hey hey to quote Gruber they got the name right but you know they do have which is by the way one of his best burns I have to say Gruber has a you know he's sometimes great sometimes not but that that's good was one of his better burn but you know they have it's awesome we gotta get we gotta get uh we should get him on the podcast yeah you do it I can't stop looking at you guys can I can I just say what I had it's one thing they have their beats branded so it's silly but they have a huge volume dial on the side do you have a picture of that it's awesome is it oh is it a wheel yeah it's a wheel who won't the beats associate with who won't Jimmy Iovine who who won't he associate with yeah no one there I don't think there's anyone he won't does that everybody have a beats brand of their product yeah remember how HCC was like we're investing 300 million dollars in beats it's like you didn't have to they wouldn't partner with you anyhow it turns out they don't really care where's this thing this dial is that awesome that's pretty hot I mean where is this super I don't see anything that's really nice I mean it's cool I really would love some more analog controls I got nothing here on devices I'll say this about beats first off it's it's a monster it's a monster company no no no monster just makes the headphones beats has come it's just Jimmy and dr. Dre well where how does monster play into that make the headphones you mean they make the beats headphones yeah so they make all the beats products no but not like a laptop isn't beats it's not monster what is it it's just that's just branding yeah it's not a real thing sauce there's no secret sauce that's BS that's marketing they like have it's like don't if you're a Dolby don't be like they turn the treble down Dre that's down with the envy and it's like you know what I don't think it sounds good I'm serious you know what I'm talking about right Dolby is like not a thing it's just a noise reduction yeah Dolby noise reduction as we rolled off the high end and you can't hear the hiss and now we've so we've reduced the noise like this is this is beats is the same thing they're like it's like check out the extra base they literally like turned up the base is what's happening with beats beats is a scam just like monster is a scam that's a good thing they found each other no offense to dr. Dre and Jimmy I have been who I love deeply but it is full-on scam City USA cool volume dial though yes the volume dial is great that's kind of I'm sorry but what's crazy about the scam is that it's working it's working like it is working the only other headphones I see on the street are very all these people are wandering around with beat head pretending to listen to music because their batteries are dead because that thing eats triple-a beats customer Oh one look here's the deal the only way to really listen to music is to get a set of really high-end it might be a monitor might be double-a run a ton of tests on your listening space right to get the optimum listen in there to get his opinion get Dre in to judge whether or not it's beats worthy no but seriously you know here's the thing so so audio being like an audio snob is really funny right people think there's this mean people listen to the worst sounding what we're gonna whisper it man it's happening you know we're on we're on anyhow the point is the point is you know audio snobbery is really dead I mean this is a very select group people but beats has brought snobber audio snobbery to the masses except there is no really there's not a really monster it's like hey you gotta buy this $500 HDMI cable because you're seeing it won't be as pure they sold the image of audio snobbery right without the audio snob they got I have been in there and all of a sudden you're like man I gotta get this red the red cord headphones because here's the thing about true audio files is they are believe anything they are not listening to dr. Dre songs I'm sorry who they are listening to to in yeah who like real who's listening to any audio files real audio files they're not have the most just the worst taste no they're listening they're listening to to they've got no they're listening to prog rock nor Joe they're listening to classical music they're listening to highly complex styles of music right because they want to hear all the and a lot of India yeah and you know a lot of any is highly complex really new age yeah they listen to Yanni yeah definitely once had a guy Yanni's pretty good I admittedly try to sell me a $15,000 pair of speakers you get a file shop he sat me down he's like wait till you see this it's gonna blow you away and he just played a clip of action sequences from the fifth element remember it was like I don't remember super audio CDs we're having to them I had an sACD player I had an experience I had an experience with an sACD player which is we I was working on a record with something we went to master it and they had a sACD set up like with the full like 5.1 or whatever and it was that we listened to it back yeah the seat see change dude so so there's um HD tracks or high def track I don't know I was like investigating we are just cool because of online distribution you don't have to worry about like a specific format you can just buy flax that are yeah at a high bit rate and so I bought see change and actually see change is so well mastered it doesn't really know if changes vastly let's just talk about see change for a second but I got a I got a talking heads out anyway that's a back record yeah it's no but it's incredible it's produced by Nigel Godric who did a ton of Radiohead stuff see changes a such an immaculate recording it is like the high it is probably one of the finest audio recordings ever made it's beautiful it is really incredible if you listen to it especially if you listen to it on super audio CD in 5 1 it'll blow your mind you know what's funny is that I mean I had an sACD play it came like Sony put it and everything for a while people are I think we're just losing people now it's over it's all over it's all over we gave it back to tech I'm saying is all I thought of how much how much ram does it have 18 gigabytes that's a lot of RAM all I wanted to say is that I found talking heads remain in light to be vastly superior at a higher bitrate and a higher sample rate you want to really that's yeah of course you know what's really interesting is listening to serious so I have serious in my car and I you know there's a the modern station there's like serious XM you which is their indie station and then if you switch it to like what's the one that's got all 80s like it's like synth pop and new wave stuff that music sounds so bad coming over serious and all the new music sounds pretty good yeah people are like tuning to horrible compressing oh yeah it caught a Kanye album sounds absolutely perfect 128 yeah no or or lower it probably should be a little bit lower like I never even beat venture deeper it's crazy though that our ears are changing like our perception of how audio sounds but like this all this stuff is recorded at like 192 192 kilohertz just crazy killer oh no it's recorded the you mean you're saying like original files and then it just gets 48 well it used to be it used to be compressed to used to be that he used to be impressed a 16-bit 44 one right on CD front CD which was low right right you know but there was a time I mean that's still better than most amp degrees oh it's way better yeah it's that's that's basically a flack right but there was a time with flack house can you imagine there was a time when there was no digital element in it it was pure analog straight to the recorded version that you bought in the store it's like you're there with Elton John it's like Elton John it's like Elton John is sneaking up behind you and singing into your ear he just he just slips a bedazzled vest over you you're sitting there at the piano but he's playing over your shoulders because he has really long arms yeah and he's singing right into your ear that's what it was used to be like it now now it's like exactly now it's like now it's like a distorted robot yeah yeah he's infecting your computer yeah through your beats head for the body with the body of Elton John in the face of a monster and Android monster yeah I don't know we're talking about let's let's let's wrap this thing up what do you say all right well we can't have any more topics it's it's it's 843 let's just do this thing all right well it's not about the fire in the nook oh you reviewed the fire would love to yeah I would like to talk about the box box thing for two seconds and we should talk about on the verge then we should get out of here okay so I reviewed the fire yep it's the best tablet you can get for $200 you can get two fires in a touch for for the price of an iPad no it's it's fine it's okay well so what's really interesting is RAM is break it looks like the price is on the playbook is coming down to $199 at least there's who cares they can give the playbook away it's not worth purchasing right even look like a coming software update I mean why what's the point there's nobody supporting it and you'd rather right I mean Netflix it's got a hobo and all in all fairness let's talk about the playbook for a second there is only so much room in the world for a mobile operating system you can't there's not gonna be 20 of them we've talked about this mobile phone you've got Barnes & Noble and Amazon pretty much yeah they're both running and doing their own thing but they're basically running Android and if you want to make an app you just go I made an Android app and I and I am submitting it to you to put in your store will you do it yes or yes or no please check one of these boxes and I think we keep talking about our worried that they're gonna splinter Android farther but I think Barnes & Noble is they can't right I think they know that it's a terrible idea for them and I think Amazon is too smart to know to try and splinter Android that way well and so the other thing this is there's been some controversy this week is these these manufacturers are Barnes & Noble and Amazon only win if you buy stuff off of their services otherwise they couldn't really afford to build tablets they're offsetting just like just like the game you know just like subscription services are using the offset of actual sales to make their business profitable something so that makes sense nobody you are saying earlier is that they're they can be successful because they're still selling music no that's that's the record companies that's what I meant that's what I meant record companies it's been a long night yeah and you're too long like razors and blades and game 20 ways bar give away the razors you sell the blades at a premium that's right yeah you yeah right now you're like free yes free mock 3 razor but the blades cost but the blades are five times the cost of the free ball free is game consoles right you suddenly loses money in a ps3 or they did for a while right and now they sell the games in market so here's the reality of the situation if I gotta get modern warfare 3 bad yeah have you played it no it's supposed to be good right is it good it's supposed to be good I'm gonna ask I want to ask you streamer uncharted that's the one I want it's supposed to be amazing yeah I keep reading I'm trying to was incredible yeah I'm gonna have to play the third one there's so many games out now so much there's so many things time for this I want to do with my life that isn't constantly worried sorry go ahead Paul going I could talk about Skyrim because that's really good game to watching it or playing it playing it I don't believe you no I was killed here in the office yeah yeah because I like watching people play Starcraft right all right total nerd here's the reality of situation with these tablets nook is ship nook tablet is a 16 gigabyte tablet but Barnes and Noble only lets you play around with one gig first for non-broadcast that is bonkers to me yeah I mean it's it's it's got 16 gigs of on board right or no eight is it 16 or 816 16 of on board but they only let you use one gig of it for your stuff right they don't even have a music downloading service and so we're still I think we're still kind of figuring out the situation with the Kindle fire but Amazon isn't showing competing bookstores right now in there I think they're not some aren't they they do in the in their Amazon app store like their regular one on other Android devices but they're not showing up on the Kindle fire at least they weren't I feel like this is part of a flawed I feel like this is a symptom of a flawed logic that has yet to be fully exposed where everybody's trying to do everything all the time no you know and it's like that's not a tenable solution for this world right it's like as if you know we also try to I don't know start a carrier or run a you know make a make hardware so can we start a carrier I'd love to I would love to and I was like doing a handset but I just think it's like this idea that that Barnes and Noble right should also be in addition to being the bookstore should also be here's what I think is gonna happen this is we're gonna read a review yeah let's read this just shut up everybody I want to hear this fine just keep going here's what I think is gonna happen is this is gonna be exactly like the console model and what you're gonna end up having is you're gonna like you're gonna hey hey I know a guy who can unlock a Kindle for you it's like with the Xbox is where you can have your like cousin could like load Xbox media center and have all the cracked games on there I don't think I think this is gonna be pretty rampant I hacking real nice devices and it's good I did I did when we did on the verge I talked to T Rave he hacked his no color but he's T Rave I mean well that's the thing not regular T Rave man oh by the way I'll hack their tablet well you know that you say that but you say it but I told you that that that Laura's stepmother asked her about jailbreaking yeah it's true and I think it's gonna be become more pervasive like with the console hacking his main where you have a completely locked down device and these aren't completely locked down but you have a locked down device that's being sold at a subsidy and then people want to do more with it and they turn that to hacking and it's a huge you know Sony waged a very public battle over this with the ps3 and loss Xbox will so will destroy your life if you dare what will hack it Microsoft with the Xbox 360 Xbox live they will shut you down yeah if you hack that thing yeah but they're gonna be one there when how did they win and Sony failed so bad I think it's Xbox live yeah I mean Microsoft's had something to offer and I don't think there's any hacker who thinks I should be able to hack my Xbox and get Xbox live hmm that's right I think you're very mistaken about what the hopes and dreams of hackers are no I mean like they know that's not fair yeah they know it's not fair right it it you know there's like a sense of like fair play we're like okay you've hacked all right you got me this time I'll be back right where with Sony it was just like we're gonna sue you like the literally like agents will come to your house and arrest oh it's like the RIA suing people for downloading stuff on Napster yeah you know I used to represent those people and they were a conflict of interest for you to talk about it I used to represent the people got sued nothing is this a conflict of interest for you to talk about it it's a long time ago but they lost the well no so hmm well hold on there's no the RIA lost they lost like the in the court of like public opinion and they also lost but they want to answer it they know they want all of those cases that entire that was a business for the RIA those cases aren't like they're gonna get a bunch of music they're talking about a bunch of money back yeah but that whole that was a business they ran the RIA ran its litigation for downloading as a business I can hear you can hear the true I was so bone to pick attitude here this is not just this is not just a random guy can I just like I mean look I these were like my clients when I graduated from law school right and they were college kids and now they're in jail they were college kids and like I had clients who would get sued for downloading and they would have to quit school like take a second job to pay their music downloading what is that occupy man I've never heard that me I never heard that kind of sign or music is coming for you man I can't I have to get back to Brooklyn there's must see TV is on tonight right this is not going to fly no it's over man you know what I need a helicopter first copter what what is that it's Bloomberg you know they're blocking they're blocking helicopter airspace over the occupy Wall Street stuff is that going to impact my helicopter trip yeah that's what I'm saying no but seriously what is that sound am I crazy guys is that a weird siren sound you say it's a sub like a submarine we're being told that the police have a subwoofer woofer woofer woofer it's not a dog huge marmaduke style dog it's used to clear traffic okay anyhow that's apparently I'm being told I'm being excuse me I'm being told now that's a regular sound each siren and I have nothing to be worried about so I'm on edge I happen to be the one percent and you never know when these 99 let's read this Call of Duty review and be done let's not let's just call it today we've lost by the way I think we've lost like real-time like hundreds and hundreds of real-time listeners during this pot I don't know where this review is by the way we have one that's called modern warfare 3 multiplayer review is that you my man in there no somebody somebody says topic about what race are you gonna play in Skyrim what are the options I chose the kitty cat that's a race you can be like an orc you can be a dark elf you can be a nice elf you can be a human it's chaotic neutral option can I play as Mike Lazaridis you could you could probably do a pretty good Mike Lazaridis this facial I understand you can like customize big time I just say this review it has a score they made a score module you people everybody should see this this is from I'd like to see it from from chow in our forums it's really well done where I'm line let me just read the bottom line where is it I didn't give you the link can you drop it into the chat room it's happening I'm not logged in well oh look at that what the hell man our our readers are insane that they're I mean in a good way no you were all removed buddy nice going wait you were all not removed so he's like who's laughing hysterically yelling fail at you small victory buddy I'm just gonna read the conclusion oh look at this look the main question from chow the main question I have about the Call of Duty series right now is this how long can they keep making Call of Duty games are unexciting have very few innovations that's rough that's a big I don't know I played the last the last Modern Warfare and it was like playing a movie yeah if you were so it was so thrilling let me tell you something let me just give you a little I want to give you a little window into my life mmm should play like let me just read the wrap up last line there's a first line is wrap up last line if you are a Call of Duty fan you'll pick this game up the reason you'll buy Modern Warfare 3 is not because it's better than the old one it's because all of your friends are playing it I don't know that's harsh I did a heart I disagree with that all right chow let me just hold on yeah I just want to say I played the last Call of Duty game yeah and Laura watched and Paul Miller did yeah no but you know what black it was awesome for everybody in the room including penny our dog no but it's like it's what's the one where you basically are a horrible terrorist we kill civilians yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm sorry where you kill everybody the airport no okay that that I was gonna say that movie that game is like a movie it's like playing a movie like a really good but you were talking about the other day where it's like it just a passable Vin Diesel action movie yeah not like Citizen Kane right it's like it could almost be good enough to be a movie that's like Uncharted 2 it's like it could almost be good enough to be good to be a decent action movie but not like it's not you know but all the characters are flat it's not art right right it's a two stars from me bird out of four maybe two and a half yeah movie reviews are just about the experience they never ever rate anything on a scale don't worry the mics fine yeah I didn't hit the galaxy nexus did I who are people freaking out about can we talk about one more thing cool it's fine everybody sure then we can go you have no idea how resilient these I really freed Paul out did I upset you pause on that I thought you drop the mic I dropped it on purpose like this is over yeah can I say it I'm excited you're gonna get box thing can we go Chris Farley to run back across the stage and pick up your mic I don't know what you mean yeah all right let's go let's wrap it up all right so last piece of news boxy announced a live TV adapter for the box box the only reason excited about this is because they're the first company to like actually be like cut the cord you can get live TV and streaming media and I mean it's it's like they're the only ones are really gonna be effective they're the only ones who are even trying when nobody else is trying like I think the idea that like Apple like build a TV that streams everything over the Internet is like a fallacy I think that's a bad idea it's a beautiful dream it's a dream but it's not there's no way to do it that makes sense for boxing to be like you can plug in this antenna or plug in basic cable and get all the network shows and most of shows you want to watch on networks well and you can all the streaming stuff I don't know about that most of the shows you want to watch there's like there's there's like little you in this scenario is that everybody most people like it's like it's like a right top alright to it to an admin sure of course are you kidding me back you got me into it really happy ending that's like saying you're really into what's that show with Courtney Cox cougar town yeah I mean happy endings is like ABC's version of cougar town is cool town on ABC yes then it's the same exact show basically the same show but I will say Becky deeply loves friends so I think friends is a pretty bad but you know what hasn't been on air for a while but compared to back to bear the happy endings from what I've seen so here's the thing it is like citizen Kane well you know it is the I think it's a prototype for every sitcom in the world in the world at this point so Nick at night is rerunning friends which means I watch friends like three times a day now she's always watching friends in HD when I grew up Nick at night was showing I love Lucy yeah and the Bewitched and what was the one with the friends is I love Lucy go ahead with the shoe phone it's crazy about these HD reruns on Nick at night is that they actually went back to the master film and telecine them into real HD which is astonishing have you seen Seinfeld in HD? What's going on with that? So great what is the deal with Seinfeld in HD? It's so funny cuz at the beginning of like the HD era it was so bad I'm trying to just get through it man are we done can we be done no I think the boxy box thing is real just give me this action he doesn't need it I mean what how much money do I have to pay you to wrap this up we're done I'm done you want to talk great show we just did yeah we did a great show on the verge so good it's way better than this way more rehearsed yeah we did our first monthly show yeah which is on the verge we're doing one next month and I think ultimately we'd like to do them more than once yeah but we'll see what happens we just have to find the time we're pretty busy I will say my favorite part of the show is the sad robot voice I watched it oh the sad robot yeah a lot of ideas for the sad robot to be a part of our show anyway we're done guys I can hear you talking really clearly through the mic right now no I don't care you don't have to be don't feel bad about it anyhow we should wrap up this because because we've done a full on to basically two-hour I mean almost our 45 hour 45 it's about 45 minutes longer than Paul and I wanted to do the podcast right Paul nice going anyhow that's our show for the week there's a reason Chad gave us like a 15 second time limit I'm sure you will definitely chat laughter at the beginning of this I want to really know that that's our show for the week if if you want to get in touch with us you can email us at podcast at the verge comm yeah you can leave a comment on the post yes using our highly advanced commenting system it's awesome it is cool one day it's gonna let you edit comments one day at a time or you can tweet at us on twitter.com I'm Joshua Topolski Neely is reckless Paul's future Paul the verge is at verge the at symbol not AT in case you're wondering we should get at at verge by the way can we get that what's going on at Puyallup seconds we're not doing the six-hour podcast they wanted and we're back next week with more of this delicious whatever this is no intelligent debate was about the future about the future about the present but the past about where we were where we're where we are and where we're going about x-men x-men you know the economics the 1% the 99% nothing nothing is off the table during the verge cast a name a hotly debated name the verge cast we cover 100% yeah oh I would if you guys weren't so far away I mentally high-fiving you right now that's good that's really good yeah you know Paul you're all right and anyhow that's our show for the week so thank you for listening to this insane hell ride and we'll I'll see you soon rock and load rock and roll that's great good just end this end it now
 Hey and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of November 14th 2011. I'm Josh
 Topolsky. I'm Paul Miller. I'm Nila Patel. And we are back. I don't know. I don't...
 Should I be looking at this? We are back but I'm staring into the...
 I'm staring at the internet. I'm looking at you. I'm looking at the
 internet right now and it is... It's full of stars. D-list stars though which is lame.
 Anyhow this is the Vergecast where we discuss the week in technology news,
 consumer electronics, technology culture, gadgets, feelings, emotions. Emotions and
 feelings. Are they the same thing? We'll be talking about that. That's one of the
 topics we'll be covering. And we had a crazy week. I mean you know I always say
 that. It's actually something I say every single time we do. We had a sane week.
 I don't think I've ever wanted to go to sleep as much as I have, as I do at the end of this week.
 We had a completely normal week. Nothing happened. Nothing interesting happened.
 Anyhow we had a really crazy week. It's Thursday. If you're
 listening to this recorded it'll be Friday or if you're in like I don't know
 Japan or something. The good news is we're about to declare martial law in New
 York so we all get an early weekend. Yeah if you hear any screaming or chanting...
 Why? What's going on? They've decided to just occupy New York now
 because they were kicked out of Wall Street. So they're just going...
 I mean I don't think it's any secret that I'm into that.
 Yeah, no it's cool. That's fine. This is the zombie apocalypse that you've always wanted.
 It's time to stick it to the 1%. Which is us.
 The 1% of zombies. No is that really what's happening? They're gonna do martial law?
 No they're not gonna do martial law but they took over all the subways. That's where they started doing
 karate on everybody. It was like a day of protest on the subways today.
 That's good. Yeah. You know what? Sometimes it takes a little civil unrest to get
 what you need. That's how I got the editor-in-chief job. I remember that.
 Remember Occupy Cubicle 7? That was great. Anyhow we should talk about
 technology instead of occupation because I don't think we have anything
 really good to say about occupations except that it's wrong or it's right
 and useful. I don't know. Let's talk about what happened this week in
 technology. I think something happened to you. I can't say this week in technology.
 I think you... That's a patented term. No. This week in tech. Let's talk about what
 happened, huh? Leo? Just kidding. I love that guy. I think something happened to you. I think you found a love that dares
 speak its name. That dares speak it in thousands of words. I did find... I did
 fall in love a little bit. I reviewed... I did review the Galaxy... Are you talking about the Galaxy Nexus?
 I don't know. Sideway new mistress. We had a lot of affairs this week. Vanessa. Hello. Yeah, no. I reviewed the Galaxy Nexus. It went up today.
 I have, you know, we've... I had a couple encounters with it over the past few months.
 To me it feels like this is the longest thing ever because I saw this phone when
 I interviewed Matthias and played around with it at... Poor Josh. Saw the phone so
 early. Had to wait. I'm not trying to, you know, I'm not trying to be cool but I'm
 just saying it was hard because I knew that at some point... It's a humble brag. No, a
 humble brag is like... Yeah, I guess it is. Yeah, I know what that is. I can't take waiting for the secret
 thing I saw to come out. Well, I want to just come out already. It's so lame. You
 know what I mean, guys? Anyhow, but no, but I saw I've been waiting for this
 phone for a long time and I wanted like a really good Android phone that didn't
 suck. Yeah. And that's hard to come by if you ask me. And is that what you got? I
 think so. I hope. Yeah. We'll see. Check back in a month. Remember when you liked the
 Atrix? You know what? I was always... I always knew in the back of my mind that the Atrix
 was I was dancing with... I was dancing... Playing with fire. Yeah. Because it's got
 MotoBook. And I always knew I was being a little like dishonest with myself that
 it was really as great as I thought it was. Did the Nexus S degrade with
 time for you? Here's the interesting thing about the Nexus S. I really didn't...
 Wasn't that crazy about the Nexus S when it came out. Remember my review? I gave it
 like a 7. I thought it was very mediocre. Yeah. As far as like phones go. And I
 actually still think it is. But like it's the only phone you can get with
 pure Android. It's the only... It's your flagship phone. So they update it and
 it's pure Android. And Chris was always like, oh, I bought another Nexus S. I mean
 Chris literally has purchased like four separate purchase sell purchase sell
 sessions of Nexus S. So that's why I bought it. Because I wanted a pure Google
 experience. Is that so crazy? I just wanted to be you know on the
 upgrade list. I can't do it on Delta. I'm looking at you Delta. Think about it huh?
 This guy needs an upgrade. Six foot four. But I am not on their upgrade list. And
 Virgin America huh? Think about it. I don't know who I'm talking to. Are you just begging for a sponsor?
 No I'm begging for more leg room on a flight. I have no idea who I'm speaking to either by the way
 looking in this camera. It's like I'm gazing into the abyss. That's what it is.
 And it's like a $400 camcorder. Yeah. What was I talking about? By the way I
 didn't really sleep last night. You were talking about the Nexus S. Yeah it's pretty tight.
 Yeah. Well it's not actually. You know I did a live Q&A for the
 Galaxy Nexus review and a bunch of people were asking me is it
 better than the Nexus S? And I answered a bunch of them and people were like can you
 please stop answering. But the Nexus S is a piece of crap compared to the
 Galaxy Nexus. Really? That much? Yeah. Oh yeah. If you own a Nexus S and I
 do and I paid like a retail price for it. Yeah. You are gonna be sorry when
 you see the Galaxy Nexus. Yeah. I'm like ready to get one just having played with
 your... You played with it yesterday and you were like into it right?
 Yeah I just don't like the hardware. I think the hardware is fairly...
 When I say the hardware I mean like not the internals or the
 specifications but just sort of the feel of the hardware. So having used an
 Nexus S this is like a Rolls Royce. That's like driving a Yugo and this is a Rolls Royce.
 But of course just think in a year this will be like a Yugo. Right. Does
 anybody even know what a Yugo is? Yeah. Yeah people do. They got it. Do you guys know what a Yugo is?
 It's the default hilarious car in the world. Yeah okay good. Right okay. There's a
 Rush Limbaugh parody of In the Ghetto but it's in a Yugo. Oh god. It's about
 liberals and their small cars. Oh yeah I wonder how that's working for him now.
 When's that from? It's a morality... What do you mean the song?
 Yeah. Wait wait wait wait. Rush Limbaugh's parody songs? Rush Limbaugh's a multi-faceted
 entertainer. No. It's from the 90s? Yeah. Do you think he stands behind that
 song? I mean I know he probably does but I think we've proven that like big cars
 are not really a great idea. Gets nine miles a gallon. Yeah. I still own a
 Suburban. Or not a Suburban. I wish I had an Escalade. Can I see the... Yeah. So the thing I played with it just a little bit and it looks kind of junky in the back but it's really...
 I think you look kind of junky in the back. It's really comfortable. No it feels...
 It's a really good... It's like a balance. And it's surprisingly like you think it's gonna feel like a huge thing in your hands. Well who knew that
 putting the weight at the bottom was a smart thing to do. Right. Like do you know how it's like a teardrop?
 It's like it won't even it won't even leave my hand it's just like... I want it to leave your hand and come into my hand. Did you notice that it's that it has a kind of teardrop shape?
 Yeah. I noticed it. Yeah. I know what you're saying. Hey. Every teardrop is waterfall.
 Which by the way is now available as a free download on the Google Music Store.
 Is that on our list of top? It is. I hope so. Is this button as annoying as it is on the S?
 A side button is always annoying but on a big phone like that you don't want the
 button up top I think. Right. Personally. I don't know. I like it. I like it a lot.
 Honestly I honestly think that my score would have been higher than the
 iPhone 4s if the camera were a little bit better. Yeah. Because that's the one
 thing that I felt like... I feel like it's competitive. I mean it's a good camera.
 It's not bad or anything. But I feel like it's really competitive with what I
 consider to be probably the best phone which is the iPhone 4s right now.
 In terms of hardware and software and just the whole ecosystem, the whole
 package. But this is an awesome phone in my opinion. It's got a lot going for it
 except that the camera is like... Sometimes I could get great photos with it and
 sometimes it was just like a mess. And low light was terrible. Is it mostly the low
 light? Well it's the low light but it's also... You know they have this like... They
 advertise that well it has no shutter lag. You snap and it's taking the
 picture. It almost seems like it's too fast. Like it doesn't take enough time to
 compose. Yeah. They like crank the ISO to compensate for the shutter speed. And it doesn't have a preview. As far as I know
 there's no... I couldn't find a setting to add a preview so like when you
 snap a photo it just... It's exactly like webOS actually if you
 remember. WebOS was no shutter lag, no preview. So it would just take the picture
 and go... But you never get to look at it. And jam down into your library. Well you know what's
 interesting is that on the show... Thank God I have it back. On The Verge, Matthias was
 talking about how... Oh my God. If you think that looks weird on camera... I want to see what that looks like. Now I get to watch it on the playback. I can't tell you how weird that was in person.
 No but Matthias was talking about how you know camera settings are like for the
 weak and stupid. And what you really want to do is take a picture. And if the phone
 can't figure it all out for you then it's a bad piece of technology. And it's
 almost like they're rushing. You know that they want you to just generate
 imagery without thinking about it. I'm watching people react now to the... Yeah no
 I mean that was basically... I don't know what it looked like because my video is totally frozen.
 There's some... Developers will be able to come up with apps that allow you to have
 settings right? I'm sure. For that camera. I hope. Like lower the ISO. I hope.
 Raise the shutter. There aren't any... There really aren't that many good camera apps
 like that are like hey use the camera and like tweak it make it awesome for
 Android. But I will say that when I talked to Matthias he made it sound like
 they're gonna be harder on developers or at least kind of give them more
 guidelines. And something else speaking of that this has not been... Nobody's
 talked about this and I actually was gonna add this to the review and I
 haven't gotten around to it. There's a setting. So this has a developers menu in
 it. And there's a setting that you can force hardware acceleration. And if you
 turn it on it makes every app that doesn't use hardware acceleration really
 super smooth. Like the Twitter app on Android is kind of a little bit choppy
 on a regular phone. And on this and it's a little bit... It's not choppy but it's
 like not super smooth and responsive like the way it is on iOS. And if you
 turn on this force hardware acceleration it's buttery. Why don't they just turn it
 on? I don't know. I was talking to a Google rep and he said it's one line of
 XML. Well it's probably something they have to retest their whole app just to make sure
 there aren't any bugs. And I think the other issue is that I don't know maybe it's
 different for different devices. Maybe it's conspiracy. Talked to Raj Limbaugh about this.
 Does that make the Twitter app... Because I played some with... It makes the
 Twitter app feel like the iOS Twitter app. Well I played some with the primary UI
 of the phone. Yeah. Actual ice cream sandwich. And that's like perfectly
 responsive. It's really good. I felt a little bit like a like I was like a
 wounded animal and I was a little shy to like... I wasn't expecting it to be instantaneous.
 My iPhone is instantaneous. It has good days and bad days.
 But that was really responsive. So I mean they... I really think this is a
 huge, huge seismic shift for what Android is in my opinion. I mean it is
 like all the stuff that has been driving me insane about Android. Like the little
 the last bit. And then you know it's kind of like a one-two punch was that Tiny
 Towers is released. Is it Tiny Tower or Tower? Tiny Tower. Tower. Yeah. Which by the way I don't play.
 But Laura plays it. Joanna freaked out. No, no. I know everybody's super into it.
 But the fact is it's a real game that people play on iOS and all of a
 sudden like it just appeared today. And Minecraft is like now available. I
 know Minecraft is available for iOS now but it became available recently for all
 Android phones. I mean I will say this. Joanna... First she freaked out that it was
 out. Tiny Tower is out for Android. Then she suggested that we write the story and
 put it in our first big hero slot. She was so excited. And then like five minutes
 later she came back and said and I quote Tiny Tower fragmentation is real.
 She couldn't download it on like two of her phones. Oh well it downloads on this and it's good.
 It's fun. On iOS you can visit your buddies towers over Game Center. Here's
 disturbing about it actually. Can you not do that on Android? Here's the bugging me about it.
 It doesn't have Game Center. It maybe has open... It's open faint. Here's what's freaking me out.
 It's not open faint. It's something else. But here's the deal. So I downloaded it.
 This is actually kind of freaking me out. I downloaded it and it's like you need to
 have an account to play this game or whatever. And I was like okay well I'll make one.
 And it was like sorry that name is taken. Which was Josh Witzepolsky. Pretty
 original. And I was like what? Somebody took my name on this. And then I was like
 you know I'll just try to log in with using my name and password which I used
 you know in a couple of different... on a couple different game sites. And it
 worked. And I don't recall ever making... You signed up for this service before. I have to
 imagine I signed up for it or I'm the victim of some kind of crazy hacking scheme. Have you done any other
 multiplayer Android games? It's possible. I mean I've downloaded a lot of
 software that I don't... and I don't fully remember. You kind of spread yourself thin over the years.
 I mean you have to understand. You have to understand when I think about how many phones I've
 tested over the last couple of years. I mean when I look at my Kindle list of
 registered devices it's like... Oh yeah. It's like Joshua's 25th Android phone.
 Like that's how they name it. Yeah. It's really messed up. And I have books like
 Storm of Swords I've been trying to read on on other devices that I get and I
 can't because I've run out of licenses. You get like five and they're like you
 have to deregister these other devices and delete the content. I'm like that
 phone got sent back. I don't know how I do that now. Is that the fourth book? It's
 the third book. The third book? What's the fourth book?
 I've been listening to the Game of Thrones books on Audible. What have you
 what have you listened to so far? I can't remember if it's two books or three.
 Well I'll tell you what the first books are. It's Game of Thrones is the
 first one. The second one is A Clash of Kings. And then A Storm of
 Swords. Wait am I right? Yeah. I can't remember which it is. I think I've only
 read the first two. And the third one they changed the guy who narrates it on
 Audible. Oh okay. He's like a completely like monotone jerk. Really?
 And so now I ran out of money. Now I have to read this book with my eyes and
 it's... I have to read this book with my eyes. I thought like hey you know you
 should read it on. Galaxy Nexus. Great pixel density. Actually though...
 You want to talk about the screen? Because I'm like eager to talk about the screen. Did you so you do we ever we didn't do anything? I sent you a crazy...
 No I know I know I know. You used it, you hurt my feelings. No no I was gonna put it in.
 You don't understand I was rushing to get this I wanted to finish the core of
 the review and we're gonna update it because we got to talk about the LTE
 device. Oh yeah. That's a that'll be an interesting problem for us to tackle
 both on the... Do you even know when you're getting that? No idea. Verizon so can I
 just say something's wrong with Verizon. They have the best Android phone in the
 world. And they're doing the droid razor. In Josh DePulsey's opinion, one man's opinion.
 And they're like pushing yeah they're pushing the droid razor. I think there's
 something really funky going on Verizon like they don't want to sell this phone.
 And the Nexus is available now in the UK. Yeah and and just listen internet and
 you guys as well you can listen if you want. The version that's available in the
 UK if you can get an unlocked phone is AT&T T-Mobile ready and also the fastest
 I don't know why this is the fastest phone I've tested for download speeds on
 AT&T. Maybe ever. I definitely buy this phone. No did you see the speed test? Yeah I saw it.
 It's like it's like four and five down. That's ridiculous. It is ridiculous. Yeah.
 In my neighborhood I never get that. It's 4G. I get on the iPhone 4S I got 2.2
 was like it maxed out. I've gotten like three three and a half. Well I'm just
 telling you it's fast and I've downloaded like large files quickly while like in a
 car going into Manhattan. That's awesome. You know it is awesome. It's just so big
 it has a gigantic antenna. That's what happens. Maybe just it just I don't know.
 I mean that's awesome. That's what happens when you get an unlocked device.
 You know what's funny is that I would you know I would seriously consider buying a
 Verizon Galaxy Nexus and because they won't do it like they won't let me buy
 it I was gonna buy the unlock. I was planning on buying a Galaxy Nexus on I
 was gonna switch because I'm on AT&T. I was gonna make the you know screw this.
 Like a full switch? Yeah full switch. Well I did contemplate getting a new line
 because yeah I tell you a lot of people a lot of people have my phone number now
 a lot of crazy PR people. PR people who are like I'm not gonna name names but
 some people will just war dial you. Yeah. Do you know what war dialing is? Yes. Do you
 know what war dialing is? No. Really? No not the term. War dialing is a it's like an
 old hacker term for when you would I know about war. You get like a batch of like
 you get like a batch of like a string of numbers basically and dial them to
 find where there were to find where there were modems so you could hack into
 them you know all war game style. You have a lot of people like hacking
 into your phone. Anyhow I refer to it I refer to when people call me a lot as
 war dialing. Okay. Because it does feel like a an offensive move. Right. But I'm
 just saying a lot of people have my phone number now. So you're gonna get a new Verizon. I thought about getting a
 second phone that isn't like for everybody. I'm like 90% sure I'm gonna
 get an unlocked Nexus on T-Mobile. So I just realized that somebody in
 conf chat whatever it's called is you has the name Tasha with Jopolsky. That's
 pretty good. It's just I was like who why am I saying that? It's pretty good.
 Yeah we should talk about when Google Music when we get to that. We should. How they
 basically trolled you. Is there anything else we need to talk about? I just want to
 quickly talk about the display. So yeah let's I caused a huge ruckus with
 calling the Droid Razor display bad and I'm telling you it's bad. This display is
 Pentile and it looks great to me. I think the color shift is still a little
 there just because there are no true white pixels. It could be brighter. Where's the
 image? Let me let me find the image. I can put it up. I mean I took it. I have it
 somewhere in my life.
 I don't have anything to do. I don't have any images on my computer. Go take me to the screen. What is wrong with us?
 What's happening? Is your like personal email gonna be on there? No.
 Hey don't forget to shoot that person I told you to kill. I have the PSD. It's the full
 reds. So if you're looking at this. The Ustream what? Where is this? It's well
 now it's on the video. I don't see it. Oh there it is. We're just gonna wait for it.
 Let's see. So you look at it. I mean it's different. They're obviously different
 fonts because the Nexus uses Roboto but you can see there's just more pixels
 making up the letters. Wow this is fundamentally more pixels. This is
 disturbing. And at a high distance they actually blend into white which is the
 whole idea of Pentile and the Razer doesn't have enough like it doesn't have
 the density. So I don't understand what's the Resound has a what? The Resound has a
 standard LCD display. Right so that but so it's bad it's a battery sucker. Well a
 little bit. I mean but here's the thing about this image I mean this is
 obviously like pretty shocking but the display looks really good to the naked eye.
 Right and it's because there if you look at like the O or the G right you can see
 there are more pixels like just physically more pixels making up the
 letter forms so when you pull out they blend into a more cohesive like white.
 Right. Whereas with the Razer there's so few and you can see there's like ragged
 edges of like blue and red there. When you when you look at it from far away I
 can see like the ragged pixels making up the letter forms on the Razer and it's
 really distracting. So there's there's something there is a say that the
 Galaxy Nexus is still a little dimmer than something. No no the problem with the Galaxy Nexus
 is that it has a very harsh auto brightness setting which just
 makes it super dim. Like you could turn that off. You could turn it off yeah it
 looks really great when you have it at a regular brightness but it wants it to be
 way down and I think it's obviously a battery conserving move but um to me
 this is kind of like knowing how the sausage is made this is one of those
 situations where it's like if you take it at at the at the ultra granular
 level you're gonna look at it and go well this looks terrible but actually I
 mean I can tell you I mean I've been looking at the screen and it does look
 good. No I think it looks good too. It's like a rainbow bright. Right.
 It does look exactly like a rainbow bright. No and I agree you know I think that there is a
 level where the pen tile layout like just hurts you and I think on the old
 Galaxy S phones which use pen tile displays I think they looked bad.
 The Nexus S is one of them I think that screen kind of looks bad. Kind of. The
 Droid I think the Droid Razr I think it just looks bad and you know I've been
 keep using the Droid Razr because it's the only 4G LTE phone I have right now. What is the deal?
 It hurts my eyes. It's just a battery conservation move? So with the Razr
 it's it doesn't need a backlight so they could make the entire phone thinner
 right but not having the LCD backlight so the ReSound is like literally twice as
 thick and you know Chris said the ReSound screen is like the best screen
 he's ever seen. He's like there are no you cannot complain about this display.
 Really? It's too good. You know he actually we should talk about that just a little
 bit he reviewed the ReSound. Yeah. Said it's a great phone, senses way over the
 top, great hardware, super thick but you know it if you're on Verizon and when
 this phone comes out I think that's why they're holding on to it. I mean Verizon
 has two super high-end phones it's pushing. The ReSound and the
 Razr and it's from partners who they play a little bit more ball with
 Verizon right. I don't think Google and Samsung like played ball with the
 Galaxy Nexus. I don't think they asked Verizon what do you want this phone to be.
 No in fact Google's going around going you can delete anything you want off of
 the phone. Right and I mean I think that's it. I think the carriers they
 want to determine what's on their network. I think Verizon you know they
 signed the open access provisions for LTE. I don't think they've done anything.
 You know Google needs to do is they need to they need to make a Galaxy Nexus with
 special offers. You do and just subsidize it and sell it on their own.
 Say put it on whatever carrier you want. Galaxy Nexus with special offers.
 Pull a candle fire. Yeah that's exactly what I'm suggesting. Like literally verbatim
 what I'm suggesting. You know I think there's a like just a problem in the
 world when you can buy an iPad for $499 and a full-on like laptop computer for
 like $300 and every cellphone unlocked is still $700 and it's because there's
 no market. I can start ranting about carriers right now. No no that's not in time. I mean there's no market for unlocked cellphones.
 Sometimes it's more expensive to make something that's small. Like LCDs are
 more expensive on phones than on a large tablet. I hear you saying but there's no
 there's no price pressure for phones the way there has been for every other piece
 of electronic. At least in the US. Well right but that's where I live so that
 sucks for me. It's true. Right. I can start ranting. I mean this is like the thing. You should buy a phone in the UK.
 I'm gonna buy that phone in the UK and unlock it. Yeah but at full price. And I think that's probably the other reason why Verizon is really like
 whatever. They don't want to promote a phone that you can easily buy unlocked
 and then put on another carrier. Well the thing about the thing about phone is. Which is funny because they do with the iPhone.
 The phone is like a commodity item. I mean it's not like a tablet. People need
 phones. Tablets are a luxury item. I mean you need. That phone is very much a
 luxury item. Well yeah sure but I mean but the model is built around the concept
 of the necessity of a phone. It's built. It kind of built on the model of. I mean
 it's not really built on the model of but it's I feel like it's an extension
 of the landline in a sense where it's like you got to have one of these so
 you'll jump through all kinds of insane hoops to get one. Sure but yes I want you to do
 whatever it is you you think I don't want you to. I'm just gonna start ranting about net neutrality.
 That's what I'm gonna do right now. I'll let you guys just go at this. Well no I mean
 like that's what happened with with look there was this brief period of like
 super innovation in like cordless phones. We have so many topics to get to. I know. I'm just saying look if Verizon
 just let you bring phones to its network and AT&T just let you bring the phones to its network that are compatible.
 Innovation would explode. It would be even faster. The price would come down. The consumer would win but who wants that? Not the 1%
 That's why we got to go out and occupy those trains. Right. Or whatever it is
 they're occupying. It's the city. It's literally the city. I noticed I was out there it seemed pretty
 tame to me. I only drove through the super rich neighborhoods though where they can't get to.
 Can I just say one more thing? Yes. The landline thing that you're talking about is that the
 government literally said AT&T you don't know the lines but you have to open them up.
 It was the Carter phone rule. Yeah. You have to let people plug in whatever phones you want and
 then literally phone innovation like exploded and wireless phones. I'm with you. You're preaching
 to the converted. Anyway. The end. I'm sorry Paul. Paul doesn't care. He's cool. He's googling something.
 Yeah. He wants a phone on T-Mobile that he can't have. He's checking out how much he can get it unlocked.
 I'm trying to figure out. Taylor Swift tweeted this photo. I'm just trying to figure out.
 Taylor Swift tweeted this photo. What's happening in this photo? I think it's pretty obvious.
 She's like meeting a magi. That's obviously what's happening. That guy's not a magi.
 No. She was at a Knights Templar reunion. It might have something to do with the Shriners.
 I don't know. I don't know. Let's move on. You want to talk about Google Music?
 Wait. Is there anything else to talk about with the Nexus? No. We did the Nexus and the Resound.
 What percentage of this is the hardware and what percentage of this is Ice Cream Sandwich for you?
 70-30. Software. But the hardware is great. I mean obviously I'd love whatever they're using for the retina display to be a 720p display on this.
 Does it have a turn off thing? Yeah. You could get the Resound which is just a little bit thicker but the same display LCD.
 I don't want the Resound though. Do you understand? Because it has the buttons.
 Well first off it has the buttons but more importantly than that I don't care if it has sense but it will never be first in line for the latest innovations and updates from Google.com.
 Okay. And that's the problem. They make it. They build it. They do the new stuff.
 When there's a push it doesn't go to the Resound. Six months later Resound people are going I can't believe I'm still on Froyo.
 That's what happens. That's the reality of Android. So I want the device that is blessed by Google and this is the device that's blessed by Google and it just happens to be also a pretty good phone.
 So what you're talking about right now is literally the specific danger that when we were at Engadget and we talked about the Google phone that Michael Gartenberg always talked about.
 That he would always say you can't compete with your licensees because eventually you will make the superior product and everyone will know it.
 But the truth is you can if a bunch of people who buy your stuff don't care about having the premier Halo product.
 But you're saying this is the best Android phone. But you speak to the consumer.
 Well I speak to the consumer but not every consumer. Let's put it that way. And this is a 250 on Verizon. It's a $250 phone probably.
 There are a lot of people on Verizon who want the $50 phone or the free phone and those are going to happen to the Android as well.
 What do you say to Motorola? What does Google say to Motorola who they own which is insane.
 It's a growing market.
 And what do they say to HTC?
 They say it's a booming market. Your profits are higher than ever.
 But not them. Motorola is losing money lots of times.
 Motorola just got bought by Google. I don't think that's a problem. But HTC is having record numbers. And you know why? Android. That's why.
 Google just announced 200 million Android handsets activated.
 And believe me 199 million of them are not the Nexus S.
 They're that boost mobile one that's $25.
 I'm just saying it doesn't matter when it's everywhere. When it's ubiquitous you don't have to worry about that.
 You don't have to compete with yourself because you're not. Because you're not going to compete.
 There's only like five handsets that are going to compete for the top tier position.
 And the market is growing. We're in a boom period of the smartphone market.
 What is the percentage of ownership? I know it was 30% a couple of years ago. It's probably what?
 I'm just saying at what point, particularly in this situation where the three newest high-end Android handsets are all in the same carrier.
 The carrier is having problems trying to figure out how to... They're not promoting the best one of them.
 Well, they're not promoting the one that they like. They're not promoting the one that we like the best. They're promoting the one that they like the best.
 Which is arguably the worst of the both.
 I happen to think that my opinion is the only opinion that matters.
 Verizon probably thinks that the Razr... There are a lot of great...
 I'm sure that they pay less for the Razr, right?
 I don't know. I have no idea.
 I'm saying I'm sure there's like a lot of...
 But there are variables, right? There are like, hey, you know what? People really want this. They want the phone with those weird edges. That's just a thing.
 Or on corners.
 Right. That's just a thing that people are going to be attracted to.
 You don't want it to be thin.
 We had this long conversation last night about the ads, the mortgage ads with the dancing, 3D dancing people in them.
 Lower My Bills.
 There's like a woman in a gray suit. She's like a 3D sim, really gross dancing.
 And there's an alien. There's a female alien, which Paul found, which is like an alien wearing a bikini and has blonde hair.
 But it's the same alien.
 Same alien. And it's doing really gross dancing, right?
 And the thing is that people, for some reason, are attracted to that. They click on it. It's working, right?
 It catches their eye.
 I think that's why horrible laptop designs do so well at Best Buy.
 It's like Reeboks. It's like Nike.
 I've talked about basketball shoes.
 No, it's like tacky design is appealing to a large swath of people.
 I mean, there's not a lot of great taste out there.
 That's why when people make really crazy looking things, people are like, whoa, that's insane.
 I never thought of that because most people aren't thinking of it and they're not interested in it.
 They're buying the dancing aliens.
 It's not even like people don't click on lower my bills dot com because they think it's a well-designed ad.
 It's just their eyeballs.
 I don't think they were right. I bought that because my eyeballs saw it.
 It's like an instinct. It's almost an animal reaction.
 This weird synth that you're like, I want to read it with my eye and my eyeballs.
 He's right. But he's right. It's an animal reaction to it.
 I think that's what you're saying.
 Unless I'm wrong. But but it is like a visceral reaction.
 So what I'm saying is like the droid razor may appeal to people on some visceral level that is very profitable for Verizon.
 Whereas a great well-designed phone running the latest version.
 There's one extreme counter example to this, which is Apple.
 That's an anomaly. That's like that's like that's like that's an X-Man.
 Apple's an X-Man?
 Yeah. What do you mean?
 It's a it's a it's a genetic anomaly.
 You know, most people are just regular people, but some guys can shoot lasers out of their eyes.
 That's Apple. Apple is Cyclops.
 They're the only people who can sell good design.
 And everybody else is like just everybody else.
 I don't think Apple is the only company that can sell good design.
 No, no, I don't. I don't. But they're one of well, there's some there's a bunch of X-Men, right?
 Professor X?
 That's what I was wondering.
 Yeah, right. You know, Beast. There's all kinds of X-Men.
 But you're saying...
 But there's way less X-Men than everybody else.
 So you're saying companies that profit off of like really high end design are mutants.
 I mean, are we completely authorizing?
 Who's Professor X?
 Well, OK, let's just get you want to get down into this?
 Yeah, I think Android is a good candidate for Wolverine.
 I think Android is a good candidate for...
 Yeah, you might be right.
 Wait, how is Android?
 Well, no, I get it. They're reckless.
 Wait, wait, wait. Time out. Hold on.
 Android is a thing that people make the most tacky.
 Google. Google.
 Google is Wolverine.
 Google as a whole because they're kind of like unpredictable and wild.
 Who's the girl who could look like a bunch of different people?
 That's... What's her name? Mystique?
 I think.
 Who's Mystique?
 That's like HGC.
 That's the nation of China.
 Apple is Professor X.
 Mystique is...
 Oh, this makes perfect sense.
 Mystique is Samsov pretending to be Apple.
 Or no. No, no, no, no.
 I think Apple is Magneto.
 Apple's Magneto.
 How are they evil?
 Oh, because they're trying to make everybody into them.
 No, they believe there's a...
 Draw a line in the sand.
 Put your foot in the sand.
 The first X-Men movie looks like Magneto in an Apple store.
 Apple's Magneto and...
 He's in prison.
 He's in a plastic prison.
 Yeah.
 And I'm trying to think of where Microsoft fits into this thing.
 I was going to say their Professor X, but I don't think so.
 Is there like a clumsy...
 No, Professor X is like the EFF or something.
 They're not even in this.
 That does not make any sense.
 It's not even...
 Because they're like doing something else.
 Professor X is doing something else?
 He's not like...
 He's not Magneto.
 Let's put it that way.
 Right.
 Yeah, I see what you're saying.
 Who would that be?
 In terms of technology, companies...
 Just the way his attitude is, it's not...
 This is so...
 This conversation is so out there.
 It doesn't make any sense at all.
 I think it makes a little sense.
 I'd like to continue it.
 I don't know if we could do...
 The fact that we started with Apple and X-Men because they sell good design is, first of all, problematic.
 Our Ustream has some pretty good ideas here.
 Professor X is the FCC.
 That doesn't make any sense.
 That doesn't make any sense at all.
 Microsoft is Nightcrawler.
 I can...
 No.
 No.
 Is there like a clumsy mutant that has a lot of good ideas but can't make them happen?
 He's like, I'm going to turn into a plane.
 And he falls down.
 No, not really.
 No, Beast isn't clumsy.
 He's like...
 He's super smart, though.
 He does...
 Well, let's see.
 He's not like...
 I don't think this is going to work.
 He looks like a big animal, but really he's just wants to talk about smart stuff.
 He's super smart.
 Like Balmer.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 No, it's the one Jubilee.
 It's not the...
 Rogue.
 Everything it touches, it like dies.
 It sucks the power out of it.
 She sucks like...
 But then they die.
 Not necessarily.
 But that's classic like old 90s Microsoft.
 I don't think that works.
 Maybe.
 I mean...
 That's like RIM.
 It's more malicious, though, don't you think?
 No, no, no.
 She has really great intention.
 She just wants to touch you, man.
 I don't think so.
 She just wants to give you a hug.
 All right.
 We got to move on.
 Thanks for all your power, Wade.
 We got to...
 We got to...
 Can we pull out of this nosedive?
 Can we edit that part out?
 Can we get the plane back into...
 We can.
 Yeah.
 An altitude that's safe?
 Speaking of RIM.
 Nice.
 What?
 Who would RIM be?
 Hold on.
 Who would RIM be?
 RIM is like...
 Can I just say RIM is like...
 They're not like an X-Men that I can think of off the top of my head, but they are like
 the Dungeons and Dragons chaotic neutral.
 Do you know chaotic neutral is the unplayable alignment, right?
 Because it's...
 Well, it's like no allegiance to anybody and you'll just do anything at the drop of a hat.
 It's like you can't play it truly because nobody can really play like that unless they're
 totally off the rocker.
 And if that's the case, why are they playing Dungeons and Dragons anyhow?
 But RIM is like the chaotic neutral of the smartphone world.
 Anyhow.
 That's good.
 Let's keep going.
 I know what happened.
 You want to talk about Google Music?
 No.
 I mean, we could talk about Google Music, but...
 That's the last Google thing.
 All right.
 We can talk about it.
 And then we can get back to RIM.
 But we got a BlackBerry thing coming.
 I just want everybody to know.
 All right.
 Google Music happened.
 I will say that Paul was on the edge of his seat because the invite had T-Mobile on it.
 He was on the edge of his seat for the entire event waiting for them to announce the T-Mobile
 Galaxy Nexus.
 That was so painful.
 And then the T-Mobile guy got on stage and he's like, we're so pleased to announce...
 Oh, no, no, no.
 And Paul like steeled up.
 People kept on like talking up T-Mobile was our first partner.
 And like T-Mobile's got some of the best data out there.
 Closed relationship.
 Yeah, we got a great relationship with T-Mobile.
 Carrier's the ones who are making this all happen.
 Oh, my gosh.
 And then the T-Mobile guys.
 They really happened to be here.
 It really felt like it was just right on the edge.
 What was even the point?
 They got some exclusive albums or something?
 No, no.
 They got nothing.
 They were like, you can buy music on your...
 Carrier billing.
 Oh, yeah.
 Carrier billing.
 And they were like, we're so excited to be here.
 We have a great announcement.
 Yeah.
 You guys are...
 Your minds are gonna be blown.
 You'll be able to buy a song on your bill.
 You still have to pay for it the same way with money, but it'll be delayed.
 In my dream world, here's what happened.
 T-Mobile was totally gonna get the Nexus and they were gonna announce Verizon the same
 day.
 But then Verizon's like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
 We're playing Tiny Tower.
 We can't get the phone ready in time.
 And so...
 I don't think anybody at Verizon is playing any games.
 So they made T-Mobile hold back.
 Yeah.
 I think...
 The only game Verizon is playing is Monopoly.
 I'm done.
 That's it.
 Podcast is over.
 Goodbye.
 That's definitely the coolest thing I've ever said on a podcast.
 I mean, look, Occupy, man.
 Get out there.
 Okay.
 Anyhow, yeah, Google Music.
 I'm excited about it.
 Here's the deal.
 No, no, listen.
 Look and listen.
 Look and listen.
 I'm listening.
 Why am I yelling?
 Google Music is...
 It completes the circle.
 The Android circle?
 The Google Plus circle of content.
 That is definitely the best feature.
 No, it's...
 It is a good feature.
 No, no, no, but I meant in a more esoteric kind of way, it completes the circle of content
 from Google, right?
 Right.
 They now have a full...
 Well they have a full array of stores.
 They don't have a full range of content, right?
 They have some music in the store.
 I mean, they're missing Warner Brothers.
 I mean, they're pretty good.
 I downloaded some calm trues, no problem.
 That was surprising.
 You gotta start somewhere.
 And they have all the stores now.
 But I love what they're doing with Google Plus, which is...
 Let me tell you something.
 Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
 Every time you buy an album, all of your friends on Google Plus can listen to all of those
 songs once.
 I mean, that's...It's like the return of Lala.
 You just have to know people who buy music from Google, which is a problem.
 Well, now people will start following people who buy music.
 I just think that this was something they didn't have.
 There was no...
 Amazon has it, right?
 Apple has it.
 Microsoft has it.
 Yeah.
 You're gonna have it.
 I've got it.
 I'm sorry about music purchases.
 No, but they didn't have it, right?
 I mean, Google has transitioned from search to content provider, and music is kind of
 one of those big ones, right?
 I mean, it would have been cool if they just bought RDO maybe or...
 Yeah, that's the biggest...
 I think we've been talking...
 That's the future.
 I think these models...
 But their model is the future.
 No, it's not.
 There's no subscription there.
 You just have to buy songs and throw them in the cloud.
 Well, not now.
 Not now.
 But there could be a subscription.
 Well, that's where you got it.
 There could be anything.
 They could do anything, but they didn't do it.
 You know, that's a good point, Josh.
 There could be a subscription.
 There could.
 It's like, well, Apple could have a subscription, too.
 I'm just saying...
 That's right, they could.
 And you know, this whole, like, you get the one free play in your Google+.
 Yeah.
 Like, that's great.
 You know what would be better?
 If Google+, was actually a subscription service.
 Maybe it's possible that the subscription services aren't that profitable.
 Is that possible?
 I mean, Spotify seems to be doing all right.
 Are they?
 Yeah.
 Really?
 I mean, they're a startup.
 I mean, they've been in business for like three, two years or something.
 Right.
 Let's see them in ten years.
 Is it a sustainable model?
 I don't know.
 All right.
 You know, the only model there's to look at is like, Zoom.
 Rhapsody?
 Rhapsody.
 Rhapsody's been around forever.
 How are they doing?
 They continue to be around.
 Well, what's going on?
 They had a tiny...
 Probably because they're offset by sales on iTunes.
 Rhapsody?
 Yeah, do you understand?
 How are they offset?
 Well, labels sell music on iTunes.
 So it's probably a rounding error to give the music to Rhapsody for subscribers.
 Yeah, but Rhapsody has a business to run.
 No, no.
 Do you understand what I'm saying?
 I'm saying like without the model of buying the music, you can't have the model of subscribing
 to the music.
 And this is really true.
 Because at what point...
 No, because if you make it a $20 a month, let's say $20 a month for every person who
 buys music, I mean, are you saying on average if everybody who buys music, like they're
 not gonna...
 Like you can just average it out, the $20 a month will make that all profitable.
 So there's a chart somewhere, I forget where I saw it, but that kind of breaks down how
 much an artist gets and how much a label gets and how much of a cut the company takes for
 each music purchase or listen.
 And there's obviously...
 If an artist sells something directly and gets the whole 99 cents, that's great.
 iTunes, I think the artist gets something like 20 cents.
 But on a subscription service, you get like 0.0000 something of a cent every play.
 Yeah, because you pay per stream.
 And no, but the problem with that, it's like...
 So they break down how many song sales you need to be profitable as an artist to make
 like a thousand bucks a month.
 And you need like 500,000 song plays to make a thousand bucks a month.
 And like Lil Wayne gets like 500,000.
 I looked on...
 You mean Lil Wayne, right?
 Little Wayne.
 Little Wayne.
 Yeah.
 Little Wayne.
 Little Wayne.
 Most artists are getting like 50,000 total plays if they're lucky.
 They're not making enough money off of the subscription services to be totally viable.
 And people would argue that, well, the new profitable model is just concerts and stuff.
 But right now, if you wanna sell your music online, you still need to actually sell your
 music to be profitable.
 Can I...
 I just wanna pause you there for a second because I just happened to glance at you streaming.
 I don't mean to get back to this, but somebody said that they asked me a question today during
 the live Q&A of the Galaxy Nexus and I refused to answer them.
 So I wanna know what the...
 I wanna know what the question was.
 I may still refuse to answer you here.
 So I'm sorry, I don't mean to get off track because this is a very interesting conversation,
 but I wanna address this right now.
 Okay, here we go.
 Who was the person?
 Holyoaked.
 Oh, yeah.
 The question was all caps.
 I think Holyoaked is an armor type in Skyrim.
 Wow, Holyoaked.
 Really?
 It's a spell you can cast.
 You get like...
 You're on the stage, buddy.
 It's like plus 40.
 Everybody's...
 That's your question?
 You refuse to answer that question?
 It's really controversial.
 As far as I know, you can't sort folders alphabetically.
 That was it?
 I don't think there's a setting to auto sort, but you could use your brain to sort them
 alphabetically.
 How did anybody refuse to answer your question?
 I don't think I refuse.
 You don't know, but you guys don't know, but there were...
 When I was doing the live Q&A by myself, thanks for nothing, Paul and Eli, for helping to
 sort questions, there were like five, literally 5,000 people watching the live Q&A and asking
 questions.
 It was kind of overwhelming.
 So I didn't refuse to answer you.
 I just...
 There were so many questions, I could not keep up with them.
 Just thought I'd let you know that.
 You're fired, Holyoak.
 You're done.
 Yeah, Holyoak, I thought you were cool and you wasted everybody's time.
 So to get back to this, Spotify was profitable last year, by the way.
 Spotify is profitable, sure.
 How?
 I mean, from my perspective, look, they have a better service for me.
 No, I love it as a consumer.
 I'm just saying, ultimately...
 Also like, was it Coldplay decided not to put its album on the streaming services just
 recently?
 I think there's gonna slowly be more of a back...
 As the streaming services...
 But Coldplay is available on Google Music.
 Right, no.
 So as long as the streaming services were just a rounding error, it wasn't a big deal.
 But as they grow in popularity, I think more and more artists are going to get off of the
 streaming services because they don't make money on them.
 But everything is moving...
 Right, that's exactly...
 Everything is moving towards like, can I just get it for free?
 Right.
 And I'm just saying, I don't believe things should be...
 As long as we agree that we're gonna have a capitalist economy where people make money
 off of doing the things they do...
 And at any moment, Bloomberg could just say, no more.
 Right, that may happen.
 But until that happens...
 Wait, is that right?
 Is that what you're saying?
 Yeah, martial law in New York City.
 Martial law, right.
 And then no...
 We declare sovereignty.
 We declare extreme liberalism all over the place, even though Bloomberg, really kind
 of Republican.
 But let me just get back on my point, okay?
 Okay.
 I'm hurting inside.
 But as long as we have...
 About that?
 Yeah.
 Okay.
 As long as we have agreed that we have...
 We're in a capitalist economy where I'm going to produce something or do something or whatever
 and you're gonna pay me for it and whatever, there's gonna be this 1% 99, you know how
 it goes.
 I've lost my train of thought completely.
 One percent controls all of the music streams.
 But there has to be...
 Yeah, there's a really simple solution to this.
 That we can't give everything away.
 This is not Star Trek.
 Right.
 But Spotify isn't giving it away, right?
 They sell ads.
 They're selling subscriptions.
 And they sell subscriptions.
 They raise the price of subscriptions to meet their revenue goals.
 But at some point when you raise...
 The people who make the music.
 No, but at some point when you raise the price of subscriptions, people who want it for
 free go, I'm not gonna pay for that.
 Oh, you raise it to $35 a month?
 I don't think so.
 I'm gonna start pirating music again.
 Because you can do that.
 But you have to compete with that.
 I mean, they can't not compete with that.
 You can't compete with stealing.
 I mean, Apple's entire let's have a music store was all about that.
 Yeah, it's pretty good.
 I mean, they're doing a good job.
 And Spotify...
 But now...
 But stealing still exists.
 Stealing still exists, but also...
 Stealing always exists.
 No, no, but also...
 Yeah, but not this way.
 Stealing exists.
 Like I had to run up to a shop and steal a loaf of bread.
 That's a physically difficult thing to do.
 This is like I need to open a program and click something and I have it.
 This is the low level...
 This is what you're saying is like what Hollywood never figured out.
 What the music industry just recently figured out.
 I'm saying give people something to buy and they'll buy it.
 But there's always going to be the same, but they want it to be cheaper.
 And that's why they buy the free Android phone.
 But you know what people love?
 They love the feeling that it's free.
 That's why they love Netflix, right?
 You pay Netflix, it feels free.
 It's like the argument that free food tastes better.
 Right.
 And you pay Spotify, but it feels a little free.
 I don't think that's it.
 No, I really do think so.
 No, I think it feels like...
 It's like all you can eat.
 No, no, I think it's...
 Well, that's the thing is that it's the all you can eat feeling.
 It's not that it feels...
 It's not that it's like it's free.
 It feels like I'm paying a reasonable amount of money and getting a lot of value.
 Right?
 Like when I...
 I pay for RDO.
 Right.
 I pay for them both.
 And I think that I'm paying a reasonable...
 Like Hulu Plus at some point, it's kind of stopped me feeling this way.
 But at some point it was like $8 a month and I feel like I'm getting a reasonable amount
 of value.
 I'm only going to watch ultimately like four shows or something.
 But I feel like I'm getting value, big value, Netflix, right?
 $8, $9 a month or whatever for one disc, streaming or just streaming.
 That is a better proposition to almost everybody that has come across it than keep buying songs
 and not answering to music.
 But is everybody...
 But if everybody is paying the $9, is it still profitable?
 I think if everybody pays the $9, the music industry will make a ton more money.
 Is there any data to back that up?
 You can't...
 You have to average out.
 How much money do you spend on music before RDO?
 I was really erratic.
 Some months I would spend $40, some months I would spend zero.
 I mean I'm a bad person to ask because I'm not like a normal music listener.
 I won't consume...
 I'm not going to download the new Pink album.
 So my fiance, Becky, she buys three songs a month, right?
 She's on RDO.
 She's spending more money on music total.
 Now it's up to the industry and the services to decide how they're going to allocate that
 money and to decide if $9 a month is an appropriate amount of money.
 But they're getting it at a regular interval from her where they were not getting that
 money at a regular interval before.
 You can't figure out how to make money doing that.
 You're a bad business person.
 Well, but I do think there is the ever increasing desire for freeness.
 Like, musical artists are bad business people.
 Right, they are.
 I just think...
 No, but let's just be clear.
 The goal is...
 Can I just say something?
 The music industry is one of the worst industries because I've been in it and I don't think
 it's a good industry.
 It is an industry of people who are...
 Their desire is to backstab as many people as they can to get more money.
 And I have this feeling, I don't have all the facts to back it up, but I'm starting
 to get the impression that the streaming services are 100% profit maker for the labels, but
 I don't think that really trickles down at all right now.
 To the artists, you mean?
 Yeah.
 Well, I mean, the labels have deals with artists.
 I think it's considered under a promotional license.
 Like, we're putting this out there to promote you.
 If that's real, then that model is completely broken.
 If that...
 And I don't know that that's...
 I mean, if that's...
 Well, the margins are so low for the artists that you could never be profitable with it.
 I mean, if that's the case, if it really is like, hey, we think of this as a promotional
 tool because they don't understand the power of it...
 There's no way that the labels are blind to what Spotify is gonna do with music.
 Really?
 You mean like they weren't blind to what Napster was gonna do to music?
 So that's the thing.
 I think there's a new generation of executives at the labels, because the old guys got hosed,
 right?
 And I think everybody in charge knew that those companies were failing because the old
 guys couldn't see what the internet was doing to them.
 I mean, the people who run the labels, the business side of labels, they're us now.
 I mean, they're like our age and a little bit older.
 Like, they use Napster.
 They're using the services.
 I mean...
 I'm sure...
 No, I'm sure the labels have figured out a way to make money off of this.
 I'm just not sure it's gonna be tenable for artists.
 I'm concerned.
 Somebody just said this is a...
 Well, this is a really great segue into a piece of...
 I just wanna say, somebody said this is the weirdest podcast ever.
 Do you agree with it?
 We're out there, yeah.
 Are we?
 We're doing some weird stuff.
 We are?
 Yeah.
 I just think we're talking about stuff that's relevant to my interest.
 Look, the FCC needs to regulate music sales in America.
 I think we need a...
 The FCC is Wolverine.
 The FCC is Professor X, I thought.
 Anyhow, but I just think we're just talking about big ideas.
 This is jamming.
 Look, this actually relates to Google Music...
 I'm the only person drinking on this podcast too, which is great.
 Actually, I asked for a drink and...
 Nobody's there to help you.
 Where's the stuff?
 Patrick's like, no, I'm doing something.
 Can I get some brownie?
 Modding.
 I'm over there.
 I got it.
 Thank you.
 You can deliver a beer.
 Just...
 Underage.
 We should keep it moving.
 Can I talk about this piece of Google Music?
 Keep going.
 So they...
 Keep going.
 Google did one thing that is very different from what the other services are doing.
 They're letting artists sign up directly with Google and promote their songs, get a cut.
 It's like $25 to set up your page.
 It's like Bandcamp.
 But it's not because Bandcamp is like a quasi-label.
 Tuning tour.
 This is Google being directly the distributor of the music.
 What's happening?
 Everybody left to get drinks.
 I forgot to tell them.
 Whatever.
 It doesn't matter.
 It's fine.
 I think that's interesting.
 I mean, this is like Google basically doing the Android market model for their music store,
 right?
 Right.
 Where you can sign up and do whatever you want.
 Which makes a lot of sense.
 You're killing me right now.
 What?
 Go ahead.
 Go ahead.
 Yeah.
 Let's just wait it out.
 Keep going.
 It's just interesting that it's Google saying to indie artists.
 I mean, they ran this hilarious video during the event, which was a bunch of pretty bands,
 like band guys with feathered out hair being like, I live in my van and I have to wash
 dishes for the love of the music.
 Oh, that guy.
 He works in a soup kitchen.
 One of the guys that works in a soup kitchen.
 Yeah, I work in a soup kitchen.
 That's great.
 Right.
 That's great.
 Sometimes I have to steal soup from the other poor people.
 Right.
 Sometimes I'm not just working there.
 Yeah, it's like, wow, your bands are, you are really bad business people.
 No, like Monogold.
 Yeah.
 And Shinobi Ninja.
 You know, the problem is that's a band, right?
 That's one of those bands.
 Yeah, I've heard of Monogold because they're from Williamsburg.
 They are.
 They're from Brooklyn, yeah.
 At least I've seen their posters up.
 Monogold feels like a name of a band that was created in a laboratory.
 Yeah.
 Do you sound like the name of a band?
 No, that's Shinobi Ninja.
 An indie band.
 Shinobi Ninja.
 I mean, it just sounds like Linkin Park's management wanted to get some like new projects
 together.
 Yeah.
 Like, I don't know, what do you think?
 And like somebody from Linkin Park was like, what about Shinobi Ninja?
 Because they were high in playing Shinobi.
 Yeah.
 Next thing you know, like that's an actual band.
 I just lost the stream.
 No, it's back.
 Okay, go ahead.
 I mean, it's just, you know, Google's like, they're trying one thing that's different.
 I remember when the iTunes store was like at the peak of its popularity, the question
 was always, is Apple going to start its own label and remove the labels and distributors
 from the equation?
 Because they're the most popular store and they never did it.
 I think probably to their benefit.
 They also like swore up and down to Apple records that they would never do anything
 to do with music.
 It's happening.
 Occupy!
 Is it?
 Is it?
 Blueberg is charging down Fifth Avenue.
 I'm just glad that we can wait out the end of everything with our podcast listeners right
 now.
 My phone's ringing.
 Oh my God.
 My least favorite ring of all time.
 Without question.
 Occupy!
 Without question.
 I don't need to answer it.
 You can just put it on silent, by the way.
 You guys don't know.
 You guys don't know what's happening here.
 You answered it.
 That was my mother and you answered it, by the way.
 Great.
 By the way, I met Neely's mother at the first.
 My parents love Josh.
 At the first On The Verge.
 It's a very, very strange situation.
 And I had a great time with... This is a gift for you here.
 I had a great time hanging out with Neely's parents, his aunt and uncle.
 Patrick, can you do me a favor?
 Can you refresh this?
 This whole Trent... Trent decided this out.
 Just all of this needs to go.
 Just for the people who are watching now, though, you can never unsee it, can you?
 That's a vodka soda.
 Do you know how to make a vodka soda?
 Can you... Thank you.
 These sirens have not stopped.
 You know what?
 You know what?
 I'm fine with this.
 Yeah.
 I'm fine with where we're at right now.
 We're having a good time.
 As a nation, we're hanging.
 The listeners are having a good time.
 We don't have to apologize to anybody.
 No.
 No.
 This is America.
 Freedom of expression rules here.
 So far.
 Unless you're occupying Wall Street, which case, you're going to jail.
 Yeah.
 And there's going to be martial law in the entire city.
 But here in our ivory tower on Fifth Avenue...
 That's right.
 They can't get in here.
 The elevator's locked.
 Our goblets are fine.
 There's no way they'll get out here.
 Anyhow, what were we talking about?
 Google Music started playing.
 Google Music, yeah.
 Shinobi Ninja.
 Just doing it.
 Doing it.
 Come on.
 Don't talk about Shinobi Ninja like that, okay?
 Do you want to move on?
 Let's talk about this BlackBerry.
 By the way, I just want to say that Paul and I were like, before the podcast, we were
 like, we got to just keep it to an hour.
 It was definitely going to be an hour podcast.
 I was up all night.
 We were here late.
 We just got to keep it to an hour.
 And now here we are.
 Yeah.
 This is a cool move.
 I don't know what you're doing, man.
 It's like you're literally holding onto it for support and comfort.
 I am.
 This is the galaxy nexus.
 Go ahead.
 BlackBerry.
 Oh, yeah.
 This is a crazy story, actually.
 We had a crazy week this week.
 So we spoke to a source who had an image, which was at first was completely bonkers.
 I was like...
 We spent Monday morning magnifying glass.
 I was full on level effects.
 It was out of control.
 It looks like a movie prop.
 It looks like a phone.
 And the table it's on looks super weird.
 It looks like the phone that Tom Cruise uses in Minority Report.
 And there's a 3D interface and he dials from really far away from the phone.
 But it's still a rotary dialer because old stuff is cool, like an analog clock.
 But anyhow...
 So we talked to a source of ours.
 They had some information.
 And it seemed kind of crazy.
 And we continued the conversation.
 There were pieces of it that began to align.
 And I said, you know what?
 I think this is the real deal.
 Even though it seems totally insane.
 We were seriously doing crazy Photoshop stuff.
 We were doing a lot of investigation.
 And we ran this photo of...
 And with the specs because we'd heard a bunch of other stuff about it.
 We ran this photo of this device called the...
 The London.
 The London.
 The Blackberry London.
 I mean, it's obviously a code name.
 But unless they want to get real fancy...
 And what we heard is earlier it was the Colt, right?
 That was the code name of the first BBX phone.
 And we've heard that it's since...
 I think BGR corroborated our report.
 So we had some...
 I think we had some pretty solid information.
 But then Boyd Genius, who is a...
 He's pretty into Blackberry devices.
 I don't know if you know that or not.
 But I think that he talked to some people and they were like, yeah, this thing is real.
 Right.
 And they canceled the Colt, which is apparently gonna be just a scaled down playbook.
 Right?
 And that seems like a bad idea.
 I just feel like...
 Yeah, I just don't know.
 Go ahead.
 There's an interesting spin to this story.
 Pocket Lint recently talked with Todd Wood, who is the senior vice president of industrial
 design at RIM.
 And he was saying, Blackberry was just functional before, but we realize people want beautiful
 things.
 So we're working on that.
 And that the new Blackberries are gonna be charming, whimsical, and fun.
 And then he said, the design team headed to different locations around the world to draw
 inspiration for the phone design.
 The 9900 was inspired by the Bellagio in Italy.
 What?
 That doesn't make any sense.
 The team went to Sweden for their latest workshop.
 I mean, London, this phone was inspired by London.
 That makes sense.
 That makes sense.
 It makes sense, but the 9900 looks like every other Blackberry.
 I just blew your mind.
 Just confess.
 I mean, it's good.
 I hear what you're saying and I like it, but...
 Thank you.
 Have fun.
 Did you go crazy on the content here?
 I like having an intern.
 It's good.
 Patrick, good work.
 Thank you, sir.
 Yeah.
 Have you ever made one of these before?
 Didn't William make it?
 Who made this?
 Me.
 You did?
 Yeah.
 A lot of bug in there.
 I know.
 It's cool.
 It's no problem.
 It's smooth.
 So the other thing is that this looks like this crazy Porsche phone.
 Yeah.
 Which is super weird.
 That's the weird thing.
 That was one of our big points of doubt was why would they design a phone that looks like
 a slate version of the Porsche phone?
 But at this point, maybe it's just like, safety's off.
 Right?
 Fire at will.
 Fire at will.
 Lock and load.
 Rock and roll.
 I mean, at RIM, who knows?
 At this point, Lazaridis is like in an opium den somewhere.
 I mean, that's what I'm at.
 Chaotic neutral.
 Yeah, chaotic neutral.
 RIM is chaotic.
 Thank you for bringing it.
 It's so good.
 You brought it right back around.
 RIM is chaotic neutral right now.
 Maybe they're just going...
 Maybe the next one will look like some kind of weird sword.
 Plus one perseverance.
 Yeah, exactly.
 Whatever stats.
 It could be a club.
 It could be a magic spell.
 Their next phone might look like a magic spell.
 There's no telling.
 There's no telling.
 Can I steal your power?
 You have to like LARP to make calls.
 Yeah.
 What do you mean?
 Come on.
 Do an air raid.
 It destroys my battery.
 Get an air because they last forever.
 Like the one that you need to plug in right now?
 Well, I mean, I bet I haven't had it plugged in for ages.
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 I don't know.
 Like I barely know it for ages.
 We should talk about specs.
 Mattering.
 We could talk about that.
 You had quite an argument.
 No, no.
 I didn't have an argument.
 There's been a lot of talk this week about how specs don't matter, and I was thinking
 like...
 Remember how nobody wanted to buy a MacBook Air before the specs were better?
 Yeah.
 You know, specs do matter.
 The MacBook Air got better.
 That's demonstrable through specs.
 The Core i7 is a better processor.
 You into that?
 William's into that.
 No, but it's true.
 stuff is valuable it has its place though you have to know its place but
 specs speak to experience people were like the experience the only thing that
 matters is like well how do you get to experience right I was I was very fired
 up about this because I think I agree I think it's a pedantic viewpoint that
 somehow we can disregard the you want to just get right into what happened the
 materials that make something and assume that just because you know it's like
 it's like hey look at this beautiful house I built and it's it's Jersey a
 sad if you hug John Gruber you would both just explain I like John I love John
 Gruber things have really intelligent I don't think he's also I don't think he
 initiated I wasn't actually like responding to him I don't think he
 initiated this I think he was just kind of quoting other people were talking
 about it but but not counting not thinking about specter thinking that
 they're important is like thinking that the Western towns that you see in old
 West movies are not just the fronts of buildings held up by two-by-fours I mean
 that's basically it you know his experience what I'm trying to experience
 it's the experience of an old West town but you can't go into the saloon because
 it doesn't exist right you need to be able to go into the saloon and get a
 drink and that excuse me and that is a core i7 processor is getting a drink at
 the saloon it's at least the door functions I mean right who's the sheriff
 Xavier
 you see space and time everybody boom no you know and I think particularly that
 argument I agree it was a multi-facet argument but they're like this is that
 mattered for Windows phones because everything was the Windows computers
 because everything was the same so it's like have you seen Android no how do you
 measure that you can definitely measure the performance of Android devices no
 but that's exactly right and you can definitely look there's a little
 resolution like I think they were somehow using the Kindle as an example
 of like look specs don't matter but guess what the Kindles performance blows
 it's not that good well isn't it it's a 1.2 gigahertz dual core processor right
 yeah but but I'm saying but it's low but it's lower spec than a lot of other
 stuff as is the nook tablet right which is why they're selling them for $250
 right no I mean $200 but it's like it's bad for like a variety of reasons and
 software I think is one of them right Android has traditionally been right
 kind of laggy and right that way and you know what's really helpful to software
 is when you have like a really great hardware chassis to throw it on to I
 mean I'm just saying like it's all it's you know it things to say like whenever
 there's a bold pronouncement about a thing that exists you know like the a
 car gasoline powered car is dead like that's the that's the way I think of it
 like is it dead or is it changing is it evolving I mean ultimately gasoline
 powered cars are gonna be dead at some point specs don't matter man well I'm
 just you know actually cars is a good example of respects you know do matter
 right let's see what you're saying it's the material raw potential of something
 is like it definitely affects the overall experience well no yeah but more
 than that I'm gonna it speaks to I got real knowledge here potential okay
 serious knowledge yeah drops of knowledge it's like you have an engine
 no and the engine has a certain number of horses horsepower horsepower yeah and
 the car horsepower is it can use a certain weight and so depending on how
 it's like a ratio if you have a really like car you can get away with a smaller
 engine speed yeah but if you've got a really heavy car to get the same amount
 of acceleration I see so the weight of the car is a software yeah yeah yeah
 I'm with you okay I see what I don't you know I just it's a tan I'm on a tangent
 here but I think we have it since we stand gentle yeah but I think that um I
 just think you know you can't the specs are significant they speak to experience
 and potential to understand the potential something you have to
 understand the raw materials is built from and I think that some of those some
 are face value understandable and some are hidden that software in a lot of
 ways is hidden potential but here's a perfect example the hardware
 acceleration the software wasn't taking advantage of it right away but you turn
 on development mode and now Twitter's faster that's right because the hardware
 was there that's because it had the possibility of hardware acceleration
 which you would want to know as a developer and as a user if that was
 gonna be possible but it's not just that it's not just the possibility some
 things are just better than others it's not a it's not up for debate more RAM is
 better than less RAM apples better than Google Apple Apple rules everybody else
 drools I mean that's just a fact all right let's get back onto our list
 yes I'm a thermostat I like by the way can I just say I know I know these I
 know these people are in the minority but there are people who are like come
 on six hour verge cat really what would we be like in our sixth hour awesome
 that's what would be like awesome yes is coming man it's happened before that's
 true but this year we got those music festivals where people are being
 carried away on stretchers because of dehydration or like or like a snake
 handling you know like biblical like you know church you know there's like
 churches where you can handle snakes and drink strec-9 and stuff and get all
 messed up for six hours well I assume it goes on for quite a while I would
 imagine you know just go there that's like a whole day event yeah snake
 handling day maybe that's not a good analogy it's no snake date the local church it's
 like occupy Wall Street sirens back let's occupy thermostats can we let's
 talk about the nest uh about a nest nest you know I think the nest is a very
 interesting product I mean I rose the thermostat and the fact that it's a
 thermostat doesn't stand for anything does it now because it was like neuro
 yeah energy style to near all energy saving thermostat yeah what is the what
 is the the end we have to change the end you know lies energy saving thermostat
 energy saving thermostat is good so you just need a good end so what would it be
 natural natural no naughty you knew new energy saving thermostat that's what
 Ness stands for I think naughty is pretty good go on no sense uh you know
 it's one of these devices where it's kind of like we know we met with Tony
 twice Tony Fidel who created the iPod and actually that's pretty disputed
 little story whether it was him or John Rubenstein his Rubenstein found the
 hard drive like made it happen yeah Laura was like this is very debatable
 she was talking about your headlight or something well but he's the one who like
 built it like he like he was like I take this you know what what is the saying
 success has many fathers has just one dude is that what it is I don't see that
 exact saying anyhow go on anyway look it's kind of crazy that he has a team of
 people including a MacArthur genius grant like artificial intelligence
 researcher figuring out how to build a thermostat and like I want one so he's
 admonishing me for looking at the screen during this sorry you guys are just
 really interested in and wonderful to watch I I won't pay any more attention to
 you you know actually you can read it's a long feature you can read it the cool
 part was when Tony was just talking about his time at Apple which is like
 not in the piece but like you know his stories about working with Steve Jobs are
 like crazy I mean he did 18 generations he was the head of that team great and
 when he left Rubenstein took over that 18 generations of what the iPod and he
 did three he led three generations of the iPhone so like he has all these
 crazy stories and like his story about like when they first presented the iPod
 to Steve it's like you know there's that famous stories like you know let's make
 sure we have three and then we show them the one we like the best you know pick
 that his story is like pretty different he's like we made three mock-ups we like
 you know the one you know we should put it all together and he Steve said that
 one like that's the one I like and then Phil Schiller looked at me and goes well
 we have some you know he asked Steve what can I show it to him and he came
 back with a scroll wheel and said we want to control with the scroll wheel
 and that's like kind of insane to think about that meeting and he's like and we
 were trying to recruit people from across Apple and like I had problems
 recruiting guys from the server team who made the X serves yeah because they
 thought the extra was gonna be more successful than the iPod I'm surprised
 it wasn't I mean it was just cool to hang out with him he's like he's a kind
 of a crazy dude and he's like seriously trying to build a thermostat no I think
 it's great it's a wild product innovation starts at home does it that's
 I just made that up that doesn't make any sense but now it does thanks to the
 nest but you're the only person I know the thermostat I will so I actually have
 three thermostats my so that you know they all connect and talk to each other
 that's what I need so I have on each floor of my house I have a separate
 thermostat and that's not like an opulent by choice situation that's just
 is how the house came it's from 1890 something and I don't think they just
 they didn't have the tools to make it happen I would love to have something a
 little bit more intelligent let's hook these up in my house why aren't we
 doing this because they're actually out if you have three thermostats do they
 talk to each other to see which one is like doing the best job like no I
 imagine they try to like should really really amp it up downstairs but I don't
 need to worry I would think like as that you reheat the bottom floor okay can I
 just tell you the answer yeah so it knows your schedule so it has all these
 motion detectors so this thermostat has two motion detectors one's far range
 one's close range and the thermo all three of them talk and they construct a
 schedule of where you are in the house so it knows that like you wake up in the
 morning you're upstairs I was like over and over a lane of time yeah so after a
 week they'll program each other and so if you have a really erratic schedule
 this is actually what he said to me she's like you know this would totally
 not work for you right they would like blow up I don't know he's got it up but
 for he's going to bed at 4 I can't figure it out that's like pretty accurate the
 old woman yeah yeah so all three of them will talk and they would they would
 regulate the parts of your house that they believe you're gonna be in and
 you're erratic but yeah I think you probably mostly work like in your office
 or downstairs right hard to say over time though you'd build a model right
 anyway it like that's the idea is and then you could you could use that
 information when sky net becomes self-aware the term is the information
 of what room you're in to send a Terminator to kill you right great
 thanks a lot Tony Fidel the thermostats have reported that he's upstairs yeah
 exactly no way to go Fidel way to kill everybody on the planet with your stupid
 thermostat but you know it's interesting okay it's actually it is actually I
 played with it very bad but but it's a it's a it's a click wheel just to be
 clear it's real mad when you point out that he made another wheel well he did
 what is the obsession with a wheel like a wheel such a great like a rotary phone
 was yeah it's funny because he had nine you know he showed me the keyboard it's
 a little bit more now he's like this was the first design for the iPhone
 keyboard when we were just gonna extend the iPod and it was a wheel yeah he was
 like were you sure and you select a letter there were a lot of mock-ups of
 that in the run-up also I think the you know the the hilarious onion piece about
 the I wheel or whatever it's called yeah we were all your typing was with that
 like yeah we're like riding in the streets because they're so happy that
 they could spell everything out with a rotary dial I mean it makes sense for a
 thermostat because you're really you're adjusting it kind of yeah but I actually
 feel like this would make more sense that's like a slider yeah that makes a
 lot more sense to me yeah multi-touching you could like pinch to select a range
 all right Tony you're coming what about what about up and down since it's like
 it low that's colder hotter like a little bit of like a like an actual
 scrolling like an actual thermometer huh I gotta get you on the phone coast to a stop I like how
 someone's like something it should run web OS what is this every everywhere I
 go everything I do I this web OS people cropping up like do you think the end is
 do you think web OS is dead or like just like this would be great if it ran web OS
 as an example here listen I gotta tell you guys something and as I'm speaking
 as a person who really loved web OS and I don't know if it's gonna happen you
 know if you say something's dead it's just more alive than I'm not saying it's
 dead I didn't say it's dead I just don't know if it's gonna be the way we wanted
 it to be with web OS I think it's gonna be on a copier yeah at Kinko's that's
 three dollars a copy you know it's one week down for Meg Whitman by the way
 it's two weeks left she said three to four weeks are we talking about age this
 HP stuff we already talked about this you know I'm just saying Meg Whitman is
 my time this time's gonna by the way one eight one cool thing HP did this week
 they put out the new I'm looking at the screen again they put out the new Envy's
 and actually they have they look exactly like Mack with hey hey to quote Gruber
 they got the name right but you know they do have which is by the way one of
 his best burns I have to say Gruber has a you know he's sometimes great sometimes
 not but that that's good was one of his better burn but you know they have it's
 awesome we gotta get we gotta get uh we should get him on the podcast yeah
 you do it I can't stop looking at you guys can I can I just say what I had
 it's one thing they have their beats branded so it's silly but they have a
 huge volume dial on the side do you have a picture of that it's awesome is it oh
 is it a wheel yeah it's a wheel who won't the beats associate with who won't
 Jimmy Iovine who who won't he associate with yeah no one there I don't think
 there's anyone he won't does that everybody have a beats brand of their
 product yeah remember how HCC was like we're investing 300 million dollars in
 beats it's like you didn't have to they wouldn't partner with you anyhow it
 turns out they don't really care where's this thing this dial is that awesome
 that's pretty hot I mean where is this super I don't see anything that's really
 nice I mean it's cool I really would love some more analog controls I got
 nothing here on devices I'll say this about beats first off it's it's a monster
 it's a monster company no no no monster just makes the headphones beats has come
 it's just Jimmy and dr. Dre well where how does monster play into that make the
 headphones you mean they make the beats headphones yeah so they make all the
 beats products no but not like a laptop isn't beats it's not monster what is it
 it's just that's just branding yeah it's not a real thing sauce there's no secret
 sauce that's BS that's marketing they like have it's like don't if you're a
 Dolby don't be like they turn the treble down
 Dre that's down with the envy and it's like you know what I don't think it
 sounds good I'm serious you know what I'm talking about right Dolby is like not a
 thing it's just a noise reduction yeah Dolby noise reduction as we rolled off
 the high end and you can't hear the hiss and now we've so we've reduced the noise
 like this is this is beats is the same thing they're like it's like check out
 the extra base they literally like turned up the base is what's happening
 with beats beats is a scam just like monster is a scam that's a good thing
 they found each other no offense to dr. Dre and Jimmy I have been who I love
 deeply but it is full-on scam City USA cool volume dial though yes the volume
 dial is great that's kind of I'm sorry but what's crazy about the scam is that
 it's working it's working like it is working the only other headphones I see
 on the street are very all these people are wandering around with beat head
 pretending to listen to music because their batteries are dead because that
 thing eats triple-a beats customer Oh one look here's the deal the only way to
 really listen to music is to get a set of really high-end it might be a monitor
 might be double-a run a ton of tests on your listening space right to get the
 optimum listen in there to get his opinion get Dre in to judge whether or
 not it's beats worthy no but seriously you know here's the thing so so audio
 being like an audio snob is really funny right people think there's this mean
 people listen to the worst sounding what we're gonna whisper it man it's happening
 you know we're on we're on anyhow the point is the point is you know audio
 snobbery is really dead I mean this is a very select group people but beats has
 brought snobber audio snobbery to the masses except there is no really there's
 not a really monster it's like hey you gotta buy this $500 HDMI cable because
 you're seeing it won't be as pure they sold the image of audio snobbery right
 without the audio snob they got I have been in there and all of a sudden you're
 like man I gotta get this red the red cord headphones because here's the thing
 about true audio files is they are believe anything they are not listening
 to dr. Dre songs I'm sorry who they are listening to to in yeah who like real
 who's listening to any audio files real audio files they're not have the most
 just the worst taste no they're listening they're listening to to they've
 got no they're listening to prog rock nor Joe they're listening to classical
 music they're listening to highly complex styles of music right because
 they want to hear all the and a lot of India yeah and you know a lot of any is
 highly complex really new age yeah they listen to Yanni
 yeah definitely once had a guy Yanni's pretty good I admittedly try to sell me
 a $15,000 pair of speakers you get a file shop he sat me down he's like wait
 till you see this it's gonna blow you away and he just played a clip of action
 sequences from the fifth element remember it was like I don't remember
 super audio CDs we're having to them I had an sACD player I had an experience
 I had an experience with an sACD player which is we I was working on a record
 with something we went to master it and they had a sACD set up like with the
 full like 5.1 or whatever and it was that we listened to it back yeah the
 seat see change dude so so there's um HD tracks or high def track I don't know I
 was like investigating we are just cool because of online distribution you don't
 have to worry about like a specific format you can just buy flax that are
 yeah at a high bit rate and so I bought see change and actually see change is so
 well mastered it doesn't really know if changes vastly let's just talk about see
 change for a second but I got a I got a talking heads out anyway that's a
 back record yeah it's no but it's incredible it's produced by Nigel
 Godric who did a ton of Radiohead stuff see changes a such an immaculate
 recording it is like the high it is probably one of the finest audio
 recordings ever made it's beautiful it is really incredible if you listen to it
 especially if you listen to it on super audio CD in 5 1 it'll blow your mind you
 know what's funny is that I mean I had an sACD play it came like Sony put it
 and everything for a while people are I think we're just losing people now it's
 over it's all over it's all over we gave it back to tech I'm saying is all I
 thought of how much how much ram does it have
 18 gigabytes that's a lot of RAM all I wanted to say is that I found talking
 heads remain in light to be vastly superior at a higher bitrate and a higher
 sample rate you want to really that's yeah of course you know what's really
 interesting is listening to serious so I have serious in my car and I you know
 there's a the modern station there's like serious XM you which is their indie
 station and then if you switch it to like what's the one that's got all 80s
 like it's like synth pop and new wave stuff that music sounds so bad coming
 over serious and all the new music sounds pretty good yeah people are like
 tuning to horrible compressing oh yeah it caught a Kanye album sounds absolutely
 perfect 128 yeah no or or lower it probably should be a little bit lower
 like I never even beat venture deeper it's crazy though that our ears are
 changing like our perception of how audio sounds but like this all this
 stuff is recorded at like 192 192 kilohertz just crazy killer oh no it's
 recorded the you mean you're saying like original files and then it just gets
 48 well it used to be it used to be compressed to used to be that he used to
 be impressed a 16-bit 44 one right on CD front CD which was low right right
 you know but there was a time I mean that's still better than most amp
 degrees oh it's way better yeah it's that's that's basically a flack right
 but there was a time with flack house can you imagine there was a time when
 there was no digital element in it it was pure analog straight to the recorded
 version that you bought in the store it's like you're there with Elton John
 it's like Elton John it's like Elton John is sneaking up behind you and
 singing into your ear he just he just slips a bedazzled vest over you you're
 sitting there at the piano but he's playing over your shoulders because he
 has really long arms yeah and he's singing right into your ear that's what
 it was used to be like it now now it's like exactly now it's like now it's like
 a distorted robot yeah yeah he's infecting your computer yeah through
 your beats head for the body with the body of Elton John in the face of a
 monster and Android monster yeah I don't know we're talking about let's let's
 let's wrap this thing up what do you say all right well we can't have any more
 topics it's it's it's 843 let's just do this thing all right well it's not about
 the fire in the nook oh you reviewed the fire would love to yeah I would like to
 talk about the box box thing for two seconds and we should talk about on the
 verge then we should get out of here okay so I reviewed the fire yep it's the
 best tablet you can get for $200 you can get two fires in a touch for for the
 price of an iPad no it's it's fine it's okay well so what's really interesting
 is RAM is break it looks like the price is on the playbook is coming down to
 $199 at least there's who cares they can give the playbook away it's not worth
 purchasing right even look like a coming software update I mean why what's the
 point there's nobody supporting it and you'd rather right I mean Netflix it's
 got a hobo and all in all fairness let's talk about the playbook for a second
 there is only so much room in the world for a mobile operating system you can't
 there's not gonna be 20 of them we've talked about this mobile phone you've
 got Barnes & Noble and Amazon pretty much yeah they're both running and
 doing their own thing but they're basically running Android and if you
 want to make an app you just go I made an Android app and I and I am submitting
 it to you to put in your store will you do it yes or yes or no please check one
 of these boxes and I think we keep talking about our worried that they're
 gonna splinter Android farther but I think Barnes & Noble is they can't right
 I think they know that it's a terrible idea for them and I think Amazon is too
 smart to know to try and splinter Android that way well and so the other
 thing this is there's been some controversy this week is these these
 manufacturers are Barnes & Noble and Amazon only win if you buy stuff off of
 their services otherwise they couldn't really afford to build tablets they're
 offsetting just like just like the game you know just like subscription services
 are using the offset of actual sales to make their business profitable something
 so that makes sense nobody you are saying earlier is that they're they can
 be successful because they're still selling music no that's that's the
 record companies that's what I meant that's what I meant record companies
 it's been a long night yeah and you're too long like razors and blades and
 game 20 ways bar give away the razors you sell the blades at a premium that's
 right yeah you yeah right now you're like free yes free mock 3 razor but the
 blades cost but the blades are five times the cost of the free ball free is
 game consoles right you suddenly loses money in a ps3 or they did for a while
 right and now they sell the games in market so here's the reality of the
 situation if I gotta get modern warfare 3 bad yeah have you played it no it's
 supposed to be good right is it good it's supposed to be good I'm gonna ask I
 want to ask you streamer uncharted that's the one I want it's supposed to
 be amazing yeah I keep reading I'm trying to was incredible yeah I'm gonna
 have to play the third one there's so many games out now so much there's so
 many things time for this I want to do with my life that isn't constantly
 worried sorry go ahead Paul going I could talk about Skyrim because that's
 really good game to watching it or playing it playing it I don't believe
 you no I was killed here in the office yeah yeah because I like watching people
 play Starcraft right all right total nerd here's the reality of situation
 with these tablets nook is ship nook tablet is a 16 gigabyte tablet but Barnes
 and Noble only lets you play around with one gig first for non-broadcast that is
 bonkers to me yeah I mean it's it's it's got 16 gigs of on board right or no eight
 is it 16 or 816 16 of on board but they only let you use one gig of it for your
 stuff right they don't even have a music downloading service and so we're still
 I think we're still kind of figuring out the situation with the Kindle fire but
 Amazon isn't showing competing bookstores right now in there I think
 they're not some aren't they they do in the in their Amazon app store like their
 regular one on other Android devices but they're not showing up on the Kindle
 fire at least they weren't I feel like this is part of a flawed I feel like
 this is a symptom of a flawed logic that has yet to be fully exposed where
 everybody's trying to do everything all the time no you know and it's like that's
 not a tenable solution for this world right it's like as if you know we also
 try to I don't know start a carrier or run a you know make a make hardware so
 can we start a carrier I'd love to I would love to and I was like doing a
 handset but I just think it's like this idea that that Barnes and Noble right
 should also be in addition to being the bookstore should also be here's what I
 think is gonna happen this is we're gonna read a review yeah let's read this
 just shut up everybody I want to hear this fine just keep going here's what I
 think is gonna happen is this is gonna be exactly like the console model and
 what you're gonna end up having is you're gonna like you're gonna hey hey I
 know a guy who can unlock a Kindle for you it's like with the Xbox is where you
 can have your like cousin could like load Xbox media center and have all the
 cracked games on there I don't think I think this is gonna be pretty rampant
 I hacking real nice devices and it's good I did I did when we did on the
 verge I talked to T Rave he hacked his no color but he's T Rave I mean
 well that's the thing not regular T Rave man oh by the way I'll hack their
 tablet well you know that you say that but you say it but I told you that that
 that Laura's stepmother asked her about jailbreaking yeah it's true and I think
 it's gonna be become more pervasive like with the console hacking his main
 where you have a completely locked down device and these aren't completely
 locked down but you have a locked down device that's being sold at a subsidy
 and then people want to do more with it and they turn that to hacking and it's a
 huge you know Sony waged a very public battle over this with the ps3 and loss
 Xbox will so will destroy your life if you dare what will hack it Microsoft
 with the Xbox 360 Xbox live they will shut you down yeah if you hack that
 thing yeah but they're gonna be one there when how did they win and Sony
 failed so bad I think it's Xbox live yeah I mean Microsoft's had something to
 offer and I don't think there's any hacker who thinks I should be able to
 hack my Xbox and get Xbox live hmm that's right I think you're very
 mistaken about what the hopes and dreams of hackers are no I mean like they know
 that's not fair yeah they know it's not fair right it it you know there's like a
 sense of like fair play we're like okay you've hacked all right you got me this
 time I'll be back right where with Sony it was just like we're gonna sue you
 like the literally like agents will come to your house and arrest oh it's like
 the RIA suing people for downloading stuff on Napster yeah you know I used to
 represent those people and they were a conflict of interest for you to talk
 about it I used to represent the people got sued nothing is this a conflict of
 interest for you to talk about it it's a long time ago but they lost the well no
 so hmm well hold on there's no the RIA lost they lost like the in the court of
 like public opinion and they also lost but they want to answer it they know
 they want all of those cases that entire that was a business for the RIA those
 cases aren't like they're gonna get a bunch of music they're talking about a
 bunch of money back yeah but that whole that was a business they ran the RIA
 ran its litigation for downloading as a business I can hear you can hear the
 true I was so bone to pick attitude here this is not just this is not just a
 random guy can I just like I mean look I these were like my clients when I
 graduated from law school right and they were college kids and now they're in
 jail they were college kids and like I had clients who would get sued for
 downloading and they would have to quit school like take a second job to pay
 their music downloading what is that occupy man I've never heard that me I
 never heard that kind of sign or music is coming for you man I can't I have to
 get back to Brooklyn there's must see TV is on tonight right this is not going to
 fly no it's over man you know what I need a helicopter
 first copter what what is that it's Bloomberg you know they're blocking
 they're blocking helicopter airspace over the occupy Wall Street stuff is that
 going to impact my helicopter trip yeah that's what I'm saying no but seriously
 what is that sound am I crazy guys is that a weird siren sound you say it's a
 sub like a submarine we're being told that the police have a subwoofer woofer
 woofer woofer it's not a dog huge marmaduke style dog it's used to clear
 traffic okay anyhow that's apparently I'm being told I'm being excuse me I'm
 being told now that's a regular sound each siren and I have nothing to be
 worried about so I'm on edge I happen to be the one percent and you never know
 when these 99 let's read this Call of Duty review and be done let's not let's
 just call it today we've lost by the way I think we've lost like real-time like
 hundreds and hundreds of real-time listeners during this pot I don't know
 where this review is by the way we have one that's called modern warfare 3
 multiplayer review is that you my man in there no somebody somebody says topic
 about what race are you gonna play in Skyrim what are the options I chose the
 kitty cat that's a race you can be like an orc you can be a dark elf you can be
 a nice elf you can be a human it's chaotic neutral option can I play as
 Mike Lazaridis you could you could probably do a pretty good Mike Lazaridis
 this facial I understand you can like customize big time I just say this
 review it has a score they made a score module you people everybody should see
 this this is from I'd like to see it from from chow in our forums it's
 really well done where I'm line let me just read the bottom line where is it I
 didn't give you the link can you drop it into the chat room it's happening I'm
 not logged in well oh look at that what the hell man our our readers are insane
 that they're I mean in a good way no you were all removed buddy nice going wait
 you were all not removed so he's like who's laughing hysterically
 yelling fail at you small victory buddy I'm just gonna read the conclusion oh
 look at this look the main question from chow the main question I have about the
 Call of Duty series right now is this how long can they keep making Call of
 Duty games are unexciting have very few innovations that's rough that's a big
 I don't know I played the last the last Modern Warfare and it was like playing a
 movie yeah if you were so it was so thrilling let me tell you something let
 me just give you a little I want to give you a little window into my life mmm
 should play like let me just read the wrap up last line there's a first line
 is wrap up last line if you are a Call of Duty fan you'll pick this game up the
 reason you'll buy Modern Warfare 3 is not because it's better than the old one
 it's because all of your friends are playing it I don't know that's harsh I
 did a heart I disagree with that all right chow let me just hold on yeah I
 just want to say I played the last Call of Duty game yeah and Laura watched and
 Paul Miller did yeah no but you know what black it was awesome for everybody
 in the room including penny our dog no but it's like it's what's the one where
 you basically are a horrible terrorist we kill civilians yeah yeah yeah yeah
 I'm sorry where you kill everybody the airport no okay that that I was gonna
 say that movie that game is like a movie it's like playing a movie like a really
 good but you were talking about the other day where it's like it just a
 passable Vin Diesel action movie yeah not like Citizen Kane right it's like it
 could almost be good enough to be a movie that's like Uncharted 2 it's like
 it could almost be good enough to be good to be a decent action movie but not
 like it's not you know but all the characters are flat it's not art right
 right it's a two stars from me bird out of four maybe two and a half yeah movie
 reviews are just about the experience they never ever rate anything on a scale
 don't worry the mics fine yeah I didn't hit the galaxy nexus did I who are
 people freaking out about can we talk about one more thing cool it's fine
 everybody sure then we can go you have no idea how resilient these I really
 freed Paul out did I upset you pause on that I thought you drop the mic I dropped
 it on purpose like this is over yeah can I say it I'm excited you're gonna get
 box thing can we go Chris Farley to run back across the stage and pick up your
 mic I don't know what you mean yeah all right let's go let's wrap it up all
 right so last piece of news boxy announced a live TV adapter for the box
 box the only reason excited about this is because they're the first company to
 like actually be like cut the cord you can get live TV and streaming media and
 I mean it's it's like they're the only ones are really gonna be effective
 they're the only ones who are even trying when nobody else is trying like I
 think the idea that like Apple like build a TV that streams everything over
 the Internet is like a fallacy I think that's a bad idea it's a beautiful dream
 it's a dream but it's not there's no way to do it that makes sense for boxing to
 be like you can plug in this antenna or plug in basic cable and get all the
 network shows and most of shows you want to watch on networks well and you can
 all the streaming stuff I don't know about that most of the shows you want to
 watch there's like there's there's like little you in this scenario is that
 everybody most people like it's like it's like a right top alright to it to
 an admin sure of course are you kidding me back you got me into it really happy
 ending that's like saying you're really into what's that show with Courtney
 Cox cougar town yeah I mean happy endings is like ABC's version of cougar
 town is cool town on ABC yes then it's the same exact show basically the same
 show but I will say Becky deeply loves friends so I think friends is a pretty
 bad but you know what hasn't been on air for a while but compared to back to
 bear the happy endings from what I've seen so here's the thing it is like
 citizen Kane well you know it is the I think it's a prototype for every sitcom
 in the world in the world at this point so Nick at night is rerunning friends
 which means I watch friends like three times a day now she's always watching
 friends in HD when I grew up Nick at night was showing I love Lucy yeah and
 the Bewitched and what was the one with the friends is I love Lucy go ahead
 with the shoe phone it's crazy about these HD reruns on Nick at night is that
 they actually went back to the master film and telecine them into real HD
 which is astonishing have you seen Seinfeld in HD? What's going on with that?
 So great what is the deal with Seinfeld in HD? It's so funny cuz at the beginning of
 like the HD era it was so bad I'm trying to just get through it man are we done
 can we be done no I think the boxy box thing is real
 just give me this action he doesn't need it I mean what how much money do I have to pay you to
 wrap this up we're done I'm done you want to talk great show we just did yeah we
 did a great show on the verge so good it's way better than this way more
 rehearsed yeah we did our first monthly show yeah which is on the verge we're
 doing one next month and I think ultimately we'd like to do them more
 than once yeah but we'll see what happens we just have to find the time
 we're pretty busy I will say my favorite part of the show is the sad robot voice I
 watched it oh the sad robot yeah a lot of ideas for the sad robot to be a part
 of our show anyway we're done guys I can hear you talking really clearly through
 the mic right now no I don't care you don't have to be don't feel bad about it
 anyhow we should wrap up this because because we've done a full on to basically
 two-hour I mean almost our 45 hour 45 it's about 45 minutes longer than Paul
 and I wanted to do the podcast right Paul nice going anyhow that's our show
 for the week there's a reason Chad gave us like a 15 second time limit I'm
 sure you will definitely chat laughter at the beginning of this I want to really
 know that that's our show for the week if if you want to get in touch with us
 you can email us at podcast at the verge comm yeah you can leave a comment on the
 post yes using our highly advanced commenting system it's awesome it is
 cool one day it's gonna let you edit comments one day at a time or you can
 tweet at us on twitter.com I'm Joshua Topolski Neely is reckless Paul's future
 Paul the verge is at verge the at symbol not AT in case you're wondering we should
 get at at verge by the way can we get that what's going on at Puyallup seconds
 we're not doing the six-hour podcast they wanted and we're back next week
 with more of this delicious whatever this is no intelligent debate was about
 the future about the future about the present but the past about where we were
 where we're where we are and where we're going about x-men x-men you know the
 economics the 1% the 99% nothing nothing is off the table during the
 verge cast a name a hotly debated name the verge cast we cover 100% yeah oh I
 would if you guys weren't so far away I mentally high-fiving you right now that's
 good that's really good yeah you know Paul you're all right and anyhow that's
 our show for the week so thank you for listening to this insane hell ride and
 we'll I'll see you soon rock and load rock and roll
 that's great good just end this end it now