 Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of October 29th, 2012. I'm Josh Topolsky. I'm Neelay Patel. I'm David Pierce. I may be Ross Miller. And we are all together here. Sort of. On the first birthday of the Verge. We're not all together. I mean, we're virtually together. Physically, we couldn't be further apart. It's the power of technology. Just Ross and David, who are physically very close together. And anyhow, this is our, it's our first birthday anniversary. Is that a thing that happens? I don't think that's actually a possibility. Birthday anniversary. Birthday anniversary. And it's also a big week of news. So we talk about, and I got a hard stop because I got things to do. Very important things that I know that our readers will be disappointed if I don't finish. You're a really big business man. We get this done. Big business. I'm a big business man. I just want to let people know why we're all separated. The hurricane in New York is over, but New York is still recovering. And we can't, Josh and I cannot physically get to the studio from Brooklyn. Josh, you tried and you failed. We can, I mean, we can, but like the level of difficulty and confusion and chaos that it is like requires is a little bit more than I think. I mean, basically like, you know, we got, Michael and I got picked up by a car here and they were like, when we called for a car, they're like, okay, you've got two people. That's fine. And then when we got picked up, they're like, we need to find a third person to go into the city because you need to have a quota of people to take cars into the city. And then when we turned the corner off of my street, there is like a children of men situation going on where, where there's like, no, I'm not even kidding. There's like cops, like there's like a lines. There's I live near two gas stations and there's lines like of cars trying to get into the gas station. There's like patrolling like the gas station lot so that people don't steal gas or like get into a gunfight or something. And and I looked over the, the, I looked at towards the bridge where you go to get into Queens to get to, to get to the tunnel or to the bridge. And it's, it's like, it was, it looked insane. I mean, this is, I think, I don't know if people who aren't in New York or New Jersey or along the East coast that got really hit by the hurricane are aware of this, but it actually is pretty bad. I mean, things think real things happen like horrible hurricane things happen here. I know everybody's like, you know, was, I know there were like a lot of jokes like, Oh, New Yorkers are blowing this out of proportion. And it's actually like people died, like houses were destroyed, like cars were like blown into buildings. Like it's really, it's pretty crazy. Did you guys get power? Did you guys, did you guys have power the entire time? Like any blackouts? Our power somehow stayed on. And I don't know why or how, because there's flooding like a block from here and like the whole lower portion, actually northern portion of the portion of where I lived is flood, was flooded. I don't know about, Neelai, you were evacuated. So yeah, I'm extremely irritated about being evacuated. Didn't you get taken to no power from having power? So we were evacuated. I live right on the East river and we were evacuated for Irene. And we literally, we evacuated to a friend's house that was like two blocks away. So we just went somewhere else. And then this time they said they were going to preemptively shut off power. And so we left and we went to someplace for the power and the water went out and they actually didn't shut off power in my building. So the building next door, they locked everybody in. So it was like two dramatically different strategies. They locked everybody in? It's not safe. Wow. Yeah. And the building next door, somebody in the studio was in the building next door and she said they just locked everybody in, which I think is. That's insane. I like, I like the idea of locking people in during a horrible event like that. That's exactly what I came back. So the riverfront here is like, it is broken. You know, I was to, I took some pictures of the city and when I came back, I realized that I couldn't see what I was exposing like in the river. And there was just like debris like floating in the river, like pieces of the pier. There's a construction site next door house that is a lake. Oh my God. So yeah, it's clearly, things are bad. It's not, it's not great. But so anyhow, so long story short, our problems aren't nearly as bad as the kinds of problems that other people are having. And by the way, we put a, I believe it went up or it's going up a post on the site about how you can donate. Right. And we have a, we're going to put the website, Brendan, can we put the link on here too? It's I think the redcross.org. We put up a link on the verge to information about how you can, you can donate if you want to help out. And you know, look, it's, there are worse, there have been worse hurricanes and worse situations, but I don't think like I wouldn't downplay that, you know, a lot of people got hit really badly here and they need help. And I mean, it's, it is true, like all over the city, you know, things are not normal. No, I, the last week I heard, I think we all just got phone calls who live in the East Village. Sandy, the Con Ed is not expecting power until Saturday at 11 o'clock at night. Like pretty much straight on down. In lower Manhattan is, we won't have power until Saturday. Yeah. And I mean, you know, just so people who don't live in New York may not realize this, but like the subways are out and when the subways are out and I mean, many of the subways, not all of them, but a lot of them because they're flooded or damaged. And I took a ferry to when I had to take a ferry, it's a good ferry though. And when subways go out in New York, people don't drive here. You know, all the other cities, like people drive and they're like, oh, you're going to take a detour. But there are no detours when the subways aren't running. It's like, you just can't get there. So you either take a car or a bike or you walk. It literally feels like, my neighborhood at least feels like that early part of like GTA 3 where you're like running around, you don't know what to do. You're very low on supplies. You're just waiting for like the thing to light up that says subways unlocked. You can access different parts of the city. Because like my neighborhood is out of stuff. No, it's me too. We went to the grocery store yesterday and it was like, there's just nothing there. And like, you know, the trucks are coming in slowly, but you know, it's a hurricane. Actually, so there's a couple like really interesting kind of hurricane stories out of New York. They're more kind of more directly technology related, but I think are really interesting. So we ran a report yesterday. I want to say it's yesterday. There's a lot of startups in New York and they all, for whatever reason, there's a lot of startup data centers in New York. And right now they're all, they're literally calling diesel fuel up 17 flights of stairs to power their generators, to keep things like Squarespace going, to keep Trello going. There's a whole host of them that are like, that are literally running on diesel fuel right now. Stack exchange, Gawker is totally out. They're still out. They've been using Tumblr. They've been using Tumblr, which is funny because Tumblr is a New York based startup, but their servers are elsewhere. Yeah. Livestream is having trouble, like all kinds of stuff. It's really bad. Yeah. We're, I'm being told we're running on diesel fuel right now. Wow. Yeah. I think Joshua Topolsky is done. Yeah. I think he's out. Josh, Josh ran out of diesel fuel. No, it's been insane. I know for the last few days, actually I got electricity for the first time last night. We're staying at a friend's house. Before that I was trying to stay at my apartment, kind of like the East Village area. And you have to, you see these crowds of people just walking up. Like they're just making a trek to 27th street to get power at whatever outlet they can find. Yeah. I saw this one picture. I don't remember if it was from you or who else, but it was the one spot in the East Village where there was cell service. Yeah. So that's at ninth and C. It's crazy. Can anybody hear me? We can hear you, Josh. Josh, we can hear you. Yeah. So like, yeah. So like you have to like walk up to 27th to get cell service. Guys. 39th, 40th you get, you know, you start seeing power outlets that are open. Lines are kind of coming on. Buses right now only go down, I think, 23rd. They like cancel that for some like weather conditions. They may be back now. I don't want to spread misinformation. Yeah. I mean, it was like that picture, like the, Nealai has this great picture. If you haven't seen it, we have this great photo essay of stuff from Sandy, but just this one picture that Nealai took where it's like the bottom half of Manhattan just cuts off and then you can literally see like here's where Manhattan still exists. And you are, you are seeing these people make these kind of treks up and down north and south of streets just to find power. You know, lines are getting super crowded. I think I was telling you the other day, it took me until 63rd street to find an open power outlet at a Duane Reade. It's crazy. If you charge my phone. And I'm sure it's like all out war to get. Or it's like you have a power strip, like you're a hero. You are the person. They all get together to help out websites to go to that will have updates. It's a very interesting sense of community around the like little ATM enclosures that have power outlets. That's crazy. So it's very interesting where they're doing, some trees have power outlets nearby because there's the you know, they have the Christmas lights running around. They just on sides and they just plug in their phones and just sit on the curb and talk. Crazy. It's very interesting. Hello. Oh, we switched sides. How'd that happen? So I'm like about to use an LTE because I don't, I don't know what's going on with Time Warner, but I mean, this is the same as time. It's the worst right now. Yeah. So anyway, we were talking about, yeah, we can hear you. Can you hear us? Yeah. I can barely make you guys out. You sound okay, but you're breaking up a bit for me. This is apparently a nightmare. You're speaking like you're a translation right now. The way the mouth is moving in the audio. We missed that boat. This is not good. Just slightly. Yeah. We're kind of already doing like a few minutes. Yeah. Sorry, man. There he goes again. He's gone. Okay. Yeah. Well, I just turned off my, I just turned off my video for the time being. Okay. So we'll just imagine your beautiful face. Because it's the giant floating head of Chokopolsky. Well, it's funny. It's funny. I have an LTE device sitting here that is. Oh wait, he's back. No. And my, who? Hi. This is. Yeah. Guys. Yo, Neil, what's up? Oh, I'm enormous. Hey. Just a large man. Do we need to figure out how we, can we, to the stream in the world, obviously we're having some technical difficulties. Can we turn them off for a minute? Can we turn off the live audience, figure out what we're doing with Josh and come back to them? Yeah. That's fine. We're just going to be waiting for these brief messages of nothingness. Yeah. I'm sorry, everyone. Are we back on? This is the Josh Topolsky's white hand. Hey, if you're just joining us, so are we. Let's just start over. Yeah. All right. Okay. We're just going to start over. Okay. Wait, I just want to say, I just want to, can I just talk about what just happened? Are we back on the air? We're back on the air. I want to tell the world, I want to tell the world about what just happened. Okay. Long story short. When I reviewed the iPhone 5, I got a new SIM for my account on AT&T with, I got a micro SIM and obviously they made the account compatible with LTE because it's an LTE phone. Then when I was done with the review, I took the SIM out and I put in an adapter and I switched back to my Galaxy Nexus. Recently I've been reviewing another phone, which is also an HSPA device. And anyhow, my connection here at my house has been very bad since the hurricane, the Time Warner connect. I mean, it's normally very bad, but it's especially bad post hurricane. And I have a GS3 here, an AT&T GS3 on LTE, which is getting ridiculous speeds down, a separate phone that I'm using, that I'm testing with, I'm testing the data on. And so I was like, here's what I'm going to do. My network is terrible, but the account that that phone has, that's a review phone, it is not set up for the S3 now I'm talking about, is not set up for tethering. Okay. I was like, I'm going to tether my computer to a phone on LTE because I'm getting very good speeds right now. So I was like, well, I'll just take my SIM out since it's provisioned for LTE and for tethering. I'll take it out of the phone that I'm testing right now. I'll put it into the GS3 that I have sitting here and I'll use that to tether with LTE. Okay. Are you with me so far? No. I put the SIM in as AT&T recently told us you could do. I put my SIM into an LTE phone on AT&T and I tried to register it on the network and it would get no data. Okay. You with me? No. It really had not been provisioned for me. So I had to take that SIM out and put it in the iPhone 5 and now I'm tethering over LTE on the iPhone 5. Long story short, iPhone 5 saved the day. AT&T lied about whether you could put a SIM into another LTE device and have it work. And it's becoming increasingly likely the next phone that I purchase is going to be the iPhone 5. Angrily. Increasingly. Didn't we figure out this week that LTE is just like the worst thing in general? Just the worst. No. No. I mean it's great. LTE is the best thing in general. But the way it's managed and the way that carriers deal with it. It's crazy that you can't take a SIM card and put it into your phone and do things with it. That's ridiculous. Pure appointed, man. Pure appointed. Pure appointed. All right. Anyhow. So let's get back to the matter at hand, which is whatever we were talking about on this first- We were talking about the hurricane ruining everyone's life. The hurricane ruining- We were talking about the hurricane ruining everybody's life and now it just ruined our- We spent a half an hour trying to figure out how I could get online. Happy birthday, Verge cast. Happy birthday, Verge. Happy birthday, Verge. We got you this nerve-shattering hell ride as a present. Anyhow. All right. What else do we need to talk about? The Lumia review? Did that go up? Did that go up? Did it up? Let's just pretend that we're saying all this like two minutes from right now. Oh, it's going up in two minutes? Oh, really? All right. Yeah. Do you want to get people ready? Is it actually happening? It's happening as we speak. Right now on Twitter, people are- They heard that and they're freaking out. Lumia not doing a review. Everybody's just perked up and goes, Lumia. Just madly refreshed. They're ready. They're sobbing just immediately. There are guys right now somewhere who just began sharpening a knife. They're in a room- There are thousands of employees Microsoft has to be in our common system. They're in a room- They're angrily queuing up. They're sangry. Sangry. Sangry. Is it up? No, it's not up. Let's come back to this. Let's skip it. Let's talk about- We can set up the Lumia review. We can. We also earlier this week reviewed Windows Phone 8 and reviewed the HTC Windows Phone 8X. Right. It's kind of like the hardware manifestation of Windows Phone 8. It's called the Windows Phone 8. It's Microsoft's- They just put an X at the end. Ordained flagship phone. Right. We did with the HTC. Yes. Yep. I really like that device. It's a lot. Personally. What do you think? I've spent almost no time with it. For a Windows Phone. I have- But it's downstairs. I would bring it up and I don't- I'm not doing anything else. If you go downstairs, you will lose connection. Don't move ever. Please. No, I can't risk any waves through the air. I'm sorry. I like it. I think it's a really nice device. My problem with Windows Phone and I'm sure that this will be talked about. My problem with Windows Phone is at this point is it feels like it's like version one again. I actually think they've fixed a lot of the things. A lot of the things that I was kind of frustrated by with the Lumia review when I was doing that, I think have been fixed in the latest in Windows Phone 8. But I still think it's like I have trouble understanding in what circumstance I would tell a consumer to go get the Windows Phone device over the best Android device or best, well, the iPhone 5. It's hard for me to- I think there are people who it's great for. I just think those people are not the vast majority of consumers right this moment. What about Office people? That was one of the things we said about the Surface. I think if you're a hardcore Office user and I think that if you're like completely immersed in the world of Office and Windows and you want a phone that will work seamlessly with all of that stuff, I think it's a good choice. The review's up, by the way. So everybody should go read it. But when I- The review's up. Everybody should go read it. Or at least wait- Our Lumia 920 review is up. I'm going to go tweet it. I'm looking at it on theverge.com. An amazing pop shop. So I think that when I talk to people and they say, here's what I need in my smartphone, X, Y, and Z, they want Instagram. And it may get there, but I don't know. And that's the thing about it being like Feeling Link version one is we still don't know if it's getting there. Yeah, right. And so I think it's improved and I think it's competitive with the iPhone, the latest iPhone, and then the latest Android devices. It's hard for me to recommend it. And it's hard for me to imagine using it instead of one of those devices. Part of what kills me is that Microsoft's trying to create their own kind of cordoned off ecosystem like Apple and Google are. But they're so far behind at this point. SkyDrive is great. If you don't use anything, SkyDrive is great and it's a perfectly viable app. It really is. But I bet you already use Dropbox. And if you use Dropbox, Windows Phone is not a good system for that. And so if you just came onto the earth today, there's a lot of stuff to like in Microsoft's ecosystem, but it's impossible to get into unless you're already in it. And most people probably aren't in it because they're so far behind with all this stuff. I just think, yeah, I mean, and again, and this is a thing that I've complained about. I complained about it with the Surface that I'm going to talk about it here. I am perplexed at Microsoft's failure to show me some killer games, for instance. Like Halo, there are games that they have. There are franchises that are either exclusive to the Xbox or they are first run Xbox titles and they come to other platforms. If they had a handful of those, literally like five to 10, it could be the difference between me kind of really wanting one of these devices and not wanting one. And I think that I don't play games that often, but it's a very enticing idea. They're starting to get the Xbox. The Xbox Music thing is now kind of finally really a part of it. Smart Glass, it feels like it's a part of this ecosystem, feels like it's alive. It's like it's been sparked to life, but it hasn't gone out and terrorized the village yet. That's a Frankenstein. Yeah. I guess Frankenstein reverends. Just looking at our two reviews of the 8X and the 920, it definitely seems like the 8X is the way to go. Yeah. Why do you say that? We gave them very close scores. Just because the Lumia has this really great camera, but the 8X, it seems like a better phone. I like the smaller. I mean, the hardware, one thing I'll say about the Lumia, the hardware is really huge. It's like the biggest, chunkiest phone I've used in a while. It's heavy. That's specifically what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing I'll say about the Lumia is that it's got a very, its low light camera performance is insane and its stability is insane, but it actually takes rather dull photos. And it's something that we went back and forth on. You know, Tom Warren, Vlad Savov, Dieter Bohn. Dieter Bohn wrote the majority of this, but we all worked on the review. We all kind of traded ideas and stuff about the phones back and forth because we all had an opportunity to use the device. And I think we all were like, the camera's really, really good in some situations. And then there's other situations where it's like weirdly not. Well, you know, I will say this. Low light is the most important feature of a camera, I think. Well, it's the most differentiated feature, for sure. Well, it's the most differentiated feature, but you know, even on my iPhone, I look at those pictures again when I get home on a computer screen. I'm like, oh, these are all terrible. My real camera takes much better photos than this. And that is, you know, one of the best, you know, probably within the top five best cameras in the market for phones. I mean, and the reason is it's because there's a tremendous amount of blur and everything because it has to keep the shutter open just to get light in. I mean, we had a conversation about this, and there was a lot of dispute over the camera. It's like we were comparing photos of like the iPhone. You know, I think we did a comparison of photos like the iPhone to the Lumia to the GS3 to whatever the flagship devices are. And you know, people are going to go crazy for me saying it, but like the iPhone had nicer looking photos. Yeah. They were better looking photos. I don't know what kind of voodoo they're using. The Lumia is a really good camera, but the iPhone nine times out of 10 takes nicer looking photos. Yeah. I mean, and you could argue like we, I was talking about this with Dieter earlier, like you could argue that the ones from the 920 are actually better photos. Like if you take photos on a cloudy day, they're muted because they should be because it's muted and dull and it's a cloudy day. But they don't look as good. Like the iPhone's processing just kind of makes these colors pop. And like if you're a pro and know what to do and can go and process or fix them, like Jordan Opplinger is going to take unbelievable photos with the 920. But if you just want to like hold it up and take good pictures, it's better. What you want from a phone is to be able to get good results without tweaking. You want to be able to like quickly take photos that are good. Like that's the whole point. Like the whole idea is like you're not carrying a camera with you. You're carrying, well, I mean it is a camera, but you're carrying a camera that is quicker and simpler and produces better results than if you were to just hang on to a point and shoot and take it around with you. You know? It's like you're trading off a few things, but like what you don't want. I mean don't get me wrong. It takes really, really good photos. I just think that it has some very, very good qualities and I think it has some negatives. And I don't think you can have one without the other. And I think that Nokia has done this evangelizing about the camera that has really, you know, at least in our readers has taken root that this is the best camera ever in the history of phone cameras. Oh, dude. No, so I took the picture of the skyline in Manhattan and I got emails from people telling me it would have been a better picture had I taken it with the 920. It was like, wow, I took three 16 megapixel raw frames on a tripod and put them together with HDR. I don't mean I know that you love the 920. I just don't think it would have taken a better picture than when I put together here. Like you're crazy. And that is everywhere. Every picture that I take, somebody tells me that the 920 would have done it. And it's like the only reason they think that is because that's what Nokia has constantly been telling them. Right. Right. They haven't tried it. Nobody else has used it. No, I mean, it's definitely like if there's definitely a seems to be some kind of, you know, campaign happening. Hold on a second, there's a little bit of an issue with the review. There's definitely some campaign happening with Nokia and like, you know, God bless them. They did make a phone with a nice camera, but it's not like your brain will explode when you see the quality of these photos. You know, they're very good. The low light performance is crazy. I will say that. It took pictures in like almost darkness for me that were like the room was completely lit. And I don't fully understand the voodoo that they're doing there. And so like for that purpose, I think in like dark settings, like you're not going to get better performance out of a camera. But it's like overall, there are, to me, it feels bluish. It's like bluish and washed out compared to photos from other cameras that look richer, that have better color reproduction. And I actually had some focusing issues with it. I was actually surprised that it took a few photos for me where it was like autofocusing where it like did not focus correctly and the photos were completely blurry. So you need to have like a little bit of, I mean, I do think the hardware, I mean, part of the problem is Windows Phone now has this mode where it's like you tap and it focuses and takes a picture at the same time, or you use the hardware button to focus. But the hardware button requires an incredibly hard press to actually snap the photo. So by the time you've focused in the first step of the two step focusing and shooting, when you start to shoot, it actually like shakes your hand a lot more than necessary. By the way, I have one here. I guess I should tell people. I'm like physically unable to take good pictures with the hardware button because I end up just like moving the camera violently. That's a pretty color though. No I have to say like this hardware is really nice. I mean it's just huge. It is big. You can kill a man with a Lumia 920, no question. Let's do a comparison. Here's the Galaxy Nexus. Okay. I don't know if that's a good. Move it a little bit. Move it directly in front of your face. Other way. There it is. There's the Galaxy Nexus. Beautiful. Oh boy. Here's the, it's actually about the size of the, of the, you like how I just am pulling out. Can you see this? This is the life of Josh Dupolsky. Yeah. Can you see that? Ross, move your head. No, we can see it. My head's not in the shot. You look great. What do you mean? Your head is in the shot. You can't see the shot. You're looking at the wrong camera. Don't worry about it. Oh, I see. Okay. So there's this. Technology. That's okay. And then there's the, can I do this? This is the Nexus 4. Okay. Yeah. You can get an idea of the size. Here you can get an idea of the thickness. They're close, but this guy feels a little bit bulkier in the hand. I mean. It's really heavy too. Like really heavy. It's heavy. I will say this, but that's where I think the 8X is a little bit better of, I think will be better for a broader consumer is because it's actually like a really felt skinny, like it feels small in your hand. And I think that'll appeal to, and it's a 4.3 inch screen. I think it'll appeal to people who don't want the giant screen. I think the 8X is, again, I have one downstairs. I'm not going to get it though. Is kind of the perfect size. But look, there's no denying that no matter what is going to happen, what we say today about the Lumia, the comments on this review will be the worst set of comments that we've ever had on a post in the history of the Verge. And it couldn't come on a better day. It's going to be hard to beat the surface, I think. Yeah. Let's take a sampling. No, I think it can beat the surface. Let's take a sampling of some comments here. Also, Josh, I will say everybody seems to be a lot more excited in chat on the Verge cast. What do you think about the Nexus 4? Really? Everybody just kind of forgot about the 920, and it's now like all they want to know about is the N4. Can I tell you something about the Nexus 4? I think so. I don't know if we're allowed to. I don't know what the... Google's been a little bit like the rules of... Because we have, we're reviewing it under embargo. I guess I can say that. I'm saying that now. I don't really know what's going on at this point. If somebody murders Josh, it's fine. Yeah, right. But Phil Nickinson had a thing up earlier, he was kind of taking questions on it, and other people have tweeted photos and talked about it. Obviously we had our... They were going to have an event. I mean, the thing that happened, which is weird that I don't think a lot of people realize, is that we went and did... We had these couple of features that we worked on. We went to Google and we did get the inside story and had some exclusives with them. But then we had... That coverage was supposed to be coincide with when they had their event, and everybody would have had a chance to do hands-on and video and stuff. Because the hurricane hit, we ended up having all this extra coverage by accident. It was not a planned thing. Obviously everybody would have had a bunch of access to these phones had they held the event. But anyhow, so... Sandy is an Apple fanboy. Sandy is an Apple or a Microsoft fanboy because Microsoft had their event that day without any interruptions. Anyway, I don't know where I was going with this. I cracked the back of my Nexus 4. That's what I wanted to tell you. Best transition ever. I dropped... I'll have a picture of it. I dropped it off my dining table. And I don't know if you'll go back if you watch my video with Matthias. I say, aren't you worried about it breaking? And he tells me about how the chamfered edge and all this stuff, about how it's protecting it. Right. It doesn't protect it from a 30-inch drop from a dining room table onto hardwood floor, in case you're wondering. It's a small crack. Doesn't really bother me that much. So I have one too, and I do this thing where I toss my phone onto my couch as I'm walking by. You have a dangerous thing. And I missed my couch yesterday. I just tossed it onto the floor. And it was fine. Just completely fine. Picked it up. All good. You know, everybody's experience may be different. No, I will say, whatever is going on with your house, Josh, because you've destroyed a number of iPhone 4s with that dining room table. No, no. Yes. There was a Park Vance incident too. Josh's dining table is 11 feet tall. So my brother and I have both broken. My brother broke the back of his iPhone 4. I mean, I know a ton of people who have the back broken on their iPhone 4. I think there's a reason they have a metal back. Yeah. Right. I'm just checking out the comments on the Lume. I already hit a few. How bad are they right now? I will tell you the one I just hit involved calling Dieter a wimp for saying the phone was big when Jessica Alba has one. I was just reading that one too. So I deleted that one because that makes no sense. You know, Jessica Alba is paid to carry the phone. What I just want to say is everybody is so sure it's the best phone ever who's never touched it or used it. And that seems unusual to me. And Tom seems to believe that there's actual astroturfing going on. And I'm not going to accuse anybody, but there are definitely comments on these Lumia posts that seem out of the ordinary for the types of comments we get. So Microsoft's been paying me to go into the comment section as well. To raise hell? So does Apple and so does Google. It's great. Three paychecks, dude. So let's talk about some other reviews. We've talked about Windows and Microsoft and these products at length. The thing with the Lumia for me is that it's kind of the first time I've answered it. I'm sorry. Can I just say something? I actually want to respond to something because people are talking about it in the comments. I'm sorry. It just came up. People think that our ecosystem score is only about apps. The ecosystem score is not about apps. It is predominantly apps play a big part in the ecosystem score. But it's also about services. And there are some good services. In fact, the ecosystem score would be lower if Microsoft didn't have the services it has. Because the app ecosystem is not that good on these devices. But it's also about other products, cases, or docs, or what types of products it's compatible with external hardware. And so the ecosystem, there's a bunch of things that go into it. Apps are a big part of it. But I think that people are under this impression that somehow we're like, if it doesn't have 500,000 apps, then it gets a low ecosystem score. And apps do play a big part. And when you talk to consumers, and when you hear from consumers, when you hear from people about this stuff, they're always like, can I get this app? Can I get that app? That's the stuff they actually care about. Well, and especially with the device, I got a lot of questions about the Surface. Because everybody's like, oh, well, it can connect to my printer. And I was like, well, that's cool. But I bet most people are not super interested in plugging their Surface into a printer. To be perfectly honest with you, the idea that you can plug in a mouse, or a USB stick, or a printer is really a very, very small part of these devices. The Surface, that was one of the things, is like the Surface you can plug in a printer. It's like, well, I just don't think that's that important to that many people. And by the way, there are great wireless printing solutions. And almost every printer ships now with Wi-Fi. So it's like, so what? You can plug in a mouse. That's the worst thing I've ever heard in my entire life. You can plug in a keyboard. Like whatever. That's what Bluetooth is for. That is not important to me. And it's not important to most consumers at this point. And that's why we rated the fact that there aren't any apps on RT. Like any apps. That's why we rated that more highly. Because there aren't any apps. What's funny about the Surface review is that I, had it been completely compatible with Windows, which everybody says I hate, I would have given it a higher score. Yeah, the Surface Pro is so really excited about that. Yeah, right. I'm actually very interested in the Pro. Had it done everything that it does, plus been able to run a full suite of Windows apps, I probably would have been like, this actually is the thing that is going to let you do both things fully. And also, the Pro is going to be- Go ahead. I was going to say the Pro- The Pro is going to be more expensive. It's going to be the price of a laptop. And then you get into a whole category of like, am I buying a laptop or what am I buying? Many of Windows laptops are coming out with touchscreens. So it's hard to say. I've been playing with a ton of these as they start to come out. And I will never willingly buy a laptop without a touchscreen again. Really? It's so much better. The reach over is not- You're telling me you're going to get a Windows laptop for your next laptop. I wrote, this is my next Windows 8 and I believe that. And as soon as I find good hardware, I can't wait to get rid of this thing and get Windows 8. I can't wait. I just want to say, you're going to sell your MacBook. I just want to make sure I'm hearing this. I'm going to throw it out the window is what I'm going to do. The battery life of my MacBook Air is now like 10 minutes. Let me know. I do want to catch it because there's a good resale value on these. Yeah, that's fair. No, but I have yet to see the perfect hardware. But I think as it is, the operating system is great. I love using a touchscreen. I really, really do. What is the best of you so far? The best of you so far is, I'm working on it right now actually, it's the Lenovo Yoga. It's really good. It's mostly a laptop, but it does these, it flips back to you and kind of uses a tablet or you can prop it up. But it's mostly a laptop, which I like. But it has a touchscreen and you can do all kinds of other stuff. Yeah, it's 16.9. Yeah, fair. By the way, I just realized it's getting really dark in here. Yeah, I need to go to my office. It was daylight when we started. It was like so long ago. Here's just the thing I wanted to say about apps and the ecosystem. It's raw app count is like, that's the raw. If you're going to criticize an ecosystem score for being about apps, you need to understand what apps actually are to a mobile device. They're not standout. People think about apps, it's like, oh, I'm going to download a thing and play a game and that's all it is. For most people, it's how their device interfaces with the world around it. So a Dropbox app isn't just an app. It's how literally I move files from one place to another because that is connected into a larger ecosystem of Dropbox. There are hundreds of thousands of these apps for every, we do our expenses in Expensify. What's really great is when I go out and I take a cab to a meeting, I just take a picture of the receipt when I'm done with Expensify and my expenses are done. That's not just an app for me. That's a connection into a deeper ecosystem of a service. Those apps are available for some platforms that are not available for others. That set of connections through apps into other broader products and services is critically important. So it's not just here's a number of apps and we're ranking it. It's how useful is this device and how much more useful is it made to be by these apps that connect to others. Right. That reminds me, there's a point I wanted to ask about this and I think you guys probably answered it better. So Microsoft is making an initiative like exclusive app features, right? The Pandora stuff, the Facebook stuff. That's not going to get updated though then. That's not going to follow one to one with any Facebook updates or iterations. What is the risk of that when they're trying to make exclusive features for their apps? Right. I will say that it is, I think you're 100% right at that point, Neelay, about it's not just about the count, but it's the quality and it's what they do and it's how they interact with the rest of the ecosystem. In some way, I give Android more points in that department, the interaction. Oh yeah. No, I think absolutely. Where you get, for me, it's so easy to save something to pocket the way Android allows developers to plug into their sharing. I think that's a big advantage. I think we had this problem for a long time with Android where we were saying, God, the quality of apps is like, yeah, you've got apps, but they're garbage. There's still a lot of garbage, but it's gotten way, way better over the past, I'd say, two years. This phone still definitely suffers from having, let's say you've got, I don't know what the number is now, but a lot of those apps, they're very bad. They're not good. They feel amateur. They feel like my first app from a developer. Particularly weird is that Microsoft doesn't do any policing in the store. If you do search for a legitimate app, you will find a lot of results that are basically counterfeit that are other developers noticing a demand for a popular app on another platform and saying, here's my weird counterfeit version. This is stealing a dollar from people. Microsoft needs to get on that. You can tell the world over and over and over again that this isn't about apps. It's not about app count. It's about live tiles. It's about seamless sharing, all this stuff. When people want to go extend the use of their device and they go in the app store and it's basically full of thieves, you've got a problem. I think there's also this thing, not related, but somewhat related, which is the Microsoft – the reason I have trouble saying go get a Lumia or go get an 8X right now is because Microsoft has this – their premise is what would make you get this phone over an iPhone or an Android phone? They have this thing where it's like the live tiles are better and they're designed for your life and they'll help you do things faster. Our people thing, our people app is integrated and you've got – it merges your contact. You've got this integrated chat with your SMS messages. That stuff is all really true. They do have some good, really thoughtful ways of dealing with data, but none of it is the kind of stuff – and I always said this about webOS. It was like what's webOS? What's the webOS message to consumers that it's going to be better for you? I actually feel like right now, RIM has a similar problem, but they're going to be able to say look, we're Blackberry. It's the most secure. It's built for business, blah, blah, blah. They actually have a little bit of a story, but Microsoft's story is just not – it's not so compelling on points where people are enraged. I'm not enraged about a lack of live tiles on iOS 6. I think iOS 6 is desperately in need of some innovation. I think it needs some widgets or something like a live tile there. I think it needs to be able to show people more information more quickly and in an easier way and frankly in a nicer looking way, but I'm not like how dare they? I can't live like this. I don't think most consumers feel that way either. Most consumers are like, yeah, that's nice to have, but I'm okay with it right now. I think you have to give them a compelling – I can tell you there are compelling reasons why you would choose Android over iOS. The Pocket one is a great example. It's easier to get things done that you need to get done. If you're a Gmail user, I can say if you use Gmail, this is a better experience. It's tough for me. Even if you're an Outlook user, I don't believe that the experience in Mail on a Windows phone device is dramatically different or better than an experience on iOS in terms of Mail. It's not like they're saying, we've got this incredible Mail experience that's second to none for Outlook users. They've got a good Mail experience, but Apple has a pretty good Mail experience and Android has a pretty good Mail experience. They've got to find a way to say to consumers, and that's where I'm talking about stuff like Halo. They start to do with, I will say, the integration with music and stuff, but it's like you've got to convince people this platform will offer them something and down the road will offer them something that they're not getting somewhere else. Right now, you can't say, unfortunately, and this is true, if consumers say, you say, well, you can't get Instagram on it, there are a lot of people, there are a lot of young new buyers of phones that will say, well, I don't want that. I want Instagram. That's the harsh reality. It's tough. On the one hand, you don't have the really compelling element. Then you've got a lack of other elements, so it becomes a tough recommendation, at least for me. Let's move on. We actually had two other big reviews happen this week. Josh, you reviewed the iPad, the iPad Mini. The iPad Mini. We just published my review of the Retina MacBook Pro 13-inch today. Can I just blaze through talking about the iPad Mini? Yeah. It's been discussed. Then we'll talk about the Retina because I haven't actually, I haven't even read your review all the way through. Thanks. Well, I skimmed it and then I read the conclusion and I left a comment. You saw the score. I read the number score. You said no video review? I read the number score and then I left a comment. That was it. Yeah. Where's the video is what I said. Yeah. Okay. Just really quickly, the iPad Mini, I think it's in this class, it's second to none. I've been a Nexus 7 user and I really, really have liked it. It's almost like with a little bit of sadness that when I started using the iPad Mini, it occurred to me that I don't have a compelling reason to pick up the Nexus 7 now. In terms of reading, I'm reading on Kindle. This Kindle app, it works the same if not better on the iPad Mini. Obviously, app selection is just astronomically better on the iPad Mini. It's compatible with my Apple TV. There's no TV element for the Nexus 7. It's something that's really bothered me where I'm sitting in front of the TV and I want to either control something, like I can control my Apple TV and find stuff to watch or I can send stuff over using AirPlay, which I do a lot and a surprising amount. I was sad that I realized that the iPad Mini has obviated the need for the Nexus 7 for me. You're saying that agnostic of a price tag though. I say in my review, I don't think they're in the same price group at all. I think there's $200 and $329 is a big difference. On the other hand, if I needed a seven-inch tablet, if I felt like that was the tablet the size I wanted, I would strongly consider trying to save up the extra $130 because it's the difference between a really, really great, well-established, well-fed tablet ecosystem and one that is extremely lacking, I think, still. I'll say that on the seven-inch, you can get away with some apps that are made for phones and they're okay. You go up any higher than that and it's not good. There's also just not a lot of apps that are taking advantage of that form factor. On the other hand, the iPad has incredible apps. To me, it's like we're watching the clip from the review right now and it just showed Garage Band. Using Garage Band on a tablet, every time I do it, it still just blows my mind on the iPad. It's great on the iPad Mini too. It's crazy. It's like a really- There's just nothing like it on Android. It's a really- I asked the Android guys about it, about why they didn't have a compelling app like that or there's a lot of compelling apps they could have, they don't have. I'll give you a great example. I was using an Android tablet. It's a larger Android tablet. I downloaded an app. It's the game Another World. You know the game Another World? It's the old Amiga game. I think it was originally for the Amiga. Anyhow, I was like, oh, this would be cool to play on a tablet. This is great because it's not like super high action, but it's like sort of it would be a good- Anyhow, I loaded it up on this tablet and it is literally like a box on the screen. I'm not even kidding. It's like not formatted for- It's just like that's all over Android still. Not even that you don't have apps that are made for the tablet. You don't even have apps that will scale up properly in some places. That's the Achilles heel in tablets right now. Talk about the screen on the mini because that's- I have one coming tomorrow. I broke down. Me too. Yeah. The screen is- This is what I'll say. If you've seen retina displays, you're going to look at it and say, this disappoints me. If you have been using a Nexus 7 or a Kindle Fire 8G, you're going to say, yeah, there's a noticeable difference. I've been reading with it every night since I started reviewing it and it really doesn't bother me. It's clearly a lower resolution display. That's a trade-off you make. It's one of very few trade-offs you make. I don't think that it's- At the end of the day, it is what it is. It's a low resolution display. If I thought that the only deciding factor was how high resolution a display is, I would tell you the Nook HD is the best seven-inch tablet on the market. I think we know that isn't true. Yeah. I'm going to ask you a- Yeah, it's noticeable. Yeah, go ahead. Kindle Paperwhite or iPad Mini? For me, it's iPad Mini because I actually prefer the complete uniformity of an LCD display for reading. My eyes have now, for whatever reason, seem to have adjusted to that and I prefer it when I read. Additionally, it's an iPad. This is like you don't need the 10-inch iPad. That's what's so compelling about this. To me, it's like I have a 13-inch MacBook Air. I have a Galaxy Nexus as the phone I've been using. I have an iPad, but the iPad feels big and bulky. I don't like traveling with it because it's so huge. That's why I've actually been really enjoying the Nexus 7 is that it feels like the right in between size. What's so interesting to me and what's so exciting to me is that now that in between size is occupied not by a tablet that I wish had X, Y, and Z, but a tablet that has all of the things that I want a tablet to have. The one thing that's missing is I wish I had native Gmail and native Chrome. Do you have the Gmail app? It's pretty good. It's okay. It's actually quite terrible. It's not okay. No, no, no. It's bad. Let me, I'm sorry. I'm going to go on record. The Gmail app for iOS, it is garbage. Anybody who thinks it's good. I just said it's okay, but I take that back because it isn't okay. It's garbage. I'd rather use the native mail. You are crazy. No, I'm completely disagree. I completely agree with you. No, it's bad. It's garbage. You guys are high and drunk. I mean, you're living in a- I use it. It's better. It's better than using mail. It's better than what? Than nothing? It's way better than native mail. It's better than the iOS mail. I guess if I were starving, if I were a starving man and you came and you said, well, here's a rotten piece of fruit, I would eat it. I would eat it because I would be better than dying of starvation, but I certainly wouldn't enjoy it. No, it's better than mail. You are crazy. What? It's not better than mail. Dude, are you kidding me? It's better for search. That's the only thing that's good. The keyboard pops up and it's all rickety and weird when you start typing. I disagree. I actually think it's a really bad. It's got like some, it's like trying to like HTML5 up my contacts. Seriously, I think you're tripping. Josh, did you say the keyboard is rickety? The keyboard is- It's rickety. It feels like it's like, it doesn't think where you're typing, it stops and then it goes, and it like puts your, I'm sorry. You know the truth. Search your heart. No, there's no way. You know what I think? I think the Nexus 4 and iPad mini is like the best combination in the world because I just want the Nexus 4 for email and then this and then the iPad for everything else. This is what I'm saying to you. Listen to me. This is what I'm saying. It now is the perfect, it's like I'm not going to get an iPod touch and I want to have an iPad. Okay. I want to have a tablet. I mean, I'm not going to get an iPod touch and I want to have a tablet. I want the tablet to do everything I want a tablet to do. I don't want a big bulky tablet. I don't want to have basically another computer with me. And so now it's like you don't need an iPod touch or an iPhone if you've got the iPad mini. So if you have an Android phone, get an iPad mini and then it's like you want to have all those iOS apps, boom, you have access to them because the vast majority of the ones you're going to use are for iPad anyhow. And then you've got your computer. This is me at least. And the phone of choice that is good for me, like getting work done. And I feel like it's a perfect combination because I don't want to work necessarily on my, this is not, by the way, this is not for people who are like, I'm replacing my computer with my tablet. Okay. I don't think it's that kind of tablet. I think this is a tablet you have in addition to a computer. I don't think it's a tablet you have as your only computing device. I don't think any tablet is that. No. I mean, some people get the iPad, the third gen or the fourth gen, it's got a super high res display. It's fast. It like can do all the basic things you need to do. Email, you know, web browsing, you can manage photos on it, blah, blah, blah, whatever people do with their computers. You chat with people on it. Or so I'm told you Twitter, you know, that's something that kids are doing. So I think this is actually the most interesting piece of where Apple's ended up with tablets is they are now, they're all over the, they were all over the laptop replacement game, which is what Microsoft is trying to do. But what's different is Microsoft is saying is we're going to reinvent laptops and the Surface is very much, particularly Surface Pro, a reinvented laptop. It's a Windows 8 PC that happens to have a weird form factor. And then the RT thing has to grow into this, there's a breed of its own and it is, it's infant. It has to get there. Google has basically been putting out these like consumption devices, these reading devices. I think that's very much what the Nexus 7 is to me. It has this great potential to do more, to take over some of those laptop roles. But really what it's good for is like reading a bunch of stuff. And Apple's now moved the iPad into that game as well. So they're now covered the, do you want a new PC? Could you get an iPad instead? Which I think a lot of people are actually still interested in. Or do you want a tablet in addition to your PC and you want something inexpensive that can do a bunch of cool stuff. And they're definitely like moving into that game. And that's like, that's playing both sides of this coin of what tablets are going to be. Now, I'm very like disappointed it doesn't have a higher resolution display, but I just don't know if people are going to care. That to me is the thing. It's not usable at this point too. I think the super high res display is not, I mean, it would be awesome if it had it. And no one's denying that. It's not a knock. I mean, it's not not a knock because it is a knock. Like I knock it. You know, like I knock the display for not having it. Say knock again. It's knocked. It got knocked. There's no question. But it's also like you have to balance that, you know, with the price, with the size, with the way it's built, with all the other stuff it does, with, you know, how good the speakers sound and how good it is at running all those apps and how good it is at, you know, connecting to your Apple TV or for that matter, lots of other things that it can connect to. Right. So here's this goes right into now the laptop. Because I have had this 13 inch retina display laptop and I'm back to my 15 inch pro, which has the higher resolution screen. And I don't miss it at all. Like I don't I don't think, man, I wish I was looking at retina display, whereas when I go and look at like an older iPhone or older iPad, we have an iPad 2 here. I'm like, this is bad. I don't want to. Well, I think and I think I think there's a I think it's because you're dealing with an economy of space and you need clarity in that space. I mean, I think with an iPhone in particular, with phones, I think that we really hit a place honestly, I don't have a problem with the current resolution of devices. If this was the next two or three generations of 1280 displays or whatever the iPhone has 1136 by 9,640, whatever the hell the thing is. I would be fine. I'm fine with that because I think it's we reach a threshold where like I really can't perceive pixels. I have to really work hard. And like it to me, it's like showing enough content, enough data at once, like on a screen of that size. I think the iPad, I actually thought that I mean, I think the retina display looks amazing. Do I think it needs it to be operational to function the way I want it to function? I mean, I think the 1366 by 768 Nexus 7 looks really good, too. It's lower pixel density than the retina display. This is I think any lower than what the iPad Mini is doing at that screen size. I think that screen, that resolution at the iPad 2 screen size now seems like really bad to me. Right. Like it seems wow, like this is a really kind of noticeable difference. I think with a look, you save a little bit in pixel density when you go smaller. It helps. I think the next generation is obviously going to be higher res. If it's not, it'll just seem silly. But I don't think for most consumers and not for me, I mean, look, I'm a guy who has to review this stuff for a living, who really cares. And using it day in, day out, yes, it was noticeable. But it was also like, man, this thing's awesome. In all honesty, it's like the right size. It just felt really portable. I found myself wanting to have it around. I would keep it next to my computer. I'd take it downstairs. When I went down or if I was going out, I would grab it and throw it in my bag. And it felt like this thing that was like a companion. It was like a companion device, like my phone does, but a different kind of companion device. It's like, oh, I need to go a little bit. I need to get into a larger environment. I need to do something that's a little bit more hands-on here. Or I want to do something that's a little more of a lean back experience. It was great. I was playing Letterpress on it with Laura and playing Punch Quest, which is a game that I, because I haven't been using iOS devices that often lately, I didn't even know it existed. I'm like, oh, man, Punch Quest. I'm all over this thing. And then I found out that it's not making any money. And I felt very depressed. And I had no idea it had in-app purchases. That's news to me. Yeah, that's right. Wow. So that goes right. So this all goes into the laptop. Because I think it's very clear that these smaller devices, they benefit greatly from the higher resolution screens. And it's very interesting to hear you say that using one that doesn't have one is, there's a balance to portability and kind of the feel to it that makes up for the screen. Because what I felt from the laptop, which is a very nice laptop, but tremendously expensive, $1,700 for this laptop with a retina display, is that it's slow. And the overall utility I get from that screen is not there. Because I'm used to working on a laptop. And so working on a display that only gives you a usable, effective resolution of 1280 by 800 is not useful. You're used to a 15-inch laptop, right? Yeah, a 15-inch laptop with a high-res display. But MacBook Airs have 1440 by 900. Like Josh, would you settle for less space than your Air at a higher resolution? No. No. I don't think most people want to make that trade-off. I'm going to change mine to 1280 by 800 right now, and we're going to see how it goes. It's teeny tiny. And what's very strange to me is that the processor in the Pro doesn't do as good a job of driving that display as the processor in what little time we've seen with the Nexus 10, which has the same resolution display, as the processor in the iPad, which has a slightly lower resolution display but is still very high. And it's curious to me that the Intel side of the, the x86 side of the game, can't do what ARM is doing to drive these insanely high-resolution displays. I mean, you're never going to win in a laptop review or any device review if you ship us a device and I open Chrome and I try to scroll to Verge and it stutters. That's the beginning of the downward spiral. I mean, I personally think, I guess I don't know. I mean, for a laptop, I just don't sense, I don't get a sense when I look at my laptop display that I need more pixels to show things smoother. What I actually want is more room for things. Yeah. And Apple has gone at the retina display with our first job is to make things look smoother. And then our second job is if you want it, and I think it puts a real strain on the CPU to do it, is to show, is to actually utilize more pixels. Yeah. For stuff. You can't run it at one to one. So you can't run it at 2560 by 1600. Because my impression is, and this is actually my impression of, and I think there's some technical data to back this up, that one of the reasons that the iPad went to double or quadruple the pixels is that it is a less processor intensive scale up to do a double. To double it instead of doing, it's a third bigger or whatever. I think that requires more computational power. And I think that on the laptop, you're getting the, and by the way, I'm not an expert, but that's my understanding having read a few articles on it. And the laptop, I think it's just trying to push a lot more pixels if you go to that mode, which is the mode that I want where it's like, I can see more stuff on screen. Like I want to see more lines of email. I want to see an extra row of icons. I want to see extra row of apps. Look at that. Look what we got for you here. Check this out. I got an idea. Why don't you get me a notification that doesn't pop up over my back button? How about that? You know what? That might be a good transition to some of the other big news that happened this week. Oh God. I got to look, I got to review to finish. We got to wrap this up. Okay. I mean, not right now. What's the other news you want to talk about? We could briefly go through this. In like 15 minutes. All right. 15 minutes. We want to talk about Scott Forstall. Is anyone interested? Yes. All right. Yes. All right. Neil, I know you had a lot to say about this. If you're just catching up, Scott Forstall, the iOS head is gone. It looks like he was forced out more or less. He's not gone. He's on a one-year advisory leave with $40 million and no one wants to hear what he says. You make it sound like he just like disappeared. He up and left. There's been a lot of reporting out about this now from New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and then we've done a little bit as well. And obviously we hear about what's happening. It really sounds like the reason that he left was not maps alone. The reason that Scott Forstall was made to leave was that he refused to sign the letter that Apple was made to put out apologizing for how bad maps in iOS 6 were. He demanded or he refused basically, vociferously refused to sign this letter and instead demanded that Tim Cook do it. And I think that was the opening for him to leave. But there was a lot of, you know, he was a divisive figure. I think he was, they found a way, a reason to pull the trigger and sort of- Yeah, it's just a catalyst, not a cause. I think that was a kind of well-known or well-rumored fact that he could be a- You know, I think he was an acolyte of Jobs. I think that you guys can hear me okay, right? Yes. Yep. And I think that he maybe copied some of his management style. But you know, it takes a really specific, special kind of person to take Jobs' management style and make it work. And I think that it can rub, you know, as I've tried many, many times at the verge, I've cried when I couldn't get my way. I've screamed at people for being shitheads. And then the next day complimented them on being geniuses. And it has not gone that well. It has not gone that well. You got to take a very specific kind of guy. And I think if you're not that guy, it's going to be, it's a tough, kind of a tough gig. What I want to talk about though is this Johnny Ive thing, which is they had a bunch of shuffles. But the most interesting one is that they said they were putting Johnny Ive in charge of the human interface design. And to me, and I don't know if this is just a, I don't know if it's a role that's just like he has a name and he's going to have a bunch of other engineers that are going to work under him or how this is going to work. But what I will say is I think that Johnny Ive has a very different design sensibility than Scott Forrestal had. Right. I mean, it's on the record talk, minimalism versus scheme morphic design. Yeah. And I think that the, and I think when you see what some designers have done, some developers have done in iOS with some of the really minimal, beautiful design you can do when you've got a screen like that and a platform like that, and you can kind of do whatever you want. Like it kind of excites me to think of Johnny Ive looking at the software and going like, what can we, how can we fix this? Or how can we alter this? How can we improve this? Because I mean, no matter what you think about Apple, I mean, I don't know, I don't care who you are or where you came from or what your name is or what color your hair is, or if you like to wear flip flops or if you wear sneakers. You can't deny that Johnny Ive's hardware design, his design sensibility about hardware is incredible. It's unmatched, I would say, in the industry. And so that tells me that he has some pretty good ideas about how to make things beautiful and make them function well. Well, at least for industrial design. I mean, that doesn't necessarily apply to you. But that's, I feel like there's this idea that like, oh, that's just hardware design and somehow that wouldn't apply. There'd be no, there'd be no application of that in software. And I think like, look, you either know if something looks like crap or it doesn't. I think he'd at least be able to say, if like, for all we know Scott Forsall, every time Johnny Ive got in the room and tried to make a comment about a knob or something, you know, or like a leather stitch, Scott Forsall was like, get, get out of here. This is my domain. You have no right to be here. You know, I mean, we don't know. We really don't know. Right. But and so like, and it's very possible Johnny Ive may be like, yeah, this is what I've always wanted to do is, you know, let's take it. Let's get rid of this brushed, this brushed metal slider and turn it into like a flat, minimal design, designy looking. I don't know. I'm just saying I'm excited about the possibility. The question is, when do we start seeing that? Like, is it going to be? Immediately. The next version of iOS will probably be completely revamped. 6.1 will probably look completely different. How amazing would it be at 6.01? Did it look completely different? It's actually just Android. That's great. Well, I was going to say, like, I wouldn't be surprised if we see some Android engineers and designers get poached here. Yeah. Because I don't know. I look at Android and I think like, this is where Apple should be on some of this stuff. I actually look at Windows phone and think this is where Apple should be on some of this stuff, you know, where it's like, it's high minded design, but it's also functional. I think that the gesture stuff that, I mean, you guys haven't seen it yet, but the stuff in the camera and the new version of Android is like, yeah, how could it have possibly taken this long for someone to come up with this concept? The menu is wherever you put your thumb and you can access it all with a thumb and you don't have to tap, tap and close a bunch of like settings windows. You saw the hint of that when the iPad originally came out, where you put your finger down, you get a small menu system and they never went anywhere with it and then Android kind of realized it with... Oh, that's right. They had the contextual menus. I remember talking about it. We were like, this is a step in the right direction. It never happened. Nothing ever materialized from it beyond that. Yeah. But that was before Android had any unified vision. That was pre-Android actually looking good and desirable. Like a year and a half ago. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. He's right though. The Galaxy Nexus was a turning point. I actually said that in my feature, right? It was a turning point for them. This is when Matias Duarte actually stepped in there and said, we need to do better software design. I mean, he has a lot to do with hardware, but I think that his influence has been big on the overall look and feel. And so I think that... Anyhow, but no, you're right. It is a year and a half. I mean, it was a year ago, really. When did ICS come out? Oh, Jesus. And this is, by the way, the most frustrating thing about Android is ICS is a really beautiful, elegant operating system. Jelly Bean improved upon it and the newer version is going to improve upon that and no devices have it. Yeah. It's the best thing I've ever experienced. Laura has an HTC phone she's been using. I keep telling her about the things in ICS or in Jelly Bean that she would like better than what she has to deal with. And what does it matter? You can't get... And I think Android... I think, by the way, this LTE thing, not to go back to Android, but this thing with LTE and not being able to get a device on the fastest networks in America, a device that's competitive with the iPhone or the Lumia or the HTC, the 8X, I think says something very very worrisome and troubling about Android. And I think that you can have the most... I made a joke about Virgin America becoming the Betamax of airlines because it's like they do it really good but nobody flies them. But I think that Android is in danger of being the Betamax in the way that webOS was at one point and it was the beta of smartphone OSes. You've got great gestures and really good design but you couldn't pull it off for one reason or another. And now Android is like, who cares? When you have touchwiz on your device, who cares how good your stuff is? It's operating system versus platform. The underlying Android is going to be there, going to be everywhere. And they can try to influence with these flagship design elements but they're always the merit of being open platform. That's what's kind of annoying is that we talked to Andy Rubin, we talked to Matthias and they were like, we're setting the table here for our partners. We're showing what can be done. And it's like, you're showing what can be done if your partners give a crap. But they don't. They really don't. They would prefer to get rid of your stuff altogether and just have a Samsung world. And I think that's actually really important. We are now at an inflection point, I think particularly for HTC, where it's maybe not profitable for them to try and compete with Samsung to be the Android vendor and to spend the money on Drew Bamford and skinning Android in the sense. And it might be better for them to make Windows phones and to take the money from Microsoft. It's clearly coming their way. And try to build that ecosystem instead because they'll have more ownership and more control and more kind of direct support from their software vendor. I think it's that way for a lot of companies now because of how dominant Samsung is. But I think it's particularly HTC, which has been losing money over and over and over again every quarter trying to compete with Samsung. And they can't find a formula to be successful. I guess it just proves at the end of the day that people don't really care that much about operating systems. People aren't buying phones because they think that somebody had a really well thought out way to do something in the OS. They're buying phones because they want Instagram. The Samsung point is super interesting because I remember I think it was the Windows phone event. They're playing at the 8X, they're playing at the Lumia 920. Samsung was there without being there. They didn't even show a picture of the Ativ. Bomber says, we don't have it, but it's obviously going to be a big deal. Samsung is big enough that they can be at Microsoft and be bigger than Microsoft at their own game. They're launching a Windows device without Microsoft promoting it. The two big brands, Nokia and HTC, they're the Halo devices, the flagship devices. Microsoft enforced these colors on them. They all have to be bright yellow and blue and purple or whatever. I think they look great. The Ativ is like, here's a piece of Samsung junk. It's great plastic. It's very much like, here's what's in it. I only say that because the focus was such a bad phone. It feels like Samsung is doing the same thing to Microsoft again, where it's like we're capable of producing this. Here you go. Here's what your platform gets. I know you've been working with HTC and Nokia on these colorful polycarbonate shells and making the hardware stand out, but here's the Ativ S, and it's great plastic. That's what Samsung has become, I think. They're bigger than Android in a very important way. They're definitely bigger than Windows phone and Microsoft in a way that I think opens the door for Nokia and HTC. We always ask why Nokia didn't pick Android and put Android on the amazing hardware they were able to produce. I think that's why. I don't think they saw a world in which they wanted to go head to head against Samsung and Samsung's ability and willingness to produce things to carrier spec. I think Nokia wanted to produce its own products. This is the inflection point, I think, for Android and for Windows phone and Windows phone ecosystem to say, here's an Exes 4. We can't get it on carriers. Here's what our partners have to do. These are the biggest brands in the world have to do. They have to put a Verizon logo on the home button for the Galaxy Note 2 because that's what Verizon wants and Samsung's willing to do it. All these other vendors have to decide what kind of company they want to be. It's a major inflection point. Does Android just become Samsung's platform and then everybody else goes and competes on Windows Phone 8? Because it seems like, to me, it's going to be really hard to compete on Windows Phone 8 because all you can do is differentiate hardware. The software is all the same. I don't think we know because no one's buying the phones. I don't think we know what competition looks like because you have to have a base of people that are going out and having to choose. What's happening is instead of choosing one of those Windows Phone devices, they're choosing Android or iOS most of the time. We know exactly what Microsoft wants it to look like. They want it to look like the PC market looked for years and years. They put out the software, the vendors buy it, they add some crapware, they ship their devices and buy it. That made Microsoft money hand over fist and they dominated the market. The difference is that unlike on PCs, they're not reskinning or customizing or adding weird menus and stuff like this. It's like they're adding software, you can open it or not. You can also uninstall. One of the things that's amazing about the Lumia when I first got it out of the box is, yeah, there's a bunch of crap on here for that 18 people on, I'm just going to uninstall it. You can't do that on the Samsung phone, on the Android device. I don't think users care. They don't really care. They care about apps. They care about whether it has LTE. Those are the things that are important to people. I think it's sad. Where is all of this great design at Android going? When you were there, did you ask them about Motorola? Do they even want to talk about it? They didn't really want to talk about it. I made jokes about Motorola, but it was all very like, I was like, well, you got Motorola and everybody would laugh and then they went saying, you know what I mean? It was the same thing about the Q. Every time I try to bring up the Q, it was like an uncomfortable few seconds and then somebody would change the topic. What are they going to do with Motorola? I don't know. Verizon isn't going to let them do what they want with Motorola. That's clear. They just released a bunch of new Motorola phones with horrible bloatware, gross graphics and disgusting screens. It's also clear that Google itself can't get enough leverage in this relationship either, which is bizarre to me. I mean, Verizon is driving everything. Verizon Samsung could not care any less about Windows phone. The ideal situation would be, I think the ideal situation is this. AT&T has had this head start with Apple and the iPhone. I think they continue to lean on that for their dominance in the market. Verizon really hit success with modern smartphones when it started doing droids. They've leaned into that for success. Now they have droids and iPhones, so that's great. What we need is better competition. What we need is an alternative. I mean, T-Mobile actually has the right idea. They're selling the Nexus 4. It's an unlocked device on their presumably higher speed HSPA network, but they're not competing here on LT. If I thought T-Mobile was a viable alternative to an LTE device on AT&T or Verizon, I would absolutely go get one. My T-Mobile download speeds in my house are slower than HSPA on AT&T. That doesn't help me. It doesn't help a lot of people. We need a third open LTE network that covers all of America. Get on that world. Get on that capitalist. We know how you love open things. What we actually need is for somebody to regulate the hell out of this and just say, like- Socialists. People are going to make devices. You're going to sell your bandwidth and your services. That's that. I have to say it was cool to see that. Was it AT&T and T-Mobile that were sharing networks in New York? Yeah, for Sandy because they had the GSMA, HSPA plus standards. I just thought that was cool. They're going to stop and go back to brutally hating each other, but I thought it was cool. They don't hate each other. They wanted to love each other. Well, they wanted to love each other. Now they're just jilted. I think we need to wrap up because I really have to get to writing. You got business. Yeah, we need to- Yeah, I got business to take care of. Any first birthday reminisces or wishes we want to talk about? I think one of our first reviews ever was the- Let's save our birthday party for next week when Paul's around. Yeah, that's a good idea. Paul's out shooting a feature stuff. We'll have a little birthday party next week and we can have Paul talk about his six months off the internet. That's right. His six months off the internet was just last week. I think it's November 1st actually. I think it's today. Oh, was it? I think so. Interesting. Yeah, I think it was. Is he last May 1st? You're right. Yes. Maybe he was just telling me about it last week. Yeah. Interesting. All right. I'm hanging up forever. Are you going to take- I should wrap up. I'm going to take us home. That's the verge cast for this week. The hurricane cast. Hurricast, birthcast, quasi birthcast. Anyhow, of course, you can get in touch with us if you want. You can email us at vergecast at theverge.com. You can leave a comment on the post when it goes up. We love your comments. They're always so pleasant. You can also find us on Twitter. The Verge is at verge. I'm Joshua Dopolski, Neelai is Reckless, Ross is Odorosco, no E on the end. David Pierce is Pierce David, which no one will ever be able to explain to me. That's fine. That's the show for this week. We'll be back next week. I guess Paul will be on and we're going to actually really talk about our first year in existence. Until then, if I were you, I would not leave any of your doors or windows unlocked this weekend because it could cause horrible danger to your family. Because Josh will find you and kill you. I don't even know. Now I'm just threatening people. As always, I wish you and your family the very best this weekend. Wow. That was also terrifying. I know. Rock and roll. Yeah, I think we're done. Yes, Paul. Thanks for having me.