 Hey, and welcome to The Verge Live at CES. I'm Josh Stapolsky, of course. I'm here with Dieter Bohn. Hello, hello. Say hello. How's it going? And we've just finished LG's exciting, sexually exciting press event. Actually, not that exciting. It depends on how much you want to know about washers and refrigerators. Yeah. A lot of smart... It's going to be exciting, honestly. A lot of smart stuff, but we did... I think most importantly, what just happened is WebOS, the ill-fated palm operating system... Ill-fated is a very nice way to put that. Yeah, ill. I mean, it's sick. Ill. It's dying. Yeah. But now it's alive again. It's ill. That's what we're here to talk about. The rebirth of WebOS. All right, so Dieter, should we talk about the announcements? You just want to talk about WebOS for a second. Should we just get into it? So LG announced a bunch of WebOS TVs at varying sizes. They say that... 56% of their TVs next year will be running WebOS. 56? Yeah, it's a very exact number. I thought the number was 70. No, they expect that 70% of their total sales will consist of WebOS, and 56% is of the number of TVs they offer. Right. So more than half the televisions that LG ships in this calendar year will be WebOS. Yeah, that means that they sell at least 50 different models, probably 100, probably more. Because to get to 56 in that round number, never mind. I don't know the numbers, but you do know. They're running as a native operating system, WebOS, which has gone through a lot of permutations. And you have kind of the inside story on the design of this new version of WebOS. Yeah. Yeah, just run through the story that you put up just like an hour ago. Yeah, so yesterday we went and we spoke to Itay Von Schack and Colin Zhao, I'm murdering Colin's last name, who are the design guys behind WebOS on the TV. They came over from HP after LG bought the company. And we walked through what the thinking was behind why WebOS looks the way it does, why it doesn't look exactly like WebOS on a tablet, because trying to manage cards, the old school cards on a tablet, would be a nightmare. Right. And they redid everything and they're using this metaphor of a line. Right. And so what are the benefits here? Why not just use an off-the-shelf, why not just build their own, grab Linux, do their own distro or whatever, like everybody else, or just use Android as the base? I don't know if I fully understand why it wouldn't have been easier to just use Android as opposed to WebOS, aside from the fact that they bought it. Well, Web apps don't perform very well on Android at all. And they perform pretty good on WebOS if you're optimizing it. And a lot of smart TV apps are just built in HTML. Right. Because one, they're already building it for the Web, they're building it because it's cross-platform so they can get it to run on all these other smart TV platforms and all these insane set-top boxes and Blu-ray players and everything else that's out there. So if everybody's already making HTML Web apps for their content stuff, why not build a platform that's really good at displaying that stuff and running that stuff? I guess that makes sense. We were actually, last time we were talking about the TV issue, the situation, the fact that everything is different, every app is different. And my impression is that this might actually lead to some more consistency, at least on LG television. It's supposed to. They're going to have an SDK and they're going to release it and they've got UI guidelines for how it's supposed to work. And the UI guidelines basically are don't ever leave TV. TV is like the thing you're watching and when you go do something like hit the home button or go to the menu on an app or whatever, that pops up as an overlay over what you're looking at so you don't lose your place. The Netflix app they show is not an overlay. It's like a full-screen experience. It's a full-screen thing. Well, forget all that. So that whole design guideline thing is just thrown out. I think part of the problem is are individual companies still developing these apps or are they being developed in-house at LG? I think it's a problem with individual companies. I almost said HP, by the way. Yeah, well. Should we talk a little bit about the webOS story? I feel like everybody knows. It's not really that necessary. But yesterday I said I was reading my palm pre-review that I did on Engadget, which was a 10,000 word review. How long was your... You did the pre-review, right? I was close to 10,000. Although, I wasn't... So back then, whenever there was a phone embargo, there was the real embargo, and then there was the embargo whenever everybody actually went because a publication would go really because they were a newspaper and they thought that was okay. Let's just say it was the Wall Street Journal. In the older days of when blogs got really no respect whatsoever, you would be given a review embargo that wasn't real, and then you'd be scrambling and finishing it for the next morning and Walt's review would go up and people would be like, what's happening? Why is this happening to me? We had very different reviews, by the way. You needed to be experiential to talk to a bunch of people, and I needed to be comprehensive to satisfy the insatiable need for every last freaking detail possible. You don't think my 10,000 words covered every last detail? I think you spent more time on the classic. I had a giant bullet list of how every single gesture worked and the thinking behind it. I had to go through all that. Are we competing now? I'm saying yours was better. No, I don't think it was better. They were different. It's funny. I mean qualitatively better, yes, but of course also very different. In this story behind the WebOS TV post, there's a narrative arc because WebOS launched here at CES and it was five years ago. In my first draft, it went live. Five years, almost to the day. Yeah, my first one I had four, it was January. Wait, it was to the day. Was it to the day? I think it was January 6th. Am I crazy? This is some eerie stuff, people. If you're a huge nerd, this is really eerie. Super huge nerd. Right now, January 8th. Oh, it was the 8th. I forgot it. Not that eerie. Never mind. Yep, not so cool. Anyhow, it was a huge deal, CES. I remember They launched, they couldn't get on Verizon, they had to go sprint, they'd launched late. Which by the way, LG just did a sprint exclusive launch. Well, sort of. They're going to be on T-Mobile in 18T2 for the G Flex. Yeah. But it's pretty well established in my opinion that if you launch with Sprint, goodbye. The product is dead. Yeah. Like you're screwed. It's not happening. I mean, it's the smallest. Is it smaller than T-Mobile? No. Subscriber base? Close. Can we get a fact check on subscriber base? Ross, let me know. Anyhow, they launched WebOS on the pre. Palm launched WebOS on the pre. This was like their, this was the if they don't do this, they're screwed. They're gone. They were already kind of late and like we were waiting and waiting and waiting and nobody expected what they did. Nobody expected it to be changed. It was incredible. In my opinion, it's still, first off, one of the greatest, first off, one of the greatest CES demos of all time in my opinion. Yeah. But in terms of, I mean, in really skillfully put together and really thoughtfully done, a real moment for me, that sounds so insane. A real moment for me like having been a Palm fan boy and really wanting to see them succeed, seeing them pull off what they pulled off at CES. Of course, it was all smoke and mirrors because the product was not done at all. They were six months away from shipping. Yeah. And what they showed to this day I think is still incredibly advanced. Yeah. The best part about it, I was talking about this last night, the syncing was a huge deal. They showed, by the way, remember when syncing was a thing and everybody was like, how am I going to sync this with iTunes? They showed how you can sync the pre, you could sync the pre with, I think how we're, we're supposed to be talking about WebOS on television and we're just being nostalgic about WebOS on phones, but how you could sync with iTunes was a huge deal and then Apple killed it basically. But anyhow, it was five years ago, almost to the day. Yeah. They did that at CES and since then WebOS has just been on a, it's just been nose diving. Well, I mean, yeah, they had a little moment and then it was, they couldn't, they couldn't get support from carriers in the US and they needed it. They kept on launching stuff late, the performance wasn't very good. They ran out of money basically and a bunch of companies were like, we're going to buy them, we're going to buy them for IP, we're going to buy them for this. HP bought them and then HP CEO got caught in a sex scandal and they got a new CEO who didn't believe in them. That's right. And he set the thing on fire. The Leo Apotheker, better known as the Apothecarylipse, Apothicalypse. Is that what it does? It's known as the Apothicalypse. Really? People within both the WebOS division, Palm division and within HP at large had no idea it was coming. He was like a spreadsheet. Everybody was just like, boom. He was a businessman. Yeah. He didn't have the passion. Yeah. He was a passionless bastard from hell. Yeah. Is that cool to say? That's probably liable. That's probably liable. He got sued by his people. That's all right. Does he have people? He got a golden parachute and got out. Yeah. Now Meg Whitman is trying to pick up the pieces. Meg Whitman I love. She's great, wonderful, wonderful lady. Anyhow- They open Sarset and then LG buys the rest of it. This was February last year LG bought like a bunch of WebOS, HP kept some. It was weird. They bought them and we were like, well, guys, why do you need WebOS to make smart TVs? They had no answer for us then. We have the answer now and the answer is HTML apps run really well on it. Two, and I think this is the more important thing, they managed to pick up some really good designers. I think the design of this is probably my favorite smart TV interface that I've seen. That's not really saying much, but it's pretty good with one major exception. What? Beanbird. What? Beanbird. You love Beanbird. I kind of like Beanbird. Can you explain Beanbird? Beanbird is a cartoon bird that's shaped like a bee bean and it helps you get through the setup process. There he is. He's protesting that you didn't set up your Wi-Fi right there. He's like, you should really do it. Beanbird's pretty cute. Yeah, I know, right? Come on. It's an easy target though is the thing. People are going to be making fun of it, but he's just there to help you set up your TV. Why don't they just call him like the WebOS bird or something or like birdie? Because he looks like a bean. Yeah, but they actually referred him as Beanbird. I just like being elicit lots of things that you don't want to hug. Is the bean non-hugging items associated with beans? Yeah. That's all I'm saying. The problem I'm trying to solve is nobody ever sets up their smart TVs and then your smart TV sucks if you don't set it up. This is great. Look at that shot. Beanbird doesn't have wings or arms. Yeah, he's magical. I feel like it's a sad situation for him. Oh, you think that he's... Well, I feel like it would be better to have wings or arms. First off, if you're a bird, hard to fly without wings. No arms, hard to log on to your WebOS TV and check out the new House of Cards season two. That's right. By the way, the trailer for season two is available on The Verge right now. You can check it out. Reed Hastings was on the stage. Reed Hastings. This is really interesting. Reed Hastings got on stage at the LG event and was basically like, LG's awesome. This is the problem, by the way. You have to buy an LG television. Yeah. LG's not really known for having the greatest television. They make fine televisions. Everybody makes okay televisions. When you think about the best television, you're like, oh, that's Panasonic or Sony or Pioneer. The fundamental problem is when you go to buy a television, are you going to get the best television in terms of picture quality for the money that you're going to spend or do you want to get the WebOS interface? I'm thinking you want to get the best picture quality for the money because you know what? I'll just go buy a Roku. I'll just go buy an Xbox one. I'll just go buy a whatever. Their interface is really awesome, but I just bought a Roku. I don't replace my TVs that often. The Roku does what they're doing in the sense that it's a cohesive, sort of a co... Actually, I will say this. If they could get the UI completely in sync, completely following guidelines, I think that would be a really big deal. Do they have an IR blaster solution with these guys? The LG Motion Remote can work as a universal remote. They're not trying to be super comprehensive and cover everything, but they say that they're going to... They'll support the big stuff that you care about. They'll support your DVD player, Blu-ray player, your Xbox, your cable box. The cable support is just... Yeah, I don't think it integrates with the guide, but I don't know the full details. We were talking mainly about the design, so it's possible. What's interesting is everything that you want to watch is just these little cards, these little vertical slashes of things. When you plug a new box into it, if you plug an Xbox One into it, it'll switch to it, and then it'll add a card, and it'll label it Xbox One because it can detect that it's an Xbox One that you've got. Right. So instead of toggling through your input button over and over and over again, you just go down to your card for that input. I will say that sounds kind of great, but one of the things that I liked about speaking of the Xbox One, and they don't have it quite right because there's things that you can't do, but it almost ingests the cable input into the interface of the Xbox One. Well, almost. Almost. But I'm saying that even if they offered that amount of functionality with this, it would be an improvement because it would take, again, that cohesive interface and make your cable box part of that interface. And it's still like you're bouncing between those things. I mean, it's less of a problem now, I think, for most people. Cable interfaces have gotten slightly better. I mean, I'll say this, Time Warner just refreshed their interface. Is it okay? I mean, comparatively to the previous Time Warner interface, it's like a heaven. It's like the most advanced- Instead of a punch in the face with a slap in the face. Yeah. It's like the most advanced UI ever compared to the last version of it. But I do think for most consumers, that's not that big of a concern, but I also think for most consumers, they're not aware of the options and how to access them on their televisions. And I don't know if having, making a better smart TV with a better interface necessarily helps them get there. Well, so here's the thing with what was possible for them is when you're dealing with TV and doing stuff, it's not a glass ceiling. It's like a steel reinforced concrete ceiling of what's possible and Microsoft hit it and couldn't break through. LG is not going to be able to break through that. LG can get where Microsoft could do that. There's no way that they could do that. You cannot get cable to give up their stuff and play all of their systems. And there's a phantom belief that Apple will get there, but thus far, they haven't been able to get there. They've been sitting there upside down strapped with a jackhammer for the past five years and we're still waiting to see. Right. Well, I mean, I think that's why we haven't seen any big... I mean, everybody claims this year is going to be the year of the Apple TV. I hope so. I think that actually explains a lot about why we haven't seen more action there and more motion. Yeah. So let's... We should talk about some of the other LG announcements which are... Why don't you go through the list? So they had the Lifeband Touch, which is LG's fitness tracker. It's a water... Of water resistance, whatever. It's got an OLED display. It does smartphone notifications, exercise goals. Proprietary LG tracking. Yeah, I think so. And then it hooks up with a little MP3 player that the earphones will monitor your heart rate through the earphones and it also checks your pulse and checks blood flow apparently. Right. So that's kind of cool and weird. But I mean, honestly, it's like they built it because they could. It's another... I think that's cool, but I think the biggest problem with these devices, particularly for an LG is it's proprietary. It's their... You got to buy into their software, their whole ecosystem and who is buying into LG's proprietary health ecosystem. I mean, that doesn't sound like... I mean, what we really need... No, I mean, I don't think most people are thinking about... I mean, you and I care a lot about a proprietary health ecosystem and eventually people will get to caring about that. But you walk into Best Buy, you're like, I want a fitness tracker. You're just gonna get one and so... Nobody walks into Best Buy and says, I want a fitness tracker. Really? I don't think so. Really? First off, Best Buy... I think... You mean Best Buy in America? Sure. In America, nobody walks into Best Buy and says, I want a fitness tracker. They're like, I want the biggest television you have for as cheap as humanly possible. A big gulp on the way out. And they leave with that and they've been upsold a $150 HDMI monster HDMI cable. That's the best buy experience, I think, for the vast majority of Americans at least. I don't think people go in and they're like, I need a fitness tracker. Which one should I get? What I do think they do is they go in and they say... I've heard about some people going in and saying, I've heard about this Fitbit thing. Right. Or then FuelBand. Yeah. Again, two proprietary closed systems where you can't get your data out. Right. It would just be nice if LG had gone, hey, we wanna partner with Fitbit or with Nike or someone... Not that Nike wants to partner with LG, but it does something where it's like, this is going to work with the rest of the stuff that you do. Right. I feel like they just made it because they could. It does smartphone notifications, so it's cool. It's a Samsung move. We can build this thing. It's not that hard. It's not gonna kill us. We might as well just do it. We'll sell a few and that'll be fine. That's called the... That is the Lifeband Touch. Lifeband Touch. Fitness tracker. You gotta put touch or something in it. You have to have a lowercase I or a touch in it. Well, I think it's camel cased. Oh, good. No, no, it's not. It's Lifeband and capital T Touch. What else? It's safe. What else? You know, from LG, the Flex is coming to the US. Bigger TV. Oh, yeah, the Flex. We talked about this already. The Flex is coming, starting with Sprint. So, great. We reviewed the Flex. Yes. We didn't like it that much. Not a big fan of the Flex. I've used the Flex. First off, it's gigantic. It is massive. There are enormous phones. Here it is. And then there are enormous phones that remind you that they're enormous all the time and this is the latter. And the curve, I don't get... I mean, the curve to me seems like the most superfluous, gimmicky thing. Yeah. I mean, it is not even... I was gonna say not even... Remember when there were a couple phones that had a 3D screen or a 3D camera? The curve is akin to that. And LG is like all over the gimmicks. They have the button on the back. Oh, they were... They've got this curved screen, which is meant to compete with Samsung's curved screen. And when I used it, I could not see the... I mean, I heard... There was this argument like, oh, it'll reduce glare. No, so they were defending it. They're talking about it in the keynote today. And it improves sound quality because the speaker's off the table. It allows you to hear better, hold better and view better. It improves grip because you can... I don't know. You don't have to hold it. Whatever. That's what they're saying, man. Yeah. Sorry, I was just watching that person step on the phone. Oh, right. I mean, we're sure it's made to do that. I mean, do we know for a fact that the phone is made to do that or are we just doing that? It's got the Wolverine plastic on the back. Yeah, I don't know. It's got a flexible battery. It's a flexible battery. It was a mistake. But I think... It's coming to Sprint, AT&T. But I don't know why you need a phone... It's like, hey, you know what? If you had not... If you had made the phone flat, it wouldn't have to flex when somebody stepped on it. What are they saying? It won't break? Is that why it's curved? They're saying... I mean, their selling point was, from what I understood, their selling point was it feels really great to hold. It curves your face. No. To me, it's like it curves away. I guess a phone... But a phone, you had to hold onto the curved part. That was the reason for the curve. Or this. Your face is... I mean, well, your face might be perfectly flat. My face is perfectly flat. It's like a two-dimensional object. Like a... You sprung out a max head. Can you even see my face right now? No. If you were to... If I... You can see it now. Oh, there you are. Right. And now you're back. And you're just nothing. Okay. Hey. Just like flat. Right. Oh, you know what we should mention? Yes. No. Well, actually, two things. One of them is going way back to the beginning. Lay it on me. Put it down. Throw it down. Visio said, we're not making 3D TVs anymore. 3D is... We said last year 3D is dead. And now they've admitted it. 3D is dead. Yeah. I mean, consumers don't care about 3D. They don't want to watch 3D in their homes. If you showed them a TV that had immaculate, perfect 3D... Something just happened behind us. Did... We don't know what it is. Did we get hit by... It may have been... Were we hit by something? Does anybody know what that was? Someone may have thrown a brick. Maybe someone threw a G Flex at us. It's possible. LG is retaliating for the comments we made about the G Flex. Seriously, what was that? We should find out. We'll figure it out. If this could... Last night I was like, I really want a backhoe to just come driving through the tent. And now you're going to get your wish. And now the backhoe is actually going to drive through the tent. It's going to be great. So this could be our last broadcast. Thanks for watching. We had a great time. We had a great time with you guys. Okay. Anyhow, where were we? Just talking about? Oh, just thank God that companies are beginning to give up on 3D. Oh yeah. Well, 3D, I mean, 3D is... I was going to say, if you were like, here's the TV. It looks beautiful, perfect, exactly normal, but you can switch it into 3D mode without glasses and it'll show you 3D and it will be perfect. There's no weird tearing or blurring or interlacing or whatever. Maybe, maybe somebody would use it. But you have to give them that experience. Yeah. I mean, what's the deal with ticket sales for 3D movies? How are they doing? Well, they do better, but it's because there's no other option. But I don't think they're doing as well as they were a couple of years ago. And they also cost more. So figuring out the numbers is really complicated. 3D was always a gimmick in my opinion. I mean, James Cameron will tell you that it's a life-changing experience. I have not seen Gravity in 3D and everybody says Gravity is the movie that he was made for. So I could be wrong. I didn't get a chance to see it. I'm very unhappy. I haven't seen it either. It's been ruined. We're the two people... I know. Hey, hey, hey. Spoiler alert. Ron dies. No, come on. Ron Weasley from Harry Potter. Ron Weasley from Harry Potter died because he has a Gravity. He's like, hey guys, did she get shot by an alien? Yeah. That's what would happen, right? Ron... Okay. I think we're nearly done talking about LG. Is there anything else to talk about with LG? No, I think that's fine. There's really nothing else? I mean, we have no idea if they're going to make a phone. And if you make a phone or tablet LG, please go back and use that Mochi UI that we wrote about last week. Because that's pretty sick. That's it. That's my open request. I haven't heard what you thought of it. The web OS stuff that you did? The lost web OS design. I think it's awesome. Yeah. Wait, can you use that UI somewhere? No. There are web OS fans currently theming the touchpad with it. They're like re-skinning the touchpad to look like it. It won't do all the crazy card stuff. Right. No, I mean the version of web OS... By the way, if you haven't seen this, go see it. Dieter did kind of like expose on the old... God, we're such losers. It's out of control. I know. I promised myself I'd stop talking about web OS. Home phones that were never made and web OS versions that never came to be. Well, the phones are whatever. The phones and tablets are completely whatever. The X convertible is okay. I blame HP for those designs. I think they're pretty bad. But the interface looks really awesome. And I wish it had existed. It's like the perfect middle ground between flat and skeuomorphic. And it's just really beautiful, very elegant. I mean, here's a look at it. Really elegant and some extremely thoughtful design ideas. It just makes me so bummed that it never came to be. Like, look at that. You want to use that calendar. You want to touch those blobs of information. Blobs of information of the future. Oh, one last thing and then we can go out. Nvidia's new 192 core K1. They demoed it in an extremely long keynote. Not really LG related. No. It happened yesterday. I wanted to just bring it up and say it looked great. If you didn't see it last night, Nvidia is one of the most boring keynotes of all time. Truly mind-numbing in areas. And anyhow, they announced 192 core mobile. It's basically the new Tegra. Yeah. They say it's a console grade processor. No, no. It's capable of some really... They showed off Unreal 4 engine on it. And if they can get that into phones and get games using it, it's definitely a game changer. Tegra's kind of not in the best spot right now. It's just a quick recap of stuff you might have missed last night though. Though I will say this is a good time to actually say it. We're going to be doing Verge Live all day after Samsung's event today at 3 o'clock at 3 p.m. Pacific, right? 3 p.m. Pacific. Yes, that's right. 6 p.m. ET. We will be back doing Verge Live. I don't know who's going to be on that. I'll be here. It will not be me. Not you. We don't know. Who knows? It might just be the person who drove the backhoe into the tent. And then tonight at what time? 6. No. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, at 6, 9 o'clock on the East Coast, 6 p.m. Pacific, Verge Cast after dark, after hours. Both. What do we call it? It'll be after hours. It'll be both. After dark. And shit's going to get real nasty. And there I've sworn on our live recap. There should be only Verge Cast behavior, but you know what? We're on the internet. We can do whatever we want. We're going to have some honchos, some head honchos breathing down our neck. Some sensors. They're going to throw bird beans at us. Nobody's going to throw bird beans at us. Okay. It's time for me to get some coffee. All right. So that's the Verge Live post-LG. We'll be back again at 3 p.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. East Coast to talk about Samsung's event. And all day long we're going to be streaming live events. We're going to have lots of new, I mean we're going to have a crazy amount of news today. Tons of reports. Tons of hands-ons and first looks. And it's going to get very hot. Very hot and heavy. Very sexy. So stay tuned to The Verge. Stay tuned here. And we'll see you guys after the Samsung event.