 Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of June 25th, 2012. I'm Josh Dupolsky, editor-in-chief of The Verge, and with me, as always, is Ellis Hamburger. Hey there. And my wife, Laura June. Hello. People have asked, they've requested, they've begged, they've sent me personal paper letters to my home address, which I don't know how they got. And they said, Dear Josh, if you don't put Laura on the Vergecast, I will kill both of you while you sleep. And I said, all right, I'm convinced. Let's get her on. Here she is. Hopefully, we won't argue the whole time. Please stop saying that. You're embarrassing me. So this is the first time Laura's been on, ever. You came on- And Ellis, too, right? And Ellis. Yeah, I'm a new- Ellis is making a lot of appearances on the site this week. And also, Ellis and I coordinated shirts today, which I think is pretty tight, right? This is like what you'll look like in 10 years. You're going to become way bigger and have a huge beard. My mustache is going to be more filled out. Your mustache will be way better. Anyhow, and we have Dieter Bohn behind us. Hey, everybody. I'd like to refer to him the Bohn-zone, which he loves. It never gets old. No, it doesn't ever get old. And it's always funny. That's the thing. Always funny. Anyhow, this is the Vergecast where we discuss the week in technology culture and culture culture, if you want, if you like. And this week, we're also going to be talking about the Culture Club. How relevant were they? Very relevant in 1984. Anyhow, this is a big week of news, mostly Google news. Google. Google. Google. No Google News news. You can Bing it if you want to find out. No Google News news, but Google News. I just want to tell you that someone in the chat has already noticed you have a new mic stand. Yeah. I'll tell you what. These guys are really perceptive. They've been complaining all week about our- They're going to miss a beat. They've been complaining all week about the fact that somebody in the background of 90 seconds on The Verge, our new daily show, was mirroring the same screen on two monitors and it was really bothering them. And this has been a topic- There's a whole forum thread. There's been a great topic of debate amongst our readers, which indicates to me that our readers, while I do appreciate the fact that they're paying attention, might possibly have too much time on their hands. I can't be sure. That's not an empirical factoid. But they're cult subscribers to everything MetaVerge. They also claimed to have seen a horse head in the background of last night's, but I didn't see it either. We can't be sure. You may see a car in the background with a license plate that says Paul is dead, but he's not dead. He's just off the internet. Okay. And yeah, we should get into it. I just got back this morning from San Francisco where we were covering the Google IO developer conference and you may have seen, we published at 3.30 in the morning, my review of the Nexus 7 tablet and we have a deeper dive of some other stuff coming very soon. Jelly Bean, the Q, and some deeper thoughts about Project Glass, which I'm going to spend all weekend writing. Just kidding. I'll be sleeping. Anyhow, let's talk about the announcements. Nexus 7. Jelly Bean's seen. Please leave. I already made a mistake. Nexus 7. Nexus 7. What do you think? Let's go. Ellis. I don't know why anybody would buy a Kindle Fire. At this point. Yeah. I thought you were calling it a Kindle Fire. No. It was just a Kindle Fire. Laura, what do you think? What was the score that we gave it? 8.8. 8.8. It's pretty good. It is good. I haven't used it yet, so I don't know yet. It's the second highest rated tablet that we reviewed. But literally everyone is up in arms fawning over it. It's good. It's really good. It's like if a company that made the software also basically made the hardware and they put them together and they were both pretty good. But the funny part is that it's like, what, a year old according to Sean Hollister? Yeah. Sean, hold on. Wait. Let me get Dieter's reaction. Dieter, your reaction on that. You've got one over there. Yeah. No. It's my favorite Android tablet. That would normally be damning it with faint praise because every Android tablet previous to this one I haven't been able to use without wanting to chuck it out the window. It's great. I'm really, really pleased with this tablet and for 200 bucks, it way overachieves. I don't know if it's the reality distortion field that Google shot all over everybody when Sergey Brin had people jump down onto the roof of the Moscone Center. Twice. Twice. But people have been very positive about it and I feel very positive about it. I think it's really good. I can envision a world where I'm using that on a daily basis. Well I feel like it's kind of symbolic of the whole thing everybody's doing hardware now. Microsoft, like week later, we see this. I mean, is that the better way to do it? Hey, it's Apple's world. We just live in it. Is it the better way to do it? Well, I think what's a better way to do anything is if you're a person who has a vision or if you're a group of people that have a vision for how you want something to work, that you do that end to end. How did the hardware partners feel this week? So I've heard- After Microsoft and Google I.O. Oh, well they haven't. They're very quiet. Their partners have been very quiet, but this is what they've been doing all along. I mean, they did this with Samsung. They've done it with Motorola. I mean, the Zoom. They did the Galaxy Tab last year, which was kind of like the first party tablet. But I have heard, this is kind of a side note to that, I've heard from sources familiar with the matter that that that ACES was a very good partner for Google. They were very easy to work with. And then some of their other partners maybe were not as compliant. Yeah, not as easy to work with. And that ACES- You mean like the wholly owned subsidiary Motorola? Which I took- I mean, can you talk about that? That like they bought Motorola and their Nexus tablet is coming from ACES. Isn't that just a little weird? But they just bought Motorola like two weeks ago. I mean, are they officially clear to sale? They can't just- I mean, they agreed a while ago. Yeah, but they can't just make a product. I don't think in the period of while they're waiting for that to be approved, they can just start doing stuff. They don't just like have a picnic and be like, let's start now. I mean, because that would be unfair. I mean, that would be all kinds of violations, I'm sure, of all sorts of rules from some kind of organization that makes rulings on whatever the hell it is that we're talking about. But yeah, I want to- Can I go back real quick to this thing about integrating software and hardware? Yes. Like, I don't know if I fully buy that. I don't know if the reason that this is good is because Google got to like do a better job of integrating Android with this particular hardware and there's something magical and special about Jelly Bean and this Asus tablet. I almost feel like, and the same thing applies to Microsoft, it's like they just have a different philosophy about like shepherding the value of their brand. And all these other OEMs are like, well, if it sucks, we'll have another one out in a month or in six months. And so we'll just try again. But where Google and Microsoft and Apple come in, they need to make sure that hardware that has their name on it is really good. And that has more of an effect than the quality of integrating software and hardware in one thing. Sorry, I just realized, speaking of that, speaking of the hardware, I did an interview with Matthias Duarte, who's Android's head designer. And he had his hands, he claims, and I believe him because why would he lie? He's had his hand on all of this stuff on obviously the new version of Android and the tablet and the queue he was involved in, at least the software side, which as far as I can tell is nothing to boast about and people shouldn't say that. And the tablet. Did I say that already? I don't know if I did. But he talked about the design of the tablet. And he was very insistent that even though this was apparently based on Sean's report, this was a design that we had already seen that Asus had worked on. Same model number. Same model number, but they had a lot of collaboration on the actual housing and sort of- And the back and there's no SD card and a few other details. And I do believe that. And I think that, but it's interesting to see that when you, to your point, Dieter, by the way, it is very warm in here. I think there's actually a bead of sweat dripping down my face right now. It is insane. It's like anime style. It's like this big. Yeah, it's like it's gonna be a zoom. There's gonna be flashing colors in the background. Anyhow, but I mean, this isn't like a Google owned product, essentially. It was created by Asus. It was tweaked by Google. And it is now what you see in front of you. But Asus never brought it to market, right? Like that's part of Sean's report is that they, it essentially sort of disappeared. They announced it and then it never came to market as a thing. So it's essentially just Google tablets. I feel like what happened, and he basically says this, or at least alludes to it, is like Google saw that and they were like, let's make a super cheap tablet out of that thing. Right. Right? Yeah. And that's what he's saying. See, things are going well. Yeah. Going back to what you were saying about Motorola, though. I mean, that was some time ago. But I mean, Google says what they were working on this for four months. I mean, that was, you know, a ways back. And it seems like they've been working on it for at least a lot of the hardware was ready for some time before that. It's not like the Motorola thing could just turn it around. I wonder if that four months is, that's not just, I mean, it's obviously not the creation of the thing. Four months is like the finishing touches. Yeah. The memo. It needed the Steve McQueen behind. Exactly. Anyhow, so does this pose a threat to the iPad? Is this an actual competitor to the iPad? What do you think? Go. I think people are looking for really different things. I mean, I for one, it's like if you have a Galaxy Note, let's say you're the kind of person, you have a Galaxy Note and you have the new Nexus 7. I mean, where does that like, when you're looking at tablets, you want something that fits. Did you say Galaxy Note? Yeah. I'm saying you want something that fits the scenarios. I don't think this is true. I'm not saying it's a competitor. I'm saying you need a phone and a tablet. No, no, no. I'm saying I don't know if you have only a Galaxy Note. What is the screen on that? 5.8. What's the screen size? 3, isn't it? 5.3. It's a huge screen. This is only a little bit larger. Yeah. And I feel like you want to have two devices that differ in size enough that you know when to pick either one. Yeah. But I will say that when I was talking to Matthias, he was like, I'm a book lover. And we have an interview, by the way, I just tweeted about it because I forgot that we'd gotten it up. We have an interview with Matthias and he talks about, again, we were discussing sort of the design of it. And he talks about how he's a big book reader and he loves holding this with one hand and having a sandwich in the other or whatever. Which is like, by the way, a great mental image of like Matthias in an extremely loud and extremely, extremely, no, not shirtless. Quite the opposite. That's just you thinking that. That's very sexy stuff. Very sexy. And no, Matthias in one of his very loud like shirts. Or white suit. I imagine peanut butter jelly sandwich in this hand. A great book in the other. What's he reading? What's Matthias reading? Wabi Sabi. It's Jack Dorsey's favorite book on design. Why would he be reading Jack Dorsey's favorite book? Because he's a designer. No, Matthias is out there. He'd be reading something. He's like reading like On the Road. No, too common. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Yes. Yes. Does that voice sound off on what Matthias might be reading? Let us now praise famous men. That's what he's reading. What is that? It's a book. It's a book man written during the Great Depression. Speaking of books, if you check out audible.com. I think the commenter's got it right. I think he's reading Cormac McCarthy. But by the way, do we have a sponsor this week, Crate? Yeah, actually IE. Let me just take a break right here. An interstitial. Perfect segue. We have a sponsor this week and I'd like to talk about them. Internet Explorer 9. Yes, thank you. Less browser, more verge is the ad I believe that's running on the site right now. They made these like custom ads. I assume they're running on other sites as well and they're like, there's like one running on Gizmodo. It's like less browser, more Gizmodo. I don't know if there is, but they're running on our site and it makes me want to use Internet Explorer very badly. Unfortunately, they don't make a Mac version. So here's a thought. Microsoft make a Mac version of Internet Explorer. I mean, right? Am I crazy? If Google can make, by the way, this maybe is a good segue, but I think we should talk a little bit more about some of the announcements on day one. If Google could make Chrome for iOS, you can make Internet Explorer for the Mac. Think about it. Anyhow, all right. Go ahead. No, go ahead. I want to go back to your question, which was, is this a competitor for the iPad? Oh yeah, thank you. I think it's a really complicated question, but I think you have two types of people buying things these days. And I think that Vlad in his editorial made a really good point, which is the touch pad, which was not a successful product and everyone knew, well, most people, knowledgeable people, knew was a dead end. As soon as they put it at a certain price, people like bought them, you know, there was like a frenzy. It's only a million of them. Because as soon as something's cheap enough, some of those questions don't matter anymore. So I think they have a chance with consumers like that where, so the answer for the iPad would be no, because they're not that cheap. I think they're not necessarily trying to beat the iPad just yet. I mean, shooting for second place at this point, you know, the iPad has how much market share? Like more than 75. And you're shooting for second place, which I think, you know, the Kindle Fire set a good bar, but I think this transcends that bar. And if you get into second place, I mean, right now, I mean, this is taking aim at the Fire from what I can see. I mean, the problem is, the problem here is that they don't have the one thing the Fire can offer that is truly enticing to most consumers, which is like Amazon's content selection and Prime, which means like not only do you get the content selection, but you get a bunch of stuff for free. Lots of instant video. Like thousands of videos and you get like free books and music. Lending library. There's a lending library. So I think... But most people don't know about Prime. That's one thing I've learned. I think that's the second type of consumer, which is the kind who is now thinking about buying into an ecosystem. Yeah. But isn't that the whole thing? Isn't that why they had play, all this play stuff? Yes. I mean, they want to show like, look, they call themselves the world's largest bookstore, didn't they at the event, Dieter? That's Amazon. I didn't catch that. No, they call themselves like the world's largest. Can somebody dial up my live blog? It totally counts, Gutenberg. Live blog. Hold on. What was the name of this? Google IO. Day one. This is by the way, this is when I search for anything, this is how I search. You say it out loud. I go live blog, Google IO. There it is right there. So I'm pretty sure they said something about it being the largest. Just let me do a quick search for largest. Anybody in chat say anything? Where is it? No. They're trying to determine who I am right now. Finally Google Play is the world's largest ebook collection. There you go. Tricky language there. It is. Well, it doesn't matter how many physical books you see. You're not trying to sell physical books. During the, I think they had the Google Play guy come up and talk about Google Play for a long time. And when you first boot up the Nexus 7, the main home screen is completely filled with a giant Google Play. It looks like the fire. It looks like the fire. It's got like a big book and a big song. Amazon's catalog of content is already like so respectable and they're just going from day one, adding TV shows, adding things like that. And they're saying, all right, here's why you're going to buy this. We're going to make this at a loss. Perhaps yet you're not familiar with any of our content library. Right. I mean, it's a tough sell on that, on that point. But what it, where it isn't a tough sell is that I think it's as full featured a device as the iPad in many regards. Like it doesn't have a slower, cheaper, I mean, it's got a slower, cheaper CPU in, in comparison to some things, but it's actually like pretty powerful and it has a pretty decent screen. It's higher resolution than the fire, right? The fire is 1024 by 768. It's I know this one's 216 pixels per inch. 216 PPI. So the actual, the, the, the pixels per inch, they're pretty high. Like the, the, the pixel depth is, is pretty decent and it's really fast. The software is really full featured. You can download all Android apps. It's not just like stuff that's in the fire store or yeah, in the Kindle store. And also it should be noted, you can go get the Kindle app and you can go get Amazon's MP3 app and you have access to that stuff. But you know, it doesn't have any prime. I wonder how this is going to, I mean, I wonder how consumers are going to receive this though, cause you know, people are sorry, I hate to interrupt, sorry, but you can also download correct me if I'm wrong, the, the Amazon app store. And that's all the same stuff that's on the Kindle, right? Anyways, yeah, would it be compatible with this? If HBO go makes, I guess, I don't know what HBO goes deal is, but if they make a Kindle version, wouldn't it just, you could just throw it right onto this thing. I mean, I guess you'd have to get it. You'd have to get it approved. Sound like it would work. I mean, but I'm saying, but you can download the Amazon app store for other devices. So I don't know how that, what the crossover there is. Anyhow, what were you saying? I was just gonna say, I don't think consumers are going to be incredibly receptive or as receptive as they were to the fire. Cause I mean, going from the regular Kindle, taking a step up, you're like, I'm already familiar with this company. I'm already familiar with how to order stuff on Amazon. And you look like the Kindles at the top thing sold on the entirety of Amazon. Well they're pushing it on every page. Right. And I think people are so familiar with that. Every time you buy a book, they're like, did you know you could get this book on the Kindle fire? I mean, they do that. I mean, how, how can you not buy it? And it's a great strategy. I mean, I try not to buy books on Amazon. I'm talking about physical books. I try to buy them in my local bookstore. Local bookstore buyer. But I buy books on Amazon all the time just because I'm browsing and I see them. So I mean, I think they're really effective at selling things that people don't necessarily want or know that they need. I feel like right now I'm really appreciating what a t-shirt does. It's wonderful. Because what's happening underneath this shirt is very uncomfortable. Mesh pennies next week. It is not warm, just warm in here. It is, I would describe it as hellish or hell-like is how I would describe the temperature in this room. You guys need tank tops. Can you just crack the door open and get a fan going in here? I mean, is this a Turkish bathhouse? And if so, should I remove all of my clothing and put on a very small towel? The look in Laura's eyes said yes. That's not what the look was saying. I'm just scared being between you guys. Anyhow, so I think a lot of people went and bought these, went and pre-ordered them. Because like 200 bucks is also, I mean, you want to get the 250 version because that has 16 gigs of storage and there are no other storage options. So like you do not want the 8 gig in my opinion. But if you only have $200, is the fire 16 or 8? It's 8, isn't it? The bottom end, there is only one. Is it 16 or 8? Can somebody tell me? How can I not know this? Am I stupid? I reviewed it. I thought it was 8. I think it's 8. I think it's 8. Chat says 8. It's 8. Chat says 8. Approximately 6 gigabytes available for user content. Chat's always right. So, I mean, I do think the sell to the mainstream is still pretty hard. But what I hope will happen is that developers will look at this thing and go, hey, this is actually a good, nice, cheap tablet and people are going to, some people are going to buy these. Like let's make some decent apps for them. There are better apps. And one of the things that I noticed and I actually, I comment on the fact that there are still a lack of apps, really tablet optimized apps. But one of the things that I'm not sure that I say, I can't remember if I put it in the review or not, is that the 7 inch screen, I think I say it in the video, the fact that this is a 7 inch screen versus a 10.5 inch or 10.1 inch, not 10.5, 10.1, makes a big difference in how phone apps transition. Like Twitter, which is not any different than the phone app on this tablet, actually feels, it's workable. It's not ridiculous. Like you can look at it in portrait and use it and it doesn't feel like this is silly, like it doesn't match up on this device at all. And I think that's a big deal for them. I mean, I think that makes the transition between those apps way less awful, but they still need developer support. What do you think, Dieter? Well I think that the main thing versus the Fire is can Google market this thing and get it into retail channels outside of the online Google Play Store to try and match that power that Amazon has to throw the Kindle Fire in front of everybody that's already shopping on Amazon. I think we know that Target dropped the Fire, right? Because they didn't like the Amazon competition. And so I mean, if Google could start pushing it into more retail channels, then it could gain enough mind share to be, people think about the Nexus tablets instead of just a Kindle Fire when they think of cheap tablets. That's really interesting that they could get it into a place like Target. I also feel like there's a real possibility, Samsung is doing these pop-up shops. I feel like there's a real possibility that Google could do the same thing. I mean, when I went in for this interview, they had a line, they had like a shelf set up with the phone, the tablet, two docs for the phone, the queue, and maybe there was some other stuff there, I can't remember. And it looked like a store. I mean, it looked like things that matched, that went together, that were nicely designed that should be sold together. And I feel like, and their design is really nice. I mean, I think Google's design is the best design right now on like a mobile platform for the actual devices. And their actual, like, I think the device design is not, you know, look, the iPhone is a more beautiful phone than the Galaxy Nexus, and the iPad is a more beautiful tablet than the Nexus 7. But I think that they're pretty nice looking, like for what they are. They're pretty restrained and pretty classy. And I think that if you presented that to people, they would actually see, they need to see it. You know, physicality is a big deal, you know. And if you don't have like the brand of Amazon where people are just going to go like, oh yeah, it's Amazon and I know what I can get on here. I wouldn't be surprised if they start doing some kind of weird pop-up shop thing, holiday, mall, street, street car. Christmas, how many units? Nexus 7. Let's go, Munster. They got to find a way, they have to find a way to make it make sense for Christmas shoppers. I mean, what is the sell? It's like iPod touch, Kindle Fire, or if this is the $200, like I want to get somebody a multimedia device. It's iPod touch, Kindle Fire, Nexus 7. I'm scared, man. I think that, that have an, I know, you know, the Nexus Q is going to be in the commercials. Can we talk about the Q? And it's going to be really confusing. So people will be like, do I, do I need it? I don't think the Q is going to be in the commercials that much. I think I spoke. Oh, it's part of the ecosystem. I spoke to, I spoke to a, I spoke to a person familiar with the matter and, and my, I got the impression that Google did not do the Q to make it a big mainstream device. I think they did the Q because it's audacious and weird and, and it's cool for certain things. I actually don't think it's right now. It's a good product and we've been testing it here and we've been testing it on the West Coast and it has a lot of problems. Like I believe it's a very problematic product for even what they wanted to do. How long did it take you to get the thing working? I mean, we had a lot of problems with the setup. It's hard to reset if you need to. It's like very touchy. Like the connectivity is extremely touchy. Like, I mean, look, it's not available to consumers yet. We're using essentially like a, not a beta version. Well, let's call it a beta version. I don't know where this is in the grand scheme, but I mean, Deeter, this is beta software, is it not? I mean, it, it, it sort of is because it only works with Jelly Bean devices right now, but they say it's going to work with everything down to gingerbread by the time. You know it's on your shoulder basically. Yeah, I know. I put it there on purpose. Yeah, bring it over. Get it over. I'm going to have a plug I say you can't see. Can you get those lights radiating for us? Look at that. It's, you know, it's smaller than your head. Show the back. Can you show the back? Yeah, sure. So this is the Q. So let me explain. Okay. Oh, that's beautiful. So hold it right there. So this is the Q. Okay. It is a music streaming and video streaming device. It has banana plugs in the back for speakers. It has an amp inside. So this is a, this can power speakers. I mean this, you can, you can literally hook this up to a pair of speakers, banana plugs and play music on it off of your tablet or phone that running Jelly Bean. Here's what it got. It's really heavy. Can I stop holding it up now? Yeah, you can stop holding it up. It's very heavy. It's actually a really beautifully made thing. And also it's made in America and we can touch on that because Laura, you wrote a report about that. And, or an editorial, what is it? Like an ed, an ed report. It's both. It's a little bit of both, but it's, it's the point of it is that you hook up your TV and or your stereo or your speakers and you, um, you use your Google play content on it. You play your Google play content on it. You can't play. It does not have its own interface. It's pulling it all from the internet. It's a point. You're using your phone as a remote, but there is no, you're not controlling. It's hard to explain. There's nothing that you're controlling exactly. You're just basically telling it, you're telling it to play the content you've selected on your device, but it's streaming on, it's streaming on the queue. It isn't beaming it from your, so it's not like airplay in the sense that it's like streaming it from the device onto the thing. It's so strange. So, so, but then you can't, it doesn't have an interface, which means that when you plug into your TV, there is no like remote app. It's just like your Google play content. What's this? You're paying $300 and you can't even watch the movies you have on Google play. You can't watch, you can't watch your phone. You can watch the movies you have on Google play. No, I'm saying you got to activate it with your phone. You have to have your phone or your tablet. And also, uh, it doesn't, who doesn't? Well, no, but it doesn't play. It won't play your local files, right? So it won't play local files. It won't play. If you had, if you had music, you have to upload it to Google play. You had six gigs of music stored on your phone. You also don't need an iPhone to use an Apple TV. Right. Well, yeah, that's true. It's got its own interface. I'm getting to that. Yeah. Damn it. Ellis, I'll tell you what, this new guy, not really working out here. Stepping on feet. Uh, just interrupting with factoids, unrelated factoids. Oh, by the way, great new album, uh, from, uh, from one of my favorite bands, which I'm not going to tell the name of. Anyhow, you know, if Neely were here, he'd have picked right up on that and had something. Why can't you be more like, what? The Hamburglars. The Hamburglars, Chrashawn, really? This is devolving at a rapid pace. Uh, that's a song from the album actually devolving at a rapid pace. It's kind of like thrash metal. Uh, it's like thrash disco. Um, anyhow, what was I talking about? We were talking about the cue and about how expensive it is considering there's no interface on it. As Ellis said, there's no interface. So you can't do things like, it's not Google TV, which is a product they make, which like lets you play stuff on a TV and or stereo. It doesn't have its own interface. It doesn't have other content. You can't play content that's stored locally. It won't beam your content local from, from your device to the thing. And it won't, you can't like say, I want to watch Hulu on my TV using this or I want to, not Roku, uh, uh, Netflix. And the reason I meant, I was thinking of Roku is because Roku, here's what they're competing with. They have a $79 box that does a bunch of different streaming things. Uh, they have an audio app now, right? Somebody know you should know. Yes. Somebody should know. Anyhow, they've got like, you know, Netflix and Hulu and HBO go and all this stuff. And it's like, this thing is like a really expensive, weird looking amp that also plays content that you probably don't have much of, which is Google play. Like Google plays brand for most people, Google is brand new. They've never heard of it before. Yeah. This thing is all about Google play. And I mean, I know Google wants to build this, you know, content ecosystem and compete with iTunes and compete with Amazon, but it's not there. And even if it is there, nobody knows about it. And so I don't know anybody that's clamoring for a magical device that'll stream their, their Google play content because they have so much of it. Right. I mean, I have music, I upload music to Google play when it, when, uh, when the music from my computer gets uploaded. And so it's there. So that's nice. But, and I will say the coolest thing as we were testing today, the coolest thing it does is that you can plug in speakers and it's like a little amp and it's a, and it's a, it has, it rotates. So it, it's a volume control and it has a mute. You can touch it and it mutes. And uh, it's awesome that it's like this standalone thing that you can just plug speakers into and it just works. That's cool. But everything else around it is like basically khaki and broken right now. So it's funny that you say that it kind of strikes me and I don't really know their motivation, but you know, Google is a company who historically has taken a lot of chances and done a lot of like sort of experimental, they seem to make decisions like very quickly and go like, let's just try this out and then they'll just kill it if it doesn't work. It strikes me that this is one of those things. I think we don't see it very often with hardware, so it's really confusing. I think people go like, oh, why are they all in on this? I'm not sure that they are. It seems like they're experimenting with it on like every level possible. They're saying it's hackable. They're making it in an experimental way. They're making it in the US, but it's not done. They gave it to developers. I mean, the US thing is really interesting. Let's talk about that for a second. Hang on. It's the Nokia N900 of set-top boxes. But it's not a set-top box. Well, okay. It would be a set-top box if somebody put Boxee on it. Yeah. And it is basically a Boxee box. The most important thing on this product is this port I'm pointing to right here, which is the micro USB. They said in the keynote, we hope you guys hack on this thing. Yeah. And we already have got games running on it apparently. So like we personally do. This is for like crazy, I don't, but we're going to see crazy hack stuff on this and that'll be fun. Qualcomm and other companies have shown off basically like Android on a stick that you plug into your HDMI port. And it's like full, it's a full Android system that's fast enough to run 3D gaming that just plugs into your HDMI. Like I wish this were more like that. I wish this had, I wish this had some like, I mean, it's just disappointing. If they did that, it would stomp all over Google TV. That's the other question. I would really like, here's the problem. I would really like some form of whatever AirPlay is for my Google stuff. Like or some compatibility with AirPlay or something. I mean, there's DLNA. They're not really using it at all. I mean, how can I get music off of my phone when I have people over, when we're having a party or whatever, how can I get music off of my Galaxy Nexus onto my stereo? What are my options right now? To dock it? To use Bluetooth? You know, like DLNA. DLNA if the stereo has Wi-Fi and it has DLNA, which mine doesn't. So right now when I play, when I want to listen to music at home, I get my iPad out, I open up RDO, I turn on AirPlay, you know, my Apple TV is hooked up to my stereo, I turn on my stereo and I can play whatever I want. It's awesome. It's a really awesome idea. If I want to switch to Spotify, no problem. If I want to switch to my iTunes library, no problem. If you use the playlist queue for the queue, the Nexus queue, does everybody need to have their stuff that they want to play on Google Play that they've uploaded to their app, so everybody needs it? Yes. Yes. It's all Google Play-based. And actually, we need to talk about this playlist queue because it is a mess. It's a mess. I don't know how, I don't understand how it works. When you tap a song, it adds the entire, when you tap a song, it adds the entire album or the entire playlist that you tapped on. The only way to add a single song is to do like the little right click on the right hand side to add your single song. Their interface is completely nuts. It's bonkers. Like, I was playing, we were playing with it today and it was like, I was playing a song and you have to hit the queue thing to get it to play to the queue. And then like sometimes when you adjust the volume, it disconnects from the queue, but continues to play the song on the queue because it's not streaming again, it's independent. And then like I would go to play another song and it would start playing on my phone or on the tablet. And it's like they were both playing at the same time. And like you can tap the little thing that shows you that it's playing at the bottom of the app and that like switches between what's playing on the queue and what's playing on your device. And it makes like no sense. When I was, Ross and I were testing the social stuff, cause that's another thing that they talked about is that it's a social streamer that everybody can join the party and get in and play their stuff. And it's like, it's insane. Here's what happens. First off, you can switch whenever you want. There are no like, there are no controls. Like you don't have like, I'm the owner override, like I have to approve a selection. So you're saying this is good or bad? I'm saying it's horrible. Wait, wait, you think there is, you can turn it into like, like private mode. Like I'm the DJ. I remember that. Yeah. Is that right? No, no, no, no. It's either, it's either just you or everybody can do everything. Okay. Right. That was our experience. So like, so, so it's like, I mean, Sam, Sam Sheffer and I were testing it out and you know, he'd put on a song and then I'd be like, screw this. And then I put on a song and he'd be like, screw this. And it's like, that's what's going on. Sounds like a horrible idea. Imagine, imagine, imagine this. You throw a party and you've got a playlist and you're running your cue. Your friend comes over. Joshua Ryan's party mix. That's right. Jr Jr party mix volume, volume seven, the X factor. Summer heat at the subtitle. Oh, summer heat. Yeah. That summer heat is volume eight. The X factor is volume seven. Anyhow, the point is you're listening to Jr Sweet mix, uh, that you've programmed painstakingly and your friend comes over with his galaxy Nexus, uh, presumably you're in mountain view and uh, and he starts playing, you know, hollow notes. Not the good stuff either. The back stuff off the back wall. And it's not like on turntable where you can just thumbs it down. You gotta go to another site, you gotta like, you gotta wrench it back from the, it's, it's very half baked. The cues very half baked. But, but what I will say is it is audacious. It is bizarre. It is beautiful in a certain kind of way. Like I think design wise, it's really interesting. Um, it has things that I never would have assumed or thought would be in a product like this. Like the fact that it's an amp and it takes banana plugs for speakers in the back of it. It's got this weird like audio file like quality to it that I think is really interesting. And I think most importantly, it's made, they say it's made in the USA. It's manufactured. They don't say it. I mean, it is. Well, they say it is. We don't know what's inside exactly right now. But it's assembled in the USA and shipped from a presumably from a factory somewhere in Mountain View. And this is. And if that's true, then it sort of follows that whatever parts they could get in the United States, they probably did. I would imagine they're sourcing as much as possible, but I don't know. But it's not possible to get all of the parts here currently. What I will say is this. I would I want to be able to pay three hundred dollars for this, except I don't know what I would use it for. Like I don't know where. But I think it's really cool and really interesting. And it may not be. I don't think we can completely rule out the possibility that Google wanted to do this just to mess with Apple a little bit because they are. That was one of the points I made. I mean, I think it's there's been a big point made and Apple's taken a lot of heat because they're sort of the most visible company and they're they're very outspoken about being environmentally safe and blah, blah, blah. And I think that when the stuff with Foxconn started happening, they were blindsided a bit because they're not used to being criticized that way. And they've responded and it's sort of escalated for a really long time until very recently, just a month ago, you know, at the at the All Things D conference, you know, Kara Swisher like sort of bluntly asked Tim Cook, like, will you manufacture in the US again? And he said, I hope so someday. And at that point, Google must have already been. Oh, yeah, they must have been way into the process. You can't turn this around overnight. I think that there's been some, you know, some sense that someone was going to do it and they maybe they wanted to get their hearts. I think here's the question. Like, I have to say what they put in this box, this amp, you know, the banana plugs, this making this spherical thing that rotates, they have lights on it. It's got like a touch portion on the top. That's all like really elaborate technology. I think if you took out a bunch of that stuff and made it into a streamer box, they could probably sell it for 100 or 150 bucks. What else? In my opinion, like based on what I'm seeing. So I wonder, like, if they could do that and I don't know the economics of this and I don't pretend to know, but if they can do that, could they make an Apple TV like streaming box that does similar stuff? I mean, they have essentially the guts of it there. Take away the mechanics, take away the amp, take away the stuff that makes it like kind of a weird audiophile device. Does it suddenly become much more affordable? And if so, can that be made in America for a price that you'd want to pay? And what does that mean about like what Apple is, how Apple will react or what Apple's going to do? I feel like this is just a first step. I mean, Laura wrote about the fact that they chose this to be an American made product. You know, we don't know how long they were working on it, but maybe this is a precedent that they want to be setting. They showed what was it called the tungsten last year at IO, which was some early kind of concept of this, right, Dieter? Yeah, they showed the tungsten. In fact, if you go deep into this on the controller app for the Q, there's still a reference to project tungsten in there. Oh, interesting. But what were you saying, Alex? Oh, I was just saying that it's interesting that they chose this to be their first thing. And it's like, well, maybe in some time we will, like now that the Motorola deal has to some extent gone through, we'll start to see them being like, hey, we want to make this a priority. We have the money to be able to do this. I just feel like maybe they should be subsidizing it a little more in some way. Yeah, I mean, it's really expensive. It's very expensive, but it's also, but like, there's nothing there to justify the expense. That's the problem. I mean, to, to, to, to, to an average consumer, I think that's it. I think we know, but you know, well, the first iPod was very expensive and didn't make sense to the average consumer. I mean, you know, I, I agree with Alice. I don't think that this is some throwaway. I think that they're going to try in earnest to do this. I mean, in the New York Times article, which, you know, which is where like the, the first point about it being made in the USA, they didn't talk about it on stage at IO. They can really set themselves apart. Right. And they said that, you know, they hoped that as they sold more of them that the price would come down. So, so that indicates that there is some sense that this product is going to scale to the point where the price would come down, which means that there must be some commitment to it. I don't think that they're just going to make a thousand of them and say, well, that didn't work back to, back to China. Right. What I will say is, I mean, this is their first self-built hardware. Yeah. I mean, what I will say is, is it definitely elicited a feeling when I learned that it was made in America. It elicited a very interesting feeling for me, which was, I don't know, like it was almost like, I mean, this is going to sound really cheesy, but it was almost like a kind of feeling of hope of like, like in all honesty, I mean, I'm not trying to sound dramatic, but, but, but when you guys, cause I will, during the presentation, I don't know if they said it was, it was made in America. Did they? They did not. Okay. And they did, they did very, very briefly show a made in the USA bit when they were showing the blown up parts. Yeah. But it wasn't, but it wasn't like really call it out on stage, but then the New York Times and Wired had some exclusive articles that they had. And it was about the manufacturing. It was clear that they wanted to talk about it without actually saying it themselves. And look, I don't think, I think we've talked about this a lot on the show and I don't want to go down a rabbit hole, but you know, American manufacturing is not what it used to be. And in particular, you see this explosive growth in electronics and in technology and you don't see any of it or hardly any of it coming from America. And I was like, uh, this is kind of awesome. Like this is kind of amazing. Like if we could do, if they can do this, I mean, yeah, it's kind of a little bit more expensive than a bunch of other stuff and it turns out to not be that great of a product, but not, not because it's built badly. It's built very well from what I can tell. I actually think it's kind of smart. I mean, if it was a phone, there would be almost no, you know, it's hard to quantify what this product is actually worth. Yeah. I don't know if they could have done a phone. That's what I wonder. They probably can't. I mean, they probably can't do a phone in the US, but if five years down the road they can, the price is going to, the price difference is going to be massive. Did it just get, sorry, go ahead. Did it just get like ridiculously hotter in here? Like there's like now heat being pumped into the room. I'm like, not even kidding. We just started talking about economics. I'm not even kidding. That's what happened. It feels like now heat is being pushed into the room. Is that what's going on? Oh, that's cool. That's sick. Um, I mean, we're, we're this, this, we're not doing more than an hour today because it's way too hot in here to, to. So let's get into jelly beans. Let's talk about something else. Yeah. Yeah. We gotta talk jelly beans. Yeah. I mean, I think it's great. I think it's great. Huge improvements in my opinion, huge improvements across the board for Android. I mean, Android four was already very good in my opinion. It was as good as any of the other mobile operating systems. And in some ways, and I said this in my review in some ways better than, than even iOS. And now I am at this point having seen iOS six, what we've seen of it and having seen jelly bean and used it. I mean, I, I, for my money, that is my operating system of choice. And I think it, it offers as much and more than what Apple is doing in the mobile space. And like, you know, they've entered, they introduced some things I did not expect. Google now, which is, which is part of jelly bean, but it's also as Matias Duarte said, a platform for Google. It is a, he said that they were working in any, we talked about this in the interview that multiple groups across multiple parts of Google are working on Google now. Google now is like, I think a lot of people have said like, it's just like Siri. And we did some stuff where it's like, Dieter, you did some stuff where it's like Siri versus Google now. And it does some of that stuff and I think actually does a lot of it really well, but it does some crazy stuff, which I got my really first taste of when I landed this morning on off of my red eye. And this is what it did. So yesterday I, yesterday, I, it thought that the hotel that I was staying at was where I live because I just started using it and I was kind of cute. And I was there a lot and I kept leaving for short periods of time and coming back. So I think it kind of logicked out that that's your home. And it was like, is this your home? And I'm like, no, that's not where I live. And I told it my address. That was the end of that encounter with, with now. So during the day I was checking for, and I was also testing as well as like reviewing, I was also just kind of doing it for myself. I kept looking up this flight that I was taking back on Virgin America and to see if it had been delayed because they would say, they were saying things like they weren't really clear like it would tell you if there's delays to a train, if you're waiting for the train. And I kind of made the assumption, and this was not correct, that, that it would tell you if you search for a flight, if that flight gets delayed or the gate changes, it would give you an alert, which by the way, Google, please make it do that. But it doesn't do that. But what it does do is it remembers you search for it. And as you get close to the flight, it brings up the card again. And it's like this flight is taking off at this time. It tells you if the time has changed or whatever. But anyhow, when I landed, as soon as I got my phone on, like two minutes after I got my phone on, it did two things. Well three things. It showed me the weather in New York automatically. Did not prompt. You opened it. I got my phone. I slid down the notification window. And there was a Google Now. And it said, there was a Google Now prompt. And it was either the weather or it was directions. And what it did was it showed my flight had landed. It showed the card for the flight. And it says it's landed, which I knew because I was standing there on it. The weather in New York. And it said, the drive home, your drive home will be 33 minutes. And it showed a map with directions to get home. It said no way you're making it to the Virgcast. And one of my biggest things is like the reason I don't take carry ons if at all possible, especially on a red eye. Because when you get home in New York, if you get home at 530 in the morning, if you get out quick enough, you can get into a car and I get back to Brooklyn. Wait, you just said the opposite. You said you don't take carry ons. You don't check your baggage. I'm sorry. I don't check my baggage. That's what I meant. By the way, I had four hours of sleep. And I did not sleep on the plane. And it's 115 degrees in here. And it's like so hot here. It feels like some kind of weird torture that's happening. It's like I'll tell you where the bomb is. Just please put the air conditioner. That's the next talk show is the Virg Turkish bath. It's a little calmer. So it said, it automatically said here's how long it's gonna take you to get home. And that's awesome. Because if there had been a huge traffic jam on 495, it would have told me. And I would have been like, oh, I'm gonna take the train. I'm not gonna. And when we went for Nila's wedding, we got out off the plane and we were like, let's hop in a car to get from the airport to the hotel. And there was crazy traffic. It was like an hour wait in traffic. And it was also about 100 degrees. In this case, it was. It was the worst experience. But in this case, it would have said, it's gonna take you an hour. And we could have looked at other options. Like it blew my mind. I did not ask for it to do it. I did not expect it to do it. It just did it. I'll tell you what. And I needed it. That's what I want from a personal assistant. That's what you want? As it's billed. A lot of people are comparing this to Siri, which is, which is marketed as in essentially is a personal assistant, which a personal assistant sort of by definition gives you help when you ask for it. This is like not doing that. Actually a personal assistant by definition, the good, a good personal assistant, a good personal assistant is supposed to, is supposed to anticipate what you're going to do and take action before you ask. Cue Michael Shane. Yeah. So, so that's, what's so interesting about this because it actually did that. Now it isn't perfect. It's far from perfect. Yeah. I need to talk about it not being perfect. It's not perfect. Because I am having a different experience with it than you are. It finally learned where I live this morning. You can tell it where you live. No, you can. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. I did it. When it pops up a card and asks you. There's a setting. Dude, I could not, show me where the setting is. When it pops up the card and says like your ex from home, there's a thing to say, this is not right. Like set my home location. Right. But until that card pops up, you can't do it. I don't know because I got the card and I just did it because I'm smart. So I don't know what to tell you. No. So the idea behind Google now is really interesting because we've been hearing literally since I put GPS in phones that there's going to be a magical future where the phone knows who you are and it knows where you are and it knows everything about you and so it can give you this information. Geofence. And nobody's really tried to do it all that, you know, comprehensively before and Google finally is. So that's really interesting. I'm remembering Roger McNamee when he was on the stage showing off the preview like wow. Yeah. It's going to know everything you're going. That's right. It's going to auto email people. That's right. That's right. That you're not there yet. But you know, it's the thing is you don't, you don't configure it. The way that you like get your cards to pop up is Google just watches you and guesses. Well, you search for a sports team and then it's like, oh, well you must like that sports team or you in the same place every night and it guesses that's where you live. And like that's great. And I think it's really interesting and I want it to work that way. But the way that it's guessing and what it thinks matters to me when it's wrong, it's a little bit frustrating. So my example is I searched for a flight just to test it and for the next two days I was getting this flight information popping up and I just don't care. So I would have to swipe it away, but you can change that, you can change that setting. You can change it so that it doesn't show those notifications. You can change it so it doesn't show those notifications globally, but I can't say, Hey, Google now, I don't care about American airlines 1921 at all. It's not subtle. No, no, no. It actually is subtle. It is subtle. But what it isn't is that smart at this point because it doesn't understand. It's making assumptions based on behavior. But I think, but here's the thing. And this by the way is the problem with reviewing a product in a couple of days, which, which I really dislike doing greatly. And Google kind of created a situation here and our, and at the world of our, our press world has created a situation where there is an incredible demand from readers to find out about this stuff right away. And people will just jump the gun and review it. And you know, you've got to be part of the business review. And that's why like this thing, Google now does, is not a one or two day or a five day or even a, A week. Or even, or no, I don't even think it's a week. I think this thing needs to watch, to see over time. I think this thing is like, if you, it's like any person, if they, you ask them to identify things that you do or places you may go or, or questions you may ask or stuff you may need, they're not going to know from hanging out with you for two days or a week. It's going to take a while to get to know. And I think that Google now is going to look for patterns. And I think that in those patterns over a long enough period of time, and I'm really curious to come back to this after a month or two months of using it and to see, but if it did that, if it did what it did for me in the span of two days, and if it gets smarter by watching patterns, I'm extremely curious to know what it'll be able to do or at least what it thinks I'll want in a month from now, because it's going to know where I live. It's going to know where I work. It's going to know how I get home every day. It's going to know the restaurants I like to go to. It's going to know the bars I like to go to. And it's like when it starts getting that information, it's going to know who I call the most often, right? Because you can search for contacts in there as well, I think. I mean, I hope it's pulling in some of that information. I think it'll be very interesting to see what happens with this. But I agree with you. It is far from baked, you know? But the question is, will it do that in a month? Or is this, you know, have we actually gotten a pretty good idea of what it can and can't do within a few days? If it's way better in a month, I'll be super excited if it's the exact same as it is, you know, having it. Was Google going to be updating it incrementally in the back end? Google is definitely working on this as an ongoing project. And one thing you can say about Google, they do not wait. They iterate. They iterate. So I guarantee you within the next couple of months, this will be iterated on a number of times. I guarantee you that it will produce better information. I mean, I assume. I can't guarantee. But I assume this will produce better, more useful information in the next couple of months. Because I don't think Google is going to sit around in the way that they tweak their algorithm and the way that they tweak, like, you know, Gmail gets a new feature, like, hey, we're adding this today. Like, it's not like they completely revamp the product. They just start adding little things. I mean, remember what Gmail looked like last year? Go back one year from right now and look at Gmail. I'm pretty sure it's a completely different beast. And they constantly tinkered with it, too. You know, originally there was so much white space in that new Gmail. And they would graduate lab stuff. I mean, think about how much they've graduated some of the lab stuff to actual features. I mean, look at the maps, like, when maps gets updated for Android, it's like, oh, we've turned, like, the plus and minus signs, they got rid of them to zoom in and out on maps. And then they added them as a labs feature so you could add them back in if you wanted them. And then they were like, hey, we've just added them as a feature now. Which I think has happened in the span of, like, two or three months or something. So I think that they'll iterate on this. I'm just, I have to say, it's far from perfect. It misunderstands you just the way Siri can sometimes. It gives you information that you didn't really ask for. You cannot find show times for Prometheus, like, no matter what you do. It's like, Promi-meeth-is. It's like, it doesn't understand what you're saying at all when you say Prometheus. It got Prometheus but misspelled it, like, which I don't even know how that happened. Like, it was a word that was Prometheus. But it wasn't Prometheus. You know, it's funny when you start using Siri and things like this, you realize how many out of the ordinary words you're really saying when you start using this. Yeah, it's crazy. So it's not perfect. But it is, I think it's actually a really exciting technology that feels very different than what Siri intends to do or means to do. To go back to Jelly Bean, though, I think one of the other things I saw that I really showed Google's kind of flexibility to work with updating, whether it's like APIs or the different cards that are gonna be popping in, is even like the little thing in the notification center, the way they kind of modally added, well, from a notification, or not notification center, from the notification drop down, you can like something, you can, you know, interact with something from the notification bar. And I think that that really shows that they want to integrate a lot of different data sources and how you can interact with them. My computer's dying. So I'm gonna want to try to wrap up quickly. I want to go over a couple of other Google things really quickly. What were the big things? Project Glass, we haven't touched on it all. Project Glass. So if you guys didn't see it, they had an elaborate intro for Project Glass, which, by the way, interrupted. So what happened at the event was Vic and Doutro was out talking about, oh, this is, we didn't even talk about Google+. How much can we talk about really? But Google+, they added this thing called Events, Google+, Events, which is basically color. Anyway, I can sum it up in a second. Yeah, go ahead. It's essentially, what they want to do is they want to let you take pictures on your phone, and as you take pictures on your phone, it populates a feed of photos for people at a party. Yeah. Which sounds like a horrible idea. Or, as Vic and Doutro said, or as Vic and Doutro confirmed to me when we did our interview, and you can watch it, it's on the internet, it could be for two people during lovemaking as well. Yeah, it's like a cloud at every angle at your own birthday party. He said, as long as you share it to the right people, and I said only two people, right? And he was like, well, you know. Well, I mean, it's hard for me to have any perspective on it. I'm the least photogenic person ever. I disagree. My eyes are always closed. My mouth is always hanging open. I will say this. You do have a knack for making a face every time a camera is on you. Am I doing it now? No, you look like a normal human while you were just doing something. You look basically like a normal human being. If you slow the video down frame to frame. If you slow it down frame to frame, I would look like I was high. It's true. But every time there's a photo taken of her, it's very difficult. But then there are many very beautiful photos of you. So I think that you're not completely a failure at getting your picture taken. Are you blushing? Am I embarrassing you? Just move on. I can't embarrass you. Well, what about glass? She's a very sexy woman, everyone. I want you to know that. Oh my god. Very sexy lady. And we enjoy each other's company. Okay, I'm leaving. We enjoy each other's company immensely. Okay. And I'm right in the middle. Now, Ellis is actually blushing. I got rosy cheeks. So Sergey ran out on stage and a long story short, he had a bunch of skydivers wearing project glass. Now, did you talk to him? I did. He jumped out of a plane. By the way, he seems pretty cool. He seems like the coolest guy in the world. That's what I was waiting for. Was he high? That's what we all wanted to know. I've been dying to talk about this. Does he smoke weed? I said, was he high when he talks? Is he a big weed smoker? I don't know. Did you see that gif that was getting passed around? No. Okay, hold on a second. So the thing about him being cool is I think he was wearing the toe shoes. Oh, that is kind of a... He always wears the toe shoes. I think he was actually wearing Crocs yesterday. Oh, was he wearing Crocs? Crocs. He looks... The guy likes to have a foot comfort. And by the way, Laura is a big fan of foot comfort as well. So she really... Not that level. She's one toke away from Crocs, okay? But I mean, she used to have a pair of shoes I refer to as bread shoes because they look like loaves of bread. They were so huge. I don't like wearing high heels or sandals. She hates heels. Does not like sandals. You like sandals. Oh, you like flip flops. Yes. Anyhow, enough about Laura's shoe fashions. So these people, they skydived. Sky dove? I think it's dove. Sky dove. Sky dived. I think it's sky dived. Sky dived. They skydived out of the plane. I'm an English major, man. Wearing a pair of glass. They landed on the roof of the Moscone Center. Then some people got on bikes. They high five guys. They high five guys. Those guys got on bikes. They took the bikes off jumps. Then they high fived a guy who repelled down the side of Moscone Center. Then he went smashing through the side. He didn't go smashing. He opened the door. Then somebody else got on a bike and they rode the bike into aggressively into the auditorium and jumped it up on stage to give Sergei a pair of the ultimate high five and a pair of project glasses, which he was already wearing. So I don't know what the whole point was. The point was to thrill us. What was it like to wear his Google glasses? Well, hold on. That's what I need to know. I'm going to get to that. But they did that twice. Two days in a row. Yeah, they did. Well, you know, it was BOGO. Buy one, get one free. So they're like, you buy one ridiculous base jumping stunt, you get the second one for free. And Sergei, how could he pass that down? They had the blimp for two days. Yeah, exactly. Blimp rental. They may force you to rent it for two days, the blimp. So you got to put it to use. So then afterwards there was a press meeting with Sergei and some of the members of the team of Project Glass. And they spoke very candidly about it. And I actually have some thoughts about it. And I'm going to write something probably early next week. I'll have just a kind of piece on what Glass is and what I make of it. This week was a little hectic. But at the end of it, Sergei was like, you know, why don't we how about you guys come up here and you just try it on? There were like 25 or 30 journalists in the room. He's like, why don't we have you guys, he's like, I didn't plan this and the PR guys are going to freak out. But why don't you we have four people up here with Glass on. Why don't you come up here and you can try it out and see what it's like to wear. It's impromptu. And check out this demo we set up on it. No, because they hadn't even set up the demo yet. He was like, okay, he's like, oh, my battery's dying. And then we get some more in here. And there was like this period of like 10 minutes where they were like charging the ones they were wearing and they were like setting them to demo mode. So Sergei was letting people put his glasses on. And I went up there, a bunch of people went, Nick Bilton from the Times and Peter Hall was there from TechCrunch, all kinds of people. And we all went up and Sergei placed the glasses on us. I got him to take photos of me because I didn't have anybody else to help. And he thought he insisted. He kind of did, actually. He kind of was like, here, I'll take the photos. I was like trying to do this. That's what I read. I think he was embarrassed for me that I was doing one of these. I was like, this is for my MySpace. Okay, fine. You don't get my MySpace. I liked it. I was like, I'm going to take off my shirt and get in my mirror. Okay. This joke's going nowhere fast. Crayton likes it. He knows what I'm talking about. He likes to wear the glasses. It was like, here's what it was like. There was a floating screen in the upper right corner of my vision showing a semi-translucent fireworks display. It was just running on a demo of a video. So it produces sound, but you have to kind of cup your hand over the stem to hear the sound clearly. And I have some more information on it. I don't want to talk about all of it right now about how it's operated, but I'm going to share some of that information in the near future. It's going to blow your mind apart. And you're going to have to put it back together using a special program that runs only on Project Glass that shows you how to put your brain together. Elmer's glue.app. And you didn't order any, right? I can't speak. I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of an order of Project Glass. Let's just say that if you see a sweet-ass-looking Borg that reminds you a little bit of Josh Topolsky coming towards you on the street in about six months, you'll know what's happening. And I think that's the Verge cast. Oh, we got to talk about one more thing. What about RIM? We got to talk about RIM. I mean, I don't know how much there is to say. RIM is not doing well. There's not a lot to say. They've postponed BlackBerry 10 to 2013. 2013. Correct. To some people. And they are firing 5,000 workers. How many workers do they have? 5,000. So that's about 35%. Is it really? It's 35%. Wow. I believe it's 35% given what's the 5,000 they announced yesterday and the 3,500 they had. It's 35% of their workforce. And the big deal is that I believe Reuters published a story or Bloomberg and they said that there is- It was Reuters. That they are contemplating either producing Windows phone devices or selling to Microsoft. What was the- Something's true. The rumor was that Microsoft approached a while ago and said, hey, guys, you're in trouble. Here's Windows phone. Let's do it up. And Torsten and the board are like, no, man, we believe in BlackBerry 10. Let's do it. And then on top of that, there was Jim Beausoleil wanted to get big into offering the BlackBerry enterprise backend stuff to other smartphones, BlackBerry Messenger, Secure Email, yada, yada, yada. And the board was like, no, no, we want to sell our own phones. We want to do it. But now this quarter was so bad and they're in such a world of hurt. All those previous rumors are coming back and they might need to spin off the hardware or spin off the software or partner with Microsoft or do something. They're going to try and put BlackBerry 10 out. That's going to happen. Yeah. You think so? I mean, you think it's going to be a Nokia. This could be a Nokia. Here's what's going to happen. They're going to they're going to delay it. They're going to continue talks with Microsoft. They're going to strike a deal with Microsoft. They're going to release a single BlackBerry 10 device that's like the unicorn. Like we had to do it. We completed our mission. It's like it's the end, the end nine. And what does it say about your company? If it's so I mean, how large is Dieter probably knows? I mean, how large is their software development team to begin with? What does it say about your company if it's in such dire straits that you have to push something back that far? You know what? I mean, to me, I feel like this is not going to happen. I don't want to I don't want to be negative. And RIM has made some really wonderful products in the past, but I do not see any possible way of them reclaiming success with a brand new operating system with brand new devices in the current state of the market. I just simply I mean, I simply do not understand how RIM can make a mount a comeback of any of any substance of any size that matters at this stage in the game. If they're pushing to 2013, like this is not like this is this is not I don't think we're in the last quarter of this game, but we are definitely about at halftime and you're getting a pretty good sense of the game could go. But like, you know who the teams are. I think RIM needs to... I just said this metaphor doesn't work at all. The game is being played with a ball. Go ahead. The thing that made BlackBerry successful and the thing that has kept it hanging on up until recently was people had a visceral, desperate need for some of the features on BlackBerry. Either they had to do it for work or they were obsessed with BlackBerry Messenger because it was free or cheaper than text messages. Those needs aren't as powerful and visceral anymore. And there's nothing that I've seen in BlackBerry 10 that looks like it's going to create that kind of desperate need at all. I mean, also they said their first device was going to be a non keyboard device. And the one thing that I actually hear from... But they hedged on that today. They're going to do both around the same time. The one thing that I actually ever hear from anybody who I see using a BlackBerry, like literally the only, the only argument I've ever heard in the last six months from anybody who I see with a BlackBerry device is I can't use a virtual keyboard. I love this keyboard. It's all about the keyboard. It's all about the physical keyboard. Yes. The last phone that I used that was not an iPhone was a BlackBerry Bold. Yeah. The original Bold. I used it exclusively for the keyboard. The keyboard is amazing. And by the way, I think there is room for keyboard devices in the world. I would love, I mean, Matthias Duarte talked to Joanna Stern from ABC News, our good friend, and he said, she asked him about BlackBerry. By the way, she's sporting a Bold and a Galaxy Nexus right now. She's living the dream. She asked him and he was like, we'd love to have a BlackBerry making Android devices. I think from a business standpoint, they need to either get out that way or sell. I mean, they're stocked. I'm sorry, but if RIM made a really beautiful keyboarded high-end Android device running like straight up stock, like don't give me like add BBM or whatever other customizations you think are cool, but like make it basically stock. Kind of what you said about the 900. That would be a formidable device. You'd want that Android phone. Yeah. That would be a formidable device. I don't know. I mean, I don't want to go into the weeds here cause I know we're done, but, and I don't, I'm sure Dieter knows more about this than me, but I just feel like we're talking about a situation, you know, we're like, this is like pie in the sky stuff. I just don't think there's room for them anymore. Well, no, no. I see. I disagree. I mean, there's room for them to play to their strengths. Here's what their strengths are not. Software. They're not good at it. They were good at it 10 years ago when no other smartphone platforms existed really. And they had advantages on particularly not in user interface, but in backend services, in email services, in security services and deploying that in deploying it. Right. Hundreds of thousands of enterprise. Where they don't have strength and where they've never had strength is user interface design and execution on user interface designs. And I mean, isn't their biggest strength their hardware? No, it's a services. Their biggest strength has been up until the last couple of years, their email service, their BBM service and their enterprise service that they can deploy for companies and the way they deploy it and the security offerings that they have for those companies. Right. But that truly has been years. Relatively, they've peaked hardware wise. The curve. Yes. No. Relatively versus the competition. Oh, I mean, in terms of market share, the curve was massively when Verizon was giving away curves 2007, maybe 2008, 2007, I think massively popular phone and a lot of people had them. But I mean, that's living in the past. That is a different world that we live in. And everyone caught up to them. Everyone caught up and surpassed. Or died. Like Palm. Or Nokia. I mean, Nokia is not making Nokia phones. Nokia is making Nokia hardware with Windows phone on it. So to me, my take is the only I think it's you got to pick a team at this point for them. I don't think they can they may do a 10 device. Dieter, I think you're right. But I feel like you they're looking at Android. They're going to either sell off. They're going to break it apart and maybe just be enterprise backbone in some way. Or they're looking at a partner. I got to say, Windows phone makes much more sense to RIM than Android. I agree. They already have partnerships. They've got a Bing partnership. Yeah. And they need to fully secure all the way up to it's like the president can carry one. And they need to let governments have been on their servers, you know, from Dubai or whatever. And that kind of like serious enterprise class stuff and management is, you know, Android has some of it. But it's nowhere going to be nowhere near as robust as Windows Phone 8. And that's the other thing is Blackberry 10 versus Windows Phone 8 for an IT manager at some giant corporation. I don't know that they would take a chance on Blackberry 10 at this point. When their two years comes up, they're going to switch. Yeah, I mean, I guess it's up on that. Well, Windows phone is vastly superior to any software product that RIM has put out ever. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, I mean, even iOS has come such a long way. I mean, people want it so bad. But that's the thing. Apple is aggressively pursuing this market and they're offering a lot. They want to own that market and they're offering a lot and their customers are like, everybody wants an iPhone. They're like, well, we're going to make an iPhone. There's companies built on creating secure apps solutions for iPhone. Also, think about what you can do from an enterprise standpoint with something like an iPhone versus a Blackberry right now. Their worlds apart. You can drag and drop. I think that's it. Also, I mean, as we've seen with many things, the best thing doesn't always win. So it doesn't always matter that, you know, like that's the thing about RIM that I think has become less true, but it's still true to some extent that is that huge corporations use them and insist that their employees use them. You said Joanna has one. I assume it's because of CBS. ABC. ABC, wherever. It's definitely ABC, I know for a fact. The point is that, you know, that continues to, millions and millions of people continue to use them because they have this idea that it's the best thing, but that could go away very quickly and it won't really make any difference. They've already, they're already, I mean, we keep reading these, we keep writing these stories about how, you know, so-and-so decided they're not going to deploy Blackberries anymore. They're going to switch into iPhone. Well, the government, a lot of them. Yeah, I just think they are in a very hard place and the only reason they're there is because they failed to adapt. They failed to adapt quickly. I mean, they have no one to blame but themselves. It was not like they were just beat, okay? Like the iPhone didn't come out and everybody was like, I'm, forget this Blackberry, I'm going to go get an iPhone right this second. The iPhone came out, it was a huge success, it has been a success. Android was not a success at first and it's become a success, but there was, there was a huge chance at the beginning for RIM to offer something that was as innovative and as fascinating and as exciting and as wonderful as either of those platforms. And they gave us the storm. And at every turn, at every turn, they half stepped, they, they lagged, they were stubborn. I mean, in my opinion, and you need only listen to Lazaridis at the dive into mobile right after the torch came out at dive into mobile, Lance Ulanoff got up and said, you know, he was talking about, just talking crazy talk about how we can't make the right kind of phone until there are dual core CPUs and phones and you can have the playbook and it's just like stuff that made no sense at all. It's like so out of touch. But you hear him respond to like, Lance says like, why is this torch is terrible, it's slow and laggy, like is this what you think is a, is what, you know, is a good phone? And he was like, yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's very speedy. But then he was like, also like, well, we can't make a good phone until we get a dual core CPU. Meanwhile, everybody and their mother was working on dual core devices, you know, I feel like the other thing about, sorry, the other thing about rim is like when the iPhone came out, everybody else went, whoa. And they tried to reset. Not every Nokia didn't execute on it, but Microsoft did. Microsoft didn't. Android did. Google did with Android. Google totally different. Google saw it. Microsoft didn't. Nokia didn't. And rim didn't. And they're all in a really tough position right now. I mean, none of those guys saw it. I mean, Balmer laughed it off. You know, they were working on the kit. They were working on projects like the kin. They were, they released windows 6.5, windows mobile 6.5. Remember that disaster with the hexagonal icons grid? Yeah. I mean, it was a total bust. I mean, you know, they were still pushing resistive screens in 2008 and 2009 even, I think. When was phone actually introduced? 2010. Yeah. Yeah. It was February 2010. I mean, and you look at Nokia. Nokia was pushing Symbian garbage. Garbage phones. I remember some of the phones that we looked at where they were like, we're doing an all touch screen phone, but it's resistive. I remember talking, I talked to a Nokia designer and he said, it doesn't matter what the material of the screen is as long as the response is just as good. And it's like, but you can't get the response because resistive doesn't work that way. You know, and it's like, they didn't get it. They fought and now they're, they're, now they're dying. It's like adapt or die. Adapt or die. That's my motto. The one company Steve Jobs was really, really ended up being right about about being five years or more behind, you know, ends up being this kind of situation. I mean, that was 2007. I think you're, I think you're, I think you're, you're very foolish. I'm surprised. If you saw the iPhone, you didn't at least go, this is something. This means something. If you didn't touch it. I mean, I remember I, I, I, uh, I got an iPhone and returned to the next day because I, I couldn't deal with the keyboard. And then a couple of months later, I was like looking at my trio 650 at this tiny screen and a st you'd moving a stylus around on it. I was really like, what could the iPhone do? The trio 650 can't do. And I was like, this is ridiculous. Well, adapting is hard. It's hard for companies and it's hard for people. But I went back to the store and I bought another iPhone and I started, I remember very, we were sitting in like, uh, in the car, in the parking lot somewhere. And I was, um, changing the time on the clock, on the, on the alarm clock. And I was just like, the touch response was insane. And it hit me. I was like, this is way different on a different level. This is way different. Like there's a, you had to like learn a new skill. Well, you had to at least open your mind to it. Right. You know, I was like, this is way different for reasons that are much more subtle than like Apple made an aluminum back touchscreen phone. It's like they made something that felt different than anything that had come before it. And people who didn't recognize that and immediately start trying to adapt, Google did check it out. Rim did not, Rim did not. They thought they had better ideas and they didn't. I mean, they needed to riff and they did not riff on that stuff. But they didn't have any ideas. I mean, I think that's part of the problem. I think that that's what you see now in some of like with the iPhone is that it's not changing very much. And when people start getting, they go, oh, we're so successful. We don't want to change too much. Right. I mean, that's really dangerous. No, it is truly like if you look at iOS 6, what we've seen versus, you know, it just is slightly reminiscent. And by the way, like they've got a great product right now. And I understand why they don't want to mess with it too much. I'm not suggesting they'll fail. It is reminiscent of how slow Microsoft became at adapting. On a year to year basis. I mean, just yeah. When you see the evolution of Windows, when you see the evolution of a lot of that, I mean, the Windows Mobile is a great example. They just got into a rhythm of very slow, very slow, very gradual innovation without any fire under you because you own it. You own the market. They had a huge market. Windows Mobile used to have a huge part of the smartphone market when the smartphone market was much smaller. And now. I have an insane naive hope that we haven't seen all of iOS 6. There's still some UI innovation that hasn't has popped up. I was talking to Sam Sheffer, one of our resident. He's like a very hopeful. He's very hopeful spirit about Apple. And and why not? They've done amazing stuff. And I think there is there is he was saying that he's holding out this hope that maybe there would be some surprise. Like we've added all this and they very well might. They're going to have a new device around October. They're going to show a final version of iOS 6, not the beta version that developers are using right now. And I don't see why. I don't think it's we can rule out them having some surprises. In fact, you have to rule in that they will have surprises. Knowing forestall, I think there are definitely going to be some surprises. I don't think Apple's like then they're not foolish. They see what's going on in the landscape. But right now, I mean, right now, as it stands right now, like I think that people are starting to wonder, like, is there is there more? Knowing that people have to buy, you know, you pick one phone for a couple of years for most people. If you're if you're pitching somebody Android versus iPhone now, when you're looking at the software, like, do you think I was wondering what you think about how fast Android is moving over the course of the year versus iOS? Where is that going to be in two years? Well, they started from a good spot. And, you know, they innovated a lot early on. I mean, iOS. So their distance to go is a little less far. I mean, Android, just with the last version, in my opinion, got to like design, parody, design parody and cohesiveness and and performance. Honestly, like this this jelly bean on the Galaxy Nexus, like with Android four point oh and especially with two point three, like it only felt good when you had it on insanely beefy hardware and a super fast processor. You just had it would have to brute force to make it feel like it wasn't stuttery. This jelly bean is the first one. I mean, you know, the Galaxy Nexus has no slouch, but it feels remarkably better. And the performance and the speed of stuff, you know, scrolling and whatnot is great. It really took it took a device from that was introduced in October of last year and made it feel feels like a new phone. What were the issues you had with with scrolling? I read what you wrote. I didn't quite understand it. I had issues with scrolling on the tablet. They're very minor, but there's some I can't believe we're getting into this weed area right now. But there's just some very minor when you're flipping through the home screens very quickly. Or other screens, there can be a little bit of snapback where it almost is senses too much of your finger movement and kind of thinks you want to go in the other direction. But on the whole, you felt like it was like super snap. Yeah, it's very pleasant to use. It's very pleasant to use. And it makes sense. And the new notifications are awesome. Like the new notification stuff is awesome. There's so much to read the review and we'll have more on jelly bean. We got to wrap up. We have to wrap up. And by the way, I'm sorry, we didn't take any calls today. We just got we had so much to talk about. I think I said we were going to. And Laura said we were going to and we lied. Let's take one call right now. Dial in. We're gonna take one call. Who's gonna be on dial in. The number is the number is the number is a number. It has digits in it. It's 888-418-4074. You get to be the only caller on the verge cast today. You can talk to Laura. You can talk to Ellis. You can talk to Dieter. I want to hear some rim optimists here. You don't have to be rim optimist. I don't think there are any. It can be anything you want. When was the last time you met someone who's like all in with with a black bear? All in for rib. I mean, I knew a few diehards, but they're they're all they've all given up. Yeah, I know. My good friend and former colleague Kevin Mitchell, who's still going for it. I know some. Well, he does run crackberry, right? So you got it. I know some people in L.A. and and in D.C. who are like not in our industry, who are in like the entertainment and like Paul and like more like politics. Those people are still hanging on. Last name rhymes with Schmanual. Schmanual. No, he he has an iPhone. Ari has an iPhone. In case you're wondering. He probably also has a black. I think he also has a black. All right. Here we go. We're taking a call. Caller, you're on the air. You're the special Virgcast for this week. Caller, what is your name? What's on your mind? This is not good. Hello. This is a total fail. Did I do something wrong? Can they hear me? Nice job, Michael. You lost the caller. Well, that was great. Is this a sign? All right. That's it. We're wrapping up. I think it's a sign from from the Lord. The Lord of the dance. That was the optimist mind caller. Joseph Flatley. Joseph Flatley, one of our feature writers. All right. That's the Virgcast for this week. If you'd like to get in touch with us, you can email us at virgcast at the virg.com. You can find the Virg on Twitter. At the Virg is not us. It's a Canadian radio station. Please ask them if we can swap names because we're open to it. We'd love to do that. Let us know, guys. You can also ping me on Twitter. I'm Josh at Josh. Ellis is at hamburger. I kid you not. You had to squeeze it in. It's incredible. Laura is at Laura underscore June. Underscore is not written out. It's just the symbol. That's right. That would be cool. And Dieter is at Backlon. That's a really good idea. Backlon. That's B-A-C-K-L-O-N. He's happy to tell you the story about that name any time you ask. Of course, you can always leave a comment on the post when it goes up. We love that. That's it. We'll be back next week with more delicious and informative Virgcasting. Until then, what happened there? You just ended it? What's that? I'm here. How dare you? Great. I was just about to send warm wishes. Until then, I wish all of you in your homes happiness. And air conditioning. Rock and roll. I don't know. I didn't even put those words in order. That was a horribly creepy ending. It was like a German guy ending. I wish all of you in your homes happiness.