 Yes. Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of July 2nd, 2012. I'm Josh Topolsky. And I'm Paul Biller. Yes. Yes. And we're back. We're back. The band has been gotten back together. Yes. Comeback world tour. Comeback. We're on a tour right now. I like the way my shirt kind of is blending into the background here. I'm like a snake. Yeah. Chameleon snake. No, no, no, no. It's like a snake with like four legs and kind of shorter. From Metal Gear. Oh, that snake. Are you kidding me? You thought I meant an actual snake? These guys knew on the internet, not back there. What if like a light just started like coming out of your body? Would you describe your blazer as a sneaking suit? It's my shirt that's the camouflage element here. As anybody with an eyeball can see. Just take a look. What are you doing right here? There's a button. It's like it's like it's poorly made shirt. And this button is like wants to subscene. You just saw something you weren't supposed to. And I hope you enjoyed it. That'll be $5. PayPal it to me at I'm not gonna tell you my PayPal email address because I wouldn't want you to send me too much money. Anyhow, this is the Vergecast where we discuss the week in technology. Culture. And and I'm very happy to to have Neelay Patel back from being married. And also from having a honeymoon. Yeah. And Paul Miller. Neither of those things happen here. But he did go to Mexico. You did go to Mexico where where any of those things could have happened very easily. It's true. When you say Yeah. Yeah. They say it's the city of love. Mexico City of romance. Mexico is the city of love. I believe that's the that's the official nickname for the whole country. The city of love. Right? Sorry, Mexico City, right? Is the city of love. That's where you were. Mexico City. You weren't anywhere else, were you? No. Now, you may or may not know this. I'm not gonna ruin the surprise. I don't want to ruin it. What? Let's just say that it involves a meal a classic American meal. Oh, yeah. I shouldn't talk. I thought about wearing the t shirt. I shouldn't talk about I'm a secret. Okay, why not? Well, what are we saving it for? Isn't it in your file filed report? Well, it's it you know, that's that's ages from now. Is it Paul did a report on on robotics, right from Mexico. I was in Robo at RoboCup. He was a RoboCup in Mexico City. We've got a great report coming on. Fourth, fourth, fourth coming report. But but while there, he hung out with meatloaf. I went what I went to a meatloaf. Oh, you don't know about this? No. He went to meatloaf concert and then got backstage to meet love concert. And I don't know if you you didn't Billy Billy Billy our video guy hung out with meatloaf. He shook meatloaf's hand. That's definitely something Billy would do. Which apparently it's completely in character. And apparently meatloaf was a no. He was not in good physical condition. He collapsed at a he collapsed. He fainted at a concert in Pittsburgh. Really? Yeah. Recently. Like after how recently? Like I don't know, like two days ago or something. Oh my gosh. Yeah. You know, right. Right. Paul meatloaf are good friends now. Yeah. Great show, which is he puts on a good show. He just can't. He just can't quite hit the notes anymore. How do you know if he could ever hit the notes? Because I've heard the recording. Auto tune. Early auto tune. Let me tell you what's happened. Okay. You're living in a world where using a future technology, all songs that you hear that sound like they're in tune are being treated. I'm not saying you're being treated. You're being treated psychically. He was missing large swats of his vocal cords. You're being treated psychically, psychologically and electronically to believe that those songs are in key when they're actually not. Yeah. It's like a plot of a Philip K. Dick book. It's not, but it should be where people are just fixing off tune things from the, from the future in the past. You know what I think is really, that just blow your mind. Do you ever read? Paul's like really taking this all. I can't get it. I can't. It's like they're sending waves back through time that fix out of key notes. Oh, so like, like Buddy Holly was singing totally off key, but you would never know. 50s they couldn't tell because from the wave right now, we were fixing it back. That's right. Okay. Retroactive perfection. The question, the question, of course, the great, the great question is, but why? Retroactive perfection. No, but there's a reason. We don't know. We won't know until the shocking conclusion of the book. Retroactive perfection. Space lizards. It's called Now Wait for Last Ear. Oh God. Now Wait for Last Ear is a book. I know. I know what it is. Yep. What kind of hate are we experiencing in the chat right now? Yeah, yes, yes. All right. So we have a lot of technology we need to talk about and we don't need to talk about Now Wait for Last Ear, the great lost Philip K. Dick novel coming soon to a store near you. Thanks to Penguin Audiobooks. Oh, it's only available on audiobook, of course. No, it's already out of print. It's out of print on audiobook. Can't be duplicated. It just came out out of print on audiobook. But the waves make it sound perfect. All right. Hold on. What's our first topic? I feel like we're out of practice. We're not out of practice. I've been given a photo of you. I think we're in practice. This is the first topic is Jelly Bean and I have a photo to put on the big screen. Jelly Bean, guys. Have you heard of it? It's the latest, greatest Android update that you'll never see on your device. And maybe I thought they fixed that like a year ago. Now I think you're imagining a world where when people say things at Google IO, they come true. No, so Jelly Bean was announced and it's been rolling out. It's been rolling out to the devices they gave out at Google IO. And it's going to be on shipping devices, the Nexus 7 and the Galaxy Nexus. They hit a little snag with some of that recently. But yeah, and Dieter did a review. I gave a little bit of an assist. Well, I reviewed the Nexus 7. What device did they give out if it wasn't the Galaxy Nexus? The Nexus 7. So they gave those out with the update with the update. People who had the real one, people who went and bought it don't have the update. Those suckers. Well, that's I think they're still just working on a few last minute kinks. Also, I don't think they want to release Jelly Bean until the Nexus 7 is out. Also, they don't want to release Jelly Bean until they take out the patent they violated of Apple's right, which is now causing the halt of sales of the device. When does the Nexus 7 come out? It's supposed to be mid July. So I think they said they're shipping, I mean, they claim they're going to be shipping Galaxy Nexus or Galaxy Nexi next week with this. We'll get into that in a second. But yeah, but anyhow, they handed out devices at IO that were updated or to be updated and they have been updated as soon as you take them out of the box. And Dieter did a review. And I did I mentioned Jelly Bean. I talked about Jelly Bean a bunch in my Nexus 7 review, which you've never seen. No. Because you're not on the internet. How many? How many Josh faces out of I gave it 8.8 Josh faces out of 10. That's pretty good. It's very good. And actually, it's a very good product. The Nexus 7 is really, really good. And in fact, I've been using it. I've been using it day to day. And and I and I really like it. I mean, I was Google now kind of settle itself down for you. Yeah, Google now was never really giving me any I mean, if anything like Google now doesn't do enough. Like I wish it was showed me more stuff. I wish you were saying like it was it was a lot of stuff. It was making wrong assumptions about it knows where I live. It knows where I work. It guessed where I worked by like a couple of a couple of numbers. So it didn't I didn't tell it where I worked. But it was like we it was like I think you work here. And it was pretty much right. It was like three numbers off. So it's like the block. Yeah. Oh, so it was like tracking where you kept on going. Yeah. Do you know how it works? I don't really know a lot about Google now. I heard about this and it's like, oh, here's how Google now I've been waiting for something like this. Here's how now I'm with you. Here's how Google now works. It takes your search history, your location information. And I think there's a there's a bunch of look at your address book. Siri gets most of its stuff out of your address. I don't know. I don't know if it does. I don't know all of the places. Siri gets the relationships to people. So it's like this is my sister. This is I don't Yeah, I don't know all of the places it pulls from. But what I do know is that it knows enough to be able to say things like in the morning, it'll say your commute to work will be this long. That's pretty cool. Using like transit, public transit. And they'll show you on the map. You can so it doesn't even matter if it's a few numbers off. Right. It's the same. It's the same. It's like a lot of people don't know. I'm sure there's like a lot of people that don't know. And it's like, you know, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of people that don't know. I'm sure there's a lot of people that don't know. I'm sure there's a it's the same thing. But once no, I told it where my work was. It was like, is this your work? And I was like, no, it's this address. And it's now it's in there. It'll show you the weather. It'll show you if it's I mean, so the thing is, it's using it's using your search data, your location data, but it's also using data that it's pulling. Does it replace the home screen? Or do you have to go into it? There is a gesture you hold down on the home button and push up. And it this little Google orb comes up and it's a very web OS feeling thing. Yeah. And actually that icon that Google icon, the white with the black inside. Yeah. That looks very for whatever reason. I mean, I was looking at we ran the story about we got a leak. We saw a leaked video of the pre not the pre three the Windsor knot, which is the pre three without is essentially the slab web OS phone. Okay, no keyboard. And I looked at that compared to the jelly bean, the stock jelly bean screen, which has, you know, the row of icons on the bottom. And it's just an empty kind of like multicolored background and has a search bar up top and there they basically have turned Android into like a version of web OS. I mean, you could see Matias really had a hand. You know what I think is really exciting. It is exciting. And the card stuff they're doing. I mean, they're things they're Google now is based on cards that you can swipe away. Oh, yeah, they're cards of information. They call them cards. Wow. So it's in they layer them like on top of each other, which is actually a little weird. They layer them on top of each other, top of each other. But the only way to see the ones on the bottom or to swipe away the other ones, like a totally different metaphor than anything else in the operating system. Or is that kind of like a strip of it's kind of like the strip and it's very much based on swiping. You know, they all the new hollow apps are like swipable left to right, like get to different areas. So it feels really well integrated. So here's the thing about hollow talked about all of this. We don't know. Well, we didn't. I mean, I took we took last week we had we had Ellis and Laura and Deter on which I watched part of that wild, wild mixture. It was good. We got to get all those guys. So here's the thing about the hollow. So we had I remember when the zoom came out at CS 2000. And then try on tablet, try on tablet. And we had Matias at the trailer. You interviewed him. And he was like, Yeah, I don't really have anything to do with this, but it looks nice. I had some stuff two years later. Actually, all that stuff is gone. What he said, what he said. You're right. But he also said that he had come in right as they're working on gingerbread. Yeah. And they had done a couple of really minor things. And then like I see us or not. I see our honeycomb was already in the pipeline. Yeah. And he only had very minor, I think, just very minor. But you can see they cleaned up all the like, they got rid of all that. So they kept the they kept one of the wallpapers or two of the wallpapers from the there's no more like little blue lines all over. That's all gone. What is it? We're waiting blue lines. All those blue highlights and like, there are some things like when you move widgets around, or you move icons, it has like the little like, pluses for like targets. And it shows like the ghost image of where you would put the icons, which is not really, I think it works really well. Yeah, it's a nice visual effect. It's not that you know, how much does Google now factor into your daily life? Very little at this point. I mean, basically, what it does is tell me the weather, which I don't need, because I have a weather app that I use. And it tells me commute stuff. But it has done I told you the thing about the plane getting off the plane. No. When I landed after coming back from IO, I landed off of a red eye, a red landed on a red eye. At like six in the morning, I was getting off the plane. And I looked at my turn my phone on, you know, and it immediately said, your commute home is going to be or your drive home will be from here will be 33 minutes. So it like knew that I had arrived because I'd search for the flight. It knew that I'd arrived or at least it knew where I was. And it knew where my home was because I told it the day before earlier in the day. And so it said, it'll be 33 minutes driving. Now, presumably, had there been like a bad accident or something and the road was like blocked up, it would have said commute is going to be an hour and a half and hear other alternate routes, which is amazing. To me, I didn't prompt it. I didn't ask for it. It just did that. It was like, you're in New York. Here's the temperature. Here's the weather. Sorry. Yeah, here's the weather. And and you you if you're going home, this is how long that's because you can land in New York at like 6am. You're totally fine. You land at like 730 or eight. No, no, no. This is like, that's the thing. Like if you I never I said this last week, but I'm going to repeat it's worth repeating. I don't check any bags because my goal is to get out of the airport as quickly as possible, especially here in New York. Because I have 15 minutes can make the difference between like city and traffic and not city and traffic. So like in the morning, it's like five, I let it like five is actually 530. So at 530, you're pretty much okay, unless something really catastrophic is going on. So so theoretically, is Google now getting is going to get smarter as like friend connection? Yeah. And I interviewed I don't know about friend connections, but I interviewed Matthias and he was like, this is a project that's like across the across Google. It's not just like an Android thing. Like everybody is a part of this. And it's a platform. It's not an app. It's a platform. And so you know, just like and it does, you know, it's it does Siri stuff, too. You know, right? Like you can ask it sports scores and that's good at that. So and I think it'll do like if you if you ask for like a sports score, when the game is over, I think it'll tell you it'll like prompt you to tell you what the score was. How is that different than because those are cards are telling you information it already knows you want. So how does it how do you ask it? What a sports court? It has a Google. Yeah, the Google voice. Sorry, not Google voice. The voice search, the voice search icon. You just tap that you can also say Google. Yeah, which is completely scary. Like, because I mean, Google, I haven't done that. I think you say talking to Siri, I think you can open I never addressed Siri. You can open Google now and say Google. Like the running joke in my house is that whenever we want something to happen, we have to get up and do it. I just yell computer. Well, hope a computer does it for me. And that's like, that's never happened. I never I never yell one day, one day. I'm like, Google, yeah, get me a sports score. And there'll be a do it. You'll just say give me a sports score. Specific for I like the sports score right now. I think of getting something more specific and having very specific like motorized ramps at your house for like, I need a beer and like there's a little ramp that goes from your refrigerator just for beer cans that come which are the one hand like falls out and goes down a motorized mousetrap or goes to where there's a motorized slow movie motorized ramp that goes just to where you sit on the sofa. And maybe that has like a pivoted arm so to shoot it out in different places. You like that? I'm just I'm just excited. I think this is a really good shift from like at first I feel like we're putting all the information in to the internet and we got better at finding it inside of the internet. You know, maybe it shows up in your Bing result. But I think the best is that if it comes straight to you. Well, what's interesting about it is that it's preemptive. It's a preemptive search in some ways, right? Which I think some people find like, terrifying and I don't find terrifying because I don't think Google is going to I trust Google at least until up until this point to not really abuse my data too badly. I know they're going to use it to sell ads to me, but that's fine. Like if you can give me more targeted ads, I'm not going to do that. Does it read your email? Like when you got off the flight, did it know that you were on that flight because you were searching for it? No, it knew I was on the flight because I had searched for it a number of times. And that's still getting worked out because I searched for the flight and it gave me like two different version of American flights with the same flight number going to completely different places. And it didn't say like, there should be an option there where it's like is one of these your flight? That's also just like the chaos of Virgin America. It's just the chaos of everything. Yeah. chaos of information. The new book chaos of life. A new book by Neil I Patel and Josh with the forward by Paul Miller. Then the forward is called information is life. Yeah, I got it. I like this. Paul's pissed because he's just doing the forward. I'm just trying to think it wasn't included in the writing. Sorry, man. You're busy. You're busy. Forwards are great. It's like an essay. I love writing essays. And you get like you get a lot of the credit. Yeah. For like you're like all over the book. But all you had to do is write a few pages of just like fluff. Yeah. I hate by the way. I hate forwards. Oh, really? I hate them. I just read a really good John Jeremiah Sullivan forward of Absalom Absalom. I just feel like I just you know, I have a really good there's a John uptake forward of Walden. I just feel like I just really like I really don't tell me what the book is gonna be like. Let me check it out. And then maybe I'll go back to you. Like a post you want a backward? Yeah. Cool. And that's the verge cast. You can get in touch with us on Twitter. Yeah, a backward. What's happening? chat chat didn't like that. They didn't like your high five. It's are they panning your high five? I'm just reading Michael Shane just in our chat just saying some stuff. Oh, you guys trouble not even family. Shane. Shane brain. What would you do? I don't know. I just said I wish we had a camera on that room. By the way, really, really cool down in here. Yeah. Very nice. Yeah. I was I by the way, I just I just did today's 90 seconds on the verge. Oh, in case you're wondering yesterday was a national holiday. And there was no news. So there was no point doing it. No other countries even though other countries exist in the world. And you had news. We're in America. So sorry about that. But you know, we were out there with the hot dogs and the fireworks and whatever it is that people do on July 4. That's how like I sound like an alien. We had we had a cookout. There were hamburgers there and a good fun time. sparklers were lit. The children played. All was normal. All was right. Oh, you don't like my joke. Cray Sean? Really? I think it's pretty good. Paul's a good one. Anyhow, back to Google. I know. No, back to jelly bean. No. So here's the thing about jelly bean. What the hell are we talking about? All this is great. All this type of talk about is great. Google now seems amazing. No one will ever get it. No, as far as I can tell, no one will ever get it. Is this situation getting worse? Way worse. Situation normal. They just hit 10% of devices with ice cream sandwiches. Here's the problem. But they have done something. They announced something, which is this PDK, which ironically is what Palm called something that they announced about two years into being Palm. The PDK is from my understanding and by the way, callers, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. They are going to give the core code to hardware partners. What is this? What are you making this for? It's just a different lie. You say it's a different lie? Yeah. A different lie. The new novel. One lawyer against the world of patent crazy heathens. They tell this lie all the time. Go ahead. This is the new version of the lie. They're going to give the core code to hardware partners so they can begin their development. So like early on. So what I understand, presumably they're going to say we just carved out, we basically have this like code base, which is, you know, maybe we're not, we didn't put all the bells and whistles on it, but this is like the core of our major update. Which they built for whatever specific, which they build for their, for their nexus device. And they're going to go to Samsung and, um, and say, here's our, here's our next code base. Get your stuff ready for it. Here's the big changes. And presumably that will allow them to release the devices. So one of two things are going to happen. Either they're going to, the developers will do the, or the, the third parties will do this. They'll take it early. They'll really go crazy and they'll build their stuff on top of it. And then they're going to Google release something and they'll be totally at odds. And then they'll spend, you know, another year or two reconciling or the third parties just won't do that. And they'll wait for it to come out. I can't imagine. I don't think this has anything to do with like Samsung or HTC or Sony. I think it does. I think it has a lot to do with Verizon and AT&T and whatever carriers. I mean, that's, that's the real, only somebody would write an editorial. Somebody could talk about how the carriers are. Authoritatively talk about it. Um, hold on. We're going to get to that. I, I, I, It's going to happen. It's going to. My understanding is that that regardless of what this is, Well, you know, last year at IO, they promised that everybody get 18 months. Maybe this is their, maybe this is their better solution. No one ever talked about it again. No matter what. They're like, Android updates. Google gives itself such a great headstart. Like no matter what they're giving themselves a head start on everybody. Here's the thing, but here's the thing. We're upset about it. Uh, Google should be upset about the situation because their great new software isn't getting on phone. So like the consumer experience is worse. The cool new features like Google now aren't happening on all these devices. But Samsung made its own Siri competitor. Why would they use Google now? Well, it's, it's not exactly this mic stand. Why is, can I ever get it right? It's not exactly a Siri competitor. There are similarities, but there's also great differences. But, but the point is like Google's shooting themselves in the foot here. I mean, to me, uh, it should be priority number one to bring devices to parody. Because then all the cool stuff that you announced at IO that all the world is hyped about is suddenly on all of your devices. And you want to fight Apple. If Apple is your main competitor and you want to show off like your hot new stuff, like why wouldn't you want to do it on, like, you're not selling Galaxy next? Well, you know, you're not selling next. I mean, they're going to sell some nexus sevens, but the galaxy nexus, let's say 10% of devices are on, on, on ICS. What percentage of those devices do you think are galaxy nexus? I bet it's like, I bet it's like 1% if that. So they're not putting their best and brightest stuff in front of consumers. So how is it helpful to Google to do what they're doing? Like why would they want to continue? And they're showing it to competitors. I mean, right. If they, if they wanted a monopoly on features, there are other ways to do it. Like this doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, unless they think like really long term down the road, there won't be any more partners. In which case they've like kept all the good stuff to themselves. Like, I don't really understand. They bought one of their partners. I know that, but they're not doing anything with Motorola right now. I mean, literally if they were going to do something, we don't know if they're going to, we'll find out, but they say they're not going to, and we can only take them at their word. You do have Microsoft like a million years down the road. Like, you know what? We got, we kind of need to make our own hardware. Yeah, but Microsoft didn't have to buy Motorola to do that. Sure. Here's what I think. I think, do we have a call coming in? But it's a similar idea of like realizing, you know what? We can never deliver the perfect best party product through a third party. Like, I never team up and collaborate well enough with a third party to create a great product that's on time. No, anyone for either. That's what Microsoft making that tablet means. Like, look, if we leave this up to third parties, we're never going to create the best tablet on the market and Google, it's very obvious to them. It seems that we're never going to make the best phone on the market if we leave it up to third parties. So you just have to do it yourself. They made the, they made the Galaxy next to Google could say, you have to compete with your partners just to make Google market better. Google could say, you know, partners, you have to, and you have to give users the option of having a stock experience. We'll give you the version and you can offer the phone with a stock experience immediately when it's ready, just as we would. Or you can wait to put your skin on it. You know, it's your choice. You can give users an option. Even then their phones wouldn't be ready in the same time. And some of like an HTC phones, the kernel is so different on HTC phone and stocking. Like the multitasking works differently. It's terrible. I was having this conversation to your last night. Nobody's doing like a straight up direct port. Their multitasking is awful. They should be put in jail for that. What they did to the multitasking. Especially with Jelly Bean. I'll tell you something. Jelly Bean multitasking is instantaneous. Yeah. The menu comes right up. The apps switch really quickly. It's like exactly what you want. I mean, there's, it's really nice. So good luck. I got a Galaxy next to the Jelly Bean. Good luck to everybody who wants to tweak the multitasking. I should have skipped my wedding and gone to IA. You should have. It was great. But it is a problem. I mean, it's not even fragmentation at this point. It's not like, it's not like there are like major software. Like it's not like I really wanted to get this, but I can't get it because I have a, you know, at this point we're like beyond, we're almost beyond the point where there's like hardware fragmentation. You know, screens are all higher resolution and most of them now are going to be 720. You know, I think this, at this point, people have just, these, everybody's decided this is how I'm going to do it. Samsung's going to do it this way. HTC is going to do it this way. But I mean, where, where the real, the real thing that's being, you know, ruined here that it's where the hurt is, is, is the, the features, like the cool features that Google So it hurts the features, but it doesn't seem to hurt Google very much. Well, Google doesn't seem to hurt these other manufacturers very much cause they're still doing it. And I mean, consumers are still buying. It pisses us off. And we've been talking about it for three or four years. No, but if you look at what the most interesting features are in these products, it's the deeper stuff. It's Google now, it's Siri. It's not, we built a new music hub. But if you care about Google now, just get a Nexus. But you can't like right at this second, you can't. Well, that's a, that's a different story. Well, you can't. I mean like, well for that, you can still buy one on Verizon. There's the patent story, but there's also the, you can't go buy a jelly bean device. Right. You can't buy a jelly bean device right now. Presumably. But those devices will get the effect pretty quickly. Well, this is maybe a good segue to your editorial because, and then we can talk about the band, but I, because I was going to say that Verizon, you can buy. Let's, let's see the patent first. Okay. Let's talk about the patent. I want to talk about it too. Okay. Cause people are up in arms about this. So as you may know, a injunction has been granted. Correct me if I'm off course on this. Temporary injunction. Temporary injunction has been granted to, to Apple. Who, where's the injunction? So Apple requests the injunction. Apple requested injunction has been granted for them. Well, it's in their trial. Carried out for. They got adjuncted. They got adjuncted all over the place. So Samsung can't sell the guys in Exxon. The court has said that Samsung. As of when, cause I just read an article. As of last night, it went off of the store online. We were like, we were looking at the store. Earlier in the day I was looking at the store and I was like, yeah, it's still available. And then like an hour or two later it was gone. And we're like, that's not right. It's crazy that Samsung is still the one that's fighting that battle. That's a really, no, no, but that's a really interesting. No, that's just make user sell. Right. That's what patents cover. Yeah. I understand that like Apple has to prosecute that. And like, I'm sure Samsung's hanging out with Google trying to figure this stuff out, but it's still, it's just such a weird concept. This is like a proxy. The whole thing is like this weird proxy battle. Like Apple doesn't want to correct me if I'm wrong, but they don't want to. Well, Samsung makes the hardware, right? They sell it. No, they make the phone. That's what I'm saying. Right. But not just the hardware. They, they're responsible for the entire thing. I understand that. But the software itself and the place where the patent is being violated is within Android. But, but Apple can't stop Google from selling anything cause they basically don't sell any. They don't make it. Right. But what's interesting is it is kind of this weird like. No, Samsung is basically innocent of doing anything. Apple, well, no. I mean, they put the software on the phone, but like they didn't make that decision. Sure. Apple could very well sue Google. And I've been asking for years, I've been asking Apple why they don't sue Google. I've been asking Google why you don't sue Apple back. Cause Google now owns a huge variety of patents. They, Apple and Google are now, they were involved in a lawsuit directly against each other because Google bought Motorola. That lawsuit was dismissed. So the one place where Apple and Google. And who dismissed it? It was Richard Posner in Chicago. Is this the thing that just happened? This happened last week. Right. Two weeks. Okay. Posner's on a roll. What did he dismiss today? You know, he didn't, he interviewed about his dismissal. Oh, we just found out today. I see. Okay. So there are these now competing cases around the world, right? And I know you were really up in arms about the injunction. I'd like to talk about it. Can we just say what it is, hold on? Yeah. Cause if you don't know. Just, just very, basically you can't buy a Galaxy next right now because there are a handful, I'd say what is it, four or five key patents that Apple holds that they. It's four. Is it four? That, that, that, that Samsung has violated or has, has what's the correct word? Infringed. Infringed. Thank you. But there's one in particular. There's one. Which is, which is essentially in like on device universal search, which means. And so an Apple met the standard, right? They said they're damaging our sales, whatever that is. Yeah. They're, they're reputable. See, that one's weird when you, when you say when it's the Galaxy nexus, it's the device. Well, because it doesn't, the standard, the legal standard for the injunction is they're going to do harm that they can't be repaired. But they can be repaired by money. They could have picked any Samsung device that has that function, right? Right. And so one of the reasons that the injunction, the Galaxy nexus was granted, and this is one of the arguments that Apple has been making around the world is we keep picking devices because we're required to pick devices. Yeah. The thing that is sold. Yeah. And by the time we get to the point of deciding whether or not it's infringed, Samsung has released five more devices. Yeah. Smart, smart of Samsung. Yeah. Good tactics on Samsung. Yeah. Well, what are they, you know, it's like they're. So the judge in this case was swayed by during the life cycle of this device, we, it will do us harm. Yeah. Exactly. And we have, we have presumptively proven that this patent is both valid and likely is likely valid and likely. So that's how Apple is getting these like, like, so they got to, this is how they're getting it like earlier in the process. This is the first time. I mean, this has been the fight right there. There has been very little real, like, are these patents valid? Are they being infringed conversation around the world? The fight around the world so far has been, I'm filed a patent lawsuit. Can I prove to the court that these patents are likely valid and likely in French so we can ban the sales while we have to get started. So we can get started. So this was filed five months ago. Forever ago. Yeah. So, so, and so in five months, very quick, right? Like in the world of the courts, that is, you know what? There's a solution. What's funny about it is they just made the most compelling case ever for the galaxy Nexus like a day before, you know, a week before they just made the most compelling case ever, which was we dropped the price to 350. You could buy it unlocked for the end. It's going to have 350. You didn't know that. Yeah. 350 unlocked. Great. Which is by the way, pretty incredible for this device. Like I know there's some, you know, the screen, the camera, but like overall out of every phone I can use right now, this is my phone of choice. And I think like for 350 it's a, it's a pretty good deal. I was just at AT&T, an AT&T store and they had for like, like unlocked, like flip phone, like dumb phones at 250 bucks. Yeah. Well that's, that's just kind of weird. All right. So tell me what you have huge problems. I don't have huge problems. I have, I have, let me collect my thoughts here. I, I, I don't believe, I don't believe that the goal of this ban was to stop Samsung from infringing on their patents. That's my problem. My problem is not that, not that I don't think that they may have a valid case about the patent. Wait, but who you're, what do they want to do? What is the goal? Just saying that conflates really simple. Apple can request things for bad motives, right? Yeah. Yeah. So what's the goal? They have to make a legal case. The goal is I don't, I don't think that they actually believe that the Galaxy Nexus will damage sales of the iPhone. So what do they believe? In any material way. Sure. I mean, it'll make it, it'll be a huge pain in the ass for Google and for Samsung and we'll slow them down in some pretty material ways, which they've just done. You know, they, they, the device can't be sold and now they've got to go back and look at all their other devices and say, well, are we going to get hit with the same crap? We to go fix those too. And for all we know when the Galaxy S3 goes on sale. When you say fix. Yeah. What do you mean by, you mean. Well, they have to alter the functionality on the device. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they have to remove the functionality or decrease the functionality. Well, let's actually talk about this. But they still have to mess around with it, right? So let's be, let's be, hold on, let's be, get specific. Messing around with it is great. Hold on, wait, can we get, actually I can. But it still takes time. Sure. Sure. Thank you. Nieland and I actually haven't talked about this, so I just want to get specific because I'm not like, how dare they, but I do have some like pretty strong feelings and I've noticed something else that I want to talk about online that, that I think is a bad, is kind of bad. But the patent essentially, the one that's really in question here is the one that if you, if I go on my device and I start typing like you know, I'm trying to think of an app like, I type the word shadow. Yeah. Right. It'll pull up like shadow gun the app and then like a bunch of shadow related searches. I read the patent a while ago. Maybe an email that has the word shadow. It pulls multiple databases. Multiple databases. So, so. I haven't read it. It's not in front of me. That's fine. Okay. So. That's at a very high level. So maybe you don't have, where's Matt when you need him? Maybe he's online. But, but he only comes on like late at night, like on the weekends. He's like on at like three in the morning on Saturday. Yeah. My man's a practicing attorney. He's got a day job. He's very busy. He's got a lot of work to do. But so, so basically they're like, you can't, we don't want your device to do that. Right. So fix would be my impression is fixed would be like remove, change the functionality. So when you, I type shadow, it doesn't bring up multiple results. Sure. It brings up like a web result. But that's, but that's a limited fix. There's, there might be a way to design around it. So give me an example. Give me an example of how that might happen. Maybe fold all the databases into one database. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it depends on the magical. I don't know. Patents are written in the claims. It's like, right. Like the method, that's the path without a method. You do something right. Right. So without having the claims in front of it, which I couldn't, in this case is the method code or is it the way that like, I think this goes back to, and I have a lot of patent stuff kind of planned out for next week. Yeah. But this goes back to what I think is the core problem with software patents, which is they don't exist in like a tangible way. Like there isn't a thing that is a software patent. Like you can't go to patent office and be like, I'd like to file a software patent. And then there's rules governing software. So they end up patenting the results because you can't patent the mechanism very well. Right. Do they patent the results or do they patent like some kind of weird graphical workflow? They do part of that. They do all of these, they do everything. And descriptions. The descriptions are like a method to query database where part one of the database does this. Are you suggesting that there might be a patent that's like, I have a chunk of code and no one else has ever made this code and here's what it does. And the patent should cover the actual code. Well, because the actual code, if you're a computer scientist, is kind of irrelevant. Yeah. Because you just put another line break. And that's not another line break. What you've developed is like a complex series of math. Right. And that's hard. And then you can express it in code. And if you're, you know, that code is valuable and good, but the algorithm is the thing and you can express that in all kinds of different languages in different ways and whatever. Right. So what you want to protect is that you want to protect the algorithm for the most part. It would be cool if they, they should be able to patent an algorithm. They just shouldn't be able to patent the results. So this is like a really fuzzy, right. You can't patent math and all algorithms are math. But wait a second. But you say they can't patent the idea, but if they were, if it's a very novel, if Apple truly was the first to have and file a patent for the idea that you could be on a device and type in one word and get all the results from a bunch of different databases, that is a relatively original idea. Right. I mean, that's, that's pretty original. Right. And they, you know, I don't know where universal search originates from. I don't know who holds the palm. Do it before Apple did. No, no, these patents, all these patents, these are core operating system patents. Like these are like the 90s. Are these, this is from, this is from, this is from, this is from like, oh yes. River Sherlock. This is, yeah, these are like, this is from the 90s. I think Sherlock was in like OS 8.5. Okay. So, so this is actually one of the reasons Apple and Microsoft have really strong cases against companies like Motorola and Samsung. Well, they also have, don't Apple and Microsoft also have a lot of cross licensing agreements? Yeah, Apple and Microsoft. For stuff like this? Cause they once sued each other. Right. All to hell and back in the 90s and they cross license everything. Right. And Microsoft invested in Apple and that whole thing happened. Right. How about that? There's a big video screen of Bill Gates looming over Steve Jobs. No, that moment is not Microsoft just investing in Apple. That's Steve Jobs saying we have to stop fighting Microsoft. Yeah. There's better things for us to do. They're going to invest in us and the second part of it that seems to have been forgotten There will be a company called Google. So we're going to screw the second part of it. The second part that it was lost in the midst of time is they settled all litigation between the two companies and announced like a 10 year patent cross license agreement for everything. Yeah. Which is why if Microsoft wanted to use universal search in their phone, they have some form of it too, I think. I can't remember exactly. Microsoft and Apple are very friendly. Windows 8 searches across everything. Right. Yeah. And they're very good at that. And they're very good at that. And that's why. But you know, but you can, there's, look, if Microsoft becomes really successful and becomes a threat to Apple, I'm sure they can find a way to sue each other. But right now. This gets to actually the core of my problem, which is not that they don't have a right. Okay. It's not that they don't have a right. I think they do. I just wish they were doing something other than exercising their right. It's just not that cool. I just wish they were doing something other than exercising their right. And what I'll say is this. I have a lot of people have tweeted to me and emailed me about this. I'm sure you've gotten ton as well. You would have gotten ton if you were on the internet. Um, I sense a very dark like vibe, not just from people who are Android users, but from like people who use technology, who really love it. Apple users and Android users. A dark vibe. What? The vibe, the vibe is this is, this feels bad. This doesn't feel like, this just feels like the wrong way to do it. And when Tim Cook got up and said, we prefer to settle, we prefer to license, we prefer not to get into these. Who says that? I know that, but I'm just saying that my, my, and I feel the same way. It feels like the wrong, at a moment where I feel like we're like, there's explosive innovation to be doing someone on a patent from the nineties that, that is present something, a type of search that is like present in many other places in your, in your, on your devices, on other devices. Um, you know, windows eight is a great example. Um, uh, uh, but it's also present in windows seven. So here's what I'm saying is I just feel like I wish there were less of this, which feels like a distraction and a, and like a, a, like a flat tire rather than like, this is like playing street ball. You're playing basketball, you know, and uh, I'm just, most people play, most people play street ball, no blood, no foul. And you can in street ball, you can pretty much always, I didn't know this. You can play a lot of street ball, a lot of street ball. All right. Do you play? Yeah. No blood, no foul. Have you, have you played a blood? No, no. Okay. It's the same thing. That's the same. No blood, no foul. Right. So blood, no blood, no blood foul. You play that version. No, no. Okay. The lame version. No, but so that's kind of an unspoken thing. And so like if somebody fouls you, like someone shoves you from behind in LA, you could call it, you know, but it's kind of more fun to just be in them anyway. Cause you're, you know, no, this is a such a great, this is such a great analogy. I mean, you really, I'm glad that you're back because you really summed up exactly what I was doing. It's not about being the cool, not about being the cool guy here, but it's like, you're not hurt. You're not really hurt. And the thing is, you're not, you're not going to stop doing what you're doing. And the thing is the next time you go for that, you can, you can still dunk. No. And the next time you go for that lay in and they shove you in the back again, but you knew it was coming and you make the lay in. They just feel like such an idiot. Yeah. Here's what I fear. Here's what I just want to know more about you playing street ball. I also fear not hearing more. They're all like 12 or 13 years old and they win. That's pretty much how it goes. Paul plays in shrieking terror the entire time. Paul left the internet for street ball. But, but, but it is, it is like, I don't want this to be what technology is, but I don't want it. So that I understand it. No, no, no, but, no, no, but I hear what you're saying. Please don't hit me with some historical data, but it, this is the history of the technology industry at every single level. But it's like, can we learn, can we learn anything from our, from our, so I think this time, this time is particularly bad. I agree with you at this moment, at this moment, it's particularly bad. This expression of this particular one is that bad. And I think that at the end of the day, they'll find a way around this. No, I think that the, I mean the global Android mess. It's not just Android, it's everybody. And by the way, other companies are guilty of this. It's not just Apple is like, you know, I mean every company has been trying to block the iPhone and then there's other, then there's other like patent troll companies that are like doing something like also horrible, but different, but disruptive to like what people are doing in technology. Go, carry on. Look, you love patent trolls. Love them. They're my favorite. I love covering them every, every day. This is like, there isn't a king, right? And that's, this is one of those moments when everybody on the internet has the common sense to see that there needs to be a change and they're demanding a change without considering the process. Right? And you can't get the big change. Big government. Well, it's not even big government. It's, you have to have these lawsuits. These lawsuits have to happen. Right. Because these outcomes have to happen. Because the, because judges will look at these and go start to go like Posner for instance. Right. And so hang on, we're, this is not, we're not doing it. So yeah. So what you have right now is you have these companies around the world and they're doing what lawyers would call. That's why lawyers exist. That's why lawyers exist. They're, they're forum shopping, right? So they're going to Germany with easier to get injunctions. They're all getting injunctions against each other in Germany. They're going, they're suing each other in California. They sued each other in Illinois. They're all over the world. They're in Korea, Japan. All over the world. They're suing each other. So you think today that we, that we did a story about Siri, is being sued over Siri in China? That's a really bullshit troll in China. I wouldn't worry about that one. Like that will just go away. Like that's the kind of crap that goes away. Maybe it could end Siri. It could end Siri. Wants it for all. Maybe in China. But no, so even in the United States you have two different venues. You have two different judges, two different people. And Lucy Ko, who is a regular district court judge, who is tasked to apply the law as it's written, says, okay, you met all the requirements, I'm granting the injunction. Ko's the injunctor. Ko's the injunctor. She's the one, I believe she's the one who at the very beginning of this held up the Galaxy Tab and an iPad and asked the lawyers to tell them apart. And Samsung's lawyers couldn't tell them apart. By the way, I hope those people were sacked immediately. I mean, if you go into a trial to like defend- I believe that was her. If you go into a trial, whoever it was, if you go into a trial to defend the right for your product to exist on the market and you don't know which product it is, because like you can hold them up to me, I'll be able to tell you. And I don't get paid by Samsung. And you know what's really interesting about that in particular was, remember when Apple first sued Samsung, their biggest claims were not about these 90s era patents. No, they were like, look, it was like- It was like, you're confusing consumers. You're making stuff that looks the same as- Anyway, so there's Lucy Ko who did that. She blocked it. And then there's Posner in Chicago in the Seventh Circuit. And he is probably the most influential judge of our time. And he is slumming it basically. He's an appellate court judge. He's 73. He's hugely famous. And he was like, you know, I'm really interested in patents. I'm going to do this lawsuit. And he literally was like, I'm going to try this lawsuit as a trial judge. And they gave it to him and he was openly annoyed with Samsung or with Motorola and with Apple the whole time. He said, why are you suing a show? What are the damages? Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, he yelled at them, kicked them out of court. He like held them in contempt over and over again. Prove to me that there's some damage here that requires relief. And they basically couldn't satisfy him. And so that's an innovation. I mean, that's a legal innovation. The whole debate for him. Because if this were put to that same test, this Galaxy Nexus thing, you would be hard pressed to show any material damages right now to Apple. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure Posner would say the same thing. And that's where it's like common sense. That's where you like you want common sense prevail. You want someone to say that might start to spread through as more of these cases gets tried. That might be a more common response. Well, I think what you'll see, you know, if it gets harder to get the injunction because you have to more specifically prove damages, which is going to be the result, right? The fewer and fewer calls for injunction. Then you get fewer calls for injunction. Or it is exciting. It is exciting. So you want the change. Thank God, Eli's here. So you want the change. And I think everybody agrees there needs to be some sort of major path. I would just rather write something on my blog. I would rather just pound my fist and say Apple's doing it wrong. There are more topics. There are more topics. Yeah, why? Because patterns are great. But we're in the midst of a very... We did. But we solved it. I don't think we solved it. But I do think it's interesting. What's funny about this to me is that I'd gotten an email and a couple of tweets. People are like, should I get a Galaxy Nexus? You know, I'm worried about the injunction. And I was like, I tweeted, I was like, here's my advice. If you're thinking about getting one, I would just order it right now. Because we don't know when they're going to post the bond for this. So by the way, if you don't know, Apple has to give $96 million to put it basically in escrow. Yeah, they did that. They did that very quickly. No, that's why this happened. I mean, they needed to do that to basically say, if we're wrong... Yep, here are the lost sales. We think it'll be $96 million. And if we're wrong, here's your money. So this is, I think, segues... It will cost you. We can get off this. I think this segues nicely into what I wrote today. Because... Yes. Well, a pretty salacious headline today. It said, Carrier is the biggest threat to innovation. I got a lot of salacious... Well, it was a, I don't know, controversial... Well, they are one of the biggest threats to innovation. So I wrote, and the immediate response I got from everyone is, no, no, no, you're wrong. Patents are the biggest threat to innovation. And I don't think so. Because that system is like, it exists. It's there. Patents are post-innovation. Like, innovation happens and patents like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. But carriers are like, whoa, don't innovate yet. And you get to solve... Patent problems get solved with money. And that's essentially what Posner says, that's essentially what this bond means, is we did something with our patents. We stopped you, slowed you down. But if we screwed you up too badly, we're gonna give you this amount of money. Or Google and Apple at the end of the day, which is what they should do and which everyone believes they will eventually do, they will write each other a licensing agreement. Yeah, Apple is the only one. Carriers never have to say... Carriers are systematic. That's a systematic problem. Paul, your point about the patents being post-innovation is really true, which is like, the innovation was allowed to happen, now there's a fight about who gets to use it. Or who pays. Or who pays. But your point, and I think which I have seen, I've spoken to people, you and I have had many conversations about it, and I've spoken to people who are, some of them you cite in the article, where you watch these carriers just have a total stranglehold on what is arguably the most important emerging technology that we have right now, which is mobile communication, mobile technology, mobile broadband. That's what you think. You're like, where do you get off? Where do you get off at? So two things that set off this editorial were, well I guess it's three things. Microsoft announced the Surface with no 4G. Google announced the Nexus 7 with no 4G, which is both insane. Well I think one is a price motivation. Well sure, but both of those are like, mobile broadband on tablets should be table stakes, right? You shouldn't be able to announce a tablet that you can't connect. Those are inherently mobile devices. Are you good? I'm just trying to give an evil stare to this camera. And then it was the five year anniversary of the iPhone or whatever on Saturday. And everyone's like, the iPhone changed the world. Everything is so much better now. Yeah. Well, certain things. Yeah, certain things are great. Getting walking directions. That's good. Way easier. Having the phone tell you how long it takes to drive home when you land in an airplane. I thought you were going to say, how long until you're dead? Siri will I die? 20 minutes. But you know, the things that were great about the iPhone, the structural changes of the iPhone have not been repeated and I don't think can be repeated by any other. Well, they haven't even been, the iPhone didn't even kind of achieve that. I mean, the only thing the iPhone achieved is that there's one phone in the market that doesn't get tampered with by carriers. But that's it. I mean, but, and Apple is responsible for it. But that's just one phone. But that's one structural change. I mean, if anybody else could do it, if anybody else could do it, it'd be Google and Microsoft and somehow they can't. Right. Because there's no Steve Jobs. And like, two times. Well, it's more than that. But that's what, I mean, ultimately he's the one who convinced AT&T, it was singular at the time to let him do it. Singular. Yes. And it's like, you shouldn't pin what was clearly the most important structural change in the wireless industry. On the force of personality. On the force of one man's personality. You should say, this is important. We should build it into the system. And it's just not there. Who would say that? The FCC. Oh, you mean one of our regulatory committees, one of our regulatory groups here in America? Who else could say it? I mean, the people who are bought and sold by the companies that you were talking about. I guess. Yes. I would like it. Maybe I should just run for office. Let's not be naive. I mean, AT&T and Verizon have heavy lobbying arms. Lobbying a committee is different than buying and selling a committee. Yeah, but the commissioners to the FCC go, they quit and they go work for the telecom companies. It's one remove from buying and selling. And the people of the FCC don't physically take an envelope full of money, but there are the people who are telling them what to do are taking envelopes full of money. And it's not like they're going, I'll think about it. They're like, yes, I will do that because I want to stay in my position and I want you to keep giving me however. I don't think- Well, the FCC will say insane things to me. It's our job to work with the industry to make sure everything works well. That's one of your jobs. I don't want to get down, I don't want to go down a rabbit hole, but there was this story in South Carolina, which we've been looking into. Oh, the municipal wifi store. Where it was ruled that the municipalities can't offer wifi to their citizens because it would undercut AT&T in those areas. Right. And then the argument is that's a service you can buy. The government shouldn't undercut a service you can buy. Right. Which is insane. Which is like- That's kind of- That's kind of true. How about this? Since we don't actually know what would happen because no one really is doing it. Right. They're just kind of guessing. And I think their guess is motivated by AT&T saying, we need to be here and make money. And I think putting the interest of a corporation over the interest of citizens who should have access, not free access necessarily, but access of some type to the internet, which is arguably, no, not arguably. Treated as a utility and should be treated in some ways as such. Right. It just seems crazy to me. And it's like, at what point will we get a right? Where will the regulation come from? If the FCC can't sit down, your point today towards the end of your article where you said they're essentially just leasing- No, literally. They're leasing- They lease the spectrum from us. What is the property of the American people. Yeah. I mean, they should be accountable to the American people and we can do better. I mean, if this is the best we can do, I'm unimpressed. And in terms of allowing innovation, in terms of allowing a competitive marketplace, I mean, you really want to talk about- We did have the fastest 4G rollout. We are definitely winning at that. I think that- No, so actually, can I respond specifically to that? Sure. I don't think there should be, I don't think that's- I can answer that specifically from a handset vendor that I talked to. He said, of course we had the fastest LT rollout. The carriers are terrified of being dumb pipes and they accelerate technological change so that people will buy new devices faster. You make it sound like accelerating technological- No, no. No, no. But- Technological change is a bad- No, but so there's, just go with me. So there's the pendulum swings both ways. So Verizon did great with LTE because they needed to get off of 3G and move forward. And they wanted people to buy new devices and sign new two-year contracts and be locked into Verizon. The other side of that is because it wasn't coordinated, Sprint tried to race ahead faster with WiMAX. They blew billions of dollars and that company is now faltering. And also- Could fail and millions of jobs will be lost. All kinds of hardware was developed. Well, also, also, terrible experience and service for consumers. I mean, they bought devices that they were told were one thing and they're not and they're basically killing the service. Right. So it's great. I mean, it's great. In one sense, it enables these, there's a huge incentive for companies to race ahead. But that incentive to race ahead doesn't necessarily work in the public interest. Also wireless- Well, wireless- Also wireless innovation is not like, there's not like there's some free flowing supercharged innovation happening in Verizon and AT&T when it comes to establishing what is happening with our wireless networks because those standards are being established and those ideas are being established elsewhere. I mean, they're not like, they're not the arbiters of all wireless. One of the things that I really like- But we don't have like a unified standard. I wrote about, you know, IP calling and how much I'd like, you know, HD voice. I think I'd be calling is a cool thing. And I think something that, you know, obviously this is a battle for freedom and for better services and stuff, but I think there is a battle being waged. You know, the carriers do look invulnerable and they might actually be invulnerable, but there is a battle against them. And I think they innovated so fast on 4G, faster in their network than they did on their services that there's a gap there. And I think there is a possibility for some of these open app stores or relatively open app stores, you know, because the iPhone is still relatively interfered with and Android is relatively interfered with for voice and video services like you have, you know, FaceTime and stuff to start outpacing bandwidth. Well, no, because they outpacing, no, they don't, they use the bandwidth better than the carriers and so then because the carrier didn't provide you that service, a generic product, provided you the service that starts to compete with them and it does turn them into a dumb pipe just because they delivered the pipe way sooner. Yeah, but on the plus side, they get to own the pipe. Well, sure, but that's the whole point. Charge money for it. That's the whole point of creating pipes is that you can own a pipe. I think that, but don't you think there are reasons? iMessage is a great example of, you know, none of the carriers really built this. So Apple built this, everybody uses it and it really makes me think like, you know, we're on the internet, like I could get an iPod touch and I could iMessage and then that's I just got a phone call. Are you getting a phone call? Is that the singular tone? Wow. It's like old school. Yeah, cool. I could get a iPod touch and have iMessage and have a lot, you know, talk to a lot of my friends on it. Yeah, you know, that's something no carrier did, but it exists now and that, and that and that competes with the carriers. Yeah. Or, or it's another service the carrier offers like Verizon, for instance, it's just another pipe that they monopolize. Well, think about it this way. And by the way, how are they monopolizing that? Well, no, voice. I can do that over wifi. Well, that's what I'm talking about over wifi. Who sells your wifi to you? Is it a, who is it? Is it the government? Yeah, but I get to use it how I don't want to pay the government for it. You get to use it how you want it unless they decide to start throttling. Right now I'm using it how I want. Like yes, you can talk about like theoretical fears, but right now I can use that how I want. Well, I mean this is goes down a rabbit hole. Well no, actually I want to, the theoretical fears thing is like really interesting because that's the exact opposite of what's going on with patents, right? So you can talk about, we don't want to, we don't want to preemptively legislate theoretical fears on like net neutrality and access, but we're all angry that the fears have actually come true on the patent side because we didn't preemptively legislate against them. Well, and it's like there's a balance in there somewhere, right? We can either let the bad things happen and then try to fix them because we structurally know what the bad things are, or we can try to design around what we think the bad things might be. But just as you said that it's post-innovation, I mean, I think the same is true here. I would be fine if Verizon suddenly felt because like, you know, we had, there had been a legislation that said, Hey, you can create your 4G network, but it has to be compatible with AT&T. They did have that. No, no, I know. And they had devices that have to be, you know, interoperable so I can buy a phone and use it on either network. That would, you know, somebody asked me, okay, you, you wrote this huge thing. You complained. Great. Well, how would you fix it? And the first thing, the very first thing I would say is these two giant companies and Sprint, which is building an LTE network, they have to build interoperable networks. Yeah. You have to be able to take a device from AT&T to Verizon. And if you want to break your contract, you have to pay and do whatever. But there should be, we have to create a real market for unlocked devices. I mean, just, it would just be... That you can pick a carrier and that's it. That's step one. Well, that, that would be, that alone, to me that would be like 10 years of incredible innovation happening just from that one... Small companies could develop phones. Yeah. You know, here's what I'm thinking. And people could innovate on them. They could, they could iterate without the kind of, well, there are these, you know, Verizon has to sign off on every phone that goes on their network. Right. But think about, what was the small gaming PC company? Vudu, right? Vudu was just, Rahul Su just started it. I want to build PCs and sell them. I'm a guy. I have a better idea about how to build gaming PCs. Right now, structurally, the wireless market does not support that company. You can't build, you can't say, I'm a guy. I want to build awesome phones in my garage. Put stock Android on them. I think that... I know that there is a demand for stock Android phones. Yeah. I want to fill it. You can't do it. And there is, there is a, it's not just phones. It's all kinds of things that use wireless. Whatever. Yeah, yeah. I mean, who knows what would be... Microsoft. We want to make tablets for our new operating system. Yeah. But also, but even beyond the things that we know... They're not doing it. Even beyond the things that we're thinking of. Right. You know, there could be a, a augmentation to cars and all sorts of stuff that, that utilize open networks in a way that we can't. You know, it's funny when I, I did talk to both AT&T and Verizon. Neither one of them really wanted to go deep on the record. But one thing they, they said to me as I was talking about this is, if you look beyond phones, if you look beyond phones and tablets and whatever, we certify all kinds of crazy stuff for networks that are like robots and thermostats. And like, I'm like, that's great. And I was like, name one phone. And they were like the jitterbug. We certified the jitterbug. I'm like, that's, that's not really great. We're so proud of you. Hey guys, game over. Jitterbug's been certified. They are doing, they know, yeah. You know, they know, they know they need to open up to these other devices and they can't predict them. But the one thing Verizon sets me on the record, which I didn't put in the piece was, we enable innovation on a network by allowing these other devices. And it's like, I'm thinking to myself, dude, I don't want you to enable anything. I want you to get out of the way. Yeah. And that's, there's a huge difference between those two concepts. I think, I think that like, you know, what we have to, the truth is, is that when you have a, when you have a very profitable, basically monopolistic business that you've spent a lot of money on and that you spend a lot of money on, it's pretty hard to say, you know what, I'm going to just open source this. I'm going to just let everybody have at it. Or I'm going to suddenly let other people regulate the thing that I built. I just think that we're approaching, and I think that it's just because of where we're at. I mean, obviously there are issues with, with the way our government works and with the way people at our regulatory arms work, but I just think we're also at a point where we're at this kind of like pain point, this inflection point where the innovation has happened a lot faster than we thought it would. The adoption has happened a lot faster than we thought it would. And everybody's trying to, the same thing is going on in the entertainment industry where everybody's trying to like, trying to figure out in the advertising industry where they're trying to figure out like, what are we supposed to be doing? Like, what's the next thing we're supposed to do? Like how do we, how do we map this out? And they're just doing what they've always done, which is like control your piece of land, you know, control your turf and, and own something that no one else can have. Well, so what I think is really interesting, I think this is, this will be the, the core change after this inflection point is, and I am planning to write about this a lot this year. Oh, watch out. You've been warned internet. Well, no, we've, we've been ever since the days of AOA, we actually, we had this conversation a couple of days ago with, with Marty. Who nobody knows who that is. Marty Moe. Our chief content officer, one of the founders of the site. Does that still come up when you Google? I think it does. Don't tell me. Anyway, when you Google the verge for a long time, it'd be the verge of Josh and Marty website by Josh and Marty. I don't know. I haven't Googled the verb. Anyway, there was, we are literally living under a regulatory structure. That is from AOL, right? AOL defined itself as an information service. Can't believe that. That provided both access and information. Go figure. Can we focus that? That structure carries on. And it shouldn't. That structure is really wrong. Keywords. Because there is access that we pay for and we want some innovation access. We want it to be faster and cheaper, but that's it. And then the content and the services on top of that is where we all see the potential for more innovation, where we should accelerate innovation. Right. And the way you accelerate innovation on the service and content level is by making access cheap. And that's the thing is that it's like, we're going to have to get there because we are not there. That's the, I'm going to break this. I know it. That's the thing is that we are, we are moving from one known thing to one much less known thing, which is, you know, I think it's kind of like American innovation right now. It's like a lot of American innovation is happening on the web and in software. And we used to be building things, physical things, and we used to have industries that were based. Facebook is now part of American industry, but Facebook is nothing like any American industry that's ever existed really. You know, and, or any part of it. And we're at this point where it's like, it's just really different. It's just new and nobody's used to it and nobody knows what to do with it. But I don't think it helps that we have parties that are basically unwilling. Right. Because we're going to be, you'll be dragged into, they want to be dragged into the future. Verizon, when they oppose net neutrality, they say this infringes, net neutrality infringes our first amendment rights. Still going. Still going. They say net neutrality infringes our first amendment right because what we provide to consumers is an information service and you're restricting how we can provide information. And it's like, that's not true. And any kind of rational observer sees that it's not true. What you provide is access and you should provide access. We should force you to compete in providing access. What does Verizon spend? What is their expenditure every year? Do we know? Do you have the number? On lobbying? Just on everything. I want to know what it costs to run Verizon. I want to know what would happen if our government was like, we're going to run a Verizon. I want to find out. I don't want the government to do this. Let me think of it. I really don't want the government. I want to coin it. I really don't want them to do this. No, no, I'm just curious to know. You want this government to acquire these companies. This is the dumbest idea ever. Obama. And it's been done so many times by so many countries. I'm trying to think of what it would be called. I don't want that to happen at all. Obamacare would, so this would be called Obamify. Obamify. Obamag. I'm trying to think of what it would be. It would be OG. It would be Obama. ObamaNet. It would be the next version of Obaminet. ObamaNet. That's good. Republicans can get right into that. I don't want, I'm just curious to know, like, what would it cost to create a competitor who was like, look, it doesn't have to be the government. I don't care who it is actually, who was like, look, we're going to do this. It's going to be open to everybody. You can't. You can't do it. You have to buy, you have to get the spectrum. Nobody has it except for Verizon and AT&T. Who else has it? We've got some emergency channels. I mean, there's a, I forget who I was talking to, but there's like an economic theory that basically like if you have high margins and high profits in an area, which, you know, from time to time, you know, Verizon and AT&T definitely have very high margins, high profits. T-Mobile sprint, not so much. But you, when you have high margins in an area, it means that it's an exciting growing thing that will eventually, that's not saturated. I'm going to go ahead and say $91 billion to run Verizon in 2010. That's a little bailout, little nothing, bailout money. The user base isn't entirely served yet. Right. But you can continue to offer, have large margins because there's a scarcity and there's more demand than there is product. You know, so like, you know, you have the PC industry where there's high margins, really profitable, awesome place to be. And now like you have HP wants to get out of it because they're so tight and because they're, everybody offers it. It's a completely saturated market. Right. So there is room for more product in wireless. And if, you know, if the government wants to make its own network, go ahead, but it's going to suck. I don't want the government to have to. I'm not even advocating that. I'm just curious to know like what their footprint is because I'm, what I'm saying is, at least what I'm thinking is, I don't want access to be a product necessarily. It's fine if it is. I mean, I want it to be something more like, you want the access companies to compete. I want this competition. You want AT&T and Verizon. The problem with dictating things from the top down. If you just say then you wanted to compete, then we're all set. What's the problem? No, no, no. You want to limit, you want to limit the vectors of competition, right? So that they're only allowed to compete. Why? Because if you make, to make access really competitive, think about when you go out in New York with like a laptop and you can pick from any number of wifi providers, right? You can pay Boingo or you can pay AT&T and you just have a choice. Or you can use free wifi hotspot. Or you can use free, which will be slower, right? And steal all my information. But the standardized connection between your laptop and its wifi chip and wifi providers enables there to be like, enables liquidity in the market. Because all of those wifi networks can broadcast and I can pick it up. Right? So that, now you have this broad base of consumers. But why do you assume that's the place? And there's incentives. Why do you assume that's the place where they have to compete? Because I feel like you've got a really flawed argument here. And oh, and on top of it, who says, but this is a different business. I mean, if they tell you, if they're a capitalist, they're there, if they're capitalists and they say, this is how we compete in this industry, who are you or anybody else to say, that's not how they should compete? If you're going to let them compete, then let them compete however they want. But you can say, but I can say, which I literally did say today, that the type of competition that you're engaged in right now is not beneficial to consumers. Because you're limiting. They might argue, but they might argue that it is. Where's your proof? I have all kinds of proof. I have all these companies saying we don't have access to consumer. You have companies complaining to me. That doesn't mean proof. That doesn't mean that the consumers. We are consumers. I mean, you may look at other countries and say, by statistically speaking, consumers are having a better experience here. That's definitely not true. In Sweden. Well, they've got more 4G, don't we? Actually, Sweden is right on top of us with 4G and they started first. But Sweden's a bad example. It's a great example. UK. Well, nothing. So the UK. Everything is better in Sweden. Okay. We know that. The people live longer, they eat better, they're healthier, they're happier. The Genie team. They actually do have a really high rate of suicide in Sweden. But anyhow, that's not a big deal. That just means they don't need to have death panels like we do here in America. So what I'm saying is, I'm actually devil's advocate. I know, but let's take the UK, for example. Which is a nice tiny little island. There's like 12 people in the UK. 12 people. And those 12 people can buy a phone and buy a SIM card from any carrier and pick a line. Yeah, and use it on their slow, slow 3G. Actually really fast 3G. Faster than our 3G has ever been. Well, it's fast. It ain't no 4G though, is it? Well, ain't no 4G. And when they actually get it, and they're gonna have 4G next year. So I'm playing devil's advocate. All I'm saying is like, where do you draw the line? It's very difficult for you to say, or anybody I feel like, to tell Verizon. They compete in America, which is a very big country. You can draw the line, and you can say, you are building your business on the back of what is literally the scarcest public resource, right? It's spectrum. It's finite. If you call it a public resource, then you have to change your thinking on it. But nobody actually... And they shouldn't compete on that resource. But you can get a good outcome. Look, markets just optimize, right? That's what the function of the free market is to optimize the conditions. Maybe it'll optimize once we give them a few more years to innovate and compete. But you have to set up the... No, they optimize two conditions. They don't create conditions. This is happening. Wow. I don't know what's going on with that. What did you say? I'm running for president. Oh, yeah. You're the death star as part of your... That's really... I don't get it. Is Neil gonna destroy planets? Yes. Populated homeworlds? I think that's supposed to be the AT&T. I think somebody made this for us. That's supposed to be the AT&T. Huh? TC made it? TC made it. Okay. TC loves to do show. Anyhow, the point is, you're saying what you think would be better for them to compete. But if we're in a free market, they know how they have to compete. They will just merely optimize to make as much profit as they can, given any amount of... I don't know, Paul. Do you agree with that? I think a lot of times you get really great products by optimizing to make money. I mean, who's losing out right now? Us. Are we? I mean, if there's all these great open markets all around the world, make great products for them if you're Mr. Joe in your garage. Have you ever noticed how Europe gets the phones first and they're all interoperable? Yeah, like the iPhone that they got first. Well, that was different. Like the Galaxy Nexus that they got first. They did. Yeah, they did. That's true. They did. Almost all of them. They get all of the stuff first. Almost every single one of them. I mean, Galaxy S3. Remember, Vlad did his Galaxy S3 review weeks before we were able to review the American version. Let's just shut it down. Government mobile. Government mobile. Do you not remember for years before the iPhone came out, there was a constant thread. Unlocked iPhones in Germany. Sorry, go ahead. No, but for years before the iPhone came out, it was, why don't we get good phones in America? I remember that question nonstop. Why are all these awesome Nokia handsets coming out in Europe and they never come out in America? It's because the carriers don't want to support them. I actually bought an unlocked N95. It is true. It is true. Carriers control the flow of devices here. And we would see all the time in Europe awesome phones years ago, and you still do sometimes, where you're like, I want this phone. And you're like, sorry, you can't buy it. The Samsung Omnia 7 was a really awesome Windows phone. Never came out here. Never came out. They changed it into the Focus, which was a piece of junk. So I agree with you guys. We have sucky jerk face carriers. And we have some- Can TTC do a graphic on that? And the carriers do restrict and push back on innovation a lot. They're terrified of it. But I think there's some competition coming and I don't want to dictate it. Do you know something we wrote down? I don't want to dictate how things go from the top down because what I'm terrified, what if someone somewhere decided, you know what, they all need to be interoperable and they'll be a WiMAX. And it turns out WiMAX is kind of a sucky protocol. I do think, but okay, so let me switch back from being devil's advocate where I think there is a way to, and maybe the word, I mean, when you say the word regulator, everybody gets very antsy. So let's change the word regulate. Let's make it- Regulators. There's a way to- Can we just please get the Warren G song going on here? There's a way to partner. There's a way for our government- With your home, partner with your home. To partner with their good friends at the carriers. To all join hands. Cruise up and down. Yeah. Straight, straight hit the curb. This is just happening. Finally, finally, bring up the lyrics to regulate. But you don't have to bring them up. You just need to bring up the music to regulate. That's all we're asking for. How are the speakers on your MacBook Pro? So Verizon AT&T- So to partner with- Want to mug the regulators. That's right. And they got to call for backup. Yeah. I think you know what's going to happen. Regulators. Hey, is there a sponsor this week? Regulate any stealing of history. Oh, good. We're damn good too. Anyhow. There can't be any gig off the street. So they regulate. This is off your local library, right? No, it is on my local library. I just did it. The government, instead of regulating, would partner- It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. Okay. They would partner with all the guys. Keep going. Keep going. Come on. Can we just bring this out? I can't believe you guys even want headphones. I'll just turn down my headphones so I don't hear the- I would just like to confirm that I do in fact have this locally. That's great. Yeah. I'll just turn it off. Okay. So you have it locally. That's bad for him. Yeah. This guy just experienced a- I do own- Okay. By the way, I'm going to just say this right now. Your Xbox live account is on my Xbox from when you stayed at my house. Yeah. Do you log into it all the time? No. Sometimes it logs in by itself and I freak out. Oh, gosh. I turn on my Xbox and it's like- Can you just delete it? I can, I guess, but I'm not sure how. Okay. I haven't looked. Well, I would come over and I'd delete it for you, but that would probably involve me getting on Xbox Live. I've never had to delete an account from my- I don't even know why you put it on there. I don't really know why I did either. Dumbest thing you've ever done. Anyhow, so I just want to say if anybody sees Paul online, it's not him. It's just accidentally logging in on my Xbox for some reason that I don't know and I don't know why. All right. Let's move on from Rick. Can we get this graphic off the screen already? Yeah. You want to talk about the iPad or you want to talk about- Let's talk about what? The last two things are the iPad mini. Could you explain the small iPad to me because the last I heard you would have to like shrink your fingers to ever use a 7 inch iPad. Okay. Let's first, first off, you know, as soon as Steve Jobs, you know, in any time he ever said anything negative about a product, it just meant we're working on that product. Okay. So there's no point in even going down the- why even bother talking about what Steve Jobs said about- Just tell me how it's going to work. How is this going to work? Is there going to be a third? There are going to be fewer. Yeah. It'll be a 1024 by 768 screen. 7.85 inches. But how does the app work? Which is the same. Same. It's the same resolution as the iPad two. And the difference is they'll probably show, they'll scale down apps and they'll show less icons on the home screen. That's my theory. They're going to scale down apps? 7.8, it's eight inches essentially. 7.85 inches. This is the button. Here's the important thing you need to know. Here's the important thing that you need to understand. As soon as- Here's the important thing you need to understand. As soon as any public interest was shown for Google's seven inch $200 tablet, stories magically appeared, magically appeared in the Wall Street Journal in Bloomberg as if placed there by angels. As if placed there by angels. Anyhow, these stories, I think there's, look, they could probably do it. They can probably afford to do it. It'll definitely mess up Fire and Nexus 7 sales. Well, assuming that they're around $200. Would they sell it for $200? Apple would sell it for like $250. Let's look at the landscape. They have an iPod touch sells for how much? 200? Thousands. No, iPod touch sells for how much? What's the starting price? Come on nerds. Shane, Shane, you worked at an Apple store. You can't tell me this off the top of your head. $200. $200. Straight up $200? $200. Now there's a 3.5 inch device they sell for 200 bucks called the iPod touch. There's a $400 tablet they sell called the iPad 2. Where would a seven inch. So you think 250? No, he said 300. I think 300. I think 300. Yeah. Math. I mean, you could do 250, but who's going to buy, nobody's going to buy the touch. But I mean, who cares because they're selling them anyhow. What? They're going to sell. Nobody's going to sell it. If you can get a seven inch. What human pays $400 for a 64 gig white iPod touch? If you can get- That is just bonkers. I think if you can get an eight gig iPad mini for 250, you're probably not going to buy the iPod touch unless you need something pocketable. Because the 7.8 inch iPad won't be. So many people say that they just love the seven inch 4.5. I know people with the fire, you know? I love it. And they love reading on it and stuff like that. And you know, they only got a seven inch from somebody else because, well, for one, it was cheap. And because their only chance to get a seven inch was from somebody else. You mean as a gift? No, you mean they bought them from another manufacturer. I'm saying if Apple made a seven inch- All things being the same, if there was a fire in an Apple. Yeah. If Apple made a seven inch tablet, everybody would buy it and everybody would stop buying it. Well, you know, actually it's funny, but I will say this. And I may have even said it on the old podcast when we talked about Apple starting to sell iPhones on Verizon. And I was like, I think we actually had a kind of heated conversation about it. I was like, Android is done now. Like, forget it. They're not going to sell any more Android handsets. And that was not right. They continue to sell Android handsets all over the place. There are people who want a different device. And I hope that never changes because that's very valuable. No, but I- It is great. It's great. Let Apple do the seven inch tablet. That's great. Apple will, I'm sure provide a wonderful experience. Let's see some competition in that space. Why not? I mean, it's a cool form factor. I mean, I'll say this. I have not been persuaded by any other device that I would want to. I mean, I've not seen a device before the Nexus 7 where I was like, this hits a sweet spot for me. Right. But I can say that I enjoy using it. One activity that I think is better suited to a larger tablet is magazine reading. I will say that. Yeah. I think, well, magazines are big. Yeah. You know, they're larger. And I think that that's, but also I hate reading magazines on a tablet. So I actually think magazine reading is better suited to magazines for me. So if I had to choose, if you gave me three devices, if you gave me a magazine subscription, a seven inch and a 10 inch tablet, I wouldn't choose the magazines. So I will say this about that. What if you had to choose between a seven inch iPad and a 10 inch iPad? You could only have one. It depends on the screen. I will say this after, after using the Nexus 7, going back to the iPad, it seems just enormous. It just seems huge. It really does seem large. And I've often felt like it's a little bit too big for things that I want to do on it. I mean, I don't actually, I'm not using my iPad as a productivity device. So I used my iPad, it was my only computer when I was on vacation. Like I had my laptop with me, but we never used it. You know, I took a, my last vacation, I took the touch pad. Did you know that? I was like, I really want to go to vacation. And I, I was actually in the midst of the review and I was like, well, I'll kill two birds with one stone. Oh my God. What's happening? Wow. That's a lot of energy. All right. That sounds good. And yet he's, he's in front. Where's this happening from? I like that. Just a little taste to regulate. All right. Some Photoshop stuff here I'm not liking. Yeah. What's this here? There are so many people right now, penning emails about how they're sick of our tangents on the podcast. And can we just stick to the, I actually forgot. Oh, iPads. Yeah. So, no, here's what I was gonna say. So I used the thing as my only computer. And it was great. It was a little bit limited cause it's iOS. But it was fine. It was, it was a great, that size is great as like a primary computing device. The second I went back to my Mac book, I was like, wow, the screen looks like crap. Oh really? Yeah. No, and I use my iPad mostly. And every time I start using my Mac book again, I start reaching out at the screen. I haven't had that problem. You have the mind of a child that kind of issue. No, and then the other thing was we had, I had the new iPad and Becky had the iPad too. And when I would try to use the iPad too. That is terrifying. But you know, it's, if you make the seven inch and it's got the same display, it's 163 pixels per inch, which is the same as the original iPhone, the iPhone three GS. It's not a, it won't be a retina display. I'll say this, the screen. Which would suck. If you build a reading device with that. Yeah, you can't do that. The screen on the. Who would do that? The screen on the Nexus seven is 1280 by 800. And it looks really nice. It looks good. Yeah. It's 216 PPI and the, and the iPad, new iPad is a two. 20 something. It's not bad. I have to say, I got to hand it to them. I mean, I am, I am kind of impressed just in the fact that it's so cheap and so good. Like here's my problem and maybe you can enlighten me like outside of like. Still needs apps though. That's for sure. Yeah. It's kind of, you know, consumption. Like it's very easy to scale a book app or a video player. Those are pretty easy to do. A reader, a news reader app. Right. Yeah. But I've never in my life seen an experience that seemed like it was a tablet specific experience on any device other than an iPad. Well, yeah. No, that's true. Give me an example. I guess give me, no, no, give me, give me an example, I guess. Like a garage band. Well, garage band is in a very rarefied space. Garage band is when, when another company can create the experience of garage band, we'll know that a true competitor has arrived. Nobody has been able to do it, whether it's a 10 inch or a seven inch or whatever garage band is a far and away, one of the most brilliant tablet apps period that's ever been created. And one of the most truly annoying if you're not the one using it. Yes. But garage band is, is no, there's nothing like it. Okay. Paper. Yeah. I mean, there are, I don't know if, I don't know what the, what the draw, I haven't explored fully the drawing app, a selection though. I, I, you know, it's not what it is on the, on the iPad, on the, on the Nexus. It's just, when you're using an iPad, it feels like you're using, what is that? It's my computer. It's a very specific experience that was just perfectly made exactly for that device. Well, it was, it was, that's the thing. Yeah. That's the difference. And that's the place where I think Google with, they need to stop with this like one, you're scaling up, they need to stop with this like one binary, Oh, we got a split system. That's the same thing that I have in my house. I didn't realize you got a split system in here. I have that remote. There's three of these in my house. This is so, I'm so excited. I don't know if you guys know what a split system is. They're all over Europe. You know what an air conditioner? Yeah. Yeah. They're an air conditioner. The compressor is still outside, but the, there's no duct, no duct work. So that this unit is the fan and it hooks up to the compressor and it's very quiet. As you can tell, it's very quiet and it's also very cool. I had no idea. Great choice, boys. What it be, how many BTU's? 15,000? You know, 24,000. 24? No you got a compressor that's capable of 24. There's no way that's 24. Seriously? Oh, you got two. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Sorry. Complete random off topic. You are deep in the air conditioning blog game. I've been, I've been, you might check out my site, AC Cool Blog.com. Now we remember at CAS we were going to start like a smart appliances blog. Smart apps. Because of all the smart apps.com. You want to talk about the rim stuff that happened that we can call it a day? Yes, we should, we should do that. Okay. By the way, definitely think they're coming out with a small iPad. I think so too. Without question. Why wouldn't you? If you're Apple, why not just to ruin everybody's good time? Yeah. With a, with a, with a product that is a great price point and a superior experience. Not with the stylus. Please with the stylus. They could. I mean, you're. Galaxy Note, man. Galaxy, whenever that thing comes out. Well, I don't think that's coming out for a while because of certain litigation. No, that was the note there. The tab. Yeah. I think the tab, it might not be different enough. Rim this. A shoe all over again. Rim last week announced a very. Rim last week, research emotion last week announced a very dire earnings outlook. And then told the world that they would cut. What was that animation? Can you go back to that? And then. Just tweeted this. And told that they would cut. It's amazing. That is amazing. I bet it's amazing. Can we get this up on the screen? Yeah, I'll send it. It's in the comments. This is incredible. Whoever made this is going to get a special. So rim lost a lot of money. Yes, they, they, their earnings were very bad. Their market share, a comm score just released some numbers. Their market share has dipped. They've lost, I think 3.2% in the last six months. I don't know what the. They're falling apart. And then they said they would cut 5,000 jobs, which is like 35% of their workforce. And that they're delaying, you don't know this. They're delaying blackberry 10 and blackberry 10 devices to 2013. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So I saw a guy on the train with a, some sort of storm, I think. And he. Was desperately trying to type on it. No, he had some, it might've been a game, but it kind of looked like he just had a wallpaper and then a row of buttons and he was just jamming on the other buttons. Like, I don't know what you can possibly be doing. It's like fake. He was like using it in a movie. It's like if you're playing a game, you're not having any fun. And if you're not playing a game, your phone is frozen. I'm sorry for you either way. Remember when you said that you thought the typing on this phone was really good? Oh God. It's like you're one of your greatest. One of these, one of these days I'm going to just get an old, the original storm and just get my WPM just so high on that. Dude should be like awesome and typing on a ship. And then I'm going to throw it on the ground. Like what up now? Anyway, so then they went on a PR blitz. So they went on a PR blitz. Torsten Heinz, the CEO of the company wrote an op-ed in the Globe and Mail saying, saying a number of insane things. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. Make no sudden movements. I think 2013 it, look, you can't make a good operating system without 2013. What they said is, what he said is, what he said is, what he said is everything is, is, is on track and they want to make this product perfect and, and that it's going to interact with parking meters and ATMs. This is true. And we have no idea what that means. So I spoke to, yeah, can you get this up? Paul don't look at the screen. This was put in comments. This is truly amazing. I don't know who made this. But Laura tweeted it and then now it's everywhere. It's amazing. It is amazing. We just need to write more stuff about Katy Perry. I can't tell, is this a positive response? Yeah, he's vomiting rainbows. Is this a positive response to Trent Wolby's review of Katy Perry's 3d movie? You don't know this happened. Trent went to Katy Perry's TV. Can we take it off the screen so Paul can stop staring at nothing. Paul's like looking downward sad. I read a glowing review about Katy, the Katy Perry movie in one of the newspapers. Well, this is nothing. This is nothing like that review. Trust me. This is definitely a Trent Wolby jam. Anyhow, Torsten wrote this thing and then we spoke to their managing director here in the US and he was a very nice man. He refused to tell us any actual information. At the end he was just like, yeah, boys, I'm not going to answer that question. It was a yeah, boys. It was very nice. It was very honest. He was like, yep, not going to do it. He was in good spirits, but it was like, how do you guys plan to, what will you do to be competitive when you relaunch your new devices? How will you win users back to rim? And he was like, we believe we have a great product coming and we want to take our time and perfect it. Yeah. He did make a seven inch tablet. And we believe consumers are going to love it. When they see it. Anyhow, it's kind of like that. He had a line. He was like, this is going to change the fundamental way we interact with our devices. No, it's a fundamental way we communicate. It's crazy. It's like crazy. Like, like, like, yeah, blackberry 10 will be a new way of interacting with the world. So how did I end it? What was my thing back in that day? I just used to like blackberry 10 is an entirely new way of interacting with the world around us and you ended it by saying, Hey, no pressure. They ended on like, they ended on like, what, you know, it was like when, when we're finished the lives of every man, woman and child will change on this planet. We used to have six senses. Yeah. Now we have one five and black right. We believe rim is the beginning of a transition. The changes when you can see dead people. We believe rim is at the beginning of the transition that will change the way people communicate. Yeah. Blackberry 10 represents our future as a company and the future of mobile computing. Like, Hey, no pressure. No pressure. You just keep saying stuff. We're not just releasing new devices. Yeah. We're changing the fabric of the universe and change takes time. We are. I want you to imagine that the universe is a grid. Torsten Heinz will reach into the grid, pull back on streams, which make up the grid, you know, and then snap them into an arrangement, which you've never before seen. The problem with travel through space and time is that it is sort of like a plane. But what if you bent the plane in on itself? We're able to touch two points of the plane together. And then in the midst, floating between those points was the new blackberry 10, the new blackberry 10 bold X coming to a carrier soon. By the way, I'm not making fun. He was a very nice, I'm not making fun. I'm having a little laugh about rims. You know, they're struggling right now, but he was a very nice guy, but we were like, what carriers will the device be coming to? And he was like, you don't really expect me to answer that. We tried, we have to try, you know, he was a very nice guy. It was a fun conversation. I will say this. I will say this, other people have said blackberry is dead. They're not in good shape, but there's always a chance. There's always a chance they'll do something incredible that we didn't see coming. Just like in the very small, one of the matrix, I think in the third matrix. No, no, you think he's dead. He's just laying there. Hey, spoiler alert. I mean, he's actually literally, literally dead. He's awakened with a kiss, isn't his heart stopped? Spoiler alert. Yeah. You got spoiled. And at that moment, the Wachowski brothers said, we've run out of things to steal. What are those like the last five minutes of the movie? Blackberry 10 will lean over rim and wake it with a kiss. I think that's our podcast for the week. That's the verge cast for this week. If you'd like to get in touch with us, you can find us on Twitter. The verge is at verge. I'm at Joshua. Neely is at reckless. Paul is at future Paul. And I do encourage you to tweet at him, even though he's not checking because I think we'll want to take a look at that. I'm also at PO box 501. You're doing this, but I always forget the zip code. It's like New York, New York. It's like 10, two, seven, six. Paul's PO box information is in our forums. If you want to send him a letter or letter bomb, which will open, which will open when, when the, when he opens the PO box, you can find the information on the internet. You know, I was, I was, I don't send him a letter, but obviously it goes without saying, by the way, I do want, I want to say just directly to the camera that I've received some, some letters that it's so great. It's I am so grateful. Like they're the coolest thing. And it was, I just realized, no, it was just like, man, it's like, you've never, I've received emails that say, Hey, you do a good job and you're really, you know, you're an inspiration to us all. But like, man, these letters were so cool. Yeah, it was really cool. You should read. And I'm really grateful. Go back to that shot of there. Yeah. I don't like this at all. What are you doing, man? Thank you. I don't know. Um, but also I open some of those letters while some like small children were around and I was like, what if there's anthrax? That's a crazy thought because who would want to kill Paul Miller? I don't know. The ghost of Osama Bin Laden is out, is out for you. You know what? He hates people who leave the internet. Number one thing, the spirit of Osama Bin Laden can't stand internet deserters. Uh, uh, did you get, can I ask you a question? I'm not, I will not wrap up. I shan't wrap up. I shan't wrap up. Uh, did you get a letter from, uh, anybody special? I got a couple of letters from Laura, your wife. Yes. That's not who I meant. She's very special. She is special. Very special. I did. I did receive a, uh, any letters from Texas. Really? Did you respond to said letter? No, I'm still work to people who have sent me letters. I don't like mail. I don't like writing or sending mail, but I'm working on it. You love paper. I love paper. I try real paper. The problem is more like putting stuff into a, into an envelope and then addressing the envelope. Laura will be happy. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to do this. Come to the office. I'm going to get, come to the office, come into the office and work with Laura. She'll spend some time with you. She loves mailing. I will. She loves to mail. Oh, I mean, that's my goal for next week. She loves putting a letter into a mailbox. We walk up the street, got to go bail this letter. I'm like, why don't you just email the person, just call them, tweeted them. I made the, I wrote this letter with my hand. Anyways, Paul is at Future Paul. Paul is at Future Paul. He's also at a PO box address to be TBD, not TBD, TBA to be announced. It's been announced. It's in our forums. That's the, also of course you can, you can email us vergecast at the verge.com. You can leave a comment in the post when it goes up and what other ways can you, oh, we're on Tumblr. Yeah. This is the verge. Facebook. Tumblr.com. Facebook, Facebook slash. The verge. No, no, it's Facebook slash this is the verge. I think is it, can someone confirm? How do I not remember this? Nobody knows. I thought it was the verge. It's not the verge. No, it's, yeah, this is the verge. This is the verge. Facebook and Tumblr. Okay. We're closing on 50,000 likes. Make it happen. Make it happen folks. That's nothing. Yeah. We got to really jam on this Facebook stuff. I hear Facebook's hot. Is that true? Yeah. And, yeah, that's it. We'll be, so that's our, that's our verge cast for the week. We'll be back next week. You know, who knows what's going to happen. June was crazy. Yeah. I hope July is a little bit. Me too. Calmer. I was gone half the month in June. So I'm going to looking forward to spending some downtime, some quality time with the verge team who has been, can I just actually, can I take a minute to say we went through a crazy month of June and the, and our team was incredible. I mean incredible, like just so good. They just did so much awesome stuff like between features and reviews and doing videos, our video team is like completely out of control. Everybody like are the developers, the sales guys, everybody's just like, it's been a crazy time because like we're just doing a ton of things. And I just want to say our editorial team has been incredible. We started this new thing, 90 seconds on the verge, the Ross Miller has been running along with our video team and doing great. I just did one very high pressure to do them good. We had so many people do them and they're good and anyhow, but our editorial team has been incredible. I sent them an email. You didn't get the email because you're not on the internet, but just expressing how lucky I feel and happy to be doing what we're doing. And I'm glad that people read it and appreciate it. June was our biggest month ever. It was big by millions, bigger than the month before. And I just want to say, like, I feel very, I might get a little choked up here. I just feel very like very happy and I just want to express that. And I'm glad that anybody likes what we're doing and they read it and they email us and follow us on Twitter and stuff. It's very cool. And so I want to thank, I want to just say thank you and excellent job to the people that I work with. And I'm happy that everybody's kind of back, like you're back from your honeymoon and I'm back from traveling and you're still off the internet, but you're back physically from Mexico City. And I'm looking forward to, we have an awesome year plan and cool stuff planned and that's it. That's all I want to say. And now, and now I'm going to release you guys back into the wild. Not you. Well, you're going to get back into the wild. That's it. That's our Vergecast and we'll be back next week. And as always, I wish you and yours the very best of times. Talk around. Haul.politik.TV