 Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of August 20th, 2012. I'm Josh Dapolsky. I'm Paul Miller. I'm Neil Epitel. I'm Paul. This really needs like a big drum solo at the end. I'm going to, I'm going to look into that for you. I'm going to have somebody look into that and we're back on the Vergecast where we discuss the week in technology culture. Yeah. Right, yeah, exactly. Uh, anyhow, we're back. Uh, it is a, it has been a wild week. Really busy, busy week. A lot of stuff happening, uh, and there's a lot to talk about. Uh, there's Apple, Samsung news to talk about, there's online news to talk about, there's Microsoft news to talk about, there's Amazon news to talk about. We should just jump into the Microsoft news. We're gonna talk about feelings, we're talking about hopes, dreams. I have been pouring over my Wall Street Journal this week. So I have not seen any of these stories. Why would you? Why don't you get back on the internet? You're missing some of the best reporting, the best legal reporting that exists in the world. I'm not even doing it. Yeah. So it's all Brian. Have you ever seen a legal report that made you start crying with joy? Yeah. Yeah. Because that's what, no, I haven't. That's what's happening. Not on the Wall Street Journal. Yeah. Have you ever seen a legal report that made you quote Samsung's attorney saying this can revitalize competition in America? No. You have a choice to make, okay? You can destroy American innovation or you can revitalize competition. Should I be writing this down? Or you can revitalize competition in America. You should send that to the Wall Street Journal. I will. I'll give a letter to the editor. The choice, ladies and gentlemen, the jury is yours. Doom America to... Also South Korea. Doom America and a little bit of South Korea to a hasty destruction or raise America and South Korea out of the ashes like a Phoenix that takes flight, a burning bird flying. That would be terrifying. A burning bird that looks suspiciously similar to... Like another bird that was invented in America. Anyhow, so where do you want to start, Neil? You've got the board. I've got the board. I think we need to start with what has been unquestionably our biggest piece of news today. Blowing everything else out of the water, Microsoft unveils a new logo. New? What? Microsoft? No way. Yeah. Logo. I don't like it. Yeah. I think it's terrible. I'm just going to go... I know that everybody thinks I hate Microsoft, but I think it's a boring logo. I think it's not attractive. Like Helvetica. I wish they had used Helvetica. No, they used their font. What is it called? Segoe. Segoe. And it looks badly current to me. They've got weird stuff happening. The F and the T are touching and lots of other letters aren't. It feels separated. I mean, it just feels like it's four... Here, I'll tell you what it looks like. It's four colored boxes. The F and the T are touching. Are they lowercase? Yeah. It's... Can we grant Paul an exception? It's on my screen. He's trying desperately not to look at it. I'm not looking at it. Can you draw me a picture? You'll see today's news tomorrow in the Wall Street Journal. Yeah. It's no problem. All right. I'll stop taking it off my screen. I'll be right back. I'll be right back. It's right there. It's fine. I can describe it to you. Fine. Yeah. Please describe... Well, this is an audio podcast. Not everybody gets this on video. Okay, I'm gonna describe it to everybody. Imagine a square split up into four smaller squares. Each like a window. Like a window. Completely flat, perfectly symmetrical square. Actually, I can just draw it. It's actually, it's more of a rectangle. It's a little bit more of a rectangle, I think. Let me get my notebook. No, it's a square. It's a square. I'll be right back. Wait, you're getting a notebook? You could just draw it. Oh, you're gonna draw your interpretation of it? There's nothing to interpret. You know what? There's almost nothing to interpret. Now that Paul's gone, I think we can talk freely. The man has a problem. He's gotta get back on the internet. I can't take it anymore. I miss him, first of all. I mean, we don't see him. Oh, he's back. Here he is. Stop talking about him. Okay, he brought a pen and paper. Oh, you're gonna draw it based on what we're saying. I'll draw it like a police reporter, and then we'll see how close I get. Okay. So it is a square. Like a window. Yeah. It's a two by two grid of squares. It's a square broken up into four smaller squares. What a... With white space intersecting the squares. So you can't draw a square and then put a line in it. Oh, I'm not gonna tell you what to do, but the squares would be... There's no square around them. Okay. They're just floating. It's a grid. But they're on a grid. Like a window. Yeah. Like a window without the frame. Yeah. Just the glass. Like the Windows logo. And then, yeah. But you know how the Windows logo used to be curved? Now they're just totally flat. Yeah. And just a little bit to the right of it, it says Microsoft. And like a Sans. It's a go. It's a Sans Sarah font. It is, I think, an... So they're italicized at all? Nope. Not italicized. Are the M slanted in or straight up and down? Up and down. It's straight up and down and it looks kind of like a bulkier... It's a round... It's rounded. It's like a more rounded Helvetica. Is it bold? How bold is it? It's like if Helvetica went to the South. What's the weight? If I were to describe Helvetica as Friendly Vetica. Friendly Vetica? It's really not that friendly. How bold are we talking? It's like medium. I'd say medium. So less bold than the, obviously, the bold blue. Than the original. Yes, yes, less bold than the original. And how far does the M, the middle, dip down? I don't know. I can't tell you. Three decameters. Decameter? What color? It doesn't matter. The font is like a, the font is a, the coloring of the font is a kind of a noncommittal sort of bluish gray. And the windows are like green. I'm just from memory. Orange, blue, and red or something. No, it's the. Now, the other letters are lowercase, right? Yes. Do they have any like swoops to them? Like the bottom of the I? You said the F touches the T. The F touches the T, but no other letters touch one. All the other letters are really far apart. Put that back up on the screen. And they're really straight up and down. They're straight up and down. Here, you could look at it if you want. You won't look at it. This is just piped in locally. Yeah. From the internet. From the local internet. Anyhow, I think it's fine. It's like, I don't like it personally. I don't think it's very interesting. I guess it is kind of gray there, isn't it? And you know, it's a grid of four squares and a word. Yeah. It's not interesting. You wouldn't see it and go like, if you saw those squares by themselves, you wouldn't go like, ah, Microsoft. Yeah. You know? And I think that's a little bit interesting, a little bit telling. Well, I mean, you know, in every new logo, they've got to put it everywhere before you think that. Oh, and they'll put it everywhere. Yeah. Now, the vertical logo. That's really shockingly correct. Pretty good. Let's see. Here's Paul's. Did you forget the last O? Micros. You forgot the last O. Micros. Micros. He was so excited about it. He was so excited about getting the F and T. He was actually in it. He went right past it. That's your like, Curve brand? It's like, Paul's like, I got my own software company. Micros. Like, one of the squares is a triangle. So it doesn't matter. Nobody can see it. It doesn't matter. So they redesigned their logo. And, Neil, what is your take? I think the most interesting thing about it is that the Windows logo is now Microsoft's logo. I mean, that's the Windows logo, the four squares. That's Windows. Well, that's the whole point. It's always been. They've always had a. No. But that was the point. No, that was Windows. It was just the Microsoft with the. I mean, I like it in the sense that their old logo, to me, was really corporate and boring. I actually like their old logo a lot better than this. Really? Yeah. Really? This logo, to me, I haven't seen this one. But I've never liked the old one. You just think it's corporate and boring because it's an old Microsoft logo. Well, no, but it had that like, bowing thing in the O. Yeah, yeah. It had a bite taken out of something. The O was like slanted in. What? The old Microsoft logo had that like, 90s kind of like. Can I see it? Can I call it out? We're moving. We're shaking. Yeah, they were shaking things up. The 90s were the time for Microsoft. Searching for Microsoft. What does it look like? Oh, there we go. That it? This thing. I love that. I like it. Is the next Xbox going to run Windows? Because I would just. All the old one is just saying it's a lens flare. I'd pay $5 extra just for Microsoft to say that the next Xbox lens would run Windows. I'm sure the underlying guts of it will probably be Windows. I just want them to call it Windows. I mean, why wouldn't it? Well, I just think it'd be entertaining. I think it would be a huge statement. Like Microsoft has hid itself from this Windows product in its consumer type stuff. The Ken, the Zune. You're talking about the Xbox. Two gigantic failures and one huge success. Right. Well, they were trying to do the Ken and the Zune in the vein of. I don't think people care. And then with Windows Phone, it's like, you know what? Let's do Windows. And since Windows Phone, everything is turning into Windows. I just don't think the market cares. Like, people either like the product or they don't. It's either a good product or it isn't. But I don't know, it says something. Well, and they're obviously trying to say something with this Window thing. They're trying to say that they're about Windows. Trying to say, where are the Windows companies? They're not the company that also bought Skype. Don't forget. That also bought a Quantive. Yeah. Well, that's gone now. I mean, look, that's what I'm saying. They're focused. That's the Encyclopedia and Carta company. They're laser focused. On Windows. On Windows. They're doubling down. Yeah, I think it's. I mean, I. Doubling down to laser focused on Windows. The interesting things about it to me are like, it is so much friendlier and consumer. I mean, it's a very like, it's hip in its way. I don't think. I don't feel that from the logo at all. Really? I mean, it's hardly a logo. I mean, it's four squares. Yeah. That's fine. You know who it would have been a great logo for? What's that? Four square. Yeah. I saw me made that joke in a few minutes. I just told him. Gruber pointed out today that it looks a lot like the Chrome icon, because it's just like primary colors. Well, not primary, but like bold, solid colors. Well, I mean, Microsoft has been doing this kind of bold color thing for a while. Yeah, no, I'm just saying. Are the window panes four different colors? Yeah. The Windows colors. It's totally. No, it's like green, orange, red, and blue. That's super iconic. Yeah. I know it might sound simple. That's super iconic. If only you could see it. Although I do miss the little ripple to the flag. I think I agree with you. I think that they just tightened up that letter spacing so everything was closer together. Yeah, I mean, I guess they're really psyched on that font. It just, in this context, just doesn't feel very. It feels like they just typed it. Is that what you're saying? It just feels like, yeah, it doesn't. The whole thing seems like, you know, it just doesn't seem like there was a lot of time put into worrying about it. You know, I don't ask why, but I was using Microsoft Word this morning. Why? And the default header style is kind of a bold blue text. It's not like, it's not HTML is H1. It's like a friendly soft blue bold. Cool story. That's a cool story. All right, what else? There's nothing to say about this. I just think the other thing that's fascinating is. Yes, there is something to say about it. Well, I mean, it's amazing. It has been our most popular post by far. More popular than the home page of our site is a picture of New England. I don't understand why that surprises you. It's fascinating to me. It's a very important and popular brand. Yeah, but it's just like the amount of time people are spending. I guess we're spending it, but it's just fascinating. Here we are. Still feeding the fire. All right. Still talking about the logo. So the next big story we have is from today. Microst. Which Paul, literally, this will impact you in no way whatsoever. Oh, I'd love to know about this. The Facebook app for iOS has been released. It is now a native app. Finally. Yeah, Paul's been waiting for this for three months. I don't think I even had the Facebook app on my iDevices before. This is huge. Yeah, I think this is actually a huge deal. So it's faster. They rewrote it for iOS and native. They promise they're going to be doing something for Android in the future. But to me, this repudiates how a lot of apps are being built. No, I mean. It's like a native wrapper around a web app. I mean, Palm fought against this when they kind of were like, we're doing HTML5 wrappers, and you're just going to do it. Everything's going to be executed. I mean, it's not HTML. And we've had many conversations about this. HTML5 is amazing and is already doing some amazing things. And in certain situations, is completely fine to stand in place of native code. In some places, it isn't ready yet. Not at all. And this was a place where it wasn't ready. And I think there's other places where it's not ready. I think that place is all over mobile, though. I think it's ready on the desktop. I think, like, I use. Well, the desktop is. You're going to get a better experience overall. It's a more powerful machine. But native apps are still better on the desktop, too. You should read my editorial on the future of the internet desktop. I don't know what I call it. You don't know what I call it? I haven't read it since I came up on the internet. I can't remember what headline we put on it. It was something like, Paul doesn't know how to use the new operating systems. LOL. LOL. LOL. LOL. And then in parentheses, sick burn. No, I'm just saying, like, my entire life on the desktop is browser windows. But should it be? I mean, sometimes it shouldn't be. But most of the time, it is. What about when you're playing World of Warcraft? That's most of my time. Let's be honest. I'm trying to think. What about when you're playing online? What do I use that is not a web view? Twitter. Twitter. But Twitter is built kind of like, I mean, it's like a network service, right? Atium? But do you use TweetDeck? No. Oh, sometimes, yeah. TweetDeck is like an HTML5 app. No, I know that. It's great. Fantastic. I love it. Say Atium. Yeah, no. No. No. Is HTML5 the next Adobe Air? Oh, god. No. No. Definitely not, actually. I'm just kidding. Yeah, but I'm saying on mobile. I don't think that works. What if Apple just decided, you know what, HTML5 had a good run, but we're not supporting it anymore? War on HTML5? Well, no, I think that there's, I think it had a great run. It will continue to have a great run. But for an app like Facebook, where they need to have the performance, where people are going to use Facebook on mobile more than the desktop very soon, I don't think they can wait around. This is great news. But I just think it's like, so many apps are, let's build an HTML5 and we'll deploy to every platform in these custom wrappers. And I think that trend is over today. I don't think that's a good way to build an app. And I think that's what people have thought about building an app for a long time. You can just do this and we'll serve it to Android and we'll serve it to iOS. Good enough. Yeah, good enough. And I don't think good enough on mobile is like, you can't play that game because everything will be mobile soon. On mobile, good enough isn't exactly good enough. That definitely sounds like an Apple ad from 1983. No, it sounds like an editorial. On like? On the Facebook app. No, an editorial. I'm trying to think of what site it would be. At the end of the Jim Lehrer News Hour, someone gives a voiced editorial. Yeah, I guess so. I was thinking of a traditional publication. Just sounds like something from The Weeknd. But it sounds like something you should be saying out loud, though. I'm saying it out loud right now. Anyhow, this isn't a shocker. And Facebook needs engagement, hardcore. And I think I'm sure they were seeing a lack of engagement in those apps because of the slowness. And this should fix that a little bit at least. I hope they do something. Well, I don't really use the apps. It doesn't matter. I was going to say, I hope they do something about the Android app too. But it doesn't matter. They said they're going to do something. I used the iOS app a little bit today. It is way faster. You use Facebook for photos a lot. Yeah. Like a lot more than I ever do. I don't do that. Well, because we moved away from all of our friends. So like, yeah, we like. Oh, like Paul didn't? The guy's from Washington state. But you made new friends in New York. Becky and I chose to not make new friends. This guy won't hang out with me. I refuse. He's like, I need to Facebook my friends in Chicago. I don't have any time for you. He's like, I got a big hangout plan. I'm like, I'm just standing right outside in front of your apartment. No, I'm going to use Facebook. What is it called? He's like, I'm air timing with all my friends on Facebook tonight. Air timing? What happened? Remember air time? No, who does it? Sean Parker. Air time never made it into Wall Street Journal. I thought air time was like an Apple networking protocol. It wants you to think that. Airplay, airport, FaceTime. Just mash them all together. Take it. Take it. What else? All right. I need to be a quick verge cast. Those are boring stories. I wanted to lead. I really think those are the up stories. Those are the positives. I want to hear about you guys. How are you doing? Can we get Sean on the phone, by the way? Yeah, let's do that. Do you want to talk about how we're doing? Yeah, we'll do that while we just quick up the updates. How are you guys doing? Go ahead. We're going to get by all means. I'm good. I'm actually really, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night. Go figure. I was up at like 4 in the morning talking about iPhone 5 rumors with our editorial team in Europe. I'm tired. I'm looking forward to the weekend. I hope it's a quiet weekend. I hope there's no surprises. I hope jurors don't decide to deliver a verdict in the Apple Samsung trial on Saturday. I don't think they're going to do that. Can they do that? Is that even legal? They should announce a settlement. Well, that would be nice, but also annoying. And I'm good. I had some lights installed in my kitchen. It cost more than I expected. And I'm a little bummed about it still. I've had a light bulb. I've had my light bulb. I meant under counter lighting, by the way. All my kitchen lighting has been burnt out for many dark Looking for a month. Well, it's really nice. What would it be like if I went without electricity? This is a flashback. I have to borrow a ladder. I have to borrow a ladder for my superintendent. It's like 12. Did you say superintendent? What is wrong with you today, dude? Paul's a little off today. Brandon, do we have Sean? OK. What about, wait, are you going to tell us about how you're doing? I'm good. This trial has been destroying my life. How long has this been going on? It's three and a half weeks. And now the jury went away. Yesterday was a first day deliberations. Today is a second. Neal, I published a piece today that was like the nightmare of the Apple versus Samsung jury. And it's just basically like, if you read it, you'll see how completely insane it is that Apple and Samsung have decided to let you, we talked about this earlier, have decided to let these nine regular human beings decide such a monumental and also extremely complex. There's no way. We'll get to it. It really should have been nine experts. It should have been nine lawyers from Apple and Samsung. We'll talk about it. But we have OnLive. A big story, yeah. It's been breaking for weeks. It's a story that will not stop developing. It really won't. So OnLive, which is the streaming game company, fell apart, basically. Hit a brick wall is what somebody told me. And they randomly called all their employees into a room, fired everybody, and then said, but don't worry. We're going to start a new company called OnLive. And rehire you. And some of you. So Sean Hollister's been following the story very, very closely. We've got him on the phone. Sean Hollister's our man with a plan. He actually went there. He was photographing people. He went out. He was literally pounding the pavement, along with a number of other journalists. Hats off to them. They went down there to find out what's going on. We have Sean on Skype, supposedly. Sean. Sean Hollister. Sean Hollister's on the call. It's me? My hair? Yes. By the way, can you start every conversation that says Sean? Sean Hollister. Sean Hollister. Sean is the new Paul. Sean, can you just tell me what the hell is going on? Because I kind of don't know. Sean, set this up for us. Can you? Now, I know it's a big, big story with a lot of components. But can you just give us the big points of the story so far? I know you're working on other stuff. But just up to this point, what happened to OnLive? What do we know about it? Where is the company right now? I almost wish that I knew what was going on. But basically, what we found out so far is that last Friday, like you said, they called the entire company to an all-hands meeting, including people over the phone. Nobody had any idea what was going on. They thought they were going to be bought. They thought maybe they'd have a public offering or something like that. They were told how well the company was doing. They were told how well the company was doing. You're all doing a great job. And by the way, here's HR. And they were all let go. The entire company was dissolved, including all the employees, all of the stock, all of the assets of the company were handed to a assignee in a transaction that's known as an assignment for the benefit of creditors. It's an alternative to bankruptcy. And then those assets. Oh, the old ABC, yes. That all of those assets were bought back by a new company called OnLive, which had an investor, a single investor, who said, yes, OnLive 2, new OnLive. OnLive bought OnLive, basically, including all of the assets, but left at least half of the employees and all of the stock that all of the employees owned, all the companies who invested in OnLive owned, all of that in the dust. So now there's a new OnLive. We've just found out that Steve Perlman, who started the company and headed it up, will be the CEO of the new company. Oh my god. We found out that. This is horrible. Sorry, go ahead. No, no, no. Go on. Keep going. All right. All right. We found out that the company, before it was about to die, it had between $30 million and $40 million in debt. It had to do something any minute, or else it would have to go bankrupt for real. And companies like HTC and British Telecom have lost their entire investments in the thing. It's a big mess. It's a big mess. Wait, how is that for the benefit of creditors? Like, we just did this thing called an assignment for the benefit of creditors. But you creditors. They're not the creditors. It's like the assignment for the benefit of them all. HTC and British Telecom had investments in the company stock. They had a stake. British Telecom, for instance, had a 2.6% stake in OnLive. And they basically lost that stake. There were some strings attached, but it's perhaps OnLive didn't actually owe them any money. Right. OK. This is the point we're not certain on. It's just a horrible scam, it sounds like. Well, I don't know if it's a scam, but they did something very odd where they, well, this ABC transaction is. Like they found some crazy loophole to screw everybody over. That's basically what they did. And so what happened to the employees who had stock, they're like, oh, by the way, your stock's not worth anything. Sean, can you explain? And maybe, I don't know if you know enough about this or not. I'm just trying to understand it. Assignment for the benefit of creditors, what happens? Like, what is the, what is the machination there that happens? What's supposed to happen? What does it do? I mean, what happened? Like, OK, well, they're in debt. They're in $30 to $40 million of debt. They can't, I assume, pay for things they need. Like, they can't keep their servers running. They can't keep paying their employees. What happens in the ABC process? Do you know enough about that at this point to describe it? Like, what exactly transacts? I'm afraid I'm not a lawyer. I don't know enough about the process. From what I've read, it is a rather private thing. This assignee of theirs was supposed to take the assets and maximize the value of them such that these creditors, maybe the server companies, you know, they did some construction on the building recently. I heard they installed a new bathroom to pay off the construction company. They should have, yeah, it's expensive bathrooms. They should have maximized that value such that the creditors can get their money back. But I don't know, actually, how much it needed to be. So they were on credit. So what's happening is they had taken the money they invested. They had borrowed against it and done things on credit and needed to basically said, like, we don't have the money to pay you back. But here's what we're going to do. So it sounds like a crazy scam where they said, like, hey, but let's let this assignee take over the stuff. And it was like, the assignee's like, I don't know who would pay money for all this stuff. And the CEO's like, I would. Because like, who wants on-life as a very specific thing? I think what it is is that is that he'd be the highest bidder. I mean, by the way, I'm just flying blind on this. I don't understand economics or this process enough. But my understanding is this or money or numbers. Have you seen this man play bingo? No, I cannot do that. It sounds like it basically they were like, well, look, we're out of money. We can file for bankruptcy. Or like men, or we can say like, we're out of money and somebody swoops in with money. And they're like, I'm going to take care of your debts. And I'm going to own your stuff. But that is so it. There's no taking care of debts here. And I think the bigger problem there is no debt to HTC. HTC invested. They're not like, no, no, but they're well, I guess they would. So they if they just had a manageable amount of debt, I think they probably could have figured this out. Can I appeal to our listener, our live listeners? If you are, if you are an accredited, yeah, I'm not a financial expert. This makes perfect sense to me. Right. You say, you say, look, we can't pay this debt. OK. And so we're just literally making this. We have no idea what. Let's let's hold back the ABC piece for a second. Because we know about it. Look, this is far any idea what ABC, what ABC. This is some weird style. Yeah. All right. No, no, no, no. Let's let's. Gentlemen, we got to speak one at a time. I know. I think we're all the time. Sean's cracking away. I don't think I don't think we should speculate on how that process works because I don't really know. I thought Sean might have more insight. That's exactly what we should do. OK. But I'm going to what I want to say is I want to Sean, I want Sean to talk about where the company is now and where they go from here and what you know. And by the way, don't if you're working on something, you know, don't share stuff that you're not ready to talk about. But I'm just curious, like, do you have a sense of of of of what what they what they think the company is now and what their plans are? According to OnLive, they're they're doing they're going to conduct the business as usual. They're planning to go ahead with all of the services. They're going to keep everything running. Nothing has been shut down. The service has been running continuously. They they claim 24 seven since it first launched a couple of years back. No downtime at all. They want to keep pushing out their games. They want to keep going forward with their cloud desktop platform. They want to they want to keep doing everything that they've been doing with no interruption. That whether they can actually do that or not and whether they actually intend to do that or not depends on how much of the company they've managed to retain, how many employees they've managed to keep on, how many they're about to hire back with new investment. If they really want to do that, they're going to have to have a certain number of people to make that happen, to keep testing these games and on negotiating with companies to bring on new games and keep the flow continuous. And from what we've heard, they are planning to do that. They brought on as many as 100 employees. But it's possible that they would go a different route. It's possible that they'll find out that they don't have the funding to go forward and instead sell this off to companies who are interested in cloud gaming. Sony bought Gaikai for $380 million. Gaikai was a rival of OnLives. Perhaps Microsoft or another company would be interested in competing with that, a cloud gaming company of their own. I have a question. There's two things here that I think make this really interesting. One is we've just been generally saying, and I think the gaming press has been generally saying, this cloud gaming stuff is like a huge piece of the future. And that sort of theory was validated by what Sony did with Gaikai, right? We're going to start delivering these games over networks. You don't need to care about local hardware. This is the future. That's that. But then I also heard that OnLive only ever had like 1,200 concurrent users. 1,800. 1,800 concurrent users. And that it's business. Concurrent on the service at the same time. Yeah, which is nothing. That's nothing. And that one of the reasons that they were so massively in debt is they were paying for all this additional server space and they couldn't get out of it. But those things don't match at all. It's either the future or nobody used it. Well, I guess, I mean. I understand that a lot of people signed up. They tried it. A lot of people were on there playing demos. They had their monthly plan. They'd play around with it like a Netflix-like service, playing around with their old games. But as far as people on there all at the same time, I heard the number could be rather low. I've heard 1,800. I've heard 1,600 concurrent users worldwide. The company claims that is inaccurate that there were as many as 1.5 million active users of the service. But what we haven't heard at all from anyone yet is how many people tried it, liked it, and bought games. We don't know were people willing to pay for this. But I think that in essence here, this service isn't viable as a, I'm a small startup trying to do cloud gaming, streaming gaming. I don't think this works because if Microsoft came to you and said, if you're a gamer and you own an Xbox and a PS3, I mean, I highly doubt you're going to go buy the on-live stuff just out of the blue. But if you're a gamer and Microsoft comes in and says, we have a new cloud gaming package and you pay x amount of dollars a month and you can play this selection of games streaming, it's a different proposition than if Gaikai or on-live says it. And you don't know if the selection of games is limited. And there's nothing back. I mean, there's nothing really to support it. It's very true. I mean, hardware has always been driven. Go ahead. Well, would you sign up for on-live right now? Definitely not. I've signed up for it. I'm using it. And I'm not paying a dime because I just get on there and I play a game demo. And that's all I need to do. Well, what do you mean? What do you mean you're not paying a dime? You just play demos. On-live is a service that you can sign up for for free and try games. And then if you like them, you can pay for them. And you can pay on-live and say, well, now I can take this with me wherever I want and play it without having to have a big, powerful computer in front of me. If I decide I like that game, though, but I want to play with my Microsoft Xbox Live friends, I might buy that same game on Xbox. The big thing that keeps video game platforms from succeeding, whether they're a piece of hardware or a cloud gaming service, is exclusive games, titles that you can't get anywhere else, that you have to play. You can only get it there. And on-live didn't ever have any of those worth writing home about. Yeah. They were trying to get some, but they didn't have them. To me, this sounds like a really, I mean, there's no question I think this technology is awesome. And I actually play around with Gaikai a bit and a little bit with on-live. And I think they're impressive. Yeah. And I think especially when we all have Fios, forget about it. But I think that as a component of a larger ecosystem, this is really fascinating. You basically are saying, I'm going to start a new game. I'm going to be a new game console slash game company. I'm going to be an Xbox. I'm going to be a PS3. You're going to buy my little piece of hardware. You're going to plug it into your network. And I'm going to give you all the content. You're going to have an ecosystem. You can play against people on my match-up system or whatever. And that's a huge undertaking for any company. That's the thing. You can't sneak into the console market. And that's what they were. They were competing against consoles, and you can't just cycle your way in with 40 million dollars. They're competing against brick and mortar. They're competing against Amazon for distribution of games. This is not how people are used to buying their software. I'm not saying it's bad. I think it's great. But that innovation seems to work best when you match it to an established ecosystem. Without the ecosystem and without the weight of one of these guys behind it, Microsoft, sorry, just want to make one more quick point. Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony are fighting tooth and nail to hold on to their market. Nintendo, we don't know where they'll be this time next year, if they're going to have success with the Wii. These are big players. To have OnLive and Gaikai enter it and try to go neck and neck, because that's where it is. It's in your living room. So Sean, you did a big piece on Gaikai. And my sense with that company was that they were always angling their way towards either being an infrastructure provider for the big players or getting bought. They did a deal with Samsung, right? Right before the Sony thing. They were like, hey, we're going to be on Samsung smart TVs. And then they got bought. Gaikai was never shy about being an infrastructure provider. They said they never wanted to have a gaming service the way that OnLive did. They didn't want to be a user first thing. They were a business to business company. They would give you a white-labeled gaming service. They would put these demos everywhere on the web so you could play them. But they were either always going to be that white-label service, or they were going to get bought by a company like Sony. So go ahead. Well, that was the thing about Gaikai is they had a business model that actually made sense. Because like you say, you play demos. And that's what I used OnLive for, for playing demos. And the big thing is that originally is like, is OnLive even going to work? There's no way this is actually going to work. And then it came out. And I followed it very closely. And it worked amazingly. And then for some reason, I never cared to use it. I just never had a use case for it. At least Gaikai had a use case. And OnLive just never figured it out. Well, and the other thing is. And yet I think this is the future. I still think this is the future of gaming. Because this is the way that you can get your game to anyone, anywhere, if they've got the bandwidth, if they've got the connection to do that, as these LTE networks and as these fiber optic networks roll out, that's going to happen. It eliminates the piracy. Because the local users do not hold onto a copy of the game. It's always there in the cloud. Well, I'm done. And it allows. All right. You guys quit it. Sorry, make your last point there. Well, I mean, your other point. Oh, yeah. So those two things. And the barrier to entry is just so low for the customer. They can buy. They can have it on a smartphone. They can have it on a $100 Google TV box. Any hardware with just this ability to decode the video stream as it comes in can be your game console. And just so I understand, I just want to be clear. In browser, I'm pretty sure I played GaiGai in browser, if I recall. That is Flash, right? I believe they've used Flash. Is it something else? They've used Java. Oh, good. They've had a number of things. Is it proprietary? GaiGai, actually, most recently, GaiGai has a Chrome native client implementation. So it's just running natively, accessing your local hardware through the web protocol. Java. So that doesn't need. Is it Java? Java. Also, I just told GaiGai that I was born on January 1, 1919. And I was like, cool, we'll let you play this game. What is the point of that? Age gates. There's no such thing as a real age gate. I mean, are you old enough to select a different year than the year you were born? If so, you're old enough to play this game. It's like a click gate. Do you have the patience to click four or five times? I don't have Java installed. You don't have Java installed? It says in it. I don't know, man. I don't know. You've got to upgrade. No, that's Flash. This is Flash. This is Java. You need a Java SC6 plug-in. Oh, yeah. That's right. Yes, there's Java involved. There's also the native client version. So I mean, long story short, I played a, I used GaiGai in browser. And the experience was really impressive. I mean, it is, and I agree with Sean, as networks speed up. And that's the linchpin here. You have to have a fast network for this. It's not just about the speed, but also about the location, the latencies, the huge portion of it. You have to have servers that are close enough and connections that are strong enough so that you can ping the server quickly and get a response quickly. Otherwise, your controls, if you press a button, you won't see the action happen because it takes that much time to bounce to the server and back to you again. In my experience, the worse my connection is, the higher my latency is. So the connection, Matt, I mean, the point is the networks have to get better. They have to utilize these networks better. The piracy thing is really interesting that people haven't really talked about. But to me, if I were a publisher, this would be like, how quickly can I turn this into the way you play my games? There's no used games? The problem is, yeah, there's no used games. The problem is the service of subscribe isn't as valuable, I don't think, to these game companies as buy. So they need to find a way to sell the $60 game to the user. And when you buy, maybe I'd buy something that's stored in the cloud from Google or Amazon or Microsoft. I'm not going to buy from this jerk face who is a fly-by-night, going to change the name of the company to OnLive with two E's and revoke all my licenses all of a sudden. I have no way to try. I would never buy anything from this guy. He sounds like a horrible person. I mean, I will say this. He invented QuickTime. I know. I know. I've been obsessed with him because he's clearly a slimeball. I'll say this. I think that I've been obsessed with him? Yeah, no. I was obsessed with OnLive when it came out. I was like, this is the guy who created QuickTime. And he's going to figure out latency and video stream. It's going to be better than it ever has been. I think that there has been. OnLive still streams things way better than YouTube does. I think there has been a lot of Steve Perlman, as you're talking about. I think there's been, I don't know if I'd use the word irreparable harm, but I think some considerable harm done to his reputation. But in Silicon Valley, there are plenty of bad people with bad reputations who are very successful businessmen. In fact, it's kind of their thing. So I don't know if that really affects it, but I do think that the users and I think that the community and the people who are really fans of innovation and kind of rooting for startups, I think this has left a bad taste. I think a lot of the people in the startup world, this has left a bad taste in their mouth because they don't want to see. It's kind of a dirty exit. And consoles matter a little less, but a lot of gamers care a lot about the backstory of at least who gives them their games, who sells them their games. I think look at Steam. I mean, look at Steam and there's a community there and it's this belief that the people running it will do what's in the best interest of the users and the company. And you don't really feel that with online. And on Livey at this point. The amazing thing about Steam, and I think this is every time I get into a conversation about how we should sell music and movies and all this stuff. You mean The Verge? Yeah. We should have a music and movies portal? So no, but what's the future of how we distribute content? You mean we? Are you saying the world? The world. Not we, like even me. The Verge. How should society do it? Somebody always always sends me, and it's usually Josh Kopstein, somebody always sends me a Reddit post of like, we should just have an interface that looks exactly like Steam that sells music and movies. And it's like, that's great. But you know, Steam wraps everything in like DRM. That's fascinating to me. DRM is the future. It is. It's everywhere. It's pervasive. It's just funny that this thing that we used to decry is holding us all back from getting the most out of media is now the key to actually making all this stuff work. And because everyone loves Steam and this company and they're all into Valve, they're like, that's fine that you're using DRM for this. Yeah, but that's different. I mean, that's really different. I mean, you're talking about like. I'm just saying the feeling that the. By the way, piracy is completely possible with Steam. Yeah, no, of course. The amount of good feeling for Steam, I think outweighs the amount of like hand wringing over DRM. Well, no, I just think there's some necessary evils to running a company like that. Piracy isn't possible with Steam. Piracy is possible of games that are also available on Steam. And I think that's the thing. Steam provides a slick, easy interface. And you'd rather use that. We have people in the chat right now who are saying Valve service is worth the DRM. And it's like, well, when did that start? What? When did we start saying that was cool? But I think the idea is you're. Oh, there was a. We had a whole battle. It was iTunes. We're saying. But if you have a Steam account, I mean, just walk me through this because I only have it on my. I only really use one computer. If you have a Steam account on multiple computers. That's fine. You have access to your. This weird. No, but it's this weird game that all the. So what was it? What was the alternative? What do you want to do? But it's this what I'm saying. It's this weird game that all these huge DRM based companies play where they make DRM that is so friendly that it's like there's no DRM. Right. It's like, well, we've we've innate. We've. I don't know. I don't know why DRM is the issue. I mean, you have to protect, you know, games. There has to be a way. I mean, if you could easily copy if I could easily burn a copy of an Xbox game for somebody. Yeah. You know, that would be detrimental to their business. I mean, I have. I have to. I have to. I understand. I understand. Are you complaining about DRM or complimenting Steam? It's both. It's a little bit of both. It's both. It's Steam is so well regarded as an indie company. Well, I mean, now they're massive, right? But is it an independent company people have such good feeling for that this other thing that people always criticize is often overlooked? Right. And I think that just goes to. I think Steam is an enabling service. It's an enabling company. It allows you to get something that you wouldn't have otherwise. If you buy a game off the shelf at Brig at home, you know, a game from most companies, it's not going to say you have to connect this to Steam or else you can't use it. But if you buy your games on Steam, you have access to them anywhere. You can download them anywhere. You can log in. You can get all of the friend layer on top where you can talk with all your friends and pull them into your games and things like that. You can manage and organize your collection. It's an add-on. It's a benefit. And by opting into that enabling service, you're trading in your ability to resell your games and things like that. Right. But it's not like you couldn't play your game without it. Whereas one of the competing services, Origin, if you buy a copy of Battlefield 3 off the shelf, you take it home. You can't even start it up until you get it hooked into Steam and get it all settled with them. You're basically buying a license on the shelf. And you have to actually do the rest through the interface. It feels more like DRM with that. Origin is the E-A, right? Yeah. There's a lot of hatred for Origin happening right now. Yeah, of course. But look at who they are. One is this indie company. One is EA, this gigantic, monolithic, well-established. I mean, now Valve is obviously very well-established. But you know, EA just has a horrible logo is what it comes down to. Well, they're just the big dog. Sean, is there anything else we need to take away from Alma? I think that we've been talking about what you need for OnLive to succeed, and I think the piece that they're missing is there's no, all the big console companies, they're trying to do other stuff than gaming, right? The market for the pure play gaming, it's there and it's huge. But they're like, let's do all this media stuff. Let's do all this living room stuff. Let's have 50 TV apps on the Xbox. And OnLive sold this one thing. It was cheap. And the games were theoretically everywhere. But all the other stuff that makes the Xbox valuable, all the other stuff that makes the PS3 valuable wasn't there. And that's what we criticize Nintendo for all the time is, what do you, you have to grow. And Nintendo's not growing. So if you take a look at the OnLive physical controllers that they sold, they all have pause, play, fast forward, rewind buttons on them. And I understand that they were looking into that. I don't know if they ever had the funding, the staff, the interest in making it happen for real. But it was definitely on the table. You mean movies. So they would use their technology for other stuff. Stuff like that. That was on the table. Well, maybe Apple owns the new. Something I always wanted OnLive to do is get into esports. Like, the 1,800 number is really wild to me. Because on Twitch TV, you'll have like 100,000 people watching a League of Legends tournament live. Well, but that's a participatory. A horrible Flash client with chat. That's a participatory event, like a soccer match. Like watching a TV show. But the thing is that something like OnLive has the ability to add a lot more elements to it because it's streaming software to you, not just the video stream. Well, I think that it's. Especially if you've got multi-camera or actual interactivity in the game. I think it'd be amazing for esports if they figured it out. I just think that at this point, OnLive has to. Somebody else has to buy them. I mean, they have to prove that they either have a viable standalone business, which I don't see that. I mean, at this point, they're in very rocky territory. Or somebody comes along and says, your technology is great. We want to buy it. And let's make a deal. Yeah. Sean, is there anything else we need to take away from this? No, I think that's about it. No, we've run this into the ground pretty thoroughly. Yeah. All right. Sean, thank you for joining us. And we really appreciate the time. And looking forward to, hopefully, you'll come up with some more OnLive stuff. I'm very interested to keep track of this story. Have you checked inside of their dumpster yet? Have you done dumpster diving? Did they throw away incriminating evidence? Did you see me walk out with like. I have not. Did you see me walk out with a bunch of garbage bags full of paper, throw them into the dumpster? On the day when I was there with several other journalists waiting in front of the door, we did smell a very strange burning smell for about 10 minutes. Really? Really? We have no idea what that was. Are you serious? Wow. That's amazing. That is. Very strong burning smell. You've just made this appearance even crazier. You've really taken it to another level. Yeah. And somewhere just behind the door, and a former OnLive employee was like, let's screw with him as much as possible. Or they were burning documents. Or they were burning documents. Sean, thank you for joining us. We've got to have you back on. Maybe you'll be on when you're out here soon. Yeah. I'd be excited. All right. Get the whole crew. Sounds good. All right. Thanks, Sean. The whole crew? Do you remember our, let's get the whole crew on the Verge cast? That's always such a fun little concept. Fun idea. How big is our crew? Like 55? Now it's 55. Last time it was like 12. And we all wanted to murder each other. 55. 55. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. It's nuts. We were saying today, it's completely nuts. 55 people. Completely insane. If there's 55 people, that means each of us represent, like if we're speaking for the Verge, which is, I don't know. We go off the rails. We might not be the perfect representatives. I don't think we're speaking for all of the Verge. But we're each representing like 18-ish people. Yeah. Ish. 18-ish. There's like a half person in there. I don't know the math really. Anyhow, what's next? There's more to talk about. And I'm dreading. I know we're going into Apple Samsung territory. Let's just do it. So look, the closing arguments happened on Tuesday. Just do it. It's here. It's on Next on the List. Are you D-R-E-D-D-ing? Dude, there's a Judge Dredd 3D movie coming out. That was the worst segue in the world. Judge Dredd dreading Samsung Apple to trial. Judgment. Has a judge. Yeah. Judgment. So that's what's the loan is involved? I can't. 3D? I'm not going to validate anything. You know, there's a Samsung Mega 3D phone. Yeah, I'm sure they do. Are you kidding me? They're like, whatever. Do we have any 3D things? All right. Megaphone. The Galaxy Dimension. Ooh, Galaxy Dimension. Probably real. That sounds good. Whoa, Galaxy Dimension? Yeah. Neil, take us into the courtroom, the Apple versus Samsung trial. Give us a taste. You brought a box into the room. And you opened the box. And inside the box is a chocolate cake. And that cake represents the Apple versus Samsung trial with many layers. So many layers. I'll just read some quotes from closing arguments. And you're going to slice a piece of the cake off for us and the listener. And you're going to let them taste it. So after three weeks. And then we get to lick the spoon. Yeah. Why would you be eating cake with a spoon? No, like the batter, the cake batter. He didn't bake the cake. He just brought it. He just brought the cake into the room. But I covered a spoon with frosting for you. You may have to have that. It goes for you. That's the Paul Miller spoon. So Tuesday was closing arguments in the Apple versus Samsung trial. It was very emotional. Can we lower the lights in here? Yeah. I feel like we could get a little dimmer in here. Make it romantic. Brian was there. He's been reporting live from this thing every day. Brian Bishop just crushing it. There was an enormous line to see these closing arguments. Just crushing it. People were like spectators were just coming to be part of it because it's the trial's public. And the judge opened it by reading 100 pages of jury instructions, which completely killed the mood. That was crazy. How long did that take? Three hours. Because you can't give them the text of the instructions. You have to guarantee. It's like antiquated. But you have to guarantee that they've heard them. There was definitely a point where we were doing some live blogging of that, weren't we? Yeah. There was definitely a point where somebody was like, oh, I guess Brian was like, they're losing the jury. I just saw somebody start featuring it. Oh, yeah. No, the judge made them stand up. They took standing breaks, so people would say. So that was the morning. That's like Nazi Germany. So that's like forcing the jury to stand up. We'll get into how complicated the jury's task is. But Apple and Samsung argued over the 84 jury instructions that spanned 109 pages for months. And they got read. And then in the afternoon, Apple started its closing arguments and opened up first sentence. Steve Jobs made a revolution. It was called the iPhone. And that was their theme. And they both had around two hours total to deliver their closing argument and then a rebuttal. So it was Apple, then Samsung, then Apple, and Samsung again. And Apple's opening, their closing argument was 90 minutes. It was very, very focused, very tight. It's Apple's story. We invented the iPhone. It took us four or five years. And Samsung said, our sales are flailing. We have a crisis of design. And they copied it in three months. And they kept on coming back to this over and over and over again. One of the quotes, they spent billions of dollars mimicking our designs. And they focused really hard on the documents. They have all these documents. So Apple's lawyers kept on saying things like, just put together a timeline. Just look at what happened here. It's very, very simple. Don't think about the witnesses. Don't think about all the stuff you've heard. Just look at the evidence. They had some witness issues, didn't they? That's the job. Samsung's lawyers are really good. So they did a good job of impeaching some of the witnesses. But when they have those documents, at the very least, the trade dress document, the one where they're comparing, where they have the Samsung document where it's like, here's what they do. Here's what we need to do. Go fix it. Those are damning. I would say damning. How'd they impeach witnesses? What happened there? No, that's what you do. I don't remember that. Because impeachment in a trial is not a real thing. It's just a thing that happened. You damaged their credibility. It's not like you're impeaching a president. You're kicked out of here for saying something. But you can still take that into consideration, isn't there? No, so you say, Apple put Susan Kerr, who designed the icons of the original Mac, up as an expert to say, let's talk about icons. Oh, and they impeached her? And Samsung said, well, you don't have to design icons like this. And Samsung said, well, to do a functional analysis of this, is this the best functional way to have icons? And she said, no. And Samsung hammered her over and over and over again. But you never did the functional analysis. You never, because the standard is, if it's a functional design, Apple can't protect it. I understand. So they said to her, they said, she said, you don't have to design the icons this way. Yeah, she said, I'm a designer. And there are many, many ways to design. I'm an expert designer. So I can tell you what would be. All about Apple icons. And within that realm of what she knows, it would be like what the functional design is. Presumably. Which means the thing that would be best for users? Yeah. It's like, yeah. Like putting it on off switch left and right, it doesn't make as much sense as putting one up and down. Kind of. Or does it? I don't even know if that does. So the standard for the design patterns and for the trade dress is, you can protect the look as long as the look isn't determined by the function. So what she's saying, there's many ways to design a button. There's many ways to do these icons. And Apple and Samsung is saying over and over and over again, but isn't that determined by the function? Isn't the best way to do this functionally to make a rounded box that you can press? Or make like a CD that's kind of at an angle with a musical note. Yeah. They had a big argument over what the phone icon should be, because Samsung's looks just like the thing. And they're like, this is what phones look like. And they went after her really hard. There is an element there where it's like putting a picture of a phone on the phone icon done in the style of a road sign is pretty functional. So this is the jury has to decide. In a closing, arguments are saying they brought up Susan Kerr. And Samsung's lawyer said they never did the functional analysis. And Samsung's closing was very sarcastic. They also did a lot of kind of they battered, who was the other expert, Bressler? Was that his name? Yeah. I mean, his testimony was he was Apple's expert. And there was one point they hammered him on. And I can't think of what it is right now. Expert on what? I'm completely blanking on his. He had a particular piece of testimony that in their closing statements, they were like, oh, they couldn't prove. They couldn't prove actual confusion. So let me get to all this stuff. They literally like basically. Users are walking or people are walking in the store. And they did their surveys of users. There's no thing where people are like, I bought a phone and thought it was an iPhone and was told it was an iPhone. So let me get to that. Because that's actually a very interesting whole thing. I thought it was notable they brought it up as much as they did in the closing argument. Well, there's a reason. Well, I'm sure there is. A very good reason. Anyway, so Apple, look, they're basically Apple's entire argument was look at the evidence. It's very clear. Just make the timeline. Look at the documents. Look at the phones before the iPhone. Look at the phones after the iPhone. You're going to see what happened. They basically were appealing to the jurors to say like, forget about everything Samsung said. And really forget about everything we said. And just look at those documents where they are saying, we're copying this. And know in your heart, like, they're copying. Right. They're saying this is obvious. Did they say know in your heart? Because that would be great. No, they didn't say it. Both sides ended by asking the jury to use their common sense. Good, Chad. So Chad's just creeping outside. It's just creeping. Anyway, so then Samsung gets up to do their closing. Chad is very distracting. Really creeping. Stop creeping. Don't bump that. Don't bump that. Stop bumping that. And Samsung gets up to do its closing. And they're very sarcastic. And they say, do you remember what Silicon Valley used to be like? Because they're in Silicon Valley. They both did some heartstring tugging. Samsung opened up with this is the American dream. Their big quote was, competition is what built this country. Apple is attempting to block its most serious competitor from even playing the game. The jury's decision can change the way competition works in the United States. It was pretty strong. And it was like a scary, almost a scary statement. So they opened up. And they went after Apple really hard. And they were very effectively. This was great. It was fiery. Brian was saying the jury was staring right at him. They're very taken in by it. It was a good performance. But that sort of argument, that's not arguing the case. Because a juror's job is to look at the instructions and look at the evidence. But this is like the emotional moment. The machine argument is not really arguing. This is all about emotion. So then at this point, I was laughing. Because I was like, this could be taken out of our forums. These are all quotes. Let's not pretend you can patent a row of icons. When you walk into Best Buy, all the TVs look the same. They're all flat screens. They're all minimalist. This is crazy stuff. So he's saying. Because our forums are just chock full of crazy lawyers. Crazy lawyers. He's saying the common sense arguments that our regular readers understand. They both were appealing to the common sense argument, which actually is the not true argument of this case. Absolutely the not true argument. The argument is there are very technical reasons why these things should be considered. And they're like, throw all that out. Look into your heart. And what feels right to you? What should the law be? What do you think it should be? This is where the actual confusion stuff comes in. So Samsung's lawyer says, all this copying nonsense is just hand waving from Apple. You and I, you know just like I know that no one is going to be confused when they're buying a smartphone. And that's not what Apple is saying at all. That is very far away from what Apple is saying. Apple is saying, we had a distinctive design. And you copied our products. And you lowered the distinctiveness, and thus the value of our design. That's Apple's point. Well, that's a very subtle point. It's a hugely subtle point. But there is a. There's actually only, I would say there's only one direct claim in the entire case that you copied. And that's you copied the look of the iPad with the Galaxy Tab, which is pretty much. I actually think that's one of the weakest points of it. I think that that's worrying about whether the Galaxy Tab copied the iPad is. But that's the only one to one comparison. But I think the funny thing there is it almost would have been better to leave it out. So as not to introduce. No, I actually completely agree. So as not to introduce that element to say, we have very, very valid claims that have nothing to do with you trying to fake people out at the store. It's really about you taking what was ours, devaluing it, and using it for your own product. And so this whole thing where he's hammering away on, there's no actual confusion. They never proved you actual confusion. They never brought you a customer who was confused. It's one element. I thought that was a very effective argument. It's very effective, but it's one. When I read it, the f- You know what? But the other element is Samsung's intent to copy. It's the intent to create the confusion, the intent to copy the distinctive design. That's part of it. They're there in the jury instructions. So you haven't seen any of the instructions of the jury. I heard tell. The jury- Yeah. So let me just finish this. So trademark or trade dress dilution, which is the specific legal concept that Apple's suing over, says there's all of these elements. You can look at consumer perception. You can look at actual confusion. You can look at Samsung's intent to copy. There's a laundry list of elements. And they each picked one element to focus on. Effectively, but Samsung's big speech about actual confusion is kind of like a red herring. Because you can just throw it out. And you can say, look at all of this intent to copy. And that outweighs the lack of actual confusion. But what's interesting is that that argument, there were a couple of points that were very strong. And I think that Apple's overarching whole point of just look at these things, it felt like it hit the right emotional tone, which was it's there, black and white, in full color even. They copied. They wanted to look like us. They wanted to be like us. And that has hurt us. And so this is one of their quotes. So then both sides deliver their closing. Samsung actually kind of ran out of time a little bit. It was clear that they had way more of this like, we're coming swinging at Apple. And they just went a little long. And so they sat down a little bit early. And then they had rebuttals. And so Apple gets up. And they do their rebuttal. And they end on this note. And they repeat their kind of key line, which is it took Apple five years to create a revolution. And it took Samsung three months to copy it. That's the truth. And it's undisputed. And that's like it. And then they pointed at Samsung, keeps on saying, we have all these other products. Not all of our products looks like the iPhone. And they held up one of the documents that said, there is a crisis of design in Samsung. And Apple asked the jury, if Samsung had all these products and they had all these plans, why did they tell you there was a crisis in design after the iPhone? So very effective stuff, right? And then stupidly, Apple ended with, if you decide for Apple, you will have reaffirmed the American patent system. You will have ended Samsung's cynical game plan. And it's like, don't ask anybody to affirm the patent system. Don't do that. Like that, don't. Everybody knows this is an enormous waste of time. And these are two kids having a tantrum. Reaffirming the patent system is the last thing that anybody needs right now. I mean, but these jurors don't understand the scope of this, do they? Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. I don't think they do. I don't think that they do. I don't think if you took nine average people off the street and you said, I need you to decide whether or not Samsung copied Apple, and even if they told you how important it was, it's taken me years of hanging out with you. And you're a lawyer who knows this, to begin to understand what it means, what the value of a patent is and what it means, like what it's supposed to mean. There's also some simplicity to being a juror in that you don't have to necessarily think about the big picture or the repercussions or reaffirming the patent system. You're just saying, this is the claim. This is the law. Does this match? If Apple, but if Apple. Well, that's the idea. No, but if you're an American citizen, you know our patent system exists. And you most likely believe that it's important for things like the patent system to exist because they do a lot of good. And Apple says to you, by voting in our favor, by finding this in our favor, you will reaffirm this very important American thing that we have. I think that is a pretty powerful thing to say. Imagine if instead of hearing Neelai talk about from this, trying to talk from this neutral standpoint of like, here's what's right, here's what's wrong. We have a lot of problems, but there's a lot of things that are really good. Imagine if what you heard was one person going, the patent system has to be protected at all costs. Everything it does is perfect, and we've got to fight for it. And the other person was like, these people are lying to you. That's what the jury heard, basically. Yeah, but they also, when they were selected, they swore up and down that they aren't going to take that into consideration. They're not going to take the law into their own hands, and they're just going to look at what they. Nobody knows what happens in this room. Yeah. That's it. I can't wait till somebody does nine angry. It's going to happen. Anyway. Nine bored people. Nine bored people. So then we're, so that ended. So Apple ends, right? Apple got a little bit. Their rebuttal. They pulled off into the weeds a little bit, but they bring it back to this. In their rebuttal. Yep. Closing rebuttal. Closing. So then Samsung gets up. They have 14 minutes left. The last 14 minutes of Apple versus Samsung in front of the jury. That's it. I'm excited. Yeah, it's like this huge moment. The way you paint this, it's very exciting. Charles Verhoeven, he's been this fiery lawyer this whole time. He's going to. He's sparred with Judge Ko. Yeah. Right? This is going to happen. And he chooses to spend his last 14 minutes in front of the jury rambling on about frand. About standards essential patents. And whether Samsung had or had not complied with Etsy rules in disclosing its 3GPP patents. Oh god. Etsy. In a timely manner. And we're sitting there. Etsy. And I'm sitting there going like, this is what you did? No, yeah. It was definitely. You just, what? You did what? Like you could talk about design. You could talk about innovation. It is odd. You could talk about Samsung's contributions. And you're going with standards compliance? Like why did you just? What did he say? Do we have any quotes? Can you read me some quotes? I don't think Brian even did quotes. Well, but we did the live blog though. We did. Let me see if I can find. I don't know if he did any big quotes in the end. I did think it was odd. It was very strange. He was great. I mean, he was a tremendous attorney throughout the entire time. But it's just like these last 14 minutes were extremely. What do Etsy's guidelines really say? If you have IPR, you can intentionally withhold it. What? You're like, why? Why did you say that? What does that mean? So my question. There's no evidence that Samsung committed an intentional delay with its 3GPP patents. Intentional delay is the only thing that constitutes a breach of the Etsy agreement. No. He did not say that. Yeah. It's like, what? He could have been like, I want to reiterate. Apple brought no witnesses. Finding for Apple won't help the patent system. It will destroy what the patent system was meant to do. Yep. Oh, and then he got to get. Why? That's what I would have said. I just said, Apple just told you that you have to reinforce. But the truth is, what they're really saying is, if you decide for them, you will lock up our patent system and set the precedent for a terrible trend in the future. This is how he opened up. That's what I would have ended on. Don't do this. It's a horrible mistake. Please don't fine for them, because you will destroy America. Then he's like, listen. I don't think doing a long division. There's been a lot of journalists coming. By the way, that's not my statement. I'm just saying that's what they might have said. Anyway, it's totally wild that Samsung just kind of fizzled out into. They screwed the pooch is the term that you're looking for. It's just like, yeah. And he ended. He ran out of time again. And then he was thanking the jurors. He ended on this line, which is very awkward. Let's have Samsung compete freely in the marketplace instead of Apple trying to stop it in the courtroom. Which is like, it's one of those lines that sounds good, when you're kind of thinking it up. Apple had a couple of these, too. But it's just awkward. And then he says thank you to the jury. And the judge reminds him that he still has a couple minutes. So he stands up and says thank you again. And everyone laughs. And it's like, you really just fizzled this one out. It's bad. So what do you think is going to happen? Can I? Yeah. My question is, is anything here indicative of whether they're thinking about settling or not? Does Apple think it's so strong that this might be its slam dunk chance to really hold up and stuff? I don't know. I have been trying to figure this out for a couple of days now. I don't know what the hell anyone's thinking. So that's great. So here's closing arguments. Everyone stands up. And then the jury gets this 20-page form that is charts, just endless charts. That's crazy. It's 33 groups. And within the groups, if you count all the specific questions, it's over 700 specific questions that they have to answer. I mean, it's crazy. They're not in that room trying to figure out if Samsung copied Apple. They're trying to figure out if the Samsung Galaxy Gem violated claim 50 of the 163 patents. Specifically, just so you understand, because Neelay is, this is. I'm way deep in this. He's so deep in it that he's not even mentioning this fact. For each one of these, not for every single thing, not in every single place, but for many of these questions. I have this locally. I'm just gonna show it to you. For many of these questions, you have to, they are asking the jurors to specifically about 25 different devices, does each device violate or not? Yep. Like, it's not like, did Samsung rip off their icons? It's like, did they rip it off on the Galaxy S2? Did they rip it off on the Galaxy S2 4G? Did they rip it off on the Galaxy S? Look, I mean. Yeah, it's just these endless charts. They have separate models of the Galaxy S2 that they're considering. Do they have like the Galaxy Tab, the Gem, the Involve? They have all the devices in the room with them. Can I read this list? Is this a majority rules thing or do they have to be a unanimous list? Unanimous, all nine of them. So they have all the devices in the room. They're not allowed to update the software. They're not connected to any 3G networks. SIM cards are removed. They can go on Wi-Fi, but they've been instructed to decline all the software updates. They can't look at the apps. So they can look at the things. And on top of it, so they have to read and understand each claim of Apple's patent and each claim of Samsung's patents, which are far more complicated. They have to look at the phones, the individual phones, and then decide whether Samsung Electronics in Korea is liable for patent infringement, Samsung Electronics in America, or Samsung Telecommunications in America. So there's three? It's just so insane. How would you pick? How would you know who's responsible? All right, so here's, here's, here's. I don't know. So I'm just gonna give you one set. I'm gonna just actually read the first question. I wanna read them out loud. Do it. Can you say all three or do you have to choose one? All three. All right, here we go. You ready? One. For each of the following products, has Apple provided a preponderance of the evidence that Samsung Electronics Co., SEC, Samsung Electronics America, SEA, and or Samsung Telecommunications America, STA, has infringed claim 19 of the 381 patent? Please answer in each cell with a Y for yes for Apple, or an N for no for Samsung. Do not provide an answer for any cell that is blacked out. So hold on, I'm gonna read. So there's three, for each one of these items, there's three, is that the same one? That's a different, that's a slightly different one, but it's the same idea. There's three options, three different companies you have to do Y or N for. And these are the products. This is one out of how many pages? 33? No, there's 20 pages. 20 pages. 33 questions. Captivate, Continuum, Droid Charge, Epic 4G, Exhibit 4G, Fascinate, Galaxy Ace, Galaxy Prevail, Galaxy S, Galaxy S4G, Galaxy S2, Galaxy S2, Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Gem, Indulge, Infuse 4G, Mesmerize, Nexus S4G, Replenish, and Vibrant. That's all one question. Three, they have to answer. That's all one question. That's one question. Within it, that's 28 products and three questions for each one phone, they have to decide if they violated it in three different ways. Yeah, that's three different patents. Right. Right, so there's many. It's three software patents and then all these design patents. So how many check boxes total? At one point, it's over 700. And so they have to be unanimous on 700 different things. I think at some point, they're just gonna start like, they're gonna give something. They're gonna say, you have the best grip of this. You fill it out and we agree with whatever you agree with. And then you lie to tell. And then there's one guy in the jury who. If they called you right now, one guy in the jury who's not an attorney. No, he owns some patents where everyone believes that he will end up being the foreman. You know, it's funny, Chris Sigler is like, I wanna be on that jury. There's nothing I wanna do more in my life than sit around a table, talk about the Samsung gym. Like, just like hours on end. I mean, is it crazy? It's just like, I really think, here's what I think. And I don't know if. Can I just read this next one? Does it, did Apple. This is the one that makes me the angriest, like in terms of just hurting a group of people. They have to answer all of those questions. And then they have to answer whether Samsung Electronics in Korea took action that it knew or should have known that would induce Samsung Telecommunications America or Samsung Electronics America to infringe these patents. So. What? Yeah, I don't know. That's like, you're just getting another. Did the Korean company induce its other companies? And it's like, yes, dude, they're the same company. Well, like just because they. Maybe this is like easy. This is like a no brainer. Don't even worry about it. But for Apple, this is such garbage. Who is that guy that just entered the room? The foreman. The foreman that owns Apple. Hey, don't you worry about it. I'm just saying, it's such garbage to put this in front of the jury, right? Is Android I see the foreman of the Apple choose? Apple chooses, right? They, and they're the ones. What, they're gonna accuse them of? You think they'd have given this a better user interface to my right? Huh? Oh, yeah. Should we give people iPhones to do it on? iPads. Super iPad. And then you scroll, like you scroll down. Can we put question nine up on the screen? It's like most of the stuff is blacked out. It looks like a crossword puzzle. They're searching for question nine. Make it stop. I mean, there's. Are you seeing this? This is like crazy. And then you get to. All right. That my favorite, we just have to. I just want to put the, my favorite on the screen. Yeah. Question 22. Question 20. No. Is it in your post? It's 22 on the post. I have an old version of thing. Question 22 is a dollar sign, a horizontal line. And it just says, what is the total dollar amount that Apple is entitled to receive? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like. Be unanimous on that too. Yeah. And it's like, dude, they're just. What are you talking about? Like. $20 billion. And like, you're just gonna write it. Could they write, could they write 20 billion? They can write any number from zero to 2.5 billion. Oh, that's the highest they can write. Well, that's what, that's the highest Apple asked for. Oh. And then they. There it is. Could they give them more just for fun? They could. They have to break it down by product. Could they write one trillion dollars? So how much money does Samsung owe Apple for the continuum? Like per device? Per device. Like, $10. It doesn't even say per device there, by the way. No, it is per device. Please run the dollar breakdown by patent. Oh, man. By product. Yeah, by product. This is, this is harsh. Welcome to the American justices. And then it's still gonna be one dude that fills this out. Just keep this in mind. They've gotta do this all over again. Or woman. One guy's gonna be. One man or woman. I'm pretty good with phones. That's gonna fill this whole thing out. So this is, we're just looking at the Apple side. Keep this in mind that Apple or that Samsung is suing Apple for violating five patents as well. Here's the question. So they've gotta do this all again for Samsung. I'm like, I'm really fatigued listening and talking about it. It's crazy. Here's the question. Here's the question. Is there any chance that the jury could divide over the owners of Android and owners of Apple? Oh, I'm sure. And they're gonna be going at it like, well, I love my Android phone. It seems totally original. Has Apple proven by preponderance of the evidence that Samsung has violated section two of the Sherman antitrust app by monopolizing one or more technology markets related to the UMTS standard? Like, here's the thing. We have been talking about this trial and all these patent lawsuits in terms of binary choice. Did Samsung copy Apple and should they be punished for it? But what this jury forum shows is that there's a huge gradient in between those two extremes. And there's brand. Huge gray area. There's a huge gray area. And like, you know, the jury is not gonna answer all of these questions. There's too many. Like just statistically, they're gonna answer some for Apple and some for Samsung. And so what's happening in this jury room right now is the jury is negotiating for Apple and Samsung. Right, this outcome is gonna come back and Samsung's gonna owe Apple some money and Apple's gonna owe Samsung some money. This is why you're saying nine lawyers should have done this. And this is like, if you're letting these people, you've put us all through this mess, right, to let the jury, the nine strangers negotiate what is effectively a business deal for you. Why don't you just do this on your own? And with every day that passes, they have to be freaking out more and more. I'm saying like, it feels like Apple wants some sort of like, Apple wants some sort of like vindication that makes their patents like much like less assailable. Yeah, but who cares? Like ultimately like, yeah, but ultimately Apple just wants that, like, you know, they're not suing HTC for this design crap. No, no, I think that's what I'm saying. They found an easy, clear target. Samsung is one of the most obvious ones, especially when you talk about like, you know, some of these icons that are so obvious or that design document and stuff like that. It's like Apple wanted a clear cut slam dunk case that validates its patents. And they didn't get it. They didn't get it. They didn't get it. This is not a clear cut. They didn't, cause they did the thing that Apple was, they didn't do the thing that Apple is known for. They didn't make it simple. This is ridiculously complicated. The truth is that there's two sides, there are actually two sides to this story. And what we believe and what you can look at, you know, that Samsung document, I think again, damning. They ripped off the look and feel. But Samsung has their version of that. And with the patent, Samsung has their version of it. And to a group of, you know, supposedly neutral people, both those arguments can sound compelling. And like, this is not a murder case where there's a dead body and a gun, and there's like, you know, he had gunpowder on his hand. Like, it isn't like that. There is no, like this thing happened and this thing happened. Here's the clear line between them. And here's the evidence we have that this guy committed murder. Like, it's so much more complex than the kinds of crime you think of being tried in front of a jury. It's not a crime, really. It's not a crime. It could almost be like a misunderstanding. You know what I'm saying? It's like trying to prove a misunderstanding. Like I said, you look really nice today. And he thought I was being sarcastic. And so he got offended. And then we started arguing and you have to like figure out who was at fault in that situation. It's really hard. Anyhow, is there any other topic? No. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot more. Oh, there are more topics? Yeah. You wanna wrap it up? I'd like to. No, we should talk about some of these other things. I wanna talk about two things. I want, three things I wanna talk about. One's meta. They're not Samsung out. One's meta, yeah. I wanna talk about AT&T and FaceTime. I wanna talk about the Amazon event on September 6th. I wanna talk about the Polygon thing. Oh yeah, okay. So let's start with FaceTime. So I can rage out more about something. Outrage, outrage. What happened with FaceTime? So AT&T is gonna enable FaceTime over cell networks. But only if you sign up for a new mobile share plan. They're gonna hold you hostage to sign up. Only if you sign up for what will effectively be a more effective plan, or a more expensive plan. A share plan. Yeah. Oh. So you have to sign up for one of their new share. Like a family plan type thing? No, no, they have these new plans where you can share, they're unlimited text and video, or text and, thank God, I've been talking about this the whole time. Unlimited voice and text. Unlimited HTML. Unlimited text. And then variable data buckets, tiered data. But you can share the data among devices. It's like if you have an iPad, a 3G iPad, and you have an iPhone, or even if you have an Android and a 3G iPad, you can say, I'm gonna pay for six gigs a month, and I'm gonna use that data wherever I want it. Now I actually think those are great. It makes a lot more sense than, if you're a guy. Tethering your iPhone to try to get it onto your iPad. If you're a person with three devices. If you're just a guy with an iPhone who wants to FaceTime with his grandmother, sorry. You're gonna end up paying more. Especially because the whole deal, the whole impetus behind these shared data plans is they know that people are gonna stop using voice and text services. They're aware of it. So they're gonna say. Well, if they have an iPhone. If you have any phone. I mean, you're gonna. No, there's no equivalent to iMessage. It's fading and they need a new business model that helps them keep getting the money. Well, where's the Android equivalent to iMessage? Google Talk. I mean, like, there's other stuff. Well, that's true, I do use Google Talk a lot. They need a new revenue stream as that turns up. So they're like, all right, so we'll just start charging everybody for unlimited because then they'll have it. So you pay 20 bucks a month for unlimited voice, but you're not using any voice. Can I just say something? So they're just getting a flat 20 bucks a month. Guess what my phone bill is now? That's your phone bill. 40 bucks a month. Why? I don't seem as slow as I would think. Yeah, I was thinking like 15. Well, it is a cellular phone. You know, I guess I don't think I can even get rid of texting. I don't text, but. Yeah, but that's the thing. So the goal for AT&T is to basically. I thought you guys would be proud of me. I was not. 120 bucks a month. Oh, that's, well, it's an improvement. I'm saving a lot of money. Saving a lot of money. Anyway, so the goal for AT&T is to lock off how low voice and text revenue can go by saying, everyone gets unlimited at this rate that's a little too high and then we're gonna charge you different amounts for data. So if you're just. And to get a share plan, you have to get the unlimited text. That's how it works. So they're holding their customers hostage. So they're saying, but to get FaceTime over cellular. They're holding grandma hostage. You can't, they gotta gun to your grandmother's head and they're gonna pull the trigger unless you get the share plan. You better FaceTime your grandma really quick. Yeah, and so they've got this big new feature that's coming out from Apple on the iPhone. Is that the foreman? Yeah, the foreman from the jury. How do you get your grandma's house? I don't know. Okay, go ahead. No, they've got this big new feature that's gonna, people are gonna be excited. The new iPhone, whatever, it's got FaceTime over cellular. You can be anywhere. But to get it, you've gotta get this plan that boosts the revenue. Well, and Apple must love this concept that it's becoming like, you know, of course you'll have an iPad and an iPhone. Like, if it already exists, it's already a default. There's only one question to answer here. That's actually quite beside the point. There's only one, it doesn't matter what you have. Here's what matters. You signed up for AT&T. You said, I want four gigs of data a month. I'm gonna give you 50. Let me read you this. I'm gonna give you $45 a month for my four gigs of data. I can do what I want with my data because it's my data that I paid for. They're like, well, you can do what you want, except you can do video over 3G if you use Skype or whatever other app does it. So let me tell you. Hold on, wait, just let me finish my thing. Damn. I don't know what that was. I got it. It was grandma. She's very upset. Yeah. You can use, you can do whatever you want over 3G, except for one thing, FaceTime. The coolest thing. FaceTime, we're gonna control, we're gonna tell you what you can do with it. And if we don't like the plan that you have, you can't use it. I just feel like these things. If I were Apple, if I were Apple, if I were Apple, I would be like, here's the deal. Do you wanna keep selling the iPhone? Get rid of this. Yeah. So let me, so there's this huge, so you announced this move, this huge backlash. There's only one net neutrality rule for wireless carriers. They can't block, talking too much, can't block any service that competes with their own voice or video service. Not allowed to do it, right? Right. FaceTime obviously can do it. Sorry, AT&T has a video chat service. Whatever, but it doesn't matter. Yeah, there's like a really hokey one. So they can't, they're not allowed to do it. So everyone's screaming, net neutrality violation. That's the only net neutrality rule for wireless? Yeah, the only one. And they have to be transparent about what they do. Those are the two rules. So they say there's no transparency issue. They post this, frankly, bullshit statement. It says, I mean, this is, this is. Do you talk to grandma on FaceTime on 3G? If you want to know what like just sort of banal corporate evil looks like, you read AT&T's public. Lay it on us. Public policy. Lay it on us. Are you up to this? AT&T, the FCC's net neutrality rules do not regulate the availability of cost to customers of applications that are preloaded on phones. Rather, they address whether customers are able to download apps that compete with our voice and video services. Because the FCC rules definitely say the word download in them. I mean, it's like you are lying to me. If you're saying a preloaded app is different than a downloaded app, you're lying. Here's all I have. In terms of that rule. You're just lying. That's a lie, first of all. Here's all I have to say to AT&T. And then, wait, wait, hold on. Okay. I'm fine. There's a line here about how it's cool because everybody can just use Wi-Fi. To be clear, customers will continue to be able to use FaceTime over Wi-Fi irrespective of the data plan you choose. Oh, oh! Thanks, AT&T! Yeah, you're tweeting about this. You're like, I'm so glad AT&T will still let me do what I want with Wi-Fi. But I'm like, screw you, dude! No involvement with what's happening. Like, what are you talking about? I wanna say something. But boy, do they wish they had some power over your Wi-Fi. I know that it was only a few podcasts ago that I said we should take to the streets. Oh, it was over this! And smash in the windows of AT&T stores and go on a rampage over this. But here's what I will say. This seems minor. Yeah. This is setting up the stage. A lot of users won't be affected. But I'm looking at you, internet. If you're an AT&T customer, you must protest this. This is the beginning of a very bad, well, it's part of a trend. But it is definitely the beginning of a place where you do not want this to go. As your device gets more and more powerful and can do more and more stuff, and you have to pay more and more for the data because it's something that is a premium service, and you can't do what you want with your data. If I can't burn through my four gigs on FaceTime to grandma no matter what, I'm paying for it. This is, this is, like if you allow AT&T to draw this completely. They've been doing this. Like this is not new. Remember when we were like. Because they're allowed to do it. Remember? Because we let them do it. No, I'm just saying like remember like Sling, you know. Like, um. Sling blocked it from the app store. Yeah, no, there's always been like these random things. They get blocked, and then they're like, you know. But this is, this is way different. This is, this is. This is like they're drawing these two, they're doing these two things. They're drawing this totally false distinction between what's preloaded on the phone and what you can download. Yeah, no, their excuse is bogus, but this behavior has happened before. But then they're saying on the other side, they're conflating, they're conflating what they allow you to do on their network with what they allow you to do over Wi-Fi. Which is insane. No, okay, that's what I'm saying. Their argument is stupid. Like that's, those two things combined. Why are you arguing for AT&T? Just hear me out. Just hear me out. Their argument is stupid. Their excuse is stupid. This policy is stupid and anti-consumer. Yes, bankrupt. I'm just saying this is happy before. This is unprecedented. No, no, it happened before. It happens before and it keeps on incrementing. Can I, can I? You can tell people on 3G networks, we're gonna hold back Sling Player until we figure out what that means. I just think they're gonna get a lot of crap for this and then like in six months, for some reason they'll change something. And we'll keep on always, we'll always be paying more for data. It needs to not be in six months. It needs to be before. It's like healthcare. Data's always in the closet. It needs to be now. This is the beginning of the end. That's what this is. Or is it the end of the beginning? Think about how these phones are going. Think about how voice and data are going to be carried on phones forever from now on. Think about Windows Phone. Do you know what Microsoft just bought? Skype. Does that mean AT&T can start blocking Skype because Microsoft is bundling it on Windows Phone? That is insane. You like Wi-Fi calling? What? You like Wi-Fi calling? Where do they start blocking you from Wi-Fi calling? I wrote about this. This thing, they see, Wi-Fi is their competition. They used to be. Now it's how they get away with not serving you data. You know the two numbers that carriers deliver to their shareholders are average revenue per user, ARPU in the industry lingo, and cost per bit delivered. And if you get people to pay the money to use the network, but then go to Wi-Fi because it's better, then they drive down their cost per bit because they're not using anything. And you drive up your ARPU. And that's all they want to do. That's it. That they want you to use the cheap network that you're probably paying for at home. It's not their network. Or the cheap network. They don't have to deliver bits they don't deliver. Right. Or AT&T wants you to use its Wi-Fi elsewhere, which is cheaper to make for them. They walk a fine line because the more they promote people being on Wi-Fi, the more they push people towards Wi-Fi, the more people are gonna like get up, get a iPod touch for their kids. I mean, this isn't about. The more people are gonna get like. This isn't, look, that's like whatever. But what they're doing. What they're doing with this is they are setting up a world where they are allowed to decide what services you use on a phone. And that we're, I mean, bundling services into a phone, that's happening more and more. But they were doing that forever. Yeah, and it was wrong before. Yes. You know, the iPhone was a revolution. I still don't know why this is like a weird surprise to me. Why was the iPhone created a revolution? Why AT&T ruined it? Why was the iPhone a revolution? Took them three months. Why was Android a further revolution, right? Because you got out of the walled garden of the carrier. With Apple, you got out of the walled garden of the carrier, which is crappy and into a much nicer walled garden of Apple. With Android, you got out of that, it's gone, right? Now you can do whatever you want on a phone. You've got a computer in your hand. This is AT&T saying, we're gonna build those walls back up. We're gonna tell you what you can do with your phone. And we're not even gonna do it directly. We're gonna be slime balls about it. We're gonna say you have to get a more expensive plan. And now we'll let you freely use. Of course they're slime balls. I'm not happy about this. Doesn't Apple have to agree to this? Apple rolls over for AT&T to every minute, man. They put the 4G logo on the phone. It's slimy as hell too. It's true. Like, I don't know, man. I mean, Apple just wants to sell the phones, you know? Right, but I'm just saying, like this doesn't seem, I mean, search what you know is true in your, what do they say? Use your common sense. Use your common sense. Does it seem fair that they say you can do it, but only if you upgrade to this other plan? Yeah. Like, you're telling me the network's capable of handling it. I'm not getting better data. Yeah. The data's the same. I'm just sharing it amongst devices. So what is the block? Like, give me, I wanna know. Here's my question. Hold on. I'm asking AT&T representatives, email me joshuaattheverge.com. I wanna know why. What is the reason that I can't use FaceTime on 3G when I don't have a share plan versus when I do have a share plan? Like, literally, I wanna know the reason. The rules don't require it. No, no, no, no. The rules don't require it is not a reason. That's like, we've chosen. The reason is that you're less likely to use up your four gigabytes that you paid for, but they're hoping that you only use a gigabyte. They want their better ARPU to the business. No, I think Josh is asking like why, you can use, I bought it. Let me use it however I want. No, I understand. I understand. But this is their internal. Beyond your greed, I'm asking, beyond the greed of AT&T to get you to subscribe to a different plan, which will inevitably cost some people more money, I wanna know what they would tell someone when they tell me in the store that I can't get FaceTime over 3G. And when what they're telling, what they're telling their customers when they say you can't use the simple thing ever. It's just, it's easy. Like I don't think they even thought that hard about this. No, no, I think they did think, I think their first instinct was to just charge for it. Extra five bucks. Yeah, 4.99. And then everybody freaked out and they said, well, how can we still charge for it? And they did the slime ball move and they said, we're gonna make you get a more expensive plan. They ran some numbers and they said, well, here's the thing. Our share plans are five bucks more across the board. If you average it out, you end up paying five bucks more, 10 bucks more a month per user or whatever. Average user will pay $5 more a month or $10 more a month. And they said, well, would our users tolerate that? And they're like, well, to get the new iPhone with the new FaceTime feature, most users would kind of shrug off the extra 10 bucks a month and more money for us. So why not do it? It's like, they're like, people aren't gonna leave us. Probably that's what they think. Yeah, I mean, I'm still, I'm sitting here raging as AT&T. I'm not going to Verizon. I wish I was, but it's like, I don't know, here's a slightly different color of evil. You know, like. This is the, and I thought the same thing. This is like, I think about the Galaxy Nexus on Verizon and all of the stuff that like went down with it and how it still doesn't have Jelly Bean. And it's like, you know, when will it happen? Google Wallet. Who knows because you had Google Wallet and all this stuff. And I think like, where is my advocate? Where is my advocate in this process now? Like your companies like Google and Apple are making devices that do incredible things. You're telling me the user that I can do incredible things with those devices. And sometimes I even need to do those things. And here's monopolistic carriers saying, well, we don't want you. We think that we think we have a better idea. We don't want you to be able to do that. Or you bought data from us, but we don't want you to use it. Like who advocates for me, the consumer in this process? I think it's supposed to be the FCC. But as far as I know, they've done zero advocacy or it feels like zero advocacy for what I believe is a growing problem where it's like this disconnect between the innovators who make the stuff and the people who sell the stuff basically. And like, it's like, if they can dictate what the innovators do, how is that good for American innovation? And how is it good for the customer? It's only good for the bottom line of a couple of very large, very real companies. There was a time when they called it unlimited data. And then they weren't allowed to do that anymore. Right, they still call it now. They play all these games. Like it's unlimited, but they throttle you. But if I bought the unlimited data, hold on, just be clear, if I had an unlimited data plan right now on AT&T, which was not a share plan, I could not use FaceTime over 3G. I need to know. What could you possibly tell me to prove that that made any sense? Besides like we want more money. Yeah, no, carriers want to sell you a lot more than you'll use. And if you start using as much as they've sold you, but they only want to do, they're not making the margins they want. They only want to sell you more than you can use because they can charge more for a thing you perceive that you'll use as opposed to. But it's like a lie they've been telling for a million years. They're not gonna be like, only pay for the data you use. Right, no, back in the day when they sold you 2,000 minutes. It's an all you can eat buffet. If you used the 2,000 minutes, they would be not doing nearly as well. It is an all you can eat buffet. Okay, here's the deal. You paid $10 for the all you can eat buffet. You're like, I'm gonna pig out. Now you might eat a lot, but you're not gonna eat $10 worth to that restaurant. Like you're gonna get full before you, I mean, unless you're a fat pig. You're gonna get full. And then they kick you out of the restaurant. You're gonna get full before you eat your $10 worth. You know, and like they know that. Yes, that's the whole point. And they're putting extra starch, they're putting extra starch in the potatoes. So that'll happen. And that's how they make the money. This FaceTime throttling, they're putting extra starch in the potatoes. Can you just tell me where this $10 all you can eat buffet is? Cause that sounds like a deal. Let's put it this way. It's been, last time I was at an all you can eat buffet, they cost $10. Really? Yeah. All right, let's get off the range. Let's go back to Hope. Amazon. Oh, Amazon. This is very quick. Amazon's got an event in Santa Monica, which is bizarre. September 6th. Yeah. Supposed to be. At a hanger, at a hanger. A hanger? Yes. They're gonna take off. Like a hanger. We don't know what's going on, but here's the speculation. I'm about to speculate. Yeah. New tablet. Yep. Maybe a new phone. Maybe an Amazon phone. That's my, that's my, I mean, we heard rumors of both. In fact, we, wasn't there, the Wall Street Journal published something where it was like. Oh yeah. They talked about the phone. Yeah, I thought it was like a slam dunk. I thought it was definitely. I think it's definitely happening. Here's the question. What are they gonna do? I don't know. That's what I'm curious about. I have a theory. Yeah. Oh man, I just had an amazing idea. What? What if you could get your books synced to your phone? What if Amazon bought T-Mobile? No. And they offered awesome prime deals on phones. No, no way. Yes. No, I think Amazon to do something with a phone that's really unique, they have to. And let you FaceTime. No, they have to do, it can't just be like, get all your cool Amazon content on a phone because that doesn't work. When you move it to a phone, you're kind of in like a different space. It ha, they have to do something more Amazon-y. I feel like an MVNO, something where like, I thought WhisperSync was really innovative with Kindles. I feel like they're gonna do something that's a different way to have a phone. I mean, if they did one. I'm not saying they're going to. And make T-Mobile their brick and mortar move because they've been talking about doing brick and mortar. Get those little Amazon boxes where stuff's delivered to your Amazon boxes. You get same day delivery to all T-Mobile stores that are now Amazon stores. I don't get that. That would be cool. You go to an Amazon store. Most of the stores are owned by like franchises. Like they're not like owned and operated. I do think an Amazon store with the lockers is a really cool idea. If you're a franchisee and you want to keep on making money now that Amazon bought T-Mobile, you might switch it over. You know, we. There's a lot of singular stores that are now called AT&T. I just pulled that out of thin air. I'm just saying. I love it. We keep. Or Sprint. I'm in love with Sprint. The history of the world of talking about big companies buying cell networks just doesn't happen. There's no. Like every company thinks about it. We dream about it. But the economics of running T-Mobile don't make sense. What about their like their super speed? I don't want to talk about reality. What about their like their accelerated browsing thing? Do they still do that? Cloud Browse or whatever. Yeah. It wasn't very good. Put that in the T-Mobile hub. Yeah. So then T-Mobile can look at everything you browse on the web. I don't even know what you're talking about at this point. We don't know what it's going to be. What else would they possibly do to a phone? Without question, I'll say this pretty affirmatively. I think there's going to be a new tablet of some type. Yeah. A Fire 2 or a bigger Fire. You know. I can't wait for all the Fire puns. What do you think? Like if it were a bigger Fire, do you think they're going to call it something like Amazon Bonfire? Amazon relights the Fire. The Fire burns on. No, I mean they're just throwing it out there. What if it's Bonfire but it's B-O with the little. I think the New York Times will go, hey Amazon relights the Fire. That's my guess. We're going to go. Oh, I know what we're going to do. Wait, wait, wait. Amazon puts a Fire under Apple and Google. No, no Amazon. Huh? Amazon. Print it. Amazon. See? We didn't start the Fire. It was always burning. No. The Fire gets rekindled. That's from me. I think I might have spit a bunch. Just get ready to hate the media. A moment ago when I yelled, print it. Just like, spray. Did I hit you, Michael? Yeah. Okay, just a spray. Literally nobody has any concept of what they could be doing differently? No, I've been trying to figure out what they're going to do with this phone for a long time. What, where are, let's think about Amazon's business. What are they really good at? Let's talk about a couple of things. Selling products. Well, they sell, they're great at retail. Okay. Mechanical Turk. They made a great, they really turned the e-reader market into a viable thing. They're great at an ecosystem. Like they sell music. They do movies. They have great movie offerings on Prime. TV shows. They have books, obviously. So we know they're good at that. Imagine this feature on the phone. It actually does the barcode scanning. So you're anywhere, you scan the product. You get it on Amazon. You work right from Amazon. Well, I've wanted that forever. I mean, you can do it in their app. I think they have it on. Like, are you integrated into a phone? Okay, okay, so maybe that's integrated. Integrated, they have a button for it. Yeah. I mean, but what are the other things? They do things like WhisperSync. They have a huge cloud infrastructure. You know, a lot of the internet is on Amazon. That's it. That's what Amazon does. Yeah, they're a big store. Is Amazon doing any of the stuff that eBay's doing as far as like integrating with lots of like retailers? I feel like I read something. No. They're doing some, they do some retailing. I think that's mostly eBay stuff. Cause like eBay, like it's creating apps. Like you walk into a phone or walk into a store. You just give your name and they do the transaction over PayPal. You don't have to like swipe a card or anything. Well, I don't know the answer to that question. But what I will say is, are we approaching two hours? Yeah. Really? Here, I'll be crate. That's what happens when crate is not on. That's what happens when crate is not here. The time just flew. When the cat's away, the mice will play. No, we are indeed mice. With fire. Anyhow, I don't know. So I don't know. This mouse is on fire. Then you can't like. Here's what I hope. I'm just ready for it. Here's all I hope. I hope that whatever it is, is like jelly bean. Yeah, it's not gonna be. Why not? Ice cream sandwich. Why not? Well, at least that's close. Oh, you know what we didn't talk about that you might find really interesting? Yeah. Nikon put out a camera that runs Android 2.3. Yep. It's touch screen on the back, got apps. It's wild. Why am I doing that? Why? Because they know that it's like, the people are using their smartphones. The Android is the future. No, no, no, but it goes the other direction. No, but think about it. You upload. It's not a phone. No, no, no, it's just a camera with Android. No, no, no, that's the whole point. You use the camera on your phone. No, I can think of. Because it's your phone. You know, a quick upload to Facebook with really high quality shots. Quick upload to other servers with like, sorry, services with really great Nikon photos. Is it a point and shoot? Yeah. This is a terrible idea. It's like a, yeah, 16 megabits. It's like an okay point and shoot. What would actually be cooler is if it was running ICS and it was a micro four thirds. Yeah. And it had all those extra features. If it cost $4,000. Whatever, I mean, it costs a lot of money to make an Android phone. Well, yeah, but this one is 300 bucks or something, like 350, most. All right, let's talk about our final topic. It's about HaterAid. Yeah. About HaterAid, it's you can drink it, but usually you're born with it in your blood. No, so Polygon did this thing that I think is actually really cool. They're doing a, as they build their site, as they get to launch of their site, they're doing a multi-part documentary that at some point is just gonna be like, this is us behind the scenes building this site. And when they told me about it, I thought it was an awesome idea. One of the things that when we were doing this is my next and doing the verge, I got emails all the time from people who were like, are you guys gonna do like behind the scenes? Are you gonna take pictures? Are you gonna have a video like showing us how you're putting it together, like what you're doing? And we didn't do it, we were like, we didn't, we were so chaotic and it was such a race. Polygon has had a lot more time to kind of like get their ducks in a row. But I think, I don't know where the idea came from. I think it was the studio here, our Vox studio that does all of our video and the verge, we have our team, but they're part of it. And anyhow, they put it up, I think it's really awesome. I'm really excited to see it, but they've been like getting like a lot of hate for it. Like people have been like, you guys are so pretentious, which I feel like the word is being incorrectly used here. Cause I don't think pretension is what you wanna say. Like what you wanna say is like. It's self-indulgent. I think that's what people are saying, like it's self-indulgent, but like, I actually don't think it is. These guys aren't like, we're the best, we're awesome. They're like being, they're doing this now. And they're being asked by the director who's putting it together of like, what are you guys thinking right now? And they're being honest. And I think it's really interesting and I'm very excited about it. And I feel like it's really lame to dismiss it as these guys being full of themselves, cause they're not, they're the most humble group of, and I've seen a lot of that. And I just, it really hurts me. Like they're the most humble, hardworking group of people, you know, of course, outside of the verge team. I'm no longer humble. Chris Grant, the editor in chief is a carpenter and he lets me sleep in his guest bedroom. Simple car. He has this adorable dog named Yuki who cuddles with me in the bed and he rescues cats. He's a simple carpenter who's on a mission from God. He's got a cat named Zelda. He's got a cat named Link. All right, let me finish my statement. I forget what the third cat's name is. Who cares about his cat's names? One of his cats has diabetes. Stop trying to humanize that monster. But I just think like, I think people are giving them a hard time and it's lame because they're actually really hardworking and they really are sincere. And I think this, and I think that like, I actually want to see this. Like I, and I think a lot of other people want to see it too. Like how do you build something from scratch like this? Because you know, if you're in a world where there are a million other things, it's very hard to do something different. And it's, it is really stressful. And it is, I think it's really interesting to watch it unfold. And I don't think anybody's ever done that. Like, and I think it's a cool- It's not opening an HTML editor. And typing like H1, polygon. Here's a clip of it right here. Here's some very jerky video. I know, I don't know why it's playing so jerkily. I mean, I just think that before you dismiss it or before you like splash some hate on these bros, chicks and bros, I think, I think give it a chance because I actually think what they're doing is really cool and they're really sincere and they're not full of themselves. Like these guys are extremely humble. I think they're just doing their thing. They're talking about what they're doing. And this is what it looks like. It looks like a lot of people who've put, you know, their entire lives into doing something. And like as a person who is up at four in the morning talking about editorial to his like European crew, like I appreciate it. And I think it should be, you know, I'm not saying like you owe us anything. I mean, the world doesn't owe us anything, but it's, it's, you know, this isn't, this is not, we're not in a war zone, but it's, it's a tough job. And it's tough to build something from scratch. And I think it's a really interesting story to watch. And so like to the people who are hating on it, like I just feel like you should, you should take it, take it easy and watch these guys do what they do. Cause I think that they're, I think it's really cool. And I think it's really valuable. And I don't think anybody's trying to like, you know, pat themselves on the back. I think they're like, we wanted to document this. And this is, this is what it looks like as you document it. And I think that there's a lot of legitimate worry cause I, they're worried. They're worried it's not going to work. And it's coming out in the trailer. They keep talking about it. Oh my God. I spent every day I wake up. I'm like, are we going to fit? And I remember that feeling. I still, I still, Are we going to boot up our website and not have it work? I mean, the day, you know, it was like the day we launched, I was like, oh man, we launched it happened. And then it was like, the next day I was like, oh God, we got to go. Like it's got to work now. You know? And every day is like, is it going to work? And so that fear was incredible beforehand. It's easy to start something new. The incredible, cause there's money and there's people's lives and all kinds of stuff riding on it. It's easy to think that like you're being like, like self-important or self-serious that, to create a documentary about this. But the whole, I think the whole point of Polygon is that they're trying to take video games much more seriously than they've ever been taken. And they're trying to do something that's really important about them instead of just like, you know, slamming up some news. And I don't think they're disparaging what other people have done. I just think that they've have something that they want to do that's different and they're working really hard to build it. Anyhow, like the long as, Sincerity is rarely rewarded on the internet. It's hard to be sincere on the internet or serious and not have people deride it. And I think, you know, and I'm really rooting for them. And I feel like it's, I think it's cool. I think the plan is to like do a full length documentary about this. And like, I don't know if you like watching indie game, like I don't know why this wouldn't be interesting to you. Maybe the news game seems like less appealing and it's not as cool as you playing a video game, but like putting together something like this is, you know, it's tough and it's interesting. And I just feel like the hate is unwarranted. I think, just get to know the Polygon crew. They're gonna be great. Zelda and Link. Whatever. All right, that's the Vergecast. That's the Vergecast for the week. If you'd like to get in touch with us, you can email us at vergecast at the verge.com. You can find us on Twitter. Verge is at Verge. I'm Joshua Topolsky. Paul is future Paul, though he won't help you on Twitter ever again. And Eli is reckless, both in life and on the internet. I'm cleaning it up though. Trying to clean it up. He's got a married man. Yeah. He's married. So that hasn't stopped him from getting into horrible fights. At considerate. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's gonna be great. At considerate. That's the show. We'll be back next week with more. And as always, I wish you and your is the very best for the weekend. And Paul. Rock and roll. Rock and roll. Paul. Sean. Sean Paul. We'll be right back.