 So, you know who knows everything about me? Google. They know when I wake up, they know when I go to bed, they know what I search for, they know everything I'm interested in, they know where I eat, they know where I sleep. It's really kind of creepy that Google knows everything. And is it creepy that they know everything about me, or is it just creepy that they know so much about a single topic? Well, you know who knows a lot, a lot, pretty much everything about mobile? Vlad and Chris. Are they creepy? We're going to find out. Stay tuned for The Verge Mobile Show. Hi, I'm Dieter Baum. I'm Ron Burgundy. And I'm Chris Ziegler. This is The Verge Mobile Show, it is the sixth episode of it for the week of July 2nd. And we have got so much Google-y to talk about, I can't even handle it. Do you really think I'm creepy, Dieter? No, I'm just posing the question, is it creepy that you know so much about mobile? That's all. Well, I'm personally offended. I don't know about Vlad. I can't speak for Vlad. I mean, Vlad is cool. Yeah, so that's cool. That's true, it's Ron Burgundy. I forgot, I'm sorry. And you're living in San Diego, and you have the most amazing mustache on the face of the planet. Actually, Vlad, you know what, I want to see you in a mustache. This is very important to me. This is very, very important. We need to make this happen. I've had beards. Yeah, no, but beard is... A mustache by itself doesn't last on my face longer than half a day. I just start feeling like an 80s porn star. Like Ron Burgundy. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm going for. This is getting weird. Let's talk phones. Yeah, let's not be creepy. That's right. So, I mean, what else is there to talk about? I mean, there is other stuff we could talk about, but let's just Google I.O. and Jellybean and the Nexus Q. And I mean, I don't even know where to start. And this is partially because I decided to wait until the last minute to handle the layout. And actually, I'm talking about my Jellybean review. I also waited because I wanted to give myself a ton of time with Google Now, because it does it gets better as you spend time with it. So I didn't want to kick something out right away. I wanted to give it a chance to get to know me, which is very sweet. Let's talk about the event itself. We had a big team there. I was there. Josh was there. Sean was there. Scott was there. Jordan was there. Justin was there. We had a bunch of people there. What was the atmosphere? What was the atmosphere? Was it as crazy as it looked from the outside? It was insane, insane, insane the first day. They didn't give press a separate line. And I know I shouldn't complain about not having a separate special line for press, because I've done plenty of events not getting to even be in the special line for press when there is one. But they basically just filled up the entire first floor of the Moscone Center with developers. It was wall to wall people. And then we went up one set of escalators and then went around a hall and lined up in the hall on the second floor. And then they stopped that. And then the line merged in a really awkward way. And then to get up to the keynote, we had to go up the third set of escalators. And everybody was really agitating and waiting to get up there, because they were kind of late. In fact, they started the keynote before everybody was even sitting down. And so since everybody was pushing up against the stanchions, they opened it up. And the Google guy literally went, let's go, and turned and threw his arm back and started sprinting to the escalators. And we're like, well, I guess that's what we're doing now. We're sprinting. It was nuts. They were really, really excited to make us run, which was dangerous. And somehow there were no riots or fistfights, as far as I can tell. Well, that's because everybody was there. I mean, everybody was there to get the insane amount of swag that Google gave away. They gave away a Galaxy Nexus, a Nexus 7, a Nexus Q, and a Chromebox. See, here's the thing. These guys are- Go ahead. Okay. We interrupted each other about three times. But what I was going to say is these guys aren't fools. I mean, as members of the press, I don't think we're paying anything to be there. But most of us are paying a fairly chunky fee to be there. So maybe you do want to riot. Maybe you do want to throw down. But presumably they did that on maybe the day two keynote after they collected the day one swag, after they got through all the information. But there was still day two swag. There was still day two swag. On day two, they got the Chromebox. See, the people are just too efficient and too rational about it. That's a good point, actually. All of these events, and particularly I remember the Galaxy Nexus event when Google and Samsung hosted in Hong Kong, and it was an absolute massive crush in front of the doors. And everybody pushed and crushed into one another. But again, nobody was throwing punches. There was plenty of reasons for people to get agitated to the point of fighting. But people were like, actually, I'm here to collect information and see this pretty awesome new thing. So maybe I'll save the fighting till later. Now, I'm there to fight. I'm there to throw down. And that's why I always bring a blade of police to these events. Well, there was extreme sports. So after they got done with the keynote and all the announcements, which I promise you were actually going to talk about, Surya Brin runs on stage in an impromptu, totally unscripted moment, and wanted to show off Google Glass. And so they had not just skydivers, but the dudes wearing the wing suits. They jumped out of a blimp or a dirigible or a aircraft ship. It was fine. But no, the second day was a blimp. I'm not sure about the first day. Anyway, it was an airship. The second day was definitely an airship. What I'm getting to is they did it twice. They parachuted on the roof of the building. They got on dirt bikes. Then they went over and another dude rappelled down the side of the building. And then they rode bikes again through Moscone Center, through the crowd, and up on stage. They did it twice because the first time wasn't enough. Right. Wow. So actually, thinking about it now, I can't believe that it's only been a week or rather that Google I.O. happened within the past week. Just because we didn't, well, we previewed it on the last podcast slash show. But it just feels like it's so massive and so comprehensive in terms of what Google introduced and showed us. That kind of feels like it's further back in time. I mean, we had the Nexus 7 review and everybody has delved really deeply into that new device. And it's shockingly impressive. Again, we'll find time to discuss it. And it was all the Nexus Q stuff. And then today, Android 4.1. It's actually surprising how much Google managed to squeeze into those two days. Don't you guys think? Yeah, for sure. Although, to be fair, I mean, there was only so much that they could say about 4.1 because it is only a 0.1. And they didn't describe every little thing about it. Let's just get into it. Let's get into Jelly Bean. So it's basically the same look and feel as Ice Cream Sandwich. It basically, it's the same look and feel. The main things that they did is the first thing was called Project Butter, where they increased the responsiveness of the screen by increasing, by standardizing a frame rate. They set up the triple buffering so that the GPU and the CPU and the screen could operate independently and they wouldn't slow each other down. And I forget what the third Project Butter thing was. Oh, the touch responsiveness. Oh, yeah, touch responsiveness. That's right. So the net effect is that it feels way better. It feels way better than 4.0. And 4.0, of course, felt way better than 2.3. And I know in the video on the review, it doesn't quite come through. And I mean, that might be like a frame rate thing. I had a heck of a time embedding that or encoding that video. But like the multitasking menu, there's like almost no lag there. It's really good. It's not iOS level. And you just can't deny that once you use it. It's not quite as like you moving a piece of paper on a screen as iOS, but it's really close. And it's close enough where I'm not really complaining about it. And I wasn't really complaining about it with 4.0, but I didn't know how bad I had it. But with 4.1, it's great. And what's really impressive about that is they did it on the Galaxy Nexus, which is what, eight months old? They didn't have to like throw massive hardware at it. Yeah, it's an old OMAT 4. One of the really impressive things to me about iOS has always been the fact that even going back to iOS 1 or iPhone OS at the time, the original iPhone, it still felt very responsive then. And I think that's because Apple is very good at employing creative visual techniques to make you believe that the device is more responsive than it actually is. And I always think back to the way the browser worked. You know, on the original iPhone, you'd scroll a page around and it would instantly go to checkerboards, but it would never start stuttering and it would never feel like it was lagging behind your touch. And that is so, so important. I would much rather have that checkerboard effect than the perception that the phone isn't instantly responding to my touch. And I think that Google is just now getting around to recognizing that and fixing it. And I recently heard a presentation from Nvidia where, and Vlad, we may have talked about this in the past, but in Integra 3, they did some specific things to try to address that as well. So hopefully that's finally solved or very close to solved. Yeah, regarding Integra 3, I recall at CES Nvidia showed off a particular touch technology, which I believe is called direct touch, but don't quote me on that. It's something like that. They gave it a particular brand name. And it was specifically about the lag between your touch and the smoothness of response with touchscreens, which at the time sounded intriguing, but again, we never really got a chance to test it out in full or to see any, you know, really engaging demos of it. But there's every chance that this could be something that Google has looked at at least, if not integrated. Obviously, Nvidia would probably want that to be Integra 3 only thing, which wouldn't make it universal to Android 4.1 as a software, but it's good to see that Google is addressing that exact same thing. And I also think it's very easy to underrate the importance of Project Butter. Like, okay, first of all, it's easy because it's got such a silly name. Let's just agree. I don't care if Google continues to give these dorky names for the next 20 years. Every time a new one comes up, I will say it. It's a silly name. So Jelly Bean is silly. Ice Cream Sandwich was triple silly because it has three words for crying out loud. It wasn't even efficient in terms of space. And our Project Butter is again, it's unbelievable. Like this is a multi-billion dollar business we're talking about and a critical aspect of improving your competitiveness in it. And then you call it butter. Yeah. I mean, it's nuts. It's nuts. If you're talking about something that involves a touch screen, do you really want to be thinking about that in conjunction with butter? I mean, I get buttery smooth, but like butter's greasy, yo. I mean, it's just kind of gross. Right. I mean, there are so many hip words. You can use Greek mythology. You can use futurism. You can use Tolkien words and names. You can just grab anything. There's so much mythology that geeky folks can get into. It doesn't have to be food. It's just talking. But beyond that, what I think is important is user interface responsiveness is still to me the number one thing, the paramount thing with any operating system. This is also the paramount complaint that I had about Symbian on the previous podcast with the 808 POV. And I think Google going after it again with 4.1, even though as Dieter said, 4.0 was a massive improvement. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, 4.0 fixed 90% of all lag problems with Android with just the basic user interface. And going after it again with 4.1 shows that Google is really keen on maximizing responsiveness everywhere. And I can tell you, once you spend time with Ice Cream Sandwich, you do find areas where the phones lag. Like with Galaxy Nexus, a perfect example is as soon as you jump into your contacts list, if you start scrolling really quickly, you find lag. As soon as you jump into emails, if you start scrolling really quickly, you find lag. When it has to both load things up and start scrolling through them, it lags. The animation starts to break up. Forget about standardizing frame rates. You go down to like two, three frames a second for a split second and it fixes itself. So there's definitely room for improvement. There's definitely areas where Google can raise the bar, raise the performance. It's raised it to 60 frames a second with Project Butter, which is great. I mean, you really are going to see extremely smooth and consistent frame rates there. And I also noticed in your video, Dieter, that the browser, which is another really important part, performs smoother and faster. Again, on the exact same hardware, which is great. Yeah, that was actually one of the things that surprised me. I mean, to be clear, we're talking about sort of responsiveness and the feel of the OS. In terms of raw benchmarks, I ran all the benchmarks on Android 4.0 on a Galaxy Nexus and Android 4.1 on a Galaxy Nexus side by side on a fresh boot. And the numbers were pretty much identical. There was no real difference that could matter. But just scrolling around and especially just stuff popping up. So the phone isn't just faster, it just feels faster. And I mean, that's feels faster matters. And that's the very core of the software. As far as I'm concerned, if you're going to improve your software, make the one thing that is fundamental and constant to it, which is the user interface, better. Because then it's just a universal upgrade. It's kind of like, I know people complain when we reference Apple, but it's the truth. It's kind of like an Apple upgrade where it seems minor. It's like a one sentence, okay, we just stuck a massive new retina display in laptop. But then you go and use it and you're like, actually, this makes a huge difference in day to day use. Maybe not the retina display in laptops immediately. But you know what I'm saying, right? Apple does these upgrades. They're really easy and quick to verbalize. And then because it's not a massive list of upgrades, people think, well, it's just one thing. How can it matter so much? And I think this is exactly what Google's doing. And it's the absolute perfect thing that Google should be doing. I would argue- I want to just- Go ahead, Chris. I think that Project Butter is very important. But I would actually argue that Google now is a big deal, not just- it transcends Android. It's a big deal for 4.1. But I think that this is actually- this is the culmination of everything Google has been doing for the past 15 years is Google now. It's only going to get crazier and crazier. Yeah, I remember Amit Singha, who's one of the Google fellows, he did a talk in London a couple of years ago that I attended. And he was talking about the development of search from the beginning of Google. And then 0.6, so he had six major bullet points of development. 0.6 was search without search. And he was talking about exactly Google now. Like he was saying, predicting things like when your flight will be traffic, predicting things like you might be hungry, here are restaurants, you might want to buy something, you might want to go and pick up your dry cleaning, etc. So if you're not familiar with what Google now is, I mean, when you jump into it, it gives you like cards that sort of display ambient information. So I just popped mine up here. I've got the mobile podcast, I've got the weather, and what else have I got? I guess that's it right now because it knows I'm at work and I'm going to be here for a while. But when it gets close to quitting time or what it thinks is quitting time, it'll give me directions home, by transit, it's got restaurants nearby. It really wants me to go to Mars Bar restaurant, like in the worst way. It keeps on popping that one up. But what's interesting about Google now to me is one, we've been hearing this promise for so long. I talked about this on the Vergecast, that we would get phones that would magically give us information and now find that Google is actually trying it. And two, I don't know who else could pull this off. Who else knows enough about me? Who else is collecting enough information from me from the phone and from other metrics and has an ecosystem to support it to give me this kind of functionality? Who else is plugged into the transit system in San Francisco and has a robust set of maps and locations and knows what I'm searching for online and yada, yada, yada, yada? I mean, Apple's I suppose close, but I feel like it doesn't have the raw computational expertise to try and pull it off. It's a uniquely Google product because it takes pretty much everything Google does and combines it into one experience, or at least it's trying to do that. And it's a uniquely Google product because I don't know who else could even attempt it and have it not come off as a total flop. Because it's not a total flop. It's pretty good. It's not changing my life. But I'm checking it a couple of times a day. And at first, I was like, oh, I don't care about this. But there's fewer and fewer of those moments as time goes on. It's funny you mentioned the Mars bar thing, Dieter, because it makes me wonder, it actually kind of concerns me to think that this is the next generation of Google AdWords, right? Companies are going to be able to buy into- That's a terrible vision, Chris. Doesn't mean it's not true. Right, exactly. It is a terrible vision. I'm saying companies are going to be able to buy into your consciousness, basically. That's what this boils down to. Okay, but to play, what's the opposite of devil's advocate, the positive advocate? Angels advocate. Okay, so to play angels advocate, I do feel like, getting back to the idea of search without search, Google now taps into Google's core competency, which is, as Dieter says, data collection, and search, indexing, etc. Still, ultimately, Google now is just a web-connected service that gets you, essentially, search information that you need. It just kind of tries to do it preemptively, tries to do it proactively, tries to predict what you're actually going to want. So again, if Google didn't have its own search algorithms and indexing and crawlers, etc., you could do it. So again, it's a unique functionality to Google, but if you go to Google search yourself, you'll find, yes, a whole bunch of companies are buying ads and listings, promoted listings, but they're clearly identified. So why would they- I mean, it should be possible. Okay, first of all, Google now is barely out of the door. So let's not curse it off as just the ad promotion platform. Google will probably be very, very cautious before it starts introducing ads. It will want it to flourish and develop before it adds ads, but then when it does, I imagine they will be kind of identifiable, at least. If not, something you can opt out of, be identifiable. Can Google switch to paid placement in shopping, or did they kind of backtrack on that? It's not quite as clear what is and isn't an ad in that part of Google. Pay to play. That's right. I mean, everything that Google does is built around advancing the core cash cow, which is search, and Google now is clearly, even though we're just seeing the first glimmers of it, it's clearly the future of Google as a platform and as search as a product. And there's zero question in my mind that they are going to commercialize this product and turn it into a money-making platform for them. Well, it's already commercialized. I mean, let's be clear. Every single search brings up web results, and those web results have ads. Right. But I mean, Google now presents many new and interesting and, quote unquote, smarter ways to integrate that, right? And the question is, how are they going to do that? How lightly are they going to tread in turning this into a new form of profit center for them? Now, hey, you know, I was just thinking about something else here, which was, again, going back to Apple being the close competitor. But when Apple updated Siri for iOS 6, you notice that Apple's sources information were all outside companies. So Siri being able to look up sports scores and player bios and things like that, it comes from Yahoo Sports. Movie reviews, rotten tomatoes. Restaurant reviews and things, yelp. Google strength and the thing that Google has been building up is the fact that Google has bought everybody up. You know, it bought Zagat, so it has restaurant reviews. It already has the maps and the search and all of that stuff already. So most of the stuff that comes into Google now is in-house. And that's a massive advantage. And they tried to buy Yelp a few years ago, right? And that deal fell through. But at one time, that was that was part of their plan. But anyway, don't get me wrong. Don't get me wrong. I'm I'm very bullish on Google now, and I think it is one of the most exciting things to happen in search and for Google as a company, maybe in forever. I'm just very concerned at how the commercialization of the platform is going to proceed over the next few years. We'll see. Well, I mean, it's a funny thing. But I said in the intro is totally, let me just get this out real quick. I wasn't joking that Google knows when I wake up, it knows where I live, it knows where I sleep, it knows where I work, it knows what I eat, it knows where I go every minute of the day because Google Maps is, you know, I don't know if it's every minute, but, you know, I'm checking in, I'm opening maps up all the time. Right. There's one comfort for you, and that is the fact that Google doesn't care who you are. Thank God. It will keep anonymous data on you because it really, really doesn't care who you are. You're just a data point. And so long as it's able to sell data points as opposed to person identifiable information, you're fine. Fair enough. You know, actually, there's another ecosystem play that happened that we should really talk about, because they spent a long time talking about Google Play. And this was specifically about the Nexus 7 as a Kindle competitor, yada, yada, yada. But they basically spent a good third of the time for the Nexus 7 talking about Google Play and pushing that ecosystem of movies and media and whatnot. And of course, there's a Nexus Q, which only works via Google Play. And I don't know, like, that feels like a little bit of an overreach here. I mean, I suppose they have to do it. They have to try. But I, you know, Google now is like, yes, of course, Google should do this. This is interesting. But Google Play is like, well, really? You really think you're going to beat Amazon at this game? Do you really think you're going to beat Apple at this game? I'm not really sure. Well, there's no question that they want their own content ecosystem. And I mean, I can't blame them. That's one of the most profitable, well, maybe profitable isn't the right word, but it's been a very profitable venture for Apple. It is an extremely profitable venture for Amazon and for a company like Google to have to rely on Amazon or, geez, I don't know, Zinio or I don't know who else to bring that content into a self-branded flagship, quote unquote, flagship device like the Nexus 7. I mean, that's just not going to fly, right? They need, I mean, they're getting, Google's getting paid for all that content that customers are buying out of Google Play. And that's certainly part of the strategy. I just can't envision Google not having a competitive software and media consumption store with the other guys. It's just not possible. I mean, Microsoft is building up to do the same, whether it calls it Xbox or Zoom or whatever the heck it wants to call the store, it's going to try and do absolutely the same thing. It's the reason why Microsoft is also going into hardware. They're all kind of more or less building up to work into Apple's model. I mean, it's funny to say, but it's the truth, you know, Google now legitimately has a Nexus program. And the only thing that's consistent about the Nexus program is that it's Google branded hardware and Google marketed hardware. And that's one of the big highlights with the Nexus 7. And probably the reason why ASUS wanted to build the Nexus 7 is because Google is completely handing the marketing with that. So ASUS can save money there, even though it seems to be being produced at cost, sold at cost. So we should talk a bit about the Nexus 7 because it sounds certainly from Josh's review. I haven't played with the tablet personally, but Dieter, I know you'll be able to speak to this, but it certainly sounds to me like this is the most exciting non-iPad tablet ever. Is that a fair assessment? 100%. It is the most exciting non-iPad tablet I've ever used. And it's pretty thin. I think it's just, what is it, a millimeter thicker than an iPad. And the bezels are kind of big around the screen, but it's, you know, but he's like, oh, you want big bezels so you can hold it in landscape. And I guess that's true. But like it's fast and it just, it feels right in a way that Honeycomb and even Ice Cream Sandwich tablets never, ever did. And that's partly because the, you know, the Android tablets that I had experiences before were like the original 7-inch Galaxy Tab, which was on, I think it was on 2.3 and then, you know, 10-inch tablets, which just like, I hated that you had this crap in the four corners of the screen. You had Google search up here, you had multitasking and something else down here. You had notifications over here. You had apps up in the other corner and you were just like, all the time. And so with the Nexus 7, they're like, you know what? And this is actually one of the interesting things that, you know, I tried to come across in the review of Jelly Bean. It's like everything from Honeycomb except for like that initial idea of having a pop-up multitasking thumbnail list is gone. Like there's very little Tron left. That bar on the bottom, the four corners of Honeycomb, that's gone. The font is improved. It's like a blown up phone, but it's a blown up version of Jelly Bean, which is great instead of a shrunk down version of Honeycomb, which I think it's, even if you liked it, you got to admit it had baggage and I think it was totally the right call to jettison it. But will this UI work at 10 inches? That is an excellent question. I think it'll be pretty weird at 10 inches. Yeah. Yeah, that's my concern. I mean, 10 inches is a very, very important form factor for tablets, obviously, and somebody is going to have to make a 10 inch 4.1 tablet, whether it be Google through a partner and they brand it as a Nexus or if it's somebody else, but somebody is going to do it. And that's still a very open question what that UI is going to look like. Can I just rewind us back to Matthias's comments for just a quick moment about you want a thick bezel in order to hold it in landscape. That is basically the tech equivalent of a car salesman telling you, I know this car is slow, but that's safe. You want it to be slow because then you won't kill yourself when you're driving. Just give me a tiny little bezel and then I can stick things on the outside of it if I really need to hold on. I don't know if I agree. This has always been a problem for me with the iPad since day one. Like if I'm if I'm reading it in bed and I'm holding it above my face, you know, and you always hear stories about people dropping their iPads on their faces and breaking their faces to really tragic. And I don't mean to make light of that situation, although it is kind of funny. So many like noses, right? There is definitely something to be said for having a thick bezel. And I agree with you, Vlad. I think that that Matias was putting a positive spin on, you know, Asus started this project to make like a low end. I don't want to call the crap tablet, but like a low end tablet that that that was under two hundred fifty dollars. This is the you know, Sean Hollister wrote an excellent piece about this. You should go read it. Start light. It started life as as the memo and uses a low cost Tager three and all that jazz. So I think that ultimately the bezel is there because it's a low cost device. But that being said, I think that there is a very legitimate positive spin to be put on that big bezel. Well, it's not. It's bigger on the top and the bottom than it is on the sides in portrait. And so having it when you put it in the landscape be a little bit bigger means you can like hold it with your thumb and you get more leverage on the stupid thing. Actually, so no, the home screen on Jelly Bean is not does not go into landscape. That's not going to work at ten inches. It's just not. Now, there's no way that ever work at ten inches. Maybe. Well, so maybe it would for a four by three tablet because, you know, you think of an iPad. It's mostly used in portrait. But if they're if they're putting out 16 by nine ten inch tablets like they usually do with Android, then they're I mean, they can't avoid the landscape question. They just can't. But let's also not rush conclusions here as well, because the Android 4.1 that we have so far is a preview build. Right. Well, the Android 4.1 that was announced at the show was Android 4.1 preview. Yeah, but it's coming out. I mean, like it's going gold. It's shipping this month. So it's not like it's going up in the next two, three weeks. Right. I also think that being able to flip the UI into landscape mode is such a minor thing. Google could just do Android 4.1.1 when the first 4.1 ten inch tablets come out. So I wouldn't worry about it. No, I agree. But there are open UI questions about how that will work. Oh, yes. Look, you know. Yeah. No, that's absolutely true. Chad is saying that there will definitely be a different UI. Is ten inch UI is just the same UI? No. There's a different UI. It uses the old UI. It uses the original Ice Cream Sandwich Honeycomb UI. So that might be what the whole story is here. Okay. And is this some specific Konami code combination that a user needs to punch in to get the special tablet UI? What's going on there? I think it's just the bigger tablets that use it. I mean, I think that Google just didn't want to talk about it at all with this thing because they're positioning against Kindle Fire and they want to keep it really simple. Right. So they didn't broadcast all that differences. Speaking of the fire, that's a very good question. Like what is going to happen? I mean, I have so many questions about Amazon right now. Amazon is a source of continued fascination for me, because I know I talk about the Amazon, the mythical Amazon phone on every podcast. But what is Amazon's next move? Are they going to fork 4.0 or 4.1 again or are they permanently forked off of what? What did they pull? 3.0 or 2? I don't know what the fire is running. It's 2.3 or 3.0 or 3.1 or what? But 2.3. So are they permanently forked or are they going to take another cut? You know, and what is the next fire going to look like? Are they going to do a seven and a 10? Is it going to be there are rumors going around that it's going to be a much higher end looking and feeling device than the current fire, which I would, I would believe because the Nexus 7 looks and feels nicer than the existing fire, which is basically just repurpose playbook without a camera. But yeah, lots of questions for Amazon right now, how they how they respond to this. But in the meantime, what they immediately need to do, in fact, I'm blown away they haven't done this already, is drop the existing fire to 179. I mean, why they have done that, I don't know, because there's no way that they would not be able to break even if not still turn a profit at this point in the fires lifecycle if they dropped it to 179. There's no way. And there's I would not not recommend a fire to anybody except for people who are desperate for Amazon video or I guess buying stuff on Amazon because the Amazon app doesn't work on the Nexus 7. Isn't that funny? What was that? The Amazon shopping app. It's not compatible. When I try and load it up in Google Play, it says it doesn't work on my device. Well, they're going to have to fix that. Amazon see, here's the thing about both Google and Amazon is that they both and they've they've exhibited this in the past few weeks. They both seem to be pretty genuine about the fact that they just want to extend their ecosystems as far and wide as possible, whether it's their own hardware, somebody else's hardware. Google is being very good about continuing to support iOS. That was one of the announcements that came out of Iowa is that now Google Drive is on iOS and all this this other stuff. And of course, Amazon is very good about pushing Kindle far and wide as well. And Amazon music and cloud player. So excuse me, Amazon cloud storage and cloud player. So hopefully they all continue to do that, regardless of what device you're using. On that point, Chris, on that point, I do feel like there's only one way that we can wrap up our discussion of Android 4.1, at least for the moment. And that is by having an epic whinge about the complete silence from every Android OEM without exception about when current devices are being upgraded to 4.1. There has been zero before. You know that just notifications are awesome. And you know, you can't you can't act on everything. I wish you could archive email. But being able to drag down your email and see your five most recent messages is totally amazing. And I don't know why they didn't do it sooner. It just it's prettier. They improved the font. The new notifications is really great. And I would show them to you, but it's all in Android 4.1. The one that nobody has on their phone right now. One thing that Josh pointed out in his Nexus 7 review that concerned me a bit is the fact that you can't, Dieter, correct me if I'm wrong, you can't collapse or expand all notifications with a single toggle, right? Right. Yeah. It sort of it sort of auto expands like pictures and whatnot. OK, so I mean, Vlad's right. We need we need to have a winch. What's OK. Explain winch to me. Is it like wine or is it a different word? Yeah, it's exactly like wine. I am actually not really sure why there are two words for that. Well, you know what, I'm using it blindly. Thank you for calling me out for using word blindly, Dieter. I don't know what you guys are talking about. There's no shame in that at all. What the heck are you guys talking about? Well, I'm going to talk about mobile again. Well, there's one other thing, which is Google's IOT2012 day two keynote was essentially the iOS portion of IOT because it was bonkers and loaded with things for iPhone and iPad. Here's how our software works on the iPad. Here's how it works on the iPhone. It was like, hey, Apple, we want to be friends. And one of the things that came out of that was that Chrome for iOS, iPhone and iPad was available on the day. Now, the first thing to say about that and everybody has noted it is it's not the proper Chrome browser. It's kind of Chrome ish because Apple doesn't allow you to install your full browser and have the full JavaScript engine, all of those things. But it does sync with your Chrome bookmarks, which to me is one of the major attractions of Chrome is having the bookmarks synced across every device that I've got. And the annoying thing is you need Android 4.1, I believe. Yeah, I think so. 4.0. 4.0. Right. OK, well, in any case, most devices don't have access to the full Chrome browser, which left beta during I.O. Most Android devices don't have access to the full Chrome browser. And Apple has like over 90 percent of iOS devices have access to some version of that browser. It's really you know, you know what? What Google doesn't have access to, though, is decent whatever the heck the stupid things are called that point a camera at a screen. The pictures from the live blog, I mean, I apologize. They were terrible of Chrome running on the iPad and iPhone. But that was because like they like pumped in red fog and red lights on the devices. So like you literally like sitting there in the room, you couldn't see what they were doing. And it was it was like they were in hell. And I don't know if it was intentional or not. Pumping in red fog is a sure surefire way to make any presentation go a little smoother. But but I want to go back to something you said earlier, which is that Google is like, oh, Apple, we want to be friends. That's not it at all. They want to be they want to be friends with Apple users that not with Apple. There's a big difference. But yeah, no, absolutely. So yeah, I mean, I know that Google's play is very specifically to get its own wares on to. Again, like you were saying, Chris, every single platform possible and I was is the one platform you can ignore. It doesn't matter how much you hate Apple, how much you want to compete with Apple. You have to be on that platform. Yeah. But but then at the same time, Google's best way to achieve that is to be amenable to Apple's demands and to be friendly to Apple. So, yeah, I mean, it's in that respect that I'm saying let's be friends. I don't really think Google has as its end goal, some sort of will unite with Apple and knock out the competition or whatever. Like that's obviously not the case. It's just if you want to be on Apple's platform, you have to play nice with Apple. That's been known. That's the thing that's been the truth for years now. Decades, maybe. I'll bet you that Apple has excuse me, Google has an amazing native chromium build for iOS that they can't submit to the App Store. I'll bet you they have it kicking around at the Googleplex. This amazing, like totally native chromium build. I guarantee it. Do you think it would be like Flash? Like Google constantly moan and just kind of be passive aggressive about it and just talk, you know, we would love to give you guys a native Chrome experience, but it's just up to Apple. Why doesn't Apple open up? Well, Eric Schmidt certainly would. I don't know about Sergey Brin, who turns out to be like this crazy superhero, like chill superhero guy who wears muscle shirts and and and commands people to jump out of planes at. I'm pretty sure Sergey Brin, now that he's, you know, a triple billionaire or whatever, now his only goal in life is to be the utmost badass for the rest of his days. Yeah. And hey, we're power. What's his name? Alison Button Island, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. But but all things considered, if if I had to choose between buying an island and dropping a bunch of dudes wearing is up glasses that that I I funded, I essentially funded onto Moscone Center in San Francisco, I think I would take the ladder personally. Yeah. Now, Chris, no, absolutely not. The island is the way to go. What you want is a recipe. You want to buy the island, make sure you can grow watermelons on it and then set up a nice watermelon farm on it. And then, you know, spend the rest of your days. On a rocking chair on the porch, looking at the sea, the ocean, just lapping the waves against the beach, eating watermelon. So now we know how to spend his life. That's pretty amazing. You can get a nice satellite internet connection as well. I'm not saying, you know, be a hermit. I'm just saying, you know, guys jumping out of an airplane is a few minutes worth of excitement, maybe hours if you can stretch it out. But an island, you could do anything on an island. How much watermelon could you reasonably eat, though? I mean, like, what are you going to do with all these watermelons? Can you? I mean, are you? You face yourself. And I don't know. I don't like this plan. I see what Larry Ellison is really going to do is he's going to turn that island into like a private most dangerous game slash Hunger Games slash, you know, that that that formula has been done 15 times now throughout history. I'm telling you, Thunderball, Battle Royale, Thunderball guys, he's building an underwater layer and then we're going to have to send James Bond to take him out. Just guys, one thing I want to point out, though, is we love to talk about we as in all of society, the whole world love to talk about the power of states and the dangers of authoritarian regimes and all that stuff. But then we're kind of forgetting how these ultra rich companies and let's not forget, Google has cash reserves that are better than most European countries. OK, I'm just making it up, but probably because most European countries are in debt. Apple has more money than probably anybody in the world. The guys who are on top of these companies have power that is probably comparable to that of many states. And you know, just look at the examples we're giving. Like one CEO or former CEO, co-CEO Sergey Brin is sending guys out of planes, jumping and recording video and other guys buying in islands. Oracle now has territories. It's absolutely true. And it's not it's not a very big leap of logic to suggest that that Elson is going to use Oracle's vast technology to take over a satellite like Goldeneye and, you know, take over the launch. You launch a freaking array of satellites. He could I think he could. I think Elson is more of a moon raker kind of guy. I think that's more his style. So like a space base of some sort. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, the secret space base that nobody knew about somehow. Dark side of the moon. Yeah, you might already have it. Who knows? Anyway, we need to talk about Nexus Q. We need to complain about Nexus Q and then we need to talk about the fact that Android 4.1 was announced the same week that Android 4.0 just barely managed to crack 10 percent. It's 10.9 all told. And I'm sure a huge chunk of that, you know, when it went from like seven to just over 10 was from sales of the Galaxy S3. And you know, last year at Google I.O., there was this alliance of all these partners and they were they promised that devices would get updates within 18 months, assuming the hardware could support it and they're going to find a way to make things happen more quickly. And I mean, what happened there? Nobody knows. So now the new initiative is the Platform Development Kit. And the idea is a few months, two to three months before they actually launch the next version of Android, they're going to give hardware partners access to it so they can port their hardware or port Android onto their hardware. Which OK, maybe that'll work out better than we've got now, but it takes more than a couple of months for these devices to these companies to ship the latest version of Android on existing devices. It always does. And then on top of that, you know, we reached out to all the major Android OEMs and the most forthcoming statement we got from out of anybody was from Samsung, who was already high on their horse because they're releasing Android 4.1 devices. They also said that they will soon announce which additional devices are eligible. HTC said, watch the space. And everybody else said, we're looking. You know, like, yeah, that's terrible. Like that is like that is Google. If you thought that Google could like. I don't know, control the Android ecosystem or corral these manufacturers into, you know, bending to their will and cooperating with them instead of just taking Android when Google gives it away for free and using it for their own means, then like that illusion is gone. Like the Android ecosystem is all these manufacturers going after their own thing and Google going after its own thing. And the thing that ties them together is that, you know, Google happens to give away Android that these guys have to put on their phones eventually. But in totally different ecosystems. Like do you think Samsung is going to put Google now on the Galaxy S3 and just an S voice? That's a very good question. I hadn't thought about that. I don't have a prepared answer. I think this is garbage. Right. So as voice is really terrible. But that I mean, come on, but when has that stopped Samsung from doing anything? The only thing I don't want to see is Samsung do S now because there is going to be Samsung snow. Yeah. Yeah, that would be bad. Oh, no, because, you know, it'd be Samsung snow. And then instead of asking, you know, Google to tell you something or Siri to something, tell you something, you'd ask Informer to tell you something. You lost me. I know there's a reference here. I'm just not getting it. Yeah. Now, what if I said a licky boom boom down? Would that help? No, I have no I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. OK, move on. Just let it go. I'm going to listen to our listeners. Yeah, some some listeners. Yeah, no, Sharon's totally got it, man. Brian, he's in the room. He's got it. The Canadian rapper Informer. Come on. 90s 90s hip hop man. You're not going to sing it for you. I'm not going to sing it for you. I was too busy listening to Van Halen in the 90s. I don't know any Canadian rappers from the 90s. But I'm sorry that I took us down that path. Please. Yeah, I am perplexed. I there were thoughts in my mind and now there's nothing. Well, so, look, I, you know, I want to say one thing. And you know, I'm not going to say it at the very end of the show, because I know we always end the show on a depressing note. And I want to get the depression out now, which is that I feel like the tenuous alliance that is holding Android together. I mean, Charlie Kindle has written extensively about this. But I when he when he first started, I thought that he was kind of crazy. And now I realize that he is dead on, which is that Google lost control. He's crazy like a fox. Exactly. Google lost control of Android a long time ago. And they can say and do whatever they want. And that's great. Four point one is a beautiful dream. And Google can can make as many devices as they want to make running four point one. But I think that that OEMs are probably feeling empowered by the success that Amazon has had. And they are probably feeling like they can offer enough value add on top of any version of Android of their choosing to completely ignore or mostly ignore new versions of the platform offered by Google and instead fork off and do whatever they want to do with a previous version and just add crapware on top of it. And that's that's an extremely depressing vision. But I think it's probably an accurate one. Yeah. OK. Yeah, I am depressed. OK, I know how I can make us happy again. Let's talk about the Nexus Q. Yes. The shot put. Let's do it. Oh, my God. It is terrible. Is that the word I'm looking for? It's interesting. And you don't think of it as an Apple TV competitor. Think of it as like a Sonos competitor because it's got an app and, you know, they're they're sort of looking at high end audio with it. The way it works, if you're not familiar, is it looks like you're streaming music from your phone, but you're not. You are using the music app on your phone that you would normally play music from to tell the Nexus Q to stream the music directly from Google Play over Wi-Fi over the Internet. Let's clarify one thing. Let's clarify the first thing that the Nexus Q is not a speaker. Right. Right. It has an app, but it's not a speaker. Right. So you can't put out sound. It just it needs to plug into something else. Right. You can. There's banana plugs for two speakers or you can plug, you know, optical audio out or HDMI out to get the sound out of it. I can tell you that is the most befuddling thing about this device, which is befuddling in its entirety and its entire spherical existence. But it's like everybody who looks at it and hears that it's about sound and music and streaming and all of that stuff and sees its shape because it's so spherical, it looks like it should be a speaker. So everybody would expect at least some sound to come out of it and particularly with the price, which, you know, will come around to. But it's just kind of nuts to me that. I don't know. I mean, just carry on because they were more questions. They were very close to making a Sony Rolly when you think about it. Yeah. I mean, it reminds you of that. Yeah. Because it has the colored ring that flashes in in sync with the music. Right. All they need to do is put a little motor on it to make it roll around and add a speaker and they would have had the next generation Rolly. The thing weighs like two pounds. Like that would it would it would shatter floors if it were to. It's like it's like it's like classic American muscle cars. Right. Like it's made in the USA. It's got to it's got to exude that American like heaviness. Right. So they have to make it a two pound device. Absolutely. I'm totally. I just I don't think Google intends to have this be a commercial success. I don't think they ever did. It's an interesting project. There's going to be some people that really get into it. It's got the micro USB port so you can hack on it. There's already games running on it. And you know some people will you know have have some fun with it. And they're just sort of seeing what it's like to be in this market in a small way. And maybe they'll you know with the next version they'll do something more ambitious and more serious for the consumer market. I think for now you know it's just in a weird space like what's its relationship to Google TV. Well it's a totally different thing. What you know what is it for. I think it's for people to just be like oh I've got this cool thing and it's kind of nerdy and fun. Like that's that's what it's for. I think that really what it was was it was a way for Google to to experiment with the concept of making a device in the US without without having something that was. Yeah well yeah without having it be something that was really critical to Google's strategy because the cue isn't critical to any part of Google's strategy right. It's just this thing. And if like you're saying either if it succeeds great if it doesn't that's fine too. It's not a phone it's not a tablet it's not something that's really core to the success of Android going forward. And I think that Google probably would be the first to admit that they have kinks to work out in their US manufacturing strategy if they're going to actually make that work. Well here's another question. Doesn't you have any built in storage. It's got eight or. Brian how much storage does the cue have. Sixteen gigs built in but you can't like transfer stuff to it it's just there for caching video. Yeah I mean that was my impression that you can't stick your music on it which is just annoying because Google learned this lesson to some degree with Chrome OS in making Google Docs this past week available offline and offline editing and making making you know the whole experience of using its devices offline at least tolerable right because most Google services are so online centric you have to be online you have to have a web connection in order to make full use of them. And now it's kind of taken a step back with the cue and saying well if you want to play music with this thing you need to have a web connection always constantly even if you are you know. A good great example is I might want to OK I mean I wouldn't want to take the cue because it's good these are just that it's heavy but I want to take a device like this when I'm traveling right and just have my music on it for whatever. No I don't know why. Why would you carry. I know I would carry a two pound sphere with you when you travel because I might. You feel fear of the glowing light and a rotating top that looks a lot like a bomb looks a lot like a bomb like like like if you just put a fuse on the back of it out of one of the little ports on the back like it that's that's some wily coyote action right there. OK OK I won't carry on with that hypothetical because it really is just way to. It's out there but there's a more serious point to make here which is at last year's I.O. Google made big point about Android at home and this year's I.O. there was no Android at home. They were just I mean the queue is kind of linking into that but there is none of that. I mean there's a whole SDK for Android at home which seems to be like 25 people used and abandoned within a month. It's been a year no development nothing nothing to be happening. And if I can offer kind of again kind of a far reaching analogy I'm getting the feeling with Google's Android at home and home automation and home flirtations anyway with home devices that Google has the idea that there's a market there that maybe can be developed and grown and exploited but isn't doing it properly and it's kind of doing to use another Apple term hobby devices particularly with the queue like Chris says it's not really a serious device a serious competitor to anything really. And the thing about the queue is like they're being obstinate about it like it's basically got the guts I believe of a Galaxy Nexus inside in terms of its processor and you know we just mentioned the RAM and everything so like it's running Android 4.0 they're just like deliberately like nerfing it basically so that it will only work with Google Play to see if they can you know make this ecosystem play with Google Play and then also you know let people hack on it just to sort of you know I don't know appease people that like to hack on strange Android spheres. But like they could have I feel like done more like I don't this wasn't an issue of late ran out of time to give it a UI because it doesn't have a UI it's only got the app on your phone. It's that they're deliberately choosing not to they're deliberately saying we're gonna make this thing that's weird we want to make a weird little thing and let's see what that does. Right but the analogy that comes to mind with me is Microsoft and its tablet strategy around the turn of the century right because since 2000 2001 Bill Gates has been saying you know tablets are going to be really really awesome they're going to be great they're going to do a whole heap of things for you and Microsoft has been doing tablets and we can throw Intel into that as well with the M.I.D. like ultimately tablets are Intel's vision of the mobile Internet device they're just done better and well. So what I'm kind of getting the feeling that I'm getting is that guys like Google are going to screw around and I'm gonna be like well we'll try this we'll try this other experimental device and while they're doing that they are actually providing data points and some sort of reference points for guys again I'm going back to Apple I don't know why I sound like an Apple fanboy this week but whatever for guys who are more serious and focused about really exploiting the space and really having a mass market device and ultimately somebody's going to come up with something that really solves too many problems for people and then becomes indispensable and that somebody isn't going to be Google because it's so scattershot in its approach. I mean that's the feeling that I'm getting right now. You know one of Google's strengths and this has been a strength of theirs for many many years is that they have the money and the brain trust to you know basically put on a blindfold and fire a bunch of shots into the air and hope that something hits and you know that goes back to you know their corporate culture of 80-20 and you know it's very fundamental to their philosophy as a company that they try all these crazy things and hopefully something works and I think that the cue fits right into that you know and that fits in with what you were saying what about it being a hobby for them just like the Apple TV was for Apple and I and I think that Apple TV is not a hobby a hobby anymore I think that it's turned into a viable platform for them and will continue to evolve as such the queue I don't know maybe it won't maybe there will be no queue to but but maybe something will come of it maybe they'll they'll figure it out for next year's IO I don't I don't know but but I don't think that Google is sweating over this being a successor of failure I think that the worst case scenario for them is that they don't sell any of these and for the price they probably won't sell many but they've they've figured out a way that you know they've they've worked through a lot of the logistics of making a device like this in the US and they've you know they've come away with that with that knowledge you know that we can't we can't overlook the fact that this is a Google device this is not another company making this device on Google's behalf and then Google slaps their name on it Google made this device with the queue they are a hardware manufacturer right but but what I'm saying is that they're not like these two saying they could do more they could go one step beyond just we'll build this and it would be crazy and nuts and whatever they could build something that actually you know gives them a foothold in the market because as far as I'm concerned network speakers and speakers that you can just you know seamlessly and that's that's the key thing seamlessly get your music off your phone and playing onto them whatever it be via airplay whether it be by something like Sonos and Wi-Fi and whatever else they can be just a massive market if somebody nails the price and nails the execution you know it's there it's just waiting for somebody to do it right Sonos is too expensive that market basically just needs its own kind of fire as far as I'm concerned airplay is too expensive as well air blow and the queue could have been that device now there was nothing standing in its way I don't think it's that airplay is is too expensive it's because there's a huge airplay ecosystem now the problem is that airplay is proprietary to iOS and to Apple and Android does not have a viable equivalent airplay right now and it's so frustrating to me whenever I go to you know to somebody's house and they have an airplay device and I just you know I want to say hey listen to this track whatever and I can't it Android desperately needs something that is that simple it's it's it's weird to think you know because we've had a 2dp for so many years now it's and it's weird to think that little leap from a 2dp to seamless Wi-Fi audio and video would be such a big deal but it really is airplay has revolutionized that entire workflow of playing media and I would love to see somebody do something that simple and easy on Android and you certainly isn't the answer to that you know because people are going to own queues I just want to point out that if Google does try and make a go of this at actually making another version of the queue there's going to be rumors about it and we're going to have to write about having received a Q tip I can't believe you just said that it's really really upsetting to me I yeah I think we got that that that refers to old-school rap we got it's actually a really good one I just you know my life slappy guys I'm sorry first is Canadian rappers now it's Q tips I just don't know see I warned people in the podcast post that Dieter may not be lucid and I think that that I went I went home to take a nap and literally five minutes after I laid down there's banging on my front door and a bunch of workers showed up to install the baseboards after my apartment flooded was it two weeks ago I don't even remember it may have been a year ago it doesn't whatever and so like I couldn't sleep I didn't I had time to take a nap and I wasn't unable to do it because they were selling baseboards and they knew that I was in a hurry to get them out of there so they were rushing and they basically spent the the whole time telling each other to do unmeasurable things to their mothers which was pretty awesome I got to brush up Spanish yeah you should have offered them a Q for their work it would have thrown it at me and that's a dangerous thing to get chucked at you I mean yeah I'm so tired of talking about the Q can we please talk about something else yeah we say is we can't have a Google exclusive podcast can we talk about anybody else okay talk about rim talk about anybody before rim I'm saying rim for our depressing closer all right fair enough well T-Mobile CEO resigned oh that's depressing too well it's not entirely depressing it is it is happy news for him that he's going to work for Vodafone which is in Germany which is a carrier with much brighter prospects than T-Mobile USA right now so so at least for him it's it's a it's a it's a happy event so yeah they still have an interim CEO T-Mobile USA they haven't they haven't announced a permanent CEO yet okay no we gotta talk about BlackBerry so BlackBerry 10 devices delayed to 2013 rim cutting 5,000 jobs and take they took a 518 million dollar loss their sales last quarter have plummeted they're not selling phones anymore well I mean they're still selling phones but radically fewer which is a bad sign that they're you know what they had been hanging on to which was international is probably starting to get really really soft on them so that's all the terrible news the good news is the grand tradition of rim executives saying boneheaded things in public continues with Torsten Heinz yeah it's yeah so there are two good things that that Torsten Heinz has said which are very encouraging first of all he said that he's he's not satisfied with the results so that's good news right if he had said well I'm delighted with with this horrible quarter then then then he probably wouldn't be the right CEO for the company but then too he has come out today with an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail the Canadian newspaper saying that rim is not in fact in a death spiral so in a radio interview like the company is not ignoring the world out there nor is it in a death spiral like man don't let people put the word death spiral in quotes when in an article about you I don't care if you're saying no like you don't you do not bring that up that's just not smart you say we're doing we're not failing we're not no going down we're not something something but I agree with him I don't think it's a spiral at all I mean it's a straight line right it's it's going this way or I think that's the way yeah the problem for rim is that you know maybe a year or two ago there were potential paths and options that they could have maybe pursued to turn the company around but at this point there is no right answer right so people will say I can't believe I can't believe Torsten Heinz is delaying black break 10 to q1 2013 well guess what if they had shipped a half baked product this year that would have been their death now but are they going to survive long enough shipping q1 I don't know maybe not it's no longer a right answer I'm going to retweet somebody live on the show and be completely irresponsible in not crediting that person I saw this you know in the in the immediate wake of rims announcement of his quarterly results and he was the best the best reaction so whoever it was first very clever guy credit to them that person said that room has delayed the first black rate and devices until after it stops doing business and goes bust which was just the perfect way to summarize like it's so difficult for me to express and at the same time comprehend just the sheer stupidity of leaving the smartphone market the I mean yeah leaving the smartphone market as far as I'm concerned rim doesn't have anything that is competitive with legitimate smartphones anymore and it's not going to until at least the first quarter of 2013 it was late with quarter free 2012 that was late that was the previous roadmap and nothing was happening now they moved it a whole six months back I don't care how amazing the software is or is going to be even if it actually beats every single piece of software that's you know leading the market today so even if it beats ios 6 even if it if it beats I don't know android 5.0 is probably going to be out by then that doesn't matter it doesn't have an app ecosystem because people are going to have to start building apps all over again and even if it's ahead of everything else summer is going to come again there's going to be google ios 2013 there's going to be ios 7 you just can't compete you're done and you know I mean if I'm tossing right now I'm tossing right now I would say exactly what he's saying there's nothing wrong with the company and just spend every single second trying to sell the freaking company to somebody and I think that's what's happening I know what you're about to say and it's not true it's very clear that hindsight is not 2020 here that is okay Peter that is strike three you may now leave the show walk away have Ryan fit in your place go go lay your head down you've earned it no I yeah they are I think that what's happening behind the scenes we've known for a few weeks now we've written a story about it and he mentioned again on this earnings call they have retained two banks to quote unquote investigate their options and those banks are in my opinion obviously going to recommend that rim liquidate some or all of its assets and that that recommendation is probably going to come long before black ray 10 ships so the question is does this black in the long term does rim become an IP holding company does it become does it become this generation's palm source I don't know but but yeah it's looking very grim and you know the thing is Heinz has said in the past two quarterly earnings calls including this most recent one that they want to concentrate on the enterprise and BYOD markets the problem with that which he fails to acknowledge is that BYOD implies that anyone wants to bring your device nobody wants to bring nobody is going out to their their carrier right now and saying give me your latest hottest blackberry and then bringing it into their office and going to their IT department saying this is the phone that I want to use for my for my corporate email nobody is doing that so BYOD makes no no sense for them it makes sense for for apple makes sense for google doesn't make sense for rim that leaves them only with enterprise and that market is being eaten quarter by quarter by quarter by apple and by by google oems and and just just another thing that really really needs mentioning here rim has been failing to execute for so long for so many years forget what torsten and mike lazareedis before him have said you know torsten everything is fine mike everything is unfair just forget what they've said remember the blackberry 7 wasn't supposed to be blackberry 7 it was originally supposed to be blackberry 6.5 but it took so freaking long to make and rim was so convinced it's such a massive upgrade it just decided it would jump it a whole one version up remember that yeah am i crazy no i i remember it was supposed to be blackberry 6.5 we went to blackberry 7 i mean we're looking at freaking uh and you know blackberry 7 was behind the times as soon as it came out we're looking at version inflation you know from blackberry it was it was actually 6.1 not 6.5 i i've mentioned this i've mentioned this before if you look at everything from blackberry os 4.7 to 7.1 you can barely notice the difference i think that is so glad i think the terminology used version inflation is an excellent description of what's happening here well the browser is you know usable slightly more usable yes you know torch browser very good point you know i will say this um i would like for me and you know i would i would selfishly like to see another company try and do something new with like user interface design on a smartphone because i think that's interesting and i think that blackberry 10 is an interesting mix of a whole lot of concepts and i would love to see if rim could actually pull it off in a usable device that feels compelling um whether or not it succeeds just like just because i'm you know greedy i would like to play around with that um and two like if if i were also being selfish like the scenario i'd be you know that seems most likely to me and that i would be really happy with is if a year from now we're talking about uh installing blackberry messenger on android and ios and windows phone devices and this mess and i messages is you know obviated nobody uses it anymore and we have a full secure instant cross-platform messaging solution that is as robust and compelling as blacker messenger used to be for blackberry users like that you need you need a nap you need a nap so badly deter i can't even tell you that is the most absurd vision i've heard in this entire show bbm is is i i've never understood bbm okay i don't understand the novelty in giving a hexadecimal code to a friend of yours so that he can add to your account in what version seven i when did this happen i i can't remember what version of blackberry messenger they moved on to the hexadecimals i think are still technically there under the hood in some cases it's it's a big mess but we'll have to have kev mitchell come on and explain it all to us but what i'm saying is like sms is expensive and stupid and uh not everybody's using google talk uh nobody i mean what whatsapp group me i message blah blah blah just give me a cross-platform messaging solution that i don't have to pay 25 cents a pop to to the carrier right you know well i i'm tired of i mean waiting for that carriers are very very cognizant of the fact that that business model is going away and i'm sure that they're going to be fighting very hard over the course of the next 18 months to two years to try and keep that source of revenue because at this point at&t and verizon have forced virtually all of their smartphone customers onto these 20 unlimited messaging plans which is just absurd to think about the fact that you are paying 20 a month for something that costs the carriers as close to zero dollars and zero cents per message as a as you can possibly imagine i i'd love to see like an independent audit break down exactly how much one sms costs at&t but it must be in the thousands or tens of thousands of a cent tens of thousands i'm sure if not even less because i mean keep in mind sms's origin is literally they fit the reason it's 160 characters is because they fit it into some sort of header message in in the gsm uh you know uh scheme so it's like it it it began life as a shoehorned uh protocol that wouldn't cost anybody anything to begin with and now we're 20 years on and we're getting charged 20 a month for these things it's completely asinine so i agree with this progress i totally agree that something needs to replace that and it's unfortunate that uh what's what's ended what's ending up happening is we're we're developing these um incompatible fiefdom most notice most notably i message which is ios only um so if we get to the point where there's no viable sms replacement that will make me a very sad individual indeed we're at that point right now i still use sms daily well you know yeah i know but i mean there's no viable replacement is what i'm saying and that's completely frustrating to me yeah no i agree i i message could be that replacement if it were cross platform i want to bring this back to rim actually just for a quick quick second um what i was actually thinking i mean i'm i'm a diter on this i feel like rim could figure out a licensing agreement and just spread bvm out um and figure out again licensing agreements with other companies for its enterprise services and all of those things that was jim boseley's whole idea that he wanted to promote and push months and months ago uh tail end of last year and it's the thing that made well it's because he was turned down in that push that he decided to step down as co-ceo but you know that ship that whatever has sailed by now um but what i also have been thinking about qnx which is the underpinning of blackberry 10 is whoever's fault it is it's taking rim an inordinately long time to code anything with it or on top of it or however you want to put it uh i mean the playbook came out with the qnx based os and it didn't have an email client it didn't have really really really basic functionality i don't think it had a calendar i think that was one of the emissions right it was missing a candidate is that basically limited and hamstrung so and and now again we're taking six months i can tell you for with an absolute guarantee the thing that's taken six months is not hardware right rim in six month time um like if you tell rim from today design me a brand new smartphone it needs to be super high end you have six months it will be a massive push but rim has the resources capabilities the designers to make that happen so delaying things but i still think so i still think so they'll rush it but they can do it um just let me be you know bullish on rim for a second right if for a little bit we can be bullish right but then now we're talking rim is giving itself some 10 months to finish off just the software like the software is the thing holding this thing back and and that's that's a problem like if you can't code on that software fast enough to compete with anybody else even again even if you get the best case scenario and qnx comes out blows us all away in the first quarter of 2013 what does that mean for the future after that if if you're still coding and evolving your os slower than everybody else yeah there there is no there's yeah i struck the perfect tone we can just cut it done now that we're all depressed again um there's no road there's no road to success for rim apart from uh breaking up or selling the company uh i'm absolutely convinced of it and i and i think that uh torres nines is convinced of that too and i think that's why these two banks are in there and he he knows damn well that he can't say anything about that until that process is complete so uh until then any antitrust issues um i think anybody because rim doesn't add any value to anyone but but uh i i i just realized something i just had a moment of brilliance that i wanted to uh to share with you i i think that that heinz actually i'm sure this has probably already been said in somebody's editorial but i'm gonna steal it and use it as my own i i actually don't think that heinz has any intention of shipping black ray 10 ever i think the problem is that uh with the original ship date it bumped up it bumped up against uh a potential decision from the banks or you know a target sale date and he didn't want to get those those two dates mixed up so he pushed black ray 10 out comfortably far enough so that it wouldn't be an issue for the banks coming back and trying to sell the company so the guy that i like a lot of time and money whipping up developers right now like the the idea that they're i mean they're still like it it might be completely insane but so far as i can still tell they're still pushing to get this thing out the door but i mean what chris says though is a very logical scenario like if you want to actually just give yourself room to complete a sale get that stuff sorted out without any interruptions this is exactly what you would do you would kick the blackberry 10 release date so far into the future as to be essentially irrelevant right and they can't say that they're not working on it anymore because that would that would tip their hand so they they need to say oh yeah we're working on it it's going to come in 2013 and then that gives them all the time they need to to do their due diligence on a sale or whatever they're going to do with the company yeah so so the guy that i was saying that i'm live retweeting him he was joking but he could actually turn out to be absolutely right yep that's pretty crazy but yeah i mean if anybody decides to take over rim um i think uh i think you you're the one who made that point chris rim being an ip holding company they would do it for the patents wouldn't they exactly as google did with motorola like you take over the company and just focus on grabbing hold of all those uh wireless patents and then keyboard patents which aren't going to matter so much anymore oh man it's such a sad story such a well the blackberry 10 keyboard looks like i mean like i kind of see what they're trying to do with it but it looks like a mess like i don't want these words popping up all over the keyboard which is how they have it set up right now i think it's great no i think it looks weird um but reaching i mean so okay the autopark keyboard on jellybean is really great it's a it's a huge improvement over what there was there before um but you still have to you know reach up to hit the thing and maybe you could set it on a space but i don't think so um but to just like when you're typing quickly your thumb is naturally going to go to the first letter of the next word that you want to put up there and if that that word is just sitting there just flicking it up like that i think seems really fast and cool um like that impresses me i like that fair enough so fair enough too bad too bad you'll never get to use it on an actual device yeah well oh well um maybe i'll crash a blackberry jam they're on a world tour you know they are they are actually we sent uh we sent dante to the blackberry jam in in new york uh was it a week or two ago and that's where we got our hands on with the keyboard which is up on the site you want to check that out he's got he's got a video posted in some some gallery shots i believe uh so you can get a sense of how that works in the real world but uh yeah i mean it's it's so far until we we get actual hardware assuming we get actual hardware uh ever uh that is it's kind of irrelevant right now uh and nobody i mean like i'm kind of surprised i i gotta admit as a gadget collector i'm a little shocked that there hasn't been a cottage industry forming around the resale of these uh dev alpha devices no one has offered me their dev alpha device for princely some and that that personally upsets me you have a dev alpha device email me they're out there i'm sure they're out there yeah i mean name your price so i'll i'll i'll give you a few bucks for it let me know i'll give you five bucks six bucks yeah whatever yeah literally a few bucks you'll be able to buy yourself lunch with it um no i mean the crazy thing is that chris is never gonna sell these devices he's actually just going to keep them in his collection no it's like this is a commercial venture too that reminds me i need to talk about something amazing that happened uh the other day so uh nokia uh reached out to me um and said hey chris uh we're about to recycle a bunch of old devices uh do you want them and i said yes and so they and so they sent me uh they sent me a 3620 i i think it's a 3620 i'm looking at them over on the table i can't i can't read the model number but it it was the one you know with the crazy circular keypad but but the americanized version that had the the standard numeric keypad instead and that's new in box never been used and then i also have three communicators of the e90 the 9000 which is the original i believe in the 9300 which i think came out around 2001 or 2002 something like that um and i'm gonna try i have all the chargers for them and try to get them working uh and hopefully i'll be able to show them off a little bit more but um it is pretty much the most exciting thing happening in my life right now are these nokias it's pretty special stuff so i'm done i just wanted to share that that anecdote thank you that's a happy positive uh anecdote and we're gonna we're gonna end on that um so thank you let me let me share a future anecdote i'm sorry to interrupt you man come on and and that was way too positive a note to another show on like it's a combo breaker we can't we can't end the show on a happy and positive note about an open delicious old school devices like one of these knockers might even have the original snake on it like imagine that i would actually own one of these ancient knockers just to play snake on if anybody wants to sell me a 5110 with the original snake on it i promise i guarantee you i will break any record you set on that device is that what you're saying you're a snake original snake snake 2 and anything after it forget about it but the original snake yes yeah yeah i would definitely waste it if it was a snake what i was gonna say though um to hopefully turn down the tone i do hope people will be sad about this i'm gonna be missing for the next couple of weeks while i regrow my hair you mean your mustache oh yeah yeah i'll make an effort to grow a mustache i want you to come back i want you to come back with a ben popper style mustache anything anything less than that will be a failure on your an abject failure on your part but i want to make that very clear i don't really want to go and compete with ben popper he is he's rather owning the mustache verge editor position right now i mean that's that's his throne i don't want to compete with him on that one yeah but in any case i'm going to be gone for a couple weeks i shall be in bulgaria i expect real superstars of the mobile industry to replace me um as guests probably ross menna he'll be suitable he's super super yeah that's good ross is good people's we'll have to we'll have to have ross on he's no he can't announce beta so i'll practice i'll work on it can it wait wait so that's not that's not that depressing of a note i mean like you're gonna go away you're gonna get rested yeah yeah yeah so i mean i i think that's actually i think that's a very uh that's a very bright note that's it that's good that's a happy note well you should be unhappy for you guys because you miss me i'm already missing you yeah um same nice you can you can follow us on twitter uh i'm at back lawn chris z power and you should tweet at vlad savov uh your favorite watermelon pictures because apparently he's desperate for them uh we are all at verge and we have got a ton of coverage of google ios we got a bunch of story streams bunch of reviews you should check it all out at the verge.com thanks so much for watching listening we will catch you guys next week all right thanks guys