 Hey, and welcome to the Vergecast for the week of October 8th, 2012. I'm Josh Dapolsky. I'm Nilay Patel. And we have a very special guest with us, 5x5's Dan Benjamin. Hey, how are you doing? Hanging out. Good. How are you? I stopped by, came to New York, and had to come. You're in New York. I am in New York. And now you're on the Vergecast. I'm on the Vergecast. Where else would I want to be? In New York City. Great state of New York. I can think of several great places to be in New York. Number one on my list is right here. Well, that's very nice of you to lie about. Come and do a little show with you guys. Dan, of course, is a well-known and well-loved, well-known and somewhat loved, internet person. You have a personality beyond the internet, though. Would you say that's true? To some degree, yeah. Friends and family feel that you are some kind of personality? Or would you say just like not? They're like, you know, one thing about Dan is no personality off the internet. I think if you hear my shows, if you know me on the internet, that's what I'm like off the air. Now, you're based in Austin now. Austin, Texas. You weren't always in Austin. No, we don't need to even... I want to talk about it. We don't have to. Dan's in Florida. You don't want to talk about it. He doesn't mute when he constantly... I just do. Oh, okay. Because I heard it still in the mic. Well, I think you heard it in reality. I'm just saying this is an audio thing. Here you go. A little bit of the personality of Dan Benjamin too. Dan is controlling us a little bit. How about the Dan Benjamin personality you've been hearing about? I'm used to the headset and we got this ear thing, but it's all right. I just want to say now... I mean, I'm just saying in RE27, I like the PR40. I'd like to say that Dan has been... The treble's way down on the strings. He's a fine man from what I'm told. He's been complaining, I would say, almost nonstop since he got... The lights are too bright. Why does it have to be so bright in here? Nobody wants to see us. The earpiece was dirty. There was actually a microphone. It wasn't adjusted to the right height. He's been asking me if I'm going to shave for the show for about two and a half hours. And then he complained about your cough, not muting your cough. Look, we do things a little differently here. All right. No, it's the New York style. I like it. This is New York style, which is raw and real. Real. This is the real deal. Do you feel that? I'm ready to... By the way, this is the Verge cast where we discuss the week in consumer technology, technology culture, culture, culture, and Dan Benjamin's complaint list. What episode is this? I have no idea. It's the... What's the... Do you know the date already? I said it's the... You said the 50th episode? 50th episode of the Verge cast? Five zero? Five zero. Wow. Give me a for this. Give us a round of applause. I was literally just doing a clap of like... You did a golf clap. I have no idea what I'm doing. Clap. Anyhow, yeah, this is our major 50th episode. I think you can tell we prepared. We're very excited about it. 50 episodes deep. And I feel like we're just getting started. Yeah. Just rubbing it out. Dan, how many episodes have you done of your show? My show? You have multiple shows. Yeah, we've got a lot of shows. What do you consider to be your main show? That's a really good question. The show's right now are really personality based, right? So we've got a handful of different shows that are... I guess each one of them appeals to kind of a slightly different audience with some overlap. So we don't have right now a main show that I could say, oh, listen to this. It's the main show. We got a lot of different shows. What would you say is your... My least favorite show? No, what would you say is your... What's the show that's most raw, that's most out there? Oh, Back to Work with me and Merlin Mann for sure. Yeah. You met Merlin? I've not met him. Yeah. Is it good show if you listen to the show? No, I don't listen to it. You don't listen to any other podcast? No, of course not. Why would you? On the internet. What would you say is the defining characteristic of that show? Merlin Mann would be the defining characteristic. That's it. Yeah. We're helping people. It's a show about helping people. What is the show? Can you just tell me helping people in what way? See, you don't have like an on camera light. So I have to look over here at this TV to know which camera is actually... Oh, you can just look at it. I see now they're flipping it around. Do you need to address the audience? Is that what you're saying? Right now, you guys are trolling you with the switch. Yeah, I'm just saying. Yeah. It's called the trollcast. Do you want to address the audience? Is that what you're trying to do? Go to this one, this one right here. You want to talk to the people. They're laughing and they see they like it. They like that. People are loving that. You look at the camera when you're doing the intro. Sometimes. Yeah. I vacillate between looking at the camera. When I'm addressing the audience... See, but they pay attention where you're looking and they switch it for you. They know that I'm going to be... Well, they have a camera that's all right on me. You see that? That's the JT cam. That's a good one. That's what we call it. Yeah. That's what we call it. Yeah. The GH2. That's very funny. I mean, it's not laugh out loud funny, but... Yeah, no. Nothing. Nothing. Anyhow, we should talk about some news. Yeah. What you got? Nila, you've got topics for us. What do you have? I do. Well, so Eric Schmidt. How's the brightness in here? Yeah. Sorry. Is it okay for you? Schmidt. Schmidt. He's a character within the industry. He's created a total Schmidt store based on his comments yesterday at the Y, 92nd Street Y here in New York. No, that's where he was. I'm not making that up. So first of all, he just opened the door. He said, Apple should have kept our maps. They're clearly better. Is he even speaking on behalf of Google at this point? I mean, he's like a cartoon character. I had another conversation. I took a meeting today. A really rich cartoon character. And the person I took the meeting with was just referring to Schmidt. Who was it? Schmidt was here. I can't tell you. How do we know it happened? It didn't happen. Well, I don't think Nila would lie. Anyway, so then he also said there's a gang of four that consists of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google. Yeah. Notably not including Microsoft. Right. He said, we're all different. We're all competitors. We're all making enormous investments. He said, Microsoft is a deliberate omission from the list and said, although it's a well-run company, they have not brought any state of the art products to market. And that's which at this point to say that about Microsoft is you could say it about the past, right? No. You'd have to ignore Xbox. I mean- But you could say, sure. But they're on the cusp of redefining two enormous platforms. Attempting to redefine. But they're- But can I just say- No, Windows, they are going to redefine Windows. Did he mean in for all time or just like recently? Just recently. I think he's talking about the four movers in the industry right now. Yeah. Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google. And then Microsoft. And ZTE. And ZTE. And then there's Microsoft. Huawei. And I'm saying, and Huawei. And I think when he says it's a deliberate omission, what he's conveniently forgetting to note is that, sure, you might argue that Windows is a bit of a staid product, right? But Microsoft is about to redefine Windows. Which is an enormous move for- I mean, I think this is a PR move on his part. I think he's trying to downplay the... Look, everybody's in a battle right now. There's this battle of press releases where we're about to end October here with a flurry of it's going to be Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. And now there's these rumors about iPad mini and Google is going to do a new Nexus device. And everybody is trying to suck up the air, right? They're trying to like, how can I make people forget about these other products? I feel like this is Google just going like... I mean, they know Microsoft is about to have a big launch. He's tweaking Microsoft. I just feel like, it's also like they're very competitive. They're not competitive in mobile devices with Microsoft, but they're desperately trying to take the office market away from Microsoft. They're doing that. And Microsoft is running ads for Bing right now. Yeah, Google, Bing. What is it called? Bing this out? Bing? Bing? Time to Bing? Bing it up. No, it's like Bing something. Oh, Bing it up. Bing it on. I knew it was like Bing in place of a regular word. This is their chance to sort of grandstand a little bit. And it's like they can finally come out and say, finally, Microsoft isn't in the club anymore. This is their way to do that. No, I mean, Microsoft has been so dominant in PCs. Everybody's relishing this opportunity to go like, they're not where we are. This is we're here and they're here. And that's, hey, cool PC market. Because that's what they're saying. You own 95% of the thing that's dying. It's like you're a dinosaur and I'm a space alien. Yeah, but it doesn't make sense because most people- Did that make sense to you, what I just said? No. No. You're a dinosaur. But you're a dinosaur makes sense. And I'm a predator. And then you can say whatever else. And you're like a rat and you're going to survive the ice age. Who's the rat? Are you calling me a rat? Google's a rat. Oh, Google's a rat. Yeah. It's like Apple is a cockroach. Yeah. Google's a rat. Google's a rat. Google's a dinosaur. Big, all over the planet and about to be wiped out. Yeah. The problem for Google- Coming July 2013. I'm just saying that the problem for Google in that metaphor and the problem for Eric Schmidt to say they haven't brought any innovative products to market- Yeah, Schmidt's problem. Is most people get to Google through a web browser on a Windows PC. Yeah, but it doesn't matter because they know that the thing in the browser is more important than the browser. Or more important than the thing that the browser is. Is that true? The thing inside- If I handed you a Chromebook- Yes. And would you just use it? I mean, if I had nothing else to use, what are my options? No, what I'm just saying- You could have a Chromebook or a piece of paper. If your choice was a Chromebook and like that Lenovo, that orange Lenovo PC that you've, you know what I'm talking about? The orange, the IdeaPad. Oh, the U310. Yeah. Yeah. You're like deep in the U310. I know. I've been researching. Well, you can't buy the orange one anymore. Yeah. They're like out there. Anyhow, go on. You would pick the Lenovo. You would pick the Windows PC or the Lenovo. Why are you answering for me? You didn't give me a chance to answer the question. You don't know what's in my mind. I know what's in your mind. I would pick the Lenovo. He's right about that. And that's still a problem for Google. They have not reached the point. I don't know what that is. They haven't reached the point where their software beyond what's on the web is good enough. No, I get that. I get that. Yeah, but I understand that. But you know, look, you've got Android is extremely strong and mobile. Apple is extremely strong and mobile. Tablets, smartphones. Yeah, Google's tablets are strong. He said on stage, there are going to be more smartphone owners than computer owners pretty soon or there already are. I don't know what the exact quote is. I don't think there are at this point. Anyhow, but the point is he's looking at where are we strong, where are we going to continue to be strong and where are they weak and where can we hit them? I feel like this is, I'm not saying that what he's saying isn't necessarily true. I mean, well, I think he's willfully ignoring the Windows 8 thing that's about to happen. But I also think he's attempting to from- He's trying to derail it in a way. He's trying to derail it. He's trying to like downplay the impact. Like this is just more of the same for Microsoft. This is the same thing that happens whenever there's going to be a big Apple announcement or something like that and you get Amazon Kindle roll something out right before. It's the same thing. He's trying to take the attention away from that. Well, there is a lot of that. That's the kind of the thing where it's like trying to suck the air out of the room with your own news or whatever. But it's also more like a, I think it's like one of those planting the seeds of, that's not that big of a deal. Like, oh, we don't care. We're not worried about- Pay no attention to it. At the end of the day, like Windows 8 is like, I'm kind of like, look, they're going to release Windows 8 devices. The tablet market is, everybody's trying to battle for it. There's no sign that Microsoft will do better than Android has in the tablet space. No sign at all, as far as I can tell. Are you more likely to buy a Windows RT device or a Surface than a, presuming that like- So, wait a minute. You don't think that people that are already entrenched in Windows are going to say, well, there's a Windows device. I don't want that Android nonsense and I don't like Apple. Well, the Windows Pro devices, I mean, the way my understanding is that the Windows Pro devices, the ones that are like actual Windows that run x86, those are going to be like priced more like towards laptop pricing. Like, right? Like 800, 900, 1000. So they're out of reach for those- And then, and then, and then if the other ones are coming at the tablet range, they still do some Windows stuff, but not really. They do like Office and you can't make apps for that. They don't want people making applications for the desktop environment. They only want them making them for Metro. So I mean, the question is like, is that a better, bigger proposition? Like, are people more excited about that than they are about an Android tablet? That's a fair question. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Like how well have the, has the Zoom sold? Yeah. It's a $500, $600 Android tablet. But you know, the only thing they manage to sell is a $200 Android tablet. Yeah. The Kindle Fire and I think some Nexus Evans. Yeah. I don't think they're selling a bunch of anything else. But the thing is that it's only like in this past week that Google put out like guidelines for making good tablet apps and it's only, they've only. You have to remember, sorry, go ahead. No, but I'm saying. Did you ever read anything from the chat? These guys have pretty good comments in there. Oh God. You don't. This is, now that you've acknowledged them, this is good. What are they saying? What did you see in there that you thought was good? Well, just scrolled past and he's got a tiny little font, but. More complaints. I'm just saying like. And I thought, I'm a complainer by the way. So for me to notice complaints. We acknowledge them all the time. I know. All right. No, but what I'm saying is Google never solved, they never gave anybody reason to buy an Android tablet. They just said that like, he's made a number of crazy statements. All TVs will be Google TVs by like summer 2012. You know, what is it like Android tablet? He had some other Android tablet statement that was completely, you know, like I think Schmidt's deal. The fact that his name is Schmidt and we keep referring to him as Schmidt. I would just like to thank him for that present, that gift. Schmidt's strength is that. Schmidt's strength. The sequel to Schmidt's strength. Schmidt's strength is like, oh, so we're doing like the sequel convention is like, is like the Batman movies where they're just getting a new name. Schmidt's strength is that he is, he says crazy things and nobody holds him like accountable for them. Yeah. I think that's why he's not like in a real operational role at Google, right? Yeah. They're like, you can say Eric, you can say whatever you want. Just you can't actually like be in a role where anybody would hold you accountable. Yeah, right. Or we can make legitimate decisions. And that's why he's CEO and then like immediately he's like, we'll be on, we'll all be living on Mars in the next year. Because he might say that. Yeah. You know, anyhow. No, I mean, I just, Google never gave anybody a reason to buy a tablet. They never did. They never said. Well, the Nexus 7. The Nexus 7 runs phone apps. Please stop dissing. And it's cheap. It now has landscape view. Please stop dissing. Look, they'll figure it out. It's a fine, look, it's a fine product and it's at its price point, you know, but unfortunately the iPad mini is coming. Yeah. Or the iPad airs as some people are calling it. Which is, where did that name come from? Nowhere. I haven't heard that one. Yeah. Gruber used it the other day. iPad air. iPad air. He said it all like nonchalantly like the time that while Mossberg was like the iPhone 3G that Apple's about to introduce. And he was on Twitter. He was like, it was a guess. Was it? Yeah, yeah, he said that. I don't think they're going to call it iPad air. I mean, it just seems like a weird. What's your, what's your vote on this? What do you think? You had to put your money on it. I think it's iPad mini. Mini. I don't, I mean, it just seems like a air is like it's the regular thing only smaller. iPad thinner. iPad thinner. Never. No, I don't know. Honestly, maybe mini. I guess they could call it air. I just think it's weird to refer to that product as air and then you're like ultra thin one. Right. Is what? You're not, that's not the air. Yeah. Like you, I guess what I'm saying is when they released the, the third iPad, the new iPad, they really were like, look how thin it is. Yeah. It's like so thin. It's thinner than a phone, right? Right. Thinner than the iPhone. Not the new iPhone, but the previous iPhone, the iPhone 4S. Now it's like you introduced one that's, will this be thinner than that? Yeah. You think it will be? Oh yeah. I think it will be. Thinner than the current iPad. What if it's as thin as an iPod touch? It's pretty thin. Yeah, but I don't, they didn't call that the iPod air. No, and I support that. I don't think they'll call it the air, but what if it's that thin? Yeah, I don't know. It could be. It'll be really thin. Yeah. I have a, you know, I have a thing like thinness. I'm not, I think thinness is like overrated. You're very thin also. I'm not that, well, thank you. Tall. That's weird. You're taking it back. I just, they didn't hear that. Well, we heard it. Go on. I mean, the Nexus 7 is like whatever. The Kindle Fire is like they made a small cheap thing. Is like whatever is not a statement. But no, it's not, you don't buy a Nexus 7 because you're like, oh, this has great apps. You buy a Nexus 7 because it's cheap. It has a web browser. I guess. Or you like Android and you want a tablet. Right. Yeah. I mean, there are people like that. That's why I bought it. No, but that's why I bought a Nexus 7. Yeah. I didn't buy it. Maybe great Gmail experience, great calendar experience. Great Android stuff. Great. You know, I don't know. I read on it. Kindle, great Kindle experience. Great Kindle app. No, it is. It's a good Kindle app. I mean, it's fine. What do you want from it? But that's why, but I enjoy it. Those are the re, right. You know, but Microsoft has to make. You have a Nexus 7, right? I do. Do you use it a lot? I thoroughly enjoy my Nexus 7. Do you use it a lot? Although I go through, yeah. But you have an iPad too. You're not, you can't, we're not fair. Yeah. We have, we have a one. But I go through a progression every day where I come up. And a lot of people come up to me and said, you know, I got this Nexus 7, I don't use it. They come up to you on the street? On the street, they pull me aside. And they're like, walking through New York. They're in a bagel and they'll be like, this Nexus 7, you said it was pretty good, but I don't, you know, and I, the people that I know have talked to it. Do they all have iPads? Some of them have iPads. Some of them do not. Right, because I go through a progression every day where I come home and I read email on my phone. Yeah. And I get frustrated with that. And then you switch to. The Nexus 7, because it has a really good experience. And you get frustrated with that. And then I go to the iPad. Yeah. Because I, because it's. When you want to get something real done, you go to the iPad. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's not that. It's, it's, invariably there are links. That's when you get your MacBook Air out. It's called GoTi. Invariably there are links in an email, like web pages and things I need to look at. Then I go to the iPad. Okay. And then I need to respond to the email. Yes. And then I go to the laptop. And this happens to me every day. I feel that, I feel that both the, the, the, the Nexus 7 and the iPad are, are whenever I have to, like, I kind of now have skipped the step that you're talking about where I'm like, oh, I got to deal with this or like, I got to look at this. Yeah. I'm just like, well, I'm just going to go to the laptop because it's like over there. To me, it's like, ah, I don't want to, oh God. Yeah. Here we are. I'm working. How do we get on the topic of tablets? Because Mike, what basically. I'm going to statement about Schmidt, Schmidt statement. What Google, what he's saying, and I think what Google would love to say is the future is mobile and we have a claim. Mobile first. But, but they, in one, they have a claim in one space on the phone. Well, they have yet to establish that claim. Also in the, in the, on the web. But the, the, but not. What do you think the percentage of mobile search that goes through Google is? Oh, right. 90%. Because of the phone. Yeah. They lost a hundred million maps customers in one day. Yeah. Or like it's, it's because of these phone operators. Do they, or do they make, do they make a bunch of even better maps customers? Think about it. Yeah. I hear what you're saying, but that's, that's like. Just process it. Just do on that for a moment. When they put that app out, we'll see, but, but they don't have a claim. When they put that app out, it'll be like. They have a claim to phones. Unless it totally sucks. Yeah. It'll be like the number one app in the app store. Oh, absolutely. But I'm saying they have a claim to phones. They have not really established that claim to tablets. Yeah. Okay. And I think all of the, all these manufacturers are super eager. But I think that Microsoft actually proves, and you know, we had this, what is it? The Acer, this Acer, not convertible, but like, what is it? A hybrid? The 510 thing? The Windows 8 thing. Yeah. And I think if anything, what that woke me up to was, you know, you feel like, Oh, tablets, we stopped there. Yeah. That's like, we're stopping there. You know, that may be like a small off ramp to like a small town. Yeah. But like, I'm not sure that's the only stop on the highway of innovation. What's happening? No, we have this, this kind of like long running conversation about gadgets and like smart, a smartphone as a gadget is kind of like it's run, it's run a very fast race. And now now we kind of know it's smart. Now it's coughing and wheezing. Right. But you know, like the age of like slider, QWERTY keyboards and like flipping phones and like we've settled on basically this, right? Well, it's how many slider QWERTY phones? Droid 4. Check it out. No, I refuse. I will not check out the Droid 4. You're lost. That's not on the market. I mean, the PC and the tablet, because of Windows 8, I think we're going to see an enormous flurry of form factor. Well, that's the, to me, like, I feel like the, look, I see people on planes all the time with those laptop docs. Yeah. You know, for their iPad. Yeah. Where you're typing with it. I feel like we're not anywhere near what we think is actually the best use for it. I mean, I think I will say this, you know, like, they're making the, like the surface of 16 nine, right? I think that's a weird screen. Like I don't think you'd want to hold this screen in your hands. What is this a 13? No, it's a 15. Well, you definitely would want to hold this thing. But like an 11 inch MacBook Air screen would be awkward. I think even now we're kind of like, Hey, you know, what's weird to hold in your hands is a 10 inch screen. Yeah. I think that's like why people are like even talking about seven inch tablets. It depends. I think this is a very comfortable form factor. I think that where the Kindle sizes. That was the first thing I noticed about the Nexus 7 when I got it was that it's super easy to hold this. It's the perfect format. You can take this thing with you and sometimes I'll be there and say, I don't know if I want to take the iPad. It's a little bulky. With this you chuck this thing in. And I think that's the beauty of it. I think that's part of the reason there's the seven inch thing is happening. And also I'm sure they're going to be like, my guess is 249 is my guess. Yeah. Whatever the price point. They're going to introduce it. 249? 249 is really like a forget about it. Sorry. Who's not going to buy that? Yeah. Poor people. I mean mainly people without extra money later on. I'm talking about listeners in the context of this show. People listening to this show, everybody's going to go buy this. People who ate Apple for some sort of political reason. But they'll probably do something where it's like, look, it's the same size as a Kindle Fire but we've used a smaller bezel so we have a larger screen or whatever kind of fancy stuff that they'll do. But I think that- They're saying in the jackals in the chat room, there's no way they're going to do it less than 300. Jackals. Well, they're saying it because this iPod is 300. People said they were going to sell the iPad for a thousand dollars and they did it for 500. I think they're looking for another blow your mind price point. I think they have to be on this. And how does then you keep holding this up? What is this? This is the new iPod. We've actually had a lot of conversation about this. $299 for this. But so the thing, the important- So then is it a decision between, they're not going to price it lower than this. Why not? Hold on. So this is a whole different product. We've been arguing about, and I think having these conversations and I've kind of come around to the idea that in my mind, I'm like, but then it would be the same price. But it's like, well, does that matter? Because you're not going to go like, well, I want a tablet, but maybe I'll just buy this four inch. So you're saying it's not an either or. You're not saying someone shows up at the Apple store with 300 bucks and now they're going to make a decision between- It's eight inches versus four inches. They don't do the same thing. You don't slide them into your front pocket. One is like you throw in your bag. One is you put in your pocket. I would say the major cost center of this thing is the display. Can I see that by the way? It's great. You're keeping a little- I like this. A little bracelet band thing on it. Jaws is really psyched about that. That thing has like the brand new in-cell touch retina display. I mean, that is the best display Apple can make. Is it the same exact display as the- Same exact display as the phone. That thing is great. Everyone seems to think the smaller- Oh my God, I'm dropping it. The smaller iPad- The kids will love the strap. No, but the smaller iPad will have a much cheaper display, right? It's going to have 10, 24, 7, 68. That's a good reason. No, that's a great point. It's not going to be retina. We know that. Well, I assume- They may find a way to call it retina. I don't know. What would the PPI be on that? It would be 168, same as- No, that's not going to be retina. That's the thing. You want super portable and you want retina, get the iPod touch. If you just want a cheap thing. A cheap thing. Yeah. If you want a retina display- But Apple doesn't make cheap things. Well- Okay, let's talk about this. You don't sponsor breaks or anything? No. Wow, that's cool. Yeah, finally he's happy. Yeah, I know that. I don't know if he's happy. All right, so what is this thing here? It's the iPod Nano. It's a piece. I haven't seen one of these yet. It's the Nano. It's a piece, huh? It's not a piece. I mean, it's- It's a really nice- You're upset because it's not a watch anymore. I'm upset because it's such a- It's got a clock. I do. I am. It's so- This is the best iPod from 2010. Do you have more audio listeners or video listeners, guys? I'm perplexed. We don't think of- We don't split our listeners like that. We think of them all as listeners. Okay, because here's the reason why. There's a lot of people who can't see this if they're just listening. We spend plenty of time doing things that they can't see. Okay, you just have to roll with it. All right, that's cool. But here's my thing is- Because usually I would describe it. What's odd to me about this is that I thought that the square form factor was very successful and popular and people were really into the idea that, like, I could wear it as a watch and it's like super miniature and it's got a touch screen. A lot of companies based their- Here's our beautiful video of it. What is the reasoning? Oh, there you go. Again, like with the four inch screen here. I know the answer to this question. To watch movies? No, no, it's not that. I don't believe there's a soul on the planet watching movies on that. And if there are, I pity them. I am 100% confident the reason they change this thing every two years- It's a playground. No, it's not a playground. It's to juice sales. This thing is a trifle. You buy it for 150 bucks, you throw it in a stocking, you say, I bought you the new iPod Nano. And if you change the way it looks, it's new. I mean, this is the same argument that we've been making with the iPhone. We're getting the whole staff for Christmas. I mean, the holidays. Everybody's getting a mint green- But if you think about the things they took out of that- iPhone touch. From two years ago. Look at this video. Man, our videos are really nice. This makes me want to buy one. Yeah, the Apple should hire you guys to make these things. So here's my thing about it. And I reviewed this. You're right. You're right. So I will say, I guess we're talking about our reviews of these things. Yeah, we're segueing. But so we reviewed the touch. David reviewed the touch. And the touch is like, it's expensive. It's $300. But it's also clearly a spectacular product. It's super thin. It's beautiful. It comes in these colors. It has the same display. There's a video of it. Yeah, they're showing a video of it. Look at that. That's nice. You just hear Johnny Ive talking about it over and over again. No, I mean, the iPod touch. If I had an Android phone and I wanted to play with iOS, the iPod touch is the place to do it. Right? It's a great product. It's just a little bit expensive. This thing is like, the Nano is a product from two or three years ago. It's not the thing that people want. What kind of numbers do they do on these things? How many do they sell? It declines every year, and that's always half the sales. That's the touch. The iPod numbers decline every quarter. And the iPod touch is generally half the sales. So this is a, there are things I really like about the touch, and there are things that I don't like about the touch, like the new touch. There's a little too much going on in the back of it. Yeah, I don't like the camera. There's too many things. There's a camera, there's a flash, there's a little loop, little black thing. There's this antenna, you've got the camera and flash. Everything feels, and then you get the logo, and you can see a little bit of the headphone kind of. I just feel like I wish some of this, I mean, obviously you can't move the camera. Well, if you take out the strap, that little button is like. How do you do this? You just pull it off. I don't think, this is supposed to pop up, man. Yeah, it's popped. It's done. Here, let me see it. It popped? There you go. Ooh. That's cool. It's like a little Apple design flourish that's cool, right? But it's also like. We're only days away from stories of these being snapped off. I mean, because you definitely could. It's like when the Wii first came out and people kept on throwing their remotes through their. Through their TVs and windows, yeah. Were you trying to break it? No. I mean, you're just seeing how much it takes. I mean, if I was, would that be a problem? I know we have to mail this back, but. No, this is nice. What color is the coming? Oh God, a million colors. Green, green, red, black, yellow, yellow, black, white, white, white, silver, silver. What color would you get? Black. It looks awesome in black. I feel like I would get yellow. It's another one of those colors. It's like the Nokia phones. Oh, there we go. Look at that. I think I get the pink. Is that pink in the middle? Yeah, it's pink and I think they do a red one, but it's like the HTC phones where they look best as a set. Ooh, easy. Do you want this? Yeah, here you go. Thank you. Anyhow, okay, we're just, I don't know what we're talking about now. So I want to talk about this for one second. Okay. Because I gave this a pretty. Great. I gave this a solid score. A solid score. Fair review. But a fair review. Yeah. Because the thing about the Nano to me is that the equation for Apple is not just iPod. It's always iPod plus iTunes. And this is like an extension of iTunes. This is like, you made a lot of, your intro is actually really funny in the review where you're just kind of like, it's all about. It's files. And the reason AAC. That's what you do. But like, you know what? You know what I don't do anymore? I don't use iTunes. So when I went home to review this, I had to boot up iTunes and like plug into it and see what files are in my iTunes. And it's like, oh, I stopped listening to music in this way three years ago. I feel like we're broken. Right, but you did that because you're an iPhone owner. And what do you think the percentage of people who buy one of these things? No, but so the problem is not this. That's what I'm saying. The problem is the problem is iTunes. The problem is that Apple's model for distributing music to the world and then putting it on this thing is completely backwards. Yeah, but it's backwards in like five years. Right now it's extremely profitable. I mean, I hear what you're saying. I use RDO and Spotify and I want to just have a subscription service. And we've talked about this like at life. There's a lot of people who are still using iTunes. No, I mean, that's the thing. The majority of people are like, they're seriously pre-ordering the new Britney Spears record right now. And they're like, cannot wait to get that to download. I think so. No, I don't think so. But I know she's doing one, but like they cannot wait to download the MP3s. Yeah, ACS, you know, I think we happen to be in a, in a, what do you, okay. What are you listening to on your iPhone? My iPhone? I mean, I listen to Spotify and then I have like my library and then like, I don't, I, you know, like I enjoy where does your library come from? I get what you're saying. It's files. I understand iTunes, right? No, no, no, no, no. Cloud. Yeah. But he streams you the files. Yeah, but you see, I'm testing him about his library. No, that's it's... Oh, it's up there on that. Yeah. See, I'm old fashioned. I use, I use the heck out of iTunes. This is a, here you go, regular user. It's a heck out of it. That's what I'm saying is that regular people... How much music do you buy? You know, not a ton of it. Might buy an album every week or two. You do that much? That's an extraordinary amount. That's a lot of music. That's like, that's like you're spending, you know, do the math. I don't know. 40 bucks a month. Possible. Times 12. You can do it. 40 times 12. Anybody? Can't do it. Maybe it's less than that. I don't know. Can't do it. 480? It's a bad habit. Doesn't seem like that much money. Over the course of a year. $400 a year on music? Spotify is 10 bucks a month. Maybe it's a little bit less than that. No, I know. It's very affordable. Here's the thing. That's why I use it. I can't imagine buying one of these. It's literally a quarter of the price. Four albums a month. I mean, what? I guess that's how it's done. Maybe it's two. I don't know. You know that Spotify and audio exist though, right? I know. But the point is this. Sometimes you don't have an internet connection. You can sync them to your devices. You can download it on your thing. I don't have to check that out. You're like, I'm going to hit you with it. I'm old fashioned. No, but that's the key. And a lot of the time I'll have an iPod. Why? Why? Because it's small. You can chuck it in your pocket. You don't want a device. You don't want to use anything. You go offline a little bit. You've seen one of these, right? Yeah. You can chuck it in your pocket. It's extremely small in life. These are designed to go in your pocket. Oh, I have it in my pocket right now. The phone, I mean. The phone in my pocket. What do you have, a five? Yes. You like it? It's great. Have you used the maps? I don't like the maps. You don't need scuffing? Yeah. Scuffgate? Oh, God. Everybody has scuffs. Check it out. This is, by the way, our office every morning comes in and everyone has like PTSD stories about scuffs. Look at this. Look at this. This is the last thing. Can I tell you I like the scuffing? Yeah, it's cool. I think this is what happens when you look. Can you get a shot of this? Can you get a shot of this? Look at a beautiful old Leica camera. Oh, God. No, but I mean, it's got a... You want it to have a little character. You know, it's like leather is not cool until it looks beat up. That's why when I buy a leather jacket, I just punch it. You like got to punch it until it's- Do you guys ever burn CDs anymore for portable listening? Burn what? Burn a CD. What Ds? No. You remember this kind of data. Listen, there's a lot of people and their MO is they buy the music, they download it, they make a mix tape essentially as you guys might... You may remember. No, I had all the time. That's a CD and they put it and they listen to that in their car and they get a whole little book of them. Come on. I did that. This is real. Yeah, I did that when I was- I bet you some of these jappals are real. You just get one of those. What you do is you take the CD player out, you get a cassette player and then you get one of those cassettes with the wire that goes to your CD. I used to use one of those in my Honda Civic. There are a lot of people that- Which I love. Me too. In my Honda Civic. What year? What year was your Civic? I think it was the late 80s Civic. I had a 99. 99. That's what I loved. Yeah. Mine got stolen. Which my mother... Let me tell you a quick story. That's a true story. A funny story. Let's hear it. Which is similar but my mother stole it. No, my mother... My air conditioning was broken. I went home to visit my parents and my air conditioning was broken. My mother was very... It was a very hot summer. Yeah. She was very upset. She was like, we have a guy who does... Because they had a Honda. She was like, we have a guy who fixes Hondas. Leave it here. We'll take it to him. We'll get the air conditioning fixed so we want to do this for you. I fought with her. I was like, I don't need the air conditioning. It's not a big deal, whatever. Finally she wore me down and my friend Nick was like, look, just let her keep the things. You'll want to do this for you. I think it'll make her very happy to let her fix the car for you. It's a small thing. You can take a ride with me back to wherever we're going. I don't know. To New York, I guess. So I was like, fine. I left the car there and two days later a landscaper backed his rig into my car and totaled it. Nice. My car was gone forever. Your mom did a nice thing for you though. Yeah. It was wonderful. She convinced me to get a new car. I inherited my sister's 94 Accord. Oh, I like this. This is brown. Brown. Brown. Brown. Is that like off the lot? That color or is that like a repaint? My parents, she was the oldest child. She was the A plus student. She was the good child. She was the good one. She was impossible to live up to. And they were like, we want to get you a car, anything you want. And she picked a brown Ford or Accord because she was the good child. Sensible vehicle. That's the color that they won't pull you over no matter how fast you're going. They're like, I don't want to deal with this brown. She would only go to the speed limit. Keep your speed limit. Keep your speed limit. But she went to the University of Chicago too, which is a bad neighborhood in Chicago. And the car got broken into so many times that by the time I inherited it, the area where the stereo would go was just a blank space. And we just had a stereo in it. And I would just take the stereo and just take it with me. Like an actual, the whole unit. Not just the whole part. Yeah, it was great. Amazing car. It had a button on the shifter that was labeled sport mode. There's nothing about this car. I think in the, and I don't know when this was, but I think in the late nineties, early aughts, Hondas were the most broken into or stolen for sure. Because you could disassemble one of those and have the parts sold in like an hour. Is that right? Yeah. To other Honda. When I finally have the center stack rebuilt, I'm pretty sure I just bought somebody else's stolen center stack. Put it right in there. All right. We should move on from whatever it is that we're supposed to be talking about. Is this what people tune in for to your show? I think, no, I really prefer you didn't. This is 149. You know how much this is all the iPod touch for? 199. The older one. But that's the Delta between. But I'm saying if you're buying this, you should spend the 50 bucks and buy the touch. It's the same storage, the same features. You want to sync it and play files. Do you ever let the guys in the booth talk on the show? They don't even have a mic. They have a mic. They can't talk at all. They can't hear them. Michael's like dying to talk. Michael would love to say something. Michael, you don't even acknowledge. There's like 50 people back in there. Dan Brock. Dan. And they're part of your crew. They're the team. Oh, I just realized. Dan, you brought your, Hattie is your. She's my producer. She's back in there. And she was like making a crazy face and thumbs up in just a second ago. But I realized Hattie is a real name. I accused her of having a fake name. It's a real name. But I just realized that there's a character on the show, Parenthood named Hattie. Is that short? That's short for something. Yes, it is. Not in her case. You have a real name. It's Hattie. What's your real name? No. That's her whole name. Use the microphone. I've seen her license. I think Hattie is short for something. Ask your parents. Can you mic her? Can you put her on the mic? I don't think there's a mic for her. No, there's a mic right there. Put her on the mic. John is shaking his head. By the way, I would like to apologize to the listeners of the Virgcast for the Virgcast existing. We tried, we thought we could do it the right way and this is the best. I got to say the listeners guesses on what Hattie might stand for. Do we have any good guesses? Hateria? No. Why can't they, these guys, why can't they get a mic? Who runs this place? Ray Charles? Harriet Tata? That's rude. Henrietta? Ray Charles, one of the most loved recording artists of our time. I do love Ray Charles. I have an album that I bought on iTunes from Ray Charles. You have a single Ray Charles album. Harriet, is it Harriet? Harriet, yes. No, it's Hattie. That's your real name, Harriet. No, is it with two D's or two T's? Is this what people team up for? Two T's? Two D's? Oh, okay. That is a fake name. That is the Hattie. Hattie? That is like Maddie, but you messed up the first letter. We wrote an M, but they thought it was an H, so I guess that's her name. How do you deal with these a little ear? Why don't you have nice headsets? I prefer this because I think the headsets are gross looking. No, I agree with that, but you monitor really well. We've actually done some broadcasts where we don't use these either. We use the little pal, which I actually prefer. I prefer it on the laptop. Hattie has a mic. Oh, Hattie has a mic? Yeah, it's Hattie. It's really her. Hattie, do you have a middle name? Yes. Hattie Anne. Anne? That's not a real name. That's short for something. Annie? No. Annie, yeah. Hattie Annie. That would be a great name. Anyhow, Hattie, you work with Dan down in Austin? Yes, I do. We should just let her out here. I don't know why. No, it's fine. I like this as a visible person that everybody has to hear. I'm sure our chat room is now freaking out because a female voice has been introduced to it. You have a woman on the show. Woo. We've had women on the show, and they always freak out. It's a little weird. It's how you get ratings. Now, Hattie, when did you start working with Dan? Like a little less common denominator. Hold on. Quiet. I want to get some answers here. That's your audience, man. About two months ago. Okay. And does he complain? How much does he complain in Austin about this? A lot. See, you're going to mic them all the time. They're cracking up. These guys are fun in there. I don't need people. It's a party in here. Yeah, it is a party in there. And so he complains a lot. Would you say like 60%, 70% of the time it's complaining? Not really. I don't know. He's so... Be honest. Be honest. Be honest. But you don't have... Do you have people in your studio who come in? Occasionally, yeah. You mostly do people remote? Most of the guests that we have on the shows are remote people that we bring in with Skype. But we're in there, and sometimes we let other... But it's like for the people who are... This is a really... You've got this great space out there, but this actual recording room is quite... Yeah. Quite cozy. We are... Thank you. Ours is also quite cozy. We are... We don't have these awful lights shining on people. We are moving to a new... Have you announced this publicly yet? I guess I haven't, but I will. 50th show. Time to do it, man. It's our 50th show. I might as well tell everybody. 50 more shows from now. But nobody cares. It's because it's like they're not going to be there. It's not like you can just come in. Will the lights be as bright? Please don't come in, by the way. We've had some unannounced visitors. We prefer that you didn't stop by unannounced. No, we're moving to... We have a new office in Midtown that we're moving to, hopefully in January. Sounds great. With a brand new studio. We're actually on two floors of a building, so we'll have a big floor for editorial and sales and developer guys. You'll be in one... Everybody's going to be in one place, right? And then downstairs, yeah. And then downstairs, we're going to have a big new studio with... We just finalized some of the... We actually met with contractors today. It was very exciting. Very cool. Yeah, it's cool. Anyhow, we'll do a tour and stuff for people and we'll probably... A video tour. A video tour. Not like you're going to have people who can come in, sign in, and take a tour. We're so far off of what could even be described as a topic right now that I don't know what's happening. I frankly am a little upset and confused. All right. Well, at some point, you guys said, I need to leave. Yeah, you have to leave. All right. Yeah. Is this... Well, since you brought it up, maybe now's the time. Now would be a good time. I know these lights are bothering you, Dan. No, they're very bright. I know they're too bright for you. What else you got on here? Anything good? Anything else that Dan can talk about? Dan, what do you have? Oh, you reversed your trackpad. Yeah, because I'm a normal human being. Oh, you use the reverse trackpad? I just try to roll with it, man. Dan, any topics you'd like to discuss? Let's see if you got anything. The rest of the show is kind of boring. Any personal topics you'd like... Trollin', man. I'm just saying. Any personal, any beefs you want to share, talk about? No, man. I'm just happy to be here with you guys. Happy to be here in New York. Any guests you have coming up that we should know about? When are you coming on the show, Josh? When are you inviting me? I've invited you. I was on your show. I know, but the new one... How many times can I come on? You can come on every week. When would you like me to be on? Every Friday at noon. Every Friday at noon. Mm-hmm. What kind of money can I... What kind of compensation can I expect for that? I would think it would be a great way to promote your shows. You'd be wrong. I've heard this game before. I don't want your audience, frankly. You don't want mine. I don't know what they'll bring. You don't want mine. I don't know. Actually, what I don't want is your nice, clean, normal audience to meet the Verge audience. You guys have... Judging by this chat room, you've got a pretty good audience. You know when a kid goes to... Any tech news today, the guy says? You know when a... You don't involve any of these great people. You go work in here. You know when a juvenile delinquent goes to... They go to Juvie and they learn how to blow up a car in Juvie. Wasn't Sherlock Penn in that movie? That's what'll happen if the... Bad Streets, I think it was called. If five by five listeners come over to the Verge, they'll be like... Yeah. They'll de-dos your next show is what'll happen. Trust me. There's a lot of overlap, I think. Maybe. You get these great people in the chat room. I like how you're so excited about all the other people that are not on the show. No, you're gonna include them. You're like, look at these great people here. These great people over here. What's wrong with us, Dan? By the way, on cue, they should use 3D920s to film this. That's a good idea, actually. We have two more topics. That's it? Yeah. Wasn't Ross gonna come on? Yeah, let him... You wanna switch out? Yeah, I'll switch out. I don't wanna send... All right, listen, thanks very much for having me. Hey, thank you for coming. This is really fun. This is a wonderful New York welcome. This was a surprise. I just found out as I was on my way over here that you were gonna be joining us. Yeah, I didn't know I was gonna be here. And I think my exact words were, what the fuck? Yeah, can you get him out of there before I get here? This is an outrage. But we'll bleep that in post. Yeah, well, I apologize for being here. No, no, no, it's good. It's fine. I mean, all of a sudden, you're like real nice. All of a sudden, now I'm nice? Now you're nice. Oh, now I'm nice. Now that you're leaving. Well, I'm leaving. Complaints all the way through. Complaints all the way through. No, this is fine. This is fine. All the good shows. All the good shows. Please get off. And read his book, Dan Benjamin's How to Do a Podcast. How to Do a Podcast. All you want. Look, they're saying, please go. And the other guy says, don't go. Welcome to our chat room. You should write a book, How to Do a Podcast. I just gave you a free idea. I know. In fact, 5by5.tv. Afterdarkslash75, where I discuss such a book. Go check it out. Wow, really? Seriously? That fast? That's a URL? Yeah, committed to memory. You're like, I have a new podcast about this book. Yes. That I haven't written yet. That is right. How many shows do you have? Personally or total on the network? Both. Hattie, how many do I do? Do you know? On the mic. On the mic. Six. On the mic. I think personally, six. Six. You're going to say. And then. Six or seven. You could have said that in the first place. And then total. Total is like 20. 18 or 20 on the network. 18 or 20. Yeah, we're always adding stuff, tweaking stuff. Yeah. Changing it up. 5by5.tv. Thanks. What do you think will be the next show you add? I don't want to give it up. I'm not taking it off right now. No. Can you give me an idea of what it would be? Don't take that off. I'm not taking it off. Give me an idea. It's just annoying on the internet. Is it going to be more about celebrity? Celebrity culture? It'll be celebrity culture. It'll be a show about Hollywood celebrity and the woes of being multi-millionaire. What if you're in France? French celebrities? French celebrities. We'll translate it. New York celebrities. No, no. Are you planning new shows? Yes, absolutely. When can we expect it? Very soon. Will it be shows that I will want to tune into? I don't know. Keep in mind, I currently don't tune into any shows. Okay. Do you listen to any podcasts other than this one? I'm going to say yes. I'm going to say this would be right up your alley. Do I listen to other podcasts? Yeah. Do you listen to anything? Did you listen to the interview that I did with you on the pipeline? Do we have a number? Do we have an episode here? Do we know what number I was on the pipeline? They're Googling. I think it was a late one. I think it was in the- Like in the evening. It was late at night. What does that mean? You finally did it. You finally were on the... Took forever. What is the story behind that? I'm very busy. I don't know. Anyhow, I would love- Look at that picture. What's that? That's awesome. Is that you? Check it out. That is weird. That does... Yeah. I mean, you look like such- Wait, hold on. I can't hear the guy. A D bag. It was pipeline 33. Number 33. So five by five that gives us pipeline 33. Is that Michael? 33 is... That was Michael. 33. Michael's been waiting to get on that mic this whole time. I was in the mine. 33 is a mystical number. That's the secret number on the rolling rock bottles. 33 is the age that... It's an important age, I think. Can anybody tell me the mystical meanings of the number 33 in the chat? In the chat? I'll let you guys get back to your- All right, Dan. Dan, thank you. While we figure out what the mystical meaning of 33 is. All right. Do you want me to wait out there or should I get out? By the way, I would love to come back and let's- It would be great to have- Have Hattie- Everyone- Hattie and Michael are in the same room right now, so you could probably- You hear this, guys. You're going to set this up, right? You could probably figure it out. All right. No promises. Literally, your people are meeting his people. No promises, but I'd love to come on. I would say that's a promise. It's a loose promise. I got to be on Jimmy Fallon now. All right, guys. I'll talk to you later. Have a good one. Wow. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Real troll exit right there. Really trolled his way right off the set. Ross. Now that he's out of earshot, I never liked that guy. It was terrible. I really didn't care for him. I didn't care for him on the internet and I like him even less in person. Yeah. No, he's great. Dan, that was very nice to join us. Very nice of him to join us. Indeed. And frankly, nice of us to allow him to join us when you think about it. Ross. Okay, Ross Miller is getting in here for the final 15 minutes. Yeah. How long have we been doing this? 55 minutes. What time do you have? 5.55. I'm a minute off. Yeah. That's not that worrying. No, it's fine. For an old watch? How you doing, buddy? Hey, y'all. Ross Miller. I feel absolutely terrible knocking off Dan Benjamin. Can we address something just for a second? I want you to... Yes, I'm using natural scrolling. I want you to take a vision quest with me. Get a shot of Ross up. Can we get a shot of Ross? Okay. Now just imagine for a second that he's very pale and that this is a sheer shirt. That's his flesh underneath there. Just imagine. I just think about it. I wish we just had some nipples. Let the record be sure that you're thinking of me fifth element style. What's my Leloo Dallas outfit to you? I like you're like, I'm just going to name drop a few characters from fifth element. Like it's no big deal. You don't know. That's fine. Fifth element is actually a pretty bad movie. Can we all agree? It's a pretty great movie. It's actually fairly terrible. We can all agree. It's an amazing movie. I mean, it's like a real... What year was fifth element made? Like 1998? Dude, it's from the future. There's no time. 1997. It has defined our generation and for years to come it will. Define a generation of sad people wearing sheer shirts with stripes on them. It's awesome. I would actually say that was more of a Freddy Krueger. Flesh fleshy Krueger. So like if Freddy Krueger used the flesh of his victims. I mean, I look at this show. It is Krueger. It's a Krueger. 97 was fifth element. Yeah. Okay. But I look at this and I think... Go ahead. Tell me a... Say a movie and I'll tell you a year. It was out. Oh God. Matrix. It's a mad... 99. It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world. 1968. 67. That's probably 66. Is this the game we're playing? Is this what we're doing for the last 15 minutes? Wait, wait. What year did you say? The first one I said was 69, but it's actually the thing. It's 68, but I can't remember. No, it's actually 63. You lose, sir. You lose. Oh no. In my mind, the three looks a lot like an eight. You're done. Oh really? There's one more. And the fact that I even know it's in the 60s is commendable. That's the standard now? That's commendable? No. Okay, fine. When was Failsafe released? I don't even know what Failsafe is. What is Failsafe? You mean Failsafe? Failsafe is based on a book I believe called Failsafe, which is the same thing that Doctor Strangelove is based on, but it's like a serious version kind of of it. It's really good. I think it was released in 1958. I could be wrong. Could be 59. This is my thing. 58 or 59? I think it's 50. 64. No. Right off. Well, it's in the same range. It's commendable. It's within a decade. Commendable. Anyhow. I got them mostly right. You know what? The important thing is we all learned about a new film. Failsafe. No, it is a great movie then. You should see it. Who's the star of it? Jack Lemmon? Walter Matthau. Close enough. The other grumpy old man. Very close though. You got to admit. Is Jack Lemmon in the film at all? I don't think so. Really? Frank Overton, Walter Matthau, Henry Fonda, Dan- Jack Lemmon. There's a party going on in there. What's going on in there? Are you leaving? We're leaving. All right. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. I'm leaving. All right. Bye. It's great meeting you. Bye Dan. Sorry to bump you. That's his fault. Hattie, ask your parents about the name. I will. Because I think it's a real problem. All right. Be nice to these guys in the back. I don't think that's a good idea. Get out. All right. He slammed the door. Dan Benjamin. See, he really did kind of slam it. Yeah. There's one more thing to talk about. Yes. And it's a topic we talk about every week. The Nexus. Oh, yes. Big rumors on the Nexus. Yeah. I have to say rumors that truly disappoint me. Oh, yeah. So the rumors are that LG is making the next Nexus phone or a Nexus phone. There's pictures all over the place now. We don't know. But there are pictures of a phone which looks on the front, on the face, kind of like a Galaxy Nexus. And on the back, it looks like a disco Barbie or something. I don't really know what you call it. This is Steve McQueen's more fan point era. I don't mind the weird pattern on the back. What I mind is everything else about the phone. I think the shape of it is ugly. It looks like it's using cheap plastic garbage. I actually hope this is not. I hope this is like a device but not the device. If this is the flagship, if this is the best that Google, if this is Google's A game by doing this device, come on, guys. I thought you brought up an interesting point actually on Twitter. You mentioned that it says with Google on the branding. That's not what the Nexus phones do. So the original G1, somebody pointed out to me, says with Google on the back. But that was before they even had this concept of Android phones as these flagship phones. Do you want to wipe that down? That was in Dan's. Actually, Olivia wiped it down for me. So this should be good to go. This is not Dan's earpiece as far as I can tell. The phrase Olivia wiped it down for me doesn't sound polite. I'm just going to risk it. If this is the last time you see this ear, well, you know. Do we say Dan's earpiece? Hey, remember that Virgcast? It was the last time we saw Ross's ear. It's just hanging out. He Van Gode right after the Virgcast. Is Van Gode a verb? I'm just saying, we just went through this with the iPhone. You know, it's like hearing Apple fanboys say it wasn't it, it wasn't it, it wasn't it, and then it was it. If Apple can't hold it down, I don't think LG can hold it down. Well, let me offer something. Multiple sites are showing me this. Well, actually, you first. Let me just suggest something to you. Here's the thing. Nobody's checking out LG's production lines and nobody's checking out Samsung's production lines and the scrutiny is, there's no, not anywhere near the scrutiny that Apple has on their products. Like, you know, so I feel like there's, so it's possible to keep a secret in some ways maybe even easier than Apple because there isn't this intense scrutiny. I agree. Hold on, wait. May I finish? No. By the way, is the vice presidential debate on tonight? Nine o'clock Eastern. Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Oh my God. Anyhow, I was just thinking of what it would look like in my mind's eye. My brain pissed. Two white men not saying anything? No, they're going to be saying something and it's going to be crazy. Okay. What was I saying? Oh, the other thing is that it is possible that this is one of, we've heard there are going to be multiple devices. I'm not trying to like be an apologist because like this very well could be the Nexus phone, but I do think the with Google thing is interesting. It's one of two, one of two things makes this factoid interesting. One it's either for some reason, Google is changing the way it addresses these phones as like a product, like with Google versus Google as a Nexus thing. If this is a Nexus phone and it's with Google, that to me is highly suggested that there will be other with Google phones that will be part of it. Didn't they do this once before with the whole with Google, Google experience, Google products? Yeah, that was when they first launched Android. Okay, right. So this is my- But nothing about- This is part of my- Nothing about this brand, I mean, it also says not for sale in giant letters on it. They could change the branding. No, I know, but this is, well, but it's odd that with Google will be on there at all. So my feeling is like it could mean that they're changing, if this is the Nexus, they're changing the way the Nexus program works. Right. Or alternately, this is not the Nexus. But here's the other thing. Two things are possible. What is that? This is the front. I mean, there are pictures now of it next to an iPhone. Here's the thing, here's why Google can keep these secrets. This thing is out there and it's running Jelly Bean. And no other- Here's the question. Look at the size of the, why is there so much room on the sides of the icons in the dock? Can anybody tell me? Doesn't that seem odd to you? How many are in yours? Maybe you should have one more icon in there. No. How many icons are there? Five? Yeah. This is like the dirty area of Android secrets. Well, four in the home button. Maybe it's the same. That's the same? That's totally the same. No, but that's what I'm saying. Isn't that odd? If you were making the Nexus phone, would it have like, well, when you'd be like, well, Jelly Bean's gonna be perfect. Oh, there we go. That looks weird to me. Something's weird about this. The screen's wider. Is it? You're saying it's wider than this? Yeah. Why would it be wider than this? Can you get the square phone? Can anybody tell me why this? It's a phone. Who knows? Switch to me. Switching to me now. I mean like- Great job on switching. I'm just saying LG does produce- Why would you wanna make it wider than this? God, this looks actually kind of small in my hand. It doesn't look like a big phone, does it? You have a big head. Give me your, give me that iPod touch. Here, I got my iPhone. Give me your iPhone. Can I get, can you unlock this? By the way, I broke down and purchased- I like how I'm just like standing here like this. Oh, I turn this off here. Yeah, I thought it was fine. That's fine. It's not gonna be quite the same. Here, I'm gonna be that person in the picture. Yeah. See, these don't look crazy different to me. They totally do. A little bit. One looks skinny. That is not in focus. Hold that by your head. Don't make me do it. I hate you. Hey, do you wanna do it with this thing? No, I'm over this. It doesn't matter. Who cares? You know what, guys? It's not about what's on the outside, except it is. No, but here's the thing. And it matters. No, but here's the thing. Look, you're looking at the With Google logo and I'm looking at an LG phone that's running stock jelly beans. So what? Anything can run stock jelly bean. But here's the thing. Nothing does. We are making something good. What are you talking about? I mean, why would they keep the exact same basic design language as the Galaxy Nexus? Why would they make... They had LG make a phone that looked... They had LG that made a phone that looked like Samsung's phone? You're asking why LG made something that looks like Samsung. Oh, I don't think LG's... Look, they have the Optimus 4X or whatever it's called, the 4X HD or whatever the stupid name of the product is. But it looks like... It's actually a pretty nice looking phone. It's a square. They're saying this is based on the Optimus G or whatever it is. There's two reasons. Well, I give it an Optimus F. Google has been designing these phones for however long and they all look like that, right? No. And Nexus looks like that. They're both Samsung products. That's fine. Who said they have to all look the same, like a cheap piece of plastic? Sure, but Google's drive... If your argument is Google's driving the design, then they've landed on this design. If your argument is that LG is driving the design, LG tends to make things that look like Samsung products. I don't think this phone is hideously ugly. The Galaxy Nexus, when it came out... When it came out, this was a much classier, thinner variation on the plastic-y Android phone. Sure. I actually thought... And I went back and looked at my review. I say it's one of the nicest phones on the market, and it was at the time, and it was nicer than most of the other Android phones that were out there. And it was really thin and whatever. But this to me is so iterative of the other... It's so... I mean, I don't know. It's one of these two things. Here, I want to answer your question earlier about why you think... Somebody's calling you. Since Apple can't keep a secret. I got an email. Here you go. Someone's giving you an email. It's an important email. Forget it. We'll wait. Just leave this on us. No, so the thing is like everyone, when Apple makes a phone, they know what factors to look at. They know who's making the hardware. When Google makes the Nexus device, we're all assuming it's LG. At what point did LG... It's always Foxconn factory. Everyone... Foxconn makes everything. That's actually not true, but... But what point did we start assuming LG was the Nexus device maker for the next round? This was just a rumor. We heard... This rumor has been around. Well, the Wall Street Journal actually reported in, of course, this report, I don't know how true or not it is, but they reported there were going to be multiple Nexus devices, multiple phones. Yeah. Five. And a couple of tablets. Five devices. My hope is that this is one of multiple. Are there side shots now? Yeah. This thing is out. This is insane. That's what I'm saying. This device is out. Whatever this is. This is happening. LG does not put out stock Android devices. Controlled leak. They never have. And I don't know why they don't show now. Controlled leak. Sure. Whatever. But here's... I don't know. If this is not a Nexus, LG has so much marketing potential for this phone now because everyone assumed it was. Yeah. It's just so... I mean... It's so boring. It's... Yeah. It's so boring. Like, it's so, so boring. What do you expect the next Nexus phone to be? Stock Android. I don't know. I just saw a bunch of really beautiful Windows phone devices introduced. The new HTC and the new Lumia's look... I would take a... They look awesome. It's gorgeous. Yeah. The One X is better looking than this phone. Yeah. And also, I'd rather have something made of polycarbonate than these cheap pieces of plastic thrown together. Well... It's also like a dev unit. We don't... Or whatever. Yeah. I mean, whatever the back... No, it's sparkly. By the way, if the back is glass, it'd be really funny. Yeah. Like, all things considered, like, oh, cool. You did glass back because everybody loved those on the iPhone. They never broke. It's sparkly. It's made of sparkles. It'd be cool if it lit up. Maybe it lights up. Yeah. You know what this looks like? This looks like a club bathroom. Yes. Yes, it does. It looks like... It looks like one of those weird, like, a karaoke place. There's, like, some weird light wall or something, and it's like that material. It's not good. It's like some Google is passed out in, like, a nightclub in Seoul, and it's like, we should make it out of that. A game officially not brought. Yeah. Well... All right. Any other topics? That's it. That's it. Really? I mean, you want to... We can keep hanging out. No? Was there anything we missed? Any big stuff? No. No, the Note 2, which I actually think is kind of an interesting device. I think... Okay. Hear me out. Yeah. If it was not running this custom Samsung software, and, you know, there were, like, just apps that really took advantage of it, like, paper, that took advantage of a device with a stylus, or there was, like, paper for Android for, like, a five-inch phone. What is it, 5.5 inches or something? It's enormous. Yeah. And if you don't think about it necessarily like a phone, or you're not using it like a phone, you know, you're like, this is my... You know, I'm using it with a Bluetooth headset, or, you know, it's my in-between kind of... I don't know. I think something cool about the stylus. Like that... Not for, like, using the device. That's the old stylus idea. But for doing things with a stylus, like drawing or editing something or writing. This is what I went through when I reviewed the Note 10.1. Yeah. And then... Well, that was a... That was, like, not a good device. Yeah. But it's... That shift, the contextual shift between using the stylus and then using the device with your finger is like a... Well, but this stylus does both. It does... No, it doesn't... It's an improved stylus. An improved screen. Stylus combo. I don't know, man. Like, there's a... Somebody... It's a smank. They're smanging it. You're smaking it. Smash Bang Fusion. It's a Smash Bang Fusion is what I'm saying. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I don't know, man. Like, I... Does anybody know what we're... Is that an obscure reference or do people know what we're talking about? You know, I actually talked to someone who, like, knows their Atlanta comedy group who made Smang. Oh, that's not a real thing? No, yeah. Turquoise Cheap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's just a joke. Yeah, it's all a joke. Oh. Plain Flossing, it's obviously not real... Then I've lost all... I've lost all excitement about it. Yeah. I thought, like, smanging was a thing. Well, it... No. It can be whatever you want. I was... I was into the concept of a Smash Bang Fusion. It is a thing. Yeah. Let me smang it, girl. Oh, my God. And that's the Verge cast for the week of October 8th, 2012. There's one thing we could have talked about. We could still... If you bring it up now, we're talking about it. Well, we ran... Is it Smang? Is there a Smash Bang Fusion? Well, no. I think Ben ran a really interesting report this week on clout. Clout. And the thing is, like, basically, we were trying to think of headlines for this, and all I could come up with is, like, the apocalypse is here, everyone hates this thing, but it's going to happen, whether or not you want it to happen. And I... I don't know, man. It's... Your clout score must be greater than 35 to read this. Yeah. But there are, like, people, like, companies who will only interview candidates for jobs who have a certain clout score. Well, I think what's most... And that is, like, actually becoming... I think what's most amazing about clout is they have yet to accurately demonstrate that the clout score is... Has any... Has any... Like, I think that my clout score and Kim Kardashian's are, like, relatively close. Yeah. Can you find out? I think that I'm, like, 76 and she's, like, 79 or something, which is, like... I understand we're in different professions, but if you're just going by the score number, which most people do... Oh, you're higher. You're, like, 83. What? Yeah. Where did you see that? I just remembered. I was looking at it. I don't think I'm 83. You were clout stalking? I'm not... You're clout stalking me? Well, we ran the report, then I looked at my clout score. Does anybody know what my clout score is? Michael? Just look it up. Who can get my clout score fastest? Yeah, so I'm a 78 and then you're an 83. Joanna's... What's Kim Kardashian? Can I do this? Yeah. Today is the day that Josh made me look up Kim Kardashian on... Oh, yeah, because you never look up Kim Kardashian on anything. 88. 88. Kanye West is 92. Okay, so whatever. So you're saying I'm within 9... Kanye is 84. I just want to be clear, folks. From a clout perspective, I'm within 9 points of Kanye West and I'm very... What am I, 5 points away from Kim Kardashian? Yeah. I mean, I think that I rest my case. The show's over. I'm leaving. Goodbye, Virg. I'll see you in Hollywood where I'll be wearing a diamond robe. Yeah. By the way, I can give Kim Kardashian plus K. Do not give her plus K? On celebrities, photography, and money. Oh, yeah. There's got to be another option. Give her a plus... On money....Vandalism. Can you do that? Can you make up? I have no idea how to use this service. I can't believe... I can't believe Kanye and I are in such a rarefied space together. Yeezy, as I like to call him, in casual conversation. Good friend of mine. I don't even know... Great collaborator. I'm closing this window. And great at Twitter. You know, he deleted a lot of his tweets recently. Really? He had a Twitter meltdown. All right, that's the Virg cast for this week. But this clout article is really good and you guys should read it. What I was going to say is there's no scientific data or any data whatsoever that I know of that says clout does... Now, look, I'm not saying that maybe it does have... Maybe there is a real meaning to that number. No. But I think any service that puts me and Kanye West in spinning distance is there's something that's gone horribly right with the world and I'm very excited about it. They're all asking about the car. We should tell them what's going on with the car. The car that we're giving away. Oh, my God. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We're going to give a winner and we were going to do an announce post. I think we're planning for tomorrow. I hope so. We're going to do an announce post. We have a winner. A person won the car who made a GIF and it is an awesome GIF. I don't want to... We're not going to say here, are we? No. We're not going to tell you now. We'll do a post tomorrow. Michael's like shaking his head like furiously. No? Michael's just trying to get on the mic again. Yeah, you're just trying to get up on the mic. You really want to. Well, I can't hear you. What, are you trying to say something? I have nothing to say. That's not even what you sound like. You just sound like Buffalo Bill, the serial killer from... Is that his name, Buffalo Bill? He puts the lotion on his... No, no, no. Take the mic away from him. Take that mic away. And Dan Benjamin wonders why we don't allow them access to the mic in there. We're about to bust out some rush right here. I can feel it. Some animals in there and in a cage where they should be. That's the Vergecast for this week. If you'd like to get in touch with us, you can email us at vergecast at the verge.com. You can leave a comment on the post when it goes up or you can contact us on Twitter, The Verge is at Verge. I'm Joshua Topolsky. I'm Joshua Topolsky on Twitter. Neelai is Reckless. Yep. Ross is Ono Roscoe. Dan is Dan Benjamin. Dan is Dan Benjamin. He's not a standing member of the Verge team, but he is on Twitter. Michael Shane is Michael B. Shane. That's his real middle initial from what I understand. And I think that's it. We'll be back next week, of course. Until then, I hope that you enjoy a safe and secure weekend in your homes. Rock and roll. Paul. Paul. Paul.