 Oh, hello. And welcome to The Vergecast. Was my audio on there? I don't think it was. Hi. And welcome to The Vergecast for the week of December 9th, 2013. I'm Josh Topolsky. I'm Paul Miller. I'm Neelay Patel. And I'm Dieter Bohn. Whoa. That's right. We've stepped into the bone zone. We brought you into the bone zone. Or have we brought the bone zone into The Vergecast to the viewer? Into you. Into you. The bone zone has been brought into you. And I think Paul, you know, you're supposed to be the good person. The good person? I'm Paul Miller. The good person. The good person. A new spinoff from The Good Wife on CES. That's a good like three episode series canceled by ABC. The good person. The good person. He can't do wrong. It's like, no, where's the conflict? This is always helping people. Okay. Anyhow, this is The Vergecast where we discuss things. What's the point of me even telling you? You know why you're here. You know what we're doing. You know what we're going to do to you. Yeah. So just, just sit back. You know what you're going to get. No, I said, you know what we're going to do to you. It's like a half threat. You know what you're going to get. You know what you're going to get. And you know how we're going to do it. You're asking for it. You're asking for it and we're giving it to you because you tuned into The Vergecast. Anyhow, we got a lot to talk about. Exciting week. We just had a very exciting big day. Yeah. We did some stuff. Other people did stuff. Paul Miller did only good all day. What is going on? You know what? I kind of like my hair. It's pretty good. It's good. Very nice today. All right, Deer, tell me about Instagram. Let's just start with the big news. There's an Instagram event today. Yes. I paid half attention to it. I believe that it's evidence of Instagram losing its way, but you disagree. Tell me. It's the exact opposite. All right. Tell me what happened. So Instagram had an event and they, Kevin's sister got up and looked very sad and was very quiet. And I work for my Mark Zuckerberg now. It was the terrible decision that I made. And so it's Instagram direct. So you can send pictures privately to up to 15 people at a time and they get the picture in a little inbox and then they can tap on the picture and they can like the picture and then they can comment on the picture. I feel like we're on every service is now there's been this talk where Twitter is going to do a break off their direct messages as a separate app. And you know, Facebook has its messaging app. It's a separate app. But I feel like that's a little different, but this one in direct messaging, I feel like we're just slowly moving towards email. Yeah. You can, you can send a message to anyone you want. You can include pictures or text. Like you can include several other people on the message. Like, wow, you made email for your app. Like that's what you can't reply with the picture. Right. Anyway. Right. No, but that's the atomic unit of Instagram is the photo. So when you get a picture, you reply and the video, the photo or the 15 second video, I think it's pretty obvious what this is, right? This is pretty unabashedly a response to the dominance of Snapchat. So they, they, they stole like unabashedly the interface for sending from Snapchat. It's the same list of people. The best interface. That's not a total trash. You can't send a group. It's like, look, Snapchat is like, no, that's great. And then the, I want to send it to some people like Snapchat is designed to be used by drunk people. And then they made an interface that is impossible for drunk people. You're literally screaming about this. I mean, it's a free app. You don't have to use. I love it. So here's the thing. This is Instagram losing their way because it's not really a messaging platform. I don't want to eat too much into something that Ellis Hamburger, who was at the event with me today has to say about it, but they didn't say it's like messaging. You don't message with Instagram. You sent a photo to a smaller number of people. Would you call that a message? Well, I think, I think, but it's 15, but it's a maximum of 15. It's ultimately supposed to be like, I think this is ultimately sort of geared towards one to one or like you want to share with your closest friend. It's Snapchat, but without the trip to the cat skills stayed in a cabin with some friends. We almost got murdered by serial killer. No, you didn't. That didn't happen. But we, but like, I did not Instagram anything. My, my phone was dead most of the time, but everybody else somehow had reception. And I think probably that trip generated like, like 5,000 photos on Instagram and every, all of our mutual friends that didn't go to the cabin trip just hated us afterwards. Like, please stop reminding us that you're in the cat skills, having a great time and it snowed and you made a fire. You have weird friends. And are we in that group? Well, if that was like a private little Instagram group, that would be great. That makes sense. That's a perfect sort of scenario. But here's a question. Let me just ask you, those photos for those people each time and they'll improve it. What's your question? I mean, why would you want to share photos of where you are with people who are there with you in real time? Great point. Can you turn my earpiece down a little bit? I'm just like, I think of Instagram is like, here's where I am. I'm communicating to people who aren't, there wasn't half that did that very loud flock made by the people who made bump before they got bought and it did not do everything. Remember the color is now what color did. No color was, I don't know what that was. You can take pictures all together and then like check out all the pictures from the same scene. I think we kind of, I mean, that's what we used to do with like, like Facebook. I remember like five years ago you'd go to a party and then you get home and after everybody had time to plug in their digital cameras and download everything. Your own Facebook is awesome. When everyone I knew was a girl in college. Now Facebook is full of everyone I know having babies and I can't wait for this babies to grow up. Yeah. So let me say this about the Instagram direct is it's really Instagram me. Okay. Which you mean because it's house within the Instagram identity. They actually, they could have done like a straight private group messaging app thing, but they didn't do that. They made something that feels like Instagram and I don't know if it's going to succeed, but at least they managed to make it like Instagram. They kept the atomic unit. What you share here, the big secret to why Twitter was successful was they looked at what their users were doing on Twitter and they built that into the service. So they were like, users are retweeting and they like built retweets in the service, right? Like users are like, they're, um, they're at replying to each other. So they built at replies in the service. Nothing about what Instagram just did has anything to do with how users want users are, you know what people want to do? You know, I want to do, they want to regret, regret. They want to take pictures in a grid, which I see all the time. Like, wow, that's great. I wish I knew how to do like the four up. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Do you have an app to do that? There's an app that does it for everybody. There's a thousand apps to do it. Yeah. But then you gotta go like process it. Look, you could take a picture of a Paul Bunyan and then you can send it to your Paul Bunyan. This is a terrible UI by the way, with the letters on the side, red flannel shirt. I'm just saying huge guy. That's a huge, not the proper Brainerd Paul. And he doesn't have his ox. Garbage Paul Bunyan. Well, what are you going to do? Look, the proper Paul Bunyan, these guys are being held. You know what? I'm just seeing a young people having fun. You know what? What about let's see some old people in a old folks home in a wheelchair. Guys, we're eating ice cream. Yeah. I mean, this is great. And trash garbage. I don't understand this. Like I don't walk on the hood of my car. I get that is a piece of cars. That is a gremlin though. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's a gremlin that's made for a gram. Can I get a confirmation? Anyhow, so listen, I think this is, this is a, I do, I will agree with Dieter. Uh, uh, I don't want it's Snapchat that doesn't go away. I get what they're doing, but also, but also there is this element to what Paul is saying. I think that you do have like this. Here you are camping with your friends. Paul. It's all about like, yeah, buddies. Yeah. Buddies hanging out. And I do think it feels very, I'll say what it feels like is a very Facebook kind of feature owned by Facebook. That's what I'm saying. I mean, you're gonna complain about people that don't know what they want to be. Complain about Facebook and Twitter. No, I think I told her nose. Oh my God. We're going to talk about the Twitter. Yeah. We can. Should we talk about it now? Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. Whatever. Speaking of app updates. I'm just going to update real quick. No, it's on Android. But you don't know. There's a Mac update too, right? Oh, I don't know. I don't use the Mac app. So I wouldn't know anything about it. Well, I'm about to find out. I use, what do you mean? I use tweet bot for Twitter. What do you, what do you, on the Mac? I use tweet bot. What do you mean? It's great. Yeah. It was $20. Yeah. It was insane. It was well, but for 20 bucks you get a lot if you care about Twitter, which I do deeply, which is why I was so disappointed. My God. Segway, which is why I was so deeply disappointed when I updated my Twitter app on my Android phone only to discover, by the way, uh, Android, big market, not a small market. Android? Big market. Yeah. A lot of users and believe it or not, a lot of them using the Twitter app. Uh, what they've redesigned the Twitter app and they have removed the notification, like the me, the at replies and the somebody favorited or somebody retweeted you. They have removed that completely from the main navigation. No, it's there. No, it's been removed from the core navigation. It's now a part of a secondary navigation, which encompasses your direct messages, like some other weird thing. Add a friend, add a friend, find a friend. And now this, so the notifications, it's not a tab. It's a new panel that you can't, like you can't do basic things that you could do in the app. Like on the app, you could normally hit the, if you're in the notification tab, you can hit it and it'll scroll all the way up to the top, like auto scrolls to the top. You can now no longer do that. You have to hand scroll all the way up. It's completely abstracted from your timelines, like completely abstracted from your flow of information. And uh, and it sucks to use. It sucks so bad that I took the timeout, which I've never done before ever. And I gave this a one star review on the play store and just said like this, this update is garbage because it completely ruins the way the app works. If you care about people talking to you, it makes it that that's like a secondary activity that like you're not interested in like a secondary activity. I suspect by the way that for most Twitter users that is a secondary. Well, I don't know, but I can tell you that that on the iOS app, they'd use a completely different UI combination where they kept that in the main navigation. This update is what, 24 hours old. I'm using Twitter less already. I'm avoiding it. I mean, they switched to Instagram. What they've, what they've replaced it with is a home discover and activity. You can figure out how to write a message on that stuff on the iOS app, which by the way, the iOS app does it right. They've got the tabs at the bottom and you can just tap on them. There's a super here's thing. There's a really simple solution for this. Let me show you what's going on here. Here's what I wanted. Here's it is a mess. It's got you have these two things of navigation. Like I don't know if you guys can see this. The bell is your notifications, but like you can't swipe between here. It used to be here, right? So you were always to Jordan. Okay. Here is that a main navigation. It's just sitting there at the top. I consider that to be secondary navigation in this app because it's the main navigation, the main navigation of these three columns. I want you to walk us through this from step one. Can I get my brightness down, John? Yeah. Let me, let me quickly just change the brightness here for you. Uh, hold on a sec. Let's all, well, but he wants me to bring it down so that it's a, is this better for you, John? Is that more, is that, does that play better on screen? Okay. So, so here you have, you hear, you have your main navigation. This is your timeline with all the people you follow and then discover now discover. I don't know what discover is, but I can tell you what it feels like. The garbage, what it feels like to me is a pile of bullshit. Yeah. It feels like a complete useless pile of garbage that they're trying to foist on me. Discover it. They're trying to like, please, please increase engagement. Yeah. It's like, it's like, Oh, um, this guy, can I interrupt? Can I just interrupt the entire verge cast for one minute? You go to your phone call. I get this phone call three times a day. It's, it's, it's from, it's, it's for hello. We are calling regarding an important business matter for Dwayne Peel. Dwayne Peel. Dwayne Peel. Turn that off. Dwayne Peel. If you're out there, it's just if you are Dwayne, press one, but I'm never Dwayne. Dwayne Peel. If you are out there, you need to address this important business matter. Okay. So look, so look, so then there's discover, which is right back into discover, which, which I guess this is stuff Twitter things I'm going to like like these cool trending topics up here, including the sponsored, sponsored training topic. Football's coming by the way, with no apostrophe. What that means is football's the object coming, right? Like they're here, they like they're on their way. When you search for verge 50 right now, the sponsored tweet, uh, for some reason it's from the AARP. Okay. That's amazing. By the way, this is the same UI in the audience. And then, and then, and then my third column, thank God they put something useful in activity, which is more shit. Yeah. Vague like stuff that Twitter decided I wanted to see in some organization they thought I wanted to see. And then up here, there's some, there's a bell. That's my, oh, my app replies. Great. Now look, I'm taking my regular navigation has disappeared from the app. There is no columns. The columns are gone. Okay. Oh, let me go back here to this. Then there's this, oh, it's my direct message. You can't see it, but the next one's direct messages. So I don't even want you to look at that. Then there's this plus add a friend. You know, often I add somebody on Twitter, like once every two weeks. So the search. Yeah. And then this secondary menu, I guess what's the third, it's the third menu where I have my account management tools, my overflow menu. And, and, and what's your, what's your, what's your phone's big enough, Josh, you can hold. Here's all they have to do to fix this. Let me, let me, let me long press on the discover tab and just say, show, discover, show notifications, show whatever. Let me choose what's on the second tab. I will show if you put the camera, I will show you exactly. Mr. Mr. Cristolo Dick. Can I call you Dick? Hey, Dick, let's call you Dick. This is an Android phone. They're bigger than iPhones. Don't put the navigation that we need up here at the top and make them tiny. Just do what you did on the iPhone. Yeah. Literally here. Literally fine. Here's your opportunity to not have to like workshop both of these. I know you're desperate. You're completely desperate to increase engagement from new users on Twitter and trying to get them to follow more people. If I had to be cynical, that's what I would say. You don't have to be cynical. That's the truth. And I know that you think that people on Android are like dumb newbies who don't understand how to use Twitter. So you've got to like throw this crap in their face, but you don't. And if you really feel like you must give us an option to get the other UI because the way you've killed the third party app ecosystem, there's like, I can't get the features that I need from Twitter. I mean, there's the reason I had to spend $20 on tweet. The reason I had to spend $20 on tweet bot, by the way, on that point, the third party app ecosystem, like the reason tweet bot is $20 because they basically want to keep it, the numbers of people trying to use it down because they can't like off people for their app. It's like, I don't know. I know we're not important. I know we're just like, I got reviewers of technology and influencers and early adopters. I know that's not important to Twitter anymore, but let's just call it, let's just call what it is. The apps badly designed, like whether or not you guys think it's increasing engagement, it is like a bad flow to use the app. It just doesn't feel natural. So I got a tip for you guys for, for Android users out here, out there, but this is the LG flex by the way. It's very exciting. So what in first person shooters, you there's the typical like two thumb stick arrangement and then you use this thumb to like hit the X and a button and stuff like that. But there's also something called the claw grip where you hook, hook this index finger over the top. You use this finger as your, as your trigger finger. So that way you've got this free to hit the face buttons and you still have your thumb always on the thumb stick. So I'm just saying, if you got your buttons across the top, you use the claw grip, you get into the claw grip and you're just switching through those things. I'll be honest with you. I'm less upset about the buttons across the top than I am about the, thank you for the demonstration of the claw grip. I'm less worried about the buttons at the top than I am about like the complete failure of like making a sensible UI. You know what the word discover reminds me of? Multimedia PC or just the general buzzword. The compact discover. Yeah. Yeah. It's the compact discover. It's just like, so it's, it's this big idea. Twitter made the compact of red. It's funny because here's the thing, Twitter, at the same time they did all this other crap, they added like photos and direct messages, two days before Instagram and they added this like timeline and swipey thing on the iPhone app. By the way, automatic app updates on the iPhone combined with iOS 7 is such like a nightmare of waking up and seeing that an app is radically changed overnight. That's the problem with automatic updates is that you, like if we lived in a world where app where changes were not like simply feature creep and people trying to like monetize their crap better and were actually made for users, like that would be okay. But in a world where it is just like endless iterations to try to figure out how to scam your users into looking at ads, um, like, because that's what Twitter is doing. Make no mistake about it. They want more users looking at more ads, full stop. And the way they're doing it is by they're taking the things that you value out of your direct line of fire and putting garbage in it. So here's my cynical thing. It's highly, highly deceptive. And this is, it's super cynical, but it's, um, if you're Twitter and you're desperately trying to get regular people to engage with Twitter more, you say to yourself, well, look at our usage stats on Android. It's a different demographic. All those low end Android phones, uh, will make this app dumber so that people can open it and like Twitter is doing shit for them without them asking them to do it. And that's why the apps are diverging. And that's ridiculous. This is an important contrast between the way Instagram is approaching this and then like Twitter and Facebook, just the, I know the Instagram is Facebook, but just that like Instagram is saying, we know how you already want to use this. Here's also another way to use this. No, that was my whole argument. No, no, that's correct. But they're not doing the thing. You called it. Like the spot on. Guys, don't, don't agree so angrily. Yeah, but the difference is like Instagram isn't giving you what you want. Twitter is actively taking it away. They're trying to, they're trying to read instead of giving you another random feature that might actually blow it or whatever, but they're trying to reflow how you use it. To your point about the, you know, all these low end phones and you know, there's a bigger audience or whatever. Like I actually find that like a lot of our uses of things tend to bubble up from the mainstream, not from like the, you know, the elite or whatever. Yeah. And like, so the idea that like as more people get it, like the idea that you'd have to dumb it down for them because I actually feel like a lot of Twitter's realest problem, but like, like my mom signs up for Twitter and she has to go and follow a hundred interesting people. And that's why the suggested users list was so powerful at the beginning. Like they're, they're in a weird world where you can't use Twitter without doing a bunch of stuff. But I think if you look back at the suggested user list, I think you would find that there was a lot of, it was a lot of, there were a lot of, there's a lot of garbage on there that people ultimately didn't like find utility in. And the things that obviously they found utility in like CNN breaking news or whatever was always going to be the thing that people gravitated towards as like, Oh, I need to follow that. I'm not sure it helped as much as like, well, I don't know that you're giving it much credit, but I'm not sure it helped at all. No, but I'm saying that they've always had this problem where to use Twitter, you have to set it up. Right. And that set up stuff is a problem. It's a classic Twitter problem. It's like I signed up for Twitter and like, I don't know what to do. And it's like, well, you got to use Twitter for like a couple months. By the way, can I read you the trending topics? Set up process on people that are already set up. Sponsored. That's true. Sponsored football's coming football coming. No football. Oh, it is coming. Football is coming. Football is coming or football is coming. Here's the thing. It's like week 14 of the football season. Football has arrived, promoted by NFL. Next up hashtag pray to end abortion. Oh yeah, that's good. Squarely in my interests. And then second one, the third one. Sorry. I G d m. Yeah. What is that? Instagram dm. Oh my God. Instagram dm is my third training topic. So mission accomplished Twitter. You got me talking about a competing service. Um, this is just the worst. I just want to say it just the worst. What was it? What's the five words tech nightmare? Five times. I was like yesterday's trend. That's all. I just, why is like what the people I follow favorite and retweet given more priority than, uh, my notifications and my at replies. Like the thing is we are all very egotistical people. We want to know when people talk to us, but nobody talks like I don't think regular people use Twitter the way we do. How often like regular people look at their own profile pages all the time. Everybody knows that that's why it's one of the first options on Facebook. It's why it's a big option on Instagram and it's a very highly used option on Twitter. They've buried it here. I mean, I'm literally saying that the same thing applies to your notifications. Like people would like that. I mean, I could even go back to Instagram direct. Like when I send you a picture, what do I want? I want you to say nice picture. That's why Instagram. That's why I never do it. Powerful. I'm literally, I'm literally like missed entirely what people want out of a Twitter service. I mean, I'm looking at things that people I know have favorited. That's what the disc, this is what the discover tab is. You know what? I'm interested in finding things to favorite, not necessarily like somebody else's favorites. Like that's not how I think about Twitter, but that's the whole point of favorites for complaining about this is my most retweeted tweet ever. Six course and use it to heavily. All right. I'm perfect. We have to move on. We've been bitching about Twitter and Instagram for a long time now. I'm not bitching about Instagram. I love their changes and I can't wait to use them full time as my only, um, yeah. Snapchat doesn't disappear. I'm happy to say that I'll continue to put more time and effort into my Instagram communications thanks to Twitter's garbage that they've dumped on me. What we need is I think every app needs its own direct messaging platforms. We need, we need an, a company, a separate app for the direct messaging so that each one has a companion app. Right? Yeah. Companion app. Right. So it's Twitter and Twitter DM as separate apps. And then Instagram DM as separate apps. Facebook, Facebook, DM. And Facebook poke. Poke is separate. My god. So Snapchat super DM, which is a dis it just, you don't even see it. It just sends you a text description of what was in the DM to DM, which it integrates the app to just what about a DM that would, that would aggregate all of your DMS into a single stream. It's great. I love it. You know, there is, okay, moving on the verge 50. I just wish my DMS had BCC. Speaking of things we love, speaking of things we love the verge 50 we launched the verge 50 today. Here it is. Uh, we spent a lot of time and a lot of energy and we built, we have, uh, these beautiful illustrations done. Uh, we built a ranked by the way, in case you're wondering a ranked list of the 50 people that we think are really important right now that are doing interesting things that are changing things that are, uh, lists by the way, not invented by Buzzfeed lists. I think this is something I learned today is that modern, the modern media consumer believes that there are only listicles, which is like a Buzzfeed list of the 20 most amazing photos you'll ever see. Um, lists actually predate what it's interesting. I did a little research today and discovered that making numbered lists of things, it turns out predate a Buzzfeed and Upworthy. Yeah. Uh, I don't even know if Upworthy does listicles, but I believe that they do, uh, in my heart of hearts. Uh, uh, this is not a listicle because crack.com, this is a massive, this is a massively, uh, uh, time consuming editorial list that we made and it is numbered and it is ranked. Um, but it's also, you know, researched and we had art commissioned for it and we spent an enormous amount of time. Our product team built this amazing responsive app basically and look at it on a phone and uh, and uh, you know, the goal here was for us to say, here's the people that we think are really interested in and really have really, um, moved, moved the ball forward in one way or another. Kanye West, by the way, extremely controversial, extremely controversial. How could that be controversial? There's no other controversy as far as, he's a 16, six 15. There's never been a moment where I felt, uh, more disconnected from some of our commenters. Then almost killed the computer, then seen almost then seen the, the, the kind of like weird feedback about like, how can you put Kanye on this list? It's like, how could you not put Kanye on the list? Like I get that he's obnoxious. I get that he's annoying. I know, you know, even though he's the Steve Jobs of everything, uh, of downtown, well, but also of other things. We have a clip. Um, we do. Yeah. It's a Kanye West talking to sway. Oh yeah. Can we, but if you guys in there investing in the arts, y'all want to invest in this school in Brazil, y'all want to go to Africa. I'm standing up and I'm telling you, I am Warhol. I am the number one most impactful artists of our generation. I am Shakespeare in the flesh. Walt Disney, Nike, Google. Now who's going to be the Medici family and stand up and let me create more or do you want to marginalize me till I'm out of my moment or why don't you empower yourself and don't need them and do it yourself? Take a few steps back to go. You ain't got the answers, man. You ain't got the answers. You ain't got the answers. You ain't got the answers sway. I've been doing this morning. You ain't got the answers. You ain't got the answers. You ain't been doing education. That's what it does. It doesn't have the answers. We replaced our entire show, but just Connie West. Can one of us just be called sway for the rest of the answers? You ain't got the answers. You ain't got the answers. Listen, he doesn't sway. Doesn't have the answer. Of all the people I look, Sway's a nice guy. I'm sure he's a lovely man, but of all the people who might have the answers, he's been like V Jane for 25 years. Like he's that hat has never left his head. I don't think he has to be a little upset. I will say that shit is crazy. By the way, that is why he's on the ver. Like just here's the thing. He is the Shakespeare of describing himself as Shakespeare. He is the Steve Jobs of making like descriptions of himself as Steve Jobs. Like he's the most unbelievable seller of Kanye West that has ever existed. So good. But here's the thing. Kanye, obviously wildly obnoxious, clearly out of control, like egotistical, but and this is the, but, and this is why he's on the verge 50. He's also kind of an incredible artist. Like he is kind of his, his, his music is, is like so genre defined and so weird and so smart and so out there. Like you can say like the lyrics are shitty. Sometimes you can say, I don't like, I'm not feeling what he's doing on his new record, which is very dark and very harsh, but it's really hard to look at it and not go, this is really different. This is something special. Like no one's making stuff like this. And his whole deal is just like, no one's doing what he's doing. And like a lot of the stuff he did, the installations around the new record and the way he's been performing the performances he's doing and how he's like running stage shows, the whole thing is just, it is wildly creative and really interesting. And I get the sense that it does really come from him. So you can, you can knock him as a being an obnoxious guy, but like some of our greatest, I mean, Steve Jobs was, you know, you read the book about Steve Jobs and it's like, man, he sucked to be around. Like he was not a nice guy. He was egotistical. He was temperamental. He was said crazy things all the time. You know, like he's going to go thermonuclear on Google because they, cause the Android is a stolen, you know, whatever. And like, it's just, you know, people, people at that level are insane. Yeah. They're weird people. I think I think is interesting is somehow he set himself up to be like impossible to ignore. And there's a lot of weird out there pushing boundaries, you know, maybe even like expanding, you know, the world of, you know, like weird art out there that you can really just not care about for your whole life. Can't ignore Kanye. You can't ignore the Shakespeare of our generation. He's Warhol. He's Andy Warhol, Shakespeare jobs. Yeah. Um, and I, and I know my favorite one is the one he described himself with Steve Jobs of downtown. It's incredible that that clip I've never seen that clip actually. Amazing. Incredible. You ain't got the answers. So you ain't got the answers. Poor Sway. Sway is like calm down. It's like, dude, he's not going to calm down. Kanye is like, he's stuck in a moment. He's just, you know, like this ride. But, but, but beyond Kanye, there's a lot of people on this list that I think are really interesting. And I, I really, you know, not just because I'd like you to look at pages on the verge, but also because we put poured a lot of effort and time and care into talking about thinking about who is on this list, talking about them, trying to talk about what, why we think they're important, why you should think they're, you know, if not think they're important, at least look at them and say, I need to keep my eye on that. And there are, it's like a discover feature and there are, look, and there are people here that are obvious. There are people here that are not obvious. And I think that's part of the list is that like some of the things that have happened this year and I think these people who will change what's happening next year and the years beyond, some of them are like, yeah, obviously that Elon Musk, I think is an obvious one. So the Elon Musk one I think is interesting because you know, there's a poll associated with this for people to vote for how we should have ranked the top 10 and Musk is dominating the poll. Like it is such a far and away. I've gotten, I've gotten like some messages from friends about the Kanye pick, which I think again, hilarious. It's a controversial, I've got some messages about some of the other ordering and I've seen some of that stuff. Not one person has disputed that Elon Musk. Oh, people in our comments have disputed the Elon Musk. Really? Yes. I haven't been reading the comments. But what I will say is, what I will say is, is, uh, people are like Snowden should be number one. Well, here's the thing. Like in my, in the equation of like, Snowden did one thing that's really, really important, you know, like it's going to have him, it has already had impact. Snowden may disappear. It doesn't necessarily have a second act. He doesn't necessarily have a second act. And what he did was not, um, it wasn't an original act. It was something that has been done historically for throughout history, which is whistleblowing or revealing state secrets, you know, whistleblowing on revealing state secrets. And we still don't know what the fallout of that is going to be completely, but there's no question. He's been a major, a prime mover in terms of what's happened this year. Um, Glenn Greenwald, who is in our top 10, I think to me he, he deserves, um, in some ways more credit because he hasn't just done this, taken this one thing and let it sit there. You know, he has been, he's turned this into a mission to, to get this news out there and to inform the populace of what is going on. And I think, so when you think about, and then when you think about, so how does Elon Musk rank against those guys? Like, well, they're very different places, but when I think about the longterm, when I think about where we're going and when I think about like what the verge embodies and what we all think about every day and talk about every day, Elon Musk at this moment feels to me like the hope for like a brighter tomorrow where, and like, and he was really actualizing a lot of that stuff and making it real. And so to me, it just felt like it was hard to imagine a person who seems as exciting and impressive at this moment. Uh, other than Elon Musk, I think if you just had the list of his achievements already, he's a strong contender for number one, but you just get the feeling he's going to have more. Well, he's going to have more. And like, I think, feel like he's just getting started, like the stuff he's just now starting to get a little bit of foothold and doing big, big things. I think, um, you know, it's interesting like time just did their man of the year and or person of the year and it's the Pope. Uh, clearly everybody, not everybody is like, yeah, the Pope's the person of the year. You know, there's always controversy when you make any list or when you say someone is especially a ranked list. And that by the way was, you know, we definitely, I knew going into this and I think we even talked about it that there would be, uh, people outrage, you know, when you say anybody's better than it's and they're not better. This is just like our ranking of where we feel like they sit in the, in the hierarchy of importance right now at this, at this moment and moving forward, which is why Johnny Ive is 12. A couple of people I really liked were, were not notch and Tavi. Cause I feel like you love Tavi. I haven't said, yeah. Uh, I mean, you know, I feel like both of them, like a lot of the people on these lists, like, you know, if you read the Elon Musk bio, it's like frigging billions of billions of dollars selling his first company to was a HP or no, some company. No, it's first, first company. It's first, first company. But it's just, there's a lot of these people are like, you're an early founder of a huge company or you know, you got stock options. At some point you like hit this awesome ramp and you had millions of dollars and then you started doing really impressive, interesting things. And I think that there's something about both of them that not only have they done really awesome things on their own, you know, like obviously Minecraft and style rookie or whatever it's called. I think there's something about their like method and ethos of creation that has like really inspired a lot of other people. I know you see a lot of self-made, it feels like, well, but you see a lot of game developers. I feel like indie game developers kind of approach how they experiment with games differently because that's all he does. Apparently now not just like frigging just hangs around and tries to hack together weird little tech demo. Yeah. I mean, I think not just is he seems so obviously to be, he had to be part of the top 10 because uh, I mean, Minecraft is crazy. Like when you think about the, the, the arc of Minecraft, it's bizarre, right? I mean, it started as this super duper nerdy and still is to this day, 100% as nerdy as it ever was. This incredibly nerdy does not fit in with our current aesthetic of video games is not fitting with the current, like the flavor of video games, which is like really violent and sprawling and action and all that stuff. And it's like, not only did it, was it successful, but it's become like a, a monstrous success. One that I, and where it's successful is interesting to me that children are really into Minecraft. And they're like world building and yeah, yeah. So trade run dread trade trade run dread are the head of product at Vox. His son is like heavy into Minecraft and like they hack stuff together in Minecraft and they're building stuff together. And you know, he's been to diverge craft and is like, you know, Whoa, this is awesome. And it's really into it. They're selling Minecraft like dolls and stuff at Walmart. Yeah. Walmart. And it's like, yeah, oh yeah. This is the thing about Minecraft. It's like super duper mainstream has over overtaken, like smart kids are all over Minecraft. Like that's what I've noticed. And I feel like it's actually really encouraging because what Minecraft is all about is making things and building, like discovering things, building things, figuring out ways to make things out of nothing essentially. And I think like if that's a lesson we're teaching kids right now through a video game, like it's a pretty awesome lesson that you can build anything you want if you like learn the skills to make it. I had the most, and I like directly grateful to notch for being able to have this experience. But while I was living in Colorado with my, my brother's kids and my sister-in-law, while he was deployed, we started a Minecraft server and like me and my six year old niece and my four year old nephew, he was sitting on my lap watching me play. We're like built this little house and my brother came on the server and like, we built this house for you. And like, then we made a lot of, yeah, we hung out on in this world. And like, and that was the cool thing is that we've, you know, like notch allowed us to create so that we have a world that we've made and the kids want to visit it. It's so awesome. I mean, it's so awesome. And it's not, and it feels like it's growing. It doesn't feel the kind of trend where it's like propped up by hype or advertising or marketing feels like extremely grassroots. Like I was blown away when I started to notice how much this had penetrated like the mainstream and how, how many kids were involved in it and, and interested in it on a really deep level. And, and we're thinking about it and talking about it. Legos 2.0. I mean, it's, but that's the thing and how awesome were Legos for us as kids. Oh, they're still pretty great. Well, no, I think those are obviously great, but, but think about taking that to a, to a virtual realm and saying like anything is possible here. I just feel like it's incredible. There's a better that like go from like regular Legos to Technics was like a huge leap and like you either made that nerdy leap or you didn't, but it seems like there's an easier ramp up in Minecraft to start doing cool things. And I think it's also like you look at it in comparison to something like Angry Birds, which we all think of as a big success for indie gaming. But this is, feels like the most impressive thing that has ever come out of indie gaming in the sense that it isn't just a cool distraction, it isn't just a fun game to play on the train. It is a like a lifestyle and a way of thinking that has changed. I think it's changing like kids and adults for the better. And it's exciting. I got to start playing more of it. You really do. I mean, it's actually very time consuming. That's the thing is like once you get hooked, you're sort of hooked. That's fine. Anyhow, so this list is, there's a lot of people in this list. There's so many people to talk about and all 50 people on this list are all 50 matter. And by the way, there are so many more that we did not, that did not make the top 50 cut. So if we had a 200 or a 500 and they all are impressive and matter and interesting. And so it was actually really hard to make some of these decisions. And we went through many, many iterations of paring down and moving around and just trying to figure out who was really the key, who are the key people. This list does not say, this is not every person who you should care about. These are the top 50 that we care about and we think you should take a look. We've been watching, we will watch that you, we think you should take a look at and think about. I encourage you to check it out because we, we put a lot of energy and time and thought into this and unlike a lot of other places that do make listicles or do make slide shows, we have endeavored, we endeavor to never make stuff that is deceptive, that is feels like we're just asking for page views or we want you to like, you know, flip through this so you get to see ads. Like there are some ads on this. It's sponsored by Samsung who loves to advertise with us, which I'm not complaining about. And if you scroll down for each, each person on the list, there's the top, their top 10 fashion mistakes. But, but, but, uh, what I'm, what I'm saying is, is, is we actually made this wanting to do it as a paginated like experience. Like this is not, this is not designed it. And this is not to gain people. This is like, we didn't have to do it this way. We could have done it a hundred different ways and we thought this was a cool way to do it. And, uh, we think that frankly, like when you are sparingly used, numbered ranked lists, like there's actually a lot of power to those and there's a meaning to them and there is power and meaning to this. And we're going to do this every year. And I suspect that when we do it next year, uh, it will be bigger and, and batter. Uh, and hopefully I'd love to do an event where we can invite all these people and invite other people to like, you know, have drinks and party party, the list party. And, uh, and so anyhow, so this is the first year we're very excited about it. And then we're going to invite the 21 introverted behaviors that feel just like you. Yes. Is that an actual headline somewhere? That's definitely a BuzzFeed headline that I've been sent. So I have a segue. So number four on our list, uh, Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify. Yes. And actually Josh, as you were sitting down, uh, you told me that you were, you were quitting. So Spotify got Led Zeppelin, which is a coup, major coup. And they also launched a free streaming service in iOS. I literally like not even a week ago, like less than a week ago, bought the whole Led Zeppelin was looking for where Led Zeppelin was on streaming services. And they're not there. Can we just listen to some Zeppelin while we talk about that? Um, I don't think that legally speaking, I would talk about anybody have it. Everybody, everybody sing your favorite Led Zeppelin put on everybody put on their favorite Led Zeppelin song while you're listening to this at home. But, uh, but here's the thing I'm, I think I'm leaving RDO. Yeah, I think, uh, the winner, I pay for both subscribe to pay for both and I pay for Google and nine times out of 10 lately when I'm looking for something obscure, I find it on Spotify and I just feel like their momentum has, has basically stopped. Like the, the hook for me is that RDO had a better interface, but when I can't find the music I'm looking for, like that's it. Like you, that's the sole purpose of your service. It sucks cause RDO does have so much going for it. Well, and the way the way, I mean, the thing is, is like, cause I spent that year with off the internet, I like really got out of touch with like music and it's taken me a long time to just kind of get back in the flow and like new things and stuff like that. And you know, my carefully curated list of people I follow on RDO are pretty much my entire gateway to new music and interesting music and cool music. And that's, I tried, I like Spotify is like the fact that they store stuff on your computer, like makes the streaming work better when you have like a bad internet connection. But almost everything else about RDO is so much better. Spotify has what appears to be a better like technical backend. I can't really tell, but it appears to be that way. They've got way more scale. They've got way more scale. Except for their search. They've got their searches like, okay. You get a bunch of like, like cover, cover. They have a lot of stuff. Like they are engaging the prioritizer search. They've got a better exclusives, but they have the worst, one of the worst. The app ecosystem is great. Like the fact that you can plug in Pitchfork and just like whatever their best new music is. But that's on the desktop. So that's the thing. You know how I want to spend my Sunday afternoons is like with my iPad reading Pitchfork, air playing it to my stereo. And that I can't do it right. Like Pitchfork is an app on Spotify that works at the desktop. But like why do I want that in this experience? There's no mobile. It needs to be a mobile version. Yeah. I just don't know why they haven't gotten that. I love the player here instead on Artea. On Artea, this is great. No, and I want a collections view. I want to know what's on my phone. I have to say though, since I've been using Sonos a lot in the house, like it's gotten less of like, frankly I'm dealing, I'm grappling with their interface. And so it's like you lose a lot, but you also gain a lot in terms of like where you can play music. But, but I think the thing that kills it for me on with Spotify is like, why not just give me, just give me a button that's like add to my, like I don't get starring. It basically does the thing of adding to my collection and then off saving it for offline. If you have that turned on, you can't search or sort it. It's just a mess. Why not just give me, they have a lot, your library. Just let me add things into that that are, and then make them look different. Give them like a slightly different color so that I know that those are like not on my computer. Yeah, no, they did. John says they announced it last December. They announced all this stuff last December. But it hasn't been, it hasn't happened. It hasn't rolled out and it's like not in the festival. Here's what Spotify needs to do. Buy RDO, take its interface, stick it on top of Spotify. Add direct messaging features. Add Spotify direct so you can do, oh, they have direct messaging. I get messages. This is another thing I hate about Spotify is that people send me messages on Spotify. Yo, check out this track. And it's like, listen, I, you're a wonderful person. We're strangers. We never met. Please don't recommend music to me. Like I'm going to just find it on my own. Although to the two people who just recently messaged me, that's not a personal attack on you. You can continue to send me suggestions. I just won't probably won't listen to them. The thing that drives me bonkers about Spotify is this new, like that you can stream in one way for free on, and on tablets and desktop and a different way on phones. And it's, I'm sure it has to do with licensing, but here's like, this is not a troll. This is a genuine question. What about phablets? I think those are considered phones. Well, okay. So if I have a 6.5 inch device, you're a loser. I'm a loser. So if I have this LGG flex, I'm sitting here. I'm flexing it. I mean, this should count as a tablet, right? Why? It's a phone. It's a big stupid phone. Take the earpiece out. Oh look, dude, here's the deciding factor. Can you make calls with it? Yeah, but that's such a stupid. Yes. And the answer is yes. No, you can't. No, no, no, no. I mean, does it use 18T's network to send a call over their network? Like if it does that, then I think that's a phone. If it doesn't do that, it's a tablet. There. That should make a difference when it comes to how much you, oh my God, a boy's choir is singing at me because the phone is turning on. Take it away. I think if you're asking for help defining what is and is not a phone. Oh man. Why should that ridiculous distinction make it any different? Oh no, no, no, no, no. Don't do that. It's been flexed. I think it's cracked. It has flat flexed. Did you just crack this? No, this is cracked. This is us scratching it because it's supposed to heal itself. You cracked something. No, I heard a cracking noise, but I don't know what it was. Please stop. All I'm saying is the fact that Spotify has offered different features on tablet and phone is stupid. Hey LG, sorry about your review unit. We cracked it. Claw. Paul's immediately lost interest in whether or not the phone is cracked. Are we talking about this? This is a hot new way to use phones. Let me see this thing. It's a gigantic overpriced curved Android phone that we have a lot of tech demos to play with today. Where's the talk? I like what Samsung's doing. Here's the talk. Let's curve it the other way. More importantly, the talk charger. Seriously though. Ready for this? Ready for this? We're just involved in the chaos now. These edges are quite sharp. It's not a good phone. I don't want this. I don't like this. This is the only way to charge this thing. Why? Why is it like this? That's weird. It's because they want to prove that they could. I don't understand. How did you like the Nexus one, but you don't like that? That to me is just a bigger, badder Nexus. There's no relationship. No relationship. It has a better screen. It's curved in the same direction. You mean the Galaxy Nexus. The Galaxy Nexus. First off, Galaxy Nexus screen was so slight in curvature, it's not even funny. It was still curved. That to me is like they took that idea and extended it in all kinds of stupid directions. Okay, number one, it was extremely slight. Number two, it was stock Android. That's true. My problem here, if this were running stock, I'd be like, well, at least it's running stock Android, but it's not, and it's really, really not. You know, LG skin is real bad. It's just also, it's a way too big. The Galaxy Nexus is much smaller. This is a Qualcomm talk. The Qualcomm talk and the curve are like in the same category. Let's see if I can figure out how to use it without instructions. This is like an amazing Spotify. Neil, I just got a notification. I just wanted to read it. Oh, sure, sure. Could someone send him a notification? Black panties, deluxe version by R. Kelly is now available on Spotify. I got that notification like three times. I'm sorry, what is happening here? I really want to listen to this Kells record. What is happening? Is this the band? There's no way. The band is touch sensitive. It's both sides of the band. But look, this is working. Yeah, there's a gesture area there. What am I supposed to do with the band? The band, tapping on the band is another UI thing. It's not a good, you know how you resize that watch? Did you read Chris' review? You know how you resize it? You take scissors out and you cut the band. No. Awesome. Yeah. The band that is integral to the functioning of the watch. Whoops. This is hilarious by the way. It's showing the Qualcomm stock being down. By the way, if Paul Jacobs didn't like us after CES last year, he's really going to hate us now. The thing about the talk watch, and this was in Chris' review, I want everything in that watch, just not in that watch. I want the, it's Mirasol. Oh, a Mirasol product in market. Yeah. Proper Mirasol. It's heavily took all of the bits and pieces here and made a watch out of it. It'd be great. This is making me really sad. Yeah. Okay. Because no one wants this. And let me tell you something. The charger is cool. Here's the thing guys. Like if this is the thing, if this is what you're making, if this is the best thing you can make. No, it's not. No, it's a tech demo. It's a tech demo. Everyone apologize for the talk all at once. I almost said that too at the same time. Yeah, this is like, that's the opposite problem where we're talking over each other. Show everybody that watch face. That's great. That's just good. This is good charges. The other way. That looks like a hyper card. Yeah, it does. The whole thing looks like a hyper card project. The whole thing looks like a hyper card. Like they made, you made it in hyper card in 1988. Yeah. And then you put it, you were like, you know, sync to watch. That'd be incredible. I would a hundred percent buy that watch, the hyper card watch. Here's what I want. Here's what I want you to do. I'm wearing a Seiko. I forget the model number of this watch, but let me, can you get this? Can you shoot this? I just want you to just look at this for a second. Okay. I want you to do this is what I want watchmakers to do. Okay. Very plain, minimal of silver watch. Okay. I want you to make this exact thing, but replace the, replace this middle part where all the stuff is with a, with the screen from the Motorola aura. Okay. Capacitive touch screen version of that. And then replace Josh with this like glowing blue or purple plastic. Do you want physical hands? Um, physical, no, but it doesn't, no, there's no physical hands because you'll make a soup. It'll be either a super high res or a display circular display. And then you'll make, there'll be a Seiko will sell watch faces for it. That looked like classic Seiko watches. Rolex will sell a $500 watch face for it. That will look like a classic Rolex watch. Okay. And, um, the pirate may will get super weird. And then, and then, and then it'll have a bunch of apps and stuff like cool, whatever. It'll show notifications. It'll show the weather. But like at the end of the day, like I'll be able to swipe onto, I would buy that. I would spend well over a thousand dollars for that product. Yeah. If it looked like a watch I wanted to wear that I could put my own strap on and then also had all the functionality of the smartwatch stuff. If, if that's what Apple makes, I will give them any amount of money to buy it and I will give it a 10 plus review sight unseen. Okay. I will be number one forever on the verge 50. If he makes you a super expensive, he makes me an awesome watch. There's no way for me to source this, but I heard a rumor. You'll say it anyway. I mean, I can say here. Yeah. Rumor, rumor. Who the hell knows, but I've heard that Apple's watch is going to be really expensive. I hope it's expensive enough that they actually put the time and materials into it to make it cool. And that's some like future cyber watch like this watch is going to show notifications. I hope that whoever worked on the notifications area for iOS seven gets nowhere near it. Yes. No, it's funny that the main value of a watch is notifications. No, the notifications cover the time. Apple have no idea how to do notifications whatsoever. The notifications will cover the time and they won't move until you swipe them away. You won't be able to swipe them. You're going to have to hit a tiny little X. You'll hit the corner of the watch. There will be no X. You'll either have to open the notification or sit there and wait for it to go away. I do that so much. Even though you have 10 mail notifications, it'll give you an individual notification for each mail. Yeah. Cause that's important and that is helpful. Anyhow, enough. There's more toys to play with. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, this is the LG, this is the new LG Google play edition tablet with Deater's stuff on it. Let's see what he's doing. Can you hand me that? That's white Nexus seven. The white Nexus seven I think is like the white Nexus five, which is feels like, oh why? Yeah. Man, wait, what man? Oh, they changed the battle. Doesn't know how to make white products. Let me see it. Yeah. Oh, so the black Nexus seven is like this. What? Yeah. Is this metal? No, it feels like this nonsense. I like black Nexus five and I'm like, that's fine. No, this is a soft tie. Even I like this a lot. You're crazy. Trade you Nexus five. I want the white. Now I didn't think I wanted this, but now I want the white Nexus seven. No way. I love my Nexus seven. This one seems cooler. I want an extra seven, but I'm waiting for the Verizon one. It feels higher end actually. This feels like a higher end product. Check it out. Paul, you tell me I'll trade you. Dexter's fives. I'm going to need Nexus five is so bad. It's a different type of, Oh, this button's funky. Yeah, that's nice. My button is very good touch. No, the black ones way better. The black one's way better. Josh, you got that. You did something slightly controversial this week with the Nexus five. You upgraded our view. Oh, well, I, I, I, Oh, we want to talk about the Nexus five a little bit? Yeah. So, so Google has, has, has, is now it should be shipping, gave us an early look at software that was mostly focused on improving focus, no pun intended, but every pun intended, on improving the Nexus five camera. And I would say that from the release software to the new software, the changes are pretty monumental. I mean, in the, in the, in the sense that pictures I have given up on thinking I was going to capture, I'm now capturing and it has given me a new level of confidence with the camera. It is still not as good as the iPhone camera. It is not as good as the Lumia 10 20, which is like a kind of a crazy camera. I don't know if it's as good as the Xperia Z one, which I just bought a, an imported version of and is on its way hopefully to my home soon. Yeah, I couldn't resist. But there were some samples that we were just showing, but it is like way better at taking photos and way better at focusing on photos. It's not perfect. They still have a lot of work to do. They need to make better software. I think their biggest problem is like the actual UI that you use to capture is just not great. But I mean, Deeter you're using a Nexus five. Yeah, no, I feel the same way. Thank you, Billy. Thank you. That was wonderful. Like the TVs went off apparently. I feel like it went from being a camera. I didn't trust to just do the basic work of taking a picture to a camera that can do the basic work of taking a picture. So it went from unacceptable to usable, but I still think the Galaxy S4 takes a better picture, for example, and the iPhone obviously does really the Galaxy S4 takes a better picture. I do not the stock version. Oh, I haven't used much the Google Play edition. So that's that one much. So that's the hook. Like, yeah, no, the Google Play, the Google Play edition of the Galaxy S4. I really should do the same thing, but it is garbage and makes it. I haven't really used the non Google Play a lot version. I don't know what that's like. So what I'm waiting if it's a lot better, I'd be very interested in checking in. What I'm waiting for is, but I don't want to use Samsung's supposedly Android has got the hooks in it now for third party camera apps to like work better with any Android phone. Yeah. And so we might be able to see third party camera apps that don't suck that just take native pictures quickly come up and solve this problem before you can because they clearly can't. Well, I think Google's also now based on our conversations with them and David wrote, you worked on the article with him about the change in the conversation we had with Google. They seem to be getting really aware of the fact that this is a deal breaker for a lot of people. Yeah. Like how did, how did they not know that? Um, years surprising what Google doesn't know. Given all of their data. Yeah. It's sometimes very surprising what they don't know. Actually it's funny cause they seem to know it right. Cause they launched the Nexus five with a bunch of crap about the camera and they keep on talking about Google plus photos and it's like, yeah, no, we talked about this for like a half an hour. Why you had to build an intense cloud service to improve photos. I think in some way I do, cause your cameras suck. I do feel in, I do feel in some way that, that, um, that they rushed this out. Like they weren't where they want it to be in terms of, um, I think they wanted to get it, I think they wanted to holiday sales, some kind of cycle they need to worry about. Yeah. Who knows? But what I will say is I got the distinct impression that they rushed it without the camera software where they wanted it to be. When I spoke to them before the review went up, cause it was in the review, I said, look, these guys are gonna, they said they're going to fix it cause they know it's broken. Cause I was like, look, this camera sucks. And my impression was they were acutely aware of it then, not just because somebody had told them. Yeah. And so I don't know, there's no excuse. There's no excuse for releasing a half finished product. Yeah. Like I carry now, right now I'm switching back and forth between the five and HSC one Google play in my five S and I took a picture of Chris Ziegler in a bar last night that was like, I was astonished when I took this picture. Who took it? I mean, what camera took it? I took it like the five S. Yeah. I took a picture of it and it was like a dark room and like I put the camera on the table and like shot a picture of him and it was like bright and beautiful and like looked amazing. And I was like, I can't believe this camera did that. Right. I've never gotten that feeling from an Android phone. Mostly what I get is thank God any picture here is usable. I actually took it. I actually think the macro is more impressive on the Nexus five than on the macro pictures. And I do like macro pictures and I actually think the macro is better on the Nexus five than on the five S the five S will not, it has a, it's a less shallow. Yeah. Is that right? No, it has a, which one would have the shallower? You have a, that has a closer minimum focal distance, right? So, so I took a picture of a spider before the software fix was in. It took me like nine tries, but I took a picture of a small spider spinning the web outside of my house. And when I look at that picture, I'm like, that's a pretty crazy picture to have taken with a phone, even though, and like with the new software update, I would have taken the picture on the first try. I think I think it would have focused on the thing I was trying to focus on. So, so at what point is this, does this become like, um, like, and it's like you got like Nikon and Canon and they're both like really, really good. And like there's kind of tweaks and preferences and styles that people want out of their camera when Nikon and Canon start making sensors for, for phones. First is like, it seems like, you know, for, for people who use the iPhone, like the camera problem is pretty much solved since like the four or whatever. It's like you haven't had to worry about it and you kind of worry about other things that you just know it always gets better. But it seems like there's a baseline we're still waiting for Google to hit and then we can stop complaining. It's not just Google. I think it's, it's all of these other manufacturers who don't have the control that Apple has over the cameras. How much of it is an art and how much of it is a science? Um, part of it is hardware. Let's be like Samsung makes cameras. They make some cameras that like real cameras that are well regarded and they're, they make Android phones that are cameras and you know, like they make a mirrorless phone, a mirrorless like, and they are, when you buy the S4, you're getting a lot of like Samsung's best work and HTC when they put out the one, they made a big deal, like fewer megapixels, more light and like it didn't work, but like they're trying, they're, they're very, very aware that a reason people buy iPhones is because the camera. I mean, look at the LG, look at the G2 ads on television. They're all about like the OIS and how like you're not going to take any more blurry photos. I'm just worried that Sony's putting out, Sony software is equally bad, right? Like the camera, the, on the spec sheet of the Z1 camera is amazing. And then the JPEG compression is out of control. I don't think it's that, I don't think it's as bad as you make it out of the sound. I mean, it's, it's, it's much worse than it should be. Or you just bought a Sony camera or Sony phone. Well, I bought it because I saw the, I bought it because I, no, I bought it because I saw the photos that Evan was taking with his and I was like, these look really good. And I looked at them like next to mine and I was like, I don't see a dramatic. Just wait till you take a picture of a person in the dark. I'm just waiting for the day. And then like it kicked in. What do you mean, Eli? Like the second you like, you're in. Just wait until you're on your first porno shoot. Well, yeah. I'm just waiting for the day that this is out of control. I'm just worried that this is always going to be a thing. Well, it will be a thing until there's a, there's a, there's going to be a threshold. Well, physics are the issue. That's what I'm worried about. Physics physics is you can't get around physics, but what you can do is quantum quantum. What Apple has done is made a physically better. They've had a, they've used a physically, physically better component with better software and like the better components are happening. That's obviously happening. The software I think is the real, what Apple's doing with software, with control. Rolling the hardware is like just as they do in many places is just better than the competition. It's a Sony sensor, right? Like they buy a Sony sensor, they put it in the thing, they engineer a lens assembly and they like write better software than everybody else. Right. It's like the trackpad. I'm just tired. I'm sad and tired. It's like the trackpad on your Mac versus the trackpad on any PC laptop you've ever used. Yeah, and the PCs, they still almost can't get, they're still terrible. Yeah, HP just put out a laptop that doesn't click. It's called the force pad. Whoa. Chill out guys. Yeah guys. No need to use force. You know what I mean? All right, what else? One last thing and this is going to be the last one. Yep. There's a rumor last week. I mean, you guys just blow it up. You really are, right? Ellis is all over me right now. Why are you blowing up so hard right now on our Vergecast? I don't know. It just happened to me. Ellis? Step off Ellis. Ellis wants me to put a comic on the screen. I'm not going to, well, let's see if Billy surprises us. All right, go ahead. What were you going to say? There's a rumor and this is a bad rumor and I, oh my God, Ellis. You kidding me? Stop it. You're going to ruin the Vergecast Ellis. Take the battery out. Oh wait. Oh come on, really? I'm taking it out of my Nexus 5 too. Really? Smartphone X2. Oh my God, what a burn. 2007. Smartphone X2. 2007. No, like I know because I was, I was, look, I was there with you in spirit, okay? I know the impulse to make a joke about a removable battery. Let's not go there, okay? We're better than that, Deitor. There isn't a device on this table that has a removable battery. Oh, like I can't be sure. Oh, no. So, no. Which one? I don't think the back is supposed to come off of the LG G Flex. It can, but it's not supposed to. Pop this off. Just pop this bad boy off. I can take the battery out of my watch. No. Yeah, it does. No. What's this? Oh my God. What is it? What? It's a Korean phone. It's a Korean phone. I didn't even see that coming. I was like, what am I pulling out of here? You're like a clown with like a scarf up your sleeve and you keep on pulling out the scarf and it was like, no way. How much scarf is there? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's a Korean phone, right? It's for their TV service. It's their DVB-T or whatever. Yo, this is whack. That's amazing. Watching a little TV here. On my G Flex. That's actually really disturbing, but kind of nice. All right. One more. Speaking of television, huh? Speaking of television. Get that away from me. I can't even see the back. I can't even see the back. Okay, nice. I can't see the back. Okay, nice. I can't see the back. I can't see the back. I can't see the back. I can't see the back. I can't see the back. I can't see the back. I can't see the back. I mean are you gonna fake stab yourself? Yeah like a slight, a little slightly... What if LG sold a slightly... We're the dumbest people. Slightly larger phone and then that was the stylus for you. Let me jot this down. Yeah, and then you draw on this with the... Let me jot this down. Go on. Let me just sign off on that. You know if Samsung could convince people that they needed a third smartphone like your device? I've got a terrible itch here. We can't send this back now. That has my skin, flakes of my skin all over it. Okay, but seriously, let's get real. Speaking of television. My God. There's a rumor that Apple... No. There's a rumor that LG... Google. There's a rumor that Google... Stop. Nexus TV. There's a rumor that some company that we've covered... Rumored by a site called The Information. Brand new site. The Information. Brand new site. It's only $39 a month. Yep. And they have a report. But you can't put a price on this content. You can't put a price on an obfuscated rumor that Google is launching something called the Nexus TV. Nexus TV. We play Android games. It's... That we'll play Android games. Yeah. That's what you've wanted on your TV. Wild success so far. Yeah. Yeah. And then on top of that, today Apple released a bunch of new channels for the Apple TV, including WatchABC, Bloomberg, and my favorite zombie television service that no one uses but is everywhere, Crackle. What is Crackle? Crackle is like Sony's... Everywhere. You know, Sony's fail. They just won't die. Oh, you know what I need to do? Is it a Sony fail? You know what I need to do? I believe Crackle is a Sony fail. I need to buy a Roku 3. You know what? Roku 3 is really good. I need to buy a Roku 3. They've taken blood money from a bunch of services. They've got a bunch of crap on the home screen. That search stuff is really powerful though. The search stuff is great. And I have been... So we've been watching The Good Wife on Amazon. Yeah, Crackle is owned by Sony. We've been watching The Good Wife on Amazon, which by the way, Good Wife, amazing show if you're not watching it. Thank you for coming to it, yeah. A bunch of lawyers lawyering on it. Yeah, yeah. But here's the thing. I've been like using the Xbox One because it's the easiest thing to get. How do you like the Xbox? It's been how long? A couple weeks now for you? Yeah, the whole thing about the... The Xbox One is out of control crazy, like weird and bad in some ways. Yeah. Like it is doing things in my living room that are inappropriate. Do you have your cable watch all the time? No, it is doing things that are inappropriate. Like I'll pause a game. I'm like playing Dead Rising 3 surrounded by hordes of zombies. Pause, I got some food delivered. I'm going to have a snack. Like I'm eating. Nothing's going on in the room. The game unpauses and the zombies are... I literally was on the third floor of my house and I heard... It was like pause and then like, and I was like, no. And I started running down the steps like, no. My guy was like, there are zombies. I'm like, no, pause. Like it's listening and hearing things that aren't happening. The other day, Laura was saying something to me that it was unpausing it. She wasn't saying anything that remotely sounded like unpause. Like it's insane. It shouldn't be doing what it's doing. It's not a ghost. It's bad software. Yeah. I just think it's a machine. Do you have your cable watch through it or not? No, I did have it for a minute and then I was like, oh, this is only doing stereo sound. Catch you later. Yeah. I got a Sonos play bar up in this piece. I got to get five, one or get out of my face. The only person I know who's left with the TV hooked through it is Chris. And I berated him last night until he admitted sheepishly that he would soon unplug it because it's not good. What's the advantage? I can get to a channel and then I got to like get the remote to find all the things I want. Like, you know, if I want to watch my sons of anarchy on demand, if I want to watch my sons of anarchy on demand, I got to go get the cable remote. Yeah. By the way, sons of anarchy season finale. If you haven't seen it, have you been watching it? You're not watching it. Are you watching it? I've been watching you tweet about it. Have you been watching it? No, sir. We got to get there. Anybody on our team who watches high quality television, like sons of anarchy. I just finally watched the end of breaking bad. Can I just say something? That's more of a bad end. The ending, the last episode of this season of sons of anarchy made the worst moments of breaking bad look like a day at Disney World. It's really hard to know if that's good or bad. It's hard for me to know as well. Just very deeply upset you on several levels. Okay. Anyhow, what are we talking about? Nexus TV. I got to get a road view. Oh, Nexus TV. So what is this? So we tried Google TV. That was a massive failure. We're doing Chromecast. I believe Chromecast is a success. Don't forget the Q. The Q unreleased product. Fourth or fifth time's the charm. But hold on, Chromecast. Chromecast, if you walk into a Best Buy, it's the first thing you see. Last night I wanted to watch something on Vimeo. And I was like, oh, you know, it's like right before I was going to bed, I was like, oh, I got to watch this video real quick. And I was like, oh, this is cool. We have a Chromecast up here in our bedroom. Like I'll just throw it over to the Chromecast. Yeah. That doesn't work. Oh, Vimeo doesn't support it. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't support it. And our site doesn't support it either. Until they make an underlying thing that's like if video is playing, then can go to Chromecast, like whatever that code needs to be. It's not- That's good. That's good. Is that JavaScript? That's JavaScript. If video playing, then go to Chromecast. That I just wrote. By the way, can somebody just put that in a text file and upload it to the web? Save it as like fixed.js. Yeah, just upload that as an exe. This is why AirPlay works, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yes, this is why AirPlay works. At some point, Google needs to support something like AirPlay where it can move stuff locally. AirPlay is so good. Fundamentally, as a company, they think it's better to stream over the internet than over your, the internet to your device and then from your device to the TV. No, that makes sense. And that's true in many ways. It makes sense that they have to get app developers on board. But that's- And like our videos need to be able to go on Chromecast. Right. Or they need to do it from YouTube. Yeah. That's how, like I've been using my Chromecast more and I switched to Google Play because it's really convenient to do. And it's just like, I rented a movie last night and I was like, and usually my, my MO is I turn on the Apple TV because it's faster than the Xbox 360. And then I hit the D-pad for like 45 minutes. So I find something I like and then I watch it. But I, I'm just opening up the Play Store on the Android phone. You can just like scroll through on your phone while you're walking around doing this stuff. Oh wait, this one, play it. And then, you know, you could pause it from the phone. It's nice. No, I mean, it's weird. But you have to wait for stuff to work. I use the Chromecast in both my office upstairs and my house. I have a Chromecast and Apple TV plugged into the television. And I use the Chromecast more here because I send more things like worky things, the TV and like tabs and like we look at stuff and at home it's all Apple TV. Yeah. That's the, I'm doing, I do the same. I mean, I don't use Chromecast at all, but what I realized. It's the same, but it's not. No, I mean, I want, I want to use it. It just doesn't, it doesn't work. For worky things. No, for worky things. I don't need to do that. I realized like I need to stop buying stuff on iTunes because it's like my only, my only option is to play it on the Apple TV at this point. Like I'm not doing anything else where I can play it. So I think what, that's why I want to get a Roku because the only problem is it doesn't do the bouncing. Like I still want to be able to bounce stuff over there. Like why didn't they build it into the Xbox one? Like why didn't they make it part of the smart glass experience that you could like screen share or something like, okay, anyhow, that's, that's off topic. But yeah, like, well, it's not really, I mean, if you look at this stuff, it's this, you know, we ran a report on the, on the next, did we actually run that? No, we're still writing it. It's sitting there. But we have a quote in this forthcoming report from an analyst who's like the only, the only company that has a hold on the living room as this platform is Microsoft right now. Right. And it's because of the Xbox 360, now the Xbox one. And the more I use the Xbox one, I'm like, they didn't finish this. No. Yeah. There's nothing about it. So they could get, if they could, is there even an IR blaster option for what, for the Xbox one? It is an IR, like the whole thing is IR. No, but to control like on demand and stuff. No. Right. So there's no option there. I wouldn't be willing to put my TV through it if it was a more completely encompassing experience where I did all the things I needed it to do, like where I could send photos to it or send video to it and all these other things that I'm using the Apple TV for and you know, random, you know, I'm using my cable box because the on demand functions work properly. Like I actually love the, it's a blue ray player. I love the idea of the Xbox one as a single solution for your living room. I think it's actually the closest that anybody's gotten in terms of a real commercial product. It just didn't go far enough. And it's so messy. It's a mess and it's hard to use and the voice commands are janky and it's like, you know, it just doesn't feel like a finished product and it's frustrating because you see how close we actually are to getting it. I just realized, it's like check out crackle now on the Apple TV. I don't use flex and crackle. I'm just waiting so desperately for an Apple TV. Downton Abbey? Yeah. Downton Abbey, front line. Oh really? Oh, okay. I'm waiting so badly for an Apple TV with an app store or even if the Xbox or PS4 got a real actual app store because there's something really great about your phone that when you're sitting there on your phone and you're kind of bored, you can just open up the app store and find something amazing all of the time. And I just feel like a sucker for buying the Xbox one just because I'm going to go on the app store and there's like five apps on there that are clearly like contractual agreements between Microsoft and another company. This actually reminds me of like I had this experience with the one where Laura and I are sort of joking because there's problems but then we were watching the Good Wife and we were trying to find the episode we were on and I was doing the thing where you hold your hand out and you close your hand and you can use it to scroll. But I got to tell you something. It was working really well and I was doing this and scrolling through. How far away do you have your sensor? It's like eight feet or something. It's not very far away. And I was like, this is awesome. This is crazy what I'm doing right now. I'm sitting in my living room and I'm scrolling my TV using this crazy minority report gesture and then it went completely haywire. Then later on that same day or in an hour or something we were watching episode and I was taking a sip of my drink and I thought that my hand drinking was like the hand on the screen and it stopped the show and then it like rewound it back. Then I was like, no. And I tried to put my hand down and it rewound it back to the beginning of the episode. I'm like, yeah, this is not this amazing experience that you want it to be. This is actually really frustrating. I have started saying Xbox pause and Xbox play. I do that a lot. I don't have to power on the controller. But the other day I literally sat down on my couch and it was like the screen is great because I've been away from it for a bit. I think I was browsing the app store or something like that. I was like Xbox and I was like, oh, right. I literally said that out loud. You know what, I'm going to pick up the controller and just do this for real. He keeps trying to snap things when I don't want them to snap. Your Xbox is very clearly defective. It is very sensitive. Or like haunted. Yeah, I know. It's like snap Amazon. I'm like, why would I snap Amazon to the size of the screen? What am I going to do with that? The technology that's in the new Kinect is so expensive and so much more powerful and it seems like it's just so just marginally better than the last one. Yeah, it is. I see you a little better, but then everything on the back end is worse. But I will say this, like I don't dead rising three. I will say even seeing you stuff like those games like like if you look at like the Kinect sports adventure, I complained about this last time about the setup of the visual things stuff. I finally moved my my Kinect sensor to the far side of my room. Is it better? Well, I haven't like turned it on yet, but Zutech worst game ever made worst game I've ever played. Zutech. We should probably talk about the thing. It's funny that we start complaining about the Xbox. The thing? So here's the thing about Nexus TV. Oh, Nexus TV. I can't tell you why they're building such a thing. I have an idea. Because they're Google? Other than just sort of like a no, but like they've already failed at this like a hundred times, right? Other than this like sort of need everybody feels like we've got to get in the living room and like do something there. But what like that's so open. Like I don't know what you do. Right. Right. It's the same reason everybody's building a watch. Right. It's like this hot pressure. No, it's hunt for like the next big growth. I mean, what's amazing about people building a watch is it's literally all spurred by the rumor that Apple is going to build a watch. So it's about the Google Play Store, because if you buy an iPhone, you know, you've got iTunes and you know, you can watch that on the Apple TV. You can watch it on your phone. You can watch it on your tablet. If you buy an Android phone, you're like, what do I do with this stuff? I'm not going to buy a movie from Google Play. So they just they swung for the fences with Google TV. They completely whiffed. They tried to get it like a double with the Nexus Q and that was a huge fail. So they just get in the game. They just did. I think Chromecast is like, and they're going to take on Roku and I mean, I'll be that like let's not discount, by the way, how badly they blew with the Google TV. So bad. I mean, they were there on stage. It was a I.O. He's like, today we change television. And then it completely failed. I was pretty incredible. Also, I was right. Yeah, yeah. You were threats in the mail. You didn't get that. And they people were very crazy about that. They got a little bit further with the cable companies than Microsoft did because they had that they had a relation with like, oh, it was this network. Here's what I think. They'll do it. I think the T-Mobile of television. I think this could just be the effect of my addition. I work in T-Mobile shit together. Oh, my God. This could just be effective marketing. But was it Tom had the piece about Chromebooks? Yeah. Yeah. I just carry Chromebooks and like, call me crazy, but Chromebooks seem to really be making an impact in terms of like laptop buying. No. Well, they're like the number one laptop. No, that's like so special. I bought one like it's how why their market share is zero. Well, I think they're selling a lot of Chromebooks. That's what I think. Disagree. I've seen Chromebooks in the wild. People that have never asked me about technology before in their lives are asking me about books. Microsoft is advertising them. Well, because they're afraid. I will say that that ad, the Pondstar's one, I was like, all I take away from this is that Chromebooks exist. Yeah. That Chromebooks are a thing. And if you didn't know about them, like, I'm kind of like, what's a Chromebook? Those ads are so poorly made. They're so bad. It's out of control. But here's what I think. I think that the Google TV is of a kind with what they're doing with Chromecast and what they're doing with Chromebooks. I think less the Nexus 7 for sure, that they are trying to create a suite of consumer products that serve the belief of certain consumer needs need to be met. Like a box. The Chromecast is interesting, but it's like a confection. People understand a box that does video stuff that attaches to your TV. Yeah, because Chromecast is hard to understand. I think if they sold a $99 box or a $75 box or whatever they're going to charge for this thing, that they showed it, they marketed it the way they marketed the Nexus 7 and the Chromecast and the Chromebook, where people are playing video games and it's super cheap and there's all these video apps on it and blah, blah, blah. I think they see an opportunity there. I don't think they think Apple has won that battleground. I don't think they think Roku has won that battleground. I think they went too far with the Google TV. The Chromecast is sort of almost like a weird nerd item. I don't know that normal people understand. It's $35. I walked into a Best Buy. Are they selling them? Do people understand what they are? That's my question. They have huge end caps in Best Buys. The end cap is empty. Yeah, like on Black Friday they were virtually, they have $35. People are just buying it. It's just like another end cap like plugged into the side of the box. So the only question could be, I need YouTube on my TV with this. So what could the advantage be to making a box? I could not. The advantage to them is they don't have a hole in their ecosystem anymore that convinces people not to buy any more stuff. But can they do this? This is why everyone thinks Amazon is going to make a box. You know what Amazon should do? You know what Amazon should do? There are a lot of people for whom that makes sense. Like here's a bunch of Amazon stuff. If Roku, Microsoft. Roku is really, getting a Roku is still kind of a nerdy. Wrong. I think a lot of people are buying Rokus. No, I've given a lot of people Rokus. I think like old people, young people, smart people, dumb people. The staff that Roku always gives me is quarter by quarter it's either them or Apple TV depending on who has a new product out in terms of being number one in the US. I don't disagree but what I'm saying for Amazon, Roku is like a window into their service and then it's a window into a hundred different services. For Amazon to make a box they sell for $30 or whatever Amazon cheap number. With offers, free with offers. Free with offers. Amazon. And have it be like here's your ecosystem, you pay for Prime. Some of these videos are free, some are a dollar. Amazon needs to friggin' make a Blu-ray player. What is wrong with you? I mean the thing about the. Yeah because you've got Amazon Prime. No actually if it played Blu-rays and DVDs. There's a lot of people who feel like they need to get. Right you buy a Blu-ray and you play it on your Amazon box. Or you end up getting your like PS3 or your Xbox One or PS4 or whatever because it's got a Blu-ray player. That's a big value add. And Amazon is the one company that really benefits from making a box that plays Blu-rays that you can also order Blu-rays from with free shipping because you have Amazon Prime. Basically flies right into the player. Yeah. Just shoots through your mouse slot and slides you into the player. Like the magic bullet. No it's a tray so that the drone could just hover right over there. Oh right and drop it onto the tray and it slides right in. Targeted outdoor Blu-ray player. The drone flies over you. We're going to create what's going to happen. It swaps your catheter. Soon we'll all have holes in our house like kind of like a chimney. Yeah. That's the size of a Blu-ray disc that will lead down to the where it can just drop into a tray and the drones will just drop your latest. It's Santa Claus 2.0. That's right. Jeff Bezos. Santa Claus 2.0. And that ends another Virgcast. Yeah that's really where we got to end this. That's our Virgcast I think. Yeah. Is there anything else? That's the whole thing. Hey let's just remember. Paul Miller is here everybody. Great stuff. Wow what a beautiful box to charge on. Yeah. Don't leave home without it. Literally. Just friggin' don't. It's great stuff. Well that's the Virgcast this week. If you'd like to get in touch with us you can email us at virgcast at the virg.com. You can leave a post something in our forums. We like that. You can leave a comment on this post when it goes up. You can make a list of your favorite moments from this Virgcast and build a responsive app around it. Or you can find us on Twitter. The Virg is at Virg. I'm Josh Wytopolsky. Neal I is reckless. Paul is future Paul. And Dieter is back lawn. And he's got a great story about it that he'd love to tell you sometime over some crumpets and tea. Is crumpet a food item? Yes. What is it? Have you ever had one? In my mind there's a cookie and there's a scone and there's a muffin. And a crumpet. Oh it's all those together. And somehow it's a child. You just take all of them and smash them together and give someone the ball. You're like here's the crumpet. It does kind of sound like it because you crumbled it and then made it into a thing. Maybe with a doily underneath. Think about it. We'll be back next week with more Virg Casti style Virg moves. And until then you know what? You and your family are going to be alright. J.K.