Gadgetory

from pocketnow.com this is PocketNow weekly hello and welcome to episode 01 six of the pocket na weekly the once-a-week podcasts from pocketnow.com where we discuss what's hot and what's cool in the world of mobile technology from smart phones to tablets two phablets and everything in between I'm your host Michael Fisher senior editor at pocket now and I'm joined by our editor-in-chief Brandon minimun good morning to you sir hello there hello and our managing editor and Tandy Naja good afternoon to you sir good morning everybody I need to start off right away by telling everyone that we are the sixty-six percent of the team on the on the air today is sick so you've probably heard it in my voice already I sound horrible my apologies I assure you I have done everything I can add to sound better and it's just not working tony is only about a day into whatever you think is his cold so he sounds better it's not right yeah I don't know you mentioned it on the pre Cole that he gave me something as I told you I should have installed in firewall or something like that yeah I gave you my cold over the Internet yeah yes you guys sound fine to me except for that that sound you just made Michael that I was indicating imma it was just gonna say I'm gonna be making liberal use of my cough button today but we fortunately I have though I've done a lot of work this week I have not done the most visible work on the site and we have so much to talk about and I don't want to delay any further I want to leap into what we're calling our thought thread the kind of podcast pre-show that kicks 11 topic list we do thanks to thanks to some discussion I think that was that was brandon's idea so Brendan because you thought of the title why don't you jump us right in to the to the thought thread at the top of episode 16 here alrighty well the thought threat today is about the surface RT and literally 10 seconds ago I press the publish button on the review so everyone can read it the videos up all of our coverage of the surface RT is up and you'll notice that we gave it a six out of three and it takes a lot it takes a lot for me to write something that low and I'm going to talk about why i rated it that low in addition to some other things that i think are pretty ridiculous with with what what microsoft is doing and I have nothing against Microsoft I used I've used Windows products for a very long time pocketnow wouldn't exist if it wasn't for microsoft and windows mobile pocket pcs we've been advocates of Microsoft because they push the industry forward as much as some of the other biggest companies in fact you could say they're responsible for a lot of what exists today in technology so the first thing I want to talk about is how the surface this is basically two parts so that I'm going to talk about so talk about the problem and I'm going to talk about the solution what Microsoft should have done with Windows 8 Windows 8/rt windows 8 pro the surface and so forth you guys at my Colantoni probably saw the minute and a half long video that Microsoft did showing people playing with the kickstand and clicking the keyboard right yeah that Coon draft dance commercial yes uh-huh and that was the first video that Microsoft presented to the world showing off the the marketing message for the surface did you buy the surface for death reason that's a good thought okay so so so obviously the service has this awesome kick stand it and Microsoft likes to go to great lengths talk about how high quality it is and it is it's quite high quality it makes a nice sound when you open it makes a nice sound when you close it and it has a lot of utility it's awesome to have a kickstand integrated into a tablet that does not increase the thickness of the tablet that is awesome and it's also cool that this touch cover the keyboard cover snaps into place but I thought that this video it was only intended to be like some sort of viral type video and it got around pretty quickly but it's it's not it's part of their marketing message I was drawing driving down i-95 the other day and I see a billboard for the surface and I love tech note i love technology billboards because they're very interesting and the message was the work towards click in and it had a picture of the surface with the live tiles and a keyboard drawing closer to the surface i'm trying to tell that there are nice strong magnets in the keyboard that make a click sound when you attach it to the surface and I thought to myself who the cares who cares so only the only time that that that matters is when you first get it out of the box and you're like wow this is pretty cool how it clicks in and then you show some friends and then you forget about it and then it becomes about actually using the product and when you start using the product its it's ugly it's ugly because it's a tale of two worlds neither of which works very well on one hand you've got the desktop environment and the desktop environment is awesome because or it should be awesome because we know the desktop from all the way back to Windows 95 and a little bit before it's a productive environment it's so familiar we get it we get it how it works everyone's used Windows but desktop on the surface RT is not the desktop it's a fake world it's a phantom desktop where you can only run a small handful of apps you try to install it um your favorite Windows app which is natural when you see the desktop but it's not the desktop and the only thing you can do in it is run the Microsoft Office suite and run a second version of windows internet explorer there are two internet explorer okay so that's that's a guy this is a limitation of Windows Windows RT right it's a limitation of Windows RT so it will only run apps that are designed for ARM processors which which okay so are there going to be apps will Spotify be available for ARM processors yes maybe probably and it will be in the other side the other world which is this touch-friendly metro-style world and it's a nice world if you ever wanted to have Windows Phone on a tablet this is it this is Windows Phone on tablet and it's it's good the interface is beautiful it's got the fluidity of Windows Phone it's laggy and slow at times if you're loading a program that hasn't been in RAM you can wait I count up to ten when Netflix was loading and another third-party app um loading from the metro it's given from the from the new UI yeah loading from the new UI it's just it's just slow and playing games are slow okay so so let's say let's say you like the interface and it's fast and fluid and it's 2d which is very refreshing and then you go to the App Store and there's nothing there there there are some major apps like Netflix and Hulu but if you think of 20 of your favorite apps that you can find an Android and iOS probably two out of 20 are there now they were mentioning this as a deficiency in some of the earlier reviews like some of the reviews that came out you know earlier than today and I think a lot of the commenters on those reviews were saying well you know you got it you guys reviewed it before the product launched you know you've got to you gotta wait for the the ecosystem to you know come online and stuff have you noticed any apps like flooding the flooding the market in your time with it or has it been basically static throughout I I haven't been counting the number of individuals because you can't do that how you kind of could do that with Windows Phone and I sort of watched a day to day but I see really no difference from the week on by when surface RT landed 22 now so it's it's a slow grind and it's it's going to be even slower than it was for windows phone because back in the days when Windows Phone 7 series or seven came out the stakes were a little bit lower because it was earlier in time three years ago fewer people had these touch devices but now Microsoft dropped this thing into the laps of developers that already have a lot of work to do and and so whether whether the App Store ever becomes populated with a full suite of apps remains to be seen it might never or it might take a year or two years or three years isn't that isn't it crazy I mean how different this this product is I mean you talk about those microsoft product that's come out and we're talking about apps I mean you know we're talking about this this kind of ecosystem question which is old hat to everybody who follows technology now sure but if you think about the last time Microsoft really had this much buzz around around a release you know when they're talking about windows 7 i'm talking about desktop stuff and you know vista for for all its failures and stuff but when it first came out you know apps are not a question when you're talking about the desktop app sir you know that's not it's not weird what you're talking about so it's just fascinating to see that to do and i kind of wonder if it's just a question of them running out of time of his question that I'm not not not courting the developers well enough or or what Oh Michael we don't know okay let it wait let me say that I not we I am tired of microsoft running out of time I am tired of giving always microsoft a second chance when windows phone 7 came out they were out of time they rushed a product to the market there were no applications and we said okay let's give them another chance and then no dough came and another chance and then mango key and another chance and now Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 and RT is out there and another chance so I'm completely indifference towards Windows RT on the surface RT but Abbott and the early adopter of Windows Phone 7 back in the day when I first laid my hands on the lg optimus 7 which I was reviewing at that time after a couple of hours of usage I had that feeling I don't know exactly how to describe it but that was both angry and sad that I have no applications to install on the on the phone itself which actually make use of my day-to-day usage and what I feel right now is that went surface RT Microsoft is doing the exact same thing and I don't want to go through that feeling again because i feel i don't know betrayed do you feel the same way Brandon uh I mean they I i don't know that's that's that's a tough question it was it was almost like it was almost died or die and as opposed to do or die for Microsoft because if they released this product now with without a real robust app store it would be harmful or if they waited somehow a little bit longer that would have been harmful to Microsoft uh you know and then and then you gotta wonder well why couldn't they have assembled a team of developers to make a huge suite of software that runs natively on the surface RT that covers all the bases well you sorta can't do I mean you can't make a twitter Microsoft can't make a twitter client well they can technically because it's it's it's open then they'll come in and shut it down after yeah yeah yeah um I mean they did do that with some software like Skype Skype Oh so microsoft on skype right and so i might get one of the benefits of the surface RT is that you can run you can run skype and you can benefit from the 22 degree angle that the camera is positioned which is just right it's a wide angle lens and then you get into the skype software and I talked about this in the video review not only is the quality of the video pretty poor in fact it seems like it's like vga video blown up new 1366 x 768 resolution and and i was communicating over a fast Wi-Fi connection with someone else that had a fast Wi-Fi connection so not only is the quality of the interaction on skype low quality when it shouldn't you know this is microsoft's product right but there is advertising in the chat screen oh i don't know really i have cheese for a wholly-owned for considering that microsoft own skype as you pointed out that is uh wow that's a giant i just i cannot understand why they would clutter the interface with an ad on a flagship communication product that they now own and don't need to derive revenue from I don't get it yeah so so anyway to not make this an endlessly long rent now on to the solution cuz it's easy to you know bad these things they don't work very well so here's what I think Microsoft should have done and perhaps this isn't a fully baked solution and I might have come up with it late one night so I think they should have made two separate products and one should have been called Windows 8 desktop for those like me that are considering keeping windows 7 because I like Windows 7 but also I recognize that Windows 8 desktop when running on a full computer has some awesome advantages it's got a new 2d like interface less fluff the task managers improve there's more ribbon style interfaces around it's faster it's all very good stuff so they make a product called Windows 8 desktop for office environments for people that like windows and then they make an entirely separate product called windows 8 touch that is all about this this metro-style interface and and instead calling it windows 8 style modern UI style whatever they call it door style wonder windows 8 store style I mean how many times I've the chin j they go with Metro because people know Metro people are thrilled about metro and somehow they associate Windows Phone 8 with windows 8 Touch saying that hey if you like Windows Phone 8 but you want a bigger experience this is what we've created for your windows 8 touch and I don't know how to solve the app problem but at least this creating two different products and not combining them solves the confusion problem the disappointment that people get when they open their surface RT they go to the desktop and they're like this is not the desktop this is this is fake so that's that's my solution that's my right what do you guys think about well let me ask you guys what would you do differently if you were Microsoft if you if you had to create a touch experience but you also had to keep the desktop like experience how would you make sense of that yeah I'm not sure that I would rely on that I would split the product for like fork the products into a desktop and a tablet experience I mean that's what Mike shaft has done it but if you're going to do that I agree i think you I think got to go all the way and you can't just um you can't include the desktop in the RT version just so that you can run some versions of office I think it would be really infuriating for people to hear no you can't run we haven't ported office to the new style yet or we have imported whatever to the new to the new desktop yet so you can't run it but yeah I think it would be a cleaner solution than then this kind of half-baked Windows RT desktop implementation which I've played with and been annoyed by more than once but you know III don't know I am kind of interested in seeing what happens as the as time goes by now because yeah before you know we gave them the benefit of the doubt on windows phone 7 but they were like well some people in the same kernel so we wait until windows phone 8 comes out and windows phone 8 will be built in the same thing so now Windows Phone 8 is sharing a kernel cheering an architecture with with Windows RT with windows 8 pro these things are all now finally in the same family it's like a whole bunch of children that really didn't get along when they were growing up and now they're all kind of teenagers and they're like all right well yeah but they play together via well but they they're starting to write I mean I think that's if they if they fail from this point forward and I hate to say that stone you have a great point like every single time they release a product it's like Oh we'll give them another two well this is it this is the one yeah you know I don't think that's what this is I mean I did that with multiple iterations of webos and of course it never worked out but Microsoft is not you know is not Paul Microsoft is not is not a smaller firm and this is quite literally their future they have no choice but to succeed in this or you know or just you know dissolve so I think they will find a way to do that and I think it's just a matter of waiting of India we're gonna have to wait a while it looks like but I think they're gonna force this into relevant eight not know if you look so good it's a it then the chicken egg problem comes up if I mean the consensus is out across the internet that the surface RT is is is a good product but it's not it's not good enough and and people read that stuff and they're gonna make buying decisions based on that and and so there's gonna be this awkward period of time where the informed consumers that read reviews are going to turn away from the surface RT product and other Windows RT products for now and so that's going to harm the installed base that's going to have developers think that you know maybe I should spend more time on Android or iOS this windows thing I don't know about it and then we check back in a year from now and it's almost the same thing right and either it's almost the same thing or they all the headlines read 30 times over the surface 2 is what the surface should have been and then you know blah blah blah we go from there yeah and and you know they should have I can't believe they put us Tegra 3 in here why don't they use the s4 pro that would have made this thing hum and sing like a yeah I got lovely opera opera opera saying you know as you guys talk about this I'm just watching every now and then the comments on our review which is on the front page and there's this guy who comments in the following way and he says quote the RT does everything I want in a tablet browser check netflix check word check excel check I don't really need or want that much more tablet unquote so I guess the surface RT is good for those types of people and and full stop no other things to add here but on the other hand those who expected more from the windows RT and those who pre-order the tablet without having a hands-on without reading a review so blindly pre-ordered like you Michael implied in your editorial yeah those will now have two options option number one is to admit that it was a mistake and get rid of it and those with the cojones will do that and those who will not admit to the mistake and will blindly defend the RT against every critic out there well I mean I gotta say in this guy's a situation um I'm Emily the same comment the surface RT is gonna be just fine he wants a browser and Netflix excel and so forth that's that's fine but absolutely but as a as a tablet enthusiast or somebody that just likes to experience lots of different things and have lots of different options it's just it doesn't fill in the boxes yeah it's like somebody was saying on another piece I wrote about the android tablet app problem where somebody's like look at all these android tablet apps that scale right and then proceeded to list like 50 apps that that he used and that he found you know interesting and it's like you can do that on any product you can go to any review that Doug something for not having of apps and say but it has everything I need and then you list you know some bunch of really niche apps that that work for you and it's like so therefore you're wrong it's like okay you are not every person you know most people want to have the choice it's in it's not a question of having 700,000 apps of course most people only download about a hundred and then they only use ten of those regularly but it's it's about having the ability to be in a situation like wow this app about look with a Berlin map would be really handy right now I wish I could download it but my platform doesn't have it because it's not a thriving platform yeah it is not the issue it's about having the choice and don't forget if you're gonna buy a surface you are gonna take you're gonna spend five or six hundred bucks for that same five or six hundred bucks you could get a nexus 10 and a nexus 7 and you could also get an ipad for right or an iPad Mini or what have you and and if you I mean that's kind of how we look at these things right if you're going to spend 500 600 bucks what platform is going to give you the most flexibility and and so you know that so this is that so that's an interesting point one thing I wanted to ask you guys is why when when I ever want the ipad there were very few to no ipad apps so they let you run iphone apps and the experience wasn't amazing you have this little window but like that satisfied people why didn't they do that with the surface and let people run Windows Phone apps well is that is it possible because i feel like the Windows Phone apps ah what's the difference that you got windows phone 8 apps and Windows Phone 7 apps and they they're not they are they are different they use the one uses the NT kernel right when uses I think the what's that thing called that windows mobile was based off of what was that cee cee haha yeah yeah okay so the current could have created an Emmy some environment that like did the coding whatever you know what's interesting that whenever you bring an emulator into the question is cuz palm did that right like everyone thought that that was what the the palm pre's saving grace was gonna be is like no it doesn't have many apps for webos but we've got this cool palm an emulator and you can run any of the 25,000 paulo maps that are out there and really like the amulet they didn't work well in the emulator and like performance right the emulator like it would cost money I don't know I feel like maybe if you made it free on this and then you made sure the apps ran well inside it it would be a good thing I agree maybe that but yeah but I feel like maybe that was a victim of of time I don't know how I don't know how applicable this is but we did see a story this morning where a Microsoft employee commented this was your story I think Tony yeah yeah What did he say he said that he was talking about Windows Phone 8 but he's just said they ran out of time they ran out of time of course as usual as I implied in my first comments at the beginning it was about a notification tray a notification center for windows phone 8 and this was at the build conference this was a story from the verge they have asked the guy what happened to that and he admitted that this was a plan to include it in Windows Phone 8 but they had ran out of time and they did not include it and of course the normal follow-up question was okay then how do you solve the notification problems and the person the Microsoft he said you've got live tiles were in to reach i agree to fifty percent because i don't want to been all my life styles or all my applications which notify me to my home screen what happens if if i receive a notification up there a toast notification how it is gold and I don't take adult action on it and it disappears because another one push it pushes it away and I don't have a tile i miss a notification or two right yeah i don't want to do that and and it's interesting like I agree I agree with you I think that there should be a notification center in there will be in Windows funny but it's just interesting to see a company executive just kind of come out and say yeah we ran out of time you know and I just wonder how much of that happened in in windows 8 and windows RT but you know I'm sure we'll hear about this in the kind of in the coming weeks and days but um how many times does Microsoft need to run out of the time until once they get it right I mean it's a good question you know but Microsoft is in this position still for now and I keep saying this and you know I don't have a business degree obviously but I mean they're in a position where they they have they still have time to burn you know they can keep getting it wrong on release and they're not gonna alienate enough people they're gonna alienate more people each time they do that but they're not going to you know they're not going to sink into the sea they're not gonna dive in because they have enough money they have enough success and they have enough cell riff for now the market is already dominated by Android like 55 or 60 percent right and like twenty thirty percent by by iOS how much time how does that time translate in the markets here I mean I've got time when I have sixty percent market share but when i have madame below five percent market share or zero in the case of the surface how much time do i need or how much time am i willing to lose it's a good question i don't know um you know guys I guess we will see going forward a you know and there is still more of the surface story to be told I mean when is the surface pro kind of gonna drop is that that is that gonna happen before the end of the year mo most probably at the beginning of next year so surf the surface pro is actually uh a great way to fix the the I guess now part image of the surface brand because it fulfills one of those promises very well and then some like it gives you the full desktop experience but then it's like and some people are saying well it's gonna be like twelve or thirteen hundred bucks but yeah it's going to be basically a laptop replacement with a touchscreen and and it's gonna be pretty darn cool and you know what if that's a successful product mean that there's there is nothing saying that this initial kind of half-and-half feeling about the surface brand can't be overcome I was just writing about this with the Nexus stuff like that the nexus brand was starting to get a little bit bogged down by this kind of Galaxy Nexus LTE problems and all this stuff and not a lot of people knew about the Nexus phones because they're sort of enthusiasts developer phones and then Google drops this nexus 7 and they sell three million of them and it's like wow people suddenly know the Nexus name and its associated with a good product so I think Microsoft can definitely there's no there's no real lasting damage yet because I branded I you can disagree if you want i don't think the surface RT is necessarily a bad product just think it's a confused one right yeah i mean the hardware is is fantastic and you know it's it's got some good points it's just like you said it's a confusing product it's a tale of two two worlds neither of which right now one of them permanently the desktop will never work well but the other side they're just not enough apps to fulfill to fulfill the the round out the experience so just to kind of wrap this up before we jump into Windows Phone 8 but who would you say who should buy the surface RT both Tony and and Brandon both but uh Brandon first a few because you've used it ah I think I think a perfect example is of this commenter who just wants office and and yeah you cannot you know you go into the desktop environment and you use office in the desktop world you get out a mouse pointer or you use the trackpad and it feels very familiar they did that part very well so if you want office if you don't mind waiting for apps and you got the the very basics cover like Netflix it has it hulu it has it you know there's a there's there isn't a Twitter Facebook client yet but there are sort of you remember with Windows Phone they were those fake apps like instead of YouTube there's like YouTube downloader youtube yeah worm worm tube or whatever that other one was ya lazy war ya lazy where I yeah yeah yeah and instead of Angry Birds there was like upset ostriches there's a lot of that going on and and there is angry birds by the way um okay but you know that if you don't if you know I recommend that people that are kids are in service go to a best buy and play around with this touch-friendly aspect of of windows 8 and go to the app store and search for your favorite apps apps that you couldn't live without and if there there's and great if not then you know let that be part of your consideration what's a good call yeah Tony what did you do you agree no no I'm trying to be nice here but I just can't I here's my advice stay away from the surface art they don't buy that thing not for this Christmas by for next Christmas wait for a generation wait for another OEM wait for another update I don't know but wait until this thing delivers on but I don't know these people who actually use and pre-order the surface RT and Windows RT actually come on comments and bash every other tablet whether it's Android or iOS that post purchase justification yeah absolutely i mean i mean come on take a look at what you're holding you can't do anything with that of course you have office you have explorer but even for that wait way to generation skip this holiday season maybe buy a DVD player plasma TV anything else don't buy the surface RT this is my personal opinion well let's uh let's let's jump into two windows phone 8 because i feel like this is a very interesting kind of a perfect inversion of the windows 8 story and you guys can agree or disagree with me but I feel like Windows Phone 8 is one of those cases where it is maybe what Windows Phone 7 should have been but we have a really in-depth review listeners if you are if you have not seen it yet this Windows Phone 8 review by Adam who is just amy is huge its massive i read it the other day and i think i've reread it a couple times i still haven't gotten absorbed all the information so check it out if you haven't already it's but what's so interesting about Windows Phone 8 to me is that it is so so similar to windows phone 7 from a UI perspective of course it's built under different kernel as we've discussed and the whole architecture is different and I think that's where a lot of the time went on the engineering side to building windows phone 8 was to adapting it to this new you know framework but it's amazing just how similar it is in operation in appearance obviously we've got those changeable live tile size that's the most visual change if i don't hear that again i will be happy i'm so looking forward to Windows Phone 7.8 dropping and never having to see another demo of how how to change a live tile size because it's week that's all we've seen the urban month um but you know and I even though it is such an in-depth review from from Adam I'm struck by how much by all the little changes are absolutely inconsequential compared to the fact that there is that that there are more apps now that we have I think over 120,000 apps in the in the windows phone marketplace which is amazing so in a lot of ways is exactly the opposite story this of this windows 8 apt earth on the tablet side I mean what do you guys think I feel like this this makes me feel really good about the future of the Windows Phone platform if they can market it right yeah in fact I want to set an outlook reminder to talk about this on on November second 2013 because Microsoft clearly as a strategy they're bridging together all of their products and all of their ecosystems and they're making finally a cohesive world where you know if you got an xbox if you get a Windows 8 PC if you got a windows phone 8 they all talk to each other it's it's great i mean it's it's what android continued continues to or good google continues to do it's what Apple has has been doing um and and yeah I would I'm fascinated to see if it works out in their benefit if for example someone buys a Windows 8 PC and they're like you know I I want a phone that kind of like meshes with I want I like this look I'm so curious if that happens me too and I think that's something that we always kind of talk about on the air we three were we were like well yeah I mean just once the desktop and the mobile and the intermediate platforms all look the same then there will be this kind of unifying trickle effect I don't think that's borne out by history I don't think there's ever been really a situation where that where that has really happened I don't think it happened with windows mobile and windows I don't think people were clamoring for a start button on their phone but whatever you know I don't know but that network I mean that helps that helps to sell windows mobile because people were like oh I get it you press Start and just like on my computer I press Start yeah I mean I does that was one of the tactics I used when I was selling windows mobile phones back at that sprint and nextel but I don't know if I can't I wish I'd kept track of whether it worked or not um I don't know Tony are you looking forward to getting your hands on one of these no I love know and we'll Here Come explanations those of you guys who prefer who have followed bucket now since the early days know that ever since I've been on board with bucket now I've been a huge fan of windows mobile I've spent a tremendous amount of energy defending and promoting Windows Mobile which later on turned into a huge amount of energy and promoting and defending windows film seven because at that day I was an MVP at Microsoft but I didn't defend the platform because of that I believed in the platform I believed in Microsoft and I just no longer do so i will pay serious attention to Windows Phone 8 whenever it will reach a ten percent market share and then i will start taking it seriously so ten percent is your threshold yeah well they're you know they're at four percent of globally right now I think right there little looks like 3.9 yeah something like that after two years and we saw said was true I know and but we saw some interesting numbers indicating that it's it's climbing in market share much more rapidly in that I really hate I really hope they they manage to do that but I have lost my how should I say this and no longer attract me I mean when I saw the present asian and I'm when I read the review all I seen was windows phone 7 of course the Metro UI is the same the principles are the same that kernel has changed and but from the end users perspective it doesn't matter what the colonel is what the what the end users cares about is a consistent fluid user interface with lots of applications now there are applications in the store but I I know I don't want to be the bearer of bad news but my prediction is or no I am very afraid of that Microsoft will at one point do with Windows Phone 8 whatever they did with Windows Phone 7 and I hope they will not abandon it and I hope they will not show the finger to all those who believe in them and and will probably buy a phone on contract or not and just move on to Windows Phone 9 so I fail to be excited about this until they prove me that they are serious about things I I kind of I kind of want to do my own investigation here because Windows Phone 8 for me fixes three problems that i had with windows from seven and seven point five which is number one the hardware I was tired of looking at wvga screens and running on slower processors that's fixed with Windows Phone 8 number two the app situation while not completely fixed it's tremendously better so I can't wait to search for stuff and actually find it and and and number three windows phone 7 + 7.5 made me feel like iOS like tam I can't change a thing here this is just a this is just how Microsoft wants it to be and and I and you know I was kind of thinking I had in mind the Start screen because you know you could have these tiles and I was like damn I don't want my pictures tile to take up to space I don't want that and Windows Phone 8 you know is still iOS ish in the fact that there's not that much you can change you can't really you know your windows phone 8 put on a custom rom and change everything about it but at least now you can change more so of that that Start screen where you spend most of your time so that's a 3ds rate of what's that that's a week trade off man great mean nobody I get it though that it is it is more I zabal then then iOS though Tony after do you have to agree with that at least what would the fact that i can make triple double or half the size of the life bells that means customize yeah you can make out yes yeah it's a much more you customization is when you can set a wallpaper customization is when you can I don't know do stuff I don't know i don't agree i don't think it's just that you can set a wallpaper i think it's you know I I think it's much more useful to be able to say hey here's my home screen here's what I want out of my home screen from a notification standpoint and then like you know trigger it that way I mean I you know compared to iOS it's it's gives you many more options I absolutely absolutely but compared to android gives you nothing oh well compared to android yeah sure nothing says customized both android it's kind of fun how we have the spectrum writer of like iOS Windows Phone kind of in the middle and Android an extreme end of customizability it's great that that that except that has happened that's true yeah just from out from a choice standpoint it's nice that you can pick your platform based on how much you do or don't want to think in when you're setting up your mobile phone and I you know I'm not that's not a dig I'm not I'm not saying you know I always users are stupider and like that it's just you can make a choice you're like if you want customization go android you want ease of use and out-of-the-box functionality go iOS you want something in between and something with a very distinct you I you go Windows Phone I mean it is cool that we have that choice but it's turning to how they're going to sell this kind of stuff we have we had two articles this week about about windows phone commercials windows commercials and it's so funny just how you know this this plays into this larger question of the difference between platform makers and manufacturers we have first of all this commercial from Microsoft for windows phone 8 by Steve Ballmer Steve Ballmer once again on TV has he been on TV since that hilarious windows phone excuse me windows like 10 commercial from the 80s wait just one minute before you answer oh yeah nice I see what you did there Oh mobile sorry she's five hundred dollars a thousand that's one of the best listeners that you obviously have seen this commercial if you haven't go google it right now steve ballmer windows commercial it is the best thing you will ever see um but this this this windows phone 8 commercial I i love it i think it's insignificant that it's steve ballmer because i think eighty percent of the world you know sounds good not gonna get it but like I think it's a charming commercial I really do yeah it's it's it's basically the camera view just panning and scanning around different live tiles on ostensibly Steve Ballmer's phone I like his me tell and yeah me too and he's he's he's doing the voice over India's like this is some advice I'd take and some advice I don't and here's what I do and here's what I don't and it's a very straightforward very clean very well you know it's a very good commercial I think it's a great commercial yeah and it's like um I the windows phone 8 more than ever is about this message of like it Sammie phone you set it up and it becomes about you and it remains to be seen whether people respond to that like I get it that I want my phone to work the way I want it but I um maybe it's it's almost a little too extreme little too creepy the fact that like um you know my phone you know was I guess windows phone 7 when this 17.5 was the same way but when does funny more so I just wonder if this is too extreme what do you guys think about this message of the me phone the microphone the ant I'm fine it's a good concept but for me it would be more reassuring to do something like this do you guys remember the joint microsoft nokia commercials where they would prob basically bash I think it was the iphone & bash the users because they were actually beta testers of phone oh yeah the smartphone betta tell ok so his nose for me right back at you guys how do all the windows phone 7 users feel if not as a beta tester so I think it would be more reassuring for the customer to say that hey this is our new platform it's here to stay and this is what you can do with it but this advert this ad transmits the information that yes this is my phone but knowing what Microsoft did in the best how long will it stay my phone you know I think that I think Tony you're right for the for the but as you as you said before you know their market share is so low on Windows Phone that I hate to say this but I think that they they probably don't care collateral damage it's not that they don't care i think that they they look at the numbers and they're like all right we need to do something to make it right for those people but it's got to be some kind of web-based videos we got to reassure them in a different way and if we're going to spend the big dollars on a national or international advertising push then we're gonna you know we're going to focus on this big broader concept and the windows phone seven people will fix that in a smaller way and maybe they never will and you know what they probably won't but I just feel like going forward they have to look at the big the whole world and they have to say how are we going to sell did the idea this phone to the whole world and what's left well look iOS says you all have to be the same Android says a variation on that is there is there take on this like Android they seem to think android is the same as iOS which is hilarious it's not but but I like there but I like this push where it's like this is a known that will customize itself to you to your needs you to your phone it's a take on what HTC did with you you are special you were unique you are not yet absolutely i think that's that can be very effective if we stick with it for this and all the other reasons i think that windows phone regardless if it's seven or eight is an impulse product they are trying to market it as such but here's a question to you and aside from the live tiles being smaller larger or XXL in dimension there isn't at first glance a huge difference between Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 I mean all the commercials with Windows Phone 7 emphasize them the fact that you can make this phone yours do you remember the really or seriously ads which were yeah very good yeah and if this impulse thing didn't happen with Windows Phone 7 I mean it happened up until at four percent market share point why do you think what do you I do you think that it will happen more now with Windows Phone 8 I mean it's the same concert well I don't think it is the same concert I think at the core it's a different things I think windows phone 7 was but they don't hear about course no you and I care about course but no that's not what I mean I'm sorry i mean the the heart of the of the push is different I seem yeah like I think with Windows Phone 7 they were saying look at get in get out get back to your life they're saying like look at these tiles and they show you things so you don't have to spend as much time in your phone and they've kind of abandoned that that advertising push with the with Windows Phone 8 where they're saying instead make your phone yours and I think that's very different whether it will be effective or not you know that who knows but I'm glad that it's different and don't forget that what and dont and dont forget that phones are sold in stores where people are gonna see on our rack they're gonna see a Lumia 920 they're gonna see windows phone 8x they're gonna see an at TS and they're gonna have beautiful screens wonderful hardware high-res displays and they're gonna have these live tiles that fill up the entire screen whereas in seven and 7.5 you have that bar on the side and they were all relegated to the left so so I think I here's a question to both of you you guys are not bucket now editors you guys are the normal regular user and you go into a store and you see the Samsung at CVS on the left and you see the samsung galaxy s3 on the right of course in the store a phone will never be as customized as with with your own account so you will probably have all those dull tiles which probably the photo style will probably be animating the music that will be animating but the rest life and all that yes yeah the rest will be only colored tiles and then you see the galaxy s3 with the beautiful weather widget with with all the icons and you've heard all about the galaxy s3 and you know what android is what would you pick yeah if I'm if I'm gonna speak for myself I'm gonna look at both of them as a consumer and as a consumer if I'm just a regular guy I would gravitate to the galaxy s3 first because I know the name I would look at the achieve and say why why is this different and and at that point it would come down to the sales guy this is why the carrier sales people are so incredibly crucial because he would have to come Vince me one way or the other I think for to me windows phone is much more aesthetically appealing than anything the TouchWiz has ever done and I like TouchWiz nature UX better than the other versions so I I would give them a fair shake it would come down to the sales got for me Brenda that's I I don't know what I would I can't do this role play effectively I because I would I mean do I have knowledge that that i can customize android see that's that's all you read about on the internet okay so i know it okay um i would probably go with with the android device because I i I'm a control freak I want to control every part of the experience on the phone and I want to have the option to do so in the future whereas with this windows phone 8 thing while it looks pretty and different I I know that that will be the way it's going to look for the next two years on my contract give or take mm-hmm well it's yeah that it's a solid it's a solid question um I'm glad you brought up the achieve Tony because I wanted to compare samsung samsung not too low mia sure and and we've got an example of how samsung's gonna try and move their products with we kind of launched off this discussion with the placebo more commercial from microsoft and then samsung dropped to this other ad where it this is like a minute and 30 so i think this is something that is not for broadcast is that right Tony well it's close to two minutes and I don't know about the US laws but in Europe you can as much if you have enough money you can go with a five minutes at two so but probably a shorter version of this should be or will be aired in the US probably so yeah it looks like a peek at how Samsung is gonna sell a toll at Eve line and for me you know this thing was just was just too much so it looks like they're positioning the the achieve liner they're trying to as this kind of prosumer / professional line where they're like here's the pro tablet here's the consumer tablet and here's the achieve as smartphone and is this whole narrative in the commercial about like oh we got this project coming on the clients are coming in where generic white collar workers oh no we just lost a bunch of data so we're doing deals yeah exactly yeah so like calling everybody across the planet like somebody's in a taxi cab somewhere and she's got her tablet and the students like had a business lunch and he gets this message on his a team pro and he's like sorry bro I gotta go and he liked attaches the tablet from its keyboard dock and walks away leaving his friend with his keyboard dock for some reason that's absurd and then you know this guy is talking to some beautiful woman and on a tropical island and all the sudden is at Eve s goes off he's like oh I've got to take this I'm obvious on vacation but I'm very dedicating to my job so I got to take this and its just oh it's the most dull commercial ever Michael it's funny that i usually don't agree regards if what we talked about i disagree with everything you guys say i don't think there's there's a person in this world who hates samsung adds more than I do I told you last time I hate them up to the point that I want to puke yeah but this ad I like you like this I of course you like I said well why do you why do you like I said I like I've said about why I don't like it I don't think it's very I don't think it's it moves my heart so why does it jumps right to the point where ever you are you can work and you can play because if you've seen everybody is playing at the beginning the girl is with the maps and the guys with his phone and the other one is at lunch but you can't play and collaborate and this is the most important thing and I think the core of this ad is the collaboration between the three otherwise totally different platforms windows phone 8 Windows RT and Windows 8 so they play nicely together and this is I think this is the point of the sad it's almost it's like that one because I was like an advertisement for the windows 8 ecosystem and not for samsung because you know that these products don't necessarily do anything together I mean they just all have a samsung brand on them yeah no that's that's a good point and antonio i think i think you're right i think that this is advertising more effectively advertising the interoperability of the user experience or you know the disabilities experience between different flavors of windows and that that could help to a degree i don't i think it needs to be a better commercial if they want to they want to push that idea but it's cool that samsung is coming at it from a different angle than then microsoft is at least in these two examples which kind of apples Norwich is but you know good to the point of to the point of Brandon that this is a an ad for the ecosystem the Nokia aside which gives all those nakia applications and HTC SI 2 gives you now the HTC hub in the form of a lifestyle OEMs don't really have that freedom to customize and differentiate their phones so of course they will push the ecosystem because they cannot tell you anything what pushes their particular phone or tablet it comes down to build quality yeah right which-- and it's gonna be interesting to see how HTC markets their windows phone products they will probably see that the bear phones just like Nokia said that their phones worthy windows phones HTC will see that this is the windows phone ages as the name says it's the windows phone yeah i saw them mention in more than one mentioned across the web that like you know people are already starting to perceive the HTC windows phones as the sort of the Nexus equivalent we'll have to see how that that goes on I I'm glad we touched on those I i do want to kind of move on to android here because we have spent a long time justifiably a long time on windows because there's a whole lot of news from windows today i want to remind our listeners that we've got a bunch of reviews coming down the line we headed unboxing of the HTC windows phone we will have a review on that up shortly i believe and that'll be followed of course about the Lumia 920 a whole bunch and stuffs coming down the road so before I jump into before we all jump in android if final thoughts on on Windows Phone Tony's like no no I yes no comment no really I want to say this guy's I'm not hating on Microsoft really I am being so harsh on Microsoft because I know given the size of that company its potential its background I know that they can do much better and when I say that I don't recommend the surface RT I'm not to say that I hate on Microsoft I just want them to be better at what they do and I want there to be a solid third platform an option for those who hate me about iOS for those who also hate me about Android I want a solid competing company with solid product that's all yeah Brandon amen my thoughts are in the review well let's let's start talking about what what mountain view is done here because either has had a giant week as well google had to cancel its official event unveiling the the nexus 10 and officially announced in the nexus 4 in the new Nexus 7 and we didn't know if they thought was going to be rescheduled maybe even though they said was cancelled her I did I was like ah they got to have an event but no they just kind of quietly unveiled their devices on their on their android blog and so we have a nexus family now in small medium and large we've got the nexus 4 on the small size replacing the Galaxy Nexus from LG we've got the new Nexus 7 with different storage capacities and cellular radio and we've got the nexus 10 this new giant tablet from from Samsung that looks depending on your feelings either looks awesome or looks like an old CRT TV tube so I this is this is interesting we also have android for tattoo has dropped I want to touch on we've kind of talked about the nexus for a little bit we'll talk about it in a second but I want to touch on the Nexus 10 real quick with you guys kind of touch base I've written a lot of pieces I feel like on the Nexus 10 this week there's another one going up today what what do you guys feel about this this thing this is in a landmark product for Google in in a way that I didn't necessarily expect because I feel like they're using it to turn this app model on its head and they're like well the apps aren't there for the 10-inch but we made an awesome device and this awesome device is going to motivate developers to write apps for the 10-inch form factor and I'm like I hope it's the case okay yeah do you guys think that that will happen this is by the way taken from an interview they they did with the the verge a couple to couple days ago so what what do you think I mean anyway they are they're priced to sell really I mean that ya know the nexus 4 in the nexus 10 are ended and all the nexus yeah in the seven yeah it's unbelievable it's like sometimes you have to remind yourself that the nexus that you can get a tablet that's very good for 200 bucks and now you can get a 10 inch tablet that has significantly higher resolution than the ipad 3 and 4 for 399 bucks yeah that is awesome but whether whether I mean I mean you can kind of look at it when was the nexus 7 released in the spring maybe uh no it was low barely four months ago yeah I was like this start of the summer wouldn't barely four months ago it was the end of july at the end of june i'm sorry end of june end of joy and in july it's it's far too early to determine whether the strategy of coming out with hero hardware low price points is enough to get developers excited but I I'm gonna guess that eventually to keep firing cannons like the Nexus 10 at such low price points and it's ventually going to work and people are gonna bite I mean a lot of people bought the Nexus 7 and I think a lot of people are not that many not that many Brandon well we mean three million units and four months throws relative to other each other's their tablet yes relative absolute I mean that's I that's a lot of that I was gonna mention that later on but i mean you know i think that's that's a cool milestone I don't know that we have enough data to compare it to look at look at the way the 7-inch tablet you know market was was before we had the kindle which was its own little flavor of Android and you had to buy into amazon's ecosystem and that that sold very well this kindle fire fire rather but this a nexus product selling that many units in that that amount of time to me is very impressive and i think it speaks to this this nexus approach being a good one where you have really cheap hardware as you're saying Brandon but it's not economy hardware it's like buying a first-class ticket for you know for coach class prices you know I I think that strategy is really cool and Google can afford to take a to slim those margins down on those products because they're not trying to make money on the products are trying to make money by getting your more eyeballs on Google content and I think it's a great great strategy I just questioned with regard to the nexus 10 launching a 10 inch android tablet without an app ecosystem which contrary to to what some some commenters think is the case there is no legitimate android tablet ecosystem unless you're talking about scaling up smartphone apps which is frankly ugly and stupid yeah I think I think it's about time the Twitter comes out with a proper android smartphone app because on a 2560 by 1600 display that Twitter phone app is gonna look disgustingly bad yeah yeah yeah yeah um anyway well you know well we'll we'll see how it how it plays out but I mean I it's so yeah I feel you you know yeah it's it's I get it and I it makes me excited for the future but right now I'm I wouldn't be excited about buying a nexus 10 just because I do tend to rely more on apps when I'm in the tablet form factor and I'm not browsing but i think they are also that they're also going to make that this enhanced play for hey remember we're Google we have the google play store and it has all this amazing content in it which they have managed to build up very quickly i have to give them credit for this you remember when the nexus 7 dropped and and they were like look at look at all this content we've gotten the google play store we're relaunching the Google Play stores this content destination I mean since then I've been able to search for books and eight times out of ten four times out of five I've been able to find the title I'm looking for you know in movies as well and and it's like wow this is you guys have really built up a destination for content faster than I would have expected so I think they're going to use that to try and sell the nexus 10 and I think it's gonna work pretty well while while we wait for apps I don't know absent the user interface I don't know if I'm right probably i'm wrong but i had this feeling that the android aside from the fact that has many many many screen sizes and many many many resolutions has basically three modes and please drop me a line if I'm wrong it has a smartphone mode a phablet mode and a tablet mode now all it would take for Google is to improve the tablet mode because I you remember guys last week I talked about my nexus 7 experience Michael you remember my five completely empty home screens yes that's because I I don't really find a widget which could fill up that space now what I'm saying here is that even the user interface itself has to be a little more polished to justify in my particular case personally the purchase of a 10-inch Google tablet yeah they're gonna use the space intelligently right they need to do that and we we went and thought about this last week I thought that you guys agreed that it would be intelligent for them to okc we're not gonna make applications and we're not gonna make developers code another app for the tablet go with windows guys limit the application to a certain height and width in pixels just like the window mode on the galaxy note 2 and let me drag that around on the screen and do no more super huge white space i can arrange stuff i can bring them forward i can close them i can multitask and problem partially solved agreed yeah and you're talking about fleshing out the space between the mobile and the desktop kind of you I paradigm yeah it's in and it gets annoying to me when I'm using an American Galaxy Note 2 right now which doesn't have the multiscreen support which is amazingly frustrating and and so half the time i'm using this galaxy note 2 which is this giant smartphone with just a scaled-up smartphone OS yeah like one of the one of the crucial features that differentiated it because it used the see added screen size intelligently is absent and if the nexus 10 ships without enough you know enough intelligent usage of its of its massive canvas and its high resolution canvas i think it'll be similarly disappointing i agree you know what I always dreamed of what what well well rocket sure has it except for the things you told me yeah as it relates to android tablets is that and and this kind of ties into how are people gonna use 10 inches of high-resolution screen space um I've always dreamed of a tablet where I could set it up to be a console a dashboard for my life so everything that I do on a daily basis is in one screen I can see my email I can see traffic static stats for pocket now from yesterday I can see my bank balance I can see um let's see I could see my favorite websites I could see my delivery status for my ipad mini that's coming today I can see the score for the game that I missed and it's just like one view my entire life is there and it seems like you're talking about windows are demon she was gonna say it seems like you're talking about Windows but your are you talking about not having to tap on the on the tiles to shoving them all omnipresent all the time yeah and further the the widgets would act as many apps so I could if I got an email in the upper left corner of the email widget I tap on the email it would pop up in a slightly larger screen that would overlap against all the other widgets for just that moment sure and and so I would sort of live in this world of I would live in the dashboard I wouldn't go into any apps I would interact with everything everything would be updated right when I turn on the tablet the problem with Android or last time I tried to do this and it was with the Galaxy Tab 7.7 when I used that for a long period of time Bravo Android is that all these widgets are coded differently so some of them will update some of them will not some of the more lags I'm a little crash um so so like I I'm hoping with the nexus 10 I can try that again because there's so many pixels on the screen and because hopefully widgets have gotten a little bit better um den and you don't get no I don't mean to interrupt I'm just coming right on the end of your point with a firm agreement but I think that they will not build in the support necessary to do it because no matter how high-rez the screen is going to be it just seems to me that Google doesn't care about how many pixels it has it'll still confine you to widget sizes that are way too big for that high res screen where you can't make it small enough and still make it functional yeah it's it's gonna be like a macbook pro where while the resolution is higher the effective resolution is the same if you know what I mean exactly yes because you can't downsize it enough even though if you made it a one and a half inch by one and a half inch widget it would be readable at that resolution they won't you do it yeah yeah unless unless you get like I mean there you can you can put some third-party software on there that allow you to change the DPI settings you talking about that fancy fancy routing and things of that sort yes I sent you what's the catch the stage already damn kids seriously guys two more things and wrapping this up as far as I'm concerned first of all I have no doubt that the nexus 10 will sell very well it has great specifications but i would i would be as bold as saying that both the nexus 10 and the surface RT are excellent hardware and their software counterparts are lacking at the moment and i'm not saying listen android fans know android is not lacking i'm talking about the user experience on a 10 inch screen yeah and the second thing i want to say and this for those of you who know me this is a great thing i will buy a nexus 10 before i buy a surface wow wow you know what I can't disagree I if I were to if I were making a decision based on utility on getting things done yeah I would probably buy an extra time before i bought a surface as well and then and then some people might say well well you're not gonna get the full office experience that's true but they're having the COG from quick there's there's something called I mean let's let's be honest here how many mmm how often do you use microsoft office I use Google Docs a lot cuz I like spreadsheet I do use spreadsheets and I do use word processing and so forth and I make a powerpoint not once every six months and maybe if you're in a lot of work where you need to do a presentation up more often you do that but there you know microsoft office used to be like this this pillar with which that's not very her a pillar where if you remove the pillar everything would fall down because you needed office office office right it's not it's not like that anymore if you get the nexus 10 or get an app like quick off where you can make powerpoint presentations you can do Excel and so forth yeah yeah I don't know I I I never comment on this the utility of office of microsoft office because I'm in that world and so long that I just if I have to do a document i use google docs if i have to a spreadsheet i use google docs it's not because i'm a fan boys because i've used gmail since 2006 and it's there and it's handy and it's streamlined and it's clean so whatever well you know what we'll we'll talk about all that stuff i want to i don't want to get too far back into to Microsoft there is something android for dot to has brought some some improvements and stuff and some of that a showcased on the nexus 4 which we've talked about a lot on the site this week in editorial content would obviously have a review of that coming up soon as well d are you or either of you guys at Tony I know you're probably not but it attempted to carry the nexus 4 as a daily driver in any respect if I I had to carry an android phone probably the nexus 4 would be on my top free list right there with the HTC One X and probably maybe the Samsung Galaxy S free if I don't see any more ads cord and and and brand it I am so excited about uh well the nexus 4 of course for the hardware but for point to add some really cool stuff like this this is 360 degree panorama is the way panorama should be done on an iOS what are we up to six you know you've got that panorama mode but while it works very well it is it is so unintuitive to use because what you get and if you're looking at it on your iphone is this extremely horizontal picture and you gotta like you gotta pinch to zoom yeah pinch to zoom is like and and it and I think the purpose of a panorama is to make somebody have an experience a wide 180 degree experience that you had when you were looking at something cool and and the panorama on on all other products doesn't recreate that but with this new panorama 360 degree mode on an Android is brilliant it's awesome yeah and joel eva has a great demo up if you haven't seen it lists it's awesome i just watched it this morning because i was trying to get caught up on all the news before we broadcast and photo sphere is a really cool thing I was concerned about it I mean it's kind of gimmicky in whatever but it does make I love taking panoramic photos but I have the same complaint that Brandon does you see him in the gallery and it's this thin ribbon that you have to pinch to zoom on and it's really not a very fun experience plus the software almost never stitches it together right no matter what Android build you're using it there's always these seam lines and it looks like straight lines get all distorted as the software is kind of its its it sucks yeah it's normal because white balance is changing from seeing to see I mean no I get the white balance I don't have a problem with it's just there's their spatial distortion between the show yeah for those two been aramas which you take on a yearly basis you can live with that but but my point i would take more panoramas if it worked better and as a matter of fact I did when I first got the Galaxy Nexus LTE the NT of four dot 0 dot whatever version had shipped with did panoramas excellently and then I got some kind of OTA update to another version of Android and all of us on the panorama feature sucked it screwed it up yeah I'm like come on man and then then I stopped taking panoramic so whatever I think photosphere is something I didn't want to talk about until I saw Joe's Vidiot video demo and I was like this is actually really cool so I it is yeah it is well I'm not a panoramic I'll probably as i mentioned i never take Ben Rama's but I'm a huge photo enthusiasts hence running with the 808 PureView all the time but it is a great feature Photosynth was a microsoft thing which was available for iOS and it's also was available for Microsoft products but what my main key takeaway here is that running through the key changes of Android 4.2 I couldn't justify a point release maybe a 4.1 points free but that for a four points you I I think this is not that much I mean swipe gesture typing yeah yeah you know panorama mode yeah wireless display and multi-user support were already there in place multi-user in 4.1 point2 so I think it would have been better for a 4.1 for free and bring something I don't know a UI overhaul for Nexus then in 4.2 I I think I think that the the point one update was was a good iteration to go to because um you know if you usually the point X point X point X are reserved for bug fixes and I you know I look just your typing for me as a must-have I I swear by it sorry swipe you know the the widgets on the lock screen is awesome sorry widget locker the the improvements to Google now our awesome the the photo spheres we just talked about I think you're cool yeah the google now improvements that's something we don't talk about often those are those arrogant those are really crucial because that's kind of what the future of Google's looking is looking at I want to be just one sec just just let me disagree shortly with Brandon on the point release a 4.0 and 4.1 ice cream sandwich versus jelly bean now that's justifiable but 4.1 2 4.2 it's not well we can't have project butter on everyone right yeah I don't you know I mean we can we can argue about the points all day long I I think that I think it's cool they're continuing to iterate I I do want to i have kind of a couple ideas about about the future of Android that I want to discuss next week but we have to we have to keep moving because we we have a couple more things to cover while we're still in android though the the galaxy note tablet has been rumored can we just touch on this briefly i think we we all have different opinions on this maybe or maybe we're all the same the this galaxy note 7 has been rumored in the Android world and i don't think that it has a point I don't think of that it needs to exist based on the fact that the galaxy note 5 dot five exists and the galaxy note 10 dot one for better or worse exists what do you guys think do you think they're just going to use the galaxy note 7 if Samsung releases it do you think they're just going to do that to replace the tab 7 dot 7 yeah and this is just a mindset what it is they're just going to add an s pen and and it's the normal evolution of the Samsung products they brought the s pen to the 10-inch form factor they brought the s pen to the 5-inch form factor and they will probably bring yes been to the 7-inch form factor they're already there in the market the the there are the tab 7.7 the tab to the tab 1 so they had lots of product right there and bringing the S Pen is just a good addition yeah i think it's i think it's huge because the the galaxy note is not it's a little too small for aggressive note-taking and the hung the 10 inch tablet is a little too unwieldy to have the portability the 7-inch talon so you know they got to go in the middle right yeah i just a it's just that every time I carry around my galaxy do you think they'll put a phone on it wouldn't it be hilarious i wish i wish they won't i I know yeah that would be your dream phone Tony yeah yeah um anyway you know and then speaking of big phones of course is that one of the bit of news about the the droid the droid that the android phone that can't seem to keep the same name the the butterfly j / di x / DLX / now DNA the droid DNA on verizon looking confirmed this is HTC's giant giant beast of a not a phablet but a super phone with the 5-inch screen we'll we'll see you know I don't know I i I'm if this thing changes his name again I'm just never gonna talk about it again maybe maybe they're just that variety somebody got the idea from a leak which was handwritten and it was poorly done at stat that they could yeah yeah just to just just typos and things so obviously a lot a lot going on with Android it for me the most exciting news from Android just wrap it up for from my perspective is that the the nexus 4 is going to have an a wireless charging orb available which almost as I tweeted earlier in the week almost makes up for the lack of LTE which for me is a deal breaker at this point just because I live in a in a market where if you don't have LTE you're nobody you were right yes totally status no it's just that your phones useless as Brandon saw in New York so I can't buy a phone without LTE I will not be buying the nexus for it personally but that wireless charging orb almost made me change my mind yeah so just to touch on iOS stuff briefly guys the your iPad Mini is coming in today Brandon you said it's coming today yes feeling lucky bastard um the more hands-on I see if that thing that's just it's just so wide in that aspect ratio at that screen size I don't know I can't wait to hear your thoughts on it next week I'm very nervous um I'm nervous because uh right i mean i unfortunately i was in here last week so I didn't get to cry and cry about the lowest screen res but yeah I don't want to have deja vu that I had with the ipad won an ipad to where i couldn't use the device for more than an hour without getting a high strain and the pixel density is slightly higher cuz it's a smaller screen but i have a feeling that i'm just gonna not be able to use it so I'll you know I'll let my wife easy okay what you could get send it up here to boss and I could find something to do then you have my name you have my Nexus yeah i've got all your stuff yeah brandon is as you come into my base and stolen all my dudes the UK court orders Apple to apologize better is a hilarious hilarious story that's already a little bit stale but I just think it's great so it would tell me what was the story on the Samsung the court ordered Apple to apologize to Samsung and Apple kind of did it and like this is all being forced to do it this is where people seem to be confused and I might be wrong here there's a ten percent chance i'm wrong but ninety percent chance and right the court didn't order apple to apologize the court ordered Apple to acknowledge that and state that Samsung did not copy its products and from what i see they just did that so it's not about an apology it's not like kids playing in a kindergartner I'm sorry I stole your whatever it's just an acknowledgement so if you care to read the text that's also on our website in case it gets pulled down Apple did just that Apple acknowledged that the court found samsung not to copy its design and goes on and say that opposed to other courts in germany and the US for instance in the UK that particular court had this rolling so right so it kind of be yeah it's it's just been this headline like all across the all across the internet about about the court saying Apple you you you posted an acknowledgement that was not in line with with what we with what we said that you had to do so maybe it's not i think you're right Tony I think technically it's not quite an apology as much as it is misinformation in the place of information where it's like we told you you had to make this clear to consumers and instead you you made the rule you made it sound like our ruling was exactly the opposite so quickly see better they say it on the 9th of July the higher of Justice of England and Wales ruled that the Samsung electronic limited galaxy tablet computer namely tab 10.1 7.9 and tab 7.7 do not infringe apples register design number blah blah blah right so they acknowledge that okay well it's yeah I don't know it's it's it's weird it's just interesting to see this that note that they're not done with this peeing match between them it'll never be done now and they won't you know and but the far larger news of course this week from Apple was that the there are some major changes in management that have gone on John Browett has left the company i don't know if i'm pronouncing his name right I can't even talk at this time I'm actually getting sicker as the podcast goes on the x senior vice president of retail is leaving but also scott forstall um big big name apparently from all the stories that are coming out from everywhere this week apparently nobody liked him wasn't Scott Forstall the guy that used the phrase this is blow away is that what he said it didn't remember this is blow away Tony can I get a confirmation on that or what mm I don't know he was referring to an iOS feature he was like this is absolute blow away like this is absolutely blow away he said yeah this October 2011 yeah I when I think of it I I can only remember these words and that's it about and insert the feature here and he was always going to the next feature and ending the presentation with that's all about maps let's take a look at series what a little and that's all materi apparently he was he was like the big guy but behind the push for ski or morphism to continue at Apple please stop it yeah and so it'll be interesting to see how iOS changes that's why this is significant I'm not interested in the drama as much of this corporate you know a guy leaving but he was you know how it will affect iOS going forward it'll be really interesting to see how this I language iOS changes both iOS and Mac OS and Johnny I've sir Jonathan Ive is taking over and just take a look at the products if you have an Apple product in four in front of you take a look at that it's been drawn and thought out by jony ive yeah and he will bring this design to iOS I don't know to what extent I don't know what they will change but just knowing that there will be a change is enough for those who got tired of the good old user interface and this is great timing for that because if Apple doesn't change iOS 7 to make it truly different this time after all these years then people are gonna start turning away and I by firing the guy who was responsible for the way did he quit heard was he fired because the rumor has it that he was fired cuz he minimized all the critics about Apple maps and he refused to sign off the apology letter and Tim Cook the CEO himself had to sign that one off rabbit good so it's kind of symbolic it's like yeah and maybe Apple didn't put up a big try to keep them keep them at the company and said you know we're gonna part with the old here and bringing the new jony ive's in charge of iOS 7 because we need to do something pretty dramatically awesome to keep this going well yeah and if that results in something incredible i will be very pleased because it's so nice to see iOS with fresh eyes i will be tickled yeah i will be tickled pink just over 10 minutes left in the podcast want to get to listener mail because we can't skip it every time once again just a reminder to everyone we appreciate your reader mail sorry we can't get it all on the air but we do have a few pieces here which are really interesting number one is from someone whose name I haven't decided how to pronounce it is either cure kire or keep it somewhere he's writing the Front's always running from we don't know that he's a mystery he or she is a mystery person question is why is apps on the windows market more expensive than android and apple's marketplace who sets the price do you think ten dollar apps is overpriced and and why do you agree or disagree yeah brandon i love this question is a good question a long time ago not too long ago uh software companies would charge you know twenty thirty dollars for a piece of software and I don't know about you guys but at that time I didn't buy that much soft fur cuz it was expensive and maybe that was even though I mean $50 software wasn't rare and you had no foot Photoshop at six hundred fifty dollars and you could go into the thousands and then and then iowa's came around in the app store opened and Apple Apple introduced this idea where apps should be one dollars or two dollars and and developers were kind of upset about it at first but something crazy happened people started to buy a lot more software and so and so the new norm is that applications should be priced at five dollars or below because it allows for an impulse purchase I mean there's a big difference there's a big difference between four dollars and ten dollars um you know yeah so so but windows the windows brand is is still a little bit set in that old school mentality and I imagine that over time as Archie evolves or as the windows 8 style Metro thingy App Store um you know matures at prices will come down because people aren't going to buy a ten-dollar game like like like I showed in my in my video review when you could you know by the same game or a similar game for half the price or a quarter of the price in iOS App Store or Android App Store so it's all I I don't think this is permanent I think they're gonna come down because no one's gonna buy apps that are that expensive because we're trained now to pay for cheaper apps and by four of them I have a different perspective though I agree with Brandon that the price will come down but I think that the reason for this is simply economics and thinking business and thinking numbers when you are a developer and you get a plan plication in the android store or in the apple store you expect that many people will buy your application at 199 299 multiply 199 by a thousand and you get the amount of x if you are a Windows RT or Windows Phone 8 developer you expect your application to be bought by less people because of the last market share exactly so I'm I'm pricing it higher because if less people will buy it maybe it will make it worth my time and the more people will be caught in with the ecosystem the prices will drop down exactly it's a point that then we saw a lot of that back in the webos days when like the apps would be ported to webos and it'd be free and another platformer that she's a big dollar in another platform they be five bucks in webos and got in the forums is like why and the developers would frequently participate in the threads and they would give the same exact answer you did Tony there was just like there's not enough user base we have to be able to justify our man hours and not only porting this app to begin with but maintaining it after it sported true it makes it even more difficult much more difficult for a new platform to come come come about for that very reason yes exactly that's so thank you very much that was an awesome question perfect i was for one day because Michael never answers questions no it is like I just I just I just ride on your coattails that's what one of the great things a little in the host I do to answer questions shut up um this is the second questions from Tom huffmaster first love the podcast keep up the great work thank you Tom the second a question about the nexus for tom is debating whether you get a cheaper at t-mobile instead of getting it straight from google because of the chance of hindering the pure Google Experience he's concerned he says with updates being delayed through carriers since it's being sold through google on the play store with the t-mobile contract do you guys know if it will still have the same pure Google status if bought with a tmobile contract instead of unlocked I think this is a very good question it's something I've never thought about this happened before this happened with the Galaxy Nexus right well I don't know about the guys next I know the nexus one was was a tmobile product in addition to being its unlocked self and I think it was the same I don't think there was any tmobile bloatware I don't think there's any team of lower I don't think you've to worry about that yeah I don't think I my gut says that after the absolute train wreck of headaches with the Galaxy Nexus LTE the Galaxy Nexus on sprint an xss with these update problems they've even Google as mentioned this in interviews and they've said you know that wasn't a very good user experience I don't think they are going to try and reproduce that at all Tom personally I wouldn't worry that the t-mobile one is going to be is going to be any different from it from an update perspective I think what because the guys just backed me up on this the nexus 4 has support for t-mobile's AWS bands right yeah I think it's Pentagon's yeah like the Galaxy Nexus was llama yeah so uh yeah I agree I don't I I would be very surprised at the t-mobile version varied significantly from habits for I come from a different region of the world and the everybody knows that I prefer to buy phones unlocked and given that this phone is very cheap it will probably be like one hundred dollars cheaper on on contract I would go for it on lock straight from google and then you don't even have that ? that's true that whether it will happen or not I mean one hundred dollars is not too much this is what I would and and it's it's a good point because it used to be like a discrepancy if like 250 bucks but now that price is so low we're talking $99 difference agreed yeah no that's that's a good point and also and you're not locked into a two-year contract with with tmobile in that case and that's that's good too so yeah Tom that's and then time had a follow-on question for our opinions on the Nexus 4 we touched on them a little bit earlier in the podcast and are the specs powerful enough to compel you to use one tom yes but the lack of LTE torpedoes it for me in my region of America oh shut up you I've just answered a question Tony look what I did yeah and I will disagree with you I will of course by this because we don't have LTE here in this region so I don't care about LG but respect something executor excellent they are they are excellent and that wireless charging orb is awesome the second last piece of listener mails from Myron gun listener and viewer from Trinidad and Tobago awesome yeah just wanted to say i love your podcast and youtube vids keep up the good work thank you for listening and watching Lehren I listen at work and it's very entertaining I wondering what's your personal opinions on rim and do you think they're too far gone and if so will blackberry messenger be doomed along with them or as a last resort will they eventually go multi-platform next year mmm i speaking personally I think if BBM survives if rim survives long enough to safeguard the future of BBM they will have to go multi-platform and I think not only will they do that I think it'll be too late you know III don't have personally there's a reason we don't talk about rim a lot on the podcast or on the site you know it i personally don't have much hope for them either way you can I don't think BBM matters anymore with facebook Messenger and with Windows Live and with all those applications like samsung chat on with which chef I mean yeah especially they have all inter compatibilities and even if not it doesn't matter BBM unfortunately will not matter next year and I don't think it matters this year either yeah unless you're really like married to read read receipts and delivery receipts and things like yeah but facebook Messenger has that already sure yeah and all these other platforms do I mean BBM's big compelling thing was that you weren't being charged per SMS which is kind of no longer a situation I think people have gotten over that and and that you know your delivery receipts read receipts and you could have little chat rooms and stuff and as you said Tony there's there's so many different third-party alternatives to this that I don't think it's relevant anymore yeah uh Brendon anything else before yeah yeah this last one is from the whim first of all thank you for keeping me thinking up to date with all new cool stuff thank you for reading I was following your discussions on mobile note-taking past and future and maybe wonder yet again what is happening with display technologies like Mirasol this is an awesome question because I had forgotten all about Mirasol which Wikipedia informs me the the technical name is the interferometric modular display yeah yeah which is this interesting kind of hybrid between capacitive displays that we know and love and and ii inc and it's a Qualcomm product i believe and yeah the shouldn't this be a pinnacle asks the web for a note device that just stays on and has the displays be to work with android i promised myself i would only buy a new e-reader if it had full color and ian capability unfortunately my firsty broke down so why are there no mainstream devices at all with mirasol did it fail to be mass producing mmm why would somebody in 2012 at the end of the year by an e-reader instead of a tablet I think just for for daytime reader OT for tablets the kindle paperwhite is super suit I me if you're if you're a bookworm there's nothing like a paper white or yeah print the glow light I mean they're just so good at what they do is unbelievable okay then I have no opinion on this I i I'd say that Mira saw isn't ready yet it's either too expensive or it's not good enough and if they came out with a product with it no one would like it so I think it's just a matter of time I think you know we'll be in this in a future where this week a new display technology coupled with low power using processors dramatically extend battery life and batteries continue to get bigger and not necessarily smarter um so I think it's part of the future but just not ready yet yeah I i agree i think i think just development wise where we're not seeing the e I think if they were ready to ship we would have seen them already and apparently inventec LG some some companies come to be developing some phones with using maricel technology but i think the initial wave even when it's ready for release ostensibly will be will be unimpressive i think this is something that has so much promise because it does it promises capacitive touchscreen full-color awesome not forget I said capacitive but the full color of today's regular touch screens the but with a with an anti-glare aspect to it kind of like the old blackberry displays but yeah I don't know we'll see how it goes thank you for thank you for all of those pieces of listener mail everyone thank you for for writing in and sorry we couldn't get them all read on the air guys before we wrap it up do you have anything else no full stop yeah nice well that is an efficient end to a dense podcast and I think that all of us need to go brandon has to go take shipping on this new iPad Mini Tony probably has to go see how Jack is doing and no Tony probably will have to moderate some of the compounds and the Windows Windows RT review now the surface review angra let me be mollified I'm looking at them let me address some of these that's fine I'm gonna do that after this good well I'm I have to go find some men occasion and not talk because i'm just so disgusted with the way my voice sounds so that told you my friend you have to even you know what you have tight know what I've gia paracetamol and palinka right all right well that wraps it up for this episode of the pocket and weekly feel free to tweet at us as always Tony over there is an aunt on d nadja int 0 ND na gy brandon is at brandon minimun you can find me at captain two phones captain the number two phones follow pocketknives official twitter account at pocket out tweets follow us on facebook and google+ leave us a review on iTunes are soon if you like the podcast you can find us on stitcher on a variety of other third party podcasts videos and if you have a comment question topic suggestion for the podcast where you just want to say hi you can email us at podcast at pocketnow.com thanks for listening we'll see you next week hey