Gadgetory

hello everybody welcome to at CES 2016 welcome to the verge lounge here it's a yes we're in the corner there's a car beautiful Ford car here I encourage you to gaze of the car and then we are performing some sort of social engineering experiment we're forcing people to tweet to drink water I encourage you I encourage you to refuse to do it hi I'm told the people are tweeting with crazy literal thirst wait really but you can only get water if you tweet 10,000 care that right you got you got your nuts anyway I'm gonna be on the other the verge this is my friend Walt Mossberg we're gonna actually start the podcast want to say hello to the people hi I'm wat moss briggen hello before I have to read this wonderful podcast at if there's one thing everybody loves about podcasts it's it's primo advertising I think that's what the data tells me so I'm gonna read the ad or get in the show thank you guys so much to be here it's I think it's fun that we have like an audience so if you like want to laugh and make noise so people here you that'd be cool or if you just want to stare at me in this first day of CES dead-eyed silence that's also acceptable if you want to stare those stare at him alright so maybe the ad where I start the show we're gonna get right into it um okay are you really of looking to build your network with like-minded individuals look no further talents that's TL NTS a social media platform where you can build your networking business by connecting with creators like yourself anywhere in the world whether you're posting our piece and editor real or producing a new music track on talents your portfolio is your resume and now it sounds new vouching system your connections can help build your awareness so download talents today on iOS and share your house the world also if you're an Android user tell us what we available on google play at the end of the month that's talents tal and TS just as it music is ax to the soaring real thing ok does that happen hello and welcome to control alt delete a podcast that I no longer am able to say is new because it is a totally different year it is we began it is and we are starting out the year 2016 at CES I'm joined here by walt mossberg my friend and the executive editor of The Verge how's it going well yeah you know it's it's it's gone CES it's gone see yes I have to say that so if you're listening the show we you should know that we are at CS in the in the verge lounge sponsored by Ford I think I just collected three dollars with an audience front of us it's super cool to have everybody here Ivan at CES for 500 years and Walt got here yesterday yeah today is the first official day of the show right we just walked through the LG booth and Samsung booth right I was mesmerised by everything and what was like why do you need this in the refrigerator but I want to talk about CS was the top level like what is the Walt Mossberg experience at CES well it's mote it has evolved over the years this is my 24th year oh my god upcoming to either see yes or its predecessor Comdex which some of the older attendees might remember which was which was at one time where the computer industry when it did not go to CES and CS was much smaller and Comdex was about this size maybe not quite as big but almost and then it the computer guys started going over here and Comdex kind of collapsed but it's my 24th year going to vegas for a gigantic massive trade show and so my experience has changed somewhat over the years it now it's I find the highest value to be private meetings where I'm seeing things that are not on the show floor or talking about them at least and because there's two CSS or at least there's maybe five Cs two different ones and but the two that I'm thinking of our the show floor experience and then kind of well here's really what we're working on here's what's yeah what's the good stuff here and I prefer to go to the you know I get more value out of this to be honest yeah but here they're still all this stuff here yeah yeah yeah I one of the most persistent criticism the show is that nothing gets announced here is like valuable or it's all nonsense or it's all just like toaster fridges gluing two things together but when I walk around I see all these attempts to build new cons of is that is that just a new perception of CES that it's all kind of silly or is that been sort of always your critical of it and you have the proof of that which I guess you're going to read a little love but it's not critical because it's quotes ill I don't think it's silly I just think it's a kind of follower kind of kind of event there are for sure innovations here that will take root and become important particularly in the areas which are the roots of this event which are consumer electronics so TVs for instance but if you think my only point is it first of all the five most important tech companies in the world you have virtually no presence here and secondly wait named 25 Google and Apple Microsoft Facebook and Amazon right those are the those are the big five companies with platforms and products that I'm pretty out you ask the people here I mean you all use something from these companies every day and you rely on it in your who has a windows from your personal life well I mentioned my Christine you can't get a windows found in a virtue this is not here helots that's good so that's number one number two if you look at the breakthrough game-changing products of the last 15 20 years from any of those companies and some others none of them were introduced here with the only exception is HD TV because this has always been a TV show and it took my estimate was it five CES is before it sort of took off yeah that's the other thing about it it's a slow cooker kind of a show it's not like you know Steve Jobs has walked out on the stage three weeks after the launch of X they've sold X million of them right that's not quite the way this one works yeah i mean but i don't think it's silly I i I've never said that and I don't believe it well I think it's interesting call it a TV show because fundamentally that has been the heart of this show for so many years please here's sony HD range of tvs they're going to take a bunch of best executives out to dinner and convince them to stock the TV right and I've never actually understood that dynamic because bet they need the TV's like why do you gotta cubensis I'll best because best buy has a lot of power over all the stuff including like even laptops right I mean they'll tell the laptop makers we think if you had this feature you change this color or you move this thing over here would do better on the show and that's kind of like what really happens here right the company's show off a bunch of new stuff the vendors the dealers the partner should show up they look at it that's why nothing ships until june or july out of CES traditional right and i think that is what kinda gets lost or the ship but let's get into what actually happened here have you been paying attention to the user but we watch the crazy samsung LG sony press conferences i have I don't go to the press conferences any what's another change well Jim I CEOs go to wall well no no well it isn't that it's at one time I I never missed a Bill Gates press conference for instance and stuff like that but I think there's a lot of fantasy at the press conferences that door doesn't relate to the real world and there's just more valuable uses of your time at all and we have a big staff and we have a lot of terrific reporters who are going to do a great job on those press conferences so I'm kind of superfluous yeah but to the actual products that come out so for example when you see a coming exam some say this is the year for HDR 4k TVs and an LG says it 10 minutes later and it's only says the five minutes later does that strike you is okay finally this is happening or is that just silliness to you it's it's absolutely not silliness and I'm not buying into that turn why do you think these guys have that's the most vicious encryption you know you know quantum dots was something I actually SAT through one our briefing about two years ago because I thought well maybe this is important you know I don't know its back then we just walked through as you said a couple of booths and we saw science has talked about quantum dots i'm still not i don't think i remember exactly what they are but I know they're important and and I know that different companies have different names for them and if anyone here has a good name that nobody else is using let me know so you know having HDR that might that might be what they need to sell more 4k TVs you know I just don't know they they tried that they succeeded with HGTV although as I said it took years they now have a problem because the replacement cycle of TVs and you know this is we know this from talking about how the replacement cycle of laptops asst has has you know moved from every few years to have five six whatever I don't think people really know tablets the same thing we don't know if something has a 78 year replacement cycle which I think big TVs typically do it's hard to move to the next thing get people who just shelled out a bunch of money for an HDTV to buy the next thing and I think that's why 3d fails mm-hmm I mean there may be other reasons but that was one of the big reasons people weren't ready to it's easier I'm you know do you I put off the wall right you're an iphone or a galaxy you might be inclined to replace at least every other model or something like that but a TV you know you have to have spousal negotiations about it and that's that fit in the room and there's a lot of a lot of I think three failed because just didn't offer any compelling reason that you're going to wear glasses in your home I agree but it's also not something that lends itself to an impulse buy like a smaller like even a laptop right theoretically but I look at 4k HDR and I think there's a lot of people out there with first and second-generation TVs in their living room and they have had no reason to upgrade them right and now you can go in the store and see something that's ridiculously thin that has streaming content that actually works in 4k HDR it's slowly starting to come out although I will say something just randomly at the end of their press conference announced we have another new 4k streaming service and like they didn't mention that they have an old one fish like shut so but you see it happening with Netflix you see it happening with other streaming services there they're investing in content so I think that upgrade cycle in my estimation anyway is about to house at recoup you could well be right and and it's the third or fourth C yes for 4k yeah which is about you said HTTP and 525 you know it's probably about to start and it will hit some stride in the next couple of years in part where some of it depends on the macro economy which and you know penned the people's wage levels it's possible income and stuff we're not qualified to discuss yeah so while you wrote this piece I think like the day after we have launched a few years ago it's called CES is not what you think it is I only imagine you wrote this under extreme duress of starting a new company I very little sleep yeah and so it sits as long thing and it basically sums up what we've been talking about here which is that there's like five CES is happening right somewhere here there's like I just moderated a panel at the cyber security forum at the Venetian right I asked the people on a panel if they were ever coming here and they were like no we were never going to show for why would we go there right there's like random chip vendors here talking about talking to platform vendors about putting new chips in I mean there's like 500 kinds of shows here and then there's like TV companies trying to get TVs in the best buy but I'm just going to read this paragraph which I think sums up what most consumers think about CS which is the ipod WTS know about Windows 95 no Google search facebook the iPad the first android phone you've there's five notes here nope no filter Microsoft's historic first Apple Computer the surface and up again although what's it historic looking back on it now was just joy because was the first computer they made there you go and you've got this is a list of notes and I think that's what there's so much out there about what isn't here what do you think is here some people I'm you know I this is not the first year that you could say this but I think it's its way up this year and it's in its kind of presence and that has to do with the the car becoming a platform for software for digital hardware and the kind of battle that I think is shaping up some cases they'll be partnerships but I think a bit overall as kind of a battle between the two big rival Valley Giants google and apple on the one hand and the car industry and it takes several forms i mean one of it is we all know that Google's been working on making driverless cars they've had years there I think they're ahead of everybody we also believe strongly that Apple is working on building a car and if it's driverless or what it is but whenever the head of one of the major car companies said to me yesterday his executive team has been told to just absolutely assume Apple is building a car huh nah not based on any information but that just for their own that's just the environment planning they better assume it and they all anybody and when he said was and we had better assume it'll have a fabulous ui/ux and we'd better well but that's what they're working against you say in your car you go to turn on the radio Apple music shows up so but the point is that's one thing yeah but the other thing that is maybe smaller scale but it represents the clash is control of the dashboard you know wait before we get to driverless cars and all the regulation and all the things hurdles it has to go through it's it's a month the near term thing that you're going to see is control of the dashboard yeah and the car companies don't want to give it up and Apple and Google have Android auto and car play which is Apple's where I don't know how many people sitting here have tried it I don't think this is a representation of that actual us or global population but um if you just can I explain really quickly so if you go into a car that supports it and there aren't beginning to be a reasonable number of them and you plug in an iPhone or an Android phone you get a subset of the apps on your phone in with big icons most these cars have touchscreens but it also works from voice you don't have to use so you don't have to use the the software that car makers put on you can basically have right on the screen of your car those apps which are deemed to be safe to use and which you can control by voice you get to use Siri or google voice both of which in my experience are way better than the ones the car makers built in and you just get to take your experience from the real world cut down a little for safety but very familiar into the car right and there's been big announcements here right so yeah fiat-chrysler said all their cars are going to do it Ford said their cars are going to do well Ford sort of split it right i mean ford announced its own platform or the expansion of its own right there Toyota now and Toyota is going to use it but at the same time Ford is there 2017 models are going to have carplay and android auto most GM cars already have it honda accord has it hyundai sonata but i think this thing you're saying it's funny you see the industry saying we're going to do what we're going to do it and then toyota says we're licensing the ford platform which now has the capability but we are not going to do car point i try out as a hole down there are some others that are holdouts and but my position as a reviewer as a tech journalist for a long time is it's much better i think it's even better for safety for you to have a familiar thing that you used to whether it's Google Maps or God forgive me Apple maps which to be honest hasn't has improved a lot it's probably not going to drive you into a lake like it would have a few years ago but it's not as good as Google if you if you're you know if you love Spotify and you have it on your phone it's just there yeah and even even Bluetooth phone calls are actually easier yeah with this it's so what's the current so I say I have said to car company folks both here and before this why actually had a public discussion about it with the head of GM Mary Barra at biko our coat conference last spring why don't you just say you know what we're really good at the engine we're really good at the at the at the transmission we're really good at you know that that bending of the metal to make the car we're not so great at this why don't we just let the and every consumer either has an android or an iOS phone just put that in and let them do it and not only that why don't we have apps we can build them ourselves or if somebody else build them that controls the sea and controls the HVAC and it's all going to look like Android or all going to look like iOS to me that would be the best thing didn't want to do that no I'll never do it they don't want to do that they don't that they're very reluctantly putting these things in because it helps them selves cars they think but they don't ever want to give up the whole thing and they actually claim that the that that I had somebody claimed to be just yesterday that the controlling of the position of the seed and the HVAC are things that play into their regulatory approvals and they can't give that to google and apple I don't know maybe it did yeah I mean I I it's funny cuz it's just I just imagined him cook getting and did whatever extraordinarily expensive car he has and like fiddling with the defroster and being like how this sucks and genuine let me do it so he's just gonna build the whole car right like it's like that level of you can just see the me like whatever always gotta build Paul Carter yeah but so there's that I think if there's like I think that's a big deal let's see that's the first big deal that's the incremental the next one is you know this company called faraday future announced like we're building a car platform and basically the cars are going to electric in autonomous we partnered with the Chinese entertainment company and they're going to play entertainment the cars while they drive you around and that's like some really futuristic stuff volvo announced a dashboard that flips open to into a screen everyone thinks you're gonna be watching things in the cars will i drive themselves and it's like there's just a little gap there of the technology is like it's like you can't they don't drive themselves yet yeah and your bill but there's just the gap is like regulatory because the cars are really close to being able to drive what I have to say there's a lot of things where if I was a government regulator yeah I would do things differently but this is not one of them I was a government regulator I would not say it's okay to have the cars driving selves unless I was like six hundred percent sure that the cars really could do this safely and we're not there yet you know I do believe that by the end of the decade we'll probably have some thoroughly mapped out you know geofence limited areas of certain cities where you'll be able to use these kind of cars at least not fully self driving you'll still have that feature where you can grab the wheel if you had to which California where most of this is going on actually that their proposed regs which Google is very upset about actually call for that but to get a completely self driving car where you'd be comfortable sitting watching a movie in the front seat there's so much of that here I mean but we have been talking about as a staff it that it's like the companies like you know what this regulatory stuff is too hard what if we just build a bunch of screens in the car so BW yesterday showed a new electric microbus called the buddy yeah yeah and if you just look at the interior that car they basically taken out all the windows replacement screens so that you could finish like watch movies presumably projects other fantastic we're drug dealing it is fantastic well Walter yeah kidnapping if you were a government regulator there's a lot of things you would do differently right and letting why don't they just call it the kidnapper no one commits swimmers you know but it's just funny to see how much of that you know this shows about tv's what the car companies are doing is like what if we make the kol horo TV yeah and i think thats related if we get two cars that are bulletproof and in their ability to drive themselves and that talk to the roads I mean I look I'm not a deep expert on this but my understanding is to get to where we want to go the roads have to be smarter but but Congress won't even pass the money to fix the bridges that are falling down nevermind big build roads of the future but if we get it let's say we have a few roads and I don't know you know and Sanford in the bay area a few roads and somewhere in Florida a few roads somewhere around DC because they want to impress the regulators whatever it is that would be fascinating it's not happening at this CES though so they're a little ahead of themselves right all right what I think is interesting is there's a bunch of smart city stuff happening here and you see companies like the ATT did something panasonic is like we're going to build you a smart city unclear Panasonic's with by the way one of the craziest views they built a stadium and a house to demonstrate their smart home stuff is literally built a house than the OCS but anyway so ATT tude smart city panasonic company and you can see it's like the net it's the thing that has to sit next to the car I you have to improve no I agree i think self-driving cars if and when they come and they will come but most people say what 20 20 yeah and i think one company is VW no not 2020 they say later than that right I don't know 20 20 has been a target date for the past few but there's a number of stages which I would really bore people to go into all of them but there's there's I think they're going to want to get to stage 2 it anyway or is that what it is well I think the first stage is they're going to the intelligence of the car will mostly let you draw like there will be a traffic mode right where you're in heavy traffic so we already have that way but it's coming so that's like the first one yeah and then it they just they're going to do more and more and more stuff for you until they take the steering wheel yeah that's that's basically the map right but but the it getting from the from the last possible stage of automation which still requires you or allows you to grab the steering wheel and a pedal to the one where they don't they're not even in the car yeah that's gonna be the big gap to get through for regulators I can't wait for that by the way and by the way not only to thank you up federal regulators you can imagine even if they somehow got it through the federal regulators as 50 states as I gotten out of so many cities perfectly yeah I mean I don't know what the law is on this but i can't imagine that some states won't take it upon themselves to say well you can do that in Illinois but you can't do it in Indiana yes sir although you know my personal theory is the states with big mass transit systems will be more resistant than where i'm from the midwest where drunk driving is a massive problem I think the states with that problem we're going to they're going to want it a lot faster yeah that's fascinating but it still implies the differentiation oh yeah of course it's just funny because you know uber and Google have their kind of fighting now but you know Google was an investor in goober to eventually to ride sharing and eventually do self-driving cars and at this show GM invested half a billion dollars and lift to do self-driving rideshare cars and you can just see that that is a particular vision of the future where no one owns a car you push a button and the robot shows up and drives you I agree with you and I think that one is very exciting for this show to suddenly be a place where we incrementally get closer to that vision has very interesting to me it is very saddening a TV show it does fit the pattern though of not being the first play the first place Google talked about totally self-driving no touch the steering wheel cars and showed a video of it was our the conference I've run the code which does not compete with this it's not a trade show it only has six hundred people not know 165,000 people but it's typical of you know they that size a band separate from this is where these companies tend to or their own events yeah way these companies tend to make make these things person no love it so we are sadly out of time we are yeah what's been its been that it's been about time this is the first time we've done it together though it is is it the first time we've done this face-to-face so what you haven't seen me do is just read my computer yeah I haven't just been checking the website what we talk no but this is great it's great to have you here it's great to have wallets yes we're gonna make a bunch more stuff with wall I think you have a whole date with a video team tomorrow we're gonna do a wall explore see I don't have a whole day with the video dear for a full deck but there's something it'll be very exciting what do you guys we are together yeah we're physically present in same room I god I'm afraid of this yeah I have a have a friend of mine one of my finally paying you good blood money that you've extracted from me finally paying his bitch thank you thank you for the applause yeah how much when do I get the get off my stage mossberg all right alright well that was it that was strongly thank you guys all so much for being here in the audience thank you for listening at home we have a ton of stuff from CES coming literally right after this I'll be taping the verge cast joanna stern and sam sheffer on the verge cast today david pierce is on tomorrow we have such three more for more of our chats coming tons and tons of videos please hit our youtube page we're going crazy on youtube uploading videos all over the place there Sam sheffer just wandered into or he's logging I don't know what's happening Sam god you have abandoned me Sam I don't know what so anyway this is the not very precise end of control wall tonight goodbye thank you so much for this thing about