Gadgetory

this episode of our chats is brought to you by lynda.com the online learning platform with over 3,000 on-demand video courses to help you strengthen your business technology and creative skills for a free 10-day trial visit lynda.com slash verge cast that's ly NDA comm slash verge cast Linda comments for problem solvers for the curious where people want to make things happen maybe you want master Excel maybe you want to learn some negotiation tactics maybe you want to build a website maybe just want to boost your photoshop skills go to Linda calm and feed your curious mind you can learn about virtually anything there you can learn how to build a note-taking app for iOS 8 you can learn how to do a data visualization you can do better retina graphics with Photoshop and illustrator there is an entire course where you just learn how to get Sam scheffers haircut it's kind of amazing linear calm we view unlimited access to training on hundreds of topics all for one flat rate so whether you're looking to just become an industry expert your passion about a hobby or you just want learn something new please visit linda.com slash forecast and sign up for a free 10-day trial that's ly nba.com slash forecast I want to say it took Mossberg 4 seconds to start trolling me on there for this verge cast hello everybody and welcome to the broadcast I want to stay today is June 25th it's a very special episode of The Verge cast we are joined by our new colleagues one mr. walter Mossberg who you're supposed to say hello oh hello there I am the delightful miss Lauren good hello everybody um so dieter I've got I've got I just tabs playing audio everywhere um so Lauren and Walt are joining the verge as part of boxing these acquisition of recode which is very exciting right they're gonna be around they're in town this week to meet everyone literally it's just been three days of introductions it's been awesome things new endless meetings I did we had a good dinner that was great we had a stew eater yeah our friends eater hooked us up yeah and we thought we'd have known for chest this week and then later on I'm going to somehow swindle Walt into doing a podcast of his own and that's been great and then over what the hell are you doing drinking this hydrater no distilled I'm just reusing you chef isn't hype see this is call hype on the giant yeah water yeah so this is how okay you don't call hi here's how this works okay it's very close to God but if I got myself into so this is the verge cast let's start with started start this is the verge cast were discuss all things verge for the week I am we usually stick to technology we have the we have formats where sometimes we you know get deep into entertainment we get deep in a culture we you know Liz will be on we talk about science and then sometimes we have what we call hard Tech verge cast we're just get really nerdy about technology but the main format here is it basically it's chaos over here and Sam sits in the hype desk over there and as we discuss various topics you can ask Sam to hype check those topics so we can Sam hype check the iPhone it peaked a while ago it's out like it's six or seven now like it's ubiquitous and the idea is for Sam to provide a number but that the fortunately some flavor there the formula that generates that number is subject to much discussion because I think it should change over time I think the hype level of things changes over time you're totally right yeah so that's the first agreement I've gotten from all a week so I feel really good about that so just for the audience we have been in meetings and literally just like introducing people and hanging out and seeing how things work so we've been a little off of a new cycle and these guys haven't been on the show before so I thought what we might do is sort of introduce them everybody with kind of state of the union and just talk about the big players and tech what they're up to how they're doing you know where they're where they're where they're hype levels are coming and going you got to stop drinking out a two liter or a two gallon jug of water no one going to one that's one go okay well it's still crazy what you doing click I check your jug of water 10 I so this Walton Lauren is the verge chest Peter Kafka is live watching oh yeah he's our biggest fan and he has already told us well that we need to speak into the microphone you guys you know really thanks Peter yeah you guys you know that's the first time Peters ever told us to do something that Peter has watched a podcast streaming classism yeah Rob so that's our show no one lets him on them have you noticed that oh just really interested Peter here in the hype seat next week buddy that would be great Peter lives nice yes yes no he was in deep Brooklyn Wow roof shape throughout at Brooklyn yeah heroic story yeah so look that up so the the frame of this we were talking just before the show started is who is Eric Schmidt at Google was that right a conference with Walt on stage with Walt yeah their conference was a deer code it was D it was the D conference when I was in the 2011 and he referred to it as the Gang of Four which is Apple Google Facebook Amazon right correct I'm notably leaving out Microsoft right and I said why did you leave out Microsoft and his answer was something on the order of they don't have a modern platform and then he went on make a point which was I mean and I interpreted that as just he's hated Microsoft since he ran Novell which one person listening to this knows what Nobel is but it was a networking enterprise kind of company and he competed with Microsoft but he left them out and he had a rash now but and and we had Microsoft on stage the next morning and they fired back scoffs key it was Steven Sinofsky yeah who is an important executive there at the time and for had been for many years and he was actually showing for the first time ever I think Windows 8 which went out to as you know knuckle the world and most Burroughs what was the hype on Windows 8 I mean when it at the time the fanboys were rabid for it right and yeah it uh people are looking forward to Windows 10 now let's just leave yeah that's right so Sinofsky made the point correctly because snaps key is a smart guys a student of history lived in China for a while and that the Gang of Four was also a term that referred to the kind of clique of dictators that ran China for a while yeah and so he was happy for Microsoft to be that was his point but but Eric actually putting aside the Microsoft jealousy thing he had an interesting point to make which is still true today I think which is he claimed there had never been a time in tech history where you had four companies that were platforms that yeah so powerful and growing so fast simultaneously and that it was just sort of an amazing time for developers and consumers of the products they developed and that was that was sort of the way his thought process that what I think is fascinating is how all-encompassing those platforms have become right now you can't you literally everything I wrote a piece last week two weeks ago where the entire media industry the whole revenue of the media industry or the music industry is less than Apple's profit over three quarters and they're totally dependent on Apple's platform to succeed and be the gatekeeper of everything they do and Google wants the same thing in slightly different way and Amazon wants the same thing in a slightly different right and Facebook is literally just subsuming the media industry and instant articles and it's amazing how big these platforms have become and Microsoft is trying to reinvent its platform with Windows 10 I get yet again the 15th time right and I think the I thing the interesting thing is that all these guys and most the more guys had had a particular thing they were good at or that the sat at the center of their their formula you know Google it was originally searched than in you know then Android Apple it was and still is I think basically making hardware with software that kind of ties in vertically to the hardware with Facebook social obviously and with Amazon it was selling things but they're actually all now impinging on each other right like you know you could draw these Venn diagrams and show all the overlaps of all this stuff so it's it's like a giant four-sided or including Microsoft a five-sided war yeah I think we should include because Microsoft's on we actually morning there are costs for trying in but I think if we're doing this a year ago when Windows 8 was like in full throat I would say maybe you could leave them out like that that didn't work now I wouldn't have laid that look there still are hundreds of millions of yeah and they're all Lizzie's hot running Windows and that's what they do every day so that is the legitimate platform that a lot of things a lot of work a lot of of browsing and other things is done on every day all around the world right Lauren yeah yeah so let's get into it and I'll just ask Lauren so we're in an apple moment right now which I'm just gonna go analyst Apple Google Facebook Amazon Microsoft and let's do State of the Union all of them somewhere in there I'm going to read read some ads and why do you think we're in an Apple moment right now biggest they're both are huge they're about to roll at Apple music hmm right they showed off the next versions of all of their platforms OS 10 iOS 9 the iPhone continues to be a monster they got Taylor Swift to put her album on Apple you know like that they have the cultural weight that I don't think anybody else has and I think when Google you know we look at I look at it when Google had i/o a couple weeks ago there wasn't just the wall-to-wall saturation of Google's like we did in our Sun because we covered Google but the rest of the world wasn't like paying attention to Google Apple is like has one little tweet with Taylor Swift and like the world explodes right and I think that moment is still very strong and so you tell me what do you think is going on with operator Oh Apple music specifically I mean there's so much Apple watch I mean we'll know the heart so the watch I think he's like fascinating please stop talking about to watch you're not wearing one I'm actually not one Walt's wing while it's wearing one and I've noticed a bunch of people at the verge actually are wearing theirs as well but I'm testing something different right now and yeah we it is definitely a moment for Apple right I mean they revolutionized the way that everybody pays for consumes music over a decade ago now they're now trying to do it again they're sort of you know they've taken this wait-and-see approach everyone now knows that streaming music is a thing right and so I think you know this is going to be a really pivotal moment for them in terms of their music services and actually what happens to iTunes as it exists now they just like they're doing with music they took a wait-and-see approach with wearables and now they've just come in with with a SmartWatch but you know I think the response to Apple watch has been a little bit mixed actually and I think the early reviews were all sort of like polite and acknowledging it as a beautifully designed piece of hardware of course like you know we were viewed at graph and then Walt reviewed it you know early on as well there weren't a third party apps at the time so we couldn't really judge it you know totally accurately or entirely at the time but now like even we've seen lots of apps come out and people are still like yeah you know we're still gauging the value of this so it's a fine Apple moment but it's like there's still so much wait and see and we hate saying that is journalists like which is the whole time will tell but it that's sort of I all right now so I think I think you're right but I would remind you that if we could get in a time machine and go back to two months into the iPod the iPhone if you look at the reviews the iPad got weird bad reviews in the beginning like no one's going to buy this and it became the fastest-selling piece of consumer electronics ever even faster than the PC I actually think the bad I've had reviews and people getting those wrong is the best thing that could have possibly happen the Apple watch because I don't I thought everybody was wrong those bad reviews about the iPad were wrong like off the bat so but I think the the mixed reviews of the watch are dead-on yes of course they should be everyone's afraid to like really say it because they might be as wrong as nobody lie they should be mixed because the whole package isn't out there yeah I agree well because they just thanks general one thank you first of all the hardware is Jim one but it isn't that the hardware is fine for Gen one yeah it's they just as you know very well they just released what you might call the first real SDK for it right where where a third-party developer can write to the watch as a device what I said in my piece which was based on wearing it for a month was that I had the feeling and I did have some apps to to talk about that were finished but they were these apps that you know basically are little stubs of iPhone apps because they didn't weren't allowed to write directly the watch and I and so I wrote it just feels like a lot of the developers don't know what to make of this right right that's not going to be true in the fall and we also wanted a rush it out or tour I don't think they rushed it out they took years to do it the question is why did they do it in these two stages yeah because it was probably faster to get a bunch of apps out through the iPhone it may have been a mistake no it's also the total learning curve with these types of devices right like I was just talking to the Fitbit CEO yesterday we ran a story about that and recode and even he pointed out and they've been around for eight years we're still in very early stages of consumer awareness around these types of products too so on the flip side of that I guess the Apple had rolled everything out and saying like ok and here are thousand apps you can run immediately on this watch and and you know a lot of the app load experiences have been really slow or in some cases you're swiping and you're like what is this do here it could have been too overwhelming for a certain segment apples Apple you got to remember two things about Apple and it goes through all these products and one is they you you guys mentioned this but this is a truism with Apple they always wait they always wait to see what people are fun pummelling around in a category they decide it's interesting to them and that and they figure out can we do this better or more holistically or whatever and then they try and that's what's going on they usually really succeed and dominate the market they do they have historically secondly um uh Apple plays the long game yeah and they can afford to mm-hmm but it but to be fair when Jobs did not have this kind of money he still played the long game I mean I in in I had lots of conversations with him over the years I can't ever remember him talking about quarterly or anything yeah yeah it just couldn't have mattered less to him he never went on the analyst phone calls I think he did want he wants to burn Android tablets to the ground right but the point is basically eating care so I mean what though I did see him super excited one time when the sales of one of the Pixar the box office for one of the Pixar movies came in because he was so happy about it but so they're in it for the long game if you look at the iPhone it was dead in the water for the first three or four months I mean dead in the water and they had to cut the price yeah add to cut the price and he had cut the price again and it did not if you looked at the sales chart on that it did not there was eventually kind of a hockey stick thing but it was like a year was like after they had opened an app store and all that other stuff same with the iPod and so it's way too early the reason I have a watch is it's a platform device from the company that as the hype desk has just clear has eventually succeeded within all these things however out these two people together will it will it either is going to be a huge flop or it's going to actually become a platform where people are going to deuce let's talk about Apple music I really do but there's like there's so much Apple this what I mean by oh man we did a whole show on the watch we do the whole show on using Taylor Swift's next album should be called Apple moments hey Tay you heard it here yeah soundcheck Taylor Swift she's at Queen of hype she is I really is like I got good music well we talked about Apple music on a show I think every single week it's been like two months it's been dominating what we talk cuz it's such an important thing it is and then Spotify it's music in general right now is upside down Emily and I were having a conversation and for the past year year and a half all we've talked about in terms of entertainment and technology has been television over and over again we talk about TV are they gonna get the deals and make TV what's Netflix going to do amazon's making shows and I just sort of figured itself out and now we're just moving on we reinvent music again and we're all we talk about when we talk about technology and culture right now is music it's just strange just flipped like that like we just stop talking about television in the way that we did for each of the past agents you're saying this is all just one big head fake no I maybe Apple orator or you're really interested music no I could be I just think that the TV stuff has proven to be so hard for so long yeah no you're right you're right that it is slowly sort of sort of so we were actually talking about this in one of our meetings this week how there are a lot of smart TVs but people are still hooking Roku's yeah these are still using over-the-top yeah whatever on here's a one thing I find really interesting about Apple music which by the way they did an uncharacteristically terrible job of presenting as you rose it was the opposite of simplicity that they and I personally I mean I think it's because they had this part of their effort to integrate beats yeah it's Apple which are different cultures I mean I was thinking about what you said actually you go through it because it's really interesting well gee well has a perspective so so Jimmy I've ein and dr. Dre who you know created beats and ran beats and got three billion dollars for it from Tim Cook which for Tim Cook is couch cushion change right nothing he came out on stage he had a lot to do with I think the design of Apple music and I happen to like him a lot yeah I think he's great he's a great guy but he's a record industry guy he happens to have a it's almost a purity of vision about music he cares he really does care about human curation since that's an Apple thing also if there is a fit there but in terms of him coming out and doing a presentation with Eddy Cue who has become his pal um it was it just was very muddy it was very unclear what they're doing and it's really not unclear when you break it down but the way they presented it was hey I remember people were leaving and saying oh so beats one is now the new iTunes radio but it's actually Apple music radio and beats one is a channel yeah radio is staying the same with a different name it's algorithmic radio right and beats one is an old-fashioned it might as well be 1957 except that its global and it's a linear radio station it's so weird which focuses on the taste of the DJ's yet but I'm not so sure I'm no expert on this but I'm not so sure that Millennials won't find that interesting I don't know even just the idea of if multiple people tuning into the same stream or the same thing write read write or they may find address Gracie I think one eel here for a reason I think this is going to be one of the most compelling things about Apple music I think even like my generation we are also connected you know we have whatsapp and FaceTime you just it's you press a button and you're talking to someone on the other side of the world your time at the greatest generation your time that's debatable definitely debatable you won world war two right I mean we could do an entire show of walnut and trolling yeah I'd be really clear it's going to be I think your old really special where you know you can be listening to the same music as someone that's in a different time zone er literally on the other side of the world yeah and it's Apple and everyone knows Apple and yeah I think it's going to be it's Apple and everyone knows Apple explains a lot of things he explains a lot of things so my question is also around human curation not just this not just the idea of the limit linear terrestrial style radio being streamed but do people really care about human curation when it comes to trying music I do you listen to a playlist you're like this was made by a human instead of a bottle those humans are icons also like arguably known around the world to in the case of Apple Museum but I guess for streaming in general do you think people care about curation what Emily did you see em I tweeted a picture if like Beyonce's like festival hits playlist on title yesterday it was just so bad it's just like we all said Yonsei like did she do this robot do this did like but knee like where did this come from nothing against Beyonce personally but I mean that's a quote of the virtuosity gimmick that's a celebrity but the point is when when Jimmy and Dre and the and Ian Rogers who most people don't know who he is but he's been in the music business a long time the digital music business and he's a very smart guy when they started beats music and the DNA of de beats music is in Apple music clearly even even some of the UI is in there their idea was not to get celebrities they did they do have some that was not their idea their idea was to get the the best country music magazine I can't remember the name but what is it the does anybody here know no or if it's wrong it was really it's rock and roll country music is the last music the world to have actual guitars in it and I keep trying to get into it because I'd like one of us think it's our songs and then it's awful and I thought this is a hey Monty cyclope anyway that so that so whatever that whatever that is they had them curate a bunch of playlists they had Rolling Stone curate rock and roll play but Spotify has a statue hitch fork do that so yeah but they did it they did it first and Spotify then also did it and you know maybe it'll all work out that it's all the same remember when Spotify launched apps this is like a crazy idea they had a desktop and the one app that was awesome then remains awesome but nobody it's really update anymore is the pitchfork app okay but pitchfork is in was in beats and it's in up Ivan checked but I'll bet it's an apple music we can read pitchfork and listen nobody can't read it right so it is Spotify desktop app used to be able to read pitchfork and it would play the songs of the nice early units so not compelling but that's like that's my Sunday afternoon with and I actually really like to do that when I'm lost I miss Spotify in the car right I'm just kidding yeah you can't read what remember like the idea so I used to read you used to I used for his head amazing need to know what cutting that coming wrong recode I think the lowered a little bit you know what's happening what do I think about the price what's ten dollars a month I want to bring this up yeah cuz here is complete but it's not just the price that you're going to pay but the model of it I mean how it like Mossberg has a theory that we've talked about so here's the theory it's more than a theory it's condemnation I know it's more than a theory because you let the insane for the aside I'm really excited right this shows you get boring and now it's getting excited there's gonna be blood because every waters our friend Peter Kafka who knows everyone in the music industry that you know wrote for a while about this this and will continue to write about it so basically what's happening for those of you out there who just want to listen to music and didn't really care or confused about why is Apple finally doing this when they wouldn't do it when Steve Jobs is alive and whatever what's really going on is the labels who were saved once by Apple when they started iTunes the labels hate Spotify because there's no money essentially it might as well be no money made from the ad-supported free tea right or Spotify so they wanted is everything to be a subscription they don't mind a trial period but basically they want a subscription so they went to Apple an apple also at the same time iTunes sales began plummeting so they needed to do some different so there was a mutuality of mutuality of interest there but I am I know for a fact that there were discussions about okay if we want to get everybody to subscribe and we want to defeat the free streaming ad-supported streaming music which by the way not just the sort of you know evil Titans under the music industry but even the artists and the songwriters all hate that because so little money is generated from it my curious or my question is why didn't they let Apple charge less than Spotify less super-luxe and they actually had serious conversations about it they have conversations about six bucks seven bucks 80 bucks you know and whatever number just so it was just the differentiator just everything just was a stereo Spotify to kill Spotify to achieve their goals mm-hmm apples goals but also the industry's goals how would how would they achieve their goals if they're charging less because they they'll get more people as they wait because what still be better than the ad dad base they would get people behind paywalls let's ask our resident millennial by the way I'm on the cusp so I'm with you here in terms of millennialism sort of Fulani ilysm is sort of a worldwide does it matter to you if you're paying $8 a month for your favorite streaming service or $10 a month it's negligible right and so what ultimately is going to be the driving whichever ones that are and whoever has two lon screaming music because I have yet to find a streaming service at his tool right it's the one I mean let's whatever has the most music so I'm sorry actual they could charge you 15 bucks and it would be all right what I pay premium for tool maybe my point is is that I the catalog needs to go deep well no but now the same catalog does need to go deep because there and everyone's going to tweet at me about Google music this is what happens everybody is uh but Apple Scout does need to go deep because you can just buy the tool record and then you'll have it it'll be over right I mean uh starts checking its Apple watch I know really excitedly showed me at Peter Kafka who's listening to this pinging the Apple oh or no Peter pissah first on the oh we don't like it so Teeter just tweeted that in fact Apple wanted five bucks and thought at one point they had settled a date yeah and he had a link because of course he wrote it of course Lauren to answer your question I'm going I pay I've been paying for Spotify since the day came out in the US and when on June 30 if I'm going to sign up for an Apple music subscription and after a month a month and a half whichever one serves me better I'm gonna pick that one but I serves you better with you that's purely based on catalogue not about the UI it's about it's it's about the UI the experience like Spotify there was one version of Spotify that I was able to at the icon and it would be up in like two seconds now there's like a six to eight second buffer and if I miss that when I have service and I hop onto the subway like it's so it's over yes Sam and I also argue on the show every week about Spotify about Spotify I think spies garbage a bad user this see this is where it's great that it takes just a while I don't know if it's bad I usually let me just say let me just say I've been yeah like I like Daniel Eck I don't I like music I like the idea of streaming music I think you could put a little more effort into making a good interface I will see what Apple is Apple well well cast again in a month and we'll really well section I mean I think Spotify is you guys garbage like agency it's not good I use it it's the one I use the most do you use Google Play all access and sweet it's just the tweets and the tweet of the angry email like yeah we'll play specifically yeah because we there's we have a lot of listeners to use it and I have it I pay for that one - yeah the thing I use that one the for the most is it doesn't I not to watch ads on YouTube when I watch music videos on YouTube that's great that is a excellent reason to pay for that service ad then apps on the iPhone are garbage like they're not good in their app on Android is a little bit crashy like none of these things are good and the reason I have been these listeners have heard this from me so many times I'm excited for apples because I think they write the best software sometimes yeah yeah not all the time now sometimes they have a history of running great song for him because they paired compared with their artists so but one of the things that Walt said to me which was like mind-blowing because I know it never occurred to me to think about anything this way was he said well look you're trying to integrate recode the this recode group into the verge and you're taking it slow and you're being respectable everybody's feelings that's what Apple was doing with Beats so they're letting the beats people do the stuff their way because Tim Cook knows he said Tim Cook knows what he doesn't know when he's letting Jimmy and Dre like do the beats thing and I'm thinking that's why this sucks like what I'm looking at is a product that is this a series of compromise yet you don't actually know it sucks yet you know it just feels like a lot like it feels interview people artists connect having the radio but then also a flagship channel within the radio and I'm in people's iTunes also being integrated directly ice-creams it gets a little bit lacks focus it lacks focus but it could be awesome and one of those things where you say yes decide for maybe artists connect like I see where this all makes sense once we start using it what you haven't swung on this I don't know sorry to be clear I don't mean a product sucks I met I mean the the keynote the mess yes oh that was neat idea we all agreed on that you know but you wrote a nice piece saying it sucked I get it but in this legislation here if you're gonna check me line right now just it's like a zero strong dangerous levels how small to burn but it's not it's not a puddle of brown okay can we talk about what a shame shuttle of burn what Apple is bad at yeah now don't say cloud connected services that's just every whatever whenever someone got Sanaa Kapil they're like they can't do clouds because it's like yes they can I wrote a vo script on my Mac on TextEdit and I just popped it up right on my phone boom interconnectivity super quick okay I'll say one thing that way I come what you guys what the the audio listener is not experiencing right now is just Walt just daring it's Sam like Sam descended from the sky I'm like a plane marked like idiot jet sorry welcome ticket Apple needs to get a lot better services and it has to get better at that for people to can't write a vo script right it has to you know that that the like whether it's iCloud file drive is that what they call it or iCloud a car drive yeah um whether it's the fact that they it took them months to get my music right on match they still haven't finished uploading a photo iCloud photo library what is you had thirty thousand but they have a lot of people with much bigger libraries than that they they are not as good and that's and I personally also think that's why their Maps thing wasn't what it should have been part of that is I like their stance on privacy and on device things but it does cut them off from some tools that Google can use even while it's so that's a good we should we have five of these to get through yeah we've done a lot anyway that's there so we talked about their strengths and their weenie that's Italy and so this is it excellent transition I think into Google Facebook Amazon right because those are all their platforms are all in the cloud right that Google has Android as its one hardware platform where software I don't make oh if they don't make hardware actually even the Nexus stuff then I'll make as you know right but it's the one tangible expression of their software running on a local device is Android maybe it's somebody else's device that was a beautiful way to describe that thank you I'm I'm not going to show you my poetry oh geez what that's great real MFA works at high a machinist I thought was Lauren's way of asking for a 10% raise yeah that was Lauren's way of trying to build my ego up after it's been a thoroughly decimated okay learn we'll start with you again tell us about Google what's going on what's good what's bad what's going on with Google Oh God by where I don't even know where to start the pick pick an area and we'll go with the phones phones okay well I mean I think you know Google is Android is very much the dominant platform in a variety of markets and that strategy has clearly worked for Google I use an Android phone fairly regularly because I have to as part of my job but I have to say like the platform I most go to is my iPhone and iOS and that sort of thing what else I mean I think it's interesting what Google has done to an extent with Nexus trying to introduce that into the market um I don't feel like I kind of don't know like what to say but I like don't have anything really I see right now about I think my iPhone is a vessel for Google services that's what is it for yeah I buy an iPhone and I load up the Gmail app and I use Google search and Google Photos is wonderful it's just funny like my in it again it's why work at a company we all work now at a company that it runs and Google services mm-hmm so it is very that connects a lot of threads and I think maybe if you work at an Outlook shop or something like it's not quite as dominant but I literally my iPhone runs provides me a window into Google yes a Google Life all the time Gmail yeah Google Docs Gmail search everything everything all Google I think Google has done a really great job with Google now it's virtual assistant I think right now like that there's a lot of talk of virtual assistants with Apple claiming that series getting much better obviously we're going to see new iterations of Cortana with Windows 10 there was a lecture and Alexa news today from Amazon and everyone's like this is this is becoming a very hot area and I think that Google has done a really great job with Google now but you know Apple will of course argue that the way that they're approaching things with in terms of all the information being local to the device is much more private now maybe Google's approach let me ask this privacy I think it's a that's all a hedge on Apple's part because they're not as good in software yeah I think they got caught that could be it to an extent like looking in the wrong direction and it's partly a hedge yeah I get what you're saying but I honestly believe they deeply believe it yeah and I agree it comes from Steve and it's still there and if Tim Cook would Tim Cook has taken the lead in you know even challenging the government over encryption this phone this I'm holding up for those who are now watching I'm holding up an iPhone which is pretty common but it's encrypted right um Google ascetic that's going to encrypt it or maybe they have an option in the phone in the latest version of Android to encrypt it but it's not the same thing Apple is a hardware company they just decided to go in and crypt the phone you know right and they did I think Google is obviously has won the war over the share of self of smartphones they so are so far losing the war over the profits made by the smartphones but they're not a band that may that's not money doesn't matter to them right but there is a big threat to Google there's two in my opinion one is they're spread very thin and that's why Larry Page has begun to pare back a bunch of their products that aren't generating either generating revenue or he doesn't think they're leading or they're not interesting or whatever and secondly and this is the bigger threat by far is the open source the conflict between wanting to get Google services on Android that's how they make money writing Android is free but you get this big Google search bar and you get Google Maps and you get Gmail and you get all these things and they then can collect information on you target ads sell you know place ads all that stuff that they're in advertise the advertising company in the sense of that's how they make their money but a rising share over twenty percent the last time I checked on this of Android distribution in the world has no Google services on it right it's open-source Android I mean the example most Americans know about is the Amazon devices but it is extraordinarily common in China it's extraordinarily common in other parts of Asia they're trying to fight back with a thing called Android one which they say allows for sub $100 devices but well inna free to our colleague at recode just wrote a story about how they've struggled quite a lot with that or maybe well maybe was mark burg one of them wrote I think it was Maya's mark which is about the oneplus and emerging markets but the point is that's that's a huge threat to Google is the ironically the growth of Android yeah without Google right research why why can't Google just manufacture their own iPhone their own iPhone or their own Flags your own flagship right they could they could I think Andy Rubin who invented Android and who whose company got bought right and the Android group there for a long while before sundar Pichai took over Andy Andy liked the idea of hardware you will remember the famous incident of the thing called the Q no home and or device yeah we had on earlier at the doorstop yeah it was amazing yes very very super effective doorstop they were very they made it me you they were going to make the USS was made of high quality materials all the stuff and they they never put it on the market um you know I think Yandy had some tendencies to liking the idea of the at least the idea of Martin were but um you don't have the margins and hardware that you do in in software or in advertising and it's not like Google's broke at all yeah Google could do it but I but just like it's just like it's not as easy as people think for Apple to do the kind of job online that Google does it's not as easy as people think for Google to do the kind of job that Apple does with hard work people just like humans companies have things they're really good at and thinks they're not as good at and you know they could go to they could go to Foxconn I think they could buy Motorola yeah yeah I spray actually they did a phone they did many phones now but they did a phone that was intended to take on the iPhone and which one gallery to the Moto X that was uh but it's not it's you you've got the Google shrug but right no Google owned that company right Google helped Motorola immensely there were Google engineers all over motor I just don't think they were punching as high as they could be punching right if they're gonna do it just do it and do it right this is the Google and I am I I completely greatly but we've been saying is Microsoft and laptops for 10 years - it's like it I I think it was what Walt is saying is it's not as it's not that easy and faced with the choice between we're gonna piss off Samsung and they're going to continue for Android and they're the hardware maker that has the better carrier relationships in the distribution Japanese only the margeurite banker that is global and profitable although less and less I'm saying when Google had that choice between we can do this on our own we can learn how to do it or we can give up and let Samsung do it and Samsung will play nicer with us they just like offloaded motor so then that that begs the question what is the next Nexus phone are we going to see a Nexus phone that's you know this year what is the Nexus program even mean to Google right now well there there have been rumors they're going to drop it they I think they've denied them so I summarized that naturally but the Nexus phone is a is a as we all know is sort of a reference design right it's like an enthusiast it's the Android phone I choose right and it's the Android phone motion wait actually most people is actually pretty nice phone I mean it's enormous would you have a Nexus 6 you have an Android Pentium where do you swap I have a nexus is sitting excuse me Nexus 6 loaner at home and I have a nexus 4 I think that was given to us and so in some code quad is fun no I haven't bought it right but I mean I appreciate having unlocked phones around its really the Nexus 5 but I find that favorite phone Nexus 6 was a little big for me the Nexus 5 had a not garbage camera I would probably say as my main phone we've talked about this a lot too like when you did your review of the Asus zenfone 2 last week for recoded and this idea that there's always going to be you know the premium for the iPhone the Samsung Galaxy s6 or Samsung Galaxy Note that people like aspire to they're sort of aspirational devices right but you go to other countries and you see that like not everyone can afford those types of phones and there are a lot of handset makers now that are coming in at the low end of the market making actually pretty decent phones and it's really starting to put pressure on things and I think at the Nexus 6 is something like that or I mean I know it's not as know that it's not is expensive it's not as inexpensive roughly it's rough that the price price right but you look at you know different devices like that and I don't I think there's you know they're starting to put some pressure so so anyway to me the danger for Google is they might be losing control of Android let's just say that right might be losing control of Android and and they would say well we never controlled in yeah but they do you have to give you a contract and it's supposed to be about you know faster updates and not for King and all that's great but it's also has in it you have to use these Google services you can't just pick and choose you have to use this whole suite of Google services this search bar has to appear on this home screen and finally at once in my life I can say that was my scoop instead of every kids are you guys person to publish up that and gadget that's fantast what you guys know what to say no has to stand up no it is a good scoop you know I've gotta actually stand up now to watch don't know I'm waiting for cosmetics pop gonna text me and tell me that what that that they had a person but I so is so that to me that's your Google that's that's the go so what about the rest of the Google suite because we at we should go to Facebook enamel because I think Amazon is really interesting because I think everyone thought they were going to be a big platform company they were in that gang and then the fire stuff at least in my estimation is not a great but I think Facebook is very but let's let's let's go through Amazon because we can do that pretty quickly yeah okay so Amazon is obviously enormous ly successful in two very important vectors one is commerce I mean there's a lot of other commerce companies some of what you're doing very nicely but Amazon is still like the gorilla there and they continue to innovate they don't they disrupt themselves which is the key to everything I think in if you're going to be successful but Amazon I think in the device area which which to be honest they don't even need they just do it they have the Kindle e-readers yeah the Motiti derp dee derp bond just eat your deer just did a review on a Kindle paper doesn't keep Kindle paperwhite mom my wife uh has an iPad but she just walks around with that with a with a with a Kindle and she loves it and she's a voracious she have a surface just like I have so that's how you end that's how what will I have a surface surface amazing we'll get there highly but um so so but my point about Amazon is okay so there's the Ian's Kindle reader everything else they've tried even though they don't ever announce sales yeah I mean we know the fire was the phone the fire phone was a flame out but I think the fire tablets has pretty good have so no I stole that from you I think that was in your headline yeah we loud money uh I think the fire tablets have been if this was an apple and app was reporting numbers the way Apple does which is pretty transparent they would be terrible numbers I don't think the fire tablets could be considered a big success what about the echo while we're talking about devices the echo is a fascinating device but it's brand-new and we just don't know so I love the echo I bought one a couple weeks ago yeah I think it's great and I think it will go it will die as soon as Apple builds that feature into a speaker or lets other speaker manufacturers tie it into an Apple TV you know like apples got this homekit thing happening the idea that you could buy an Apple TV and would sit there and be the brains of Apple and the one of it needed actually they have a new that Alexa would be the brains of a no no no I'm saying he's crushing Alexa's great like say he loved and ran the next clause he said it's gonna be dead but yeah I was like the idea is so good write it and then Apple and Amazon ecosystem is so limited that you can just see how Apple can swoop in and take the idea and that's assuming that they got the virtual assistant in tartar sauce part right too because part of the appeal of the echo is this Alexa artificial intelligence software yeah actually actually a few demo is just that it is there and it is so much easier to talk to a computer for some things and type it in here right but what you're saying that part I mean so it's a piece of hardware it looks kind of like an elongated speaker essentially and anybody anybody can do that yeah talking to it part that you're you in gestation what artificial intelligence right but I'm saying that like Google do to it that the backend assistant part is commodity smart it's like tables alexis table stakes tables date right you can ask her the weather you can tell her to play some units not really it's not a bit a giant legal now right we're Google now is like it like the Alexa never wakes up and says get the hell out of here you going to miss your flight the way Google now could do but what is amazing is having a speaker that's sitting there always you have to push a button on your phone and you I just say Alexa what's the weather like every morning now by habit I just want to speak to this I think this would make a great like holiday gift for normals the same way that I feel like Roku is so successful because a lot of normal and I say normals is like you guys know a normals that's like not us not people like us that do this for a living but like you go to amazon.com you see an ad for the echo and then you like Google echo and you know watching videos and read Surat I had no idea this thing existed let me let me say the right number what is it 200 it's once it's once or not if you're prime so so but my point is Apple could make a Siri echo right or but or and I think this is the move because basically Amazon announced this today right that other hardware makers correctly their API right right there's no reason Apple can't say to other speaker makers you can plug into our API and get access to society through homekit lauren am I wrong about this but and you were there actually just both it because you were sitting right behind me you were sitting no no no next to me in the at the Apple event did they say something about the developers finally being would tap into Siri in some way on the phone oh ml okay but that's that's a step at least look can we get to my bad my bad name is on I don't it if the echo is a breakthrough and a big deal and they follow through in today's announcements show they're serious so that could change everything that could be it could be the next device other than the ink Kindle readers in which they're successful I'm only saying that right now as we sit here all the devices between the E and Kindle and maybe the echo not have not been and then the phone is a disaster yeah and I actually remember I saw that phone a little awhile before it it hit the market and I thought and they and you know they have serious people who have been at other companies doing hardware for a while they thought they were very serious about not just selling stuff through it yeah but actually being a phone power and the problem was in its Microsoft's problem to me it's a funny thing in that business you start late and it's very hard to get people to think you've got the gimmick or the you know the that in their case it was you you kind of flip that his real done and a demoed great in Seattle when I was there I saw it and then I got my review unit and like my risk got tougher and it worked okay going right but not going live in my case and you know that I you could dig up the review I wrote I wrote about that but so they may not need the device business because they've got the other vector that I need mentioned that we all know about but average people who use Amazon don't necessarily know about is that this whole back-end you know they there they are the what they are the servers for everybody else so it was it's a WS what's interesting about that is those are those are other companies right they're a platform provider but they don't get any they don't get any intelligence across all those companies no they don't but they make money but they make money but it's interesting that that would be that's like no but they are in a way that's kind of being a platform right notes I know it is being a platform so there's a platform there and they're a commerce platform and those are that both pretty powerful right all right so we should do and while I know you have a hard out but we should do five or ten on Microsoft if we have if you have time because I think Microsoft if we're if if we're in an Apple moment there is a Microsoft moment coming with Windows 10 but in my estimation that moment is coming sort of it's like careening towards us it does not feel like in orderly and by design right they've done a lot of Windows 10 out in the open there's a lot of walk back on the new start screen and versus the desktop they're kind of it's kind of like back to the future what they mean they've made this Tom Warren knows the exact count I don't but I think they've made at least three revisions of Windows 8 yeah and now with Windows 10 there's going to be another one that are basically backpedaling from the original concept of Windows 8 here's the here's the short my short point of view on Windows 10 which is not about the quality of Windows 10 Windows 10 is designed much more for reviving their phone than for uh improving pcs although and that I'm not saying won't improve PCs but pcs are not a market that's growing nearly as fast as phones and so the phones is really crucial them they have a universal app format so if you are a developer Lauren and you decide to make a Windows a Windows 10 right and the windows developer you are worst user story you are that's what I do my Saturday I know many developers who listen is not your real activity is way down cuz of the cat huh but anyway so yeah here's their idea mm-hmm get everybody to upgrade to Windows 10 on the PC of which there are hundreds of millions in there install base I don't know the exact number actually I think they promised a billion devices right yeah billion and once you upgrade on the PC then there exists a Windows 10 app that can also run on the phone right thing that all of a sudden the Windows Phones it's the same Excel bunch of code right right have a whole bunch of apps and that's been one of their big problems with phones here's the interesting thing historically Microsoft has never cared about upgrading to new versions of Windows it's been about 10% of their windows business it's been difficult because the hardware didn't support the new version of Windows we've all tried it we all know this it's a usually a good column for reviewers will probably do it again and uh but this time they and so they they've just not cared about it plus their partner Intel and their om partners like Dell they wanted an HP they wanted you to go out buy a new PC anyway this time microsoft's interests in the phone which are such a strategic product requires them to get all these hundreds of millions of people with pcs to upgrade to Windows 10 so that developers will say ok there's a huge market for my right Windows 10 app I'm going to be really interested to see how many people are going to want to do that is it going to be easy all that so this is like yeah tell us why you sure about your surface which one do you have I have the original surface such a troll that was built on our arm and I bought it because it was the first computer not counting the Xbox I mean the first standard computer that Microsoft had ever made and I think they did a good job on the hardware on it they did and not the software but they did a good job on the hardware and I also thought it was smart to do it on arm I thought it was dumb to call Artie and I thought it was dumb to put a Windows desktop on it they should have taken those office apps and let them be full screen like they are used to with the tablet and by not having the desktop they wouldn't have had the problem of people thinking they could just put regular Windows wraps on there I mean I I think they should our listeners totally note I think but I think they should have called it Metro and it should have been basically their answer the iPod or the iPad you and I completely 100% reimburse we should send the show I don't know if like that is the worst jeez any Microsoft products line I've been using the Microsoft Surface 3 being in a relatively inexpensive one that they put out a short while ago that runs on an atom processor and it's really it's really very slow is my observation so far so I'm not I don't love it it's not the kind of product you're gonna like you know run heavy apps like Photoshop off of and do all your heavy multimedia work on I think this desktop apps thing to drive the phone is is a when while said this to me yesterday it's the most counterintuitive thing to think about Microsoft ever that they're going to use their desktop install base to court developers and a writing phone apps is I mean that is a like a jujitsu move no but that's absolutely I'm not making that up but what is crazy to me is I don't know that mobile developers are racing the right test top apps I think they're going to say just open a browser just let it render me necessarily mobile dabei so in other words they want a better I mean maybe I'm wrong about this example but let's say they want a better Facebook app so Facebook which typically I guess doesn't have absence say yeah open your browser like do better job of html5 years old so maybe this will be a spectacular fail maybe that's a strategies think strategies take their strengths which is the kind of moribund PC market but still with a large installed base and use that to to let to do this jiu-jitsu to leverage it over to phones that's I mean it and we're gonna watch that drama and see what happened and I would actually love I mean I you know it's funny I have this like MacBook Pro sitting here mostly it's running with us right i Walt I both use mail plane mail plane is basically Safari with some stuff I just started using mail plane right I've got slack open slack as a web app it's an app but it's definitely running a web view in the background and then it's just chrome tabs for days and that's what's like what's open on this computer right now and I it's it's a really fancy Chromebook it's very good it's Beauty way from Highgate but do you do you use any oh oh we say one more thing do the wrap-up meet your rep I know I you guys gone but I'm gonna leave time is it and then five and on Twitter it'll be walk walked out on Nilay hey you know what here's the thing I know about great television and great radio you got a stage some stunts you gotta get the people talking you gotta give them something good well we do have one thing to mention that we yeah get to a train which is that recode has been working on its own radio show yes a while now and so on July 8th we are going to be launching recode radio which we're very excited about and we're also going to be launching something called recode decode which is an interview show on recode radio IV Mo's I heared and yet the most loved woman in Silicon Valley Berkeley vampire sparkling vampire herself kara oh sure it's gonna be great code decode July 8th we're really excited week codes first podcast yeah I don't think it I mean I don't want to say it's not going to be as entertaining as this one but this is pretty this is pretty fun this one's all over this was really fun for us it I have no idea I was for listeners but it was Kara Swisher free and then and Rico decode would be caring cared anything as a real real strength up Sam do the rest of our engagements hello thank you for watching and listening to this podcast laughs what did you I think got it man go Sam we are on snapchat if you've listened to the show and you've heard me say this you know what's good you should follow us on snapchat we are the real virgin on snapchat I promise you it will be worth watching our stories you should hit us up on periscope also we're at Virg on periscope we take it to events we take it all around the world something you want to see there we're on YouTube youtube.com slash The Verge subscribe if you haven't we are going to hit a million this year and you're going to make it happen and now back to you Neil I all right and then obviously there's Rico decode we'll start we'll be promoting that across the verge but you can find the rest of our shows for GSP and what's tech on iTunes and iTunes on such the verge Sam on Twitter is Sam Scheffer Lauren is Lauren good well this Walt Mossberg I am reckless the only person that his first name on here thank you so much for listening hold on I've got to do a thing and I want to thank Linda comm for sponsoring our show today lynda.com is online learning platform with over 3,000 on-demand video courses to help you strengthen your business technology and creative skills free 10-day trial lynda.com slash podcast that's ly nba.com slash fresh cast they use rush listing thank you to Walt the morn for being here those are a chest rock'n'roll