The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Alright, we got to move. There's an emergency scheduled episode of the talk show. Matthew

00:00:05 ◼   ► Panzorino is kind enough to shuffle his schedule. We're recording on Wednesday night. We got

00:00:10 ◼   ► a baseball game coming up. Big important wild card game with the Giants and the Mets. I've

00:00:17 ◼   ► got travel plans this weekend that have been rescheduled because there's apparently a hurricane

00:00:22 ◼   ► that is coming towards the United States. And so we could either record a short episode

00:00:26 ◼   ► right now, short for the talk show or probably no episode until next week. So anybody who

00:00:32 ◼   ► looks at the time on this and says, "Wow, that's too short." Well, it's better than

00:00:36 ◼   ► nothing. And for those of you who've been begging for shorter episodes of the show,

00:00:40 ◼   ► here you go. It's a gift just for you.

00:00:42 ◼   ► You're welcome. Thank the wildcard race. I'm not a Giants fan, but my family is.

00:00:50 ◼   ► You gotta watch.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Yep. And it's a West Coast team. It's the hometown team, so you gotta watch anyway.

00:00:55 ◼   ► I tell people this, I'm sure you know this, because I also know you're a uniform nerd.

00:01:01 ◼   ► I tell people this and it blows people's minds, even baseball fans, that the Mets,

00:01:07 ◼   ► the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants left New York within like a year of each other.

00:01:11 ◼   ► I think it was like, I don't know, 1959 or 60. And it left New York, which used to

00:01:16 ◼   ► have two National League teams with no National League teams, and so they created the Mets

00:01:21 ◼   ► to fill the void left behind by both teams.

00:01:23 ◼   ► And because it was two teams,

00:01:25 ◼   ► the Mets colors are Dodger blue and Giants orange.

00:01:29 ◼   ► And I tell people this, and they're like,

00:01:31 ◼   ► no they're not, and then they go look at the Mets uniforms.

00:01:33 ◼   ► And they're like, oh, well that's weird.

00:01:36 ◼   ► And I'm like, and don't you think it's a little weird?

00:01:39 ◼   ► Don't you think it's a little weird

00:01:40 ◼   ► that those colors don't really go that well together?

00:01:42 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, that one was a crime of expediency.

00:01:48 ◼   ► There was no careful designer behind that one,

00:01:50 ◼   ► I'll think.

00:01:51 ◼   ► Dave: No.

00:01:52 ◼   ► And it's, you know, the other color for the Dodgers, or the Giants at least, is black,

00:01:57 ◼   ► which doesn't really—you can't really mix with anything.

00:01:59 ◼   ► So it was really the—you know, as long as you were going to go with this idea, which

00:02:02 ◼   ► was a sketchy idea, I think, in the first place.

00:02:05 ◼   ► But there you go.

00:02:06 ◼   ► There's a little baseball.

00:02:07 ◼   ► Ben: You know what it reminds me of?

00:02:08 ◼   ► And this is—it's like not the same colors, but it reminds me of the mellow yellow car

00:02:12 ◼   ► in Days of Thunder, because those colors are so awful.

00:02:16 ◼   ► It's just like it reminds me of a color scheme that would be on a NASCAR car like, you know

00:02:22 ◼   ► We're like a late late 90s NASCAR car, you know, they're like they're more sedate these days

00:02:27 ◼   ► Yeah, who do you like in a game tonight?

00:02:29 ◼   ► I think that you know, I think the John's will pull it out. They tend to they tend to somehow by hook or crook

00:02:35 ◼   ► They tend to like react better under pressure and come through and you know, I never count bum Garner out, you know

00:02:41 ◼   ► Bummy's just an amazing pitcher. He's a beast. So, can't count him out.

00:02:46 ◼   ► - Syndergaard for pitching for the Mets is one of the best pitchers in baseball.

00:02:49 ◼   ► You can't go wrong with him. The Mets have got to like their chances. But I think right now,

00:02:54 ◼   ► given the last three, four years of baseball in a big game, I don't think anybody's better in

00:02:59 ◼   ► Bumgarner. I mean, the record... - Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, the World Series,

00:03:04 ◼   ► their last World Series win was just insane, you know, when he's like, "No, just put me back in.

00:03:09 ◼   ► I'll do it

00:03:10 ◼   ► It was as close the one day one two years ago was about as close as you can get to it to a single

00:03:15 ◼   ► Person a one man winning the World Series for his team

00:03:19 ◼   ► It's it's really that's you know, there's no other way to put it. I

00:03:23 ◼   ► Really? Hope the Giants lose at some point though

00:03:26 ◼   ► Cuz I if they win the goddamn World Series again and that this every other year they've what they would have won it in

00:03:33 ◼   ► Yeah, every other year twelve twelve. No, no ten ten twelve fourteen sixteen

00:03:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah, 10, 12, 14, 16, right.

00:03:42 ◼   ► - And then you know they're gonna finish

00:03:43 ◼   ► in last place next year.

00:03:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:03:46 ◼   ► And they're gonna be insufferable too.

00:03:48 ◼   ► Like all of the fans will be insufferable.

00:03:50 ◼   ► I mean, look, hey, I love the Warriors,

00:03:53 ◼   ► I love Steph Curry, and I wish they would've won,

00:03:56 ◼   ► but I'm almost kinda glad they didn't win,

00:03:59 ◼   ► 'cause if they won and the Giants won in the same year,

00:04:00 ◼   ► it would just be impossible.

00:04:02 ◼   ► It'd just be impossible.

00:04:04 ◼   ► - And they did take it to insufferable levels,

00:04:07 ◼   ► because there was a story,

00:04:08 ◼   ► I forget who published it, it might have been Businessweek,

00:04:11 ◼   ► but I don't know, it wasn't even a sports publication,

00:04:13 ◼   ► but somebody had a piece on the Warriors

00:04:16 ◼   ► while they were still months away from the playoffs

00:04:19 ◼   ► about how Silicon Valley geniuses have beaten the NBA

00:04:24 ◼   ► at its own game and created an unbeatable team.

00:04:26 ◼   ► And it's like, take it easy, guys.

00:04:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was a pretty remarkable piece of PR placement.

00:04:36 ◼   ► I was pretty staggered by that.

00:04:38 ◼   ► - One thing, and you're a Yankees fan too,

00:04:42 ◼   ► I think one thing all Yankees fans can agree on

00:04:44 ◼   ► is that we do not like insufferable fans

00:04:46 ◼   ► who gloat over championships.

00:04:49 ◼   ► - Right, 'cause we're so humble and salt of the earth.

00:04:52 ◼   ► - Exactly. - That's our calling card,

00:04:53 ◼   ► for sure. - Exactly.

00:04:55 ◼   ► Who else do you like in the baseball playoffs?

00:04:58 ◼   ► I gotta say, I'm gonna go with the obvious answers,

00:05:01 ◼   ► and it really, I'll pick first, if you don't mind.

00:05:03 ◼   ► I'm gonna say Cubs, and I really hate to say

00:05:07 ◼   ► the following two words, Red Sox.

00:05:09 ◼   ► - Red Sox, hmm.

00:05:12 ◼   ► - But then I hope the Cubs beat the Red Sox.

00:05:14 ◼   ► That to me would be delicious.

00:05:17 ◼   ► - Right, yeah.

00:05:19 ◼   ► Yeah, that would be.

00:05:20 ◼   ► I mean, the Cubs, you know, I don't know.

00:05:23 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:05:25 ◼   ► I mean, I think the Red Sox is probably my number one pick,

00:05:27 ◼   ► and I would really detest it at the Dodgers one,

00:05:30 ◼   ► but they've been playing so incredibly well.

00:05:33 ◼   ► aside from these last three games, which the Giants just destroyed them.

00:05:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:36 ◼   ► But yeah, I mean, I think I think we could see either one of those.

00:05:40 ◼   ► I think that when I watched him because I was watching to see the Vin Scully

00:05:43 ◼   ► telecasts and it just looked to me like the Dodgers.

00:05:46 ◼   ► I know they were still fighting for for, you know, home field and stuff like that.

00:05:49 ◼   ► There wasn't like the games didn't matter, but they had already once they'd locked up

00:05:54 ◼   ► that they were going to be the, you know, the middle stay.

00:05:57 ◼   ► We're going to catch the Cubs so they weren't going to get to play the wild card team.

00:06:00 ◼   ► And I feel like home field wasn't enough to really fire them up.

00:06:03 ◼   ► They, they played flat.

00:06:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:06:06 ◼   ► I mean, it was, it was kind of, you know, bittersweet too.

00:06:09 ◼   ► I mean, you have Vince Scoli coming in, um, you know, doing, calling those games

00:06:12 ◼   ► as last games in San Francisco.

00:06:14 ◼   ► It was so, it was so cool to see.

00:06:16 ◼   ► And it was just like, Hey man, you know, win one for win one for Vin, but I guess not.

00:06:20 ◼   ► Well, and they got it on the, the last Dodger game.

00:06:24 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:06:24 ◼   ► Like, I mean, the last home game for the Dodgers.

00:06:27 ◼   ► So the last home game for the Dodgers was one with a dramatic walk-off home run that Scully got to call. Yeah, that's true

00:06:32 ◼   ► So I feel like it does. Yeah, it's his park. Yeah. Yeah, they got that

00:06:36 ◼   ► Anyway as we speak literally whether the start of this podcast was the the last holdup was big breaking news

00:06:45 ◼   ► by you

00:06:48 ◼   ► Yeah

00:06:49 ◼   ► Yeah, so Samsung acquired viv which is the company

00:06:54 ◼   ► created by, or founded by, Doug Kittlaus, Adam Chayer, and Chris Brigham, who all worked on Siri,

00:07:01 ◼   ► which was acquired by Apple in 2010. So they left in 2012, well, over the years,

00:07:07 ◼   ► several of them left, but Doug left in 2012, founded VIV, which is a next-gen AI,

00:07:15 ◼   ► and then worked on that for several years and has just sold it to Samsung.

00:07:21 ◼   ► which is, I think, is sort of, they were either,

00:07:26 ◼   ► I hate to say it, I'm not gonna say that they were built

00:07:29 ◼   ► to be sold, but I think it is the,

00:07:32 ◼   ► now we can get to Google's announcements,

00:07:33 ◼   ► we will get to Google's announcements later in the show,

00:07:36 ◼   ► but I feel like these sort of AI systems,

00:07:41 ◼   ► assistant systems, fundamentally have to be built

00:07:45 ◼   ► into the devices.

00:07:47 ◼   ► You can't just be an app, right?

00:07:49 ◼   ► And as a standalone company, that's

00:07:51 ◼   ► what Viv would have been, is you have to launch the Viv app

00:07:55 ◼   ► and then do your stuff.

00:07:56 ◼   ► And there's some cool-- that's how Siri started, too.

00:07:59 ◼   ► But everybody is moving in the direction

00:08:02 ◼   ► of integrating these things into a system level

00:08:04 ◼   ► so that you can address-- whether it's

00:08:06 ◼   ► so you can say to the device, hey, dingus, go get me an Uber,

00:08:11 ◼   ► whatever the need may be, or to just have access

00:08:14 ◼   ► to a button like the way that the new Google Assistant works

00:08:18 ◼   ► with a long press on the home button

00:08:19 ◼   ► in the same way that Siri works, et cetera.

00:08:22 ◼   ► - Right.

00:08:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I think with Viv,

00:08:25 ◼   ► I talked to Doug quite a bit.

00:08:27 ◼   ► I interviewed him in May at our conference in New York,

00:08:32 ◼   ► and I had talked to him a little bit previously,

00:08:34 ◼   ► obviously in the run-up,

00:08:35 ◼   ► and kind of get the feel for what to talk about on stage.

00:08:39 ◼   ► And their philosophy, and he said some of this on stage too,

00:08:42 ◼   ► it's not like private information or anything,

00:08:44 ◼   ► but he said that they want to,

00:08:47 ◼   ► they wanted to launch the app as a sort of proof of concept,

00:08:51 ◼   ► but that their vision was the Viv button in every app,

00:08:55 ◼   ► next to every search bar, et cetera, et cetera.

00:08:58 ◼   ► And at the time, and I told him this,

00:09:01 ◼   ► that's like incredibly optimistic, right?

00:09:03 ◼   ► Because everybody is sort of introducing their own systems

00:09:07 ◼   ► of this type, specifically because they don't want

00:09:10 ◼   ► to be disintermediated by somebody else's system, right?

00:09:14 ◼   ► Apple introduced Siri for a variety of reasons,

00:09:17 ◼   ► but one of those reasons is you go to Google less with it.

00:09:21 ◼   ► You go out to some competitor's product less with it.

00:09:26 ◼   ► And with Apple, it's a little different equation.

00:09:29 ◼   ► You're slicing the pie a little different

00:09:31 ◼   ► 'cause it doesn't necessarily make its money

00:09:32 ◼   ► when you do a Google search and click on an ad, right?

00:09:34 ◼   ► But it does compete with device makers like Samsung

00:09:39 ◼   ► and other folks who are trying to carve out

00:09:43 ◼   ► a piece of people's life, you know,

00:09:46 ◼   ► and lock them into a system that says,

00:09:50 ◼   ► look, I know so much about you.

00:09:53 ◼   ► I know all of these things that I need to know

00:09:56 ◼   ► to serve you well and to do the things

00:09:59 ◼   ► you want me to do with efficiency.

00:10:00 ◼   ► Why would you ever leave?

00:10:01 ◼   ► Why would you ever go?

00:10:02 ◼   ► You know, why do you wanna do that?

00:10:04 ◼   ► And I think that that is like an insurmountable

00:10:07 ◼   ► or will be insurmountable very, very soon

00:10:10 ◼   ► as far as, you know, customer lock-in

00:10:11 ◼   ► and like a third entrant into the system.

00:10:13 ◼   ► So honestly, this is a good time for them.

00:10:16 ◼   ► I mean, he said this is about ubiquity

00:10:18 ◼   ► because Samsung has 500 million devices or whatever,

00:10:21 ◼   ► which that's a fair statement.

00:10:23 ◼   ► Like if you wanna be ubiquitous, what are you gonna do?

00:10:26 ◼   ► Who are you gonna go to?

00:10:27 ◼   ► There's only four companies

00:10:28 ◼   ► and three of them have their own already.

00:10:29 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:10:30 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:10:31 ◼   ► And yeah, I think it was destined

00:10:35 ◼   ► to be acquired by somebody,

00:10:36 ◼   ► whether it would be Apple or Google or Amazon or Microsoft

00:10:40 ◼   ► who would buy them to integrate

00:10:42 ◼   ► with what they're already working on,

00:10:44 ◼   ► or someone like Samsung,

00:10:46 ◼   ► who is the biggest example I can think of,

00:10:48 ◼   ► who just had this glaring hole in their own technology

00:10:52 ◼   ► that they own that plays this game.

00:10:55 ◼   ► So I'm kind of, I don't know, I had never met the guy.

00:10:59 ◼   ► But just from my armchair quarterback position

00:11:02 ◼   ► across the continent, I think this is huge news,

00:11:05 ◼   ► but I'm not the least bit surprised

00:11:07 ◼   ► that Samsung bought them.

00:11:10 ◼   ► Yeah, no, not at all. I mean, I think it's definitely, if you were to have asked me a

00:11:14 ◼   ► couple of days ago, you know, which company would buy Viv, you know, like I said, there's

00:11:19 ◼   ► only a handful and I was telling this to somebody else and they were like, "Oh, I don't know,

00:11:24 ◼   ► if they're so far along that they couldn't have been helped by Viv, you know, by Viv's

00:11:27 ◼   ► team." And I think that it's true that Amazon or Google or Apple could definitely have utilized

00:11:33 ◼   ► Viv's technology and expertise, right? Because they've got an insane team. But at the same

00:11:39 ◼   ► time they've already sort of made their bed and now they have to build on top of that

00:11:43 ◼   ► bed and this isn't the time to be taking that bed and throwing it out and purchasing

00:11:47 ◼   ► a new bed, you know? And I think that that is, it's a simplistic analogy, but AI systems

00:11:53 ◼   ► like this that need to be trained and integrated are not like plug and play. You know, you

00:11:58 ◼   ► don't just kind of buy one and then insert it. AI as a concept is an additive concept,

00:12:06 ◼   ► So you can sort of pour it into other buckets and it will improve them.

00:12:09 ◼   ► But if you're looking for like a cross device, cross platform solution

00:12:14 ◼   ► that sort of, you know, is your brain across all of this

00:12:19 ◼   ► that recognizes people and their context and serves them,

00:12:22 ◼   ► that's not something you just buy and go click click.

00:12:25 ◼   ► I mean, Siri took a long time to integrate,

00:12:27 ◼   ► and it's still like far from as sophisticated as it could be

00:12:30 ◼   ► or sophisticated as it is.

00:12:33 ◼   ► but Apple has not yet unlocked those capabilities.

00:12:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:12:38 ◼   ► And I just posted, I just linked to the article,

00:12:41 ◼   ► literally while we're recording.

00:12:43 ◼   ► But I linked to the article at TechCrunch,

00:12:46 ◼   ► and my quick comment is just,

00:12:48 ◼   ► does anyone disagree that AI assistant technology

00:12:50 ◼   ► is table stakes for the next decade?

00:12:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, thank you. - I don't know,

00:12:54 ◼   ► I think this is one of those rare things

00:12:56 ◼   ► where everybody agrees.

00:12:57 ◼   ► I don't know anybody who disagrees with this.

00:13:00 ◼   ► You know, you-- - Yeah, you got the person

00:13:01 ◼   ► who's like, no, that's stupid.

00:13:02 ◼   ► nobody should have one of those.

00:13:04 ◼   ► - Right, and it's just another way for Samsung

00:13:07 ◼   ► to sort of assert their independence from Google.

00:13:09 ◼   ► It's just not a good position to be in

00:13:16 ◼   ► for them to be completely beholden to Google

00:13:18 ◼   ► to provide all of that intelligence.

00:13:20 ◼   ► - Not at all, not at all.

00:13:21 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense for them,

00:13:23 ◼   ► and it hasn't made sense for a while,

00:13:24 ◼   ► which is why they've been experimenting

00:13:26 ◼   ► with Tizen and other stuff.

00:13:27 ◼   ► But with Samsung, they have two options.

00:13:30 ◼   ► they can sort of try to create a mobile operating system, right?

00:13:34 ◼   ► Like try to do an Android, right?

00:13:36 ◼   ► Pull an Android and just like turn and burn

00:13:38 ◼   ► and make a mess of things and go as fast as they can

00:13:42 ◼   ► and then have to clean it all up.

00:13:43 ◼   ► Like honestly, Android, we joked about this Porsche analogy

00:13:47 ◼   ► with the whole, you know, the iPhone, like, hey,

00:13:49 ◼   ► you just refine this Porsche thing.

00:13:51 ◼   ► But there's sort of another saying about Porsche,

00:13:53 ◼   ► which is that they made a mistake 50 years ago

00:13:55 ◼   ► and have spent 50 years fixing it.

00:13:57 ◼   ► And that mistake was that they made a rear wheel drive car

00:14:02 ◼   ► with an engine in the back.

00:14:04 ◼   ► It's like, no, that doesn't--

00:14:06 ◼   ► physics.

00:14:07 ◼   ► Did anybody check the physics?

00:14:09 ◼   ► And so 9/11's are famously squirrelly and hard to drive

00:14:13 ◼   ► and have gotten better because they've added traction control

00:14:16 ◼   ► and new suspension and steering assistance

00:14:19 ◼   ► and better differentials and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:14:23 ◼   ► But it took them 50 years to get into a space

00:14:25 ◼   ► where you can actually take a 9/11 out

00:14:27 ◼   ► and drive it to the storm back and not be afraid you're

00:14:30 ◼   ► going to end your life.

00:14:31 ◼   ► And if it rains for like three seconds, it's like, done.

00:14:35 ◼   ► You might as well pull over.

00:14:38 ◼   ► But I think that that is an interesting analogy

00:14:40 ◼   ► when you look at Android, because Android was created out

00:14:43 ◼   ► of necessity.

00:14:44 ◼   ► It was sort of created to be one thing,

00:14:46 ◼   ► and then purchased, and then modified for other uses,

00:14:49 ◼   ► and has been essentially fixed over the intervening years.

00:14:53 ◼   ► patches have been placed on holes and things have been desoldered and taken out and new

00:15:01 ◼   ► things have been bolted on.

00:15:03 ◼   ► And it's in a shape where you could conceivably say, "Oh, you know, I could pick up an Android

00:15:06 ◼   ► phone and use it for pretty much nine-tenths of my tasks or an iPhone."

00:15:10 ◼   ► And those differentiating factors are really like the personalization and the customization

00:15:14 ◼   ► and artificial intelligence is a part of that.

00:15:17 ◼   ► Like does my phone recognize me and everything I have to know, I need to know.

00:15:21 ◼   ► So if you look at Samsung and you go,

00:15:23 ◼   ► should Samsung pull an Android and build an OS from scratch,

00:15:27 ◼   ► or should it start with the core differentiating factor,

00:15:30 ◼   ► which is the AI, and then sort of work outwards from there?

00:15:33 ◼   ► 'Cause it has Android, it doesn't really need

00:15:35 ◼   ► to build something new.

00:15:37 ◼   ► Google's like, open, you can have almost all the stuff,

00:15:40 ◼   ► except for the Google stuff, right?

00:15:42 ◼   ► And that's Samsung going, well, why don't we just build

00:15:46 ◼   ► our own quote, unquote, Google stuff, right?

00:15:48 ◼   ► the stuff that allows people to go,

00:15:51 ◼   ► oh, I can pick up my Samsung and just ask it something,

00:15:53 ◼   ► or I can talk to my fridge and ask it something.

00:15:56 ◼   ► - Right.

00:15:57 ◼   ► Which is going to be, this actually works out,

00:16:02 ◼   ► it almost seems like we've planned this,

00:16:03 ◼   ► but it actually is a pretty good segue

00:16:05 ◼   ► into Google's event, which was yesterday,

00:16:09 ◼   ► as we recorded earlier this week,

00:16:10 ◼   ► the Made by Google event.

00:16:12 ◼   ► But first, since we're moving right along,

00:16:16 ◼   ► I'm gonna thank our first sponsor,

00:16:18 ◼   ► is our good friends at Fracture.

00:16:20 ◼   ► Fracture is the company, you know them.

00:16:23 ◼   ► They print your photos directly on glass.

00:16:26 ◼   ► I think there's probably a lot of people

00:16:28 ◼   ► that probably think, well, glass is heavy,

00:16:31 ◼   ► so this is like a heavy thing to put on a wall.

00:16:33 ◼   ► One of the things, I don't mention it,

00:16:35 ◼   ► I'm stealing this from Marco, by the way.

00:16:36 ◼   ► Marco mentioned this point on ATP, but I'm stealing it.

00:16:40 ◼   ► One of the things that makes these Fracture prints

00:16:43 ◼   ► so remarkable is how lightweight they are.

00:16:46 ◼   ► They come, they self-hanging, they call it.

00:16:48 ◼   ► But everything you need to hang it on the wall

00:16:50 ◼   ► is on the back of this piece of glass.

00:16:52 ◼   ► So you send them your photos.

00:16:54 ◼   ► They print them directly on the glass.

00:16:55 ◼   ► It looks like it's right on the surface of the glass.

00:16:58 ◼   ► Edge to edge, corner to corner, no frame necessary.

00:17:02 ◼   ► It's just the glass, and then there's just the thing

00:17:05 ◼   ► you need to hang it on the wall.

00:17:08 ◼   ► They don't come to your house and put the nail in the wall,

00:17:09 ◼   ► but other than that, it hangs itself.

00:17:12 ◼   ► Super lightweight, almost like lighter

00:17:15 ◼   ► than you'd think it could be,

00:17:16 ◼   ► which makes you feel really good hanging it on the wall

00:17:20 ◼   ► because you don't feel like,

00:17:21 ◼   ► hey, this is like a big heavy piece of glass

00:17:23 ◼   ► that's gonna break and put broken glass

00:17:25 ◼   ► all over the floor or whatever.

00:17:27 ◼   ► Quality is excellent.

00:17:29 ◼   ► I mean, this is how I print photos.

00:17:31 ◼   ► I don't, you know, I can't imagine

00:17:33 ◼   ► why I would print them some other way.

00:17:35 ◼   ► Great quality, all sorts of great sizes, great price.

00:17:38 ◼   ► They are made in a carbon neutral factory

00:17:41 ◼   ► right in beautiful Gainesville, Florida.

00:17:44 ◼   ► And here's the thing, they're upping their sponsorships

00:17:49 ◼   ► recently, September, now we're in October,

00:17:52 ◼   ► because these are fantastic gifts, they really are.

00:17:56 ◼   ► It's both, they make the people,

00:17:58 ◼   ► like you're giving to grandparents,

00:18:00 ◼   ► giving to other family members, stuff like that.

00:18:03 ◼   ► If you've got kids, get some pictures printed of them,

00:18:07 ◼   ► give them to everybody for Christmas and the other holidays.

00:18:11 ◼   ► Great gift for a couple reasons.

00:18:12 ◼   ► It makes the people you give them to really happy.

00:18:14 ◼   ► Trust me, they love them.

00:18:16 ◼   ► And it's so easy.

00:18:17 ◼   ► It is so easy for you in terms of,

00:18:19 ◼   ► hey, let's knock off all the parents and grandparents

00:18:22 ◼   ► and stuff like that, knock off the holiday gift items.

00:18:27 ◼   ► Here's the reason.

00:18:27 ◼   ► I want you to think about doing that now or soon

00:18:30 ◼   ► because these things are all made by hand

00:18:32 ◼   ► right here in Florida.

00:18:34 ◼   ► Well, I'm not in Florida, but right here in the US.

00:18:37 ◼   ► They get backed up for the holidays

00:18:38 ◼   ► is what I'm going to get at.

00:18:39 ◼   ► So you can't wait till like the beginning of December

00:18:42 ◼   ► and then still get it by the end of December for the holidays.

00:18:45 ◼   ► So think about it now.

00:18:46 ◼   ► You'll knock off something on your shopping list way early.

00:18:49 ◼   ► You'll be ahead of the game.

00:18:51 ◼   ► Where do you go?

00:18:52 ◼   ► You go to fractorme.com.

00:18:54 ◼   ► That's our website.

00:18:54 ◼   ► Slash podcast.

00:18:57 ◼   ► That's the thing to remember, that they're

00:18:58 ◼   ► using the same URL for all their podcast ads.

00:19:01 ◼   ► And then they'll just ask you a one-question survey of where

00:19:04 ◼   ► did you hear about it from.

00:19:05 ◼   ► And that's where you tell them you hear from the talk show.

00:19:08 ◼   ► And anyway, you go to that URL.

00:19:10 ◼   ► You'll get 10% off your first order.

00:19:12 ◼   ► So the more pictures you buy on that first order,

00:19:14 ◼   ► the more you'll save.

00:19:15 ◼   ► So go to fractureme.com/podcast.

00:19:17 ◼   ► My thanks to them.

00:19:20 ◼   ► So I said, segue, going to the Made by Google event.

00:19:24 ◼   ► So why should Samsung be concerned

00:19:26 ◼   ► about owning their own technology

00:19:27 ◼   ► for stuff like this?

00:19:28 ◼   ► Because to me, this week's Made by Google event,

00:19:32 ◼   ► which overall I have to say I was pretty impressed by.

00:19:34 ◼   ► But the truth is very obvious that Google is now

00:19:38 ◼   ► going to favor their own hardware over those of partners.

00:19:43 ◼   ► That the full experience that they're planning,

00:19:46 ◼   ► that they feel like they can drive through AI technology,

00:19:52 ◼   ► they clearly-- they said so.

00:19:54 ◼   ► It's not even implicit, explicit in interviews this week

00:19:57 ◼   ► that they see that the integrated hardware and software

00:19:59 ◼   ► is the way to go.

00:20:02 ◼   ► Imagine that.

00:20:04 ◼   ► Surprised no other company had ever come up with this before.

00:20:07 ◼   ► You know, it's remarkable that Google was first to this realization. You know, I'm

00:20:18 ◼   ► not going to rag on them too hard, right? Because it does—they made a bed, right?

00:20:22 ◼   ► And they had to lie in it. And that bed was that they had to be partner-friendly and,

00:20:31 ◼   ► you know, this open strategy, whatever you want to call it. It really laid out a track

00:20:36 ◼   ► for them, that they had to follow, and they followed it for as long as it made sense.

00:20:40 ◼   ► And now it doesn't make sense anymore.

00:20:42 ◼   ► Google is not a fool.

00:20:43 ◼   ► The people that are not fools, but the people that should have known or should have realized

00:20:48 ◼   ► are the partners.

00:20:49 ◼   ► You know, the companies that are like, "Oh, Google will never betray us," and they will

00:20:53 ◼   ► always have our interests at heart, et cetera.

00:20:55 ◼   ► I do think Google meant it, and I don't think it's any coincidence at all.

00:20:59 ◼   ► I mentioned this briefly in a short DF piece the other day, pointing out that, you know,

00:21:05 ◼   ► Like the 2010 in particular was the year

00:21:08 ◼   ► where it was where Vic and Dottra was given a keynote at IO

00:21:12 ◼   ► and really dug into the anti-iPhone, anti-Apple,

00:21:17 ◼   ► anti-Steve Jobs sort of sentiment.

00:21:21 ◼   ► You know, it literally said something to the effect

00:21:24 ◼   ► of one man, one phone, one company, one carrier.

00:21:29 ◼   ► We're here to stop that from dominating mobile

00:21:32 ◼   ► for the coming decades.

00:21:33 ◼   ► And really meant it.

00:21:35 ◼   ► I truly think, I think, Vint Gendotter meant it.

00:21:38 ◼   ► I think Andy Rubin was very much along on that,

00:21:42 ◼   ► that it was a strength of Android

00:21:45 ◼   ► to be Microsoft to the PC industry,

00:21:48 ◼   ► to not only do like reference hardware

00:21:53 ◼   ► and just do the software.

00:21:54 ◼   ► And I really think that they thought

00:21:56 ◼   ► that Android would lead to a Windows-like monopoly over

00:22:02 ◼   ► mobile.

00:22:03 ◼   ► Right.

00:22:05 ◼   ► And they still thought that in 2012, right?

00:22:08 ◼   ► - I think so, yeah.

00:22:09 ◼   ► - So they had the Galaxy Nexus, the Nexus 7 tablet,

00:22:13 ◼   ► that streaming device, that Nexus 6 orb,

00:22:18 ◼   ► I forget what they called it exactly,

00:22:21 ◼   ► but it was like the ball thing.

00:22:23 ◼   ► I don't know, that was that particular Google I/O

00:22:26 ◼   ► when they introduced all those things.

00:22:28 ◼   ► And there was some additional Glass stuff,

00:22:31 ◼   ► the Explorer edition of Glass

00:22:33 ◼   ► when that was launched and everything.

00:22:35 ◼   ► And that particular one, they also made a lot of really kind of, whatever you want to

00:22:43 ◼   ► call it, predictive or hypothetical, but not really hypothetical statements about software

00:22:51 ◼   ► and hardware integration and how they could only do certain things if they took control

00:22:54 ◼   ► of both and they would show their partners how good it could be and then they would follow

00:22:59 ◼   ► suit.

00:23:00 ◼   ► were dealing, they were kind of trying to roll out several small software updates to

00:23:05 ◼   ► limit fragmentation and all that stuff.

00:23:08 ◼   ► In 2012, I remember tweeting this because I remember the first reply was, "Do you

00:23:13 ◼   ► realize the stupidity of that tweet?"

00:23:16 ◼   ► It was really funny because nobody had replied to it at the time.

00:23:21 ◼   ► Everybody like favorited it, but nobody replied and then it took a year.

00:23:25 ◼   ► I posted it June 27th, 2012.

00:23:27 ◼   ► Well, what did the tweet say?

00:23:29 ◼   ► Well, the tweet was the hardware plus software epiphany.

00:23:33 ◼   ► I said Apple 1979, Microsoft 2012, because it was the Surface thing, and then Google

00:23:39 ◼   ► 2012.

00:23:40 ◼   ► In other words, they're saying, "Oh, maybe the right way to do this is to do both,"

00:23:46 ◼   ► and to say, "Maybe you could do the other."

00:23:51 ◼   ► I was being a bit facetious because obviously the hardware/software join made less sense

00:23:58 ◼   ► for a variety of reasons that have been gone over ad nauseam by you and other folks and

00:24:02 ◼   ► all of us over the years, made less sense on desktop than it does on mobile, right?

00:24:07 ◼   ► But mobile's lack of tolerance for weirdness and its intimate nature and a lot of other

00:24:12 ◼   ► things, it just, Apple had the right formula for it, which is why the iPhone was such a

00:24:16 ◼   ► hit right off the bat.

00:24:18 ◼   ► And so Microsoft and Google in 2012 kind of shifted their gears and were like, "Oh, maybe

00:24:24 ◼   ► we should take full control over these mobile experiences because people are

00:24:28 ◼   ► not getting them right and letting our partners diddle around with our hardware

00:24:33 ◼   ► is not going to you know or our software in Microsoft's case is not going to to

00:24:38 ◼   ► make a device that's holistically like feels great and engenders love and

00:24:44 ◼   ► loyalty. Do you think it took them that long though to get to the point where

00:24:48 ◼   ► they have these pixels? Do you or do you think that there were further epiphanies

00:24:52 ◼   ► along the line? I don't know. I mean that's the joke I was making

00:24:57 ◼   ► about, you know, Google convincing people that they're launching their own phones

00:25:01 ◼   ► for the third time. Yeah. For the first time because they had, you know, the

00:25:05 ◼   ► Google, the Android, the One. Yeah. Yeah, and then they had the Nexus phones, of

00:25:13 ◼   ► course, and then this is sort of like the third time they've done this, but it

00:25:17 ◼   ► seems, for better or for worse, they seem more serious about it now, and I think

00:25:22 ◼   ► they're serious about it now because they're in a place where their

00:25:26 ◼   ► competitors, their real competitors, or real partners/

00:25:31 ◼   ► competitors are very seriously thinking about divorcing themselves, right? And

00:25:37 ◼   ► going like, "Hey, what do we do when Google's not the answer?" or "How do we

00:25:42 ◼   ► fork Android in a way that's to our advantage like Amazon

00:25:47 ◼   ► attempted to do. But I think that they basically look at it and say, "Well,

00:25:52 ◼   ► eventually it's gonna happen and somebody's gonna be good at it, so why

00:25:55 ◼   ► don't we just do it? Why don't we be the person that's good at it?" And that's why

00:25:59 ◼   ► we're getting this third attempt. Yeah. As for the phones themselves, I almost...

00:26:09 ◼   ► I'm one who's largely offended by rip-offs and I, you know, over the years

00:26:15 ◼   ► have argued with people on Twitter.

00:26:18 ◼   ► And I was certainly of the belief

00:26:22 ◼   ► that Samsung ripped off the iPhone

00:26:24 ◼   ► in those phones that were the subject

00:26:29 ◼   ► of the big case that went to court.

00:26:32 ◼   ► I largely agree with Apple on the merits

00:26:36 ◼   ► of most of their arguments there.

00:26:38 ◼   ► And the counterargument was always from people who either,

00:26:42 ◼   ► I just think that they're mentally made up

00:26:44 ◼   ► not to see or notice these things in the way that,

00:26:48 ◼   ► for a best example I can think of is the way

00:26:50 ◼   ► some people just don't notice the differences

00:26:52 ◼   ► between fonts, and so yes, they can see the difference

00:26:55 ◼   ► between a serif and a sans serif,

00:26:57 ◼   ► 'cause you can say, see these little feet at the bottom?

00:26:59 ◼   ► That's the serifs, and they'll say, oh yeah, yeah,

00:27:01 ◼   ► I see that, but they don't see the difference

00:27:03 ◼   ► between Times and Garamond, and they don't see

00:27:06 ◼   ► the difference even between Futura and Helvetica,

00:27:09 ◼   ► let alone the subtle differences between, say,

00:27:11 ◼   ► Vettica and Ariel, which is an actual ripoff font.

00:27:15 ◼   ► It's a ripoff of--

00:27:17 ◼   ► So I think that there's people who just

00:27:19 ◼   ► don't see the differences like that in industrial design.

00:27:22 ◼   ► And they give arguments like, well, there's

00:27:24 ◼   ► only so many ways to make a round corner, round rectangular

00:27:28 ◼   ► piece of glass.

00:27:29 ◼   ► And it's like, no, that's not true.

00:27:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's like trying to tell somebody

00:27:37 ◼   ► who's colorblind, like, this is lavender,

00:27:39 ◼   ► and they're all, no, it's not.

00:27:41 ◼   ► OK, never mind, because they just will never see it.

00:27:44 ◼   ► These Pixel phones are so clearly following

00:27:48 ◼   ► the design of the iPhone 6 that--

00:27:52 ◼   ► I mean, it's to a degree that I don't think I've ever

00:27:54 ◼   ► seen in any phone, any post-iPhone competing phone ever.

00:27:58 ◼   ► These are the biggest rip-offs of the iPhone industrial design

00:28:03 ◼   ► ever.

00:28:04 ◼   ► But it's almost so absurd that I almost salute them for--

00:28:08 ◼   ► it's almost like there's a certain integrity to it

00:28:10 ◼   ► where they're just explicitly saying, yes, we're making phones that make look like iPhones.

00:28:14 ◼   ► They're not, I don't even think they're quite denying it. I mean, they're even talking about it

00:28:17 ◼   ► in some of the articles that they've made a few choices to not make them look like iPhones.

00:28:22 ◼   ► But nobody, there's so much like iPhones in terms of the, the, the shape, just the basic

00:28:29 ◼   ► shape that it, I don't see how anybody could look at them and first thought not be, wow,

00:28:35 ◼   ► those look exactly like the iPhone six. Right. There's almost an integrity to the fact that they

00:28:39 ◼   ► or if we're going to copy Apple, we might as well copy Apple.

00:28:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:44 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like recently Instagram copied Snapchat

00:28:47 ◼   ► with their Stories thing.

00:28:48 ◼   ► And they basically said, yeah, Snapchat

00:28:51 ◼   ► came up with a really good idea, so this is our spin on it.

00:28:53 ◼   ► Which I think is like Facebook has copied a lot of features

00:28:56 ◼   ► from Snapchat over the years or tried to,

00:28:58 ◼   ► and most of those standalone apps have failed.

00:29:00 ◼   ► But Instagram's, even though it's under the Facebook

00:29:02 ◼   ► umbrella, it's led by people who will make decisions.

00:29:05 ◼   ► And in this case, they either made the decision

00:29:08 ◼   ► or convince somebody above them to allow them to say,

00:29:11 ◼   ► "Look, we thought it was great, so this is our spin on it."

00:29:15 ◼   ► And I think that's a kind of a,

00:29:16 ◼   ► there's a similar scenario going on here

00:29:18 ◼   ► where they may not explicitly say it

00:29:20 ◼   ► 'cause Google probably has a little bit more layers

00:29:22 ◼   ► of interruption between somebody just coming out

00:29:24 ◼   ► and saying that and not.

00:29:26 ◼   ► But I do think that there is an element of,

00:29:31 ◼   ► the design is great, we're just gonna use that

00:29:34 ◼   ► because the design is not really all that important to us

00:29:37 ◼   ► in terms of appearance, right?

00:29:40 ◼   ► And I'm using design here in the terminology

00:29:42 ◼   ► of physical, industrial design, physical appearance,

00:29:46 ◼   ► not the holistic design, capital D,

00:29:50 ◼   ► where it's the way it works and looks.

00:29:51 ◼   ► But I think that they said, hey,

00:29:53 ◼   ► there's certain choices we need to make,

00:29:55 ◼   ► but one of those choices is not to be wildly different,

00:29:58 ◼   ► to wildly differentiate the look and feel.

00:30:00 ◼   ► And the way I feel about it is,

00:30:03 ◼   ► the name of the phone is perfect,

00:30:05 ◼   ► it's called pixel, which obviously to anybody in the computer world, or honestly most people,

00:30:13 ◼   ► probably know at least what a pixel is. Because nine times out of ten when you tell anybody

00:30:17 ◼   ► about a phone or something, "Oh, how many pixels does it have?" They don't really know,

00:30:22 ◼   ► or "How many pixels does that camera have?" They don't really know what it means and how

00:30:25 ◼   ► that translates from a capture element to an actual pixel on a screen. Well, pixel is

00:30:29 ◼   ► a really broad recognizable term. So A1, you know, number one, broad recognizable term.

00:30:36 ◼   ► So that's great, right? That's a good choice. And second is, it emphasizes what's on the

00:30:42 ◼   ► screen, right? The software. And to Google, the hardware is a vehicle for their AI and

00:30:49 ◼   ► whatever other software they want to launch on it. And to Apple, the hardware is the thing

00:30:53 ◼   ► and then people build to suit the hardware. Like that's the way that they, that's their

00:30:57 ◼   ► philosophy, their entire developer ecosystem builds to the precise specifications available

00:31:02 ◼   ► on the devices.

00:31:03 ◼   ► And that's what leads to theoretically great experiences.

00:31:06 ◼   ► But Google is basically like, "Hey, we can provide all the experiences people need or

00:31:11 ◼   ► that we really care about."

00:31:14 ◼   ► And so the Pixel, calling it Pixel, telegraphs that.

00:31:17 ◼   ► It says, "It's about what's on the screen.

00:31:18 ◼   ► It's not about what's around the screen.

00:31:22 ◼   ► Don't worry too much about that.

00:31:23 ◼   ► We're gonna give you a design that feels familiar,

00:31:26 ◼   ► that you feel like, oh, that's a phone,

00:31:28 ◼   ► I can use that thing, you know?

00:31:30 ◼   ► And that's it, they're good, they're golden.

00:31:31 ◼   ► The rest of it is on the screen.

00:31:33 ◼   ► - Here's my biggest question.

00:31:36 ◼   ► It's a win for them, honestly.

00:31:40 ◼   ► It doesn't have a camera bump,

00:31:42 ◼   ► and that was one of the first things I noticed.

00:31:44 ◼   ► One of the things that they copied, though,

00:31:46 ◼   ► is they put the camera in the same corner

00:31:48 ◼   ► that the iPhone has always put the camera.

00:31:50 ◼   ► And that's been one of the weird things

00:31:52 ◼   ► that I've always wondered about, that here we are,

00:31:54 ◼   ► nine years with 10 generations of the iPhone,

00:31:57 ◼   ► and every single one has had the camera in the top left

00:32:01 ◼   ► as you look at the back face of the camera.

00:32:04 ◼   ► And almost all competing phones put the camera in the center,

00:32:09 ◼   ► more or less where the Apple logo goes on an iPhone,

00:32:12 ◼   ► and where the pixels put their fingerprint sensor.

00:32:16 ◼   ► Most other phones, though, put the cameras there,

00:32:18 ◼   ► whether there's a bump, whether there's no bump.

00:32:21 ◼   ► I've never quite understood why since,

00:32:24 ◼   ► just not even making the argument

00:32:25 ◼   ► of why the iPhone's placement is better,

00:32:27 ◼   ► but given that the iPhone--

00:32:28 ◼   ► - Oh, it is, for sure.

00:32:29 ◼   ► - I think so too, 'cause I think it's more likely

00:32:32 ◼   ► to keep your finger out of the position.

00:32:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, most people are right-handed,

00:32:35 ◼   ► and you bring up the phone,

00:32:36 ◼   ► and most people are gonna take it in horizontal,

00:32:38 ◼   ► and so you bring up the phone and turn it horizontal,

00:32:40 ◼   ► and you tap it with your right thumb,

00:32:42 ◼   ► and your other finger is in front of it, holding it stable,

00:32:45 ◼   ► and then that way you don't have a finger

00:32:46 ◼   ► in front of the lens.

00:32:47 ◼   ► It makes total damn sense.

00:32:48 ◼   ► It's like the right place to put the camera.

00:32:50 ◼   ► And Android phones, I always have my damn finger

00:32:52 ◼   ► in front of the camera and I have to remove it.

00:32:53 ◼   ► - I do too, and I don't know if it's because I have

00:32:57 ◼   ► finger, you know, handheld habits that coincide with it

00:33:00 ◼   ► or not.

00:33:01 ◼   ► I'm looking at my Moto X right here,

00:33:05 ◼   ► and I just remember I've often, I'd hold it up

00:33:08 ◼   ► and my finger's right over the camera.

00:33:09 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:33:10 ◼   ► Well, the Nexus 5 is in the center,

00:33:12 ◼   ► so they sort of like, hey, we'll be agnostic,

00:33:14 ◼   ► you know, left hand, right hand.

00:33:15 ◼   ► - Here was my first question though.

00:33:17 ◼   ► As soon as I saw the design, and this is before,

00:33:19 ◼   ► you know, before the event, because it leaked,

00:33:21 ◼   ► and I was like, well, there's no camera bump,

00:33:22 ◼   ► so how are they not having a camera bump?

00:33:24 ◼   ► Is it because they made the phone thicker?

00:33:27 ◼   ► Or is it that they've got,

00:33:29 ◼   ► somehow they've got superior optics?

00:33:31 ◼   ► So the iPhone 7 is,

00:33:36 ◼   ► have it right here in front of me,

00:33:39 ◼   ► 7.1 millimeters thick,

00:33:42 ◼   ► and the 7 Plus is 7.3 millimeters thick,

00:33:45 ◼   ► so 2/10 of one millimeter thicker for the Plus

00:33:48 ◼   ► than the regular 7.

00:33:50 ◼   ► And then there's a big bump.

00:33:52 ◼   ► The pixels dimensions on Google's tech specs page

00:33:56 ◼   ► are for thickness--

00:33:59 ◼   ► I don't understand what this means-- 7.3 and then a tilde

00:34:04 ◼   ► 8.5 millimeters.

00:34:06 ◼   ► And that's for both phones, the Pixel and the Pixel XL.

00:34:08 ◼   ► It's 8.5 at the top, because there's a plate of glass

00:34:11 ◼   ► or whatever that is over the top.

00:34:13 ◼   ► I think so.

00:34:15 ◼   ► I haven't seen anybody answer this, though.

00:34:16 ◼   ► that they're slightly wedge-shaped, sort of like,

00:34:20 ◼   ► you know, not quite to the narrow,

00:34:23 ◼   ► to like a blade, like a MacBook Air,

00:34:25 ◼   ► but that they're not, when you look at it in profile

00:34:29 ◼   ► from the side, it doesn't look like the bottom

00:34:32 ◼   ► is as thick as the top.

00:34:33 ◼   ► It's thinner at the bottom than it is at the top.

00:34:35 ◼   ► So it's sort of like they slope the whole phone

00:34:38 ◼   ► up to where it would be a bump.

00:34:40 ◼   ► - Right, yes, I totally agree.

00:34:43 ◼   ► I think that's what happened there.

00:34:44 ◼   ► I actually didn't go to the event,

00:34:46 ◼   ► so I didn't handle them myself, but I did ask somebody,

00:34:49 ◼   ► and I believe that's what they told me.

00:34:51 ◼   ► There was that sort of like piece of material at the top.

00:34:55 ◼   ► I hesitate to just say glass

00:34:57 ◼   ► 'cause I don't wanna be wrong.

00:34:58 ◼   ► - I don't think that it's just,

00:34:59 ◼   ► but it doesn't like jump in thickness.

00:35:01 ◼   ► I think it is, it's like a gentle wedge shape.

00:35:04 ◼   ► But, and their product photography--

00:35:06 ◼   ► - There's a bevel though.

00:35:07 ◼   ► - Their product photography

00:35:08 ◼   ► seems to purposefully obscure that.

00:35:11 ◼   ► I looked at product photography for a while

00:35:16 ◼   ► before I even thought to suspect that.

00:35:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I actually went in our back end here

00:35:23 ◼   ► 'cause our guys were at the event.

00:35:25 ◼   ► We generally, when we shoot pictures,

00:35:27 ◼   ► we dump 'em all into the back end

00:35:28 ◼   ► so people that are utilizing them

00:35:31 ◼   ► or writing articles about them can pull 'em up.

00:35:34 ◼   ► And so let me, I'm pulling one up here.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Yeah, and he's holding it at an angle

00:35:39 ◼   ► and you can clearly see that that part at the top is raised.

00:35:42 ◼   ► Now whether it's like a wedge from two thirds up the phone,

00:35:46 ◼   ► it starts out at like eight millimeters

00:35:49 ◼   ► and then it goes up to 8.3 at the very top, I don't know.

00:35:51 ◼   ► But it's definitely like raised at the top.

00:35:55 ◼   ► The top third of the phone is raised

00:35:56 ◼   ► off of the rest of the phone.

00:35:58 ◼   ► So I think they're hiding a lot of the bump in there.

00:36:00 ◼   ► And if you look at the camera, it's interesting

00:36:02 ◼   ► because there's actually a sort of slight indention.

00:36:06 ◼   ► It slopes inwards at the camera.

00:36:09 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:36:10 ◼   ► - So I don't know, I think it's a combination of things.

00:36:12 ◼   ► I think they found out, they figured out a way

00:36:14 ◼   ► to make it as thin as possible,

00:36:15 ◼   ► and then they also sloped it up a little bit.

00:36:18 ◼   ► But yeah, it's a clever way to get rid of the bump, for sure.

00:36:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it will, it certainly would allow it

00:36:23 ◼   ► to still sit flat on the table with no wobble.

00:36:27 ◼   ► So I have to say, I mean, I'm not willing to say

00:36:29 ◼   ► that it's a complete win without seeing it myself.

00:36:32 ◼   ► I mean, I think I'm gonna buy one,

00:36:33 ◼   ► 'cause I haven't bought an Android phone in a while,

00:36:36 ◼   ► and it seems like this would be the one to buy.

00:36:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think I'm gonna upgrade for my 5X too, yeah.

00:36:41 ◼   ► So I don't know, but it's, you know,

00:36:43 ◼   ► I still hate the bumps.

00:36:44 ◼   ► I like the seven bump better, I've said this before,

00:36:46 ◼   ► I like the seven bump better than the six and six S bump

00:36:49 ◼   ► because to me it's more of an honest bump.

00:36:51 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, man, we've got it,

00:36:53 ◼   ► yeah, we definitely have a bump.

00:36:54 ◼   ► And you see it in a product photography.

00:36:56 ◼   ► - We put this badass camera in here and yeah.

00:36:58 ◼   ► - There were entire articles two years ago

00:37:00 ◼   ► about how Apple's product photography hid the bump

00:37:04 ◼   ► and they had profile pictures where in theory

00:37:07 ◼   ► you think you would have been able to see the bump

00:37:09 ◼   ► and you didn't, and then there were defenses

00:37:12 ◼   ► where people were making their own photos,

00:37:14 ◼   ► and they're like, "If you hold it just right,

00:37:15 ◼   ► "you can take a real photo and not show the bump

00:37:18 ◼   ► "by just the exact, shooting it from the opposite side

00:37:22 ◼   ► "and putting it at the exact right angle."

00:37:25 ◼   ► And I can just hold up my phone to my eye

00:37:27 ◼   ► and hold it sideways, and if I hold it just right,

00:37:29 ◼   ► it looks like it's in perfect profile

00:37:31 ◼   ► and I don't see the bump.

00:37:32 ◼   ► But doing it was dishonest,

00:37:33 ◼   ► whereas now Apple's product photography highlights the bump.

00:37:37 ◼   ► they've got like a beautiful reflection

00:37:39 ◼   ► off the jet black aluminum.

00:37:42 ◼   ► - Right, and the reflection's not an accident.

00:37:45 ◼   ► - Right.

00:37:46 ◼   ► So I'm not willing, but overall,

00:37:49 ◼   ► I think not having a bump, you've gotta say,

00:37:52 ◼   ► otherwise it doesn't feel too thick in your hand, et cetera.

00:37:56 ◼   ► This could be a win for the Pixel over the iPhone.

00:37:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, hey, who wants, nobody wants a bump.

00:38:02 ◼   ► That bump probably just drives Johnny insane, right?

00:38:06 ◼   ► But it's, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do.

00:38:09 ◼   ► - I think having an asymmetrical, overall,

00:38:11 ◼   ► the whole phone being asymmetric

00:38:13 ◼   ► would drive him nuts too, though.

00:38:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, that's true.

00:38:17 ◼   ► That's true. - Like, I can still see why,

00:38:18 ◼   ► I could, I wouldn't be, you know,

00:38:21 ◼   ► I'd almost be surprised if Apple didn't consider

00:38:23 ◼   ► a wedge-shaped design to accommodate the,

00:38:26 ◼   ► you know, the necessary thickness of the camera unit.

00:38:31 ◼   ► And I could see why Apple rejected it.

00:38:33 ◼   ► - God, remember that wedge-shaped design that,

00:38:36 ◼   ► Who said that was gonna have a,

00:38:37 ◼   ► was it Josh Polsky or somebody?

00:38:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so.

00:38:40 ◼   ► - Maybe This Is My Next or something

00:38:41 ◼   ► that they said was gonna be like a wedge.

00:38:43 ◼   ► So maybe they were considering a wedge at some point.

00:38:45 ◼   ► - Right, but maybe that wasn't totally

00:38:47 ◼   ► pulled out of thin air.

00:38:49 ◼   ► - Right.

00:38:50 ◼   ► - Maybe that was an, I wouldn't be surprised at all.

00:38:51 ◼   ► But I can also see why they got rid of,

00:38:53 ◼   ► didn't go that way.

00:38:55 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:38:56 ◼   ► - What else about these phones?

00:38:59 ◼   ► They did move, they moved the volume to the other side.

00:39:03 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:39:05 ◼   ► - Which is where a lot of Android phones

00:39:06 ◼   ► had the volume. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, I like them. I mean, I think that they're

00:39:12 ◼   ► a little bit awkward. The mix of materials is not really my bag, you know, like the two-tone

00:39:17 ◼   ► thing. It just seems a little bit contrived to me, and I don't know why they have antenna

00:39:25 ◼   ► lines and a huge window that could theoretically be transparent to signal, but that's, you

00:39:34 ◼   ► I'm not a phone designer so there's probably like very logical reasons and all of that stuff.

00:39:38 ◼   ► Right and it's like the iPhone 4 and 4s had breaks, you know, the antenna was the frame

00:39:46 ◼   ► around the sides and then there famously there were breaks in there for different antennas to

00:39:51 ◼   ► not be touching each other but then the back was made out of glass and therefore signals get

00:39:56 ◼   ► get through. I don't quite get why they've got a one-third glass back and

00:40:00 ◼   ► two-thirds aluminum and antenna lines. I could see why they have glass if they

00:40:06 ◼   ► wanted to have the antenna signals get through and I could see having antenna

00:40:09 ◼   ► lines for the reasons that the iPhone 6 and 7 have antenna lines but I don't see

00:40:13 ◼   ► both. Yeah. It'll be curious. It's a very technical design, right? Yeah. Like it

00:40:20 ◼   ► screams like this is very technical, we have lots of things going on and I think

00:40:24 ◼   ► I think that's an interesting play,

00:40:27 ◼   ► and they probably did it intentionally, right?

00:40:30 ◼   ► 'Cause this is the high, high end of the Android market,

00:40:33 ◼   ► which is something we haven't talked about yet,

00:40:34 ◼   ► but pricing-wise, this is an expensive phone, right?

00:40:38 ◼   ► This is not like the Nexus 5X,

00:40:40 ◼   ► "Hey, get one for 250 bucks, flat out,"

00:40:42 ◼   ► you know, or whatever, on sale or with a coupon.

00:40:45 ◼   ► You know, these are expensive $650 to $800,

00:40:49 ◼   ► $950 phones or whatever.

00:40:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, they're very comparably priced

00:40:53 ◼   ► to the iPhone 7.

00:40:54 ◼   ► It's 120 more for the bigger display

00:41:01 ◼   ► instead of 100 more, and they have two storage tiers,

00:41:04 ◼   ► 32 and 128, and the 128 I think is,

00:41:08 ◼   ► I think for both might be exactly the same price

00:41:11 ◼   ► as the same iPhones.

00:41:12 ◼   ► - Right.

00:41:14 ◼   ► So I guess whatever math Apple was doing

00:41:18 ◼   ► wasn't just about gouging.

00:41:20 ◼   ► - No, I don't think so.

00:41:22 ◼   ► The colors are called Very Silver, Quite Black, and Limited Edition Really Blue, which is already out of stock.

00:41:31 ◼   ► I almost bought the blue. I literally pulled it up and I was pre-ordering it.

00:41:36 ◼   ► And then I decided to just kind of wait and see what the first impressions were.

00:41:40 ◼   ► Did you order one already?

00:41:42 ◼   ► No, I haven't ordered. I'm going to, but I don't have it.

00:41:45 ◼   ► I am too, but I'd probably just buy black. I don't want to wait.

00:41:48 ◼   ► Although I'm curious why blue is limited edition.

00:41:52 ◼   ► Is it just artificial scarcity or is it because--

00:41:54 ◼   ► - It's probably harder to make.

00:41:55 ◼   ► I mean those finishes are tougher.

00:41:57 ◼   ► You know, I mean like even the, look at the jet black.

00:41:59 ◼   ► Right, it's like, you know, some just nine step process

00:42:02 ◼   ► that they have to anodize it and then they have to clear

00:42:04 ◼   ► coat it and polish it and clear coat it and polish it

00:42:06 ◼   ► and clear coat it and polish it.

00:42:07 ◼   ► It just takes longer.

00:42:08 ◼   ► I would guess they just produced a lot less of them

00:42:09 ◼   ► because of that.

00:42:11 ◼   ► - It looks like most of their product photography

00:42:14 ◼   ► is the very silver.

00:42:16 ◼   ► They skipped gold, so there's no gold.

00:42:18 ◼   ► They can't accuse them of ripping off

00:42:20 ◼   ► or following Apple in that regard.

00:42:22 ◼   ► I'm kind of impressed if the black looks as good as it does

00:42:26 ◼   ► on the aluminum, that I'm kind of impressed

00:42:28 ◼   ► that they've already caught up.

00:42:30 ◼   ► Who knows how much of that expertise Google brought,

00:42:32 ◼   ► and who knows how much they're leaning on HTC.

00:42:35 ◼   ► But famously, the reason that we've had space gray

00:42:38 ◼   ► for a couple of years is because black proved so hard,

00:42:42 ◼   ► even for Apple, whose unparalleled expertise in materials

00:42:47 ◼   ► couldn't even get right.

00:42:49 ◼   ► And here they're coming out of the box

00:42:51 ◼   ► with a black anodized aluminum.

00:42:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, like I said, I haven't seen it in person,

00:42:56 ◼   ► so I don't know how black the black is,

00:42:59 ◼   ► but it looks pretty black.

00:43:00 ◼   ► I mean, you look at the black top section,

00:43:03 ◼   ► and it is lighter than that, but it's not like gray.

00:43:06 ◼   ► Like the previous iPhones were.

00:43:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's, I don't know.

00:43:11 ◼   ► There's some things that look weird about it to me,

00:43:13 ◼   ► but it certainly is the best looking

00:43:15 ◼   ► or Android phone I've seen in a while, to my eyes.

00:43:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, a lot of them have too many notes

00:43:21 ◼   ► 'cause they gotta differentiate, right?

00:43:23 ◼   ► - Right. - You're in this

00:43:24 ◼   ► crowded market with a bunch of competitors

00:43:25 ◼   ► and you're sitting on this Verizon shelf,

00:43:28 ◼   ► like people walk into the Verizon store

00:43:29 ◼   ► and they're like, "Oh, that one looks cool."

00:43:32 ◼   ► That's what they're playing to, that audience.

00:43:35 ◼   ► And Google's not.

00:43:36 ◼   ► - This shot, I'll send it to you.

00:43:39 ◼   ► This shot seems to me to really emphasize--

00:43:42 ◼   ► I think this is where you can kind of see the wedge shape.

00:43:47 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:43:49 ◼   ► AMOLED display instead of LCD, but just about everybody

00:43:52 ◼   ► other than Apple has gone to AMOLED.

00:43:55 ◼   ► And there's rumors that Apple is going to go to AMOLED eventually

00:43:59 ◼   ► sooner than later.

00:43:59 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:44:01 ◼   ► It seems to me like--

00:44:02 ◼   ► I mean, AMOLED still has advantages on blacks.

00:44:04 ◼   ► And I think they're inherent to the technology,

00:44:06 ◼   ► that black on AMOLED is going to be a darker black,

00:44:10 ◼   ► a deeper black, whatever you want to describe it,

00:44:12 ◼   ► than LCD can ever do.

00:44:14 ◼   ► But it seems to me like both technologies

00:44:17 ◼   ► are sort of approaching each other.

00:44:19 ◼   ► It take, you know, both are catching up

00:44:21 ◼   ► to the strengths and weakness, or strengths of the others,

00:44:23 ◼   ► and getting rid of their weaknesses.

00:44:25 ◼   ► Like the days when AMOLED couldn't reproduce color

00:44:28 ◼   ► faithfully, I think are probably over.

00:44:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, that was always the,

00:44:35 ◼   ► I mean, AMOLED was a new technology for a long time

00:44:37 ◼   ► and it was harder to make and everything else,

00:44:39 ◼   ► but it's starting to become much more widely adopted.

00:44:42 ◼   ► - I remember there was, in particular,

00:44:45 ◼   ► the Flickr logo, which had the magenta.

00:44:48 ◼   ► You could damage your retina,

00:44:50 ◼   ► but just by looking at the Flickr logo.

00:44:52 ◼   ► - That's right.

00:44:53 ◼   ► Yeah, and when you vanish to AMOLED overall

00:44:55 ◼   ► is that the colors are more neutral, right?

00:44:57 ◼   ► And LCDs always have a sort of,

00:45:00 ◼   ► they fight against the blue cast, you know?

00:45:03 ◼   ► And that moving to AMOLED sort of fixes that

00:45:07 ◼   ► without having to do software trickery on top of it

00:45:12 ◼   ► to filter that.

00:45:12 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:45:14 ◼   ► I think LCD and plane switching stuff,

00:45:16 ◼   ► it just was so good because it didn't burn in,

00:45:20 ◼   ► and it was really easy to make in pretty decent quality.

00:45:25 ◼   ► But yeah, I think everything's gonna be AMOLED pretty soon

00:45:28 ◼   ► because of the better color rendition.

00:45:30 ◼   ► - I think it just comes down to the scale.

00:45:33 ◼   ► And you have to remember that for Apple to switch,

00:45:36 ◼   ► they're switching like 70 million displays

00:45:38 ◼   ► in the first quarter.

00:45:40 ◼   ► So it's not surprising to me at all

00:45:43 ◼   ► that they might be late to that game just because.

00:45:48 ◼   ► There's no way they were going to shift in the early years

00:45:51 ◼   ► when the color of reproduction was so bad.

00:45:53 ◼   ► And even now, if they might want to,

00:45:55 ◼   ► they have to wait not just until you

00:45:57 ◼   ► can make one that's up to their qualities for--

00:45:59 ◼   ► just how good does it look, really,

00:46:01 ◼   ► which is ultimately what Apple cares about.

00:46:03 ◼   ► It's not really what you can measure in any kind of test.

00:46:06 ◼   ► It's just look, just look at it with your eyes.

00:46:08 ◼   ► Does it look good?

00:46:09 ◼   ► But they've gotta be able to do it

00:46:11 ◼   ► where they can make it in iPhone quantities.

00:46:13 ◼   ► Let me take a break.

00:46:14 ◼   ► I wanna talk camera on the Pixel.

00:46:19 ◼   ► - Right.

00:46:21 ◼   ► - But let me take a break and thank our second sponsor

00:46:24 ◼   ► and just because it seems like a natural point

00:46:26 ◼   ► in the show to do so.

00:46:27 ◼   ► It's our good friends at Igloo.

00:46:28 ◼   ► You guys know Igloo.

00:46:29 ◼   ► They make the intranet that doesn't suck.

00:46:33 ◼   ► Anyone who's worked in a corporate environment

00:46:35 ◼   ► knows how painful intranets can be.

00:46:37 ◼   ► The content's stale.

00:46:38 ◼   ► The interface is ugly.

00:46:39 ◼   ► You can't access it on your phone,

00:46:40 ◼   ► or you have to do it with a lot of pinching and zooming.

00:46:43 ◼   ► And nobody uses it because they don't like it.

00:46:45 ◼   ► Igloo is an internet intranet you will actually like,

00:46:49 ◼   ► because it's designed for the user.

00:46:51 ◼   ► It's designed to be nice.

00:46:54 ◼   ► And therefore, people use it because it's nice.

00:46:56 ◼   ► And because people use it, it stays up to date.

00:47:00 ◼   ► It gives you the flexibility to get your team's work done,

00:47:03 ◼   ► how you want to do it, where you want,

00:47:05 ◼   ► and on whatever device you want.

00:47:08 ◼   ► Igloo is truly building a modern product meant for 2015,

00:47:12 ◼   ► not for 1997.

00:47:14 ◼   ► You can share news, organize files, coordinate calendars,

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00:47:21 ◼   ► They've got annotation on documents.

00:47:23 ◼   ► They've done a lot of work in the last year or two

00:47:25 ◼   ► on the document sharing stuff.

00:47:27 ◼   ► And everything can be social.

00:47:29 ◼   ► You can have comments if you want.

00:47:30 ◼   ► It's all configurable, too.

00:47:32 ◼   ► comments and like buttons so everybody within your team

00:47:34 ◼   ► can do all the sort of stuff that you're

00:47:36 ◼   ► used to doing on social networks right there

00:47:38 ◼   ► within your own private internet.

00:47:42 ◼   ► And everything is responsive web design wise.

00:47:44 ◼   ► So it looks fantastic on everything from your phone

00:47:48 ◼   ► to your tablet to your big giant 5K iMac.

00:47:52 ◼   ► So go to igloosoftware.com/tts, TTS for the talk show.

00:47:59 ◼   ► igloosoftware.com/tts.

00:48:01 ◼   ► And you can get a free trial for your team

00:48:04 ◼   ► and see for yourself just how good it is.

00:48:06 ◼   ► My thanks to them.

00:48:06 ◼   ► I wanted to talk about this.

00:48:11 ◼   ► So Google's bragging on the camera.

00:48:15 ◼   ► It might be a great camera.

00:48:16 ◼   ► But they're banking it all on the scores from DxOMark.

00:48:22 ◼   ► And I didn't have time before the show to look this up.

00:48:25 ◼   ► But there was something else recently,

00:48:26 ◼   ► like within the last year or so, where DxOMark came out

00:48:29 ◼   ► with something about Apple's image quality.

00:48:31 ◼   ► And they have this test that comes out.

00:48:35 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:48:36 ◼   ► They run these tests, and then they get a number from one

00:48:39 ◼   ► to 100.

00:48:40 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:48:41 ◼   ► So the Pixel phone--

00:48:43 ◼   ► How good's the picture of your kids?

00:48:45 ◼   ► Oh, it's 86.

00:48:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:46 ◼   ► It's an 86 picture.

00:48:48 ◼   ► How good is this camera?

00:48:49 ◼   ► It's pretty good, but not so good.

00:48:50 ◼   ► It's an 89.

00:48:51 ◼   ► And this, to me, sounds like bullshit.

00:48:56 ◼   ► And I know some people will say, well,

00:48:58 ◼   ► that's because you're a fan of the iPhone,

00:49:00 ◼   ► and you've got an iPhone.

00:49:01 ◼   ► And so if Apple had the higher score,

00:49:04 ◼   ► you'd be bragging about that.

00:49:07 ◼   ► I don't, because I don't understand how you do this.

00:49:10 ◼   ► And it's not like the iPhone is that far behind.

00:49:12 ◼   ► The iPhone 7 is at 86 on their scale.

00:49:15 ◼   ► I don't know if that's for both the iPhone 7 Plus and the 7,

00:49:20 ◼   ► or just the iPhone 7.

00:49:23 ◼   ► There's a couple of Android phones that are at 87 and 88,

00:49:27 ◼   ► including the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, which

00:49:29 ◼   ► I've heard is is a and I've seen examples from is probably the one camera that if anything's better than the iPhone

00:49:36 ◼   ► It's the galaxy s7

00:49:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think the s7 is probably the best camera out there other than the iPhone

00:49:43 ◼   ► You know of shipping phones or whatever whatever you want to call

00:49:46 ◼   ► I saw I mean I find this scale to be a little bit weird because there's like the moto z force droid is rated higher than

00:49:54 ◼   ► the iPhone 7 as is the Xperia z5

00:49:58 ◼   ► The galaxy galaxy s6 edge, which is a generation old

00:50:02 ◼   ► The HTC 10, I mean that's the problem with numerical scales right is that they they don't make any sense across generations

00:50:10 ◼   ► They don't make any sense, you know out of model year and frankly they just don't making any really damn sense at all

00:50:17 ◼   ► I'm not a fan of numeric scales. I never assign them to reviews not each fan. I think it's enormously reductive

00:50:23 ◼   ► And I think you know you could give somebody even if you want to give them the cheat sheet, you know

00:50:27 ◼   ► You give them a simple one-line kind of explanation

00:50:30 ◼   ► of why something is good or bad or kind of where it rates

00:50:33 ◼   ► in the grand scheme of things.

00:50:34 ◼   ► And you're doing people a much better favor

00:50:36 ◼   ► than a number, which is marketing.

00:50:38 ◼   ► It's not actually anything.

00:50:41 ◼   ► It even goes so far.

00:50:44 ◼   ► I think everybody has-- even at a consumer level,

00:50:46 ◼   ► people have gotten away from counting megapixels.

00:50:50 ◼   ► And for years, people who knew would say megapixels,

00:50:55 ◼   ► they are important.

00:50:56 ◼   ► And they certainly were pretty important in the early days

00:50:58 ◼   ► of digital photography, where if you only

00:51:01 ◼   ► had like a two megapixel phone, you really couldn't--

00:51:04 ◼   ► there's a limit to how far you could--

00:51:06 ◼   ► even if it was perfectly exposed,

00:51:07 ◼   ► there's a limit to how far you could blow it up,

00:51:09 ◼   ► because the pixels just weren't there to make a poster-sized

00:51:12 ◼   ► print.

00:51:15 ◼   ► We long ago got past that.

00:51:16 ◼   ► And things like, well, how big are the pixels on the sensor?

00:51:19 ◼   ► Not just how many there are, but how big they are,

00:51:21 ◼   ► and that you could--

00:51:22 ◼   ► just simply that a camera with fewer but bigger pixels

00:51:25 ◼   ► could get much better image quality than a camera

00:51:27 ◼   ► with more but smaller pixels to fit it in the same space.

00:51:32 ◼   ► And there's so many other factors.

00:51:33 ◼   ► Photography is so multivariate that the idea

00:51:37 ◼   ► that you could reduce it-- at least with the megapixel

00:51:39 ◼   ► comparison, you really are counting something.

00:51:41 ◼   ► And you can argue whether it makes for a better camera

00:51:43 ◼   ► or not, but you could say, well, 15 megapixels

00:51:46 ◼   ► is more than 12 megapixels.

00:51:48 ◼   ► You can't deny that.

00:51:49 ◼   ► You could argue about whether it actually

00:51:51 ◼   ► makes for a better camera or not,

00:51:52 ◼   ► but at least when you're comparing those numbers,

00:51:54 ◼   ► you're comparing the same thing.

00:51:55 ◼   ► Whereas saying this one gets an 89, I don't know.

00:52:00 ◼   ► It seems like bullshit to me.

00:52:02 ◼   ► And I didn't think Google's heart was in it.

00:52:04 ◼   ► Maybe I'm reading into it.

00:52:05 ◼   ► But when they talked about it on stage in the event,

00:52:08 ◼   ► to me, when they said that--

00:52:09 ◼   ► I forget the guy's name who was talking about the camera.

00:52:12 ◼   ► It just seemed to me like his heart wasn't in it.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Because Google naturally draws people

00:52:17 ◼   ► who want to measure things that are real.

00:52:20 ◼   ► And this, to me, seems like a bullshit censor.

00:52:22 ◼   ► the example photos they showed taken with the pixels

00:52:25 ◼   ► did look very nice to me.

00:52:27 ◼   ► I have no doubt--

00:52:28 ◼   ► well, I don't deny that it might have a very nice camera.

00:52:32 ◼   ► It might be a better camera than the iPhone 7.

00:52:34 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:52:35 ◼   ► But using DXO Mark to prove it, to me, raises some red alerts.

00:52:41 ◼   ► Well, if you go to--

00:52:42 ◼   ► I mean, the megapixels discussion, I think, is apt.

00:52:45 ◼   ► Because you got like--

00:52:47 ◼   ► in the first really affordable, quote, unquote,

00:52:50 ◼   ► commercial digital SLR was the 30D, right?

00:52:54 ◼   ► And around that time was the time, the age of the Mavica.

00:52:57 ◼   ► Most people don't remember it, but it was the digital camera

00:53:00 ◼   ► that you threw a floppy disk into, that Sony made.

00:53:04 ◼   ► And then took pictures onto a floppy disk.

00:53:05 ◼   ► And then they came out with the CD Mavica,

00:53:07 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

00:53:08 ◼   ► But from those days, all the way on through to like,

00:53:11 ◼   ► Canon came out with this, I think it was a G6,

00:53:15 ◼   ► and the previous model, the G5, don't quote me,

00:53:17 ◼   ► don't at me, 'cause I'm sure I'm getting

00:53:19 ◼   ► these model numbers wrong.

00:53:20 ◼   ► It was something like 2008 or 2009,

00:53:24 ◼   ► somewhere around there, or a little bit earlier.

00:53:26 ◼   ► And they came out with this compact G-series camera,

00:53:29 ◼   ► which is compact point and shoot.

00:53:30 ◼   ► And the previous year's model year had been 12 megapixel.

00:53:34 ◼   ► And this model year was a 10 megapixel.

00:53:37 ◼   ► And everybody was going ape, customer-wise.

00:53:40 ◼   ► People would go like, "Why are you, why are you?"

00:53:42 ◼   ► I used to sell, I was selling cameras at the time.

00:53:44 ◼   ► And they were like, "Oh, why do you, why does it go down?"

00:53:48 ◼   ► And you have to sort of explain to them about pixel pitch,

00:53:51 ◼   ► right, and the size of the capture element,

00:53:53 ◼   ► and how a smaller megapixel rating,

00:53:56 ◼   ► you know, anything over eight megapixels

00:53:58 ◼   ► is already gonna give you a great eight by 10

00:54:00 ◼   ► and larger even.

00:54:02 ◼   ► So at that point, it's all a wash,

00:54:04 ◼   ► and for them to get better image quality,

00:54:06 ◼   ► they had to concentrate on the size of the elements,

00:54:09 ◼   ► to reduce the noise,

00:54:10 ◼   ► and to give you a better picture quality, all of that.

00:54:12 ◼   ► And so the numbers race is like a,

00:54:14 ◼   ► it's a, just long done.

00:54:17 ◼   ► I mean, it's done almost 10 years ago now, you know?

00:54:20 ◼   ► And that's the thing that you get into when you

00:54:23 ◼   ► start reading things numerically.

00:54:25 ◼   ► So like this DxOMark has these really wacky phones

00:54:28 ◼   ► rated above the iPhone 7 because the chart crosses model years.

00:54:32 ◼   ► And those cameras have lower pixel pitch and worse quality,

00:54:36 ◼   ► but in fact are rated, quote unquote, "better"

00:54:38 ◼   ► because they were rated on that scale of the older phones.

00:54:42 ◼   ► But then you have, in addition, the thing that bothers me

00:54:46 ◼   ► about DxO. DxO has been around for a lot of years, but in the last couple of years, they've

00:54:51 ◼   ► started marketing an attachment for the iPhone camera that is supposed to make it like DSLR

00:54:58 ◼   ► quality or whatever. It's basically a huge sensor, much bigger sensor that can fit in

00:55:02 ◼   ► your iPhone in an external unit that you plug into the lightning port, right? And it sits

00:55:08 ◼   ► on the side like a tumor and takes better pictures. And I'm sure it takes better. I

00:55:12 ◼   ► I've never tried one.

00:55:14 ◼   ► Our camera guys have tried one and they think it's fine.

00:55:16 ◼   ► But the thing is, is like you go to DxOMark,

00:55:19 ◼   ► you go to this review of the Pixel,

00:55:20 ◼   ► and it's literally the logo of the site,

00:55:23 ◼   ► the charts on the side, on the right hand side of the page,

00:55:26 ◼   ► and the Pixel overview is right there,

00:55:30 ◼   ► and framing the Pixel review of the camera

00:55:35 ◼   ► is an enormous banner for the DxO1 iPhone attachment,

00:55:40 ◼   ► And then down at the bottom, a pop-up banner is,

00:55:42 ◼   ► discover the DX01 Crow-Quality camera, miniaturized,

00:55:47 ◼   ► connected with a picture of an iPhone

00:55:49 ◼   ► and this thing plugged into it, right?

00:55:51 ◼   ► So look, I'm sure these folks are very nice.

00:55:54 ◼   ► I'm sure this David Cardinale is doing

00:55:57 ◼   ► the best work he can do writing this article.

00:56:00 ◼   ► But it does raise questions about how much you can rely

00:56:03 ◼   ► on the rating of a camera company

00:56:07 ◼   ► on another person's camera

00:56:09 ◼   ► when they're actually made for the same device.

00:56:12 ◼   ► Like, oh, what's better, the iPhone's camera

00:56:13 ◼   ► or the one we made for the iPhone?

00:56:15 ◼   ► You know?

00:56:16 ◼   ► And I would look, it's probably fine,

00:56:18 ◼   ► and it's probably like this three point difference

00:56:20 ◼   ► between that and the Pixel probably doesn't have anything

00:56:23 ◼   ► to do with it, it's just I always take stuff coming

00:56:25 ◼   ► from DxO about smartphones with a grain of salt,

00:56:27 ◼   ► as long as they're in the camera business, I always will.

00:56:30 ◼   ► It's just my gut, you know?

00:56:31 ◼   ► - Right, that they've got a motivation

00:56:34 ◼   ► to make iPhone users think maybe the iPhone camera

00:56:36 ◼   ► isn't that great because they're selling

00:56:39 ◼   ► a separate camera that you can add to your iPhone.

00:56:41 ◼   ► Like don't worry, you don't need to replace your iPhone,

00:56:42 ◼   ► you can just buy our camera

00:56:44 ◼   ► that you stick on the lighting port.

00:56:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh your camera is only an 84?

00:56:47 ◼   ► Oh, it's too bad, but we can make it 100.

00:56:49 ◼   ► - Do they give a rating to their DxO mark?

00:56:52 ◼   ► - No, I don't know, I don't know.

00:56:55 ◼   ► That would be good though, I would love to look at that.

00:56:57 ◼   ► Maybe they rate it like a 70 or something,

00:56:59 ◼   ► that would be funny.

00:57:00 ◼   ► But anyhow, the Pixel, like I really,

00:57:04 ◼   ► it's hard to kind of make any value judgments on the camera

00:57:07 ◼   ► until I take a look at it, right?

00:57:08 ◼   ► I don't want to go off the handle and say,

00:57:10 ◼   ► "Oh, it's probably crap," when it maybe is amazing,

00:57:12 ◼   ► and I just haven't seen it yet.

00:57:14 ◼   ► That would be the worst thing.

00:57:15 ◼   ► There are some specifications that do tell some stories about the camera.

00:57:19 ◼   ► It has a larger pixel pitch than the iPhone.

00:57:21 ◼   ► So however they arrange their sensor and size of the sensor,

00:57:25 ◼   ► they manage to map out larger capture elements per pixel,

00:57:29 ◼   ► which does help. It helps with color rendition.

00:57:31 ◼   ► The way that capture elements work is that there's a small,

00:57:34 ◼   ► flat capture element that sits on the back of the sensor,

00:57:38 ◼   ► and then above it there's a sort of well, right? And that well

00:57:41 ◼   ► divides it from the the capture elements next to it,

00:57:46 ◼   ► and the way light shines in, especially from the edges,

00:57:49 ◼   ► can affect how much color information that

00:57:52 ◼   ► that capture element picks up and how it reads as like a red pixel or green or

00:57:56 ◼   ► whatever the case may be. And all of that is predicated on how

00:58:01 ◼   ► large each of those wells are. And so the bigger the pixel pitch, the

00:58:04 ◼   ► The wider those wells are, the better color rendition, the more accurate color, the less

00:58:11 ◼   ► weirdness around the edges of the borders of two colors where they blend into one another

00:58:15 ◼   ► or divide from one another.

00:58:17 ◼   ► All of that is going to be affected by the pixel pitch.

00:58:19 ◼   ► So seeing a larger pixel pitch is already a great sign.

00:58:23 ◼   ► So that's good.

00:58:25 ◼   ► Then on top of that though, you do have, I believe it's a smaller aperture than the

00:58:29 ◼   ► widest aperture on the iPhones.

00:58:31 ◼   ► I think it's a 2.0, whereas the iPhone's a,

00:58:34 ◼   ► think, what's 1.8, is that a half stop or a full stop?

00:58:37 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:58:38 ◼   ► - I think it's a half stop. - Yeah, yeah.

00:58:39 ◼   ► But anyhow, it's brighter, right?

00:58:41 ◼   ► So people are saying, oh, it's brighter,

00:58:43 ◼   ► you know, the iPhone's brighter,

00:58:44 ◼   ► but at the same time, the larger pixel pitch

00:58:46 ◼   ► could offset it and then some,

00:58:48 ◼   ► because it is significantly larger.

00:58:50 ◼   ► So, you know, I'm interested to see what it can do.

00:58:53 ◼   ► I'm curious.

00:58:54 ◼   ► - Right, there's so many variables that go into photography

00:58:57 ◼   ► and that it really is, and it's always been,

00:59:01 ◼   ► It's not just new to digital photography.

00:59:02 ◼   ► It's always been an argument over how much glass

00:59:05 ◼   ► do you want to carry around.

00:59:06 ◼   ► - Right.

00:59:08 ◼   ► - You know, and sensor versus the lens,

00:59:14 ◼   ► and getting more light by doing it on the sensor side

00:59:17 ◼   ► as opposed to doing it on the aperture side.

00:59:20 ◼   ► Effectively, in the bottom line is what is it like

00:59:22 ◼   ► to actually go out and shoot photos with the thing?

00:59:24 ◼   ► And that's what matters.

00:59:25 ◼   ► One difference I've seen is that it doesn't,

00:59:29 ◼   ► unless they're not talking about it,

00:59:30 ◼   ► It doesn't have optical image stabilization.

00:59:34 ◼   ► So I think on stills, that's going

00:59:35 ◼   ► to hurt them a little bit, because it certainly is going

00:59:38 ◼   ► to--

00:59:39 ◼   ► it really does help with stills.

00:59:41 ◼   ► On video, I'm not sure, because it

00:59:43 ◼   ► seems they have a gyroscope-driven digital

00:59:49 ◼   ► stabilization for video.

00:59:51 ◼   ► And they showed an example that was supposedly shot side

00:59:53 ◼   ► by side, where they exaggerated the camera shake of video

00:59:57 ◼   ► while you walk.

00:59:58 ◼   ► and their stabilized version looked pretty good.

01:00:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, there's still the normal

01:00:03 ◼   ► rolling shutter effects, and then you do get

01:00:05 ◼   ► the little blur and low light and stuff,

01:00:07 ◼   ► but it looks like they're digital.

01:00:08 ◼   ► I mean, this is Google's kind of bag.

01:00:11 ◼   ► The digital stabilization I would estimate

01:00:13 ◼   ► would probably be pretty good, so I'm not shocked

01:00:15 ◼   ► to hear that it is pretty good in the video.

01:00:17 ◼   ► But yeah, no optical stabilization.

01:00:19 ◼   ► - I have an app, maybe there's other apps that do it,

01:00:22 ◼   ► but I have an app for the iPhone called Horizon.

01:00:24 ◼   ► I don't know if you've ever heard of it.

01:00:26 ◼   ► It's an app that lets you shoot horizontal video

01:00:29 ◼   ► no matter how you hold your iPhone.

01:00:31 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

01:00:34 ◼   ► - So what they're doing is they're just using

01:00:36 ◼   ► a crop of the sensor to do it.

01:00:38 ◼   ► And so that you can hold, now obviously there is a,

01:00:42 ◼   ► it's not magic, it doesn't shoot the same exact video

01:00:45 ◼   ► that you would get holding it horizontally

01:00:47 ◼   ► when you hold it vertically, it's a crop,

01:00:50 ◼   ► so it's almost like the equivalent

01:00:51 ◼   ► of being zoomed in a little bit.

01:00:55 ◼   ► - Right.

01:00:56 ◼   ► but you get a preview while you shoot.

01:00:58 ◼   ► But they must be doing the same thing,

01:01:00 ◼   ► 'cause it also, the other effect is even

01:01:02 ◼   ► when you use Horizon to shoot,

01:01:04 ◼   ► even if you hold your iPhone horizontally,

01:01:08 ◼   ► you still get stabilization.

01:01:11 ◼   ► - Yes, it's all the digital stabilization systems

01:01:13 ◼   ► are exactly that, they're all based on crop.

01:01:16 ◼   ► And so the most intelligent ones will crop dynamically.

01:01:19 ◼   ► Right, the earliest ones are

01:01:23 ◼   ► the earliest digital stabilization systems

01:01:27 ◼   ► were all based on a fixed crop.

01:01:28 ◼   ► So they would essentially crop in 20% of your resolution

01:01:32 ◼   ► and then use that as a buffer, right?

01:01:34 ◼   ► To try and stabilize your image.

01:01:35 ◼   ► And the more dynamic ones, the newer ones,

01:01:38 ◼   ► like this Google one most likely,

01:01:39 ◼   ► although I haven't read deep on it,

01:01:41 ◼   ► vary that crop by how fast you're moving your phone.

01:01:44 ◼   ► They use the accelerometer data and gyroscope data to say,

01:01:47 ◼   ► hey, you know, you're vibrating, you're, you know,

01:01:50 ◼   ► jigging a lot, so let's go ahead and just crop in a ton

01:01:53 ◼   ► and then, oh, you're more stable now,

01:01:55 ◼   ► you've stopped walking or whatever,

01:01:56 ◼   ► let's go back out and get you as much resolution as we can.

01:01:59 ◼   ► So the more intelligent ones, that's what they do.

01:02:01 ◼   ► And that's the way Apple's digital stabilization works

01:02:03 ◼   ► on the, like the iPhone 6S where it has no optical.

01:02:06 ◼   ► - Right.

01:02:07 ◼   ► I think it's a win for the iPhone 7, though,

01:02:10 ◼   ► and I think it'll be proven out

01:02:11 ◼   ► that on all of the iPhone 7s, plus and regular size,

01:02:15 ◼   ► you get true optical image stabilization,

01:02:17 ◼   ► including for video.

01:02:18 ◼   ► So that's-- - I'll tell you what,

01:02:19 ◼   ► I missed the hell out of it in 2X.

01:02:22 ◼   ► - Oh, yeah.

01:02:23 ◼   ► - It's the worst, yeah.

01:02:24 ◼   ► It's like, yeah.

01:02:26 ◼   ► - It's the one thing I keep telling myself

01:02:28 ◼   ► to console myself that my personal iPhone

01:02:31 ◼   ► doesn't have the 2X camera.

01:02:33 ◼   ► Is that, well, it doesn't have OIS, so who cares?

01:02:36 ◼   ► - Right.

01:02:37 ◼   ► - So what, who cares?

01:02:38 ◼   ► - It is very shaky, I'll tell you.

01:02:39 ◼   ► Especially because it's 2X, right?

01:02:41 ◼   ► You know, so hey, it's the price you pay.

01:02:45 ◼   ► - It's a camera for well-lit situations.

01:02:48 ◼   ► While we're on this subject,

01:02:51 ◼   ► I don't know that there's anybody who knows more

01:02:53 ◼   ► about the depth effect on the iPhone 7 Plus than you.

01:02:57 ◼   ► You had pre-release access to the feature a couple days

01:03:01 ◼   ► before the developer beta came out.

01:03:03 ◼   ► Your explanation of it is as detailed, technically,

01:03:06 ◼   ► as anything I've seen.

01:03:08 ◼   ► More detailed in some regards even than what Apple has seen,

01:03:10 ◼   ► because you've poked at them to get them to tell you

01:03:14 ◼   ► that they wrote their own custom disk blur.

01:03:17 ◼   ► Which is funny, because it came up a couple times.

01:03:19 ◼   ► I keep seeing people say that it's like a Gaussian blur,

01:03:22 ◼   ► which is exactly what you said

01:03:23 ◼   ► in your first version of the report.

01:03:25 ◼   ► - I'm so irritated.

01:03:26 ◼   ► I'm so irritated that it was in my article.

01:03:29 ◼   ► - Right.

01:03:29 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:03:30 ◼   ► Because I think, 'cause I remember talking to you

01:03:32 ◼   ► about it behind the scenes,

01:03:33 ◼   ► and you were somewhat skeptical that it was a Gaussian blur.

01:03:35 ◼   ► You're like, "But that's what they told me."

01:03:36 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:03:38 ◼   ► Right, that's why you're frustrated.

01:03:39 ◼   ► - When you get told that it's Gaussian,

01:03:40 ◼   ► you just say, "Okay."

01:03:42 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:03:42 ◼   ► - But honestly, a reader, and I'm sorry,

01:03:44 ◼   ► I don't have the tweet in front of me,

01:03:46 ◼   ► but he tweeted at me and was like,

01:03:48 ◼   ► "Hey, this picture of a strawberry that you have in your piece,

01:03:51 ◼   ► like, I'm-- the edges of it, the bloom really looks like a disc blur."

01:03:55 ◼   ► And the guy's probably in visual, you know, in visual work somehow.

01:03:59 ◼   ► He's a designer or in visual effects or something.

01:04:01 ◼   ► 'Cause the visual effects supervisors and those people

01:04:03 ◼   ► are writing articles about it now, they all have it nailed.

01:04:06 ◼   ► And, you know, like, they're super sharp about this 'cause they do it all day.

01:04:09 ◼   ► They simulate camera effects for a living, right?

01:04:13 ◼   ► Or many of them do.

01:04:14 ◼   ► But he said, "Hey, this kind of looks like a disc blur. Are you sure?"

01:04:18 ◼   ► And I was like, no, no.

01:04:19 ◼   ► And I was really like, oh, you know.

01:04:21 ◼   ► And he's like, oh, just asking.

01:04:22 ◼   ► And I'm like, no, no.

01:04:23 ◼   ► You know what?

01:04:24 ◼   ► Hey, you know what?

01:04:25 ◼   ► Actually, now that I look at it-- and so I went back.

01:04:27 ◼   ► And yeah, it's a custom disk blur.

01:04:28 ◼   ► So I was really irritated.

01:04:29 ◼   ► I hate getting anything wrong.

01:04:31 ◼   ► So it's just like, it makes me itch.

01:04:32 ◼   ► Here's the thing I've noticed.

01:04:34 ◼   ► And I've had a few brief conversations with people

01:04:36 ◼   ► on Twitter about it.

01:04:38 ◼   ► At least for me personally, while I

01:04:40 ◼   ► was shooting test shots with the iPhone 7 Plus review

01:04:43 ◼   ► unit with the feature on, it looks to me

01:04:46 ◼   ► like they're doing something different with the noise,

01:04:49 ◼   ► that to me, it gives a sort of film-like grain

01:04:54 ◼   ► to the noise on those images.

01:04:58 ◼   ► And I don't see the same thing on the non-portrait shots.

01:05:02 ◼   ► And I don't know if I'm seeing what I wanna see

01:05:04 ◼   ► because I've always been a big fan.

01:05:05 ◼   ► - No, I have seen it too.

01:05:06 ◼   ► I've seen it too.

01:05:07 ◼   ► And honestly, I haven't seen it as much on my shots,

01:05:10 ◼   ► but maybe I just haven't been looking,

01:05:11 ◼   ► but I've seen it a ton on examples,

01:05:13 ◼   ► like things people are showing me

01:05:15 ◼   ► or things that I see on Instagram.

01:05:17 ◼   ► And yes, I have seen it and I don't know.

01:05:20 ◼   ► I have no information about whether they're artificially

01:05:25 ◼   ► under sharpening it, right?

01:05:26 ◼   ► Or sharpening it with a tighter radius.

01:05:29 ◼   ► Excuse me, under noise reducing it is what I meant.

01:05:32 ◼   ► Or sharpening it with a tighter radius.

01:05:33 ◼   ► Because I am not a fan of how aggressively

01:05:38 ◼   ► Apple noise reduces their images.

01:05:40 ◼   ► So I feel that the iPhone's images,

01:05:44 ◼   ► while great, would be better subjectively, right?

01:05:49 ◼   ► This is me talking.

01:05:49 ◼   ► This is not like some grandiose statement

01:05:52 ◼   ► about better or worse for everybody.

01:05:54 ◼   ► But I definitely feel that they would be better

01:05:56 ◼   ► if they were sharpened a little bit less while still

01:06:00 ◼   ► understanding why they do it.

01:06:02 ◼   ► Because most people would just rather not see any grain.

01:06:06 ◼   ► And to me, that's the trade-off.

01:06:08 ◼   ► And I get it.

01:06:08 ◼   ► I just don't like it.

01:06:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I've never been afraid of the grain.

01:06:12 ◼   ► I used to when I shot film would tend to just leave the camera loaded with 400 or even 800

01:06:18 ◼   ► speed film because I always thought like if you're going to leave some film in there,

01:06:23 ◼   ► be ready for any situation. And if it means that I'm an outside and I'm getting a lot

01:06:28 ◼   ► of grain because I could be shooting like it with 100 speed film, so be it because the

01:06:34 ◼   ► colors still look good and I can shoot indoors and get an exposure where I couldn't if I

01:06:40 ◼   ► if I had 100-speed film already loaded in there.

01:06:42 ◼   ► And if there was a slider I could set in iOS

01:06:45 ◼   ► that adjusted noise reduction,

01:06:49 ◼   ► I would probably turn it to the lowest setting

01:06:51 ◼   ► that Apple would allow me to get away with,

01:06:53 ◼   ► knowing that Apple isn't going to say

01:06:55 ◼   ► don't noise reduce at all.

01:06:57 ◼   ► 'Cause that's one of the things people have been noticing

01:06:58 ◼   ► now that you can shoot raw with the iPhone camera

01:07:01 ◼   ► is holy shit how much noise there is on the image

01:07:04 ◼   ► when you shoot raw, and it's just what the camera sees.

01:07:08 ◼   ► Everybody I know who's using Lightroom to shoot RAW on the iPhone 7 is like, "Holy

01:07:14 ◼   ► shit, I can't believe how noisy this is."

01:07:16 ◼   ► I'm sure there's somebody at Apple or on the camera team who are like, "Do you know

01:07:20 ◼   ► how small that sensor is?"

01:07:22 ◼   ► You know what kind of miracles we're pulling?

01:07:25 ◼   ► That's why I always say, I try to be really careful when I'm talking about this noise

01:07:29 ◼   ► and say, for me, I would be okay if they dialed it back.

01:07:33 ◼   ► But they really are performing miracles.

01:07:35 ◼   ► I mean, honestly, the RAW image that comes off of that sensor

01:07:39 ◼   ► is already better than the actual data that they get.

01:07:44 ◼   ► So I mean, I think that you're getting a viewport

01:07:48 ◼   ► with the RAW stuff, and just how good the ISP is.

01:07:54 ◼   ► Yes.

01:07:55 ◼   ► I mean, you could always tweak it.

01:07:56 ◼   ► I talked about this last week.

01:07:58 ◼   ► One of my almost beloved devices-- not just cameras,

01:08:02 ◼   ► but devices I've ever owned was my original Ricoh GRD.

01:08:06 ◼   ► The Ricoh GRs were the point and shoot cameras

01:08:08 ◼   ► that they made for film for years,

01:08:09 ◼   ► and when they first went digital, they called it the GRD.

01:08:12 ◼   ► It was the first generation one.

01:08:13 ◼   ► And it's very confusing,

01:08:14 ◼   ► 'cause then they had the GRD2 and the GRD3, I think,

01:08:17 ◼   ► and then they went back, they went back,

01:08:19 ◼   ► and they just had one, instead of numbering it four,

01:08:21 ◼   ► they just went back to Ricoh GR.

01:08:23 ◼   ► And so it's very confusing.

01:08:24 ◼   ► But I had the original one, I think I bought it in 2006,

01:08:27 ◼   ► and the whole reason I bought it,

01:08:29 ◼   ► I bought it without ever knowing anybody who owned it,

01:08:31 ◼   ► just based on the reviews, and it was gray market,

01:08:33 ◼   ► wasn't officially sold in North America,

01:08:36 ◼   ► was that everybody said that Ricoh's digital sensor

01:08:40 ◼   ► is tuned, the ISP is tuned to turn the,

01:08:43 ◼   ► make the noise look more like film grain.

01:08:46 ◼   ► And everybody who had one on these boards would say so,

01:08:49 ◼   ► and I looked at people's Flickr uploads,

01:08:51 ◼   ► and looked at, Flickr would let you see the original,

01:08:53 ◼   ► so I was like, damned if that doesn't look like film grain,

01:08:56 ◼   ► not digital noise, or at least less, more along those lines.

01:09:00 ◼   ► And the idea was, and Rico was explicit about it,

01:09:03 ◼   ► as opposed to being sort of secretive like Apple

01:09:05 ◼   ► and not really talking about it.

01:09:07 ◼   ► Rico was very explicit and said,

01:09:09 ◼   ► "There's a limit to what we can do with these,"

01:09:12 ◼   ► and it was a very small sensor for a 2006 point and shoot.

01:09:16 ◼   ► There's a limit to how much, there's going to be noise.

01:09:19 ◼   ► And so rather than trying to hide the noise,

01:09:21 ◼   ► our efforts are to make the noise aesthetically pleasing.

01:09:25 ◼   ► And that's exactly what the film industry did

01:09:28 ◼   ► for a hundred years.

01:09:29 ◼   ► The people who are like anti-noise would say,

01:09:31 ◼   ► "Ah, you guys celebrate film.

01:09:35 ◼   ► "You're just, you're romantics."

01:09:38 ◼   ► And you're celebrating something

01:09:42 ◼   ► that was a technical limitation anyway.

01:09:45 ◼   ► But I would argue, in my opinion, sort of as an amateur,

01:09:49 ◼   ► but the reason film grain looked good

01:09:51 ◼   ► wasn't just nostalgia.

01:09:52 ◼   ► It was because Kodak and Fuji and the other film companies

01:09:56 ◼   ► spent 100 years making the noise look better.

01:10:00 ◼   ► I call it noise now, but that it wasn't like,

01:10:05 ◼   ► it's not just because it was old

01:10:07 ◼   ► that we thought film grain looked good,

01:10:08 ◼   ► it was that they, decades of work

01:10:10 ◼   ► went into making it look good.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Anyway, I see it in the seven plus portrait shots,

01:10:15 ◼   ► and I don't know if it's my imagination or not.

01:10:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I do know, I do know that they,

01:10:23 ◼   ► you know, the work that was done to tune the ISP

01:10:28 ◼   ► was definitely done with an eye to what had come in the past,

01:10:31 ◼   ► but not just photographs, you know,

01:10:32 ◼   ► other works of art too.

01:10:34 ◼   ► I mean, remember, they're creating this custom from scratch

01:10:37 ◼   ► and Apple's never one to kind of go with the accepted wisdom

01:10:40 ◼   ► around something like that.

01:10:41 ◼   ► So they have an opportunity to sort of tune the ISP

01:10:45 ◼   ► to however they want it.

01:10:46 ◼   ► And now that the camera, honestly,

01:10:49 ◼   ► what else is a defining, you know,

01:10:52 ◼   ► definitive deciding factor between phones.

01:10:56 ◼   ► Most of the time it's the camera these days.

01:10:59 ◼   ► And you could argue that AI or the assistant features

01:11:02 ◼   ► may be what they're seeking for to be next.

01:11:05 ◼   ► But right now, if you're deciding between three cameras

01:11:08 ◼   ► or three phones on the shelf,

01:11:10 ◼   ► you kinda wanna know which one has the best camera,

01:11:12 ◼   ► 'cause that's your camera too.

01:11:13 ◼   ► It's a huge factor when they decide on picking stuff.

01:11:17 ◼   ► So now that they have an opportunity

01:11:19 ◼   ► to really have an amazing camera that has optical zoom,

01:11:24 ◼   ► that has all of these additional features

01:11:26 ◼   ► that could be unlocked in the future by having two lenses,

01:11:30 ◼   ► and they're able to tune the ISP how they want,

01:11:32 ◼   ► they can pick and choose and really create a look

01:11:36 ◼   ► that is new, you know?

01:11:38 ◼   ► And it may have some elements of film,

01:11:41 ◼   ► it may have some elements of what we consider to be

01:11:45 ◼   ► like, you know, characteristic of digital images,

01:11:49 ◼   ► which would be maybe a little bit crisper,

01:11:52 ◼   ► maybe a little bit lower noise or whatever,

01:11:54 ◼   ► but you could definitely kind of see them

01:11:56 ◼   ► combining the two qualities.

01:11:58 ◼   ► - I've been thinking, one thing that's occurred to me

01:12:00 ◼   ► as more and more people are shooting with this,

01:12:03 ◼   ► you still have to have a beta,

01:12:04 ◼   ► so it's still pretty uncommon.

01:12:05 ◼   ► You have to, A, have to have this iPhone 7 Plus,

01:12:07 ◼   ► and B, you have to be willing to install the beta,

01:12:09 ◼   ► but I've seen enough examples.

01:12:10 ◼   ► It occurs to me, this thought had occurred to me,

01:12:13 ◼   ► but now the more I think about it,

01:12:14 ◼   ► the more I think it's gonna be a big deal,

01:12:16 ◼   ► is that the number of people who see your photos

01:12:20 ◼   ► on their own phones, they're seeing them

01:12:23 ◼   ► on Instagram on their phone, or on Facebook,

01:12:25 ◼   ► or on Twitter, or something like that,

01:12:26 ◼   ► they're seeing them in such a small size

01:12:28 ◼   ► that the smaller the size you view the image at,

01:12:31 ◼   ► more like a real bokeh from a real large sensor camera,

01:12:36 ◼   ► the effect looks like.

01:12:38 ◼   ► You have to zoom in more, you have to make it really big

01:12:42 ◼   ► to see the deficiencies of the trickery.

01:12:46 ◼   ► So when you see somebody who has an iPhone 7 Plus

01:12:48 ◼   ► using this feature just in their Instagram feed,

01:12:51 ◼   ► that's more compelling than looking at it

01:12:57 ◼   ► blown up to a full size on your iMac.

01:12:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, and comparing it, like a lot of,

01:13:00 ◼   ► obviously, and this is not a dig,

01:13:02 ◼   ► it's sort of what people want to see,

01:13:04 ◼   ► but comparing it against, even in my piece,

01:13:07 ◼   ► like I had to, I really had to compare it

01:13:10 ◼   ► against the same shot, which it does shoot automatically,

01:13:13 ◼   ► the same shot without the effect, you know?

01:13:15 ◼   ► Because that's what we want to see, right?

01:13:18 ◼   ► Oh, what did it look like before?

01:13:19 ◼   ► What does it look like after?

01:13:20 ◼   ► But I honestly think that does it a disservice

01:13:22 ◼   ► because I think then it allows you to go through

01:13:24 ◼   ► and be really picky about,

01:13:26 ◼   ► oh, this particular thing is wrong,

01:13:28 ◼   ► or I missed this, or whatever.

01:13:30 ◼   ► But if you just look at it in isolation,

01:13:32 ◼   ► they're really pretty good.

01:13:33 ◼   ► I mean, there's some that are really funky

01:13:35 ◼   ► and weird and dumb and silly and it screws up,

01:13:38 ◼   ► but it is very early,

01:13:40 ◼   ► and there are some shots out of it that are just great.

01:13:43 ◼   ► And you don't have to use them.

01:13:44 ◼   ► If it turns out weird, you got the other one,

01:13:46 ◼   ► which would have been what it would look like normally.

01:13:49 ◼   ► So there's no loss.

01:13:50 ◼   ► - Back to the Pixel.

01:13:55 ◼   ► And I don't think, I think a digression

01:13:59 ◼   ► about the iPhone camera is fine,

01:14:01 ◼   ► because one of the, and a big picture,

01:14:03 ◼   ► I think it's not just what the pixels look like

01:14:07 ◼   ► before you even turn them on and saying,

01:14:09 ◼   ► look, this industrial design is just

01:14:13 ◼   ► blatantly following Apple's lead.

01:14:15 ◼   ► Everything about the pixels to me is saying,

01:14:19 ◼   ► we're making an iPhone caliber,

01:14:21 ◼   ► if we're going after the iPhone market.

01:14:23 ◼   ► They've made a switching tool that,

01:14:26 ◼   ► I don't even know how it works.

01:14:27 ◼   ► It's fascinating to me.

01:14:28 ◼   ► I can't wait to see this.

01:14:30 ◼   ► They have a cable they ship it with

01:14:31 ◼   ► that has lightning on one side,

01:14:33 ◼   ► goes into the pixel on the other,

01:14:34 ◼   ► and takes things like your iMessages

01:14:37 ◼   ► and your text messages from your phone.

01:14:39 ◼   ► I don't understand how something

01:14:41 ◼   ► with a lightning cable is reading that.

01:14:42 ◼   ► I guess it's pretending to be like iTunes or something?

01:14:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, yeah.

01:14:47 ◼   ► - You'll have to give it permission on your iPhone,

01:14:49 ◼   ► the way that the iPhone-- - You'll have to tell it

01:14:50 ◼   ► to trust it, yeah. - Right, trust this thing,

01:14:52 ◼   ► and it'll take it over, and I guess it'll put your

01:14:55 ◼   ► iMessage and text message history into Allo, I guess,

01:15:01 ◼   ► or maybe their Messages app.

01:15:03 ◼   ► I don't know which app they're gonna put that history into.

01:15:06 ◼   ► But that's a big deal.

01:15:07 ◼   ► They really, I mean, whether it's gonna work or not,

01:15:10 ◼   ► They seem to seriously be saying, look,

01:15:13 ◼   ► we know there's a lot of people using iPhones who are also

01:15:15 ◼   ► using heavily into Google services, including,

01:15:18 ◼   ► I'm sure, thousands of people who work at Google.

01:15:21 ◼   ► And they're doing the best effort

01:15:24 ◼   ► they can to say, we want to make it possible for you to switch.

01:15:29 ◼   ► And there's a couple of things.

01:15:31 ◼   ► They're all on the TechSpec page, in a way, that to me,

01:15:35 ◼   ► these are a couple of things where they're obviously

01:15:38 ◼   ► ahead of Apple.

01:15:39 ◼   ► And you have to say, Apple, I think that they really

01:15:44 ◼   ► need to catch up.

01:15:45 ◼   ► Here's one of them.

01:15:46 ◼   ► Unlimited storage for photos and videos at full resolution.

01:15:52 ◼   ► So if you buy a Pixel, your Google Photos account will--

01:15:55 ◼   ► and here's what I'm curious about, though.

01:15:57 ◼   ► Is it only for photos you've shot on the Pixel?

01:16:00 ◼   ► Or can you shoot 4K video on another camera,

01:16:02 ◼   ► and because you own a Pixel, you can upload it all

01:16:05 ◼   ► to your Google account?

01:16:08 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:16:09 ◼   ► But even if it is only for the photos you shoot on the Pixel,

01:16:12 ◼   ► that is a hell of a thing.

01:16:14 ◼   ► Apple gives you five gigabytes of storage for free,

01:16:17 ◼   ► and that includes everything-- your backups, your documents,

01:16:22 ◼   ► and your photos.

01:16:24 ◼   ► And Google is saying for photos, unlimited at full resolution.

01:16:29 ◼   ► That is a huge difference, because real people run up

01:16:33 ◼   ► against that five gigabyte limit if they shoot photos

01:16:35 ◼   ► with any regularity, let alone if they

01:16:37 ◼   ► to shoot 1080p or 4K video.

01:16:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that thing is, that 5GB limit

01:16:43 ◼   ► has been around forever, you know?

01:16:45 ◼   ► I mean, I think that it's, if it,

01:16:48 ◼   ► I'm not sure this will, because I don't know if people,

01:16:53 ◼   ► I don't know if this is a big enough factor

01:16:55 ◼   ► in people not buying an iPhone,

01:16:57 ◼   ► but if it does, for lack of a better word, shame it,

01:17:04 ◼   ► shame Apple into giving us unlimited storage for free,

01:17:07 ◼   ► or at least some enormous amount,

01:17:10 ◼   ► some finite but enormous amount for free, I would love that.

01:17:14 ◼   ► That would thank Google for that.

01:17:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, and even if Apple wanted to segregate

01:17:21 ◼   ► photo storage from other storage,

01:17:23 ◼   ► instead of just saying you've got one bucket

01:17:25 ◼   ► where everything goes into,

01:17:26 ◼   ► but I think they should up both.

01:17:28 ◼   ► I think five gigabytes is not enough, especially,

01:17:31 ◼   ► I really think the more I think about it,

01:17:32 ◼   ► now that the minimum phone size

01:17:33 ◼   ► 32 gigabytes. How can the storage be five gigabytes?

01:17:36 ◼   ► Oh, it's impossible. It's ridiculous. Like you go to backup and then like my wife and I have different we have separate iCloud accounts

01:17:42 ◼   ► So we use the same iTunes account. So she gets all my purchases, but she has her own iCloud account. So all of her

01:17:49 ◼   ► Photos and all that stuff synced to her phone, but I don't get them all in my photo stream, right?

01:17:54 ◼   ► Not because we you know, don't we're not gonna care but it's just you know, less messy

01:17:59 ◼   ► I mean, I got like 1500 screenshots in my camera roll. She didn't want to see all that junk, you know, and these pictures of events

01:18:06 ◼   ► She doesn't need she didn't even know what I do for a living. So she's okay, but the that whole like

01:18:11 ◼   ► All she has a five gigabytes and now I have to pay to upgrade her when I've already paid to upgrade myself

01:18:18 ◼   ► because I have three phones and she's got her phone and my daughter's iPad and her iPad and you know,

01:18:26 ◼   ► Etc. And the it's full instantly instantly, you know, so just to ensure that she doesn't lose

01:18:32 ◼   ► Stuff she's got a backup to iCloud or up her iCloud storage because there's I mean she didn't even have a computer

01:18:40 ◼   ► Like we are truly a post computer household aside from me

01:18:43 ◼   ► Which has to sort of is like tied to my desktops because I choose to be right

01:18:49 ◼   ► I mean, I could probably do my job from my iPhone. Don't tell my boss, but you know that the

01:18:56 ◼   ► So big screens do help, especially on busy news days or when I'm managing a huge team

01:19:00 ◼   ► across multiple continents. But my wife doesn't do that. And her work, they don't even let

01:19:05 ◼   ► her bring computers into the OR, so she doesn't care. And so for her, her computer is her

01:19:10 ◼   ► phone and is her iPad, and she doesn't have anything to plug it into to back it up. If

01:19:15 ◼   ► I didn't have this desktop, there would be no option to do that. And I don't even want

01:19:20 ◼   ► her to do that, right? Because I erase and install betas into all kinds of weird stuff

01:19:25 ◼   ► on my machine and my machine's encrypted and all kinds of junk. So, you know, this,

01:19:30 ◼   ► maybe I'm not home and she can't get on it or whatever. So for her, iCloud is her computer,

01:19:36 ◼   ► right? That is her storage. That is everything. That's all of the storage in the world that she

01:19:40 ◼   ► has aside from what's local on her phone. And it's just really crippling and silly for it to be so

01:19:45 ◼   ► small out of the gate.

01:19:46 ◼   ► Like it should guarantee that you should be able

01:19:49 ◼   ► to back up a full iPhone out of the box.

01:19:54 ◼   ► Anything else is just kind of silly.

01:19:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I, you know, it's,

01:19:58 ◼   ► I'm only saying that Apple has to do this

01:20:01 ◼   ► for people who've purchased devices of, you know,

01:20:05 ◼   ► I don't know where you cut it off, but you know,

01:20:08 ◼   ► I don't think that they should necessarily give free

01:20:11 ◼   ► unlimited storage to anybody who just signs up

01:20:13 ◼   ► for a free iCloud account.

01:20:15 ◼   ► But if you've bought a new device,

01:20:19 ◼   ► especially the iPhones, which start at $649 or $700

01:20:24 ◼   ► or something like that, and it's easy for me,

01:20:27 ◼   ► I always say this, it's easy for me to spend

01:20:29 ◼   ► Tim Cook's money from my armchair here,

01:20:31 ◼   ► but here's existence proof that it's possible.

01:20:33 ◼   ► Here's a phone you can buy for the exact same price

01:20:35 ◼   ► as the iPhone that comes with free unlimited cloud storage

01:20:37 ◼   ► for photos and video.

01:20:39 ◼   ► So to me, the bar is raised and it's way above,

01:20:42 ◼   ► It's not like the five gigabytes versus 10 gigabytes.

01:20:46 ◼   ► It's five gigabytes, which is not enough, versus unlimited.

01:20:50 ◼   ► Pure and simple that Apple needs to catch up.

01:20:52 ◼   ► The other one, it's right here,

01:20:54 ◼   ► is that they do fast charging.

01:20:56 ◼   ► They call it seven hours.

01:20:57 ◼   ► I'm sure seven hours of what,

01:20:59 ◼   ► but they say you can get seven hours of battery life

01:21:02 ◼   ► in just 15 minutes with the Pixel.

01:21:04 ◼   ► Now, I thought, here's what my guess was.

01:21:07 ◼   ► My guess was they've included

01:21:09 ◼   ► a more expensive high watt adapter.

01:21:13 ◼   ► And I'm looking at the tech spec, and that's exactly it.

01:21:15 ◼   ► It comes with a USB-C 18 watt adapter.

01:21:18 ◼   ► That's the thing that makes the iPhone so slow to charge

01:21:23 ◼   ► is that it comes with a five watt adapter.

01:21:26 ◼   ► It's, if you plug an iPhone,

01:21:28 ◼   ► I think it's true for the regular 7,

01:21:30 ◼   ► but I know it's true for the 7 Plus.

01:21:32 ◼   ► If you plug it into the expensive iPad Pro 12 watt adapter,

01:21:37 ◼   ► It charges way faster.

01:21:39 ◼   ► And Apple sells, I forget how many watts it is,

01:21:41 ◼   ► but they sell like a 50 or $60 standalone adapter

01:21:46 ◼   ► that'll charge it even faster than that.

01:21:48 ◼   ► So it's not like iPhones can't do fast charging.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Nobody just knows about it because they ship

01:21:53 ◼   ► with these measly little five watt adapters that charge it.

01:21:56 ◼   ► - Well, sort of, right?

01:21:58 ◼   ► Like yeah, it will charge faster, absolutely.

01:22:00 ◼   ► You could charge it with an iPad adapter

01:22:01 ◼   ► and it'll charge, I don't know,

01:22:03 ◼   ► let's call it 2X faster or whatever, right?

01:22:06 ◼   ► But the quick charging that's like 15 minutes

01:22:09 ◼   ► for seven hours or whatever,

01:22:11 ◼   ► I mean that's like 4X or 5X the normal charging rate

01:22:14 ◼   ► of a phone.

01:22:15 ◼   ► And generally speaking, that has to be enabled

01:22:18 ◼   ► by quick charging circuitry.

01:22:21 ◼   ► So quick charging circuitry, and then a controller,

01:22:24 ◼   ► which controls that obviously the rate and the voltage

01:22:27 ◼   ► and all of that stuff coming into the battery.

01:22:28 ◼   ► Like Qualcomm makes a quick charge system, right?

01:22:31 ◼   ► So if you're using Snapdragons in your phone,

01:22:33 ◼   ► You can get their quick charge plug and play in your device as a manufacturer, I'm saying.

01:22:40 ◼   ► You can grab Qualcomm's chip and put it in there and it will give you faster charging

01:22:45 ◼   ► and all of that.

01:22:46 ◼   ► But I think it's just a… there is a real disconnect between this concept of, "Oh,

01:22:57 ◼   ► "Oh, I'm gonna charge my phone real fast, and I'm also going to ensure that the battery lasts a long time,

01:23:06 ◼   ► you know, and doesn't deteriorate." Because quick charging does damage batteries, right?

01:23:11 ◼   ► The faster you charge the battery, the more strain you put on it, and the more aging cycles you put on that chemistry.

01:23:20 ◼   ► So there are trade-offs, you know, and sometimes they get hot, and sometimes they explode.

01:23:24 ◼   ► So quick charging is good and an interesting technology

01:23:29 ◼   ► that could very well pave the way towards like,

01:23:32 ◼   ► well, if you can charge something in five minutes,

01:23:35 ◼   ► who really cares how long the battery lasts?

01:23:39 ◼   ► - I tend to think that for the price that iPhones cost,

01:23:41 ◼   ► they should ship with at least the 10-watt power adapter,

01:23:44 ◼   ► if not the 12-watt power adapter.

01:23:46 ◼   ► I know it's a bigger adapter too,

01:23:49 ◼   ► but I still feel like it would get you

01:23:52 ◼   ► part of the way there.

01:23:53 ◼   ► I don't know if you've heard about this,

01:23:55 ◼   ► but speaking of power adapters and stuff like that,

01:23:58 ◼   ► Samsung has some problems with the batteries

01:24:02 ◼   ► in their phones.

01:24:04 ◼   ► - I hadn't heard.

01:24:07 ◼   ► - Did you see the story today?

01:24:08 ◼   ► I'm sure you did because you stay on top of everything.

01:24:10 ◼   ► But some guy was on a Southwest flight this morning

01:24:12 ◼   ► and his good Note 7, he even powered it off, he says,

01:24:20 ◼   ► But whatever, it started burning a hole in his pocket,

01:24:24 ◼   ► and so he got it out of a pocket,

01:24:26 ◼   ► and there was smoke coming out of it,

01:24:28 ◼   ► so they evacuated, this is before the plane took off,

01:24:29 ◼   ► the plane's on the ground.

01:24:30 ◼   ► And the flight staff on the southwest was like,

01:24:33 ◼   ► well, everybody, let's get everybody off the plane.

01:24:35 ◼   ► Nobody got hurt, it was calm and orderly,

01:24:37 ◼   ► disembarkation, is that the word?

01:24:41 ◼   ► - Yes. - And then they went in

01:24:43 ◼   ► to take a look, and it burned through the floor

01:24:46 ◼   ► of the plane.

01:24:47 ◼   ► - I hadn't heard that bit.

01:24:49 ◼   ► But the scary part, the really scary part,

01:24:51 ◼   ► is that it was a updated phone

01:24:54 ◼   ► that he just bought on September 21st

01:24:56 ◼   ► and was supposedly had like the marking on the package

01:24:58 ◼   ► that says this is one of the good ones,

01:25:00 ◼   ► not one of the bad ones.

01:25:01 ◼   ► - Right.

01:25:02 ◼   ► - Which makes me think,

01:25:04 ◼   ► I've been wondering for a while with this fiasco,

01:25:07 ◼   ► and people keep writing to me,

01:25:08 ◼   ► 'cause I think people don't follow closely,

01:25:09 ◼   ► if people get on an airplane,

01:25:10 ◼   ► and apparently lately, around the world,

01:25:13 ◼   ► you get on an airplane,

01:25:15 ◼   ► and one of the things they say is,

01:25:16 ◼   ► "If you have a Samsung Galaxy Note 7,

01:25:18 ◼   ► You must power it off now and keep it powered off for the entire flight, which is terrible publicity. I mean just dreadful

01:25:24 ◼   ► It's like the worst possible

01:25:27 ◼   ► advertisement ever I've seen people on Twitter saying that they're telling people out in the

01:25:31 ◼   ► Airport to that they're you know, like, you know when they're like, hey, we're gonna board, you know flight

01:25:35 ◼   ► 677 it's gonna board in about 10 minutes. Oh, and if you have a galaxy note 7 you got to power it off

01:25:41 ◼   ► Please board now if you're gonna go like 7 just throw it in the trash on your way in

01:25:47 ◼   ► I've been wondering for a while

01:25:49 ◼   ► How are they gonna deal with this when there's good ones and bad ones and and you say oh no, no

01:25:53 ◼   ► No, I've got I just got my new one. It's got the green battery icon up in a corner. It's it this one's good

01:26:00 ◼   ► Are they gonna are they gonna believe that or are they gonna be like no way buddy? You're turning it off and now

01:26:05 ◼   ► Gonna believe them. Are you kidding me? We couldn't for a decade

01:26:09 ◼   ► We couldn't use our devices on planes just because they thought maybe

01:26:13 ◼   ► Maybe something might interfere that they had no evidence of so I don't I don't think so

01:26:19 ◼   ► My other thought with this news today that a quote unquote good galaxy note 7 caught fire on a plane

01:26:25 ◼   ► Is that they're gonna wreck this for everybody and they're just gonna say you've got to turn all of your phones

01:26:28 ◼   ► Powered not just sleeping. You've got a power them off before you step on the plane and

01:26:34 ◼   ► Did you know whether they can make you do that or not?

01:26:37 ◼   ► but they could certainly notice if you have it out and you're sitting in your seat and you're dicking around on your phone and

01:26:41 ◼   ► and I don't know what I would do for that

01:26:44 ◼   ► 20 or 30 minutes.

01:26:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, that is, God, that is the worst scenario.

01:26:47 ◼   ► Oh my God.

01:26:48 ◼   ► Now you're giving me nightmares.

01:26:50 ◼   ► Poor Nick Bilton can undo all of his work.

01:26:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, exactly.

01:26:54 ◼   ► Nick Bilton got us to be able to use our flights

01:26:56 ◼   ► while we're landing.

01:26:57 ◼   ► Now I'm worried Samsung's gonna wreck it for everybody.

01:27:00 ◼   ► Well, I know we gotta wrap it up.

01:27:01 ◼   ► I know the baseball game is starting,

01:27:02 ◼   ► but I gotta do a third sponsor

01:27:04 ◼   ► and then we can talk about everyone else

01:27:05 ◼   ► we wanna talk about for the rest of the show.

01:27:07 ◼   ► - Sounds good. - But our third

01:27:08 ◼   ► and final sponsor,

01:27:10 ◼   ► Amazing coincidence given what we'll be talking about

01:27:12 ◼   ► in the next segment of the show.

01:27:15 ◼   ► It really is a coincidence, but it's interesting.

01:27:17 ◼   ► Is Eero, E-E-R-O.

01:27:21 ◼   ► Eero is a modern new WiFi system for your house.

01:27:26 ◼   ► And the basic premise is one WiFi router is not enough.

01:27:32 ◼   ► It's not strong enough signal for most people's houses.

01:27:35 ◼   ► Maybe if you live in a studio apartment

01:27:37 ◼   ► or something like that, sure, you're fine.

01:27:39 ◼   ► But if you have a house that has more than one or two floors,

01:27:43 ◼   ► or it has thick walls, or any sorts of things

01:27:46 ◼   ► that can interfere with the signal,

01:27:47 ◼   ► you might notice that there are parts of your house that

01:27:50 ◼   ► don't get a good Wi-Fi signal.

01:27:52 ◼   ► Eero is designed to change all of this.

01:27:54 ◼   ► They make a single device.

01:27:55 ◼   ► It's a small, elegant box about the size of an Apple TV,

01:27:59 ◼   ► sort of Apple-style round-wreck design.

01:28:01 ◼   ► And you just buy more than one of them.

01:28:02 ◼   ► So I think one of the basic packs

01:28:04 ◼   ► that they recommend for most people based on square footage

01:28:06 ◼   ► is you get a three-pack.

01:28:07 ◼   ► You get three of these things.

01:28:09 ◼   ► You hook one of them up to your cable.

01:28:11 ◼   ► You put the other two strategically around the house.

01:28:14 ◼   ► And your work is done.

01:28:17 ◼   ► The different pods negotiate with each other,

01:28:22 ◼   ► and they just do the work to form a mesh network

01:28:24 ◼   ► that blankets your home in fast, reliable Wi-Fi.

01:28:28 ◼   ► They sent me a three-pack when they started sponsoring

01:28:30 ◼   ► the show.

01:28:31 ◼   ► I set it up.

01:28:32 ◼   ► I set it up thinking, okay, I'll set this up,

01:28:34 ◼   ► and then I'll go back to my Apple, whatever it's called.

01:28:38 ◼   ► And I never went back to my airport because the Eero system was as good or better at every

01:28:48 ◼   ► single spot in my house.

01:28:49 ◼   ► And I didn't, it really was more work to like unbox the devices and plug them in than it

01:28:53 ◼   ► was to set it up.

01:28:55 ◼   ► That's like you unbox it, you plug them in and you're done.

01:28:57 ◼   ► It's unbelievable.

01:28:59 ◼   ► The configuration goes through a really nice iPhone app.

01:29:02 ◼   ► So there's no, you know, command line typing or logging in through a stupid web browser

01:29:07 ◼   ► or at a certain port or something like that.

01:29:09 ◼   ► You just get on the Eero app on your phone.

01:29:12 ◼   ► Could not be easier.

01:29:13 ◼   ► They are protected with state of the art WPA2 encryption.

01:29:16 ◼   ► Of course, Eero's update automatically.

01:29:21 ◼   ► So if there's like a security update or a performance update,

01:29:24 ◼   ► just updates by itself.

01:29:27 ◼   ► It's so great.

01:29:27 ◼   ► They have new features like parental controls,

01:29:30 ◼   ► where you can create profiles for your kids

01:29:32 ◼   ► and you can manage what and when they have internet access to.

01:29:37 ◼   ► Just go check it out.

01:29:39 ◼   ► I cannot tell you everything there is to know about this

01:29:41 ◼   ► in the course of one little sponsorship read.

01:29:44 ◼   ► Just know that they more or less recommend one euro

01:29:46 ◼   ► for every thousand square feet of your home.

01:29:48 ◼   ► They've got more information on the website

01:29:50 ◼   ► where you can figure out how many you want in new.

01:29:51 ◼   ► And here's the most important thing of all,

01:29:53 ◼   ► 30 day money back guarantee.

01:29:55 ◼   ► So buy one, see if it works.

01:29:57 ◼   ► You've got 30 days to just put it back in the box,

01:29:59 ◼   ► send it back to them, no questions asked,

01:30:01 ◼   ► and it'll be done.

01:30:04 ◼   ► Here's what you do to find out more.

01:30:06 ◼   ► You've got to remember this promo code.

01:30:07 ◼   ► It's the talk show, the talk show.

01:30:10 ◼   ► Just go to ero.com, E-E-R-O dot com, and at checkout,

01:30:15 ◼   ► you select overnight shipping.

01:30:16 ◼   ► And that code, the talk show, gets you overnight shipping.

01:30:19 ◼   ► So depending on what time of day you're listening to me

01:30:21 ◼   ► tell you this, you could have it by tomorrow for free,

01:30:25 ◼   ► shipping-wise.

01:30:26 ◼   ► So go check them out, ero.com.

01:30:28 ◼   ► So I say coincidental, because one of the products Google

01:30:33 ◼   ► announced at their event was called Google Wi-Fi, which

01:30:37 ◼   ► is a thing that sounds like it works a lot like Eero,

01:30:41 ◼   ► where you can buy more than one of these things.

01:30:43 ◼   ► You spread them around your house, and it gives you Wi-Fi,

01:30:47 ◼   ► and it does all the negotiation for you.

01:30:49 ◼   ► Right.

01:30:50 ◼   ► And as I watched that part of the presentation--

01:30:55 ◼   ► I've been thinking it ever since Eero sponsored the show,

01:30:58 ◼   ► but watching Google say it is I began thinking,

01:31:00 ◼   ► You know, it has been, I don't remember the last time

01:31:03 ◼   ► Apple has said a damn word about airport,

01:31:06 ◼   ► and airport seems like it's outdated.

01:31:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:31:12 ◼   ► I mean, I did the same thing.

01:31:14 ◼   ► I bought a pack of Eros, or Eero?

01:31:17 ◼   ► Eero, is it singular?

01:31:18 ◼   ► What's the plural?

01:31:19 ◼   ► - I don't know.

01:31:19 ◼   ► I'm gonna call 'em Eros.

01:31:20 ◼   ► - Pack of Eero, okay.

01:31:23 ◼   ► Like, a pack of wild Eero.

01:31:25 ◼   ► A murder of Eros, and I installed them,

01:31:30 ◼   ► I like them a lot. I mean, they generally cover well. They cover areas of my house where

01:31:34 ◼   ► I did not have coverage before. Even like I configured a handful of other extenders

01:31:40 ◼   ► like an Express attached to my extreme and blah, blah, blah, right? And none of those

01:31:47 ◼   ► seem to work as well as the Eero. So you can just extend your Eero spot, I guess, to cover

01:31:52 ◼   ► this conversation. But I like it. I like the concept a lot. And yeah, Apple hasn't done

01:31:57 ◼   ► a whole lot with that. And it does seem like a very Apple-like concept. Oh, just unplug

01:32:01 ◼   ► this in and use an iPhone app and you're done. Right? And like that's, like I could see an

01:32:06 ◼   ► Apple version of that where you take it out of the box and you plug it in and your iPhone

01:32:11 ◼   ► sees it over Bluetooth, you know, LE and says like, "Oh, hey, do you want to set up your

01:32:16 ◼   ► Wi-Fi now?" And you hit yes, like the AirPod connect thing. You know, when you flip, flip

01:32:20 ◼   ► over the AirPod case, it pops up with a little white card. And I could totally see, like

01:32:24 ◼   ► It makes little sense to have an Apple system that works just like that.

01:32:28 ◼   ► But they don't.

01:32:29 ◼   ► And it's still very complex.

01:32:31 ◼   ► And the airport utility is not user-friendly and doesn't work at the time.

01:32:36 ◼   ► It was so much better than what it used to be before, you know, if you were using Cisco

01:32:41 ◼   ► or Netgear or something like that.

01:32:45 ◼   ► But by today's standards, AirPods are a perfect example.

01:32:49 ◼   ► You just open the case and you're not like, it's like, you're not picking like which gigahertz

01:32:53 ◼   ► Bluetooth to use, which one is the least noise.

01:32:56 ◼   ► You're not picking-- like the way

01:32:57 ◼   ► that with airport you're still supposed

01:32:59 ◼   ► to pick between 5 gigahertz and 2.5 gigahertz

01:33:01 ◼   ► and pick a channel.

01:33:05 ◼   ► Why do you have to do any of this?

01:33:06 ◼   ► Why can't the software just figure it out?

01:33:07 ◼   ► And it seems like that's certainly where Eero went.

01:33:09 ◼   ► And that seems like that's the exact description for Google

01:33:14 ◼   ► Wi-Fi.

01:33:16 ◼   ► The thought I had, though, is that right after Google Wi-Fi,

01:33:18 ◼   ► they announced the Google--

01:33:20 ◼   ► what's it called?

01:33:21 ◼   ► The thing that you talked to?

01:33:23 ◼   ► - Google Home?

01:33:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, Google Home.

01:33:25 ◼   ► I don't understand why those are separate products.

01:33:27 ◼   ► Or at least why can't Google Home,