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The reason that we're here doing river restoration is because for 30, 40, 50, 60 years, they've been clearing out the large wood out of the stream for various reasons. When you remove these roughness elements, the river responds by getting further removed from the floodplain. And what we really want is the water out on the floodplain. That gives us the habitat complexity and diversity that juvenile salmon sealhead need. To immediately see that biological response is tremendously rewarding.

So everybody thanks for being a nerd and clicking to watch the extra footage from the hyperlapse video. This is, uh, oh, I'm Ryan Manning. We should say who's here. I'm Ryan Manning. I'm John Logo Marciano. I'm Tom Connors. I'm Jimmy Shelton. Jimmy is the person who was on the glide cam in this video and I'm the one that was on the hyperlapse. So we just wanted to talk about how crazy hyperlapse is. Like the way it's the way that hyperlapse stabilizes is like, so like it knows my gyroscope and my phone knows where my hand is right now. And then it's like, oh, see, you're kind of janky and rid and choppy when you're moving around. I'm just going to make that smooth for you. Cause I know where your hand should have moved to be smooth as opposed to like warp stabilizer or any other image stabilizer stabilizer that like looks at the planes in the image and sort of tries to figure it out after the fact. It's pretty crazy. It's only, it only is a exists for like the phone right now. Yeah. You can see what right there. I like to point out that that shot is like really hard to do really hard. Yeah. So Jimmy, this is, this is a glide cam and Jimmy on the glide cam and then it was warp stabilized and you could see it sort of like pulsing there. And that's something you would never get when you're using. Yeah that's something you would never get when you're using like a hyperlapse because you don't have to actually, yeah. Like when you use warp stabilizer, it can be tricked if something. So I think what it was doing in that shot was actually latching onto Sam's body instead of the scene, which messes up a background. Yeah. And that happens all the time with warp stabilizer. Where I like what we're looking at here. That's Ryan by the way, in the, in the blue. Yeah. That's me guys. Um, so you can see like even this isn't low light at all in this shot and like you can still sort of see the weird blurry things from when I. It's still like more passable than what warp stabilizer will do to some shots. Yeah. Which is like, I would see warp stabilizers are kind of messing up in this shot. But yeah, so I'm just trying to show you like what my hands did and then the shot that came from it. So that's how I moved. So like when you use hyperlapse, you still have to look like an idiot and have like a weird face. Like it's not, it's not like you can just casually shoot, but you have to sort of still get into it. But like the results are pretty crazy when you do get into it and act. You still try to be as stable as you can. Did you guys film this shot with the C100 on the glide cam? No. Because I'm pretty sure it would fail really hard with all that detail happening. Like there are. Yeah, there's no way. There are like lines to track onto, but I'm pretty sure the feet moving, which completely destroy that shot. And having to run up the stairs and then land. Yeah. It's a hard shot to hit anyway. So like, yeah, the fact that like warp stabilizer could work in the dark, it doesn't need something to look at to track onto. All it needs is like the like motion from your, the gyroscope, which is crazy. But like you were saying the other day, when it's in the dark, it also has to use a really wide shutter or a slow shutter rather. And what happens then is when it does stabilize, you get motion blur that gets stabilized. And so it's like kind of the telltale when you see some blurriness happen and the frame doesn't move. Do you have anything like that? Where it's like locked off shot and then it's just blurry? Yeah. Uh, maybe. Cause that's the stuff to me that's like a dead giveaway. Yeah. And like what they're going to have to. It's so insane. It's insane. The only thing that like that ruins this for me is that it's so deep. If there was somehow to make this somewhat shallow, like you can do on like a C300 or C100. Oh, well that's the thing. The only reason this is a problem is because like the phone's camera isn't that great. Yeah. You put this, you put this kind of stabilization technology into any like C100 or larger camera and you're going to get the same results, but a better camera. I know. And it's going to put me out of a job. This is crazy. This shot when I saw this, I was like, holy shit. This technology is crazy. So like I was shaking so much on this shot before it was like shaky as heck. Yeah, I mean these kind of shots, you could do these classic like. You look like a creep. Yeah. I don't know if I've seen this shot. I don't think this was in the video. Oh my God. Are you kidding me? That's great. That's great. That's insane. Oh yeah. This is weird too. Like if you shoot in a car or something, it's actually, it's stabilizing to like the earth and not necessarily like the taxi you're in. So like the taxi jump like. Whoa. Jump around. That's great. The street stays stable. So like that's a crazy effect. You can do some, there's, because it's like a new kind of stabilization, there are lots of like weird quirks that we could, people could figure out. Do you have any of the videos that you shot, the Havana? Oh no. Yeah. If you like, if you lock onto somebody's face, like get really close to them and focus on their face and then just like, just zoom in and out really fast, like with your arms, just like pushing it out. It looks really weird. It's a, it's a weird thing. I mean, maybe I'll put it in. How's this going to go? I'll throw it in after this. Oh yeah. This is crazy. So like I was running full speed here. This is like the shaky version. I was going full speed, one handed. We don't have an alternate angle of how it was running, but I was running full speed on this and I think this is where you actually. Oh my God. I mean, it's not great. You see it breaking down. But there are moments where it's like passable. Right there is a moment that's passable. Yeah. There's like a. I'm not sure if I would still use it. I wouldn't use it. In one of our videos, but like. Sure. But like. I mean, I'm a kid riding like a motorized unit. Okay. So here's like. Well, if this is your kid riding a motorized unicycle, I'd question your parenting. Yeah. I mean, this is markedly better. Oh yeah. Yeah. I think once you get to like high speeds and very shaky, you can't really use it. Especially when you go to like one hand and you have to run the like tilting of your hand affects it so much more dramatically than a glidecam would. Tom, was this you doing this? No, this is me. No, this is me. This is great. Um, but yeah, then, then like, like kind of, it was kind of shaky. I put warp stabilizer and it fixed it. So like this. Even like warp stabilizer gives it like this kind of surreal bend to the image, which I don't think hyperlapse is even doing like hyperlapse. It does at times, but it's more like a sharp, like you'll notice that it feels like a sharp twitch rather than like the bending. Yeah. Like that might also have to do with that winning smile. Yeah. This is crazy too. Like I'm. Anyway, listen to this. Go try this. It's wild. Just run really fast with it pointing at your face. Wow. That's the main thing in my mind. I still don't know what it's doing because like my mind is so used to it having to track onto the image. So I don't even know why it's doing it that way. It's it just knows where it is. Like imagine it re imagine the phone moving like shitty. This is actually, you can see why like hyperlapse will never like solve all the problems. And this one, because like, there's some weirdness on the fence here. Watch when I, Tom asked me to like jump up and down. It's a little bit, but it's now that's weird. It's weird, but it's an effect I haven't seen before, which I think is really interesting about this. Um, but like, Jimmy, just imagine like you see all these banks and stuff. Just imagine that your phone knows how you, how you moved through the space, but then it goes back through it and sort of adds like, does the opposite move. Right. Like, um, have you ever in illustrator drawn like a crappy janky line and then there's like the thing that says like, smooth it all out. Like it just smooths out your hand in space. Like imagine it going back through the exact same shot, but smoothing out all of the points, which is actually like a much easier thing to process than going through and analyzing the footage. Yeah. The speed, which is also amazing to me because of how long it takes to stabilize footage in premiere to how quick hyperlapse is able to do it. I look, cause it doesn't have to do image processing. It's just doing spatial taking the data that already exists. We should look this up before we did this, but, uh, we've heard about a thing that goes into a little dongle that goes into like the hot shoe on a professional camera that would collect the same kind of data and then using software could correct, say for like one of our C100s or a 5D or something. So that that's super interesting. Somebody is making a device that is just like a gyroscope that would, I guess, have a third party app that you plug the data into and then your footage, and then it would do the smoothing this way. This is wild. Yeah. This is like this. I was on a bike. I was riding really dangerously. Oh, yeah. But then anyway, that was crazy. I was riding on a bike and shooting and it was really janky. Here's like, I was like, here's like shitty like concert footage and like, you can see my hand is shaking. I was doing like sort of a fake tracking move, like a fake jib move. But it's pretty, it was pretty dark. And you'll see like, there aren't a lot of, even for being this dark, I don't see much of the blurring. You might see it every once in a while on the amp light. You could see like it's sort of blurring, but it's pretty smooth guys. I mean, the unfortunate thing though is that you're still using a phone's camera. So yeah, that is the unfortunate thing. Even though the motion looks great, the exposure just isn't good here. Right. And like, that's going to always be the problem. But like, it's just, it to me is like the hope of this for the future is crazy good. And like Jimmy said, it does feel like my job will get like taken away soon because all of a sudden this computer will take over what we do. What if GoPro had this built in? Yeah, I mean, no joke. We, I had the contact to somebody at GoPro and I was like, why aren't you guys doing this now? Like right now? Because that's been like the biggest problem with GoPro is that it's shaky. And like, how hard would it be to put a gyroscope into the GoPro? Not hard. It would be hard to be to put a gyroscope in any camera. Like this, this technology is like the inevitable future of all cameras. The stabilization the way we used to do it will still be around, but it'll be completely secondary to this kind of stabilization. You can get away with so many more bumps. Yeah, it's great. Basically, well, I guess the other thing though is that you need to be rolling then at a resolution that's much higher than you need to do it. Well, you need to be like, like the future of this is really, really high shutter speed. This is a good example of bad warp stabilizer. Yeah, warp stabilizer fucking up going in and out. Like it's terrible. Warp stabilizer is cool, but this is why warp stabilizer is going to die. Stuff like that. Well, all right. I guess it's over. That was an abrupt ending. But thanks, Rhonda. Yeah, Rhonda. Thank you. Thanks for watching. See you later. See you next.

If you're recording video in 2014, it's more likely than not you're using a phone. You're literally just holding a rectangle up in front of your face. And in that position, you can't help but have a little handshake, especially when you're walking. We're humans. We're shaky. But there's a free app that can take your shaky footage and make it look something like a Terrence Malick film. Like a shot from the tree of life. Professional solutions to this shake problem have come in many forms. Tracks, jibs, cranes, crazy vests, and um... this. But those are all extremely expensive and also are you really going to attach your phone to a stabilization rig? Do you really want to be this guy? No app has made the Verge video team as happy as Hyperlapse. When Instagram released the app earlier this year, the focus was on these really cool time lapses. And don't get me wrong, those are very cool. But it has a second function that's just as interesting. Amazing stabilization that turns this into this. Shaky shot. Fixed. Got the jitters. And they're gone. This into this. Okay wow, this is crazy. If you just set the slider to 1x, it plays back your videos in real time with sounds, but perfectly stabilized. Basically the app captures 1080p video but only outputs a 720p file. Hyperlapse uses data from the phone's gyroscope along with the excess footage from around the frame and, well, math to remove all that extra wiggle. This is opposed to traditional stabilization techniques that analyze frames after the fact without the benefit of knowing how your hand was moving. We even tested it against our best Glidecam operator, Jimmy Shelton. This was shot with $10,000 worth of professional equipment and years of experience. And this? This was just a phone. Okay, here's some tips for the clean shots. Make sure you use focus and exposure lock if you can. This keeps it from flicking through different exposures, a dead giveaway on a phone, and it just looks bad. The effect works best in bright sunlight, as is the case with most photography. If you're too shaky in low light, you begin to see weird blurry throbs. It makes it seem like there's a glitch in the matrix. Actually, that could be kinda cool, in the right setting. And we're really just scratching the surface here. There's an even more advanced version of this technology being developed by Microsoft, for example, that recreates a 3D environment and reconstructs the video using different frames at different times. So now instead of having to use crazy, complex contraptions to get stable shots, we can just use our phones and crazy, complex math.

I'd be afraid to go with the cops. So about 15 seconds out clear. He puts that red wand up in the air at that point. Once again I would press your head against that rear headrest. Thank you. We're going to get about 3.6 in this car. I like it. I like it a lot. Yeah, it's spectacular. It really is. These engineers are wizards, they really are. So we're going into autopilot mode now. So much like cruise control, just going to turn it on. At that point my hands are off the wheel, my foot's off the accelerator, off the brake. The top camera is going to read that 30 mile per hour sign. It's going to adjust the speed while navigating through the lane course. Once again, not touching a thing. The car's driving itself. So that bottom camera is reviewing the lines, top camera is reading signs. It's going to read that 25 mile per hour sign. Once it straightens out, she's going to slow down automatically. I'm going to press the blinker. She's going to initiate a lane change automatically, all by herself. And the Model S now she'll react to traffic conditions. So it's going to sense the car up ahead, start slowing down, and once again, not touching anything. She'll come to a complete stop by herself. It's amazing. That's it. Truly amazing. Put your foot in the brake, disengages it just like cruise control, and you're back to driving yourself. Wow. Really? That's a lot of speed. Really?

Hey, this is Jake with The Verge and this is the Xperia Z3V. This is a new variant of the Xperia Z3 that's been designed for Verizon. There are some small design changes. Most notably you'll see the sides are no longer all metal. It's sort of a soft touch plastic with instead a metal band along each side. It's still a really nice design though. It feels really nice. Same 5.2 inch display. The battery is very slightly larger in this model at 3200 milliamp hours. It's still supposed to last over a day which is one of the defining features of the Z3. The really big change for the Verizon model is that it now supports Qi wireless charging which will make it really easy to charge this thing. Otherwise this is basically the Z3 that you already know and that includes the fact that it's waterproof and that it can stream PS4 games as long as you're in your home. Separately Sony is selling a mount that allows you to attach this phone to a PS4 controller. There's no technology in it. It's literally just a suction cup that you stick it onto. Sony doesn't have anything to say about the Z3 Compact coming to Verizon but for now the Z3 V is going to be available on October 23rd for $199.99 on a two year contract. It will be available in black and white.

Remember what they did with the dinosaur DNA in Jurassic Park? They like found it in a tree, sewed it all up, rebooted the dinosaurs from scratch, and then they had Nylonded dinosaurs that killed everybody. It turns out the basic theory behind that methodology is actually totally sound. It's just a question of whether we can make it work. They didn't really mention this in the movie, but the problem with dinosaurs is that their DNA is really old. You'd never be able to find a good sample. Mammoths on the other hand, people are a little more optimistic about. We've had mammoth fossils for a while, and we've actually got mammoth hair, mammoth protein, we know lots about them. But the DNA samples are pretty broken up from all those years inside of that layer of permafrost. If you look hard enough though, you can get a sense of how they all fit together. It's also pretty convenient that a mammoth's DNA is 99% the same as an African elephant. So we actually have a pretty good roadmap of how to build this thing. We can start with the elephant DNA, and we'll all just plug in the mammoth DNA wherever it looks different. So we've got the DNA, we put the DNA in an elephant egg, put the egg in an elephant, add some sperm, and then there's your mammoth. This sounds crazy, but people get really excited about this idea. Picture somebody who's studied mammoths for their whole life. Like what do they eat, how do they move, how do they smell? Now you're actually standing next to a mammoth. It's got the tusks, the hair, it smells pretty terrible actually, it's real. We brought it back, we're the coolest dudes in the universe. But then your scientist buddy says, wait, that's not actually a mammoth. That, my friend, is a genetically engineered elephant. You just messed with its DNA so it would look like a mammoth. The other problem is that she's lived her whole life in a lab or a zoo, so she can't actually teach you how mammoths behave in the wild. If you want to do an actual de-extinction, yes that's a word, you've got to go for the whole package. You need a real mammoth habitat with a bunch of actual mammoths that are all like having a mammoth party. And then there's genetic diversity so that they can actually breed with each other and create a real mammoth community. It's hard enough to arrange all that for endangered species that are still around today. We just can't do all that for mammoths. But maybe we could do it for other animals that are much easier to take care of. There's a group right now trying to bring back passenger pigeons, building aviaries in state forests where they could live. They want to train them with real homing pigeons and gradually reintroduce them back into the wild. It's kind of a long shot, but with enough time and enough science, they actually have a chance of making it happen. If they do, it'll be the first time in human history that we brought a whole species back from the dead. Then we can focus on the mammoths.

We think a lot about the future. Of course, you don't know what's going to happen in the future. That's why it's the future. So you end up with a lot of questions. Are we going to make it to Mars? Is that really going to happen? Are we all going to be hanging out with mammoths and supercharging our brains? What are we going to eat? How are we going to live? I don't know. I mean, we'll find out together. Whatever happens, big things are coming in the next hundred years.

Portland's biking infrastructure is widely emulated. With 300 miles of bike lanes, the city is carefully laid out for cyclists. But the lack of bike data stands in the way of perfection. So the Oregon Department of Transportation recently collaborated with Strava, a popular biking app, in an attempt to make the city better and safer for cyclists. Going through many meetings through the Oregon Department of Transportation and sitting in meetings, we were having conversations of, well, what is the level of service for bicycles and what is the level of service for pedestrians? We really just don't have any good data for that. It's very hard to plan for a multimodal agency when you lack bike data. So with that problem in mind and going to meetings, I was joining a ride with friends and I realized that everyone was pulling out their cell phones before the ride and using an app. And there's a couple different apps there, but in particular, an app that's popular in Portland is called Strava. Strava is a software company based in San Francisco. We developed mobile apps and a website for cyclists, runners, endurance athletes to track their workouts, have a social experience, get motivated and hopefully help make people enjoy cycling and running more. So all of a sudden I thought to myself, well, where is that data going? All these people are recording their rides. Why can't we use that data? From two points of view, we recognized there was a need here. There was an opportunity to work together with Oregon to try to build that the Strava data set for this purpose. It's really interesting to use Strava data, but I think that I would push ODOT to try to actually look at who's biking and where the demand for bicycling is rather than where the existing people who are kind of tapped into the system already are. I mean, I think ODOT has a lot of resources at its disposal, but it also, it's like the people who work at ODOT are not necessarily going to be attuned to the needs of people who live along Southeast Howell today or who need to cross it every day or who would ride a bike except that that street is impassable. It's like a wall. Bicycles are increasingly visible in Portland. Since 2001, overall bike traffic is up 211%. In recent years, over 300 miles of bike lanes have been laid out across the city to encourage cyclists. Hawthorne Bridge, one of the many bike-friendly bridges in the city, supports an average of 1.7 million bike trips a year. With buying this data, we are unable to control sample bias. There's a certain amount of users that use Strava. They may not be a complete subset of the population. So knowing that, we had to kind of work out those issues internally and both with my peers and colleagues to say we recognize that the sample size may not be perfect, but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. This is a lot of good data. I think there's a bike movement happening around the country and even around the world. It takes on a bunch of different forms, but there is a rising tide right now for bicycle transportation to become a real normal part of daily life in a lot of communities. And one thing that I've been seeing happen is that Portland is a model of that, and I wish that we would do it better because I see other people copying this model and achieving the same benefits as we have, but also making the same mistakes as we have. And one of the mistakes that we've made in Portland is we've really left out large parts of the population. Unfortunately, that's often correlated to class and race. So let's take that debate, let's hear the both sides of that debate right now. So the people who are on the side of Strava data is not representative are guessing that we have mostly elite cyclists who tend to go out for pleasure rides or go out for training rides, not commuters inside Strava. That's a myth, first of all. So when we look at the data in metro regions, about 50 percent of the activities that are uploaded to Strava are commutes. So Strava is being used by commuters. There's another argument because we charge for our service, it's not affordable by people with less economic means. And that again is a myth. Our service is free. You can upgrade to premium if you choose to, but it's not required to participate in Strava. You can be on free as long as you like. I think that big data is really something that public agencies need to embrace, and it's new to all of us because again we can't control the data set, but big data or app data is the future. There's so many people using apps, there's so many people using phones, so we have to continue to be innovative and think outside of the box and reach out to all of these app companies and start forming these partnerships. We both can benefit from learning from each other and sharing the data if we figure out the right partnerships and the right agreements to move forward and build better cities and better places to travel.

Unicycles have long been the go-to vehicle for clowns, thrill seekers, and that weird kid from my dorm freshman year of college. And today, none of that changes. So this is the SVU, the self-balancing unicycle, by a company called Focus Designs. It is an electric unicycle that has an accelerometer in it, very similar to how a Segway works. It's a pretty nice design, it's got two pegs for your feet that just sort of fold out. It's got the power button, and it has a lock here so you can lock it and when you turn on the power button it won't turn on. And it's got its charging port. The seat is replaceable, which is nice, and the seat that the SVU comes with is not at all comfortable. I've been riding this thing for about a week and I am definitely sore. So once you learn how to ride this thing, it's actually really simple. Just put the pegs down, you turn it on, you get on and you just lean, and hold your balance, and yeah, that's basically it. And the more you lean forward, obviously the faster you're going to go. And we're actually going uphill right now. And the way I learned to do it is you just sort of throw your hands around to keep the balance going. And like I said, you just lean forward and you really just take off. It goes 12 and a half miles an hour, and it lasts probably like 6 to 10 miles depending on how many hills you're climbing. The one thing I'll say though is that lots and lots of people just sort of give you a double take. I've had lots of interactions with strangers asking questions about it. So in that aspect, it's pretty cool. It costs $1,800, which is pretty expensive for a toy like this. But if you have $1,800 lying around to spend on something cool, this is definitely something cool to buy. I was just messing with this thing and the seat was off, right? And I turned it on and noticed that when you – that happens. Can't really explain what that is. I think it's the unicycle trying to compensate itself and it gets in an endless feedback loop. And will just go harder and harder each way until it gets off the ground and stops. It weighs 26 pounds, which is extremely heavy for a thing like this. I mean, carrying it up the subway stairs definitely is tiring. Carrying it back up to my apartment is also pretty tiring. It's obviously not as sleek as just something like a skateboard. And it's not nearly as light as a skateboard either. This thing will definitely power you through the city.

There is a rising tide right now for bicycle transportation to become a real normal part of daily life. Straddle is a software company based in San Francisco and we develop mobile apps and a website for cyclists, runners, endurance athletes to track their workouts. We both can benefit from learning from each other and sharing the data if we figure out the right partnerships and the right agreements to move forward and build better cities and better places to travel.

Webcams are pretty much everywhere now. You just don't buy them anymore. They come built into your laptop lid and the front of your phone. But cameras designed solely to stream video are still here and they're adding features you normally find in home security systems. For about $200, you can get one that can record a day or even a week of footage. It doesn't do everything a home security system can, but it's getting close. The best one out there right now is the Dropcam Pro. It's a small camera with a built-in stand that connects over Wi-Fi. For $200, plus about $100 a year, it will record and store a full week of footage in the cloud. You can watch it on your phone or computer and even turn it into a live webcam if you want to transform your living room or just your fish tank into a reality show. But more importantly, Dropcam does the best job of telling you what it's seeing and the most ways to customize your alerts. You can set up zones around your house for it to keep an eye on things like your front door or windows. You can set up alerts to go off only when it sees something in those zones, while ignoring everything else. Dropcam can also use your location, so it only starts recording when you leave your house. If there are any drawbacks, it's that Dropcam's 720p video stream takes its toll on your monthly internet use. Another thing to consider is the price of the service. Using one of these cameras is about half the price of the hardware every year. Now, if you want to save $50 up front and potentially more on the price of storing recordings in the cloud, you should check out ARKSOFT's $150 Simplicam. It does close to everything that Dropcam does, plus facial detection. So beyond telling you if something moved, it can look for eyes, nose, and a mouth. What I like best about the Simplicam is that you can do everything on the app that you can do on the website. There's no difference. That means creating, saving, and sharing clips. The other great thing is that there's a one-day plan that costs $49 a year. Unless you're going on vacation and end up having your house broken into, that's a great amount of space. It isn't as sharp as the Dropcam Pro, and it's not as wide. You're missing out on programmable zones to track and monitor activity, and things like Bluetooth, which Dropcam uses to make setting up easier on your smartphone, isn't there. If these things matter to you, you should spend a little extra on the Dropcam. Now if you don't want to spend anything on the service, there's Belkin's $130 Netcam HD+. Like the Dropcam Pro, it's got an all-glass lens that captures sharp video. The big difference is that you're not going to pay for the recording service, at least for now. The downside? The interface is a little crummy, and the notifications aren't as useful as what you get on these other cameras. One last thing. If you're looking for something a little closer to an actual security system, there's Piper. For $199, you get a 180-degree fisheye lens, an actual motion detector, and a siren for scaring thieves away. It can also control the lights in your house, run for two to three hours on batteries, and will even keep an eye on the temperature. This all sounds great, but I found the mobile software fussy, and right now the only way to check things out is on the app and not on a website. None of these things are as good as keeping an eye on your home as a human or a robot someday, but until then, this is about as good as you're gonna get without buying a full-fledged alarm system. Dropcam does a lot of the same stuff, but cheaper. Right now, there are a million options out there, but Dropcam's the best. can't

Hurricane Sandy wiped out thousands of homes, businesses, and city infrastructure. In the aftermath, the Department of Housing and Development set up a task force to rebuild the city. A Dutch water management expert joined the force and launched a contest called Rebuild by Design to promote innovation and provide resiliency with the hope that the winning designs would make the city less vulnerable in the face of the next disaster. So water management is very complex. Water does exactly what it wants. It goes everywhere. So you can protect, let's say, your own house, but then the water just goes to your neighbors. When I started working in the U.S., the first question I got from a reporter was, okay, Mr. Oving, are you going to save New York by building a storm surge barrier next to the Verrazano Bridge? And that idea was, I think, exactly the problem we all face all over the world. We want simple solutions. We want the silver bullet, which is the wrong approach because there is no silver bullet when it comes to water. If you would embrace water as part of your life, as part of the economy and the culture, you will come up with a multitude of solutions that altogether form a comprehensive plan. The competition invited designers, scientists, engineers, thinkers and leaders to reinvent solutions and safety measures for the New York, New Jersey region. Out of 148 entries, the six winners balanced local needs with aesthetic and functional value. The first thing we said to the teams in their design phase was, stop designing. The first thing you have to do is build a coalition. And don't design for them, but, you know, work with them to get to a design that's inclusive of this community, that also builds in the needs and the understanding and the capacity of the neighborhood and informed by the process your design. One of the most ambitious projects is the Big U, a protective system designed for lower Manhattan which was hit hard by the hurricane. The team proposes to shield the low-lying region from floods and future storms with elevated beams and pavilions with folding doors. The Big U will stretch across 10 continuous miles and provide social and environmental benefits to a high-risk region. So the idea is that the Big U is almost like a chameleon, that it changes character and color every time it encounters a new neighborhood. In the East River Park, it's really like the park terrain races towards the highway, protecting the park from the noise of the highway, but also protecting the city from flooding. Then as you move down and you get under the FDR, the elevated highway, in some places we have placed pavilions with galleries or marketplaces. Inside them they have these sleeves so that they're always open, there's always space between the pavilions, but in the case of a flood, out of these sleeves giant doors can come out and create a continuous flood barrier. Through our dialogue with the local communities, even though the Big U is one continuous effort, it really changes character all the time so you'll never be able to see it as a big piece of infrastructure, rather it's the social infrastructure of that community that really changes its character and its appearance. We owe it to these communities, we owe it to ourselves and our next generations to make a better place. I think in the end if you look at what a city is all about, is a lot of different people from a lot of different cultures, a lot of different nationalities coming together in a restricted space to try to maximize the possibilities for each and every individual to unfold themselves, to express themselves. And what we try to do with the Big U is to really in a way turn this public participation process into something that actually improves the design, something that generates design, something that generates diversity, something that generates surprises. We are in a very intelligent, smart, competitive region. We have the minds here, we have the hearts here, we have the understanding here. We don't have an excuse not to create a better region. There's only one way forward. Thank you. Thank you.

So here I've got a mouse pointer, I'm using the mouse, I click start, I get a start menu, I launch mail, here's a universal outlook, it runs in a window, just as I've been showing you already. Now when I remove the keyboard and mouse, it prompts, should I enter the tablet mode? And when you say yes, the app is maximized, the taskbar adds a back button for switching, and when you touch start with your finger, it switches itself into the large start mode so that it's really easy for you to pick other apps and navigate around and watch them. So here we launched OneNote, OneNote is, it knows that it's in the touch mode, the UI adjusts, I say new page and I can do something like use the pen to ink right in my OneNote. If I want to switch apps, I can go back to start, or I can use the familiar taskbar that I've known for years, and I have a simple, convenient way to do this. When I bring the keyboard and mouse back, I'm prompted again to exit tablet mode, and when I do, the start menu comes back to its small mode where I last left it, and the apps that I ran are still present on the device in their windowed mode because now I'm using it like a laptop. When we've shown this to people, we've shown this to a lot of partners, enterprises, OEMs, people say...

Water management is very complex. Water does exactly what it wants. We want simple solutions. We want the silver bullet, which is the wrong approach. There is no silver bullet. And what we tried to do with the Big U is to really, in a way, turn this public participation process into something that actually improves the design. We have the minds here. We have the hearts here. We have the understanding here. We don't have an excuse. Are you going to save New York?

I probably don't have to convince you to buy a smartphone. You probably know that having your email, your music, your games, your maps, your photos, your documents, your everything all in one device in your pocket is awesome. And if you have a smartphone, you probably use it all the time, which is why you know it's incredibly important to get the right one, maybe more so than with any other device. Getting a phone with the right combination of hardware design, software, apps, camera, ecosystem and battery life is really, really crucial. It's also really easy. Just buy an iPhone 6. No, the iPhone 6 isn't the most exciting phone on earth. There's nothing shocking or incredible or earth shatteringly different about it. It has a 4.7 inch HD display, which actually makes it smaller than a lot of today's flagship phones. The display is gorgeous though, laminated right to the glass and curved ever so slightly so that it feels great to your fingers. Basically, the iPhone 6 is the best phone on the market because it does everything and it does it all well. It has a phenomenal, absolutely best in class 8 megapixel camera and thanks to new slow motion and time lapse video modes, plus a new focusing mechanism, it takes better pictures and video than ever. The battery easily lasts a day, more if you're not staring at Twitter all the time. Touch ID is super useful now, letting you unlock your phone, secure your apps and soon pay for things all by just putting your finger on the home button. The 6 is fast and powerful and as simple to use as iOS always has been. And iOS still has the best app ecosystem with more and better apps and games than absolutely any other platform. The thing about the iPhone 6 is that it just doesn't have problems. It has a big screen, great performance, great battery life, great camera, great apps all in one really nice package. It's not a revolutionary phone, but it is the best phone you can buy. There's a shockingly close second place though and it's the Moto X. The Moto X is definitely the best Android phone out there. Like the iPhone 6, the Moto X has almost no compromises. It has a great screen, a fast processor and a beautiful high-end design. It has a lot to set it apart too, like the super customizable design and really cool voice control and always-on notification features. Its battery life is good but not great though and its camera can still be frustratingly inconsistent. But in every respect the Moto X does its job and it has some really neat extra features too. If you don't want an iPhone or if you want some more color or a lot more Android, you should absolutely get a Moto X. From there, the list of really good phones is really long. The HTC One is a beautiful museum piece of a cell phone with some useful extra software and really good battery life. If only it had a better camera. The LG G3 is a different kind of hardware achievement with almost no bezels and just this big beautiful screen staring at you. Then there's this whole class of huge phones that some people like and some people hate, like the iPhone 6 Plus and the Samsung Galaxy Note series. You might love them and there are lots of good reasons to, but don't buy a huge phone until you've tried it. There's also Samsung's Galaxy S5, which is a very good smartphone but is entirely unexceptional without anything to set it apart, or the Nexus 5, which is the purest Android phone but it's more expensive up front and getting support can be tough. The list of Android phones goes forever and honestly most of them are pretty good. It's really hard to find a bad smartphone these days, but it's worth getting the best ones even if it costs a little more. Windows Phone is getting better and better, but whether it's the Lumia icon or the 1320, what they offer is less important than what they're missing. And seriously, just don't buy a Blackberry. Just don't. If you buy the right smartphone, you'll use it constantly and you'll use it for everything and you'll love it. So make sure you get the right one. And the easiest way to do that is to buy the iPhone 6. It's not perfect, but it's the best thing out there.

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Hey guys, Chris Stigler with The Verge here. I brought this banana with me to the office today, and when I took it out of my pocket, let's say it was a little bent, so I just wanted to try applying pressure here to see if I could bend it more. See what happens. Uh-huh. And look at that, you'll notice the banana's kind of straightened out, and we have some damage along the edge here, so I'm going to repair that, but it's probably not going to be cheap.

Hey guys, this is Neil Iver with The Verge. I'm here with Matt McCray, the CTO of Visio. And we're here with the new P Series, which is a thousand dollar 4K TV. You guys announced it in CES, it's about 10 months later, and here we are. So first of all, what took so long? We wanted to get it right. So we showed our demos at CES, and we're showing a lot of picture processing demos here, and we wanted to make sure that the resolution was right, the motion capture was right, the color was right. So it's really been just fine tuning the details, and not only ship an amazingly priced 4K TV, but one that actually blows away the competition on picture quality. So that's the big question. How did you make a thousand dollar 15 inch 4K TV when everyone else is like two thousand dollars, four thousand dollars? What's the secret here? Well, it wasn't easy. We spent a lot of time doing engineering work specific to our product. So probably the biggest thing we did is we developed our own backlights. So we talked about that at CES, where we do full array local dimming across all our product lines, and by designing them ourselves, we were able to not only raise the picture quality, but actually lower the price. Wait, how does all that work to let you lower the price if you're doing all that engineering work? Because of the component price. So yeah, we spent a lot of engineering time and development effort, but the actual component price and the innovation that we did was to create a full array local dimming, right, where we got LEDs going all the way through the backlight, but actually reduced the component count by 40% at the same time. So there's a lot of integration happening where the glass meets the LEDs, meets the driver boards. We were able to reduce that overall cost through that innovation. And again, the picture quality goes up, but cost goes down. So the big question with 4K is how are you going to get content? And you guys are betting almost exclusively on streaming, right? Yeah, we've decided since our first smart TVs launched six years ago that streaming was going to be one of the primary ways people are going to get any content. And we've streamed billions of hours of video content to our smart TVs now. And 4K is not going to be different. So there will be 4K Blu-ray players in the future. There will be 4K set-top boxes in the future. This has HDMI 2.0 and will support all that. But we do believe that one of the primary ways, and probably the primary way people will get content are going to be from sources like Netflix and Amazon and UltraFlix and some of the partners we've announced today. And we had a demo in the other room and you can see that it's pretty nice. I mean, 10 to 15 megabits per second is gorgeous. And that's what you need, right? Otherwise you get a little too compressed? Yeah, it starts at about 9 point something, almost 10 megabits per second. And then it steps up all the way to 15. And by the time you're at 12 to 15 megabits per second, it is substantially better than 1080p. Really? And do you think it's going to be as good on disc? It'll be a little bit different. You'll see different artifacts. It won't be quite as good as a disc because the bit rate will be so much higher. But it's already showing a massive upgrade against what you're seeing on 1080p. And remember, it's not just going from 7 megabits a second on 1080p to 15 on 4K, a doubling of it. Because we're also using HEVC, which is a much more compressed format, it's a new format for extreme units, you're getting the double of the bandwidth, but you're also getting another doubling of efficiency. So it's actually four times the effective throughput and it looks really good. And you're building your own chips to it? We are. We have the Vizio V6 processor, which is a six core processor we're using to do all this. And we have the VM50, which is our picture processing engine that's doing all of the color, fidelity, the contrast, our pixel mapping and everything that we're doing. And that was the other way that we decided, even though it would take a little bit more time, but to not only beat people on price, but beat them on picture quality, we had to actually bring our own technology to market. So that's the question, once you start talking about processors and cores and that kind of technology and a TV, I get worried about how long until I have to replace it with a faster processor and a faster, better pixel engine and better software. How long do you think this TV is going to last? It'll last a long time. The chips that we can buy off the shelf were dual core. This is six cores. So again, one of our choices was to actually put more horsepower than we need today to make it a platform that can last quite a while. The investment, like you keep mentioning, how do you guys do it, how do you guys do it, there was definitely a very large upfront investment, but we're not passing that on to consumers. That investment we made not only for this TV, but future TVs. So we're spreading that very small across all of the platforms. So first TVs got flat and everybody rushed out and bought new form factors. And then there's been this desperate search for the next thing that's going to make everybody buy again. Don't say curved. Curved. Then there's 3D. You guys have taken 3D completely out of the picture now. You're just giving up on 3D? So what I'll tell you is one of the things we pride ourselves on is really listening and watching consumers, but listening to what they really want in a television. So there was actually two reasons. One is we looked at how many people are actually using our 3D TVs and how many people actually thought that was a very important feature set and it was pretty low. Also if you look at the 4K, if you do 4K right, if you do ultra high def with the right picture processing, you'll swear it's 3D. And we've had other people come through this gallery already and kind of look at it and say is that 3D? And it's because of the depth that we're able to produce through the picture processing. So for us, putting our investment resources towards improving the picture quality, not in a 2D, but making it so clear and the motion resolution so good that it actually looks 3D was much more important. You get to curved and things like that. Again, our opinion is curved as a gimmick. It actually hurts picture quality and causes a lot of problems so you won't see us do curved. We try and find a way to actually improve the user's experience and charge them less. Not figure out how to make their experience worse and charge them more. So for us, it's complete opposite of what we focus on. So do you think 4K is going to kick off another adoption cycle? Is that why you priced so low to get to the front of the market? Well I think what would have happened without Vizio is we would have seen maybe a three to four year, maybe five year even, transition cycle from 1080p to 4K. At least on 50 inch and above where you can really tell the difference. Our goal is to try and make that transition one to two years and get most people buying 4K TVs at those sizes by next year. And hopefully this year we're already going to get a big chunk of the market. So one of the things we like to do is actually drive transitions faster. Is use disruptive technology to get people the latest technology. Maybe they thought they couldn't afford now. And that's part of the pricing strategy is to take that market by storm. So we've talked to you a bunch of times. This feels like a refocusing on the core of Vizio which has always been televisions. You've diversified a few places. You're in sound bars. You're doing really well there. But you did laptops for a minute. You've played with phones. Is this Vizio coming all the way back to TVs or are you going to keep trying to broaden out? Yeah, a bit. What I would say is this took a lot of effort. So for the last year and a half, two years, we've actually spent a bulk of our resources perfecting UHD. And again, making sure we hit the prices that we want to hit. But really setting a new bar for quality. We think it's really, really important. So that has been the bulk of it. Also our sound bars and our audio equipment. We're the number one sound bar manufacturer as well. That's been a big focus. But I think what you can say fairly is that for the last year and a half, at least from an engineering and R&D side, we decided that there was some really cool technology coming forward and that focusing on the living room, again, was really important because we saw this transition coming. Having said that, you'll see some interesting stuff coming in the next year or two that I can't talk about. So we won't predominantly stay in the living room, but it was important to actually take a leadership position in UHD and continue that position in audio as well. So if the living room is getting interesting again because of the 4K transition, no one's cracked it, right? Everyone's still poking around the edges of it. How are you guys going to maintain that leadership position, even if everyone else is coming at you? Because they're all going to keep coming at you. Yeah. The best way and the reason we spent so much time on this is quality. You can try and be the best price forever and that's great and it will decline quick and that's something we do naturally anyways, is price aggressively. That's great. But that can also be fleeting. What really matters is actually shipping a world class product. So if you have a world class product where you've actually beaten products that are twice as expensive as you, you're going to have staying power and you're going to actually have a pretty good chunk of that market. So we have a good initial foray with these and you're going to see us continue to innovate in UHD. And again, our goal is to get people to transition into an ultra high-def living room quickly. So the last question, world class product, the other TV you showed at CS was the reference series. What's the timeline on that? Coming soon. Can't tell you exactly. We're perfecting that as well. Yeah. 40 under the air? A lot of probably not shipping. That's going to be really close. And so we may actually wait a little bit longer, give it some breathing room. But a lot of the fine tuning that went into P-Series is going into our reference series and then we have a whole other order of magnitude that we're doing for that product. And it's beautiful. I can't say too much. But the demos we showed at CES on the reference series were pretty jaw dropping and it's only gotten much better from there. Also the reference series, we want to make sure that when we launched the P-Series, we want to make sure there was content. So Netflix has great content. We've got Amazon and Ultra Fix climbing. So even if you don't have a 4K Blu-ray player yet, there's a lot of content. On the reference series, we're doing the same thing where we want to make sure that there's high dynamic range, ultra wide color gamut content when we launch. And some of that stuff's being created and mastered right now. And so we don't want to launch a TV and then not have content to actually show with it. So it's another reason why maybe waiting a few months would make more sense. So this guy's $1,000. $1,000, $999. The big one is, how big and how much? The 65 inch is $21.99 and the 70 inch is $24.99. Wow, that's aggressive. And these are going to be in stores now? Yeah, actually a few websites are already selling them live. There's some pre-orders that a few snuck out and our retailers will have them starting tomorrow but some are already on the shelf. And you're going to be able to keep them in stock? What I think is going to happen based on what we're seeing online is that we're going to sell out for a while and then we've got a whole other huge boatload coming and that's when we'll kick off our advertising and things like that in October. Awesome. Matt McCray, Vizio P-Series, $1,000, 4K. Awesome. Thanks, man. You're welcome.

A serious question of safety is being asked after a fire hydrant failed during a Hazelton firefight. In the case of a fire, there's a chance the hydrant in front of your home won't function. Is the fire hydrant in your neighborhood working? Hundreds upon hundreds remain out of service in Kansas City. Defective hydrants risk lives. While technology and other firefighting equipment has been revamped, the hydrant has not been redesigned in over a century. Which ones work and which ones don't? They tried not one but two fire hydrants. The fire hydrant in front of this house failed. This hydrant right in front of the house was not working. So a former New York City firefighter has designed a hydrant that is virtually indestructible. As a firefighter, New York City firefighter, I recognized the need that there had to be a change in the reliability of a fire hydrant was. In a hundred years, there hasn't been no real significant change, even though we know where the issues and problems are. Well, fire hydrants are the critical part of the fire extinguishment tactic. A hydrant is as important as a firefighter. We have standards. We get to the scene within four minutes. We have set up time, which means connecting to a hydrant, stretching all his lines, another four minutes. And we expect that water to be on the fire in eight minutes. And when the hydrant is broken, we don't accomplish that. Through better engineering and better materials, we've come up with the solution. It's called the Sigilak Spartan Fire Hydrant. Here's your basic standard, conventional fire hydrant. And you can see how the corrosion on there exists, because they just put regular paint on there. It's totally vulnerable and accessible. These things can get damaged and bent. These can get cross-threaded. They throw debris inside. But the integrity of this hydrant is easily compromised, because everything's accessible and exposed to the elements. What I've done is I've deconstructed the fire hydrant and identified all the vulnerable parts of a hydrant that are known to break down and fail consistently. Now you can see, obviously, just by appearance how much different they look. You can notice that the water's going to come out as much higher, which is better for the firefighter to be able to put his thing on there. You have the snow pole. And all the integral parts are encapsulated inside the hydrant. So there's nothing where the elements can get to it. You can't put wrenches. There's nowhere to put a wrench on. You need a special tool to do that. So what I always do is come up with this tool, crack that open like that, spin that off, take that off. Now that everything's out of your way, the hydrant's in perfect working order. If I want to get water, it comes out like that. And then take the caps off. They come right off. Inside, up on top, you see there's a grease fitting. So it's a very simple, less complicated hydrant. And we're within 10 to 20 percent of the cost of a traditional hydrant. So we're not even that much more, but we do so much more. So cradle to grave, you can't afford not to have our hydrant in the ground. So we're in about a dozen U.S. states right now. We have 150 hydrants in the ground in those 12 states. And the reason there aren't more is because typically a municipality will want to buy one or two and put it through its paces over a four-season cycle and determine for themselves, let the fire department work on them extensively and determine that it doesn't leak, it doesn't freeze in the wintertime, it won't rust or corrode or break down. And then once that happens, they start to order more hydrants. People don't realize the need for hydrants until it's their house that's on fire and all of a sudden that hydrant's not working. And people yelling, screaming out of the building. And firefighters are putting their lives at risk. You know, and it's unnecessary. It's something that time has come. People believe they're just an ordinary fixture in the street. They are life-saving fire department appliances. They shouldn't be used, you know, for washing cars or for cleaning streets. People do not understand the importance of these types. When you're at a fire and a hydrant doesn't work and the firefighters are standing around and no one can get water out of the hose, then you understand how important a fire hydrant is.

We're in Colon, Michigan, the magic capital of the world. One of the town fathers just flipped open the dictionary and saw colon. And he said, that's it. You know, I call it the lower bowel of the state. And it's also the upper digestive tract of magic. It's a town of 1,200 people, and it doubles in size during magic week. A lot of people say it's like Vegas coming to Mayberry. It's just a wonderful thing that happens. One week out of the year, everybody just shows up. Here you guys are. If you compare it to music festivals, this is like the Woodstock. So awesome. This is Christmas to me. I would skip Christmas for this, for real. OK, I'm Greg Bordner, and I'm the president of Abbott Magic Company here in Colon, Michigan. My name is Rick Fisher. I'm the owner and president of the Fab Magic Manufacturing Company here in Colon, Michigan. My name is John Sterlini, and I own Sterlini Magic Manufacturing here in beautiful Colon, Michigan. I mean, we have one stoplight, and we have three magic shops. Go figure. My dad came along in 1934. He was the money behind Percy Abbott. So they started the Abbott Magic Company downtown Colon. My dad took over in 1961, and he passed away in 1981, and I've been running it ever since. My folks brought me up here in 65, my sister and I. We did some fishing. They took me over to Abbott's. I was seven years old, got a couple magic tricks, came home, absolutely fell in love with magic, could not get enough of it. The Abbott children were good friends of mine, and so they were the first to jump on board and say, what can we do to help you open up a new magic company? Some of the other Abbott family wanted to help him along to start the Fab Magic Company. So he has been separate from us and completely different from us ever since. This is like his 10th or 11th year in business. One year after the get-togethers, Saturday night, I thought, hey, I wonder if there's a building available for sale here in town. Next week, came out and checked it out, and about a year later, we moved in. I feel animosity. I mean, this is my home. The owner of Abbott seems to think that they have no right to be in town. Well, this is United States of America. I don't want to get into that. I mean, to me, it's where I grew up. I mean, I played on a football team with a fighting rabbit on my helmet. You know, I mean, it's like I know the people in the cemetery personally. They had an open house when they started in 1934, and they called it the get-together. And they've invited magicians that they knew in the area to come and have fun and have a party and see their newest shop. But they had a great time. They had fun. And really, that's the whole basis of this whole thing, even to this day, 80 years later. It's like a big family reunion that you want to go to. The magic is secondary here. The people that come here, they've been coming 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years. And it's all about the relationships that people have here. It's the camaraderie. That's more important than the magic. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. And this is really beautiful. Yes. And there was no tradition that had been popular back here. This was a mixture of traditional and traditional and traditional. Mary Mary And this is what was brought me up here. This is where I grew up. I did something that I love to do. I love to fish, I love boating, I love water, I love magic, and this is what it combines. My mom used to bring me up here. There's a dealer room where we can buy new magic. And then each evening, there's a big show in the high school. There's magicians on that act. The top cruise ship entertainers, top Vegas entertainers. It's a top-notch show that you see. My first time I was here was 1974. And then I came back the following year, and I started to be in the competition. I feel like I'm going through town. Oh, welcome to golden Michigan, you know. You should have, like, you know, set your watches back 200 years. I'll go on stage, and people will go, Oh, we know him. It's like just coming home. It's like in your own living room. That's what this is like to me. It's very homey. Hey, Doc, come here. They want to interview somebody really important. That's Dr. Smolarz. He's a local dentist. Magic is not illegal. But when you stop in the middle of the road to do your trick, then it becomes illegal. So, yeah. Magic Week is always a big influx of people. In town. You know, normally we have a couple horse and buggies going through during the day. We don't have fights over parking spots or, you know, things like that. But it's never a major problem. But for the locals, that is serious. They want to get their mail, things like that. People stop in the middle of the road to go talk to somebody that they haven't seen since last year. And I believe it was in 2003, we had a magician start crossing the street and actually get hit. Because he just got so excited about seeing somebody, he just walked out and luckily the car wasn't going fast enough. You know, everybody has their routine here. You get the same people at the same restaurants at the same time every morning. And then you have this influx of additional people that take up their spot at the restaurant or their spot parking at the post office. We deal with it, it's four days a year and we're okay. A town of 1,000 people in the middle of absolutely nowhere, halfway between Detroit and Chicago, has three magic shops. I don't think they have that many in New York City, I'm not sure. For a while there, there was some cooperation. We don't see that cooperation now. And that's too bad. Because we want to see, it's for the betterment of Kola. There's a new kids, you know, trespassing, if you will, but I guess it's just too big, I can't stop it. You know, in the Magic Capital there should be magic everywhere. If you go to an antique capital or a city that's known for antiques, there's more than one antique shop. It's not a competition, it's let's try to enhance what we can for the community, for the magic community, and take it from there. I had a cochlear implant. I got it turned on December 21, 2009. People that know me, just a couple days ago, came here. You can hear now? I was wondering because you're talking so much better. He didn't even know. I went from profoundly hard of hearing to deaf between about the age of 17 and 20. So that's when I found magic at the same time. When you lose one of your senses like that, whether it's blind or deaf, people close in, you know, they avoid social interaction, you know, so they feel uncomfortable. But because I was getting into magic, I craved to get in front of people, to do magic for them. So that kind of kept me out of my shell, and I didn't have to hear them. I became kind of attention, so they listened to me. So if I didn't go deaf, I probably wouldn't be in this thing right now. Go like you say, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. I was a bully as a kid. I used to pick on this one kid. One day he just went off on me and beat me up and changed my life. And so I thought, well, what is, I got to figure out a better way. And then one day I went to school, and there was a big circle around this one kid. And I went over and he was doing a very basic trick that he had gotten from the drugstore. So I asked him, I said, hey, can you show it to me? And then he showed me how it was done, and it was right then and there. I was 11 years old. I said, well, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to do this for the rest of my life, guaranteed. You want to get out now, buddy? No, you don't want to get out? I never got the opportunity to come here until I was old enough to get myself here, get the money to come here. I'm not sure if this town didn't exist. I might be putting gas lines in mobile homes, hating my life right now. I did that actually for a while. ¶¶ I think everyone as a kid has a magic set or gets a magic set. And then we either stick with it for some reason like we did or we didn't, you know. I'm 19 years old. I'm a freshman in college right now. I actually started to do magic when I was in 7th grade as a way to pick up girls, no joke. Just like as an icebreaker, and it really, you know, it didn't work too well. ¶¶ The word trainspotter in England is a guy that stands on the end of a station and when the trains come through, writes down the numbers on the trains. They're usually a bit, ooo, they're a bit mad these days. And they're what we call trainspotters in England. Magicians, I think, are one step above trainspotters. You know, we have that strange fascination and that ability to work on some little tiny card slide. So that's kind of what it is. We're doing something which we really enjoy and we get a buzz out of doing it perfectly. And that's kind of what the magic world is all about. ¶¶ Whoa. Almost. Almost. Johnny Carson was a magician and he said he liked being a magician. Even though he was very shy, it allowed him to be the center of attention without being himself. It kind of gives them a confidence that they can express to a group of audience. They probably all had some kind of complex when they were younger, you know what I mean? And the hobby gave you the outlet to compensate for it. And so you grow with it and then you, through magic, you become a total different person at the end, you know? One, two, three and four. This is really fun. Just for you. As they change. We're going to be 400s. That's whatever we want, right? I think magicians always want to show people something that they've never seen before. And I love to make people laugh. I love to entertain them. And I think when we get together here, there is that brotherhood of magicians. We live in a world where things are changing so rapidly. And every year when we come to Colon, there's things that are still the same. ¶¶ You know, magic is bigger than you might think. I have somebody else's heart. And it really is touching to be alive today. I mean, God said you must keep this going. It's how I feel. Really I've been chosen to keep this get-together going. ¶¶ Magic is such a universal thing. It's so amazing. You can take someone who's a genius and they're fascinated by the puzzles of it, the magic happening. You can see little kids, their mouth falls open, their eyes get big when you do the easiest, smallest of tricks. It brings back a sense of childhood again. I've got goosebumps on my arm talking about it. ¶¶ Santa Claus used to come and visit me every year for Christmas. And that is like the most magical thing in the whole world. And I think every magician, you try to capture that. You try to, this is something that's just not possible, but yet I'm doing it for you and creating that wow, that was cool. If you can create something and do it in their hands right in front of them, wow, we're going to have some fun right now. We're going to forget about everything that's going on in life and just be kids again. ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶

For years, Blackberry was a smartphone for getting stuff done. The ideal Blackberry user doesn't have time to mess around, doesn't have time for games, and definitely doesn't have time for your nonsense. Blackberry's new Passport is just a smartphone for that person, but for the rest of us, it's one of the strangest phones on shelves today. The $249 Passport, or $599 unlocked, is what you would get if you took a classic Blackberry and stretched it in all four corners, making it a giant square slab of a device. It weighs nearly 7 ounces, measures over 5 inches tall, and over 3 and a half inches wide. It's actually the same size as a standard international Passport. It's a solid, hefty device, it's got a steel frame and a soft touch finish, and it's wider than almost every other phone you can buy, including Samsung's new Galaxy Note 4 and the new Apple iPhone 6 Plus. The Passport is awkward in your hands and awkward in your pockets, and I definitely dropped it once or twice in the few weeks I've been using it. Its awkward dimensions are thanks to its giant square display. It has a 4.5 inch high resolution IPS LCD panel with 1440 by 1440 pixels and a dense 453 PPI. It looks great, it's got wide viewing angles and no visible pixels, and you can really see a lot on this screen. It's great for reading, great for navigating spreadsheets, and great for plowing through email. But unsurprisingly, it's not great for watching video or playing most games, because no matter what you do, there are annoying black bars above and below whatever you're watching. But if you live your life in a spreadsheet, the square screen is perfect for that. Below the display is a three row physical keyboard. It's an honest to goodness throwback to what Blackberry is best known for. It's similar to the Blackberry keyboards of yesterday, but it's not really as good, because it's too wide and it's impossible to type on with one hand. Worse, the space bar is strangely jammed up into the last row of keys instead of below the letters like every other keyboard ever. It's something I can never get used to and I'm still way faster on a good virtual keyboard. I'm wondering why Blackberry just didn't extend the phone another quarter inch and put in a fourth row, considering the Passport's already a massive phone. The keyboard does have some cool tricks. It's got a capacitive touch layer so you can swipe on it to scroll through web pages and email, and you can also use it to move the cursor around when you're typing, but I found it's just easier to use the touch screen for doing things like that. The Passport runs Blackberry OS 10.3. It's been refined and tweaked and looks a whole lot nicer than it did a couple of years ago. But it's still the same interface, heavily reliant on swipes and gestures, and it's not particularly intuitive. Blackberry 10 centers around widgets, app icons, and the hub. The hub's a good idea. It attempts to group all of your notifications in one place, but it's still not as good a notification experience as Android or even iOS. Little things like marking a bunch of Twitter notifications as red still take way too many taps, and for some reason it insists on showing all of the appointments in all of my shared calendars instead of just the ones I actually want to see. It's the area where Blackberry has the most potential, but it's still unfulfilled. But the biggest new feature in Blackberry 10.3 is the new virtual assistant. It's like Siri, it's like Google Now, it's like Cortana, but it's just not as good. This virtual assistant can perform web searches, make calendar appointments, set reminders, and do more with just your voice. It's intelligent and it's got good voice parsing technology, but it's often slower than the options on other platforms. To fix its longstanding problem of no apps, Blackberry is now preloading the Amazon App Store on the Passport. It's a huge step forward, the Amazon Store has many more apps than Blackberry Store ever did, but it's still missing popular options like Instagram, Snapchat, and more. Installing apps from the Amazon Store is a chore. It requires multiple screens, button presses, and loading bars before the app is actually usable. For the people that this phone is built for, the Amazon App Store provides more than enough apps, but if you want to use the latest messaging app or post photos to Instagram, you should probably look elsewhere. The Passport is the most powerful hardware Blackberry has ever put in a phone. It's fast most of the time and the browser is really quick and responsive, but if I try to multitask or do a lot of things at once, the system definitely slows down. Opening the camera can take multiple seconds and sometimes it just doesn't happen at all. That's pretty unacceptable for a high end device in 2014, and certainly not one with as much RAM as the Passport. The camera is the best camera Blackberry has ever used, but that's not really saying much. It's a 16 megapixel unit with flash and autofocus and it can shoot 1080p video at 30 or 60 frames per second. Image quality is okay, it's not great, but the bigger problem is it's just slow and it defaults to the Passport's odd square format, even though you can't share any of those square photos to Instagram. You can't change the Passport's battery, but the integrated cell is really big and it lasts for a really long time. There wasn't a single day where the Passport didn't last all day for me, and many times I could go two days without plugging it in. Two days of getting stuff done, just like Blackberry intended. But when everything is added up, the Blackberry Passport is a niche smartphone if there ever was one. Blackberry's built a phone that's a shrine to everything the company has done for the past decade and a half. It's a big, productivity powerhouse that's designed more for work than fun. It even looks like it's wearing a suit. But despite getting a number of things right, the Passport fails on some obvious ones, like the keyboard that makes no sense and its giant, awkward to use dimensions. It's the perfect phone for a very select few people, and it's clearly the best that Blackberry can do. But for the rest of us that left Blackberry's behind years ago, Blackberry's best isn't good enough, and there's nothing in the Passport that's going to bring us back.

We're in Colon, Michigan, the magic capital of the world. One of the town fathers just flipped up in the dictionary and saw colon, and he said, that's it. You know, I call it the lower bowel of the state, and it's also the upper digestive tract of magic. It's a town of 1200 people and it doubles in size during magic week. If you compare it to music festivals, this is like the Woodstock.

The battle to create the connected home has been going on for years, but it seems like nobody's really cracked the code that will get consumers excited. Over the last couple of months, a new dark horse competitor has emerged as sort of a front runner. Wink is a company that's spun out of a partnership between Quirky and GE, and they've created a whole range of products and a central hub that allows you to create one integrated intelligent apartment. So this is a Wink loft. We're in Soho, New York. We really tried to construct this place to have a kind of very look and feel that everyone could kind of feel comfortable in. So we built a garage door, we built a whole new entryway. It's really kind of exemplifying and bringing to life all the different products on the Wink platform. Okay, so right now the whole home is kind of asleep. We're about to go in. You unlock the door and what happens? So I'm going to unlock the door. That lamp is going to turn on. The radio will turn on. The shade will go up and then the big shades behind me will all go up as well just from the swipe of this one button. So unlocking my Schlage lock. One of the things I think is really interesting about the smart home is that people have been trying to solve this puzzle for a long time and nobody seems to have gotten a lot of traction to the point where it feels like it's easy to integrate all the different smart devices in your home. Obviously the idea of the smart home has been around for quite some time. There's been a number of different radio frequencies that have been out there or a number of different people that have tried. And I think one of the things that was missing was that many of the brands that people know and rely on and already have in the house hadn't been connected yet. We're seeing them kind of all come online. In fact in Home Depot they have over 600 different connected products that are sold either in store and online today. This radio isn't a smart radio. It's just plugged into a smart switch. This light isn't a smart light. It's just plugged into a smart dimmer. And again, these are from Levittown and Lutron, two brands who have historically competed with each other but all came together under kind of the Wink platform. So this is like the mothership here. This is the hub, right? What is the purpose of this and how does it control everything in the house? Sure. So the Wink hub has got six different radios in it. It works with all these different radio frequencies that don't have kind of internet access. So for some reasons you can't have a Wi-Fi chip in different products because of the power or the cost of it. And so it allows it to kind of interpret those different radio frequencies and let you control it all from your phone. Is there an idea that these devices will sort of come to learn your schedule or be personalized to you, that they'll work together in some way? We have smart schedules, so kind of knowing when certain actions should happen based on time-based triggers. We also have geolocation, so if you're coming home to turn on your AC before you actually arrive, when you're in a certain distance. We have robots, which we kind of think of as if-then triggers. They can kind of do things for you. So open your door, turn on your lights, turn on your radio. What's the approach to privacy or security when it comes to having all of these smart devices living in your home, on your Wi-Fi network, and connected to your phone? We take security of the utmost importance, whether that be from two-factor authentication to bank-level encryptions. So we're never going to share your data or shell your data. You don't have to share your geolocation or things of that nature. So it's all kind of opt-in. And of course we'll never share that with anyone else. So I think the toughest part might be in making sure that you're always making the product simple and easy to use. There's lots of different things you can do with the smart home or with each product, and making sure that you're offering the consumer the simplest and easiest experience to make sure that they're getting the most out of the interactions and know out of the gates how to use these products and find that value right away.

Apple's calling iOS 8 its biggest update ever, and while it may not look like it on the surface, there are enough changes here to justify that claim. iOS 8 represents a big change for Apple, it's finally becoming a modern mobile operating system. If you've used iOS 7, iOS 8 is going to feel instantly recognizable and comfortable. In fact you have to dig quite deep into iOS 8 before you find what's actually different compared to iOS 7. Unlike last year's complete visual overhaul, iOS 8 is a refinement, with few actual visual changes. It's a recent contact picker when you open the multitasking menu, notification center has shrunk from a confusing three tabs to a much more logical two, and the animations are ever so slightly faster than before. You can also respond to notifications right from notification center, and apps can insert widgets of their own right in there too. But iOS 8 looks and feels just like iOS 7, nobody upgrading from one to the other is really going to be completely lost. Spotlight has been updated to provide results from Wikipedia, news sources, maps, iTunes and more based on your location and other pieces of context. It's the universal search app Spotlight should have always been. iMessage is now more like Snapchat and other hot messaging apps of the day with audio messages, video clips and location sharing. You can finally manage group messages, you can silence your noisy friend or leave the annoying group chat that never seems to end, but we did have some issues getting that to work on our end. iOS 8's new health app acts as a central hub for all of your personal health data, whether it comes from a connected scale, your Fitbit, a heart rate monitor, or the iPhone's own built in step tracking. It's a more comprehensive look at all of the quantified life statistics you might track these days than other platforms have done and it lets third party apps share their data with it. But without third party apps supplying data, health doesn't do much on its own right now, but it's really going to be a big deal when Apple releases its watch next year. Apple's Safari browser has been upgraded with a new desktop mode and the ability to send links to other apps so you can save a webpage to Evernote without ever leaving Safari. It's a really fast browser and a great mobile experience, but you still can't set a different browser as your default in iOS 8, which is frustrating. Apple's upgraded the virtual keyboard with next word suggestions which appear above the keyboard as you type. They're pretty good, not quite as eerily predictive as SwiftKey, but iOS 8 now lets you install third party keyboards, so if you really want SwiftKey's crazy smart predictions or Swype's useful tracing features, you can just download them from the app store. Android has had this capability for years, but it's definitely a welcome first for iOS. Apps can put widgets right in the notification center, so you can get a prediction from Yahoo Weather or the latest headlines from New York Times Now without ever opening an app. This can either be super useful like Evernotes, which lets you create notes right away, or kinda pointless like Dropbox, but thankfully by default they're disabled and you can pick and choose which widgets you want to display. Third party apps can now talk to each other in more ways than ever, letting you do things like share pictures and send data from one app to another. I can save articles to Pocket or Instapaper right from the New York Times app without ever having to do an annoying copy and paste dance, but like Messages, we found this to be a bit unreliable, at least for now. Photos can now be edited with third party apps right from the main camera roll. It takes more taps to get at the editing tools of an app like Lightly than it really should, but it's still more convenient than having to switch around apps. Again, Android users aren't going to be impressed with these capabilities, but they're entirely new for the iOS world. iOS 8 represents a great leap in connectivity between your iPhone and iPad and your Mac. Apple's calling this continuity. Once OS X Yosemite launches, sometime later this year, you'll be able to answer incoming calls, reply to text messages, and do more right from your desktop. But right now you can actually use your iPad to answer calls made to your iPhone. The new handoff feature lets you start something on one device and pick up where you left off on another, whether that's browsing a webpage, or composing an email, or reading an article in a third party app like Pocket. It makes everything in your life more cohesive and connected, if you're fully bought into Apple's world. But we'll have to wait until later in the year to see the full benefits of it. That's the story with iOS 8. It's not a massive visual overhaul like iOS 7, but Apple did enough things under the hood to make this one of the most significant OS updates ever. iOS 8 is more open, plays nicer with others, and just feels like a much more modern mobile platform than its predecessors. And frankly, that's exactly what Apple needed to do.

People don't realize the need for hydrant till it's their house that's on fire and also that hydrant's not working. In a hundred years there hasn't been no real significant change even though we know where the issues and problems are. A hydrant is as important as a firefighter. Through better engineering and better materials we've come up with a solution. It's called the Sigilak Spot and Firehive.

Hello. How are you doing? Welcome to the Vergecast. That's usually the next line. I don't know. He was doing a thing. Yeah. You gotta, hello, welcome to the Vergecast. This is our show. It is a show about just a bunch of guys having a good time. I don't know. Is that what it's about? No. What is life about? It's a show about me having a small existential crisis once a week with good friends. That's right. And technology and news and pretty much us arguing at the end of Breaking Bad, which I've discovered recently can just send us into a tailspin of disaster, and other ideas. In fact, in figures, emotions. This is the Vergecast. Look at all this negotiation I have to do to get this beer up to my mouth. Yeah. It's really bad. Here's what I'm saying about the Vergecast. It's back. We've been gone for a long time. We did a Hack Week podcast. We threw together one last week and now we're just back. It's just gonna keep happening. We've got kind of a different set going on here based on- The French Cafe set. The French- It's very nice. It's a salon. We kind of looked at our numbers and like how people were consuming the Vergecast. We realized most of you were downloading it on audio, so we're gonna be focused on making a really great sort of like audio thing. Are we unattractive? No. Is this- No, I have a theory about the internet. Do you? This is the only one you have. No, I think, I believe the internet has radically changed consumption media. Fact. That's true. Don't even argue with me. Are we gonna talk about Taylor Swift right now? We can. We can in a minute. But if you think about how people used to consume information in their lives, it was they would wake up in the morning and read a newspaper and they would go to work and presumably be productive and then they would come home at night and like watch television. Right? And if you just look- I just- That happened. Just keep going. I feel like there was a lot of Minesweeper in the middle of there. Yeah, but like, whatever. But then what happened, then the internet arrived and now everybody wakes up in the morning and like plays with their phone and they get to work and read our website all day long. Bless you. Which is true. Our highest like traffic is like at noon. Yeah. And then they go home and like play games and like all of information is like we've moved it from like the beginning end of the day to like the dead center of the day. And that is what to do with podcasting? Well, hear me out. I think people listen to podcasts on their way to work. They listen to podcasts at work while they're ignoring their jobs and then they listen to it on the way home from work. Yeah. And those are all bad places to watch video. And when they're doing dishes. And apparently dishes. Yep. Basically you listen- Big podcasting time. Whenever you are- Whenever you should be doing something else, you should be listening to a podcast. I mean that's definitely when I listen to podcasts. Like I listen to one- Basically one podcast a day in three chunks. It's like when I'm getting ready in the morning on my way to work and on my way home from work. Yeah. You know an hour and ten minutes every time. Do you listen at regular speed or do you speed it up? See I listen at regular speed. I speed it up. I speed it up. Yeah. It's actually pretty good. Like the- What is it? Pocketcast that I use is like it- People don't sound crazy. I use an app that people made people just sound horrible. So you know that Marco Amens podcast thing. It speeds it up but it also removes the silences. And so it sounds really natural. Apparently really neat. That is neat. But yeah we should just talk 1.5 speed just to troll the people that listen. I mean I have friends who basically talk at 1.5 speed. I feel like we all talk at 1.5 speed. Everyone I know is like please stop talking so fast. But I have so many facts and figures. So anyway the point of that digression was that we know most people are consuming us on audio. So we are gonna figure out what to do with video. I think what we should do is we should let this be a podcast. And then when we want to make TV shows or video shows or whatever shows we should make those differently. Which is a radical idea I know. Let each media be true to itself he proclaimed. Although we are starting this audio only format with a live show that is on camera. But if you want to see us sitting around being jerks. Revealing the lie behind all language. No this is like yes right. Everything is a symbol that means we are gonna die. No but if you want to watch us be goofballs together you can tune into us live and we will have the replays on livestream. So if you want to hang out with us now. Now is a good time. 4.30 pm eastern on Thursdays. Anyway Vergecast is back. Those are some facts about the Vergecast. Tell me some figures about the Vergecast. There are three of them on it right now. There are three people on the Vergecast. It is very tall. It is 12 feet tall. Very wide. It has a blue ox as a pet. It is straight to Paul Bunyan. What? Deeders from Minnesota. He always immediately references something Minnesota. Everything in Minnesota is either Prince or Paul Bunyan. And Prince isn't very tall. Funny story. Same guy. Huge. Actually Prince is very small. Tiny man. Paul Bunyan by the way. Is it like two princes stacked on top of each other with a trench coat is Paul Bunyan? No one gives Paul Bunyan credit for being an excellent guitarist. I mean he is really good with an axe. Alright we are done. Shut it down. We are never doing this again. Okay let's talk about speaking of enormous things. There is actually a lot of news to talk about this week. I am holding a gigantic iPhone. I have a less gigantic iPhone. I don't have an iPhone. Do you want like a little iPhone? I am taking this one out of the case. That is my 5S. Does this have a big crack in the middle? Here is my plan with the 5S. I am not going to switch it, my SIM card, until that phone explodes. Because it is so close. You are on your way to that happening. It is so close to being completely trashed. Anyway so this was reviews week for us with the iPhones. iOS 8 review is coming next week because there is so much to unpack there. Yeah it was really like, and we kind of thought this was going to be the case and it totally proved out that like so much of iOS 8 didn't get unlocked until all these developers started updating their apps. And like there is all kinds of cool stuff going on that was not there for us before. So like iOS feels, even now like I am still waiting for a bunch of widgets that I know are coming and I really want to use. And like it is starting to finish now which is cool. But yeah so that is coming Monday. I would say most of the apps, we should get into the actual reviews but a lot of the apps that have updated have not updated for the 6 plus yet. I think developers were actually surprised by the screen size. Interesting. Which is weird. Yeah because you are just saying you are still getting four tweets on Twitter. Yeah my Twitter is like literally to show you four. Oh so it looks like Twitter on the iPad. Yeah it is very. Which is just. Twitter. Other than that they just rolled out a bunch of new stuff. Anyway let's talk about these reviews and then Dieter you played with a bunch of Amazon new stuff yesterday. Yeah yeah. And there is all kinds of stuff going on with the website. Wait so okay here is where we need to start because I feel like this is the only question anybody wants to ask and we should actually just talk about it is like which one should people buy? The 6 or the 6 plus? The big one. The 6 plus. Why? So I am. Plus. Here the 6 plus. Thanks Dieter. So also wait can I just back up real quick. So my favorite thing about this phone is that everyone almost everyone picks it up and immediately knows which one they want. Right like you pick up the big one and you are like this is way too big or you are like this is perfect. Let me tell you a story about the 6 plus. Hold on let me finish. Damn it. Except for Dieter Boehn. He picked it up and just immediately had a panic attack. It happens when I pick up everything though. It is not the iPhone's fault. Oh my God what do I do? This is the existential crises I have watched you go through over the last week. I settled on just the 6 and I immediately regretted it. Oh you pre-ordered one. Yeah yeah. Which one did you get? The 6. You should have gotten the 6 plus. Again but I regret it. But I got the right color. Yeah black. Space gray. Space gray. Well black. Yeah the white I think the white makes the phones look bigger than they are and the gold I think looks terrible. Fair. That is just where I am at. So apparently and this is totally anecdotal and may not be true but is what I have seen is that people who got gold got it immediately which is the exact opposite of last year. There was no wait people came on a day late. Yeah there was only like 10 people wanted them. Well but last year there weren't any. Right. But I guess there was a supply shortage so I don't know. But space gray is a little bit delayed and silver is super delayed. Yeah. Which is really weird and not at all what I would have guessed. Yeah I just don't think the white looks great. Well white and silver. I think the space gray is where it is at because if they are bigger you want them to look smaller. I think the gold looks terrible. Yeah I agree but I thought that last year and lots of people liked it. No last year the gold was like flashy and new and it worked with the design and it was all angled and Johnny was like it looks like jewelry. You know like I don't know why he's a mobster. He's definitely a mobster. He's gone through a rough patch in his life. He needed the money and then he joined the mob. He doesn't need the money. I don't know. That joke makes no sense. Well let's talk about the design. Let's just start. So I think the answer is a six plus. I have many reasons for this. I will say that today I went to lunch with Trey Brindrette our product officer at Fox and I pulled out the phone and we drew a crowd. People like we were just standing in line to like order hamburgers. I thought you meant you literally like held it and drew a crowd. Yeah I was like Trey let me show you what I'd like my friends to look like and I drew a picture of people that I thought were my friends. I want this many friends. You're an engineer right? Make me friends. No it was like we know like people crowded around us and like played with the phone and asked us about it and they're like how do you have it already? And like it was like we were doing shtick like Trey put his like iPhone 4 on it and like the screen is bigger than an entire iPhone 4. People are very excited about a gigantic iPhone and I think the big iPhone the six plus is like it's the first time I've gotten an iPhone where I thought to myself this is a new experience. Right. Whereas with Android phones because you switch manufacturers you switch skins you whatever every time you get your Android phone it's like kind of a new experience. With the iPhone it's like this is slightly nicer. Nothing is different now. Yeah I mean even the 3.5 to 4 inch screen difference was like nice but didn't actually meaningfully change anything. Right and I think the six plus is like it's exciting because it is so different. Right but difference not always good like you like different for different sake. Yeah. Like you think it's hilarious that it's humongous and I mean it's like walking around. It's a really simple like decision. Do you want a phone or do you want a little like everything computer almost tablet thing that you can run more most of your life off of. I mean do you want something that you can conceivably use as both a ping pong paddle and like a deadly weapon and a laptop. When you put it like that it's kind of. It is this is this thing is comically huge. I said in an interview I think the Galaxy Note 3 is actually easier to hold because it's a little bit thicker. It is squatter it's like square. Yeah this is really it's top heavy in a weird way. Well because you're holding it feels like it's going to just slip out of my head. They kept the home button the same and so it's got the big thing at the top and the bottom so it looks symmetrical. But that means it just feels super tall. Right and it's ridiculous that the speaker is still like there's just the one speaker on the bottom. Like Apple took their hardware design and like literally did a pinch zoom. We made a big phone everybody. Yeah I think it is. I think the iPhone 3G and 3G S are like by far the ugliest iPhones ever made. Agreed. But I would put this like this is in that pantheon. Like I don't think it's really. I do not. I mean I don't think it's anywhere near as beautiful as the 5 and 5S but like I don't think it's ugly. I hate the outlines on the back. I mean these outlines on the back are. Like this is like Johnny I was like hammered. He was like look I have to go drive my Jaguar and then he like left and they were like no just do the lines. He handed somebody a magic marker. Did you read the big business week profile on Apple that came out yesterday that they hilariously called an interview. It's very confusing. No interview. But it was a profile of Tim Cook and Apple. It was a good piece and it was great. Really well done. Brad Stone and somebody else. But really like really well done piece. And the criticism of Tim Cook's reign at Apple is things that you like designers have left in a specific complaint that they said the business week was where I used to sit in like a meeting with Steve Jobs and we would like hash out like button design. Right. Yeah. I have these tiny particulars of icons right now. We have these like gigantic sprawling teams and things are less focused than before. And I could not tell you if that affected the design of the iPhone 6 and the 6 plus but I can tell you that I wouldn't be surprised if like that's how we got this intended design. Sure. Right. Because it's not. I just don't. I don't see this happening. Right. But if you look at the iPhone 4 it's like just a beautiful thing. If you look at the iPhone 5 and 5S it is there. They're beautiful in their way although far less durable in my opinion the iPhone 4. Yeah. Really? Yeah. All right. Fair. They just like the iPhone 5 like the black one just like turned silver over time. I mean I've dinged my 5S to hell. So I will defend the 6 and the 6 plus from a design standpoint in that they're not as beautiful as the 5 and the 4 but I think they're way more approachable. Like the 5 and the 4 are like I am an art object and you must like bow to me and this is like I'm designed for you to hold in your hand. The 5 got nice curved sides and a really like natural feeling screen and it just they feel like because they made them so big if they had stuck with that like stark design I think they would have felt insanely imposing. Right. I said this to I asked some folks at Apple about this was like because the big question we went in with was why don't you just make it thicker and make the battery longer. That's the question for Apple. Right. Well and I have this camera bulge. Well yeah. But that's a separate thing. What camera bulge? I don't see any camera bulge on Apple's website. I don't know what you're talking about. So I asked them this and the answer and the answer I got from two different people was it would have been horrible. And like whether or not that's true I don't know but they were like we played with or they you know they looked at just blowing up the design of the 5S because everybody liked it presumably including Apple. And what they found was that you're exactly right that a phone that looks like that and is that sort of stark and sharp and rectangular bigger would just feel like crap. I will say that which I agree with. We ask a lot of questions of a lot of like product managers and product designers and the one answer that I always am like I believe you. I accept it and don't immediately assume it's total garbage is we tried that and it sucked. Right. Yeah. I mean I don't know. Here's the thing. You know we read a lot of reviews of the phone because once you're recently want to read everybody else's reviews and everybody talks about these phones in terms of Apple had to do this to catch up the competition. Even iOS 8 in many ways it's like they had to start adding sensibility. They start they had to start adding third party technology. Words and like widgets and like actual notifications like they had fallen behind in a way and just here with the sheer screen size of the thing they felt we had David. I had an argument because his review we were editing each other's reviews. Your view is like Apple had to make a big phone and I was like no they had to make a regular phone. Right. What they were making the whole time was a smartphone. Right. And they had to just get to normal. They're still smaller than the S5. They're still smaller than the Nexus 5. They're still smaller than any. Everyone else's flagship phone is bigger than the iPhone. Yeah somewhere between 5 and 5.2 now. Yeah everyone like that's just where they planted and then the Android big phone market is even bigger than this right. The Note 4 is 5.7. Right. They've like Apple's just gotten to parity with everybody. Right. And that's like that is kind of the story of these phones. Right. Like they're just they've caught up now. It's also like the I mean that that's half the story right. The other half is like Apple has all these entrenched advantages that it's been winning with for so long like the camera and the app store and like the general polish of iOS that doesn't exist in Android. Right. And so like in some cynical way they're like OK well we have we do these four things better than anybody. If we do everything else exactly as well as everybody we're going to do these four things better and thus be the best. Right. And it's like that's a deeply boring way to design a phone which is kind of what I think they did here. But it does work. Yeah. Like it's a successful strategy. Right. And what's I mean they're I mean like for example like the Note 4 screen is beautiful. Yes it is. The there's other beautiful screens in the world. Lots of them. LG makes a beautiful screen. HTC makes a beautiful screen. This screen is really like it's really good. Yeah it is. It's less pixels per inch than just about everybody. Actually it's less than everybody. Everyone else is like 441. Yeah. This is 401. But they like Apple like what the small stuff like this is a joke I made in the review like everyone else is in a pixel resolution race and a pixel density race. And nobody is in a how thin is your lamination race. Right. Because there are no specs. How close can you get to the glass race. Right. And it's like if there is only a spec. Yeah. If only Apple would be like we have X nanometers precision lamination so that Samsung would be like yeah we beat that. Yeah. But because they don't like Samsung's like whatever and like the Note the Note 3 screen definitely looks sunk below a layer of glass. The Note 4 I think is a little bit the same. And it's like Apple's just really good at the little like that little thing makes this screen great. Yeah. Well and I mean it's little things like we've talked about this too with the fact that it just curves a little right at the edge like. Yeah. There's nothing I can't explain that to somebody. But like you pick it up and it just feels right. So 20 degree radial curve. Come on Samsung. What Apple needs 46 degrees makeup. They need to make up fake tech specs. Yeah. Just like pretend stuff so that Samsung loses their mind trying to beat them. I mean retina. Well they did that. They need to do it more. I mean it worked like Apple did it and then Samsung was like oh right. What about 11 times retina in your face. No one can see it in the app scale. But try this out. Look at all those pixels. And that's it. So the thing with the six is like it is just the next iPhone right. And Apple's really good at putting up the next iPhone right. And they bumped a spec and they like the app scale and it's fine. Like it's not I don't think it's perfect but it's fine. Like the scaling you mean. Yeah. If you look for it it's there. Right. But for the most part it's fine. It's like the 6 plus in Chrome. It's the same thing as I tell everybody. It's like you're like this is too big but it's not a problem. Right. You never notice. And then you know the apps get updated and whatever. Right. With the 6 plus the scaling I think looks terrible. Well what was it the dialer that is just hilariously full of white space now. I mean this phone is comedy gold. Just let me be clear. It is very much points to a future of like hybrid devices. It like has a brilliant camera. It has a great screen. Like all these things. The battery is great. There are many reasons why it's the phone I want to buy. And then there are many reasons like I'm literally sitting here giggling it like how doofy it is all the time. Doofy. You keep walking on it. I'm just like you are not caught up with the doofy stuff. I mean it's just like. 2.5 more doofies. Give it a minute. I mean here it is. Like do do do. Like that's the phone. Like do do do. Like it's just a big lumbering beast of a phone. And like the apps like the Kindle app like is like gives you a headache. The scaling in the Kindle app is so bad it's like this is blurry. It's like looking through. What's the thing like it's like the wavy text on a TV screen. Like it's blurry. It's just like headache inducing. The Twitter app just got updated and they updated it in so far as the menu bar doesn't scale the status bar doesn't scale now but like it still shows you four tweets. The landscape keyboard is like I don't even know what sort of like comedy moment Apple was going for with that. The landscape keyboard is a perfect example of like just because you have more space doesn't mean that you should fill it. And they were really good especially with iOS 7 at not doing that. They're like it's okay to have white space. Right. But they're like oh it's a keyboard. That's like a functional area. We should cram it full of crap. Well here's like a decision on the landscape. There's two decisions on the landscape keyboard that are just mystifying. One is the paste icon which is to be clear is an icon of a bottle of glue. And Apple thinks you the consumer do not understand the difference between paste and glue. And I think that is probably accurate because I do not understand. I was going to ask you to explain it to me. But I know paste you it's got a little. Right I know that paste does not come out of a glue bottle like that. It's just obviously true. Right it's just something I know. Well I mean like right like paste is like a dip whatever. And then there is the fact that of all of the formatting choices you can put in a button they picked bold. There's a button just to bold text. And I look at it and it's just a bold B. It's just a bold B. Which is going to be cool because you know it's going to happen a lot. People are going to go to type B and it's just going to do nothing. They're going to be like that's a B. I would like to type that. It's like you get the feeling that Tim Cook personally sends a lot of emails with bold text in it. And he was just like listen Johnny. I know you're in charge of design. I know Steve Jobs structured this company so that you know and can tell you what to do. But I want a fucking bold button. And there it is. It's just so confusing. And then the keyboard trolls the hell out of you. Because when you rotate it from portrait to landscape the position of the emoji button the emoji keyboard button and they switch to numbers and symbols literally flips from portrait to landscape. No way. It's numbers on the outside emoji on the inside. Yeah. And then you turn it and it switches. Just click on my account. There you go. Just click on my face. Click on my face. Just click on your face. No it's just like that to me is like they made this keyboard and like they made it. They had to figure out how to now rotate it. Come on. Like I don't understand that at all. Wait a minute. No the emoji stays on the left. Oh yeah but they do flip. Yeah. Just to confuse you a little bit more. Also this is not rotating super fast. No I did. I don't know. Can I tweet from your account right now? No please please not do that. I mean yeah there are definitely things about pooping. You can pay. If I poop into you live on the Vergecast. Stay away from my property. Get off my lawn. I'm just saying like I'm like these are all my complaints about the iPhone 6 Plus. You've just heard all of them. You just ran out of big lists and then you're like buy like it's stupid and weird and there's bad software. Buy it. Well the bad software is like. Don't buy the one that doesn't have any of those problems. For every other company when they put out a phone with bad software I'm like don't buy it. I'd kill them for bad software. Sure. Samsung puts out a phone on AT&T of bad software. I'm like you are doomed for six months to experience this bad software. With Apple it's like probably in two weeks all the apps will be updated and Apple will like fix that keyboard issue. Well actually no. They didn't fix the shift key button. Yeah. So I have no faith. Still insane. Whatever. Don't buy an iPhone. Here's what you should do. Throw away all your phones. Go on eBay. Look up RAZR. Yeah. Buy a Sony Ericsson W810i. Yes. Yes. And just live a life knowing that that is the pinnacle of technology. Yeah I can't disagree with that at all. I mean it's a phone and a Walkman. So do you try to use a six plus one handed? Because that's the reason I didn't get it. Yeah. Is like I've got big enough hands to do it but it's awkward and I would just drop the thing and I've shattered two phones in the past month and so it was time for me to admit that I am a huge klutz. Yeah. And I would drop that and I'm less likely to drop a small one. That's why I got the small one. I actually wrote the exact, independently wrote the exact same paragraph in our reviews which was these are the first iPhones that are better in cases. Yeah. And I'm just gonna say it. I've never had a case on my phone before. Ever. Never. And like you kind of need to do it. Yeah. I mean I'm just gonna say it. When you put the big one in a case it looks like a Samsung phone. Yeah it does. Like just does. Yep. There's like there's an element of I mean it's like the way the cases are shaped and like the white and the color like that's how Samsung phones. So we got a close up on the camera there. Let's struggle to put a phone in a case. Yay. Yay. These cases feel really nice by the way. I got a lot of questions about like how they're gonna hold up over time and the answer is I have no idea but they feel really nice. Yeah. Yeah. The leather. I'm into the leather. The leather on the Moto X. I'm really happy. The leather on this like it's really nice. Yeah. Now let's look here. It's a Samsung phone. Yeah flip it over like you cannot tell that that's not a Samsung phone. Right. And well it's a case. Yeah. But there's like an element to this this specific aesthetic of the phone that is very Samsungy. Yeah. Which because it's a giant phone in the case. Samsung. Look here's the thing. All of these complaints aside what I know about this phone is that I'm never gonna use my iPad mini again and never even consider buying another iPad mini. There is a shot in our video you should go watch it where if you watch a 16 by 9 video on the iPad mini the actual because it's letterboxed the actual size of the video you're watching is only marginally bigger than a video on this phone which is like that's the game. That's why I have an iPad mini. Right. Because I want to like watch things in a bigger screen. I have an iPad Air which I like very fond of. I am struggling to think of reasons to like get it now because it's all it really offers me is a yet another bigger screen and I think that's like super interesting. Yeah. But we need to see iOS on the iPad Air start to do some like proper stuff. No that's what I'm saying. I think there's a world in which the little phone becomes like a little phone. This becomes a primary computing platform thing and the iPad becomes like a truck. To like stretch that metaphor. The iPad becomes they focus on actual productivity with the iPad the way that Microsoft quite frankly has been focused on with the Surface Pro this whole time. Well that's when the like split screen multitasking comes in. Or maybe user switching. Which is the thing that this is not big enough to pull off. Yeah. That would be great. Just come on. Yeah. I mean I'm telling you Dieter and you're engaged now and you just don't you just don't want to share that device. Nope. I'm kidding. I have no idea. Because at least it's always like pooping. No if you give it to your kid. Whatever. I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on the 6? I feel like I've rambled on about the 6 Plus. I mean my thing about the 6 is like it's the 6 Plus is way more interesting in terms of like what it could and might someday be. I mean what you said that I've been thinking about a lot about over the last few days is that your argument is that in three years this will just be the iPhone. Yeah. That there won't be a smaller one. It'll just be that that you buy. Yeah. And like I actually think you're right. I hope you're not but I think you are. But for me it's like this is like there are a lot of bad things about the fact that this is just another iPhone. But it's also like I don't need something else. Right. Like I sit at my laptop all the time and when I'm on the subway I want like a thing I can hold in one hand and like play games on or read on or whatever and this is that. Right. Like I don't need this giant productivity machine. Well actually you kind of do because you've been slacking. That's more reviews. I think the like this makes sense to me in a lot of markets where for most people their phones are already their primary computers and that's just like a thing and that's a growing thing in the world. But for me personally that's just not how I operate. I'm excited for this to become my primary computer. Yes. I think that's insane. No. Why is that insane? It's only insane because the software isn't good enough for it to be that yet. That's the only reason it's insane. Right. And like Samsung's like trying to do that with a note. I mean the problem just straight out is that Samsung is not as good at software. Right. Like they have really interesting ideas about how to do all that stuff on the note and I actually I mean I like the note. Every time I see one on the subway or out in the world I'm like I love big screens and then I like play with the software. I'm like I hate your software. Yeah. And that's that's the only problem with the note is that yeah it's cool to do split screen and like resize the apps and do the swipey thing to make a little phone on the screen and use it like that would all be great if it was like smooth and worked well. Well that's what I'm saying like Samsung is at least trying and like I forever will think that the Samsung Note Edge is the most interesting phone that's come out recently because it's weird and probably not going to work but it's different and they're trying stuff. Yeah. Like Samsung you can say a lot of things about Samsung but they try stuff. Yeah. And they're not trying anything here. Like this is literally all this is is like you're getting a slightly bigger version of the video that I'm getting on here. And what I'm getting is like a more ergonomic thing that actually fits in my pocket. And that doesn't obscure your face when I try to take a picture. But that for me is a really easy trade off. So like in three years I might be happy to buy this. And I when it when they make it worth being slightly bigger or when the watch comes out and makes it so that I'm not taking my phone out of my bag very often. Great. And there are a million reasons this is useful to have. But for right now for like a thing I use constantly in short bursts all the time I'd rather have the thing that fits if the experience is the same and the experience is the same. Right. They haven't done enough with the software to make the experience different. No. All you get is like a two paned messages window which doesn't really do anything for me. Yeah. I mean they are. That's the thing. I like the feeling Apple like made some concessions to how big the phone was instead of having a plan. Right. And the email I've gotten a few times is that like that's that's the talk. Right. Like this is the tech where they're like here's this crazy weird new thing and then the next time they're going to come out and like here's stuff to do with it. Yeah. And that's that may well be the case but that's. It doesn't make this better now. That's why I think I'll get that one when they when they get the right. Like in three years I will gladly buy this phone. But for right now it's like it's not worth the trade off of it. Have we talked you out of this phone yet. No sitting awkwardly. I have one more trump card. Oh here it is. Which is the camera slightly better. And that and I the experience of taking photos like I like using this phone has made me understand why people take photos with tablets because it's like wow I just became a much better photographer just by having the ability to frame stuff better. It's true. You should get glasses. Well no I should get a gigantic screen. Super easy. I should wear glasses like a nerd or I can get a huge phone like a bigger. Why wear glasses. Nailed it. You know I know I'm wearing contact lenses now. I'm sorry. Do you want to try my giant phone. If you try and hand that phone to me now I'll drop it. I can't see anything. Who's that laughing at me over there. What's going on. I mean look I'm just saying I think this is the one. Like oh mostly for the fact that it is so different and I you're right. I appreciate different. Well you just appreciate different because you haven't had different because you've been no I like I love my Nexus 5. I think that's a great phone. If that phone had a great camera I don't know. Nexus 5 that apparently is prone to the screen chattering. Yeah people mean when you drop it on the ground it shatters. I dropped it like a foot. If you buy it from Google Play like that you can like the people on Twitter told me about this you can like trick your way into like having them just fix that for you. Yeah fair. So here's what I think is which like we have you know differences of opinion but which is going to sell better. Where they they pre-ordered four million of them. The big one. The small one. I think it's the small one. I don't even think it's going to be close. I think a lot of people are going to return the big one and get the small one. Really. That's what I think. I think a lot of people don't understand how much bigger than their iPhone 5 this is. I mean it is like the screen is as tall as an entire iPhone 5. Yeah I mean it's like this is comedy. Like I'm talking to. No and I think like there are a lot of people at least people that I know who are going to be upgrading from like a 4s to this and it's going to feel terrible. And I think people will like would get used to it. But in the 15 day return period are going to take it back and get a 6. I disagree. Because I've had so many people who I hand this to and they're like oh my god that's way too big. And it's like that's the small one. Sorry about your life. There's no I mean this is barely even perceptible to me. If I wasn't holding a 5s in one hand and a 6 in the other I would just tell you this is a 5 like the same size of a 5. I don't know. That's my. So other than other than the adapting to screen size how do you guys feel about iOS 8? I haven't used it yet. I've been waiting for the 6 to come so I can get it. iOS 8 it definitely just feels like they thought it through this time. Mm-hmm. Right and it's like David saying this stuff we're just now seeing the apps take advantage of it. Right. And all the keyboard people are ready to go which is like adorable. I know. But I think like understanding how photo apps are going to plug into the extensibility I think until Yosemite comes out and we can play with like handoff and continuity and all that stuff. I mean that's the one thing like we kind of said this is WWDC that like that's the one thing that's game changing. Everything else is like cool and should have been there and my thing is like I love almost everything about iOS 8 and it doesn't make any sense to me why they didn't release it a year ago. But handoff and continuity are the two things that are like no one is doing that and that's like if that's why you buy into an Apple ecosystem is for that stuff. Right. And that's huge. Taking a phone call from a Mac is like it will just bring the pain of making a phone call on AT&T to every part of my life. Yeah I mean I do this like jacked up thing all the time where I'll open a Google Maps link on Chrome on my computer and then I go to Chrome on my phone and then open up Chrome and then I'm like oh there are devices and then I wait for it to refresh and then I open that tab up again and just being able to go and like swipe up from the bottom left corner and there's my map is huge. Yeah. That's amazing. Too bad it's Apple Maps. Yeah so I won't get where I'm going. I know. But at least it'll look cool. No I mean that's the stuff like iOS 8 is like a clear like iOS 7 was very messy in places. Yeah. I think everyone just admits it now. iOS 8 clearly refines all the broken parts of it and makes it more extensible and bigger but it's as with all of these things it's like when will the app developers show up and the answer right now appears to be right away. Yeah. Yeah. I mean this is why they did this is why they talked about our WWDC right they were like go build this stuff we can't tell you why but it's gonna be great. I will say the iOS 8 on my 5s feels very small. Yeah. Like the adding the extra row of predictive text about the keyboard the keyboard now takes up you know 55% of the screen which is crazy and then like you pull down and if I have like eight widgets and it takes like an hour and a half to scroll through them all and all this stuff is like it's clearly designed for bigger devices which makes sense that's what they sell now. Yeah. But it's like it updating was. My phone my 5s won't update. Why I don't know just erroring out. It just hates you? Yeah whatever I mean it's so broken it knows it's not long for this world I mean I'm sorry. I'm legitimately worried to know what my iPad mini is gonna do with iOS 8. It's gonna die. Whatever. It's gonna die. They want you to buy a new one or they want you to buy a Kindle tablet hey. Oh. All right you played with a bunch of the Amazon stuff. Yeah Amazon announced like 50 things yesterday. Yeah. So there's a new HDX 8.9 inch tablet it's a spec bump I don't care about it. I'm sorry. They announced new HD HD 7 and HD 6 tablets so it's like super low end tablets and the HD 6 which is like bordering on can you even call it a tablet. Yeah. 6 inch screen. It's 99 bucks. It's an iPod touch. It's an iPod touch. It's the iPod touch. It's actually kind of insane for 99 bucks and you got already on Amazon Prime membership because of course you do. You've got like a hundred dollar thing that you can watch Amazon video on you can like chuck it and it's more durable than other Android tablets. It's like relatively sturdy and if you lose it it's a hundred bucks. Yeah I mean this is what I've been saying forever is like and this is the you know the logic of Amazon giving away for free and in a real way a hundred dollars is like a huge step in that direction but like Amazon has this big trove of content. Yeah. And if you pay a hundred dollars a year it's all free. Yeah. Right. And so nobody is more set up to have an iPod touch than Amazon. Yeah. So the thing about the 6 and the 7 is like they're low end Android tablets are running some media tech processor. It's the truest sign of quality. Well it might they might be terrible but I think when I think good user experience I think media tech. But FireOS seems smooth on it but who knows. Like Amazon has crappy games and a media tech processor will stream your video and music and the end. So the thing is slow and jaggy and whatever as long as it will play that video I don't care. Right. It's a hundred dollars and I'm gonna be able to pull it out on a plane and watch the Amazon Prime video that I have downloaded. Because you can watch that you can watch that download you can download Amazon Prime videos or a bunch of them. I mean I'm just saying I don't understand like I think Amazon software strategy is not good. It's not great. The content strategy is really good and their content strategy is also not going anywhere so their kids strategy is better than anybody else's and it's super weird but so you can buy the kid version of these tablets fifty bucks more. You get this giant bouncy case that kids can hold but you also get a two year warranty like literally you can take the tablet smash with the ball peen hammer send it back. They'll send you a new one saw it in half. Make sure you send at least fifty one percent back. They'll send you a new one for two years. No questions we don't care. So like you can buy this thing for a hundred bucks turn on all the parental controls of like what kind of apps you can use no in app purchases blah blah blah. Get the free year of like you get to watch Dora or whatever. Yeah. What are Nickelodeon. They got a bunch of stuff. I think they got Disney in free time. Yeah. Yeah. It's not just like here's a hundred dollar tablet and you are free to destroy it. Go away. The best parenting tool in the history of time. And then America. All good things end with you telling your kids go away. Yeah. Go child. Yeah. Learn from this tablet. No explore. Teaches people how to speak Spanish. So don't you hate on door. Teaches people the Diego is just useless. Really. I'm just saying like I've watched a lot of Dora with my niece and nephew. There were well your niece and nephew. Thankfully there's time. Man Diego dude get it together. Just like get your shit together Diego. Like you're always lost. So like you're just you're never in the right place. Tell me the truth about the swiper. The swiper actually like scary. No I was a kid. I was like a wreck. Villains were like scary. No swipers are getting adorable raccoon. He's like whatever. And doors like oh man you're swiping like whatever door. I have a question. Yeah. Can we pivot this podcast just be recaps of door to the Explorer. Oh oh. Really. Large untapped mark. I know. Dora Dora and Diego go to a place. Diego screws up catastrophically. Someone else swiper no swiping and then everything is resolved. Well Dora uses her bilingual skills. And she says pack pack. Right. I mean Dora is legit. Like yeah. Like as a lady like she's like she's on her game right. Like hold on. I'm just gonna take that. What. What. I'm saying like Dora. It's clear that children should idolize Dora. Yeah. I'm saying that if you're if you are into Diego you are headed down a life of misery. Right. That's your wrong role model. So I flushed along. It's just a thing that happened in my life. No keep going. I feel like this has been waiting inside you for a long time. Diego's bullshit. That's all right. The best thing Amazon announced was the Voyage the Kindle Voyage. Yeah. It's really good. Okay wait. I don't understand because I have a paper way and it's a pile of garbage. Perfect. It is. I have zero problem. I've never had fewer problems with a device. So many problems. Why? It is slow. The screen is not flushed. The screen is plastic and scratches easily. And it does scratch easily. It's not too heavy. It's too thick. It's too heavy. Uh huh. Is this the game we're about to play? And like paper white is too heavy. Yes. Crap. You're crazy. And the screen is not 300 pixels per inch. That's true. I'll give you that. And it refreshes too slowly. And it doesn't have physical buttons that you can just like squeeze it. Yeah wait. How does that actually work? I don't understand that. That's it. That's like there's no bezel physically. You like physically just like give a little tiny squeeze to the bezel like not too hard and then there's like haptic feedback. The other reason your paper white sucks is it doesn't have auto adjusting on the brightness. And even if it did, it still sucks because if you're reading in bed in the dark, it doesn't get dimmer over time because it knows your eyes are adjusting to the darkness. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I ordered one. Did you? Yeah. Zeder texted me last night and he's like, I bought a voyage and then I felt, I would say like a deep American materialistic, like a what? A purchase can be made and I haven't, I'm not, the president might know that I haven't done my duty. My Cadillac has bigger fins on it than yours. Here's, here's my dream fleet right now. 2001 Escalade, used Escalade. I saw one on a weekend trip for a sale for $9,000 and I thought to myself, I bet I could talk to the $7,000 and then it would be a deal. And seriously, they've like been eBay on eBay motors looking at 2001 Escalades for some time now. Why would you want dude? I don't know. Impala Impala. No, no. The slate is like a critical element of a fleet. And then a new Mustang. The 2015 Mustang? Yeah. You will, you will drive. The only time you will drive it is when you're moving parking spots because you live in New York. No, I'll drive the Mustang to the garage with a 2001 Escalade that's constantly being repaired. And then you'll just roll down the East side. I'm just saying like, I think the verge should own an Escalade. I'm fine with that. What? Cause then we can all get in it and like go places. Only if you convert it to run off of like, like crickets or like biodiesel biodiesel. No crickets. Crickets. Crickets is like hard. Just crickets. Biodiesel is like, isn't, you can like just roll up like, and that like, let me paint you a scene. We're all in our suite Escalade. Okay, hold on. I'm going to close my eyes. All right. And then we just like, we're like driving around. It smells like French fries because we're doing biodiesel. Who's driving? It doesn't matter. We all take turns, right? And then like the rest of us are just like hanging out. Your eyes are open. And then we were like, man, we're like out of gas. And then we like roll up behind a McDonald's and like steal their oil. And then like, that's how we, no. Okay. It got weird at the end. I was with you for so long there. That's the biodiesel stories. Like you're constantly like going to McDonald's or like fusion powered. We could do fusion like a mystery. We need mr. Fusion. Yeah. What if, what if we get on 2001 escalate to over to like pimp my ride style or 2001. We should actually talk about it. So Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are like in a rocket ship war, right? Like didn't, didn't, uh, Bezos did something else with like spaceship blue or whatever something is called. Uh, and then Elon Musk, like I love the idea that like billionaires desperately want to go to space. Is this a place where, um, that's right. They is this a place where like capitalism and competition is the best thing? Yeah. I mean it is, but like maybe if they worked together, it would be cheaper and we would get up there faster with cooler stuff. No, but they want to each be in their own. I mean like they're, they're like months away from like mounting guns on one of our spaceship and like having like billion hair laser fights in space. That would be so sick. I mean that is definitely like a sci-fi show waiting to happen. I mean, yeah, I'm kind of in the idea of Elon Musk, my ride moon. Yeah, it's called moon raker. No, here's an idea. This one's free for everybody. You get billionaires and you make him play laser tech. That's the whole show. Billionaire laser fight. Do they get to like design their own laser tag as a kid? I was not allowed to have laser tag as a kid, but I was allowed to have the version of laser tag that was with like an actual like replica Beretta. It looked like a gun, like a real gun. You and I grew up in the era where guns were allowed to look like guns. We like, we want it. We played guns. That was what you did as a kid. They didn't have like orange caps. No, no, no. They would, they would, it looked like, it looked like a gun. Yeah. I actually just owned it. It was actually, it was just an unloaded fire on the toilet. Uh, no, I had my nest zapper was gray. And then like two years later they made them all orange. Yeah. No, but I was not allowed to own laser tag, but there are many laser tech facilities in the region. Oh yeah. That's what we had too. Yeah. But did you play the laser tag where you shoot each other or the laser tag where you all just shoot at targets? Uh, each other. Of course each other. Cause it was like, we shoot at targets. Now all it is is targets. That sucks. Yeah. It's like, let's run around and look at each other while we shoot at targets. Yeah. And if there's fun laser tag out there, I will go anywhere in America to play fun laser tag in our 2000. Yes. That gets phenomenal gas mileage. Uh, but yeah, there's like targets up in the corner of the room and you just run around and shoot those. Yeah. Which just sounds horrible. How do you, so you just become the first person they've ruined laser tag. Well, like they can still shoot you, but you don't get points by shooting them. Like if, if, if you're shooting at the target, I shoot you and then you have to like go away and recharge and then come back and keep shooting the target instead of like, how many people did you kill? So you can be like, so you can be like the world's ultimate griefer. Basically like not shoot the targets, just kill everybody. Yes. Cool. Oh, we should talk about minecraft. Speaking of grievers, that's all. Let's wrap up on minecraft. So somebody explained minecraft to me. Uh, the game or the event that happened surrounding it? All of it. Uh, the game is awesome and you should play it. Yeah. It's fun and creative and helps kids learn and helps you build castles in the sky. Okay. Here's the question. I don't know the answer to. How does minecraft make money? They, they sell games. Yeah. They sell expansion packs. That, that was like the basics of minecraft is free, right? Right. But they sell more, right? And they also like license like collectibles. Yeah. It's a, just a franchise. Right. But is that, is that worth a 2 billion? It was $2 billion, right? Yeah. 2.5. Oh, that's right. It was 2.5. So it's like $2 billion to Microsoft. Uh, because it's like, it's the, it's the future of Lego. Like it's like the, like the number. Is it like minecraft can be cool for 50 years? Yes. Really? Yeah. I don't know, man. I know. Like if you talk to all of the various VOX dads who like play Minecraft with their kids, they're like all super into it. Yeah. No, that's definitely true is there's like this whole army of nine year olds who are super obsessed with Minecraft. Yeah. And they have like their own servers and like their own communities and like that all I get it's just, I maybe I should play the game more. Here's my dream. I've been thinking about this. Uh, so notch quit mojang, right? Uh, when they sold it to Microsoft, he said, I don't want to be responsible. By the way, Minecraft is not free on every platform. It's like depending on the platform or cost. Oh really? Okay, fair enough. Um, so notch quit, he wrote this like very emotional letter about like, I don't want to be a part of this. Like I don't want to take responsibility. I just want to play games. And he's like, but like, it's like, it's a really easy thing to write after you sell your company for $2.5 billion. Like not to be cynical about it, but like if, if you're like, I don't want to be part of this, then just leave. Don't sell for $2.5 billion. What are you going to do? Like, would you rather he just like lit the whole thing on fire? No, but like you don't get to take, no, no, that was his, that's like why he sold it. Yeah. He sold it because he was in charge and he was like, I, this needs a steward. Right. And the only steward is like this company. So I'm selling it and that's fine. It's all, that's fine. Well, and it just felt, I don't know, the, the letter felt very holier than vow to me in a way that I don't think it needed to watch the, I mean the, he, he referenced that, that the 20 minute video or about Phil fish or 10 minute video about Phil fish about like how he's become a symbol of like the internet's ability to like hate famous people on the internet. Oh yeah. Yeah. And like, it's actually, it's a really smart thing. And so if this guy like is honest and he says, I do not want to be the figurehead in charge of this game and also manage this whole game, like selling it to me seems like a relatively virtuous thing to do. All right. That's fair. That's fair. If that's legit. Yeah. If that's what he was after, that's fine. I'm just saying, I think we should get, we should get Paul Miller to interview Notch and just talk about like leaving. Yeah. Yeah. Like the vibe to me was very much. Paul Miller invented the internet and then left. It's true. He wired the first ethernet cables. No, the vibe, when I read that letter, the vibe was very much when Paul left the internet and I was like, we should get these people in the room. Paul, if you're out there, I know that you are. Paul. Love you buddy. Notch, I don't know what you're doing now. Probably reclining on a bed of money. Not feeling not responsible for anything. Talk to me. Let's get at me. Yeah. Let's all, let's all be in a room together talking. It won't be awkward at all. No one will bring up Dora or Escalades. What else? Anything else going on? There's some Windows stuff coming up at the end of the month. Yeah. Windows 9. Yeah. We had a little preview and then we also, Tom Warren put up some, we had some screenshots of an upcoming version of Office that has a little help box that is reminiscent, although not cartoony of Clippy. New Clippy? Yeah. Not Clippy. It's like Clippy-esque. It's new Clippy. It's Clippy-esque. I mean, can Microsoft get away with doing anything Clippy-esque without people calling it Clippy? No. No. Tom will be here next week. We should put him on the show. That's true. We can do it. We'll do a long Windows preview with Tom Warren. Yeah. It looks good. Did you see, he retweeted somebody's Vine where it's like, I got a copy of Windows 9 and you open it up and it's a Windows 7 DVD with a, sorry for Windows 8. It's pretty great. Man, Windows 8. Yeah. You know, I have a Surface Pro 2 in my house. I was playing with it the other day. I just had one. And man, that's so close, so far. Like, so close. I like the Surface Pro 3. Do you know what I mean? You know my theory about like Apple fanboys? I think Apple fanboys are beginning to root for Microsoft because they're tired of being like the big dogs and they hate Google and they need a new underdog to replace Google. That's interesting. It's like a psychological theory that I have. I mean, I also think that, and we've been saying this for a long time, that I think Microsoft is attempting to do a lot of the right things. Yeah, like this is why I- Like what Apple is doing, like the story you tell about this is the same story that Microsoft tells about the Surface, they just did it wrong. Yeah. And it's like if Windows 9 is them figuring out how to do it, that's awesome. It's not. It's them walking Windows 8 all the way back. Just all the way back. You think so? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a start menu again. Like it's all this stuff. They're taking all the ideas from Windows 8 and putting them in a box inside the start menu. Like how is that not the best metaphor? Oh man. Oh, Microsoft. You're going to get there someday, I promise you. Before we go, I want to talk about the Apple Watch, because we haven't talked about the watch yet. We talked about the watch all last week. You just weren't here. Oh, I wasn't here. I will say, I'm going to actually- Have you changed your mind? I have not changed my mind. Actually, I am more and more convinced the watch is a disaster the more and more I think about it. Wow. I have approximately 23 opinions about the watch, and I want to just put them all on a page. I just haven't done it. Fair enough. I cannot get away from the idea that it is a watch with a right click. That is just weird to me. I don't understand it. Force Touch, bad brand. It's just a collection of- Fair enough. This is going to sound really weird. Here's the thing. I look at the watch, and I think of the incredible collection of A-player talent they've assembled. Now freely, obviously, enter the fashion market with the watch. The thing I'm thinking about is all of these people are in charge. You can't hire the CEO of Burberry and the CEO of Yves Saint Laurent and a VP from Adobe. The Businessweek article said Tim Cook had his number one guy be in charge. Johnny Ive is still there, and Phil Schiller is still there. None of those people are... All of them are in charge, and none of them are in charge. That is the clear- Yeah, you don't hire those people by saying you work for so and so. Right. Maybe they're in charge of slices, but there isn't one person. That's what I think about the watch. It looks to me like one person wasn't in charge. That is just expressed in the idea that you can force touch it, which is it is just a weird interaction paradigm, and it is not the right one. Dude, Force Touch is coming to iOS. It's the worst name. It's coming to the iPhone. Dude, this is the thing. Get ready. It's coming. If you described it as a screen technology, that is the next thing they're going to do for screen technology. No, but you know how you make a big screen work better in one hand is Force Touch. You let you do more things by touching the parts of the screen that you can touch. This is a company that literally only had one button on its mice for 20 years. That's what I mean. Philosophically, I don't understand this paradigm. Oh, sure. I'm just agreeing with Dieter. Force Touch is coming to the iPhone. You're disagreeing or just agreeing? No, I'm agreeing with Dieter. You're just agreeing. No, I'm just like, that's fine. Yeah, I use right click on my Mac all the time now. Long pressing isn't interesting, but I just cannot get away from the idea, and this is somebody very smart said this to me, smaller screens demand fewer interaction methods. Sure. This one has so... That's why they invented multitouch. It's the smallest screen and it has the most interaction methods. That's why they used multitouch. Can you pinch to zoom on the Apple Watch? No, you have to use the crown. You use a dial, but can you also pinch to zoom? I think you can also pinch to zoom. That's great. I'm just saying all of that, and I understand the argument that they haven't shown us all the software, that they're still working on it. I don't think it's going to come out for a long time. I understand that maybe it's really expensive and it's a market, whatever. What I do absolutely know is that it is impossible from what we have seen so far to explain to somebody how to use it, and that is crazy. That is not... That's so far out of the zone for Apple that I... People pick up an iPhone and they figured out how to use it instantly. I was actually thinking about this. When the iPhone first got announced and then it came out, they had that however many month period where they were just blasting commercials and all the commercials were was, here's the iPhone, here's how to do stuff on it. But here's the thing about those commercials. Every single one of them was like, holy crap, that looks awesome. I need to do that. Those are things I like to do. I see how easy that is. Give me that. Yeah. The commercial, they weren't instructions. Yeah. They were like, look at how easy it is. Yeah. They were instructions that were also like advertisements for a thing that you want. Right. I don't know how those commercials would work for the Apple Watch. You've got this watch and you really want to look at a map on it. I don't know. I'm just like, I... It's the photos that gets me every time. They're like, we've found ways for you to carry your photos around. And then he scrolls out and it's just a million one pixel icons of photos. I don't know. I'm wearing a watch. You know who that's useful to? It's Justin. Yeah. This watch is a crown. It's like the last thing I want to do is monkey with this knob on my watch. You're not supposed to monkey with it all that often. I don't know. I am deeply, deeply skeptical. It's not because Apple didn't have a killer app. It's not because I think it should be cheaper. None of that stuff. I'm skeptical because I think there's too many ways to interact with it. And I think that all seems really messy to me. I mean luckily, they have probably what, 10 months to figure it out. Maybe they will. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I don't think it's going to be until June. I kind of doubt it. But we'll see. I mean, they're not shying away from the fact that this is historic. Tim Cook is betting his legacy on this watch. So he has proven to be a smart CEO in the past. I'm assuming that he's putting resources against this. Yeah. I mean, they're not going to bail on this. Like they'll- Just kidding. Yeah. The first one, they're like, sorry guys. Bad move. We're done. Right. But- Just put it on the shelf next to your folio. Right. But you kind of hope that in Tim Cook's office, there's like a huge glass display case. And in it, there's just two objects. There's a Newton and there's an iPhone. And he's like, man, we got to do this one. Because the Newton was a great idea and it had tons of potential. And another CEO made it who wasn't Steve Jobs. And if they had just kept grinding on the Newton, it would have turned into something. It probably would have turned into the iPhone. I don't know about that. But Steve Jobs came back- It would have turned into the trio. Right. It was a lot of really good ideas about that paradigm. And it would have just kept going. And nobody would have faulted them for continuing. And then there's the iPhone, which was like a revolution. Right. And you just have to think- So Apple could have either been Blackberry or Apple. Right. Exactly. You have to think, this watch, we know so little about it. It's either the world's best Moto 360 or the world's best Pebble, or it's a revolution. And you just hope that Tim Cook is actually thinking in those terms. Yeah. Fair. Because what he's saying over and over again is this is a revolution. And then you look at it and it's like, but why is it that thing? It's just a pretty good- That, as far as I can tell, is not the answer at all. We want a revolution. And Apple is the... They're all doing what they can. Right. We're done. This is over. I'm getting in my 2001 escalator. I'm going home. I'm sorry. We were listening to U2 album. It was right there. All right. Are we going to talk about the U2 album? No. I mean- No. That's fine. The U2 album is like, it is like a year ago if Apple had given everybody a free U2 album, nobody would have cared. Yeah. But after the NSA and iCloud leaks and like, was the government looking... Apple just dumping stuff on your phone is terrifying. Yeah. Right? If Dropbox, everybody's Dropbox, now has a U2 album in it, nobody would have cared. I would have cared. Not if they didn't take your storage and you could just like, here's a link and you can open it and it's just there. Or they didn't take your storage, I suppose. But if they shot that stuff, shit down to my computer, because that's how Dropbox works, it syncs to your computer. That's fair. That's like, to me, that's probably the U2 album is like, that's like 20 megabytes of stuff that I would like to keep on open for pictures. Yeah. I mean, also the album is bad. Also the idea that what people, like Apple thinks what people want is like to download MP3 files. Yeah. Yeah. There's many things about that. I mean like- Well, the other thing- Yeah. I mean, why didn't Jimmy Iovine stop this? Why didn't they put it on Beats Music? Yeah. Just put it on Beats. Because they probably can't yet. Because- Well, but Apple's already- What Apple wanted- They're talking a lot about Beats Music. Yeah. Like Tim Cook went on Charlie Rose and talked a lot about Beats Music. It was in this Business Week profile. Right. They're just not ready. It's on Apple TV now. That's a thing. That's what I thought. It could have been, even if you don't subscribe to Beats, you can listen to this U2 album on the Beats app for free for eternity. Yeah. Go ahead and make sure you open your Beats app. Right. Because that doesn't make U2 any money. That's what it's about. At the end of the day- No, what makes U2- At the end of the day is Apple. I mean, don't you think Apple paid U2 for this? Apple made U2 money. Yeah. No, but U2 wants to run out. It's like objects. I mean, U2 wants reach. They want 500 million people to have their phone home. They want all the people to have it. Right. They want like, Beats Music is in every country. They have the new show, blah, blah, blah. And they want to be able to say, this is the most downloaded album ever. Right. Or the biggest selling album since X. And Apple paid them for that. They gave them that marketing. They got in trouble for it, but at least they tried and they put it on Beats. It's like U2 sold out to sell Beats. And that is a different... You know, but the Samsung deal with the Jay-Z? Yeah. Didn't hurt him. Well, he's Jay-Z. Yeah, he's Jay-Z. No, honestly, if there's anyone on earth who's immune to that, it's Jay-Z. But at the same time, nobody's mad at U2. I'm not saying... I mean, the album sucks, but I'm not saying anybody's using U2. When I see memes, it's always like Bono's head with a little speech bubble. Yeah. Coming out of it going, ha ha. That's all I see. Well, U2 got paid, like whatever. They made a pretty mediocre record and they got paid. Good for U2. Pretty mediocre is the kindest thing that I've said about that record. This is the most mediocre. It's right there in the middle. Well, I heard... My favorite solution to this whole problem was... I forget where I heard it, but somebody was like, what if they just put better U2 albums on instead? Everybody gets the Joshua Tree. We'll solve this by giving you other U2 albums. No, I mean, it's U2, man. It's fine. It's just nothing. U2 came after a credit card service. Yeah. In the scope of that presentation, it was like, we're gonna change the world with Mastercard and Amex and Visa and here's U2, everybody. This is weird. The Edge's guitar tone is the best, though. That's wonderful. It was so good. I was out of the room by then. I stayed for eight seconds just to let him envelope me in his Vox AC30. It was really... And you wept. It was great. And then you left. It was very nice. It was a very nice guitar sound. But whatever, U2. Apple needs to get to Beats Music. They need to get to a place with Beats Music where U2 wants to put out free albums on there instead of being like, let's pump them through iTunes. But how do you... They are just not there yet. Right, but there's no way to do that but to do it. If Apple has proven one thing, it's that it, in four seconds, can make something huge. No, not that yet. Why? Just not yet. Why? It took them five years to make iTunes radio. It's like I talked to Jimmy Iovine at that event. They're slow, but this is what I'm saying. If they take a thing... But you just said they're fast. No, they're fast at taking something that exists and making it mainstream. They came out with Apple Pay, which everyone has already done, and they said, Apple Pay, and then suddenly... Right, but it took them years. We'll see. I saw Jimmy Iovine at the event, and I was like, how's it going? And he's like, it's my sixth week. Right. Fair. Sixth week being the editor-in-chief of The Verge, and then we had a hilarious fish out of water story moment. Can you just stop with the Jimmy Iovine humblebrags, please? Just for a minute. I'm a big fan of Jimmy Iovine. You guys fucked Jimmy Iovine. I got Gwen Stefani hitting me in the shoulder when she walked by. She was shooting me out of the way. You guys are friends now? No, it was a get the hell out of my way, useless, nobody. That's fair. Yeah. Right. I was friends with the guy in Sublime. That's what Gwen Stefani is thinking of herself all the time. Like, I need that dude, and you never can. I'm awesome. I'm awesome, because I would like to know that guy. I went through a Sublime phase. It's super dark. It's not that dark. I just listened to that record again recently. I was like, 40 Hours of Freedom? Yeah. It's a good record. That one and then the Sublime record. It just came on. It was like we were in a house. It was beachy. I was like, we should listen to some Sublime. And then we did, and that was great. Sweet story. I knew that story, everybody. No, I tried super hard to creep on Angela Aaron's talking to Will.i.am. And it was just impossible. I feel like there's a force field around that. It's a force field of tall, terrifying women who just sort of like just crowd you. They just get up on you and they're like, oh, I'm not allowed to stand here anymore. I guess I'll go. Okay, that was Vergecast. Thank you for listening to us. That's always nice. We never introduced ourselves. I just realized that. Oh, at the end. Yeah, I'm Neil. We're going to introduce ourselves. Yeah, introductions. Yeah, this is I'm Neal. I'm David. I am Dieter. Yeah. You can find us on Twitter. He's Pierce David. He's reckless. I'm Backlund. Yeah. And this is Vergecast every Thursday, 430 streaming on our site. And then we'll have the audio up very shortly after. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week.

So, you're like me. You'd rather watch a video about productivity than actually be productive. Here's the good news. To-do list apps today are powerful and beautiful enough to actually make us want to get out of our ruts and start working. At its most basic, a to-do list app couldn't be simpler. It's just a checkbox with some text next to it. But great developers take them much further, letting you organize huge projects, manage recurring tasks, and even set location-based reminders. They also integrate with other services in your life and help you focus on the things that you can get done now. There are hundreds of to-do lists cluttering up the app stores, but which one is the best? Wunderlist is the best to-do list app for most people. It's available on every major platform, it has a beautiful design, and it's powerful without feeling overly complicated. It's also free. And while a paid option will get you a handful more features, like uploading large files and customizing the look of the app, Wunderlist is a powerful solution even if you never subscribe to the premium version. A big part of staying on top of your task list is being able to capture the thought at any moment, and Wunderlist makes great apps for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and the web, and makes good native clients for macOS and Windows 8. At its heart, it's just a simple list, but it offers a perfect foundation to build on. The mobile apps do a good job of letting you add tasks quickly, and the desktop and web clients offer a huge canvas for drilling deeper, organizing big projects, and delegating tasks to others. Many of Wunderlist's competitors share those virtues, but Wunderlist is usually more intuitive, with all of its key features never more than a tap or two away. You can add notes via email and Google Now, but not Siri, at least not for now. But it's easy to set and manage recurring tasks, and while other apps will charge you $20 or more, Wunderlist gives away nearly everything for free. Other apps boast more granular controls or more specialized features, but if you're looking for a powerful, free, cross-platform app for managing your tasks, Wunderlist is absolutely the place to start. Todoist is another thoughtfully designed, powerful, and intuitive app for managing your tasks. It just costs more, $29 a year for basic features like search, reminder notifications, and adding tasks via email. But if you spend a lot of time manicuring your task list, give Todoist a look. You can set up custom labels and filters for your tasks, location-based reminders, and even templates for recurring projects. It's a lot of firepower, but it also encourages you to spend a lot of time fiddling with your tasks. And while the design is clean, it's just a bit too spare for my tastes. Still, Todoist is an easy recommendation. Any do's claim to fame is what it calls the moment, a push notification each morning telling you to plan your day. I find the push a bit too pushy, but lots of people seem to like it. But the app is less intuitive than it should be, and its feature set isn't as robust as its peers. OmniFocus is sometimes called the Ferrari of Todoist apps. It packs an incredible amount of firepower and charges a premium for it. It's actually the app I use every day. But all that power makes for a steep learning curve, and most people will prefer a simpler option. Three other options to consider are Remember the Milk, Clear, and Todo. They have varying degrees of power, but suffer from dated or confusing interfaces, and are generally less intuitive than their peers. Todoist apps help you get things done by getting tasks off your mind and into a place where they can be organized and managed more easily. None of them will actually do your tasks for you, but they will get you started. Wonderlist offers the best balance between power and ease of use, and it's mostly free. So stop watching videos about productivity, and go get something done.

The We're officially out of Reykjavik and into the Icelandic countryside, one of my favorite places in the world. We are headed for a waterfall. Should get there just around sunset and we'll be testing some slow motion and some other stuff. It's going to be a really awesome place to do that. Alright, so we have this side-by-side rig with the 5S and the 6 shooting with the 6 Plus and this is going to be awesome for testing stabilizer, pano mode, all kinds of stuff because we can do real-time side-by-side comparison. The amazing thing about Iceland is it can be storming and raining like crazy and then you can just drive a mile and clouds are opening up and it creates this beautiful scene. Looks like it's about right. It's so fun to be playing with this device that makes it easy to capture great images. We are rolling up on a beautiful area called Þórsmurk, which is a playground of Thor in Icelandic. I was looking at just the way that the light is hitting the piece and thought it might be an awesome area to test the time-lapse. So we're doing that and it's pretty easy. You just switch it into time-lapse mode and hit go and it takes care of everything else and I think it's going to turn into a really awesome piece. We just pulled up at the Iceland Coast Guard Flight Operations Center and we are about to board a training mission where they will be hoisting people outside the chopper. I may even get hoisted. I don't know what's going to happen. To be proficient we have to train this certain amount, certain many times every month. So that's what this is going to be tonight. I'm going to hoist you and I'll give you a thumbs up. The only thing that can't go wrong is if you're holding the race or putting your hands up. So you can't hold onto this. Can I hold a camera? Yes. Good morning. We are here at the Jokulsárlón Glacial Lagoon. The glaciers are floating in this lagoon and it's really beautiful. They also move, they float around so we decided to time-lapse of it. Just drove up a random hill. By random I mean we were driving and we saw a street and we said hey let's try that. And drove for about 30 minutes and ended up at the top of this mountain and also at an enormous glacier. We're going to be able to get back up. Incredible glacier. Got some killer images of it. The tones, there's a few shots that are literally zero color. It looks like I've already converted it to black and white but it's shot full color. Anyway we got out on the ice a little bit and it was really really special. We're on the southwestern most tip of Iceland and this is a really special place and it's one of my favorite places I've ever seen the lights. But it's also beautiful for sunsets and just coastal. 30 frames a second. Now it's close. We just finished a continuous autofocus test with the iPhone 6 Plus versus the iPhone 5S. It was a pretty impressive test actually. What we did is we have the cameras mounted side by side. iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 Plus. As you can see the cameras are as close as possible to each other. And we held a rock in front of the cameras. Started them rolling at the same time. And they were tack sharp on the rock at the time it was thrown. And actually by the time it landed the iPhone 6 Plus was able to refocus on the water and was tack sharp on the splash. And the iPhone 5S actually never did refocus. So it's a pretty impressive improvement versus what we've had in the past. We are here. It's the end of the week and everything comes down to this. I've been dumping footage and editing pictures and assembling everything all night. Actually I haven't slept yet. And we'll be posting my review here in just a couple of hours. I hope you've enjoyed it so far and check out the in-depth review on my blog. Bye.

Amazon is announcing a bunch of new tablets today and these are two of them. This is the Kindle HD 6 and the HD 7. These are low end tablets but they don't have a low end feel to them. So the HD 6 for example starts at $99 which is pretty crazy and it actually doesn't really feel like a $99 tablet. It's really fast, it's got a pretty good 1280 by 800 screen and yes it is very thick and relatively heavy but at this price point it's pretty difficult to complain about that actually. The other thing about these tablets is they're running Amazon Fire OS 4.0. It's based on Android KitKat which is really good for developers. It gives them some benefits like speed and it also gives them another benefit, they're able to work off of the profile system which is built into Android. Amazon's made it better, it's much faster and it means that you can log into multiple profiles very easily and that also means that you can have a kid's profile which leads us to the other tablet that they've announced. This is the exact same thing that we just looked at but it's a kid's edition and for $50 more than you pay for the standard HD 6 or HD 7 you get a kid's edition so of course they've got the kid's profile here and you get a kid mode and that's standard for any Fire tablet but with this version you get this $25 bounty case and you also get a free year of free time which is their content service for kid's content like videos and books and stuff. It's actually a pretty good deal. The last crazy thing about the kid's edition is that for two years you've got a no questions ax, you send them the broken tablet that your kid stepped on or threw into a lake and you fished it out or had the dog eat and they will send you back a replacement no questions asked which is pretty wild. And that's the other thing about all of these HD 6 and HD 7 tablets is they seem to be much more durable, Amazon's really pushing that durability, they've been throwing them around dropping them on the ground here at this event and it hasn't seemed to be a problem. So all three of these tablets should be available in October. They start at $99 for the HD 6 version, if you go up to the HD 7 version you are looking at $139 and then again it's $50 more for the kids edition.

It may not be the most popular tablet that Amazon has announced today, but it's definitely the highest spec. This is the new Kindle Fire HDX. It's the 8.9 inch version, and they've made a bunch of under the hood improvements. So it's very thin. They claim it's 20% lighter than an iPad, and that's thanks to a magnesium frame. But it's basically the same look and feel as the previous HDX. You've got this weird angles on the back. You've got the power button on the back and so on. The screen is 2560 by 1600 pixels, and it looks pretty good to me. It's also quite fast. It's got a Snapdragon 805 processor to speed things up. And the other thing that's new with the HDX is that it's running the Fire OS 4.0. And so that gives you a few new features, one of which is that it now supports Firefly. Just like the Fire phone, you can point it at stuff and it will be able to tell you what it is. It can even do optical character recognition and translation if you point it at like a PDF or a printout or something. In addition to that, it also supports family libraries. So if you and your significant other both have Amazon Prime accounts and you've got a book and she's got a book, you can share the books or you can share the videos amongst each other. The other thing that they've added to this, which I can't show on video, is they say that it supports Dolby Atmos for sound. So they virtualize the experience of having sound above you and beneath you and left and right when you put in headphones. We gave it a listen. It actually sounded pretty good. It was pretty impressive. Another thing that they added to the HDX, it's actually really cool, is they've added a new light sensor. What it does is it detects the color temperature of the light that's shining on it and adjusts the color of the white on the background so that it's a little bit less glaring on your eyes. You can see here this book in the kinderlap just turned to a yellow background so that it wouldn't be this blue underneath the lamp that happens to be shining on it. That's the high points of this. It is a very fast, very capable tablet. Amazon really likes to position it up against the iPad Air. They say it has a million more pixels. They say it's 20% lighter. And it's cheap. It's $379. It's available in October. You can preorder it right now. If you want to get the 4G edition, that's going to be $100 more. Kindle Fire HDX 8.9.

Amazon has decided to unleash a slew of tablets and the most exciting one isn't a tablet, it's actually this reader. It's called the Kindle Voyage and it's available in October. You can pre-order it now. And the big deal with the Kindle Voyage is it has this new screen. It's 300 pixels per inch, which is an upgrade over the Paperwhite's 221 pixels per inch. And it's just gorgeous looking. You can take the text settings and drop it all the way down to the smallest and the thing is still completely readable. It's great. The screen is also completely flush with the rest of the Kindle, so it's all the touch screen and everything is all flat. It's a glass that has a special finish on it so that it's not reflective in the sun, which is pretty impressive. And then the other thing you'll note is there's these lines on the side and this dot. And you can just sort of squeeze the sides of the Kindle and it will page turn for you and then you squeeze the dot to go back a page. It works on either the left or the right side. And you don't have to squeeze very hard, so you don't have to move your thumb. And there's a tiny little haptic feedback that happens when you squeeze it as well. The other thing that's really great about the Voyage is they have changed the backlight on it. It gets much, much brighter, which is great. But the thing that I'm excited about is it's got an auto-brightness option. And so instead of just having to set the brightness manually, you can hit auto-brightness. And what's really cool is if you're reading in bed, it will dim, but then as you're reading, as it's on for longer and longer, it knows that your eyes are adjusting to the darkness and will actually continually dim the screen down lower and lower so that it's not getting too bright for your eyes. So there you go. That is the new Kindle Voyage. It is way lighter as well as thinner as the previous Kindle Paperwhite. It's got this magnesium shell. It's available for $199 with Kindle offers. You can pre-order it right now, and it should be shipping in October.

In the past few decades, Silicon Valley has quickly become one of the most economically vibrant places on earth. Because of this, localized inflation has caused the cost of living in San Francisco to skyrocket. There are many non-profits serving the homeless and low-income communities, but there are certain needs that simply can't be met by large organizations. Enter HandUp, the public benefit company that acts like a kickstarter for people in need. Homelessness is not just one thing. It's not just the typical stereotype people think of. People who are homeless, who have full-time jobs, who are sick, who are all coming from all walks of life. Housing is a huge issue. It's just so expensive to live here. It's a great place to live. But it just, yeah, the cost of rents are escalating. They already were high, escalating really quickly. Our clients have all kinds of challenges in their lives, but even the ones who do awesome and who get this great full-time job, even then, it's really hard to raise a family here. It's just the incomes are not on par at all with the cost of living. So HandUp is a direct donation system for homeless people and other people in need that lets you donate directly to a specific person that you want to help. And then 100% of the funds go directly towards food, medical care, housing, and other basic needs for that person. So this is the HandUp homepage. We really try to emphasize the human connections as much as possible. So we see this banner of a lot of our members. And this is totally a random selection of members. What we're doing is using technology to help create a bridge so that the community can help directly. We are building technology for people in poverty and for human service organizations. And we're also a for-profit technology startup. But we are a new kind of for-profit called a public benefit corporation. And so that lets us have the growth of a traditional for-profit while also having the values of a socially driven organization. So the way HandUp works is we build the technology and we partner with nonprofits that already serve the homeless and at-risk community. So we sign up an organization like Compass Family Services, teach them how to use our software, and then the case managers will administer the site. My name is Kevin and I hope to get into a one bedroom apartment. What I want most of all, especially for Christmas, I don't want two front teeth, I want a whole set. And I hope to receive a bed. Scientific tools like box open end wrenches, socket ratchets, breaker bars, pipe wrench, crescent wrench, screwdriver, micrometer. Currently looking for employment. I don't have any codes for the interview. Any kind of job, you have to have teeth. And you just look really funny and sound really funny when you don't have your teeth. So being employed again is on my list. One of HandUp's many success stories is single mother Janelle, who needed a computer to finish her online school. So I'm a single mother of two boys and I work in San Francisco for a human service agency. And I go to school at San Francisco City College. I had enrolled in an online class and I didn't have a computer so I was using the computer at work, don't tell anyone, to do my assignments. And so I was like, no, you need a computer. So she told me about HandUp and she said you should just create a profile and see if they can help you. I did that and my request was granted in like 24 hours. The donors were just awesome. They were just, I don't know, happy to help. I think she put in a request for about $500 for a computer and someone donated $400 to her right off the bat. And just knowing that there are people out there who would do that, and you know, just for a stranger, I think that's been really cool and really surprising to see. One thing that HandUp does is tries to create this two-way communication between our members and their donors. So on the bottom we see the most recent update that Janelle sent, thanking the donors for all the help that they've given. So on the right side we see this is how you can donate to Janelle's account. And then there's also the option to add a $5 tip to HandUp and this is basically how we support our operations. We even cover the credit card processing costs so we make sure that if you select $50 then $50 goes to Janelle. And then I have the opportunity to respond here as a donor and write Janelle a little message so it really starts to create this community feel and the support network a lot like your Facebook friends would. Technology isn't a silver bullet. It's not going to completely solve poverty, but just in my experience working in nonprofits, working with incredibly vulnerable populations, it's so powerful as a tool to reach more people and really importantly for our model is sharing the story. With an estimated 3.5 million homeless people in the United States and countless more tatering on the brink, low-income America needs all the help it can get. Hopefully for-profit models like HandUp are able to both maintain profitability and more importantly adhere to their founding documents.

People want big phones. First that idea was silly, then it was a little bit true, now it's just kind of obvious. We don't use our phones to make calls, we use them to watch movies and read books and get work done and send weird videos on Snapchat. So we want phones with big screens and great cameras and good battery life and lots of apps. So Apple made that. Exactly that. This is the iPhone 6. There's really nothing more accurate to say about the iPhone 6 than it's a big iPhone. It's taller and wider and slightly heavier than last year's iPhone 5s, though it's actually a bit thinner. It comes in the same three colors as the 5s, silver, gold, and space gray, plus three storage options. You either get 16GB, though I wish the base option were 32, plus 64 or 128GB if you upgrade. It has much slimmer, rounder edges than the 5s, which makes it both a little more comfortable and a little less starkly impressive. Because it's thinner, it's still easy enough to hold in one hand, though I definitely have more trouble using it than the 5s. It's about the size of your average flagship Android phone, somewhere in between last year's Moto X and this year's HTC One M8. Moving up from a 4-inch phone takes a minute to get used to, but it really is worth it. The iPhone 6 looks a bit like the very first iPhone, actually. There's no question this is an Apple product. It's really well made, sturdy and high end, and even the buttons feel better than they ever have. The power button is on the right side now, which took forever for my fingers to relearn, but it's definitely the right location. And the volume buttons are a little longer and a lot clickier. The only real design flaw in my mind is the stripes along the back where the antennas go. They outline the top and bottom of the iPhone 6, and they almost look out of place on an otherwise clean design. Same goes for the protruding camera lens, which looks a little odd and makes the phone wobble slightly if you put it down on a flat surface, but it's really not that big a deal. The front of the phone is all about the new 4.7-inch 1334x750 screen. It looks great, like iPhone screens have for a while. I can't make out individual pixels, and it's totally visible outdoors. The screen curves into the edges of the phone, which makes swiping and tapping feel a lot more natural. The iPhone 6 doesn't feel like a box with a screen on top. It feels more authentic somehow. Most apps upscale pretty simply onto the bigger display. Developers can change them to suit the screen, or text and pictures just all get a little bigger, but I imagine most developers will pretty quickly update to show more at once instead of just the same but bigger. In some places, having a big screen makes a huge difference. I instantly started typing both faster and more accurately on the larger display since there's just more room. Movies look better, framing photos is easier, you can see more emails at a time on the screen. It's great. But I can't help but wonder if Apple could or should have done more with this big screen. You get an extra row of icons on the home screen, a neat recent menu in your multitasking window, and not that much else. There's a strange but sort of useful reachability mode where you double tap the home button and the screen literally slides down so you can reach it. On the iPhone 6 Plus, there are a few other changes like landscape mode in a few apps, but on the 6 even though there's a bigger display and a lot more space to play with, nothing really changes. It's bigger and better, but it's the same. That idea really persists across everything about the iPhone 6. It supports faster LTE, voice over LTE, Wi-Fi calling, and a handful of other new standards and upgrades. There's a new A8 chip which is noticeably faster than even last year's A7, and the M8 motion processor can tell you how many flights of stairs you've climbed in addition to your steps and lots of other health data. Even the speaker is louder, which I actually really appreciate. The battery is a little bigger and noticeably better. I could charge it one night and then not need to again until midday two days later, and that's with pretty heavy use. I'm still charging it every night, but I can forget and not worry about it. Those are all updates you won't really see, though. They just run in the background and make the iPhone 6 slightly better and faster than the 5S. The one you will see is the camera. It's still 8 megapixels, but the camera's been upgraded in a bunch of great ways. It uses what Apple calls Focus Pixels to do phase detect autofocus, and it is just insanely fast. You can't really notice it focusing, yet shots always come out right. You can take higher resolution panoramas now thanks to the faster processor, and they look amazing. But my two favorite features both have to do with video. One is that you can shoot slow motion video up to 240 frames per second, which turns quick moving action into this epic replay footage. The other is cinematic video stabilization, which does an incredible job of taking your shaky handheld video and making it still and smooth. You can see the frame warp and bend a bit as it works, but the effect is amazing. There's lots of new software here, time lapse videos, burst selfies, a new photos app, and more. The camera has always been the iPhone's killer app, and the iPhone 6 is a big upgrade. The rest of the story of the iPhone 6 is the story of iOS 8. There's now predictive typing on the keyboard, which is sometimes useful and sometimes hilariously not useful. The Health app plugs into the M8 processor and eventually into the Apple Watch to tell you your steps, your elevation, and all sorts of other fitness data. Messages lets you talk with your voice and leave group messages, which, thank God. My favorite upgrade, though, is to Spotlight, which now also searches the App Store, the web, Wikipedia, and more, all from the one pull-down window. It's just super handy. Apple's software and its app ecosystem have always been what set the iPhone apart, and that hasn't changed here. The iPhone 6 is weird. On one hand, nearly everything about it is better. Bigger screen, faster processor, more impressive and versatile camera. It's the best iPhone yet, and it's the one I suspect most people will buy. For me, at least, the 6 Plus is just too big. I was hoping that when it made a bigger phone, Apple would do things or change its plan to really show off the promise of a larger screen, to make it easier to use and take full advantage of. But it didn't. Apple just made a bigger iPhone, the same thing I've used for years. That's okay, and again, this may well be the best smartphone on the market. But the iPhone 6 doesn't quite feel like a revolutionary device. It feels like Apple playing catch-up, just giving the people what they want and nothing more. I wish Apple had really taken the chance to rethink how we use a phone now that our phones are so big. Instead, we just got a really great big phone. Nothing less and nothing more.

The only thing you really need to know about the iPhone 6 Plus is that it's a big iPhone. A really big iPhone. After years of mocking Samsung and others for putting out giant phones, Apple's finally caved to the clear demand for enormous screens. And it turns out that an iPhone with a huge screen is pretty great. The iPhone 6 Plus is enormous. Although it's a similar size to the Galaxy Note 3, it feels bigger than the Samsung when you hold it. It's taller and thinner and getting your hand all the way around it isn't easy. Between the size and the slippery curved aluminum edges, I prefer using it in Apple's leather case. This might be the first iPhone that's better in a case, actually. I'm not a big fan of the weird antenna lines and protruding camera lens on the back of the phone, and a case hides all those things nicely. Of course, the reason this thing is so big is the 5.5 inch 1920 by 1080 Retina HD display, which looks fantastic. It's the highest pixel density screen Apple's ever shipped on a phone, and it's definitely brighter and sharper than the previous Retina displays. It's not as super saturated as Samsung's screens, but it looks far more accurate, especially when you're taking photos. Until apps are updated to support this bigger screen, you'll definitely see some fuzziness since the phone just makes everything about old apps bigger. Even the menu bar gets bigger, which makes it feel like you're using a phone for old people. Blown up apps look fine for the most part, but some get pretty fuzzy looking. Gmail is particularly bad. But I'd expect most software developers to update their apps relatively soon. But you don't need these updated apps to appreciate the screen right away. It's just so big and gorgeous, and browsing the web and watching videos on it is a joy. Video in particular is terrific. I watched a Packers game for a couple hours on the 6 Plus and never thought about switching to a TV. It's that good. Of course, watching video on any big screen phone is great, so it's up to Apple to figure out how to take better advantage of this new size that's in between an iPhone and iPad. It's starting slowly. Apps that are updated for the bigger screen can take advantage of some new features that make the iPhone 6 Plus almost like a smaller iPad. There's a new two column view in landscape that shows you more information in various apps and a new landscape keyboard that includes arrow keys and dedicated cut, copy, and paste buttons. It's all very useful, even if the icon in this paste button is terrible. Seriously, this is awful. Come on. Once there are apps that take advantage of this new size properly, I can't see ever using my iPad Mini again. The iPhone 6 Plus is almost as big, has an awesome screen, and is also my phone, which is a huge advantage. And the iPhone 6 Plus battery seems to last forever. If you're a frequent traveler, the 6 Plus is a no brainer. The 6 Plus also has a killer new camera, which is now so good I can't imagine ever using a point and shoot camera ever again. It's still 8 megapixels, but Apple's added what it calls focus pixels for faster focusing, and it really works. This thing takes pictures fast. You can also take 240 frames per second slow motion videos, which is awesome, and the 6 Plus has optical image stabilization, which makes it even better in low light than the iPhone 6. It's just an amazing little camera. But apart from the huge screen and terrific camera upgrades, the iPhone 6 Plus is still very much an iPhone. iOS 8 offers a wealth of new improvements to the basic experience of using an iPhone, but there's nothing drastically new here. Apple Pay looks like it will be the first successful mobile payment system ever, but it's not rolling out for another month or so. And new features like Wi-Fi calling and voice over LTE might finally bring voice calling into the modern era, but the carriers have to support them first. So right now the iPhone 6 Plus is really just an iPhone with a huge screen. If that's what you're looking for, you should get one. You won't regret it. But eventually the iPhone 6 Plus has the potential to be much more. After being on the road for a few days, I found myself using it for everything. My laptop and my iPad remain safely tucked away in my bag. This is the future of phones, and it's a future Samsung and others have been chasing for a while. The iPhone 6 Plus might be late to the game, but it's off to a great start.

Homelessness is not just one thing. It's not just the typical stereotype people think of. It's just, it's so expensive to live here. It's a great place to live, I love it, but the cost of rents are escalating. They already were high, escalating really quickly. There's a lot of money in the city, clearly. And there's a lot of, also a lot of interest in issues like poverty, homelessness, and so it feels like the kind of place where people are willing to throw money at a problem and come up with all these different creative ways to fix it. Technology isn't a silver bullet. What we're doing is using technology to help the community help directly.

Headphones are your smartphone's best friend. They're nearly as ubiquitous as smartphones themselves, and they let you listen to music, games, or video, and make and receive hands-free calls without disturbing those around you. Many smartphones, including the iPhone, come with a basic set of headphones that have a microphone and remote on their cords. But most included headphones, like Apple's EarPods, kinda suck, with a poor fit, mediocre sound and a cable that turns into knots right in your pocket. You can spend hundreds of dollars on getting great headphones to go with your new smartphone, but if you just want something better than came with the phone and don't want to spend a fortune, there are countless options available for under 50 bucks. A good replacement headphone offers three things. Great sound, great fit, and a microphone, so you can still make phone calls. Some offer volume controls, but that's not as common in this price range, and the compatibility with volume controls varies from smartphone to smartphone. And they should be cheap and easily replaceable, so it's not a problem if you lose them, send them through the washing machine, or just wear them out over the course of a year or two. If you're looking to replace your EarPods or other bundled headphones, the best overall option are Panasonic's TCM125. These basic black headphones are super lightweight, comfortable to wear for extended periods of time, and most importantly, sound fantastic. They include a microphone and remote for play and pause controls, but unfortunately no volume, and they come with three different size tips to fit a variety of ears. The Panasonic stayed put in my ears, whether I was swiftly moving to catch the next subway train or flapping my jaw on a long conference call. The Panasonic's also have a balanced sound profile for a variety of music and audio sources. They sound great for pop, rock, metal, classical, hip-hop, podcasts, and more. They sound so good that I often forgot I was wearing inexpensive headphones and not more high-end models. And the best part about the TCM125 is just how cheap they actually are. You can easily find these for about half the cost of Apple's $29 EarPods. It's not a big deal if you lose or break these, you just buy another pair. The one area where the TCM125s don't blow away the competition is with heavy bass response. If you want more bass in your headphones, the Sony MDR-XB50 are the ones you should get. They're a bit more expensive than our top pick, but they offer a lot more bass response than the Panasonic's. The downside is they don't sound as good overall and aren't as versatile for different types of music. They're also a bit heavier and larger than the Panasonic's, but they're still comfortable and fit in my ears well and didn't really fall out. These also have a nice cord that resists turning into a ball of knots in my pocket. There are many other options across the field, but none of them really fit as well or sounded as good as our top picks. The Earbuds Inspire 400 are sweat proof and designed for wear during a workout. They do a really good job of staying in your ears while moving. They also have a remote with volume control that works with the iPhone, but they just weren't as comfortable or as good sounding as the Panasonic's. Similarly, the Urban Ears Kransen are packed with nifty design features like the ability to lock the earbuds together for storage, a fabric covered cord, and a built in cable tie so you don't have to worry about knots. They do a good job of staying in my ears, but they don't sound as nice overall compared to my top picks. The others that we tested all had a tendency to just fall out of my ears whenever I moved, turned my head, or just took a sip from a water bottle. It was difficult to get many of them to make a proper seal, which leads to lower quality sound and makes them fall out easier. The best options, like the ones we already mentioned, have designs that lock the headphones in your ears so they don't fall out. It turns out you don't have to settle for Apple or Samsung's inferior headphones. Almost every option we tested were better than the headphones that come with your smartphone. And if you just want the best overall headphones without spending more than 50 bucks, you should get the Panasonic TCM125.

On this stage, 30 years ago, Steve introduced the Macintosh to the world. You will agree that this too is a very key day for Apple. The biggest advancement in the history of iPhone. The iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. Anodized aluminum back, complete with stainless steel Apple. We call them Retina HD. They're a lot bigger. Here on the left is an iPhone 5S. In the center, iPhone 6. And on the right, the iPhone 6 Plus. And boy are they packed with pixels. Over 1 million pixels. Thinner than anything we have ever made. Well if you double touch a new generation chip, the Apple A8. Up to 25% faster CPU performance. Up to 50% faster graphics performance. It's up to 50 times faster than the original iPhone. It's 50% more efficient than the A7 chip. And that allows us to sustain performance over a longer period of time. Good morning. Today I am thrilled to debut for you Vainglory. A world of 1.3 million polygons running at 60 frames per second. And more than 100 fully animated characters all interacting at once. The iPhone 6 Plus. 80 hours of music listening. 14 hours of HD video playback. 12 hours Wi-Fi browsing, LTE browsing, 3G browsing. Really great battery life. While the new generation M8 can tell when you're cycling and you're walking, you're running, it also has a new ability to estimate distance. And for the first time, give you credit for elevation as well. Flights of stairs. The LTE in iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is faster than ever. 150 megabit per second. And there's now 20 LTE bands. That's the most in any smartphone in the world. Maybe you've heard of it. It's called VoLTE. It means we can take the voice data and move it up onto the 4G LTE network. It makes calls clearer sounding and you always have simultaneous voice and data. There's also faster Wi-Fi which is up to three times faster. Up to 433 megabit per second. You can make a standard call in the same way and it will go out over Wi-Fi, but as you leave your home and transition onto the cellular network, the call will seamlessly just hand off and keep going. There are great new cameras in both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. There's an all new EyeSight camera in it. It's an 8 megapixel EyeSight camera, a new generation EyeSight sensor in it. Focus pixels. This is called phase detection autofocus. Best way to do fast autofocus. Now the 6 and the 6 Plus can take video up to 240 frames a second. Yes. Yeah, but how much does it cost? It starts at just 199. The 16 gigs, 399 for 64 and 499 at that new 128 gigabyte configuration. We're going to start to ship them on September 19th. We'll be able to pre-order them starting this Friday on the 12th and the team is worth thank you. We've enlisted the help of a couple of our friends to do some fun new ads. Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon. These guys are incredibly fun to work with. So that is iPhone. Our vision is to replace this and we call it Apple Pay. That's it. It is so cool. And we've got a groundbreaking NFC radio antenna built across the top and it stores all of your payment information encrypted and securely. We don't store the credit card number and we don't give it to the merchant. If your iPhone is lost or stolen, you can use Find My iPhone and suspend all of the payments from that device. There's no need to cancel your credit card. Apple doesn't know what you bought, where you bought it or how much you paid for it. The cashier doesn't get to see your name, credit card number or security code. McDonald's with 27 million visitors every day and McDonald's is even adding Apple Pay to its drive-through. And that's Apple Pay. Thank you. We have one more thing. It is the next chapter in Apple's story. And here it is. Apple Watch is the most personal device we've ever created. And it works seamlessly with iPhone and it's also a comprehensive health and fitness device. It's this dial. It's called a crown. The digital crown includes infrared LEDs and photo diodes that translate rotary movement into digital data. The watch senses that you're raising your wrist and then activates the display. The digital crown is a remarkable input device. It fluidly zooms into apps. It enables nimble, precise adjustment. And critically, you can use it without obstructing the display. It's also the home button. Or you can even share something as personal as your own heartbeat. It's been laminated to a machined and polished single crystal of sapphire. The display also senses force. We've developed a linear actuator that provides haptic feedback to complement your interactions. It's essentially miniaturizing an entire computer system onto a single chip. Infrared and visible light LEDs along with photo sensors detect your pulse rate. The watch provides a comprehensive picture of your daily activity. Inductive charging. Completely sealed, it requires no alignment or exposed contacts, keeping time to plus or minus 50 milliseconds. We have designed six different straps and a mechanism that makes the straps easily interchangeable. Of course, we knew one size wouldn't fit everyone, so we've also developed a smaller watch with matching smaller straps. We've actually created three distinct collections. Apple Watch, the sport collection, Apple Watch Edition technology to be worn. To be truly personal. This is the current moon phase. We scheduled our event on a nice full moon, so this will look great here. We've created something called glances. You just swipe up from the bottom of the watch face. If I just swipe horizontally, I can see things like where I'm located, here at Flint Center, the current weather outside, NASDAQ, stock quote, and world time. Where I can see music I'm currently playing on devices around me. We're using the Taptic Engine to give you feedback on your wrist. It's just like somebody tapping you on the wrist very gently. Even if you're sitting right next to someone, they won't be able to tell that you're getting notified. It's very subtle, but you'll feel it on your own wrist. Here's a calendar invitation. Other notifications. Ah, here's one from Johnny. We've actually analyzed the text that's coming in and picked out some things you might want to just tap on and send back. We can do Siri just by pressing the digital crown here. What movies are playing tonight in Cupertino? Photos app here. Now, though, I can use the digital crown to zoom right in to photos and see which ones I'd like to look at. Let's tap on maps here. Now, while you're walking, Apple Watch will give you Taptic feedback on each turn so you'll know whether it's time to turn left or to turn right. And those feelings are different for each direction. So you can actually know without even looking at your watch. And there are my friends. When we're getting hungry, we can just tap each other and we'll feel it on our wrist. So I'll just do the triple tap here for going to lunch. Okay. So we do this a lot. That means what's for lunch. So I know how much Jeff loves sushi. We've also been working to enable third-party developers with something called WatchKit. You can see it's using the same layout as the original Tweet, but now it's much richer with images and text. It looks like the Twitter brand, and it has buttons that you'd like to use to favorite or retweet right on that message. MLB lets you see the current sports scores. Honeywell lets you control the temperature in your home. With the Lutron app, you can control the lighting and the scenes in your home with one tap. With the Nike app, you can challenge your friends to go for a run. And we just can't wait to see what developers are going to create on this great new platform. Health and fitness. We have two new applications in Apple Watch. The first is the fitness app. It monitors all of your activity and movement throughout the day. And the second is the workout app. It allows you to set specific goals for specific types of workouts, like cycling or running. It uses an accelerometer to measure your total body movement. It has a custom sensor that can measure intensity by tracking your heart rate. And it uses the GPS and Wi-Fi in your iPhone to track how far you've moved, with the goal of helping you sit less, move more, and get some exercise. And it is so much more that we don't have time to cover this morning. The list of features is a mile long. Apple Watch requires the iPhone because it's been designed to seamlessly work together. Apple Pay will work with Apple Watch. But we've also designed it so that it will work with iPhone 5, iPhone 5C, and iPhone 5S. Apple Watch starts at only $349. And it will be available early next year. We are so excited about Apple Watch. And I hope you are as well. You too, join us on stage and perform. Oh Zen Master of Hard-Hand Software, Tim Cook. You would consider putting songs of innocence out to over half a billion people free in say five seconds from now. Yes. It's the largest album release of all time. Five, four, three, two, one. Wow, that's instant gratification.

Sailing is a 7,000 year old technology that has been almost completely replaced in the modern world. Commercial ships are run by fuel-hungry engines which become less economically and environmentally feasible by the moment. Two San Francisco based entrepreneurs have developed a technology to revive sailing and do their part to save the world. The ferry system in San Francisco Bay is very popular. The people that use the ferry system either on a normal commute or when we have the emergencies that happen on a periodic basis. When the earthquake hit in 89, the Bay Bridge went into operation, the ferry systems took over. The problem with the ferry systems the way they're currently instituted is they are horrendously inefficient in terms of diesel use. They're also creating a lot of greenhouse gas and it's just not sustainable. You can drive your Cadillac Escalade across the Golden Gate Bridge and get 19 miles per gallon and you'd be far more environmentally correct than you would be to take the ferry system the way it's currently operated. Some of these vessels burn 300 gallons an hour. There is certainly an overwhelming desire to make ferries greener, cleaner, more fuel-efficient. And after all the ferries in the Bay Area are government subsidized so if we can save cost it saves taxpayers so it's kind of a win across the board. I met Jay I guess two years ago and he introduced his wing project. From that moment I guess there was six months of design and iterations, a lot of different tests to optimize the size of the wing for this test platform and then the actual build took maybe six months. Everybody knows what normal sails are like. They're just fabric and they're essentially one side of a wing. The benefit from the wing is that you have two sides and it's a very precise shape. So an equal size soft sail and a wing, the wing is going to be about twice as effective, twice as powerful. The wing is 45 feet tall, front to back is 10 feet. It weighs roughly 600 pounds so it's a very, very light structure. Sort of insignificant to the weight of a ferry and it's potentially very powerful. These ferries are traveling along at 30 and 40 knots sometimes and I forget the exact number but you certainly can produce I think six or seven tons of force at full speed if required. So the wing also has inside of it a brain, it has a GPS system, it has a satellite tracking system, it has a vessel data recording system. It knows where it is, it knows where you're going. All we have to do is turn the wing on and off. The people who drive big ships are not sailors so there's kind of a discontinuity between wind power systems and the people on the boat who are just not going to use those systems. What this wing does is completely autonomous. The crew doesn't need to know anything about the wing or how it works. It's literally an on off system. We do that by having a feathering tail system. Very much like a tail on an airplane controls the pitch and hence the lift. We have a vertical tail that controls the wing and hence the power the wing produces. If it can make power for the boat it will do. If it can't it just feathers and is kind of a benign thing on the ship. In a way you could say that the wing is a hybrid system. It's not intended to completely replace the motors. It is intended to make them as efficient as possible and use the wind to drive the vessel as much as possible. The ferries in the Bay Area, I think they use certainly over a million dollars worth of fuel per year. There are 25 ferries. We demonstrated we could save 30 to 40 percent of the fuel costs. We have proven technology works and is valid and saves fuel and emissions. It's really handed over to the lawmakers, but certainly the policy makers. We've demonstrated the technology is available. Are they going to insist that that technology is included in the next generation of ferries? I think it's going to become a requirement pretty soon that the energy standards and greenhouse gas emissions are going to be. You're going to have to show that you're reducing. If you can't show that you're reduced from what has been done in the past, I don't think they're going to allow the technology. To some it might be a threat. I mean you're going to use less fuel. You're probably going to have smaller motors. You're going to do things differently. It's a clear choice. You can either go the dirty diesel route or you can go for a clean tech route. The wind's got a tremendous amount of power in it. Seventeen quadrillion kilowatt hours of power in the wind in the course of a year. It's a number that's unimaginable. If there's only a one percent chance that we're going to seriously damage the conditions of life on Earth, that one percent chance is enough for me to say, okay, we've got to do something here. The rest of the universe is 20 miles this way. 20 miles up is what the rest of the universe looks like. We absolutely have got to stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Anything that we can do to change that is what we've got to do.

Welcome to the Verge Live for the iPhone 6 slash Apple Watch event. I'm Ross Miller. I'm Chris Sigler. And that's it for formalities. We just want to talk about Apple shit for a little bit. So let's do it. Wearables! Yes! I can't believe you just put a slap bracelet on my wrist. I warned you. I'll take it. By the way, there's nothing, I don't know why we have a slap bracelet prop because there's nothing slappy about... Correction, we have two. We do have two props. Yes, that's true. All right, let's get started. So the big thing today, of course, Apple announced the iPhone 6 as expected, the iPhone 6 Plus. It's exactly as it was leaked. Yes. They also went... 4.7 and 5.5. 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch screen. We'll get to that. The Apple Watch we'll talk about later in the show. And of course, all our friends in San Francisco will be here as soon as they're done doing all the hands-ons and they'll have the way more interesting first-hand information on this. So if you have questions, hashtag Ask Verge on Twitter, we'll be checking it. We'll be able to answer, hopefully we'll be able to answer a little bit of it. If not, San Francisco will answer it for us. And let's just kind of get into it. So you've done enough Apple events. I've done a few in my time. Let's talk about the big thing. First off, a new venue entirely. Well, old venue. Old venue is new again. This is where they introduced the original Macintosh some 25 years ago. So a little bit of nostalgia, I think. Tim Cook mentioned it first thing when they started today. And it's huge, right? The venues that they normally use, Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco primarily, isn't nearly as big as the Flint Center where they held this event today. So they obviously wanted a much larger crew on hand. They got it. They filled that theater up. And then of course, they built that enormous box right outside the trailer. Which is at U2's dressing room or at the hands-on booth? Both, hopefully. I can only imagine that Bono was getting dressed this morning amongst Apple watches. Amongst his Apple staff too. He's got a purse for each item of clothing and just fits it in. Yes, he does. Except the sunglasses. Those have never come off. Right, no. Not since after Europa. Right. Right. No, before that, I think. That was like Joshua tree era. No, no, no. I think the sunglasses turned Joshua tree. Oh, you didn't? No, I think all that you can leave behind is a confirmation. Okay. I think pop, Zoropa. Look, I'm a big U2 fan. Apparently. I like dad music sometimes. This is Zootv, by the way, for Zoropa fans. But anyway, let's talk about the phones and not U2. So the leaks were 100% spot on. Basically, yeah. This is the first complete departure in industrial design since the 4, right? If you consider the 4, the 4S, the 5, and the 5S, birds of a feather, this is the first complete departure from that. It's a rounder design. You could argue that the 4S to the 5 is slightly stretched. Obviously, the original to the 3G changed the back. But no, this is a stark departure. It's starting to look like some of the other phones we've seen out there in the world. This is a point that's been made a number of times in the past. There are only so many ways you can skin a cat. There are only so many ways you can present a glass rectangle. I think that this is one of the biggest challenges for industrial designers from here on out, which might explain why they hired Newsom, right? Very weirdly, on a Friday night, they broke that news of Andy Fair. Hey, Newsom wanted to get hired on a Friday, and by God, he got hired on a Friday. But he is a superstar designer in his own right. I think that you're probably going to see more of that, these superstar designer partnerships with smartphone makers, because again, there are only so many ways that you can make these phones look. I think that that at least partially explains why you're seeing Apple explore watches now. We're approaching this sort of steady state with the smartphone, I think, and then they're going to move into this other field. But the 6 and the 6 Plus are still very interesting devices. It amazes me how many people want a much larger iPhone. It's just not my thing, but Sam Sheffer, who is sitting just beyond the view of the camera here, is absolutely chomping at the bit for a 5.5-inch 6 Plus. I don't get it, but I'm sure, like him, there are probably millions of people... Wait, what do you use? What do you use? So, until very recently, I was using a 5S. Totally comfortable with the 4-inch size. Now I'm on a Nexus 5, which is shattered into a million pieces, slightly larger, and I'll probably be getting a Moto 6 this month, which is 5.2. Wait, a Moto 6? Or the Moto X? The Moto X. Excuse me, which is 5.2. But 5.5, I don't know, there's something... I think Nilay just made the point on Twitter a few minutes ago that it's hard to see how or why you would get an iPad Mini if you have the 6 Plus, because the display sizes are just so similar. And I do think that they're starting to really, really blend those two genres, the small tablet and the big phone. So it'll be interesting to see... I'm assuming Apple's gonna have an iPad event later this year. It'll be interesting to see what happens there. Just what becomes the iPad Mini, which is still a much different size. I mean, no one... It is, but the 5.5, I mean, looking at the pictures, I mean, you have to... I mean, I guess we have some 5.5-inch phones or thereabouts in the office that we can use as a rough comparison, but that's a big phone. Once you get to the mid-fives, that starts to feel really big in the hand. And of course, there are a couple that are 6 and beyond, which is just insane. And then you have things like the Sony Z Ultra, which is just out of control. But even if it's just down to app ecosystem, like with the iPad, you don't always get a steady cellular connection, you don't always buy it, sell it, but also there are iPad-only apps, which may change now. You also... That's a very good point. You also can't hold an iPad Mini to your face. Well, I mean, you can, but it wouldn't do you any good. Absolutely. Whereas with a 6 Plus, you're more than welcome to hold it to your face. Right. Well, what else is there? So it's a new design. It's thinner than the iPhone 5S, and I actually... I forgot how thin this thing is. I use a Mophie case because the battery life is shit on this. This feels thin to me, and now it's actually noticeably different. Well, I can't remember which OEM told me this, but several years ago, an OEM told me that they've conducted a lot of focus group testing where they've kind of discovered that the point of diminishing returns with smartphone thickness, where consumers can no longer really tell the difference nor care about the difference, is somewhere between 5 and 6 millimeters. And so I think what you're gonna see in the industry, for better or for worse, is these companies, Apple included, are going to keep pushing for that 5 to 6 millimeter thickness, and then only once they get to that point technologically will they say, okay, we're gonna stop trying to make this thing thinner and we're gonna focus on battery performance, right? Because what has always frustrated me, even going back to the 3G, 3GS, iPhone 4 days, is that instead of keeping the same thickness, which people are happy with, and just making the battery bigger or more potent, they insist on making the phone thinner and keeping battery life roughly the same. And I think we would all agree that battery performance on these phones is about somewhere between 20 and 30% shorter than it really needs to be for that sense of confidence that no matter what happens over the course of the day, you're gonna be able to make it through to the end. I've definitely had days where this happens a lot at like CES, where you get up at 5.30, 6 in the morning, you're working until 11, 10, or 10, 11 midnight at night, your phone's not gonna make it. For an average day, 9 to 5 is not a problem, but it would be nice to have a phone that just focuses on battery life, which is why I've always sort of extolled the virtues of the Max line that Motorola used to make. So we'll see, we'll see. We'll see how the battery does on these, but it sounds, I mean they even said it on stage, that the emphasis was on preserving battery performance versus the 5S, not improving it. Right, and it still needs to be better than it is, they're announcing, you're right, and we'll get to that. I do want to talk about some of the questions we're getting already, hashtag ask Verge, and I don't need to actually say that because clearly you guys know that already. A lot of things about Apple Watch we'll get to, but difference between 6 and 6 Plus. I was watching, the video feed kept coming out for me, I know the camera's different, obviously the screen size is different, what else? Battery I don't know if we have battery capacities off hand, the milliamp hours, but the 6 Plus does obviously have a larger battery, and as you mentioned the 6 Plus has optical image stabilization in the camera. The sensor is the same and they both have digital image stabilization, the 6 Plus just adds optical as well. Other phones, Android phones have had that in the past, but it'll be interesting to have that on an iPhone because of course iPhones are known for just having really good image quality so I think it's going to make a big difference for them. Other than that, I think they're pretty much the same phone as far as I can tell. It's just the size of the screen size, size in your pocket, and the price of course, is it $100 difference? $100 difference. One thing that we should talk about that, so the way they've structured it with the 6, it's a $199 to $299 jump for a 48 gigabyte increase in storage capacity, right? You go from 16 to 64, is that 48? I'm not good with numbers. That's 48. Whereas before, that would have been a 16 to 32 jump. It seems like they're finally acknowledging that flash prices are coming down. They're saying, okay, 64 is the sweet spot. I'll be honest, I'm a very cloud-centric person, but so many friends of mine and family members have said, 64 is not enough. I need more storage, either because they're taking just billions of pictures or they're downloading a ton of music or what have you. They've topped these phones out to 128, which is $399 for the 6 and $499 for the 6 Plus, I think. Right, so it now tops out at $500. Right, and they've just skipped 32 entirely, which is funny to me because I've always bought the 32 model. 32 to me is the sweet spot, and they've taken that away and said, no, now 64 is the sweet spot. 16 is the entry level. Yeah, 16 is just not enough. No, 16 is not enough. That's the point where not only can you safely assume that you're not going to be able to download any movies for flights, but it's also to the point where it's like you have to start to be careful with apps, especially if you're a gamer, right? Some of these games are one, two, three gigabytes. No, no, I didn't know. The story that I have is when we were doing, when Addy did the Bioshock for iPhone, we tried it out, I was like, all right, I'll put it on my phone, whatever. I have the phone here, and then I realized I do delete every app I had, Facebook, half my pictures, Clear Out Pocket, Spotify offline. Worth it for Bioshock. Not for iPhone. I delete that immediately, and I get this weird sense of emptiness where it's like, what did I do with all that data? Yeah, that's just all gone. But 16 just seems ridiculously small. Yeah, I think their volume seller is going to be the 64, and I think we're going to be surprised at how many 128s they sell. I don't know. Do we have numbers on which sizes do well? I have to imagine the entry level is the best seller. It's the cheapest one. I want an iPhone for the cheapest. So first of all, I don't think that we, we certainly don't have official numbers on that, but I would actually guess that the 32 is the sweet spot. Maybe I'm wrong. 32 always felt like the sweet spot to me, because it's a nice balance between cost and capacity. Right. But yeah, we're getting rid of 32 entirely. Yeah. So then of course there's the, a couple of things, so there was optical image stabilization for the iPhone 6 Plus. That's not on the iPhone 6. We talked about that. There's a one touch mode, what is it? Reachability where like, you know our phones are bigger, so we're just going to cut off half the screen, bring everything down, and if you've got to touch the top. How does that work? So it's a double tap of the home button, right? Right. And that brings the buttons within reach. Yeah, they had to do something, right? And it's a tough call, because Apple has to walk back years of saying that four inches is the sweet spot for these devices. Which, I mean, you know. They walk back and they're just not saying it, of course. Like, they're not going to follow this. No, no, no, of course. But it also means that they need to adopt solutions that feel weird or frankly a little stolen. I mean, you know, other vendors who've explored five inch plus phones have implemented one handed modes. Samsung has one. And it's just something that you have to do in order to make the phone usable at that size. But it's, you know, this is certainly true, as true now as it ever has been. Like, if you're listening to what Apple is saying, then you're not really paying attention to the direction that they're going. And I think this is a perfect example of that, right? Like, 4.7, 5.5, if you go back even two or three years, you would have said, well, there's no way they're ever going to make a phone that size. Even though the market pressure might be there, they're just philosophically, that's not where they're at. And yet here we are today, 4.7, 5.5. Right. So let's move on. Let's talk about the thing that applies to all Apple products now or will apply to all Apple products. It's kind of a good transition between this and the watch. And that's the Apple Pay, that's NFC payments. Yeah. Which... This is, I mentioned this on Twitter earlier. You know, the mobile payments thing is a great example of a technology where, you know, Apple is not quote-unquote innovating here, but they are legitimizing a space that has so far been kind of a cluster, so to speak. Yeah. Like, you know, Google Wallet hasn't been broadly accepted with US carriers because of weird business things. Well, it was Verizon was supporting the company's name, I can't remember, who used to be called ISIS and obviously changed it. SoftCard. SoftCard. Yep. So yeah, that's the other thing. SoftCard has been a very carrier-centric technology that has seen, as far as I can tell, close to zero adoption. And that's because they put their business priorities first. I mean, Tim Cook said this on stage today. He said, well, when you're talking about a technology like this, it can't be about putting these business priorities first. It has to be about putting the user experience first. Because you're just not going to get people to use this thing unless it works seamlessly and it works like cash. Well, that's the way to say it, but I'm sure there are business priorities that are at hand. And of course, the fact that if you're on Apple, you're in a huge market. You will be in a huge market. And they've got a ton of banks, obviously American Express, Visa, MasterCard. Top six banks. Yeah, MX, MasterCard, Visa. That's huge for them. I think this has a very real... I mean, considering the market buy-in that they have and the market saturation they're going to get with these devices, I think they have a very real chance of getting penetration with mobile payments in the US market that they haven't seen before. Right. And the support is amazing. You've got McDonald's. Yeah. Starbucks, I'm assuming. I don't remember if they said that or not. Yeah. Disney World, whatever. All your pharmacies. So Starbucks, funny thing about that is that it's supported, but they didn't mention it. Oh, okay. It was pictured on a slide and you'd think they would want to bring that up because Starbucks is a pretty big deal. It's huge, yeah. But yeah, they didn't mention it. Oh, wow. But yeah, today, like I mentioned, I use a Nexus 5 and I use Tap2Pay all the time. Do you really? Yes. And every single time I get a weird or sometimes a dirty look, like, what are you doing? Are you hacking my credit card machine? Yeah, and sometimes what'll happen, this happens with 7-Elevens a lot, you'll tap and it'll look like it's working and then it says denied and then you have to swipe with your card anyway. So I think that Apple adding support for that, like I said, really legitimizes that market in a way that it hasn't been before. And companies like 7-Eleven are just going to have to say, okay, we're supporting this now. Right. So is the compatibility there? If you're supporting, if you're a McDonald's and your little kiosk or whatever supports Apple payment or whatever, Apple Pay, do you need a different set of hardware or software technology to make it work with the other one? You know, I don't think they mentioned that on stage, but let's put it this way, I can't imagine that they do. Right. Because if they did, that's a no-sale, right? I mean, that's a speed bump that they would have a very hard time getting over. All right, which apparently they've found a way to do, or at least Apple has in this case. Yeah. Well, I mean, the phones themselves are just NFC, right? So it might be, who knows, it might be a software package that they deployed to the actual credit card kiosks that have NFC sensors built in. Maybe it's a firmware update, who knows. But I can't imagine that they would have deployed or developed Apple Pay with the idea that you need to put new kiosks in stores. I just can't imagine. I would hope. If they did, they would have made a big deal out of it, of course. Right. They would have announced that. Right. So, great. Actually, maybe they wouldn't have, because Apple is very good at not mentioning sad news during events. That would constitute sad news. They very, very quietly discontinued the iPod Classic. It's dead now. It's dead, officially. Wait, the Classic. Yes. Is the Nano still alive? Nano, I don't... I think the Nano is still alive. Has the Nano been dead for a while? Because it looks exactly like the watch, and that's confusing. Oh, no, no, no. That one, remember they placed it with that rectangular one. That's all they needed. They made it vertical. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one with its weird own platform or whatever. Right, right. Which looks vaguely iOS-esque, but is not. Yeah, the iPod Classic, rest in peace. It is a little funny to me that they... Yeah, we need a 40 that we can pour out. I mean, can we just get beers to pour out here in bowls? But again, they would have to be... Not beers, Ross, malt liquors. We don't have malt liquor here. Believe it or not, we have a lot of alcohol between the three floors of Vox Media in New York. We do not have malt liquor. That's unfortunate. I have asked. That is a non... That's a deal breaker. I mean, this is a device that was... Look, we've all owned an iPod Classic at one time or another. I own several going back to 2001 or whatever it was. And yeah, it had a good run. But it's just... When you think of the market power that the name iPod had, even five years ago, but certainly seven, 10 years ago, to just see that evaporate and be replaced first with iPhone and iPad and now with... They've gotten rid of the iMonitor altogether for the Apple Watch. It's just kind of striking to see that. They've essentially buried this extraordinary branding tool willfully. But that's the death of a market. They recognized it and they moved on to smartphones. So what do you do? It's on a dumbly personal note for me. The first iPod I ever got was the U2 iPod. Oh yeah. Unashamed. The black one with the red ring? Yes. Yeah, it was a good looking... Unabashedly love U2. And I had to get it and that was the first Apple product I ever had. And it had their signatures on the back, right? Laser engraved. It did. That scratched off immediately, like a month into it. And nothing said like, I am a white suburban kid in the south, I have a U2 iPod. So to see U2 again, that's just like, just stop everything. I thought that you only listened to REM. Isn't that Georgia's band? It's an Athens band, yeah. But of course they also had B-52s, they had Rock Lobster. We're not talking about this right now. The B-52s are from Georgia? Yeah, from Athens. Wow, didn't know that. Yeah, I can tell you where the love shot gets. No, but like, in the U2 thing, we should talk about Apple Watch versus what people care about. But I do want to talk about the U2 thing later because that's just me. You should deal with it. We should have a separate show devoted to U2. God, that would be the lamest show ever. But it would be just full of drunken people just chugging Guinness, covering themselves in Guinness, remembering the good old days, or remember which tour and album was the best. And anyway, let's move on. Yeah, okay, so if you're just joining us, obviously we're waiting for the San Francisco crew to do all the hands-on video, give their impressions, and then as soon as they're done with that, they're going to run out of the giant white cube. There's a camera crew waiting for them, and we're going to go live and talk to them and get more information. Until such time, though, we're going to keep answering your questions. That is hashtag Ask Verge on Twitter. And we're just kind of going down the list a little more casually than just like I'm seeing them or prodding each other for it. I mean, let's get into Apple Watch now. Yeah. Let's do that. We actually have video hands-on. John, do we have that available where we can just kind of watch that? Yeah, so we're going to watch the Apple Watch hands-on, watch it together, and we'll kind of talk about that and answer some of your questions. All right, we're at Apple's big event here. We finally know what's inside the big box. It is the Apple Watch. First thing you need to know is it won't be available until early 2015. It's going to start at $349. There's a whole bunch of features on here. The most important one for Apple is this digital crown, which we're running through demo loop here so you won't actually see it do anything. But it is a zoom and it also lets you scroll through stuff. It's the primary interface for this watch. However, it also has a touch screen. It measures two different kinds of taps. You can just tap it. But it also measures force. So if you tap it hard, they call that a force touch and that lets you bring up little activities and so on. There's another button on the side here that brings up Apple's custom messaging app so you can send little drawings to each other. You can also send your heartbeat to each other, which is pretty crazy. If you swipe up, you get these things called glances. And that's like customizable information letting you see your calendar information and so on. And then notifications pop up. You feel the taptic feedback, they call it. You just turn your wrist up, the screen turns on, and you see it. So that's a super quick look at the Apple Watch. I can actually show you this band here as well. We can remove it here. I'm not used to how this band works. There we go. I'm kind of clumsy. On the back, you can see there's these sensors here, so measuring your heart rate and so on. There's a close look at the digital crown on the side. These straps actually slide right out. They click in and out, which lets you customize. They've got a whole bunch of different watch straps. It comes in two different sizes. And it also comes in lots of different varieties. There's a solid gold one. There's a sports one. And then there's the standard one. So there you go. That's just a very super quick look of the Apple Watch on a demo loop. Okay. That is the Apple Watch. That is the big change. This is obviously what they thought was the biggest event since 2010's iPad, since 2007's iPhone. This is a landmark moment for them. We should actually take a moment to recognize that this was, Neelai mentioned this in the live blog, this was sort of Tim Cook. The moment that he said, one more thing, was the moment that he completed his takeover of Apple, right? Yes. This is now his company, first use of one more thing since Steve Jobs died, and a very deserving use of one more thing, I think. Was this actually Tim Cook's first time saying one more thing? Or did he say it as he took over the interim CEO position? That's a good question. But I can't remember Tim Cook saying one more thing before. I can't remember. But anyway, that's another topic for another time. We should talk about the Watch. I think that their master stroke here, many things unpack, but I think the master stroke is releasing it in two sizes. I really do. Do we know what sizes are though? I don't think we have, the dimensions might be up on Apple's side, I'm not sure. But just the fact that they are acknowledging that watches are not a one size fits all proposition is huge. One of the biggest complaints we've seen with the Android Wear devices so far is that the single size of these devices is too big for a lot of wrists. And so having a smaller size, I think, is going to just instantly sell significantly more watches than they'd be able to with a single size. Of course, when you add in all the finished combinations and the strap combinations, it makes it a very personal device. And I think you said there's three different buckets they're putting into the Apple Watch, the Apple Watch Sport, and then- The Apple Watch Edition. Is it just called that? I thought that was a typo. It's the Apple Watch Edition, which is just gold. It should be called Apple Watch Edition Apple Watch. It's the Apple Watch Edition of the Apple Watch. But anyway- And I'm very curious how much that one costs, because you're buying basically an 18 carat gold watch. These things last two years. Won't be cheap. Yeah. We'll get back into it. We'll argue ourselves about that a little bit. But I believe we have Dieter Bohn. Dieter Bohn, are you ready? Is Dieter with us? I'm ready. How's it going? Hey, how are you? Hey, how's it going, guys? Good, good. So tell us about your experience there today. What's the mood like? I got to say the mood is pretty emollient. This is the biggest Apple event I've ever been to. There's just a ton of people. The keynote itself was very well run. In fact, it was quite hectic. There were definitely a bunch of Apple fans in the audience. I assume a bunch of special guests and employees, so there were lots and lots of cheering. And then of course this giant white building behind me where they're holding the actual hands-on area is also pretty well controlled. So I actually got a chance to hold the two iPhones and play around with one of the mini editions of the Apple Watch. So in general, everybody here seems pretty pleased. We'll see what happens when we walk away from the Apple event and have had a few days to think about it. But everybody on site seems pretty pumped by what they're seeing. So let's talk about the... We were actually talking about the watch in general. What was your impression? You had the hands-on for us. What is your takeaway from it? So my takeaway is actually that it's kind of like a lot of other Apple products in that it's simultaneously amazing and kind of boring. Now part of that is that we've already seen a bunch of other smart watches. We've seen Android Wear and we've seen the ideas that they have. But if you were to ask me to tick off all the ideas that we would see in an Apple Watch, they pretty much hit all of them. I suppose the most interesting part of it is this idea of this glance, I think it's called, where you can get extra random information, which is sort of like a weird version of Google Now, I guess. But we'll have to see. Actually they only had demo units that we could actually touch and then the actual working units were on the Apple employee wrists. But overall the hardware is... It's nice. It's not stunningly beautiful. I personally think the Moto 360 is better looking. But it's a watch and so other people might prefer what Apple has made. It is nondescript. It's very well done. It's very pretty. It looks very good. But it's certainly, I guess, inoffensive. It looks great. It's very well made. It's very well designed. But it doesn't make a very bold statement as far as I'm concerned. And is this digital crown easy to use or what's that like? So the bad news is I haven't actually been able to interact with software using the digital crown. I've seen people interact with it and it seems very fast and fluid. On the unit that I played with, which was, you know, like it was running through a demo loop, I got to feel the physicality of it. And the thing that's really surprising about the crown is that there's almost no resistance to it. There's no like clicking. It doesn't push back when you turn it. It doesn't spin like completely freely, but it spins pretty easily. And so it felt a little bit weird. But that said, I imagine that when you're actually using it to scroll through lists or to zoom, it'll feel much more natural. Is it something like, do you think it's too sensitive where like I would accidentally bump into this? Like if I was like walking across like a wall? I don't think so. It's small enough and it's inset on the side of the watch enough that it's pretty unlikely that you're going to accidentally spin it by bumping into something. And I also don't think that it's likely you're going to accidentally press it and go home when you don't need to. So let's talk about the iPhones for a second. Of course, there are two sizes, the 4.7 and the 5.5. Tell me about those sizes. Does the 5.5 feel really big? What's the hardware like? So both the hardware, they're both amazing. They're both just super thin and way lighter than I expected. Everybody wants to know about the 5.5, so yeah, it's big. But what's interesting about it is it's very tall. The bezels on the left and the right are relatively thin. And so when you hold it in your hand and it's got that aspect ratio, it feels like actually holdable in your hand. But once you want to like start doing stuff, you're going to need two hands. But it doesn't feel nearly as wide as say like a Galaxy Note. I guess I'd put it in like the Nexus 5 range in terms of width. So it's much better to hold in your hand than I expected. And then the best part of it is you turn it sideways and it turns into, I think I called it an iPad mini mini, so you actually get more stuff on the UI. The other thing about the hardware that's really neat is the glass, I don't know if it curves, but it catches the light and it feels a little bit different than previous iPhones. It feels a little bit more organic. And I don't know quite what to attribute that to if they put something subtle on the finish on the glass, if it's this new type of resistant glass that they didn't really give a brand name to or what. But it looks much different in person, a little bit glossier and a little bit less cold than I expected than previous models. Which you know, you got to say you look at the iPhone 5S, it's got some pretty sharp lines on it. And there's not a sharp line to be found on these phones. Now I want to quickly go back to watch because we're getting a lot of questions from readers right now. One of the things that are asking a lot about is one, left-handed use because of where like the digital little crown is. Number two, the battery life. Can you talk about any of that stuff? Well I'll answer the second question first. I wish I could talk about the battery life, but the closest thing we have is very subtle hints that were maybe dropped during the keynote about how easy it is to charge and it's so easy to charge every night. So unless I missed it because I was live blogging, I didn't hear real battery life numbers. And as near as I can tell, this is probably going to be charged every day. The models are very small and so if they've managed to light up that panel and have some sort of battery revolution, I feel like they would have told us. Since they didn't, I'm guessing that you'll be lucky to get a day out of this. I'm assuming that. I don't think Apple would release a product that you couldn't do that on. And what was the first question? Left-handed use. Left-handed use, yeah I don't know. I mean it's a crown and I had it on my left wrist and I bent my hand around and I wasn't worried that I was going to be hitting it. If you're a left-hander and you want to put it on your right wrist, you'll need to do what all left-handers deal with, which is occlude the watch face and reach around to get it. But maybe they'll make a left-handed version, but from what I saw, it didn't look all that painful to use on your right wrist. It's pretty rare for Apple to announce a device like this this far in advance. Of course they did it with the Mac Pro, they did it with the original iPhone, so it does happen but it's fairly rare. What do you think about this strategy of announcing the iPhone 6, which is going to be available next week, and then at the same time announcing the Apple Watch that is coming out at some point in early 2015? Do you think that was a wise move or no? Oh, I think it was a totally wise move. I mean what does Apple have to lose by announcing this early? Unless they don't hit their release date, it's not like they're cannibalizing any current Apple products except maybe a Nano, but I don't think so because this thing works with an iPhone. They might manage to hold off people from buying Android Wear devices in the meantime, which is a win for Apple. I don't really see what they lose here other than not having the, oh my God, I can buy it right now moment. Other than that, they're going to have time for people to make apps for this thing. They're going to have time to nail the battery life, if that's actually a question on this. We don't know. I don't see, other than missing the Christmas season, what hurts them there. I think that it's going to be just fine. Let me ask you guys a question actually. There's the Apple Watch, there's the Apple Watch Sport, there's the Apple Watch Edition. I heard you guys talking about this beforehand. Then there's just a whole slew of different strap options. I, in the room with all the different variants of all these different watches and then the two size options as well, had an actually tough time making sure I caught everything and telling them apart. I think this thing is going to be so customizable that although you'll be able to tell an Apple Watch from a mile away, I don't think very many people are all going to have the exact same thing on their wrist. What's your take on all the different variants that you guys saw from your end? I think customizability is absolutely... I've been preaching this for as long as I can remember with smart watches and wearables in general. I think that more than any other kind of consumer electronic, it's really important that they be hyper customizable. If there's one thing that Apple did extremely right with that device today, it was make it available in two sizes. As I was mentioning before, we've heard a lot of complaints about Android Wear being too big on some wrists. I think that having those two sizes is super important. Actually let me toss it back to you. Is the small one a lot smaller than existing Android Wear devices that we've seen? Give us a sense of the relative size between the two. I haven't actually gotten a chance to look at the two of them right next to each other, but I would say that the relative size is not that different. If the big watch offers significantly better battery life, even if you've got small wrists, I think it's the way to go. In terms of comparing it to Android Wear devices, it's way smaller than a Moto 360. It's in the same way that a Pebble is smaller than a Moto 360. In terms of size, it's actually not that far off from a Pebble, but because it's so rounded and so much better made and just nicer looking, it feels like a different watch. The Pebble's got those sharp edges on the Pebble steel. It feels like a watch. It's a little bit thicker than maybe some people would like, but it's certainly not the big honking things like the Moto 360 to put on your wrist. It looks way better than say even the LG G Watch, the original square watch, which is pretty nondescript. It's not that much smaller than the G Watch from what I remember, but it feels way smaller and looks way better because of how much better designed it is. I do want to talk a little bit more about the software things. I think there's a lot of hyper-customizable we've been talking about this, but I think the thing we were harping on before the show started was this user, this UI that they have going through all these apps. To me, it still reminds me of, I hate saying this, the Juju Rev 2 where you're having these neighborhood apps and you're using the crowns, the touch screen, force touch. That part seems so unintuitive, the non-Siri aspect of this seems really bad. Dieter, how much of the interface and switching between apps did you get to see? What was your take on that? Just a bit. I will say that I agree with you that this idea of zooming out to the universe and then zooming straight into the neighborhood. By the way, shouldn't there be a range between universe and neighborhood? That's a little bit weird and then you pan around and you open the app. You've got app and then you've got these glance cards or whatever we're calling them on the bottom. Then you've got the custom app, the messaging app that you can launch from anywhere with that button on the side. Then you've got watch faces and they're customizable. I think that there's a fidgetiness to this thing that is insane. You look at an Android phone and you have to spend a half a day setting it up, moving widgets, figuring out what icons are on the home screen, what icons are in the app drawer and just messing around with it. You get an Android Wear watch and there's nothing to do. It's just there. With the iPhone, it's the exact opposite. You get an iPhone, you just have your home screen and your apps and it's very simple. You get the watch and you've got all these watch faces. Then inside the watch faces, you need to customize the watch faces. Then you have these apps and you've got to scroll around to the apps and learn how to move all that stuff. You've got a touch and then you've got a force touch, which is a weird UI thing. I don't understand why it's not just a long press. Then you've got the dial. All of that said, I don't want to prejudge and say this thing is overly complicated because I haven't actually had time to set up my own yet. It might be that it just feels natural and intuitive. Apple said that for the watch, they needed to come up with a revolutionary UI that worked for the wrist. They definitely created something different. Whether or not it will actually feel as intuitive as Apple's other products, we just won't know until we spend more time with it. That's actually something interesting I want to talk about. You mentioned the force touch. It doesn't make sense on our end, what there's going to be a long press touch, force touch, what they're saying with that. Do you feel the difference when you're trying it out, what that force touch really is? It doesn't give you the taptic feedback depending on the touch. If you just tap it harder, basically, is what it comes down to. Again, I haven't actually had a chance to use the working unit because they're holding that on Apple employees' wrists at least in the initial hands-on area. I will say actually, speaking of the vibration, they made a big deal about it being very subtle and personal to you and not really obvious. They're actually right. When other smart watches vibrate, you can hear it across the room, especially say the Pebble. This thing, it vibrates, you definitely feel it, but you can't hear it and it's not broadcasting, hey, I've got a notification, it is a very subtle thing. That's interesting and I think that's definitely something that I've noticed with the G Watch certainly is. In fact, just the other night I was in bed and the way that I knew that I had gotten a text message was because I heard the G Watch across the room, not because I heard the phone sitting next to me. That is a very real issue. Yeah. Did you have any other questions for Peter? Well, I have the most important question for Dieter, I think, the question that is on everyone's mind, which is A, are you buying next week and B, if so, the 4.7 or the 5.5? Man, it's hard. I came in here expecting 4.7, done, but now after holding the 5.5, the only question is whether or not it's too tall, it's not too wide for me to use. That double tap the touch ID button to bring down the screen is actually kind of interesting. I couldn't get it to work consistently, but it did work and then you could reach those elements wrapped so it don't support the swipe. The idea that I'll be able to turn the 5.5 into landscape and have it work like a little tiny baby miniature iPad is actually pretty compelling. I don't know, man. I'm going to need another week to think about it, but luckily, I've got till Friday to preorder, but I'm definitely getting an iPhone. I'm way too excited about Apple Pay to not get an iPhone. I know we didn't bring it up, but it's a really big deal. I have personally spent the past five years watching every single company on the planet just screw up mobile payments. Tim Cook on stage, actually, he said it best. He said that everybody's failed at mobile payments because they were worried about their own vested interests instead of worrying about the customer experience. The fact that Apple seems to be doing this securely and they seem to be doing it in such a way where they're not collecting information, I think it's going to be a really big deal. It's the thing that is going to lock me into using an iPhone for the next two years, for sure. Yeah. No, I totally agree. We actually said the same thing before we brought you on, the fact that they are identifying the business model getting in the way as being what has prevented mobile payments from taking off. I think that that really hits the nail on the head. The only question is are they going to be able to use this as a selling point for the iPhone? Will they pull people into the fold with this or is it just going to be a value add for existing iPhone subscribers? That's the question, or iPhone owners, I should say. I actually don't think that's a question at all. I think that they're going to sell iPhones no matter what. The question is are they going to be able to get all of the retailers and banks and everybody else to get behind a single standard and actually have mobile payments work and not be garbage and confusing and you never know what's going to work and what's not going to work. From that end, I'm really hopeful. Apple is literally the first company who hasn't lied to my face about mobile payments. If nothing else, I'm grateful for that. It sold me, but I'm a forward-looking nerd. I imagine once we get a year of Apple Pay under our belts and people see the experience everywhere, it's going to start selling a lot of other people. As an eternal optimist, I always say, as goes Starbucks, so goes the entire industry. They have Starbucks on board. I think that everything's looking up for Apple Pay. I agree. Dito, I think we're going to head out with you soon. Anything else you want to talk about before you go? It was a real bummer to only be able to catch half a song from YouTube, but it seemed like they were rocking. It was pretty awesome. You can go download their free album now. Yeah, there you go. Dito, thank you so much. Thanks, guys. I do want to talk about a little more of the design thing. Something I was thinking about when Dito was talking. There you go with the slap bracelet again. Thank you. Your watch was in the way. The thing I want to talk about with that is, it was going back to what the iPad looked like when it first came out, what the iPhone looked like when it first came out, which were not, especially in retrospect, they're not, I would say, great designs. The iPhone was revolutionary at the time because there was nothing else like it, but now it looks terrible. I still say, even when the iPad came out, it was just, it was ridiculed. It looked terrible. I don't know if I'd say it looked terrible. I think that at that time, the precedent that they were setting in the industry, both with the original iPhone and also with the original iPad, gave them more flexibility for putting out a design that wasn't necessarily the absolute best that that form factor could be. They were first generation products. I see where you're going with this. You want to talk Apple Watch. To an extent, I actually just want to address what people are saying. We're getting a lot of questions like, thank you for knowledge in design. I don't know if I can say that this time because I've seen first generation Apple devices before. This feels actually not bad for what it is. The functionality, the software doesn't feel there. I'm sure that's one of those things like, I want to wait for the second generation. I don't know if I can hold off financially. I'm honestly not sure if I agree. I think that the first generation Apple Watch, what we saw today looks to me very much like a generation one product. I'm sure that if you were to sit Johnny Ive down in a room and be like, look, dude, real talk, is this the product that you want? Did you have all the technology and all the capability at your fingertips to make the product that you really wanted to make? There's no way that he'd say, yes, this is exactly the product that I wanted to make. The display is square even though the UI elements that they showed on screen, many of them were obviously optimized for a round display. The watch faces that they showed, a round watch face on a square display always looks silly. One displays are definitely still in their infancy. There haven't been many of them. 360 is kind of an outlier there. We heard rumors of flexible displays and actually, apparently this display is technically flexible but it isn't curved, of course. Maybe there's some opportunity there. I think there are probably some people who are looking for a fitness wearable who are saying this isn't anything like what I want. The fact that they're targeting a sort of a vague 2015 launch and may not mention battery life during the event leads me to believe that there are still some open questions about how this battery is going to perform. Everything that we've seen with Android Wear devices suggests that there's some mismatch there. There's mismatch between the battery technology they have available, the energy density they can get out of them, and what they're trying to do with the processors in these devices. We have some things that they need to figure out there. I think that if you look at the Apple Watch in five, seven years, just like we're doing now with the iPhone, and then you look back to this first generation Apple Watch, you're going to say, it was kind of insane that we were all using that. Impressive for a Gen 1 device and don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's going to be a huge seller just like the original iPhone was, but I do think there's a lot of room for improvement. I think that Apple is obviously poised to take advantage of that. They have $150 billion in the bank. They can do pretty much whatever they want. They have the very best technology and fabrication techniques available to them. I think that they'll probably move to round at some point. They'll probably have a whole portfolio of devices. They'll have a fitness focused one, they'll have a round one, they'll have different materials, they'll go thinner, they'll put different kinds of batteries in there. It's a huge and growing space for them. Here's what I'm interested in, this is obviously not a mass produced item yet. It looks thinner than the Moto 360 as Dieter pointed out. It's about the size of a pebble. Once they figure out the battery life, we start seeing these closer production models, will this get thicker? Or are they just going ahead and saying, this is what it's going to look like without question? The straps can stay the same. This could just stick out a little bit more once they figure out what actually it takes to last a full day, for this generation at least. You're suggesting that the production watch could get thicker? I think so. Unless they didn't really mention the thickness of the watch. Not on stage, but I can't imagine that would be unprecedented for Apple to release a device that didn't look exactly like what they gave hands-ons with. There would be absolutely no precedent for that. Look, anything's possible, but I think that that would be a pretty bizarre scenario. It's also a story like they didn't come out and tell battery life. If it's not good now, what is it? Is it software? Is it just literally physical? They've effectively given themselves a solid six months to fiddle with it. I think that they can... There's probably tons of software optimization they can do. They probably have some wiggle room on chipsets. Maybe they're waiting on a new chipset or a new fabrication technique for an existing chip that will reduce power draw. Maybe they're going to say, okay, we need to be more aggressive about when and how we turn off the display when you're not using it. There are lots of things that they can do to eke out extra minutes. I'm sure that they're going to do that. I can't imagine them making a material change to the appearance of the device between now and then. I think they'll just keep... I think back to the... Remember the white iPhone 4? Right. Where they're just like, sorry guys. We done goofed. Yeah, it's no bueno. We're just going to hold it back until it's good and ready. If push came to shove, I think they'd probably do that again with the Apple Watch. Right. Although I can imagine this being the same. I could imagine being just a little bit thicker, like a millimeter, and no one's going to know because no one's doing the hands-on with a millimeter. We should have brought a ruler to this hands-on. No, no, a caliber. A caliber. We should have a caliber. Just like, okay, I'm going to need to know these numbers now. We'll check on the measurements again in six months. I do want to talk about this more. I do want to get into your own personal feeling where you put your money where your mouth is on this one. I mean, at first, we finally had the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus hands-on. I've been dying to see this. Let's check that out and we'll be right back. Here we are at Apple's big event with two really big iPhones. This is the iPhone 6, and as you probably already know by now, it comes in two sizes. This is the 4.7 inch device, and this is a 5.5 inch device. It feels pretty massive, but it doesn't feel so massive that it's completely unwieldy. It's pretty narrow, so compared to really giant Android phones, it's not too bad to hold in one hand. Now, if we compare these models to the iPhone 5S, you can see here that it is quite a bit bigger, the 4.7 is. However, it is thinner and the buttons are a little bit nicer. They've got this iPad-style button here, a nice ringer switch. On the back, the camera sticks out a little bit, but you still have the true tone flash. There's one more feature that's really worth noting on the new iPhone 6. If you double tap, you don't press, you just tap on the Touch ID home button. It pulls down the screen so that you can reach the stuff at the top. There are a lot of apps that don't support the back gesture, and so it's convenient to just be able to double tap on that thing to bring down stuff from the top of the screen so you can hit those buttons. So we've got a faster processor in here, it's the A8. It's running iOS 8, of course, with the new HealthKit app, which works with the Apple Watch. But the really exciting thing, at least with the 5.5, is you can turn it into landscape and you get some extra features. So if we jump into messages here, you can see you've got a two-tone, two-pane thing here you can look at. And then when you go into portrait, you actually get little avatars, whereas on the 4.7-inch model, when you go into messaging, you don't get those avatars. So not only do they just give you a bigger screen, they also give you more information on each screen. And then when you turn it sideways, you can see you get different interfaces there. Both of these models are available for pre-order on Friday, and they should be available for sale on September 19. The 4.7-inch starts at $199 on contract, and the larger 5.5 starts at $299 on contract, and then it goes up as you get more storage. Okay, see, look, that 5.5-inch doesn't look bad. I mean, okay. What? No, I think, look, there's a reason they're making two sizes, right? Because different people want different sizes, and they're addressing that market need, and I think that they're gonna sell a lot more iPhones because of it. Having just a 4-inch model, I think, was starting to actively hurt them when you see literally every Android, flagship Android phone on the market move between 4.7 and 5.5, and they just needed to up their game. And so I think that they're gonna sell way, way, way more devices in the next couple quarters because of this two-prong strategy. 5.5 just isn't for me. I mean, it's not fun carrying around a phone that big, and it's not fun holding a phone that big. But I will say that making it that thin, I'm sure, is gonna have an impact, too. That's good. Right, not to mention the idea, of course, is like if you can keep it in your pocket and do everything in your watch, whatever. Doesn't matter how big it is. Right. That's true, yep. So let's kind of start wrapping up. I wanted to talk about YouTube for another hour, but John is in my ear telling me not to do that. He's literally crying at the control booth. I can see him. So let's just start kind of wrapping up and talk about money where your mouth is. Obviously, we spend a lot of money. This is where we spend all our budgets, more than rent and utilities at this point. Are you gonna get the iPhone, and are you starting to think about the iWatch as well? The Apple Watch. Here's what's gonna happen. Here's how it's gonna go down. Again, this has been the case for the past two or three years now. What's gonna happen is I'm gonna tell you to your face right now that I'm not gonna get the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus. And I know you're full of shit. Yes, next Friday, at 3 a.m., I will be in line somewhere. Oh, you'll be in line. You're not gonna... No, because I'll make it past this Friday without pre-ordering, and I'll be very proud of myself. I'll be like, look, guys, I'm staying committed. I'm staying in the course. Look at that. Look at that. Tell me you don't want that. What, the big one? The 6 Plus? Either of them. Bigger than better. And look, you know what's even better than that? It's not Jimmy and Justin bantering. That's true. Which I love them both. It's just not the best of them. No, no, they weren't at their finest. That's true. And they were also... You have these two superstars, and Apple spent, what, like 10 seconds with them, and then they're done, which is kind of funny. No, look, I think that this is a great evolution for the iPhone. I think that they did a lot of things that they needed to do. Going to a bigger size, even for the small model, was important, but more importantly, just having two sizes is going to be huge for them. And the Apple Watch, I really want to reserve judgment right now. I'm not thrilled with the square. I'm not really thrilled with the ID in general, and I have a lot of questions about the UI, but it's way too early to decide if they did the right thing or not. So we'll see you early next year. And I know you've been talking about how Moto X is the best Android smartphone. I love the first Moto X, so I'm excited about this too. Would you do the Moto X plus the Moto 360 combination? Is that something you would actually consider now? That's what I intend to get this month, yeah. I think the customization is huge. Being able to make the phone truly your own instead of one of 50 million people with the gold iPhone 6 is a big deal. And they've kind of progressed the UI to the point and have stayed true enough to stock Android where it's just kind of the, in my opinion, the perfect Android package. But there are questions about that too. I think the battery life is on the short side of acceptable with that device, and it is 5.2 inches. So again, being very honest with you, I'm going to tell you right now I'm not getting an iPhone 6. Next Friday I will get an iPhone 6. I know you'll buy them all. I'm more curious which one you're going to use. And I guess looking at this behemoth of a watch right here, the Moto 360 is no big deal for you. It's not... Well, watch and phone are very different things. True, true. But if you're getting one, you're not going to get an iPhone and then the 360, or the X and then the watch. No, certainly not. And you do kind of have to commit to a platform. And actually that's something that I wish we had more time to talk about, and maybe we'll save it for another time. The fact that both Apple and Google have very much... I hate to use the term, but they've very much doubled down on platform lock-in with these wearables. They are very much all in on their... They're all in with their wearables because both Android Wear and Apple Watch are platform exclusive. So if you're spending... I mean, if you're spending, who knows what the Apple Watch Edition is going to be, $1,000? I don't know. But say you buy that, there's no way you're going to be buying a Moto X or a G3 or a GS5 or whatever. No. There's no chance. And you are locked in until you either turn that watch around or you replace it, which could be years. And even then, that's actually a good question. So that device, it's a piece of consumer technology. It's going to become obsolete in a matter of one, two, three, four years, something like that. But it's gold. So then what? I guess you melt down the gold. I don't know. Do you take it to a pawn shop? I don't know what the procedure is when you're done with an Apple Watch Edition. There's no upgrade plan except just melt the gold. Not reusable at all. Just melt the damn gold. Melt the watch. All right. Well, I'm sure we'll talk about this again because I have a strong feeling there's another Apple event next month. We hinted at Apple TV stuff. There's clearly iPad rumors I've been floating about. So we'll probably be back for that. I have to go listen to the U2 album. We need to go see if there's any other news that has happened. Is happen on theverge.com. If you want any more big analysis, editorials, smart people talking about this, that is theverge.com. We have 90, 100 people up there just writing a ton of stuff right now. Thank you all for joining us so much. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Control Room. Dieter, Neelai, Josh Lowinson, David Pierce, Jordan Opplinger from San Francisco. I'm sure I'm missing someone else. Christian. Christian Mazda. Oh my God. He's going to kill me. I said Josh Lowinson. Sam Sheffer back here. Sam Sheffer. And Chris Sterling who's already pre-ordered six. He's hacked the system. God damn him. All right. Thank you so much for joining us and stay tuned to theverge.com.

We have one more thing. It is the next chapter in Apple's story. And here it is. Apple Watch is the most personal device we've ever created. And it works seamlessly with iPhone. And it's also a comprehensive health and fitness device. It's this dial. It's called a crown. The digital crown includes infrared LEDs and photo diodes that translate rotary movement into digital data. The watch senses that you're raising your wrist and then activates the display. The digital crown is a remarkable input device. It fluidly zooms into apps. It enables nimble, precise adjustment. And critically, you can use it without obstructing the display. It's also the home button. Or you can even share something as personal as your own heartbeat. It's been laminated to a machined and polished single crystal of sapphire. The display also senses force. We've developed a linear actuator that provides haptic feedback to complement your interactions. It's essentially miniaturizing an entire computer system onto a single chip. Infrared and visible light LEDs, along with photo sensors, detect your pulse rate. The watch provides a comprehensive picture of your daily activity. Inductive charging. Completely sealed, it requires no alignment or exposed contacts, keeping time to plus or minus 50 milliseconds. We have designed six different straps and a mechanism that makes the straps easily interchangeable. And of course, we knew one size wouldn't fit everyone, so we've also developed a smaller watch with matching smaller straps. We've actually created three distinct collections. Apple Watch, the Sport Collection, Apple Watch Edition, technology to be worn, to be truly personal. This is the current moon phase. We scheduled our event on a nice full moon, so we've created something called glances. You just swipe up from the bottom of the watch face. If I swipe horizontally, I can see things like where I'm located, here at Flint Center, the current weather outside, NASDAQ, stock quote, and world time. Or I can see music I'm currently playing on devices around me. We're using the Taptic Engine to give you feedback on your wrist. It's just like somebody tapping you on the wrist very gently. Even if you're sitting right next to someone, they won't be able to tell that you're getting notified. It's very subtle, but you'll feel it on your own wrist. Here's a calendar invitation. Other notifications. Ah, here's one from Johnny. We've actually analyzed the text that's coming in and picked out some things you might want to just tap on and send back. So we can do Siri just by pressing the digital crown here. What movies are playing tonight in Cupertino? Photos app here. Now, though, I can use the digital crown to zoom right in to photos and see which ones I'd like to look at. So let's tap on Maps here. While you're walking, Apple Watch will give you Taptic feedback on each turn so you'll know whether it's time to turn left or to turn right. And those feelings are different for each direction. So you can actually know without even looking at your watch. And there are my friends. When we're getting hungry, we can just tap each other and we'll feel it on our wrist. So I'll just do the triple tap here for going to lunch. Ah, okay. So we do this a lot. That means what's for lunch. So I know how much Jeff loves sushi. We've also been working to enable third-party developers with something called WatchKit. And you can see it's using the same layout as the original tweet, but now it's much richer with images and text. It looks like the Twitter brand, and it has buttons that you'd like to use to favorite or retweet right on that message. MLB lets you see the current sports scores. Honeywell lets you control the temperature in your home. With the Lutron app, you can control the lighting and the scenes in your home with one tap. With the Nike app, you can challenge your friends to go for a run. And we just can't wait to see what developers are going to create on this great new platform. Health and fitness. We have two new applications in Apple Watch. The first is the fitness app. It monitors all of your activity and movement throughout the day. And the second is the workout app. It allows you to set specific goals for specific types of workouts, like cycling or running. It uses an accelerometer to measure your total body movement. It has a custom sensor that can measure intensity by tracking your heart rate. And it uses the GPS and Wi-Fi in your iPhone to track how far you've moved, with the goal of helping you sit less, move more, and get some exercise. And it is so much more that we don't have time to cover this morning. The list of features is a mile long. Apple Watch requires the iPhone because it's been designed to seamlessly work together. Apple Pay will work with Apple Watch. But we've also designed it so that it will work with iPhone 5, iPhone 5C, and iPhone 5S. Apple Watch starts at only $349. And it will be available early next year. We are so excited about Apple Watch. And I hope you are as well.

Apple has officially entered the wearable race. The company unveiled its long-awaited fitness tracker today, and it's called the Apple Watch. The device is a square-faced smartwatch that comes in two different sizes, three different models, and dozens of different bands. All models feature what Apple calls the digital crown, a small knob on the side of the device. Think of it as the home button on the iPhones. The digital crown can be rotated to scroll, zoom, and navigate the user interface without obstructing the display. The glass on the watch is made of sapphire crystal, the scratch-proof material that was speculated to be used in the new iPhone 6 models displays. Sapphire is a relatively common material in high-end watchmaking, and it makes perfect sense for it to be used here. On the backside of the watch is a set of four rings that house the sensors the watch is using to track wearer's activity. The sensors include infrared, visible light, LEDs, and photo sensors, which all work together to detect your heart rate. Using that information, Apple says that it can put together a comprehensive look at a person's daily activity. The Apple Watch also has a built-in gyroscope and a taptic engine for input sensing, which allows it to recognize the difference between a tap and a press. Charging the watch is super easy, thanks to a mag-safe charger that simply snaps on the back of the device. There was no word, however, on the watch's battery life. On the software side, the voice-activated Siri assistant will come integrated along with dedicated maps and photo applications. Brand new fitness and workout apps will serve to collect your daily biometric data and encourage a more active lifestyle. There's also WatchKit, designed to help developers create apps tailored to the Apple Watch. The previously announced Apple Pay will also be incorporated into the device. The Apple Watch will work with the iPhone 5, 5c, 5s, 6, and 6 Plus, and will be available early next year, starting at $349. Hey guys, thanks so much for watching that video. The first thing you should do if you liked it is click the thumbs up button down below. Then, if you haven't already, you should subscribe to our channel over here. It's awesome. You'll love it. And you'll especially love these two videos, which you should watch right now because really, what else are you doing?

Hey guys, it's Neil with The Verge. I'm here with the iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Pay. So this is actually really simple. This demo is already set up. Because this phone is already set up, all I have to do is put my finger on the button and hold it here and the NFC at the top will use the default card. It's not reading. There we go. There we go. It read. It got approved and it told me, sent me a notification and said it paid. That's really simple. Now I can do it again. And if I don't put my finger on the button, it's going to figure out that I have it authenticated. It will ask me what card I want to use. And I can pick a different card. I can authenticate and it will pay. Which is pretty awesome. Now there's also one more thing you can do with this, which is you don't actually need this reader stuff to happen. I can open an app like Uber and without even having to log into Uber because it has Apple Pay built in, I can just hit ride now. Pick application. And then it's set to Apple Pay. I just hit request black card. Once again, I authenticate my finger here. And we're all done and I'm paid and the car is coming. Which sucks for the car because I'm not actually going to get in it. So that's Apple Pay. Super simple. Really easy to set up. You just take a picture of your credit card basically and then wave it around at 220,000 locations in the US right now. Let's try to do something else. See if I can do this again. 220,000 locations in the US right now. Obviously more to come. Cool.

Here we are at Apple's big event with two really big iPhones. This is the iPhone 6 and as you probably already know by now it comes in two sizes. This is the 4.7 inch device and this is a 5.5 inch device. It feels pretty massive but it doesn't feel so massive that it's completely unwieldy. It's pretty narrow so compared to really giant Android phones it's not too bad to hold in one hand. Now if we compare these models to the iPhone 5S you can see here that it is quite a bit bigger, the 4.7 is. However it is thinner and the buttons are a little bit nicer. They've got this iPad style button here, a nice little ringer switch. On the back the camera sticks out a little bit but you still have the true tone flash. So there's one more feature that's really worth noting on the new iPhone 6. If you double tap, you don't press, you just tap on the Touch ID home button. It pulls down the screen so that you can reach the stuff at the top. There are a lot of apps that don't support the back gesture and so it's convenient to just be able to double tap on that thing to bring down stuff from the top of the screen so you can hit those buttons. So we've got a faster processor in here, it's the A8. It's running iOS 8 of course with the new HealthKit app which works with the Apple Watch. But the really exciting thing at least with the 5.5 is you can turn it into landscape and you get some extra features. So if we jump into messages here you can see you've got a two-tone, two-pane thing here you can look at. And then when you go into portrait, you actually get little avatars whereas on the 4.7 inch model when you go into messaging, you don't get those avatars. So not only do they just give you a bigger screen, they also give you more information on each screen. And then when you turn it sideways you can see you get different interfaces there. Both of these models are available for pre-order on Friday and they should be available for sale on September 19th. The 4.7 inch starts at $199 on contract and the larger 5.5 starts at $299 on contract and then it goes up as you get more storage.

Alright, we're at Apple's big event here. We finally know what's inside the big box. It is the Apple Watch. First thing you need to know is it won't be available until early 2015. It's going to start at $349. There's a whole bunch of features on here. The most important one for Apple is this digital crown, which we're running through a demo loop here so you won't actually see it do anything. But it is a zoom and it also lets you scroll through stuff. It's the primary interface for this watch. However, it also has a touch screen. It measures two different kinds of taps. You can just tap it. But it also measures four, so if you tap it hard, they call that a force touch and that lets you bring up little activities and so on. There's another button on the side here that brings up Apple's custom messaging app so you can send little drawings to each other. You can also send your heartbeat to each other, which is pretty crazy. If you swipe up, you get these things called glances and that's like customizable information letting you see your calendar information and so on. And then notifications pop up. You feel the taptic feedback they call it. You just turn your wrist up, the screen turns on and you see it. So that's a super quick look at the Apple Watch. I can actually show you this band here as well. We can remove it here. I'm not used to how this band works. There we go. I'm kind of clumsy. On the back you can see there's these sensors here, so measuring your heart rate and so on. Here's a close look at the digital crown on the side. These straps actually slide right out. You click in and out, which lets you customize. They've got a whole bunch of different watch straps. It comes in two different sizes and it also comes in lots of different varieties. There's a solid gold one, there's a sports one and then there's the standard one. So there you go. That's a very super quick look at the Apple Watch on Demolubri.

Fans have wanted a bigger iPhone for quite some time and now they officially have one. Make that two. Apple today revealed two new larger iPhones, the 4.7 inch iPhone 6 and the massive 5.5 inch iPhone 6 Plus. The iPhone 6 measures 6.9 millimeters thick, making it the thinnest device Apple has ever made, and the iPhone 6 Plus clocks in at 7.1 millimeters thick. Still thinner than last year's iPhone 5S. Both phones featured a newly designed glass front that curves around the sides, and Apple says the new screen has retina HD resolution. Under the hood, the phones feature Apple's new A8 processor, which Apple claims has up to 25% faster CPU performance and up to 50% faster graphics. Compared to the original iPhone, the new processor in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is 84 times faster. The phones also contain the new M8 processor with a built in barometer which allows the phone to tell the difference between running and cycling, as well as accurately measures distance traveled and elevation. The company also made major improvements to its cameras. The iPhone 6 has an eight megapixel camera like the last model, but Apple added a, quote, next generation eyesight sensor, which is said to make the autofocus twice as fast as the 5S. The iPhone 6 Plus has an even greater camera though, featuring significantly improved optical image stabilization. This means that the lens can physically move to compensate for the movement of your hand. The iPhone 6 Plus won't be the first smartphone to feature optical image stabilization, but it will be the first iPhone to do so. Video has also been improved across both phones. The smartphones can shoot 1080p video in 30 or 60 frames per second, and there's a fairly stunning 240 FPS slow-mo video mode too. The iPhone 6 will start at $200, and the new iPhone 6 Plus will start at $300, and both are available for pre-order on September 12th, and will ship on September 19th. And yes, they'll be running iOS 8.

Everybody knows what normal sails are like. They're just fabric and they're one side of a wing. The wind's got a tremendous amount of power in it. The wing is a hybrid system. It's not intended to completely replace the motors. The ferries in the Bay Area, I think they use a mere of a million dollars worth of fuel per year to save 30 to 40 percent of the fuel costs. The San Francisco Bay is a playground of wind. We absolutely have got to stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Motorola's back with a brand new flagship smartphone. It's got a familiar name, but the new Moto X promises to be everything last year's device was, and more. The new Moto X, available later this month for $99 on contract or $499 unlocked, is instantly recognizable, echoing the look of last year's model and the Moto G and E. But virtually everything has been improved this time around, from the design to the materials to the specs inside the phone. Last year's phone had a 720p 4.7 inch display, but this year Motorola has stepped up to a 5.2 inch full 1080p panel. It's bigger, brighter, sharper, and just overall better than last year's screen. Colors are bright and punchy, and viewing angles are great. It's also easy to see outdoors in sunlight. Above and below the screen are new grills for the earpiece and speaker, now on the front of the phone. It's not the dual speaker stereo setup of HTC's One, but the front speaker is loud and easy to hear. The speakers are flanked by a series of light sensors, a front facing camera, and a new set of IR sensors. But like last year, the front of the phone is mostly display, allowing Motorola to fit a larger screen in a smaller size frame than other phones. It's not quite the one handed ergonomic miracle that last year's Moto X was, but the new phone doesn't feel nearly as large as I expected it to. Along the entire edge of the Moto X is an all new metal band. It looks great, feels great, and actually serves a purpose. Motorola is using it to enhance reception and signal quality. Sure enough, I found it grabbed onto AT&T's LTE network better than other phones in the same area. But most importantly, the new metal rim makes the Moto X feel much more like the flagship phone it should be, and it's a great improvement over last year's plastic. The volume rocker and power button are still a little too small, but the power key is now textured, making it easier to find by feel. The back of the phone has the same sloped curvature as Motorola's other phones, making it comfortable to hold. It's thinner at the edge, and the trademark dimpled finger rest is much larger and more prominent. My review unit has an optional bamboo finish, which is grippy, organic, and just plain cool looking, and Motorola is offering a number of other customizable options, including all new leather backs through its Moto Maker program. Above the dimple is a new 13 megapixel camera with a dual LED flash and a mock ring flash configuration. But that's the hardware story. It looks familiar, but it's been improved in a number of ways and makes the new Moto X an attractive and comfortable phone to use, despite its much bigger display. The Moto X is shipping with Android 4.4 KitKat, and Motorola has promised it will be updated to Android L when that's released. Like last year, this is about as pure an Android experience as you can get outside of Google's own Nexus phones. That's fine by me, it's clean, easy to use, and fast. It's really how I wish most Android phones were. Motorola's own software features are now combined into one single app for management. The always listening voice feature is now called Moto Voice, and it lets you set your own command to activate it instead of requiring you to use OK Google. You can do more with your voice, like send WhatsApp messages or post to Twitter and Facebook, and the voice actions are much faster than on last year's phone, but it still can have trouble hearing me if it's noisy in my environment. Active notifications is now called Moto Display, and it uses the new IR sensors on the front of the phone to let you peek at the time or notifications by just waving your hand over the screen. It's a neat trick, similar to Nokia's glance feature, but since the Moto Display lights up on its own with every incoming notification or whenever I pick up the phone, I really didn't find much use for it. Last year's Moto X had an older, slower processor, but that's not the case this year. Motorola is using the same Snapdragon 801 processor found in the HTC One M8 and Galaxy S5, and the new Moto X just flies. It's snappy, responsive, and has little to no visible lag. Motorola claims it can maintain a consistent 60 frames per second in the interface, and while I'm not really sure that's entirely true, this is definitely one of the fastest and smoothest Android phones I've ever used. The new 13 megapixel camera is better than last year's 10 megapixel model, but it's not a giant leap forward. It's really fast, almost as fast as my iPhone 5s, but the images are still grainy and blurry in medium to low light, and the focus can be unreliable even in good light. I didn't find the ring flash to be much better or different than any other smartphone flash either. Battery life was a bit of concern last year. It was good, but not great, and it's slightly better this year. The battery is a little bigger, 2300 vs 2200 mAh, and Motorola says it will last a normal day of use. The Moto X isn't quite as long lasting as the LG G3, the One M8, or Galaxy S5, but I was able to get a full day out of it between charges. Last year's Moto X was a well received phone, but it wasn't a great seller. This time around Motorola has an even better phone, a phone that can go toe to toe on paper and in practice with the best from Samsung, HTC, and even Apple. It's the best Android phone and one of the best smartphones I've ever used. Now Motorola just has to get people to buy it.

Chicago, the town where El Capone and Michael Jordan left their indelible marks on history also happens to be the home of Motorola Mobility. This lakeside town of over two and a half million may not be known for its technology or design as much as it's known for pizza and the Cubs, but if Motorola has its say, that's about to change. In fact, it kind of did change this week. Halfway through an ownership switch from Google to Lenovo, Motorola pulled some of the world's top technology press, yours included, to its new headquarters for the biggest product of end it's held in a long time. But this isn't just about a phone launch, it's about making a statement. About two and a half, three years ago, we had a complete reset for our product portfolio in how we approach product and how we build products and how we approach consumers. We put ourselves back to the forefront in the minds of consumers because they really, these products really met some needs that people had and the results have been very good. In the first quarter, year over year, we grew 60%. In the second quarter, year over year, we grew 130%. We started out with Moto X and the proposition was simple and compelling, but Moto X was a part of a much bigger vision and arc. We always knew that the world would have different types of screen sizes, either in your pocket, on your wrist, in other places, and other types of wearable device. The second opportunity, we saw that even something as core and basic as smartphones weren't being offered to consumers in a proper way, especially in developing markets. Last year's Moto X set the stage for an all new design language across Motorola's entire lineup and this year's models, the G and X alike, take it to a new level. These are birds of a feather and that's important. Sure the X is cool, but the lower cost G is the bread winner. The last generation G almost single-handedly gave Moto credibility in Brazil and India and keeping that up means making the cheap phones look just as good as the expensive ones. We don't want to create a design language that is too polarizing. We want to create something that represents what we think is important to the brand, which is personal, approachable, comfortable. From a physical perspective, there are signature aspects of it. You'll see on all the Moto series is the familiar curve on the top here that we always have there. There's functional reasons for it and there's also visual reasons for it. The curve is often talked about, it's packed with NFC antennas, batteries, curved batteries, stacked batteries originally, and the use of the very thin edge here. The whole idea is to fill the hand and create physical comfort, but when you look at it, you create something that is really light and feels like more of a natural form rather than something that's been totally manufactured. We initially come up with 2D renderings of how the product needs to look based on the insights we have, our vision on where we want to take the product, and what are the different technology vectors that we have. Then we take these 2D renderings and then we convert those 2D renderings into actually 3D databases. These 3D databases are actually made of parts that are actually inside the device. I think so much of great product development is almost like weaving. It's not a silver bullet thing. It's about all the different pieces that come together and how you weave them together and that balance, which I think differentiates products. What maybe to some of us in industry might seem like a minor thing because we're so absorbed in it, but from a person who's touching and seeing it, those things mean a lot. You talk to somebody who goes to buy a pair of shoes or a bag, the reason they're making taking one bag versus the other isn't because the bag is more functional. It's because the quality of the materials, the workmanship, the brand itself and what it stands for. I think that's where this industry is heading. I think that's why we're pursuing Moto 360 the way we're pursuing it, the way we're pursuing Hint that way, and the way we're also pursuing Moto X as a system or a set of products that need to be high in style. Coming on the cake, the object that suggests that this Motorola has real technology in design shops is of course the Moto 360. It's not perfect by any stretch, but if nothing else, it's an engineering marvel. We've done round before, but the challenge was how to make a round product without having all the circuitry, for example, an R that you see at the bottom of the device. We have a display technology team that went to work and did an incredible job in building it. After we figured out how to take hundreds of lines and actual ICs that go around the display, how to make them disappear, what we did was we built an entirely round stainless steel structure. Essentially the challenge was how do you put antennas on this thing? This thing has a Bluetooth and Wi-Fi antenna. The whole structure itself is antenna, and there's a unique way where the entire structure is connected. If you see there's the back housing and on the board where all the RF connectors are supposed to go, where it's all in Z dimension. And so there is nothing that takes up space. I think people just assume everything can be done now. In many ways it can be. It's a matter of choosing the right things to do. And for us right now, we really believe that people are expecting these things to look and behave like many of the other products that they have in their lives, whether it's shirts, clothing, or other objects. And that's why we've made a considered effort over the last year or two to really bring in those very difficult things to do. Honestly, walk down the street and hear a turn by turn and you're a hint and then look at a little turn by turn on your watch. That's the stuff that people love doing. They don't want to actually get their phone out of their pocket if they don't have to. The reason that our company and our groups made the 360 is there's so many people that were really passionate about how can the smartphone deconstruct. We've been in many ways dreaming a lot about this and inventing around this for the last three or four years. And I think a lot of stuff's coming together that allows us to do it in a way that we think is truly kind of differentiated and the most compelling way to do it for people. For all the drama Motorola's been through over the past half decade, CEO changes, a split to acquisitions, and the long shadow of the Razr, I just couldn't see any of it this week. Here's a company that has cool, genuinely interesting products, excited people, and an actual plan for setting itself apart from the Samsungs and Apples of the world. I don't know if they're going to win. This isn't an easy or a cheap market to play in. But even if they don't, I get the sense that they're going to go down swinging. Our design teams have always had a real clear point of view. And I personally have had like, OK, I believe it should be this, it should be this, it should be this. But at a certain point, it's like, what the hell? I'm not here to design for me, right? I'm here to design for you. So as a designer, when we first started looking at Moto X and the approach to Moto Maker, there was a degree of like, OK, we got to step back here, you know, and let some things go. And instead, focus on the design that allows us to curate something that gives people, set it up so that people can make great choices, but allow them to be part of the process. And so we've decided to embrace it. There's a certain cathartic thing that happens when you kind of like do that at first. Like, you know, and then you realize that the person who chose mint last year, even though it maybe was 1.5 percent of the people, absolutely loves mint, you know. And so we did something that allowed that person to have exactly what they wanted. And that's more important than me getting what I want. And so, I don't know, I think it's just a mindset change. And design is design, and it's about designing for somebody else. I'm not a painter. My parents were artists. I'm not going to force my taste on, you know, everybody. What we wanted to do is express our brand through design and the definition of a product and kind of create something that we think is really compelling on its own, then allow you to take it the rest of the way, whether it's the functionality of the software or what we do in design. And to me, that's an inclusive design process that we think is important to pursue right now.

I've been waiting for months for this. We've seen countless different ideas about how a smartwatch should look, how it should work, what it should do. But we've gotten these teasers, these glimpses of what seem to me to be by far the best answers to all those questions. A smartwatch should be first and foremost a watch. It should tell the time. It should feel good on my wrist. It should look awesome. Everything else is secondary. I've been waiting for the smartwatch that understood all of that, and now I have it on my wrist. This is the Moto 360. The 360 feels different from any other smartwatch from the moment you put it on. It feels lighter than it looks. It's smaller than it looks. I don't have big wrists by any means, and I don't prefer large watches, yet the 360 was comfortable right away. Of course, this isn't just a watch. It's all about the 1.65 inch screen, the round Gorilla Glass display that's ringed only by a tiny bezel. It has incredible viewing angles, it's easy to see even outdoors, and although it's an insane magnet for fingerprints, it's at least easy to keep clean. It's round, but it's not a perfect circle. Not really. There's a tiny black cutout at the bottom where all the device's innards go. It does take away from the appeal a little, but Motorola's other option was to make the bezel bigger, and it made the right decision. It does stick out above the bezel, though, and the angled glass catches light and gives off this ugly moire pattern. And honestly, it's just not high res enough to really look crisp and perfect. The screen is good enough, but it's not as good as the rest of the hardware here. It comes in two colors at launch, silver and black, with a couple of different strap colors as well. There are more straps coming, though, including two metal straps that cost an extra $50. I can't say it enough, this is what a smartwatch should look like. There are small changes I would make aesthetically, like to drop the screen flush with the case, and maybe make it ever so slightly smaller for my own wrists, but compared to the blocky rectangles that adorn every other smartwatch on the market, the 360 is in a class completely of its own. But for all it can do to differentiate its hardware, Motorola can't escape the fact that the Android Wear on the Moto 360 is the same as the Android Wear on the Samsung Gear Live, the LG G Watch, and countless other devices coming to market. That means the Moto 360 is primarily an inbox for everything, all the notifications and information on your phone. Google Now tells you when you have a calendar event coming up, or that your package is being delivered. You'll get notified about emails and calls and texts, and you can do quick Google searches, take notes, and set reminders. Android Wear is still best used when you don't use it much, when it's just an occasional add-on to your life. The 360's heart rate monitor and pedometer both work as well as any other device, and I've grown to love Android Wear's integration with apps like Run-Tastic. Apps are getting smarter about using your location to deliver handy, quick, useful information, and at giving you easy ways to find information or control basic things on your phone. In most ways, using the 360 is identical to other Android Wear devices. In a couple, it's much better. Motorola's watch faces are the best, classiest options I've seen by far, even if I would like a few more choices. It also has really impressive range. It stayed connected even as I walked down a floor in our hotel and down a hallway. In one key way, though, the 360 is much worse. Android Wear might technically work on round or square devices, but it's clearly designed for rectangles. You're basically getting a rectangular interface with the corners cut off. Sometimes that's fine, others it's a huge pain. All that I can live with, though. But the 360's worst feature is almost a deal breaker. Its battery life is rough. Motorola says it'll last a day, and is fairly explicit about the fact that you have to charge it every night. And at least the charger, a black wireless dock you drop the 360 into sideways, works well and looks good on my bedside table. But I got battery life more like 12 hours, even less with heavy use. Getting a day or a day and a night if you forget to charge it seems basically impossible. I don't need weeks or years for my smartwatch, but I don't think two days is too much to ask, and the 360 doesn't deliver. Right now, if you're buying a smartwatch, buy this one. This appears to be the best a manufacturer can do with Android Wear, the best thing available on the market. For $249, the Moto 360 is definitely the best of its kind, but right now that's still faint praise. I'm still waiting for a manufacturer, whether it's Apple or Samsung or HTC or Motorola itself, to come along and make us dream a little bit bigger about the devices we can wear on our wrists. Pretty is a good start. It's a really good start, but it can't be the finish line.

This is David with Verge and this is the new Moto G. So this is the follow up to Motorola's best selling smartphone ever, which was last year's Moto G. It's super cheap, it's designed to be like a high end smartphone for everyone all over the world. So there's a few big changes to this phone. The biggest one, literally and figuratively, is the five inch screen. It's now a five inch 720p display. It looks really good, it's an LCD, it has nice viewing angles, there's nothing terribly special about it, but it's a good screen. The other thing is all sort of small changes to the way that this works. Motorola says it spent a lot of time with customers talking about what they want in a phone and then built all that into here. So one of them is these two speakers. They're now front facing and they're much louder, they actually sound really good. The other big thing behind the removable back here, this is another important thing for Motorola, is having interchangeable backs. They have 15 of them now and they tell me that there are actually people who buy all 15 and change them all the time. But anyway, behind that is now an SD card slot. Motorola says it found that people use the SD cards to trade information, to send things back and forth between devices and not having a slot in some developing markets was a real problem for this device. So now it's here. So really this now has most of the trappings of your average smartphone these days. It has a lot less than the Moto X. It doesn't have any of the cool voice features, it doesn't have some of the always on display stuff, but it's just a very standard stock Android smartphone. It seems to work really well, it's pretty fast, it has a quad core processor. These are the amazing things that you can get with $179 smartphone now. It works pretty well, there's nothing terribly special about it, again it's just basic sort of stock Android. But it's a solid smartphone and for $179, which is what this costs and it's all over the world and it's hugely popular in a bunch of different markets, this is about as good as you're gonna do for the price. It's the new Moto G, it's coming all over the world and it's pretty interesting for Motorola. And that's it for this video, thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.

This is David at The Verge and this is the Motorola Hint. This is sort of the smallest of the announcements that Motorola had today. It's a tiny little Bluetooth headset. They don't want to call it a Bluetooth headset because there's all sorts of stigmas with that, but it's a Bluetooth headset. It's made to be super discreet and nice looking. It comes in this wood, plus a bunch of other materials that are designed to look really, really nice in your ear. And on one level, it's just a Bluetooth headset. You put it in your ear, you make phone calls, you can do voice control on the phone and there's all this cool Motorola Assist and Motorola Actions and stuff that all work. But on the other hand, it's kind of extra special for a Bluetooth headset. For the one thing, it's tiny. For another thing, it's super sensitive. So it's made to go in your ear just like this and there's a sensor on it that recognizes when it's in your ear and it'll automatically turn on and connect. And then as soon as you take it out, it'll disconnect and even if you're on a call, it'll route it straight back to your phone. So it's made to be super simple and to basically be worn all day, but you can have it come and go as you please. So it's $149, it's designed to be used with the new Moto X and the Moto G, but it'll work with lots of other phones too. There's some special stuff with the way the Moto X works that makes it even better for voice actions. But the Moto Hint is designed as really, it's a wearable. It's not a Bluetooth headset though, it's kind of a Bluetooth headset. It's gonna be a really interesting accessory for the Moto X this year. So the Hint itself is gonna get three and change hours of battery life, but it comes with this case which is cool looking and will help you not lose this tiny little thing. But it also makes it get triple the battery life. So when you put it in, it's actually charging, you can see from the light here. And it gives it about two full charges. So in all, with this whole package together, you're gonna get about 10 hours of battery life and that's probably good enough for a full day. So the Hint is kind of a weird little accessory. I'm not sure how many people are gonna get into it. I kind of like it, but we'll see how it does when it comes out with the Moto X this fall.

Hey, this is Chris from The Verge, and this is the new Moto X. Yes, that's right, just Moto X, not X Plus One or 2X or anything like that. It looks a lot like the original Moto X, but it's bigger and better and faster in pretty much every way imaginable. They moved up from a 4.7 to a 5.2 inch display, and it goes from 720p to 1080p on the new X. On the back, they have a 13 megapixel sensor, and you'll notice that they've done this cool thing with the flash where there's a ring surrounding the lens, and there's two LEDs inside of there, so when the flash pops, it sort of diffuses through that ring and surrounds the sensor. Below, you have sort of that trademark Motorola dimple that is from the original Moto X, and they've carried that through their entire line. And you'll notice that there's this curve here that's very familiar to existing Moto X owners. And on this phone, it goes to a much narrower edge than on the original. And this is very important, the new model is metal around here instead of plastic, so that gives it a much more premium feel. Now they've kept going with the configurability of this device through Moto Maker. The review unit that we have here is bamboo, but you'll be able to get a variety of woods plus a variety of colors. One new option for the second generation X is a number of leathers. There are four colors to choose from, and that is of course an upcharge, but it's kind of an interesting feel because it has some pliability to it that you don't get with something like plastic or wood. Compared to the original X, you'll notice that the new X is considerably bigger, but because it's so much narrower on the side, or at least it feels that way, it still feels fantastic in the hand. I think that the most amazing magic trick of the original X was its ability to feel very small, even though the screen actually wasn't that small. And the new X manages to do basically the same thing, even though the screen is a full half inch larger. Now you'll notice, you can't see it on the black version of the new X, but on this white one, there are these dots along the bottom, and there's also one at the top. And these are infrared sensors. So if I put this phone here, and I want to see the active display, which is one of the trademark features of the original Moto X that they've kept for this device, I can just wave over it, and that will turn on the display. So I can get my notifications at a glance. I can see if there are any text messages or emails that have come in. And if there were notifications, I could tap and peek at them without actually turning on the phone. And because this is a Super AMOLED display, it doesn't actually power on the entire display to do that, saves battery life. Now you'll notice this looks a lot like stock Android, and that's because it basically is. Just like the original X, they've kind of sprinkled in a few Motorola custom features, but overall, it looks and feels like just standard Android without any decorations or frills on it. It's running Kit Kat and it'll get an upgrade to Android L when it becomes available later this year. Overall, it's a much more premium feeling device than the original X, which I think was probably Motorola's biggest challenge, was that even though the X was their flagship, it kind of had a plasticky feel. They've solved that here with this metal rim, and of course, the leather choices are going to add a premium touch as well for those who decide to upgrade to it. So that's a quick look at the second generation Moto X.

A note-taking app is a super simple idea. It's for, you know, taking notes. But when your phone is involved, there's actually a lot more you can do. Sometimes your notes are text, sometimes they're pictures or weird drawings, sometimes they're checklists, and who knows what else. A really good note-taking app can handle anything, anywhere, at any time. And that's why Evernote is the best note-taking app on the planet. And it's the best on almost any platform, too. It can be a little unwieldy at first, but it's so incredibly powerful that it'll always be able to work with whatever you're doing. If you just want to keep a list of text notes, there's great organization, tagging, and sharing built into both iOS and Android. You can also click from the web to Evernote, or take pictures, or use the Reminders feature to make a to-do list. Evernote works everywhere, which is one of its best features. And I mean everywhere. iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, the web, Windows Phone, even Blackberry. But the best thing about Evernote is when you turn it into a huge repository for everything, from great reads, to funny GIFs, to class notes, and you'll know it's all there when you want it later. Technically, Evernote is free, but for $5 a month or $45 a year, you get better offline access, better search, and more security. I pay for it just to have offline notebooks on my phone, but whether or not you do want to pay for it, Evernote is still the best note-taking app on the market. Its only real competition is OneNote, Microsoft's great note-taking app that's finally come from Windows to other platforms, too. OneNote is structured just like a standard notebook, which I like on the desktop, but it can get a little bit overdone and confusing on a smaller screen. Still, it's incredibly powerful, it's free, it syncs to lots of different platforms, and it'll take pretty much anything you throw at it. If you're not in love with the way Evernote looks or can't handle its initial learning curve, OneNote might be the perfect choice for you. The third good app on the list is Simple Note. It's crazy fast, it has really good search, and it's really seamless across platforms, but it only works for plain text. If you're just jotting down notes to self, there's nothing that's easier or faster, but you might find you need more than Simple Note offers. Beyond those three, there are literally hundreds of apps for iOS and Android, but they're usually either less functional or less enjoyable than the best three, or both. On iOS, you might try Gnotes, or Awesome Notes, or Notes Tab, or Notability, but they all offer less than Evernote. Vesper is maybe the best-looking Notes app, but without sync or support for other platforms, it's really hard to sync your teeth into. On Android, the list is even longer. Papyrus, and Write, and Scribble, and Fetchnotes. Actually, Fetchnotes has a neat tagging system that I like, but that's not nearly enough to use it. Google Keep, in particular, is a great Android app with a really useful widget, but it's still a little basic, and not nearly cross-platform enough. Cross-platform really is important. You might not have your same phone or laptop forever, but you want to keep your notes forever, and having them accessible anytime from any device is huge. Luckily, all three of the best note-taking apps work on all the most important platforms, and they all work well every day. And of those three, Evernote is simply the most powerful. It's the one most able to adapt to whatever you decide to give. If you're going to dump your whole brain into one place, and you should, make it Evernote.

Samsung announced a bunch of new products to IFA today including a new Note 4, a Note 4 with a curved display, a watch, and a VR headset, which is crazy. Dan Schafer is here. He's played with all this stuff. Let's just start with the most important one, the Note 4. What's going on there? So, the Note 4 is an update of Galaxy Note line. It's almost exactly like the Note 3 on the outside except it's got a faster processor, higher screen, and Samsung finally put some metal on its phone. Yeah, instead of faking it. Right, the Note 3 had this really ugly chrome plastic that's supposed to look like metal. But the Note 4's got a metal band around it and it's got kind of the same soft touch back that's that leatherette feeling but they got rid of that awful fake stitching. It feels a lot better in your hand. Put together a lot better. It's remarkable how big of a difference what a little thing like a metal band does when you're holding the device. It's basically just a really refined Note 3. It's a refined Note 3. It's exactly what it is. It's Samsung saying we did a really good thing with the Note 3. A lot of people complained about these particular things. We fixed those particular issues. Here's the Note 4. It's faster, better screen, better camera. And they're also doing stuff to make it more luxurious. There's Swarovski crystal backs. They partnered with Montblanc to do nicer styluses. Yeah, so Samsung's had these partnerships for a while with Swarovski but now they're just going full hog onto them. I don't know if we're ever going to see them here in the US but I can picture them in Samsung flagship stores worldwide of getting a Swarovski crystal back for your Note 4. Other than being a refined Note 3, anything major about the Note 4 that's worth knowing? So I think what the big takeaway for the Note 4 is Apple's going to be expected to release a big phone next week or announce a big phone. 5.5 inches. 5.5 or whatever it might be. Samsung has long held onto that big screen market. It kind of invented the phablet. This is Samsung putting its best foot forward to be able to hold onto what it's got against a big screen incoming iPhone. You think they'll be successful? It's hard to say. I think that this is definitely the best Note that they've released yet. They refined a lot of things. They made it better. The Note 3 wasn't a bad product. If you wanted a phablet device, it's definitely the best option. And now this is just a better Note 3. We'll have to see what Apple brings out. Every time I see a Note 3 I'm like, man, I want a gigantic screen. So Samsung, they also released the Note 4 Edge, which is the Note 3 with a little bit of a screen curve, some buttons along the side for quick actions and notifications when you watch videos. Did you play with that one? Yeah, so the Note Edge is exactly what she said. It's a Note 4 except on the right hand side of the phone they've taken the screen and kind of just melted it along the side. And they've had this kind of concept for a long time. We saw a couple years ago at CES they were showing off the exact same concept. But now you can actually or will be able to go buy it. And the curved kind of side, it shows different notifications for you. You can check your weather. You can have it act as a clock on your desk. They even built a silly little game for it that you play on the edge, which is just silly. Is that just Samsung being Samsung? This whole product is Samsung being Samsung. It feels to me like this is very much a first generation product that doesn't have a clear purpose to exist other than Samsung saying, we can do this and nobody else can. Right, I remember a long time ago Samsung had the Continuum on the Verizon which had two displays. Well, no, it had one display and they blacked out the middle of it. It just feels very much, is anyone going to support this? Exactly. When I talk to Samsung executives they say, they haven't released pricing yet, but they say this is going to be positioned higher than the Note 4. I don't think that they expect a whole lot of people to go for the Note Edge. It's just kind of like a thing that they built because they could do it. If you use it with your right hand... The ultimate Samsung. It's the ultimate Samsung. If you use it with your right hand you can swipe along the little edge. It's still a really big phone obviously so it's not super comfortable. But if you use it with your left hand that curve does nothing for you for interactions. Right, you've got to hold it upside down. You've got to hold it upside down which is ridiculous. So speaking of other Samsung stuff today, big news. Gear S, which was announced a few days ago, you've got to play with it now. Yeah, so the Gear S is the biggest smartwatch Samsung has ever released. It looks like something from a movie. It looks like your watch looks small. Because this thing has a two inch curved screen and it is... I've long said that these things look like computers on your wrist and they always have, but this is literally the closest thing we have to a computer on your wrist. It has a full QWERTY keyboard. It has a full QWERTY keyboard. You can swipe on it. I know some developers announced some things that their keyboards that they have on Android phones, they're going to be porting to this thing. It's got a SIM card in it so you can leave your phone at home and still get your text messages and emails and God forbid make calls from this curved two inch screen. There's no plans to bring it to the US yet. And we don't really know what it's going to cost but this is like peak Samsung smartphone. This is Samsung going full hog with a big curved display. And it looks cool. I don't think I'd ever wear it out of the house. It's kind of the same thing. Next week Apple is going to do a watch or something we expect and this is kind of there. Yeah, this is Samsung trying to preempt it. And so then lastly, speaking of crazy Samsung, they announced a VR shell for the Note 4 in partnership with Oculus. It's a great name. It's the Note 4 VR display, innovators edition powered by Oculus. It's an amazing, amazing collection of nouns all in that name. It's kind of crazy. You put a Note 4 in it and you can wave your head around. Is this just a gimmick? This thing is like, I looked at it and I was like, that's silly. It's ridiculous. I know that had been leaked a couple weeks ago and I thought, same thing. But when you put it on, and it's the same thing that you get when you put on the Oculus Rift, it's just this like, oh my God experience. You're sucked into this world and you're moving your head around all over the place. You're doing your best Stevie Wonder impression and you're just in this world and it just put a smile on my face right away. It's just a fun thing to play with. I don't know how much it's going to cost. I don't know when you're going to be able to buy it. It only works with the Note 4. There isn't a whole lot of software with it. Samsung says there's going to be a software store when it launches. Samsung makes a lot of promises on that software store. Samsung makes a lot of software promises. That's right. That's not going to happen. But there was a couple demos on there. You could be Tony Stark in his lab and grab things and stuff like that. There was this flight simulator demo where you flew the ship around with your head and tapped the side to blast things, which is like super fun. It's probably like 15 minutes of entertainment. If anything's cheap, it's a good toy to buy for the Note 4. I think what they're going to do, because it only works with the Note 4, they did the same strategy last year with the Note 3 and the first Galaxy Gear. It only worked with the Note 3 and one other phone. So Samsung bundled them together and they put a Galaxy Gear on a lot of people's wrists that wouldn't have bothered. AT&T is going to be giving these things away for free like crazy. I think the Gear VR is going to be the same thing. It only works with the Note 4. If you buy a Note 4, you can pick this up for 50 bucks or something and it doesn't work for anybody else. But it's fun. Awesome. Samsung. Doing it. Thanks, Dan. Subscribe.

Sony released a bunch of stuff at IFA today including three new phones, a couple cameras, and a $300 MP3 player that appears to be directly from 2006. Dieter Bohn, you know all of what's going on. Tell me about these phones. So, it's three new Z3 devices. There's the Z3, which is, I think, a 5.2 inch device. Maybe it's a little bigger. There's a 4.6 inch Z3 Compact, which is sort of the ideal sweet spot phone for them, I think. And then there's the Z3 Tablet Compact, which is an 8 inch device. The streak of awful names at IFA continues, basically. It's insane, right. So, the tablet's cool. It's super thin, but, you know, it's an Android tablet, so whatever. But the Z3 Compact is the one that I think is the most exciting because, unlike most compact phones or mini phones, it's just fully spec'd out. It's got the full megapixels, the full processor speed, a really nice screen. So, if you want a good Android phone that isn't gigantic, this is the first one in a while that there hasn't been some weird compromise for. And it's kind of like directly at the iPhone. That's kind of what they live. And if you want an Android phone with a good camera, Sony's been kind of the place to go. Yeah, they've always been a little bit better than everybody else, and there's always been just one little piece that's like, oh man, if you guys would just fix X in your software, then we know you could be as good as the iPhone. So, I'm really interested to see what these do. And they've scaled back their software crazy. Yeah, they've scaled it back a bit. So, it's not as bad as the super early days. It's still not pure Android, but it's way better. And so the most exciting thing about all these phones is that they integrate with the PS4. Yeah, so I think it's a PS4 remote play. So, if you're on the same Wi-Fi network as your PS4, you just take the DualShock controller that you've already got because you own a PS4. And they sell a little plastic mount for it. I think you might be able to do some touch screen, but they want you to do it with the DualShock. And you just can play your PlayStation games. And if I have a PS4 and I'm going to buy an Android phone, I'm going to see if I can get a Sony because that's awesome. I don't have to go buy a Vita. I just can do it on my phone. And not only is that super cool, and it's one, it's the first time Sony's ever actually succeeded at using its PlayStation brand on its phones. Remember they tried to do the PlayStation phone? The PlayStation phone, and there was like the store, and then they had to do it with... And they tried this garbage, and everyone was like, no. They tried HTC for a while that never went anywhere. Whose deal with HTC has never gone anywhere? So anyway, this is great. That's what I want out of a phone. And it's also screw you Microsoft. You've been making this promise for a long time. Well, they've never made the promise, have they? I mean, that's what smart glasses for, all this stuff. They've never gotten to the place where Sony has gotten very quickly, it seems like. Yeah, Microsoft should have been doing this for years. And I don't even think it's on the horizon for them right now. So yeah, more bad news for the Xbox One. Wow, rough. So speaking of cameras, Sony, they continue with their lens cameras. Yes. Those big mounts, you can mount them like an iPhone or any other phone. You get a better sensor and lens. Yeah, so it's just like a giant lens that you would normally see on their little alpha line of cameras. You speak of the NEX line. And they're basically the E-mount lens. That's their small format. So there's a new one that's the QX30. It's like a super zoom. It's a big ass lens that you strap to the back of your phone. The thing that I'm excited about is the QX1, which is still pretty expensive, but it's basically the mount and the sensor, but not the lens. So if you're already bought into Sony's camera ecosystem, you've already got the glass sitting around. You can just attach it to this thing. And I was really excited about the previous generation of these, but the software is a little janky. Sony, they've got to make better software. Right, and it's the same story as always. Like, oh, we've gotten better, it's getting better, it's getting faster. But is it faster than pulling out the camera that's not that much bigger than this lens? No, it won't be. Yeah, I think, I mean, but the idea of having a great lens that you can take your photos directly to your phone is awesome. Yeah, it's a super great idea. Sony's just to figure it out. What else? They did watches. They released so many products today. They did a SmartWatch 3. They finally switched to Android Wear. It's just like a little puck that you put into these horrible colored bands. They might have some special software on top of Wear someday, but it's a pretty uninspiring Android Wear device. And then they've got a fitness band that uses e-paper. It's got a curved display. It's something, something talk. And you can make phone calls on it. You can snap your fingers to start and stop your music. I don't know why. It seems terrible. So, speaking of, I mean, the last three products here, the Sony SmartWatch. This is their third SmartWatch. It's just like, why'd you do this? Well, at least we don't have to watch Sony try and cram Android onto a tiny screen anymore. There used to be home and back and menu buttons on these things. But that was fake Android. Well. Whatever. So, just try harder at this, Sony. And then lastly, this is my favorite of them all, a $300 MP3 player, the A17 Walkman. So, bring back the Walkman line. It is literally as though there was a caveman frozen in a warehouse who woke up and was like, I have to do this. It has no click wheel. It has no touch screen. It's the four buttons that failed in every product in 2006. And it plays, it upsamples your music. Yes. Claims it's super high end. Yeah. There's no syncing software. You have to drag and drop music onto it over USB. I mean, it is just the perfect product for 2006. It is, and the whole claim is like Neil Young is doing this Pono thing that's like really high end audio. Sony has a high end audio line of like receivers and amps and all this like audiophile stuff. Meanwhile, everyone else is just listening to music on their phones like through Beats Audio Streaming. And it's, I just don't, or Spotify or whatever, and it's, I don't understand this product. Except for the audacity of existence. Yeah. Like, it's here again. The only thing I can think is that it cost them nothing to make it. And so, they're like, well, look, people are buying our e-readers, so maybe they'll want to buy our MP3 players. Didn't they just cancel their e-readers? Yeah. Yeah. For a while they were selling them. They took the e-reader staff and they were like. What are you going to do now? And like the best idea that e-reader staff was like, what if we do an MP3 player? Sure, why not? Sony. There it is. Doing it right. Subscribe.

Errors can be fatal in an operating room. For decades, diagnoses and surgical plans have been made based on 2D x-rays and MRI scans, requiring doctors to rely on instinct during surgical procedures. When 18-month-old Gabriel started having hundreds of micro-seizures called mind erasers every day, surgeons at Boston Children's Hospital piloted a revolutionary technique to save his brain. Gabriel is 18 months old and he was born January 28th of 2013 and he had a major stroke at birth and actually almost died and Boston Children's Hospital saved him. And about five months later he developed these horrible seizures called infantile spasms. They call them mind erasers actually because many children who end up with these spasms forget everything that they've already learned. The scariest part about it was that we were warned that he could maybe forget us. So every day we would go into his crib and be like, please don't let this be the day that he forgets who we are. We had talked to many people here at the hospital and it was decided that he needed to have something called a hemispherectomy. So a hemispherectomy is probably the most challenging operation and it's used in fairly rare cases where one whole half of the brain is not working well but is causing seizures and involves actually disconnecting one whole half of the brain from the rest of the brain and from everything on the other side. What's really made a big difference is being able to actually get a model of the brain that we can practice the surgery on before doing the surgery. I'll never forget when he said, you know, we're going to do something with your son that we've never done with anybody before and I was like, what? And he said, we have this 3D printing machine and I can make an actual replica of his brain before the surgery. 3D printing has been used to make guns, dresses, cars and prosthetics but using new 3D technology, BCH can simulate the conditions of even the most difficult of surgeries. This technology allows them to take CT and MRI scans of a patient's brain and turn them into 3D printed models which surgeons can practice on before going into the operating room. So I was actually able to perform this operation in its entirety on this child the night before surgery and actually show it to the parents and say this is what we're going to be doing. It was so amazing to know that the surgeon was going to go in and actually do the surgery on this replica before he was going to touch my baby. Until now, medical simulations have been limited to simple training exercises like CPR or intubation. Gabriel's surgery marks a breakthrough in medical simulation. Nobody wants to be the first person to get a hemispheric tami from a particular surgeon ever really. So why would you ever want to have your first operation be on a real patient? And I think that's what we're seeing with the simulator movement. 3D printing using simulation offers an opportunity to cascade knowledge, to share knowledge in a box. If there's a surgeon in another country who is interested in doing a very particular surgery on a patient on a child, imagine the opportunity to send the images of that particular patient, have us print those images, have our surgeons iterate the surgery and send them back essentially a kit that they can hold in their hands. That's a game changer. Being able to actually do a patient-specific operation I think is a real plus that I've really enjoyed having that opportunity. We did the surgery. This boy has been seizure free ever since and his parents are just absolutely thrilled and they're really wonderful people, all three of them. He's doing great. He's starting to hit all these milestones that he missed. He doesn't have to have these seizures take his life away. I hope every hospital in the world ends up with this kind of technology because it is such a godsend. I thank God for this place every day.

This is Dan Seifert with The Verge and we are looking at the new Samsung Galaxy Note 4. It's the latest in Samsung's Galaxy Note line of smartphones and phablets. Note 4 actually has a number of upgrades over last year's Note 3. Same size 5.7 inch screen but now it is actually a QHD 2K display as opposed to the 1080p model from last year. It really looks great. It's got great viewing angles, great colors. It's super AMOLED so it's very vibrant and saturated and there are visibly no pixels. And then the other big design change here is the new all metal band around the side of it. This may look familiar if you are familiar with the Galaxy Alpha that Samsung announced a few weeks back but it's an all metal band here. It really improves the quality of the device as far as holding it in your hand. It feels a lot better than the plastic material Samsung used to use. On the back here it's got the same kind of soft touch material but gone are the fake leather stitching which is a huge improvement if you ask me. The camera has been improved to a 16 megapixel module up from last year's I believe it was 8 megapixel. And then it's got the integrated heart rate monitor that we saw on the Galaxy S5. Samsung says that the camera is a major improvement in that it has optical image stabilization which is the first for Samsung. So it lets you zoom in further on digital zoom as well as get sharper pictures in low light. We've seen a couple of manufacturers use optical stabilization but this is the first for Samsung. And then on the front facing camera you've got a new higher resolution front facing camera that has some new tricks up its sleeve. You can just tap the display to take a picture or you can use the heart rate sensor on the back. Samsung's also improved the battery charging on this so now it can charge from 0 to 50% in just 30 minutes with the rapid charge technology. And of course it's got a big removable battery just like any other Samsung Galaxy smartphone in the past. So you can take the battery out, you can add a micro SIM card if you need to. Samsung isn't announcing exact price and release date for the Galaxy Note 4 just yet but it will be available here in the US as well as across the world. In the US you're going to be able to get it on Sprint, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. Hey guys thanks so much for watching that video. The first thing you should do if you liked it is click the thumbs up button down below. Then if you haven't already you should subscribe to our channel over here. It's awesome. You'll love it. And you'll especially love these two videos which you should watch right now because really what else are you doing?

Hey guys, this is David with The Verge and this is the Samsung Gear S. It was announced last week but this is Samsung's newest smartwatch. It's running Tizen and the different thing about this is it's not really actually in need of your smartphone very often. It has a 4G connection and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and everything it needs to basically run all by itself. It's not designed to replace your smartphone so much as just let you leave it home for a while. So the best new thing about this, it's running Tizen and the best thing is that it actually has good notifications. So you can see the full text of somebody who texts you or calls and you can actually just call them right back and you can do pretty much anything you need to do from your watch itself. You can send emails back to people from the watch. You can say, hey, I don't know who this is that I'm texting but you know that's okay. Hey guys, oh hey you. Send text message and it's done. It has a lot of the same Tizen apps as some of the other watches. The app store is a thousand strong and getting bigger all the time. It has all the S-Health stuff. It'll measure your sleep and your steps and all kinds of different stuff. The biggest problem that it still has is that it's just big. It has nice looking watch faces. S-Voice is handy. Being connected this way is great but it's just going to be big on your wrist. It has a really lovely two inch curved OLED display that looks really great but it's just big on most people. The replaceable watch bands will make it a little easier for a lot of people but I think having a watch this big is still going to be a problem for some people. But this is the Samsung Gear S. We don't know when it's coming out. We don't even know if it's coming to the US yet but this is at least for now the latest and greatest Samsung smartwatch.

Hey guys, this is David with The Verge and this is the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge. Basically it's the same thing as the Note 4. It has the same processor, the same design, the same camera, the same S Pen, the same everything. It is one big change. It's this. It has a rounded display that actually is part of the same display. It's a little smaller than the Note 4, but it's curved. And what it lets you do is in software actually have essentially a whole separate setup off to the side. So you can do whatever you want to do on the screen itself and then you have little menus over here. Sometimes it's apps, sometimes folders will open, sometimes it's contextual things like if you have the camera open, the shutter button and all the modes come down here. So basically it's designed to be sort of complimentary, sort of separate and it's basically a whole other screen that you can choose to do whatever you want with. Samsung's done this before with the Continuum, which was sort of silly. This actually seems much cooler. So you can customize it by adding things like news and sports scores and Twitter and things about your steps and all this stuff. And what's going to be really interesting is when developers can actually get a hold of this and start to do cool stuff. My favorite thing so far, this is kind of small, is the alarm clock mode. So the idea is you set it down on your table as you sleep next to it and it will just show you the time and you can scroll through your notifications, you can scroll through your news, your steps, whatever you have while you're lying in bed looking at it. I don't know if that's cool, I'm kind of into it though, so I don't know, I'm a fan. So this is otherwise just like the Galaxy Note 4. It has a 16 megapixel camera on the back, plus a heart rate sensor, it has a removable back, it has this new metallic design that's actually really, really nice. It has a super fast processor, it has the S Pen, it has Samsung's same sort of wacky overwrought software as always, though I have to say it is getting a little better with every iteration of TouchWiz. It's going to be the flagship model, Samsung doesn't expect to sell as many of these as the Note 4, but this is the one that Samsung is going to trot out and say like, this is the future. It's going to be announced at IFA, Samsung hasn't announced pricing or availability yet, but there will probably be more to talk about this fall. It's coming to all four major carriers in the US and around the world, it's definitely the flagship phone. And that is the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge.

This is Dan Seifer with The Verge and I am wearing the new Samsung Gear VR headset, which is actually an accessory for the new Samsung Galaxy Note 4. It is Samsung's version of a VR headset and it uses the Note 4 that actually sits in the front of these glasses to power the lenses behind it and so it creates this virtual reality environment. Samsung says that they've actually partnered with Oculus and some other VR developers to create this headset. Currently I'm playing a game where I'm flying a spaceship around and blasting asteroids and other spaceships. It uses full head tracking, fully immersive, it's very similar to the Oculus Rift experience except it's completely untethered and mobile. On the right hand side here there's a control panel that is a touch panel and swiping and there's a back button volume control here and a focus controller on top. But otherwise you're pretty much interacting with the display itself. There's a few demo applications that let you view concerts and play games and there's an Avengers program built into it as well so you can pretend to be Tony Stark which is very cool and actually a lot more fun than I expected. Oh, I'm going to die. Samsung isn't saying exactly when this will be released or how much it will cost but we expect it to be available this fall and until then I'll be in here.

Gabriel had a major stroke at birth. It was decided that he needed to have a hemispherectomy. Hemispherectomy is probably the most challenging operation and involves actually disconnecting one whole half of the brain. We're going to do something with your son that we've never done with anybody before. We have this 3D printing machine and I can make an actual replica of his brain. So I was actually able to practice the surgery on before doing the surgery. It is such a godsend. I thank God for this place every day.

As Americans, the way we eat is not sustainable for much longer. The farming which supports our bad habits is inherently flawed. An estimated $165 billion are lost to wasted food every year. And the scarcity of water threatens to wipe out production in parts of the country, also threatening the balance of global food systems. But could technology be the answer? An MIT scientist is giving farming a facelift by building a platform for the next generation of food. An operating system for the farm of the future. About four years ago during Japan's tsunami, a group from the Media Lab went to Minami San Raku. We were looking at all different kinds of things. I was looking at food. The headlines that day said Japan farming has no youth, no water, no future. And so from that point I started thinking about contaminated areas and how could we put it back into production. You know, the strategy right now is these countries that are having food security issues go to another country and they buy their land and they make a farm. The problem with colonizing another place for food is often that place also doesn't have much food. You know, it's not a far stretch that when supply lines get stressed more, when our natural resources get stressed more, you will see a potential war over food. You'd have to protect it and militarize it and all these things, which I think is an awful way for the world to go. But if those countries start investing in their cities, which is where everybody's going to live anyway, that's the biggest change that I see happening for the relationship between this kind of agriculture and conventional agriculture. I'm Caleb Harper. I'm a research scientist. I'm also the founder of the City Farm Project, which is just looking at how do we feed our cities of the future, how do we move production closer to the point of consumption. City Farm is a plant research facility based in MIT's Media Lab. Using state-of-the-art equipment, they explore and build innovative and high-performance indoor agriculture systems. Through research and development of hydroponic or aquatic production, the lab uses an array of network sensors and computerized automation to deliver the most efficient means of growing plants without the need for soil. When I look at my lab, what do I see? I see a 1960s mainframe. I see vacuum tubes and plugs all over the place and one crazy maniacal man that goes back and forth filling holes in the dam. I mean, that's what I feel like and that's what I see, and that is to me the most accurate representation of the technology. We're at the beginning. We are not the first by far, but right now we're at this special moment where everybody cares because people are now asking for a level of transparency that they haven't asked for before. So that's why I'm making my work completely transparent to say, look, come check it out. I'm going to try to get one in your city. I'm going to try to get one around your kids for them to play with it and see what everybody thinks and so they can kind of educate through doing and then decide what they think of the food because we have to educate people. We have to bring people into this new method of growing. We have to create innovators. It's no longer the case that, you know, grow it there and eat it here. It's grow it here, eat it here. As you enter the space, you'll encounter what we think of as like a decontamination area. That's where we keep our server and our tools. Then you go into the next big volume and what you'll have is all the different kinds of equipment that we have in there. So there's aeroponic systems and then there's shallow water culture. Shallow water culture is just like two inches of water the plants sit in. Then there's deep water culture for bigger plants. Aeroponics is just where there's no longer standing water, we're just misting it. We're misting at about 50 microns a size, so a little heavier than fog. So it's just water and how we're using water and are we using it the most effectively for the plants. This is called a shallow water culture. So three inches of water, these nice bright white roots that come out. So what we're doing with this is continually recirculating this water around in the system. What you're seeing growing here is a variety of things. So in the lab we do a polycropped environment, which just means we try to grow a lot of different kinds of things rather than a mono crop. We have 12 points of sensing. So things like pH in the water makes a big difference. Electrical conductivity, so the amount of salts in the water. CO2 content, temperature, humidity. We control the photosynthetically active radiation levels. So that just is a big fancy word for the part of light that grows plants, which is about 10% of light. It falls between like red and blue. So we monitor and adjust that for both spectral balance and intensity. So I mean there's a lot of control and understanding going on in there. And so when we have a problem, you know, for a specific plant, we can kind of go back to the data we've collected and change the environment. What I'm working on and what a lot of people are working on needs to be thought of in concert with agriculture rather than us versus them. This is not a replacement. What's really going to happen is it's going to be implemented in strategic ways. You know, because on one side of the spectrum you have people that just love this. They're like, you know, it tastes better, it's fresher, it's better for you. And you have the other side that's like, this is freaky food. This is super freaky food. And what did you do with it? Because I as a consumer feel like I've been lied to for a long time about my food and I don't believe you. I think that's a conversation that from my perspective just needs to be open and say, look, you want to know what's going on with the water? Here it is. Open data right for you. Check it out. You want to be invested in your food again? I will hopefully be building sockets for you to plug into to where you can be reinvested in your food again and understand what's going on. There's a new farmer being born and the new farmer lives in the city and is young. You know, this is a new generation of people that can get interested in food in a different way. And it's existing farmers whose systems we can make better.

burst into Eureka! Breath, looked at me seriously.... Laugh, and then started walking brush... Close with body technique

I kind of always wonder what I was missing, I guess. You know, I'd ask people, you know, what is 3D vision like? And that's a really hard question to answer for people who have always had it. I saw this TED talk by someone named Susan Barry, and she was one of the first people who was saying that you could actually gain stereo vision in adulthood. At first, about two or three weeks in, I just saw the keys on my keyboard kind of popping up. When I got it and it worked so quickly without too much effort, that was when I thought, you know, I have to really try to see how far I can push this, try to figure out what's possible with the technology. Sometimes something associated with strabismus is something called a lazy eye, or the medical word is amblyopia. So a child develops a lazy eye, and to treat that lazy eye, we patch a child. The patching is to help take the weak eye and make it stronger and give it best vision during the early years of child development. I was diagnosed with a lazy eye when I was less than a year old, and I've been wearing glasses my whole life. I did hundreds of hours of patching when I was a kid, and it didn't end up working. When I was about nine or ten years old, my doctor said, you know, I was past the critical age, I was too old, and I would never be able to learn how to use my weak eye together with my strong one. Obviously, the brain will often take the shortest route to the best vision. So if something's not matching up, if it's blurrier in one eye or if the eye is off-center, the brain will just only use the good eye. And so what we do is, inside virtual reality, we'll take single objects and we'll increase the signal by increasing the brightness of those objects in the weak eye, and we'll decrease the signal by decreasing the brightness in the strong eye, and that kind of tricks the brain into using the eye when normally it never would in normal seeing conditions. Our job as physicians who deal with ophthalmology for business problems, our goal is perfect depth perception. That's what's holy to us. That's what we look to do. So occasionally I'll prescribe, if you will, video games four times a day, call the doctor in two weeks. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not by much. But any kind of close-near work that converges the eyes is strength training for the eyes. The advantage of fine depth perception is that you drive better, you play sports better. All those fine functions, you do better. You thread a needle better. All those fine functions. The reason why virtual reality is necessary for this is that we have to show the same object with different properties to each eye. And before virtual reality, that wasn't really possible. And for a person with lazy eye, we show this cube to both eyes, and we'll make it brighter in the weak eye and dimmer in the strong eye. And what that does is it breaks through the suppression of the weak eye that people with lazy eye have. So one of the issues with any new application or treatment is, is it truly been scientifically tested? As multi-centered double-blind studies, will you test patients with it and without it and see the difference? And also the thing to be careful about is some devices require FDA approval. And presuming this one doesn't may be too much of a presumption. Maybe not. So I've talked to a ton of optometrists, vision therapists, ophthalmologists. We have two optometrists on our board of advisors who are actively making sure we're doing this the right way, advising us on how to build the game. Our long-term plan is to get this software out to as many people as possible who need it. We want to help as many people as we can. And so that probably means at home, you can buy it over the internet, download it, use it at home on any head-mounted display. The value we can offer to people I think is worth the expense of the head-mounted display.

The way we are developing and treating VR, it is a means to an end. We are not developing VR for its own sake, but in order to do better science. Now that you have this interface where you can work with your data in a much more natural fashion, you're not just doing your science faster, but you're doing it in a completely different way. I'm Oliver Kreilos, I'm a researcher at the University of California, Davis. I am specifically in the K-Caves project, which is an interdisciplinary research project between computer scientists like myself and earth scientists on the other side with the overarching goal to develop virtual reality as a tool to enable scientific research at a time when VR really got noticed by the mainstream for the first time in the late 80s, early 90s. Head mounted displays were the display modality of choice. The problem was that head mounted displays have two inherent issues that make them very difficult to deal with. One of them is latency that requires a very low response time between you moving and the system reacting to it. The second part is they also are very sensitive to calibration. You need to input the positions of your eyes relative to the very small screen very precisely in order to get a convincing image. And so those were both things that couldn't really be done with the technology at the time, which is one of the reasons why VR ultimately failed. People came up with the idea, well, instead of having two tiny little screens that are mounted right in front of your eyes, why not just use big screens that are far away from you and that are not attached to your face? And hence the cave was born, which is essentially a combination of three very big screens on the big floor, which are projected by big projectors. And then the user does not wear a display on their face, but they just wear stereo glasses, the same ones you would wear in a 3D movie theater. That was really the first time that a VR environment was working to the point where you could really do things in it. So the cave by design is a one person environment. Due to the way it works, it can only create a very convincing view of your virtual objects for the person who is wearing the head-track glasses. Everybody else in the cave gets a secondary, somewhat distorted view. But in practice we found that our scientists are using the cave in smaller groups. And that is when sort of the light bulb went off, when we realized that science is collaborative, not just because people work together in writing papers, but really they develop the knowledge or they extract the knowledge from the data in a collaborative fashion. Very naturally from that observation came then the question, how can we support collaborative work that is not done in the same environment, but across different environments? We are trying to replicate precisely the way how people work together when they are in the same physical space, but then we are trying to allow them to do it separately. Each one of these is a capture space, so to speak. Here in this space I am capturing the user using one, two, three first generation Kinect cameras so that we get a full body, low resolution, 3D scan of the person. And then the same thing is true for the 3D TV, only that we have only two Kinects, one to the left, one to the right, because the TV is supposed to be used sitting down in front of it like this, and so now I am captured from here and from there. Anybody who is using this environment, who is sitting here or standing here with the Rift gets transported virtually into that shared space, and the same for whoever sits in front of that. It doesn't really make a difference if this is here or in another room on campus or somewhere across town, or we have even tried it between here and Germany where latency was, let's say, the problem, but it still worked. So this is a long distance communication system. What looks like very disparate elements is, if you look at it from an underlying level and especially from a technical level, it is actually really one thing. On the one hand, we have all these different things in hardware that make VR happen. There is the Cave and the 3D TV and the Oculus Rift and the Project Morpheus and whatever you have, and then you have all these input devices from the game controller to keyboard and mouse to the kind of tracked wand that we have in the cave and stems and razor hydras and motion capture suits and all that. So these very disparate elements, those are the things that any good VR software has to unify. What I am personally working on is to write that infrastructure, that middleware that allows us to write software completely independently of any of those issues. And while that is work in progress, and I have been working on it for, I don't know, 16 years now, it works really well. What I'm trying to work towards is essentially treating VR, treating the VR environment like you would treat a normal computer, meaning that there is some VR operating system that is running on the bottom of it, but which really supports exchanging data between applications, accessing your files in some form. So in other words, some kind of 3D VR version of the kind of things that would be in a normal operating system. The main skepticism is that virtual reality or 3D doesn't really add anything to the functionality of a system. That anything we can do in VR you can also do using a normal computer, but of course at much, much, much lower cost. And that we found out is simply not true. By shifting fieldwork out of the field where you are not connected to the internet, where you don't have power, where each day in the field costs a lot of money, we can now do those things in our offices in comfort and over a much longer period of time, we can just attempt to get data that we didn't even consider doing before. For example, we can send a team of students to scan an area after an earthquake at a very, very high resolution using LiDAR and then spend months in the cave cleaning up our data to get not dozens but hundreds of measurements, which not only give us a much more detailed view of what is happening along this fault during the earthquake, but it also gives us information we simply didn't have before.

The promise of virtual reality has always been enormous. Put on these goggles, go nowhere, and be transported anywhere. It's the same escapism peddled by drugs, alcohol, sex, and art. Virtual reality may be man meets machine, but what happens is strictly within the mind. What can we learn from the failures of the past? What do we want from the future? What kind of reality will we end up with? The Verge investigates the rise, fall, and rise again of virtual reality.

So Terry Gilliam's new movie, The Zero Theorem, it's out on video on demand and it's in some theaters but it's not everywhere, maybe because it's not that good of a movie. At the end you sort of just feel like, what did I watch here? And I should tell you right now, there's gonna be a lot of spoilers here. There's this guy, he's a programmer in the future, he's trying to solve the Zero Theorem. Basically it's this attempt to prove that the universe is going to shrink back on itself and turn into nothing. Although it's a little bit like paint by the numbers, Gilliam. You're expecting your standard Kafkaesque Brazil. But then the second half of the movie you're basically locked in a church with the main character, Owen Leffert. The thematics of this guy who believes in God and is sitting in a church is just a little bit heavy handed. So basically every single character in Zero Theorem acts kind of like an archetype. They're there to forward this larger philosophical argument that's happening, more so than to actually get you to connect to them as people. Except for Bainsley, the love interest, she actually feels like she has real human feelings and motivations. So when you see a Terry Gilliam film you expect a certain amount of visual flourish. There's Batman the Redeemer billboards, there's crazy ads, there's people wearing hilarious outfits made out of plastic. Lots of great set design too. It feels like this surreal place that's designed to sort of make this larger philosophical parable kind of argument. So let's talk about the end. At the end, Cohen has put on the virtual reality suit that's designed to help him find his soul and everything goes wrong and he ends up getting sucked into the computer and he sees all of these faces and people, the people that he's connected to, say on the internet, swirling into the black hole of nothingness. He's like, screw it, and he jumps in and he ends up on the beautiful sunny beach. Rather than be like, oh this sucks or what's going on here? And he starts playing with the sun aesthetic. The Zero Theorem is true, everything is meaningless. You might as well play around with the universe and have fun. But if you look at it as a metaphor for the internet, rather than freak out about our attention deficit and that we can't connect to each other as humans, just sort of accept that this is a reality that we've created for ourselves. It's this like standard, do you believe in meaning or do you believe in this nihilistic future? Philosophically, I didn't get a whole lot out of the movie. It's definitely not Gilliam's best work and you're not going to leave the theater feeling super awesome.

This is Dan Seifer with The Verge and we are taking a look at the HTC One M8 for Windows. It is quite literally an HTC One M8 running Windows Phone. It's the exact same hardware as the Android version that was released earlier this year. It's got the same single unibody metal frame, same 5 inch 1080p display, the same duo camera on the back with the 4 megapixel ultra pixel camera. It's also got the IR port up top here as well. Quite literally the exact same hardware as the Android version. But it is running Windows Phone 8.1 update which is the latest software from Microsoft. It's got Cortana built in, it's got various tweaks to the start screen here. You can have folders and things like that. You can hide the on screen buttons here. So it's the latest software from Microsoft. It also has a couple of things that HTC has added to support the duo camera and the other unique hardware features on the M8. HTC has built its own camera app which will look really familiar to you if you are familiar or if you used with the Android version. The camera app supports the same type of after the fact features that you can do with the duo camera on Android. It's got the U-Focus and the foregrounder and the 3D dimension thing. So you can tap to refocus using the U-Focus just like you can on Android. HTC has also included its blink feed service. It's now an app that's on the start screen but it looks pretty much the same as it does on Android. And then finally HTC has also built its Sense TV app for Windows now. So it supports the IR port on the top of the M8 so you can program your TV and cable box in there and use the device as a remote. The HTC One M8 from Windows is available starting today from Verizon's website or you can pick it up in Verizon stores tomorrow and it's priced at $99 with a two year contract.

Now I'm gonna do it. Now, Bankov tagged me. ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Now I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna tag Joanna Stern, Ezra Klein, and Matt Rogers. Matt Rogers from Nest. Shit just got real.

Mailbox for Mac is finally here. Well, it's in beta, so there are a few bugs, but that won't stop us from showing you the app's six best features to help you get through email faster than ever. First, Mailbox for Mac is super quick. Adding an account downloads all your emails instantly. There are no loading bars ever. Second, the app swiping is here too. As you're scrolling through your inbox, you can quickly swipe to archive with just one motion, whereas in most apps, this takes a few clicks. Third, you can finally select multiple messages. Sure, that's an easy one, but is there any other mail app that lets you push a ton of emails until tomorrow all at once, or a ton of emails until you get back from vacation in a month? Fourth is Thread View. Having access to all your message snippets in one column makes even long conversations easy to parse. You can click on a message to expand it. Fifth is Drafts. In the new mailbox, you can click away from any message you're typing and your draft stays right where you left it. It even shows up on your phone instantly. Finally, the new app lets you defer a message to your computer or to your phone. Let's say you're out to lunch and want a certain email to be at the top of your inbox when you get back to your desk. This button lets you do it. Mailbox is the first desktop email app I've used that actually feels fast, but it isn't for everybody. There are no labels or stars, and for now, only works with Gmail and iCloud. But with the beta finally out in the wild, you can count on a lot more features coming soon, and Mailbox knows exactly what it needs to do. The beta is available now, but there's a waitlist, so you might have to wait a few more weeks before you can start burning through your inbox.

There's a new version of Dungeons & Dragons that's coming. Actually, it's mostly here. It's called the fifth edition, which is a lot of editions, so why did we need so many of them? So back in the 1970s, this guy named Gary Gygax created a tabletop game called Chainmail. It was kind of like a medieval version of Risk, but pretty quickly he and his buddy Dave Arneson started messing with the rules and it turned into something completely different. It turned into a role-playing game and we call it Dungeons & Dragons. Back then, D&D was all about having a lot of friends around a table and telling each other stories about what their characters were doing in an imaginary world. There are all sorts of rules about how to swing a sword, creating fireballs, and figuring out key stats, which led to the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. AD&D was really cool, but it kind of caused a moral panic. Pat Robertson got on the 700 Club and he told Christians that D&D was demonic and dangerous. Tom Hanks made this movie called Mazes and Monsters where D&D basically drives him crazy and ends up crying harder than James Van Der Beek in Dawson's Creek. So they pulled out some of this demon stuff and cleaned up a bunch of complicated rules and they released AD&D 2nd Edition in 1989. It basically turned into a golden age of D&D. All sorts of people started playing and we got crazy new worlds to play in. There was a high fantasy world, vampire world, desert world. We had D&D in space with these creepy creatures called Mind Flayers who had tentacles instead of mouths. That was all great, but fast forward to 1997 and a new company owns D&D and they release a super complicated version and then another version that focused too much on tabletop play. Then a competing game called Pathfinder, which is actually based on older D&D rules, started to be more popular than D&D itself. So we get this crazy nerd fight that everybody calls the Edition Wars where gamers are all playing different versions of D&D or Pathfinder and just trying to find people who you want to roll dice with and kill some floating tentacle-eyed beholders is worse than arguing about iPhones and Androids. All of which is why we have this new 5th edition of D&D. It goes back to its roots with simpler rules and more creativity. It's trying to win back all those people who left during the Edition Wars. If they pull it off, it could be a resurrection for the franchise. Pat Robertson would be proud. �

Go beyond simple fix-its of apps and gadgets. Explore how our best and brightest are embracing science, technology, and design to attack complex issues of the economy, the environment, class, and more. These are the people, groups, and companies that are solving America's problems in new and unconventional ways. This is DTOURS.

In five years, fitness trackers probably won't be a thing. They'll be built into watches or clothing or your phone. But right now, they're the best way we have to use technology to get in shape. There are a million of them, and they all do essentially the same things. They count your steps, and they tell you if today's number is better than yesterday's. But a really good one will also tell you if you're not sleeping well. It'll remind you subtly or not so subtly to eat better, or go to bed a little earlier, or get out and exercise more. And it either looks good or is basically invisible. Or both. They come in all shapes and sizes, but the best fitness tracker you can buy right now is the Jawbone UP24. The reason is simple. It's just crazy powerful. The UP does basic step tracking, essentially the same as any other device. But it's really the most powerful when it comes to tracking your sleep. It tracks that incredibly well, and pairs it with your activity and your diet to give you these awesome small tips about how to do better tomorrow. Plus the vibrating alarm, which wakes you up at the perfect point in your sleep cycle, is just the best. The UP24 also syncs wirelessly, unlike the regular UP, so everything is always up to date automatically. But where the UP24 gets really powerful is its integrations. You can send your UP data to MyFitnessPal or a bunch of other apps, or even let it work with your Nest Thermostat to have the temperature automatically change when you go to bed. It works with some food delivery services, so it'll know what you're eating as soon as you order it. Using If This Then That, there's even a huge list of other things you can do as well. It turns the UP24 from a simple fitness tracker into an essentially limitless data collection machine. It comes in nice colors, it doesn't look geeky, the battery lasts a week, and it's just the best fitness tracker you can buy right now. The only other one worth even looking at is the Garmin VivoFit, which is basically the exact opposite of the UP24. It has kind of an ugly, basic app, it doesn't do much other than just count your steps, and it's not great looking. But I like that it has a screen on it and that it tells the time, and I really like that its battery lasts a full year. If you want to buy a step counter and not a whole health ecosystem, the VivoFit is a really strong choice. The rest of the market really runs the gamut. On the one hand, there are super powerful ones like the Samsung Gear Fit, which is also basically a smartwatch, or the Basis Band, which collects lots and lots of extra data. On the other, there's the Misfit Shine, a beautiful round puck you strap to your wrist that just looks like jewelry. And often some weird other realm is the Huawei TalkBand B1, which also doubles as a Bluetooth headset for some reason. The Fitbit Flex is basically just like the UP24, with a slightly thinner band and a lot fewer features. Same goes for most other options, the Wittings Pulse O2 and many more. Ultimately, you should really pick the one you like wearing the most, because whether or not you'll keep it on is the main thing that matters in a fitness tracker. But if you're committed to getting and staying healthy, eating and sleeping and exercising better, the Jawbone UP is by far the most qualified device to help, at least until a great smartwatch comes along.

So email is dead. It's dead. It's being viciously, horribly murdered right now. And you wrote a story about it. Tell me about the story you wrote about it. Well, I wrote a story about this app called Slack, which is kind of like an AOL chat room from 15 years ago, but with all your colleagues in it, but has as good of a search as Gmail. And what it can do is replace the way you talk to your colleagues, but also all the emails you've been sending around your office and all the GIFs and all the weird stuff and everything like that. Okay, but isn't that like every chat app ever? Haven't they all tried to do this? Like AOL chat rooms tried to do this. I guess it was like my middle school friends, not my colleagues, but like what's different about Slack? Yeah, but like none of them have succeeded in doing any good multi-platform apps with like any indexing or search or anything like Gmail at all. And they also have support for like every attachment you've ever sent me, I can be like all the weird cool GIFs that Dave has ever sent me, I can see them all inside of one pane. Or let's say we're working on an article together, which we do sometimes. An article. I could see all those things together and search for them, whereas like man, how much time do you spend going through your email trying to find the right conversation? But this is all assuming that you're like pretty descriptive. You know, we're writers after all, but I still have trouble searching for things sometimes. True. I think that's a problem with both email and Slack. I guess Slack is better than like the janky subject lines. I always just write like hey in email subject lines, which is horrible when you're trying to search for something. Yeah, but here's the other crazy part. It's like if you're using Gmail or something like that, not only does it feel really sluggish in general, this is real time, so it's like chat, but it's also like you can plug in all these things that used to clog up your inbox with notifications. Like let's say there's a new bug report that somebody files. Let's say there's a new notification from Twitter that somebody followed at Verge. A lot of people, a lot of developers especially, have like a gazillion notifications for all that stuff. Now you pipe them in through Slack and it's all in one thing and you can search for it and there's even a Slack bot that can show you whatever you want. Jurassic Park pictures, pictures of a nili on a boat, whatever you want. Those are actually the only two things. Yeah. So that's good. That's fine. I'm happy. So who is Slack killing email for? So it's killing email surprisingly for enterprises, which is like a super hard market to get into, but companies like Adobe and eBay and PayPal are using Slack to talk to each other. The weird thing though is that it's not like the whole company is using it. It's like smaller teams within the company are using Slack and they're talking to each other on this thing. And they're still emailing like some people outside the company, but I think the point that we're getting to is where we need to be, where the way I talk to my friends might be on Facebook or WhatsApp or iMessage. The way I talk to people at work is on Slack. The way I talk to my family is through some other app that's like a little more family oriented. And I think that's the point we're getting to. The point is like email has no context. It's just text with like these big chunky attachments and the phone app probably sucks and doesn't let you search for what you're looking for. And let's say somebody joins your company, they start a new email address, they get a new at the verge email address, they're starting from blank slate. With Slack, you get an address and you can search for anything over the whole history of everything that you guys talked about. So you think we're done with this thing where it's like I have one service that communicates with everything because that's all email is good for, right? It sucks, but I can definitely email you. I know that for sure for everyone on earth. Do we not need that anymore? It's always going to be there. Just like phone numbers or something like that are always going to be there in some shape, form or another. Even if it's 50 years, we're not using phone numbers or anything like that. It's almost like you'd have it set up so that if somebody does decide to call you, it'll just forward through to your Snapchat call or whatever it is. And I think that's the big idea is that we're finding better ways to communicate and email I think is going to be around for a long time. I mean the Slack CEO admits that this is how we still talk to people outside the company, but for small teams, I think that having a chat slash email real time chat thing AOL altogether is a really good solution. So basically just Snapchat me or Slack me or DM me or pick anything just please for the love of God, stop emailing me. Yes.

Hey everybody, this week the new Michael Bay produced Ninja Turtles Movie is Hitting Theaters. We actually saw an early screening of it. So the question we've been asked a lot is, did Michael Bay ruin the Ninja Turtles? People seem to forget just how weird this franchise has been over the years. Really messed up franchise if you actually think about it. So let's actually kind of go back and look at the history of the Turtles franchise. 1984, almost 30 years ago, they had the first issue. And it was meant to be a parody of other comics at the time. Marvel's Daredevil, I think Frank Miller's Ronin was a big thing. And from there it just kind of took off. Right, though the origin story always seemed to stay the same. Four turtles get affected by a mutagen, grow up to be warriors, taught ninjitsu by their rat father. And then we have an animated series in 1987 that turns into a wildly popular success. Ninja Turtles Heroes in a half shell. Turtle power. It spawns a live action movie that turns into a trilogy. At the time it was everything you want, but looking back it definitely doesn't hold up. Do you remember that Vanilla Ice plays a key plot point at the end of the second film? Yo, it's the green machine, gonna rock the town without being seen. And then in the third they're samurais that time travel and it gets weird. But the weird stuff happens afterwards and they realize it's a franchise and we can put turtles everywhere. Pizza Hut has been a sponsor since the beginning and we have the Power Rangers crossover. What are those things? I can't believe it, but I think they're... It's the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We've got, what was it, the Oprah thing? Right, yeah, we recently made the rounds on the internet, but this thing in 1994, 1995, the turtles were turned into this song producing quartet that toured the country and performed and ended up doing an episode of Oprah where they performed to a whole room full of kids. And it's just super weird. Once we got started, we knew that we could. We learned that music was fine in the core. There was a CGI film in 2007 that was well enough received, but instantly forgotten. And then another animated series in the late 2000s and even a TV movie that was probably the best thing that they had produced since the original series where all the different turtles from all the different animated series ended up working together cross dimensionally. We're actually kind of cutting to modern day here. 2012, the Nickelodeon cartoon, this is when the franchise and the toy line admittedly got much bigger. Come here, you cunt! Knock it off! Get off! Ow! Hey! Shh! Right, Nickelodeon bought the rights and actually turned out a really good product that's still going on now. Something that if you don't feel like looking back on the movies and kind of hating your past, you could actually enjoy. TV has always been a little different. Here, let's get back to the movies. And this is the first somewhat live action film produced by Michael Bay, so everyone was kind of afraid. We saw it. It's fun, but it's exactly what everything else is. It's a very dumb kind of film with so much product placement, so many explosions. Right, you could pick this thing apart in a lot of different ways if you wanted to, but this is a new live action movie for kids. This is what they're going to grow up thinking back on and maybe hating in 20 years, but it is good enough for them right now. And it's actually good enough. If you've been a fan of the series your whole life, it's worth seeing because it is in a lot of ways better than some of those original movies. Yeah, and here's the thing to keep in context. This movie, there is no weird cameo by like a Vanilla Ice equivalent at all, but they're planning a trilogy. There will be two more films at least, if not more. There's plenty of chances to have like some weird pop culture crossover, some turtles dance off, God knows what. If history has proven anything, they will find a way to make it even weirder. Let me ask you this. Do you sometimes wish that April was a turtle? Whoa, definitely. Conceptually, that works for me. You know, I've been... You know, I've been...

야 decide I I One afternoon in late spring, I traveled to a Girl Scout camp in Burl, New Jersey to see the apocalypse. Coming from an office in Manhattan to 200 acres of field and forest, I felt like I had stepped into some empty dream world. What I was about to get into was more like Mad Max. This is Dystopia Rising, a live action role playing game set generations after a disaster that wiped out civilization as we know it. So you're with the Birch. I am. You are not sure if you want to play out here. Oh no, I totally play. Do you want to play? Do you have anything else to wear? I mean, I have another t-shirt and another pair of jeans. Okay, we can put something together. With a lot of help from veteran players, I made up a fighter whose race, sorry, strain, had been horribly disfigured by radiation. I was covered in hideous, oozing open sores and gigantic body armor. It's probably the closest I'll ever get to being able to scare someone in a dark alley. I might have looked tough, but I still had no idea how to fight. When you're doing combat, I'm going to show you what a strike feels like first. And I'm going to catch you by surprise when I do it so that you don't tense up, you don't freak out, and you don't think, that is as hard as it's ever going to hit. And then when you strike, we do what's called a three strike flurry system, which means you can only hit someone three times before you have to pause for a second. This is to prevent someone from just wiggling their blade and doing silly shit. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to try and hit you and I want you to block the first strike and then strike back at me. As it turns out, fighting in Dystopia Rising is sort of like fencing while doing math in your head. You hit someone with a stick, you yell a stat. You get hit, you calculate how much more damage you can take. I would do plenty of fighting, but it's a small part of the overall experience. You spend a lot of time trading, making friends, or just listening to someone play acoustic daft punk covers at a bar. It feels like 24-7 improv theater. Sometimes the role playing was fantastic, but other times it was absolutely terrifying. My character was supposed to be tough, but because I really had no idea what I was doing, she ended up as a socially awkward wallflower. I kept feeling like I had to break out of character to think about what she should be doing, and I kept wondering, was I holding up my end of a conversation? Should I be more creative? Was I being too forward? It was like a cotillion at the end of the world. Then I died. We're going to be leading a lovely irradiated undead horde into town. There is going to be another player waiting for us. We're going to hook her and we're going to kill her. Alright, sounds good. Cool, let's go. Alright, perfect. Before it happened, my character was supposed to be running on a broken leg. Coincidentally, I twisted my ankle that morning and decided to walk it off. It was an incredibly stupid idea, but it was also the thing that would bring us together. When she limped, I was limping. When she got knocked down by a giant zombie, I couldn't stand back up. For something that made us both yearn for death, it was great. This may be theもsip薩injui that killed us, but follow the Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! Welcome. Can you speak? Yes. Do you want to live? Yes, I want to live. Remember always that you are one of death's chosen. I'm done with you. So yeah, take a minute if you need one, but you'll be in character once you come out of here. I had my sword somewhere. Can someone down there pick up the weapons from the floor and bring them back up? Thanks. When I came back, I learned someone had looted my weapons and armor, and I was genuinely afraid. I'd built a character who could barely do anything but fight, and now she was basically useless. That was, strangely, the moment something seemed to click. My character had gone crazy from dying, and I was in pain. Everything I did somehow seemed natural for both of us. We studied a religion that worships TV signals, joined a gang, and finally got back on our feet. Oh, yeah, I mean it hurts, but yeah, that's the part. It was like the stupidest raider battle injury ever. I fell into someone. Well, no, they ran into my leg. Did you have fun with it? Oh, yeah, well, kind of flinched out, but it was very realistic. I still never quite figured out what I wanted to be. LARPing can be about leaving yourself behind, and some of the people I met before the game seemed totally different during it. But sometimes it seemed like I was just amplifying a few things about myself. Sometimes the best things, sometimes the worst, and adding swords. Then again, the swords were fantastic, and I'm pretty sure the more I had known about the world before going in, the better prepared I would have felt to create something new. But I'm probably overthinking it. Most people I met were there for one reason. To have some fun at the end of the world. Thanks for watching! I'm not sure if you can see this, but I'm not doing the video properly. I'm trying to find the best angle to show the world. I'm trying to make it look like I'm in a real world. I'm trying to make it look like I'm in a real world. I'm trying to make it look like I'm in a real world.

Hey guys, it's Neil Iffenberg, I'm here with Russell Brandom. We're talking about the hack of the century. What is the hack of the century? Yeah, it's, okay, so it's 1.2 billion login password combinations, which is more than we've ever gotten in one bundle. The security firm called Hold Security has been tracking this group that they named Cybervor. Very spooky. It's a great name. And yeah, so through various methods, the Cybervor group had amassed 1.2 billion username password combinations. And the highest number before was like 700 million. Yeah, it was a lot lower. So I mean, that's why, you know, the number kind of gets your attention. We're up in the Bs, billion with a B, which is new. Right, and the New York Times had like a big exclusive yesterday. Yeah, yeah. Huge thing. But then there's immediately questions about whether this was true. Yeah. And you're saying it's not true. Well, I have my doubts. I mean, the biggest thing that immediately people had questions about was everyone wants to know if they're on the list. Like is it my login password combination? Hold Security, which had in fairness done all this work to uncover this stuff, said, well, if you're a subscriber, which means you give us $120 a year, then you can know if you're on the list. That seems super scammy. That's the thing. And so people were very uncomfortable with that, especially since it was this big exclusive in the New York Times. The New York Times certainly, I'm sure, didn't mean to just be driving all these people to hold security. So that felt a little weird. And then as you look more at the numbers, is this really a direct comparison to other hacks that we've seen before? Or is this just a kind of, did they just sort of get 1.2 billion names from various things? Some of them were theirs. We know that they had, as part of their earlier things, bought username password combinations, which is a thing that scammers do on the internet. So where did this really come from? Is it fair to call all of it a hack? Is it all 1.2 billion together? So the weird part is that it seems like there's this hacking group Cybervor, and then there's Hold Security. And Cybervor should be the villains, but it seems like Hold Security is doing some weird stuff to sort of turn themselves into the villains of the story. Yeah, well, I think part of it is that Cybervor aren't very scary, other than the name. But I mean, I think the name's sort of an example of it. So what are they using this for? They're not using it to break into my bank account. They're not selling it to other criminals, which is often a thing that happens. They're using it to hack Twitter accounts, which is not a particularly lucrative or frightening thing to do with this information. Well, it's scary for me, certainly. I mean, that's because you're verified. But I mean, no, it's just not, like, this isn't a very sophisticated thing to do with this information. So that's kind of whatever. And then also the way that the method that they used, you know, SQL attacks have been known, but it's not really that sophisticated of a method. So if you have this unprecedented hack, which $1.2 billion is certainly unprecedented, you expect them to be using unprecedented methods that, like, these people did something really cool. Like with Target, they were hacking the air conditioning company. It's like the electronic version of, like, crawling in through the air vents. It was this cool thing, and they got in this way that no one had really thought about before. There's no real equivalent of that. They just did this thing that... They just collected a bunch of stuff and maybe hacked some other stuff. Well, and yeah, I mean, they looked over a lot of sites to see who was vulnerable for this, but this is a known vulnerability. So it's just sort of the scale of it is different. It's kind of quantity over quality. But isn't that, like, actually known vulnerabilities being propagated in lots of places? It's kind of like a big story that has gone a little bit under-reported, right? Yeah, absolutely. And it does seem like these people really did hack a lot of... They hacked a lot of people, certainly. I think it does seem the more you look at it that those were maybe small firms who weren't very good at security and sort of maybe these were not high-value username passwords in the way that, like, I use a really complicated one for my bank account and, like, my Snapchat password is a little less high-pri. The thing is... It almost seems like there should be the other way around. That's true. I have insurance on the bank. Snapchat is just my reputation. It can't get it back. So bottom line, I mean, is this scary? I mean, it's the hack of the century, but it is the hack of the century. I think most people just want to know, is my stuff going to be safe? What steps can I take? What's sort of the next... What's the next frontier of terrifying things happening on the Internet? I mean, you should be incredibly scared all of the time. The Internet's terrible. No, we always say, like, change your passwords, use a password manager. Don't duplicate the passwords across multiple things, which is multiple services, which is... I mean, that's, like, the number one advice. Don't use the same username and password. Which is exactly what they're trying to do here. I mean, that's the attack they're doing. But if your name is one of the 1.2 billion names, which just statistically, if you're living on Earth, the odds are high, it doesn't really matter. Like, they're going to hack your Twitter, maybe, if you use... If you duplicate that, but, like, who cares? I think people care if they hack their Twitter. Yeah, but I mean, it's just not, like... So this is one of those moments where you should change your password. Like, bottom line, this is one... I guess, but, like, I mean, it's sort of not even, like, if your Twitter password was the same. But I just think even in the scale of hacks, like, if you had shopped a target, they would have your credit card information. This, it's, like, nothing. Like, it's just very... Right, it's just passive. Even if you're one of the people who's affected, it's sort of a low-impact thing, I think. It's just that the number's really high, so it's sort of more likely. So just continue living your life free of all danger and carefree. Yeah. And change your passwords.

Tablets are great for everything, from playing games, to watching video, to reading books, magazines, and all sorts of other stuff. They can even be used as drawing slates, and in spite of the outrage from many tech nerds, many people use them as their primary cameras. Some people like to use tablets as their only computers, but for many of us, tablets are secondary devices. They complement our smartphones and our laptops. A good tablet should be lightweight, fast, well built, have lots of apps available, and be easy to use. It should also easily last through a day of heavy use, or multiple days of lighter usage. It should also have a large ecosystem of accessories available, things like styluses, cases, and keyboards, things that let me do more with my tablet than it can normally. When everything is considered, it's clear that Apple's iPad Air is the best tablet on the market for most people. It's very well built, is exceptionally lightweight, has a fast processor, has a battery that easily lasts for days, and has a great high resolution screen. The screen is easy to look at for reading, but vibrant and colorful enough for videos to look great too. The Air also benefits from the hundreds of thousands of iPad apps available on Apple's iTunes app store. Virtually every major app and service has iPad apps available, many of which take advantage of the Air's larger display. And iOS is one of the simplest and easiest to use mobile operating systems, so virtually anyone can pick up an iPad and quickly grasp how it works. There are also countless accessories you can get for the iPad Air. But it really works great out of the box too, so you shouldn't feel compelled to buy an accessory if that's not how you want to use your tablet. While the Air is the best tablet for most people, the iPad Mini with Retina Display comes in a close second. It's smaller, 7.9 inches versus 9.7, and slightly lighter, making it better for holding in one hand and reading. It's also easier to slip into a bag and take with you wherever you go. I find myself on planes and trains all the time, so the iPad Mini is actually the better choice for me. It's not as versatile as the Air, but it's more portable, which is more important for my needs. There are countless other tablets on the market too, but most of them aren't actually worth your consideration. Samsung literally has dozens of tablets on store shelves, but they all suffer from the same software issues, which make them confusing and frustrating to use. They're also very plastic and chintzy feeling compared to the iPad. Many have excellent displays, and some even come with smart pens for writing on those displays. But those features aren't enough to make up for the other shortcomings. Microsoft has been trying to figure out tablets for years, and the Surface Pro 3 is its best effort yet. But it's a much better desktop computer than a true tablet, it's just too big and clumsy to be portable or comfortable to use for long periods of time. And while it can run lots of old Windows apps, there's still relatively few true tablet apps available for it. Google's own Nexus 7 is a relatively good smaller tablet, and you can find it for pretty cheap these days. But it's been around for over a year, and it has more software issues than the iPad Mini. Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX boasts a very nice display and a lightweight design, but it's hampered by a limited app selection. It's really tailor made to present Amazon services and make it easy to purchase from the retail giant. But you can get all of Amazon services on the iPad and still be able to do a lot more. And that's really it. Tablets are fun to use, and great for many things like reading, playing games, watching video and more. And the iPad Air is the best one you can get.

The check-in is dead, but if you're looking for the best soup dumplings nearby, there's an app for that. This is the new Foursquare. When you first open the app, you'll notice that there are no check-ins from friends or even a check-in button at all. Instead, you find a row of intents, like breakfast or lunch, and a list of categories and places below that dig deeper into what you might be looking for. These categories range from great dinner places nearby to places you've saved and places to get a juicy burger. The coffee intent might even include a places with wifi category. These groupings are great, but here's the key to the new Foursquare. Everything in pink is content customized just for you. If you tap on the pink F in the top left corner, you're presented with a list of tastes. Add some, like sashimi, and they start showing up all around the app to indicate that one of your favorite foods is particularly good at this or that place. These pink results show up in search, but also in the app's venue pages, where tips including your favorite tastes show up first. You might also notice tips with a yellow star beneath them. These are tips left by experts, people who have left many popular tips around town in this category. You can even become an expert yourself if the tips you leave are liked by lots of people. You can check on your progress in your profile. A lot of the new Foursquare revolves around personalized recommendations, but if you know exactly what you want, you can still search for it. And if you've arrived at a bar and are looking for something good to drink, you can tap here, a new tab that gives you quick access to tips at the place you're at. Tips also live within another tab, which acts as a newsfeed of tips from Foursquare, people you follow, and tastes nearby, which is a collection of recent tips only related to stuff you like. If you only want to know what people are buzzing about, check the popular page. This is Foursquare's most practical app yet. By focusing entirely on recommendations, really, for the first time ever, the new app could finally break through to the masses and challenge Yelp on its own turf. While Foursquare's data set is still largely the same, the company has finally taken advantage of the 55 million tips it's collected, converting these tips into tastes which help influence your search results. It's the most personal recommendations engine I've ever used, and it's only getting better.

Hey guys, it's Yon from The Verge. I'm here with our new executive editor, Dieter Bohn. Hello. In this totally not contrived situation, during which we will discuss Samsung. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What the heck? They just had their quarterly earnings like everybody else on the planet, and the news wasn't super great. Yeah, they're down. They're down. Their net profits were down year over year, and that's the first time I think that's happened since they had their big Galaxy phone explosion. And their other operating profit, the other profit measure, has been down for three consecutive quarters. So basically, Samsung was the only company on the planet other than Apple that was completely rocking and rolling on phone sales. And kind of just like Apple, they've kind of hit the plateau of what's happened. But Apple's phone sales are up. Yeah, but the people are a little bit concerned about Apple. But Samsung's is more dire than Apple's, it seems. But the problem seems like they're not necessarily United States, right? They're in Europe, they're definitely in China. What's going on there? So the China thing is the big problem. So Vlad Tava put up a really excellent piece where he makes the case that the way that Samsung won, there's a few ways, but one of the ways they won is they had really good parts and they could sell them for cheaper than anybody else and a good enough phone. And that game worked for them for a long time, but they're getting beat by that same game by people in China. So people in Xiaomi and Huawei. Obviously making cheaper phones, larger screens. Yeah, they're making cheaper phones, larger screens, but they're good enough quality, and they're a better fit for that market right now. So this leads into what I think is my universal theory of Samsung, which is that they own display companies, right? So they're not totally vertically integrated, but they're very closely aligned with these huge display manufacturing facilities. And chips, too. And chips. So if you look at the TV market, Samsung totally took over the TV market by being the first to ship huge LCD TVs for cheap, and now they own that market. If you look at phones, what's happening in phones, the screens are getting larger and larger. Samsung, obviously the first to ship gigantic OLED phones. And nobody knew that this was going to be a hit, but they were able to ship so many screen sizes and then optimize against a huge screen like the Galaxy Note 3, they'd be enormously successful before anybody else could catch up. I think that leverage is kind of over for them. I think, I don't know that phones necessarily are going to get bigger than this. I think if you- I wish I could say I agree with you, but I don't know. Because every time I've been saying phones aren't going to get any bigger for two years now and I've always been wrong. Right. I just think we're at a point now where if you look at like Apple's Mac sales are going back up, right? And iPad sales are shrinking. I think you're going to end up with a really big phone and a laptop and somebody has to figure out what tablets are going to do. And the only company that's been really successful in tablets is Apple. This is the Tab S. That's the Tab S, the bigger one. This thing, by the way, this is the grossest feeling substance that's ever been produced. That was the other thing that came out of the earnings call is it sounds like they are finally getting the message that we don't enjoy this plastic. This weird, simple thing. It's only taken several years. And so apparently they're going to have another flagship phone release that's not a Note later this year that's going to have better materials, higher quality materials. And that's got to be a reaction to Apple. I mean, because Apple is going to do a big phone. I've been waiting for a big iPhone for a long time. The main attraction of this device to me is not the pen or Samsung's weird software, but it's gigantic screen. And every time I look at one, I'm jealous of how big the screen is. That's the thing that when you talk to actual regular consumers, especially in the US, but I think in the other markets too, it's like, why didn't you get an iPhone? Oh, I wanted the bigger screen. So once that goes away, Samsung is potentially in big, big trouble. So how do they differentiate? How do they solve it? They have to do a better job of what, like they need to like do what HTC does, make a nicer looking phone, but that certainly hasn't been enough for HTC. So they also have to fight and try to like, I wouldn't want to be Samsung right now, but they've been so successful and they've like risen above the stereotype that it's really, really crappy software, really, really cheap design. If they can do that and just execute better on the plans they already have in place, get ties in phones on the low end, make a high end phones seem nicer and better and make their software actually feel compelling and not, eh. Those are all hard problems, but they're actually, they are attacking all three of those things. Well, particularly the third one, because they're in constant conflict with Google over what Android should be. So Samsung's the only company that has ever managed to turn a profit on Android really. And they're doing that on tablets, on phones, and now on watches. They're having that fight. Right. So hard to be Samsung right now. Anyway, that's us. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.

Hey, this is Ross Miller with The Verge, and I basically wasted my entire weekend last week playing the Destiny beta. Destiny is the first game from Bungie after the whole Halo thing. We happen to have Chris Grant, the editor-in-chief of Polygon. What up? Hey. Hey. What is this timeline of Destiny? How long has this been going on to make? Whew. It's gonna come out this September, 2014. They announced a partnership with Activision in 2010, announced the game in 2013, but it's been in development for about five years. Okay, that's a lot. It's like most games, what, two, three year cycle? Yeah, every once in a while you'll have something a little bit longer, but that five-year number represents not only a huge investment on Bungie's part and on Activision's part, the numbers that they've released are $500 million for the game. This is a big game. This isn't a...this isn't your run-of-the-mill shooter. This isn't Halo. This is something closer to World of Warcraft. They don't ever use the word MMO, which is what World of Warcraft is. It's a dirty word. It is, essentially. It's a shooter where you level up, you do these kind of grinding, you raid a bunch of people. That's why Activision's making this investment. They've gone on the PC side, on the Blizzard side of the company, they have World of Warcraft. They've got these games that are, for a lot of people, very difficult, very impenetrable. Shooters own the console. How can we get some of that stickiness, some of that engagement, that really high engagement they have on the PC side, on World of Warcraft, on Diablo, on StarCraft? How do we get that on the consoles, and a shooter is kind of their Trojan horse to get that connected gameplay experience into people's living rooms? Right. Why couldn't they do this with Microsoft? Why isn't this part of the system for that? I think, you know, Bungie made the Halo series. The Halo series made the Xbox. They were wholly owned by Microsoft. They were moved from Chicago out to Washington state. And they saw, when the Xbox 360 launched and Halo 3 came out as a big hit, but they also saw Gears of War, made by an independent studio, Epic, sell. Make a lot of money, make a lot of its developers very rich. And these guys were owned outright by Microsoft. They got some bonuses, but they weren't getting rich. So they wanted to go independent, and I think the quid pro quo was, we'll make some more Halo games for you. If you let us go, if not, we're all gonna leave. Why do this beta? Why release a huge chunk of the game for free for people to play? They had an alpha, actually, before the beta. And the alpha gave us Peter Dinklage's now famous That Wizard is from the Moon. What the fuck is up with that voice? I'm sorry, just what is with that voice? It's the worst thing I've ever heard. The Hive haven't been on Earth in centuries. That Wizard came from the Moon. Dinklage's performance, not my favorite, personally. We'll see how it does. But I think what Bungie wanted to do with the alpha and the beta was to kind of, for them, technically validate a lot of these shared, server shared gameplay models they talked about, where you're playing and your friends are coming in and out of your experience very seamlessly. You're having these large events. They wanted to kind of validate all this stuff before they released it. If you don't validate your server infrastructure, you get Battlefield, right? Which just crashed. Yeah, it didn't work for three to six months. Bungie, to its credit, the game launched on PlayStation 4, and it worked awesome. They had six million users they announced. It was a huge beta, and I think that really proved the sort of scale of what they're looking to do. With a half a billion dollar price tag, the thing has to be a hit. Right. Thanks for hanging out with us. For more on Destiny, check out The Verge and Polygon, and thanks for watching.

Unlike a smartphone or calendar app, nobody needs a drone, but you shouldn't let that stop you. Drones are the coolest toy a modern-day gadget lover can own. And if you're interested in photography or filmmaking, drones are going to let you get shots that just wouldn't be possible otherwise. If you're just getting started out, the most important thing is to get one that can take a licking and keep on ticking. Because getting good enough to have fun and shoot great footage requires patience and a budget for repairs. For the first-time drone owner, the best overall combination of simplicity, performance, and video is the DJI Phantom 2. It's beautifully designed, very well built, and offers an advanced autopilot that will let it fly and film in conditions other drones simply can't handle. For most people, the Phantom 2 Vision, which clocks in at $999, will be more than up to the task. If you've already got a GoPro handy, you can stick with the Phantom 2 and save yourself around $230. The Phantom's battery is neatly packaged and locks into place easily without loose wires you need to fiddle around with. The rotors attach in under 10 minutes without any extra nuts, bolts, or tools. And the flight controller has just four switches, which means it isn't overwhelming to new pilots. The best feature of the DJI Phantom is the powerful GPS software. This allows it to hover in one place, and it will even compensate for strong wind. You can set a home position and the Phantom will return to you if it wanders out of range. The Phantom Vision 2 also comes with a gimbal, which means that the camera will adjust as you move, helping to center the picture and produce better footage. The Iris, a quadcopter from 3D Robotics, is the most clear-cut competitor to the Phantom in terms of its flight capabilities and GPS software. It doesn't come with a camera, but does have a GoPro mount built in. At $750, it's roughly the same price if you add in your own video equipment. Like the Phantom, it's meant to be flown right out of the box with minimal assembly and setup, but the experience is far more frustrating. The build quality is poor, beginning with the plastic rings you need to attach the rotors. They're not well molded, and it took three of us nearly 20 minutes before we figured out how to jam them in place. The batteries come with a warning that they might explode and a special bag to contain the acid spray and fire that might result. They also leave the wires exposed, and a ton of wrangling is required to get it inside the battery tray. The learning curve on the Iris is much steeper than the Phantom. I couldn't get it to calibrate properly, nor could the experienced drone pilot I brought along as backup. To give you a simple comparison, the DJI Phantom controller has four switches on it. The Iris has 13, and an LCD screen with additional info. I spent a few days playing with the Iris, and I never managed to get it off the ground for more than a few seconds. Even when I did, it crashed right away. For something simpler, there's the Parrot AR2. It comes fully assembled, has a stylish camo exterior, and only needs a charged battery to be flight-ready. You pilot it with an iPhone app, which makes takeoff and landing a simple tap of the screen. Its GPS allows it to auto-stabilize a bit, although it's much more effective by wind than the Phantom. The big plus of the Parrot is durability. I crashed it a dozen times, and it never lost a rotor. The downside was the iPhone app as controller, which made piloting it feel really mushy and haphazard. And the built-in camera shot decent but not great video. On the cheaper end of the spectrum are the Hubsan X4 Mini drone and the Proto X Micro drone, which clock in at under $60. Both are pretty much ready to fly right out of the box. Neither one can handle serious wind and are best used indoors. But despite a lack of GPS, both handled really well in calm conditions. The Hubsan also packs a built-in camera which can record videos stored on a microSD card. These are great drones for learning the basics of piloting and for horsing around inside without causing too much damage. Overall, there is a really exciting range of drones available on the market right now. And if you can afford it, the DJI Phantom is the one to go with right now. Oh, and one more thing. The $4,000 DJI S1000 is a high-end octocopter that is far too dangerous for the average civilian to control. That's why we called in a little professional help from the folks at Intelligent UAS who fly these things for a living. It's aimed at serious hobbyists and cinematographers looking to use heavy equipment. This is not your next. Maybe your next, next, next. But we couldn't resist showing you a little of what it can do.

Hey guys, it's Neon with Reverge. I'm here with Adrienne Jeffries. Adrienne has been working on a huge series about Comcast called Comcast Confessions, exploring why customer service is so bad at the company. So Adrienne, you've interviewed lots of people at Comcast, I think over 100 employees now. What have they been saying to you? At this point, I think it might be close to 150. I lost track. We keep getting people, new people writing in, so I'm basically drowning in emails from Comcast employees, so thank you guys for that. A lot of them are Reverge commenters, which is awesome. We wanted to talk about why Comcast customer service is so notoriously bad. It's pretty much at the bottom of every customer satisfaction rating, and then there was this call with Ryan Block, AOL executive. And my former boss, which is very entertaining. And Neil's former boss, which is a funny parallel. And he just had this insane conversation with this Comcast rep, who tried for 18 minutes to talk him out of canceling his Comcast service. And that just kind of sparked this whole conversation about customer service at Comcast, which is the largest cable provider in the country. And which wants to buy Time Warner Cable. And that's the other thing, right. Which wants to buy the second largest cable provider in the company, Time Warner Cable. After that acquisition, it would be a 30 million subscriber company, which is massive. Right, and would cover most of the major metro areas in the country. Right, and would be in New York, LA, Texas, every enormous market. So after all these conversations, why do you think, what's at the core of why the service is so bad? Right, so the big themes were, there's an emphasis on sales, on pushing existing customers to buy new products, to upgrade their products. They have people who are dedicated to doing sales, but they also wanted their customer service reps, their tech support reps, the people dealing with billing, to try to sell stuff too. And the problem with that is you call Comcast because you have a problem, and then you end up with a service representative who has to meet a quota for a certain number of sales. So they're kind of thinking more about what to sell you than how to fix your problem. So do you think you have to split that up for better service? Is that what you're hearing from the employees? Or is there a way to do it right? I mean, there is some selling that happens during customer service. Like if you have someone call and say, like, my internet's too slow, maybe you need to upgrade to a faster tier. That makes sense. I think where they went wrong is when they started giving people too much incentives to sell that stuff, and then they started giving the managers incentives to put up numbers for their groups. So people started to feel like they would get fired if they didn't sell enough. So Comcast says, and I'm sure they told you, that they're trying really hard to improve customer service. We ran a memo today from Comcast to its employees after the Ryan Block incident saying, this is what we want to do, don't talk about it too much. They've released public statements saying we're going to get better. You've talked to Comcast. What do you think about what they're saying about customer service right now? So Comcast has always been, and I'm reading the internally published story of Comcast, which is called An Incredible Dream, which is a really interesting way to mainline company propaganda. Yeah. Well, there's a little bit of, I mean, it is like a family that started this business. It's totally, no, it's a cool company actually, despite how miserable it is to deal with as a customer. And they have been just sort of like constantly changing things and experimenting with things. They're always like trying new ways of doing things, scrapping that, moving on. Like, I think that that is a cool thing about Comcast, and they do seem to be doing some things differently with customer service. But they, you know, the sales thing is just one part of why they have these problems. The other two big things that jumped out at me were dealing with technicians. They kind of, I think they understaff technicians, their in-house technicians, and then they try to fill the gap with contractors. What ends up happening is everybody gets overscheduled and technicians are late to appointments, missing appointments. They're not given enough time to get the job done. Like, they're basically given one trouble call or one installation an hour. And if they don't get it done in time, then they're just late for the rest of the day, for all their appointments for the rest of the day. And then besides that, Comcast has also grown by acquisition a lot of the time. And so it's still kind of fragmented in a lot of ways. And I think that's a big problem for them to resolve. Particularly. And communication is not super great. They're going to make another huge acquisition. Right. I think that's going to be really fragmented. Right. Exactly. So last question. Just what would you, if you're running Comcast right now, what's the easiest way to fix this problem? Oh my gosh. So definitely tone down the incentives for sales in customer service. Hire more in-house technicians. Pull back on the contractors in call centers and also for field technicians. And then try to, as much as possible, make the company more uniform so that you don't have different packages being sold in different markets. And your customer, when you call into a call center that serves the entire south, where there are a bunch of different policies. So that the rep on the other end has to look up and see where you are before they can even start talking to you. Because their products are so different depending on what city and what area you're in. And then maybe they could read our stories and take some learnings from what people are saying on the front line. I think they've got one thing they're saying at the top. And people at the top of Comcast love their company. They think it's a really great place. And it is, in a lot of ways, a pretty good company. It has pretty decent benefits, among other things. But their message is just getting totally lost in translation on its way down to the front line, where people are actually dealing with customers. That's great. Everybody should go read Adrian's series called Comcast Confessions. It's on the verge right now. Thanks for watching.

For the past few years, the best designed phones have all been made out of aluminum. Whether it's the iPhone 5s, the Lumia 930, or HTC's One, the best designs always come hand in hand with the best materials. But as bad as the reputation of plastic phones is, there are a few that stand up against the very best on the market. They have the same care and attention to detail, and the experience of using them has been just as good. HTC's new one, the E8, tries to be just that. It recreates almost everything about the company's flagship 2014 phone. Except it's cheaper, and it's plastic. The E8 has the specs and the same basic shape of the One M8, but the soul of what makes that phone appealing ends up lost in the translation. The E8 is the exact same size, but its curves aren't as soft or refined, its edges aren't chamfered and don't glint in the light, and its lighter weight makes it feel somehow less substantial. It feels closer to the utilitarian Nexus 5 than it does to HTC's real flagship aluminum phone. The E8 also loses that elusive sense of authenticity that's so hard for these cookie cutter smartphones to have. The Metal M8 reacts to the environment around it, and it feels a lot more natural than the plastic counterpart, which feels alien and inorganic. Really good plastic phones either solve for their design problems, or use them productively. But in making a direct plastic copy of the Metal M8, HTC's neglected to do that. The only thing it's adding is a selection of bold new colors, while taking away the subtle aura of exclusivity that the One M8 maintains. Maybe that's good enough. In fact, for HTC it might be perfect. It can sell a cheaper version of its premium phone without sacrificing any sales of the M8. But for a company staking its future on design, the E8 is a disappointing missed opportunity. It could have proven that premium design is more than premium materials, but instead it's a phone that Samsung might be proud of. The first step in the right direction is to design plastic like it's plastic, and not stitched leather or brushed metal or super shiny chrome. HTC avoids those pitfalls, but in the process it avoids being innovative in almost any significant way. At least, the finest design continues to be the exclusive province of aluminum phones.

Light field photography is sort of a complicated idea to explain. Essentially the idea is that instead of capturing just one 2D plane of light with one subject in focus, a camera can capture everything, the light and the direction it's moving. You don't think about focusing, ever, and you'll never have a blurry photo again. Theoretically. The Illum is technically Lightro's second camera, after the odd kaleidoscopic camera it released two years ago. But this is the first real product it's made, the first one made for people to use for serious work. It's also the first Lightro that looks like a real camera. Or at least a camera crossed with a futuristic weapon. The Illum is a big, heavy, black and blue device. I really like its look, actually. Most of its body is its lens, a huge round cylinder where everything special about light field photography takes place. It has a few familiar camera trappings, like a hot shoe and a shutter button, plus a handful of customizable wheels and buttons, but most of what you do with the Illum you do on the 4 inch display on the back. It's angled so you can see it from above, the standard position for the Illum is about chest high held in two hands, and it articulates so you can hold it at almost any angle. Virtually every setting change, like white balance or shooting mode, happens on this screen. It's a good touch screen and a nice, clean, simple interface, but I do still like having a few buttons and dials on the camera. More than almost any camera, there are two distinct steps to using the Illum, shooting and processing. You're going to need both. But let's start with shooting. The Illum has a 1 inch sensor and a high end Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. Its big lens extends from 30 to 250mm and it shoots at F2 all the time, but gives you the ability to later focus as high as F16. Basically there's crazy range in this camera, unlike almost any other on the planet. For regular, plain pictures like we've always shot, the Illum isn't very good. Its 40 mega rays sensor doesn't produce especially sharp images, and it's pretty bad in low light. But using the Illum to take standard DSLR pictures is a waste of your money and Lightro's technology. This camera is meant for what Lightro calls living pictures, which let you, and ultimately anyone, play around with perspective and focus inside a photo. It tells a different story as long as you do it right. Doing it right means having at least two subjects in your photo, one close to the camera, one further away. It often means shooting from below, where you'll get a better sense of depth and distance in the image. There's a lot of staging required in getting a light field photo just right. You can't quite just aim and click like you can with a regular digital camera. That's kind of a problem, honestly, and it's partly a solvable one. The Illum has what's called a Lightro button, which maps the refocusable range of your shot in blue and orange colors on the screen. It gives you an immediate sense of what you'll be able to shoot, and how you'll be able to interact with it later. And it does make getting the right shot a lot easier, and it also kills the battery. The Illum's autofocus is essentially useless. There's no image stabilization either, which makes shooting even harder. You're better off just focusing manually, which adds an entirely new level of complexity to this camera. But with the right time and effort, and a lot of trial and error, it's possible to get great photos from the Illum. And the effect when it works is amazing. The camera can focus on things literally touching its lens, and with so much zoom and such bright aperture, there's really nothing that's not in play. Except, you know, low light. The Illum's biggest problem isn't what it's capable of, though, or even the challenge it can be to take great shots. That's all part of the fun. The real problem is that this product is just flat out not stable. It crashes too frequently, it freezes to the point of needing the battery to be pulled. It can be really slow to load pictures, slow to shoot them, and just slow to turn on in the first place. This camera is plenty complicated as it is, and sure, it's still a new technology, but it's a $1500 camera and it needs to get those things right. The same goes for the processing software, which is the other half of the Illum equation. Lytro Desktop lets you organize your photos, edit them with a set of basic tools, and share them to Lytro's site or to anywhere on the web so people can see and play with them. You can also use it to animate the photos, guiding them through particular perspective and focus shifts, and then sharing the finished product as a movie. It's fairly simple software, but it's impossibly clunky. Importing a lot of files at once cripples even a crazy powerful gaming laptop. The whole thing crashes all the time, and it's all just slow. Each light field picture is about 53 megabytes, takes about 30 seconds to import and process, and can be a huge hassle to edit. If you're willing to put up with its $1499 price tag and its many, many headaches, buy a Lytro Illum. This thing is a glimpse at the future, when photos will truly come alive. And Lytro might even be the company to pull it off. But pulling it off will mean making it easier to shoot beautiful photos, photos that are sharper and clearer in their own right, and a user experience that doesn't make you want to pull your hair out. Light field photography is incredible. I hope it takes over, but I wouldn't tell anyone but the craziest photographers to really get into it just yet.

Hi, I'm Kwame O'Pom. I went to Comic-Con last week, and this is my bed. It's not the most comfortable bed in the world, but it saved my life. After three, four days in the convention hall, I kind of needed it. I'm going to tell you about surviving Comic-Con. The first thing you need to know is that Comic-Con has 130,000 people going to the same place, the convention center in San Diego, and it's just not equipped to handle those people. This is from one of the big panels, and that's Robert Downey Jr. himself. You know, you're in Hall H, you're doing cool things, you're seeing cool shit, but the fact is you're tired, you've been online all day, so at the end of it, it smells, and you just want to go back to bed. This is a Ninja Turtle pizza cannon sponsored by Pizza Hut, which sounds about as ridiculous as you can imagine, so what they were doing behind the convention center was they had people fire foam pizzas at these cardboard cutouts with shredder, and it was truly, truly depressing. The line for the pizza, actual pizza, was longer than for this thing. The red hood and arrow from the show Arrow. Cosplaying is a big deal at the convention, but if it's happening, you're not going to get anywhere, and these are two guys cosplaying. If it's a female character, it's over. Guillermo del Toro drinking a Coke. So what the studios love to do is go really big anywhere in the hall or anywhere around the convention center, so what Legendary did is they had Guillermo del Toro come down, and because of the crowds, I could only talk to him for two seconds, and then he went to drink a Coke. God, everything is fucking expensive. It does, like, I get it. We're having you in this room, and we're going to make you spend five dollars for bad hot dogs. Would I go back? I'd have to take a long vacation. Maybe? Yeah, yeah, I'll go back. I'll go back.

So, on the last big day of Comic Con, it's the moment everybody's been waiting for. The big panel's from Marvel and DC, and so I go to check out the line, and it's out of control. There are 12,000 people, and they've been waiting for 36 hours. I said, no thank you, I'm gonna read about this news on Twitter like a normal person. So I walk away, and it turns out I have a chance to meet with Thunder Levin, the screenwriter of Sharknado 1 and 2. I say, heck yes I'm doing that. I said, Thunder, tell me about the experience of making Sharknado 2. He said, well it was crazy. We had to film it in New York in February, even though the movie's supposed to take place in July, and it was one of the coldest winters New York had seen in decades. It was so cold that the actors' jaws froze shut. They had to blow hot air on their faces just so they could speak. I said, you know, there's something kind of poetic about the fact that actors in a movie about sharks have their jaws frozen shut. He says, speaking of jaws, I met Richard Dreyfuss this morning. I was like, the Richard Dreyfuss from Jaws? He said, yeah. I walked right up to him, and I said, hey, I'm the guy who wrote Sharknado. And Richard Dreyfuss turns around and says, what's a Sharknado? Pretty sick burn from Richard Dreyfuss. Anyway, Sharknado 2 comes out on Wednesday, and I will be watching the hell out of it.

So on the first day of Comic Con, I go to Hall 8, the biggest venue at Comic Con. I showed up at 4.30 in the morning, and at that point, everybody just looks like a homeless person. People in sleeping bags, people gathered around garbage fires watching television. But finally, they let us in, and we get to see the upcoming blockbusters. And just when I'm feeling like the day has peaked, all the lights go off, and suddenly you hear a man's voice shout, I am Hercules, and everyone starts screaming because The Rock is like running down the halls, and I have lost all journalistic credibility at this point. I've hurled my laptop onto the person next to me. I'm waving at him like he's gonna see me and just walk over. But the greatest thing is somebody shouts out, Hey Rock, where's your fanny pack? And in case you haven't followed this, he posted this Throwback Thursday photo of himself looking ridiculous, and so he starts cracking up, and then he has to explain why he was wearing a fanny pack. And The Rock talking about his fashion choices from the 90s on stage is basically all my dreams coming true at the same time, and so I blacked out.

There are two smart watches worth buying today, the Pebble and Google's new Android Wear platform. But if you're looking for one, which do you buy? The Pebble, which has been around since the beginning of last year, has an easy to read black and white display and a fairly traditional digital watch design. The steel version is the one you'd want. It costs $250, but it's all metal and comes with both a leather and a metal wristband. The two Android Wear watches today, the $200 Samsung Gear Live and the $230 LG G Watch are plasticky and geeky looking compared to the Pebble and certainly don't look as nice as a classy dress watch. Both Android Wear watches have full color displays that light up when you get a notification or move your arm up to look at the time. But they're not easy to see in the daylight and they suck down a lot of battery power. You need to charge these things every day with your smartphone or you'll have a dead, useless gadget on your wrist by the next day. The Pebble on the other hand can last about 4 to 5 days between charges. Android Wear and Pebble can both show you all of your notifications on your wrist including email, text messages, and social alerts. But this can get quite noisy especially if you have an iPhone and a Pebble since every notification that hits your phone is now going to come to your wrist. There's other things that you can do too such as control music with your phone and count your steps with a pedometer. One of the coolest things about the Pebble is the ability to customize the watch faces on your wrist. You can do everything from a traditional analog design to text based displays to standard digital watch face. You can also install different apps to extend the capabilities of the watch. Moving on Android Wear, the real promise here is the integration with Google Now to show you relevant information when you need it. Are you at the airport and need to get your boarding pass out? No worries, your Android Wear watch is displaying it right on your wrist. You can also control the thing with your voice to send messages, perform Google searches, and more. Android Wear also supports apps so developers can make it work with their existing smartphone apps to do things like order pizzas, call a cab, or turn your smart lights on and off or more. If you use an iPhone, you really have no option except for the Pebble. But even if you use an Android phone, Android Wear watches are a tough sell at this point. They're still too plasticky, have to be charged too often, and are too clumsy to use to really be beneficial to most people. If you must buy a smart watch today, you're better off getting the Pebble. It looks nicer, lasts longer, and is easier to use than the Android Wear watches. But that doesn't mean you have to do anything right now. Chances are smart watches are going to get a lot better really quickly. They may very well be the next big personal gadget, but it's going to take some time to figure them out before they're on everyone's wrist.

Hi, I'm Neil Ipital from The Verge. And I'm Spencer Hall from SK Nation. And we just want to have a little conversation about some pretty hilarious news in my opinion today, which is that the Minnesota Vikings are wearing Google Glass at training camp, which is not going to help them not suck this year, but I think Spencer has some ideas on what it might help them accomplish. It really does. Like, before we just start making fun of the Vikings, which is going to be the point of this whole thing, there is actually a modicum of useful information and of sort of forward thinking in this, which is a lot of football is about the eyes and a lot of the coaching that people do, particularly the defensive secondary and for skilled positions on offense involves looking at people, right? Looking off the safety, going through your reads. Now, Google Glass probably can't with the technology they've got actually do eye tracking. I'm just assuming that's probably not something that they have done yet. Yeah, not yet. However, what it can do is that it can give you the perspective. So if they really are turning their head to look at receiver one, two, three, four, then you'll be able to follow along with them. And while that's probably not as valuable for veterans who are certainly doing this already, it's a matter of getting your number two and your number three and guys who are just coming into the fold trained up on that. So this might actually make some sense for the NFL. Yeah, but not for the Vikings because they're terrible. So the Rams did this last year, right? Did that like take the sports world on fire that Rams lose all this first person video from training camp making an impact on how you think about sort of sports and sports journalism and what you're seeing from players? Not really because the Rams are bad and they're not a particularly great team. However, it's cool that they're playing around with it because I think one, coaches just want information. If you want to talk about the information environment that they work in, you know, ideally coaches want perfect information. Everything they do is sort of a step towards getting that. And if you can actually get what they're looking at and seeing on the field, right? Because typically a player will say, well, I saw this and I saw this. Well, you'll literally be able to go to the data and say, no, you didn't. You didn't actually look at the safety at all or you didn't see the receiver coming across the middle and didn't react. And once you get past a certain level of football, once you get past the college level, when you're really sort of pattern reading at every single opportunity, that'll actually help. So it didn't necessarily rock the world. I don't, I think it might if you saw actual improvement based on that. But here's the other trick. The people wearing Google Glass have to be good. Right. And I think that's the key challenge for the Vikings, right? Is they're not very good. What do you think if you're, I mean, I don't know, what, which of their many bad quarterbacks do you think will most benefit from Google Glass? Let's see. Our Vikings quarterback roster. Now, I primarily do college, but we're still dealing with Christian Ponder. Yeah. I mean, no hope for improvement there as far as I can tell. Okay. There won't be any improvement there because again, the raw material inside the helmet has to work. And Ponder is just, Ponder, this is another thing that just sucks for them. Okay. I don't want to take pity on the Vikings, but Ponder's arm is only so strong. Right. And he came into the league as somebody who had some nagging injuries to begin with. So it might not go that well. Now who can actually help would be Teddy Bridgewater. Teddy Bridgewater, Teddy Bridgewater coming in is going to have to go from Chris Peterson, who's currently University of Washington head coach, is fond of saying that there's this learning curve for quarterbacks at, you know, middle school, high school, college, and pro. And once you get to the pros, he's talking about not only going through multiple options, like in high school, it's like you're throwing to that guy. Yeah. He's a foot taller than everybody else. And he weighs 50 pounds more and he's really mean. So just give him the ball and we'll watch everything happen. Right. You get to college, you're like, well, we have like two or three options. You should know what you're looking at and know what you're throwing into. And then when you get to the pros, it's like, okay, you have a full moving spectrum, right? Like moving chest that blows up. Right. And we need you to know exactly where to put the rope and where to put the knight. Right. We'll script the plays. You just need to know how everything's moving. For Bridgewater, that's going to be really useful because he played very well in a very collegiate offense with some pro elements in it. So I think this could actually like, I think as a learning tool, it's got a lot of potential for him. That's awesome. So last question, yes or no. Is there any chance the Packers don't beat the Vikings twice this year? No. No, the Packers will beat the Vikings twice. Awesome. I'm Eli Patel. That's been Spencer Hall. This has been a lengthy troll of Dieter Bohn, the new executive editor of The Verge. And we'll talk to you soon.

So this week the verge is going to comic-con 2014 we're thrilled about it. It's my first comic-con I've been researching it online and what it turns out is that comic-con is a way to get 130,000 people to fly down to San Diego and then stand in line for 14 hours at a time And they're standing in line because they want to find out about all of the upcoming movies. You look at what's gonna be here It's incredible. I mean all the Marvel movies Ant-Man Avengers 2 maybe and then Jurassic world the Hobbit Star Wars episode 7 Maybe it's all gonna be super exciting. There are also panels and discussions for you to go to We've gotten about 15 different emails about where George RR Martin is gonna be signing autographs And so I have this vision that you're gonna walk around Hall H and you'll come around a corner and boom He's right there and he's like the other pen and you hand it to him and he signs her book Obviously we have to talk about the elephant in the room Sharknado 2 Sharknado 1 kind of redefined the art of cinema and narrative storytelling It is back to blow our minds all over again so much to get excited about this year But the thing that I'm most excited about is honestly just seeing all the fans We're gonna be spending a lot of time in line and so the idea that I'm gonna be standing next to a beautiful lady Thor and a beautiful man Thor and We're gonna be able to share a moment together and just kind of like celebrate that geeky spirit of fandom That is gonna be super cool and we're just really excited to bring that to you

Hey, it's Chris Sigler with The Verge, and I'm here to talk about my Soylent review. Now, since that review went live, I've gotten many questions about what it's like to live on a nutritional meal replacement for almost a month. I'm here to answer those questions. Number one question, and this was, by the way, far and away the most frequently asked question, what was your bathroom experience like? And the way I would describe it is normal but lighter in volume, if you catch my drift. And by the way, to everyone who asked that question, shame on you. Did you try mixing it with anything? So Soylent actually says that you can mix the product with a variety of different things. They recommend adding in peanut butter or chocolate, a few different things. I didn't. I wanted to do pure Soylent, and I wanted to do it without any additional calories. Now, this is a good one. How did you make the lead photo? Was that real Soylent flying through the air, and why did you waste it? Our photo director, Michael Shane, his vision for this lead photo was to have two of our video guys literally throwing Soylent at me while he captured it on a still camera. And yes, to answer your question, that was actual Soylent. I know it's very hard to get right now, but I like to think that at the end of the day, it was for a good cause. Why were you drinking Diet Coke? Wasn't that banned? These were my rules that I was following during this little experiment for a month. Soylent actually doesn't recommend that you replace 100 percent of your food with Soylent. I went for the whole thing. You can do 100 percent, but basically I couldn't survive without caffeine, so I added in a couple forms of that. And one final question, would I ever drink Soylent again? The answer surprisingly is yes. Now when I started this little experiment, I didn't expect that I would ever want to see this stuff again. But as a meal replacement for breakfast if you're in a hurry, lunch if you're in a hurry, totally makes sense. Would I do it full time? No. And I don't recommend you do it full time either.

Ever tried searching for a calendar app in the iPhone app store? Good luck with that. There are hundreds, if not thousands of calendar apps vying for your daily attention. And the truth is, most of them are garbage. But if you dig deep enough, a few of them are truly great. The best ones give you directions, tell you more about the people you're meeting with, and tie in to your favorite services like Facebook and Tripit. But which app should you pick? Sunrise is the best calendar app for most people. Not only does it have one of the largest feature sets of any app I tested, but somehow manages to bundle it all into a very handsome, minimal, and free package. Sunrise does everything you'd expect from a calendar app. Recurring events, birthdays, alerts, Google Maps integration, and more. It's the little things that make Sunrise truly special though. Like its weather indicators, photo avatars for event attendees, smart icons that change to reflect your events, and its integration with popular services like Song, Kick, and Tripit to show upcoming concerts and trips. You can even add interesting calendars for free, like holidays, sports schedules, or World Cup games. Sunrise's Facebook integration is also best in class, importing events and birthdays like no other. The icing on the cake is that Sunrise also makes iPad and desktop apps, which trump Google Calendar in almost every way. There are some rough edges, like a lack of a true week view and month view. Sunrise finds a great balance, however, between useful features and information overload. It not only displays your calendar really well, but adds a whole lot to it. Fantastical 2, on the other hand, doesn't have as many bells and whistles, but is so solid that it's impossible not to recommend it. It comes in a very close second place. Fantastical is easy to read, imports all the calendars you've already added to your phone right out of the box, and has best in class language recognition. That means you can type in, Dinner with David tomorrow at 8pm at Chipotle, press add, and you're done. Even better, as you type Fantastical shows what else is going on in your calendar, so you can plan around upcoming events. The app also includes a true week view, unlike Sunrise, but offers no detailed month view. Fantastical is way more expensive than its competitors, so it might scare off all but the most serious schedulers. Beyond Sunrise and Fantastical, there are several worthy competitors that might be perfect for a certain kind of person. If you desperately need the date on your home screen, for example, the iOS calendar is your only real option. Otherwise, stay away. Calendars 5 by Riedel is a lot better alternative. The app does everything well, from its Fantastical-inspired language recognition to its unique portrait-oriented week view. Its best features are some little touches, like arrows that indicate when you have more going on today, and elegant support for Apple's To Do app reminders. The app's month view is also excellent, letting you quickly zoom into a day, then back out again super fast. Calendars 5 is great, but expensive, and doesn't stand out much from the crowd. If you're looking for a more integrated approach to productivity, however, Cal is a great option. The app ties directly into AnyDo, one of the best To Do apps you can find, and envisions your calendar as a mixture of events and tasks, and tacky stock photography. There's no other calendar app that is integrated with a popular To Do's app like AnyDo, but Cal can be sluggish and buggy enough to make the trip not worth taking. If you want a calendar app that's ultra-minimal, and only includes today's events, Peak might be worth a look. Peak is definitely the most beautiful way to see what you're doing today, but it can't do much else. The app's UI is like nothing I've ever seen, but it also means it's a real challenge to add events and pick out calendars to show or hide. So what good is it? Up2 is like Sunrise Light, offering a similar interface, weather, and interesting calendars, but not much more. Up2's selection of calendars is a standout feature in fact, offering not just sports teams, but also schedules for shows like Game of Thrones, and alternative music releases. The app's real strength, however, is its shared calendars system. It's easy to share specific events so they show up on the calendars of your other family members. But ultimately, Up2 just doesn't have enough features, or even Weekview, which comes standard in most apps. Want another way to look at your day, even if it looks totally bizarre? Mind offers an odd but effective snapshot of your day the moment you open it. The app tells you the weather and what's happening, but also which event is next and how soon you should leave so you aren't late. The app's butt-ugly, but has some unique features like insights about how you're spending your time, and a tool that helps you suggest meeting times to colleagues. A more attractive take on predictive intelligence comes from Tempo. The app can dial conference call numbers for you, pull attachments from relevant meeting emails, and even tell you the latest tweets or mutual friends of an event attendee. There's also one-tap access to directions, flight statuses, and conference calls. Tempo is a bit of an eyesore, especially when you hop into Weekview, but is a well-rounded calendar app that business people should love. Two final options are Week Calendar and Agenda. One's great for looking at the coming week, while the other's good for looking at your agenda over the next few days. Agenda offers a really nice way to see a list of all your events at once. The app has great information density. Week Calendar, on the other hand, has gained a faithful following for its even denser Weekview, which attempts to squeeze everything you're doing this week into one screen. It's pretty ugly, but hey, some people dig that. Unfortunately for you, downloading a calendar app is only the first step towards organizing your life. Inputting events, fulfilling promises, and not being late to your next date is entirely up to you. But there's certainly some effective apps to help you get there.

Another truckload's coming in for me, all for me, I'm singing. I love Rocky Road. So hold another dime in the King Rock, baby. I love Rocky Road. So have another grip, let's go with me. I don't care if you're full, just eat it. Eat it. No one wants to feed us. Because I'm fat, fat, fat, come on. You know I'm fat, fat, fat. You know I'm fat, fat, fat. Don't you call me pudgy, portly, or a stout. Just tell me once again, who's fat? Now I'm mumbling, it's a dangerous. And I don't know what I'm singing. I'm still fed, ears are bleeding. City of bedrock, lonely as I am. Now I'll tell you why. Oh, oh. He just kept saying life is like a box of chocolates. He's gone, she's loved, she's in my head. He's gone, she's loved, he's gone, is he in bread? I'm spending most of my life living in an homage paradise. I churn butter once or twice, living in a gangsta's paradise. I wanna roll with the gangstas. They hoping that they gonna catch me riding dirty. Fingers just too wide and dirty. Fingers just too wide and dirty. Fingers just too wide and dirty. They hoping that they gonna catch me riding dirty.

Every year, Apple updates Mac OS X with some new features and usually some design tweaks. And every year, we wonder if we're going to see iOS take over the Mac. And this year, with a release it's calling Yosemite, Apple has brought the two platforms closer together than ever before. But lucky for Mac users, it's making sure they stay distinct. Starting today, up to a million regular people can sign up and download a beta for Yosemite, not just developers. That's the good news. The bad news is that the very best features of this new version are the pieces that make it talk to an iPad or iPhone with iOS 8, which aren't out yet. So you'll have to wait until the fall before you'll be using your Mac for making calls, sending texts, and sharing files directly with your iPhone. Also, this is a beta, so you should not install it on your main computer. But what can you expect if you do download and start using Yosemite? Quite a lot. First and foremost, Yosemite has complete redesign from dock to menu bar and everything in between. It shares a lot of the aesthetic of iOS 8. It's a Johnny Ive-led flattening. Where it used to have gradients, Yosemite has broad expanses of white. Where it used to have thick toolbars with extra information, Yosemite emphasizes thinness and efficiency. There are a lot of corners in OS X, and I keep expecting Apple to miss a little one or two, only to be pleasantly surprised at the attention to every little detail. The so-called stoplight buttons are cleaner and actually work the way you'd expect when going to full screen. Other buttons are less, well, buttony, but not to the extent that they are in iOS. These are still things that you click with a mouse. The icons are bolder, the fonts are updated. There are still a few edges to be smoothed, but not as many as you'd expect on a beta. But the biggest change, and probably the most radical, is all the translucency. In lots of places throughout the Mac, you'll find that different parts are see-through and show you a blurred out version of what's behind the window. Sidebars show you the desktop or the window behind it, menu bars show you the content of what's inside the window as you scroll up, and the notification center appears over the desktop instead of under it. All these blurred out elements are supposed to help give you a sense of place for your windows, or maybe they're just meant to look cool. Mostly I found the effects distracting, and I was constantly glancing at elements on the screen that I'm used to being completely static, and it wasn't too long before I was digging through the settings to turn down the effect. Another big change, and a huge improvement, is with Notification Center. In Yosemite, it's actually finally useful. Not only can you reply to some notifications right there in the pop-up, but you can actually add useful widgets inside the Notification Center. Instead of a basic list of alerts, you can get customized pieces of data, including a daily calendar view that actually makes sense. Third-party widgets are coming too. The Max Universal Search Spotlight also got an upgrade. It now pops up right in the center of your screen, just like the third-party Alfred app, and it's able to give you more search results than just your local files, just like Alfred. Sometimes it works for searching the web, and sometimes it doesn't, but mostly it's a big functional improvement over what we had before. Apple gave a bunch of love to its built-in apps as well. Safari has some new tab and address bar features that finally give Chrome a run for its money, and it seems to be way faster and gentler on your battery. Calendar has a Today view that's actually worth using. Mail has the ability to mark up attachments and store them in the cloud. Most of the important built-in apps have received a fresh coat of semi-translucent white paint. It's all simpler looking, but it's still just as powerful. At the end of the day, the most important thing to remember is that the Mac is still the Mac. Sure, it will be able to hand stuff off to your iPhone, and yeah, it looks more like the apps on your iPad than ever. But Apple isn't taking Mac features away, it's just making them look better, or at least making them look more consistent. And just wait until Yosemite and iOS 8 are out this fall. Apple's not trying to merge your computer and your smartphone, it's just trying to make them all work better together. It's gonna be great. Hey, Doctor, you're on speakerphone via my Mac.

Of course Amazon was making a smartphone. Our smartphones are our most personal devices, our most used devices, and Amazon wins when it's right there in front of you. So of course Amazon was making a smartphone. And this is it, the Fire Phone. The first time you look at it or touch it, there's really nothing remarkable about the Fire Phone. It's a black rectangle, a slab of glass, and beveled plastic. It's heavy, but not really. Big, but not really. It's just a phone. It has a 4.7 inch 720p display that's not anything special, but certainly gets the job done. It has three speakers so you'll always get stereo sound. It has a raised home button, which I weirdly like a lot, and an etched Amazon logo on the back. It has excellent performance thanks to a Snapdragon 800 processor and about a day and a half of battery life. It's all good enough without ever standing out. It's just fine. The camera, at least, is fairly straightforward and pretty good. It's 13 megapixels and takes solid sharp images in just about any situation. It's better in low light than almost any Android camera I've tested, actually. There's a nice panorama mode, plus one for taking photos you can look at, with the dynamic perspective features turned on. The only problem is the camera's slow. Slow to focus, slow to shoot, just slow. The only hint you get from looking at the Fire Phone that it might be something a little bit different is the five, count them, five camera lenses pointing out of the front bezel. They make for an ugly front of a smartphone, like exposed screws or visible seams, but they enable one of the most important features of the Fire Phone. That feature is called dynamic perspective. It uses four cameras in the four corners of the Fire Phone's face to recognize your head, its position, and its motion. And then it lets you see lots of different parts of the phone's OS in 3D. Sort of. When you look at the home screen and move your head around, you'll be looking around the icons. You can also move the phone, which responds to tilts and gestures to always be showing you more information. To open the quick settings menu and the notification window, you flick your wrist back and forth with the phone in it. You tilt it to show hidden menus or pop up more information in a map. Amazon's whole idea is to take away most of the information on any given screen and only show you what you want to see at that moment. Games are awesome with dynamic perspective, more immersive than just flat-out more fun. But with everything else, it's just a gimmick, and sometimes it's actually unhelpful. It means that the Fire Phone doesn't always show the time or battery levels. You have to tilt the phone slightly to make them appear. I don't want to do that. I want all of that as accessible as possible. All this tech is open to developers, and they may well find cool ways to use it, but really all I wanted to do was turn it off and just use the phone. The other big new feature of the Fire Phone is Firefly. It's basically an ultra powerful object recognition tool, able to scan email addresses and phone numbers and websites and deodorants and tea bags and books and movies and songs and speakers and almost anything else you put in front of the Fire Phone's camera. At a very basic level, Firefly is a shopping tool, like the ones available for lots of other devices. You're running out of soap, so you scan the bottle and four seconds later you've bought more soap. From Amazon. But you can also listen for a song and in one tap start an iHeart radio station with whatever you were hearing. It's up to developers to make this interesting, because all Firefly does is figure out what's being shown. Eventually it'll do more than just add soap to my Amazon cart. The problem is it doesn't work all that well. It got books right most of the time, always figured out what song I was listening to, but it often couldn't figure out the object at all, or got kind of close but not really. Firefly is kind of its own thing, a single app with a single purpose, but dynamic perspective invades everything about how the Fire Phone works. Its software, Fire OS, is all about three panel interfaces. In the middle, your content. On the left, menus. On the right is what Amazon calls delighters, little additive tricks that add something fun or useful to the app you're in. That concept is fine, even though it's frustrating how few third-party apps currently play along. It's the navigation that's the problem. There's no indication that those menus exist off to the sides, or when they exist, or what's in them. You just have to open an app, flick the phone back and forth a million times, and see where everything is. The Fire Phone's multitasking isn't exactly obvious either. I spent a lot of time just hitting the home button, going back and starting everything over. But even the home screen is confusing. It shows every app, book, or item you've opened in reverse chronological order. As you scroll through them, below each one is related information. Your agenda underneath calendar, recent texts underneath messages. Underneath most of them though is just more stuff to buy. You have a to-do list app? Here are five more! Some things scroll left to right, some up and down, and there's an app drawer hidden underneath the row of icons at the bottom. There's a lot going on here, and once you understand the paradigm, it's even sort of clever. But it's a million miles from obvious or intuitive. The only thing consistently straightforward about the Fire Phone is how easy it is to get things from Amazon. Buying, renting, streaming, anything from Amazon is easy. But that's not what a smartphone is for. A smartphone is for a lot of things. Shopping, definitely among them. But it's also for getting work done, for relaxing, for communicating. And since Amazon doesn't have the Play Store, it's missing a huge number of Android apps, including all of Google's. And everything from the email client, to the calendar app, to maps suffers as a result. Amazon's only going to win if it gets developers on board with its most unique features. And when it can't even compete on number of apps, it's hard to see them really working to develop for one phone on one carrier from Amazon. So the Fire Phone costs $199 with a two-year contract, and it's available from AT&T. It's full of big ideas, a couple of them huge and full of potential that will probably never be realized. In a few months or years, things like Dynamic Perspective and Firefly could go from cool gimmicks to actually important features. Mayday, the super simple one-touch support system, is really awesome as well, and you'll need it in order to figure out how to use the Fire Phone. But in an effort to make something different and new and innovative, Amazon kind of forgot to make a good smartphone. A good smartphone should be fast and efficient, entirely without complications. The Fire Phone tries to be fun and delightful, but too often it's just complicated.

So the story is really about these kind of legislative efforts called kill switch bills. Their basic goal is to turn off your phone remotely and that's not just turn it off like the power that's like disable it from being able to connect to AT&T or Verizon or even be able to install apps. So the big piece of legislation that's coming up is this bill from California. It's basically passed the Senate, it's gone through committee and now it's on the assembly floor which means it's just a couple steps away from being signed into law by the governor if it gets approved. And it's basically going to require cell phone companies starting next July to provide a way to remotely wipe, a way to disable it completely and a way to revert everything when you're done. The other side of this is that cell phone companies and cell phone manufacturers have already kind of agreed to do this. They're a part of a consortium called the CTIA and they all signed something a couple months ago that basically said we're going to provide all these features anyways because it's something that we need to do. And so that goes into effect next July as well. So you kind of have the situation now where you have these laws bumping out against the self-regulation of these companies. The main reason to have this kind of legislation out there is that people's phones are being stolen faster than ever. Millions of phones are being stolen every year. A lot of them not really violently. People are just kind of leaving them in restaurants or bars or taxi cabs and it's very easy to flip them and sell them. On one side it's really about consumer protection but it's also about kind of making it really simple to make these things less worthwhile to steal. I think the downside right now especially with some of this legislation and this is something that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is kind of arguing is that if you make all these companies do something, maybe a better version comes out later but they still have to comply with this law that you could theoretically have a situation where they still have to provide this and it's hindering them from really innovating as quickly. Also you run into some sort of issues where maybe it brings up the expense to make these devices or it kind of creates this bloat in software. I don't think these fears are really well founded but they're a legitimate issue.

The World Cup may have just ended, but there's another huge tournament happening right now that you should be watching. It doesn't have end zones, or a home plate, or even LeBron James. But it does have mythical ancients, powerful wizards, fearsome warriors, a dude riding a bat, and this guy. Right now 16 teams are competing to take home millions of dollars in an event that could be watched by millions of people. It's called the International and it looks like the future of sports. This is the fourth year of the International, an annual Dota 2 tournament, and it's by far the biggest year yet. It's hosted by Valve, the company best known as the creator of the Half-Life series. This year Valve enlisted Dota 2's huge fan base to sweeten the pot for competitors, and they came through in a huge way. Valve seeded the tournament with a $1.6 million prize, but players pitched in more than $8 million to bring the total purse to over $10 million. That makes it not only the largest esport tournament in history, but also bigger than some traditional sports tournaments. These players are the best of the best in Dota 2, but that doesn't mean they're paid like LeBron. There's no salary, and losing can literally mean missing out on your lunch. This year's winning team will take home nearly $5 million. If you're new to Dota 2, there's a lot to learn, so much in fact that listening to the tournament's broadcast can be completely overwhelming for newcomers. You're going to hear a lot about laning, creeps, BKBs, Rat Dota, and dozens of other jargony terms. It's complicated, but really there are just a few basics you need to know before watching. You could compare Dota 2 to a lot of games, and that's both good and bad. It's part chess, part capture the flag, part Magic the Gathering, and part Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Dota is short for Defense of the Ancients, and that's actually the game in a nutshell. Two five-man teams battle in a big square gladiatorial arena with a single objective — siege the other team's base and destroy their Ancient before they destroy yours. Of course, it's not as simple as hitting a baseball out of the park. Each Ancient is protected by a series of defensive towers that must be toppled splintially. These defenses have four layers, and they're spread out in three lanes, which are just pathways from one team's base to the other. There's one that goes straight down the middle of the map diagonally, and two that wrap around each edge. Unlike pro sports, Dota 2 is incredibly easy to watch. You don't need television or a special cable package. You just need an internet connection. And this year, Valve has made it even easier for newcomers with a beginner's broadcast that breaks down the game for newbies. Even Valve's spectacular documentary on the game, Free to Play, is free to watch online. But this year, for the first time, major networks are also getting in on the action. The stream will be available to watch on ESPN3. The main event starts today and runs through Monday, July 21st. Each team will compete on a stage at the Key Arena in front of cheering fans. You're likely to see furious combat, emotional comebacks, surprising twists, and at the end, one team taking home almost $5 million and a giant shield trophy called the Aegis of Champions. If you're thinking that kind of Dota 2 is tempting, you too can someday become a champion. Dota 2 is completely free to download and play, and it's available for Mac or PC.

This week Washington State opened the doors to its first recreational marijuana shops and the turnout was pretty large. Let's go, dude! I will take two grams of your sour kush. Yeah, go Washington! With no legal reason not to try the drug, curious people of all walks of life now have the opportunity to smoke marijuana risk-free for the first time. First customer! We expect things to get very interesting. My mom is 93 years old. And a half. When she learned that marijuana was legal in Washington, she decided she wanted to try it. I was kind of looking for a marijuana cigarette. I'm not even sure how you talk about this stuff and what the words are. I think joint. Mom thinks it's a joint. Burnt my thumb. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to smoke it. Burnt my thumb. I'm holding it in, but I don't think I've got much smoke. Maggie supplied the marijuana. I asked if I could pay for it. She said, no, it's free. Then she said, the first one is free. I'm not sure exactly what she meant by that. Oh! Am I really going to put this on Facebook? Oh no! So we light this guy up. It's quite small. You know, when you take the smoke, you're supposed to hold it for a long time to get all the goodness out of it. I've seen it in movies. I don't know if it's the first time I've ever done it. To see I'm not a professional. He's fucking frozen, bro! What the fuck? This is awesome, man. I've never seen anything like this. Don't let it burn your pants. When I exhale, nothing comes out, so I'm not sure how much is going in there. A lot came out of me. Yeah? Yes. Holy shit, those huge fucking owls. I'll try the old pipe way. Maybe that'll work. Wow! I'm going to try the pipe way. I'm going to try the pipe way. Wow! Just wait to make it work. I was paralyzed. I was paralyzed! I was just paralyzed! I swear to God, I swear to God, I was just paralyzed. This is not good, this is not good, Jesus! I called the ambulance. I was just paralyzed. I was just paralyzed. I was just paralyzed, Jesus! No, I can't, I can't, I can't. You're freaking out, man. No, no, I didn't understand. We just knocked you out, you just knocked anybody out. Please, I was just stuck in time.