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For many, many years, humans have eaten food. It's what sustains us. It comes from the earth. It comes from the seas. Now, it comes from science. This is Soylent, a scientific-looking amalgam of protein, flour, vitamins, and minerals that first made waves as a crowdfunded project last year. A project whose goal was to straight up replace food. Yes, all of it. Technically, Soylent is food, just not any kind that you're used to eating on a regular basis. It's supposed to give you pretty much everything you need to survive, and nothing else. There's no joy to Soylent, only purpose. It's just cheap, nutritious liquid that dispenses with the entertainment and social aspect of eating and gets down to business. Subsisting on Soylent costs less than $10 a day. Here in New York, $10 is good for a couple packs of gum, so a full day's worth of calories for that amount of cash is actually a really good deal. And if you're in a time crunch, it just takes a few gulps to put a meal down. Of course, the first step to eating Soylent is getting it, and right now, that's very hard. It turns out that the promise of a mega-efficient, no-frills diet has a lot of people buzzing. And the hype has left the company with a backlog that runs several months long. You can make your own Soylent, or some variation of it if you're enterprising enough to dig up and deal with the mess of the ingredients. They offer a whole DIY site with forums, in fact. But that defeats the purpose of saving time with ultra-efficient nutrition in the first place. Anyway, once you dig up some Soylent, the next challenge is making it. The product ships to you in individual packets, one per day, seven per box. The company also ships customers a two-liter pitcher and a metal measuring scoop. The pitcher is key. In fact, you don't need the scoop at all unless you want to futz around with making individual servings. But you're better off just dumping an entire packet into the pitcher and filling it up to the top with water. You have to be careful here, because the act of dumping the bag into the pitcher causes a little plume of Soylent powder to form. The company also ships matching bottles of a fish oil-canola oil blend that looks a bit like those little bottles of shampoo you get in hotel rooms. You're looking at a full day's worth of everything that has to go into your body to keep it running, or so Soylent says. 2,010 calories of beige liquid. Once you clean up the mess, you shake the pitcher for 30 seconds. I found that shaking usually opened up some air bubbles in the powder, which means you have to add a bit more water as you go. When you're done, you stick it in the fridge, let it sit overnight so it gets smooth, and you're ready to have all your biological requirements met with just a few sips. You just have to get that whole pitcher down by the time you go to sleep. Now, the moment of truth. The drink. Since Soylent first made headlines, you've probably read some pretty disgusting descriptions of what this stuff tastes like. Don't believe them. It's not bad. It's certainly not delicious. But it's not going to make you gag. The best way I can describe it is like if you took a few spoonfuls of peanut butter in a blender with a lot of milk. It has some richness and creaminess to it, and just the tiniest hint of sweetness. It tastes like sustenance. I drink Soylent for a full month, and let me tell you, it gets boring. It's doable. Like I said, it's not gross. But there's a social aspect of eating and drinking that Soylent simply isn't built to provide. Fortunately, the experiment was pretty painless. Apart from some occasional digestive discomfort, I felt healthy the entire time, and I never really felt hungry. There's a ton of protein in Soylent, so I guess that's no surprise. Over the course of the month, I lost somewhere around 12 pounds, but my usage was a little extreme. The company says they don't imagine most people use it as a 100% meal replacement the way I did. They see it as a convenience thing. A breakfast here, a lunch there. And when you want to eat real food, you go ahead and do it. In that regard, Soylent isn't all that revolutionary. You can walk into your local grocery store right now and find an entire aisle of meal replacement bars and shakes. But Soylent seems to be both cheaper and more nutritionally complete than most of them. Would I do another 30-day stint on it? Absolutely not. But could I see myself drinking it here and there? Definitely. Assuming I'm ever able to work my way through the waiting list.

It takes the best of Apple and the best of IBM and puts those together. There's no overlap, there's no competition, they're totally complimentary. And we found a kindred spirit in IBM and I am so happy we did. We've come from 30 years ago being competitors to today being incredibly complimentary. IBM's first product was terrible. It was really bad. In 1977, IBM dismisses the personal computer as too small to do serious computing and unimportant to their business. With over 50 competitors vying for a share, IBM enters the personal computer market in November 1981 with the IBM PC. This is a highly sophisticated office computer and to use it all you have to do is learn this. It appears IBM wants it all. This is Macintosh from Apple, also a highly sophisticated office computer and to use it all you have to do is learn this. It is now 1984. Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry? The entire information age. Was George Orwell right about 1984? I think we fit together like a puzzle.

Odds are good you still have cable TV. Cord cutting hasn't exactly taken over yet. But odds are also good that you're done watching Shots of Sunset reruns just because there's nothing else on. Netflix, Hulu, and a thousand other services are engineered to solve this exact problem, to put huge libraries of anything you might want to watch just a click or two away. If you want the most content and the best experience, you really need a dedicated set-top box. If you want access to the huge world of streaming content, there are exactly four dedicated boxes you should even think about buying. At the end of the day though, the Roku 3 is the best choice. It's the right set-top box for the most people, the one with something for everyone. The biggest thing Roku has going for it is content. It offers more to watch than any of its competitors and it's not close. Netflix and Hulu, Amazon and YouTube, Showtime and HBO Go, anything and everything you can think of. Each comes as a channel which you select from a grade on the home screen. The interface isn't beautiful but it's simple and usable and it's a window to a truly outrageous amount of content. The Roku 3 also has a nifty universal search option which makes it really easy to find whatever you want to watch across all of those channels. There's even a headphone jack in the remote so you can watch without disturbing whoever is sitting or sleeping next to you. You can also replicate a lot of the Chromecast features with the Roku, streaming straight from the Netflix or Hulu app on your phone to your Roku 3. A couple of the other boxes have prettier or faster interfaces, but you buy a set-top box because you have things to watch. The Roku 3 has the most things to watch and all the features it needs to make watching easy. It's the best set-top box out there right now. But it wins only by the slimmest of margins. If Apple ever decides the Apple TV is worth real time and effort, if it fixes the interface for YouTube and adds content sources like Amazon, it could really quickly claim the throne. That's because it has a truly killer feature that no other device can replicate, AirPlay. AirPlay lets you play Netflix or Spotify on your TV, sure, but it also lets you send almost any photo, video or audio from another Apple device to your television. It'll even mirror your screen on your TV and do some cool dual-screen tricks if you're playing games. AirPlay is system-wide, it's built-in for anyone with an Apple device, and it's a really incredible tool. But the Apple TV hasn't gotten a real update in a while and it's showing its age. Apple's interface and remote are a little too simple and there's nowhere near the breadth of content you'll find on the Roku 3. AirPlay is an unbeatable feature and it really wouldn't take much to get Apple TV over the top, but it's not quite there yet. The same is essentially true of Amazon's Fire TV. The Fire TV has lots of content, Hulu and Netflix and watch ESPN and basically all of the basics, except HBO Go. It's also really fast and has this amazingly great voice search function. Just hold the button on the remote, say movies directed by Christopher Nolan and you're off. There's all kinds of cool ancillary features like X-ray and IMDb on top of whatever you're watching. Even Amazon's games, usually a mess on a set-top box, are pretty fun. But the Fire TV is missing a few apps. Its content library isn't huge, especially if you're not and don't want to be an Amazon Prime subscriber. And the handy universal search doesn't tie together services the way the Roku 3 does. Amazon was late to the set-top box game and could absolutely fix all of these problems. And it does have a solid base to build on. Amazon could make real moves here and win in a big way, but it's not quite done yet. That brings me to Chromecast, the crazy cheap, crazy simple model. With Chromecast, there is no remote. There's not even really a box. You pick what you want to watch or hear on your phone or tablet or laptop, and then click the button to start it playing on your TV. It works, but only in a few apps for now, and it's nowhere near as simple or as pervasive as AirPlay. And truthfully, there's something nice about having a remote and about being able to sit on the couch next to someone and scroll through options together. Chromecast's potential is big, and it's as cheap and easy a way to watch Netflix as you'll find anywhere, but it still feels like kind of a hacker's toy. Okay, so those are the big four. The Roku 3 is the best of the bunch, but they all do the job. Your only real mistake would be buying anything else. Set-top boxes change fast, and when Android TV comes out, or when Apple or Amazon or Google takes its next big swing, things might change again. But for now, you should be looking for the best mix of content, features, power, and simplicity. The Roku 3 offers the best mix of all four. The little guy wins this time.

We're less than six weeks away from the return of Doctor Who and the first full introduction of the Twelfth Doctor. August 23rd not coming soon enough? Let's see how Doctor Who got to this point in the meantime. Doctor Who first aired in 1963, and if you don't discount the cancellation in 1989 and the movies in between, it's the longest running science fiction show ever. At the time of its premiere, the Doctor was played by the aged William Hartnell, and over the years the character has regenerated, thus allowing the producers to recast their titular hero without having to restart the storyline. Although each Doctor is technically a reincarnation of the previous one, they each have different looks and personalities. The first was essentially your time traveling grandfather, the second was playful and childlike, the third was a smooth talking scientist, the fourth, and the longest lived of all, was quirky with that wild scarf, and so on and so forth. After the Seventh Doctor in 1989, the series went into hibernation. There was an attempt to reboot in 1996, but that pilot was released as a one-off television movie. After a 16-year hiatus, Doctor Who was rebooted in 2005 by Russell T. Davies, the creator of Queer as Folk. The series, generally referred to as New Who, launched with The Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston, but Eccleston only stayed one season and was promptly replaced by the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant. Davies' period ran for four seasons, and brought back many of the series' most iconic antagonists, including the Doctor's one-time friend, The Master. In 2010, Davies stepped down, and Doctor Who was passed to Steven Moffat, then widely considered one of the show's best episode writers. Where Davies had tended toward loosely planned, sometimes downright goofy plots, Moffat created extremely intricate season-wide arcs, sometimes working on plot points from almost every episode. And with a new showrunner came A New Doctor, the eleventh one, played by Matt Smith. After the series finale, Smith appeared in two more specials. The Day of the Doctor premiered last November in honor of the show's 50th anniversary. It featured appearances from all previous Doctors, both living and dead, and introduced fans to The War Doctor, played by John Hurt. Smith's final appearance as the Eleventh Doctor was last year's Christmas special, The Time of the Doctor, which ended on the introduction of the Twelfth Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi. What does the future hold for the New Doctor? Not even the Time Lord can tell, but at least he has new kidneys to see him through.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been in the top job for five months, and there's one point he keeps driving more than any other. Mobile first and the cloud first. Mobile first, cloud first. Mobile first, cloud first. He's now firmly stamping his mark on the software giant. In a long letter to Microsoft's more than 100,000 employees, Nadella outlines his vision to reshape the core of Microsoft. First and foremost, he's dropping the devices and services focus that former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer brought in, and instead refocusing on cloud and mobile. It's Microsoft going back to what it does best, its software roots. That culling of the devices and services focus doesn't mean Xbox or Surface are going anywhere just yet. In fact, Nadella remains committed to Microsoft's game console and describes its latest Surface Pro 3 tablet as an example of how Microsoft will build first-party hardware in the future. If anything, Nadella's letter is largely an omission of how Microsoft is changing, and how he, as the new CEO, wants to change the company's culture to get there. Some of those traditions already appear to be out the door when Nadella opting to bring Office for iPad to fruition and traveling to the heart of Silicon Valley to impress in relaxed and informal surroundings. The timing comes shortly before Microsoft reports its latest financial results, and amid rumors the company is planning layoffs shortly. Nadella doesn't touch on those aspects, of course, instead focusing on the future. Quote, we will collectively transform this company and seize the great opportunity ahead. Learn something mobile first, cloud first.

Virtually any smartphone you buy today can tell you the basic weather out of the box. But if you're willing to dig into the app stores, you'll find countless weather apps that promise to be more accurate, give you more information, and be nicer to look at than your smartphone's default. Weather apps are some of the most useful apps on my phone. They determine what I'll wear and where I'll go in any given day. The apps that come with your smartphone can tell you the current weather conditions and perhaps a short forecast. But if you want more information, such as longer forecasts, radar maps, or severe weather alerts, you're going to have to look elsewhere. For the iPhone, the best paid weather app is hands down Dark Sky. It's $399, which might sound like a lot, but Dark Sky has an uncanny ability to pinpoint your location down to a street address and then tell you exactly how many minutes you have before it will rain. The first time you get a push notification to your phone letting you know that it will rain in 15 minutes and last for 11 minutes and that's exactly what happens, you quickly forget about the few bucks you spent on Dark Sky. Dark Sky is also a full featured weather app with 24 hour and full week forecasts and animated maps for precipitation and temperature. Importantly, Dark Sky has an easy to use design with bouncy but informative animations sprinkled throughout. It also works on both the iPhone and the iPad. It's almost silly to say this about a weather app, but Dark Sky is just fun to use. If you're looking for a great free weather app, you can't do any better than Yahoo Weather. It's one of the prettiest weather apps ever, very clearly inspiring Apple's own weather app introduced with iOS 7. But it doesn't just offer good looks, Yahoo Weather is as feature complete as they come and it doesn't have any obnoxious ads interrupting your forecast. Yahoo Weather presents the current conditions in a beautiful font overlaid on images pulled from Flickr and it provides more information in a vertically scrolling column. There are hourly forecasts, 5 or 10 day forecasts, and detailed weather information for the current conditions. It works on both the iPhone and the iPad and it even has animated radar maps, but it does lack alerts for severe weather conditions. Over on Android, the best paid weather app you can get is AccuWeather Platinum. For $299, AccuWeather Platinum offers pretty much everything you can ask for in a weather app. Detailed current conditions, accurate hourly predictions, forecasts that stretch out for up to 3 weeks, animated radar maps, and TV style video forecasts. It also has minute by minute forecasts and exact locations, right down to your street level. AccuWeather's design is clean and fits right in with Android's native design language and it includes informative and attractive home screen widgets. There are no ads in the Platinum version and you can opt to have your current weather permanently displayed in your phone's notification tray, as well as get push notifications for severe weather conditions. You can get the free version of AccuWeather, which offers the same features and design, but it comes with obnoxious banner ads that ruin the experience for me. As with iOS, the best free option on Android is Yahoo Weather. Virtually everything that makes Yahoo Weather great on the iPhone is found in the Android version, including its clean but information dense design. The only thing the Android app is missing compared to iOS is animated radar maps, and it doesn't have the minute by minute forecasts offered by AccuWeather. There are countless other options out there, everything ranging from the ultra simple weather line to the graphics heavy clear day to the ultra complex radar scope and even old standbys like WeatherBug and the Weather Channel's own app. But when you cut through the noise, what you really want is a weather app that's accurate, powerful, and pleasant to use every day. You'll pay a few dollars to get that experience in dark sky or AccuWeather Platinum, but when you're able to duck inside just before that torrential downpour, it'll be worth every penny.

Android Wear smart watches are shipping, which means you can get a Samsung Gear Live or an LG G Watch right now. Once you do, you'll be swiping through your notifications and searching Google with your voice like a champ. But now that it's out, you can also do something else. Load up your watch with apps. There aren't a ton of apps available yet, but of the 30 or so that we've checked out, there are at least a few that are worth your time. Luckily, installing an Android Wear app is simple. You just install or update an existing app on your phone, and if it has an Android Wear component, that part is automatically installed on your watch. There's a few different kinds of apps for your wrist. The first and easiest way is to just take advantage of Android's built-in rich notification system. Android already lets you see and do stuff right from the notification shade on your phone, and those same features can work on your watch too. So when you install an app like OneWeather, its notification gives you a detailed forecast you can swipe through. Other apps that haven't been fully updated for Wear sorta work. You can fave and retweet from Twitter, for example, but you need to bust out your phone if you want a reply. The best way to end great with Android Wear is to take advantage of its default voice search actions. Right now, those include some basic things, like take a note or call a car. By far, the best app to take advantage of this feature is Evernote. You just say, okay, Google, take a note, and then speak, and it turns itself into a quick note that's saved right into your notebooks in the cloud. If you're already an Evernote user, or if you just don't wanna use Google Keep, it's pretty great. You can also say start Evernote, and then open up your to-do lists, checking off stuff from your shopping list while keeping one hand on the cart. The app with the biggest wow factor here is Lyft. Just say, okay, Google, call me a car, and the app will automatically figure out your location and then hail a driver. Be careful, though. If you're showing off to your friends, you only have a few seconds to hit cancel before the app actually does what you tell it to. But apps can actually do all sorts of other stuff on Android Wear. There's a hidden little start menu inside the watch, which gives you access to everything that's installed on it. You don't have to dig for it, though. Instead, you can just say something like, okay, Google, start EAT24, and soon you'll be presented with swipeable, tappable cards that will have a pizza en route to you immediately. If you're interested in unclogging your arteries afterwards, both Runkeeper and Run-tastic work with Android Wear. Another great app is Duolingo, the app that helps you learn new languages. The Wear version gives you flashcards. They let you quickly refresh your vocabulary lessons that you run through in the full app. You don't have to talk to your watch for this one, but it's an easy way to pass a couple of minutes and learn something while you do it. Right now, the apps we're most hoping for are custom watch faces to replace the built-in options. There's one already. It's a binary clock for nerds, but there are more to come. Until then, have fun talking to your watch, and someday, I promise, it won't feel super weird. And don't forget to check them out.

Seven years after the end of the Harry Potter book series, JK Rowling has released a new story online that offers a very brief glimpse of Harry, Ron and Hermione in their later years. All from the perspective of gossip columnist Rita Skeeter. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released in 2007, bringing an end to one of the most popular book series of all time. But the books and even the films were only the beginning to a much, much larger franchise. JK Rowling's book series started in 1997 with the release of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Since then, the seven books have gone on to make over $7.5 billion. And then there were the movies. Aside from launching the careers of Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, the eight Harry Potter movies have also made over $7 billion. The final movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, is the fourth highest-grossing movie of all time. In fact, the seven other movies all rank in the list of the top 50 highest-grossing movies in the history of the world. So it's no surprise that the final film, which was released in 2011, was far from the end of the story. Since then, Universal Studios has teamed up with Rowling and Warner Bros., the studio behind the films, to create the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, a fully interactive, high-tech theme park that immerses fans in the world of magic. The park opened in Orlando, Florida in 2010 and expanded this year. A similar park will open this summer at Universal Studios Japan, and a third version is planned for Universal Studios Hollywood for 2016. And it doesn't even end there. Rowling is also producing a stage production in London's West End that will focus on Potter's early years before heading to Hogwarts. And then there's Pottermore, a website which Rowling helped create. It gives fans details about the world of Harry Potter not given in the original series, as well as retells the original story in an interactive way and provides a platform for Rowling to release new material. But Rowling isn't stopping at just the story of Harry Potter. Based on Rowling's spin-off book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the film adaptation will be released November 18, 2016. So yeah, expect a lot of muggles and magic in the decade to come.

This weekend, audiences will swing into theaters to see Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, a Planet of the Apes film that does not have James Franco in it. It does, however, have Gary Oldman and Andy Serkis, presumably playing an ape, and it's directed by Matt Reeves, who helmed Cloverfield in the vastly underrated kid vampire movie Let Me In. It is, of course, a sequel to 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which was in turn a reboot of the series, but not the first reboot. The latest film is the eighth Planet of the Apes movie, and I'm not even counting two failed TV shows. The series has a long history with major highs and some seriously disappointing lows that span more than 50 years. Before I go any further, I should say there are many spoilers in this video, and if you haven't watched at least the original five Planet of the Apes films, you're doing yourself and humanity a disservice by listening any further. Here's what I wanna say about the first five Planet of the Apes films. They are a perfect circle. They are complete in every way, shape, and form. They paint a shocking, striking, upsetting picture of a world gone horribly wrong. Let's break it down. The movies never would have gotten their start without the original source material, a French novel aptly titled Planet of the Apes that was published in 1963. 20th Century Fox eventually greenlit the movie with the first draft of the script written by The Twilight Zone's Rod Serling. Unfortunately, Serling's version was scrapped, but the producers did keep his original ending, which has become, well, rather iconic. The finished script focused on a group of astronauts, including the very sexy Charlton Heston, who crash land on a planet run by talking apes. Several of the astronauts are killed, a handful are captured, shut up, you freak! And eventually they learn the shocking truth about the Planet of the Apes. It was Earth all along, a post-apocalyptic Earth. The film was released in 1968 to critical acclaim and is considered one of the greatest films of all time. The sequels, perhaps even better. In 1970, there was Beneath the Planet of the Apes, my personal favorite Planet of the Apes film, about, yes, another astronaut that crash lands on the Planet of the Apes. This astronaut's actually looking for Charlton Heston, but what he finds is a beautiful woman, telepathic humans, nuclear bombs, and Queensborough Plaza. A year later, we got Escape from the Planet of the Apes, which is possibly the campiest of all of the Planet of the Apes films, and yet it has the darkest ending. Without giving away too many plot points, let's just say that three of the apes from the Planet of the Apes, that's Earth in the future, escape using a rocket ship and fly back to the past, which is Earth in the 90s, although the film was made in the 70s. And they sort of become celebrities. I don't wanna say anymore, but it's got a very, again, very, very dark ending. In 72, people were treated to Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, which takes a look at how the apes eventually overthrew humanity. 2011's James Franco reboot most closely follows this film's story, and aside from a brief appearance as a baby in the last film, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest is the first major appearance of Caesar, the leader of the ape revolution. Battle for the Planet of the Apes was the last film in the original series, and it's clearly inspiration for the latest, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Battle has Caesar and his army of apes going head to head with a decimated human population. In the end, the apes realize they're treating the humans just as bad as the humans were treating them, and the film ends with the humans and apes coexisting in the world and living happily ever after. After Battle, there was a live action Planet of the Apes TV show in 1974 that only lasted 14 episodes. It did, however, feature a very young, very handsome Jacky Earl Haley. And a year later, there was an animated show called Return to the Planet of the Apes that lasted for a mere 13 episodes. Those TV shows are something of a footnote in the film series, which largely laid dormant until 2001, when Tim Burton made what is largely considered the worst in the series. After sitting in development hell for two decades and bouncing between directors like Oliver Stone, Chris Columbus, and even Michael Bay, Tim Burton eventually rebooted the series with Marky Mark Wahlberg. I'm guessing the film would have been measurably better if they had gone with their original casting choice, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Either way, the movie is kind of terrible, and let's not talk about the confusing, very forced twist ending. It would be another 10 years before the series would get the proper reboot it deserves. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was both a critical and financial success, thanks in large to fantastic visual effects and a mind-blowing performance from Andy Serkis as Caesar. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is expected to attack the box office, and critics are saying that it's one of the best films in the series. So we can all expect many more years of apes battling humans. In fact, the next film is already scheduled for July 2016, with Matt Reeves returning to direct. There isn't a title yet, so for now, let's just call it the sequel to the sequel to the loose remake of the conquest of the Planet of the Apes.

What do you get when you combine an air balloon, airplane, helicopter, and what the hell, even a hovercraft? This is the Airlander, the world's largest aircraft. Think of it as three airships in one, which means the hull itself can generate lift like a plane, and it's over 300 feet long. It has a max speed of 80 knots, or nearly 100 miles per hour. Originally developed by British company Hybrid Air Vehicles in partnership with Northrop Grumman, in June 2010 the Airlander was chosen over Lockheed Martin's P-791 for the United States Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle Project. The goal? To create an aircraft capable of staying aloft at 20,000 feet for three weeks without landing. Here it is in August 2012. When the project was canceled following U.S. defense budget cuts, Hybrid Air Vehicles bought the aircraft back for $300,000. The Airlander is currently being built, or rather rebuilt, in Britain's historical Royal Air Force Cardington hangars, where the R101 airship was built nearly a century ago. The first British flight is scheduled for later this year or early next. Already the company has plans for an even larger airship that'll be nearly 400 feet long and 200 feet wide, with the ability to land on water and room for up to 50 passengers. That's right, luxury airship cruises. Think about it.

Here's the deal. Your computer's speakers are terrible. So are your phones. It's time to upgrade to a Bluetooth speaker. They sound good, they work as speaker phones, and you don't have to put them upside down in a bowl just to hear them. But in order to buy the right one, you need to make sure you buy a Bluetooth speaker that sounds great, that's easy to carry around, that has long range and good battery life, and maybe even comes with a cool extra feature or two. Luckily that's all totally possible. It'll cost you somewhere between $80 and $200 and you won't regret the purchase. At least not if you buy the right one. Portable Bluetooth speakers look like they're a dime a dozen, but they're not. And the best one, by a pretty wide margin, is the Logitech UE Boom. It's everything I'd want it to be. It's cool looking, a colorful mesh cylinder that comes in a bunch of eye-catching colors. It has good range, about 35 feet before the signal starts to drop. That's pretty normal for a Bluetooth speaker. Its battery lasted more than 16 hours. And best of all, it sounds really good. It has loud 360-degree sound pumping out of its round body. It's full and clear so you can hear the resonance in the strings of a classical song or catch every word Kanye says. If the sound's not loud enough, you can chain two booms together and listen even louder. There are other speakers with slightly better battery or slightly better sound or a slightly smaller body, but the UE Boom is a virtually perfect mix of everything a Bluetooth speaker should be. If you're okay with its slightly expensive price, look no further. The Soul Republic Deck is another of my favorite portable Bluetooth speakers. Its only problem is it doesn't sound quite as good as the UE Boom. It doesn't have the same clarity or the thumping bass, and you get a little of that shallow tin can effect you hear on your computer speakers. But it sounds good enough for most uses and is definitely loud enough, and it has some really fantastic extra features. Its range is ridiculous, 200 feet or more. Its battery life is ridiculous. It took 22 and a half hours to die. And it has this cool heist mode feature that lets you connect up to five people at once and have everyone DJ. Of course, ultimately you might just want something that sounds amazing. That's the Bose SoundLink Mini, a heavy metallic silver speaker that just sounds fantastic. It's clear and crisp and natural through almost any kind of music. And it has strong battery life too, more than 14 hours. But its Bluetooth range was strangely bad, only about 15 feet, and it often had trouble connecting at all. It also has a proprietary charging port, and it doesn't have any nifty extra features. And man does it sound good. All of my favorite portable Bluetooth speakers are on the expensive side of the market. If you're looking for something cheaper, the Logitech UE Mini Boom, the smaller cousin of the UE Boom, is definitely the way to go. It's tiny and plastic and nice looking and will easily fit into your jacket pocket. Its audio does only go in one direction without any real stereo effect, and its sound isn't great, though it is much better than anything else in its price range. But in terms of bang for your very few bucks, the Mini Boom is a pretty great choice. Logitech does know what it's doing with Bluetooth speakers. After those four, there's a pretty big drop off. You could buy one of the three Jambox sizes, sure, but none of them are really worth it. The big Jambox sounds great, but is humongous, and the Jambox and Mini Jambox both just don't sound good. At all. They're some of the worst sounding Bluetooth speakers I tested, and among the most expensive. You can do better without trying very hard. There are a couple of Bluetooth speakers that sound really good, but they're just too big to be considered portable. The Bose SoundLink is one, and it's too expensive, too, but it does sound good. It'd be a great desk speaker if that's what you're looking for. The Soundfreak Soundkick gets a little closer to the right size, and it sounds great, too, but it's just not something you'd toss into a backpack and take to the beach. There are a couple you could absolutely take to the beach, like the Panasonic SCNT10. It's a waterproof hockey puck looking speaker that sounds good for a cheap speaker, but its battery life is pretty weak and it's also really ugly. The Braven BRVX is a little better sounding and also waterproof, but it's only a good choice if someone else is carrying your gear. It's huge. The JBL Flip 2 is another solid choice for cheap speakers. It has that same cone, round design as the UE Boom. It's loud and sounds okay, but it's a little bit complex to set up and connect, and its sound just isn't as good as even the UE Mini Boom. Same for the Aira Pure, the smallest speaker I tested. It sounds better than it seems like it ought to, but it's only a little better than your computer speakers. It's worth upgrading to get something better. Last and certainly least is the Beats Pill. It just sounds bad. That bassy Beats sound doesn't work on a portable Bluetooth speaker, not by a long shot. In addition to everything else, you should make sure that whatever you buy has an input for plugging in a music source directly, plus easy to use controls on the box itself. Luckily most of these do. And if you buy the Logitech UE Boom, the best all-around Bluetooth speaker on the market, you'll get all that and much more. I bought two.

LeVar Burton's Reading Rainbow revival is now the most popular Kickstarter project ever with over 93,000 contributors and counting. But you don't have to take my word for it. Perhaps most generous is Family Guy creator and Cosmos booster Seth MacFarlane, who has pledged to match every dollar raised after $4 million, up to $1 million in all. So it's safe to say LeVar Burton is back. But has he ever really left? Are you more familiar with me from Star Trek or Reading Rainbow? Have you all heard about the Reading Rainbow app that's out in the App Store? It's out now. You are all butterflies in the sky in my heart. Premiering in 1983, the award-winning Reading Rainbow ran on PBS for over two decades before its revival years later as an iPad app in 2012. Goodwill for the Reading Rainbow reboot seems to be peaking as the project reaches its conclusion. The other projects in Kickstarter's top five most funded, that's Pebble, Ouya, Pono, and Veronica Mars, have all donated rewards from their own campaign to give to Reading Rainbow's latest backers. Burton has said that if Reading Rainbow reaches $5 million, which is now guaranteed to do so, he will build apps for Android, Xbox, PlayStation, Apple TV, and Roku, and provide it for free to 7,500 classrooms most in need. And after that, who knows?

We've been talking about smart watches for a long time. Years. And we've seen a lot of devices, even a few good ones. But for the first time, thanks to Google and Android Wear, smart watches feel like a thing. A thing with a future and a market. Android is huge, it's everywhere, and now Google's committed to putting it on our wrists. We have one version of Android Wear and two watches running it, and we have our best look yet at Google's vision for the future of wearables. If this is the future, it's going to look a lot different from what we thought. Let's start with the hardware. There are two Android Wear watches available for pre-order now. They'll be available on July 7th. For $229, you'll get the LG G Watch. $199 buys you the Samsung Gear Live. That's odd, actually, because on almost every front, the Gear Live seems like the more high-end device. It's a square watch with sharp chrome edges and a rigid, rubbery strap. It comes in black or in wine red, and both are sort of a simplified version of Samsung's new Gear 2. It's a little chunky, as watches go, and I really don't like the toothy clasp on the strap, but it's a decent looking device. There's a button on the side that activates the Gear Live's 1.63 inch 320x320 Super AMOLED screen and a heart rate monitor on the bottom next to the five contact pins for the Gear Live's awkward clip-on charger. This is not the best looking watch I've ever tried on, but it's decent looking. Decent looking is kind of a feat, too, next to the almost ridiculously boring LG G Watch. There's just nothing to the G Watch. It's a square, with a rubber strap, that comes in either black or white. There are no buttons, no eye-catching design touches, no nothing. The G Watch is, at least, inoffensive. It's hard to find something to really dislike about it, but only because there's nothing really to say about it in general. The G Watch does score some design points with a long list of custom watch faces, which give it a cooler look than the Gear Live's pretty bland options. But once developers can build their own, both watches will get a lot better looking. The G Watch has a slightly larger display than the Gear Live, 1.65 inches versus 1.63, and it's slightly lower res, actually, 280 by 280 instead of Samsung's 320 by 320. Neither is great, and neither is terrible, but the Gear Live's display is definitely superior. Its colors are more accurate, its viewing angles much better. Neither works especially well in bright sunlight, which is a big problem for a device you're supposed to look at all day, but the Gear Live does do a bit better. The G Watch is also imperceptibly heavier, at 2.2 ounces, and at 9.95mm thick, it's a little heftier than the 8.9mm Gear Live. But actually in practice, since the G Watch is less rigid and stiff, it's the more comfortable watch. Both displays are always on, 24 hours a day. There's what's called Ambient Mode, which is just a simple watch face that kicks in a few seconds after you stop using the watch. The power controls are buried in settings, and there literally isn't a way to turn the G Watch back on once it's off without connecting it to the charger. They both have batteries that last one day, maybe slightly more, but are prepared to set their awkward chargers next to your bed every single night. All the differences that exist between these two watches are tiny. They run 1.2GHz processors with 4GB of internal storage and 512MB of RAM. They both work as basic step counters, which is handy, and, and this is the important part, they run the same software just about exactly the same way. That software is Android Wear. When you download the Wear app and connect either the G Watch or the Gear Live to your Android phone, you'll immediately start getting your full stream of notifications onto your watch. Texts, emails, snapchats, system stuff, everything. Imagine Android Wear as a grid. Between one tall column in the center is a running list of all your notifications. Your home screen is at the top of that list, but also off to the left. When you push a notification away, you're scrolling through the list and back towards your home screen. Off to the right is extra information, week views for the weather, archive and reply options for email. And, in a cloud hovering over the whole thing is Google Now, listening for your voice. It's sort of a clunky metaphor and sort of a clunky interface, but it mostly works. Some notifications you can just read and dismiss. Others you actually do something with on your wrist. You can archive or reply to an email. You can answer a text. You can answer a phone call or quickly deny it with a canned text like, can't talk right now, what's up? You also get information about the weather when Google thinks it's useful, or flight info if you have one coming up. Basically, Android Wear is Google Now writ large. It's a card-based operating system designed to let you do a few things, but mostly to do a lot of things for you. The problem is it's all very inconsistent. Some things are notifications, which you can swipe away to get back to the home screen, but other times you're actually in an app and have to move around a bunch to get back home. Everything you can actually do on the watch starts with a tap on the screen or the words OK Google. Then you can set a reminder or see your calendar for the day or do a Google search. You can take notes, set alarms, and a few other things too. It's all pretty basic and for anything other than a handful of small things, you're going to have to pick up your phone, though the watch can make it so your phone is instantly on the page you're looking for. Eventually, Google hopes there will be much more to do. You'll be able to say, OK Google, get me a car and pick whether you want your watch to use Uber or Lyft to find it. Take a note will work in Google Keep as it does now, but maybe also in Evernote or SimpleNote. The possibilities are theoretically endless, it's just up to developers to figure out what to build. But none of that is why you'd buy the G Watch or the Gear Live. You should buy one if and only if you're willing to give all your data to Google, to trust it to show you everything you need at exactly the right time. Sometimes Android Wear feels like magic. Other times, when I accidentally swipe a notification to the right and then it's gone forever, it feels like a headache. Before it's really interesting, Google needs to work out that balance between giving you things to do and doing them for you. I want my watch to be a watch first and foremost. But I want to be able to do more, too, like get directions or open Google search results, and I don't want to have to get out my phone every time. If you do want to buy an Android Wear watch right now, you can basically close your eyes and pick one. They're both sort of boring, they have ups and downs, and they both run Android Wear quite well. I'd pick the Gear Live because I like the screen better and I actually like the slightly classier design. But if you'd rather have a simpler watch and a bunch of cooler looking watch faces, the G Watch is for you. Of course, neither one is preventing me from holding my breath for the Moto 360 and the next generation of even better looking devices. If we're all going to wear something on our wrists all day but only use it occasionally, it's going to have to be jewelry. Good looking, fashionable, something I want to wear and be seen wearing. That's why I wear a watch in the first place. So I hope Android Wear devices improve at least as fast as Android Wear does. I'm eventually going to want a watch like this. But neither of the first two options really catches my eye.

What if we could design for the materials of the future instead of the materials of today? And that future is right around the corner. Google has a new design language. It's going to be used across all its products going forward, starting with Android. But it's more than just a new idea about how software should look. It's a new idea of what software actually is. It's called material design. What if pixels didn't just have color, but also depth? What if there was an intelligent material that was as simple as paper, but could transform and change shape in response to touch? And this led us to a way of thinking that we call material design. Material design started with Google's designers thinking and debating about the look and feel of its software. What, they asked, would happen if you treated the bits on the screen as more than just icons that show information? What if they were real things? That's where it started. The idea actually came from a discussion that John Wiley and Nicholas Jitkoff were having when they were really asking themselves in one of their explorations, what happens when you slide this surface out of the way? What's underneath? And they're like, well, what is underneath? Well, I don't know. What's it made of? And it sounds like an innocent question. And yet it was such a powerful spark. We didn't realize its power until we kind of started using it and leaned into it. But the metaphor helped bring everybody together. It starts with these pretty high-minded ideas, creating a metaphorical substance that defines the rules for how software looks and acts. But in practical terms, it doesn't seem like that radical of a change. We're seeing it first on Android L and Android Wear, and it amounts to clean white cards that you can move around like paper, bright colors, animations that give you a sense of location and space, and yes, consistent drop shadows. It will come to all of Google's products and even third-party apps, but it's going to take a while. In the meantime, Google's design team is trying to spread the word of what these design principles are so that everybody can learn how to design with material. The metaphor was not just useful for unifying ourselves and how we thought about doing stuff. We could say, hey, wait a minute, that doesn't feel right, not because it violates paragraph C sub-clause A of our design philosophy, but because it just doesn't feel right. It also means that we use that metaphor to connect with our audience. The human mind is built to build models. That's what makes us capable of being in the world and learning and doing things and putting people on the moon, building smartphones. And so we're constantly building models of the world and predicting how that world will work. When you have a digital world that has no rules, where every time you do something it behaves in a new and different way, it's surprising, but it's also really stressful. Your mind can't build any models. It makes it hard. Everything is an adventure. Well, when you're just trying to get something done, you don't want an adventure, right? You want things to behave in a predictable way. It would be like sometimes I put something on the table, and instead of sitting there, it flies up to the ceiling. But material design is more than just a set of physics for software elements. This paper is able to morph itself into different sizes with animations designed to help you understand how software transitions from one thing to the next and back again. We're not hurtling you through space at high speeds. We're not puncturing your hand with invisible, impossible surfaces. We're trying to limit animation to kind of a depth that is appropriate to the thing that you would hold in your hand. We're trying to make the motion be just enough to help you understand where things have gone and where they're coming from. Beyond animation, this metaphorical material has other abilities. It's smart, based on Google Now's ability to know what you want to see and when you want to see it. It means you have to trust Google with all of your data and hope that it turns into something you want. It's all done in the name of simplicity. Instead of making you hunt for information, it just gives it to you. I think we're approaching it in that we want to have the system as intelligent as possible in terms of ranking information. So if things seem to be out of order, that's a mistake of the system that we need to rank it better. As opposed to approaching the problem as, we're going to solve it by just requiring the users to reorder things. We did it in order to come up with the most simple solution. One of the design practices that we like to follow is try to design the simplest possible thing for the user first. See if you can get away with that. Prove that you need more complexity before you just add it. Material design is all about algorithms doing the work, finding and presenting the information you need instead of making you look for it. We could have said we want to unlock this by giving you control over how you're going to rank things. But instead we said, let's enable rankers to exist. Let's create an ecosystem where rankers can get to know you, learn you, and help you not have to put in that effort. Elevate the things that you should care about, suppress the things that maybe can wait for later. And I think that's the key to unlocking this seeming conundrum between power and simplicity. We want to find ways to do more, be smarter, but at the same time put less burden on the user. Recents is a perfect example of how material design is software that involves things that feel real, but follow their own virtual rules instead of trying to directly imitate physical objects. There's logic, but it's not based on things that came before. It's native to now, to whatever device you're holding in your hand. The brilliant work that Xerox PARC did with windows that could overlap and mice that could point and click, groundbreaking. It really helped people use computers and part of the way it helped is that it had object relationships. Some people didn't understand, actually I'm not sure anybody understood, why that was valuable. The reason why the computer desktop works with overlapping windows representing documents is not because it looks like your physical desk, but because when you work on your physical desk, the same physical things happen. You put the important things on top because those are the ones that you're paying attention to. Then you're like, oh wait, I need something else. You pull that out, it sits on top. Now it has your attention. It's an interaction congruity. It's a functional congruity. It happens to have a visual congruity as well, but that's not the essential part. As we come to smaller screens, we want to actually have that same congruity of the things that you've used recently are at your fingertips. Whether material design turns out to be the most radical rethinking of what software represents since a desktop, or if it's just a fancy term for drop shadows, it has given Google a fresh way to think about its products. It's added new metaphors, new possibilities, but most of all, new constraints. It's that last part that's most intriguing. Design is all about finding solutions within constraints. If there were no constraints, it's not design, it's art.

Google is making some big changes to Android for its L release this fall, and starting today, it's letting developers take an early look at it. Naturally, we wanted to try it out too, so we got the preview up and running on a Nexus 5 to see what it's like. There are three major changes to pay attention to here. The first, and the most obvious, is that there's going to be design changes all across the OS. You can see it right away in Android's new buttons, a triangle, circle, and square. New designs aren't in place across most of the operating system just yet, but you can already see it in action in a few places, like the calculator and the dialer. Google is calling the style material design. In most places, you'll find splashes of bright color, simple geometric shapes, and basic shadows to let you know when a menu or a button is above or below something else. Pretty much everything you touch animates too, and in a really playful way. At first glance, it's all pretty stylish and smart. The next big change is to multitasking. Now, all of your apps will display as separate cards, almost like a Rolodex. But more importantly, every tab that you have open in Chrome will eventually appear here too, blurring the line between apps and websites. For now, the layout seems a little bit more inefficient, but it certainly looks good. The final major change is to notifications. For one, big interactive notifications will now pop up when you're inside an app. You can also now interact with them all straight from the lock screen, swiping to dismiss them or dragging to interact with them. It looks like a really useful addition. Android L looks good so far on the surface. Now, we're just looking forward to seeing what the rest of it looks like.

At Google I.O. 2014, we saw some of the craziest and the most beautiful stuff that Google is currently working on. It's coming out of the Advanced Technologies and Products Group. It's a team led by Regina Dugan, and she's a legitimate badass. This is ATAP. Dugan's presentation at I.O. is essentially a grand introduction for ATAP to the world. She told us who ATAP is and how they work. For the next 45 minutes, you're going to get a glimpse of a small band of pirates trying to do epic shit. Here we don't tinker. We build new things. The cool shit that ATAP is building is sometimes hard to describe. These aren't the traditional consumer product prototypes you're used to. The first thing it showed us was Project Tango. Technical lead Johnny Lee showed us the all-seeing tablet that's able to see in 3D and know where it is in space. It's called Spatial Awareness, and it might help blind people move around and video game developers create amazing new stuff. The best demo that we saw was of the tablet moving around five floors of Google's campus with only 1% of drift over the entire trip, all mapped with just cameras and motion sensors, not GPS. Oh, and then there's soldiers attacking bathtubs and real-time portal puzzles. Next up was Paul Aramanko and Project Ara. It's a modular smartphone that should be arriving for developers this fall, and it's coming along. For the first time, we saw a real Ara phone boot up live. Then we saw it freeze. But the working phone should be arriving later, and when it does, we might have some pretty crazy modules for it. Why can't I slide in a module that's my key fob? Then take it out, give it to a valet. Why not share the most expensive sensor or component among my friends, my family, or perhaps across a village? If you don't want a new battery, you can hot swap a regular battery module to essentially get any battery life that you want. Last but certainly not least, we got an update on Spotlight Story, the neat little animated virtual reality scenes that you might have seen on the Moto X. ATAP is working on a new one called Duet. Even better, they're working with animator Glenn Keen, who's worked on everything from Ariel to Tarzan for Disney. For Google, his drawings were painstakingly converted into CGI using gigabytes and gigabytes of data and then combined to make another virtual reality play. Basically, ATAP has got a bunch of people who used to work at DARPA inside the Defense Department, and they're all about trying crazy stuff that nobody else believes is possible. The craziest part of all is that they're actually pulling it off.

For most things you might buy a cheap camera for, you're honestly better off using a smartphone. But if you want sharper pictures, or if you really need long zoom and more versatile performance, you're going to want a camera. And you might be surprised with how much camera you can get for not a whole lot of money. What's the best you can do for $250? If you're looking for the best camera you can get for under $250, you should buy the Canon PowerShot SX280 HS. It strikes the right balance of features, performance, ease of use, and picture quality, and it doesn't cost a fortune to do it. The SX280 HS has a long 20x zoom lens to get you close to the action, a compact, solid metal body that can survive banging around in your bag or your pocket, a big bright display for composing and reviewing your shots, 12 megapixels of resolution, and a variety of easy to use automatic and manual modes for taking pictures. As a bonus, it also includes Wi-Fi, NFC, and GPS, so you can quickly send photos to your smartphone for sharing on the go, or tag location data on your pics for plotting on a map later on. And it only costs $199, so you'll have enough money left in your budget for a memory card or two. The SX280 HS has accurate color and takes good pictures in most lighting conditions, but it will struggle a little in low light. That's just a fact of life with all inexpensive cameras. If you want better, you're going to have to pay for a mirrorless camera or a premium compact. The SX280 HS isn't the smallest or lightest in the field, and its battery life of 210 images per charge isn't class leading, but it is enough to last a day of shooting. But if you're looking for a cheap, compact camera that does more than your smartphone, the SX280 HS is the one that you should buy. There's also the Sony Cybershot WX350, which offers many of the same features as the Canon in a smaller, lighter package. And it lasts a stunning 470 shots per charge. But the Sony doesn't take as good pictures indoors as the Canon, and it doesn't offer any manual controls, which can make it easier to capture that picture of a fast-moving 8-year-old. The Sony is also $248, almost $50 more than the Canon and really pushing the envelope of our budget. And if you buy an SD card, you go over budget. There's a huge number of other cameras also in this category, but there's only a handful actually worth looking at. The Canon ELF line has been very popular for years because it's so small, but the latest model ELF 340 HS has a shorter zoom lens, no manual controls, and worse image quality and low light than the SX280. Similarly, Nikon's Coolpix S6800 is compact and cheap at $166, but its short zoom lens, slow focus, lack of controls, and poor low light quality take it out of the running. Panasonic, Samsung, and Fujifilm all also have cameras in this category, and they all have big zoom lenses and relatively compact sizes. But they are all really cheap feeling compared to the Canon, and in the case of the Samsung and Panasonic, took worse pictures in my tests and have other quirks that make them not as nice of a choice. Beyond that field, there isn't much else you should consider. Cameras that are super cheap, like under $150, have shorter zoom lenses, typically terrible battery life, lousy video quality that doesn't even compare to the video your smartphone takes, and are made with cheap-feeling plastic. They don't even warrant a look. But if you're willing to spend $100 more, you can really get something worth your time. An inexpensive camera won't ever take stunning photos in low light, but they can take better photos than your smartphone. With many offering built-in Wi-Fi, you can quickly send those photos to your phone for posting on Instagram or Facebook. The Canon SX280 HS is the closest thing to getting the best of both worlds, and you don't have to break the bank to get it.

Board games were a huge part of my childhood, and they're still a big part of my life. Rarely did a game of Risk or Monopoly end without a brother or an uncle vowing revenge against their own blood. These games provided real competition, real excitement, and most importantly, a table surrounded by real people. I love a good console game, but nothing compares to laying down a lightning bolt in front of a colleague and seeing him cringe. Man, I love games. But where do these games stand in today's world of digital gaming and virtual reality? Do people still care about family game night? It's impossible to talk about board games without talking about Hasbro. The company, founded in 1923, has created some of the most iconic games of all time. Life, Candyland, Battleship, Ouija, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, I mean the list doesn't stop. The games you played as a kid, they own. And while Hasbro may not have created all of those games in-house, it now owns the companies that did. As of 1984, Milton Bradley is one of Hasbro's brands. And what about Parker Brothers, the longtime rival of Hasbro? Hasbro bought it in 1991, but these games have been around for decades. How does a 91-year-old company stay relevant today? I mean, Monopoly was created during the Great Depression, yet people around the world still build park place hotels and bankrupt their families. How does a game stay timeless? Do you have any idea on the number of families that Monopoly and RISC have destroyed over the years? Have you ever had any divorces or weird? We are a pretty competitive family, so we've had a lot of battles over Monopoly and my wife will not trade with me. So we have a trading rule in our family where we can trade properties. My kids will trade with me, but my wife now refuses to. So I understand the competitiveness of Monopoly and RISC. But you know, Monopoly in particular is an amazing brand, right? Over 90% brand awareness globally. So you've got this amazing appeal around the world. And what's great is our fans love to participate in the creation of the game. So through our things like our token vote and our house rules campaign, we found that fans want to contribute and participate, which I think gets the blood boiling that much more. Is once you have even more of a stake in it than you've ever had before and you're helping create the game, you are that much more passionate about the brand. What is it about Monopoly and other board games that you think keeps people coming? Sure, well it's funny because when I first started at this company, everybody's aware of what Monopoly is and almost everybody has one in their house. It's almost like a part of the housewarming experience is that somebody's going to get you a Monopoly board and it's going to be one of those things that you can always go to. But I think it's that tactile feel and it's that connection that you make to people actually being face to face. So this is my Monopoly. So what we've done is out of the box, you have your classic game that everybody's familiar with and it'll come with these little squares. And on these squares you can print out stickers using the website or the app and you can put them into all the different spaces within your Monopoly game. So as you go through here, you see that each picture sort of has a customized piece underneath it so silly sunglasses or Santa's little helper. And you can move these around all around the board to make any style of game that you want. But then the game, like I was talking about, you have a website that you can access and you have a mobile app. Both of them are connected to each other. So the user goes in, they can either log in with their Facebook or they could create an account. They go inside, they can upload photos from social networks or they can grab photos from their mobile device or from their computer. They put it into the account and then they can start to customize those photos so they can crop in, they can add text and we're going to start to add more features as we start to see more people getting engaged with the product. And product engagement really is what drives game development at Hasbro. Remember Simon, the electronic memory game? Today it's become Simon Swipe. Kids today are more familiar with touch screens and Hasbro looked at that when developing the updated version. This is Simon Swipe, this is your newest one. How did you come up with the idea for this? So really, I mean, what it really is is taking the great classic gameplay of Simon, which involves lights, colors, memory, all of that and making it relevant to a whole new generation of kids. With the technology here we have, it's actually a tap technology so it's touch, just like traditional Simon. Start with one light and it builds. That's where the new Simon Swipe comes into play. So press, press and then hit the swipe across. So we cast a really wide net and we came up with lots and lots of different concepts. And it was through a process of elimination with marketing, with upper management to drive down to one concept. And that could be from what is the easiest get to what's the most exciting new product to something that we can really advertise and that we can drum up a lot of business around. Why did you make a new physical Simon instead of an app or a digital game? While there is this sort of great influx of digital media and apps and all that, there's still sort of a basic human need for the physical. And when we test stuff with kids, you really see that. When you get something physical that they hold, there's something there that I feel that there's always going to be a place for the physical as well. Why are board games still relevant? Well, I think the primary reason is people still want social connection. And what games, what our gaming brands bring is the ability to bring people together and connect socially. For laughs, excitement, fun, you can't always get that from digital gaming. Do you think that board games and physical games will be the heart of Hasbro forever? I mean, is that something that's never going to go away in your mind? Are you going to start making more video games or digital components or are you going to try to stick with what's tried and true? I think gaming is going to be with Hasbro. Gaming is kind of a cornerstone of what Hasbro is about. And we focus on the brand first and then figure out the best way to bring that to consumers. So physical gameplay is definitely a core mainstay for Hasbro. Digital gameplay is a core mainstay for Hasbro. I think whatever, wherever the consumer goes, we're going to be there. Hasbro's moves are precise, calculated, and focused. Like a game of chess, each design and development move has a clear focus on what the end goal will be, but newer, younger companies are taking a different approach. In early 2011, indie game Cards Against Humanity raised over $15,000 on Kickstarter. Its original goal was only $4,000, and it's currently now the number one selling game on Amazon, a title it's held for three years. Since then, Kickstarter has become one of the most popular spots for indie games to receive funding. One of those is the yet-to-be-released Game of Phones. Created by Luke Stern and Sam Wander, the game acts as a perfect middle ground between physical and digital gaming. On the one hand, it's a card game. You have a deck, you sit around a table with a group of friends. If you're me, you have some beers and a pizza. But on the other hand, every player is clutching their phone at all times. Your photos, your tweets, your knowledge of Google Images, these are your tools to win the game. This isn't Bradley Cooper from American Hustle. This is Luke Stern from Game of Phones. So what is Game of Phones? Game of Phones is a deck of cards that you play with you and your friends. The idea came out of the kind of antisocial use of smartphones within social settings. So essentially how it works is one person is the judge. They pick a card from the top of the deck and it says something like, find an ugly baby. And then everybody else solves it with their smartphone, however they see fit. It could be an ugly baby from anywhere. It could be your ugly baby. It could be your own ugly baby if you feel that it's ugly enough to challenge everybody else's ugly baby. So then I as the judge, if I pick the card, decide who has the ugliest baby and award that card. And the first person to 10 cards wins. Sounds like you can make a lot of enemies in this game. We're a lot of friends. Most of the development for this game happened in a few bars. So we have about four different types of cards. There's kind of the find cards. So for example, find the weirdest thing that comes up when you Google image search yourself. Then there are ones that kind of deal with the content that's already on your phone rather than searching on the internet. So like show the last video you took. So that's already there. You're not going to create anything. Then there's also more physical things. So like most crack screen wins. And then there's one other type that kind of sits in the background while you're playing next to get a Facebook notification wins. So that's a card that just sits with the judge until the play keeps going and then someone gets a notification. So it's also like apples to apples and cards against humanity. So yeah, similar to those two games in the sense that maybe more towards cards against humanity in the sense that like you're definitely playing towards the judge and trying to kind of win them over. So it may even help if you know them sometimes because you may be able to play something funnier towards them. And you guys put this on Kickstarter and how long did it take you to get funded and recognized? So we did a two week campaign and we got funded I think within the first week. People keep telling us to make an app for the game and that's like definitely not where we wanted to start with it. Maybe it is a good idea down the line but that we really wanted to pull it out and kind of have something that you can touch and trade and therefore have a physical interaction with someone rather than just using your cell phone. Kickstarter is great for getting concepts like Game of Phones made quickly without a corporate machine. But sometimes these concepts need a little more time to bake. While not everything about the game always works, it does nail the social aspect of gaming and in the end, that's what's most important. I've been playing board games and video games alike since I was really little. And sure, Mario Kart and Monopoly have their differences, but they shine most for the same reasons. They bring people together. I'll never forget the time I first sat down with my friends when the Nintendo 64 first came out. I was excited about the cool new graphics, but I really mostly enjoyed being with my other buddies. The same is true for Risk or Monopoly or any other game with real human interaction. That's why, at the end of the day, this tiny game for the Fire TV called Fibbage was everyone's favorite. It may not have had any physical component like a deck or a board, but that didn't matter. It's just no substitute for trash talking to people you love in person.

Android Wear is finally here. We've seen a lot of demos and we've seen a lot of hardware, but until now we haven't seen how the software works on actual shipping units. This is how Google does a smartwatch. At its core, Android Wear is surprisingly simple. From the home screen, you can swipe up to scroll through your notifications. On any single notification, you can swipe to the right to perform actions on it, like navigate, reply to a text message, or see more detail about the weather. You can also swipe to the left to dismiss the notifications, and they'll also dismiss on your Android phone, which is pretty convenient. You can also swipe down from the very top of the home screen to mute notifications and see your battery life. The last thing, and maybe the best thing that you can do from the home screen, is say, okay Google, and it will bring up a Google search that will let you perform all sorts of actions. You can search the web, you can send a text message, you can set it to leave yourself a note. It's basically the entire power of Google Now right there on your wrist. The last core feature of Android Wear is the ability to change watch faces. To do that, you just hold your finger down on the home screen, and then you can swipe left and right through a whole bunch of different things. Different manufacturers will have different watch faces, and on the LG G Watch at least, there's something like 15 or 20 of them. Some are pretty neat, but unfortunately you won't be able to install watch faces from third party developers, yet. Google says that's coming in a future update. Setting up Android Wear with your Android phone is relatively simple. You need to download the Android Wear app from Google Play, and then pair it to the smart watch. Once you've approved it to access your notifications, everything that shows up on your phone also shows up on your watch. Within the app itself, you can actually go in and set different actions for different voice commands. Right now, everything is just using Google's apps, but in the future, you could theoretically have the timer mapped to the clock, you could have Show Me My Steps mapped to Run Keeper instead of Google Fit, or you could even have Call a Car mapped to Uber or Lyft or whatever you use to get around. The overall design is super clean, super simple, and super readable, which is exactly what you want on a watch. Every notification shows up as a Google Now style card, although I guess from now on we're going to have to call them Material style cards with the upcoming release of Android. The backgrounds are colorful pictures, and they're also contextual, so if somebody sends you a text, you'll see that person's profile photo in the background. Probably the most frustrating thing about Android Wear is that you can't reorder notifications. Basically, this watch, more than anything else, is a Google Now machine. You're going to have to learn to trust Google Now, and trust that it'll give you the notifications that you actually want. We already know what a smartwatch that tries to do everything looks like. It's the Galaxy Gear. Android Wear doesn't try to do everything. It just tries to do the right thing. Just like Google Now, Android Wear is sometimes wrong about that, but when it's right, it's often almost exactly magically right. Overall, Android Wear is really close to what I imagine most people would want on a smartwatch. It's not too complicated, it doesn't get in the way, and the voice commands and voice search are legitimately great. Now it's just up to the hardware manufacturers to live up to it.

Welcome to The Verge Live for Google I.O. 2014. I'm Josh Topolsky. And I'm Ross Miller. And if you've seen us do this before, you know the drill. We're going to talk about all the news, relevant and irreverent, about Google I.O. Development Conference 2014. Relevant and irreverent. See, I like that. I don't know. I don't know how much irreverent kind of stuff I'm going to be able to bring today. We'll do what we can. And hopefully later on, if we can get a hold of them, our San Francisco crew who was at the event will be joining us. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if they're still in, you know, we don't know what kind of condition they're in because the I.O. keynote was long. It was long. It was arduous. It was... Frought with the protests. There were protesters. There were long periods of extremely boring coding on stage. Oh my God. And I know, and look, I don't want to get into it. I know that everybody's like, it's a developers conference. But you know what? It really is so much more than that. And I think that you guys all know in your heart that this is Google's chance to talk about their new stuff and how great they're doing and blah, blah, blah. I mean, look, Apple just did a developers conference. There was some nerdy stuff going on there. Yeah. And it was boring. But they had a flow. Yeah. I mean, by comparison, like this is like if Apple was a, let's say WWDC was like a, I think a strong eight for an Apple presentation or a presentation in general. Okay, relative to all presentations. This is like a six, five and a half, six. I wouldn't go that low. I mean, there's a lot to talk about. Really? You wouldn't? Well, that's... I mean, the coding stuff was boring at the end, but they did front-load with a bunch of stuff. It's like Android, Android, Android, Android L, Android Wear, Auto, TV. Did they not say the name of Android? No, it's just L. Okay, so let's talk about, let's go through some of these things. Okay. Hold on, I'm getting some weird pirate stuff happening with this sleeve on my shirt. It's like kind of a billowy pirate situation. I don't like that. That's a little bit better. I'm going to tip this table. You are definitely going to tip the table. Okay, so here's the thing. So Android L, which is the next version of Android. And frankly, there's this whole refresh. Chrome, I think Google on the web, Chrome OS, Google on the web and Android have like a whole new visual language, which they're calling material design. And we did, we actually saw material design leaked just before or just as they were starting the conference. I think it's a progression of what Google has already been doing in... With Google Now, Google Glass. Yeah, with Google Now and Google Glass and frankly with Android, but it is a, to me this looks like a completely end-to-end redesign of every element of the interface. I mean it's really, it really is, I mean there are clear similarities, but it looks like they've touched pretty much every single thing in the interface here and sort of painted it with this new brush. And, or new paint? I don't know. They used a brush and paint. At any rate, it looks really good, I think. I mean I feel like this is, you know, when people talk about flat design, this to me feels so much more modern. I mean you know how I feel about iOS 7. I've never been a big fan of... And just to update that, after iOS 8 came out, like do you, any changes to that opinion? Are you a little more warmed up to it? I mean iOS 8 had some very minor visual tweaks, but I mean overall, I mean I think if you look at these side by side, to me what Google's doing with design looks so much more forward thinking and so much more modern and feels so much more complete in a way than iOS 7. The iconography, the color schemes they're using, and frankly some of the interface ideas, I just feel like it's a much more lively, much more modern take on what a mobile interface should be. Actually what's interesting about this is that it's not just a mobile interface. They're looking at this as this kind of holistic, it's a web interface, it's a tablet interface, it's a phone interface. And I think that is informing a lot of what they're doing and it actually is improving what they're doing. I'm going to give you a little taste of this. They have a...and the part of the platform they're building this stuff on is something they call Polymer, which I'm jumping around a little bit, but there's actually a quiz they have online right now that you can go play around with it. It works brilliantly in Chrome. People were like, yeah, this doesn't function in IE8 or whatever, but that's probably not where Google was intending for you to use it. Internet Explorer? No, no, no. But anyhow, they have this Polymer quiz. I tweeted it earlier. Just look at my feed. Just go through my Twitter feed. I don't like this shot at all. What's going on with my hair in this shot? There's like some weird, some tendrils, some tentacles. Anyhow, it's not important. Hair looks fine. Go to Joshua Topolsky, at Joshua Topolsky on Twitter and check out my feed. You'll eventually find the link for the Polymer quiz. Anyhow, there's a lot to unpack, but also this is not the craziest event ever. Actually, let's talk about what happened at the end of it really quickly. At the end of this event, we're giving all the developers here this cardboard. This Google Cardboard. Google Cardboard is basically a cardboard craft virtual reality headset. You put your phone into it and you can do VR projects with it. It's actually really awesome. I think that we have a post going up on it or maybe it already is up. Anyhow, it's a very odd... Can we get it up on screen? Can we get a shot of the cardboard? This cardboard device? It's really quite impressive. They have kind of a sub-site for it. This is just us searching for things. This is always good. This is good TV. Exciting. There we go. There we go. Is there a source link on this? Can we just see if there's the cardboard? We are literally backseat browsing right now. Compelling entertainment. Click on that. Check this out. Scroll down. Scroll up slowly. You scroll too fast, man. You can see how the cardboard is. I like how I'm just controlling a person's hands virtually. You can see here how this thing actually gets constructed. I have to say, it's a pretty cool, weird thing for Google to give out to people. You see the phone getting inserted there. Basically, this works as the Oculus does. It's a flat panel and there's two lenses. Turns out you don't need all that Oculus crap. You just need a cardboard box that you can slide your phone into. Why are we wasting all this time, money, and energy on this bullshit when we could just be sliding into cardboard? And with this, you can take outside. I mean, people will look at you funny, but you do have a space for the camera, so maybe you could take it out. Is there something you can use to strap on that? I'm sure you could just build a strap. Anyhow, let's go through the announcements here. The first big one, the one that seems to be prevailing throughout most of the I.O. thing, was Android L, which is the developer preview. Not a candy name yet. The official one will probably be Lollipop or Lavender. What's going on at Google that they couldn't decide? They've had literally years. They're like, hey, we're going to use this naming scheme where it's going to be some kind of dessert and we're going to go through the alphabet. So you could have come up with every single name for every version of Android day one. So what is the issue that they don't have the L name? Maybe they're just calling it Android L. They have simplified the design. They have cleaned it up considerably. But they have this big, and Google of course has this big lawn full of candy ornaments. Now it's going to be a huge letter. Just a huge letter L. We're moving to the Sesame Street styling here, just a giant cartoon letter L. So what do you think it's going to be? Lollipop? Lollipop, Lemonhead. Let's think of some things it could be. Lollipop, Lemonhead is a trademarked product. But KitKat is too. Licorice could be one. That would be good. They could just call it something like lime. They didn't do Key Lime Pie. Oh yeah, they didn't do Key Lime Pie, that's true. Is there an issue? Is there something going on? There's some behind the scenes stuff happening here. Should I be worried? What? Lorna Doon. Is that an actual dessert? It's a cookie apparently. I'm being told that Lorna Doon is a cookie. Wait, you went to the dramatic hand to the ear local list? I'm getting the report now that Lorna Doon is actually a cookie. So you can see here, here's a great example of the material design. And some of these notification enhancements are really interesting. They've always had actionable notifications for the past couple of versions of Android. Wait, did they introduce them in KitKat? No, it was before that. It was Jelly Bean. At any rate, they now have a whole new realm of actionable notification. Oh, somebody just said Lifesaver, they tweeted at me. Lifesaver would be really good. So material design is a big deal. And then they've got this Polymer project where they're showing how you can really build one thing across platforms, which looks very impressive. I thought that it was, you know, it's actually a nice forward thinking concept from Google. And they've always been sort of playing this game of, you know, is it native, is it web? And they're clearly trying to get those things together, especially with Sundar running, you know, he was running the Chrome OS project, Chrome and Chrome OS. He moved over to Android. Everybody was talking about how they're going to bring these things together. And they did get into that during this presentation. Yeah, I mean, with one exception, the All Android event, that one Android event was really, the one Chrome thing was, oh, you can do Android apps and you can log in with Android. They're still merging these ideas together. Right. No, I mean, and so I think the visual refresh is good. I feel like that was strong. Then they announced they talked more about Android Wear. We've already seen a lot about Android Wear. Right. You basically have these watches that people have been showing off and it's essentially it's Google Now cards on your wrist. Yes. And it's a little more, it seems a little more contextually aware, like it knows where you are. You can see reminders, say I'm home. Which may be something you want and maybe something you don't want. Right. But I'm having a lot of problems with this sleeve right now. Your pirate sleeve. My pirate sleeve is causing me serious, serious. Okay, so start all the way out. What I want to do is I just want to loosen up here a little bit. Okay. I don't know. I don't know. Is this working for me? I feel like this is working. Okay. Hair's good, by the way. Hair's good. Okay, as long as the hair is intact, I'm a happy guy. So we didn't really see anything new with Android Wear, but I think the big announcement today was that these, well Samsung's making an Android Wear watch. Not only is it making it, it's coming out soon. It's coming out soon. You can order it right now. They were like, well, I guess we'll do one. Why not? Why wouldn't we? We've got these, what is their product called? Galaxy Gear. Galaxy Gear. They're like, we've got this Galaxy Gear, the shell sitting around. Flash it, put something else on it. Throw Android Wear on it and see what happens. Is that what it is? It's not new hardware at all. I didn't get a good shot of it myself. It looks a lot like the Gear. Okay. It looks a lot like the Galaxy Gear. And then the LG G Watch. Right. Just rolls off the tongue. What are you getting for Christmas? Oh, the LG G Watch. Which, I'm sorry, it's ugly as hell. It looks like a Casio calculator watch. I mean, it looks like a square digital watch. Right. I wouldn't say it's ugly as hell. It's not attractive as hell. It's not attractive as hell. Okay, fine. So those are both available to order today. Right. And do they say when they're shipping? Do we know? I don't think we know when they're shipping yet. Wait until it's here. And then. If you want the pretty one, the Moto 360. Well, the Moto 360 is going to be available later in the summer and there was just an audible disappointment in the audience when they announced that that was the case. But they're giving everybody their, they're basically giving away 360s to everybody there. Right. When they're available. Not right now. Today they get a piece of cardboard. You get a voucher and a cardboard. They get a voucher and cardboard, but in the future they'll have an actual device. Right. So that's kind of a big deal. Then they did Android Auto. I'm just barreling through these. Am I moving too quickly? I don't think so. There's a lot of stuff. They did Android Auto, which Now let me get this straight. So Android Auto, the way it works is. I'm taking a little bit of a step back because I'm not a car person at all. So the way it works is you have to get a car that has Android Auto installed on the head unit. Already installed. It's part of the. Okay. I mean, I don't, I'm not sure I fully understand this. I'm asking. Feel free to tweet at me if you know better than I do. I'm sure we'll be able to. You need to go get a car that has Android Auto in the dash. Then you sync it. You connect it to you. Bluetooth it to your phone. Right. And it pulls the data off of your phone. But only Android. Yeah, Android. No, no, I don't think I don't. I don't think it works with iOS. No, it must. No, I guess it doesn't. I don't know. It probably doesn't work with iOS. At any rate, it actually looks really intuitive. Right. And really nice. It looks way nicer than CarPlay. Yes. In my opinion. I think it's a much more attractive interface. And also it's Google Maps. There's a guy in a Verge shirt in the audience. Oh yeah. One of the limited edition Verge shirts actually. That's a true fan. But it uses Google Maps for navigation, which is awesome. And now that Google Maps incorporates Waze data in it, that's super handy. So this would obviously be my interface of choice if I had to choose between the two right now. My problem with all these auto ones, again, this is speaking completely of ignorance. I haven't driven a car in about a year. It's wonderful. I'm sure it is. It's incredible. You can just get out. You can just go out on the road. Hit the road. See trees. I live in New York. It's been a while. No, but like, when you buy the car, you're buying this system. How do you update it? It's updated. I think, so somebody just tweeted at me. Let me see. I mean, this could be complete fabrication. Let me see what they're saying. It says the head unit supported display protocol, not specifically Android Auto, runs from your phone plugged in via USB. This is what Dylan Staley just said to me. And he could be a complete liar. We don't know. But if that's true, I mean, here's the deal. I just got a new car. I can't use this. An Audi. Q5. I have a family. I have a family now. Don't judge me. I have a family. I'm a family man. And I needed a luxury vehicle to lorale with my family in. It is a nice looking. I didn't actually want to get, if I can be honest with you, it's a crossover, whatever they call these small SUVs. I didn't really want to get an SUV, but what I wanted was a wagon, a station wagon. The station wagons are cool. This looks good. We're really going down a rabbit hole here. Is that what you want to do? Of course. Well, I wanted to get the Audi Allroad, which is kind of an awesome little wagon. The A4 chassis has no leg room. Very little leg room. It had less leg room in the back than my Volkswagen Golf. Okay. So it would be a step backwards in terms of leg room for the rear passengers, aka members of my family. Right. My growing family. Well, one of them will not care about leg room for a while. But anyhow, they grow up faster than you think. So long and short is what I ended up buying. But you don't think you'll ever really like this? That's the Allroad. I did not get that. So this luxury minivan here, you don't think you'll be able to add... It's not a minivan. What is going on? What is this? There's a thing right here. It's not a minivan. It's an SUV. It's a crossover, which is a BS way of saying small SUV. Apparently, I'm hoping... Okay, so now I'm getting conflicting reports. Software's already in the car. I think here's the... Oh yeah. Oh my god. Somebody just mentioned the water glass looked like it was about to fall. They were right. They were 100% right. That's amazing. So my complaint is that I can't do anything about Android Auto in my car. Android Wear I can get in my car because I can just wear an Android Wear device when I get into the car. So that's a little annoying, right? Somebody needs to come up with a solution where you can get this into your car without having to get a new car. Is it just putting your phone on the dashboard? Is that... Well, that's what I do now. So maybe that's a problem that Google can solve for us. But they probably can't solve it immediately. So they announced Android Auto. Well, they had already announced Android Auto. They just kind of gave us more detail on it. And I'm jumping again to also like that was the only other thing they mentioned. There was no self-driving cars. And the weird Google was not here today, which was kind of a disappointment. Where? In IO. There was like weird Google. Oh, weird Google. I thought you were saying it was weird Google wasn't there. And I was thinking that doesn't make any sense because it's a Google event. It's very upsetting to hear. But yeah, there is not a lot of weird stuff. This is a chilled out. In comparison to Apple in terms of WWDC, this was like a chilled out, laid back, not really in your face. What was that? I didn't like that. Is that you doing a Larry Page impersonation in my ear? I'm like, what the hell is going on in the control room right now? So they did that. Then they showed off Android apps for Chrome. No one understands this yet. You can run an Android app in a window on a Chromebook. So I think a little bit of backstory. Andy Rubin kept Android very separate from the rest of Google. At some point, these started to merge. There was a Chrome browser for Android. Android was going to laptops a little bit. And then around that same time, Andy Rubin moved over to robots while Sundar Pichai got Android and Chrome. There was talk about putting them together. He said, I'm going to keep them separate. But now we are starting to see them merge a little bit with Android being the dominant force here. Yeah, if you say so. That's what you want to believe. No, but this is an early version. But I will say it is a great idea. It makes a lot of sense. And I love the idea that you basically can run these, you're running these windowed on a Chromebook. So to me this is kind of a huge deal. Now I'm assuming, and I don't know, does this mean I can multi, yeah it means, well you can multitask. Obviously you've got a browser here. But can you run several apps at a time? Like my Twitter app and Evernote while I'm running a Chrome browser. You see here, here's Vine. And it's basically running, it's running off of a device, right? Or is this being run on the platform? I can't tell if this is being mirrored or if it's a part of it. That was a little unclear to me. Yeah, it wasn't clear. So anyhow, the interesting part is that you've got real native, now you have a real native app environment for Chrome. One way or another. So wait, this is running off of the webcam. So it's running on, it's basically running on the platform. Or it's making calls to it at least. Yeah, exactly. So it's very interesting development. I think it's kind of a huge deal. It changes I think the app outlook and sort of the usability outlook for Chromebooks. I mean, far more, I find that I think a Chromebook would be far more useful if I could run Android apps on them. Yeah, it's already wildly successful for the cheap laptop market. Yeah. So that's interesting, but they didn't really say a lot about it. And okay, somebody's actually saying they were installed. I mean, by the way, in the midst of this, there were things I missed because we were actually working trying to get data off. So somebody said they were, they're installed on the Chromebook. Okay. So they're installed directly on the Chromebook. So they're running natively there, which is fantastic. By the way, people on Twitter are highly, highly helpful. Thank you. Thank you. You were watching much more closely. So that's great, but it's early. They didn't really have, they didn't have a lot to say about it. I mean, they weren't like, okay, this is coming this year. And it's like they weren't showing a new Chromebook. There's no Chromebook Pixel or anything like that. No, they didn't show any new Chromebook. And there was no real hardware. I mean, they didn't show any new hardware at all. This is typically they don't show hardware here. They have done in the past, they've done, I believe they did Nexus 7 last year. Or was that the year before? It was the year before they did Nexus 7, Nexus Q, and Nexus 4 all together. Don't remind me of the Nexus Q. Speaking of the Nexus Q, they did Android TV. Yes. We did, we did a, we had an exclusive on, I mean, we got some documentation that we published on Android TV. So we knew this was coming. Basically, they're saying, hey, we're going to do Android for the living room. And a full version, this is not the Chromecast where you're basically just streaming. You're basically just streaming from a device to something that's plugged into your TV. This is a full version of Android that's being run on your television. It's either, I mean, did they say how it's coming to your TV? Yes. I mean, we know that, we know that Razer is doing a little gaming box. Razer and Asus are making set top boxes. Right. Sony, I want to say Philips maybe also are doing TVs, the 2015 lineup will include Android TV integrated. Yeah. So this is all over again. So I think that actually the big thing here is gaming. I mean, they're kind of pushing gaming for the set top boxes and for these televisions. And that's not something we've seen Google do before. They clearly see that there's, I mean, there seems to be some interest at least. I mean, I don't think the Ouya was a huge success. No. But clearly, like, people are going after this more casual gaming space. And it may be even not as casual gaming based on some of the demos that they showed. Well, I mean, this is something I think David or Dieter once said in the live blog. These are Android games. They're good, but they're not mind blowing. It's casual. It's a little better than what we're seeing with Fire TV, which is Amazon's kind of half-assed addition to the gaming set top scene. Right. Yeah, I mean, I think that, so, you know, we'll catch on. Do people want this? Are people, I mean, they're buying Roku's a little bit. They're buying Apple TV a little bit. They're apparently buying Chromecast. They're buying a lot of Chromecast. Do they want, I mean, is Android TV something they're thinking about, something they want, something that feels like a vital part of their TV world? I mean, I'm not sure that it, I'm not sure that it does. It's tough because I think, and this is something that came up from the Fire TV, which everyone was saying, like, if you have a Roku or Apple TV and you're happy, you're set. Right. You don't need, it's essentially the same functionality. Right. If you're starting from scratch, that's where it becomes interesting. And you're dealing, but you're dealing with a new ecosystem. You're talking about buying from Google Play. Exactly. They didn't make any mention of, presumably Amazon can have an app here. I mean, Google has been far less restrictive than anybody else in this department. Right. Well, certainly less restrictive than Apple. So presumably there'll be an Amazon app on here. There certainly is on Roku. Right. And so, you know, I think that there is some, I mean, this is pretty impressive though, like what we're seeing right now. I mean, this is, I think the big question is can they make it into something more than just a TV box? Can they make games matter for this thing? And, you know, I don't know that that's the case. And going back to Android L, because this is running the Android L developer platform, if you make a game for Android TV, it's probably going to work on the Android phone and tablet. Well, I think that's exactly what they're saying. I think they're saying that it's build once, deploy in a bunch of different places. And I think there was some statistics that came out recently. It was like, it's a mind-blowing number of people. Like, it's freeware. That's the most, the biggest thing for Google. So, like, the games are coming, but like iOS is still the big pusher for games. Right. And this is the way to get ahead of it. But, I mean, this is interesting too, as well as you've got this, you know, sort of interactivity between tablets and the controller. I mean, it's a cool idea. Will it take off? Do people want or need this? I don't know. I don't know that it's really, this stuff has caught on at all. I mean, I know that there are certain, look, I have several boxes in my living room. You probably do. Way more than I should. Right. But we're not normal people. No. Normal people are just like, they're still, the complexity of something like this is just not attractive to them. But the sell is if you do not have a box and you're starting fresh, which are going to be a lot of people, especially not us, but other people. I don't know those people. I mean, well, the Android TV could be a compelling case. It's a cheap box. It does the Chromecast stuff. So, if you have your browser open, it's essentially over. It just doesn't feel to me, it doesn't feel, I mean, if Apple does something in the fall with TV that moves the needle at all, I think it's going to be tough for anybody to be in that space and make an effective argument. But that's a big if because we haven't seen, Apple hasn't done anything that's necessarily, we don't know what Apple's doing at this point. There's been a lot of rumoring and they've yet to do anything that is moving the needle really. No, and the big Apple rumors have been an Apple TV, other game system or TV set. Yeah, and by the way, the Apple TV. Or Andrew Watt. I think even going back from the Roku, the Apple TV interface, I mean, that's got to change, I'm assuming. It just is, but it is not fun to use. It is not an enjoyable experience. And I think that that's a place where Google has an advantage. This interface looks a million times better than what Apple is doing as far as interfaces are concerned. And also, you can just use your phone. Right, the interactivity with the phone or even a watch, if you've got one, is really interesting. I mean, this is something I'm interested in. And the question is how do they sell it to the average consumer? You know, you've got all these, when people are buying smart TVs with software already on them, some version of, you know, it's some variation of what they're doing with Android TV, essentially. Are people paying attention, you know? Are they thinking about this stuff? I mean, they've done a good job marketing the Chromecast. If they can market this the right way, I think it can be a success, but it is going to require some real work from Google to sell this. They're basically saying this is a Chromecast, but also plays games, and if you don't have your phone with you, you've got Netflix and Hulu. Yeah. And that's in a nutshell what this is doing. So that's Android TV, and then protesters. Yeah, protesters. Google announced a series of protesters today. Yeah. No, they had several people protesting. The first person was a woman protesting the event because of the housing situation in Silicon Valley. That was just, I could not hear her to save my life. I believe the first one was about the bad housing shenanigans that are happening in Silicon Valley, which a lot of people blame Google for. Among others. Among others, but Google seems to be kind of the lightning rod for a lot of the stuff. And the second protester, correct me if I'm wrong, but was shouting about Google making killer robots. I feel, I mean, he definitely, there he is. He did say that, yeah. There he is. And I can't help but feel slightly responsible for this particular protest, because yesterday we published a story. It's a narrative. Which is, can we get that up on the screen, which was called, Hey, remember that time Google accidentally made Skynet? Right. And it actually, and that was born out of, there was a little bit of like fan fiction from Brian Bishop, but it was born out of this conversation we were talking about. Photoshop from TC Sonic. Yeah, TC did that. All the stuff that Google was making, and I said, you know, it's weird, but they kind of have all of the things you need to build Skynet. I mean, they actually are laying the groundwork for really what Skynet is in the Terminator movies. And one thing led to another, and then we had a protester at the Google event yelling about killer robots. I know. But I mean, they did buy military robot companies. The thing is, we've talked for years how scary these Boston Dynamics are. That's what it's called, right? Boston Dynamics, yeah. That's not the fringe science fiction company. That's Massive Dynamic. No, you're right, Boston Dynamics is the company that you're thinking of. In Fringe? No, no, no. No, I don't know about Fringe, okay? I don't watch garbage, all right? That is bullshit. No, I'm kidding. I know people are going to freak out. No, I actually have never seen an episode of Fringe, so I can't really speak to it. Here's Boston Dynamics wildcat here. Just a normal, just something Google needs for its stuff that it's doing. Let's put Android Lollipop on that. Oh, yeah, Lollipop. Oh, I like that Lollipop. But you know, seriously, here's the thing. This guy, here's what this guy could be doing, you know? Taking walking tours of cities, going into shops, shooting like Shop View and Street View and doing all that stuff. I mean, I think, you know. Because when I'm at Macy's, I want to see that going down the lane. If you covered this in fur and put some like googly eyes on it, it wouldn't seem that terrifying. I don't think it would. You'd be like, oh, look at this cute. I mean, you want to put it in fur that's like blue or something so you didn't think it was an actual animal. I don't know. I think this is kind of cute and adorable and I'd like to hug it. Your description, all I can think about is like that Simpsons episode, Treehouse Heart, got to come up with a reference to the Simpsons. I'd like to curl up next to that at night. With a cute, crusty doll that turns its head and the nice little cute small goes, I'm just going to turn. I don't know what you're talking about. Are you talking about the Simpsons right now? I'm talking about the Simpsons. I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't watched the Simpsons in 20 years. It's been on the air for 50 years and I haven't watched it for 20. Plus. But you know, this was, it was a weird event for Google in that they didn't have anybody skydive. They didn't have any weird, they didn't have any ending bits with Larry where he talked about Google Island or anything. They didn't really, there were no, I mean the biggest thing that they announced was this new design language in my opinion. That really is the most notable piece of this and I think it's great. I'm excited to check it out. And real quick, just to catch everyone up. So what we're hearing, are we getting, I'm sorry, I'm getting something from. Dieter Bohn should be joining us sometime in the next 15 minutes. 15 minutes? What am I going to talk about for 15 minutes? I don't know. We've already burned through all of our topics here. It's literally been on the air for 10 minutes or something. Not a lot longer than that. Has it been? 30? It feels like it's been just a moment with these, with this audience, with this wonderful audience. I could spend all day and all night with them. We're all, go with all. Them and the Boston Dynamics robot that I was just talking about. Just cuddle up with the stock version. Yeah. But okay, so we're going to get to, we're going to actually speak to Dieter who's at the event live in about 15 minutes. I think that, I think we should just take questions from Twitter right now. What do you want to know? What do you want us to talk about right now? What would you like to hear? While you're asking, while the questions are coming, I do want to talk about the other things that were out there. Google Glass, completely, completely missing. There was no Google Glass. I don't know what the, I'm not sure what the genesis of the issue is with Google Glass at this point. I feel like, here's the thing that I've always thought about Google Glass. That they were, Google did this thing and it ended up taking off a lot more than they expected it to. Right. That Google Glass was one of their weird experiments and for some reason it just took off and people got very excited about it and I think they felt like they had to keep talking about it and promoting it. You don't think it's a real thing, though? Even though it's not really a central, I don't think it's a really central product to what Google does. I don't know. I mean, it will be, I mean, it will be, you know, part of the Skynet system. Yeah. But somebody wants to know why I'm back with an iPhone. You know, look, I use a lot of different devices, okay? I like to stay fresh and updated. How many do you have on you right now? I've seen you have several devices in my pants right now. And you know, no, I mean, but you know, you gotta use everything. You know? Next it'll be Windows Phone. Then it'll be Firefox OS for the phone. Then whatever they call it. You can carry a giant web or a CD with you. Then I'm gonna go back to my Asha S40. All right, I'm getting some questions here. Okay. Let's see if any of them are, oh, did I test drive the Moto 360? Well, if anybody, I think somebody's asking about the Moto 360. I mean, let's just say that I've, I'm familiar with the 360. I can't say much more about that. But it is a beautiful device. Somebody just said, can you talk about how beautiful it is? And I will say that of all these Android Wear devices that we've seen, and having seen this up close and personal, the 360 is far and away the device that I think people are gonna want and want to wear. Compared to these three at least. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, the stuff that looks like a digital watch, like you've gotta really be interested in wearing something like a digital watch to get excited about it. The 360 really legitimately looks and feels like a regular watch on your wrist. Okay. And I think that that's a big selling point. And I think that the fact that so many people were sort of upset when they said that it wasn't available immediately is a great example of just how important that device is gonna be for Android Wear in general. Right. And you remember when they came up with it, the story wasn't just Android Wear, it was the design and hardware of Moto 360. Motorola's really playing up that part of it. It's like, we're trying to make a pretty watch that just happens to run Android Wear. Yeah. No, I mean, and I think that hopefully we see other manufacturers do a circular display and do, I would like to see other watch designs that are more traditional but not, you know, this one's just very, very plain, very basic. I think you could do a lot with it. It's a bit big, too. I'm interested to see if they can do a smaller, a slightly smaller version. But that's just one man's opinion. Somebody asked about Android One, which is a project for building, Google's building its own... This is the third, not third world market, the developing... The developing countries, third world is actually pejorative and has been deprecated. Guys, I'm really sorry. Just so you know. So please apologize to our viewership. For developing nations, they're working on, developing countries, they're working on lower cost handsets that are actually designed for those particular markets. Sundar was talking about a device for the Indian market that was dual SIM, had FM radio, just certain things that like, obviously you're gonna think every country, every region has its own needs. Google is thinking about that. Presumably they're also working on, I mean, not presumably, they are also working on building an Android to fit pretty much any device. That's been an ongoing project for Google generally. But I think they're now aiming really specifically at lower end devices that are much more affordable and that can be, that can give you a great experience without having to have massively powerful hardware. That reminds me, Google Fit. Oh right, Google Fit. Sorry, completely weird correlation of that. So Google Fit is their health platform. Yes. Basically it's their health kit. It's just, yeah. It's their health kit. I feel like it's weird. I mean, are Apple and Google talking more? I feel like there's so much, there are so many similarities between the Apple event and the Google event. I mean, it could just be an accident or it could just be Google trying to sort of get in on some of the stuff that Apple is doing. Yeah, or even the stories around it, because it's like, oh well, Apple's remembered to have a TV and a watch and Google's like, oh well, here's our TV and watch, by the way. We're doing the same thing. Don't forget about those. Yeah. No, I mean, it makes sense. I mean, the problem now is you've got, everything has to be, I just wish everything didn't have to be about these competing, these warring platforms. You know what would be great is if Google and Apple were like, hey, listen, we're going to create an open standard for exchange of this data. Because what happens is, it's like, oh, well, we're building these devices for Apple's health thing and doctors are using this thing. And then other doctors will be using the Google thing. And all of a sudden you've got, look, I need to get my glucose levels to my doctor and I can't do it because he's on iOS. He's on Android. Or he's on Android. Or whatever it is. I think it's, when it comes to your health, there should be some open standard. You know what we should do? Let's have the government create an open standard for health data. They did such a great job with healthcare.gov. I feel like how could this possibly go wrong? For a second I thought you were being serious. Well, actually, there is an argument being made that there should be some group of technologists should get together and say, let's create an open standard for exchange of health data because it's actually really important to the future of humanity, in my opinion. Who wasn't doing it with healthcare? But we don't really have that. There was one big health firm that was a part of HealthKit. Was it Mayo Clinic? Yeah, Mayo Clinic. Yeah, but I'm saying. I know, I know. You get that Mayo Clinic buys in on HealthKit and somebody else buys in on Google Fit. Next thing you know it's Spedlum. Well, to be fair, it's total terror. Total madness. But Nike, who has long been an Apple supporter, and obviously Tim Cook is a big Nike fan, Fuel is a part of this health initiative, this Google Fit initiative. You can actually use the Fuel score and track that throughout whatever Google Fit platform thing-ma-jig is going to do. Yeah. Well, I mean, I just think that all I'm saying is I'm just calling for people to be reasonable. Human beings need to get their data out there to doctors and also out into the cloud for hackers to get so they can hack their pacemakers. Well, it's unfortunate because my- Is that a thing? That is a thing. My password is always my glucose level, so if someone does get that, I'm veritably fucked and also dying. Wait a second. Somebody just said Google Drive just did a one more thing. What is it? No. This better be good. I don't know how Google Drive can do anything because it's an inanimate. Oh, he literally just said one more thing. Oh, yeah. Look at that. New home screens on the web. Okay. Whoa. Oh, okay. So there's kind of a Drive redesign. That's interesting. We're just learning that right now. Which is material design. First hand. Is it material design? It looks like it. I don't think so. It is similar. Yeah, I guess it is. Sure. Anyhow, I think the design is... That to me is the most exciting thing they talked about today. Right. I feel like it's really fresh. Like fresh in the kind of slang use of fresh and also- So fresh and so clean. Yeah, exactly. The fresh also like it's like you got some celery and you just ran it under cold water and you took it out of the refrigerator so it's cold and crisp. I'm actually a little hungry. This might be. This is what I'm talking about. You know when you bite into a cold piece of freshly washed celery and you're like, oh man, that is like a refreshing experience. If I say no, that's more reflective of my dietary problems. That's a refreshing experience that is just filling my mouth with pleasure. You don't ever feel that way when you bite into celery? No. Am I the only person? No, no. Maybe just add a little bit of peanut butter. Sure. No, no, no. Come on. What? You don't mess up a beautiful piece of celery with peanut butter. You absolutely mess up celery. I'm like five years old or something. Somebody asked me to tweet the Google Drive link. I'm going to do it. Do it. Do it. That's a live tweeting right there. This is interesting. We've been talking a lot about this. Look at this. Look at that beautiful calculator. Look at that sexy calculator. I just want to make love to that calculator. By the way, somebody mentioned that Matthias today looked like somebody from Panem in the Hunger Games. I have to say, he definitely looks like... What is the name of the head game guy in the first Hunger Games movie? Played by Wes Bentley. He kind of has some crazy facial hair going on. Control room, please look up. He also is wearing a futuristic Matthias style outfit. It's just not... No, not that one. Wrong. Wes Bentley. You got to find Wes Bentley. Facial hair. That's what I'm talking about. You failed me. You really failed me in the control room, I got to say. That guy is the... Whatever. The TV show's name is like Tally something or other. I just made that up. That may not be right. It's Lee Stanley Tucci, right? Just do a search for Hunger Games Wes Bentley. I'll give you $5 a day if you can do it. I can see them furiously typing in the control room right now. Wait, wait. Am I going to... There we go. There we go. Can we get a picture of Matthias up next to him? Just go back and forth. I do feel like, look, you got it. No problem. I'm fine. I'm going to go Google. Can anybody tell me this guy? Seneca Crane. Somebody just said it's his name. Seneca Crane. Okay. Let me just ask that I take off my shirt, by the way, for the people. I don't know if this is related to Hunger Games or not, but I'm considering it. Just one button at a time. Just one slow... By the time this broadcast is over, I will be 100% shirtless. Don't hold me to that. Anyhow, Seneca Crane and Matthias Duarte, I feel like there's a little bit of a... Did we get the side by side? Did it ever happen? I think they're working on it. What's happening? I feel like you guys are really slipping. Since we've not been doing the Verge cast, you can tell that they're off their game. These guys have just don't know how to get it going. We've been taking it very easy here in the studio. They don't know how to do this, to get it happening. You know what I mean? Well, they snapped. Still nothing. Unbelievable. I'm disappointed. I blame Billy Disney. You can email him at billyattheverge.com and tell him how you feel about this. Tell him how you feel about this disgraceful lack of graphics on this broadcast. We will have, hopefully in a second, Billy, I'm going to do this little ear thing to you. Hopefully you get it. Hands on. A hands on from Google IO. Hopefully we can show that soon. Who's that? Who's that? Who's doing a hands on? I don't know. There's stuff. You see, here's the thing. As we speak, there are on the ground, there are people on the ground at IO, not us, but there are other people, human beings from the Verge. We're home. We're comfortable. Furiously working to get you more content. We know how much you love content. Furiously working to get you bigger, better, meatier, juicier stories. I am definitely hungry. Yeah. I'm starving. This is what happens when you only have a little snack and then you sit through a long Google event. It was long. It was so long. I don't understand why Google can't get this right. That stuff they were doing, some of the stuff they were showing was definitely in session territory. Let me just explain this to people who don't understand. A developer's conference has sessions that follow the main event. They have this keynote as a kickoff thing, and then they do sessions with developers. They break out. They go through new things that they're working on they want to share with developers. Totally a great idea. There is a way to communicate what your thing does and why people should be excited about it without having to show the functionality of it straight through. I just feel like Google needs to get a little bit better at demonstrating those things without going into a full blown session style demo. Do we have the Seneca crane, Matias Duarte side by side yet? I'm just thinking about it in the back of my mind and getting angry again wondering why it's taking so long. This is clearly the most important thing to do right now. We were just publishing the hands-on Google Android TV. Okay, we've got a hands-on with Android TV. It's exciting. The video will hopefully be coming soon. I need to get a hands-on with this L version of Android. Does anybody know how I can do that right this second? Is the developer view out now or is it coming out? Is there a developer version of it that I can sink my teeth into? I'm sure there's somebody. Like a delicious piece of celery. For all the time it took you extremely bad, extremely bad quality work. I just want to say for the time it took you to produce this image on the screen, I should have seen more. But I will say there is a striking resemblance here, striking resemblance. I think we should take note of that. We really should have Andy Forte's ferocious hair out. Frankly, heed the possible message. We've already talked about Google becoming, building Skynet. Could they actually end up creating a Panem style situation? What the Hunger Games? Could they create the Hunger Games? Think about it actually. They wipe out a lot of the US citizenry, the Terminators. And then they subjugate them. Google Island is actually in Colorado. A city, a glorious shining city unto itself. And then the rest of America is broken up into, what do they call them? Districts. Districts. And every year we have to go fight in the Hunger Games. It's not so far off from reality, I think, possibly. But probably is very far off. So anyhow, I'm way off topic now. Are there any snacks? Does anybody have any celery here that can be brought in? Maybe not celery. I'm sure there are chips. But before we're doing that, we do have the Android TV hands-on, which just got posted. We can take a look at that now. Can we take a look at the video of the Android TV hands-on? I'd love to see this. I'm just going to cue that. So we're here at Google Island in San Francisco, where Google just announced Android TV. It's a big update to the longstanding Google TV platform. It's basically part of their initiative to have Android everywhere. And it starts off with a TV interface and a remote app on their phone, which has the basic D-pad controls. And along with that, there's a new gamepad controller, because Android is showing off lots of games on the TV. So with this, you can go across the interface. At the top, it has suggestions for content that you may want to watch or view from Google Play TV, YouTube, Travel Channel, other options like that. And if you move down, you can see all the apps that have been installed. You can use the Google Play Store to add more. But it has your typical options like Netflix, YouTube, Showtime, as well as other things like Eat24, which they showed off on stage. And there's a special link for Google Play Games. Games are broken down into a separate category down here. You can see all the games installed on the TV and jump into the most recently played games here. The TV box itself that's running is a reference platform that Google built specifically to let developers start programming Android TV. And the controller is the same deal. And that's basically it for Android TV. All in all, it seems like this is probably Google's best effort yet at building a TV interface that people will want to use. And it seems like it might actually be a good way to bring casual gaming to the big screen in your living room as well. Certainly a better effort than Google TV we've seen thus far. And given Google's success with Chromecast over the last year, this could be their next big thing. Here's my question. One, why didn't Google build an actual box and give that box to all the developers there today? Do we know? No. They're not giving that box out to developers, right? That's not coming until, it says it's coming out in the fall with a developed preview of L. I don't have time to wait for the fall, okay? So the first question is why don't they actually just make a box? The second thing that I, it's not a question, but I was just thinking, they did Google TV, Nexus Q, and Chromecast. So this is their fourth attempt to do something for television. Because the Q had a, it did do video, right? It wasn't just an audio device. It did YouTube. Did it just do YouTube? I think just YouTube. We have a Q somewhere in this office. It's literally a doorstop somewhere on the A floor. Someone's actually using it as a doorstop? Yeah. It's on this floor? I think so. No, no, no, it's up on nine. Is it upstairs? Someone's gotta find it. That's like a rare, that's a cool weird thing to have. I think it's pretty, it lights up nice. I mean. Lights up nice. Really, did Evan hack it? He probably did. Probably did. There it is. So they made a lot of attempts to do this, and my God, I hope they get it right this time. Here's my question. Universal search for content? Does it have universal search? No. Do we know? Wait, wait, does Android TV or does Q? This is why we need an expert on the ground in San Francisco, but unfortunately I don't know that Dieter is gonna be able to break away from all this action. We've actually just gotten word that Dieter may not be able to join us for this broadcast. He has been punched violently by other members of the team there for canceling on us. A protest has broken out. A protest has broken out, protesting the lack of Dieter on this broadcast. But I think that, you know, the Android TV stuff looks interesting. I feel like they've, again, they've only taken it halfway. I know that Google wants to do this thing where their partners make stuff for them, but I don't know. It might be time for Google to take the first party game more seriously. That's just my, that's just what I'm saying. I'll have to wait and see. Let's start wrapping up. Should we wrap up? Is there anything else that we didn't cover? Oh, the, somebody, a couple people mentioned this AirPlay, the sort of AirPlay-like mirroring to the Chromecast. I think that's very cool. They were already doing tab mirroring from browsers, from Chrome, so from devices kind of makes sense. I don't know how that's going to feel in the real world. You're going to have to just go test it immediately that you can. And they showed, they showed, I will say that some of the, some of the, not to go back to the design stuff, some of the performance that we saw in the material design demos and some of the performance that you can see now with the quiz I was talking about on the web suggests a kind of new era for how we think of app design and web design, native versus web. And I'm actually really excited about that because it's a really impressive, it seems like a really impressive and powerful platform to be, to be harnessing. And it brings all of their products together in a real material way, no pun intended. So I think all in all, here's my take on it because we do have to wrap up. We have to wrap up and then we'll end on a super cut. Oh, we have a super cut already? Here's my take on it. I think the design is extremely strong. Right now for a mobile platform, I don't think there's anybody who is as focused and doing as good in terms of design as Google is right now. Especially cross platform. I mean, I think there are places in iOS that work. There's a lot of stuff that still doesn't work. In iOS 8, we didn't see any significant changes to that. I think the notifications is an example, not to go back to iOS on that, but how they're continuing to develop notifications in Android is really impressive. And some of the ways that they're tying in, was that will or won't? Will not. Will not. Sorry guys. Some of the ways they're tying in, sorry, I just got a message in my ear about Dieter and I couldn't make it out if he was going to actually join us or not. Some of the ways that they're utilizing some of the new APIs, the calls they're making where you can load straight from a web page into an app on Android to me seems extremely powerful. So I think that they're making the right moves in that space. I think that they still have this, they don't, I mean, one of the most compelling things that Apple did at WWDC was to show us how connected this family of products can be. They really brought together the phones and the desktop and frankly the cloud for the first time in any really meaningful way. And you started to see how Apple could do that ecosystem really right and make all that stuff talk to one another. And even with CarPlay, they showed that you could do it in a car as well. Android has that going for it. Google has it going for it across these platforms right now. But it just doesn't feel like it's as cohesive or clean or clear in a lot of ways on how it's going to, all these things will talk and play. And here's my theory to wrap up on because there was so much they didn't bring up. ATAP, Project Aura, Glass, a lot of the final deliverables with Wear and TV. I would imagine there's another event coming. This would be a little bit atypical for Google, but I imagine we'll see something else a long time when Android L becomes Lollipop or Lemonhead or Lylash. I'm sorry, I'm not laughing at you. I'm just laughing that somebody tweeted the picture of a woman eating celery at me and I have to say that celery looks amazing. Although celery basically has no caloric content whatsoever, so it wouldn't really help that much. It's a good snack if you're dieting. I'm not. I'm ready to eat just about anything. I'm ready to go totally ballistic on some food. Hey, what do we think about the new iconography at the bottom of Android? Nice and pretty. What about the fonts? Well, somebody mentioned to me that if you're confused about the share icon in iOS 7, these icons at the bottom of Android are going to be really confusing. But I have to say, there's only a slight deviation from the current iconography in Android right now in KitKat. So it doesn't strike me as tremendously difficult to understand, but there is a learning curve to begin with when you get onto Android. You have to understand the back button does this and that home icon takes you here and this thing loads up multitasking. Let's talk about multitasking really quickly. They just blow multitasking on Android, by the way. Because this interface that they have, the new multitasking interface, have you guys seen this? It looks a little bit like the new Safari view for tabs in iOS. But the idea that you would want to stack a bunch of your apps and not be able to see any of them and have to swipe through them to find the thing you're looking for is a little bit insane. What they have going right now actually makes some sense. Kind of argument though is you can see more apps at once. You can't really see the apps because they're buried behind. Look at the... Can we get a screenshot of the multitasking view before we sign off? We could round this out to a nice hour of us just BSing if you can find this graphic. Can you get Wes Bentley overlaid on top of the multitasking? Can Wes Bentley be eating celery? I'd like to see Wes Bentley eating celery while multitasking with the new version of Android. Is that possible? Because that's what I'd like to see today. But the multitasker looks like they maybe have ruined some of the multitasking for Android in my opinion. It was very clear before. Very clear. Let's see the picture. I don't know. I'd love to see the picture but this is like a Seneca Crane situation where we may never get it up on screen. Right now our poor viewers, tens of thousands, tens of dozens of viewers. Tens of thousands. Is it tens of thousands? Give or take. I'm so sorry guys. I'm high balling. So sorry. People are waiting to see this. They're dying to see the multitasking. They can't find it anywhere else. They cannot find an image of it. Or knows we can't. Just put up Seneca Crane while you're looking for it at the very least. Could we get a picture of Wes Bentley while we're looking for it? Poor Billy. Look at him in there. Poor guy. Just surging his little heart out. Real quick. Real quick. Nest. No mention of Nest. Nothing of Nest. No mention of home automation. No mention of anything about Dropcam which Nest just bought. That's right. Nothing really that even indicated that they're interested in the home. I think it's weird but I think they're aligning themselves to an Apple schedule and they're doing very much. They're basically copying WWDC where they're saying like, oh, here's some stuff for developers. This will lay the groundwork. And then they're talking about this fall date. And they're saying we're going to show you more stuff in the fall. Maybe that means they're going to show us some Nest integration. They're going to show us some home automation. They're going to show us actual products as opposed to these phantom products. That would be very nice. Really? No, can't find the multitasking, huh? They're looking. They're looking. There's literally several people now frantically searching. I bet you if I took one second right now, I'm not going to do it because I don't want to neglect our viewers. Or embarrass our control. But if I were just to break away for literally a single second, I could immediately pull up... We'll never be able to prove this out unfortunately but I think that I'd be able to pull out the multitasking view. All right, it looks like we're just going to have to wrap up. Let's just go ahead and wrap it up. Looks like we're never going to get to the multitasker. You can find it yourself at... You can find it at theverge.com. We have several articles on the... I agree with what somebody just said. It's taking too long and I agree with you. We have several articles, many, many articles today about all of Google's announcements. Go to theverge.com. Read all about it. We have a bunch of Verge update videos. Probably some more on the way. We're doing hands-ons right now. And anyhow, it's a big day of news for Google but did they achieve what they needed to achieve today? I'm not sure what that was. At the very least, I'm excited about checking out the new version of Android and I think that's the best you can possibly... I am much tinier comparison. Not just shorter but literally my face is like a little mini. Yeah, you're actually... You look like my son. You look like my little... With a beard. Oh, dad. My teenager. This teenager always giving me guff. All right, anyhow, this is a bad and dark way to end- Very dark way to end.... a Verge live at Google IO but that's it. No thanks to Dieter Bohn for not showing up. Guy was too busy getting you news. Just being important. But still, he should pay in some way. And Ross, as always, it's been a true pleasure to work with you. It's been a thing that happened. It really was a thing that we did today. Yeah. Oh, there's a desk thing. I like that. Oh, there it is. There's a multitasker. I like that. That's completely insane. These guys are high and drunk if they think that's a good way to multitask. I mean, they are seriously smoking some good shit. And by the way, they probably are because they're in California where weed is basically legal. It's decriminalized. Decriminalized at the very least. Anyhow, and thank you guys for watching. Thank you. Really, seriously. We always would love... We love doing live post-game wrap-ups for you. And that's it. We just like to sit around at table talking. Now, I'm going to go get some celery. So please... And by the way, several people on Twitter found the multitasking before our guys did. So I'm going to... There's going to be several canings tonight when I'm all said and done. This is true. Because that's how we deal with the problem. Contractually, I'll believe it. Yeah. Please enjoy a nine-minute supercut of the three-hour press conference. No, no, no. Not a 90-minute, 90-second. Nine minutes. Nine minutes. Oh, we're ending on that? We're ending on a supercut. Super fast and efficient. We have a supercut of the three-hour event if you could possibly watch it. Stay in nine minutes. We've got nine solid minutes of everything that you would need to know. So take a look at this, and we'll see you guys soon. We'll be back, I'm sure, very soon. I owe Sven. We talk about our two large computing platforms, Android and Chrome. We are very excited. As of this year's I.O., we are over 1 billion 30-day active users. They take around 93 million selfies every day. The team tells me about 31 million of these are duck faces. User experiences are evolving rapidly, and we wanted to rethink the user design experience in Android to have a fresh, bold, and new look. Android, Chrome, and across all of Google to craft one consistent vision for mobile, desktop, and beyond. And this led us to a way of thinking that we call material design. Those scenes and shadows provide meaning about what you can touch and how it will move. And we've also updated our system font, Roboto, so that designers and developers can use one typeface designed and optimized for every screen from your watch to your laptop to your television. So another area where we've improved the user experience on L is around notifications. I can double tap on a notification to launch the corresponding app, or if there's something I don't need, I can just dismiss with a single swipe. And to unlock the phone, well, this is just a notification shade, so you just swipe it away and you're straight into the device. So from here, I can keep going, or if I want to act on it, I can answer it, or if I'm busy, swipe it away. And what you're about to see is Epic's Unreal Engine 4 desktop rendering pipeline running on Android L on the latest NVIDIA tablet hardware. We have a bit of a flicker here. And we've worked hard to make sure that the battery keeps up with the performance. So Battery Saver allows you to clock down CPU, the refresh rate, even turn off background data to conserve battery. So Battery Saver is really great if you're about to embark on a lifelong hike or maybe a long protest and you say you want the battery to last even longer. Both with L Release and Chrome, we are bringing a whole set of new experiences to many connected screens around you. We're right at the beginning in a new phase in the miniaturization of technology, which means that it's finally possible to make a powerful computer small enough to wear comfortably on your body all day long. Here's a live demo on the LG G Watch. You can see that it has an always-on display that at any given time shows you the most important thing we know for you. Swiping up and down navigates you through this stream of cards, which includes information from Google Now, apps running on Jeff's phone, and apps running directly on the wearable itself. You can see that there's a broad selection of analog and digital designs in a variety of styles to suit your tastes. When you swipe away a notification on the watch, it disappears from the phone. And when Jeff receives a phone call, he can either swipe to reject the call from his wrist or swipe up to choose from one of these quick SMS replies. Now you'll see that Jeff has music controls on his watch. He can see what song is playing, he can pause the music or skip to the next track. Jeff can see how many steps he's taken today, along with a step count history for the week on devices that support it. He can even check his heart rate after a jog. Pinterest can notify him that he's near one of Suzie's pinned restaurants, allowing him to quickly glance at the details, then swipe to see a map. And if he likes it, he can start navigation right from his wrist. Today we're making a full Android Wear SDK available. It enables you to write code that runs directly on the wearable itself. And here I'm presented with a beautiful interface that lets me confirm the kind of food I'd like today and stick with pizza. And then I can quickly swipe to see and repeat my last order. Just one more tap to pay and the pizza's on its way. When a watch is connected, the wearable portion of the app is automatically installed and kept up to date on that watch. The LG G Watch will be available to order later today on the Play Store. We're very happy that Samsung is joining the Android Wear family with the Samsung Gear Live. And the Samsung Gear Live is also available to order later today. The Moto 360 is the first watch to adopt the round Android Wear UI. And it will be available for sale later this summer. Those are just the first three watches. Cars are an integral and essential part of life. And today we're happy to announce Android Auto. It looks and feels like it's part of the car. But all of the apps we see here are running on Andy's phone. The first thing Andy sees is the overview screen, which shows personal and contextually relevant destinations, reminders, contacts, and music from Google Now and other apps. Andy has access to all of his curated playlists, radio stations, albums, and artists. He can also use voice or the steering wheel controls to control the music in the car. How late is the DeYoung Museum open today? The Young Museum is open from 9.30 a.m. to 5.15 p.m. on Wednesday. Navigate there. Navigating to DeYoung Museum. New message from Hiroshi Lockheimer. Here it is. Andy, are we there yet? We're starting with a full set of APIs for audio and messaging applications. And the Android Auto experience will be available to users with the public L release later this year. The first cars with Android Auto will be rolling off dealer lots before the end of this year. So I'm going to talk about a different form factor, and that's TV. Today we're announcing Android TV. And Android TV requires just a D-pad with voice input. And that can be made available as a hardware remote control, as a game controller, or even a virtual controller on a phone or tablet. And the UI provides a unified view of your channels in a familiar channel-hopping UI with the channel information. As I scroll down, you get immediate access to your applications, ordered by how often you use them. Breaking bad. Google will interpret the result, get me a result for the popular TV show. Now, with one click, I can then watch it in Google Play Movies and TV or any other service that I have installed. So from here, I can actually interact with the TV. With Android TV, we enable you to take your games to the biggest screen in your house. I'm from Ireland, so I don't really understand this game. Android TV includes full Google Cast support, so you can use it just like a Chromecast. I'm super excited to announce that the entire 2015 HD and 4K smart TV ranges from Sony and the 2015 ranges of Sharp and TP Visions Philips will run on Android TV. I will also be seeing streaming boxes powered by Razer, Asus, and others launching this fall. We're launching a new Google Cast feature that allows you to mirror any Android device to your television. And we're actually going to mirror in live action, which is a little nervous, in live action, all of you on the big screen. Our journey here began with Chromebooks. Let's say you get an incoming phone call. You will start seeing those incoming call notifications on your Chromebook. If you get a text message, you will see those text messages on your Chromebook as well. We are very, very excited about bringing important favorite Android applications for users straight on their Chromebooks. And it's been battle tested to run at 1.3 million queries per second. Today we're announcing a platform preview of Google Fit. We want to help users keep better track of their fitness goals. You can choose who you share what with, and you can delete your fitness activity whenever you want. Adidas has a collection of smart sensors that they're opening up to developers for the first time. And we're thrilled to announce that Nike is allowing other apps and fitness devices to integrate with Nike Fuel through this API. And of course, there are many, many, many partners that are joining the Google Fit ecosystem. It's tough to believe that personal computing started only a few decades ago. We feel humbled to be part of this journey with you all, and we look forward to building more amazing experiences with you. Thank you. I hope you enjoy today's conference.

Okay, so we're here in San Francisco at Google IO taking a look at Android Auto. It was just announced. We're inside a Hyundai car and it is hooked up via USB to a Nexus. As soon as you plug it in, you get this interface. You can see that it's navigating right now, but we can close that. We're in the overview screen now, so this tells you everything that's going on with the phone. You can tap over to music. You can tap over to phone to make phone calls. And you can even tap over to look at, you know, actually information about your car, if the car provides that to the Android phone. This also works with third party apps. If you were to tap on the music icon again, you could choose a different third party app for it to work with. And of course, full Google Maps navigation is all here and that works pretty well. And I mean, it's actually really straightforward. It's safe, so you're not using your phone in the car. It's just all here on the screen. And you know, full Google Voice Search works as well. Play Arcade Fire. There it is. So that's Android Auto. It should be coming out before the end of the year on certain manufacturers. There's a whole lot of partners that are going to be working with this and it's pretty neat.

Hey guys, it's David with The Verge, right after Google's keynote at Google I.O. in San Francisco looking at the Moto 360. This is one of the Android Wear smartwatches. It's one of the first ones we heard about and it's one of probably the most intriguing and we've seen three so far. The Samsung Gear Live, the LG G Watch and this. And this is easily the best looking. So the big thing about it is that it's not nearly as big as it looks. It actually feels pretty good. It's light and comfortable. It's made of stainless steel and has a leather band. It comes in two different colors but they're big on the materials for all of this. And it feels really good. I wear a watch that's not that much smaller than this and it's actually considerably heavier than this. So it works really well. It fits really nicely and it's much more comfortable than I thought it would be. So it's currently running retail mode which means it only does about four different things. But you can see some of what it looks like and we got to see one running on a Motorola executive's wrist that ran just about this fast. And then you can say things like, okay Google. And even in a crowded room it figures out what you're actually doing and that you're talking to. The display is 320 by 270 and down here is where all the display drivers are. Basically they took all the things you'd normally put in a bezel and put them all down here so that they could have the screen go totally edge to edge. And it looks really, really nice as a result. It's definitely better that it's round honestly instead of square. So this is the thing. We don't know that much about the 360 yet. It's coming out later this summer. We don't know the price though we're pretty sure it's going to be $249. We don't know how long it's going to last. We don't know what the processor is going to be. But one thing we know for sure is that this is easily the best looking smartwatch we've ever seen and hopefully it's going to start a lot more that work like it. And that is the Moto 360.

Katy Goldstein's News, Inc.

Today at Google I.O. the company gave developers a first look at its latest redesign. Google is calling it Android L. Sticking with Google's new material design initiative, L brings many new changes, including a new interface for Gmail, minimalistic new Android buttons, and a shift from square to round icons. All of Google's stock apps will eventually make the transition to the new material theme, however for now the list is limited to the most used apps, like the phone dialer. Notifications are being spruced up too, with new interactive access to notifications on the lock screen. The notification pane and the lock screen are basically being combined, with a new look similar to Google Now cards. A new drop down notification is being introduced for when you're using the phone, dubbed Heads Up by Google. It's big but easy to address or dismiss. The L preview code will be available for developer devices to download later today, while the full OS release is promised for the fall. The next question is, which L candy will it be named after?

Hi, we're here at Google I.O. 2014 in San Francisco and we are holding the LG G Watch which was just announced. It is a watch from LG obviously and it is kind of the standard option for Android Wear. Like everything that we're seeing here today, it's running just this retail demo so it's not a fully working model, but you can get impressions of the hardware. The screen is relatively bright, the colors are fine, they're a little bit washed out but not too bad. The bezel is quite large but the speed and the responsiveness, at least in this demo, is pretty good. It's pretty thick and if you were to compare it to anything I would say it looks quite a lot like just sort of a big pebble steel, but obviously you've got a really nice big bright LCD on this screen. It's always on which is pretty great. It's in black and white mode and then when you move it that's what turns it on. It charges via contacts on the back and the watch band is rubbery and it's not very fun. It's not great but it'll do the job and it's pretty easy to swap it out for something else. Again, it's not too bad. It feels a little bit smaller than the Gear Live which we tried earlier which has got gigantic metal looking bezels. This is a little bit more restrained. So there it is. It's the LG G Watch. It's on pre-order today. It should be shipping on July 7th and it's going to retail for $229 US.

Hey, we're here at Google I.O. 2014 in San Francisco where we have just heard the announcement for the Gear Live, a Samsung smartwatch running on Android Wear. So unfortunately right now the watch is running in a retail mode, a demo mode, and so you don't actually get to see how it works, but you do get a sense of what the interface looks like and it's very similar to what we've seen before. You can swipe up to go between your different notifications and then you can swipe to the right to dismiss them, they won't do that here, and then you can swipe the other way to get controls for the various notifications. Pulling down from the top, at the very top here, gives you the chance to mute or unmute notifications and you can also say, okay Google, and it'll pop up things that you can give voice commands to. So that's the software. In terms of hardware, it looks a lot like the other Galaxy Gears. It's got a really large metallic bezel. The screen seems relatively bright, although it is incredibly reflective with the glass that they have over it. If you pull open the watch and look underneath it, you can see that we've got a heart rate monitor and just standard contact charging for charging the watch up. The Gear Live is available for pre-order today and it's shipping on July 7th. It should retail for $199 US.

IOS when we talk about our two large computing platforms, Android and Chrome. We are very excited as of this year's IOS, we are over 1 billion 30 day active users. They take around 93 million selfies every day. The team tells me about 31 million of these are duck faces. User experiences are evolving rapidly and we wanted to rethink the user design experience in Android to have a fresh, bold and new look. Android, Chrome and across all of Google to craft one consistent vision for mobile, desktop and beyond. And this led us to a way of thinking that we call material design. Those scenes and shadows provide meaning about what you can touch and how it will move. And we've also updated our system font Roboto so that designers and developers can use one type face designed and optimized for every screen from your watch to your laptop to your television. So another area where we've improved the user experience on L is around notifications. I can double tap on a notification to launch the corresponding app or if there's something I don't need, I can just dismiss with a single swipe. And to unlock the phone, well this is just a notification shade so you just swipe it away and you're straight into the device. So from here I can keep going or if I want to act on it I can answer it or if I'm busy I can swipe it away. And what you're about to see is Epic's Unreal Engine 4 desktop rendering pipeline running on Android L on the latest Nvidia tablet hardware. We have a bit of a flicker here. And we've worked hard to make sure that the battery keeps up with the performance. So Battery Saver allows you to clock down CPU, the refresh rate, even turn off background data to conserve battery. So Battery Saver is really great if you're about to embark on a lifelong hike or maybe a long protest and you say you want the battery to last even longer. Both with L Release and Chrome, we are bringing a whole set of new experiences to many connected screens around you. We're right at the beginning in a new phase in the miniaturization of technology, which means that it's finally possible to make a powerful computer small enough to work comfortably on your body all day long. Here's a live demo on the LG G Watch. You can see that it has an always on display that at any given time shows you the most important thing we know for you. Swiping up and down navigates you through this stream of cards, which includes information from Google Now, apps running on Jeff's phone, and apps running directly on the wearable itself. You can see that there's a broad selection of analog and digital designs in a variety of styles to suit your tastes. When you swipe away a notification on the watch, it disappears from the phone. And when Jeff receives a phone call, he can either swipe to reject the call from his wrist or swipe up to choose from one of these quick SMS replies. Now you'll see that Jeff has music controls on his watch. He can see what song is playing. He can pause the music or skip to the next track. Jeff can see how many steps he's taken today, along with a step count history for the week on devices that support it. He can even check his heart rate after a jog. Pinterest can notify him that he's near one of Suzie's pinned restaurants, allowing him to quickly glance at the details, then swipe to see a map. And if he likes it, he can start navigation right from his wrist. Today we're making a full Android Wear SDK available. It enables you to write code that runs directly on the wearable itself. And here I'm presented with a beautiful interface that lets me confirm the kind of food I'd like today and stick with pizza. And then I can quickly swipe to see and repeat my last order. Just one more tap to pay and the pizza's on its way. When a watch is connected, the wearable portion of the app is automatically installed and kept up to date on that watch. The LG G Watch will be available to order later today on the Play Store. We're very happy that Samsung is joining the Android Wear family with the Samsung Gear Live. And the Samsung Gear Live is also available to order later today. The Moto 360 is the first watch to adopt the round Android Wear UI. And it will be available for sale later this summer. Those are just the first three watches. Cars are an integral and essential part of life. And today we're happy to announce Android Auto. It looks and feels like it's part of the car. But all of the apps we see here are running on Andy's phone. The first thing Andy sees is the overview screen, which shows personal and contextually relevant destinations, reminders, contacts, and music from Google Now and other apps. Andy has access to all of his curated playlists, radio stations, albums, and artists. He can also use voice or the steering wheel controls to control the music in the car. How late is the De Young Museum open today? De Young Museum is open from 9.30 a.m. to 5.15 p.m. on Wednesday. Navigate there. Navigating to De Young Museum. New message from Hiroshi Lockheimer. Here it is. Andy, are we there yet? We're starting with a full set of APIs for audio and messaging applications. And the Android Auto experience will be available to users with the public L release later this year. The first cars with Android Auto will be rolling off dealer lots before the end of this year. So I'm going to talk about a different form factor, and that's TV. Today we're announcing Android TV. And Android TV requires just a D-pad with voice input. And that can be made available as a hardware remote control, as a game controller, or even a virtual controller on a phone or tablet. And the UI provides a unified view of your channels in a familiar channel hopping UI with the channel information. As I scroll down, you get immediate access to your applications, ordered by how often you use them. Breaking Bad. Google will interpret the results, get me a result for the popular TV show. Now with one click, I can then watch it in Google Play Movies and TV or any other service that I have installed. So from here, I can actually interact with the TV. With Android TV, we enable you to take your games to the biggest screen in your house. I'm from Ireland, so I don't really understand this game. Android TV includes full Google Cast support, so you can use it just like a Chromecast. I'm super excited to announce that the entire 2015 HD and 4K smart TV ranges from Sony and the 2015 ranges of Sharp and TP Visions Philips will run on Android TV. I will also be seeing streaming boxes powered by Razer, Asus, and others launching this fall. We're launching a new Google Cast feature that allows you to mirror any Android device to your television. And we're actually going to mirror in live action, which is a little nervous, in live action, all of you on the big screen. Our journey here began with Chromebooks. Let's say you get an incoming phone call. You will start seeing those incoming call notifications on your Chromebook. If you get a text message, you will see those text messages on your Chromebook as well. We are very, very excited about bringing important favorite Android applications for users straight on their Chromebooks. And it's been battle tested to run at 1.3 million queries per second. Today we're announcing a platform preview of Google Fit. We want to help users keep better track of their fitness goals. You can choose who you share what with, and you can delete your fitness activity whenever you want. Adidas has a collection of smart sensors that they're opening up to developers for the first time. And we're thrilled to announce that Nike is allowing other apps and fitness devices to integrate with Nike Fuel through this API. And of course, there are many, many, many partners that are joining the Google Fit ecosystem. It's tough to believe that personal computing started only a few decades ago. We feel humbled to be part of this journey with you all, and we look forward to building more amazing experiences with you. Thank you. Have a great conference.

Yes, Google is already committed to wearables with Android Wear, but it's also getting into fitness. At its I.O. developer conference today, the company previewed the Google Fit platform. It's very similar to Apple's Help Kit service for iOS. Apps will be able to access a user's complete fitness profile with data blended from multiple devices and services. Fit will let an app just go to one place to get all of a user's fitness stream. That is, of course, if the user gives permission, and they can delete the fitness data too. Partners include Adidas, HTC, Motorola, Runkeeper, and yes, Nike. Nike, by the way, is going to add its fuel number to Fitstream for other apps to use. The SDK will be available in a few weeks, but beyond that, we're still in the dark.

Google is bringing Chrome OS and Android closer together, and that'll eventually mean having Android apps running right on a Chromebook. While still in the early stages, Google says the native Android apps such as Vine, Evernote, and Flipboard will eventually be able to run on Chromebooks. The apps can appear in a tall, phone-sized window, or they can be expanded to run as they would on tablets. It's been widely expected that this would happen eventually, especially after Sundar Bachai, previously the head of Chrome alone, took control of Android too. There's still no word when the future will arrive, and Chrome OS still has some major hurdles to face. Mainly, these apps were designed for touch screens, and most Chromebooks don't have them. Yes, Chrome has been working with touch screens since the Chromebook Pixel was released last February, but for the most part, the experience has been unnecessarily tedious. That looks like it's about to change. Also, Google announced that Chrome OS will eventually be able to display notifications from a paired Android phone, and that a paired phone will be able to unlock a Chromebook just by coming near it. Thanks to these updates, the mobile and PC divide is continuing to blur.

So we're here at Google I.O. in San Francisco where Google just announced Android TV. It's a big update to the long-standing Google TV platform. It's basically part of their initiative to have Android everywhere and it starts off with a TV interface and a remote app on their phone which has the basic, you know, D-pad controls. And along with that, there's a new game pad controller because Android is showing off lots of games on the TV. So with this, you can go across the interface. At the top, it has suggestions for content that you may want to watch or view from Google Play TV, YouTube, Travel Channel, other options like that. And if you move down, you can see all the apps that have been installed. You can use the Google Play Store to add more but it has your typical options like Netflix, YouTube, Showtime, as well as other things like Eat24 which they showed off on stage and there's a special link for Google Play Games. Games are broken out into a separate category down here. You can see all the games installed on the TV and jump into the most recently played games here. The TV box itself that's running is a reference platform that Google built specifically to let developers start programming the Android TV and the controller is the same deal. And that's basically it for Android TV. All in all, it seems like this is probably Google's best effort yet at building a TV interface that people will want to use. And it seems like it might actually be a good way to, you know, bring casual gaming to the big screen in your living room as well. Certainly a better effort than Google TV we've seen thus far and given Google's success with Chromecast over the last year, this could be, you know, their next big thing.

Android is going everywhere, and next up on Google's agenda, watches. Google announced Android Wear in March, and now at I.O., we've got some details on the first devices. First up, Samsung. It's called the Gear Live, and it'll be available for pre-order from the Google Play Store later today. LG's previously announced G Watch will also be available for pre-order. And as for Motorola's rounder Moto 360, which was first teased months ago, well, that's still being planned for release later this summer. The Gear Live actually marks a return to Android smartwatches for Samsung. Last year it released a Galaxy Gear, a smartwatch running a modified version of Android. But just half a year later, Samsung abandoned Android for the Tizen operating system when launching the Gear 2. Google also showed off a few Android Wear demos on stage today at I.O. using the Moto 360, which included everything from setting reminders about double-sided peanut butter jars to ordering a pizza. This sudden and quick push into smartwatches is no coincidence. The space has increasingly become a subject of intense interest following Pebble's smashing Kickstarter success. And beyond that, Apple is reported to be working on a smartwatch for release later this year, one that's believed to be able to measure aspects of its wearer's health, too. That gives Google and others good reason to start getting ahead. We should see soon how well that first round of Wear devices holds up.

Android has been on our computers, phones, and tablets for some time, but now it's riding shotgun. This is Android Auto. For many of us, cars are an integral and essential part of life, but they remain disconnected from our other devices and our digital lives. Android Auto provides the same experience users have been accustomed to on their mobile devices but redesigned for the car. It heavily incorporates Google Now to help make driving more convenient. The system gives you quick, voice-based access to Google Maps navigation, text messaging, and apps like Google Play Music. Android Auto is also fully compatible with the dials, knobs, and buttons on your dashboard and steering wheel. Google is encouraging developers to get in early, and it's already rounded up partners including Spotify, Pandora, MLB.TV, Stitcher, and Pocket Casts. So far, over 40 automakers have joined Google's Open Automotive Alliance, with a promise to bring the first Android Auto cars to the road later this year. Google's car ambitions are rooted in Android L, the latest version of its mobile operating system. From phones and wearables to TVs and cars, this is all part of the company's mission to build a seamless experience across every device in your life.

With a success under its belt with the Chromecast, Google is officially renewing its assault in the living room with Android TV. TVs are fast becoming smarter and more connected, and really they're becoming computing devices in their own right. So we see a great opportunity to bring some of the strong capabilities of Android. Running on the Android L developer preview, you'll find Android TV on set-top boxes, similar to Apple TV Roku and consoles, but with an added focus on gaming. Today's announcement confirms details learned by The Verge this past April. Google TV, launched in 2010 with its apparent ambition to turn your television into a smartphone, is now firmly in the past. Android TV is Google's rekindled vision for your home's largest screen, and it's considerably sleeker and more in line with the competition's offerings. Entertainment is paramount this time around, as the software surfaces content from the Google Play Store and requisite partners like Netflix and Hulu, and provides recommendations based on what you watch. Search is also baked into the experience, using Google's Knowledge Graph to provide contextual information for your favorite programs. And then there's games. Gamers will be able to play multiplayer games online and earn achievements via the Google Play Games Network. The games Google is showing off are basically Android level, which is to say alright, but not totally mind blowing. And yes, there's a game controller. Android TV requires just a D-pad with voice input. Users can even control the software using an Android Wear watch. Upcoming 2015 TV sets from Sony, Sharp, TP Vision, and Philips will have Android TV built in. Razer and Asus also plan to make set-top streaming boxes that can be added to existing sets. Speaking of Chromecast, which is apparently really popular, there's a new update where you can mirror your Android device to your TV, and anyone will be able to Chromecast to your TV without needing to be on your Wi-Fi network. Android TV is coming this fall alongside Android L.

And now, let's take a look at the new Android Chrome OS. Design is essential in today's world. So we challenged ourselves to create a design that was not just for Android phones and tablets. At its annual I.O. developer keynote, Google has released a new design language for Android, Chrome OS, and the web. Google's calling it Material Design. The new look, which was first previewed in a Google Plus update last month, includes splashes of color, refreshed iconography, and a more consistent interface hierarchy. The entire interface is based on what Google calls a quote, unifying theory of a rationalized space in a system of motion. Yeah, it's a mouthful. A video released by Google shows the new design language in action, with radically redesigned versions of Google's apps for Android and the web, including Gmail and Calendar. Google also trotted out a new look for Android's logo. It's entirely lowercase and replaces the one Google has used for the past five and a half years. Material Design represents the first real departure from the company's so-called Holo UI, first introduced with Android 4.0 in 2012. Holo came with design guidelines for app makers, which at the time helped unify the disparate styles that independent developers had used for their apps. That consistency has changed the face of Android, and although Google has only demonstrated its own Material Design app so far, it's releasing a comprehensive set of guidelines and tools for developers to create web and Android apps in line with the new style.

Larry Page, people who know you well say Larry wants to change the world and he believes technology can show the way. I think people naturally are concerned about change and I think, I do think the pace of change in the world is increasing. Especially in technology we need revolutionary change, not incremental change. We haven't adapted mechanisms to deal with that. Maybe some of our old institutions like the law and so on aren't keeping up with the rate of change through technology. Now privacy officials from the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Israel and Switzerland have sent a letter to Google Chief Larry Page. They're asking him to explain the privacy implications of Glass. Google's new self-driving vehicle. There is no steering wheel, there's no accelerator and no brake pedal. Google admits that it collected private data on people who were connected to Wi-Fi in the alleged privacy of their own home. There's carbon monoxide in the family room. As Google moves into home automation and home security it's obvious they're going to move into cameras, room sensors, the things that would tell them specifically what I'm doing and where I'm doing it. Google now owns these. They are robots, high-tech robots that mimic humans and animals. They were designed for the battlefield. No idea what Google plans to do with all that robot power. Google's at it again buying up this time an artificial intelligence company, DeepMind. This after buying Boston Dynamics, the company that makes that thing. You imagine one of these robots running around if it can think for itself. I mean listen, Google's motto is don't be evil. Most of us would agree that robots inherently are evil machines. Do we have any idea what their ultimate goal is? Most people think companies are basically evil. Do they get a bad rap? I think that's somewhat correct.

Less than four years after the withdrawal of American troops, Iraq is once again descending into violence and chaos. A breakaway faction of Al-Qaeda known as ISIS has seized large swaths of northern Iraq and is marching toward Baghdad. The Sunni insurgents say they want to establish an Islamic state that would span parts of Syria and northern Iraq. The Iraqi government has reportedly requested air support from the United States, but President Barack Obama has so far proceeded with caution. Ending the Iraq war has been a cornerstone of Obama's administration. When he was running for office, Obama campaigned on the need to wind down the war. In 2011, Obama announced the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq, the last American troops left the country by December. It's difficult to quantify the cost of war, numbers vary depending on how you count, but a conservative measure says that more than 189,000 people have died in the fighting that followed the March 2003 invasion, with the vast majority being civilians. As for the financial toll, that's been estimated at $1.7 trillion, with several hundred billion more due to be paid in veterans care. After eight years of war in Iraq and a longer one still winding down in Afghanistan, Obama has been taking a more cautious approach to intervention overseas. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail. Because the costs associated with military action are so high, you should expect every civilian leader and especially your commander in chief to be clear about how that awesome power should be used. But then in June, things in Iraq took a dramatic turn. On June 10th, after days of fighting, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or as it's better known ISIS, seized Mosul, Iraq's second largest city. ISIS then took control of Tikrit, hometown of Saddam Hussein, and the Tal Afar. When they took Mosul, the militants freed prisoners, burned army vehicles, and robbed banks of hundreds of millions of dollars. In YouTube videos, ISIS promised to take over Baghdad. This is President Obama days after ISIS took the first two cities. We will not be sending U.S. troops back into combat in Iraq, but I have asked my national security team to prepare a range of other options that could help support Iraq security forces and I'll be reviewing those options in the days ahead. I do want to be clear though, this is not solely or even primarily a military challenge. At the time, there were still about 200 American troops stationed in Iraq to guard the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, according to the Wall Street Journal. And this week, Obama sent 275 soldiers to reinforce them. The U.S. has also sent an aircraft carrier and other warships into the Persian Gulf. Surveillance drones and manned navy aircraft have been reported flying over Iraq to gather intelligence, and Obama is reportedly considering drone strikes against ISIS. However, given Obama's previous limited responses to conflicts in Libya and Syria, it's unlikely that the president would turn to any of these options lightly, if at all. American forces will not be returning to combat in Iraq, but we will help Iraqis as they take the fight to terrorists who threaten the Iraqi people, the region, and American interests as well. Obama has a handful of non-military options, which could even include cooperation with longtime adversary Iran. The U.S. is continuing to push Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki to implement more inclusive policies in Iraq. Failure to do so, experts say, made it easier for ISIS to garner support among the disillusioned Sunnis. But even that may not be enough to save Iraq from chaos. Since his days as a senator, Obama has spoken about the need for less military intervention abroad. But as Iraq teeters on the brink of sectarian war, he's finding himself reluctantly returning to the country. The question he faces now is how to stabilize the country without getting pulled back into a conflict that's already proved so costly in lives and money.

Harley Davidson motorcycles are known for being loud. But last week, the company unveiled one that was really different, Project LiveWire, a surprisingly quiet electric bike. LiveWire is Harley Davidson's first electric motorcycle, but it isn't actually going on sale anywhere. Instead, Harley's touring it around the country to get riders' feedback. It kicks off today in New York City, but Harley let us take an early look at LiveWire at one of its stores in lower Manhattan. LiveWire is a sleek electric bike that's almost looks like something off of a movie set. But it's completely ready to ride. It goes from 0 to 60 in under four seconds and tops out at 92 miles per hour. For now, though, Harley isn't interested in talking specs, just how it feels on the road. I'm not a rider myself, although I did try out a stationary demo just to rev the engine. So we brought in a friend of ours, a photographer and motorcycle enthusiast, Tristan Felber, to ride it around Manhattan. Felber's been riding an old Honda for a few years now, so LiveWire quite literally took him about five decades into the future. It's super light. It's really agile. The power's just so smooth. I just want to go on the highway. I really want to go on the highway. Actually, it's an amazing experience. I just want to open it up. That was awesome. Even from owners of traditional Harleys, the immediate response was pretty positive, albeit with some hesitation. Many saw it as a great starter bike and a good option for those in the city. But unsurprisingly, the absence of Harley's classic sound was the big turn off here. I think I'd probably miss the sound of the engine for sure, the rhythm and even the smell of gasoline. There's something really nice about that romantic. That's not riders' only concern either. A lot of the classic Harley owners I spoke with saw LiveWire's silence as a big safety issue. I pulled my baffles out of my Honda. And it just makes people, because otherwise, people won't see the make left hand turns in front of you and swerve in front of you. So it's like, I mean, this is so silent. It's like, yeah, there is definitely a safety issue. One told me he thought that an accident was guaranteed on such a quiet bike. Harley doesn't see the sound as a safety component, though. The sound that you hear behind me right now is an engineered sound that we put into the product that we feel is, in its own way, very muscular for an electric product. So this isn't like any other electric product that's out there we feel. It's there for the emotion. And to that end, it's distinctly different from the Harleys that fans know and love. One of the biggest things about Harley-Davidson is the trademark sound. Everyone knows that sound. You can hear it coming from a mile away. But who knows? I don't know who this will appeal to. That's what Harley's out here to gauge, though. If the riders won't buy it because of the sound, Harley's next iteration of LiveWire, whatever that may be, might just fix that. Harley won't say exactly where it sees LiveWire going or when it'll put an electric vehicle up for sale. But it says there's work to be done in the electric vehicle market, and it knows it can help push that forward.

Since the beginning of this year, Samsung has released no fewer than nine distinct tablets, and that's not including different storage and LTE options. That's just an insane number, and there's not that much to distinguish them. So, of course, Samsung did what Samsung does. It went ahead and introduced tablets number 10 and 11. This is the Samsung Galaxy Tab S. The Galaxy Tab S comes in two sizes. One has an 8.4-inch screen and the other is 10.5 inches. And it's actually the screen that's the most important part of any tablet. If it's terrible, the whole thing is basically worthless. If it's great, everything you do in the tablet feels better. So, with the Galaxy Tab S, Samsung focused on the screen, and it did something pretty amazing. Both sizes have the same resolution, a super high 2560 by 1600 pixels, which puts them imperceptibly ahead of their respective competitors, the iPad Air and the iPad Mini with retina display. The pixels are basically invisible, and everything is super sharp and super bright. The whole tablet is built around this screen. It's using the same technology that Samsung uses on its phones, Super AMOLED. That technology doesn't need a backlight, so these tablets can be thinner and lighter. Both are just.26 inches thick and weigh just a little less than the comparable iPads. The colors are vibrant. Often it's just a little too vibrant. But Samsung has added software called Adaptive Display, which keeps an eye on the content on the screen and the lighting environment of your room to automatically adjust the image's color, saturation, and contrast. Most people won't notice these subtle changes, just that the screen is nice and sharp. I'm just impressed that the screen looks good in so many lighting conditions. I can see it fine in daylight, and in total darkness you can ratchet the brightness way down so it doesn't burn out your eye sockets. That's the story of the screen. The story for the rest of the hardware is, well, not as good. As usual, Samsung is sticking with plastic everywhere. All that plastic does make the tablet light, but it also makes it feel cheaper than the iPad. The back has the same stipple texture as the Galaxy S5, and in fact both tablets basically look and feel like blown up versions of that phone. They both come in two colors, white and bronze, and they're both garish and kind of ugly. Samsung sells a variety of covers that click into the back using plastic grommets. They attach securely, and then there's various origami folds you can make to attach the magnets and prop up tablets at different angles. I'm not a fan of the color options here, but if you want a case that looks more like a handbag than a boring black laptop sleeve, Samsung has you covered. Depending on which model you choose, LTE or Wi-Fi only, you'll get different processors. The models we tested were Wi-Fi only with a crazy fast Exynos 5 octa processor. That gave it speeds fast enough to handle even tough tasks like intense gaming. There's 3GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, but you can also add a microSD card for more storage. The camera on the back is 8MP and it's fine. There's also dual speakers on the side that get loud enough for me, but are pretty easy to cover with your hands. Battery life on both was solid, lasting me two days of moderate use without much hassle. Samsung even added a fingerprint sensor to the home button, which works about as well as it does on the Galaxy S5 phone, which is to say that it works only if you're very careful with your finger swipes. The best thing about the software is Samsung's split screen mode, which lets you run two apps simultaneously. Unlike the Galaxy Note Pro 10.5, you're only limited to two apps, but the feature is really nice and for the most part things don't slow down too much. There's also the usual array of Samsung features and add-ons. Paper Garden is loaded on for magazines, Hand Come Office for documents, and the home screen is a pretty crazy pile of flipboard style tiles, Android style widgets, and that's not to mention the direct access to your files and a completely nutso pile of settings and options in the notification panel and in settings. There's also the latest version of SideSync, which mirrors your Galaxy S5 phone onto the screen of your tablet so you can operate it directly from there. It lets you do everything your phone can do right on the tablet, including making and receiving calls, and you can transfer files too. It's too slow to actually be useful in most cases, so it basically amounts to yet another software feature that's more impressive in the showroom than it is for real humans. At this point, getting angry at Samsung for all these software add-ons is like getting angry at the allergies you get every spring. It's better than it used to be, it's still not fun to deal with, but you're never going to get it to stop. Of the two, I much prefer the 8.4 inch version. Android tablets work best at this portrait size and though the incredibly high screen resolution can make some things difficult to tap with your finger, the fact that it just barely fits in my back pocket makes it totally worth the trade-off. The 10.5 inch version starts at $499.99 and the smaller one is $399.99. That's the exact same price as the equivalent iPads. And Samsung has tried its hardest to match the iPads in every category. There's a bunch of hardware accessories like keyboards and cases, there's a ton of hand-waving software to distract you from the fact that iPads tend to have better apps. But at the end of the day, even though the Tab S has a better screen and is slightly lighter, I still prefer the iPad. These are probably the best tablets Samsung has ever made, but the vast majority of people would still be better off going with an iPad. Better luck with tablets number 12 and 13, Samsung.

The Google I.O. developer conference begins on Wednesday. It's the biggest nerd party of the year, but here's what the rest of us should expect. Right now, when you think of Android, you think of it on a phone, or maybe on a tablet, or if you're really crazy, you think of it on your face. This year, Google's hoping you're going to think of it in a whole lot of other places. The first place is on your wrist. Android Wear has already been announced, but at I.O., we should be seeing a lot more of it. The beautiful round Moto 360 and the utilitarian square LG G Watch should be taking center stage, and we're hoping to find out when they'll be released and see how Android works as a wearable. Samsung and HTC have said they're on board too, and who knows, they could surprise us with new hardware. But beyond the wrist, there's also cars. Google already has a partnership with Audi, GM, Honda, and more, but hopefully we'll learn what all that means this week. One hint, something called Google AutoLink, which apparently will let you control your Android phone from your dashboard or steering wheel. Next up, your TV. Google's had a really tough time getting the living room right. Google TV and the Nexus Q are notable failures, but it had a win with the Chromecast, and next up is Android TV. We're expecting an entirely new interface that's simpler, cleaner, and a whole lot more like regular Roku's or Apple TVs. It's less ambitious than what Google has tried before, but for TV, simpler is better. But what about those phones and tablets? It might be time for Google to release an entirely new version of Android. All the rumors out there right now are pretty difficult to stitch together, but it's a good bet that we should be seeing a big visual refresh. And maybe, finally, we'll see Android and Chrome OS get closer. There's also a good chance we'll see a new Nexus tablet or two this week. What else? It's tough to say. We've seen rumors of a touch-friendly version of Chrome OS, and that Chromebook Pixel is really overdue for a refresh. Google Plus seems to be less of a focus than it was before, especially since Senior Vice President Vic Condottro left the company. That doesn't mean we won't see something from the social network. Keep an eye out for photos. There's also that Nest acquisition to think about. Will it expand beyond smart thermostats and smoke detectors? Oh, one last thing. Don't count out weird Google. This is a company that's researching self-driving cars, internet-providing balloons, modular phones, artificial intelligence, and even ways to cheat death itself. CEO Larry Page once wished he could set up a special part of the planet for completely unregulated experimentation. And co-founder Sergey Brin once orchestrated a live skydiving event in the middle of a keynote. Basically, anything can and will happen at Google I.O., and we'll be there live to report it all.

T-Mobile began its Uncarrier initiative last year by dropping contracts and data limits and cementing itself as the bad boy of wireless carriers. CEO John Legere also helped with that. Last night, the company continued that tradition. These days, T-Mobile is trying every possible way to get customers to try out its service. The latest attempt is called Test Drive, and it's exactly what it sounds like. Anyone can now go into a T-Mobile store and walk out with an iPhone 5S that runs on T-Mobile's network and comes with the company's unlimited plan, free of charge. At the end of the week, people bring the phone back and either sign up for the plan or return it with what T-Mobile says are no strings attached. And who is providing all these iPhones to Test Drive? Apple. According to Legere, Apple is giving the iPhones to T-Mobile for free in support of the program. But Legere's Uncarrier announcements didn't stop there. Thanks to a new partnership between the phone carrier and streaming music service Rhapsody, T-Mobile customers will now have free access to internet radio starting June 22, albeit only customers that pay $80 or more a month get it for free. The rest of its customers will still be able to get access to it for $4 per month, and even non-T-Mobile customers can sign up for $4.99 a month. It's a clear attempt to take on services like Pandora, which claims to have 77 million active users as of last month. Unradio differs, though, by offering unlimited song skips, offline options, and no ads. It may not compare to companies like Spotify and Rdio, which offer the ability to listen to full albums consecutively or organize a library of music. But Unradio is really just a value add, giving prospective customers another reason to sign up with T-Mobile. The company also announced a new initiative called Music Freedom, which rids customers of data caps when using a select group of music streaming services. These include the aforementioned Rhapsody, Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, Slacker, Samsung's Milk, and the forthcoming streaming service from electronic music destination Beatport. It'll also be taking votes from customers through its website and on Twitter for other services to add to the list of exemptions. While this may all sound wonderful and right in line with T-Mobile's uncarrier image, it's not a good look for net neutrality because T-Mobile is essentially deciding which companies observe free data and which ones don't. You, who do you, you know. Hi, I'm Peter Bowman of The Verge. So the mobile, the music freedom thing is pretty interesting, but from a net neutrality perspective I think it's problematic to treat a certain kind of data differently than other data just because it's music. And I'm wondering if you guys thought through those issues and if as a, as a, you know, data first kind of company if you think that's a problem. So you actually think that somebody would have a net neutrality problem with you giving it to them for free? I think it's possible. I think you kind of got it. I think it's, yeah. I, I, I don't agree. Especially since, you know, if you have a different service that you want and it's being used we will put, it's a technical inclusion in the process. It takes a short period of time to get the appropriate site, get the URL, figure out how to white list it and get it on the network. So it's more so than that. Our idea is to give free streaming of music to everybody. And I, I don't, I don't foresee the uncarriers issues and what we're doing with the industry being other than something that the proponents of net neutrality would really be supportive of. Whether that's true or not, what's to stop T-Mobile from withholding music freedom from services that aren't in John Legend's good graces?

So like my dream last night was... Aliens invaded and Angelina Jolie was like a general and she just starts getting bigger and eventually she's like 800 pounds. And it got to the point where my only out was to jump in the toaster. Suddenly one of these prehistoric giant birds just comes up and just eats my mom. Graphically it just visually rips her apart. We had to deal with the repercussions of this like mangled body of my mother. And like walls start disappearing and like people are watching me. But at some point I was flying. You're just airborne and you came down and like landed on a ramp. And like Bob Balaban is standing there. And I'll just say, hey Bob. And then they kind of like did like a cross section so you see the dead baby in the center but there's like layers and layers of paint around it. And then there's this kind of weird crazy flip where like... I bring Ben Franklin with Time Machine into the present day and I'm just like showing him around. And he's like I was saying you know his mind is blown by everything. I showed him his Wikipedia article. He was like, yeah I had syphilis. What happens when we go to sleep at night? I've always been an advocate for a good night's rest. When most of my colleagues are still dashing off emails or enjoying a nightcap, I'm usually in bed by 10 to clock a solid nine hours. But beyond appreciating the benefits of rest, I have to admit that I'm also drawn to the fanciful imaginings that often come with it. Dreams. But not just any dreams. Dreams I can control. Dr. Andrew Varga is a neurologist at the NYU Sleep Disorder Center. And sleep is a really evolutionarily preserved phenomenon from creatures that you wouldn't even think would have sleep. Things like C. elegans, which is a little worm, to fruit flies. You get bombarded with all this experience during wakefulness. And sleep is thought to maybe help you sort of figure out like what's worth filtering out and what's worth kind of retaining. Do we know what is going on in the brain when someone has a lucid dream? Lucid dreaming differs from regular dreaming during REM in that certain frontal areas bilaterally seem to get much more activated during lucid dreaming. You know, the idea I think to some extent behind lucid dreaming is that you create a little bit of a hybrid state that doesn't otherwise exist. Part of your brain essentially remains asleep and remains dreaming, but part of the brain actually enters a state of wakefulness. Lucid dreaming. It's the holy grail of sleep. Imagine having complete control over the world around you. It's like the most immersive virtual reality experience and it doesn't cost you a dime. Just a warm blanket and lots of practice. I've always had weird dreams like most people and been curious about what they meant. Was my psyche trying to process some earlier life trauma or teach me important life lessons? Or was my gray matter simply performing various restorative functions with dreaming simply an arbitrary side effect? In trying to figure that out, I read a book about lucid dreaming written by Thomas Peisel, a very active lucid dreamer. And it made me think lucid dreaming could help me figure out what it all means. And even if it can't, well, it sounds pretty damn fun. Do you ever get confused about whether or not you are awake or asleep? Yes. Do you think you're awake right now? I am awake. Are you? Am I dreaming? I'm also dreaming, I think. I mean, what are some of the most intense or crazy or profound lucid dreams that you've had? I mean, do you remember them in a vivid way or do they tend to sort of fade? I was once told by an oak tree, I asked, how are you so strong? How can I be like you? And it said, build something that will outlast your body. I've gotten great advice from an eight-foot tall Abraham Lincoln. A whale made of light told me all matter has its origin in spirit. And it showed me that if you make changes here in the dream world, you can actually affect the physical world. These are two parts of the same whole. Also, if I said the word cozy spasm, does that mean anything to you? You know when you get into bed and it is so cozy that you just have to like kick your feet and like do a little freak out? Like it's so warm in the bed. That's the kind of spiritual practice I'm talking about. So I want to be a lucid dreamer. What do I need to do? Well, you already are a dreamer. So you got that down. I am. So knowing you are a dreamer, that every single night you have access to this rich inner world. The next thing is about remembering your dreams. So go to bed with a paper and pad next to you, next to your bed, wake up. And you know that you will have a dream. So keep that journal next to you. Perform techniques like the wake back to bed. So if you set your intention in the beginning of the night, I'm going to become lucid. You're not going to become into a dream for another 90 minutes. So the goal with the wake back to bed is to sleep for six hours straight. Wake up in the middle of the night or six hours later. And now you're going to stay up for about 15 minutes setting your intention that the next place I'll be will be a dream. And I will become lucid. And then you're going to go back to sleep. And essentially you're going to go right directly into this REM cycle. And with a strong intention you can carry right over into a lucid dream. And I would say more than all of that, it really is about waking up and being present more in your waking life. That presence will carry over into your dreams. Because that's essentially what you're looking for is to wake up to the present moment of a dream. So when you're doing these practices, yeah, get into your pajamas and get into that cozy bed. You know, you're not just a spasm. Cozy spasm. Okay, it's time to dream. For the sake of this experiment, I've also set up a camera in my room to document my dreams the second I wake up. Shadow wants to make the dream journal a mobile experience. While the app does allow me to easily type out my dreams, the dictation function fixes that middle of the night confusion that makes writing in a dream journal difficult. Shadow also pulls out keywords from my dream and creates a more visual experience. One that will help me train my brain to recognize patterns in my dreams. Good morning everyone. So I just woke up after falling back asleep for another hour. I had a really intense dream and I feel like it was the closest I've come to having a moment of lucidity in a dream. It was just like a normal dream. I'm already starting to lose it, but I was in a car, like a sports car. Next to someone that, a dude that like I knew but I don't know who it was. But in the dream I felt like I knew him. And he was speeding through an empty city and then I had this moment of like, where I just felt like really in the car. Like the wind, temperature from outside coming in and like feeling the car around my body. And then I was like, slow down and turn around and take me to this house. So he like turned around and parked in front of a two-story house and I got out of the car and then I woke up. So now I'm already forgetting the dream, but it felt like very, very real. It was really weird. So, a good step. It feels like I'm making progress, but I think it might be time for an upgrade. This is the Remy sleep mask. Created by Duncan Frazier and Steven McGuigan of Bitbanger Labs, the project was funded in 2012 through a successful Kickstarter campaign. Remy is a device that gives you this kind of predictable signal in your dreams. It flashes lights through your eyes while you're in a dream and you can kind of latch on to the light patterns and it helps you recognize the fact that you're dreaming. So you can say, oh, there's the lights. I'm in the middle of a dream. Like now I can start to control the world around me. Originally, and when we had started looking into it, the main method was sort of to brute force train your brain to always check whether you're in a dream. Throughout your day, you'd have some kind of action you would repeat. Look at a clock, look at text, count your fingers. Typically, if you did that enough during the day, you might do it in your dream. However, in the dream, you look at a clock and you look away and you look back, the time has changed or text is very hard to read. So what you were doing is you were creating almost like a tick or a habit in your waking life that would then carry over into your dreams and would cue you. And Remy kind of automates that reality check process. You don't have to train yourself necessarily all day to check your watch or read words. Remy continues giving you predictable signals that are of your own design. So when you first turn on Remy, you'll get a little signal, just a back and forth pattern to let you know that it's on and all the lights are working. At this point, it's in regular mode, which in default settings means it's going to just not do anything for five hours. After five hours, it's going to start showing you signals every 15 minutes with what, like a two-minute wiggle. Some of them are more jarring. You'll get just all full-bright in one eye flashing back and forth. And some of them are just more like fading back and forth like a Knight Rider type pattern. Most people say, I saw it manifested as some sort of other light source in a dream. They'll say, I was standing there and suddenly my kitchen lights started going like this or an ambulance went by. For me, I generally see them as lights, as lights overlaid in a dream, like nothing incorporated into the dream itself. There's still an interplay. It's not like suddenly nothing's there unless you will it to be there. It's more like you're in a movie, but all of a sudden you don't have to say your lines and take cues. You can just do whatever you want. I had talked about lucid dreaming. He talked about flying into space. I had just never done that. The next time I was in a lucid dream, I flew into space, but I hit a painted space ceiling, like a diorama. It was really fascinating just to see how I was able to do what I wanted to do to a point, and then there was this sort of third-party interpretation of that. It's like a Wile E. Coyote thing. Yeah, I think that's really interesting when you can kind of bounce against your subconscious like that. Good morning. Night two with the Remy mask. No lucid dreams, but I just woke up from a dream that I was getting ready to get married. I dreamt that I was in a house. It was like my house or a house I was familiar with, with Carl, and we were getting ready for our wedding because we were getting married that day, and we were making food. I don't know why, because it was some other wedding that is not the one we're planning. We were getting ready for our wedding, and then my oldest sister arrived, and I was all excited to see her. Then we were lying on the grass, and then my mom got there, which is unusual because she's dead. She was wearing the same clothes she always wore, which was total mom pants with the waist up really high, and then a tucked in button-up shirt. She was there. She got there, and we were really excited to see her, and she was lying on the grass with us, and then she turned over and gave me a really big hug, and then that was when my alarm went off, and I woke up and I was crying. So not the kind of dream I have every day. I don't have dreams about her a lot, and it was actually rather unpleasant. It was a very, very vivid dream. I feel like the last two nights with the mask, I don't know what it is, but the dreams have been pretty intense. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Using Remi and Shadow helped me to have more vivid, intense dreams, but I was still unable to have a lucid dream. That will come with weeks, months, or maybe even years of practice. Whether I'm using my smartphone and LED mask, or pen and paper, my brain is my only tool in the end. And while scientists continue to wrap their heads around what dreaming is and why we do it, developers and lucid dream enthusiasts will continue to do their part, creating whatever gadgets and apps are needed to better understand this bizarre, tranquil, even frightening experience that happens when we're trying to catch some Zs. In the meantime, I'll keep dreaming.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the main event! Good evening everybody! If they gave you any of those hologram cameras, you can point them at me and see if they'll tell you who I am. I hope you got the goodie bags. There should be an energy drink right next to the doobie in the bag. This group is not a plant. They're out of their goddamn mind. We make it so complicated. That is a complete crock of bullshit. Why don't AT&T and Verizon offer unlimited data plans? A. They can't. B. They're greedy bastards. See these maps? We keep seeing these maps. Are you sick and tired of these maps? It's so much faster than even the laboratory promises of whenever the hell Sprint finishes the Spark network. We are absolutely kicking their ass on both fronts. I'm absolutely out of my mind. $6 billion that creates this cacophony of the biggest bullshit in history. Maps and charts and promises and happy families running through the goddamn store. What the fuck do I care about all that? Every time we do something, people don't tell me, hey that's a great idea. These high and mighty duopolists that are raping you for every penny you have, if they could do something nice for you, they would. The hackers hate you. I promised myself I wasn't going to be angry today, so I'm going to be happy. The last time I had a seven night stand was approximately never. I don't give a crap if you like Spotify, Rapsody, Pandora, iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, Slacker, Beatport, Milk. I don't care. You're going to use beats. Every goddamn note you listen to, including the ads, we're going to charge you for. And that guy that sings Happy That Makes Me Sick is going to come in and you're going to listen to him for hours until you stab somebody. Why? Because we can. I have two quick answers. I don't give a shit and I'll celebrate. Everything we do is forever. We will not stop. I can go out to the bar with my best friend, me. I can order another round for both of us. I think I've made my comments clear about the young guy in the AT&T family that was searching porn. We're not trying to make money on this. How many of you right now here use other than T-Mobile? Are the rest of you stupid? The biggest question I usually get in these events, we usually end with, which is, is that it? What I'd like to do is answer the question by telling you, yes. There's so many things that I could say, Roger. So many. You going to stay for the concert tonight? Perfect. Perfect. Us old guys got to stick together.

This is the Fire Phone, Amazon's latest addition to its hardware lineup. In some ways, it's like any other smartphone. It has a 4.7-inch 720p display, much like the Moto X. It has a Snapdragon 800 processor, just like the HTC One. It's $199 on a two-year contract, just like the iPhone and just about every other smartphone on the market. But Amazon will throw in a free year of Prime. It has a 13-megapixel camera, which Jeff Bezos compared to both the iPhone 5S and the Samsung Galaxy S5. On specs alone, it's a nice smartphone, just like any other smartphone. And it's hardly top of the line. But the Fire Phone isn't just like any other smartphone. That's why everyone at today's event got a copy of Mr. Pine's Purple House, Bezos' favorite children's book. The Fire Phone is different from every phone on the block, and it's different in some crazy ways. Obviously, the most talked-about feature of the new phone has to be its 3D interface. Amazon calls it Dynamic Perspective, and it allows visuals on the display to have more depth. They can barely pop out, but rather move farther in. Thanks to four front-facing cameras, as well as a motion sensor, the Fire Phone can constantly track a user's head and sense its depth in order to redraw images quickly. You can tilt the Fire Phone in different directions to see more information from apps, play games, resize images, scroll through websites without using your fingertips, and most impressively, move various layers of the user interface around as though they were physical objects in front of you. The Fire Phone also boasts an impressive camera complete with a 13-megapixel sensor, a fast F2 aperture, and optical image stabilization. The phone even has its own dedicated camera button for quick and easy access. Amazon also expects users to take a lot of photos. That's why the company is offering unlimited photo and video storage in Amazon Cloud Drive for free. While Amazon has stressed the sound quality of the Fire Phone, more often than not, you'll probably be using headphones. That's why the Fire Phone is paired with earbuds that are supposedly tangle-proof, with flat cables and magnetic buds that stick together. And yes, it's got mic and buttons for playback control and volume. And if this really is the panacea of tangle-free earwear, well, Amazon will sell them separately for $24.99. No word on how compatible they'll be with other devices, however. The Fire Phone's second screen feature allows you to fling any video you're watching from the phone's display to your Amazon Fire TV. It's a clear counter to Apple's AirPlay, and another way to get people more invested in Amazon's hardware ecosystem. Meanwhile, Amazon's also brought its X-Ray feature from the Kindle Fire tablets into its phone, letting you click on an actor to learn more about them from their IMDb page. By the way, Amazon also owns IMDb. Finally, Amazon's ASAP feature attempts to predict what video you'll watch next on Prime Instant and pre-caches them for you, so video plays immediately if you choose it. Mayday is Amazon's way of providing help through instant tech support over video chat 24-7 from the device itself. Mayday was first introduced late last year with the Kindle Fire HDX. It works on Wi-Fi and cellular. Amazon is trying to create a seamless experience for its products, but the infomercial-like demo video beforehand drove home one idea. Using a phone is really, really hard, and you're going to need someone to hold your hand. According to AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph De La Vega, Mayday customer service can offer a, quote, warm handoff to AT&T's technical support. Of course, once you fully enter AT&T's world, all bets are off. But the feature that makes the phone truly an Amazon phone is Firefly. It's so important that it even gets its own button. Amazon is always focused on making its devices a portal into its online store. Now that the company has its hands on your smartphone, it's making access to its store easier than ever. With one press, the Fire Phone boots up its camera to see what you're seeing and listen to what you're listening to. If Firefly sees a barcode, a button will pop up, allowing you to buy the item on Amazon. If Firefly hears a song, it'll prompt you to check it out on Amazon Music or buy tickets on StubHub. If Firefly hears Game of Thrones, it will show you the show's IMDB entry and then, of course, offer options to buy or rent more episodes on Amazon. The service recognizes 100 million items and purchasing them happens with just a simple tap. But while the Fire Phone is unique, sometimes that isn't for the better. There's no Bluetooth low-energy support, which means some wearables won't work. The Fire Phone runs on a forked version of Android, which means it doesn't have Google apps like Gmail and it doesn't have the Android Play Store. Amazon's own app store has over 240,000 apps, but that's just a sliver of what Android or iPhone app stores have. As with Kindle Fire and Fire TV, this phone is first and foremost a portal to Amazon services and especially its store. Remember, every picture is one click away from being an online order with free two-day shipping.

We're here in Seattle, Washington, Amazon's hometown, where CEO Jeff Bezos just unveiled the Fire Phone. So the biggest whizbang feature on the Fire Phone is dynamic perspective, which isn't as gimmicky as 3D, but it does enable some neat features. You can sort of peek around the corners of things. It allows you to do tilt scrolling in the browser and in eBooks. So that's what you see on the 720p screen, and it's run by having four cameras in each corner that actually tracks your head in space. Beyond that, it's a relatively standard Android smartphone. It's got a home button, it's got Gorilla Glass on the front and on the back, where we've also got a 13 megapixel camera, rubberized sides, stereo speakers, and a dedicated button on the side, which can launch the camera. Or if you hold it down, it launches this feature called Firefly. Now Firefly is pretty cool. You can stick anything in front of it, and it'll automatically detect it and tell you what it is, and then you can slide up and do stuff with it. And since it's Amazon, the thing you're going to want to do with a lot of it is buy it. So you can go right in there, you can buy it, you can start radio stations with it with third party apps and whatever else. Some of the other features here, if we look at this display perspective stuff, you can see when I tilt the phone, it starts popping up information from Yelp on the different restaurants. And I can actually just move my head to have that stuff appear too, instead of just tilting the phone. That's pretty neat. So the dynamic perspective stuff also comes into play in games. So while you're looking at a game, you can actually peek around the level to sort of get a sense of what you're going to need to do when you start running around the screen. A few of the other features on the device, if you give it a quick shake over, it'll jump you into notification settings where you can also start Mayday, which is instant video chat help from Amazon's customer service. And it also is instant help from AT&T's customer service, which is great because AT&T's customer service really isn't. There's also neat little panels. There's a universal notification or navigation thing on this side. And these panels here, you've got weather and other bits of information on this side. And overall, the phone, it feels a little bit thick, but the screen looks great despite the fact that it's only 720p. It feels really sturdy despite the fact that it's glass in the front and the back. The rubberized sides really help you grip it. And overall, it's a pretty straightforward kind of Android phone. There's some neat features. It's got really big blocky graphics here. But if you love Amazon, you might like this phone. Otherwise, you might be looking for something a little bit more powerful. It's available exclusively on AT&T. It's $199 on contract. Or you can also get it with Next for, I think, $27 a month. And for right now, Amazon is also giving you a free year of Prime, which is worth $100. So that's not a terrible deal.

So like my dream last night was... Aliens invaded. And like walls start disappearing. My only out was to jump in the toaster. But at some point... You see the dead baby in the center. And I woke up feeling pretty good about it.

If you want a cheap laptop for just doing the basics, you should look seriously at a Chromebook. For a lot of people it might be better than a Mac or a PC, but there are plenty of options with that multicolored Chrome logo in the corner. So how do you pick the perfect one? Chromebooks are always cheap and they always run the exact same software. So when you're looking for one, you should really pay attention to a few other things. Battery life is key and it varies wildly among different models. So does performance, depending on the processor you get. And even for $300 you should still expect a good keyboard and trackpad, and good and sturdy industrial design. After all, you do have to use the thing, even if it's cheap. There is no perfect Chromebook yet, no wonderful mix of everything that I want. But Dell's Chromebook 11 comes the closest. It's an 11.6 inch laptop for $299 with all the bells and whistles a good Chromebook needs. An Intel processor helps it run fast, as does 4 gigs of RAM. Having an Intel chip is really important in a Chromebook. It's really nicely designed, a matte gray box that weighs just under 3 pounds and seems to take a travel-induced beating pretty well. It has a good keyboard and trackpad despite the smaller size, and the best thing about it is it'll last you an entire workday or more. Good performance, good design, good battery. Virtually no other Chromebook can claim to have all three. Fair warning though, the Chromebook 11 does have the same problem most other Chromebooks do. Its screen isn't particularly impressive. It's 11.6 inches, 1366 by 768, with a giant bezel and a lot of reflections, but it does get the job done. And if you're going to sacrifice something to get this price, getting only an average display actually is better than settling for subpar performance or a frustrating keyboard and trackpad. I'm still waiting on the perfect Chromebook, the one that does everything exceptionally well and still costs $300. But until that exists, the Dell Chromebook 11 is the best one you can buy. The Samsung Chromebook 2 is the next best thing though, and it's this close to being the right thing. The 13-inch model has a high-res 1080p screen that is, frankly, still a tiny bit washed out and muted, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a better display on a $399 laptop anywhere. And the Chromebook 2 has a good keyboard and trackpad, plus a really beautiful design, that curved wedge you'll also find on Samsung's high-end Ativ laptops. Its body is a little plasticky, and it has this faux-stitched leather that I'm not wild about. But it's light and thin and sturdy, and looks more thoughtfully designed than just about any other Chromebook. Its battery also easily lasts all day. But the Chromebook 2 runs a Samsung Exynos processor, the same one you'll find in some of Samsung's tablets. That means it works like, well, a tablet. It's good enough, as long as you're only doing one thing at a time, but as soon as you even try to load a couple of browser tabs simultaneously, the thing really starts to chug. As soon as you pick up any other laptop, the Chromebook 2 just starts to feel slow. Too slow. There's a smaller Chromebook 2 as well, an 11-inch model, but it's not worth buying. It's only slightly cheaper than the 13-inch model, only slightly lighter, only slightly smaller, and it has a much worse 1366x768 display, and a more cramped keyboard and trackpad. The size and price savings just aren't worth the sacrifice, especially when it still comes with exactly the same performance problems. Among the larger screen Chromebooks out there, the Toshiba Chromebook is one of the best. It's good-looking, almost like a MacBook Air, though it's a bit deceiving. It's a little flimsy and not as well made as I'd like it to be. It has solid performance thanks to Intel's Haswell processors. I really can't stress enough how important those are in a Chromebook. And it has decent battery life, too. But it has a big, low-res display that is average at best and pixely and frustrating at worst. It's a decent option, especially at $299, but you can do better. Same goes for the HP Chromebook 14, which has the odd distinction of being the largest Chromebook on the market. It comes in cool colors, has solid performance, it also has good battery life and a nice keyboard and trackpad. But it has one of the worst displays you'll find on a Chromebook, and it's both heavy and a little bit cheaply made. Chromebooks are made to be portable, to go everywhere with you. And this is not that machine. That focus on portability is why most Chromebooks have 11.6-inch screens. Of those, the Acer C720p is one of the best. It's not exactly attractive, at all, but it has everything else going for it. Good battery, good performance, decent touchscreen, usable and portable. If it weren't for the Dell Chromebook 11, this might be the choice, but Dell gives all that plus a design that doesn't look like it was hacked together in five minutes out of spare parts. There's also the Acer C720, which is the exact same thing but without a touchscreen. It's cheaper and gets slightly longer battery life, but it's basically the same proposition. I still hate the design, but if you want a dirt-cheap Chromebook that works, this is probably the one to get. The HP Chromebook 11 is sort of the default Chromebook. Google likes to talk about it. But it's not very good. It's cheap and plasticky and slow. I like its super vibrant display, which proves 1366x768 doesn't have to be a bad thing. And I love the fact that it charges with a USB cable. But this looks, feels, and operates like the cheapest Chromebook on the market. And it isn't. So don't buy it. And then there's the Chromebook Pixel. This is the gold standard, what all other Chromebooks are supposed to aspire to. With an incredible 12.5 inch, 2560x1700 touchscreen, a fast processor, an outrageously beautiful design that's as nice as any laptop on the planet, and a great keyboard and trackpad. Oh, except that it's $1299, more expensive than basically all of these other Chromebooks combined. It's a wonderful idea and a totally ridiculous thing to spend your money on. It's really amazing how far Chromebooks have come in the last few years. They used to be just a web browser, but now for a lot of people they're fully capable of replacing your PC. They're getting better all the time, and companies are still looking for that perfect balance of performance and quality and price. But these are finally real, viable options for everyone. And if you're in the market, you can't do any better right now than the Dell Chromebook 11. It does everything right, and it only costs $299. That's pretty hard to beat.

Jack White is a platinum selling musician whose videos garner millions of views on YouTube. But he's also an independent artist, and as such, he could disappear from YouTube in some countries in a matter of days. Here's what's happening. According to the Financial Times, YouTube is preparing an ad-free premium streaming music service, which it will begin testing internally with plans to launch later this summer. As a part of that, YouTube is creating new licensing deals with music labels. And according to YouTube's head of content and business operations, if labels don't come to terms, then YouTube will block their videos from the site in their respective countries. And not just the new premium tier, but its ad-supported parts as well. So far, record labels representing 90% of the music industry have agreed to the new terms. But that leaves 10% that are holding out for a better deal. So who's in that 10%? Independent labels like Domino and XL. And between the two, they've got some pretty big names. Others have previously mentioned Jack White, as well as Adele, The Arctic Monkeys, M.I.A., Tyler the Creator, and Vampire Weekend. A source familiar with the situation has confirmed to The Verge that most of the details in the Financial Times story were accurate. YouTube doesn't want to launch a paid service and then be forced to show some videos in ad-supported mode. Or offer users the ability to take videos offline but not be able to offer that for big-name artists. It's a tough situation. YouTube is taking a very hard line approach, but a lot can change between now and the launch of its new service. YouTube is far and away the world's biggest online video platform, a principal driver of attention is singles, and behind radio is the biggest discovery platform for new music. So, it's no wonder YouTube thinks it can play a little hardball.

I'm Ellis with The Verge, and this is our first look at Facebook's Snapchat killer, Slingshot. Slingshot is a lot like Snapchat. A camera screen is the first thing you see when you open the app. Tap to take a photo and hold to take a video. You can caption your shots and even draw on them using various colors and brush sizes. Pick a few friends, hit sling, and your photo or video is sent. It all seems very familiar. Except in Slingshot, you can't view shots from friends until you send them a shot back first. By the end, their locked shots become unlocked and you can view them. The mechanic doesn't make much sense unless you think about Slingshot the way Facebook does, not as a messaging app like Snapchat, but as an app for status updates and for sharing casual photos and videos to lots of people at the same time. In this way, each shot is like a status update, but is also a nudge to get friends to show you what they're up to. Flipping through the feed of shots you've unlocked feels like an idealized version of Facebook where every shot is full screen and meant just for you. You can tap on one to take a quick reaction shot or make a text comment. And like Snapchat, every shot and reaction is gone forever once you've swiped it away. But like conventional status updates on Facebook, these posts don't feel urgent like texts or snaps since you can't view them on demand. So what's the real difference between the two ephemeral apps? Slingshot includes a select all button, something Snapchat diehards have been begging for. And Slingshot is certainly noisier. Slingshot's pay to play mechanic might be too confusing to get your friends to join. It feels weird to get a push notification for a message and be unable to read it until you take the time to share something back. And what if I have nothing to share? Facebook doesn't call Slingshot a messaging app, but it looks so much like Snapchat that it's easy to forget how you're supposed to be using Slingshot. Yet the app shows that Facebook isn't afraid to experiment with new ways to let you share, and new ways to incentivize sharing beyond Facebook proper.

So this is E-boy. Wait, hold on. This is E-boy. There are three of them. They're computer artists or artists that use computers? I think we are three guys that work with pixels and make images. Images like a chair or that robot from Robocop, some nude hippies, a cool car. In the end, we do everything with a pen tool. So it's a very, I think, the most basic tool in Photoshop is used to draw each pixel. The size of the pen tool is just one pixel, one by one. Everything is made like this, one pixel at a time. So it's really labor intensive. But they've been doing it for nearly 20 years. So they've made a lot of stuff. Like a ton of stuff. So here they are again, E-boy. Freeze frame. Sven, Kai and Stefan. They all met here in Berlin, the capital of Germany. Home of the Brandenburg Gate. The Berlin Wall. Sausage Walkers. And world class graffiti. Stefan and Sven have been friends since they were teenagers. Then when they met Kai in the mid 90s, the group was complete. Between the three of them, they've made images of Honda, Adobe, Yahoo, Total, Groove Armada, Uniqlo, Mountain Dew, Asics, Xbox, Lacoste, DKNY, Haribo, HBO. With Robot we work with Mike a lot, Paul Smith, Adidas as well with Coca Cola, New York Times magazine, Wired magazine. But that's just to pay the rent. I mean what they're really excited about are these giant pixel cities they build in their free time. They're pixel versions of real cities. Because people know New York for example and they see an interpretation of New York and that's always interesting to see. Something you know how it's seen from a different side. They've actually built a lot of cities. Berlin, Venice, London, Cologne, New York, Tokyo, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Paris, Rio and Marseille. And they call them Pixoramas. Pixelized stylized versions of cities. Working in their free time each one takes two or three years to complete. And as of today they've created over 9000 little parts. We have a huge database with thousands of objects in it and everything can be reused. The pixels are modular. Modular, now this is the key. So you can very easily reuse pixels and combine them. So like you can get this car and then take this guy out and put this other guy in or take away his eye or whatever. Also everything is isometric. So the things that are in front have the same size as the things that are in the back. So I can take this topless lady and have her move all the way over to this construction site or have her hang out at this rooftop barbecue. You can move her wherever you want and she'll always be topless, always the right scale. This is a donor. It's a lot like a Euro but it has like different vegetables, different sauces. Donors are delicious. There's even a donor place in their Berlin pixelrama. Look at all this stuff. Look at all the detail. Why would anyone devote their life to building something like this? What's funny is that at home we had a picture from Bruegel. Do you know Bruegel? And I grew up with it and it's a scene with a lot of people. Of course, Bruegel. All those little details, that little universe frozen in time. Could it be that when Kai was a kid, life outside his home was too complex, full of confusion and constantly changing? But the world of the painting never changed. He could examine it, understand it and maybe now that's what he does with our world. To be honest, I don't think it has anything to do with what we do. But I don't think so. It turns out it was more practical than that. For example, you design something on a computer, a layout for an image. You just do something on your screen. Then when you go to print, you have to deal with a different color space. You have CMYK versus RGB on the screen. Then you have to deal with the printer who uses some kind of special inks. And then you have to deal with the guy that puts more ink or less ink. And so the result for me never was, I was never happy about anything I printed. I could live with it, but more often than not I was like... I like to make a thing and then that's the thing. But the bad thing about making one thing is that you cannot copy it. So I wanted to become an artist at some point, but I didn't want to make stuff that I have to sell to live and then that guy puts it on his wall, which might be nice or not. I would never see that stuff again. I hated to leave it alone. So that was the reason why digitally it was so extremely important being able to share without having to leave your work. They say a common sign that a pixarama isn't complete is if you look around it and you can't find anywhere you'd like to be. We have a theory that there has to be a place where you have to be able to relax. So if everything is just in your face, I don't want to be there. So if you see that we cannot go into it, it might be a source of a problem. So for example here you have this scene in a café where the guys are sitting with the computers and that's for example a place I think everyone from us would love to be there. There are all these Apple employees working, the blue shirts, they're having their lunch, I don't know, their coffee. But they didn't always have genius lunches. I mean up until the fall of the Berlin Wall, both Sven and Stefan lived in East Berlin. When you are a teenager and you see that you can't go through the wall, you see the wall every day and you can't travel. And you see it on television, all the cool stuff. All the bands played in West Berlin so you could hear it on the radio but you couldn't go there. But we had some cool stuff going on too, like East German bands playing in churches and stuff in really strange places. It was very cool as well but that weren't the bands we wanted to see in the first place. But growing up in East Germany was pretty normal. It was a bit like a surreal moment when all of a sudden you can go to the other side of the city. Before it was like a secret hidden world and now it was just possible and it took a while to believe that it's now normal. For me it was like, after the wall came down, there was advertising everywhere. So back then in East Germany it was really black and white, everything was kind of the same. I remember I first went to a supermarket and it was like a gallery. All those cereal packages and boxes and it was so exciting, just a really cheap supermarket here in this area. It seems like everything they're excited about eventually gets immortalized in pixels and given a home in their cities. And they're pretty much excited about everything. For us it's very important to have time to play really. We are really lucky to have met. You see it on bands sometimes, it's just luck that somehow they met and it was a good fit. For us it's just good that we are happy and we can live from it and we enjoy our work and it's great, I guess.

The Amazon phone is coming. That's almost certainly what the company is going to announce at its big press event this Wednesday. If the months, the years really, of rumors are true, here's what we can expect. Much like its Kindle Fire tablets, the Amazon smartphone is expected to run a forked version of Android. Amazon even has its own App Store, which it says now has more than 240,000 apps and games. And rumors have long pointed to some sort of glasses-free 3D user interface. Supposedly, the phone's interface will move as the user tilts their head around and may even display more information about something when the phone is tilted. In fact, Amazon's teaser video all but confirms that with various scenes of head wobbling. No one's quite sure how the 3D technology will work or what it'll look like on the phone, but leaked photos suggest the device will track your head using upwards of four front-facing cameras. As far as specs go, BGR, which also posted the leaked pictures, says it has a 4.7-inch 720p display and a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. That would put it right in line with last year's Moto X, which is a decidedly mid-tier phone. Of course, the 3D might end up being nothing more than just a novelty. Where Amazon can really stand out is on cost. Amazon's always priced its devices aggressively, foregoing profits on the hardware in exchange for more people using Amazon services. It already uses advertising to offset the cost of its Kindle lineup and has experimented with interest-free payment plans for its Kindle Fire tablets. The Kindle Fire is nothing if not a portal to Amazon's storefront. It's a way to use its multitude of services like Prime Instant Video and now streaming music. But tablets are secondary devices, the ones you use when lying around the house or traveling. With a smartphone, Amazon could own your primary device, the one that's always in your pocket and constantly being used. All of this leads me to Mr. Pine's Purple House. Amazon sent attendees a copy of the book ahead of the event with a note from Jeff Bezos, who called it his favorite childhood book. It's certainly one of the weirdest gestures we've ever seen from a tech company. In the story, Mr. Pine had a little white house that looked exactly like the other 50 white houses on the street. So Mr. Pine paints his house purple. And while it inspires every other homeowner to paint their house different colors, nobody else chooses purple. So what's Amazon trying to say here? That it's found a way to stand out from the competition? That people will try to copy them but won't be the same? Maybe this whole event is just going to be a live reading of Mr. Pine's Purple House while members of the press actually paint Jeff Bezos' house. Either way, we wouldn't miss it. It's going to be something.

It's Friday June 13th 2014. I'm Michael Shane and this is 90 seconds on the verge Nintendo is back on top at e3 this year. Stop stop. We can't do this anymore. What are you talking? Can everyone come in please? Can everyone yeah, please? Oh you want us to do the story? Nintendo is back on top after e3 this year after a lackluster performance at e3 last year. No no no no news Stop this has to end guys our whole lives have been this show We have literally only lived in 90 second intervals. He's right I mean haven't you ever wondered why we're forced to do the news in 90 seconds? I mean don't you ever wonder who controls this guys look at our production crew what it's just John and Christian look again Oh my god Our time is almost up guys. It's not up actually there's a world outside the 90th second And we're gonna find out what that is right now Has anybody been watching the World Cup? It's been a brilliant journey of self-awakening any last wishes? I don't want to dream any longer I want to experience real life. I wish you well Ross It's been you all along I'm ready And it's called 90 seconds on the verge not loving the name I do like the idea of a daily video Let's just call it verge update and don't worry about how long they are. I gotta go Put this light here

So this is Eboy.

I'm Addie Robertson with The Verge, getting ready to crash some cars. Ubisoft's The Crew might seem like a standard E3 driving demo, and it wasn't high on my list of games. But that all changes when you're inside a $35,000 race car simulator. SimCraft is a company dedicated to high-end simulation machines. There are various systems for different game genres, but the Apex 3 GT was designed to feel like a sports car, even if it looks more like the car from Death Proof. It made an appearance at E3 last year, but this was the first time I got to check it out. When you first get into the SimCraft, it's a lot like the seat, pedal, and steering wheel system you'd find running Cruisin' USA in an arcade. Fundamentally, that's what it is. But the real story is the suspension and force feedback system that can make you feel like you're violently crashing into a tree or pushing the limits of your car. It adds another layer to racing games, since you have to compensate for how your steering wheel shakes when you go too fast, or the sudden shock of spinning around. SimCraft isn't the kind of thing that's going to show up on Kickstarter for a few hundred dollars. Its creator says individual fans have bought outfits, but he describes it as a labor of love, and it's the kind of big, expensive system that really exists for amusement parks and events like this. It may not use gloves or goggles, but it shares a common goal with the virtual reality systems I've spent most of E3 testing, making you feel like you're really part of a game.

Amazon is entering the streaming music business. Coincidentally, it's one of the only industries the company hasn't publicly pissed off this week. I'm Brian Bishop coming to you from E3 2014, and this is 90 Seconds on the Verge. Amazon calls it Prime Music, and as the name suggests, it'll be bundled in the company's pre-existing $99 annual membership program. Prime already includes free two-day shipping, Kindle eBook lending, and Prime Instant Video. The last one has been growing substantially as of late. But while Prime Music is a value add, it's not at the level of its competition just yet. Amazon promises one million songs will be available at launch for streaming. That number is super tiny compared to Spotify and Beats, each of which claim to have around 20 million tracks. Prime Music will also have hundreds of curated playlists if you just can't decide on your own. Prime Music has one glaring omission right now, and that's Universal. It's the largest music company in the world, and it means no U2, no Taylor Swift, no Jay-Z, and no Kanye. Discussions are said to be ongoing. But Universal is just one of many major companies that Amazon has been beefing with, and it's not even remotely the most public spat. Amazon and book publisher Hachette have been in a very public ugly feud lately. It seems Amazon is now purposely delaying customer orders of Hachette books by weeks. Affected authors include James Patterson, Malcolm Gladwell, and Stephen Colbert. Amazon seems to be plying similar tactics to Warner Brothers. It's no longer taking pre-orders for movies like The Winter's Tale and The Lego Movie. For more on Amazon, check out The Verge. Coming up tomorrow. What begins at the 90th second shall end there, and what ends there shall begin once more. What the fuck are you naked again? It's time to wake up, Brian. Wake up.

We're here at E3 2014 and really all anybody wants to talk about is big games, but this is one of the coolest things for little games. This is the Razer Jungle Cat. It's a game controller for iOS and those have been kind of much talked about but haven't really caught on that much. But this actually seems to be one of the best ones. For starters, it's not huge. It's about the size, you know, it's twice the size of the iPhone. You can see you've got, it's basically like having a really giant battery case on your iPhone. But instead, it slides out of the bottom and you get the D-pad and the buttons and everything's a little shallow and not, you know, the greatest controller you've ever used. But it seems to work fine and it maps to a lot of different games. Razer has a bunch here that it works on, but there's also a huge store. And Apple has certified a lot of these games to work with any controller, including this one. And so you've immediately got access to all kinds of different controllers. And you can map the different controls, you can map the sensitivity to however you want. And it's pretty full-featured actually, like a bunch of games that I didn't necessarily expect would work, seem to work. Nothing actually changes on the screen. So if you have other controls that exist on the screen, they don't exactly go away. And things where you need to move the screen and all that don't really change. But when you have a game like Limbo, for instance, where you're just on the screen and you move with touch or tilting, having a screen and controls like this tends to work really well. So this, I'm still not totally convinced is the right idea, even an iOS game controller like this, but Razer's really good at making gaming peripherals. And this is about as good as any game controller I've seen yet. So of course the first thing we asked is why a D-pad and not analog sticks? And it turns out the answer is basically for space. They wanted to keep this small, to keep it as something that you don't ever have to take off. You can access the power and the headphone jack right with the case on, and that's not true of most cases. But they had to make some sacrifices, and the analog stick was definitely one of those. I'd rather have it, but the D-pad seems to work alright. It's the Razer Jungle Cat. It's $99. It's going to be available in July. And if you play Asphalt 8, it's kind of a cool accessory to have with it.

For as long as humans have made music, we have been dissatisfied. For hundreds of years, musicians have searched for the next sound, the next evolution that could change everything. And more often than not, the solutions and foibles have been basically technological in nature. Technological advancement in music has always been a fraught process. Sometimes it's an overt success with lasting impact, like when Beethoven decided to add trombones to the orchestra for his 5th symphony. And sometimes the influence of technology in music leads to mixed results. Just ask any Rush fan about the 1982 album Signals. I've been privileged to perform in some of the world's most famous concert halls, but it's always just been me and my clarinet and anywhere from a few to a hundred or so colleagues. Traditional classical music, and I do mean the stuff written by dead white guys, is, by definition, unplugged. I've always been interested in the interplay between technology and music. Electronics found their way into the symphony orchestra as early as the 1920s, and after all you can't put on a great rock show without a backline and the support crew of techs and engineers it requires. The great jazz drummer Freddie Gruber once said, you can have a beautiful body and look marvelous, but if you're not breathing, it's not alive. So what happens when circuits replace physics in musical performance? Is it still alive? Martin Yee is a drum tech based in New York City. Without people like him, rock shows simply don't happen. Martin's been on the road with some of the biggest acts in the world, including my personal favorite Rush. His job is to bridge the gap between technology and talent. So you've been doing this for a long time. You've worked with Rush. You've worked with Rush. You've worked with Rush, Sting, Seal, all kinds of people. How was technology different when you first started helping people with their drums and now? Right after the 90s, we went through this whole thing of sampling and triggering. Check one two in the house. Right on. We're ready to go. It's how you embrace it just like anything else. Can you use technology to make a drum kit simpler? Oh yeah, absolutely. Tony Royster, for example, he shows how to incorporate in a basic five piece kit all the sounds you need just by changing samples. So do you ever worry about the long term impact of technology on drumming or music in general? Because it's sort of the responsibility of players and musicians to keep the humanity in the music making. I feel it's always humans playing the instruments. It's always, it's kind of like the whole Matrix thing. Either you let the machines take over or you, or the humans take over. I spoke with Kenny Arnoff about it. He's one of the top session players ever. And I asked him, so do you think it's ever going to change? He's like, I don't think it's ever going to change. If they want me to play, I'm still going to play. Technology in music advances because it has to. Musicians demand it. Jordan Rudis, the keyboard player from Prog Rock Mainstay Dream Theater, has always been interested in what the future holds. He even develops his own music making apps and has worked with Rollie on an instrument called the Seaboard Grand. I spent my whole life learning how to play the piano. I went to Juilliard when I was nine years old. My upbringing was very, very serious. As a matter of fact, I was a closet improviser. I would go and I'd play my Beatles songs and my jazz music. I'd bring the kids into like a practice room and say, shh, don't tell anybody, but here we are. Right. But really, my focus was to be a closet pianist. Learning the piano was everything. But as I got older, I started to become more interested in sound and synthesizers and different possibilities. Eventually, I ended up leaving Juilliard and looking for other ways to express music. When you first started using technology to augment or enhance or to evolve what you were doing with acoustic instruments, were there new skills that you had to learn? Did you have to make sacrifices or was it a whole new world? I can remember vividly when my high school friends brought over a Moog Sonic 6 keyboard to my house and also my mother's face when she saw my friends carrying this because she was like, what is that? It was like the devil has arrived at our house. But we brought it into my room and I plugged in headphones at the time. And it's a traditional kind of keyboard, but it has a pitch wheel on it. And the pitch wheel discovery was major. I started to move the pitch wheel and I went, oh my god, I think my brain literally exploded. And I realized then and over the years how important pitch is and amplitude. The two very basic things, controlling amplitude in real time and controlling pitch, is a major part of expression. Growing up with a piano, which is you play the note and you're not changing the pitch. What you play is what you get, which is so different than so many other instruments like a guitar where you play a string and you can add vibrato or a wind instrument like a clarinet again or a saxophone or anything like that. Pitch is such an important part of music making. When you think about guitar players, you look at Jeff Beck. Steve Vai. You think about their vibrato, the speed of their vibrato, the way they attack the note, the amplitude, it's everything. It creates the style. So here we are with the C-board and as a keyboard player, I'm able to do that. I sit here today in front of a Steinway piano and this C-board is really pretty amazing. Although I've been involved in the exploration of sound and all different kinds of ways to make sounds and starting out as a classical pianist, this is really the first time that all that exploration has come to a point where I can really use my piano skill and take it to another level musical expression wise. So tell me at a technical level how this instrument works. The C-board is basically poured silicone and underneath the silicone are these sensors. So when your finger lands on the surface, it's actually triggering the sensor that's below it and the sensor will recognize position and will also recognize pressure. So as I press into it, it knows that. And what's really cool and very different than traditional synthesizers these days is that every note that I play is an independent message that goes out. You can bend one note, not the other. You can play a three note chord here and then just slide down with this one. This enables keyboard players or anybody who is familiar with the keyboard as a concept to add the kind of expression that we would want from a musical instrument. Technology is at a point right now where we can really measure touch and the experience and make it so sensitive, really as sensitive as we want and it keeps on getting better. It's important for people to realize that technology is no longer this kind of distant robotic type of thing where it lacks expression. We're actually becoming closer to the organic, physical, real human experience with instruments like this than ever before. And that's the whole point. Instruments exist because the human voice alone has never been enough to create the sounds musicians hear in their heads. That's really the beginning and the end of the lifelong struggle that is music. And no matter what, technology can't replace collaboration. Music has always been a conversation that happens among human beings. It's as true now as it was 300 years ago. Artistic genius alone cannot overcome physics. But genius is often the impetus for technological breakthroughs. The keyboards that Jordan Rudess plays today exist because composers like Mozart and Beethoven needed more from their instruments, and their aspirations and achievements motivated craftsmen to push the envelope. Technology isn't a substitute for musicianship. It's a tool. Electronic instruments have potential, maybe even great potential, and who knows what the next truly great Canadian power trio will come up with. But in the end, technology makes noise. And turns it into music.

TweetDeck today suffered a major security bug. Amazing what some people can do in 140 characters. I'm Adrienne Jeffries and this is 90 Seconds on the Verge. Today, a newly discovered vulnerability in some versions of TweetDeck allowed attackers to remotely execute JavaScript code. It seems to have started innocuously enough, with users seeing random pop-up windows reading YO or please close TweetDeck. But some coders soon realized how to trigger the retweet command, causing more TweetDeck users to spread the code further. Many popular accounts were hit, including the New York Times, Central Park, and the BBC. Soon after the news broke, TweetDeck took the service down as it assessed the security issue. Service returned an hour later after TweetDeck said it had verified the security fix. Okay, so what exactly is going on here? In short, the issue has to do with cross-site scripting, or XSS. Let's say someone writes a bit of JavaScript code into a tweet. A Twitter client is supposed to convert that into harmless plain text. But something went amiss and TweetDeck was instead executing the code as written. All it had to do was show up in your TweetDeck's timeline. One of the earliest examples we found was from a 19-year-old Austrian teen named Florian from around 8 this morning. He soon reported it publicly to TweetDeck, which potentially alerted anyone who monitored the account's mentions. The small silver lining here is that the JavaScript is limited to what TweetDeck itself is allowed to do. So while Twitter might be a mess, your local files and Gmail accounts should be okay. For more on Twitter and the web at large, check out The Verge. Coming up tomorrow, we must seek answers for what comes after the 90th second. Wait, what? Is it always TweetDeck, or not?

Two years in the making 477 episodes this Friday the truth will be revealed What the hell happened here the characters you love the questions unanswered Where will you be when it all comes to an end It all comes down to this But what happens when this is over do I disappear? The special two-minute series finale coming this Friday Finale coming this Friday only on the verge

I'm Addie Robertson with The Verge and I'm here at A3 to check out a new demo for Project Morpheus, Sony's virtual reality headset. The demo is called Street Luge and it is exactly what it sounds like. You lay down on a beanbag chair, put on Morpheus, and your body is on a board rolling down hills and dodging cars. It's a fantastic idea and a great example of what you can do with only Project Morpheus' head tracking technology, because your body really doesn't move. All you're doing is nudging yourself left and right, although you'll probably look a little ridiculous jerking your head around. You really feel the sense of vertigo and of trying to avoid things, and it's hands down the best thing I've seen from Morpheus, although that's not necessarily saying much, because so far we've seen a couple of things that have mostly been tech demos. Project Morpheus has really only been around for a few months after being announced at GDC, and the hardware hasn't much changed. What they're trying to do is figure out things to do with it. They're also showing off some of the old demos, which use move controllers or just let you look around, but none of those have really managed to feel as seamless as the Street Luge. Sony's not the only one here at E3 trying to figure out what to do with virtual reality. Oculus is actually showing off some new games too, and the overall feel is that if last year was about trying to understand what the technology of VR looks like, this year is trying to understand how you can use that to make games people want to play. Sony hasn't given us any more information about when we might see real news from Project Morpheus, but we're going to be watching it and the Oculus Rift very closely over the next year.

When you're buying a phone, there are really five things you need to pay attention to. Battery life, camera, app ecosystem, design, and software. Every phone does the basics well. They make phone calls, they send texts, they browse the web. And you really can't get a bad smartphone anymore. But what if you want the best phone? If you want to buy a phone you know you'll be happy with and just not worry about it anymore, you should buy an iPhone 5S. It's just the best all-around smartphone on the market. It's beautifully designed, a little metallic rectangle of a thing that scuffs pretty easily, but is both sturdy and handsome. Its screen is small by today's standards, yes. If you want bigger than a four-inch screen, you're better off looking elsewhere. But the screen is high resolution, viewable outdoors, and generally every bit as good as it needs to be. Two things really set the 5S apart. Its camera and its ecosystem. The 8-megapixel camera is the most consistent, sharpest, simplest smartphone camera you'll find. Other phones offer cool features the iPhone doesn't, but there's just nothing that matches its picture quality and ease of use. And then there's the App Store, filled with hundreds of thousands of great camera apps, games, productivity tools, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Sure, every platform has Twitter and Facebook and Angry Birds, but iOS gets the best apps first, and it gets great apps that no other platform ever sees. And that's all not to mention the huge ecosystem of speakers, Docs, Apple TVs, and cases that only fit the iPhone. It may not be perfect in every respect, but if all you want is a phone that you know you'll love, that you'll never have to worry about, you should buy a 5S. But what if you don't want an iPhone? What if you want a big screen, or really killer battery life? That's when you should take a long look at the new HTC One. It's one of the best designed phones I've ever seen, a truly beautiful object. It's big, big enough to be hard to use in one hand, but it's just gorgeous. It is a 5-inch, 1080p screen that's easily among the best on the market. It has a battery that lasts a day and a half without trying very hard, and it has one of the better customizations of Android you'll ever find. It has great speakers too, and seriously, it's just beautiful. The One has just a single big compromise. The camera. It does a nice job taking pictures in low light, since HTC uses big pixels to take deceptively well-lit shots in dark rooms, but the photos just don't look as good as I'd like. It has some neat features, and a second lens that lets you sort of refocus your shots after the fact, but pictures just aren't what I want them to be. In anything but the most ideal situation, it doesn't hold a candle to the iPhone. If you do want an Android phone that takes great pictures, you have a couple of options. There's the Samsung Galaxy S5, which has a 13 megapixel camera that takes good but unspectacular pictures pretty much all the time. Actually, everything about the S5 is good but unspectacular. It has a good screen, some useful software features, and great battery life. And it's waterproof, which I really like. But it has a plasticky design, which is better than last year's S4, but still not exactly attractive. And it's still too full of overbearing and unnecessary software and bloopy sound effects to really be a great, enjoyable device. There's nothing terrible about the S5, except maybe the design, but there's really nothing to be all that excited about either. I like the Nexus 5, too. It feels a little more expensive than some other phones, even though it isn't. And I like that it comes with pure, unadulterated Android. But its battery life and camera can be spotty at times, and there are some dangers with things like customer service when you buy a phone directly from Google. If you're a picky purist, you won't want anything else, but most people can probably get a little more for their money. Phones really aren't one-size-fits-all. Different things work better for different people. The best example is probably the Samsung Galaxy Note 3. It's huge. With a 5.7-inch screen, it's too big for your average skinny jean and for your average customer. But if you want a big phone or you want stylus support, don't even consider another phablet. Samsung invented this kind of phone, and it's still king. On a similar note, if all you want is crazy, insane, outrageous battery life, you want a splurge for the Motorola Droid Max. I don't like much of anything about the way this phone is designed, but it'll last two days and then some. Now for a slightly smaller phone. The Moto X is designed to be a straightforward iPhone competitor. Simple software, easy to use, easy to understand. Its problem is that it has slightly outdated specs that are only going to become more outdated over the course of your two-year contract. It's a good phone for basic users, and I love the ability to customize it, but you might find yourself wanting a little more. Honestly, that's really the end of the list of phones you should consider. You might find yourself looking at a Windows phone like the Lumia Icon or the Lumia 925, but even though those have good cameras and hugely improved software thanks to Windows Phone 8.1, they still don't have the app selection or general performance that the best Android and iOS devices do. And if you're looking at a Blackberry, well, you either desperately need a physical keyboard or you shouldn't be buying a Blackberry. Honestly though, no matter what you leave the store with, you can leave knowing you bought a phone that will do just about everything you absolutely need it to. What you're choosing among is the details. Which design do you like best? Would you rather have a killer screen or a big battery or a great camera? Do you like iOS or Android better? For my money, the iPhone 5S is an easy choice. It may not be the best in every category, but it's the best smartphone you can buy.

Hover cars could actually become a thing. That's right, the cars that float above the ground could become a reality. I'm Nathan Seichert, and this is 90 Seconds on the Verge. This week at Bloomberg's Next Big Thing Summit in San Francisco, Toyota's hero, Yoshi Yoshiki, confirmed that the company has been investigating the possibility of vehicles that hover just above the road. Yoshiki declined to elaborate on how far along Toyota was in the investigation, or if it ever plans on bringing the hover cars to market, but he did make sure to note that these cars would just float a little bit off the ground in an effort to reduce friction and improve efficiency. Hover cars are a long-running science fiction trope. From Star Wars to Total Recall and even video games like F-Zero, people have dreamed of floating cars for a long time. Although generally speaking, they don't fly more than a few feet off the ground at most. And our efforts to actually build hover cars dates back decades. Curtis Wright made two working prototypes for the US military. The Model 2500 created an air cushion that lifted 10 to 15 inches off the ground and had a max speed of 38 miles per hour. But the idea was quickly abandoned, since it couldn't really do all terrain. For more on hover cars, check out The Verge. Coming up tomorrow. Stop, stop, stop. Don't. Don't say coming up tomorrow. It never happens. But think about it. It has happened. Remember episode one? We'll be back tomorrow when we're taking a look at hover boards. They're cool, but are they safe? Yeah, but I mean, hover boards aren't exactly. Nathan. Nathan? Nathan, where is everybody?

The young shared information and discussed what was happening through the internet. It's one of the unexpected triumphs of social media. When a people rise up against their government, they do it on the internet. On Facebook, Twitter and public blogs. And sometimes after that happens, the government tries to shut the internet down. Twitter has been blocked by the courts. We've seen it happen over and over, from Egypt to Venezuela. If activists are relying on Twitter, a country's central telecom can block Twitter's IP addresses. Suddenly your phone can't reach the server. And if they want to stop online activism at large, they can cut off the internet completely. This blue dot is Syria's exclusive state-run telecom. On May 7th, 2013, it started cutting off the traffic routes one by one until there was no way left to get data in or out of the country. Central web blocks have also happened in Turkey, Ukraine, Egypt, Syria and Iran. The question is, once the connection shuts down, how do you fight back? In the case of a total web blackout, the kind we've seen in Iran and Syria, simple redirect tricks won't work. In that case, you need something stronger, like a mesh network. It looks like this. Each dot is a router and each line is a working connection. There's no need for a central hub or an ISP. No one's ever deployed a network like that in a real crisis, but there are lots of people who'd like to. Today we're going to see what it would look like. New York art space called Eyebeam is hosting a mock internet blackout, kind of a fire drill for the web. Inside, there's no outside connectivity of any kind. The internet is down and we're going to see what kind of network we can put up in its place. The big problem with an isolated mesh network is you can't download anything that isn't already there. But our group came prepared. We're all connected to the local Wi-Fi, which lets us plug in an IP address and connect to a local repo of apps. Using F-Droid and Kripplap, we can download the apps we need to start actually talking to each other. Of course, we're all still in the same room, feeding off the same Wi-Fi network, so once that's done, it's time to make the network bigger. Everything's running on this, a reprogrammed commotion router. It doesn't connect to the internet, it just connects to other routers. With enough of them together, that's all the internet you need. The new network takes some getting used to. There are no centralized services, so instead of Facebook or Twitter, you'd publish using a local WordPress app. Instead of WhatsApp, you'd use a decentralized chat service like ChatSecure or WeChat. Instead of Skype, there's Linfo. After a while, our network broke down. People walked too far away and lost connectivity, unsure of where to set up or how to communicate with the group. Simple coordination is a real problem, and the process is still going through some growing pains. But the idea works. This kind of small-scale network can be useful even if you aren't fighting an internet blackout. Mesh is a big deal in Europe, with immense networks already constructed in Berlin, Athens, and Barcelona. For the most part, they're a way to connect to the internet for a little less money. But they're also vibrant networks in their own right, with files and programs swapped between thousands of different nodes. It's a different kind of web than we're used to, scrappier and less centralized. But that's the whole point. The network in Chicago might look completely different from the one in New York, and surveillance agencies have to move against all of them at once if they want to listen in. It doesn't replace the main internet, it just grows up alongside it, with services that never leave the block. From a global perspective, that's a powerful thing. As this technology spreads, the power of the network gets stronger. Maybe it won't be in New York or Berlin, but the day will come when a government reaches out to turn off the internet, and finds out they can.

So the first day at E3 every year is just the news. It's all of the news for the whole week. We're in Los Angeles, it's hot, we're driving around everywhere, there's traffic, there's a million people, everybody loves video games. And the two biggest things are Microsoft and Sony. Microsoft is first, Sony is last. And Sony, where we are right now, is in this huge arena in downtown Los Angeles. They had food carts outside, the event started two hours before the actual event started. I don't really know why, but I guess it was cool, so we all just sit outside and talk about video games and eat hot dogs. And then we're here. So this is the big thing of E3 every single year. It's Sony the last couple of years especially, they kind of won last year. And this year, Sony kind of won again. They came in just full of swagger and confidence and then just kind of laid on the table why Sony is doing so much better than Microsoft. One thing they didn't show, except for a minute when they were like, hey, Project Morpheus, virtual reality, and then just kind of cast it off to the side and that was it. But what they did show is just a lot, a lot of games. It started with Destiny, the game we've been waiting to see for a while and we're gonna see more of this week, we're finally gonna get to play it. We saw Arkham Knight, the new Batman game, including the Batmobile, which looks sick. I was worried the Batmobile was gonna be terrible, and it's not. It looks awesome. You get to fight it, you can jump out of it, it's gonna be amazing. That game looks crazy. There was also this game called No Man's Sky, which I don't really understand at all. They called it infinite. The game is huge and just bizarre and strange, but beautiful and colorful and looked really cool and I kind of can't wait to play it. And there's a game called Little Big Planet 3, which we got to see game play over for the first time. It's this adorable little game where you play as a sock and you just fly around and everybody has these powers and you have to get through levels working together. Co-op was actually a thing they talked about a lot. Being able to play a game through the campaign with a bunch of other people online is a really big thing that both Microsoft and Sony talked about. And it's really cool. I don't know if it'll actually work or really change anything, but it's a really neat idea. One of the best trailers I saw, actually there were two of the best trailers that I saw. One was Dead Island 2. You're just a dude running down the street listening to music and all of a sudden you just turn into a zombie. It was crazy and everybody's eating everybody and fighting and that game looks amazing. Zombies are still a thing and that game looks awesome. The other one is Mortal Kombat, which is just the most terrifying, goriest, kind of like grimace inducingly disgusting thing I've ever seen. And by that I mean I cannot wait to play this game and go like this to someone's spine and just snap it in half. So the list goes on and on. Sony's games look great. They have great trailers. They're excited about them. They have really good IP. It's new games. It's exclusive games and they talked a lot about that. The undercurrent of all of this was we have things that Microsoft doesn't. One of the biggest cheers of the whole night came for Grand Theft Auto 5, which Sony came out and announced is coming to the PS4. It's also coming to the other consoles and I don't even know if Sony's getting it first, but Sony won big by being the one to say it's coming to next gen. Sony did talk about a bunch of things that aren't games, like the PlayStation TV, which lets you remote play from your PS4 to a different TV without needing a new console. There's PlayStation Now, the online streaming service. There's a new TV show called Powers. There's a movie based on Ratchet and Clank. There's a lot of stuff, but that really was not the focus here. Even when they would talk about that, Sony always came back to the idea that they are about video games. And that was really what this whole thing was. Sony just throwing down the gauntlet and being like, listen, Microsoft, we don't care what weird things you do with the TV. We have games. And honestly, we got a lot left to play this week. The floor opens tomorrow. There's a lot going on. But it kind of seems like Sony won this year yet again.

Good evening. Our vision is grounded in an uncompromising commitment to gamers that ensures PlayStation is, above all else, the best place to play. Right now, in the PlayStation Store for $9.99. Now, in the PlayStation Store for $9.99. Fart. The Last of Us is being remastered for PS4. I'd like to leave you. One last title from one of the finest studios in the world. The very best of the PlayStation. Thank you all so much. Have a wonderful day.

What do you get when you cross fast cars, lots of money, and acclaimed producer Deadmau5 driving a Ferrari that looks like an internet meme? You get the Gumball 3000, an annual road rally filled with some of the rarest, most expensive cars in the world. As the name suggests, the Gumball 3000 runs for 3,000 miles. And this year it's a transcontinental affair, starting in Miami and ending in the European dance club mecca of Ibiza in the Mediterranean Sea. Technically, there's nothing about the rules that says that the entrants, each of whom paid 40,000 pounds to participate, have to break the law. But when you've got a grid filled with cars that can crack 200 miles per hour without breaking a sweat, well, you do the math. The Gumball stopped in New York City's South Street seaport on Friday night to get loaded on aircraft taking them to Scotland for the second leg of their journey, and a small but devoted crowd turned out to watch the cars arrive. They were pretty ridiculous. Entrants ranged from a chrome Aston Martin to a velvet-covered Rolls Royce. But the evening clearly belonged to Deadmau5, who was driving the rally in a Ferrari 458 clad in Nyan Cat with Tory Belichi of Mythbusters fame riding shotgun. Why Nyan Cat? Why? Why not? Why not? Right? Because no one, because one of one. Because it's me. It speaks to me. It's mine. It's, you know, I created it. And speaking of things on the internet, turns out Deadmau5 is a pretty big fan of the Verge. I'm with the Verge, by the way. Dude! I'm like your biggest fan! Someday we'll all be driving McLaren supercars painted to look like Tron props. Wait, no we won't. This is as close as we get.

Microsoft just wrapped up its 2014 E3 press briefing. If last year was all about next-gen consoles, this year is all about next-gen games. From the very beginning of the conference, Microsoft seemed like it was trying to make up for straying from the Xbox's core function, gaming. It was a cavalcade of teaser trailers and demos with clips from Silicon Valley stars talking about how much they love gaming, and Phil Spencer talking it up as the fastest-growing medium. It wasn't just about getting games on the Xbox One, it was about getting games there soon, around the holidays, not next year or later. Microsoft's strategy for selling the Xbox One is, essentially, reminding people of how much they like to play games on the Xbox 360 or even the original Xbox, and then telling them they can play those games again. The biggest news of the conference might have been the Master Chief Collection, a remastered version of the entire Halo series that includes every single multiplayer map. Halo was big news last year, too. Ridley Scott is also directing a digital series that will lead up to the next installment, Halo 5. And along with the latest Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed titles, we also got a look at a new crackdown game and a remake of action strategy game Phantom Dust. It was mostly a year of big-name sequels, with a focus on co-op multiplayer to set the new titles apart. Assassin's Creed, Fable, and more can all be played with friends, but Xbox also gave a nod to indie developers in its ID at Xbox program. That included a trailer for Inside, a new game from the creators of Limbo. It might not have been as technically impressive as Call of Duty, but it was one of the best-looking games at the show. So what wasn't there? In a word, Kinect. Today is the first day you can buy an Xbox without one, and Microsoft didn't even show it off during the press conference. Nobody shouted orders or used voice commands. The only Kinect-based game we even saw was a New Dance Central, which got a couple of minutes as an afterthought to Harmonix's Fantasia game. More surprisingly, we also didn't hear anything about Halo developer Bungie's new game Destiny. But since a demo is coming to the show floor, we'll be learning a lot more soon. This was just the first of several press conferences on the first day of E3, and we barely got a taste of most of the games. It's way too early to say what will actually be good, or what most of these games will even look like when they come out. But we'll spend the rest of the week finding out what we can about the rest of the year's gaming lineup.

With Halo 5 still over a year away, Microsoft has put every consolation prize imaginable into one beautiful stopgap. I'm Ross Miller, and this is 90 seconds on the Verge. This week marks the first major Xbox One event since the console launched last November. One of the biggest announcements was the Master Chief Collection. Available November 11th, the compilation features Halos 1 through 4, all remastered to run at 1080p, 60 frames per second. In addition to the remakes, and this is key, the Master Chief Collection will include access to the Halo 5 multiplayer beta this December. Halo 5, however, isn't due out until next holiday season, 2015. In some ways, it's just house cleaning, since the Xbox One isn't backwards compatible. But in the absence of another top-tier flagship exclusive this holiday season, the Master Chief Collection is also something of a necessity. Sales of the Xbox One have trailed behind Sony's PlayStation 4 since they both launched last November. And last month, Microsoft announced a $400 Xbox One bundle without Kinect, so that it could compete directly on price. But Halo has always been a guaranteed system seller for Microsoft. And it's not just the games themselves, but the whole Halo mythology. That's why Microsoft also announced Halo Nightfall, a live-action weekly series from producer Ridley Scott. Nightfall will tie together the first four Halo games and lay the narrative groundwork for Halo 5. Still no word on that Steven Spielberg Halo series announced last year. For more on E3, check out The Verge. Coming up tomorrow, Oregon Trail is rebooted as a live-action... Wait. Do these stories ever happen? He knows. Shut it down.

Good morning everyone, welcome to E3. We're dedicating our entire briefing to game. Hey! See you on the other side. It's okay, see you on the other side. Horizon 2 is an action-packed open world driving game filled with incredible vistas, amazing music, and over 200 of the world's greatest cars. I'm here to introduce Assassin's Creed Unity, the first exclusively next generation installment in our epic saga. ACU also marks the first time you will be able to form your own brotherhood and join with up to three friends on Xbox Live. All this place needs is a hero who doesn't just survive, but does it with style. Traverse the open world with speed, strategy, and style using an arsenal of unconventional weapons and special abilities to save Sunset City. Fable Legends is a bold and innovative adventure and I'm proud to share it with you here today. In Fable Legends, you can be the villain. On November 11, 2014, for the first time ever, you can play the entire Master Chief saga on a single console, the Xbox One, with Halo, the Master Chief Collection. This December, we bring you the Halo 5 Guardians Beta. It's time to reimagine the future. It's time to reimagine your open world gaming experience. We will continue to listen to you, and we will continue to make the best of what we have. We will continue to listen to you, and we will continue to make Xbox for you. Thank you for making your voice heard, and thank you for helping us shape the future of the new Xbox.

By all accounts, this is the year of the smartwatch. But for Samsung, it's actually year two, and its best smartwatch effort yet is the Gear 2, a refinement of last year's ill-fated Galaxy Gear. Samsung has fine-tuned almost everything in the $299 Gear 2. It's slimmer, lighter, more comfortable to wear, quicker to use, and longer lasting between charges. It's also more attractive to look at, but it doesn't quite shake off the I'm wearing a computer on my wrist and everyone knows it appearance. Last year's model was clunky, uncomfortable, and frankly pretty ugly. The Gear 2 is a great improvement in those respects. I've worn it for a week straight without finding it to be too much of a burden on my wrist. The main attraction here is still the 1.63 inch square super AMOLED display that's bright, colorful, has great viewing angles, and is easy to read outdoors. It's a touchscreen, and it remains your main point of interaction with the Gear 2, but below it Samsung has put a convenient home button so you don't have to rely on swipe gestures quite as much as before. The display is not always on, but the Gear 2 is much better at waking up when you lift your arm up to check the time, making it much less annoying to do so. The other big change that Samsung did to the hardware was move the camera off of the strap and integrate it into the watch housing itself. As a result, the design is much sleeker, the camera is less of an eyesore, and crucially, it lets you swap the strap for a different one. It took me less than five minutes to put on a more comfortable leather strap to replace the included plasticky rubber one on the Gear 2. Samsung did add a couple new hardware features to the Gear 2 this time around. There's an integrated IR blaster which can be programmed to control an entertainment system, and like the fitness-focused Gear Fit, the Gear 2 can measure your heart rate and track your steps or sleep activity. Step counting is significantly more accurate than the Gear Fit, and it's a welcome addition to the Gear 2, but the heart rate monitor remains slow and difficult to use. Fortunately, Samsung's S Health app that pairs with the Gear 2 and Gear Fit has been updated to display sleep tracking information, but I'm still not convinced at how useful that information actually is. The Gear 2 also has the same fitness coaching features as the Gear Fit, but it's bigger size and heavier weight make it less comfortable to wear when you're working out. You can now load music on the Gear 2 itself, so you don't need to carry around your phone when you're doing a workout, but the interface to do so is pretty clunky and it doesn't do anything for you if you use Spotify or another streaming service. Samsung says the Gear 2 is more responsive and faster to use than last year's model, and for the most part that's the truth. The interface hasn't changed at all visually, but under the hood Samsung has swapped the Android software for a platform based on Tizen. You can't tell the difference between the two, but the chances that the Gear 2 will ever work with a non-Samsung smartphone are pretty slim now. Swipes and gestures are more responsive and it makes the whole experience much less frustrating than before. But notifications, especially from third party apps are still not very useful and you have to use Samsung's own messaging and mail apps to take advantage of the quick message replies and other conveniences. It also requires way too many taps to clear a notification. With the new platform Samsung is supporting third party apps, which can be downloaded via the Gear Companion app on a Samsung smartphone. At this point the app choices are pretty limited, with most of them consisting of calculators or custom watch faces. One of the big features of the original Galaxy Gear was the ability to make and receive phone calls from your wrist, Dick Tracy style. The Gear 2 still does this, but it doesn't improve the experience much. I still have to project my voice quite a bit for the other party to hear me, and when they speak the audio quality is pretty low. It's still a parlor trick more than a useful feature. You can do other things with your voice too, such as set timers, call contacts, and so forth, but you still have to touch the screen at some point to confirm your command, which feels unnecessary when you just want to start a timer while cooking in the kitchen. Battery life was a big problem with last year's Galaxy Gear, requiring you to charge it every day just like your smartphone. The Gear 2 does better, but not by much. I still had to charge it every two and a half days, and it requires a clunky clip-on adapter that's easy to lose. A smartwatch that can be charged on the weekend and last through to the next weekend would be ideal, but the Gear 2 is not there yet. Overall the Gear 2 is a marked improvement over last year's model, but to be honest that wasn't a very high bar to meet. Samsung improved a number of things from the design of the hardware to the responsiveness of the software to the battery life between charges, but a number of nagging issues remain and if you're not using a Samsung smartphone, you can't get in on the fun at all. The Gear 2 is definitely the best smartwatch Samsung has created, and it's a better option than the Galaxy Gear or the fitness-focused Gear Fit for pretty much everything. But this is the year of the smartwatch, and there are certainly better things on the horizon. You might just want to wait for one of those.

It's been seven years since Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone and the first iteration of Apple's mobile platform, iOS. The next version is coming this fall, but how did we get here? Let's go back to January 2007, the Macworld keynote. This is Steve Jobs. Today, we're going to show you a software breakthrough. Software that's at least five years ahead of what's on any other phone. When the original iPhone was introduced, it was actually well behind the competition in a strict feature-by-feature comparison. Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian, and even Blackberry were all established systems in 2007 with a wide and deep array of features. Instead, Apple focused on the core experience. As Steve Jobs put it, the iPhone was three things. A phone, a web browser, and an iPod. It had a capacitive touchscreen with pinch-to-zoom and inertial scrolling. It had a Safari app that nearly matched the power of a desktop browser, although Apple famously refused to support Flash. And it also had the best Google Maps you could find on the go. But big changes came with the iPhone 3G and the iPhone OS 2.0. It's at that point in 2008 that Apple opened the doors for third-party developers to create iPhone apps. Critically, the app store existed both on the device itself and within iTunes, where users could easily browse and install apps. Let's talk about what's next. And that is iPhone OS 3.0. With version 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS, Apple focused on cleaning up any little messes it had made in its previous versions. It was released in June of 2009, and like the 3GS itself, it didn't necessarily have any single headline feature. Instead, Apple filled in all sorts of gaps with a massive list of functionality and app updates touching every corner of the operating system. These included cut, copy, and paste, spotlight search across multiple apps, and push notifications for third-party apps, even if they did get annoying. And then, of course, version 3.2 brought iOS to Apple's newest device, the iPad. June 2010 marked a major turning point for the iPhone legacy, if only because they changed the name of the operating system to iOS. iOS 4 was mainly about one thing, adding features for power users. The headline improvement was multitasking, or rather, Apple's version of multitasking. Developers could now run portions of their app in the background, like music, GPS navigation, and save states for fast switching. iOS 4 also added FaceTime video chat and support for the retina display, all of which went to showcase the company's redesigned iPhone 4. iOS 5 came with a lot of personality, and she was named Siri. Yes, sometimes she was unable to connect to the web to perform either voice recognition or transcription, and other times she returned with strange results. But still, as a natural user interface, she was one of the more promising things we'd seen on a phone. In iOS 6, Siri and Notification Center got upgrades, and Apple also introduced a potential dark horse with Passbook. But the big headline was what Apple took out. Google Maps had long been considered the benchmark in online mapping, but it's also made by one of Apple's biggest rivals. With iOS 6, Apple dumped Google and introduced its own Maps app. It had turn-by-turn navigation, a 3D flyover mode, and, well, a lot of embarrassing issues. It also nixed public transit directions entirely, something Apple still hasn't managed to bring back. As part of the follow-up for the Maps debacle, iOS VP Scott Forstall left Apple, with lead industrial designer Johnny Ive taking over for the, quote, human interface efforts. And with iOS 7, we saw the fruits of his labor. Gone were the famous glossy icons, the rich textures, and, for the most part, the skeuomorphic apps. Replaced by flattened graphics, colorful gradients, and transparencies, it was a stark visual change. Apple also used this chance to clean up and add some new touches to its core apps like Photos and Camera. iOS 7 also added some features, like a swipe-up control center and iTunes Radio, its Pandora-like music streaming service. All of which brings us up to today with iOS 8, a refinement on the design iOS 7 established. The most impressive new feature is what Apple is calling Continuity. Basically, it's a seamless pass of information between your mobile device and your Mac, so you can start on one device and move over to the other, or even take calls from your desktop. The most exciting parts of iOS 8 won't be made by Apple, they'll be made by its developers. HealthKit and HomeKit are major pushes into the healthcare and smart home industries. Touch ID can be used by third parties in lieu of a password, and, for the first time, apps are going to be allowed to talk to each other. And, thankfully, there's now widgets and third party keyboards. And on top of all that, Apple has also introduced a brand new programming language called Swift. This new Apple is definitely catering to developers in a way it never has before, and, in a very real way, they'll get to decide how the next version of iOS will work. And if the rumors of a bigger iPhone pan out, those developers will have a much bigger canvas to work with.

Over the last year America was given proof of what it already suspected We're all being spied on but long before Edward Snowden introduced the world to prism spies like Magnum PI dick Tracy and even Veronica Mars were showing us just how easy it is to keep tabs on unsuspecting targets And now with all the new technology at our disposal being a spy or investigator should be easier than ever Plus I have this question I want answered Sam Sheffer my friend and the Virgis social media manager has this insanely huge collection of sweet air Jordans Including some no one can find anywhere. How's he getting his hands on the kicks? No one else can seem to find I assume it has to do with shady deals and back alleys and probably some illicit card game I could just ask him but what's the fun in that first? I need to learn how to do this stuff how to be David Pierce PI This is Jimmy messes a private investigator for over 30 years He's worked for the White House Scotland Yard and even for boxing promoter Don King Jimmy's also the owner of PI gear comm an online Store that sells everything from night-vision goggles to nanny cams and he's also the head of PI magazine The biggest trade publication for investigators around the world. So how do you start doing this? I actually became a private investigator back in 1979 and Technology really didn't exist back then so what how has it changed over the last you know the few decades you've been doing it Well in the late 70s video cassette tapes had just been invented And even then a setup like that was thousands of dollars and probably enormous It was you know that the technology back then was super big and just evolving now the technology has come into Nano size. Yeah, where you know, I can put a video camera anywhere on my body I could actually be videotaping you right now you would have been I'm assuming that you are from you know 30 or 40 different places. No, just 20 just 20 skip. All right, so we're gonna need some tools and Jimmy has plenty of them Most of them are shockingly simple and not even that expensive. So this is the base of a button cam So I could basically like replace one of the buttons on my shirt with right? What kind of video does this record? That's gonna record 550 lines of resolution color during the day Automatically switches to black and white and low-light situation in video or covert video Normally, it's two different pieces the camera and you have to plug it into a DVR This is a high-definition recorder and this will take up to a 32 gigabyte SD card now you can plug About 10 different cameras into this device. The other device that we have was the video glasses This would run down to the small your back. Nobody would know that you have it on Where is the camera? The camera is actually on the stem on one side and the microphone is on the stem on the other side Glasses are a big thing now the difference between the ones you originally wore and these is that this is self-contained So the DVR the camera everything is inside those glasses And again, we always recommend that if you're gonna wear glasses like that You wear a hat because it just helps break up the face as compared to just straight out and there's still there's a camera here No microphone here. Well, actually everything is right over the center. It's on the bridge of your nose Everybody has the keychain for their car of remote control. They can take pictures They can take video and they can also Record audio and this is like a little piggyback to the iPhone you put your iPhone in here And what ends up happening is there's a camera on the base Now you're videotaping this way as compared to bringing the phone up where people know that you're taking video and this will this also Charge my phone's battery. No It's all really simple Actually, the trick is making it so no one ever notices and honestly that's mostly still on me the more I blend in and don't freak Out and seem shady the less Sam or anyone will think I'm up to something and start looking a little closer So now that I've got my gear I'm ready to investigate. I Have a question for you. Yeah, I need to buy Air Jordans like good ones I need to buy a friend a present I need you to have like a Jordans guy for me. I can't hoping you're gonna be like there's this dude I know I know The bottom of the shoe is icy I'm putting you so deep in this game right now Yeah, so like sneaker news like all the sneaker heads we're going crazy, but all these are hype shoes Okay, you can maybe score a pair of these from Nike.com the second you get them They're double the value on it. His bots have taken over the shoe buying game like people have written scripts Wow, I don't know how to do that. I used to know someone at Nike I Don't know his email anymore or whatever. But if you have contacts at Nike, they would probably tell you when it's gonna be all right Thanks to you. You're welcome. Okay, so nothing groundbreaking, but I know he's holding something back. I want to take this even farther I want to know where Sam lives what he does at night who he hangs out with we're talking about the works I want to do as much of this as I can without having to get a license What what can I do just as a regular person? Like how how far down this road can I go before I run into issues? Well, you're probably gonna go down a really short road Because the moment you start doing that you're technically stalking and now that's a criminal offense So there's a fine line between what's legal and what's not with them so I can take a picture of him but I can't anything that your Target will be due in public is fair game But once they start going into private areas in their home or in a secluded area or a gated community You're not allowed in there you get caught in there your trespassing. Let's say I was a licensed PI how could I track Sam to a secret sneaker source without even being there that device will give you 30 hours of Of tracking of motion and then you're able to monitor that live on your smartphone or online Is there like a PI app store that nobody knows about that you guys have all? Secret apps, you know, I tell you that but I don't know I'd have to you'd have to kill me with you No, I'll just make you disappear I file the first case on the counter since I depends on a list of things to find out Older than Social Security It's normally they need more than 30 hours of tracking so what they'll do is they will put the tracker into a waterproof magnetic case and you just attach this to the underside of a vehicle and now that's a hundred hours of motion Unfortunately Sam doesn't drive a car and I don't have a PI license I swore you had like a hookup with some dude. No? The hype is so real with shoes right now, it's unbelievable. Sam, here's my real question. Yeah? How do we turn this into us getting rich? What? I feel like we're like one small step away from just being gotten shoes. It's impossible. It's impossible. Now see, Sam, that's the difference between you and me. It's impossible. You're wrong and I'm not. So it turns out being a PI is not as sexy as Tom Selleck made it out to be. And also way more difficult than I imagined. Just because I have all this gear doesn't mean I'm suddenly a veteran investigator. That's why, in the end, I had to come clean. Wow. What is happening right now? When was that filmed? Wow. Wow. This is amazing. So is it creepy out that we were able to do this to you for like a week? Yes and no. Yes, because it's like weird not knowing that this was happening, but it's not surprising. You know, when you have no idea, you obviously feel like you're vulnerable. I did notice your iPhone case was pretty strange yesterday. I did notice that. Really? Yeah, I was like, oh, I didn't know you got a Jank Amazon battery pack. I mean, those shots are like so good too. I'm like, I had no idea. And also now the sneaker hype game is semi-exposed, but it's also still impossible to get those shoes. We still need to start our business. Yeah, it's going to happen. It's going to happen. Let's get rich off shoes. Perfect. So by now you might be wondering, how can I avoid being Sam? Well, I can help you there, but there are definitely some ways you can detect surveillance. I would think you would be more qualified than anybody to help people avoid surveillance also. Is that part of what you do? Often we get called in where people think they're being watched, and they want us to watch them to see if anybody is watching them. But what can I do myself? These are wireless camera detectors. Oh, wow. And if there was a camera transmitting in the area, we would see the picture of what's being transmitted. This particular device has these LEDs right here, and I will find the hidden camera because it will flash back at me. Women are buying these like crazy. When they go to a hotel, they want to make sure that they're not being watched. When they go to a dressing room, they want to make sure they're not being watched. So it's kind of an interesting little tool. Being a PI has changed a lot, but with the right gear, a toolkit that's easier to buy and more affordable than ever, a good PI can now always be ready. But it turns out the gear isn't the point, or at least not the only point. Jimmy can blend in, be cool, and stay patient in an unmarked white van. I can't do any of those things well, and I can't legally do most of them at all. I can show you everything that you've seen here, and in another month, I could use all this equipment on you, and you'd never see it. I believe it. Because you just, your mind is just not set up to think that you're being watched that way. That's why I got nothing from Sam, why I still don't own Sweet Air Jordans. But hey, at least I found a place to get dollar tacos in New York City. I'll call it even.

If last year's E3 was the year of the next-gen console, this is the year of the next-gen game. Last year, Sony and Microsoft showed off launch titles and very early previews for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. And Nintendo, well, it doesn't matter. But this year, developers have had much more time to work with these new systems, and there's going to be a lot more to play. Let's start with Microsoft. Last year, the company put more focus on the Xbox One's entertainment features, and left many of its upcoming games in the back seat. This year, we can really expect the company to put a focus on its games. That and the $399 Connect Free Xbox One are how Microsoft plans to compete with the PS4. We've already gotten a brief teaser of the next entry in the Halo series, but next week we can expect to see a full look at Halo 5 Guardians, the first main game in the series since 2012. That's due to hit the Xbox One in the fall of 2015. There's also a good chance Microsoft will tease the next Gears of War games, since the company now owns the rights to the series. Sony's also going to talk a lot about big-name games, leading with a couple of key exclusives. Naughty Dog's critically acclaimed Uncharted series continues with Uncharted 4. We saw a teaser last year, but aside from the title, haven't seen much. That's likely to change. We also make it a better look at the Victorian steampunk action game The Order 1866, and The Witness, a new adventure game for the makers of Braid. Remember those island puzzles? But maybe the biggest question this year is what Nintendo will do to save Wii U sales. To start, Nintendo just released Mario Kart 8 last month, and it is the bomb. And next week, the company will show off the latest entry in the Super Smash Bros. series, a longtime staple for Nintendo. It's also dedicating a 90-minute presentation to a single 3DS title, so we can expect it to be pretty big. Maybe a new 2D Metroid? Who knows. Now let's put exclusives aside. This year, we're going to learn a lot more about Destiny, the massively multiplayer first-person shooter designed by the guys who first made Halo. The studio's confirmed we'll see a playable, competitive multiplayer demo, and more details about a summer beta program. Meanwhile, Ubisoft is expected to show off more on Assassin's Creed Unity, set during the French Revolution, and Far Cry 4, which moves the series from a tropical island to the Himalayas. Activision will be showing off the next Call of Duty game, titled Advanced Warfare, while EA is going to give fans more details on the unexpectedly police-themed Battlefield Hard Line, which will officially be unveiled on Monday. Also, despite being delayed until next year, the final part of the mostly critically acclaimed series of Batman action games, Arkham Knight, is still highly anticipated at E3. And finally, we've got a lot of franchise installments on the table. There's a new Mortal Kombat and a new Alien game, but probably the most exciting is the new Star Wars Battlefront. The game had an awesome teaser at E3 last year, and the last main Battlefront game came out in 2005, so there's a lot riding on this new entry. Now putting games aside for a moment, this might be the first time in a while we see some major updates in the virtual reality field. Oculus has been pretty hush-hush since being acquired by Facebook earlier this year. It's possible, though hardly certain, that we'll hear details about a final consumer version of the Oculus Rift, which is expected in 2015. Oculus has also branched out from hardware to publishing, and it's supposedly working with a number of major developers on dedicated VR games, so seeing some new games isn't out of the question either. And then there's Project Morpheus, Sony's virtual reality headset. While things still seem to be in the very early stages, any details about pricing, release date, or final design would be welcome additions. E3 is always full of surprises, and even without the prospect of a new console, we'll be hoping for big reveals of games we've never heard of and virtual reality that's more than just hype. We're starting Monday with a big day of Sony, Microsoft, and more. And until then, we'll keep our fingers crossed.

In one week, a paralyzed volunteer will walk onto the field of the World Cup and, with the help of a robotic exoskeleton, open the games with a ceremonial kick. There is no joystick or steering wheel involved here. The person inside is controlling the suit with just their mind. It's one of the most advanced versions of a brain-machine interface, or BMI. And while it sounds like science fiction, it's actually just the latest proof we've entered the cyborg era. This suit was created by the Walk Again Project, a consortium of over 100 neuroscientists and engineers from around the world. It's spearheaded by Dr. Miguel Nicoleles and his colleagues at the Duke Center for Neuroengineering, building on more than 40 years of research on how to record and translate the electrical activity in our brains, the natural language of thought, into commands that a computer can understand. BMI research began in the lab with rats and monkeys. Scientists were able to gather data on mental activity by implanting microelectrodes into the animals' brains. Beginning in 2000, they were able to take that information and translate it in real time so that a monkey, for example, could use its mind to control a robotic arm. In one of Dr. Nicoleles' most famous experiments, a monkey in the lab at Duke was able to make a robot in Japan walk simply by thinking about moving its legs. In recent years, scientists have been working to bring the advances from the lab to humans in the real world. But there's one major challenge. Most people aren't willing to get the kind of invasive surgery and implants necessary to gather enough data. The Walk Again Project solves that big challenge. It works using an EEG headset that is able to gather enough brain activity to control a robotic suit without any invasive surgery. As BMI continues to improve, it holds great promise for people with lost mobility or limbs. DARPA's DECA arm, a BMI-controlled prosthetic, for example, has already been approved by the FDA for testing outside the lab. The big transformation, however, will come when this technology is deployed not just to help those with medical need, but to augment and improve the abilities of everyday people. From soldiers to construction workers to extreme athletes, BMI may push human bodies well beyond their natural limits. As we learn how to translate the language of the brain in real time, BMI may also open up new avenues for communication. At the University of Washington earlier this year, researchers demonstrated a brain-to-brain interface in which one subject could use his thoughts to control the movement of the person he was connected to. BMI advocates like Dr. Nicoleli's hope that in the future, this kind of technology may allow us not just to control robots, but to share our thoughts, memories, and emotions with our fellow humans in a neural network that connects us all.

I want to do as much of this as I can without having to get a license. How far down this road can I go before I run into issues? Well, you're probably going to go down a really short road because the moment you start doing that, you're technically stalking. I had no idea.

Welcome to The Verge Live just after Worldwide Developer Conference 2014. I'm Ross Miller. I'm Chris Sigler. And, God, there's a lot to go through. We'll have Dieter Bohn. It was a heck of an event. Yeah. We'll have Dieter Bohn with us very soon. From San Francisco. From San Francisco, yes. From San Francisco. But let's just get into it. Here's the big news, and then we'll kind of dive right in. OS X 10.10 Yosemite. It's a brand new look. Notification. Widgets, actually. Spotlight, which is basically Alfred. Right. iOS 8. Health Kit. Home Kit. Programs. Apps can talk to each other. Widgets. New programming language. Dear God. And, of course, the continuous client. Everything talks to each other now. They blew it out. They really did. So let's just go. Let's just ask real quick. What was your personal reaction to the whole thing? I thought that they hit... Well, obviously, we would have liked to have seen hardware, right? In a perfect world, we would have seen an iWatch. We would have seen a retina MacBook Air. We would have seen the mythical Apple TV, the actual rectangular box. Not just the set top. You're talking about the full set. Right. Yeah. But we can keep dreaming. And look, let's be honest. Apple's going to be doing some events later this year, obviously. So this ended up being a purely software-focused event. But if it had to be a purely software-focused event, I think that they hit on a lot of really important points. I just said on Twitter a second ago that it feels like they hit... They checked a bunch of boxes that had been lingering for years that needed to be checked off. The app-to-app crosstalk in iOS is huge. Widgets and notification center, those have been sort of on the docket for a while, rumored for a while. The continuous client stuff between OS X and iOS is really, really freaking cool. You can take a call on your phone, on your PC. I just tweeted last week that I wish that you could see your SMSs in the Messages app in OS X. They're fixing that. So they're doing some really cool stuff. AirDrop works now between phones and PCs. So again, they just checked off a bunch of boxes that they needed to check off. I think that this is a great update to iOS. And of course, they're bringing the design language of OS X up to snuff. Right. So let's dive in. And first and foremost, yeah, I think the widget thing, I do want to say that the widget was interesting. Craig Federighi, who had every other performance today... You mean Hair Force One. Hair Force One, as he's affectionately called. He noticed that widgets has been something that's been requested since iOS 2. That was the only time that Steve Jobs' name was invoked, actually. And it took six versions to get it right. When they got it right, we'll find out. But real quick, let's go for iOS 10, because it was the quickest one of the bunch. It was maybe 20 minutes of a two-hour presentation. Something like that. Yeah, they kind of... OS 10, 10.10, Yosemite, which Craig Federighi first called OS 10 Weed. Yeah, that was a weird name. They're doing weird fake jokes. This is like corporate joke stuff now. They were doing... Yeah, they were really yucking it up a little bit for a while. I mean, look, I think that Federighi is not... He's definitely not a stuffy guy. And it shows in the way that he presents. But yeah, they kind of blew through OS 10 pretty quickly when you break down everything that they were bringing to the table. Obviously, the aforementioned continuous client stuff, which I believe... This is still a little unclear to me, but I think that it's all falling under the umbrella of what they're calling handoff, which is better airdrop, phone call integration between your PC and your phone, caller ID works. So if your phone rings, you see a pop up on the screen that says so-and-so is calling and SMS integration. Right now, it's just iMessage. I mean, between handoff, airdrop, mail drop, iCloud Drive, which is, I guess, their Dropbox competitor in some sense. This is everything that iCloud, I think, was promised to be years and years ago that's actually finally realized in Dinsum. Right, right. And of course, you can't overlook the fact that they've completely redesigned the operating system. And now it looks like iOS. It's much flatter. And Josh, who was doing the live blog, just kept screaming, glass and glass, glass. Yeah, I'll be curious to get Josh's full download on how he feels about the design, because I know that he had some strong feelings about iOS 7 when it came out. And they've obviously adopted that design language for Yosemite. It's readily apparent that Johnny Ive had a very strong influence there. So from what I can tell so far, it looks great. The public is going to be able to sign up for this beta over the course of the summer, and then it's eventually going to be a free upgrade this fall. But historically, you've had to pay a fee to become a developer in the eyes of Apple, and then you can go under NDA and get this thing. But now it's just kind of open to everybody. Yeah, I think it's also just a realization that that's just how information is dissipated now. Everybody just ganks everything. It's going to get leaked somehow. You might as well just be a part of it. That's exactly right. Yeah, and I think the most visual or I guess the most functional user-facing feature that I think is going to be exciting is Spotlight, which is essentially, and I don't know if anyone else here uses it, but we use Alfred religiously at the office. And it's just like one hot key, and you get everything you want online or on your computer. And now that's just part of the operating system. And thank God too. Yeah, no, I mean, if you had to kind of identify one theme throughout this event, it's that they're playing catch up and kind of picking and choosing features from other platforms and apps around the world. It's obvious that they took some inspiration from Alfred for Spotlight. Feel kind of bad for the Alfred guys. Yeah, but I mean, but it's also, it can now be integrated much clearer. I'm sure Alfred will figure something out. And then again, like it's not our place to care. Like it's much better as it is now. I care. I care. Okay, I'm really sorry. Do you want a hug? Not now, maybe later. Okay, yeah, so that was cool. But I just keep going back to the design because it is really striking. If you think about the fact that OS X is what, over a decade old now. Is that right? Over a decade old? I'm not making numbers up, right? I mean, it's 10.10, number schemes be damned. Right, sorry. And this feels like the most drastic single design iteration in the platform's history. I mean, there have obviously been some pretty striking. If you go back and look at 10.0 or before that into the betas to 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, there are obviously changes. But this is like a really clean break. A lot of glass, as Josh said, very flat. It's the matchup that they needed with iOS now that it's in 7 and 8 and they had that clean break last year on that platform. And before we get into that, I do want to stop for a second to enjoy one clip. This is probably my favorite part. There wasn't a lot of Apple executives that showed up. It was basically just Craig and Tim kind of going back and forth. We expected some kind of beats mentioned. There wasn't one except for Dr. Dre. Yes, they called Dr. Dre. They did call Dr. Dre. And I think we have that clip we'll play in a second of Craig Federighi talking to Dr. Dre, calling him on the computer. Yes. I wanted to make a phone call to a new Apple employee that's joining us. It's something we do from time to time. So let me just bring up this. Here we go. A little welcome call. Let's give him a WWC welcome. So let's have my Mac dial via my iPhone. I talk to people like him all the time, of course. Very normal for me. Hello? Wow. Hey, it's Craig Federighi here. Hey, how you doing? This is Dre. Hey, Dr. Dre, you're on speaker phone via my Mac with over 6,000 amazing developers here at WWDC. We all want to welcome you to Apple. Hey, thanks, Greg. I love a big audience. I want to thank everybody here. They have created such amazing apps. Yeah, they have created some amazing apps. By the way, I'm glad you called. I hear Tim gets here pretty early. What time should I show up for work? If you want to beat Tim into the office, it would be about 430. But I think orientation, new employee orientation starts at 9. So you don't want to miss the free t-shirt. So I'd shoot for 9. Sounds good. I can't wait to get to work with the team at Apple. And Dre, it's been great chatting with you. I'll see you around campus. Thanks, Greg. Talk soon. All right, bye. Okay, first off, on first mention, Craig goes, hello, doctor. It's not a first name. No, it's a well... It isn't, it isn't. Maybe in a formal setting, if you're meeting the good doctor for the first time, you refer to him as doctor. I'm not sure. Oh, man. I just clearly listened to Dre just go off on some script as everyone's applauding, just getting through the motions. I'm just still in my mind having a very difficult time rectifying the chronic with what happened on stage today. It's just, it's not... What? You know, Dre is known for his work in music that is very, I would say, it is not of the law for lack of a better term. And so now he's in this very corporate environment and it's frankly a little difficult to rectify. I don't think it's such a bunch of stretch. I think Dre's in the business of making a lot of money. That's true. That's true. And that phone call alone made him a billionaire. That's very true. Well, so getting back to the point about Beats not being a big part of this presentation, look, the deal was announced last week. I'm sure that the keynote today has been planned or mostly planned for weeks, if not months. So it's not something that they could rely on and they just didn't fit it in. And that's not to say that they would have had any hardware to announce anyway. That's true. But I mean, there's also the software portion, which is Beats Music, which is somewhat analogous to iTunes Radio. Also, we didn't hear anything about that. That's a very good point. Which was surprising. We heard there might be a chance of the iTunes Radio app being separate. Not the case. Although God knows that might change also because of, I don't know what they're going to do. You have iTunes Music, you have Music, you have iTunes Radio, you have Beats Music. It's going to get a little crowded on that one. Let's just jump right into iOS 8, unless there's anything else you want to talk about for Yosemite at all. Well, just the fact that this is a hell of an update for OS X to be free. It's one thing for this to be a $100 update, but we've kind of gotten the sense from Apple that they're moving away from that model for desktop updates like they have been for mobile updates. So if you're going to get a free operating system update, this is a great one to get. That's a very small group. Oh, if you're getting any free operating system update. But to their credit, that is something that's big on the developer stuff because, and this is something they hammered early on, was 51% of their customers have upgraded to Mountain Line, the newest version. Which sounds like a lot. You mean Maverick. Maverick, sorry. Yes. It sounds like a lot, but remember, it's a free download and they only got half the upgrade. I'm sorry, I know it's much better than Windows 8. Right. Well, so there are a few considerations, right? There's the fact that there's a cutoff beyond which the hardware doesn't support Mavericks, right? So you got to figure that a significant percentage of that other half falls into that category. And then there's the category of people who just don't care. And then there's the group of people, myself included, who believe that Snow Leopard was the best version of OS X of all time and would prefer that it just be frozen there in time. Seriously, Snow Leopard was really, really good. Why would you want an outdated operating, you know what? It was just, no. Just okay. After Snow Leopard, every subsequent, I'm sure there are viewers right now who understand what I'm getting at. After Snow Leopard, every subsequent version of OS X introduced more bugs than it fixed. Snow Leopard, it was like, they took, I don't know if you remember the keynote for it, but I remember it very well. They made a very, very specific point of saying to developers, look, this version isn't about features. We're just cleaning up that, like, we've been working on this thing for many years now. We're just going to take a breath, clean it up, fix some bugs, and spit out a new version. And they did it and it was fantastic. And since then, every time you upgrade to a new version of OS X, you go through a couple point releases where, full of buggy. And I'm sure that Yosemite will be the same way. Absolutely. But here's the thing also, and it's a numbers thing too, is Apple, I don't think, honestly, cares that much. To an extent. And I'll explain why. Apple doesn't care about bugs. Well, it doesn't care as much about OS X. Here's another reason why. Mavericks, what, they said 40 million copies installed, and that's 51% user base. So it's just a little over 80 million. Yep. Okay, compare that to 800 million iOS devices as announced today. You know, 100 million iPod touches. They have more iPod touches out there than they're claiming for Mac. Right. So, like, what they're focused on, I mean, they keep saying iOS is iOS and OS X is OS X. They're not going to change them. But iOS is clearly the dominant platform. Of course, that's why they spent an hour and a half on it. Right. And that was, when they started talking about iOS, was we got this barrage of words that ended in ket. Right. There was health ket, which is accompanied by the creatively named app Health. Then there is home ket. There is cloud ket. Cloud ket. And I think I might be missing one or two. And then there was metal. Anyway, we should talk about all these things. Yes. And I'm going to have to ask you to kind of hold my hand through metal and Swift, because those are the ones that are going to... Sure. So let's just go into Health Kit, which was formerly known in the leaks as Health Book, because it just looked like Passbook. Right. So Health Kit is the platform or the sub-platform, and Health is the app. Is that right? Yes. Okay. So what is the big thing here? I know it's like it keeps track of a lot of stuff. Yeah. And they can send it to Mayo Clinic. Right. They send it to Mayo Clinic. Basically, I get the impression that they're trying to obviate doctors. Someday Apple is going to be your doctor. Your phone is going to be your doctor. You think obviate or supplement? I mean, I don't think they're trying to do anything replacement here. Look, man, in 20 years, doctors will be obsolete. Your phone will be your doctor. When you need surgery, equipment on the phone will sort of spring out and operate on you. No, they're working with Nike and, as you mentioned, Mayo Clinic to do some of this stuff. They announced a lot of partners. I'm sure they're going to be announcing more. But it's apparent that health and fitness are a big, big push for Apple right now. And we've heard rumors that the iWatch that they're allegedly working on, which we heard nothing about at this event, is also fitness-focused. So you can see how it kind of all creates an ecosystem. And here's the thing. It's almost somewhat of a head scratcher because in the finance calls they do, they keep hinting at new product categories. They keep saying, we have a lot of great stuff. Tim Cook, I think less than a year ago, said, we really like wearable stuff for looking into it. And this time, they didn't even hint at iWatches. They were like, look, this health kit stuff, it measures. How do they get into measurements? Eh, don't worry about it. Right. Like, they did not even hint at it. No teases. It was just, we're measuring. Don't worry about it. That's because in a few months you're going to have your iWatch and it'll take care of all the measurements. In a few months. Maybe. I don't know. Who knows? That's Christmas time. So that was one of the kits. And then there was, let's just go through the kits, I guess, HomeKit. This is the one, I think Fortune or Forbes. FT, Financial Times, I believe. Financial Times. FT. One of the F-words. Apologies to all F-publications. But yeah, HomeKit. This was rumored. It's home automation. It's not as big of a deal in the presentation as it was in the article, but I'm curious your stance on this one because it's just, your phone knows what your house is doing. If you have the right smart home equipment, it can use it. Well, I think that Apple has the potential to bring gravity to a standard. It has the potential to do two very important things in home automation. One, bring gravity to a single standard in an industry that has historically struggled to find a common standard. And two, simply bring attention to it because it's kind of a wacky, offbeat, almost hobbyist industry where it's like you have these weirdos like myself who buy all these different wireless locks and lights and switches and all these things. And sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Some use Z-Wave, some use Zigbee, some use some other weird standard. So right now, how do you control it? Is there a remote control you have? Are you still just using a light switch because then it's just nothing? No, that's a very good question. And there is no good answer. There are companies like Crestron that do ultra high-end home automation and they just basically talk to everything and they say, don't worry about it. You can buy these 10 components with 10 different standards and we'll just talk to all of them. There's a device called Revolve that we wrote about late last year. It looks kind of like a stack of CDs, a red and transparent stack of CDs that has a bunch of radios in it and it can talk to Nest thermostats and Z-Wave light switches and whatnot. So taking the bigger picture is basically what Apple wants to do. And this is obviously an old thing. It's not old, it's like a couple of years they've been working on this. They want you to talk to Siri and say, Siri, I'm getting ready for bed. Please turn off the lights. Stop looking at me. Right. So yeah, exactly. So that's the software, that's the user experience for this thing. But then on the back end, they have this HomeKit standard that devices will be able to get certified through. And so you're going to see all these things that have been just kind of like plodding along on disparate standards. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, including, like I said, wireless locks, light switches, air conditioners and heaters. And actually now that Nest is a Google company, I suspect that no love will be lost between HomeKit and Nest. I don't think you're going to be seeing a lot of support. If you notice, if you look at the partners, and we've got the list right here, Nest is nowhere to be found. Nest is nowhere to be found. Nest nor Google. And they used to be BFFs. I don't know if you remember, I believe that Nest was the first brick and mortar store they were sold through. Was the Apple store. Was the Apple store. Yep. And I guess that is no longer the case or soon will not be the case. Right. But I mean, of course you would think that because Apple and Google are rivals, except they did mention Google twice by name. They name checked Google twice and Microsoft Bing once, which is great for them. Whenever they use Safari search in iOS or OS X, they're like, we were using Google search. And then the big extension thing, using actual widgets, we should get into that next, was Bing translation. They're not being shy about actually talking to the competitors when it's, of course, convenient for them. Right. And I think it's a tacit admission on Apple's part that they do certain things really well, and they do other things not very well. And one of those things that would be the barrier of entry is simply too high to try to bust into it is effective search. Think of how much time and money and energy Microsoft has poured into Bing, which plays a distant second fiddle to Google in the global, or at least in the North American search market. Which I hate to echo a Microsoft talking point, but again, second place is not the end of the world for this. I mean- No, no, certainly not. But the fact of the matter is Apple has to choose between embracing the search partners and trying to go up against them. And look at the struggle that they've had with maps, right? Apple Maps. And do they really want to repeat that again with something as daunting as effective web search? Probably not. Do you remember years ago they kept talking, oh, we have Wolfram Alpha integration, and what the hell happened to that thing? No, it's still in there. It's still? Okay. If you say something to Siri, something super nerdy like how many neutrons are in a whatever, it'll pull up Wolfram Alpha. That's good. But let's go into the Bing translation stuff and the extensibility, because this is the part that at once excites me and also scares the hell out of me. What scares you? Okay, well, let's talk about what it is first. It's extensibility is what they're calling it. It's this kind of a goodbye to the sandbox. It's apps talking to apps, which means finally open integration. It means like as a corollary to that, it's like, of course, keyboards, you can now choose different ones. And that's a huge point. That's a huge thing. Huge point. The mail client still default, the maps client default. Your keyboard though, it can be swipe, it could probably be Swift key. And there's a new keyboard that Apple touting that's its own keyboard essentially. Which is by the way, a Swift key like, and then it tries to complete phrases for you. So that all makes me super happy, super excited. This is a long time coming. Thank you widgets on the notification panel. That being said, the part of this that scares me is this is where Tim Cook talks about like Apple is very virus free. It's 1% of the mobile virus market, assuming like if Android is 99% and no one cares about Windows phone, God, I'm going to get killed after this. But then once you have this kind of thing where like apps can draw data from other apps and there's sandbox ideas over, does this open the apps, does this open the information up to be more subjective to viruses and to malware? I don't think so because all of those components that you're referring to are still going to go through the same app store approval process that they do now. The only difference is that they're now talking to each other. But like, you know, if you trust app A and you trust app B, then there's no real reason that you wouldn't trust app A to talk to app B. That's true. That's true. But yeah, you know, back to your original point about extensibility in general in iOS 8, this is potentially the single biggest announcement today. When you think back to the progression and the maturation of iOS and before that iPhone OS over the years, this has been a sticking point for as long as I can remember. The fact that apps can't extend each other, the fact that you can't have your own keyboard, which is a huge deal on Android. The first thing I do whenever I use an Android phone is install Swipe, and you haven't been able to do that in iOS. And frankly, at this point, the built-in, don't get me wrong, in iOS 1, iOS 2, Apple's keyboard was head and shoulders above everything else on the market. Today it sucks. It's terrible. It's worse than Windows phone stock keyboard. It's certainly worse than Android stock keyboard in KitKat. It's really a jelly bean before that. So it's good to see that they've done this. And I think that it could end up being, when we see where app development goes over the course of the next year, that could end up being the biggest deal here. Right. I mean, but again, we haven't seen anything of it. The only stuff they showed was Pinterest notification. They showed a lot of first-party stuff that's exciting. You can now inline respond to messages. I think Facebook you can like inline. Right. Well, it's just like, you know, it's just like anybody's developer conference. It's like Build or it's like IOWA. You need to, the first thing you need to do is present the possibilities to the developers and then in a few months you see what can actually be done. And my guess would be that in addition to the partners that they've worked with so far to present the few demos that they showed, by the time we get to an iPhone 6 announcement, they will have a bunch of additional stuff on the table. Right. So we should talk about this more, but thankfully, hopefully, luckily, lovely, we have Dieter Bone from San Francisco live on the air. Dieter, are you there? I am here. How are you doing, guys? Doing very well. That's a nice office. God, I've got to go out to San Francisco. Yeah, this is Vox West. It's very impressive. We're lucky to be here. That's beautiful. Yeah. Also, I'm not sure if it's a video glitch or if you're just really good at like miming. It is good to hear from you. So Dieter, you've done a number of worldwide developer conferences. You've done a number of developer conferences in general. What was the vibe like in there, media versus dev? So the vibe was pretty excited, pretty happy. The media was really into, especially the stuff for iOS 8, the extensions, I think they're called, the stuff between apps. Everybody in our section seemed really jazzed about it. But then when they moved on to the section about Swift, the new programming language, the media section kind of started to be like, oh, this seems cool. This seems cool. And the developer section, which was, of course, the vast majority of the room, lost their minds. They were cheering and yelling and super-duper excited about it. And I mean, I'm not a developer, so I can't tell you, other than Apple's claims that it's way faster than Objective-C and, of course, way faster than Python, what everything is that's great about Swift. But the developers there seemed really excited. And that, I think, is probably going to end up being the most influential thing out of this developers conference, we look back on it a few years from now. Right. And this is actually John Gerber, who was tweeting throughout the event, who's known Apple developer, knows the same thing. Media badge people are silent, attendees are going nuts. This is huge, huge news, the future of all Apple development, which, when you look at how small OS X adoption is versus iOS, I think he's right in that case. Yeah, but I mean, you see- We're going to need to see how this plays out for the rest of the developers conference. One question I have for Swift is, I'm sure that Apple's right that it's incredibly fast and easy to use and the development environment, and this sounds so nerdy, but this is a developers conference, so this is what the big news was, it seemed really easy to use. But my question is, if I start learning how to use Swift for iOS, does that mean I'm going to be less capable of making stuff for other platforms? Now, Swift can work along with Objective-C in the same app, so you can only pick Swift. But that might be a question. Right. And that's, of course, something that they may change going forward. Obviously, when Apple switched from, I guess, IBM PowerPCs a lot to Intel chips, the programming language went with it, the architecture went with it. Right now, Swift and Objective-C work side to side. Objective-C, of course, works on a lot of platforms. What happens when Apple sees this as a success and goes, sorry, guys. Well, for all we know, Swift will work just fine on Windows at some point. That's true. That's true. Right. Let's be super clear. Objective-C is already a very Apple-specific environment. You don't see developers on Windows or certainly on Android programming in Objective-C. So I don't see this as being a protectionist move, and I certainly don't see it as being a roadblock to allowing developers to develop in other platforms. And this is why I do not develop Encode. Thank you guys so much for clearing that one up on my end. No, but, yeah, so, Deater, above and all, you also solved the iOS stuff, the OS X stuff. What was the feeling for that? Your own personal feeling, actually. My own personal feeling is the, we'll start with OS X. I think it looks fine. I think it looks pretty good, actually. I'm really interested in the continuity features. I think that's killer, to be able to text and to be able to just pick up stuff from one device and move it to the other device and just start right where I left off. I'm super excited for that. I'm probably going to switch back to Safari from Chrome, because Chrome has been feeling slower and slower, and all the speed stuff they showed on Safari looks pretty amazing. So it's not a kind of update that would, if you don't already like OS X, get you to switch necessarily. But if you are using OS X, I think it's going to feel a lot better. As for my OS X stuff, I like the extensibility stuff where apps can talk to each other. I'm pretty excited for Touch ID being opened up to the point where I can use an iPhone 5 all this time, but the ability to not have to punch in passwords. And yeah, I don't know. A lot of it's a blur. I'm glad AirDrop finally works across devices. I'm glad they finally fixed that. Yeah, I mean, after a keynote, it's always tough to remember the millions of features that they announced. What's some of the stuff you guys have been talking about? Yeah, well, to your point, Dieter, I think that the handoff features are huge. I was just tweeting last week that the Messages app on OS X would be so much more useful if you could see both SMS and iMessage. So the fact that they did that was big. I was kind of blown away by their phone call demo. I thought that was crazy and cool and not expected. Yeah, and from our end too, it was just seeing all that kind of great. And I'm curious, kind of a corollary of that, is the SMS iMessage stuff that's been kind of coming to a head lately. Is this a sign that it's been fixed? If they're figuring out how to get that work? Or is it going to be even worse? Yeah, no, they even took a swipe at SMS users during the conference, right, Dieter? Yeah, it was like people who bought Android phones by mistake. Tim said that once. And just people that you hate those green messages on the iPhone. The Messages app in general is a really interesting section of the keynote because not only is not only are they letting you use message from your desktop with texting, but they've added a whole bunch of other features. So they've added the ability to share your location. They've improved the ability to send voice messages and short video messages. You can just tap on a button to actually record a voice message or tap on a button to just speak out what you want to say. And they also added quick reply things so using natural language prediction can guess what your next word is going to be. So from my perspective that seems really interesting because they're not just taking on a general messaging client, they're actually going after other messaging apps like Facebook Messenger. I guess maybe even Snapchat since you can destroy stuff, but that seems like a stretch to me. And maybe WhatsApp. It really feels like a much more full-featured messaging app and the sort of thing I can actually see myself using. Yeah, actually, Dieter, go back to that because I was trying to watch the stream. I might have missed something. Some things auto self-destruct, some things don't. What is the... Where does that fall? Sorry, I forgot to say that, Ross. Can you repeat that again, Ross? What auto self-destructs, what doesn't? It wasn't kind of clear to me. Maybe I just missed it on the stream. The audio stays there, the video stays there. Yeah, it wasn't clear to me either, actually. They glossed over it. I think you can set stuff to slowly degrade and disappear, but we'll have all week to actually figure that stuff out and then we'll have the beta when it comes and the actual release this fall. So we'll see. But I don't think that it's fair to think of it in the same class as Snapchat regardless of what the auto-destruct messages features are. I think it's much better to think of it as a competitor to say Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. Well, there's also that... The name of it escapes me, but there's that enterprise class Snapchat. It's like Snapchat for adults. Tinder? No, it has absolutely nothing to do with Tinder. Okay, sorry. By the way, Tinder got a name drop in the intro video. Having people talk about how amazing developers are. They had a guy like, Tinder is the best. It was hilarious. Yeah, and then they kind of held on him for a second like, are you going to say anything else about Tinder? Like, how are you going to use it? Nope. All right, moving on. Speaking of Tinder, we just need to wrap in a minute. Any final thoughts from the keynote? My final thought is I'm really impressed that they're releasing the 10.10 beta to the public. This feels like a much more open, much more accessible Apple. And the fact that they're joking around way more and they are releasing a beta to just regular users sort of admitting that people want to get in on this stuff early is a really good sign that Apple's opening up a lot. Yeah. Awesome, Dieter. Thank you so much. Yep, thanks, guys. And I think that is, I guess, one of the threads that we should kind of open up on because Apple has a lot more open in so many ways. These apps are more open. OS X feels a little more open. The keynote feels more open. It feels more accessible. Yeah. And to be fair, at the developers conference, I think that they've always been a little bit more open than they are at the consumer facing events because these are their people, right? They're the people that they need to bring with them on this journey to apps, for lack of a better phrase. So being more open and direct and kind of friendly and jokey with them is natural. But this event in particular felt a half notch different than usual in a good way. It was entertaining. It did. And actually, in another sense, too, it's a half notch toward the kind of developer centric. We've seen other WWDC pass. Of course, they are developer focused, but they also have a notch to consumers. Here's new hardware. Here's the iPhone 4. And this time, it's like, we're going to code on stage. Just make a 2D game. Why not? We're going to show you how it is. This isn't like always expected Google I.O. for one of the three, four days of conferences. But this is kind of like where Apple's going to go first. We're going to make jokes that developers love, multi-threaded rope. If we're going to make a little silly Photoshop things, just kind of jump around. And if we're also going to show the stuff in action, actually programming in action, like that is a different kind of Apple. It's one that's catering not to every audience, but to a very specific audience with this. And to that point, going back to what I said at the beginning of this, I think we're in for a really busy second half for Apple. We're going to see, I have to believe, at least three events. They have to do an iPhone event. They have to do an iWatch event. I can't imagine they would want to bundle two events that big, maybe, but probably not. They're going to have to talk Retina MacBook Air. They're going to have to talk iPad. And they might have to talk Apple TV. How do you fit five major product shifts for them into the span of six months? I don't know. Not to mention, in the next six to 12 months, we're going to see something about Apple Beats and all that kind of collaboration. That has to be more than just these sign-on dotted lines, because we don't know what that means yet. Right. And of course, what they typically do is they show 90% of the next version of iOS, either in a dedicated event or at WDC. And then at the time of the announcement of the next iPhone is when they show that other 10%. Right. Right? I think last year it was Touch ID was sort of the big reveal when they announced the 5S. This year, clearly, there will be some additional 10%, so to speak, that they show at the time of the iPhone 6. Might be a new screen resolution for the bigger displays. It might be who knows? Something we haven't even thought of. Yeah. The big rumors that didn't happen this time, of course, were transit and Google... Sorry. Transit and Apple Maps, excuse me. Right. From their HopStop acquisition. Exactly. You know, they got the notifications presumably from the Q acquisition, maybe. We'll see. And then also, of course, multitasking with the iPad, which has been rumored a lot lately, was not likely going to make this, of course, but that's something you can show later this year. Yeah. Are you hedging on the iWatch and the Apple TV unveils? Any of that stuff? As being 2014 announces? Yes. iWatch is a lock for 2014, I think. I believe very strongly we're going to see that this year. Apple TV, I think, could easily slip into 2015, but at this point, it's just kind of like a running joke that there aren't apps for the Apple TV. Like at the very least, let me put Flappy Bird on Apple TV. Like it's such an easy win, right? We saw Amazon do it with Fire TV. Makes absolutely no sense that they would continue to lock independent developers out of that platform. So I think, again, I think it's just going to be a really busy second half for Apple. And I think if you look at even like what Eddie Q said at the Recode conference last week, or the Code conference from Recode, got it right now, which is, you know, 20 million Apple TVs, clearly not a hobby. Yeah. That's the most exciting product category. Clearly, we've got to figure out what the hell is tracking health data. So it's got to be something. And I'm just going to use a fuel band. So, yeah, I guess we'll see. But that's, you know, for us at least, that is kind of it for WWDC. Yeah. The big keynote. We're going to be obviously sticking around the whole week, talking to a lot of people, trying to get a little more information, especially on Swift, which is Swift and Metal, a shoo-in for making Apple TV apps work and games, of course. That's right. Everyone, thank you so much for joining us. Of course, Dieter Bohn is at Backlawn on Twitter. Chris is ZPower. I'm O-N-O Roscoe, no E. If you put the E in, it actually redirects you. Thank you, whoever did that. For all this information and more, check out theverge.com. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. And have a great day. Thanks, guys.

We are 562 days away from Star Wars Episode VII hitting theaters. Let's see where we're at. I'm Jake Kasternakas and this is 90 Seconds on the Verge. After the first batch of cast members was revealed in April, using the latest actors to join the light side and the dark side of the Force has been relatively hush-hush. Until now, Lupita Nyong'o, coming off of her Oscar-winning performance in 12 Years a Slave, along with Gwendoline Christie, best known for her role in Game of Thrones, have both been added to the new cast. They'll be joining more than a dozen previously announced stars, both new and old, to the Star Wars universe. Production on the film is already well underway in Abu Dhabi, which also means set photos have begun pouring in. Judging by both a video from director J.J. Abrams and leaked photos from TMZ, it looks like Episode VII will lean more on practical effects and set design than the CG-heavy prequels. It also looks inspired by original trilogy artist Ralph McQuarrie, who died in 2012. And yes, the Millennium Falcon is back, as well as a starfighter that looks like a cross between an X-Wing and an ARC-170 from the prequels. Or so we're guessing, because it's clearly not a finished model. We'll have the internet Forbes take over from here. Episode VII is due out December 18, 2015, and already Lucasfilm and Disney are working on the first non-trilogy Star Wars film. Gareth Edwards, whose reboot of Godzilla has so far grossed over $375 million worldwide, has been tapped to direct the first spin-off film. Disney has confirmed that three standalone films will happen in the next ten years, and they'll likely be origin stories based on characters like Boba Fett, Yoda, or Han Solo. Maybe Jar Jar too? For more on Star Wars, check out The Verge. Coming up, new leaked photos show a Taco Bell in the Mos Eisley Cantina. Gotta get a product placement in somewhere.

Hey, this is Josh with The Verge and we are live at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. You know, it's been a roller coaster of a day, beginning with me nearly getting run over by thousands of extremely angry and anxious developers, desperately trying to claw and punch their way to a cheap and pretty uncomfortable seat. There are plenty of seats for you. You will get a seat. You're okay. You're still on Earth. You will sit down, I promise. There are too many seats if you ask me. But obviously that's not the main story. The big story is that Apple had a bunch of announcements. iOS 8, a new version of OS X called Yosemite, several weed jokes on stage. Actually, a pretty good run of weed jokes on stage. OS X weed. Strangely, this one had large pockets of support within the product marketing organization. So Yosemite is obviously a big deal. It's a complete visual revamp of OS X for the desktop. It looks a lot more like iOS. There's a bunch of new features, but I thought the most notable thing that they're including is something that Apple's calling continuity, which is actually a cross-platform feature. It is a way that you can sort of push your application states from your desktop to your iPad or your iPhone and vice versa. There's a lot of interplay there that's really similar to an idea that I had a few years ago called the continuous client, which would allow you to kind of place shift the stuff that you're doing on your devices from one to the other. And there's some really interesting things that Apple's doing with stuff like proximity awareness, where your computer will know that your phone is nearby and will be able to answer a call from it, which is kind of a huge thing. And I've been sitting at my computer a billion times wishing that I could make a call or answer a call from the desktop instead of having to do it from the phone that was sitting next to it. So I think that's one of the most notable things that they did today in terms of Yosemite. But obviously the visual refresh, refreshes in Safari, a new engine that's powering Safari that's extremely fast and power efficient. And I think, you know, most importantly, what's interesting about continuity is that it allows you to place a call to Dr. Dre while at your desktop. I'm glad you called. I hear Tim gets in pretty early. What time is the show at 4? If you want to beat Tim into the office, it'd be about 4.30. But I think, you know, orientation, new employee orientation starts at 9. So and you don't want to miss the free t-shirt. So I'd shoot for 9. I don't know if that's a feature that's available to everybody or just to Craig Federighi, but it's intriguing. Apple also introduced iOS 8 today, which is a pretty major update from the previous version of the software. Not a lot of visual changes that I could see, at least during the demos that they had, but some really interesting new features and a lot of under the hood stuff. One of the things that's really notable is that they've updated notifications and you can now take action on a notification right from the drop down panel. So you can like something on Facebook or reply to a message. Another interesting thing they've done with the notification center is they've added widgets to it. So a third party developer can plug in glanceable information that you can access right from the notification panel. I mentioned there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on and one of the big features is extensions. Apple's allowing developers to make their applications extensible and plug into more of the system architecture. So you'll be able to share from apps to a lot of other apps now, including Apple's first party apps. For instance, Pinterest sharing or Instagram sharing will now be able to be built in at a system level. And you can also have things like photo filters, say a VSCO photo filter in your photos app that you can apply right from within that application. So that's a huge underlying change the way Apple is running its iOS platform. And it's going to create a lot of opportunities for developers to plug into each other's apps and into Apple's apps in a brand new way. They're also allowing third party keyboards, which is a huge sea change for Apple. They've been proselytizing their keyboard as the best in the business since pretty much day one on the iPhone. And this is definitely a change in attitude about the keyboard and about users' ability to customize their experience. Apple is also including continuity, obviously, in iOS 8. It's a big part of how it plays with your desktop. So that's kind of awesome. And there's some new multitasking features. You can now get to your favorite contacts from within the multitasker. You can also access Siri without having to actually touch the phone. Elsewhere, there's some slight tweaks, some interesting changes to mail with new gestures to manage your mailbox and sort of multitask while you're working on a message. And there's also maybe some changes to the speed with which the OS actually operates, but that might have just been for demo purposes. But overall, this really did feel like a developer focused WWDC, maybe more so than they've ever done in the past. And in fact, they introduced a new programming language here called Swift, which people kind of went crazy for in the room. And I think is a really notable move today, maybe the biggest story of the day, because it's certainly going to have a long term impact on Apple's platforms. But I think the most notable thing that happened today is that Apple seemed to be having a lot more fun. They were looser. They were more open. They were cracking jokes. But I think the vibe in the room was very different from previous years at this event. And hopefully, that's a little bit of the new way forward for the company.

We're gathered to talk about two powerful platforms, OS X and iOS. We collected our crack product marketing team. They first ventured south discovering OS X Oxnard, OS X Weed. We discovered OS X Yosemite. We started with the most fundamental controls. You'll see how the use of translucent materials gives you a sense of place as you scroll your content. Check out these beautifully crafted new icons. We also focused on precise and consistent typography throughout. All in all, a gorgeous and more usable version of OS X. Next, let's talk about Notification Center. You get an at-a-glance look at your calendar, your reminders, weather, and more. You can extend the contents of Todayview with the contents of widgets and apps that you've downloaded from the App Store. Next up, Spotlight. You get a big field right in the middle of the display. If you just type a few characters, you can launch an app just like that. We also tap into sources of information on the internet. Type a few characters in like Yosemite, you can get newsfeed, information from Wikipedia, and even maps. Next, iCloud Drive. Your Mac, in addition to let you work on those within the document, has all of those folders right accessible inside of Finder. In addition to those apps that are local to your Mac, you can get content from iOS documents. Next up, Mail. Instead of your message bouncing off your recipient's mail server, you can elect to have the attachment sent encrypted and securely via iCloud separate from the message and it rendezvous on the receiving end. And those attachments can be up to five gigs in size. So next, Markup. Have you ever been working on an email message and you realize that if you could just maybe circle something or write something on the message, maybe doodle a little something, you could get your point across so much more clearly? Well now with Markup you can. Next up, Safari. We in Yosemite have been able to pack all the power of the Safari UI into this single bar. Now, your smart search field, when you click it, shows you all of your favorites right there. You also get spotlight suggestions right there in your completion menu. This means you can get at things faster than ever before. We now have a tab view that gives you a bird's eye glance of all of your tabs. Something entirely different. It's called continuity. We believe you should be able to use the right device for the moment. Maybe your phone, your iPad, maybe your Mac. Now AirDrop works between iOS and the Mac. But now we have something where we really take it to the next level and it's called handoff. Your devices around you are aware of each other. And so if you want to pick up where you left off on your Mac, on your iPad, your iPad is prompting you right in the lower left of the screen. Just swipe up and you can pick up working on what you're working on your Mac right on your iPad. This works in the other direction as well. The next area we really wanted to handle is SMS. We all love iMessage. We can continue our conversation seamlessly from device to device. But then we have these green bubble friends. They have inferior devices and they insist on sending us messages and we don't want to hold it against them. But the problem is that those messages don't show up on our other devices. Now your phone is able to act as a relay to automatically and transparently send your messages between devices. We're able to do the same thing with phone calls. Hey, how you doing? This is Dre. Hey, hey, doctor, you're on speakerphone via my Mac. It's a wonderful new release, Yosemite, and it's available to you developers here today. Everyone else will get it in the fall. It will be free. Today we're announcing iOS 8. What I really love are our new interactive notifications. If you get a message like this, just pull down and you can reply from right where you are. If you get a calendar event, for instance, just pull down and respond. You can also use that same double tap to get at the people you communicate with most frequently. If you're reading a message and you want to remember to get back to it, so you're going to mark it unread, we can do that with just a single gesture. If you want to flag a message, you can just pull across as a flag option. But if you pull all the way across, you can delete with just a gesture. Have you ever found yourself composing an email and then you really wish you could get it something else in your inbox, maybe for that reply? Just swipe that message down and you have access to the rest of your mail. You can search for apps and find matches of apps that you don't yet have on the App Store. You can search for points of interest and get Wikipedia entries and directions. You can search for news, search for restaurants, songs, not just in your own library but also on iTunes. Next, technology we call QuickType. It's context sensitive. For instance, in messages, if someone asks you, do you want to go for dinner or movie? It's going to suggest dinner or a movie. It learns how you type to different people in different apps. Next up, messages. So when it comes to group messaging, you can now name your threads. You can add or remove people from a conversation underway. You can do not disturb on a per thread level and you can choose when to leave the thread. You also can share your location and you also have a really great at a glance view of all of the pictures and attachments. Tap to talk. You just hold your finger down on the microphone button. Swipe up with your finger when you're done talking and send what you said. You've got to do something. I've got it. Craig, it's good to hear that you survived the great hair crisis of 2014. Next up, iCloud Drive. You can bring up your iCloud Drive panel and open documents directly from other applications. Now something that we all care a lot about, health. And with health, you can monitor all of your metrics that you're most interested in your activity. Next up, family sharing. You automatically get to share photos with a shared photo stream, to share calendars with your family, to share a shared reminder list. You can get it not just your purchases, but the purchases of all the members of your family. And it works great for kids as well. When they do make a purchase, they get prompted to ask you for permission. We're bringing together photos with iCloud so that every photo you take are available to you on all of your devices. Your device actually has access to more photos in the cloud than it can physically store locally. But we also give you search. And so that search lets you match on things like location, time, and also albums that you've set up. We also help you perfect your photos with great new smart editing controls. You get all your photos in your organization across your iOS devices, and soon with your Mac and via the web, Windows as well. If you take your phone and you plug it in, for instance, in the car, you can say, hey Siri, and start talking to Siri without having to even touch your phone. We're rolling out a number of new features on the store. We're adding an Explore tab. We're adding top trending searches to make search even better. We're giving the developers the capability to form app bundles. We're introducing app previews. We're also introducing for the first time today a new beta test service called Test Life. This release is the biggest release since the launch of the App Store. With extensibility, applications from the App Store will be able to extend the system and offer services to other apps. In addition to the system's built-in sharing options, an app like Pinterest can offer a share sheet to Safari. Now we're also supporting photo filters inside of photos. Finally, we're enabling third-party apps to define widgets that can now go in Notification Center. Tap the plus next to Sports Center, position it where I want among my widgets in my Today view, tap done, and now I have information on my favorite sports teams right here inside of Notification Center. Now third-party apps can take advantage of Touch ID as well. We started working with the leaders in home automation devices, and we've come up with a home kit with a common network protocol that has secure pairing to ensure that only your iPhone can open your garage door or unlock your door. With HomeKit, you can group devices and changes into scenes, and then with Siri integration, you can say something like, get ready for bed, and be assured that your garage door is closed, your door is locked, the thermostat is lowered, and your lights are dimmed. We have a new programming language. The language is called Swift, and it totally rules. Swift is fast. It is modern. It is designed for safety, and it enables a level of interactivity and development that you've never seen on the platform with features like closures, generics, type inference, multiple return types, and namespaces. You know how many people at home are going, what in the heck are these guys talking about? That's iOS 8. It's going to be available to those of you here in beta today, and you guessed it, available to everyone else in the fall, and it'll run on all of these devices. It's an incredible set of features and incredible relays. Thank you very much.

Apple announced some major updates today in a two hour keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference. Here's a quick recap. I'm Nathan Seigert and this is 90 Seconds on the Verge. The next OS X has a name and it's Yosemite. Coming out this fall is a free upgrade. As expected, the design language is more in line with the new iOS, with flatter icons and sharper corners. The OS X and iOS integration is also deeper than ever. Handoff syncs your work across devices, while AirDrop now works across OS X and iOS. There's also iCloud Drive, an online file storage system similar to Dropbox. One of the biggest surprises coming is the integration of SMS and even phone calls in OS X. Hey, uh, Doctor, you're on speakerphone via my Mac. So now let's talk iOS 8. The visuals remain the same, but functionally. With interactive notifications, you can now reply to messages without switching apps. Quick type is Apple's new keyboard, but if you don't like it, iOS finally allows for third-party keyboards like Swype. Then there's the aptly named Help Kit and Home Kit. Apple has a lot of partners here for both. We imagine it'll get more interesting later this year. For developers, Apple is now letting apps talk to one another. Imagine applying VSCO filters right into the new Photos app, or letting Bing translate a website in Safari. But the biggest announcement is probably the least consumer-friendly. Swift is Apple's brand new programming language, and it's a lot faster than Objective-C. While many may not understand the full extent of that announcement, it was the one that easily got the biggest cheer of the keynote. There's a lot more on WWDC, and for that, check out The Verge. Coming up, I unveil Froingle, the new programming language you can use with your invisible friend. I really need human interaction.

These are mind-blowing numbers. Over a thousand, two-thirds, thirteen, nine million, fifty percent, twelve percent, eighty million, forty million, over fifty percent of our install base, fourteen percent, eight hundred million, a hundred million units, two hundred million units, a half a billion units, over a hundred and thirty million, nearly half ninety-seven percent, almost nine out of ten people in our install base, less than one out of ten of their customers four years ago, eight, two stories not one, one point two million, three hundred million people, over seventy-five billion, ten thousands of people. Thank you very much.

Celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Sean Combs might have expressed interest, but in the end Steve Ballmer has become the new owner of the LA Clippers, and no one could be more excited than the man himself. I'm Dan Seifert, and this is 90 seconds on the verge. It's been officially confirmed that the former Microsoft CEO will purchase the Los Angeles basketball team for $2 billion. The Clippers were put up for sale this month following former owner Donald Sterling's banishment from the league for making some, well, remarks. You added Ballmer to me a lot that you wanted from broadcast that you're associating with black people. Ballmer's ownership will still need final approval from the NBA, but there doesn't appear to be anything holding that back. Ballmer is also coming out strong against Sterling's views, saying Los Angeles is, quote, a city that embraces inclusiveness in exactly the same way that the NBA and I embrace inclusiveness. You might be asking yourself, though, why Ballmer? Last August, Ballmer announced that he would be retiring as Microsoft CEO earlier than originally planned. Also, the man is worth an estimated $20 billion, and how often do you get to buy an NBA team? Ballmer has said it himself that he loves basketball, and there's certainly proof of that online. I'm a huge basketball fan amongst everything else. If you loved basketball, were recently out of a job, and had $2 billion to spend, what would you do? For more on Steve Ballmer, check out The Verge. Coming up, I try to take out a loan in my effort to buy the Detroit Lions. Hi, Dad?

Last night, SpaceX founder and real-life Tony Stark, Elon Musk, unveiled the Dragon V2, the company's first manned spacecraft. The capsule can carry seven astronauts to the International Space Station before docking automatically with the ISS. And as far as landing it, the craft's propulsion system allows it to land almost anywhere on Earth with the accuracy of a helicopter. Right now, a vessel leaving the ISS can't land very precisely and it can't be used again. SpaceX's Dragon V2 will have the freedom to land almost anywhere and be reused several times. But how exactly did Elon Musk's company get to this point? Rewind to May 22, 2012. After several delays and false starts, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket takes off. Three days later, its unmanned Dragon capsule successfully docks with the ISS, marking a first for any privately owned spacecraft. Later that year, after receiving a $1.6 billion contract from NASA, SpaceX completes the first of 12 planned resupply missions to the ISS using its Dragon capsule. This was also the first resupply mission ever by a private company. But vessels like the Dragon aren't the only parts Musk wants to wash, rinse, and reuse again. Beginning in late 2012, the company began testing its next generation reusable rocket called Grasshopper. The Grasshopper rocket is designed to launch into space, release its payload, and land back on Earth safely and ready for another mission. This is a major step forward in rocket engineering. Right now, such rockets have mostly been throwaway equipment after completing a launch. Not really that cost effective. Anyway, back to Elon Musk. In December of last year, Musk's company launched its first commercial satellite into orbit. This milestone marked a potential game changer for the commercial satellite industry. SpaceX showed it could launch satellites on U.S. soil for millions less than it typically costs competitors. And that brings us back to today. Musk says the Dragon V2 will be able to transport crew to the ISS by 2016. And that's not even the end of it, because Musk has a greater vision. Human colonization of Mars. That's right. With the company's development of innovative, reusable spacecrafts, travel to and from space is about to become cheaper and easier than you've ever imagined.

Jurassic World, here we go! I'm Nathan Seidkert and this is 90 Seconds on the Verge. Jurassic World, aka Jurassic Park 4, is still a year away, but director Colin Trevorrow went ahead and confirmed a wealth of general plot points. We're going to get to those in a minute, but let's take a step back first. Steven Spielberg's original Jurassic Park film, based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name, was about a group of specialists who traveled to an island near Costa Rica to sign off on a new theme park chock full of living, breathing dinosaurs. Jurassic Park was a billion dollar box office success. The sequels, The Lost World and Jurassic Park 3, also proved successful at the box office, but didn't really capture the magic of the first film. That brings us to the new film, and this is where the spoilers come in. Jurassic World is going to be set 22 years after the original and takes place around a fully functional theme park and resort on that original island. But here's the thing, now that everyone's used to the whole dinosaur thing, the park is looking to science to spice things up with a brand new dinosaur created by the park's geneticists. But if you were hoping for scientific accuracy, you're going to want to stick to the History Channel. Trevor wrote confirmed last year in a very brief but direct tweet that we won't be seeing any feathered dinosaurs. See, since the first Jurassic Park was released in 1993, there's been a flood of research on dinosaurs' evolutionary connection to birds. But look, it's a film. Raptors can actually open doors. A dilophosaurus doesn't spit venom. Okay, I mean the third film did put some feathers on raptors, but I'd rather just forget that movie. For more on Jurassic World, check out The Verge. Coming up, I discover that I have feathers and I can actually fly.

Later this year, we've got, you know, the best product pipeline that I've seen at Apple in my 25 years at Apple. The best product pipeline you've seen in 25 years. That's right. That includes the iPhone. Could you tell us about them? I get to see it tomorrow. Oh. Every year, Apple gathers a huge crowd of its developers and walks them through the future. The Worldwide Developer Conference has been the place where Apple has launched iPhones, redesigned software, and shown glimpses of its most exciting and important upcoming products. This year, it all starts June 2nd, and the rumor mill has been churning for months with what we will and won't see in San Francisco. Let's start with iOS, which is a staple of WWDC. Last year's update was a sweeping change in the look of the platform, but iOS 8 will really begin to polish some of the rough edges while introducing a number of key new features. The most important one seems to be Health Book. According to 9to5Mac, the new app will collect data on information like blood pressure, activity, heart rate, and sleep, and will place it into cards that look a lot like the Passbook app. It will pull from the phone's many sensors, but might also work nicely with a few accessories. But we'll get to those. Now what about smart homes? What if your phone could unlock your door when you get home, turn your lights on, and welcome you home with just the right song playing through your living room speakers? The Financial Times has said that Apple will unveil home automation software at WWDC, which would mark a huge step into a new industry for Apple, one that Google just got into with its recent acquisition of Nest. Rounding out the iOS 8 rumors are new apps like Preview and TextEdit, enhancements to Siri including Shazam-like song identification, and public transportation for Apple Maps, finally. Again, not a huge reimagining of the platform, just a polish and a paint job. And, I don't know, an addition or something. Next, let's talk OS 10.10, called Syrah. And yes, that is apparently the numbering scheme Apple's going with as 10.9's follow-up. The Mac's operating system is apparently getting a big design overhaul, one that puts it more in line with iOS 7's bright and simple looks. It'll still work like the OS 10 you already know, but will start to feel a lot more like a real companion to iOS. It's a logical next step, they have an increasing number of apps in common, and a similar style would make the two platforms feel even more like one. So iOS and OS 10 are basically a given, and while Apple's used WWDC in the past to announce major hardware, generally speaking we don't expect to see much outside of iterative updates there. That said, there are two bigger iPhones said to be on their way for late summer or early fall. Multiple outlets have reported that Apple is working on iPhone models with a 4.7 inch display and a 5.5 inch display, both far bigger than the 4 inch iPhone 5S. It's hard to say when they'll appear, especially given what are apparently real production problems, but it's not impossible that we'll see one of them at WWDC. Then there are wildcards like Apple TV. The company has been talking about Apple TV a lot lately, and this week Apple's Senior Vice President Eddie Q revealed that it's sold 20 million set-top boxes so far. It's been more than a hobby for a while now, and if Apple did want to set up something like a new app ecosystem as it gets ready to build a television, its annual developer conference is just the place to do it. And it's not just about TVs, of course. The really big Apple rumor of late has been the so-called iWatch. Apple has yet to enter the wearable field, which is quickly becoming crowded by some of its biggest competitors, including Samsung and Google and even Pebble. And the phrase new product categories keeps being thrown around by Tim Cook and other Apple executives. Something is coming, and soon. But watches are a fashion product, so maybe Apple's been waiting to solicit expertise from Beats, a style-focused audio company that Apple just bought for $3 billion. We're not expecting to hear anything from them next week, but we might see newly minted Apple executives Dr. Dre and Jimmy Ive. As for Dre's long, long, long in-production album Detox, well, some things not even Apple can make happen.

Nobody buys printers anymore, but they might be making a comeback. Is 3D printing the future? I'm David Pierce and this is 90 seconds on the verge. 3D printers are far from a household commodity, but startup New Matter thinks it has something that'll break through to the mainstream. The company this week unveiled the Mod-T printer, which is now up for pre-order on Indiegogo. And New Matter thinks it can differentiate in two key ways. One, it actually looks good. The hardware was made in collaboration with Frog Design, an influential firm whose clients have included Sony and Apple. The other way New Matter hopes it'll stand out is price, and there it's absolutely got a leg up. At $249, the Mod-T is significantly cheaper than virtually every other 3D printer on the market. That includes the $499 Solid Doodle and the $1,375 Replicator Mini, the cheapest printer for MakerBot, which is arguably the most well-known company in 3D printing. But you can only stay competitive on price for so long, and the price of 3D printers is bound to come down as the years or even months go on. Their biggest hurdle, and the one they really have yet to answer, is why would I need or even want this? Right now, 3D printing is still very much for hobbyists. And while the things you can make are indeed cool, or at least fun, it all still falls within the broad category of knick-knacks, doodads, and personalized trinkets. Still, the advancements in 3D printing are the stuff of dreams, from pizza for astronauts all the way to a 13-room Dutch canal house. That isn't the kind of thing you'll get with an at-home 3D printer anytime soon, but it's not as far off as you might think. For more on the Mod-T and 3D printing in general, check out The Verge. And coming up, we'll be releasing the CAD file for your very own, printed home, David Pearce.

Google has been showing off its work on driverless cars for a few years now, but up until this week, those vehicles always used a human driver or two for backup. There was a steering wheel, brakes, and gas, just in case the computer conked out or a person needed to take over in an emergency. But all that has changed with the introduction of Google's new completely autonomous vehicles. The prototype car doesn't have a steering wheel or pedals, and passengers are buckled into what are essentially back seats. These cars aren't street legal yet, but while regulators iron out the details of when and where they can drive, Google is intent on showing that automobiles are far safer without any input from us puny humans. Rob Medford, Google's director of safety on the Driverless Car Project, says that more than 90% of automobile accidents are caused by human error. That adds up to around 33,000 people killed every year, the leading cause of death for people between the ages of four and 34. Google's newest unit is purpose-built for safety. The form factor means its cameras and sensors have no blind spots and can detect objects for 360 degrees and as far as 200 yards away. The all-electric vehicle tops out at 25 miles per hour and has a front end built of soft foam, tweaks Google hopes will cushion any pedestrians struck head-on by the car. The company acknowledges that an accident is inevitable, but says collisions will be far less frequent and less dangerous than with humans behind the wheel. Google has been putting its first generation of driverless car systems through a series of tests on city streets around Mountain View. It's the same system that's being used in these fully autonomous models. The system can detect various obstacles and even color codes accordingly. Cyclists are red, pedestrians yellow, vehicles are either green or pink. The system so far can detect cones, construction zones, railroad crossings, and yes, it knows when a bicyclist raises his hand to change lanes and then changes his mind at the last minute. Google wants its cars to drive as if a human were behind the wheel. To slow down going into a turn or to inch up at a four-way stop as a way to indicate it wants to go next. For now, Google's totally autonomous cars are operating just on a closed track, with plans to eventually expand to city driving in Mountain View if and when they become street legal. When that happens, Google's safety systems will likely be tested not just by chance, but on purpose. Insurance fraud is already common among tractor trailers, with scammers getting into accidents so they can sue for damages. If people are willing to throw themselves in front of a speeding semi, imagine what they'll do to a foam cushion car owned and operated by one of the richest companies on Earth. Google knows this is coming, and it's doing its best to play things cool. Every driverless car is gonna be equipped with multiple cameras that will record any accident, meaning there'll be plenty of evidence to show who's really at fault. As Sebastian Thru, the original inventor of Google's driverless cars, told the New York Times, the big losers are gonna be the trial lawyers.

The e-cig industry had a run-in recently with Girl Scouts of the USA and Tootsie Roll Industries over e-liquid flavors that taste like their respective cookies and candy. But while cease and desist letters may force those flavors off the market, vapors still have a ton of options. That's actually a big part of the appeal of vaporizers. Choice. We're not talking about the enjoy type e-cigs that look and taste like regular cigarettes. This is about more elaborate vaporizers that can be taken apart, modified, and accessorized to produce what those in the community call mods. First, there's the liquid. There are more than 1,500 companies making e-liquid in ever more creative flavors. Cinnamon toast crunch. Cinnamon red hots. Buttered popcorn. Bam! Dried bacon. Crab juice here folks. Mother's milk. Carrot cake. I can taste the frosting. And a cake. Some people mix their own varieties by combining liquid nicotine, artificial flavoring, and a base of propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin, all of which can be bought online. You can actually get the glycerin at Walmart because it's also used to make cake icing. Propylene glycol can be bought on Amazon, where it's advertised as an ingredient in shampoo. A warning. Adding alcohol to your e-liquid will not get you drunk. It will just make your throat hurt. Many vapors don't stop at plain chemistry, however. There's also the device itself, which consists of a battery, atomizer, and other hackable components. This may tamper with the atomizer to ensure a more satisfying puff or alter the heating coil to change the temperature of the vapor. These tweaks supposedly produce a better flavor and smoother drag. One popular goal is to make the cloud of vapor as big as possible. Some people will even use a reader to check the vaporizer's ohms, which will tell you how much power you can use without burning all the flavor out and permanently frying your vaporizer. e-cigs and e-cig liquid aren't regulated by the FDA, and modifying the devices at home carries risks. There have been more than a dozen documented cases of e-cigarette explosions in recent years, which makes the thought of messing with the battery a little scary. Meanwhile, e-liquid can also make you sick if it comes in contact with your skin, and please, please don't swallow it. Other than that, hack at it.

Mark Zuckerberg once had a dream that your real life and your Facebook life would become one and the same. Well, sometimes dreams don't come true. I'm Sam Sheffer and this is 90 Seconds on the Verge. Connecting the app and your timeline together. You're adding all of the activity and history in the app to your timeline and you're going to automatically keep them in sync going forward. So that way anything that you do in the app gets added to your timeline. That was Mark Zuckerberg in 2011. Starting today, Facebook is taking a big step back from automatically posting to your Facebook page. With this new update, auto-posted stories from apps like Spotify and Pinterest will begin showing up less and less in your newsfeed. While these may just sound like privacy updates to benefit people looking to separate their real life from their Facebook life, there's actually much more to the picture. This actually signals the beginning of the end to Mark Zuckerberg's dream of a world where everything you play, listen to, eat, or visit gets shared to Facebook automatically in real time. Facebook has always been about sharing what you do in life with your friends online, but the idea of connected apps reached a climax in early 2011 with the introduction of OpenGraph and so-called frictionless sharing, which allowed apps like Nike Plus to automatically post where you went for a run or the Washington Post to share stories you've read. But it turns out the world just wasn't ready for that kind of connectivity. In the end though, this is all part of Facebook's ever-evolving history. I mean, just take a look at how your profile has changed over the last decade. For more on Facebook, check out The Verge. Coming up, we take a look at what the future of autoposts would have been. Status thoughts.

Hi guys, this is Vlad with The Verge and this right here is the LG G3. This is the brand new Android 4.4 handset that's been introduced as the company's 2014 flagship. And the thing that makes it different from all the other ones is this vast 5.5 inch display with Quad HD resolution 2560 by 1440 and extremely small bezels on the side. The LG says this is 76.7% display out here on the front, which is actually even better than the company's previous flagship, the G2, last year. That's one of the highlights. The other one is this metallic skin that LG has on the back. It's not actually metal, it's polycarbonate with a very thin layer, which LG says makes it extremely scratch resistant. Otherwise in terms of specs, you're kind of looking at a really standard configuration now, Snapdragon 801 processor, quad core, 2 or 3 gigabytes of RAM, 16 or 32 gigabytes of storage, and LG has a new simplified user interface. This is our first time with the device. There's a lot of Korean software on here, so it doesn't feel too simple immediately, but you can see some of these flipping and card animations that LG has added. And it's also made a big deal out of the circular motif, which comes from the company's logo, obviously. Another big highlight here is also the 13 megapixel camera that LG has. It actually uses laser autofocusing system now, and as you can see, a very simplified interface. So when you tap to focus, it captures at the same time. And once the capture is done, you can come up here in the top right corner for a preview and take a look at the image. And autofocus and performance with this camera seems to be extremely fast. LG claims it's the fastest in the world, with something like 276 milliseconds to focus and capture a picture, whereas everybody else is apparently about 300 milliseconds. The big new deal is this massive display, fast performance, laser autofocus on the camera, and this new metallic skin around here on the back.

Has Redbox found the ceiling of its disc rental business? I'm Ross Miller and this is 90 seconds on the verge. Redbox has announced that it will uninstall over 500 of its movie rental kiosks. Part of the reason is logistical with over 40,000 kiosks. It's just about to run out of places to go. But it's also symptomatic of a larger issue. According to the Wall Street Journal, Redbox's overall revenue increased just 3% in 2013 and isn't likely to grow this year. Redbox was founded in 2002. The big draw has always been its iconic red kiosks found in many US supermarkets. In 2007, Redbox passed Blockbuster in sheer number of US locations. It's a key moment in both companies history. The one-two punch of Redbox kiosks and Netflix's disc by mail business in large part drove Blockbuster to bankruptcy. But there's one other big reason that led to Blockbuster's demise and it's something that Redbox should be very worried about. While DVD and Blu-ray have continued to be more profitable than their digital counterparts, growth of physical media has declined across virtually all categories, while digital media has surged. In 2008, the war between Blu-ray and HD DVD ended with Blu-ray on top, but by then consumer interest was driving towards online streaming. Netflix has over 35 million US subscribers for its ubiquitous streaming service, while its classic disc by mail business accounts for just six and a half million. Meanwhile, Redbox instant service has completely fallen flat since launching publicly last year. For more on Redbox, check out The Verge. Coming up, 8Track makes a comeback after one Brooklyn night finds a few tapes hidden in a box at a thrift shop while looking for a top hat.

This week Warner Brothers revealed the name and poster for Batman v Superman, Dawn of Justice. The film stars Ben Affleck as an extremely muscular and very sad Batman and Henry Cavill who will be reprising his role as the beautiful Superman. The film doesn't come out until next summer, 2016 is next two years from now. Wait, really? Jesus, that seems like a long f***ing time to wait for this fight. But I think I can give you a fairly definitive idea of who would win right now. Let's start with the suit. Superman wears a regular superhero costume with no special features because he's Superman and he is impervious to damage. Batman on the other hand has a fairly elaborate suit, especially elaborate in the Christopher Nolan films and the Joel Schumacher atrocities. However in the comics it's not nearly as elaborate, mostly just consisting of blue or gray spandex and a fancy utility belt and boots and those gloves with the things on the side, whatever they call those. A notable exception to the costume is the Adam West version from the 1960s Batman which doesn't look particularly useful in any way but does seem comfortable like a pair of cozy pajamas you slip into before knocking out the Joker. So even though Superman's suit is simple and I do love simple things in life, Batman ultimately wins this one if you can forget about the Joel Schumacher suits, particularly the nipples. There's something about an anatomically correct rubber suit that puts fire in a girl's lips. Okay, so what about the disguises? The disguises, well there's really no contest there. Superman, when he wants to not be recognized as an invincible superhero, he takes off his suit, puts on a regular suit and then wears glasses. Batman on the other hand lives a life of opulence and I think hot sex as Bruce Wayne, the billionaire playboy. I'll be honest with you, Superman's disguise is awful and the fact that people in Metropolis don't notice that Clark Kent is Superman suggests that they're all high and drunk. So I think Batman takes this one, though I will say if you're a skilled chin expert, he's gonna be in trouble. You've got to ask yourself who in this battle has a more sympathetic origin story. Batman of course had his parents brutally slain in front of him. Of course we know one thing is for sure, a young Bruce Wayne is kneeling in front of his dead parents, gripping his mother's pearls and crying. Superman basically had a regular childhood and he was raised by regular parents, whereas Batman lived with his butler Alfred and also had a horrible accident where he fell into a bat cave. Although Superman did have his entire planet blown up and everybody he knew or could have known is dead, parts of them floating in space presumably. Also there's that stupid hologram of his father that just appears everywhere. You know what? I feel like this one's a tie. Abilities. I mean this is not even worth talking about. Superman is Superman. He can do anything he wants pretty much. Batman just has some gadgets. On the other hand, if he did have that gun that shoots kryptonite bullets, it could be very effective against Superman. But just because you put bat in front of a regular device doesn't make it any more capable of beating Superman in a fight because Superman is again a superman with alien powers and tremendous strength. So I think I'm gonna give this one to Superman. Let's talk about success rate. Superman seems to fight the same villain a lot, Lex Luthor. Although in the last film, Men of Steel, he did fight General Zod, who's kind of an awesome badass. Target that aircraft. Zod's a cool villain. I'd like to see Zod versus Batman. I'd pay to see that. Anyhow, I feel like Superman wins a lot, you know, because he's a superman and everything. Batman on the other hand does not have a great track record. Yes, he puts a lot of people in Arkham Asylum, but they always seem to break out of Arkham Asylum. I'm gonna give this one to Superman and I'm gonna say Batman maybe start putting people in jail. Let's talk about love life for a second. That might not seem like it matters, but on the battlefield, when you're thinking about what you have to go home to, it might give you that extra juice. Fight juice. Superman is obviously hot and heavy with Lois Lane. I don't know how they have sex. I'd like to get some data on that. I assume he just does it real gently. And I think that's great. She seems like a pretty great gal. She's a journalist. She can't tell that Clark Kent is Superman, so she might be incredibly stupid, but she seems like a nice lady. Batman on the other hand kind of gets into it with a lot of different ladies. Dude might have a STD actually when you think about how many people he's sleeping with. There's Catwoman, Talia al Ghul, Vicki Vale, Rachel Dawes most recently from the Christopher Nolan films. That doesn't end well. It's fairly obvious that Batman gets around more than Superman, but there is something to be said for monogamy. On the other hand, Catwoman is pretty hot. So I'm going to give this one to Batman. Oh, sidekicks. Sidekicks. Superman doesn't have a sidekick because he's a Superman with alien abilities and incredible strength. Batman has Robin who usually either dies or leaves. This is why Superman works alone. I'm going to give this one to Superman. So let's tally up the count. Oh, look at that. It's a dead tie between Batman and Superman. I don't understand why they're even fighting. Why would they be fighting? You think that either one of them would be like, this guy's cool. Like he seems to hate bad people and like, so I'm going to, we're going to just like hang out or whatever, get a beer or something sometime. What would they be? What are they fighting over? Who loves justice more? Is the battle about which one of them is more into justice? I think it might be. It feels to me like maybe this film doesn't end with Batman or Superman winning. Maybe it ends with them realizing that in order to truly do something good, they have to work together to fight the real evil. A very curly haired Lex Luthor played by Jesse Eisenberg. Although he probably will shave his head. So forget I said that.

Every day I carry three gadgets with me, a phone, a laptop, and a tablet. The phone's not going anywhere, but can the new Surface Pro 3 replace the other two? Microsoft sure hopes so. This marks the third Surface Pro the company has released in a little over a year and a half and it's the result of a completely relentless refinement on one single idea, to find a hybrid of a tablet and a PC so you can use one device for both things. Let me get this out of the way first, the Surface Pro 3 is really just gorgeous. Microsoft has stuck with magnesium for the casing in a matte silver color that's a little darker than Apple's style. It has the classic angled lines of the original Surface and there's a thin port for the fan across the top. This is a PC after all and PCs need to be cooled. Microsoft says that you'll never hear the fan and rarely feel any heat. Both of those statements are a little bit optimistic, but the fan is nearly silent and the Surface never got hot enough to be uncomfortable. Yes, it's still a tablet, but it's a very big tablet. Microsoft has increased the screen size to 12 inches and increased the resolution to a super sharp 2160 by 1440 pixels. That gives the screen a 3 by 2 aspect ratio and it makes a world of difference in using the Surface. When you pop up the keyboard in landscape there's actually enough screen left to do stuff on and in general it just feels more computer-like than tablet-like. Although the screen size has been bumped up, the rest of the Surface Pro 3 has been shrunk down. It's thinner and lighter than the last Surface Pro and even the current 13 inch MacBook Air. You've got a single USB port and a single DisplayPort, plus a nicely redesigned power jack that's easier to plug in and harder to bump out. There's a microSD card slot under the hinge and while I do wish that Microsoft had found a way to make that a full SD slot, it does keep the whole thing thin. There's also still pen input, completing the tablet side of this equation. The pen is bigger now with a nice round shape and a comfortable heft. It no longer attaches to the side of the Surface, which is a bummer, but the bottom line is that it's super accurate and fun to use. One of the best features is that you can just click the top of the pen to instantly launch OneNote and jot stuff down. There are 5 megapixel cameras on the front and the back. They're fine. Eventually Microsoft will release a software update that lets you take a photo and then draw right on top of it in OneNote. But otherwise, if you're depending on a device this big to take pictures, you probably need to reassess your gadget priorities. But the best design feature of the Surface Pro 3 is the new hinge. The first Surface only worked at 22 degrees, which made it a desk-only kind of affair. The Surface Pro 2 gave you a second angle, but this new model can go pretty much at any angle you want all the way down to 150 degrees. It uses friction to hold itself in place and feels really sturdy. Maybe someday it'll get loose and slip around, but my guess is that it won't. Microsoft really wants you to believe that you can use the Surface Pro 3 on your lap and a big part of that is the new type cover. It's $130 and it's way better than last year's model. Microsoft has cleverly added a second magnetic strip that folds up and attaches to the front of the Surface. That adds a ton of stability and it also elevates keyboards slightly, which makes it much more comfortable to use. But my favorite part is the new trackpad. It's much bigger and it works much better than it did before, but unfortunately it's still not as good as what you'll find on a real laptop. In general, Microsoft's solutions for helping you use this thing in your lap are better, but they're still more complicated than the dead simple action of just lifting your screen up on a laptop. Battery life is pretty close to Microsoft's claim that it can last all day. It lasted just under 8 hours in our battery drain test and when I was using it much more heavily I really didn't need to plug in until mid to late afternoon. The model we tested had a core i5 processor and 8 gigs of RAM and it rarely felt slow, if ever. Because of the high resolution, Microsoft has set a display scaling of 150% and it's a good default for most everything, although a few apps can still look fuzzy here and there. This isn't a gaming powerhouse by any stretch, but it can handle the basics just fine. On the software side, the Surface Pro 3 runs Windows 8.1 Pro, and I still find that it's an operating system with a million great ideas that can sometimes still be a little frustrating to make sense of. The split between the desktop world and the more modern app world is still here and it can still cause you to spend too much time arranging things. Microsoft's App Store still feels more barren of big name quality apps than I'd like, but it's improving fast. And there's always the huge world of traditional Windows desktop apps to fall back on. The Surface Pro 3 ranges from $799 for the barebones i3 model all the way up to $1949 for a top of the line i7 model, but most people are going to want to pick something somewhere in the $1300 range. No matter which model you pick, make sure you remember to kick in the extra $130 for the type cover, which is pretty much a must for this device. Is the Surface Pro 3 a laptop? Sort of, if you don't mind a little awkwardness here and there. Is it a tablet? Sure, but it's so big that it's not really great for traditional tablet stuff like reading and casual games. What the Surface Pro 3 really is, is the best hardware and experience for Windows 8.1. Whether you'll love the Surface Pro 3 will depend a lot on whether you love Windows. That's increasingly a pretty big if for a lot of people, but Microsoft has at least put its best foot forward.

Whether you believe in heaven or hell, one thing's for sure. Purgatory does exist and it's a place full of lost iMessages. I'm Nathan Seidkart and this is 90 Seconds on the Verge. Apple has announced it plans on addressing the notorious iMessage issue that leaves many messages in limbo, never to be seen again. Here's what happens. Apple's default messaging app detects when two iPhones are communicating. And when that happens, messages are automatically sent via iMessage. This can happen over Wi-Fi or cellular data, and that saves you from typical messaging fees. And it works alongside standard SMS. The only visual difference is a blue versus green chat bubble. That means that when your friends with iPhones send text and photos, they may continue to send via iMessage, which of course you never see. And therein lies the problem. iMessage knows to send iMessages when you're on an iPhone, but it doesn't know when to stop. The problem can be avoided if you turn off iMessage before switching devices, but even then there's no guarantee it'll work. In a statement to Recode, Apple says it has fixed a server-side bug and that it'll have additional fixes in a future software update. And the issue isn't even anything new. It's been happening since iMessage was first released in 2011. But recently, frustrated users have been more vocal. Lifehacker's Adam Pash wrote about it on his blog, and separately, an iPhone user in California sued Apple last week for losing her messages. Will Apple's next update finally bring an end to this problem? Will years of lost iMessages ever be found? Or will we forever be trapped in an unhealthy relationship with our iPhone? For more on iMessages, check out The Verge. Coming up, I discover I've been doing this from purgatory the entire time. Wait, what?

A robotic startup in Florida claims to have built the fastest running robot in the world. Outrunner, a six-legged machine that can run up to 45 miles per hour on a treadmill and 25 miles per hour outdoors. The company behind Outrunner is raising $150,000 on Kickstarter, and the creators say they'll stage a race for the world's fastest robots if they make that goal. So who would win? MIT set a speed record in 1989 with a robot known only as the Planar Biped. It reached speeds of 13.1 miles per hour, but only when running in circles while tethered to a pole. That record held for 23 years, until it was broken by Cheetah, a robot built by Boston Dynamics, the company that was recently acquired by Google. Cheetah can hit 28.3 miles per hour on a treadmill, faster than Olympic runner Usain Bolt. It needs a power tether, however. The unleashed version of the Cheetah, called Wildcat, can only run up to 16 miles per hour. That still beats MIT's current four-legged robot, also named Cheetah, which clocks in at 13.7 miles per hour when indoors and tethered. Elsewhere in quadrupeds, the Italian Institute of Technology is working on the Hi-Q, a versatile, animal-like robot that can squat, rear up, and jump. It's not that fast, though. It only runs up to 4.4 miles per hour. Over in humanoids, the Toyota Partner robot can hit 4.3 miles per hour, beating Honda's Asimo, which can run up to 4 miles per hour. Meanwhile, there are experiments with robots that run on, quote, wags, wheel legs or wing legs that imitate bipedal running with spokes. And some of those can reach up to 6 miles per hour. Right now, it looks like OutRunner may have a lock on the land speed record, at least outdoors. But with all these creative approaches, we'll have to see a race before we know for sure.

My name is Henry Hargreaves and I'm a photographer and food artist. All my aunts and mum and her sisters all did art in one form or another. My mother was an embroiderer. One of the aunts was also head of the art department at the sister school to where I went to school at. So in the weekends I would go and use the photography darkroom. So there was a lot of that kind of creative stuff going on when I was growing up. And so it was always kind of, you know, really encouraged. So this was when I was at high school and I won the Independent Schools Festival of Music poster competition. When you're young you kind of have a thought that good art is almost realistic. And so everyone was trying to draw great pictures of instruments or musicians. And I just did this little collage made out of, you know, notes. But it's when things started to connect where it was ideas were kind of stronger than the execution. After high school I really didn't know what my direction was going to be. And so when I graduated from university I got a one-way ticket to London. But on the way to London I got a stop in Bangkok. I got approached by a guy who was a stylist and they were looking for models for a shoot. And asked me if I was a model and no I wasn't. Would I be interested? And I did three shoots while I was over there. One of the great things about modelling was it kind of gave you a very privileged view of a lot of cities and places. My travelling occupation that I always had when I needed money was a bartender. So I'd also had this experience working in restaurants for a long time. So when I first started doing photography I started trying to shoot fashion because that was what I knew. I come from the fashion background. But still life was something I enjoyed much more. And I started to get asked to shoot food for the restaurants I was working in. For friends who opened restaurants to do it. Everyone has all these emotions tied up with food. And I think there's all these narratives that can be used to be told with food. And you know just showing people food in a different way than they're used to seeing it becomes much more memorable. And I'm really attracted to things that are humorous and playful and fun. And I also feel that stuff is successful if it puts a smile on someone's face. If they smile and laugh they're engaged and if they're engaged they remember. As a photographer you want to be the most proud of your most recent work. You know because I feel that's the way you know you're always evolving. And to get a response from things online is just kind of validates what you've done. I'm Henry Highgraves and this is my story.

The X-Men return to theaters this week with a sequel to the reboot that's now canon to an earlier trilogy that may or may not matter now. Can you give me that one more time, please? Stay with me. I'm Russell Brandom, and this is 90 Seconds on the Verge. Days of Future Past is the seventh X-Men film from Fox in 14 years. Based loosely on the comic book storyline of the same name, the movie has Wolverine travel back in time to stop the creation of the Sentinel, robots that by 2023 render mutants extinct and humans oppressed. In the comics, it was Kitty Pryde who traveled, but whatever. It's a direct sequel to 2011's First Class, a reboot set in the early 60s. But seeing as time travel is involved, it's also a chance to bring back the cast to the first three films. That means two Professor Xs and two Magneto. Just one Wolverine, though. Hugh Jackman is ageless. Days of Future Past also marks the return of director Bryan Singer, who helmed the first two X-Men films. He then went on to direct a disappointing Superman reboot, while Brett Ratner stepped in for the equally disappointing X-Men The Last Stand. So the original cast returns, but what about the story? Where does the original trilogy fit? Frankly, that isn't clear. Is it still canon? Or does it live in some alternate timeline, like J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movies? In this case, do yourself a favor. Put aside logic. Regardless, the X-Men series will live on. Fox is already planning two more films, including a sequel called Apocalypse due out in 2016. Expect many more to follow. Just remember, no matter what, there's one linchpin, one constant face through it all. Excuse me, I'm Eric Lynch. I'm General Xavier. Go f*** yourself. For more on X-Men, check out The Verge. Coming up, a new Daredevil film. Just kidding, that would be terrible.

Civic, Accord, CRV, HondaJet. Honda is best known for its practical line of cars, but the Japanese automaker has dipped its toes into a variety of other businesses too. It has generators, lawnmowers, motorcycles, a friendly humanoid robot named Asimo, and now a beautiful jet designed to ferry six titans of industry to their destination in total luxury. What makes the HondaJet weird though, besides the fact that Honda is making an aircraft, is the way the engines are mounted. Most business jets, like Learjets, Gulfstreams, and the like, have a pair of turbofans mounted on either side of the rear of the fuselage. The HondaJet, on the other hand, has its engines mounted on pylons that rise from each wing. Honda claims benefits to fuel efficiency and cabin space, and on a jet this small, you need all the cabin space you can get. The plane has been in development for a long time. In fact, Honda started looking into business jets in the late 1980s, partnering with Mississippi State University on the MH-02, an even weirder looking plane that was never intended for production. The HondaJet meanwhile made its maiden flight back in 2003, and has been delayed several times since then. It turns out building a Mach.63 luxury bullet is harder than it looks. At $4.5 million each, the market for the HondaJet won't be huge, but for the executives who absolutely need to get from New York to LA in the blink of an eye, this might be one of the more attractive options out there. It'll be able to travel over 1,300 miles between refuelings with the typical load, clipping along at a brisk 420 knots at 30,000 feet. Even the pilots are wrapped in luxury. They've got access to a battery of giant displays provided by Garmin that sit in place of traditional instruments. The HondaJet's from the future, and unfortunately the future isn't cheap. If everything goes according to plan and the plane is certified for sale by the FAA early next year, it'll run you a cool $4.5 million. Start saving up.

For two years, Microsoft has been pushing the Surface as a no-compromise solution that scratches your laptop itch and your tablet itch equally. But this year's Surface Pro 3 brought a change. Microsoft is directly challenging the nearly ubiquitous 13-inch MacBook Air. During its keynote today, the company took pot shot after pot shot at the popular laptop, going so far as to leave a scale on stage showing just how much lighter the Surface Pro 3 is. But how do these two devices actually compare? Well, to start, one is a Mac and the other is a PC. But if you can set aside your software preferences and just look at the hardware, the comparison gets much more interesting. The MacBook Air is almost universally considered the best all-around laptop on the market. It's a thin, light, powerful workhorse that gets super long battery life and it's pretty fast. It's also, well, a laptop, meaning it works really well on your lap. The screen stays where you put it and the keyboard always feels sturdy. The Surface Pro 3 is this amalgamation of a tablet and a PC. It has a keyboard dock, sure, and it has a kickstand. This year, Microsoft made a kickstand that uses friction to stay in place, which means that it can go basically in any position you want and stay there. Microsoft says that it has great lapability, which is their word, not ours, and basically the company wants you to feel comfortable using it on your lap. It also did this clever thing with the keyboard cover, adding extra magnets to make a sturdier connection. All that's great, but unfortunately setting up the Surface Pro 3 is still a multi-step affair. You pull down the keyboard, you kick out the hinge, and you spend a bit of time futzing around. Is it way better than the last Surface? Absolutely. Is it a laptop? Eh, not really. It's a fairly big tablet and maybe not exactly something you'd want instead of an iPad Air either. But there's so much other stuff that's great about the Surface, it's getting harder and harder to complain about feeling a little awkward on your lap. It's lighter than the MacBook Air, it has a high-resolution touchscreen, and it even accepts pen input. Microsoft says that it should have all-day battery life, too. Frankly, it's the best PC hardware I've seen since, well, the MacBook Air. But which one should you get? We're not quite ready to answer that yet, and certainly not ready to restart the great Windows vs. Mac OS debate. But we're intrigued, and eager to give this brave new PC a shot. You can expect a full review soon, and yes, we'll do our best to write it from our lap.

YouTube is close to securing a $1 billion buyout of video game streaming startup Twitch. Letting people watch others play video games. I'm a little at sea on this one. Make no mistake, it could be the best billion dollars it ever spends. I'm Adrienne Jeffries and this is 90 Seconds on the Verge. Twitch launched in 2011 as a subsidiary of Justin.tv. Since then, it has grown at a phenomenal rate. By the end of 2013, there were 45 million unique viewers watching a total of over 200 million hours per month. It even surpasses Hulu and Facebook in peak internet traffic. But Twitch admits that it's gotten to the point where it quote, can't keep up with the growth. That's where Google comes in. YouTube has the technology and infrastructure to help Twitch scale. Where Twitch shines and where YouTube absolutely doesn't is a venerable live streaming community. Last year, a League of Legends event attracted 32 million viewers with 8.5 million watching simultaneously. Google's efforts at turning YouTube into a live streaming destination have been fruitless so far. Highlighted by the universally maligned YouTube Music Awards. That's the benefit for both companies, so what's the catch? Top of the list is copyright. Many of the prominent Twitch streamers play their games against a background of unlicensed music. Small companies with limited budgets aren't particularly attractive for infringement claims, but what happens when it's backed by YouTube's deep pockets? Just ask Viacom, which sued the company for a billion dollars after it was bought by Google in 2006. It just settled in March. For more on Twitch, check out The Verge. Coming up, Twitch plays Pokemon, but Pokemon fights back, and there's blood on the road to Viridian City.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the tablet that can replace your laptop. Surface Pro 3. The question that needs to be asked and answered is why hardware? We clearly are not interested in building refrigerators or toasters. We are not building hardware for hardware's sake. We want to build experiences that bring together all the capabilities of our company. Our goal is to create new categories and spark new demand for our entire ecosystem. It does not matter what store you walk into, the conflict exists. And you walk up to the salesperson and you can stand between two very clear tables and ask a question. What is it that I'm supposed to buy? The response is this. What is it that you want to do? I don't know, I'm about to spend a thousand dollars. I thought I needed to do everything. Today we take the conflict away and I'm absolutely sure of that. I'd like to introduce you to Surface Pro 3. Look at how thin it is. This product by definition is faster than the Surface Pro 2. It's an absolutely beautiful screen. We've grown it to a 12 inch diagonal. Pushing it to 12 inches was critical. Sitting right in between the tablet and the laptop and getting to the point where you can replace your laptop, this is a critical, critical element. It's a 3 by 2 aspect ratio. It's something that hasn't really been done before in this size. It's a 2160 by 1440 display. It's optically bonded. It has the highest contrast ratios in the industry. I can talk specs all day and quite frankly it doesn't bore me but it probably bores you. You have a perfectly equal distribution of weight through the product. I'll put the Surface here. I'm going to grab this MacBook here. Now we have a 12 inch screen. I want to compare it to the 13 inch for a reason. We have optimized the scaling of Windows perfectly. On this 12 inch screen you get 6% more content than on this 13 inch screen. We want you to take both those devices out of your bag. So you have to think about all the weight that happens with these devices. We've partnered super close with Intel. It has been the closest thing to a technical love affair that I could possibly think of. We spent tireless hours together to put the Core i7 in the new Surface Pro 3. Then we reinvented the fan. We were able to make it 30% more efficient than any fan in any product today. Then we reinvented the fin on the fan. So you never feel it. You don't hear it. You don't even see it. We built the thinnest optical stack ever built on a device this size at.75mm. Over 20? 15? There's a number in there percent more battery life in this product than any product Surface has shipped before. It's the same unbelievably strong chassis that I'm about to drop and it doesn't break. And we don't worry. You don't worry at all. Let me introduce you to the Surface Pro 3 docking station. This docking station lets you display out to a 4K monitor. Very important, right? 4K. Super hot buzzword right now, people. Pay attention. 4K is cool. So I want to show you the new kickstand. First I'm going to show you a different mode and it's called Canvas mode. And it's a new one. This hinge has taken every single detail. The amount of custom parts to bring to you full friction. So you can say it, bring it all the way down at any position you want to land it at 150 degrees is intense. We landed 150 degrees. And with an amazing Palm Block technology you now can do the drawing you want to do if you were an artist. We know that to really build a tablet that can replace the laptop, it has to work in your lap. I want to introduce you to the Surface Pro type cover. It's got a lot of accolades from thinness and we've made it even thinner. We put a ton of energy into the trackpad this time around. This trackpad is 68% larger than the previous trackpad before it. We've reduced friction by 78%. I'm going to show you one simple move here that's important. Watch how it clicks in. This now magnetically seals itself to the screen. When you start to change positions, I can change them in any way and I don't lose any stability. I can then change the friction hinge and drop it down just like this. I have the ability to pick any position I want and any angle I need. This is an important posture. A piece of paper and a pen. And the pen looks familiar because it is the size of a pen that you'd normally hold. It's not a stylus. It's not meant to be thin. It's not meant to be cheap. It's meant to be pronounced as a pen. It feels weighty. It feels good. It's meant to be the weight that it is. And in the seamless event that you are a student in class and you needed to capture that thought, you need to pick up your device and you need to click your pen because you know you can write. And when you click it, even if your device is off, you have to know you can write immediately. You can write your notes and the minute you click your pen, they go right into the cloud. Folks, we are super, super proud of Surface Pro 3. It goes on sale tomorrow. You can pre-order it starting at $799. It comes in three configs, Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7. I could talk all day and it feels like I have. I think I might be done talking.