The Vergecast - 330: iPad Pro review, Macbook Air review, and Walt Mossberg

Episode Date: November 8, 2018

Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn reviewed Apple’s new iPad Pro and MacBook Air, and discuss their take on this week’s show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Hilton. Restaurant or Room Service. What would the boss do? Either way, the boss would choose Hilton Hotels and Resorts to get down to business and a little pleasure. Check out Hilton Hotels and Resorts. Travel like the boss. Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Vox Media. The whole thing. The whole thing. Also, the Verge, which is the website that we run. I'm Nelai, your friend. Paul Miller is here. Hello. Deider Bound is here. Hi. Wow.

I don't know. Hi. It's review week at the verge. Another one. Fall hardware season continues to be in full effect. I reviewed the iPad Pro. Deeter reviewed the MacBook Air. Right now as we speak, Samsung is holding an event announcing Foldy phones, which is wild. Google just announced support for Foldy phones in Android.

Deeter had a little bit of that. So we have a lot going on on this episode. But first, I want to ask a question to you both. You ready? Yeah. Is it about Bixby on Foldy phones? It's not about Pigsby on Foldy phones? Because it's a, it's a, it's, that, because you could have two screens, right?

And then you'd have two Mixpies. And it would be an eight-legged dog. Oh my God. It'd be a spider dog. This is the worst. Yeah. Bixby. Bixby Racknid.

No, here's my question. Do you text with proper grammar? Do you text in all lowercase? Depends on whom I'm texting. I do not text my parents in a lowercase. I give them proper grammar. Paul, what about you, man? Well, I text a lot from my laptop because I still haven't quit.

eye message. So then if I'm on my laptop, yeah. So if on my laptop, I feel like I'm a liar if I do like phone capitalization, but sometimes it will fake phone capitalization to look like I'm texting from my phone. But mostly I just do whatever the phone does. I don't fight the phone's defaults capitalization. Interesting. Okay, so I think I'm with you mostly, Paul, except on my computer, it's always all overcase because I don't have auto-correct on. The reason I bring this up is Ashley Carman and Caitlin Tiffany, their episode of, why you push that button is so deep on this this week that I think everyone should listen to it. They talked to a linguist.

The linguist was like your code switching, you're automatically in your brain, thinking about how you want to express yourself to who you're, it's a lot. Like literally everyone should listen to this episode. It's the most why'd you push that button episode ever. They got Kara. Yeah, her copy editors on it, just being mad that no one will do what she does all day professionally. Copy edit that day. Anyway, go listen to it.

It's great. I wanted to plug it. but it's super, you can ask anybody that question, and they will think about it because everyone does it so differently. One of my favorite episodes ever. Anyway, this week, I made the internet mad. Just very mad. You didn't make the internet mad.

You made a slice of it mad. Okay, so I have a theory, an ongoing theory. Okay. The more important you are, the less actual work you do, and the more likely you are to be an iPad user. Ooh. So, like, billionaires, like, people are like, billionaires use iPads.

they must be fine. I'm like, all billionaires do is look at PDFs that were generated on a Mac. That's what they do with their iPads. They're like, let me review that spreadsheet that someone did real work to make. That's my theory. And I think I irritated that whole class of people because I reviewed the iPad Pro, the new one, which is a remarkable piece of hardware running iOS 12, which Dieter, you've, you traditionally have reviewed iPads for us.

The last year, Deter reviewed the iPad Pro 10.5. It was running iOS 10. and the promise was iOS 11 would make it better. iOS 11 came. I think we all know that iOS 11 was a little rough around the edges. iOS 12 came out, focused on cleaning up the rough edges, really added no features to the thing. So now the new iPad Pro is here, squared off design,

looks super cool, great screen, insane processor, iOS 12. And I said this to Dieter during the review. I was like, I'm just going to like say it out loud. Like, I'm just going to say I don't like this. It literally prevents you from getting things done. iOS 12 is not, it just doesn't let you do a bunch of stuff. And then you have to spend all of your time figuring out how to do stuff instead of doing stuff. What I'm hearing is an elaborate self-owned where you're not important enough to only use an iPad.

Is that what I'm hearing? It's something like that. So here's the thing, like before you get finished, Eli. Like the thing that people, we've been talking about can the iPad replace computers since literally the first iPad, right? And the answer was always no, no, no. And then it was like, but maybe, maybe soon in the past couple of years. And so when Eli comes out and says like definitively, no, it cannot do that right now, people don't hear that. They hear the same argument that everybody's been having for the past four years.

The thing that I think, Neil I did differently with this review is he said, we're done sort of waiting for Apple to fix it next year. This is like Apple is making very outsized claims, like that it is a full on complete citizen that can be your main device. Like they're absolutely making that claim. And so if before Apple, like, it's great and like it could and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, and so we would judge it based on like that idea of that device. If you've got a lot of money and you want a nice thing and get it, if you want to replace your

computer where you really got to know what you're doing, but like no one, Apple's not actually trying to really truly make you do that. I think with this iPad, they are. And so it was time to revisit that whole debate. And Neil I did. But it has made, it has made people mad because they're not, they're responding to their ideas about what the iPad has been over the past three, four years, not to the specific device right now and the claims that it's trying to make. Is my sense of the outlines of the problem here. So there's two that we should actually talk about the iPad, but there's two things. One is there are all the people who are like, it did replace the laptop for me, right?

I use an iPad every day and you're telling me I'm wrong. I don't, I'm not actually telling them that's wrong. I think some people can just use an iPad every day. I think the argument for why you need the iPad Pro instead of the $329 iPad if you are able to use it every day is extremely difficult to make apart from the keyboard cover. Like if the cheaper iPad had the keyboard connector on it, I would literally say no one should buy an iPad. What you're going to do on it is iPad things, then you can get that one. Except for music production, there is an amazing realm of processor pegging music effects and interconnected apps that actually do interoperate with each other despite the limitations of the iPad.

That's like a one weird zone of where you actually. would want a pro. Yeah, and I completely agree with that, and that stuff is super cool, and every single one of those people also has a MacBook Pro. That's what I mean. Like, yes, the iPad can turn into this crazy music production thing, but then when you want to, like, finish that project, you bring it over to a MacBook Pro, and you, like, use Logic. If Logic was on the iPad Pro, it made a lot of sense. If Final Cut Pro is on the, like, it's not, that stuff isn't there. So it becomes this, like, single-purpose tool, and the process of performance is there. The people who are like, I can just replace my laptop because my set of needs is so constrained, if the cheaper iPad had a keyboard

connector, then they should all spend $329, and that thing would dominate the market. So it's like one set of people. Then I think there's the set of people who see the promise of the future, who want to weave elaborate tales about how, so it must be that we all must change, and we went from the command line to the graphical user interface, and, you know, people wanted to... These are the people who are accusing you of being stuck in your old ways demanding that all computers never change. And if a computer does change, therefore, anybody who, you know, they, you know what I'm saying. Like, yes, you're, yeah, because they all tweeted at me. I know exactly what they're saying.

And that's, I get that too, right? Like, computers change. Like, we all move from, I don't know, desktops to laptops. We all move from laptops to phone. Like, yes, the way we use computers change, phones and broadband in particular. led to a huge amount of change. The whole like command line to to graphical user interface thing, that change happened before people had computers, right? Like Microsoft's vision at that time was a computer on every desk. Yeah. That's where they were going. And now it's like, you know,

everybody has a computer in their pocket. So like you have to give like people the credit of everyone has a supercomputer in their pocket. Everyone is fluent in computers in the internet in some extremely meaningful way. And so if you say here's a pro device that you can max out at $2,200, you can't be like, also you're too stupid to use it, right? Like, that's the, that's the argument to me that the iPad Pro seems to be making. You can spend all of the money on it, and then it still treats you like you're a little bit too dumb. Okay, maybe we can imagine a future of work, because I've thought about this, you know,

like in the Greek times, they were all rich because they, they, because they had slaves pretty much, and they would walk around and talk philosophy to each other, right? Yeah. But like, even in more modern times, you know, some of our greatest thinkers were walkers and talkers. Like they did most of their greatest work walking around and having epiphanies. Then they'd maybe rush back and use a MacBook Pro to write down the equation or something like that. But can we just reimagine a future of work where mostly what we need to do is walking and talking

or Microsoft's version where you're like always you know flipping that that two and one from in different modes you know what I mean can you circle and stuff wildly yeah like what if your job involved more circling and less file management I don't so there is not a job in the world a creative job in the world there are many jobs in the world there is not a creative professional job in the world that does not involve file management it is just the reality of being being like a creative pro. What are you doing? You are generating assets. What are you generating assets out of? Other assets. Right? And so at some point, you've generated files.

And you can abstract that a little bit. So creative cloud and Dropbox and OneDrive and I, like, all of that abstracts it a little bit. Dropbox just announced these like extension type things where you, you do these small, very limited in scope third party actions on files that are in your cloud. Yeah, sure. Does that get you closer? No. Maybe. I feel like I should talk about the... We got so far into it. I was so ready for this conversation.

I have an iPad Pro. That is what you should do. It's the 12.9 or whatever, right? Yes, they gave me the 12.9 inch version with LTE and a terabyte of storage. Why didn't they just call it 13? I don't know. Whatever. Keep going. For the same reason they prices at 1899 and not 1900, Dieter. So it's huge. It's small. Like I showed it to Casey Newton today.

And he was like, yeah, it's way too big. This is like comedy levels of iPad. So it's smaller in the sense that it feels more wieldy than the old 12.9, which is like doofy looking huge.

So it feels the right size for what it is. I think the smaller one is still what most people get. Anyway, so Apple gave me the most iPad. They gave me a set of AirPods. The total for all of this is like $2,300 in change. Like it's a, it's an enormous amount of money.

Because the pencil's like one something, 150? Everything is more expensive in last year. So the pencil's 30 bucks more than the last year. It's 129. The keyboard cover is more expensive. The iPad itself is more expensive. The AirPods are the same price. Apple's new price is like 129. That's where they live. That's their

that's sort of the Apple accessory price. So the big question is, what am I reviewing here? It comes in two sizes. It comes in a million configurations. But they chose purposefully to give me the most iPad Pro that one can get. A $2,300 what's a computer?

Yeah. Well, the iPads don't count. So a $2,200 what's a computer? Well, the AirPods count insofar as if you want to listen to audio, not through the speakers. You need to buy something because it doesn't come with headphones. And does it come with a dongle, a headphone dongle? It does not. The headphone dongle, Apple's USBC to headphone dongle is $9.

So it's either, you know, $2,209, or it's $2,300 and change if you buy AirPods. But Apple's solution is obviously AirPods. So they gave me this $2,300 bundle of stuff. And I just felt really strongly that if that's what they wanted to show me, if they wanted to be like, here's the best thing we can make, that we should treat it like that. And what struck me about it using it, and we're going to talk about the MacBook Air and a little bit because you'd review that is that's more expensive than the MacBook Air. for a piece of hardware that is unquestionably more powerful, that has an unquestionably better display, that has Apple's custom design processor in it that can just run circles around the Intel processor in the air.

And yes, it's way more expensive, but you can get the 11-inch version of this for $800. So you get a smaller screen, but you still get a better display, a faster processor, you know, Apple's all of Apple's custom design stuff, you get a front-facing camera with face ID, MacBook Air doesn't have that. So Apple will charge you a $400 premium to use a more flexible operating system against the entry-level Pro, right? So if you want a MacBook Air, you get a worse computer and a more flexible operating system

for $1,200, or you can get a kick-ass piece of hardware, an operating system that will stymie you constantly. And that's like damning. That is the argument for they should just stick. an H-12 processor and a Mac and call it a day. Yeah. I mean, I really do feel like this generate, like the past few years like, oh God, one are they going to switch Macs to arm?

It's going to be so painful. Apps are going to suck, and nothing will be compatible, and it's going to be a hard transition. But now, after these computers came out, I think that if Apple doesn't switch the Mac to arm in the next year, you are two at the outside, people are going to be

livid. Yeah, they're going to say, why can't we get this thing? You're forcing us over to iOS. And the thing of being forced into iOS. I put this on Twitter, but what did we make? I think people forget this all the time. We are, we're the verge. We make the verge every day. There's a team of creative professionals here who make videos and take photos and draw illustrations. All of the things Apple says you should be able to do with an iPad, there are professionals who work at the verge who do those things. So I handed it off to Dami, who's like a kick-ass cartoonist. She has a book. You should buy it.

Will Joel is our design director. He does all of our design, but he does a bunch of 3D work. Alex Castro is our illustrator. He didn't use it, but he used Photoshop when we did that story. And all of them are like, I just ran into walls. Like, I need to use a real computer. And they kept using that phrase, right? Like, Apple doesn't want you to use that phrase.

The proponents of the iPad don't want to use that phrase. Like, it is a real computer. And yet, when people use it, normal people try to do their jobs with it, they're like, yeah, this is great. And now I need a real computer. I used an iPad Pro at the verge in the capacity as a writer, you know, so I wasn't doing a lot with rich media. And I was able to do it fairly well, except when you send the newsletter, there's this little slider that you have to be able to adjust. And that mobile safari can't get a hold of the slider.

So I'd get the newsletter all prepared, and then I'd send it off to someone with a real computer to move the slider for me. Yeah. And that's it. It's just shit like that. Like, mobile safari is embarrassing. You just have to admit it. Like, it's the phone browser, bigger, right? And, like, you know what a 10S max can do?

Tabs. That's it. Like, that was the big thing that the iPad version of mobile Safari could do, and now the 10S Macs can do it too. What are you getting more out of mobile Safari? If Google is the one, and Apple likes to shade Google, because everyone wants to use Google Docs and Safari in an iPad, but it kicks you to the app. Google's not taking any advantage of the iPad.

in that app. They're not making that experience better. So I would love to take the pencil and draw all over a Google Doc to edit it, but I can't. So what is the purpose of not having all of the features of Google docs in the web client? I can't tell. I don't know. So the argument is you should yell at Google for not having their app updated. Or I should yell at Apple for not having a browser that just lets me address Google Docs on the web, which is what everyone else can do. Yeah, the reason I bring that up is the thing about computers is that there are a million little things that you want to do, and the computer is supposed to be a general computer that can do whatever you want it to, and so you should only be, you know, limited by certain things.

And there are more limitations on the iPad than there need to be given the power of the hardware. And the browser is a really perfect example of, yes, a full desktop class browser in a perfect world, you wouldn't need it because everybody would make their web pages compatible with the, you know, more battery efficient, lighter weight, mobile safari or Microsoft Edge or whatever. In the actual world where we live, there are a million little things like the slider on your newsletter sending tool or Google Docs or whatever that a more powerful general purpose browser is useful for. And so can you make the iPad your main computer?

Sure. But you're going to run into these little things. all the time. And this is why I like this thought experiment of the future of work, because if the iPad is designed for this perfect world, what would we all do in this perfect world? Would it actually work? If the newsletter software on the web was fixed and I could do the slider there, like, you know, that kind of stuff.

If everything worked, if everything was designed for the iPad Pro, then using the iPad pro would be awesome. That is true. Right, and we'd all just be walking and talking and firing off newsletters and drawing equations. I mean, the world would be perfect. So maybe a different way to talk about this so that you can get a little less hate Twitter, and we can talk a little bit more about the hardware, is compared to the previous generation iPad, is this a good computer?

I think most people who have the previous, unless there are these music producers that you're talking about that are pushing the processor. I think this is true of all iOS devices. It's true of the phone too. The previous generation is still really fast. Like Apple makes kick-ass processors. So you weren't maxing it out before. And so you're going to, you might see some like on the order of milliseconds improvement in flipping around web pages and sending off emails. But you're not going to see a huge difference.

You might like the face ID better. Sure, that's fun to use. The fact that you can like flip around any orientation and face ID works is like incredible. Like Apple built a really good implementation of that. the cameras are marginally better, and they're marginally better only because of software in the A12. So they made a new sensor on the back that's way thinner, but is supposed to have the same performance as the previous camera, but it runs smart HDR, right?

So Apple will do some smart HDR stuff to the camera, but unless you're a serious iPad photographer, are you going to notice that? Probably not. And then there's USBC, which the reality of USBC on the iPad today, and I don't think this will say reality forever, but the reality today is that if you had a previous iPad and you were really interested in plugging a bunch of stuff into it and you have a bunch of lightning dongles, USBC is not going to change your life, right? No.

So if you had a lightning to HTML and you were the person who was like running keynote on a big display with an iPad, great. Now you can do that with a USBC adapter, but the experience is exactly the same. If you were the sort of person who really did import a lot of photos and you had the SD card adapt, I have the lightning SD card adapter. Now you can use a USBC SP card adapter, and it'll be a little bit faster, but the thing is,

the experience of that is still exactly the same. So over time... What you will get is you'll, if you are the kind of person who travels with both a MacBook and an iPad, because you have to, because you need to have a quote-unquote real computer with you,

you'll be able to use the same charging brick on both, which is great. Yeah, you get all the benefits of USBC. That's the big thing. But if you were already like, I got to plug a bunch of shit in my iPad, and you had the dongles to do it,

well, you're just going to have to buy new dongles, and it's going to be, the software is going to not let you do more with USBC. And I think that is, like, again, it's Apple. Like, the example I keep using that people keep yelling at me about is external storage. There are apps in this world

that will let you address a hard drive with an iPad Pro. That is true. There's like the Sandisk, I expand that everyone keeps tweeting me about. Great, I'm happy it exists. You put a USBC port on there. You should be able to plug in a hard drive.

What do you creative pros do? They make files. What does our staff do? They run around with cameras, they shoot onto cards, and they've got to read the cards into an app to edit the video. That's a thing they have to do. Well, you plug that stuff in the iPad Pro, and just a regular hard drive won't do anything.

The files app won't show it. Maybe someone else is going to write another app that will address it. Sure, but then you've got to get it into the iPad's idea of a file system, which is like ICloud driver Dropbox or something. So you're just moving it into another place. You're never addressing it directly with an app. or you put in a camera card or you plug in a camera and it just insists that you import everything into the iOS camera rule, which would be fine. To be clear, this would be fine if that didn't also just like sync to iCloud, just like relentlessly sync to iCloud.

And if you're me and you have like a bunch of photos you take of your family and a bunch of photos you take for work, which presumably creative professionals don't want to commingle their. personal and professional asset collections, you just end up with this messy photo library. Like it doesn't even give the option to say like make a new library, right? There's just this one iOS, ICloud photo library. So now like I have photos on my phone and it's like 10,000 photos of the USBC connector of the iPad because I took those photos and imported, you know what I mean? And like, and those are just work photos. And I got to like go back and delete them. And that's just dumb. Like it's not a restriction that gets Apple anything. I can't even figure out what benefit a cruise to Apple with not letting Lightroom or Photoshop or affinity photo or whatever directly address

a card on a camera, right? So the benefit that accrues to Apple is I think they believe that they get better security in sandboxing because, you know, not any random app can read any random file. And so if you plug in a USB stick that you picked up in North Korea, you don't have to worry about it hacking your device. It also gets Apple I don't buy that I don't buy that

I just I'm here I am playing devil's African let me do it it also gets them you know the the effort of not having

made the iPad more of a general purpose device and that involves well no that involves like real work like if you're going to do that and you're going to genuinely

secure yourself against the random North Korean thumbstick you need to do some more stuff right Apple, I think, is still sort of hanging on to this idea that they can applianceify computing and run everything through the App Store. And, you know, at some point, if you really open it up a little bit more, like, that could go away a little bit.

They also get simplicity. They get the idea of simplicity because if you mount a hard drive on your computer, it shows up on the desktop or in the finder or some other place. And I don't know, maybe Apple just doesn't think that the core, you know, shell, the core UI of iOS, is robust enough to handle some of those more complex use cases. The rumor was iOS 12 was going to be a big redesign of the home screen, but a better way to think about that is they're working on like a re-overhaul of like the idea of the shell. Like when you talk to think about desktops, there's different Linux shells you can pick or whatever.

Supposedly that's going to come with iOS 13. And so maybe iOS will be better next year, Eli. So let me grant you this premise, right? Yeah. That you don't want this complexity. Like, okay, you don't want the complexity of a finder or Windows Explorer. Like, I get it. You know what you want to do?

You want the people who need that complexity to have to seek it out, go someplace. You know, maybe you'll make another app just to deal with files. And you could call that app files, which is the app on the iPad that is supposed to help people manage files. Like, why doesn't it just show up there? And I could even see the argument, and maybe this is too much complexity. The cheaper iPad shouldn't do any of this. That's your computing appliance, right? And if you want to address a file system, if you want to have a USBC port, if you want to do all this other stuff, that's why you spend the money on the pro.

Maybe that's too much complexity for Apple. I don't know. But I think it's just tired. Like, I was talking to someone who knows what they're doing and they try saying, I keep running these roadblocks. I'm tired of figuring out ways around them. And they sincerely tried to convince me that the iPad was just a toddler and that, you know, it hasn't grown up. And I was like, it's eight years old, right? They're selling a $2,200 iPad.

Like, we have to stop making excuses for the future. It either is or isn't. The other argument against simplicity is one that I bang on about all the time. When I was eight years old, I understood how to use a file system, right? Yeah. I did. People are smart. Like, you know, the cliché is, like, Grandma figured out Windows. It will be fine if you add some complexity to the iPad.

My dad bought a external hard drive that was Windows formatted, and it launched him into a wizard to install some weird driver to run a Windows. I was like I had to like uninstall multiple programs and reformat the drive for him. So there are some small complexities. But again, it seems like Apple has like Neelai said, there is a files app. Apple has the abstraction to deal with this. Like can't they just, if they solve this next year, is this a good thing now? Like, do they really need to rethink the whole experience to make this stuff work?

Or if they just added external drive support and, like, a file open dialogue for third-party apps, would that be enough? I think the browser is a huge stumbling block. So I think they got to spend some real serious time thinking of Oval Safari. The files thing is like a medium, a medium thing. Like most people don't need it, but if they want to sell it to creative professionals, they got to solve that problem. That's just real.

If they want to show me the Lightroom demo, they got to let me manage files. That's all Lightroom is. It's a file management and photo editing piece of software. It's great. And I love it. And I can be very positive about the iPad, too. Editing photos in Lightroom CC on the iPad Pro is a delight. It is delightful.

It is an incredible display. It is probably the best display most people will ever own because it's 120 hertz, variable refresh rate. All that is super cool. Like, you know, Macs don't do that. Most Windows PCs don't do that. So it's just an incredible screen to look at a photo on and, like, edit. But you know what?

Lightroom CC is not as powerful as Lightning Classic CC in a Mac. So, like, that's the third problem they have to solve is the apps that are happening on the iPad are not nearly as powerful or capable as the apps are happening on desktop. And you make that argument, people are like, well, yeah, but no desktop computer can do AR. And it's like, I don't, it's not real. It's great that you have all this AR kit stuff. It's great that they showed us the demo of like, we're going to wave 12-inch iPads around a Lego castle and things are going to blow up. But that is just more entertainment, right?

It's just more consumption. It's not creation, which is traditionally the knock on the iPad. And I think they got to get there with these creative apps before they can make the claim they can do all this other stuff. But if you're an iPad person, you're going to love it. That's like all I can keep saying. If you're this sort of person who goes into it with their eyes open, this is the best iPad that's ever been made. I just need time to stop pretending that the future of computing looks like Apple's restrictions. I think it's also time to stop making excuses because whatever the iPad is now is exactly the thing Apple wants it to be.

It's not like, we'll get to it next year. This is the first generation. This is a very real product that is, like, it has one of the best processors you can get in it. Just let me use it. I have noticed, though, there are still some rough edge. I don't think they've fully made the transition to the, what is it, post iOS? 11 era when they kind of started to change things up. Like copy and paste can be really flaky on the iPad between a copy that you make using your

fingers on the screen and a copy that you make using the keyboard shortcut. Like I do think they have a lot more polished to do still, even in this current paradigm. Yeah. But I don't know. Do you hear you're right, man? Next year. iOS 13 is coming. And I will say that, you know, there were some people who loved it and some people who hated

of this. The broad spectrum of other good reviewers, I guess I'll say, I don't know, other reviewers we like and trust, totally in agreement. So David Pierce, the journal, basically said the same thing. Matt Panzerino, TechCrunch, a great Apple reviewer. He was like, this is great, maybe the pencil's a future, and then he ended it with, but the software needs to get radically more powerful. And so I think if that's the consensus, I feel in good company. I just feel like with this iPad Pro in particular, Apple's claims, it's faster than 92% of most recent lap computers shipped. We sell more iPads than anybody else's entire notebook line. That stuff is, it places it in the class of we're going to compare it to primary computing devices.

Primary phones are people's primary computing devices, but you take what I'm saying. We're, we're to compare it to laptops. If they're going to keep doing that, then I think it's just way more fair to say, hey, why does this browser suck? Right now, if someone asked me, like, I just need a cheap laptop to do a bunch of basic stuff, I would almost say, like, you should buy a Chromebook. You should not worry yourself with the iPad Pro. Like this Chromebook will do more of the things that you want and you won't have to worry about quite as much complexity. And that's a weird place for Apple to be, to be the more complicated product. It is definitely the more complicated product. Also, just going to say, I literally like hit myself in the face because I forgot to

like demand this went into the review. And I tweeted about it. It is absurd. It is absurd that the iPad Pro, a $2,300 computer, if you want to spend that much on it, still only assumes that it will ever be used by a single person. Yes. I can't believe I forgot to put this in their review. It's ridiculous that there's not multi-user support on it.

Yeah. It's really strange, especially with Face ID, right? It can just see you and be like, you're not, Neelai. You're somebody, you're maybe one of the verges many video producers who needs to log into this thing. I'm not saying I just had a recent experience

with this. Yeah, it's really weird, especially if we're going to be this expensive, and especially a computer that, you know, lives in shared environments. Like, it's meant to be handed around and passed around. Well, and to Neelai's point, I never really thought about this a lot, but they don't even have a work-home dichotomy. Like, that's, that is a pretty big shortage for this expensive and important of a device. I think if you get, if you get, if you get, if you get the thing, like, put in, like, the enterprise system, you can't have some specific, they do have some of that stuff. Yeah, schools can do it.

It's not a, schools can do it, enterprise can do it, but it's not a thing that is generally, like, available and easy to set up for an average consumer that goes and buys one in a store. Yeah. Look, I think at the end of the day, this thing is the most kick-ass accessory to your laptop that has ever existed. It's great. And I think a lot of pros are going to use it that way, and some people are going to have needs

that are perfectly serviced by it. And all that is cool, I just think if Apple wants to claim that this is, in fact, a vision of the future of computing, it needs to aggressively pursue that vision instead of suggesting that an open connector and a more powerful processor moves it closer. And that's like what Apple does. It makes software. I don't know. Get it. The other piece of context here is if you just want a tablet to do tablet stuff, to do iPad stuff, the 329 iPad has no peer. It's not as nice as this pro. The bezels are bigger and it's got a home button and blah, blah, blah, blah. But I do not know of a better deal in technology than the $330 iPad.

It is just what you get for that money is it outclasses everything. Of course, you can get Chromebooks for that cheap that will let you do other things that the iPad can't do. But in terms of like raw quality per dollar, the iPad Pro, $330 iPad Pro is still the best thing in the world. Yeah. And I think that's really the thing that makes the more expensive one. Like it puts it in a sharper relief.

again, if that cheaper one had a keyboard connector, this is the only computer people should buy. And then maybe the whole world would have to adapt to the fact that people only had iPads, right? And we could all live in Paul's philosopher King dream. The future of work. Which wandering around. Walk and talk.

Talk about ideas. No files. No files. All right. We're going to read an ad. We're going to come back and talk with a MacBook Air, which Dita reviewed. We'll get some real work done.

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Yeah. You reviewed the MacCare. I did. I have it in front of me right now. I'm staring at it. Staring at that little touch ID button. Staring at the screen. Got the brightness cranked up to the absolute max

because I'm in a bright room. I mean, I don't know quite where to start with it. There's a lot of stuff to get into. We can talk about the processor. But to me, like the most interesting place is I couldn't decide if I thought this was a 12-inch MacBook blown up to 13 inches or a 13-inch MacBook Pro with cheaper parts. I think it's a 12-inch MacBook blown up. I think it's a 13-inch MacBook with cheaper parts. I think it's both, actually, is what I think.

But I don't understand why Apple didn't release this two years ago. I mean, so that's the main thing. I don't understand why it has the Y-series processor that's just like kind of maxed out all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so it's got a Y-series processor. If you've heard the stuff, they power it at 7 watts instead of the standard 5, which means it can run a little bit faster, I think. The fans are spinning up more than I expected on this thing, I think, because that processor is running just a little bit hot. There are a bunch of other computers in very similar form factors that use the more powerful U-Series Intel chips and seem to do okay on battery life. So did Apple go with Y because of cost? Did they go with Y because of a they think they can get better battery life out of it. Did they go with why? Because they actually are not that impressed with, you know, U series performance and they

don't really want to, like, have people get tempted to go four core in this thing or what? It could be all of the above. It does make this thing feel especially compared to like comparable Windows laptops, just a little bit overpriced and a little bit underpowered. But the truth is that doesn't matter because I don't think it's not realistic that a bunch of people who have MacBook Airs are going to switch to Windows. like it's just not. And so at the end of the day,

where I came down when I reviewed it was to just compare it to the old MacBook Air, which is like it was the most infuriating experience that I know that they like did a tiny processor bump in 2017, but the last major processor revision was in 2015. So that's like three years ago, right? Yeah. And so I am comparing a laptop to something that's three years old.

And in fact, even older, if you start talking about the hardware and the screen technology. So of course it's going to be better on every single metric. It's just there's nothing for it, right? The screen is beautiful. It's not full. It doesn't have as wide a color gamut as a pros.

It doesn't get as bright as the pros. It doesn't go edge to edge like other Windows laptops. But if you've been using a MacBook Air, it is unequivocally better, right? And like the same goes down the line for like every other feature, basically. The track pad is way better. Yeah, anyway. So the MacBook Air is this like enormously important. product, right? And we, for years, said it was the best laptop ever made. And I don't know, however

many episodes of Control Walt Delete, I did, where it was like, Walt was like, they just need to update the MacBook Air. I have a bunker full of them. He really does. You know, I just, I don't want to give up on this thing. I mean, they literally invited Walt to this event. Walt is retired. And they invited him to the event to be like, we made a new MacBook Air for you, which is incredible. Yeah. We should just call Walt. Did we just call Walt? I mean, I think he got his today. All right, Andrew, can we call Walt?

Hello, is this Walt Mossberg? This is Walt Mossberg. I'd like to order 10,000 lattes to go. Walt, it's Neilie and Dieter and Paul. It's the Vergecast. How are you doing? Hi, guys. How are you?

I'm good. I heard a rumor that you got your MacBook air today. I did. I got it, I don't know, an hour ago, a little more than that. An hour ago, why haven't you written a full review? Where's my column, well? I'm retired, man. I'm not writing reviews anymore.

I just write him in Twitter threads. That's quicker. That's true. No editor. So Apple, yeah, no pesky editor. So Apple literally brought you out last week. It was fun to have you at the event just around. It was great because Walt was like, we were like scrambling like we always do.

And Walt was like, what do you think of this? And I was like, I'm going to take a little break and hang with Walt. So you were at the event. You saw the stuff. You got one today. And I know you were one of the best. biggest proponents of that sort of second generation MacBook Air ever. What do you think of the new one? I actually, I have one huge complaint. I open the box and the new MacBook Air did not have any

verge stickers or Control Walt Delete stickers. I think we saw some control off delete stickers. I'm sure we do. I'm good. Good, because I was about to return it for lack of stickers. Worry about it was the keyboard, you know, that butterfly keyboard. Even assuming that there's no stuck key problem and dirt problem because of that plastic thing they've put underneath. You know, it's a different, it's a whole different feel. It has less travel. But I have to say that in my limited experience at the event last week and in my limited experience so far here, obviously very limited, I'm fine with it. I'm fine with it so far. Hey, Walt, are you a loud typer? Because I'm a pretty loud typeer. And even this keyboard,

which is quieter than the previous generation MacBook pros. People are still like, yo, dude, are you mad? What's going on? You can definitely hear it more than you can on the air. I read that in your piece, and I've heard about it before. It doesn't sound particularly loud to me. I don't know why. Maybe it is my style of typing, which is pretty much hunt and peck,

so I don't go fat, and that may be it. But, you know, it's fine for me. I find it a little bit cool that it's smoke here, but kind of cool. And I got it in space gray, which you couldn't do on the old one. Yeah. And I've ever made. I know that the Windows guys have caught up, but I also think that they're, you know,

Windows itself in a compromise state where it's trying to be partly a tablet and trying to be partly a laptop. And it's not what I personally want. So although I've owned many Windows computers in the past, this thing runs MacOS. It's all up to date. It's got a retina screen. It's got an up-to-date processor, and it's got actual speakers. The sound is not coming from under the keyboard, as it did on this machine at one time.

And so far I'm happy, an hour and a half in or whatever it is. So you famously, you had like a store of previous generation MacBook Pros. You were like bunkered up with them. Like Apple's never going to update this. I'm just sticking with it. Is this enough to make you sell off? your collection of new-in-box MacBook Airs? Yeah, you know, this is a classic internet phenomenon where I bought one spare MacBook Air.

One, it's still all shrink-wrapped, never opened, and it has just like exploded into this tail that I have 100 or 1,000 or something like that. It's like my retirement is completely wrapped up in MacBook Air. Every week we take one of them. We go to the supermarket. We trade it in for some fruits and vegetables. The answer is I'm not doing anything with that shrink-wrapped older one. Who knows, I may need it. I'm a prepper.

I'm, you know, got a bunker. And I might need it. So I've got it. I'm keeping it. So let me go a little bit broader. You know, they released two products last week, the iPad Pro and the MacBook Air. Do you think that this MacBook Air, there's a sense of it where it's like, all right, this is what you wanted, you wouldn't listen to us so you can have it. Like we put a retina screen and

touch ID of the Macwick Air. Great. This is what you, please stop asking us for it. Or do you feel like these product lines are on disparate pass where they're both sincere products? Does that make any sense? Yeah, it does make sense. I think they're on disparate paths. I think that Apple took a wrong turn on the Mac a couple years ago. I think they tried to take their pro. You know, let me back up for a second. I'll make this quick. Everybody who knows Apple and knows the history knows that Steve Jobs had this, you know, four quadrant little graph. He drew top reach one desktop reach in those days. And I think what they did a couple of years ago, whole laptop and try to make it a tweener. In fact, that's when I, when I reviewed it, I called it a tweener. They

tried to make it kind of cover both the market that had been the Airs market and the market that had been the pros market. And I don't think either group of customers was happy with it. And I think there, I can't prove this, but I think there's been a reconsideration inside Apple. I don't know what else it will lead to, but, you know, who would have expected them to the way they did also? That was widely believed to be left for dead until very recently.

So something has changed in their Mac policy, and I do think it's on its own course. You know, we can argue about whether that's a good policy or bad policy, but I think that's been their policy. I think they screwed up the Mac half of it, and I think they're now coming back. I assume there will be an Arm Mac. I assume there will be Macs with more new features than this MacBook Air, but I do think they're separate. And I, by the way, you all know that I'm a huge iPad fan as well. and I have an iPad Pro, and I do a ton of stuff on it. Yeah, I think the Apple just had its earnings.

We haven't gotten too deep into them, but the Mac revenue is a fifth of the iPhone revenue. It's not a small number by any means. And on Control, I'll delete, you were always telling me the Mac business would be like a Fortune 500 business all by itself, right? And it's still true. I checked it just a couple of days ago, and it's like almost $26 billion,

which would be a Fortune 500 company. And so, at one time, at least the most popular Mac, it's probably not at this moment because on the hillside to die. I feel like that's what they did with them. I know it's rough, but you know, the world is rough. Yeah. The hills are full of Mac minis and I'm not. Two Macs. One is the quintessential consumer Mac that they've had immense success with, finally, you know, kind of brought back to life.

any other was, you know, what turns out to be almost entirely, I can't imagine consumers buying this particular MacBook Mini. It's really, even a server, a pro machine, even a server. I don't think two years ago, if we'd been having this conversation, we'd have predicted either of those things. But something has changed in the Mac side of their development. Yeah, it's interesting to see Apple kind of respond to clear market demand in this way, right? Like, they were trying to sunset the MacBook Air. They did that whole presentation with the pro where they said, look, it's smaller, it's more powerful, just buy this one. And people still wanted an error, and they kept selling it. And they were surprised at how well it

continued to sell. They still sell that 2015 error, by the way. It's in a store. It's crazy to me that that product is still available. But it's almost like their hand was forced. Like, the market just told them to make this product. So, Walt, do you think, I know you've even had it for an hour, is this a worthy successor to the computer that for years you said, Joanna Stern said, we said, every reviewer said the MacBook Air is just the computer you should buy. Is this a worthy successor to that product, do you think? I mean, on first impression on the New York event and the limited time today, I would say yes. What I'm doing right now, which everybody who's ever owned a Mac and then bought another one knows about is I'm migrating the data from my old

one to this new one, and that takes some hours. The interesting thing is, though, I'm migragging it from a USBC external drive as opposed to the book air, and now I'm just doing it. Dive into it more over the next couple weeks, and maybe I'll do a Twitter thread. I don't know, but yes, the answer, I mean, is every experience I've had with it, in my opinion, suggests that this is. MacBook Air was in terms of advanced radical features except for touch ID, but it's a, I'm really a MacBook Air, which is a little bit thinner and a little bit lighter and a little bit smaller, all of which are good things. I'll say one thing.

If you buy the non-touchbar, the so-called Escape Model MacBook Pro, key row is really. Right, Dieter, really kind of thin little button. Wait, really? Yeah. Huh. You know, I have a look. You guys have them.

Yeah, I have a MacBook's escape, and I never really use it. Yeah. I'm sticking with my, I got my 2015 pro with a GPU that is just viciously eating this battery. And yet, to me, the thing that was amazing about the MacBook era, the second generation that everybody got was it was simultaneously the computer for everybody that everybody should just get. And it was also at the same time so far ahead of the rest of the laptop world by at least a few years. And it took, it took Windows a long time to catch up. This has the benefits of potentially being the every person computer, which is great, but I don't see it being that far ahead. It's basically like a ketchup product in my mind. And that's not a knock on it, but I do think it's an interesting question as far as what's going to happen two, three years from now because, you know, Microsoft's devotion to Windows is a little bit softer than it used to be. And Apple's devotion to the Macintosh seems to be a little bit more resurgent. And I'm just wondering, you know, is there, are we going to see a world where the Mac is, like, radically

ahead of the rest of the computer world in some way again? Or, you know, is that just, are those days behind us and all that innovation is going into the iPad and the iPhone? That, I'll answer that. I'm curious what I'll say, but the, that day comes when they put an arm ship in the Mac. Similar to Nilize, I would go even a little farther. I'm going to repeat what I said. I think there's been a change inside Apple and they're thinking about the Mac since the, I think error, unforced error they did on the pro. And I think the two that they introduced at the event are maybe the first pieces of evidence of that. I expect them. And I realize I'm leaving out the 12-inch MacBook because I don't understand what that is and where that fits.

No, seriously, given the price and the and the capability, you know, it just, I don't understand. it, but, you know, it isn't even 18-carat gold. I mean, I don't know. I assume, and nobody's, this is not, nobody's told me this, but I assume they are working on an arm-based Macs, I assume they're working on that, more Macs. I think that this is meant to put a stake in the ground for the consumer side to say, okay, here's your MacBook Air, all modernized up. I think there is new territory, and I think they're looking at it. You know, know there are Windows machines out there, but I'll repeat. I think it's not all the hardware. HP has done a beautiful job, even Dell, and I say Even Dell, because I don't think their

hardware was generally very good over many years in the past, but they've done a nice job, but I think Windows remains a little bit of a confused situation, and Apple is making – if the answer to the question, Dearest, I think more Macs are coming that will be a new. Yeah. So I'm not buying a second one of these. in the plot. The bunker remains. All right, Walt, well, thank you so much.

I know we kind of called you out of the blue here. So let us know when you're done setting this thing up and what you think of it. I will. Take care, guys. All right. See you, man. Thanks, Walt. Bye.

Man, I love that man. Truly. Deeter, I want to ask you about T2 and then we should move on to the next thing. So the T2 trip is like crazy, right? It, like, does a whole bunch of stuff. So it's the security element. So it has a secure enclave for your fingerprint sensor, and it turns the microphones off when you close the laptop.

But I think that's not- Does it physically disconnect the microphones? I read there somewhere that it physically disconnects the microphones, which seems crazy to me. Like it- I do not know if there's a little guy that's unplugging in it. Actuator, yeah, that I cannot speak to. But it keeps the rest of the system from seeing it. It also handles the audio on the speakers for some reason.

Sure. But to me, the most important thing that it does is it handles, just like it does on the other Pro Max, it handles real-time encryption for the other. SSD, which means that you can have file vault turned on and have everything fully encrypted on your computer with no loss to speed. And I think, you know, it runs a BIOS, blah, blah, blah, blah. In a way, it's, to me, it really seems safe to say that the T2 is Apple learning how

to do more stuff on the Mac with its own custom silicone so that when it wants to switch the CPU over, there won't be that many surprises. Yeah, I think there's also an element of, I mean, it also handles like video encoding, which is like deeply hilarious to me. Yeah. All those people encoding video on their, their macular cares. Remember the Elgado stick that we all used to have to buy? Yeah.

I loved that thing. I think there's an element of they need to give that Intel processor like some headroom. Like they need to give it some space. So like they're going to move a bunch of stuff just over to it. And then I don't know if they can move more stuff, right? Like that turns into re-architecting the operating system. But that's the thing I want most of the has to come. I had a whole riff in the review that was like, the reason that this thing isn't like, holy crap is like blame Intel.

And Intel's had some bad ears. They haven't advanced enough in chips and so on and so forth. And I had a whole like way to go, Intel. You're really, you really, the MacBook Air would have been the most amazing computer ever if it weren't for you. Wow. No, but we cut it because it's a little bit unfair, honestly. It's not like the right thing. And also, again, other laptops of comparable size have.

a more powerful Intel processor and like nothing exploded on them. Yeah. That's a battery life. Other reviewers have said that it's really good, that they're getting really, really good battery life. I am finding that it is very, very workload dependent. If you are just using Safari and email and doing basically like Chromebook stuff, like basic computer stuff, you can get eight, nine, maybe even 10 hours, I think.

Apple claims 12 of web browsing. for me, I run my Mac with a tweet deck and sometimes Chrome. And so I'm like getting seven to eight. That was one of the things with the original MacBook area, the other thing, or the second MacBook area, the thing that people love so much, especially when they switch that MacBook Air to the Haswell Intel processors. Yeah. You could just got like magical battery life, just magical battery life.

But this thing has a high resolution screen. It sure it doesn't get as bright as I like it to. And, you know, it's got this processor that they need to clock it, whatever they're clocking it at and watering, you know, powering it at the TDP, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so it's, like physics, I think keeps it from having, like, true 12-hour battery life. But that's not a huge knock. I think a lot of other computers, especially computers that have those U-Series processors, so you end up kind of in the same zone. I'm a little bit bummed. And like, this is where I actually am mad at Intel is we seem like we were creeping up on a world where, like, you actually could just

not worry about having to plug your computer in all day. I think we're backsliding a little bit. like things were getting really good and you could see a path to it. And I feel like we've gone backwards a little bit on that. And that's, I don't know, it's a bummer. It's especially a bummer on this MacBook Air because it doesn't have MagSafe. And I know that most of us, if you're listening to this, you probably haven't used a magsafe laptop in a long time. I'm using one right now.

I'm using one right now. A lot of people that have old, you know, MacBook Airs and MacBook Pro's, like, that was a genuinely good, great, useful thing. and it's a bummer to see he had gone, especially since the battery life isn't holy crap good. You know, I was like really, MagSafe for us, like here, the company had become this like standardized connector,

even though it's proprietary. Like, everybody had a Mac. So there were just like power adapters everywhere and I could just like wander around and play. And so I was sad. And then I interviewed the CEO of Anchor this week. Oh, yeah. It was on Tuesday.

And he's like, look, we ship, like the world ships like four billion power bricks every year. Like that's the number. It's four billion. He's like, we should stop that. And so I'm willing to accept the USBC transition pain if, like, I can just plug my stuff in and we're not making more, like, e-waste, and it's just simpler everywhere. I think there's years of pain along the way.

But hearing that stat, it finally just, like, clicked for me. Like, oh, we make a lot of garbage. Yeah. We, like, physically produce a shitload of garbage every year just to charge stuff. Well, and I'm hoping that this MacBook Air, if it does sell in big numbers, is going to be one of the things that pushes USBC forward, you know, and, you know, speeds up the transition period and gets us better USB-C devices. Like, I'm actually genuinely hopeful for that.

I will say, now that we've gotten through talking about USBC and this MacBook Air and USBC on the iPad, I've spun all the way back around. Apple has a lot of decisions that are good for Apple for leaving the iPhone Lightning, but it doesn't have any good reasons that are actually useful for consumers for leaving it lightning. Yeah, I can't. I feel like they went to USBC on the iPad. The excuses for leaving lightning on the phone are dwindling. There's no turning back.

Once they switch the iPad, it's over. Yeah. I mean, there's like a variety of reasons. Like, A, people have, there's like a lightning ecosystem in the world. Yeah. Same excuse for the iPad. Yeah, but there are fewer iPads. Like, the pain is like way lower.

Do you want to live in a world where you carry two. SD card adapters with you. Think about that. I already live in that world. What are you talking about? I've been in that world for years. Apple missed the moment with the iPhone 10. They could have switched the iPhone 10 to USBC,

and everyone would have been like grumble, grumble, grumble, it wouldn't have sold as well, but they would have signaled it was the future and there's enough other stuff changing in it that people would have been like, okay, I get it. You know, we did the USBC montage for the iPad Pro review. Yeah, that box is coming to me for the Pixel Slate, by the way.

It's beautiful. We packed all your stuff up. Well, enjoy the party light because it is the most fun. The one thing that came super late was the USBC to 30-pin adapter. So you can plug the old iPod 30-pin into the... Oh, my God. And it just doesn't do anything. I don't even know if there's wires inside of it.

Like, it literally just does nothing. So I have it. It's an amazing adapter, but we couldn't make it do anything. All right. We're going to do this week in Elon with Liz. we're going to have an ad and we'll come back. Check it out. Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow dirtbags and everybody else,

welcome to this week in Elon. My name is Elizabeth Lepado. I'm the deputy editor at The Verge, and we are here to talk about Tesla's board. So Tesla has appointed Robin Denholm, who is already on the board, to be the chair of the board of directors. And the reason, of course, that that has happened

is it was a condition of, of the settlement that Musk reached with the Securities and Exchange Commission in September to settle the fraud charges related to his funding secured tweets. Right? So he's out as chairman and Dunholm is in as chairwoman, but of course, Musk is remaining on the board. Possibly you are wondering who is Robin Dunholm. Good question. So she is the CFO, was the CFO, and head of strategy at an Australian telecommunications company. called Telstra. And so she's given notice and is going to be full-time chairwoman at Tesla. So the other thing that to keep in mind is that, you know, there are going to be some people

added to the board also as a result of this SEC settlement. The reason for that is that the board has come under fire for not being sufficiently independent from Musk. So part of what she is coming into, actually, and we know this because public companies have to file documents, part of what she's coming into is a subpoena from the SEC around Model 3 production, as well as two DOJ probes, one around funding secured, the other around Model 3 production. Okay. The reason why I mention this is that Tesla disclosed that they had been subpoenaed about their Model 3 production numbers by the SEC, and I'm not an expert, but subpoenas seem possibly bad. Anyway, because I'm not an expert, I called some experts, and they confirmed that. Receiving subpoenas is

never a good thing. Former SEC Commissioner Harvey Pitt emailed when we asked him. They're a fairly serious step. And of course, it doesn't mean that there's any wrongdoing that's occurred. It just means that the SEC is extremely interested in your business. Now, there's a bunch of sort of like lawyer rules, which I'm going to skip because we will be here for 15 minutes if I go through them all. But it is worth noting that there has actually been a shareholder lawsuit around Model 3 production. It was initially dismissed in, I think August. and it has been refiled. So it looks like there's like a fair amount of litigation that's just kind of hanging over Tesla right now.

And here's the thing about SEC subpoenas. They can give information to the DOJ. And in fact, some members of the FBI literally work in the SEC office. So they are in close communication. So basically what's going on is that there is at minimum a very exhausting documents process of assembling everything that could be required by the subpoena, going through emails, looking at memos, whatever, whatever else. So at minimum, this is going to be a distraction. And of course, at maximum,

it could be quite dangerous. So that's what Robin Denholm is coming into as chairwoman. I'm sorry, Robin, but, you know, also congratulations, girl. Like, that's pretty big news. You ever want to give an exclusive interview to somebody? You know where I am. A couple of other things going on in the Elon world. It looks like SpaceX is seeking a new loan for about $750 million. to put cash on the balance sheet. Now, SpaceX, you may remember, is involved in two very big productions. One of them is a network of satellites that will give you space internet, and the other, of course, is the BFR, the big Falcon rocket.

Obviously, those things are capital-intensive. That probably explains the loan. According to Bloomberg, it's coming from Bank of America, instead of Goldman Sachs, as was initially reported. So Goldman Sachs was previously leading talks between SpaceX and people who might want. to give SpaceX some money, but that has changed. So a lot of stuff going on in the sort of the finance world of Elon.

For instance, you know, Tesla is expecting to invest up to $6 billion in the next two years to ramp up their China operations. And all of this, obviously, is going to be part of Robin's job. So Robin Dunholm, congratulations. I am very much looking forward to see what you do. That's been this week in Elon. I'm Elizabeth Lepato. Thank you very much. This episode of The Virtra House brought to you by Better Mortgage.

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Find out how much house you can actually afford right now on your phone in just three minutes. Go to better.com slash verge to start the mortgage process so simple it feels like magic. Not available in all states. See better.com slash terms. All right. Paul, every week, my friend, a segment begins. Yeah. With you saying the same words and they are.

I always say the same words. I always say hashtag dongle what? And what is spelled W-U-T. just in case you didn't. Yes, good. I was assuming. Okay, so obviously new iPad with a new plug, this is easy material for hashtag Dongle what,

because we have the hyperdrive for iPad Pro, right? Of course, a USBC hub. You get your headphone jack. You get SD card slots. Maybe I could have three SD card adapter. HGMI port, USBA, USBC power delivery. But here's what's really exciting. it basically bolts to the side of the iPad.

So instead of having a cord... It doesn't make any sense. And there's like diagrams. It looks like... It says it won't scratch your... Secures USBC Hub in place without blemishing the iPad Pro service, which makes you wonder,

how did you get so close to blemishing the iPad? It's like there's a multi-part diagram with these like like trans like plastic brackets and then they screw into the hub it's really exciting so it's just it just makes your iPad look really ridiculous it's great i love it i love that they show a thumb drive plugged into it that can do nothing it does make me think that the placement of the port on the iPad at some point they should rethink it i know they've got the speakers in the corners but yeah like smack in the middle of one of the sides is like down in a corner they should put it down in a corner Yeah. Johnny I just gave an interview to The Independent, which is like a classic, wonderful Johnny I of hyperbole, where he was like, you know, at the first iPad, there was an orientation. And now through the magic of technology, there's no more orientation. And you can just, it's a magic piece of glass. You should read it. It's great. But like, it definitely has an orientation. Like there's an Apple logo on it. It points in one direction. It doesn't like magically rotate. The port is at the bottom. The camera is at the top. And so, like, it definitely has an orientation. And so, like, like, it's an Apple logo on it. It points in one direction. It doesn't, like, magically rotate. The port is at the top. And so, like, like, like, Like, there's that, first of all. And then when you put it in a keyboard case, the port is off to the side.

Like, there's only one way to mount it in the keyboard case. You guys are thinking of a world where you are so productive on your iPad Pro that you're actually using it at work and you need it to be plugged in. Well, so Apple is like, yeah, you're going to, same as your laptop. You come into work, your iPad Pro, you unfold it, you clip open the keyboard case. You plug in one cable, lights up your external display and your, you know, whatever else. you have going on and power and you're off into the races. And it's like, but all it can do on the external displays mirror the iPad. So why would you do that? You know, and like keynote and other stuff can do it. And like they can put up, you know, one slide here and show you the next slide

on your iPad screen. But I mean, that's their vision, right? You're just going to plug in one cable and get power and all the other stuff you might need. So a bunch of hubs worked. It's just very funny. It is, I didn't put this in the review. The iPad is USB C 3.1, Generation 2. And then the MacBook Air is Thunderbolt 3. Yeah. And that, I think, is going to confuse the shit out of people. Like, even just in testing the iPad, we were like, what cable is what, you know, like Apple just ships you a power cable in the box.

It's just like a lot of stuff to know the difference between what will work on a MacBook. But you can't plug an external GPU into the iPad, right? Because it's not Thunderbolt, but you can do it in the MacBook Air. So there's just a lot of, let's see what's going on here. But I'm pretty sure Thunderbolt isn't the thing that's keeping. the iPad from working with an EGPU. Pretty sure that that's, there's something else.

There's some other factor. It'd be wild. It'd be wild if it didn't, if you couldn't read a thumb drive, but it's like, yep, this EGPU totally works. Take that Xbox. Oh man, the Xbox graphics thing,

yeah, great. Your processor's real fast. Like, no game on here looks as good as an Xbox game. Like, it's just not a thing. All right. Let's talk about this real quick. This was literally happening

while we were podcasting just now. Dieter, what is going on with Android and foldable funds? So both Google and Samsung have developer conferences today, and Google jumped the gun. They were going on at the same time, but Google said, hey, we're going to support foldable devices. They called them foldables. Oh, my Google phone thinks I'm talking to it right now. And they basically are using stuff that's already built into Android right now. They're saying if you make an Android app, make sure you support this thing called screen continuity

that makes your app not go crazy when people put it in Windows mode on Chrome or when they turn their phone sideways. If you do that, it'll support, you know, when the thing unfolds. It will set, that's, they'll send that flag. So they're basically telling everybody, look, this is how Android should handle foldables. Don't make any custom APIs. It's a way to limit fragmentation. But in terms of like forward facing future stuff features in Android, they're not talking about that yet. Then about, I don't know, an hour later, we saw Samsung, a Samsung prototype of a foldable Android phone. I'm looking at the photo right now for the very first time. And it sure does look like a little tablet.

My nearest understanding, Google said that Samsung's device is going to get released next year. Samsung is trying to tell developers how it wants developers to make apps for this phone. But the basic goal here is for Samsung's making this thing, Royals making a thing. Presumably, LG will roll out a knockoff, you know, within two weeks. And so for all these phones that are foldable, Google wants to make sure that they all work in basically the same way. And they're working with Samsung to make that happen.

This is like a new thing that Google does with Samsung, right? Samsung's like, we have a crazy idea and Google says, wait, hold up, slow it down. We want to be ahead of the curve and actually support it directly in Android, not have you build some crazy fork of Android. I would say it's a third or fourth time they do something along these lines. So that's cool. Who is Royale? Where do they come from and why do they have a foldable display?

I have a theory. Yeah. You ready? Yeah. Yes. They're the fourth shift company. There's a company, like name right? and they're division of something else or whatever,

and they're hanging out at the factory where Samsung is making these displays, making these phones, and they're like, hey, we know Samsung's doing it, but we could just, like, sneak in there and get it out the door since all that stuff is they're working on anyway. So they just, like Paul said,

they were first to fold. First to fold. But I think that... Wait, so, but Dieter, that would imply that Royal has very similar technology to Samsung. No one knows. Yeah, I don't think that's true at all. I mean, Samsung literally turned off the lights at its event, so you couldn't see the phone.

You could only see it folding. Yeah. Which is crazy. Yeah. They also announced that BigSpeed now supports third party apps, just in case you're wondering. I've been waiting for that. That's the thing that'll save Bigspe. No, but like, remember when, like, the essential phone came out and it was like a notch and then we're like, oh, and then Apple did it and then everybody did it.

And it was like, out of nowhere, everybody was able to make this thing. I think that there are like one or two factories that out of nowhere are able to like get this one particular kind of folding screen to actually work at scale. And so everybody's just going to make one because they can. Intel was hinting at it. Microsoft's been hinting at it. It's just going to happen. There's a GIF on the verge. We can see it fold.

I'm watching it fold over and over. It's very exciting. The screen folds. Oh, it folds in the screen's inside. The screen's inside. And then there's another screen on the outside. screen on the outside. Oh, it's so good.

It's all I've ever wanted in my life is this many screens. This makes no sense. I mean, they can't fold it like, you know, fully flat, right? Because that would break the screen. And so this in your pocket is going to be a real moment. This is my next phone.

I don't care. I'm all in. Bigsby forever. This is, I can't not have this. I'm going to sell new larger pockets on. Yeah. I did ask Google, why Android? Because if you have a tablet,

But there's no good Android tablets. There's only the new Chrome tablets. I mean, there's Samsung's Android tablet, but come on. So if you have a bigger screen, you probably want a desktop class browser on it. Otherwise, you just run into iPad problems, right? And they're just like, we think of this as like an extension for phones. It's like, it's going to be a minute before you can fold this out and have a real computer in there. Yeah.

I mean, Samsung is like, what if you unfold it? And it's like, Dex is here. Yes. Like, Samsung has the opportunity to go. insane. By the way, this is folding, and when it's folded up, the third display, you know, the third one on the front, is suspiciously small. It has like a giant forehead. Probably the largest bezel I've seen in my lifetime. Ever. I don't care. I'm buying, I'm buying the hell out of this phone. It's the only phone I'm going to use forever. I think for

this phone, they should bring back the bloops. They should bring back the galaxy bloops. Oh, my God. All right. We got to wrap this up. I can't. I mean, I just have to watch this gift for the rest of the day, so we got to wrap this up. A couple of things. We didn't mention it all, but we are taping this the day after election day. There was an election in the United States of America. There's a new Congress. The House is full of Democrats and the Senate's full of Republicans. That means a bunch of tech policy stuff is going to change. Go look on the website. We have a really great new policy reporter. Her name is McKenna Kelly. She's doing a bunch reporting. She just interviewed Senator Mark Warner about how he plans regular tech. He's one of the

smarter thinkers on that stuff. He said he would break up Facebook as a last resort, but he wouldn't nationalize it because he's capitalist. Oh, hey, Nilai, Wisconsin Valley has a new governor. That's true. Your buddy. Scott Walker is gone. He took another run at him and they beat him.

So there's a new governor in Wisconsin, a new governor for my hometown. I suspect the Foxcon story is going to change dramatically. So there's a lot of that stuff we didn't talk about on this show because honestly we had to yell about USBC ports. But it's all on the verge.com. Read that stuff. We're going to be covering a lot.

I'll probably do an interview episode to talk about policy changes with the new Congress. So you'll look up for that. Speaking of interview episodes, the anchor CEO Stephen Yang episode is up in the feed. And next week I talked to Sukinder Singh Cassidy, who is the new president of Stubhub. So we talked about Stubhub, a bunch, which has some wild ideas for the future of ticketing. But we didn't talk about this either. Last week, like 20,000 people walked out at Google across the world, the protest, kind of a pervasive culture of sexual harassment and discrimination.

So you came there not only was Google's president of Latin America and Asia. She built those businesses from the ground up at Google. She also is a chairman of a foundation called The Board List, which places women into senior roles on boards and executive committees. She had a lot to say about that. So check that out. It's coming next Tuesday. You can listen to other Verge podcasts. Like I said, why did you push that button is this week's episode is terrific.

Go check that out. You can listen to Recode Decode with Caras Swisher. You can listen to Pivot with Caras Swisher and Scott Galloway. and you can listen to Recode Media with Peter Kafka. All wonderful podcasts. Everywhere podcasts are served. And you can just tweet at us. It appears that all of you know what my Twitter is

because you all have thoughts about the iPad. But Paul is at Future Paul. Dieter's at Backlon. I'm a reckless. Let us know what you think. And that's it. We'll see you next week. Rock and roll.

Paul. 8KAI plus 5G. Oh, God. Hey, Vergecast listeners. I'm Spencer Hall from SB Nation. And I want to tell you about my new show it seemed smart. It seems smart as a show about people doing things that,

for some reason or another, seems smart at the time. Those things might include doing a little cocaine and driving a bike up a mountain. Or, I don't know, maybe racing 100 miles per hour across the country in the middle of the night with no one's permission. Or even stealing a bat from an umpire's room in a major league baseball park. Check it out. And if you like it, tell a friend. I'm Spencer Hall. Don't do anything smart.