The Vergecast - Apple Watch Series 6 with WSJ's Joanna Stern

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

Every Tuesday this month, Vergecast co-host Dieter Bohn hosts a series of discussions diving deep into tech review season, each focusing on a specific product. This week, Dieter talks with senior personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal and Verge alum Joanna Stern about Apple's Watch Series 6. Dieter and Joanna also discuss the process of reviewing gadgets on video and the complications of reviewing a product that has this many variants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Build Me a Revenue Dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data, in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skylar Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years,

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and it is our special run of a few episodes that we're doing, where we're doing a deep dive into our reviews of the hardware that's coming out in this very, very busy fall hardware season with other people outside the Verge who have reviewed the same devices. So this week we are talking about the Apple Watch Series 6, and I am very excited to say that we have Joanna Stern from the Waller. Wall Street Journal on. She's a friend, and she's also a former colleague. She used to work here at The Verge. Now, by the time this podcast goes up, Joanna's review will have already been up,

but I'm not sure if mine will be up or not yet, because I've run into some production hassles, which is what happens during the middle of a pandemic when you're trying to learn a new skill all by yourself. We actually talk about that a little bit. But as I'm working on this review, The thing that I'm really struggling with is how much I love this watch right now in this moment, because one of the hobbies I'm trying to pick up is riding my bike more often, and the Apple Watch has biking directions. It has actually a pretty good ecosystem of biking apps now. And so more than ever before, I am depending on and sort of loving using my Apple Watch as a thing that's good for my fitness.

But at the same time, the flagship feature of this Apple Watch Series 6 is the blood oxygen monitor that I think is frankly unreliable. And so does Joanna, actually. We give a lot of talk to that. And I don't know, she gives me a little bit of help thinking through how to think about the blood oxygen monitor in the context of this thing being a quote-unquote wellness device instead of an actual medical device. Also, we talk about putting hot dogs inside folding phones like you do. Anyway, it's a super fun conversation with a very fun person and I think you're going to enjoy it. Joanna Stern, you are the senior personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal.

also my friend, how you doing? Good. It's good to be here with you, Deeter. You in your closet, me in my office. Your closet is beautiful. It's not a beautiful closet, but it is big enough to fit me, which I like. Actually, we're probably going to talk about this later, like how we actually produce stuff at home. I thought you meant like me coming out of the closet.

No, no, that's not. We can talk about that. I feel like you might remember that. Wow. This is a personal podcast, I thought. I mean, we're supposed to be talking about the Apple Watch Series 6, which is the personal of tech products. So we just get so personal. So by the time this episode goes up, your review is already up. Mine may be posted. I'm working on it right now. I'm shooting the video

this afternoon, actually, or part of the video. High level. What do you think of the series six? Yeah. I think I said in my review, nope. It's not because it's a bad product. I just, I thought the series five was great. It was good. It was a great update from the four. I thought the four actually was like as far as Apple Watches go, the best Apple Watch release we've had. question doing the review actually, but I did feel like there was a lot to explain about the choices. So this is a long-winded way of saying no. Yeah. Your last line in your review was like the thing I was like had in the back of my mind as a headline. If I can come up with a pun for a headline, I know I want to do it. I usually don't.

I usually get talked out of it. But I think you said if it ain't broke, don't series six it, which is like perfect. Can't believe I got it in. Yeah, it's so good. Imagine if you were my editor or I was your editor and we just let all the puns go in. It would just be chaos. I know Neely hates puns. Maybe he just has to because of who he's friends with. Yeah, no, he wouldn't survive otherwise.

I think that I've got a series five, and it was important to me to have an always on screen. So that's why I liked that one. But other than that, like the series six, it seems like the biggest thing they did that will actually matter to people is they added the blue and the red colors that people might want. And they like, you know, they'd change the iPod every year. And so if they just add some more colors to the Apple Watch, maybe they'll have been some extra people to buy it. I actually forgot to mention the new colors in the review. I mentioned the solo loop, which I think is the best innovation yet in the Apple Watch. The solo loop is remarkably simple.

No clasp, no buckle, no overlapping parts, just one continuous piece. Actually, it's funny, I went back on the fifth anniversary of the Apple Watch, which was, what, April. And I watched back my first review, which I really did. almost every single thing they had hit except for two things. One was sleep tracking, which we got. And two was I fumbled with and made fun of the sport loop. You know, looking back on it, was like, yeah, you know, I was a little too harsh on that. But like, it was my initial reaction. We had just had the watch for like a week. And I kept fumbling with putting that thing on. And now, of course, it's like second nature because we've had like six years of these. But this loop band is like,

yes, Apple just invented loop bands. And they're a. Amazing. So they like, you know, they're stretchy and they slap out. The loop bands are super hard to size. Apple had to like update the way that their sizing tool. They didn't send them to me initially because Apple, I don't know, they wanted, it was important to them that I had a band that matched the watch because they sent me the red watch and they don't have red loops yet.

Anyway, I said it looks like I'm a size seven, maybe a size eight. And I got a size seven and a size seven is maybe a little bit loose. But I think a size six would be too tight. So I think I might actually be in between loop sizes. I'm a little bit worried. I am in the same exact boat. So they sent me three and fours. Okay.

And I have the Navy and they sent me a number of these because they wanted to make sure it would match. And so they sent four bands, two in size three, two in size four. And first couple of days I started wearing three. And it was tight. Like I would take it off and there was like the imprints, you know, like the kind of imprints of like when you sleep too hard on a pillow or something. Yeah. And I went out. up to the four. Now, the four is very comfortable, but the blood oxygen level reading thing sensor

requires that this be really quite flush with the skin to work. So apparently four is not tight enough. So really, similar to how I am in shoe sizes, I should be a three and a half. I'm not a three and a half in shoe sizes. That would actually be like a baby foot. I actually just wear my son's shoes all the time. But I'm an eight and a half, two-size. So they should make half-sizes. Maybe they'll do that next year. That'll be another reason to upgrade.

Or maybe they do stretch over time, which I haven't really worn for long enough to know, but could be. So in your review, you wrote, remember your SIT multiple choice tactics, eliminate two choices, and you suddenly have a 50-50 shot out of a correct pick. Buying an Apple watch is like that. And I feel the exact same way, because they have three models now that they're selling that are new. There's the Series 6. There's the Series 3. That's a cheap one. And then there's the SE, which is kind of like a repackaged Series 4.

But also, if you want, you could maybe go hunt down a user refurbished Series 5. And it's like Samsung-y, how many different versions of the Apple Watch there are now. Yeah, two things that I wanted to say off of this. One, I ended up buying my dad an Apple Watch for Father's Day. It was a Series 5. And it was right before WWDC and W. WBC happens and I'm like, you know what, I should return it. It turns out it was too late to return it.

So it was like, hold on to it. Maybe I could sell it or something. But now looking at it, I'm like, this is actually the best model out right now. Sure, like you can ignore the pulse ox and blood sensor, blood oxygen sensor. Yeah. But I was like, I really think people could still buy Series V's for a little bit of a discount and be super happy. Yeah. Yeah.

And then I think on the why there are so many choices, I think this tends to happen when there's not a ton of of innovation or big leaps in products from Apple in a certain year. And they're sort of like people, either we're going to address the market of people who don't have Apple watches, which is a huge market right now. So let's give them a bunch of choices and they choose. Buying any of these is good for them because then they're making money on a new customer, plus talk about fitness, plus coming down the road even more money. Or maybe there's some upgraders out there who will like one or two new features and

they'll go and buy it. Yeah. When you get a product that has like this many variants, or this many, like, how do you help somebody decide which version to buy on top of whether to buy it in the first place? How do you think about approaching that? Because I always struggle, I mean, writing for the verge, people want to know all the specs and they want to know the whole chart and blah, blah, blah, blah.

But at a certain point, I feel like talking about, like, I don't know, the Series 6 in the context of the Series 5 is not actually helpful because most people don't have a Series 5. And so there's always this tension between, like, there's people that want you to compare everything for them. And then there's just like, you want to give some buying advice. And I never know how to approach when there's multiple versions of the same product. Yeah, I tried to address all of it in this, knowing that I also had had had a bunch of reader emails who were interested in buying watches for the first time.

And frankly, like, for a lot of my reviews now, I try to approach like some of the more interesting features. I try to focus on one or two of the features and I think try to dig in on that. With this, I felt that was really hard. Yes, I could have done it on Pulse, But I had just done this piece a couple months ago on wearables and all the sensors that are in them. So I didn't feel like redoing that was that important. Plus, I'm not really sure that's a buying, like it's a buying decision that feature. Right.

So I tried to just like give an overview, give my thoughts on which one you should get. You know, the headline kind of said, like, watch out for the upsell. Like I think most people should buy the SE and they'll be happiest. But I got an amazing reader email. You know what? I'm going to read it. No, it's right. You know, maybe this puts Wall Street Journal readers in a bad light.

And so, yeah, this is an email from someone who's not happy. He said, by the way, your readers are paying $500 per year to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. You are not, they are not nickel and diming over the lowest cost alternatives. It costs $800 every five years to have my Rolex cleaned. And I just thought that was an amazing email because it represents the breadth of readers of the Wall Street Journal. Yeah. And so, yeah, you know, maybe they are just going to go and buy the most expensive watch and not listen to me. But also, I told you that Apple's really not giving you the feature add-on that I think that they should be giving you for that extra money.

Yeah, so the feature add-on is the blood oxygen sensor. The new health sensor in Series 6 shines red and infrared light onto your wrist and measures the amount of light reflected back. Advanced algorithms use this data to calculate the color of your blood, which indicates the amount of oxygen present. The new blood oxygen app lets you take a measurement in just 15 seconds. How did it work for you? Well, how did it work for you, Deeter? It did not. It works if I am very, very, very deliberate, and I push the watch all the way up

my arm, so it's nice and snug and tight, and then I definitely rest my arm, and then I'll probably get a reading at that point, and the reading will probably not make me have a panic attack because it will be above 95%. And basically, any other situation where it's further down my wrist or I'm sleeping or, like, it's doing it in the background or whatever, I get readings that either don't work, or they come in low and I get really worried and then I go grab my finger monitor and I look at it. I'm like, oh, I'm fine. And it's sort of shocking that there's this thing that they chose to release in the middle of a pandemic that one of its error things that happens is telling you that you have low blood oxygen, which you shouldn't actually pay too much attention to that unless you actually actively have COVID-19 and I'm not a doctor.

Don't take advice for me. but neither is Apple and don't take advice from Apple because this isn't a medical device, right? I couldn't agree with you more, and I've been shaking my head furiously for those, because we're doing this via video. But I didn't have a lot of the lower readings. I got, I was, you know, if I had done a video, I think I just would have like screamed unsuccessful measurement for 15 minutes and just published that video with this. I got unsuccessful measurement so many times and exactly what you more times than I could count. and exactly what you just described, pushing the watch up the arm. I have a very steady arm.

I like to brag about that sometimes. But doing that, holding steady, fix the issue. Now, sometimes when I wouldn't get unsuccessful measurement, like when it's still low down the wrist and I would get like a slightly lower reading, I never got in the 80s. Have you gotten in the 80s? I've had background readings in the 80s. And I like, oh, that's real bad.

I don't know. That's real bad. Yeah. is going to be happy with that. No doctor's going to be happy with that. But also, Apple's own website says don't use this as a diagnostic tool or with the doctor as a diagnostic tool. They don't just say it's not a medical device. They explicitly use the like u-lala language of this is for health and wellness.

It's a wellness device. Actually, that spectrum is interesting because normally you would think Apple wouldn't be on the, you know, like when we go to CES every year, we'd go to like the health gadget section and there'd be a bunch of people making really, really dubious claims. but they do it in this like perfectly weasel-wordy way so you know that it's like okay or they you know they won't get in trouble with the FDA. So there's a spectrum of like weird wellness things like all the way up to like full on medical devices. And health gadgets sort of lands somewhere on that spectrum. And we actually asked, I think we got a clip, we asked our health reporter Nicole Westman, like where on the spectrum the Apple Watch falls. So let's listen to that real quick because we talked about this on the verge cast.

I think it probably falls closer to the like quantified self, gets a, some health data. It's not like the EKG feature, which does have FDA clearance and can be used, sort of they can market it as more of a medical function. But, you know, I think that this is something that could follow a similar trajectory that that did. You know, like a lot of people were very skeptical of Apple's EKG when it first came out, like doctors and cardiologists. And then you saw some validation and, you know, people looked at the studies and they said, okay, like maybe this can be something that's useful. And I think we might see a similar trajectory with pull socks on wearables now that they're on a couple of devices and we'll probably

see a little bit more attention to them. So the pulse ox on the Apple Watch is like, doesn't it not seem useful to me? Do you think that it's going to be useful ever on wearable devices like this? Because you've tried a bunch of them. Yeah. I mean, I think one thing that she raised there, that is a really good point. And I think you were getting at it too, which is we might not have expectations that this would be in that medical realm versus that wellness. shady CES product realm if Apple hadn't had FDA clearance on the EKG and hadn't had that far and ahead above its competitors, right? It actually kicked off in many ways the competitors trying to get their features certified by the FDA. So I think when they introduced something like

this, the expectation is sort of a little bit higher from Apple. I was shocked during the presentation that we didn't hear more about the way the Apple Watch is being used in medical research this year from Apple because I have followed pretty closely the wearable story. And Fitbit has led that way and the aura ring is led that way. And we have these thousands and thousands of these, I mean, hundreds of thousands. I don't know how many, I mean, Fitbit's got to have hit millions, right? It's probably, yeah, yeah. On people. And we are gathering data and we can now spot signs, people who end up getting COVID. When we look back at their data, we can see that there were clear signs that they were coming down with something. And there might be even clear signs that they were

coming down with COVID versus the flu or COVID versus just a cold or a virus. And I think that's fascinating because we do wear these things and we just, you know, kind of think about what we wear them for, which is maybe fitness, maybe to tell the time, maybe to just, you know, I bought these for my parents because if they fall, I want to know and I want them to be safe. But then there's been this background thing happening that maybe we didn't consider. So I'm fascinated by that. And I figured Apple watches have been actually been used in a lot of those studies. Stanford and others have been using Apple watches because they take a lot of the vital measurements they need for this sort of stuff. And the fluctuations can be shown in heart rate and they can be shown in activity.

Sleep now they have so they could see the fluctuations there. But yeah, I think Apple's being cautious. That's really smart. But then why I introduced this this year with no real purpose for it was the big thing I said in my review? And maybe the purpose isn't also that clear because they don't know yet. Which is also strange, right? Yeah. Typical with this stuff, like there's some indirect consumer benefit, even if they haven't

got the results of the full study yet, or even if they haven't gotten their full FDA clearance yet, there's like something that it is advisable that a consumer could do that they could actually use and get benefit from. And to me, the blood oxygen one in particular, like, I don't think that there is a direct consumer benefit. Like, who should actually use this thing and do an act on the readings? that it creates. Maybe if you get a low reading a bunch of times or something, and in addition to other

symptoms, you could put that together. But otherwise, like, this is a feature for, I think, what's the thing, like high elevation endurance runners? Like, okay, great. And actually, it's funny, I'm trying to look through my inbox and I can't find it right now, but I did hear from a pilot who said that this is something that he would want to use because he's in high altitudes a lot and does worry about his blood oxygen level for being up in those altitudes for so long or, or I don't know exactly where he flies to. But I thought that was

an interesting use case as a small one. But yeah, I mean, overall, like, I'm, I think it's, I don't think it's a setback, but I do think it, it is a big question mark around Apple and why they need to release features every year for this product. I mean, I wrote about this. I'm, I wonder about for you, and I was sort of taking a guess at it because analysts don't have the best data on it. How often do you think people upgrade or think about upgrading their have a watch. Oh, I have no idea. If I, like, if just, if I had to guess, anecdotally, I would say on average, it's at least three, if not four, four years. I would say four years is actually probably accurate, just looking at people that I know that have one. What do you think?

Even about, like, for your reader, like, what about early adopters who love to have the greatest thing? Even then, I don't think it's more than every couple of years at the most. It just, it seems like it's a, the year-over-year differences don't make it appreciable impact on your experience of the thing, unless you, were like really persnickety about something. So I am really persnickety about having an always on screen on my watch. I don't know why. I'm really bad at doing the,

to make the screen turn on gesture. I want to be able to look at it subtly when I'm talking to somebody or whatever. So I cared a lot about that. And I also cared about the bigger screen. So like Apple like got me. They like tricked me on like the series. Yeah. The four was the big one.

The five was he always on screen. Yeah. So the three was like the first truly good one because the, you know, the zero and the one and the two were like meh. The three was truly good. It's like, okay, the three is, it's good. I'm going to get one. And the four was bigger.

I was like, oh, God, it's bigger. And then the five was always on. I was like, oh, God, it's always on. But the six, I don't care. I don't need it. Yeah. And they had, I mean, I wrote this in my review, they had such a rapid increase. And I think most people, like, I think the series three, series four was like the first

breakthrough for mainstream. Yeah. Or especially, I think, around the four. The four was the one that I think I, it was my first review saying this thing is ready for you. And you, I think was the fall detection one. And my headline was I've finally fallen for this watch. Finally. Yeah.

All right. Well, this is a great place to take a break, hear an ad, and we will come right back, and we are going to talk about making videos. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving, successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question. What if, given the right tools, I really put my all into this. One tool that can help grow your sprouting business to new heights is Shopify. Millions of businesses around the world rely on Shopify. for e-commerce.

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All right, we're back. Joanna, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show, which was like director's notes for reviews, is you make incredibly good and super fun video reviews. I'm in hell, and I did it all without any tech from 2019. To discover the quietest keyboard, there was only one place to test, an anechoic chamber at the Cooper Union.

Which is why this bubble is the only place for me to be to review the new Samsung Galaxy Fold. When you think about making these videos, I mean, are you thinking about, because I think a lot about making the video that works for YouTube, and then the article that I write is for, honestly, a different audience,

and they end up diverging pretty far in some cases. Sometimes it's like there's like some shared language or shared structure, but they do end up being kind of different. How do you think about approaching that? Because it's like, I don't know, I'm jealous of YouTubers that just get to make a video

and then walk away. explosion. Boy, do I, am I jealous of that? Honestly, I'm trying to figure out YouTube. You know, I'm not a YouTuber, neither are you. My pieces publish onto the Wall Street Journal's channel, which has a very big range of content and topics. So that is something that is a little bit of a challenge to figure out, really. On platform, I want to talk to, on the Wall Street Journal platform, I want to appeal to as many people as I possibly can. So that means, yes, I might have to be a little bit more simplistic on certain things and be a lot clearer, but I still want to have the fun, obviously, but also like the nerdiness of some of this and play with that for the sort of early adopter

tech type of crowd. And so it like, I might be trying to hit too many people with it. Also, sometimes I just put my head down. I'm like, I want to do what I want to do. Which, you know, our strategy team may just, you know, not love me for that. But that's kind of what I try to do. I think also in the world of YouTube, there's a lot of people offering opinion, and it's not always grounded in some of the more rigorous testing.

And so I've tried to go that way with some of the pieces. Like, I'm going to focus on one feature and really, test the crap out of that. And show your work in like a really fun way if you can. Exactly. Exactly. Like I did that with the Galaxy S20 Zoom camera. I was like, I just want to test this thing.

I want to do it in a fun way. I want to give it to somebody who like we gave it to this. That was the video I did with the private investigator because it like for me, it was just a creep camera. Like why do we need this crazy zoom lens? Which I'm sure we'll get it on the iPhone and I'll feel the same way. But yeah, I mean, I think for me that's sort of how I've been thinking about some of these reviews.

Okay. So like YouTube. versus the Wall Street Journal, like, written page. The other thing is you have made the transition from, like, needing to write for a verge audience that absolutely needs you to identify the specific Qualcomm processor and how much RAM is in a phone. And, you know, like, we don't go full on speeds and feeds, ultra-tech. We do try and put stuff in some kind of cultural context.

But you made the transition from that kind of audience to ABC and then also the Wall Street Journal, like a different kind of audience. the kind of audience that has Rolexes that they get cleaned for $800 a year, or every four years, whatever. How is that transition for you? Like, how do you think about your audience now? Because, like, you don't want to pigeonhole them and just be like, oh, it's just, you know, the Wall Street Journal reader. You actually do want to reach as many people as possible, right? Yeah, I do.

And I think that's what I hope has made me a little bit different from other Wall Street Journal reporters and columnists is that I had had this background. And I think, you know, some of the people who have followed me have still followed me from the verge days and still go to the verge and still read you and still read everyone else on the site and watch you and everybody else for some of that. But then come to me for my take, which may not get into all of the nitty gritty. But no, I have that understanding and I do have that knowledge to do some of this testing, to do some of the more rigorous behind the scene stuff, even though sometimes it doesn't make it to the page, frankly, or to the video. And I would say, like, there's a lot of times where I miss that, frankly, you know, yesterday's Amazon chip announcement. I sort of felt like, you know, I'd love to do a call with Amazon to go deep on this thing and really kind of figure out what they're doing here and compare it to what Apple's doing and others are doing. And maybe that's a story for us. I mean.

Has media tech ever been so excited to be mentioned in any announcement ever? Never. Never. And most people are like, what is media tech? And, you know, I actually was, I'm like thrilled that Arm is like in news so much now because it's like people are like, who can explain that? I'm like, well, I know a bunch of analysts who can explain that. Back in the day, I guess I could have explained that. But yeah, I think that's sort of how I sort of like to think of what I do.

And like, I miss it. I do miss it. And I do also still carry a lot around with me in terms of like rigorous testing. I often hear from colleagues like, why are you going through all these lengths to test 5G? and all these Wi-Fi routers, and why did you decide, you know, like, for me, it's like, it was just in my blood from coming from the verge. And even before that laptop magazine, like, you test the crap out of something. Yeah, you learn stuff through that testing. And oftentimes what you learn is, yep, it's exactly what you expected. And that's what's so frustrating is it's

tempting to cut the corner and be like, I don't know, I just reviewed the iPad, right? And it's like, what's the battery life going to be like on the iPad? Well, you know what? It's going to be fine. It's going to be just fine. I don't need to worry about it. I'm not going to test it. Oh, wait, no, yes, I am. Of course I am. And so there's a ton of work that goes into doing these reviews that just no one needs to hear it. No one thinks it's interesting. It's exactly what everybody expected. But it might not be. So you always do it just in case. But also like, and I have to say this is like a credit to some of our peers in the industry on each other, right? Like we've been doing this now for how long, 15, I mean, you're 95. I'm 95. You know your competition knows

this stuff too. Like it isn't like we're reviewing products too and like, you know, one day or two days. I mean, I know that some people do do that, but I still feel it's very important to not do that. I mean, we might write something quickly and say, here's my first impressions because people are going to make that pre-preorder decision and that's important and we want to have some say on that. But we might also take some time to go look at a feature and look at it more in depth for a couple weeks. But I definitely also think, like, you know, my competitors are going to point this out. Like, I don't want to be the one that doesn't see that thing. Yeah. There's like this special language that we use that, like, indicates how much time we've had. So there's hands-on where you're

like, you just got it. Well, there's unboxing and then there's hands-on. And then there's like, first impression. Some sites do ongoing review or like one weekend review. And then there's review. And then there's like long-term review. And like, that's a signal to like readers. but it's also a signal to each other that we're not trying to front like we've done more testing than we actually have. And I think it's funny. It's like, we invented that kind of, you know?

Well, I think you did it over at Engadgett before I joined you all. I can remember, I mean, I'm not saying we as like personal, but I feel like Engadgett, but I also feel like in our early days of the Verge, we were very much like about the labeling system. As someone who started the Verge review program, I was very clear, like, this is a review. And we're going to, I said, well, David, who is my first hire, my first and only hire, frankly, on the review team, which I used to go around telling like all these companies, no, no, we have our review team. That's really just me and David. And like we said, like, you know, a review has to have these certain things in it.

You have to have had this amount of time for certain categories. We say we're going to test battery or we're going to test performance in certain ways. And I think that's like really carried through the industry. And I'm proud of that. You should be. But you should be too. Well, thank you. I mean, you're still stuck in your closet, but. I mean, you know, you can only do so much.

Okay. I'm in my closet because I'm working from home. Lucky to be able to work from home during the pandemic. Making videos, though, during lockdown has been a trial. It's been fun for me because it's like my hobby now to like learn how to use cameras and lighting and stuff. I'm so impressed with you. Oh, well, thank you.

I still think it's like not great. And I also have a big Fudge video team that, like, takes the crap that I make with my camera and turns it into something good. You're not giving yourself enough credit, but yeah. We could way far down the rabbit hole of, like, how exactly you produce videos. We should go, like, a little bit down the road. Like, like, let's peek in the rabbit hole. Like, what is, what's changed for you when you're making a video during lockdown compared to how you did it when you could just go to a studio and meet somebody? I mean, it depends what month.

I mean, I hate it. While you've made it a hobby, I have actively not. And part of that is time, because I will, I will get, I will get like you. I will like stay up till 3 a.m. trying to get one audio thing syncing with the camera and like trying to Google the crap out of figuring out how something is not, or why something's not working. Yeah. So and also just like do a lot of stuff. And like I, I think I'm a better producer, story producer and editor than I am a technical producer.

And I think like I just, I need to focus there. if I want to get better at the things I want to get better at. That said, in March, April, May, June, two, I, like, didn't have my amazing producer, Kenny Wasis, who lives in Brooklyn, and we were always in the office together shooting and out shooting in all the crazy places we get to go. So I shot pretty much everything on my iPhone. He tried to clean it up. He would send shot lists, and I'd be like, no, I'm not going to do all of those.

that's going to take me 700 years. Yep. I also, like, all of that, like, I live with a three-year-old. He's obsessed with the tripod. It's adorable. The tripod? He loves the tripod. It's so cute.

He loves the mic. He calls it, he has a codpast. Dieter, maybe you can join him on his cod past. I would love to join him on his cod past. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, it's podcast, but he can't, he flips the, you got it. And he grabs the mic. Anytime he says, he says, like, you know, welcome to my cod pass.

and he grabs the tripod all the time and he's setting it. I mean, it's the cutest thing you've ever seen. I have watched the videos on my phone. He goes to sleep and I watch videos of him on my phone as parents do. But I can't do that. I can't be creating videos in this house, which isn't, again, I feel really lucky to have a house and a place I can work during this time. but I can't be making videos here with him here.

Yeah. That's all a lot to say is like, I don't like doing, I don't like doing the technical side of this. And I also, like, it's hard too. Creatively, I've always hired and worked with producers that are going to creatively challenge me. Like, it's, I want you to be, you know, I always write the job description. I want you to be like technically great and push the bounds in terms of format. But like creatively, I need you to be there. I need you to be in on this.

with me, and that's so hard remotely. Well, it's so hard because you have so many ideas that you would just like immediately shut down because you can't go somewhere. And the problem with that isn't just that you can't go do the thing that you first thought of. It's because the best idea is like the third iteration of that thing, right? So the limits of what you imagine is possible are so constrained. It gets even more constrained than that because you're just like, well, I guess I'm just

going to do this thing. And that's exactly how our process has been. And it's, and it's sad. Like, there are so many ideas that I have for certain things. And I'm like, oh, let's go do that. And let's go here. And I'm like, we can't. It's indoors. I mean, we are trying to, I am now shooting with Kenny in person. We have gotten together. We do distance. We wear masks. We do, we've been doing all outside. We actually shot the surface duo review in my parents garage. Oh, wow. Yep. We set, we shot a little, like, we made a little studio in there. And you can hear the crickets in the back. because it's a garage. I do not know what we're going to do in the winter. I might just not have videos. We shot a video in our studio, and I just went in and set it up myself, took the mask off, did the shoot, put the mask back on. The other trick that we're doing now, because I mostly do, you know, review videos, is I will do a stand-up, maybe try and shoot some B-roll, but I'm pretty bad with the camera.

And then I will get in my car and then drive over to Viren Pavik's house, hand, like, wipe down the device, hand him to the device. hand him the device. Maybe we'll, like, go outside and shoot some stuff together. And then I'll go back home. And then I'll go back and get the device and pick it up from him and then take it back home. And then I can actually write the written portion. Where I think we're thinking about doing the same thing around iPhones and stuff. I mean, yeah. And I'm trying to get clever. Like, might do this video on sleep tracking. I'm not sure. I'm trying to get clever about that stuff and like what I can shoot in home at certain times. Yeah. Okay, well, we've gone all the way down to getting super philosophical now in my head. And so we've talked about the audience that we're writing for. We've talked about how to deal with multiple variants of the same thing.

I've talked about blood oxygen on the Apple Watch. But other than buying advice, what do you think a review is for? Like, for the Apple Watch, because for me, it's like, well, I want to talk about it in a cultural context. I want to talk about it in terms of Apple's strategy. Most people just want to know whether or not to buy the thing. So, like, you do that, but you could do that in two paragraphs. So, like, is there some, like, thing you're trying to do when you're writing a review, like, something for the Apple Watch beyond just buy it or don't buy it? Well, this Apple Watch was tough.

I really did not think. I think I didn't necessarily need to do the longer review, but I did think then I was like, you know what, I have some things to share and I want to share it. Yeah. I think the significance of, like, the Apple Watch and health has been really interesting and watching that strategy of all. And I think there is this push and pull, which I didn't really get into the review. I kind of got to it at the end in the future section, but again, I was trying to keep this short, which is this push and pull of the Apple Watch is a growing category and a moneymaker for Apple, but also it is now positioned as something that is a health device that we all need and rely on.

And I think that is a little bit of a tension. And I think we were just talking about it before when we were talking about this blood oxygen feature that is there. and it's being marketed to sell more watches. And overall, it might have some really good and important things for people, but also ultimately it's a new feature that will help sell watches. I think that's just an interesting thing when talking about the watch. I felt that way similarly, like, I don't think I actually will ever do as good of an Apple Watch review as I did

when I did the fall detection piece. And we're putting the new watches fall detection and fitness features through the paces. Turns out, fake falling is really hard. Seriously, please don't try this at home. Not only was that fun, and we did actually test this thing that Apple said, don't test. And I was very proud of that. But also, to this day, I get people writing to me saying, your review of that saved my life. I bought this watch, and I fell, and it called emergency services.

Wow. And my mom earlier this year, she got sick. She fainted, and she didn't have a watch. And she was, you know, luckily there were people around. But immediately after I bought her the watch. So I'm really interested in that sort of what you're saying. is like a cultural, personal connection to this device. I definitely didn't get at it in this review

because I also just felt like this was an incremental review. But it is something I was thinking about. Well, it's super hard to wrap your head around too because there's all these anecdotal stories of people, literally their life being saved. Apple always has a couple of them that they put up whenever they announce a new Apple Watch. And like those are real and those are important,

but they're also like not necessarily science, right? And so this push pull of here's a thing that has science-y features, but consumer tech moves so. much faster than actual science. Yeah. That it's really hard as a reviewer to like be responsible and say responsible things to people. We can't say this thing will detect a fall and save your life. What we can say is this thing might detect a fall and it might save your life.

But it's not necessarily like certified to do that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you end up like saying all of these really caveaty things. But you know that like it's true that someone's life is going to be saved. by this thing. And that's like, but you can't say that for sure will happen, right? Absolutely. And that was that was the kind of also the significance of that review back when was we didn't really know if it worked. Right. You know, like, I mean, and mostly because there is no safe way to test to fall. I mean, we want to talk about, you want to go back down the rabbit hole doing that video and that story might have, I've done a lot of complicated standards pushing

videos at the Wall Street Journal. I get, I want to say I get by with a lot, but I actually work really hard to get by with a lot. We have a crazy involved standards process and legal process with stuff. I imagine you guys have similar around some of it. And I had to work very hard behind the scenes to get that thing done in terms of release forms and payments and safety precautions. And it was a whole thing. So the behind the scenes of the fall detection piece was crazy. But yeah, I think there was really no safe way to test that. But it was important to do a test like. that because then people just buy something and I guess assume it will work. And again, I never promised it would work, but I just was able to show my work of like, this woman fell many,

many, many times. It did go off many, many times. She was not hurt many, many times. My company made sure she was not hurt. She was a professional every single time. Yes. Don't worry. I'm good. This is just my professional stunt devil. Oh, you know, one last thing. Whenever a company announces there's something coming, but you can't actually review it. It's tough. Traditionally, this happens with, like, software updates. Like, there's a software update that'll fix it. I don't know. With the Apple Watch, it's, there's going to be a whole damn fitness subscription program coming later in the fall.

And, like, we'll review that or there'll be some kind of review of that when it happens. But, like, how do you think about, well, they're selling this thing now, or like, you need to get an Apple Watch to use that for some weird reason. Does that, do you, how do you think about, like, when a company promises something? How do we review that? Yeah, I have no idea how to review that. Do you review it as like a reality show? If Fitness Plus does not make me lose 15 pounds, it is bad.

Great, perfect. It is not worth your money. I also, I think we had this with the duo, right, a couple of weeks ago. Oh, God, what a mess that was. It's such a mess when you have a device that doesn't do a certain thing. I mean, Fitness Plus is not in this category, right? I actually consider the Apple Watch, the series three, which had cellular issues, was another example. I mean, I can recite these, like, and I can also tell you, like, how much sleep I lost in the process of reviewing something because I wanted to make sure I was telling my readers what my experience was, but the company is telling you something else.

And that is a very tough place for a reviewer because you need to report on what you have actually experienced. Of course, the company deserves and needs to have their statement in the piece. but sometimes that just really conflicts with what your experience is. Yep. So, okay, top three, like, annoying mid-reviewed software updates. Number one, for me, is probably just because it was so disruptive to the video that we were trying to make. There was a MacBook that had really bad thermal issues one year, and they, like, issued a kernel update or something to fix it. And Dave Lee actually made a really, really good video explaining the thermal issues.

And I was talking to them about it and, like, getting a statement that we had a whole video that was centered around the, like, here's this thing, and then they like put out the update, and we're like, well, it might fix it, but also we don't have the time to run a battery of tests. So we ended up putting this video that was like completely chaotic. Number two is definitely the duo. And then this is so weird, but like number three was like the essential phone. We wanted to do really high concept art video for fun and it was and like people made fun of me for it because I was wearing a suit or whatever. But they issued a camera update right at the end. So we had to like break out of our like high concept art video and just show ourselves sitting in the office with me drinking a beer,

and being like, everything I told you doesn't matter anymore because they just updated the camera. Did you do that for the fold, too? The fold was also another one. Actually, the fold was worse than the essential phone. Yeah. The fold is different. I mean, I would say fold mid-review wasn't software, but was the most disruptive. Yeah.

I just blocked it out of my mind entirely. It doesn't exist for me. What a win it was for reviewers, obviously, because not only are they saying there's going to be an update, but we are going to pull this product. I mean, that was the most disruptive of, because you were dealing with news cycle, getting your review straightened out. I mean, that video, which, you know, made me number one most wanted in Korea. All right. $2,000 phone meet $2 hot dog.

Fold it. The video is like, I hate it because, first of all, the hot dog was just like a random thing we had done. And like, that's what turned into the focus. It's literally at the end of the video. and that's like what blows up on the internet. And I look horrible in it because I hadn't slept for like three days because in the middle of the shoot, I get a call from Samsung that they're coming to pick up the phone because they're pulling it off shelves.

And yeah, what a couple days that was. Well, Joanna, I think that is a great place to wrap it up with the pain and sorrow that we all experience when products are broken. Where can people find you on the internet if they want to find you? I'm trying to build my Instagram following. Okay. So you can only find you. me on Instagram at Joanna Stern on Instagram. Follow me on the Wall Street Journal, even if you do not

clean your Rolex watch every five years for $800. My thanks to Joanna Stern for joining us on the show. I love talking to her. You can find her on that Instagram. The producers for the Vergecast are Andrew Marino and Sophie Erickson. And we're going to be back on Friday with the chat show. And we'll be back again next week with another deep dive director's cut of a product review. We're going to have your average consumer, you might know him from YouTube on, and we're going to be talking about a review of a product that I guarantee you you're not going to be expecting. So, stay tuned.