The Vergecast - Apple Watch Ultra review: an aspirational debut

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, David Pierce, and Victoria Song discuss using the new Apple Watch Ultra, the next-gen GPUs, and a bunch of gadget news. Future reading: Apple Watch Ultra review Apple AirPods Pro (second-gen) review: same look, better everything else This RTX 4090 is so ridiculous it needs a ‘Dark Obelisk’ RGB support stick  Nvidia announces next-gen RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 GPUs Nvidia says it built too many GPUs — expect sales while it works on something `new`  DJI's new smartphone gimbal aims to get you filming quicker than ever  Logitech’s G Cloud Gaming Handheld arrives in October for $349.99 ByteDance’s Pico 4 VR headset is a Meta Quest 2 competitor Framework’s new Chromebook is upgradable and customizable This new turntable can play music directly to a Sonos system The PS Vita’s time is now, again Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we'd love to hear from you. We are conducting a short audience survey to help plan for our future and hear from you. To participate, head to vox.com/podsurvey, and thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the Vergecast, Victoria Song joins the show for a deep dive on the Apple Watch Ultra, and for some reason we let Alex talk about GPUs again. It's coming up right after this. That's the Vergecast coming up now. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools

means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, 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 Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for sure. nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello and welcome to Rochast, the flagship podcast of very large wristwear. Yeah.

It's good. Honestly, I didn't think about it too much before. Anyway, I'm your friend, Nilai. David Pierce is here. Hi. I have a small watch and I'm sad about it now. But we're going to talk about it. I have feelings.

Get ready. Alex Cranes is here. I once had a 50 millimeter watch, but I was also in third grade. So it was just like comical. Did you just look like flavor flame? There's a photo somewhere on the internet of me with it. It's incredible. Little like Bob haircut.

It's great. And Victoria's song is here. Hey, Beck. Hey, Beck. Hey, I am double-risting the largest Apple Watch possible and the smallest one simultaneously. Are you like selectively decided? which one to deploy, depending on situation. Like, I'm at the bank, big watch.

I should, but I haven't, so I will now. All right. Well, we'll get into it because V just reviewed the Apple Watch Ultra, of which I spent, I don't know what my contribution was. They sent me one, too, and I also played with it. But V actually reviewed it in the context of an actual review. I just tried to avoid breaking my NDA as I walked around the world with a giant watch on my wrist.

How successful were you? Actually, I actually wonder to this about both of you because one of the things we heard from Apple, like, right off the bat, like, there was this story that they were telling us that, like, during the event, as they announced the Ultra, all the Apple executives had to take off their watches and put on Ultras because otherwise they were so large you'd be able to tell. Yeah. Did you guys get caught out for wearing Ultras before you were supposed to you? Like constantly. Not at all. No? That's so funny.

No, not at all, which you would think people would notice it more on me because I have really petite, right? But, you know, I went grocery shopping. I went to all these places. Not a single person clocked it on me. And when I went hiking with my friends, one of them was just like, oh, is that the new series eight? And she's a non-techie. So that's to be expected.

I was like, no, you heathen, it's an ultra. Well, I will say, so it happened to, and I live in the middle of nowhere, at like 20 yards away at a golf course. A dude came, which I think it's like where dudes notice watches. Yes. Like that's a target rich environment for watch dudes once at the grocery store. And then when I was getting my new booster, the pharmacist, like needle in hand, right? Like shooting the stuff in the air.

It was like, ooh. And I was like, one step at a time. I'll talk to you about this afterwards. So yeah, I mean, maybe it's just like a dudes noticing watches thing. But I just, it's so big. Also, what watch face were you using, V? I was switching between a bunch of them. but I was using the Wayfinder one

because that's the one that's exclusive to the Ultra. Well, we should get into it. So like I said, Victoria reviewed the Apple Watch. We've got AirPods Pro, the second gen review to talk about, although I think Chris Welch

is coming in the show to really get into it with that soon. There's a bunch of GPU news to talk about a little lightning round of gadgets. So we started with the Apple Watch review. So I was using the infograph modular face, like the straight face I always use, which is like pretty colorful and full of text.

It's got like, I have my calendar in the middle, and it's got obviously the rings and whatever. And that one just seemed like everyone could read it from five miles away. Because the screen is really big. Yeah. It's like the main thing. If you're not like an extreme sports athlete, what you're getting out of this is basically infinite battery life. And the screen is gigantic. Yeah.

The good baby boomer watch. Hey. Or if you're like me and you have the world's worst eyesight. So like I go into the accessibility settings. and crank the text up to the largest possible thing, and everyone can just read my text from my wrist. It's bad, but I can read it. So that's great.

And that's all the batters. And texting's easier. No typos when I use swipe-to-type on the Ultra, whereas it's typo city everywhere else. So there are benefits. It's big enough that I could just push the letters. I wasn't even swiping. I was just like, boop, boop.

This is just a keyboard that I'm using on my wrist. I think it's in your review. Like, this is as close to like an iPhone. on your wrist as you can get without actually crossing over to it's a phone on your wrist. Especially because the screen is flat. V, you, I know you have tried to do this many times and it's borderline impossible, but like, I still cannot wrap my head around how big this thing actually is to wear all day. Because like you see all the pictures.

Everybody's wrists are different. And like, I think you had the same experience I did in, mine was much briefer, but like picking it up and putting it on and being like, oh, this is lighter. than I expected. It doesn't feel monstrous. But like it looks humongous and I feel like I'm like putting on my coat, I feel like it would catch every single time. I feel like I would like

scratch it on doorways as I walk through. Like I don't know. How big is this thing actually? Well, David, I'm glad you ask because I had such cognitive dissonance over the past week. I was like, am I getting ultra-pilled? Do I not understand what size is anymore? What's going on? And the thing is is that this is a 49-millimeter watch,

But it's like I would say it's the equivalent of a 50 to 51 millimeter round watch. But it gets to be small. Like you can tell I have spent like nights staring at the ceiling thinking about the size because I was just like. It was just like so the width is 44 millimeter. See, I can tell you the measurements off the top of my head. I even bought digital calipers to help me because I was having like I was having just such an existential crisis because I don't love big watches. and it is like 44 millimeters in terms of the width, which is the same as the 44 to 45 millimeter Apple watches.

Okay. Which is why when you look at it, it doesn't seem as humongous as a 49 millimeter watch should be. If this was a 49 millimeter round watch, it would look like a dinner plate on my wrist. Now it just looks gigantic, but not like, oh my God, what are you doing, gigantic? I don't think I put this together.

You're saying it's the same width. the previous ones, but it's taller. Yes. The software has to have scaled differently then. Yeah, it does. But when you put the 45-millimeter series 8 next to the 49-millimeter series 8, you're just kind of like, oh, it's not that big. But, you know, at the same time, if you put the 40- or 41-millimeter watches next to the 45 ones,

you're like, oh, that's not that big. It's when you put the smallest watches next to the largest one that you're like, oh, this is honking huge. This is gigantic. This is... Yeah. What the hell? It's a size of a Fing Newton. That's what it is.

I was about to say, you were tweeting with, like, calipers and, like, it's the size of a Fig Newton. Which is heavier? A Fig Newton or the watch? The watch. Yeah. A fig Newton is not titanium. It's, it's, I mean, they're hefty cookies. Also, extremely limited connectivity on a few moon.

Yeah. No, yeah, really bad connectivity. Zigby only. It's almost none. You can only swipe tape on the Fing Newton. It's a real problem. I was just trying to find something that everyone could, like, go into their house and be like, oh, this is what it is so that you don't have to, like, memorize numbers.

I'm excited for the people out there who are going to put a fig Newton on their wrist just, like, for a day. Yeah, just to figure it out. Like having a bag of flour to prepare for a baby. Yeah, like the palm team walked around with a block of wood to, like, see what a palm pilot would look like. Like, I'm just got a fig newton on my wrist. I'm just seeing if this is worth $800. That's the size of it is something.

It's lighter than you think. I actually, I think it's too big, and I have bigger wrists than V. V, it sounds like you are ultra-pilled. You're like, this is fine. This is what I'm doing. I really hate to admit it, but I was talking with Dan over Slack and we're like, are we ultra-pilled? Are we okay?

What's wrong? Because we're both very firmly on the side that smart watches are getting too big. And I still believe that. It's just, you know, I didn't realize how bad my eyesight has gotten over the course of my life because I'm just like, wow, I can read without squinting and putting it right directly in front of my face. And that's been a revelation. So, like, there are reasons to have a bigger watch. Fashion is absolutely not one of them. But there are reasons. Nil, I'm shocked. You're a big watch guy, though. I mean, I do wear a larger watch when I,

well, I buy the larger Apple Watchers just still not a big watch on me. And then when I wear a regular watch, I tend to buy big watches. But you think this is too big? You know, it's the thing that he's talking about with the screen. So I'm very, very much appreciate the screen is bigger. I am, like, paranoid that if I was in an office or out in the world, like, everyone could read my texts. Like, it's, I don't need to turn up the font size all the way, but it's already at its default, just, like, big enough to, I think you can just comfortably read it from far away.

So, like, you know, and you can just, like, change all the settings. I've turned it all off. So it shows you the preview until you hold it up. But there's, like, a, I think there's a real balance here between how personal the information that comes through on your wrist is on a thing. that's on display versus how big the screen is. And I, you know, I just like have to use it to be comfortable, like, thinking, oh, maybe one time the text I'll come through, the settings won't work, and you'll just be able to

read whatever something because my hands on the table. I'm just thinking of like celebrities at a basketball game sitting courtside and they get like a really spicy text from somebody and it's just photographed by everyone. Yeah. You're thinking of like Adam Levine. Yeah. Yeah. Just that spicy text.

way with his owl watch. Courtside, Lakers, I don't know. I know where your brain went. Yeah, immediately. Incredible. Well, we won't quote the Adam Levine text. I will tell you that you should read them because they're hilarious. They're very funny.

Flatly hilarious. And it's also not black. So it's for $800, I want a black one. Oh, interesting. The color's part of the problem for you. Yeah, I think it would look smaller if it was black. Also, I'd like things are black. And it's the only can only get one color.

Your choices are what extremely. loud color band do you want? And I spent the day wearing the orange one. That's the trail one, right? That's the alpine one, yeah. Yeah. And I was just walking around being like, I'm already paranoid everyone's looking at this thing. And now it's bright orange.

And I'm just in my house. I mean, but these are like purely aesthetic concerns. I think the other thing for me, and V, I don't know if you felt this way, the software is so much the same. And it really is just scaled up. And it's surprising to me that I didn't even realize it wasn't scaled like perfectly linearly that the screen is taller than it is wide on the series eight. Because it's so similar that unless you are paying attention, you would not see it, that actually the screen is a different aspect ratio in the software has changed its scaling.

Because unless you're using one of the new modes, the experience of this watch, apart from the battery life, which is phenomenal, is exactly the same. That's kind of the story of all three of the Apple Watches this time around, is that the bulk of what makes them good is in WatchOS 9, which is a, it's a significant update compared to like, WatchOS 8 was just like, hey, be more Zen. You're all stressed. But WatchOS 9 is an actual update, update. And it's just kind of weird what they decided to include on what watch. But just generally speaking, having used all of them, the software experience is basically the same. So you're really. really only getting the ultra for either aesthetic or durability or battery reasons. And let's be real, most people don't need the durability. Even though, you know, people are screaming that, I need the sapphire crystal. Most of you don't. You just don't. Like, you don't. Well, I thought that was interesting. There's some stuff that's gate kept to it that seems really odd to be gate kept to it, like the night mode where it just goes completely red. Why is that only on that watch and not the other ones? Do we have an answer to that?

I guess they're assuming that you're going to be in pitch black conditions outside when you're on a trail and that might help you read more. New York City has so much light pollution that I didn't really get to try it in pitch black settings just yet. I will in Iceland. But, you know, I did sit in a closet. I did turn the lights off. Thank you. And I did turn it on night mode and I was like, oh, okay, this is fine. I feel like a gamer.

That's cool, I guess. It works. I don't know that it's actually easier to read. Somebody was tweeting about how, like, they were an astronomer. and that mode was going to be really exciting for them because their eyes weren't going to get. They wouldn't have to worry about the light change fluctuations. Like they would with the regular watch.

Oh, I have an app on my phone called Sky View, where you hold it up to the sky, and it shows you where the stars are, and it has that red mode, and it rules. Yeah. Also, that app is cool if you can see stars. I don't have to try it. Yeah, it's a great idea.

That seems dope. Yeah. I'm going to go chase the Northern Lights next week in Iceland, so I'll try it then and report back. Does it only work with, like, pitch black conditions? I just don't think, like, if you're in a closet and you turn the lights off, it's just, like, anti-climactic. You're like, oh, it's red. That's fine.

Yeah. I really think it's going to be for outdoor use that you really see the difference. And I just, you know, there's freaking street lights on every corner in New York. It's not. And no standard Apple Watch owner is ever outside in the dark. No. Never happens. Never. I've never, never been outside in the dark.

That was the thing that kind of bumped me about it. It was like, oh, I would use that constantly because when I'm trying to, like, I wear my watch a lot of times when I'm sleeping, and the normal modes are all too bright. Like, I've tried setting up a dark red, and it's just, this seems much better. What's fascinating about this is it's not a feature of the watch. It is a feature of the watch face. Yeah. And you have to, like, none of the other watch faces inherit this mode. Right.

Which is weird for this watch. You think they could just sort of add it to everything? But it's just this one watch face, which you could theoretically just bring to the other Apple watches. Right. But Apple actually restricts watch face creation on the Apple Watch for some mystifying reason. There's a color that I have the stainless steel gold watch. And so I have a gold color. But I'm only allowed to use it on this watch, not any of the other watches I might have.

And only in certain watch faces. Other watch faces, it's like, no, you don't get gold. You can get brown or you can get yellow. Yeah. It's just the restrictions on watch faces is super weird at this point. Yeah. And then they opened up the Nike watch faces to all the watches this time. Yeah.

And the Hermes ones as well. You can get the Hermes one that. That's the one that, like, there's ones that I would understand. Yeah. Like the Hermeswood is like, yeah, you got to buy the Mets one. You got to spend the money. Like, yeah, I can put a Gucci logo wallpaper on my phone whenever I want. I can be that guy.

Yeah. I'm a 40-year-old Indian man. I can put a Gucci logo wallpaper on my phone whenever I want. It's in character, but I just like, but it doesn't make it a Gucci phone. Kind of does. Whereas I think like that, that makes sense with the, it's weird, like what they allow and what they. I think it just comes down to how they think about it as a fashion object as much as a tech object. And that dynamic is back and forth.

And it never really, it hasn't really landed on a thing that you can understand. No, it's in that messy middle of like they want to give you more stuff to do, but not so much that you can make it ugly. It's like we talked about this with the iOS 16 lock screens to some extent almost, right? It's like they're caught between wanting people to customize things so that they like they like, and doing things that are like aesthetically pleasing to the 12 designers at Apple who make these things. And those two things turn out to be further apart, I think, than they get credit for sometimes. Yeah, but there's a spreadsheet somewhere. Like Tim Cook has an Excel spreadsheet. He has many on files on his iPad. He has so many. It's very confusing situation for him.

that's like a model of if we allow everyone to use the Hermes Apple Watch watch watch face this is how many fewer Hermes Apple Watches we will sell from two to five yeah someone has done that math now only 10 people are buying it yeah right and then they've made that decision and then at the same time they've made a decision that's like if we let other people turn their watch faces red we will not sell Apple Watch Ultras like Apple is instinctual and, you know, somewhat emotionally driven company, but it's also a company that's run by Tim Cook. And there's definitely a spreadsheet in Files app on an iPad somewhere.

Yes. That's like, how do we restrict some features to sell more watches? And it's weird that the extremely high-end luxury watch face is like, screw it everyone can have it. And the, it's red is like $800. No, no, you got to pay for that. I think that probably says a lot about what Apple thinks sells Apple watches. Like I think I think you could make a pretty strong case that a lot more people want a red face than want an Rames face and are willing to pay extra money for it at this point in the life of the Apple Watch. But then the Nike one is a good example, right? Where that has become so much like a sort of mainstream piece of what people do with the Apple Watch that having like a separate thing that is the Nike Apple Watch,

I think stopped making sense a long time ago. So actually bringing that to everybody tracks. I think the red face is also just kind of, like, not only from like a fashion standpoint, it's to encourage athletes who are like somewhere between middle intermediate, who aspire to be, I don't know, D.C. Raidmaker are thinking of because the compass features like backtrack and Waypoint go all the way back to the series six and you can even get them on the SE. So there's like a reason for athletes to actually save some money and not go for the Ultra because they have those features. So if you really want people to get the ultra, you have to kind of limit this red mode. You're saying it's for nerds.

You're saying it's for gadget nerds who want to be athletic but don't really want to be athletic. Yes. Which is true. Like, that's me. I really want that red face. I want it so bad. But like I also. So you're on the spreadsheet.

I know. I'm on the spreadsheet. You're one whole column of this spreadsheet. Just me. Things Alex will buy. How do we get Kranz. It's a long column. I'm one of those nerds that like.

Like, I want it because it seems like a cool gadget feature, but I don't necessarily want to pay $800 for it and also have an iPhone on my wrist. Or Fing Newton, excuse me. Let's talk about those features. So, I mean, that's like the bulk of what you reviewed, right? They added all these sort of extreme sport features, even that you're supposed to pick when you buy it, which of the three bands is the extreme adventure that you are in your soul, right? Are you an ocean? It's literally a choose your character in a video game. It's very much.

What are you? like, which Voltron lion are you? Are you the volcano lion? Are you the ocean lion? Are you the forest lion? I don't know their names. You're the Alpine, right? Yeah, I think I'm the, well, I mean, in my heart, I'm the black lion.

But we don't need to explore that any further. Just leave that right there. That's great. We can end the show here, no further analysis. But I think in terms of the Apple Watch, Apple thinks I'm the green lion. Well, it also thinks I'm the green lion, but I'm the runner lion. So I was just kind of like, oh, I wanted the trail loop.

Yeah. That's the one I wanted. But you gave me the other two that I didn't want. And I understand why, because those two are much more visually engaging. But yeah. Right, but you're supposed to like pick. Like, who are you? And you like buy one.

I immediately put my regular Apple watchband on the thing. It was fine. I just want to say, I like it much better the other way where it's like, the sorting hat in Harry Potter, where like you go into an Apple store and you say, I would like an ultra, and like someone at Apple decides what kind of adventurer you are. Yeah, Siri's like, all right, we're doing some on-device processing to figure out who you are. Did you know you love the ocean? Yeah.

Here you go. Like, I love to run. And it's like, no, you don't. You'll never run again. I got to say, I wanted the trail loop because it is the lightest thing that I have ever picked up as far as like straps go. And in my head, I was like, okay, they're going to give me the trail loop. All I ever talk about is running. I'm insufferable about running. And this is a big boy watch and I am a small girl. So they're going to give me the thing that's going to trick me into

thinking that this is lighter and better than it is. And I opened it out. I was like, I got the orange one. Okay. I'm a, yeah, because you live in the mountains now. I'm a biohazard. That's fine. This is very bright. So let's talk about this mode. So like that's the point of the watch down to like, here's what you can buy it with. It just seems like your review of it was Apple's taken some baby steps, but the garments of the world are safe for now. Yes, absolutely. So I think the biggest omission is the fact that, you know, they're saying explorers, adventurers, this is the watch for you, but we won't give you offline maps or turn-by-turn navigation. And it's sort of like, okay, but why? Like, I went to a mountain to like test out the

compass features over the weekend, and it was very much like me and my buddies had zero cell signal. And we had to rely on a combination of the Ultras backtrack and the horrible Google Maps that wouldn't load and the horrible offline maps that just didn't make sense whatsoever, because trail maps never make sense when you look at them. And I was like, oh, you know, if I had a garment, I could just condense all of that into the garment and be fine and have turn by turn navigation, so it would tell me where the F I'm supposed to go. This was just like, I don't know, praying to the gods a little bit. And I was very happy that I had backtrack on because they actually closed one of the gates

that you pass through early. So my friends and I were actually kind of stranded and like, we have to find an alternate route. And we are not good at this. So let's just use a combination of this and luck to find a way back to the part where it meets again. So that was really happy to have that. And I write that in my review, but it's just baffling to me that you don't have offline maps or turn-by-turn navigation, which is basically what puts Garmin on the map for trail runners and hikers. So that's omission number one that I'm baffled by. Yeah.

And then... And it kind of seems like there's one of those in every category Apple is trying to do here. And this is like the thing I kept coming away with from reading your review is basically like Apple gets sort of 60% of the way there with a bunch of. of different things but never fully completes the job. Like, I've talked to a couple of people who are furious that there's no recovery metrics in the workout stuff. And that's a huge problem. And it's like for a giant number of people, that is an instant deal breaker.

And it just feels like the list of those is long enough that you kind of get to the end. And it's like, is there anyone for whom this is like actually correctly designed? Yeah. I really do think it's for weekend warriors. And it's for intermediate people who are making the leap. So like an example, again, running that I would give is someone, who is very comfortable running a 10K, probably has a half marathon under their belt and is looking at the, which I'm going to call it, the full marathon and going like, hmm, like that level

of person, I think, is who this is for. Because you don't want necessarily the Garmin, like, deluge of clunky interface and 70,000 charts and maps that you have to kind of sit and read what they mean. That type of person, this is going to be easier for you just because it's, It's just, it just is. And then there are people who really like Excel spreadsheets and tracking all of that stuff on their own. And then on top of that, just want, they don't want to make a compromise between a fitness watch and a smart watch, right? So they're looking for, like, I have seen readers comment on my reviews. Like, God, I'm thinking of ditching Garmin because I just need something that's smarter because they're not out every single day doing three hours of exercise.

they're backpacking on a weekend. Those are the people who this is going to be really great for. But if you have people who are like, this is my 50th marathon, I take training super seriously. And if I'm a woman, I train based on my cycle. Like there are those athletes out there. This is not going to be enough for you. You need those recovery metrics.

You need to understand where your physical strain is at. And, you know, like, those recovery metrics are kind of, let's just say take the accuracy with a grain of salt. but those are the people who this is just not going to do enough for. So it's just a really interesting, it's just interesting. And I attribute a lot of that to the fact that this is their first attempt. I really think Garmin should be like, ooh, we're cool for now. Next year, I think it would be a mistake for them not to see what Apple's doing and start

brainstorming. If they're not brainstorming, that's a huge mistake. But right now they're like, we're fine. Like, that's how I feel. I just really want to go back to you, said, one of the kind of the core audience members for this is someone who really loves spreadsheets and also really just wants a watch that looks nice. So is that just Tim Cook?

That's literally just Tim Cook. That's just Tim Cook. Yeah. That's, I love that. I love that Tim was like. No, wait. No, no, didn't you mean people who train with spreadsheets? Maybe he does.

He has spreadsheets for everything. I absolutely believe Tim has a spreadsheet for his exercise workout, like his exercise routine. I tweeted a poll the other day just because the thought came to me that all the current tech CEOs have to be spreadsheet masterminds because they're all, I mean, just like look at him. Yeah.

And I was like, who's the best Excel power user? Is it Cook, Nadella, Pichai, or Jeff Bezos? Who is no longer the CEO of Amazon, but you got to put him on the list. And people just like pick Nadella because he runs Microsoft. I'm like, no, dudes, it's Tim Cook. It's Tim Cook. It's definitely Tim Cook.

He's also... It's 1,000%... He has never used numbers in his life. Tim Cook looks at numbers and he's like, get this out of my face. He's like, how dare you? He like opens Excel and immediately just like pushes his mouse away. And he's like, I will not be needing this. He's got like the external number head on his hands go into straight like sideways macro mode.

Do you think he, Tim Cook like watches the Excel world championships? Yes. 100%. Yeah. Man, you know, when I was at code, I asked him this like big thinky question about like whether the phone is, you know, like partially to blame for social media. you know, I was like philosophical. I was like, no, we're fine. I should have been like, do you watch the Excel World Championship?

Who do you think's going to win this year, Tim? Like, it's like you and me, buddy. I know Johnny's here, but like you and me, eye to eye. He's super in it. You streaming that shit? And the next time I see him, I'm 100% asking if you watch the Excel World Championship. I don't care where my career goes after that. I just need to know the answer.

But, wait, V, you meant people who train with spreadsheets, right? Yeah. Like the people who play video games with spreadsheets. I know several of them. I am sometimes one of them myself. I go back and forth. It's just too. I have a whole notion page with training info on there.

It's sad. Like, I'm embarrassed for myself right now, admitting it. Right. But then the Garmin can, like, send you CSV data, right? Mm-hmm. And the Apple Watch is just not built to do that. So when I do my testing and I do comparisons, I'm old school and I go spreadsheet. But I know there are smarter ways to do that and to, like, export all your fitness data.

So I'm not the person to ask for that just because I like to be really, really hands-on with the data when I'm comparing and I'm anal retentive about the columns and how they look. Oh, God, this is so embarrassing. But yeah. Welcome. This is fun. This is home. This is where you are your people. Yeah.

So, like, I just have a spreadsheet at home and it is psychotic looking, just like percent of change accuracy. And it doesn't. I realized a long time ago that no one wants to read that in the review. But rest assured I'm doing it, and I've been doing it for years. I mean, people want to read that. There's an audience. You don't want to read like, okay, so on four different runs, it was off by negative 0.2%. Like, as these get more accurate, it gets less relevant.

That's the thing. Like, six years ago when I was doing it, I was like, the LG Watch sport was super accurate, and the LG Watch style was off by 0.2%. And it's awful, and it was color-coded and everything. It's so sad. But, yeah, like, accuracy, it's really interesting because accuracy in wearables is less relevant than consistency. It's just a thing that I came to after a long time. If you're consistently inaccurate by the same margin, you can still track your progress.

And the progress is the thing that matters most, presumably. Yeah. So it just seems like Garmin has this advantage, right? Because it right now can do more. It's got more metrics for fitness. It has offline maps. It's built to be worn for the task, right? It's like task specific in a way that wearing a garment

is a general purpose smartwatch doesn't really make any sense. Apple's bridging the gap. Do they have to do more on the general purpose smartwatch side? Or is it when you push the button and turn on the I'm hiking mode or the I'm diving the ocean mode? It needs to do more there to compete with the specialized devices. It needs to think a little bit harder about design in some ways. So like I love the action button,

but the action button was built by a general use company. trying to pull in specialized people. But the more I think about the action button, they left out a huge thing with the action button here too is that a lot of athletes use physical controls to swipe through screens. And you would think that that would be the case with the action button, but it's not.

It's all like pause. So like it's great. They thought about really hard about how to make a more intuitive way to pause with physical controls, but they forgot a more intuitive way to use buttons to scroll through menus. Now that's something

that everyone who uses a garment is super used to. It's something they love. It ensures with no doubt that if you wear gloves, if your fingers are sweaty, if you're in the elements, that you can scroll to the menu that you need. So with Apple, they added the workout views, which freaking great. I love the new workout views. But you're still having to scroll with the digital crown in order to view them mid-exercise. And that's just, I end up having to take like a short walk break sometimes to scroll through it. And the digital crown is bigger. It has grooves. It's more tactile. That's great. But it's not the same thing as being able to press a button and scroll through your menus. And I think that's a bit of a whiff. Would you say the digital crown is an input

device on par with the mouse? And multi-touch? And the multi-touch display. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It's just like, don't get me wrong. I don't know. You would? You say it's as big a deal as It's the mouse. It's revolutionary. No, I misunderstood what you were saying. I was just saying when Apple introduced the digital crown, they were like, the mouse and multi-touch. And now the digital crown. No, I totally misunderstood.

Is the action button there? The action button is not there yet. I actually think the action button should be on every single Apple watch. It shouldn't just be on the ultra. But it's, like David said, it's, I want to say 70% of the way there. I'm super excited that there's a third physical control, which makes things. more accessible. But like keeping, it feels like they were saying you still have to use this digital

crown. We made grooves. So it's easier and more tactile for you to use. But really, because they want it to be the mouse. Because they want that. It's the mouse of the watch. But if you really listen to what athletes have been saying online and I've just been like going through all the comments and questions and opinions, it's just they wanted a button so that

they could scroll through stuff and they don't have it. I'm shocked that you can't just assign it to open. in an app on the phone. Yes. This is what I was going to say. It's so nuts that it's not more customizable. Yeah, you can pick like, what, six things, five things, me? Like the, and it's Apple's list.

It's like you can turn on the, it's like the stopwatch, the flashlight, and the workout app or what you can do. And dive and shortcuts, which, you know, shortcuts are so clunky to program. But so you can do things like if you're willing to go through the whole shortcuts app nonsense, you can press a button and it'll notify people at your next meeting that you're running late. That's cool. Do much work for me. It would be great if you could do other things. And I think that's coming, you know, because there are certain, like, I just wrote a how-to on the action button and there are certain settings in there that make me believe that you'll be

able to choose which app it triggers eventually. But I don't think, like right now, like you go to the workout app. There's a little button that says app and you press it and it's the native workout app. Because none of the other developers have developed for this yet. But I think in the future, they will be. And that'll add some customizable. But right now you have your choice between what Apple says you can choose. Like, why won't you let me start a timer? Yeah.

I would love to start a timer with the action button. Right. Why can't I open the home app or the remote app for the Apple? You can tell where I used it. Yeah. Like these, like, I make spreadsheets down to like half a percent on how consistent the watches are. And I'm like, I'd like to pause the TV. It's very important.

Give me the button that I can pause the TV with. I use my Apple Watch for two-factor off, like, maybe anything. Let me just open authenticate her. Like, let me just do it. Why not? You know, like, that's like the one where you can see how you have to build the entire system of APIs and hooks and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, to fully enable it to be customized.

But open arbitrary app, I don't think you need to do much work to do. It's baffling that they missed that. But you can get there by writing a short. Shortcut. No. Shortcut is an answer to nothing. And there will come a time on this podcast where I'm feeling spicy and give you like a 65 minute long rant. I'm setting up the shortcut that notifies you that you're doing a bad job.

And I'm going to push the guy. She's like, text to him. Like work a little harder, buddy. No, it's my overwhelming theory about shortcuts is that shortcuts. Please do it. You spam it during the podcast. It says you blew it. I'm just like, beep.

You blew it. Yeah. No, I mean, that's the only good shortcuts idea I've ever heard in my entire life, is my point about shortcuts. Shortcuts is a terrible idea. And Apple claims it, every thing you don't like about all of your Apple devices, Apple's like, oh, shortcuts. And that is not an answer to any of it because it shortcuts is a terrible idea.

Yeah, they're like, just become a developer. But not like a good one. Like, not a good developer, but just develop. Come on. You can do it. There's a weird, especially in a watch, shortcuts are particularly slow. Mm-hmm. So the shortcut you set up to open the app is like you might as well just open the app.

So there's a really funny thing because I was trying out every single possible use case for the action button. And so I dabbled with the shortcuts and I immediately remembered why I don't normally. But you press shortcuts and you select which shortcuts you want. There is one that says, quote, what is a shortcut? You can set the action button. Yeah. That's my favorite one. To open something that says, what is a shortcut?

And then it's like, shortcuts are blah, blah, blah, blah. And here are three that you can try. So like one of them. That's literally clippy. It's just clippy. There was one of them that was just like, oh, turn on theater mode. And I was like literally, so you want me to press it so that it opens something else. So I can press something to do theater mode when I can just swipe and hit theater mode.

That's, that was kind of the. So. But you want the shortcut that's like, you know. I'm going out to do ocean stuff. Ocean stuff me up. Watch. Yeah. And like I got to put my boat in like lockdown mode and I've put all these

smart home accessories in my boat. And right as I dive elegantly into the water, I reach over and click. And then like all the shades in the boat. A very nice boat. In my calming music place. See, that's the tech nerd side of it. I'm just saying That's like the far expanse of what you want the shortcut for

Yeah I don't you know I don't know that that's true There's a dive The dive one is a lot more practical Where you press it and it starts your dive for you You know which No but yeah we just add that into the shortcut Yeah that's just part of it

So you're like mid dive and you're like shit I forgot to prepare for this I'm already in the air Kenny G isn't playing yet Yeah I got to hit the button It starts dive mode on the watch. It lights up the underwater speakers. It closes all the shades.

It probably turns down your thermostat. It sets the timer to contact help if you don't appear again. I don't know why this isn't in the ads. Why are they crashing cars? They could be doing jazz ocean. Zero people from the audience that they aspire to buy this watch would buy this. Like, I mean, when you, like, you probably, like, Mila, you know this. Victoria's just like, absolutely not.

No. Your bone is not a thing. It's like when you open the ultra box, we both got the hiking version. But you like open the box and there's pictures of mountains on there. And it's like, haza. You are a hiker now. And I was looking at it. I was like, wow, this is extra.

But the people who are buying this are like, yes, I am a mountaineer. No mountaineer is going, let me press this shortcut that does this nonsense. That's super techie and nerdy. They're like, oh, let me press. this. Well, no, the hiking one would lock your BMW that you've already paired with your watch. It's ridiculous. You own a BMW because that's the

hiker that buys this. Yeah. No. It pops the tent on top of your Subaru. That one's like running a command to your watch. Subaru owners will never own an Apple Ultra. What's the connectivity situation on Subaru's these days? Real good

Vergecast question right there. Real bad. The Tsugeist are Bluetooth? They got Bluetooth, but they They're still using their own, like, custom built entertainment system software. That's terrible. Right. So what you want is, like, you want, like, the middleware at your house that's connected to, like, Rivian. So you run the shortcut and it, like, locks your Rivian doors.

Right. And, like, puts it into the, the, Rivian stuff, all these air suspension modes. And they're like, this is where your hike is started. No. We'll call the cops if you're not back in. And then the Rivian, like, auto drives itself to the bottom of the trail. Yeah, that's what I want. Y'all are wild, but that is not.

I just can't stop hearing. do Subis have Bluetooth as the title of a children's book that Neil Isker write? There's all the cards with Bluetooth. Do Suvies have Bluetooth? And you unfold that you can open the garage. No, right. And there's like a cross track and it's like, I do. Wow.

Okay. Welcome to our show. It's like this all the time. See, you guys are a very specialized case. The majority of people who are going to buy the Ultra are not that nerdy. They're nerdy, but don't want to be. They're going to a hike and they're pressing the action button and they're like, ah, I am disconnected from the world yet I have this giant honking computer on my wrist.

It's that like contradiction for the ultra. So it's like people who glamp. Yes, it's, well, but they glamp, but one level grungier than glamping, if that makes sense. It's people who buy really fancy looking expensive camping gear. Yes, they buy. It's R-EI customers is basically. what we're talking about. Yeah. I was going to say Yeti. Yeah, there you go.

Yeti. That's me. That's a go on your wearers. This is for me. See, Alex, you're holding up a Yeti right now. And I know that as she dove into the ocean, she would want to lock down her smart. I would. I would want my smart boat to just be like, just quiet down. Although Alex's smart boat would immediately start like pirating movies for her smart boat. Oh my God. It would have its own server. Yeah. She'd be like, start background ripping DVDs. I need the next episode of. She-Hulk stabbed.

The underwater Plex projector turns on. That's very good. I want to say we've exhaustively covered the Apple Watch Ultra. Battery. We didn't talk battery. With this conversation. Oh, battery. Yeah, we should talk about the battery real quick.

It's good. I was not able to kill it. So I went 56 hours before I went off the charger, just lying around the house. It's a lot of Apple TV remote usage in 56 hours, I would assume. So that's a horrible test. I don't think it's a horrible test. not using it. It was on my wrist, hadn't turned out any of the workout modes, hadn't used cell service just on Wi-Fi. And then I was actually going to go and play golf where the person

spotted me. And I knew I was going to use a workout mode. So I was like, I got at least get this thing back up. I had gone 56 hours. I was 14%. I was like, I got to charge it because I know we'll make it through this. V. You got to like 60 hours. Yeah, last night I got to 60 hours with no low power mode on, always on display on and several workouts. Like, well, several workouts, but a lot of them, not GPS related, just only one of them was. So, you know, they're saying it can get... Apple is super conservative with its battery estimates because, you know, they've been saying 18 hours

for several watches now, and it's more than 18 hours. You're going to get more than 18 hours. So with the Ultra, when they said 36 hours, I was like, we're going to get 48. And generally, if you are working out and using cellular, you're going to get 48 with regular usage. If you have a rest or recovery day, or if you just don't work out,

which a large portion of people who buy this watch, are not people who give a damn about the fitness features whatsoever, they care about the battery. Those people, you can get 60 hours without a low power mode enabled, without the special further battery optimization feature that's coming. It's insane the battery life on this. When you think about every other Apple Watch that's been, it's the first true multi-day battery that it's just multi-day battery.

It's great. Yeah. I mean, I was incredibly impressed with it. Also, you know, it's interesting. the last episode we talked about the iPhone Always on Display and how much I think it is killing my iPhone 14 Pro battery. Turned it off immediately.

It was terrible. I turned off and now the battery lasts forever. Yeah. This thing has essentially that same always on display. Yeah. And it's just like just cruising along. It's obviously much smaller, but it's just cruising along for hours and pound hours at a time.

It's pretty impressive. Yeah, it's, I don't know. Like I feel like an always on display is essential to a watch, but really unnecessary for a phone. that's just how I feel. It's interesting. Because I thought I would like an always on display on my phone. And I was like, nah.

I put it face down all the time anyway. So I don't need it. And I have a watch. It just makes more sense on a watch. Yeah. How did they test the battery on the watch? Because on the phone, on the laptop, they usually do like a video rundown. Are they just playing a tiny video on the watch?

Is that what they do? No. Not at all. I just really like the idea of that. I mean, in some, In some cases, I would like a benchmark for, like, some sort of test I could run on the watch, but it's really, that's not useful to anyone at all. It's just lifestyle usage. When you're testing the battery life, you have to do, okay, daily smartwatch usage, okay, heavy GPS usage, and then heavy cellular usage.

So they average a bunch of different, like, use cases together after we to get those. Yeah. So, like, usually when you get. That's much less funny. Well, duh. But when you get smartwatch battery estimates, there's usually a little asterisk in the fine print where it's just like with about one hour of GPS usage per day under these settings. And so like that's just generally the case for it.

But Apple, I think they take that and then they like minus five hours from it just to cover their butts, which is the exact opposite of what Samsung does. And yeah, so they gave us a bunch of different battery estimates for regular usage, for absolute max usage, and then absolute max usage with low, with like, it was with LTE. That's what it was. The low power. Yeah. So it's like they're saying, if you put low power mode on, you can get 60 hours.

Well, I got 60 hours without low power mode. So I'm not sure. I don't think there's enough time in the world within one week to meet embargo to see how long this thing would last with low power battery mode on, let alone the additional battery optimization setting that's coming. So I would like some time. to just go, how long can I really make this thing last? But that's different from how long can I make it last within a triathlon.

So it's supposed to be able to last with low power mod on an entire Ironman, which is about 14 hours. Yeah. So that's impressive, but still not at the level of a chorus or a garment. That seems nice. All right. We have to take a break. We spent an hour with really smart thoughts from V on the Apple Watch and then whatever we did.

We were also here. Eli's on his boat. On our boat. He also participated. I'm just thinking about my extremely beautiful smart boat. That is powered entirely my shortcuts. David, you're going to have Chris Walsh on to talk about the AirPods Pro Gen 2 in some way, yes.

Yeah, we're going to do a deeper dive on that in the next couple of weeks. The short version of it seems to be they are precisely AirPods Pro. Everything is slightly better. Noise cancellation seems to be potentially substantially better, but not as good as the new Bose ones, which seem to be ridiculous. But we'll, yeah, we'll get into that in a big way in a couple weeks, I think. Yeah. The surprise hit of our second episode segments has been putting Chris Welch in noisy environments and headphones.

So we're just going to double down on that. Some people really like it. Some people really hate it. So stay tuned for that. We'll talk more about the AirPods coming up. We're going to take a break. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify.

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V sticking with us. Thanks for hanging around, V. But welcome to Alex Cranes' dark GPU zone. Oh, I've been here before. Yeah, you've been here. I've been here before. That's true. Alex and Victoria used to work together at Gizmodo.

So I don't know how Cranz managed to recruit you back into this situation. She was always assigning me stuff that I was like, why? why are you doing this? And then she's like, because I know you're going to have fun. Sorry in advance. That's great. That's perfect.

That really tracks. Yeah. Okay. The reason I called it the dark GPU zone is Nvidia had an event. They announced the RTX 4090 and the 4080. They're huge, et cetera. There's some metaverse stuff we should talk about

because I did some metaverse noise in the middle of this keynote. Yeah. But I just am going to review this headline. This RTX 4090 is, so ridiculous, it needs a dark obelisk RGB support stick. And I purposefully just did not read the rest of that story so I can ask

Alex what is going on. So, Nvidia announced their 4090 and their 4080, the first of the new 40 series. This is the successor to the 30 series, itself, the successor to the 20 series, which is when they introduced rate tracing. So like those two previous generations, the 4080 and the 4090

have rate tracing. Great. Like those two previous generations, they're enormous. One of the companies that's making one of those GPUs is Glax. And they're the ones that really, like, RGB did up. They've also got, like, an anonymous hacker thing going on with the box. If you look at the box, there's just, like, a weird dude, like, half a mass. So it's like some real, like, Fan of the Opera situation here.

Fantam of the Opera. Yeah, it's Fan of the Opera Cross with V for Vendetta. That's the only way I can describe this look. That's good, actually. Yeah, that tracks. Yeah. And because these things are, they're. They're big. They're hunking huge. They put out a lot of heat. A lot of them are going to have a 3.5, like, they'll take up 3.5 slots on the back of your computer. Good Lord. Yeah. It's huge. Ew. My 2080 does two slots and I was like, this is too much. So this one is going to take up nearly four slots, which is going to mean a lot less computers are going to be able to use it, which I personally were bummed about because I wanted to make a really tiny computer. And this will just never fit in it. But this

particular one decided that it also needed to have extra fans and the stick. And it's just a big. And the stick just holds it up? Yes. It's just like a prop. It was some like high tech thing that's there to like augment the way that it works. It's literally just a thing that holds it up so it doesn't collapse the rest of your computer. Because it's so heavy.

Like the way I mean, I don't know the last time you guys have built a computer. I love it. But you usually have to like, you plug it into the PCI slot. you usually put it pretty far down because it takes up so many slots and you don't want to lose a bunch of your other slots. So you have to plug it in pretty far down. And then the only thing holding up a very heavy GPU is the soldering from the PCI slot. And this guy is so heavy that they're like, I don't know if the soldering is going to hold it up. So we need to have a prop. Incredible. So we made us to, and the stick itself has RGB lights. Yeah, and the stick has RGB lights on it.

Okay. So, but the other ones, like the Founders Edition, which is Nvidia's one that it made itself in his releasing does not have the stick. It is only the Galax that's going to have the big RGB stick. Okay. I just want to read you the caption, which I know people think our fonts are hard to read, but this font is so hard to read that I'm not 100% sure what it says. My belief of what it says in the caption of this image is 5G exclusive RRG.

support stick. And it's the 5G exclusive that really sticks out to me. Oh, because I have no idea what that means. It might be SG exclusive. Maybe? It's just hard to say. It also might be ARGB.

What? None of that makes sense, though. Yeah. This thing is like one Bluetooth speaker away from being like the exact center of all of Nelai's interests. Just right. Party speaker. Dude, Sony put out a new party speaker this week.

It's $898. and literally the video opens with now with six tweeters, which is just probably so many tweeters. I don't want to tell you. Still cheaper than any of these GPS. They're like, I'll stick another one on there and make a video. $900. As always, our offer stands to the Sony party speaker team.

We will give you one full hour of the first cast. Please come. Creighton has reached out on behalf of Decoder. We will go into it. I want to know. How many $900 party speakers do they sell? That's how I feel about the RTX 4090. Yeah, who is it for?

So the 4080 actually starts at about the same price as the new Sony speaker. But the 4090 is going to start at $1,600. Wow. That's crazy. This picture of the Assuse one where it's just holding up an entire motherboard in like a T-shaped is incredible. Like this is one of the biggest graphics cards I've ever seen. Yeah, it's wild. So what does it do?

We have not, we talked about how big it is and how silly that RGB lights are and whether or not it's a 5G exclusive. It's basically just like it's, there's not any of the big, the enormous jumps like we saw with the, the 2080 where they finally introduced rate tracing. I'm going to make lots of people mad because I said that. But it's true. Most of the big jumps here are like, it's going to be just a lot faster. It's got better storage.

It's using GDDDR6x memory, which is wicked fast. I've been living in the Northeast too long. But it's just super, super fast. But isn't there this Ada Lovelace thing that InVITA is trying to say it's like a whole new universe of how everyone thinks about everything? Well, it's their new architecture, right? Like they've moved one architecture up. So they do kind of a TikTok like CPU companies do. And this is this is their new architecture.

But for most people, the practical experience is just going to be it real fast. Like for the majority, the vast majority of people, it's just going to be a lot faster. And the thing that got me really excited is going to have native AV1 support, which is the big, like there's AGVC. That's what most videos are like your phone, your iPhone will record an AGVC. Most stuff does. AV1 is an open source video codec that's really popular, but it's kind of resource intensive. So it's not used as often as maybe it could be. So this is going to have native support, which will be really helpful for streamers and stuff.

And anybody who is, for some reason, I don't know, ripping enormous Blu-rays onto their computer and wanting good playback. So, like, that was the part that got me the most excited was the AV-1 support, which is a very small part of the puzzle, but pretty exciting. Maybe Apple and other people will start adopting it and using it in their processors. They're never going to use an individual. They're never going to. Never. Never. Ever going to happen.

They were like, who? And they said, they're all in on their own GPU architecture now, which does not require support. sticks. Well, no, I think they can still support AV1. Like, they can still support this codec. But also, Apple, like, I don't think ever natively supported, like, they've always been butts about video codecs and video containers and supporting them. And just, I'm still very upset. Except for HVC. Yeah, except for HVC. They're like, we're on. They're like, what about this one that you hate? Everybody's going to use it. Send it to everyone. Actually, Protocol today had, Enco Protocol, had a piece about Google coming up with its own new open competitor to Dolby Vision and Apple.

I saw that. And how because of YouTube, they were able to just force AV1 into the world. And now they're trying to do the same thing with basically HDR10, right? Yeah. Yeah. But they're packing it. Right. It's fascinating.

Like, this is nothing to this video card. The other thing that was really interesting with the Nvidia announcement to me, to RtX49, 48, great. That's what we covered. That's like the consumer part. Then there was this like hard gear down shift into metaverse, like enterprise metaverse stuff, which is becoming. an arms race kind of between

Nvidia and Epic, which makes Unreal. So Unreal is pushing really hard into Hollywood. So all those Disney shows, I'm assuming, I know it was true of the Mandalorian, I'm assuming Andor as well, shot on huge soundstages with microl-D screens that are showing renders out of Unreal, which is crazy to think about.

That's happening all over Hollywood. What was the John Favre just did a whole movie in VR? What movie am I thinking of? You thinking of a Lion King? Yes. Yeah. Okay. I'll say that for real.

John Favre did like all of the Lion King. He directed it in VR. Yeah. Right. So like there's this big push in Hollywood for that. And then there's something called the, I hate this phrase. There's like enterprise metaverse stuff where they showed Lowe's and other companies like building what they call digital twins of their stores. Yeah.

And assembly lines and factories. And then they're having AI try to. try to optimize the layouts of the stores or like the how the factories work and you can't do that in real life you need like a actual 3D model of the thing that works in the same way and so the and video is just like pushing super hard into the so the keynote's worth watching just for this part because it's it's really boring on space but on the other side you're like oh like they can just go capture a whole video game in 3d like they can put their camera in the middle of any video game and do volumetric capture the video game and then reconstruct that as like a metaverse situation well and and

not only that i mean one of the things jensen huang the The CEO of Nvidia did a really good interview with Ben Thompson at Stratereckery, I guess, like, right after the keynote. And one of the things he was talking about is, because Ben brought up that, that, like, gear shift you're talking about. And basically what Jensen said is, like, the future of video games, but also all this other stuff you're talking about the Enterprise Metaverse, you know, movie making, all this stuff is about, like, generative graphics. And the idea that you can, like, build as you go, it's not just about rendering something really fast at a really high frame rate. you are changing the thing that it is on the fly. Like that's what Minecraft is and Roblox is. And it's like if we're going to get to the point where we have these like lifelike meta versus like that is like holy shit, the GPU power we're going to need in order to do that in a real way.

And that was like he drew a much sort of straighter line between those two things than I expected. I mean, he's like very financially incentivized to draw that line. Right. Like we saw Nvidia's in the toilet right. Well, not in the toilet. But it's way, way down stock. It's tough times. Yeah.

And that's because they've lost, like, they were being propped up to kind of an, like, absurd degree by cryptocurrency. And everybody was buying their, their GPUs to mine. And that's gone. And they still have a super robust server business. They still have this consumer GPU business. They still have their like straight to business, GPU business. But they need, they need people to be pumped about GPUs again.

Totally. And they're, specifically, they're big, super powerful, super hot ones. Because, like, these CPUs sound really, really great, but they are so far ahead of what you're getting in a PS5 or an Xbox, which is what most game developers are developing to. They're not, game developers do not develop to Nvidia without a lot of stuff going on in the background, right? Like, the game developers go and they have conversations with Nvidia and money sometimes exchanges hands. It's a, you know, they're working together. Sometimes there's a boat at the end. Whoa, wait a, you really rescued that.

You're like, you know, you just pay them to protect you a little bit. It's great. It keeps you safe. It'd be a shame if something happened to your video game. It's very telling that they're doing, like, Nvidia has DLSS, which is their own, it's basically like a software that makes the video games look prettier. And you have to work with the developers to make, this is like super oversimplication. of DLSS. I'm so sorry.

My dog is snoring loudly in his sleep. Inclu. But DLSS is this Nvidia software that is exclusive to NVIDIA. AMD has their own version of it. Intel's going to have their own version of it. It's using AI to basically upscale games and make games look a lot prettier than they might out of the box. But it still has to be supported by the game developers.

And I think it's really telling that only 35 developers are coming out of the box, with the new 4090s in the 4080s. So you're only going to see 35 games have that support. And that's because the real support, most of the money, is going to AMD and to the PS5 and the Xbox. So they kind of need a bigger business. They need more stuff. And yeah, saying, oh, you want to go and do, like, build the Metaverse? Yeah, we're the guys to come talk to.

Oh, you want to, you want to compete and build your own giant mini LED screen. to render graphics on the fly for shooting a movie. Yeah, come talk to us. They need that if they want to continue to advance compared to Apple who's just schooling everybody in the GPU and CPU space right now. It's also fascinating because the idea of you having a big GPU on your desk

might be going away is game streaming particularly comes to the foreground. Well, I mean, that was part of the AV-1 thing here is that they're like, you want to have the best stream, you want to have the fastest, most efficient stream and just look the coolest. get a big 3.5 slot thick GPU. And if you can fit it in your computer and it won't break the motherboard,

it's going to be a great time for you. Like, I don't even think my computer could fit it. All right, David, what are you saying? And then we got to take a break. I was just going to say, it is interesting that there's this, like, huge enterprise pivot for a lot of these companies. And it was, I was just thinking as I was reading about all this about, I believe it was a Bloomberg story today about all the chief Metaverse officers who are

getting hired at these companies. Yes. That story ruled. It's fantastic. And it's basically these people are getting hard with these big lofty titles and it's like, figure out the Metaverse. And it's like, what the hell do these people do all day? And I think if I'm a company like Invidia, like all these companies are just throwing money at this in case it's like the next big thing. And I think invidia will not be the last company who just like uses it in a lot of branding things to try and make some money in the short run.

But I don't think this is just branding. They have built some real tech here that is fascinating. Yeah, the Omniverse thing. is very cool. Like they've had this tech for a while where they can go and do this because they were originally marketing it to streamers and to gamers so you could take like the raddest screenshots of all time by being able to move the cameras and stuff in the games. Someone, there is someone in a video is like, you have to make this a real business. Yeah. It's not just screenshots. And they came up with like hyper-optimizing a lows layout with AI. Like I cannot tell you how many CES that I went to where they're like,

do you want to see how cool our screenshot camera system is now? And I'm like, okay? Sure. That's great. All right, we got to take another break. We got to have a little light around. We're going to come in. Stick around.

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an easy answer. And the ones that are really worth asking usually come with a healthy mix of inspiration and backpedaling, aha moments, and quiet meditation. When you're working through one of those problems, you want a partner to bounce ideas off of and figure out where the deeper issue lies. That's where Claude can help. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move. Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. Plus, Claude's research capabilities go deeper than basic search.

It can have comprehensive, reliable analysis with proper citations, turning hours of research into minutes. Ready to tackle bigger problems? Get started with Claude today at cloud. that's clod. a.ai slash vergecast. That's clod.a.ai slash vergecast. And check out Claude pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.a.combe slash verge cast. We're back. Okay. I'm going to start with the new DGI smartphone gimbal, the new Osmo. It's the Osmo. For some reason, I bought this immediately. Why? I don't know why. I have an Osmo already that I never use.

And I was like, oh, you know what? This one feature they added will make me use it. I'm spending $180 on it. Is it the telescope? No, not the selfie stick. It has a magnet. Oh, God. And so you put the little mat on your phone.

So you can pull the phone right off it right away, which is a big annoyance. But then you clip it back on, it runs a shortcut. And it opens the app for you right away. And I was like, oh, this is it. This is, I'm going to be gimbling for days. if only you could launch that app. Are you guys ready to see some of the smoothest Instagram stories of all time? Oh my God.

Because they're coming and you're going to think to yourself, God damn, that boy is smooth. Ew. It's so smooth. No. The shortcut automatically doing stuff. V did not enjoy that just now. I just want everyone to know. She's never coming on the show again.

The loud noise. That was a lot. I'm so sorry. That was mine. Someone else, feel free to go. I mean, I'm super excited,

as I have been for a while, about the Logitech GCloud gaming handheld. Oh, yeah, it was announced this week. Not excited about that name, though. That name is... It's a bad name. Or the price.

It's $349. 99 cents. The same price as like a budget phone. But I think this is still better than a budget phone for cloud gaming. Yeah, but it, I mean, it's the same price as it.

the switch. It's actually more expensive. It's $50 more expensive than a switch and $50 cheaper than the cheapest steam deck you can get. Wow. Okay, but you are excited about it. I'm still excited about it. I think the phone is a terrible way to cloud game. And if we want cloud gaming to be a real thing, there needs to be real hardware to support it. And this is a great first, if expensive, poorly named step. Yeah, just the idea that there is like going to be real multi-company, multi-platform competition over handheld cloud gaming, I think it's very exciting. Cam Fox and our team wrote a really good story this week about one, like the, I think the headline was the PSVita's time is now again.

This time it'll work. And it's like, on the one hand, like, guy needs a hug. Like, he's been through a lot with his PSVita. But in the other hand, like, he's kind of right. It kind of is. It's this little tiny gaming consoles. Bring back the Game Boy. My husband agrees.

My husband is such a PSVita fan. He will be having dinner and then he'll just sigh and go, I miss the PSVita. I don't understand. I just don't understand. He's just like, you don't understand. Just eating a tomato. Yes.

On a random road trip, he'll be like, you know, I really miss my PSVita. And it's just like, I don't understand it. I showed him Cam's article and he was like, I've written something like that before too. I understand. Wow. So, wait, the GCloud gaming hand, horrible name. Three, four, nine. As much as a switch, OLED.

That's what I was thinking of. Yeah, but less, you know, it's not an OLED display. It's an LED, it's a traditional LED display. It's got a Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G processor, four gigabytes of RAM. It's going to have 64 gigabytes of storage in it. It's basically a Chromebook, but for cloud gaming instead of cloud PCing. Right. So here's the line that really caught me.

You can launch Xbox Cloud Gaming, but it's just a progressive web app. Yeah. I mean, that's amazing. But yeah, what else do you need it to be? Well, that's the way it's done on the Steam Deck now. Like, I've got the, I went through the whole process of setting up XCloud gaming, whatever it's called, on my Steam deck. And it's just a, it's just a website, but it works perfectly on my little Steam deck. Does it?

So, like, why should they reinvent the wheel for this as well when they've got the app built? The web isn't dead, everybody. The web's here. Here's the evidence, the verge.com. and the Xbox Cloud gaming progressive web have. The future is bright for the web. All right, David, what's yours? I'm pretty excited about Framework's new Chromebook.

Framework is this company we've covered a bunch. Their whole thing is like super upgradable, super repairable laptops. And they made an Intel-based Windows laptop that I think is like a little too expensive for what it is. But people really like it. And I think they have like started to actually deliver on the promise of making these things upgradable. And that's very cool. and now they have a Chromebook.

And as we've talked about, I was sad about the pixel books. So this made me feel a little better. There's like new people doing interesting stuff with Chromebooks. And it's still super upgradable. It looks nice. I think it's a thousand bucks, which feels like a lot of money again. But you can choose all your ports. You can choose like lots of things about how it works.

You can choose the RAM and the storage. And it's just like, I don't know, the tinkerer in me is very excited about specking to death a Chromebook. But you'll still be using. ChromoS, which is I've come, I love, but I think it's super ugly, and needs an entire refresh.

Oh, I totally agree. Here's what I tell you. Framework tweeted Google is committed to a minimum of eight years of updates on the Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition. That's a long time. Google isn't committed to Google search for eight years. Like, this is a huge commitment for them. But at any moment, they're like,

fuck it. We're setting down search. Like, it's time to sunset search. We're very sorry that you relied on it. Here's do YouTube stories. We're just maps now. I just like don't buy it. It's amazing how Google has like torched its brand in that way.

It really is. I mean, to be like eight years is like a ludicrously long time for Google. But I feel like if you're going to bet on anything, betting on Google Chrome to last a while is a decent bet, I would say. I wouldn't take that bet. I'm just telling you. Sorry. Fair enough.

Google's like, we don't support Cordy. keyboards anymore. We've looked into it and... They're dumb. It's over. V, do you have a lightning round entry? Is it a gadget or just a story that I like? Anything. Something going on this week you're into. Whatever you want. You've earned it by being on this show. Well, if it's something I'm looking forward to, then it's probably the pixel watch just because I am dying to know what this thing is going to be like. I've just been, it's just been haunting my nightmares ever since it was announced.

Nightmares? Yes. Because WearOS. Before WearOS 3 was an absolute nightmare that every single time a new WearOS 2 watch was announced, I just sat on my bed and cried. It was not, you know, that's an exaggeration, but it was just gentle weeping. It was sad. It was so sad. And, you know, like, I don't know. I'm just so curious as to what this thing is going to be because Google was at the forefront of wearables back in 2014.

Like Android Wear was first to the game. And then they were like, me, we give up. And then they were like, oh, no, smartwatches are popular now. Uh-oh. And then, like, in 2019, they just started, like, building. They, like, bought a bunch of fossil stuff. They were fitbit, and they were just kind of, like, mulling it. And then Rick Osterlo comes out.

And I just remember being there at the Made by Google event in 2019. He's, like, ambient computing. And I was like, are you going to fix it? Are you going to fix it? And then I had to wait another, like, two years to get that Samsung. And I was like, you kind of didn't fix. Okay, well, I'll wait another year. And then I was like, oh, it's, it's, you know, I still see the promise, kind of.

You kind of made some progress. And then I tested the Montblanc Summit 3. And I was like, oh, no, the fragmentation is still there. So there's just so much I'm curious about with the Pixel Watch. I really want to get my hands on it and probably break my brain testing it, just comparing it to what Samsung's done with it. Well, it's coming soon, right? Yeah, it's haunting my hands on it.

dreams. It's coming soon, October 6th. I'm just so curious what they're doing with it. I feel like in the abstract, you described all of Google hardware. You did. Right? Like, if you just take out the words watch, you're like, did they fix it? And then Rick Osterlo said some stuff, and they bought some stuff. Then you waited a year. And then Samsung did a thing. And then, oh, my God, the fragmentation. And I'm going to do it. It's like, it's all of it. Yeah. That's Google. Yeah. All right. My last one is Victrolo put out an $800 turntable to can stream directly to Sonos, which is cool. They should have done this.

Like, Sonos should have done this. It's just funny, it's Victrola, which is until recently, like, one of those, like, zombie brands that you buy at Target for $99. It's like RCA. Biggest glow up for a zombie brand has ever occurred. Good for them. Like, the $99, like, you know, those, like blue suitcases that have turntables in them, step up to $800 streamerically.

Samos. Very good. All of us should be so ambitious. That's it for us. Victoria, thank you so much for rendering us on the show. It was mostly fun. Thank you. That's literally the best we can hope for.

It's true. I'm blaming Alex. You can tweet at us. We'll be back on Wednesday. David, what's the hotline? Next Wednesday, we have a bunch of fun stuff. I did a whole story on scooters because I can only stop myself from talking about scooters for so long. So we're doing some scooter stuff.

We have some other stuff. But the big thing coming up is we're doing a whole episode about cybersecurity at the end of October. And what we really want is for people to give us cybersecurity mysteries. can solve on the verge cast. So if you have big, small, weird, extra weird, call us and tell us about them. It's 866, Verge 1-1, call the hotline. Also, the next episode of the future music miniseries is going up on Monday. Ariel Shapiro is doing it.

It's awesome. Lots of fun stuff going on. All right. You can tweet at us. David is at Pierce. Alex's Alex H. Kranz. Victoria is Vic M. Song. And I am reckless.

We love hearing from you. Please keep sending in read his own feedback. I love reading it. I'm trying to get back to everyone slowly but surely. It's great to hear. And I'm glad it's clicking with so many people. We are going to tweak it. But I'm glad it's like working.

So that's like great to hear. That's it. And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, subscribe in the podcast app of your choice or tell a friend. You can send us feedback at Vergecast at theverge.com. This show is produced by me, Liam James,

and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. This episode was edited and mixed by Amanda Rose Smith. Our editorial director is Brooke Minters, and our executive producer is Eleanor Donovan. The Verge cast is a production of The Verge and Box Media Podcast Network. And that's it. We'll see you next week.