The Vergecast - Apple's October 2014 Event

Episode Date: October 17, 2014

This week is a Very Special Episode of the Vergecast. In fact, it's The Verge Live, straight from Apple's October event. Ross Miller and Chris Ziegler are joined by Dieter Bohn on the ground in California to discuss new iPads, new iMacs, new OSes, and Stephen Colbert. (If you'd like to watch this special live show in video form, check it out here: http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/16/6988049/the-verge-live-ipad-2014) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, Virgcast audio listeners. This is Ross Miller. This week, our regular Vergecast day happened to coincide with the big Apple event. So we've decided to combine our usual Verge Live video show with this podcast. What you're about to hear is our usual post-show coverage. If you'd like to see what we're talking about, check out theVerge.com. I think you'll enjoy the show just fine through your earbuds. Enjoy, and we'll be back with the regular Vergecast next week. Welcome to the Verge Live. Just after the Apple event, it's a little bit after. We're taking it kind of slow and casual, much like the Apple event itself, to be honest. It was a very low-key kind of doldrum event. I'm here with Chris Ziegler. In top of the show, actually, we have Dieter Bone from San Francisco. We'll get to him in just a second. But real quick, you know, get the logistics out of the way. If you have

questions for us or for Dieter, hashtag Ask Verge, here's the news that has happened so far. The big announcements, iOS 8.1 and OS10 Yosemite. 8.1 will come out Monday. Yosemite came out today. It is free. There's also new I-work. iPad Air 2. It is a, it's a, it's thinner than a lasered pencil. iPad Mini 3. It's a complete waste of money. We'll talk about that later. It's an iPad Mini 2 plus 1, basically. Basically.

And then a 27-inch IMac with 5K retina display. It's actually really impressive and priced very well, too. Also, updated Mac Mini for some reason. Which Tom Warren is extremely excited about. I am extremely excited, too. Again, if you have questions for us or for Deeter, hashtag AskVerg, and we'll get them to us.

All right, let's go ahead and get started. Deeter, are you there? Hey guys, how you doing? Hey, Dieter. You looking good. I'm... Hey, hey, how's it going? Doing well. So a couple questions real quick.

How was the iPad event? Was it as boring for you as it was for us at home? I mean, kind of. We were expecting Apple to go through their usual rundown at these events. They go over, you know, the latest OS again on the iPhone. They go over the latest OS on the Mac. They remind you how good the iPhone sold. They sort of run through the numbers of all the features that we kind of had heard about earlier in the year at their other two events.

But they did that for what felt like quite a long time. And then we sort of raced through the new hardware stuff. And it just like it was exactly what we were expecting. Nothing more than that. No real surprises except I suppose the Mac Mini was neat to see. I might end up buying one. But yeah, there wasn't a whole lot of hope. Holy crap. I would say the best part of the whole event was Stephen Colbert doing a cameo to demo the phone calling feature on the Mac.

Yeah, we have a video that we'll play that probably in a little bit afterwards. Let's, I want to talk with the products real quick. So the iPad Air 2 with the laser-sheared intro, did you get a chance to play with that at all after the event? Yeah, yeah, I did just a little bit. And you know what? It's an iPad. It's stupid thin. It feels pretty light. The screen is very pretty. It's fast. I mean, I hate to say it, but like, it's kind of boring. But this has been the knock against Apple products for a long time.

They seem kind of boring, but they're great. The one thing I'm most curious about with the new iPad Air is the anti-reflective coating. You know, I didn't get enough time with it to really see how I feel about it. But, you know, I've got lamps in my house. That's a thing that people have. And, like, using the iPad with lights behind you can be a pain. and so I'm really hoping that it'll be nicer. So we'll see.

But yeah, I mean, of the stuff that was announced today, I think that the coolest thing was obviously the new IMac. And then the number two thing is the iPad Air 2. And then from there, you just can kind of forget about the rest of it. So let's talk briefly about, or maybe at length, about the IMA because I agree with you. I think that was the most interesting announcement and the most exciting. I'm assuming you've seen the display, is it as insane as it sounds? It is even more insane than it sounds.

It is just stupidly good looking. It has incredibly good viewing angles. They're playing around with video editing software, obviously, to show it off. I didn't see any lag, but of course this is a demo unit, so it's ideal conditions the way that they've got it all set up. But you sort of run out of things to say about a screen when you look at it. It's like, there's no pixels that you can see. It is gorgeous. It is bright.

It has incredibly saturated, rich colors. If there's a better screen available for a regular human to go out and buy today to look at things on, I've not seen it. Right. And what about the screen lags? Did you notice anything? They did talk about this timing controller a little bit, too. Yeah, I mean, Apple's very excited. They brought it up two or three times.

They made this custom chip to control the pixels. Sure. I mean, I'm sure that it's important. I mean, I didn't detect any lag, but again, it was a pretty controlled demo. So it's really hard to say, you know, if it will actually do it. I know it was an issue with, you know, the first retina max. There was some concern that they weren't powerful enough to keep up with it. But, you know, this is a big-ass desktop.

And so they've got, you know, plenty of stuff that they could pack into it. They don't have to worry as much about heat. Apple claims it's even more energy efficient than before, too. So presumably that helps. with heat as well. So I don't think that we're going to see the same sort of early issues that we saw with the original Retina Max on this iMac. I think it's just going to be good. I think one thing that's really surprising about this iMac is the pricing. I think you expressed a little bit of surprise in the live blog, and my job momentarily dropped as well. So I guess my question

is, what does this mean for the Mac Pro? I mean, I guess there's probably still a market for it, but it certainly seems like this steps on it a little bit, particularly considering how much time they spend talking about video editing with this announce. And also, what the heck? A 5K display, I would expect to spend $2,500 just on a 5K display, much less an entire iMac with a 3.5 gigahertz, what is, I5 or I7, and, you know, 1 terabyte fusion drive, all this stuff. So talk a little bit about the price.

Was that a shock for you? Yeah, it was. I mean, I got to be honest, I'm not, I haven't been shopping for 4K displays or TVs or monitors or anything else, so I'm not super conversant in that. But I was fully anticipating this thing was going to be over $3,000. So I was pretty shocked that they were able to get it in at $2,500. You know, if I, if I own a Mac Pro right now, the one thing I'm wondering is how can I make this thing my monitor for my Mac Pro? and why did they make one that doesn't have the whole computer in it to bring the price down even further? I bet not, at least not for a while.

Yeah, I mean, the big question with any desktop computer is justify your existence, convince me to buy you instead of a laptop. And with the Mac Pro, it's easy. It's like, this is a super-pro-grade machine to do super-pro-grade stuff. And with an I-Mac, you know, it's not going to be as powerful as a Mac Pro. So they've got to do something. And so it's either got to be super cheap. or amazing in some other way.

And Apple kind of managed to do both. It's not ridiculously cheap, but to get this display for this much money, I certainly wasn't expecting it. And you have to wonder, Apple's famous for having really high profit margins. You kind of have to wonder if they're getting that on this computer.

So let's talk about the iPad for a second because this is the first one that's available in gold. Have you seen a gold one? Is it as ridiculous as it sounds? It's muted. It's not like, look at me, I'm gold, in the way that the iPhone 6 plus is. So it's not so bad. It's not so ridiculous.

I would almost say it feels more bronzy than gold. I mean, I'm a guy that used to own an orange iPhone, so I'm really not one to talk. But it doesn't look too ostentatious and ridiculous to me. So to be clear, this is a different shade of gold than the iPhone 6 and 6 plus? It seemed like it to me, but I mean, it could be that just at that side. eyes, it looks a little bit different. But I mean, I was expecting to look at this thing and have to shield my eyes and just find it to be the most ostentatious, ostentatious device ever created by human hands. And it honestly didn't look like that. I mean, I still would be getting a space gray one.

You know, actually, honestly, if we're talking about iPads, I did the hands-on with the iPad mini three for the website, and I've been waiting to talk about it because of everything that happened today, it is by far the most disappointing. It's basically an iPad mini with retina, aka iPad Mini, too, and they threw touch ID on it. For $100. That's it. It didn't even get stage time.

Yeah, they just, like, Schiller's like, oh yeah, by the way, we did the thing with the retina on the mini. It's like, it's got touch ID now. See ya. It's like, oh, but that was the one I was going to buy. No, it's Yeah, no, it's embarrassing about. We talked to us in our news posts as well.

And they also now have... Sorry, go on. Yeah, say that again? Oh, just go on, sorry about that. Oh, I was going to say they also seem to have 15 different iPad models in their lineup now. You can get the original iPad Mini, you can get the iPad Mini 2, you can get the iPad Mini 3, you can get the iPad Air and you can get the iPad Air 2. Have I missed any?

Is that everything? Is that everything? Although it does seem like the iPad Mini 2 is going away because like I said, it's $100 for Touch ID in gold, everything else. And we looked at the spec comparison before we went on the air. Everything else is the exact same, which is almost like iPad Mini 2 get it now because it's a good deal while supplies last because pretty soon that price is going to jump up. It's no wonder they didn't spend any time talking about the Mini 3, and it's not a good deal. Like Dieter mentioned, you're paying $100 for basically Touch ID and seemingly nothing else.

It looks better, though, if there is no iPad Mini 2 on the market, which I feel like in a couple months time after Christmas, that stock is just going to dwindle. I don't know if that's true. I mean, we'll see, but typically Apple's strategy has been to keep the old models in the lineup. for a full product cycle, but we'll see. And you look at the 5C too, and the iPhone 4S stuck around longer, that might be the iPad Mini 1, because, oh, you can get the cheapest iPad for $250,

that's a great sounding pitch. Right. So, Dieter, let me ask you, they spent a lot of time talking about taking pictures on tablets, which seems to be an admission by Apple that this is a thing, and it's not going anywhere,

so we might as well make it a really good experience. What's your reaction to that? Well, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Why are you calling it an admission? An admission implies that there's something wrong. Taking pictures with your tablet is cool, bro. It's an awesome thing to do. I just like, look, there are situations where it's not okay to take a picture with a tablet.

If you're at a concert, don't be that person. Otherwise, you know what? Don't judge. It's cool. It's a big screen. And at least with the iPad air, it seems to have. just a really good camera. They took a whole bunch of the stuff that they created for the iPhone 6 in terms of like software features and applied it to the iPad error. It doesn't, they didn't get

into enough detail to say whether or not it's the exact same sensor and the exact same optics as the iPhone 6. I'm sure it's not because it just doesn't look like there's space for it. But yeah, if you've got a really good camera on an iPad, then, you know, use it. I will say that the one sort of admission thing they did do is they went right from like you can take pictures of it aren't these cool pictures to talking about like wild and crazy apps that you can use on an iPad that kind of makes sense with the camera they had the thing where you know they show like a baseball guy swinging and like you can like analyze the accuracy or the the behavior of a swing so that was kind of neat but really you know at the end of the day like there's nothing other than even the touch ID was not the thing

There's nothing with either of these that makes you go, holy crap, this is a brand new thing that I was not expecting that is going to change things. Yes, they made it crazy thin. They shaved the pencil with the laser. But other than that, I mean, it's an iPad. It's a really good tablet. It's probably the best tablet. And it's better than last year. And we just keep on marching on.

I was hoping to see more. I mean, they even set on stage, I think it was Schiller, said each one of our. products in our lineup pushes the other products to be better. So the iPhone pushes the iPad into needing to be more professional. If you're going to make that claim, I think you need to finish it. You need to finish it by showing us maybe that split screen stuff that's been rumored for so long. I was really hoping we'd see an iPad Air demo that showed some real multitasking. But we didn't. Most of the software story was stuff that they had already talked about earlier in the year. Yeah, it actually seems to me like maybe they sandbag just a little bit to pump up an event early to mid-2015 that'll involve, of course, the Apple Watch, maybe some sort of iPad Pro, which has been rumored for like 20 years, it feels like, and of course the retina MacBook Air.

Yeah, I mean, I'm waiting for that Retina MacBook Air. You know, people were hoping it show up at this event. I'm totally fine with it not showing up at this event. If the chips aren't ready, if the thing isn't ready, just wait because it's a computer that every single human on the planet is waiting to buy. And they've got to get it right. So if it's not ready yet, I'm totally fine waiting. It's funny how much the Apple Watch came up. I mean, they needed to tease it here and there. I think the only real use we saw with it was they showed off.

It was a Craig Figueridi showed, like using it as a remote to go through his presentation. But it wasn't clear to me if he was tapping on the screen or twisting the digital crown. But they look fine. They look good on executives or so they would flash it. So early 2015, it didn't move up. We'll see him next year. Great. Deeter, we got to let you go into the second.

But final thoughts, what was any other final thoughts on the event itself? Just overall? It ran through fast. It felt almost a little Samsung-y in how quickly they ran through features and were willing to just jam through tech specs, which was not something I expected from Apple. But really, the takeaway for the day is get to an Apple store and look at the display on this iMac, because it's just crazy.

Awesome. Well, Deeter, thank you so much. Thanks, guys. All right. Let's let Deeter get back and grab coffee and all that. We do actually have first footage of the iPad hands-on. We'll take a look at that, and we'll come back, and we'll answer some of your questions from AskVorge. Hey, guys, I'm here with the new iPad Air 2, which is really, really thing.

I've got my old iPad air here. You can see how much thinner this guy is. It's incredibly thin. One notable change is there's no more side switch here. It's gone. But here it is. It's really thin. It's got a touch ID sensor on the front.

Inside, it's got a new 8X processor. And the screen actually is laminated now. It's the first time on iPad. The screen's been laminated, which is just like the iPhone and the iPhone 6 plus. And it looks really, really incredible. It's like you're touching the pixels exactly on the display. on the display, which is a big change to the iPad, something I've been wanting for a long time.

There is also Apple Pay support, but there's no NFC, so it's all happening through the touch ID sensor in apps. You can't wave it at things. You can't wave an iPhone and add it to pay or anything like that. Other big change in the back. The camera is new. It's an 8 megapixel eyesight camera. Apple's really high on it.

It's spent a lot of time talking about this new camera here and we can try to take a picture with it. I think tablet photography has really arrived. Take a picture of Lance Youenoff. There he is, looking handsome. This is, I think, a big deal. a big deal, I think iPad photography and the apps that make use of a good camera on a big screen are actually coming up and changing. So that is the new iPad Air 2. And here is the new iPad

Mini 3. This is the updated iPad Mini. It has the A7 processor. It has new finishes. It comes in gold now. The major change here is really the touch ID sensor on the front. The display is still not optically bonded, but it is a really nice looking iPad. Can I just see this for one second? As you can see here, the iPad Mini 3, still kind of notably thicker than the new iPad Air 2. So between the 2 and the iPhone 6 Plus, you actually have a huge collection of screen sizes to run iOS now. I think the Air 2 is a really nice product. The screen laminated is a big improvement over the original air, and it is just so much thinner. It is actually kind of impossible to believe.

What I love the most about that video is, like, Neelai just grabbing it. You know there was another journalist out there, probably taking pictures or doing their own hands-on video. Yeah. You know, like, I'm sorry. I hope it was Joanna. Got it. Joanna Stern. Formerly of the Verge.

Formerly of the Verge. A Walser Journal. Great. So we're going to take a few of the questions. Hashtag Ask Verge. I'm just running through this real quick. If you have any other questions, keep updated. And I'll keep just looking down.

I promise I'm looking at you and everything you're asking us and nothing else. Let's just go through real quick. Obviously, we didn't hear anything about any MacBook updates at all. Like I said, maybe just spring, hopefully. Yep. iPad Mini 2 versus 3. We talked about a little bit with Deeter. Let's just kind of rehash that just a hair.

The only differences we can tell, and we've looked at the Apple's official spec sheet, the only differences are one's available in gold, one has Touch ID, and one costs $100 more. And that's basically all the iPad Mini 3. If you can get the iPad Mini 2 and you do not care about Touch ID and you do not care about gold, that's probably the better deal. Yeah, I think that what we mentioned this when we were talking with Dieter, paying $100 for touch ID seems completely insane. And if you have a mini 2, I don't think that there's any reason

that you would want to consider a mini 3. Even if you have a mini or no mini at all, I'm not sure that the mini 3 makes the most sense because, sure, touch ID is nice, but is it something that you want to spend $100 on? Probably not. So unless you either desperately need a gold mini, you desperately need a touch ID,

or you just like throwing money at giant corporations, Mini 2 seems like the best deal. It does. And then we should also get into, and this is another question I've seen a lot, what's up with the iPod and the iPod Touch? Specifically, the 16-gibby iPod Touch right now is $1099. The cheapest 7.9-inch Mac Mini is now $249.

Like right now the iPod Touch is still on sale, but I'm kind of wondering how long that's going to be as well. So your hypothesis is that they're just going to kill the iPod Touch. I mean, they just killed the iPod. And they've not, for a long time, like, updated the Shuffle or the NANA, which are great, like, utilitarian devices. I'm sure they still sell decalding, but those numbers have been on the decline for so long. I think they're very polarizing products because, you know, different people have very different

opinions about what's going to happen with these lines. If you talk to David Pierce, he'll tell you that the iPod Touch is a gateway drug into iOS. And it's also, I mean, it's a very good point that it's something that you give your kids, right? You're not going to give your child, you know, your six-year-old child a six-plus. Maybe you will, I don't know. But it's a lot more cost-effective and potentially less expensive to give them something, a month-to-month, that is, to give them something that doesn't have a cellular connection. iPod Touch is old, and it's a lot cheaper than a six. So, and you're sharing the same apps, obviously, with your phones. So. Right. But you're also. You're also,

sharing the same apps with the iPad, which can upscale, and the difference is not only 50 bucks, and that's also requiring Apple to continue to support the lower resolution, which, or the lower size screen, which they're doing right now with obviously the legacy iPhones. Right. I just, I don't know how long they're going to care to do that. Once the 4S is completely out of the cycle, or the 5 is completely out of the cycle. That's true. I mean, let's put it this way.

If they could find a way long-term to deliver, say, a $99 or $129 iPod Touch, with the current specs, or maybe even slightly warmed over specs, I think that's a product that they can and would want to leave in the lineup for a very long time to come, because the entry point into iOS then becomes very, very low. That's not to say that it can't be low as it is. You have products like you mentioned, the 5C, which is zero on contract. You have products like the original iPad Mini. But still, if you could hit some,

$100 with an iPod touch, that would be a really compelling proposition. There are a lot of people who want access to the app store on an iPhone, I think, on an iPhone form factor, but don't necessarily need a cellular connection. So really, you can think of it as like the smallest iPad at that point. Really good. The iPad Nano. The iPad Nano, that's right. A couple other questions we should run through, and then I want to talk about the tone of the event as a whole.

Mac Mini, actually we should talk about that later because I'm really excited. excited about that. Should we get, should you actually download OS 10 Yosemite on day one? We actually just published a review of OS 10 Yosemite. We did. And it looks pretty solid, but more or less. I've heard, yeah, David told

me in the process of reviewing it that he was hard-pressed to find bugs. That said, that said, I have never personally been a day-one downloader. I'm not going to be a day-one downloader this time. So it's the person that buys the phone on day one? Hardware's different.

Well, you know, I rely pretty heavily on Creative Cloud, for instance, and Adobe is infamous for having compatibility issues with new versions of OS10. I just want to give it a few days, let other people be the guinea pigs, and then we'll see what happens. But I'm a strong believer that OS10 peaked with Snow Leopard. I'll go to my grave saying that. But yeah, I'll upgrade eventually. Okay.

I I So you are going to be a day one downloader Is that what to be? Yeah, 100%. I do not care about whatever little nagging issues are going to be there.

Like it's still overall a better product. Do it right now. Live on the air, man. Just as you have to do half. All right, fine, whatever. I don't care. It's live to help but who cares?

I'm doing it right now. But the last question they were probably going to take before we can move on. Is there anything that surprise you at this event? To me, it's just the amount of dad jokes

and weird goofiness. of the secrecy. Yeah, it was a... I mean, it's a new Apple, right? Like, I think that every event that Federigi is in, I get more and more surprised at what a huge effect he has

on the tone of the event. I think back to WDC with the OS10 weed jokes. Oh, yeah, Air Force One. Hair Force One. He's definitely a lighthearted character in their executive mix, and I think that is a good look for them.

The problem, The only problem is that they leaned, they had to lean way too heavily on him to make dad jokes. This is Eddie Q and I don't even know who. Doing the secret handshake and failing. The most ill-advised. Yeah, and then he gets kicked out of the building.

Yeah, no, I think that it's fine. It's all well and good that they do that sort of stuff, but they just need to not do it as much. They had to lean really heavily on him here because they didn't have a lot to talk about. Right. And there's probably a lot of, you know, there are many minutes that they could have trimmed out at this event if they had wanted to. I am now agreeing to the terms and conditions.

This is happening, folks. Right now, you're going to regret this. You are really going to regret this. But they're also the talk of, like, not just double a down, they crossed out, it's triple downing on secrecy. They're like just a wink and nod to the fact that everything is kind of leaked. Yeah. Which was already like a kind of pretty low-key event as self. Yeah, I mean, yeah, can you imagine?

that happening in the jobs era, I certainly can't, you know. I cannot imagine them letting anyone, like that number executives and developers on stage that weren't like pristine and eloquent as all out. Because anyone who fumbles with their words, and a lot of people did fumble with the cues today,

would probably have been fired immediately under the jobs era. It's a much stricter regime. Yeah, it's very interesting to see the way that they treated. Even last night when the 8.1 user guide leaked with the the new iPads in it, I think that I expected Apple to just freak out

and certainly not acknowledge it on stage. Instead, they joked about it for like 20 minutes. And they brought in Chief of Secrecy or now Supreme Commander of Secrecy, Stephen Colbert. Can we just watch that clip real quick? I just want to show everyone else what that was like to see in the live stream. And so next, I'm going to move on to the next slide

in my presentation. And, you know, I heard that our new Chief of Secrecy Stephen Colbert has some concerns about his part of the presentation. And so actually, I can give him a call from my Mac right here at his office. So let's just type up Stephen. There's this work number, and I can just dial right here, and it's going to dial up. My Mac's going to actually make a speakerphone call through my phone.

And by the way, yeah, I have the coolest job in the world. I get to talk to Stephen Colbert. Hi, Stephen, it's Craig from Apple. Oh, oh, right. Hello, Red Delicious. This is Granny Smith. Over. In the back.

Roger Fox Trot, Thunderbolt, Retina, Swift, Lightning. Feedback on the content of your presentation. Well, Chief Secrecy Officer, that's a pretty impressive title. I just don't think it's big enough to capture. Run this one by you. I don't know. Allied commander was good enough for Ike. It's good enough for me.

Intergalactic Chancellor. How about Supreme Commander? Uh, who? Oh, yes, yes. Yes, absolutely. I will let the chairman know. I'll get right on it, Stephen. Over and out, Red Delicious. He's Jonesen for some jewelry.

He's Jones for jewelry. We actually did get asked what watches we're wearing, and this is a busted $7 novelty gift with the Golden Eye Paws screen on the front. You realize that you can get that, well, of course you do. You can get that watch face on a Moto 360. I also realize I can save $300 and get a nice dinner and some drinks and go on vacation. That's fair. That's fair. Is why I have not upgraded my iPhone yet either.

That's fair. I actually enjoy having money. I'm wearing my favorite G-shock. I'm a bit of a G-shock beast. Sam is going to kill me for admitting that. Sam is not a G-shock fan. But until, right now I'm on an iPhone 6-plus, so I can't use my Moto 360.

So I'm kind of, the question is, do I get a pebble? I kind of like the blue. There's a pebble that's kind of a similar color to this, or do I just wait for the Apple Watch, or do I just give up on smartwatches completely? Well, if you're going to spend money on iPhone 6 plus, pay $100, try the pebble. You can try the one that I stole from Dan.

I'm not using it anymore. Did you mug him? I didn't. I asked an isolate and he said, I don't care. Yes. I want to talk about the Colbert thing because that is the only time on Apple stage that Hitler has been mentioned in any way, shape, or form. Are you sure? Have you gone back through all the events?

I'm just going to take a wild guess and say no one has ever mentioned Hitler on an Apple stage. So I was just thinking while we were watching that, this is now at least the second time, and I'm assuming more than that, I'm just not remembering correctly, that they've prominently featured and spoken to one or more celebrities during the event. And it seems like maybe that's, you know, for a very long time, Apple has involved popular musicians and musical groups in their events. And now it seems like maybe they are moving to celebrities. Like television and movie celebrities.

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely that broad appeal. I think we've talked about that when the Apple Watch stuff came out And, like, the fact that they're giving interviews to Vanity Fair, to Vogue, and tell these places. Like, the idea now is, like, they want Apple to be a fashion brand. And to be a fashion mainstream brand, they need to bring in celebrities and people who are influential in those circles. That is your talk show host or your future CBS late-night talk show host. That is the food fighters who are still relevant. That is Coldplay who is consciously uncoupled itself from reality.

Or that's you, too. I'm sorry. Speaking of fashion and celebrities, I was thinking. not know where the segue is coming from. I just want to bounce something off of you that I was thinking during the event. What if Apple did an iPad edition or an IMac edition, like they're doing an Apple Watch edition that is 18-carat gold? 18-carat gold, I-Mac?

An 18-carat-gold, I-mac? Because that's a giant. It's a lot of gold right there. But certainly, I mean, someone will buy it. But certainly an iPad edition, I think, would play well. I think it would play well in certain circles. people who have more money than either of us will ever imagine. But again, it's a fashion brand.

I think the interesting part of that, if we're going to go back to the last month's event, is the, how long do Apple Watches stick around? iPads, you know you upgrade once or twice a year. They keep it very similar to the iPhone cycle. Yeah, but the, so the, I think that although Apple does upgrade its iPads annually, and of course we saw that again here today, that doesn't support itself in the same way that the iPhone upgrade cycle does, which is very reliable.

Every year you have a very significant percentage of iPhone users upgrading to the next iPhone. I'm sure that other groups use this vocabulary as well, but we say that people are on the S-track, if they're only upgrading every other year, including Ross Miller here. With the iPad, I think it's just like, well, I have an iPad, it works fine.

I'm going to upgrade when it breaks. I know lots of people that still have an iPad too. So I think that the product cycles and the life cycles for these devices is actually very different from category to category. Lots of unanswered questions about the watch. We don't know if they're going to attempt to upgrade it annually. We don't know what they're going to do when they do upgrade it because you're sitting there with a chunk of actual 18-carat gold in your hand or whatever the material may be. Right. So that's, yeah, that's definitely an open question.

My question is, well, one of my many questions, is what did they do with the iPad Mini next year? Because I think one of the reasons that it was downplayed so have, we haven't talked about this yet, and I wanted to get into it. One of the reasons that the iPad Mini was so heavily downplayed this year is because the 6 Plus encroaches on its territory. And certainly, this is something that we've heard many times, and I believe it's true, if you bought a 6 Plus or if you're going to buy a 6 Plus, and you also want an iPad, you're almost certainly not going to buy the iPad Mini because it's so close to a 6 Plus. You'll probably get the big iPad. Well, it's even, it's less powerful than 6 Plus now, too, because it's still last year's processor. Yeah, that's a very good point.

So the question becomes, do they do a more significant refresh of the Mini next year? Or do they just kind of semi-permanently downplay the significance of the Mini in light of the very large phones that they're now making? I don't know. I don't know the answer. Yeah. And I think that we should also talk about the, not the elephant in the room, but something that we should talk is that kind of hangs over. Yesterday, of course, Google announced Android 5.0. It's a lollipop.

It is a lollipop. It is a lollipop. It is not lava cake or what are the other bases you in there? I was guessing Liam Gallagher, but that didn't happen either. Wow. I'm still bummed about Oasis five to ten years later. I really can't believe that up. But with that, of course, new flagship products, the ACC made Nexus 9.

Same resolution as the iPad Air, but 8.9 inch, 4x3 ratio, same. Also, pre-order start tomorrow with that. It's got a 64-bit processor first for a Nexus tablet. 2 gigs RAM, 9-hour battery life versus the 10 on the iPad Air, and it starts at $400 for 16 gigs. So it's priced very competitive with the iPad Air. Yeah, I think that Google definitely looks at this as a premium product. It's the first time that they've gone to HTC for a Nexus device in quite some time.

and I think it's super notable that they're going to four by three with this tablet instead of 16 by 9 or some other aspect ratio. It's pretty clear to me that they want this to be a direct competitor to the iPad line. It's kind of neither a mini nor an error in terms of size, but it falls somewhere in between. And I think that it's going to, I'm sure it's going to sell very well. because it's the right aspect ratio and it's a good-looking product.

That's a really good price for it too. Yeah. So does this affect the sort of balance of power between Apple and Google in the tablet space? I think that depends largely on how this is marketed, right? If we see this in stores everywhere, if we see big kiosks for it, I think they can make a dent. If you look at the Nexus 7, it's old very well, right?

In fact, there was a time when we said that the Nexus 7 was the only Android tablet that mattered. And I think that the Nexus 9 could be the new that. Right. I mean, in 8.9 inches, I mean, that's a perfect size. It's the iPad mini competitor with the right specs, the right price. You know, a lot of people are asking us to compare the two. The problem with that is, we know what the iPad is like. We tried today.

We haven't tried 5.0 in the Nexus 9. We haven't tried a final version of Android 5. We haven't touched a Nexus 9. Lots of unanswered questions, but I have a strong feeling they're going to be answered very soon. Yeah, and I promise, when we know what the Nexus 9 is like, we will tell you, and we will draw comparisons, of course, between the two because they are, as they are going on sale, both going on pre-orders tomorrow. Yeah. That's the if-then, if not that question. Yeah.

We're definitely not going to keep those impressions to ourselves. We're going to put those on the website. Not one bit. And I guess we should probably get up, as we're starting to wrap around the wrap. up one of those days. Also wrap around. I started a wrap around. Just like this. No, I was trying to wrap up. The iMac menu with Brennan display.

Yep. That's the big question. That's actually probably the most exciting announcement today. And you talked about the price. No, the Mac Mini was most exciting. No, I'm kidding. The Mac Mini was not the most exciting announcement. Yeah, look, $2,500 is a lot to spend on a computer for anybody.

But if you're going to spend $2,500 on a desktop, I can't imagine. not seriously considering this thing. Right. It's the total package. And ever since they did the last round of redesigns on the IMac and made them super thin, it's just a beautiful all-on-one. It's just, it's a really striking device.

And with this display, I mean, it's insane. The fact, one thing that they said a couple times on stage, which I think is just crazy to think about, is the fact that you can edit a 4K video, pixel for pixel, and still have room for the UI of the video editor around it, which is just, it's... Well, I mean, I'm curious about that allegation because it's 5K retina, but if you know, if you're a retina MacBook, you're not actually getting 5K, or you're getting the full retina display, you're getting fine-tuned pixels in like a 2,500 by 1,600. Like, sometimes they'll actually just, like, make it a crisper display using the extra pixel

space. So I'm curious what is, realistically, how people are going to use that screen. Yeah, yeah. Points versus pixel. Sorry, John is in my ear correcting all my techno babble. Thank you, John. I'm sure that our, I have to believe that our video team is kind of frothing at the mouth over this 5K display,

but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they think it's a piece of garbage. We'll have to have a serious conversation with them about this device afterwards. We actually, we have hands-on with the iMac retina, so people who've actually seen it can talk about it instead of blather. So let's take a look at that.

Hey guys, this is David at the Verge, and this is the new retina iMac. It's an iMac with a retina display. It has the CIS. same body as always. It's still super thin, but it has this brand new 50120 by 2880 display. That's exactly double the resolution of the last time. And there's a whole bunch of new technology in here to support it. There's a new timing controller which tells the pixels when to move and where. There's all kinds of stuff going on here. Apple basically had to

rebuild the display. They say it's the world's highest resolution display and honestly I have no reason not to believe that. The display looks amazing. You see every detail of Paris and the Eiffel Tower and everything looks amazing. It's designed for photographers and people who work with 4K video. And it really is. is just gorgeous and it's also still thin and light and really nice. The display is the hero here. It's $2,499 to start with a 3.5 gigahertz core I5 processor. You can speck it up and get a 3 terabyte hard drive

and 4 gigahertz core I7 processor. You can get really crazy with this thing, but this is very much the top of the line IMAC. It's really beautiful. You'll really have to see the screen to believe it. For most people it might be overkill, but it's really, really, really nice. This is the new IMA with Threatna display.

It's out right now. And it's probably the best computer screen I've ever seen. Okay, we actually wanted to talk about the IMAC retina, but we just saw this while the videos going on. Apple is actually including its own SIM card, one SIM mini options. So if you get a cell your iPad, you can just change the carrot on the fly, it seems. This is something that we're, and I'm sorry,

this is happening in real time. We're reading about it as we speak. But this is something that we have known that Apple's wanted to do for some time. moved to an embedded sim. This goes back to the Steve Jobs days. I think that there were rumors that he personally thought that Sims were onerous and terrible and needed to go away. And of course, Apple was a major force in getting the so-called 4FF,

the nano-sim pushed through the standards process and approved. They keep trying to make those sims smaller, and with the eventual goal of making them go away. And it looks like they have now achieved that. Almost. With the iPad era two. Yeah, they're definitely moving in that direction here. Single SIM can be, as Ross mentioned, can be reprogrammed,

depending on the carrier that you're taking the iPad 2. The practical benefit of this to the end user is really pretty small. I've never personally considered the SIM to be. that annoying. You just pop it out, you pop a new one, and the most annoying thing about it is something that Apple actually pioneered, which is the SIM tool with the tray, yeah, used to be that you just pop the battery cover off something with the SIM in it, take the SIM out, bolt sim out. But also now, like, they don't have to even create that functionality so you can make it a thinner device, the less ports it has to have. Right. The interesting thing is, and this is actually

on their official site, when you look at the iPad Air 2 stuff, there's one SIM description. It shows in the picture AT&T, it shows T-Mobile, show Sprint. Verizon, not listed. I don't know if that's still a separate device altogether. I can't imagine, but that is interesting. It certainly isn't a CDMA thing because Sprint is in that list. Yeah, I don't know. But it's, that's unusual.

And it's also unusual that this is something that they're introducing on the iPad, not the iPhone. Then again, correct me if I'm wrong, Ross, because you're in a walking encyclopedia and you know all things. A pop culture. Yes, this is not. I believe that the iPad is where the mini-sim first debut. The original iPad, I want to say, was the first production device to have a 3FF mini-sim. And then the iPhone 5, I believe, was the first production device to have a 4-FF nanosim. So they have pioneered some SIM technologies on the iPad before. And it looks like they're doing some. So again, here. If you look at it's selling Apple's page, iPad Air 2 slash wireless, all that,

participating in U.S. and UK carriers are AT&T, Sprint, TeamMobil, and, of course, EE in the UK. Everything Everywhere, which is my favorite name for a company ever. Right. With, of course, these subnotes, participating carriers are subject to change. Yeah, they must have worked. The only way they could have done this is by working with carriers to make this happen. And, you know, I have to say, I have to give Apple tons of crap.

regardless of whether you like Apple or not. Like the amount of control that they wielded over carriers, which are notoriously hard to work with, is amazing. To this day, they are basically the only manufacturer that is allowed to roll out from where updates willy-nilly without carrier approval. Usually that works out very well. Sometimes it doesn't, like with 8.0.1. But this is indeed very interesting, and it's something that we'll be doing some more research

on. But we should go back to the iMac. Yes. Go back to that Mac. Now this tangent's over. Yeah. So we saw David's hands-on, and by all appearances from everything we've heard from both David and also from Dieter, the display is miraculously good. Right.

It's just a question of whether you want to spend $2,500 on it. Or you could get some $1,000 on a 4K TV, Vizio's big push was the $999.99.4K. And get a new Mac Mini, which I'm not kidding. I'm actually kind of. excited about. Yeah. No, I mean, Tom Warren squealed with glee at the Mac Mini announced. I didn't know he was such a big Mac Mini fan, but apparently he is, I'm assuming that he's planning on installing Windows 8 on it. It just makes a really good, like, just, like, home PC. Like, just something you can hook up to your big TV and run Plex on it, run all your video apps. Because I think we just did an editorial on this, like Chris Plant did an editorial on this. That really is sometimes the best interface. And like, the most options come from, just a web browser hooked up to your big TV. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, that was actually a really popular piece of ours.

And you do all that? It's still cheaper. And it's got a bigger screen, too. Yeah, I hadn't considered that. That's a very good point. You don't get the, I mean, there's something really sexy and appealing about just having a single device that you pull out of a box and set down, and it's a 5K display with all these really amazing hardware components built in. but there is also something to be said for saving $1,000. Yes. It says the man who just buys a 6 plus off contract. And will not upgrade the software.

Look. Look, I'm just saying. So the base Mac mini starts at $499. Is that right? But although, like, you know, this is the fair comparison to IMac, it's just 1.4 gigahertz, Intel Core I-5, dual core. So, like, comparably to the specs, the IMac with retina is way better, way more powerful. I mean, it's definitely. Definitely at some point you can see this blurring the line with the Mac Pro because we do not have, and this is the thing people could ask them for, we do not have a new cinema display.

I think someone to point out, just pointed out, it's been 1,127 days since the cinema display was last updated. Thank you, Agent Polito for that. That's crazy. If accurate, that's insane. I bet that they could have and would have shown a 5K cinema display today, except that they didn't want to take the wind out of the sales of the IMA launch. That's my guess. I'm assuming that in 2015, WWDC would actually be a great place to debut it.

Which is where they debuted the Mac Pro, too, I believe. You might be right. The model, at least the form factor? They all blur together at all the events. But that would have been, or that would be a great place in 2015 to show a 5K cinema display. One thing that I want to point out, going back to the list of available Mac minis, the 699 model, which comes with a 2.6 gigahertz dual core I5, 8 gig of memory, and a 1 terabyte hard drive.

Very interesting. The $2,500 retina iMac has 8 gig of memory and a 1 terabyte hard drive. Really? Yeah. So that's pretty striking to go up by almost $2,000 in price and not get more memory of your hard drive. You're also talking about 3.5 gighertz quad core processor. we're talking about a lot more muscle and a dedicated graphics card. Whereas the Mac Mini, I'm assuming at Intel Irish Graphics, this is an integrated graphics chip.

Yeah, sure. I'm just saying that it seems like in late 2014, 16 gig should be the standard RAM level for what is by all standards a high-end desktop. So that was a little surprising to me. And I think that Dieter actually showed some surprise when he was live-blogging about that as well. that's fair if you need to ramp up to 16 gigs you're paying how much how much is that

you're adding 200 bucks 200 bucks well if you're spending $2,500 on a computer I guess you don't really care about that and also I don't know if this is still true I haven't checked in on memory prices recently but it used to be that you could save a ton of money by just picking the base level of RAM on an iMac and upgrading it yourself

um looking I'm actually like I'm pricing everything out right now John is asking John is our producer is asking if you can upgrade the memory yourself. That is actually a good question. No idea. But it used to be,

it certainly used to be that that was the way to go just because it was so much cheaper. And 32 gig is how much? $600. $600. So if you want to max out your IMAC right now, it's about $4,400? Keynuts.

Pocket change. Let's do it. Press the buy button. Do it. Can I borrow your credit card? Completely unrelated to this. I already goaded you into upgrading to YSemite right now.

It's not yet available. Assuming later today, and as soon as it does, I will, I promise you guys. I will download it and break my laptop. Make it happen. I think it just about wraps up everything today. Yeah. It wraps up most of the questions too. If guys have anything other questions, any want to hear any other news about the show or about Apple in general?

Check out the verge.com. It's a nice website. It's a little pretty. It's good. We're biased, but fairly so. Yeah. Want to think again, Deeter. Out of San Francisco, of course, Neil and David are also there covering the event live the entire time.

The entire crew here, everyone works in video and product and sales and everyone else in Vox Media. Oh, lovely people. Yeah, we should have a credit role. But that's about it. So, guys, thank you so much. Remember to check out theverse.com for anything else, and we'll see you next time.