The Vergecast - GTA leaks, TikTok search, and Apple reviews hotline

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

Welcome to the flagship podcast of measuring changes in gravitational force. 02:13 - David Pierce chats with video game reporter Ash Parrish about how footage of Grand Theft Auto VI has leaked online. GTA 6 gameplay leaks online in 90 videos Rockstar confirms hack, says work on GTA VI will ‘continue as planned’ 19:40 - David tries to use TikTok's search feature as a replacement for Google. 31:40 - Nilay Patel, Allison Johnson, and Victoria Song answer listener questions about the new iPhones and Apple Watch. Apple iPhone 14 Pro review: early adopter island Apple iPhone 14 review: meet the iPhone 13S Apple Watch Series 8 review: if it ain’t broke 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

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of measuring changes in gravitational force. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am recording this into the Apple Watch Series 8 that I bought myself on Sunday. That doesn't sound like particularly exciting news, but it does mean I've started leaving my phone at home, connecting my headphones to my watch, downloading a bunch of podcasts, and then going on screen-free adventures everywhere. It's great. I'm not going to lie to you. And I actually think this mic sounds pretty good. I'm sort of impressed. Anyway, today on the show, we have a bunch of big things to talk.

talk about. We're going to dig into the huge Grand Theft Auto 6 leak from over the weekend and what we know about both the game and what happens to it now as a result of the leak. We're also going to see if there's anything to this whole idea that TikTok is the search engine of the future and is going to replace Google for young people. And we're going to answer some of your Vergecast hotline questions about the new iPhones and new Apple watches. Big show. All that is coming in just a second, but first I actually have to charge this Apple Watch because it has a lot of good things going for it, but the battery still kind of sucks. This is the Vergecast.

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And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Welcome back. So over the weekend, somebody who goes by the screen named T-Pot Uber Hacker posted a three-gigabyte file with 90 videos

to a Grand Theft Auto forum that they claimed showed footage from Grand Theft Auto 6, a game that has been rumored and talked about for a while, but is reportedly at least two years away from coming out. But it's Grand Theft Auto. It's a huge deal. It's one of the most popular games on the planet. So with all of this stuff out there now, what do we know about the game and what happens now that so much has leaked?

That's what the Verges Ash Parish is here to tell us. Hi, Ash. Hi, David, how are you? I'm good. I'm torn about how I feel about this game. And it's causing me to feel a lot of feelings. But we're going to come back to those in a minute. But let's talk through this leak a little bit because like in the video game world, like we see leaks all the time.

everybody has sort of, there's different stuff coming out about different games. Everything is always rumored and reported. It seems like a very small industry that is full of people who like to talk. Give me a sense of like how big a deal something like this GTA6 leak is in the scheme of things. So leaks are never good from a development standpoint. Gammers have a reputation of being extremely hostile. They get very emotional about the things that they love and it, uh, manifests in this weird, like, hostility because you realize that these, these games that they love, the people that they're making it, they make their lives, like, harder because they believe, at least some of them believe they have some kind of, like, entitlement issue with these things

that they don't make or whatever and have no idea how they're made. So leaks, especially like the one with the GTA6 leak, where it's clearly in development assets. It was like over 90 videos. It was like debugging, like the developers were going through and debugging mission scripts and like that. So in the videos that you could see, like, a lot of textures haven't been added. There's a lot of, like, placeholder assets, placeholder text, things like that. It's not the most polished of looking things. So people see this, and they see that this is, like, still a work in progress, but they don't really, like, conceptualize that this is still in progress. So they believe, like, oh, this game looks like ass. It's going to be terrible. And then, you know, people are talking about this on social media and the stock

price tanks. Like the stock price for Take 2, I believe, like took a little dip by this because people are having all these negative opinions about this game that is still like two or three years out from being released because, you know, children can't, don't realize that this is something that still is being worked on. It wasn't meant to be seen like this. So it's a big deal. Developers hate it. They get on social media and they say like, this makes everybody's job harder. like this is counterintuitive to what you guys want, you know, the way that this leak was happened and the way people respond to it. It's just, it's just this big negative thing. And that's what we're dealing with right now. Yeah. And I feel like I have a really hard time

imagining any world in which it goes the other way where like a leak comes out like this and everybody's like, oh, looks awesome. Great job, Rockstar. Keep doing what you're doing. It's just like not how this world of gaming works. That like, of course, as soon as something comes out like this, people are going to find things to be mad about, in part because it's like in progress code. And in part because that's just how people react to this stuff. Right. Like it's like you were saying, I think with video games more than almost anything else, people feel this sense of like ownership over everything and anything that comes out that is this much different from what they think they want or expect or whatever people are going to freak out.

So there was, I can't imagine a world in which this went better, even if it was some like totally different kind of game or footage that leaked, right? Right. But it's really funny that you said that because not too long after the GTA 6 leak, Diablo 4, the game that Blizzard is working on, also leaked with like 43 minutes of footage. And I feel like people had a much more positive reaction to that than they did to DGA 6. Yeah. I mean, it's still like had the same issues that GTA 6 did. Like there were still like assets that hadn't been loaded in.

But I think because of the way that the leak was like perpetrated, like the GTA 6 leak, somebody, hacked into rockstar servers and stole like in development footage. The Diablo 4 leak was because I guess somebody was granted access to like a friends and family beta and they streamed it to not on like Twitch or anything like that, but through Discord and somebody recorded that footage and then leaked that footage. So it might be because like Diablo 4 looks like a little bit more further along in the development cycle. I mean, it should be. The game is supposed to come out sometime next year. Maybe that's why people are responding more positively to it. So, there are cases as slim as it is where people can see like, oh, okay, yeah, this looks cool.

Yeah. Okay. I mean, that's sort of encouraging, actually. And it just feel like the fact that this is happening to Grand Theft Auto specifically is sort of fascinating because GTA is this like legendary series. Tons of people like it. It's very popular. But it also, the last time I had this very funny moment when this league happened of I

haven't played GTA in a long time, but I had a pretty like when GTA 5 first came out, which was good lord like almost a decade ago. Yeah. Nine years. I played a bunch of it and it was Grand Theft Auto, but like, it was fun and I enjoyed it for the same reasons. Running around and punching strangers in the face in a video game is fun. Like, it's cool. And then I went back and I was like, oh, I wonder what's, you know, really changed in the game since I stopped playing it if there's a bunch of, and it's like, nope, nothing has changed.

It's just they're still selling you Grand Theft Auto 5. And this is just where we are. So is this like, are people just so pent up waiting for this new game that seems like it's been out and debated and rumored for so long that everybody is like desperate for this thing to come. out so they have very strong feelings about it? I think so, yeah. There has been a very long lag time between GTA 5 and now GTA 6. We've only just heard that GTA 6 was in development maybe a couple years ago. And you know, GTA 5 has become like rock star Skyrim, right?

They re-release it for every console. I believe you can play it on mobile now. Like it came out when the Xbox 360 was still a thing, right? So it's gone through two console generations in that meantime between time. And now because people are like anxious and desperate for something more, they've probably built up this idea in their heads of what they expect, you know, GTA 6 to look like. And, you know, they have high expectations on Rockstar because generally speaking, Rockstar delivers fantastic like narrative and gameplay experiences.

So yeah, like these people like expect it to be something and maybe because it's not meeting that expectations because we're looking at stuff that's been in development that it's at least two years old, that they're having a hard time coping. Right. Are you a grand theft auto person? Absolutely not. Not my wheelhouse, sorry. Why not? It's just not the kind of game that appeals to me personally.

Like, I appreciate it, like, aesthetically and from a distance, and I understand that a lot of people have a lot of emotions tied into it and a lot of other rockstar games because I know people love Red Dead Redemption 2 to death, and just not for me. Just not for me, which is fine. So what did we learn about this actual game that's coming from this footage? We kind of had heard reportedly that there was going to be. to be a female protagonist, which seems to be confirmed now. Did we learn any new stuff about what this

game is going to be? So Jason Schreier at Bloomberg reported on this early in the year that there would be a female protagonist. I think there's supposed to be like two protagonists, like a male and a female, and they're supposed to be based on Bonnie and Clyde. I think we got a little bit of that. We also got the fact that this is going to be set somewhere in Miami. I believe Jason's reporting also spoke something about reviving the Vice City. setting that happened with like GTA 3, I believe it was. So it seems like that's where the setting is, but I don't think beyond that, we have much more information other than, you know, it's vice city again or something vice city adjacent and we're going to be able to play as a woman.

It was funny watching some of the leaked videos because on the one hand, it, like, it feels very Grand Theft Auto. Like there's a whole scene where they're driving down the street in a stolen cop car with the driver door sort of swinging open into stuff. And then there's like that whole weird punching style that they, it's like it feels very Grand Theft Auto. And I wonder if that's one of the things people are responding to that it's like if we, if it's been a decade and you're still giving us a game that just feels like slightly newer grand theft auto, like what have we been waiting for all this time? But then again, this is all like debug footage from at least two years ago.

And it's just, it's very hard to sort through kind of what we know and what we don't even from a leak this big. Well, I guess I would say personally, like if it ain't broke, don't fix it. right? There's a reason why we're, you know, doing NBA 2K 2023 because it makes billions and billions of dollars, right? GTA three and four and five were, you know, they were different stories, but they kind of like all did the same thing. And with GTA 5 being able to be sold across two different console generations and still making gobs and gobs of money as it does, same with GTA online, which is like the same thing, but online where it's like a shared world or whatever, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? Like, you can add some new iterations in it to it. But, like, as long as it fits that traditional GTA formula, people are going to buy it.

They're going to eat it up. So, I mean, I'm not saying that GTA6 isn't innovative because, you know, we don't know anything about it. But from, you know, an academic standpoint, it makes sense that this is like the sameish. I mean, I guess we'll see. No, that's totally fair. And part of me wonders, like big picture for a company like Rockstar, when something like this happens, what goes on internally? The response they've given so far is basically like, bummer, this happened, we're still moving ahead, right?

Like, do we have any sense of what happens in a company like that after a leak like this? So not really. I mean, it's terrible. Like, the developers feel awful. I feel like more than anything, it's a huge hit to morale because now the poor community managers and whoever has the keys to the social media have to fend off like thousands of Twitter anime profile avatars like tweeting abuse at them because their game, which is unfinished. clearly in development looks like crap to them. But it seems like there's not much you can do about this like from a like a public standpoint. You can't really do anything but keep on keeping on, right? So they put out their statement saying this was the result of a hack. It sucks that you

learn about this game before we were ready to show you. But this hasn't deterred our ability to get this game to you at all. Like I don't think they said anything about it being delayed or anything like that. But the sense that I get is that this is far more like an internal morale thing more than anything else. But Jason Schreier, again at Bloomberg, also brought up the fact that this might have a problem or this might impact Rockstar's ability to have their employees work from home because of the way that this hack happened. Because the way that I understand it, the guy who hacked Uber is claiming responsibility from this. And the way that he hacked Uber was through social engineering. And so while he hasn't like said like, or Rockstar didn't say like this was

social engineering specifically, people are kind of like drawing the connections. If this guy really did do Hoover and Rockstar, it stands to reason that he might have used the same tactics of social engineering, like impersonating IT or something like that to get somebody to give up their login so they can get into the servers and take whatever they want. So it might impact employees' ability to work from home because, you know, Rockstar wants to lock it down a little bit better. And it's hard to do that when you've got employees far flung across wherever. Totally. Well, and I think there's also this bigger picture that if I really like put on my galaxy

brain hat, this is all happening at this really interesting moment in the games industry, right, where there's been this reckoning over the last couple of years about like the internal cultures of these companies and companies are starting to unionize and the whole sort of concept of crunch has come into real scrutiny. So there's this like, this industry feels like it's changing and there's like this internal tension of a lot of these companies. And I certainly don't have any evidence that that is like connected to the fact that it seems like these companies are also getting leakier, but part of me wonders, like, if I were to

sort of play the ten-dimensional chess here, if these things might be connected, but maybe I'm trying too hard on that one. That's interesting. I never really associated this, like, kind of, I don't, I don't want to say loosening with the idea that these companies might be opening themselves up to more dramatic breaches like this. I mean, I'll say that we didn't need to be in this, like, kind of work-from-home culture to have leaks like this happen. It's happened before when everybody was in the office crunching, you know, 14-hour days and it's happened now. So it's always going to be a thing. So I don't think you can say that, you know, these new work from home policies and this lack of crunch policies mean that more of this will happen. I mean, just the other day,

like, you know, leaks are happening because this guy was breaking NDAs left and right and he was just doing it for the cloud. So it's like it doesn't, it doesn't really matter, honestly, where people are. This is going to happen if determined individuals wanted to happen. But yeah, people are, shining way more of a light on how these big ticket AAA games are being made. And at least the people that I follow are saying, like, take the time that you need. We don't need this like right now. We would prefer your employees get these games done safely, healthly. If that means it takes a little bit longer, that's fine because nobody wants to do this anymore. Like nobody wants to crunch. Nobody wants to hear stories of like people losing their families or whatever because they had to work 17 hours a day.

So yeah, I mean, that's, I guess, the thing that I'm seeing. Yeah. No, it makes total sense. And it seems like at the same time, and this is kind of what you're talking about, like, these industries are just so sprawling now that it's like just the sheer number of people involved with building a game like GTA6 across like different companies and partners. And it's like there are people who work for like cloud services who know all the video games

that are coming in the next few years, right? And that's never been a thing before. I wonder if this is going to continue as this industry and these companies get bigger. it's going to get harder and harder for them to keep stuff like this under wraps over time. I mean, it's like it's like consumer devices, right? It's like it's always the accessory makers that leak them. And now in the world of video games that are on streaming services and are on a million different partners and have to sort of trickle out into the world in all these complicated ways,

I wonder if we're going to start to see more of this happen rather than less over time. I mean, we'll see. It happens a lot. You know, some storefront in Brazil will accidentally leak like the release date of some game because of, you know, whatever. So, you know, it's anybody's guess, but I don't think it'll be any more or any less than what we've seen in the past, being honest. Fair enough. All right. Well, what game are you playing right now if you're not playing GTA?

Yeah, no, I'm not playing GTA. Right now, I am playing Metal Hellsinger, which is a rhythm shooter. So it is, it's on Xbox Game Pass. It's also on Steam. You play as like a demon who lost her voice, who is fighting through, like, the realms of hell to get her voice back. And the way that it works is that, like, there's. metal, like heavy metal tracks in a playing in the background and you have to shoot on the beat. And when you shoot on the beat, you get a higher score multiplier and you do more damage.

It's a lot of fun. Oh, that sounds awesome. All right. Sold. For who needs GTA6? I'm going to go play that instead. You should. All right.

Ash, thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. Okay. We're going to take a break. And then we're going to go deep down the TikTok search engine rabbit hole. There's this idea out there that young people are using TikTok instead of Google. and I'm suspicious of that.

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Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. terms and conditions apply. Welcome back. I want to talk now about something I heard a few weeks ago and have been thinking about basically constantly ever since. So in July, there was the Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference, which is one of those fancy, thinky tech conferences for fancy people.

It's held in Aspen, and it's designed to be one of those places where people come to talk about big ideas and the future and whatever. And in the middle of the conference, Prabhakar Raghavan, who is an SVP at Google, and is for all intents and purposes, the guy in charge of search at Google said this on stage. Younger people don't come with preset expectations. In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they're looking for a place for lunch, they don't go to Google Maps or Search.

They go to TikTok or Instagram. So the journey begins in different forms than before, in visually rich forms. Again, this is the guy in charge of Google Search, one of the most powerful and popular products on the internet, the source of billions and billions of dollars in revenue for Google every year, saying essentially that the search engines of the future might be TikTok and Instagram, not Google. Prabhakar's point made a lot of headlines, in part because it also seems to confirm the way that younger internet users use the internet.

More videos, more photos, less typing what Google likes to call keyword ease into text boxes. I'm really not convinced that the world is as Prabacher makes it sound here, though. There's no doubt that search is changing and becoming more multimedia. I mean, just look at the fact that YouTube has long been the second most popular search engine on the planet just behind Google. And even Google is using lens and voice to become more multimedia. Soon you'll be able to point lens at something and ask questions about what you see. But you know who has a huge incentive to make it sound like Google is not the only company that matters in search? Google.

Good morning. We welcome everyone to this morning's hearing. on transparency and accountability, examining Google and its data collection, use, and filtering practices. If it can convince the world that TikTok and Instagram are real threats, it can maybe make regulators in particular just slightly less concerned about what it's doing on its search engine. But it's definitely true that TikTok in particular is investing in search. It's starting to offer search ideas on your For You page, and you can actually even see

in the content that people are starting to do something. that's more designed to be helpful and evergreen rather than like dance challenges. Here's the tutorial on how to tie your tie the easiest way. First you're going to place it in your hands like this. So I decided to try this out and see if TikTok is actually a good search engine. For a few days, I tried to search almost everything on TikTok before I looked for it on Google. And I started with the thing that Prabacher mentioned at the conference, looking for lunch. I searched the phrase restaurants in my neighborhood and got just nothing.

It turns out TikTok doesn't know where I live and doesn't know what I'm looking for. But then I searched for restaurants in Del Rey VA, which is where I live, and I got some useful stuff. Matt and Tony's is a good spot. So we do American Compa food, breakfast all day. So is Del Rey Cafe. Hungry in Virginia, check out Del Rey Cafe. The next result was one in Del Rey Beach, which is in California and literally thousands

of miles from me. Then I got pork barrel barbecue, which is near me, and also pretty good. is one of their most favorite platters. It's a barbecued rib, sausage. This whole thing kind of works, right? Then it was another Matt and Tony's recommendation. Then back to California. Then more California.

And then Matt and Tony's again. We are at Matt and Tonys. And yes, the snow did not stop us from trying to. I don't know that the information density here is super high. It took a really long time for me to basically get three names of restaurants. But it does work. And while we're on the subject of food, TikTok is actually an amazing tool for recipes.

You type in like chocolate chip cookies, and you can spend the rest of your life watching people make delicious-looking chocolate chip cookies. My holy grail cookie cookies. Chocolate chip cookie bars are the goat. A lot of those videos move really fast, so you have to watch them a bunch of times and take notes, but there is a ton of good information here. Just listen to this bite. There are even TikTokers who go through other TikToks to find the best chocolate chip cookie recipes from TikTok to show you on TikTok. And I scoured the seemingly endless collection of chocolate chip cookie recipes on TikTok to bring you these. It's bananas. Today we're making soft banana chocolate chip cookies, so grab your dusty-ass ripe bananas.

What doesn't work here at all is actually the number one thing people use Google for. Opening web page. The main reason most people go to Google search is to get to like Facebook and YouTube and Amazon. They type in those words into the search box. TikTok just won't help you there. It's also not at all useful for answering basic questions. Like, what time is it? Which is number four on the list of most asked questions in Google, according to one study

I found. And how many ounces in a cup, which is number five on that list. But the number one question on Google, according to that same study, is what to watch. People just want to know what TV and movies to watch. And TikTok is pretty interesting there. It's literally called Devil Man Cry Baby, which is like the hardest title I've ever heard. The first video I got when I searched was a bunch of recommendations for stuff to watch on Netflix.

This is a show for the dudes and the guys. Another was the new shows coming out on streaming, but that video was several weeks old, so they weren't that new anymore. The resort will be coming out on Peacock. It's a black comedy mystery show. But it still was kind of helpful. And it stars William Jackson Harper. Another one was stuff to watch after you finished the summer I turned pretty, which I did watch and did very much enjoy. This is actually a really helpful set of results. Okay, let's keep going. Music is all over the most popular Google search results, as is people looking for broad topics,

Googling things like Fortnite. Well, damaging a llama builder, and ASMR and Billy Eilish. In that world, you're not looking for anything in particular, just something in that genre. And TikTok is like an endless supply of all of that. Here's one for all you Billy Elish fans. Also, movie trailers are a good one. Mortal Kombat Movie 2021 was one of the most search things on Google. And Godzilla versus Kong was also at the top of that list.

TikTok covers all of that really well, though you don't usually get full songs or full trailers, and a lot of times you get remixes and jokes before the actual content you might be looking for. You can imagine, by the way, why TikTok might be interested in making a full music app to give people easier paths to this kind of stuff. It seems to me that Google really shouldn't be worried about TikTok as a search engine. You look at the stuff people search and it's USPS tracking and weather tomorrow and what time is the Super Bowl. Google is obviously lots of things to lots of people, but it's mostly a glorified question and answer service or a way to find more information on the internet. TikTok is just not set up to do that.

But you know who should be afraid of TikTok search is YouTube? Okay, so a common problem I hear from people when making rice is that it gets stuck to the bottom of the pot. One thing that jumped out to me is hashtag TikTok taught me, which is a huge success. story, and it goes right at the kind of DIY, how do I change a tire or kind of content that YouTube is so well known for. Personally, one thing I keep searching for is back stretches, because I have back problems and I sit in front of a computer all day, and it's just overall bad news. TikTok is perfect for this, and the videos don't come with those long preambles you get on

YouTube. I don't need 14 minutes of personal history before you show me the stretches. It's just 30-second video of stretches after 30-second video of stretches, and it rules. I'm going to grip into the doorframe with my hand slightly below chin level. Let's take our chin towards our chest. As far as quick, helpful visual information, TikTok is actually a much more efficient system than YouTube. I don't think the results are always as good, but TikTok does make it easier to just flip through your options to find one that works. It's less of a search engine and more of like a choose-your-own rabbit hole adventure story, which is a new but kind of fun way to think about search.

I will say though, if search really is a long-term focus for TikTok, the platform is definitely going to need to change a bit. Right now, for instance, creators only get the one link in their bio, so there are tons of folks who are just like, I posted my new recipe and make a video to show it off, but then by the time you get to that video, that link is gone. Also, TikTok is still all about the For You page, which means people are using sounds and doing challenges and generally doing everything they can to show up right when you open the app. longer in-depth, evergreen, helpful how to change attire content isn't really going to work

in that space. So TikTok is going to have to find a way to incentivize people to make more search-friendly stuff if it really wants to take on YouTube that way. All of this is to say, I don't think Google is under any actual threat here. I don't think 40% of people are going to keep using Instagram and TikTok, even if that was ever the case. But it is not the only search engine worth using anymore. For a lot of things, 10 Blue Links is still the writing.

answer. But for a lot of others, it turns out an endless stream of vertical video might be even better. I don't know that I'll ever end up actually making these chocolate chip cookies that I've been staring at for hours and hours and hours. But it's really fun to watch other people make them. And that might be just good enough. Okay, we're going to take a break, and then we're going to come back and answer some of your most burning questions about all of Apple's latest devices. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, you know, that every hire counts, but time and resources are limited. Finding, connecting with, and screening the right candidates takes up valuable time you could be giving to your customers. That's where

LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. Nearly 60% of hirers find a candidate to interview within a week. With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focused shortlist that actually moves

your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. Support for the show comes from Anthropic. Not every question has 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 citation. turning hours of research into minutes.

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Claude.aI. slash vergecast. Welcome back. Now that we've posted our reviews and had a chance to test some of Apple's new phones and watches, we asked you to send in your biggest most burning questions about the new stuff to our Vergecast hotline, which, don't forget, is 866 Verge11, and you can also always record a voice memo and send it to

Vergecast at theverge.com that works too. Thanks to everybody who called in, we really love hearing from you, and please keep calling with all of your burning tech questions about Apple or otherwise. We got a lot of questions about Apple. So I'm sorry we're not going to be able to get to everyone's voicemails, but we are going to try to answer some of the most common ones and some of the most fun ones. Let's dig into the phone a bit first, which means I should bring in Alison Johnson, who reviewed the iPhone 14, and Eli Patel, who reviewed the 14 Pro. Hi, Nilai. Hey, buddy. How how are you doing? I'm good. Hi, Allison. Hello. Fresh off of iPhone reviews, everyone has recovered, ish. I tried to buy an iPhone this weekend, and I failed. I'm devastated about it. Oh, no.

Just from watching football on Sunday, every carrier in America will just throw an iPhone at you if you get anywhere near their stores, from what I understand. It's very difficult to pay for one. Yeah, I managed to get my dad an iPhone Pro Max, which he's very excited about, and my mom an iPhone Pro, which she's very excited about. And literally, those were the last two that Apple had available in the store. And so they were just like, David, you get nothing. Okay, but anyway, we have a bunch of hotline questions.

Let's just dive into them. So I think, Andrew, let's just play the first one. Hey, David and Vergecast team. So I've been a long-time user of Android for the last five or six years, so originally with an iPhone user. And with the new iPhone 14 in the dynamic island, it had to be considering switching back to iPhone. I originally switched because it was customizable, but I wonder now, is iPhone more customizable than Android? Can you scratch that it if you need it? Really curious by your thoughts. Thanks. I have thoughts on this, but Nilai, you made a face while we were listening

to that question. Why did you make a face? Because the answer is flatly, no, the iPhone is not more customizable than Android. It is more customizable than iPhones in the past. And it's getting closer to Android, but your average Android phone, I mean, you can just replace the app launcher. I mean, you can do anything you want an Android phone. So it just depends on what itch you are trying to scratch, I guess. But if you're like an all-out customizer, I think Android's still where it's at. Allison, is that your take too? Yeah. And it's gotten better. It's gotten, there's a lot more you can do now than in the past. Apple's slowly adding more things we can do. Like, you know, the lock screens are fun. But you're just,

still definitely playing within the realm of what Apple thinks looks good. They do not want you to walk around with an ugly iPhone lock screen because that would embarrass them. Android, you can make it as ugly as you want if you want to do that. So yeah, yeah, I agree with that. It's more fun. You can have more fun with it now. I would say also that the dynamic island is not customizable at all. It is the appearance of customizable. But Apple is deciding what happens in that island. Yeah, I was actually going to ask about this because we talked about this a few days ago and we're still in the sort of like who knows what's going to happen here. And now it's like been a few days. I opened up my phone.

I had 25 app updates this morning. So it's like everybody's sort of on the iOS 16 train. Have either of you seen anything that is like dynamic island sparking something cool here? No. Yeah. Okay. No, because the big update is the live activities API, which isn't out yet. So I don't think third party apps will be able to use the island until that API is out.

I did the exact sequence of things to get two things in the dynamic island at once. Just like naturally, I was listening to a podcast and I set a 15 minute timer to take a COVID test. And it was magical for a second. Yeah. But that's as exciting as it gets right now. All of our dreams coming true at once. Okay. So this feels good.

It's more customizable than it once was. But if you switch to Android because it's customizable, stay on Android. I feel like you can make it as ugly as you want was like five years of Samsung ads, and it's still true. But if you switch to Android because you wanted to customize your lock screen and put widgets on the home screen, you know, Apple's got you now. That's true. Like if you want to change the default messaging app on the iPhone, Android will let you do that.

If you want to add a third-party app store to an Android phone, you can do it, and Apple will not let you do that. Right. All right. Let's move on to the next one. Andrew, what do we have next? Hey, guys. This is Dax.

one question about the iPhone 14s. I have been a long-time Android user, and I think my friends might actually get to me this year, and I may or may not switch to an iPhone, but I don't want to be that guy that gets the iPhone the one year before it goes to Type C. Do you think this year is the time to make that call and switch? I really appreciate the input. Thank you. So I just want to say on one hand, this was a trend of the voicemails that we got from people, this idea that I have been an Android user for a long time and now I'm tempted back by the iPhone 14, which I find fascinating. Because I think our takeaway is like, this phone is cool, but it's not going to like blow your mind out of your head. But there are a lot of people who are like, I have been an Android fan

for a long time and maybe now it's time to get back into Android. But USBC, is this the last year? Is our friend Dax stupid to buy an iPhone this year because they're going to switch next year? Well, it depends on where you live, because every carrier now, it will just be. just give money to you to switch every year. That is true. If you live in the United States, it feels like you can scheme your way into getting a new phone every year for no money. Right. And you're kind of just going to end up signing a new to your contract over and over again. But like I've come to peace with this idea because when am I going to not have carrier service? Right. That said, it does feel like the USBC changes coming to the phone. I don't know if

it's next year, the year after. I think you'd be okay for a while. I don't know. There's still like, there will still be tons of support for lightning many years. And they come, many, many hotels will have some weird lightning connector, you know, dock to play your phones. But it's the other way around, right? If he was an Android person, he's probably got a bunch of USBC cables. Oh, that's true. Buying a bunch of lightning cables for one year seems dumb.

I would wait. If that's like, if that's what you're describing, like, I'm fully invested in USBC. I'm kind of tempted by this phone, but I'll feel dumb if I buy a, a life's worth of cables and then what the next year they go yeah you should wait the answer is dongles i can't believe we didn't get here yet the answer is buy a bunch of lightning to USBC converters and your life will just be terrific no i think that's right i would wait but i also i think you're right neli that the like can i buy this year's phone and also next year's phone is not as hard a question as people think actually especially in the u.s where people will just

fall all over themselves to give you giant amounts of trade and money for whatever phone you bring them. Yeah, the carrier marketing for the new iPhone is out of control. Like, it's wild. Verizon is running ads with celebrities in them being like, buy a new iPhone 14. And it's like, everyone knows about the iPhone 14. Do you need to hire celebrities to do this? All right, let's move on. So next one is from John in New York. Andrew, what do we have? Hey, Virge. This is John from New York. Really love the show. I would love to know more about the decision behind the digital sim. Seems like the U.S. was the only place that really adopted this, and I wonder what it means for cell phones and global travel if this is going to be

the future of mobile usage. It was actually really challenging for me to get my digital sims started on my iPhone 14 Pro. Really curious to see what you guys are thinking about it. I like this one because this is also a thing that was kind of floating around the internet all weekend was that people were having trouble activating. I saw a bunch of people who were saying like Verizon was having a hard time with the e-sims in it. It's just a lot of questions of like, is this a good idea or are we just solving a problem that doesn't exist by like throwing more technology at the problem. Alison, what's your sense of this?

Where are we in the ESIM world right now? It's weird because I feel like half the people I follow are really into it and think it's pro-consumer. And the other half are like, I hate ESM with a fiery passion. I had no trouble with it. I don't do a lot of international travel. So it's not really my use case. But I feel like the people who I know who do travel are the ones who are more amped up about

ESIM and that it'll make it easier to kind of swap when you get to another country. I don't, I can't speak to it too well. I set this phone up in the back of an Uber on the highway and it worked fine. It's a bold strategy. Yeah, it was, it was real exciting. Yeah, I feel like you can, you can describe sort of abstractly the pro-consumer argument, which is, it should be really easy to sign up a phone for network service and thus compare plans and pricing faster and switch faster.

All of that, if you make all that switching faster and easier, the carriers will have to compete more because you might switch away from them. It's like switching web pages at that point, essentially, rather than switching devices. That's the idea, right? You don't have to go into a store. You just say, that one's cheaper. You press a button and you have it. That's how that's supposed to work.

But then that kind of runs into reality. Like, at least here in the United States, it runs into like pretty brutal reality, pretty fast, which is the reason they could do in the United States is because there's only three carriers. So they could get the three main carriers on board. and then every other carrier, minus a few regional carriers, like U.S. cellular or whatever, but every other carrier is basically like an MVNO. Like they're basically just like reselling in most cases T-Mobile service or Verizon service. And so you hear like people on like visible had like real problems.

But that's it's still like a different cut at like Verizon's network, I think. So they're able to do it here because they only had to make three deals around the world. They can't just, they haven't made all the deals yet. So they still need a physical SIM tray. The other thing that's really weird is that when you. go to add an ESIM, it doesn't just show you the available networks and let you sign up for them. You need to like scan a Q, you need to go get an ESIM kit and scan a QR code or at least go to a website and scan a QR code, which is really weird because the iPad works as you would expect.

If you have an iPad and you go to add a cell plan to an iPad, it'll pop up a screen of available data plans and just let you sign up for one on the iPad. So it's like they're halfway there, but then the brutal reality of the uncompetitive American market is right in front of you, and then they haven't, like, built the rest of the functionality that would make that pro-consumer vibe, like, work. And then, as we just said, like, you're locked into a two-year contract in the United States anyway. So, like, you're not switching as much. I don't know, like, it's the beginnings of something. I think most people do not interact with their SIM cards at all. But if you could travel internationally and just, like, open your phone and be like, I've landed

in Europe and, like, hit the button and see all the networks and sign up for the cheapest one for, you know, a month. That would be amazing. They just haven't built any of that yet. I mean, it goes back to the like theoretically pro consumer argument, right? Where you can like, you can see why somebody thought this was a very good idea. And at the end of this, it's like, okay, this is the intended behavior. But like you were saying, like this is a lot of work for three carriers in the U.S. with Apple, who has more leverage in this space than any other company to pull this off. Forget going to Europe where there's a million carriers and a million countries with vastly different ideas about how all of this is supposed to work.

It just feels like the idea that any company, including Apple, is going to be able to sort of exert. its authority that way is just like basically non-existent. So then what you have is you have the European phone and you have the American phone and those two things are like borderline interoperable. So if I'm a person who lives in the U.S. but travels a ton internationally, is the move to buy the Europe phone? Like is that fly to London, buy a phone there and don't tell anybody you still have a physical

sim when you're in the U.S.? You'll miss out on millimeter wave, big bummer. I feel like I can live with that. Like I'm good. Of all the tradeoffs here, I can live without millimeter wave. Well, I think it's just that it's sort of the behavior that matters, right? It sounds like a lot of people fly to Europe and then just buy a burner sim for a weekend and throw it away and come back.

Like, that seems to be what people are describing to us. Like, I just show up and I buy a SIM card at the airport and I throw it in my phone and I use it till it's done. And then I fly home and then the next time I show up and do it again. So there's an answer that is you show up at the airport and instead of buying a physical SIM card, you buy a QR code and you use that until it's done and you walk away. But I think that just has to all get teased out into practice. All right.

We have one more before I let you two go and then we're going to talk about the watch. This is not about the phone, but it's about cameras and you two are my favorite camera nerds. So let's hear the next one. My name is Zhef. I run the JCP Tech YouTube channel and I was wondering, what has the Apple made a camera? Because it seems like that would be a really obvious place to put their money into. Like, I know, like, pretty much everyone has a Sony 87S3 these days. So like, why isn't there an Apple camera?

And thanks for answering my question. I love this question so much because, A, I desperately want to live in a world where everyone has an A7S. Like, this is just, these are our people. I love it. The answer is Apple does make a camera and it's called the iPhone, right? Like, that's, that's just what this is. It is the most popular camera in the country, for sure. In the world, probably. Yeah. The question here is why hasn't Apple made a mirrorless camera for creators? Because Apple makes a camera, several models of camera. If you think about the iPhone that way. But why haven't they made an awesome camera for creators? creators. Right. And I think, like many things with Apple, they have probably looked at that market and said, that's not even a tenth of the size of AirPods in terms of money that it will make us. So no. And those cameras exist. And, you know, there's a long history with them. And to enter a market like that, you have to commit to creators. And I'm just leading up to saying, have you used Final Cut

pro? Because Apple's history in that market is actually not one of great success. So I guess, why you'd want them to do it. On the other hand, I don't know that you want Apple making the kinds of aesthetic decisions in that kind of camera that it does in the iPhone. And sure, you can shoot in pro r now and you can shoot in pro res and back off the aesthetic decisions, but it's Apple, right? They're going to be on by default. The Apple look will be on by default. And I'm, I'm not sure that's, that philosophy is compatible with that user base. If my A7C put out JPEGs where everybody was orange, like previous iPhones have, I would be so pissed. Yeah, like the worst built-in lightroom preset of all time.

Yeah. Yeah, there's just, there's weirdness there. But I get, like, why doesn't Apple just make a great camera is a question that's been asked for years and years and years now? And kind of the answer is the market is just not big enough. I think that's right. Yeah, I mean, in the last year or so, a lot of people have been talking about wanting Apple to make a webcam again, because suddenly the webcam market was hot for, you know, nine months. I do think going super heavy on the camera would be a really fun future for the iPod touch,

that they're just like, this is our cheaper camera. It doesn't have all the other cool stuff, but we put the best camera in it. Do they even still make the iPod touch? No, I don't think so, if I'm being completely honest with you. I forgot, which is sort of the point, right? Like, this is... Bring it back. The iPod camera, just to confuse everybody.

Pro. Max. It's an 11-inch screen. It's just a television with a camera on the back. Yes. Thank you both. We're going to talk about the watch and ring on V, which means you both have to go, but thank you both.

Appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, hello. Hello. Thank you for being here. No problem. All right, we have a bunch of watch questions.

People have a lot of feelings about watches. So we're just going to go through a couple of them. Andrew, you want to play the first one for us? Hi, Vergecast. Derek here from New Zealand. So I charge my Apple Watch in my car on my commute so that it's charged all day, and then it's charged at night for sleep tracking. But if I have to wear my Apple Watch

for the crash detection to work, I mean, what? We're going to actually answer this question, but I just have two things I have to say before we do. One, the official pronunciation of Vergecast is now in a New Zealand accent, so I just like everybody to know that. And two, how did I never think about charging my Apple Watch

in the car? That's a genius plan. It's like the one time it's totally superfluous to my life and I can just charge it. This feels like a good idea, right? Yeah, no, it's an excellent idea. I just think, you know, I don't actually commute by car much, so I've just never thought about it. Because, you know, I'm in New York City, so when am I going to, like, I don't, I'm not really commuting by car much.

But for long trips, now I'm just like, oh, because it's totally intuitive to charge your phone in the car. But I've just never thought about charging my watch in the car. I know. I love this. I'm all in. Okay, but let's talk about the crash detection thing here, which is like, I sort of wanted to do this question, just because it's representative of a lot of questions we've gotten about like, how does crash detection actually work?

What is it trying to do? How does it know I'm wearing the watch? How does it know I've been in a crash? And I'm assuming the answer to if you're in the car and you're not wearing the watch and you get in a crash, it probably won't register. I don't know. But what do you, what can you tell us about how all of this actually works? So I actually asked Apple about this earlier today because I also was like, oh, I don't know.

I don't know the answer to this. But they basically told me that it was, you know, intended to be worn on the wrist. That doesn't mean it won't necessarily work. It just means, like, they've done a bunch of testing with, like, dummies where you're putting, you know, the Apple Watch in various parts of their body and whatnot. So they've done a lot, a lot of testing on this, but it's all on human bodies because I think the assumption is if you have the watch in the car, you're probably wearing it. Obviously, the rest of us have not got. on Derek's level and realizing that commuting with the watch, it's like the perfect, it's legitimately the perfect time to charge the watch if you're commuting by car. He gets it. He's

on a level that we're not on. So crash detection works because it has a new accelerometer that can detect up to 256 Gs. The previous watches could only detect up to 32. So that's like orders of magnitudes different. And it also has an improved gyroscope. And all of these things are working with the barometer, GPS, and I think the microphone to detect whether you've been in a severe car crash. But it's a really fascinating feature because it does seem like Apple's thought really hard about it in terms of how the watch interacts with your phone. So like if you crash the car and you know, you have your phone and your watch on you, it'll route the call through your phone because it's got the better antenna. But it's going to appear on your watch. And, you know, you have a

because that's more likely to be on you and you don't know where the phone is during your, you know, like in the aftermath of crash, you have no idea where that might have gone. So it's, they've thought a lot about it. It's just, I don't think we really know how it's going to work until unfortunately people get themselves in that situation. Like, I've been in really bad lift rides where it was so stop and go. I felt like I was going to hurl. Yeah. But that doesn't actually trigger it. and New York drivers are New York drivers,

and I went hiking this weekend. So there were a couple of close calls, but no actual, like, trigger. Right. Yeah, the part of it that gives me hope, like instinctively, it seems like it would make sense that if it wasn't on your body, it wouldn't be looking for that stuff

just because it's like, why would it be sort of operating if you weren't wearing it? But then I think about the fact that the iPhone 14 now has crash detection, and it's clearly not meant to be worn on your body. So it is, like you're saying, able to do some of this sensing,

even when it's not on your body. And the Apple Watch might be treating it differently, but it at least seems like technically it's possible for this stuff to work even when the device is not physically being on your body, watching you like thrash around in the backseat. Yeah. So it's designed to detect like extreme impact and changes in speed. So you have to really hit a certain threshold for that to really kind of trigger.

It's in quote unquote testing because I can't really test it in an ethical way. that doesn't risk my life. At least, we haven't figured that out just yet. You know, in testing this, it's very, it reminded me a lot of testing fall detection. So like back when fall detection was a thing, myself and a bunch of other reviewers would just, you know, leap off a bed into a bunch of pillows to see if we could trigger it. And I have yet to trigger it in real life. I've eaten it while running as well.

But I wasn't injured enough to be lying there prone, which is part of like the fall detection works. So I think you're not really going to get false positives, which is, you know, which is a big thing. Some other similar safety features like Garmin's fall detection, you could just have a really hard stop and your loved ones are going to be told you've had an incident. So I have hope because it sounds like it's very sensitive. And I haven't triggered it yet with my terrible driving. So there you go. It's for the best.

Yeah. If you have been in a car crash and you have gotten crash detection, call the hotline and tell us. about it because I am very curious. Do not crash your car on purpose to do this, but if it's happened to you, we'd love to hear about it. All right, let's move on to the next question we have, Andrew. You want to play it for us? Hey, guys. I'm just wondering if it's really worth getting series A for the S.E. Basically for the always on display, because I don't know if I really need the other sensors. Thank you. Bye.

Okay, so don't get the S.E. That doesn't have an always on display. So, That's one of the things about the ESI. You're missing some of the advanced sensors and the Always on display. That's why it can be cheaper than the other watches. But I used to just very gung-ho say that everyone should just be getting the Apple Watch SE because, you know, I wasn't 100% sold on the need for an Always on display. But after a few years, I really do like it. I think it's an excellent feature. It makes it more like an actual watch and that you can always see the time. And the other thing about it is it's just so much easier when you're in a workout. Because like when I'm running and I want to check a certain metric or like this weekend

when I was on a hike and I want to see the compass, you can. You can look down and glance at certain things. It's not going to be, it's refreshing at a much slower rate. So you're not going to see some detail. But you don't necessarily have to bring your wrist up and flick it in just the right way to see the things that you need, it wakes up like a half second faster. And it's like not necessary, but it's super nice. It's like now I'm a team always on display. Yeah, I always have been. And I honestly think even since the first one, like it's it's not a watch if it doesn't show you the time. Like that it just, that's just the rules. And Apple still has not solved that arm gesture you're talking about. Like if I just sort of like flick my wrist over, the screen doesn't turn on,

you still have to do this like very exaggerated like bring your arm up to your face and if you have to do that every time you want to look at your watch that is bad to me it's like always on screen or don't get an apple watch like i like i genuinely believe that yeah well you know when you've been in the wearables game as long as i have you you kind of master the flick like i i get the flick every single time it almost never not you know wakes up in what i needed to but it's just like five, six years of having to do this, the muscle memory is there. So if he's upgrading from the series four or earlier, you know, and you don't need the other sensors, I think it's totally fine to just go for the SE because you've never had the always on display. You don't know what you're missing. I went from the Apple Watch Series 5 to the SE when I was testing, and I knew what I was missing. That made me so happy to go back to the watches with the Always on display after. So if you don't know what you're missing and it really is something where you're prioritizing budget, you know, you can't miss what you don't know. So that's one thing. That's fair. But then back to the

question, what they're saying is like if the always on display isn't enough, is it worth upgrading? And in that case, I feel like the answer is probably not, right? Like there's nothing so sort of dramatically spectacularly better in these that if you're happy with the one that you have, you should upgrade, right? Definitely for the series four or later. I think if you have a series three, it's time. It's time to put this watch to rest. It's five years old, which, you know, in terms of gadgets, that's ancient. But there are some things where I actually do think the software is worth upgrading for. It just depends on your individual use case. So the new redesigned compass app is bomb. I love it. It is so good. It is finally really useful for hikers or like trail runners in a way

that, like, it was just a compass before, and you're like, cool, I have no idea what a bearing means. Like, this doesn't help me. I'm terrible with directions. I, like, it's just really sad. But this was a major upgrade. The thing is, is that the redesigned Compass app isn't coming to the series four. You'll get it on the series five, but it's not going to have the really nifty stuff like Backtrack or Waypoints.

So if you do want that stuff and you think it'll be useful for your life, you're going to need to get at least a series six, the first-gen-sexual. or later. So, you know, that's one thing where if you're an outdoors person and you really like that stuff, it's definitely one thing where I think actually, yeah, that is worth upgrading for you. If you stay inside all the time, nah, you're good. Don't worry about it. Fair enough. That is good advice right there. All right. Thank you to everybody who called in. We got tons of questions. I'm sorry we can get to them all. V. Thank you. Appreciate it. Super helpful. No problem. Okay. And that's it for the Vergecast this week. Thank you so much for listening. As always, there is tons more coverage on everything we talked about at our newly redesigned website, Theverge.com.

There's also a bunch more Apple stuff coming in the next few days, so keep it locked over there. You can also follow all of us on Twitter. Ash is Ad Astra, Allison is Allison Joe 1, Neelai is reckless, V is Vic M. Song, and I'm Pierce. This show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Norie Donovan is our executive producer, and Brooke Minters is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you have thoughts, feedback, feelings, buried treasure, or want to help us crash some cars and test G-forces, you can always email Vergecast at theverge.com. Also, we're getting an episode ready all about cybersecurity, and we're going to do a full-on call-in show answering your questions.

So if you have a cybersecurity thing you can't figure out, or better yet, you have a crazy mystery you can't solve. Call us at 866 Verge 1-1 or send us a voice memo to Vergecast at Vurge.com, and we'll get back to you if we think we can help. Alex Neely and I will be back on Friday to talk about more Apple stuff, Peloton's new rowing machine, dislike buttons on YouTube, and much more. See you then. Rock and roll.