The Vergecast - I Don't Think Anyone is Great

Episode Date: April 10, 2015

There is finally an actual Apple Watch in the studio, and Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, Joanna Stern, and Sam Sheffer are on hand to look at it, talk about it, and force touch it. Also on the show are the new MacBook, Android Wear on iOS, and a genuine Motorola selfie stick. Join us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That is podsurvey.com slash vergecast. If you are not able to understand or type in this URL, I have no idea why you're listening to the show. but take the survey help us make money keep the thing free get a hundred dollar gift card thank you hello welcome hello welcome with red chas i'm gonna i'm just gonna preface the show just preface preface preface i am very tired it's a good name for a product preface preface the motorella preface yeah yeah the hcc preface i think would be a fly yeah obviously oh boy anyway i'm very tired as you might know we did apple watch review this week it i've been

didn't do my job this week. I did that. Deeter did the Macbook error. Whatever. The MacBook, the MacBuch, that's it. Review this week. We have basically just been... Joanna. It was going to be a surprise, man. Spoiler. I was asleep on the mic. Joanna had the same problem. So, hello and welcome to the Vergecast. I'm just letting you know it's going to get weird. But I'm Neely. I am Deeter. We have a special guest, Jay Stern, Joanna Stern. Hello, I'd like to use this mic as a pillow. I'm so Yeah, we're all very tired. And then, my man, Yo, hype command. What up? Sammy Chef. I'm here. I'm periscoping. I'm not really paroscoping. Good.

You know, it's a time-delayed radio show. It's fine. The information that you're, A, one, you could be lying and no one would know. B, no one can watch your periscope because it's later. There was a, there was a hard split of people that were like, you're going to cannibalize a stream. And it's like, no, we want to see. It's like, What do you want to see my face for 40 minutes straight? I want to see your face for 40 minutes. Thank you. Can I have any choice, actually? I'm looking directly at you.

It's a great site. Joanna called me old. So for those that don't know, Joanna used to work at Engadgett with all of us. And she was at the verge for a bit too. And so we know each other for, well, us as in like me and Eli and Joanna. And basically, Joanna called me old and I'm 24 and I don't think I'm old. So Joanna, I'm a little hurt, Sam.

I used to be your mother. Well, you still are. This is your last year of freedom. I gave birth to Sam when I lived in the Shagadgett. And he was my child. You were my Jewish mother. That is true. And my Jewish mother called me old.

Sam get, have a bris and then have a bar mitzvah. And he was a baby then. She saw all of the Jewish events in your life. I think he was even in high school, maybe, when we were working at Engadget. Were you in high school? No, I was a sophomore in college. Well, you acted like you were in high school. Thank you.

Sternburn. So once you were young and now you're old. He's just matured. It's so lovely to see. You look very nice. You've got a nice style today. I like your hair. You have your own desk.

Why are you going to get a girlfriend, Sammy? You should be a nice girl. And I'm just so proud of your success. Thank you, John. I really appreciate that. But you call me old. No, it was in a good way. You look mature.

Thank you. I mean, also now that you're 24, you're going to. to start settling when it comes to finding a girlfriend. Yeah. I'd prefer to settle in Catan. Wow. I don't know that that was quite the return burn that you thought it was. It wasn't more of a...

I prefer to be alone with a board game. Which is fair. I mean, if that's your speed, we love everyone. I love you. All right, let's begin. Somehow. You're wearing a thing. I'm wearing a thing.

What are you wearing? Joanna. It's just like... Close your way. Close your. You're done. I know we have free Wi-Fi here. I know you're eager to use it.

Free Wi-Fi. It's crazy. Well, somebody just open your laptop again. It's not like Starbucks when it logs you out every 20 minutes. It just keeps you on. That's it.

I love it here. Somebody needs to come and read you guys at bedtime store. Box media. We have free Wi-Fi. Love it here. All right. I'm wearing a watch. What are you wearing?

I'm wearing today. My Melanie's loop. Is that the 38? Yes, this is a small one. Okay. You have the big one. I have the 42. It's funny.

A lot of people have been asking, you think they are? Yeah. Because I was, I saw, I was on Fox yesterday with Lance Eulenov from Mashable, and he seemed to be able to hit the targets better on his bigger screen. And I've been wondering, okay. Is he, does everyone hear here? No. No. Is he even there?

That's, yeah. By the way, God is now talking to us. Okay. I'm sorry. To the people who are listening, I keep hearing, I think, someone in the control room or in heaven talking to me in my ears saying I need to stay on the mic. This is way smaller. It is way smaller.

It's way smaller. I love the size. Okay, yes, it's way smaller. Really small weird wrists. And apparently hairy wrists as the YouTube comments are talking about. And so I love the size of this, but I have been noticing that people like, I mean, I have normal size fingers, right? And so I've been noticing maybe like the bigger screen you can hit the targets better.

I think that would be a big difference for people. Yeah. So you, okay. So just to set the stage here, like me, you've had to watch for about 10 days, something like that. Yep. You wrote your review. Yes. Revert Murdoch did a cameo in your video review.

Yes. Which was amazing. Both of us, I will say this, both of us adopted the same theme for the review, which is to like basically describe what it's like to live a full day with this thing. My video review was that. I wrote a written piece too, which was just sort of about fashion and fitness. And that would be my, yeah. My stuff was all over the place. Yeah, just why.

There's so many, so, I was, my review hit 7,000 words. Yep. Before Dieter tried to delete a thousand of them, and I slowly added them back over time. That's my move.

That's how I do things. I found it very difficult to review the actual product and not review the concept of a smart watch. Because there have been smart watches. Dieter's rang a Gwatch R. Yep. Obviously, there's smart watches out there.

They all do the same thing. And this is, I think, the thing with the Apple Watch right now is that fundamentally the list of things it does is the list of things a smartwatch does. True. Right? It doesn't do much more. It has apps, but the apps are not there yet. But, like, it does notifications. It does a little bit of fitness tracking.

It can send heartbeat. Yeah. It can give you ambient information, like, little widgets and whatnot. Right. But, like, it's a very similar list. But what is also true is that most people don't know what that list of things is. So a lot of the reviews I read were basically like here's this generic list of things a smartwatch does. And how they affect your life?

Is that cool? Yeah. And you have to do it because the whole world doesn't know what that list of things is. But then you actually, I found it very difficult to not then review the Apple Watch and how it executes those things. Right. And there are so many ways to cut and slice and write about it that you, so you wrote like two wildly different pieces and wrote a piece and made a wildly different video. ours are just like this sprawling Yeah we divided it because like

You said there's so many parts of this and Apple is I mean Groomer's interview was interesting You kind of talk about those three things they're talking about Right and then there was like fan fiction at the end Yeah a young boy with a crush and a girl Right

And he taps her with his watch Oh that was me As far as I was concerned but I mean Can I just have one question And I love John and actually throughout the, you know, you can only talk to so many people who have the thing, and so he had one, so I was talking a little bit.

It's been great talking about it. But that story, I just, how does the young boy get the girl's phone number into his watch so that he can tap her? The student directory. It just really implies. His friend who had an Apple watch sent him a voice message with the number. It just, that's sorry. I get it.

He forced touched on the Apple Watch to save it. So if you don't know, John Grubber's review ended with like... This is actually like him saying that. There's so many things that this thing does. I just figured out how to hit reply on an email. I just figured out how to make the emojis change color. What? Yes.

How? Wow, that was amazing. So, uh, that was comical. So you go to Thirstie. Here he is. Go to Thirsty. So we named the. Smiley Face Thirsty. His full name is Thurston.

By the way, go to Nelai's Apple Watch review and type the word Thirsty while you're on the webpage. He's our mascot. So you go to Thirsty and then you force touch and he goes from yellow to red. Oh, he gets mad? He gets super mad. Oh, my God. Yeah. And then he's like steamboat out of his ears. Dude, can you go to other colors? You know, it's yellow and red on Thirsty and then the heart goes from red to blue to purple. So he is now Quent. What about on creepy mime hands? Mime hand does nothing. No, that's master hand. No, that's creepy mime hand. Anyway, but this actually illustrates your point. Seriously.

The idea that... And actually, it's from Zelda. Thank you very much. Oh, this goes to blue. The hearts go to blue. Yeah, I just said that out. I was... Not purple.

Back to red. The verge cast will be back after a short now. Okay. But doesn't this kind of illustrates my point? Like, if two professional tech reviewers don't think to, like, right quick... I'm not a professional. At this moment, Joanna, I think that... is accurate.

You're so happy. Let me describe. I've known Joanna for a long time. We've been through a lot of things. I've never seen her in a state of childlike glee is that the purple hearts on her smart watch. Wow. Who would have ever discovered that?

No one. That's what I'm saying. What? I figured out by accident today. There's so many layers of this product. It's insane. Right. Like there's so many things going on here.

I don't know about you guys, but whenever I get a new tech gadget, I usually just go super deep as I, like, as deep as I can, like, weigh into the settings and, like, screw around with stuff. Like this, like, this isn't a setting. This is more complicated. You have to look at thirsty and think. What happens if I hit a car? What happens if I force touch thirsty? And the answer is you would never think to do that. Why would you think to do that?

I guess. What other, like, if force touch is like a right click, it's a context. like it's unclear what it's for right so on the watch face you do it to customize on thirsty it changes color yeah on the Twitter app it brings up the button for a new tweet yeah like how do you that's the way to know how to do a new tweet right no you have to force touch it and then it brings up a button that says new tweet right so how do you in the workout app it brings up to pause and cancel buttons that kind of makes sense but why does that make but how do you know what it's going to happen when you hit it? I don't know. It's a good question. But the thing that gets me from meeting your reviews,

you're still doing the hearts? No, just I was like, I was like what kicked off this conversation was me telling Dieter, like, I had just figured out that you could force touch on an email. Yeah. Oh. And like you can get all the prompts to, you know, mark it on red, put it in trash. Right. I thought at some point I saw a reply thing. I don't know. You can't reply. I know you can't reply in email, but there was a, I think it may be if you force touch on an I message. So what happens is you forced touch on a glance. Nothing. Nothing.

How do you know? Maybe, maybe. Yeah. Look, it's for, I still think it's insane that the only way to get to a glance is to know that you go back home. There's no video here. If you, if you force touch on your eye message, you can hit reply, send location

and details. Oh. Oh. That's crazy. That's cool. This is like a whole new world that I'm discovered just like. Yeah, but I'm saying it's the most undiscoverable thing on the phone. Definitely.

But it's also. It's a watch. Do you actually call it the phone all the time? I call it the phone. on television like four times today. Really? Yeah. My sister keeps asking how my watch, my iPhone watches.

That's, that's, by the way, can I just say? That's what most people think is. Going on morning TV is the worst experience that any human being can have. I had a miserable morning, like just the worst morning. Is this a humble brag, like rant? Yes. Dude, I got like mugged by the host of Good Morning, New York. Like, he came charging down the hallway and was like, is that the Apple One?

watch guy? And then he like grabbed my wrist, took my, took it, which I'm not supposed to do. I'm not like, he took it. Put it on his wrist. He's like, I just want to try it on. And then he like pretended to get a producer call in his headset and ran away. And I was like, I just fucking mugged. I got mugged.

And then I had to run onto the set. He went and started doing the show. And he was like, I got the Apple Watch. And I was like, I'm going to get arrested. Like Tim Cook's bodyguards are going to come arrest me right now. And at the commercial break, I had to walk onto the set and be like, I need the watch back. Wow. And he was like, no, just sit down.

Was it? Huh. And so I just sat down. I was like, okay, I'll just sit here. We're not supposed to allow other people to wear the watch. It's been a whole. For those that, I mean, and it's standard for many NDAs that we sign. Yeah.

Whatever. Yeah. I let my wife wear my watch. Uh-oh. I tried to get Becky to wear mine. She was like, and actually that was to me, like, one of the most interesting things of the week because it is um far hod's lead uh of the new york times the new york times review which talks about how long it takes to sort of learn this thing it's fascinating to try and watch someone learn how to use

this yeah yeah and i didn't want to help but she just started screaming no no no i mean and like i wanted video that but we can't allow people to use it so you know whatever um but yeah like she was just getting very angry at trying to use what are they going to do in the apple stores are they going to have like demo loops i think this is why they have all those videos they haven't released the rest of the guided tours yet either, which is really interesting. Yeah. Well, they don't need to until 24. Those videos, like, watching them, I, like, I photoshop the thing of the

original iPhone demo guy, and then, like, a physicist did a chalkboard with formulas behind him because there's so many of them. And they, they, they, there seems to be no coherent story between how things work in this, in this video to how things work in the next video. Right. Neelai, what you keep saying about

the button, or the button on the, on the watch is 100% dead on. Like, that is the lock button. on your iPhone and your iPad and your iPod and it's like you are going to even do you still make that mistake do you press that button to turn on. I do you feel like an idiot every time because you know it's wrong yet you still do it. Okay. Should I put this in my mouth? Yeah. That's basically where he needs put it. I don't like it there. Who does? But yeah, Joanna, you make you make that mistake too, but you know it's wrong. Yeah, you still do it. It's like. She went from such happiness to such

sadness. No, I like actually keep getting confused which buttons I should press. And that was one of the things I did highlight in the video, which is like, yeah, this interface is small and then you like, you know, that doll hands line, like you want to keep touching at it, but then you're like, you've got these other buttons and you've got this digital crown. And I never use the digital crown to scroll through things. Yeah. I mean, I like it. Sometimes it zooms. I've never zoomed anything on this. Never zoomed. You can zoom the apps. Like you couldn't hit the

buttons. You can zoom all the way into the app. I mean, it could could be that I got toothpaste in my digital crown and so it doesn't work. Wait, what app do you zoom? You can zoom it into apps, right? On the home screen. And maps, you can zoom? But who, I never opened maps.

Maps mean you there, really. Yeah, why the hell would you want to use maps on a one-inch screen? So I would. No, no, I would want to use maps. I totally would. Walking around New York City, like, I feel like such a goon holding my phone out.

Like, oh, everybody else were there except for me, please mug me. But like, why you just like, have it on my watch a little bit? I'd be like, oh, yeah, that way. Yeah, one thing. we cut from the video is me walking and saying like, you know, if this was Android where it would have told me already how long it would take me to get to work. And that's really

useful. Yeah, I mean, it's just, the maps for me load slow. Yeah, they're super slow. I love that little part in your review where you have the spinning Uber thing because that's been my world all week. Yeah, I haven't, the apps are slow so I don't use them. And that's, it's, I'm going to humble break again, all the morning TV anchors in the world are like, what's your favorite app? And I was like, notification. Whoever just tweeted this is amazing. What? Oh, the thirsty thing?

That's our, uh. Somebody made that? That's if you go to the review and type thirsty. Yeah. Go to the room. Yeah. Is it like a. It's an Easter egg.

That's exactly what it is. This review is like another level. It is like insane. No one slept. I know no one slept. I didn't sleep either, but all I have to show is one video. And a selfie stick. And a selfie stick.

And what, are there greater signs of success? then those things. All right. So I'm going to ask you the questions that everybody asked me, do you know, are you like it? Do you like it?

Yeah. Do you like it? Are you getting one? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Are you getting one? Should I get one? Do you like it? It's just like,

how hard is it to answer that question? It's impossible, but I'm asking you. It's so hard to, and then they want, like, it's like the first thing they ask on TV. Yep. So?

Yeah, all the time. So were you at Borderoam? Today on CNBC, they made a dick joke. This is true. This happened to me. I, like, sat there uncomfortably, and then I made half a dick joke back at them. What's his name?

So, CNBC is like... I do like it. Yeah? Yeah. I mean, I said in my piece, like, I wrote, you know, all these great things and sort of at the end, I started like, don't get one. I kind of say, like, don't get one. But it doesn't mean I don't like it. Right.

I mean, there are reasons I don't think normal everyday people should get this. And I think that's the right thing to tell people. but I still like using it. So I think that's a really... But you like gadgets. I love gadgets. That's why I'm probably getting one. Right.

And I love gadgets. And I'm fascinated by this gadget. And that's where we're going to get them. The people around us at the Verge are like fascinated by this gadget. And that's cool. And like there's a reason we blew out the review because the Verge is read by people who like gadgets. Or at least a lot of people who like gadgets. Some people who hate all gadgets from one company.

And some people who hate all gadgets from another company. But in general, gadgets are... of interest. But it's a gadget. It's the most gadgety gadget Apple has ever made. Yeah, though I kind of think in some of these. Newton.

No. You think this is gadgetty? You think the Newton is gadgetier than this? The E-mate, the Batman laptop. No, no, no. Those things had like Deeter's in the 80s right now. No, I understand what Deeter's saying. Right? But those things were like,

yeah, okay. I do you know what I mean? I do think it's a gadget, but one of the the things that I, I don't know if it came through in the piece that I wrote, but it does feel like more than that. It could be. And in many ways, I turned this into something that wasn't as gadgety. I tried to focus over the week on, yes, the notifications, but I really tried not to go towards

the apps. And like as much as we enjoyed messaging each other, I think that is a really useless thing about this piece of technology. That's my heartbeat, buddy. Yeah. You know that Kelly Clarkson's on? To the beat a drum. This is my heart bleat song.

Yeah. Did you sing that every time you sent me your heartbeat? Yeah, I sent it in my head. But I think, like, when I used it, I really did really enjoy using this as a watch and sort of as this device that keeps me on schedule. I love having my calendar on my wrist for some on reason. Did it turn on when you looked at it? And like, John Gruber was complaining. Sometimes it's a tick slow.

Sometimes it doesn't. That's, that would have to do like the whole gesture thing to like. I honestly have been feeling like since I showered with it. Maybe it doesn't work as well. Oh, you did shower with it. Did you not watch her video? Yeah. No, I have not yet. She's strapped a DSLR to her face.

I saw the pictures. I haven't seen the video yet. Yeah. No, I mean, you showered with it. I showered it with it. And I mean, also I got toothpaste in it. So, how do you pull that off? Joanna brushes her teeth with her wrist. I brush my teeth. Yeah, it was just going to. Can you tell me? So, I mean, just back to that point. And I really do think as a fitness device, I know a lot of the reviews have been focusing on sort of like you didn't think it was as good. I think it's actually a really good fitness device. I think it has this huge potential to be that. And that, and that, is a gadget but I think has this potential just to kind of fade to the background and that's a really good thing. Right. So, yeah. And I think you and I talked about this while we were writing these.

It's so, like I said, it's easy to fall into the trap of reviewing the concept of a smart watch. It was equally easy to fall into the trap of reviewing the potential of the Apple Watch. Yeah. And I struggled just mightily to review this product. at this moment in time against what is an insane range of prices.

That was the other thing that killed me because if I had gotten the cheaper one that was like 350, I wouldn't have gotten that one. I would have gotten the $400 sport, the bigger sport. You're getting that one, right? That's probably the one. Even if I buy one out, that's the one I'll buy.

That's what I'm getting. But if I had gotten that one, instead of the $700 Apple Watch with Lover Lube, I don't know if I would have thought about it totally differently. But every time I told anybody this watch, is $700, they would like gasp. This is $6.50, yeah. And that's a lot.

That's a lot of money. What if I get the 38 millimeter with that leather band? How much is it? Hype check. What? You're not price check. Are you asking me to hype check? Sorry, price check?

There's a long tradition. We did a price check in I.O.5? Is this black sport model is it going to scratch? Is it going to, does the black going to hold up? Huh? Is it black going to hold up? on the sport model. What do you mean?

The band? Yeah, no. The space garage and the annotation. Yeah. So I had, well, it might ding. So I had my, I've only held one like ever so briefly. Right. That model.

But it was very much like, you know, the iPod classics when they were black. Oh. Oh, interesting. It's like Maddie a little bit. So they didn't scratch badly, but you could definitely ding them. Yeah. But I don't know if it's exactly the same. That's just what it reminded me of.

I will say that the stainless steel one is. is getting dinged up. This one is very much like, you know, when iPods had the stainless silbacks, that's what this is like. That's crazy? Yeah, people have already noticed in the videos. Like, literally all I did with this,

all I did with it really this week is like make videos with it. Yeah, and you sit around a table every one. You just wore it. Well, I wore it, but like when you make a video, like you're constantly like looking at it and polishing it. I did it on purpose for the first three days. What did we get it last week? Monday?

Yeah. Yeah. first three days. You just wanted to like use it. Get it and figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't start wearing the helmet

until Friday. Thursday night. Thursday night with the helmet. Yeah. I don't remember where I was going with that. But someone did just tweet to me that, so it's a great fitness space, but it can't even make it through the shower.

It actually can make it through the shower. I say that because I'm like a little bit worried that maybe something happened to it. And I'm like very paranoid Jewish person. Okay. But Sam and Joanna just like seriously exchanged a look like a you know me. Yeah. We had a moment.

But, you know. No, I mean, it can definitely withstand like a ton of sweat. And Apple says that it's fine for even taking the shower. It should not just not get soap and shampoo on it. And that's why another reason it just is not a good idea to get anything on it, I guess. But you can't submerge it in water. So should you or should you not shower with it? You should probably not shower with it, but nothing happened to this one.

Don't worry about it. Okay. Yeah, if you're right, that's what they say. I don't want to have to take this off. I mean, you should take it off, I think. You should definitely take it off. Why? I mean, certainly if you buy a very expensive version, you should take it off.

How are you going to charge it if you don't take it off? So my theory. He's going to slip the thing in between the roof. Yeah, I'm going to walk around the juice pack of my pocket. No, my theory with this, not really a fear. It's going to be like a marionette puppet. So I'm so tired. I thought you meant a juice, like a juice.

like a juice box. I was like, what the hell is Sam talking about? I want to. I want to wear the watch until it dies and then charge it. So like if it dies at two in the afternoon, because like I've used it and then, you know, I just want to be on that cycle. I don't want to like, oh, it's night time.

Take it off. Put in the charger. You're going to 100% be on that. Why wouldn't you want to do that? It does nothing for you when you're sleeping? Does it not? It does not track your sleep? No.

I meant to put that in my review, too, and I didn't. Sam, let's just do it. You read, you read ours, I hope. Yes. You read, you read, you read sternos? I haven't read, I haven't read any others, truthfully. Just read ours. Yes.

Okay, but let's just, but you've got a general vibe. Did you read, be honest, did you read all seven thousand words? No, I got around, I got like 65% through, and then I watched a video. Mm-hmm. The video is fair. I did the opposite. I read it all. Well, I mean, Hype check Apple Watch.

Oh, did you see the Vergecast post? it's approaching dangerous levels right now. Really? Yeah. There are like every normal and random is like random and normal. Are talking about this now. Like this is it. This is the Apple Watch.

It's here. It's coming. It's 10 out of 10. 10 out of 10. 10. 10. I'm buying one. Check.

I mean, the reviews are like, the reviews are like, you know, it's like a nice thing, but it's like, do you need it? Do you want it? is it for you? Are you going to buy one? It's not like you need to buy this.

Like, I don't know, probably like six and a half or seven. Yeah. Realistically. Yeah. But I'm buying one. What are you typing? I'm replying to a tweet. Shut down her Wi-Fi.

Dieter, are you buying one? So if I were not an editor at Theverge.com, I probably would not. Right. Yeah, I'm with you. You know what, Dieter, you are an editor at Theverge.com. If you were you, like your personality. Yeah. And you, like, loved gadgets.

Yeah. But the, I would wait. That's what I mean? No, no. Like, this is, like, I, I love gadgets. I buy the first versions of lots of things that I ought not buy the first version of. But the, consistently everybody said it takes a tick to turn out when you look at it because it's not on all the time. And it's kind of slow. Yeah.

And it does really. Most of the time it is very. I don't want my. That's a long time. I'm already on a year. I'm already on a yearly cycle of spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $500, $600 on a phone. I'm going to snap. I don't want another yearly cycle of spending $400 on a watch.

I will buy a watch, but I want to do it. I don't think they're going to come out every year, and I think they're going to slash the prices. You think they're going to slash the prices. No, I really feel like they're coming out of a year. I think the first generation will be updated within a year and a half. Yeah. Yeah. I think, so here's my theory on performance and battery life.

So have you noticed this? I go from 100% battery life to 85%, like relatively fast. That last 15% is like a war march. Is that a phrase? Death March. It is just endless. It's just like the last 15% of the battery lasts for. Isn't that the experience on the iPhone too?

I feel like most people freak out when they get down to 20%. But if you actually use your phone when it's down to 20%, it chugs. You can get through a significant amount. Like for your phone to actually die, you have to be like using Google Maps at 1% and like really, really kicking it. I kill my phone all the time. Yeah, my phone dies at 3% all the time. I count my phone like twice a day. But I will say so here's my point.

And it's entirely possibly the iPhone does it to you, right? It's like shared architecture. Yeah. But I think they aggressively manage the performance of the CPU to maintain that battery life. So I think they're constantly ramping the CPU as low as it can go. Which is why it takes, it's like resting now. And then when you boot it, it's like, up, got to come up now. I actually think, like, this is an OLED screen.

I took a macro photo of this thing. I should have just put this on the side. I don't know. I didn't. I took a macro photo of the screen because Apple won't confirm if it's OLED or not. It's definitely a pentile all-ed screen. But it's RGB, so it's got the blue stripe and the red and the, you know what I mean? Yeah.

I'll send it to you. No, that's fine. It's shocking to me that you could see something pentile and not like, it looks good. No, it's like, S6 has a pentile screen too, right? Or an OLED. Pentile. I don't know. Who cares?

Exactly. If it's good, it doesn't matter. It's gotten good now. But even OLED screens. So you can usually just leave an OLED screen like you can take the, like they're like power. Yeah. All these power features.

Yeah. Like the black doesn't take up as much power. Right. So you can like run like three pixels because the screen is effectively off. Right. Right. Which is what a bunch of Android Wear watches do. Right.

So that's the Gwatch does that? Yeah. So this is, um, let me just turn it. Yeah, so that's like the default mode. Right, so that's just off. And it's just lighting up some of the pixels, right? And the black ticks no power. So I think it is fascinating that Apple went all the way off.

Yeah. Like, it's, that is how like crazy they are for battery life on this thing, where all sorts of other devices with the same kind of screen keep some things lit up because they know it's important. And Apple goes all the way off just for that extra little like half a percent. Yeah. And it's kind of like when you put your iPhone in your pocket. it's more than half a percent.

I think it'll be... You know what I mean? No, like on the Moto 360, like especially the first iteration of it. Like if you leave that ambient screen on, you're hosed. Isn't it the 360 and LCD? I think the 360s and LCD.

Oh, there you go. Yeah. I think we should come back in exactly a year from now and do another Verge cast on the Apple Watch because... No, we're never talking about the Apple Watch again. I mean, I think, I think... No, I think...

Confirm. Meto 360's an LCD. You need to come back. from the dead to talk about the Apple Watch. I think, I think, remember, like, iPhone 2G and then iPhone 3G, like, that is leaps, the 3G is leaps and bounds better than the original iPhone. So this is the problem with evaluating the Apple Watch right now is... Wait, the 3G had only two differences from the original iPhone. It had a 3G, had a redesigned body, it was way faster.

Yeah, but that was it. The only one that mattered, it wasn't way faster. The 3GS was way faster. the only difference really the 3g in the app store app store came to the first iPhone 2 the only that's why that's why it was in every one yeah but I was going to say the two differences but the abstract came to the first iPhone 2 the only real difference of the 3G was the radio I just think

they're going to iterate on this thing significantly and Apple has a very high tendency to like make its old products feel obsolete so fast like Dieter your review of the new MacBook which we should talk about it makes the it makes the current air feel old and clunky like that's nuts because i think this thing is super thin and awesome granted i i'm looking at the sport right now on my screen it's kind of chunky like it's not as thin as they can probably make it and i guarantee you the next one is going to be thin and awesome and now i'm kind of going back on the yearly cycle thing because

yeah they probably will probably will release one next year no chance they don't update this thing right away. Yeah. They have to. Like just the, they've got it out in the market. They're going to figure out what people are going to do with it. They're going to launch their real app platform instead of this goofy run on your phone, remote control thing. So, so apps are coming to the, like, the device will process apps eventually, right? Right. And it does, it does for like Apple stuff. Right. Right. Okay. I mean, the app thing right now is like, bust. It's real bad. Okay. And I think they know it. I don't think that they have any illusions about how slow the, the third. party apps. Okay. Right. I mean, the apps need to do far less than they're trying to do right now, but do that way faster. So like calling an Uber from your wrist is a great idea.

It should take two seconds. You should go like this, tap Uber, wafer to load, and tap. So here's the big problem with Uber that I finally got it to load yesterday. So Uber takes Uber is like. Was that an online thing on their part? Like was there a software thing? No, no, no. Literally the whole time.

I mean, I stopped trying. I finally got it to work, and then I realized I couldn't pick the kind of Uber, so I couldn't go from regular Uber Black to Uber X, and I was in this building, and I couldn't pick whether I wanted the Uber on 39th Street or 40th Street, which is like an important thing to know about where your car is going to show. So it literally is just a button that connects to your phone, and you have to get your phone. So you can't drag the little pin at all? You can't do...

None of that's there. Yeah, so this is I mean, like, the app story is like, there are. all proof of concept. They're not there completely. And like, I think when they launched the real native apps, there will be a lot of iteration on like, what one powerful thing should my app do on your wrist?

And I think that's like the question that every developer needs. I have one question and then we should really move on to the MacBook. We can, we can. You want to keep talking about the one? I want, I want String's opinion. I just have one question. Do you think we will see Apple talk

about development on the watch at WWDC? Yes. Oh my God, yes. Yeah? Okay. So they're going to, like, talk about the new version of OS 10. They're going to talk about iOS 9 and then whatever the hell they call Apple Watch OS. Is it called WatchOS?

I think it's, I'm assuming they're going to call Watch OS. Interesting. Yeah, that's cool. It's something new, right? Yeah, that would be neat. I mean. Watch OS because this is, right. So here, I want to know what you think of this thing.

WOS. WOS. Yeah. We're in sync today, Deter. Oh, my God. Feel it with him. I wish you had a. I wish you had an Apple watch.

You just so do I. Can you stop slowly backing away from the microphone? I hate this microphone. Jan is just like rolling away. But now you want to cuddle with it. It's a pillow. All right. Jana,

sum up the watch for us. Tell me, give me the real. TLDR. The watch. You're like no better than a TV anchor. Wow. Wow.

You really are. So? You really are. Do you like it? You should just go work for Fox News. What's the best app? How, okay, actually, How are dealing with notification?

Do I need to use, do I need my iPhone for this? What happened? Do I, do I need my iPhone for this? Not for everything. Not really? Mm-hmm. Do I need a data plan? I got to ask.

Actually, I want to say that was to me one of the best things about the entire watch was going for a run without my iPhone. Mm-hmm. I put, the process doesn't require to use iTunes, which is truly the worst thing on the earth. Wait, I, like, iTunes. iTunes on the iPhone, though, not like on your computer. Well, don't you got to get to the music. the iPhone and then to the watch.

You don't have, right, but you still can use iTunes now without your computer, but I, I decided to use iTunes on the computer, which I haven't used in probably like two or three years. I don't know. It is terrible. Yeah. It is so, so, so painful. Why can you not drag something to the iPhone? Yeah.

Yeah. It's insane. You sound like you're biting your tongue. I'm just real mad about iTunes. It's so. Jimmy Ivan's going to fix it, you guys. He's not going to fix iTunes. iTunes is just a terrible place.

I don't think it'll be called iTunes. They're going to, they'll probably kill iTunes. No. Can you imagine the day that they kill iTunes? They killed iPod Classic. I'm going to write my think piece for that right now. No. They're going to kill it.

Should you buy iTunes? You should never go into iTunes. You should never go there. And actually, I even bought music through Apple, which I haven't done in so long. What did you buy? I bought a Katie Perry song. Oh, that's good. She bought the one Katie Perry song.

I bought a new Katie Perry song. And you listened to it to your watch. You listened to it on repeat for 45 minutes. I bought five workout jams on iTunes, is what I did. And then I synced it to my phone. Then I synced it to my watch. And that process was not good. But when I had it on there and then I paired Bluetooth headset to the watch.

And I went for a great run. And then I ended up at Whole Foods and I bought some really hipster stuff like water with fruit in it. Yeah. $6. Did you Apple pay for it? And then I Apple paid for it. Wow, that's actually a pretty cool experience. home. And it was really cool. That is a cool experience. And I didn't have those notifications,

but that's why it was really great. So when you leave the phone at home, what happens? Your phone is at home. Thank you, Joanna. What happens to the watch when your phone is at home? My phone was at home in my apartment. And then the watch just says it's not connected to the phone. And your phone isn't connected. You get a little icon. It's like a red box. That says like, yeah, it's a little red box with an X, like, you, it's using the storage of the device itself. Yeah, I think it's like a four gig limit. Okay. Which is fine for working out like music.

So then hypothetically, because I am invested in Spotify. So. Yes, I mentioned this in their review. Unlikely that there's, yeah. I mean, unlikely you're going to have that, that, the ability to have that. I mean. No, once I allow native apps, I'll figure something out. Well, if they allowed native apps that you could cash your music, like you could.

put it on your phone. Yeah. But like, you can't have that now. Yeah. Damn. Okay. Well,

run without music then, I guess. It's like, right? Or use iTunes and want to kill yourself. Well, I probably won't do that. I mean, because right now,

right now when I run, I carry my phone to use Nike Plus. And I probably will stop using Nike Plus and just use whatever Apple has. Does that, does the health stuff sync from the watch to the phone? Really fast. Really fast, cool.

Yeah. I like, I think they did a really, really good job on, on the health stuff. Yeah. They have so much more potential, but it was, it was, it's good.

But that's the whole story. Yeah. The whole story of this watch is everything is half finished. No, but the, the heart rate monitor, was it you that said that it was in like five minutes? It was you. It was in five, five heartbeats of the chest trap. Yeah, I said that. You said that. That's really impressive. It's really impressive.

Because Harvey monitors on Android wear are just like, no. Yeah, but part of that, you have to be wearing the sport band. Oh, you got a kid. On this band, it does not work. It's like a very tight fit with the heart with the sport band. Maybe that's why I was wearing the sport band. I just am thinking about everything I did over the last week and it isn't. It's a lot of things.

I mean, I will say this, and I don't mean this as much. I used to say it and I meant it kind of as a burn, but now I don't think it's a burn. I think it just speaks to how sprawling the product is. It is the most Samsung Apple product ever. It does everything. And because it's Apple, it's not like, you know, you get a galaxy phone and it's like, S movies. And you're like, well, I'm not going to use that.

Right? Like that's dumb. I totally agree. And like I try to make it into something like to personalize it to myself. And I think that might be one of the reasons I keep saying this is the most personal product. It's like you've got to figure out what it does for you. But I want Apple's help in that. Right. I want Apple's help to be able to set this up to do what I want and not have to see a million.

I mean, yes, you can delete all these little apps, but the glance that, you know, you can take off the glances too. But it's a lot of customization that has to have. How much time did you spend? How much time did you guys spend doing all the little like, toggle switches to turn notifications off and get rid of apps. Like, Neil, you didn't write about the app at all. No, I couldn't. There's too much.

There'd be 10,000 words if I wrote about the app. Nobody wrote about the app. Yeah. I didn't see one person write about the iPhone app, which is an equally sprawling experience. Right. I mean, the big thing for me is like VIP isn't deep enough. Like, that feature doesn't go deep enough. Oh, that's interesting.

Oh, it's VIP on the iPhone. You can set contacts with VIP. so their notifications come through. Right. You can, like, say, I want VIP notifications, but not the other ones, from mail.

Oh, I did not know that. I do you know anything about Apple? I don't have a watch. Android does this. Lollipop. No, you have this. They've had it since, like, iOS 5 or something. iOS 5, bro.

Is this, is that a favorites thing? Yeah, it's in email. No, so email. The reason that these two are excitedly talking about it is they both made the terrible mistake of using iOS mail. No, I'd never do that. I have to use it. I have to use it.

No, what? Yeah, because you have exchange. Yeah. What do you guys use? I use Gmail. Gmail or Outlook? Jamal. Why don't you use Outlook?

I did use Outlook for a while and then... Outlook is great, especially with Exchange. Outlook was taking longer to hit my email, my work email. First, it was really fast and then for some reason it got slowed down. But yes, I do have Outlook. Still on my front page here, everybody, so... John, make the sound! This episode of Vergecast is brought to you by Linda.com.

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So whether you're looking to become an industry expert, your passion about a hobby, or you just want to learn something new, visit linda.com slash vergecast sign up for a free 10-day trial that's l-y-n-n-da.com slash verge cast today's episode of the verge cast is also brought to you by tripcase trip cases help brilliant people take over 30 million trips last year by collecting their flight hotel and other trip items and do a single app on your phone and tablet sam you've got too many apps on your phones and tablets just get the one and then go places you also get free flight notifications which jeter tells me is a thing you get

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you can get seat maps go to tripcase.com check it out today tripcase.com slash verge cast we out of the zone yeah Highway to the danger zone

are we back in the apple zone I think we're back in the apple zone John's just John's just not talking to me. Yeah, he's giving up on us. Okay, so, Dieter. Wait, I have to say, Sam, I have a question for you. And Joanna's still just replying to tweets.

No, I'm going to do email now. Okay, I would like, I'm going to say, you can't. No more emails for you. Why? Because you're on a show. But guys, the SoulCycle app is finally out. There are, you're sending emails about it? Yeah, the people are you emailing your darknet social network?

Wait, Neil, what's your question? I'm emailing with soul cycle. Okay, I have two questions for you. One, July. Well, it's not more of a question. It's more of a statement. I'm taking control of this first cast. You have been trying to mutiny me this whole time.

I know what you're doing. Can we get any snacks? There were snacks before. We're just on a lot of eat on the camera. And you, this isn't even a mutiny. This is just like, it's like a lazy rebellion.

I'm really hungry. I'm really hungry. I'm a snack. Why did we bring you on the show? I don't know. I don't know why you asked me back the last time. I was terrible on this show. I think you're great.

You do. You're the only person. That's not true. Everybody thinks you're all. Nobody thinks you're saying. Dieter's fine. I mean, I don't think anybody is. It's great.

That's what I love about you. I don't think anyone's great. The Deeter Bone story. That's what I've always loved about Deeter. That's fine. It's a six. I have to say, I gave the thing a seven. Yeah.

Again, I think if we've gotten the cheaper one, that score might have been different. But I got a lot of heat for giving it a seven. Because on a one to ten scale, what you're supposed to say is a world of no sevens. I don't miss that. world. You know, it's a hundred point scale? This scale is your idea. I know.

I'm pretty angry. I got a huge fight over 8.4 versus 8.5 today. That's ridiculous. Yep. Didn't, I think I wanted to do 100 points. We should just do a 10 point scale. No. We should not be talking about this on the first.

No, are you kidding? This is like red meat for the verge cast, but here's what I know. Here's the two things I know. One, 100 point scale as a founding decision. Let's make a thousand points scale. I think I wanted to do one. wired versus tired, but everyone's setting up. Can we do a hexadecimal scale? Yes. Wired versus tired. I think I wanted to do that and everyone said no. Or hot or not. Yeah. What's the vice one?

I don't know. It's like drunk versus stone. That would have been a good one. Drunk versus sober. B for bus. Can we start? T for bust. I'm serious. We should use a hexadecimal scale. So it can be 0 through 9 and then A, A, B, C, I give this thing a C. Okay, Dieter, Dieter's in the bone zone. Oh, Deeter. Dieter went to the bone zone. I'm never coming back. No, here's what I know.

The 100 point scale, murderous decision from our past. Yep. Causes murderous rage. Yep. When we can't change it now. And David Pierce, I'm going to murder him for giving all these smartwatches eights. Just murder him. I mean, talk about great inflation.

If David Pierce is like my high school English teacher, I would have gone to Harvard. Like that's all I'm saying. Like, without question. What are you doing, Pierce? Moto 360 is like, this changed my life. Oh, well, like, that was also the problem, right? Because when you do a review, it's very set in time.

Yeah. And so the grading doesn't change. Right. Time changes. Time changes a song. That's what the watch tells me. Do you just start singing a, do you just make up a little beat? there. And so

the Moto 360 as bad of a review as I gave it was a breakthrough product because it was this first smart watch that people would consider wearing. Right? And it was 249. And it actually came with a nicer charging stand than the Apple Watch. And I knocked the battery life, but it's gotten better.

Yeah. I think people are saying it's two days now. That's crazy. When I had it, I couldn't get it for a full day and that's I don't think it's two days. It never last two days for me. I got a lot of fanboys in my tweets. Yeah, well. But I'm I stand by that review and I'm actually so happy, like, I went back and read it and I said how crazy that thing looked on my wrist. Yeah. And it's huge.

It still looks massive on my wrist. And there's no way that product was ever designed for everybody. I spent a day wearing both of them. Yeah. So, you know, like, sometimes when you're reviewing, you have two smartphones. You feel terrible. Two smart watches? The worst.

You should go to a workout class with five bands on. Yeah. And a heart rate monitor. Hmm. Yeah. I don't know if I want to do that. Yeah. Yeah.

You should also go to two workout classes in a day. Right. Because you need to review something. Yeah. You're dedicated. I was dedicated. At this point, mostly what I do is drink beer and talk on this show. Yeah.

That's the whole of being the other than chief of the verge of course. Yeah. I cannot believe actually how much I worked out in the last week for that piece. Yeah. Okay. We should. Oh, Andrew DeWere, the last point. You did a story today.

Oh, yeah. Andrew to where potentially coming to iOS. Right. So there's been rumors and whatever, but Google is working on it. They are very close to being done. and then we'll see if Apple accepts it. Yeah. It will support Google now on iOS and notifications and voice somehow, voice search.

Yeah. And you can also act on g-mails. I think. So that was actually something I didn't get to write about, but it was a thought in my head. And I'm sure it was kind of in your piece a little bit is talking about like the lack of Google services that you can get right now on here, even though you can get on the watch, that even though you can get the notification. that even though you can get the notifications, right, from Gmail or inbox or whatever, it just doesn't feel like even there's the potential for Google to do something deeper here as it stands. You know what I would take?

And I thought about this Google piece a lot. I don't care for all the notifications. Like, you've got to get the watch, you've got to get the phone, you've got to open the app, you've got to curate your notifications. There's two different ways to curate notifications. There's like the new way where you can, with updated apps, you can mirror your phone or you can customize each app. app or with the old apps that aren't updated, you can just turn them on and off, which is crazy. I would take a smart watch that was basically an analog watch

with a display behind the hands, and all it did was light up and show me Google Now cards. Right? So it just did contextual information whenever it thought I might want. Isn't that what Android wear is? No, no, it's still like the 360 is a big ass screen. The Gwatch R is a big ass screen. Yeah.

I'm saying it's like basically a regular watch, but it has some ability to show you now. I will say that now that I'm bouncing back between... So every time you look at your wrist, it just shows you some important piece of information. Yeah. You really need to commit to Google Now for it to be useful. Like the Google Now cards that I'm getting an Android where right now

are kind of pointless. Like they're no good because I've been bouncing between iPhone and Android a bunch lately. So you haven't been using it as much. And so Google Now just like doesn't know me anymore. It like forgot who I am. You drifted. It's great. That's cool.

You had that trip to the lake in high school. Jeez. And the Mustang. Yeah, in the Mustang, the top-down. Yeah, you guys are listening to that one Katie Perry song, Joanna Downer. It's really good. It's a really good song. Jeez.

I can play it on here. Oh, I can't play it on here. You can't play a little, tiny, little speaker? No, it starts playing on your iPhone. Oh, okay. But you could take calls with it. Yeah. And they sound terrible.

Oh, another rando moment on morning television. Today. God. Okay. So first I went on CNBC. Yeah. And I was like, it has a button in a knob, which is like my little joke, right? Like what piece of technology do you have in your life that has a knob?

And the CNBC guy. It wasn't Katie Perry. It was Carly Ray Jepson. Oh, so different. Do you really like her? Did you hear the match-tale smash up? I see it, Nelai. Uh-huh.

I see what you did there. What? Do you really like her? It wasn't like you had to see it. No, I- It happened way out in the open, Sammy. great now we're going to get sued there we go

partly of the judge it's going to sue us so yeah you can only control it that's really loud so okay but if you you don't put your watch down

and then you bring it back up how do you control music we can't do this we're killing John I want you to know this how do you control the music he's dying can you really hear that that well

yeah if you put your watch down did you just want to dance and wait a minute then you put it back up it goes back to the watch face right I want to dance with somebody

you want to feel the heat with somebody. He doesn't know what song we're talking about. There you go. Hype check Whitney. I've been to many bar mitzvahs in my time. Hype check Whitney. Always a 10.

She's phenomenal. Whenever it's like 3.40 in the morning in the East Village, that song comes on. The place gets lit up. Yeah. Because it's a great karaoke and like party song. It really is. I just want to point out Sam's life as far as I can tell. occurs at 340 in the morning in the East Village and barbittances. That's all of the relevant cultural knowledge that's...

Sam, you're going to make a Jewish girl so happy one day. I hope so, Joanna. I'm sorry. What am I going to get married? What are you going to get married? Are you dad now? Mom and dad. How am I not?

I should be like half Indian, right? Yes. I'm kind of dark. I'll take it. You want to have a half Indian, baby. We'll talk about this later. Wow. I mean, you know, that's my life.

That's coming on me. Yep. Half an in baby flying, flying through the danger zone. At Nelai's wedding, he had the cutest little cousin there that was half Indian. Oh, yeah. And I ran around chasing her the whole night. Until, until my cousin came up to me and said, can your friend stop chasing my baby? She was so cute.

She did not want to be my friend. You were chasing her. Got me out of little child. Chan is like, I'm going to take her home. And my cousin is like, I think she means it. Wow. So MacBook. Yep.

John, I'm so sorry. Now, John, this is a great show. We're going to really, we're going to really look back on this one. The day, John Quinn. It's back to your watch face now, right? No. What? It stays on music?

It's on music right now. Okay, because Jack River wrote that like the default is that it goes back to the watch face. Sometimes. But not other times. So how do you know what does or doesn't go back to the watch face? Usually it's after a notification. it goes to the watch back to the watch face. But you know what?

Sometimes with exercise or workout, I think I've been calling it the wrong thing the whole time. There's two of them. There's workout and then there's activity. Yeah, I know. But I think I've been calling workout exercise, the exercise app. Is there an exercise app? This is really kind of very confusing. Okay.

There's the activity with the circles. Yeah. And then there's workout, which is where you tell it you're like right. But there's no exercise. No. But there's no workout app on the iPhone. There's only activity on the iPhone. Huh.

So when you get the watch and you set it up, you get a new app called activity. And that's where you can view all the stuff. But they also put workout in activity. But on the watch, there's workout and activity. Can I just zoom all the way out of this for a second? Has this all just gotten too complicated? Yeah. Are these, is the phone, like I was thinking about, like, yeah, like, I was thinking

about my old Windows PC, which was like, it was just, like, I think the reason phones are popular is because those just got so complicated that it was. was like an easy reset. Like now you strip it all away and that's super simple. And even my Mac is like, every time I get a new Mac, I find myself just installing stuff forever. Right? Like, you know, like Alfred and millions of menu bars and every piece of Google

software. And it's like this endless. I need all this stuff to make it work. And I didn't feel that way about my phone. And now like the watch installs two apps that you need to use to configure the watch. And it's like, is just like, wait, the watch installs two apps? Because I got the Apple Watch app.

No, I got the Apple Watch app. You're right. But I mean like, now it's there. So there's the Apple Watch app. Why did they force this Apple Watch app on me in the first place? I don't know. It makes me pretty unhappy. Well, because it can.

That's marketing. Right. But I'm just saying, just like. And by the way, you can't delete activity. I think it is. Right. I mean, we spend an hour talking about what this thing can do at its first iteration. Like, yeah.

I don't mean, I don't mean to watch. I just spent like, what? Have we just gotten to a point? I think phones used to be fun because they were like. interestingly simple and if you wanted to get deep into it. Well, phones or smartphones? Smart phones? Like this smartphone moment was like Apple

would add one feature at a time and if you were into the game you'd get an Android phone and like go crazy or you would jailbreak your iPhone and go crazy but there was like an inherent wonderful simplicity and now the phones like a PC and it's like everything's connecting this phone. You can do everything on these things now. Actually that never existed except for like a couple years with the iPhone.

Right. Otherwise it's always like iOS 2, 3 and 4 felt like that. I don't know. You're like... But I think with the watch, the great thing about the iPhone is that it can be so simple to people, right? It is so simple to my mom,

and she loves it. And she could have an Android phone too. You can very easily make it what you want it to be. Right. A phone, email, eye message. That's what my mom does on her phone. I know so many people will say, I never use any apps on my phone.

Yeah. My mom doesn't use it. I mean, she does play Scramble with friends. Yeah. She loves it. She loves scramble with friends. But with the watch, there's so much.

much going on. And they don't make it very easy right now to make it what you want it to be. And I think, I really do wonder what the return rates will be on these. People get them. Yes, at first it's complicated to use, but there's still so much going on when you learn how to use it. I mean, to me, that's the big, like for normal people, for the average consumer who isn't going to buy this just to be the gadget person, but heard that it's going to help them with something. What they're going to hear is just going to help you pay more attention to look at your phone less. And I think looking at your watch is worse than looking at a phone. Or they've heard, you know, it's a good activity tracker.

It can, it can, you know, do some other things for you. And then they get all these notifications and they don't want them. Right. Yeah. My mom asked me, should I get an Apple Watch or a Fitbit? Right. That's a big thing. Get a Fitbit.

It's not in your drawer in three months. We can talk. That's a good. That's what I kind of said, too, in my piece, like people should try and see if that's for them. There's a lot of reasons this is better than a Fitbit though, especially for $350 when you're looking at the Fitbits that are $250. I would say go buy this for the extra $100 because you'll want to wear it.

The Fitbit surge is super ugly. Oh, yeah, it's terrible. And gave me a rash. Or a job on up, actually, is what I meant. And the screen is terrible, right? And people want, like, that wouldn't probably be for your mom. You know, that would be for someone who wants to work out more. But, yeah, I mean, I just think.

What are you saying about my mom? I don't know. She's super fit and exercising. Guys. Dark place. We're going to a bad place. Just back it off. Anyway.

Yeah, I just think, I think there's a lot of complications here. And for me, like the notifications, the, you start, I've read some people saying they think it makes them more present. It doesn't make me more present. Not at all. And for me, it actually, like yesterday is a great example. I was talking to my producer. I got an email from my editor. I looked at it and I stopped mid-sentence and ran back to my office.

Yeah. Like if I, usually I do look at my phone. I keep it in my back pocket. If I see something, but I don't see the whole thing. And, you know. So I was the way I do it is like I let my notification stack up. So I go to meetings and turn my phone upside down on the table. Like I try to pay attention to everybody.

Then I leave the meeting. I look at my phone. And like there's a bunch of stuff that happened. And I can like look at it all. It's very convenient. Being in a meeting with this thing just like dingin away is like I don't want that to happen. I'm going to say something. And I know you can,

I'm going to get a lot of angry tweets about how you can customize it and you have to worry about any. And that's true. There's like a steep learning piece of this. What are you going to say? Okay. Us, you, we are a pretty serious edge case.

You just give us a lot of vowels and consonants. I think, I think we as people get a lot of notifications. Like the normal, the normal like everyday, you know, high school kid or like mom that's driving their kids to soccer like I disagree they're gonna get they're gonna get like a phone call they're gonna get like a few text messages no no here's my new thing no here's my new thing I and I I I think that's what Apple thinks too it's not true but you know what I know is

you know how I know somebody is bad at computers now when they when I pick up like their phone or their iPad and they have shitty notifications on it it's like that's that is the new like Windows status bar well well iPad notifications stack up because I feel like the device is mostly right so you like to you pick up look you you go to somebody's house this I this happens to me like yeah every time I go to a family

member's house I go to their house I pick up their like they usually have an iPad two lying around yeah I'm an iPads or they have an older iPad lying around and you pick it up and you're like what are these garbage game notification right well and they're just everywhere, right?

And it's like, Candy Crush has been trying desperately to get, you're like, get you back. Yeah, get you back for like a month and a half. And you're just like, and they're like, everyone's always like, yeah, I just do whatever. I don't pay attention to him. Yeah, but I, Sam, to your point, like, people live on email, right? I don't know about that, Joanna. Companies live on email. Yeah. Every company, you're getting tons of emails.

It's how they communicate with people. It's email. It's just a thing. Everyone does it. I message. My family has eye message chains now. Like, and we, they're constantly talking to each other. My sister, my mom.

So many of my family friends have that. No, it's not fine because every time there's an eye message, my wrist is buzzing. My wrist just buzz and my mom is telling me she likes my video. I mean, isn't that the same thing is, isn't that the same thing as having an iPhone? No, so here's the thing. Because this is my wrist. The problem is, the problem with having it on your wrist is on your phone, you can look at it and be like, oh, I'll get to that later. And on your wrist, or you don't look at it.

You get to it. You deal with it when you see it. On your wrist, you look at it. You're like, oh, I should do something about that. And then it's gone. It's like when you have an inbox and you see an email and you mark it red and then it disappears, but really you should do something about it. And also it's another thing to remember to put into silent, like mode.

I don't know. I think that when I get it, like, I just got a text message from Evan. And if I would have had that on my wrist, I wouldn't have had a look at my phone. I could just be like, oh, I'll text him out for the Vergecast. Instead, I had to look at my phone. Now I could just reply to him right here. But if my phone was in my pocket, I could have just looked at my wrist and said, I'll get back to that after. One thing that does work well is these things usually working well together.

Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. But it knows that I'm on my iPhone and looking at my eye message. So my wrist doesn't always buzz. Have you found that? Have you found that? Yeah. And it's like hard to know what's going to happen. I feel like you're about to own me right now.

No, I am. Yeah, I am. So we were shooting in our video. We were shooting, we were at the bar with Sonia from Eater. and we were shooting a video. And I needed fake notifications. So John was like sending me fake notifications and Jordan was sending me whatever.

And then I got, in the middle of a take when I wasn't supposed to get one, I got a real one by accident. And it was Dieter sending an email to somebody else. And Dieter and I play this game where when we want something to seem more important, we'll email somebody else and then we'll CC the other person.

Just like add our names. This is like corporate email games, right? So Deeter's like emailing something. and he just ced me just so it's like and now nelai knows too this is like a thing that people do on your email all the time yeah yeah and so i'm like looking at i'm looking at my wrist and i'm like this is the least important piece of information that could possibly interesting right so and it was like but then but then right like on that same on that same plane let's say you didn't have the watch on your wrist you had the phone on the table that's the exact same no no because i can take my

phone and put it face down over there that's what i do I usually put my phone face down. I can, you can do all kinds of things with a phone that you can't do with a watch. And the watch literally taps. It's an all or none thing. Like when you strap this thing to your wrist,

you are going into notification hell. But you can customize to a degree. That's why I was talking about VIP. Right. So Dieter's on my VIP list. Vip. You're right. Like, by the way, you made it, buddy.

You're VIP. So, but I, but that, but Dieter sends a lot of emails. Look, look, I'm going to get my watch and I'm going to review it. And I'll put some words on the internet about it. Yeah, we'll read it on samshepher.com. All right, we need to talk about, Sean's going to kill himself.

We can literally just hear him. We've been going for over an hour. I can feel the waves of anger coming out of the booth over there. It's great. Okay, we need to do, John, I know we're going long. We'll just do, we need to do five or ten on the MacBook. Are we going to talk about this Motorola selfie stick? No, I'm going to acknowledge that you had it.

Yeah, no, he didn't. It's made of wood. It's very fine. So the new MacBook. Have you felt a leather on this strap? Wow. It's, um, it's, it's like, like a laptop. It's a laptop, but it's like, it's like, the thing I wrote was like, it's like if the iPad Air 2 decided, you know what?

I wish I was a laptop and ran OS 10. And then that's what happened. Like it's super thin, it's super light. It's a little underpowered. I'm not going to have as much battery life. Yeah. Well, yeah. I don't know.

What are you, what do you got? I've been getting not good battery life. Really? I'm getting, I'm getting, I'm getting, I'm getting, like a solid eight hours. If I don't push it, I can go over that. Really? Do you have brightness up?

Yeah, it's like I usually keep my brightness pretty low. I keep my brightness high. Okay, I don't. Does yours get hot? I keep my brightness medium. Mine gets pretty warm. Really? Yeah.

Yeah. It's gone a little bit warm. I probably am not pushing it far. I mean, like this thing hates Chrome. Oh, God. This thing hates Chrome so much. And people are yelling at me for saying that in my review. because I tested it with Chrome.

But you know what? A lot of people use Chrome. Apple says most people use Safari. And I believe that. But I use Chrome. I love Chrome. And it was getting slow using Chrome. If you got over a dozen tabs in Chrome and you're like in a world of hurt.

Yeah. Yeah. I totally. But like literally everybody wrote the same thing, which is like this is the future. This is what all laptops will be. Is it a crazy how we said that about? It makes me feel like I should have just written something. else because everyone wrote the same thing.

They said the same thing about the air, right? Yeah, totally. Everyone wrote that too. Yeah. Your ending of your review is very much, like, it's almost like we shared our reviews to each other. We didn't. We did not.

I had no idea how Dieter felt about this stuff today. The original air had like more things that were clearly wrong with it. It was not a beautiful object. It was like, it was an impressive object. But like in terms of build quality and amazingness, it was like kind of floppy. Um, this thing like, it's amazing. Yeah, you list complaints on it.

It's like wait for, wait for the dongles to exist and, uh, improve the speed and I guess for joining the battery life. And I don't have any other complaints. Like, that's it. But like,

I've never held a laptop better design. I love the keyboard. Some people are complaining. I think it's great. It just took a little bit to get used to. And then when I go back to my MacBook, I, I like, oh yeah,

I missed you. Yeah. It feels like when you went from like an old keyboard. Yeah. Like a chicklet keyboard. Totally. I think that it's a little bit about like it's it's like that it's like that going from a desktop keyboard Yeah like something different right not a bad thing and I was kind of mixed on that it's not a

It's not a good or a bad thing yeah I mean I love this touch pad so much I just love it so why I like I love it But it's I love it just because it feels like a Mac track pad and I love that there's like dark magic inside it yeah okay You can click on the top I guess right it's wider I mean yeah I mean and you're like piece on force touch is like the same it's like just crazy to me. It's just, it's a crazy, magical thing. Yeah, I think this is the most beautiful laptop ever created, but I don't think anyone should really buy it. Yeah. Yep. This is the Apple, the Apple, Inc. Story. Yeah. Apple 2015. Pushing all of the envelopes. Both reviews were very similar. Yeah, both reviews. This Apple product is amazing. Wait for the next one. Yeah, but the problem is that with the watch, like, this is the only one. It's the product category launch. With this,

it's like they're pushing the envelope. Yeah. If you're the sort of person, and I think that there's a reason that comes in like many colors, like, if you're the sort of person who just like buys a laptop all the time. Good space gray.

Or you can afford to buy a laptop every year. Like you're going to buy a fashionable laptop for you and like chuck it. Who does that? I think a lot. I think like random people just like buy a thousand dollar laptop whenever they want to. I don't think so.

I think there are rich people. There are definitely rich people out there. Yeah. There are definitely rich people out there, but I think rich people out there who I hear from a lot. At the Wall Street. I do. I really do. And they want something that works for them. Yeah. Like they're not interested in this looking beautiful. They're like, I have to plug in my phone to charge. Right. Yeah. I don't, I mean, like my aunt who. You have like business people though. Yeah. Yeah. But even, no, but even like my aunt is a great example. She needs a new laptop. She saw this. She's like, it's beautiful. I want this. I told her all the problems with it. She said, yeah, I'll just get the air right now.

Wait. So I, this is a fact. Becky is currently using. is that computer? I bought it from Dieter. You tell this story all the time. It's like it's one. I actually don't know this story. You have to buy her a new one. I don't want to hear this story. 2010? Wait, 2010? I bought it from Deeter before we launched the Verge.

Holy crap, that's old. It was a total desperation buy. It was right when we moved to New York and she was taking whoa. She was going back to Illinois, take the Illinois bar exam and you take bar exams on the computer. So she needed a laptop that worked and her

original air. She had bought the original first air, the curvy one, that died like a week before the Illinois bar exam. So she like, we just needed a new computer. And I like, because she had to like load all the stuff and like, it had to work. I gave you a good deal on it. Yeah. It was great. Did I pay you? Yeah, I don't know. I'm still unclear if I pay you. And she still uses it. The good deal was that Dieter named a price and I didn't give him any money. Yeah. No, I'm pretty sure. Did I pay you? Who cares? It's past is past. Anyway, so she has this machine Like, it was a desperation, like need a laptop right this second That's her computer still Can't wait for an order to come in. We should just had to go back to Chicago and like get to get studying all this stuff And she's had it forever.

She doesn't complain about it. And then she saw this one and she's like, can I have that? And I was like... Because it's gold. Yeah. And it's like, it looks beautiful. Yeah. And because I've been waiting to upgrade her because she doesn't come like she uses it to Chrome.

That's what she used it for. She watches Netflix on the iPad. Oh, she's eating it for. Chrome, you shouldn't get her to this laptop. No. You got to convert to Safari first. That'll be fun. Fine.

Okay. I won't do it. There's a market out there for super rich minimalists. She never wants to charge her phone on the laptop. Where? Of the USB. At home? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She'd have to live Lovita Dongle. Yeah. I love that. Will Apple make, will Apple make a... You can't live Lovita Dongle.

Dieter, do you think Apple will make a USB type C to lightning? I think that they will. Yeah. No, they're going to, it'll be... They'll just make lightning have a USB type C at the other end. Yeah, that's what he's... No, but I think they're... I think an enterprise and third-party thing is smart.

Oh, I thought you meant a dongle. Yeah. It would make a USBC into the thing with a branch out lightning. Yeah. So it's like two and one. Probably. Yeah. That would be great.

And Apple has... So Apple's super excited for all of these third-party adapters. They, they are not... They don't want you to buy the Apple-approved $80 thing. Obviously they do. But they, like, I charge this thing. with a plug that came with the Chromebook Pixel off of a rando battery pack. Yeah, I've done that too.

Right? Yeah, I mean, fascinating. Apple's connector situation right now is incredibly messed up. Yeah. Like, if you, like, I, last week, I was carrying like five or six different Apple chargers. I had the charger for my Mac, my Air. I had the charger for the Mac, this MacBook.

I had the charger for the watch. I had the charger for my iPhone. that's four different charger cords. I definitely just got a text on my watch well after I received it. And also, let's talk about it. That's bad. How is Apple not working on wireless charging? I mean, they are.

But, like, what, like, that's what made, would make sense for the watch. Maybe they just think it's terrible. Yeah. Because it is, in general, like, pretty slow. What do you want wireless charging for, Joanna? So all of those things could charge so I don't have to carry around four cords. Yeah. So just the pad.

You just want a pad and drop the things on. What I want is the bowl. Intel makes a bowl. So you don't have to line up with the paddys, chuck it in the bowl. Yeah. Yeah. That's a Vergecast. There it is, everybody.

Petering out, peering to the end. That's all rest our heads on the mic- Is literally going to sleep on the microphone now. All right. Sam. Hey. Engage. We haven't talked about the stuff.

It's not going to happen. Why? It's a literally a stick. It's not. It's more than that. Is it? The wood matches my MotoX. Okay. Sam, engage. Engaging with the audience. Hello, internet.

Hey, everyone. Thanks for watching the Vergecast. You should follow us on Snapchat because a lot of cool things are going to happen in Snapchat very soon. Not like product stuff, but we're doing some cool stuff inside Snapchat. You should add us right now. We are the real Verge. Find us at us. You should follow us on Instagram because we post all of our beautiful photos on our Instagram feed. So if you like looking at beautiful photos of gadgets that are taken by us. You should follow us on Instagram or Instagram. com slash verge.

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I'm at Sam Schaeffer on Twitter. Dieter is at Backlon. Nelai is at Reckless. and Joanna is Joanna Stern. Am I doing the whole sign-off? Yeah. I was just going to interrupt you whenever I wanted. Okay, yeah, Nilai, go.

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Bye. Bye. Bye. You know,