The Vergecast - IFA, the Yoga Book, and looking ahead at the Apple event

Episode Date: September 2, 2016

The IFA, or Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin, is upon us and we are looking at the best tech announced at the show. Nilay Patel, Paul Miller, Ashley Carman, and Dan Seifert give us the scoop on the birth of new gadgets, the death of others, and the continuation of the booming gadget market. Paul also calls up senior editor Vlad Savov, who is on the show floor at IFA, to give us a first-hand experience of the show. 01:53 - RIP Sunrise 08:16 - RIP Chromebook Pixel 10:42 - Sonos 20:48 - Interview with Vlad at IFA 46:39 - Wealthfront ad 48:46 - Lenovo Yoga Book 58:03 - smart watches 1:04:54 - Squarespace ad 1:06:23 - Ashley's weekly segment "Gadget Pie" 1:11:30 - Apple event next week! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast. Cizzer vodka. How's your gadget cornucopia, bro? Your joke isn't any better than mine. Mine at least has like fan art. Oh, that's true. Because of consistency. Right.

You could use a cornucopia in the center of this table. Yeah, now that you bring up cornucopia is pretty great. Hi, everybody. I'm Eli Patel, the host of this disaster of a program that we do every week. but that you seem to love, and that's what we keep doing. Paul Miller is here. Hello. You may have noticed him already, being obnoxious.

Dan Sefer is here. Hi. What's up, Dan? How much? All right. Ashley Carmen is here. Hello. Ashley and Paul have been swamped in a deluge of gadgets.

This has been her week. I have to say I'm really jealous because every time I walk through the office, I see Ashley just like playing with toys. It's the most fun. Yeah. I can't tell you what I was doing today because it's under embargo, but it was pretty cool. And it has to do with toys. Cool. Good tease, actually.

Tons going on. Lots of news. It's EFA this week. Vlad and Tom, Max, from our video team. Some other people are there. Gadgets galore. And I have to say, one of the most interesting EFAs in a long time. Usually this is, I always think of it as like, oh, new laptops are here.

Hooray. But tons and tons of stuff out of EFA. So we get to that in a minute. Paul actually interviewed Vlad live from Berlin. Vlad was in a disco. Yes. The power went out. No, me.

Oh, my God. I was like, what? Vlad in a disco is one of the most improbable. That's why I wanted to believe it. Because I was like, please say Vlad turns into a different person when he goes to Berlin. Yeah. You know how like in clubs in New York and Chicago

there's like the tamale guy? Yeah. Vlad just rolls enough broccoli. It's like, I brought fresh vegetables for everyone. They'd be amazing. Vlad, the broccoli guy in a Berlin nightclub. Anyway, I want to start on a sad note. That's where I'm at.

Oh. I want to start low and go high. You know what I'm saying? I want to talk about sunrise. I'm already so broken up about this. Sunrise is a calendar app. It is now dead. I think we all agree.

It was among the best calendar apps ever made. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. Sunrise is a calendar app. They got a lot of funding. People loved it. We wrote about it. It was great. Microsoft bought it.

People got scared. The thing inevitably happened where Microsoft rolled it into the new Outlook. So that team joined the Outlook team. It's worth noting that Microsoft, at the time when it bought Sunrise, had also purchased recent time before, like slightly before that purchase Accompli, which was an excellent email app, which it became the new Outlook email. But see, but if you... That it could be like a good thing.

There wasn't like... No, no, the Accompli thing is... That's fine. Yeah, that was a good thing. That's a good thing. That's a good thing. Like Microsoft did a good job with it. So I had...

They were like, Outlook is garbage. We're buying new email app. We're taking that team. We're giving the Outlook name. Make something great. Yeah. Here, Sunrise is great. And they're like, we're buying it.

And then we're going to roll it into this other app and killing it. Yeah. Because Accompli slash Outlook had a built-in calendar feature. Anyway. This is exactly what happened to Sparrow. This isn't the first time this has happened. Sparrow was a great native Mac client for Gmail and Google bought it and then Sparrow died. But it became inbox-ish.

Yeah, but inbox isn't a desktop app. Like the idea of Sparrow itself. A native fast. When? Yeah. My only point is when Sparrow died, there were not articles in major mainstream publications. Like Mashwell wrote about it. I think the New York Times like Bits blog wrote.

The zines were all over the Sparrow death. No. The hardcore underground tech scenes. Paul Paul has like four sheets of photocopier paper stapled together. It's like, the man that's killed Sparrow. I believe it. Sunrise is dead officially now. They killed it today's the first.

Well, so they were going to kill it. What episode of the first? Today's the first. They were planning to kill it yesterday for the 31st. But the outcry was so huge. That they are like, we decided to give everybody a little more time while we like beef up the Outlook calendar features. Because frankly, the calendar features in Outlook pale in comparison to what Sunrise is offered. I'm trying to use Outlook.

I'm doing my best, right? It's a great email app. No, it's not. It's a terrible camera. It's a terrible camera. I have to say Outlook is among the worst cameras I've ever used. No, it's not even a great email app. Wow.

It's fine. Wow. Unpopular opinion. No, it's so needy. You know, it's like it has a different chime. Maybe it's because I have like everything running all at once. I'm getting alerts from Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar and Outlook and Sunrise. User problem, yeah.

Well, yeah, I'm just a moron. But Outlook, I don't know, I've got it set up so you got to like touch ID, authenticate it. Because I thought that was a cool idea. It just has all these features that are like, turn them on. Unlock your phone. Whatever. Outlook is fine-ish. I just missed Sunrise.

I think the fact that Microsoft is feeling such backlash about Sunrise. There was a Twitter moment about it. The poor people at Twitter who make moments, whoever you are, they were like, they were crying about it enough to make a moment. I want to know, and I think I know the answer, but I want you to say it. Why did you like Sunrise so much? It was a dedicated, focused app that talked to a lot of services. Right. And got the hell out of my way.

Right. And you could plug in every service into every service you had that could possibly have a calendar component, whether it's a to-do service. or your note service that you set a due date on or just your straight multiple I loved it because I could have my personal Google calendar my work Google calendar and like all that other stuff all in one place that I could view it. Why are you so convinced that Outlook is going to destroy this?

Because it did. It's like it ate it. But why can't some of the good features be brought over? That's also that's Microsoft. So some very, very few of the features have come over right now. With Outlook, you can integrate Evernote, Wonderlist, which Microsoft owns and a Facebook calendar. into it. Sunrise had like, I don't know, three dozen more integrations than that. And when they were going to kill it on the 31st, Outlook wasn't getting an update with all those integrations. So

Microsoft is saying that they will keep it alive until more of those features are rolled into Outlook. I'm going to start sending checks to Such a Nadella. Just what was it, $10 to run the outlet, to run the Sunrise back end. They own a cloud. Oh, the other thing that was really cool about Sunrise, it had a web interface. So like, if you had two Google, accounts, like a work account and a personal Google account, you can go to Sunrise's web app and see both your calendars in one place on your computer. Web apps, of course, are the future. I really feel like I missed out on something.

Yeah, it was a real time? I'm not busy enough to need a calendar app. Honestly, you don't mark your days with gadget blogging. I have like, maybe one appointment in a day. Cash it walking. Like, I'm like, oh, Friday, I'm going out my friends. And for Friday. And then like Wednesday, gadget blogging, maybe meeting with something.

Yeah. No, I mean, it was just a time. It was a time. Casey wrote a great thing about it. There's a whole moment in the app store where that's over, basically, that you can't launch a new app that solves a good problem and expect to raise $8 million, whatever Sunrise raised and like try to start a business. Those days are over. For, it's too hard to compete. It's too hard to get discovered. I'm just sad that this app that I depended on is gone. And it's funny how many people... You can still use it until they kill it again. I'm going to use a hell of it. I'm deleting Outlook right now. I'm going to do it right now. Savage. I hate it. I mean, like, the thing is, like, if you are a sunrise user and, like, the, someone suggests we'll use Outlook instead, like, that is such a sucky, shitty, like, replacement. That's what it is. The replacement for my calendar app should not be a new email app. It's just, like, basic.

Like, oh, my calendar's going on. What should I get? Yeah. Change your entire life. How do you communicate with people? Is it your phone broke? You should get, like, a telegram. Like, that makes no sense.

UX or the UI of Sunrise, like really pretty? Not necessarily. Because I have this image of sunrise my mind now. I'm like, wow, this is like the future. I'm thinking of like pebble. I mean, it's a list of things. Right. It's real pretty.

You can click that guy. But it was all about the integration. You could have multiple accounts, multiple services. It was great for it. It's over now. Okay, so let's talk about something else instead. Ashley, you read about this today. The Chromebook Pixel.

Wandered off. Goodbye. Goodbye. Is your mom sad? I mean, she has one. So she's good. Also, if I told her like, if I was like, no one else can this now. She'd be like, sucks for them.

I gave her a shout out in the article. I saw. Yeah, I was like, she still loves hers. Totally. Still loves hers. And decided it's fun. After all of that, decided that she like, just using her phone. Just using her phone. So I'm like, you're using computer? She's like, yeah, I love it. I stopped using it. And it's not, it's like just, that's her relationship with computer. She'd just rather use her phone, which is the future. I can't blame her. Yeah. I just think Google's obviously making so many hardware push. We wrote this week that They're not going to brand the Nexus phones, Nexus.

I read Google. Yeah, that's been kind of a story or a rumor that's been around multiple outlets, but another outlet, Android Central this week is reporting it as well. So goodbye, Nexus brand. And they're bringing Android and Chrome closer together. Yeah, I mean, like Google has a whole unified hardware team now. They have one guy who used to be the CEO of Motorola is now running Google's hardware team. So, like, it's brought in all these different teams under one roof.

there's obviously a hardware thing happening at Google. But do you think they're going to do... The pixel was the most expensive Chromebook by like almost $1,000. Well, no. So that's the thing. It was when it came out. But since then, there's been a shift and there's a lot of Chromebooks that space... Maybe $5.99.

I have $800 Chromebooks on my desk right now. Look at this, man. You can spend this guy out to like $500. Or Ashley's like rolling around the hallways. Yeah. Dan's like, check out my $800 Chromebook. Where did I go wrong here? I think that, you know, like a lot of it, a lot of the pixel was to set a precedent and like set a, like a North Star. And so that's not over.

I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a Pixel 3. Yeah, I think it's coming. It's going to be. It's just like, it's not a, it's not a blockbuster huge selling product. So there's no. No, some are meant to me. I think they're going to, my read. And also, they brought Nest engineers, the platform team at Nest is now reporting into Google.

which is interesting. Yeah. So the underlying Google platform that enables all this hardware is kind of getting, it's getting more focus and attention. So finally, hopefully.

Finally, a pixel C running Chrome that can control your smart lights. That's what everybody needs in this world. Other, here's some happy news. I'm just starting to stalling until we get into EFA here

because we got a lot of talk about. But I thought this was kind of the most interesting news of the week. Sonos basically was like, screw this app. Like fundamentally, They're like, we put out these speakers, we have this app, the app. People have a love-hate relationship with the app.

But they're saying, we're going to let Spotify directly control our speakers from the Spotify app. We're going to let Pandora directly do it. You have to imagine they'll let Apple do it. Well, I think what they're doing is they're using the Spotify and Pandora deals to push Apple to let them do it. Right. And there's some Alexa integration as well that they're doing. So yeah, the other big thing is that starting next year, you'll be able to yell at your echo and control the son of speakers, which is like awesome because, the echo is a pretty lousy speaker

sonos speakers are sound great but you can't control them with your voice so I'd say I'm putting I'm trying to figure out how to put speakers in my house and it is so confusing it's so hard to know what to buy and the answer is basically buy a bunch of sonos yeah but I don't want to subject my friends to like here's a Nexus 7 preloaded with the sonos app which I've

I'm like ready there's a Nexus 7 charging at my house in preparation for this horrible idea clever solution. What are you going to do with the next to seven? I have like 10 of them. For a while, they just kept showing up with other products. Because they're like, you need to control my internet of things garbage. So we've preloaded this next to seven.

It's like, do you want this back? I'm like, no, they're garbage. Anyway, so I have one. That was my plan. But now, if you can just be at my house to open Spotify. And click the Spotify connect button. And just go. That's great.

Yeah. Does Sonos have competitors? So, yeah. Yeah, Sonos has dominated this multi-room home audio space for a while, wirelessly controlled home audio space for a while. There's another company called Romfeld, which recently, they're from Germany, kind of obvious by their name, but they recently launched in the U.S. They do a very similar concept, but they don't support as many services, and their speakers are a little more expensive. And there's a couple other, you know, Google's been trying to get people to use cast in wireless speakers, and there's a bunch of manufacturers that make them, but I don't think they're hugely popular. Yeah, I was wondering how well that works, because that seems kind of obvious to me.

I tested it last year with LG's speakers. And it works fine. The thing with Sonos is it's really, people, I think it's fair to hate on the Sonos app because it is poorly designed. But as a concept, the Sonos app allows you to manage multiple rooms really easily. And when you're using things like AirPlay or Google Cast, you're pointing to one speaker. And if you have multiple rooms in your house. Cast support multiple speakers. Cass did add multiple speakers.

But multiple rooms is a different story Where maybe I have like three or four speakers in one room And I want them playing one thing And then another room I've got I've got a whole multi-room group playback FAQ pulled up on cast There's a lot of questions This is a long idea

How to create an audio group How to edit or delete audio? I wanted to go all in on cast Because it's cool But then it's you know what's gonna leave out? Apple music on your iPhone Yeah Right and it's like I don't want to use Apple music on my iPhone

I generally don't want to use Apple Music and Music L'AFLMLAFO. How are you going to listen to the new Frank Ocean album? Yeah, and then Frank Ocean is like this cast ecosystem is bullshit. So to me. And there's talking to me a headphone jacks. I can't even like hack it together. The thing about Sonos, Sonos is like buying house plants. You're like decorating your house with speakers.

Where to me the most important thing about audio is that there is one place that you know you can sit and get truly great sound. Oh, man. I completely disagree. I think like there was a time and maybe for some people that like is a case where you want to sit and like just get the best audio fidelity you want. But when you're thinking of wireless technologies, streaming music services, it's convenience trumps audio quality in a huge way. And Sonos sounds great. And like it's for the vast majority of people, it sounds better than the speakers that they have in their home, better than their boom boxes and whatever they're using 40 years ago. A lot of people do rely on terrible speakers and Sonos might be an upgrade for them.

but I just want people to know that you can buy these bookshelf monitor type speakers and then you plug them into an amplifier and the amplifier has an auxiliary jack that probably has to convert to RCA but don't worry about it. And then you use max cell tapes and then you sit in a leather chair and the sound literally blows you back. No, it's not that much of money, but you can literally have a setup that is now of the I don't know what the right word is. Species that they use to mix stuff. Of the species?

Like, caliber. I don't want that. Like, I want to, I want to hear how the creators were listening to. I want to listen to music when I want to listen to it and how I want to listen to it. And so if I'm walking from room to room or if, you know, we're playing music in one room for the kids and I'm in the bedroom and I want to play something else, I want to be able to do that easily. I want, I want speakers in every room of my house. I want them all wirelessly controlled. and I want to be able to yell at them with my voice.

That's what I think what we're... Do you have a whole separate speaker system for your TV? No. So your TV plays through your Sonos? You can get... I don't have a Sonos sound bar, but Sonos has a sound bar for your TV. How do you hear your TV then? My TV has speakers.

With my ears. So you don't even care about how anything sounds. I think what we've really stumbled upon here is the rift between a person with children and a person with no children. Well, a person... Rooms in their house. Plural room. That's the bigger thing. Or like, you know, someone who prioritizes audio quality, like an audio file claim or whatever versus a normal person who has a life to live.

What I'm really excited. What we're really trying to do is get Ashley to get a TV. How are you on that process? I told you, I want to get a projector. There you go. That's the move. I genuinely want a projector. Do you have a wall?

I can, yeah. I have some posters. We got to move. You have the maxel poster of the guy in the leather chair. Does anybody know where I can get the. I'm looking for that shit right now, man. If there's one thing we need in this office, it's that max cell poster. So you would move stuff?

Yeah, I would get projector. And then I have to get cable. 1299. What's the fucking deal? Fast and free shipping? Buy it now. I want to know why you want a projector instead. I just want to let everybody know that Nilai has indeed.

Well, no. PayPal. Come on. Just click PayPal. God. You got this. You got this. Supporting the mafia.

The PayPal mafia, that is. Right. I don't know what I'm doing. Of Elon Musk. And if everybody listens really closely, you can hear Nelai typing is PayPal password. I'm buying this. Look, I'm buying the poster. I buy a lot of things in this show.

So you'd need a playback device as well, right? You need the whole technology stack to watch things on a wall. Yeah. But it seems excessive. Yeah. But it's exciting because you can start for Ground 1. You don't have to make the mistakes that Dan made. So much possibility.

Like children. Like having multiple rooms So you want to listen to music in Yeah, I want a projector because personally Whenever I walk into a home that has a TV I find it not appealing Oh, so you don't like the aesthetic of a TV? I do not like the aesthetic of TV at all

So for me I love that I can still maybe stream something But it's like only when I want you to see it So like 30 years ago you would have bought this like big entertainment center With doors that close over your TV Yeah, definitely the doors, wood paneling Oh God, that's awful The number of people on the verge staff who don't have televisions is phenomenal. Like, Helen, you know, we do the Mr. Robot show.

And last night, Helen was here to, like, tweet along with the show. And I was like, why aren't she doing this from home? And she's like, well, I don't have TV. It's not even they don't have TV. No one has cable. Yeah. She doesn't have a TV or she doesn't have a service to watch on a TV. Well, if you don't own a television, it's very unlikely that you're going to buy cable

so you can authenticate cable streaming. No, no, no, I'm not saying. You can have one per TV in your house and not have a TV in your house and not have cable service so she couldn't watch USA at home. I still think those things go handed in. Like if you buy a TV, you're more likely than not to just give up and buy cable. I don't know. Okay.

I feel like I haven't been totally honest with you guys. Oh, my God. You have cable? No. She's like, I've got to have it. I can't get rid of it. My roommates have a TV. Okay.

It is, I have no idea what this TV is. It's ancient. Yeah. It sits in our living room. I think we have like a first generation Roku that they own as well. I do not use this thing because I'm like, why? Because you have taste. You're like, do you know what I do for a living?

And so, but they don't have cable. They have a Roku. One of them used to be an entertainment writer. Yeah. This is like a thing. We run in this problem consistently. You know, the other hot... We assign a TV review to someone and they're like, I don't...

Oh, yeah. The other hot thing I'm learning about, it's the Plex media server. Oh, yeah. No, Plex is... So, like, a lot of... Plex is the killer app for Apple TV. A lot of people I know, it's like, oh, you... yeah, like my buddy's cousin, first removed friend, set up this Plex server.

Someone I don't know and I'm not liable for it. Yeah, has given me the password to this Plex server that has all possible entertainment on it. Pirate entertainment. Let's be a brand. No, Plex is a killer app for Apple TV because it makes the Apple TV the ultimate cable box because somewhere in the background is a PC with like array to ray that's just downloading the internet constantly. And like Plex is awesome because it's like, oh, I found this BitTorrent file. It's Batman versus Superman.

I've gone ahead and downloaded all the album art and tweaked it and like put in some captions. It has better related content than the actual Apple TV. It's terrific. Don't steal anything, kids. And if you do, do it because you want to smash the state. But if someone else has done the stealing, life is set up the server. All right. All right.

We got to get an EFA. I want to start. Paul, you talked to one, Mr. Vlad Savov. And I just want to warn everybody. Talks a lot about gadgets. That's why they're here. All right, let's run that. We'll come back and we've got to get into the yoga book and a whole bunch of other stuff.

All right, everybody, we've got Vlad here. Vlad Savov. He's literally in Berlin, Germany right now for the EFA trade show, which is, I don't know, what you call it, the CES of Europe? Pretty much. It's one of the big global events. Unfortunately, Europe is kind of the third wheel in the, you know, international scene nowadays. China is growing in popularity and prominence. And the United States is always the place that everybody makes the big announcements. But this year in EFA, we have

plenty of really exciting and thrilling things that we get to see for the time. We got Acer, we got Asus, we got Sony, kind of Lenovo showed up pretty big. Oh, Lenovo showed up in a fantastic way. My highlight of the show, gadget of the entire I saw it tonight and I fell in love. I kind of have. this vulnerability where I fall in love to easy little gadgets but I think it's worth it for the yoga book that's how you get hurt yes here's the thing with a yoga book okay it is just a terrific device to hold in your hands I've seen pictures of it

I've read text about it I've seen it on video it just doesn't convey what it is the tactile feel of it it is just so perfect symmetrical everything is flat and straight and that's all before you even talk about its function just as an object, the physical object, it's so desirable and lovely. And then this is why I don't feel like I'm going to get hurt. It only costs $500 with Android and $550 with Windows. I would have imagined it to cost like thousand, well, not thousands, but above $1,000. It's like a little fall fling.

Just drop a few hundred. So is that, how's the hinge? Because I check that, that Lenovo's been doing that hinge design for a while. Have they improved it at all? Because it always seems a little like, I don't know, creaky, I guess, to me, if that's the right to word. I haven't seen it, I haven't seen it creaky. They've been using it for about a year and a half now. They first started using it in their ultrothane laptops. And in that case, I felt like it was a big gratuitous. Like, you could

have done the hinge in a more conventional way and you would have had the same functionality. There, it was just kind of, well, you know what? It looks kind of like a watchtrap. It looks stylish and weird and definitely different, definitely recognizable for a no-go. So they did it for style reasons. With this device, with the yoga book, first of all, like you say, they've completely redesigned it. They've gone through iterations upon iterations of this thing. And now just feel so stiff and rugged. I feel it's part of what makes the device so appealing to me. The fact that the hinge is just super smooth, super stiff, super reliable. I try to talk it in every direction. I'm starting to do bent tests with laptops and tablets. They're that thin these days.

And it just gives this sense of real, real high quality. I'm just extremely impressed. I think creaky was the wrong word. What I mean is that, you know, some laptops, you kind of have to over-apply, you have to, like, push too hard to get it to move, and then you overshoot the position. You know what I mean? Instead of it just going exactly where you move your hand.

Does that make sense? Well, you know, this is what design is. I think the quotes was that little things aren't unimportant aspects. They are, you know, when you put all the little things together, that's what design is. And that's what it is. it's not making it too stiff, not making it too loose, getting it just right so that somebody like me who is critical of everything. I am erotic about it. This is my job to criticize.

Somebody like me opens it up and just feels an immediate sense of pleasure. So they nailed it. I think so. I mean, are you going to get the Android one or the Windows one? Or are you just think you might get one? I don't really care about the operating system because the thing. It's just want to touch it. Yes, yes, I do. And the thing with this is, It's just so cheap for what it is that I can say, I'm going to buy this as a bedside thing that I can watch YouTube videos on. And then if I get some extra functionality out of it, it's just a bonus at that point. This is how attracted him to it.

That being said, like I said, it's my weakness that I've fallen up with a gadget. A good example is the Samsung gear fit when it was first introduced. It's still a beautiful thing, but it's not functionally great. So there's always a danger of the actual utility of using the Lenovo Yoga Book doesn't match. it's physical design and it's tactile appeal. Sure. But let's be optimistic about it. Okay, love at first sight at least.

So, okay, but you're at a trade show, you're seeing thousands of gadgets. You just walk one end of the hall to the other. You're literally surrounded by technology. What else has stood out? Okay, well, Acer actually stood out to me. They were one of the first companies to introduce their products, and that's always a danger because when you're first, you just get superseded so quickly.

everything just snowballs on top of you. But ASA went for the absolute extremes. So it introduced the first laptop that is less than a centimeter thick. So that is the thinnest and probably the lightest. Actually, not the lightest. LG has the gram, which is less than a kilogram. So everybody's just kind of coming up with these round numbers and saying less than that. And Acer did the craziest wildest gaming laptop ever.

A 21-inch curved screen on it. And it actually weighs almost exactly seven. of its ultra-thin laptop 17 pounds yeah uh 8 kilograms fast here in europe how many how many stone is that gosh i have no idea i i spend it by the entire interior metrars 17 pounds two stone one and something one and a half yeah one point two stone that's a big laptop it's enormous it's it's really great exercise if you want to do you know some arm curls and whatever i mean i know it's it's it is ridiculous but to me it's just like It's like the monolith in 2001.

It's like this thing that you look at. I mean, like the monkeys don't get any functionality from the monolith. It just lets them know that something out there exists. And that's what inspires them to move forward as a civilization. And so I feel like just a laptop that has two GTX-1080s in it, it's just inspiring to me to like, I really, I really, really want a laptop with one of like the Nvidia 10 series graphics cards. And I don't know which one I'm going to get yet. And I know the dust is still settling. They just started announcing them.

But I'm pretty excited to have a VR quality GPU in a laptop. And somehow this laptop that I would never buy, never want to carry is inspiring to me. Well, I think you've really nailed it, Paul. And I think we cannot by any means judge this or weight's merits as a regular laptop. Like, we can't treat it as a laptop. If you put this on your lap, the joke that multiple people have made to me, you get free birth control out of it. It's a ridiculous device, okay? Well, and also, I've got to say that the thin and light for laptops is really ridiculous to me because you put it in your backpack.

And it's like if you accidentally drop a pack of gum into your backpack, now your backpack is heavier than like the next five laptops that were heavier than this one. You know, I'm proud of them for breaking records. But it's, I mean, really weight and thickness is not my problem with laptops. Absolutely. And you know what? The same is true of phones. But I've admitted to mention the product name. So the ultra-thin laptop from A-Series called the Swiss 7.

And very briefly, what I would say about it is the fact that it passes that milestone of less than a centimeter thick is kind of meaningless. You're absolutely right. Slightly thicker laptops do a better job, I imagine, than this one. You know, you just go in for too many compromises just to have the thinnest thing possible. It's very nice. Very well built, actually. It doesn't bend. I tried to bend it even because it's just so thin.

So I think ASA has done a really good job with it, but I don't see any value in it being that thin. So that's the Swift 7. The big one, the Predator 21X, I just want to get back to what you said because it's just so true. This is the reason we have concept cars. You're not going to drive the concept car. This is the reason where we have fashion shows. For the most part, you're not going to what. the things that are shown on the catwalk.

They're there to show you the extreme. They're there to give you kind of map out the boundaries of what's possible in design. And then you kind of rein it in and you make it practical. So this is where Acer is going. It's essentially saying, okay, we've got all this engineering acumen. We can stick four SSDs in there. We can stick 64 gigabytes of RAM. We can stick an Intel K-Series processor that hasn't even been announced yet, okay, seven-generation.

An SD card slot. Yes, that's what I love. Yes, practicality guys. SD cars. Like, you're going to jack in your SD card and start posting photos on this thing, with his curve display. I just want to make sure we hit all the big brands that are pouring their hearts out here at EFA. Asus has this new Zen watch.

That's right. I don't know. I don't know. It's not my normal style. I still haven't bought a smart watch. And I'm still waiting. And I don't know if this is my style, but there is something really appealing. I don't know why it looks so different, but it does look different to me and also has a truly actually circular screen, which is important milestone.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's really what is down to. A circular screen is just more appealing to us. Well, the majority of us, let's say. And AISOR is again, not AISO is, again, going for having better design. It uses Italian leather. It uses specific sort of jewelry grade steel. I didn't know it was jewelry great steel, but apparently there is. But my personal feeling with this watch is that it's just over-designed.

And again, it has that extra bulk. It doesn't feel like a watch. The big achievement of last year's E for Samsung's Gear S2, the moment I've got that in my hands, that's what I had another one of my infatuations developing because it just felt like a watch. And I'm like, but this is a smart watch, and yet it feels like a watch. And I couldn't compute it. And the big issue with smartwatches, and I think it's why you also don't have one yourself,

is that they're just bulky and large. And unless you're actually going for that kind of chunky thing, that's the thing you want from your watch, it's just not going to be comfortable for you. Yeah, I mean, I used to wear it just as a fashion thing. I rarely did any math with it, but I used to wear a calculator watch, and it was way smaller than any of these watches.

I mean, the face was barely wider or thicker than the band. And that was a calculator. It was very powerful. Okay, so, well, speaking of the S2, there was the S3 here. Yeah, and it's bigger. And it's bigger. So nobody's learning any lessons. Unfortunately, I mean, Samsung was very kind of schizophrenic, okay? Because first of all, Samsung's production for his presentation was really impressive.

So sound, visuals, starting right on time. If you're going to do an event specifically to launch a watch, you'd better start it right on time. And Samsung did that. And I was like, yes, you guys nailed it. And then they brought the people out and they staged an interview with themselves. So they brought a blogger out and that blogger is Samsung's marketing manager. And everybody loves interviews. Yes.

My sarcasm going there. But the gear S3. What I will say about it is it's a marveling of engineering because it's so hard to stick GPS into a watch. And the S3 is a watch and it's stylish. And it also has LTE. It has, it's shockproof, it's waterproof. I mean, in terms of just getting everything into it, I cannot complain. I cannot knock it for anything.

Right. This one, you don't need a phone. Like, this was a rumor for the Apple Watch that the Apple Watch 2 would have built in a radio so that you didn't need to have a phone with you at all the time. And this is what's so hard about it. It's hard. It makes it big. That rumor was defeated by another rumor saying Apple couldn't do it.

Right. Well, and I mean, I'll be honest and frank. I feel like Sam's Lung shouldn't have done it because it, I mean, no. The nice thing about all these other, all these companies is you have so many options. Obviously, you can choose from a smaller smart watch. You could just get a bracelet that doesn't even have a watch. You can get a fitness. There's a lot of options.

Obviously, Apple just does one and it's small. But yeah, it definitely doesn't have all these features. Okay, so you are a huge headphone nerd. and have you had so maybe just lay out the schedule of EFA just so people kind of know you kind of start by going to a ton of press conferences and then over time you get a little more time for the show floor is that correct that's right so today this is the evening of Thursday I do believe we've just got over the hump of the two days of press events and for the next couple of days we're just going to meet companies walk the floor, roamed the floor, discover things we'd never heard about. That's how it's working out. Just one final note about the gear is free.

Like I said, excellent engineering, but I just have to agree with you, it's because it got bulkier. It's because it got heavier, that it doesn't have that special feeling that the gearrest2 conveyed about a regular watch with smart functionality. Now this, the gearrest free, is

straight up smart piece of technology that you put in your wrist. So that's the distinction. But actually, headphones, this is the thing. Yes, I'm the Virgins resident headphone nerd. I haven't had an opportunity to look at any, hear any. That's what I realized as soon as I said that. And then the show floor is about the worst possible place to try out headphones anyways, unless you go to like a private meeting room and then you've got to go offside and takes forever.

But I do feel like we've seen headphones with the lightning connector before, but they're kind of come fast and furious. and they're including some sort of interesting, like I wrote up some headphones that were at EFA with, they're powered by a lightning connector and they're earbuds with noise cancellation, but there's no like battery pack or anything. I feel like that's exactly, I mean, you know,

Neelai's not here. He's not here to tell us how to think or how to feel. And this is the exact reason I'm kind of excited for Apple to get rid of the headphone jack. As inconvenient and horrible and annoying as it's going to be, it's clearly sparked a bit of an arms race in headphones like, oh, we could do crazy things now that we're going to put all the electronics in the headphones themselves.

Yeah. And I mean, this particular year, I have to say, headphone development has advanced in a very big way. It's not the most prominent thing in terms of news coverage, but things have pushed forward in a big way. And now what we're seeing is exactly like you say, lightning powered, USB-C-powered, H-G-C-B-L, I believe, partnered on USB-C-powered earbuds. And again, because you can get power out of lightning and the USB-C port,

you remove a lot of the hardware that you have to stick into the headphones themselves. So you make them lighter, you make them more comfortable for people to wear, and thus you make their functionality more appealing, which in that case was noise-canceling. I will say to the point of agreeing with Neely, you don't actually need to get rid of the headphone jack to have those bits of functionality. But then maybe you do need to get rid of it in order, like you say, to nudge companies into developing more models like that. I don't really know how to feel about it myself.

I just know, like you say, that everybody's kind of trying to push boundaries, trying to develop new ideas and essentially seeing what's going to stick with people and what's going to resonate most. My biggest fear is that you're going to end up having the... since every company has to do the digital to analog conversion in somewhere in this either in the headphone itself or somewhere along the cable or in the plug that the cheaper of these headphones are going to have digital to analog conversion that's inferior to what was built into the iPhone. Is that going to be a problem?

Are the cheap headphones going to be worse than they already are? That is a legitimate concern to have. One thing I will say, this is if it has been. a big show for phones. You know, phones kind of are getting neglected because they just keep coming, they just keep coming. But it has been a big show for phones. And I've noticed companies are pushing the high-fi audio within their phones as a selling

feature. So Nubia did that. Nubia Z-11 introduced recently right here at the show. Huawei did that with the MediaPad and Free Android tablet. It also used a similar deck from a Japanese company, which is digital to unlock converter. So everybody's putting good. hardware, dacks and amps inside their tablets and phones. And that actually feeds the headphone jack.

So, like, the first thing to say is, if the iPhone drops a headphone jack, nothing is going to happen straight away. You have a litany, literal litany, cornucopia, vast diversity of Android alternatives that offer you great audio straight out of the phone for a headphone jack. But then, you know, you have your phone, you have a consistent source. So I have my phone and then I can compare headphones plugging into. it. If you, like you say, take that circuitry out of the phone and put it into the headphones into that cable, then you put more reliance, more dependence on the headphones themselves.

And then you have to essentially be a better informed consumer of headphones. Well, I'm excited to, and scared, but I'm mostly excited because I just feel like I'm seeing some pretty cool, cool stuff. Okay, so what was horrible about EFA so far? Oh, the presentations. Who, without a doubt, the presentations. Well, the other thing is, The only things I've seen so far, I've been the presentation, but honestly, they have been train wreck after slow motion disaster. We had Samsung interviewing Samsung, which I cringe that. And at least, okay, the positive of that is that I talked to one of Samsung's PR representatives, and I gave him a point-by-point breakdown of what not to do again.

So hopefully they listen to me. I'm sure they want to. Huawei presentation, first of all, I have to say Huawei introduced two highly competitive phones with a no- and the Nova Plus. These have aluminum unibody designs. The Nova in particular looks like a shrunken down Nexus 6P.

It just has some lower specs. I love that hardware. Yeah, totally. And the Nova, I played around with them ahead of the show. It's just very good. Like, Huawei wants to be known for aluminum unibody design,

and I think they should be because they're nailing that. And they've always had some of the fastest and best fingerprint recognition technology. So they have a lot of good fundamentals. But here's the thing. They introduced the new phones. It took them like 15 minutes to do an introduction.

And then they took a half hour, which they gave to a random blogger who decided to give us a masterpass on how to take selfies. And then she started to explain why we need beautification features on selfie cameras. And it was just horrible. Just I don't know. Here's the thing. The companies themselves, for them these are big events. And they seem to think that because it's a big event, I need. to give it a big word count, essentially.

Right. And that frustrates me because, quite frankly, by the end of Huawei's presentation, I started to hate the phones, which I really liked before the presentation. Well, I like the presentation where you have to dig into the press release to actually know what even happened because despite the fact that you spent half an hour, 45 minutes, you didn't really learn any facts. I don't know what it is about this year. It's, if companies could just relax and just kind of unwind the process.

pressure that they put upon themselves to always sound like they are the ones beating the entire competition, et cetera. Listen, if you're making phones, you're making the thing that everybody else is making. So the things that's going to make you appealing and give you any character might be just that you are a human company and that you're down to earth. This is the thing that people say about Elon Musk when he does a presentation. It's like, he speaks like a human being and that's peculiar to me, you know, whereas companies just kind of seem pressured and that pressure comes across in their presentations.

A good example is Sony. I went to their event today. I was looking forward to their new Experio phones. But then Cash your eyes, Ben, maybe half the presentation, apologizing for Sony's poor performance and saying,

guys, we're working really hard over here. Here's a break. We want to be, you know, the technology closest to you. We know you have a lot of choices, but we would really like it

if we had the one that you choose. And it was just, you know, it made me feel sorry for Sony. And here's a $3,200 gold-plated walkman to celebrate our 70th anniversary. Love that company forever. Never changed Sony. This is what's crazy. Sony is a company and Cassidy Wright himself presents so much humility and so much recognition

of where it is and how competitive everybody around it is. And then it comes up with these wild products. I mean, $2,300 headphones, $3,200 gold-plated Walkman. Who is buying that? I am the audio file of the verge and I am scratching my head. That's just them celebrating. rating. Those aren't, I can't imagine that's a huge focus for the company. But I would, I was really sad to read, and we, we have to wrap this up because there's going to be a whole other podcast. But there's so many gadgets. Oh my gosh. The Sony Xperia XZ and X compact, which have crazy, amazing camera sensors, but terrible software. And it's, and it's sad. Well, this was a roller coaster emotions for me. First of all, I saw the

spec sheets for these devices and I was like, okay, Sony, what are you doing? You only give me 3 gigabytes of RAM, 32 gigabytes of storage. There is nothing in terms of specs on this new flagship from Sony that you couldn't have gotten from like the the Xiaomi Me 5 back in March,

which is a problem. Everybody else is six months ahead of you. And then I went there, I picked up these phones and I was again smitten. They're just really well designed, especially the X compact. That is a beautiful about. It's beautiful. It's not just myself. It's James Vincent, Tom Warren, my fellow European colleagues. Everybody who picked it up really liked it. Really comfortable in the

hand. It has that powerful camera system inside it. So you're getting high-end technology, small, literally compact form factor. Beautiful. Okay. So then I'm on a high. And then I am like, let's start using these cameras. Let's write them out. And I start taking photos. And it's just a disaster after a disaster, which is terrible. I don't even understand. And the thing is I had multiple of each phone. So it wasn't a case of here's this phone with crappy software, which is letting me down. Yeah, and I read other write-ups too that other people have problems. So other people have had the same experience. Well, okay, let's break down the camera system very briefly. First of all, 23 megapixel Sony sensor. They've had this already, but now they're

emptying up. So they're putting a laser auto-focus on it. It already has face detect auto-focus, laser autof-focus. So you're stacking up the focus systems. You're making auto-focus Super fast. Great. Then you have, this is the first time I've ever heard about this, an LGBC infrared sensor designed to sense lighting and perfect white balance, right? And Sony's calling that a triple sensing camera system, which is a bit dodgy, but whatever. Set that aside. What I'm saying to you is that all of Sony's engineering for the past year has focused on this camera system. And then you pick it up, you start taking photos, and they're just really bad. You said you had to put it in a manual and you got some great photos.

Yes, well, that's the issue. Right. I could have done that with any experience of a phone for the past four years. Because it's the same. You know, you go into manual, just everything yourself. Yeah. So this is the problem. If you don't have good automatic software, that is Apple's little, quote, quote,

little trick, having amazing photos by default. And that is the thing that Sony has never been able to perfect. and that is always the disappointing thing because I will tell you, the X compact with that camera system, if you could work really quickly and reliably and just nail the photo each time and with that design,

I would buy like three of them and have enough for the next few years. All right. Well, on that note, on that sad note, I don't know why I wanted to end EFAR on a sad note. I guess there's, I don't know. I have a positive note. I have a positive note.

We have an anniversary. We had it with, okay, okay, okay, go. Go ahead. Be happy. This is the 16th anniversary of the Nokia 3310, which was introduced on September 1st in the year 2000. Which you could play snake on and put in a washing machine. And it would survive. Indestructible.

I mean, I feel like the past couple years, people have started to realize that an indestructible waterproof phone would be a really great idea, actually. Yeah. But we're still working our way back to that. Pinnacle of gadget history. the Nokia 3310. And thank you, Vlad, the pinnacle of gadget blogging, killing at EFA. Thank you for sharing your time with us.

I know you're very busy and you probably want to eat dinner right now. What time is it over there? Sam Boston. Well, have a good evening and just keep falling in love. Good enough. This episode of the Veritcast is brought to you by Wealthfront. I'd like to thank my friends at Wealthfront. For sponsoring today's podcast, Wealthfront is a transparent, affordable financial advisor that can help you invest your hard-earned dollars and reach your financial goals, like, I don't know, purchasing a TV or a projector.

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Go to wealthfront.com slash vergecast. That's wealthfront.com slash vergecast. Wealthfront.com slash vergecast. They just added the third one there so that you'd remember it. What is it? Wealthfront.com slash verge cast. Paul. FIFA's going on.

It's a real thing. It's a real show. Promise it happens. It's not a ruse. Yeah. Yeah, I know exactly that the stage Vlad is at where you've been at press events the whole time. And so while you're like, you know there's a whole trade show there, you haven't really gotten to touch the trade show yet. Yeah.

You're just shuttling from. Well, I think the floor just opened today, right? Right. So there's, I think so. How does the atmosphere compare to CES? CES. It's more German. It's more German.

So it's more organized. It's also smaller. It's a lot of... CS is so huge that you think every trade show is huge. And then you go to another trade show, you're like, oh, I can actually see the whole thing. It's like a... It's one big horseshoe of very large buildings. Right?

Isn't it a horseshoe? I'm not 100%. You know, all of Germany is built in horseshoe ships. Just try that one up for size. Also, they've got like a fake space needle. Yeah. Germany. Who knows?

Anyway, what's going on? Tom Warren and Vatter there. There's tons of stuff on the site. But let's talk about some news. So I thought the biggest news out of Iifa was the Lenovo Yoga Book. Dan, you actually wrote a big feature on it this week. Yeah. Yeah.

So we got a look at the development of the yoga book over. So Lenovo spent three years on this thing, which is like four times longer than Lenovo usually takes to churn out a product. So they spent a lot in time developing it, concepting it. And with Lenovo, which I found this really interesting. is that a lot of companies, when they talk to me about their products, they like to put on airs that, like, you know, they had these, like, very inspired, creative thinkers come up with these magical ideas. Yeah. You know, Apple does that all the time. Lenovo was like, we did a lot of research. We found people were doing this, so we made a solution that we think works to fix this. I mean, the thing looks beautiful. It's super thin. Yeah, it's like the product itself is, like, really thin, really unique looking.

What's really unique about the yoga book, if you haven't seen it yet, is one side is a, you know, a 10-inch tablet, and then connected to that by a hinge, is a flat, featureless surface that is touch-enabled. So it can be a touch keyboard, or it can be a writing surface, or what's really cool is you can put a stack of paper on it and write with ink and have all your ink notes digitized automatically, which is really neat. And even with both halves, closed, it's under 10 millimeters thick.

It's light enough that it can be used as a tablet. It's super versatile. Really neat. You flip it around. You flip it and reverse it, and then it's just a towel. Right. Yeah, you can roll that other half back. Which is like a lot of, there's a lot of Windows laptops that do that, but they have

like big, thick keyboards on them. So it, like, makes it super clumsy. Whereas because this other panel has no feature on it, you can hold it comfortably, it's not super thick. It's really interesting. And it lights up to show you where the keys are, but it would still suck to type on. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It sounds like just typing on a table, kind of. It's kind of like typing on an iPad.

We're all doing it. We're all fake typing on plus services. I just want to feel what the yoga book would feel. I was so excited about this. If you've ever typed on an iPad, like the iPad's on-screen keyboard, it's going to be similar to that. However, the yoga book does have some haptic feedback, so you know when you've clicked. I hate haptic feedback. I hate it.

I love it on my phone. It feels so slow and dumb. Like, every time I get a phone with haptic feedback and you push the screen in it, it's like, it makes the phone feel slow. The trick with that. is you can do this on most Android phones. It's set the vibrations to really short. So it's just really light and you don't actually feel the phone vibrate.

Or you could turn them off and not require your brain to be tricked by vibrating to let you know that you've done something. Yeah, but then, you know. Train your brain. That's my new brain training series. Anyway, so there is feedback to some extent. But so what's interesting is, you know, based on its research and user testing, Lenovo says that young people under 25 can get comfortable.

on it in like as little as 40 minutes. This is their claim. But oldies, like 35-year-olds, should just kill themselves. It might take a few hours, yes, and might want to kill themselves. But yeah, we saw a lot of pre-production models. You know, obviously we're going to have

to review it and spend some real serious time with it and put these claims to the test and see if it does suck to type on or not. But I'm excited about it. Just looking at it, it looks like something from a Star Trek set. It's easily the most interesting piece of hardware I've seen that isn't crazy that isn't, you know, like years in the future. It's the most interesting thought of how

you would mash up the current state of hardware into something totally new. I've seen that long time. I will say Ashley, too, about this yesterday. The logo on the front. So when you close it, I think my favorite part of it is when you close it, the logo is rotated. So it looks like a book. Yeah. So the whole idea is supposed to look like a book. But the Lenovo's consumer logo is like aggressively cute. It's, I think it's the same font that Google. uses. Well, they should stop it. I mean, at Google's logo, there's like this famous Aikwood column.

It's like, congratulations, Google. Your mom drew your logo for you. Google's logo is like not high art. Not a bar to... Right. It's like, Lenovo being like, that's a good font. We bought Motorola. We're going to... Can we get that font too? Let's just make it bold. It's a bad logo.

And it's weird branding. Yeah, like, in your feature that you wrote, all the Lenovo executives are like, oh, we want people to bring this to class. They kept pushing that. Sort of storyline. And so of course, naturally, I'm imagining, like, the cool guy who picked up his yoga book and is going to school this year. And he's like, yo, I got this yoga book that's so dope. Like, this is impressive.

And he's going to roll up, and this topography looks so bad. Like, I would be intrigued if I saw someone writing out of this. And then as soon as he folds it and I see that Lenovo staff. It's over. It's all done. They have a yoga logo. They could put that on there. Yeah.

Yeah. On the inside is a yoga logo. I just wish we didn't need to be hit over the head with brands. Brands, brands. Poor Ashley. I just wish I put the think pad logo on it and a think pad keyboard. Then I would love this. I would just like a think bad.

Well, what do you think? I mean, we were OGs in the days of the courier. This was like stuff that Paul and I... Here's what I've realized about myself. At some point in early high school, I stopped being able to really control a pin very well. Oh my God, Paul. And I think it seriously affected me on the written portions of some rather important tests,

like AP tests. Yeah. I mean, I'm a professional writer. I got terrible writing scores. Yeah. And I basically can't handwrite anymore. Yeah. I hardly ever draw.

And I used to be a big part of my identity. And so I like seeing this thing, but they're forever other people. and I'm glad Lenovo is experimenting and doing cool things, and I'm so happy this exists. I just, it's such not for me. Right. I have to say the fact that it exists in Windows and Android versions is potentially the questionable, like best and worst decision. So, yeah, I mean, all of this hinges on the execution and not the hardware side.

It's all about whether the software is going to work well with it. And so it's coming in Windows and Android versions. Lenovo's modified Android a little bit so that it can support. multiple windowed apps and it's got like a Windows like taskbar. But yeah, that's a big question. But a forthcoming Chrome Android mashup that supports Android's multiple window, I mean, that could be a thing. That could be a thing, but that would be like a different device. Yeah. Like, you can't just like switch this from Android to Chrome that supports Android apps. If you could just stick windows on it. Come on. Right. If you put windows on this, why can't...

It's got an Intel processor. This seems way more compelling with Chrome OS to me. It's possible. You know, I've gotten a bunch of people saying that. Oh, question. Does the whole surface just work as a touchpad, like the world's biggest track pad? In the writing mode? No, like if you're using it as a computer. When you have the keyboard on, there's a trackpad section.

Okay. Looks a little small. It is, but also this is a touch. It's not for me. This is a touchscreen. Never have I seen Paul realize that he's being excluded from something so aggressively. Yeah. They designed this whole thing around.

on what you'd be bad at. For people who can hold pins. I mean, honestly, that was the thing. When I looked at this, I was so excited about the hardware. But then I was like, I just wish Apple had made it. Ooh. I even told my mom that. I told her out the yoga book.

And I was like, but I wish it was Apple. But OS 10 or iOS. It couldn't run an XOS. Why not? Because it has a touchscreen and like you flip it around. Well, sure, but presumably Apple's going to do all the work. I wish it was like iOS, basically. Like, I want my phone as this.

So this is essentially what you wish an iPad Pro was. You know what I like hearing in Ashley's tone of voice that she's describing this? Is that what Hope sounds like? You're trying to make a flip phone. Damn it, Paul. That's on the list. Ashley run about like three flip phones. Ashley is obsessed.

And Dan is so mad about the flip phones. It's my favorite thing. I'm not mad about flip phones. I'm mad when people are like, oh my God, the flip phone is back. And it's like, well, no, in like China and Japan, flip phones still existed for the last time. I think there's just a really big thirst for it in the U.S. right now. And I'm not kidding. Every time I write about a flip phone, people email me and are like, you have said exactly what I've been thinking.

So many people want this. And I don't get why it's not here yet. And so many people want a phone that just magically turns into a laptop. And I'm saying I like hearing the hope and optimism in your voice versus the bitter, jaded pain that I have experienced for the past eight years of seeing people try and fail. But this could be the thing. This could be the one, the yoga book. The all-touch, real computer that we've all been dreaming. I mean, it's not going to replace your phone, but sure.

Why not? What if this was just... What if this was like the cover of a mole skiing? Yeah. Right? We, yeah. We got to move on. We're just, it's just getting...

What if it was a different kind of book? What if Lenovo shipped the next Harry Potter book? Like, we're just going nowhere. All right. Actually, I want to talk about this. I noticed this out of Ifa, and it actually started earlier in the week. There is a bunch of new Fitbit stuff announced.

Samsung put out the Gear S3. Pebble did an update. There's an Asuse-Senwatch. There's some new fossil stuff. There's Withings. Withings. Don't forget. Withings.

Tom Tom. Tom. Tom. Just trying. Fall 2016, man. Still in the game. Good old Tom, Tom. Now is the time for all the wearables companies to launch their stuff. So people will buy it for Christmas in the holidays because they don't buy it any other time.

And then next week, you know, we're expecting. And we're going to get in. Apple preview, but next week we're expecting a new Apple Watch. What's going on on smartwatches? Would you buy any of these, Ashley? That's always my question. That's what I was going to say is Paul is well aware of my thoughts, I think,

on fitness trackers and smart watches. I own a pebble. Yeah. That is as far as I'm going. The pebble time round. Time round. So here's the thing that's the full time round is I lost my charger and I took a chance on a third party one

of Amazon. I'm so cheap. Wait, how How long did it take to start on fire? It didn't kill it, but it got real weird. It would just say, like, it was at 100% after one minute, and I was like, sick. And then I put it on, and it would die, like, within 25 minutes. So, I don't know. I think I did something bad.

Ashley, what do you think about the Zen Watch 3? Oh, my God. That's so funny, because that's the one that's, like, called to me. Yeah, because I was talking with Vlad about that. Right, Dan hates it. There's something about it that does stick out to me. It looks better than most. Oh, man.

Hard disagree. Oh, this is grotesque. Wait, I think T.C. said it looked like Winamp. It looks like... Exactly. That was the most of a stuice. The watch base definitely looks like a wind. Everybody, we know how LCDs work, right?

You can change it. You can change all the pixels. Right? Right. Yes. Don't get hung up on the watch face. I think this looks like a cheap watch that's trying to look expensive. I thought Paul was going to grill. me on like the specifics of LCDs.

I'm like, the crystals twist. You apply electric current and they twist. I was like, shit, I got her a member everything. I'm going to just go edit the Wikipedia entry. The crystals twist. It's a thing. It's a thing.

The crystals twist. Okay, no, please, Ashley, I want to know as someone who I consider to be fashionable what you think about this watch because I don't know why. I'm seriously into it. Yeah? You like this one? The design.

Yeah. Because, okay, Dan says it looks cheap and it does. But I kind of feel like I like that. Are you saying it's owning its cheapness? Yeah, like I think I don't like a lot of watches, which is why I have the pebble. At least this, I'm just like, yeah, I want a smart watch. I think it looks like a cheap watch that's trying really, really, really, really hard to not look like a cheap. I have to say this watch face, it's gregariously bad.

Like, it's so comically bad. like the little guy that's like I walked 9,000 steps like the hell is that you know what it reminds me of I'm using a mic watcher watcher now as a little guy don't put a little guy in your watch face

all right just a hard rule no the little guy is my dad what's bad about it is this two-toned metal fake lookingness my dad is a graphic designer and in the 90s the late 90s maybe early 2000s he got a stock photo CD

with like different metal textures so he'd pull them into Did he make some sick when amp skins? No, he would make Brohures for local businesses Yeah Using a lot of metal and rivets And drop shadows and emboss

And like highest power tools Remember that Photoshop plugin? Yeah You know they used to call Paul's dad The AMP doctor They spelled it with zeros instead of owes It was real thing. Maybe we should bring back

Winamp skins. Okay. Nostalgia. I mean like, remember one AOL bought Winamp? Somebody skinned Spotify last week to look like Ardio. Yeah.

So there's that one. Vlad wrote a piece about the Gear S3 that is as much heartbreak as I've seen Vlad Express in some time. He's like, everything that was special about the Gear S2 is gone.

Here's the thing with the Gear S2. I have a laundry list of things I would change on it. I would not make it bigger. and Samsung went and made it bigger. It looks huge. It's enormous. It's like, I mean, Nila, you like big watches.

So maybe you'll be into it. But I don't like smart watches. Like, I still have a dozen of them and I don't wear them because they just don't seem useful to me. Yeah. To this day. And like, I want them to. A big smart one. Do you remember?

But this is a big smart one. It's huge. You can't go off like traffic to indicate anything. But we've been writing about the Apple Watch for like two years. And like, we've read out of the Apple Watch for like two years. And like, we're out of Apple Watch, something's happening, this changed, whatever. People are vaguely uninterested. We wrote out the Gear S3, and it was like, top of the site for a day.

Yeah, I think that's really weird and interesting. Yeah. I don't know what it means. Well, maybe it's just Android. It was just Android. But it runs Tyson. It doesn't run an Android, yeah, that's the thing. Like, I mean, part of it is, the Gear S3 is, like, a real thing as opposed to a rumor.

Yeah. I don't know. Mare. So the Gear S3 has GPS and the S2 did not. Yeah, there's a couple changes. GPS is one of them. LTE is an option on one of the Gears 3 models. The S2

only had cellular, but it wasn't LTE. So they made it that's like the reasoning to make it bigger, right? It's like it's got to support GPS. It's got to support some of this other stuff. And so the battery is bigger. It's thicker. And that's why the size increased. But like, I don't run

ever. I don't really care about GPS. So like maybe it's an option for somebody who wants it. I mean, the rumor is Apple's going to add it. Did you ever get lost in your huge house? Yeah, but he just follows the sound of his sonar speakers. He's like, the kids of music is playing in that direction. Do all these just look at the fossil ones now? They all just look the same.

They don't. Okay, the fossil ones piss me off because I feel like they announced another round of these, too. All the watch faces they show? Black. Isn't that interesting? Are you going to ask me how OLEDs work now? Because I don't know. Just flatly do not know.

It's because they don't have a full circle screen. They've got that black bar. They've got a flat tire. Every fossil watch has that flat tire. Right. And so they try to hide it by when their press images using black watch faces. Black watch faces. It's a lie.

A black digital watch faces. OLED's work by directly powering the pixel. I didn't look that up in Wikipedia. I just remembered. The crystals twist. All right, I got to read one more ad. Then we've got to talk about Apple. Then we got one of these two gadget people is going to say some gadget stuff.

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I love this. I'm going to just start collecting that one, put on my wall. Squarespace, cut through the night. Square space. That's not real one. All right. It's time, Ashley, I believe, for your recurring. segment. Oh, yeah. You mean gadget pie? Right. Yes, gadget gadget pie. I'm going to slice off a piece of gadget pie for you. I picked Sony's $3,200 gold-plated Walkman because I wasn't even aware that Sony was still making Walkman. I somehow missed that news. That was the most popular story at CES two years ago. Yeah. I wasn't running

about gadgets two years ago. I missed that whole story. You're back. This is why there's hope in your Yeah, there is hope, and I just am so happy this exists, basically just because it's so damn expensive and it's gold-plated. I love that Sony's like, you know, the answer for Walkman is a brand, a cherished brand, is to make it super expensive so old people buy that. And plate it in gold. Yeah, I just want to know who's buying this. Neilie Patel. This is the 70th anniversary. It was great.

Let me see if I could pull this up. I just wonder, so the Walkman originally was a tape player, then CD player, then an MP3 player. Where are you getting content to play on your wall? Oh, on Sony's like high. Sony's whole thing is like high bit rate music. High five or something. But like it doesn't, it doesn't sell you the radio so it can't stream when you're... No, no, no.

This is all about local. This thing is kind of the dream. Okay. It's really cool. When you're audiophile, you know what you want to listen to. You're not discovering music. I had this dream. You know, speaking of your, Paul's like, you need a room in your house.

There's like three or four songs in the radio that are like made for dads basically to have huge tower speakers in the basement and talk about how you can hear the individual guitar strings. And it's like, that is the only reason Ed Shearron exists. So like you can play the songs and they're pretty and you can be like, you know, on these speakers, you can hear the pick at almost every individual string. People aren't listening to Ed Shearing. There they are. It's happening. I guarantee if you go into like, one of the few old school music. They're listening to Steely Dan. Yeah, exactly. That's on vinyl. I guarantee if you go into one of the few remaining like high-end stereo stores. Listen to like Steve I.

No, no, Steve, those days are way over. They totally are. Go to a Magnolia, and they're playing like Ed Shear and Blu-Rays. It's a real thing. Maybe John Mayer. And you're thinking to yourself, I understand this business model now. You're like, Ed Shearin, how can you do this to yourself over and over again? And like, his agents in his ear are like, this is going to be great for the high-end audio market.

I guarantee you, that's a conversation that's happening. We need to do an investigation. Jake wrote up this. Old guys listening to Ed Shearing. Jake wrote up this Walkman. and it was under embargo and he hit me up. And he's like, Sony has a new Walkman and says this in the PR. Quote, it incorporates a dual clock circuit with low phase noise quartz oscillator,

which achieves superior sound reproduction at virtually any volume setting. And we had no idea what that meant and spent the next like 30 minutes of Googling to figure out. But there's definitely, there's a point in the signal chain that you got to have your clock right. Or things get out of phase. And you can get digital distortion. What they're saying with that is that if you're... This says dual. The sound quality is as good at low volumes as it is, high volumes and vice versa.

Like, you don't lose sound quality when you're changing volume. You're just saying, oh, you have a whole lot of buzzwords to get that across, right? No, these are technical things. Yeah? Like, Monster HTML cables technically. No, like, if you think about the chain of processing, The chain of processing like audio to go from digital to analog,

there's a lot of steps. And we don't talk about all the steps. We talk about the gold-plated connectors or whatever. But this is a step that is in every circuit, and they've got two of them in their low face noise. Low face noise? Yeah. We have to move on.

I still don't know. What's your gadget pie? Oh, man. What's the filling of your gadget pie this week? Oh. Actually, you did this to us. I'll never forgive you. I forgive you already.

I just feel like I've been blown away by Ashley's segment. Yeah. I'm embarrassed. You know, I will say that I sat down before we recorded, I was like, I want you guys to fight. And Paul, like, went at Ashley full force before we started recording. And now he was just breaking down. You aren't expecting the heat, man.

I can't come up with the name. Way to go, Ash. Just crushed it. Low key. Ashley was like, oh, I need an ape? Okay, got it. It's a segment that I do every week called Gadget games. It's over, man.

Gadget games. Let's talk about Apple. The Predator 21X laptop is so cool. It's got a curve 21-inch screen. It's like peak absurdity. Dual GTX 1080s. Who buys that? Who buys it?

No, you'll hear it later, but Vlad and I had a really great conversation where I kind of compared it to the monolith. In 2001. They've already heard it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know I'm saying you guys will hear it. Oh, yeah. Right? Yeah.

Sure you are. But the listeners know what I'm saying right now. All right, all right. We only have a few minutes left. Apple's next week on the seventh. I wonder what they're going to do. I think there's going to be, there's whispers of a surprise in the air. But I don't know what it is.

But it's probably an app of some kind. It's not going to be a MacBooks, though. It's not going to be Macbooks. I don't think it's me MacBooks. The MacBooks situation is absolutely untenable. Dyer. My MacBook is breaking. I was saying earlier,

Lauren Good told me that she put Sierra on her MacBook Pro, and it's like made it really slow. I'm Yosemite. I haven't even, I'm just leaving it alone. How could you not upgrade to an operating system called L. Capitan? You don't get that chance every day. If you make this update,

if you skip to a Sierra laptop, you'll never have an L-Captan. I'm just saying, I've got L-CAP. As I like to call it. Okay. I've got it running on, like, Dieter's old MacBook. It's on my IMac. Sure.

But this thing is like, I rely on it. Mm-hmm. And I don't like to upgrade it unless I have to. Mm-hmm. But now it's fighting back by having a video card that only occasionally chooses to come to work. Mm-hmm. Sometimes the video card is just like, you know what? I drank too much less than.

Fuck this. I can't even load the verge. Yeah? Every time I try to load it, Chrome tells me Flash has crashed. You got to just get rid of the flash. You got to switch to Safari, and that's what you really got to do. No. Okay.

I was actually hoping you met an answer. Thank you. I'm going to get to the hard. The answer is the answer is the answer. I guess so. Not a good answer. I'm on Chrome and Firefox. Oh, your calendar app is dead?

Switch to Safari. I mean, like, nonsense answer. Okay, so I think MacBooks are going to happen farther down the line. Intel just put out new processors. Vlad actually did not put the right headline. He suggested it as a joke. And I was like, that's the right headline. The headline for the Cabby Lake, K-A-B-Lake.

K-A-B-Y. I didn't hear anyone pronounce it. K-A-B-Lake, let's call that. I'm going with K-B. K-B. K-B. Vlad's headline was, finally, there's a reason for new MacBooks, which I thought was great. Because I think they held off on the previous ones.

Yeah. Because a bunch of Windows PCs had problems with those that we saw. But isn't this generation, or the ones announced so far don't reach up into the... Yeah, they don't go up into the pro range. Yeah. They're more like the core. More like the MacBook range. Yeah, the ones that have been announced are pretty mainstream.

And then, you know, it's expected that as the Cabby Lake, Caby Lake, in a few months, Intel will announce a more powerful version. So keep waiting. Or Apple will just get them early, which has happened before. Totally possible. Right, Apple could just get the next generation early. But this is the architecture model for whatever's coming. Yes.

But it's out of control. I have a version, I said this on control with the history. I have a version of a conversation of this conversation like three times a week. Hey, I need a new Mac. My Mac is old. don't buy one. Oh, why are new ones coming out? No one knows.

And it's like, well, should I buy? Nothing. I have friends who have like five-year-old IMAs. Yeah, imagine the Mac Pro users. Yeah, seriously, it's like 600 days on a MacPro now. I was editing a piece with Lauren today for another laptop review, which you'll read on the site soon. And we were like trying to figure out where the pricing for this, like, compared to others. And we looked up the MacBook Pro for the 15-inch starts at two grand still.

And I just laughed in my chair for how old this thing is, and it's still a $2,000, for most people at $25 or $2,800 computer. I'm just going to look at the canonical one, I think, is right at the Mac Rumors Buyers Guide. Yeah. The Mac Pro, dude, I'm so wrong. The Mac Pro has been on the market for 987 days. Like, there are children who are born who are now like basically fully functioning. They're like, I'm ready to learn video editing. Apple's All Strategy is like, what if these children never know what a Mac is?

They will have to buy iPad pros. That's right. They'll have to figure out the productivity problem. We will deny the children of the future. We get 30% of all of their apps. I said this on, I really want a laptop with like the 1060 in it, like the NVIDi graphics. I want a laptop I can play Overwatch on. Aren't you playing Overwatch on the Specter 13?

Yeah, but yeah, that's not great. It was definitely doable, but I want to really go all out. Also, do VR with a laptop with a 1060. So unless Apple treats me real nice in the next few months, I'm jumping ship. Unless Apple starts... And I'm going to be that guy. I'm going to complain about Windows every day all the time. My Twitter is going to get so vibrant.

You're mentioning. All right. So we should talk about they're actually... But I am going to buy this new iPhone. whatever it is. I don't care. I'm ready. Well, yeah, I'm looking at your iPhone that has a correct screen. I would say yes, you're ready for a new phone. I'm very much ready. So we're just going to agree.

They're going to do some camera stuff, maybe two lenses. Everybody's going to be super disappointed in the new Apple Watch. They're going to, why? Because it's just going to be just a little bit better. It's going to be the same thing with GPS. I don't think people. Those are the vibes. What I'm saying, but the phone, there's like a blue one that leaked. Yeah.

Are you super into a blue phone? Yes, better than rose gold. Do you think it's going to be just like black, black, silver, rose gold blue. Is the blue real? We've seen a bunch of blue weeks. Best by getting an exclusive blue color. I think if they do colors, I'll do lots of colors.

What if it's... That's my guess. What if it's Tim Cook's eyes blue? Does he have blue eyes? Super calming. I don't know. You're the one who said it confidently. I know.

I said it that I was like, I'm not sure. Tim Cook's eyes. They are blue. Nice. Nailed it. Virchcast, everybody, in which we Google executive's eyes and then are proud of ourselves. Podcasts on. The flagship podcast

at work. So they're going to move the antenna lines, they're going to do better cameras, presumably take out the headphone jack. But overall,

same design, minus a headphone jack. And the next year is crazy. Yeah, it'll be really interesting to see how they spin this on stage. They've been working this

design for, this will be the third year now. They've got two things to spin. Stale design and no headphone jack. So I'm really interested to see how they spin

both of those on stage. Yeah. It's funny that we're now talking about Apple, like, spinning. Oh, it's 100% spin. We haven't always talked about Apple's spinning.

But Apple does a lot of spin. They do. And then the watch. The people at this point in the watch, I don't think people, no one's mad at the design of the Apple Watch. They're mad at how it's slow and the functionality. I would like it a lot better if it was round. Well, I mean, you can just buy one of these other round ones.

Yeah, I don't know. They're outselling all the round ones. They're doing fine. I mean, like, no, that's fair. I see it everywhere. But I don't think it's like, people are buying the Apple Watch because the Apple Watch is like the one note, I mean, like, aside from the Fitbits that I see everywhere, the Apple watch is like the one mainstream known smart watch.

Like nobody knows what the gear S2 is called. Right. I just feel like I wish someone could come up with a hook, a non-fitness hook. Yeah. Like some standout new feature that's not for fitness. GPS. The GPS is kind of for keeping track. I mean, for me it would be just so I don't have to look down at my phone when I'm walking

on the sidewalk trying to find a restaurant or something. I could just look at my wrist. I mean, is that a selling? Yeah. I love your hope, Ashley. I guess I just have a lot of hope. on the show everybody. Literally the only hopeful person who comes on the show. Because while you

wait for your watch to load your Maps app, you will walk into traffic. No, it's going to be fat. I mean, like, let's say the first Apple Watch was running WatchOS 3 and was performant and had GPS. I don't think that we would have panned it as hard as we've been panning it for two years. I mean, yeah,

I certainly wouldn't have been as criticized as much, but it doesn't solve the problem that Paul brought up of, like, what do you do with it? Like, if you want to use it, it's great for fitness tracking. You're wearing a smart watch right now. What do you do with that thing? I use it for fitness tracking and I use it for notifications. And like, I care about those features. I also would be wearing an analog watch if I wasn't wearing my smart watch. So like I like I like wearing watches. A lot of people don't care about those three things or if they care about one

of them, not the others, right? So I think yes, if it worked better and maybe if it had GPS or maybe if it had like, you know, an always on display, because the Apple Watch is functionally a terrible watch. It doesn't tell you the freaking time. Well, it's always on display. Let's assume that you got to. That would be a big... It would get less criticism. I don't know if it would have made it a big, huge, more blockbuster product. What would make you buying an Apple Watch, Ashley?

I'm in agreement with Paul. And this is why I have sort of... I'm against smart watches. It's because I don't care about the fitness tracking at all. Yeah. The only reason I use the pebble is because I like that it's e-paper. It's not, like, super flashy, and it's not distracting. Also, I just want it for notifications.

Yeah. And it's pretty. Yeah. And for me, the Apple... watch is too much of a computer on my wrist. You don't like it so much that you bought it a real charger, though. You were like, this garbage, not UL-listed charger, that's good. I'm trying to save some money, Eli.

But you're right, I should have made me. Anyhow, we're going next week. It's me, Dieter, Lauren Good, Walt, as always, just sniping and the live vlog, which is my favorite thing in the world. We'll have full coverage, all this stuff and more. Presumably, you know, hands-on will happen. All the things that you might expect to have an apple event are going to happen next week. It'll be fun. And then the seventh.

The same day. Sony. It's going to announce a PlayStation. If they do the PSVR, I'm buying it. I'm buying it from the Apple event. I will stop live blogging. I'll be like, hold on, everybody. I'm giving Sony my money.

I bought this MaxL poster last week. Yeah, I'm ready to buy the PSVR. If it goes on selling next week, I'm just buying it. I want to wait for the Neo, the faster PS4. I feel like that's going to really help it. I got this madden problem. podcast like four times this summer talking about what the new PS4 is that's going to be announced? I still don't know what it is.

I believe the Neo is just a distraction from Microsoft. Like, every time Microsoft says anything out with the Xbox, Sony's like, yeah, the Neo is the one we're expecting to be announced next week? Or is the Neo next year's one? We're almost the Slim has been leaking out. So we, or yeah, whatever that is. Yeah, the Slim has been leaking out. That's almost surely going to be available next week. Got it.

Okay. is what, as far as I know. But I think, I'm guessing they're going to talk about the Neo. Then maybe the Neo will be out by the holiday? So I don't know. That seems very rapid. It does seem pretty rapid. I just want the VR headset and I want to buy PS4 so I can buy the new Madden.

We're not feeling guilty about buying Madden from my Xbox. This Madden's so different from last year's Madden? I just, I just want to get, I just, I'm done with the Xbox one. Yeah. I'm done having a Windows PC that is somewhat unreliable in my life. I mean, that's what it is now. Like, it's great and it worked and it's cool. And every time I turn it on, I just update, it's all for six hours.

I mean, I see people complain about PlayStation the same exact reasons. Like, they have to download some stupid update for a game because they only turn it on every couple months. Everything is terrible, 2016. Keep hoping your heart, Ashley. Which would you buy, Ashley? PS4 or Xbox. Literally zero opinion on this.

Stay that way. Live in that joyous opinion. How do you play the new Madden? In my dreams. Yeah. Okay. So that's it. We're out of time.

Next week will be crazy. Note on the Vergecast next week, we're actually going to mash up Vergecast and control at delete. Crazy. So we're going to record those together, me, Lauren, Dieter, Walt, as you might expect. In San Francisco, live right after, not live. We're going to record it live together as humans. Walt's not going to record a series of opinions and then had me respond to them after the fact, which would be an amazing way to do that show, I have to say. But we're all going to be together, record it right after the event. It's be fun. So keep an eye for that. Keep an eye for all of our coverage. Circuit Breaker, Ashley and Paul, Micah. rocking and rolling this week and next week with all the gadgets good on them dan you just keep reviewing stuff all day all night never stop except to listen to music and your giant decadent

home wandering room to room fancy chrome books dance just in a robe where's my eight hundred dollar browser on the laptop i must google a more brandy turn on the downstairs group why don't you children retreat upstairs. I want to thank Wealthfront for sponsoring Vergecast today. Wellfront, as you may have gathered, a transparent, affordable financial advisor that can help you invest your hard-earned dollars, reach your goals. Wealthfront charges no trading commissions, free for accounts under $10,000.

Over $10,000. It only costs 0.25% of your account size. And if you go to Wealthfront.com slash Vergecast, you get up to $15,000 managed for free. That's wealthfront.com slash vergecast. Also, if you have an extra minute, go to VergeSurvey.net to take a short anonymous survey about today's episode. This is for our friends at the city. It would be big help to the show.

I'd really appreciate it. It's a Vergeurvey.net. Just go tell people that you love the show. Also, you can follow at Verge on Twitter. We're Verge on Snapchat, where Ashley does gadget Thirstrap, one of my favorite Snapchat shows. We're Verge on Instagram. Hit us up on iTunes. Check out our other podcast.

What's Tech is on Tuesday with Chris Plant. Control at Delete. Thursday's with me and Walt. VirGESP every Friday with Emily and Liz. You can hit me up on Twitter. I'm reckless. Paul's future Paul. Dan is D.C. Seafurt.

I was found hard to say. Ashley, Ashley R. Carmen. Whoa. Got it. Nailed it. And that's it. Rock and roll. Paul. Paul.

Writing on paper with a pen. I'm going to help you learn how to use a pen.