The Vergecast - iPhone 8 review, Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE review, and Apple TV 4K review

Episode Date: September 22, 2017

Last week, we brought you The Vergecast live from San Francisco after the Apple event. This week, The Vergecast is back in NYC for Apple reviews week. Nilay Patel, Paul Miller, Lauren Goode, and Dan Seifert go through the reviews, including the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, the Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE, and the 4K Apple TV. There’s a lot more in between that — more leaks about the upcoming Google event! — so listen to it all, and you’ll get it all. 02:51 - iPhone 8 and 8 Plus review 35:32 - Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE review 1:00:26 - Apple TV 4K review 1:24:27 - Google leaks 1:27:19 - Paul’s weekly segment “DOG FOOD PODS” 1:29:40 - Google is buying part of HTC’s smartphone team for $1.1 billion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of Vergecast is brought to you by Qualcomm Snapdragon GigabitLTE. With download speeds up to seven times faster than typical home Wi-Fi, Snapdragon GigabitLTE can turbocharge all of your connected apps. You can stream 360-degree videos and 4K resolution with minimal buffering. You can access files in the cloud nearly as fast as you would if they were stored on your phone, and you can download hours of movies or music in a matter of seconds. To learn more, visit snapdragon.com slash gigabit today. Hello and welcome to Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the Verge Media Empire.

That sounds good. Also, it's a part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we are the best part of that network as well. Like the best node. If we're the empire, what is the Vox Media Network? Well, we're an empire. What's it called on BitTorrent? That's it. The good things to connect to.

on BitTorrent. And I'm not just peers, but like super peers? It's something like that. Magnets? No. That's something else. That's got a link. Super Cedars.

Yeah. Sure. We're that. You will notice that we are not live this week. I want to thank everybody who came out to the live show in San Francisco last week. There's like 200 plus people there, 250 people there. They were all great. We like talked to all of them.

I shook all of their hands and then didn't have. hand sanitizer, but I'm not sick. All of them were very clean. Good job being a clean audience. That's what you want. It was super fun. It was really nerdy. It was a great show. It was just a great time.

But we're back in the studio. Dieter is not here this week. He's working on a super secret thing that I think all of you are going to like very much. But I'm here. I'm Nealai. Paul's here. Hello. Dan Seafrit's here.

Hi. And a little bit later on, Lauren Goods is going to be joining us to talk about the Apple Watch. So full crew, tons of news. big week of news. We should maybe just get into it. Let's get into it. You want to do some jokes? We could do some jokes. No, let's get into it. So

it. Last week was Apple Newsweek. This week is Apple Reviews Week. Ah, yes. It's basically how I'd put it. It's the most wonderful time of the year. The most exhausting time of the year. By the way, the Verge video crew is like heroes. They've just been up all night

and day producing all three of these Apple review videos and a bunch of other stuff that's going on. So, props to them. But the iPhone 8 did that review. The 10 off in the distance, looming. Don't even think about it right now. Full screen design. Just a notch, steadily rising

over the horizon. A black bar of chaos coming for us all. That's great. But we reviewed the 8 and 8 plus and they're fine. I think my deck was, it's an iPhone. Indeed it is. And I particularly want to Dan here,

because he reviewed the S8 and the Note 8. And one of my lines was this design of the iPhone 8 is actually way behind the S8. So I want to talk about that with you in particular, which maybe whisper about the iPhone 10 looming again in the distance. But it's an iPhone, right? Like the 8 is an iPhone. It has a glass back.

It supports wireless charging. The wireless charging is just as slow as wireless charging has always. been. Actually, it's slower than what you get on other wireless charging. Oh, because it's not... It's not fast wireless charging. It's regular wireless charging.

So here's the color on that. Right now, Apple's wireless charging system, based on the Chi standard, will draw 5 watts of power, which is the same as their little wall charger they ship with the phone. They're releasing a software update to iOS 11 that will let them draw 7.5 watts of power? I believe so, yeah. Is that fast charging? You know, it's hard to say if it's exactly the same as... what Samsung calls fast wireless charging,

but it probably gets it closer there. I don't remember off the top of my head the spec for Samsung's fast wireless charging, which is actually based on Chi but built on top of it. So you need a Samsung phone with a Samsung fast wireless charger or fast wireless compatible charger to do it. A real Apple move. Samsung says that their fast wireless charging is 1.4 times faster than standard wireless charge. Yeah, so it sounds like 7.5 watts.

That's up no sense. Report 5. Yeah, sure. But even fast, quote, fast wireless charging is pretty slow. Especially now that we've got like fast wire charging, which is like really fast. And to be clear, the iPhone 8 is also getting the USBC fast charging? So this is, I think, very confusing. So most fast charging on Android phones is enabled by a Qualcomm chip set.

Because they all basically have the same Qualcomm chip set. Right. Apple, you may remember, is suing Qualcomm, not really using Qualcomm chip set, but I think they know they have to say they have fast charging. So they're saying they have fast charging. What they mean, and I think this is where it gets a little wonky, is that on the regular adapter, they ship in the box, same as ever. If you plug it into an iPad adapter, it goes pretty fast.

And this is where the USBC thing comes from. if you buy their USBC to Lightning Cable and the MacBook's 29-watt USBC adapter. Okay, you spent $80 in charging accessories. Then you get 50% charge in about 30 minutes. But I just used it with my iPad charger, and iPad charger is like everywhere, and that got me to 40% in 30 minutes.

But I have used an iPhone with an iPad charger forever. I always buy the higher-spec charger. So I don't... I think it's like, they're like, it's fast charging. I don't think the iPhone has like supported faster charging, at least not officially. Yeah. Even if you use the iPad charger, like you can use it and it'll charge fine. But I don't know if it officially charged fast.

But when I plug my seven into an iPad charger, it charges way faster than the wall plug, the regular wall plug. I think a lot of people do that. Yeah. I mean, like I do it too. I'm just saying I think it might be a little bit of a placebo effect. No, it's definitely faster. Okay, all right. But now I think it's like officially faster.

Yeah, Apple's never said it's faster. Apple's never directed anyone to go plug their phone into an iPad charger to get faster speeds. But now it's saying if you buy the MacBook charger, which I think with the cable, it's going to cost you like $80. It's ridiculous. You will get faster charging in that advertised spec. But of course you have a MacBook charger because you've been doing nothing to buying brand new MacBooks with USBC plays this whole time. Yeah, I mean, and not being able to plug your iPhone into them. But you got to buy a special cable.

Anyway, I think all of this is, this is all kind of already worked, and now it's like a little bit more official, and they're calling it fast charging to compete with the fact that Android phones have what you might call fast. Like they have like chipset support. There are fast chargers. They go really fast, right? It's like 50% in 10 minutes.

Yeah, I mean, the way that fast charging always works is that if you have a totally dead phone starting from zero, it'll charge up to 50% really quickly. So that's why you get that 0 to 50 in 30 minutes, or 0 to 40 and 30 minutes or whatever. And then it tapers off really hard. So getting that next 50% can take up to two hours. But, you know, if you're stuck in an airport and you only got 10, 15 minutes to charge, it's great.

So that's the iPhone 8. It's a bunch of charging talk. Everything you expected with a bunch of confusion around charging. What would a new Apple product in 27B if it wasn't for cable? You shit. Here's the real dream. Here's what you can do with the iPhone 8. Yeah.

You can charge it and also listen to music with the included earbuds. Well, you know, now that you've got wireless charging. You're like delicately hold your head near your nightstand so you don't bump it off the wireless charging stand. Now you got to buy AirPods. Oh. But I guess you could then charge it and listen to music too. Yeah, there you go until your AirPods die. So here's what I want all the Vergecast listeners to you.

Go to the Apple. store and buy all of the charging accessories. Please run exhaustive tests. And then we'll just talk. You just send him to us and we'll talk about it next week because this is very tiresome. But internal is the iPhone 8. Interesting, right? Same chip as the iPhone 10 or X. Everyone in the world is calling it the X. I almost refuse to call it the 10. I say X so many times. I think they did that on purpose. I think they know people are going to call it the iPhone X. It solves the 8, 10 problem. Like, I was out with friends, and they're like, why does the 8 exist if there's a 10? And then a lot of them, like, where's the 9? And they're like, visibly uncomfortable with the idea of

it. It's over in the graveyard with the Galaxy Note 6 and Windows 9. That's where the iPhone 9 is. So I think they did. It's a very clever move to call it. Have everybody called the iPhone X, have it officially be the iPhone? Great. You did it. But same processor. I thought this story was great. You know, we went to the event. They went to our meeting. And they were just very direct. Like, yeah, you know, our old chips had boring names. Now they have interesting names.

I mean, it's such a funny thing to me that Apple is directly answering the fact that Qualcomm calls its chips Snapdragon. Yeah. And Samsung calls its chips Exenos. And like, I forget what Huawei calls it. it's chips, but like, Kearin or something. It's like, Kearin. Yeah, I think it's Kearin. Kearin.

Not Bexenose. Hexenose. Snapsenose. But like, I think that's hilarious, and it's such a, like, thing that you don't expect Apple to acknowledge. Yeah. And especially, like, such a stupid thing. Like, who gives a crap if it's called Bionic or whatever? Like, go walk down the street, find somebody with an iPhone, which will take you half a second, because everyone has one.

And ask them what chip is in their phone. phone and they're not going to know, they're not going to care. Yeah. I mean, I get it, right? Like, if you can, why wouldn't you? Yeah. If I could just, like, go around branding everything in this office, I would. I'd be like, here's the desk of power. Like, fine. But it's the same chip. The wide angle cameras on all three phones, 8 plus 10, all the same. Optical stabilized, F1.8.

Deep pixels. Deep pixels. And then the difference really in the cameras, the dual camera, is that, is that. The 10 has a second optically stabilized F2.4 telephoto, and the 8 plus not stabilized F2.8. These are totally wonky details. I don't think it doesn't matter anybody under any circumstances, but those are the facts.

Yeah, crucially, I think that the thing that hasn't changed from the 7 pluses is they've upgraded the cameras across the board and they're all new sensors, but the telephoto sensor is still an inferior one to the wide angle one. It's better than the telephoto sensor that was in the 7 plus, but it's still not as good as the wide angle. I think that is all fundamentally there for the portrait mode stuff and not necessarily for the zooming stuff. Right. But as Paul was saying, the sensors are also different.

Still 12 megapixels for the wides, but slightly bigger. And Apple says they have deeper pixels. Which I'll admit I did not look into to actually figure out what that means. I asked them what a deeper pixel was. and they actually responded by saying it's deeper. So their answer to me was it has a deeper light well that captures more photons. Which implies that camera sensors are made of buckets, which I thoroughly enjoy as a metaphor for camera sensors. Yeah, if they're buckets that collect drops of light.

Yeah, exactly. So the deeper the light, the deeper the bucket, the less likely that those drops of light are going to spill into the other bucket next to it. It's actually deeper pixels is like it sounds like an accrued. crazy Apple marketing thing, but it actually has existence before Apple used it in image sensor just to make sure I'm getting this right.

So I'm imagining a grid of sensors, light sensors, right? A grid of buckets, square buckets, right? In each bucket detects light. And Apple is saying that those buckets are now deeper so

that like... So what happens is when you have pixels, at the pixel level, light can bleed from one to another. Right. And then you get things like chromatic, well, chromatic aberrations is a lens thing, but you get things similar to that effect where you get like reds and greens and stuff that blur, like on the pixel level when you zoom in really, really close on the detail. A deeper pixel helps or is designed to help prevent that spillover. So it's like a lens hood per pixel.

Sure. Yeah, there you go. It's a mudflap. It's a barn door. Barn door. Why not? How many metaphors can we throw at this? And then the screen on the 8 is Trutone, which I turned on, and then I turned off. True Tone is one of those great technologies that you're not supposed to think about, and it just makes your experience better.

It's nice. You don't notice it until you turn it off, or if you do turn it off. But, like, I use it on my iPad Pro all the time, and I love it, and it's great to look at my iPod Post. Yeah, I have left it on. It's been great. Cool. And that's it. Basically.

You said you like that it's heavier. I do like that it. So the glass back is definitely heavier. The phone feels ever so slightly thicker. It fits perfectly into iPhone 7 cases. I think it actually is thicker. I'm just saying in terms of when you hold it in your hand. It is definitely a more substantial.

Hand feel, if you will. A substantial hand feel. Thank you, Dan, for this moment together. You're saying it feels good in the hand. It feels good in the hand. Okay. All right, great. Anyway.

It's not a slug. It's nice to hold. Yeah. But it's still gigantic. The plus in particular is gigantic. And so my, you know, I reviewed the thing. We leaned way hard into, well, it's boring. Let's just like acknowledge it it's boring in this video right at the beginning.

It's like we calmed it way down. We didn't like overproduce it. Oh, that was fun to do. But at the end of the day, my feeling with this phone is like lots of people bought an iPhone 6. And they've just held on to them. they're out there, they should probably get a new phone. And so, like, they're going to go, and they've got, I don't know, AT&T Next or Verizon has Edge. Team Mobile has Jump.

Maybe they're on an iPhone payment plan from Apple. Yeah, Apple has their own payment plan. They're just going to, like, get a new phone. Like, they've paid off the old phone. They've been making payments. You just, like, go trade in your six and get an eight, and you'll be happy. And that, to me, feels like, this is what I call it in your view, like, the default option. It's a Toyota Camry.

Right. It's like... Your lease is up. You get a new Camry. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, the Toyota camera, I thought about this earlier today is like the best way I can think about the iPhone 8. It does everything really, really well. It has all the latest safety technologies. It is, uh, really super reliable.

You're not going to have any problems with it. And it's also maybe the most boring thing on the road. What part of the camera do you think maps to having giant bezels? Is it, is it the super aggressive headlights or the weird, pokey, rear tail lights? all the lights in the Camry are offensive It's the pillar between the doors You know like the iPhone 10 has the suicide doors Oh there you go

Yeah so so iPhone 10 has no B pillar There we go It's the big the B pillar in there The iPhone 8 is an excellent phone Yeah obviously one of the best phones on the market And it's also extremely boring Like And kind of expensive

And kind of expensive Camry's not expensive But like if you got If you got the Lexus version of the Camry What do they call that? D300. There you go It's a Lexus E-300.

ES 300. The Carnards are coming for you. Do you see them justifying this $50 price bump? Yeah, because they bump the storage. I think it's such a lame bump, though. Like, they should have bumped the storage as... Oh, they should have bumped the storage as part of the new refresh. They should have dropped at $50.

It's like, oh, here's our boring phone. Yeah. So the boring phone will cost less money. Like Costco. Yeah. You know, like, this is the Kirkland of the iPhone. You just buy 50 iPhones in the track of 50. But like Costco, it's like the iPhone box has been scaled up to, like the cereal boxes at Costco.

You just open it. There's 90 iPhones. I want to talk about cameras, but just on this point of pricing, boringness, the reports out from the analysts, take him or leave them. But they're saying iPhone 8 demand is pretty flat. Everyone's waiting for the iPhone 10. you think about, they're all based off pre-orders. We're recording this in the iPhone 8 isn't even in its stores yet. It comes out tomorrow.

I have one now. Yes, you have two. Aren't you cool? But they're basing all of this data off our pre-orders. Who is the customer that pre-orders a phone at midnight Pacific time of day goes up? Traditionally, all of them. No, not all of them. Not all of the customers. When was the last

time an iPhone wasn't sold out? Okay. The customer that does that is the customer that's going to want to wait for the iPhone 10. The customer that does that is the enthusiasts and the one that care. They're the one that know the difference between the eight and the ten. Of course the eight's demand is going to be lower. The eight demand isn't going to peak until January when you like, you know, get to the average customer that's waltz and into their Walmart and Best Buy and Verizon store or whatever and they're like, oh, my iPhone broke,

I need a new phone. And what is the one that they have in stock? It's the iPhone 8. What I want the listener to know is that when Dan was saying that he was doing a jaunty walking motion with his arms. Didily needly. Listen, I like to provide visuals. But like, you know, that's when the iPhone 8 demand is going to reach its highest, or when its sales are going to do the best, or when it's like in the stores and just the average person is buying it because they're not caring about the latest and greatest.

Maybe they don't want to spend $1,000 on the phone. They don't want to think about it. I mean, that's the question, right? Has Apple successfully segmented their line where only enthusiasts are going to want the 10, the sort of regular person buys an 8 and is happy, and they're not, you know what I mean? I'm like, that's a big move. They haven't been able to pull that off before. I don't fear, but like,

it's interesting that they're doing that now at a year when the lineup is more crowded than ever before. The 6S is still available. The 7 is still available. So I know why the 6 is available. Yes, you can share that in a second. The 8 is available, and then you've got the 10, and you still have the SE available as well. I mean, like, you walk into an Apple store, and there's six iPhones staring at you on almost every price point that you can think of.

So the cheaper ones are there for emerging markets. We said this, actually, I think we said this on the show last week. The editor of Gadgett 360, although I told me that the success is by far the best selling I found in India. I mean, I don't doubt that at all, and it makes sense there, but it's also still available here in the U.S. So you'll still be able to go to an Apple store and buy 6S. Or order a success from Apple.com.

Which, by the way, has a headphone jack. and 16 gigs of storage. Hey! Three songs listen to the most conveniently way possible. I feel like right now someone put a bullet through my iPhone 7 and it was just totally dead. I mean, I'm looking at your iPhone 7 now

and it's halfway there, but it's not actually dead yet. I think I'd just get another iPhone 7. So Jeff Fowler reviewed them for the Wall Street Journal, and that was basically his advice. He's like, just buy a 7. Don't spend the money to buy an iPhone. eight. If you're the sort of person who doesn't want a 10, don't just, you don't need to step down

one. So you can actually save more money. It does put that the eight in that really weird spot because the lineup is so crowded this year and there's so many different options available. So like if there wasn't the other ones available and it was just the eight and the 10, I think that makes like the eight would be, you know, super popular. Of course, you know, that said, the eight is the one that's going to get a lot of the marketing push. Yeah, Apple told me that they're going to go hard

marketing the eight and the 10 simultaneously, which I think is fascinating. Like, that's, if they start calling it the 10 in the ads, and they're just going to run into that. Yeah. I'm kind of in a position where, like, my mom is due for a new iPhone this fall. And, like, she's coming from a 5C.

So she's like, literally anything in the store will be an upgrade for her. And I'm like, I don't do, she doesn't need an 8. She doesn't care. Like, heck, she'd be happy with the success. So, like, do I get her a success? Like, no, if she's got the 5C,

I think if you, if you were the sort of person keeps a phone that long, you should actually buy a more expensive phone. Yeah, I mean, there's that reasoning. I get it. At the same time, with most iPhones at least, you can guarantee that, or you can, don't have to worry about getting software updates because they're going to get delivered to it for a longer time.

But I don't know. We'll see how it goes. Okay, so now we've got to talk about it. So Paul's sitting there with the essential phone. That has an edge-to-edge LCD with a big, silly notch to top. It's not a big silly notch. A little cute little. I would say it's a completely forgettable notch,

which is also what I feel like. That's true, you can barely see it. But it's still got... It's like a little hole punch. It's got a notch. That's my only point is got a notch. Sure. And then you can decide how adorable that notch is or is not on your own time.

Right. On by yourself. You can make that... Off the clock. Off the clock. Adorable rating. Okay, but I'm here to work. Let's talk about notches.

I don't know, man. So, Apple, could have done an edge-tage LCD. There have been other edge-to-l-l-cd-cd-cd phones. They didn't do it. They kept the design the same. Obviously, the 10 has an edge-to-el-ed with, I think, a much less adorable notch.

But the difference with the 10's edge-to-edge, and you can see it on the essential phone is there's no bottom bezel. Right, because they've got to do the electronics for the backlight, I believe. Right, exactly, for the LCDs. So, but my question... Also, there is serious light leak

at the top of the essential phone. Yeah, I've noticed that, too. But my... question is, can you price a phone like the iPhone 8 against its nearest competitor, which is actually the Galaxy S8 in terms of price? It's like no contest. The S8 is a better piece of hardware, right? Yeah. I mean, like, you'd look at the two, and one looks like the same thing you've been looking at for four years, and one looks like the future. And, like, if that matters to you, it's a pretty obvious call that the S8 is the more appealing-looking phone. I mean,

And it gives you, I mean, you said this in the review, the 5.8-inch Galaxy S-8, which is this, quote, smaller one, has a way bigger screen than the iPhone 8 and is not that much physically bigger. It's got glass on both sides. It's got the sloping curve design. It's got, you know, those tiny little bezels. You know, all of these things are things that, like, make the S8 visually more appealing than an iPhone 8, which is an iPhone 7, which is an iPhone 6, which is an iPhone 6. Yeah. So, I mean, it's like, and especially if they're at the same price point, it's an interesting thing where, like, you can go into a carrier store and say, like, I'm going to spend $650 on a new phone or $700 on a new phone. And there's the iPhone 8 staring at you, and then there's an S8 staring at you next to it.

And, like, the visually, the more appealing one is the Samsung. Like, that's a world we live in. And that's, like, very strange to say that. But, I mean, virtually anyone that picks up the NSA is like, wow, this is really nice and feels really nice. It handles really nicely. And no camera bump. No camera bump. Just a thing I'll point out.

Terrible fingerprint scanner. Terrible fingerprint scanner. Terrible fingerprint scanners. No camera bump. And miserable eye recognition, right? Like, it just doesn't work. Actually, I do want to talk about cameras. I've been threatening to talk about cameras.

So you and I disagree here. I think that the iPhone 8 and the pixel, they're very different. The pixel is like a very accurate. camera produces pretty good, flat images. The iPhone 8 produces extraordinarily pleasing images. Some of the processing that Apple is doing is wonky. It's like they split the difference between where they were and Samsung and kind of landed in the water sometimes.

But on the whole, they're doing a good job. They're saturating the images more. I think portrait lighting is their way of doing some of the crazy face smoothing that Samsung does automatically because it definitely smooths your face a little bit. Especially in selfies. But you think the S8 takes better photos. Yeah, I think that they, it really depends on the situation. And in certain circumstances, the S8 will take a better photo.

In certain circumstances, maybe the iPhone 8 will take a better photo. I don't think that you can definitively say one is obviously better than the other. Yeah. And like the thing that with Samsung photos is you are most likely viewing them on your Samsung phone, which already has a very vibrant punchy display. so it makes that appearance that they're like oversaturated and oversharpened even a little more aggressive. So if you move them over to your computer or look at them on a different device,

you'll notice that they're like way scaled back from what you were seeing on your phone. So that kind of like actually works against Samsung's favor when you're using them because you're like, oh my God, that's so saturated. But I think that like Samsung does a really awesome job when you're taking a portrait of somebody of metering for the correct thing that you're taking of. Like it knows you're taking a picture of a person. It meters for their face and not the background. And in all the comparisons I've done side by side in those situations,

which are mostly just taking pictures of my kids, the Samsung one is the image that I prefer because it metered for the subject I was taking a picture of and not the background or just getting an average of the whole frame like the iPhone tended to do. So that meant that maybe it was a little bit brighter and maybe the colors were a little more saturated. But I mean, I'm not, when I'm taking photos of my kids,

I'm not there like documenting to preserve the exact situation. I'm there to like capture a memory and like look back on it and be happy with it and be pleasing. And like when I look at the image, I want the image that like looks better, even if it's not technically, you know, clinically accurate, right? And I think that most people would say that about their smartphone photos. They're not photographers. They're not scientists. They're just wanting photos that they're happy with.

And I think this is the split the difference moment for Apple because they, They know that, they see that. I think there's a lot of, you know, there's like DXO Mark and display made out there. Those companies basically get paid by other companies to, like, consult on their cameras and then give them very high scores. It's a great racket, by the way. I wish somebody would pay me to consult on their thing and then be like, it's great. But, you know, like, they're the only benchmarks that exist, basically. and Apple is getting crushed in those benchmarks.

And I think they see people look at Samsung photos on Samsung screens, and they're like, colors are bright and vibrant, and they made a little bit of a move to get there. But I think that move, like, because they don't want to, it's like you can sense their lack of enthusiasm for that move in some of these photos. But what they always say is we aim for realism. We want it to be true to life. You can filter it to hell and back if you want afterward.

done, but we're going to start with real. And, like, I don't know, I just, Samsung photos to me just look crazy sometimes in a way that, like, the pixel tends to look very accurate and flat, and the iPhone tends, I think they've, again, they slit the difference.

Like, they've done kind of like a half-hearted job of already filtering the photo for you, which looks better than before. I don't think the difference between the seven and eight is huge at all. It's, like, literally, like, they tweaked a couple sliders. Also, you can tell

the pixels are way deeper. The depth of the pixels is just so deep. We're going to do like a huge camera shootout where I think we're going to talk about the pixel two is like leaked. Yeah, we'll probably wait for the pixel two to come out to do that. But like, I mean, I guarantee you what's going to happen at the end of that. And like this is based on years of jaded experience. You're going to have a hard time telling these things apart.

They've gotten to the point where, and it's a wonderful point to be, where the cameras and all of them are so good. The processing behind them is so good. The autofocus is so fast that, like, it's not, uh, the differences between them are not great if you're playing at that premium level. If you are looking at phones that are less expensive and cheaper,

then yeah, you know, the first thing you give up is that image quality and the camera quality. But if you're playing in the premium field, you're going to get a really killer camera on there and you really have to like, like pixel peep and compare side by side to notice a difference, which is great. which means that you don't have to buy a phone based on its camera.

You can think about other things that you want. Do you want a screen that's edge to edge? And do you want waterproofing, which is also becoming a thing that most all premium phones have? So I think that's a great thing. But when you compare them head to head and you get really into the nerdy battles of it, the reality is the difference isn't that great between them. Unless you buy an essential phone. Unless you're buying an essential phone.

Not waterproofing. Which is not waterproofing also as a bad camera. But like, it's adorable notch. But, like, you know, that was our biggest criticism. This is a $700 phone that's playing in the field of premium phones and doesn't have a premium camera. So, like, it's a non-starter. Those are table stakes. Yeah.

Okay. So that's the iPhone 8. Is there anything else to say about the iPhone 8? Wait for the iPhone 10. That's basically. It's coming. All the things that, like, I will say this, all the things that make the S8 appealing against the iPhone 8 are negated by the iPhone 10.

Like, if you do that same comparison with the S8 versus the iPhone 10, the iPhone 10, the iPhone content looks more appealing because it like has all those features. And a big notch at the top. I don't think the notch is a big deal. I don't think it's going to be a problem at all. I'm 100% on team embrace the notch. I've decided. I'm on team.

Forget about the notch because November 4th, it comes out November 3rd, right? November 4th, nobody's going to be thinking about the notch. They're going to have forgotten about it. Are you crazy? They're going to have forgotten about it. They're going to be using it and they're going to forget it just like the essential. We were like, when this phone was announced, we were like, oh, the notch is going to be a really annoying thing and it's going to be obtrusive and it's going to get in the way. And then you

use the phone for five minutes. You're like, oh, I forgot about it. Okay, you're crazy for two reasons. Here are both of those reasons. One, five people have the essential phone. So no one even knows what they're saying. We can't find them. If you have one. Paul's one of them. Yeah. Paul's here. He thinks it's adorable. This is a long of to be honest. Please come to my website, Adorablenotch or not.com and let us know what you think. Only five people can visit it. Hotternotch.com. Ooh, that's rough. But the Apple design community, ex-Apple employees on Twitter,

they're all freaking out about this notch. And they're all basing it off of screenshots and pictures and like mock-ups. They're not using the phone in real life yet. And so that's one of my point is that once you use it in real life, you're going to forget about it. The chance of the people who are all fired up about it getting it in their hand. Oh, I mean, they're never going to admit that wrong,

but like I'm just saying the average person's not going to give a ratch too. The number of like long philosophical Apple blog blog posts about the notch when they get, it's going to be, I'm so looking forward to it. But here's why I'm on Team Embrace. I think Apple has made a bunch of bad decisions about what iOS 11 should look like on the 10. Because I don't know if they know this, but it's an OLED screen and that just most of the background should be black. Yeah. And all of their backgrounds are white. Yeah.

And I don't, it's very confusing. like it actually uses more power to do that in OLED. I mean, I hear you, but like if you look at Samsung's default interface, it's all white. Yeah, because they're copying Apple. Like, just Apple Apple can just like go the other way now. So I think app developers are going to solve the notch problem incredibly fast

by just blacking out those two ears. Yeah, honestly, I agree that I think that should have been Apple's solution. It's like black out those two ears. Leave them as like the ability to permanently see the time, your battery life and your signals and whatever other indicators are up there. And

and then just use from the notch below as content. We'll see. It's coming. So that's the eight, basically wait for the ten is what we're saying. I'm going to read a quick ad, and then Lauren Good's going to join us. We're going to talk about the Apple TV and the watch, which is Lauren caused quite a stir this week about the watch. Let me read this ad real quick. Attention, there's been a last minute change to the advertising.

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but not be naked. Why are you so angry about the underwear? I'm excited. I'm excited. My undies is recognized this as a valid podcast for selling underwear. It's like you sound like a general delivering orders. It's like a downfall over there. Should I read all the bullet points?

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It changed my life. I guess reading this ad has changed my life. It's time to let Meundis change yours. Go to meundies.com slash verge right now. Hey, Lauren Good is here. Lauren. Hello. How you doing?

I'm doing okay. I just wanted to remark that it's 2.12 in the afternoon Pacific time. And my watch has hit 10% back. Eli. But I did use LTE quite a bit this morning. Try to. Sometimes it worked. I called Neely from it this morning. It sounded great, actually. I was very

suspicious of the demo on stage because, you know, they had the woman on the paddleboard. Yeah. And she was waving her arm and I was like, this audio sounds very compressed. Way too good. But Lauren called me from watch today. It sounded great. Lauren, were you using the AirPods when you called? I was not. No, I was just speaking

for the watch. Sounded really good. So, Lauren, I want to talk about Apple TV lights, but I feel like we have to just get into it with Lauren. You caused quite a stir this week, along with our friend, Joanna Stern at the journal. Both of you published your Apple Watch, series three with LTE reviews, and both of you basically said,

I can't recommend it, it doesn't work. And then Apple sent hit squads after both of you. You've escaped. You're currently in an undisclosed location. But walk us through... Calling us from a surfboard. Yeah, exactly. Lauren's just paddling in the middle of the ocean under the waves.

but it's funny you said it's 212 in my watch is 100%. Like your review is like meticulously detailed with timestamps basically of experiences you had with the watch. Walk us through what happened with it for you and like where your thoughts are now. Sure. So I actually ended up with two review units because the first one proved problematic in other ways. When I first got the loaner unit from Apple of Series 3 with LTE, I also got a new iPhone 8 that was connected via AT&T. So both the watch and the phone were on AT&T, just to make that clear.

Some people were upset that I didn't mention that in the video. Within the first full day of using the Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE, I noticed I was having both issues making cellular calls happen. And with Siri specifically, Siri was really the first problem I had. One of the new features of the watch is that Siri is supposed to audibly talk back. to you from the watch when you're using it. And that wasn't happening. And then when I was using Siri to try to initiate phone calls and text messages, because let's be honest, it's a really tiny little display. And so tapping through it can be annoying. And so I was trying to use Siri as much

as possible. Siri just kept getting stuck and wasn't just didn't seem to be able to connect. I think that the latter issue is what was also related to the problems I was having just with Wi-Fi to LTE connectivity. But the first issue of Siri not responding was like definitely a problem. So Apple gave me a second review unit a couple of days after I received the first one. And that one, I was able to get audible responses from Siri, but I still had the issues where I would leave my desk or walk away from my apartment. I would either leave my phone behind or I would have my phone turned off or have it on airplane mode.

and I would expect to get cellular service. And instead of getting cellular service and seeing the three or four green bars or whatever you're supposed to see to indicate LTE service, the watch would appear to want to connect to some type of Wi-Fi network nearby and then just kind of get stuck on that. And there's no manual way to turn off Wi-Fi on the watch. So I had no option. I had no way to really tell the watch, okay, don't connect to Wi-Fi. Default to cellular because I'm away from my phone.

There's just no way to do that. But really, at the end of the day, you shouldn't have to do that. The watch should just work, and it's not working the way it should. I think that's the major point here, right? Like, Apple released a statement to you about unauthenticated Wi-Fi networks. Then there was a lot of, like, Apple blogging follow-up about captive portal networks. The captive portal thing, by the way. Never have I experienced the words captive portal hurled as an insult.

the way Twitter reacted to this yesterday, you just don't understand captive portals. And it's like, no, I've been in hotels before. But the, and then Apple, you know, they said to us one of the fixes is that you could go on your Mac and you could open your Wi-Fi settings on your Mac, not on a phone, and delete all the networks. And that would sync over to ICloud and you wouldn't connect to captive portals anymore, which is insane, just from the jump.

for many reasons. One, you shouldn't have to do that. That's one. Two, a lot of people with iPhones and Apple Watches don't have Macs. Right? So, like, you can't. So that's just broken for those people.

And three, Lauren, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think that describes all of your problems, like at all, right? No, there were definitely spots where I was walking or just basically, basically, basically walking. I'm like trying like I wasn't really running that hard. Where I knew myself that I didn't think that I had ever connected to that Wi-Fi network before, whatever it was. So whether it was walking through an apartment complex that is not my own, that is blocks from my own apartment complex. And me thinking, yeah, I've never, I've never signed into Wi-Fi here before. I don't think there's a captive portal network here. And yet the watch would sort of get

stung on, excuse me, and yet the watch would sort of get hung on, and Wi-Fi. It happened at a shopping mall where I don't think that I've ever logged into the Wi-Fi before. It happened near the office here, you know, like just, just far away enough from the office where I'm thinking, yeah, I don't think I've ever, I've ever logged into any type of Wi-Fi network here before. So it's really unusual, but then there were times, I mean, it should mention it as well, like there are times that it worked. Like I called Nilai from a coffee shop or a bagel. shop this morning, and I've never logged into that bagel shop before on Wi-Fi, and for whatever reason, the call work. So it's just like, it was just a very inconsistent experience. I also

discovered, which is not, I guess this is the way AT&T works. I also discovered that if the phone was turned off or in airplane mode, I couldn't send a text message to Dieter, who's on Android, through the watch. So they're like these weird little things that the watch is doing in terms of its prioritizations and it's canned off between connectivity. It's just like, frankly, I just don't think it should, it should work this way. And we're, you know, we're pretty, we're pretty nerdy. We really try to troubleshoot when we review. We really get into this stuff.

And I think a lot of our audiences too, but I think about people who maybe don't want to spend the time trying to troubleshoot their wristwatches. And like, this should just shouldn't be happening this way. Yeah. And I think that's the main point. There was so much yesterday about what's wrong and like, is it actually broken or is this like a bug that you can fix? And it's like, it's an expensive device with a promise capability.

And you probably shouldn't have to understand how that's going to work in order to use it. It should just work, which is like a very classic Apple thing. It feels like the bar has moved for Apple in terms of like it just works. It used to be it's going to make a whole bunch of decisions for you that you may or may not like, but it will work as it's promised to work. and if you hate those decisions, you should, like, get a Windows PC or something. This one just feels like it made a whole bunch of decisions, and there's still not the right ones. And also, they haven't, they don't have music yet.

Yeah. Like, I'm glad that you did all this work to test the connectivity to talk to Siri to make phone calls, but I'm never going to make a phone call. The whole reason I'd get LTE on a watch would be for streaming music. Yeah. Is there a timeline on that, Lauren? We believe it's coming next month. I think Apple has said it's coming next month, but we don't know for sure.

And also, it's just kind of a, it's not ready thing. I mean, it's hard to get a straight answer as to why this isn't launching at the time the watch is launching. I'm curious to know, and I guess we'll find out whenever Apple issues, it's bug fix for this Wi-Fi issue. I'm very curious to see if that resolves all of the connectivity issues. because when I look at the Apple Watch, and Lauren, we talked about this through while we were doing edits on your review, is like the one difference between the LTE Apple Watch

and other LTE smartwatches is where the antenna is. And other LTE smart watches have put it in the band, which carries a lot of problems. It's uncomfortable, it's stiff, you can't change it. It's very obvious why Apple didn't do that, but the LTE signal works and is reliable. And then Apple made a big deal on stage

about how they're using the screen as the antenna for this connectivity. And I'm curious if that has something to do with it, maybe that's not as reliable as other methods. Apple's never been great at wireless radios, especially in its mobile devices. The iPhone's wireless radio is not nearly as strong as other phones. So I'm just curious as to how much this is going to be

a design and hardware issue versus a software issue. And I guess we'll just have to find out and wait when they issue bug fixes. The only explanation we've heard so far, is that it's the software thing. But we may hear more in the coming days. And a bunch of other reviewers didn't have any problems, to be fair, but I suspect that those people never left their houses.

Saw it's on this. No. You know, for all, you know, to be fair, I believe Nicole at BuzzFeed swam out to Alcatraz, and it worked for her. I don't know why it didn't work for Lauren on a surfboard much closer to shore, but it didn't. Because there's a captive form.

The only thing we can do. There is a shark waiting for you go log into his web page authentication system. It's flipper five. The weirdest thing about the most interesting thing about the surfing example, which we showed in the video. And I should just give a quick shout out to our video producers who we started shooting the B-roll for this video, you know, throughout the week, all week. And then we had to make all these last-minute adjustments and changes because of the issues. But when we tested it on the surfboard, that was one of those instances where it either showed disconnected with a red X at the top of the watch or it showed one bar of cellular of LTE. And you can see it's like it's green, right?

So it's either if it's connected to Wi-Fi, it's blue Wi-Fi signal. If it's disconnected, it's disconnected in red letters. And then if there's LTE, it shows in green. So it was like vacillating between disconnected or one bar. And so I was able to make a phone call to Viren Pavig very briefly from my wrist while on a surfboard. But what's interesting is that I took a full-fledged phone call from my phone on the beach, like feet away. And that was, that was fine. Yeah.

So it could have been the distance between being out in the water versus the shore that made all the difference. Or it could have just been that the watch was falling down a weaker signal. So here, I think, is the ultimate question with the watch, right? presumably they'll fix the software. Apple's good at that historically, and they'll ship it in a work. And if it's not some weird antenna problem, it'll be fine. But why are they rushing this out? What is the, they have no competition in this space.

Like, none, as far as I can see. Yeah, they could just ship it in December and be fine. Yeah, as long as they get it out in time for people to, you know, I don't know, stick in a stocking. Do you step, put like a $400 watch in a stocking? As long as they're Michael Scott. For that moment, right? Like, the Black Friday watch sale will be the older generation. It's not, you know, like, as long as they get the new one out in time for that holiday

shopping period, it's, it's fine, as far as I can tell, it's just fine. I mean, it's... Why rush it out? It's a great question, because from, based on reporting, I believe from Bloomberg and others, this is already delayed a year. Like, they wanted to put the LTE watch out last year, and they couldn't do it because the components weren't miniaturized enough. Maybe they were working on the screen antenna or something like that.

It was like a 56K U.S. Robotics modem sitting next to the watch. So, like, it's already, you know, based on reports later than Apple had it anticipated or wanted to push it out. And so why rush it out now? It was a great question. Lauren, do you feel like it's buggy in any way except for, because it's got watchOS 4, too, right? It's like, is that polished or is it just the connectivity? Like, what's the split there? I really like watchOS 4.

I gave that two thumbs up in my review and didn't really have anything negative. to say about watchOS4. I did discover today that the heart rate tracking features of watchOS4 won't work on the very first Apple Watch, the OG, which launched in 2015. It will only work on the series 1, 2, and 3. The series 1 came out the same time as the series 2 because they essentially renamed the original one series 1 and gave it a new processor. Anyway, you have the very first Apple watch. You won't get all the features of watchOS 4. But I liked watchOS 4. I would say my three biggest issues with the watch were the fact that the first unit I had didn't have a working Siri. So that marred the experience.

The second was the handoff issues, the connectivity issues. And then the third was battery life and just how badly battery life was impacted by LTE. Yeah. So Lauren, I have a question for you. Had the connectivity been working as advertised, do you think that it's worth the cost of admission? Because we're talking about a more expensive watch and we're talking about a monthly service fee. That is when you get into the more subjective aspects of a review, because that's when you start to weigh the cost and benefits of something that actually works. And so that value

proposition is going to be different for different people. For me, I personally would not, even if it had been perfect working connectivity, and I had those few magic moments of LTE working when I, like, absolutely needed it, I just still don't think I would pay $400 up front plus the $10 per month on top of my monthly sell bill to have those rare conveniences because I happen to have my phone on me a lot. But I have heard a lot of other people say leading up to the event and since the event when Apple first announced this, that they were really excited about the possibility for this. What do you guys think? Would you get, would you pay extra for smart watch with LTE? I would not. And I think that it comes down to the smart watch as it stands now, including the Apple Watch series three,

is still an accessory to the phone. And like, I've worn, just like you learn, you know, we've both been reviewing these things forever. And like I've worn every single smartwatch that's ever come out. And, you know, there's this notion or this ideal that people have that they think they're going to use their phone less or look at their phone less because they have a smart watch. And the reality is that the smart watch,

maybe it gives them notifications on their wrists or whatever, but you're still pulling your phone out of your pocket to do anything. Because like doing anything on the smart watch is still a chore. still frustrating. So like there's very few instances I can think of, and none of which actually fit into my own personal life, but that where a connected smartwatch is actually going to be useful to me. And they're like, you go for, you're a runner,

or you go to work out at the gym. If anybody's seen me, you know that I don't do those things. Then, yeah, that's awesome because you don't want to bring a phone with you and you still want to be able to, like, get a phone call or text message if you need it. But you're only gone for like an hour or two or whatever. Or if you, like, you know, run out to the corner store to get something and you forget your phone at home, well, you're covered by your watch or whatever. But, like, those are, like, pretty niche scenarios. And, you know, I personally for me, that's certainly not worth paying extra money for.

And I don't think we're at the point where, like, the watch is, like, an independent enough device to where you can actually justify its cost of a monthly service plan. That's me, like you said, you know. But I'm not for the same price as an iPad service plan. Exactly. There's so much more. Like, I'm one of those people that actually pays extra to connect my iPad to the network because I always want connectivity to the network on my iPad. But like, I could do a lot of stuff on my iPad that I can't do on a watch for obvious reasons. This was $2 a month. I mean, I guess, sure what that?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But 10 is like, what? What's free money? And they're doing the promotion now. So they're like, you know, first three months are free and the waiver activation fees. What if you get this in February of next year? Here's what I don't understand about the first rents are free. That implies that at the end of that three months, you will have, you'll be like addicted to it. Yeah. You're like, I can't live without this.

I think a lot of people are like, I can super live without this. Because guess what? I stole my phone with me all the time. Yeah. Paul, what about you? Yeah. What, I can save $10 a month and get longer battery life. I'm still not really a smart watch person.

Yeah, I find no utility. I want to. One thing. And maybe Lauren, you can opine on this as well. I don't think the Series 3 Apple Watch changes the equation for either of you or for someone who's like not a smart watch person. It doesn't make the smart watch more appealing if you already are like not decided that like that's not for you.

Yeah, I would agree with that. I think we've seen, Dan, you've reviewed a lot of LTE smartwatches before. Yeah. Well, not a lot. There are only so many out there, but the Sam's, version and the LG version. And I think, of course, you can make a whole argument about operating systems and what ecosystem you're getting tied into.

But I think if you're the kind of person who heard about those watches and you weren't super excited by that idea or thinking like, oh, yeah, that's something I should consider now. Then I don't see how this makes, I don't see how this makes that happen either. Yeah. But they've been focusing it on health and fitness over time. I cannot think of another watch app that exists that I want, right? Like notifications, fitness tracking. It's what we all suspected when the watch came out would be it's like killer apps.

They still are. Right. And now you have a little bit of like run while streaming music. I like to check the time. It's not. Really? Mostly what I do with a watch on my wrist. Do you look at your watch to check the time?

I've been a person that's been wearing a watch on my wrist since I was like eight years old. That's right. smart watch today. What is it? This is a Galaxy, or it's a Samsung Gear S2. That looks nice. A couple years ago. Thank you. No flat tire. No notch. That one does have an LTE option, right? It does. This one does not have that LTE option

because I just don't find value in that. But like, if I'm not wearing a smart watch, I'm wearing an analog watch because that's like I feel comfortable with it on my wrist because I've been wearing them forever and that's how I check the time and especially how I check the date. I get really mad if I'm wearing a watch. It doesn't tell me the date. Lauren, do you look at your wrist to look

for the time? Yeah, I do know, actually. I'm going to make a statement. I hope this is a huge generalization, but it kind of is. Oftentimes, you guys are wearing pants that have pockets. And so your phone goes in your pocket throughout the day. So even if you step away from your desk, grab a coffee or go to the restroom or whatever you're doing, your phone is always with you.

There are times when I don't wear clothing with pockets. And so then I step away from my desk and I actually don't have my phone on me. I mean, it's still within range. It's like 10 feet away. But then if I need to check the time, I look for my wrist. Well, Lauren, I think the only solution to that problem is to carry a microwave. everywhere that you go. No, this is true.

Megan Furquemesh and I were recording a promo for the Mr. Robot show, the after show that we're doing, and I just put my mic pack in my pocket, and she went for hers, and she was just like, you know what, women's pockets are not designed to be useful. It was just like, very true.

Rack discovered it. It's a whole thing. Here, yeah. This is an interesting, so I like to listen to audiobooks and podcasts almost all the time when I'm not, like, working at my computer. So if I get up,

to go to the restroom at work, right? I bring my phone with me. I have it in my pocket, my man pockets, and I have them headphones in. If I could get up from my desk and seamlessly keep listening to what I was listening to and leave everything behind, and everything's just like all the audio just starts streaming through my wrist now into my AirPods that I have now purchased.

I mean, I've got to solve that captive portal product problem before. that. I mean, like, first it just has it to work. But like, that does sound something to aspire to. Like, that doesn't seem like we're there yet. And that's like one of those ideals that people have about smart watches that have not really panned out in reality. And like, I was talking about this with Ben Popper yesterday. And he's like, he's like, man, it would be awesome if I could just like, you know, put my phone away and still feel like I'm not completely disconnected. And I'm like, that's a great ideal. Like, in my experience, I have my phone on me more when I'm wearing a smart watch

because I'm using my phone to fidget with the smartwatch or to set up the smart watch or to control the notifications of the smart watch. So I end up looking at my phone more. Or I like, you know, get a notification on my wrist and it's like too much of a chore to read it and click the link that's in it or whatever it is and I just pull my phone out anyway.

So like I don't think that ideal has borne out in reality. I'm definitely going to start texting you more links. So Lauren, right now, now you can't recommend it because, you know, it doesn't work. But assuming it works, right? I mean, like, that's true. Like, Lauren was on CNBC yesterday. Like, can't recommend it.

Joanna, her headline in the journal was like, I can't recommend this to you. Assuming they can solve the bugs and there's no timeline for that. So that's a big assumption. Is this like a worthwhile upgrade or is this just a, you actually, you know, run so much that it's worthwhile to pay the money? So I really don't want to be Debbie Downer on this, but I do want to point out one more thing about that. which is Apple's battery estimate, battery life estimates for Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE. They're saying it can get the same 18 hour battery life as the other watches. That is actually based only on a half hour of working out for day with LTE.

Once you start to exceed a half hour of working out in workout mode using LTE, the battery life is actually going to drain more. So my argument for that is, I mean, I don't often run more than a half hour because I'm not as big of an outdoor run. as I used to be, but a lot of people go on really long outdoor runs. And a lot of people go on really long hikes for that matter that lasts much longer than that. So the value, and then there's no streaming music right now. So the value proposition even for workout people isn't necessarily there yet. So I would say if you really, really love the idea of LTE on your wrist and you love the idea of it even before these reviews came out, then once this is fixed, this might still be worth it to you.

because you're going to be that person who's like, I already factored into my mind, then I'm going to pay $10 a month for this intermittent inconvenience that I might have. But otherwise, I would say just go with the series three without LTE. Yeah, it seems like the move. Okay, I'm going to read one more ad, and then we're going to talk about receiver lights and surround sound,

which is what everyone came for. Codex. Everyone loves a good codec conversation. Do they? This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by the art of shaving. If you're looking to elevate your grooming routine to a grooming ritual, the art of shaving is pleased to announce their brand new bourbon-inspired collection in celebration of the highly anticipated new film Kingsman, the Golden Circle, in theaters, September 22. Inspired by the Kingsman movie, the new Art of Shaving Collection was thoughtfully created to celebrate the best of the modern gentleman. It combines a rich, woodsy base with a hint of vanilla.

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So we had the iPhone review, Lauren's Watch review, and then I reviewed the Apple TV today, all back to back. You can see them all on theverge.com slash guidebook. Yeah, you can use our offer code, verge. Just type it in. It's the verge.com is our offer code. Find the nearest browser. type it in, you get the virtual free. Unlimited free content.

So Apple gave me the Apple TV. They were excited to give it to me because I've been on this podcast a lot talking about how I want all the lights on my receiver to light up. I want Dolby Vision. I want Dolby Atmos. I just want it all to work. It's very hard to get that all to work. They were really pumped.

I met with them. They're exactly talking about other people. Took it home, plugged it in, and basically was extraordinarily disappointed. And to explain my disappointment, I had basically no choice but to write 2,300 words about video mode switching, which is not what you want to do with your time in life, usually. But we did it. Deeter was editing it. Dan edited it.

And I basically said to Deeter, this has an audience of one person, which is John Syracusa, who I know complains about this stuff on his podcast, but also is like the person who used to write the 30,000 word OS10 reviews for Ars Technica. Yeah. It's like a snack of a review for him. Yeah. It was a little baby. It's just a little nibble.

But it's like literally I thought in my mind that this has an audience of one person. And the thing has exploded today. So there's a lot of AV nerds out there. Here to me, and I talk to Apple a lot about this, here's the problem with the Apple TV. Fundamentally is that Apple didn't make a TV. And the more I think about this, the more it's obvious to me that this is the problem. We really need to get Gene Monster as a guest on this show. No, they don't, they're not in control of the panel, right?

The physical display of the thing. Well, more importantly, they're not in control of the software that controls the panel. Right. I mean, like, anybody can make the panel, but if Apple came out with a TV where they're going to source the panel from LG like they do on the IMAX, they're controlling the software that drives that panel. Yeah, right, but they're not in control of the panel. Right. What I mean the panel, I mean the software.

Right, there's a TV connected to your Apple TV, and they really cannot control that TV. So instead of doing that, and this is true on the old Apple TV too, they just put it in the best mode that they think they can find. So on the old Apple TV, it always runs at 1080p 60 hertz. So you can think of it as a 60 frames per second refresh, right? And everyone has complained about that for years because movies are shot at 24 frames for second. So display them on a 60 hertz TV, you have to like interpolate frames, have to do all this stuff. if you're a huge nerd, it looks bad. I think you have to be a massive snob

until I care about that. It's not... It would be nice if they switch modes, but 99% of people can't really see it. I can spot it any TV anywhere. I don't even need an AB test. I don't even need a B test. Just show me a TV, I'll tell you.

What hurts it's in? Yeah. This is so walkie. The TV at the San Francisco office. that we watched. Oh, it's like motion smooth. Yeah. It's not doing that.

Yeah, that's different. That's way different. I can spot motion smooth in a mile away too. It looks like garbage. God. So on the old Apple TV, they run everything at 60 hertz. And people complain about it

because they want to run it at 24 hertz. But whatever. On the new one, 4KHDR, they run the TV at 4K HDR all of the time. And they won't switch back to SDR, the normal dynamic range. that means everything on the TV gets converted into HDR,

and their conversion is bad. Like, it's not good. So when we went and watched The Dark Night or other movies on HBO Go or other movies from other services or other shows or whatever, they were getting pumped up to HDR, even though they're not HDR content. And so it just looked bad. iTunes, and I think this is like some Apple Bubble,

I was like, this looks bad. Well, did you watch The Dark Night on iTunes? because we remastered it. Of course they can. Oh, sure. Oh, right. So, like, okay, so I went and watched an iTunes. It looks great on iTunes.

Apple actually has the best encoding ever for iTunes because they go to the studios and they only have one device and they master it for their one single device. And that's the end of that. And it looks great. Which, to be honest. Is choice. That's awesome. And that pushes further your theory that they should just make a TV.

They should just make the TV. Which literally, until this very moment, after. after, I mean, I worked in gadget. I've been in gadget news for 12 years and since all of that time, Gene Munster has been writing reviews that Apple will come out with the TV. Never thought it was a good idea

right this moment. Right, when I told you they encode their own shows. So it doesn't it does this weird thing with Dolby Vision and HDR 10 where it does they just want mode switch. They said to me, we think it's inelegant to mode switch, which is the

Apple thing I've ever heard. They had some good points too, which is like some, like bad TVs when they mode switch, sometimes just like fail out. And they put up that weird green, HDMI screen, right? If they don't get the handshake right again, whatever. But like, if you're buying the most expensive TV streamer on the market, I suspect you have a TV that can handle it. Right. It feels that way to me.

And you have to have, like, a really bad TV to have those issues. Like the one that we always refer to as, like, the best TV to buy this year. It's not an expensive TV. It's $600. Yeah, the Roku TCL TV. The TCL Roku TV. That's not going to have issues much of the way. So the video output of this thing looks great in HDR and Dolby Vision.

And everything else looks weird. You can set it to not do that, right? Like you can change the output setting. But when you do that, it lowers the refresh rate. And then the interface looks bad because you want the interface, the animation is the interface, to run at 60 hertz. But if you set on my TV, my TV only supports Dolby Vision at 30 or 24,

so if you set it to Dolby Vision at 30, then the interface looks stuttery. Because what you wanted to do is switch to 60 frames per second for the interface and then switch to the native resolution of the movie when it's playing the movie. But they won't do it because it's in elegant.

Right. So at some point, something is going to look bad because Apple has only picked one mode and that mode is not actually the best mode for most things. So that's like the video side. And on the audio side, it doesn't light up my Atmos light because they don't support Atmos. Yeah.

And so I asked them a hundred times what's going on here. And they finally said, look, it's not a hardware limitation. We can do it. We're going to do it. And they said, I was allowed to report. So we put it in the review. At some point, it's on their roadmap. They're going to support Atmos on this Apple TV.

They won't really tell me why. But I strongly suspect, mostly because Dolby has published a document saying this is true, that the reason they won't support it is because Siri on the box needs to come out of the speakers. So they need to take all of the audio coming in from the movie and, like, decode it so they get the audio back, mix Siri's voice to it, re-encode it, and send it back out.

Oh, so that was going to be my next question. Hi, I wasn't even sure if I was still a part of this segment. I've been, honestly, I've been writing a new story. Hi, Lauren. Sorry, I'm fine. No, that's fine. I'm just ranting about lights. Don't mind me.

So that, that has to happen for streaming. It's not, this is not for downloaded content. No, it's the whole thing. So, like, if you're playing downloaded content, right, you're still streaming audio through the converter, right? You're playing it in real time. Yeah, it's outputting audio to the TV. Right.

At some point in your signal chain. So every other device doesn't decode the atmosphere. They just, they bit stream it. Yeah. They pass it through. And then your receiver or your TV. The obvious thing to do. Right.

That's doable. It's very doable. But Apple wants Siri to always work. And so they're afraid that if they do the Atmos pass through and you push the Siri button, your receiver will. Here's a solution. They put a little speaker on the Apple TV itself and Siri talks to that. This is just my suspicion. And again, it's based on the fact that Dolby has literally published a document being like,

Let's talk about how Dolby works on the Apple TV. And they're like, it all happens on the thing. And it literally says right there because Apple makes a Siri into the thing. And Apple's like, we'll do it in a software update. I'm like, what's the hold up? And they're like, ma-war, and I'm like, oh, it has to be this. Can you imagine trying, I mean, this is like 10 times worse than trying to explain captive portal networks.

Like, this is, imagine if Siri just didn't work on the TV box and people would lose their minds because Siri can already be incredibly frustrating. And then, but then being like, well, here's a white paper. on how this is supposed to be working and why it's not. I actually kind of understand Apple's approach to this. Right. I completely understand because it's so hard. All of these problems to even identify the single problem requires endless explanation of why that problem exists.

So why does HBO go look bad on the Apple TV plugged into an expensive LG OLED TV? Let's talk about refresh rates. That's why this review was 2,500 words. With a sidebar, man. Plus the sidebar. Our video team was like, keep this under five minutes. I was like, I don't think I can.

To be clear, is the problem with the way that they mess with footage that's not HDR, the frame rate stuff, or also the color? Like, when you're watching Game of Thrones, is the color or frame rate or both? Game of Thrones looks okay-ish.

Okay. And probably fine because HBO made it themselves. And Apple went and worked with HBO and spent the time, its own stuff. Even through the HBO Go app? HBO Go looks worse than HBO now. So that's, that's weird.

There's all kinds of stuff going there. But I believe that's what we call. I'm quitting television. Fragmentation. It's super fragmented. But the problem, the problem, okay, so the problem, so the problem is so insane. The problem is the, the, when you play the dark night on HBO Go. Right, right.

It's a bad encode of the dark night. It is worse than the, it. encode of the Dark Night on iTunes. Right? So it has built-in problems. Then you're not putting the TV in 1080P SDR where it knows, okay,

I'm a 4K HDR TV. I'm getting a 1080P standard dynamic range signal. I am good at interpreting that to look the best on this panel. Because the software is running the panel, presumably the software has been designed to run that panel. It doesn't know. It just thinks it's getting a

4K HDR signal. from the Apple TV. The Apple TV doesn't know anything about the panel, so it's just making a bunch of sort of averaged out decisions about what to do with SDR to remap it into 4K HDR. Those decisions on average make bad encodes look worse. So when you watch the Dark Night, it's a bad encode. It makes everything much brighter, and all of the noise just jumps out at you. It gets real sharp and contrasty and shitty. And it wasn't just me who noticed that. Dave Katzmyer at CNET, who I think is, probably the best TV reviewer in the industry, called out exactly the same problem.

Matthew Panzerino, TechCrunch, he was tweeting about it all day today because he just got his review in it. Notice the same thing. So the problem is because they won't switch modes, SDR content looks bad if it's a bad encode. If it's a really good SDR encode and iTunes is full of them, it looks fine. But your life of streaming content is full of shitty SDR. Is this a problem if you have a lower level TV that's maybe 4K and not HDR? I don't think it's a problem for a 4K TV or a 180 TV. Yeah, a 1080 TV is fine, but then why would you buy this?

You'd buy the 1080 one. What about what about YouTube? You said YouTube's not? Oh, so and in YouTube, Apple and Google have like literally a company-level format war about 4K video on the web. Apple supports HGVC, MP4. they're in that side of that world, the patent pool world. YouTube bought a company a couple years ago, made their codec royalty-free.

It's called VP9. That's what YouTube generally supports. Apple won't support VP9. So Safari and a Mac generally won't play 4K YouTube. iOS won't play 4K YouTube. Chrome on the Mac because Google can do whatever it wants in Chrome can play 4K YouTube. But Chrome on the iPhone, because iOS is locked down, can't play 4K. TVOS, subset of iOS, the YouTube app can't bring in its own VP9 encoder and play 4K.

So, like, they have to solve it. So I guess they are team softy. What? What is the opposite of Krispy? Oh, yeah. Team soggy? I don't know. The real issue is that YouTube is actually the biggest source of 4K HDR content available.

I mean, it's mostly like MKBHD and demo reels from, like, High Sense TVs. But it's out there and you can watch it. great. There's a bunch of like let's play PS4 Pro stuff that's like super fun to watch in 4KHCR YouTube. None of it available to you. And that this

is all just limitations. Like if Apple wanted to unlock TBS a little bit and let Google put the VP9 codec on it, they could. And it's not like the iPhone where you're like going to run a software codec and run the processor hot and drain the battery. The thing is plugged into the wall and has a vent at the bottom. You will never know that it's

like running less efficiently than the hardware decoder. So it's just like all of the video side is a bunch of decisions about, well, we can't control your panel. We don't trust mode switching. So we're just picking a mode, which was more or less fine when they were upscaling 10 AP and running in 60s. It's like it wasn't great, but it was fine. They have not solved the HDR one is too complicated and makes things,

makes particularly bad encodes look way worse. and then on the audio side again they say it's coming and I think they're they won't do it without Siri if you can't push the button and Siri doesn't talk to you Atmos it's not going to happen and so who knows

that's like just give me the switch I need two switches this product would I would have given it a nine if they'd given me two switches one to disable Siri and enable Atmos fine I'll take it I don't get Siri I never use Siri on this thing anyway and two enable mode switching

Just give me those two software buttons. Are you going to buy it? No. It's like they say these things are coming, right? I strongly suspect that after all of this outcry that they will enable mode switching. I think, you know, the are you going to buy it question really comes down to whether you have content in iTunes or not. Because like as you made this point in the review, Nilai, like your 4K HDR TV has a lot of smart apps that are optimized in 4K HDR and all the content you. stream through those is great.

Yeah. So, like, the only reason to buy this is for the iTunes content. And if you're not in that world. If you bought a lot of movies in iTunes, they're getting upgraded for free. That is enormous value. Yeah. That alone, if you have a big enough iTunes library, justifies the price of this.

And they'll all be good in codes. And they'll all be great in codes because, like, Apple has its, like, I don't know, team of encoding ninjas that, like, wandered through Hollywood Studios. I mean, that part, so I've been really down on it. But, like, that part of it, Apple is one of the most powerful companies in the world. It has great relationships with the music industry and the movie industry. They go to the movie industry. They're pushing the industry towards 4K HDR because they have the clout to do it.

They've released a high-end device that's connected to their ecosystem. They handle the encodes for the industry. They told me that the industry had expressed some of these concerns about HDR remapping, and they'd prove into them that iTunes encodes could look good this way. They are operating at such a high level when a... it comes to where does the video like when the video when the movie leaves a director's hand how is it going to look good when it shows up on a TV like they probably the highest level in the industry they're right up there they're you know super tight with Dolby although apparently

the utmost engineers are locked out of that pizza party um sorry so salty about it uh like they're they're the ones who are going to figure it out just there's no one else competing at that level they're going to figure out TV the problem is is that until they make the screen, they have to let me adjust their box to work better with my display. You just have to let me do it. You make a Mac, right?

You can plug a Mac into a monitor, and you can go fiddle with the monitor settings on the Mac all day and all night to make your monitor look good. That's exactly where they need to land at with a TV, or they just need to make the monitor and have it all autocalibrated. And the more I keep ranting about this,

the more I'm like I need to assign myself the piece that's like Apple should just build $1,000 TV. Because if TCL can build a $600 Roku TV that everyone loves, I guarantee you Apple can build a $1,000 55-inch TV that runs an A10X chip in this software that is perfect. And like, they should just do it because this controversy is not worth it to them, I don't think. The bummer about...

If everyone would buy that TV, they would buy that TV in a heartbeat. The bummer about all of this on the high end, and again, you made this point in your review, is that, like, this supports Dolby Vision HDR, which is the best HDR in the market, but it doesn't support Dolby Atmos, which is the best audio system on the market. So there's no way, and there's no device that does both. Right. Like, like...

The Chromecast Ultra does both. Many, many people have reminded me to do. But do you know the problem that Chromecast Ultra is? Support for both Vision and Atmos comes device by device via firmware updates. And you have to use your phone as a remote. So whatever, but like, the Chromecast Ultra won't do Dolby Vision to my 2016 OLED.

one of the most popular TV is released last year until Google updates the firmware in the Ultra. Wow. And I just haven't done yet. What are they doing? Everything is the worst. Apple just make a TV. Do you see what I'm saying? They just make a TV. I have questions about your thoughts on the interface.

Because one of the things that we still hear a lot from people is that they just want from cast because they don't want an interface. They just want to stream from their device. Which I personally don't agree with. I like having a destination to go to on the screen. I don't mind the, the apps-like experience, but is anything drastically different about that? No. It is largely the same.

Series is, like, a little better at sorting things. You can be, like, show me 4KH2 movies. It's mastered in 4K now. That's the big difference, right? The interfaces. Oh, yeah, the whole interface is in 4K HD. You can't tell. Right, especially because you should run that interface in dark mode anyway.

You're like, those icons are brighter. Like, who cares? Yeah, there's nothing notably different. You know, that TV app that they released, it's sort of like, it goes undernoticed. It will be, I talked to a senior executive Apple, it will eventually become the home screen of the TV, of the Apple TV. But they need to populate, they need to get apps to support it and populate it with content. People who have not used the TV app. What happens when you open the TV app?

So the TV app is not, it doesn't actually have any video in itself. but all the apps that support it, plug in, send it data about what you're watching, how far long you've gotten, and then it can make recommendations about what's in all your other apps. Apple can promote content that's in other apps. Apple can do things like put planet of the apps

on the first on screen in case you want to have that experience in your life. So it's basically you download Hulu and Amazon when it comes to it, and ESPN and CNN and whatever else, and it'll show you like, here's what's in your iTunes library, here's what's popping on Hulu, here's the stuff you've watched, here's what you can finish watching all these apps, and it'll kick you into those apps,

but then you can come back to it. I thought that was already the default. And the big holdout is Netflix, because they don't want to show the data with Apple. But Apple says that once you get Hulu and Amazon in the TV app, the combined catalog of the TV app will be so big, they'll be competitive with Netflix, and they think that all works all. Yeah, well, you know what? They don't have wet hot American summer. Yeah.

Anyway, the point of all this is that this is a mess that fills me with rage, and I can barely explain it because it is so infuriatingly complicated. But there it is. So if you want the simple... I just want all the fucking lights, man. You want the simple digestion of all of this? If you aren't a heavy iTunes content owner already, just go buy a streaming stick of your choice. Buy a Roku Premiere Plus. That's what you should buy.

It's $79, $89, $89 somewhere. I have one. It's great to speak up on. You know what? I'm going to, I'm going to take it. Oh, go ahead, Paul. Oh, you go ahead. I was just going to say that we haven't seen all the fall hardware launches yet.

Yeah. So don't rush out by anything right now. That's my advice. Yeah. Well, I will tell you, I was looking at prices for all the competitors yesterday. Amazon fire stuff kind of getting discontinued out of stocky. It's happening. And there's that leak of the one with the dot, right?

Out of stocky. There was actually a leak of Amazon stuff. in the past week, and then just today, our buddy Dave Zatz, leaked some info that Roku's got some new stuff coming. That's not funny. That's not funny. But, you know, like Lauren says,

it is the season to not buy something. So just wait. Don't buy any of these Apple products to just review. Don't buy anything else. That is the one, what you just said is the one thing that is kind of like blowing my mind is Apple just released a suite of flagship products

and we're saying don't buy any of them. Yeah. That has never happened in my career. And it's kind of like mind-boggling. Yeah. On behalf of our comment section, I wanted to point out that there's a device named the Nvidia Shield TV. Oh, God.

And it's now $179 and it's got a lot of specs. I'm going to review the Shield. I reviewed the Shield. No, you did a hands-on. Trust me. No, I reviewed it. But you can go answer your question. Here's what I know about your quote-unquote review of the Shield, because

a thousand people have pointed out to me. You didn't give it a score, and you didn't tag it correctly, so it doesn't show up in the taxonomy of the site when you look for set-top box reviews. So, thus, you did not review it, according to the many lawyers who populate the internet and are aware of our site taxonomy. So I'm going to re-review the shield now that it's cheaper

because everyone is all up on me about it. Get some plex. We're going to pirate everything in the world. So many movies. And we're going to flex the shit out of it. We're going to pass through Atmos Bidstream from whatever the pirate PIC gives me. I got to tell you, on the shield, Sonic is awesome.

You thought it was good on the Apple TV? Wait until you get a controller in your hands. And then you're Sonic 2 forever. No, the $179 shield does not come with the controller. No, get the one with the controller. I can buy an Xbox. You can also buy an Xbox, which is also the hilarious point that we're at. Should we talk about these Google Leaks for like two seconds?

You want to run through them? Sure, let me pull them up. And then we can wrap the. We're way over time. So if you haven't been paying attention, Google has an event on October 4th. It's its annual fall event for hardware. Last year this time, they announced the Pixel and the Google Assistant, the Google Home, probably a new Chromecast, a bunch of other stuff.

So basically all the stuff, well, we don't know all the stuff, but a whole lot of stuff that it's expected to be announced that on October 4th has been leaked. You can go look at what the Pixel 2 is going to look like. You can look at what the pixel 2xel is going to look like. Okay, everybody needs to look at this pixel 2xel black and white. It's got a little tasteful orange button on the side. It's the sexiest. I've always seen it from the back, but I am.

It does look pretty good. I know we're not even supposed to use that adjective. That's a ban phrase. For gadgets because it's been overused in the past. But man. What phrase is that? Sexy. But the pixel 2XL black and white, that little orange button,

It's really attractive, and I'm very happy about it. I think it looks very nice. There have been a lot of leaks for the pixel line in the past six months, and so if you look back, you can probably see what the front of it looks like. That one, the pixel 2 XL, I believe, is expected to be an edge-to-edge screen. The pixel 2, not the XL, is supposed to be different or whatever, but it's smaller. I'm buying a hell of these phones. Live on this show.

But those say, so the pixel 2s have been leaked to high heavens, but the things that haven't been leaked and just came out where this new miniature home, which we're expecting to maybe be like a competitor to the Echo Dot. So it's like a little tiny Google Home. So that might be interesting. And then finally, a new Chromebook Pixel, which is allegedly called the Pixel Book, and it's going to cost $1,500 or something.

And I'm buying the hell out of that. Yeah, like $1,300 optional stylus. And then I'm going to turn all those things on, and they're not going to have I message, and I'm going to go back to my prison. That's reality. I don't know why you bother buying Android phones. Because I love them.

They're so crazy. this is where Dieter was pointing out to me when the whole notch controversy is going down. It's like Android phones are fucking insane and it's fine. Like all the, you're just crazy. Like this screen curves around the edge. This screen has a whole set of buttons

around the curved edge. When you look at this phone, it might turn on. You can get an Android phone with a keyboard. That's how crazy we're talking. You can get an Android phone with a Bixby button. And if you're like me,

there's a dog butler on this phone. You actually turn off the Bixby and then you just have a button. that does nothing, so I have an $800 phone with a button that does nothing. Man, the button, button debate continues to rage. Dan, if you aren't aware of this. Button and I are on team button. Button.

He's reprogramming all of our minds to pronounce this word incorrectly. Speaking of dogs. Oh, there's a segment. There's a segment I do every week. Which we did not forget. And it's called dog food pods. It's hell. happened. A pod-style subscription service model for buying dog food. It's not very pod-like,

but it's called ya doggy or yeah doggy. I'm not sure how you're supposed to say it. It's a smart dog food scooper that I don't know how it works, but somehow over the magic of Bluetooth and it's supposed to, it senses every time you scoop food. And so it knows that you've scooped all the food and then it orders more of the dog food. That's pretty good. It reminds me of those coffee. It's bad. Coffee makers that have the Amazon, was it, Amazon Dash built into it, that, like, you run out of coffee beans and it, like, orders more coffee beans.

It's dash, but instead of just a button, like, oh, I'm out of dog food, I can push a button and get more dog food. This is always sensing when you're scooping. It also reminds me of that cup of water. That water cup, what was it called the vessel that would tell you how much water you drank? Yes. Yeah. Yes. One of the late nights made fun of that.

Was it John Oliver? Someone pour that thing to shred. Yeah. For good reason. The other nice part, this is actually slightly convenient for feeding you. Because this is actually a situation with my apartment's cat is I never know if she's been fed or not. So I have to text my roommate. It has a cat and fed her.

She's just being asshole because she's a cat. And this will let you know if anybody's fed the dog today. And listen, I guess it gets jocs. How much does this wonder gadget of the future cost? 40 or 50 bucks. Wow. It's a scoop. Yeah, doggy.

Oh, God. I think that's, we can end up there. Don't buy that either. Why a doggy? Would you say that? Yeah, doggy? Or yeah doggy I think you say yeah doggy

Yeah doggy I think it's yeah doggy The internet ordered you more food All right Again please don't buy anything That we've mentioned on this show today It's the only advice I can give you Oh speaking of buying things

Google bought like a bunch of HCC They bought some employees Oh my god there's so much news this week For 1.1 billion dollars They bought the powered by HTC team It wasn't just a bunch of employees It's the team at HTC That makes the things for other people

which for the longest time was HTC. Yep. So like HTC was an OEM. They made phones for Verizon. They made phones for, I don't know, Sprint. Yep. They made POM's phones actually for a minute there. So the powered by HTC team, which is the heart of HTC, was purchased by Google.

Google also got a bunch of HTC's patents. HTC, whatever remains of it, is still going to make phones. Very unclear who will do that. Maybe they can be powered by Google phones. HECC will then contract Google to make its next phone. That would be the ultimate irony. In my mind, I want this to be, like, Google's like, oh, man, we really got bit by that time when we bought Motorola. I mean, maybe it worked out for us, but it just wasn't super successful.

Oh, shoot, a squeezable phone. Oh, my gosh. Yes, that's, I mean, if you're not aware, the HECC's. gimmick of the year is you can squeeze the sides of the phone to do things and the new pixels are rumored to have this function. Google saw, of all things,

in HECC's portfolio, Google saw that as the value. Squeasability patents. That's my dream. I don't know about you, but when I'm about to give all of my personal information to a Google assistant, I just want the sides to be squeezed as I'm doing it. Yeah, you know, you what it is, is like

you get matter and matter as more information is given away and you just keep squeezing the sides of the phone as your grip gets, gets more intense. And then your Google assistant comes to life. Yeah. God. Okay. Don't buy anything.

Just chill. You got an iPhone 7? Just hang back. Put that money away. A lot of things are coming out. And then we're going to review them all again. Vurge.com slash guidebook. The verge.com slash guidebook.

By the way, I went to the verge.com slash verge for Afroco verge. 404. Really disappointed. Oh, so that one expired. Sorry. It's too late to get 20% off your verge visit. I feel like I have an offer code for the merch. Anyway, look, next week I'm going to do a house ad for our own t-shirt store and offer you all an offer code.

Which will just be offer code. And you can get the e-mails t-shirt. Email's t-shirt. That is our show. We are way over time. Lauren, thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me. And I'm sorry that I've been a little less engaged.

this segment, not only because you are the number one TV nerd that I know, and I figured it's better just to let you talk about it, but because I was writing a news story. So go to Theverge.com. I think Lauren just described there is that Lauren did something way more valuable with her time than I just said. Lauren posted her scoop while talking to us. And it wasn't a you doggy scoop. See? See what I'm saying? No. That was the best, Dan. I just think she just ended at that. All right. Dan, thank you. My pleasure. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Paul, you're fine.

You're welcome. There are other podcasts to listen to, including Lauren's podcast, too embarrassed to ask. Lauren, who did you have on the show this week? We had Anne Wigitzki on the show this week. She's the founder of 23 and Me, which is a well-known genetic testing company, DNA testing company. And we had a lot of questions from people about how secure it is to basically to a company like 23 and me. And we asked her a lot of questions about that. So be sure to listen.

Very cool. You host that show with Kara Swisher. Kara Swisher has a podcast called Recode Decode, which is excellent. And Peter Kafka, also on the Recode team, has a show called Recode Media, which I personally love very much. And then we're, I promise we're going to have more for shows sometime. It is an empire. Casey Newton owes me a one page for the show that is thinking about it. It's going to be something.

But anyway, that's our show. Thank you for listening to that insane surround, sound rant. But I think that's why you come here. Anyway, that's it. Rock and Roll. Paul. Goodbye. Paul.