The Vergecast - MacBook Neo, iPhone 17e, and iPad Air: The Vergecast Livestream

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Apple released a bunch of new iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Studio Displays this week. The Verge’s Nilay Patel and David Pierce tried them all this morning, and are back to share their thoughts live. Further reading: All the news about Apple’s MacBook Neo, iPhone 17E, and more Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed.We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This week on Explain It to Me, the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's your friend David Pierce here. What you're about to hear is a live stream that Nilai and I did together. We came running back from this week's Apple event to talk about all the stuff that it just come out and sort through all of our feelings. One thing you're going to hear as we start talking about it, especially as we get to the iPhone 17E, is that Nilai was told when he was getting a demo that the screen is an LCD. Actually, it's an OLED, which we figure out in real time and Nilai feels appropriately bad for it.

It's horrible. But I just wanted you to know right up top that he's wrong. And it's a N-led. Horrible. Let's get into it. Welcome to the Vergecast, flagship podcast of tiny computers. That's pretty good.

Tiny-er computers. One centimeter. Gently tinier computers. I'm your friend David Pierce. We're in the studio. Neil Appetell is here. What's up? We are full morning show is what I would say,

is our... I have been given little pieces of paper and a pen to write on. I'm very excited about all this. I don't have a laptop. We're going to do... I'm going to do this. while we can say we're going to go to break like a lot while we're sitting here.

This is going to be great. I'm very excited about it. So two things we should say right up front. We've just been wanting to do more live stuff recently. This is like a thing we've talked a lot about, as you can see, by the fact that this is 11 minutes late. We're still learning how all of this works. But we're here, we're live.

It's like we also, I love an emergency podcast. Like we make a lot of jokes about the idea of emergency podcasts. But when it's just like there's a thing that happened and we should talk about it, it's fun to be able to just like spin this up and start hanging out. Also, David, I went to an event. together, which is rare lately. We were in a room together. We were in a room together.

We saw all the stuff together. We were like, we should just go back and do it right now. Why wait a day? And be in different cities. So here we are. Can you describe this event that we just went to? Particularly what I want you to do is describe the first 10 minutes of programming at this event. Yeah.

It was a very strange morning. It was a strange morning. I want to be very clear with everyone. Apple did not call this an Apple event. They called it an Apple experience. And there were three simultaneous experiences that you could have depending on where you were in the world. So there's one here in New York City. There is one, I believe in Singapore or Hong Kong.

It was Hong Kong. Yeah. I don't know what happened around the world. Here in New York, we went to, Apple rented a large event space. It was beautiful, full of press and creators, the usual suspects, saw a lot of old friends. And then we were ushered like around the corner in this warehousey event space to a room with just a giant TV in it. Like a 200-some-inch TV. Like huge empty space.

A huge empty space and just a TV doing the swirling, like, glassy Apple logo animations. Kind of like ominous in a way. It's just like come stand and look at this. Again, it's not an event's experience. So then Apple's Trudy Mueller got on stage. She's a longtime PR person there, one of our favorites. She said, welcome.

And then she introduced John Ternis, who is in charge of Hardward Apple, long rumored to be the next CEO. of Apple, so this is fascinating. And he came on and said, look at all the stuff we announced for the last week's, got a special one for you, the MacBook Neo, and then they ran a quick video. And then that was it. And then he was like, great, you can go look at this stuff. And we all ran around the huge TV into a beautiful hands-on area with lots of space.

And my favorite, there was like a coffee shop at the back of all this that they had made where we could sit down and actually work. Because usually that's not the case of these events. Yeah. I'm like in the corner, like with a laptop open, propped up in my hand, trying to get a photo on the internet. This is of no interest to the audience. I just want you know, usually it's chaos to get those first photos out. And this was great. So just a really strange one, because it was very focused on just getting to this stuff, including an entirely new MacBook,

which is not the way they normally announce new hardware. No. Like if this was just the iPad and the 17E and a new MacBook Pro with a chip bump, I would have gotten it. But this is like an entirely new piece of hardware in the MacBook Neo. And it was a really new piece of hardware in the MacBook Neo. and it was super casual. Yeah, so let's actually start with this. So the announcements that they talked about were the 17E, the iPad Air, the new MacBooks with M5 chips, the new studio display and studio display XR, all of which were around and we could touch them. And it was the first like hands-on experience anybody had had with them. And then the Neo.

And I would say even before all anybody cared about was the Neo, right? Like this thing has been rumored for a while. the name came out, I think either yesterday or the day before. It was like, this was clearly coming. And there was a minute during that presentation. I was like, oh, my God, they're not going to announce a new product at all. Because he said, like, Ternus is up there, and he said something to the effect of, you know, this is our lineup of products. And he shows the thing behind him with all of them lined up.

And I was like, oh, my God, this is just it. And then they dropped the NEO. But clearly, this is the only one. Like, I can tell you the story of everything but the studio display by saying, new chips, the end. And we can come to those. But the Neo is clearly the thing. Yeah. And my sense of this is Apple desperately wanted to make a laptop it could sell for $599.

$4.99 for education. Yes. Which I think you could make the case. That's actually the price. Right? Like this is, I go back to like when I was a kid, there were old like EMAX all over my classrooms. And they looked like teeth at the top. Yes. And this is like this is a key thing for Apple for a long time. The education market was a big deal.

Apple too, yeah, Apple has a Chromebook problem in schools. And has for 15 years? Ages. Yeah. So, you know, every elementary school gives out a Chromebook to people. Their answer to this was the iPad for a long time. I think that answer is running into challenges. Because the Chromebook market is so huge that a lot of the apps that the schools want to use are just web apps. Yeah. And I don't know if you've ever tried to use a web app and an iPad, David. Once or twice. That's not going to happen for you. Well, I can do it now by downloading a different browser and then desperately trying to make that work. So I think they have like a real like, okay, you want a cheap machine that can run Chrome and garage band and all the other stuff that might be interesting in an educational context. Here you go.

Yeah. And it is eight gigs of RAM and it has an iPhone chip in it. And it has a mechanical touchpad, which is David and I just spent a while just. physically pushing a touchpad in. So you walk up to these, they have these big tables with all the different devices that you can try. And I walked right up to one of the laptops

and start messing with it, doing the thing that we always do. And there's like an Apple Minder standing there looking over my shoulder to make sure we don't, you know, steal the laptop. And I'm playing with the thing, spinning it around,

looking at the thing. And I pressed the button and I just came out of my mind or I came out of my body. It's just like, oh my God, it clicks. Yeah. And the guy just started laughing. He's like, yeah, clicks.

It's exciting. Sure. It's different. It's exciting in the sense that it's different. It's not what you expect. But they've just made a bunch of compromises to make a cheap laptop. I suspect they're going to sell millions of them to people because it is an Apple. It's a MacBook.

It's $600. And we all have feelings about 8 gigs of RAM, I'm sure. But most people don't even know that they should have feelings about 8 gigs of RAM. And it's $600 and you just like buy it. This is outrageous. You have lit me on fire over and over on this. this podcast for saying eight gigs of RAM is fine. I am on record over and over and over saying eight gigs of RAM is fine. And all you have done is mock me for it. And now you get to sit here and

be like eight gigs of RAM is no, no, no. Well, look, it's here. It's early 2026. I can't, in good conscience tell people to spend money on RAM because I'm like, here's what I need to do. I need to sell your children. Fair. Take out a mortgage in your house and buy another eight gigs of RAM. Like I, you know, there was a time when I make the only upgrade you should do on a computer is buy more RAM. Yes. Now I feel like I'm asking people to make a meaningful sacrifice

in their lives to get another 8 gigs of RAM. So things change. But it's not enough. Right. It's not enough. Especially for a computer that I guarantee you

will primarily be used to download Chrome and then keep 5,000 Chrome tabs open at all times. I know. I mean, and that's the thing that is so good

about a Chromebook, right? A Chromebook is the only thing that runs Chrome well and has been for a long time. Look, I have a Mac Studio. It runs Chrome fine. No, it doesn't.

It just has enough horsepower that it can pull it off. You know, like, nothing runs Chrome efficiently other than a Chromebook. And that is the secret success of a Chrome. Like, one very fun conspiracy theory is that Google is just sandbagging Chrome on every other platform in order to make it work. So the 8 gigs of RAM argument is fully in the chat. Good. I want to. So more people agree with you than not.

Yeah. And now you're joining my side, which is just outrageous. I'm not joining your side. I'm just acknowledging the reality of the world in which we live. Fair. Okay. So I'm actually with you. I think this thing is going to be hugely successful

for a bunch of reasons I actually kind of didn't expect even as they were announcing this thing. But let me just walk through. I have my papers. I'm going to take notes on the same paper that you're reading from. I'm just going to walk you through a bunch of the tradeoffs that Apple made here because I think the choices you make when you want to get from a 1099 computer

to a 599 computer are really fascinating. So the most obvious one immediately is just the storage and memory specs, right? instead of starting at 512 gigs of RAM and I believe six or sorry instead of starting at 512 gigs of storage and 16 gigs of RAM it's 256 and 8 so meaningful downground buses I get a check from Nealai for that one you get a magic keyboard that I would say did you type on the thing at all

I didn't spend any time really typing it felt fine it's like Apple keyboards or Apple keyboards at this point they're all pretty good you don't get the the haptic trackpad you get the thing that actually clicks which I assume is a noticeably cheaper piece of equipment than the thing that they're trying to do with the MacBook Airs. It has two USBC ports, one seemingly very fast and one much slower, which is interesting.

There's been some specs running around that they're actually very different USBC ports. There's no MagSafe. There's no Thunderbolt. There's no Thunderbolt. It has two side speakers. So when I first saw it... By the way, MagSafe in this context means the power connector,

not the phone mag safe. Right. I mean, listen, give it a minute and Apple, we'll call it Apple TV. Do you know what I mean? Like, but the, there are two sort of slits on either side

kind of like level with the track pad that are speakers that are side firing. And in that room we were in, it's very hard to tell what it sounds like. But no, I know what it sounds like. It sounds bad. Yeah.

When John Turnis looked me in the eyes and said, it supports Dolby Atmos. I thought to myself, John, you're in line to be the CEO of one of the richest companies in the world. Don't start by lying in this way. They're supporting Dolby Atmos and there's... It was weird that I interrupted the entire event

and addressed him by name. Eli walked up and said, take Dolby Atmos out of your mouth. They're fine. They're going to be fine for what they are, but they are side-firing speakers that will, when you add the unbelievable amount of Atmos music processing to them

will sound even tinier than ever. I guarantee it. Which I think is a small bummer because I actually think as laptops go, MacBook speakers are pretty good. The MacBook Pro speakers in particular are pretty good. The air is like fine. But so it has the speakers.

I thought they were SD card slots at first. There's also a headphone jack near the front, which I hate. It's an odd place for it. But I get it because... Don't like it. Not a fan. Why would... Because in schools, you got to plug in like the weird splitters and stuff.

You need space. I guess that's true. That kind of makes sense. But yeah, so it's up towards the front. That's weird. The thing weighs about the same as the MacBooks. quick air, but is a little thicker and a little smaller. So it's, it's smaller in the, like, depth and width dimension, but a little thicker. And it feels, I don't know if you pick the thing up.

It is like, it's a dense. Yeah, it's a tank. Little thing. Like, you, you sort of want to swing it at somebody. Like, it is, it is a real piece of metal. So it's great for schools in that way. Yeah. I wonder if they did go out of their way to make it more durable. They didn't really talk about that. They didn't. I, I'm imagining it's more durable. And I think it's also probably more repairable, like just the way, we didn't get a lot of big lecture about needy body construction and all this like stuff. I imagine this thing is made for a context where kids are going to beat it up. Yeah. And that's fine. My disappointment, such as it is, it's not a huge disappointment, is I wanted it to be a little bit smaller. When they announced there was 13 inches, I kind of went, oh no. You want like the old

12-inch MacBook. Or yeah, or the old 12-inch power book. Oh, yeah. Right? Like there was a size, there's one tick smaller of size that I think just lends itself to be a really compact computer, really great for travel. It's like the old sub-notebook class that used to exist. It's kind of gone now. I had a 12-inch power book.

I had that 11-inch MacBook. I love that size of computer. It's just gone. And like I was sort of hoping we would see a return, but it's 13 inches. It is basically the size of a MacBooker. The way to think about this

is that it's not, a new ultra-portable, it's a cheaper MacBook error. Right, which I think is really interesting because the comparison a lot of people have made is to the iBook, which was a like last generation swing at this same kind of thing. Like, how do we make something that is geared more towards young people is a little more fun? Like, it wasn't sort of a power book. It was a different kind of device.

But that one was bigger. It was more colorful. And it was very specifically in a lot of ways. is designed to do this particular job, right? Whereas this just feels like it is in almost every meaningful way a cheaper MacBook.

Like it is not a different device for a different kind of person. There's one thing. One compromise you haven't talked about is the fact that it has a A19 in it. A18 Pro. A18 Pro, sorry.

A18 Pro. So the iPhone 17E has a 18 in it. It's weird that it's a different chip in the... It is weird. Than the iPhone. A18 Pro chip in it instead of an M-Series chip.

Yes. And the word on the street is that when they were designing the A18 Pro, they knew they were going to put it in a MacBook. Oh, really? This is a word. This is a very sketchy rumor. But, like, you know, Apple likes to be like, we integrate it up all the plans from the very beginning. So it's unclear what the true performance compromise here is going to be. But that is the main compromise.

And my sense of it is you get so much more scale making iPhone chips that you can bring that cost down compared to any M-Series. Yeah, I think that's probably right. And that is one enormous way to save money is to just coast on smartphone scale for anything. I have a hard time imagining that for most people, this will be underpowered in any meaningful way. Like, if you put those two things next to each other, right, the like, it has a smartphone chip and it has 8 gigs of RAM, which of those is more likely to cause users' problems? Like, I would sort of say neither, but my guess would be it's the 8 gigs of RAM. It's more likely to be a problem than like the raw, whole. horsepower the A18 Pro. Yeah, but my sense of it is that Apple's

sort of mobile chips in iPhones and iPads have been limited by their OS more than their capability for a long time. Yeah. And so when, you know, the M1 was not a huge leap forward from any of the A-series chips that we were seeing at that time. I'm still using an M1 Pro laptop. It's fine.

Yeah. I use it every single day. Still one of the greatest laptops there were a long. So I suspect, you know, A18 is way ahead of that M1 Pro. I think it's going to be fine in this context. I think it's going to choke on that RAM. Yeah, that could be. And Apple made a bunch of promises about all the things you could do, right?

It can do whatever Apple intelligence it can do. They showed it running garage band. They showed it editing photos. Like, you're going to hit the RAM way fast. And then because it's unified memory, if you play a game, you're going to hit that RAM real fast. I'm unclear how fast the storage is. So if you end up in swap, which is a real problem on 8 gig max, a lot of times they

can cover it because their storage is fast. Right. But if you end up in swap on 8 gigs of RAM with slow storage and a computer like this, am I really, we're going to see, we're not to review the computer, but that's the sort of tradeoff that I think you're making. Yeah, this is going to be a fun one because what we normally do with MacBooks is like the benchmarks get predictably better and sort of a set of new things becomes better to do on your MacBook.

This one is going to be a real test in the opposite direction, right? Like what starts to fall apart as you lose this processing power is a very fun, bizarre question to try and figure out in the year 2026. The other thing that has come up a bunch To your point about the M1 Is that up until very recently You could just go to Walmart And buy an M1 MacBook Air

For this price We're very close to it And there are a lot of people Including in our Slack Running around being like That's still the better deal You should just buy an old MacBook Air Old refurbished MacBook Airs

Are not hard to find You can get them pretty cheap Maybe that's the better deal Do you buy that argument? I think it's just a penitimate on who you are. Yeah. But yeah, I probably buy that argument.

Yeah. I think to me, the thing that this has going for it is the colors. Like, if we're just being honest, right? Like, the thing that this has that no other MacBook will sell you is the fun colors, which I was, I confess, slightly underwhelmed by. They're very pale. Yeah. And the citrus, the yellow, like a pale yellow that looks a wee, let's call it stained. Yeah, it just, it's one of those things that, like, the, the, I have this blue iPhone 16 that I'd love.

The orange iPhone 17 pro was like hugely popular. People really liked it. And you just can't figure out why Apple refuses to properly bring that to its other devices, right? It keeps doing with the iPads, these really pale light colors. The people in the chat love the colors. Listen, the people in the chat should see them in person. I love the colors too. think I'm a fan in general of the existence of these colors, right? But it's like you have the

opportunity to either like be bold and vibrant, which keeps working for Apple. This is the thing. Every time Apple like really pushes on color, people love it. They sold an orange iPhone and people went nuts for it. Sitting right here. Yeah. And they just for some reason with the iPads and with the Macs just refuse to kind of go all the way down that road. Yeah. Which I find odd. But I still think tons of people are going to like this thing. I'm very careful. I'm curious to see how many of the other ones I saw. Once you see it in person, you're like, oh, that's neat. Yeah.

And then you will probably buy Indigo or Silver. Like, that's the way it's right. And there's just a couple of other, like, they said that they color matched the keyboards. And it's possible that we were in this very specifically lit room that makes it very hard to tell anything. This is one of the strange things about any Apple event is they light it so intensely and so aggressively that it gets very hard to see certain things, right? Like, oh, you look pretty good on the webcam because it is perfect. rationally lit by a large team of people whose job that day it was to make sure you look on the web. 15 years into running the verge, no other company has figured out that people with cameras like well-lit rooms.

Everybody else is. You go to other companies events. They're like, the whole room is pink. And it's like, well, that is no fun at all. Yeah, they're like, welcome to our cave. Would you like a hands-on? And it's like, I can't see anything. It's true.

It's a very well-lit room. They understand who the audience in those rooms are. But it's hard to see anything for real. Yes. In that specific way. Yes. Yeah. But so they said they color matched the, and you can even see.

in the pictures Antonio took for the site, that it's, it's, it's even paler still than the colors. Where it's like, I look at this, I look at this keyboard and it's like, color match the whole thing. Like, do the whole job and I'm into it. I will buy the hell out of a purple laptop. Like, are you kidding me? Sell me a purple laptop and I will buy it. But like light sort of, it's like they sat it next to a paint can. And it's like, that's the colors.

A lot of questions about the name here. I'm seeing fly through the chat. I asked this before we started because I'm genuinely torn on NIA. I honestly thought it was a code name. I didn't think there was any chance this thing would be launched as the NIO. I think they have they've got it right with iPad, iPad, Air, iPad Pro. I think that's right. Yeah.

And they, I think iPad Air is still somewhat meaningless, but they've managed it. I think in that product line, you buy an iPad for your kids. Most everybody should buy an iPad error. And then there's like iPad sickos who are. like, I don't have a computer anymore. I just don't know what they're doing. Right? And like that's all...

Look at all this processing power. I can't take advantage of. Exactly. Real estate professionals everywhere. Like, I have a 12.9-inch iPad Pro. We're going to look at Matterport together on it. Like, whatever's happening there is happening there. But that makes sense because that market is segmented.

The problem with the Mac line is the MacBook error is the only computer most people should buy. The MacBook Pro is very well defined. And there's not any space left on the bottom. Right. Well, because Apple for what many, many years now has very deliberately not occupied that space. Well, they've not occupied that space, but the error was supposed to be like the sub notebook. Right? It was supposed to be thinner and lighter. And the problem is that it's the default. So I think if you brought back the MacBook, you would confuse everyone into thinking that it was like the default MacBook and the one would buy it. Sure. And what you're trying to do is you're trying to sell a $500 computer to the education market or kids or whoever.

And so you need to do it the same way as the iPad, where the base model iPad, everyone understands. This device is for Disney Plus. Right, right. This is the cheap one. This is the cheap one. And I think there's just too much history there. I think they wanted literally,

I think it's called Neo because they wanted a clean start with this product, instead of ever being like, do you start with the MacBook? Because the reality is, it has been for over a decade now, everyone starts with the MacBook here. Right. Well, and the 12-inch, MacBook was decidedly not an entry-level machine. Wasn't it more expensive than the air?

Yeah. Yeah. So, like, they lost that thread a lot of time ago. Yeah, and that computers, like, it didn't work. Yeah. There was a time when they made, no, even the black and white plastic MacBook Pros, I believe, were, no, there were just MacBooks. That's true. I think that's right.

And those were great. But, like, the air was meant the cost of the error, the additional price for you was to make it smaller, and that time has come to an end. Yeah. I think the Neo thing is pretty. particularly interesting to be because it is like, and Ternis said this in introducing the thing. Like, they are very clear that this is for people who have not previously owned a MacBook. This is not, if you own an error and next time you upgrade, they are not interested in you saying,

oh, should I buy this or should I buy the Neo? Like, this is, this is Fisher Price my first MacBook. You know what I mean? Like, and I, clearly that's what Apple needs, right? Like, this is, we're seeing Apple do a lot more price point chasing than it has in the past. You can sort of see this company being like, we need to sell things at this price, this price, this price, and this price, which is not normally how it is operated. They've just been like, here's a thing we made. It costs what it costs. Screw you.

It's $3,500. Enjoy. But I think if you're going to do that, the name, like the name Neo does make sense to me. I still don't know that it's a great name, but I see the thesis behind it. Do you see a thought? No. What?

Ooh. Who, who. Boy, do I have feelings about how they're typesetting the words MacBook Neo. Wait, hold on. Now I have to look. It's like a chunky, lowercase. I don't know, man. It's like your dumb friend.

I don't know how to describe this font. What? Hmm. See what I'm saying? Are they trying to do a Matrix-y thing? I mean, you got to do it a little bit. Like, it says, hello, Neo. Yeah, obviously.

They're like, they're, they're, they're, Does anybody get, if you, okay, if you are a child in school who might buy this to go to eighth grade, do you have any idea what the Matrix is? Well, no one can be told with the Matrix is, too late. Then it would be, it would be too late. You have to look at Citrus yourself. I don't know about that. I'm just saying, it's a font. It's a font.

It sure is a font. They made some choices with the font. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise grade, no code website builder used by teams at companies like Burbrose. complexity and Muro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS, with everything you need for great SEO, not to mention advanced analytics that include integrated A-B testing, your designers and marketers are empowered to build and maximize your dot-com from day one.

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Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right, we should talk about the rest of it because the only thing we're talking about really, this nonsense MacBook, is the studio display XTR. Yes.

Which I'm going to buy. Yeah? I don't know why. It's wrong. It's $3,300. Yeah. It's almost the price of a vision pro. I stood there with Phil Schiller.

He was standing by the studio displays and I said, well, I'm going to buy this. And he goes, yeah. And I said, I don't need it. And he goes, I don't either. And then we both looked at it and agreed that we were going to buy them. I mean, it is gorgeous. Yeah. Like, I am not, as you know well, a display guy particularly.

But like even standing there, so they had, I think they had a row of four of them. And it was an XDR and then two regular studio displays in the middle and then another XDR. And you just look at them next to each other and you can see the difference. Like between a terrific display and something even better. So the studio display, which I believe is still 1599, right? They've left it alone. That panel is effectively from 2012, 2011-2012 era panel. It's the same LG 5K panel.

I am sure that over the past 12 years, that colors are a little more saturated. Sure. Right. Like, they've made it a little bit better. But from everything I understand, you're still looking at the,

the same fundamental edge-lit LG 5K panel from 2011, 2012 IMax. And I still have an old-ass IMAX sitting on the floor of my office, staring at me dead to the world. The hard drive clicks when you plug it in. And every time I think I should buy a new 5K monitor, that thing is like, no, your destiny is repurposing this display.

And it sits there and I don't buy any monitor. Yes. Because I cannot bring myself to buy the same panel that's literally sitting on the ground that if I just had a little more liquid courage flown through these veins, I would extract and turn into a real monitor. You can threaten this for like years.

I'm one of these days. I've done so much stupider stuff and I still haven't done this. Anyhow, that's one thing. And I think the studio display is just a mess for that. The XDR is very, very expensive. $3,300. But it is right, it is

local dimming backlight, micro-LED it looks beautiful. The colors are vibrant. It's only an eighth-em-inch thicker than the studio. That is a remarkable packaging job. And if you believe that you're going to have a monitor for a long time, you can, maybe you can liquid courage your way into buying that one. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Well, it was very funny because I was getting a demo of it and they're talking about, you know, who is this person, who is this for?

who is the kind of core use case for this. And one of the things they talked about is like print designers, people who are like, you know, they have to lay out the magazine. And I was like, well, there aren't any of those anymore. So like, what else you got? And then they're going through, you know, architects and people who make billboards. And like, this is a sort of like reference display for a lot of people, right? So it's very important that it is accurate.

And they have the Adobe, RGB Color Suite. Like, it is clearly aimed at a specific kind of person, not just, somebody who wants a really great monitor, which I think it's frankly what the studio display was. Do you know what I mean? It's like the studio display initially was like very good computer monitor with shitty webcam. It was like that was the story of the studio display.

This feels like it is actually like pointed more directly at a set of people with a set of professional needs. You are not one of those people. No, no, no, no. You just want really good monitor. I can leave extremely brutal comments on David's Google Docs trash almost like any display that exists. Including your flip phone.

This is bad. Yeah, right. So, yeah, I don't need it. But again, if you, the regular studio display is so overpriced for the thing that it is. And I know Apple sells them a lot. I get notes from our listeners and our readers apologizing for buying the studio display in like a weird turn of events. Because I reviewed the first one.

I gave it a miserable score because the webcam was so bad and so overpriced. And so people send me notes. And they're like, need you to know that I had no choice but to buy a studio display because it looks so nice next to my Mac and the weird BenQ thing does not. Yeah, the odd thing I bought on Amazon for a third of the price. You can buy reject. You can buy monitors made of reject LG panels now, 5K27 inch monitors for $500.

And they are, I guarantee you they're not nearly as good. I'm going to do that. I guarantee you that their colors are going to be so all kinds of crazy. I guarantee their reject panel. Like something's going to be wrong with them. But you can just go on Amazon and buy a 27-inch 5K display with effectively that same LG panel in it for $500. And Apple's like, what if? $1,600.

So that thing is just like a, it's occupying a different space. I think the XDR, for the audience that it has, is, I mean, it's just the step up. And then because it's modular, I am going to personally convince myself that I will have it for a decade or more. and then be like, it's just $300 a year. And that's just, it's paid for. For a dollar a day, you too can have one of these. That's right. It's like every single day, I'm going to not go to Starbucks,

and I'm going to look at my extravagant monitor that can be calibrated for use by medical professionals, and I'm going to open Slack. And it's going to be awesome. But you're going to open, like the blacks in the Slack theme are going to be so sick. I'm, I can't believe I'm going to buy this thing. I'm super going to buy this thing.

I mean, I do think it was just very funny to see this next to the MacBook Neo, which is, because this is pure Apple just being like, we put all of the technology into this thing, here's what it costs. And Apple is actually making an argument that $3,200 is extraordinarily expensive for a computer monitor, but next to a lot of the stuff that other people you buy and use. Like, you talk all the time about this TV thing that you judge where like the reference monitor costs a million dollars. Yeah. $3,200 in this kind of.

of professional setting is not that absurd of cost. My belief, and no one agrees with me anymore, is that it's just true. It's just no one agrees with me, is that you should overpay for displays because you spend so much of your life looking at them, and they last forever. And not in the context of phones, because everything gets a new phone every two years or ever, but like anything that's just going to be in your house for a long time, the premium on this is beautiful is worth it. David's like, I bought a $12 TV that has ads on it.

I couldn't even tell you the brand of my monitor. No, I feel the same way about screens that I feel about wine, which is like you should never develop a taste for the good stuff because it's just a waste of money. If you think $6 wine tastes good, hell yeah, live your life. This is like an AI slop rendering that's appeared in my brain of you just chugging the phronsia out of the bag in college.

Like, I know this happened to you and you never moved on. It was, it was Trader Joe's two buck chucked. And yes. When I was in college, this is how old I am. I just want to say this. It's a studio display under here. I'm going to tell you a story about Fronzie. When I was in college, the bag was silver foil.

Now they're plastic and they look gross. But when I was in college, the Franzia came in a silver foil bag and you would pull it out of the box. And my friends and I would call it Space Wine. And then we would just walk down the street, chugging the Space Wine. Anyway, I think you should buy a $3,300 monitor. I love this.

I love this for you. So wait, back to the Mac with you know for one second. One thing that has come up a bunch in the chat is the thing that you were talking about. which is people who have more powerful desktop machines wanting basically a road computer. Yeah. Which is a very funny use case because Apple makes one of those

and it has been desperate to convince you that the iPad is your road computer. That the correct way to live your life is Mac Studio and iPad. That is the future Apple wants you to believe in. Right. And that's when if you have like an Apple marketing job where you spend half your day like making assets

and the other half of the day presenting assets. Right. Yeah. That's what you do. But you're a Mac Studio guy, right? That's like your main machine. You're very compelled by the idea of being a MacS Studio MacBook Neo guy. If it was smaller.

When I thought this thing would be about the side, I keep calling it a plane computer. That MacBook, that 12-inch MacBook with a single USBC port, the 11-inch MacBook error, what's an 11-inch, that one, the 12-inch powerbook, I used these computers on planes primarily, and they were terrific on planes. Because, you know, the seat back is small.

You don't want to lug around all the stuff. Like, I traveled with those computers almost exclusively. And whatever tradeoff I would make at now I have a slow computer or wherever I've just totally worth it for the space saving. This is like, again, this was the subnet but category, you know, we, like a little bit New York. Like, we are on trains all the time. Like, having the small computer really, really played, I don't think the Neo is small enough. I think that's probably right. It doesn't, there's just not a part of this from like, I should just get an error.

Like that one should make, M1 error is still going to do the job. I'm not sure small enough exists, right? I think this has been the problem is you get to like 10 inches and you start to make a bunch of other really ugly sacrifices. Like you get a smaller keyboard, which causes all kinds of problems. Wait, it's right between 11 and 12. I think that's probably right. I mean, I will say the closest I've seen to it was that 12 inch MacBook, which again had a series of other problems, like a disastrously bad keyboard. But size-wise that thing.

Miserable Intel processor. Like if you could just put a good computer inside of that shell, I'd buy the hell out of it. Like that, the size of that thing was right in a lot of ways. Someone helped me repurpose the guts of my IMAX so I can use the display. And then I will dig out. It's actually the one I have is Dieter sold it to me. Nice. It was Dieter's and he sold it to me.

And I still have it. So if anyone wants to put an iPhone in my 12-inch MacBook, which at the time had a Intel I7, like mobile I7 in it. It's horrible processor. A lot of weird decisions from that era of Apple. All right, we should also talk about the iPhone. Do you don't want to talk about Franzias?

Very telling, by the way, that the iPhone is the third product we're talking. No, wait, yeah, the third product. And I'll give you two pieces of supporting evidence for the fact that it's the third product. One, we all rush into the hands-on area and everyone stops. And it's like organized in stages. So it's like the MacBook Neo, the

iPad, the studio display. plays and the iPhones. And I was assigned, go get the hands-on of the iPhone, Antonio and Owen, you got to get the Mac with Neo. And then David is like, I'm the editor at large. I'll just wander around making small talk. That's right. Whatever it is that you do.

No, no, that's also did the network. No, no, that's precisely correct. So I run to the iPhone because, you know, your job here is to run. There's a real thing when you're at the live event, and I was the only person there for 10 minutes. Seriously? I just hung out with all the people. They met the product managers.

I took photos of all the colors. So I just was by myself for a while. And I rush. You know we sell a lot of these, right? I rush to get the photos up. And I come back, like, loop around, look at all the stuff. I come back to the site. I look at the iPhone 17E hands on.

Zero comments. Oh, brutal. I mean, I don't know. Look, the old man still got it. I had those photos up before anybody else. With your 35-year-old DSLR. Yeah, with my 2014 Nikon D-750, the 40 millimeter macro, the single greatest hands-on camera ever made.

True. But no one cared, I think, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. I mean, I forget what your headline was, but it was something to the effect of like, yep, here it is. That was actually the first draft. Yeah, I mean, I think, I don't know, Apple, Apple seems to be on the same grind with the 17E that it is with the MacBook Neo, which is like, how do we make the right set of tradeoffs to sell cheaper phones? It used to be smaller phones.

So this tradeoff is almost verging on unacceptable for me for $600. Why? Here is the tradeoff of this. It's not the camera. It's not whatever else. It is a 60 hertz LCD. That's bad. It's bad.

And I'm so not used to shooting LCDs anymore. That's another thing that's great about the studio display, by the way, 120 hertz. See, I think you should spend $3,300 on this one. Okay. Can I offer you a studio display or a Vision Pro? This is like... You know how bad that makes the Vision Pro? That's a personality test.

You have $3,500. Is it going to be a studio display or Vision Pro? Like, there are two wolves. Or like a souped up Mac Studio. I know. There's one right answer, and there's like a group of suckers. And like, you know, you can just sort them out and be like, you're on the one ship that's going to the special planet and you're the future of humanity. Yeah, that's about right.

I'm just saying it. Anyway, six year, it's LCD. So I'm not used to shooting LCD somewhere because almost all the phones we shoot are OLEDs. So I'm taking photos. I'm realized that it's banding because I'm shooting faster than 60 Hertz. It's just like I felt like I was going back in time. This is a problem that I don't have anymore because there are 60 Hertz LCDs around that are like you are often shooting in this. So that is the compromise of this thing.

They compromise the display. They're calling the super retina XDR display, which 100% means LCD 60 Hertz. Everything else is fine. Everything else is iPhone. Yeah. It's an A19. It's a 48 megapixel fusion sensor on the back. Apple loves to just sort of like say camera words as loudly as they can to make you not question if those words mean the things they're supposed to mean.

So that you can crop that 48 megapixel sensor down to optical quality to assume. It's one camera. It's still just the one camera. It's like you're just cropping the sensor. What does optical quality mean? Also because the optical quality of 40 megapixel sensor by default is, doubled up 24 megapixel photo. So anyway, this is just a lot.

Yeah. But we'll test it. But all that's like very familiar now. The tradeoff here, it's $600, which in Android world will definitely get you an OLED, is a 60 hertz LCD. Yeah. Well, and I think the way people buy phones is just not the way people buy MacBooks, right? Or laptops or any, really any other device. Like, I think you're in this position now where people are holding onto their phones.

longer and longer. The chat is extremely telling me it's OLED. I asked them very directly if this thing was an OLED or an LCD, and they made the noise at me that said LCD. I don't know. There's a real debate. Bugs and stuff has you, has your back on it being an LCD. You did come out of your demo saying it was an LCD.

I mean, I... So either somebody told you wrong... I looked the person in the eye before I was doing the hands-on and said, is this an OLED or an LCD? And they went, it's a super retina, and they wouldn't say OLED. Hold on. Let me... Welcome to the portion

of the first cast where Neely reads the fine print on the Apple website. I mean, you don't see this when you don't do these lives.

I check all the time. At any rate. Oh, okay. They say Apple's official pages all that. So I was misinformed at the event because I asked

very specifically. In any case, the 60 Hertz refresh, I think at $600 is still a problem. I'm sorry, we're going to have to edit this when this goes out live.

It's true. We're going to censor ourselves. It would be a long bleep sound as Neely reads. But I really did. I looked to the person who handed me the phone and said, this is Olet, right?

And they went, like, how dare you? Yeah. I think the 60 Hertz thing is real. I think... A lot of people are telling me that liquid retinas LCD. Can I tell you the...

You're right. I know liquid retina has LCD. And I once, in a briefing with Apple, spent a long time being like, what do you mean by liquid? What does liquid mean? and they finally caved and, like, it just means rounded corners. That's it. That's what that means.

I mean, that's the liquid glass story. Rounded corners of unknown radii that are never the same across apps. Liquid glass. Yeah. This is what we're doing here. Great job, Apple. Okay. So I don't see this on the Apple website anywhere because there's no tech specs page for this thing yet.

Oh, there is. Here it is. Okay. That was wrong. It's an OLED. There again. Again, I looked the person in the eye, and they straightforwardly were like, Fair enough.

Well, still, I think I think it would be worse if it was an LCD, for sure. But I remember, so when I last reviewed the iPad Mini, there was this big sort of long-running

controversy about the jelly scrolling effect on the iPad Mini, which is like in part about screen refresh. And I said there, and I still feel the same way that that is,

that is again in the list of like, don't ever taste good wine. once you see it, you can't unsee it. And for somebody like you, who is coming from big screen 120 hertz, boy do you notice. Boy, do you notice the downgrade. And I think there are a lot of people who say you don't, you wouldn't see it if you hadn't sort of trained your eyes to see it.

But I think increasingly, as people are starting to play games more and more in particular, you see it. Yeah. Like it doesn't. They demo games for me and you can definitely see it. Yeah. Like, I don't think it matters in the course of, like, scrolling TikToks on your phone. I don't think you're going to see the tearing in a way that, like, sucks and makes you hate your phone.

But you see it in games. And there are... Wait, I can see it in this one. I know you can. But most people who are going to buy a 17e are not coming from a pro max. So that's fine. But, like, I do think that is a real, like, actual user experience sacrifice in that one particular way. And that is such a core thing people do on their phones now, is playing.

games that, like, you notice. It's a big difference. Now people are confused about whether OLED technology is L-C. No, I'm just wrong. I'm just like, I'll just admit it. I was somewhat misinformed of the event, and then I was in a rush. Well, the good news is once we hang up this

live stream, we're going back. We're going back. We will ask this question. We will look more people in the face. I think the text text page is right. I just didn't look before we did it because I, when someone tells you, you know? Yeah. I think I was so struck by the 60 Hertz refresh,

which I can definitely see, and I associate that with the other thing. Sure. So I apologies for, thank you all for correcting me. I just think what's chat's for. When I see, it's $600, $600, $60.00 is still okay.

Right? And that's like, that is the compromise of this device. Yeah. Again, especially because you're not, most people are not paying the $600. You're trading, like, Verizon will so happily give you a new phone. For any reason, you just, you just call Verizon and you say hello

and they're like, would you like a new phone? You can just have it. So I think the idea that like... I don't think most people are going to end up paying actually $600 cash for this. That's what I mean. They're going to get a trade in or it's going to be free or it's going to be on sale.

Right. And it's obviously different in other places around the world where people are more likely to like plunk down cash. But I also think I, like the way you feel about displays is how I feel about phones. Like I think you should overspend on your phone. Because it is, it is in almost every case the device you use

the most that does the most things in your life. And whether screen alone is a reason to upgrade, I think I've heard from a bunch of people already who are mad at not having two cameras. They put the text next to a big job. Thank you. Now I'm being dunked on by the video switches. Owned by Travis.

Like, I think when I went from the iPhone pro back to the base iPhone, I noticed losing the third camera and you really noticed losing the second camera. And all the fusion sensor stuff is nonsense. It's just a camera you can crop and you will notice not having it. And so there is a real set of tradeoffs you have to make to do this thing that aren't going to show up in the giant credit card purchase. And so for me, it's like, I have an easier time telling somebody to buy a

MacBook Neo over an air than I do telling you to buy a 17E over a 17. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Especially now because the base 17 is like a terrific phone that almost everyone should buy if you want an iPhone. and that hasn't always been the case, but now it is, and it is like handily worth the upgrade price over the 17-A for me. Yeah, I think that's right. Also, people hold on these phones forever.

Yeah. And so it's the same argument to me with screens, right? Like, if you're going to have this thing and you know it's four years, which is where people are stretching these phones out to, by the way, Taylor Shuff has a 13. I saw a picture of her.

Really? 13. People have them for a long time. Taylor, if you're listening, and I know that you are. Taylor. It's a 13 pro. It's time to upgrade.

You'll like the orange one. Call me. We can talk about this. We'll go to the Verizon store together. That is an episode of the Virgin's guys. That's the only way to dig ourselves out of this hole. My mistake here is to get Taylor on to talk about why she has an upgrade or a phone. I think David and Taylor go to the Verizon store is like an Emmy waiting to happen.

It's either a greater. It's a car crash. Anyhow, you hold on for so long. It is actually worth the, it's worth the extra money. And I think that's why you see it's the pros that people are buying. Yeah. Right. Like the volume seller in this last run, I think was actually the pro.

And I think people understand the tradeoff of I want to have this for a long time. Yeah. Especially with the camera, I think in particular, that it is like this is a thing worth investing in now that you are doing it less and less often all the time. Which I think is awesome. Support for the show comes from Anthropic. Not every question has an easy answer. And the ones that are really worth asking usually come with a healthy mix of inspiration and backpedaling, aha moments, and quiet meditation. When you're working through one of those problems, you want a partner to bounce ideas off of and figure out where the deeper issue lies.

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Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus. And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm. We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning. And we assessed that individual. they are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, Explain, drops every weekday afternoon. We should briefly talk about the iPad,

which I think we have waited this long to talk about correctly and on purpose. Yeah. There's a new iPad error. The end. I told David he should just do the hands-on with the iPad air that was already in his backpack and see if anyone knows. I think it's wrong for us to do disinformation. So, like, we didn't.

But, like, I'm pretty confident that if you had just been like iPad error hands on and published it before the event? I have a stack of iPad errors at home and I'm very excited to add the new one to it and see if I can tell the difference. Like which iPad is this that I'm getting out is an increasingly hard game to play at my house.

Yeah. I was really hoping the announcement this week would be a big upgrade to the base iPad because that one is sort of slowly being left behind. All these chip bumps, they're not like individually all that meaningful generation to generation, especially now that Apple is revving these so fast. Like, it used to be a couple of years between iPads,

and now we've had three and two years, basically. But the chip bumps matter over time. And, like, you talk about how long people keep their phones. People keep their iPads for, like, a decade. They're one of the longest-lasting devices you'll find, which is awesome. But what it does mean is that you should future-proof that as much as possible. So, like, every one of these chip upgrades, I think is good news for the iPad because when you need a new iPad, because yours breaks.

Like my mom is my favorite barometer of this. She uses the absolute hell out of her iPad. And she will use it until the point where she comes to me and she's like, David, the Hulu app won't open anymore. And that's when it's like, all right, mom, it's time to upgrade. Like, you have officially lost software support and now we can upgrade. And we're just going to get her the new one, right? And it's going to be fine.

And with every chip bump, it's like, okay, I'm buying you another year of use on this thing, that you will get out of it on the other side. it's a bummer that the base iPad didn't get it because it just continues to be like multiple generations out of date on that. And now I have to like, for years, it was like, well, an iPad is an iPad.

And if mostly what you want to do is do iPad, you should just buy the iPad. And that's less and less true as the air gets further away from it. Here's my one, if you have kids, you buy them an iPad, and then they discover that Apple Arcade exists. They download games for Apple Arcade.

You will quickly run into the fact that the base iPad cannot play Dreamlight Valley. What is Dreamlight Valley? It's a Disney RPG. I don't know. I just like this is good universal advice that is definitely not just specific to your life. There's a category of games that if you want to hold on the iPad for a while. Probably the base iPad can play it now, the new base iPad.

But the one we have cannot play Dream Live Valley. And so like the iPad is content viewing device can last for a long time. If you start to play games on this thing, that's when the base model does not last as long. Are you just Googling during my family? Well, there's a bunch of people in the chat saying the 12th generation iPad and I was like, oh my God, did I miss a launch? And I believe the answer is no, but there has been rumors of a 12 generation iPad coming soon. So hopefully, hopefully I will be proven right and this will be fine.

And like that will go back to being a good deal. But right now it's like you need the one with the horsepower because A, like you said, you can do a lot of stuff. It is a gaming machine for a lot of people. It is, you know, you're going to, do architecture drawings with augmented reality apparently. But what you want is something that is going to last you a decade. Because it should.

Your iPad should last you 10 years. And I think this error has a shot at that in a way that the base iPad currently does not. But like we'll run a bunch of tests. I think the one thing I am excited about on with the air is so last year I reviewed the iPad Pro, which had the new, is it the C1X, the new wireless chip? and got like astonishingly good wireless speeds. Like 50% to 100% faster than I was getting on other iPads, just sitting next to each other.

And it's like there are a million reasons that could be, right? That newer devices have less going on. That stuff gets old. Like, you never know. But if this one can do that again, A, this is a huge win for Apple's own chips. And B, I think cellular. iPad is one of the great things that exists and everyone should have one. If you're going to buy an iPad, I so firmly believe you should get cellular connectivity because it A just works. If you also have an iPhone,

it just sort of ease them between them super seamlessly. The iPad is an amazing hotspot. It's just like a forever lasting hot spot. Yeah. So it just sits in my bag and a hotspot it from it all the time. And the thing where you can just pull it out and use it anywhere, like meaningfully changes your relationship with your iPad. And even little things like, you know the Kindle app will always be in sync because it can just sync when you open it up. It's like that stuff adds up. This is why I want a MacBook with a cellular connection. Like that was one thing I was hoping would be in the Neo that is not, is 5G because that again changes the set of things you can do with it. Like I had to do this grape surgery for my six-and-a-up laptop. For what they're trying to do here, cellular wouldn't make

any sense. Like having a student device with cellular is a waste of money. The C-1-X is really interesting. You know, Apple got in some trouble because they really had a contentious relationship with Qualcomm. Yeah. They were trying to go to Intel for modems. The Intel modems, they eventually bought Intel's modem business. They were underperforming. So they started throttling the Qualcomm modems they were using to make them perform as well as the Intel modems, which is not good. They got in a bunch of trouble for this. And I think the C1 was like, it performed as well as the Intel modems. They put it in a bunch of cheap stuff. I think the C1X, which is their modem that they're going to produce at scale, might be outperforming the Qualcomm modems.

We don't, again, it's very hard to test this stuff. But if it's outperforming the Qualcomm modems, that's a big deal because they will just put it in everything because there's no reason for them to like make different versions of the modem. Right. That's just scale. Just put it in everything. And they don't have to pay Qualcomm that's licensing fees.

Right. So if they've actually pulled it off with the C1X here, we'll see. Yeah, that puts Apple like even more in control of its own destiny in Silicon Way. I'm saying we'll see because Allison is at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week where they are talking about watching 6G.

We made it so far without talking about 6G. It's common, baby. Not ready for this. All right, that's as good a thing to end on as any. We've been here a while. You and I have to go, we have to get back. Anything else in your mind before we say goodbye to chat and get out of here? No, I will just say this to the chat from the bottom of my heart.

One of my superpowers is no one can tell what I'm embarrassed. He doesn't brown. The blood rushed to my face and I was embarrassed. And I've gotten myself out of a lot of trouble by just not imper. Like, people can't tell it. I'm very embarrassed by getting it. So I'm just admitting it to you. I usually do not get display specs wrong.

Hopefully that you can trust me after all these years. We're just cutting it out of whatever is here. I was going to say, everyone should know that Nelai gets this wrong every single time. And we just normally cut it out of it. There's like 13 takes to meet in display text. Every episode is twice as long and then we cut out all the things

you guys wrong about. The couple thousand people who have been on this live stream, they'll know that I duffed it and it'll just, it's going to disappear for the internet now and you'll never, you'll just be like a whisper in the wind.

Kilroy was here, you know what I mean? This is the last anyone will ever see of this episode. I'm actually discontinuing the iPhone 17, so we don't talk about this. People refer to this as LCD gate. This is, be the end. I only said it

because they looked me in the eyes, man. I will say you came away from a demo saying that. And it's like this is what we do. We issue a correction and we move on with our lives and your boss yells at you until you do better next time. There's no one that's like

that's what the chat's here for. The chat's our boss today. Yeah. All right. All right. We should get out of here. Thank you to everybody who has been here watching hanging out with the chat. We're going to do this a lot more often. This is A, very fun. B, it's It's a nice thing to do. It turns out we're in a moment where there's like there's too much news for the amount of show that we make.

So to be able to do this and then we can come back. We're going to start the Friday show. I have, it's been a heavy week of like politics in this world. There's a lot going on. We're starting a Friday show with me just experiencing pure gadget related joy. Whoa, that's a good. I've never been happier with a gadget in my life. And it's like an extremely stupid, extremely neelized.

situation where I promise we're going to start the Friday show with that and then we'll talk about all this stuff. What a good tease. All right. Until then, thank you to everybody. Thank you to Travis and Denise and Eric and the whole team for getting all of this set up and running for us. We're going to go back and yell at Apple about OLEDs. Neelai, say goodbye to the people. Rock and roll.