The Vergecast - Pardon me, is that Apple you're wearing?

Episode Date: September 13, 2014

The Vergecast is a discussion of all things relevant and irreverent in the worlds of art, culture, science, and technology. On this week's episode, we discuss the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and the Apple Watch. Join Nilay Patel, Chris Ziegler, and Dieter Bohn as they go over their hands-on impressions and agonizing decisions over which iPhone to get. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, welcome to the Vergecast. You might notice that you can't see us. That is by design. We are hideous. Yeah, we're terrible, mutant people. No, it's just, we're through, I think it should be clear by now. We're throwing this together. But hello, welcome to the Vergecast.

It is actually a Vergecast. We are bringing back the Vergecast. We're going to have another one next week. John, our producer. I've never seen anyone look more trouble. He's texting someone right now, letting them know the good news. But it's back. The Verkast's back.

We are in the deepest portion of the tech new cycle. Our show is about technology news and culture and lifestyles. It's about Chris just up and pouring a Coke right into his laptop before the show begins. I caught it. I caught it. Should we identify ourselves? Yeah, hi. I can see us.

Hello. Yes. Yes. Hello. This is Nilai Patel. I am Dieter Bone. And I am Chris Sigler. Noted watch expert, Chris Sigler.

Noted watch expert. So let's just get into it. We're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, how's it going over there, John? We're still good? Okay. We have a pile of cables and equipment on this table. John literally has a guitar center over here. Like there's like a four-track recorder quarter.

There's like a Zoom, Mikey thing. He has a Fuji X100S for some reason. I mean, it's just, there's a lot going on. There's so many cables here that are not plugged into anything. I'm very, I'm proud of you. We're about to record some Green Day covers. I'm going to happen. I'm going to buy a Berringer mixer.

It's going to be great. This is like the old days of podcast. Actually, we've been using the word Duky a lot today. That's really disappointing for everyone, actually. Okay, let's just get into it. There's a lot to talk about. Yes. So, Dieter, you and I, we were in California until last night, very late last night.

We both landed around like midnight one in the morning. Apple event. Big deal, Apple event. They called it historic. There was a ton of hype. They held it at the Flint Center, which is where Apple, where Steve Jobs, unveiled the first Mac, the IMac, just tons and tons of history. in this building.

Apple leaned into the history and then revealed pretty much just a big iPhone. The big white box too. You can't forget the big white box. The big white box was exactly what I thought it would be. It was an Apple store.

They built a little Apple store to do a hands-on-in because you couldn't. The Flint Center is on the campus of De Anza Community College, which I believe is a community college. I was just going to say you just installed a whole bunch of them. Look, I don't know.

It's a college. It appears, anyway. Can you just imagine going to school and all of a sudden having apples show up to be like, here's our watch. The mothership just descends. Thousands of journalists are just there like wandering around, like looking angry. Like Will I.N. is there wearing like a backpack that appears to be like, I mean, it looks like a triangular turtle shell. It was very strange. Anyway, so huge event. Tim Cook, not shy at all about leaning into the history.

He said one more thing to announce the watch. Oh, and you just like, it was, I think the moment that really defined the event for me was when he was like, screw the numbers. I don't have time for the numbers. Let's just keep rolling. Yeah. He was just doing this thing. It was super fast for live vlogging. We tried a new thing where Deeter did like play by play and I did color, which is great for me because I love jokes in telling them on the internet.

It's great for me because I love getting arthritis in my fingers. But it was funny. So we had a bunch of people that was me, Dieter, David Pierce, Josh Lerner. Owenson, two of our video people, Jordan, and Christian. So we went all out in coverage. I think we had a great day. One of the most popular days in the verge history in terms of number of people on the site. The gears that keep the site running were literally smoking during that event.

Yeah, our server ops team has just kept on tweeting, like, hilarious pictures of what they... I mean, they were just like staring in traffic. Yeah, they went flat. So just a big day all around for, like, the industry, for media, for Apple. but the announcements when you get past the hype of an Apple event and the hype of Apple saying

this should be a hyped Apple event and giving exclusive to ABC News to talk about their historic day I have a lot of questions I'm just going to frankly say I have a lot of questions we can go through this stuff we all do we all do so I think the phones the iPhone 6 and the 6 plus

I think they will be smash hits yep no like no doubt in my mind like we played with them there The 6 plus is gigantic. It's like a comedy goldmine, basically, because the apps then aren't optimized for it, like scale up and, like, in the way that, like, big things are funny. Am I the only one who, like, I keep saying, I keep confidently saying big things are funny. Do you guys know, like, big clumsy things are funny?

Like, inherently funny. Like, I don't know. That's just me. Well, the 6 plus is also, there was some brouhaha this week about the resolution not being what everyone expected it to be. So, well, no. But that does raise some questions for developers about how they're going to support that device. I would be with you on that, except that the way that Phil Schler described it as a desktop class scaler, there's no black bars, there's no this or that.

At WWDC, they talked about adaptive, like, sizing for stuff so people would get ready for this. And people, the things that aren't ready, like, they're just scaling up. And these things are such high resolution that I'm not worried about how apps are going to look scaled up at all. Like, I frankly think that, like, the, as long as they kept the aspect ratio, which they did, it's not a problem. I don't think it's going to be an issue for developers at all. And you absolutely optimized pretty fast, it seems like, right? So those are the phones. We can talk about phones at length, but they are very much what we're expected.

I can wrap up the phones pretty quickly. Like the iPhone 6 plus, if you want a really big screen, it's fine. Just remember, you're going to use it with two hands. Even if you have big hands, you're going to use it with two hands. If you're okay having two hands to use your phone, it's great. If you've got a place to put it that isn't like a little pocket, go for it if you're excited about it. The iPhone 6 holding it just feels perfect. It feels like the right size to me.

I've used all manner of different sized Android phones. The iPhone 5 and 5S feel really small to me, but the 6 just feels like Goldie locks just right. Yeah. Which is funny because we said the same thing about the Motowix. last year and that was a 4.7 inch device right? Yeah, it's like a sweet. I think 4.75 is a sweet spot. Like, I really like the Nexus 5. I think it's a good size. And then there's

Apple Pay, which is basically Apple's riff on the same NFC payment stuff. Other people have been doing and failed to do. Unlike Google, Apple can tell Verizon what to do apparently. So as far as I can tell, the carriers aren't in this conversation at all, which is what's different. They just went straight to

the bank, sent the credit card companies, and they kept the, I can't could get way into this and it's really nerdy. But basically with mobile payments, like where you store the secure information is like a point of contention. Everybody wants it in a different place. So the carriers want it on the SIM card and the manufacturers want it on the phone. And Google wants it in the cloud, actually.

Yeah. And so that's where you should put secure information. Well, but they tokenize it. So like you don't put your credit card in the cloud. You put a random like thing that's generated in the same way that like you have. your password when it gets stored on the server. That's what gets put in the cloud or on the secure element. And then they can burn it and make a new one if something bad happens.

Anyway, Apple said, we're putting it on the phone. And so the carriers, like, they're just, you know, they managed to get them to be not involved. I mean, I wrote this piece that I think that this is the most revolutionary thing that Apple announced. Yeah. And I could get way into it. But the bottom line is that everybody has completely failed at mobile payments. And we've been waiting for Apple to, like, stomp around and be like, we're Apple, we're going to do it our way, and everybody get in line. And they finally did it.

So that was Tim Cook's line. Is everybody else thinking about business models and we thought about user experience? Yes. And they also are getting a cut. And they're getting cut. From the banks, though, not from like merchant fees and all this stuff, right? But Google wasn't thinking about business models with Google wallet. There was Google ever think of the business model.

Google was just like, here's what we're doing. And Carries were like, no. And Google's like, oh, okay. That was the Google conversation. Because Google, I mean, this, you know. So apparently Walmart and Best Buy are not on board with Apple Pay yet. They're like trying to do their own thing. But they're not going to stand up.

It's not going to work. Yeah. Everybody's going to get behind this. But like, you know, the thing with Google, I mean, this is like if you, man, Apple's going to be really happy to hear me say this. Google doesn't control the hardware, right? Right. And so that question about where you should put the secure element.

They don't have a same. They had to go to like the standards bodies. They had to say, let's use the one on the same. SIM card at first. They had to let Verizon screw with Assuse or whoever's... And then they had to deal

with all the manufacturers that would... Like Samsung. Samsung has done all of these models. Right. They just don't care. Right.

So there's no, there's no consistency or standardization. So there's no way to build up a critical mass of like consumer demand and influence from the person

that's actually making the solution to make it happen. The closest thing we had was ISIS. Or not ISIS. No, it's called soft card. And I mean, that was a,

that was a... No, I mean, it was going to fail from the beginning. It was going to fail when it was called ISIS. It was definitely going to fail when that name was co-opted by a group of murderous warlords. Because they wanted to rebrand themselves from Al-Qaeda. And then I was definitely going to fail because it's called Soft Card, which is a rich. Also, ISIS was bad in the first place.

It was the name of the spy agency from Archer. No. I mean, all of that stuff on mobile payments. Deter Utigrate, like everything has been a fail and it's been a fail because no one's incentives are lined up because everyone wants to make the money. Right. And for Apple, it's like they're a line.

Like they make the hardware, they make the software, they make the service. Right. They just created a thing. It's in our phone now. To Apple's credit, like, yes, they are taking a slice of the money, but they are not taking a slice of the consumer data, which is also incredibly valuable.

They have cut themselves out of that loop entirely. And I talked to Visa and Visa's like, look, this is just like a credit card transaction to us when it comes to like the information that we know on the data that we collect on our end and the secure, you know, visa land. So one of the reasons I think Apple was able to get the leverage to get all these banks and credit card companies on board is they said, look, just give us this tiny cut of the money. That's what everybody asked for, but we don't need any of the consumer data. We don't need to know what they're buying or when or where or who or why or how. Right.

Like just that's not our problem. That's your thing. And then the credit card company is like, yep, that's what we want. cool and then they just did it. You know, that's the thing about Apple, though, that, I mean, this is going to go right into the watch for me. Okay. Here's the thing about Apple not doing that stuff and not, like, not wanting that data and not

wanting that information is that they don't have it, right? So now they don't have it, right? And now they can't do, like, predictive things. Like, they can't do other services that are built on top of information like that, the way that Google definitely would. And that is, to me, that's the entry point into the watch. because I'm just going to say it. I'm just going to put it out there.

I'm going to publish a long thing about it on Monday probably. I am deeply skeptical of the Apple Watch because I don't know what it's for and I don't know why I want it. I don't know why anybody would want it, except for it looks pretty and it's infinitely customizable. So you're saying you don't want to send your heartbeat to another human being?

I absolutely want to send my heartbeat to another human, but I want to do it in a threatening way. Right? Like I would like nothing more than to like creep up behind you like late at night and then suddenly have my heartbeat just like, So let me try and set up that. And that I think is a killer app.

The Apple Watch is for murderers. Oh my God. I'm just saying, that would be awesome. If I get any moment, you could just like, I could just like hit you with that. Yeah. That would be terrifying. And you would know.

You would know that I was somewhere near you. Probably not what Johnny I was going for. And my heart was beating, but yours would soon stop beating. Just getting creepier by the second. Can we change the subject, please? I think this personal thing. you. It's going to be great, guys.

That's why I want to buy a watch to threaten people with it. So Apple set this thing up as the next big category for them. They explicitly said, this is a place where we introduced Max. And then they put it in the same context as the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. And it was their one more thing. And it was their one more thing. And with all those other products that I just mentioned, like the day after, you could say, I understand why Apple thinks that's the future. Right.

And I don't understand the answer to that question for the watch. I will say this. We went to the event. We all played with the watch. The ones that you could wear were running basically video of like UI. Yeah. And then there were ones you could like screw with the people were holding and they were like demo units. Those ones are pretty, I mean, it's like it's not coming on for a long, it's not coming out for a long time.

Like sometime next year, right? So the ones they had there to play with, understandably kind of prototypy. kind of crashy. But everything about them was like, why would I do this? Right? And that's like really the question. Like, why would I, like the heartbeat thing, like it's cute. It's adorable.

It's also like I would have to do that. You have to convince somebody else to buy a watch. Yeah. Right? And that's like, that's a network effect problem. Like you have to suddenly know a lot of people with Apple watches. Which maybe you will, but it's not like a standardized thing. Right.

Everybody, like you have to convince everybody like buy into the Apple ecosystem. and then buy a watch and then like do the heart like learn how to do the heartbeat thing. How big is the market for people that text XOXO to their significant other five times a day? Because that's like that's what that heartbeat thing is for. Well, they're also leaning really hard into the concept of these bite-sized voice memos, right? Yeah. And then the little drawings. Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, I mean, Apple has a spotty record identifying what what social media trends are, right? With ping. So I don't think it's a sure thing for that. I mean, so let me actually get into like my main issue with the watch, which is like the app stuff. Like these little like here's an app and maybe that app is a good idea. My biggest problem with the watch is it has entirely too many like interface methods. So they open like this keynote was explicitly about Tim Cook like using the elements of like a classic Steve Jobs keynote to say the watch is a big deal. Right.

And so the elements are like, we're in the Flint Center. We're going to show you the Mac and the I. We're going to show you in the iPhone and the iPad. We're going to show you the mouse and the click wheel and multi-touch. Here are all of the things that we've made that are important. And then now we have the watch. Are you ready? Like thunderous applause, standing ovation.

He's got his fist in the air wearing the watch. And he's like, we've come up with our next major interface revolution. It's called the Digital Crown, which is the worst branding in history. Second worst. Right after Force Touch. Yeah. Force Touch is like a right click. They made a watch the right click.

Right clicking is endemic in the watch space. Like it's just everywhere all of a sudden. It's a long presses on Android wear. So anyway, so he's like, we made this thing in the digital crown. And it's like showing like you don't want to be pinching to zoom on a watch face. You want to use this crown. That'll scroll. And then Kevin Lynch, who is the VP in charge of the watch software, comes out and does a lengthy demo of the watch software.

In which he like barely uses digital crown. and it starts scrolling through lists with his finger. And it's like, isn't that what you just said we shouldn't do? Yeah. Right? Like, what is the actual purpose of this thing? Because it's definitely not the primary interface method, the way that multi-touch is on the phone or the click wheel was on the iPad or the mouse is on a Mac.

Right? It's actually just kind of like a knob that's like the scroll wheel on a mouse. Yeah. That's basically what you're using it for. And a home button. But like, that's just a button. Both of you guys had the wrist or the watch. on your wrist, right?

Yeah. So let me ask you. But so let me ask you with a digital crown. See, my thing with with that is that a crown is not something that on a traditional watch you're fiddling with constantly, right? Because your finger gets in the way of your hand. So is that a problem here? Or have they figured that out?

It felt fine. Like I think the thing I've been telling people is like it doesn't click, you know, so it's not that much for instance, but it also doesn't spin freely. Right. And so it feels a little bit loose to me, but I think that that feeling will go away once I actually see it moving software. It'll feel really good. But like, again,

Like I if if Apple expects one of the apps they showed was Twitter. If Apple expects me to read my Twitter stream by like sitting and like spinning a little dial on my wrist, like no. Yeah. Don't want to do that. It's just in that. And then so that, so now you have it, you have a touchscreen that you're like tapping and swiping on. You can swipe up from the bottom to get glances. You can swipe down from the top to do a notification center because you need that on a watch.

You can use the knob. You can use the digital crown. And then you can customize. You can get multiple watch faces. and then you can customize all the little tiny pieces on each watch face. Right. But that's like fine. And then you can like force touch on the face of the watch,

which is like you push down a little bit harder to bring up like a menu in all these apps. And it's like what? Like first don't call it force touching. Just don't. Like it's the joke I've been making over and over and over again. Force touching is what you tell kids not to do to each other. Right? Like don't force touch your brother.

Right. Like that is exactly how my niece and. nephew are like that's how people talk to them right and like it's terrible so we have digital brand digital crown which sounds like a Kanye album right it's like just we there's bad branding for these UI elements like this a company came up and like we forgot that and series on this thing like we've gone through all the stuff and oh yeah by the way Siri which should be the headline feature for the watch but right and so like just a bunch of like I just remain skeptical it's like how do you use it yeah like just at a super baseline level like what is the most important way of interacting

with this watch. It does feel strangely. Is it turning the knob or is it swiping the screen? It feels strangely designed by committee for Apple, right? Which is not a company known for designed by committee. My thing, my like parallel rant to Neely's is that the Apple Watch feels a little too gadgety. And so the thing, you know, like you do after these Apple events, you mill around and

talk to other journalists. And so here's the story that I've been telling. I think I told this on the live show. Like the thing that's insane to me about the Apple Watch is you look at an Android phone. You get an Android phone and you want to. set it up and you spend half your day moving widgets around and figuring out the difference between the home screen and the app drawer

and like getting all your accounts set up and like there's a notification center and there's the top of the Amazon's the fault. There's all the stuff to figure out. I mean I love going to the S market. It's conceptually difficult to figure stuff out. But then you look at Android Wear the watch and like they just stripped all that away. It's like this

is just Google now notifications and you don't get to do anything. Now but the flip side is the iPhone is very simple. You get it, you've got your icons on your home screen, you're done. but the watch is the equivalent of the Android phone. You need to spend half your day learning what all the different zones are, that there's glances down here. Oh, I want to set up my glances.

What glances do I want? I don't know. Let me see if I can figure out. Oh, wait, there's a notification that came in. Let me swipe down to see that. I don't know. I know it just popped up. But when does it go away?

I don't know. And then there's, oh, what do I want to see on all my different watch faces? And then there's, oh, I can do Siri. And then there's, oh, wait, I can reply to stuff with my voice where it gives me the predictive analysis stuff where it analyzes the incoming text and gives you options. That's cool. That's super cool. Right.

But all Apple, like, if Apple's going to have that many features on this thing, first of all, whoa, maybe, like, do you have to start and then introduce the rest later. Two, tell me a better story about which one of those things is the premier focus of it. It's probably health, but. Well, we didn't see a lot of that. Well, we saw some. I'm actually excited about the health stuff because the stand meter is really cool. Yeah. No, they've come up with a good.

idea, right? But like, why would you pay $350 for the Apple Watch to do health stuff when you can buy a Fitbit or whatever, right? Which is less intrusive. Yeah. If you buy the regular Fitbit, like, my wife doesn't wear a band, right? She just clips a Fitbit on her person and forgets about it. Right. And it's like not a fashion accessory. It's like a utility. It connects to her phone. That's the other thing is we're looking at this from like a smart watch perspective and a usability and a UI perspective. But Apple doesn't want us to be thinking about the watch like that at all. It's a fashion piece. It's a fashion accessory. There's, I don't know how many dozens of different ways to configure the three different lines and the two different sizes. Including one that's explicitly jewelry. Right. Like it's jewelry. The addition? Yeah.

Right. And that one's going to be. So the basic one, they announced 349. It is unclear whether that's the Apple Watch or the Apple Watch sport at 349. It's got to be the sport. Everyone thinks it's a sport. And the sport doesn't have a set. Yeah.

Well, it also doesn't have a sapphire display. Oh, it doesn't? Nope, it's the IonX glass stuff. IonX glass, man. Let's talk about that for me. Let's talk about the design of this watch. So on the back, I tweeted this either, on the back of the watch, to make it look more like a regular watch, they've printed all kinds of words, right? Yeah.

So on the back of the sport, it says IonX display. It says Apple Watch. It says, to be fair, can I just read what's on the back of the 360? FCC ID-25-3-298. Yeah, water-resistant IPC. But you expect Motorola to print garbage on the back of things. Right? Like, just like, when Sony makes something, they're like, there's a guy there who's like,

I've got all these leftover megabase stickers and I put it on the, like, right? Like, that's expected. Like, is that a new Walkman phone? Does it have hyperX audio? Because whatever, just like print whatever words on your thing you want, right? Apple is like clean, minimal, like no Intel stickers, right? And on the back of this watch, it's like splash proof. Yeah.

And it's like, is that, do you just make a, like, a skeuomorphic hardware design that's explicitly supposed to remind people of regular watches because it has stuff printed on the back? Because that is the least Apple thing I've ever seen. Yeah, but it is called, I think that they took Johnny I or whoever designed this thing.

I mean, maybe it wasn't him. It took a very explicitly skeuomorphic approach with this device. Okay, so here's what it says in the back of the Apple Watch. It says Apple Watch with the logo, 42mm case, that's the bigger one. 7,000 series aluminum, INX Glass, composite back,

and then a serial number. None of that information aside from the serial number and perhaps the case size, if you've forgotten, that you have the bigger one, is important. And, like, that's kind of like... I think that's a watch trope.

Yeah, I'm not a watch throw. Because why does Apple do tropes like that? Well, but that's what I'm saying. That's like when Apple put out the iPod high, they didn't print digital on the front of it. This is a watch.

Like, this is a timepiece, right? And, like, they didn't shy away from that on stage. Right. And it's called the Apple Watch. Yeah, not the I-WiW. And today is the first day that I didn't immediately say I watch instinctuant. I did this too and I watched a million other journalists there take and retake their stand-ups because everyone kept saying I watch.

And so Christian and Jordan stood in front of me and Christian would be like, yeah, you boned it again and I'd have to start over. And everyone around me was having the same problem. Because we just kind of weird, John, this is like the worst treat in history, like tweet. First, you got Chris's Twitter handle wrong. And the Vergecast is kind of back. Breckless back on Chris Ziegler. Did you use Chris Ziegler? No, it does.

There's a Chris Ziegler on Instagram. It's not me. I don't have an Instagram account, John. He's really into Penn State. At least he was 23 months ago. Oh, man. Wrong Big Ten team entirely. And, wow.

Poor Chris Sigler. It's all going very wrong. How do you not have an Instagram account? I'm a conscientious subjector. You know what? Can we just say, can I just say something? To square face? To be like, I don't have Instagram.

I'm not on Facebook. Is the new, I don't have a TV. I'm way to culture for that. But I'm like an OG conscientious objector to Instagram because like I didn't believe in the filters. We got into it on the site. Yeah, you're still wrong. And at some point I was just like, well, it's been so long now that I just can't be

on Instagram. It's the same way I feel about Lord of the Rings. Like I didn't see Lord of the Rings. for a while and at some point I'm like, well, it's never too long that I can't see it now. It's never too late to watch some hairy Hobbit feed. Look, Instagram is over, man. By the time I get on that serve, it's something else is going to replace it. That's Chris Sigler, destroyer of social networks.

The last man in America to send his heartbeat to somebody else using his watch. Oh, you just made John delete his tweet. Well, as he should have. Oh. Okay, we've totally lost the thread on the watch. The watch, man. We've talked about the watch so much. Yeah, non-stop.

And it's interesting. Like, Chris and I were talking today about the idea that the addition will be probably like $2,500 or $3,000. It's made of like... Solid 18-carat gold. No, but like Johnny Ive did a thing where he's like, we've improved gold. Apple made a better gold, everybody. He did.

Like, you watched that video. We've improved an element. Scientific element. So it made out of gold. Like, it's going to be super expensive. How long are you going to keep that watch? It's not something you hand down to your children, right? Right.

Here's an old computer. Put it on your body. Like replace the battery. Well, so here's my theory. I think that at least for the addition, maybe for the whole thing, but especially for the addition, Apple will definitely have to have a trade-in program where they say, bring in your last year's edition and will give you two grand toward next year's model, you know. What are they going to do with last year? They're going to melt it down?

Yeah, it's gold. I mean, like, you're just the idea of Apple like, Apple running like, Apple running like, oh. a watch smelting factory. They've got the guys and the gold vats and just like huge dump trucks of old $3,000 smartwatch. It's just like getting dumped into it. That's ridiculous. But that's going to happen.

It has to. So what do you guys think of the actual design of the hardware? I find it actually like incredibly well executed. And I personally think it's pretty beautiful. But I also think it's super. And I also think it's super conservative and nondescript. Yeah. Like it's, it is like, it is an unbelievably good build quality and just like perfectly executed design,

especially the way the display goes into the rest of the curve of the watch of a relatively, like, it doesn't make a huge bold statement. Right. And this is the point of Aaron, Aaron Soporos's piece. Yeah. Like he hates the Moto 360 and thinks this is good. But like the Moto 360 is like, look at she, look at me. I'm a Moto 360.

This says, look at me. a very pretty, I'm an Apple Watch, but doesn't like yell it the way that other 10360 does. Yeah. It kind of reminds me of a, it looks like they started with an iPod Nano in a minimal case,

or minimal strap, and said, okay, let's now turn this into a watch. I mean, even there's minimal strap like that, right, that there's a lot that's here that's from that. I will say this is like the most bulbous product Apple currently makes. Yeah. It's super round. It looks like it's inflated.

Yeah. And it was very much memorable or reminiscent of the original iPhone, particularly the sport in that aluminum. It's like there are cues of that original iPhone all over the place. But speaking of the original iPhone, I think that what we were all secretly hoping for or not so secretly hoping for was a product that made us say, holy crap, how is this even possible? Which is what happened when they announced the original iPhone. That didn't happen here. It's like, oh, they made an LGG watch but running Apple software. I mean, right, and that is the problem, right?

Apple has yet to come out with a super compelling narrative for why you should buy this. And their answer is, well, look at all the apps seeking. Tim Cook's like at the end, he's like, and we haven't even touched all the other stuff I could do. I love controlling my Apple TV with it. Other people love using the walkie-talkie functionality. And it's like, what? They're just throwing stuff at the wall.

It's super throwing stuff at the wall. And like, I just, I'm sitting there. It's almost Samsung-y. It's got to say. Right? And like, it's crazy that the Androidware is in its way so paired down. Yeah. And this thing is basically a computer. Yeah.

By the way, it has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. So when you're at home, it connects to Bluetooth, or to Wi-Fi for its connectivity and when you're out in about it Bluetooth to your phone. But it's a computer. Like, it has a home screen with app. Like, with the home screen on the demo units had like 48 apps on them. And you like scroll through the concept. With an app universe.

Yeah. With an app universe. In the neighborhood. And nothing in between. And it's like, what about the podcast? Planet. Where do the apps come from? Oh, that's BlackBray Planet, Samsung Galaxy. Yeah. They could have on solar system. Nobody's taking that yet.

Nebula. No, it's just like, where do the apps come from? Is there an app store? Is there an App Store app store app on the phone? Do you manage the apps? Like, managing apps on an iPhone is already a torturous, pain experience. Like, I open most of the apps on my phone by searching for them, and I don't know where the icons are located and it's a disaster. And I'm like, man, one day I should really. sit around and plug my phone into iTunes and painstaking. No, I'm never going to do that.

Do you do that with the, do you manage apps on your watch from your phone? Hopefully. Notably already bad experience. Like so many unanswered questions. And I think that's, as we talked about it all week in San Francisco, what we kept coming back to is, yeah, we have a lot of questions. And it's like, we don't have any answers. And just having a lot of questions with no answers, like feels negative.

Right. But the problem is all of the hints of the answers are kind of like, it's probably not the right answer. So the other problem that we're having as we talk about this is the battery life. Is that there's a script to these Apple things when they announce but don't actually release a thing right away, which is that everybody's like, oh, tech journalist didn't believe in the iPhone at first. Oh, tech journalist didn't believe in the iPod at first. My greatest fear is that there will be a clip on YouTube of me saying I'm skeptical of the eyewatch and it will run in parallel with Steve Bomber saying that he didn't believe in the iPhone. And that that is how my career ends. Right?

Like the verge failed. When every single human being on the planet has an Apple Watch. Yeah. And there's just me. There's me. There's the audience. I don't know about that. When we say we're skeptical, it's not like, it's, we're not saying, you know,

screw this thing. This is a fail. Because like, like, we want to believe there's a thing here. Yeah, I really want a smart watch. I'm actually not wearing my pebble right now. Chris is wearing a 360. I just put my 360 on today for a while, yeah. Like, this is a product I want.

And I think what we were all expecting from, the Apple Watch was to understand why we want it, right? Other than it's a gadget. Right, right. And what this is is a really beautiful gadget. And I don't fault them for making a really beautiful gadget. But like in that history, if you're going to do the thing that Tim Cook did, if you're going to say, this is the Mac, this is our next Macintosh, right? We're changing the world.

You're going to call it historic. You're going to invite 3,000 members of the press. This is as big as the iPhone. We have the digital crown is our new multi-touch. That's a hell of a thing to say. And then to not tell the entire world why they should buy this thing other than, ooh, it's pretty, is that disconnect. That's where all the questions come in and where they start to sound like negativity. Right.

Now, they have a long time to go to start answering those questions. They have early 2015. I actually wouldn't be surprised if this thing took until May or June to come out. I agree. It feels really unfinished. They have not, they are so away. to deal with the battery life. Yeah, they're just not anywhere close to answer.

All they will say is you have to charge it daily. Yep. Like every night you should charge it. Yeah. We built this charger for it. With an insane Megsafe thing. That's cool. That's cool.

It's really cool. Here's why it's insane. The 360 charges on literally any cheap hat on the planet. Like, I've dropped it on like five different kinds of cheap hats. Yeah, there's like one of those. Well, this is, this is Apple. You are the only person in the world who knows what a cheap hat is. It has five of them.

Yeah, but you will, you can also just. I've got three. You can also just drop. Still only one to five. You can also just drop it on there, whereas with this, there's like a weird little magnetic hockey puck that you have to think.

It's weird. It's like, it lines it so you don't have to think about it. I'm not worried about it. Are you going to fault Apple for making a custom connector? It's like, that's all they know how to do. That's true.

Like they're like, oh, we should get a connector. What kind of we should use? It would have been far more surprising. It's like, some designer comes, like, charging out of the base

and he's like, I've been making this one. Lightning is, is far superior to USB in terms of like connector shape. Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, because it's reversible if nothing else.

We should probably wrap soon? No, let's talk about the button. Let's complain about the button. I was going to get into which iPhone are you going to buy, but that's cool. No, but I really want. I'll end on that. I have so many questions about this watch.

I was actually talking to John Gruber about this because he was randomly at T-Mobile's event. Maybe not so random, but I randomly talked to him at T-Mobilevent. The uncharitable way to talk about the button on the Apple Watch is name a company that has a custom dedicated button to take you to a chat app. And if I were to ask you that, you would probably come back with, oh, Blackberry. Yeah, or the HGC Chacha.

Well, that was the Facebook button. That's a chat app. That's where you chat with Dave. If you were to talk to me a week ago and say, what is the, what's a button situation on the Iwatch going to be? I would be like, that's obvious. there'll be a button. Or no buttons. Yeah, I would have thought no buttons.

I would say one. They like the home button, right? They'll have a button. But instead, they added, they've got the crown, and they added a second button, and the second button does two things. It's the chat app thing, and then it's also, like, activate a payment for the double click. Right. So if you tap it once, it opens the chat app where I can stalk you with my heartbeat. Or, or, I'm just going to put it out there.

You can draw pictures and send them to friends. Yep. the number one picture that people will draw is a dong yeah of course they won't be 100% like this is like when FaceTime came out and I would like FaceTime my friend Kyle like I was in

he was in Wisconsin he was in L.A where is his story going? No no I would show my no absolutely not and I would be like I would like FaceTime and he'd answer it I would just like scream like fuck you and then I'd hang up and like I would think to myself I just used all of that research and technology all of that effort

all of history's progress has brought us to the point where I can call my friend, he can see my face. I can scream the F-bomb at him and hang up, right? And that's like, that's great. And now there's better uses for FaceTime. But that's like, that's what I did as a young man. This is like Apple built a watch. They've miniaturized all this technology. They've built a new communications platform. You can buy a $3,000 gold one and you will probably use it to send pictures of dogs to your friends. All of that is true. Yeah, I don't know. That button, so that you push it once to open the chat app and then if you want to pay it's tied in apple pay so if you put the watch on

unlock your phone authenticate to your phone and then the watch doesn't leave great contact with your skin you can wave it at an NFC reader and double click the button to pay how do i explain all of these different like usage modes to my parents you can't right that's what like regular people picked up the iPhone and got it yeah one button one button like did the thing on and off they could like you're like here's a swipe and then pinch to zoom and then you were done yeah there was no more learning involved uh and like i know a lot of people who are still like surprised that like there's a dictation button so they can talk to it or like whatever like yeah syria was like now hold the button down and you can talk to it right and everybody figured it out uh the iPad traded on all of that knowledge so you got an iPad

you're like it's just a big iPhone which was the biggest criticism of the iPad at launch and its biggest strength. And yeah, and it's like unspoken biggest strength. Everybody knew how to use it. You picked it up. You're like, oh, this is a big iPhone. The apps are different. I don't want my laptop or whatever. And like, now they got to figure out what's going on with the iPad. But at the time, it was explosively popular because it was a big iPhone. This thing is like, it's a small iPhone with a knob, a button, and force touching. And just like, I cannot get over force touch. Like, it is right click. That's what it is. Right. It's a context menu that opens up to show you different options in your app.

in your interfaces. And it's like, why is that appropriate on this watch, but not appropriate on your iPad, which is supposed to replace your laptop? And like, how are you ever going to explain to anyone? Like, buy this watch. Here's the knob. Here's the swipes.

Right? Here's glances, but glances are different than notification. What does the crown do again? It scrolls through lists. And it seems enough. But why can't you just flick through the list? You can flick through the list. Well, then why does the crown exist?

Nobody knows. But it's the new multi-touch, everybody. And like, that's, these are the things. Like, I'm sure that no one in Apple is dumb enough to let Tim Cook walk on the stage and say, the digital crown is the new multi-touch, the new click wheel, the new mouse without a solid understanding of why that is true. Or Tim Cook is like an egomaniacal moron. Right.

Those are the two options. Like either they know what they mean or he was like, I need a new click wheel. And they came up with a crown. Right. Well, to be fair, I mean, like, anytime Apple enters a new category, you need. need an event of this caliber, right? And you're going to push a lot of hyperbole on the 2,000 people that you've gathered to see the event. So it's like, you know, that was going to happen. They were going to say some really bombastic shit on stage. But they said bombastic,

they said bombastic shit on stage in deliberate echoes of their previous bombastic shit. That turned out to be not bombastic at all, but actually spot on and accurate to what they had produced. Right. Right. And like, I don't, I guess what I'm saying is, these are just questions I have. Like, these are, this is why I'm skeptical. Yeah.

I'm not skeptical as I've used the thing at great length. I'm not skeptical because I understand the feature set or why I'd use it, except for the dong thing, which I'm very clear about. But like, it's just weird for Apple

to not have those questions answered. I just, I have this image in my mind now of getting a dawn on my watch followed by a heartbeat. Yeah. It's so creepy. They send you the dong,

you send back the heartbeat, and then they send you back the little customer. Faster hardge. A little custom emoji, whatever. You can, like, instead of sending back a text reply or a dong or heartbeat, you can also send back an emoji face that you can like, like, you can, the face pops up and then you can like drag his eye up, his eyebrow up and like drag his mouth down.

So it's a Facebook sticker. There's a weird emoji. And then he's animated too, so like he winks. There's just no, I'm going to, it's weird. Oh, every apple of an hour. We forgot another piece of branding. What's that? Taptics.

Oh, it has a Taptic engine. Taptic engine. This is sounding more Samsung by the second. Here's the thing about the Taptic engine. It does feel different than a standard haptic vibration thing. It does actually feel like something's tapping you, which is really cool. So that's the other way you can communicate. And you said it's silent, which is super important.

It's super quiet, yeah. So, like, I could like, if it was time to end the podcast, I could just like hit the watch, hit you and then tap my wrist three times. And then you would feel three taps. But how do you select me? You hit the button that props up a friend list, and then I tap on you, and then I don't know how you select all these different ways of using the messaging app to do all these different things. I don't know how that works. It was like they have like a, you just saw Kevin Lynch, like, be like, maybe this will be the emergent behavior. I'll draw a fish to my friend.

That means sushi. And it's like, no. Like, I don't think that will happen. Yeah. Maybe some other stuff. But like, that's what I mean. Like, there's so much here that's like maybe. Maybe you'll like this.

Maybe this will be what's important to you. Yeah. If they were to make that button just be customizable to whatever app I wanted on the watch, that would be great. Then I've got a home button and a shortcut button. I don't think the Apple Watch needs to zoom in and out of shit. I think scrolling can be handled with swipes. I think you get rid of the crown and just have the button that turns the screen on it off. Like that's where they should go.

Because there's no reason you need to zoom in to like your 10,000 photos that are stored on your watch. Yeah, when they showed the like, photos on the watch thing, you know, because Apple's photos app has got that zoom out mode, which is really cool because you're like, oh, this is about the time. And then you, like, pinch and you, like, you can zoom into the photo. But showing that on the watch, it's like this weird, like, just grid of, like, little tiny pixel colors and you're supposed to guess where your photo is there. I don't, like, who wants to look at pictures on their watch?

Yeah, makes sense. And I say that fully aware that in the past, I have said things like, who wants a five-inch screen. It's possible that we are just dead wrong in this skepticism and people are going to lose their minds and this is going to become the new emergent behavior and we're just going to do stuff on our watch. We're going to talk to our watch and it's going to click right away once people actually have the thing on their wrist.

Right. But I kind of don't think so. Yeah. I mean, like, this is what I'm saying. We can go back to it. We can do 15 minutes to talk about the phone. phone is just, the iPhone 6 and the 6 plus are such obvious standout hits. Like, just playing with them for as long as we played with in the hands-on area.

It was like, now everyone's going to argue about which one to buy, right? Like, there's a good argument to be had either way here. And if I'm going to look at photo something, I'm probably going to get the gigantic screen out and look at photos on that. And, like, those screens, they have retina HD screens or like higher resolution. The lamination that appears to be even tighter, if such a thing as possible. They're curved at the edges. It really is, like, touching pixels in a way that, in a way that, like, the iPhone 4 first felt like it.

And then, like, then I got away and, like, you started to learn how to see, like, the light refracting. Did this happen to you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, your tolerance for gap on a screen gets less and less by the year. Right.

And, like, particularly on the white ones, you could, like, I can always just see the gap. Yeah. These ones are, like, perfect. They're perfect, beautiful displays. The hardware, I think, is the six plus. like I keep saying it's comically big but I have big hands so it was easy for me to hold I think they look exactly with the leaks

I feel like those lines in the back are like ugly but who cares yeah right they're weird you'll get used to it after a week and it'll be fine I'm not I mean it's whatever they look like it's like Johnny I've like bought like a like a Camaro and put tape lines all over it you know he's like I'll do that on the phone now

I don't mind it I don't mind that because like whatever they needed to do to finally have an iPhone that felt like an honest callback to the original iPhone I'm okay with. And that's what these feel like to me. But they could have. That's interesting.

Like, look at the curves. Like, it feels a lot like they've made the phone that they wish they could have made in 2007. Yes, I've seen this point made all over the internet. It's definitely a thing, especially if you look at the back. Yep. But if they really had wanted to do that, then why did they fill in the tape lines with metal? Like, they should have just made the bottom plastic and the top plastic and done it in a tasteful way. Well, I don't think they wanted it plastic in the first place.

That's the thing. The plastic was always a compromise. Right. Right. have the seams. So it's like, I don't know. Yeah, the seams, whatever. Like, people are going to walk into stores. They're going to see iPhones of bigger screens. Yeah. And they're going to finally make like a head-up choice between the Samsung phone and Apple phone. Yeah, Apple's going to win. And Apple's going to win. And they've instantly, they've instantly,

they've instantly grown their market share by 30% and just by having two models. Yeah. Right. People are going to go crazy. And like, you know, who was it? Somebody, Tim Cook said that there's a big Android upgrade cycle. And somebody pointed out to me that the Galaxy S3 is at the end of its two-year cycle. And that was like the big seller for Samsung. That was the big breakthrough, a single model, everybody's on the same thing. So lots of people want S-3s. And this is the end of the two-year window.

Those people are going to make a decision. And like, that's interesting. That's a huge wave of people that were on the other platform that could come back. And now you've got a big screen in your competitive. You've got a lot of people on iPhone 4 is still hanging around and 4S is hanging around. like there's just a lot here for Apple to go after and like the six is a great phone like it's a it's cool right the six plus it's I don't know we're gonna have we're gonna have to like do reviews and all that stuff like really figure it out but like it's a big screen like I held it I was like what I thought to myself about the six plus was I have an iPad mini and I'm never going to use it again right if I get a six plus I will never use my iPad mini again and Apple had better figure out what the hell the big iPad is for because now it's just my iPad. the thing I have with a bigger screen.

So the iOS device I have with an even yet larger screen. And it's like that's not a good reason for that to exist. Right. Right. Yeah. It needs to become more of a productivity, laptop replacement. And that's great for Apple, right? That's a good, they're pushing themselves now to, like, improve the iPad in a way that they've been really complacent with it before.

Apple pay in the iPad. Yeah. So my conflict was I could have. It was waving at it. I can have a single device that replaces my phone and my iPad mini and just like, this is my everything device. But I have to use it with. two hands. Or I could have a phone that is amazing and feels good in one hand and yeah, I'll probably hang out, hang around with a tablet every now and then. And like that was a tradeoff. And you,

you look at the six plus and the screen is just unbelievable. And then you hold the six and like, oh, this feels like the best phone I've ever held. Yeah. And you just, you just need to pick. Are you willing to have a two-handed device that means you can have everything device or do you want a one-handed phone? That's the trade-offs. I went with the one-handed phone. You ordered. iPhone. iPhone, 664 gig Space Gray Switching to Verizon from AT&T I will say that

Switching to Verizon is a big deal I'm thinking about it Space Gray seems like overwhelmingly The number one choice Everyone I've talked to Who ordered Space Gray Same word of Space Gray Like there was

White came out People did white Then white start getting tired Then people went to gold And now we're going back to gray I get the impression That the gold does not look as good on this one As it did on the five hours

It absolutely does not Yeah? Does not Interesting It's I don't know I don't know maybe I'll get a gold one I mean, because the 5S, I'm playing with a collar picker right now on the site. There's no chamfered edge.

There's no chamfered edge that like glitters, right? It's like, yeah. There's going to mean aftermarket chamfering services? John just made a gesture of like drinking out of a bucket. Yeah. What, dude? What? Oh, hey.

Aftermarket chamfering services. There we go. That's an idea that I have for you. Free, free idea. No. Which one are you getting? So, I originally wanted. the 6 plus and tried desperately to order it overnight, didn't pan out, and that just immediately

sold out, right? And we don't know if that's because they just didn't make very many, if they're having sourcing issues, or if that's overwhelmingly the more popular model. I think it's overwhelming and more popular. I think people are, you're going to see gigantic iPhones everywhere all of the sudden. Yeah, I think you could be right, especially considering how popular notes are Galaxy notes. So in desperation, I ordered a 6.

I'm strongly considering canceling that and just waiting for a 6 plus. Yeah, I don't know. I'm... I want the longer battery life, too. I'm 100% 6 plus for many reasons. One, it's just time. It's just time to be a guy with a gigantic primary phone. You've reached that point in your life.

It's just where you've got to be. You know? And it's like, I had a Nexus 5 and that was like a good size and that was a great primary. And the camera's garbage. Yeah. And now it's like, you know what? I just want an even bigger phone. But so did you pre-order?

What's your strategy? I'm going to wait. No, wait. I'm just going to wait it out. So my current iPhone 5S, I think I can grind it into dust. It is so broken. You are well on your way to doing that. It is so broken and so cracked and so destroyed that it's like a personal mission of mine now to see how badly it can break.

I want to break it as bad as you broke this Nexus 5. It's in terrible. That's the other reason I got the smaller one. He walked into the, he walked into where we're recording the podcast. with his phone in a plastic bag. He said, why is your Nexus 5 in a plastic bag? He said, because it's actively ejecting glass. It is.

There are little glass shards just coming off of it at this point. It's like the needler from Halo. Yeah. No, I mean, I don't know. I think, I don't know. I don't know. I'll probably just go walking an Apple store and ImpulsePy whatever is in front of me.

Yeah. Because that's what I do with all phones. Yeah. I got the smaller one also because I'm less likely to drop it. Yeah. Yeah, so they are, they are like, I will say this. Apple's obsession with thinness is crazy. The camera sticks out.

If they just made it a little bit thicker and the camera didn't stick out, they probably could have added a little more battery under that thing too. And, like, I don't believe iOS devices, except for iPads are good at battery life. No, they aren't. Absolutely not. The 5S is not a battery champion. No, I have mine in a battery case. And actually, again, my intention is to destroy this phone so thoroughly.

My hope is that the battery case explodes the next time I drop it. That's like where we're going with this. So I remember a few years ago an employee for one of the major phone manufacturers told me that countless amounts of focus grouping indicates that consumers ultimately want a device that's between 5 and 6 millimeters. And below that, they can't tell the difference. So I think that's what everybody's tracking toward. I think that over the next few years, as technology improves, phones are going to stabilize some of the different. between five and six, and that you're just going to have to deal with it. Which sucks because I would buy a Razor Max all day long if that made sense.

Like if they had made a Max version of the iPhone, I would have bought it in a heartbeat. Yes, absolutely. Eight or nine millimeters. I mean, these phones, the six plus is going to look so incredibly stupid when Mofi makes a case for it. Yep. And I'm going to buy that case so hard. Yep. It's going to be, just imagine, like, here's my tank.

I brought a tank. What are you going to carry that in? Certainly not a pocket. I'm saying it right here, right now. Holsters are coming back. No. Yep. That's bad.

Holsters are coming back. I could see that. Or maybe a satchel? Yeah. A leather satchel. I'm going to buy six. Oh, God. Can you, do we need to talk about iOS 8 at all?

I will say this. Here's what I can say about iOS 8. They barely talked about it. They barely talked about iOS 8. This was a totally a hardware event. Barely talked about continuity. They didn't talk about continuity. They barely talked about handoff.

They barely talked about the watch software. I mean, they, like, did some demos within it. Like, it's sort of an open question whether the watch is running iOS, right? Yeah. They didn't say it. It's just out there. Everyone's assuming it's true because it would be,

it's running Tyson. So that's weird. Amazing everyone's running Tyson. The thing is, you look at the interface and all the different metaphors of what the different pieces are and it's like kind of running, Tyson, at least metaphorically.

A little Tisney. A little Tisneys, but one of the sickest burns that ever delivered. Yeah. Okay, so they didn't talk about software. They didn't even do the demo of iOS. Every iPhone announcement I can recall has always included like a recapitulation of the demo from WWDC. Yeah. And they were like, Iowa State is here.

It's great. Moving on. They did a game demo. Yeah, that game looked great. Yeah. I think one important reason that they didn't do an iOS. They show off the GPU. Right.

Yeah. Go ahead. They didn't do it. I think they didn't do an iOS 8 demos because 8 leaned so heavily on Yosemite, which isn't ready yet. Right. So, like, they didn't want to tie that software release to something that isn't available. So there's that. And there's also the fact that, frankly, 8 is a very developer-heavy release.

Like, if you look at 6 versus 7 and 7 versus 8, 8 is about developers except for continuity, basically. Well, I mean, I'm super excited for it. I can't wait for all these extensions. Yeah. No. You see the gift keyboard? No. Yeah, it's a keyboard where, like, you just communicate solely through Nicholas Cage Gifts.

Ellis was very happy. Isn't that amazing? That sounds awesome. His tweet was, like, my entire career is, like, summed up to this. I don't know, man. I'm just looking at the watch. I'm looking at the watch. I could talk about this watch for hours and hours and hours.

Are you going to get an addition or a sport or a classic, whatever the regular model? I'm going to get the one that is. I'm going to get the one that is, that Apple explains me why I should buy it. You're going to get a gold edition with a crocodile band is what you're going to get. Yes, I think that is, that is super right. And then I'm going to have a $3,000 watch and I'm going to use it to use Apple Mail. Yep. And then the watch two is going to come out a few months later, and you're going to be like, what do I do with this?

Can I, let me offer the listener a window into Vox Beatty and the verge. We run our business on Google apps. Yeah. We have many Google apps domains, right? Because the verge started and the company is called Espination at the time and we just started Vox Media. And then we bought, our company bought the curb network. So now we've curbed the needer and react. And we started Vox.com.

We have polygons. We have many, many app, like domains. Many of them are alias to one another and confusing and ridiculous ways because that's the nature of having a company. So we are trying to migrate all of our domains together. This is a disaster because Google doesn't support anything. And if Google just figured this out, like, At some point, every company of our size has to make the critical, like, we should just go to Microsoft decision. Because there's, like, a million people in New York City who can just migrate Microsoft domains together, right?

Yeah. And it would be fine. But Google design, so it's disaster. All of this is just to say, calendar invites at our company are somewhat messy right now. That's just true. Yeah. Like, the email thing is fine. Like, the doc thing is a little confusing.

There's a lot of reoffing. But I get a calendar invite, and, like, there's just panic in my soul. Like, what email address did you send? this invite to. What calendar is it going to go to? Yeah, am I going to go to any meetings tomorrow? Like, am I just going to miss the shit? And so, like, I'm looking at this watch demo of, like, calendar. Like, I'm just like, it's on my screen. And I know how well, like, the stock calendar app on the iPhone is handling this mess. And I'm thinking about that mess translated to my wrist daily and the little flashes of panic that will, like, heartbeat into my body. Ah, very confusing.

Well, let's just get real for a second about using, about being fully immersed in the Google ecosystem and using Apple devices, right? Because I used a 5S for probably 10 months before switching to a Nexus 5, which is now broken into a million little pieces. And the difference between the user experience for a heavy Google user on an iPhone versus an Android device is night and day. It still is. The email is just killer.

The calendar is great. It's fine. can add as many Google accounts as you want and they're just intrinsic to the phone. Yep. They're like they, they, the Google is better. The Google account experience is better on Android than is on the web. Yeah.

Yeah. Straight up. Yep. Like, it's, it is killer and great. And this is, I mean, you were just playing with your 360.

Yeah, my 360, which thinks that I've taken 400 steps since we sat down to do the podcast. This is because we've been counting the table. Unbelievable. No, but this is like a, this actually comes back to the watch. The 360 is like,

you can dump a bunch of stuff into an Android phone, which is like a prime. great user experience for Google services, and then it will pipe Google now to you. And so Google knows all this stuff about you because we've got all these accounts in one place. It's like learned all this stuff. And it's like, you look at the watch. It's like, this is how long it'll take to go to work. Or like, it's time for your flight.

Or like, it just knows stuff about the information that's collected in your phone and it's sending it to you. Knows that want to know the score of the Michigan game tomorrow, you know? Right. And then Apple does it because it's not collecting the data, which is good or bad, like that's a hard differentiator for them. In many ways, it's great. but because they don't have the data, they can't do that stuff. Right. And so there, it's like, here's a stocks app on the watch.

And it's like, I, that's, I don't, who is so, is that just for Tim Cook? So that he can just like look at his wrist and check Apple stock? Like, who, what? Why is that there? Right. That's what I mean about being gadgety. You've got to sit there and fiddle with what different glance things you want. And you've got to know which apps support a glance, I guess, thing.

I mean, setting up an Androidware device takes five minutes. Like you pair it and you're done. And like sometimes to a fault. Like I do wish there was more crap I could do on an Android Wear watch. But I don't know. But on the other hand, I'm looking at this Apple Watch watch face that has like the date, the time in a digital format because I can't read analog anymore because I'm old and sad. My next calendar, the weather and the three little meters for what your health bar is and also the time in a different time zone. like it's just chock full of information.

It looks good. And I'm like, dang, kind of want that. Like, here's the thing. Like, as a smart watch, if they can pull off all these different software metaphors, it's going to be a really good smart watch. Yeah. Yeah. What's the difference between a glance and an actual notification? A glance is a persistent piece of information.

It's like a widget in your notification area on iOS or in the sidebar on Yosemite. A notification is a piece of incoming information. Can go. No, they're like, I'm just saying they're roughly analogous. Like, think of the, think of a glance the way you think of like a stock widget. Yeah. It's the other thing you have glances and stock widgets on this thing. I'm being really negative.

Like, and I think that's just, I don't know, there's something about this that it's because you don't have a story. Well, you know, I will say that everybody I've talked to who's a normal since the Apple event and uses an iPhone has said to me, I have no intention of getting this. I don't know why I'd want it. I left the event that day. We drove from Cupertino back to San Francisco because we were going to stay in San Francisco. And I went and just hung out and saw my friends. And they both were like, that looks dumb. And they were both like, we're going to buy the phone.

But their immediate reaction to watch was that looks dumb. Yeah. And that's like, well, that's the problem. That's the end of that. Like, I don't know. They've got a long time. I think they might have almost a year. I think it's going to take them until June.

I really do. And like, they've got a long time to figure out why this thing is going to be what. it is. And, you know, I said it on Twitter. And in the meantime, like, nothing's hurting them other than, like, a slightly muddled story that we've been fetching about for an hour. And they'll print money with iPhones. Yeah. I mean, they're, that iPhone is going to. They've, they've stopped some Android ware sales with this. They've stopped some pebble sales with this. I'm sure they have. Definitely stopped some. And ultimately, if they sell, if they sell one, uh, Apple Watch for every

10 iPhone users, that's an enormous one. I bet you, I bet you it'll be one and 50 at best. I think you're probably right. Uh, but. But, even at one in 50 I think there's probably still going to print money with that thing yeah it's very confusing and if that one is a $3,000 rose gold right addition with a crocodile band

I man all right I would have stopped oh one more thing about the addition why is there no white gold I don't know then because they hate America what does what gold have to do with America it's clearly duh my gold it's just so confusing

all right whatever that's it That was the Vergecast. It ended on a sad note for a site that I continually say, Peddles Hope. What I'm offering you here is not hope. I'm offering you the knowledge that one day you will, you too will throw your $3,000 smart watch into a puddle of molten gold. Apple's molten gold. Walk away knowing that you were part of history.

Whatever, man, I'm getting this watch and I'm going to send you heartbeat all day long. Oh, I cannot wait to send people's heartbeats. And that is the... That's not coming through, is it? Mila is trying to send his heartbeat to all of you right now. I watched him do it. Actually, you know what this reminds me of is Huey Lewis? Yeah.

Oh, yes. Yeah, all right. I'm going to go listen to Huey Lewis. That was the Vergecast. We'll be back next week, John, on video, with a crazy new set and, like, dancers and, like, the lights. Fireworks. Like the shimmery lights. Oh, it's going to be smoke machine.

Christine Hagalera will be here. I got shoulder check by Gwen Stefani at the Apple event. Nice. She just like shoved me out of the way. Come on, man. Those are the best. Maybe we can get a laser light. I'm going to go, like, I have to go to the DJ's store.

I mean, we've got a whole guitar center here. I mean, might as well have the one pro sound room in the back that nobody understands. Fine. I mean, do you like club owners? go to guitar center? I don't know where they get their gear. You're talking about like the balls that move around. No, if you go to a guitar center, right?

You can buy a fog machine and like the laser show. No, like you walk into a guitar center and you're usually confronted with like the bunch of cheap guitars like the $99 like fenders in front of you, right? Yeah. And then there's like off to the left there's like the custom rack guitars. Yeah. And off to the right there's like strings and picks and shit. And then you like go farther into it and there's like acoustics.

And then there's like the room like the humidity. I've been to a lot of guitar centers. I was going to say you still haven't mentioned the most important part of walking into a guitar center, which is like the 19-year-old. Yeah, like smarmy sales guy who's like wearing a polo shirt, but really he wants to be wearing a ripped t-shirt and he just looks down on you. Yeah. And it makes you feel bad. Yeah, they take your back. But then, so then there's that.

And then there's like the drum room. And then like you have to walk into the drum room. And then if you keep going, there's like the pro sound room. Right? With like huge speakers on stands. And then like racks and racks and like club lights. Yeah, yeah. Right?

and like huge club lights and it's like, do club owners come to Guitar Center? So like, is that what you do? Like, is that a necessary step in opening a club? Like, all right, well, I got the liquor distributors here. We got the beer trucks coming in. Dan Sores laid down. Let's hit up Guitar Center and put a chance to a club without fog.

But like, why would you go there? My question is where do you get the Suds machines? Like if you're doing one of those clubs that's like chest deep in Suds? I don't know, but I'm going to guitar. and we're spending some money tonight. It's Friday night, everybody. All right. Goodbye, that was a Vergecast.