The Vergecast - Reviews of the iPhone 14 Pro, Apple Watch Series 8, and more

Episode Date: September 16, 2022

Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Alex Cranz discuss The Verge's reviews of the iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 14, and Apple Watch Series 8. Further reading: Apple iPhone 14 Pro review: early adopter island Apple iPhone 14 review: meet the iPhone 13S It’s time to bring contrast back to our smartphone photos Apple Watch Series 8 review: if it ain’t broke iOS 16.1 beta adds Apple’s ugly new battery percentage indicator to the iPhone Mini iOS 16 review: unlocking the lock screen We finally got our hands and eyes on the PlayStation VR2 Google canceled its next Pixelbook and shut down the team building it  We didn’t need another Pixelbook Adobe to acquire Figma in a deal worth $20 billion Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II review: noise cancellation domination Disney’s CEO teases a ‘hard bundle’ of Disney Plus and Hulu Sonos announces long-awaited Sub Mini for $429 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Build Me a Revenue Dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data, in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds.

dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hello and welcome to the Virchast, the flagship podcast of the dynamic island. First of all, I want to call it my friend Joanna Stern for actually taking a canoe to an island for her review video. It was excellent. Every now and again, Joanna's like, what if I just do a little bit more than everyone else would possibly do? And the fact that she did her entire video on a small island with a canoe. Did she initially pitch like a bigger island?

Well, no. Well, okay, first of all, I'm your friend, Eli. That's Alex Cranz. Hi. David Pierce is here. Hi. I live on the dynamic island. It's a mindset more than a real island.

But Joanna found the real island. Her video producer obviously brought a drone. Yeah. I think Kenny is her video producer. I'm pretty sure he's one doing this video. And so her point was that the island gets bigger and smaller with the tide. And so they have the video. Wow.

The tide making. Yeah, and bigger and smaller. Just like the dynamic island on the phone. I love this so much. It's just very good. It's a very good joke. It also straight up would be an Apple thing to do to make the dynamic island slightly smaller with the tides. Like a localized dynamic island that like changes colors as the sun sets and rises and falls.

You can always know the tides looking at your phone. Whatever happened to that Steven Spielberg show that was only supposed to be available at night on Apple TV? Do you guys remember this? I was on Quibi. It was on Quibi. Okay, that makes more sense. Yeah, and they never built the technology to do it. Womp, but he was like, I made a horror show.

And so you have to watch it at night. And it's like, yeah. On your phone. Constantly turning your phone. And they announced it with such fanfare. Oh, yeah. Yes. Right?

It's like the show's only available in the middle. And it was very much like, that's how a lot of TV worked for quite a long time. Actually, it was available for 30. minutes once a week. Put that show in the dynamic island, just what I'm saying. That's where Quibi goes. No, if Apple did the Tide sensor thing, they would be like, we have built a custom

array of tide sensing robots monitors the coast of California and that is constantly in a very privacy, respecting way, constantly beaming Tide information to your phone. All right.

So a lot of talks on this week. Indeed, we reviewed the iPhones 14 We also have a few reviewed the Apple Watch Series 8. iOS 16 is out. David reviewed that. Sony brought out the place in the show in VR2. Google canceled more stuff.

We also, our new website launched, which we did a whole podcast about that came out yesterday, but it's like two days later, three days later. It's old news. It's happened on Tuesday. I'm very tired. You've also been talking about the website nonstop for, I mean, as long as I've been at the verge

and potentially much longer than that. Yeah. do you want to talk more about the website? How are you on website talk? Here's what I'll say. So the podcast David made with me and the Tara and Matt from our product team. We did that like before it went out. So like what I will say is now the thing's out.

I think we have a lot of people who make products in our audience. You have no idea how it's going to go. Right? Like I've been looking at this website for six months. I've been reading our site exclusively in these designs for like two months. And you know, the first wave of feedback. to everything is like, fuck you, change it back. Like, that's just the way life goes.

And so we were expecting it, and we certainly got that. And I think those people tend to amplify one another, especially on Twitter, the social network that I'm trying to escape with our new design. So if you're tweeting at me, change it back. I can just get your headlines on Twitter. It's like, well, yeah, that is the dynamic I am fighting against. I'm fighting against the hostility of this platform. We are together as a family.

on the flip side, you know, a couple days later, we're starting to get way more notes. I'm getting notes in my emails. I'm getting notes on Twitter. We're getting notes across our team. It's starting to click for people. So like, you can open us first thing in the morning and see a bunch of cool stuff. And you can check us once at night and see a bunch of cool stuff. And that's like, yeah, we didn't we didn't get it right. We don't think it's perfect. It's not done. We should change some things. And we will. Like that's like how it's going to go. And here's what I, here's what I. I'll say to you, to everyone. Apple made you use iOS 7 for one year. They're going to ship Stage Manager to a lot of people. And it's going to be like that for one year. Like, we're going to change our site faster than that. So just like breathe. We wanted to try some things.

Some of our site is like the most cutting edge web development you can do. And maybe it's a little too cutting. edge. Maybe we need to back it down a couple steps. But the main thing, which is, did I just publish the tube filter top 50 that I look at once a week to our site in five seconds and point out that the number of channels in the top 50 that are primarily YouTube shorts channels keeps growing every week. And then that was done in four minutes. And I got to share our audience with tube filter, which is a great resource and not have to overdo it and have that be an art. Yeah, I got to do that. And like, if we can just do that a little,

little bit more and make it valuable for people to check one more time a day and not have the toxicity of social media, I think we're going to be fine. And so, yeah, we're going to tweak the colors and fix the breakers and if we're going to do all the things. We're going to keep blurple. Blurple is deeply important to a lot of people. Blurple is extremely good. But the, here's the main thing we have to change is people keep saying there's too many fonts. There's only three fonts. What you are really reacting to is that the display of regular articles and the display of the quick posts are too different. So we actually just need to make them look more the same.

And that's like a pretty easy change. We have to do it. But like I think once you make that change and it's just there's more visual consistency, I think we're going to be fun. Yeah. And I will say the thing that's been the most fun for me the last few days is like way more of our Slack is now on our website, which I think is very cool. Like I went on vacation in August and I got yelled at for being in Slack.

And I realized one of the reasons I keep opening Slack is because we have this channel called Goods Tweet because I think there used to be one called good tweets that's now dead. So now there's one called Goods Tweet. And there's just like a long running list of like funny tweets in that channel. And I literally check it on purpose because I like it and it makes me happy. And it's like we've just built venues to put that stuff on our website, which was the point. It's like our job is to like see cool stuff on the internet and we want to give you more of it in public. And people are just having a blast of it. It's just so much fun to do. It's great. Yeah. It's just it's fun for our staff to be a part of our community.

And doing it on other people's platforms seem self-defeating. So we're going to try to do it on our own. And yes, that's a big change. And yes, the whole site isn't just a list of headlines anymore. But we think this is a, like, there are so many ways to get lists of our headlines. Like infinite, you can build custom RSS feeds for days. There's a page on our website that is one decade old. We'll put a link in the show notes about how to build custom RSS feeds out of the verge.

It all still works. We've been committed to RSS for one. If you are listening to this show, you know that we've been committed to RSS at a DNA level for like one decade and we're going to keep doing it and we'll make RSS feed for all the stuff. If you want those views, you can get them. You can just follow us on Twitter. We just tweet all the headlines every day. But we're going to try something else on our own platform. So like I said, we'll iterate.

I'm more pleased. We made everybody talk about a website in 2022. Yeah. The spiritual victory of making everybody talk about a website in 2022 is very high. reacting to the complaints about people wanting the website to be more like a direct injection RSS feed to the brain. Fine. But like I'm happy that people are reconsidering the value of the web in 2022. We've accomplished our first.

And if you read The Verge on a 40-inch ultra-wide monitor and you think that the column of the verge is too small, please just know that we hear you. Because we all have giant weird crazy monitors too. And we hear you. Most people use cell phones. Like half our staff has like the ultra-wides. Sean Hollister has like his monitor is as big as his death. Yeah, what does it look like on the, on that crazy Samsung thing that's 11 feet tall? Oh my gosh.

No, it's the vertical curves and the one that looks great, man. That's just a verge. Yeah, it's like that's what it's built for. They actually built it for us. That's a surprise. We started with the two views. We shipped a product, right? Like we started with the phone viewport because that's most people.

And we did like the standard laptop viewport because that's almost everybody else. We'll get there. Where's my E-ink view and my iPad view? It's all I want. I'm just saying Apple made you use iOS 7 for one year. Just take a breath. We're going to be fine. All right.

Speaking of Apple, phones. We have phones. A lot of fun. Yeah, you reviewed the pro, which I feel like is clearly the most interesting of the phones. Like, we didn't review the plus. Yeah, Allison's review of the iPhone 14 was very much. It's very funny. You should watch it.

It's very good. Her video is extremely good. Yeah. I mean, it's the same phone. Yeah. Only now you can tell you if you're in a car crash. It's even more the same phone than I realized. Like the thing I at least hoped was that in the camera in particular,

some of the like little upgrades would add up to something. And it kind of sounds like they barely do. It's like very much in the vein of if your phone is dying and you need a new one, this is probably the one to buy. If your phone is not dying and you don't need one, don't buy this one. Yeah. I think the iPhone, 14 is indicative of the fact that maybe there are no more people without cell phones.

Tell me more. Certainly not who might buy iPhones. Right. Like Apple's entire game now, and if you just look at the pricing of these phones, right? It's the, I know the 14 pro price off. They start $1,000 and the big one is $10.99, right? But then the carrier subsidies are out of control. It's just they're totally dependent on the carriers now because the carriers are all into your upgrade cycles.

they really want you to upgrade those phones because you'll sign another two years of 5G service for whatever reason you might want to do such a thing. Like Apple has created a world in which most people who are going to have iPhones have their iPhones. And they, yep, they need to be competitive and compete with Android and Conquest, those users. But that huge installed base,

if they can just turn them regularly, they're going to sell a lot of phones. Well, and it's almost like the incentive to make it dramatically better every year for those people is almost going away. because now it's like you're going to keep your phone until you need to upgrade for one reason or another, and then you're just going to upgrade to whatever the new one is. So the thing where Apple has to like ship something spectacularly new every year because that's the upgrade path for people is just gone.

How many people is that upgrade path for though, like the ones who are doing it year annually? I know a lot of people on our staff do and probably a lot of our listeners are doing the annual. But I feel like a lot of people are now just doing like three, four year upgrades. And even then, it's the same thing. Like, I got to wait until there's a reason to upgrade. 5G was not a reason for a lot of those people. I mean, the carriers will happily lie to you until you're... Yeah, carriers will tell me differently.

But your mom, Alex, is on, if I remember correctly, like an iPhone 10R, right? Yes. Yes. Your mom is going to buy an iPhone 14 and it's going to be like magic, right? Like, it is going to... She's not, though, because she watched Allison's video. So she's like, I guess I'm going to get a 13. Is she going to buy a pro?

Oh, she's going to buy a 13. Even that will feel like a huge upgrade, right? Like the summation of these over the course of three or four years is huge. Yeah. But each individual upgrade now is pretty minor. Yeah. I mean, I held off. I'm on an 11 pro.

My 14 pro is currently in Kentucky. I'm so excited for tomorrow. And like I'm sorry. My understanding of your situation is that you live in New York and your family is in Texas. Is it on its way to you in Kentucky or has it stopped in Kentucky? I just checked the UPS tracking. And it's like, you landed in Kentucky. I didn't know if you had like a burner house in Kentucky.

Has a P.O. box in Kentucky. She's like, I'm working an elaborate tax scam. It's technically my main residence. Well, not anymore. Like, it's now everybody on the podcast does. Yeah. The Kentucky state tax authorities are on the case. If you work in, like, if you're a tax auditor in the state of Kentucky, you're listening

in the Rochester, let me know. I would just, what's that like for you? We have a lot of Alex information to tell you. Don't call them. Don't call them. It's fine. We're excited about the upgrade, is the point of all. Yeah, yeah.

I'm fairly excited about it because it actually feels like, like, for me, the dynamic island was a moment where I was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to upgrade for that. Oh, cool. Which is probably very stupid. My sister was like, who would upgrade for the dynamic island? And I was like, well, I did. I just bought a phone for it. I mean, it's fun.

Yeah, and it feels like. But I think that the cycle has been two years and it is stretching its way to four. Right. And you can kind of see that Apple's slowing the pace of iterative updates. So year to year, it's almost nothing. Yeah. Right. Four years.

It's massive. Yeah. And probably your battery is shot, so you're like extremely excited that your phone's going to last all right. That's the biggest part for me is I'm excited for my phone to last more than four hours. Well, yes. Four hours, yeah. So we've now dispensed with talking about the iPhone 14.

And that's the iPhone 14. Which we have not actually talked about at all. Get the 13. The iPhone 14 exists to be upgraded to. Mm-hmm. It does not exist. exist for any other like meaningful reason. It's just slow iterative updates and it's there.

They cannot advertise the new 48 megapixel camera. They can't advertise a new chip in 14 Pro. 20 minute commercial trying to explain it. Yeah, they can't advertise a new design. They can't advertise the size of the camera bump. What do they got? They got the island. And it's like, oh, that's why they named it the island.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a great. Actually, I've super come around to the name. Uh-huh. Because if you are me and you are walking the earth, And people are like, what do you think of the dynamic island? You're like, let me tell you about notifications and status alerts and smartphone operating systems.

And you're like, this is actually how I want to connect with people. Yeah. This is the bond that will bring us together is your newfound interest in smartphone alerts. And then I look up and they have been running for minutes. The distance between us has grown so immensely. With their little pixel phone. But that's why I have this community. Yeah.

So that's the 14, right? I think it is just a very iterative update. It's designed to capture that group of iPhone 11 owners who it's time to upgrade. And I think all those people will be very happy. Yeah. If you have an iPhone 13, just like stay away. Actually, I think the iPhone 13, in particular the iPhone 13 Pro, you can get it on sale. Tremendous upgrade target.

It might be actually a superior upgrade target than either the 14 or the 14 crowd. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. So if you have an iPhone 11 and you can like get one of those on sale, who that's a good idea. right? It's like a very complete phone. And this is really the point. This was my review of the 14 Pro. The iPhone 13 is complete. It is a finished thought. Yep. And in Deider's review of it last year, he was like, there's not a lot of here to say. Right? And like you kind of end up. Yeah, they did the thing. Yeah. And you kind of end up reviewing iOS. Yeah. Right at like a basic level. And that's like, you know, it's Apple. It's hardware and software and services. And that did a, you know, like Tim Cook will give that speech. But as a product, as a finished product with melds hardware and software. There was just not a lot of rough edges to the iPhone 13 Pro. Yeah. You can criticize the camera in some little, like all this stuff, whatever.

It didn't have an always on display. It's like all this, they didn't have a bunch of Android features, basically. With the 14 Pro, they've added an always on display. They've added the satellite thing. They've added the island. All of those things are like wildly unfinished. The 48 megapixel camera is new. So you're like, Apple's now in the beginning of this new path.

And you're like, oh, I can see all the rough edges. I can see all the things they didn't add. I can see all good. the idea is they didn't complete or what they left off to ship this one. And that's like pretty exciting. At the same time, it's also like, boy, there's a lot to criticize. Yeah. Well, and I guess what I wonder with the 14 Pro and even still wonder kind of after reading

your review is like, is there a long road towards something really cool here? Are we going to get to the iPhone 15? They're going to like polish all those things. And then we're going to be back to thinking like, okay, they more or less finished this medium interesting thing they were trying to. do. I think you have to take it in chunks. Okay. So the island, I think we won't know if it's awesome or if it's 3D Touch Part 2 until next year. Right. Like straight up, the live activities API has to chip, which is turning into a huge deal for Apple, right? This like background task,

live activities API that they put, they're doing an iOS 16, which we saw, when we saw it at WBC, I think David and I both like, oh, that could be a whole thing. But it is the foundation of the dynamic island. So all the concepts they showed from flighty and lift and all that. They all need to use it. It's the sand underneath the dynamic island. Yeah.

What are islands made of? It's the volcanic rock. Is it sand? The volcanic rock. There you go. It's the dormant volcano underneath. No, but I think, and the interesting is I've been talking to a bunch of developers about this and there's still very much a sense of like uncertainty about

the best way to use this stuff. So I think you're going to see a lot of folks try stuff and roll things out that are live or aren't live that make use of the island. And there's a lot of open questions about not like whether this can be cool, but what it looks like when it is cool that I think is, to your point,

going to take a while to shake out. And especially with the live activities, and I think it's true on the island too. Like, it's coming for you. It's not a thing you get a lot of control over. Like, if you're going to have notifications, on, you're also going to get live activities. So I think figuring out sort of where that pendulum should stop before it's like super

annoying and in your face all the time is going to take a minute. Yeah, so here's one that we couldn't review because the live activities API hasn't shipped. There are no apps that use it. Right now in our video and every video, every demo of the island, what do people do? They start the music player and that flies up to the island and then they open a timer and then the island splits in two. Beautiful. The classic.

The clock app is the most innovative app on the iPhone. Like, prove me wrong. It's the one. All right, but that makes sense. And there's an internal priority system in iOS that says the music player is more important than the timer. Oh. So the timer's going to go in this little circle and the music player is going to be the big one. If you then make a phone call, iOS is like, actually, the phone call is the most important thing and we'll kick the music player.

We'll stop it. We're going to stop your music while you're playing a phone call and timer's it. So, like, there's this internal priority system that Apple has developed. Who knows, right? Like, when you add Uber to that mix, who wins? Will Uber respect said priority system? When you add sports scores to that mix, who knows? Like, there are millions of kinds of these live activities.

Is Apple handling that, or is that going to be up to the developers? It's going to be up to the users. Seems like a terrible idea for it to be up to the developers. So it's not up to the users, as far as I know. So Apple has this priority. priority system. You don't like assign yourself, like a five. Yeah.

I think they've ranked basically the APIs. Yeah. My app's not very important. I mean, that's what they did on Android, right? Notifications on Android have priority levels, and the developers basically pick their priority levels, and everyone picks, like, the top priority. They're like, I'm the most important.

Surprise. It's true on iOS, too. You need to know what's new on Netflix right now. Yeah, Apple has time-sensitive notifications, and like half of my notifications are marked time-sensitive because developers like, of course this is time sensitive. Yeah, it seems like a terrible idea to give the developers any control over that because they are. Well, this is where I think Apple's control of the app store for better or worse comes into play.

Like, they're going to pay a lot of attention to how this thing is being used. So, you know, here's a question. What if developers just start putting ads in the dynamic island? It's a thing you could reasonably do, right? I'll throw my phone out the window. You're near a McDonald's and McDonald's is like, boop, boop. Stop in for some French fries. You can see it coming.

Yeah. Right. And like, I think Apple's ability to police its platform, and I think perhaps more importantly, it's absolute willingness to police its platform is going to come through here. So there's just this part of it I can't review yet. Yeah. Right? Because that huge ecosystem of experiments has not actually begun. Then the part you can review is like you're just using your phone. And it's like, oh, I'm not supposed to use this. Like it's just background stuff. Like I'm what I'm supposed to do, my iPhone is use apps. Yeah. Like, there's not really a world in which you're, like, using the Maps app to navigate. Via the island. And you open another app. Right? Like, how often does this happen to you? It's very rare.

There's a world in which you have the Maps app up. And a phone call comes in and, like, that little thing is fine. But just, like, sort of the opening round is like, oh, yeah, it's the music. It's phone calls. It's the timer. That's what I really want there. And kind of everything else is just like a demo. You kind of compared it to 3D touch earlier, but I feel like it's more adjacent to, I'm sorry, to everyone besides me who loved it, the touch bar.

That's rude. Like I feel like it's that same. And I wonder if like the touchbar part of its failure was that like Apple and developers had very little interest in it. Like developers didn't do a lot with it. Apple did like three things and it was like, yep, there it is. And there was no, nothing more happened with it. Is this different? Like is this going to be different?

Yeah, I think it's different. I hope so. The problem with the touch part is like Apple replaced a set of good and useful buttons that had been on computers for 1,000 years. Yep. You don't need that. And it was like not useful and it was like hard to use and whatever. This is like, all right, there was a notch which you basically didn't see. I know some people claim to be able to see it. And now there's this thing that you definitely see because it is always moving. Like stuff is happening up there. all the time. And it's like, you got to pay for that, right? You got to make that so useful. It's worth it to be there in your face all the time. Yeah. I always think of things in terms of cost, right? So like the first Apple Watch to me was not worth it because the cost of having to care for its little battery was like too high. Yeah. Right. He was always charging it and like didn't do a lot and it was pretty slow and it was like, oh, I'm putting more into this than getting out of it.

The notch was like a great value proposition. It took away a little bit of screen, but it added face ID and like after a day you're like I'm not even looking at this thing anymore. Yeah. Now I face ID. This is like they've made it more prominent. It's in your face. You're looking at it. You kind of want to use it.

And it doesn't do a lot yet. Like it is legitimately cool that the air drop indicator is in there. It's cool. Like that's just neat. Yeah. I do think you might be underrating the widget access from other apps. That like I, to me it's like the closest thing we've ever had to like persistent playback controls on an iPhone, which I would argue if done really well is like

hugely useful. Yeah. There was a tweet somebody did the other day that was basically like after looking at the dynamic island. They never noticed that your phone doesn't tell you what you're listening to as you're using it. It just has, there's just audio playing. There's no sort of latent information about it unless you go looking for it in one way or another.

And I've spent a bunch of time thinking like, is it, is that actually a thing I want? If I'm like listening to music, do I need it like ticker, scrolling the song I have on at all times. Like, probably not. But do I want access to playback without having to do three or four other things? Like, yes, that strikes me is really useful. But you did. You just swipe down.

You get like the widgets on the notification center. Yeah, but the like. Or it's in a control center. The control center thing sucks. I will, I will. Control center is useless. And I will not stand for anyone telling me control center is good. Okay.

So then here's, but here's my push back to you. You have to tap and hold. Yeah, you want it to just be the one tapped. get there. You just tap it and open it. Since we published that take, like I've heard arguments, like some apps won't have it, you know, like they won't have a widget. You'll just like go back there anyway. Like, okay, fine. What, like, what is the appropriate widget for like, I don't know, the stocks app? It's just like take you this. The stocks app makes a dynamic island widget, like we're all doomed. We financialized too much of our lives. Yeah. The widget part of it is

really cool. That's actually the coolest part of it is because they, to your point, it's like always on playback controls. They have made it look like a screen that gets bigger with this subpixel anti-aliasing. Right. It's very crisp and it like opens very cool and all the animations are cool. Like that's the way to think about it. Like you've got a secondary display on your iPhone now that lives way over the top of the system. Like a touch bar.

Like a touch bar. And it is a bar that you touch. Sure. It doesn't, they didn't take away the escape key on the keyboard. The cost isn't that high. Yeah. They added. It would have been like if the touch bar had been above the function key bar.

And instead. No, it would have been like if Apple had replaced the dock on your Mac with a touchbar. Like that's functionally what's going on here. It's like a space you kind of use that is still a software space that they're turning into something different. I'm just thinking about that and like trying to swipe across the bottom of my monitor. That's gross. The look on the opposite face right now is incredible. No, thank you.

Absolutely not. So, like, we'll see, like, that's my big, this is what I mean. So the first bucket is like a year from now, we'll be able to confidently evaluate the dynamic island. Yeah. Right now, what I can, I'm just telling you, the tradeoff is a little bit upside down. Like, it's more in your face. If you, I run my phone in light mode, it covers up the content. You can see, it's just a black pill on top of your display all the time.

In a way, the notch, because there was no bright contrast at the top of the notch, it was easy to ignore. But now there's screen at the top, too. so you can just like see it glowing and it moves. So you're like, look at all time. It's worth it. Is it cool? Do people want to talk to me about status indicators on the phone? They do.

I love it. Alex, do you use dark mode or light mode? I am a dark mode like avid religious believer. Yeah, it's like full crazy to me that you use your phone on light mode, Nilai. Like that is, it's, it's, do you just turn on your phone at night and it blinds you to death? Well, based on tweets about our redesign, I am not the only one. I mean, we have some some light mode. Lovers also at The Verge.com.

I mean, I too love to be blinded by my phone every time I turn it on. It's great. It's upsetting to me. I have like a white screen on me right now and it's giving me great lighting on one side of my face. And that's the only reason for light mode. Okay, so that was the first bucket, a year from now. The second bucket is like, who knows? Yeah.

The other thing I put in the year from now bucket would be the camera. Yeah. Really? Why would you put that in the year from now bucket? Because it feels a little, like, apart from the sharpness issues you had, it felt pretty complete in your review. And this is like an old idea. Apple did not like invent a new theory about photography here. It's just pixel bins.

Right. And then like, so what you get out of it is that the sensor is much bigger. So you get a little bit better blur like Boca and the photos, which is nice. Not so much that like you have to like go look for it. And then it's there. And it's a very, it is very nice that it's not so much more than 13. Yeah. and you get a little bit better low light performance.

You do get better fine detail, but that fine detail comes with a bunch of sharpening. You're just not getting... A year from now, I think Apple will be more confident in how to use this sensor. Yeah. Right. I think right now they played it pretty safe. And they're not pushing it. And I'm just telling whoever from Apple is listening to this, like the photo processing

is getting too aggressive. Like the combo platter of noise reduction and sharpening that is occurring on the iPhone right now is like just getting weird. Like too much. like back it off. It is the side by sides of particularly the 14 pro and the pixel six were pretty wild just that it's like and you even say this in their view it's like these are two photos of ostensibly the same thing that just have wildly different opinions about what a good photo is supposed to be and you can look at them both and they're both pretty good photos. It's like

this is in incredibly bad lighting and it's it's a relatively like sharp nice looking photo but it is stylistically like miles apart from each other and it's it's wild like it's gotten so much more pronounced over time Samsung has this like very warm tone idea about the world where everything is like colorful and smooth and beautiful Samsung phones are on a different planet I don't know what else to say about this like they're in a different dimension where everything is the different color I kind of like the world it lives in it's a very like optimistic universe that Samsung's phones live in where everything is like beautiful and the sun is always setting. So the last time I did an iPhone pro, I didn't do last year, two years ago, I did the 12 pros.

And my takeaway that year was all these phones are the same. They all look the same. Like no differences exist. And then this year, they're as wildly different as they've ever been. I mean, like, in bright light, when you like shoot a person on a city street, like they look exactly the same. But it's on the edges when they have to make decisions, it's like, it's hard to even describe. Like they're making artistic decisions that are wildly different from each other. Yeah.

And the pixel is very sort of like neat and tidy. And then Apple is just like let light rain see what happens. Just like the dynamic range. Yeah. It's nuts. On the 14 Pro versus the 6th. The pixel 6 pro is is incredible. You're looking, oh, I can like look into these buildings on the pixel 6 pro.

And I simply know that there are buildings there with the iPhone. Yeah. And they're very bright. They're very brightly. They're very brightly lit up. You know, it's like other stuff. Like Apple, it does not appear. Apple spent a lot of time on portrait mode.

You know, and like Samsung is just a, even a baby S-22, not the S-22 ultra, that's better portrait mode segmentation of like hair. The bummer. Than the iPhone does now. There it is. And we actually did that demo with the S-22 just because it's interesting to see that the not-pro Samsung phone is outperforming the iPhone 14-Pro. I think that, you know, the pixel is contrasty and moody.

it always has been. Apple is, what did you say, Alex? It's like Festival of Lights. Like, it's very Thomas Kincaid. Yeah. It's so much. Like, everything is very bright. Uh, there's almost no shadow. Like, can you switch it? Can you switch it to rich contrast mode or like mess with the, yes, you can do all these things. But it's just, I think Apple has gotten, they've like backed themselves into a corner with the processing a little bit. And they, this is, I think now with a new sensor that can collect more light, they can get out of it and go to a different look that does. does not require them to do the amount of noise because when you shoot 48 megapixel raw i was just about to ask it's not like the world's noisiest photo like it's a fine photo they're huge it takes the shutter like when you push the shutter the capture time is really long oh interesting like i would not run around shooting a 48 per rau 48 megapixel pro rile like you'll just get annoyed in the files like 80 megs i can destroy this phone in one afternoon but you can see there's a lot for apple to work with there but i just i think they're a year away from that thing and then

only knows. Like they've, you know, they've rebranded this whole thing as the photonic engine. And they've really the main move there is they've moved deep fusion, the midlight and low light pixel by pixel. Now they're running it early in the process on uncompressed data. And it's still just like, what does sweater mode do? Like, did this do anything? Like, who knows? But like, you know, they're getting more comfortable sort of talking about their processing pipeline as something other than magic, you know? And like, I think that's good. And I, I think they can start making different decisions. So that's what I mean, it's a year away from being like, oh, there's a 48 megapixel sensor in this camera.

You can do stuff that the 13 probe definitely cannot do. And right now they're just like right on top of each other. Yeah. So is that, is the next turn there then to basically open up like a new set of camera modes to people? Because it feels like what you're describing is like Apple has this like incredible amount of raw power now. And the solution is to give that back to users. Like to just let you do more stuff with your camera feels like. the next turn from like we just collect an incredible amount of light and have an incredible

amount of processing power. Like find clever ways to put that back into the camera app. Seems like where this goes. And I feel like I just think about like the, what's the thing called in macOS now where you can use your phone as the webcam and it'll also look at your desk? Continuity camera. Continuity camera. Thank you.

Continuity camera feels like a version of that thing, right? Where they're just like, okay, now we have lots of pixels to use and lots of processing power with which to use them. like what wacky new stuff can we open up? And it feels like that's what I would hope Apple would spend the next year working on. Are they going to focus on the camera, though? Because I feel like the camera for the longest time has been the differentiator year to year for most phones, right? Like most phones, the big upgrades camera related.

But it also feels like the majority of people have gotten bored with that don't care as much about the camera upgrades. Like present company excluded. Yeah, the 12 pro camera was fine. Yeah. The 13 pro camera was great. Like, what are you going to do? But like action mode, I think is an example of something that is like a, and I've said this on their show before, like is a meaningful change.

It doesn't sound like it's great yet. But like that kind of thing is the kind of stuff where it's like, everybody's just running around making TikToks all day right now. If you can make them more stable, like you have accomplished something real for people. Yeah. Yeah. So action mode is like really interesting. You know, because what they're doing is across all the sensors.

They're just like cropping down. You know there's like the TikTok filter, which just like holds on your face. that is what it is doing. Like it's just, it's just, it's cropping the sensor down. And then as you move around, it's just moving around the sensor. Yeah.

Which is, you know, that's neat. But as far as I know, when you do it on the 48 megapixel sensor on the main wide, it doesn't use the additional space. So you don't get like more stabilization off the 48 megapixel sensor than you do off the other 12 megapixel sensors.

Like that's just like one of those like things you could just figure out how to do. You know, like right. The A16 biome. processor is like a is what I can from what I'm told by Apple, the performance is off the unlabeled charts. So we all just need to be 50 times better. Really excited about iOS 17. No, I don't think the camera is the thing they don't update. You're right. Yeah. It's like, and that's weird. I just think that's weird. I think they should start doing camera updates and versions of iOS. Like you have the hardware,

particularly like the iPhone 13 pro to the iPhone 14. Same processor. Same. camera, as far as we can tell, right? 12 micro-pixel lens are same lens. Why does the 14 have the photonic engine with deep fusion and the 13 pro doesn't get it? That's just weird. It's a software camera. Yeah. Because you need to pay for it.

Like, I don't, that's like at some point when Apple does the segmentation, they're, they're just playing games that I think are dumb for software to play. Yeah. But I don't know. We'll see. But I'd put the camera, like action mode is great if you have a ton of light. And it's still not that great. But like, it's a baby step forward to a really important thing.

And so a year from now will it be like a meaningful change, like maybe. And that's like, that's, I put the camera and the island in that like one year from now. I would put always on display in one year from now because I think a lot of people are going to discover that they want they're always on display to be slightly more off than this display. Take us through that because that was the thing I am like the single feature about the 14 pro I'm most excited about is the always on display. And I left your review kind of thinking like maybe I'm going to buy this. and then turning the always on display off. I'm definitely turning the always on display off. Why is it not good?

Bluntly, Apple's behind. Android phones have had this for a long time. And they've had to compete on making that thing good, right? So like across the Android landscape, always on displays, like you can customize them, you can put widgets on them,

you can make them look like just a clock, you can make them look like all kinds of things. They look wildly different than the home screen. Apple's like, what if we just dim the lock screen? Yeah. This is what is occurring. And they don't, you know,

and it's still very color. So like Becca and I were sitting an extra show. We both thought our phones were on all the time. So we say functionally not that different from just having your phone on, but the brightness turned like almost all the way down. Is that like basically what it feels like? Well, and the screen is only refreshing at one hurts. Like imagine you had a way shittier version of your phone.

Yeah. So it's like, you know, the screen isn't updating, but notifications are flying. Like it looks too on. Yeah. And like I would prefer like that pixel style faded or Samsung style. fade it all the way to black and white, you know, and like, show a clock. Show a clock and like my next calendar appointment. Yep.

Call it a day, right? And the other, I noticed this and I think Marquez noticed this too, it feels like it's running the battery down faster. Yeah. Which is like the main thing Apple says it doesn't do. It's just like, it's the wrong set of trades. The main thing we don't want to happen. It has to because you're still, you're still firing those pixels. Like everybody else did it black and white because you could turn.

and all the black because just the pixels are almost. Yeah, and they're like, what if we left the entire screen on? Yeah. But at 20% brightness. Right.

A better way of thinking about the always on display on most Android phones is that it is the mostly off display. Yeah. And Apple's like, you know, this thing's on. Yeah.

It's just on. So I think, you know, like as we've seen from Iowa 16, tons and tons of customization is in iOS 6. Yeah. So it's just like another year of refinement away from being great.

Yeah. These are all the reasons it got an eight. Like we reset our scores because we had score inflation. But I'm just like, well, always on display. Like not a thing. Like cameras like pretty much the same. Like I wouldn't say it's necessarily better than the pixel or the S-22 Ultra. In fact, in some ways it's definitely worse.

In some ways it's much better. But yeah, it's like it's a tie to just behind. Like that's how I would put the camera. On video, I think it's way ahead of everybody as always. And then the island is like, who knows? It's crisp. Question mark city. It's very crisp.

And the rest of the stuff is like satellite connectivity. It's like it's not even out yet. I can't review it. I can just tell you it's there. Car crash detection. Like, I don't know. Did you, you didn't crash a car? We did not crash a car.

I have heard tell that there are some plans to crash some cars. I have also probably heard that. Yeah, we're going to, Alex, after the show, we have to figure out our insurance for us for the car crashing. It's going to be great, guys. Stay tuned. This feels like the sort of thing I'm going to be made to do against my will. And I just want everyone to know that I don't want to do it. I'm saying it on this podcast.

We have a meeting tomorrow. Bring your fluffiest sweater. Maybe a really fluffy hat. Like just... A fluffy hat? A fluffy hat. Bulky stuff. That is the most Texas car crash instruction in the other hand.

You don't need a helmet. You just get yourself a bulky hat. You're going to be great. You just go like this. Just hunch and fly. All right. We got to take a break. Yes.

We're going to talk about the iPhone so much. Come on now. We're going to take a break and we'll come back and talk about this. Watch. Yeah. I tell you what. Wear your fluffy hats. We'll be right back.

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I think we can dispense with the Apple Watch Series 8 very quickly. I think that's right. Unfortunately, that seems to be right. It also does car crash. It does car crash. Put on your fluffy gloves. So car crash plans. in the future aside. The video team tried to trigger crash detection with the series 8 by buying

an RC truck, mounting a GoPro to it, and then having the watch on the truck just like crash into stuff. And that's, I mean, why do we, why did we, why did we start the verge? I learned about that because I just heard the whine of the motor through the office. And I was like, what is that noise? And then I saw it whip around the corner and just crash sadly into a desk. Yesterday was one of the busiest days in our office in the past two years. There's like apparently some sales conference. And obviously we had the relaunch and there's a bunch of product people. And it's like, how does the verge team show up?

Well, we've attached a watch to an RC truck and we're just crashing it into walls. This is what we do here. Welcome. We're professional adults. Yeah, it's great. It did not work. We did not generate sufficient G-forces to trigger. Or the watch was like silly children.

Yeah. This won't do it. The only answer is to get slightly bigger vehicles. until it actually triggers. I think it might also know that it wasn't on a person. So I think we have to get like a lukewarm sausage and like, you know, just be like trying to trick it into the acidase detection. No, we have to put, we have to put David in a power wheels and then see what happens.

I'll do it. I think you're just getting in the car with a fluffy helmet. That's what you're doing. It's in the mail. Get ready. So the series eight largely the same as a series seven. I think V's point was if you have like a series three. you should upgrade and you'll have the time of your life

and everyone else will be fine because the new watchOS will bring you almost all of these features. Right. It's kind of the same story as the iPhone 14, right? It's like if yours is, if like you use the one you have and it is obviously nearing the end of its life, upgrade to

this one, you'll be psyched. If you already have one that you like quite a bit, don't worry about it. Nothing is going to change. The Ultra seems to be a very different story, but we haven't reviewed that yet, so we'll see. But the, yeah, the series eight is like, for me, it's like, I haven't had a watch in a few years. I was all in on the watch for a little while and then kind of like tapped out on having

too many notifications on my wrist. So I just like stopped being an Apple watch guy for a few years. And I think I'm going to get back in. And now the question is like if I had bought a Series 7, I would not feel the need to upgrade. Now I can't buy a Series 7. So I'm going to buy a Series 8 because it's just the one to buy. Yeah. But there doesn't seem to be anything.

If you've bought a watch in the last, say, three years, it's very unlikely that anything here is going to blow your mind. It's wild to me that Apple got to this point. of these, like, teeny, tiny annual upgrades this quickly with the watch, but this just seems to be kind of where we are. I mean, they could fix the battery life. Like, there's stuff they could actually be doing that they're not or that they haven't. I'm not sure that's even true, though.

Like, it's a small thing. Well, they did fix the battery life with the Ultra. They made it gigantic and still. They made a shiny shadow in there. Shove a couple more batteries in there. They solved your problem. Yeah, I think it, you know, it's interesting because the reason we're saying the iPhone 14 is at the siter of stage is like they're out of iPhone customers.

And so now they just have to be there and then squeeze you for Apple TV money as hard as they can. The watch is not there, right? The total market for Apple watches is the installed base of the iPhone. And as far as I know, they have not yet arrived at one-to-one Apple watch to iPhone sales. If they are, Apple is lying on its earnings. Well, I mean, that's part of why they did the thermometers, right? Temperature readers.

What are those called? Temperature sensors. There we go. Your belief is that the thermometers. That there are people around the world with iPhones being like, if only I knew what temperature was. No, because I think this is part of, there's been this weird gender divide. Oh, I see what you mean. There's been this gender divide in wearables.

Oftentimes people who identify as women have been pointed towards like, get the aura ring, get a Fitbit. Like, you don't need a whole lot. Oh, you identify as a man. You need the biggest, smartest watch you can buy. And this, like, Apple kind of perpetuated that by being like, look at this manly, manly, enormous ultra, and then look at this smaller one that can track your period or help you anticipate your ovulation through temperature readings. No, it cannot help you do that. It can't.

It can tell you after the fact. It'll tell you afterwards. And then you can use that to be like, hmm, maybe I'll have a better idea for next time. Right. And then Apple is not on the hook for their off book on license. FTA. Right. That's just you guessing.

That's you guessing. Right. You just want to get that sensor and go for that. But it's very like fundamentally appealing to these women and saying, hey, if you don't want to go get one of these other devices out there, if you want to be part of the Apple ecosystem, we've got you now. And I don't know if that's going to be successful, especially because like they really half-assed it by being like, we will not get any sort of approval whatsoever. We're just going to put this out here so you can anticipate and use it on your own time. And that's like not great. But yeah.

Yeah. But I, you know, I think the user review had it right. There's a couple apps that on different platforms are that do have the certification to do it. And you can use those. You can see how Apple would, you can see how they would show up on a watch and maybe get the certification. You can see how Apple would go after the certification. Yeah. So yeah, I buy that.

Like, okay, they're expanding the capabilities of this thing such that they might be able to get more people. Right. Yeah. And I think that's exactly what it is. It's just like, we know there's this huge market of people who historically haven't been buying these as often. They've been on these other platforms. And now we can convince them to get this really big watch.

It continues to grow larger every year. Not every year. Every other year. Yeah. I'm upset about it. I have a theory about this that I'm just developing right this second. And I'm curious what you guys think. It seems like one of the things that Apple pulled off with the iPhone was to basically open up

the app store and make everybody else make the case for the iPhone. for them, right? Like the Apple designed very few of the best things about the iPhone, ultimately. That is not true on the Apple Watch in like any meaningful way. Apple designs all of the things about the Apple Watch at this point. And the like, there are apps on it, obviously, but I've seen very few Apple Watch apps that appear to be like Apple Watch first apps. They're like companions to other things or sort of barely thought of things. And I, yeah, but there's one now. There's exactly one. Flow. No, it's, Oceanic Plus by Hughish on the Apple Watch Ultra.

This is the one. They built the entire watch. They partnered with another company, which is a big move for Apple. And that app is supposed to sell the Apple Watch Ultra to scuba divers. And I don't think that it is meant to be used as an extension of an iPhone app

because if you're using your iPhone in the open ocean, you have problems. So like they've got one. Yeah. And maybe that's the beginning of something else. but I think that's just mostly related to how often do you have your Apple Watch without your phone?

And they still sell lots of, I would bet most of Apple Watches that get sold don't even have the cellular capability. And even the ones, I'd send the last year and a half with a cellular capable Apple Watch that I never hooked up. Yeah.

Because it's been a pandemic. I was like, what am I going to make a call from this downstairs? I'll just go upstairs and get my phone. Is there ever a case where, like, because I never feel comfortable going with just my watch and not my phone, right?

Like if I get a phone call, then I'm going to have to figure out the AirPods situation. I can't play music on it as well. Like, I don't trust the Apple pay and stuff on it. I should, but I don't. Yeah, you should definitely trust that. That's fine. But I think there, I'm not the only one. I think there is a lot of people who do have this, like, slight phobia of just going with the watch and leaving the phone at home.

Like, you should do it. When I, when we lived in the city and I would go on walks with Max, I would only take the watch. Uh-huh. And it was great because I didn't have my phone. And so, like, I could get texts. I could make the one phone, like I could make the emergency phone call if I needed it. I could pay for stuff. I still had my wallet.

But it was great because I couldn't like check Twitter and see what people were mad about. But besides those walks, how often are you without your phone? Well, now I live in a house that's full of computers. Yeah. It's a real problem. I got to buy another house. It's no computers. Shack in the woods.

I'm just saying, give it a shot. Yeah. But like we said we're going to dispense with the series A quickly. Like now we are just generically talking about the Apple Watch. Yes. Right. The Series 8 is an instantiation of the Apple Watch is very iterative, very nice, and they've added capabilities that might appeal to a few more people, maybe many more people.

And focus modes, too. In focus. That one's cool because I'm going to be able to have like, when I'm not at work, have one that doesn't have my calendar on it. That's good. Not having to look at my calendar while I'm off work. That sounds great. Yeah.

We'll talk about the Ultra more next week. I think that's the interesting one. Seriously, very nice. If you have a three upgrade, upgrade watchOS, you're going to be very happy. David, do you want to talk about iOS 16 real quick? Sure. I mean, you've used it actually in a funny way, in a more advanced way than I have. One of the funny things that, I mean, it comes back to what we're talking about before, right?

Like one of the most interesting things about iOS 16 is going to be live activities in the dynamic island. Because the whole thesis of iOS 16, if I was to like have a big, heady thought about iOS 16 is that it is trying to make your phone do more things. without you having to do them. And we've talked about this already on the show, but it's like the always on screen is about this like, how do you get information without having to open up your phone?

Which I think is like an absolutely correct path for Apple to be on. Based on your review, it doesn't sound like it's handling it perfectly, but like lock screen widgets are amazing. Like huge win. I wish I could have more of them. I wish they were more interactive. But like I can tap on my phone and I can see what is next on my calendar and I can press one button to take a note on my phone.

You went widgets instead of the cutout? Yeah, none of my pictures are cool enough to need a cutout. Although I do now my calendar widget is over top of my wife's face, and she is not thrilled with that, I would say. There was some consternation. But I think it's great. And having a bunch of different lock screens that like Alex is talking about or hooked to focus modes is great.

There's like these little ideas, especially about the lock screen that I think Apple got like really right. And then everything else about iOS 16 is just like common sense stuff that it would have been great to have had several years ago, but it's here now and pretty happy about it. And that's like, that's basically been the story of iOS for a while, as they're just like,

oh, here's a future you want. We made it for you. Yeah. It's interesting because all the stuff you're describing that you want on the lock screen is stuff that I have in my Apple Watch. That's interesting. Right.

Like, I never do any of this customization because like what I put, I just had, I use the modular face in the watch. Right. Yeah. It's like, all right,

there's the calendar. I just look at it. Like, there's not much else, I guess. It's, that's a weird dynamic. Yeah.

Like you can overload your lock screen and ambient information or you can just like overload your walk. Right. Yeah. No, I think that's right. Yeah. I did the cut out because I don't need the widgets. Like those are all on my watch.

Yeah. But I do have one quibble with iOS 16. And I was talking with Will Joel, our creative director. And we were mainly talking about the verge website. And I was grilling him on the colors and everything because I wanted to understand it because I just think it's neat to talk about color choices. Is it the clock fonts? It was the clock fonts.

Like we immediately started talking about the clock fonts. So like, I was like, look at these fonts. I'm talking about the verge site. And I'm like, these fonts are great. Unlike these fonts. And he had an really, really interesting point that I thought was great, which is that like the watch fonts, they've given us so much choice. It's almost anti-Apple because they've given us these really ugly watch fonts, right? Like, they are all kind of unattractive.

And they didn't think what they didn't have that like Apple touch. Because Apple usually is so good at design. And if it's going to give you choices, it's always going to. to give you choices that it thinks are aesthetically pleasing. And I refuse to believe that it thinks these fonts are aesthetically pleasing, especially because they don't, like the serif fonts you can choose, don't work with the widget sansara fonts. They clash and you're like, this is ugly. Yep. And so un-apple. And it was just really, I hate it. That's what they want. It's MySpace time for Gen Z. And it's going to happen on their lock screens. That's real. I mean, the fact that that Widget Smith app is so

massively popular is like there are definitely people at Apple Park who took notice of that that like people want to make their phones uglier in the service of making it look more like them and that's actually the correct thing for Apple to do I also Alex to your point I think it's not Apple I think what you just described is Johnny Ive like the thing where it's just like this is the right answer and if you don't like it you're wrong and can just go screw yourself yeah that's Johnny that was all Johnny Ive and I think like when he's gone you can draw a pretty straight line to this stuff. He was like he was that Apple design. I think if if this was if that was Johnny and this is like obviously an operating system made without his influence for the most part as far as we know

less than less than previous years at the very least. Less influence certainly. Yeah. Then what does that mean for Apple in its its own philosophy about design because that's a pretty radical shift to say like to go from being like we we know it looks good and will guide you to. I don't. Oh, here's some fonts. Here's some colors. You do you. It's not, it's some, that's some, that's what it's some fonts and some colors. If Apple was like any font and iOS users were like, comic sands, let's do it.

Like, they're not doing that. They've pre-selected some aesthetics for you. But they're bad aesthetics. And you may engage in them. But they're like. But like, like, some of them are very ugly. I agree. But I think like the, even when you go to pick a lock screen, it actually does this in a very

interesting way because it gives you, it, it, It basically like stack ranks what it thinks are good ideas. And it'll even pick a bunch of your photos that it's like, what if you use this photo as your lock screen? That might look nice. But then if you like... It picked a photo of my friend Sam at his wedding. Crushed it. And it was like, don't you want a picture of your friend Sam at his wedding to look at every day for the rest of your life when you turn on your phone?

And I was like, no, Apple. What's wrong with your friend Sam? What do you have against Sam? Like, I mean, he's fine. But we're not friends enough for him to be on my phone like that. All my lock screens are. are of you guys. I don't know what you're talking about.

There's already a TikTok meme of like people changing the lock screen for their side pieces. It's pretty good. Focus modes. That's a good use of focus modes. I miss my cheating focus mode. It's good. It's all you.

All right. We should take another break. I can't wait for these live activities. It's the point of iOS 16 is like live activities. Yeah. It's going to be cool. It's going to be very good. Like it's a big deal.

And it's just like not here yet. All right. We've got to take another break. We'll go through a little lightning around and we come back. We're right back. Support for this show comes from Whatnot. Whether you're selling online or out of a storefront, you already know the challenge. You're simply hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk in.

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but before we do, can I give one more iOS 16 thing? Yes. I got the greatest comment that I've ever gotten from a story that I wrote on the verge.com, and it has emboldened me to share the thing that I discovered on this podcast. So I wrote in the iOS 16 review that it was stupid that you couldn't sort in messages just to see your unread messages because that's stupid. And you've never been able to do that. And it's stupid that that can't happen.

You can unsend messages. That's great. You can edit messages. That's great. You couldn't just sort to see the unread messages. ones and we all have that one message from like two and a half years ago. That's the reason you still have the badge in your messages app. Anyway, I got a bunch of people on Twitter, thank you to all of you, who said, actually, you can do this. There's a thing at the top left that says filters. And if you

go to filters, you can now filter down to unread messages. But you can only do this if you've turned on a feature in settings. You go to settings, messages, scroll all the way down and turn on filter unknown senders. It's not on by default. But if you turn it on, then you go to the messages app and you will have a filters button at the top and you can filter just to see your unread messages. What? This is the greatest thing ever. I wrote about it on the verge and it was like this hidden feature lets you filter and I just

for everyone listening I just blew both of their minds right now. This is the greatest thing. And then there's a red button. This is incredible. You can select all mark red. It's magic. Well, I can't do that because I need to get back to some people. But I wrote about this and somebody commented saying usually when I read the 10 hidden tricks,

it's all stuff I know. But I didn't know this one. So thank you. And I was like, yes. So turn on filter unknown senders, filter unread, life changing. You're welcome. The other thing, the reason that I had filter unknown senders on already is because I have an app called Robociller, which is amazing. It not only blocks spam calls, sometimes it just takes them and plays a script at them.

That script can be bonkers. And then it records that. And then sometimes you can just listen to that interaction. That's a podcast I would listen to. It's the funniest thing that you can do on your phone. it's like just an old man going, hello, hello? For five minutes and a desperate spammer trying to get through that wall. That's awesome.

It's a very good, highly recommended. It's like four bucks a month. And every now I just listen to them. But that's why I had filters on and senders on. They need to do it with text when people reply to spam text. So now if you delete, I found this out because I got a spam text yesterday. I'm on 16 and I deleted it and I said, do you want to report this as junk? And I was like, what?

Game changer. Yeah. And then I deleted another text, and I didn't want to report that one as junk. I was like, no, that's just my mom. That's just my friend, Sam, who's not on my last room. This is why you should buy your mom an iPhone. Yeah. Messages app is industry leading.

The worst. Okay. Let's start the pixel book. So this is rewind. Rich Minor comes back to Google to start a tablet division to make hardware. All right. And then they're like, yep, it happened. Yep, we're excited about Android tablets again.

Then there's a recession, in quotes. Yeah. Depending on who you talk to on what day, right? And Google's like clamping down. Sundar's telling people like, be 20% more productive. Remember how Google you could like spend 20% of your time inventing Gmail? We're done with that.

Do stuff that we want you to do instead. So Google's clamping down. They just shut down Area 120, which is their like inventions factory. We've covered a bunch of inventions. They're spinning off Project Loon. into some other, that's the internet balloons. Remember when every tech company was like, what if internet from the sky?

Google's like balloons and Facebook was like planes and they, I don't know. So Google's clamping down. And it seems like one of the things that got clamped was the next pixel book. Yes. And they're just whining it down. Yeah. So according to our reporting,

they knew what this thing was going to be. It had been prototyped. It was scheduled to launch next year. And not only is that not going to happen. the team that was building it is no longer. They were all told to find jobs elsewhere in Google, right? Yeah. Which is also just a funny thing that you can be like, hey, you still work here, but find a job.

Find something to do, I don't you? Yeah. Be more productive. Yeah. And I think, look, it's one of those things that, like, if 100 million people had bought a pixel book, they would still be making pixel books. So this is the kind of thing that there's like a small set of tech nerds who really loved the pixel book.

The pixel book was perfect laptop hardware. I will go to my grave believing this. 100% perfect. It needed like the second version of it would have had slightly smaller bezels and it would have been fine. But it was, it was unbelievably great. It's still my favorite laptop hardware I've ever used. No, the Chromebook Pixel is my favorite laptop hardware. The Chromebook pixel was also.

Actually, that's not true. My 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro is the best laptop hardware I used. That's fair. It's all about that pixel book. But the Chromebook Pixel came out nine years ago. Yeah, my mom still uses the one that I got her. And it is lovely because I bought her one with CoreI7 to run Chrome. It kicks Chrome.

It's great. It was overkill at the time, but it's great. It's still rocking because it just runs Chrome. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I think the story really here, as Alex and I were working on the story in the editing, Alex Heath, yeah, sorry. Alex Cranz had nothing to do with it and deserves no credit. I was like, ooh, I was a surprise.

But Dan Seafurt sent this link to a study saying, basically that the PC market had this huge run-up in the course of the pandemic and has crashed back down to Earth and Chrome OS has crashed even harder back down to Earth. And basically what we've learned is that ChromeOS massively successful in schools and education really has not made any inroads

in any interesting way anywhere else. And you know who doesn't want to buy lots of $1,000 Chromebooks is schools. Yeah. And so there was just, there was no way for the pixel book to continue to exist, which makes me very sad, but I also sort of understand. I really think that for a lot of people,

a Chromebook is the best choice for a laptop. I agree, but the market does not agree with that. I believe it to my bones that that is true. I disagree. We already have people who, Monica did that great story last year, about people who were raised up on phones in pixel books so they don't understand file hierarchies.

And that's why I'm like, no, Chromebooks are bad for your full-time computer. Alex is like, what I need you to do, is understand the concept of a file. Yes. Yes, your home. That's the Vurchast.

We're here for you. But I honestly, you know, the holidays are coming. Buy your parents at Chromebook. It will make your life better. I will never get over. I mean,

obviously, some of you have parents who are very good at computers. They're fine. If you're like me, and every time your parents call, it's like a knives out mystery to figure out how they broke the computer.

Get them a Chromebook. Yeah. Because, like, all they're doing is going to websites. Like, that's all they really want to do. And the thing is really good at it. And then they have a phone for all the other stuff. And they, like, use the phone to, like, do FaceTime calls.

Like, you don't need an app model on that device for that, for, like, look at websites good. Yeah, I mean, the Chromebook probably might make sense for a lot of older customers who maybe don't need a whole lot. They're retired. They're not doing, like, their taxes on the thing or anything like that. They have an accountant. But that younger, the Generation Z or whatever we want to call it, those kids don't necessarily. need or want just a little window to the internet. They've already got that.

They've got their phone. They want something that can do a little bit, a lot more. Not even a little bit, but a lot more stuff. So I think it makes sense that Chrome is not reaching out to those kids, especially because they also care more about their privacy, and you're just buying a window to Google when you buy a Chromebook. You're just saying, here's my data, Google. These are people who are buying Windows laptops and then running Chrome.

No, they aren't, though. I cannot tell you how often I see the teens being like, don't use Chrome. It's terrible. You have to go get Firefox. Save Firefox. No. Nope. There's like on TikTok and stuff like...

I can tell you confidently that is not a real thing that is happening. I don't know what teens you're hanging out with comics. The teens. The teens love it. Go use Firefox. It cracks me up every time. Here's a digression for you. I can't believe this hasn't come up on this show yet.

Ford announced a new Mustang yesterday. Yes. It looks exactly the same as the old Mustang. They've added a crease to the back, whatever. On the inside, it looks totally different. They've added huge screens everywhere. It runs Unreal Engine. I think it doesn't run Android yet.

They've really dicing. But it runs Unreal Engine. But yeah, they've got all these animations. Cars now are video games. And actually, the PR is full of references to video games. They're like, we made the dashboard look more like a video game. And it's like, it's weird. But there's this line in it.

They've taken out the buttons and the knobs for the climate control in the radio. There's maybe a volume button, so, or a volume not still. And the line is like, we asked Gen Z millennials and traditional Mustang owners, and they all prefer having screens. And it's like, those are your three generations? There's Gen Z. There's one of those.

And then the generation that will forever be known as traditional Mustang owners. It's like, all right. That's, you know, I've always been kind of on the border of Gen X. I'm going to have a traditional Mustang owner from this point on. I actually feel like that describes you personally better than any of the other labels. It's like, you want to do Oregon Trail, no, no, no, traditional Mustang. That's always been me. I'm an old soul.

Also, Ford, you interviewed the wrong people. 100%. No. No. Hard disagree. It's very funny. It's just such a confidently stated line in this press release, too. But wait, back to Alex's browser point, that's actually a really good segue into another thing we should talk about, which is Adobe buying Figma for $20 billion.

Yes. Terrible. Because there are lots of reasons it's terrible, but one big thing this is is like a fundamental bet on web browsers. Like Figma's thing for a long time has been that like the web is a place for massively powerful apps. And it has like built one of those things inside of web technology. And Adobe has been saying for a long time that it wants to build more of its tools into the web and has, struggled pretty hard to do so. But like Scott Belsky at Adobe has been talking about this forever. And this is like this is going to be a push for them to do more stuff on the web. And I think my like theory

slash if it doesn't get blocked. Well, yeah, again, there are lots of reasons this might not happen, but might not and might not be a bad idea. But like a window to websites is a much more powerful thing going forward than I think it has been recently. Yes. So I did lots of big company. Microsoft, Spotify, whatever, where they're actually provisioning their designers Chromebooks to run Figma. Oh, wow. It's like a real thing that occurs. Well, I don't think Microsoft is revisioning crime books. Fair.

Maybe. But Microsoft is getting, there's a great CNBC story that I think Tom linked to today in his piece. Just around a week ago that Figma is like taking root inside of Microsoft. And Microsoft's Adobe have been very cozy. And like, it's actually straining the relationship. Who knows? I do think that if you're in a world where Lena Khan wants to block meta from buying supernatural, an app that only runs on the quest.

because she's like, there's not enough competition. And everyone seems to want to stop Microsoft from buying Activision based on call of duty alone. Yeah. That Adobe, which has Adobe XD buying its only real competitor in Figma, probably needs to get stopped. Maybe it's too walkie. You know, maybe the FTC doesn't know what Figma is. But in this world, it's like a big, big deal. And so I don't, we'll see.

I would just imagine they're going to charge head first into antitrust time. I just can't like, I feel like Adobe has been this company, we always kind of dance around when it comes to antitrust because they have effective monopolies in a number of places, including like that image, you know, Photoshop. Like, it's Photoshop. You go somewhere and they say, can you do Photoshop? That's like, that's it. And I wonder why it's taken this long for the antitrust eye to even glance. Well, it hasn't glanced. They're like, we're going to buy Figma.

I mean, I feel like probably glancing right now. They're like Lena Kahn's on the verge right now. She's seen it. She knows. She's glanced. When Microsoft set out to my Activision, there was like, uh, there was a run up of like Microsoft executives saying how open they were going to be. Like, you know, they set the stage. You know, like we love openness.

We're going to do our apps. We got GitHub. Yeah, right? And then when they announced it, they announced all these principles. They've been trying to. to say at Call of Duty. I think Tom has reported this. Like, they sent a letter to Sony by just doing some math based on what they're saying. Yeah. It's seven years of a commitment. They haven't said seven years exactly, but they said a few more years in the existing deal. It's like, you just like,

you have to like no, like you can add it up and it's like seven years. Like Microsoft did a lot of like pre-work around regulators to like butter them up into approving steel. It's still not going to succeed, maybe, right? Like it's still getting all the scrutiny. Adobe is like, I don't know. mind, Figma. Yeah. It's wild because I feel like I see more complaints about the monopoly at Adobe than I do even Google and Microsoft and Facebook and everybody else that we talk about being, or excuse me, meta, being these big antitrust nightmares.

I think one of the reasons, well, one, Photoshop is Photoshop. Yeah. There are a lot of competitors to Photoshop in the world. Yeah. Right. And the switching cost is actually like zero, right, apart from Photoshop files in the cloud. whatever. But they're not, like, it's still, most people expect Photoshop to be the thing you use. Yeah, but that's just like the market has picked a thing that you use.

Like, Adobe is not out there locking you into Photoshop. Like, the world of ad agencies is like, we use Photoshop. Like, here's the skill you need to have to work at this company. Fine. And then with XD, the design program, like, Figma was winning. Right. So, like, you know, like, people complain a lot about how much creative cloud costs. And to become a young creative in the world,

you've got to pay all this money a month just to show up at work. Yeah, it's an expensive proposition, and maybe they should be cheaper, but like one-to-one for those apps, like Final Cut exists. It is meaningful competition to premiere, I guess. There are lots of image editors that are not in Photoshop. The fact that the industry has set a standard for its professional software, I think, is, like, fine. It's here where there's like a people are not using the Adobe app. they're using this app from a startup.

Adobe's like, whatever, we're just buying it to foreclose competition that you get the scrutiny. Yeah. We'll see. I don't know. That's what it seems to smell like to a lot of people, right? Which is like everybody has Facebook buying Instagram because Instagram was cool on their mind right now. And that is like that looks an awful lot like what Adobe is doing here. They're saying, oh, they've figured out something we can't.

They're cool. We have to eat them before they eat us. And like that is just that is a dynamic people. are primed to see in a way that I think they have not been in a long time. Yeah. I don't know whether it's actually the case here. It certainly looks like it on its face, but it's going to be interesting. But I would be willing to bet that the FTC has never once had a meeting about Adobe with the possible

exception of like today or tomorrow. Do it. Do it. Adobe runs a gigantic ad business. I think Adobe is fundamentally one of the most undercovered companies in tech. I think it is absolutely fascinating. Totally agree. We have a new reporter in the UK.

I mean, it's just Weatherbed. She is creative. She's part of the creative community. Like, she's, she's going to write a story about the Figma community and the reaction to Adobe. And I'm excited to point her more directly to Adobe overall. Okay. Alex, I just want you to explain one more thing before we go. Okay.

What's that? I'm just going to read this headline that you wrote. Oh, I know what it is already. Hell yeah. It's a great headline. I've read it so many times and I didn't read the story just because I was like, I'm going to try to make Alex explain this to me. Disney CEO teases a, quote, hard bundle. of Disney Plus and Hulu.

And the subheadline is the current soft bundle is so confusing they have an ad campaign to explain it. And it turns out that I have no idea what any of this means. Alex, could you tell us first all of your rejected headline ideas? They are not safe for the podcast community to hear. But yeah, I didn't know what a hard or a soft bundle was until this week when, when Disney's CEO tease this stuff, Bob Chapic. Where did he tease this? Bob 2.

Bob 2. I actually don't remember where he teased this. I wrote this whole blog and I forgot everything. Right. So yeah, Bob Chapic spoke to the Los Angeles Times this past weekend. He was at D23, which is Disney's big fan event. They announced a whole bunch of movies, Marvel News, Star Wars stuff, tons of trailers, new trailer for Willow, which only me and four other people are excited about.

But boy, are we excited. And he kept talking about hard and soft bundles. Like this was just part of the conversation they were having. And a soft bundle is when you take a whole bunch. Just imagining somebody going up to Bob in the middle and being like, Bob, you know people can hear you. Don't talk about this here. Okay. What is a soft bundle?

So a soft bundle is what we have now, which is Hulu plus plus or whatever they're calling it at the moment. So it's Hulu. It's the live TV. It's ESPN Plus. it's Disney Plus. That's a soft bundle. Most companies are doing this. HBO Max is doing a soft bundle now with it and DiscoveryGo.

A hard bundle is just an app where all of the stuff is in one place. But instead of calling it an app, they called it a hard bundle. Okay. So a hard bundle is when they just make Hulu and Disney Plus the same app. So, but Hulu, Disney Plus, and ESPN. And it was really weird how he phrased it, because he was talking about it would be all of the experiences in one place, but somehow saying that was different than an app that was just Hulu and Disney Plus merged together.

Right, because you don't want to mix the Hulu shows with the Disney. So it's like an app with three tabs and that's a hard one. I think it'll be like you click into it and you'd be like ESPN like an app with sub apps. What would that app be called? Would it be called the Disney Hard Bundle? I hope so. Be called Bob's Hard Bundle. That's what we called.

That's it. That's the Verchast, everybody. We got to the inevitable conclusion of this conversation. We tried to avoid it for as long as we could. It took one minute and 18 seconds. Thank you, David. We're very sorry. Liam will be marking this episode as explicit.

So kids, go ahead. Just tell your mom what happened here. And you can have a conversation about that with your parents. I'm very sorry. Okay. It makes sense to me that they would like make everything one app. Yeah. Right. But doesn't ESPN have its own? ESPN should be over there.

Yeah. And I think that's what they're trying to figure out. And also, are they even going to be able to buy Hulu? Because Comcast CEO this week also was like, hey, I know that everybody's expecting us to sell our 33% share to Disney. But maybe we want Hulu. And it would make sense. Well, that and also, the other thing Comcast said that I loved very much was basically intimating that what if Hulu is actually worth $1 trillion. dollars. They're like, we'll sell it to you, but it is the most expensive thing in the history of the universe. Disney, do you still want it? But I will say to me, the, like, there's a, there's a lesser version of this, I think, which is basically just that they stay three separate things, but you have to get all of them. And I think that would not totally shock me. If Disney is just like, cable. This is the price. You get everything. It's cable again. And it's like, oh, you don't

watch sports, but you want to watch Disney movies? Like, what's a lot? up everybody, it's 1992 again, you're going to pay for it. And if Disney wants to fund all the stuff it wants to do, especially with ESPN, it's basically going to have to force a lot of people who don't want to watch sports to pay for sports. So I would not be at all shocked if that's where this lands. I'm required to say that Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, a parent company. We also made a Netflix show, which people should know. It's a good show. You should watch it if you have a holiday. Polygon made a Quibi show. That's a real thing. I also really liked the bear on I don't know if that's a disclosure I should make.

It's very good. That's true. Yeah, I watch NFL primetime on ESPN plus every week. That's another disclosure. It's great show. Really great music. Yeah. All right, we should wrap this up.

We have gone way over. By the way, speaking of Comcast, they're rolling at two gig speeds to millions of people. You know, I usually have nothing but unreserved scorn for this company. I don't believe them. Actually, faster internet access is pretty good. That's true. But they're saying to millions.

So if you've gotten two gig internet access from Comcastle, let me know. I'm very curious. And we'll all come over to your house. Hang out. Oh, Sean is Chris Welch. He totally scooped the son of submini, which was announced. It's 429. Yeah, that was great.

Very good. Yeah, that's all you're right. All right. Next Wednesday, David, you're doing the hotline, right? Yeah, we are going to take all of people's burning Apple questions. So if you, anything you want to know that we didn't cover or stuff that you have feelings about about Apple, 866 versus. urge 1-1. Or I should say, if you don't want to call or can't for some reason, you can record a voice

memo and email it to Vergecast at theverge.com. That works great to all your Apple questions. Send them along. And then on Monday, we have a little miniseries starting about the future of music on the show, which I think would be very good. Alex, do you have the first episode of that? Yes. I will be on the first episode of that, and I am talking with Charlie Harding, who is a music journalist. And I believe also on the Vox Media Network with his podcasts, which on pop. Switched on pop, right? That's great.

Charlie has been on the other show that I'm not allowed to say it in this show. That was a good episode. We talked about it here. We only talk about the Vergecast and switched on pop. And it's a really, really good conversation. We revealed far too much about our musical taste. It was great. Speaking of the other show, on Decoder next week is Ryan Peterson, the CEO Flexport.

He's spicy. So Flexports is like a logistics company. We had a little splenchant conversation. Very good. it's good I'm excited I might have gotten himself into some trouble at the end

we'll see how it goes for it It was good It's fun to talk to him You can tweet at us I'm at Reckless David's at Pierce Alex's Alex H. Cranz

Redesion is up It's running We're not going to revert it To the other way It's like such a weird question We're just going to keep Improving what we got But I promise you

We're going to improve it Thank you for visiting us In particular I want to hear From Burgecast listeners about it Because the whole point of the side is a community and this podcast is the heart of our community. So by all means, reach out to us.

With feedback, we are eager to hear it. That's it. That's the show. Rock and roll. And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, subscribe in the podcast app of your choice

or tell a friend. You can send us feedback at Vergecast at the verge.com. This show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Marino. This episode was edited and mixed by Amanda Rose Smith. Our editorial director is Brooke Minters and our executive producer is Eleanor Donovan.

The Verge cast is a production of The Verge and Box Media Podcast Network. And that's it. We'll see you next week.