The Vergecast - Samsung Unpacked, Google Pixel 4a review, and Apple's new 27-inch iMac

Episode Date: August 7, 2020

Nilay, Dieter, Becca, Chris, and Dan discuss the products announced at Samsung's virtual event this week, as well as the Google Pixel 4a review, a new 27-inch iMac, and Greg Joswiak replacing Phil Schiller as head of Apple marketing. Stories discussed this week: Apple and Google’s COVID-19 tracking system will make its full US debut in new Virginia app We can’t skip steps on the road to a COVID-19 vaccine Twitter blocked Trump campaign account from tweeting over COVID-19 misinformation Facebook removes Trump post for falsely claiming children are ‘almost immune’ to COVID-19 One tweet tried to identify a cop — then five people were charged with felony harassment President Trump withdraws FCC renomination after 5G controversy Donald Trump trying to control the FCC is a ‘disaster,’ says Sen. Ron Wyden President Trump says he will ban TikTok in the US today How the Trump administration could ‘ban’ TikTok Apple is not interested in buying TikTok Instagram launches Reels, its attempt to keep you off TikTok Google announced Pixel 5, Pixel 4a 5G, and Pixel 4a all at once Pixel 4a review Galaxy Note 20 first look  The Galaxy Z Fold 2 is Samsung’s big promise that it can fix its foldable future Samsung Galaxy Buds Live review The best part of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus is its screen Sony WH-1000XM4 review Greg Joswiak replaces Phil Schiller as head of Apple marketing The new 27-inch iMac’s webcam isn’t just better; it’s smarter Scientists rename human genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on the Vergecast, tons of phone news. Becca, Chris, Dan joined Dieter and I to talk about the Samsung Galaxy unpacked event, the Note 20, the Note 20 Ultra, Pixel 4A, the Galaxy, Bud Live, which should have been called the Galaxy. It's so much. There's so much going on this Vergecast. It's coming up now. Support for the show comes from Retool.

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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, welcome to the Virchcast, the flagship podcast of Mystic Bronze. Hazy Mystic Browns. That was my favorite part of the same song event. Like my favorite and least favorite part at once is like, Samsung introduced to color and like talked about it too much. I'm your friend, Eli. I'm here. Hi. Dieter Bone is here. Hi. Also friendly. Not your friend. It's always so threatening from Dieter. We're doing something different today. Usually on the

Vergecast, what we do is we bring in one reporter to talk about one thing for, you know, a period of time, and then that person leaves and we bring another report. Today, we've decided to bring on three reporters the whole time and just have chaos. So Chris Welch is here. Hi, Chris. Hello. How's it going? Becca Fasci is here making her Vergecast debut. Let it rip. This is going to be amazing. Dan Seaford is here. Hi.

So this is an audio show, but Dan, can you tell us about the shirt that you're wearing right now? Please, Dan. Explain yourself. I'd rather not, but. So I'm wearing a shirt that says it's a dark shirt and in big white block letters across the chest. It says Bixby. Wow. What you can't see in our little video chat is that below.

it, it says specialty coffee roasters. So there's actually a coffee company called Bixby Coffee Roasters, and I signed up for their coffee like a year ago, and part of the promotion was they send you a free t-shirt. Do they have a mascot? Is it a dog

with shoes? They have a mascot, and it is a dog. I have never seen its feet, though. So I do not know if it is wearing shoes. I would assume it is. Look, we don't do a lot of, like, integrated sponsorships, but if they put some shoes on this dog, Like, let's fix me, Cosby Roasters.

Come on. It's good coffee. So our merch store is down right now. Like, you can't buy a Verge T-shirt right now because we're switching vendors and all this stuff. But we're bringing it back up. And so I went to a meeting yesterday with Will, our creative director and all these other people talking about what T-shirts are going to put back in the store.

Then at the end of it, TC, our executive editor was like, where's the e-mails t-shirt? And there was like this moment of silence. And then everyone looked at me on the Zoom. And I was like, we need to have the emails T-shirt. So the emails t-shirt is coming back. I demand it. It's the only shirt that will outlast, I think, the entire project of The Verge. Okay.

That's our cast for today. As always, I want to start with updates on a virus, the movement for racial justice in this company, the two biggest stories in the world. They will outlast any of the phones we talk about today, I assure you. 21 weeks. So I even have to say it. It's been 21 weeks since the president presented to the nation a flow chart about testing, Google, and it's 5 million engineers have not yet built such a website. The testing situation is bad. It needs to get better. 21 weeks since we saw the flowchart. However, Apple and Google this week, you know, their COVID-19 contact tracing tool has been implemented in both iOS and Android.

Virginia is the first state to release an app that uses those APIs. Alabama has an app in beta. So we're seeing the fruits of that labor come to America. It's coming out in other countries. on the world. Eventually, both companies are going to make that functionality exposed in the primary user experience. They're going to build it into the operating system. But right now, you need an app from your state. That's important because your state has to validate that you got a positive test and then notify everybody else. Apple and Google don't have themselves testing capabilities. So the first steps towards phone-based contact tracing are coming out in America, in Virginia. Again, beta test in Alabama. If you live in Virginia, just download the app. I'm not going to tell you that you should make a choice.

I'm just telling you what to do. Just download it. Everybody should, like, if your state has the app, you should download the app. Nicole Wetzman wrote a piece this week about skipping steps on the road to a vaccine. You should read that. It's a very cogent analysis of how fast we're going towards a vaccine and the necessary steps to make sure it's safe and that people take it. That's very important.

And then because COVID just keeps intersecting with tech all of the time, Twitter and Facebook both took action against President Trump this week over basically. basically tweeted it or posted. Children, I think he said they were immune to COVID-19, which is absolutely not true, just not true. Children actually died from COVID-19 already. Facebook removed the post. Twitter blocked the Trump campaign, not the president, not real Donald Trump, but the Trump campaign account from tweeting until it removed this misinformation. I think we're seeing very clearly, Twitter is just taking a harder line and Facebook is falling behind. I'd point out, because it's the thing I always point out that just a tiny bit of

competition here has made Facebook behave itself. The second thing that we're constantly tracking, which is also just now running fully into the election that's coming up, is the movement for racial justice. Addy Robertson had a story that published just minutes before we started recording. This one is wild. During a protest in Nutley, New Jersey, the cops were being friendly with counter protesters. So a Black Lives Matter protester took a photo of a cop, tweeted it out, and said, can anybody identify this cop? The cops charged that person with a felony and then also charged four people who retweeted that tweet with a felony of cyber harassment. Absolutely wild case. The ACLU is involved. It's going to have repercussions. If retweeting something rises to the level

of felony harassment, the entire internet will change, at least in Nutley, New Jersey. So we're keeping an eye on that, read that story. It is completely built out Addie and Russell did a great job reporting that one down to the ground. Seeing the election and the stakes of the election, Snapchat is planning in at and voter awareness tools to make sure people know how to vote. The president himself is obviously publishing a lot of misinformation about mail-in voting. He's pushing that very hard. So I think the platforms are going to start pushing back on that. We're seeing that with Snapchat. And then we interviewed Ron Wyden on the Verstcast on Tuesday. Addy and I talked to the senator for a while. There's a thing that's happening. It's not getting

enough press, I don't think. We've paid attention to it. We obviously asked the center about it. But Mike O'Reilly is a commissioner of the FCC. He is a very conservative. I would say on balance, I have not agreed with Mike O'Reilly on most things. But obviously, Trump had the executive order asking the FCC to enforce 230 to talk about conservative bias. O'Reilly gave a speech in which he said, I have First Amendment concerns about this. I don't want to regulate social media platforms. The last thing we want is to impose the fairness doctrine on the internet.

Within days, his renomination to a second term when the FCC was withdrawn. So it was obvious retaliation. The Wall Street Journal opinion page was like, that's a little cancel culturey. The Wall Street Journal opinion page is obviously very conservative. And then we asked Senator Wyden about it. And Wyden was very clear that Trump's attempts to influence the FCC in this way are inappropriate. And he made a direct link to the president wanting to publish misinformation about mail-in voting and using pressure on the social media platforms to allow him to do that. So all of these things just seem connected to me.

We're paying a lot of attention to them. I don't want to indicate because we're going to talk a lot about phones that we're not paying attention to them. But as I say, every week, our audience tells us they need a break. So we're going to talk about some phones. But it's on the site. I want you to pay attention to it. It's top of mine for all of us. Okay.

Let's talk about some tech news. There are phones this week. The reason we have the whole cast assembled is because there was the Samsung Galaxy unpacked event. lots of Samsung news, Pixel News this week. But also, I just want to run through this timeline, absolute chaos in the TikTok world. The president basically said,

I will ban TikTok on August 1st. He said, I'll ban it tomorrow. How many weeks has it been since the president said a thing about tech? It's been one week since the president said he would ban TikTok tomorrow. That escalated into Microsoft being involved somehow. Microsoft put out a statement saying we've heard from the the president. Sachi Nadella has talked to the president directly. We are in conversations to buy parts of TikTok. We will complete those by September 15th or not. And the U.S. Treasury is going to get

its cut. It's very complicated. No one knew what that meant when Microsoft published it. The president followed up by saying either TikTok's going to get sold by September 15th or it's going to go out of business. And then he said this thing about the treasurer getting its cut, which was someone's got to pay the treasury, if not for me, this deal wouldn't be happening, so we have to get paid. He likened it to key money, which is an illegal landlord extortion scheme in New York City. The man was a New York City landlord, so I feel like maybe he's just supplying some former knowledge to the present. We don't know what's going to go on with Microsoft and TikTok.

Now it appears that what Microsoft is being pressured to do is by all of TikTok, not just the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but the whole operation. no one knows how you could even buy part of a social network. Russell Branden wrote a great piece about that this week. Buying a social network with an algorithm that is built in China and segregating it by geography seems very challenging. I'm sure Microsoft can pull it off. They're a big company. I'm sure it would go just as well as a Nokia acquisition.

I mean, I kind of want them to buy TikTok. Then there was, was this Wednesday, Deeter? Like we woke up on Wednesday. We were like getting ready to deal with the IMAQ that came out. Yeah. And then Axios published Apple is interested in buying TikTok. We asked Apple. They were like, no.

No? No. So then they denied buying tick that they were even interested or that they ever would. And then like 20 minutes later, they were like, a new IMac is here. And then 20 minutes after that, Phil Schiller announced that he was moving on to an Apple fellow, which definitely sounds like the next level of Scientology. I'm just going to be honest about that. So just a confusing array of events with Apple. And then Instagram launched Reels.

that's a competitor to TikTok, which is flatly a clone of TikTok. I don't care what they say about it. It looks and feels exactly like TikTok without anything interesting going on. Have you all used Reels? No. I have not. I don't know if I've actually opened TikTok since Reels launched, or I excuse me, opened Instagram since Reels launched.

So it took me a while to get it. The first Instagram reel that I saw back is on our phone right now looking at it. I need to look. I haven't even seen it. I think this says everything. the first Instagram reel that was served to me was Jessica Alba doing a TikTok meme. I got that too. I think that's the one they programmed for everyone.

Yeah. Okay, I haven't started. It's like create, get started. Should we see what I get fed first? Yeah. It's going to be Jessica Alba doing a TikTok meme. Oh my gosh. This is so cute.

No, I got a mommy bear playing no games. That's the one I got. You and me, Becca, were the same person to the algorithm. Incredible. Wow. Who would have thought? I heard from a lot of people. who got the Jessica Alba doing the TikTok tan.

I think that was like, they had like three or four. What did you get? Yeah, Chris Welch has Jessica Alba doing the TikTok dance. I think they pay Jessica Alba a lot of money to launch Instagram Reels. Yeah. But it's funny because the thing that she made was it TikTok me? Like very obviously they were like, this is TikTok. Here's a more famous person doing a thing that you like from TikTok.

So I have two things to point out here. One, I notice how quickly you moved to wanting us to talk about Reels. to prevent me from saying that you explaining the TikTok of that story has me reeling. No, Jesus Christ either. Come on. Come on, man. You killed me. Two, I have reels, but I can't use the audio, because at some point in the past, I accidentally clicked the button that says,

make my account a business account, and then I was like, this is dumb, and I undid it. And I just, they don't let business accounts do audio in reels, so I just, like, don't get to play around with it. I feel so bad for you, famous influencer on Instagram. I clicked the button, but sorry. I was on CNBC, and they asked me this question, which I think says everything about this whole drama, which was, well, now that Instagram has reels, it's fine to kick out TikTok, right? Because Facebook will just have, and I was like, I don't, we just had a whole antitrust hearing. Like, Facebook is not great. Like, they shouldn't just be able to clone every company.

And I think that dynamic is real. I also think that it's not as good. Like, the interview show on Tuesday is Taylor Lawrence from the New York Times. So that's coming up on Tuesday. And like the thing I want to ask her when I talk to her tomorrow is Instagram is like a social product. Like it's about who you follow. And TikTok, I don't even have a TikTok account. I just have the app on my phone.

And it just like magically figured out that what I really want to see is like extremely expensive Bluetooth grilling equipment. That's what I want from TikTok. And that's what it shows me. It's great. It's that. And like people doing dumb things with cars. I'm sure everyone else's TikToks are great. Instagram does not know that about me, right?

Like TikTok figure that out. It's an interest-based social network, not a social, like social-graph network. I don't think Instagram can figure it out. I don't think they will be able to get there nearly fast enough because all of TikTok's energy has been on that recommendation engine. Like it is effectively just a massively good recommendation engine and it has infinite content to show you. So we'll see.

Like I said, like I said, I'm talking to Taylor tomorrow about all of this, you'll hear that on Tuesday. I don't want to burn too much time on it because I think she will know what she's talking about. But that is the timeline, six days since the president promised to you had banned TikTok. But he did set a deadline. So I'm not going to start counting until the deadline comes. I got one reporting trick and it's counting. All right.

Phones. Now we're going to talk a lot about phones. Dieter. Would you like talk about phones that exist or phones that don't exist? Don't exist. We just had Sundar on the show. Like, what was it? Two months ago?

Mm-hmm. And we're like, what's up with pixels? And he was like, we got to make him good. Yeah. Did he make him good? I mean, he made one good. So the Pixel 4A has been announced and released. I reviewed it.

A bunch of us here on this actually podcast have used one. But because the Pixel 4A is late and we can talk about why, it is really close to when we're assuming the Pixel 5 is going to come out. So Google is like, you know what? Yeah, we're making a Pixel 5. It'll be out here this fall. Also, there's going to be a Pixel 4A 5G because, you know, that's what you want. So they just announced all three phones at once. Just bam.

But you reviewed the 4A. We have not seen photos of the 5. We have seen various and confusing leaks all summer. And Chris, you might actually have a better handle around this so far. But a bunch of the early leaks were like, this must be the pixel 5A. And it's like, well, no, there's actually the, that's probably the pixel 4A 5G now. And then there's yet more internal documents of even more pixels at a foldable pixel, like, later on down the line. Like, it's a fiasco in pixel rumor land.

Yeah, it's super confusing. I mean, they had that leak. I think it was last month where there was a phone that looked just like the 4A, but they said it was the 5 and people weren't sure. But then it seems like they might get rid of their face ID clone, which I really actually liked on the pixel 4, like, to just walk away from that for the thumb reader. But, I mean, yeah, no one's really quite sure what it's going to look like. even the 4A 5G might have new specs or a bigger screen or who knows what the story is. I mean, it's a pixel. So there's just always confusion about what's going to happen.

Is it going to look like a brightly colored plastic rectangle? That's just my guess. Yes. The 4A is a decidedly not brightly colored plastic rectangle. All right. Deider, tell us about the 4A. You reviewed it. So the big, big new innovation in the pixel 4A is they dropped 50 bucks off the price.

so it's down to $350, which is pretty big. It's a pretty big deal. It's $100 less than the storage equivalent iPhone SE to get an iPhone SE with 128 gigs. And they just got everything as good as you can probably get it on a $350 phone. Like, I wish it had a faster processor, but we live in a world of Android work, Qualcomm. If you want to get a good Qualcomm processor, you've got to spend way too much money. So they got like an okay one that's got a pretty solid screen. It's OLED.

It's got a hole punch. It's got the pixel camera. Becca actually pointed this out to me when we were talking to them. She asked if it had, what was the sensor, Becca? 363. Yeah, yeah. Same sensor as the pixel 4 and the pixel 3A and the pixel 3. They've been using literally like the exact same camera stack for like two years now.

So it's great. It takes great photos, but they haven't pushed it much. I would love it if you could select your software tuning on the pixel. Ooh. Right? If you could buy a pixel 4 and be like, just make this shit look like the pixel 2. That would make me very happy. Because I thought the pixel 2 looked.

It was the most contrasty and the most dramatic. And they have veered towards looking more like the iPhone over time. But I wish I could just be like, go back to that look. I love that look the best. Because if they're using the same hardware, they should give you the choices in the software, right? But everyone is just looking at me like, I'm done. I mean, it's like, it's like saying you should just just. get your choice of, I don't know, clutch on your Mustang.

Like, it gets tied to the hardware. The thing, well, okay, that's true. Wow. No, I meant, like, not just, like, manual versus automatic. Just, like, go and put your 97 clutch in a 2015. I mean, you don't want to do that, but you can definitely retune an engine. Anyway, keep going. The pixel 4A.

We're not going to talk about Mustangs on the show. Figure print sensor on the back. It works great. It's got a headphone jack because, you know, apparently low-in phones are the only phones that get headphone jacks anymore. I'm into it back. Are you holding one right now? You're holding one.

Yeah, I'm holding one right now. And what I'll have to say about this is that I love this thing. Like, it gave me everything I like about phones in 2020, like a big screen and it's slim and the battery's decent. But it kept the things that I also love about previous phones that I love a fingerprint sensor, like one on the back. And I love a headphone jack. And I love the pixel camera. And it's $350, which is a pretty good. price in 2020 for a brand new phone.

Yeah. There's this, there's this meme out there. I think like it's a gruber meme. But like there's this idea out there that like Google is bored with Android and the pixel is a reflection of its boredom. Does this phone feel like they're bored with it? No. I'm bored with Android. Wow.

I mean, the debut on the Birchcast. The one new feature is an accessibility feature for software where it'll, it'll do real-time captioning of phone calls, but it doesn't record them and it doesn't put them on the internet, so don't have your conspiracy theories thrown at me, Bright Bart, they wrote it up terribly. Anyway, so that's like the one thing, but that's coming to other pixels. It's just like Google is so committed to keeping the pixel software like really clean and basic relative to the madness that happens on every other Android phone that it can feel a little bit boring.

And their decision to be really like understated with their design. I think it's like they've maybe gone a little bit too far. It's been like, no, no, this is the Android phone that isn't flashy. It's just like a phone. And after a while, like that message gets through that like, oh, no, you just made a phone. Okay. Like they want it to be utilitarian to the point where it's like become a little bit boring. I feel like Google has been so long burned by Sergey Brin coming to the Google Glass event on a hang glider.

That's like a, that's a real thing that happened. They launched Google Glass and one of the co-founders landed on stage on a hang glider and it's like, glass is the future. And that was their last big attempt to be splashy and it completely backfired like in every possible way. I don't even think he was wearing shoes. It was just like a lot. You probably had rollerblades on, right? Yes, it was bad. But they do not, Google as a company is not flashy.

And I think to compete with Apple, you have to have some amount of flashiness in your ethos. And they won't make a flashy phone. they won't do a Samsung style flashy. And we'll talk about whether or not unpacked was successful as a virtual flashy event. But their emphasis right now is on cheap phones, which it might be where a lot of volume is, but it's not where a lot of mind share is.

And so like, back I agree with you, like, I'm just like in my house. The only thing I really use my phone for is scrolling through Twitter on the couch and then taking photos. I probably do not need to spend more than $350 on the pixel 4A for that. But it's also like, I'm not spending money in anything else.

Just like in this house all the time. Like, what if I wanted to buy a nicer phone? And Google just does not have an option for me. And I think that's like a weird place for them to be all of the time to not have the range of things. Do you think the pixel 5 is going to be like flashier? No. Becca is emphatically shaking your head. No?

I don't know. Has a pixel ever really blown anyone's mind here? I mean... Well, I disagree. The pixel two's camera. Yeah, okay. A camera, true, true. Yeah, with the pixel two camera, and, you know, the 4A is kind of interesting.

Google's blaming pandemic-related supply chain issues, but the fact that it's only available in one size and it's only available in one color is like a first for the pixel line. You know, the pixel, the original pixel one came in that just blue color was this like best buy blue. That was flashy, you know, and then you had like, you had the pixel two had this panda color scheme. That was pretty cool. You couldn't get that anywhere else.

No one could ever buy the cool ones. Yeah, yeah, but like they existed, though. In theory. Oh, no, you know when you could buy them? You could buy them when they were on Woo in like 18 months as refurbish models for half the price. That's when you could buy them. I would just say, the fact that you could, no one could ever buy the one that everybody wanted is like the worst part of this whole story. I mean, but the reality is no one bought any of them anyways, right?

Like that is the story of pixels in. Right, because you'd go to me like, I want to buy the cool panda one and you couldn't. You're like, well, screw it. Yeah. And like, we're all. saying that the Pixel 4A is a great phone for, you know, the price is excellent. It does everything you need to do. The reality is how many people are going to buy it? It's not going to be pushed by any carriers. It's going to have the same issues unless it has a huge marketing thing from Google,

which has never happened before. So like... No, there's something I love about it's not flashiness, though. Like, this is the first phone that I've held. And maybe it's because it's a little bit cheaper where I'm not like afraid to use it. Like when I get a new note or something, I'm like, this is like precious cargo. This is like something really great. And I kind of like treat it a little differently. But with this, I feel like I can go out and take a lot of photos with it and kind of like, you know, hold it over the edge of the ferry and take a photo. And I don't know.

Maybe that's because of its price, but. Risky. Living on the edge. So we should talk about the price and the marketing for a second. I am sure that they originally planned on selling this for $3.99. And then the iPhone SE came out with the A330. routine, whatever bionic, the fastest processor that's ever been put in a phone, got put in the iPhone SE.

At $3.99. Yeah, for $3.99. And then it was like, whoa. And then the pandemic. And then, like, just flagging pixel sales. And then, last but lot, not least, and perhaps most importantly in this whole story, the pixel 4A is not 5G. And I don't care.

I don't think that you should care. Because what are the, like, if you're stuck at home, if you're lucky enough to be able to stay home, you've probably got Wi-Fi. If you're going out in the world, 5G isn't that much faster for most regions. And so having to pay the extra money for 5G is not necessarily worth it. If you get a, if the phone you want happens to have it great. If it doesn't, I wouldn't sweat it this year. But, you know, who is sweating 5G is all the U.S. carriers. And so if your phone doesn't have 5G, then the U.S. carriers don't care. And so there is going to be no co-marketing for the Pixel 4A. Google. Google.

basically told me that. And so one of the reasons I think that they had to pre-announce the pixel 4A 5G and the pixel 5 is because they just know if they hadn't, they'd put the 4A out and it would have just disappeared because no carriers are going to be advertising it at all. Only Google is and how much is Google going to spend on it, who knows. And so it would have just looked like a flop. Even if it was selling relatively well, it would just disappear. from the conversation two weeks after it was released. So they had to drop the price down to make

it sell better. And they had to say these other phones are coming. And so don't freak out when Verizon isn't telling you to buy it in two weeks. Plus, like, you know, the note was coming up later that week. And so, like, what else you got to do? Yeah. I feel like the, you know, I'm very skeptical of the T-Mobile Sprint merger. But one of the things that would happen if it works and goes through and that network expands the size that TBO wants it to. I think Google can just start doing its own advertising for FI because it runs on that,

it will run on that combined big network. It might have the coverage, although we'll see. But if Google can just start running its own ads that are like, buy this phone online, we run our own network, it doesn't have this overhead,

you can pause it, like my FI service right now is pause for, I just pushed one button and paused for three months. Because I'm not going anywhere. Like we have all these. these other features were Google, and they can sell a more integrated service phone package. That would be wild if that's like a result of the T-Mobile Sprint Merger. Because I think that is something they can actually market as a differentiator versus go to your,

Dan is looking at me so skeptically. This might be the most optimistic read I've ever heard on the T-Mobile and Sprint Merger. I'm trying. I mean, like, I think we all agree that Google is not bored with Android. Is it bored with FI? that might be a real thing. And like, is FI going to hit the Google Graveyard? I would not be terribly surprised if that happened at something.

I'm trying to have an optimistic viewpoint on everything. On that note, we're taking a break. We're going to come back. We'll talk about the note because it actually came out. We're right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving, successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question.

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Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right, we're back. Becca. What's up, Eli? You have seen, as far as I know, you're the only person I know on this call who has held a note 20 and a note 20 ultra. Someone is holding one currently.

Yeah, they did send me the review unit. But I've turned it on and installed stuff and then not touched it because it's installing stuff. So Becca is, in fact, the only person on this call who's like done more than like, unbox it. You had like a weird setup to get an in-person look at the phones, right? Yeah, very strange. I walked up to a door in like lower Chelsea in Manhattan, and this woman greeted me with a thermometer and some hand sanitizer. I stood there. My temperature checked out. I was okay. And then I got brought up into a freight elevator into a big, empty room where we are all very separated, well, well beyond six feet, all wearing masks. And, and

And I sat at a very pink desk, and I just told I had an hour to check it out, take as many photos and videos as I could, and then scram. What did you think? It's a note. We can say that. It's got a stylus. It has good specs. It feels heavy.

It feels good in your hand. I need two hands to do absolutely anything on it, but that's pretty standard for me. And I'm not a big phone person. I mean, you heard me talking about how much I have the size of the 4A. So for someone who is, I think that this is, there's no surprises. It's, it's a note, but it's, it's good. Yeah. I think for me, the biggest thing is that the stylist feels so nice to write on this note with. Like, it really felt like I was writing notes. And Deeter and I were trying to talk about like what that was. And he has it in front of him. Maybe he can write some more and we can try to figure this out because I didn't have time in my time there. But it's not just any stylus. It really belongs with this phone. And it has, you know, gyroscope. it's still got, you know, you can click it to take photos and zoom in on the camera and all of that. But it's good, but it is just an update. So there's two of them, right?

Yeah. It has not been received well. Let's just put it that way. Yeah, it just seems like a huge miss, like a $1,000 plastic phone. But you've held it. Is it plastic feel horrible? Or does it feel like plastic? Yeah, it feels fine.

It's very slippery. It's matte instead of like this crazy mirrored glass. It's a mystic bronze, I believe. it's called. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, I'm sorry. Oh, the mystic bronze. Yeah. Yeah, for me, as I was looking at these two phones, they look like they almost don't belong in the same line together. Like the note 20 versus the note 20 ultra. So you have the note 20 and it's got a rounded screen and a flat screen at that. Its edges on, on the rails are actually a little bit more rounded than on the note ultra. They just don't feel like the same phone at all. It doesn't feel like a mini version and a big version. It feels,

like the Note 20 and then the Ultra, the plus. Deider, which one do you have? They have sent the Ultra out as review units, I think specifically because they want people to know that they want the best one in people's hands. We'll review the regular Note 20 when we are able to get it, of course. The thing back I mentioned about the screen, yeah, Samsung said that there was some kind of different finish on it to make it feel a little bit more paper-like. I never really believe that when people say things like that, but there does seem to be a little

bit better friction. I'll be very curious to see if that friction still exists in six months or if it's just like some coding or something. And then the other thing about this note, and Becca, you've said this and like you said it in the video and I wrote it and the hands on based on your impressions in the article. But the camera bump on this thing is serious as hell. It is 90 degrees squared off mesa. It's huge. It is huge. It is huge. It is huge. I had this whole tangent in the video that I ended up cutting out where I just talk about how big this thing is. Like if you put it flat on a table, it will wobble. It's massive.

And that has what, three cameras, a depth sensor, the usual stack that we've even seen? No. No. Well, it's not a depth sensor. It's not a depth camera. It's a laser auto focus. Okay. And that's important because it has the same 108 megapixel sensor that the S20 ultra had,

that had slow focus because they weren't using, you know, the proper phase of tech, whatever. And so I'm going to get that wrong. I definitely got that wrong. But they were using the slower focus. And so it meant that they had to put a bunch of firmware updates. It was a whole fiasco with the original review because they didn't have the new software update. So that's all quote unquote fixed, but it's still slower to focus. So they put a laser in the note because a laser is way faster.

Lasers are quite speedy, I've been told. Yeah. But that made it a mesa. Does it get hot? Well, I guess no one's used it long enough. I've just always sort of been told the reason you make that whole stack bigger and that shape is for heat dissipation.

Right? And like notes are big. They have big batteries, fast processors, huge screens. You add in another thing that gets hot. It feels like a phone that gets hot. But I guess we'll find out. That's why you'll review it.

Time will tell. It's a big bump. But like you got to figure like that phone starts at $1,300, right? It's like the number of people who like buy it and like carry it around just by itself without a case has got to be pretty small. Yeah, that was my thought with it too is once you put a case on this, it's going to hide that that bump below it. But I wouldn't be surprised if you put a slim case on there, if that bump still

sticks out. Becca, do you get to take any sample shots of this camera? Okay, so not really at all. And I obviously couldn't take anything with me when I left. I tried to zoom in with that 50X zoom on the Note 20 Ultra, and I was too close to absolutely anything for it to even focus on it. But I'm very excited to get out into the world because I have been using my telephoto lens on my S10 a lot more recently. So we'll see if that holds up. Social distancing is finally kicked in. You're like, I'll just stand back a little bit.

Well, I mean, this is always the question with the S20, right? The camera wasn't as good as we thought it was going to be, even though Samsung had thrown all this hardware in it. This camera feels a lot like the same thing. Do you think they've improved the software? Like, I guess we're just going to have to see. We're going to have to see. I personally have never really liked the colors that Samsung leans into. I always felt like it was way too punchy.

They were trying really hard to add a lot of contrast and bring the saturation way up. So we'll have to see. I definitely want to put that all to the test. I'm telling you the entire game here is software modes that just look like old famous phones. Yes. If you can put like the Instax filter on Instagram and be like, now it looks like that. Eli, this is a business model. This is an app.

This is a business model for an app, just like you have, you know, Fuji film simulations and Kodak simulations. And you got all these filters for these various films. But you want one to emulate smartphones from three years ago. It's going to be great. We actually, Mark Lavoie, left Google, the guy who made the pixel camera. And now he's at Adobe. He's building you the app right now.

He's doing it. I got to do it first, but crappy. And then Adobe can buy my company. This is the way, why doesn't my brain work like this? Okay, so that's anything else we need to pick up on the note. I got to say, it feels like the note landed with just a thud. Like, as Chris was saying, the $1,000 plastic note with a 60-hertz screen. Yeah, the 60-hertz screen is what kills me.

Like, that's terrible. That product just feels like a carrier concession. Like carriers wanted something at $1,000 or less with 5G and all that stuff. Like if you look at last year's note 10 lineup, you had the note 10 and the note 10 plus, they were basically equally premium, right? And the note 10, I think, was $950.50 and the note 10 plus was like $11.50 or something like that. But they both had like full glass bodies. They had the same spec screens except resolution was a little different that you couldn't tell.

Same camera, stuff like that. This year, there's like a way bigger as like Becca. alluded to you, way bigger difference, way bigger golf. You got different design, different screens, different build quality, like different cameras even. We really talked about that, but this camera on the note 10 is not the same as the note 20 ultra, or excuse me, on the note 20 is not the same as a note 20 ultra. It just really feels like Verizon and T-Mobile, we're like, we want a note that's under the

$1,000 mark that has 5G, make it happen, and Samsung was like, okay, and like did it. And like, but Samsung wants you to look at the note 20 ultra, which is why, We have a No 20 Ultra review in it and so on and so forth. Yeah, these are two different phones. This is why Samsung gets the carrier co-marketing deals, right? Yeah, exactly. The carriers are like, here are some hoops, and Samsung is like, we have jumped through them. How high can we jump?

Are there more hoops? We'd love to see more hoops, please. Just market Bigspey in your weird TV ads. But it's also like, do we need any more evidence of the carriers don't really know what they're doing? Right. Like, they demanded a phone that no one wants. The carriers have. very different incentives than a phone maker or than URI.

Like Verizon's incentive is to sell its 5G network and get more people on its 5G network. The fastest way you can do that is by offering more 5G phones at more price points, whether they are the 4Pixel 4A, 5G, Excel, whatever it's going to be called for $500, or the note 20 for $1,000, or the 1 plus 8 for $800, whatever it is. Like they can get 5G across the line. They can make their 5G network look better. and get more people on it, yada, yada. It's like a completely different goal for them than Samsung or Apple or Google or whatever.

Yeah, I just think it's impossible to talk about it. I mean, I don't think we should, I could rant about the three major carriers. And I'd say it's, as everyone has heard me do for a full hour, it's impossible to understand Samsung without understanding that relationship. But at the same time, like, Samsung is a big company. And they're launching these phones globally. And you can't just give them the out. I'm going to say, we wrote about this book a few months ago.

there's a book called Samsung Rising that talks all about Samsung's like efforts into becoming the company that is now and there's a huge section about its early work with carriers and what it was willing to do and it's super enlightening. There's an article on the site written by Sam Biford who interviewed the author

but I also suggest go read the book. Yeah. All right. More things happened at unpacked. One of the more confusing virtual events that we've attended. There's a new Z-fold too. Dan, I'm going to, for whatever reason, I've chosen you as the person I will ask about the folding phone.

It's your punishment for making us talk about characters. I deserve it. Roast me. But this one actually feels like, you know, Samsung's doing the Samsung thing. They put up the Z-fold. It was a legendary mess. So actually, it was the Galaxy Fold.

Yeah. Get your names right. It's a Galaxy Fold. Then it was the Z-Flip. I got it. And now it's a Z-fold, too. No, no. Then the Z-Flip 5G.

Yeah, yeah. Which got it out early. And now it's the galaxy Z-fold 5-Z-fold 2, 5G. But what is it the sequel to? Hold up. Hold up. What is it the sequel to? Technically, the galaxy fold. Got it.

So I was right. You're right. It's what I'm taking away from this. Here's Samsung, there is the A line, which is their low-end phones. There's the S-line, which is their mainstream phones. There is the N-line, which are the note phones. and there is the Z line, which are their folding phones. There once was a J line, I believe,

but I don't know if that's around anymore. Just like, imagine they're subways, and some of them are nice and some of them take you to bad neighborhoods. I don't know. Wow. Some of them are broken half the time. I'm letting all of this go.

We're putting all of this behind us. There is a sequel to the Galaxy Fold. All I was saying was Samsung did the Samsung thing. They put out the first generation product, which had many, many flowers. one of the flaws was it immediately broke then they recalled that phone they re-released it it broke less frequently and now they it seems like they fixed same basic design but there's a bigger screen on the front cover so it looks more like a normal phone it seems like they've re-engineered the

cover yeah i mean i feel like with the second revision of the first one they were addressing the durability concerns, which were obviously the major problem, right? It's why you couldn't buy the phone initially. So, like, they kind of feel like they got those in a decent place. And so now, with the Z-fold to 5G, they are addressing the feature complaints. And so, like, one of the feature complaints of the first one was that the outside screen was, like, tiny, and he wasn't really usable. So they made that basically as big as a screen on, like, an S-20 now. So it's, like, a full-size outside screen, so you could realistically use that as your phone. They made, they got rid of like the giant camera array when you open it up now, so it's just the little hole punch dot that we're

seeing on all the modern phones. And they upgraded the other cameras so that they are commensurate with the S20 line, so they're not like a generation behind. So all of those things that were like feature level complaints, not the like fundamental, this thing will break in my hands complaints, but like it seems like they're addressing that with the new model. Is it going to break? I don't know. I feel like there's plenty of anecdotal evidence now of people who have bought the original Galilee Fold and have used it for months on end and not had the issues that we initially

saw last year. So maybe it's slightly more durable in everyday use as long as you don't get it wet and don't poke it and don't put dust in your pocket and don't, yeah. Becca, did you get to see this at the hands-on? No, I didn't get to see this. And I am very eager to hold it in my hand because I just don't. believe that the bezels on the front are going to be like that small. I don't think they're going to be as small as the S line. I just like Samsung is obviously committed to this style of folding

phone. Like it, right, they're iterating on it. They're going to make another one and another one. I think the real question is the first time around they didn't get it right, right, in like very clear ways. Is this now the prototype from which like they got it right and they're going to make it better and better and cheaper and thinner? Or do they still have like fundamental reengineering to do? It took them like five generations to get the NOF into like a really great place. Yeah. It might be a while. Maybe they move a little faster now. Maybe they've learned a few things and they're able to do it in three or four generations. I think this one is still going to be really expensive. Like all the all the signs are pointing to it being close to $2,000 again. It's going to be really limited in terms of like how many

you'll be able to buy where you'll see it. Though they are said that it will be on all three carriers, to just AT&T, like the first one. So it still feels very in the experiment stage to me. It's just in a next step of that experiment stage. Yeah. I will say that everyone being at home is like the best possible situation for this phone to come out. Like, you can't get in too much trouble with it, hopefully. Sure.

But like, at home is like the last place that I need a folding phone because I've got bigger screens all around me. Or is it the first place you need a folding phone? I'm not sure what the rest of that argument is, but that's how I've chosen to engage. So actually, one thing, at the end, there was a scripted interview with TM Row. And he, they're like, why not a stylist? And he's like, you know, stay tuned. Which they're going to make another one with a stylus that's coming next year. So this is my constant, like, we criticize Samsung a lot.

Dan is literally wearing a Bigspy T-shirt. I mean, like, we criticize Samsung a lot. the thing that you can always compliment Samsung on is they're willing to have their boldest ideas in public and fail in public and just keep going just step by step by step by step relentlessly until they're like, see, we told you so. And you're like, well, the first note didn't even fit

in a regular human being's hand. Yeah. And they're like, see, everyone likes a big screen now. You're like, that was a refrigerator. But like, they just keep going. And like, I'm always eager to see Like, it's rare that we see a Samsung failure not result in them learning something in the way that Apple, like, will never even tell you that their mistakes happened. Like, Apple never admits that they tried something and it didn't work and they made a change because of it.

Can you apply that insight to the unpacked live stream itself, Nelai? No, I cannot. Samsung needs to stop having these events. I'm just going to be straight up about it. I was thoroughly entertained, though. I must admit, I was doing the super cut, and I was like, this is incredible. but not, I don't think it was the response of the incredible that they wanted. No, because you're doing the super, like that frame of mind of, I hope something interesting

happens so I can put it in a supercut. Like, I hope there's a, I hope there's like a car crash that I can like stick in the supercut. I must admit, when I'm when I'm editing a supercut, I'm always looking for the moments that make me giggle so that I can like pull them out and put it in the end card. And this end card was getting along. We call those the Michael Bay moments of supercuts, yes. I keep making fun of mystic bronze.

And at one point, Samsung was like, this color is gender fluid. Yeah. Which is like, did you just look up a vocabulary word and not, and not understand what it means? Like, that's not what that means at all. And also, like, all you're trying to say is both men and women will like this color. And the best way to say that is to just not say it. To still say it. To zero percent say it.

Samsung does get credit, though. That is the most diverse group of. of presenters I've seen in a tech keynote that I can, in memory, like maybe ever. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. I mean, look, they've been trying, like, we dinged them ages ago. Remember when they had the Broadway show?

Who could never forget, Radio City? Nila, you and I were sitting there and the audience just trapped in that horror show. You're like, what is happening? So they've gotten steadily better since then. We've given that credit. But they're still, these unpacked events, they don't tell a story. They're totally disjointed. And most importantly, everything leaks.

like everything from this thing leaked down to the the videos they showed during the event right and then they released their own PR before the event even started so like not only had it all leaked they had officially told everybody what was going on and then they this thing was basically a sequence of promo videos because that's what virtual events are and it just they I think they have lost the plot of events yeah like they don't know why they're doing them but they know they should and there's like a predatory cabal of ad agencies who are ready to affirm that instinct and be like, we'd like some of your money. And you can just see that dynamic happening. Like spam calls have gotten really bad lately. And maybe like Samsung is just like the company that answers them and

like provides their information. Yeah. It's like, oh man. Like every time I watch one of these days, I'm like some ad agency got super rich today. What did you think of the giant AR larger than life products. That was probably my favorite part, to be honest. I mean, they had to do something, right? If you're not, right, you can't give people the big screens or the Oculus thing that they usually do. Why not make it seem like your, your headphones are dwarfing a human being? I'm just glad they didn't know what to do it. Speaking of headphones, we got to move on. We've spent too long on critiquing their show. Welch, the first line of review of the Samsung Galaxy Buds Live is they should have called them the Galaxy Beans. They should have. I mean, how many chances

do you get intact to just own the fun name of the thing? We always complain about how these headphones have weird, bizarre names, no one remembers. And there was some meeting at some point where someone said, hey, guys, I think it would be fun to call these things the Galaxy Beans, because that's what they look like. And then someone else came along and said, Galaxy Buds Live, you see, because the open design makes you feel like you're at a concert. And someone else said, that's the one. Not the beans. Galaxy Buds laugh. That's the predatory cabal of ad agencies. I'll never understand that choice. I think they would have sold better if they were just call the beans and how they lean into it.

I mean, literally the product page on launch day, they left one of a beans reference in on Samsung.com. Wait, it was, they were actually going to be called the Galaxy Beans? I didn't even see that. Wow. And they changed it? Yes. If you went to the Galaxy Buds Live page on Samsung.com,

right when the keynote ended, and you typed Command F and typed the word beans, you found a reference to beans. They called them the beans. Dieter. I have a question. for you. Yeah. So you're confirming that directly after the keynote ended, you went to the Samsung Galaxy Bud's live page, hit Command F, and typed in Beans. I have been so hard on the Call

Them Bees bandwagon, the Bean bandwagon, the Chuck wagon that everybody on Twitter knows that I'm Team Bean. And so someone who went to that page tweeted it at me, and that is why I went to confirm. It is too late now. They're the Galaxy Buds Live indeed. But it turns out, they're actually pretty good. They sound good. They fit in your ears better than I expected. I mean, I'm someone whose ears

don't like AirPods at all. Like hard kind of earbuds don't fit me super world, but these just kind of slide right in, sit in the contra of your ear, I believe. That's the... Wow.

Yes. This phase in tech is making us learn way too much vocabulary. So, but they sit pretty well. They sound great. The bass is tight.

They don't sound better or worse than the Galaxy Buds plus, I would say, because these are open, so they sound different, and they let them much more outside noise. The noise cancellation, like I say in the review, is barely a factor at all. Like, it'll cut off the smallest slice of,

like, really low-pitched things like hums or, like, your air conditioner or your refrigerator, but, like, voices and, like, outside noise all just comes through like nothing. So don't buy them for that reason. But if you want the style, if the look appeals to you, they sound good. The battery life is really good.

Chris, tell me about this. image, which is the headphones in beans. Just walk me through the whole thing. Ideation, refinement, execution, everything. Well, I figured if they weren't going to do the name justice, I would take it upon myself. And so I stopped at my corner deli at like 10 o'clock on Tuesday night and bought a bag of beans and came back home and tossed them in a plastic container and put my flash on my camera. and made the lead image you see in the review. I got to say, it does not look like deli beans in a plastic container under a flash.

They look like much classier than bodega beans, for sure. It's weird. Do you think they change the name to live because the noise cancellation isn't any good? Well, that's, was the intent, the design intent from the start to make it this sort of half weird noise cancellation that feels open? Or did they want it to be open because I know that AirPods Pro are. are vented and they wanted to be vented and then they couldn't figure out how to do noise cancellation on top of it. Like, that's the question, right?

I think the whole time they wanted to call it, open type NC is what they call it. Okay. So it has its own name. So I think that's what they were going for. But I wish they were a bit more effective at just cutting out, like even a bit more of like trains or like airplanes. Like these will not work on a plane. I mean, just forget about it.

So for that, you're going to want the other headphones there we're going to talk about in a minute. But all in all, I think they're pretty good earbuds. Has the, has like the pairing multiple device support? Like right now with my AirPods, I switch between my phone, my iPad and my laptop. More than ever, I think. There's like other people in this house, right? So I need the headphones more at home than I did before.

And like I have just realized like, okay, I'm like locked into Apple W1 world. I hate it, but it works really well. So I'll deal. You know, like it's real. That part is really good. How is that kind of like pairing dynamic with these? I managed them with a Samsung phone. And so obviously it's going to be pretty ideal there.

You just open the case and it is very. very close to the AirPods experience where it just kind of comes up and says, these will be paired to your account, and then you're good to go. But I didn't, I mean, I did have some issues with dropouts and that sort of thing here and there, but by and large, I mean, they're pretty on par with the Galaxy Buds Plus. If you want more noise isolation, I would go for the Buds Plus, since they have those silicone ear tips. Chris, these don't have true multi-point support, right?

Like, I can't have them on my tablet and my phone at the same time. Nope, just one device at a time. I think still right now, the only buds at least that have that are the jobbers. So they kind of stand alone as the ones that I'll do two devices at once. Well, we have to talk about the tablet, Samsung's the S7, but you just mentioned the other headphones review this week. The Sony, WH-1000 XM-4s? WH-1,000XM-4s, yep.

That's what we're saying with the names. Do they change the X and the M around? No, the M-X are the Bud style, I think, right? And the XM are the over here? But they were the MH4, MH3s. So the buds are the WF,000X, M3s. And the headphones are the W. This is the worst radio ever made.

They should call them little beans and big beans. Every now and again, I'm like, man, we should have a show on like Sirius XM. And I'm like, what will I send them? And it's us just doing Sony model numbers. But it's the fourth edition of like the famous Sony. Fourth edition, yeah, these are a final here. It took two years for some reason. I mean, Sony kind of fired off the first three, like, I think there was one every year for a while,

and then it kind of took two years to kind of catch their breath and see what Bose did, and Bose came out with the noise-canceing headphones 700, which are great. And so now Sony is back with the 1,000XM4s. They look the same. They sound exactly the same. But now they can pair with two devices at once, and the microphones are no longer garbage. So if you're on Zoom calls or talking on the phone, they'll actually do pretty well now. It took two years to add multi-point support and slightly not garbage microphones.

They also added the sensor inside the earcups so it can detect when it comes off your head to pause music, right? Yes, you take it. Does that work? It does. Crap, I'm buying these. I mean, so I have the twos. I'm still not entirely clear what this one. I'm like, I'm literally looking at your view in that collection of numbers and letters is breaking my brain.

I have the twos. I love the twos. I could not justify. upgrading to the threes for a pretty good jump in noise cancellation in USB3. I was like, this is fine. I'm like either on a plan I'm asleep or listening to something and the noise cancellation was fine. Is there a reason to jump from the twos to the fours? I mean, I guess if you want the multi-point, if you want to like, I mean, like you were saying, you're always home now, like on your phone and your laptop at the same time often. So it does come in handy for sure. But right

now they're kind of buggy Sony's support for multiple devices. But they said a former buggy Sony's software. But a former update will come out by the time you ship to customers they claim, and then that'll shore up all that. So it'll work. I got to say, multi-point is like a habit or like a deal breaker for me. Like I've never bought any of the other generations because they don't support multipoint. And I'm constantly switching between my like phone and my tablet or my computer or whatever. And so like I got the surface headphones too specifically because they do great multi-point and like average everything else. did not like the way the surface headphones too sounded.

They just never agreed with me, but multiple devices. Chris, I scroll to the end of your review to look at agree to continue because Sony's Sony's headphones connect privacy policy has always been terrifying to me. Yeah. It seems like they've walked it back a little bit. Like at one point, if you use headphones connect Sony, it's like, we'll just send every song you're listening to to our server so we can track your listening of music. It was like, why?

That now falls under the opt-in. part that I mentioned at the end there. So you can like opt into like what you do with the app and how you use it and software updates and things like that. But it's, it's the usual privacy policy in terms of service that no one rates and hopefully Sony's not doing something too nefarious. To me, it's the one extreme downside of Sony headphones is I, every time I look at that app and every time I look at that privacy policy, I'm like, I don't love this. All right, let's talk about the, I mean, it's an Android tablet. Dan, I'm going to give you like three minutes to talk about it. I feel like that's enough.

Yeah. But people are kind of excited about it. Literally, the only thing you need to know about this, Tab S7 Plus, is that it has a 120 Hertz OLED screen that looks incredible. Like, it is, I wrote this in my piece today, perhaps the nicest mobile screen I've ever held in my hands. It feels like I took an OLED TV off the wall and, like, hulked it down to 12 inches, and I'm staring at. Like, it is, it is gorgeous. And the 120 hertz is, like, awesome for, like, interactions. super fluid. It's fast and responsive. Like, it's all great. The sound on the four speakers sound great. Like, it does everything right in terms of, like, a content consumption tablet.

When it starts to, like, fall apart is when you try to use it as a productivity tablet, so, like, you when you use the keyboard and you're using Samsung's Dex software, which is their desktop emulation type of software environment or whatever, it's kind of buggy, doesn't work great. It's running Android, so a lot of the Android apps kind of look terrible on this big 12.4-inch screen, unless you're watching full-screen video, which doesn't matter. So it's like really great. It's like the typical Samsung story from five or six years ago. Really killer hardware, awesome specs, really well made, and then software. It's Android tablet software. I feel like the interest in this is definitely related to people being at home. I think people are buying tablets

for their kids. Kids are, we have no idea what's going on with schools. Kids are going to have to, like, do e-learning. Like, is there a cheaper kind of computer that I can put in front of my kids or use for that? I wouldn't call this like an ideal kids tablet. I mean, the thing is $850. The keyboard case is $230.

You're at well over a grand when you pack them together. This is a premium level. This is going head to head with the iPad Pro and like the 12.9 inch iPad Pro with that. So, like, the top of the tier stuff. And it has a price that's commensurate to it. If you're looking for like a tablet that you just want to kick around and watch some, some video on and kill time with that home, you know,

a fire HD 10 will do that for you. An entry level iPad will do that for you. This is probably way more than you need. Unless you're a total screen snob and you just want to have that OLED screen, which is like I get it. I don't blame you. Like this screen is incredible. Yeah.

I don't know. I don't want to dive into it, but it feels like this product coming up against our Macs. We're about to see just like a category wipeout happen here But we'll get into it when we get into real real quick How about the watch the Galaxy Watch 3? Just super quick I totally forgot about this watch I've got one of my wrist they send me a review in it already It is thinner and lighter than the last Galaxy watch was two years ago so that's not saying much

Not saying much uh this is the 45 millimeter model it's still pretty big I've also got an active watch active 2 that's in the 40 millimeter model, and that's a smaller size, and I find that way more comfortable. But if you like big watches, you'll like this too because it's still a really big watch. I haven't really spent a ton of time playing with it, but that's their big pitch is that it is smaller or it's going to be thinner and lighter than before. It's also slightly more expensive. They're kind of going upscale with it since they've got the watch active 2 line that's taking care of the lower price. so it costs a little bit more. I think this model is like $450,000, and it goes up from there.

So stay tuned. We'll have a review soon. I know that the Galaxy Watch was really popular for Samsung, and this one probably will be popular as well. But we'll see. I love the rotating bezel on those, but I felt like when I was holding this at the hands-on first look experience, that bezel raises pretty high above the screen still. And I just wish that they would get that down.

Yeah, it's like I'm of two minds of that, because I told. totally agree. Like it's got this like dish to it and it's kind of a little weird, especially when you're swiping it. But at the same time, if you're like out and about and you knock it again, something that bezel like stops something from smacking your screen and scratching it. So like I can totally understand why you would want to have that kind of raised lip in the sense of like a Cassio G-shock has all that chunky like rubber around it and it's super rugged. You could smack it with a hammer. Wouldn't smack this with a hammer. But like I get why that bezel is raised. And I will say this. I've been wearing the watch active 2 for almost a year now. And it has that virtual touch dial around. It's like a touch strip that doesn't rotate, but it moves when you move your finger on it. And then this is obviously the actual rotating ring. This is way better.

The rotating ring is way superior. So I'm glad that they kept that around. Physical controls beating virtual controls. I'm into it. All right. We got to take a break. We've got to talk about Apple a little bit. We'll be right back.

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I will say this. We were on the call where they told us about the new IMac, and then I was time for questions. And my question was, so it looks the same? And they're like, you're right. We didn't point that out because it looks exactly the same. One assumes the IMA is going to change its design when they move it to Arm. Which is happening within two years. We think.

Well, no, Apple said this transition will take two years. Right. So we know, I guess. Unless that those are like really weasily promises, like, that's the thing. So, all right, the TLDR is they kept the body exactly the same. They didn't take the time to put in face ID or a fingerprint sensor. They upgraded the processors to 10th gen Intel. They made SSD standard, which was the right move, but you can still get a fusion drive if you really want for cheap storage.

And they gave you an option to spend $500 on a nanotexture display. And they made the webcam 1080P instead of. of the terrible webcams that are in every single other Mac. So I looked at your comparison photos of the webcams. Yeah. It really looks like they are just doing some iPhone stuff on that webcam. So they are. So this thing has a T2 chip, which is like the iOS chip thing that controls like the touchbar.

And it does the secure enclave. And it like controls the encryption on the SSD so it's faster. They just like, they've just put a little iOS computer inside every Mac now. And it controls a bunch of stuff. And so now it controls the camera. So the camera runs through the T2 chip before the Mac even sees it. And they're using that opportunity to do stuff. So they say what they're doing is exposure control, tone mapping, and face detection.

Not face detection to unlock because, you know, why would anybody want that on a computer window, every single Windows computer up? No, it's to, like, properly light your face, you know, and not have it just give you a general exposure for the entire room. So it's always exposed to your face. see it. When you move your face around, you can watch the room get lighter or darker, depending on how light or dark your face is. They insist they're not doing face-smoving, and part of me wants to challenge that assertion and really see if they're doing face-moving out, because everyone who says they're not doing face-moving on cameras, they really, they really are. Maybe not Apple, but a bunch of other people do some face-moving.

But I couldn't see it. But yeah, it's like, it's a pretty good webcam. It's like they're doing some iOS stuff on it. If this pandemic lasts another year and webcams across the world on every single computer don't take a massive step up. I'm going to be supremely disappointed. Yeah. But it's like particularly for Apple, right? Like maybe on the Windows side, like the market will get the signal. Oh, people are buying computers for better webcams. Yeah. Apple's like, people continue to buy Macs. Max. Max remain the most popular Macs ever made. And it's like, you don't, you know, literally no data is hitting you. Like, they're like, the iMac is a best selling desktop Mac in our line. And it's like, there's only one.

There's the Mac Mini. I feel like they made the concession. The relighting stuff, like Apple's image processing stack is so good. They're just moving it to this computer and putting in the better camera. They obviously have a lot of thickness in that chassis to put it in there. Yeah. But the fact that they went all the way to, we're doing intelligent relighting exposure control. I hope that portends, like, when the RMAX come out, we're going to do some crazy iOS stuff to these cameras.

They really should. Yeah. If they don't take that shot, like, what is even the point? An iPad app on your Mac? Come on. What do you think it's more likely? You get a really, really good iPhone-level camera in an ARM Mac, or you get a touchscreen on an Arm Mac?

All right, everybody vote. I'm going to go with a better camera. Okay. Dan went with camera. I'm going to go camera, too. Yeah, I'm going with a better camera. Welch? Because it's like the easy, like, they don't have to change MacOS at all for that.

Chris? I suppose the camera, yeah. Oh, man. I'm going to, wait, Dieter? Look at Big Sur. Just look at it. Yeah, I'm going touch screen. I bet we get a better touchscreen before they figure out the hardware limitations

is squeezing a better camera in a laptop. Yeah. What's interesting to me, like, I think you just alluded to this a minute ago, Nila, is that like they have this image processing stack from the iPhone that they've refined for the past decade plus, and like they could just port that over to their existing hardware, which is terrible. And, you know, the general consensus is that the lid on your MacBook is too thin to put

better hardware in there. But what if they just took the process? thing and put that on their hardware, would that bring it up to a level that is above garbage? And then maybe they can figure out a way to put in better hardware if they do a redesign or something like that where they have more space or whatever. I don't know. It just seems like an easy thing that they could do that they just haven't done. Yeah, I mean, iPhone photo tricks are based on like multiple exposure stacking, which is way harder to do in video. I've own video tricks are done.

and all kinds of other ways. I don't even know if these existing 720P cameras in the MacBook can do it. Yeah. And you kind of get the feeling that Apple was forced to put a 1080P sensor in the iMac because no one will sell them at a 720P sensor anymore. Like they went to Sony and Sony is like, dude,

like you gotta stop asking for this. Like we all want to move on. But I don't know. We'll see. Like if the stuff we get from our Macs is the things we take for granted on iOS devices, The camera just has to be on that list. Yeah.

Bring back the eyesight camera, you cowards. That huge tube. Yes. That's like such a sign. We're talking about how thick the winds are. That thing was like a six inch cylinder with like holes in it for airflow. It was incredible. And it was like 480P, if that.

It might have even been lower than that. Dieter, talk to me about nanotexture. So it makes the screen math, but not really because Matt scatters the pixels and makes it a little bit fuzzy. and makes it a little bit fuzzy, and this tries not to. And it keeps glare from hitting your screen. So there's no glare. It's very effective at that. And I do not know how durable it is.

I just don't. I don't know. Yeah, that's because there's no, like, coating or whatever. There's no coat. So it's bare glass. So the way it works is they etch the glass at a, like, nano level and like the literal definition of nanometer, like tiny, tiny, tiny. Like, I actually was like, I'm just going to call it Microsoft.

because that seems small. And I'd look up like, no, no, microscopic is actually not the right term. I should go with nano because it's super tiny. But it's glass. And so, like, at a certain point, like, there's physics involved. And, like, glass can only stand up to so much, especially when it's etched in their, like, little tiny points, right? So they give you a cloth to clean it, and they tell you not to clean it with other stuff. And so the concern is that, like, it will, like, scratch or degrade.

And this was a big concern with the pro display as well. The problem is when you buy a pro display, you're spending $5,000, $6,000 or whatever on a thing that you're going to put in your fancy, you know, studio where you edit videos. And you are the kind of person that could spend $6,000 on a monitor and use it for work. You probably know not to touch it when your hands are covered in macaroni and cheese. If you're a four-year-old and there's an IMac in the living room, you see a big glowing screen and all big glowing screens are touch screens because that's the way the world should work. And so you're going to go up and you're going to slap your hand on it. Oh, man. Does a nanotextra iMac mean that there's never going to be a touchscreen Mac?

Oh, dude. Don't say that because I want this on the iPad Pro very badly. Deere, I want to go back to what you said in Apple's instructions. They hand you a cloth, they give you a cloth, and not to clean it with other stuff. That other stuff includes things just like water or like window cleaner. Like you can't like spray anything on this display. And then you probably void your warranty in it. just disintegrates or whatever. But like, I love the point that you made in your, in your article.

And, like, I didn't even think about that. Like, the IMA is, like, the shared family computer that Apple makes and it sits in living rooms all the time. Yeah, but like, when in our off, our dear sweet office, remember that? It was great. Like, Becca was editing on an IMAQ, right? Like, most of our video editors were editing on consumer, not even IMAX pros. And, like, I think there is a world in which a bunch of pros actually end up buying IMAX. And so you can give them this option and maybe not your unruly children. I mean, my kid would destroy this thing so fast. But, you know, other well-behaved children might not destroy it.

That to me is like the confusing part of the line. What are you saying, Becca? Another thing, though, is that as a video editor, I have a lot of other video editors often around me. And they love to like touch screens. Like they'll point to the timeline, but they'll touch my timeline. and I'm like, don't, like, I have one co-worker and you know who you are, who always is touching my screen, and they would just ruin this. So I asked Apple about this specifically, and they're like, look, we don't want to,

we don't want to give you the impression that it's delicate, right? It's not going to, like, it's not going to fall apart if you touch it, or if you, like, happen to accidentally wipe it with a paper towel or something. But over the course of the life of an IMAQ, which you're going to keep for a very long time, Eventually, like, a bunch of abrasive things that weren't designed for this bare glass would damage it. Now, where the truth lies of how delicate and fragile this thing is, I don't know. And I don't know because the only other screens that have it are the $6,000 pro display XDRs. And, like, how many of those are out in the world?

Who has the data on whether or not those things are actually durable enough to be put on an iMac? presumably Apple does and they decided it is, but I mean, they just must know that they have pro customers who want to buy this thing and the pro customers were like, we see that pro display XDR. Is it available on the IMAQ Pro? They did like a slight update to the IMAX pro

and you can't even get this on the IMAX pro. Interesting, isn't that? Very, very interesting. That is super weird. All of this has made me remember that we actually purchased an IMac Pro and a very fast Windows PC and our video team was very excited about

both of those things, and both of those things are sitting in our office being completely unused right now. Surprise. I am sitting within five feet of one. What? Which one do you have? I have the Mac Pro here. Oh, my God. I agreed to do every super cut.

I could have this in my home. Wait, really? That was the trade? That was the legitimate trade. Yes. Incredible. This is the best. I had no idea.

Do you have the display, too? Oh, I have the display, too. And yeah. I legitimately had to move a vacation because there was a supercut. And then I also had to give Alex a set of keys to my apartment so that she could come do a super cut just so I could just miss one. Is that why we had a record turnaround time on the Samsung supercut this week? No, Dan.

I'm just getting that good, okay? Wow. This is incredible breaking news on the perchcast. I had no idea. That's incredible. Do you wait, our display is the glossy one, right? You don't have the nanotechure. I don't think I have the nanotech one, no.

All right, well, don't put macaroni and cheese on that one either. But what I will say, a bit aside, is that the Mac Pro gets so hot that my air conditioning is running at full speed at all times. And there's a fan on the Mac Pro. I just keep it on it because it just, under my desk, it's just hot at all times. That's incredible. I had no idea. That's such, that's hilarious.

I love it. We got to talk about Greg Jawswick and Phil Schiller. There's like a lot to say and also not a lot to say. So Phil Schiller is a legend in Apple World. He has been there since 1987. He used to be the product manager for Power Books. He gave interviews to Engadgett when we were in Engadget about the Power Book. He famously demoed one of the very first Wi-Fi chips on a laptop by like jumping off a giant like diving board on stage and landing at a giant.

Matt? Yeah. I mean, he's been there forever. Depending on who you ask at what time, he gives himself credit for the click wheel on the iPod or the scroll wheel. If you ask other Apple executives, they will dispute this. But he was in that room. And he has claim to be in this disputed conversation about who invented the iPod. Very few people get to say, someone will argue with me about whether I invented the iPod or not.

And my argument is just as good as theirs. He's that guy. So that's incredible. He obviously worked hand in hand with Steve Jobs. He has been in charge of worldwide marketing in Apple for a long time. Marketing in Apple is very different than other companies. Yeah. Can you explain that?

Because I think I've been saying it, but I think that people don't really understand what it means that marketing at Apple is a completely different thing. You know, the way I think about it is, there's this joke that, like, Apple is a software company that makes hardware. And, like, they make all their money in hardware, but, like, really what they are is a software company. And they want to make software experiences. I think what Apple really is is a product marketing.

company. And I mean that not in a bad way. I mean that in an absolutely positive way. Apple figures out what people want and what they can give them and what tools they have. And then they make that product exactly and they don't let other people like this joke about Samsung just doing whatever the carriers want. Phil Scholar's the guy at Apple like stops it. He's like, this is the product we're making to fit the market. Like the classic definition of marketing. We found a market of people who want this thing and we're going to make that thing and make sure that we communicate about that thing the right way. And a better way maybe to think about it is Schiller's the guy who's introduced the iPhone for the past several years. And he's the guy who geeks out about the camera because he knows the story of the phone is the camera.

And he's in it and he knows the specs. And he knows exactly how cameras work. And he cares about the specs and the nerdery of it. But his job is to tell a story out of those specs. So he's just been in that world in Apple where marketing is different than almost every other. There's no predatory cabal of ad agencies surrounding Apple because they're doing it all right there. He also, just to be blunt, has had like a super spiky relationship with the press. He is very protective of Apple.

He famously is the can't innovate my ass guy when they introduced the old Mac Pro. Yep. Which it turned out their innovation was wrongly directed. You know, he's just like a company man through and through. And like that has led to some great successes and some obvious misses. Yeah, he's been running the App Store for the past little while. And like the App Store has been the center of a bunch of controversy lately. And that's not all on him, but like he's he's in charge of it.

Right. So he, the press release says, what was, it was like a sense. The verb was, was wild. Yeah. It's like, ascends to Apple Fellow, which is this title that Apple uses for like famous people. Like Steve Wozniak has the title of Apple Fellow. It means he has no responsibilities. Alan Kay, Andy Herzfeld, Alan Kay, like famous computer people get this title to just like float around and go to events.

Schiller is getting the title. And he's still in charge of the app store. And all this product marketing functions are going to Greg Joswick, who we know really well, who we see at every event who talks to us about every product. Who's great. I think he will do a great job. He's very direct. He's very clear with us.

He's also been in a lot of those rooms. But if you just take a step back from all of this, they're taking the app store away from like the day-to-day job of one of the executives. They're making it Schiller's entire job, taking him out of the executive team. And then you look even one step farther than that. Johnny Ive, Angela Arrence, Phil Schiller, like a bunch of Apple people are gone. Like senior famous Apple people are moving on. And there's like an obvious changing of the guard.

It kind of feels like this is now Tim Cook's moment. Like he's more in charge of this. And all that sort of like Steve Jobs' DNA is like kind of like. And like to be fair, he's been there since 1987. I would be bored. How many portions does he have? One for every day of them. But you just see this moment where all these dudes are moving on.

And I think it's a pretty big inflection point for this company with, they're not being treated like an underdog anymore. They're a big company that's in front of Congress that controls a big chunk of the economy and that has outsized impact on the entire world. And that's now going to be Tim Cook's version of Apple. And sort of the underdog growing Apple is moved on. So I don't know. I don't have like more thoughts than that.

There was a lot of them, to be honest. But I know, what do you think, Peter? Well, the inflection point is also coming when the Mac switches to arm, and they're going to start really truly unifying their ecosystem. We've been seeing a bunch of building blocks, you know, the catalyst on the Mac and iPad getting, you know, a few more features and becoming more like, can it replace your Mac and blah, blah, blah, blah. They've been like, we've been calling it a collision course for years, right? And so like that's happening under Tim Cook's watch under his vision. And everyone's like, well, Tim's not the product guy. and everybody else is a product guy,

but like at the next phase of like Apple products and Apple computers and how they work and how they work with each other is something beyond what the original vision was under Steve Jobs. And like the DNA of the company and the culture of the company, I still think is like has that Apple core to it. But the things that they make and the philosophy of how they're supposed to connect with each other

and connect with the rest of the world is coming out of the most valuable company in the world, depending on what day it is, not the underdog who got big and just realized that it's big now. It's like, it's coming from the behemoth, not from the little guy that has just realized it's a behemoth. And that's a big shift. Yeah. The other thing I'll note is Steve Dowling was another Apple executive who left, I think less well known to the world. But he was their head of comms.

And he was like a powerful head of communications. Like he ran all the press and all the messaging. he's been gone since September. Apple has not had a head of comms since September. Schiller's been running it and now I don't know who it is. Right. And like that's just a lot of places where either it's going to be new blood with new ideas or they're going to promote people from like within the ranks to just deal with how do we talk about a company that now some people, some powerful people think has too much influence in power across the entire industry. And I don't know. I think it's just a, I think Schiller had an incredible run. I think almost any tech executive would take

Schiller's run. Like certainly, for example, if you ran the tiny phone division at a certain search company, you'd be like, hmm, I'd take Phil Schiller's run. Yeah, it's going to be very strange this fall to not hear him talking about the iPhone's camera or like the new features or everything else. I guess there's what better time to do it really than this year when there's not going to be that usual iPhone event. And so Jaws can kind of just come in and do whatever they're going to do for the event and maybe find his own approach to it. But yeah, I think Phil's done most of the last several iPhones, so not small shoes to Phil.

Not, I mean, not even a little bit. And like, Phil will get into it on cameras with you. I mean, he is a nerd. And Jaws is like deeply a nerd too, but there are not many marketing executives who are like, I made a decision that affected the camera while we were developing the product. And Phil had claimed to that. We'll just, I just, this moment of Apple becoming the bigger company, like, I would say, this is one of the bigger inflection points.

Not even I've leaving. Like Johnny I have left and we're all like, good, right? All right. Like, battery life, here we come. How long till the keyboards work? Yeah, Johnny I've left. The laptops got thicker and the keyboard got fixed.

You know, like, that was one kind of inflection point. This is how does Apple treat itself as a business. So there's not like executive shuffles of big companies are not usually the kind of news that we talk about. but I think this one is notable. It's worth, you know, saying the dude did an incredible job, but it's also the future of Apple, I think, looks a lot different as the, is this group of executives cycles out,

which is what we're watching him do. Okay, we went over. I don't know why I say we went over. We're actually under our average time. Whatever. Well, we went over the time that we're supposed to hit. I want to call out one story before we wrap it up. James Vincent wrote a story about scientists who,

like the committee of scientists that named, like human genes in the genome. They got together and they decided to change their naming scheme because Microsoft Excel kept converting the names into dates. And it was easier to change the naming scheme for the human genome than to get Microsoft to change Excel. This is a long and deeply reported story. It has many twists and turns.

I just want everyone to read it because there's nothing I love better than human software interaction stories at this scale. So you go check that out. The site is rocking. Casey's actually off this week and next, but the interface is coming back next week. Check out the interface. Deeter is back at Processor. He was actually off, but he's back now.

Becca, you got a new show on YouTube. Tell me about it. Oh, yeah, yeah. We got this new show called Full Frame where we talk anything and everything cameras. We're just kind of revving that up, getting really excited about it. I just needed a place where I could, like, fully nerd out about cameras on our YouTube page. So this is that. The first episode, I built my own camera because, you know, you got to know the rules to break

rules and learning the rules killed me. So if you want to watch me struggle, go check out episode one of Full Frame on YouTube.com slash The Verge. Very cool. We'll be back on Tuesday. Like I said, if all goes well, I'm assuming it will. I love Taylor Lawrence from New York Times. Talk about TikTok. I think that's going to be a fun episode. You can tweet at us. Chris is at Chris Welch. Becca is at Becca Farsace. Dan is D.C. Sefert. Dieter is Backelon. And I'm reckless. We love to hear from you. Like I said, we'll be back on Tuesday. Talk to you soon. Rock and Wear a mask.