Pod Insights The Vergecast How to buy an iPad, hike 2,600 miles, and watch free TV About this episode Today on the flagship podcast of over-the-air interactive television:
David Pierce is joined by Alex Cranz and Janko Roettgers to talk about ATSC 3.0, the new standard for over-the-air broadcasting.
The future of TV is up in the air
Mitchell Clark joins the show to discuss his next endeavor.
Mitchell's gear list
Dan Seifert explains which iPad you should buy and how to make the iPad work better for writing by hand.
The best iPad to buy in 2023
Yes, paper-feel screen protectors for the iPad are good
This Apple Pencil clone provides 80 percent of the experience for a quarter of the price
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 17,137 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 David Pierce? Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of over-the-air interactive television. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I'm currently on my way to drop off my three-month-old at daycare. We live about a mile from the daycare, which means on nice days, I can walk. But we also live in Washington DC, and it's March, which means, really, there are never any nice days. So I'm pretty sure I bought a hybrid just so that I don't feel bad about driving the 0.9 miles to and from daycare every morning. Anyway, we have a great show for you today. We are going to talk about the latest thing in over-the-air television, which is both much cooler and higher-tech than you might think, and coming slower than you'd hope. We're also going to talk about hiking gear, because our own Mitchell Clarke has some really cool, big plans coming up.
0:46 David Pierce? And then, we're going to get deep into the weeds about iPads again, because Dan Seifert has been doing some really cool handwriting experiments, and I want to talk about them. All that's coming in just a sec, but first, I gotta drop off the kid, and then drive the 0.9 miles home, because I'm too cold and too lazy to walk. This is The Vergecast. See you in a sec.
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1:32 David Pierce? Welcome back. If you've been listening to this show for a while, you've probably heard us, and by us, I mean Alex Cranz, talk about ATSC 3.0. It's the new standard for over-the-air broadcasting, and it turns your antennas into a much more powerful and interactive TV device. Well, kind of. It turns out the ATSC 3.0 story is complicated, and so is the rollout. Yanko Rutgers recently wrote a story about ATSC 3.0 for us, so I asked him and Alex to come explain what's going on and what it means for you. Alex, hello. Hey. Yanko, hello. Hey there. Yanko, I hope you appreciate what you've come into, which is the segment of The Vergecast that Alex has waited approximately her entire life to do.
2:16 David Pierce? So if you had plans for the rest of the day, like, it's, this is it. This is your day now. Dreams do come true.
2:22 David Pierce? Okay, so we have a lot to get into here, but I think the place to start is actually like at the very basic level because I realized in reading the really good story that you wrote for us, which is in the show notes, everybody should read it, that I didn't even totally understand what ATSC 3.0 or really even ATSC at all is.
2:41 Speaker 02 I don't know if you want me to start with the acronym itself. It is kind of weird because it stands, I actually wrote this down, for the Advanced Television Systems Committee, and that sounds like something invented in Soviet Russia also, but it is basically, that's an organization that comes up with broadcast standards, and ATSC 3.0 is the new standard for broadcast television, so television that you can watch with an antenna, things that get broadcasted over the air. They have been in the US digital for quite some time. It used to be that TV was analog, you had these weird rabbit ear antennas, it was snowy, depending on the reception that you had. They switched it over, a little over a decade ago, to ATSC 1.0, which brought HD, freed up a bunch of spectrum which the government
3:26 Speaker 02 loved because they could sell it off, and it also allowed people, or broadcasters rather, to transmit far more stations. So if you are in a market where you do have some reception, if you're anywhere in the city and you don't have too many obstructions around you, you can nowadays receive anywhere from maybe 20 to 40, make sometimes even more stations for free over the air. So that's ATSC 1.0 right now, the current broadcast standard. It's free, it's out there, you get ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and a bunch of stations you've never heard of.
4:00 David Pierce? That's literally my experience, and like 2/3 of them are in Spanish, at least where I am. And yeah, it's good times.
4:05 Speaker 02 But then, there is now a new standard coming out, or is being implemented, which is ATSC 3.0. And that one basically provides better resolution, better video quality, up to 4K, it supports HDR, it supports a more advanced audio, immersive audio, in theory also Dolby audio, and you can even transmit, because it's IP-based, you can transmit. Data over it, which can be used for simple applications, for example. So you can have like HTML apps on your screen, which you don't even need internet for, they just get downloaded to your TV over the air. So broadcasters have been wanting to switch to this new format for a couple of years now.
4:46 Speaker 02 I think in 2017, the FCC said, looks good to us, go, go ahead with this. But here's a couple of conditions for that. And since then, slowly, we have seen sort of a move towards ATSC 3.0. It's now available in around 50 markets. So if you are in Los Angeles, if you're in DC, Portland, a couple of other cities, you can already receive some stations in ATSC 3. If you're in the Bay Area in San Francisco or so, it's not available yet. And that's true in, in a bunch of other cities around the States as well. But the people who are pushing it, the broadcasters are saying by the end of the year, 75% of all households in the US are going to be able to watch their broadcast television in ATSC 3.
5:29 Speaker 02 So this is basically what all of this is about. And there's a lot of development in the details, but I'm sure we're gonna get to that.
5:35 David Pierce? My immediate question when you explain that, and I say this with, you know, all love and affection, is who cares? We, we exist in a world where the internet exists, where the thing that you do when you cut the cable is you sign up for a bunch of streaming services that come straight through to your TV. You don't need an antenna hanging off your TV or on your window or whatever. Like, haven't we solved this problem with the internet? Like, what, what is there about ATSC that would work in a way that isn't yet sort of a solved problem on the Roku TV behind me?
6:08 Speaker 02 Well, first of all, there is the cost issue. Broadcast television is free.
6:12 David Pierce? Fair.
6:12 Speaker 02 And it's great and it's a public service, you can get PBS over it. I mean, you and I probably cut the cord because cable was just terrible.
6:20 David Pierce? Yeah.
6:20 Speaker 02 But many people cut the cord because of real cost savings that they need or because,
6:25 David Pierce? Sure.
6:26 Speaker 02 you know, we have inflation right now. And then the other part is that broadcast television is inherently local. So there's a lot of stations that are local broadcasters. And especially when it comes to local expert communities, local minority communities. There's a lot of broadcast stations, like in the Bay Area, there's like a Vietnamese station, a Japanese, you can get Japanese feeds, you can get, there's a actually pretty widely watched Chinese station, Spanish, you already mentioned. So all of these people are being catered to with local broadcast stations in their native tongue. And it's harder, if not impossible, to completely substitute that with streaming. Because if you go to Netflix, obviously, you won't find your local news in Chinese there.
7:08 Speaker 02 If you go to YouTube, you might find some of that, but it could be very inconsistent. And so just having that as an opportunity to turn it on and tune into that, I think makes a lot of sense. And then also, I mean, there is a digital divide. People, not everybody has fast internet. Not everybody has internet at all. If you think about older generations, that's how they still watch television. They either have cable or maybe they have an antenna and that's how they watch TV. So broadcast still matters. And I think with cord cutting, it started to matter more to people who wanted to sort of augment that. Because even if you sign up, what you just described, you sign up for Netflix, you sign up for Hulu, you sign up for Disney Plus, there's more than you could ever want to watch. Except you don't get certain sports things, you don't get the Oscars live, you don't get
7:52 David Pierce? Yeah.
7:53 Speaker 02 breaking news events that easily live. For all those things, broadcast TV stations, especially the big ones like the ABCs and CBS and so forth, still matter.
8:03 David Pierce? Okay, Alex, what is it for you? You're in New York, so you don't get the like, I don't have access to other things. Your internet is bad sometimes, but it seems to work most of the time. Like, what is it about ATSC 3.0 that is so appealing to you?
8:14 Alex Cranz? I, I think it's, it's, it's a quality issue and it's a cost issue. I use Hulu for a long time. I've still got Spectrum. I have cable TV and that was for the longest time because I would have to watch and review shows on the CW. And so that was the only way to get the CW in New York City for the longest time. And I just haven't canceled my Spectrum since then. But, but it really was like, it was that idea of like, I get a lot more flexibility with it and I get flexibility on how I watch it in a way that I don't with streaming channels. Like Netflix, I watch it in Netflix app. That's the only way to do it. And if I want to watch it local, I better hope that like, I managed to download it correctly in time. In broadcast TV, I can just download it. I've got channels.
8:58 Alex Cranz? I go, I DVR what I want to watch and it's done. And I upload it to my device, whatever. And like, I don't have to worry about anything. It all just works. And so that's just very appealing to me. That mix of control plus affordability plus quality. Because typically those streams are higher quality. It just makes sense for me.
9:18 David Pierce? Fair enough. Yeah, let's talk about the gear behind all of this. Because, Yanka, you broke some news in the story you wrote for us about a DVR company thinking about some of this stuff. We're in this interesting place where, like you were saying, the protocol exists, the standard exists. It kind of works. You can kind of get it in some places if you have like a very specific, specific set of skills. What does it actually take? Like, who's building stuff to make this work? How do you have like, what does the setup look like? Who's out there making this stuff?
9:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, before we even get into like adapters and DVRs and boxes and so forth, we have to talk about TVs, I think.
9:52 David Pierce? Okay.
9:52 Speaker 02 Because when you go out and you buy a TV and all those TVs have tuners built in and most of those tuners are ATC1 tuners. So you can watch existing broadcast channels. But once they start turning on these new signals, most of these TVs don't actually know what to do with that. Because it's a completely different format. It's IP-based and so forth. So it needs different tuners. And some TV companies have begun to build those tuners into their devices. Samsung has done it on some higher-end devices. The Samsung 24LG. Sony was so far, I think, the only TV maker who said, we're going to put it into all of our TVs. But not that many people buy Sony TVs, to be quite honest.
10:30 Alex Cranz? They're expensive.
10:31 Speaker 02 Yeah. And that's the point again. Like, when you go down and you look at the cheaper TVs that people actually buy, so the Vizio's and the TCL's, none of those have ATC3 tuners built in. And I talked to those companies before writing the article and they said to me, well, we don't really see the demand for that yet. It's not quite there yet. You can't receive it everywhere. So we're gonna wait and see. And one of the reasons for that is that these tuners are a little bit more expensive. And when you only have, I don't know, five percent profit margin on your device, or 10% maybe, you're not gonna spend extra five bucks because then basically you're gonna lose money on your TV set that you sell for $300 at Walmart or something like that, right? So it's a very thin margin business to begin with.
11:13 Speaker 02 And then to add component costs, then that's not gonna do it until there's overwhelming demand for it. So most people, even if they live in a market where there's ATSC 3.0 turn on and all these stations are available, most people aren't able to watch it these days. Now, one way to solve that would be adapters, right? And the analogy for that is back in 2009 or whatever, the last transition happened to digital television. There was this whole thing where you could go to Radio Shack and you got coupons from the government. You could buy a converter for 30 bucks or 40 bucks or something. It's really cheap, clunky boxes. I forgot about that, yeah. But they worked, right? So suddenly you could receive digital television on your old school TV,
11:54 Speaker 02 even if it was like a super old 20-year-old television, you could receive those signals. These converter boxes, none of that really exists yet. There's plans for that, companies have started to certify some of them. And you hear something about price points of like $200, $300 for something that converts a signal for you. There is no readily available hardware for that yet that people would be willing to buy. And people have been looking at that and thinking like, how can we accelerate this? Converters would be the next step. And so you mentioned it in the story, I broke the news a little bit, that Tableau, which is a, or the company has a different name, but the devices are called Tableau, it's this DVR software that records broadcast TV for you and then streams it to a bunch of different apps.
12:38 Speaker 02 It's actually kind of a fun device. They got bought by Scripps, which is a big broadcaster, they own lots of local broadcast stations. And they are clearly looking to figure out how can we use this tech to, first of all, get people more comfortable to watch other stuff with antennas, period? But then also, how can we use this and maybe make ATSC 3.0 converters? They didn't explicitly spell that out and they were just kind of like, well, wait and see. We're gonna announce more about the plans this summer. But basically, this is where all the roads are leading to, I think.
13:10 David Pierce? Okay, and are we just caught in this kind of horrible chicken and egg game now where until it's easier to use and devices have it, people won't use it because I suspect most people don't even know this is like a thing that exists that they're missing out on.
13:25 Speaker 02 Right.
13:26 David Pierce? And so until they know and are clamoring for it, it's not going to be in the products. And until it's in the products, most people aren't going to find it. And until people know how to find it, the broadcasters have no particular reason to get on board. So there's no, like Alex, who spins this forward? How do we get out of this?
13:41 Alex Cranz? Yeah, I keep thinking back to that, that last time, that transition from analog to digital. And that was a really difficult transition, but it was also, everybody put effort into it, right? Like, all of the broadcasters, their local news channels would be like, and don't forget, you've got to go get your thing at some point because otherwise your TV won't work. People were freaking out, being like, I gotta buy a new TV, or get this box. But there was a lot of movement behind it. And that was because people still used broadcast TV. And nowadays, we are few and far between the people who actually like tune in for broadcast TV. So you have that totally tiny market, primarily of older people, like our parents, who are still on broadcast TV and still enjoy that. And they don't care.
14:26 Alex Cranz? Like, what they have is good enough. So they're not driving it forward. The people who want 4K, like, are relatively few. Like, I don't think there's that many people who actually want 4K. I'm probably one of the very few. And that's because it's, it takes up a lot of bandwidth. It takes up a lot of space. Broadcasters don't want to stream in 4K because it's a lot of work. It's expensive for them. So I think it's, we're kind of stuck because nobody, we have the technology, but nobody actually wants to use it because it's expensive. And nobody wants to foot that bill, right? Like, the last time the government foot a big chunk of that bill, because the government recognized that the majority of people were watching TV on broadcast, and they needed to make sure they had that available in an affordable way. And this time, it's like, well, you don't need that. You've got fast
15:11 Alex Cranz? TV, you've got streaming, you can do all these other ways of watching this content. You got YouTube. So why should we pay? We don't need to foot the bill for this.
15:18 Speaker 02 And the government had a real incentive last time, too, because basically, the whole transition happened, or a big reason for it happening was That they wanted to free up that spectrum to then auction off for 5G essentially.
15:30 Alex Cranz? Right.
15:30 Speaker 02 So analog television took up a lot of bandwidth essentially. And they figured out, well, if you make it digital, you can have sub channels, you can stack these things, you can squeeze a lot more TV and a lot less spectrum. And and also in a different part of the spectrum, and then we can sell off this all this other stuff. And I think these auctions made the government like 20 billion dollars or something like that. So not insignificant. This time around, it doesn't free up any spectrum, the spectrum is the same. And the government instead is kind of like, well, wait a minute, we don't want to lock anyone out this time. So they actually put requirements in that make it a little harder from the broadcaster's perspective. And they said, yeah, you can switch to ATC three, that's all fine with us, it it seems to work.
16:11 Speaker 02 But you also need to broadcast the old signal, the ATC one signal for at least five years. And they might even prolong that at some point. And that kind of puts a lot of burden on the broadcaster as well. Because then now they have to have two signals on the same amount of spectrum. And for that to happen, they basically had to backtrack on a lot of those promises of ATC three. So one of them that Alex just mentioned, 4K, none of the broadcasts in ATC three in the US today are in 4K. And the reason for that is 4K takes up a lot more bandwidth. So you can't stack all these channels together. Instead, it's 1080p at max. So you can have sub channels and all these other things. And then still transmit the ATC one signal at the same time.
16:55 Speaker 02 And that's, I think, the one thing where I was like, that's going to sell people for sure. 4K, you have this big fancy television, you want the latest thing on there. But no, it's not even broadcasting in 4K.
17:05 David Pierce? Yeah, I've kind of always been of the mind that 4K is one of those things that like, sounds good more than people actually care about it, I think. It's like, everybody would, if you suddenly were like, would you like 4K? People could be like, yeah, but if you like, do a bunch of work to get 4K streaming. I think the number of people who would do that work are relatively few and far between. But one group of people that seems like they might move on this, and it seems like now is actually an interesting moment for this, is those broadcasters, right? Because I think another thing that you you touched on in the piece, and the really sort of sneaky reason I wanted to talk about this, is I find free streaming services absolutely fascinating. And I think they're about to have a really, really big moment in a way that people don't really realize yet, like the the Plutos and the Tubies of the world. But there are a million of them out there.
17:49 David Pierce? And in a world where. There's like infinity content available across tons of platforms and everybody's raising their prices and everybody is more price sensitive than ever. The idea of like going back to watching a few ads an hour in exchange for not having to pay for streaming services is just going to get more and more compelling. And so if I'm one of these broadcasters, I'm thinking, I actually might have a first mover advantage here. If I can start to like push people along, there's now millions of new people who might find me and want to be a part of my street and I can show them ads as opposed to being just another tile on a smart TV that no one is ever going to open because I'm right next to Netflix. Like Alex, am I thinking about this the right way? Like, is there, is there an actual turn coming
18:34 David Pierce? there for some of these free services?
18:36 Alex Cranz? I don't know. I think because what we're seeing is we're also seeing a radical change in how we consume media, right? Like our generation, if you want to millennials or whatever you want to call them, we'll watch it on the TV, we'll watch it on the phone. Younger generation, younger people are oftentimes watching it on phones or watching it on their iPads. They're not necessarily sitting in front of a TV. And so like how the content is consumed is very different. And we've got this whole generation of people who had access to YouTube as babies and didn't have their content programmed by professional programmers at ABC or Fox or whatever, right? And so they haven't had to deal with that. And I think we're about to see this really interesting shift in do those people, as they get older, turn into the rest of us, buy a house, buy a TV, sit on the couch and watch the TV?
19:20 Alex Cranz? Or do they keep watching it on their phones? And I don't think we really know yet because it is so new. It is so young. I really want to be hype on fast because I think it's kind of interesting. And there's also potential there for the crossover with ATSC 3.0 because of how it streams. But I just don't know because we've got this whole generation of people, we don't, they who are watching content in a totally new and different way.
19:44 Speaker 02 I mean, there's also a lot of old people like us around still, so.
19:48 Alex Cranz? Yeah, we're all still here, but like
19:49 David Pierce? Save one for the aughts.
19:50 Alex Cranz? But people often look to that younger market as their north star for how they're going to plan these things 20 years down the road.
19:56 Speaker 02 I see your point when it comes to looking into the future and maybe decade or two down the road. But right now, linear television or television still matters. Watching things on TV still matters a lot to people. And actually, these fast channels are having in a moment, or these fast services, and one of them, you mentioned Tubi. There was just a number out this week from Nielsen that was saying Tubi now accounts for 1% of all TV viewing in the US.
20:20 David Pierce? Wow.
20:21 Speaker 02 I mean, 1% does not sound big, but for a service that a couple of years ago was like, nobody had ever heard of it, it's actually quite noticeable. A lot of that is driven by these linear channels, which are sort of, I always say it's like basic cable essentially, right? Because, okay, the quality maybe is not always that great, but it's sort of reliable. You can tune in, you can like run it in the background. It's 24/7. You don't have to think about it a whole lot. And add to that more live programming, news programming, and stuff like that. It becomes a thing where you can channel surf and all those things. And it is having a moment to where it's starting to find significant audiences. Sure, whether that's still going to be true in 10 or 20 years is hard to say, but for now, I think there's definitely quite a bit of momentum behind it, and maybe more than behind broadcast TV.
21:06 David Pierce? As a dedicated Tubi viewer, I just want to say, if you want to watch random house renovation shows that you've never heard of and are almost all British and are extremely wonderful, Tubi is the dream. There's a show called The House 100K Built, where it's just a bunch of people building houses that they don't have enough money to build. It's just, it's delightful.
21:26 Alex Cranz? I love it.
21:27 Speaker 02 They also streamed the World Cup, which was quite amazing.
21:29 David Pierce? But again, I come back to the Tubi question of like, does Tubi need ATSC? Like, is the future Tubi, or is the future a bunch of sort of old local broadcasters figuring out how to reach new people? And it just seems everybody's sort of running in different speeds in different directions on stuff like this. And I do think to Alex's point, the sit down on the couch and watch TV behavior is not dying. But I think the sit down on the couch and flip channels behavior is dying much more quickly. And so One of the things I'm curious about, and I admittedly have no experience with some of the like interactive stuff on ATSC 3.0 is like, how good can those experiences actually be? And how seamless and like Alex, I know you're a big fan of channels for messing with that
22:12 David Pierce? stuff, but it's like, can you build a sort of truly modern streaming world out of an ATSC 3.0 system?
22:20 Alex Cranz? Yeah, so I use channels and I can feed in all of my broadcast channels and then I can go and feed in Tubi and I can have all of it in one place and I can flip around and I can DVR and I could do that whole experience there. And that lets me feel like I'm living in the future. That lets me feel like I'm getting that, that choice that I kept being promised with cutting the cord and never actually got to the point where I'm like, okay, how do I figure out to like, can I filter Netflix in here? Can I filter other apps in here? Because I'm tired of like going to all the different garbage apps and I just want one I trust. And so I think there is a potential for it, but I think you're also going to continue to have that difference between like the big streamers, Disney Plus and the HBO Maxes, or whatever it ends up being called, and the Netflix's. And then
23:05 Alex Cranz? the fast guys and the broadcast guys. I think they're like two different sets of groups. And you might want to think of one side as like the replacement for premium cable, paying for your $15 extra each month just to watch The Sopranos or nowadays Succession. And the other side where you get your Grey's Anatomy and you get your regional sports and regional news and all the reruns of old British house repair shows you could ask for.
23:31 David Pierce? Yanko, what about you? Do you see a UI success story in all of this that actually like works for people the way they want to watch TV going forward?
23:39 Speaker 02 That's a really tough question. I don't know if I have a good answer for that. Just while Alex was talking about it, I was thinking about that because channels is one of these solutions that are sort of DIY DVR solution essentially, which there's a very small market for that of dedicated people who like-
23:54 Alex Cranz? It's the listeners of the Vergecast.
23:56 Speaker 02 Yes.
23:57 Alex Cranz? Where the market-
23:58 Speaker 02 Maybe half of them.
23:59 Alex Cranz? No one else.
24:00 Speaker 02 I have a DVR in theory through Plex where I have a HD Home Run up in the attic or somewhere and I can stream to it.
24:07 David Pierce? There were a lot of people, by the way, in the comments of your story extolling the virtues of the HD Home Run. Lot of fans of the HD Home Run.
24:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
24:15 Alex Cranz? Well, that's like the primary competitor for Tableau, right? Like Tableau is like an easy version of HD Home Run.
24:20 Speaker 02 Right, right, right, because it has the DVR built in essentially. But to that point, DVRs were really popular in the in the early cable days and we all had a TiVo at some point, more or less. And then we we sort of moved on to streaming. And people have been trying to reinvent the DVR or revive the DVR or figure out things to make it better. For a long time and nobody has quite cracked that nut yet, so that. Amazon had its own over there DVR and they just discontinued it last year. There's Tableau, as part of my story, I I found out that they sold like two hundred thousand devices in ten years. That's not a lot.
24:57 Alex Cranz? This brutal number when I read that.
24:59 Speaker 02 Yes, it turns out the guy who had it on his LinkedIn profile took it down after the story got published, but. That happens. Yeah, and then there's a couple of other ones. There was a company called Simple TV that went out of business really early on. And Boxee, which a couple of people on the Vergecast may remember as well, they tried that too. And then Cloud TV, as people tried doing all those things. And it's always really hard. In theory, it's it's a great idea. You can sort of accumulate your own personal media library and then you can watch it on demand on any device. You can stream it wherever you want, but making it work in practice is pretty hard. And it always just goes to a certain point, because then now you're in the broadcast universe. Again, you don't have all the streaming channels anymore.
25:44 Speaker 02 So unifying all of that is really hard, making it work is really hard and really only for technically minded people. So I don't have a good answer. I think there is some potential to make lightweight maybe experiences. Like, forget all about DVRs, forget all about building this TV server in the in the sky or whatever, TV server of your dreams. Just think about somebody who just wants to watch football match or something and it happens to air on CBS or wherever. And now in the future, he may be able to pre-select his favorite teams who are playing on a different channel at that time. And he can get a ticker on the bottom that shows them how they're doing at that point. So there's things to make TV better, but I think they're more incremental and they're not like this dream solution we have all been hoping for.
26:28 David Pierce? Okay, so last thing before we go, is there a sort of next possible move we're waiting for? Like, obviously, Yanko, you talked a bunch about Scripps, which seems like the kind of company that if it decided to push really hard on this, could potentially make some moves here. It doesn't sound like there's any particularly like regulatory thing in the way. So are we all just sort of twiddling our thumbs, waiting for something to happen? Or is there like a move in the works that we might see at some point soon?
26:54 Speaker 02 So there's a few things. So the broadcasters are warning the FCC to eventually get rid of this mandate that they have to keep carrying the old standard. They don't haven't quite put it like that. They're just like, oh, we would like to have clarity on the timeline, please. Maybe we can do a working group. It's kind of a very polite way of saying just, we don't want to do this anymore.
27:13 David Pierce? Well, the good news is the FCC is really functional right now and doing super good, fast work. So that should go just fine.
27:19 Speaker 02 Fully stuffed and everything. Exactly. So but that's, I think, one of the pieces of the puzzle potentially. The other one is if adapters really came about and or if these tuners itself became a lot cheaper. And when I talked to the people pushing the standard, they were saying, oh, we have now MediaTek, which makes a lot of the chips in smart TVs, they're starting to support it. So in like 24, you're going to see all these devices come out. We're going to have adapters for 40 bucks. I feel like they've been saying similar things for a long time.
27:47 David Pierce? Yeah, Alex has been saying similar things on the Vergecast for a long time. Yeah, it's always been almost the year of ATSC 3.0.
27:53 Speaker 02 But in theory, in theory, like if it was just a feature that was in any chip you built into a smart TV, and it was just enabled just out of the box, essentially, yeah, there could be something there. But as long as we're still in this waiting period, it's like it's hard for the industry, and it's becoming harder because people are losing interest.
28:13 Alex Cranz? Yeah, I think somebody has to front the bill, right? Somebody has to either pay for the boxes so that people can watch it at home, or pay to get all of the broadcasters who haven't adopted it yet to go out and adopt it. I'm looking at you, every broadcaster in New York City, besides a single Korean channel. If somebody pays for that, does kind of what they did back in 2009, I think ATSC has a chance. I think there are a lot of people who are really interested in wanting to get away from paying all of their money to all of these different streaming companies just to watch content. And there's cable companies. I think there's like, A market, people are interested, but the messaging has been garbage. The rollout has been garbage and the cost is frankly, at this point, kind of garbage for most people.
28:58 David Pierce? Well, on that uplifting note, everything's garbage, but as soon as the FCC gets it to act together, it's all gonna be fine.
29:06 Alex Cranz? Yeah, they got this.
29:07 David Pierce? This is a good idea we had. I'm so sorry it's not gonna work. All right, we need to take a break. Yanko, Alex, thank you both. Appreciate it. We'll do this again sometime in the next 40 years when we're all watching ATSC 3.0. I'm really looking forward to it.
29:25 Speaker 01 If you're looking to hire, you need Indeed. With Indeed sponsored jobs, you can spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
30:12 David Pierce? Welcome back. Our next segment is about hiking gear, but actually it starts with a bit of a spoiler, so I probably shouldn't give anything away. Let's just get into it. Mitchell Clark is here. Hi, Mitchell.
30:22 Speaker 04 Hello. Pleasure to be here.
30:24 David Pierce? So you have news and I didn't spoil the news for you in your intro because I feel like, you know, no one should steal hashtag personal news from anybody else. So tell us your news.
30:34 Speaker 04 So yes, this summer I am planning on hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, which basically goes from the Mexican border in California to the Canadian border in Washington. And that's roughly 2,600 miles of walking.
30:50 David Pierce? Okay, so my first question, and really the only thing we're here to talk about is why? What's wrong with you?
30:57 Speaker 04 Surprisingly, I haven't gotten this question a lot. I think people hear that and they're like, yeah, that just, that tracks. Like knowing you, yeah, that sounds right. My answer is that I like walking. I don't really have a great answer to it.
31:09 David Pierce? That's fair. And this is like a known hike. I'm from the East Coast where like the Appalachian Trail is a thing people do. It's kind of the equivalent.
31:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, there's sort of these Triple Crown, these three really popular ones, the AT, as you mentioned, the PCT and the Continental Divide Trail. There's a whole movie about it called Wild with Reese Witherspoon, which is based on a book. So yeah, a lot of people, at least passingly, familiar with it.
31:32 David Pierce? So let's talk just sort of philosophically here, because I feel like there are a bunch of ways you can approach a trip like this, right? You're like, I'm gonna be walking a lot. You can either say, I want to try all the new tech, I want to do cool stuff, or you can go all the other way and say, I want to unplug completely, like no modern technology, I'm gonna hike as our forefathers did. Where have you landed? Like, kind of how do you want to approach this hike?
31:54 Speaker 04 My general idea is that I don't want to sort of, there's a lot of people out there that are turning their hikes into content, which I deeply appreciate, because it gives me a lot of ways to prepare. But I don't want to do that. I'm not interested in it.
32:09 David Pierce? So hike talk is not your thing?
32:11 Speaker 04 No hike talk, no hike tube, not even a blog.
32:14 David Pierce? Okay.
32:15 Speaker 04 That doesn't mean that I'm going to be just 100% disconnected. I'm not throwing my phone in the lake like Laura Les. I'm bringing the modern stuff that helps keep me safe, but I'm not going to be using it for the modern uses of watching Netflix in bed at night.
32:32 David Pierce? Okay. So nothing that's like not directly related to the hike?
32:37 Speaker 04 Pretty much, yeah. I am bringing a camera, like a digital camera, just because I don't think my phone's sufficient. This is a once in a lifetime thing, potentially, and I want to make sure that I have like the best pictures of the people that I'm hiking with as I possibly can.
32:51 David Pierce? That's fair. So, okay, you actually brought up one of the things I was gonna ask you about, which is the camera, because you wrote this big story about all the gear you're bringing, and I want to talk about a bunch of it. But the thing that jumped out to me the most actually was the camera, because it's the one place where you're actually bringing what I would say like an unnecessarily large amount of gear. Everything else, you seem to be at sort of the bare minimum, like you've stripped all the way down, and then you're like, but also I'm just bringing a bunch of like camera-specific stuff. A, why? And B, tell me about the gear you picked and why you picked it.
33:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, so in hiking, this is like known as a luxury item, like the something that you don't need to bring, but that you want to. And I've, I've just always been sort of a photographer. I got my first DSLR when I was like 12. I've loved using it. I've always been sort of a very focused on image quality. And so I do want to make sure that I have something that can take good pictures in low light because you're out in the wilderness, like there's no artificial lighting. And also it has zoom, it has a zoom lens on it. And that is just something that I don't think modern phones really do well. There's a lot of digital zoom and even, you know, the 10x zoom on some of these very high end Android phones, it doesn't, it's not a physical zoom
34:07 Speaker 04 lens. So I think that's the main thing. I'm going to be walking through mountains. I might see an elk 200 feet away, or a bear, or a cougar, and I want to take a picture of it. I want to be sure that I'm able to do that.
34:19 David Pierce? That's fair.
34:20 Speaker 04 I mentioned the zoom lens. I'm bringing a Canon G5X and it has a 8.8 to 44 millimeter lens, which is roughly, I think, 18 to 120, something like that in the
34:33 David Pierce? Solid.
34:34 Speaker 04 Four range. Yeah. And it's a 1.8 to 2.8. So it's, it's going to be pretty decent in low light. And it's got a flip up screen so I can see myself when I'm taking pictures, like the group selfie, which is always nice. That's something that you don't always get on these sort of compact cameras. And while it is like, you know, it's, it's not light, it's not even as heavy as like a mirrorless camera or anything like that. It is a compact point and shoot. So I'm not giving up too much in terms of weight savings to, to bring it along.
35:05 David Pierce? So I also saw it looked like you have a, you're bringing one of those like adjustable Joby tripods. Is that coming with you too?
35:11 Speaker 04 No, it's not an adjustable Joby tripod, not the GorillaPod. It is basically just like, I don't know, two inches tall. It's basically so I don't have to put the camera on a rock is essentially what that is. So it was so have to be like up on something. And that's just so I can take pictures of myself, basically.
35:31 David Pierce? Yeah, the wide lens actually seems like it's going to come in handy. Like you think about zoom a lot, but it's also like you're going to be in these sort of small spaces where you need to get a picture of you in a cool place without falling off of a cliff. And having an 18 millimeter lens at that point is actually more useful than it gets credit for.
35:46 Speaker 04 Very much so, yeah. And that that is something that my phone could probably do fine, but I I have it on the camera, so why not? Not the phone that I'm bringing. We don't need to talk about that.
35:56 David Pierce? No, no, we we absolutely need to talk about that, Mitchell. That's where we're going next. Let's talk about that right now. What phone are you bringing?
36:02 Speaker 04 So I have an iPhone Mini 12. That is the phone that I use in everyday life. It is sufficient. It is not the phone I'm bringing.
36:11 David Pierce? Because the battery only lasts like two and a half hours?
36:13 Speaker 04 Well, yeah, it's like three years old now and two like, um, I'm bringing this phone called a a Unihertz Titan Pocket, which is, imagine a BlackBerry.
36:23 David Pierce? I was gonna say that's a knockoff BlackBerry.
36:25 Speaker 04 Yeah. It does have a touchscreen. It does run Android 11. It's got USB C.
36:30 David Pierce? Oh, so it's better than a BlackBerry?
36:31 Speaker 04 Yes, yeah, but it is. It's got a keyboard.
36:36 Speaker 04 The reason why I'm I'm bringing this is one that I plan on sending very long emails home. Uh, and just typing on this is I I find it to be a very nice experience. Also, it's not particularly expensive. It's like $300 phone. So if it gets ruined, then it's like, meh, whatever.
36:49 David Pierce? Okay.
36:50 Speaker 04 It also has features, uh, which is something that my iPhone does not necessarily have. Uh, it has an SD card reader, which means that I can take the pictures from my camera and just load it and not have to worry about the internal storage of this. I've got like, I've got a 512 gigabyte micro SD card in here, along with the 128 gigabytes of internal storage, whereas with my iPhone, I'd just be limited to that 128 gigabytes of internal storage. It's also got a headphone jack, so I don't have to worry about like an adapter breaking. So that's nice, because those those adapters are pretty fiddly. I had a lot of times when I was backpacking that it just wouldn't work.
37:23 David Pierce? And I I literally cannot imagine anything sort of less in the spirit of the hike than having to go like hunt for a USB C to 3.5 millimeter headphone jack in the middle of.
37:35 Speaker 04 No, no, it's a lightning one if I was using my iPhone.
37:38 David Pierce? Well, yeah, that's true, too. Yeah.
37:39 Speaker 04 That'd be horrible. Then I I don't think there are that many best buyers on the trail.
37:44 David Pierce? I don't know. I was just thinking as you were talking about lighting, like when you do this hike, what is the furthest you're ever going to be away from somebody with a ring light in the woods taking a picture? And I feel like the answer is like upsettingly not that far most of the time.
37:56 Speaker 04 That's a fair point. I know the Sierras, um, there's a couple of places in there that you do have to have a permit to be at. So I would assume that that those sorts of places are not going to attract sort of the casual wildlife Instagram crowd. But I I could be wrong.
38:12 David Pierce? So is the only reason not to bring your iPhone, like the sort of storage and battery stuff you're talking about? Because I think the upside of the iPhone is it just does all the things. Like you can use it for navigation, you can use it for taking pictures, you can use it to like find stuff. And now, one thing I was curious about was like the satellite connectivity. Like they're starting to build emergency stuff into these things that I would think would be really useful on an adventure like this. Like, why leave the iPhone behind when it seems like it's kind of a good backup to everything?
38:40 Speaker 04 That's a totally fair point. One, as I mentioned before, I have an iPhone 12, so it doesn't have that satellite connectivity. I also am carrying a dedicated satellite messenger. It's called the Garmin Enrich Mini. And that thing has a couple of advantages to it. One, it's got a really long battery life. Like it lasts for four days between charges. The iPhone does not. It also lets sort of people at home, specifically my mom and wife, track me. It'll take my GPS location every, I think, five minutes. It's a setting, so I can change it. And then send it up to satellites and they will be able to see where I am, basically, at any given time. It also, unlike the iPhones, even the iPhone 14's SOS via satellite feature,
39:24 Speaker 04 lets me just send text messages. It uses like an obscenely expensive plan. I think it's like $40 a month. But I can send unlimited text messages even if I don't have cell coverage. And that is going to be a very frequent occurrence. I know a lot of people have said, yeah, in the Sierras, it's like a week where you don't have cell coverage. And given that that is going to be the most dangerous part of the trail this year, I definitely want to be able to check in with my friends and family as often as possible to let them know that I'm okay.
39:53 David Pierce? Okay, that is actually really interesting. Because I was sort of thinking about it as if you were going to have service, you know, in spots, right? You might go like a few hours with it, a few hours without it. But the idea of going for a full week in unfamiliar terrain without service makes me think there's some like, like to me, that means I have to spend eight hours like furiously downloading every map and podcast and, you know, episode of Ted Lasso that I can possibly get onto my device. What is, do you have like, I'm about to go offline procedures baked into this whole thing?
40:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's every week or two you will stop in a town. And that's, that's basically my ideas. I'll download my podcasts for the week, audiobooks, music, all that sort of thing. And to be realistic with myself, I will be listening to music on the trail, but I don't think it's going to be like a constant thing, right? I don't think that I will be sort of always with my earbuds in. For one, for safety reasons, in the desert, there's rattlesnakes. So you don't want to come up on one of those and not hear the warning signal. And then just the spatial awareness of traveling through very snowy areas in the Sierra, which by the way is, is a pretty short section of the trail. I think it's only 200 to 300 miles. So it's not like I'm going to be going months without cell service. It's, it's only a pretty short period of time.
41:08 David Pierce? Yeah, it does seem like rocking the like noise cancelling, you know, the Bose QC35s on the PCT kind of defeats the purpose of the thing you're trying to do.
41:16 Speaker 04 Yes, probably not a great idea. And then as for maps, I have this app called Far Out, which used to be known as Got Hooked if anyone's hiked these trails in sort of the past 10 years. Basically, you just download 700 mile sections of the trail at a time and it's got the maps and a bunch of waypoints. So like, hey, here's a good campsite, here's where you can get water, that sort of information. So yeah, I will have that downloaded on my phone as well.
41:41 David Pierce? Okay. Is there a, you know, you talk about like hiking TikTok and hiking YouTube and stuff. Is there like a place people who do hikes like this gather to hang out and talk about it? Like, I'm sure there are people out there who are like recommending all the best views and side hikes and things like that. Like, where does the PCT community like hang out and talk about this stuff?
42:00 Speaker 04 Yeah. So there's a couple of places. One is the people who are actually on the trail. Far Out does have comments on these sorts of locations. So you can read what people say like, oh, there was, you know, there was water here. No, there wasn't water here. This campsite has ants, stay away, and stuff like that. So that is one sort of thing. It's not really a place where you would talk with other people though, because this is a very like, sort of, it's more like a bulletin board.
42:24 David Pierce? Right. That is like, like as a much less ambitious hiker than you, that's what I use like all trails for. Where you can just see, it's like somebody three days ago said, this is really muddy and overrun. And so it's like, okay, we won't do that hike today. And so it's like, it's not quite like talking about it in real time, but you sort of get a sense of the place. And it sounds like that's a little bit of what you're talking about.
42:42 Speaker 04 Yeah, for sure. So in terms of like talking in real time, there's a Pacific Crest Trail subreddit, um, which I've been hanging out on a ton. But really, I think most of the, the activity is going to be in, in a Facebook group. As everything that used to be in a forum nowadays is going to be in a Facebook group.
42:59 David Pierce? It's deeply upsetting.
43:00 Speaker 04 Yeah, it does mean that I will have Facebook on my phone for this hike, which I'm, I'm not happy about, but it is what it is.
43:06 David Pierce? Your goal is between the beginning of the hike and the end of the hike, you have to get them to switch to Discord. You have 2,600 miles to get them to switch to Discord. That's, that's the job.
43:13 Speaker 04 So the, the benefit of the Facebook group is that you can see what people are experiencing ahead of you. So like, oh, this river crossing, super dangerous. We almost died. Okay. You want to know that you'll have to be like pretty careful around that. And then also there are these people who will just help hikers along the way. So they'll give them rides to town. They'll bring them food sometimes, give them places to stay. They're called trail angels. And a lot of those, you'll contact them through Facebook groups as well. So that's, if you need help, you may be able to find it in, in that group as well.
43:45 David Pierce? Got it. Okay. That makes sense. Talk to me about power. Cause you, you mentioned you hit a town once a week or so. I'm assuming that's a moment you just like, plug in everything you can think of, but like, how many cables are you bringing? What are you going to charge with? Like, what's the plan?
43:57 Speaker 04 I think I'm bringing three cables. I'm bringing two USB C cables and then a micro USB cable for my Garmin and my flashlight.
44:06 David Pierce? Listen, Garmin, Garmin, get it together. USB C.
44:09 Speaker 04 Okay. The new version of both my Garmin and my flashlight have USB C. So if I had bought this stuff this year, instead of like two years ago, I would be fine.
44:17 David Pierce? There's legitimately like a commercial to be made in the fact that someday you could do this hike and just bring one cable with you. It's like, that's, that's the tree.
44:25 Speaker 04 100%.
44:26 David Pierce? That's the EU's whole marketing campaign should be hikers with USB C cables.
44:30 Speaker 04 Yes, absolutely. So yeah, and then I'm carrying a battery bank that charges via USB C. It's about 20,000 milliamp hours. My phone won't be on all day, or at the very least it'll be in airplane mode. So I should be able to get away with it, charging it every two or three days. So it's not gonna be an every night thing like I do at home.
44:47 David Pierce? That to me is like a perfect, it's such a like linear thing because it's like you can, they make them that are much bigger than 20, but like holy God, are they heavy?
44:55 Speaker 04 Yes.
44:55 David Pierce? Or you could get a much smaller one that's like 10 and those are, you know, sort of wafer thin now. And you strike me as somebody who has probably done some math on the exact correct ampere hours to weight ratio for this hike.
45:08 Speaker 04 It's not even doing the math. It's having lived it. I did a hike that was around 180 miles in August last year and I had a 10,000 milliamp hour battery and it didn't last enough.
45:19 David Pierce? Oh, interesting. Okay.
45:20 Speaker 04 I ran out of power about two days out of a town.
45:24 David Pierce? Oh, geez. Yeah.
45:25 Speaker 04 Trying to communicate with my family, saying like, hey, I'm all right, but I can't talk to you anymore. That was stressful for me and them. So I,
45:33 David Pierce? Fair.
45:33 Speaker 04 That's why I'm bringing a 20,000 milliamp hour one.
45:36 David Pierce? I buy that. But no like wacky solar chargers or anything like that?
45:41 Speaker 04 No, generally the, the wisdom is that solar chargers are not particularly useful. They just don't provide enough juice for the amount of weight that they take up.
45:49 David Pierce? Okay.
45:49 Speaker 04 And in a lot of trails, you know, you won't be out that much in the sun. The PCT I think is a, is a pretty big exception to that. It's not so much tree cover, but yeah.
45:58 David Pierce? Tell me about your bag because I am what I would describe as like a reformed bag sicko in that I have several times more bags than I will ever need to use in my life. And so I love a good bag.
46:11 Speaker 04 Yeah. So podcast listeners can't see this, but there are literally two bags in the background of my video right now.
46:16 David Pierce? And what looks like a hard hat.
46:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's, that's for when I do trail work, basically building trails. When you're swinging a peck axe, you know, you gotta be careful.
46:24 David Pierce? That's fair.
46:24 Speaker 04 But neither of those are the bags that I'm bringing. The bag that I'm bringing. Is one that you can't actually buy anymore. It's by a company called Waymark. A big thing in hiking now is these sort of smaller cottage brands. So there are plenty of people who will still bring things like an Osprey or Gregory pack.
46:40 David Pierce? Sure.
46:40 Speaker 04 But there's a million brands making sort of these very specific pieces of gear. And this is one of them. It's made out of a fabric called Eco Pack and it's bright red, which is great for the search and rescue crews. But this fabric is made of, it's recycled, so made out of recycled water bottles. And it's also a laminated plastic fabric thing. So it's water resistant. Nothing's waterproof, especially not in hiking, but it is water resistant. So when I am hiking through the rain or snow or going through a river, it should keep most of the stuff I have in it dry, at least dry enough. It's about 40 liters, which if you've shopped for like day packs, you'll know is is pretty small. A lot of people will carry something more in the 50 to 60 liter range.
47:24 David Pierce? Yeah, you see 40 as like, that counts as like a big day to day backpack for a lot of people, rather than like a hiking bag.
47:31 Speaker 04 Yeah, I've, I've worked pretty hard to get like relatively compact gear. And it also helps that it has sort of this roll top enclosure, which can roll down. Basically, there's no zipper on the top. You just roll it and then clip it with some buckles to get it to close. But that also means that it's expandable. So like, I've got the main body and then I can also sort of push up some stuff towards the top.
47:56 David Pierce? Sure.
47:57 Speaker 04 It also has a Y strap. So if I need to put something on the top of that, I can do that too. And that's going to become really important when I need to carry a bear can. So my bear can's going to go on the top of it because it it won't really fit in this. It's just too big and too wide.
48:11 David Pierce? Mitchell, I have a really important question.
48:12 Speaker 04 What's your question?
48:13 David Pierce? The hell's a bear can?
48:14 Speaker 04 A bear can is this, it is kind of what it sounds like. It is a very large canister.
48:20 David Pierce? Okay. And you just give it to a bear so it goes away?
48:24 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's a tribute. No. So it is this massive, plastic thing.
48:29 David Pierce? This looks like a company-sized water jug that you would have in your water fountain at work.
48:35 Speaker 04 Yeah. And the theory behind these is that bears can't get into them. The International or the North American Grizzly Association, or whatever they're called, has put this in a thing with a bear and to make sure that the bears can't get into it. And what you do is that you put your food in this. And anything else that might smell like food, chapstick, sunscreen, toothpaste, you put it in here and then you put it away from your campsite. The bear can still smell it, but when they come to sort of investigate it, they can't get in and they'll leave. You don't want bears eating your food. That's bad for you because you need that food. And it's bad for the bear because then animals learn, this is where I can get food. They might start molesting hikers.
49:17 Speaker 04 And that usually ends up in the Forest Service having to go out and kill that bear, which is not great. You don't want to be responsible for that. There's not enough of them as there is. We're not really worried about grizzlies on the PCT. This is just for black bears. And there's only certain sections that you have to carry this. There aren't desert bears in Southern California that you have to worry about. So this will just be for a few hundred miles.
49:39 David Pierce? Got it. Okay. What are you gonna miss most? What technology are you like looking wistfully at, being like, ah, I'm not gonna have you for months. Whatever am I gonna do?
49:50 Speaker 04 Very specifically, Breath of the Wild 2. It is coming out like a few days after I leave. I'm not bringing a Switch with me. I've joked about it. I'm not gonna do it.
50:02 David Pierce? You've thought about it, though.
50:03 Speaker 04 I have 100% thought about it. I Googled like, how much to is a Switch light really weigh? Like, and how long would it be able to play this, like in terms of battery power? But I'm not gonna get a Switch light and bring it. I think video games I'm gonna miss a lot. And then two things that aren't high-tech, air conditioning and running water. You do not know how much you take running water for granted. Like when you go to wash your hands or like, oh, I spilled something on myself. I want to wash it off until you have like a very specific amount of water and no way to get more until you get to like a way, somewhere that's five miles away.
50:41 David Pierce? Right. Yeah, that's very fair. Well, and that is good because it brings me to my last question for you, which is, as you were leaving The Verge, I just want to know, did you ever imagine writing the sentence, "pooping, however, requires a bit more planning" as part of like your journalism career? Like, how does it feel that that is the Mitchell Clarke Verge legacy? The sentence, "pooping, however, requires a bit more planning."
51:05 Speaker 04 I never expected that. It does track. It's not shocking.
51:11 David Pierce? I mean, you're not wrong. All right, Mitchell, I hope the hike is awesome. I hope you come back and tell us about it. Thank you so much. This was really fun.
51:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, absolutely. It's been a pleasure.
51:20 David Pierce? All right, we need to take one more break, and then, as we like to do here on The Vergecast, we're gonna come back and talk about iPads. We'll be right back.
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52:10 David Pierce? Welcome back. As you know, we here on The Vergecast are forever fascinated by the iPad. Because like, what is the iPad? Is it a tablet? Is it a computer? What is a computer? Does the difference matter? Does anyone care about any of this? I don't know. But it's fun to talk about. The Verge's Dan Seifert has been on something of an iPad journey recently. He's been trying to figure out both which iPad you should buy, and how to make the iPad work better for writing by hand, which is a thing a lot of people really want. So I brought him here to help us with all of those questions, and some other stuff, too. Hi, Dan. Hello. I feel like I haven't talked to you on the show in forever. This is very exciting. I think it's been a minute. Yeah. We haven't had feelings about iPads in too long. I've missed having feelings about iPads.
52:55 David Pierce? Well, let's fix that. So my immediate reason for wanting to have you on, and you've actually written a bunch of interesting stuff about iPads over the last few weeks, and we're going to get to that. But the thing I knew I wanted to have you on to talk about was the thing you wrote about screen protectors. These like paper feeling screen protectors. And my immediate reaction to reading this story was I have spent, I don't know, 15 years telling everyone I know to not use a screen protector because they don't actually protect your screen. They make everything look worse. They're a scam. Nobody puts them on correctly. They're a scam. Don't buy them. Like, just don't do it. And now I'm kind of like, I read your piece. I'm like, okay, maybe this is at least in in one very specific case. Maybe this is no longer good advice.
53:37 Speaker 06 Your advice was not wrong. I personally am anti screen protector for the most part, too. Like, I don't put one on my phone. I typically don't put one on anything else. But if you've ever tried to write on an iPad with a pencil, it is a hard plastic stylus on a glass screen. And it's noisy and slips around all the time. It's really hard to get used to. And like, as a result, I would have really terrible handwriting, like worse than normal handwriting, I should say. It's not like my handwriting ever is good, but worse than normal.
54:04 David Pierce? Yeah.
54:04 Speaker 06 It was just like not an enjoyable experience. And one of the things that I like to do with my iPad, I wanted to be able to use my iPad for, is be able to take notes while I'm in a meeting or thinking of something or whatever, just kind of like as a notepad at my desk. And so a few years ago, I actually bought one of these matte screen protectors. Some people call them paper feel. There's a brand called Paperlike, all kind of the same thing. And the idea is this is this matte surface provides a little bit of texture to the top of the iPad. And then when you're writing with the stylus, it provides just enough resistance where you have more control. It feels a little bit closer to writing on pen and paper. It's not exactly the same, but it's closer than the bare glass. And it's not as loud. You don't hear the tapping on the glass nearly as much. It's just a more enjoyable experience.
54:50 Speaker 06 If you're using it a lot. So I've actually been really happy with it. And now like, I don't use an iPad without it. Like, I just put it on there. And then when I'm writing, I'm happier. There's like other side benefits and other side trade offs. The other side benefits are like, because it's a matte screen. If you've ever looked at a matte screen versus a glossy screen, you know that like a matte screen has much fewer reflections and much less glare. So if I'm looking at my iPad and reading on it, which is like the other thing that I really use an iPad for, I'm not staring back at my reflection half the time.
55:20 David Pierce? Oh, that's interesting.
55:21 Speaker 06 Cause the glare is cut down a lot. I can sit next to a reading lamp and not have to like position the iPad just right so that the light isn't like reflecting in my eyes. So that's kind of a nice benefit. And then the last benefit is iPads, for whatever reason, don't have great oleophobic coatings on them. So they get really fingerprinty and greasy really quickly. And the screen protector actually helps mitigate that. It doesn't remove it entirely, but it helps make that less obvious. And they're really easy to clean. You just wipe it off and stuff like that. So it helps like in the areas that I care most about using my iPad, which is like reading and writing and like doing work on and stuff like that. It helps me enjoy the experience better. If I was like watching movies all the time, I might not love it that much.
56:02 David Pierce? I want to get to the trade offs in one sec because I think that was the thing in reading the comments to your story. There were a bunch of people who were like, Dan, you're an idiot because it makes looking at the screen worse. And I think that's a valid point, but I want to come back to that in a second. But I think there's this interesting thing that's like, I was trying to piece out in reading your story where there's screen protectors that ostensibly are there to protect them from scratches, right? And those are the ones I think are just a scam, like don't buy those. And then there's the ones that are like the privacy screen protectors that sort of you put over to sort of keep it so that people in your peripheral vision can't see.
56:35 Speaker 06 Which I find hilarious because the amount of engineering that goes into a modern display to give it like very wide viewing angles is like, like years of development went into that so that you can see it the same, whether you're looking at it from like a 45 degree angle or dead on. And then someone puts a privacy screen protector and undoes all of that engineering.
56:54 David Pierce? Every time I see somebody doing that, I'm like, buddy, we're in row 27 on this plane. Like there's no chance you're doing anything on that that I can't see. Like it's fine, but anyway, and so then these paper like ones, both, you know, lowercase paper like and uppercase paper like in the case of the brand seem to be sort of like those, but also different. And I guess part of what I'm trying to figure out is like, when, when they say they make it feel more like paper, what are they doing other than just putting a matte coating on top of the screen? Like, is it just that simple that it provides that resistance? Like what else is there?
57:25 Speaker 06 It really is. That's all it is to it.
57:27 David Pierce? Okay.
57:27 Speaker 06 You know, I think Paper, like the brand, has a lot of marketing materials around what their specific screen protector does, and it's got like these micro abrasions on it. And it's kind of like, just, it is like basically texture that you can't see, but it is so small that you can feel it when you drag a stylus across it. And so like, that is just providing a little bit of resistance, and that is all it is to it. The texture that they build into the plastic is actually created by like removing plastic. So they start with a thicker screen protector and then they remove bits to like,
58:01 David Pierce? Interesting.
58:02 Speaker 06 create the texture to, to make it happen. But that's all it is. That's, I think it is basically largely a clear screen protector that they sanded down, probably in a more technical way. But like, that's the gist. They sanded it down and now it has a slight texture on it that you can't really see, but you can feel. And it provides that matte finish on it and it kind of disperses the light. So that helps illuminate the glare some. And it gives it that textured feeling when you're writing on it.
58:27 David Pierce? Got it. Okay. Okay. So back to the trade offs. The two things that I saw in the comments and have heard before about these screen protectors are, A, it sort of destroys the like color vibrancy of the screen. So when I'm watching a movie, it doesn't look as good. And B, I've heard some people, and this seems to be sort of less universally believed, but some people say it actually makes the screen feel less interactive in the sense that it's like, do you remember when we used to use those devices where you could sort of tell that the screen was like three pines of glass away? And it didn't feel like you were touching a thing. It was like you were touching glass on top of a thing that then clicked a thing. And it just didn't feel nearly as direct. I've heard some people say they get that feeling with these screen protectors too, that it just like,
59:07 Speaker 06 Yeah.
59:08 David Pierce? adds this extra sort of abstraction between you and the thing you're trying to mess with. Are either of those valid points in your use?
59:15 Speaker 06 As far as like the abstraction thing, you know, maybe if you're really sensitive to it, maybe it's a thing. I'm not going to deny their experience. For me, it's like not really an issue. I'm able to tap and swipe and type on the screen and all that kind of stuff without any like complaints or whatever. I know that Paper, like, touts how thin their screen protector is. I think to kind of like address that criticism somewhat. But like, it's, it's never really been a problem for me. And I, like I said, I've used this for years now on iPads and I've crossed multiple iPads. The thing about the vibrancy and the contrast, that is a real thing. And like, when you put it on, it does reduce the contrast of the screen a bit. And like, just like the difference between a glossy screen and a matte screen is that you have more glare and reflections on the glossy screen.
59:56 Speaker 06 You also have a much more contrasty kind of vibrant look on that glossy screen versus the matte screen. And that's exactly what happens here. So like, if you buy an iPad specifically to watch TV and watch video and watch movies on most of the time, maybe you don't want one of these. And you can like, deal with the glare and the reflections and you can be happy. And especially if you had got like, the 12.9 inch iPad with a micro LED screen. You bought it specifically because of how great that screen is. Then yeah, maybe this isn't the right thing for you. But for me, I watch the occasional YouTube video. And maybe if I'm on a plane, I'll watch a movie on it. It's still a better experience than watching the seat back movie. We're talking about like, differences among good, right?
1:00:33 David Pierce? Yeah, that's fair.
1:00:34 Speaker 06 For what I use my iPad for and like, for what I spend most of the time on it for, it's more beneficial than it is detrimental for me. Other people have different use cases. Maybe their idea of what they want to use an iPad for is different. And like, it's not the right thing for them. But yeah, it will diminish the contrast a bit. And it maybe might diminish the sharpness a tad too. But today's iPad screens are so high resolution that like, the sharpness is, they're still very sharp.
1:00:57 David Pierce? Okay, so it's the equivalent of going from like, the current iPad screen to like, maybe a generation or two ago iPad screen. Not like, going from like, a high res TV to a low res TV.
1:01:08 Speaker 06 No, not at all. It's like, you know, today's iPad screens are all considered retina level resolution. It's not even like going back to pre retina. Like, it doesn't make it that bad.
1:01:17 David Pierce? Yeah.
1:01:17 Speaker 06 It's just like, it's just not quite as punchy as it could be without the screen protector.
1:01:21 David Pierce? Okay. What about the pencil? Which is another, obviously, part of the drawing process. And I want to get to your specific setup here because one of the things it seems like you have discovered and seems to be true with all Apple products is there's this like, set of high-end accessories by like, brands you've often heard of. Usually somehow like $60 is the minimum price for any of these things, no matter what it is. And then there is just an infinity of crappy Amazon versions of them for $6. And I say this as somebody who just bought a bunch of- No name Apple Watch bands for $4 apiece. No, I'm sorry, $6 apiece. And they're amazing and I'm never buying an Apple branded watch band.
1:02:00 Speaker 06 Yeah, never buy a branded Apple Watch band at ever.
1:02:03 David Pierce? Unbelievable. I can't believe how much money I have wasted not buying crappy Apple Watch bands on Amazon. But the, the other part of this equation is the pencil, which is also very expensive. And I know you've spent some time goofing around with both the pencil and the knockoff pencils.
1:02:17 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:02:18 David Pierce? How does that fit into this equation?
1:02:19 Speaker 06 I didn't even know knockoff pencils existed until a few months ago.
1:02:22 David Pierce? Yeah, there was just like the Logitech one and that was the only other one I knew about.
1:02:26 Speaker 06 Yeah, exactly. The same. I, Logitech made the crayon, which was marketed towards like kids and for education and stuff like that. And then there was like the Apple pencil, which is regularly like 130 bucks. Maybe you can get it for a hundred bucks on sale or whatever. I was like, that's it. That's the market. I don't need to know anything more. And I, I don't know what I was doing on Amazon a few months ago, browsing for something. And I saw that like, there's actually a whole industry of knockoff Apple pencils. And when I say knockoff, I don't mean like the Logitech crayon where they made a different looking device that works with Apple's technology. I mean, these things look exactly like an Apple pencil too. Like you cannot visually tell them apart. So I, I was, saw all of these. I saw one that was like, I don't know, one of the less, lesser expensive ones.
1:03:07 Speaker 06 And it had the ability to stick to the side of a modern iPad, like the iPad pencil too, and charge itself that way. And it looks exactly the same and you can change the tip. And I was like, what the hell? It's like 25 bucks. I will just buy it and see if it works. I do not believe this will work. Like I, I bought this with one of those assumptions of like, this is not going to work.
1:03:25 David Pierce? Yeah.
1:03:26 Speaker 06 And I get it and I, I opened the box and everything. I can't tell them apart visually, except for the fact that the Apple one says Apple pencil on it or pencil in the Apple logo on it. And when I'm holding it, the materials feel exactly the same.
1:03:37 David Pierce? Wow.
1:03:38 Speaker 06 So I started like using it and it's a little weird because. The Apple pencil obviously is very tightly integrated with the iPad. Like they were developed together. It's Apple's first party thing. It has a little bit of like really nice ideas. Like you pair it by just sticking it on the side of the iPad. The iPad talks to it. It pairs, it's connected. When you put it on there, the little pop up with a battery icon tells you when it's charging, stuff like that.
1:04:01 David Pierce? It's like the AirPods thing, right? Like you can do things other ways, but Apple's own products always get these like little extra affordances that nobody else gets.
1:04:09 Speaker 06 Little, little extra bonus.
1:04:10 David Pierce? Yeah.
1:04:10 Speaker 06 This one doesn't work quite that seamlessly. When you first get it, you have to go into your Bluetooth menu and connect to it like you would any other Bluetooth device. So it's like got an initial pairing process. And then when you put it on the side of the iPad, it will charge the battery, but you don't get the little pop up window saying how the battery is charging. So their workaround is because it's a Bluetooth device, it integrates into Apple's batteries widget. So you could put the batteries widget on your iPad's home screen and then you could see if your knockoff Apple pencils charging.
1:04:38 David Pierce? Good enough, yeah.
1:04:39 Speaker 06 I never use a pencil long enough to deplete the battery. Basically, when I'm like, I take my note and then I put it back on the iPad and it's charging. And like, I never know what the battery life of my pencil is, but it does allow you to do that. So like some of the other ones out there have USB C ports and things like that where you would have to like plug in a cable. I was like, that's, that's obviously a pretty diminished experience. But this sticks to the side of my iPad mini. It charges off the side of my iPad mini, all great and wonderful there. And then the other weird thing is because it's a Bluetooth device, it goes to sleep. And so if you pick it up after a while and start writing with it, it won't be immediately responsive. But you just like stick it back on the side of the iPad and pull it back off and it immediately wakes up and then you can write again. And then once you're writing with it, it feels just like the other, the Apple pencil.
1:05:22 Speaker 06 It's a little bit lighter, like a gram and a half or two grams lighter, according to my kitchen scale, which you notice if you hold both of them together, but you never notice if you didn't do that.
1:05:30 David Pierce? Sure.
1:05:30 Speaker 06 And like the tracking and the responsiveness and all that kind of stuff is just as responsive as the Apple pencil. It supports tilting, so you can like tilt to get a different thickness on your brush, but it doesn't support pressure sensitivity. So like, I think the Logitech Crayon has the same limitation. It supports tilt, but not pressure. For so for whatever reason, that is like a first party Apple thing. But for me, for what I do with an Apple pencil and My iPad is taking handwritten notes. I don't need pressure sensitivity. In fact, pressure sensitivity makes it mean like sometimes my letters are stupid goofy thick when I push too hard or whatever.
1:06:02 David Pierce? Yeah, I always find the first letter of every word I write is like much larger and thicker than the rest of the letters.
1:06:08 Speaker 06 Exactly. If you're an artist, if you're serious about it, like, yeah, you might want pressure sensitivity and stuff like that. You might want these extra features. But for someone who's just like, I've got an iPad. I don't really know if I'm gonna use the pencil or not. I don't know if I'm even gonna like writing on my iPad a lot. And I don't want to spend a hundred to 130 bucks to find out. Like, I'm just shocked at how well this works for its cost. And so for like 25 to 30 bucks, you can get a knockoff pencil that basically gives you 80% of the experience.
1:06:35 David Pierce? Yeah, I'm, I'm actually with you on the fact that it sticks to the side of the iPad is, is everything because like, even the Apple pencil one always annoyed me and I didn't use it enough because I just didn't have it with me and charged most of the time. I would just forget about it for weeks at a time. But now the, the fact that it just lives there, I'll take most other issues to save, you know, whatever 80% of the price, as long as it has that one. That's pretty exciting. Okay, so you're using that. Is that your, that's your go to pencil now?
1:07:05 Speaker 06 Yeah, I mean, I own an Apple pencil two that I got back in like 2018 or something like that. And so like I bought this one to compare against it and see what it's like. But when I got it stuck to my iPad mini right now and like, really, it doesn't matter to me which one I pick up. So like, they both get the job done. So yeah, I mean, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. Like I said, if you're just kind of like pencil curious, you know, you're gonna be doing some like casual stuff with it, maybe just handwriting, then it's like totally, totally fine.
1:07:31 David Pierce? Is the same true for the screen protectors where you can either buy the, the nice fancy brand name ones or the piece of junk ones on Amazon and they're all close enough?
1:07:40 Speaker 06 I will caveat with that. I only have experience with the nicer ones. I haven't like explored the world of randos.
1:07:46 David Pierce? It's a deep, deep well.
1:07:48 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's a really deep well. I think with that with there, you will, at least this is based on like what other experiences that I've read with the cheaper ones is that they do have. More impact on the screen quality than some of the nicer branding ones. So if you spend 30 to 40 or 45 bucks for one, that's from Paperlike or Moshi, or I think Pen Tips is the other brand that makes a pretty higher end one. They will like, look pretty good on the iPad. But some of the cheaper ones will have more and like, kind of like weird color refraction on them and stuff like that, that is like going to mar your experience more. If it doesn't matter to you and you're just really curious to spend like eight to 10 bucks to just see if it is, then like, sure, it's only eight to 10 bucks. But you will get a better experience probably with one of the more expensive ones.
1:08:32 David Pierce? I want to talk about your iPad buying guide before I let you go. Because
1:08:35 Speaker 06 Sure.
1:08:35 David Pierce? The what iPad should I buy is like my eternally favorite complicated question.
1:08:41 Speaker 06 It should not be so complicated.
1:08:42 David Pierce? No.
1:08:43 Speaker 06 Like it's such, it's such a wild place for us to be in now. Where if you go to Apple's own website and you click iPad, you are presented with four categories and six discrete iPad options.
1:08:55 David Pierce? That's too many. It's just too many. The buying guide is very good and we'll link to it in the show notes. But the thing that jumped out to me, and I feel like you had two conclusions. And I want you to tell me if you agree with my reading of your conclusions. Conclusion number one was if you don't know what to buy, buy the iPad Air. It's pretty good at everything.
1:09:12 Speaker 06 I would say it's great at everything.
1:09:13 David Pierce? Yeah, right. Like it's not the best screen. It's not the smallest, but it is, it is right in the middle in a really good way. Like, great. But the real answer is if you want the full iPad experience, you probably need to own multiple iPads.
1:09:25 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:09:25 David Pierce? And it makes me so happy that that's where you landed because that's also where I've landed. And I feel ridiculous about it.
1:09:31 Speaker 06 You know, I didn't put that line in there. You, you sussed that out. Like, I mean, you might have projected a little bit, but I feel you.
1:09:38 David Pierce? I'm willing to admit that this might be a me problem more than anybody else.
1:09:41 Speaker 06 There's a very real thing where there are so many different iPads in the lineup now. And there are enough differences between them that certain iPads are very good at certain things and other iPads are very good at other things. And they don't really do both. And I think the most extreme example of this is you got the 12.9 inch iPad Pro and the iPad Mini. And the 12.9 inch iPad Pro, if you're going to like, try to like, be productive on an iPad and like, use it as a computer, connect it to an external display, attach a keyboard, all that kind of stuff. That is the iPad to think about and to like, consider, even though it is really expensive, especially when you add on all the accessories.
1:10:21 Speaker 06 But as an iPad, it's not great because it's so big and it's heavy. And you and like, so my experience when I had a 12.9 inch iPad Pro, and I've heard this from a lot of owners of them, is it just never leaves its keyboard case.
1:10:34 David Pierce? Yeah, it's it's functionally a laptop.
1:10:36 Speaker 06 It's functionally a laptop with a touchscreen. Exactly. And so like, if you're lounging on the couch, you're lying in bed, you want to read, you want to browse a website, whatever. It's not the iPad that's great at that. Then on the other end of the spectrum is the iPad Mini, which is really great for just lounging around and reading. You can like slip it into a bag easily. It might fit in even to a jacket pocket. You could take it with you. It's a great personal reading device. You can watch some video on it, whatever. It's terrible for getting work done because it's like you can't type on the screen. Apple doesn't even make a first party keyboard for it for obvious reasons, even though you can pair a Bluetooth keyboard to it. But it's like not the productive iPad. So like they serve very different needs. And there's a real scenario where if you like, you're using iPads, you could own both of them.
1:11:19 Speaker 06 Or you could own an 11 inch and an iPad Mini and use them in very different ways. And like personally, I hate admitting this publicly, but that's what I do.
1:11:27 David Pierce? Same.
1:11:27 Speaker 06 Use my 11 inch iPad Pro with its keyboard case. And like, that's my travel work computer. And then my iPad Mini is like my personal reading device. And I use that at night when I'm reading a book or reading articles or catching up on news or what have you.
1:11:41 David Pierce? That is my setup. Exactly. I have never felt more seen than when you described that just now. No, I'll tell you the the thing for me, and I've I've noticed this even more after reading your buying guide, is that the two most common things I do with an iPad are one, sit either on the couch or in bed and read. Right. And it's like, I have the Kindle app. I have I have Matter, which I use for like reading stuff later. I have all the news apps. It is like exclusively like a consumption device. And then the other thing I do, and I do this way more often than I realized, is I I'm in the kitchen. And I'm I have the iPad up and I'm watching a video full screen. And then in slide over, I have the recipe app that I'm using. And so it just sort of sits on top of whatever I'm watching. It's on the stand. It has plenty of screen. It works perfectly. Like it's an excellent setup while I'm running around cooking.
1:12:26 David Pierce? Those two things I cannot do the other one on the other device, like the 11. 1" one is too big to sit like lie in bed and read one handed. And the mini, and it's such a stupid thing about the mini, like it doesn't have a stand that's good enough to sort of sit propped up in my kitchen for an hour and have me sort of bash at it with my flowery fingers. It just has the dumb foldy case that.
1:12:48 Speaker 06 And like if you're, if you're like four or five feet away from it, like it's harder to see, like it's just not the right device for that use case.
1:12:56 David Pierce? Yeah.
1:12:56 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's a very cute example of like how that dynamic works out.
1:12:59 David Pierce? Yeah, so this sucks and I think is sort of an unsolvable problem, but I guess the good news is.
1:13:05 Speaker 06 I'm gonna propose a solve.
1:13:06 David Pierce? Oh, please, I'm ready. Hit me.
1:13:08 Speaker 06 A foldable iPad.
1:13:10 David Pierce? I mean, fair, fair. It starts as an iPad mini. You fold it again, it turns into an iPhone. Unfold it twice, iPad Pro. Unfold it again, MacBook. One more time, Mac Pro. Done.
1:13:24 Speaker 06 It's the future, man.
1:13:25 David Pierce? I just did it. No, I honestly think you're right. As I was thinking about this, like the only solution I can think of to this sort of fractalization of the iPad is a foldable one because I don't know how Apple pushes all that stuff back together over time, otherwise.
1:13:40 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:13:41 David Pierce? I sincerely hope that's coming. But the air struck me as what you, kind of what you were saying earlier, it's gone from being kind of the, the like solid middle ground to it's just great. Like it's, it's very good at everything now. And there used to be stuff that it was missing and you know, you're making price sacrifices on one end, or you're making processor sacrifices on the other end. And now it's kind of like, if I just want to buy an iPad and know that it's going to work really well for five years and support roughly all the accessories I need, the air seems like a slam dunk, kind of easy choice, right?
1:14:13 Speaker 06 Yeah, I fully agree. There are like a handful of, I think I call them like nice quality of life features that you get on the iPad Pro that you don't get on the air. Face ID is a nice quality of life feature. It's not available on the air. It has Touch ID, which works very quickly and very well, but Face ID is very convenient. You get a faster refresh screen, which is nice to have. You will never notice it if you don't have it. So like you won't miss it on the air if you don't compare it against the Pro. And then like the speakers go from like two to four. And so like the really good air speakers sound really great. The Pro has really great speakers and but it's like a minor difference. And then I guess the current Pros have an M2 processor and the Air has the M1 processor. But yeah, nobody can tell the difference between the two. Like the iPad software cannot tell you the difference between the two.
1:14:58 David Pierce? Yeah, ironically, I would argue the most noticeable difference of all the ones you just described is the speakers. I'm consistently surprised at how good the iPad Pro sounds and how much sound it can actually put out. And the Air is fine, but it is noticeably not as good in a way that I totally agree. Like for my workflow, I think it's going to be a very long time before I notice the difference between the M1 and whatever else comes next. Like, is the M6 going to make my life meaningfully better than the M1? Like, I don't know, but I sort of doubt it at this point.
1:15:29 Speaker 06 But the flip side is the Air gets all of the other benefits of the Pro. So like you can use it with an external display and get all the features. You can use it with the same keyboard and the same style of accessories. You can add 5G to it. You can, you know, it's the same weight and size as the 11 inch Pro. So like it is basically a Pro Lite. And like for most people, mass majority of people buying an iPad for thinking what they they want. Like you said, I want to work for five years and get all the features or whatever. The Air is just a slam dunk no brainer. The only rub there, the only thing that makes this consideration a little more difficult. And I had a paragraph about this in the intro is that I suggest people look at prior year model iPads.
1:16:08 Speaker 06 Because the development of the iPad is so slow and the differences between model years is so minor that you can like buy last year's iPad Pro or the one from two years ago now. I guess it's a 2021 model and still get basically the same experience at like 40% less price. And if you're able to find a refurbished model or an open box or clearance or whatever iPad. 11 inch iPad Pro and your only other option is like a new iPad Air. You might end up spending less on the Pro and get those extra bonus features. So like you do have to do a little bit of homework and like do your own due diligence or whatever. But if we're comparing like regular prices and like you're just at apple.com clicking around to buy one, then the Air is just a slam dunk no brainer.
1:16:53 David Pierce? Do you think like I'm trying to think of sort of how far back I would tell people to feel good about buying. And it seems to me like anything with an M chip, you should feel very good about buying.
1:17:01 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:17:01 David Pierce? Is that a good cutoff? Like, don't even worry about it as long as it has an M chip?
1:17:05 Speaker 06 You know, I think actually you could probably go a little bit further back than that even. You know, the 2018 iPad Pro was when they introduced that new, the new design that had the second generation pencil. And then they introduced the Magic Keyboard in 2020 that works with that design and stuff like that. That is still extremely capable iPad. The one thing that you don't get is you don't get the ability to use Stage Manor on an external display. And like, that is like one feature.
1:17:28 David Pierce? Don't care.
1:17:29 Speaker 06 And not a great feature.
1:17:30 David Pierce? So aggressively don't care.
1:17:32 Speaker 06 So like, if you can find a refurbished 2018 iPad Pro, you could probably get that for like a really great price. The only thing I would say to look for is because it is four or five years old at this point, see if the battery has been serviced, see if the battery has been replaced or conditioned or whatever. But like otherwise, like its processor is extremely capable. The 2020 model processor is extremely capable. And then once you get into the M1, like, yeah, you have no concerns whatsoever.
1:17:58 David Pierce? Okay. All right. Well, we need to take a break, so I'm gonna let you go. But last question and tell me the honest truth, Dan. The iPad Mini is your favorite iPad?
1:18:05 Speaker 06 Uh, I do like the iPad Mini.
1:18:10 David Pierce? Yeah, I do too. But I have better and more powerful ones and I use all kinds of things. And then I just pick up my Mini and I'm like, you are the size that I want. It's like the part of me that really understands people who like tiny iPhones.
1:18:20 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:18:21 David Pierce? I'm just like, I look at the iPad and I'm like, yes, you fit, you complete me. This is what I need. All right, Dan, thank you. Appreciate it.
1:18:28 Speaker 06 My pleasure. Thank you.
1:18:32 David Pierce? And now that we've talked about iPads, we can be done with The Vergecast for today. Thanks, Tyanco, Alex, Mitchell, and Dan for being here, and thank you so much for listening. There's a whole lot more from everything we talked about at theverge.com. We put a bunch of links in the show notes, and Mitchell's whole gear list is particularly great, so make sure you check that out. As always, if you have thoughts, feedback, feelings, or tips for how to survive bears on long hikes, you can always email us at [email protected] or, even better, call the hotline, 866-VERGE11. We're actually going to do a whole hotline episode really soon, and we might answer a question you have in a future episode. We love the hotline. We love using your questions. Please keep them coming. This show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Brooke Minters is our editorial director of audio.
1:19:17 David Pierce? The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll be back on Friday with Alex and Neelai and more of the Verge crew to talk about Google Bard, the TikTok hearing, and all the other big news in tech this week. See you then. Rock and roll.
1:19:41 Speaker 07 Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash apple watch series 12.
Previous Solo Acts: Marco Arment and his podcast app Overcast Next TikTok goes to Washington Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
