330: iPad Pro review, Macbook Air review, and Walt Mossberg

Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn reviewed Apple’s new iPad Pro and MacBook Air, and discuss their take on this week’s show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Vergecast is brought to you by Hilton. Restaurant or room service, what would the boss do? Either way, the boss would choose Hilton Hotels and Resorts to get down to business and a little pleasure. Check out Hilton Hotels and Resorts. Travel like the boss.

• 0:15Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Vox Media. The whole thing, though. The whole thing. Also, The Verge.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  The whole thing.

• 0:22Nilay Patel?

  The website that we run. I'm Neelai, your friend. Paul Miller is here.

• 0:26Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 0:27Nilay Patel?

  Dieter Bowne is here. Hi. Wow. I don't know. Hi. It's review week at The Verge. Another one. Fall hardware season continues to be in full effect. I reviewed the iPad Pro. Dieter reviewed the MacBook Air. Right now, as we speak, Samsung is holding an event announcing foldy phones, which is wild. Google just announced support for foldy phones in Android. Dieter had a little bit of that. So we got a lot going on, on this episode. But first, I want to ask a question to you both. You ready?

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Is it about Bixby on foldy phones?

• 0:59Nilay Patel?

  It's not about Bixby on foldy.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Because it's, it's, it's a, it's a, because you could have two screens, right? And then you'd have two Bixbees and it would be an eight-legged dog.

• 1:09Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  It'd be a spider dog.

• 1:12Nilay Patel?

  This is the worst.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  With shoes.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Bixby.

• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  Bixby arachnid. Um, no, here's my question. Do you text with proper grammar or do you text in all lowercase?

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Depends on whom I'm texting. I do not text my parents in all lowercase. I give them proper grammar.

• 1:26Nilay Patel?

  Paul, what about you, man?

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Well, I text a lot from my laptop because I still haven't quit iMessage. So then if I'm on my lap, yeah. So if I'm on my laptop, I feel like I'm a liar if I do like phone capitalization. But sometimes I will fake phone capitalization to look like I'm texting from my phone. But mostly, I just do whatever the phone does. I don't fight the, fight the phone's default capitalization.

• 1:51Nilay Patel?

  Interesting. Okay, so I am, I think I'm with you mostly, Paul. Except on my computer, it's always all lowercase because I don't have autocorrect on. The reason I bring this up is Ashley Carmen and Caitlin Tiffany, their episode of Why'd You Push That Button is so deep on this this week that I think everyone should listen to it. They talked to a linguist. The linguist was like, your code switching, you're automatically in your brain, thinking about how you want to express yourself to who you're, it's a lot. Like, literally, everyone should listen to this episode. It's the most Why'd You Push That Button episode ever.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  They got Kara.

• 2:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, her copy editors on it, just being mad that no one, no one will do what she does all day professionally. Anyway, go listen to it. It's great. I wanted to plug it, but it's super. You can ask anybody that question and they will think about it because everyone does it so differently. One of my favorite episodes ever. Anyway, this week, I made the internet mad.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Just very mad. No, you didn't make the internet mad. You made a slice of it mad.

• 2:44Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so I have a theory, an ongoing theory. The more important you are, the less actual work you do and the more likely you are to be an iPad user.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 2:56Nilay Patel?

  So like billionaire, like people are like billionaires use iPads. They must be fine. I'm like, all billionaires do is look at PDFs that were generated on a Mac. That's what they do with their iPad. So like, let me review that spreadsheet that someone did real work to make. That's my theory. And I think I irritated that whole class of people. Because I reviewed the iPad Pro, the new one, which is a remarkable piece of hardware, running iOS 12, which Dieter, you've traditionally reviewed iPads for us. Last year, Dieter reviewed the iPad Pro 10.5. It was running iOS 10. And the promise was iOS 11 would make it better. iOS 11 came. I think we all know that iOS 11 was a little rough around the edges.

• 3:37Nilay Patel?

  iOS 12 came out, focused on cleaning up the rough edges, really added no features to the thing. So now, the new iPad Pro is here, squared off design, looks super cool, great screen, insane processor, iOS 12. And I said this to Dieter during the review. I was like, I'm just gonna like, say it out loud. Like, I'm just gonna say I don't like this.

• 4:01Nilay Patel?

  It literally prevents you from getting things done. iOS 12 is not, it just doesn't let you do a bunch of stuff. And then you have to spend all of your time figuring out how to do stuff instead of doing stuff.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  What I'm hearing is an elaborate self-own where you're not important enough to only use an iPad. Is that what I'm hearing?

• 4:20Nilay Patel?

  It's something like that.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  So here's the thing, like before you get finished, Neil, like the thing that...

• 4:28Speaker 01

  People, we've been talking about can the iPad replace computers since literally the first iPad, right? And the answer was always no, no, no. And then it was like, but maybe, maybe soon in the past couple of years. And so when Neelai comes out and says like definitively, no, it cannot do that right now. People don't hear that. They hear the same argument that everybody's been having for the past four years. The thing that I think Neelai did differently with this review is he said, we're done sort of waiting for Apple to fix it next year. This is like, Apple is making very outsized claims like that it is a full on complete citizen that can be your main device. Like they're absolutely making that claim.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  And so if before Apple, like it's great and like it could and you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so we would judge it based on like that idea of that device. If you've got a lot of money and you want to get it, if you want to replace your computer with it, you really got to know what you're doing. But like no one, Apple's not actually trying to really, truly make you do that. I think with this iPad, they are. And so it was time to revisit that whole debate. And Neelai did, but it has made, it has, it has made people mad because they're not, they're, they're responding to their ideas about what the iPad has been over the past three, four years, not to the specific device right now and the claims that it's trying to make is my sense of the outlines of the problem here.

• 5:54Nilay Patel?

  Well, so there's, there's two that we should actually talk about the iPad, but there's two, there's two things. One is there are all the people who are like, it did replace the laptop for me, right? I use an iPad every day and you're telling me I'm wrong. And I don't, I'm not actually telling them that I'm wrong. I think some people can just use an iPad every day. I think the argument for why you need the iPad Pro instead of the $329 iPad, if you are able to use it every day is extremely difficult to make, apart from the keyboard cover. Like if the, the cheaper iPad had the keyboard connector on it, I would literally say no one should buy an iPad. What you're going to do on it is iPad things, then you should, you can get that one. Except for music production. There is an amazing realm of processor pegging.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Music effects and interconnected apps that actually do interoperate with each other despite the limitations of the iPad. That's like a one weird zone of where you actually would want a Pro.

• 6:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I completely agree with that. And that stuff is super cool. And every single one of those people also has a MacBook Pro. That's what I mean. Like, yes, the iPad can turn into this crazy music production thing. But then, when you want to like, finish that project, you bring it over to a MacBook Pro and you like, use Logic. If Logic was on the iPad Pros, that'd make a lot of sense. If Final Cut Pro is on the, like, it's not, that stuff isn't there. So it becomes this like, single purpose tool and the process performance is there. The people who are like, I can just replace my laptop, because my set of needs is so constrained. If the cheaper iPad had a keyboard connector, then they should all spend $329. And that thing would dominate the market. So it's like, one set of people.

• 7:32Nilay Patel?

  Then I think there's the, the set of people who see the promise of the future, who want to weave elaborate tales about how, so it must be that we all must change. And we went from the command line to the graphical user interface. And, you know, people wanted to-

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Oh, these are the people who are accusing you of being stuck in your old ways, demanding that all computers never change. And if a computer does change, therefore, anybody who, you know, you know what I'm saying? Like-

• 7:59Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:01Nilay Patel?

  Because they all tweeted at me. I know exactly what they're saying. And that's, I get that too, right? Like, computers change. Like, we all moved from, I don't know, desktops to laptops. And we all moved from laptops to phones. Like, yes, the way we use computers change. Phones and broadband in particular led to a huge amount of change. The whole like, command line to graphical user interface thing, that change happened before people had computers, right? Like, Microsoft's vision at that time was a computer on every desk.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:29Nilay Patel?

  That's where they were going. And now it's like, yo, everybody has a computer in their pocket. So like, you have to give, like, people the credit of everyone has a supercomputer in their pocket. Everyone is fluent in computers and the internet in some extremely meaningful way. And so if you say, here's a Pro device that you can max out at $2,200, you can't be like, also, you're too stupid to use it. Right? Like-

• 8:55Nilay Patel?

  That's the, that's the, the argument to me that the iPad Pro seems to be making. You can spend all of the money on it and then it still treats you like you're a little bit too dumb.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Okay, maybe we can imagine a future of work. Cause I've, I've thought about this, you know, like the, in, in the, the Greek times, they were all rich because they, they had slaves pretty much. And they would walk around and talk philosophy to each other, right?

• 9:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  But like, even in more modern times, you know, some of our greatest thinkers were walkers and talkers. Like they did most of their greatest work, walking around and having epiphanies. Then they maybe rush back and use a MacBook Pro to write down the equation or something like that.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  But can we, can we just reimagine a future of work where mostly what we need to do is walking and talking? Or like, or Microsoft's version where you're like always, you know, flipping that, that two and one from in different modes. You know what I mean?

• 9:55Nilay Patel?

  Circling stuff wildly.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like what if your job involved more circling and less file management?

• 10:02Nilay Patel?

  I don't, so there is not a job in the world, a creative job in the world. That's just like, there are many jobs in the world. There is not a creative professional job in the world that does not involve file management. It is just the reality of being like a, a creative pro. What are you doing? You are generating assets. What are you generating assets out of? Other assets, right? And so at some point you've generated files and you can abstract that a little bit. So Creative Cloud and Dropbox and OneDrive and I like, all of that abstracts it a little bit.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Dropbox just announced these like extension type things where you, you do these small, very limited in scope, third-party actions on files that are in your cloud.

• 10:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, sure.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Does that get you closer?

• 10:48Nilay Patel?

  No, maybe. I feel like I should talk about the, we got so far into, I was so ready for this conversation. I have an iPad Pro. That is what you-

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Yes. It's the, it's the 12.9 or whatever, right?

• 11:02Nilay Patel?

  Yes, they gave me the 12.9 inch version with LTE and a terabyte of storage.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Why didn't they just call it 13? I don't know, whatever, keep going.

• 11:10Nilay Patel?

  For the same reason they priced it at $18.99 and not $1900, Dieter. So it's, it's huge. It's small. Like I showed it to Casey Newton today and he was like, that's way too big. This is like comedy levels of iPad. So it's, it's smaller in the sense that it feels more wieldy than the old 12.9, which is like doofy looking huge. So it feels the right size for what it is. I think the smaller one is what most people get. Anyway, so Apple gave me the most iPad. They gave me a set of AirPods. The total for all of this is like $2,300 and change. Like it's a, it's an enormous amount of money.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Cause the pencil's like one something, one-

• 11:48Nilay Patel?

  Everything is more expensive than last year. So the pencil's 30 bucks more than last year. It's 129. The keyboard cover is more expensive. The iPad itself is more expensive. The AirPods are the same price. Uh, Apple's new price is like 129. That's where they live. That's their, that's sort of the Apple accessory price. So the big question is what am I reviewing here? Right? It comes in two sizes. It comes in a million configurations, but they chose purposefully to give me the most iPad Pro that one can, can get.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  A $2,300 what's a computer?

• 12:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Uh, well, 2200, the iPad, the, the, the AirPods don't count. So a $2,200 what's a computer?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Well, the AirPods count insofar as if you want to listen to audio not through the speakers, you need to buy something because it doesn't come with headphones. And does it come with a dongle? A headphone dongle?

• 12:36Nilay Patel?

  It does not. The headphone dongle, Apple's USB-C to headphone dongle is $9. So it's either, you know, 2,209 dollars or it's $2,300 and change if you, if you buy AirPods. But the Apple solution is obviously AirPods. So they, they gave me this $2,300 bundle of stuff. And I just felt really strongly that if that's what they wanted to show me, if they wanted to be like, here's the best thing we can make, uh, that we should treat it like that. And- What struck me about it, using it, and we're going to talk about the MacBook Air in a little bit because you reviewed that, is that's more expensive than the MacBook Air. For a piece of hardware that is unquestionably more powerful, that has an unquestionably better display,

• 13:15Nilay Patel?

  that has Apple's custom-designed processor in it, that can just run circles around the Intel processor in the Air. And yes, it's way more expensive, but you can get the 11-inch version of this for 800 bucks. So you get a smaller screen, but you still get a better display, a faster processor, you know, Apple's, all of Apple's custom-designed stuff. You get a front-facing camera with Face ID. MacBook Air doesn't have that. So, Apple will charge you a $400 premium to use a more flexible operating system against the entry-level Pro, right? So if you want a MacBook Air, you get a worse computer and a more flexible operating system for 1,200 bucks. Or you can get a kick-ass piece of hardware, an operating system that will stymie you constantly.

• 14:00Nilay Patel?

  And that's like damning. That is the argument for, they should just stick an A12 processor in a Mac and call it a day.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I really do feel like this generate, like, the past few years, like, oh god, when are they going to switch Macs to ARM? It's going to be so painful, apps are going to suck, and nothing will be compatible, and it's going to be a hard transition.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  But now, after these computers came out, I think that if Apple doesn't switch the Mac to ARM in the next year or two at the outside, people are going to be livid.

• 14:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're going to say, why can't we get this thing? You're forcing us over to iOS. And the thing about being forced into iOS, I put this on Twitter, but what did we make? Like, we, I think people forget this all the time, we are, we're The Verge. Like, we make The Verge every day. There's a team of creative professionals here who make videos and take photos and draw illustrations. All of the things Apple says you should be able to do with an iPad, there are professionals who work at The Verge who do those things. So I handed it off to Dami, who's like a kick-ass cartoonist, she has a book, you should go buy it. Will Joel is our design director, he does all of our, like, just all of our design, but he does a bunch of 3D work. Alex Castro is our illustrator, he didn't use it, but he used Photoshop when we did that story.

• 15:15Nilay Patel?

  And all of them are like, I just ran into walls. Like, I need to use a real computer. And they kept using that phrase, right? Like, Apple doesn't want you to use that phrase, the proponents of the iPad don't want you to use that phrase, like, it is a real computer. And yet, when people like use it, normal people try to do their jobs with it. They're like, yeah, this is great. And now I need a real computer.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  I used an iPad Pro at the verge in the capacity as a writer, you know? So I wasn't doing a lot with rich media. And I was able to do it fairly well, except when you send the newsletter, there's this little slider that you have to be able to adjust. And that Mobile Safari can't get a hold of the slider. So I'd get the newsletter all prepared and then I'd send it off to someone with a real computer to move the slider for me.

• 15:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And that's it. It's just shit like that. Like, Mobile Safari is embarrassing. That there, you just have to admit it. Like, it's the phone browser, bigger, right? And like, you know, you know what a XS Max can do? Tabs. That's it. Like, that's, that was the big thing that the iPad version of Mobile Safari could do. And now the XS Max can do it too. What are you getting more out of Mobile Safari? If Google is the one, and you know, Apple likes to shade Google because everyone wants to use Google Docs and Safari on an iPad, but it kicks you to the app. Google's not taking any advantage of the iPad in that app. They're not making that experience better. So I would love to take the pencil and draw all over a Google Doc to edit it, but I can't.

• 16:40Nilay Patel?

  So what is the purpose of not having all of the features of Google Docs in the web client? I can't tell. I don't know.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  But so the, the argument is you should yell at Google for not having their app updated.

• 16:51Nilay Patel?

  Or I should yell at Apple for not having a browser that just lets me address Google Docs on the web, which is what everyone else can do.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. The reason I bring that up is the thing about computers is that there are a million little things that you want to do. And the computer is supposed to be a general computer that can do whatever you want it to. And so you should only be, you know, limited by certain things. And there are more limitations on the iPad than there need to be, given the power of the hardware. And the browser is a really perfect example of, yes, a full desktop class browser. In a perfect world, you wouldn't need it because everybody would make their webpages compatible with the, you know, more battery efficient, lighter weight, Mobile Safari or Microsoft Edge or whatever. In the actual world where we live,

• 17:40Speaker 01

  there are a million little things like the slider on your newsletter sending tool or Google Docs or whatever, that a more powerful general purpose browser is useful for. And so

• 17:53Nilay Patel?

  Can you make the iPad your main computer? Sure, but you're going to run into these little things all the time.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  And this, this is why I like this thought experiment of the future of work. Because if, if the iPad is designed for this perfect world, what would we all do in this perfect world? Would, would it actually work? If the newsletter software on the web was fixed and I could do the slider there, like, you know, that kind of stuff, if, if everything worked.

• 18:21Nilay Patel?

  If everything was designed for the iPad Pro, then using the iPad Pro would be awesome. That is true.

• 18:28Nilay Patel?

  Right, and we'd all just be walking and talking and firing off newsletters and drawing equations. I mean, the world would be perfect.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  So maybe a different way to talk about this so that you can get a little less hate Twitter, and we can talk a little bit more about the hardware is compared to the previous generation iPad, is this a good computer?

• 18:47Nilay Patel?

  I think most people who have the previous, unless they're these music producers that you're talking about, that are, that are pushing the processor. This, I think this is true of all iOS devices, it's true of the phone too. The previous generation is still really fast, like, Apple makes kick ass processors. So you weren't maxing it out before. And so you're gonna, you might see some like on the order of milliseconds improvement in flipping around webpages and sending off emails. But you're not going to see a huge difference. You might like the Face ID better. Sure, that, that's fun to use. The fact that you can like flip around any orientation and Face ID works is like incredible. Like, Apple built a really good implementation of that. The cameras are marginally better, like, and they're marginally better only because of software in the A12.

• 19:30Nilay Patel?

  So it's, they made a new sensor on the back that's way thinner. But it's supposed to have the same performance as the previous camera. But it runs Smart HDR, right? So Apple will do some Smart HDR stuff to the camera, but odd. Unless you're a serious iPad photographer, are you gonna notice that? Probably not. And then there's USPC, which, uh, the reality of USPC on the iPad today, and I don't think this will stay reality forever, but the reality today is that if you had a previous iPad and you were really interested in plugging a bunch of stuff into it, and you have a bunch of lightning dongles, USPC is not going to change your life, right?

• 20:05Speaker 02

  No.

• 20:06Nilay Patel?

  So if you had a lightning to HDMI and you, you were the person who was like running keynote on a big display with an iPad. Great, now you can do that with a USB-C adapter, but the experience is exactly the same. If you were the sort of person who really did import a lot of photos and you had the SD card adapter. I have the Lightning SD card adapter. Now you can use a USB-C SD card adapter and it'll be a little bit faster. But like the thing is, the experience of that is still exactly the same. So over time-

• 20:32Speaker 01

  What you will get is, if you are the kind of person who travels with both a MacBook and an iPad, because you have to, because you need to have a quote-unquote "real computer" with you, you'll be able to use the same charging brick on both, which is great.

• 20:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you get all the benefits of USB-C. That's the big thing. But if you were already like, "I gotta plug a bunch of shit into my iPad", and you had the dongles to do it, well, you're just gonna have to buy new dongles. And it's gonna be, the software is gonna not let you do more with USB-C. And I think that is like, again, it's Apple. Like, the example I keep using that people keep yelling at me about is external storage. There are apps in this world that will let you address a hard drive with an iPad Pro. That is true. There's like the SanDisk iExpand that everyone keeps tweeting me about. Great, I'm happy it exists. But you put a USB-C port on there, you should be able to plug in a hard drive. What do creative pros do? They make files. What does our staff do? They run around with cameras, they shoot onto cards, and they gotta read the cards into an app to edit the video.

• 21:29Nilay Patel?

  That's a thing they have to do. Well, you plug that stuff in the iPad Pro and, you know, just a regular hard drive won't do anything. Like, the files app won't show it. Maybe someone else is gonna write another app that will address it? Sure, but then you gotta get it into the iPad's idea of a file system, which is like iCloud Drive or Dropbox or something. So you're just moving it into another place. You're never addressing it directly with an app. Or, you put in a camera card, or you plug in a camera, and it just insists that you import everything into the iOS camera role. Which would be fine, like, to be clear, this would be fine if that didn't also just like sync to iCloud. Just like relentlessly sync to iCloud. And if you're me, and you have like a bunch of photos you take of your family,

• 22:13Nilay Patel?

  and a bunch of photos you take for work, which presumably creative professionals don't wanna commingle their personal and professional asset collections, you just end up with this messy photo library. Like it doesn't even give you the option to say like, make a new library. Right? There's just this one iOS iCloud photo library. So now like, I have photos on my phone and it's like 10,000 photos of the USB C connector of the iPad because I took those photos and imported, you know what I mean? Like, uh, and those are just work photos and I gotta like go back and delete them. And that's just dumb. Like, it's not a restriction that gets Apple and I can't even figure out what benefit accrues to Apple with not letting Lightroom or Photoshop or Affinity Photo or whatever directly address

• 22:57Nilay Patel?

  a card on a camera, right?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Uh, so the benefit that accrues to Apple is, I think they believe that they get better security in sandboxing because, you know, not any random app can read any random file. And so if you plug in a USB stick that you picked up in North Korea, you don't have to worry about it hacking your device. Uh, it also gets Apple.

• 23:19Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I don't buy that. I don't buy that.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  I just, I'm, I'm, here I am playing devil's advocate.

• 23:25Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Let me do it. It also gets them, you know, the, the, the, the effort of not having made the iPad more of a general purpose device. And that involves, well, no, and that involves like real work. Like if you're gonna do that and you're gonna genuinely secure yourself against the random North Korean thumbstick, you need to do some more stuff, right? Apple, I think, is still sort of hanging on to this idea that they can appliance-ify computing and run everything through the App Store. And, you know, at some point, if you really open it up a little bit more, like that could go away a little bit. Uh, they also get simplicity. They get the idea of simplicity because if you mount a hard drive on your computer, it shows up on the desktop or in the Finder or some other

• 24:10Speaker 01

  place. And I don't know, maybe Apple just doesn't think that the core, you know, shell, the core UI of iOS is robust enough to handle some of those more complex use cases. The rumor was iOS 12 was going to be a big redesign of the home screen. But like, a better way to think about that is they're working on like a re-overhaul of like the idea of the shell. Like when you talk, think about desktops and there's different Linux shells you can pick or whatever. Supposedly that's gonna come. With iOS thirteen and so maybe iOS will be better next year, Neelai.

• 24:39Nilay Patel?

  So let me, let me grant you this premise, right?

• 24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:43Nilay Patel?

  Uh, that you don't want this complexity. Like, okay, you don't want the complexity of a Finder or Windows Explorer. Like, I get it. You know what you want to do? You want the people who need that complexity to have to seek it out, go someplace, you know, maybe you make another app just to deal with files and you could call that app, Files, which is the app on the iPad that is supposed to help people manage files. Like, why doesn't it just show up there?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 25:07Nilay Patel?

  And I could even see the argument, and maybe this is too much complexity. The cheaper iPad shouldn't do any of this. That's your computing appliance, right? And if you want to address a file system, if you want to have a USB-C port, if you want to do all this other stuff, that's why you spend the money on the Pro. Maybe that's too much complexity for Apple. I don't know. But I, I think it's just tired, like, I was talking to someone who knows what they're doing, and they try, saying, I keep running these red blocks. I'm tired of figuring out ways around them. And they sincerely tried to convince me that the iPad was just a toddler and that, you know, it hasn't grown up. And I was like, it's eight years old, right? They're selling a $2,200 iPad. Like, we have to stop making excuses for the future. It either is or isn't.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  The, the other argument against simplicity is one that I, I bang on about all the time. When I was eight years old, I understood how to use a file system, right? I did. Uh, people are smart. Like, you know, the, the cliche is like, grandma figured out Windows. It will be fine if you add some complexity to the iPad.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  My dad bought a external hard drive that was Windows-formatted and it launched him into a wizard to install some weird driver

• 26:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  to run a Windows. I was like, I had to like uninstall multiple programs and reformat the drive for him. So, so there, there are some small complexities, but again, I, it seems like Apple has, like Neelai said, there is a Files app. Apple has the abstraction to deal with this. Like, can't they just, if, if they solve this next year, is this a good thing now? Like, do, do they really need to rethink the whole experience to make this stuff work? Or if they just added external drive support and in a, like a file open dialogue for third-party apps, would that be enough?

• 26:57Nilay Patel?

  Um, I think the browser is a huge. Stumbling lock. Yeah. So I think they gotta, they gotta spend some real serious time thinking about Safari. Uh, the files thing is like a medium, a medium thing. Like, most people don't need it, but if they want to sell to creative professionals, they gotta solve that problem. That's just real. If you, if they want to show me the Lightroom demo, they gotta let me manage files. That's all Lightroom is. Like, it's a file management and photo editing piece of software. It's great, and I love it. And I, I can be very positive about the iPad, too. Editing photos in Lightroom CC on the iPad Pro is a delight. It is delightful. It is an incredible display. It is probably the best display most people will ever own, because, you know, it's 120 Hz variable refresh rate.

• 27:41Nilay Patel?

  Like, all that is super cool. Like, you know, Macs don't do that, most Windows PCs don't do that. So that, it's like just incredible screen to look at a photo on and like edit. But you know what? Lightroom CC is not as powerful as Lightning Classic CC on a Mac. So like, that's the third problem they have to solve is the apps that are happening on the iPad are not nearly as powerful or capable as the apps are happening on desktop. And you make that argument, and people are like, well, yeah, but no desktop computer can do AR. And it's like, I don't, it's not real. It's great that you have all this AR kit stuff. It's great that they showed us the demo of like, we're gonna wave 12-inch iPads around a Lego castle and things are gonna blow up. But that is just more entertainment, right? It's just more consumption. It's not creation, which is traditionally the knock on the iPad.

• 28:26Nilay Patel?

  And I think they gotta, they gotta get there with these creative apps before they can make the claim they can do all this other stuff. But if you're an iPad person, you're gonna love it. Like, that's like all I can keep saying. Like, if you're the sort of person who goes into it with her eyes open, it's the best iPad that's ever been made. I just, I just think it's time to stop pretending that like, the future of computing looks like Apple's restrictions. I think it's also time to stop making excuses, because whatever the iPad is now is exactly the thing Apple wants it to be. It's not like, we'll get to it next year. It's not, this is the first generation. This is a very real product that is like, it has one of the best processors you can get in it. Well, just let me use it.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  I have noticed, though, there are still some rough edges. I don't think they fully made the transition to the, what is it? Post iOS 11 era, when they kind of started to change things up. Like, copy and paste can be really flaky on the iPad between a copy that you make using your fingers on the screen and a copy that you make using the keyboard shortcut. Like, I do think they have a lot more polish to do still, even in this current paradigm.

• 29:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but, um, you're right, man. Next year. iOS 13 is coming. And I will say that, you know, there were some people who loved it and some people hated this. The broad spectrum of other good reviewers, I guess I'll say, I don't know. Other reviewers we like and trust, totally in agreement. So David Pierce, The Journal, basically said the same thing. Matt Panzerino, TechCrunch, a great Apple reviewer. He was like, this is great, maybe the pencil's the future. And then he ended it with, but the software needs to get radically more powerful. And so I think if that's the consensus, I feel in good company. I just feel like with this iPad Pro in particular, Apple's claims, it's 92, it's faster than 92% of most recent laptops computers shipped. We sell more iPads than anybody else's entire notebook line.

• 30:11Nilay Patel?

  That stuff is, it places it in the class of, we're going to compare it to primary computing devices. Primary, like, phones are people's primary computing devices, but you take what I'm saying. We're, we're compared to laptops. If they're going to keep doing that, then I think it's, it's just way more fair to say, hey, why does this browser suck? Right now, if someone asked me, like, I just need a cheap laptop to do a bunch of basic stuff. I would almost say, like, you should buy a Chromebook. You should not worry yourself with the iPad Pro. Like, this Chromebook will do more of the things that you want and you won't have to worry about quite as much complexity. And that's a weird place for Apple to be, to be the more complicated product.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  It is definitely the more complicated product. Also, just going to say, I literally like hit myself in the face because I forgot to like demand this went into the review. And I tweeted about it. It is absurd. It is absurd that the iPad Pro, a $2,300 computer, if you want to spend that much on it, still only assumes that it will ever be used by a single person.

• 31:09Nilay Patel?

  Yes, I can't believe I forgot to put this in the review.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  It's ridiculous that there's not multi-user support on it.

• 31:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's really strange, especially with Face ID, right? Like, it can just see you and be like, "You're not Nilay. You're somebody, you're maybe one of the Verge's many video producers who needs to log into this thing." Not saying I just had a recent experience with this. Yeah, it's really weird, especially if we're gonna be here this expensive, and especially a computer that, you know, lives in shared environments, like it's meant to be handed around and passed around.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Well, and to Nilay's point, I never really thought about this a lot, but they don't even have a work, work, uh, home dichotomy. Like, that's, that is a pretty big shortage for this expensive and important of a device.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  I think if you get, if you get, if you get the thing, like, uh, put in like the enterprise system, you can't have some specific, they do have some of that stuff.

• 32:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, schools can do it.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  It's not, it's not a, schools can do it, uh, enterprise can do it, but it's not a thing that is like generally like available and easy to set up for an average consumer that goes and buys one in a store.

• 32:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Look, I, I think at the end of the day, this thing is the most kick-ass accessory to your laptop that has ever existed. It's great. And I, I think a lot of pros are gonna, gonna use it that way, and some people are gonna have needs that are perfectly serviced by it, and all that is cool. I just think if Apple wants to claim that this is in fact a vision of the future of computing, it needs to, it needs to aggressively pursue that vision instead of suggesting that, um, an open connector and a more powerful processor moves it closer. And that's like what Apple does. It makes software. I don't know, I get it.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  The other piece of context here is if, if you just want a tablet to do tablet stuff, to do iPad stuff, the 329 iPad has no peer. It's not as nice as this Pro, the bezels are bigger and it's got a home button and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I do not know of a better deal in technology than the $330 iPad. It is just that what you get for that money is it outclasses everything. If you want to know, of course, you can get Chromebooks for that cheap that like will let you do other things that the iPad can't do, but in terms of like raw quality per dollar, the iPad Pro, $330 iPad Pro is still the best thing in the world.

• 33:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I, I think that's really the thing that makes the more expensive one. Like, it puts it in a sharper relief. Again, if that, if that cheaper one had a keyboard connector, I bet it's the only computer people should buy. And then maybe the whole world would have to adapt to the fact that people only had iPads, right? Uh, and we could all live in Paul's philosopher king dream.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  The future of work.

• 33:40Nilay Patel?

  Want you wandering around.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Walk and talk. Talk about ideas. No files.

• 33:45Nilay Patel?

  No files. All right, we're gonna read an ad. We're gonna come back and talk about the MacBook Air, which Dieter reviewed, and get some real work done.

• 33:53Nilay Patel?

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• 35:21Nilay Patel?

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• 35:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:32Nilay Patel?

  You reviewed the MacBook Air.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  I did. I have it in front of me right now. I'm staring at it, staring at that little Touch ID button, staring at the screen, got the brightness cranked up to the absolute max, because I'm in a bright room. I mean, I don't know quite where to start with it. There's a lot of stuff to get into. We can talk about the processor. But to me, the most interesting place is, I couldn't decide if I thought this was a 12-inch MacBook blown up to 13 inches, or a 13-inch MacBook Pro with cheaper parts.

• 36:01Nilay Patel?

  I think it's a 12-inch MacBook blown up.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  I think it's a 13-inch MacBook with cheaper parts. I think it's both, actually, is what I think. But I don't understand why Apple didn't release this two years ago.

• 36:12Nilay Patel?

  I mean, so that's the main thing. I don't understand why it has the Y series processor that's just like kind of maxed out all the time.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay, so it's got a Y series processor. If you like heard the stuff, it's they power it at seven watts instead of the standard five, which means it can run a little bit faster, I think. The fans are spinning up more than I expected on this thing, I think, because that processor is running just a little bit hot. There are a bunch of other computers in very similar form factors that use the more powerful U series Intel chips and seem to do okay on battery life. So did Apple go with Y because of cost? Did they go with Y because of they think they can get better battery life out of it? Did they go with Y because they actually are not that impressed with, you know, U series performance and they don't really want to like have people get tempted to

• 36:59Speaker 01

  go four core in this thing or what? It could be all of the above. It does make this thing feel, especially compared to like comparable Windows laptops, just a little bit overpriced and a little bit underpowered. But the truth is that doesn't matter because I don't think it's not realistic that a bunch of people who have MacBook Airs are going to switch to Windows. Like, it's just not. And, and so at the end of the day, where I came down when I reviewed it was to just compare it to the old MacBook Air, which is like the it was the most infuriating experience that I know that they like did a tiny processor bump in 2017, but the last major processor revision was in 2015. So that's like three years ago, right?

• 37:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  And so I am comparing a laptop to something that's three years old. And in fact, even older, if you start talking about the hardware and the screen technology. So of course, it's could be better on every single metric. It just, there's nothing for it, right? The screen is beautiful. It's not full. It's not doesn't have as wide a color gamut as the Pros. It doesn't get as bright as the Pros. It doesn't go edge to edge like other Windows laptops. But if you've been using a MacBook Air, it is unequivocally better, right? And like the same goes for down the line for like every other feature, basically. The trackpad is way better. Yeah, anyway.

• 38:15Nilay Patel?

  So the MacBook Air is this like enormously important product, right? And we for years said it was the best laptop. Ever made and I don't know however many episodes of Control Walt Delete I did where it was like Walt was like they just need to update the MacBook Air. I have a bunker full of them. [laughing] He really does. You know, I just, I don't want to give up on this thing. I mean, they literally invited Walt to this event. Walt is retired and they invited him to the event to be like, we made a new MacBook Air for you, which is incredible. Yeah. We should just call Walt. Should we just call Walt? Yeah. I mean, I think he got his. Okay. All right, Andrew, can we call Walt? [phone ringing] Hello, is this Walt Mossberg?

• 38:54Speaker 05

  This is Walt Mossberg.

• 38:56Nilay Patel?

  I'd like to order 10,000 lattes to go.

• 38:58Speaker 05

  [laughing]

• 38:59Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Walt, it's Neil, I and Dieter and Paul. It's The Vergecast. How you doing?

• 39:03Speaker 05

  Hi, guys. How are you?

• 39:04Nilay Patel?

  I'm good. I heard a rumor that you got your MacBook Air today.

• 39:09Speaker 05

  I did. I got it, uh, I don't know, an hour ago, a little more than that.

• 39:13Nilay Patel?

  An hour ago? Why haven't you written a full review? Yeah. Where's my column, Walt?

• 39:17Speaker 05

  I'm retired, man. I'm not writing reviews anymore. I just write them in Twitter threads. That's quicker.

• 39:23Nilay Patel?

  [laughing] That's true.

• 39:24Speaker 05

  No editor.

• 39:25Nilay Patel?

  So, Apple, yeah, no pesky editor around. So, Apple literally brought you out last week. It was fun to have you, uh, at the event, just around. It was great because Walt was like, we were like scrambling like we always do and Walt was like, what do you think of this? And I was like, I'm gonna take a little break and hang with Walt. So, you were at the event, you saw the, the stuff, you got one today, and I know you were, you were one of the biggest proponents of that sort of second generation MacBook Air ever. What do you think of the new one?

• 39:51Speaker 05

  Um, I actually have one huge complaint. I opened the box and the new MacBook Air did not have any Verge stickers or Control Walt Delete stickers.

• 40:02Nilay Patel?

  I think we saw some Control Walt Delete stickers. Let's send some out. I'm sure we did somewhere.

• 40:05Speaker 05

  Uh, good. Good, because I was about to return it.

• 40:08Nilay Patel?

  [laughing]

• 40:09Speaker 05

  For, for lack of stickers. Look, my biggest worry about it was the keyboard, you know, that butterfly keyboard, uh, even assuming that there's no stuck key problem and dirt problem because of that plastic thing they put underneath. You know, it's a different, it's a whole different feel. It has less travel. But I have to say that in my limited experience, uh, at the event last week and in my limited experience... So far here, obviously very limited, I'm fine with it. I'm fine with it so far.

• 40:43Nilay Patel?

  Hey Walt, are you a, are you a loud typer? Cause I'm a pretty loud typer and even this keyboard, which is quieter than the other, the previous generation MacBook Pros, people are still like, yo dude, are you mad? What's going on? You can definitely hear it more than you can on the air.

• 40:56Speaker 05

  I read that in your piece and I've heard about it before. It doesn't sound particularly loud to me. I don't know why. Maybe it's, maybe it is my style of typing, which is pretty much hunt and peck. So I don't go fast and hard and that may be it. But you know, it's fine for me. I find it a little bit cool that it's smaller than the old MacBook Air for the, because of the bezel thing. It's kind of cool. And I got it in space gray, which you couldn't do on the old one.

• 41:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 05

  And I think it's the best laptop ever made. I know that the Windows guys have caught up, but I also think that their, you know, Windows itself is kind of a, still in a compromised state where it's trying to be partly a tablet and trying to be partly a laptop. And it's not what I personally want. So although I've owned many Windows computers in the past, this thing runs Mac OS. It's all up to date. It's got a retina screen. It's got a up to date processor and it's got actual speakers. The sound is not coming from under the keyboard.

• 42:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Speaker 05

  As it did on this machine at one time. And so far I'm happy. An hour and a half in or whatever it is.

• 42:15Nilay Patel?

  So you, famously that you had a, like a store of previous generation MacBook Pros. You were like bunkered up with them. Like Apple's never going to update this. I'm just sticking with it. Is this enough to make you sell off your like collection of, of new in box MacBook Airs?

• 42:30Speaker 05

  Yeah. You know, this is a classic internet phenomenon where I bought one spare MacBook Air. One. It's still all shrink wrapped, never opened. And it has just like, is exploded into this tale that I have a hundred or a thousand or something like that. It's like my retirement is completely wrapped up in MacBook Air.

• 42:58Speaker 05

  Every week, we take one of them, we go to the supermarket, we trade it in for some fruits and vegetables. The answer is, I'm not doing anything with that shrink wrapped older one. Who knows, I may need it. I'm a prepper, I'm, you know, got a bunker, and I might need it, so I've got, I'm keeping it.

• 43:17Nilay Patel?

  So, let me go a little bit broader. You know, they released two products last week, the iPad Pro and the MacBook Air. Do you think that this MacBook Air, there's a sense of it where it's like, alright, this is what you wanted, you wouldn't listen to us, so you can have it. Like, we put a retina screen and a touch ID of the MacBook Air, great, this is what you, please stop asking us for it. Or, do you feel like these product lines are on disparate paths where they're both sincere products? Does that make any sense?

• 43:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, it does make sense. I think they're on disparate paths. I think that Apple took a wrong turn on the Mac a couple of years ago. I think they tried to take their Pro, you know, let me back up for a second, and I'll make this quick. Everybody who knows Apple, knows the history, knows that Steve Jobs had this, you know, four quadrant little graph he drew, Pro, Consumer, one laptop reach, one desktop reach in those days. And, I think what they did a couple of years ago, was to take the Pro laptop and try to make it a tweener. In fact, that's, when I reviewed it, I called it a tweener.

• 44:26Speaker 05

  They tried to make it kind of cover both the market that had been the Air's market, and the market that had been the Pro's market, and I don't think either group of customers was happy with it. And I think there, I can't prove this, but I think there's been a reconsideration inside Apple. I don't know what else it will lead to, but, you know, who would have expected them to redo the Mac Mini? The way they did also, that was widely believed to be left for dead until very recently. So something has changed in their Mac policy and I do think it's on its own course, separate from the iPad. You know, we can argue about whether that's a good policy or a bad policy, but I think that's been their policy.

• 45:11Speaker 05

  I think they screwed up the Mac half of it and I think they're now coming back. I assume there will be an ARM Mac. I assume there'll be Macs with more new features than this MacBook Air, but I do think they're they're separate and I, by the way, you all know that I'm a huge iPad fan as well and I have an iPad Pro and I do a ton of stuff on it.

• 45:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think the, you know, the Apple just had its earnings and we haven't gotten too deep into them, but you know, the Mac revenue is a fifth of the iPhone revenue. It's not a small number by any means and on Ctrl or Delete, you were always telling me the Mac business would be like a Fortune 500 business all by itself, right?

• 45:49Speaker 05

  And still true. I checked it just a couple of days ago and it's like almost 26 billion, which would be a Fortune 500 company. And so it's a serious business. This was, at one time at least, the most popular Mac. It's probably not at this moment because they left it so long. You know, to me, it was like the way some people in some cultures leave children, babies they don't want on the hillside to die. I feel like that's what they did with the... I know, it's rough, but you know, the world is rough.

• 46:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just, the hills are full of Mac minis and I don't care.

• 46:26Speaker 05

  But, you know, they introduced two Macs. One is the quintessential consumer Mac that they've had immense success with, finally, you know, kind of brought back to life. And the other was, you know, what turns out to be almost entirely, I can't imagine consumers buying this particular MacBook Mini. It's really a, meant to be a pro, even a server, a pro machine, even a server. I don't think two years ago, if we'd been having this conversation, we'd have predicted either of those things. But something has changed in the Mac side of their development.

• 47:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's interesting to see Apple kind of respond to clear market demand in this way, right? Like, they were trying to sunset the MacBook Air. They did that whole presentation with the Pro where they said, "Look, it's smaller, it's more powerful. Just buy this one." And people still wanted an Air, and they kept selling it. And they were surprised at how well it continued to sell. They still sell that 2015 Air, by the way. It's in the store. It's crazy to me that that product is still available. But they had, it's almost like their hand was forced. Like, the market just told them to make this product. So, Walt, do you think, I know you've had it for an hour, is this a worthy successor to the computer that for years you said, Joanna Stern said, we said, every reviewer said, "The MacBook

• 47:44Nilay Patel?

  Air is just the computer you should buy"? Is this a worthy successor to that product, do you think?

• 47:48Speaker 05

  I mean, on first impression, on the New York event and the limited time today, I would say yes. What I'm doing right now, which everybody who's ever owned a Mac and then bought another one knows about, is I'm migrating the data from my old one to this new one, and that takes some hours. The interesting thing is, though, I'm migrating it from a USB-C external drive as opposed to the, directly from the Mac. You know, I did a Time Machine backup to a USB-C external drive, which came with two cords, one with USB-C

• 48:27Speaker 05

  to USB, I guess, A, and that used that to get the data backed up off the old MacBook Air. And now I'm just doing USB-C to USB-C on the new one. So, you know, I'll dive into it more over the next couple of weeks, and maybe I'll do a Twitter thread, I don't know. But, yes, the answer, I mean, is every experience I've had with it, in my opinion, suggests that this is, it's not more than what the MacBook Air was in terms of advanced radical features, except for Touch ID, but it's really a MacBook Air, which is a little bit thinner, and a little bit lighter, and a little bit smaller, all of which are good things. I'll say one thing. If you buy the non-touchbar, the so-called escape model MacBook Pro,

• 49:15Speaker 05

  The function key row is really squeezed down. Am I right, Dieter? Really kind of thin little keys up there. And this one just has regular sized keys in the row, which ends with the Touch ID button.

• 49:31Nilay Patel?

  Wait, really?

• 49:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:32Nilay Patel?

  Huh. You know, I have-

• 49:33Speaker 05

  Take a look. You guys have them.

• 49:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I have a MacBook Escape and I never really use it.

• 49:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:40Nilay Patel?

  I'm sticking with my, I got my 2015 Pro with a GPU that is just viciously eating this battery and yet-

• 49:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  To me, the thing that was amazing about the MacBook era, the second generation that everybody got, was it was simultaneously the computer for everybody that everybody should just get. And it was also at the same time so far ahead of the rest of the laptop world by at least a few years. And it took Windows a long time to catch up. This has the benefits of potentially being the every person computer, which is great. But I don't see it being, you know, that far ahead. It's basically like a catch-up product in my mind. And that's not a knock on it, but I do think it's an interesting question as far as what's going to happen, you know, two, three years from now. Because, you know, Microsoft's devotion to Windows is a little bit softer than it used to be.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  And Apple's devotion to the Macintosh seems to be a little bit more resurgent. And I'm just wondering, you know, is there, are we going to see a world where the Mac is like radically ahead of the rest of the computer world in some way again? Or, you know, is that just, are those days behind us and all that innovation is going into the iPad and the iPhone?

• 50:49Nilay Patel?

  That, I'll answer that. I'm curious what I'll say, but that day comes when they put an arm chip in the Mac.

• 50:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, my answer is similar to Neil's. I would go even a little farther. I'm going to repeat what I said. I think there's been a change inside Apple in their thinking about the Mac since the, I think, error, unforced error they did on the Pro. And I think the two that they introduced at the event are maybe the first pieces of evidence of that. I expect them, and I realize I'm leaving out the 12-inch MacBook because I don't understand what that is and where that fits.

• 51:31Speaker 05

  No, seriously, given the price and the capability, you know, it just, I don't understand it. But, you know, it isn't even 18 karat gold. I mean, I, I, I don't know.

• 51:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:44Speaker 05

  Um, I assume, and I, nobody's, this is not, nobody's told me this, but I assume they are working on an ARM-based Mac. I assume they're working on more Macs. I, I think that this is meant to put a stake in the ground for the consumer side to say, "Okay, here's your MacBook Air, all modernized up, but not pushed into new territory." I think there is new territory, and I think they're looking at it. You know, I know there are Windows machines out there, but I'll, I'll repeat. I think it's not all the hardware. HP has done a beautiful job, even Dell. And I say even Dell because I don't think their hardware was generally very good over many years in the past, but they've done a nice job.

• 52:26Speaker 05

  But I think Windows remains a little bit of a confused situation, and Apple is making, is keeping this division. So, the answer to the question, Dieter, is I, I think more Macs are coming that will be more advanced than this. I do, I really do.

• 52:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:44Speaker 05

  So I'm not buying a second one of these to put in this, in the closet.

• 52:48Nilay Patel?

  The bunker remains. All right, Walt, well, thank you so much. I know we kind of called you out of the blue here. So, let us know when you're done setting this thing up and what you think of it.

• 52:56Speaker 05

  I will. Take care, guys.

• 52:57Nilay Patel?

  All right, see you, man.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Thanks, Walt.

• 52:59Speaker 05

  Bye.

• 52:59Nilay Patel?

  Man, I love that man, truly. Dieter, I want to ask you about T2, and then we should move on to the next thing. So, the T2 chip is like crazy, right? It like does a whole bunch of stuff.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  So, it, it's the security element. So, it has a secure enclave for your fingerprint sensor, and it turns the microphones off when you close the laptop. But I think-

• 53:16Nilay Patel?

  Does it physically disconnect the microphones? I read there somewhere that it physically disconnects the microphones, which seems crazy to me, like it-

• 53:24Speaker 01

  I, I do not know-

• 53:24Nilay Patel?

  There's a little guy that's unplugging them.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  Actuator, yeah, that, that I cannot speak to. But it keeps, it keeps the rest of the system from seeing it. It also handles the audio on the speakers, for some reason? Um, sure. Uh, but to me, the most important thing that it does is it handles- Uh, just like it does on the, the other Pro Macs, it handles a real time encryption for the SSD, which means that you can have file vault turned on and have everything fully encrypted on your computer with no loss to speed. And I think, you know, it runs a BIOS, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. In a way, I, it's, it, to me, it really seems safe to say that the T2 is Apple learning how to do more stuff on the Mac with its own custom silicon so that when it wants to switch the CPU over, there won't be that many surprises.

• 54:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think there's also an element of, I mean, it also handles like video encoding, which is like deeply hilarious to me.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:16Nilay Patel?

  All those people encoding video on their, their Mac, who cares?

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Remember the Elgato stick that we all used to have to buy?

• 54:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I loved that thing. I think there's an element of, they need to give that Intel processor like some headroom. Like they, they need to give it some space. So like, they're gonna move a bunch of stuff just over to it. And then I don't know if they can move more stuff, right? Like that turns into re-architecting the operating system. But that's, it's the thing I want most of.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  That has to come. I had a whole riff in the review that was like, the reason that this thing isn't like, holy crap, is like blame Intel. And Intel's had some bad years. They haven't advanced enough in chips and so on and so forth. And I had a whole like, way to go Intel, you're really, you're really, the MacBook era would have been the most amazing computer ever if it weren't for you.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  No, but we cut it because it's a little bit unfair. Honestly, it's not like the right thing. And also, again, other laptops of comparable size have a more powerful Intel processor and like, nothing exploded on them.

• 55:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah. That's the battery life.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  It, I, no, no, other reviewers have said that it's really good, that they're getting really, really good battery life. I am finding that it is very, very workload dependent. If you are just using Safari and email and doing basically like Chromebook stuff, like basic computer stuff, you can get eight, nine, maybe even 10 hours, I think. Apple claims 12 web, of a web browsing. For me, I run my Mac with TweetDeck and sometimes Chrome. And so I'm like getting seven. To eight. That was one of the things with the original MacBook Air, the other thing or the second MacBook Air, the thing that people love so much, especially when they switched that MacBook Air to the Haswell Intel processors.

• 55:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  You could just got like magical battery life, just magical battery life. But this thing has a high resolution screen. It sure doesn't get as bright as I'd like it to. And you know, it's got this processor that they need to clock it, whatever they're they're clocking it at and wanting, you know, powering it at the TDP blah, blah, blah. Anyway. So it's like physics, I think, keeps it from having like true 12 hour battery life. But that's not a huge knock. I think a lot of other computers, especially computers that have those U series processors, you end up kind of in the same zone. I'm a little bit bummed and like, this is where I actually am mad at Intel is we seem like we were creeping up on a world where like you actually could just not worry about having to plug your computer in all day. I think we're backsliding a little bit, like things were getting really good and you could see a path to it.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  And I feel like we've gone backwards a little bit on that. And that's, I don't know, it's a bummer. It's especially a bummer on this MacBook Air because it doesn't have MagSafe. And I know that most of us, if you're listening to this, you probably haven't used a MagSafe laptop in a long time.

• 56:58Nilay Patel?

  I'm using one right now.

• 56:59Speaker 02

  I'm using one right now.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  A lot of people that have, you know, MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros like that. That was a genuinely good, great.

• 57:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Useful thing. And it's a bummer to see it gone, especially since the battery life isn't holy crap good.

• 57:13Nilay Patel?

  You know, I, I was like really MagSafe for us, like here at the company had become this like standardized connector, even though it's proprietary, like. Everybody had a Mac, so there were just like power adapters everywhere and I could just like wander around and plug. It's so sad. And then I interviewed the CEO of Anchor this week.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:29Nilay Patel?

  It was on Tuesday and he's like, look, we ship like the world ships like four billion power bricks every year. Like that's the number. It's four billion. He's like, we should stop that. And so I'm willing to accept the USB C transition pain. If like I can just plug my stuff in and we're not making more like e-waste and it's just simpler everywhere. I think there's years of pain along the way. But that, hearing that stat, it finally just like clicked for me like, oh, we make a lot of garbage.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:56Nilay Patel?

  We like physically produce a shitload of garbage every year just to charge stuff.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  Well, and I'm hoping that this MacBook Air, if it does sell in big numbers, is going to be one of the things that pushes USB-C forward, you know, and, you know, speeds up the transition period and gets us better USB-C devices. Like, I'm actually genuinely hopeful for that. I will say, now that we've gotten through, talking about USB-C on this MacBook Air and USB-C on the iPad, I've spun all the way back around. Apple has a lot of decisions that are good for Apple for leaving the iPhone Lightning, but it doesn't have any good reasons that are actually useful for consumers for leaving it Lightning.

• 58:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I can't, I feel like they went to USB-C on the iPad, the excuses for leaving Lightning on the phone are dwindling.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  There's no turning back. Once they switched the iPad, it's over.

• 58:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think, well, I mean, there's like a variety of reasons, like, A, people, there's like a Lightning ecosystem in the world, but.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  Same excuse for the iPad.

• 58:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but there are fewer iPads. The pain is like way lower.

• 59:01Speaker 02

  Do you want to live in a world where you carry two SD card adapters with you? Think about that.

• 59:07Nilay Patel?

  I already live in that world. What are you talking about? I've been in that world for years.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Apple missed the moment with the iPhone X. They could have switched the iPhone X to USB-C and everyone would have been like, grumble, grumble, grumble. It would have sold as well, but they would have signaled it was the future and there's enough other stuff changing in it that people would have been like, okay, I get it.

• 59:25Nilay Patel?

  You know, we did the USB-C montage for the iPad Pro review.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that box is coming to me for the Pixel Slate, by the way.

• 59:32Nilay Patel?

  It's beautiful.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  We packed all your stuff up.

• 59:34Nilay Patel?

  Enjoy the party light because it is the most fun. The one thing that came super late was the USB-C 230 pin adapter, so you can plug the old iPod 30 pin into it.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 59:47Nilay Patel?

  And it just doesn't do anything. I don't even know if there's wires inside of it. Like, it literally just does nothing. So I have it. It's an amazing adapter, but we couldn't make it do anything. All right, we're gonna do This Week in Elon with Liz. We're gonna have an ad and we'll come back. Check it out.

• 1:00:06Speaker 06

  Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow dirtbags and everybody else, welcome to This Week in Elon. My name is Elizabeth Lopato. I'm the deputy editor at The Verge. And we are here to talk about Tesla's board. So Tesla has appointed Robin Denholm, who is already on the board, to be the chair of the board of directors. And the reason, of course, that that has happened is it was a condition of the settlement that Musk reached with the Securities and Exchange Commission in September to settle the fraud charges related to his funding-secured tweets. Right? So he's out as chairman and Denholm is in as chairwoman.

• 1:00:49Speaker 06

  But of course Musk is remaining on the board. Possibly you are wondering, who is Robin Denholm? Good question. So she is the CFO, was the CFO, and head of strategy at an Australian telecommunications company called Telstra. And so she's given notice and is going to be full-time chairwoman at Tesla. So the other thing to keep in mind is that, you know, there are going to be some people added to the board also as a result of this SEC settlement. The reason for that is that the board has come under fire for not being sufficiently independent from Musk. So part of what she is coming into, actually, and we know this because public companies have to file documents, part of what she's coming into is a subpoena from the SEC

• 1:01:34Speaker 06

  around Model 3 production, as well as two DOJ probes, one around funding-secured, the other around Model 3 production. Okay. The reason why I mention this is that Tesla disclosed that they had been subpoenaed about their Model 3 production numbers by the SEC. And I'm not an expert, but subpoenas seem possibly bad. Anyway, because I'm not an expert, I called some experts and they confirmed that. Receiving subpoenas is never a good thing. Former SEC Commissioner Harvey Pitt emailed when we asked him. They're a fairly serious step. And of course, it doesn't mean that there's any wrongdoing that's occurred. It just means that the SEC is extremely interested in your business.

• 1:02:15Speaker 06

  Now, there's a bunch of lawyer rules, which I'm going to skip because we will be here for 15 minutes if I go through them all. But it is worth noting that there has actually been a shareholder lawsuit around Model 3 production. It was initially dismissed in, I think, August, and it has been refiled. So it looks like there's a fair amount of litigation that's just hanging over Tesla right now. And here's the thing about SEC subpoenas. They can give information to the DOJ. And in fact, some members of the FBI literally work in the SEC office. So they are in close communication. So basically, what's going on is that there is, at minimum, a very exhausting documents process of assembling everything that could be required by the subpoena, going through

• 1:02:59Speaker 06

  emails, looking at memos, whatever else. So at minimum, this is going to be a distraction. And of course, at maximum, it could be quite dangerous. So that's what Robin Denholm is coming into as Chairwoman. I'm sorry, Robin, but also, congratulations, girl. That's pretty big news. You ever want to give an exclusive interview to somebody, you know where I am. Couple of other things going on in the Elon world. It looks like SpaceX is seeking a new loan for about $750 million to put cash on the balance sheet. Now SpaceX, you may remember, is involved in two very big... Productions. One of them is a network of satellites that will give you space internet.

• 1:03:42Speaker 06

  And the other, of course, is the BFR, the Big Falcon Rocket. Obviously, those things are capital intensive. That probably explains the loan. According to Bloomberg, it's coming from Bank of America instead of Goldman Sachs, as was initially reported. So Goldman Sachs was previously leading talks between SpaceX and people who might want to give SpaceX some money, but that has changed. So a lot of stuff going on in the sort of the finance world of Elon. For instance, Tesla is expecting to invest up to $6 billion in the next two years to ramp up their China operations. And all of this, obviously, is going to be

• 1:04:20Speaker 06

  part of Robin's job. So Robin Dunholm, congratulations. I am very much looking forward to see what you do. That's been This Week in Elon. I'm Elizabeth Lopato. Thank you very much.

• 1:04:35Nilay Patel?

  This episode of The Verge has brought to you by Better Mortgage. Better Mortgage believes in a mortgage process that feels as magical as getting the keys to your new home. They're doing it by combining technology with amazing customer service to deliver better pricing, commission-free loans, and a personalized way to see how much house you can afford. The result, in 2018 alone, Better has served over 10,000 families, saving them days' worth of stress-filled time, $3,500 in upfront fees, and $3,000 every year for the next 30 years. Plus, with a Better Price Guarantee, if they can't beat a competitor's offer, they'll give you $1,000. Find out how much house you can actually afford right now on your phone in just three minutes. Go to better.com/verge to start the mortgage process so simple it feels like magic. Not available in all states. See better.com/terms. All right, Paul.

• 1:05:16Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:17Nilay Patel?

  Every week, my friend, a segment begins.

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:21Nilay Patel?

  With you saying the same words, and they are.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  I always say the same words. I always say, hashtag dongle what?

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  And what is spelled W U T, just in case you didn't know.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  Yes, good.

• 1:05:33Speaker 02

  Okay, so obviously new iPad with a new plug. This is, this is easy material for hashtag dongle what? Because we have the hyperdrive for iPad Pro, right? Of course, a USB C hub. You get your headphone jack. You get SD card slots. Maybe Neil, I could have three SD card adapters. HDMI port, USB A, USB C power delivery. But here's what's really exciting. It basically bolts to the side of the iPad.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  So it's

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, why is it just a cable? It doesn't make any sense. And there's like diagrams. It looks like, it says, it says it, it won't scratch your oh, see. Secures USB C hub in place without blemishing the iPad Pro service, which makes you wonder, how did you get so close to blemishing the iPad? It's like there's a multi-part diagram with these like, like trans, like plastic brackets and then they screw into the hub. It's really exciting. So it's just, it just makes your iPad look really ridiculous. It's great.

• 1:06:43Nilay Patel?

  I love it. I love that they show a thumb drive plugged into it that can do nothing.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  It does make me think that the placement of the port on the iPad, at some point, they should rethink it. I know they've got the speakers in the corners, but yeah, like smack in the middle of one of the sides is like down in a corner. They should put it down in a corner.

• 1:07:01Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. Johnny, I've just given an interview to the Independent, which is like a classic, wonderful Johnny Ive hyperbole, where he was like, you know, the first iPad, there was a, an orientation. And now through the magic of technology, there's no more orientation. And you can just, it's a magic piece of glass. It's, you should read it. It's great. But like, it definitely has an orientation. Like there's an Apple logo on it. It points in one direction. It doesn't like magically rotate. The port is at the bottom. The camera is at the top. And so like, there's that, first of all. And then, when you put it in a keyboard case, the port is off to the side. Like, there's only one way to mount it in a keyboard case.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  You guys are thinking of a world where you are so productive on your iPad Pro that you're actually using it at work and you need it to be plugged in.

• 1:07:48Nilay Patel?

  Well, so Apple is like, yeah, you're gonna, it's same with, same as your, uh, as your laptop. You come into work, your iPad Pro, you unfold it, you clip open the keyboard case, you plug in one cable, it lights up your external display and your, you know, whatever else you have going on. And power, and you're, you're off into the races. And it's like, but all it can do on the external display is mirror the iPad. So, why would you do that? You know, and like keynote and other stuff can do it. Um, and like, they can put up, you know, one slide here and show you the next slide on your iPad screen. Uh, but I mean, that's their vision, right? You're just gonna plug in one cable and get power and all the other stuff you might need. So a bunch of hubs worked. It's just very funny. It is, I, I didn't put this in the review. The iPad is USB C three, USB 3.1 generation 2. And then the MacBook Air is Thunderbolt 3.

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:34Nilay Patel?

  And that, I think, is gonna confuse the shit out of people. Like, even just in testing the iPad, we were like, what cable is what, you know, like, Apple just ships you a power cable in the box. It's like, it's just like a lot of stuff. To, to know the difference between what will work on a MacBook. Well, you can't plug an external GPU into the iPad. Right? Cause it's not Thunderbolt. But you can do it in the MacBook Air. So there's just a lot of, let's see what's going on here. But.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  I'm pretty sure Thunderbolt isn't the thing that's keeping the iPad from working with an EGPU. Pretty sure that, that that's, there's something else. There's some other factor.

• 1:09:08Nilay Patel?

  It'd be wild. It'd be wild if it did, if you couldn't read a thumb drive, but it's like, yep, this EGPU totally works.

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  Take that Xbox.

• 1:09:16Nilay Patel?

  Oh man, the Xbox graphics thing, yeah, great. Your processor's real fast. Like, no game on here looks as good as an Xbox game. Like, it's just not, not a thing. All right. Let's talk about this real quick. This was literally happening while we were podcasting just now. Dieter, what is going on with Android and foldable phones?

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  So both Google and Samsung have developer conferences today and Google jumped the gun. They were going at the same time, but Google said, hey, we're going to support foldable devices. They called them foldables.

• 1:09:45Nilay Patel?

  Oh my.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Google's by Google phone thinks I'm talking to it right now. And they basically are using stuff that's already built into Android right now. They're saying if you make an Android app, make sure you support this thing called screen continuity that makes your app not go crazy when people put it in windowed mode on Chrome or when they turn their phone sideways. If you do that, it'll support, you know, when the thing unfolds, it will set that's they'll send that flag. So they're basically telling everybody, look, this is how Android should handle foldables. Don't make any custom APIs. It's a way to limit fragmentation. But in terms of like forward facing future stuff, features in Android, they're not talking about that yet. Then about, I don't know, an hour later, we saw Samsung, Samsung prototype of a foldable Android phone.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  I'm looking at the photo right now for the very first time and it sure does look like a little tablet. My nearest understanding, Google said that Samsung's device is going to get released next year. Samsung is trying to tell developers how it wants developers to make apps for this phone. But the, the basic goal here is for Samsung's making this thing Royals, making a thing. Presumably LG will roll out a knockoff, you know, within two weeks. And so for all these phones that are foldable, Google wants to make sure that they all work in basically the same way and they're working with Samsung to make that happen.

• 1:11:00Nilay Patel?

  This is like a new thing that Google does with Samsung, right? Samsung's like, we have a crazy idea and Google says, wait, hold up, slow it down. We want to be ahead of the curve and actually support it directly in Android, not have you build some crazy fork of Android. This is like, I would say it's a third or fourth time they've got something along these lines. So that's cool. Who is Royale? Where do they come from? And why do they have a foldable display?

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  I have a theory.

• 1:11:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  You ready? Yeah.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  Uh, they're a fourth, they're, they're the fourth shift company. There's a, there's a company like named Royale and their division is something else or whatever. And they're hanging out at the factory where Samsung is making these displays, uh, making these phones. And they're like, hey, we know Samsung's doing it, but we could just like sneak in there and get it out the door. Since all that stuff is there, they're working on it anyway. So they just, they just, like Paul said, they were first to fold.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  First to fold.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  But I think that.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  Wait, so, but Dieter, that, that would imply that Royale has very similar technology to Samsung.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  No one knows. I don't think that's true at all. I mean, Samsung literally turned off the lights at its event. So you couldn't see the phone. You could only see it folding. Yeah. Which is crazy. Yeah. They also announced that Big Speed now supports third party apps, just in case you're wondering. That's, I've been waiting for that. That's the thing that'll save Big Speed. No, but like, you remember when like the essential phone came out and it was like a notch? And then we're like, oh, and then Apple did it. And then everybody did it. And it was like, out of nowhere, everybody was able to make this thing. I think that there are like one or two factories that out of nowhere are able to like, get this one particular kind of folding screen to actually work at scale. And so everybody's just going to make one because they can. Yeah.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  Intel was hinting at it. Microsoft's been hinting at it. It's just going to happen.

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  There's a GIF on the verge. We can see it fold. I'm watching it fold over and over. It's very exciting. The screen folds.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  Oh, there it is. Oh, it folds in the screens inside.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  Screens inside, and then there's another screen on the outside. Screen on the outside. So good.

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  Oh, it's all I've ever wanted in my life is this many screens. This makes no sense. I mean, they can't, they can't fold it like, you know, fully flat, right? Cause that would break the screen. And so this in your pocket is going to be a real, a real moment. This is my next phone. I don't care. I'm all in. Big speed forever.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  This is, I can't not have this. I'm gonna sell new, larger pockets on.

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. I did ask Google, why Android? Because if you have a tablet, there's no good Android tablets. There's only the new Chrome tablets. I mean, there's Samsung's Android tablet, but come on. So if you have a bigger screen, you probably want a desktop class browser on it. Otherwise, you just run into iPad problems, right? And they're just like, we think of this as like an extension for phones. I don't, there's like, it's gonna be a minute before you can fold this out and have a real computer in there.

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:13:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:51Nilay Patel?

  I mean, Samsung is like, what if you unfold it? And it's like Dex is here.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:13:56Nilay Patel?

  Like Samsung has the opportunity to go insane. By the way, this is folding and when it's folded up, the third display, you know, the third one on the front.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:04Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's suspiciously small. It has like a giant forehead.

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  Probably the largest. Largest bezel I've seen in my lifetime.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  Ever.

• 1:14:13Nilay Patel?

  I don't care. I'm buying, I'm buying the hell out of this phone. It's the only phone I'm gonna use forever.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  I think for this phone, they should bring back the bloops. They should bring back the, the Galaxy bloops.

• 1:14:23Nilay Patel?

  Oh my God. All right. We gotta wrap this up. I can't, I mean, I just have to watch this gift for the rest of the day, so we gotta wrap this up. A couple of things, we didn't mention it all, but we are taping this the day after election day. Uh, there was an election in the United States of America. Uh, there's new Congress. The House is full of Democrats and the Senate's full of Republicans. That means a bunch of tech policy stuff is gonna change. Go look on the website. We have a really great new policy reporter. Her name is McKenna Kelly. She's doing a punch reporting. She just interviewed Senator Mark Warner about how he plans regular tech. He's, he's one of the smarter thinkers on that stuff. He said he would break up Facebook as a last resort, but he wouldn't nationalize it because he's capitalist.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  Oh, hey, uh, Neelai, Wisconsin Valley has a new governor.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, your buddy.

• 1:15:07Nilay Patel?

  Scott Walker is gone. Uh, he, they took another run at him and they beat him. So there's a new governor in Wisconsin, a new governor for my, uh, my hometown. I suspect the Foxconn story is gonna change dramatically. So there's a lot of that stuff we didn't talk about on this show because honestly, we had to yell about USPC ports. But it's all on theverge.com. Read that stuff. We're gonna be covering a lot. I'll probably, uh, do an interview episode to talk about policy. Changes with the new Congress. So be on the lookout for that. Speaking of interview episodes, the anchor CEO, Stephen Yang, episode is up in the feed. And next week, I talked to Soo Kinder Singh Cassidy, who is the new president of StubHub. So we talked about StubHub a bunch, some wild ideas for like the future of ticketing. But we didn't talk about this either. Last week, like 20,000 people walked out at Google across the world

• 1:15:51Nilay Patel?

  to protest kind of a pervasive culture of sexual harassment and discrimination. Soo Kinder, not only was Google's president of Latin America and Asia, she built those businesses from the ground up at Google. She also is a chairman of a foundation called The Board List, which places women into senior roles on boards and executive committees. She had a lot to say about that. So check that out. It's coming next Tuesday. You can listen to other Verge podcasts. Like I said, why did you push that button is this this week's episode is terrific. Go check that out. You can listen to Recode Decode with Kara Swisher. You can listen to Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. And you can listen to Recode Media with Peter Kafka. All wonderful podcasts. Everywhere podcasts are served. And you can just tweet at us. It appears that all of you know what my Twitter is because

• 1:16:35Nilay Patel?

  you all have thoughts about the iPad. But Paul is at FuturePaul. Dieter's at BackLawn. I'm at Reckless. Let us know what you think. And that's it. We'll see you next week. Rock and roll. Paul.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  8K AI plus five.

• 1:16:50Nilay Patel?

  Oh, God.

• 1:17:07Speaker 07

  Hey, Vergecast listeners. I'm Spencer Hall from SB Nation. And I want to tell you about my new show, It Seemed Smart. It Seemed Smart is a show about people doing things that, for some reason or another, seemed smart at the time. Those things might include doing a little cocaine and driving a bike up a mountain. Or, I don't know, maybe racing 100 miles per hour across the country in the middle of the night with no one's permission. Or even stealing a bat from an umpire's room in a Major League Baseball park. Check it out. And if you like it, tell a friend. I'm Spencer Hall. Don't do anything smart.