GTA leaks, TikTok search, and Apple reviews hotline

Welcome to the flagship podcast of measuring changes in gravitational force. 02:13 - David Pierce chats with video game reporter Ash Parrish about how footage of Grand Theft Auto VI has leaked online. GTA 6 gameplay leaks online in 90 videos Rockstar confirms hack, says work on GTA VI will ‘continue as planned’ 19:40 - David tries to use TikTok's search feature as a replacement for Google. 31:40 - Nilay Patel, Allison Johnson, and Victoria Song answer listener questions about the new iPhones and Apple Watch. Apple iPhone 14 Pro review: early adopter island Apple iPhone 14 review: meet the iPhone 13S Apple Watch Series 8 review: if it ain’t broke Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we'd love to hear from you. We are conducting a short audience survey to help plan for our future and hear from you. To participate, head to vox.com/podsurvey, and thank you! 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.

• 0:02David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of measuring changes in gravitational force. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am recording this into the Apple Watch Series 8 that I bought myself on Sunday. That doesn't sound like particularly exciting news, but it does mean I've started leaving my phone at home, connecting my headphones to my watch, downloading a bunch of podcasts, and then going on screen-free adventures everywhere. It's great, I'm not going to lie to you. And I actually think this mic sounds pretty good. I'm sort of impressed. Anyway, today on the show, we have a bunch of big things to talk about. We're going to dig into the huge Grand Theft Auto VI leak from over the weekend, and what we know about both the game and what happens to it now as a result of the leak. We're also going to see if there's anything to this whole idea that TikTok is

• 0:45David Pierce?

  the search engine of the future and is going to replace Google for young people. And we're going to answer some of your Vergecast hotline questions about the new iPhones and new Apple Watches. Big show. All that is coming in just a second, but first, I actually have to charge this Apple Watch, because it has a lot of good things going for it, but the battery still kind of sucks. This is The Vergecast. See you in a sec.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:40David Pierce?

  Welcome back. So, over the weekend, somebody who goes by the screen name TeapotUberhacker posted a 3GB file with 90 videos to a Grand Theft Auto forum that they claimed showed footage from Grand Theft Auto VI, a game that has been rumored and talked about for a while, but is reportedly at least two years away from coming out. But it's Grand Theft Auto. It's a huge deal. It's one of the most popular games on the planet. So with all of this stuff out there now, what do we know about the game? And what happens now that so much has leaked? That's what The Verge's Ash Parrish is here to tell us. Hi, Ash.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Hi, David. How are you?

• 3:19David Pierce?

  I'm good. I'm torn about how I feel about this game, and it's causing me to feel a lot of feelings. But we're going to come, we're going to come back to those in a minute. But let's talk through this leak a little bit, because like, in the video game world, like, we see leaks all the time. Everybody has sort of, there's different stuff coming out about different games. Everything is always rumored and reported. It seems like a very small industry that is full of people who like to talk. Give me a sense of like, how big a deal something like this GTA VI leak is in the scheme of things.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  So leaks are never good from a development standpoint. Gamers have a reputation of being extremely... Hostile. They get very emotional about the things that they love and it manifests in this weird hostility because you realize that these games that they love, the people that they're making it, they make their lives harder because they believe, at least some of them believe they have some kind of entitlement issue with these things that they don't make or whatever and have no idea how they're made. So leaks, especially like the one with the GTA 6 leak where it's clearly in development assets, it was like over 90 videos, it was debugging, like the developers were going through and debugging mission scripts and

• 4:31Speaker 02

  things like that. So in the videos that you could see, like a lot of textures haven't been added, there's a lot of placeholder assets, placeholder text, things like that. It's not the most polished of looking things. So people see this and they see that this is still a work in progress, but they don't really conceptualize that this is still in progress. So they believe like, oh, this game looks like ass, it's gonna be terrible. And then, you know, people are talking about this on social media and the stock price tanks. Like the stock price for Take 2, I believe, like took a little dip by this because people are having all these negative opinions about this game that is still like two or three years out from being released because, you know, children can't, don't realize that

• 5:14Speaker 02

  this is something that still is being worked on. It wasn't meant to be seen like this. So it's a big deal. Developers hate it. They get on social media and they say like, this makes everybody's job harder. Like this is counterintuitive to what you guys want, you know? The way that this leak was happened and the way people respond to it, it's just, it's just this big negative thing. And that's what we're dealing with right now.

• 5:39David Pierce?

  Yeah. And I feel like I have a really hard time imagining any world in which it goes the other way where like a leak comes out like this and everybody's like, ah, looks awesome. Great job, rock star. Keep doing what you're doing. It's just like not how this world of gaming works. That like, of course, as soon as something comes out like this, people are gonna find things to be mad about. In part because it's like in-progress code and in part because that's just how people react to this stuff, right? Like it's, like you were saying, I think with video games, more than almost anything else, people feel this sense of like, ownership over everything and anything that comes out that is this much different from what they think they want or expect or whatever, people are gonna freak out. So there was, I can't imagine a world in which this went better, even if it was some like totally different kind of game or footage that leaked, right?

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Right, but it's really funny that you said that because not too long after the GTA 6 leak, Diablo 4, the game that Blizzard is working on, also leaked with like 43 minutes of footage. And I feel like people had a much more positive reaction to that than they did to GTA 6. Yeah. I mean, it's still like, it had the same issues that GTA 6 did, like there were still like assets that hadn't been loaded in, but I think because of the way that the leak was like perpetrated, like the GTA 6 leak, somebody hacked into Rockstar servers and stole like in development footage. The Diablo 4 leak was because I guess somebody was granted access to like a friends and family

• 7:03Speaker 02

  beta and they streamed it to, not on like Twitch or anything like that, but through Discord, and somebody recorded that footage and then leaked that footage. So it might be because like Diablo 4 looks like a little bit more further along in the development cycle. I mean, it should be. The game is supposed to come out sometime next year. Maybe that's why people are responding more positively to it. So there are cases, as slim as it is, where people can see like, oh, okay, yeah, this looks cool.

• 7:27David Pierce?

  Yeah. Okay. I mean, that's, that's sort of encouraging, actually. And it does feel like the fact that this is happening to Grand Theft Auto specifically is sort of fascinating. Cause GTA is this like legendary series. Tons of people like it. It's very popular. But it also, the last time, I had this very funny moment when this leak happened of, I haven't played GTA in a long time, but I had a pretty, like when GTA V first came out, which was good lord, like almost a decade ago.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, nine years.

• 7:53David Pierce?

  I played a bunch of it and it was Grand Theft Auto, but like it was fun and I enjoyed it for the same reasons. Running around and punching strangers in the face in a video game is fun. Like it's cool. And then I went back and I was like, oh, I wonder what's, you know, really changed in the game since I stopped playing it. If there's a bunch of, and it was like, nope, nothing has changed. It's just they're still selling you Grand Theft Auto V and this is just where we are. So is this like, are people just so pent up waiting for this new game that seems like it's been out and debated and rumored for so long that everybody is like desperate for this thing to come out? So they have very strong feelings about it?

• 8:24Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah. There has been a very long lag time between GTA V and now GTA VI. We've only just heard that GTA VI was in development, maybe a couple of years ago. And, you know, GTA V has become like Rockstar Skyrim, right? They re-release it for every console. Um, I believe you can play it on mobile now. Like, it, it came out when the Xbox 360 was still a thing, right?

• 8:47David Pierce?

  That's wild.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  So it's gone through two console generations in that meantime, between time. And now, because people are like anxious and desperate for something more, they've probably built up this idea in their heads of what they expect, you know, GTA VI to look like. And, you know, they have high expectations on Rockstar because generally speaking, Rockstar delivers fantastic like narrative and gameplay experiences. So, yeah, like, these people, like, expect it to be something. And maybe because it's not meeting that expectations, because we're looking at stuff that's been in development that is at least two years old, that they're, they're having a hard time coping.

• 9:21David Pierce?

  Right. Are you a Grand Theft Auto person?

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Absolutely not.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Not my wheelhouse, sorry.

• 9:28David Pierce?

  Why not?

• 9:29Speaker 02

  It's just not the kind of game that appeals to me personally. Like, I appreciate it, like aesthetically and from a distance. And I understand that a lot of people have a lot of emotions tied into it and a lot of other Rockstar games, because I know people love Red Dead Redemption 2 to death. And I, just not for me. Just not for me, which is fine.

• 9:45David Pierce?

  So what did we learn about this actual game that's coming from this footage? We, we kind of had heard reportedly that there was going to be a female protagonist, which seems to be confirmed now. Did we learn any new stuff about what this game is going to be?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  So, um, Jason Schreier at Bloomberg, uh, reported on this early in the year that there would be a female protagonist, the, there, there was, I think there's supposed to be like two protagonists, like a male and a female, and they're supposed to be based on Bonnie and Clyde. I think we got a little bit of that. We also got the fact that this is going to be set somewhere in Miami. I believe Jason's reporting also spoke something about it, uh, reviving the Vice City setting. That happened with like GTA III, I believe it was. So it seems like that's where the setting is. But I don't think beyond that, we have much more information other than, you know, it's, it's Vice City again, or something Vice City adjacent, and we're going to be able to play as a woman.

• 10:38David Pierce?

  It was funny watching some of the leaked videos because on the one hand, it feels very Grand Theft Auto. There's a whole scene where they're driving down the street in a stolen cop car with the driver door sort of swinging open into stuff. And then there's like that whole weird punching style. It feels very Grand Theft Auto. And I wonder if that's one of the things people are responding to. That it's like, if it's been a decade, and you're still giving us a game that just feels like slightly newer Grand Theft Auto, like, what have we been waiting for all this time? But then again, this is all like debug footage from at least two years ago. And it's very hard to sort through kind of what we know and what we don't even from a leak this big.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Well, I guess I would say personally, like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? There's a reason why we're, you know, doing NBA 2K 2023, because it makes billions and billions of dollars, right? GTA 3 and 4 and 5 were, you know, they were different stories, but they kind of like all did the same thing. And with GTA 5 being able to be sold across two different console generations and still making gobs and gobs of money as it does, same with GTA Online, which is like the same thing, but online where it's like a shared world or whatever. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? Like, you can add some new iterations to it, but like, as long as it fits that traditional GTA formula, people are gonna buy it, they're gonna eat it up. So, I mean, I'm not saying that GTA 6 isn't

• 12:00Speaker 02

  innovative, because, you know, we don't know anything about it. But from, you know, an academic standpoint, yeah, it makes sense that this is like the same-ish. I mean, I guess we'll see.

• 12:09David Pierce?

  No, that's totally fair. And part of me wonders, like, big picture for a company like Rockstar, when something like this happens, what goes on internally? The response they've given so far is basically like, bummer, this happened, we're still moving ahead, right? Like, do we have any sense of what happens in a company like that after a leak like this?

• 12:27Speaker 02

  So, not really. I mean, it's terrible. Like, the developers feel awful. I feel like more than anything, it's a huge hit to morale, because now the poor community managers and whoever has the keys to the social media have to fend off like thousands of Twitter anime profile avatars like tweeting abuse at them because their game, which is unfinished and clearly in development, looks like crap to them. But it seems like there's like not much you can do about this like from a like a public standpoint, you can't really do anything but keep on keeping on, right? So they put out their statement saying this was the result of a hack. It sucks that you learn about this game before we were ready to show you, but this hasn't deterred our ability to get this game to you at all.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Like, I don't think they said anything about it being delayed or anything like that. But the sense that I get is that this is far more like an internal morale thing more than anything else. But Jason Schreier, again at Bloomberg, also brought up the fact that this might have a problem or this might impact Rockstar's ability to have their employees work from home because of the way that this hack happened. Because the way that I understand it, the guy who hacked Uber is claiming responsibility from this, and the way that he hacked Uber was through social engineering. And so while he hasn't like said like, or Rockstar didn't say like this was social engineering specifically, people are kind of like drawing the connections. If this guy really did do Uber and Rockstar, it stands to reason that he might have used the same tactics of social engineering, like impersonating IT or something like that,

• 13:55Speaker 02

  to get somebody to give up their login so they can get into the servers and take whatever they want. So it might impact employees' ability to work from home because, you know, Rockstar wants to lock it down a little bit better, and it's hard to do that when you've got employees far flung across wherever.

• 14:10David Pierce?

  Totally. Well, and I think there's also this bigger picture that if I, if I really like put on my galaxy brain hat, this is all happening at this really interesting moment in the games industry, right? Where there's been this reckoning over the last couple of years about like the internal cultures of these companies and companies are starting to unionize and, and the whole sort of concept of crunch has come into real scrutiny. So there's this like, this industry feels like it's changing and there's like this internal tension of a lot of these companies. And I certainly don't have any evidence that that is like connected to the fact that it seems like these companies are also getting leakier. But part of me wonders like if I were to sort of play the 10 dimensional chess here, if these things might be connected, but maybe I'm trying too hard on that one.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  That's interesting. I never really associated this like kind of, I don't, I don't want to say loosening with the idea that these companies might be opening themselves up to more dramatic breaches like this. I mean, I'll say that we didn't need to be in this like kind of work from home culture to have leaks like this happen. It's happened before when everybody was in the office crunching, you know, 14 hour days and it's happened now. So it's always going to be a thing. So I don't think you can say that, you know, these new work from home policies and this lack of crunch policies mean that more of this will happen. I mean, just the other day, like, you know, leaks are happening because this guy was breaking NDA's left and right. And he was just doing it for the clout. So it's like, it doesn't, it doesn't really matter, honestly, where people are. This is going to happen if determined individuals want it to happen.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  But yeah, people are shining way more of a light on how these big ticket AAA games are being made. And at least the people that I follow are saying like, take the time that you need. We don't need this like right now. We would prefer your employees get these games done safely, healthily. If that means it takes a little bit longer, that's fine because nobody wants to do this anymore. Like, nobody wants to crunch. Nobody wants to hear stories of like people losing their families or whatever because they had to work 17 hours a day. So yeah, I mean, that's, I guess, the thing that I'm seeing.

• 16:05David Pierce?

  Yeah, no, it makes total sense. And it seems like at the same time, and this is kind of, we're talking about like, these industries are just so sprawling now that it's like just the sheer number of people involved with building a game like GTA 6 across like different companies and partners. And it's like, there are people who work for like cloud services who know all the video games that are coming in the next few years. Right. And that's never been a thing before. I wonder if this is going to continue as this industry and these companies get bigger. It's going to get harder and harder for them to keep stuff like this under wraps over time. I mean, it's like, it's like consumer devices, right? It's like, it's always the accessory makers that leak them. And now in the world of video games that are on streaming services and are on a million different partners and have to sort of trickle out into the world in all these complicated ways.

• 16:48David Pierce?

  I wonder if we're going to start to see more of this happen rather than less over time.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  I mean, we'll see. It happens a lot. You know, some storefront in Brazil will accidentally leak like the release date of some game because of whatever. So, you know, it's it's anybody's guess, but I don't think it'll be any more, any less than what we've seen in the past, being honest.

• 17:08David Pierce?

  Fair enough. All right. Well, what game are you playing right now if you're not playing GTA?

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I'm not playing GTA. Right now I am playing Metal Hellsinger, which is a rhythm shooter. So it is it's on Xbox Game Pass. It's also on Steam. You play as like a demon who lost her voice, who is fighting through like the realms of hell to get her voice back. And the way that it works is that like there's metal, like heavy metal tracks in playing in the background and you have to shoot on the beat. And when you shoot on the beat, you get a higher score multiplier and you do more damage. It's a lot of fun.

• 17:41David Pierce?

  Oh, that sounds awesome. All right, sold. For who needs GTA 6? I'm gonna go play that instead.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  You should.

• 17:47David Pierce?

  All right, Ash, thank you. Appreciate it.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 17:51David Pierce?

  Okay, we're gonna take a break and then we're gonna go deep down the TikTok search engine rabbit hole. There's this idea out there that young people are using TikTok instead of Google, and I'm suspicious of that. We'll be right back.

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• 18:33Speaker 01

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• 19:12David Pierce?

  Welcome back. I want to talk now about something I heard a few weeks ago and have been thinking about basically constantly ever since.

• 19:21David Pierce?

  So in July, there was the Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference, which is one of those fancy, thinky tech conferences for fancy people. It's held in Aspen, and it's designed to be one of those places where people come to talk about big ideas and the future and whatever. And in the middle of the conference, Prabakar Ragavan, who is an SVP at Google and is, for all intents and purposes, the guy in charge of search at Google, said this onstage:

• 19:45Speaker 04

  Younger people don't come with preset expectations. In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they're looking for a place for lunch, they don't go to Google Maps or search, they go to TikTok or Instagram. So the journey begins in different forms than before, visually rich forms.

• 20:04David Pierce?

  Again, this is the guy in charge of Google Search, one of the most powerful and popular products on the internet, the source of billions and billions of dollars in revenue for Google every year, saying essentially that the search engines of the future might be TikTok and Instagram, not Google.

• 20:22David Pierce?

  Prabakar's point made a lot of headlines, in part because it also seems to confirm the way that younger internet users use the internet: more videos, more photos, less typing what Google likes to call "keyword-ies" into text boxes. I'm really not convinced that the world is as Prabakar makes it sound here, though. There's no doubt that search is changing and becoming more multimedia. I mean, just look at the fact that YouTube has long been the second most popular search engine on the planet, just behind Google, and even Google is using Lens and voice to become more multimedia.

• 20:54Speaker 05

  Soon you'll be able to point Lens at something and ask questions about what you see.

• 20:59David Pierce?

  But you know who has a huge incentive to make it sound like Google is not the only company that matters in search? Google.

• 21:07Speaker 06

  Good morning. We welcome everyone to this morning's hearing on transparency and accountability, examining Google and its data collection, use, and filtering practices.

• 21:17David Pierce?

  If it can convince the world that TikTok and Instagram are real threats, it can maybe make regulators in particular just slightly less concerned about what it's doing on its search engine. But it's definitely true that TikTok in particular is investing in search. It's starting to offer search ideas on your "for you" page, and you can actually even see in the content that people are starting to do stuff that's more designed to be helpful and evergreen, rather than like, dance challenges. Here's the tutorial on how to tie your tie the easiest way. First, you're gonna place it in your hands like this. So, I decided to try this out, and see if TikTok is actually a good search engine. For a few days, I tried to search almost everything on TikTok before I looked for it on Google.

• 22:01David Pierce?

  And I started with the thing that Prabakar mentioned at the conference: looking for lunch. I searched the phrase "restaurants in my neighborhood" and got just nothing. It turns out TikTok doesn't know where I live and doesn't know what I'm looking for. But then I searched for "restaurants in Delray VA," which is where I live, and I got some useful stuff. Matt and Tony's is a good spot. So we do American comfort food, breakfast all day. So is Delray Cafe.

• 22:24Speaker 07

  Hungry in Virginia? Check out Delray Cafe. When visiting, make sure you have.

• 22:27David Pierce?

  The next result was one in Delray Beach, which is in California and literally thousands of miles from me. Then I got Pork Barrel Barbecue, which is near me and also pretty good.

• 22:36Speaker 08

  Here's one of their most favorite platters. It's a barbecued rib, sausage, and they've got.

• 22:42David Pierce?

  This whole thing kinda works, right? Then it was another Matt and Tony's recommendation, then back to California, then more California, and then Matt and Tony's again.

• 22:50Speaker 09

  We are at Matt and Tony's, and yes, the snow did not stop us from trying.

• 22:54David Pierce?

  I don't know that the information density here is super high. It took a really long time for me to basically get three names of restaurants, but it does work. And while we're on the subject of food, TikTok is actually an amazing tool for recipes. You type in, like, chocolate chip cookies, and you can spend the rest of your life watching people make delicious-looking chocolate chip cookies.

• 23:15Speaker 10

  My holy grail cookie. Chocolate chip cookie bars are the GOAT.

• 23:18David Pierce?

  A lot of those videos move really fast, so you have to watch them a bunch of times and take notes, but there is a ton of good information here.

• 23:26Speaker 10

  Just listen to this bite.

• 23:29David Pierce?

  There are even TikTokers who go through other TikToks to find the best chocolate chip cookie recipes from TikTok to show you on TikTok.

• 23:36Speaker 11

  I scoured the seemingly endless collection of chocolate chip cookie recipes on TikTok to bring you these.

• 23:41David Pierce?

  It's bananas.

• 23:41Speaker 12

  Today we're making soft banana chocolate chip cookies, so grab your dusty-ass ripe bananas.

• 23:45David Pierce?

  What doesn't work here at all is actually the number one thing people use Google for.

• 23:50Speaker 08

  Opening webpage.

• 23:52David Pierce?

  The main reason most people go to Google search is to get to like Facebook and YouTube and Amazon. They type in those words into the search box. TikTok just won't help you there. It's also not at all useful for answering basic questions like what time is it, which is number four on the list of most asked questions in Google, according to one study I found, and how many ounces in a cup, which is number five on that list. But the number one question on Google, according to that same study, is what to watch. People just want to know what TV and movies to watch. And TikTok is pretty interesting there.

• 24:24Speaker 13

  It was literally called Devilman Choir Baby, which is like the hardest title I've ever heard.

• 24:27David Pierce?

  The first video I got when I searched was a bunch of recommendations for stuff to watch on Netflix.

• 24:32Speaker 13

  This is a show for the dudes and the guys.

• 24:34David Pierce?

  Another was the new shows coming out on streaming, but that video was several weeks old, so they weren't that new anymore.

• 24:41Speaker 14

  The Resort will be coming out on Peacock. It's a black comedy mystery show.

• 24:44David Pierce?

  But it still was kind of helpful.

• 24:45Speaker 14

  And it stars William Jackson Harper.

• 24:46David Pierce?

  Another one was stuff to watch after you finished The Summer I Turned Pretty, which I did watch and did very much enjoy.

• 24:53Speaker 15

  My top recommendation has to be Dawson's Creed.

• 24:56David Pierce?

  This is actually a really helpful set of results.

• 24:58Speaker 15

  Early 2000s, one of my top 10.

• 25:01David Pierce?

  Okay, let's keep going. Music is all over the most popular Google search results, as is people looking for broad topics. Googling things like Fortnite. Well, damaging a llama builds your ego. And ASMR. Your favorite color. And Billie Eilish. In that world, you're not looking for anything in particular, just something in that genre. And TikTok is like an endless supply of all of that.

• 25:22Speaker 16

  Here's one for all you Billie Eilish fans.

• 25:25David Pierce?

  Also, movie trailers are a good one. Mortal Kombat Movie 2021 was one of the most searched things on Google.

• 25:30Speaker 17

  I am Sub-Zero.

• 25:33David Pierce?

  And Godzilla vs. Kong was also at the top of that list. TikTok covers all of that really well, though you don't usually get full songs or full trailers. And a lot of times you get remixes and jokes before the actual content you might be looking for.

• 25:51David Pierce?

  You can imagine, by the way, why TikTok might be interested in making a full music app to give people easier paths to this kind of stuff.

• 26:01David Pierce?

  It seems to me that Google really shouldn't be worried about TikTok as a search engine. You look at the stuff people search and it's USPS tracking and weather tomorrow and what time is the Super Bowl? Google is obviously lots of things to lots of people, but it's mostly a glorified question and answer service or a way to find more information on the internet. TikTok is just not set up to do that. But you know who should be afraid of TikTok's search is YouTube.

• 26:25Speaker 18

  OK, so a common problem I hear from people when making rice is that it gets stuck to the bottom of the pot.

• 26:30David Pierce?

  One thing that jumped out to me is hashtag TikTokTaughtMe, which is a huge success story. And it goes right at the kind of DIY, how do I change a tire or kind of content that YouTube is so well known for. Personally, one thing I keep searching for is back stretches because I have back problems and I sit in front of a computer all day and it's just overall bad news. TikTok is perfect for this and the videos don't come with those long preambles you get on YouTube. I don't need 14 minutes of personal history before you show me the stretches. It's just 30 second video of stretches after 30 second video of stretches and it rules.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  I'm going to grip into the door frame with my hands slightly below chin level. Let's take our chin towards our chest.

• 27:09David Pierce?

  As far as quick, helpful visual information, TikTok is actually a much more efficient system than YouTube. I don't think the results are always as good, but TikTok does make it easier to just flip through your options to find one that works. It's less of a search engine and more of like a choose your own rabbit hole adventure story, which is a new but kind of fun way to think about search.

• 27:33David Pierce?

  I will say though, if search really is a long term focus for TikTok, the platform is definitely going to need to change a bit. Right now, for instance, creators only get the one link in their bio. So there are tons of folks who are just like, I posted my new recipe and make a video to show it off, but then by the time you get to that video, that link is gone. Also, TikTok is still all about the for you page, which means people are using sounds and doing challenges and generally doing everything they can to show up right when you open the app. Longer, in-depth, evergreen, helpful, how to change a tire content isn't really going to work in that space. So TikTok is going to have to find a way to incentivize people to make more search friendly stuff if it really wants to take on YouTube that way.

• 28:17David Pierce?

  All of this is to say, I don't think Google is under any actual threat here. I don't think 40% of people are going to keep using Instagram and TikTok, even if that was ever the case. But it is not the only search engine worth using anymore. For a lot of things, 10 blue links is still the right answer. But for a lot of others, it turns out an endless stream of vertical video might be even better. I don't know that I'll ever end up actually making these chocolate chip cookies that I've been staring at for hours and hours and hours. But it's really fun to watch other people make them. And that might be just good enough.

• 28:57David Pierce?

  Okay, we're going to take a break and then we're going to come back and answer some of your most burning questions about all of Apple's latest devices. We'll be right back.

• 29:13Speaker 19

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• 29:43Speaker 03

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• 30:31David Pierce?

  Welcome back. Now that we've posted our reviews and had a chance to test some of Apple's new phones and watches, we asked you to send in your biggest, most burning questions about the new stuff to our Vergecast hotline, which, don't forget, is 866-VERGE11. And you can also always record a voice memo and send it to [email protected]. That works too. Thanks to everybody who called in. We really love hearing from you. And please keep calling with all of your burning tech questions about Apple or otherwise. We got a lot of questions about Apple. So I'm sorry, we're not going to be able to get to everyone's voicemails, but we are going to try to answer some of the most common ones and some of the most fun ones. Let's dig into the phone a bit first, which means I should bring in Allison Johnson, who reviewed the iPhone 14, and Neelai Patel, who reviewed the 14 Pro. Hi, Neelai.

• 31:16Nilay Patel?

  Hey, buddy. How you doing?

• 31:17David Pierce?

  I'm good. Hi, Allison.

• 31:19Speaker 21

  Hello.

• 31:20David Pierce?

  Fresh off of iPhone reviews, everyone has recovered-ish. I tried to buy an iPhone this weekend and I failed. I'm devastated about it.

• 31:26Nilay Patel?

  Oh, no. Just from watching football on Sunday, every carrier in America will just throw an iPhone at you if you get anywhere near their stores, from what I understand.

• 31:35Speaker 21

  It's very difficult to pay for one.

• 31:37David Pierce?

  Yeah, I managed to get my dad an iPhone Pro Max, which he's very excited about, and my mom an iPhone Pro, which she's very excited about. And literally, those were the last two that Apple had available in the store. And so they were just like, David, you get nothing. Okay, but anyway, we have a bunch of hotline questions. Let's just dive into them. So I think, Andrew, let's just play the first one.

• 31:56Speaker 22

  Hey, David and Vergecast team. So I've been a longtime user of Android for the last five or six years. So originally was an iPhone user. And with the new iPhone 14 and the dynamic island, had me considering switching back to iPhone. I originally switched because it was customizable, but I wonder now, is iPhone more customizable than Android? Can you trash that itch if you need it? Really curious about your thoughts. Thanks.

• 32:18David Pierce?

  I have thoughts on this, but Neelai, you made a face while we were listening to that question. Why did you make a face?

• 32:23Nilay Patel?

  Because the answer is flatly no. The iPhone is not more customizable than Android. It is more customizable than iPhones in the past and it's getting closer to Android. But your average Android phone, I mean, you can just replace the app launcher. I mean, you can do anything you want on Android phone. So it just depends on what itch you are trying to scratch, I guess. But if you're like an all out customizer, I think Android's still where it's at.

• 32:49David Pierce?

  Allison, is that your take too?

• 32:50Speaker 21

  Yeah, and it's gotten better. It's gotten, there's a lot more you can do now than in the past. Apple's slowly adding more things we can do, like, you know, the lock screens are fine, but you're still definitely playing within the realm of what Apple thinks looks good. They do not want you to walk around with an ugly iPhone lock screen because that would embarrass them. Android, you can make it as ugly as you want, if you want to do that. So yeah, yeah, I agree with that. It's more fun, you can have more fun with it now.

• 33:21Nilay Patel?

  I would say also that the dynamic island is not customizable at all. It is the appearance of customizability, but Apple is deciding what happens in that island.

• 33:31David Pierce?

  Yeah, I was actually going to ask about this because we talked about this a few days ago and we're still in the sort of like, who knows what's going to happen here. And now it's like been a few days, I opened up my phone, I had 25 app updates this morning. So it's like, everybody's sort of on the iOS 16 train. Have either of you seen anything that is like dynamic islands sparking something cool here? I mean, yeah, okay.

• 33:50Nilay Patel?

  No, because the big update is the live activities API, which isn't out yet. So I don't think third party apps will be able to use the island until that API is out.

• 33:59Speaker 21

  I did the exact sequence of things to get two things in the dynamic island at once. Just like naturally, I was listening to a podcast and I set a 15 minute timer to take a COVID test and it was magical for a second.

• 34:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:14Speaker 21

  But that's as exciting as it gets right now.

• 34:18David Pierce?

  All of our dreams coming true at once. Uh, okay, so this, this feels good. It's, it's more customizable than it once was, but if you switch to Android because it's customizable, stay on Android. I feel like you can make it as ugly as you want was like five years of Samsung ads and it's still, it's still true.

• 34:32Nilay Patel?

  But if you switch to Android because you wanted a customizer lock screen and put widgets on the home screen, you know, Apple, Apple's got you now.

• 34:38David Pierce?

  That's true.

• 34:39Nilay Patel?

  Like, if you want to change the default messaging app on the iPhone, Android will let you do that. If you want to add a third party app store to an Android phone, you can do it and Apple will not let you do that.

• 34:50David Pierce?

  Right. All right, let's move on to the next one. Andrew, what do we have next?

• 34:54Speaker 23

  Hey guys, this is Dax and one question about the iPhone 14s. I have been a long time Android user and I think my friends might actually get to me this year and I may or may not switch to an iPhone, but I don't want to be that guy that gets the iPhone the one year before it goes to Type C. Do you think this year is the time to make that call and switch? I really appreciate the input. Thank you.

• 35:18David Pierce?

  So I just want to say on one hand, this was a trend of the voicemails that we got from people, this idea that I have been an Android user for a long time and now I'm tempted back by the iPhone 14, which I find fascinating because I think our takeaway is like, this phone is cool, but it's not going to like blow your mind out of your head. But there are a lot of people who are like, I have been an Android fan for a long time and maybe now it's time to get back into Android. But USB-C, is this the last year? Is our friend Dax stupid to buy an iPhone this year because they're going to switch next year?

• 35:50Nilay Patel?

  Well, it depends on where you live because every carrier now, it will just give money to you to switch every year.

• 35:57David Pierce?

  That is true.

• 35:58Nilay Patel?

  If you live in the United States, it feels like you can scheme your way into getting a new phone every year for no money. Right. And you're kind of just going to end up signing a new to your contract over and over again. But I've come to peace with this idea because when am I going to not have carrier service?

• 36:13David Pierce?

  Right.

• 36:14Nilay Patel?

  That said, it does feel like the USB-C change is coming to the phone. I don't know if it's next year or the year after.

• 36:20Speaker 21

  I think you'd be okay for a while. I don't know, there's still like, there will still be tons of support for Lightning many years in the coming. Many, many hotels will have some weird Lightning connector, you know, dock to play your phones.

• 36:36Nilay Patel?

  But it's the other way around, right? If he was an Android person, he's probably got a bunch of USB-C cables.

• 36:40Speaker 21

  Oh, that's true.

• 36:42Nilay Patel?

  Buying a bunch of Lightning cables for one year seems dumb. I would wait. If that's like, if that's what you're describing, like I'm fully invested in USB-C, I'm kind of tempted by this phone, but I'll feel dumb if I buy, you know, a life's worth of cables and then what the next year, yeah, you should wait.

• 36:57David Pierce?

  The answer is dongles. I can't believe we didn't get here yet. The answer is buy a bunch of Lightning to USB-C converter. And your life will just be terrific. No, I think that's right. I would wait. But I also, I think you're right, Eli, that the like, can I buy this year's phone and also next year's phone is not as hard a question as people think, actually, especially in the US where people will just fall all over themselves to give you giant amounts of trade in money for whatever phone you bring them.

• 37:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the carrier marketing for the new iPhone is out of control. Like,

• 37:28David Pierce?

  It's wild.

• 37:29Nilay Patel?

  Verizon is running ads with celebrities and them being like, buy a new iPhone 14. And it's like, everyone knows about the iPhone 14. Do you need to hire celebrities to do this?

• 37:38David Pierce?

  All right, let's move on. So next one is from John in New York. Andrew, what do we have?

• 37:43Speaker 24

  Hey, Virg. This is John from New York. Really love the show. I would love to know more about the decision behind the digital SIM. Seems like the US was the only place that really adopted this. And I wonder what it means for cell phones and global travel if this is going to be the future of mobile usage. It was actually really challenging for me to get my digital SIM started on my iPhone 14 Pro. Really curious to see what you guys think about it.

• 38:07David Pierce?

  I like this one because this is also a thing that was kind of floating around the internet all weekend was that people were having trouble activating. I saw a bunch of people who were saying like Verizon was having a hard time with the eSIMs in it. It's just a lot of questions of like, is this a good idea? Or are we just solving a problem that doesn't exist by like throwing more technology at the problem? Alison, what's your sense of this? Is there, where are we in the eSIM world right now?

• 38:30Speaker 21

  It's weird because I feel like half the people I follow are really into it and think it's pro consumer and the other half are like, I hate eSIM with a fiery passion. I had no trouble with it. I don't do a lot of international travel, so it's not really my use case, but I feel like the people who I know who do travel are the ones who are more amped up about eSIM. And that it'll make it easier to kind of swap when you get to another country. I don't, I can't speak to it too well. I set this phone up in the back of an Uber on the highway and it worked fine.

• 39:04David Pierce?

  It's a bold strategy.

• 39:06Speaker 21

  Yeah, it was. It was real exciting.

• 39:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I feel like you can. You can describe sort of abstractly the pro consumer argument, which is it should be really easy to sign up a phone for a network service and thus compare plans and pricing faster and switch faster and all of that. If you make all that switching faster and easier, the carriers will have to compete more because you might switch away from them.

• 39:27David Pierce?

  It's like switching webpages at that point, essentially, rather than switching devices. That's that's the idea, right? You don't have to go into a store. You just say that one's cheaper. You press a button and you have it. That's how that's supposed to work.

• 39:36Nilay Patel?

  But then that kind of runs into reality, like at least here in the United States, it runs into like pretty brutal reality pretty fast, which is the reason they could do it in the United States is because there's only three carriers. So they could get the three main carriers on board and then every other carrier minus a few regional carriers like US Cellular or whatever, but every other carrier is basically an MVNO. Like they're basically just like reselling in most cases T-Mobile service or Verizon service. And so you hear like people on like Visible had like real problems, but that's it's still it's still like a different cut at like Verizon's network, I think. So they're able to do it here because they only had to make three deals around the world. They can't just they haven't made all the deals yet. So they still need a physical SIM tray. The other thing

• 40:19Nilay Patel?

  that's really weird is that when you go to add an eSIM, it doesn't just show you the available networks and let you sign up for them. You need to like scan a QR. You need to go get an eSIM kit and scan a QR code, or at least go to a website and scan a QR code, which is really weird because the iPad works as you would expect. If you have an iPad and you go to add a cell plan to an iPad, it'll pop up a screen of available data plans and just let you sign up for one on the iPad. So it's like they're halfway there, but then the brutal reality of the uncompetitive American market is right in front of you. And then they haven't like built the rest of the functionality that would make that pro consumer vibe like work. And then, as we just said, like you're locked into a two year contract in the United States anyway. So like you're not switching as much. I don't

• 41:04Nilay Patel?

  know. Like it's the beginnings of something. I think most people do not interact with their SIM cards at all. But if you could travel internationally and just like open your phone and be like, I've landed in Europe and like hit the button and see all the networks and sign up for the cheapest one for, you know, a month, that would be amazing. They just haven't built any of that yet.

• 41:20David Pierce?

  I mean, it goes back to the like theoretically pro consumer argument, right? Where you can like, you can see why somebody thought this was a very good idea. And at the end of this, it's like, okay, this is the intended behavior. But like you were saying, like, this is a lot of work for three carriers in the US with Apple, who has more leverage in this space than any other company to pull this off. Forget going to Europe where there's a million carriers in a million countries with vastly different ideas about how all of this is supposed to work. It just feels like the idea that any company, including Apple, is going to be able to sort of exert its authority that way is just like basically non-existent. So then what you have is you have the European phone and you have the American phone. And those two things are like borderline interoperable. So if I'm a person who lives in the US but travels a ton internationally, is the move

• 42:05David Pierce?

  to buy the Europe phone, like, is that fly to London, buy a phone there and don't tell anybody you still have a physical SIM when you're in the US?

• 42:12Speaker 21

  You'll miss out on millimeter wave. Big bummer.

• 42:14David Pierce?

  I feel like I can live with that. Like, I'm good. Of all the trade offs here, I can live without millimeter wave.

• 42:20Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think it's just that it's sort of the behavior that matters, right? It sounds like a lot of people fly to Europe and then just buy a burner SIM for a weekend and throw it away and come back. Like, that seems to be what people are describing to us. Like, I just show up and I buy a SIM card at the airport and I throw it in my phone and I use it till it's done and then I fly home and then the next time I show up and do it again. So there's an answer that is you show up at the airport and instead of buying a physical SIM card, you buy a QR code and you use that till it's done and you walk away. But I think that just has to all get teased out into practice.

• 42:49David Pierce?

  All right, we have one more before I let you two go and then we're going to talk about the watch. This is not about the phone, but it's about cameras and you two are my favorite camera nerds, so let's hear the next one.

• 42:59Speaker 25

  My name is Zef. I run the Jay Z Tech YouTube channel and I was wondering, why have Apple made a camera? Because it seems like that would be a really obvious place to put their money into. Like, I know, like, pretty much everyone has a Sony A7S3 these days, so like, why isn't there an Apple camera? And thanks for answering my question.

• 43:20David Pierce?

  I love this question so much because A, I desperately want to live in a world where everyone has an A7S. This is just, this is, these are our people. I love it. The answer is Apple does make a camera and it's called the iPhone, right? Like that's, that's just what this is.

• 43:33Speaker 21

  It is the, it's the most popular camera in the country for sure.

• 43:37Nilay Patel?

  In the world, probably.

• 43:38Speaker 21

  Yeah.

• 43:39Nilay Patel?

  The question here is why hasn't Apple made a mirrorless camera for creators? Because Apple makes a camera, several models of camera, if you think about the iPhone that way. But why haven't they made an awesome camera for creators?

• 43:50David Pierce?

  Right.

• 43:50Nilay Patel?

  And I think, like many things with Apple, they have probably looked at that market and said, that's not even a tenth of the size of AirPods in terms of money that it will make us. So no. And those cameras exist and you know, there's a long history with them. And to enter a market like that, you have to commit to creators. And I'm just leading up to saying, have you used Final Cut Pro? Because Apple's history in that market is actually not one of great success. So I get why you'd want them to do it. On the other hand, I don't know that you want Apple making the kinds of aesthetic decisions in that kind of camera that it does in the iPhone. And sure, you can shoot in Pro now and you can shoot in ProRes and back off the aesthetic decisions, but it's Apple, right?

• 44:35Nilay Patel?

  Like they're, they're going to be on by default. The Apple look will be on by default. And I'm, I'm not sure that's, that philosophy is compatible with that user base.

• 44:44Speaker 21

  If my A7C put out JPEGs where everybody was orange, like previous iPhones have, I would be so pissed.

• 44:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like the worst built-in lightroom preset of all time. Yeah, there's just, there's weirdness there. But I get like, why doesn't Apple make, just make a great camera is a question that's been asked for years and years and years now. And kind of the answer is that it's, the market is just not big enough.

• 45:07David Pierce?

  I think that's right. Yeah. I mean, in the last year or so, a lot of people have been talking about wanting Apple to make a webcam again, because suddenly the webcam market was hot for, you know, nine months. I do think going super heavy on the camera would be a really fun future for the iPod Touch, that they're just like, this is our cheaper camera. It doesn't have all the other cool stuff, but we put the best camera in it.

• 45:27Nilay Patel?

  Do they even still make the iPod Touch?

• 45:29David Pierce?

  No, I don't think so. If I'm being completely honest with you. I forgot, which is sort of the point, right?

• 45:35Speaker 21

  Bring it back.

• 45:36David Pierce?

  The, the iPod camera, just to confuse everybody.

• 45:38Speaker 21

  Pro.

• 45:39David Pierce?

  Max.

• 45:42David Pierce?

  It's an 11 inch screen. It's just a television with a camera on the back. Yes. Thank you both. We're gonna talk about the watch and ring on V, which means you both have to go. But thank you both. Appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you.

• 45:55David Pierce?

  V, hello.

• 45:56Speaker 26

  Hello.

• 45:56David Pierce?

  Thank you for being here.

• 45:57Speaker 26

  No problem.

• 45:58David Pierce?

  All right, we have a bunch of watch questions. People have a lot of feelings about watches. So we're just gonna go through a couple of them. Andrew, you wanna play the first one for us?

• 46:05Speaker 27

  Hi, Vergecast. Derek here from New Zealand. So I charge my Apple Watch in my car on my commute so that it's charged all day and then it's charged at night for sleep tracking. But if I have to wear my Apple Watch for the crash detection to work, I mean, what?

• 46:25David Pierce?

  We're gonna actually answer this question, but I just have two things I have to say before we do. One, the official pronunciation of Vergecast is now in a New Zealand accent, so I'd just like everybody to know that. And two, how did I never think about charging my Apple Watch in the car? That's a genius plan. It's like the one time it's totally superfluous to my life and I can just charge it. This feels like a good idea, right?

• 46:45Speaker 26

  Yeah, no, it's an excellent idea. I just think, you know, I don't actually commute by car much, so I've just never thought about it. Cause you know, I'm in New York City, so when am I gonna like, I don't, I'm not really commuting by car much, but for long trips, now I'm just like, oh, because it's totally intuitive to charge your phone in the car. But I've just never thought about charging my watch in the car.

• 47:07David Pierce?

  I know. I love this. I'm all in. Okay, but let's, let's talk about the, the crash detection thing here, which is like, I sort of wanted to do this question just because it's representative of a lot of questions we've gotten about like, how does crash detection actually work? What is it trying to do? How does it know I'm wearing the watch? How does it know I've been in a crash? And I'm assuming the answer to, if you're in the car and you're not wearing the watch and you get in a crash, it probably won't register. I don't know, but what, what do you, what can you tell us about how all of this actually works?

• 47:34Speaker 26

  So I actually asked Apple about this earlier today because I also was like, oh, I don't know. I don't know the answer to this, but they basically told me that it was, you know, intended to be worn on the wrist. That doesn't mean it won't necessarily work. It just means like they've done a bunch of testing with like dummies where you're putting, uh, you know, the Apple Watch in various parts of their body and whatnot. So they've done a lot, a lot of testing on this, but it's all on human bodies. Cause I think the assumption is if you have the watch in the car, you're probably wearing it. Obviously the rest of us have not gotten on Derek's level and realizing that commuting with the watch, it's like the perfect, it's legitimately

• 48:18Speaker 26

  the perfect time to charge the watch. If you're commuting by car, he gets it. He's on a level that we're not on. So crash detection works because it has a new accelerometer that can detect up to 256 Gs. The previous watches could only detect up to 32. So that's like orders of magnitudes different. And it also has an improved gyroscope and all of these things are working with the barometer, GPS, and I think the microphone to detect whether you've been in a, in a severe car crash. But it's, it's a really fascinating feature because it does seem like Apple's thought really hard about it in terms of how the watch interacts with your phone. So like if you crash

• 49:01Speaker 26

  the car and you know, you have your phone and your watch on you, it'll route the call through your phone because it's got the better antenna, but it's going to appear on your watch because that's more likely to be on you and you don't know where the phone is during your, you know, like in the aftermath of a crash, you have no idea where that might've gone. So it's, they've thought a lot about it. It's just, I don't think we really know how it's gonna work until unfortunately people get themselves in that situation. Like I've been in really bad Lyft rides where it was so stop and go. I felt like I was gonna hurl. Yeah. But that doesn't actually trigger it and New York drivers are New York drivers. And I went hiking this weekend. So there were a couple of close calls, but no actual like trigger.

• 49:46David Pierce?

  Right. Yeah, the part of it that gives me hope, like instinctively, it seems like it would make sense that if it wasn't on your body, it wouldn't be looking for that stuff just because it's like, why would it be sort of operating if you weren't wearing it? But then I think about the fact that the iPhone 14 now has crash detection, and it's clearly not meant to be worn on your body. So it is, like you're saying, able to do some of this sensing even when it's not on your body. And the Apple Watch might be treating it differently, but it at least seems like technically it's possible for this stuff to work even when the device is not physically like being on your body, watching you like thrash around in the backseat.

• 50:21Speaker 26

  Yeah, so it's designed to detect like extreme impact and changes in speed. So you have to really hit a certain threshold for that to really kind of trigger it's in quote unquote testing because I can't really test it in an ethical way that doesn't risk my life. At least we haven't figured that out just yet. You know, in testing this, it's very, it reminded me a lot of testing fall detection. So like back when fall detection was a thing, myself and a bunch of other reviewers would just, you know, leap off a bed into a bunch of pillows to see if we could trigger it. And I have yet to trigger it in real life. I've eaten it while running as well, but I wasn't injured enough to be lying there prone, which is part of like the fall

• 51:06Speaker 26

  detection works. So I think you're not really gonna get false positives, which is, you know, which is a big thing. Some other similar safety features like garments, fall detection, you could just have a really hard stop and your loved ones are going to be told you've had an incident. So I have hope because it sounds like it's very sensitive and I haven't triggered it yet with my terrible driving. So there you go.

• 51:30David Pierce?

  For the best. Yeah. If you, if you have been in a car crash and you have gotten crash detection, call the hotline and tell us about it because I am very curious. Do not crash your car on purpose to do this, but if it's happened to you, we'd love to hear about it. All right, let's move on to the next question we have. Andrew, you want to play it for us?

• 51:49Speaker 28

  Hey guys, I'm just wondering if it's really worth getting Series A for the SE basically for the always on display. Cause I don't know if I really need the other sensors. Thanks, bye.

• 52:03Speaker 26

  Okay, so don't get the SE. That doesn't have an always on display. So that's one of the things about the SE. You're missing some of the advanced sensors and the always on display. That's why it can be cheaper than the other watches. But I used to just very gung ho say that everyone should just be getting the Apple Watch SE because you know, I wasn't 100% sold on the need for an always on display. But after a few years, I really do like it. I, I think it's an excellent feature. It makes it more like an actual watch in that you can always see the time. And the other thing about it is it's just so much easier when you're in a workout. Because like when I'm running and I want to check a certain metric

• 52:45Speaker 26

  or like this weekend when I was on a hike and I want to see the compass, you can, you can look down and glance at certain things. It's not going to be, it's refreshing at a much slower rate. So you're not going to see some detail, but you don't necessarily have to bring your wrist up and flick it in just the right way to see the things that you need. It wakes up like a half second faster and it's like not necessary, but it's super nice. It's like now I'm team always on display.

• 53:11David Pierce?

  Yeah, I always have been. And I honestly think even since the first one, like it's, it's not a watch if it doesn't show you the time. Like that, it just, that's just the rules. And Apple still has not solved that arm gesture you're talking about. Like if I just sort of like flick my wrist over, the screen doesn't turn on. You still have to do this, like very exaggerated, like bring your arm up to your face. And if you have to do that every time you want to look at your watch, that is bad. To me, it's like always on screen or don't get an Apple Watch. I like, I genuinely believe that.

• 53:44Speaker 26

  Yeah, well, you know, when you've been in the wearables game as long as I have. You you kind of master the flick like I I get the flick every single time. It almost never not, you know, wakes up in what I needed to. But this is just like five, six years of having to do this. The muscle memory is is there. So if he's upgrading from the series four or earlier, you know, and you don't need the other sensors, I think it's totally fine to just go for the SE because you've never had the always on display. You don't know what you're missing. I went from the Apple Watch series five to the SE when I was testing and I knew what I was missing. That made me so happy to go back to the watches with the always on display after.

• 54:28Speaker 26

  So if you don't know what you're missing and it really is something where you're prioritizing budget, you know, you can't miss what you don't know. So that's one thing.

• 54:36David Pierce?

  That's fair. But then back to the question, what they're saying is like, if the always on display isn't enough, is it worth upgrading? And in that case, I feel like the answer is probably not, right? Like, there's nothing so sort of dramatically spectacularly better in these that if you're happy with the one that you have, you should upgrade, right?

• 54:52Speaker 26

  Definitely for the series four or later. I think if you have a series three, it's time. It's time to put this watch to rest. It's five years old, which, you know, in terms of gadgets, that's ancient. But there are some things where I actually do think the software is worth upgrading for. It just depends on your individual use case. So the new redesigned compass app is bomb. I love it. It is so good. It is finally really useful for hikers or like trail runners in a way that like it was just a compass before. And you're like, cool, I have no idea what a bearing means. Like, this doesn't help me. I'm terrible with directions. I like, it's just really sad. But this was a major upgrade.

• 55:34Speaker 26

  The thing is, is that the redesigned compass app isn't coming to the series four. You'll get it on the series five, but it's not going to have the really nifty stuff like backtrack or waypoints. So if you do want that stuff and you think it'll be useful for your life, you're gonna need to get at least a series six, the first gen SE or later. So, you know, that's one thing where if you're an outdoors person and you really like that stuff, it's definitely one thing where I think, actually, yeah, that is worth upgrading for you. If you stay outside all the time, nah, you're good. Don't worry about it.

• 56:09David Pierce?

  Fair enough. That is good advice right there. All right. Thank you to everybody who called in. We got tons of questions. I'm sorry, we couldn't get to them all. V, thank you. Appreciate it. Super helpful.

• 56:16Speaker 26

  No problem.

• 56:19David Pierce?

  Okay, and that's it for The Vergecast this week. Thank you so much for listening. As always, there is tons more coverage on everything we talked about at our newly redesigned website, theverge.com. There's also a bunch more Apple stuff coming in the next few days, so keep it locked over there. You can also follow all of us on Twitter. Ash is @Ashtra, Allison is @AllisonJoe1, Neelai is Reckless, V is VicMSong, and I'm Pierce. This show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Norrie Donovan is our executive producer, and Brooke Minter is our editorial director of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. If you have thoughts, feedback, feelings, buried treasure, or want to help us crash some cars and test G-forces, you can always email [email protected]. Also, we're getting an episode ready all about cybersecurity,

• 57:03David Pierce?

  and we're going to do a full-on call-in show answering your questions. So if you have a cybersecurity thing you can't figure out, or better yet, you have a crazy mystery you can't solve, call us at 866-VERGE11, or send us a voice memo to [email protected], and we'll get back to you if we think we can help. Alex, Neelai, and I will be back on Friday to talk about more Apple stuff, Peloton's new rowing machine, dislike buttons on YouTube, and much more. See you then. Rock and roll.

• 57:40Speaker 17

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• 58:26Speaker 19

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