Peek, pop, whip, and nae nae

A day after Apple’s huge event, we ran through all the big announcements. The Hype Seat has transformed into the Skype Seat so that Casey Newton can join Dieter Bohn, Jake Kastrenakes, and Chris Welch. Is the Apple TV just a super Roku? Just how Surface-y is the new iPad Pro? If you 3D Touch a 2D screen in a 1D forest, does it make a sound? All these questions will be answered with a Live Shot, except instead of a moving picture it’s a podcast. 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.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  Greetings, mobile accomplishers. Welcome to the Vergecast. I am Dieter Bone, and we have Vergecast rookie Chris Welch.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  Here with us to talk about Apple. We have Vergecast veteran Jake Crasten. Damn it.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Approximately Castranakis.

• 0:25Speaker 00

  Castranakis. I want to put the R after the first K for some reason.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  I don't even know where it goes.

• 0:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, you do. Just tell me I'm a horrible person, and it's fine. Neelai is not back yet from California. He did not take the red eye like I did. And let me tell you, he's the smarter man. So you're probably wondering who's in the hype seat. But I want to tell you that today, we don't have a hype seat. We have, and I'm really excited about this, instead of a hype seat, we have a Skype seat. And it's Casey Newton.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  What's up?

• 1:02Speaker 00

  How are you?

• 1:03Speaker 02

  I'm excited. I'm very excited, and I want to be able to perform any sort of remote hype checks. And I will be providing Skype checks throughout the show.

• 1:16Speaker 00

  Okay, so we are going to talk about Apple, I think.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  So you just got back.

• 1:21Speaker 00

  Precisely.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  From San Francisco, where you were at the Apple event and saw everything. What was the most exciting thing that you saw?

• 1:28Speaker 00

  Are you just going to just jump right in?

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, number one. Like, what was your number one out of the event?

• 1:33Speaker 00

  My number one out of the event.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Because there was a ton of stuff.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  Is probably Eddie Q's wardrobe change. He switched into the shirt that was just... Casey, back me up here. It was great.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  It was incredible, and it was one of the few things that Mark Herman had not reported in advance.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  So, okay, I don't know, we can, I mean, the most amazing thing I personally saw was probably the iPad Pro. That doesn't mean I think it's the best thing or the thing I'm going to buy, but in terms of like a technical achievement, the iPad Pro definitely has to be like the coolest thing they created that day. Casey?

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Um, I agree that the iPad Pro looked really nice, but for me, the most exciting thing was 3D Touch, which came as a total surprise because we had been dismissing it as right-click for iPhone. But man, once you start playing around with it, though, you start to wonder how you lived without it.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Just the ability to have quick actions that you can perform from your home screen, I think is a big deal, you know, so you long press or force press on Instagram and go right to the camera. You 3D Touch on the text message icon and can just like, you know, fire off a quick text. It's all minor stuff, but I think over the lifetime of the use of your phone, it really is going to save time and just feels like a really cool evolution of the operating system.

• 3:03Speaker 00

  All right. How about you guys? Like, you weren't there, but like you saw everything. You've reported a ton of it. What are you most excited by?

• 3:09Speaker 03

  I mean, the iPad Pro is definitely the biggest thing they announced in terms of pure size, but I'm not sure I'm really too compelled by that. I'm kind of curious about who it's for. I'm not even sure Apple's really sure who it's for just yet. I guess we'll find that out in a couple of months. But, I mean, it's pretty exciting. The whole stylus thing, that whole turnaround is pretty interesting. Finally realizing that this is the right form for stylus.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Can I say the weird, like, cool thing about the stylus?

• 3:37Speaker 00

  The pencil?

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Pencil. The cool thing about it is like this tilt functionality. So when I was using it, if you just, you know, press down as with a normal pencil, it writes like a pencil does. But if you sort of lean it on its side and do like kind of a shading gesture, then in this drawing app that I was using, it sort of, you know, it looked like the way it would Look, if you shaded your pencil. So I just thought the fact that the pencil sort of knows where it is in space and time made for kind of a cool thing. Now, I'm sure there are other styluses on the market that do that. But I think that there are probably a lot of people who haven't tried out a stylus on an iPad yet, and it's kind of a nifty feature.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, Jake.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Um, I think I might be the only one, but the Apple TV.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  I was waiting. It's the first time we've said the word TV on the show.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  No, I'm really excited. Um, I mean, the idea of, so for me, I don't own any game consoles and I know it's, it's really easy to just like.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  Mock you and think you're behind for not owning a games console. Come on, man.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, but then I have to spend like hours and hours playing video games just to justify owning this thing. That's like own multiple copies of Madden.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  No, you don't. I don't, I don't.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  It's just too, it's a very big, just like emotional investment. And at, at this point in my life, I don't know if I can make it.

• 5:01Speaker 00

  And that's why you wanted Apple TV?

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Why I wanted Apple TV, because then I can just like, like I bought transistor. When it came out on the iPhone, I'm like, yes, this is gonna be great. I'm gonna play transistor. I love Bastion. And I'm like, I don't really wanna play this, because I only have an iPhone 5S and it's like a tiny screen. And like, I tried to, um, uh, airplay it over to my TV, but then there's the delay and it's like, I can't control it. Cause I have to look at my iPhone to like touch the right things and then look back up at my TV to see what's happening. So like those, that kind of like above casual game, but not quite full 3D like Destiny, whatever. I'm like super looking forward to playing with that kind of stuff. Um, so hopefully that gets a little bit more vibrant.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  I have a question.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  All right.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  My other question, which is, is the game developer community going to show up in huge numbers for Apple TV games? Right? Because like on iOS, as it stands right now, there are only really like, the, the only reliable way to make money is to, uh, offer these sort of terrible in-app purchases, right? You limit the amount of time somebody can play a game in a day. Um, and for a variety of reasons, uh, you know, some of which are the app store's fault. Game developers just can't make a ton of money, uh, off of the app store. So my question is, you know, why do we assume that all of a sudden, uh, game developers are gonna just start racing to create all these incredible experiences on Apple TV?

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I mean, I think Casey's right. Like, I don't think that the Apple TV is really going to spur all that much more development of games for iOS. Like, they're not in a great place for the most part. There are like a few gems.

• 6:39Speaker 00

  What?

• 6:40Speaker 01

  I mean, you think it will?

• 6:41Speaker 00

  I don't know if the Apple TV will, but to say that iOS games aren't in a great place is like, they're, it's not like the best, most perfect place. And like, there's a bunch of in-app purchase annoyances, but like, games on iOS compared to games on Android?

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like, why can't I buy like a game that is, you know, the quality of a game you get for the Nintendo DS on, you know, my iPad? I would happily pay thirty, forty, fifty dollars for like a good game, but like, the best thing I can get is Bastion and transistor and like.

• 7:16Speaker 00

  How much do the Final Fantasy ports cost?

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Right, but you're talking about like a Final, like, no, like, don't get me wrong, there's some good stuff, especially for people like me who are out of the loop of like, the game console cycle. But could be like, a bit better. Like, I don't understand why they're not competing with handhelds in that way.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  Right. Okay, we should step back and come back to Apple TV. So, Casey, set the scene at the Bill Graham Center. Like, it was a huge venue.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  It was, and it was actually really pretty cool inside. There was some resentment in San Francisco because Apple had rented out Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. You know, one of the city's larger concert venues for a full three weeks. Like, Apple was just inside this venue for three weeks, setting the stage for this event. And, and so we sort of didn't know what to expect inside because the venue seats 7,000 people, which seemed like kind of an insane number of people to bring to, to an Apple event. But then, once we got inside, we saw that they had built this kind of really like clever and unusual structure where there was this giant stage

• 8:24Speaker 02

  at the, the front of the room where they really could have like fit a car. I got like a little bit excited we were gonna see an Apple car yesterday because like, there was just so much space. And then to either side. Side of the stage, there was a hands on area. So to the right side of the stage, you could check out the iPhones and the iPads. And to the left side of the stage, you could check out the Apple TVs. And like the Apple TVs, they had in this super dark, like sleek, sort of like futuristic living room that looked really nice. Like on the, on the ceiling, there were like, kind of like, like star, it looked like there were stars, right, Dieter?

• 9:00Speaker 02

  So it was, um, it was like a very sophisticated, elegant, uh, presentation. And, um, you know, there wound up being about fifteen hundred people, uh, who attended the event. And I want to say about a thousand of those were Apple employees.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  Judging by the applause, yeah.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. But like, I actually think it's cool that they're letting more Apple employees go. Like, they're the people who made this stuff. And I think like, some of them, like, they, they only know about their announcement, right? Like, they don't even know what the other teams are working on. So like, I, I sort of feel like they have just as much a right to be there as, you know, the people who are writing about it.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  Was the vibe of the keynote just sort of, was it just like chill? Like Schiller had a bunch of energy. Uh, Cook was like scowling sometimes, but he, he was like, you know, the thing where like, you try and like, show like, like assurance and like power and like, man, I am so confident right now, but you just come off looking angry.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:56Speaker 00

  That's like how I do. And that's like, that's how, like, I got that vibe off of him the whole time. Like, he like,

• 10:01Speaker 03

  Well, they started off really chill because there was no like super over the top video to like lead into this event. Like last year, they had, uh, the, okay, go rip off kind of thing. And then there was the Bill Hader thing for WWDC. So they kind of realized maybe that's not the best way to intro these events. So it was just.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then the order was weird, right? Because it would, like, typically they're like, all right, here we go. Updates. All right. iPhone. We know you're here for iPhone. And then like, oh, there's some other stuff. But now, but they like, they basically flipped everything because it was Apple Watch. Then they went to iPad. Then they went to Apple TV.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:37Speaker 00

  And then they went, they ended on iPhone.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  I feel like messing with the order is sort of removes the value judgment on their own products. Like, they're not saying necessarily that iPhone is most important, even though like, it is their biggest thing. I don't know. I mean, I don't know if there's too much to read into the order that they presented them in, but, um, uh, you know, putting the iPhone last and what did they, they opened on the?

• 11:02Speaker 00

  Uh, watch us too, yeah.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know. Get me a little more interested.

• 11:07Speaker 00

  But yeah, I guess so. But like, overall, this wasn't like a like a rah rah, oh, my God. It was like, it was like, hey, they did an Apple event. Cool. It's good. I don't know.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Which is interesting, because this is one of the most packed events that they've done.

• 11:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it was like, the the whole thing ran a little over two hours, I think, like, two hours, 20 minutes or something. By the way, somebody owes me money for that. Because everyone's like, no, they won't go over an hour and a half. They definitely were always going to go at least two hours. Casey, how did you feel about the scene, like, the whole event?

• 11:37Speaker 01

  How was OneRepublic?

• 11:40Speaker 00

  It sounded bad.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  OneRepublic is not my favorite band. And you know, at the last Apple event we went to, they ended with The Weeknd, who actually like sang an incredible song and did an awesome job. And so I think like, we Apple live bloggers are sort of used to snarking at the end of the at the keynotes, because they often do pick these like, super basic bands to come in and perform. But like, after the weekend, you're like, they could bring up anybody. They could bring up, you know, like Philip Glass to like, you know,

• 12:12Speaker 00

  That would be amazing.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Wouldn't that have been amazing? He just like, came up and played like, 433. But anyway, instead, we got, we got OneRepublic. And it was so funny, because like, as Tim Cook like, starts to introduce these people, like, you're trying to figure out in your head, like, who's it gonna be? You know, like, among the people who are going to the event, I would say the number one, like, sort of, like, watercooler topic outside the venue was like, who do you think the musical artist is gonna be? And he starts, he's like, you know, they're a band. I'm like, okay, so it's a band. He's like, they had five platinum singles off their last record. I was like, well, it's not a rock band, because rock bands don't have like,

• 12:49Speaker 02

  you know? So like, that was immediately when I was like, something is not right here. And then, Tim Cook said that, like, the most important thing about them was that they were good human beings. I don't know if you remember that part. And like, which could be true. I don't know anything about them. Like, for all I know, they're like, diehard humanitarians. But then they just like, came out and they started singing Counting Cars, I think is the name of the song, which is a is a song by white people that has a gospel breakdown in it. And so like, by the time the gospel breakdown came around, I was just, I was not having it. I was, I was over OneRepublic.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I always walk out on these bands and I feel terrible about it. Cause like, I wanna go and go to the hands-on area, cause I'm, turns out I'm there to work.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  And so, I don't, I like, turn my back on the weekend at the WWDC.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  That's too bad.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  The worst thing I've ever done in my entire life, but a while ago, I got to turn my back on you too, which was the best thing I ever did in my entire life. Okay, uh, let's, we were talking Apple TV, we should just do it. So, we should run down the basics. It looks like a really tall Apple TV.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  It's just, and then it comes with a remote that has motion sensing. Do we know how it does the motion sensing? It's not like there's a wee bar.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  It's just an accelerometer, right?

• 14:07Speaker 00

  It's got a touch surface on the top. Uh, it's got a bunch of buttons. There's a TV button, which I guess is home. There's a Siri button. There's a menu button, which it will double as back. And then there's volume up and down buttons. And the volume buttons and also turning your TV on and off works via CEC.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  HDMI CEC.

• 14:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, which, what does CEC stand for?

• 14:31Speaker 03

  Not a lot of TVs have at this moment, but.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  Really? I just figured like, the thing's been around for like three, four years.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Recently would you have had to have purchased a nice TV to have that?

• 14:38Speaker 03

  2013, 2014, so pretty recent.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  My problem with CEC is like, I'm pretty sure my soundbar supports it. I'm pretty sure my TV supports it. Uh, like the Xbox supports it and like all these things, but they, none of them like understand each other's states. And like, all of them wanna be the boss of your entire sound system, your entire AV system. And I never know which one to pick to like, let it be the boss. And so I just give up and use a Logitech remote. Oh my God. What is happening?

• 15:04Nilay Patel?

  Look at my phone. What? How's it going?

• 15:07Speaker 00

  We were, we were, we, we were doing a.

• 15:10Nilay Patel?

  It's called a Super Roku. That's what, that's all.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. Hi, hi, Neil.

• 15:14Nilay Patel?

  Not even laughing at me.

• 15:15Speaker 00

  Uh, if, if you're not watching the video stream, Neil, I just showed up in, um, San Francisco next to Casey. And then they, I don't know what happened to the sound there. Neil, we're talking about the Apple TV. Uh, we haven't said anything mean about it yet, so it's really good that you're here.

• 15:29Nilay Patel?

  Super Roku.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  Super Roku.

• 15:31Nilay Patel?

  Right? That's what I mean, they have to deliver the next piece of it. The next piece of it is a streaming service. But like, they built a, they built an interesting riff on the existing UI and built a remote that other people have built. Um, and they've got good ideas about search, but all of the services are exactly the same as everybody else's services, right? You can watch Netflix on it. You can watch Hulu on it. You can rent movies. Um, they need to deliver an actual streaming service. And I, I, I was talking to Walt about it and he, his whole theory is they need to put the boxes out there so they can walk into meetings with content companies and cable companies and say, look, we got all those fucking boxes. We're doing this with or without you.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 16:08Nilay Patel?

  Sure what it means to do it without them, but that's, they, they just need leverage, right? They need the install base as big as somebody else's install base. Um, but until then, it's, it's a super Roku.

• 16:20Speaker 00

  Right. And so, but the problem is a regular Roku costs less than a hundred and fifty dollars, which is the starting price of an Apple TV.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Well, do you think the fact that Apple has this like army of developers who will like theoretically make a bunch of apps for it? Gives it like an edge over the Roku or is that just gonna be like boring? You're never gonna use that. You're just gonna open up Netflix?

• 16:38Speaker 00

  Well, it, it, that's the whole game is if they don't get the apps and they don't get the streaming service, it's just, it's a super Roku. Uh, and like, and even like down to like their, the things that it can and can't search like mirrors pretty well with the other sort of limited universal searches are like, it's not like we guarantee you universal search. I, I was imagining a world where if you wanted an app on, on the Apple TV, you have to, you have to get buy into their universal search paradigm. Otherwise you're no good and they didn't do that. So it's a, it's, it's a super Roku. So the question is, like, they need developers to make crazy apps and what apps?

• 17:19Speaker 00

  Are coming that like that are going to change the way you think about TV because I'll tell you what it's not. It's not the guilt app. It's not sitting there and like paging.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know what a good TV app is or looks like, but I want them. It's just like this weird desire that like, I'm going to download 100 TV apps and use none of them.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  The the MLB app looked cool, right? Like the idea that the app actually sends you a notification that says, hey, your favorite player is having an at bat in another game. Just tap here and we'll take it you to it right now. Like, that's great. That's something that you're never going to get in linear TV. Like, that actually looked like the future to me. But, you know, somebody pointed out to me later that other that that's just like the MLB app and that app can run on, you know, any number of platforms. So.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  Will that notification come no matter what I'm watching? Like, can will apps be able to ping pop up notifications while you're in another app?

• 18:10Speaker 03

  I'm sure you can turn it off, but as far as I know, yeah, they can send up.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Wow. Managing notifications.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  You would want to actually have like a TV OS, right? Right? Is like so that you could have a notification layer that sat on top of the operating system that would allow for that kind of thing.

• 18:26Speaker 00

  What did you do to Neelai? He's gone.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  I told him he had to get out of my bedroom. It's not appropriate that he's in here. He wasn't invited and he needed to go. So.

• 18:37Speaker 00

  So I'm going to buy an Apple TV, even though I've got a fire stick and I've got a, I actually have a Roku too. And I've got an Xbox One. I got a Wii U. I don't have a PS4, but whatever. No, I'm going to buy an Apple TV simply because my my current Apple TV is just like, it's slow and terrible interface and.

• 18:58Speaker 03

  I mean, this interface isn't really much different. It's pretty much the same thing with a new coat of paint and it's like a lot easier to like move around and navigate. But fundamentally, it's still the same setup.

• 19:08Speaker 00

  Here's the thing, moving around and navigating on it. Everybody that I talk to says the remote is hella twitchy. Like, if you if you like, if your if your thumb moves up just a little, like, you know, you use an iPhone with your Apple TV and like you slide, you think you're sliding over and Sid you go like four icons over. Apparently, it's like that times five right now, the way that it's tweaked. And I mean, it's not that big of a zone for you to move your thumb on. So they've got to make it pretty sensitive.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Isn't the Apple TV remote, the like current one, the like, the lesson that like Apple teaches all of its employees about how like brilliant its design is? It has like five buttons or whatever. Am I making this up?

• 19:43Speaker 00

  No, here it is.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  So it's just very interesting that like.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Forget the directional pad, you can swipe everywhere. Which like, no, it seems cool. I'm interested, but yeah, I'm very worried that how you will like easily start and stop and go where you actually want to on that.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. And instead of like, so, okay, the interface innovation is Siri, so that's different. And then the other innovation that they talked about is if you like, just rest your thumb on the little pad and you're like looking at a movie poster, you can like wiggle your thumb around and the icons move around and then some of them like, like movie studios can actually make them 3D. So it's like one of those really cheap holograms. I don't know.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  Sony's done that kind of thing, like on the PlayStation Store, they've done that same kind of

• 20:31Speaker 03

  parallax effect where it's like one thing on top of the other and as you move around, it'll shift around.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  But let me say something nice about the remote, if I can.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  I don't know if you can.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  The fact that it has a touch surface is going to, I think, really delight a lot of people because it means that you can use the interface without looking at the remote, right? Like, most of our experience of using remotes is like, okay, which button does this or that, right?

• 20:58Speaker 00

  Have you ever used a five-way directional pad? Like, you don't have to look at it.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that that is true for the most part, but we live in a, in a world of swipes and taps now. And I think being able to build that into your, your content remote is something that people are gonna like.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Cool. Say, I use my Apple mouse upside, like backward, at least once a week. And get totally puzzled about like, why my mouse is moving in the wrong direction.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  So is turning your mouse around. Is Chris Welch doing some sort of office prank?

• 21:34Speaker 00

  Once a week, I'll be wandering around the office with my laptop and my whole computer will freak the shit out. It'll be frozen. I can't move the mouse around. I have no idea what's happening. And it turns out someone's sitting on my desk and they set their laptop on top of my touchpad on my desk. And I'm like 30 feet away, but the Bluetooth is still connected and it's just like clicking constantly. Anyway, here's, here's my last word on the Apple TV. It's okay that they didn't score the crazy subscription deals. It's really good that they are trying something innovative with the remote. It's really good that they're doing the Siri stuff. But my, my basic complaint is that they didn't go far enough with the interface. And, you know, Neil, I think said this the other day, like,

• 22:17Speaker 00

  Siri is supposed to be more and more proactive and know what I want to watch. It should be able to sit down and show me the most recent stuff that I watch across all of my services. Like, when I go to Netflix, the first thing I go to is like, what I last watched? Because I'm probably going to want to watch another episode of whatever that show is. But I also watch stuff on Hulu and on HBO Now and blah, blah, and blah. And I should just have a queue of like, the last stuff that I watched. And it should be able to guess, like, you know, man, you've been watching a lot of Cutthroat Kitchen. Maybe you should try another cooking show on this other service that you forgot about.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting that the first thing you choose is the service and not what you want to watch.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  And like, what you open it up for is to find something to watch.

• 23:02Speaker 00

  Right. And like, that's the polar opposite of the cable model. Like, cable is like, you turn it on and there's a show. And then you start moving around from within that. And I just, like, they had a chance to do something, I think, more ambitious than yay, more, you know, icons on screens, more grids.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  It is still a big grid.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. All right. Anybody else want to throw a final word on this Apple TV before I go to the money zone?

• 23:29Speaker 02

  It just feels like it's halfway there to me. Like, I liked it better than I expected to, but it's, until there's that, like, content piece, with the actual subscription offering, it's just going to feel like it's in beta testing.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  Just like building a TV interface is hard, building a website can be hard. And even if you know your way around the code that is used to build a website, which, by the way, is HTML.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Did they still use that?

• 24:00Speaker 00

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• 25:29Speaker 00

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• 25:40Speaker 00

  All right.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  iPad Pro. iPad Pro. It's huge.

• 25:47Speaker 03

  So how big does this thing feel in your hand? Because I saw photos and it looks just enormous and it's as heavy as the first iPad was, which was not light by any means.

• 25:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, it doesn't feel heavy. It's like, basically it's not that dissimilar from like, I don't know. Imagine the size of your 13 inch MacBook Air, like cut it, like break it in half and there you go. Like then the keyboard part, is that, is that a fair representation, Casey?

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so.

• 26:16Speaker 00

  It's a lunch tray for sure.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  It feels similar in the hand as the iPad Air 2. It is just like physically more massive. So it does way more, but it like, it actually felt deceptively light at least in the like 30 seconds that I actually held it in my hand. I suspect if you held it up for, you know, an hour, maybe your arms would get a little more fatigued than they would with an iPad Air. But it definitely looks large and like almost comically large, I think, unless you are just really in love with the idea of a Microsoft Surface that runs iOS.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  So can you, can either of you imagine using this without a keyboard attached?

• 27:02Speaker 00

  Uh, I could, yes, to watch a movie in bed with its four speakers. Like, I would buy this instead of a TV for my bedroom.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  Would you ever take this outside your home? At any point?

• 27:16Speaker 00

  Right, this is like, this is a super hard question because like, the thing is meant to be a laptop replacement. Right, and again, like, the tablet that can replace your laptop, that's really a tagline. Have we, have we ever heard that from anybody?

• 27:29Speaker 01

  That, it definitely sounds clever.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  I wonder, I wonder if anybody's ever used that.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  You should go into advertising.

• 27:34Speaker 00

  Before, yeah.

• 27:37Speaker 00

  But can it replace your laptop?

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Right, so my, my impression is that, you know, down the road, this is going to be like, maybe a solid laptop alternative. And right now, iOS is still like, you know, it's, it's iOS. Like, I imagine that if you are, you really prefer touchscreens, maybe this makes sense for you. But like, there's no way you're gonna get as much done without, you know, an actual like, an attached keyboard and a trackpad or a mouse. Like, is this for the future they're preparing, like?

• 28:12Speaker 00

  So I was, I was rewatching the keynote this morning because when you're actually at the keynote, taking photos of the keynote, you don't watch anything other than can I get a picture of an executive when their mouth is in a funny position because they're talking. And I did, I managed to get pictures of people not with weird mouth positions. Anyway, and Tim Cook like led off the iPad discussion with like, yo, this is our vision for what the future of all computing is. It's a pane of glass that does magical things.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  That's funny, I didn't hear that at all, but that's, that's so interesting that like, they're just laying it out like that.

• 28:49Speaker 00

  Right. And, you know, this is where I get all, you know, angry about open computing platforms. But I don't want the iPad to be the future of computing until I can do arbitrary things on the iPad that I don't have to get Apple's permission to do. And Android has similar problems, but at least Android at least has the patina of you're free to screw around with it however you want. It has other problems too, which is like, the apps for tablets just still aren't there. Send your angry emails about the comment I just said about Android apps to Casey at theverge.com.

• 29:25Speaker 00

  It's not, I'm not wrong. Okay, we should run down the specs, though. Who wants to, who wants to give me some spec talk?

• 29:32Speaker 03

  12.9 inch display.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:35Speaker 03

  It's got a resolution of 2732 by 2048 for a PPI of 264. So it's a retina display. It's got four speakers, first for an iPad, and the 89X chip, which promises desktop performance, which we'll have to see how true that holds up. And you've got your pencil, your smart keyboard, but there's no 3D touch on the iPad Pro, which I found pretty interesting.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, like the 3D touch is right-click for the iPhone, and you'd think that you'd want it. It's a professional kind of thing. You'd think you'd want that on an iPad. Also, the other spec you didn't mention is 4 gigs of RAM, which we only know because Adobe like screwed up and told us. If you're, if this is the future of computing, tell me how much RAM is in the damn thing.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Yes. Also, like, the lack of 3D touch, for me, like, even if I wanted one of these things, I would just wait until it had 3D touch. Like, this seems like the sort of thing where, like, in six months, they'll just quietly refresh it with 3D touch, and like, you'll feel shitty that you spent $1,000 on it. It's possible I'm making too much of 3D touch, but I don't know. Every once in a while, I get excited about a software feature.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  A hardware soft, soft hard feature.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  A hard software feature. But, you know, there are a few reporters who I know who are very excited about the idea of an iOS workstation, like Harry McCracken and Federico Vaticci over at Mac Stories, and they're, they often write about how they've built these workflows for themselves, and, you know, they're doing high-quality work, and I, and I sort of get the appeal. I actually, before I had a laptop, my laptop equivalent was a first-generation iPad and a third-party keyboard that I used. And, and it was actually like, it was really pretty effective for the things I was using it for, which was mostly like taking notes and writing, you know, like, nothing, nothing

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Super intense, but you know, the, the other thing I would just note is that um for, for all these like claims of, you know, like desktop class performance, honestly, like the iPads usually are better than desktop performance, right? Because the apps open quicker, right? They're like the, the speed of the iPad, I think is one reason that a lot of people prefer it over the traditional.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  That's because you can only, well, I guess on iPad now you can run two things at a time and then you might have some of those in front of the background. You don't know. Who knows? It's possible.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  No, I don't know. Maybe I'm, I'm just like being an old fuddy duddy here, but you know what's really cool on a 12.9 inch screen? More than two apps at a time. You know what's cool? Windows, it turns out.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so I should ask, how does this compare to the Surface Pro for you? Because Surface Pro is basically the same product, except it is more on the laptop side.

• 32:18Speaker 00

  It has a kickstand. It has a better keyboard. The keyboard thing for the iPad, I, I was like, oh hey, this is fine. I was like, oh wait, this is not that good.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Right?

• 32:28Speaker 00

  I don't know. That's a really hard thing to, for me to say.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  But desktop OS.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, hmm, if this thing ran Windows, I would probably buy it, which is a crazy thing for me to be saying right now. But I just, I, the apps and like the, the ecosystem and like the games and like some of like the single task stuff is going to be better on the iPad Pro. Then what the, some of those similar stuff, I think, I even, I'm willing to bet that Microsoft Office is a more enjoyable experience on the iPad Pro than it is on, um, you know, a Surface. That's probably not actually true.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  But in terms of like, this is my only computer, I, I want to make sure that the ceiling on what I can do with it is, um, you know, it's set by like the power of the device and my ability to do creative things with it. Not like arbitrary software limits.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  It's interesting. I feel like when, um, everyone talks about the iPad as like a creation device, like there's this vision that we're just like constantly banging away, doing work. And like, most of the time we're just like browsing the web or watching Netflix or whatever.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  Wow, you are super fired.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  I know. I mean, like, I, I'm not, I'm not bringing my iPad to work to like get stuff done.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  But like, um, even on the iPad, I still can't like browse the web as well as I can on my MacBook.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  True.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  Really?

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Um, I, I think it's a more relaxed and enjoyable experience, but like, I'm opening like 50 tabs and like going through them as quickly as I can. Like the, um, I mean, the iPad Pro is probably better, but like, my iPad holds like maybe two tabs at a time.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Before it like forgets about them and has to like take a minute to load it up.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, Safari's really bad with it. I mean, that was, that was always like the complaint about the RAM on the iPhone, right? That they just put more RAM in there, maybe I went to reload pages all the time. Okay. So here's the question, like that everybody's asked me, every single person who knows that I've touched the iPad Pro asks me this question. And I want you to answer it, Chris Welch. Who's it for?

• 34:37Speaker 03

  Hmm. If you're an artist or some kind of creative, I guess, I mean, that's, that's my only real like short fire customer for this thing. If someone's gonna really use that pencil.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Casey.

• 34:49Speaker 03

  Until their dying day.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  If the, if you ever bought a, is it Wacom or Wacom? If you ever bought a Wacom tablet?

• 34:58Speaker 00

  Have you, have you ever bought a Wacom tablet and then you do the tweeters on it? And you can, I guess you can get some Facebooks and you can, sorry, sorry, Casey.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  No, that's actually, I want you to keep going with that character. I like that character. But yeah, if you ever like purchased a separate tablet and stylus to like do your creative work and you use iOS, like now you have this alternative. But I think if like, you're not an architect or an illustrator, it's not clear to me that you couldn't actually just get by with an iPad Air two, which remains a just surpassingly beautiful and fun to use device.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  And they didn't bother updating it at all.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. So when does that?

• 35:36Speaker 02

  It's that good. It didn't need anything. It's fine.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Well, they're trying to keep the specs ahead, I think, on the Pro, right? And so everything else just falls behind.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Just.

• 35:45Speaker 03

  Not the most exciting.

• 35:46Speaker 00

  The iPad Pro, it's called the Pro. It's meant to be for professionals, for like the enterprise and for IBM and Cisco to like distribute to all these companies and have the entire sales force work off of them. And I also, I just don't get that. Now, I'm not super smart about enterprise stuff, but I know that if I am buying a thousand laptops for my sales workforce, I'm not, I'm gonna wanna buy the one that's a little bit cheaper, but still gets the job done. And so if, if by some magic of, you know, perfection, IBM has created a great iOS app ecosystem for my internal software. I, I'm gonna buy them iPad Airs because they're just a little bit cheaper and like they probably don't need the styluses and I can buy a pretty good Logitech keyboard for it. That's good, gonna be good enough.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  Or I'm gonna buy more likely like $600 Windows laptops. So I, it's, it's an amazing, beautiful piece of hardware and like there will be people who will buy it just because it's the best iPad. There will be people who buy it because they're like, oh yeah, I like drawing. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that. But I don't know. It's like, I don't think this solves the iPad problem of like, what are they really for beyond like watching Netflix in bed? And playing Solitaire and whatever else people do with iPads.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  No, it's not gonna help with slowing down sales either. I mean, this is not gonna be like a mass market product for a lot of people.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  Right.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  That's still the Air 2 and the Mini 4, which looks really nice if you want the smaller version, but.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  Casey?

• 37:14Speaker 02

  I, I have an interesting comment. A, a viewer just tweeted at me. H steroid says, he, I'm assuming he, but if you're she, I apologize, is an architect and there's no way in hell I see using the new iPad Pro. I need 3DS Max and CAD stuff to work flawlessly and you wanna work flawlessly when you're an architect.

• 37:33Speaker 00

  They did show a CAD thing of the Bay Area with like some insane number of points and lines and stuff.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's some software opportunity there. You know, interestingly, I think Neelai said that he wanted one.

• 37:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Uh, I think you may fall into that category of I just want the best thing. So like bring that best thing to me. Um, but you know, I, I like, like my iPad more than most people. Like it's been, it's very trendy at the verge. It's like, oh, I have six iPads, but I never use them. Um, but like, I'm not that person at all. Like, um, I keep it by my nightstand when I wake up in the morning. Like that's what I'm using to skim Twitter, to check my email, even to like fire off email replies. Um, I use it to read books. I buy books from the iBookstore and then of course I watch a lot of video on it.

• 38:21Speaker 00

  Why the iBookstore? Why not the Kindle store?

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Um. I guess I just spent, so I just spent, it's an ecosystem thing. I'm just, I'm just, you're a classic iVerger and I really do live in Apple universe. Um, and, uh, you know, what, what, what can I tell you? I, I mean, like, you know, Kindle makes nice stuff too. I like, I have a Kindle and, and occasionally I use it, but I love the iPad screen and it's just like frankly, the iPad is the place where I already am. And so that's sort of make, you know, make sense, uh, for me to have, um, my books there too. But I have, I have another incoming tweet I would like to read. Somebody named Jared says that he does music on OS 10, uh, Logic, uh, 10 Pro. And he says he's looking forward to using an iPad Pro to make music. So maybe musicians, uh, yeah.

• 39:09Speaker 00

  And it can do like three or four HD streams at once in iMovie if you wanna be editing that stuff.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Like, I don't have any doubt that like some of these particular experiences are gonna be great, but I just don't know if they're gonna be like, I don't know. It's not, I don't know. It's not, I can't do random stuff like I can on a computer, I guess.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree.

• 39:30Speaker 00

  Which it really sounds like, I feel like I'm like recycling an argument that's five years old and everyone's gonna get really mad at me for like, oh no, you can be totally productive with an iPad and you can. Oh no, it's not that locked down. They like, they've built all the tools for apps to talk to each other and they mostly have, but there's still like.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  So, I mean, my, my thinking is also that this is not necessarily for us. This is for people who are growing up with touchscreens and one day iOS is going to be the all powerful and like customizable operating system that we want it to. But it's going to be touch first. It is going to be designed from the ground up to work with this type of device. And this is the type of device that people are going to prefer in 10 years. I could be totally wrong about that because like, I can't imagine preferring this in 10 years.

• 40:12Speaker 00

  Am I gonna buy one of these? Are you talking me into this?

• 40:15Speaker 03

  I mean, just look at the price again before you make that decision.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  I think Jake is making an interesting point. You know, the original argument around the iPad was, is this device for consumption or is it for creation? And then over time, it became clear that you really could use it for both. It so happens that I use it almost entirely for consumption. I think it's a great device for consumption. But Apple, I think, believes its future is in making it feel more and more like a device for creation. So maybe there will be some sort of generation gap there. But maybe people will just keep using it to watch videos and maybe that'll be fine.

• 40:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, that'll be great because it's got all those speakers. Like, okay, I'm gonna stop harping on this in a second. Someone said you can kind of get three apps if you put one video and a picture in picture. But like, my basic work setup is, I need Slack, I need a web browser with a bunch of tabs, and, you know, I kind of need Twitter, or a text editor. So like, I can't work without three things open. And I can pull that off in Chromebook because like, I can make those little web tabs and like, it's going. But on an iPad, you like, you kind of, at some point, you have to choose to like, let something sit in the background. And no matter how fast the multitasking is, it's, there's still like, that thing's over there now. I don't know. And that's, you know, that's, that's

• 41:35Speaker 00

  the thing that makes it feel not pro to me. But the question is, am I just like, old? And like, nobody actually needs that. And I don't actually need that. I just need to stop thinking that I need that.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  I know. I mean, I feel the same way, though, right?

• 41:48Speaker 00

  Right. And you're not old. You're a millennial.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Yes, I'm extraordinarily, I think I'm like 15 at this point. But...

• 41:57Speaker 00

  What's the, what's the bottom for millennials? Like, what's the youngest you can be and still be a millennial?

• 42:02Speaker 02

  I'm 35 and I'm a millennial by some definitions.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Just state of mind.

• 42:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, the best thing about my life is that I, like, caught the very last year that you could still call yourself Gen X. And I'm really happy about that.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Is it because Gen X is a cooler name?

• 42:18Speaker 00

  Because Gen X is, we're cooler, period.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  I mean, there's no competition between us.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  I mean, what's the, what's the, the movie that's like, yes, we're millennials, we self-identify as millennials? What's the movie? Because for me, I've got Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites, right? Like, I mean, come on. We're cooler.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  We had the last airbender.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, there you go. So...

• 42:49Speaker 00

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• 43:34Speaker 00

  up and down super quick and you have ample storage space for all of your storage intensive needs. If you're storing a lot of video or whatever, it's something that businesses do. And so the thing you might not know about Softlayer, if you haven't heard us talk about them before, is they're an IBM company. And IBM uses Softlayer as its own cloud infrastructure foundation for all of their IBM cloud products and services. So even if you're not looking for infrastructure, you can still benefit from Softlayer's infrastructure whenever you use anything that IBM makes in IBM Cloud. So there you go. So if you are excited by all of this cloud infrastructure stuff that I've been talking

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• 45:00Speaker 00

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• 45:14Speaker 00

  I felt that was the appropriate ad to put in at the end of the iPad Pro discussion. Don't you?

• 45:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:21Speaker 00

  So we didn't talk about the Mini 4, other than Chris Welch doing exactly what Apple did. It was like, "Hey, guys, there's an iPad Mini 4. It's not bad. Goodbye."

• 45:29Speaker 01

  It's the iPad Mini we should have got 10 months ago.

• 45:33Speaker 00

  Right?

• 45:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Mini 3 will go down as one of the saddest product revisions, I think, in Apple's history. It came and it went, and now you've got the iPad Mini 2 and the 4. Don't even ask about 3.

• 45:44Speaker 00

  Everybody at The Verge has really, like, strong feelings about tablets right now. Because, like, we don't know what they're for. Android tablets of like, you can't get small ones anymore that are any good. Nobody's trying anymore. Samsung, like, decided to maybe make one this year, I guess. They're like, "Yeah, sure, here's a tab, whatever." Like, the iPad Pro is the only tablet of note. See what I did there? Note. In the past 12 months, right? At least, since the iPad Air 2, honestly. Like, nothing, nobody else is trying. Don't talk to me about the Nexus 9, because I bought a Nexus 9. And when I did it, I was like, "I'm gonna regret doing this." And you know what? I was totally, totally right.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  You told me so.

• 46:28Speaker 00

  I did tell me so. All right, iPhone 6. So I can run down the specs for the iPhone 6. It starts at a lovely, capacious 16GB of storage, which is the best. It has an A9 chip with an embedded M9 chip in it, which means that you can holler "Hey Siri" at it whenever you feel like it to start a Siri search, which is what... They should have always done that. I don't know. There's a 12-megapixel camera, which is gonna be a very, very big deal, I think.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Is the sensor the same size? I don't think they said anything about making it any bigger.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  I don't know the full details of that yet. It has a faster Touch ID. It's got more support for faster LTE and faster Wi-Fi, presumably using, like, MIMO or crazy antenna stuff.

• 47:15Speaker 00

  And the front megapixel, front-facing camera is 5 megapixels now, I think.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:20Speaker 00

  And it's got a selfie flash. But of course, the Big thing, the big change is 3D Touch. So much so, I expected them to come out and talk about cameras and like, we are going to spend a long time talking about how we stayed at 8 megapixels and we did, we'd understand photography better than anybody, but now we're going to 12 and this is what it means and this is why it's a big deal. But no, they came out and just jumped bam, right into 3D Touch. Didn't, didn't wait at all. And we were talking about it earlier at the beginning, at the beginning of the show, like I was ready to just destroy this feature.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. So

• 48:01Speaker 00

  But it's great.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Hearing rumors of it, it sounded bewildering.

• 48:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  And seeing the video, it seems, it definitely seems a lot more natural than I expected, but I still, it's like really hard to make an impression without having used it. And knowing like, how much pressure it like, do I have to like push through my iPhone? How does it actually feel to use 3D Touch? Like, is it natural?

• 48:24Speaker 00

  It's natural-ish. It'll like, I think it'll take a week to figure it out.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  The, the issue that I had during my own test with it was that I couldn't tell exactly what the distinction was between a 3D Touch and the kind of long press that makes all your apps start jiggling so you can delete them.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  Which by the way, still, that's still how you jiggle the apps is a long press.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, that was a problem I had on my like Apple Watch at first. I was like, I, I'm just like long touching right now and I don't understand why I'm forced touching.

• 48:54Speaker 00

  I think like we, because we've trained ourselves not to do that. We trained ourselves to understand how much pressure it takes to activate a touchscreen. And so it doesn't occur to us to like just push harder. I think, I don't know, like it's, it's, it feels very, it feels a little bit unnatural, but once you sort of like, the question is like, once you understand how to do it, can it become like a second nature thing?

• 49:14Speaker 02

  It's going to be, it's absolutely going to become second nature.

• 49:17Speaker 00

  Okay. Yeah. Can you, can you please explain why you are so, so hyped for 3D Touch? Can you, can you Skype check 3D Touch for me?

• 49:24Speaker 02

  Okay. Here's my Skype check. So today, when you open an app, like your second step is like to hunt through the app to like find the thing you actually want. Want to do, right? So like you open up Instagram and like then you find the camera or then you go into your activity feed. With 3D Touch, you just launch all that right from the icon itself, right? So it's just like quick touch and then scroll up. I want to go to the camera, right? So it's like, it's sort of combining the act of opening up the app and finding the function in the app that you're looking for. So like opening the app and like doing the thing you want to do with the app are now the same thing. That's big. It's going to save you tiny fractions of a second, but it's going to save you like those fractions like millions of times.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  And you're just going to feel better about your phone as a result. So that's my Skype check.

• 50:12Speaker 00

  All right. But that's just like the home screen. And I feel like you're excited about that, not because this feature is crazy and amazing, but because you're just you're so embittered by how little, you know, innovation has been on the basic home screen of the iPhone.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  Like, I would love to see more innovation. I'm not going to sit here and stand in the path of innovation either. That's not why I, why I do what I do.

• 50:37Speaker 00

  But the, like, the big, the big skeptical question is why do they need Force to do these software features? Why do they need Force to give us little shortcuts into the icons? Why do they need Force to give us like email previews and like live photos, which we got to talk about? Like dude, I don't know. I honestly don't. It's because we want to save long press for other things? Is it because Force is fundamentally better because you'd like it's faster?

• 51:05Speaker 02

  I think that once Force acquire, or once like the idea of touch gains this artificial sense of depth, it just opens up new UI possibilities. And so of course UI designers are going to exploit them, right? But like, I would just turn the question on its head and say like, why should touch only be in 2D? Why, why should there only be one level of touch? Like, why would you artificially constrain the number of like gestures and interactions that you can have on a phone? Like, like to me, it just seems like the more the merrier.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  All right, fine. So the, I'm actually less, I'm like, I'm like playing devil's advocate to, because I really want to listen to Casey defend the beautiful, bright, crazy, innovative future of 3D touch and how it's going to change everything again, again, and again, because it's three. But the thing that I was most worried about wasn't like, how is the physical interaction? Well, I learned how to press, you know, hard enough to get it right. My actual concern is that the stuff that it would do would have different, like, things in different apps. And this is the problem with the Apple Watch. When I force touch on the watch screen, I can change my watch face. When I force touch in like the Twitter app, it brings up a bunch of random buttons.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:23Speaker 00

  If you force touch in something else, it's like, I have no idea what's going to happen. It's just like, force touch to like, bring up some random crap. And if that's what they did on the iPhone, or if it's what they're doing on the stuff that's like beyond the demos that we saw, then I'll get real mad. But what they, what they're doing instead is you, you force, are we calling it force touch or 3D touch?

• 52:43Speaker 03

  I believe it's called peek and pop, are the two gestures.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  Ah, okay. So peeking is cool, because it's like, what is this thing that I have? Someone sent me a link, someone sent me an address, someone, I've got an email. What is this thing? I want to see what this thing is without, like, actually opening up another app or doing something. And so you can peek at it. That's cool. That's consistent. Well, what's pop?

• 53:05Speaker 03

  Pop's when it goes false screen.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  I think, I think if you just leave it for long enough, or press harder, then it, then it, that's the pop.

• 53:12Speaker 00

  So you press a little bit to peek, and then you press hard to pop?

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:16Speaker 00

  And then there's a

• 53:17Speaker 02

  And then there are, there are additional actions you can take to whip and to ne ne. That completes the set.

• 53:24Speaker 00

  Well, there's a, there's a, there's a new haptic engine in the iPhone, so that it'll give you the appropriate haptic feedback for those different actions and whether or not you screwed them up, apparently. And apparently, to make room for that new haptic engine, they made the battery smaller on the iPhone 6.

• 53:43Speaker 03

  I'm not too concerned about the battery life. I mean, it's always been pretty great and I don't see the reason why. Pretty tiny change as far as that goes.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you sell your iPhone every like six months. Your batteries never died down.

• 53:54Speaker 03

  But I think the more pressing concern here is the 16 gigabyte thing, which is at this point is just not excusable anymore.

• 54:00Speaker 00

  Right?

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  I mean, from what we were told yesterday, Dieter, the new live photos, which we haven't really talked about, but it essentially creates like a, you know, a GIF of every photo you take with sound. Take up twice as much storage space as a photo without live touch enabled. Every person I know who has run out of space on their phone, which is an incredibly high number of people in my life, has run out of space because of the photos that they've taken, right? They just, you know, take a lot of pictures and they don't bother cleaning them out because cloud storage is still honestly very confusing for a lot of people, right? So you're telling me you're going to double the amount of storage space that a photo takes by default and keep 16 gigabytes? Like, it's insane.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  Right. And Apple will store your photos in the cloud, but only if you pay them for more than five gigabytes of storage, which is like.

• 54:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, but five gigs is, I know it's not enough for.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I mean, like, if, if there was like an Apple Photos equivalent to Google Photos, I would have just stayed in that because all of my photos would have been there by now. But instead, I went through this like painstaking process to bring everything over to Google. And now like, at the end of every month, I have to like take all of my photos, photos off my phone, bring them into like Flickr and Google Photos, just make sure they're like backed up and whatnot. And I have space on my iPhone. Like, I have on numerous occasions had to like delete like half of the apps on my phone just to make room for more photos.

• 55:18Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Like, because I wasn't in a place where I could like back them up and stuff. And it's like, I'm not going to pay a hundred dollars more probably for more storage.

• 55:26Speaker 00

  So you're gonna get a, you're gonna get a 16?

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm just gonna suffer it.

• 55:31Speaker 00

  Well, actually, well, I do want to talk about live photos, but maybe instead of spending an extra hundred at the outset, you could sign up for Apple's new upgrade program.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:44Speaker 00

  Come on, those were a transition and you guys just sat there.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Um, I would say that like, actually, this is one of, I think, the most interesting things that Apple announced yesterday.

• 55:52Speaker 00

  It's like interesting, but also like totally obvious and not that interesting because like Apple's not actually like they, they got a bank to like finance small loans to customers in the Apple Store and rebrand it. That's, that's all they did, to be super clear. But the implications of it are like really interesting.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:10Speaker 00

  Right?

• 56:11Speaker 02

  What are the implications?

• 56:13Speaker 00

  So first of all, uh, the deal is good. Uh, it, it basically, it's just like an installment plan, but it comes like with Apple Care. And so once you compare it to the carriers' plans with their insurance, it ends up being in a wash. And I know you're going to come at me with AT&T next and T-Mobile jump and whatever the hell else these little plans are and all these four carriers. Those plans are garbage. They have lots of weird hidden clauses. You don't really know, well, you know, when you get to upgrade, how many things you have to pay off to do it. And like the rules around it are very like complicated. Apple's rules are simple. Pay us this money. You can upgrade once a year and you get Apple Care. And like,

• 56:55Speaker 00

  that's it. Like, and then you can take your phone to whatever carrier you want. So what's hilarious to me, and I'm was gonna write this for Saturday, but I'm just gonna tell you right now, the dream of the Nexus is alive in Apple Stores.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 57:11Speaker 00

  Right? This is what the original Nexus one was like, hey, we're gonna like, we're just gonna sell you a phone and it'll be relatively cheap and you can just take it wherever you want. It'll be unlocked. And like the fact that all the carriers switched away from their, their like crazy contracts meant that like this opening happened for Apple to do the thing that Google has been trying to get the world to do forever, that Motorola has been trying to get the world to do forever. But now like, Apple's just been quietly doing it and now they're gonna loudly do it. And that's pretty exciting.

• 57:45Speaker 03

  I suppose so. I mean, I'm so used to just selling phones and buying them out, right? And then paying for Apple care, which is more expensive now, by the way.

• 57:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:53Speaker 03

  For the success.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  But like, so, okay, actually, teach me your ways, because I never sell my phone. I was like, oh, yeah, I'll buy this and I'll sell it. No, I totally am going to sell it. It'll be fine.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  I always, I always hang on to them. I'm like, well, just in case like my other one like breaks or I lose it or something. And now I just have like a 4S sitting in a drawer that like,

• 58:11Speaker 00

  Right.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  I will, I will like touch like, I don't know, never again, or when I'm like, oh, this is cool. And then put it back in the drawer. Yeah.

• 58:19Speaker 03

  Sometimes I use Craigslist. Sometimes I use for my 6 plus I just sold. Uh, that was over to Swappa and I got like 700 bucks for it, which wasn't bad for the 120.

• 58:28Speaker 00

  Do you like meet people at coffee shops?

• 58:31Speaker 03

  No, that one's just mail.

• 58:32Speaker 00

  You mail stuff out?

• 58:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, FedEx, PayPal right away. So that's, that's a pretty good route. I think that's the way I'm going to go from now on is Swappa.

• 58:38Speaker 00

  I mean, let's like, I don't know if you know this, but Chris buys approximately a phone a month, maybe more, but he never has like 10 of them. He like, he, he, he, you know, it's a, it's a lot of money, but it's not as much as you think because he's always selling the old ones, sometimes at a profit. But what I want to know is a phone a month, going through the hassle of buying and selling them, like, how much of your life does this take up?

• 59:01Speaker 03

  Uh, I think I'm pretty seldom right now in the Note 5. I don't, I'm not really too compelled by the success. So, uh, we'll see how I feel come like two weeks from now when it's actually on sale.

• 59:11Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 59:11Speaker 03

  But, uh, but for now, I'm pretty happy on Android, I think.

• 59:15Speaker 00

  I mean, I was not gonna upgrade. I was gonna stay with just the six. Uh, but the, the fact that Apple's upgrade plan is like, I can just walk into the store and like, here's 32 bucks. And like, 32 bucks a month is like, not nothing. Like, that adds up to $750 after two years, or whatever it adds up to, 890, whatever. Um, so, but like, you know, I can like convince myself that like, I won't miss $32 a month.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  I have a question.

• 59:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Like, like, did we calculate the actual, like, total premium that you pay to do this program over just buying the phone outright for 800 bucks or whatever?

• 59:53Speaker 01

  For the 16 gigabyte, I think it's like 125 bucks extra.

• 59:58Speaker 00

  But that's the, that's the cost of the Apple care.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  I guess that's true, but like, you also don't get to keep the phone and...

• 1:00:06Speaker 00

  Well, you do after two years.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Right, that's, that's, well, oh, I guess if you keep paying it.

• 1:00:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, if you don't upgrade, yeah.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Oh, I guess that makes sense if you factor in Apple care.

• 1:00:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  So, like, the, the same, the, basically, the, the thing you're paying for is avoiding

• 1:00:20Speaker 00

  the hassle that Chris Welch goes through once a month of having to sell your phone to upgrade. And like, you're believing that it's okay for you to give up the residual value of your phone after a year to have the simplicity of what, if, it essentially, for all intents and purposes, turns out to be a leasing program unless you decide to keep it for, until the end of the two years and then you own it. And, you know, like, fundamentally, it's not like, the greatest deal. It's basically like, at a year, if you're like, oh, man, I really want the phone, you can like, do the mental math of like, well, if I paid this phone off and then I sold it, I would get this much money for it, I bet. And so then I would probably end up ahead if, than just buying the phone. Or you'd be like, oh, man, I really want the phone.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

  Well, it turns out that I can do it, and if I don't do that math, I won't know that I lost that money, hooray!

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  The thing that makes this so hard for me is like, on one hand, this is like, actually a pretty, seems like a pretty good deal for like, people like us who always want to have like, the newest phone.

• 1:01:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  On the other hand, I could just buy a Moto G for $200 and like, keep that for a few years.

• 1:01:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  And, or I could buy a Moto X for $400 and like, keep that for a few years and have like, a pretty good phone. Like, and not be giving Apple, what, like, $380, $400 every year? I mean, like, there, there is a big cost difference if you don't, you know, if you are willing to step out of the constant upgrade cycle. Like, this, in some ways, is a way for Apple to preserve the like, I'm gonna get my phone every two years.

• 1:01:50Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  Or accelerate, I guess.

• 1:01:53Speaker 00

  So, is the moral of the story that buying a phone every year is expensive, no matter what?

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Well...

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  Is that basically where we're at?

• 1:02:01Speaker 00

  Okay, we gotta wrap, so...

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  I do not know which of these three things I'm buying. Definitely buying the Apple TV. I am probably not getting the iPad Pro and I'm gonna say I'm not gonna buy the iPhone success, but I'm totally gonna buckle in like a month and buy it.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Same boat.

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  Same boat?

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  Alright.

• 1:02:18Speaker 03

  Probably the TV, almost definitely, just to see how much different it is and how much better, if any, but the phone, we'll see in about a week or so.

• 1:02:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:02:26Speaker 03

  But, yeah.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  Casey?

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  No TV, no iPad Pro, but definitely a success.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Who's going rose gold?

• 1:02:35Speaker 00

  The rose gold is-

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  Going for the rose gold, baby.

• 1:02:37Speaker 00

  It's beautiful. It's really good looking. I'm not kidding. It's really good looking.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  I've been shocked at the response from the straight male community to the rose gold iPhone.

• 1:02:47Speaker 00

  By the way-

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  It's just outrageously positive.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  If you are looking for the representative of like the straight white male community, like the most boring community on earth, you are looking at him. We're listening to the sound of his voice right now. If you want to follow me on Twitter, you can, but you should also, actually, you should follow Verge, we're @verge on Twitter. We're also on Snapchat. A lot of cool stuff happened on Snapchat during the Apple event and a lot of cool stuff's happening. Some Snap- Snap tracks went up today. We are the Real Verge on Snapchat and we're also scoping a lot and that's gonna be really exciting. In addition to those social networks, you should also just head over to iTunes.com/verge, click the buttons and you will go there and you will discover that you could rate us

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  and we recommend that you rate us five stars, don't you?

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:03:40Speaker 00

  And what should, what should the review be of our podcast?

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  I don't know. What's it, is it out of stars, hearts? What are we looking at here?

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  Stars. They're gonna give us five stars and then they're gonna tell us something in the body of the review. That's like, you know, a recommendation.

• 1:03:55Speaker 03

  For this one, it'll probably be chill, I think, for this review.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  What I would say is, hey, if you watch the show live, the host will actually respond to your tweets and, you know, good luck getting that on the This American Life podcast.

• 1:04:08Speaker 00

  That's true. That's true. Have I responded to any tweets? I will. I will respond to every single person that tweeted to me during the show. So that's exciting. One other thing I need to mention, just because I almost forgot, was that this episode of the Vergecast was brought to you by Braintree. So if you're working on a mobile app and you're searching for a simple payment solution, you should check out Braintree. With one simple integration, you can offer customers every way to pay, period. To learn more and to get your first 50 grand in transactions without fees, go to braintreepayments.com/vergecast. You should also check out Verge ESP. It's a great podcast. Also check out What's Tech. Also a great podcast.

• 1:04:49Speaker 00

  Also check out Chris Welch's usedphones.com. Great service to buy high-end telephones. I am @Backline on Twitter. Jake is Jake underscore K.

• 1:05:01Speaker 03

  I am at Chris Welch.

• 1:05:03Speaker 00

  Yes. And you're like, you gotta be cool to follow you, right?

• 1:05:05Speaker 03

  No, not anymore.

• 1:05:08Speaker 00

  And Casey, you're Casey Newton?

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  I'm Casey Newton, and I discourage cool people from following me.

• 1:05:14Speaker 00

  That is the perfect way to end this extremely nerdy podcast. Bye, everybody.

• 1:05:18Speaker 03

  Goodbye.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  Goodbye. So long.