HomePod, WWDC 2017, and DJI Spark

This week, it’s Apple’s turn to take over The Vergecast. Dieter and Jake have just come back from WWDC while Nilay and Paul watched from afar so the gang has a lot to talk about with the new products announced. We also have Ben Popper stop by the show to talk about DJI’s newest drone, the Spark. There’s a whole lot more in between that so listen to it all you get it all. 04:56 - Apple announces HomePod speaker to take on Sonos 32:14 - DJI Spark review with Ben Popper 47:22 - Apple announces new 10.5-inch iPad Pro 1:02:51 - Apple is launching an iOS ‘ARKit’ for augmented reality apps 1:06:05 - iMac Pro introduced / macOS High Sierra 1:18:37 - watchOS 4 brings new Siri watchface, fitness coaching, and a new app-browsing UI 1:21:32 - Paul’s weekly segment “Gates-all-around, all around” 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.

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of TheVerge.com. The .com is a reference to our website, but The Verge actually exists on multiple media channels.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Or on Peach.

• 0:18Nilay Patel?

  Do you think of The Verge as TheVerge.com, or do you think of it as The Verge? I think of it as The Verge, but I think all of us canonically think of it as TheVerge.com.

• 0:28Speaker 02

  Was there any question that you would go with .com? Did you ever throw around .org?

• 0:32Nilay Patel?

  There was a real moment when we weren't gonna get that domain name.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  Oh yeah?

• 0:36Nilay Patel?

  Oh yeah, there's a whole-

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Was there like, somebody squatting on it?

• 0:39Nilay Patel?

  The domain name we wanted was Verge.com.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 0:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, so we were, this is my, this is not news. There was, WWDC happened this week.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:47Nilay Patel?

  The DJI Spark was reviewed, we're gonna talk about all that. But first, a long digression into us naming the site five years ago. No, we wanted, this is actually Apple news, related to Apple news. We were called This Is My Next, so we're like, we should buy Next.com and just call the site Next. It turns out, Apple owns Next.com.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Oh, of course they do.

• 1:07Nilay Patel?

  Due to their, like, you know, company resurrecting purchase of Next from Steve Jobs, they were not willing at that time-

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Just in case they needed.

• 1:15Nilay Patel?

  -to sell the domain. I wrote like, an email, I was like, "Hey guys, this is actually not about review units. I was wondering if we could buy Next.com." It didn't, they said no. Anyway, and then Verge.com was owned by another magazine company, and then The Verge was an internet ISP, like an ancient dial-up, like defunct ISP, so we've been in the-

• 1:38Speaker 02

  You just bought the ISP out.

• 1:40Nilay Patel?

  All of their modems.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  That is how we started servicing.

• 1:42Nilay Patel?

  There's actually a closet full of Sportster 56k modems that we got in the deal. Anyway, look, it's The Vergecast, it's starting. I'm Neelai Patel, you might have noticed Jake Kastenakis is here.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  Hello, thank you for having me.

• 1:55Nilay Patel?

  Dieter Bone is on the phone, hey! Hello. How, we never made that rhyme before.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  We're never gonna make it again.

• 2:01Nilay Patel?

  We'll see.

• 2:06Nilay Patel?

  And Paul Miller is here.

• 2:07Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 2:08Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I really wanted to have Lauren Good on the show, because she was at WWDC with you guys.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:12Nilay Patel?

  I, I couldn't make it this year, so she was there, uh, well, well, all of you were there. Um, but I'm actually going on Lauren's show, too embarrassed to ask, to talk about WWDC, and we're taping that like, two hours from now, so I, so Lauren should be here, but we're, if you want to hear Lauren and I talk about WWDC, tune into her show. Kara will be there, it'll be fun. But anyway, we got, here's our crew. Dieter, Jake, you were at Dub Dub. Jake, this was your first Apple event.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  This is also the first time that I found out that people just colloquially call it Dub Dub, which I'm not on board with. People do not do that, like, elsewhere, and I swear I have not heard that outside of.

• 2:50Nilay Patel?

  They will break you. I fought it as well.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Somebody had a shirt that said Dub Dub on it. Why?

• 2:55Nilay Patel?

  I also fought this. I fought it for a year.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  Is WWDC that hard to?

• 2:59Nilay Patel?

  Yes. Well, first of all, yes, and two, they will just, you can't fight it.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 3:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like, the next, it just happens.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Not having this.

• 3:08Nilay Patel?

  It's like, it's like calling them neck buds. It's just, there's no way around it. Yeah, you just have to take it. Anyway, but it was your first Apple event.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was. The first Apple event, period. Um, it was just crazy, because I've been, obviously, watching the keynotes streamed for years and years and years. The in-person experience is dramatically different. It is like, so energetic and also very hectic at times. Just enormous amounts of people, all trying to get to the same space at once, but also a ton of, like, actual in-person energy. It's, it's very strange.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  And is the energy coming from the developers, or from the stage?

• 3:45Speaker 02

  They're definitely like, playing off each other once you get into the room, but it's, it's weird, because like, by the end, I think people are like, wiped out. Like, I, I was like, sweating, I had to unbutton my shirt. Um, but then, I, I don't know, there's like, this buzz going on, once people have stuff to talk about, um, after the, the entire event is done.

• 4:06Nilay Patel?

  No, it's like, it was, we, this is the first one I haven't gone to in ages. So I was here in the office, and I, my body was having like, physical reactions. Like, I was all ready to live blog, I was all like, I was hearing music, and I was like, I don't have anything to do. So what I did instead was I incessantly bothered Jake about the photos he was taking.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Nilay was like, it's as though we were like in a sports car and I'm driving and he was like, pedal to the metal, got it, faster, faster. Like seriously, he does every 30 seconds, he'd be like, crank the shutter speed, don't be afraid, you can do this.

• 4:42Nilay Patel?

  That's, uh, that's accurate. That's super, super accurate. Anyway, let's talk about the news. A huge show. That's enough verge digression. Um, but here's five more minutes of verge domain purchase history. No, no, let's talk about the news. Tons of news. We gotta start with it. HomePod.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  HomePod.

• 4:57Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, you, under some very strange rules, were allowed to listen to the HomePod. But tell us what it is and what happened in the small room that you were ushered into and out of.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  So the HomePod is a speaker and I'm actually at a loss to describe the size of it. Um, it's, I said it was the size of like two grapefruits stacked, but it might be a little bit bigger than that. And it's a speaker that is basically designed for music. And then Apple's like, oh wait, we should put Siri on here too. Uh, or at least that's my impression because they talked about music in, you know, forever and talked about the quality of the speakers and the seven tweeters and one big subwoofer and blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 5:35Nilay Patel?

  It's not big. It's not even a subwoofer. It's a four inch woofer. They call it a high excursion woofer.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  I will tell you, it produces more bass than it has any right to, given its size.

• 5:46Nilay Patel?

  Those are audio tricks made by the A8 chip driving seven independent tweeters.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 5:50Nilay Patel?

  That's my, that's my firm belief.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Anyway, it is a speaker, which I think, at least in the control demo in which I heard it, sounds pretty good where they're doing lots of audio jiggery pokery.

• 6:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  It also is a Siri smart speaker. Um, the interesting thing about what they're doing with Siri, it felt really tacked on in the keynote and we haven't seen it demoed. Um, it has, and we should talk about this. It has a thing on the top that isn't an LCD, but does appear to be a touch panel and does light up. So I guess it's like a one pixel touchscreen.

• 6:25Nilay Patel?

  One gigantic pixel.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, but it does like the little Siri waveform. Uh, and, but it's, what Apple is doing is somewhere sort of in between what, uh, Amazon is doing with Alexa where you like, they'll just let anybody do anything and figure out your keywords and you're on your own. And Google is trying to make Google Home into basically like the web where like you, nothing gets like specifically programmed into it. You don't turn on apps. You just ask for what you want and it like goes out on the internet and tries to figure it out. Uh, Apple's in the middle where they say they're going to have, uh, specific quote unquote domains of things that Siri can do. And those include like setting alarms, checking the weather, setting a timer, asking a general question about, you know, how tall is LeBron James, you know, stuff like that.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  What's not clear is how, how many of those domains are going to be open to third party developers and how quickly they're going to expand it into other stuff like, I don't know, Spotify.

• 7:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Uh, you, you can play Spotify over AirPlay 2. Um, and as far as I know, the only thing in AirPlay and AirPlay 2 is there's a 2 on the end of, uh, the word.

• 7:26Nilay Patel?

  There are literally no technical documentation. I mean, look, I will say this before we talk about the rest of WBC. There's a whole conference still going on. There's sessions, developers are learning things.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  Apple's redesigned its documentation site. I think it looks pretty nice.

• 7:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So like, there's a bunch of, they didn't say it. It's not particularly public right now. But I will say the amount of time they spent on AirPlay 2 as a concept was nil, right? Like they just announced that there's AirPlay 2 now.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Well, AirPlay 2, I think the thing that's new in AirPlay 2 is like the speakers become aware of what room they're in and aware of each other. So if you have two HomePods, they can turn into stereo speakers and you can tell the HomePods you're in the living room and I have another one in the bedroom. And then AirPlay 2 can manage where the sound is going, you know, what room it's in and if, how many speakers are in each of those rooms. The other thing that's interesting about AirPlay 2 is it's on the Apple TV properly. So you can now like, stream music more easily to the Apple TV if, you know, when it's hooked up to your TV. There's like,

• 8:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and they have, you know, there are third party speakers with AirPlay 2, just as there were third party speakers with AirPlay, but like,

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:36Nilay Patel?

  A large, open question about AirPlay 2 is whether they have rethought it conceptually to match what Google Cast does or Spotify Connect does, which is instead of you streaming bits of audio from your phone to a speaker, what you're actually doing is sending a URL. And the speaker is retrieving that URL from the internet and playing it back, which has, at least in my experience, proven to be a much more robust idea for how we should control things. Google Cast has wacky problems where your phone forgets that it ever said that.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:10Nilay Patel?

  It like, gaslights you. It's like, I don't know, I didn't tell anyone to play any music, whatever. Um, and then you have to like, you just have to pretend that you know what you're doing.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Um, anyway, the HomePod is like-

• 9:22Nilay Patel?

  No, but I want to finish AirPlay 2 for one second. All of that is confusing because of what you're about to say, which is the HomePod is a computer, it has an A8 chip in it. And it has Siri, so you can tell it to play the music.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Right, but right now I believe it only directly supports Apple Music when you tell it to play the music.

• 9:40Nilay Patel?

  Sure, but it still has, it still has to know like, the URL taxonomy of Apple Music, so when you say play a song, it understands how to find it. Is the Bowers and Wilkins speaker that has AirPlay 2 gonna do the same thing? Very unclear.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  That's true, I have no idea.

• 9:57Nilay Patel?

  Right, so like, that's kind of the, the open issue with AirPlay 2, at least in my-

• 10:01Speaker 01

  I think, I think AirPlay 2 has nothing to do with like, asking Siri to do stuff. AirPlay 2, if you have a speaker with AirPlay 2, it doesn't make it a smart speaker.

• 10:08Nilay Patel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  If you have a speaker with AirPlay 2, it means you can send music to it and we don't know if it means it's grabbing the URL or not.

• 10:14Nilay Patel?

  Right, but if you have a speaker with Google Cast or Spotify Connect and you tell it to play a song, it will go fetch the song.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Correct. So- Cause it's a Wi-Fi speaker, and so is the HomePod.

• 10:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Um, so the demo that I heard was a HomePod up against Alexa playing over Bluetooth, and up against a Sonos that I feel pretty strongly was, um, mistuned. Uh, but I, like, obviously I can't prove that, I don't, I don't wanna, um, accuse, uh, you know, Apple who set up the demo intentionally like, nerfing the, the Sonos, it was, it was a Sonos 3. But, you know, obviously, the HomePod sounded better because that's that was the intention of the demo. But like, we actually do need to test it out ourselves. Yeah. In terms of sound, like, here are the two interesting things. I already mentioned that if you separate, if you have two of them, it'll do like proper stereo separation and like you really hear it.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  If you just have one in the room, Apple is not using those seven tweeters around in a circle to like send, you know, some music to the right, some music to the left. What it does is it listens to the audio that's playing and then it can guess the shape of the room based on, you know, the echoes. And then it will send different frequencies of the music to different tweeters to try and create a more like bigger immersive sound. And the terminology here is very fuzzy, but it's like, if there's a song with like strong vocals and a piano, they'll shoot the piano to bounce off the back wall. So it sort of feels like it's ambient and they'll beam form the vocals directly into the center of the room. So you can hear them a little bit more crispy, crisp, crisply. Yeah. Dieter and I got in a huge argument.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  We got in a huge argument. I will say like, it sounds good, but if like you care very much about like tweaking exactly how your surround sound works and where like different things come from, you're probably not going to be happy because Apple has made very specific audio choices with this thing. That's probably going to please the vast majority of people. But if you're the kind of person who like actually has, you know, eight speakers in your living room and a subwoofer and you like, like tune them all and do all the crap with them, it's probably going to annoy you.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  This to me is

• 12:18Speaker 01

  I am that person.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  Is very exciting, but I also would be really annoyed by it. Like, like this is like showing up at somebody's house and their, their, their TVs on 120 hertz. It's like, I get it. It's doing more.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  It's

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Showing you so many more screens.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  There's more technology happening.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  It's not what it's supposed to be.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna turn this off.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  We had a whole conversation about when it's accept, like how good of a friend you need to be to turn that off for somebody.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  Well, the, the link will be in the show notes. But uh, the, but this idea, like, a lot more can be done with this, like, room mapping. Because the best way to listen to music is two speakers, two nice bookshelf speakers with an amplifier that are aimed pretty much at your head and you sit at a fixed distance from them and one kinda hits your one ear and one kinda hits the other ear, more or less. And that's because that's what the people in studios do to, like, engineer music. And so you can hear music how it was engineered and so you actually hear what it was supposed

• 13:25Speaker 03

  to sound like. But there's, but if you aren't doing that, music is bouncing around your room and it's messing up.

• 13:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  So there is real potential for, like, a detailed map of a room and understanding the materials in a room and really good bounce shots to actually make, and like, also tracking where you are to make music.

• 13:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  Like, sound really good.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna briefly say a thing and then watch Paul and Neil's head explode. I fundamentally think that the myth of the author of authorial intent also applies to audio and the idea that we should try and perfectly match whatever an engineer, sound engineer heard is ridiculous. You experience music in the moment you hear it in the same way you experience a book in your own particular context and trying to get back to the perfect intent of what the person who created the thing was is a mistake.

• 14:18Nilay Patel?

  But, that is like a-

• 14:20Speaker 03

  Well, wrong!

• 14:21Nilay Patel?

  No, no, no, no. I agree with you. I just think, uh, this is gonna get really weird. That is like very rockist. Like, you're having an argument with, like, an imaginary rockist from the past. That's not how modern music is made at all, right? Like, Bruno Mars keeps an Escalade in his driveway to master his albums on, because he knows most people, he's like, there's a great Rolling Stone profile of him where he's like, "I need a new car, but I'm gonna keep this car forever because this is the car that I make my music in." Right? Like, they're not, they know that people listen to it on shit headphones. They know that people listen to it on a laptop speakers. Like, the, the, the goal of the audio engineer is to, like-

• 15:01Nilay Patel?

  Make it sound good wherever you are. So there's a little, like, that's a modern, I don't know, like Jimmy Plant was like, you have to buy the speakers. Like, that's like a whole, that's a whole thing in the past. But-

• 15:11Speaker 01

  I love, I love that I've thrown this firebomb into Eli's brain and he wants to move on and talk about the iPad and he just can't.

• 15:17Speaker 03

  I think you put in the exact right framework, but we don't have to argue all day, but you, you, you put, you teed it up right.

• 15:22Nilay Patel?

  But, but there are some like questions of what it's doing and then we should, we have to talk about Siri on this thing, because that's actually more important. But in terms of what it's doing with sound, it's got these seven tweeters, it can beam form the tweeters. Lots of things can do that, right? Like, that is not a particularly novel, like, you can buy a Yamaha soundbar with like 140 speakers in it and it can create surround sound in your home. It can do virtual seven channels. The Sonos that they had in there, every Sonos has True Tone, which I believe was designed to make you appear to be a complete buffoon, because you, you start it and then it's, the speaker starts chirping at you and you are

• 16:04Nilay Patel?

  supposed to walk around your room with your phone and there's a video and you're just waving at the phone up and down in the air as you like do laps of your room and your phone collects all the data and sends it back and it tunes it. So like, tuning the speaker to sound good in a room has been done. It's probably a little bit clunkier than this because it sounds like Apple is doing it in real time. Creating virtual sound spaces with a single speaker has been done, probably a little bit clunkier because you, you know, this only has seven tweeters. So there's, I just have a lot of questions about what methods they're using, if they represent massive changes over existing methods, and fundamentally, if like, that sounds good, like, if that sounds the way you want.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  I think they're banking on people trusting Apple to make something that sounds the way they want it to sound.

• 16:49Nilay Patel?

  Right. No, I, I, I don't doubt it. It's just, the way that they're talking about it is though no one has ever-

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 16:55Nilay Patel?

  -considered using multiple drivers to tune audio to a room is very Apple. It's just, this is very Apple. But there are, there are known issues with doing that. So like, I have seven speakers in my house and if I play music and turn on virtual surround, it will do the thing. It will route the vocals to the center speaker, it'll play some guitar tinkles over the back speakers. Does that sound better than just two speakers?

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Has that been done in this kind of solo form, though? Like, what you're describing is mostly stuff to augment your TV or multi-piece surround sound systems. Like, Apple, yeah, it can do stereo, but I feel like they're pitching this as like, "Hey, you kind of want a speaker that's gonna sound good, like, somewhere in your house. Just buy this. Don't think about it."

• 17:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:42Speaker 03

  If I have an Apple TV, can I replace my soundbar with this thing? And have the Apple TV route all the audio to it?

• 17:46Nilay Patel?

  Completely unknown.

• 17:47Speaker 03

  Please do that.

• 17:48Nilay Patel?

  So there's, like, a lot of unknowns there. And that's just the audio side. We have yet to talk about the Siri side and the controls on top of the thing.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Oh, but Neelai, it's not Siri. I mean, it's Siri, but don't think of Siri as an assistant. Think of Siri as a musicologist.

• 18:05Speaker 03

  I know we just had this conversation, but it's almost unacceptable to me. I'm not gonna talk to your assistant if your assistant has multiple personalities, depending on which device I've picked up, to talk to that. Like, my mom is my mom with her emailer, texter, caller, talk to her in person. It's the same person.

• 18:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. She doesn't get different capabilities, depending on which device she had.

• 18:28Speaker 03

  Or different interests.

• 18:30Nilay Patel?

  That's true. If your mom's in a car, she's a driver. You can't be, like, driving to the store if your mom's in a plane. I got you.

• 18:38Speaker 03

  I can't be driving to the store.

• 18:39Nilay Patel?

  If your mom's in a car, you can, you tell her to drive you to the store. But if your mom's in, like, a passenger on a plane, you can't be driving to the store.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  You're right. Take off.

• 18:47Nilay Patel?

  Depending on what she's in. This is way off the rails. If you, Paul.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  She's the same woman.

• 18:56Nilay Patel?

  Well, if you're in this room, I can be like, "Please podcast with me." But if you and I were, like, in a bar, I couldn't be like, "Let's start podcasting."

• 19:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's called an anchor.

• 19:04Nilay Patel?

  All right. Anyway, keep going.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  That's all I got.

• 19:08Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  It has Siri. Siri does different things. I don't know what to tell you. It has Siri, they're focusing more on, like, it can, like, plug into Apple TV's, like, smart playlists. It's unclear if they're any different than Apple Music on your phone. I don't really think they are. And then you can ask it assistant stuff. And to me, the most interesting part of this is, I think they said it was coming out in December? Is that right? When is the speaker coming out?

• 19:31Nilay Patel?

  It's coming up. And that is unclear, but they obviously want it out for the holidays. Yeah, and it's 350 bucks. Right, so that's a price worth talking about. They're, the way that Phil Schiller did the math on stage was-

• 19:45Speaker 02

  Made no sense.

• 19:47Nilay Patel?

  It made a little bit of sense. They're like, he pointed out the Sonos Play, he brought up both the Sonos and the Echo on a slide on stage. And he was like, the Sonos costs like 299, and the Echo costs 109, and if you just add that together, you get 329. Like, that was basically his math, right? And he's like, and our price is better. But obviously, those are like radically different products. It is worth noting, although it's, the prices are close, it's fair to compare, but it is worth noting, the Sonos Play 3 is their oldest product. Generally regarded as the worst sounding Sonos product. The Play 1, I think, sounds better. But I don't think that's why people buy Amazon Echos. I don't think they buy it for great music.

• 20:30Nilay Patel?

  I don't think that's why people go up Google Home, when they announced the Google Home, Google said it sounds better than the Echo. Literally because anything can sound better than the Echo.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Okay, so that's a really good question, though, right? If Apple is selling a speaker, how many people want a 350 dollar speaker, right?

• 20:46Nilay Patel?

  I think a lot of people want a 350.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  A 350 dollar speaker? I feel like people just want like a speaker. How many people are gonna, I, I don't know.

• 20:53Nilay Patel?

  The UE Mega Boom is like one of the most popular Bluetooth speakers. It is 299. Right? Like, Apple stores are like wall to wall full of 200 or 400 dollar speakers.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  It just seems like a very hard sell if you're like, well, I can get an Echo for, what, 179? It does basically the same thing.

• 21:13Nilay Patel?

  It's clear to me now that we have no idea how much the Amazon Echo, because they're always changing.

• 21:17Speaker 03

  They are. The classic, like the Bose Wave Radio, I feel like is the classic item in this genre. That was then, like the iPod Hi-Fi was 350, but the Bose Wave Radios have been around that price. My one thing is-

• 21:33Speaker 03

  People like these like little pill Bluetooth speakers they carry around. But also, a lot more people than, right now than ever, have wireless headphones.

• 21:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  And in their home are listening to music on headphones.

• 21:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I, I, I think those are just deeply different use cases. Like, I think being able to say to an Echo or a home right now, "Hey, play some music," is really valuable.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 22:01Nilay Patel?

  Being able to say that and then have the music sound great is really valuable. You know when the Echo got really useful? When they turned on Spotify by default, right? And I, I think I've said this on the show like 100 times. Apple Music is great. It's actually the thing I use. I have no problem with this thing defaulting to Apple Music.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 22:18Nilay Patel?

  I think it's, it has become, I need to write this post. Maybe now is a good peg for it.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  Is it the big fonts that really push you over the edge?

• 22:25Nilay Patel?

  Huge font. No, it's the only service that respects the idea that you might have local music.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  Oh, right.

• 22:30Nilay Patel?

  It's the only, the service that like respects the idea that you have a collection, a library.

• 22:35Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 22:35Nilay Patel?

  Right? Spotify is like totally playlist-based. Title is like, very confusing in my mind. Um, do, but like, Apple is just really good at saying, "This is your library."

• 22:45Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 22:45Nilay Patel?

  Right? And whether that library's in the cloud or on your phone, it all logically is the same thing. And then it's good at saying, "Here is a view of your library as it exists on your phone." Which is very useful to me, because I'm always on a train or a plane. Um, so I'm fine with that, but that means their total addressable market for this product is like 27 million Apple Music people, which is not the normal size of an Apple market.

• 23:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 23:10Nilay Patel?

  Like, the Apple market usually is like, all 6 billion people on Earth will eventually have this product, right? So, they have to figure that out. They have to figure out how to get Siri to address Spotify, which maybe they could do. Or they have to figure out how to make Apple Music much bigger. And maybe that is gonna happen, because everyone is gonna want this product. But that little part of the loop, to me, is not closed.

• 23:32Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 23:33Nilay Patel?

  Um, and also, the, the whole HomeKit side of what Siri can do with this thing. Again, it's WWC, so they're rolling out new things. I think Jake, you talked to them about HomeKit probably a little bit.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  I did not actually catch up with them on this stuff, but they talked about it a little bit on stage. So I think it can control all the basic stuff that your phone can control for HomeKit.

• 23:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  It's a general HomeKit controller, which is nice. It's a nice bonus. But I also think that unlike the Echo Dot, which you can just put like a ton of them around your house if you have a bunch of smart home stuff. I don't imagine that people are going to have like a ton of these things in their home because they're $350 speakers. You don't need a $350 speaker in every room. So I think that's, that makes the smart home proposition a little bit harder.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  What happens if you say, hey Siri, I'm sure this has been solved. I just thought of it now. What happens if you say, hey Siri, and your phone and your speaker are right there? Do they both try to answer you?

• 24:30Nilay Patel?

  Oh, no, Apple, they talked about this. I heard, I think, Craig Feigery and Phil Schiller were on Gruber's podcast, John Gruber's podcast. They do the same thing as Google. They just do it locally. So every device listens to you and then they negotiate as to which one's closest to you and one lights up. So they know that's a problem. This is like Apple's thing, right? They're trying to do as much of this locally as they can.

• 24:50Speaker 03

  I appreciate it.

• 24:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and that's to save your privacy on this.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Wait, but if they're choosing which one, not all Siri's can do the same things.

• 24:58Nilay Patel?

  Right. Some Siri's are in a boat.

• 25:00Speaker 03

  Right?

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:01Nilay Patel?

  Some Siri's are on a plane.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  Mom on a plane.

• 25:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, who knows, right?

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Like, I find it very puzzling that the Siri in HomePod is more limited than the Siri's elsewhere. That does not make sense to me.

• 25:19Nilay Patel?

  But Siri and Apple.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Google does the same thing, though. Google's notoriously doing the same thing with the home. Like, what you could, like, up until very recently, like, you couldn't, like, set a reminder on the Google Home. You couldn't, like, make a calendar appointment.

• 25:32Nilay Patel?

  Because they had to enable multiple voices and we have no idea if HomePod will support multiple voices.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  That is a great point.

• 25:38Nilay Patel?

  No one knows. Dieter, can you talk about the top of the HomePod? Can you address this burbling controversy that exists in our world?

• 25:47Speaker 01

  I have seen two different versions of the top of the HomePod. The version they showed on stage and the version they had in the big public demo room had a circular glowy zone that waves around a little bit. It almost looks like, imagine if you were trying to project that classic Siri waveform with a literal projector underneath it. It kind of looks like that. So it moves, but it's not like a screen. I saw another version, which was clearly more pre-production, that had a giant plus and minus button on top of it. And I was like, what's the deal with that? And I'm told that you will be able to adjust the volume directly on the thing. You don't just have to ask Siri. So it will be a touch panel. It's unclear if you're going to be tapping those zones or if you're going to rotate

• 26:31Speaker 01

  your finger on it like you do on the Google Home. But it looks to me like what it is, is a touch panel that lights up.

• 26:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, on the website, on Apple's website, it says you can touch the top for volume and playback.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:44Nilay Patel?

  But we don't know, but we don't know if it's a screen.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  I don't think it's a screen. It doesn't look like a screen to me.

• 26:50Nilay Patel?

  Right. So you'd say, hey Siri.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  The thing doesn't go out until December. They could change their mind. But it looks like a touch panel that lights up. But it can't literally show you information other than like, I'm here and listening. It might have a couple of different states. Like it might turn blue or whatever. I don't know. But it's a very simplistic.

• 27:07Nilay Patel?

  It's not going to display.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  What is a screen really?

• 27:09Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, this is like, there's an argument out in the world, right? Like, the Echo show came out with a touchscreen. Then there was a bunch of rumors about the HomePod that said it won't have a screen. Phil Schiller has said, we don't think these devices, or we think these devices should have a screen. And then now it has a display. And we are arguing semantically over whether that constitutes a screen.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  The Echo has a display.

• 27:35Nilay Patel?

  Right. Yeah, right. The light.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's got a ring or lights. And then it changes color. It provides information. And in fact, it's a lot easier to see information on the side of a thing than on the top of a thing.

• 27:47Nilay Patel?

  So you're saying the Echo has a touchscreen? Yeah, basically.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  It, I think the HomePod is slightly domed on top, is that right? Yes, you can sort of see it from the side.

• 27:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but my point here, regardless of this very entertaining semantic argument, is what most people think of a touchscreen is like the iPhone screen, right? A big display that shows you interface elements that you can touch and interact with. Or like a palm trio. Yeah, or like a palm trio. Uh, this does not appear to- Nobody thinks that. This does not appear to have that, right?

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Why didn't they put a physical keyboard on the HomePod? That's what I wanted to know.

• 28:25Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it doesn't, it doesn't have a line in.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  That is true, it does not have a line in.

• 28:30Nilay Patel?

  Are you kidding? Of course it doesn't have a line in, what are you talking about? But it doesn't have like lightning in? It doesn't have Bluetooth? It does have USB. No, it's AC powered. And it doesn't have Bluetooth? From what we know at this moment, it does not have Bluetooth. So the, the ways you can get this thing to play music are limited to Siri activating Apple Music locally on the thing, which is fine. So it definitely couldn't work as a home movie speaker. No, but it has AirPlay 2. Oh, well, of course. So whatever that is- Yeah.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  But this gets to Neelai's point, that the addressable market for this thing are iPhone users that have Apple Music or are willing to switch to Apple Music right now. Like, if you're an Apple Music user on Android, first of all, uh, call me, I'm very curious to hear what your life is like.

• 29:18Nilay Patel?

  It's great, I love it.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:20Nilay Patel?

  I love everything about it.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Uh, it's like, well, sorry for your luck, like this thing is not designed for you, it's designed for iPhone people. And that's fine, that's like, that's, that's a totally legitimate thing for Apple to do, but, uh, it is curious.

• 29:32Nilay Patel?

  Can you clarify?

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Cause-

• 29:34Nilay Patel?

  You, you can't set it up without an iPhone.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Well, you maybe could, but you can't, you can't say, "Hey Siri, play some music", unless it's, like, you could, I guess you could set it up without an iPhone, but like, then you can't play Spotify on it, right? Cause you can't AirPlay other stuff to it.

• 29:47Nilay Patel?

  If you have an Android phone with Apple Music- Right. The step between you taking this thing out of a box and pairing it to your Wi-Fi is unclear, because the setup they demoed was like you wave your iPhone near it and it takes the pairing information. But if you have Apple Music, the thing will work. So you could, you could buy Apple Music just for this thing. Here's what I'm trying to get the audience to understand. This thing looks neat. Yeah. It is just an endless series of questions about how it will work in practice after that. And Dieter heard one demo, it sounded great. That's cool. But all the little bits and pieces that make it work in your life are kind of trailing off into question marks. Would you say it's the size of a basketball? Or smaller? No, it's smaller than a basketball. Like a woman's basketball? Smaller than that. Hmm.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  I feel like I should read an ad.

• 30:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  And then we should talk about iOS.

• 30:36Nilay Patel?

  Or Hi Sierra, or the new iPads, or the new Macs, or the iMac Pro. There's so many things.

• 30:43Nilay Patel?

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• 31:27Nilay Patel?

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• 31:53Nilay Patel?

  So, before we come back to the show and Apple news, I wanted to make sure we talked to Ben Popper about the DJI Spark, which is DJI's newest drone. It's $500, it's super cool. Ben did a whole review of it. So, we're going to talk to Ben for 15 minutes or so, and we'll come back, finish up with all the Apple news. A little break, just pure gadget bliss with Ben Popper. All right, I have Ben Popper.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  Hello, everybody.

• 32:16Nilay Patel?

  How's it going? This is a special interlude.

• 32:18Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 32:19Nilay Patel?

  We did a Vlad interlude a couple of days ago, but the Vlad interlude was... Like free association.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:25Nilay Patel?

  Flat.

• 32:26Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 32:26Nilay Patel?

  But you.

• 32:27Speaker 04

  I have a product to talk about.

• 32:29Nilay Patel?

  A product that is so interesting and important to me that I wanted to interrupt the WWDC Vergecast special.

• 32:35Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 32:36Nilay Patel?

  And do this segment just focused on it. DJI Spark.

• 32:39Speaker 04

  It's a magical little product. I had it here in the office. I know it attracted your attention and then we had Ezra Klein from Vox and you kind of like wanted to show it off to him.

• 32:47Nilay Patel?

  I wanted to show it off to everybody.

• 32:49Speaker 04

  That's, that's the experience of it. So you're taking it out and you can just sort of like pull it out of a pocket. Like nobody knows you have a drone. You're like, oh, I have a drone. They're like, whoa. And then you like put it in your hand. You're like, you want, you want to see it? And they're like, what do you mean? You just like take off from your hand.

• 33:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:02Speaker 04

  And then you go into Jedi mode. You start moving it around.

• 33:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 04

  And then immediately they're like, wow, can I try? And you're like, yeah, you can do that. And then somebody who knows nothing about technology or drones like puts their hands up and then they're like flying a drone.

• 33:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:13Speaker 04

  It's crazy. It's amazing.

• 33:14Nilay Patel?

  Poor Ezra. He, I mean, obviously vox.com is like in the middle of the most morale draining.

• 33:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 33:22Nilay Patel?

  Administration in political history. And he, we're just like playing with drones.

• 33:26Speaker 04

  Right.

• 33:26Nilay Patel?

  And he goes, man, the Verge just has the most fun.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  Hey, it's good for traffic, Ezra. Trump era is good for traffic. Can't complain.

• 33:32Nilay Patel?

  Tell the listener like what this product is and like why, what is going on at DJI?

• 33:37Speaker 04

  Sure. So, you know, DJI, uh, back in 2013, released the Phantom, which was kind of the first drone that made it pretty easy to fly. Or that's what it felt like in 2013. You took it out of the box. You didn't have to like assemble it or like screw something on or, you know, fix some crazy wires. And then you got it up in the air and it could do some smart things like hover in place and, you know, go out and then return to home.

• 33:59Nilay Patel?

  This is the first Phantom.

• 34:00Speaker 04

  The first Phantom.

• 34:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:01Speaker 04

  Um, and someone was like, wow, that's such an accessible consumer product. Now, you know, fast forward to 2017 and the Phantom looks like this crazy big thing that you would only use if you were professional.

• 34:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:13Speaker 04

  And you've got, uh, you know, the DJI Mavic that came out in March of last year and everyone's like, wow, this drone is so small and accessible. You know, like, you know, we, we've really come a long way. And then, you know, six months later, you've got this Spark and you're like, wow, this thing is like the size of a cell phone, the weight of a soda can. And like you can fly it with no remote and no phone.

• 34:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 04

  Like we're getting closer and closer to that sort of like. Actual consumer drone, meaning like any consumer could pick it up and use it with no training and get some interesting results and really, some really great results. I mean, I would say like, this is the drone that finally DJI was like, alright, we're gonna compromise a little. Like, we're gonna have worse video quality, less range, a couple of things we'll have to cut back if we wanna hit a $500 price point and, you know, 300 gram weight. So like with the Mavic, they made it smaller and did all those things, but actually it was like arguably better than the Phantom at the time. Like, it had more range, you know, more features.

• 35:05Nilay Patel?

  This is so sad for me, because I bought a Phantom 4 like three weeks before the Mavic came out.

• 35:10Speaker 04

  My fault. We always have a few things in the reviews closet for you to take out on the weekends. But yeah, you know, I think this is the one that where it works just as well, maybe even arguably better as kind of a toy. Like, the best way to use it is the, you know, pull it out, fly it in gesture mode, snap some great selfies and you're done. You know, you can then extend that connected by wifi to the phone and get more epic stuff. They're eventually gonna sell it with a remote and you could fly it a mile and a half off, which I would never do for the drone this small because it will never come back to you. Maybe it will. But, you know, like, you're starting to be able to, and this feels like one you could definitely use indoors, you know, like it's very, it's very safe, it's very small.

• 35:47Nilay Patel?

  And we've been flying it indoors a ton.

• 35:49Speaker 04

  Constantly.

• 35:50Nilay Patel?

  Flying all over the office.

• 35:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, it feels like the kind of thing you're gonna see at like, clubs in Miami or something, right? Like, they're just gonna be like, you know, like over the dance floor, take a picture or whatever. And, you know, like, I watch WWDC and there's obviously new product, you know, the speaker coming out that I think, you know, might do well, might do poorly, who knows? But like, it's interesting, it's new product or whatever, but like, I didn't really see any like, you know, it didn't make big leaps over other smart speakers or whatever. You know, with drones, and I think this is probably really something you know a lot about, phones for a while got smaller and smaller and smaller. And then we were like, got to a point where like, well, we kinda wanna put screens on them. Let's make them like bigger and bigger and bigger. We like figured out, well, there's a certain size of phone and screen that you want, and you don't wanna make it any smaller. Then, you know, you're like kinda missing out. With drones, we haven't really hit the point where we're like, well, we don't wanna make them any smaller. So like, the Phantom

• 36:35Speaker 04

  came out, then the Phantom 4 came out, then the Mavic came out, that was half the size of the Phantom, and then the Spark came out, that was half the size of the Mavic. They could definitely and probably will make like a little matchbox sized nano drone for this coming Christmas.

• 36:47Nilay Patel?

  Knocked over in the wind. I mean, even the the Spark in I watched your review video today that you can see the shake from the wind.

• 36:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, again, like, right, it kind of depends on what you want to do, right? I mean, you know, if you're flying indoors, the nano is going to be ideal. Yeah, drone that small, probably not going to want to fly it outdoors. There's always a trade off, right? Like, the smaller drone has less battery life. It has less range, but you might actually end up using it a lot more. Like, that was my experience with the Spark was like, I ended up using it every day, which I don't think I've done with the drone before, because like, I could always just throw it in my bag. I went to the acupuncture for my like, pinched nerve. She was like, what do you do? And I was like, I'm a, you know, tech reporter. What are you, what are you working on? A drone review? And I was like, you want to see? And I like, pulled it out right there in the acupuncture office and like, launched it. And then she flew and just, I mean, you know, like, and that was just kind of this amazing moment. I was like, this is a drone. Here you go.

• 37:35Nilay Patel?

  I mean, to me, you're, I mean, you're absolutely right. So I have a Phantom 4. I love it. It's the most fun.

• 37:42Speaker 04

  Right.

• 37:42Nilay Patel?

  But it is a huge project.

• 37:44Speaker 04

  Right.

• 37:44Nilay Patel?

  To take it out, charge the massive battery, plug the iPad into the controller.

• 37:49Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 37:50Nilay Patel?

  Launch the, it's like, it's not complicated. It's just many steps.

• 37:55Speaker 04

  Right.

• 37:55Nilay Patel?

  And then when you launch it, like, it's an event, right? And people are afraid to fly it. And I, it's, again, I love the thing, but it's big and heavy and it's a project. This seems like not a project.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I think we're still learning, sort of like, what is the optimal form factor for a drone that the most people will use? Like, for some people, for, I mean, an interesting comparison would be, for $499, the price of the Spark, you could also now get the Phantom 3 Standard. So if you wanted a drone that goes really far and has a three axis gimbal and shoots, you know, 2.7K video, you can get that for 500 bucks.

• 38:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  But you might not use it that much and you might not want that. If you want the drone that does like, great selfies and is safe to fly indoors and can be controlled with your hand, go get the Spark, right? Like, it's the exact same price point. So really, now you have just a choice of, you know, what lifestyle, like, what, you know, what are you looking to accomplish with this drone? And I guess, you know, the other thing I would say is like,

• 38:46Speaker 04

  The the Spark is something where I feel safe flying it around people and I don't always feel that way with the Phantom, you know, like you have to get people to like give you a lot of room and that makes it like less, it just makes it more difficult to use, it's less social, it's not as fun, you know, like you don't want to like crash into somebody, you don't want to injure somebody and that's not the way I feel when I'm using the Spark. You mentioned the power up thing, so I took the Spark on a trip and I'm halfway then, I'm like, oh my god, I forgot the wall charger. Normally that would mean one one flight and then I'm, you know, I'm done for the weekend, vacation ruined or whatever. This one you can just charge up with a micro USB, they had that at the house.

• 39:24Nilay Patel?

  What is the battery life on this thing?

• 39:25Speaker 04

  Sixty, it's rated for sixteen minutes. If you put it in the air and just hovered it there, you would get sixteen minutes. If you're actually flying it around, probably more like fourteen minutes and then if they're strong winds, ten to twelve minutes.

• 39:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and how long does it take to charge over like?

• 39:38Speaker 04

  So in the wall, it takes forty-five minutes and then with the micro USB, it takes more like two or three hours.

• 39:44Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  So, you know, like use it, drive somewhere or use it and charge it overnight with the micro USB. But you could have the Spark and three batteries and it would still be less weight than the Mavic, right? So you could bring a whole bunch of batteries with you and they sell it with a charger that does three batteries at once.

• 40:00Nilay Patel?

  I know a lot of people who bought the Mavic, they love the Mavic. What's interesting to me is the most, people mostly use the Mavic the same way they use the Phantom, it's just a little more convenient. This to me feels like a, I don't know, not quite a step change, but a massive enabling change where, I don't know, the classic Phantom footage is over a beach, in the mountains, following a car down a twisty lane, this feels like the footage is going to be another type of footage entirely.

• 40:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think that's right.

• 40:32Nilay Patel?

  Because I wouldn't feel comfortable sending this out over the ocean, the way that a Phantom, you're like, yeah, go find some dolphins.

• 40:37Speaker 04

  Right, right. Yeah, I think that's totally right. I mean, I think you can see the limitation. So like they have a bunch of pre-programmed shots on there, you know, it'll do the classic journey flyaway, the rocket up in the air, the circle around you or what I like to call like the Michael Bay, like ever-expanding, you know, helix of epicness. But if you use those pre-programmed shots with the wifi and the phone, the remote actually isn't available for purchase yet, it often just disconnects. Like it starts doing the cool move and then it gets about two, three hundred feet away and it's like... Oops, gotta come back home now, you know. And it comes back home really safely and it lands perfectly. But, you know, if you're a beginner, that's like a terrifying moment. And even if you're not, that's kind of annoying that like it doesn't know its own limitations. Right? Like, I feel like it should get out there and if it's like, well, I'm about to lose signal. It should probably stop doing what it's doing and like, you know, give you, give you the chance to check in and maybe change.

• 41:22Speaker 04

  But yeah, I think that that is definitely, you sort of nailed it, which is to say like both the Mavic did just what the Phantom did with it. With a really cool form factor that was much smaller. And the Mavic is now going to be sort of like their leading consumer drone. The Phantom, they're moving up to be like a more professional thing, charging more by adding like more sensors and higher end cameras and all this jazz. And then the Spark is, you know, way more of a consumer drone, almost a toy. And I think that, you know, their strategy now is let's get as many products in the market as possible at different price points. And then you're going to find, you know, one that matches you and then you're going to be in the DJI ecosystem and maybe end up buying more than one.

• 41:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, that's, that's why I want to end this. DJI, I was just at the code conference. Intel was there. They were showing off a bunch of their drone stuff. They have a super cool industrial drone. It is probably the coolest, fastest, most responsive drone I have ever flown.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  Right.

• 42:15Nilay Patel?

  They won't even disclose the price because you don't, you actually don't buy the drone.

• 42:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 42:19Nilay Patel?

  The people who buy this thing are like BP or Exxon buys this.

• 42:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 42:24Nilay Patel?

  And they fly it out over oil rigs and Scott, you know, they mount literally, I'm not even kidding. A full on Sony A7S to the front of this with like a custom firmware controller. But you don't buy the drone. What you actually end up buying is like data processing.

• 42:40Speaker 04

  Right.

• 42:41Nilay Patel?

  For all the, all that the drone captures.

• 42:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 42:43Nilay Patel?

  And that is their market. They're very confident, they're going after it. And then right next to it, they had like unique typhoons.

• 42:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:49Nilay Patel?

  With RealSense cameras. And it just feels like that is, they cannot win against DJI.

• 42:55Speaker 04

  No.

• 42:55Nilay Patel?

  Who is DJI's real competitor? Are they just competing against themselves? Are they going for full dominance? Are they just super excited about drones and they can't stop making them?

• 43:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I think on the consumer side, I would say that they don't have any real competition except for themselves. I mean, like, you know, there will always be other options and when, you know, people who run a hobby shop or even a best buy, whatever, they want to have multiple choices up on the wall. But for a long time, DJI consumer drones have been the best. On the industrial, commercial, sort of industrial side, DJI is now making that stuff, but I don't think that they have the expertise in terms of, right, selling to big enterprise and handholding and all that stuff. Like, I think on the hardware side, they're probably making enterprise drones now that are just as good. But, yeah, I think that that is a place where a company like Intel could come in and challenge. Intel also smartly bought Movius, which is the chip company that powers the Phantom 4, the Maverick and the Spark. So there's Intel inside, even though you may not know it.

• 43:46Speaker 04

  I mean, and I guess the other thing is like, there's just this really interesting happening where the, you know, I was mentioning how the size of the drones got smaller so quickly, and the quality of the drones has gotten better and the computer, you know, imaging, computer vision. I just read this crazy story about how the Israeli Defense Forces, the military there, are now going to start buying Mavics and giving them out like standard to every like cohort of troops, and they will learn how to use them and take them out. And that's kind of the thing where I feel like that's DJI's opportunity is if the consumer drones get good enough, somebody might decide, hey, let's buy 100 of these $1,000 drones instead of buying one $100,000 drone and see what we can do with that.

• 44:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I just, the Mavic in particular, it is just in that complete sweet spot. Like, if you are, if you're a Vergecast listener, the Spark is fun, and I'm sure you would love it if you bought it.

• 44:35Speaker 04

  Right.

• 44:35Nilay Patel?

  But I bet that you're just nerdy enough to want to buy a Mavic, right? And like, that's their whole game. They're just stepping you up $500 at a time, bigger, I gotta sell this. If you are interested in buying a Phantom 4, just tweet at me. I've got one, it's maybe flown two dozen times.

• 44:51Speaker 04

  Near mint.

• 44:51Nilay Patel?

  It's in, yeah, it's almost in perfect condition. I'll even, I'll throw in an SD card.

• 44:56Speaker 04

  Right.

• 44:56Nilay Patel?

  I bought a, I bought a foam case, anything you want, just get this thing off my hands. Who are their competitors, though?

• 45:02Speaker 04

  Who are DJI's competitors?

• 45:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, again, with Intel, what they're selling is a data center. They have a great drone, but the thing they're actually selling to you is data center capability. DJI is not going to do that.

• 45:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, on the consumer side, they don't really have great competition. You know, where competition is coming has always been to sort of say, well, DJI hasn't been making this form factor, so let's do that. Like, let's make the more heavy-duty, you know, rain-proof drone. They haven't done that. Or, in the case of CES this year, it was, hey, let's make the really small, sub-$500 drone that launches from the palm of your hand. DJI hasn't done that, so that's like, you know, some greenfield we can go to. The problem is, six months later, DJI will do that. But that is your opportunity. You have a few months before DJI makes that kind of drone you can get in there and sell some units.

• 45:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, we go to CES every year, and it's, uh, two years ago, everyone was just making clone, literally clones of the Phantom.

• 45:49Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:50Nilay Patel?

  Is that, I mean, is this just another, is DJI like the Facebook of drones? They're just going to eat everyone until they die?

• 45:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, or the iPhone of drones when it comes to like cloning, right? The design and the look and the feel. Yeah, I mean, the Phantom, uh, came out of nowhere. Like, DJI was just like a, you know, a person make, a company making, uh, flight controllers for other drone manufacturers and drones that you were supposed to attach your GoPro to, right? I mean, there was this moment in time, right before they released the Phantom, where it's going to be like, "GoPro drone, made by DJI branded GoPro." And they were like, "Actually, maybe we should just do this ourselves." And, you know, the rest is history, so, yeah.

• 46:22Nilay Patel?

  Poor, poor GoPro. Um, so what's, what's the future? What should people be looking forward to, other than yet another smaller drone?

• 46:28Speaker 04

  Um, yeah, I mean, I think the future is really the computer vision. That's the exciting part to me, is that, that's what enables it to do things like palm takeoff and landing and gesture control. Um, and I do think that, you know, there are some things that can't change. So like, the battery life can't change. The smaller the drone gets, the lower the battery life. That's a, you know, constraint you have to work with. The wind, right? Like, the smaller the drone, the harder it is for it to fight the wind. But the other stuff, like the processing power onboard and the, you know, the computer vision, that continues to improve at such a rate that we're going to have smaller and smaller drones that can do cooler and cooler stuff.

• 46:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. The vision part, to me, seems, we, we almost didn't talk about it enough.

• 47:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:04Nilay Patel?

  Right? I mean, what, what they're able to do in that tiny, what everyone is now able to with computer vision is enabling more and more and more of these things to be wilder and mother. Anyway, again, if you'd like to buy a Phantom 4, it's in nearly perfect condition.

• 47:17Speaker 04

  Right, we'll trade for Mavic.

• 47:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just let me know, I'm available. Ben, thank you so much for being on, man.

• 47:21Speaker 04

  Of course, my pleasure.

• 47:23Nilay Patel?

  Okay, Dieter, we're back. Hey, how's it going?

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Let's start with the iPad. Start with the iPads. Talk about the iPad. The big news is the, there's a new iPad Pro. They've replaced the 9.7 with a 10.5. Basically, imagine an iPad and then just stretch the screen out so the bezels on the the sides, not the, not the top and bottom, unless you're holding it. It's really confusing. It's iPad. You can hold it any way you want. The screen is slightly bigger. The bezels are slightly smaller. And the whole device is actually slightly bigger, so you need a whole new keyboard. It has the A10X, I believe, processor. So it's a stupid fast processor. It has the same camera as an iPhone 7. That's kind of what you need to know. 120 hertz refresh rate. Oh yeah, it's got promotion.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  No, what, it goes to, I thought it was 240. It can go up to 240. No, 120. No, it's 120? Yeah. Okay. But it's, it's adaptive. It's adaptive and they actually use an image or an ISP like you do for a camera. They use a signal processor, an image processor, to dynamically change the refresh rate based on what's on the screen. So it's not always at the max refresh rate. It saves battery. I imagine it also prevents motion spoofing. So basically, like, and it has True Tone as well. So bonkers good screen. A screen that's so good, I'm almost like, why are you, why are you, you're already ahead on tablet screens. Why do you keep doing this? You could have stuck. So that's the hardware side of it.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  And, you know, I held it. It's fine. It's a, it's an iPad. To me, what's radically more interesting is what they did with iOS 11 for the iPad. It is crazy. They added a file system that is completely open. Any app developer can plug in. So Dropbox, Box, iCloud, Google Drive. Which to be clear, it's an app called Files. It's an app called Files, but any app can access it. So it's basically just a, they finally decided to surface the file system. They also completely changed the interface. Now there's a dock, just like there is on a Mac. It's on the bottom. You swipe up from any app to display it.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  You can add a bunch of icons to it, presumably as many as you want. If you swipe up again, or if you swipe up from the home screen, which is still just a bare grid of apps, you get the new multitasking view where all of your apps are laid out in a grid with the new bonkers control panel on the right. And then you can like swipe through and tap them. And because they're so like good with split view now, if you have two apps in split view, when you swipe up into that multitasking view, those two apps that you had in split view together, stay together. So it's they, it's like a, it's like a space.

• 50:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they've added spaces to this thing, basically.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  It's spaces, basically, yeah. But that means that like the classic like card thing that you swipe through is gone. It's just like these little things showing up on a grid. But the last piece that's also interesting, especially when you pair it with the new file system, is they've enabled drag and drop in ways that are like fascinating and confusing. So you can drag and drop some stuff, but like not everything. You can drag and drop with multitext. So like you highlight your text, you start to drag, use your other finger to go to the home screen, open up the app you want, and then you drag it into the app. Or you can drag it across the split view. Or you can start to drag, open up split view, pull in another thing, and then drag it into the thing that you just opened up in split view. Like just bonkers stuff that you can do with drag and drop that I think is going to be cool,

• 51:02Speaker 01

  but also probably a little bit confusing for some people.

• 51:05Speaker 03

  Drag drop's my number one from Dub Dub this year.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 51:08Speaker 03

  I'm trying to write a piece on it. It's kind of hard. So you know, on the desktop, right? You got a thing, you want it to be another place. You got to prep your launchpad and your target. You got to get your windows kind of in the right zones because once you start dragging, you basically have very little control over your operations. The most you can do is maybe like command tab or something like that.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:33Speaker 03

  So you basically just got to be ready to do it in one shot. Here in iOS 11, you pick up a thing. By the way, you can't do all of this in, on the phone. A lot of these things, the multi-app type stuff is very iPad specific. But you pick up a thing. Go to other views in that app, pick up some other things. Adobe did this demo where they have their, what's it called? Keep, no, keep, hold on to, inspo, they're like inspo app. Pinterest. We have so many one word apps, I cannot. Behance?

• 52:10Nilay Patel?

  It's like that you went with, hold on to it. You know, Adobe, hold on to it. Now comes with Creative Cloud.

• 52:15Speaker 03

  I'll figure this all out before I put a post on the website. So you like grab a bunch of different colors that you've picked that are beautiful. Then you go to another tab in that same app and grab a couple of brushes that you've created in there. Then you drag them into the sketch app, Adobe Photoshop Sketch is what it's called. And you place those into the palette and now they're usable in that palette. Then from Sketch, you can select layers, select them.

• 52:47Speaker 03

  Alt tab over to comp, I think it's called.

• 52:51Nilay Patel?

  I think what I'm learning here is you don't really know what any of these apps are called. Like, how much Adobe stuff do you use every day?

• 52:58Speaker 03

  None.

• 52:59Nilay Patel?

  Okay, that much is clear.

• 53:02Speaker 03

  I hate Adobe.

• 53:05Speaker 03

  They make slow, bad apps, but they have really captured the spirit of what's possible with drag and drop in iOS 11.

• 53:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and that is why I am going to learn the names of these apps.

• 53:19Nilay Patel?

  No, I get what you're saying. It's, it's, it's a new, here's the thing, are you gonna put the thing down on a flat, on a table? And like two-hand drag the way that.

• 53:27Speaker 03

  You could do most of that with one hand.

• 53:29Nilay Patel?

  You think so?

• 53:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, you, you put, you put the thing you want under your index finger. Now that's like your, your, your drag center, your drag center or finger, yeah.

• 53:42Nilay Patel?

  It's your bad motor finger. It's just losing it, man, alright.

• 53:47Speaker 03

  And then you navigate around with, with your other fingers.

• 53:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:50Speaker 03

  With multi-touch and you tap other things, maybe using your middle finger or your thumb. Tap other things that you want and kind of stack them under your index finger.

• 54:00Nilay Patel?

  Okay, stop. Here's what I want to see. Here's what I would like, where I'd like this to go. I want to see YouTube videos of kids doing fucking drag moves on an iPad.

• 54:10Speaker 03

  Like trick shots.

• 54:11Nilay Patel?

  Like trick shots, drag and dropping on an iPad. Like, you didn't even think this was possible.

• 54:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:16Nilay Patel?

  I dragged five things into five different apps. I switched to space. Oh, like, I'm, I'm holding a fidget spinner in the other hand. I like, I want to see it.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  No. You remember those little skateboards that you could do like tricks with your fingers with? You know, those tiny little skateboards? I want someone to make one of those, but with capacitive wheels. And then I want to see drag and drop done with little tiny trick skateboards.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  You, you can, uh, developers, so that, that, Apple's doing this with an API and it's really cool that they like, they re-implemented their own like home screen with the drag and drop API. Like they've done it in a lot, in their calendar app and reminders. So they're using it a lot of places, but developers have a lot of flexibility. Include, so like there's dragging like text, like most of what we do on the desktop is we drag images. We can drag, drag text. That's pretty much like, or you can drag a specific file format if, to like Photoshop, if you know, it can handle it. But the, this API makes it a lot more flexible. So developers can use kind of any custom data type if they want to, or use just the standard ones.

• 55:14Speaker 03

  But they can also customize animations for drag and drop. So you could have like a fidget spinner.

• 55:21Nilay Patel?

  No, God. Wait, are you serious?

• 55:24Nilay Patel?

  Why would you?

• 55:24Speaker 03

  Why? I don't know.

• 55:25Nilay Patel?

  Can I say this? I used a fidget spinner for the first time just before I came on the show. Shit's boring.

• 55:31Speaker 03

  It is really boring.

• 55:32Nilay Patel?

  It's really boring. It went over like a lead balloon in the office here. Anyway, we're not going to talk.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  Good fidget spinner spins for like four minutes. What are you supposed to do for four minutes?

• 55:41Nilay Patel?

  Drag and drop, dog. Uh, Dieter, I gotta ask you. So you have been on the future of computers kick longer than anybody I know.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:50Nilay Patel?

  Where does iPad iOS 11 fall into your, your rubric?

• 55:54Speaker 01

  On the scale of like, I don't know, original iPhone to a full-on Windows 10 Pro or Mac, I'm going to put like Chrome OS at a, or put like the iPad iOS 10 at like a five Chrome OS with Android apps, assuming it finally works at like a. Six and a half. I'm going to put the iPad with iOS 11 right now, having only, you know, used it in the hands-on area. It feels like an eight.

• 56:19Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  Um, and Windows 10S is like a nine.

• 56:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  But except that Windows 10S has, you know, like, who knows if the apps are any good.

• 56:27Nilay Patel?

  Right. I mean, they're coming at it from radically different.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, to be clear, like, I wasn't, this isn't quite like reality distortion feel talking, but it was a sort of thing where, like, I'm still in like the, the Twitter meme of like, the stages of like, uh, your mind exploding, uh, where I like, things that I didn't think I was going to be able to do on an iPad, I could do on an iPad now. Like, if you really want to, you can sort of get three, like, apps running on the same screen on an iPad Pro now, because you can have your split screen and then you can like, pull up a slide over app that is, will like, stand over one of the other two apps just to take a quick peek at it and then get rid of it. Um, which is, I mean, you could also just leave it there, but then it's hiding half of one of the apps. So, and like, a file system. So like, I don't have to like, okay, I have this

• 57:14Speaker 01

  thing. What do I do? I don't know. Uh, how do I open this thing? I don't know. Uh, it's like, just, it just works the way that you expect files on a computer to work. The other thing, which isn't necessarily a future of computer thing, but is like, pretty cool, is they changed the way that screenshots work. When you take a screenshot now, it puts a little thumbnail of the screenshot down in the lower right-hand corner, and you can immediately tap on it, open it up, annotate it, crop it to what you actually want to show, and then save it or share it. So like, and so like, we already communicate through screenshots non-stop, and I do it on my computer all the time, and we do it on phones all the time. But now it's going to be even easier to like, take that stuff and actually crop it to what you want to share it. So we're going to be sharing out images all the time now.

• 57:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I, by the way, just so the listeners know, Dieter's scale was not a numerical ranking scale.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  No, not quality scale.

• 58:06Nilay Patel?

  On the left was the original iPhone, and on the right was like a PC. And you're just putting him along that line. So it actually makes sense that Windows 10S would be closer to the PC.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:18Nilay Patel?

  I'm just, I'm just trying to save you some email, man. But Dieter's Twitter handles that backline. You can tweet at him whenever you want.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  All this stuff, by the way, is totally provisional, because when we're talking about these, like, the future, this idea of the future computers is your operating system becomes like managed and becomes more limited, but is still powerful enough for you to do the stuff that you want. So iOS, like, you can only get stuff from the App Store. Apple, like, strongly dictates how Windows work in a very serious way, so you can't just put Windows wherever you want. They also strongly dictate, like, a whole bunch of other things about the platform. But the trade-off is, the battery lasts longer, it's more secure, it's more stable. Windows 10S is the same idea. You can't install any old app from the internet, but you can install stuff from the Windows Store, but otherwise, it just looks like Windows. Chrome OS, same thing. It, Chrome, Google handles all of the updates automatically. They happen every six weeks on the dot.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  You know, down the line, bam bam bam. And so like, there's like a bunch of stuff about this that like the, the neck beard in me is like, "Oh no, my operating system should be completely free and open and do whatever I want." But there's another part of me that's like, "You know what? I'm ready to like not worry about viruses anymore. That would be pretty great."

• 59:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  You know, I might put Windows 10S down to an eight, because even though you can do windowing however you want, you can only use the Edge browser, which...

• 59:39Speaker 01

  Anyway, the point that I was trying to get to is, nobody has used any of this stuff in its final form. Not 10S, not iOS 11, and not Chrome OS. So like, this is all like, we're talking in terms of like potential, not actual like, judgment of using the thing.

• 59:56Nilay Patel?

  Right. Makes sense.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  I had the same first impressions as Dieter, though.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  I, I am also getting this thing where as, the second you start using iOS 11 on the iPad, something just sort of clicks that was not there before, where it feels, at least if you're somebody coming from a desktop, which I think is like most humans.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  Like, things are where they should. You're able to move around as you'd expect. Like, it feels like an interconnected, you know... World of a computer, not just like these siloed apps where you're like, okay, I guess I'm going to trudge over to the browser now and now I'm gonna hit like five buttons and then I can get this file over here. It's definitely starting to feel like a more mature system.

• 1:00:42Nilay Patel?

  Right. It's clear that they're letting these things develop along their own paths down a way that they weren't necessarily before.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. It initially felt like the iPad Pro was Apple sort of just like throwing it in, being like, well, the Surface seems to be doing well. I guess we should do something. But now it seems like they have actually taken that and run with it and that is forcing them to make iOS more complicated. Probably for the better.

• 1:01:10Nilay Patel?

  I mean, we could probably do an entire show about how the Surface RT was actually the product that everybody wanted, but we shouldn't do that show. Okay, let me read an ad and then we're gonna talk about Macs.

• 1:01:23Nilay Patel?

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• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  Can't hurt anything.

• 1:02:46Nilay Patel?

  Paul is at Future Paul. He wants to know what happened to you.

• 1:02:50Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we're back. Dieter, remind me, we didn't talk about ARKit on iOS at all.

• 1:02:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:55Nilay Patel?

  Which is... Eh... Paul?

• 1:02:58Speaker 03

  I think it's, I think it's really good.

• 1:03:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:00Speaker 03

  I think they did a really good job and it's like really freaking simple to use. And so, what we're gonna see is 100,000 apps that are basically, here's a collection of 3D models, some maybe animated, that you can put on this table.

• 1:03:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:18Speaker 03

  Isn't this fun? And then you'll probably screenshot it, mark it up, share it on Twitter. I think making it that accessible to developers so that any dummy can do it is probably going to lead to some experimentation that will probably find something new and interesting to do with AR. Because it's not going to out-compete Snapchat, obviously.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  I feel like Apple's gonna build these right into the camera app and people are gonna, like, just world lenses right from the iPhone camera and Snapchat's gonna hate it. Right? Because if you don't have to open Snapchat and you can get all kinds of crazy effects.

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  But, but that's... Will they do that?

• 1:03:53Nilay Patel?

  But you have a network. Snapchat has an isolating network effect of your friends being in it. How many, like, copies of Instagram has Apple layered into the Photos app that have gone nowhere?

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  That is true.

• 1:04:05Nilay Patel?

  Clips. Yeah, they made clips, for God's sake.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  There's also clips. I have, I have two things, real quick. One, the interesting, Addie wrote an incredibly good explainer of like, how this works and what it can and can't do. And the one interesting thing is that unlike Project Tango from Google, it doesn't actually create like a 3D virtual map of the world. It just, it sort of recognizes surfaces and like tracks things. But turns out that's like what you need for what most of us are thinking of doing or what, you know, what makes sense to do right now, I think.

• 1:04:35Speaker 03

  Yes. And the interesting thing about that, sorry to interrupt, the depth camera on the 7S is, is now like available to developers to talk to you. The depth camera, if you haven't seen it, creates an image that's very much like the Kinect's like depth image, right? Things that are closer are white, things that are further away are gray, things that are like too far are black. So... So like they have their other like another thing for developers called vision that can automatically do stuff like occlusion. So like replace the background of the the the subject that's right in front of you. So they can't put that into the AR stuff yet because they want the AR stuff

• 1:05:18Speaker 03

  to be super available to basically any device with the A9 or better processor. But if the next generation of iPhones have all have dual cameras, then it's it's really possible that that that can become a default thing and and make a slightly closer to Tango level of world mapping.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  Did you guys watch Planet of the Apps last night?

• 1:05:40Nilay Patel?

  I did.

• 1:05:40Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Did you notice that like the the spoiler, the the guy who's like who like bombed out at the end, basically made AR kit and tried to sell it. And they're like, I bet a big company's gonna do this.

• 1:05:54Nilay Patel?

  Okay, let's talk about the Mac. By the way, you should watch Planet of the Apps just because Gary Vaynerchuk like literally waves the verge on a phone at the start of Peace Coaching, which is my favorite part. He's the best part of that show. Anyway, the Mac. Talk about all of the Mac news.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  They they put a new generation like current generation Kaby Lake processors across the laptop line. So MacBook Pros and the MacBook. Although with the MacBook, you should be aware that even though you can spec it up to an I5 or I7, it is the mobile version, which Jake can explain because I it makes me sad and tired. They also introduced an iMac Pro, which I'm sure Paul has lots of feelings about. It's very bonkers. And then just because because they they just can't kill it because that's it's a laptop everybody actually wants. They slightly increased the processor speed on the MacBook Air.

• 1:06:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  And then there's also a new operating system called Hi Sierra, H I G H, not Hi Siri, which I don't know, it's like better. It does it supports better video codecs. It does some other stuff, but it's like it's a refinement release, not a like change the Mac release.

• 1:07:11Nilay Patel?

  Totally cool with that. I submit to you.

• 1:07:14Speaker 03

  Those are always the best ones.

• 1:07:15Nilay Patel?

  That Snow Leopard represents the high point of macOS to this day.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  So a couple of big things with with macOS.

• 1:07:25Speaker 03

  APFS, which is very exciting.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I'm sorry. That's a, that's a big deal.

• 1:07:29Speaker 03

  Which is, which is, as far as I know, and I'm gonna, I might do a deep dive on it. This, this is a really good dub dub for me.

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay. So, so Apple Files, what, what does that do for me as a consumer? Like, it sounds cool. I'm, I'm thrilled. I have zero idea what it means. There's like, you'll be able to copy files faster.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  So, so, so. Oh, not like instantly. That's a big deal. Like, they just, just boom.

• 1:07:51Speaker 03

  So, think, think of a typical file system, there's a bunch of files. There's those little DS store files, right, that, that have the metadata of what's in a folder and stuff like that. It's all kind of spread out over a hard drive. If you're looking for something, you gotta kind of dig through it.

• 1:08:07Speaker 03

  The, like, more modern file systems are a lot more like, like GitHub, where they're basically versioned and have, are kind of tracked in almost like a database. So, if you want to duplicate a file, well, so I just need new, they're like aliases, but they work like really natively. So, if you want to make duplicates, you can do that instantly because you're just making aliases. If you want to make like a, a change to something, that can be like, I mean, again, I don't know everything about APFS, but like, some of these newer file systems have these things where it's like, you can store kind of just the changes, and so you don't have to store like an entirely new copy of a file.

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And Jake, you already have, you're, well, you don't because you use an Android phone, but Apple has successfully switched over, like, every iPhone from HFS to, or whatever they're using before, to APFS, and like, nothing broke.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  But like, did anybody notice a difference when that happened?

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  I don't know. Nah, I mean, things like, battery life was supposed to have gotten slightly better, you know, like, a little bit faster. Um, but like, the, the core of iOS, like, it became like easier to manage, I think, because of the reasons Paul was talking about.

• 1:09:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it, it definitely makes a lot more sense on a system that you're dealing with a lot of files. And that, you know, there's a lot of file integrity, like, guarantees they make, like, there's a lot less of a chance for corruption. This system matches a lot better to something like an SSD than a typical, like, spinning hard disk. It's really, it's, I'm pretty, I'm pretty glad they went with, although they should have gone with, um, was it ZFS?

• 1:09:46Nilay Patel?

  That was, ZFS on the Mac has been like a 15-year saga, right?

• 1:09:52Speaker 03

  Has it been that long?

• 1:09:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's been like, John Syracuse has been writing ZFS on the Mac since I think he was like 10 years old. Like, that's the first-

• 1:10:00Speaker 03

  It's just now getting adopted in some Unixes anyways.

• 1:10:03Nilay Patel?

  The first ever Ars Technica article was actually entitled "ZFS Happening Tomorrow." It was published in 1974.

• 1:10:10Speaker 03

  It just represents a further divergence of Mac OS from Unix.

• 1:10:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  It's like, same ideas, totally different names for things and incompatibilities, which is sad.

• 1:10:19Nilay Patel?

  But, but it's, who cares?

• 1:10:20Speaker 03

  It's fine, it's fine.

• 1:10:21Nilay Patel?

  Right, I mean, like, the Mac, from most people's perspective, is like, it doesn't matter, right? Like, you, you are rarely in our, if you're in an all-Mac environment, you're rarely inter-operating with other things, right?

• 1:10:35Speaker 03

  That's completely not true, as far, for like, any programmer, you're basically talking to Unix all the time, either internally to your Mac, or a virtual machine on your Mac, or a server somewhere.

• 1:10:46Nilay Patel?

  Right, but I was, I just said the word "consumers."

• 1:10:48Speaker 03

  Oh, right, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, jumped on you.

• 1:10:52Nilay Patel?

  It's cool. Developers are consumers too, Neelai. Are they? No, I'm saying, but like, if you're, if you are the pro customer, not the developer, that Apple is trying to address, they've made your life easier, by making it easier to like, manage your files in this way, on the types of devices that you have. But what I really want to talk about with Paul is eGPUs. Cause you wrote a, a storming piece about GPUs on computers.

• 1:11:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, so that's something that people point, so I wrote something that, I said that Apple should come out with a $1,000 computer with a good GPU, and not reserve that special favor to $5,000 computers. And a lot of it's jumping off of what they actually did update in HiSierra. They are supporting VR now, they've got Metal 2, which sounds even more like Vulkan. Developers, obviously, use Macs, especially to compile to like iOS.

• 1:11:49Speaker 03

  So even though gaming is not huge on the Mac, you still want Unreal Engine and Unity are going to support Metal 2, obviously, so that you can make fast iOS games. So there's a lot more of an emphasis on graphics. Also, they've got this core ML stuff that they're doing,

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:12:07Speaker 03

  which has machine learning, like trained models that you can load onto an iPhone and call almost as functions. I think it's a really nice abstraction for developers. But you can also train those models on a Mac if you had a GPU. Otherwise, you're just gonna like, just go off to the cloud to do everything.

• 1:12:28Speaker 03

  So they really, really emphasized the GPU in what they put into macOS. And then they said, and we care about pro people, so we created a $5,000 computer to take advantage of these features. And it's just, it's just insane to me. There's this wide range of consumer parts that are like often called like enthusiast components of GPUs and processors that Apple almost completely ignores. They put good Intel processors into iMacs, but you can't get them without like a 5K screen.

• 1:13:07Speaker 03

  The external GPUs are really exciting for some uses on a laptop.

• 1:13:13Speaker 03

  But you're gonna have a laptop processor, so you don't get that performance ceiling again that you can get with like a $1,000 PC can blow away almost any Mac at a lot of tasks, not all tasks. And there's a lot of niceties about the Mac. And you know, they put serious workstation components in this iMac Pro that do sound like very high quality. And it might actually be hard to build your own computer that would match this spec for spec for $5,000 by December.

• 1:13:46Speaker 03

  But there are a lot of computers you can build that are way better than most Macs and are way cheaper. And Apple just completely

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  I didn't put this line in my piece because I couldn't figure out a phrase, but Apple to me is like a, it's like an old man. Who I've been yelling at. GPUs exist. And the old man finally went to his mailbox and pulled out a postcard from me that said GPUs exist. I'm like, GPUs? All right, let's get on that. And but they just don't, they still don't seem to really understand like the core of that market. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think that they, what, how much of this is, is them?

• 1:14:25Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, because there's a new. No, no, well, I think there's that, but there's, there's what they're doing with the iMac. Then there's what they're doing with the iMac Pro. I think those are the like the industrial designs that they have. What they admitted was the Mac Pro is a straight up piece of industrial design. Was not appropriate for this particular era of GPUs. So they've got a Mac Pro coming out.

• 1:14:50Speaker 03

  That will be modular.

• 1:14:52Nilay Patel?

  So you can get it without the 5K screen. Presumably you can put a variety of GPUs in it. Who knows if they'll open the doors to Nvidia versus AMD? So I think this is just a transition point.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  You don't think that they're gonna, I mean, what do they use to charge for the Mac Pro? There's like, there's no way it's gonna be a $1,000 machine like Paul's talking about. I mean, Apple's not gonna sell anything for that.

• 1:15:13Nilay Patel?

  What if they, what if they, what if they like reimagine the Mac Mini? As like, they take, take the Mac Pro, take the GPU out of it and put like, you know, like a, just a, you know, standard Intel six whatever into it. Be like, all right, this is the base thing. It's basically a Mac Mini, but you can spec it up to a killer processor and feel free to plug in whatever external GPU that you want. We just saved you $2,000. You gotta go spend it yourself. But like, here's a, here's a thing that like, is basically scales from a basic Mac Mini all the way up to insane Mac Pro in like, you know, a single enclosure.

• 1:15:50Speaker 03

  Sounds fine to me.

• 1:15:51Nilay Patel?

  But you have to plug stuff into it.

• 1:15:53Speaker 03

  Sure. However, they want to do it, I'm fine. I'm fine.

• 1:15:56Nilay Patel?

  They just have another turn. That's, that's my only point. There's another turn coming for them with the Mac line.

• 1:16:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:02Nilay Patel?

  And maybe that will be the more mod. It's just, they haven't talked, they talked about it a little bit that they're gonna do it. But this was their like. I don't know, let's just shove all the chips in an iMac. And the iMac Pro looks cool as hell. It's just very expensive.

• 1:16:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:16:16Nilay Patel?

  It's unclear, like, we are video editors sit on iMacs all day here. So like, maybe this will be great for them, but it's way more expensive than the iMacs that we're currently getting out.

• 1:16:25Speaker 03

  Well, one of our new video people, Alex just messaged me, he's like, "I agree with your piece, you're the smartest man at The Verge, Paul, favorite editor."

• 1:16:35Nilay Patel?

  Alex Parkinson, that's why we hired him, just to validate Paul.

• 1:16:38Speaker 03

  He didn't say all those things, but he did say, for the very reasons I listed, he built a Hackintosh.

• 1:16:43Nilay Patel?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:16:44Speaker 03

  And now he's thinking about switching it over to Windows. Which is exactly why I think Apple, it would serve Apple to address this. Like, I get it that I'm writing very selfishly, but Apple, I think, is losing a market.

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  Paul made a really good point in his piece. That its products are just not accessible for the up and coming creators, right? Like, people who are vlogging on YouTube. Which Mac are they supposed to buy that's gonna let them easily edit 1080p or 4K footage? Like, you have to spend, what, like, at least 1800 or something like that before you get a discrete graphics card?

• 1:17:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  Like, that seems a little crazy when you can do that for $1,000 on a Windows laptop.

• 1:17:28Speaker 03

  At like, much, the $2,300 iMac is like their top of the line. The RX 580 is definitely inferior to what you could get in a PC you build yourself for $1,000. And it's just like, it's just, it's just, it's kind of obvious to me, but...

• 1:17:50Speaker 02

  No, I agree, it's frustrating. And it's like, for someone like me, I like macOS enough that switching to Windows just does not, is not, not something I want to entertain, but at the same time, it's like, the Macs they're trying to sell me right now are not doing all the things that I want them to do. And, you know, you look at the Windows side of things, and on some level, maybe it's always been this way. But I feel like it's becoming more and more obvious that Apple is just like doing its own thing. And they're like, "Well, look, if you want to spend this much, then you're getting this computer. But if you want to actually create things, you're gonna have to go way up." Like, that's your only option.

• 1:18:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just the myth that creative people are rich.

• 1:18:37Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I think that's it. Unless we missed some things. WatchOS 4.

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  I'm sure we have, but there's a lot. Oh yeah, WatchOS 4.

• 1:18:45Nilay Patel?

  No, I don't want to talk about WatchOS 4.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  They keep changing the interface, the core interface of what WatchOS is.

• 1:18:51Nilay Patel?

  No, they just added a, they just added a new Siri face.

• 1:18:54Speaker 02

  Did you see?

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no. If you swipe, there's a whole new dock system. Like, you don't hit the button and get like your vertically scrolling things. You like scroll up through it. I think they might have gotten rid of like time travel.

• 1:19:05Nilay Patel?

  Oh, do it.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  I'm not sure. I don't know. I didn't get to play with it.

• 1:19:09Speaker 02

  I think there's.

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  I, I, they changed the, the app browsing UI.

• 1:19:13Nilay Patel?

  Well, the only reason I wanted to point out that WatchOS 4 was announced was they, they started the whole thing by being like, here's our core platforms. tvOS, WatchOS, iOS, Mac. And then they were like, okay, tvOS, we're adding one new app to it. Goodbye. And then WatchOS, they like brought out Kevin Lynch. And he was like, here's some new, literally the way that he was presenting to it. I think this is the difference between being there and watching it from a distance. Cause when you were there, you got to go play with it. You were like looking at it. From a distance, Kevin Lynch was like, yeah, here's some Toy Story watch faces.

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  No, that was the same vibe. Like, that was definitely the same vibe.

• 1:19:46Nilay Patel?

  And like, he's got like a, his hair's long, he's grown a beard. Like, he's just entered the like, I don't.

• 1:19:52Speaker 02

  Have you ever not been skeptical when he comes on stage? I'm always like, I do not trust whatever he's gonna show us. And that has always held true.

• 1:20:00Nilay Patel?

  He's a, he's a smart guy. I will give him enormous credit for completely rebooting that product. Right? Like, they got it way closer to right. I think they're still refining it. Dieter, I'm very curious about these like underlying changes, but from my perspective, it was like, here's a new Siri home screen and Toy Story stuff.

• 1:20:21Speaker 03

  Siri really wants you to get fit, Neil.

• 1:20:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Siri's like, you're fat. That's what it's gonna tell me.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  I was just a simple mode for Apple Watch. You're like, you know what? I want like one app, weather. I want notifications and just leave the screen on so I can see the goddamn time.

• 1:20:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  Like, make it a dumb smart watch. Like, have me, give me a dumb mode that just shows me the time without having to.

• 1:20:42Nilay Patel?

  Well, there's nothing, I mean, they're gonna probably have it September. I mean, they gotta put out the iPhone. It's a, they're probably gonna do another piece of hardware here. Watch with all it. But it just seemed like, WatchOS and tvOS got the least amount of attention. I still don't know why anyone would build an app for the watch, but they did some API stuff. Is that it now?

• 1:21:00Speaker 03

  There's probably a bunch of other iOS 11. iOS 11 seems huge. We'll, we'll tear it all to shreds. Yeah, it's very clear that like iOS is 95% of what Apple cares about. Yeah. And also just putting GPUs and everything now. They're like, we figured it out.

• 1:21:15Speaker 03

  Okay, that is the show, I think. Well, I want to talk about something I talk about. Every week? Every week. And it just hurts that you forget sometimes. I'm sorry, Paul. Also, I'm just stalling to find the tab of the.

• 1:21:32Speaker 03

  All right, all right, Paul. Every week you do a segment. It's called Gates All Around All Around.

• 1:21:40Speaker 03

  IBM announced that it has figured out how to make a 5 nanometer chip. So right now, the best we've got is basically 10 nanometers. That's what Samsung's shipping.

• 1:21:54Speaker 03

  And it uses FinFET technology, which is when there's a little fin sticking up so that the processor is not perfectly 2D anymore. There's a little fin sticking up. This is GAFET, G-A-A-F-E-T. Gate all around. Gate all around. So it's not like a roll of gaffer tape sticking up? No.

• 1:22:17Speaker 03

  It's really hard to understand. I spent like way too much time writing this up to try to, like, I want to get it. But there's the silicon nano sheets and then literally the gate material, the gate material is what like switches the silicon from being, you know, allowing electricity. On or off? Yeah, thank you. Conductive is what I was going for. The gate material surrounds it and, I don't know, it's pretty exciting. So I, I just, I knew FinFET was dying and was basically at the physical limits. Like maybe they can do 7 nanometers or 5, or they can do 7 nanometers.

• 1:22:54Speaker 03

  They might do 5 nanometers, but there's really diminishing returns. But this seems like there's some new, some new life in it and, and it could maybe get down to 3 nanometers. And so, once again, Moore's Law, apparently. Just doing it. Still working. Circles instead of fins. Circles? You said gates all around. No, not. They're like silos. Yeah, I don't know how to, you just have to look at the website.

• 1:23:21Nilay Patel?

  I'll look at the post.

• 1:23:22Speaker 03

  It looks like a dental x-ray.

• 1:23:24Nilay Patel?

  I have to say for something-

• 1:23:26Speaker 03

  They kind of look like beehives.

• 1:23:27Nilay Patel?

  That is named every week and I believe named Gadget Corner.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  Okay, I thought this was a weekly update on Moore's Law. And I was like, how often do you need to check in on that?

• 1:23:38Nilay Patel?

  Still going. You're good. Okay, so that now is the show, unless Paul has an actual gadget he'd like to talk about.

• 1:23:46Speaker 03

  Next week, I'll talk about more gadgety gadgets.

• 1:23:48Nilay Patel?

  Can you talk about a gadget that is Moore's Law? Think about it.

• 1:23:52Speaker 03

  But not too hard.

• 1:23:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I just broke Paul's brain. Alright, that's the show. It was long, I think is one way to describe it, but tons of news. I forgot to mention this at the top, but on Friday is our last ever episode of Control, Walt, Delete. Dieter is coming to New York. We'll be taping that. I would tell you to buy tickets, but it turns out they're all sold out. But we'll be having the audio of that coming out very soon afterwards. We're in the market for more new podcasts, as I think you've been hearing me say. We're already starting to play with some ideas on a platform called Anchor, which lets us do things a little more easily than trying to put podcasts in like podcast stores. So go check us out on Anchor. Let me know what you like. Let us know what you want to hear from us. We've gotten some good ideas. We're gonna, we're gonna be playing with them. To virtually have more than one podcast.

• 1:24:37Nilay Patel?

  But in the meantime, Recode has a bunch of great podcasts. So Lauren Good, our very own senior editor, is Too Embarrassed to Ask. Turns out, I will be on Too Embarrassed to Ask with Kara Swisher and Lauren Good, talking about Apple this week. So you can listen to that. Kara Swisher has Recode Decode, which is wonderful. Peter Kafka has Recode Media, which is also wonderful. Listen to that stuff. We'll come up with a new podcast. It'll be great. You can follow us on Twitter, I'm at Reckless. Dieter's at Backlon. Jake, Jake underscore K. Paul is at FuturePaul. And I want to thank our friends at Norton one more time for sponsoring this episode. Do you have the internet at home? Then chances are you have Wi-Fi router. Norton has a cool new Wi-Fi router that protects you from cyber criminals called the Norton Core. A secure Wi-Fi router for the connected home. Get the security you need and the speed you want with Norton Core.

• 1:25:22Nilay Patel?

  Go to Norton.com slash Firthcast. You save $30 if you preorder by July 1. Thanks, Norton. Thank you, everybody. That's Firthcast. Rock and roll. Paul.

• 1:25:32Nilay Patel?

  Step, step.