Pardon me, is that Apple you're wearing?

The Vergecast is a discussion of all things relevant and irreverent in the worlds of art, culture, science, and technology. On this week's episode, we discuss the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and the Apple Watch. Join Nilay Patel, Chris Ziegler, and Dieter Bohn as they go over their hands-on impressions and agonizing decisions over which iPhone to get. 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.

• 0:06Nilay Patel?

  Hello, welcome to the Vergecast. You might notice that you can't see us. That is by design.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  We are hideous.

• 0:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we're terrible mutant people. Uh, no, it's just, uh, we're, you were, I think it should be clear by now, we're throwing this together. But hello, welcome to the Vergecast. It is actually the Vergecast. We are bringing back the Vergecast. We're gonna have another one next week. I, John, our producer.

• 0:28Speaker 02

  Just wept.

• 0:28Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I've never seen anyone look more troubled.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  He's texting someone right now, letting them know the good news.

• 0:36Nilay Patel?

  But it's back. The Vergecast's back. We are in the deepest portion of the tech news cycle. Uh, our show is about technology news and culture and lifestyles. It's about Chris just up and pouring a Coke right into his laptop before the show begins.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  I caught it, I caught it.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Should we identify ourselves since nobody can see us?

• 0:52Nilay Patel?

  Hello. Yes. Yes. Hello, this is Neelai Patel.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  I am Dieter Bone.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  And I am Chris Ziegler.

• 0:58Nilay Patel?

  Uh, noted watch expert, Chris Ziegler.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Noted watch expert.

• 1:01Nilay Patel?

  So, let's just get into it. We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, how's it going over there, John? We're still good? Okay.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  We have a pile of cables and equipment on this table.

• 1:10Nilay Patel?

  John literally has a guitar center over here. Like, there's like a four-track recorder, there's like a Zoom Mikey thing. Uh, he has a Fuji, a Fuji X100S for some reason. Uh, I mean, it's just, there's a lot going. There's so many cables here that are not plugged into anything. I'm very, I'm proud of you.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  We're about to record some Green Day covers.

• 1:29Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna buy a Behringer mixer. It's gonna be great. This is like the old days of podcasting.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  Actually, we've been using the word dookie a lot today.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Ah, good point.

• 1:37Nilay Patel?

  For everyone, actually. Uh, okay, let's just get into it. There's a lot to talk about.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:41Nilay Patel?

  So, Dieter, you and I, uh, we were in California until last night, very late last night. We both landed around like midnight, one in the morning. Apple event. Uh, big deal, Apple event. They called it historic. They, there was a ton of hype. Um, they held it at the Flint Center, which is where Apple, where Steve Jobs unveiled the first Mac, the iMac. Uh, just tons and tons of history in this, in this building. Apple leaned into the history, um, and then revealed, uh, you know, pretty much a big iPhone.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  A big white box, too. Can't forget the big white box.

• 2:15Nilay Patel?

  The big white box was.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Was exactly what I thought it would be.

• 2:17Nilay Patel?

  It was an Apple Store. That's what, they built a little Apple Store to do a hands-on, and because you couldn't. The Flint Center is on the campus of Deanser Community College, which I believe is a community college.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  I was just gonna say.

• 2:28Nilay Patel?

  It's a regular college?

• 2:29Speaker 02

  You just installed a whole bunch of.

• 2:30Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry. Look, I don't know. It's a college.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:34Nilay Patel?

  It appears, but can you just imagine going to school and all of a sudden having like Apple show up to be like, here's our watch.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  The mothership just descends.

• 2:43Nilay Patel?

  Thousands of journalists are just there like wandering around like looking angry like.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:47Nilay Patel?

  Will I am is there wearing a like a backpack that appears to be like, I mean, it looks like a triangular turtle shell.

• 2:56Nilay Patel?

  It was very strange. Anyway, so huge event. Tim Cook not shy at all about leaning into the history. He said one more thing to announce the watch.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  When you just like, it was, I think the moment that really defined the event for me was when he was like, screw the numbers. I don't have time for the numbers. Let's just keep rolling.

• 3:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. He was just doing his thing. It was super fast. We were live logging. We tried a new thing where Dieter did like play by play and I did color, which is great for me because I love jokes and telling them on the internet.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  It's great for me because I love getting arthritis in my fingers.

• 3:30Nilay Patel?

  But it was funny. So we had a bunch of people. There was me, Dieter, David Pierce, Josh Lowenson, two of our video people, Jordan and Christian. So we went all out in coverage. I think we had a great day, one of the most popular days in the Verge history in terms of number of people on the site.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  The gears that, that, that keep the site running were literally smoking during that event.

• 3:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Yeah, our server ops team has just kept on tweeting like hilarious pictures of what they. I mean, they were just like staring at traffic. Yeah, they're, they went flat. So, so just a big day all around for like the industry, for media, for Apple. But the announcements, when you start to drill, when you get past like the hype of an Apple event and the hype of Apple saying this is, should be a hyped Apple event and giving exclusive to ABC News to talk about their historic day.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  I have a lot of questions. I'm just gonna frankly say I have a lot of questions. We can go through this stuff.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  We all do.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  We all do. So I think the phones, the iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus, I think they will be smash hits.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  No, like, no doubt in my mind, like, we played with them there. The 6 Plus is gigantic. It's like, it's like a comedy goldmine, basically, because the apps that aren't optimized for it, like, scale up and like, in the way that like, big things are funny. Am I the only one? Like, I keep saying, I keep confidently saying, "Big things are funny." You guys know, like, big, clumsy things are funny, inherently funny, like, I don't know, that's just me.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Well, the 6 Plus is also, there was some brouhaha this week about the resolution not being what everyone expected it to be. So, well, no, but that does raise some questions for developers about how they're gonna support that device.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  I would be with you on that, except that,

• 5:12Speaker 02

  the way that Phil Schaller described it as a desktop class scaler, there's no like, black bars, there's no this or that. Like, they, at WWDC, they talked about adaptive, like, sizing for stuff, so people would get ready for this. And people, the things that aren't ready, like, they're just scaling up, and these things are such high resolution, that I'm not worried about how apps are gonna look scaled up at all. Like, I frankly think that, like, the, as long as they kept the aspect ratio, which they did,

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  it's not a problem. I don't think it's gonna be an issue for developers at all.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  The apps will get optimized pretty fast, it seems like, right?

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  So, those are the phones. We can talk about phones at length.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  But they are very much what we're expecting.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  I can wrap up the phones pretty quickly. Like, the iPhone 6 Plus, if you want a really big screen, it's fine. Just remember, you're gonna use it with two hands. Even if you have big hands, you're gonna use it with two hands. If you're okay having two hands to use your phone, it's great. If you've got a place to put it that isn't like, a little pocket, go for it, if you're excited about it. The iPhone 6, holding it just feels perfect. It feels like the right size, to me. I've used all manner of different sized Android phones. The iPhone 5 and 5S feel really small to me, but the 6 just feels like... Like Goldilocks just right.

• 6:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Which is funny because we said the same thing about the, uh, the Moto X last year and that was a 4.7 inch device, right?

• 6:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like, I think 4.75 is a sweet spot. Like, I really like the Nexus 5. I think it's a good size. Uh, and then there's Apple Pay, which is basically Apple's riff on the same NFC payment stuff other people have been doing and failed to do. Uh, unlike Google, Apple can tell Verizon what to do, apparently, so they can't.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Uh, as far as I can tell, they, I don't, the carriers aren't in this conversation at all, which is what's different. Uh, they just went straight to the bank, sent the credit card companies and they, they kept the, I, I could get way into this and it's really nerdy, but basically with mobile payments, like where you store the secure information is like a point of contention. Everybody wants it in a different place. So the carriers want it on the SIM card and the manufacturers want it on the phone and Google wants it in the cloud, actually.

• 7:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Um, and so.

• 7:23Nilay Patel?

  That's where you should put secure information.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Well, but they tokenize it. So like, you don't put your credit card in the cloud. You put a random, like, thing that's generated in the same way that like you hash your password when it gets stored on a server. That's what gets put in the cloud or on the secure element and then they can burn it and make a new one if there's something bad happens.

• 7:39Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Um, anyway, Apple said, we're putting it on the phone. And so the carriers, like, they're just, you know, they managed to get them to be not involved. Um, I, I mean, I wrote, I wrote this piece and I think that this is the most revolutionary thing that Apple announced.

• 7:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Uh, and I, I, I could get way into it, but the, the bottom line is that everybody has completely failed at mobile payments and we've been waiting for Apple to like stomp around and be like, we're Apple, we're gonna do it our way and everybody get in line. And they finally did it.

• 8:07Nilay Patel?

  So that was Tim Cook's line is everybody else is thinking about business models and we thought about user experience.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they also are getting a cut.

• 8:13Nilay Patel?

  And they're getting a cut from the banks, so not from like merchant fees and all this stuff, right?

• 8:16Speaker 01

  But, but, but Google wasn't thinking about business models with Google Wallet. They were just like.

• 8:20Nilay Patel?

  Google ever think about a business model?

• 8:21Speaker 01

  They, they, well, Google was just like, here's what we're doing. And carriers were like, no. And Google's like, oh, okay. Like, that was the Google conversation.

• 8:29Nilay Patel?

  Well, because Google, I mean, this, you know.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Apparently Walmart and Best Buy are not on board with Apple Pay yet. They're like, they're like trying to do their own thing. And, but I like, they're not gonna stand up. They're, it's not gonna work.

• 8:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they'll, they'll.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Everybody's gonna get behind this.

• 8:43Nilay Patel?

  But like, you know, the thing with Google, I mean, this is like, if you, man, Apple's gonna be really happy to hear me say this. Google doesn't control the hardware, right?

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:51Nilay Patel?

  And so that question about where you should put the secure element.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  They don't, they don't have a say.

• 8:54Nilay Patel?

  They had to go to like the standards bodies. They had to say, let's use the one on the SIM card at first. They had to let Verizon like screw with Asus or whoever.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Well, and then they had to deal with all the manufacturers that would, like Samsung. Samsung has done all of these models.

• 9:09Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  They just don't care.

• 9:11Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  And so there's no, there's no consistency or standardization. So there's no way to build up a critical mass of like consumer demand and influence from the person that's actually making the solution to make it happen. The closest thing we had was, was ISIS, or not ISIS, no, it's called Softcard. And I mean, that was a, that was a fiasco from the beginning.

• 9:29Nilay Patel?

  I mean, it was gonna fail from the beginning. It was gonna fail when it was called ISIS. It was definitely gonna fail when that name was co-opted by like a group of murderous warlords.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:38Nilay Patel?

  Because they wanted to rebrand themselves from Al Qaeda.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:42Nilay Patel?

  And it's now it's definitely gonna fail because it's called Softcard, which is.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Also ISIS was bad in the first place. It was the name of the spy agency from Archer. No.

• 9:52Nilay Patel?

  I mean, all of that stuff on, on mobile payments, do you, do you, like, everything has been a fail. And it's been a fail because no one's, no one's incentives are lined up because everyone wants to make the money.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:04Nilay Patel?

  And for Apple, it's like their line, like they make the hardware, they make the software, they make the service.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:09Nilay Patel?

  They just created a thing, so it's in our phone now.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  To Apple's credit, like, yes, they are, they are taking a slice of the money, but they are not taking a slice of the consumer data, which is also incredibly valuable. They're, they have cut themselves out of that loop entirely. And I, I talked to Visa and Visa's like, look, this is just like a credit card transaction to us when it comes to like the information that we know in the data that we collect on our end and the secure, you know, piece of land. So, uh, one of the reasons I think Apple was able to get the leverage to get all these banks and credit card companies on board is they, they said, look, just give us this tiny cut of the money. Uh, that's what everybody asked for, but we don't need any of the consumer data. We don't need to know what they're buying or when or where or who or why or how.

• 10:48Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Like just, that's not our problem. That's your, that's your thing. And then the credit card company was like, yep, that's what we want. Cool. And then they just did it.

• 10:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's the thing about Apple though, that, I mean, this is, this is gonna go right into the watch for me.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:00Nilay Patel?

  Here's the thing about Apple not doing that stuff and not like. Not wanting that data and not wanting that information is in they don't have it. Right? So that now they don't have it, right? And now they can't do like predictive things like they can't do other services that are built on top of information like that.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:17Nilay Patel?

  The way that Google definitely would. Uh, and that is, to me, that's the entry point into the watch. Uh, because I, I'm just gonna say it, I'm just gonna put it out there, I'm gonna publish a long thing about it on Monday, probably. I am deeply skeptical of the Apple Watch because I don't know what it's for and I don't know why I want it. I don't know why anybody would want it, except for it looks pretty and it's infinitely customizable.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  So you're saying you don't want to send your heartbeat to another human being?

• 11:39Nilay Patel?

  I absolutely want to send my heartbeat to another human, but I want to do it like in a threatening way. Right? Like, I would like, I would like nothing more than to like, like creep up behind you, like late at night? And then suddenly have my heartbeat just like, just there.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  So let me, let me try and set up.

• 11:55Nilay Patel?

  And that I think is a killer app. The Apple Watch is for murderers.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 12:01Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, that would be awesome. If I could, any moment, you could just like, I could just like hit you with that.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. That would be terrifying, you're right.

• 12:08Nilay Patel?

  And you would know, you would know that I was somewhere near you.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Probably not what Johnny I was going for.

• 12:12Nilay Patel?

  And that my heart was beating, but yours would soon stop beating.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  It's getting creepier by the second. Can we change the subject, please?

• 12:22Speaker 01

  I think this is personal for you.

• 12:25Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be great, guys. That's why I want to buy a watch, uh, to threaten people with it.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  So Apple set this thing up as the next big category for them. They, they explicitly said, this is the place where we introduced Macs. And then they put it in the same context as the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  And it was their one more thing.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  And it was their one more thing. And with all those other products that I just mentioned, like, the day after, you could say, I understand why Apple thinks that's the future.

• 12:53Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  And I don't understand the answer to that question for the watch.

• 12:57Nilay Patel?

  I mean, we, I mean, we, I will say this, we. We went to the event, we all played with the watch. The ones that you could wear were running basically video of like UI.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:08Nilay Patel?

  And then there were ones you could like screw with, that people were holding and they were like demo units. Those ones are pretty, I mean, it's like, it's not coming on for a long, it's not coming out for a long time. Like sometime next year, right? So the ones they had there to play with, understandably like kind of prototyp-y, kind of crashy. But, everything about them was like, why would I do this? Right, and that's like really the question, like why would I, like the heartbeat thing, like it's cute, it's adorable. It's also like, I would have to, to do that, you have to convince somebody else to buy a watch.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:40Nilay Patel?

  Right, and that's like, that's a network effect problem, like you have to suddenly know a lot of people with Apple watches.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:45Nilay Patel?

  Which maybe you will, but it's not like a standardized thing, right? They, everybody, like, you have to convince everybody, like, buy into the Apple ecosystem, and then buy a watch, and then like, do the, like, learn how to do the heartbeat thing.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  How, how big is the market for people that text XOXO to their significant other five times a day? Cause that's like, that's what that heartbeat thing is for.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Well, they're also leaning really hard into the concept of these bite-sized, uh, voice memos, right?

• 14:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and then the little, the little drawings.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and, um, you know, I mean, Apple has a spotty record, uh, identifying what, um, what social media trends are, right? With Ping, um, so I, I don't think it's a sure thing for them.

• 14:23Nilay Patel?

  I mean, so, let me actually get into like my main issue with the watch, which is like, the app stuff, like, these little like, here's an app and maybe that app is a good idea. My biggest problem with the watch is it has entirely too many, like, interface methods. So they open, like, this keynote was explicitly about Tim Cook, like, using the elements of like a classic Steve Jobs keynote, to say the watch is a big deal, right? And so the elements are like, we're in the Flint Center, we're gonna show you the Mac and the iPod, we're gonna show you in the iPhone and the iPad, we're gonna show you, uh, the mouse and the click wheel and multi-touch, right? Here are all of the things that we've made that are important. And then now we have the watch.

• 15:05Nilay Patel?

  Are you ready? Like thunderous applause, standing ovation, he's like, he's got his like fist in the air, wearing the watch, and he's like, we've come up with our next major interface revolution. It's called the Digital Crown, which is the worst branding in history.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  Uh, second worst.

• 15:20Nilay Patel?

  Second, right after Force Touch.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:22Nilay Patel?

  Uh, force touch is like a right, like they made a watch the right click. Right clicking is endemic in the watch space. Like it's just everywhere all of a sudden. Uh, it's a long presses on Android Wear. So anyways, he's like, we made this thing, the digital crown. And it's like showing like, you don't want to be pinching to zoom on a watch face. You want to use this crown. That'll scroll and, and then Kevin Lynch, uh, who is the VP in charge of the watch software comes out and does a lengthy demo of the watch in which he like barely uses digital crown and starts scrolling through lists with his finger. And it's like, isn't that what you just said we shouldn't do?

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:57Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, what is the actual purpose of this thing? Because it's definitely not the primary interface method, the way that multi-touch is on the phone or the click wheel was on the iPad or the mouse is on a Mac. Right? It's, it's actually just kind of like a knob that's, it's like the scroll wheel on a mouse.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:14Nilay Patel?

  That's basically what you're using it for. And a home button. But like, what, that's a, that's just a button.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Both of you guys had the wrist or the, the watch on your wrists, right?

• 16:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  So let me ask you. So, but so let me ask you, with the digital crown, see, my thing with, with that is that a crown is not something that on a traditional watch you're fiddling with constantly, right? Because your, your finger gets in the way of your hand.

• 16:33Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  So is that a problem here or have they figured that out somehow?

• 16:37Nilay Patel?

  It felt fine. Like, I think the thing I've been telling people is like, it doesn't click, you know, so there's not that much resistance, but it also doesn't spin freely.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:43Nilay Patel?

  And so it feels a little bit loose to me, but I think that that feeling will go away once I actually see it moving software. It'll feel really good. But like, again, like I, if, if Apple expects, one of the apps they showed was Twitter. If Apple expects me to read my Twitter stream by like sitting and like spinning a little dial on my wrist, like, no.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:00Nilay Patel?

  Don't want to do that. It's just in that, and then so that, so now you have a, you have a touchscreen, uh, that you're like tapping and swiping on. You can swipe up from the bottom to get glances. You can swipe down from the top to do a notification center because you need that on a watch. Um, you can use the knob, you can use the digital crown. And then you can customize, you can get multiple watch faces and then you can customize all the little tiny pieces on each watch face. Right. So, but, but that's like, fine. And then you can like force touch on the face of the watch, which is like you push down. A little bit harder to bring up like a menu in all these apps. And it's like, what? Like first, don't call it force touching. Just don't. Like it's the joke I've been making over and over and over again. Force touching is what you tell kids not to do to each other.

• 17:46Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, don't force touch your brother. Right? Like that is exactly how my niece and nephew are like, that's how people talk to them. Right? And like, it's terrible. So we have digital brand, uh, digital crown.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Which sounds like a Kanye album.

• 17:57Nilay Patel?

  Right. It's like just, uh, we, there's bad branding for these UI elements. Like this company came up with like.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  We forgot that like Siri's on this thing. Like we've gone through all the stuff and oh yeah, by the way, Siri, which should be the headline feature for the watch, but.

• 18:09Nilay Patel?

  Right. And so like, just a bunch of, uh, like I just remain skeptical. It's like, how do you use it?

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:15Nilay Patel?

  Like at a super baseline level, like what is the most important way of interacting with this watch?

• 18:20Speaker 01

  It does feel strangely.

• 18:21Nilay Patel?

  Turning the knob or is it swiping the?

• 18:23Speaker 01

  It feels strangely designed by committee for Apple, right? Which is not a company known for designed by committee.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  My thing, my like parallel rant to Neil's is that the, the Apple watch feels a little too gadgety. Um, and so the, the thing, you know, like you do after these Apple events, you, you mill around and talk to other journalists. And so here's the story that I've been telling. I think I told this on the live show. Like the, the thing that's insane to me about the Apple watch is you look at, uh, an Android phone. You get an Android phone and you want to set it up and you spend half your day moving widgets around and figuring out the difference between the home screen and the app drawer. And like getting all your accounts set up and like, there's a notification center and there's.

• 18:59Nilay Patel?

  You don't just use Samsung's defaults?

• 19:01Speaker 02

  There's all this stuff.

• 19:02Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I love going to the S market.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  It's conceptually difficult to figure stuff out. But then you look at Android Wear, the watch and like, they just stripped all that away. It's like, this is just Google now notifications and you don't get to do anything. Now, but the, the flip side is the iPhone is very simple. You get it. You've got your icons on your home screen. You're done. Uh, but the watch is the equivalent of the Android phone. You need to spend half your day learning what all the different zones are, that there's glances down here. Oh, I want to set up my glances. What glances do I want? I don't know. Let me see if I can figure it out. Oh wait, there's, there's notification that came in. Let me swipe down to see that. Oh, I know it just popped up, but when does it go away? I don't know. And then there's, oh, what do I want to see on all my different watch faces? And then there's, oh, I can do Siri. And then there's.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Oh wait, I can reply to stuff with my voice, right? It like gives me the predictive analysis stuff where it analyzes the incoming text and it gives you options.

• 19:49Nilay Patel?

  That's cool.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  That's super cool.

• 19:51Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  Like, but all Apple, like, if Apple's gonna have that many features on this thing, first of all, whoa, maybe like do have to start and then introduce the rest later. Uh, two, tell me a better story about which one of those things is the premier focus of it. It's probably health, um, but.

• 20:11Nilay Patel?

  Well, we didn't see a lot of that.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Well, we saw some. I'm actually excited about the health stuff because the stand meter is really cool.

• 20:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, they've, they've come up with a, a good idea.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:20Nilay Patel?

  Right? But like, why would you pay $350 for the Apple Watch to do health stuff when you can buy a Fitbit?

• 20:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:26Nilay Patel?

  Or whatever, right? Which is less intrusive.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:29Nilay Patel?

  If you buy the regular Fitbit, like, like my wife doesn't wear a band, right? She just clips a Fitbit on her person and forgets about it.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:36Nilay Patel?

  And it's like not a fashion accessory. It's like, it's a utility and it connects to her phone, right?

• 20:40Speaker 02

  That's, that's the, the other thing is we're, we're looking at this from like a smart watch perspective and a usability and a UI perspective, but Apple doesn't want us to be thinking about the watch like that at all. They want, it's a fashion piece. It's a fashion accessory. There's, I don't know how many dozens of different ways to configure the three different, uh, lines and the two different sizes plus.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  One that's explicitly jewelry.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Like it's.

• 21:02Nilay Patel?

  The addition.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:04Nilay Patel?

  Right. And that one's gonna be, so the basic one, uh, they announced 349. It is unclear whether that's the Apple Watch or the Apple Watch Sport in 349.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  I gotta be, it's gotta be the sport.

• 21:13Nilay Patel?

  Everyone thinks it's a sport.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  And the, the sport doesn't have a set.

• 21:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  Well, it also doesn't have a Sapphire display.

• 21:19Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it doesn't?

• 21:19Speaker 02

  Nope. It's, it's the Ion X glass stuff.

• 21:22Nilay Patel?

  Ion X glass, man. Just, oh, can I, let's talk about that for a minute. Let's talk about the design of this watch. So on the back, I tweeted this the other, on the back of the watch, to make it look more like a regular watch, they've printed all kinds of words, right?

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:37Nilay Patel?

  So on the back of the sport, it says Ion X display. It says, uh, Apple Watch. It says.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  To be fair, can I just read what's on the back of the 360?

• 21:45Speaker 02

  FCC ID 253298.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, water resistant IP67 Moto360.

• 21:51Nilay Patel?

  But you expect Motorola to print garbage on the back of things, right? Like, just like, like, when Sony makes something, they're like, there's a guy there who's like, I've got all these leftover MegaBase stickers and I put it on the, like, right? Like, that's expected. Like, is that a new Walkman phone? Does it have HyperX audio? Because you've, whatever, just like, print whatever words on your thing you want, right? Apple is like, clean, minimal, like, no Intel stickers, right? And on the back of this watch, it's like, splash proof.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:16Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, is that, did you just make a, like, a skeuomorphic hardware design? That's explicitly supposed to remind people of regular watches because it has stuff printed on the back?

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Well, this-

• 22:27Nilay Patel?

  Because that is the least Apple thing I've ever seen.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it is called, I, I think that they took Johnny Ive or whoever designed this, this thing, I mean, maybe it wasn't him. Um, I, I took a very explicitly skeuomorphic approach with this device, right?

• 22:39Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so here's what it says on the back of the Apple Watch. It says, "Apple Watch with the logo, 42mm case," that's the bigger one.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 22:45Nilay Patel?

  "7000 series aluminum, INX glass, composite back, and then a serial number." None of that information, aside from the serial number and perhaps the case size, if you've forgotten, that you have the bigger one, is important. And like, that's kind of like-

• 23:01Speaker 02

  I think that's a watch trope.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but like, since when does Apple do tropes like that?

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Well, but that's what I'm saying.

• 23:06Nilay Patel?

  That's like when Apple put out the iPod i5 and print digital on the front of it.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  This is a watch. Like, this is a timepiece, right? And like, they didn't, they didn't shy away from that on stage.

• 23:16Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  And it's called the Apple Watch.

• 23:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, not the iWatch.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Right. Today is the first day that I didn't immediately say iWatch instantly first.

• 23:24Nilay Patel?

  I did this too, and I watched a million other journalists there take and retake their stand-ups because everyone kept saying iWatch.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:31Nilay Patel?

  And so Christian and Jordan stood in front of me, and Christian would be like, "Yeah, you boned it again," and I'd have to start over. And everyone around me was having the same problem. Because we, just kind of weird, weird, John, this is like the worst tweet in history, like tweet. First, you got, you got Chris's Twitter handle wrong. And the Vergecast is kind of back, "Reckless Backlon Chris Ziegler."

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Did you use Chris Ziegler?

• 23:57Nilay Patel?

  There, no, it does. There's a Chris Ziegler on Instagram.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  It's not me. I don't have, I don't have an Instagram account, John.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  He's really into Penn State. At least he was 23 months ago.

• 24:08Nilay Patel?

  Oh, man. Wrong Big Ten team, like entirely.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  And, uh, wow.

• 24:14Nilay Patel?

  That's poor Chris Ziegler.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  It's all going very wrong.

• 24:16Nilay Patel?

  How do you not have an Instagram account?

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm a conscientious objector. You know what?

• 24:20Nilay Patel?

  Photo sharing.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Can we just say, can I just say something?

• 24:23Nilay Patel?

  To square face?

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Yes. Do, be like, I don't have Instagram. I'm not on Facebook. Isn't you, I don't have a TV. I'm way too cultured for that. But I'm like an OG conscientious objector to Instagram because like, I didn't believe in the filters. Uh, we got into it on the site.

• 24:38Nilay Patel?

  You're still wrong.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  And, and at some point it's just like, well, it's been so long now that I just can't be on Instagram. It's the same way I feel about Lord of the Rings. Uh, like I, I didn't see Lord of the Rings for a while and at some point I'm like, well, it's been so long that I can't see it now.

• 24:50Nilay Patel?

  It's never too late to watch some Harry Hobbit feed.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Look, Instagram is over, man. By the time I get, I get on that service, something else is gonna replace it.

• 24:59Nilay Patel?

  That's Chris Ziegler, destroyer of social networks. The last man in America to send his heartbeat to somebody else using his watch.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Oh, you just made John delete his tweet.

• 25:07Nilay Patel?

  Well, as he should have.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Okay, we've totally lost the, uh, thread on the watch.

• 25:17Nilay Patel?

  The watch, man. Uh, we've talked about the watch so much.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, nonstop.

• 25:21Nilay Patel?

  And it's, it's interesting. Like, the, one, like, Chris and I were talking today about the idea that the addition will be probably like $2,500 or $3,000. It's made of, like,

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Solid 18 karat gold.

• 25:33Nilay Patel?

  No, but like Johnny Ive did a thing where he's like, we've improved gold.

• 25:38Nilay Patel?

  Apple made a better gold, everybody. Uh, he, he did. Like, you watch that video.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  We've improved an element.

• 25:44Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so they made it out of gold. Like, it's gonna be super expensive.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 25:48Nilay Patel?

  How long are you gonna keep that watch?

• 25:50Speaker 01

  It's not a, it's not something you hand down to your children, right?

• 25:52Nilay Patel?

  Right. Here's an old computer.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Put it on your body.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  Like, replace the battery.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Well, so here's my theory. I think that at least for the addition, maybe for the whole thing, but especially for the addition, Apple will definitely have to have a trade-in program where they say, bring in your last year's addition and we'll give you two grand toward next year's model, you know?

• 26:10Nilay Patel?

  What are they gonna do with last year? Are they gonna melt it down?

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's gold.

• 26:13Nilay Patel?

  I mean, like, just the idea of Apple, like, Apple running, like, Apple running, like, a watch smelting factory.

• 26:21Nilay Patel?

  They've got the guys in the gold bats, like, just like huge dump trucks of old $3,000 smartwatches, just like getting dumped in.

• 26:32Nilay Patel?

  That's ridiculous.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  But that's going to happen. It has to.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  So what do you guys think of the actual design of the hardware? I, I find it actually, like, incredibly well-executed, and I, I personally think it's pretty beautiful.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  But it's very conservative.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  I also think it's super conservative and nondescript.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Like, it's, it is, like, it is unbelievably good build quality and just, like, perfectly executed design, especially the way the display goes into the rest of the, the curve of the watch of a relatively, like, it doesn't make a huge bold statement.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  And that, this is the point of Aaron, Aaron Soporas's piece.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Like, he, he hates the Moto 360 and thinks this is, this is good, but like, the Moto 360 is like, look at you, look at me, I'm a Moto 360. This says, look at me, I'm very pretty, I'm an Apple Watch, but doesn't, like, yell it the way that, uh, other, the Moto 360 does.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, it kind of reminds me of a, uh, it, it looks like they started with a, an iPod Nano in a, uh, in a minimal case, or a minimal strap, and said, okay, let's now turn this into a watch.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  I mean, even the, even those minimal strap, like, that, right, that, oh, there's a lot that's here, that's from that. Uh, I will say that this is, like, the most bulbous product Apple currently makes.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  It's super round.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  It looks like it's inflated.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it is very much memorable, uh, or reminiscent of the original iPhone, particularly the sport in that aluminum. It's like, there're cues of that original iPhone all over the place.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  But speaking of the original iPhone, I think that what we were all secretly hoping for, or not so secretly hoping for, was a product that made us say, holy crap, how is this even possible? Which is what happened when they announced the original iPhone.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  That didn't happen here. It's like, oh, they, they made a, an LG G Watch but running Apple software.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  I mean, right, and that is the problem, right? It's...

• 28:18Nilay Patel?

  Apple has yet to come out with a super compelling narrative for why you should buy this. And their answer is, well, look at all the apps you can. Tim Cook's like at the end, he's like, and we haven't even touched on all the other stuff it could do. I love controlling my Apple TV with it. Other people love using the walkie talkie functionality. And it's like, what?

• 28:38Speaker 02

  They're just throwing stuff at the wall.

• 28:39Nilay Patel?

  It's super throwing stuff at the wall. And like, I just, I'm sitting there.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  It's almost Samsung-y, I gotta say.

• 28:46Nilay Patel?

  It's right. And like, it's crazy that the Android Wear is, in its way, so pared down. And this thing is basically a computer.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:55Nilay Patel?

  By the way, it has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. So when you're at home, it connects to Bluetooth, it's Wi-Fi for its connectivity. And when you're out and about, Bluetooth's to your phone. But it's a computer. Like, it has a home screen with app, like, with the home screen on the demo units had like 48 apps on them. And you like scroll through the.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  With an app universe.

• 29:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, an app universe.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  An app universe and an app neighborhood. And nothing in between.

• 29:16Nilay Patel?

  And it's like.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  What about the planet?

• 29:17Nilay Patel?

  Where do the apps come from?

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Oh, that's BlackBerry Planet, Samsung Galaxy. They could have done Solar System. Nobody's taken that yet.

• 29:25Nilay Patel?

  Nebula.

• 29:27Nilay Patel?

  No, it's just like, where do the apps come from? Is there an app store? Is there an app store app on the phone? Do you manage the apps? Like managing apps on iPhone is already a torturous, pain experience. Like, I open most of the apps on my phone by searching for them. And I don't know where the icons are located. And it's a disaster. And I'm like, man, one day I should really sit around and plug my phone into iTunes and painstaking. No, I'm never gonna do that. I'm just gonna keep. Do you do that with the? Do you manage apps on your watch from your phone?

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Hopefully.

• 29:57Nilay Patel?

  Notably already bad experience. Like, so many unanswered questions. And I think that's, as we talked about it all week in San Francisco, what we kept coming back to is, yeah, we have a lot of questions. And it's like, we don't have any answers. And just having a lot of questions with no answers like feels negative.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:16Nilay Patel?

  But the problem is, all of the hints of the answers are kind of like, ah, that might, it's probably not the right answer.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  So the other problem that we're having as we talk about this-

• 30:25Nilay Patel?

  What is the battery life?

• 30:26Speaker 02

  Is that there's a script to these Apple things when they announce, but don't actually like, release a thing right away, which is that, like, everybody's like, oh, tech journalists didn't believe in the iPhone at first. Oh, tech journalists didn't believe in the iPod at first.

• 30:36Nilay Patel?

  My greatest fear is that there will be a clip on YouTube of me saying I'm skeptical of the iWatch, and it will run in parallel while Steve Ballmer is saying that he didn't believe in the iPhone. And that is how my career ends. Right, the verge fails.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Every single human being on the planet has an Apple Watch.

• 30:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and there's just me, there's me, there's the audience, and you're like, I don't know about that.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  When we say we're skeptical, it's not like, it's, we're not saying, you know, screw this thing, this is a fail, because like, like, we want to believe there's a thing here.

• 31:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I really want a smartwatch. I'm actually not wearing my Pueblo right now. Chris is wearing a 360.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  I just put my 360 on today for a while, yeah.

• 31:11Nilay Patel?

  Like, every, like, I, this is a product I want. And I think what we were all expecting from the Apple Watch was to understand, like, why we want it, right? Other than, it's a gadget.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 31:23Nilay Patel?

  And what this is, is a really beautiful gadget. And I don't fault them for making a really beautiful gadget, but like, in that history, if you're gonna do the thing that Tim Cook did, if you're gonna say, this is the Mac. This is our next Macintosh, right? We're changing the world. You're gonna call it historic, you're gonna invite 3,000 members of the press. This is as big as the iPhone. We have, the digital crown is our new multi-touch. That's a hell of a thing to say. And then to not tell the entire world why they should buy this thing, other than, ooh, it's pretty, is, that disconnect, that's where all the questions come in, and where they start to sound like negativity.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:01Nilay Patel?

  Now, they have a long time to go to start answering those questions. They have early 2015. I actually wouldn't be surprised if this thing took until May or June to come out.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  I agree, yeah.

• 32:09Nilay Patel?

  It feels really unfinished. They have not, they are so away-

• 32:14Speaker 02

  They gotta deal with the battery life, apparently.

• 32:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're just not anywhere close to answer. All they will say is, you have to charge it daily.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 32:19Nilay Patel?

  Like every night you should charge it.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:21Nilay Patel?

  We built this charger for it.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  With an insane MegSafe thing.

• 32:24Nilay Patel?

  That's cool.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  It's not insane, it's cool.

• 32:26Nilay Patel?

  It's really cool.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  It, here's why it's, it's insane. The 360 charges on literally any cheap head on the planet. Like, I've dropped it on like five different kinds of cheap heads.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's like one of those. Well, this is, this is Apple.

• 32:37Nilay Patel?

  You are the only person in the world who knows what a cheap head is and has five of them.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you will, you can also just-

• 32:44Speaker 02

  I've got, I've got three.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  You can also just drop-

• 32:45Nilay Patel?

  Still only one of the five.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  You can also just drop it on there, whereas with this, there's like a weird little magnetic hockey puck that you have to stick with.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  It's like, it lines it, so you don't have to think about it. I'm not worried about what charger.

• 32:55Nilay Patel?

  Are you gonna fault Apple for making a custom connector? It's like, that's all they know how to do.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 32:59Nilay Patel?

  Like, they're like, oh, we should get a connector. What kind should we should use?

• 33:01Speaker 01

  It would've been far more surprising if they did.

• 33:03Nilay Patel?

  And like, some designer comes like charging onto the basement, he's like, I've been making this one!

• 33:07Speaker 02

  Lightning is, lightning is, is far superior to USB, like, in terms of like connector shape.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, for sure. Cause, I mean, cause it's reversible if nothing else.

• 33:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:16Nilay Patel?

  We should, we should probably rap soon?

• 33:19Speaker 02

  Nah, let's talk about the button. Let's complain about the button. The button? I was gonna, I was gonna get into which iPhone are you gonna buy, but that's cool.

• 33:24Nilay Patel?

  No, but I really want-

• 33:25Speaker 02

  We'll end on that.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  The button of the watch?

• 33:27Nilay Patel?

  I have so many questions about this watch.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Okay, here's, this is, I was actually talking to, uh, John Gruber about this, um, cause he was randomly at, uh, T-Mobile's event. Maybe not so random, but I randomly talked to him at T-Mobile, but, um, the uncharitable way to talk about the button on the Apple Watch is, name a company that has a custom dedicated button to take you to a chat app. And if I were to ask you that, you would probably come back with, oh, BlackBerry. Right?

• 33:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, or the HTC Cha Cha.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Well, that was a Facebook button.

• 33:56Nilay Patel?

  That's a chat app.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  That's where you chat with babes from college. If you were to, if you were to talk to me a week ago and say, what is the, what is, what's a button situation on the iWatch gonna be? I would be like, that's obvious. There'll be a button.

• 34:10Nilay Patel?

  Or no buttons.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would've thought no buttons.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  I would say one. They like the home button, right?

• 34:15Nilay Patel?

  I thought that, so, uh-

• 34:16Speaker 02

  They'll have a button.

• 34:17Nilay Patel?

  I saw that button.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  They added, they've got the crown, and they added a second button, and the second button does two things. It's the chat app thing, and then it's also like activate a payment for the double click.

• 34:27Nilay Patel?

  Right, so if you tap it once, it opens the chat app where I can stalk you with my heartbeat.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  And-

• 34:31Nilay Patel?

  Or, or- I'm just gonna put it out there. You can draw pictures and send them to friends.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 34:36Nilay Patel?

  The number one picture that people draw is a dong.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:40Nilay Patel?

  It's like 100%. Like, this is like when FaceTime came out and I would like FaceTime my friend Kyle. Like, I was in Wisconsin, he was in LA.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Where's his story going?

• 34:49Nilay Patel?

  Uh, no, I was showing my, no, absolutely not. And I would be like, I would like FaceTime and if he'd answer it, I would just like scream like, "Fuck you!", and then I would hang up. And like, I would think to myself, I just used all of that research and technology, all of that effort, all of history's progress has brought us to the point where I can call my friend, he can see my face, I can scream the F-bomb at him and hang up, right? And that's like, that's great. And now there's better uses for FaceTime. But that's like, that's what I did as a, as a young man. This is like, Apple built a watch, they've miniaturized all this technology, they've built a new communications platform, you can buy a $3,000 gold one, and you will probably use it to send pictures of dongs to your friends.

• 35:31Nilay Patel?

  All of that is true. Uh, I, yeah, I don't know, like, that button, so you push it once to open the chat app. And then if you want to pay, it's tied in Apple Pay. So if you put the watch on, unlock your phone, authenticate to your phone, and then the watch doesn't leave, break contact with your skin, you can wave it at an NFC reader and double-click the button to pay.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  How do I explain all of these different, like, usage modes to my parents?

• 35:55Nilay Patel?

  You can't!

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Right?

• 35:56Nilay Patel?

  That's what, like, regular people picked up the iPhone and got it.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, one button.

• 36:01Nilay Patel?

  One button, like, did the thing on and off, they could, like, you were like, "Here's a swipe", and then pinch to zoom, and then you were done.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:07Nilay Patel?

  There was no more learning involved. Uh, and like, I know a lot of people who are still like surprised that like, there's a dictation button so they can talk to it, or like, whatever. Like,

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:18Nilay Patel?

  Siri was like, "Now hold the button down and you can talk to it", right? And everybody figured it out. Uh, the iPad traded on all of that knowledge. So you got an iPad, you're like, "It's just a big iPhone", which was the biggest criticism of the iPad at launch.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  And its biggest strength.

• 36:32Nilay Patel?

  And, yeah, and it's like unspoken biggest strength, because everybody knew how to use it. You picked it up, you're like, "Oh, this is a big iPhone", "The apps are different, I don't want my laptop", or whatever. And like, now they gotta figure out what's going on with the iPad, but it- At the time, it was explosively popular because it was a big iPhone. This thing is like, it's a small iPhone with a knob, a button, and forced touching. And just like, I cannot get over forced touch. Like, it is right-click. That's what it is, right? It's a context menu that opens up to show you different options in your apps.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:02Nilay Patel?

  In your interfaces. And it's like, why is that appropriate on this watch, but not appropriate on your iPad? Which is supposed to replace your laptop? And like, how are you ever going to explain to anyone, like, buy this watch, here's the knob, here's the swipes. Right? Here's glances, but glances are different than notifications.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  What does the crown do again?

• 37:21Nilay Patel?

  It scrolls, it scrolls through lists.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  But why can't you just flick through the list?

• 37:25Nilay Patel?

  You can flick through the list.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Well, then, why does the crown exist? Nobody knows.

• 37:29Nilay Patel?

  But it's the new multi-touch, everybody. And like, that's, these are the things. Like, I'm sure that no one at Apple is dumb enough to let Tim Cook walk on the stage and say, the digital crown is the new multi-touch. The new click wheel, the new mouse, without a solid understanding of why that is true. Or, Tim Cook is like, an egomaniacal moron. Right? Those are like, those are the two options. Like, either they know what they mean, or he was like, I need a new click wheel. And they came up with a crown.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Right. Well, to be fair, I mean, like, anytime Apple enters a new category, you need an event of this caliber, right? And you're going to push a lot of hyperbole on the 2,000 people that you've gathered to see the event. So it's like, you know, that was going to happen. They were going to say some really bombastic shit on stage.

• 38:13Nilay Patel?

  But they said, but they said bombastic. They said bombastic shit on stage in deliberate echoes of their previous bombastic shit.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  That turned out to be not bombastic at all, but actually spot-on and accurate to what they had produced.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:27Nilay Patel?

  Right. And like, I don't, I guess what I'm saying is, these are just questions I have. Like, these are, this is why I'm skeptical.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:35Nilay Patel?

  I'm not skeptical because I've used the thing at great length. I'm not skeptical because I understand the feature set, or why I'd use it, except for the dong thing, which I'm very clear about.

• 38:44Nilay Patel?

  But like, it's just weird for Apple to not have those questions answered.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  I just, I have this image in my mind now of getting a dong on my watch followed by a heartbeat.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  They send you the dong, you send back the heartbeat, and then they send you back the little custom. The little custom emoji, whatever, you know, you can, you can like, instead of sending back a text reply, or a dong, or a heartbeat, you can also send back an emoji face that you can like, like, you can, the face pops up and then you can like drag his eye up, his eyebrow up and like drag his mouth down.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  So it's a Facebook sticker.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Customize the face.

• 39:20Nilay Patel?

  There's a weird emoji.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then he's animated too. So like he winks, like.

• 39:26Nilay Patel?

  There's just no, I'm gonna, it's weird.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Oh, we forgot another piece of branding.

• 39:31Nilay Patel?

  What's that?

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Taptics.

• 39:32Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it has a taptic engine.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Taptic engine.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  This is sounding more Samsung by the second.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  Here's the thing about the taptic engine. It does feel different than a standard haptic vibration thing. It does actually feel like something's tapping you, which is really cool. So like, that's the other way you can communicate.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  And you said it's silent, which is super important.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  It's super quiet. Yeah. So like, I could like, I could, if it was time to end the, the podcast, I could just like, hit the watch, hit you, and then tap my wrist three times, and then you would feel three taps.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  But how do you select me?

• 40:01Speaker 02

  Uh, you hit the button, it props up a friend list, and then I tap on you, and then you've, I don't know how you select all these different ways of using the messaging app to do all these different things. I don't, no idea how that works.

• 40:10Nilay Patel?

  It was like they have like a, you, you just saw Kevin Lynch like be like, maybe this will be the emergent behavior. I'll draw a fish to my friend. That means sushi. And it's like, no. I don't think that will happen.

• 40:25Nilay Patel?

  Maybe some, maybe some other stuff, but like, that's what I mean. Like they, there's so much here that's like, maybe, maybe you'll like this. Maybe this will be what's important to you.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. If they were to make that, that button just be customizable to whatever app I wanted on the watch, that would be great.

• 40:40Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  Then I've got a home button and a shortcut button.

• 40:42Nilay Patel?

  I don't think the Apple Watch needs to zoom in and out of shit. I don't, and I think scrolling can be handled with swipes. I think they should get rid of the, the crown and just have the button that turns the screen on and off.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  Like that's where they should go because there's no reason you need to zoom in to like your 10,000 photos that are stored on your watch. Yeah, when they showed the the like photos on the watch thing, you know, they've because the Apple's Photos app has got that zoom out mode, which is really cool because you're like, oh, this is about the time and then you like pinch and you like you can zoom into the photo, but showing that on the watch, just like this weird like just grid of like little tiny pixel colors and you're supposed to guess where your photo is there. I don't like, who wants to look at pictures on their watch?

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  And I say that fully aware that in the past I have said things like, who wants a five inch screen? Like, it's possible that we are just dead wrong in this skepticism and people are going to lose their minds and this is going to become the new emergent behavior and we're just going to do stuff on our watch, we're going to talk to our watch and like it's going to click right away once people actually have the thing in their wrist, on their wrist. Right. But I kind of don't think so.

• 41:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, like, that's what I'm saying. We should, and we can go back to that. We can do 15 minutes to talk about the phone because the phone is just, the iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus are such obvious standout hits. Like, just playing with them for as long as we played with in the hands-on area, it was like, now everyone's going to argue about which one to buy, right? Like, there's a good arguments we had either way here. And if I'm going to look at photos, something, I'm probably going to get the gigantic screen out and look at photos on that. And like, those screens, they have retina HD screens or like higher resolution, the lamination that appears to be even tighter, if such a thing is possible, they're curved at the edges. It really is like touching pixels in a way that, in a way that, like, the iPhone 4 first felt like it and then like, then

• 42:36Nilay Patel?

  it got away and like, you started to learn how to see like the light refracting. Does this happen to you?

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, like, your your tolerance for gap on a screen gets less and less by the year.

• 42:46Nilay Patel?

  Right. And like particularly on the white ones, you could like, I can always just see the gap.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:50Nilay Patel?

  Um, these ones are like perfect. They're perfect, beautiful displays. The hardware, I think, is the the 6 Plus, like I keep saying it's comically big, but I have big hands, so like, it was easy for me to hold. I think they look exactly at the leaks. I feel like those lines in the back are like ugly, but who cares?

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:07Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 43:07Speaker 02

  They're weird.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  You'll get used to it after a week and it'll be fine. I'm not, I, I mean, it's whatever.

• 43:12Nilay Patel?

  They look like, like, it's like Johnny Ive like bought like a, like a Camaro and put tape lines all over it. You know, and he's like, I'll do that on the phone now.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Well, it's obvious why.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  I don't mind the, that because like whatever they needed to do to finally have an iPhone that felt like an honest callback to the original iPhone. I'm okay with, and that's what these feel like to me.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  But they could have.

• 43:30Nilay Patel?

  That's interesting.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Like, look at the curves, like this, it feels a lot like they've made the phone that they wished they could have made in 2007.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  I've seen this point made all over the internet. It's definitely a thing, especially if you look at the back.

• 43:41Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  But if they really had wanted to do that, then why did they fill in the, the tape lines with metal? Like they should have just made the bottom plastic and the top plastic and done it in a tasteful way.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  I don't think they wanted it plastic in the first place. That's the thing. The plastic was always a compromise.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Right, right. But you still have the seams. So it's like, I don't know.

• 43:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the seams, whatever. Like, people are gonna walk into stores, they're going to see iPhones with bigger screens.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 44:05Nilay Patel?

  And they're gonna finally make like a head up choice between a Samsung phone and an Apple phone.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Apple's gonna win.

• 44:10Nilay Patel?

  And Apple's gonna win.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  And they've instantly, they've instantly, they've instantly grown their market share by 30% just by having two models.

• 44:19Nilay Patel?

  Yep, right. People are gonna go crazy. And like, you know, who was it? Somebody, Tim Cook said that there's a big Android upgrade cycle. And somebody pointed out to me that it was, the Galaxy S3 is the end of its two-year cycle. And that was like the big seller for Samsung.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  That was the big breakthrough, a single model, everybody's on the same thing.

• 44:36Nilay Patel?

  So lots of people want S3s. And this is the end of the two-year window, and those people are gonna make a decision. And like, that's interesting. That's, that's a huge wave of people that were on the other platform that could come back. And now you've got a big screen and you're competitive. You've got a lot of people on iPhone 4s still hanging around, and 4Ss hanging around. Like, there's just a lot here for, for Apple to go after. And like, the 6 is a great phone. Like, it's a, it's cool, right? The 6 Plus, it's, I don't know, we're gonna have, we're gonna have to like do reviews and all that stuff and like really figure it out. But like, it's a big screen. Like, I held it. I was like, what I thought to myself about the 6 Plus?

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Was I have an iPad mini and I'm never gonna use it again. If I get a six plus, I will never use my iPad mini again.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  And Apple had better figure out what the hell the big iPad is for. Because now it's just the thing I have with a bigger screen. So the iOS device I have with an even yet larger screen. And it's like, that's not a good reason for that to exist.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  Right?

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  It needs to get, become more of a productivity laptop replacement. And that's great for Apple, right? That's a good, they're pushing themselves now to like, improve the iPad in a way that they've been really complacent with it before.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Apple pay in the iPad.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  So my, my conflict was I could have.

• 45:45Nilay Patel?

  It was waving at it.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  I can have a single device that replaces my phone and my iPad mini and just like, I, this is my everything device. But I have to use it with two hands. Or I could have a phone that is amazing and feels good in one hand and yeah, I'll probably hang out, hang around with a tablet every now and then. And like, that was the trade off. And you, you look at the, the six plus and the screen is just unbelievable. And then you hold the six and like, oh, this feels like the best phone I've ever held.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Um, and you just, you just need to pick. Are you willing to have a two handed device that means you can have everything device? Or do you want a one handed phone? That's the trade offs. I went with the one handed phone.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Who you ordered?

• 46:22Speaker 02

  iPhone, iPhone six, sixty four gig, space gray, switching to Verizon from AT&T.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Wow, that switching to Verizon is a big deal. I'm thinking about it. Space gray seems like overwhelmingly the number one choice. Everyone I've talked to ordered space gray.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Well, there's cycles, like, like there was, the white came out, people did white, then whites are getting tired, then people went to gold and now we're going back to gray.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  I get the impression that the gold does not look as good on this one as it did on the five S.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  Absolutely does not.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Yeah?

• 46:49Speaker 02

  Does not.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  Uh, it's, I don't know, I don't know, maybe I'll get a gold one. I mean, cause the five S, I'm playing with the color picker right now on the site.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  There's no chamfered edge.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  There's no chamfered edge.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  That like glitters, right? It's like, yeah.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Um, there's gonna be aftermarket chamfering services?

• 47:06Speaker 01

  John just made a gesture of like drinking out of a bucket.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. What, dude?

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  Oh, hey. Oh. Aftermarket chamfering services? There we go. That's an idea that I have for you, a free, free idea. No. Uh, which one are you getting?

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Uh, so I originally wanted the six plus and tried desperately to over, uh, order it overnight. Didn't pan out and that just immediately sold out, right? Right? And we don't know if that's because they just didn't make very many, if they're having sourcing issues, or if that's overwhelmingly the more popular model. We have no idea.

• 47:37Nilay Patel?

  I think it's overwhelmingly more popular. I think people are, you're gonna see gigantic iPhones everywhere all of a sudden.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you could be right, especially considering how popular notes are, uh, Galaxy Notes. So in desperation, I ordered a six. I'm strongly considering canceling that and just waiting for a six plus.

• 47:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I don't know. I'm, I, I.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Cause I want, I want the longer battery life too.

• 47:58Nilay Patel?

  I'm a hundred percent six plus for many reasons. One, it's just time. It's just time that to be a guy with a gigantic primary phone.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  It, this, you've reached that point in your life.

• 48:08Nilay Patel?

  It's just where you gotta be. You know? And it's like, I had a Nexus five and that was like a good size and that was a great primary and that, and the camera's garbage.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:17Nilay Patel?

  Uh, uh, and now it's like, you know what? I wanna, I just want an even bigger phone.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  But so, did you preorder? What's your strategy?

• 48:24Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I'm gonna wait.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  No, wait?

• 48:27Nilay Patel?

  I'm just gonna wait it out. I'm gonna, um, so my current iPhone five S, I think I can grind it into dust. It is so broken. You are well on your way to doing that. It is so broken and so cracked and so destroyed that I, like, it's like a personal mission of mine now.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:44Nilay Patel?

  To see how badly it can break. I wanna break it as bad as you broke this Nexus five.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  It's in.

• 48:48Nilay Patel?

  Well, that's the other reason I got the smaller one. First, this Nexus five, he walked into the, he walked into where we're recording the podcast with his phone in a plastic bag. I said, why is your Nexus five in a plastic bag? He said, because it's actively ejecting glass.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  It is. Like, there are little glass shards just coming off of it at this point.

• 49:04Nilay Patel?

  It's like the needler from Halo. Yeah. Uh, no, I mean, I, I don't know. I think, I don't know. I'm, I don't know. I probably just go walk in Apple Store and impulse buy whatever is in front of me.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:14Nilay Patel?

  Uh, cause that's what I do with all phones.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Yep. I bought the small, I got smaller one also because I'm less likely to drop it.

• 49:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So they are, they are like, I will say this, Apple's obsession with thin, thinness is crazy. Uh, the camera sticks out. If they just made it a little bit thicker and the camera didn't stick out, they probably could have added a little more battery onto that thing too. And like, I don't believe iOS devices, except for iPads are good at battery life.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  No, they aren't. Absolutely not. The 5S is not a battery, uh.

• 49:42Nilay Patel?

  No, I have mine in a, in a battery case. And actually, again, my intention is to destroy this phone so thoroughly. My hope is that the battery case explodes next time I drop it. Cause that's, that's like where we're going with this.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Uh, so I, I, um, I remember a few years ago, um, an employee for one of the major phone manufacturers told me that countless amounts of focus grouping indicates that consumers ultimately want a device that's between five and six millimeters. And below that, they can't tell the difference. So I think that's what everybody's tracking toward. I think that over the next few years, as technology improves, phones are going to stabilize somewhere between five and six. And that you're just going to have to deal with it. Um, which sucks because I, I would buy a Razr Max all day long. If that made sense. Like if they'd have made a max version of the iPhone.

• 50:34Nilay Patel?

  If they had made a max version of the iPhone, I would have bought it in a heartbeat.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Yes. Absolutely. Eight or nine millimeters.

• 50:39Nilay Patel?

  These phones, the, the, the six plus is going to look so incredibly stupid when Mophie makes a case for it.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:44Nilay Patel?

  And I'm going to buy that case so hard.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:47Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's going to be, just imagine like, here's my tank. I brought, I brought a tank.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  What are you going to carry that in? Certainly not a pocket.

• 50:53Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I, I do, I, I'm saying it right here, right now. Holsters are coming back.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 50:59Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  That's bad.

• 51:00Nilay Patel?

  Holsters are coming back.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  I could see that. Or maybe a satchel?

• 51:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. A leather satchel?

• 51:06Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna buy a six. Oh, God. Can you, do we need to talk about iOS eight at all? I will say this, here's what I can say about iOS eight. They barely talked about it.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:15Nilay Patel?

  Barely talked about iOS eight. This was a totally a hardware event.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  Barely talked about continuity.

• 51:20Nilay Patel?

  They didn't talk about continuity. They barely talked about handoff. They barely talked about the watch software.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 51:24Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I mean, they like did some demos with an, like, it's sort of an open question whether the watch is running iOS, right?

• 51:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:31Nilay Patel?

  They didn't say it. It's just out there. Everyone's assuming it's true because it would be, it's running Tyson.

• 51:39Nilay Patel?

  Uh, so that's weird.

• 51:42Nilay Patel?

  Amazing if it was running Tyson.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  The thing is, you look at the interface and all the different metaphors of what the different pieces are, and it's like, kind of running Tyson.

• 51:52Nilay Patel?

  It's a little Tyson-y. A little Tyson-y, but one of the sickest.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a sick bird. Yeah.

• 52:00Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so, so they didn't talk about software. They didn't even do the demo via, every iPhone announcement I can recall has always included like a recapitulation of the demo from WWDC.

• 52:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:11Nilay Patel?

  And they were like, iOS eight is here. It's great. Moving on. And it's like.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  They did a game demo.

• 52:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that game looked great.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  One, I think one important reason that they didn't.

• 52:20Nilay Patel?

  But that was to show off the GPU.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Go ahead. They didn't do.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  I, I think they, they didn't do an iOS eight demos because eight leaned so heavily on Yosemite, which isn't ready yet, right? So like, they didn't want to tie that software release to something that isn't available.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  So there, there's that. And there's also the fact that frankly, eight is a very developer-heavy release. Like, if you look at six versus seven and seven versus eight.

• 52:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Eight is about developers, except for continuity, basically.

• 52:47Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, I'm super excited for it. I can't wait for all these extensions and.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, no.

• 52:52Nilay Patel?

  They're party keyboards.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  You see the, you see the GIF keyboard?

• 52:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a, it's a keyboard where like you just communicate solely through Nicolas Cage GIFs.

• 53:00Nilay Patel?

  Elvis was very happy.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  Isn't that amazing?

• 53:02Nilay Patel?

  His tweet, his tweet was like, my entire career is like summed up today.

• 53:07Nilay Patel?

  Uh, gee, like, I don't know, man. I'm just looking at the watch. I'm looking at the watch. I could talk about this watch for hours and hours and hours.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Are you gonna get an edition, or a sport, or a classic, whatever the regular model is?

• 53:18Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna get the one that is, that Apple explains to me why I should buy it.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  You're gonna get a gold edition with a crocodile band is what you're gonna get.

• 53:25Nilay Patel?

  Yes, I think that is, that is super right. Uh, and then I'm gonna have a $3,000 watch, and I'm gonna use it to use Apple Mail.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Yep. And then the watch two is gonna come out a few months later, and you're gonna be like, what do I do with this?

• 53:39Nilay Patel?

  Can I, let me, let me offer the listener a window into, into Vox Media and The Verge. We run our business on Google Apps.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:47Nilay Patel?

  Uh, we have many Google Apps domains, right? Because The Verge started, and the company's called SB Nation at the time, and we just started Vox Media. And then we bought, our company bought the curb network, so now we have curb, the need to interact, and we started vox.com, we have Polygon, we have many, many app, like, domains. Many of them are alias to one another and confusing in ridiculous ways, because that's the nature of having a company. So we are trying to migrate all of our domains together. This is a disaster, because Google doesn't support anything. Uh, and if Google would just figure this out, like, at one, at some point, every company of our size, like, has to make, like, the critical, like, we should just go to Microsoft decision. Cause there's like, a million people in New York City who can just migrate Microsoft domains together, right?

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:28Nilay Patel?

  And it would be fine, but Google doesn't, so it's a disaster. All of this is just to say, calendar invites at our company are somewhat messy right now. That's just true.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:37Nilay Patel?

  Like, right, the email thing is fine, like, the doctor's thing is a little confusing, there's a lot of reoffing. But I get a calendar invite, and like, there's just panic in my soul. Like, what email address did you send this invite to?

• 54:47Speaker 01

  What calendar is it gonna go to?

• 54:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, where, am I gonna go to any meetings tomorrow? Like, am I just gonna miss the shit? And so like, I'm looking at this watch demo of like, calendar, like, I'm just like, it's on my screen. And I know how well, like, the stock calendar app on the iPhone is handling this mess. And I'm thinking about that mess translated to my wrist.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:06Nilay Patel?

  Daily, and the little flashes of panic that will like, heartbeat into my body. Ah, very confusing.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Well, let's just get real for a second about using, about being fully immersed in the Google ecosystem and using Apple devices, right? Because, um, I used a 5S for probably 10 months, uh, before switching to a Nexus 5, which is now broken into a million little pieces. And the difference between the user experience for a heavy Google user on an iPhone versus an Android device is night and day. It still is. The email is just killer. The calendar is great. It's fine. You can add as many Google accounts as you want and they're just intrinsic to the phone. They're like, they-

• 55:51Nilay Patel?

  Google is better. The Google account experience is better on Android than it is on the web.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Straight up.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 55:56Nilay Patel?

  Like, it is killer and great. And this is, I mean, you were just playing with your 360.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, my 360, which thinks that I've taken 400 steps since we sat down to do the podcast.

• 56:05Nilay Patel?

  This is because we've been pounding the table.

• 56:06Speaker 02

  Unbelievable.

• 56:07Nilay Patel?

  Uh, no, but this is like a, this actually comes back to the watch. The 360 is like, you can dump a bunch of stuff into an Android phone, which is like a primary, great user experience for Google services. And then it will pipe Google Now to you.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 56:22Nilay Patel?

  And so Google knows all this stuff about you because they've got all these accounts in one place. It's like, learned all this stuff. And it's like, you look at the watch, it's like, this is how long it'll take to go to work. Or like, it's time for your flight. Or like, it just knows stuff about the information that's collected in your phone and it's sending it to you.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Knows I want to know the score of the Michigan game tomorrow, you know?

• 56:37Nilay Patel?

  Right. And then Apple does, because it's not collecting the data, which is good or bad, like, that's a hard differentiator for them. In many ways, it's great. But because they don't have the data, they can't do that stuff.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:49Nilay Patel?

  And so there, it's like, here's a stocks app on the watch. And it's like, I, that's, I don't, who is so, is that just for Tim Cook? So that he can just like, look at his wrist and check Apple's stock? Like, who, what? Why is that there? Right? Then-

• 57:06Speaker 02

  That's what I mean about it being gadgety. You've got to sit there and fiddle with what different glance things you want. And you gotta know which apps support a glance, I guess, thing?

• 57:15Speaker 01

  I mean, setting up an Android Wear device takes five minutes. Like, you pair it and you're done.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And like, sometimes to a fault. Like, I do wish there was more crap I could do on an Android Wear watch. But, I don't know. But, on the other hand, I'm looking at this, this Apple Watch, Watch Face, that has like, the date, the time, in a digital format, because I can't read analog anymore because I'm old and sad. My next calendar, the weather, and the three little meters for what your health bar is, and also the time in a different time zone. Like, it's just chock full of information. It looks good. And I'm like, dang, kinda want that. Like, here's the thing, like, as a smart watch, if they can pull off all these different software metaphors, it's gonna be a really good smart watch.

• 57:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. What's the difference between a glance and an actual notification?

• 58:02Speaker 02

  A glance is a persistent piece of information. It's like a widget in your notification area on iOS or in the sidebar on Yosemite. A notification is a piece of incoming information.

• 58:13Nilay Patel?

  Glances can go...

• 58:14Speaker 02

  No, they're like, I'm just saying they're roughly analogous. Like, think of a glance the way you think of like a stock widget.

• 58:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You're thinking you have glances and stock widgets on this thing. I'm being really negative.

• 58:27Nilay Patel?

  Like, and I think that's, it's just, I don't know. There's something about this that...

• 58:31Speaker 02

  It's because you don't have a story.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I will say that everybody I've talked to who's a normal since the Apple event and uses an iPhone has said to me, "I have no intention of getting this. I don't know why I'd want it."

• 58:44Nilay Patel?

  I left the event that day. We went, we drove from Cupertino back to San Francisco because we were going to stay in San Francisco. And I went and just like hung out and saw my friends. And they both were like, "That looks dumb." And they were both like, "We're gonna buy the phone." But their immediate reaction to watch was, "That looks dumb."

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:59Nilay Patel?

  And that's like, well, that's...

• 59:01Speaker 01

  It's a problem.

• 59:01Nilay Patel?

  That's the end of that. Like, I don't know. They've got a long time. I think they might have almost a year. I think it's gonna take them till June. I really do. And like, they've got a long time to figure out why this thing is gonna be what it is.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  And, you know, I said it on Twitter...

• 59:15Speaker 02

  And in the meantime, like, nothing's hurting them other than like a slightly muddled story that we've been fetching about for an hour.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  And they'll print money with iPhones.

• 59:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, that iPhone is gonna...

• 59:23Speaker 02

  They've stopped some Android Wear sales with this. They've stopped some Pebble sales with this.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  I'm sure they have.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  They've definitely stopped some...

• 59:30Speaker 01

  And ultimately, if they sell...

• 59:31Speaker 02

  Gear sales.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  If they sell one Apple Watch for every 10 iPhone users, that's an enormous one.

• 59:38Nilay Patel?

  I bet you, I bet you it'll be 1 in 50 at best.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  I think you're probably right. But even at 1 in 50, I think they're probably still gonna print money with that thing.

• 59:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's very confusing. And if that one is a $3,000 rose gold...

• 59:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:54Nilay Patel?

  Edition with the crocodile band. I, man, alright, we have something to talk about.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Oh, one more thing about the edition. Why is there no white gold?

• 1:00:02Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, man.

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  Because they hate America.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  What does what gold have to do with America?

• 1:00:08Nilay Patel?

  It's clearly duh, my gold. It's just so confusing. Alright, whatever. That's it. That was the Vergecast. It ended on a sad note, for a site that I continually say pedals hope. What I'm offering you here is not hope. I'm offering you the knowledge that one day you will, you too will throw your $3,000 smartwatch into a puddle of molten gold.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  Apples molten gold.

• 1:00:30Nilay Patel?

  Apples molten gold, walk away knowing that you, you were part of history.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  Whatever, man. I'm getting this watch and I'm gonna send you heartbeats all day long.

• 1:00:37Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I cannot wait to send people heartbeats. And that is the...

• 1:00:42Nilay Patel?

  Is that, that's not coming through, is it?

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  Neela's trying to send his heartbeat to all of you, right now. I watched him do it.

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Actually, you know what this reminds me of is Huey Lewis.

• 1:00:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  Heart of rock.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 1:00:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, alright. We should, I'm gonna go listen to Huey Lewis. Now, that was the Vergecast. We'll be back next week, John, on video, with a crazy new set, and like, and like dancers, and like the lights.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  Fireworks.

• 1:01:09Nilay Patel?

  Like the shimmery lights. Ah, it's gonna be Smoke Machine. Christine Hagelera will be here.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  I got, I got shoulder checked by Gwen Stefani at the Apple event.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  Yep. She just like shoved me out of the way.

• 1:01:23Nilay Patel?

  Come on, man, those are the best. If we can get a laser light, I'm gonna go, like, I have to go to the DJ store.

• 1:01:33Nilay Patel?

  I mean, we've got a whole Guitar Center here. We might as well have the one pro sound room in the back that, that nobody understands. Fine. I mean, do you like club owners? Go to Guitar Center?

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  I don't know where they get their gear. You're talking about like the balls that like move around.

• 1:01:48Nilay Patel?

  No, you go to Guitar Center, right? There's like-

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  You can buy a fog machine and like the, the laser show.

• 1:01:52Nilay Patel?

  But no, like you walk into a Guitar Center and you're usually confronted with like, the bunch of cheap guitars, like the $99 like Fenders in front of you, right?

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00Nilay Patel?

  And then there's like, off to the left, there's like the, the custom rack guitars.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Nilay Patel?

  And off to the right, there's like strings and picks and shit. And then you like go farther into it, and there's like acoustics, and then there's like the room, like the, the humidity. I've been to a lot of Guitar Centers.

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, you- I still haven't mentioned the most important part of walking into a Guitar Center, which is like-

• 1:02:18Nilay Patel?

  Which is awesome dude, soloing.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, like smarmy, sales guy who's like, wearing a polo shirt, but really, he wants to be wearing a ripped t-shirt and he just looks down on you.

• 1:02:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Speaker 02

  And makes you feel bad.

• 1:02:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, take your back. But then, so then there's that, and then there's like the drum room. And then like, you have to walk into the drum room, and then if you keep going, there's like the pro sound room, right? With like, huge speakers on stands, and then like racks and racks of like-

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  The LED lights, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:43Nilay Patel?

  Right? And like huge club lights, and it's like, it's like, do club owners come to Guitar Center? To like, is that what you do? Like, is that a necessary step in opening a club? Like, alright, well, I got the liquor distributors here, we got the beer trucks coming in, dance floors laid down, let's hit up Guitar Center and put our-

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  You can't have a club without fog.

• 1:03:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but like, why would you go there?

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  My question is, where do you get the SUDS machines? Like, if you're doing one of those, those clubs that's like, chest deep in, in SUDS?

• 1:03:12Nilay Patel?

  I don't know, but I'm going to Guitar Center, we're spending some money tonight. It's Friday night, everybody. Alright, goodbye, that was the Vergecast.