Reviews for the iPhone 11 Pro, Apple Watch Series 5, and a new Facebook Portal

Apple iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max review: the battery life is real Apple iPhone 11 review: the phone most people should buy iOS 13 is now available to download Apple pushes up iOS 13.1 and iPadOS to September 24th iOS 13 review: join the dark side Apple Watch Series 5 review: the best smartwatch What can Google do to compete with the Apple Watch? Not much Amazon Music rolls out a lossless streaming tier Everything we know about the Pixel 4, the most-leaked phone … Google announces October 15th hardware event for Pixel 4 ... Microsoft is working on foldable Surface devices with liquid … Microsoft's Surface Laptop 3 may include a new 15-inch … Microsoft's next Surface Pen looks like it'll have wireless ... Facebook's new Portal devices are cheaper, smaller, and … Facebook introduces Portal TV, a video chat camera ... The 10 Apple Arcade launch games you have to play - The … Apple Arcade could have huge consequences for the iOS app … Where’s the Apple Arcade, Music, and TV Plus bundle? Nintendo Switch Lite review: a triumphant return to dedicated ... We’re hiring! theverge.com/podcastjob We are conducting an audience survey to better serve you. It takes no more than five minutes, and it really helps out the show. Please take our survey here: www.voxmedia.com/podsurvey. 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Growing teams need a corporate card built for more. Something that doesn't sacrifice speed for control. Introducing the American Express Corporate Cash Back Card. Get 1.5% cash back on eligible business purchases, advanced spending controls, and real-time visibility, plus intelligent expense management. Get started at go.amex slash amexcorporate. Terms and cap apply.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Soft, cushy, plush, cozy. Soft, smooth, buttery, marshmallow-y, warm. Soft. Socks, underwear, tees, and more. Bombas, everyday comfort worth obsessing over. Visit bombas.com/audio and use code AUDIO for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash AUDIO. One purchase equals one donated, always.

• 0:59Nilay Patel?

  This week on The Vergecast, we talk about our iPhone 11 and 11 Pro reviews, iOS 13, and the Apple Watch. We also talk about the events coming up from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, and a little bit on whether you should plug a Facebook camera into your TV. That's The Vergecast coming up now.

• 1:17Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the Vox Media Empire. Galactic. I think we should start calling it the Empire Galactic.

• 1:28Speaker 03

  Planetary.

• 1:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:29Speaker 03

  Planetary.

• 1:30Nilay Patel?

  See what I'm saying? You see where I'm going?

• 1:32Speaker 03

  Inter-

• 1:32Nilay Patel?

  I'm your friend. Yep, there it is. Keep going, Paul. I'm your friend, Eli.

• 1:40Nilay Patel?

  Paul Miller is here. He doesn't know any Beastie Boys songs. Hello. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 1:46Speaker 03

  I'm here to be a disruptive force, apparently. That's, I'm just gonna set Paul off.

• 1:51Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it's iPhone review week. It happened.

• 1:54Speaker 03

  Whew.

• 1:55Nilay Patel?

  It's, uh, it is one of the strangest weeks. The, I saw our friend Joanna Stern. We were on CNBC together. And she literally said, this week is getting harder every year, as though this is actually like a real thing.

• 2:07Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like iPhone week is, is now just a part of our lives. Like in September, there'll be an Apple event. There'll be some iPhones. No one will talk to us for a week and then there'll be iPhone reviews and that's how it goes. It's wild. So it's a, it's like a fixed point in time, but it's iPhone week. Uh, Dieter, you reviewed the Apple Watch Series 5.

• 2:23Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:24Nilay Patel?

  We, we kinda did the iPhone 11 review together. I did the iPhone 11 Pro review. I kinda had Becca Farsace help me with that. That was really fun. We, we reviewed some phones. And they're really good.

• 2:36Speaker 03

  Obviously, the, the, the answer is, uh, don't buy any phones ever, from what most of the reviews say, but that's, that's not your opinion, right?

• 2:44Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I, I have some deep philosophical thoughts about the nature of phone reviews in a monopolized market dominated by lock-in in the United States.

• 2:53Speaker 03

  It's the Verstcast.

• 2:55Nilay Patel?

  Here they are. You tuned into this show, people. You did this to yourselves. Well, let's talk about the phone first and we can, we can do some media criticism, maybe. I will say that John Gruber will be in the interview show on Tuesday. So if you wanna like hear us really yell about other phone reviews, listen to that episode, cause it was, it was fun. I like, I like talking to John a lot. He and I have some beef with some of the other reviews, particularly our times. We'll talk about that a little here, but if you wanna go all the way in, just wait for Tuesday. But let's talk about the phone. Here's what I think is true. Apple, for many years, especially after Steve Jobs left, like overhyped their products, right? They had to like deliver the thing. They'd deliver one more thing. They had to say it was better than ever. They had to

• 3:38Nilay Patel?

  put out a new product category. They had to have these events, say they were changing the world, so they were better than everybody else. The example I come back to over and over again is that when they introduced the Apple Watch, they said the digital crown was an input device on par with multi-touch.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 3:53Nilay Patel?

  Which I think it's fair to say is not true. Like, you had to know.

• 3:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:57Nilay Patel?

  Um, and like, you know, like Bono was there. It was like, their events tend to come with an associated level of hype.

• 4:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, although I will say that, um, you know, in writing the Apple Watch review, I like, needed to like, refer back to the original Apple Series Zero, Apple Watch A bunch, and so I had to look up the event that it came out, and that was a really good year.

• 4:19Nilay Patel?

  In terms of Apple products?

• 4:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, the Apple Watch was a dud, but it was also the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus year, which was like a very, very important iPhone in the grand scheme of things.

• 4:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and it was the Apple Pay year.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 4:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, look, they're good, their products are good. They're a successful company for a reason. I just think that part of their narrative has been them thinking their products are slightly better than they are for a while. And if you just look at the history of their sort of first gen products, I gave the Apple Watches 7, the HomePod got a 7.5, the first Apple TV 4K until they like, added a bunch of features to it, got a 7.5, like, their sort of like, launch editions of products in particular have been lacking.

• 5:02Speaker 03

  Right.

• 5:03Nilay Patel?

  Okay, well, this year, they didn't do shit. Right, like, we all flew to Cupertino, and like, pretty muted event. They're like, the battery lasts longer and the camera's better. There's some new camera features coming and an update that'll come. Here's a picture of a sweater. Here's some phones, like, oh, the display stays on all the time now. That's it, that's, oh, it has a compass. Did you, huh? Compass is gonna change the world. It's like multi-touch, but for, for pointing.

• 5:30Nilay Patel?

  They, they were, they just said the things that people wanted to hear, and then they like, got the things and went home. And the things are really good, like, those are the things.

• 5:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, the, the, the thing that's wild is they were, they were way more muted and chill about the year-over-year upgrades from the iPhone XS to the iPhone 11 Pro. They were much more relaxed, but the difference, the, the iPhone 11 Pro is such a huge upgrade over the XS, it's a much bigger upgrade, I think, than the XS was over the XS, right?

• 6:00Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  Uh, so like, the, the less Apple hypes it, the better it is? Is this the lesson we're taking away?

• 6:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's just like, you just lower those expectations a little bit, right? I mean, if you have a, this is the first year, and this is gonna really get us into the, the controversy that's swirling on Twitter right now.

• 6:18Nilay Patel?

  This is the first year I've ever said this is worth a year-over-year upgrade. If you have a 10S or 10S Max, they're fine and you can keep them and they were very expensive when you bought them, so I understand why you wouldn't want to upgrade. I think those cameras were horrible. Like, I really do. I think I was too polite in those reviews. I said they were very good but not great. And now I'm just like, I should have just said they're not great.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:41Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, I don't think they're good. I think they're good if you look at the photos on a phone screen and the second you do anything else, they look bad. And like, most people look at photos on a phone screen, so like, maybe that's fine, but I don't know. If you have like, kids or a pet or something, you want those photos to last. You don't want to be like, huh, my phone was crappy back then. This is a huge upgrade in the photos. It's just massive.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  Well, and we actually don't know the full extent of the upgrade because sweater mode might change everything.

• 7:10Nilay Patel?

  Sweater mode? Yeah, but it's just like, very clear that Apple underplayed the year-over-year improvement in the sensor. So the 10S sensor, remember the big story about the 10S sensor was it was so much bigger? Do all this stuff? Well, it was also noisy as shit, right? So if you shoot in halide and you pull off raws off that sensor, like, they're noisy. And so the phone had to do all this noise reduction and it just destroyed detail and then Smart HDR was like drunk all the time and was like, shadows and highlights, they should all be the same and like, literally killed the dynamic range of your photos even though it's like Smart HDR. It just looked weird. Like, they just made weird photos with no detail. This sensor is not, does not seem nearly as noisy. So not even having to do the noise reduction.

• 7:55Nilay Patel?

  Then, Smart HDR is like, they calmed it down, so it makes things look better. Then, it seems just like their night mode, it's actually bracketing, it's bracketing like, potentially lots of photos. It's really good. It's better than the Pixels night mode.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  I want to talk about that for a minute, the night mode, but finish your spiel and we'll come back to it.

• 8:18Nilay Patel?

  So that, I mean, that gets you better detail in bright light. It gets you a better night mode than the Pixel, which has a different approach to night mode and obviously the Pixel 4 is coming out, it's like looms over the whole thing. And then, somewhere in there... Like, deep fusion sweater mode is gonna pick up everything from bright to night.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:39Nilay Patel?

  Right? So if you're inside, it's like weird light inside, that's where deep fusion is not like a mode. You don't have to turn it on. It's just gonna replace the processing at that time.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 8:48Nilay Patel?

  So we'll have, the iPhone will automatically switch basically between three types of photo processing. Regular smart HDR, when you're outside and it's bright. Deep fusion for basically the majority of lighting situations. And then night mode for everything dark.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  And it just handles it in a way, which is what I always want out of a camera app is to just do the thing for me. Let me know what you're doing so I can change it, but do the thing for me. And actually, that's the thing that Android phones have been doing for a while, Samsung and Huawei especially. Although their stuff is not quite as direct and straightforward as Apple's. With night mode in particular, I agree with you that by and large, the iPhone, I've been using the iPhone 11 is better than the Pixel 3. But it has a different approach to taking night photography and they like have, they value different things. And so the iPhone brings brightness up a little bit more than I would like in some cases.

• 9:42Speaker 03

  But my actual beef with it is I, the iPhone has a bias towards giving you a naturalistic looking shot. And the Pixel has a bias towards getting the shot. And what I mean by that is I've been taking night mode pictures of my cat, because that's what I got. And with the iPhone, I have to stay much more still. And the result of that is I get a better photo. And I also am really happy that I don't have to like go into a mode specifically to get it. With the Pixel, it's much more forgiving. It will get me a shot no matter what.

• 10:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  But if the cat moves or I move, it'll just be a slightly crappier like lighting condition or lighting shot. But it's much more forgiving at my super shaky hands than the iPhone is. But the iPhone, if everything can stay still for a second, produces a better shot. So I think the iPhone is doing a little bit more long exposure and a little bit less computation than the Pixel, is my guess.

• 10:32Nilay Patel?

  That's exactly right. So the iPhone is actually bracketing. It's taking lots of shots and then one of them is a long exposure. So it's much more traditional HDR. In that sense, right? Traditionally, H R, you take like a short one, a long exposure, a low exposure. You merge them together, you map the tone, map the image. So the iPhone's doing that. Obviously, it's doing a bunch of computational stuff because it's able to get the detail back out of the photo.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 10:58Nilay Patel?

  It's definitely like, there's a long exposure bracketing going on. And so if you move, that long exposure gets blurry or the frames don't line up and it's all over.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  Right.

• 11:07Nilay Patel?

  If you move a lot, you're always moving. It's just the nature of holding a phone.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:11Nilay Patel?

  The Pixel, on the other hand, also it's bracketing, but like mostly what it's doing is it's just cranking the gain on the sensor. And then Google is saying, we're real smart and our math will fix it. So it's like, it's like overrunning the sensor and then like doing a bunch of math to denoise it and get detail back and make night sight. So you're, you're, you're not doing that traditional long exposure. I'm going to see in the dark where I think Apple's doing that. And that's what makes that different.

• 11:35Speaker 03

  Well, Google's also using the delta between like the, the differences in the different shots to like get, make its math better. In the same way that like the super zoom, like your hand movement actually makes it better. And like if the, if the pixel is perfectly still, it actually moves the sensor around. It actually utilizes that handshake to make a better photo. And I think that, I don't know if the iPhone is doing that or not, but the Pixel is definitely doing it more.

• 11:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I, I think a very fair characterization of these cameras is Google is better at math.

• 12:05Nilay Patel?

  Right? And like, and you just like, Google leans into that strength. So they, they, you know, the Pixel is like a commodity sensor. It's not some like special custom weird thing. It's just a pretty normal sensor and Google is able to do really great. That's why if you put a Google camera on another Android phone, your photos get better.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 12:22Nilay Patel?

  Like Google's just like better at, at that math. Apple throws horsepower at it.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:28Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like huge sensor, F 1.8 lens, another sensor, then the tally is faster now. Like they're do, they, they started from that direction. What's great is like, okay, two steps into that direction, they've surpassed Google's mathematical ability and then the Pixel 4 will come out. That's a great race to beat. Like, if you're a car person, it's like, do you want a really fast V8 or do you want like a powerful Turbo 4 and like, that's cool?

• 12:53Speaker 03

  I have a better idea. If these cameras were mid 90s bands that geeks were obsessed with, Apple would be Dream Theater and Google would be Tool.

• 13:06Nilay Patel?

  I hate, I hate this comparison. I hate this comparison because Dream Theater fucking sucks.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  They were loud and operatic and they just used lots of-

• 13:14Nilay Patel?

  Nope, nope. Get out of here on this.

• 13:18Speaker 04

  On the, on the math angle, something I noticed, so, Apple detects, and I know a lot of these cameras do this, they detect the subject of your photo-

• 13:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 04

  And do different things to even different sectors, like, like, you mentioned, Apple sharpens hair.

• 13:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:34Speaker 04

  So, Apple knows what hair is and knows that that should be sharp, but other things maybe not. How worried should I be? Because I, I, I, that, that stresses me out that, like, what if I'm just in this weird zone and I want to get a photo, but it's not like an Apple-approved subject, and so Apple just has no idea what to do, and it just falls apart.

• 13:53Nilay Patel?

  That's really, I hadn't thought about it that way. So, first, I think most people probably assume this because it's Apple. No data's leaving your phone. They're not, like, doing facial recognition, right? Like, they're able to recognize a scene. So, I don't have the full list of things they can recognize, but I don't think it's true that if you are, I don't know, what's the-

• 14:14Speaker 03

  Taking a picture of an alien.

• 14:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  Taking an alien race.

• 14:17Nilay Patel?

  You're, you're like a Zelda fan and you're in Asia and you found a hardy durian and you're like, and Apple just doesn't, you know what I mean? Like, and it's not going to get that photo.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  If, if I, if, if Dieter's cat walks into a dark alley and I try to take a picture of it-

• 14:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:31Speaker 04

  How different is that going to be than if my friend who is, has their face towards me is in that same dark alley and I take a picture of it?

• 14:39Nilay Patel?

  Is your friend wearing a catsuit?

• 14:43Nilay Patel?

  My friend who is the lead in Cats.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  We are living in the year of the Cats the movie.

• 14:49Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we're just gonna start, start all over again.

• 14:52Speaker 04

  That's the year we're in, 2019.

• 14:54Nilay Patel?

  So like that, right, that list of things it knows about, we don't know the whole list. So like, I don't, I don't know the answer to that question specifically. I do think the level that it's sort of doing its semantic rendering is, it's not so much that it's like crappy if it doesn't do it.

• 15:14Speaker 04

  Well, cause classically with the, the, the portrait mode, right? If it didn't see something as a face, it just didn't really know how to portrait mode it.

• 15:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but that was more about cutouts and depth, right? Where in like now it's good at pets and you could always trick portrait mode into like doing a wine glass or something, right? Like you could do it, it just was, it was optimized for faces. Here it's, it's very specifically like, we know that's the sky. We're not going to apply a sharpening filter to the sky. We know this is a face, the tones across the face should be more even. So we're gonna bring up highlights and shadows on the face appropriately. We know this is hair or facial hair, a light sharpen across this is good. I don't think it's, that's a cat, we're gonna make it look more like a cat. You know what I mean? Like, I think that's an open question, like what is the full list of things that semantic rendering will take care of?

• 16:07Nilay Patel?

  What they told me that, I was gonna put this in the review, but I thought it would just be dumb. Cause they kept on being like, the sky, faces, hair, facial hair. And I kept on, I'm like, sky face, face sky, hair sky, like, they just, cause they kept saying face, hair, facial hair. But the only, the one that didn't fit was sky. So every time they said that to me, I'd be like, in sky face, obviously. Now, see, I took it out of the review, it doesn't play. It didn't play, it played in my head and I deleted it. That, but that was the list they kept giving me was like sky, face, hair, facial hair. Sky, face. It didn't work again. I tried again.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  Sky, what about sky hair?

• 16:44Nilay Patel?

  Hair, sky. You see what I'm saying? Anyway.

• 16:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:47Nilay Patel?

  So Paul, I don't know the answer to your question. I think people are gonna get their hands on these phones and we will discover that like it just fails out when you take a picture of an alien. It definitely knows what the subjects of the photos are.

• 16:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:59Nilay Patel?

  Right? It will like put a box around a face. It knows, okay, these are faces. And then it will do the, this is very broken in iOS 13. But if you take a group photo and there's like a lot of people in it, it will recrop the photo using the wide angle sensor, which is super cool. The one time it worked for me, um, and every other time it's broken. So that's the other thing they added. They added this, they added the ultra wide camera, which I think is great.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  This argument. We had, we had a bit of the argument in the iPhone 11 video.

• 17:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  Um, but we should actually have it out. Um, that, I mean, we both agree that wide angle is better than telephoto, right?

• 17:32Nilay Patel?

  Yes. I mean, they made the absolute right call by putting the wide angle instead of telephoto.

• 17:36Speaker 03

  But I actually think that you get more utility out of a wide angle than you do out of a telephoto, even though it is a worse lens. Because just stepping back on the wide doesn't get you the like picture profile that the wide angle gives you. Like it creates a different kind of photo with like different, you know, lens characteristics and different angles on the, you know, different distortion.

• 17:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  Um, and so like to me, it's more fun, but it's also more useful because fundamentally like, if it weren't like a 4X telephoto or an 8, then I'm with you. But a 2X is like, I don't know. I guess it gives you better portrait photos, but in terms of like raw zoom utility, I'm just not impressed.

• 18:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I've never been.

• 18:19Speaker 03

  Depressed, it's fine, but like I just don't get it.

• 18:22Nilay Patel?

  Last year, you know, we told everybody to buy an iPhone 10R instead of an iPhone 10S. And part of the reason was if you really care about the screen, get the 10S. And that was it. Because I didn't think, I've never thought the telephoto lens in these iPhones is good. I think it takes worse photos. It's a smaller sensor. It was a much slower lens. The wide angle just looks fun. And it gets you that sort of like shoot outside the frame, full screen finder, which I think is very useful for people.

• 18:48Speaker 03

  Well, and it gets you a ton of, ton more options in video as well.

• 18:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And I think people who are, who are trying to zoom on an iPhone are just gonna pinch in digital zoom. And it's gonna be fine. You know what I mean? Like, if you're the sort of person who's like, yep, zooming on my iPhone is what I need to do. Like, you're probably fine by just like taking a horrible photo. But I think the wide angle, like, A, looks so different, B, is so useful. Enables this feature of the automatic recropping, which does not work, which we should talk about iOS 13. But it's a much more useful lens. And the fact that it's on the 11 too, makes the argument for the 11 so much stronger than last year. Right? Like, if they, if the 11 had a telephoto and a regular lens, I'd be like, it'd be kind of worth the pro to get the ultra wide.

• 19:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. Interesting.

• 19:31Nilay Patel?

  I, cuz it's, it's, whatever.

• 19:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:33Nilay Patel?

  The telephoto is a faster lens now. It's F 2.0. So it's a little bit better, and it's a little bit better in the light. Um, but still, in the dark, it, the iPhone does the thing where it crops the main sensor instead of switching to the telephoto. Cuz it knows you'll get a better photo out of the big main sensor and faster lens if you crop than out of the smaller sensor and slower lens.

• 19:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:54Nilay Patel?

  It's a little, it's a, it's a little bit more eager to switch cuz it's a faster lens, but, um, it still crops the main lens. A lot of people, bizarrely, a lot of people ask me about that. It's a very inside. I think it's they know that I will answer that question.

• 20:09Nilay Patel?

  Like, who is the nerd who cares about, it's like me? Yeah. I don't know, Dieter, you had the 11 for a week.

• 20:15Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 20:16Nilay Patel?

  The big story for the other phones is battery life. We actually led the review with battery life the first time ever. But you didn't see some huge noticeable difference on the 11 from the 10R.

• 20:24Speaker 03

  Apple claims an hour. I didn't see a huge difference, but I think the part of that is just that the battery life on the 10R was so good to begin with. And that was one of the reasons we recommended it over the, uh, the 10S back then. The things are identical. I walked out of my apartment once, got all the way to the subway, and then looked down, realized I was carrying the 10R instead of the iPhone 11, and had to go back. Uh, cause I had the wrong phone in my pocket. So it's like, it's other than the, the camera and the, the new, um, glass on the back. It's the exact same phone, exact same screen. If you have a 10R, I don't think it's worth an upgrade to an iPhone 11 for you. You are going to get, the, the cameras are way better, but if you were that worried about camera quality in the first place, you probably were the kind of person who ended up getting a 10S in the first place.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  So I think if you have a 10R, you could definitely hang on for, you know, another year or two, uh, cause the battery life jump isn't that big. Whereas with the 11 Pro, it seems like the, the combination of the battery life jump and the camera jump. And I don't know, Neel, you could talk about whether or not the screen jump is worth it, uh, better than I can, cause I haven't seen it in person in real conditions. Does make it a thing where you might consider upgrading year over year, at least, you know, if you're two, three years back, you definitely are going to want to go take a look at it. Um, but even if you're like really into it, year over year might be worth it. Especially if you're on like a, like an installment plan or something like, just go check it out.

• 21:47Nilay Patel?

  Last year, when this, when the price differential was 250 bucks, it was a lot easier for me to say like, buy a screen. Right. Like it was just, it just felt like if you really care about monitors and I tell you to buy a slightly more expensive monitor for your PC and the Delta's 250, right? Like that's a pretty normal price range for a mon, like, or TV. Like a cheap TV costs $500 and I'm like buying OLED, it's $3,000 and no one gets confused about what I'm trying to say. So to me, the screen upgrade is like, it's 250 bucks. It's a far superior display. It's bizarre to me that now that it's 300 bucks, I'm like, I don't, I don't know. It seems like a lot of money.

• 22:29Speaker 04

  It feels like a deal.

• 22:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Speaker 04

  It, $300, a $700 phone somehow seems dramatically cheaper than a $1,000 phone. I, I'm, I really have two minds about this because at the same time, especially things like skimping on the, the charger, you know, skipping on the screen a little bit compared to Android does not feel like much of a deal. But compared to the iPhone 11 Pro, if you don't absolutely need crazy camera stuff, you know, it feels like a great deal.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  Can we talk about the $700 price and price range for a minute?

• 23:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:02Speaker 03

  It's $700 does feel like substantially different than 750. It is for only the 64 gig version, but I think that if you use a bunch of streaming music, you're probably fine. If you shoot a lot of video, you're going to want to jump up. And the iPhone 11 gives you a 128 option where the 11 Pro does not. Anyway, the thing that is fascinating to me is the thing Dan keeps saying, which is, don't look at the price when the phone is announced. Look at the price like three, four, five months later. See how much, how often it's getting discounted. That applies especially to Samsung phones, but it also kind of applied a lot to the 10R. So this $700 phone might, for all intents and purposes, if you can like find a deal on it in a couple of months, be like 600, maybe less, who knows?

• 23:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  The story of the year up to now for Android has been, man, there are a lot of like six, $700 Android phones that are flagships, that are like shockingly good. The OnePlus 7 Pro is like the top of that list. There's some other phones in that zone. And the level to which the upgrade on the camera from the 10R to the 11 puts it on top of those Android phones that up until this week were like, oh, wow, yeah. I actually would totally recommend this over an Android phone, Android phone over that thing. Like, the 10R is playing at a lower price point and it's just weighted into this very competitive zone of Android phones. And I think it's gonna, it outperforms all of their cameras and that's gonna be a really

• 24:28Speaker 03

  interesting fight.

• 24:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Are they gonna do a Pixel 4A?

• 24:31Speaker 03

  Everyone is assuming they will. I don't know if they'll do it right now. There was a rumor that they wanted to release the Pixel 3A next to the 3, but they're worried it would cannibalize sales, which it absolutely would have.

• 24:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, at this point, the Pixel 4 is cannibalizing sales. Like, this phone is so deeply leaked, it's like hilarious. My joke is that they're gonna announce the Pixel 5 at the Pixel 4 event.

• 24:54Speaker 03

  Oh, I like that.

• 24:55Nilay Patel?

  They're so far ahead of their skis, like they might as well just be like, and next year I'll do another one. Yeah, I mean, we'll see. I think that it's better than all the sort of $700 camera. Like, the thing that gets me, we just did all this camera testing. This is like my favorite time of the year. Like, how did I end up with a job where I take a bunch of photos and then like 50 people want to stand around me yelling about how good the photos are until midnight?

• 25:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:17Nilay Patel?

  That's the best thing that, like, once a year I get to do. That's great. So we're gonna do it again with the Pixel.

• 25:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:22Nilay Patel?

  The thing that gets me, and, you know, we published a photo comparison and I made a very definitive claim. Last year, my claim was like, "You must look into your own heart and decide if this crappy photo is crappy," right? Like, right? Like, "These are aesthetic choices." This year, I was like, "It's better." Like, I just think it's better.

• 25:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:42Nilay Patel?

  So you make a definitive claim on the internet and people are gonna, they're gonna tell you what they think. And so many people are like, "I like this Note 10 photo." That is wild to me, but I completely understand it.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:54Nilay Patel?

  It's like, you know, when you go to the store and the TVs are all set crazy? They're like, super high brightness, all of the pictures in like, every TV retailer, like, TVs have a retail mode. Like, when you take them out of the box, like, "Are you at home? Are you in a store?" You say, like, accidentally choose you're in a store and it gets nuclear bright.

• 26:11Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:12Nilay Patel?

  That is the Note 10. The Note 10 is like, your hammered friend at a party saying he can fix it, right? Just like, drunk, crazy, making no sense. "Do you want me to sharpen and smooth this photo? Do you want, do you want it to be as bright, overexposed?" And then it's on a screen, like, the Note screen is so bright and so saturated. I completely get it. Like, absolutely get it.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  I found, when I was using the Note 10, that my, my photos did not look that over-processed. So, maybe they changed the software, or maybe, just like, when you look at it that much head-to-head to these other phones, it's different.

• 26:48Nilay Patel?

  No, here's the thing, and this is what I mean by reviews.

• 26:50Speaker 03

  I just wanna, I just want everyone to, if you didn't read Neil's review, you should. Because you get lines like this, that, "The iPhone 11 is far more natural than, quote, 'The Note 10's processing fiesta.'"

• 27:03Nilay Patel?

  It's a process, it's a, it's a party. Like, every time you look at it, you're like, "This is a party." Like, they're just having a good time, they don't care what anybody else thinks of them, right? They showed up, they had a couple beers before the party, and now they're ready to get, like... Those photos, just look at them. And I understand why people like them. It's the same reason the TVs are really bright in the store. Your eye is naturally drawn to the brightest, like, most saturated thing, and you're like, that's the best one. And then you look at it, like I'm saying, you look at it next to the other photos, and you're like, this photo looks bonkers. Like, it's just, it's the brightest, most processed photo of the bunch.

• 27:43Nilay Patel?

  And I think it's really interesting that Sony will even, even in that comparison, like, I like that one. And I think it's great because there's choice in the market and everyone's not chasing the same look. But man, they look nuts. Like, just, it's the Kool-Aid man, right? Just like, yeah, like, I don't know. And I, I don't know why Samsung does that by default. I suspect it has to do with- People like Kool-Aid. I suspect it has to do with, like, literally, like, sales in the Asian market, right? Like, skin, we, we've gone through this every year. Like, smoothing filters and skin smoothing and face smoothing, all that stuff is way more acceptable in Asian markets.

• 28:27Nilay Patel?

  Those phones all do it like mad. I suspect it's related to that. I also suspect there's a value in just looking different and, like, looking like that, because it, it looks different. I think that's kind of the same reason the ultra-wide is the choice over the telly. Like, it just looks different. You can just, you're like, this is, this is different than what I'm used to. It's not just closer. Um, but yeah, it just, you look at these photos and it's like, what? I just want to go to Samsung's party. I want to go to the room where they make decisions about how to process photos and just be like, where's the cocaine? Is it here? Because I've, I've, I've long suspected it's here. This kind of brings me to my other point, the big point. Because, Dieter, you mentioned that, that the 11 in particular is wading into very competitive waters. Yeah.

• 29:10Nilay Patel?

  So I, you know, we do our reviews. We are nerds. So like, okay, we're gonna take the photos to 100% and we're gonna see if the, the, there's more detail. Even though we know, know, like, very few people will ever do this. But at this point, all the cameras are good, all the screens are good, all the phones connect to LTE, right? Like, they, they've stopped exploding.

• 29:33Nilay Patel?

  There's the one year where the bar was like, does this phone explode? But like, they're all good phones. They're expensive. They do the, they do the jobs. They run the collection of apps. We're not arguing about whether Windows Phone will gain an ecosystem, right? Like, there's two main players and you're in one ecosystem or not.

• 29:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:49Nilay Patel?

  And to evaluate their differences, you kind of have to be a huge nerd now. Right? You have to like, understand how cameras work. You have to understand what they're doing differently. You have to understand why those results look different.

• 30:00Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:01Nilay Patel?

  You, I don't know. You have to know about OLED screens. Like, your Apple Watch review, like, spends a little time talking about screen controllers, because you just-

• 30:08Speaker 03

  It's so short. It's like, one sentence. And I'm like, I'm gonna link elsewhere. I'm not, I'm not getting into-

• 30:13Nilay Patel?

  But, but to do a credible job of differentiating these products. So then I'm reading, and then, so we publish our review, and then like, I want to see if I got it right. It's like, go and read everybody else's review. And this year in particular, I was struck at how inevitable everybody treats the iPhone. BuzzFeed, John Pachowski at BuzzFeed, who's great, and his review is really funny. It's just photos of his dogs and like, listed features and telling you whether or not they work. And he did it on purpose. He actually tweeted at me, "Smartphone reviews are useless. Just pick the ecosystem you're in, and every couple of years get a new one, and it'll be fine." Um, and that, I think that's a, that's a take and it's valid, and John knows what he's doing, right? He like, did that on purpose. He believes smartphone reviews are useless,

• 30:55Nilay Patel?

  and so he wrote his review that way on purpose, and it's funny, and you should read it, because it's funny. But he's fundamentally saying there's no competition here. There's no way to evaluate this phone in the context of other phones. It doesn't even matter. You're just gonna get the next one in your ecosystem and move on. So that's like, one take, and I think that was very honest and very sincere. Then there's like, The Times, which is like, literally the line of the review was, "You don't need a better phone now. Just take flash photos to get better photos." If your phone is functional at all, you're, like, and that to me is so nihilistic. First of all, it assumes that Apple won't screw up. Which is an incredible thing to assume.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 31:35Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, yes, they generally don't screw up, but it's a thousand dollar product. And you should, you should see if they screwed up.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, maybe, maybe see if the software works.

• 31:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, maybe see if iOS 13 doesn't crash every 20 minutes.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:49Nilay Patel?

  Which is not reflected in this review. Everyone else, like, you can, they all say, like, iOS 13 is pretty buggy. And like, Apple pushed up the release date of iOS 13.1 today.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:59Nilay Patel?

  Because it's so buggy that they don't want people to see it.

• 32:02Speaker 03

  And iPadOS, Catalina is still out there, like, literally in Catalina. Nobody knows.

• 32:08Nilay Patel?

  I just, I don't get it, in that, we keep talking about Lock-in and Monopoly and blah, blah, and I think that the strongest evidence I have that this monopoly is damaging competition is that people who are paid to help you make buying decisions have just seeded, have just seeded the ground. They're like, I, there's no reason to help you make a buying decision. We know what you're gonna do. You're just gonna buy the next iPhone. Now, the only question is, how soon should you buy the next iPhone? Which is like, the ultimate, right? Like, it's, there's like, what if you want to switch? What if the answer is, this year's iPhone isn't very good? And you should switch to Android? Like, why would you just seed that ground? And I, it's, it's literally been driving me crazy for, you can obviously tell, it's been driving me crazy for a week.

• 32:52Nilay Patel?

  But like, I'm very curious what, what you two think about that.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  Even if you grant that people are locked into their ecosystems and will never leave them, because iMessage.

• 33:03Nilay Patel?

  I've discovered that it's also AirDrop.

• 33:05Speaker 03

  Really?

• 33:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I, I mean, what did I do all this past week? I took 5,000 photos and tried to get them on my computer to look at them.

• 33:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:12Nilay Patel?

  AirDrop's really good.

• 33:15Speaker 03

  I'm seeing, I'm seeing those hot takes, like, AirDrop is the secret teen, uh, social network. For crimes, probably.

• 33:24Nilay Patel?

  But yeah.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  At the very, even if you grant that people are locked into their ecosystem for life forever, at the very least, there's like more than one iPhone to talk about, right?

• 33:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:34Speaker 03

  And there, there's like, you know, possibly like skip this year instead of just buy it when you need it. And I would, if I saw a skip this year review, I'd be like, okay, cool. But man, the only argument for the iPhone 11 Pro to be a skip year, if you need a phone and you should like hold out for another year if you can, is that the 2020 iPhone is expected to be a much bigger change. But again, we go overdo it with car analogies, but like, man, it's starting to look like a pretty bad idea to buy the first gen of an Apple product.

• 34:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:08Speaker 03

  The first model of a car. You wait till they work out the kinks in the second year. In the iPhone X's case, the third year.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  And I don't know. I, I, I guess I'm basically with you.

• 34:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So I keep thinking about the Chinese market, where there is no iMessage lock-in.

• 34:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:26Nilay Patel?

  Where there is a thriving ecosystem of Android phones that don't have play services. So they've like mutated in different directions. Where everyone uses WeChat. So like the hardware matters more over year over year. And they're like very smart analysts who like made this case in great detail. Ben Thompson comes to mind that because WeChat is fundamentally the operating system of the phone, that you can just switch hardware and then like that is actually the thing.

• 34:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:52Nilay Patel?

  And so you look at the Chinese market, there's, the phones are way more interesting. My cameras are flipping up and down all over the place.

• 34:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:59Nilay Patel?

  There's 40 megapixel camera sensors. With the Mate 30 Pro came out today, it's got four cameras in a circle. Like it's just like.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  And no Google, by the way. That's.

• 35:10Nilay Patel?

  It didn't have Google in China anyway.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:12Nilay Patel?

  Apple, that's one of Apple's biggest markets. So when they get outgunned in hardware in China, they have to compete. The reason this camera is better. Is because Apple has to make it look better, in particular than the P30 Pro, which is the camera they cross-tested the most when they were briefing us on the cameras. They kept on telling us how bad the P30 looked. That's on purpose.

• 35:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:35Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, the P30 Pro is a pretty good camera. That's the competition you want. Right? Apple has to perform better because in China, there's actual competition for the phones. In India, there's actual competition for the phones. So I think we've talked about this on the Verge months and months ago. But like, gadget360 is the biggest gadget site in India. It's around by Canaldua. It's like a friend of us. It's as big as Verge, has a bigger audience than Verge, and just reviews like a dozen phones a week in exhaustive detail because it matters and the audience wants that stuff. There isn't a site in the States that is actually performing at that volume that knows, "Okay, iOS users might switch to Android." No one's trying to make that case here.

• 36:17Nilay Patel?

  I just think it's wild that, okay, like, the New York Times is doing all this monopoly stuff, and BuzzFeed is doing great tech coverage. You can't connect the dots between how bored you are with your iPhone review and the fact that these are monopoly. Like, that's, just do it. Like, just draw the line. It's right there. I'm doing it for you right now. Instead, you're like, "Take flash photos."

• 36:39Speaker 04

  If you are gonna resign yourself to like, "Well, we're always just gonna have new iPhones every year." That's like, that's, then it's basically becoming politics. And then you gotta start lobbying. Like, I'm, you know, I'm the small phone contingent from Tennessee, and we want small phones, and we want them now. You know, like, at least you could soapbox your review a little bit.

• 37:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's just bizarre to me. And like, there are good reviews. The Engadget review is very good. Joanna Stern, she actually wrote two at the Journal. Very good. I'm not saying that, like, no one did the work. Lauren's review in Wired is very good. Those are like our family. Like, those are a bunch of Verge people. And like, you can see it, like, that history of like, "Okay, we have to actually critically assess this product, which is one of the most important products you own. We will see it if it lives up to Apple's claims." The basic job. Not, "This is inevitable. Apple always does a good job. Just hold off a little longer."

• 37:39Speaker 04

  Here's how I see it. Like...

• 37:42Speaker 03

  Why even bother reviewing the new Jonathan Franzen novel? I mean, there's gonna be a new one every year. It's gonna be mediocre. Everyone's gonna buy it anyway and have opinions about it. Why bother?

• 37:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 37:54Nilay Patel?

  Why? Yeah, see, you convince Paul.

• 37:56Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 37:57Nilay Patel?

  The joke I was trying to make on Twitter is about the Camry and everyone thought I was actually talking about Toyota Camrys. Clearly did not play. If I, if I was to work at a major mainstream, I'm CNN's car reviewer, car reporter. Yeah. And I like go on the air on CNN. I'm like, uh, yep, I've been driving the 2020 Camry for a year. It's pretty good, but you know, all cars are fine. Uh, I only compared this Camry to the 2019 Camry and I've never driven any other cars. Buy one if you want one. Like, that's horrible. And like, no one would accept that as useful.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  You could, you can, you can switch from a Camry to a Honda and your family still talks to you.

• 38:37Nilay Patel?

  That's what I'm saying. Anyway, I don't want to get overly meta on this. It is just the frame that the iPhone exists in. When in fact, this iPhone is actually by far the best year-over-year iPhone upgrade they have produced since like the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 4.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  You think it's way bigger than the iPhone 8 to the 10, huh?

• 38:59Nilay Patel?

  Uh, yeah, I do.

• 39:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. Speaking, speaking of the phone basics, I want to talk about iOS 13.

• 39:07Nilay Patel?

  Wait, we've gone for 40 minutes. Let's take a break, come back and talk about iOS 13.

• 39:15Speaker 05

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in wearable. So your vitals app now with heart rate variability can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash Apple Watch Series 12.

• 39:45Speaker 06

  New and exclusive holiday decor just launched online at the Home Depot. Check out the viral Grand Duchess collection with smart holiday lights you can control from your phone. Easily customize the twinkle across trees, wreaths and garlands to match your holiday vibe. Create stunning light effects, then switch it up with the top of your fingers. Even the man in red will be impressed. Shop the holiday decor you want online only at HomeDepot.com.

• 40:16Nilay Patel?

  Okay, iOS 13, go for it, Paul.

• 40:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it's a buggy.

• 40:22Speaker 04

  iOS 13 is an important part of a phone because the phone runs the software. And we're coming on the heels, you know, Apple obviously didn't bring it up at their event and maybe they've swept it fully under the rug. It's still really looming very large in my mind. Apple had a huge security vulnerability a couple years back and it seems all patched and all fine now. But if you are putting out software, especially if you're actually shipping it to people, it's not just a developer beta. If you're shipping software to people, that is a buggy mess. I don't, bugs do not always equal security vulnerabilities, but security vulnerabilities are bugs.

• 41:04Speaker 04

  And, and when you have software that is a mess and crashes, it's a good sign that it might be lacking in the sort of quality assurance, the same sort of quality assurance that is necessary to keep your phone secure from being hacked by, I don't know, your best friend, China.

• 41:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, Apple's like in China, like it's one of their biggest markets. So I see what you are saying, like, don't ship buggy operating systems when you're about to enter a huge market like that. I just think they're rushing it out. I think it's a much more innocent. Right? Like, they just need to get it done and they they just race to the finish line. It's not done.

• 41:44Speaker 03

  But they don't need to. I mean, yes, they have a financial responsibility to themselves to remain rich, to keep on pushing out phones exactly on the year and and ship an operating system with it. But they have no true obligation to ship buggy software. It's a liability.

• 42:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So the fact that they moved the date up six days is a huge tell to me. Why are they even releasing iOS 13.0 to the general public when, so initially it was iOS 13.0 on the new phones. Everybody gets it today, right? The 19th or the 20th?

• 42:19Speaker 03

  Yes, right, right. One of those days. Yeah.

• 42:21Nilay Patel?

  And then iOS 13.1 comes out on the 30th for everybody.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:26Nilay Patel?

  Then today-

• 42:26Speaker 03

  And iPadOS was back there as well. And again, Catalina is literally in Catalina.

• 42:31Nilay Patel?

  And then literally today, which is when all the iOS like 13 reviews and stuff started to hit because it's going to come out, Apple quietly didn't tell anyone.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:40Nilay Patel?

  They updated their webpage to say iOS 13.1 is coming out on September 24th. And Lauren Good, to her credit at Wired, noticed it, tweeted it. Then everybody called Apple out once and confirmed it. This is what happened. And then, yep, they moved it up basically a week. So now it's a four day delta between everybody with an iPhone getting upgraded to a buggy operating system and then presumably getting the update that fixes it.

• 43:04Speaker 03

  Presumably it fixes it.

• 43:05Nilay Patel?

  Why even ship 13.0?

• 43:07Speaker 03

  Okay, why? Like, the question is, is there something about shipping the iPhone 11 that like requires them to get 13.0 on all the other phones? Is there like, if there's a, if there's an iPhone 11 in the world with 13.0 and it like pings Apple servers, are they not able to figure out that like it shouldn't be getting a 12 update? Like, what is the reason that they cannot have some phones with 13 and some phones with 12 for a week?

• 43:33Nilay Patel?

  Wait, but that reason can't exist. There's, it's always going to be a gradient of operating systems, right?

• 43:38Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah.

• 43:39Nilay Patel?

  Even on the day 13.1 comes out, they're going to have a bunch of people with 12 for a while.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:46Nilay Patel?

  So I think that problem can't exist because it would be a problem every year. And like literally every year, like iOS 12 was super buggy. And every year before that, like they would do the updates and everyone's alarm clocks would get reset. So like maybe that is a problem. Who knows? Like, that can't be the issue, because it's already necessarily true. That not everybody is gonna get it at the same minute.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  Why are they shipping it, then?

• 44:09Nilay Patel?

  I cannot tell you why they're shipping it. They should just cancel iOS 13. And, by the way, if you're listening to this-

• 44:16Speaker 03

  13.0.

• 44:16Nilay Patel?

  13.0.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  Did you cancel 13.0?

• 44:18Nilay Patel?

  If you're listening to this, I realize you're, I mean, you're a Vergecast listener, and you just put up with a rant about locking monopoly power in iPhone reviews, so like, you're in it. I'm assuming that if you put up with that, you've upgraded your phone. It feels like a one-to-one there. But you shouldn't upgrade 13.0. You should wait the four days. Absolutely. It is, I mean, Dieter, you've been running it. Our staff has been running it in betas. On my review units, it was super buggy. I talked to Lauren, it was really buggy on hers. I talked to Joanna, it was really buggy on hers. Like, messages will just, the keyboard will disappear, and the text field will go to the top of the screen. That just happens. Again, I was using AirDrop a lot.

• 45:01Nilay Patel?

  AirDrop crashed so hard, so many times, that I had to reset the phone three times. Springboard crashes. Sometimes the camera, you know, the great camera that I say is the best in the industry. So I just, yeah, didn't show up.

• 45:13Speaker 03

  Sometimes the camera just decided to stop saving photos. And not like the pixel, where the pixel like, just drops a photo every now and then, but keeps working. No, the camera's just like, no, I'm done. You can continue to take photos, but I'm not saving them for you until you reset.

• 45:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Safari, my favorite way that Safari got hooped. You know, they took out 3D Touch and now it's Taptic Touch, the long press, so like, that's how the link previews work. It's like, long press on link, I'm like, oh, this isn't working, and I realized, it was working in slow motion.

• 45:43Nilay Patel?

  Just a very slow-

• 45:46Speaker 03

  Like, it's one pixel-

• 45:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  Four pixels.

• 45:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was like, the thing is zooming, the drop shadow appears, the window started expanding. I was like, this is very relaxing. I do wonder, this is a very suspenseful way to preview a webpage. And why? Why did that happen? And I just had to re, like, force quit Safari and try again. Like, it's a buggy operating system. And I will tell you, one, people ask, why did you give it? I gave the phone a nine. Why'd you give it a nine, when you say the operating system is buggy? Well, because I knew iOS 13.1 was coming 10 days after the phone ships.

• 46:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:20Nilay Patel?

  So if iOS thirteen dot one is as buggy on this phone, I think there's a real conversation we're gonna have to have about changing the score of the thing.

• 46:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:27Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 46:28Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 46:28Nilay Patel?

  But I asked Apple, literally the first question I asked Apple on every like briefing call we had during the review process was, hey, is iOS thirteen ready?

• 46:37Nilay Patel?

  Right, like, do you know? And they're like, yeah, you know, iOS thirteen one is coming.

• 46:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:42Nilay Patel?

  And that was the answer every time. Uh, so they, they know. But it's bizarre to me that they're shipping it to the general population when they've pushed up the thirteen one. The general population. It's like people with iPhone elevens are like in maximum security. It's hard because your phone at any moment will crash. You have to be isolated. It is bizarre to me that they're releasing it this way. It's also bizarre to me that there are so many features that aren't coming. That they told us were coming.

• 47:10Speaker 04

  Okay, there's sweater mode. What else is there?

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  Sweater mode is coming later this fall.

• 47:14Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 47:15Nilay Patel?

  So we don't even know when that's coming. That's just off in the future. And I saw like, that was another question, like, deep fusion's coming, why don't you give them credit for? And it's like, I don't know, maybe it'll never come. You don't know. Air power never came, like.

• 47:26Speaker 04

  It would have been a ten with sweater mode. Is that what you're saying?

• 47:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I was like, cause you know, the Pixel on the Note one, a handful of comparisons that in, in particular, uh, deep fusion should make the iPhone better at. So people are like, why didn't you say diffusion? It's like, well, because it might never happen.

• 47:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:44Nilay Patel?

  Like you, one day Apple will ship a charger that lets you charge everything at once. Uh, you know what? A year later, they're like, no, it won't. Like, you, you can't, you can't review promises. But the U one ship doesn't work at all until thirteen one shows up. Uh, AirPods sharing, which is a thing that is on the product pages for the, the phones, doesn't work yet. Like, it's just like a lot of things. Uh, the auto resize photo thing, that's maybe, maybe that operates now. So it's, we, it's just a weird release cycle for them. And I've just he, heard over and over again, it's, it's kind of messy at Apple this year. I think they could have shipped the phones with iOS 12 and as long as the cameras are better and the battery life is as good, fine. Dieter, have you had as many problems with iOS 13 as I have?

• 48:30Speaker 03

  Not quite as many, but close. I mean, I had that camera thing. I've had, I've had springboard crashes. I've not had weird THX slo-mo Safari poppers happen.

• 48:42Speaker 04

  I'm trying to remember, weren't there was like a key command on the Mac that would make it?

• 48:46Speaker 03

  If you hold down shift when you do expose, it used to go slow. Or was it shift? There was some key command to make it go slow.

• 48:54Speaker 04

  There's one when they, you know, the genie into the dock thing.

• 48:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:58Speaker 04

  I can't figure it out. Huh. Well, please at Dieter and let him know.

• 49:03Speaker 04

  Have you, have either of you guys tried shortcut stuff?

• 49:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, here and there.

• 49:09Speaker 04

  From the app developers I follow, like the people who are super deep into the ecosystem, they're pretty stoked on it.

• 49:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, again, I like, I don't trust iOS 13. So like, I don't want to spend my time building shortcuts that might break. Like it's, it's, it's writing code in a laborious way. That's like what shortcuts is, right? Like I'm going to drag and drop these random little interface bits and bobs into an editor and it's going to eventually be a macro.

• 49:35Speaker 04

  It, it, it's writing code, which is a laborious thing. It is theoretically one of the more straightforward ways to write code, but yeah.

• 49:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, it, that's actually a really interesting question. Cause like, there's a part of me that just wants to type, when this happens, do this other thing. But instead you have to like, open a list of like images and then drag them into a puzzle. So I think that's harder.

• 50:00Nilay Patel?

  But like, it's, it may be, like, I just want to write Apple script.

• 50:02Speaker 04

  What if you did if this, then that, but then you left off the semi call? What about that though?

• 50:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I hear what you're saying. It was like, it's, they told us when they announced it, this is the like spiritual successor to Apple script.

• 50:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:17Nilay Patel?

  And it, and it absolutely is. But then there's a part of me that's like, just give me the Apple script editor.

• 50:22Nilay Patel?

  And it doesn't exist. So like, you know what I mean? Like, it's a, again, a tru- you're right. It is, in one sense, much less laborious and much more democratic, because people just figure it out. But yeah, I haven't wanted to invest time in something that I'm like, oh, this will just break. Because the OS is buggy. But I think it's cool. I wrote a shortcut last year that was my favorite shortcut, where I could hit one button on my home screen and it would just tweet, "Fire McCarthy", in relation to the Packers coach. Which is like, really useful and funny. I just like, did that every Sunday and it was great. But I haven't done anything more exciting. I'm excited for when they let you have file system access to make a bunch of photo shortcuts. I think that'll be really fun.

• 51:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:06Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, have you done anything? This is like, this is your zone.

• 51:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've done a few. I have a bunch of custom web searches. So if I want to search like, just within the Verge domain, or if I want to search for just links that came into the world, were birthed on the web in the last week. Or if I want to search a particular link on Twitter to see what people are saying about a particular story. So I have shortcuts for all that stuff. I did, I also have a shortcut that lets me create icons that just go to nowhere, or like, go to a webpage. But the thing about shortcuts is, you can choose your icon, which means that you can make an icon that perfectly matches, pixel for pixel, your wallpaper, which means that you can have your icons on your home screen at the bottom, instead of at the top.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  Because you've got dummy icons at the top.

• 51:56Nilay Patel?

  Wow. Life hacks.

• 51:58Speaker 03

  And then if you're really clever about it, you can set those dummy icons to go to like, whatever webpage you want, so that you secretly know that if you tap on the moon, it goes to like BuzzFeed or something.

• 52:09Nilay Patel?

  Your, your secret shame, the website BuzzFeed.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  I, I love you, but, uh, just giving an example of the utility of this.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  So you don't have to reach all the way to the top of the screen for your icon. So you can actually like, customize your home screen the way that you want it.

• 52:25Nilay Patel?

  Okay, okay. But like, the secret BuzzFeed link specifically?

• 52:31Speaker 03

  You know, man, sometimes you just want to tap on the moon.

• 52:34Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I'm with you. And just know, does it like, give you like, a random quiz? That's what you should do is like, like a macro I would have is like, hey Siri, make me sad. And just like opens Twitter to the explore page.

• 52:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. Is there a macro, is there a vanity URL for open random quiz on BuzzFeed.com? There really should be. Feeling quid. You just, just refresh that button. Stumble upon, but for, uh, but for BuzzFeed quizzes.

• 52:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And it's always the most obscure thing.

• 53:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:01Nilay Patel?

  Like which of these very specific My Little Ponies are you based on sandwiches you like? And it's like, I don't, I don't know anything about either one of these subjects.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  I bet you that quiz exists.

• 53:14Nilay Patel?

  All right. We should talk about the watch. Dieter, you reviewed the watch. What do you think?

• 53:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's the best watch. That, I mean, I love that the screen is always on. It does have a tiny little battery hit, um, but it still is within line of what Apple claims. But it is not like so much better in the way that the series four was. The watch faces, uh, and, uh, and watch OS six are really good, but they're not like, Apple, Apple's aesthetic is not quite my aesthetic. And it's better than the, uh, default average third party watch aesthetic on Wear OS, which is like, bah, Goth Tron. I don't know. But it's always just a little bit not perfect.

• 53:57Speaker 03

  Every single Apple watch face is just like, ah, it's close, but nah, this thing is a little bit too bubbly. Or this thing's a little too round, or I can't quite get the widgets where I want or whatever. And so I wish that they would just do a third party watch store, watch face store. Just do it. That's the whole review. It's, it's really, really good. Actually, the more important watch, I think, or the more interesting watch, I mean, what? Series five is great. If you have an iPhone and you want a smart watch and you can spend $300, go get it. If you want the cellular one, I mean, you need to have very particular reasons to want it. Neelai has one very good particular reason, and that is that he is a hundred percent unable to not look at his phone when it's within a hundred feet of his body. And so he needs a cellular Apple watch.

• 54:40Speaker 03

  I need a cellular Apple watch so that if I decide I don't want to carry two phones with me, I can have an Android phone and then have my phone number on my Apple watch. Cause I've decided I'm locked into iMessage. So now like my Apple watch is just basically to become my iMessage machine and then I'll use an Android phone.

• 54:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Dieter, you should know that, uh, you should only update your iPhone when your previous iPhone begins to physically harm you.

• 55:01Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 55:01Nilay Patel?

  Because you're locked in the iMessage ecosystem. There's no need to even have another phone.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:05Nilay Patel?

  Just take flash photos.

• 55:07Speaker 03

  If I am Fitbit, I am freaking the hell out over the fact that the Series 3 is only 200 bucks.

• 55:14Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:14Speaker 03

  I am losing my mind right now at Fitbit. Uh, cuz like, I could not imagine a world where I would recommend an iPhone owner get a Fitbit over a Series 3.

• 55:26Nilay Patel?

  Well, let me ask, if Fitbit-

• 55:28Speaker 03

  A couple of worlds. Like, if you're deep into Fitbit world, maybe. But like, I don't know. How many people are deep into Fitbit world?

• 55:34Nilay Patel?

  Some people.

• 55:35Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 55:35Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Fitbit's a social network. If Fitbits could send iMessages, if they could address the Messages app, would that change your equation?

• 55:43Speaker 03

  Well, so, this is a question that I don't quite know the answer to. I actually cut this from my like, Google screwed rant. There are a couple of things I cut from Google screwed, my Google is screwed and smartwatches rant, one of which I regret, one of which I don't. Uh, the thing I regret is like, there's a rumor that Qualcomm has another smartwatch processor coming soon, and maybe that'll save it. I cut it cuz I'm tired of believing in Qualcomm, and so, uh, I cut that cuz I don't actually have faith, but maybe I'll be wrong. Um, the thing I don't regret cutting is, like, if Fitbit could send iMessages, does that mean that it would be worth it for Fitbit to try harder, and therefore there would be better watches and more competition?

• 56:22Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 56:23Speaker 03

  But there's like, but why are there good, uh, great smartwatches on Android then? Other than like Samsung stuff, which are like, pretty good?

• 56:31Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, well, that's your answer.

• 56:33Speaker 03

  Why isn't Fitbit better on Android?

• 56:35Nilay Patel?

  I don't know.

• 56:36Speaker 03

  Where they can do whatever the hell they want?

• 56:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:38Speaker 03

  That's why I cut it. It's like, I wanna believe that if Apple wasn't so limiting on the iPhone, that there would be an incentive for companies to make better watches. And maybe it's the case that that's true because like, uh, iPhone owners tend to spend more money on other things, and therefore it's more worth it for third-party watch companies to make, you know, watches for the iPhone, etc. Um, but it's like, it's the, the situation with, uh, bad smartwatches for Android and like, you know, all other smartwatches, basically, except the Apple Watch being like, pretty good but not great, has gone from like, annoying to confounding. And that's that's kind of where I live right now is I don't know what to tell anybody that doesn't have an iPhone watch to buy like if you care about fitness get a Fitbit if you

• 57:21Speaker 03

  want a cool watch I don't know get a fossil and know that's gonna be a little bit nerfy nerfed and then if you want the Samsung watch go for it but be ready for a bunch of Samsung software on your phone which maybe you already have because you have a Samsung phone.

• 57:34Nilay Patel?

  Well, so I'm just looking at the Apple Watch Edition pages. You can spend fourteen hundred dollars on an Apple Watch. The ceramic one with the weird leather band which bizarrely only comes in forty four millimeters.

• 57:47Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 57:47Nilay Patel?

  Huh. Anyhow, but you can spend fourteen and people are gonna buy them. So I think you're like you're and it's the same Apple Watch. It's just a more expensive case, right?

• 57:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 57:58Nilay Patel?

  If you're Fitbit, you are capped like you have a more price sensitive audience.

• 58:04Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 58:05Nilay Patel?

  Because you you can't address every iPhone owner.

• 58:09Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 58:09Nilay Patel?

  Because you are necessarily offering a less good product because you can't send messages. And then we do know that Android owners, at least in the United States, are a little bit more price sensitive than Apple owners. They spend less money anyway. That's like just stats. So you're not bringing in as much money. You're not bringing in as much just pure gravy by selling fifteen hundred dollar products that just like look different. And you probably because of that aren't attracting like the absolute best talent in watch stuff.

• 58:42Speaker 03

  Right.

• 58:43Nilay Patel?

  Because they can't win.

• 58:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:45Nilay Patel?

  Right? And I think that's just like a really hard cycle. And I want to say like, okay, if you do let them do more stuff with the iPhone, then at least you get to make more competitive products for a bigger audience. Whereas I think if you have an iPhone, it is absolutely unless you have very specific needs. You know, like you need a Garmin watch because you're gonna go hiking for four days and Garmins are good at that. If you have an iPhone, there's no reason to buy any other product. I cannot think of a reason that a Fitbit is a better product for you. That is a challenging position to be in.

• 59:17Speaker 03

  Yep. I will say, though, that all this talk about like lack of competition that we've been cycling in and out of. The, the thing that I will give Apple huge credit for is they has not, they've not slowed down on the Apple Watch. They have made it iterally better year over year, added like meaningfully important, good features year over year that are like either make it worth the upgrade or make it worth buying in the first place. They, they're making a good product on top of locking everybody else out of making a good product. Which is like a pretty good place to be in.

• 59:50Nilay Patel?

  I mean, this is the, the hard problem with all of this conversation. I was talking to Addie today about Google. Like a huge problem with Google search is it is legitimately the best search.

• 59:59Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:00:00Nilay Patel?

  They, right, and the, the, the sort of like flywheel of it, they have more data, so it's even better than before. Well, they, they kicked off the flywheel by, by getting out ahead of everyone. So like, how can you complain when the product is legitimately better? And then Apple will confidently tell you the product is better because of the integration. Right? Like, they won't, like, for example, the battery life. It's very simple why the battery life is five hour better on the 11 Pro Max. The battery is huge.

• 1:00:28Speaker 03

  The battery is 25% bigger. There's a teardown, like the, the watt hours on the battery is 25% more.

• 1:00:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's just they, they took out 3D touch and they made the phone thicker. There's a lot more space in the case, the battery's bigger. The end. Apple's like, it's a unique combination of our chip design, iOS 13, 1000 power. Like, like, no, dude, the battery's bigger. But like, Apple's argument is this is not components. It's a product that we engineer is one thing. I don't, I, I agree with you. They've made the watch so good. That first series, series O review, I was like, the watch is slow and they don't know what it's for. And now I'm like, you should get one, it's fun. Like, the end. We have not talked about its one feature that's different from. The Series 4, which is the display. Are you bought in on this always in display?

• 1:01:12Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, I love it. It's great. Turn it, you can turn it off if you want. The battery life hit on turning it on is pretty small because they have the variable refresh rate thing. Having an always on screen is a thing I've wanted since the beginning. It's deeply good if you have an older Apple Watch that's like dying on you. I know there are lots of people that actually still have those Series Zero watches. It's totally worth getting the upgrade to it for the always on display. Apparently, like something like 70%. I saw, where did I see this? This is Vergecast, right? Spot off stats, I think I saw on Twitter once.

• 1:01:43Nilay Patel?

  I think it was 70%.

• 1:01:44Speaker 03

  70% of Apple Watch buyers are new customers, not upgraders.

• 1:01:49Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 1:01:49Speaker 03

  So, yeah. I mean, where did I get this number from? Who knows? I saw it on the internet.

• 1:01:56Nilay Patel?

  Cool journalism, Dieter. Just anyone can tweet. That, that makes sense, right? Like, the, um, the, again, the market of people who own iPhones is huge.

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  CNBC.

• 1:02:07Nilay Patel?

  Oh, they're, they're fine. Yeah, I trust them. Is that Todd?

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  Uh... CNBC's SEO isn't as good as 9 to 5 Max. Uh, yeah, it's Todd.

• 1:02:15Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:02:16Speaker 03

  Good old Todd.

• 1:02:16Nilay Patel?

  I was gonna say, you can trust Todd.

• 1:02:17Speaker 03

  Got the stats.

• 1:02:18Nilay Patel?

  Can't trust Steve. No kidding. Steve is great.

• 1:02:21Speaker 03

  Actually, it's Todd who got it from Apple. Apple says that 75% of Apple Watch buyers haven't owned a previous model.

• 1:02:26Nilay Patel?

  Well, then you definitely can't trust it.

• 1:02:30Speaker 03

  This is how the internet works. I think you saw a number and then like Google, which is very good, gets you someplace. And then blogs are actually nice and diligent about linking their sources. And then you go back to the source and then you see. That's how it works. That's how you verify things.

• 1:02:44Nilay Patel?

  We're just fully off the rails. We're gonna take a break.

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  Also, you get on the phone.

• 1:02:47Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I'm gonna tell you. It was Apple Review Week. We made a bunch of videos. You should watch them. We wrote some reviews. You should read them. There's a lot of photo sliders. Just slide those sliders until you've convinced yourself that whatever phone you like best is the best one. Then, really consider the fact that if you have iMessage, you are, you are just gonna get an iPhone. It's just the thing that is true. And then consider, what regulatory intervention would it take for a market for cellphones to exist again? Then, pull the car over to the side of the road, listen to this ad, and Paul's gonna tell you his thing after we come back.

• 1:03:27Speaker 06

  New and exclusive holiday decor just launched online at The Home Depot. Check out the viral Grand Duchess collection with smart holiday lights you can control from your phone. Easily customize the twinkle across trees, wreaths, and garlands to match your holiday vibe. Create stunning light effects, then switch it up with the tap of your fingers. Even the man in red will be impressed. Shop the holiday decor you want online only at homedepot.com.

• 1:04:00Speaker 07

  The action's on the court, and as the official beer sponsor of the NBA, Michelob Ultra is getting fans closer to the game with a chance to win courtside seats, merch, and more. Visit michelobultra.com/courtside to enter. Michelob Ultra Courtside, 26 to 27. No purchase necessary. Open to U.S. residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2026 and ends on June 30th, 2027. Multiple entry periods. See official rules at michelobultra.com/courtside for free entry, entry deadlines, prizes, and details.

• 1:04:29Speaker 04

  Paul Miller, every week. Yeah, I do always, I do a segment. It's called, "Let me just jot that down with my money pen." Oh, man. I know where this is going. So Starbucks has apparently, okay, you know, when you go to Starbucks, you can buy like a gift card, right? And those are refillable. So they're basically like a debit card, right? They hold money. In Japan, they have this whole Starbucks Touch line where you can do, like, they have these products that are NFC. The one that makes the most sense is like a mug. It's a mug, it's a refillable mug with an NFC built in so that you pay

• 1:05:09Speaker 04

  with the same mug that you get to drink into. But now they also have Starbucks Touch, colon, the pen. And it's just very good. It's very, it's a pen with, the ink is like a coffee brown, which is quality. And then it pay, you can pay for things. And it just, I hadn't really thought of the fact, we're pretty used to, we've moved from checks to cards to now we're kind of like, we've got cards. And we also have phones and if the the reader doesn't work, we go back to the card or something like that. A lot of countries, not as much in the United States, use QR codes. Those are very common. But really, what Starbucks is is demonstrating here is

• 1:05:51Speaker 04

  that you could pay with anything. If you can carry it, if you can carry it and you can wave it relatively close to the NFC reader, you could pay with it. So I just think there's a lot of possibilities there. What if you have a basketball? Like, pay with a basketball? Maybe at a sports store, you buy a basketball that is refillable with sports dollars.

• 1:06:12Nilay Patel?

  But don't you have to, don't you have to off the basketball somehow?

• 1:06:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, by waving it close to the thing.

• 1:06:18Nilay Patel?

  You don't have to do a secondary off with the money pen?

• 1:06:21Speaker 03

  No, that's the whole, that's the whole deal.

• 1:06:24Nilay Patel?

  It's a very dangerous pen.

• 1:06:26Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, how do you think a gift card works? You don't have to re off the gift card. You just scan the QR card and away you go.

• 1:06:31Speaker 04

  Some countries have this stuff built into their credit cards. Like, we, our chip is like, is like real.

• 1:06:38Speaker 03

  Oh, I've got the, I've got the contactless chip and I hate it because it screws up my subway card, my BART card.

• 1:06:43Speaker 04

  Oh, really? It's too powerful?

• 1:06:44Nilay Patel?

  My, yeah, the contactless, I can no longer enter our office building by just tapping my wallet because all of the card chips are wireless now.

• 1:06:53Speaker 04

  Well, all the, all the more reason for it to be a pin or a basketball.

• 1:06:58Speaker 03

  So what I want, Paul, is I want it to be a basketball. But every time, I wanted to have more than just the NFC chip. I want it to have a little tiny Raspberry Pi inside it, that detects when the chip's been read. And then every time the chip is read, it lets a little bit of air out of the basketball. And then you know that you need to re up your card when your basketball is like fully deflated.

• 1:07:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. But then, instead of going online to refill it, there's a special pump. And the pump is, generates electricity and you sell that electricity back at market prices and fill your basketball with real money derived from energy you've generated.

• 1:07:36Speaker 03

  How can we integrate Bitcoin into this scheme?

• 1:07:40Speaker 04

  It, it was born for Bitcoin, let me tell you.

• 1:07:43Nilay Patel?

  Oh, no.

• 1:07:46Nilay Patel?

  All right, Paul segment, as it does every week, Paul's segment has come to an end with a diversion into Bitcoin.

• 1:07:55Speaker 04

  Check out that Lightning Network, everybody.

• 1:07:57Speaker 03

  We are not going to talk about anything else on our rundown, are we?

• 1:08:00Nilay Patel?

  No, I think we, there's, this is, we're gonna, we're gonna do it.

• 1:08:04Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:08:04Nilay Patel?

  Dear, you're gonna be in charge.

• 1:08:06Speaker 03

  Lightning round.

• 1:08:07Nilay Patel?

  There's a thousand more events. iPhone Week is just the beginning of this autumn of monopoly discontent.

• 1:08:16Speaker 03

  All right, here we go.

• 1:08:16Nilay Patel?

  Three more ecosystems are here to take over your life.

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  Go. Amazon, September 25th. Last year, they announced 70 products in 60 minutes. I think that they're gonna do it again. I don't know what they're gonna do this year. But Dan and I and Veron are going, it's gonna be wild. Google announced the date of its event, which is October 15th. I'm going out of order chronologically at this point, but whatever. They put up a picture of an orange Pixel 4 in Times Square verifying that, not that we didn't know. If you want to know what they're announcing, Jay and Sean put together an incredible, just everything you need to know rumor roundup that actually goes topic by topic. It's great. Microsoft is like October 2nd, 5th, somewhere in there. I'm getting the date wrong.

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  They, it seems clear that they might have a foldable Surface device that they might show off. There's a patent that, of one that it has liquid inside the hinge. Microsoft makes the best hinges.

• 1:09:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:15Speaker 03

  They're just the most fun. They got liquid like, like, like, like your knee, you know, like there's some cartilage, you know, yeah.

• 1:09:22Nilay Patel?

  There's, I enjoy nothing more than talking to Pen S. Pen A. about hardware engineering.

• 1:09:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:27Nilay Patel?

  And he is just so, he is so amped. I am, I am dying to hear him talk about this hinge.

• 1:09:33Speaker 03

  They might make a 15-inch version of the Surface Laptop, which would just run right into the Surface Book. But you know what? I'm here for it. A 13-inch and a 15-inch Surface Laptop, take it out of the MacBook. I'm, I love it.

• 1:09:46Speaker 04

  We're so overdue for a new Surface Laptop, period. I'm very excited to see whatever they do. But I really feel like this is the hot year for the 15-inch. Like, this is the year where kind of seemingly one of the best processors on the market is like these sort of weird ninth-gen processors. They're not ultrabook processors. They're like actually powerful computer processors. And there's some really good laptops out there, and a lot of them are like, they're like 15-inch laptops with like, like, was it the, the ThinkPad? X1 Extreme or whatever. They also have like the P1 version of it, the Gen 2. Like they're lightweight, but they're 15 inch and they have a graphics card, but they're also not

• 1:10:29Speaker 04

  super hot and they get good battery life and they're more powerful than ultrabook processors. I feel like it's a pretty, it's like a sweet spot right now.

• 1:10:36Speaker 03

  I mean, I feel happy for you. I want a processor all the way in the other end of the spectrum. This rumored ARM Surface Laptop using the Qualcomm 8CX.

• 1:10:46Speaker 03

  That's what I want. That sounds really exciting. So, okay, that is Amazon, Google, Microsoft. Apple might have another one. We don't know. And then last but not least, Facebook also makes hardware and they just had an event where they announced a couple of new portals. At this point, I'm going to stop talking because my wife works for Oculus, which is a division of Facebook and someone else could talk about the portals.

• 1:11:05Nilay Patel?

  I'm ready to talk about monopolies again. Here we go. Now, um,

• 1:11:10Nilay Patel?

  here's the thing about the new portals. They made a better portal with a screen and a camera. It's a portal. It kind of looks like the Echo Show, right? Same, same idea. It's $129, which is a price cut. Then they made the box that goes under your TV that has a camera, plugs into your TV, turns your TV into a portal. It's $179. Those are prices that are just obviously less than it costs to make. They're making either no money or losing money in every one of these things sold.

• 1:11:40Speaker 03

  Well, hang on, the Google Home, sorry, the Nest Home, whatever the, the screen is, what we're supposed to call it now, that's pretty cheap.

• 1:11:47Nilay Patel?

  They're either making no money or losing money in every device, every one of these devices sold. I think Google was too. You know, Casey went and he wrote a story and I was reading all the stories. Nicole Wayne at BuzzFeed has this quote from Andrew Bosworth, Boz at Facebook, who's in charge of this stuff. And he goes, "We don't know the business model. We're not focused on the business model for these now. We just want to see how people use them." So they're selling hardware with no business model next to it. For what I'm almost certain is zero or a loss. Why is that? Because Facebook has monopoly profits everywhere else and they can just flood the zone. That means if you are a startup, you're an indie hardware maker, you're even a competitor. Like you're up against a company that's willing to just lose. That's basically predatory pricing, in my opinion.

• 1:12:30Speaker 03

  Can I, uh, we gotta get to Portal, but, uh, I'm just gonna say really quickly. Amazon started selling a shoe that is completely indistinguishable from the cool Silicon Valley shoe, the Albers shoe. Like, it's identical to the little startup Albers shoe. Anyway, sorry.

• 1:12:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and it was like 14 cents if you have Prime. Like, I'm just saying this, it, the pricing of these things is the most interesting to me. Because it's clear they don't have to be businesses unto themselves. They just, they're just loss leaders so that you'll use Facebook's other services that make money. Which is the same thing Google does, which is the same thing that Amazon does, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:13:08Speaker 04

  Okay, so that aside, I, I, I'm not arguing that in any way. Portal TV, right? This is the obvious product. You have a, a camera near your TV. Hopefully you can cover the camera, which apparently you can in this case, so that's nice. Uh, but you have a camera near your TV and you use it to video chat with your grandparents. Or at least your grandparents use it to, to chat with their, their, their teen criminal grandchildren who are using phones or something, right? This is a very obvious product. So now who, who could build it? Apple makes FaceTime. Apple could build it.

• 1:13:47Speaker 04

  Google can't quite figure out how to make anything, uh, video chat related that isn't confusing and, and sad. But theoretically, they could totally build it. Amazon has made a, a product kinda like this, um, but is not known for their video chat services. It, it, there's like a list of, of, of companies who, who would do this. And Facebook is probably my least favorite of those companies. But, uh, it seems, it just seems such an, an obvious thing to, to do and to be really good at.

• 1:14:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and then no one else has done it. And I think there's a reason why. I think fundamentally.

• 1:14:27Speaker 03

  Microsoft tried to do this and fail.

• 1:14:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's Skype, but that, that, they launched that stuff right when, like, they were starting to be really bad at Skype.

• 1:14:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and they and they put out the Kinect, which could have done it, and it didn't do anything. Yeah. Um, there there have been some attempts. There was um, there was some like indie hardware product that was a Skype camera for a TV that I got really excited about. Do you remember this? I had it in my office in our old office theater. And it was just like the worst. Like, it was awful image quality, and it was like a slow computer that only ran Skype, and it was like outdated Skype. People have tried. Um, Google makes a bunch of like Google Hangout hardware for businesses, Google Meet hardware. I think they're they're getting out of that. No, you can still buy the Meet kit if you're like an enterprise. I thought they were like killing some of that.

• 1:15:16Nilay Patel?

  I I think it cycles it out. I think the reason is most people's living room setups are actually not conducive to this kind of video conferencing. Right? Like, you put that box on your TV, and then you like want to have a conversation, and it like will sound bad, it will probably look weird. Like, you need a really wide angle, so you're not actually looking anywhere. Like, I think this is less impressive historically, and I think that's why this market hasn't existed. Like, you have to know Apple thought about this for the Apple TV. It's a no-brainer. And they're like, no, people are just gonna use their phones. So like, I I think Facebook is trying to do a thing here that's differentiated. But ultimately, the second you involve your television in any consumer product, the complexity starts to skyrocket.

• 1:16:02Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, do you know what Facebook is asking everyone to do? Switch inputs on their TV. They're doomed. The product is doomed. Don't worry, there's an open standard for communicating over HDMI. This thing has an IR blaster, you're like talking to Facebook.

• 1:16:19Speaker 03

  Here's the other problem. Uh, this product requires that you sit in front of your TV, and then pay attention to the person you're talking to, because they're huge and they can see you, and then you can't just go do something else. It also requires that you keep your living room clean. Uh, all the other products, you can like turn the camera so that nobody can see just how messy your house is.

• 1:16:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:40Speaker 03

  I just wanted to.

• 1:16:42Nilay Patel?

  Uh, the the so, Paul, to your point, there have been other attempts at this. They've just not gone anywhere. And I think the, like, literally the the difficulty of setup, which is true for any TV product. Like you have a smart TV, you've got a Roku, you've got an Xbox. All right, now you got one more thing to monkey with, with a different UI on your TV. You've got one more remote to monkey with, like, whatever. And then to Dieter's point, and now I've got to keep my house clean? I don't care how predatory this pricing is.

• 1:17:16Speaker 04

  So you're saying that like the hundred thirty, hundred eighty dollar picture frames are far more compelling to you than this hundred fifty dollar portal TV?

• 1:17:23Nilay Patel?

  So I mean, I video conference with my parents all the time because they want to see the baby. So like I'm confidently FaceTime, I confidently tell you I FaceTime like four times a week at least. We are, we are always doing it on our phones because the baby moves around. So like mostly I'm just like, I bought a gimbal and like, I've like FaceTimed with the gimbal before, just like chasing the baby around.

• 1:17:46Nilay Patel?

  Like, that's fun, whereas like, there's no way I can park her in front of the Echo show or whatever. And then I gotta switch services, right? Like FaceTime is great, like you just like use it and it works. I'm not moving them to whatever Echo thing.

• 1:18:00Speaker 04

  WhatsApp. Well, and that's exactly why I would never touch these Facebook products because I'm, I'm trying to live my life Facebook free. But, but I just feel like they're, they're pretty, I, I just feel like this fills a void.

• 1:18:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, look, lots of people use WhatsApp if this makes WhatsApp calling and lots of people use WhatsApp video calling. If this works, but they have not yet sold a lot of portals from what I understand. I don't, I think making them a lot cheaper, like that one will sell, the Echo Showy one, the regular portal. This TV thing is a lark, just like, you know, Amazon put out like the, um, what's it called? Like the Echo tuner? The Recast.

• 1:18:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, the Recast.

• 1:18:38Speaker 04

  For TV recording?

• 1:18:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, which is like a very complicated antenna OTA solution. And it's like, I love that they did that. It's super fun that they, like, Amazon is selling like a DVR for your attic, like, that's great. I want more of those things to exist. That speaks to me. Like, what, what consumer is like doing that, right?

• 1:19:02Speaker 03

  I, I did it.

• 1:19:03Nilay Patel?

  Well, you're, but you're Dieter Bone.

• 1:19:05Speaker 04

  Did you get one?

• 1:19:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:07Nilay Patel?

  Do you love it?

• 1:19:08Speaker 03

  I wanted to stop, I wanted to stop paying for YouTube TV.

• 1:19:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:12Nilay Patel?

  Do you love it?

• 1:19:13Speaker 03

  Uh, uh, it, it lets me watch, uh, national TV broadcasts when I feel like it, which happens way less often than I thought it would. Which is why I wanted to stop paying for YouTube TV. So I love it insofar as it saved me forty dollars a month.

• 1:19:27Nilay Patel?

  I'm very excited to, I think TiVo is gonna put out apps that run on the Apple TV that can stream from a TiVo. So I'm very excited to just buy a little TiVo and have that be my cable box and actually have the Apple TV just have a TiVo app on it. That is not a good solution. Like, I don't recommend anyone else attempt that. It's just, that's who we are.

• 1:19:48Speaker 03

  So you're, you are saying you actively want to move from the TiVo remote to the Apple remote? From the remote that literally has won awards for being a good remote?

• 1:19:59Nilay Patel?

  No, because I have a Kavo remote.

• 1:20:01Speaker 03

  Oh, right, okay. Well, that's, that's just cheating.

• 1:20:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:06Nilay Patel?

  I mean, the Kavo remote is like yet another Android box under my TV. I'm saying, I'm the person who's willing to have an Android remote control talk to an Apple TV running, Apple, like TVOS, talk to my Android TV and sort all that out. And I'm still like, I don't know that I want to put this weird Facebook camera computer under my TV. Like, it still seems too hard. I don't, it's cool, though. Like, I'm glad people are trying. I just think that, you know, like, the reason Eero went to Amazon is because Google underpriced them with Google Wi-Fi and then ran ads for Google Wi-Fi on Google when people were searching for Eero. Like, that, like, cratered their business. I think that's, it's just more me ranting about monopolies, but this pricing to me is the story. They, they've lowered

• 1:20:50Nilay Patel?

  the pricing, so they're gonna lose money just to move units, and I think that's, that is, it's distorting in its way.

• 1:20:58Nilay Patel?

  All right. Last thing up. There's actually a bunch of subscription stuff to talk about. Apple Arcade is out. It looks great. Dieter, you've been playing with it?

• 1:21:06Speaker 03

  It is great. I have many questions about what it's gonna mean for, like, the future of the games marketplace. I wrote a piece, Patricia Hernandez over at Polygon wrote a really good piece that, like, subscriptions for games are here, Netflix for games are here. There's a good piece over at Kotaku. Everyone that pays attention to games are like... Yo, these games are really good. There's a ton of them. It's gonna be hard to get through them all. Apple clearly paid a lot of money to a lot of really, really good developers to get some really good games that don't have crappy in-app purchases, that don't have stupid life meters, that don't have dumb timers, that aren't trying to scam you out of money. They're just good games. If they can sustain this, it could completely upend the market. People will have to be trying to convince Apple to fund their game and like the whole

• 1:21:50Speaker 03

  patron system is gonna get really topsy-turvy. Games might end up getting like really bad in the way that your average Netflix show is like not that good because they're all just trying to, you know, get a little slice of the subscription thing and no longer make AAA. There's like a thousand things that could happen three, four, 10 years from now if this pans out. But right now, Apple like distributing its money to use its like market power in other areas to convince you that you want an iPhone and you wanna pay for stuff on the App Store means that you are getting a ton of games for five bucks a month, 120 bucks a year. Would I spend 120 bucks over the course of a year on, on games for, for the iPhone? Actually, I don't know. Maybe not.

• 1:22:32Speaker 03

  I don't spend that much on games for the iPhone, but it would be in that zone. So it's, I don't know. It's a fascinating product. You should sign up and play, play at least the free trial and maybe a little bit more. It's the sort of thing that I could see a lot of people like dipping in and out of when they like wanna play some games. I'm excited because I like, I'll burn a game for a couple of months and then need something else to play on the train. And it's always a struggle to like find the next one that isn't crappy. And now like that problem is just solved for me. For five bucks a month and it's worth it.

• 1:23:06Nilay Patel?

  I'm very interested to see if this incentivizes me to play games on the phone. I've been so turned off by free-to-play mechanics and then like, okay, I'm, I am willing to pay 20 bucks for a game. And then it's like, I'm gonna look at 5,000 games and not, no. Now it's like, whatever, I'm just gonna like try it.

• 1:23:23Speaker 03

  So the thing that this might do, cause most of these games like work offline, is there's a, there's a non-zero chance this will incentivize me to play games on my iPad and it could actually hurt the switch for when I travel.

• 1:23:34Nilay Patel?

  That is super interesting.

• 1:23:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:37Nilay Patel?

  But the iPad's really big.

• 1:23:39Speaker 03

  iPad's really big, but I'm carrying it with me when I travel anyway. That's true.

• 1:23:44Nilay Patel?

  Are you gonna start carrying around a PS4 controller to play games on your iPad?

• 1:23:47Speaker 03

  Uh, it's smaller than the Switch? No, I'm not gonna do that. That'd be ridiculous. Um, speaking of traveling, Switch Lite.

• 1:23:53Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it's out. Andrew really liked it.

• 1:23:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. I really like it. I mean, I haven't touched it, but I like the idea. I like that it's it's a nicer product than the Switch. It makes me sad about my Switch being a first gen product that's like a little bit herky jerky.

• 1:24:06Nilay Patel?

  Well, Dieter, here's what I'll tell you. If your Switch works and you like it, you can, instead of doing a year-over-year upgrade to the Switch Lite, you can just start taking flash photos.

• 1:24:16Speaker 03

  You're the worst.

• 1:24:17Nilay Patel?

  It's, ah, I'm so frustrated. Just try. Uh, I think I'm gonna buy a Switch Lite. Even though I have a Switch.

• 1:24:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I, I do like playing on my TV from time to time, so I'm gonna keep my Switch.

• 1:24:31Speaker 04

  I want this flex adventure game. That's, I want the Switch box, the hundred dollar TV Switch, right next to my portal TV. Really, I love plugging things into my television.

• 1:24:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, well, I'm gonna buy you like a 14-port HDMI Switch.

• 1:24:47Speaker 04

  Guys, imagine how ripped I could be if I beat Nintendo's flex adventure.

• 1:24:55Nilay Patel?

  Perfect. Now, I think I'm buying a Switch Lite. I just decided right now. Usually on the show, I buy Pixel phones. This year, I'm buying a Switch Lite. I'm not gonna do it now. Next week, I'm gonna think about it a little bit more.

• 1:25:08Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:25:09Nilay Patel?

  I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't do impulse purchases this month. It's gone medium.

• 1:25:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, mine has not gone well.

• 1:25:16Nilay Patel?

  Medium. Uh, but the Switch Lite, that feels like a definite impulse purchase. All right. It's been a long show. The iPhones are great. I promise you, you will, you will like it if you get it. I think it is, again, it's, it's a weird year for the iPhones in general, right? It's, it's three cycles into the 10. It's like, by necessity, they're great. And in this camera thing, the Pixel 4 is out there. So, we're gonna see on October 15th if Google can, can come back.

• 1:25:48Speaker 03

  Or before, because it'll leak another 30 times.

• 1:25:50Nilay Patel?

  Google's just gonna send me one. They should just, they should just let us review it the day before the thing. At this point, why not? Really got to lose. Anyhow, that's the show. We'll be back. I, like I said, Tuesday, John Gruber's on the interview episode. We taped that yesterday. If you want yet more iPhone ranting, uh, we delivered. I'm gonna promise you, we delivered. It, it was a wild episode. We've come to a conclusion that, um, for the past two years, I've gone on his show after iPhone Review Week, this year it came on mine. We've come to the conclusion that we're gonna, we're gonna do that every year after iPhone Reviews. And the fact that we're very comfortable doing it now, I'm telling you, it was a wild episode. Um, so that's coming Tuesday, next week. Friday, we've got the chat show, we'll be back.

• 1:26:33Nilay Patel?

  I've got one thing to plug that's very important. We are hiring an editorial director of podcasts for The Vergecast, for the interview show, for other shows across The Verge. If you have listened this far, you obviously love The Vergecast, and you wanna make it better, and you've got some like podcast experience.

• 1:26:49Speaker 03

  Please make it better.

• 1:26:50Nilay Patel?

  You can, yeah, have you listened to this?

• 1:26:51Speaker 03

  We talk over each other?

• 1:26:53Nilay Patel?

  You, you just did it again.

• 1:26:55Speaker 03

  Constantly.

• 1:26:56Nilay Patel?

  Uh, go to theverge.com/podcastjob. You can apply. I highly encourage you, if you, you love podcasts, you love this show, we'd love to hear from you. Verge.com/podcastjob. We're also conducting an audience survey, just five minutes, go to voxmedia.com/podsurvey. We've done these regularly, you've heard me talk about them, they're very helpful to us. So, check, that's everybody. Everybody go to voxmedia.com/podsurvey. Podcast producers looking for a, a rocket ship to the top, you go to theverge.com/podcastjob. You see what I'm saying? Future of Music is all wrapped up, Charlie XCX, uh, that episode's coming out. It's awesome. Go check that out on YouTube with Danny Deal. You can also listen to Recode Decode with Kara Swisher, you can listen to Pivot with Kara and Scott Galloway, you can listen to Recode Media with Peter Kafka.

• 1:27:41Nilay Patel?

  And finally, last thing to plug, Land of the Giants, The Rise of Amazon, hosted by Recode's Jason Del Rey, is out in force. It's great. It's just a great show, all about Amazon. If you wanna hear more talking about Monopoly, woo, I got a series for you. It's called Land of the Giants, The Rise of Amazon with Recode's Jason Del Rey. Uh, that's it. You can tweet at me, I'm at Reckless, Dieter's at Backlon, Paul's at FuturePaul. We'll see you next week. Rock and roll.

• 1:28:05Speaker 03

  Paul, promo code.

• 1:28:24Speaker 06

  Fall savings are happening now at The Home Depot. Save up to $500 on select appliances. Plus, enjoy free delivery when you spend $998 or more. From prepping to cooking to cleaning up, Frigidaire has you covered. The custom Flex Temp drawer switches from fridge to freezer. With more than 15 cooking modes, including stone baked pizza mode, you can enjoy restaurant-quality pizza in as little as two minutes. Then clean up with the Frigidaire Dishwasher, featuring the industry's fastest normal wash cycle. Shop fall savings now at The Home Depot. Offer valid through October 21st, U.S. only. See store online for details.

• 1:28:55Speaker 08

  Finding a doctor is hard enough. Finding the right doctor, even harder. Someone who takes your insurance, has an available appointment when you need one, and feels like someone you can actually open up to. That's where Zocdoc comes in. Download the Zocdoc app to search and compare doctors by specialty, insurance, and availability. Read real patient reviews, find the right fit for you, and book instantly. Because getting seen by the right doctor matters. Zocdoc. Ready to be seen? Download the Zocdoc app today.