A deep dive into macOS Catalina, iPadOS, and the 2019 iPad

This week on The Vergecast, Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Paul Miller go deep on Apple's updated operating systems: macOS Catalina and iPadOS. Also, Sony confirms their next console will be the PS5 in 2020. Stories this week: Apple’s macOS Catalina update is coming todayCatalina ReviewPhotoshop and Lightroom users should wait before updating to macOS CatalinaNetflix confirms it won’t port its iPad app to macOSYou need a MacBook with a butterfly keyboard or a modern Mac desktop to use macOS Catalina’s SidecarWhy I’m turning off auto-updatesApple starts selling Microsoft’s Xbox controller after adding support in iOS, macOS, and tvOSiPadOS review: it’s complicated, finallyLinksys' mesh routers can now detect motion using Wi-FiApple’s Siri can now play music through SpotifyiOS 13 has gotten better, but there’s still a long way to go Apple iPad (2019) review: no competitionSony confirms next console is called PlayStation 5 and coming holiday 2020The next console war is going to be way more fun than the last oneSamsung made the smartwatch Google couldn’t 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.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This week on The Vergecast, we go deep on Apple's new operating systems. We talk about macOS Catalina, we talk about iPadOS, a little bit about tvOS, and the PS5.

• 0:09Speaker 01

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• 1:14Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast, the ever-growing Vox Media empire. It's a friendly empire, though. You can say whatever you want in our empire. I'm Neelai, I'm your friend. Paul Miller's here.

• 1:26Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 1:27Nilay Patel?

  Dieter Bohn is here.

• 1:28Speaker 03

  A photo of me has just been uncovered on Flickr from 2011, and I'm very unhappy.

• 1:34Nilay Patel?

  Ooh, describe the photo.

• 1:36Speaker 03

  It is me staring into the gaping maw of a Nokia N9 and being amazed at its camera.

• 1:43Nilay Patel?

  I like it. We're going to talk about Catalina here in a minute. So Catalina's out, and I ran the system report to find what 32-bit apps I have on my laptop. And I just roll my laptops every year and do clean installs, which is bad, admittedly. But I have a bunch of old software. And so one of the apps that came up was... The Elgato Turbo 264 app. Oh. Like a USB stick that you, Paul, you remember these things? We had them in a gadget. This is like how we ran CS for years, like. Oh, yeah. Life-changing gadget. You would like to go out and shoot with your DSLR and then you have this like huge video file. And like laptops in 2009 were not able to process them in time without destroying their battery. I got most of my videos from a Sanio Zacky. Yeah.

• 2:25Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, so there's this USB stick that like you plug in the side of your laptop and then ran this incredibly insane DRM'd application and it would like do a great job like spitting out 720p video. But I fell down a hole, Dieter, of like old coverage from back then. Oh, no. And I firmly believe in the right to be forgotten, is what I'm saying. Like, I should be able to send Google a letter that's like, all photos of me before I figured out my hair situation should go away. I'm with you. I understand. Yeah. Well, let's talk about Catalina. That's the news. It is part of the news. Well, so there's, there's, there's a lot of, I will, I'll just, I'll say it, I'll get out of the way. The joke I made at the top about the empire, you can say anything. There's a lot of news in this world at this moment, policy news, tech policy news, about the Chinese government.

• 3:08Nilay Patel?

  How various large American corporations are restricting what they say or what their employees can say. I think most notably the NBA at the top of the week got into a lot of trouble because the GM of the Rockets said something and then they turned it back and blah, blah. We're now at the point where Marco Rubio has called for like TikTok to be investigated because it's owned by a Chinese company. And perhaps its content moderation policies are unduly influenced by Chinese politics. There's obviously protests in Hong Kong. There are lots and lots of dramatic events unfolding in gaming and esports. Around the stuff, we're covering it all on the site. Just before we started taping the show today, we were talking about the fact that it hasn't cohered into a narrative yet.

• 3:51Nilay Patel?

  Like, there's a lot of stuff happening and it feels like a moment of reckoning. I suspect that in another few days, that will actually like come to a coherent narrative. But right now, what's happening is it turns out big companies, in order to not irritate the Chinese government, restrict what they say or do in different ways. And that seems bad. Yeah. That, that's like where it's at. It seems like there's a lot of, I think the tweet today was streamlined cowardice. And so Ben Thompson, I was talking about on Twitter, like as the companies get bigger and bigger and bigger. And they're like Disney owns like 40% of Hollywood, right? So in China is a huge market for Disney.

• 4:30Nilay Patel?

  Like, is it great that Disney, in order to protect the box office returns of the next MCU movie in China, are telling ESPN anchors to not talk about the politics of the NBA situation? Like, that's a lot of lines being drawn through things.

• 4:45Speaker 04

  Can I ask you guys a real quick, like, moral question for my own life? That I was thinking about. Okay, so Blizzard, Blizzard's one of these streamlined, whatever it is.

• 4:55Nilay Patel?

  Streamlined cowardice, yeah.

• 4:57Speaker 04

  Okay, cowardice, sure. Companies and they banned a Hearthstone player for like a display he made supporting Hong Kong, took his, all his prize winnings. This was completely within their right because they have a crazy contract with their players. So I did the feel-good thing, uninstalled Battle.net from my computer. You know, my WoW subscription was over. Like, I just like, you know, I'll extract Blizzard from my life and they can think about what they've done. But then I realized that I'd spend like the weekend on TikTok, which is way more China, you know? And is obviously way more sensitive to China speech-wise.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  Like, you know, Blizzard's never stopped me from like support. I have never done this, but if I was supporting Hong Kong in Overwatch chat or in Twitch chat during Overwatch stream, you know, that kind of thing, that wouldn't be a big deal. But, um, I don't know, it was just interesting. Like, I was wondering like what you guys think about that morally? Like, should, would stop using TikTok be a good protest? Or is it meaningless because it doesn't have as much impact as this moment does with Blizzard?

• 6:06Nilay Patel?

  That is the question, right? The analogy I made earlier today was everybody understands that California has the strongest emissions standards in the country. So carmakers who want to sell cars in America, just like build them to California standards. It's just the easiest choice you can make. In a global information economy, China is a huge market with the most stringent speech controls. It is not, to me, surprising that companies are just choosing that set of standards instead of the ones that we would maybe want to have here. I don't know that like a bunch of dudes in their 30s quitting TikTok is gonna hurt. Like, that's, that's the three of us, right? Like, so I think the real question here is, in this moment of reckoning, this is not a question,

• 6:50Nilay Patel?

  I think, of individual concerns, of individual actions. We talk about this all the time. Like, you can vote your dollars, vote your vote. It seems very clear that in this case, there is a policy decision that needs to get made that makes these companies respect the values of this country versus the values of another country. And that is really hard. But there's no way that, I don't think you can tell every teenager in America to quit using TikTok because the content moderation policy favors the Chinese mainland government versus the people in Hong Kong. I, I just, I would love that to be the case. Like, that would be great. It just seems unlikely. But, but like I said, I don't want to, I don't want to spend too much time on this. Like, this story is rapid fire right now. It's like, at every minute, like, literally before we came on, we're taping on Wednesday

• 7:33Nilay Patel?

  this week, right before we came on the air, the Quartz app was banned from the App Store in China because they're covering Hong Kong, presumably. Like, minute by minute.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  There's nothing we could say that wouldn't be, like, completely obsolete by the time you're listening to this.

• 7:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  But like, we're, we're paying attention. We're just trying to, like, suss out what to do.

• 7:50Nilay Patel?

  We're paying a lot of attention, and I think what I'm looking for, and I'm eager to hear from folks, this is a, it's not just a tech story, right? It's an international relations story, it's a globalized business story. We obviously care about those things, we talk about them all the time, but it's going to cohere into something faster than I think was reasonable for us to speculate on the show. But I wanted to mention at the top, it's definitely happening. It is arguably some of the biggest news of the week, and might be huge news, just ongoing as, as we, for example, Apple, we talk about Apple a lot, I think. I don't know. Every now and again, the Apple comes up. Uh, Apple has a huge business in China. They make all their stuff there. It's one of their biggest markets. Apple turned over the control of its iCloud servers in China to a company that...

• 8:33Nilay Patel?

  Is, you know, has its set of affiliations of the Chinese government is all companies in China do like, that is a lot, a lot of exposure to a thing that suddenly our government on both sides of the aisle is saying is a problem. You were talking about Blizzard, but like both parties have condemned Blizzard for their actions. Both parties have condemned, both parties have condemned the NBA. So I, it's going to come for these companies. It is interesting to think that Google, which was under a lot of criticism for building Dragonfly, potentially to re-enter the Chinese market. They, they don't have any exposure, right? They're like not there. Facebook.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Very little, yeah.

• 9:06Nilay Patel?

  Facebook just walked away, couldn't do it. So it's interesting to think the companies that we traditionally associate with being in trouble, Google and Facebook, are just opted out of this mess. And Apple, which usually, you know, rides high on, on doing the right thing, is very much enmeshed in it. But it hasn't, I don't think it's developed enough for us to like, talk about it for more than the nine minutes we have currently talked about.

• 9:30Nilay Patel?

  Sorry. All right, let's talk about Catalina. So I do want to, but I just wanted to mention it. But I think the, the big story in tech, the tech story of the week, to me anyway, is that Apple's big set of software updates continues to roll out. It's, it's weird to think that it's not automatically the biggest story in tech. That like, one of the world's two major desktop operating systems has got updated this week. Everyone got it and it's pretty buggy and it seems to have fallen under the radar. But I, this is like a inflection point in like macOS history.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 10:03Nilay Patel?

  Things are breaking in a, in a big way. Like, for example, Adobe is just not right. It's, by the way, this is all on Adobe. I don't mean to blame Apple for this at all, but like, what are you doing Adobe? But Apple made the call and it's a fair call. Like, we're done with 32-bit apps. We're 64-bit only. And like 32-bit apps all over the place are breaking and a bunch of Photoshop and Lightroom stuff is 32-bit and it's broken.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. The reason I wrote this article this week that like, you don't need to update right away. Adobe not being ready and being broken on the new version of the operating system is a tale as old as time.

• 10:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Up until about four or five years ago, when the Mac was pretty stable and not that much changed and the iPhone would. Like just get everybody to update. Nobody, not a single person with a computer, thought that they could upgrade their operating system and just have things be cool.

• 10:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  It was like, you just knew that if you upgraded your OS, something would break and like you would either just accept that, or you would go looking around to see if the stuff you care about is broken or not. And we had this beautiful golden age of the teens. The teens were very good to us and we had good, stable operating system updates. And now we're just reverting to the norm, I think. Or you can be very mad at Apple and they screwed this up and they should do a better job. It's like, I don't know. You should be mad at Apple for the bugs.

• 11:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so let's break it into like two pieces.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 11:27Nilay Patel?

  Specifically with Catalina, because iOS 13 also shipped very buggy, but I think it's gotten better. And we'll talk about it later because I want to talk about iPadOS as well. We'll just do that in a second bit. Right now, focus on Catalina.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:39Nilay Patel?

  There are two, I think, bits of Catalina to talk about. We should take them in turn. First, there is the jump to 64-bit. A bunch of stuff broke. A bunch of dependencies aren't there anymore. There's like a really silly, I mean, I think it's not fun, but it's like, it's hilarious in its way. Just like the cruft of operating systems over time and people's workflows over time is always entertaining to me. So like, a bunch of DJs and DJ software

• 12:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:08Nilay Patel?

  relies on iTunes creating an XML file of its library just all the time. So like DJs are, they still use iTunes to organize music because it is good at that. And it's available. It's like everywhere. And iTunes in the background just created an XML file, which is something that software that makes databases does all the time. Apple updates to Catalina, they kill iTunes, they roll out music. Music no longer automatically creates the XML file.

• 12:35Speaker 03

  They upgraded to like SQLite or something, or what?

• 12:37Nilay Patel?

  They moved to a proprietary format called .itl. What, are you kidding? They use an open format? No, no. There's a proprietary format called .itl that they now use.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  Come on, Apple.

• 12:47Nilay Patel?

  So all these like DJ apps, no longer can just like read this database of organizations. So DJs who are like, using iTunes to organize their stuff, and then they could use multiple apps to access that library and that organization. All those apps are broken. Now, depending on who you ask, you can do your iTunes management and then like hit a button to generate an XML file, but it's a manual process and it might not work.

• 13:06Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 13:06Nilay Patel?

  So this is just broken. It's just a workflow that's broken. Should all of the DJ apps in the world been ready for Catalina and updated to .itl, which is like what Apple wants you to do, or like whatever proprietary iTunes library API?

• 13:19Speaker 03

  Maybe. I think more file extensions should be like resonant with meaning. Like, .itl clearly stands for it lost, right?

• 13:27Nilay Patel?

  All file extensions should mean something like that. But so that's like, that's one. This Photoshop thing is another. Like, there's just a bunch of stuff that broke.

• 13:37Speaker 04

  Well, and to Dieter's point, it is, we've really, our phones are treating, are like training us aggressively, you, dude, you have to update all the time. Update means security, bug fixes and performance improvements. Do it. Go, go, go. But the classic, especially in the music industry, like, the music industry is famous for having probably kept dying alive a lot longer than anybody else for compatibility reasons. And, and I think graphics professionals, like Dieter said, this is a tale as old as time with Adobe. So graphics professionals are going to be used to this aspect of don't update your operating system. So it just seems

• 14:19Speaker 04

  like, but we've been learning with our mobile devices to update. And, and we just have to remember that for now, and it's not, doesn't look like it's going to be forever, but for now, a desktop computer is a computer that you manage and the operating system provides tools to help you do that. And a mobile operating system is, is managed by the provider.

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I think that the 32-bit thing kind of snuck up on everybody. It's the sort of thing where like five years ago, like, it's all anybody would talk about is like, check all your apps, 32 to 64, the 32 is going away, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're just, everybody in the industry got so good at just keeping up to date that I think that a bunch of people, it didn't occur to them, but like, oh, wait, some of these frameworks are like a decade old and like might break now.

• 15:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:09Speaker 04

  So my only stuff, honestly, on my Mac was the Adobe stuff. Um, everything else like, meh, it's fine.

• 15:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:16Speaker 04

  And I've been upgrading this Mac for, you know, I don't know, eight years, something like that, a long time.

• 15:20Nilay Patel?

  Um, I have a bunch of ancient Microsoft stuff from like an ancient Office install. Like it's stuff like that.

• 15:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:26Nilay Patel?

  Microsoft and Adobe are big companies. They're probably gonna pull them along. There are some like beloved ancient utilities that are going away. Uh, the, the, not the dashboard.

• 15:34Speaker 04

  Drag thing.

• 15:35Nilay Patel?

  Drag, yeah, drag thing is going away.

• 15:36Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 15:37Nilay Patel?

  No, the dashboard where I have all the widgets, I still use widgets.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  That's just you, man. Although I use them on the today's screen, on the today view, so.

• 15:45Nilay Patel?

  But it's gone, right? Like, there's just a bunch of stuff. And I, what I'm saying is, this is a, it's a, it's a lot of change at once. And I don't think Apple, anyone, us, the Mac ecosystem was like really prepared to communicate the scale of change. Like, you go from Sierra to High Sierra, or El Cap to, to Mojave. Everything is like basically the same, right? And Paul, to your point, you update your, your phone, well, the, the app store is in the background, just like quietly bringing everything along. Right? Instagram's a couple, couple of weeks late with dark mode for iOS 13, but eventually it's gonna be there. And they announced it, it just like shows up in everybody's phone. And you've never thought about it because everything's auto-updating in the background.

• 16:28Nilay Patel?

  The Mac App Store is not, I would say, a success story on par with the iOS App Store. And so like, it's just like not happening for people. So stuff is just broken and there's no like inherent, built-in sense that it will get fixed over time. So that to me is like, that's a big change.

• 16:43Speaker 04

  That's a very interesting thing. Like, the Mac App Store could be something more like how software is distributed on, you know, on Linux. Uh, where, uh, it's sort of this repository of up-to-date software, you know? Instead of like Apple's wedge to control and profit more off of app development, you know? If the Mac App Store was a little kinder to developers and a little looser in rules, it could be much more popular and it could therefore help an update like this go a lot smoother.

• 17:17Nilay Patel?

  And and yet it is not. And like, we've been talking, like, I don't know, we've been talking about this for a long time. In fact, it seems like they're going the other way, right? Like, now they're requiring code to be notarized on Catalina.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  That's not a Mac App Store thing. That's just a, that's a full-on Catalina thing.

• 17:31Nilay Patel?

  It will explain it.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  So your app needs to be notarized, which is you need to sign up for a developer account, and then Apple needs to be like, yep, you exist as a human. We gave you, you, you are like a real thing, not scammy, therefore your app can run. The hope and the assumption, and the way it seems to be going, I haven't heard a whole lot of complaining about this since the news first like became popularized a few months ago. Is, yeah, if you have a developer account, your app gets notarized, it's fine. Like, the only people that should really be hurt by that are people that are legit making malware that Apple, like, Apple wants to be able to have this notarization thing to, like, deny bad actors, not, like, pick and choose and curate, is the hope and the assumption.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Nevertheless, short of, like, going through and turning off a bunch of stuff and hitting a bunch of security flags and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Apple now is like anointing every single app that appears on your phone. It's, you know, it's their laptop. Excuse me.

• 18:27Speaker 04

  The big one.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  They're already anointing the stuff on your phone. They're like, it's like, it's like a notary non-public.

• 18:32Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 18:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So I've seen some developers already say, like, you know, it's too much work to support Mac users. Like, we're done. We're out.

• 18:42Speaker 04

  And that, that sounds like really lazy, but like, if you think, like, a lot of software these days is, is built with, maybe you've heard of CI, CD, continuous integration, continuous delivery. So every time you update the software, all the tests are run. And if all the tests pass, that means the software is good. And then they, they ship a binary right then, and they just update the, the official binary of the software right then. And there aren't any, there aren't any Mac servers to run the notarization unless you're crazy, you know, I don't know. Just typical Apple things.

• 19:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but it's a huge inflection point in macOS and it was not billed as such. Dieter, your review gets at it. Your review begins and ends with wait.

• 19:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:29Nilay Patel?

  But only until reviewers got it was the scale of the inflection point, I think, clear.

• 19:33Speaker 03

  Right. Well, and it actually, I didn't do a good enough job. Like I said wait at the beginning and the end, but I feel like I wasn't clear enough about it. Like because I didn't upgrade my Mac, I like took a review unit and it was like a relatively clean install. And, you know, I didn't install literally everything that I use. I knew it was a problem, but I didn't realize the scope of the problem of all of the like security access dialogues that now pop up because like Apple wants to make sure apps have permission to get into like, say, your documents folder. Uh, you know, the, they want to move the Mac to a place where, um, not every single app can have access to your whole damn hard drive. Right. It seems like a reasonable thing for them to want to do. In order to make that happen, they need to like lock it down.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  And then the apps need to ask permission and then you need to grant them permission. It's all like, there's nothing irrational about that chain of desires and events. Um, until you get to the end of that chain, which is when you update your Mac and then all of a sudden your entire screen is filled with permission prompts that you need to accept.

• 20:36Nilay Patel?

  It is very Vista. It's a real throwback. Apple actually made a, uh, I'm a Mac commercial with Justin Long and John Hodgman. And some other famous actor who was the security guard standing behind John Hodgman. And every time John Hodgman talked, he said, confer, like accept or deny. Like Apple used to like make fun of Microsoft for this thing that is happening on Catalina. But like, I get like times have changed. Like there are more bad actors. And the Mac is like, Apple's a more popular company and there's more targeting of their platforms like. Yep. You gotta, this will be my inflection point. I don't think this will be the permanent state of Catalina, but it is absolutely the state of Catalina now. And my instinct, I've done this. I skipped Sierra. I basically skipped LCAP.

• 21:20Nilay Patel?

  Like it's sort of like accidentally updated one day. Like I hit the wrong button. I was like, oh shit.

• 21:26Nilay Patel?

  I think I skipped Leopard back like you can just skip Mac OS versions like your world won't end the way that like if you skip an iOS version like all of a sudden things just stop like working along the way.

• 21:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:37Nilay Patel?

  Do you skip a Mac OS version? I like, I think you should skip Catalina. Like it doesn't, there's nothing here that's compelling. I didn't have a laptop that can run Sidecar because you need a butterfly keyboard laptop, which is the worst trait in history. Like you can have a broken keyboard, but a cool second iPad display.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  No, your Mac OS upgrade strategy is going to be the Samsung model where you're just going to get it when you have to buy a new computer.

• 22:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's right. I feel great about that.

• 22:09Speaker 04

  I will say, all of this complaining aside, I'm really liking Catalina. I've been using it in like the developer preview for ages. And once I clicked yes on enough prompts, now I only get a new, I only get a new prompt like every other day. And I'm always, let me tell you, I am always grateful for that prompt because a lot of times it's like new information. It's like, oh, I didn't, I didn't know.

• 22:33Nilay Patel?

  Do you say no a lot? I say on my phone, I'm saying no left and right.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  Oh dude, dude, I got Mario Kart on my Android phone and it pops open. You must have Google Play to play this. And then you say, no, thanks. And you play it anyways. It's, they're lying. You don't must. No, but I, I, I say no a couple of things on the Mac, but mostly it's, it's, it's knowledge of what your software is doing because your software does a lot of invisible things and hard, hard drive access is, is an interesting one that's good to have insight into. I would hope eventually that we could find a low noise way to do this with network access. So that the, the sort of situation with Zoom where Zoom just installed a random application that was, you know, spying. I don't know what it was doing, but it was being a bad person.

• 23:21Nilay Patel?

  I was like, I remember this story. It was bad, right?

• 23:25Nilay Patel?

  Yes, it was bad.

• 23:27Speaker 04

  It could definitely, it could phone home and it was running perpetually on your, on your computer and, and it, most importantly, it was a web server holding a port open on your computer, which is, is in a sense, a, a access point for messages from the outside, which is what you don't want sometimes. So knowing that, having better insight to that would be nice i- in, in the future. I don't know if they'll ever get there.

• 23:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Look, I guess that inflection point, I don't think it's bad. Like, in the brief moments I've gotten to use Catalina, it seems fine. And features like sidecar seem cool and like, seems right that they broke up iTunes into 45 separate apps and a finder sidebar, whatever they did. Like, it, there's nothing about it that's bad. I just think that there's no reason to experience the transition. And this is a transition point. If you have a Mac that's working, like, uh, in the, Dami, who wrote the wait for Photoshop users post yesterday, we were like, listing the things that are broken. I have no idea what the Photoshop Extend Script Toolkit is. I don't. There's like a print shop in Kansas City that like,

• 24:30Nilay Patel?

  the entire business runs on the Photoshop Extend Script Toolkit. Like, they should definitely wait. Like, there's no reason for them to risk their business. I beseech you, printers of Kansas City, wait. And so it's just that, there's no reason to experience the transition. I think you can wait a year. And I think the better reason, this is the other thing, the better reason to wait a year is because the real promise of Catalina is catalyst apps, is getting all the iPad apps. And that appears to be a garbage fire.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  I have every single feeling in the world about this.

• 25:04Nilay Patel?

  I know. That's why, Thierry, Deirdre will be talking for the next 10 minutes. I'm gonna go get some coffee.

• 25:11Speaker 03

  I begged Apple to make its own good catalyst apps. Ahead of WWDC, I said, "Apple, do this right. Show everybody the way to make these apps good." At the time, they were not called catalyst apps, they were called... Whatever they were called.

• 25:27Nilay Patel?

  Marzipan?

• 25:28Speaker 03

  Marzipan apps. W W C arrived and Apple did not do that. They did, in fact, they they left their own Catalyst apps as the same hot garbage that they were in Mojave. So that was bad. And then it turned out that alongside Catalyst, they also announced this thing called Swift UI, which is apparently an incredibly elegant way to build a UI for, you know, for Mac developers that are already using Swift. And to some people, especially like Mac partisans, it looked like Swift UI is the future and Catalyst is just this weird placeholder and you should ignore Catalyst, especially because they're bad. And then in the months since W W D C, we have learned that like

• 26:09Speaker 03

  making a good Catalyst app, making a good Mac style app, but using iPad style code is very difficult and it's not well documented and everything you want there to do on it isn't actually there or easy to do. And so the result is we have a bunch of pretty fine Catalyst apps. There's like, you know, I don't know, 20 or 30. And some of them are cool, like Carrot looks dope. Planning seems cool, like nine to five Mac has a has a list of like all the ones that are out there, but like Twitter hasn't arrived. That was on stage. Asphalt nine hasn't arrived. That was on stage.

• 26:46Nilay Patel?

  Netflix just quit. They were like, no.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Netflix.

• 26:49Nilay Patel?

  Not doing this.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  Not doing it. So.

• 26:51Nilay Patel?

  But those are the ones you want. Like on Tuesday, the interview episode this coming Tuesday is Cave on Bake Four. I had a product on Twitter, Casey and I talked to him. And I asked him like, how's your Catalyst app? And he was like, it's great because we don't have to like work very hard. And it's just like not there.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:06Nilay Patel?

  Because I think they actually have to like work fairly hard to get it right. But the promise is that all these like great iPad apps will just like show up on your Mac and the developers won't have to work very hard, but then everyone gets the benefit. This is always the dream, right? Of like multi operating system support or multi platform support. It seems like that dream has crashed directly into reality.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. Mark Gurman at Bloomberg had a really good story where he talked about like some of the developer worries and complaints about Catalyst. And there's like two big ones and they both relate to the Difference between user expectation and like developer reality. So one is users expect to not have to pay for the same damn app again, right? They bought it once on the iPad and then it shows up on their iPhone. Why isn't it also showing up on the Mac? It seems a reasonable thing to expect. Developers, on the other hand, are like, yeah, actually, no, it takes a lot of work to make that Mac app work. So I should get paid for that. And similarly with, you know, people that are only paying a little bit of attention. And if you are a regular human being, you should only be paying a little bit of attention.

• 28:09Speaker 03

  The message, their takeaway is, oh, developers can like check a box and like fix two things. And then it, an iPad app turns into a Mac app. And it's not like that at all. It's if you do that, it's going to be terrible. And so like people could potentially be mad at iPad developers who are promising a catalyst app because they're taking too long. And it's because they think it's easier than it actually is.

• 28:33Nilay Patel?

  Okay, here's my conspiracy theory.

• 28:35Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 28:36Nilay Patel?

  I think I've put this together.

• 28:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:38Nilay Patel?

  That's why Apple's apps are bad. It's to set the expectation that these apps will be bad.

• 28:45Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 28:46Nilay Patel?

  So that you you use this like catalyst app and you're like, huh. Some apps on my Mac, me, person who's only paying the appropriate amount of attention to the Mac developer ecosystem in this 2019. Some Mac apps are bad iPad apps. And this is something I expect, I honestly enjoy because I enjoy being jolted into a different interface paradigm that requires a touchscreen on this computer that doesn't have a touchscreen. But it keeps me alive. You know, there's like a little jolt of excitement every now and again. And so I expect some apps to be bad.

• 29:20Speaker 03

  My version of.

• 29:21Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's face right now.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  No, my face right now is because at WWDC, a bunch of people in podcasts and whatever asked Craig Federighi, why is the home app still look like this? And his answer was, oh, that's a design decision. It's not a limitation of the of the catalyst platform. We just want it that way. And it's like, why?

• 29:43Nilay Patel?

  And the subtext of that is, we want it to be bad.

• 29:45Speaker 04

  Yes, you solved it for me. Thank you.

• 29:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, we're just, we're just lowering, because when you think of Apple, you think of lowering expectations of the user experience.

• 29:55Speaker 04

  My thinking is that what is flooding our computers right now are Electron apps, which are, you know, fancified glorified web browsers.

• 30:05Nilay Patel?

  Love them.

• 30:06Speaker 04

  And, you know, performance aside, the UI ends up often being a little webby and weird. So we're already sort of learning that, that, well, it's not everything's going to look like a Mac application. So in some sense, like the, the bar is lower for Catalyst app because it just has to be better than an Electron app.

• 30:30Nilay Patel?

  Right, but, but an Electron app with a webby UI, generally built for a mouse and a keyboard. An iPad generally built for you to interact through touch.

• 30:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:44Nilay Patel?

  And like, this is the problem. Like, if anything gets Apple to put a touchscreen on a Mac, it's the success of Catalyst, right? Because Catalyst apps, like, there isn't, I think Gruber was pointing out, like, the Pcal, which is a very famous app, the developer wrote a whole long blog post, and there's no, like, menu selection interface built into it. Like, if you just want to select an item out of a list, there's no native control for that in Catalyst. You, you just get the iOS spinny wheel, which makes no sense with a mouse. Like, that is, Gruber's like, that's ridiculous. This is the first GUI framework for this kind of computer in history that does not just have that as a primitive. That's, Apple's like, either they solve that problem, they put

• 31:26Nilay Patel?

  the work in the Catalyst, or, hear me out, you just put a touchscreen on the Mac, and you're like, just touch the wheel. Like, just do the thing, and it's going to work fine. And now you actually do have iPad apps in your Mac.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 31:38Nilay Patel?

  I would be totally into that. This would break all of their religion.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  They could release an ARM Mac, put a touchscreen on it and say, hey, iPad apps go to town. No problem.

• 31:48Speaker 04

  Apple, if you're listening to this, this is not a get out of jail free card. No, you can't do that. Go ahead, you can put a touchscreen, I don't care, but you also need to solve problems.

• 32:00Speaker 03

  How damning is it, I'm just, I'm coming back to this Netflix thing. How damning is it that Netflix won't do this? Like them taking their iPad app, they've done all this work, does like offline, your queue is there, you're always logged in. You don't have to worry about re-logging in. You don't have to deal with, you know, is my web browser good enough or fast enough? It's like, it's just a native app. They're, them refusing to take that and put it on the Mac are like, no, our website's good enough. Woof.

• 32:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, who knows? Like, as with all things with these companies now, is like, is this a sincere technical limitation that they didn't want to overcome? Because the market's not big enough? Or is this just politics because, I don't know, they want some additional API hook? And Apple's like, we'll give that to you if you put Netflix in the TV app on Apple TV Plus. And like, do a signup thing where we take 30% of your money and Netflix is like, no. In response, we withhold our Catalyst app. Like, all, all of those things are possible and I, maybe we'll never know, but this is supposed to make it easy. And I think what we've learned, just in the week or so that we've had Catalina, is it is actually hard. And that.

• 33:09Nilay Patel?

  It is an open question whether Catalyst is meant to be a real project, meant to be a real thing, a real avenue for developers. Or it's just sort of the thing that allows Apple to stem the tide of Electron while they move everybody to Swift UI. I don't know. Does it work on Sidecar? So I don't have a computer that can use Sidecar. Oh. Does it work with, does Catalyst, you can't?

• 33:29Speaker 03

  No, you can't touch, just because you put an app on there, you can't touch the screen.

• 33:33Nilay Patel?

  Come on now.

• 33:35Speaker 03

  You can use a pencil on, on stuff, but.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  Can you use a pencil on the interface elements? That would be amazing.

• 33:42Speaker 04

  I have to check. I mostly drew with it.

• 33:44Speaker 03

  Photoshop, by the way, not yet supported for Sidecar, so like if you turn on pressure sensitivity in Photoshop, like the brush is like way slow.

• 33:55Speaker 03

  It's just that. It's just like some combination of Apple pushes forward with no regard for the past, which is Apple's way. That's fine. The developers are in a state of consternation. They haven't caught up to where Apple wants to be. I think that with Catalina in particular, enormous set of open questions about whether developers want to catch up to where Apple wants to be. Paul, I know, what do you like about Catalina besides the asking of permission?

• 34:19Speaker 04

  Well, I just like, I feel like it's a cleaning up. I mean, you know, as hard as it is to have the deprecation of 32-bit, that represents to me a slimming and a trimming down of the operating system. And to me, it just feel, and they also like, they cleaned out the root folder. And I like these permissions things. Like, I feel like there's a lot, the operating system to me, it is just a subjective feeling, but it feels slimmer, more streamlined, and a little more polished in that sense.

• 34:51Speaker 03

  Less polished in the apps that replaced iTunes, in my opinion. I think they're very good. They're better than iTunes, but that's a low ass bar. Right? Like, they're 1.0 products for sure. The TV apps, a complete lack of awareness of other television ecosystems and the television apps is wild. Because the TV app on the iPad and on Apple TV, like, I'm used to like, there's a show and it shows me and I click in it. And then like, here are all the services I can, I can watch it on. And it doesn't do that on the Mac. You know, and Apple Music is similarly got like, like the history is like weirdly slow to update. There's just like some 1.0 kind of stuff in all of these apps.

• 35:30Nilay Patel?

  Well, Apple Music, you know, they're using the dynamic new I T L file format. Yeah.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  I will be, you know, for people who are taking this as me somehow recommending this operating system, I do not use any of these apps that you're talking about. I don't use Home Center Land, and I don't use Apple TV, and I don't, you know, I use, I use VS Code, I use the Brave browser, and I use like a weird text editor that's not even a real app.

• 36:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Look, here's a final word on Catalina. I'm gonna try to sum it up. If you have never used a computer before, and you buy a Mac, you're gonna love Catalina. You're gonna love it. It's gonna be the best thing that ever happened to you. It's clean, it's simple, it communicates well.

• 36:19Speaker 04

  If you've never had sugar before, and someone hands you a can of Coke, you're in for the ride of your life.

• 36:25Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be the best. You're like, the future of computing unfolds in so many directions. How will apps work in the future?

• 36:32Speaker 04

  It's got a new shell.

• 36:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. If you have ever used a Macintosh before, if you're upgrading, it's not gonna be quite as fun. It's, uh, it's gonna be, yeah, it's gonna be a little rocky. And I just, my recommendation is, you can just wait. You just wait a month, you can wait a year, you can skip the whole thing. Yeah. I'm gonna see, I'm gonna see if anything, I'll let you know if anything compels you to upgrade. Right now, I have felt no, no such pull. Except that I like, always have the latest thing. But that's, that's just me. That's like, I buy phones on the podcast every year. So like, what am I doing? All right, we're taking a break. When we come back, we gotta talk about iPadOS and TVOS. WatchOS? There's a lot of OSs. We'll be right back.

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• 38:45Nilay Patel?

  All right, so speaking of Adobe.

• 38:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, where's this transition going?

• 38:49Nilay Patel?

  I'm gonna tell you. It was supposed to be a pregnant pause. What was gonna happen next?

• 38:54Speaker 03

  Walls exist and they're sometimes made out of...

• 38:58Nilay Patel?

  Every now and again, Adobe updates its software. When did that happen? When you subscribe to software, you don't own the software. Yeah, every now and again, Adobe updates its software and renting from them. The feature that I was most excited about with iPadOS, they showed it on stage. I swear to God, Fred Federini looked in my eyes when he announced it, was you're gonna import photos directly into Lightroom.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 39:21Nilay Patel?

  It's not there yet.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  No, it's not.

• 39:23Nilay Patel?

  Absolutely isn't there yet. There is an amazing workaround that people on like forums and Reddit have found, which is you can import 10 photos at a time in the Files app and then share them using the Lightroom share button, which is still an incredible hack, but at least you've gotten to, I can see an SD card.

• 39:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:42Nilay Patel?

  Adobe, that's just a real under, undercurrent of the update story. But iPadOS is here.

• 39:49Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 39:49Nilay Patel?

  Dieter, you reviewed it. What do you, what do you think?

• 39:51Speaker 03

  I think that there are bugs.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  I mean...

• 39:56Nilay Patel?

  The iOS 13 story continues.

• 39:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, uh, the, my floating keyboard, I love the floating keyboard. Uh, I will defend it to my dying breath. I think it's the best. It just goes where it wants, just all the time. It's like, nope, I think I should be over on this side of the screen now. No, you know, it's like a game. It's like, where's Waldo? I think that the Safari browser, uh, is actually pretty good. I definitely like, I'm the kind of person that will push a browser to the edge of what it's capable of and then find where it breaks and then complain about that, that spot. But overall, I think that you are going to have a better time on the web with the new Safari than you did on the old Safari. And I think that, uh, the multitasking model is super complicated. We can get into that if you want, although we, we talked about it a bunch, uh, last couple of weeks.

• 40:39Speaker 03

  And I think that the model for manipulating text is a dumpster fire. I think the line I used was Apple. Apple tried to like move on from the loop and like do something really great and intuitive. So like they aim for the stars and they hit the ditch.

• 40:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:55Speaker 03

  It's real bad.

• 40:56Nilay Patel?

  Well, explain what it is. I'm thinking about how to explain it and I don't know how, but I'm very curious to see if you can.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  The very short version is, uh, they want you to not have to think about it. And so they let you just, you know, drag and touch and like, the cursor will figure out what you're trying to pull off. Are you trying to select a word? Are you trying to highlight a thing? Are you just trying to move the cursor? Uh, you know, they'll just, you'll figure it out. And if like, you're annoyed because you can't see what's going on with the cursor. If you move your finger real fast, the cursor gets a little bigger. So you can like see where it goes. They didn't think through that like fingers are still big and, um, what's the word? Opaque?

• 41:35Speaker 03

  So it makes it real hard to place. That's the problem the loop was designed to fix. And then on top of all of that, I think that they, they just, they whiffed on the cursor stuff. On top of all of that, they completely whiffed on these three finger gestures. I just, they're terrible. The three finger tap is great. So like, learn the three finger tap. That's how you can bring up your undo redo menu, your all that stuff, your cut, copy, paste. But if you think that you can like do the lift up thing and like do the the plop down thing with regular consistency at the at the speed that you normally would when you're working with text on any other computer that has a mousing system, you are sadly mistaken.

• 42:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:15Speaker 03

  So it just, it just, it's just, it all works, but it just, it definitely slows you down if you're working specifically with text.

• 42:23Nilay Patel?

  So let me ask you this philosophically. I want to talk about iPad OS in as an OS, but philosophically.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 42:30Nilay Patel?

  Apple is closest to a gesture powered navigation system for general computing with the iPad and iPad OS than anybody else.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  That's right. That is completely true.

• 42:40Nilay Patel?

  Is that a good idea?

• 42:41Speaker 03

  Sure. Why not?

• 42:43Nilay Patel?

  Well, because they're really close. They're farther along than anybody and it seems like a bad idea. Like, should they keep going? Or is asking people to remember like how many fingers do a thing, just like a fundamentally broken idea?

• 42:58Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, I've been getting into this for a long time. I don't think it's fundamentally a broken idea. I think that we give ourselves not enough credit for how how we learn desktop operating systems. And I think that people will pick up this stuff. I think that it's not as discoverable and then, you know, intuitive in the sense of like riding a bike is intuitive as it could be or should be. But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't keep going. The like, one of the things I talk about a lot in this review is like, I'd never know what's going to happen when I tap on an icon.

• 43:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:31Speaker 03

  Which seems real bad, right? Will the window be in a sidebar? Will it be in a split screen? Are there multiple screens? Which window is it going to open? I don't know. That all seems terrible. But the truth is that it's not, I don't know, because I don't know what the operating system is doing. It's not, I don't know, because the operating system is screwed up. Like, the the OS has an internal logic to what happens with its windows. It's just too complicated to understand unless you like are like in seeing the matrix, right?

• 44:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 44:01Speaker 03

  And so don't try and see the matrix and you'll be like, you'll like eventually just come to terms with like, oh yeah, it's a little bit wacky. It's fine. And like, maybe in like four years, I will have this like inherent intuitive sense of how the thing works and I'll see the matrix without having to think about it. It'll be like, I don't dribbling a basketball. First time you dribble a basketball, you just blah. And then over time, you get better at it. I mean, I'm still blah, but you know what I mean, right? Like, maybe it'll get there.

• 44:25Nilay Patel?

  Some people have learned to dribble a basketball, is what I think you're getting at.

• 44:29Speaker 03

  But there's always gonna be stuff at the edges of a UI that are hard to get right the first time. And I think that text is like specifically a thing that is difficult when your primary input mechanism is a finger. It's just like, because unless you want your text to be, each character to be bigger than the tip of a finger, like something has to be new or something has to give. You have to figure out a solution for that problem. And Apple's tried a couple of different solutions and I think in this one in particular, they were too ambitious, or they just, they didn't reach the level of their ambition.

• 45:06Speaker 04

  We're 11 years into touchscreen primary devices like this. You wouldn't think we'd be still be bad at this. Did they give themselves permission to use more fingers? Is that the problem here? And they just did a bad job there? Or, cause like, you would think that if you were just trying to improve what we already know from phone screens and just make it a little more iPad-y, whatever that would mean, that you could make a improvement, not that, not that you would go this far in the wrong direction.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  No, I think that that's exactly what they're trying to do. I'm just saying like they whiffed it. Like, there's a difference between is this a good idea or a bad idea? And did you execute your idea well? I just think they didn't like execute the idea.

• 45:50Speaker 04

  So theoretically, if it was just intuitive and when you swipe something, it's selected, but sometimes the swipe was actually moved cursor because what you meant to do was move the cursor. If somehow it could read your intent well enough, it would be a good way to interact.

• 46:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that, by the way, that is not completely out of the realm of possibility. It just isn't. There's a rumor or a story right now that Google Stadia is going to, is aiming for negative latency because they're going to predict what you're going to do on your controller before you do it, and therefore you'll not have any feeling of latency. And that isn't a crazy idea either. It's hard for buttons, but on an analog joystick, there's only so many directions that your finger can possibly go. And after that, it's just a probability problem and a confidence problem. How confident are they that the next thing you do is going to be this, given the physical capabilities of the thing you're using? And like, if Apple's good enough at machine learning and AI, they could theoretically

• 46:48Speaker 03

  make this cursor accurate and do what you expect it to do 95% of the time. And if they can get that percent that they get it wrong small enough, it will feel like magic and only occasionally annoying. Right now, I think their hit rate is closer to like 50%.

• 47:01Nilay Patel?

  That Stadia thing is terrifying. That's just like guaranteed that I'll be even worse at video games. Like, it will confidently predict that I will press the wrong button and just push it for me.

• 47:10Speaker 04

  Yes. What if normally, I do miss all my headshots, but this was gonna be the one time?

• 47:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, so I guess let me zoom out of that a little bit again. Okay. With desktop computers, it's, I mean, this is now a 30-year metaphor that has just been refined and refined and refined. It also had the ability of existing somewhat in a vacuum for most of its existence, the Windows mouse metaphor, right? Like, that was the thing. It was the only thing. So it existed mostly in a vacuum. So every time like more capabilities were layered onto it, they were wholly new. There was no other better thing or other more effective thing that was constantly being compared to.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 47:57Nilay Patel?

  And it got to develop in parallel with sort of astonishing leaps in overall computing power.

• 48:04Speaker 03

  Right.

• 48:05Nilay Patel?

  Like, do you remember like when the, like, early 2000s Macs, there'd be like slash dot Flame Wars about how many processor cycles Apple was wasting on like visual effects?

• 48:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:13Nilay Patel?

  I'm fairly sure those conversations have gone away, right? Like, but Apple did use those processor cycles to like, make the UI more predictable. It would show you where windows are going. There's all these animations. Like, it taught users what to expect. And then over time, it wound some of those animations back. The iPad, and particularly iPadOS and all this new stuff, has none of those benefits. Right? It's wholly new. It has not been refined over time. They actually keep rebooting it in different ways. It does sit next to a very powerful, very flexible, very well-understood mouse Windows metaphor. And, like, the thing is already so powerful that the main complaint is it doesn't let you do all the things that you think it should do.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  Right.

• 48:53Nilay Patel?

  And so, like, I think Apple's actually just, like, they're in a very difficult position. They're not actually iterating. It just seems like they keep rebooting to see if they get it right, instead of being able to commit to one thing and refining it. But do you think now is, like, this is the foundation they're gonna refine?

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Uh, I think that's not totally fair. I think the slideover thing is a clear iteration. They had a good idea of, like, there should be an app and it should, like, invisibly, theoretically, live on the right side of your screen, and you could swipe it in and swipe it away. And it's good for, like, certain things. And turning that into a stack is, like, really smart. Like, that's great. So, like, their core foundation of iPadOS is one big screen, split screen, and slideover. Like, those are, like, the three modalities, basically. Instead of, like, Windows, you can put it anywhere you want in space. And they seem pretty committed to that. And I'm actually, like, I'm okay with that. You, like, those three elements, and then every now and then, if you really want to, you can, like, have a picture-in-picture thing, or you can, like, expand a notification to do something.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  Right? Like, that's like a extra modal space that, like, can sometimes exist. That is a foundation, I think, is pretty smart. You know, if you're committed to, like, not letting people just have Windows, how do you play around with the different ways that things work inside that basic framework, where, like, they're gonna try some stuff and it's gonna fail, and they're gonna have to, like, start over and try something else? And I guess the reason that I'm, like, pretty chill about this, like, you know, in the video and in the piece, I make this joke about, like, everything is temporary, nothing matters, just be a Buddhist, you know, go away, is because I have watched Android do this for a decade. Every single version of Android, they're like, "Well, that idea sucked. Let's try it again." And that, like, iterations, a cycle-

• 50:37Speaker 03

  Of iteration and rebooting is why Android notifications are so good now. They like, they just, they were willing to keep poking at it every single time and trust users to like, figure out what they were doing in a way that Apple just refused to with notifications. And the reason I'm so excited about iPadOS being a little bit complicated, which seems super counterintuitive, is because I see Apple realizing and having a willingness to like, try some stuff, have it fail, and then change it the next time. I think that's not, that's not the way Apple usually does this kind of thing. And that's like, so that's fun.

• 51:12Nilay Patel?

  So I think the question is like, are they going to commit to iPadOS diverging from iOS? Which, WWDC, they seemed, basically, there's two answers to this. Like, there is the public answer, which is it's iPadOS now, it's its own thing. And then to us, they're like, it's still iOS, like, it's all one operating system. And I think a big question is, will it diverge? Will it actually become its own thing in a different direction?

• 51:35Speaker 03

  I mean, that depends on whether or not developers make, you know, feel like they can make money selling like, prosumer apps. You know, a great way to convince developers that they can make money selling prosumer apps is to support the creation of those apps so they could work both on the iPad and the Mac.

• 51:52Speaker 03

  That seems like a really good way to ensure the future success of the iPad as a computer. Apple should really think about that.

• 51:58Speaker 04

  You say that, Dieter, and I believe you, but also, like, two weeks ago, I spent like $80 on audio apps for my iPad. Because it's, the iPad, if people aren't aware of the audio ecosystem, there's these things called AUV3, Audio Units V3, the fancy new audio unit. And so you can have an app that hosts other, these like mini portable apps that are the audio units. And the audio units can accept sound in, send sound out, accept MIDI in, and send MIDI out. So you can have an app that is, it is like, built to combine all these different apps. And that's like your effects chain, or that's your, that's your music.

• 52:41Speaker 04

  It's so cool. It's like, it's a whole different way to use computers, in my feeling. And it's awesome. And it's a great way to spend so much money so quickly. Oh, well, I mean, it's only $10 and it will generate really great MIDI sequences and I need it. And so you just buy it.

• 52:58Speaker 03

  How many apps did you buy?

• 52:59Speaker 04

  Probably like, five.

• 53:01Speaker 03

  All right. I want to hear some twos. And where's that SoundCloud link?

• 53:04Speaker 04

  All right, well, I'll work on it.

• 53:06Nilay Patel?

  I've gotta buy some more audio units real quick though. Ah, yes. The classic music production conundrum. I gotta find that sound. Uh, Dieter, you also reviewed the iPad, which I think it's just-

• 53:16Speaker 03

  It's an iPad.

• 53:17Nilay Patel?

  Just an iPad?

• 53:18Speaker 03

  Hmm, it's an iPad.

• 53:19Nilay Patel?

  Heard that one. Uh, I thought your, your conclusion was this is more confusing than ever, uh, was, seems spot on, like, why would you buy this one instead of an Air, instead of a used Pro? But like, I actually, I, I don't get it. Where did you land?

• 53:32Speaker 03

  Ah, man, I am actually also confused. Uh, uh, an Air seems like a better deal because you get a newer processor and like, the new, the screen is noticeably better, at least to me. But, you know, it's like, that's 170 bucks and like, so why, maybe it's safe to like, get the, the, the, the main thing with this iPad that bothers me, that troubles me is the processor's pretty old. It's the A10. And, you know, like, Apple will support it for as long as they can, but I think that it's gonna have a slightly shorter shelf life than, uh, than iPad Air would.

• 54:04Nilay Patel?

  That's interesting. I mean, Apple's usually not too aggressive in dropping support for these older, older iOS devices in particular.

• 54:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't think that it's like a, a short shelf life. I think it's like, instead of like, seven years, it's five, or instead of like 10 years, it's seven. Like that, that's the range we're talking. We're not in Android land where the thing is completely useless after a year and a half, right? To be clear. But it is completely baffling why, uh, this device, which is like, designed for, uh, education, designed for people that don't, you know, don't wanna spend a lot of money. They might wanna give it to their kid. Um, one, why the keyboard is still so expensive. It's more than half the cost of the iPad itself. Um, uh, you did the interview with the CEO of Logitech. Thank you for asking about the, the Logi brand name.

• 54:50Nilay Patel?

  They did that for you.

• 54:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I appreciate it. Uh, he spoke right into my ear holes. It was great. But like, they're, they're not making keyboards that are like that much cheaper and they're just using Bluetooth, whatever. And then, two, the lack of multi-user support in iPadOS has gone from like ridiculous to, um, like, I don't even know the word, like, punitive. Like, Apple should literally be indicted. Like, they, it is, it is terrible that they do not offer this feature to-

• 55:19Nilay Patel?

  Everybody, it's available in the education market, but not for anybody else. If you want to give your iPad to a kid, to your child, and you don't want that child to, you know, open up your work email and send your boss an email, you, uh, you eventually land on, well, I'm gonna have to buy him an iPad. Like, that's, that's the end of that story every time. And TVOS, which we haven't talked about much here, uh, supports multi-user. Yeah. It's like right there. It's actually like really good, too. Yeah. They just like figured it right out. They're like, some people want to watch different TV shows than you. Here's an entire robust multi-user stack. And it's like, you don't think people on iPads want to do different things?

• 56:01Speaker 04

  Here's an idea, a 15 finger gesture. It's a handover. It requires two people to make the swipe.

• 56:11Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty good. Here's my big question about this iPad. And I asked you about it when I did the interview with Bracken Daryl, CEO of Watchack. The smart connector is now on all the iPads except for the mini, right? Yep, that's right. It's a different smart connector on the new iPad Pros. It's on the back, whereas all the old iPad Pros and the iPad Air and this thing have it the little on the bottom. Sure. Right. But it's still like three dots on the back of the, it's the same, I think it's the same configuration of pogo pins or whatever, right? This is purportedly an open connector. Why isn't there even just a dongle that lets you plug in a USB keyboard? Right? Like, theoretically, anybody can make something for that connector. And I asked Bracken Daryl, like, why aren't there more? And he was like, oh, Bluetooth. Like, everyone has a sort

• 56:55Nilay Patel?

  of the same answer when I asked this question. Like, why isn't there a $20 iPad keyboard that sucks that connects to this connector? It is the thing everybody with an iPad wants. There's a reason there's now a hardware connector on Johnny I's magnificent streamlined design that defers to the screen. Yeah. Because everybody wants to plug a keyboard into it.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  Could I blow your mind even more? Yeah. Try going and looking for like a standalone Bluetooth keyboard like on Amazon. That isn't part of like an iPad case, just like you want a good knock around Bluetooth keyboard that you can like throw in a bag, use, I wanted to use it with the Galaxy Fold, right? I used to have this incredible Microsoft Bluetooth keyboard. Yeah. The thing that flips open that you could like slot a tablet in is now it didn't foresee that the devices would get thin, so nothing fits in it anymore, it all falls out. So I had to buy a new Bluetooth keyboard and there are no good ones. There are zero good standalone Bluetooth keyboards. I'll find some for you. Okay. I mean, you have to be able to like slot a- Paul's like, "Yeah, that's what I was thinking of." Yeah, but use it on your lap with a tablet. Right. So you're saying the lapability of the Bluetooth keyboards are low?

• 57:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's no lappable Bluetooth keyboards.

• 58:01Speaker 04

  Does the tablet have to be on my lap?

• 58:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, that's lapability, Paul. I mean, lapability 101. Have you taken fundamentals of lapability in one of your many online courses?

• 58:11Speaker 04

  So you want a Bluetooth keyboard, but that also has a stand for a tablet?

• 58:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:17Speaker 04

  So that it's lappable?

• 58:18Speaker 03

  And like that stand could like be separated or attached, you know, there's many, it could fold, it could do all sorts of things.

• 58:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 58:24Speaker 03

  There's just, there's like, there's one company that makes it and it's like, you know, the keyboard that like has like eight RGB colors and blah blah blah. I'm just saying, we live in a world of profligate dongle creation. Yeah. Right? It is bizarre to me that there is not a USB to smart connector dongle. There is a better ecosystem of things for AirPods than there is for the smart connector on the iPad. I just don't get, and again, it is purportedly an open connector. They've told us several times it's open connector, but I don't think it is. I think that is as locked down as anything.

• 58:56Speaker 04

  It makes it seem to me that maybe it's a subset of USB. Cause yeah, that's such a good point. It would be so nice to have a smart connector to USB. I agree, Neil, you're right.

• 59:08Speaker 03

  Look, I'm just all conspiracy theories today.

• 59:11Nilay Patel?

  It's a real, it's a real wild ride of a show. So Dieter, your iPad review, I thought the

• 59:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:16Nilay Patel?

  The subhead was great, no competition, because it doesn't have any. It was like, we talk about competition all the time. But, we should generally talk about iOS 13 and something that I think is very interesting. We also talk about like antitrust and like, the pressure from governments to open up.

• 59:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:30Nilay Patel?

  Apple, opening up Siri to other music services because

• 59:33Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 59:34Nilay Patel?

  Basically like, they're, they're starting to feel the pressure. And they're opening up their services to be in a more equal competitive playing field. So now you can say, hey Siri.

• 59:42Speaker 03

  In the stingiest way.

• 59:44Nilay Patel?

  Well, right, but it can run on the watch. You can say, hey Siri, play it on Spotify and it'll do it, which it never did before.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:50Nilay Patel?

  I think you still want to be able to set default apps. I suspect, just the hint, of like, the antitrust pressure in Europe. All of the people talking about it all the time, including us and all the other folks. I think it's gonna push them towards default apps. And I think the iPad becoming more computery and complicated, is like, it will be the first one to go, is my guess.

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  Hmm, oh, I would love that. Uh, there, there's actually, there's now two layers of the default app question. There's default apps on the voice assistant, and then there's default apps on the operating system. So, uh, both Google and Amazon let you set default apps, um, on the voice assistant.

• 1:00:25Nilay Patel?

  But not any. I, I actually think that's like a mistake for both.

• 1:00:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay, right. Not, like, stuff that they have a partner with, right?

• 1:00:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so like, on Google Assistant, you cannot set, uh, Apple Music to be the default music player. It's like Spotify and Google Play, or whatever it's called now.

• 1:00:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:41Nilay Patel?

  Google Songs, like whatever, whatever it is.

• 1:00:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, the, by the way, the pro tip on the Spotify thing, instead of saying, on Spotify, you can, you Spotify like a verb, like, like Google.

• 1:00:51Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 1:00:51Speaker 03

  So you could, you could like, just lift your wrist, you know, to your face, or say, hey Siri, and just be like, Spotify Music. Or, you know, Spotify, and it'll, it'll do it.

• 1:01:02Nilay Patel?

  That's great.

• 1:01:03Speaker 03

  Spotify Ramones, and it'll just like, play Ramones on Spotify.

• 1:01:06Nilay Patel?

  Spotify Ramones is a great thing to be yelling all the time at your wrist as you walk around.

• 1:01:11Speaker 03

  Um, okay.

• 1:01:12Nilay Patel?

  The one thing I did want to talk about with iOS 13, we talked about Catalina, some bugs, some broken stuff. When we reviewed the phones, we noted that iOS 13 was very buggy.

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:01:22Nilay Patel?

  We actually said, everybody, wait, like, don't rush out and preorder. It's a real theme of Apple stuff. Like, don't rush into it. Let them, let them settle down. They seem to be in a rush. They've now put out 15 updates to iOS 13. I think we're at 13.1.2 right now, right?

• 1:01:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Nilay Patel?

  So, the big one to wait for was iOS 13.1, and then 13.1.1 hit like, a day later, and 13.1.2 hit like, the day after that. It was just a rapid pace. I said, I think, on the show around iPhone Retime, hey, we're gonna like, if iOS 13 doesn't get better, we're gonna reconsider at least the score, like, it's a buggy thing.

• 1:01:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:57Nilay Patel?

  So, I just want to give a re-update. I'm on .1.2. There are still some around the edges, but it is far better. Like, I don't think I need to reconsider the score. I wanted to check with you, Dieter. Have you hit any showstoppers if you're reviewing iPadOS and all this other stuff?

• 1:02:11Speaker 03

  I haven't hit any showstoppers lately. Like, it's, it has settled down. There's still some fit and finish stuff that's like, what are you doing? Like, how and why? I mentioned the keyboard jumping around. I've had some real hassles with the share sheet. Like, it's like freezing, and in Messages specifically. I think that Apple Messages is actually like, pretty bad, which is super ironic because I like, committed to using iMessage, so my family would talk to me.

• 1:02:37Nilay Patel?

  This is it. This is what happens with a monopolist. They got you, and now the prices are going up, and the price is waiting for the share sheet.

• 1:02:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. I had to, I had to reset all network settings on my phone. Oh, no, all settings. I had to reset all settings on my phone so I could send MMS messages, by the way.

• 1:02:55Nilay Patel?

  That's insane.

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  Because, because Verizon, Apple lets Verizon lock down the MMS settings. So, there was literally one string of 20 characters I needed to change in Settings, and in order to change that, I had to burn every single setting on my iPhone. It's the best.

• 1:03:11Nilay Patel?

  That doesn't seem great.

• 1:03:12Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 1:03:12Nilay Patel?

  But that's iOS generally.

• 1:03:13Speaker 03

  That's iOS generally, yeah. Yeah. I would say that it's like, they need to, they need to clean up a bunch of stuff around the edges, but it's not like, don't upgrade time anymore. Like, you, you should go ahead and install it if you've got an iPhone.

• 1:03:27Nilay Patel?

  I mean, the one I'm waiting for, I mean, they put out the beta that has deep fusion in it. People are testing it. I'm sort of waiting for it to hit.

• 1:03:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:33Nilay Patel?

  Then, if that works, the camera goes the way I think it's gonna go, based on what I've seen already on foot and online. It's like, every, like, if you bought an iPhone 11 and you haven't upgraded, like, now's, now's the moment. But I haven't had any showstoppers. So people were asking, and I think it's fair to say I'm not gonna go and change the scores on the phones. Uh, cuz they're fine.

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Nilay Patel?

  They're, they're as buggy as phones are now. Like, they've, they've reached the normal level of frustrating bugs in like, a first gen phone. Uh, they're not at the chaos wait level. All right, we'll take a break. We'll come back, you know, do what we don't really do.

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• 1:05:39Nilay Patel?

  All right, Paul.

• 1:05:40Speaker 04

  Yo.

• 1:05:41Nilay Patel?

  Every week, the consistency that keeps this nation together.

• 1:05:45Speaker 04

  And it's working so well.

• 1:05:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, maybe we should actually be consistent.

• 1:05:51Speaker 04

  It's called, you know what? Maybe radio was a mistake.

• 1:05:55Nilay Patel?

  I like it.

• 1:05:56Speaker 04

  I don't know if you guys are, um, I've heard of this, uh, the Linksys aware. Okay, imagine.

• 1:06:03Nilay Patel?

  Oh, God.

• 1:06:04Speaker 04

  Imagine a Wi-Fi router, right? Or actually a constellation of Wi-Fi routers in a mesh configuration. And you think, oh, great, now I can have internet. And actually, no, also, they can tell when you're walking around in your house because they use magic to do motion detection somehow with some sort of Doppler. I don't, I, I really don't understand. I don't think Linksys is really describing the technology very well. But the, the, the Wi-Fi signals, they, they reach some sort of point of equilibrium and the timing of the signals reaching each base station or each satellite or whatever.

• 1:06:47Speaker 04

  And then when someone moves in your house, that disturbs that equilibrium. And now the Wi-Fi mesh has detected motion.

• 1:06:57Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 1:06:58Speaker 04

  So the positive way to think of this is, well, good, now I don't need a camera in my house. Right? To know when there's motion in my house. I just ask my Wi-Fi routers. They tell me. The scary thing about this is that, oh, this is just radio technology and probably, probably all Wi-Fi routers could be turned into some sort of motion detection to spy on us and we're all gonna die.

• 1:07:26Nilay Patel?

  This is like movie stuff. This is like, there's a scene in Mission Impossible where like, Benji is like, here's what I can do. I can hack into the, the mesh Wi-Fi router system.

• 1:07:35Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 1:07:35Nilay Patel?

  And triangulate his position.

• 1:07:36Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:07:38Nilay Patel?

  That's dope. Oh wait, I'm super into this. Just thinking about it that way made this way better. Uh, I feel like this was a, this was a science project we covered ages ago.

• 1:07:46Speaker 03

  There was like, there was, there was definitely a thing where like, it was, it specifically was like seeing through walls. Like you could use wifi to see through walls. And like, everyone was like, what? I remember this.

• 1:07:55Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, at the end of the day, there are radio waves, they propagate and you can measure their reflectivity, right? Like, you can like do stuff with them.

• 1:08:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. 2015, MIT researchers used wifi to watch, to see through walls, to recognize people through walls. They could actually identify people. They could detect walking speed.

• 1:08:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And, and now Linksys has given itself the capability, which is very cool, I think.

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  For $3 a month.

• 1:08:21Nilay Patel?

  $3 a month?

• 1:08:22Speaker 03

  You pay Linksys for the, for the privilege to be tracked through your home.

• 1:08:27Nilay Patel?

  Alright, this segment's over. I can't, I can't, I can't. Like, everyone's just trying to find reasons to charge a monthly fee and this is what Linksys came up with.

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  We're a service company now. Our service?

• 1:08:38Nilay Patel?

  Is knowing that you're in your house.

• 1:08:42Nilay Patel?

  How fast are you walking? This burglar is very fast. $3 a month.

• 1:08:49Nilay Patel?

  Alright, last big thing we gotta talk about. Well, two things. There's some hints of, uh, Sony, PS5. They're doing, they're doing drips and drops. So, the previous drip, months ago, like, it's gonna have an SSD so fast you won't believe it.

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Which is great. This, this one though, big one, new controller, well, two. Holiday 2020, so coming out next year, PS5, and the controller will have haptics that are unimaginable.

• 1:09:17Speaker 03

  And adaptive triggers.

• 1:09:19Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think, doesn't that count as a haptic?

• 1:09:21Speaker 03

  Yes. But, if you think about the trigger for just a second.

• 1:09:25Nilay Patel?

  Oh boy.

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  When you, when you think, we've been talking to user interfaces this whole time.

• 1:09:29Nilay Patel?

  This is what is our show.

• 1:09:31Speaker 03

  But, uh, the, the physical resistance of a trigger as a user interface, as a thing that a programmer, programmer can dynamically change to give you information. Is super cool and like this has been done before with lots of things. Computers have controlled physical objects and they you use your sense of touch or motion to like gather information or you know, give information. But expanding the realm of things that can give or take that information to something as simple as like a trigger button is like kinda cool. Like I just like think there's a programmer somewhere, sitting in a room like thinking about like messing with your head by messing with the, you know, the resistance on that trigger.

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  Like you remember the old, that old Nintendo horror game, whose name is escaping me where like as you played the game, the game would start glitching because you'd lose sanity points because you'd see monsters. And eventually the game would glitch so hard that you would think that the, you thought the console had crashed, but it hadn't. The game was just messing with you.

• 1:10:31Nilay Patel?

  That's great. I mean, this is like, I mean, my only reference point for video games is Metal Gear. So it's like, this is like some Metal Gear stuff. I'm into it. They also said they're taking out rumble and doing advanced haptics in the controller, which

• 1:10:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:45Nilay Patel?

  Seems like just better rumble and they just like, I don't know what the difference is between like vastly improved rumble and advanced haptics.

• 1:10:53Speaker 03

  But it's taptics.

• 1:10:55Nilay Patel?

  They get to say that, they get to say it, so that's cool.

• 1:10:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:58Nilay Patel?

  I'm into that. I'm into like, we're now at the point where Apple is selling the Xbox One controller at Apple stores because you can just like plug it into, you can connect it to an iPad or TV and just like play Apple Arcade games. They need to like move, the consoles need to move ahead in a serious way. But I think Sony being like, one thing at a time for a year is how you will learn about the PS5 is very strange. And the fact that the first thing was it will have an SSD is like my favorite.

• 1:11:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:25Nilay Patel?

  Because what else would it have at this point? We're the last consumers of hard drives in the world, the PS5.

• 1:11:31Speaker 04

  So I mean, yeah, it should have an SSD, but I am so stoked on it having SSD. I'm definitely at a point where we're in a very fast SSD. I'm at a point where one of the reasons I choose to buy things on PC instead of for my Xbox is, is that the Xbox takes five days to load anything.

• 1:11:53Speaker 04

  You know, it's just like, everything feels so slow. It's like, well, I don't want, and it's not just the load times at the start of the game, it's the load times all throughout the game. And it really will be, I do think it'll be transformational. I'm very, very excited about it. Also, 4K Blu-ray standard, that's a real thing now. That's, that's, I think, I think we're, I'm ready to maybe own some movies again, instead of just streaming them.

• 1:12:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you can just buy, again, you can buy an Xbox and play 4K Blu-rays right now, Paul. It's like 250 bucks. You just do it.

• 1:12:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, I already have an Xbox. I don't have a good reason to.

• 1:12:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. All right. And lastly, I mean, we're gonna do so much next week with this. We don't need to do it. Also, the Pixel's leaked, just up, down, and sideways.

• 1:12:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:40Nilay Patel?

  Next week, some Google stuff going on.

• 1:12:43Speaker 03

  So, like, my final guess is, actually, it's the same as a bunch of people's. It's the Pixel 4, Pixel 4 XL. I do not believe the Pixel 4 5G is gonna get announced. I could be wrong, but I don't think they're gonna do it. There'll be the new Nest Mini. The only thing we know about that is that it's like, gonna be easier to hang on your wall.

• 1:13:01Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:13:02Speaker 03

  I do think that if that's all it is, it's a real dumb missed opportunity, because-

• 1:13:06Nilay Patel?

  Wait, Nest, the Hub Mini?

• 1:13:08Speaker 03

  Google Home Mini.

• 1:13:09Nilay Patel?

  Oh, the little guy.

• 1:13:11Speaker 03

  There's no more Google Homes anymore. It's just Nest.

• 1:13:14Nilay Patel?

  But when you say Nest, and then easy to hang on the wall, I immediately think of the thermostat, which is already quite easy to put on the wall, because it is designed to be put on the wall. Anyway, the names are bad. Continue.

• 1:13:23Speaker 03

  Why are they putting gesture control radar on the phone and not on the speaker?

• 1:13:28Nilay Patel?

  Uh, cuz the last time they added a cool feature to the thing they put in your house, they forgot to tell everybody anything I burned on my dad.

• 1:13:36Nilay Patel?

  That's what I got.

• 1:13:37Speaker 03

  They also had to, like, remove the capacitive gesture control on the Home, Google Home Mini. Anyway, so, okay. Pixel Mini, the Google Wi-Fi, sorry, Nest Wi-Fi apparently is a thing. People are pretty sure that's coming. Pixelbook, the Pixelbook Go seems like it's a thing. And then everyone is assuming there'll be a new version of PixelBuds. But I don't think we've seen, like, a lot of leaks of that, like, not a ton.

• 1:14:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:02Speaker 03

  Not, I mean, nowhere-

• 1:14:03Speaker 04

  Near the Pixel 4, nothing is, but I would have expected to see more. So I think we'll get it because every company on the planet makes earbuds now. If you don't, like Verge is going to make earbuds next week because otherwise we don't count as a tech company. So obviously, Google will have to. But I actually don't know much about what they're going to do with them.

• 1:14:21Nilay Patel?

  It feels like they tried to differentiate Pixel Buds with the translation feature. And that was fine. Yeah, like that's not what people actually care about. They looked a little silly. The Beats Pro exist, right? So like if you can't take on the AirPods head on, which basically no one has in terms of size. You kind of, you land at like Beats Pro size. And that's a fairly competitive zone, like Sony makes really good ones, like, but you have to be better than a bunch of good stuff. And like, I don't think that the Pixel Buds were better than a bunch of already good stuff.

• 1:14:56Speaker 04

  They were not.

• 1:14:57Nilay Patel?

  So like, that's, it's just a tough, like, you're not better than the thing everybody wants, which is AirPods. And you're not better than like the second place round, which is like the Beats Pro Sony zone. Like, what is there to take? And I think that's just like, and you're, and you, and now if you like, Microsoft made ones that just look real silly. Right? So that's great. Like, you're not even, you can't even play that. Like, you have to be, you have to be ahead of like, they look like pop sockets for your head.

• 1:15:26Speaker 04

  I believe that if Google thought it could make the best or the second best earbuds, it would do it, right? But I also would love to live in a world where it was not super important that the first party makes the best headphones in the world so that you can enjoy using your phone.

• 1:15:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just, I mean, it matters on iOS because Apple built it into the stack. Right? So Apple has H1, it's built, like, there is some special stuff going on with iOS where like the Bluetooth is better managed because the H1 chip. I have, so I do, I have both AirPods and Beats Pro. And like, you know, when you switch the phone call to being on the headphones inside of the phone, like, literally an icon of the headphones you're using shows up. Like, it's like, very tightly integrated.

• 1:16:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:17Nilay Patel?

  Android isn't doing any of that stuff.

• 1:16:19Speaker 03

  Can I tell you guys a secret?

• 1:16:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:21Speaker 03

  My, uh, my earbuds, Galaxy Buds.

• 1:16:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, people love the Galaxy Buds.

• 1:16:26Speaker 03

  Uh, they, they're terrible for phone calls. Their sound is like Midland. Uh, and when you use it with an iPhone, that's even more Midland because you can't even do like the little EQ stuff.

• 1:16:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:35Speaker 03

  Um, but wireless charging, USB-C, fits in a pocket. That's, that's like, there it is. I can listen to podcasts on the train.

• 1:16:41Nilay Patel?

  It turns out that people will always prioritize convenience over sound quality. The Apple story.

• 1:16:48Speaker 04

  I will say, dongle life update real quick. Uh, my USB-C pack-in headphones that I got with my Pixel 3, uh, now, they still work, but the microphone doesn't work anymore.

• 1:17:01Speaker 04

  So, you know.

• 1:17:02Nilay Patel?

  Look, this is your time. You're gonna be the, you're gonna buy the Pixel Buds 2.

• 1:17:06Speaker 04

  There you go. There you go. You gotta translate things.

• 1:17:09Nilay Patel?

  Like I said, we don't need to overdo Google. We will overdo Google next week. When all this stuff, we, we have been talking about the products that are coming, particularly the Pixel 4, for, uh, two months now.

• 1:17:18Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Since the Pixel 3 came out, basically, at this point. Like, yeah, we wanna see how this camera actually performs. It is a very competitive moment. Great, we're gonna get 'em, we're gonna see 'em, we're gonna like, live through the presentation. We'll be back, we're gonna go all in on it next week. Be ready for that. All right, that's The Vergecast. We did it. Everything's fine.

• 1:17:37Speaker 03

  Together.

• 1:17:38Nilay Patel?

  Everything's fine. Uh, some things I need to mention. We are hiring, in case you wanna help us make this show better, Theverge.com/podcastjob. We're looking for an editorial director of podcasts. Big job. You know anybody? If you know yourself, in your heart, go to Theverge.com/podcastjob. We're doing a survey to help us with, you know, inform how to make everything better. Anybody can take that. If you, even if you don't know yourself, go to Theverge.com/survey. Just everybody, take that one. You can talk to us, I'm at Reckless, Dieter's at Backlon, Paul's at FuturePaul. And, I want you to listen to something, it's very important. Ex-Verge reporter, Ariel DeHaem-Ross, is back at Vox Media.

• 1:18:18Nilay Patel?

  She was a superstar reporter. She's back at Vox Media. She's hosting a new show for Recode called Reset. It's a tech news show. It's a broad definition of tech that looks at science, medicine, politics. It's launching October 15th, and it comes out three days a week, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. It's a big show, big star, top of it. Ariel's great. Go in your podcast app right now, search for Reset by Recode, hit subscribe, listen to the trailer. The trailer's really fun. There's also a little interview she did with Cara, which is everything that you would expect. It's just an experience that you should have. It's great. Go listen to that. It's really exciting. You can also check out Dieter's newsletter, Command Line, diverge.com/newsletter. It's really good. I mean, half of this show is me just reading the newsletter of Dieter and making him talk. All right,

• 1:19:03Nilay Patel?

  that's it. We'll see you next week. Google, Google, Google time is here. We'll see you next week. Rock and roll. Paul. Propo code.

• 1:19:29Speaker 13

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