Xbox Series X, Series S, and PS5 review / Apple announces 'One More Thing' event for November 10th

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Dieter Bohn, and Tom Warren discuss reviews of the new game consoles — Microsoft's Xbox Series X and Series S, and Sony's PS5. Oh yeah one more thing, there's an Apple event next week. Additional reading: Xbox Series X review Xbox Series S review Astro’s Playroom is the perfect showcase for the PS5’s wild DualSense controller The PS5’s new controller is amazing — here’s how it works Sony confirms the PS5 won’t support SSD storage expansion at launch Best Buy says next-gen Xbox and PS5 consoles will only be sold online for entire holiday season Sony strongly urges gamers not to line up at stores on PS5 release date Sony shows how much easier logging into the PS5 can be, among other tutorials The different strategies of Microsoft and Sony’s next-generation consoles Switch sales are so good that Nintendo is raising forecasts Apple announces 'One More Thing' event for November 10th … Apple to Launch MacBooks With Own Chips Next Week Making macOS run well on ARM processors isn’t the hard part Microsoft’s rougher ride in a similar transition could provide some lessons for Apple Fortnite will reportedly be playable on iOS again through Nvidia’s GeForce Now Sizing up the iPhone 12 mini and 12 Pro Max DJI’s palm-sized Mini 2 drone flies further and shoots 4K for $449 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're doing two episodes. On this episode, Tom Warren joins us to talk about the next generation of consoles. That's PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, reviews of all of them. Then there's an Apple event next week, new Macs with ARM processors. Got to talk about that. That's coming up now on the Vergecast.

• 0:21Speaker 01

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• 1:06Speaker 02

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• 1:40Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the next generation. It's like, it's good. It's like a hopeful.

• 1:48Speaker 03

  It's just a Star Trek podcast. We're just going to talk about Jean-Luc Picard for the next two hours.

• 1:52Nilay Patel?

  You know, in many ways, I think we are. I'm your friend Eli. That is Dieter Bohn. Hi, Dieter.

• 1:55Speaker 03

  Hey, how's it going?

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  Tom Warren is here. Hello there. How are you? We're doing all right, Tom. So we brought in a Brit on this, the 45th day of the American election. Here's what we're gonna do. The election is not over as we record this. We're recording this on Thursday night. There is a lot of just dead ahead tech news to talk about. There, we had Xbox reviews. Tom did an Xbox review. We have PS5 news coming. Tom has written an explainer of how the controller works, which is apparently amazing. There's an Apple event next week. We're expecting ArmX. A lot of dead ahead gadget tech news to talk about. And then there is a lot of election news, particularly platform policy election news.

• 2:37Nilay Patel?

  I was talking to Dieter earlier. We could not figure out how to manage the transition between those two things in one episode of it. We just couldn't. I was like, there is no segue available here.

• 2:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. What's the audio equivalent of just like a line break, just like an HR bar, you know? On the website, you're just like, oh, we'll just put a break. It'll be fine.

• 2:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right. Boop. We just couldn't. I mean, I think we've done a reasonably successful job of keeping it all together. But this week is just too much. So we're gonna do something, a little bit of an experiment. We're gonna have two smaller sized episodes. We'll go over regardless. I'm not gonna tell you how long we think they're gonna be because we're gonna go over, but we're gonna do this episode, Xbox, PS5, Apple event. There's some other stuff to talk about. That's this one. We're gonna do another episode with Addie. Both gonna be in the feed at the same time. With Addie, we're obviously gonna talk about the election, platform policy, what Twitter, Facebook, YouTube have been doing around the massive amount of disinformation and chaos that has come about in this election process. So both episodes are on the feed. If you wanna hear the policy talk, go check out our conversation with Addie.

• 3:37Nilay Patel?

  If you come for the gadgets, here we are. We're talking about gadgets. The other thing I'm not doing is I'm not gonna update the COVID website count this week. It's 34 weeks, but hopefully we're done talking about it. So we'll get back to, the pandemic is still the biggest story in the world. I just think this week it has in some ways been eclipsed by what will happen with the future of American politics. So 34 weeks, we'll come back, we'll check. Second on COVID, we'll do that stuff next week. This is the Xbox, PS5, Apple episode. If you want to go talk about election policy, platform stuff, go check out the Addy episode. Clear? Clear. Okay. Tom Warren.

• 4:13Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 4:13Nilay Patel?

  There's like three new consoles, right? The Series X, the Series S, the PS5. You reviewed the Series X and the Series S this week. How'd it go?

• 4:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:26Speaker 04

  I went to bed at 4 a.m. and got up at 7 a.m. today. So that's how it went.

• 4:31Speaker 04

  It's been, yeah, it's been, it's been a, it's been a ride.

• 4:34Nilay Patel?

  Can we just really quickly, our listeners are savvy and so they know that the job of reviewing a console isn't actually fun. It is work. Like you're playing games, but you're playing games with an eye towards judging things. And that's a completely different experience than just playing a video game.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I thought, I thought it was gonna be fun. I was like, yeah, I'll do two Xbox reviews. It's gonna be fun. And I was like, no, no, it's not. Never again. I'll wait 10 years until I do this again. But yeah, so we, we took a look at the Series X and the Series S, and they're basically very similar sort of consoles, except they're very different. So.

• 5:11Speaker 04

  So one's $499, the other one's $299. And like, the $499 is the real, like, you know, PS5 compared to, and the $299 console is the sort of like, it's the budget one, I guess. It's the sort of snackable Xbox, the little tiny Xbox. And yeah, I feel like both of them, even though they're very different, they kind of do very similar things. And I feel like they're, they're very similar to like a PC. So like, in, in different generations before, or like, the whole idea of like a next gen console is that it brings something new and it like pushes the, you know, different games forward and tech, tech forward. I'm not seeing that yet with, if, if any of these consoles, to be honest. Maybe the PS5's controller.

• 5:53Speaker 04

  But I feel like we're at a point where games is in the past, you've had like these big jumps, right? In generations. And I don't think that jump is necessarily here yet. So the Xbox represents that in the in the best way possible, because it just feels like you've upgraded your PC.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  The claims from both of these companies is the ray tracing for graphics is like the big graphical jump.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  Higher frame rate at 4K. And I don't know, I guess load times, right? Like for for the Xbox specifically, in the Series X specifically, that is supposed to be this generation's equivalent of, I don't know, the N64 jumping to 3D, or you know, whatever, whatever, you know, the big jump is for each console generation. But it seems like you can't just point to one of those things like, yep, this is this is better in that way for sure. It's just, everything is a little bit nicer and faster in lots of different ways that, like your review said, felt like the equivalent of upgrading your PC.

• 6:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, and like, I know every every generation new console comes out, it's always takes a little while for the games to catch up anyway.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 6:57Speaker 04

  But I think with with the Xbox this time, instead of like, they haven't got these new games, like, that's one of the key missing parts. Like, to me, so if I was unboxing Xbox next Tuesday, when they all come out, I think I would be super excited about the load times, super excited that, you know, everything runs a bit faster and stuff. But I think I would be missing that, like, that super excitement about something new.

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:21Speaker 04

  There's always something exciting about something brand new, whether it's like a new iPhone that has like magnets on the back and you're like, you know?

• 7:28Speaker 03

  No, I you know, I always say this, I've had the past two new iPhones I've purchased. I've been like, oh, it's still just iOS. Yeah, you have that moment where you're like, oh, then then like, five minutes after you're done playing with it, you're like, oh, wait, this is this feels the same. Nothing's changed. Yeah, this is iOS. And I it feels like the because they didn't change the dashboard, it's very much the same for the Series X, right?

• 7:51Speaker 04

  Pretty much, yeah. I think the like, basically using the console is exactly the same. Like, there's no differences. It's a little bit faster, obviously, in the dashboard and stuff you'd expect. It's just where the games get optimized and updated. That's where it can be like, you know, transformative for certain games because they're running at like an old sluggish thirty frames per second, which does feel like if you're used to like someone like me, I'm used to playing at like two hundred frames on a gaming PC and like it's, you know, super fast. And if I go back to thirty frames per second, I sometimes actually feel physically sick. Like, that's not even an exaggeration. Like, it it depends on the game, but like genuinely, sometimes it does throw you a little bit. Um, and I think a bunch of people are used to thirty frames per second, but once they, once they feel sixty frames a second and beyond,

• 8:33Speaker 04

  it's like going from like gigabit internet and going back to fifty six K modem, right? Like, the step back is like so dramatic that you would want to keep at sixty frames forward.

• 8:43Nilay Patel?

  You know, one of the points in your review that I think is super interesting, uh, with regards to the Xbox anyway, is that that your ability to choose what you prioritize in the visual presentation of the game is approaching like the PC zone. So you're saying you would prioritize high frame rates? My instinct is like, just, I'm bad at video games. It's not like my reaction times matter. Like, I'm crashing the car anyway. You know, it's like, be honest. Make it as beautiful as possible, right? Like, I would prefer to have more details, better lights and shit. Like, I'm just looking around in most games and then quickly, quickly dying.

• 9:21Speaker 04

  But that's the thing, like, for you, that's there. And for me, who wants higher frame rates, that's there. So like, we're getting to this point where you do have these modes. And obviously, on the PC, you just have like sliders, right? You just crank all the settings up or crank them down. So, so much granular detail. You obviously don't need so much of that on the console, but it's just so simplified. It's just a flick of a switch, right? And it's just, it's just nice to have that. And I feel like if we can get even more modes in there, um, I feel like it's, that's great. Choice is great, right?

• 9:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but it does show the limits of computing power right now, right? Like, what we can make with a game has run ahead of what a reasonably priced consumer piece of hardware can do. What you would want in the new generation of a new console is to just, everything's set to max, all sliders at max all the time, right? That's, that's what you would expect from like the good one. Uh, but that's just not possible. Has that ever happened, though?

• 10:12Speaker 04

  No, because like, so the hardware that's put inside these things, you're like, I have a $3,000 gaming PC, right? I can run watchdogs at max frames, max everything, max ray tracing. You just can't achieve that on a $500 sort of miniature PC, essentially. Everything's shrunk down and smaller.

• 10:32Nilay Patel?

  But isn't the story usually that it's at the end of the console lifecycle that you get the most performance squeezed out of it?

• 10:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:41Nilay Patel?

  So I think here, what's particularly interesting, you know, Tom's frame of this is more like a PC upgrade than your standard generational leap, is that the games are being updated, but that big optimization push that takes years isn't quite pulling all of the performance out of it. Which I, that's just a little bit of a change in, I think, the curve of what we expect. To me, the one that always comes to mind is the launch of the 360, which is ages ago. Children, the Xbox 360 was a video game console.

• 11:11Nilay Patel?

  It was a circle, it wasn't a circle, it should have been a circle. Anyway, that was the one that we moved to 16 by nine aspect ratios, we moved to HD. Like, this was a big change.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:20Nilay Patel?

  It wasn't just we're pushing more pixels. It was, we are re-architecting how game consoles work. It's online all the time. And it just took a few years before everyone really understood what to do with it.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  So for me, for this generation, the big open question is, will we see that pattern repeat? Or are these things in their core architecture, their processors, their GPUs, and the way that they access storage, so much closer to the way that a traditional gaming PC works? That those optimizations like will come faster. Like, the reason that games got so good towards the end of these other life cycles is there's like particular things that you can do to squeeze out extra performance out of the, you know, specialized components that are inside a console. The components inside the Xbox Series X, like, they're not, they're really, they're so much closer to what you've got in a PC

• 12:13Speaker 03

  in terms of like coding, I think, that we may not see like that spike at the end of the console's generation.

• 12:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, I feel like the problem with this generation is ray tracing, right? So that that thing's pretty heavy. Like, there's always something that they they promised with these consoles, right? So for the for the Xbox One originally and the PS4, it was 1080p. That was the target, right? And it never quite hit there at the beginning. And it took a while to get there. And then roughly got there. I mean, pretty much the PS4 did anyway. And then the Xbox One X came along and it was like, we're doing 4K. And it didn't quite get there like, and then it did. And it took a while. And I think this time it's like, we're doing ray tracing. And like, at the moment on PC that like, if I whack all the ray tracing settings on and stuff in some games, I don't even get 30 frames.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  Right.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  With with like, you know, an expensive graphics card. So I think the reality of ray tracing is going to be pretty limited. And that's going to be like the the point where we push up against and the optimizations will have to be found there. They are doing like, on the PC side, they do something that's called like super sampling. So it will basically it uses like, Nvidia is using like an AI system to like scan the game and then upscale from a low resolution image to a higher one. So it'd be super interesting to see if that comes to these consoles because that will sort of like help with the hit from ray tracing. But there's always something they need to bump up against and something that will only will only really see really highly ray trace games like in a couple of years, right? I think realistically.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  So can we talk about the games library? So, you know, everyone knows that there aren't like launch titles for this Xbox. Like, the big one at the launch day, like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna get this game. It's gonna look and feel amazing and it's the reason to go buy this console. But there's like a bunch of games that are being optimized on all of them. And it has repercussions for, I don't know how you store them and like where they go. So what is the? And then, of course, the other big thing is there's Xbox Game Pass Ultimate something, something. And so where do you see the state of like the games that are available to play for either of these consoles? Because to me, I am really, we're gonna try and do, you know, one versus PlayStation later, but I'll just tell you that right now, I'm really torn between the desire to have this simple.

• 14:28Nilay Patel?

  Ecosystem of Netflix for games that Microsoft offers and what to me seems like clearly superior hardware and exclusive games on the PS5. Like I'm genuine, I don't know which one I'm gonna get. I might end up getting them both.

• 14:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I guess that sort of decision, I think, is a lot of people. And I think that's why the the Series S success, right? Like the cheaper consoles is like, oh, this is our basically our Xbox Game Pass console, just at a low resolution. But yeah, in terms of like exclusives, they obviously don't like they have some exclusives at launch, but they're like, you know, indie games and there's not the AAA Halo, you know, it was supposed to be Halo Infinite and that got delayed because it didn't look that great when they showed it.

• 15:06Nilay Patel?

  They gotta fix that one model for that one brute or whatever it was.

• 15:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. But yeah, like it's missing that. It's definitely missing those games. And let's be honest, the Xbox One throughout its generation was missing games. Obviously, Microsoft's done Xbox Game Pass, which has like helped sort of offset that. They've made a lot of promises. They've acquired Bethesda. They're, you know, acquiring sort of game studios all the time, to be honest. So there's a lot of promise there. There's the promise that these games will eventually come. They're just not here at the moment. So I think they're relying on like, you know, Assassin's Creed, Halah, Watch Dogs, Cyberpunk, those sort of things to be the draw for this particular console. But there's obviously available on the PS5. So it's really, it's really Game Pass and those sort of around

• 15:54Speaker 04

  launch games, shall we say, not all of them are at launch.

• 15:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I feel like if you're relying on Assassin's Creed, you're like, you're betting against exclusivity. You can play Assassin's Creed on a number of Samsung refrigerators at this point. Like, as you have, obviously, you reviewed the console, but Game Pass seems like a markedly different way to think about owning, acquiring, playing video games. Did you feel that right away? Or it was just like, well, I'm paying for another subscription service now?

• 16:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think like, so Game Pass is incredible value at the moment, right? Like, you pay ten bucks a month and you get more than a hundred games. You can stream them and you can play them actually on consoles as well. So it's more like the streaming side of it is like an add-on. But it is shaping out to be sort of like a Netflix for games. But it does come with the fact that it's all digital. You don't own these games. They can disappear. Publishers just decide, you know, we don't want that game on there anymore. It's gone. If Microsoft decides to put the prices up, we see that frequently with Netflix. The price will go up. So there's, I think we are heading to an era in gaming, which is a little uncomfortable, perhaps.

• 16:59Speaker 04

  Because if the same thing happens with like the Netflix side of things and we get a bunch of different streaming services and you have to have a subscription for the games you want to play, then you end up paying quite a lot of money when you could have just bought those games, right? Individually. So I feel like we're at a sort of tipping point to see how Microsoft does with this. Because they're the ones that are really kind of leading the way in the gaming side, to be honest. Study is obviously doing their own thing and a bunch of other cloud streaming services, Amazon as well. But none of them, none of them have the breadth and the content that Microsoft does at the moment. So if Sony starts spinning up, if Nintendo starts spinning up, it's going to be interesting times. But I feel like Xbox Game Pass is great value for now.

• 17:43Speaker 04

  And I think it will be, you know, in the future. It's just, I do, I do worry about the ownership side and, you know, the pricing and everything like that getting locked into that sort of subscription.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  You know how a bunch of websites, we used to do this too. They'll put what's coming to Netflix and what's leaving Netflix in like the next thirty days. They're like, oh, this is leaving Netflix. I gotta go watch everything now. The idea that you're going to need to keep an eye on what's going to leave Xbox Game Pass and you're going to have to like, oh my God, this game is going to disappear in a week. I need to try and finish it right now and get crank forty hours into a game or something. That's what I'm afraid of.

• 18:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think at the moment like Game Pass is so is really good if you don't really know what you want to play or you just want to discover some games. There's so much on there. It's great for that, especially if you're new to an Xbox, right? Like, it's a great starting point to like, and they've got all the EA games coming to it and stuff. It's like, there's a lot. But yeah, I just don't know where it's heading.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  So the other thing that's really interesting to me is how much you seem to love the Xbox Series S. Like, is it just because it's so small and cute? Like, I, I just, like, I don't know, it's a version casting. Most people are like, oh, I want to get the good one. But there's something that's appealing about the, the Series S is just like, I'll get it as my Game Pass machine.

• 18:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I think that that's pretty much what it is. Like, to me, I keep describing it as a 1080p machine. So there's a lot of people who still play on 1080p TVs, whether it's in their living room or in their bedrooms. A lot of kids still play on 1080p TVs and monitors. And it feels like it's designed for those sort of people. They don't care about 4K. They, you know, they're perfectly fine with 1080p. They have an experience, perhaps 4K and the benefits of it, and they don't really care about it. Yeah, it does feel like the perfect Game Pass machine, and it's just so small. And I think I've, I come into my living room and I see like the PS5 and I'm like, holy, like, every time I'm like, holy, like, this thing is so big.

• 19:28Speaker 04

  And I see the Xbox on the side and I'm like, someone knocked over my Xbox. Like, these things are just like strangely designed this, this time around. I like, and I feel like the, the S is just like, it's not the greatest design, but like, I way prefer that design and it slots in anywhere. Like, it's, it's the smallest Xbox they've ever done. So I think that just appeals to my inner gadget person. And it does everything the Xbox Series X does pretty much, just at a lower resolution. That's probably the easiest way to describe it.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  Well, a lower resolution, but also you're gonna need to juggle storage way more often with it.

• 20:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's the worst part about it. That's the kind of, I feel like, so it's 512 gig SSD. It's actually usable is 364. So that's the only thing that actually matters.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  And there's like, there's, there's definitely 100 gig games. Like, how big is Call of Duty?

• 20:16Speaker 04

  Call of Duty is like 105, I think. Destiny is like 108, although it's gonna, gonna get smaller. So if you used to one of those, you, you got like another four or five games, maybe.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  Maybe.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  Maybe even less than that. And then you're full, which is like, ouch.

• 20:31Speaker 03

  And the storage expansion is super expensive.

• 20:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like $220. So that puts the price up to nearly 520 if you go for that. And that's more than the Series X. And all right, yeah, you are getting half a gig extra storage, but that's not the point. Yeah, I just, the storage situation is a problem. I feel like Microsoft could have brought out different sizes of those storage cards and that would have helped. Um, but ultimately they're probably going to introduce a one terabyte, you know, Series S at some point in the future, surely. So, which will address that, but it doesn't help right now. So, um, that's, that's, that's the big drawback, I see at the moment.

• 21:05Nilay Patel?

  So one thing I want to ask you, we're going to talk about the PS5, and it's insane hardware in a minute. But, you know, it just, I've talked to you about it. I talked to Andrew about it. The controller of the PS5 is the thing, right? I mean, the, the haptics and controllers seem like it's standout. Wow, this is a new experience. Is there anything like that with the Xboxes?

• 21:25Speaker 04

  Um, no, like, no, not like the

• 21:28Nilay Patel?

  Dieter's shaking his, I just see Dieter shaking his head.

• 21:29Speaker 03

  There's one thing I think that is actually that the Xbox has that the PS5 lacks.

• 21:34Speaker 04

  Oh, quick resume?

• 21:35Speaker 03

  Quick resume, yeah.

• 21:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, but like the PS5 has like similar like techniques like to get there. Um, it's not quite the same, but yeah, um, quick resume, like basically literally cycle between sort of, I say five or six, because that's the rough good estimate. Um, it could be more, it could be less. Um, but five or six games, they load in like, sometimes they load in like a few seconds, but usually within 10 seconds. Um, so super good if you're playing, like my best example is if you're playing in the middle of playing like Ori, like a single player game. And then your friend invites you to play Fortnite or something. And you're like, oh, now I need to like finish this and get to a save point. You don't, you just hit the invite and go into the other game. Like you don't, you start to forget about save points. Um, so it's pretty good for that. That, yeah, that is, that is the Xbox's killer feature for sure.

• 22:19Nilay Patel?

  But I mean, that's the Xbox's killer feature, but it, it's, it's

• 22:22Speaker 04

  But it's software, right?

• 22:23Nilay Patel?

  Right, yeah.

• 22:24Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, whereas the PS5, the controller like is genuinely, I don't want to say game changing, but it is. So I just said it.

• 22:33Nilay Patel?

  I mean, in the, in the one narrow sense, it is.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  It's so literally game changing.

• 22:39Nilay Patel?

  Uh, well, well, actually let's take a break and come back and talk about the PS5. Verin and Andrew actually reviewed that console, that review's out. He wrote a description of how the controller works. There's just a lot to talk about. So let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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• 23:32Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we're back. PS5.

• 23:33Speaker 03

  PS5. It's big.

• 23:36Nilay Patel?

  It looks so ridiculous. It is amazing to me how the design of this console is, it's so wacky that I'm like, I should buy an Xbox. Is that?

• 23:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:47Nilay Patel?

  It's weird, right? Like, that's not how you're supposed to think about consoles.

• 23:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, as someone who, like, values what their living room looks like, and is very, very intricate about it, like, the PS5 is just a big no-no to me. Like, I just can't, I can't put it in anywhere where it doesn't really, like, just jut out and scream like, "Hey, I'm here."

• 24:08Nilay Patel?

  Well, I mean, literally last week, Ashley on the show was like, if I walked into my boyfriend's living room and saw a PS5, I'd be like, "Get that out of here."

• 24:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:14Nilay Patel?

  That's, I mean, that's, that's an indictment of this thing. But ideally, you know, this is your big moment, you're gonna buy a new TV, maybe a new soundbar, you're gonna tuck all the stuff away in a closet. This is my plan. You're gonna, yeah, you're gonna do like an AV rack closet.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  I live in an apartment.

• 24:33Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, get a better house.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  Am I gonna run a 50-foot HDMI 2.1 cable? Like, that's gonna cost $3,000.

• 24:41Nilay Patel?

  Look, Dieter, we all make sacrifices. This is the time, this is the first console that really justifies home renovation. Because you don't want it out in public.

• 24:51Speaker 04

  But if you live in a mansion like that, you can have a PS5 in every room, right?

• 24:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, exactly. So, well, actually, let's talk about, you've got it there, you were saying earlier, like, it looks imposing. Talk about the actual design of the thing and how it, how using it, it just plays out. Is it, do you just get used to it? Is it?

• 25:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, I don't feel like I've really got used to the design, to be honest. I think just because I've slotted it into my TV stand and it looks kind of goofy on its side. I tried to stand it up and I'm like, I just have to put it on the floor because it just doesn't really fit in with my living room right now. So I haven't really gotten used to it. But I will say, like, they're just boxes that you shove under your TV ultimately. Like, you're gonna have to figure out a better way to shove them under it, but ultimately, once it's under there and it's out of the way, and it's a few months down the line, it's the stuff like the controller and all the new sort of games and the content selection that really matters, right? And it's that, that controller is like, yeah, like, that's the thing.

• 25:52Nilay Patel?

  Before we talk about good hardware, one of the things that Andrew pointed out and Vera noticed this too, and he actually showed it to me. The stand for the console, theoretically, this is only a problem once. But it's actually really weird and complicated and strange and it's got like, you do a twist thing and there's a hidden chamber where the screw goes and it's like-

• 26:12Speaker 04

  It literally took me like 10 minutes to work out. Like, this is the most confusing thing, I think, I've ever unboxed in like, probably like 10 years where like, I never usually unbox like a phone or laptop and don't know how to do something on it and have to go into the manual. There's usually like a sticker or something that just guides you. There's like nothing. And I didn't realize that you had to twist it.

• 26:33Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 26:34Speaker 04

  And it's just, it took me a while to figure out. But once you twist it, there's like a little screw inside. You take it out of its little compartment. You free it.

• 26:43Nilay Patel?

  There's a secret compartment for a screw. I mean, come on. I think, was it submit@Polygon who thought that was so clever? He wrote an entire post about it?

• 26:54Nilay Patel?

  It's like, yeah, you, it's been a long time since there's been a new console generation. We need to write about one screw.

• 27:01Speaker 04

  You like pull the screw out and like, you know, you get a PlayStation trophy on the screen. No, you don't.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  Like it's, the stand is pointless. I'm just gonna say that, like, I have it, whereas it's on the floor right now, but I have it on the floor without the stand. It stands fine without the stand. I don't understand why there's a stand. But on its side, you kind of need it because it does a little bit of weird wobbly balancing.

• 27:26Nilay Patel?

  You know, it's funny, I bet there's gonna be like cases for the PS5.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  Oh, there's, there's already third-party wings that you can get. Then Sony had to like tamp it down because they were using the wrong branding or whatever. So there's gonna be a whole lot of shady, plastic things that you can replace the, the wings with.

• 27:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, if you, if you're, look, if you are a TikTok hustler with a 3D printer out there, there is a market for you right now to square off the PS5. Think about it. Okay, so that's, we can dunk on the design. We've been talking about design for months, quite honestly. But you've got it, I mean, you've used it. Tell me more about this controller. Because that, that, it's the one that we, we've made, you know, we've written about it, we've shown pictures. Everyone who's come into contact with it has said it's amazing. It's, it feels like one of those things where people are gonna have to go and experience it to really get it. But it just seems like a step change, a game changer, if you will, for how we, how we think about video game controllers.

• 28:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, like it is, is very different. Obviously, a lot of controllers have had haptics and rumble features over the years. You can go all the way back to like N64 days if you want. But like, it's not that, right? The best way, like, so there's a packing game that comes built into the console. So it's called Astro's Playroom. And I think it's, it's the one thing that everyone, if you buy a PS5, you just, just play that game before you do anything else. Because it's such a good demonstration of the controller. And like, you, the first thing you do is you're sat on like a tiny little fan. And then you slide down and collect coins along the way. And as you come off that fan, everything About where you're walking feels different, like it almost feels like you can feel the material belief, your feet changing.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  Um. And you slide down and it feels like there's a hard slide beneath your, your, the palms of your hands. Um. And then you get onto the sand, it's like a pit of power underneath your feet and you go onto like the wood and it all feels very different. Um. And it really like, you start to feeling, you, you know, it's like one of those delighters. Um. You're like, oh, this is nice. This is cool. And you think, oh, this is cool. And then you pull like a rope. And the actual tension on the triggers adjusts. So it's like, it's fighting with you. The actual controller is fight physically fighting with you. Um. To, to make you feel like you're pulling that rope and opening that door. Um. And it's that, that's like the, the very different part. I think it's more the triggers. The haptics are amazing. I think they're better than. Uh, Nintendo Switch haptics, that they're as good or better than the iPhone haptics.

• 29:55Speaker 04

  It's that subtlety that you get, you know, like on iPhone, you hold down the flashlight and you get that like slight, that's like, um, haptic feedback. It's like that, but just imagine feeling that across your palms and feeling like, and like in Spider-Man, like a rhino comes and just stomps. And it like stomps across your hands. So it feels like he, you're getting the weight of him.

• 30:13Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 30:14Speaker 04

  It's really, yeah, it's, it's, it's hard to like describe without feeling it really is one of those things. Um. But the, the real turning point for me with the controller is when, um, in Astros, like a couple of minutes in. You turn into like a spring loaded, um, gadget toy thing. And you literally feel the tension of the, you have to pull on the tension of the, the triggers to really get the spring to like release. And you just feel them releasing it. It's just, I don't know, everything about it, just the feedback was just great. Like it really felt like you were controlling that spring. It's, it's just crazy.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  The big question for me, especially with the tension on the triggers, one, I really hope game designers think through these things. And don't just like turn everything up to max just because it's there.

• 30:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:54Speaker 03

  Um. But two, I hope game designers actually code to it, right? Like PS5 is gonna get some exclusives, but there's gonna have a bunch of cross-platform games.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I think that's, that's the question over at the moment is like, how much will this be using like in Spider-Man? It doesn't feel as prevalent. Um. It's like Astros is definitely a showcase, it's like, you know, showing off the new controller. But then I think Fortnite, they're adding like some SMG effects. So you bids feel the guns will feel different when you shoot. Um. And another game, and I can't remember what it's called, um, but like the trigger lockup when your gun locks up, which is like crazy. Um, which is like a crazy different sort of element that we haven't had before.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:34Speaker 04

  And then like in NBA, uh, you'll, you'll be like running along and your, your character will get tired. So then it becomes increased, you know, the, the, the resistance is there. So you have to really push down to like, get him to like, start moving and going.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh. I mean, I always blame the controller when I lose and now it'll be real. It'll be true.

• 31:52Nilay Patel?

  But that to me seems, you know, our conversation on the Xbox was lots of graphical improvements, a new game distribution system. Are you going to buy the series S for your bedroom TV that's 1080p? This is, this conversation is, there's a meaningfully different way to experience video games because of the controller. And that regardless of how ridiculous the box looks, that to me, that's like the deciding factor. If you're thinking PS5 versus Xbox and you know Sony's going to come with a game library because that's how Sony does it. And Microsoft made all these acquisitions. They got it spinning up. Like, why wouldn't?

• 32:29Speaker 03

  Because it looks so dumb in my living room and I'll get in trouble.

• 32:33Nilay Patel?

  But that's like all we got. That's the knock. It's like Sony was like, oh, it's too good. Make it look like Cybertron.

• 32:39Speaker 04

  That's the thing. Like the best console would be, I think the one that had like the design of the Xbox. I mean, the design of the Xbox isn't great, but like the design of the series S with the controller of the PS5 and like a mixture of like game pass and Sony's exclusives, that would be like the dream console, right? It's the same as like if you mixed Android and iOS together. Like there isn't a perfect one, but there's, I think like the Xbox does also feel different in games, but for different reasons. Like they, games, games feel different because they're running smoothly. They don't feel different in your hand. And, and then the PS5 is obviously going to make games run like as smoothly as well. Um, but that controller is definitely is like the key thing to the PS5 to me.

• 33:19Nilay Patel?

  So the PS5 doesn't have the quick resume feature that lets you bounce between four different games, but the load time is still really good. And they have this, they redesigned their home screen. So it's got the same tiles, the top, but at least they put media off in the corner in a different tab. But then when you hover over an icon, there's all these options to like, jump to a different part of the game or like experience, like do this thing here. So there's like a second row of tiles for doing stuff. Did you use that stuff? Was it, was it cool?

• 33:48Speaker 04

  I haven't really used that much. But yeah, like you basically can jump into like, say, say like Fortnite, we can't test Fortnite yet, but like the idea in Fortnite is that you just jump into the mode you want to load up rather than have to worry about going through all the menus and selecting everything. So it's like, you know what it reminds me of? Do you remember like the deep linking like Windows phone, like from the tile where you'd pin a tile and then it would go deep into the app, that sort of thing. It reminds me of that. And I think that's great because like, as long as all the devs support it and stuff like that's a really good experience. Cause you just, it's just so much quicker to like, cause half the time you're watching splash screens or like some part of the Ula that you don't care about. You just, you just want to get like into the game, right?

• 34:31Speaker 04

  So it's, it's an interesting way of handling it.

• 34:34Nilay Patel?

  So one of the things we should talk about is how these things are going to get to people, right? I mean, so we're talking about these controllers are you got a feeling to really understand it in any normal circumstance. I'd be like, go to Best Buy and try it out. But it's obviously there's pandemic, you shouldn't do that, even if you could. And I don't think that you can. So Best Buy has announced that Xbox and PS5s are only going to be sold online for the entire holiday season. Sony is basically telling people not to line up at stores on the release date. It just feels like this thing is going to be very different for people to get the units. We are expecting them to sell out, obviously.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  How is that part playing out for both of the consoles?

• 35:16Speaker 04

  Yes, that's kind of a bit of an unknown at the moment because so I don't think Microsoft's doing quite the same. I feel like they're still going to be in stores as far as I'm aware. They haven't announced any anything different, but I think the demand and like the supply is going to be interesting. I feel like these things are going to be pretty highly in demand, especially over the festive period. So I wouldn't be surprised if we don't really see the ability to get them in stores until like early next year, just generally across stores anyway.

• 35:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, online preorders were an absolute fiasco for both of these. There's going to be launch day things available at some websites and the chance like the people that couldn't get in on preorders are going to be even more eager to try and get in this time. The bots are going to go crazy on these websites. They're going to know at times to show up. You know, the the old tickle me ammo, like people like rushing into the store and there was a frenzy to get one and they're beating each other up or whatever. We're going to have the online equivalent of that for the next three months. Just I'm just I've just given up trying. I want one or both of these and I just know it's going to be such a pain to do it. That I've just in my heart accepted that me playing on either one of these consoles is a mid 2021 thing.

• 36:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, that's probably that's probably fair to be honest. I think like the series S will probably be, I feel like Microsoft's going to sort of push a lot of those out into the market. So I feel like that will probably be easier to get.

• 36:40Speaker 03

  Who come on?

• 36:43Speaker 03

  I mean, if I the whole series, I mean, this is your framing and maybe it's not Microsoft's framing, but the the series S is the the second one that you buy.

• 36:52Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, I mean, it's the budget one or like the one for your bedroom or your kids, you know, kids to play for now.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's the one, but that's what it's the if you have a 4K TV, which many, many people do now.

• 37:04Nilay Patel?

  You want to get the most out of it. And so like my, it just, when the Xbox One X was out and all of the stores were full of Xbox One S's, I was always like, well, I don't want that one. I want the, I want the, I want the good one. And I just, I feel like that's, we're going to see a lot of Series S stock, just like floating around. Cause everyone, everyone upgrading to a new console generation is going to want the biggest and baddest one. And then, and then you'll sort of fill your other rooms.

• 37:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, like the early adopters are going to want the latest and the greatest. They don't want, you know, something that's, that's not doing 4K. But yeah, like, I don't, I don't know what availability is going to be like, but it's, the pre-orders are such a mess that you can just tell. Like, and the Nvidia graphics cards have been like even worse of a disaster. Like they're just, there's just none of them. Like, and who knows how many consoles Microsoft and Sony are making. Is Sony making more than Microsoft? We don't know. Like.

• 37:59Nilay Patel?

  We should point out here too, that demand for game consoles overall is through the roof. Nintendo had earnings this week. Switch, Switch sales are continuing to be so good that they've actually raised their forecast for the Switch. So even in the face of massive next gen console launches, Switch sales are just clipping right along at high rates. So I do think this is going to be something to, to track, although just having had this conversation, I'm gonna buy a PS5. I'm saying it. I'm saying it out loud. I'll buy them both.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  We should, we should talk about one last console thing before we break, and that is, um, how exciting it's going to be to try and make sure that the next TV you buy successfully has all the features and lights that you want for your console.

• 38:41Nilay Patel?

  No, so I have promised a one hour HDMI deep dive. I've never had a one-off joke on the podcast result in so many people saying, actually, that would be great. Please give us the one hour HDMI deep dive. Here's my promise to you. When, when it's over, when, when this election chaos is over, which we are hoping is soon, we will provide soothing relief that brings our nation together of having Tom and Chris Welch. We're just going to go deep into HDMI into 120 hertz. We're going to see what Tom's running. Chris has been reviewing TVs. We're going to talk about monster cables. It's going to be amazing. Shielded, unshielded, you gotta, big decisions to be made. Cable balans.

• 39:25Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. I was so disappointed when I plugged the Series X into my 1440p monitor, which is like, it does 165 Hz through display port, but it only does 60 Hz through HDMI, because the manufacturer was like, I'm not putting a HDMI 2 in here, because like, no one uses it anyway. And it's like, so I can't use the 120 Hz mode at all.

• 39:44Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna get the, we're gonna get the president of HDMI on the phone. Whoever that is. Look, it's an industry organization that is powerful enough to put its logo, like, it's a weird logo on the back of the Xbox Series X, not one, but twice. It's like, if you look at it, it's like, what is the one organization that got its logo on there? Not once, but twice. It's HDMI.

• 40:03Speaker 04

  HDMI, it's the killer.

• 40:05Nilay Patel?

  Is anybody confused about how the Xbox connects? Uh, so I promise, it just is a form of self-care for, for me. We will deliver the one hour. It's a, it's like a treat that we're gonna give ourselves. Let's take another break. We gotta come back. There's an Apple event next week. We should probably talk about that a little bit. We'll be right back.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  If you're looking to hire, you need Indeed. With Indeed sponsored jobs, you can spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 41:12Nilay Patel?

  Dieter.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:13Nilay Patel?

  I gotta say, Apple is like, it's just like, this was the, one of the deadest weeks of like, tech, you know, there's obviously like, reviews of things coming out.

• 41:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:23Nilay Patel?

  And those embargoes were long set. But in terms of people like, making news, one of the deadest weeks in tech ever.

• 41:30Speaker 03

  I thought it was a perfect week for me to relaunch my tech, my tech news newsletter. My guy, this has been great.

• 41:36Nilay Patel?

  It just Apple's like, oh yeah, it's Mondays. Nothing's happening tomorrow. Here's here's an event invite for next week.

• 41:44Speaker 03

  And the event invite was one more thing. And it's like, if there was ever a time when I didn't need one more thing, the day before the election.

• 41:51Speaker 04

  And it's on Xbox launch day, the event.

• 41:54Nilay Patel?

  And also on Xbox, it was just a lot. It's like, where does Apple live? Apple lives above geopolitical.

• 42:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:01Nilay Patel?

  Like chaos. It lives lives above other companies. So one more thing event. On the last earnings call, Apple had earnings, a weird quarters you would expect for them. iPhone pushed into October. iPhone sales flat because there's not a new one. Mac sales way up. But on that earnings, but Apple did fine. They made a lot of money. Just their mix of products a little bit different. But on that call, Tim Cook said, we have some great things coming up for the year. We have been expecting, they announced they would have ARM Macs before the end of the year. Here's a big event, one more thing. Everyone's expecting it. Apple's not tamping down those expectations as they've done in the past with their events. Here we go.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. So Mark German over Bloomberg says that currently they're ramping up production on new 13 and 16 inch MacBook Pros and a new 13 inch MacBook Air. And that at this event, what we are expecting to get are going to be the 13 inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air that are going to look identical to the current versions, but have Apple silicon on side. That's like, if you were to stay like, what's the most default prediction you could make? That's just what we, what it's going to be. It's that.

• 43:15Nilay Patel?

  What one interesting thing about German's report, he said the processor will be based on the A14, which it makes sense in many ways. The current developer unit Mac that's running an A series chip, I think has an A12 Z bionic.

• 43:29Speaker 03

  Something like that. Yeah.

• 43:30Nilay Patel?

  It's the, it's the one in the iPad Pro. So it makes sense. They would just jump to the next one. But there have been a lot of conversations about what if you don't have to manage heat on a mobile device? What if you can add even more GPU cores to bring up to that, what you would consider desktop class performance? I think there's a lot of questions about what this chip will actually be. I don't think it's a dead ahead A14.

• 43:51Speaker 03

  Right. Well, so they can, they can, they can put in just more CPU cores. They can go put in GPU cores. There's going to be, you know, bionic machine learning stuff. Who knows what that's going to do in a Mac context? My hope is that they do something specific with the chip to handle running apps that aren't designed for ARM. Right? That they specifically have some sort of really good subsystem that the chip powers to speed up apps that haven't specifically been designed for these new chips.

• 44:22Nilay Patel?

  I'm sorry, I missed it. It's an 813 Z bionic and I said A12. Do you understand?

• 44:26Speaker 04

  I'm kind of surprised that they're doing a MacBook Pro with the ARM. Like I thought, I honestly thought that they would bring back MacBook.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  So did I. That's what I, that's what I wanted.

• 44:36Speaker 04

  Yeah. And just, and go the ARM route like that way. So I'm surprised that they're going the Pro first. They must be very confident in like the performances that these will deliver. And I think this is the test period for this. They've been on stage like a bunch over the last couple of years and touting their performance against, you know, basically like the basic Windows laptops, even against Xbox consoles on the GPU side. And I think this is the real test, right? Isn't it? Like this is the, it's coming to life. Like all the, everything's lining up.

• 45:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:06Speaker 04

  So I think it's really going to put the pressure on Qualcomm.

• 45:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, putting, putting the Pro this week is a huge chest thump moment. I really hope that Apple finds a way to differentiate it from those previous chest thump moments you've talked about. They need to do more than just show a final cut render time, right? They need to do more than, you know, the sort of standard performance stuff that we know it's probably going to be fine at. They need to show us something where we don't think it's going to perform well, or we're nervous about it performing well. And it just kills. That's what I want to see out of them.

• 45:37Nilay Patel?

  Well, the first thing to show us is either they're calling it Rosetta again, but that's their on the fly translation layer between standard x86 apps and ARM. That's the thing I want to see. I want to, I want to see them running Lightroom or Photoshop, the x86 version going through Rosetta and working just fine, if not better, without destroying the battery life of this new thing. Like, I think that's a first test. You know, Apple's managed a processor transition before. I think they know they have to show that to people. And then I think their second test is what's, what can you do now in this form factor? Is it everything was basically the same as ever, but battery life has been doubled?

• 46:20Nilay Patel?

  Or is it, you know, it's sort of the Apple world is like, we've picked a number of hours of battery life that we, we think is reasonable and that's what you get, right? I mean, that's like basically how they, they, that's how they handle the phones, right? It's like, we think you can get a day and so we'll manage the battery. Instead of putting a huge battery in there, we'll get you a day and then the camera sensor will be bigger or something like, that's the, the balance I'm interested in, particularly with the Air, which has medium-ish battery life right now. If they say, well, the performance is about the same, the battery life got way longer. Or if they're at, we're pretty happy with battery life, the performance is way off the charts.

• 46:57Speaker 04

  Right. Yeah, that's going to be the interesting trick, the tricky balance, right? Or even if they go, the performance is worse. Do you think they'd do that? I can't, I can't imagine so, but like.

• 47:06Nilay Patel?

  I just, there's no way they introduce a Pro that's slower. Like they don't put a Pro MacBook out there unless it's way faster, full stop.

• 47:13Speaker 04

  That's, that's the thing that I was surprised to see there was a MacBook Pro, I think. Cause I just figured that they would sort of, this would be, you know, a gradual thing. Do you think they'll have LTE?

• 47:24Nilay Patel?

  Ooh.

• 47:26Speaker 04

  That's like, you know, that's the benefit of ARM, right? On the Windows on ARM side is that's, that's, that's the thing.

• 47:32Nilay Patel?

  I bet you the answer is no, and that it'll be, once they fully integrated the Intel team that they bought to make modems, that that'll be what brings 5G to these laptops. Oh my God. I mean, I would say Apple has not been shy about shipping slow computers.

• 47:51Nilay Patel?

  Right. It's just, that's kind of the history of this Mac line. It's like, here's an Intel part that's two generations behind. We're going to throttle it a little bit, and sometimes you're going to hear the fan. And that's what using a Mac is like. So if they can just like, how fat, like, these are the, these are the Apple traits that are kind of interesting to reconsider in this context. They are comfortable with a performance level. They are comfortable with a battery life. They manage those things to form factors that they think people like, as opposed to letting those things drive form factors, which many, many Windows laptop makers do. And now they've got a new part that could let them go in a lot of different directions.

• 48:33Nilay Patel?

  And if they're just like, what we're going to do, because we don't want to blow people's minds right away with a big processor shift, is basically keep things as they are, to bake it out and see where the problems are, and say, well, the Intel ones are still there. Or if they're going to go whole hog, say, we've made the product 5,000 times better. Battery life is doubled, performance is doubled, it weighs a pound less. I don't know. Right? Like, if you're just like, you could get all there, and we've canceled the Intel version. Like, that's, I think that's like, the boldest place for them to be.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't think they'll go that far.

• 49:05Speaker 04

  The real interesting part is going to be like, how sustained the performance is. Because obviously, on the Intel parts, they have like, fans, the throttling can be controlled a lot better. And when, what we see with the performance on like, the iPhones and the iPads is that they're very good, like, short bursts of performance, and like, really optimized tasks. So I'd love to see like, how, how they'll build the software that way to like, optimize the power of these chips in like, short bursts of, of power, or how they've been able to just sustain that performance and really push things forward. Like, if we saw like, a 4K export in Premiere Pro, and it like, blisteringly quick compared to whatever we see on Intel, or anyone else, that, that could be a turning point. Like, that sort of performance.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  I just want to know if Chrome cuts the battery life in half, or in a third?

• 49:56Nilay Patel?

  I'd answer a big question mark, right? Like, we'll see how fast the Chrome team moves their codebase to ARM, and makes an ARM version.

• 50:03Speaker 04

  I mean, I can tell you that the Chrome, the Chromium stuff on ARM is just not, the only, the only people that are really doing it is Microsoft, right? Like, Google still doesn't contribute a whole bunch to that, as far as I can see. And it's like, strange that Chrome still isn't like, fully optimized for Windows and ARM. Like, there's no bills.

• 50:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it's but like regular heavy Chrome on a Mac is a battery life destroyer, a processor hog. Put that through a translation layer onto an unproven chip in this application. It's like, will Chrome light the new MacBook Air on fire? That's like that. You know, if they did like post-game press conferences after these keynotes, I'd be like, excuse me, a quick question. Is it true that the MacBook Air will light on fire?

• 50:48Speaker 03

  If you run Chrome for more than an hour.

• 50:52Nilay Patel?

  So we'll see. That's happening on the 10th. We'll obviously have complete coverage of that. By the time you're listening to this, Heim Gartenberg's hands-on of the iPhone mini and Macs size comparison little video will be up. I gotta say, the Macs looks enormous.

• 51:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:10Nilay Patel?

  And I say this as a big phone person with big hands, like, the phone looks big. Go check that out. I'm very eager to see how this plays out and whether that size is as big as it seems like in high speed, because it's real big. Gadget stuff. Big, big week of Gadget.

• 51:24Speaker 03

  New, new GGI, don't call it a Mavic, Mini 2 drone. They still kept it at exactly the right weight to not have to deal with the FAA, which I love.

• 51:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's funny, because I bought it. I bought a Mavic Mini 1 like two weeks ago.

• 51:35Speaker 03

  Really?

• 51:36Nilay Patel?

  I feel so done.

• 51:37Speaker 03

  What are you doing?

• 51:38Nilay Patel?

  I could have told you. There's rumors.

• 51:40Speaker 03

  Well, I needed, we, I was gonna drive the truck through a puddle and I wanted to fly the drone over.

• 51:46Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah. Well, then you need one, of course. Yeah.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  You need like that Mac room is buying guide.

• 51:52Nilay Patel?

  Everyone is like a bad time to buy at all times.

• 51:57Nilay Patel?

  They're always being updated. It's fine. It's just a toy to screw around with. I don't need Akisink or 4K. I'm gonna buy the new one. Okay.

• 52:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:05Nilay Patel?

  Absolutely buying the new one. Yeah, Tom, thanks for joining us. Check out PS5 review, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S reviews on the site. There are videos. Just commend everyone. Tom is obviously in London. Like, we made a video across the ocean. That's pretty cool. Check it out. And then we got Apple event next week. So, big week of Gadget news going into another big week of Gadget news. Excited for it. If, what you came here for, some deep platform policy talk. We got a whole other mini episode of the Vergecast in the feed right now as well. Okay, you can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless, Dieter's at Backlon, Tom is at Tom Warren. And then next Tuesday, it's happening. We're launching my new podcast, Decoder.

• 52:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's gonna be something. It's been very weird working on launching a new podcast about building things in this exact moment, let me tell you. But next Tuesday, it's coming. I'm excited about the guest. So look out for that. We'll be running some episodes in the Verchass feed to promote it. That's it. Rock and roll. Wear a mask.

• 53:27Speaker 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 a 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.

• 53:58Speaker 06

  Trying to locate news sources that reliably separate fact from fiction can seem like looking for a needle in a haystack. That's why The Guardian is launching Stateside with Kai Wright and Carter Sherman, a conversation with experts who slow down the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what's actually happening in the world. Three times a week, hosts Kai and Carter utilize all the reporting resources The Guardian has to discuss the news, international affairs, climate, culture, sports, lifestyle, fashion, and wellness. And The Guardian is not billionaire owned, meaning they're free to report the whole picture without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more.

• 54:40Speaker 06

  And listen wherever you get your podcasts, or watch on YouTube. That's theguardian.com/stateside.