Pod Insights The Vergecast Bonus: Apple Watch and MacBook Event About this episode This is a special bonus Verge Live episode, recorded after Apple's March 9, 2015 event.
As Apple wraps up its Spring Forward event — Apple Watch! A new MacBook! HBO Now on Apple TV! — Ross Miller and Chris Ziegler are heading to the studio for The Verge Live. Join us as we break down all the news of the day, and later on, we're joined by Casey Newton, who is live at the event... hopefully stealing us a few $10,000 trinkets.
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Hello Vergecast universe. This is Ross Miller, senior editor with The Verge. As you might know, there was an Apple event this week. After the event, we hosted a live show and we thought you'd like to listen to the audio portion of that. So we're adding it to the feed. Please enjoy and we will see you later this week for The Vergecast.
0:25 Speaker 00 Hello, hello, hello, hello. Welcome to The Verge Live. I'm Ross Miller.
0:29 Speaker 01 I'm Chris Ziegler.
0:31 Speaker 00 And today on the show, we're going to be talking about all the things Apple just announced at its Spring Ford event. Later on, Casey Newton will be joining us from San Francisco with firsthand impressions. Okay, so what all did we actually see today?
0:42 Speaker 01 Well, first, we started with a sort of surprise HBO announcement. They'll be launching HBO Now, they're calling it, next month, exclusive to Apple at launch. Then they went through an all-new MacBook, just MacBook, not Pro, not Air, just MacBook. And then finally, we got into some Apple Watch stuff.
1:02 Speaker 00 Yep, and that's the one I want to talk about the most, but first, let's just really quickly get through Apple TV.
1:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, $69 now.
1:08 Speaker 00 $69, actually a surprise price drop, which makes sense because every other set-top box does everything that thing does now.
1:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, they're at the point where the hardware is old enough and the functionality is commoditized enough so that they really had no option but to drop the price. A little surprising that they didn't follow it up with another box that maybe has a little bit more functionality, 4K, whatnot, but I guess they're not ready yet.
1:33 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's maybe something later this fall. I mean, the Apple TV rumors of, be it set-top box or actual set itself, has always been around. But there is something that's been rumored forever, which is content deals, which is Apple's trying to talk to every single content provider to get exclusive deals. This is the first of that. And also, it's a big deal because everyone wants standalone HBO.
1:51 Speaker 01 Right, and so this is, I mean, we knew that HBO was unbundling, right? This was in the pipeline. It was going to be a 2015 thing for them, but it is surprising that it's an Apple exclusive to start. That's a big deal. But what's your take? I think that you're more plugged into the Game of Thrones-averse than I am. What is your take on?
2:11 Speaker 00 I am going back and forth so hard because I don't want to pay for cable.
2:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:14 Speaker 00 But the things are starting to add up.
2:16 Speaker 01 Right, right.
2:17 Speaker 00 $15 by itself, like, I'm just being kind of a stubborn prick at that point.
2:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:22 Speaker 00 I did get Sling TV recently, so I use that for everything, basically except HBO and broadcast networks.
2:28 Speaker 01 But, oh, so that doesn't have ABC, CBS?
2:30 Speaker 00 No, but I have like, I have rabbit ears. I pay $10 for rabbit ears.
2:32 Speaker 01 Sure.
2:33 Speaker 00 Everyone complains about that. Anyway, but will I pay $15 for HBO? Maybe, actually.
2:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:39 Speaker 00 But I, I know in my head it's starting to add up to even be more expensive than just getting a damn cable subscription.
2:44 Speaker 01 Right, right. Well, so, one thing that, that I saw brought up on Twitter that I think is potentially an interesting point is that the existence of this service incentivizes HBO to start cracking down on the distribution of HBO Go logins, right?
2:58 Speaker 00 That's the other reason why I'm probably gonna end up paying.
3:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:00 Speaker 00 Because right now, I'm enjoying the hell out of it for-
3:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, everybody uses somebody else's login.
3:04 Speaker 00 For $3.99, yeah.
3:05 Speaker 01 There's like, one patient zero that has the master HBO Go account, and everybody's using that one account. And now, presumably, they're going to crack down on it.
3:14 Speaker 00 They're gonna log in like, the day before the Game of Thrones with mirrors, like, I'm sorry, caution, by the way.
3:17 Speaker 01 Right.
3:18 Speaker 00 This is being used by 1,253 people. We're gonna have to pare that back. Get a new account, guys.
3:23 Speaker 01 So, uh, yeah. Paired with that, they also showed the, the trailer for the new season of Game of Thrones.
3:29 Speaker 00 Right. And we've seen a bunch of clips of that before. We won't dawdle on that too much here. But, uh, yeah, well, it's exciting. It might be a slight departure from the books, which is kind of interesting. But also, Game of Thrones is the number one most pirated show. Now, there's an option where people are like, you know, you can actually legally pay for it.
3:45 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:45 Speaker 00 It's expensive.
3:46 Speaker 01 Right. You can't use, oh, I'm, I don't want to be tied to a cable subscription as an excuse anymore. But you do still need an Apple device of some sort, whether it be an Apple TV, or an iPhone, or an iPad. Because if I remember correctly, they, they said on stage that this is going to not just be an Apple TV thing. You'll be able to use any Apple device, basically.
4:06 Speaker 00 Well, I didn't, I don't remember hearing that, but I hope to God that's true, because like, that would seem very stupid otherwise.
4:10 Speaker 01 Yeah. I, I have to believe that they'll have an HBO Now app for iPhone, you know?
4:14 Speaker 00 So, and so that's the first of many, and like, obviously, like, HBO is one of the biggest cable channels out there. ESPN, we've- Big one ESPN was a big deal for Sling that was on there. It will be interesting to see if ESPN kind of follows suit or any other channels follows suit. Obviously, Apple is hawkish on getting exclusive content deals. Whether or not they're just a box or just TV. Because this is the one thing that really differentiates Apple TV from your Roku's and your Amazons.
4:37 Speaker 01 Right, right. Did I hear correctly? Do we have, do we have Casey ready? I believe we do. Why don't we go live to Casey Newton in San Francisco?
4:46 Speaker 01 Casey, how are you?
4:47 Speaker 00 Oh my god, you're so pretty, Casey Newton, hello.
4:49 Speaker 02 Hi, guys.
4:51 Speaker 00 How's it going, man?
4:52 Speaker 02 Hey, guys, how's it going?
4:54 Speaker 01 Good, good. So tell us, what's it like out there? What's the scene?
4:58 Speaker 02 So, as you might imagine, it is rather hectic inside the hands-on area right now. People are checking out the MacBook that they just unveiled, as well as taking a look at the Apple Watch up close. Heading into this event, I think most of us assumed that the watch was going to be the most exciting thing to look at afterwards. But, man, people just could not wait to get their hands on that new MacBook. It looks really, really good.
5:24 Speaker 01 Is it as interesting of a device as it appeared to be from afar? I guess maybe you haven't gotten close to it yet. But from where I was sitting, it looked like really the most interesting announcement of the event.
5:36 Speaker 02 Absolutely. And a lot of what's interesting is inside of the MacBook. For me, the thing that stood out the most were those contoured batteries, just sort of layers of like these very thinly sliced batteries on top of each other. Like, most of the interior of that notebook is all battery. So that's pretty cool. The keys feel really interesting. They designed a new system, of course, the butterfly mechanism instead of the scissor mechanism. And then there's just that, that sort of all-metal casing. It looks really, really nice. So, yeah, people seem pretty excited about that here.
6:10 Speaker 00 Casey, did you get a chance to actually go in and try any of this stuff out yet? Have you tried, like, we're really curious about forced touch especially, like, how that feels.
6:18 Speaker 02 Did not get a chance to try forced touch yet. But I'm looking forward to when I'm finished talking with you guys.
6:26 Speaker 01 What's your favorite buzzword from today? Is it terrorist battery? Is it forced touch? Is it something else? Please, please tell us.
6:35 Speaker 02 I'm gonna be trying to find ways to work butterfly mechanism into all my sentences from here on out, you know? A story comes in, it's missing a little something, maybe it needs a butterfly mechanism.
6:45 Speaker 00 I mean, it's just like, I'm sorry, this is scissoring too much. We really do need to move to the butterfly at this point.
6:50 Speaker 01 We do.
6:51 Speaker 00 Casey, I mean, this is, what I love is like reading your live blog at the events. What was the feel inside the theater, inside the Yerbroeck Wanda Center?
6:58 Speaker 02 You know, the feeling at an Apple event is sort of this like quietly focused intensity. Most of the people in the room are pressed. Everybody is staring down at a laptop or their phone or some combination of both. So you don't have a lot of those really human moments, except for when there's a bunch of sort of applause, which is usually coming from the Apple employees or maybe some of the VIPs that are there. But you know, a couple of moments stood out. When Tim Cook said that the addition was gonna start at $10,000, I heard some pained cries around me, like the sort of cries that you might imagine if like a child had been injured in a car accident. It was that sort of just like, ah, like that sort of a pained cry.
7:39 Speaker 02 So, you know, clearly, at least within the press, people are not really prepared to spend 10K on a watch. And then, you know, the other moment that I would highlight would be just sort of the frosty vibe in the air when Christy Turlington Burns was on stage during that sort of forced banter part of the presentation, talking about her trip to Africa where she ran a race and somehow the Apple Watch made that easier. But, you know, it was difficult for me to understand what the Watch really had to do with her trip to Africa, and I think it was hard for some of the other members of the press to understand as well.
8:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, that seemed like a bit of a misdirection. I'm not sure why they, why they went there. Were there any moments during the event when you think that they either didn't spend enough time explaining what was going on, or spent too long sort of dawdling on a single feature or set of features? In particular, I thought that the Kevin Lynch segment was a bit long, but maybe that's just my opinion.
8:37 Speaker 02 I tend to agree with you, and in fact, I think the event focused too much on features, period. We already knew heading into this that the Apple Watch can do a lot of things, but I think what a lot of us were waiting for was that coherent story, like, make the case that I want this and sell it to me at a level above, oh, tap this to text this person and scribble here to send a heart, right? We wanted some sort of, like, overall message that was going to make us understand how this fit into our lives, and instead, we just got this very lengthy list of, well, it can do this, and it can do that, oh, but if you don't like those two things, try this third thing. And I think it got a little bit overwhelming, and so I do wish that Apple had spent a bit
9:21 Speaker 02 more time up top, sort of, setting the stage for how this watch was gonna fit into our everyday lives.
9:28 Speaker 00 Now, Casey, going into this, have you been convinced that a smartwatch is the future? Do you even care about going into it? And now, having come out of the Apple Watch event, how are you feeling? What's your takeaway on, like, just the whole category of wearables?
9:42 Speaker 02 Well, you know, I'm very open to being convinced. I want to believe that, you know, a few years from now, the sort of default posture of humanity is not gonna be staring down at this device as we, you know, walk through busy intersections. So, I want there to be something that means I'm staring at my phone less, but what I worry about with these wearables, Apple Watch included, is that they've essentially just put another inbox on our wrist. They've given us another set of distractions, another series of things that's gonna take us out of the moment and into the world of whatever app developer we've decided to, you know, install their apps on our device. So, you know, when I think about something that's gonna be buzzing me many, many times
10:23 Speaker 02 a day, telling me to stand up, to sit down, to respond to this text, to read this email, to check out my Instagram likes, to reply to these tweets, it sounds exhausting. And one problem with the way that the watch was presented today was that it was sort of this endless series of, like, and your watch is gonna tell you this, and it's gonna tell you that. You know, Tim Cook repeatedly referred to it as... You're a coach on your wrist. I think that could all be very overwhelming. You know, there was a great piece on our sister site, Racked, about what the tech industry doesn't understand about fashion. And I think Apple probably underscored the fashion piece today. And that maybe if they had made it feel like something
11:06 Speaker 02 that was just gonna look really fricking cool on your wrist, that could have sold it more than any feature that they announced. So I'm still sort of on the fence. I'm probably gonna wait to read the reviews on The Verge to decide whether I buy one of these myself. I'm very open to it, but what I've seen so far, I have to tell you, I'm still rather skeptical.
11:26 Speaker 01 Well, you have to buy one, Casey, because otherwise, how I'm gonna send you my heartbeat?
11:32 Speaker 02 You know what? I would easily pay $350 or more just to get the Z-Power heartbeat on my wrist.
11:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, to your point, Casey, it does feel like they're taking the same tack with this thing that they have been with the iPad for the past several years, where they're sort of throwing it to the wolves and saying, "Hey, developers, you figure out what this thing is good for." And in fact, I think Kevin Lynch literally said, "We can't wait to see what developers do with this." So, you know, it's entirely possible that in a year, this device is gonna seem much more coherently organized than it does right now. But I'm skeptical, because if they're leaving it in the hands of third-party developers, then that sort of scatters it. It doesn't focus it, right?
12:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think that's very true. And the one thing I would say in response to that is that when iPad came out, I knew exactly what I wanted to use it for. Like, when Jobs sort of reclined in a chair and showed himself reading and browsing the web and watching a video, I thought, "My gosh, I would love to do that." Like, that feels like a real improvement on, you know, me holding some laptop that's getting overheated and, you know, has a battery that's rapidly draining. So, like, in the moment that iPad was shown on stage, like, I pre-ordered it in my mind. And Apple Watch just didn't get there for me yet. Like, because again, so many of those features are just... That thing you can do on your phone now? You can do it on your wrist tomorrow.
13:02 Speaker 02 It's just, they've gotta get beyond that.
13:05 Speaker 01 Right. So let's go back to the MacBook for a second. Are you buying one? And what color are you getting? Because the gold was out of nowhere. Nobody saw that coming, right?
13:15 Speaker 02 Right. Well, so, you know, Chris, as you know, at The Verge, we get to replace our laptops every two years, and I'm excited to announce that my two-year anniversary at The Verge is next month.
13:26 Speaker 00 Congratulations.
13:27 Speaker 02 So this really could not be timed better from a personal standpoint. I would love to get one of these new MacBooks. My one question is, you know, how am I going to be able to keep it powered and plug it into an external monitor and get photos off my SD card onto my laptop, right? Like, so these are three things that I do every day. Maybe there will be some new set of dongles. I'm sure that somebody on The Verge will explain to me how I'm gonna do this. But the short answer is yes, I would like to get one of these things, and I would absolutely get the gold model because I'm a trashy person and I want to find a new way to signal that to the world. Just, "Look at this gold thing that I have that you don't have." Like, that's how I like to live my life.
14:11 Speaker 00 Just gonna walk around the coffee shop to coffee shop, holding it out, going, "Look at this. Do you even see it? It's so thin." Well, I mean, so Casey, but there is a concern of like-
14:21 Speaker 02 I fully intend to wear it as a necklace.
14:24 Speaker 00 There is a concern of power, though. I mean, this is not a powerful laptop, and it's on par with most MacBook Airs, but this isn't something you're gonna get a lot of photo processing out, or, you know, definitely gonna watch 4K video smoothly on something like this. Is that gonna be a concern? I mean, I'm not saying what you're doing for work, I'm saying, is that gonna be a concern, though?
14:41 Speaker 02 It definitely seems like it is aimed at that market of people who use their laptops mostly for surfing the web, writing emails, you know, basically documents plus Netflix. And that seems like a huge market category, and I think they're gonna sell a lot of them to those people. But what you've just mentioned, Ross, is exactly why I do feel like I have to wait. You know, I don't have very specialized needs working at The Verge, but I do take photos for my job. So they're gonna have to resolve a few of those questions, I think, before somebody who works in a kind of professional or semi-professional role is gonna want to preorder the thing.
15:20 Speaker 01 You know, Neel, I posited before, and I think that's absolutely true after I've- I've seen today's announcements that this device is designed sort of to replace the concept of an iPad plus an external keyboard. A little more expensive than that, but not much. And so my question to you is, well, first of all, do you currently have an iPad? And secondly, could you see this device or something like it replacing an iPad for you? Because it seems like they're trying to bite into that market to some degree here, right?
15:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, I think there's two kinds of iPad users. There are people who absolutely want to work, who absolutely want to use it for a work device, and then there are people who use it more as a leisure device. I sort of fall into the latter camp. Like, when I pick up my iPad, it's because I'm not planning to type anything. And in fact, one of the things that I like about it is that, you know, sure, I could fire off a short email if I had to, but for the most part, I'm playing games, I'm reading, I'm watching a video. So, you know, maybe the fact that they are coming after this more professional market with an actual laptop indicates that, you know, an iPad really isn't a great work device. Like, you can make it work if you need to.
16:31 Speaker 02 There was a time when I had an external keyboard for my iPad, and I used it for work, and, you know, it worked just great. But fundamentally, you're forcing it, right? People who work need keyboards, and physical keyboards are better than virtual ones. So I do expect that you will see people using that MacBook for work, and, you know, maybe the iPad does start feeling more like a leisure device or other kind of like specialty device over time.
16:57 Speaker 00 Yeah, honestly, I think of the iPad more as like a gaming device than anything else. That's not something that you're going to be doing with this MacBook, for sure.
17:03 Speaker 01 Right.
17:04 Speaker 00 But again, it goes into the whole idea of like, Apple Watch being like a fashion device. This is a fashion accessory.
17:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's kind of true. I mean, that's underscored by the fact that it comes in three colors, right?
17:11 Speaker 00 Including gold.
17:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, including gold.
17:13 Speaker 00 Casey, I don't know. Let me ask you. Did you hear the biggest price for Apple Watch? They just put the prices online. Do you know how much they actually go to?
17:22 Speaker 02 No, how much do they go to?
17:24 Speaker 00 I'll just take a wild guess. What is the most expensive Apple Watch you can buy right now? Or you will be able to?
17:29 Speaker 02 15,000?
17:31 Speaker 00 A little higher. A little higher.
17:33 Speaker 02 20?
17:34 Speaker 00 Nope. Split the difference, 17. Seventeen thousand dollars for a 38mm yellow gold or rose gold with the modern buckle.
17:45 Speaker 01 But here's the weird thing, is that the most expensive watch, the pricing is just kind of like, it gets a little scattershot the higher you go in the in the spectrum, because the most expensive model is not a 42mm.
17:58 Speaker 00 No, it's a smaller one.
17:59 Speaker 01 Right, even though on the lower end, the 42mm are more expensive for obvious reasons. There's more materials, it's, you know, whatever. So, who actually knows what's going on in this end of the market? But I think that Apple's appealing to this group of people who write a check for seventeen thousand dollars, or however you pay for something that costs that much, without thinking about it.
18:20 Speaker 00 I think a check still works.
18:22 Speaker 01 Maybe, I don't know, maybe they have a special, I don't know, maybe they have one of those metal AMXs.
18:26 Speaker 00 I don't have that much on a credit limit either, I have no idea.
18:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's impossible for anyone at the verge to really say how you pay for something that costs seventeen thousand dollars, we can only guess.
18:38 Speaker 00 Just bring your own gold.
18:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, bring your own bar of gold. Yeah, so, anyway, obviously, the spectrum of pricing for this device is huge, on a percentage basis, and definitely larger than anything else Apple's ever made, right?
18:57 Speaker 01 You can make the argument, Casey, I think that you put in the live blog that, someone pointed out that if you cost-adjusted the Apple Lisa for inflation, it would be more expensive than the most expensive Apple Watch Edition, but we're kind of splitting hairs at that point.
19:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, it would be interesting to, it would be interesting to do, you know, a customer satisfaction survey with Apple Lisa customers, and then, you know, Apple Watch Edition customers a year after the fact, and see who is happier with their, you know, seventeen thousand dollar investment.
19:26 Speaker 01 And the Lisa wasn't even gold, I just want to point that out. Nor was it available in thousands of combinations, nor was it designed by Johnny Ive.
19:35 Speaker 00 Nor can you wear it on your wrist.
19:36 Speaker 01 Nor can you wear it on your wrist, these are all very good points. So, Casey, let's turn briefly to the one other announcement of the event, which was where we started. The HBO and Apple TV news. The HBO Now, it's called, which is debuting exclusively on Apple products. $15 a month, right? $14.99?
19:59 Speaker 00 $15 a month, yeah.
20:00 Speaker 01 Something like that.
20:01 Speaker 00 Yeah.
20:02 Speaker 01 And of course, they reduced the price of the Apple TV to $69. Casey, what do you think? Do you think this is going to encourage people? A, to buy an Apple TV if they haven't already? And B, cut the cord? Is this the turning point?
20:14 Speaker 02 I think it's a great partnership. You know, when you look at HBO and Apple, both of these are companies that work so hard to develop premium brands. And I think each one of them gets something out of this arrangement, right? HBO gets to tell its customers, hey, we're on the coolest hardware. Apple gets to say, we've got the best content. So I think it's a huge win for both companies. Like, when they announced it, I thought, that's a solid move. You know, I heard you guys talking a little bit before I came on. Ross was saying all these subscriptions are starting to add up. I'm sort of in that camp. I've got Hulu Plus, and I've got Netflix, and I may have the WWE Network. So it is all starting to add up.
20:56 Speaker 02 But at the same time, 15 bucks does not seem at all unreasonable for me. And if I'm ever no longer able to use my roommate's, parents' HBO Go password, I'm going to have to take a serious look at that.
21:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, I was kind of seriously suggesting that this gives HBO an incentive to finally start cracking down on the sort of lackadaisical spreading of these account logins.
21:24 Speaker 02 Right. As far as we can tell, there are only four known HBO Go logins on Earth.
21:30 Speaker 01 There are four subscribers who are collectively paying for the cost of production for Game of Thrones.
21:35 Speaker 00 And here we have Casey Noon, who's only three degrees from one of those sources, actually. Roommate's cousins, something like that. Anyway, but...
21:42 Speaker 01 And I've heard that Game of Thrones is one of the most expensive shows ever in terms of how much it costs to make each episode. So, obviously, they have some incentive to start dialing up the heat on these people. Casey Newton. Anyway.
22:00 Speaker 00 Me too. Casey, we're gonna let you go in a second. I have one last, very, very important question. As we're seeing more smartwatches, more wearable devices, including like Apple Watch, we see hands-ons from all these tech journalists, including our own. Where do you feel on bleaching and/or trimming arm hair ahead of a hands-on with watches?
22:19 Speaker 02 It's so important, Ross, and I'm glad you bring that up. You watch some of these hands-on videos and you just see these thick forests of hair and you think, "My god, what sort of man-ape is making this video?" And, you know, we here at The Verge are gonna use our platform to speak out against this appalling trend and, you know, hope we can stop the madness.
22:40 Speaker 00 All right. Well, get in there and tell me why I said hi and mentioned none of that. There is a new Apple Watch hands-on on theverge.com if you guys want to check it out. Casey Newton, is there anything else you want to say before we let you go?
22:51 Speaker 02 I love you guys.
22:52 Speaker 00 I love you too.
22:53 Speaker 01 Love you as well, Casey.
22:54 Speaker 00 All right, Casey Newton, everybody. All right, before we start wrapping up, though, I do want to actually make a case for Apple Watch.
23:01 Speaker 01 Okay.
23:02 Speaker 00 Not a spirited case, because then I think about the price and go, "No." But the thing I've heard for the last couple of days is, "The Apple Watch will be the thing that means you look at your phone less." And then the counterpoint is, everyone's mad that people are looking at their phone in the first place.
23:17 Speaker 01 Right.
23:18 Speaker 00 I don't think it's a bad reason. I really don't. I really like the idea of not pulling out my phone all the time. I'm obsessed with doing that. I check notifications every five minutes, anyway. I don't mind that idea. I do think there's Apple Pay interest. The Passbook stuff makes sense here. And as ridiculous as it is, the idea of doodling, you know, obnoxious cartoons to someone...
23:37 Speaker 01 Sending your heartbeat.
23:38 Speaker 00 Sending your heartbeat, making another watch vibrate, whatever cyber-dildonic thing you want to do with that. Sketching dirty pictures or clean pictures to your loved ones. I mean, there are little mini-communication things that... It's not worth 350 necessarily, but when you start thinking like how much you spend for a fitness band anyway, and fashion products like that, it starts to be a justifiable cost at the low end. At least, I'm telling myself that now.
24:05 Speaker 01 Well, and to be very clear, $350 is the very smallest amount of money you can spend on this watch.
24:12 Speaker 00 For someone who's not fashionable at all.
24:13 Speaker 01 Right, and so going into this event, I was hopeful, if not outright expecting, that the steel version of the watch with a steel band would cost 500, 550 at most. But no, if I'm not mistaken, the steel 42mm with the steel band is $999, I think. And if you get the black version in steel with the steel band, it's $1099. Which, I mean, to be very clear, that's like, that's, in the world of luxury watches, you're starting to brush up against the low end of that segment. It is no longer a commodity device.
24:56 Speaker 01 It is a luxury timepiece. And the problem that we've been sort of bantering about for a few months now is that this isn't sort of an heirloom. It isn't a legacy device. It isn't something you can pass down to your children. It's something that goes bad after a couple of years. And to drive that point home, I was just looking at the changelog notes for iOS 8.2, which is out today. And the Apple Watch isn't supported on iPhones older than iPhone 5, which is what, 3 years old? So you think about the fact that this device that you're spending as much as $1,100 on,
25:40 Speaker 01 and it's not even getting into addition territory, is, just goes bad in 3 years or less, is kind of out of control.
25:47 Speaker 00 Yeah, there are 2 things I've seen. One, that's pro that, one that's con that. And the one thing that kind of like, gave me a little bit, I was a little okay with it, was the API. I was looking through the API when it first came out a couple of months ago. And there is so much processing power done on the phone itself. That in many ways, it's just a receiver. So as long as the screen is OK.
26:05 Speaker 01 Sure.
26:05 Speaker 00 It should last a little more than a couple of years. Like the urge, like an iPad, the urge to upgrade isn't probably going to be as strong every cycle. That being said, you hear interviews, especially like, I think, the profile with Johnny Ive, where he's like, "There was 1,001 things we wanted to add to this. We wanted senses." "I did not mean for my voice to go that way. It just does whenever you say Johnny Ive." But there are so many things hardware-wise that they actually wanted to do with this or didn't. And that's where I'm like, "Should I wait for the second one where they actually figure that shit out?"
26:30 Speaker 01 Right. Or, you know, do you want a circular display? Maybe that's in Apple's future, who knows?
26:35 Speaker 00 Right.
26:37 Speaker 01 So, and, you know, with an addition, at the very least, you have, you know, assuming Apple doesn't offer a trade-in program, you at least have the gold value, the raw gold value. With the stainless steel model, you have nothing. You have a piece of, you know, you have a few dollars' worth of metal that can't reasonably be recycled.
26:57 Speaker 00 To be absolutely fair, though, we're talking 1,000 versus 10,000.
27:01 Speaker 01 No, we are, but still, you know, do you want to, do you want to put yourself in a position where you're spending $1,000 every two to three years on a watch? I mean, if you're, if you're a watch collector, that's reasonable. But you're, you're still expecting to add a watch to your collection every few years as opposed to replacing it? So that's a, it's a tricky, tricky question for Apple to answer, and they didn't attempt to answer it today. Tim Cook didn't mention Squat. And not, not to say I expected him to, but he didn't say a single thing about what happens next year when they announce the Apple Watch 2 and you have a $15,000 watch on your hands. What do you do?
27:39 Speaker 00 But also, like, there's so many things to do. Like, when the iPod first came out, it was a niche market because it had, it required using a Mac, which very people had at the time.
27:47 Speaker 01 Right.
27:47 Speaker 00 The iPad, it was like, ugly, ugly piece of shit first product. I'm sorry, it was. It really was a big iPhone. The second one, they kind of figured it out. The Apple Watch, you need an iPhone 5, which is not as ubiquitous as they want it to be, and it won't be for a couple of years. This is the early adopter kind of test market. If you're going to spend that much money now, I think you kind of know that this is like, this is kind of a test case for them.
28:10 Speaker 01 Maybe? Well, yeah, we'll see. So that's the million-dollar, billion-dollar question for Apple is, does this become a mainstream product? Are people going to line up around the block the same way they do for an iPhone? Is it going to be a niche product? Is it going to be somewhere in between? What are they expecting? And what is the public going to do? We don't know. This is kind of untested territory for them and for us. So we'll see.
28:34 Speaker 00 Yep. Is there anything else we want to really tackle in here? Or should we like look to the future?
28:38 Speaker 01 What MacBook are you buying?
28:40 Speaker 00 Oh, hell, no. I'm happy with this right here.
28:42 Speaker 01 So that's a 13-inch Retina?
28:44 Speaker 00 It's the 13-inch Retina. So my computer anniversary was recent, too. So I got a 13-inch Retina. It's doing fine. They obviously announced a spec boost today, but I don't care. This does just everything I needed to do.
28:54 Speaker 01 Oh, one thing that I was expecting today with the new MacBook that wasn't announced, and it makes me very, very sad, is I expected them to integrate Touch ID into the touchpad.
29:04 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
29:05 Speaker 01 And that didn't happen. It seems like such an obvious fit and such an obvious thing that they would want to expand from the iPhone over to MacBook, especially considering how many features from iOS they've adopted into OS X over the years. That was just a disappointment. But that being said, the new MacBook, I had the same reaction to the MacBook today that I had to the original MacBook Air, which is both good and bad. Because in retrospect, the original MacBook Air was not a good product in many ways. It ran hot. The port situation was terrible. And actually, we should talk about the port situation. And it ended up kind of being an afterthought in history compared to the second generation, which was a very good product.
29:50 Speaker 01 So, you know, we'll see if they've learned their lessons. We'll see if the new MacBook is a fantastic product or if it's one of those things where you want to wait for the second generation. But let's talk about the port situation.
29:59 Speaker 00 Let's talk about the port situation. Let's do it.
30:01 Speaker 01 Two ports. There's a USB-C on one side. And then on the other, there's a headphone jack. I think that's it.
30:10 Speaker 00 That's it. I mean, and that matches up with the rumors that we heard. I think Mark Gurman from 9to5Mac broke this. And you got like, there was a graphic designer that kind of went in, kind of modeled based on what the rumor was. And that was pretty Damn spot on.
30:21 Speaker 01 Yeah.
30:21 Speaker 00 I'll give credit where credit's due. That was damn spot on. But yeah, USB-C reversible. It's very pretty. You're gonna need an adapter for every single thing.
30:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
30:29 Speaker 00 And those days where you bought like the giant USB hubs, that's back. That's happening again.
30:34 Speaker 01 It's in vogue, what can you say?
30:38 Speaker 01 MagSafe is gone.
30:39 Speaker 00 Yes.
30:40 Speaker 01 Which is not awesome. If you have kids or pets, you might want to...
30:46 Speaker 00 Oh, right. It's just gonna yink.
30:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, you might want to make sure that this particular computer is off in a different area of the house. And yeah, you're gonna be looking at spending... I just pulled up some of the units here.
31:01 Speaker 00 Dramatic movement.
31:02 Speaker 01 If you want the VGA multi-port adapter for USB-C, Apple's listing it now for $79. If you want the Digital AV adapter, it's also $79.
31:12 Speaker 00 Wait, wait. I know no one else is looking at this, so this is really compelling, but click on the front. You're like, what? Is it just... Okay.
31:19 Speaker 01 You have HDMI, you have another USB-C, so you can do pass-through, and you have, oh, a regular USB.
31:25 Speaker 00 But can I just say, this is ugly as hell.
31:27 Speaker 01 No, it is. It looks like...
31:28 Speaker 00 This is super ugly.
31:29 Speaker 01 So, these ports look like the same white, like, last-generation Apple ID ports that they've been using for 10 years. I hear that we have a hands-on to throw to for the MacBook, so let's check that.
31:48 Speaker 00 That's what I heard. Okay.
31:52 Speaker 03 Hey, we're here at Apple's event in California, and we are just getting our hands on with the all-new MacBook. It is just the MacBook. It is ridiculously thin. It's 13.1 millimeters thin, and you can see one of the headline features here, this USB type-C port. This gets used for power, for display, for USB, for everything. It's a fast little port. It is kind of gonna be the future of laptops. It's spinning around here, and we also, of course, got a headphone jack and a couple of microphones. But the big story here is the technology. The screen is 2304 by 1440. Somewhere in that neighborhood, it's high retina display. It looks really good. There's a speaker grill across the top. And Apple is really playing up the new keyboard. They've got a new butterfly mechanism so that the keys are really flat.
32:36 Speaker 03 And whichever corner you push on, they all feel the same. There's not much key trouble to it, actually. It feels pretty shallow, but it doesn't feel terrible. It just takes a little bit of getting used to. What is weird, though, is the trackpad. They've got an entirely new mechanism, so it also feels the same no matter where you click on it. And Apple has created this new thing called ForceClick, where you sort of like push through the trackpad. And you can see, I just failed to get it done there. I'll try it one more time. You push until you see a second click, and then it gives you like a third action. So there's a single click, double click, and now this force click, which lets you do different things. And you can configure the strength of it. There's a little bit of tactile feedback when you do it. So this is the new MacBook. It comes out on April 10th for $12.99. Again, it is just stupid light, crazy thin. It has an Intel CoreM processor, so it should be pretty fast.
33:21 Speaker 03 And I can't wait to give it some more time.
33:26 Speaker 01 So one thing that I want to note in that video that I found very interesting is that all three of the colors available for the new MacBook are similar enough so that they just look like the same MacBook cast in different lighting, which is a little bit like the dress.
33:39 Speaker 00 Right.
33:40 Speaker 01 Just throwing that out there.
33:41 Speaker 00 No, no.
33:43 Speaker 01 But no, seriously, like the gold looked like a silver MacBook sitting in incandescent light. The silver looked like the silver, and the space gray just looked like it was in a dark room. So not very extreme colors. I think that they were probably careful to make sure that they weren't doing anything too wild with this new MacBook. They were just sort of like adding a little bit of hue to each one, which I guess is okay. I've been, for years, I've been wanting just a black aluminum anodized MacBook. But Apple won't give it to me.
34:16 Speaker 00 Give it time, give it time.
34:17 Speaker 01 Maybe.
34:18 Speaker 00 I mean, we're seeing more and more MacBooks. So there's a filling in the little holes. Like there was that famous, the iPad One presentation where Steve Jobs was like, "We're gonna make a case between this product and this product." And it became the iPad. And now we're just seeing Apple fill in every single hole. Which is a thing we've seen them do for years. And of course, the bigger iPhones were indicative of that. You'll get what you want. You'll get everything you want, just give it time.
34:40 Speaker 01 One important distinction, though, I think, and this is just my theory, but I feel like this, and we mentioned this with Casey, it feels like this new MacBook is filling in a hole that is partially being filled right now by the iPad for work use with, you know, when you put it in a keyboard case, right?
34:59 Speaker 00 Right.
35:00 Speaker 01 And to that end, it makes sense that this MacBook would be available in colors the same way an iPad is, whereas the higher-end, more powerful MacBooks are still effectively PCs. They don't have this level of portability. This thing is ridiculously thin. One thing that I think makes it look more like an iPad than a MacBook is the fact that the glowing apple on the back of the display is not glowing, but it's shiny like it would be on an iPad.
35:28 Speaker 00 Right. So this is...
35:30 Speaker 01 So that's a consideration, the fact that this is, in many ways, an iPad with a keyboard, except, of course, for the fact that it runs OS 10.
35:38 Speaker 00 Right. And the only thing I'd also know is this is considerably more expensive than the MacBook Air.
35:45 Speaker 01 Well, it starts at $1,299, right? So, yes, if you compare that with an 11-inch MacBook Air, yes, it is a more expensive device. But, you know, if you go back through history, going back to, what was it, the PowerBook Duo, I think, was a famously expensive and very small Apple laptop in the 90s, and I'm probably butchering my Apple history here, I don't have Wikipedia open, so I apologize. But the point is, it is certainly not without precedent to have the smallest, lightest version of Apple's PC lineup be a step above in terms of pricing. Makes sense.
36:22 Speaker 00 I agree. And again, the second generation will be a lot cleaner, be a lot cheaper.
36:25 Speaker 01 You might be dreaming. I like the way you think, but, yes, I like where your head's at.
36:30 Speaker 00 Or they'll get rid of the MacBook Airs entirely, so this is the cheap model.
36:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, could be.
36:34 Speaker 00 It's one or the other.
36:35 Speaker 01 Could be.
36:36 Speaker 00 Cool. I mean, there's other things that happen, of course, HealthKit and ResearchKit. We've seen HealthKit a lot. ResearchKit is intriguing, but I don't know if there's really much to say at this point. I'm just really curious to see what happens. The next big event for them is going to be WWDC, the big developer company.
36:48 Speaker 01 Assuming they don't announce anything before then... Presumably, they're going to have iOS 9 to show.
36:53 Speaker 00 Right.
36:54 Speaker 01 But, you know, there have been rumors of a public beta for iOS 8.3, which isn't even out yet, 8.2 is released today, mostly to add Apple Watch support for your other bug fixes. But they're kind of getting compressed in terms of how much more they can do with 8.x before 9 comes out. So I don't know how that fits. Maybe 8.3 carries them through the summer and then they stay on the same release schedule as usual. So I guess I'm talking myself into the likelihood that iOS 9 will be a WDC thing and not have a special event beforehand. But they have done that before. They have done iOS-only events early in the year. So that's an outside possibility.
37:33 Speaker 00 True. I mean, we're just running out of months in between at this point.
37:35 Speaker 01 Right.
37:36 Speaker 00 So we'll see. We'll see. Cool. Final thoughts? Final thoughts?
37:41 Speaker 01 I want it all. I want the $17,000 Apple Watch. I don't even... There is nothing in my possession that I could sell that would enable me to buy that. So I'm just going to have to dream. And the MacBook looks nice, but I need to know whether the keyboard feels as good as they claim it does. I need to know how these force touchpads really work. And I need to know that it's fast enough for me to get my job done on a daily basis. So those questions won't be answered until April. What about you?
38:12 Speaker 00 I just need to bleach my arm hair. I'm feeling really self-conscious about it now. So for all of that, let's just wrap it up at this point on that lovely note. For all things Apple, including, you know, more coverage, more hot takes, more impressions, more analysis, more video, and not just Apple, everything in the intersection of art, culture, science, technology, that is The Verge, check out theverge.com. On Twitter, @TheVerge... Sorry. @Verge. I can't manage how to do that. I am Ross.
38:38 Speaker 01 We're on YouTube as well.
38:39 Speaker 00 We're on YouTube as well. Yes. The Verge. Instagram, Snapchat, for the millennials and the teens. If you want to see what Sam Sheffer's doing, if he thinks things are beef, bust, or whatever other words he's using these days. The Real Verge on Snapchat. For Twitter, I am Onorosco with no E. This is E-Power. Special thanks to @KaseyNewton, who's just out there having the time of his life now. Thank you, guys, for watching.
Previous Infinity Gigabytes and Infinity Buckets Next Sam from the Future Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
