Pod Insights The Vergecast Apple announces new iPhone SE, Mac Studio, M1 Ultra, and more About this episode The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, and Dan Seifert discuss all the announcements from Apple's Peek Performance event this week.
Further reading:
The 7 biggest announcements from Apple’s Peek Performance event
Apple iPhone SE gains 5G, A15 processor, and a higher $429 price tag
The 5G iPhone SE will be for carriers, not customers
5G’s false start is over and the iPhone SE proves it
The iPhone 13 and 13 Pro each get green finishes
The iPhone SE’s $30 price bump looks like a pure 5G tax
Give me a bigger iPhone SE
Apple announces updated iPad Air with M1 processor and 5G
How the M1-powered iPad Air compares to other iPad models
Apple announces new flagship M1 Ultra desktop processor for its most powerful computers
Apple’s new M1 Ultra aims to beat Nvidia’s RTX 3090
The redesigned MacBook Air might have an M1, not an M2
Apple’s Mac Studio is a new desktop for creative professionals
Apple explains why the M1 Ultra-equipped Mac Studio is two pounds heavier
A fully specced-out Mac Studio will cost $8,000
Apple’s new strategy is to give — not tell — users what they want
Screw it, the rectangles are back
The Mac Studio’s ports are a step back in all the right ways
The 27-inch iMac has been discontinued
Apple announces 27-inch 5K Studio Display for $1,599
Apple’s Studio Display actually comes with a stand
Here’s why Apple put a powerful iPhone chip in its new Studio Display
Apple’s Studio Display should work with Windows — including the webcam
The future of makeup is lipstick you can print
The Steam Deck now runs Windows
Hands-on with Alienware’s new, curved QD-OLED gaming monitor
Nothing can’t stop smartphone leaks
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 16,030 words · 11 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Nilay Patel? This week on the Vergecast, Alex Trans and Dan Seifert join the show. We go over Apple's peak performance event, the new iPhone SE, the new iPad Air, and the Mac Studio with M1 Ultra and Studio Display. Then do a little lightning round. That's coming up on the Vergecast now.
0:13 Speaker 01 This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:58 Speaker 01 This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:46 Nilay Patel? Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of 5G shenanigans. That's our new, it's like one of the worst bars and grills you can go to. The shenanigans. 5G shenanigans. I have a friend, Dan Seifert is here. Hello, I am here. Alex Trans is here. I'm really excited about the shenanigans. Yeah, it's gonna be great. There's a lot of shenanigans to talk about on the show this week. I will note that our friend Dieter Bone is not here, and I went to a bunch of Apple like briefings and they're like, where's Dieter? And I was like, you know where he is. He's your rival.
2:20 Nilay Patel? Like Dieter went to work for Google. So at some point, I don't know if we should disclose it, but there it is. That's the news. We talked about it a bunch last week. If you missed it, we had a goodbye episode with Walt Mossberg and Dieter. It was very touching and poignant. And now the world moves on. You ready? Enthusiasm. Okay, we got to start. There's an Apple event this week. Tons of Apple news. Talk about new chip, new phone, new display, new Mac, old USB ports. Very exciting. I will say that in addition to that, our team is doing just excellent coverage on the tech aspects of the war in Ukraine that is obviously happening. It's the biggest news in the world aside from COVID. Lots of internet companies, content filtering, major backbone providers
3:03 Nilay Patel? are shutting off service in Russia. McKenna had a great scoop about a tech executive that is privately funding a mercenary army of private soldiers in the country. You know, we talk about policy a lot on the show. The we're just going to block a bunch of Russian channels from American social media companies. Amazon's going to stop shipping packages in Russia and Prime Video. That stuff, all the themes that we talked about on the policy side are all just coming to a head there. So we're covering it very deeply. It's the flip side, right? Of like, how should we regulate tech? The tech companies here are sort of pulling out of Russia and then Russia is running its own tech-based misinformation campaigns, shutting down its feature across the country. It's all on the site. I know you don't come to us for Ukraine news on this podcast. I just want to point out because
3:48 Nilay Patel? our team is working really hard on it. And there's actually really interesting, deep coverage of how it's planned. So that is that. Okay, now a hard segue to the Apple event.
3:56 Speaker 02 Good morning and welcome back to Apple Park.
3:59 Nilay Patel? So big Apple event, medium Apple event, small Apple event? What do you think?
4:03 Alex Cranz? Medium.
4:04 Nilay Patel? Medium, yeah.
4:05 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
4:05 Nilay Patel? Medium. It was the first one. You know, they tried to fake everyone out with this like peak performance thing in like the AR.
4:11 Alex Cranz? It was going to be the glasses.
4:13 Nilay Patel? I promise you, and I talked to a lot of people, everyone is ready to go back to in-person Apple events, I think, including Apple. I don't think they can ever do the glasses without in-person.
4:21 Alex Cranz? They can't. They can't. You're going to have to bring all of the competitors with you to that first in-person Apple event. You can have a little purse full of them. Like, don't pay attention to my purse of my bag of AR headsets. It's gonna be great.
4:36 Nilay Patel? And I brought my little HTC Vive, like room scale cameras.
4:40 Alex Cranz? Hold on, I gotta set these up. Tim, come over here. Come over here. We're gonna do this together.
4:44 Nilay Patel? Eddie Q, did you bring a ladder? Because I need one. Okay. So this one is like, they still did it in the format we're used to. Tim Cook on the stage at the Apple, the Steve Jobs Theater, zooming out to other parts of the campus, very infomercial, lightning fast.
5:00 Speaker 04 Very fast, especially the first half.
5:01 Nilay Patel? They just raced through this thing. The theme of it was like, we make our own chips. Our chips are great. Look, we put our chips in everything.
5:09 Alex Cranz? We did it.
5:10 Nilay Patel? Okay. So let's just start with it. They did a new iPhone SE. They did a new iPad. Then they announced what they are saying is the last of the M1 family of chips, the M1 Ultra. They're putting that in a computer called the Mac Studio, which there's a long history of people wanting a computer just like this from Apple, and they announced a new display. Let's take them in turn. Let's start with the iPhone.
5:30 Speaker 02 And today, we're bringing our extraordinary A15 Bionic chip to another iPhone. The new iPhone SE.
5:38 Nilay Patel? I think the story of this iPhone is 5G shenanigans, but Dan, tell us about the new iPhone SE.
5:43 Speaker 04 So there are some 5G shenanigans in that this supports 5G, but it doesn't support millimeter wave, which we can get into. So it supports what we commonly refer to as sub six 5G, or the 5G that you can actually use, which you might actually experience. Otherwise, it is the same SE that they released in 2020 with a new processor and a slightly bigger battery. That's it.
6:07 Nilay Patel? Yeah, same 4.7 inch screen, same bezels, same Touch ID.
6:11 Speaker 04 Yep.
6:12 Nilay Patel? Same camera, but they got the new processor, so the camera should be better.
6:16 Speaker 04 That's what they're saying. They're saying like, you know, it, the processor can unlock some things with the camera, but I would not get your hopes up super high for dramatic camera improvements. It is the same hardware. It's the same single lens.
6:27 Nilay Patel? It's got deep fusion, dude. It's winter mode. You could, I mean, their sweater pictures. Look, this phone's for grandparents.
6:34 Alex Cranz? Grandparents get cold. They need sweaters.
6:37 Nilay Patel? Grandparents get cold, they're often wearing sweaters.
6:38 Speaker 04 So it has sweater mode and it has the single camera portrait mode, but I don't believe it does the night mode. That is like the thing that is like not available on this one, at least my understanding. It could be wrong. But anyways, so it's a single camera unit. It's got the same front facing camera, which I believe is seven megapixels. It's, uh, you know, like you said, the 4.7 inch screen, LCD.
7:00 Alex Cranz? It's got the button, right?
7:01 Speaker 04 It's got a button. It's got a home button. It's very small.
7:04 Nilay Patel? Yeah, no, uh, no night mode.
7:06 Speaker 04 Yeah.
7:06 Nilay Patel? That's okay. I don't, I don't understand that.
7:09 Speaker 04 Like, you would think that the processor would be powering that, right? And like, it's got the A15 chip, which is the best A series chip that you can get right now. So.
7:18 Nilay Patel? That's how they get you.
7:19 Speaker 04 That's how they get you.
7:19 Nilay Patel? That's how they bracket you right up. They're like iPhone SE customers are never in the dark.
7:25 Nilay Patel? Never happens. They carry a flashlight wherever they go. They get so sleepy. They're in bed by 6:00 P. M.
7:33 Alex Cranz? Curled up in their little sweaters, going to bed.
7:36 Nilay Patel? It's a cozy phone.
7:38 Speaker 04 It's also $30 more expensive, which you could almost certainly attribute to the fact that it supports 5G. Our high among our team has, uh, looked many times into the cost of 5G in phones. I believe there's some reports about the iPhone 12's 5G modem is like its most expensive component. So it's very likely that the price bump here is related to the fact that it supports 5G, even though it doesn't support millimeter wave.
8:01 Alex Cranz? Does it support the mid one?
8:03 Speaker 04 Yes.
8:04 Alex Cranz? That like the FCC got up or the FAA got upset about?
8:07 Speaker 04 Yes.
8:07 Nilay Patel? Yes.
8:08 Speaker 04 It's, that's, uh, the C band, which AT&T and Verizon are very excited about because it's their only real 5G. That you can get, uh, and they are rolling it out and, uh, this is fully compatible with it as far as I understand it. It's also compatible with all of T-Mobile's 5G.
8:25 Alex Cranz? Is the millimeter wave thing, is that a great loss? I feel like it's not a great loss because everybody talks about how terrible it is, how like.
8:31 Nilay Patel? It was a lie and now we can all admit that it's a lie. And before I talk about that, I'm just going to point out that you can get it in green and you can get the Pro in an ice green. Great. That's all the news about the iPhone SE.
8:41 Speaker 04 You know, no, you can get the 13 in green and you can get the Pro in Alpine green. But the SE is in midnight, starlight and product red.
8:49 Nilay Patel? Oh, that's it.
8:50 Speaker 04 That's it.
8:50 Nilay Patel? Oh, and like, okay. Sorry, if you want to curl up by fire and go to bed early.
8:56 Alex Cranz? Can't have a green phone.
8:57 Nilay Patel? Can't have a green phone. Okay. Millimeter wave was a lie. Let's just come back to this. I feel very strongly about this. I'm the only person in America who feels very strongly about this, but I'm going to transmit my energy to you through this microphone.
9:08 Alex Cranz? You're already transmitting more energy than millimeter wave did.
9:12 Nilay Patel? Do you remember when the iPhone 12 came out?
9:14 Alex Cranz? Yes.
9:14 Nilay Patel? Hans Westberg from Verizon stood on stage with Apple and he was like, 5G is finally here.
9:19 Alex Cranz? Yes.
9:21 Nilay Patel? It was great. It was a great moment. He's got a great accent, a very handsome man. He's like, I did it. All this other 5G has been lies, but now that Verizon has millimeter wave on this iPhone. And then Dieter and I, in our reviews, we had to like go find street corners. Like I literally was like walking the streets of Manhattan being like, that looks like millimeter wave and like standing under the thing. I'm pretty sure Verizon put one on purpose and we would test it. And then Joanna like did her video at Giants Stadium and was like, it works great here and it's nowhere else. And that was 5G on Verizon and Verizon was insane about this and they demanded that every phone on its network have millimeter wave. Because it defined 5G ultra wideband is millimeter wave.
10:05 Alex Cranz? Yes.
10:05 Nilay Patel? It's like ultra fast, extremely low range, high power. You need a special antenna. The iPhones had special antennas on them. Custom phones, all this stuff.
10:15 Alex Cranz? Yes.
10:16 Nilay Patel? Because millimeter wave was the 5G that Verizon had. And AT&T was like, we honestly are, mostly what we have is lies, but we're along for this ride too, right?
10:26 Alex Cranz? We have a label we're going to put on the top of the phone.
10:28 Nilay Patel? We've got 5GE, so we're good.
10:32 Nilay Patel? And underneath that was a bunch of crazy stuff, like a technology called dynamic spectrum sharing, where they would reuse the LTE spectrum, but give you a 5G logo and that was 5G. And it was slow and I would get on the, you know, we would get on review calls with various phone manufacturers and be like, 5G slows at DSS. And they'd be like, whoa, their carriers. Like it was horrible.
10:52 Alex Cranz? Use it in the UK. Get some real 5G in here.
10:55 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Meanwhile, like, you know, I would get tweets from people in like South Korea being like, what are you talking about? Why are you complaining about 5G? We got six gigs down.
11:03 Nilay Patel? This is why we're great at League of Legends. Like, our internet's better than yours. Uh, it's true, by the way. Uh, latency is a big thing in esports. It's like a real fact. Look, if America wants to dominate the international esports scene, we have to upgrade our networks.
11:16 Alex Cranz? This is the reason we need an infrastructure bill to improve our internet in this country. League of Legends, we're getting crushed, guys. How are we supposed to, like, beat them at any Twitch games? Like-
11:27 Nilay Patel? What are you doing, Biden?
11:28 Alex Cranz? Come on, fix it.
11:29 Nilay Patel? So, then, this past few months, the, you know, there was a spectrum auction, they bought the C-band, the disaster with the FAA, the FCC happened. They finally slowly started launching their mid-band networks. Verizon redefines 5G ultra-wideband. They're like, "Well, we made this up, so now this doesn't mean millimeter wave. This means both millimeter wave and this mid-band spectrum." And they just sort of, like, announced it.
11:57 Speaker 04 Sort of announced it. I don't know how much announcing they did.
12:00 Nilay Patel? Well, they announced it such that Allison was able to write a piece explaining what all the terms meant. But it was, like, very under the table.
12:06 Speaker 04 Yes.
12:07 Nilay Patel? Like, under the table that I had to go on the Wayback Machine and look at Verizon's website and be like, sometime in January, they changed it.
12:14 Speaker 04 Right. There was no press release that said, "5G ultra-wideband now means C-band."
12:19 Nilay Patel? Yeah, which, for two years, they've been saying it means millimeter wave. So, and they've been demanding that every phone on their network that supports 5G, I'm making extremely sarcastic air quotes here, that has 5G was a millimeter wave.
12:33 Speaker 04 Yep, and phones were frequently compromised for that. Like, the great example is the Pixel 4A 5G. When the unlocked version came out, it did not support millimeter wave, and it was $400, I think. And then Verizon insisted on the millimeter wave in it, and now the price was $500 for that version. Or the, I think it was the Galaxy S20, that base model did not support millimeter wave, but the Verizon version did, and therefore it was more expensive. So, yeah, we've been dealing with that for a while. And now, now the iPhone SE doesn't support millimeter wave.
13:04 Nilay Patel? So, they announced this phone, and, like, literally, Dan was like, "I wonder if it'll be on Verizon." Because this is a millimeter wave. Analysts are like, "Huh, I wonder if it'll be on Verizon, or if Apple will have a second-secret, more expensive millimeter wave version." So, I'm like, we, like, ask, and Verizon's like, "No, we're gonna carry it." And all it is, is because it supports C-band, they can claim it's 5G ultra wideband and they can just stop pretending to give a shit about millimeter wave.
13:29 Alex Cranz? Do you think there was like a conversation between Apple and Verizon about this where Apple was like, we're not going to put your stupid thing in here and mark up this phone because of your stupid technology. Deal with it. And Apple and Verizon was just like, okay, sure, we'll deal with it. Thanks.
13:45 Speaker 04 I'm sure there was conversations. I just wonder how much the conversations were like Verizon's like, okay, we're closing on the C-band where we almost have it. Apple, can you wait like four months before you announce this? So that we can actually roll out this C-band. And then the FAA was like, wait a minute, what are you doing? And then that threw out a factor.
14:03 Nilay Patel? I guarantee you this thing would not have launched if C-band hadn't rolled out.
14:06 Speaker 04 Yeah.
14:07 Nilay Patel? They would have just held it, right? Although I found out he was doing fine. They have, you know, whatever phones to support the millimeter wave deception that they need to have. But if you hadn't rolled out C-band, I assume that Verizon would have either insisted on a more expensive phone with millimeter wave or the Apple would have just held it. I bet Apple would have just held it. They don't care. Right? It's like, I'm just saying, we have spent two years listening to these companies, at least two years.
14:35 Speaker 04 At least, yeah.
14:36 Nilay Patel? Listening to Verizon and AT&T ramble on about millimeter wave and ramble on about 5G. It's been at least 10 years of 5G bullshit.
14:45 Speaker 04 In fact, I would say it's been at least four years of millimeter wave lies because Sean Hollister wrote about this whole situation about, that we're talking about now. And in his article, he cited in 2018, he was at Qualcomm's event in Maui and like 5G was supposed to be like the ultra wideband millimeter wave demo there. That didn't work and it was just all lies. And that was in 2018. So it's been at least four years of this.
15:11 Nilay Patel? And I will say, people have told us, we've seen the tweets, we see like, some people can get millimeter wave.
15:17 Alex Cranz? I could actually get it. They have a, my old house, my old apartment had the Verizon transmission thing on top of it. I had to deal with like months of construction. As they built their little like air, they got air conditioning and I didn't. I'm still upset about it. Verizon got air conditioning and I didn't and it's all there. And I can look at it even now and get just incredible speeds.
15:41 Nilay Patel? Really? Do you like hold your phone out the window and like?
15:43 Alex Cranz? Yeah, just hold my phone out and just kind of hope. But yeah.
15:46 Nilay Patel? Like all right, BitTorrent, here we go.
15:48 Alex Cranz? Let's do it. But just me. Nobody else can get it.
15:51 Nilay Patel? Just you. Just, yeah, because you're probably the only one with a millimeter wave. This industry has for four years now, at least four, five, 10 years told us 5G will be transformative. Right? If you remember their early hype, like I, I would go to dinners with the cell carriers. They would tell me that they were going to compete with AWS.
16:10 Alex Cranz? 5G robots were going to save lives.
16:12 Nilay Patel? Yeah, the, the amount of telemedicine and tele-surgery that would happen, like the, like robot surgery on demand was like gonna definitely happen because of 5G. Like, we were shown pictures of, of, of just like rural towns in America that had no access to healthcare. And the self-driving robot on 5G was gonna show up and just do surgery on everyone and peace out. Right? All that stuff that has really not happened. They told me that they were gonna, they were gonna disintermediate AWS because to control these networks, they needed to put the data centers closer to the edge, which would allow for the extremely low latency applications that we have been promised this whole time. None of that stuff has happened, but they have increased the prices of the phones.
16:53 Nilay Patel? And they have absolutely increased the prices of the plans for no appreciable benefit. And it is a scandal that I would say no one is talking about, except we constantly talk about it.
17:03 Alex Cranz? We talk about it all the time.
17:04 Nilay Patel? And this phone is great and I'm happy it's a cheap iPhone and I know people will be excited about it. But this phone is just like proof that all of this fake out was just a lie. And it achieved nothing. There was actually a Wall Street Journal story last week. It's like, it was a Journal of Bloomberg. It's like they've made these huge investments in these networks. And they've created no new revenue for themselves and created no new applications that anyone is using. Whereas if you think about LTE, the amount of revenue they created, because everyone rushed to get faster phones because they could feel the speed increase over 3G. And then the applications that were delivered on top of it were all like video applications. Like it was fast enough to support streaming video. Which is why they all went and tried to put video providers.
17:48 Alex Cranz? It kind of reminds me of, of like TVs and the 4K, like when they went from 1080p to 4K and now they're doing like 4K to 8K. And they're like, aren't you excited about 8K and HDR? And everybody's like, no. Like, like, you know, 1080 to 4K, that was a big leap. And yeah, my eyes bled. It was gorgeous. But most people didn't like, 8K is not a significant jump. And 5G for most people and like the mid-band speeds is not a significant jump to be like, yeah, I need it. I gotta, I gotta go get my new phone.
18:23 Nilay Patel? But we've, we've just spent so long, particularly Verizon, so long hearing about millimeter wave and paying higher prices, right? That's the killer to me is they found ways to increase the prices of the plans. They found ways to increase the prices of the devices and they provided nothing. And now with this phone, you can see that at the end of the day, it really, all that was just, they needed to be able to market that stuff. Now they've got a real network.
18:51 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
18:51 Nilay Patel? Right? They've got the mid-band 5G network. Dan, we've seen it perform. It seems fine.
18:56 Speaker 04 I mean, it's, you know, if the typical 4G experience is anywhere from like 30 megabit down to 125 megabit down. If you're in a good mid-band 5G area, you might see 500 megabit down or 600 megabit down. That's not unrealistic.
19:10 Alex Cranz? What are you doing on your phone that you need 500 megabit down? Just like hanging out? I mean, never mind. I'm not gonna ask.
19:19 Speaker 04 Download League of Legends. There you go.
19:24 Speaker 04 I will tell you, there was one, there was one instance, I don't get mid-band where I live. I'm stuck on the, still the low-end garbage 5G that might as well be 4G where I am. But there was one instance last year when I was in New York City for our 10-year anniversary event. And I could get T-Mobile's mid-band and I was sitting in my hotel room and I was like, downloaded movies to watch on the train ride home. And like, I was like, this is it.
19:49 Alex Cranz? This is the future right now.
19:51 Speaker 04 Three years, this is the first time I've appreciated 5G.
19:54 Nilay Patel? Yeah. It's, you know, the other thing is that most phones, Android phones, you can figure out what you've got because there's Android utilities. On iPhone, it's just like whatever carrier letters are at the top of your phone.
20:05 Alex Cranz? That's what you get.
20:06 Nilay Patel? And it's almost impossible to know if you're getting what you paid for. Like my iPhone right now just says 5G and I, I know it's just DSS.
20:13 Speaker 04 Sometimes mine says 5G, sometimes mine says, cause I'm on T-Mobile, it'll say 5G UC, not UW, UC. We've got a glossary on the site. Allison wrote that, so.
20:24 Nilay Patel? What's, what is UC? Is it ultra cool?
20:25 Speaker 04 I had no idea, but it's the same as without the UC, so.
20:31 Speaker 04 You know, I'm that nerd who's like driving his car and sees UC pop up on his car play and pulls over and is like, I gotta run a speed test. And see how much faster this is. And then it's the same speed as without the UC and without the 5G. So like, I don't know, it's all lies.
20:47 Nilay Patel? Anyhow, I'm just saying this has been, look, if people in rural areas can actually get 500 down from their phones.
20:55 Alex Cranz? I will pay you a hundred dollars if they can do that.
20:59 Nilay Patel? But that is, that's actually transformative.
21:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, no, no, no, but, but, but that is transformative. I agree, but that doesn't exist yet because like that 500, 600 down is still only in the dense urban areas. I'm in suburbia and I don't get that 500, 600. If you're in rural, you're getting, you know, two down.
21:15 Alex Cranz? Yeah, yeah. I've got like a friend who's got a two, who still held on to like a 2G phone. Because when he'd be out riding horseback, checking on cattle, he's cowboy. He's not just random man checking on cattle.
21:29 Nilay Patel? I've got a friend whose hobby is checking on cattle.
21:31 Alex Cranz? He just likes to look at them and say, yep, a lot. But he couldn't get any other connections. So if he like fell off his horse or something or hurt himself. The only way to contact his family was with a super old phone, like 3G didn't work, 4G didn't work. He's just out there with a flip phone. And he didn't care that 5G is coming because they still haven't really gotten 4G fully in his part of Colorado. So he's like, why? I don't, I don't need these speeds because you'll never get them to me because nobody wants to build the infrastructure to the rural spaces. Where 5G would be transformative.
22:02 Speaker 04 Never gonna harness our League of Legends talent from the rural areas of this country if we don't fix this connectivity.
22:08 Alex Cranz? Like we are losing so many talented League of Legends players right now.
22:14 Alex Cranz? Because we cannot properly build out rural internet.
22:17 Nilay Patel? But just do the, it's like underlying that. Everyone in area needs 500 down to their phones, which is still crazy. We're all to be wearing the headsets, just like wandering through life in like real time VR feeds. Well, you definitely need a fiber connection to all those towers to support all of that bandwidth. And like, that's the actual problem.
22:35 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
22:35 Nilay Patel? In these rural areas. And if you can get fiber to the roads, you might as well like run the rest of the fiber because you've already spent so much money. We have done endless coverage on this problem on our site and on this podcast. I won't blabber it. I'm just, it's a very nice phone. It's very cool. It comes in multiple colors, including midnight and starlight.
22:50 Speaker 04 It's cozy. Not black and not silver. It's midnight and starlight.
22:54 Nilay Patel? Midnight and starlight. But it's just hard to not look at it and look at the, the entire 5G hype cycle and be like, oh man, like Verizon was just head faking us on what their 5G plan actually was this whole time.
23:07 Speaker 02 Today, I'm excited to talk about iPad Air. We're bringing the breakthrough M1 chip to iPad Air.
23:14 Nilay Patel? Let's talk about the iPad real quick because I think we can get through it really quickly. Dan?
23:18 Speaker 04 It is an iPad Air that you may be familiar with from 2019, same exact appearance. And now it's got an M1 inside of it.
23:25 Nilay Patel? Yeah. And 5G.
23:26 Speaker 04 And it does have the 5G. It has the same sub six 5G that we've been talking about. So it's really like, they took the upgrades that the iPad mini got last year and applied them to the air design, except they upgraded the processor also all the way up to the M1, which means that this is the same chip in it as the MacBook Air, as the 13 inch MacBook Pro, as the Mac mini, as the iPad Pro, both sizes of the iPad Pro. So for 600 bucks, you are getting one of Apple's most performant processors that it uses in its mainstream, most widely sold laptops, which is pretty incredible. Can you do anything with that performance? I mean, it's an iPad. So sure, maybe there's something.
24:06 Alex Cranz? Well, you can download your movies real fast.
24:09 Speaker 04 You can download your movies real fast. And it got the center stage front facing camera. So it will, if you're doing video calls, it will automatically follow you.
24:17 Nilay Patel? But it's still in the wrong spot.
24:19 Speaker 04 Still in the wrong spot. Yes.
24:21 Nilay Patel? Baffling decision. And you know, because you can use this thing as a laptop replacement, as you can with
24:26 Speaker 04 You could. I mean, it's it works with all of the same accessories as before. So it works with the Magic Keyboard, works with the Smart Keyboard, it works with the same pencil. Apple confirmed that it is exactly the same dimension. So if you have an old iPad Air and have cases and accessories and all that stuff, they're just going to work with this new one right away. There's no, no, nothing really new you need to buy. But it is a 10.9 inch screen and it's running iPadOS. I do not know how many people would really want to use that as their only computing device if they have an opportunity to have a laptop with a larger screen and a more capable operating system on it. But it looks to be like a very nice iPad. The thing that's interesting about it is this kind of happened last time with
25:07 Speaker 04 the last refresh of the iPad Air is now it steps on the toes of the iPad Pro a lot. And the only differences between the Air and the Pro 11 inch now are you get ProMotion or the 120 Hz screen on the Pro, you get Face ID on the Pro, and you get a second rear camera and LiDAR sensor on the Pro. Oh, you get four cameras or four speakers instead of two.
25:29 Alex Cranz? Ooh.
25:30 Speaker 04 Yeah.
25:31 Alex Cranz? Sign me up.
25:31 Nilay Patel? I mean, if there's one thing that's going to sell me, it's LiDAR sensor.
25:34 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
25:34 Nilay Patel? I'm just LiDAR-ing all over town.
25:36 Alex Cranz? Well, the Pro, the 11 inch Pro was always kind of like the ugly stepchild of the lineup.
25:41 Nilay Patel? No, no, no, no, no.
25:43 Alex Cranz? I have one. I love it. I have, I have the one from the previous generation. But I was, it was really frustrating when they announced that when they did their last refresh because really, really cool display in the 12 inch. And then the 11 inch was like, nope, you get some, you get faster than the iPad Air. Like, that was the big difference between it and the iPad Air and why I bought it stupidly. But now I feel I've got just a lot of FOMO. This is just me processing my feelings.
26:12 Nilay Patel? Well, so you can, you can see that what they would do in almost any other case would be they're going to upgrade the iPad Pro to the mini LED display, maybe still keep the M1 in there, that's fine. But you get a better display, better speakers. One more camera, Face ID and LiDAR. Who doesn't love LiDAR?
26:30 Alex Cranz? We have to wait like a year and a half for that to happen.
26:33 Nilay Patel? But yeah, all the rumors are that the mini LED is still too expensive. So I do think it's stuck in the middle. You know, the price difference is vanishingly small, right?
26:43 Speaker 04 Between the 11 Pro and the iPad Air is 200 bucks, but you do get twice the storage in the Pro. So the Air, this is like the one criticism I have against the Air is that they are still keeping it at 64 gigs in the base storage. And then getting more storage is a $150 upgrade to 256.
27:02 Nilay Patel? And they absolutely have done that on purpose, right? That's the, that's where they know that if you spend $150 to get the storage, you might as well just buy the Pro.
27:11 Speaker 04 Yeah. I mean, it's like, it gets this annoying like matrix because the $150 that you spend on the Air gets you 256 gigs of storage. And the Pro starts at 128, so you aren't getting as much with the Pro. But I think most people on an iPad are going to be perfectly fine with 128 gigs. 64 gigs might be pushing it if you are trying to actually replace a laptop with this kind of thing. If all you're doing is like iPad stuff, tablet stuff, you know, I think 64 could probably be fine and cover you. But if you are trying to replace your main computer or trying to make it your main computer, you're probably going to run into some issues with storage. I think Genshin Impact is like 16 gigs. So, you know, there's a quarter of your storage gone if you play that game.
27:54 Speaker 04 So it's a little frustrating that they've kept that storage level, but like you said, it is, seems perfectly designed to get you to be like, well, if I'm going to spend the upgrade, I might as well spend a little more and get the Pro and the other nice features. Because I will say Face ID on the iPad, I think I said this last week, Face ID on the iPad is a lot nicer than Touch ID on the iPad.
28:13 Nilay Patel? Yeah, I answer it. Apple is historically very smart at being like. No matter how many dollars you have, we will have a product within $50 of how many dollars you have, right? Like in either direction, you just tell us an amount of dollars and we have an iOS device for you, right? And like, I think there's a little bit of muddle there because, right, the the upgrade cycles are not perfectly aligned. But I think part of that is chip shortage. I do think all the rumors about the display technology not getting cheaper, fast enough is real. They're the only company shipping mini LED screens like in scale.
28:46 Speaker 04 I have a very harebrained theory that does not have a lot of evidence backing it up. Those are the best kind. But I was very surprised when they announced the M1 chip was coming into the air and they weren't just using the A15 because the predictable thing was the last one used the A14, I believe, and so this one would have the A15 and the iPad mini had the A15. And they just went straight up to the M1. And my theory is Apple's producing as many A15s as it possibly can and it's putting them in all the iPhones. Like we just said, it's in the iPhone SE, it's in all the iPhone models. And so it is reserving them for that and figured it could just put the M1 in the air because it now doesn't have to take stock away from the iPhones.
29:26 Nilay Patel? And this is based on the fact that the mini is almost impossible to get?
29:29 Speaker 04 Yeah, mini is really hard to get. And there's been a lot of reporting that Apple was diverting production of the mini towards the iPhone so that it could keep up with demands for the iPhone.
29:38 Nilay Patel? I think they've like all but said this on our earnings call, like chip shortage finally sort of caught up to them. This is all, by the way, you have to, we'll talk about this in minutes, they're putting an A13 in the display. So it's like, I think it's catching up to them in extremely odd ways, right? They're just making as much as they can.
29:56 Speaker 04 I can't wait until they have to just use A series chips for like all the little, little things like, like the display controller in the iPad is now an A13 bionic.
30:04 Nilay Patel? Yeah, for no reason. So I do think there's a little bit of that weirdness there. I don't know that M1s are not also constrained, like they're making, they're selling every Mac that they can.
30:15 Speaker 04 But the M1 is based on a 14, right? So it's got a longer life cycle in terms of development for that process. Whereas a 15 is a new process that they only started.
30:26 Nilay Patel? A new process? No, you mean?
30:27 Speaker 04 Yeah, exactly. So that's where my theories come from. Like I said, I could be way off. And I don't have like actual hard evidence backing this up, but it kind of slots together if you, you know, squint really closely and.
30:40 Nilay Patel? If you've been drinking, this makes a lot of sense. Yeah, if you've been drinking, yeah.
30:42 Alex Cranz? The other theory is this is all just a long lead up to killing iPadOS.
30:48 Nilay Patel? That's not a theory. That's just your fond hope. I've not heard this theory. I would like to hear this. This is Alex. You're just a manifesting.
30:54 Alex Cranz? No, I'm not, because I don't believe it. I fully do not believe it, but I was hearing it a lot the last couple of days of people being like, oh, this is all just, they put the M1 in there, just put macOS on it, be done with it, kill iPadOS.
31:07 Nilay Patel? No, they're not. They're never gonna do that.
31:08 Alex Cranz? They're never gonna do it.
31:09 Nilay Patel? 1,000% manifesting. Like, I wanted them to do that, too.
31:13 Alex Cranz? But I do a little bit feel iPadOS has a short lifespan now, because one M1, right, that's on all of the, most of the major iPads, with the exception of the original iPad and the iPad Mini, right?
31:27 Nilay Patel? Yes.
31:28 Alex Cranz? Yeah. And then the other thing is, we're gonna get a folding device at some point, right? We're gonna get, we're gonna get a, we're gonna get a folding device. And it's gotta either run iOS or iPadOS. It can't run both. So, and you're not gonna kill iOS.
31:42 Nilay Patel? iPadOS and iOS are the same thing.
31:45 Alex Cranz? No.
31:46 Nilay Patel? Well, so is that. It's just UI differences.
31:49 Alex Cranz? But Apple's gonna have to explain that, and they're just gonna kill it. They're just gonna have to kill it.
31:53 Nilay Patel? They're not gonna kill it. We talked to a bunch of folks after the event, and their position, because I asked very directly, like, hey, you used to run around telling us that the iPad was the future of computing.
32:04 Alex Cranz? Yes.
32:04 Nilay Patel? And you took your eye off the Mac and you've admitted it. You had meetings with people to be like, we are sorry, we forgot about the Macintosh. Because you were all in on the iPad. Like, this was a real thing that happened to Apple. And, you know, Apple's pretty direct about it. They had the meeting to say, we took our eye off the Mac, and now they're putting out Macs that everybody's wanted forever. And they're like, yeah, that happened, but everybody buys a Mac, buys an iPad, and it's still our vision of what this kind of computing could be like. They are in no way trying to blur those lines. Like, if you are Apple, you're Tim Cook, and you're like, so my choices are, I can sell people two computers or one.
32:41 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
32:42 Nilay Patel? They're always gonna pick two, because that is currently what's happening. People like, the amount of, I own every product in the Apple ecosystem, is the envy of the computing world. And so I just, at some point, yep, the lines are getting real blurry, and Apple's gonna be like, well. Are they blurry enough for you to buy two computers or one? And if they can keep you buying two, they're just gonna keep you buying two.
33:05 Alex Cranz? One day, man, it's gonna happen.
33:07 Nilay Patel? They're gonna keep, they tried to kill the Mac is what I'm saying.
33:12 Speaker 04 They did everything in their power. They put a terrible keyboard in it. They took all the ports away.
33:17 Alex Cranz? They're like, stop buying these things.
33:19 Speaker 04 People still want this. What do we have to do to kill this product?
33:22 Nilay Patel? Yeah, they, that original MacBook Air, or I guess it was a second generation MacBook Air that just persisted in that design forever. Like, literally, their stated explanation was, people won't stop buying this.
33:36 Nilay Patel? They're like, no retina display, like, ancient processor.
33:40 Alex Cranz? Like 14 by 900 resolution.
33:44 Speaker 04 Had mini display port on it.
33:46 Nilay Patel? And people, like, they were just like, we don't know. And we're like, it's because it's the only good Mac. Like, everything else is kind of a disaster. So like, I think that they are, they are pretty committed to not necessarily iPadOS. But I think they're committed to their strategy of selling more stuff.
34:04 Alex Cranz? Selling more computers.
34:06 Nilay Patel? Selling more, they are very committed to the strategy of selling more computers. That we know for sure. It's very sincere that they would like you to buy more computers. No confusion there. But I think they are actually committed to, the Mac is this platform where, like, pros make pro stuff.
34:26 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
34:27 Nilay Patel? And lots of consumers want Consumer Max to work from home. And we've got this vision of a, another kind of computer where every button pays us 30% of every dollar. Like, right? And like, they're just gonna keep rolling in that direction for a long time. Look, I hope, I hope you speak this into truth.
34:46 Alex Cranz? I like, I just feel like we're careening towards an end game. Like, Apple's gonna have to like-
34:50 Nilay Patel? We've been saying that for so long.
34:52 Alex Cranz? When the folding iPad comes, when the full, or folding whatever comes, that will be the moment. Like, that will be the moment where all, we're all gonna be like, wait a minute. Wait a minute, iPadOS is just a rescreened iOS. Why are we doing two of these? It's dumb. And like, it's coming. And we're gonna have to kill it.
35:10 Nilay Patel? We'll see. What's, what's your prediction when a folding Apple product comes?
35:15 Alex Cranz? I think-
35:15 Nilay Patel? If ever?
35:16 Alex Cranz? It's like a year or two, right? We keep hearing, maybe even next year?
35:21 Speaker 04 I thought the last reporting was like 2024 or 2025.
35:24 Alex Cranz? But I need, I need it now. Like Samsung did it. Samsung, it's usually Samsung does it and then Apple does it three years later.
35:33 Speaker 04 Well, we have, we have history to lean on, right? The Galaxy Note came out in 2011, proving that big phones were, were something people wanted. And three years later, Apple had the iPhone 6 plus.
35:44 Alex Cranz? There you go.
35:45 Speaker 04 Yeah. But three years from the Galaxy Fold launch would be like now. So that doesn't like work if you, you know, use that logic.
35:51 Alex Cranz? That's what I said. They're, they're, they're behind. So it's going to be, it's going to be next year. I'm manifesting that part.
35:55 Nilay Patel? I don't think Apple feels like they're behind. I think they're looking at Samsung foiling. Like, I mean, the phones are good, but Samsung's like, yeah, I don't know.
36:04 Alex Cranz? Apple's looking at its record sales and it's like, wait, we don't have to do that.
36:09 Nilay Patel? I do not think they feel pressure. Like, we've said this a lot, like, new form factors are what prompts people to switch.
36:15 Alex Cranz? Right. Oh, man, that means we're gonna have to like, it's gonna be like four or five years because the Mac mini just came out. Oh, this is upsetting. I have to leave this Verge cast. I'll talk to you later.
36:25 Nilay Patel? But I just like, if you're, I just don't think the iPhone team is like looking at any of Samsung's foldables and like quaking. I mean, they're good phones. They're very cool. I'm not denigrating them. I just think no one is switching in that direction. Right? This was a stat they said about the SE, right? We've like attracted more new customers to iPhone with these products than ever before. And as, as long as they can just like wedge iMessage into the American discourse.
36:51 Alex Cranz? Yeah, they got it.
36:52 Nilay Patel? They're good. The phones are actually, okay, we should take a break. We, I don't know how we got to iMessage.
36:58 Speaker 04 Everything just leads to blue bubbles.
37:00 Alex Cranz? I am not to blame.
37:02 Nilay Patel? I think I have this theory about like things The Verge believes, and that's just on my list, is that the, the entire phone market is like distorted by iMessage.
37:11 Alex Cranz? Yes.
37:11 Nilay Patel? And we all know it and we can't, you can't just like walk the streets proclaiming this. Like everyone will be like, who are you? Like, we're just in Cinnabon, leave us alone. But it's extremely true. Okay, we gotta take a break. We're gonna come back and talk about this Mac. We'll be right back.
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38:39 Nilay Patel? All right, we're back.
38:40 Speaker 06 This is Mac Studio and Studio Display.
38:44 Nilay Patel? I'm very excited about this Mac. So the Mac Studio, new Mac, got a new chip in it. It's basically just a tall Mac Mini. It looks like a toaster. It's got a bunch of ports. It's got It's got plenty. Two USB C or Thunderbolt ports, depending on the chip. We'll talk about that. A SD card on the front. Front facing ports. Front facing ports, man. What a beautiful thing. All kinds of I/O, new chips. I'll just, to preface this, I will say, this weekend, we're going to have Jason Snow. He used to run Macworld Magazine. I have a piece on the site about the history of people demanding a product exactly like this from Apple. Like easily since the 90s. Can you ship a mid-range, powerful, tower-ish computer with a lot of I/O that we can just bring our own monitor and keyboard to?
39:29 Nilay Patel? Like since the 90s. Like it's hilarious how long people have wanted something exactly in this slot from Apple. And it You know, who wrote the headline insight? Was it John that Apple's just doing what people want now?
39:41 Alex Cranz? Yes.
39:42 Nilay Patel? Like, that's their whole Mac strategy is like, what have people always wanted? We should make those things. So like, I am excited about that, just because
39:50 Alex Cranz? We did it, kids.
39:51 Nilay Patel? It's interesting to see Apple just deliver a thing that people have wanted for easily 20 years. There's, they've never made a product like this.
40:00 Alex Cranz? They did it with a MacBook, like the refreshed MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro. They're like, oh, wait, if we actually give computer users what they're requesting, they will buy computers from us.
40:10 Nilay Patel? They'll be happy with us.
40:11 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that came to like, the most clear way with the MacBook Pros last year, right? Like, people were waiting for so long to buy MacBook Pros and then Apple finally rolled out everything everyone was been asking for in MacBook Pros and
40:25 Alex Cranz? Everybody bought them.
40:26 Speaker 04 They've been gangbusters.
40:27 Nilay Patel? My M1 Pro, 16-inch MacBook Pro, is by far the best computer I've ever had.
40:32 Speaker 04 Yeah.
40:33 Nilay Patel? Like, without a doubt, no questions. I've, there, I've had many stupid computers. I have many computers I've been very fond of, but this is just by far the most capable computer I've ever had. It's great. But what's interesting to me about this is this is the first time they've done it in a new category. Where people were demanding is Apple enter a category they were not in for 20 years. The last time that they made a computer like this was the G4 Cube.
40:57 Speaker 07 This is a stunning product, quite possibly the most beautiful product we've ever designed. The computer is in an eight-inch cube and it's suspended in a stunning crystal-clear enclosure.
41:08 Alex Cranz? It was actually a terrible, terrible device, but it looked so cool.
41:13 Nilay Patel? It looks so cool. When I worked in the, when I was in college, I was like the IT support person in the science library. It was great. It was a great job.
41:20 Alex Cranz? And you had all the G4s, right, the little cubes?
41:22 Nilay Patel? Yeah, we had tons of little cubes. I mean, that job was like, sit around and do your homework for like 12 bucks an hour. It was great. It was an amazing job to have in college. But people would like lose a file or they would get confused or like they couldn't figure out a print and then you would like go help them. And the science library was full of G4 cubes. And so everyone would sit down and they'd get all excited and they would put their papers on top of the cube and it had the vent on the top. So it would block the vent and the thing would overheat and it would shut down in the middle of the work. And so we had to put signs on the G4 cubes to like, do not put shit on top of this computer, thoroughly ruining the aesthetic of the entire thing. Anyway, that's the last time Apple's ever made anything like this.
41:55 Speaker 04 Notably, the vents are on the back of the Mac Studio and not the top. They fixed it.
42:01 Nilay Patel? Air comes in, there's two fans, air comes in from the bottom, the fan spin, they go out of, it's like 20,000 little dots.
42:06 Speaker 04 It's basically the same concept as the Mac Mini, just bigger with more fans and a bigger heat sink area, but same flow. And bigger processors. Yeah, we'll get into those.
42:15 Nilay Patel? Yeah, I'm just saying, it's the first time they've entered a category that people have been demanding for 20 years after this one notorious failure. Steve Jobs announced that the cube was only putting, put on hiatus by saying it was going on ice because it was a cube. So now it's back. It's not on hiatus anymore. It's back. This thing looks, you know, people are excited about it. It is basically the replacement for the iMac Pro, I would like to say. It's paired with the Studio Display, which costs $15.99. And then it's got these chips in it, which actually really changed the pricing. So the base model's M1 Max, same as a 16-inch.
42:51 Speaker 04 Which we know and love.
42:52 Nilay Patel? Same as a 16-inch MacBook Pro. That configuration costs $2,000.
42:57 Speaker 04 Yes.
42:58 Nilay Patel? And then there's a new chip called the M1 Ultra, which is effectively two M1 Maxes stitched together, which we should talk about. And that configuration starts at $4,000.
43:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, you can, you can like whittle it down a little bit and get it for like $3,800 if you're willing to go with 512 gigs of storage instead of one terabyte.
43:16 Nilay Patel? But everything in these computers is soldered in. So like.
43:19 Speaker 04 Yeah, you probably should just spend the 200 bucks. If you're spending $3,800, you probably should just spend the 200 to get at least a terabyte of storage in it. So yeah, but it's kind of funny because it's like the base model, Mac Studio, it comes with the M1 Max, 32 gigs of RAM and 512 gigs of storage for two grand. And then for four grand, you get the M1 Ultra, which is two M1 Maxes, you get 64 gigs of RAM and one terabyte of storage. So you get two of everything for twice the price.
43:49 Alex Cranz? The math works. I like it.
43:51 Nilay Patel? So Alex, this chip is fascinating, the Ultra.
43:54 Alex Cranz? Yeah, I think, I think, and Tom Warren did a great piece about this, too. Probably the most interesting thing about it is the Ultra Fusion tech, which is what's allowing them to stitch two processors together. Because like, everybody's kind of started embracing something called chiplet design, where you take lots of little smaller components, put them together, make a big, fast chip. I think just last week, there was a new standard announced for chiplet design. Heim wrote a wonderful piece about it. So Apple's like, not using that same standard. They're focusing on this thing called Ultra Fusion tech, which is more like AMD's Infinity Fabric. And if you've never heard of AMD's Infinity Fabric, it's why you've probably been hearing all about AMD for the last couple of years.
44:37 Alex Cranz? This is absolutely was a huge game changer for AMD when they rolled it out with the new Ryzen chips, like when the Ryzen line launched. Huge, huge game changer. And it just allowed the various chiplets to communicate really quickly. And it allowed them to start being really competitive with Intel in the integrated CPU space. Because they could integrate and have those, the GPU and the CPU, talk faster than an Intel product could. Apple's is 2.5 terabytes of bandwidth between the two sides. And that's just like unreal. That is so much faster. They're, they're basically faster than the Infinity Fabric.
45:17 Alex Cranz? They're basically faster than Nvidia's, like, comparative product, which is called
45:23 Nilay Patel? NVLink.
45:23 Alex Cranz? NVLink. And it's just, it's wild and it's neat. Tom talked about how it's aiming to beat the Nvidia's RTX 3090. I don't quite agree with him there. Because I think most people are still buying GPUs are, like 3090s and stuff are gamers, for the most part. And Apple, I say this as someone who tried to build a gaming beat around Apple in the late 2000s.
45:54 Nilay Patel? Wow.
45:55 Alex Cranz? You know, I'm not famous for it and there's a reason.
45:58 Speaker 04 So, Apple made the claim with the M1 Pro, M1 Max, a launch that it was comparable to an RTX 3060. And, and we found out that that's not really the case with any reasonable tests that you might do. So now they're making the claim against a 3090 with the Ultra. We're gonna have to see.
46:15 Nilay Patel? So with this chip, I will, the, the claims are hard to even describe, right? They did the thing again where they put up a bunch of graphs, the graphs, the, if they have labels at all. A lot of the graphs are like, it's 3.7x faster than a 27 inch iMac. And the 27 inch iMac has a bar that goes to 100. And then the other graph is just longer.
46:36 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's got extra vibes.
46:38 Nilay Patel? And, and then, you know, it's longer, but it's also more colorful. So if that speaks to you and you, you know how to test that, let me know, because we're, you know, we gotta figure it out. The other graphs are like the classic power performance graphs that Apple does.
46:51 Speaker 04 Relative performance versus wattage, yeah.
46:54 Nilay Patel? And so they, they measure the watts and then give you relative performance in tiny print on those graphs, which flashed by extraordinarily fast during this already extraordinarily fast event. You find out that it's a 3090. You find out that, you know, it's, it's various PCs that are powerful. But it's impossible to know what they're running.
47:13 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
47:14 Nilay Patel? So like, if, if we are reviewing this thing, we want to like verify their claim. Like, I don't even know what to do.
47:20 Alex Cranz? Yeah, they could be like, it's faster than the 3090 at the AI test on Civilization 6. You're like, cool, that only tests the CPU. That was a real big.
47:30 Speaker 04 What if it's faster than 3090 at running Final Cut Pro, which you can't run the 3090?
47:35 Nilay Patel? So it's just like, all that is just like hard to understand. What I will say about this chip is that I think that the fundamental technology is very cool. Um, there's, because Apple makes both the hardware and the software, it doesn't, nothing else runs on these chips, except iPadOS, I guess. But like they make all that too. They are able to abstract the fact that it's chiplets in that way, in a way that other companies cannot.
47:59 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
48:00 Nilay Patel? So like a lot of like Metal, the graphics system on the Mac is called Metal. A lot of Metal developers were freaking out about a tweet from an Apple engineer who's like, the M1 Ultra only presents one Metal interface. Like, it's not two GPUs to your software. It's only, it's just one chip that's extremely powerful. That is somewhat revolutionary.
48:21 Speaker 04 And it's one, one pool of shared unified memory.
48:24 Nilay Patel? And that, and that's crazy. So if you can get 128 gigs of memory to a GPU, like no one has ever been able to do that. You get 128 gigs of memory to a CPU that runs as fast as graphics memory, no one's been able to do that. I will say, and I asked about this, and we're just gonna have to see, Apple's big bet has been on this unified memory architecture.
48:43 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
48:44 Nilay Patel? And with the early M1s that only ship gigs of RAM, people do just run out of memory, right? Like, the video card and the CPU are competing for memory, and you can just max it out, which is not something you're used to on a modern computer. At 128 gigs of memory on an Ultra, like, if you are doing gigantic 3D scenes, or you're doing this other memory intensive stuff, like, I think Apple is gonna have to be careful. It's unclear if Apple reserves RAM for this system. Like, that stuff is just, it's a big bet that is now playing out at the high end of the market. We've already kind of seen how it plays out at the low end.
49:17 Alex Cranz? We're seeing it in that base model studio too, right? Like, most people's base model stuff is still eight or 16 gigs. Like, Windows PCs and stuff, they're all gonna be-
49:27 Nilay Patel? Well, the studios is starting at 32.
49:29 Alex Cranz? Right. And that's what I mean, is the studio is starting at 32 gigs, because this is a little bit more memory hungry, like, setup than an Intel or an AMD processor. So I think Apple is very, like, cognizant of it. That's what, I felt like I was winning when I saw I was not gonna have to pay extra for 32 gigabytes of RAM. I was like, ooh, a surprise for me. And I was like, oh, actually, I need it. I'm gonna really need it.
49:55 Nilay Patel? Yeah. So I think this computer, it's the first computer of this kind we've seen from Apple with M1 chips in it. Yes, the Mac Pro's exist, but in the context people are gonna use this computer, I think the memory issue will be more complicated. I don't think it'll be bad.
50:10 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
50:10 Nilay Patel? I think it's just gonna play out differently, because this is a- Professional desktop machine and people are going to do that kind of stuff with it. And so we'll see it's a it is a huge bet.
50:19 Speaker 04 Well, what is interesting to me is that, like you said, Apple's saying this is going to show up as one processor in the system. It's going to show up as one processor, one pool of memory, one GPU to the apps that access it. But you get all the benefits of two processors because you get twice the headroom for memory. So now, you know, you start at 64, you have 128 as an option, you can only go to 64 on the Macs. So if you have two Macs, now you got 128 and it quite literally is a north and south bridge of that memory. That is like a pool of 64 and a pool of 64 that's blended together. Then you get more Thunderbolt ports on the I O with the Ultra because it has more lanes of PCI bandwidth. Because it is two chips as opposed to one that are fused together.
51:02 Speaker 04 So it's it's you're like getting all the benefits of having two processors. But you're also getting all the benefits of one super fast processor. That can communicate very quickly between all of these lanes of of memory and whatnot. So it's a it's a pretty fascinating setup.
51:19 Nilay Patel? Yeah, and I will say, Apple's very clear, this is the last chip in the M1 family. And they were very clear that the only computer left is the Mac Pro. They did that on purpose. They were very clear that they were like, we needed to say this. So people like, no, like this isn't the replacement for the Mac Pro. This is the Mac Studio. We're still doing a Mac Pro. But we're not, there's no like M1 tremendous chip coming here, like whatever, whatever words they have left.
51:44 Alex Cranz? What's the big differentiator? Is it going to be GPU and having a AMD GPU on it? Will that be the big difference between the two?
51:52 Nilay Patel? It would be fascinating if they'd stick with other people's GPUs. I don't know that that'll be it.
51:57 Speaker 04 I think they're I just have a feeling that the Pro is going to come out with an M2. Like, that's just my gut.
52:02 Nilay Patel? You think they're going to go straight to it?
52:03 Alex Cranz? You don't think it's going to be like seven M1s bolted together?
52:07 Speaker 04 I suppose they could scale this Ultra Fusion.
52:10 Nilay Patel? They can.
52:10 Speaker 04 So that they're doing two here and they could do four in it. But like, then what do they call it? M1 Ultra squared? Like, I mean, like, they said that it's there's not going to be any other chips in this M1 family, right? So.
52:25 Alex Cranz? Well, I mean, they don't they don't call the various builds of the M1 Ultra because you can get it. There's a couple of different thread counts for it.
52:32 Speaker 04 But those are just like cores being turned on and off on the die, right? Like, if they wanted to do two M1 Ultras fused by Ultra Fusion, that would be like twice the die bandwidth or twice the die footprint.
52:43 Nilay Patel? I think that might be overthinking it. They might just do a Mac Pro and have two M1 Ultra chips in it or whatever. They could do that if they wanted to. I doubt it.
52:51 Speaker 04 But then how do they communicate? Like, that's the magic of this is that the Ultra Fusion is two M1 Maxes communicating really quickly.
52:57 Alex Cranz? Like, I think M1 Ultra is just when we start fusing chips together, that's our M1 Ultra. And like, because they said they're not going to do this is it. This is it. And it would be really weird to announce. I mean, I guess it wouldn't be weird if they do the M1, the Mac Pro as an M2 device, but that means they have to announce the entire M2 lineup.
53:21 Nilay Patel? They don't have to announce the entire M2 lineup.
53:22 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
53:23 Nilay Patel? So there are some rumors that they'll do some more stuff at WWDC. We'll see. I would say the thing you get really out of Mac Pro is expansion slots.
53:32 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
53:32 Nilay Patel? Like, that's the thing that that category of user needs. There's all kinds of weird accelerators. There's storage solutions. They're going to have to figure out some kind of expansion slot.
53:43 Alex Cranz? Got to figure out how to Frankenstein your old Nvidia processor in there.
53:48 Nilay Patel? I don't know if they think about GPU as expansion, right? I don't think that that's the case. I think it is weird accelerators, weird storage solutions, weird controllers for specialized applications that need high bandwidth.
54:00 Alex Cranz? Yeah, like actual pro stuff. I say actual because we all think, I definitely am like, oh, I got to get the pro device. I'm a pro. But I'm not a pro.
54:08 Speaker 04 That's what I think.
54:08 Alex Cranz? I'm not a real pro.
54:10 Speaker 04 I always look at buying guides and they say recommended for pros. And I'm like, that's me.
54:13 Alex Cranz? A real pro gets excited about those weird accelerators on the Mac Pro lineup. They're like, yes, I need that. And I do not care.
54:21 Nilay Patel? Look, I'm a professional podcaster and this 2015 iMac that I'm looking at right now is no longer. It's like, it's all I need, right? I get it.
54:28 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
54:28 Nilay Patel? So I just think that's that will be the differentiators. They're going to figure out that kind of I/O, which they've not had any call to do yet. We should talk about the actual computers for one second. It is port city on these on these machines.
54:40 Speaker 04 It's beautiful.
54:42 Nilay Patel? It is beautiful.
54:43 Speaker 04 I mean, this has USB A ports. This has the rectangles. As Monica's put on the site today, it has the rectangles. It's got two USB A ports. The back has four Thunderbolt ports. If you get the Ultra, there's two Thunderbolt ports on the front. If you get the Max chip, there's, those are USB C ports. We already mentioned the SD card slot. It's got HDMI out, which is still HDMI 2.0, not 2.1. This is for gamers, I guess.
55:08 Nilay Patel? Yeah. What are you gonna do with HDMI 2.1 on a computer that plays no games and doesn't support HDMI?
55:12 Speaker 04 I want to scroll really fast and with 120 hertz on my screen.
55:17 Nilay Patel? Yeah. It's headphone jack. Put that out there.
55:19 Speaker 04 It's a headphone jack.
55:21 Nilay Patel? So the two USB A ports are fascinating. So the Macmane has had USB A too. Yeah, I think it's half a concession to reality that some people, especially for a desktop computer, there's lots of USB A floating around. I think we've also heard there's lots of weird pro software that has USB DRM dongles and you just need to plug them in and wasting a Thunderbolt port on like a little authentication key is just the saddest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. So you just like stick it in the back, but I do, but even that is concession to reality, right? Like, Apple has tried this. I mean, I complain about 5G. Like, the USB C cycle has been a decade in the making and it has utterly failed to win.
56:04 Nilay Patel? And like, the reality is USB A is still here. It's still functional, still cheap as hell. And so even on your fanciest new Mac, you're like, here's two USB A ports because you might have a Pro Tools dongle or something else that just needs to off and wasting a Thunderbolt 4 port on that is, I mean, it's a crime. Like, I'll come to, I'll come to your house and arrest you.
56:26 Speaker 04 Notably, the last desktop computer that Apple introduced, which was the M1 iMac, had no USB A ports and it was all USB C.
56:35 Nilay Patel? I would love to hear from our listeners on this. I think Apple's belief is that consumers don't plug anything into their computers, which is like half true and half not, right? Like, I think they just believe that everything a consumer does on a computer is wireless and that's fine and that's the way it should be. And then if you have, if you are a pro, you're plugging everything in your computer all the time and there's no middle ground as far as I can tell and Apple's thinking about it. It's like you get one port or you get 9,000 and that's it. I don't like I whenever we do these reviews, I hear from people that's like, I haven't plugged anything in my computer all the time. And then I hear from another class of people. It's like, thank God the ports are back. And I'm like, thank God the ports are back.
57:14 Speaker 04 Yeah. I mean, this is the kind of computer where like, I love these Thunderbolt docks because they turned my laptop into like a port monster. Like you could legitimately not need a dock of any sort with this kind of computer.
57:27 Nilay Patel? If you need a dock for a desktop computer, I will come to your house.
57:30 Alex Cranz? Or you could get four docks and just have all the ports.
57:37 Speaker 04 In every single Thunderbolt port occupied by docks.
57:40 Nilay Patel? That's actually, I don't want to listen to you. I mean, like, yeah, we always want to hear from you. If you buy this computer and you buy four Thunderbolt port box and then fill all those ports, like, I want that.
57:49 Alex Cranz? I want, please send us that picture. It's incredible. I think my favorite thing about this product, though, is that the M1, the M1 Ultra version has a two-pound heat sink. There's a two-pound difference between the M1.
58:04 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's two pounds heavier. Yeah, exactly.
58:07 Alex Cranz? It's two pounds heavier than the M1 Max version because of two pounds of heat sink. That is so like, that's a lot of heat.
58:15 Speaker 04 It's twice as much as everything. It's twice as everything, right? So it only makes sense that you're going to have twice as big of a heat sink.
58:23 Nilay Patel? Apple did confirm to us that it is a different heat sink. It's copper and it weighs two pounds more, which is great. I would say the one thing we haven't really talked about is where this thing fits. I think people tend to forget the Mac Mini exists. The Mac Mini is like a great computer. People love it. This thing is $2,000. There is no more 27-inch iMac. There's just that 24-inch M1 iMac.
58:45 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
58:46 Nilay Patel? You can still buy an Intel Mac Mini, which is wild to me.
58:49 Alex Cranz? You should not be allowed to.
58:50 Speaker 04 It's like the only Intel computer left in the store, right?
58:54 Nilay Patel? No, the Mac Pro.
58:55 Speaker 04 Oh, and the Mac Pro, of course.
58:56 Nilay Patel? But I, where this sits is really, Apple announces a new computer, everyone tends to forget everything else exists. But this one's really interesting because there's a 24-inch iMac. Then if you want a 27-inch display.
59:07 Nilay Patel? They now will sell you a $1,600 display, which we can talk about. But you have to connect it to a computer and everyone's like, oh, now the 27 inch iMac has been replaced by a $3,500 setup. But I'm like, no, the Mac Mini is still there.
59:19 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
59:20 Nilay Patel? So I think the second you like, want something slightly bigger than 24 inches, they assume you're going to jump to a Mac Mini and then a large display. And if you want more processor, you're going to jump to this thing. But the Mac Mini has been so ignored for so long. Not by Apple, but just like by the world at large.
59:37 Alex Cranz? Apple ignores it too, because when Apple did its refresh, it, it didn't, it kept the same casing, like the M1 Mac Mini looks the exact same. That was totally why I didn't buy it.
59:48 Speaker 04 But so does the M1 Air. The M1 Air is the same model as the 2018 MacBook Air. They didn't change it. The only change that they made was when they moved to the 14 and 16 inch Pros.
59:56 Alex Cranz? Yeah, but the Mac Mini hadn't been updated for years.
59:59 Nilay Patel? In 2018. That's not that old compared to the Air.
1:00:02 Alex Cranz? Yeah, I guess that's true. I just felt, it just feels like Apple itself ignores the Mac Mini. And I think part of it is also, I feel like Apple doesn't take advantage. A Mac Mini costs almost the exact same as an M1 MacBook Air. Right? And there's no
1:00:19 Speaker 04 I think it's a few hundred bucks less.
1:00:21 Alex Cranz? It's not, but it's not enough.
1:00:23 Speaker 04 700 versus a thousand.
1:00:24 Alex Cranz? It's not enough. Like, like I'm getting a keyboard, I'm getting a monitor, I'm getting so much when I get a MacBook Air and a Mac Mini. I'm like, no, you need to be, you need to be like $500, $600 cheaper.
1:00:38 Speaker 04 You know what you get in a Mac Mini? You get some ports.
1:00:41 Alex Cranz? Yeah, I do get some ports. It's not enough.
1:00:43 Nilay Patel? I just say, but that, this weird place, and Apple will tell you the next year is a professional machine.
1:00:47 Alex Cranz? Yes.
1:00:48 Nilay Patel? But this place between Apple's consumer products and their pro products, there is like a yawning gap. Like, I think a lot of people would buy a 27 inch version of the M1 iMac. I would buy that computer.
1:00:59 Speaker 04 I've always wanted bigger screens. That's like your mantra, Eli. They always want a bigger screen.
1:01:03 Nilay Patel? Cheap, big screens. It's all anybody wants. So it's interesting that just sort of like, once you're done at 24, Apple's like, well, buy one of our desktop computers.
1:01:11 Speaker 04 I think it's telling that when they did the iMac M1, they moved from 21 to 24. Like they upgraded like the base iMac size.
1:01:21 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
1:01:21 Speaker 04 And that is kind of telling that like, this is as far as it's going to go. Like this is the size of the iMac now. And if you do want some more screen, for whatever reason, then you do have to move into a more professional setup if you're buying from Apple.
1:01:34 Nilay Patel? But I don't know if the Mini is like a professional setup. Like, that's the weird thing about it.
1:01:38 Speaker 04 No, but if you stick it with the studio display, which we need to talk about, then it becomes a professional setup.
1:01:43 Nilay Patel? We should take a break and talk about that. But maybe it does. Or you just buy whatever garbage monitor you want. Like Vox Media IT will fire a garbage Dell monitor.
1:01:55 Nilay Patel? All right, we should take a break and come back and talk about this monitor. I just, that's the thing that like, we were talking about with the iPad as well. If you just kind of look at Apple's various segments, there's some weird little corner cases where it's like, I just want a consumer Mac with a big screen. And now, and now the choice is you got to put one together.
1:02:14 Speaker 04 Or maybe you want an iPhone SE with a big screen, which
1:02:18 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
1:02:18 Speaker 04 V wrote about today.
1:02:19 Alex Cranz? It's a terrible, terrible opinion, despite everybody on this call agreeing with it and egging it on.
1:02:26 Nilay Patel? Everybody wants cheap big screens. We're gonna take a break and come back and talk about an expensive, medium-sized screen. We'll be right back.
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1:03:52 Nilay Patel? We're back. One more Apple thing to talk about, then we got a lightning round.
1:03:55 Alex Cranz? The Studio Display is in a class of its own.
1:03:59 Nilay Patel? 27-inch 5K Studio Display, $16.99. I will say this is one of the most controversial things that has ever entered the verge. Like, we had our, like, usual after-the-event call, and the fury that erupted on both sides. This is the best thing that's ever happened. This is the thing Apple should always make. This is garbage. I hate it. Like, we had to, like, calm them down.
1:04:19 Speaker 04 There was definitely two camps. There was the camp of the PC owners, who are maybe more likely to be gamers, who are saying, "You can get so much more for your money than this. This is awful value proposition." And then there's the camp of, like, people who have owned the ILG 5K, and are like, "This is actually great. This is what I've wanted for six years." And, "Oh, $1,600? I thought it was gonna be three grand."
1:04:46 Nilay Patel? So, Apple did the Pro Display XDR. It was their first external display in forever. It was a $5,000, $1,000 stand. It's incredibly expensive. Some people love it. If you love it, that's fine. I think a lot of people have found, uh, maybe not all the way up to the hype.
1:05:01 Alex Cranz? Yeah, there's probably other ways to spend your $5,000.
1:05:04 Nilay Patel? This display is cheaper. It contains a lot of the same display language. The stand comes with it. It's not $1,000 extra, unless you want to adjust the height, in which case you'll pay $400 more, which is crazy. For all we can tell, we have not seen the thing yet. It is the same 27-inch panel from an iMac that we have been looking at forever.
1:05:25 Speaker 04 It's got a slightly brighter, yeah, so that it can get that HDR 600 rating, because it can do 600 nits.
1:05:32 Nilay Patel? I think that is a quote-unquote HDR. We'll see. But typical 600 nits of brightness is what they told us. Again, we don't know, so we'll see. No mini LED, no...
1:05:43 Speaker 04 It's a single backlight, backlight zone. There's no multiple backlight zones.
1:05:46 Nilay Patel? Same old tech. You can get a nano texture coating.
1:05:48 Alex Cranz? Do we know for sure it's the same backlight tech and there's not zones?
1:05:52 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's a single zone.
1:05:53 Nilay Patel? If Apple was doing backlight zones, like the amount of backlight zone graphics that we would have been exposed to would have been through the roof.
1:05:59 Alex Cranz? It would have been a four hour announcement.
1:06:01 Nilay Patel? Can't get enough of backlight zones in the spaceship. The thing about it that is just mind blowing to me is it has an A13 chip inside of it. It has a 12 megapixel front camera. That is an iPhone. They just put an iPhone in this thing.
1:06:14 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
1:06:15 Nilay Patel? Just to run the camera and the speakers.
1:06:18 Alex Cranz? I love it.
1:06:18 Nilay Patel? It has what? Six speakers, four woofers, two tweeters. Apple will happily tell you it's the best sound they've ever put on any of their computer products. They claim it does still be Atmos in spatial audio. We will see. The whole point of Atmos is like height, you know, it's like, is the monitor going to rise above you?
1:06:36 Speaker 04 Yeah, if you pay $400, you can lift the monitor higher and there's your height.
1:06:41 Nilay Patel? It goes above you.
1:06:42 Alex Cranz? You hear those helicopters.
1:06:43 Nilay Patel? Atmos is $400, you gotta lift it above your head. But the A13 is nuts that it's in there. It does not do iPhone things.
1:06:50 Alex Cranz? No.
1:06:50 Nilay Patel? It supports center stage and like the Boca effect, the portrait effect that you can get off an M1 Mac.
1:06:57 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
1:06:58 Nilay Patel? My read on it is that if you have an M1 Mac, a modern M1 Mac with a webcam, like the MacBook Pro or the iMac or whatever, it's going to look a lot like that, but because the camera is slightly better, it's a 12 megapixel camera, it'll be better, but that's it. So like, what is the point of this A13? It's running the audio, it's running the camera, but it's not doing iPhone tricks. It's not doing night mode.
1:07:20 Speaker 04 It was the chip they could get.
1:07:23 Nilay Patel? You think it's just the chip they could get? Like, I mean, we're going to end up with, I like Apple Watches with A15s in them because Apple's like, ah, we got, this is all we can get our hands on. And I mean, like, I'm joking. It's probably the most efficient way for them to do it.
1:07:38 Alex Cranz? No, I think you're, I think you're right in that it is, it is probably influenced by the shortage because otherwise they were going to have to, if they wanted to do center stage, if they wanted to do all of this, they were going to have to put a processor in there and they're either going to have to make a custom one, which means. Then they have to go and start that process of getting a custom processor made. And that's takes a lot that it's a ramp up that takes time. And there's a shortage, like, everybody's going to be like, no, I'm not going to do this for your like one off, small, like, monitor. Everybody's going to say, I could get way more money.
1:08:07 Nilay Patel? What, what has the A13 now? This is a current product. I think the base model iPad has a Kurt, has an A13 in it. That does center stage. It has these features, so it's, it's, yeah, pretty drop in.
1:08:17 Alex Cranz? They're pumping out these A13s already. And I think it just was like, super cost efficient for them to be like, yeah, we don't need to make something new. We'll just use this processor. Cause it probably doesn't, like, the A13 does not cost them a lot of money at this point.
1:08:30 Nilay Patel? Yeah. You know, you could do with an A13 and a giant display, though, is make it a touchscreen and just run iPad apps on it. And they, I will tell you, I said this, and they're like, no, you can run iPad apps on the Mac already through our wonderful blah, blah, blah. Like, they're like, no, we, we're not doing that.
1:08:44 Alex Cranz? Are people going to figure out how to run iPad OS, like, on this thing at some point?
1:08:49 Nilay Patel? Yes, you plug an iPad into it.
1:08:53 Nilay Patel? Well, it's not a touch, it's not a touchscreen. So that's like your first problem.
1:08:57 Alex Cranz? It's got mouse support.
1:08:59 Nilay Patel? Yeah, it's true, but at some point, someone's going to try to crack this thing, right?
1:09:03 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
1:09:03 Nilay Patel? I hope there's like a huge studio display jailbreak community. That would be amazing. But I don't know that this thing is connected to the display controller.
1:09:11 Alex Cranz? Hmm.
1:09:12 Nilay Patel? I think, like, from Apple's perspective, this thing, like, runs the camera and it runs the speakers and it runs the microphones.
1:09:19 Alex Cranz? So we're looking at like, a couple of years before someone's like, yeah, I'll buy this and crack it open and figure out how to.
1:09:25 Nilay Patel? No one's seen one yet, so I'm sure someone's going to pull this thing apart right away. But it is wild to me that, yep, it's expensive, especially compared to that LG 5K, which everyone has hated forever. It's like a bad product.
1:09:35 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
1:09:36 Nilay Patel? And everyone's always been like, why don't you just take the 5K this way out of the iMac and sell it to us? Well, they did it. It's just really expensive. And part of the reason it's really expensive is it has most of an iPhone in there.
1:09:45 Speaker 04 I mean, they also did it like five years later. Like, I feel like if they pulled this out five or six years ago, people would have been like 600 bucks. Okay, cool. You know, this is kind of a new screen. It's like you're getting the latest technology. Now it's like six years later and it is, you know, no HDR, no promotion. It is only 27 inches, which I don't know about you, but like 27 inches is pretty small at this point. It just feels dated already, even though it looks gorgeous. It'll probably function very well. It'll integrate. It's got a whole iPhone jammed in there. It just that I think that is a lot of the visceral reaction to the price. But I went into this event thinking they were going to announce a display of those $3,000.
1:10:25 Alex Cranz? And I see, I don't think it's actually that expensive. I mean, yes, it is $1,600. That is a lot of money. But when you're looking at like high end 27 inch monitors.
1:10:36 Speaker 04 I'm staring at a 49 inch monitor that runs at 240 hertz that I paid $1,000 for.
1:10:41 Alex Cranz? Yeah, and I'm looking like I'm looking at a 27 inch monitor that I spent $1,000 on. Maybe I just got bamboozled there, but.
1:10:49 Nilay Patel? I'm looking at a 2015 iMac. It's the same display. You already know what you're getting.
1:10:55 Alex Cranz? I don't think it is for what you're getting in this product. I think, yes, it is expensive, but it's not as expensive as we think because one, it's got a really nice webcam. And nobody else has a really nice integrated webcam. Who's making a really nice integrated webcam and a 27 inch monitor?
1:11:11 Nilay Patel? Well, so this is actually my question about it. They should sell a version without the webcam. If you buy three of these, which some people will do.
1:11:17 Alex Cranz? Or you should just sell the webcam.
1:11:18 Nilay Patel? Your Zoom situation is going to be.
1:11:21 Speaker 04 Bring back the eyesight, you cowards.
1:11:22 Nilay Patel? Like, everyone is going to become like one of those Twitch streamers with multiple angles on a Zoom when they buy three of these. But you only need one.
1:11:30 Nilay Patel? It's there's an argument to be made. They should definitely sell a cheaper version without the webcam.
1:11:35 Alex Cranz? Yes, I think that would have taken a little bit of the sting out of the price, even though the price is still not $3,000, which Dan and I. Like, I think before the event, Dan and I were like, yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be 3,000.
1:11:46 Speaker 04 I was like 2,500 if we're lucky.
1:11:47 Nilay Patel? I'm excited to look at this thing. I'm a display nerd.
1:11:50 Alex Cranz? I'm very excited for it.
1:11:53 Speaker 04 I'll tell you, you are looking at it right now.
1:11:56 Nilay Patel? I'm definitely looking at this thing already right now.
1:11:58 Speaker 04 I'm sure it looks beautiful in person, though.
1:12:00 Nilay Patel? It does. It does work with Windows, including the camera, but you don't get any of the camera features because that's software integration. So that's good.
1:12:06 Alex Cranz? Yeah.
1:12:07 Nilay Patel? It's not the end of the world. It is only a Thunderbolt input. It can charge any Mac laptop, which is. Good. It's actually pretty hard to find 96 watt power supplies for like the top end laptops.
1:12:19 Speaker 04 Out of a monitor.
1:12:20 Alex Cranz? It's got a lot of ports on it.
1:12:21 Nilay Patel? I love, I mean, Apple's just doing what I want. At the end of the day, you know, just like, give me a couple of ports and headphone jack. I'm happy.
1:12:26 Speaker 04 Oh, we cannot forget. It also has, hey Siri.
1:12:29 Alex Cranz? Yes.
1:12:30 Speaker 04 Why? Because it has a whole iPhone in there.
1:12:34 Nilay Patel? Fair enough. Let's do a quick little lightning round. Apple updated all of its preferials to make black versions for the new studio, Magic Mouse, keyboard, trackpad, Magic Mouse. We've written this story every year for the past five years. We'll keep writing it. Still charges in the bottom, which is hilarious. That team, when they're like, make a black one. Do you think they're like, I don't know. And they just like rolled the Photoshop dropper over and like now it's black. Carry on. Apple TV plus is going to do live sports, which is a huge deal. Katie Kekka is written about this. You know, sports are the stickiest thing for a streaming platform.
1:13:06 Speaker 04 It's a shame they chose baseball, though, this year.
1:13:09 Nilay Patel? And it's two games on Friday. It's gonna be free at first. It's, and yes, it's true that baseball's on.
1:13:15 Speaker 04 There's no baseball yet. Like, is there gonna be a season this year? Is that an open question?
1:13:20 Nilay Patel? You know, I'm, I'm a cynic about Apple TV plus. I think they do it mostly to say they have a services product, like they can trot out Reese Witherspoon instead of like a Candy Crush whale when they talk about services revenue. Like, I think that's important to them. But it's interesting that they're going to sports now because sports are expensive to get and they are the thing that makes people sign up for streaming services.
1:13:42 Alex Cranz? But baseball also has like, how many games? Way more games than football or basketball.
1:13:47 Speaker 04 Yes. 10 times as many games.
1:13:49 Alex Cranz? Yes. Like, and they're only doing Fridays. I don't think we know yet if there're gonna be blackout dates, if like, what kind of games we're gonna get.
1:13:57 Nilay Patel? Well, we have to have a baseball season.
1:13:59 Alex Cranz? Yeah, we have to.
1:13:59 Speaker 04 So, you know, we're putting the cart before the horse there. They need to actually like have an opening day.
1:14:05 Nilay Patel? Yeah. All their lightning round stuff, they have a three meter Thunderbolt four cable. It's $160. That's hilarious.
1:14:12 Speaker 04 A great price because you cannot buy a three meter Thunderbolt four cable from anyone else.
1:14:17 Nilay Patel? It's a great, it's like the ultimate monopolist, like a great price. There's all sorts of other stuff we talked about. Google did a big Android feature drop and then their new SVP of tablet stuff, Rich Miner, went on their own Android show and talked about the future of Android tablets is bright.
1:14:35 Speaker 04 Oh, yep, we'll see that.
1:14:37 Nilay Patel? Okay. They hired a guy.
1:14:39 Alex Cranz? There's a guy there. I mean, maybe he could do it.
1:14:43 Nilay Patel? Android also finally rolled out their iOS friendly emoji reactions in Google Messages. In case, you know, you have chosen a Google messaging product and it's that one.
1:14:53 Alex Cranz? You're brave.
1:14:56 Nilay Patel? Pixel feature drops are in beta, so if you have Pixel, you can do that. We've got a bunch of cool gadget stuff on this site.
1:15:02 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:15:03 Alex Cranz? I'm going to plug something here that is very, very cool and I'm super excited about. You could now, if you want, 3D print and build your own trackball mouse.
1:15:12 Nilay Patel? That's pretty cool.
1:15:13 Alex Cranz? And we have a great story about it. The guy went, he's built a bunch. It's called Ploopy.
1:15:18 Nilay Patel? Yeah.
1:15:18 Alex Cranz? Plooby.
1:15:19 Nilay Patel? Are you gonna do it?
1:15:20 Alex Cranz? Oh, yeah. Mine is in route as we speak. I'm gonna go buy some, like, I'm gonna sand it down to get it nice and smooth. I have never been more excited to build.
1:15:29 Speaker 04 Trackball hacks in 2022.
1:15:31 Alex Cranz? Yeah. It's great.
1:15:33 Nilay Patel? I love it. Victoria reviewed the Eve Saint Laurent lipstick printer, which is actually just like really cool.
1:15:39 Alex Cranz? I want it.
1:15:39 Nilay Patel? Yeah. Should read that. The Steam Deck now runs Windows. Sean Halster is obsessed with Steam Deck. This is, can't get enough of it all day long. I'm like, what are you working on? It's like Steam Deck stuff. I'm like, okay, keep, keep believing that try. We have a cool hands-on alien, so you know, monitors. Alienware has a gigantic QD OLED monitor.
1:15:57 Speaker 04 The, the thing that's significant about this is the first QD OLED screen that's actually shipping and you can buy. There was a bunch of QD OLED stuff announced at CES, including this monitor. Bunch of TVs were announced, but you can't yet buy those. So like, this is the first experience that people are getting of QD OLED, uh, which is pretty exciting, pretty interesting. And it's also interesting that it's in a gaming monitor, um, which is usually one of the most demanding places for a new panel tech to go.
1:16:20 Nilay Patel? I mean, I'm definitely gonna buy this monitor. And then my favorite headline of the week, because I can't believe this company is called Nothing. So I like read this headline. I was like, what are we talking about? Nothing can't stop smartphone leaks. And I thought it was like a large piece about the state of smartphone.
1:16:32 Speaker 04 I have to take this credit because I wrote this headline.
1:16:35 Nilay Patel? I was like, what, what does this mean? The fact that this company is called Nothing is the greatest troll in tech history. There's other stuff going on. Actually, both Peloton and Oculus have now integrated themselves in Apple Health, which is like, pretty interesting, just from a lock-in that's this week in lock-in. Like Peloton finally gave in. Peloton got a new CEO and they started doing stuff they should have been doing forever, like letting you sync to Apple Health. They're trialing a program where you get the bike and the software subscription for one fee.
1:17:01 Speaker 09 Like, yeah.
1:17:02 Nilay Patel? Then you guys showed up and he's like, what are you doing? Just like,
1:17:04 Speaker 09 This is like, can we stop burning cash? Here's some ideas.
1:17:07 Nilay Patel? Grabbing this low-hanging fruit. Exactly. But it's fascinating that Oculus Meta is doing it with Oculus 2. It's fascinating to do that because there's rumors of Facebook Watch 2. We're all over that. That's it. That's we've done a lot of Apple. There's a lot of news on the site. It's had a great week. It's Creative Makers Week on the site. It's another DIY week. There's a ton of amazing stories about people making stuff, including a guide who says tintype photography. You should read that. And then we have a big feature on Justin Sun, who is a crypto entrepreneur. Just keeps getting away with it. And that has some of the best art traction we've ever had on the site. So go read that. That's it. We've gone over.
1:17:43 Speaker 09 No, we didn't.
1:17:44 Nilay Patel? Not us. We went over. You can tweet at us. I'm at Reckless. Dan's DCC for it. Alex is Alex H. Cranz. Decoder this week was really fun. It was the CEO of Raspberry Pi, Evan Upton. And he was like, I'm never doing recurring revenue software. Like, we just make cool, cheap hardware. And then it beguiles kids into becoming software programmers. Great episode. One of my favorites. That's it. We'll be back next week. We're like in the thick of it. Like, the tech news cycle is like off to the races.
1:18:10 Speaker 09 I love it.
1:18:11 Nilay Patel? So there's more to come. Actually, next week on Decoder is the CEO of WordPress. So that'll be Matt Mullen. That was a really good one, too. That's it. I can roll.
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