Pod Insights The Vergecast Apple Watch Series 6 with WSJ's Joanna Stern About this episode Every Tuesday this month, Vergecast co-host Dieter Bohn hosts a series of discussions diving deep into tech review season, each focusing on a specific product.
This week, Dieter talks with senior personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal and Verge alum Joanna Stern about Apple's Watch Series 6.
Dieter and Joanna also discuss the process of reviewing gadgets on video and the complications of reviewing a product that has this many variants.
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1:09 Speaker 02 Greetings, mobile accomplishers. I am Dieter Bone. This is The Vergecast, and it is our special run of a few episodes that we're doing where we're doing a deep dive into our reviews of the hardware that's coming out in this very, very busy fall hardware season with other people outside The Verge who have reviewed the same devices. So this week, we are talking about the Apple Watch Series 6, and I am very excited to say that we have Joanna Stern from The Wall Street Journal on. She's a friend, and she's also a former colleague. She used to work here at The Verge. Now, by the time this podcast goes up, Joanna's review will have already been up, but I'm not sure if mine will be up or not yet because I've run into some production hassles, which is what happens during the middle of a pandemic
1:53 Speaker 02 when you're trying to learn a new skill all by yourself. We actually talk about that a little bit. But as I'm working on this review, the thing that I'm really struggling with is how much I love this watch right now in this moment, because one of the hobbies I'm trying to pick up is riding my bike more often. And the Apple Watch has biking directions. It has actually a pretty good ecosystem of biking apps now. And so more than ever before, I am depending on and sort of loving using my Apple Watch as a thing that's good for my fitness. But at the same time, the flagship feature of this Apple Watch Series 6 is a blood oxygen monitor that I think is frankly unreliable. And so does Joanna, actually. We give a lot of talk to that. And I don't know, she gives me a little bit of help thinking through how to think about
2:38 Speaker 02 the blood oxygen monitor in the context of this thing being a quote unquote wellness device instead of an actual medical device. Also, we talk about putting hot dogs inside folding phones, like you do. Anyway, it's a super fun conversation with a very fun person, and I think you're going to enjoy it.
2:58 Speaker 02 Joanna Stern, you are the Senior Personal Technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal, also my friend. How you doing?
3:04 Speaker 03 Good. It's good to be here with you, Dieter. You in your closet, me in my office. Your closet is beautiful.
3:10 Speaker 02 It's not a beautiful closet, but it is big enough to fit me, which I like. Actually, we're probably going to talk about this later, like how we actually produce stuff at home.
3:19 Speaker 03 I thought you meant like me coming out of the closet.
3:20 Speaker 02 No, no, that's not.
3:23 Speaker 03 We can talk about that. I feel like you might remember that.
3:26 Speaker 02 Wow.
3:27 Speaker 03 This is a personal podcast, I thought.
3:29 Speaker 02 I mean, we're supposed to be talking about the Apple Watch Series 6.
3:32 Speaker 03 Which is the most personal of tech products, so we just get so personal.
3:36 Speaker 02 So by the time this episode goes up, your review's already up. Mine may be posted. I'm working on it right now. I'm shooting the video this afternoon, actually, or part of the video. High level, what do you think of the Series 6? Yeah.
3:49 Speaker 03 I think I said in my review, nope. It's not because it's a bad product. I just, I thought the Series 5 was great. It was good. It was a great update from the 4. I thought the 4 actually was like, as far as Apple Watches go, the best Apple Watch release we've had. I questioned doing the review, actually, but I did feel like there was a lot to explain about the choices. So this is a long-winded way of saying no.
4:11 Speaker 02 Yeah. Your last line in your review was like the thing I was like had in the back of my mind as a headline. If I can come up with a pun for a headline, I know I want to do it. I usually don't. I usually get talked out of it. But I think you said, if it ain't broke, don't Series 6 it? Which is like, like, perfect.
4:25 Speaker 03 Can't believe I got it in.
4:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's so good.
4:27 Speaker 03 Imagine if you were my editor, or I was your editor, and we just let all the puns go in.
4:32 Speaker 02 It would just be chaos.
4:34 Speaker 03 I know Neill I hates puns. Maybe he just has to because of who he's friends with.
4:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, no, there's he wouldn't survive otherwise. I think that like I've got a series five and it was important to me to have it always on screen. So that's why I liked that one. But other than that, like the the series six, it seems like the biggest thing they did that will actually matter to people is they added the blue and the red colors that people might want and they like tweaked the other colors. Sort of like, you know, they change the iPod every year. And so if they just add some more colors to the Apple Watch, maybe they'll convince some extra people to buy it.
5:04 Speaker 03 I actually forgot to mention the new colors in the review. I mentioned the solo loop, which I think is the best innovation yet in the Apple Watch.
5:12 Speaker 04 The solo loop is remarkably simple. No clasp, no buckle, no overlapping parts, just one continuous piece.
5:21 Speaker 03 Actually, it's funny. I went back on the fifth anniversary of the Apple Watch, which was what, April? And I watched back my first review, which I realized almost every single thing they had hit except for two things. One was sleep tracking, which we got. And two was I fumbled with and made fun of the sport loop.
5:40 Speaker 02 Yep.
5:40 Speaker 03 You know, looking back on it was like, yeah, you know, it was a little too harsh on that. But like, it was my initial reaction. We had just had the watch for like a week. And I kept fumbling with putting that thing on. And now, of course, it's like second nature because we've had like six years of these. But this loop band is like, yes, Apple just invented loop bands and they're amazing.
6:01 Speaker 02 So they like, you know, they're stretchy and they slap out. The loop bands are super hard to size. Apple had to like update the way that their sizing tool. They didn't send them to me initially because Apple, I don't know, they wanted, it was important to them that I had a band that matched the watch because they sent me the the red watch. And they don't have red loops yet. Anyway, I said, it looks like I'm a size seven, maybe a size eight. And I got a size seven and a size seven is maybe a little bit loose, but I think a size six would be too tight. So I think I might, I might actually be in between loop sizes. I'm a little bit worried.
6:33 Speaker 03 I am in the same exact boat. So they sent me three and fours.
6:37 Speaker 02 Okay.
6:37 Speaker 03 And I have the Navy and they sent me a number of these because they wanted to make sure it would match. And so they sent four bands. Two in size three, two in size four. And first couple of days, I started wearing three. And it was tight. Like I would take it off and there was like the imprints, you know, like the kind of imprints of like when you sleep too hard on a pillow or something.
6:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:58 Speaker 03 And I went up to the four. Now, the four is very comfortable, but the blood oxygen level reading thing sensor requires that this be really quite flush with the skin to work. So apparently four is not tight enough. So really, similar to how I am in shoe sizes, I should be a three and a half. I'm not a three and a half in shoe sizes. That would actually be like a baby foot. I have to just wear my son's shoes all the time. But I'm an eight and a half shoe size. So they should make half sizes.
7:34 Speaker 02 Maybe they'll do that next year. There'll be another reason to upgrade.
7:37 Speaker 03 Or maybe the they do stretch over time, which I haven't really worn for long enough to know, but could be.
7:44 Speaker 02 So in your review, you wrote, remember your SAT multiple choice tactics, eliminate two choices and you suddenly have a 50/50 shot at a correct pick. Buying an Apple Watch is like that. And I feel the exact same way because they have three models now that they're selling that are new. There's the series six, there's the series three, and that's a cheap one. And then there's the SE, which is kind of like a repackage series four. But also, if you want, you could maybe go hunt down a like a used or refurbished series five. And it's like Samsung-y, how many different versions of the Apple Watch there are now?
8:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, two things that I wanted to say off of this. One, I ended up buying my dad an Apple Watch for Father's Day. It was a series five and it was right before WWDC. And WWDC happens and I'm like, you know what, I should return it. Turns out it was too late to return it. So it's like, hold on to it. Maybe I can sell it or something. But now looking at it, I'm like, this is actually the best model out right now. Sure, like you can ignore the pulse ox and blood sensor, blood oxygen sensor. But I was like, I really think people could still buy series fives for a little bit of a discount and be super happy.
8:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:52 Speaker 03 Yeah. And then I think on the why there are so many choices, I think this tends to happen when there's not a ton of innovation or big leaps in products from Apple in a certain year. And they're sort of like, people, either we're going to address the market of people who don't have Apple Watches, which is a huge market right now. So let's give them a bunch of choices and they choose. Buying any of these is good for them because then they're making money on a new customer. Plus, talk about fitness. Plus, coming down the road, even more money. Or maybe there's some upgraders out there who will like one or two new features and they'll go and buy it.
9:24 Speaker 02 When you get a product that has like this many variants or this many like, how do you help somebody decide which version to buy and on top of whether to buy it in the first place? How do you think about approaching that? Because I always struggle. I mean, writing for The Verge, people want to know all the specs and they want to know the whole chart and blah, blah, blah, blah. But at a certain point, I feel like talking about like, I don't know, the series six in the context of the series five is not actually helpful because most people don't have a series five. And so there's always this tension between like, there's people that want you to compare everything for them. And then there's just like, you want to give some buying advice. And I never know how to approach when there's multiple versions of the same product.
10:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, I tried to address all of it in this, knowing that I also had had a bunch of reader emails who were interested in buying watches for the first time. And frankly, like, for a lot of my reviews now, I try to approach like, some of the more interesting features. I try to focus on one or two of the features and I think try to dig in on that. With this, I felt that was really hard. Yes, I could have done it on Pulseox or, but I had just done this piece a couple of months ago on wearables and all the sensors that are in them. So I didn't feel like redoing that was that important. Plus, I'm not really sure that's a buying, like it's a buying decision, that feature.
10:39 Speaker 02 Right.
10:40 Speaker 03 So I tried to just like, give an overview, give my thoughts on which one you should get. You know, the headline kind of said, like, watch out for the upsell. Like, I think most people should buy the SE and they'll be happiest. But I got, I got an amazing reader email. You know, I'm gonna read it.
10:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, let's hear it.
10:55 Speaker 03 You know, maybe this puts Wall Street Journal readers in a bad light, but, and so, yeah, this is an email from someone who is not happy. He said, "By the way, your readers are paying $500 per year to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. You are not, they are not nickel and diming over the lowest cost alternatives. It costs $800 every five years to have my Rolex cleaned." And I just thought that was an amazing email because it represents the breadth of readers of the Wall Street Journal.
11:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:20 Speaker 03 And so, yeah, you know, maybe they are just gonna go and buy the most expensive watch and not listen to me. But also, I told you that Apple's really not giving you the feature add-on that I think that they should be giving you for that extra money.
11:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, so the feature add-on is the blood oxygen sensor.
11:35 Speaker 04 The new health sensor in series six shines red and infrared light onto your wrist and measures the amount of light reflected back. Advanced algorithms use this data to calculate the color of your blood, which indicates the amount of oxygen present. The new blood oxygen app lets you take a measurement in just 15 seconds.
11:53 Speaker 02 How did it work for you?
11:54 Speaker 03 Well, how did it work for you, Dieter?
11:55 Speaker 02 It did not. It works if I am very, very, very deliberate and I push the watch all the way up my arm. So it's nice and snug and tight. And then I definitely rest my arm and then I'll probably get a reading at that point. And the reading will probably not make me have a panic attack because it will be above 95%. And basically any other situation where it's further down my wrist or I'm sleeping or like it's doing it in the background or whatever, I get readings that either don't work or they come in low and I get really worried and then I go grab my finger monitor and I look at it and I'm like, oh, I'm fine. And it's, it's sort of shocking that there's this thing that they chose to release in the middle of a pandemic that one of its like error things that happens is telling
12:40 Speaker 02 you that you have low blood oxygen, which you shouldn't actually pay too much attention to that unless you actually actively have COVID-19. And I'm not a doctor, don't take advice from me, but neither is Apple and don't take advice from Apple because this isn't a medical device, right?
12:53 Speaker 03 I couldn't agree with you more. And I've been shaking my head furiously for those, because we're doing this via video. But I didn't have a lot of the lower readings. I got, I was, you know, if I had done a video, I think I just would have like screamed unsuccessful measurement for 15 minutes and just published that video with this. I got unsuccessful measurement so many times and exactly what you, more times than I could count and exactly what you just described, pushing the, the watch up the arm. I don't, I have a very steady arm. I like to brag about that sometimes, but doing that, holding steady fixed the issue. Now, sometimes when I wouldn't get unsuccessful measurement, like when it's still low down
13:35 Speaker 03 the wrist and I would get like a slightly lower reading, I never got in the eighties. Have you gotten in the eighties?
13:41 Speaker 02 I've had background readings in the, in the eighties and I like, oh, that's real bad. I don't know.
13:45 Speaker 03 That's real bad. Yeah. I mean, no doctor is going to be happy with that.
13:48 Speaker 02 No doctor is going to be happy with that. But also, Apple's own website says, don't use this as a diagnostic tool or with a doctor as a diagnostic tool. They don't just say it's not a medical device. They, they explicitly use the, the like ooh la la language. Of this is for health and wellness. It's a wellness device. Actually, that spectrum is interesting because normally you would think Apple wouldn't be on the, you know, like when we go to CES every year, we'd go to like the health gadget section and there'd be a bunch of people making really, really dubious claims. But they do it in this like perfectly weasel wordy way. So you know that it's like, okay. Or they, you know, they won't get in trouble with the FDA. So there's a spectrum of like weird wellness things, like all the way up to like full on medical devices and
14:32 Speaker 02 health gadgets sort of land somewhere on that spectrum. And we actually asked, I think we got a clip, we asked our health reporter Nicole Wetsmann, like where on the spectrum the Apple Watch falls? So let's, let's listen to that real quick. Cause we talked about this on the Vergecast.
14:43 Speaker 05 I think it probably falls closer to the like quantified self, get some health data. It's not like the EKG feature, which does have FDA clearance and can be used sort of, they can market it as more of a medical function. But, you know, I think that this is something that could follow a similar trajectory that that did. You know, like a lot of people were very skeptical of Apple's EKG when it first came out, like doctors and cardiologists. And then you saw some validation and, you know, people looked at the studies and they said, okay, like, maybe this can be something that's useful. And I think we might see a similar trajectory with pulse ox on wearables. Now that they're on a couple of devices and we'll probably see a little bit more attention to them.
15:22 Speaker 02 So the, the pulse ox on the Apple Watch is like, doesn't that seem useful to me? Do you think that it's going to be useful ever on wearable devices like this? Cause you've, you've tried a bunch of them.
15:32 Speaker 03 Yeah. I mean, I think one thing that she raised there that is a really good point. And I think you were getting at it too, which is we might not have expectations that this would be in that medical realm versus that wellness shady CES product realm. If Apple hadn't had FDA clearance on the EKG and hadn't had that far and ahead above its competitors. Right. It actually kicked off in many ways, the competitors trying to get their features certified by the FDA. So I think when they introduce something like this, the expectation is sort of a little bit higher from Apple. I was shocked during the presentation that we didn't hear more about the way the Apple Watch is being used.
16:12 Speaker 03 In medical research this year from Apple because I have followed pretty closely the wearable story and Fitbit has led that way and the Oura ring has led that way and we have these thousands and thousands of these, I mean, hundreds of thousands. I don't know how many, I mean, Fitbit's kind of hit millions, right?
16:31 Speaker 02 Probably, yeah.
16:32 Speaker 03 On people and we are gathering data and we can now spot signs, people who end up getting COVID, when we look back at their data, we can see that there were clear signs that they were coming down with something and there might be even clear signs that they were coming down with COVID versus the flu or COVID versus just a cold or a virus. And I think that's fascinating because we do wear these things and we just, you know, kind of think about what we wear them for, which is maybe fitness, maybe to tell the time, maybe to just, you know, I bought these for my parents because if they fall, I want to know and I want them to be safe. But then there's been this background thing happening that maybe we didn't consider. So I'm fascinated by that. And I figured Apple Watches have been actually been used in a lot of those studies. Stanford and
17:15 Speaker 03 others have been using Apple Watches because they take a lot of the vital measurements they need for this sort of stuff and the fluctuations can be shown in heart rate and they can be shown in activity, sleep now they have, so they could see the fluctuations there. But yeah, I think Apple's being cautious. That's really smart. But then why introduce this this year with no real purpose for it was the big thing I said in my review. And maybe the purpose isn't also that clear because they don't know yet.
17:45 Speaker 02 Which is also strange, right?
17:46 Speaker 03 Yeah.
17:47 Speaker 02 Typical with this stuff, like there's some direct consumer benefit, even if they haven't got the results of the full study yet, or even if they haven't gotten their full FDA clearance yet, there's like something that it is advisable that like a consumer could do that they could actually use and get benefit from. And to me, the blood oxygen one in particular, like I don't think that there is a direct consumer benefit. Like who should actually use this thing and do and act on the readings that it creates? Maybe if you get a low reading a bunch of times or something, and in addition to other symptoms, you could put that together. But otherwise, like, this is a feature for, I think, what's the thing, like, high elevation endurance runners? Like, okay, great.
18:24 Speaker 03 And actually, it's funny, I'm trying to look through my inbox and I can't find it right now, but I did hear from a pilot.
18:29 Speaker 02 Okay.
18:29 Speaker 03 Who said that this is something that he would want to use because he's in high altitudes a lot and does worry about his blood oxygen level for being up in those altitudes for so long, or I don't know exactly where he flies to.
18:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:42 Speaker 03 But I thought that was an interesting use case, is a small one. But yeah, I mean, overall, like, I'm, I think it's, I don't think it's a setback, but I do think it is a big question mark around Apple and why they need to release features every year for this product. I mean, I wrote about this, I'm, I wonder about for you, and I was sort of taking a guess at it because analysts don't have the best data on it. How often do you think people upgrade or think about upgrading their Apple Watch?
19:08 Speaker 02 Oh, I have no idea. If I, like, if just, if I had to guess, anecdotally, I would say, on average, it's at least three, if not four, four years. I would say four years is actually probably accurate, just looking at people that I know that have one.
19:21 Speaker 03 And what do you think, even about, like, for your reader, like, what about early adopters who love to have the greatest thing?
19:27 Speaker 02 Even then, I don't think it's more than every couple of years at the most. It just, it seems like it's a, the year-over-year differences don't make an appreciable impact on your experience of the thing, unless you are like, really persnickety about something. So I am really persnickety about having it always on screen on my watch. I don't know why, it's, I'm really bad at doing the, to make the screen turn on gesture, I want to be able to look at it subtly when I'm talking to somebody, or whatever. So I cared a lot about that. And I also cared about the bigger screen. So like, Apple, like, got me, they like, tricked me on like, the series.
19:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:57 Speaker 02 The four was the big one, the five was the always-on-screen.
19:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:00 Speaker 02 So the three was like, the first truly good one, because the, you know, the, oh, zero and the one and the two were like, meh. The three was truly good. I was like, okay, the three is, it's good now, I'm gonna get one. And the four was bigger, and I was like, oh, god, it's bigger.
20:11 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:11 Speaker 02 And then the five was always on, I was like, oh, god, it's always on. But the six, I don't care, I don't need it.
20:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, and they had, I mean, I wrote this in my review, they had such a rapid increase. And I think most people, like, I think the series three, series four was like the first breakthrough for mainstream.
20:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:27 Speaker 03 Or especially, I think, around the four. The four was the one that I think I, it was my first review saying this thing is ready for you. And you, I think it was the fall detection one, and my headline was, I've finally fallen for this watch.
20:37 Speaker 02 Finally.
20:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:38 Speaker 02 All right, well, this is a great place to take a break, hear an ad, and we will come right back, and we are going to talk about making videos.
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21:27 Speaker 06 Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com/AppleWatchSeries12.
21:58 Speaker 02 All right, we're back. Joanna, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show, which is like director's notes for reviews, is you make incredibly good and super fun video reviews.
22:09 Speaker 03 I'm in hell, and I did it all without. Any tech from 2019. To discover the quietest keyboard, there was only one place to test, an anechoic chamber at the Cooper Union. Which is why this bubble is the only place for me to be, to review the new Samsung Galaxy Fold.
22:27 Speaker 02 Well, when you're thinking about making these videos, I mean, are you thinking about, because I think a lot about making the video that works for YouTube. And then the article that I write is for, honestly, a different audience. And they end up diverging pretty far in some cases. Sometimes it's like there's like some shared language or shared structure, but they do end up being kind of different. How do you think about approaching that? Because like, I don't know. I'm jealous of YouTubers that just get to make a video and then walk away in an explosion.
22:55 Speaker 03 Boy, do I, am I jealous of that. Honestly, I'll be like, I am trying to figure out YouTube. You know, I'm not a YouTuber. Neither are you. My piece is published onto the Wall Street Journal's channel, which has a very big range of content and topics. So that is something that is a little bit of a challenge to figure out, really. On platform, I want to talk to, on the Wall Street Journal platform, I want to appeal to as many people as I possibly can. So that means, yes, I might have to be a little bit more simplistic on certain things and be a lot clearer. But I still want to have the fun, obviously, but also like the nerdiness of some of this and play with that
23:40 Speaker 03 for the sort of early adopter tech type of crowd. And so it like, I might be trying to hit too many people with it. Also, sometimes I just put my head down. I'm like, I want to do what I want to do. Which, you know, our strategy team may just, you know, not love me for that. But that's kind of what I try to do. I think also in the world of YouTube, there's a lot of people offering opinion and it's not always grounded in some of the more rigorous testing. And so I've tried to go that way with some of the pieces. Like, I'm going to focus on one feature and really test the crap out of that.
24:17 Speaker 02 And show your work in like a really fun way if you can.
24:19 Speaker 03 Exactly, exactly. Like I did that with the Galaxy S20 Zoo. Camera. I was like, I just want to test this thing. I want to do it in a fun way. I want to give it to somebody who like, we gave it to this, that was the video I did with the private investigator because it like, for me, it was just a creep camera. Like, why do we need this crazy zoom lens? Which I'm sure we'll get it on iPhone and I'll feel the same way. But yeah, I mean, I think for me, that's sort of how I've been thinking about some of these reviews.
24:44 Speaker 02 Okay, so like YouTube versus the Wall Street Journal, like written page. The other thing is you have made the transition from like needing to write for a verge audience that absolutely needs you to identify the specific Qualcomm processor and how much RAM is in a phone? And, you know, like, we don't go full on speeds and feeds ultra tech. We do try and put stuff in some kind of cultural context. But you, you made the transition from that kind of audience to ABC and then also the Wall Street Journal, like a different kind of audience. The kind of audience that has Rolexes that they get cleaned for $800 a year. Or every four years, whatever. How is that transition for you? Like, how do you think about your audience now?
25:25 Speaker 02 Because like, you don't want to pigeonhole them and just be like, oh, it's just, it's just a, you know, the Wall Street Journal reader. You actually do want to reach as many people as possible, right?
25:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, I do. And I think that's what I hope has made me a little bit different from other Wall Street Journal reporters and columnists is that I had had this background. And I think, you know, some of the people who have followed me have still followed me from the verge days and still go to the verge and still read you and still read everyone else on the site and watch you and everybody else for some of that. But then come to me for my take, which may not get into all of the nitty gritty, but, but no, I have that understanding and I do have that knowledge to do some of this testing, to do some of the more rigorous behind the scenes stuff, even though sometimes it doesn't make it to the page, frankly, or to the video.
26:11 Speaker 03 And I would say like, there's a lot of times where I miss that, frankly, you know, yesterday's Amazon chip announcement, I sort of felt like, ah, you know, I'd love to do a call with Amazon to go deep on this thing. And, and really kind of figure out what they're doing here and compare it to what Apple's doing and others are doing. And maybe that's a story for us. I, I mean.
26:31 Speaker 02 Has media tech ever been so excited to be mentioned in any, any announcement ever?
26:36 Speaker 03 Never, never. And most people are like, what is media tech? And, you know, I actually was, I'm like thrilled that ARM is like in news so much now. Cause it's like, people are like, who can explain that? But I'm like, well, I know a bunch of analysts who can explain that. Back in the day, I guess I could have explained that. But yeah, I think that's sort of how I sort of like to think of what I do. And I like, I miss it. I do miss it and I do also still carry a lot around with me in terms of like rigorous testing. I often hear from colleagues like, why are you going through all these lengths to test 5G and all these wifi routers? And why did you decide, you know, like, and for me, it's like, it was just in my blood from, from coming from the verge. And even before that laptop magazine, like you test the crap out of something.
27:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, you learn stuff through that testing. And oftentimes what you learn is, yep, it's what exactly what you expected. And that's what's so frustrating is it's tempting to cut the corner and be like, I don't know. I just reviewed the iPad, right? And it's like, what's the, what's the battery life going to be like on the iPad? Well, you know what? It's gonna be fine. It's gonna be just fine. I don't need to worry about it. I'm not going to test it. Oh, wait, no. Yes, I am. Of course I am. And so there's a ton of work that goes into doing these reviews that just, no one needs to hear it. No one thinks it's interesting. It's exactly what everybody expected, but it might not be. So you always do it just in case.
27:53 Speaker 03 But also like, and I have to say, this is like a credit to some of our peers in the industry and each other, right? Like we've been doing this now for how long? 15, I mean, you're 95.
28:04 Speaker 02 I'm 95, yeah, yeah.
28:06 Speaker 03 You know, your competition knows this stuff too. Like it isn't like we're reviewing products too. And like, you know, one day or two days. I mean, I know that some people do do that, but I still feel it's very important to not do that. I mean, I might, we might write something quickly and say, here's my first impressions, because people are going to make that pre, pre-order decision. And that's important and we want to have some say on that. But we might also take some time to go look at a feature and look at it more, more in depth for a couple of weeks. But I definitely also think like, you know, my competitors are gonna point this out. Like, I don't want to be the one that doesn't see that thing.
28:42 Speaker 02 Yeah. There's like this special language that we use that like indicates how much time we've had. So there's hands on where you're like, you just got it. Well, there's unboxing and then there's hands on. And then there's like first impression. Some sites do ongoing review, or like one weekend review. And then there's review. And then there's like long term review. And like, that's a signal to like readers, but it's also a signal to each other that we're not trying to front like we've done more testing than we actually have.
29:10 Speaker 03 And I think it's funny. It's like, we invented that, kind of, you know?
29:14 Speaker 02 Kind of. Well, I think you did it over at Engadget before I joined you all.
29:18 Speaker 03 I can remember, I mean, I'm not saying we as like personal, but I feel like Engadget. But I also feel like in our early days of The Verge, we were very much like about the labeling system. As someone who started the Verge review program, I was very clear, like, this is a review. And we're gonna, I said, well, David, who was my first hire, my first and only hire, frankly, on the review team, which I used to go around telling like all these companies, no, no, we have our review team. It was really just me and David. And like we said, like, a review has to have these certain things in it. You have to have had this amount of time for certain categories. We said we were gonna test battery, or we're gonna test performance in certain ways. And I think that's like
30:01 Speaker 03 really carried through the industry. And I'm proud of that.
30:05 Speaker 02 You should be.
30:05 Speaker 03 But you should be, too.
30:06 Speaker 02 Well, thank you.
30:07 Speaker 03 I mean, you're still stuck in your closet, but.
30:09 Speaker 02 I mean, that, you know, you can only do so much. Okay, I'm in my closet because I'm working from home, lucky to be able to work from home during the pandemic. Making videos, though, during lockdown has been a trial. It's been fun for me because it's like my hobby now to like learn how to use cameras and lighting and stuff.
30:26 Speaker 03 I'm so impressed with you.
30:27 Speaker 02 Oh, well, thank you. I still think it's like not great. And I also have a big Verge video team. That like takes the crap that I make with my camera and turns it into something good.
30:37 Speaker 03 You're not giving yourself enough credit, but yeah.
30:39 Speaker 02 We could way far down the rabbit hole of like, how exactly do you produce videos? We should go like a little bit down the road, like, like, let's peek in the rabbit hole. Like, what is, what's, what's changed for you when you're making a video during lockdown compared to how you did it when you could just go to a studio and meet somebody?
30:53 Speaker 03 I mean, it depends what month. I mean, I hate it. While you've made it a hobby, I have actively not. And part of that is time, because I will, I will, I will get like you. I will like stay up till 3 a.m. trying to get one audio thing syncing with the camera and like trying to Google the crap out of figuring out how something is not, or why something's not working.
31:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:17 Speaker 03 So, and also just like do a lot of stuff and like, I, I think I'm a better producer, story producer and editor than I am a technical producer. And I think like, I just, I need to focus there if I want to get better at the things I want to get better at. That said, in March, April, May, June, too, I like, didn't have my amazing producer Kenny Wasses, who lives in Brooklyn and we were always in the office together, shooting and out shooting in all the crazy places we get to go. So I shot pretty much everything on my iPhone. He tried to clean it up. He would send shot lists and I'd be like, no, I'm not going to do all of those. That's going to take me 700 years.
32:01 Speaker 02 Yep.
32:01 Speaker 03 I also, like, all of that, like, I live with a three-year-old. He's obsessed with the tripod. It's adorable.
32:09 Speaker 02 The tripod?
32:10 Speaker 03 He loves the tripod. It's so cute. He loves the mic. He calls it, he has a COD Pass. Dieter, maybe you can join him on his COD Pass.
32:18 Speaker 02 I would like, I would love to join him on his COD Pass. That's amazing.
32:21 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, it's, it's podcasts, but he can't, he flips the, you got it. And he grabs the mic anytime he sees, like, you know, welcome to my COD Pass. And he grabs the tripod all the time and he's setting it. I mean, it's the cutest thing you've ever seen. I like. Have watched the videos on my phone. I like, he goes to sleep and I watch videos of him on my phone as parents do, but I can't do that. I can't be creating videos in this house, which isn't, I'm, again, I feel really lucky to have a house and a place I can work during this time, but I can't be making videos here with him here.
33:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:01 Speaker 03 That's all a lot to say is like, I don't like doing, I don't like doing the technical side of this. And I also like, it's hard to creatively. I've always hired and worked with producers that are going to creatively challenge me. Like it's, I want you to be, I, you know, I always write the job description. I want you to be like technically great and push the bounds in terms of format, but like creatively, I need you to be there. I need you to be in on this with me. And that's so hard remotely.
33:28 Speaker 02 Well, it's so hard because you have so many ideas that you would just like immediately shut down and because you can't go somewhere. And the problem with that isn't just that you can't go do the thing that you first thought of. It's because the best idea is like the third iteration of that thing. Right? So you're, you're, the limits of what you imagine as possible are so constrained. It gets even more constrained than that because you're just like, well, I guess I'm just gonna do this thing.
33:52 Speaker 03 That's exactly how our process has been. And it's, and it's, it's sad. Like there are so many ideas that I have for certain things. And I'm like, oh, let's go do that. And let's go here. And I'm like, we can't, it's indoors. I mean, we, we are trying to, I am now shooting with Kenny in person. We have gotten together. We do distance. We wear masks. We do, we've been doing all outside. We actually shot the surface duo review in my parents' garage.
34:16 Speaker 02 Oh, wow.
34:17 Speaker 03 Yep. We said, we shot a little, like, we made a little studio in there and you can hear the crickets in the background because it's a garage.
34:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:25 Speaker 03 I do not know what we're gonna do in the winter. Like, I might just not have videos.
34:28 Speaker 02 We shot a video in our studio and we, we, I just went in and set it up myself, took the mask off, did the shoot, put the mask back on. The other trick that we're doing now, because I mostly do, you know, review videos, is I will do a stand up, maybe try and shoot some B-roll, but I'm pretty bad with a camera. And then I will get in my car and then drive over to Veer and Pavik's house, hand, like, wipe down the device, hand him the device. Maybe we'll like go outside and shoot some stuff together. And then I'll go back home. And then I'll go back and get the device and pick it up from him. And then take it back home. And then I can actually write the written portion.
35:04 Speaker 03 Where I think we're thinking about doing the same thing around iPhones and stuff. I mean, yeah, and I'm trying to get clever, like, might do this video on sleep tracking. I'm not sure. Trying to get clever about that stuff and like what I can shoot in home at certain times. Yeah.
35:19 Speaker 02 OK, well, we've gone all the way down to getting super philosophical now in my head. And so we've talked about the audience that we're writing for. We've talked about how to deal with multiple variants of the same thing. I've talked about blood oxygen on the Apple Watch. But like, other than buying advice, what do you think a review is for? Like, for the Apple Watch? Are you? Because like, for me, it's like, well, I want to talk about it in a cultural context. I want to talk about a medical context. I want to like, talk about it like, in terms of Apple's strategy. But like, most people just want to know whether or not to buy the thing. So like, you do that, but you could do that in two paragraphs. So like, is there some, like, thing you're trying to do when you're writing a review, like, something for the Apple Watch beyond just buy it or don't buy it?
36:02 Speaker 03 Well, this Apple Watch was tough. I really did not think, I think I didn't necessarily need to do the longer review, but I did think then, I was like, you know what? I have some things to share and I want to share it.
36:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:12 Speaker 03 I think the significance of like, Apple, the Apple Watch and health has been really interesting and watching that strategy evolve. And I think there is this push and pull, which I didn't really get into the, into the review. I kind of got to it at the end in the future section, but again, was trying to keep this short, which is this push and pull of the Apple Watch is a growing category and a moneymaker for Apple, but also it is now positioned as something that is a health device that we all need and rely on. And I think that is a little bit of a tension. And I think we were just talking about it before when we were talking about this blood oxygen feature that is there and it's being marketed to sell more watches. And overall, it might have some really good and important things for people, but also ultimately, it's a new feature that will help sell watches.
36:57 Speaker 03 I think that's just an interesting thing when talking about the watch. I felt that way similarly, like, I don't think I actually will ever do as good of an Apple Watch review as I did when I did the fall detection piece. And we're putting the new watch's fall detection and fitness features through the paces. Turns out fake falling is really hard. Seriously, please don't try this at home.
37:18 Speaker 03 Not only was that fun, and we did actually test this thing that Apple said, "Don't test," and I was very proud of that, but also, to this day, I get people writing to me saying, "Your review of that saved my life. I bought this watch and I fell, and it called emergency services."
37:35 Speaker 02 Wow.
37:35 Speaker 03 And I, my mom, earlier this year, she got sick. She, she fainted and she didn't have a watch and she was, you know, luckily, there were people around, but immediately after, I bought her the watch. So I'm really interested in that sort of, what you're saying is like a cultural, personal connection to this device. I definitely didn't get at it in this review because I also just felt like this was an incremental review, but it is something I'm, I was thinking about.
37:58 Speaker 02 Well, it's super hard to wrap your head around too, because there's all these anecdotal stories of people's, literally their life being saved. Apple always has a couple of them that they put up whenever they announce a new Apple Watch. And like, those are real and those are important, but they're also like, not necessarily science, right? And so this, this push-pull of, here's a thing that has sciency features, but consumer tech moves so much faster than actual science?
38:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
38:20 Speaker 02 That it's, it's really hard as a reviewer to like, be responsible and say responsible things to people. We can't say, "This thing will detect a fall and save your life." What we can say is, "This thing might detect a fall and it might save your life, but it's not necessarily like certified to do that, blah, blah, blah, check with your doctor, blah, blah, blah, blah." And you end up, like, saying all of these really caveat-y things, but you know that like, it's true that someone's life is going to be saved by this thing. And that's like, but you can't say that for sure will happen, right?
38:51 Speaker 03 Absolutely. And that was, that was the, kind of also the significance of that review back when was, we didn't really know if it worked.
38:58 Speaker 02 Right.
38:59 Speaker 03 You know, like, I mean, and mostly because there is no safe way to test a fall. I mean, we want to talk about, you want to go back down the rabbit hole, doing that video and that story might have, I've done a lot of complicated standards pushing videos at the Wall Street Journal. I get, I wouldn't say I get by with a lot, but I actually work really hard to get by with a lot. We have a crazy, involved standards process and legal process with stuff. I imagine you guys have similar around some, some of it. And I had to work very hard behind. The scenes to get that thing done in terms of release forms and payments and
39:32 Speaker 02 Right.
39:33 Speaker 03 Safety precautions and it was a whole thing. So the behind the scenes of the fall detection piece was crazy. But yeah, I think there was really no safe way to test that. But it was important to do a test like that because then people just buy something and I guess assume it will work. And again, I never promised it would work, but I just was able to show my work of like, this woman fell many, many times. It did go off many, many times.
39:58 Speaker 02 Yep.
40:00 Speaker 03 She was not hurt many, many times. My company made sure she was not hurt.
40:04 Speaker 02 She was a professional every single time.
40:06 Speaker 03 Yes. Don't worry, I'm good. This is just my professional stunt double.
40:10 Speaker 02 Oh, you know, one, one last thing. Whenever a company announces there's something coming, but you can't actually review it, it's tough. Traditionally, this happens with like software updates, like there's a software update that'll fix it. I don't know. With the Apple Watch, it's there's going to be a whole damn fitness subscription program coming later in the fall. And like you will review that or there'll be some kind of review of that when it happens. But like, how do you think about, well, they're selling this thing now and or like, you need to get an Apple Watch to use that for some weird reason. Does that, do you, how do you think about like when a company promises something?
40:42 Speaker 03 How do we review that?
40:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, I have no idea how to review that. Do you review it as like a reality show?
40:47 Speaker 03 If Fitness Plus does not make me lose 15 pounds.
40:51 Speaker 02 Ooh.
40:52 Speaker 03 It is bad.
40:54 Speaker 02 Great. Perfect.
40:55 Speaker 03 It is not worth your money. I also, I think we had this with the Duo, right? A couple of weeks ago. Oh God, what a mess that was. It's such a mess when you have a device that doesn't do a certain thing. I mean, Fitness Plus is not in this category, right? I actually consider the Apple Watch, the Series Three, which had cellular issues, was another example. I mean, I can recite these like, and I can also tell you like how much sleep I lost in the process of reviewing something because
41:23 Speaker 02 Yep.
41:24 Speaker 03 I wanted to make sure I was telling my readers what my experience was, but the company's telling you something else. And that is a very tough place for a reviewer because you need to report on what you have actually experienced.
41:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:35 Speaker 03 Of course, the company is deserves and needs to have their statement in the piece. But sometimes that just really conflicts with what your experience is.
41:43 Speaker 02 Yep. So, okay, top three annoying mid-review software updates. Number one for me is probably, just because it was so disruptive to the video that we were trying to make, there was a MacBook that had really bad thermal issues one year, and they issued a kernel update or something to fix it. And Dave Lee actually made a really, really good video explaining the thermal issues. And I was talking to them about it and getting a statement, and we had a whole video that was centered around, like, here's this thing, and then they put out the update, and we're like, well, it might fix it, but also, we don't have the time to run a battery of tests. So we ended up putting this video that was completely chaotic. Number two is definitely the Duo. And then, this is so weird, but like, number three was the Essential Phone.
42:27 Speaker 02 We wanted to do a really high-concept art video for fun, and it was, and people made fun of me for it because I was wearing a suit or whatever, but they issued a camera update right at the end. So we had to break out of our high-concept art video and just show ourselves sitting in the office with me drinking a beer and being like, "Everything I told you doesn't matter anymore because they just updated the camera."
42:45 Speaker 03 Did you do that for the Fold, too?
42:47 Speaker 02 The Fold was also another one. Actually, the Fold is worse than the Essential Phone, yeah.
42:50 Speaker 03 The Fold is different. I would say Fold mid-review wasn't software, but was the most disruptive.
42:56 Speaker 02 Yeah. I just blocked it out of my mind entirely. It doesn't exist for me.
43:00 Speaker 03 What a win it was for reviewers, obviously, because not only are they saying there's going to be an update, but we are going to pull this product. I mean, that was the most disruptive of, because you were dealing with news cycle, getting your review straightened out. I mean, that video, which, you know, made me number one most wanted in Korea. All right, $2,000 phone, meet $2 hot dog. Fold it. The video is like, I hate it because, first of all, the hot dog was just like a random thing we had done, and that's what turned into the focus. It's literally at the end of the video, and that's what blows up on the internet. And I look horrible in it because I hadn't slept for like, three days, because in the
43:44 Speaker 03 middle of the shoot, I get a call from Samsung that they're coming to pick up the phone because they're pulling it off shelves.
43:48 Speaker 02 Yep.
43:49 Speaker 03 And, yeah, what a couple of days that was.
43:52 Speaker 02 Well Joanna, I think that is a great place to wrap it up with the pain and sorrow that we all experience when products are broken. Where can people find you on the internet if they want to find you?
44:03 Speaker 03 I'm trying to build my Instagram following.
44:05 Speaker 02 Okay.
44:06 Speaker 03 So you can only find me on Instagram, @joannastern on Instagram. Follow me on The Wall Street Journal, even if you do not clean your Rolex watch every five years for $800.
44:19 Speaker 02 My thanks to Joanna Stern for joining us on the show. I love talking to her. You can find her on that Instagram. The producers for The Vergecast are Andrew Moreno and Sophie Erickson, and we're going to be back on Friday with a chat show. And we'll be back again next week with another deep dive director's cut of a product review. We're going to have your average consumer, you might know him from YouTube, on, and we're going to be talking about a review of a product that I guarantee you're not going to be expecting. So stay tuned.
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45:31 Speaker 08 Trying to locate news sources that reliably separate fact from fiction can seem like looking for a needle in a haystack. That's why The Guardian is launching Stateside with Kai Wright and Carter Sherman, a conversation with experts who slow down the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what's actually happening in the world. Three times a week, hosts Kai and Carter utilize all the reporting resources The Guardian has to discuss the news, international affairs, climate, culture, sports, lifestyle, fashion, and wellness. And The Guardian is not billionaire-owned, meaning they're free to report the whole picture without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more. And listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. That's theguardian.com/stateside.
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