Macbook Pro, Surface Studio, and the events surrounding

This week is a special episode of The Vergecast. After attending the Apple event, Nilay and Dieter sit down in San Francisco together and talk about the newest product announcements from Cupertino. Let us not forget, Microsoft also announced new computers this week! We invited an old friend of the show, senior editor Vlad Savov, to help cover it all. 01:27 - Microsoft event/Surface Studio 24:00 - Apple Mac event 28:25 - Macbook Pro 32:27 - Touchbar 41:01 - Specs 52:39 - Apple TV app Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  We'll wrap up with a, with a refreshing.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  It's like.

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  What is it?

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Appetite? A little citrus spray of television.

• 0:08Nilay Patel?

  Exactly. It'll be very nice. It's a nice glass of port wine and a chocolate chip cookie.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  With some television zest on it.

• 0:21Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast, theverge.com, a website that is relaunching its entire visual identity. Next week on Tuesday, November 1.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you're listening to this late, it's already happened.

• 0:33Nilay Patel?

  That's true, but you're probably not listening to this late because you are a news junkie. You love the news and you love stylishly making your way through nightclubs. You might say that you love cutting through the night. Scissor vodka, a joke that I'm just not letting die. Anyway, this is Vergecast. It's a huge week of news. It's like a throwback classic format Vergecast. We got Apple news, we got Microsoft news. There's only three people. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Hello. We're, we're in all different places all over the country.

• 1:02Nilay Patel?

  Dieter and I are in San Francisco.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04Nilay Patel?

  If, if you're hearing a mild echo, that's our apologies. We're in our new office in San Francisco, which is not totally set up for this yet. But Dieter and I just came from Cupertino. We're at Apple Town Hall. We saw the new MacBooks with the touch bar. I spent a long time staring at TV screens, figuring out what the hell Apple's doing in TV. But then in New York, which you're not expecting, you'll never guess who's in New York. Vlad Savov is on the Vergecast in New York City.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 1:33Nilay Patel?

  Vlad, there he is. There's my man. Vlad is in New York.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36Nilay Patel?

  He's hanging out. He's gonna be around for the, for the Verge relaunch on Tuesday. But Vlad covered deeply a whole bunch of Microsoft stuff that happened as well. Vlad, you want to give us a rundown of Microsoft real quick?

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Microsoft stuff? Well, the big highlight is the Surface Studio, which is a 28 inch all in one desktop computer. It's, I guess, the future of PCs as Microsoft envisions it, and it costs $3,000.

• 1:58Nilay Patel?

  And I'm buying the hell out of one.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  You could not be more enthused about this thing.

• 2:02Nilay Patel?

  I love it. Whatever, whoever invented the Surface Studio, Panos Penne, take a bow.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  He can't bow. He's too pumped.

• 2:09Nilay Patel?

  He's amped.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  He's amped.

• 2:11Nilay Patel?

  But like, like I'm saying, a classic. A classic week of tech news. We got desktop PCs just coming at you.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  So I would actually say this is not what Microsoft thinks the future of PCs is. Like, not even a little. Well, maybe a little. But this is Microsoft trying to prove, as Nick Stat intelligently wrote, that PCs can be about more than spreadsheets and hardcore gaming. That they can also be for creative people. And so I don't think-

• 2:39Nilay Patel?

  PCs have always been for creative people. What? What are you talking about?

• 2:42Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, but like, in terms of how people think of them, people, when people think of Windows, they don't think of-

• 2:49Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that kind of, yeah.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. So for me, this, this is like a real, like Sony move. This is like an aspirational product. They don't care if they don't, if they don't sell that many. The fact that it exists and people can go into a Microsoft store and go, holy shit, this is awesome. And then go buy a Surface 4?

• 3:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  This is like a big win for-

• 3:08Nilay Patel?

  It's a concept car.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:09Nilay Patel?

  But I disagree with you.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  So do I, actually. And this is a bit of a preview of conflict in the podcast.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  The, the thing doesn't have a graphics card.

• 3:17Nilay Patel?

  It's true.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  And it has a gajillion pixels. So it literally can't do anything other than push those gajillion pixels.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  No, hold on, hold on.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  And so like, it is maxed out, just like, just like running the taskbar.

• 3:30Nilay Patel?

  All right, Vlad, take it away.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Peaks the processor.

• 3:32Nilay Patel?

  Vlad has ideas.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  Thank you, Neil. First of all, it does have a graphics card. It is a powerful graphics card. The problem is, listen, this is my biggest complaint and gripe about this PC as well. So I am with you on that one, but it's an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M. It's yesteryear's top of the line graphics card. So it exists, it's good. It isn't as good as this year's. Usually with graphics cards, you know, between one year and the next, you don't notice because, the major differences, because there are many major differences, it's just incremental updates. This year, though, Nvidia's Pascal architecture, the 10 or 1000 series of GPUs, are just so far ahead from the previous ones. You're just doing yourself a disservice by buying anything other than an Nvidia GTX 1000 series.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Why did they use last year's mobile graphics card? Like, when I say it doesn't have a graphics card, like- Come on.

• 4:25Nilay Patel?

  It's a super expensive computer. Also, Vlad, we haven't had you on the show in a long time.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. This is just a remarkable way for you to come in.

• 4:31Nilay Patel?

  It's so good. I'm so happy you're here. If you're like a new Vergecast listener, the way Vlad just says the words graphics card just fills my heart with just sheer unadulterated joy. Now, Vlad, get into it with me because the GPU issue is real on a MacBook Pro, too. Because Apple with AMD and everything I've heard is what the whole world should be on these Nvidia 1000 series cards. But let's focus on Microsoft. Let's do the first bit of the show on the big Microsoft news, then we'll go talk about the Mac.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Totally, happy to. Well, first of all, let me mention, I am, in fact, Bulgarian, even though my accent is totally British. So.

• 5:10Nilay Patel?

  All of my accents are vaguely either Jamaican or Indian. It's just a problem I have. It's just who I am. What, I'm an Indian man who wants to be on a beach? It makes sense.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  All right, so.

• 5:21Nilay Patel?

  Continue.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  The thing with the GPU, and Panos Panay, I think he touched on that during the Microsoft presentation. He said that they spent an inordinate amount of time integrating everything. And if you look at the Surface Studio, all of the PC is essentially in this one-inch-high or thereabouts module at the bottom. I mean, it's the size of, I don't know, an external CD drive from back in the day, a little bit larger, a little bit wider. So, you know, Microsoft deserves credit for integrating all of that stuff. You know, you can get up to 32 gigabytes, up to 32 gigabytes of RAM, you know, Core i5, Core i7 processors. But again, the processors are yesteryears. This one is excusable because you can't have quad-core processors with this generation. So Intel is a bit slow on this front.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Like, if Intel could get its stuff together and deliver quad-core with this year's generation of processors, we'd do a lot less complaining. But, you know, Intel has been slow for years now. You know, they're having issues there. But Microsoft said that they spent a lot of time integrating all of this. So if you take the 980M and you've been developing this for months and months and months, and then all of a sudden Nvidia comes out with this much better graphics card, but you have to kind of undo the whole thing and then try and put it back together again, maybe they just didn't have the time to do it, which is disappointing, but you can kind of sympathize. My issue is. And I mentioned the price nice and early because I think that is the real big deal here. At $3,000, what you are selling to people, like Dee says, is some vision of the future.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Some vision of something beyond us, which we're bringing to you into the present. I think that's kind of, like he said, the aspirational part. It's the aspirational part of us as residents of the present, wanting to be part of the future. And Apple does that a lot and does it successfully. We'll talk about how successfully with the new MacBook Pro. But this is Microsoft getting into the same business and it's not really getting into the future of computing. Like, if you look at the back of it, it has four USB ports, just standard USB. Apple just blew that away with four USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports with gigabytes and gajillions of bandwidth and varieties of things that you can do with it, again, in the future. Microsoft is just doing standard USB free checks.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  I mean, this is why, this is why I'm saying that this thing isn't meant to be bought, right? Like, it's got, it's got a bunch of yesterday's stuff in it. And anybody who's able to converse in the graphics cards and processor numbers language that you just spoke is not the target market for this device.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  And is not, like, Microsoft doesn't care. Like, it has the regular USBAs on the back of it because, like, that's comprehensible to the people that actually want paying attention to this thing, which is, like, you know, rich people, rich artists, graphic designers, stuff that gets drawn, basically. Like, those people, they want them to go and buy this thing. And more importantly, they want them to want this thing and they want people to envision Windows as a platform for those kinds of people. Because right now, when you think Windows, what do you think? You think... Symphonies with spreadsheets.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Which is a phrase that was said in their keynote, which is amazing. And you know, you think hardcore games and you think like, you know, the big ass, you know, $300, three inch thick, 17 inch crappy screen laptop you have sitting under your coffee table. Right? That's what Windows is to most people. And Microsoft wants Windows to have a cooler cache.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  And this thing is designed to give it that cache, even if they don't sell more than a few thousand of them.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  So there is actually a theory I want to just layer on top of this. And it relates to both Microsoft and Apple. And actually, this is, this is the fun bit of recording the podcast in advance is I'll be able to write the full article and people can read it and then it can hear this.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  So it's kind of like.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Complete flat experience.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm preempting myself.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  First time on 360.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  So, so here's the thing. I think that the future of both PC and Mac is the thing that we saw this week. And I think the future is that they're just going to get more expensive. And this is because the old business, and this is Intel's business. Like if you ask Intel, what do you want to do with the PC industry? They're selling, they're saying sell more stuff, sell more numbers. But Microsoft and Apple seem to have gotten it into their heads that people are just not going to buy PCs at anywhere near the same numbers as previously. So it's, it's basic economics. If you can't, you know, make 5% profit margin on millions and millions of units, you try and make 10%, 15% on a smaller number of units. So this is where I think they're, they're both heading. I mean, look at the other products that Microsoft announced.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  It announced a new Surface Book, that's $2,000 whatever dollars. Microsoft's new MacBook Pros, each of them is starting at a higher price. It's, it's wild. I mean, the 15 inch new MacBook Pro is $17.99.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the, the config they want you to think about is $23.99.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  And that, and you can take it to like $4,200 if you want to.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I mean, my theory in a nutshell is the future of these devices is going to essentially revert back to be more expensive. I saw this with cameras, to be honest with you, like. Big DSLRs, when they were starting off, digital SLR cameras, were really expensive, quite rarely used, and everybody was kind of using simple, cheap film cameras. Then they became ubiquitous, they became really cheap, everybody had one. Then we got the mirrorless cameras that we have today, and now DSLRs are again retreating to just being small-volume, high-price, high-margin kind of devices. And the same thing is happening with the desktop PC and the laptop, I guess.

• 10:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, I want to kind of zoom out on Microsoft and the PC for a second. What Microsoft has done with its brand over the past, I don't know, year, year and a half, under Sachin Adella is kind of incredible.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:13Nilay Patel?

  They're acting with an amount of confidence that I think, I suspect, came from letting go of the idea that they were going to be competitive in mobile. They just stopped.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 11:23Nilay Patel?

  So Microsoft's two platforms now are its apps, which are everywhere, and they're doing a great job of being sort of horizontal with their apps. And then their innovation platform, they're like big platform, is Windows and Windows hardware. And they're saying with Windows hardware, we're going to, we're going to be competitive with Apple, right, at the high end of this premium market.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  I think we should call it Surface hardware, because I think that's the key word here.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  I mean, that's fine, but like, they're, Microsoft is basically telling all of their OEMs with the Surface, "Look, we're not going to, we're not going to take, we're not going to cut your knees out from under you anywhere, but we are going to play very, very hard at the top end of the market."

• 12:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  And so you could do whatever you want under us, and if you want to come at us at the top end, go for it, but we are not sorry and not afraid to release the stuff that costs a lot of money that serves as like halo devices for Windows.

• 12:20Nilay Patel?

  Right. And I, and I think that, you know, they updated the Surface Book, it's a lot faster now. Great. They made the hinge gap a little bit thinner.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:28Nilay Patel?

  Hopefully, this one doesn't have the Intel processor issues that plagued the first one. Um, but then they also, I think the Surface Studio, which we should talk about in more detail than just complaining about its graphics hard. The Surface Studio is 28 inch floating monitor. It actually reminds me a lot of the iMac G4, which had that like round base and the aluminum arm and you can move the screen all around.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, I could see that.

• 12:49Nilay Patel?

  It's like, that's the last articulating screen desktop PC that I can think of.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Am I, so, but the cool thing is like, it's, it's, it's got this insane hinge. There was like, what, 30 parts on both sides of the hinge? I don't forget how many parts.

• 13:00Nilay Patel?

  Is post a video with head to head, run the head to head Microsoft's exploded parts come together with dramatic music to form a product versus Apple's exploded parts come together dramatically. Apple has a slight edge because it's Johnny Ive.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:17Nilay Patel?

  Saying Johnny Ive things, like the fan blades are.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Aluminium. You know what, we should, uh, we should get a good like British voice actor to like re-dub Microsoft's like voiceover for it. Or no, we should get a bad, we should get a bad British voice actor. We should get, uh, what's his name? Guy who, uh, was in charge of Brexit and like all for Brexit. Have him. We should have Nigel Farage. Too soon.

• 13:43Nilay Patel?

  We have like 90 Brits on set. We just have anybody do it.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  No, so, okay. It's, it's like the zero gravity thing. So you can push it down, not quite flat. And part of me wanted it to be flat all the way, if you're real, but, and then you can like lean on the thing.

• 13:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  And that's cool and drawn or whatever. And then they brought back the puck.

• 14:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  The puck is back and it's like the Bluetooth thing. You can like stick it on the screen and like turn it.

• 14:06Nilay Patel?

  So in like 2000, what, two, 2001, the Griffin Powermate.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:12Nilay Patel?

  Is like a real deep throwback. So like before The Verge existed, before, before any, before Engadget and Gizmodo existed, I would be in college and I'd be reading like O'Grady's Power Page, MacIntouch.com and all the old school Mac sites like lit up.

• 14:31Nilay Patel?

  The Griffin Powermate is here and it was a huge stainless steel knob with like USB lights at the base. You plugged it in over USB. It had its own weird custom driver software for uh, at what the time was like OS nine.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:46Nilay Patel?

  And you could turn it and it would like change your volume, but then you could go into Final Cut Pro and it would like scroll the timeline. And it was just a huge knob and everyone was like, this knob is the future of Mac peripherals. It was not.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:59Nilay Patel?

  But it was like a great three year run. They still sell the thing. It's like 50 bucks. And Microsoft, it's like the center of like the Surface Studio experience.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Have you noticed that? And I know we keep saying we're gonna finish up Microsoft and not get to Apple, but both Microsoft and Apple sold visions of the future today. Where you're going wicca, wicca, wicca with two hands and neither one of them is touching a keyboard. With Microsoft, it's the dial and a pen.

• 15:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  And with Apple, it's like the biggest touchpad you've ever beheld in your entire life and the touch bar thing at the top.

• 15:31Nilay Patel?

  The trackpad on the 15 inch MacBook Pro is legitimately bigger than an iPhone 6S.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  We like set one on top of it and it there was like, like 30% more space around it.

• 15:40Nilay Patel?

  The whole thing, not just the screen of a success plus.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:44Nilay Patel?

  The entire six, it's so comically huge.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Uh, but no, like, like keyboards aren't cool anymore apparently. And what you're supposed to do is like have two hands doing stuff.

• 15:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So my, my read on the Microsoft thing is Apple has really neglected its creative markets.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:02Nilay Patel?

  Until today with this MacBook Pro, the Mac Pro has been, is ancient. It's like 550 days or something ridiculous. The iMac is fine, but it's not, there's not a ton of like iMac innovation in this world.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  There, I mean, there's the 5K iMac, which is pretty dope.

• 16:20Nilay Patel?

  It's a nice screen, but you know.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  To your old, but yeah, okay.

• 16:22Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they, they're not like revving it. They're not like coming out with a wild new.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  They're not changing the concept of what a computer is with it.

• 16:29Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:30Nilay Patel?

  And Microsoft is saying, what if we, what if we make like really awesome computers for you Photoshop user? And now Photoshop is in Creative Cloud. So just sign up for Creative Cloud and you can download Photoshop for Windows. And it'll be just the same in all your data and everything will sync because you're a Creative Cloud client. Hmm, that's pretty interesting.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  I mean, I wonder, like unlimited budget Photoshop user. I think you probably like hardcore, your whole life is Photoshop. You probably go with the Studio instead of the MacBook Pro.

• 16:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  If you don't need portability.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's not a straight comparison. I mean, one's a laptop.

• 17:02Nilay Patel?

  I think you go with the Studio instead of the iMac.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:05Nilay Patel?

  You go with the Studio instead of a Mac Pro, which is like runs on Steam, right? Like.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  They didn't, they didn't Mac Pro, they didn't say a single thing about the Mac Pro. We should benchmark.

• 17:16Nilay Patel?

  Oh, we should.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  We are going to benchmark these new MacBook Pros.

• 17:18Nilay Patel?

  Well, they're different. And the Mac Pro is like 16 processor. It's ridiculous.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, I know, but.

• 17:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:25Nilay Patel?

  Anyhow, I just think, I think what Microsoft is doing with PCs because it's, they're constrained. They can't do anything in mobile. And even if they do something cool in mobile, it doesn't matter because they lost. So now they're going to go back to where they are still dominant. I mean, they still sell more PCs than anybody or Windows still more PCs than anybody. And they're not trying to push that platform forward. I think it's really neat.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I actually have unreasonably high hopes for the Surface 5, the next tablet. Cause like they, they threw a whole bunch of specs and some, some minor redesigns at the Surface Book. At the Surface, like I expected them to like just throw in a processor and they say, hey, here's 5, it's new processor and whatever. But they didn't and then they're going to do something next year. And that makes me think that like, there's going to be a bigger change coming. And I still, still five years since the original Surface and Surface RT. Five years already, four years?

• 18:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Still believe that like they can get it. They can nail that combo package somehow. Nobody's done it. Like Lenovo tried with the Yoga Book and then I don't think the iPad Pro is there. I don't think the Surface is there, but like, I want to believe that somewhere deep down, Panos Panay. The reason he's so pumped and so excited is he knows.

• 18:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  That they've got it and they just need to finish it.

• 18:41Nilay Patel?

  You know, the best thing for a plane is it's not a Surface. It's a 12 inch MacBook.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:45Nilay Patel?

  The guy in the plane on the flight to San Francisco was using an iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard. And he saw me use your old 12 inch MacBook. And he's like, what is that? This is stupid. I want that instead.

• 18:57Nilay Patel?

  Vlad, anything else from Microsoft we can talk about? It's really the Surface Studio, which I am just buying the hell out of. This week is so expensive.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, Vlad, do you care about the stuff they did to Windows? The little

• 19:07Nilay Patel?

  Creator Edition?

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Creator Edition, little heads in the taskbar, any of that stuff?

• 19:11Speaker 02

  I mean, that is interesting. The idea of Windows people being a method for you to have your people, your nearest contacts in your taskbar and being able to share files with them. That's intriguing, but the thing with that sort of service is it needs to be almost friction-free when you first setting it up. So maybe if it like picks up contacts from your contacts book and just immediately throws them in there, like family, closest friends, whatever, and then you get into it. Like, once you develop a habit, I can see that being really useful. Like, if you're a regular Windows user and you just have, it's essentially kind of like Facebook chat heads in your taskbar.

• 19:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  And you can just throw messages in there and do stuff.

• 19:52Nilay Patel?

  You make emoji pop up on their, little dancing emoji pop up on their desktop against their will?

• 19:58Speaker 02

  I'm pretty sure I'm too old for that, but but the point is, that's a sort of feature because it's so neatly entirely integrated without, you know, getting in your face too much, that you can just wind up using without even realizing.

• 20:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  So that has potential. But I'll just, I'll just throw in one last thought on Surface Studio, and that is, I don't think it's an iMac competitor. And this is purely on account of price, you know? When you say it's for professionals, it's for really wealthy professionals. It's for like, people who are, I don't know, like, it's so much of an aspirational item that I don't even see the actual marketplace for it. Whereas with the iMac, I think one part that maybe Microsoft is missing, or is just kind of ignoring, is the fact that people buy the iMac sometimes even just to make their office or hotel reception look more stylish, you know? It's just prettier than having an old laptop hanging out there. And that's not a market that Microsoft is really addressing.

• 20:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I don't think, I mean, hotel lobby iMacs is, when I go to hotels, I'm like, wow, your iMac is 400 years old. And then you look at what they're doing on it, it's like they've run the same 400-year lap.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:03Nilay Patel?

  And it's fine. Like, I think, I think Microsoft is going after the people who make enough money using Photoshop or doing illustration or, I don't know, circling things in documents all day long. To justify that computer. I mean, like, if having that product makes you more efficient, then it's worth it and you can justify it. I mean, that's always the justification for

• 21:25Speaker 02

  So it's for people, you just said it's for people who do a lot of circling stuff on documents.

• 21:29Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, they like, they're starting to make the case that that the pen is for more than circling stuff.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, but this is the point. You're trying to make the case with a $3,000 product. The reason why I really like the Lenovo Yoga Book is because it said, here's a new way to use your tablet with this stylus and with this whole different application, different mode. But then, well, it's only like $500, $550. You can buy it and start experimenting. Whereas Microsoft is saying-

• 21:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I bought it and I started experimenting and then I returned it.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 21:59Nilay Patel?

  I gotta say, Yoga Book, also hampered by a slow Intel processor. It's like a real theme of the next generation of hardware.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, if there is a theme to this podcast is that Nvidia is awesome. It didn't get enough love from Apple and Microsoft. And Intel sucks, but it's a monopoly and therefore we're stuck with it.

• 22:15Nilay Patel?

  What if AMD starts making processors again? Oh, my god. Gigantic, nuclear hot processors. I'm gonna read an ad and then we're gonna talk about Apple. You ready?

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:26Nilay Patel?

  MasterClass, they're the ones who sponsor this show. MasterClass makes the world's greatest courses by bringing the world's greatest instructors. They're dedicated to find the best in the world, the visionaries, worldbreakers, leaders and champions, turning their wisdom into a legacy that the entire world can share. To do that, they've brought together a team of world-class educators, engineers and artists. They're crafting innovative online courses that connect instructors to students and students to each other in a community of dedicated learners. Her instructors include Aaron Sorkin, Kevin Spacey, Dustin Hoffman, Serena Williams, Werner Herzog, Usher, always got to give that shout out to Usher, James Patterson, Christina Aguilera and Annie Leibowitz. Let's talk for a second just like Aaron Sorkin's class. Aaron Sorkin is teaching a masterclass on screenwriting. Aaron Sorkin's masterclass contains 35 lessons, over six hours of video, interactive assignments. You can learn about the craft of screenwriting, you can write your own screenplays.

• 23:10Nilay Patel?

  Aaron covers the rules of storytelling, dialogue, character development, and what makes a script actually sell. Aaron will analyze a scene from The West Wing. He leads a group of students in rewriting the opening scene of episode 501 of The West Wing, which- I don't know if you know.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Do you, do you have to take the masterclass to call him Aaron? Cause I would call him Mr. Sorkin.

• 23:27Nilay Patel?

  I actually call him Monsieur Sorkin.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:29Nilay Patel?

  It's very weird when I send in my interactive. That's why he never grades him and sends him back. He just creeped out. Uh, anyway, when you purchase a masterclass, you own it. You get lifetime access, solid course content, plus access to the community events and student groups. You can collaborate and share your ideas with classmates. Classes are on demand, so you can take it whenever you want. You're in pace and you can re-watch as many times as you like on any device for life. So for an exclusive clip of Aaron Sorkin discussing how he writes dialogue, go to masterclass.com/theverge. That's masterclass.com/theverge. All right, let's talk about Apple.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  You wanna, you, so here's the problem with talking about Apple.

• 24:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  There's two things to talk about. We could both spend, like Vlad and I, and Neel I too, I suppose, could, could spend a good hour talking about these laptops. There's also television and Neel is on this show and against all reason or interest, we could spend four hours talking about just tiny, minor, random TV interface changes.

• 24:31Nilay Patel?

  All day. Let's start with the laptop.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:34Nilay Patel?

  And then, and then what?

• 24:36Speaker 01

  I already told you what I think of the TV, but we'll get to that later.

• 24:39Nilay Patel?

  Two things stuck out, aside from the products they have. One, very chill vibe.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, subdued even.

• 24:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, super whatever, not a big deal from the journalists in attendance, from the media partners, from Apple itself. Just very relaxed.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 24:54Nilay Patel?

  Not, it's not that Apple doesn't always have sort of relaxed vibes, but there's usually like.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  There's like a buzz. There's like an energy.

• 25:02Nilay Patel?

  Celebration in the air. This time it was just.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  It wasn't like dour. It wasn't like bummed. It was just like, I can't tell if they were relaxed because they were so confident and happy with what they made, or if they're just like, yeah, I made some stuff. It's good.

• 25:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, here it is again.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:17Nilay Patel?

  Second, they spent more time talking about their own history today than I have ever encountered from Apple ever before. They talked about how 25 years ago, the first PowerBook 170 came out. Then they did their whole introduction. Then Phil Schiller came out and said, I want to talk about the PowerBook 170 again. Put it back to back with the new MacBook Pro, talked about how it was like 6.8 times, 6.8 million times faster than that computer.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:42Nilay Patel?

  They ran a video showing all of the old Macs laptops that they've ever made, including like the iBook and the PowerBook 500. They just spent a lot of time in their own history being like, we invented and have driven forward the laptop.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Well, you know what?

• 25:57Nilay Patel?

  And here's the next one. What's that?

• 25:59Speaker 02

  This week is the 25th anniversary of the first laptop.

• 26:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  And you made this point on the live blog, and I'm just gonna straight away steal it from you and say, this for us should be a preview of what Apple has planning for the next iPhone. Because the next iPhone, 10th anniversary iPhone, and if what we've seen from this debut today with the laptop and all of this history and backtracking from Apple tells us, Apple cares about anniversaries.

• 26:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  You know, in some way. If you do something, and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next.

• 26:35Nilay Patel?

  Literally, yeah.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  By Steve Jobs that we had to stare at for about 45 minutes while we were waiting in line to get into this event to watch the history. And like, I know this is a cheap shot, and it was the 25th anniversary, and it's been a really long time since Apple sort of touted its own history. So like, I actually am not offended by them.

• 26:54Nilay Patel?

  I thought it was really fun.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  I thought it was fun and cool.

• 26:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was neat.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  But like, they definitely set themselves up for this joke that we're making.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Well, you know, the other thing is, Tim Cook.

• 27:03Nilay Patel?

  No, I thought it was great. Like, I honestly thought it was really like, they made a point to us when we were speaking with the executives afterward, that the form factor they introduced, the PowerBook 170, which was revolutionary at the time with the palm rest and the track ball at the time, and now. Just a comically large touchpad is still the dominant form of laptops. And like, they made that happen. They put Wi-Fi in it. They did all of these things first. Take a victory, 25 years, take a victory lap.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:32Nilay Patel?

  But then, the vibe around the actual product, the combination of that and the sort of subdued, not like, again, it wasn't sad, it was just very chill. It was like, here's on a Mac. We know you wanted one, we made one, we took out some buttons.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Let's talk about the damn laptop. Forget the atmosphere. I don't care about the atmosphere. I wasn't there. Like, you're not immersing me in excitement here, Neil, right? So let's just talk about.

• 27:55Nilay Patel?

  This one, I'm trying to set the same mood on this show that Apple's, okay. You go ahead.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  This mood is depression. This is like listening to Radiohead. Forget their event. Honestly, their event, for me, for me, their event was just looking at Tim Cook, who spent much longer on stage than he usually does. And I think he was still stuck in the earnings call mode that he was in like two days ago. He was just reciting numbers and stats. And it's like, no, this, like, we celebrated Apple. When Apple said, you know what? We've got too much to tell you today. We're not going to talk about stats. Remember when Apple did that? And we're like, yeah, go for it.

• 28:27Nilay Patel?

  Now who's being depressing? You're being depressing. Okay, let's talk about the product. See, I'm doing to you what you just did to me.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:34Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, uh, new MacBook Pro.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:36Nilay Patel?

  Two sizes, 13, 15.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:38Nilay Patel?

  There's a baby 13 that has standard keyboard, function keys.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:42Nilay Patel?

  Two Thunderbolt 3 ports.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  And a headphone jack.

• 28:45Nilay Patel?

  And a headphone jack. But I actually think the confusion between whether the Thunderbolt 3 ports or USB-C ports is real, because Apple's calling them Thunderbolt 3 ports.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:55Nilay Patel?

  Even though the connector is USB-C.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  And it also supports USB.

• 29:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  They are.

• 29:01Nilay Patel?

  So what are they?

• 29:01Speaker 01

  It's Thunderbolt over USB-C.

• 29:03Nilay Patel?

  Or is it USB-C over Thunderbolt? Who knows? Very confusing, because Apple's calling them Thunderbolt 3 ports. That's the baby.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 29:09Nilay Patel?

  It's $13.99, I believe.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and like, there's a whole, there's a whole thing that we can get into later if we want to about like, Apple's product lineup and like, the step up.

• 29:20Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Strategy.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  Now, this one is $14.99, I'm pretty sure.

• 29:23Nilay Patel?

  The little, yeah.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you said 13, I think it's 14. I think it's 1,400 bucks.

• 29:27Nilay Patel?

  These things are ridiculously expensive. Anyhow, then there's the middle one, the 13 inch with either an I5 or an I7. It's got, in the standard configs, it's got Intel Iris graphics, so integrated graphics. And it's got the touchbar. And the touchbar, we're talking about a depth. And then there's the 15 inch with the quad-core I7 discreet AMD graphics. I said graphics, graphics and also the touchbar. And that one is ridiculously expensive at $29.99. It's like, what I think Apple thinks it's the most common configuration. The touchbar is super interesting. The keyboard's super interesting. The keyboard, what they said to us is it's the second generation of the 12-inch MacBook keyboard, which has very shallow travel.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 30:12Nilay Patel?

  And they have engineered it to feel as though it has more travel.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Yes, I've been thinking about this.

• 30:18Nilay Patel?

  Although it may not.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  I don't think it has more travel. I actually think it might have a little. But I think what they did is they re-engineered the butterfly mechanism and the pad that actually takes it to give you more resistance throughout the entire key press, instead of just like it shoots down and you feel the click at the bottom. And so as you push on the key, it feels like it's deeper because it's giving you a slightly more resistance throughout the entire motion of the key press. And therefore, I think it feels much closer to what most people traditionally expect from a keyboard. But, look, I love the keyboard on the MacBook that is shallow that everybody else hates. So like, don't take my opinion as like you're gonna like this keyboard.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, take mine.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  You can't trust me.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Take my opinion, which is that you're not gonna like this keyboard. At least not at first. This is not a keyboard anybody picks up and says, oh, this is familiar, this is natural, this is sensible. Let's start bashing away at it. When you say, Dieter, the entire travel of the key, we're talking about like 1.5 millimeters at most. There is no travel.

• 31:24Nilay Patel?

  It definitely feels like more travel than the 12-inch MacBook.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. That's not really a standard to judge it by. Most people don't have a MacBook. Most people have never spent any time adapting to one. And for myself, I come from a MacBook era, which, you know, it still has this flat, chikka keyboard. It must have, I don't know, a dozen times, twenty times more travel than these new keyboards. And I think, again, speaking for myself, I'm gonna need a lot of adaptation before I'm able to say, okay, I'm comfortable with this new keyboard. Because the travel is too much for most people.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  I disagree. I think the 12-inch MacBook is definitely like, it might as well not have keys. It might as well just be a flat piece of glass sometimes. But I think that coming from the Air to this, I think it's fine. You're gonna like it. But, doesn't matter, because who gives a shit about keys? Like, you don't have any other choice. Like, there are no other Apple laptops coming for a while. And like, the Air is never getting any significant updates ever again, except unless they decide to do it. Who knows? It's like, you can't bet on Air updates. If you need a powerful Mac laptop, this is it.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  So like, suck it up. You're gonna learn to love the keyboard, because that's all that there is for you now.

• 32:42Nilay Patel?

  And I know you're gonna learn to love it. Anyway, let's talk about the touch bar. All you need to care, it's the only people, the reason people are listening to the show. Forty-five minutes in, we're gonna talk about the touch bar.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  We gotta talk about the specs of these things, too. I really wanna hear what Vlad thinks of...

• 32:53Nilay Patel?

  Touch bar.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Okay, fine.

• 32:54Nilay Patel?

  Touch bar.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Fine.

• 32:54Nilay Patel?

  Let's go into the touch bar. Here's my firm belief about the touch bar, which was somewhat validated in our conversations with Apple today. They don't wanna make a touchscreen Mac. I think they've tried to make them. I think they've tested them, prototyped them. They hate them. But they know that a whole generation of consumers has come up expecting touch interactions for things that are great, like selecting emoji. I don't, like, selecting emoji on a Mac right now, or any computer that doesn't have a touchscreen, sucks.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:24Nilay Patel?

  And they know they need to bring some of those experiences to the Mac. So instead of putting a touchscreen on the display, they've built a new touch area that is very reminiscent in terms of its interaction patterns. To iOS stuff, to the Apple Watch, and there's a bunch of Apple, neat Apple Watch connections. They're pulling apart the code on Twitter today. It's basically a tiny Apple Watch that runs that whole thing. That's super neat. They needed to do Touch ID because they want to get away from passwords. They want Apple Pay on the web to work. So they built basically a tiny touch computer under the screen because they don't want to put a touchscreen on the display, which is bold. Like, the simple answer is to put a fingerprint reader somewhere on the, on the base and put a touchscreen on the display and like, just move on.

• 34:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But Apple is just philosophically, ideologically opposed to building a touchscreen Mac. And what they've done instead is build this thing.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  But there is a conflict that arises here. And I, I noticed this when I was using the touch bar today, uh, when I was checking it out. You, you start using it and the touch bar very closely relates to the app you have above. So Apple has obviously customized all of its own apps. So in GarageBand, you have specific customizations or rotations that you can apply to a particular track. If you're in photos, you can scroll, uh, this is, I mean, I'm sure you guys have tried this. It's so addictive and beautiful to just be scrolling through the photos, uh, with the touch bar. Just doing that with your finger with nice sliding gesture. But because of this tight integration between the touch bar and the screen above it, my instinct is to go,

• 34:58Speaker 02

  okay, I'm touching a screen here and then I'm just gonna reach at the screen.

• 35:02Nilay Patel?

  Yes, I did it. Oh my God, I did it like four times. Yeah. A million, like, yeah. I was playing with the DJ, the algorithm DJ app. And I was like, I'm doing this. Why am I doing this here instead of up here on the big?

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my, my, my thinking on this is like, it'll, it'll probably go away for the most part after you use it. But that, they decided to not just like, make this thing a bunch of customizable buttons, but they gave it like, a little bit of dynamism, a little bit of interactivity. So you can like slide your finger on stuff, right? And just giving it that little bit of dynamism and interactivity directly on the thing, means that your brain goes into, oh, I'm interacting with a touchscreen now. And then you immediately go to directly interact with a thing on a touchscreen. Because that's what you do with, you directly interact with the software. Whereas on a laptop, you don't. And so that thing, literally sitting, it sits in between like, the old and the new.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  You've got the old model of interaction on the bottom, then there's the new one. And it makes you want to just touch the screen. And I don't know if like, I don't know if it's ever gonna go away for me, to be honest. Because like, that's how I use a phone. And now I've got a little tiny, you know, phone-like thing on the laptop. I'm not saying it's bad. Like, I'm very excited for this touch bar. I'm very excited for like, seeing what can be done on it. I'm mostly very excited for people to hack the T1 so that I can put custom crap in the system zones that I'm not supposed to. We'll see if they allow that, or if it is possible. I think it's wide open. I think- No, no. So, so here's the deal. The, the touch bar has like some system areas. That's where the Siri button is, the volume button.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  You can like expand it out to get all your other standard function controls. And that is locked down.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Well, you can customize it, but with only Apple options so far.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Right. Everything else is directly tied to the active app that's running. So you can't like, you can't like buy, you know how you can get like a menu bar utility? And that's just a thing that sits in your menu bar that does stuff? You can't do that with a touch bar. It, all it does is customize itself based on what the app that's currently running tells it what to do. And the question that I have, and I don't know the answer to, is we know that this thing is basically a tiny little Apple Watch, I guess. We know that it has a secure element, because that's where the Touch ID comes from. So, in order to like, if anybody wants to do like menu bar style utilities on it, you might have to jailbreak the thing. That'd be incredible. It'd be insane. But who knows?

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Anyway, Vlad, you're exactly right. I did it definitely four times today, where like, knowing, having thought less than 30 seconds ago, I shouldn't touch the screen. I know that this isn't a touchscreen. Just immediately went up to touch. It wasn't, it works in the Photos app.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  But I wanted to think about-

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Bor Tool.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  I wanted to think about for a moment how un-Apple-like this is. Because typically, the Apple way has been, you pick up the device and you're like, yep, this makes sense. And then, oh, this follows that. That makes sense. Intuitive. Yup, yup, yup. And we've had that with iOS 10. You know, intuitiveness has kind of gone away from iOS 10. It took me such a long time with the iPhone 7 to figure out, like, somebody literally needed to tell me, you force touch notifications in order to do something useful with them. And Apple is doing this again, where it's doing things, and all three of us, and I mean, I can't think of a more techie group of, you know, international humans.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  Than us, right? We spend all of our time-

• 38:33Speaker 01

  That's our new male clothing store, Techy International Humans.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  We spend all of our time with phones and laptops and we're supposed to be able to relate to both touchscreens and physical controls in a fast and natural manner. And then all three of us fell into this trap of intuitiveness, I guess. So this is peculiar, but one other thing I was gonna mention, and I think it's important. We had this issue with forced touch, or 3D touch on the iPhone, where Apple introduced it, Apple integrated it into its own apps, and then we sat and waited for third-party developers to do something useful with it, and we're still waiting.

• 39:08Nilay Patel?

  I think the reason that forced touch, and by the way, what a terrible name.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Yep. Not in the touch bar, by the way. Is it touch bar, right?

• 39:16Nilay Patel?

  It's the touch bar.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Right, okay.

• 39:17Nilay Patel?

  So the trackpads are forced touch.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:20Nilay Patel?

  The iPhone is 3D touch.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:23Nilay Patel?

  Explain that to me.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  No, I refuse to explain that to you.

• 39:27Nilay Patel?

  But here's why I think, and they showed a ton of developers already using it. I think it is probably somewhat trivial for developers to add it. My great fear was that Apple would restrict it to apps that were in the Mac App Store. They didn't do that, it's wide open. And, not for nothing, it's staring at every MacBook Pro owner in the face.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:50Nilay Patel?

  Right? So I think with 3D touch, it was hidden, it didn't make any sense, there was no natural sort of UI language for it. What is it good for? Who gives a shit? By the way, all these apps are free and it doesn't matter. If you're Adobe and you're making Photoshop and you can make the life of a MacBook Pro owner that much better-

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:10Nilay Patel?

  Using the OLED screen that is literally in front of their face, you're probably just gonna do it.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  And it's gonna be bought first by serious hardcore users and professionals who are the kind of people who are going to like, send emails and agitate in forums to like, make that bar more useful.

• 40:29Nilay Patel?

  And they showed apps, they showed Photoshop, they showed Office, they showed Algorithms DJ.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm switching to, I have an Acorn man for my photo app. If Acorn doesn't immediately add the tools that I saw on PixelMater today, I'm switching to PixelMater.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  That is a successful hardware feature.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  I do love the fact that Microsoft is one of the fanboy developers now for Apple. It is like first out of the gate. We've got Word integration, Excel integration, we're ready.

• 40:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, and there's headphone jack, we should put that there.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, actually, let's do a little run through the specs. Because to me, once you digest the big highlight, there are a couple of things that stand out. Firstly, on the positive side, the display is once again improved. Okay, last year's display, I reviewed the spring 2015 MacBook Pro, and that display basically buried my MacBook Air. It was like, I am living in a caveman past, I need to upgrade to a MacBook Pro, right? To the MacBook Pro. This one, wider color gamut, matches the iPhone 7 now. Higher contrast ratio, I mean, it's super high resolution. There is literally no limit to the view and angles. You know, you see these things perched up and they do actually look like the future. You know, when they just stood up next to each other, these laptops, they just, they look amazing.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  They look terrific, okay? So the display, Apple didn't market it enough, in my opinion, because it once again is just so brilliant. Like, I can't say enough good things about it. But besides that, you know, on the processor side, same complaint as with Microsoft. These are Intel's sixth-gen processors. And this time, unlike Microsoft, right? Microsoft's excuse is there are no quad-core latest-generation Intel processors. So you have to use the older generation. So Apple can use the same excuse on the 15-inch MacBook Pro, but not on the 13-inch. Because other companies, Dell included, have already done the Kaby Lake, this latest generation of Intel processors, dual-core in their competing devices. So my only reasoning for this is that Apple was like,

• 42:32Speaker 02

  we can't have our lower-tier, cheaper device with a later generation of Intel CPU than our top-tier quad-core device. Which, to me, still kind of sucks, because I want the perfect laptop. And to me, the perfect laptop is going to be 13 inches. But this is never going to be my perfect laptop, because it doesn't have an SD card slot.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  And if there is one thing...

• 42:53Speaker 01

  The SD card slot is like... Yeah.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  If there's one thing that is as universal as a headphone jack right now in technology, the next thing after the headphone jack maybe is a USB port, but you know, that's dying away, being replaced by USB C, which everybody agrees is a good idea. But the next thing after them is the SD card. Every single camera manufacturer is standardizing around the SD card as the medium of storage, the format of storage. And why have you need to break compatibility with it?

• 43:22Speaker 01

  If they had gone with micro SD, which is what Microsoft keeps trying to make happen on devices, that might've been interesting, actually. And maybe we'd like just all switch to those tiny little pinky nails or like use, you know, SD adapters with micro SD like that could've been interesting because like Microsoft's doing it and if an Apple does it too, then that'll be the thing that happens. I fundamentally believe that the dongle life that a bunch of people are going to have to live with, with this thing is better than you think it's going to be because it's a laptop, you put it in a bag, your bag has pockets, put some dongles in the pockets, life goes on. I'm much more annoyed with them on phones than I am with laptops.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  But, but not having an SD slot for the target market for this thing, which is people who want to step up from the air and then, you know, a lot, a lot of people who like need to use SD cards, it's just a killer. It's just like, ah.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  No, it really is. And I will tell you photographers are up in arms about this and they're actually even like you would think I would be the guy who freaks out about specs and I'm kind of bummed that it's not the latest intro process, but I can live with that. And I'm kind of bummed that it's integrated graphics, but again, I can live with that because I don't want to play games and integrated into graphics can be just fine for regular use. So we can kind of look past those things. This isn't going to be a VR platform after all. So just. Get over them, right? So then photographers, they want more memory, they want more performance and that's understandable. And Apple isn't giving it to them. Like, some people have been saying, I'm happy to spend even more on a laptop if it's a real workhorse. And what Apple is doing is it's pulling the MacBook Pro so close to the MacBook

• 45:07Speaker 02

  that it's kind of leaving those people who want just an absolute beast of a machine and they don't want it to be a Windows PC, they're used to Mac, they like the Mac and its design and its software utilities and everything else. They're used to that as their workflow. A lot of photographers are like that because Apple has been pushing amazing displays for the longest time and photographers are like, well, Mac gives me a better way to process my photos. That's, that's my workflow. And now those people are kind of left in a lurch, you know? And like you said, Dieter, while you were laughing maniacally, there, there is no next option, right? Apple just refreshed the MacBook Pro. Now it's like months and years until you get the next update, the next option. So now it's like, I am actually starting to think-

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Surface book, yeah.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  I am starting to think what are the Microsoft alternatives now? Because I need more performance and I am not gonna be-

• 45:54Speaker 01

  So you're gonna do, you're gonna get a Surface book, you're gonna pull the screen off-

• 45:56Speaker 02

  I am not gonna be the guy with a dongle for his SD card when you're trying to rush and get photos off your camera and upload it somewhere. It's just not gonna happen. A dongle is not going to improve my workflow, it's gonna make it worse. And the other problem, right? If camera companies had been able to do wireless transfer photos of the cameras by now, this would not be an issue, right? If we could do wireless transfers of cameras, we wouldn't be pissing and moaning about it so much. But the fact is that they all absolutely stink. Their software stinks-

• 46:26Speaker 01

  They are the worst.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  You can't get your photos off wirelessly, you have to take the SD card out. And when you take it out- It needs to have a slot in the laptop.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  The new Ni- the new Nikon wireless transfer is better, but it is pretty slow. Just get a dongle, bud.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I should get a dongle or I should buy an expensive new camera with actually good wireless transfer.

• 46:47Nilay Patel?

  Or maybe a USB-C camera. That could be the next move, right?

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:51Nilay Patel?

  Who knows? I'm less. I'm with Dieter. I think I would rather have four ports on my computer that can do anything, literally anything, from charge and power the thing to plug-in adapters than 900 sort of single-purpose ports.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, that is the Apple philosophy, and I would say that's exactly what's happening with the Touch Bar, isn't it? Because we had, how many keys are they? 15, 20 keys that had one or two specific functions, and then now replaced by the universality of the Touch Bar. So at least philosophically, that's consistent for Apple.

• 47:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Okay, I gotta read one more ad.

• 47:25Nilay Patel?

  It's called Graphic Stock. They're great. Graphic Stock is a subscription-based stock mini-company. It gives you unlimited access to over 300,000 premium photos, illustrations, vectors, and design elements that everyone can afford. You get great value with an unlimited download model. It has the largest unlimited download library of graphics, photos, vectors, and images available to the creative community. On most websites, they charge you per download, which costs almost $30 per image, which adds up quickly. But Graphic Stock, you get unlimited downloads with your membership for an annual rate. So credits, there's down limits, there's no hidden charges. Just you partying with content. It's the same content that you would find on the more expensive stock sites at a cheaper price. They're always adding new content to the library, so it stays fresh. During a 7-day free trial, you can download 140 pieces of content, and it's only $99 just annual subscription after that, which is less than $10 a month. Do the math on your slightly underpowered MacBook Pro. Everything

• 48:07Nilay Patel?

  is 100% royalty-free, even if subscription is canceled. You get unrestricted usage rights for personal and commercial projects. You get a keyway to download and maintain your usage rights forever. So, exclusive, Vergecast listeners, sign up for-

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Exclusive.

• 48:19Nilay Patel?

  Exclusive. Sign up for a 7-day free trial today. Graphicstock.com/vergecast. That's Graphicstock.com/vergecast. So, do you have a final MacBook Pro thought before I take this thing over with television?

• 48:34Speaker 02

  Uh, let me enumerate the number of dongles that I'm going to need.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  Ethernet, okay? Sometimes Wi-Fi sucks in events, so I'm gonna need, I'm gonna need an ethernet dongle.

• 48:47Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  Then I'm going to need a specific, brand-new cable which Apple bundles with no, none of its devices to connect an iPhone to a MacBook. Second cable. Then I'm gonna need a dongle for my SD card, third one. And I'm sure there's something else that I'm missing.

• 49:03Nilay Patel?

  Wait, I have an adapter in my bag.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  You gotta get, you gotta get the, the multi-adaptor, the Hootu.

• 49:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I got a, I got a Minix, I don't know what company Minix is.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:11Nilay Patel?

  If I don't have Amazon. I got an adapter that's got two USB 3 ports, an SD card reader, some other weird card reader, ethernet jack.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:18Nilay Patel?

  Charge the thing. Anchor's gotta make one of these things with a battery built into it.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  If Anchor made one, uh, so people have been promising to make one with batteries and, and they've all kick-started it and failed. I have tried, uh, all of these USB-C adapters, they're all great, until you need them to reliably read an SD card and then they shit the bed.

• 49:34Nilay Patel?

  Of course.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  Oh, well, that's the perfect spot for it, isn't it? Um, and, and you know, the one that I forgot, the dongle that I forgot, is the USB to USB-C. I, I'm just thinking about the gazillions of USB sticks that I have at home, which would just be like, forget it, trash now.

• 49:49Nilay Patel?

  If you ever write like a super sad, kind of like, pop lit book memoir thing, Vlad, it should be called "The Dongle I Forgot", the Vlad Sambop story. It's just, it's just stories of being at events and not having the right adapter. It's all, it's, it's all like Craigslist missed connections, but for things you want to plug. The dongle I've taken. The dongle I've taken, like, I was there, I could have plugged an ethernet cable into my laptop, but I'd, I'd once again forgotten it. Call me if you see me. To you, cableless in Seattle, like, the whole thing.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:23Nilay Patel?

  Missed connections, but for dongles. This is a billion-dollar idea. This is like, I'm telling you, this is the next, this is the next Twilight, it's the next, uh, it's the next Fifty Shades. It's Fifty Shades, but for dongles.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  No. This is not, no. We are, we are super moving on from that joke. We are not expanding on that joke.

• 50:42Nilay Patel?

  Nope.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  We are leaving alone.

• 50:43Nilay Patel?

  It's dead.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  It is gone.

• 50:45Nilay Patel?

  It hit the ceiling and then we looked to see if we should break through the ceiling. And as a group, we said no.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  So let, let me, okay. One final point, one final point. I just want to make this one serious.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Is it about dongles?

• 50:57Speaker 02

  It's not about dongles. It's about keyboards. Okay. This is very serious, very serious.

• 51:00Nilay Patel?

  It's very serious, alright.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  I ju- I just want to talk about this. The, the whole keyboard travel and all of that stuff. There is actually a company that has really done a terrific keyboard this year and it deserves some acknowledgement.

• 51:10Nilay Patel?

  Is it Razer?

• 51:11Speaker 02

  It's Razer with the Razer Blade Pro.

• 51:12Nilay Patel?

  I think it's great.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  That's the best laptop keyboard I've yet experienced. It, it's a mechanical keyboard, but it's low profile and just typing away on that thing is a joy. Now, that laptop costs 4,000 something dollars. So, you know, it's bonkers, but it also, they also have that keyboard as an iPad Pro accessory. The 12.5 inch or 12.9 inch iPad Pro. Uh, and that's a hundred something dollars. And you have to, you being our listener, have to try that keyboard out. This is why, this is my standard, basically. When I have something like that integrated into a laptop somewhere and then Apple gives me a travelless, you know, chick lit mess, like with the new MacBook Pro, I have to hold it to the highest standard possible because that's what Apple expects.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  That's what Apple talks about.

• 52:00Nilay Patel?

  Alright, we gotta talk about TV. We're way over time here.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Hang on. I just, I'm just gonna say one last thing. Looking at this MacBook Pro makes me really wish that the Yoga 910 was just like 10% better and I would probably switch.

• 52:15Nilay Patel?

  I'm telling you, this is the year. This is the year when all comes crashing down. Lock in fatigue.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  I mean, the Yoga 910 is really nice. The only thing, if, if the Yoga 910 had an SD card slot, I would switch. But it's got Thunderbolt 3, it's got the hinge, it's got a relatively recent processor. It's got a Core i7 and it's got, you know, the tablet hinge-y thing.

• 52:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Like.

• 52:36Nilay Patel?

  Which you totally need.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Well.

• 52:39Nilay Patel?

  It's like, what gimmick do you want? Do you want a flippy screen? Do you want a flippy touchscreen or do you want a touch bar? Who knows? Okay, television. Let me just do this real fast.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:48Nilay Patel?

  Apple put out a TV app today. It's called TV. It's very confusing.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  So it's a TV app on the Apple TV?

• 52:53Nilay Patel?

  TV app on the Apple TV.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  How do you, how do you launch?

• 52:55Nilay Patel?

  There's another app on the Apple TV called TV Shows.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:58Nilay Patel?

  It's very confusing.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 52:59Nilay Patel?

  Apple appears to be not able to get the deals it wants. So they announced single sign on for cable authentication at W W C.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Apple not getting the deals it wants, by the way, they're the only company that can't. Everybody else is like launching TV services.

• 53:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but I, I think their thing is like, no one's gonna buy those. Like, which is true. I think that there's a bunch of failed TV services out there. It doesn't matter. What they want is for you to have like a great experience watching TV. But they're still not getting the deals.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:29Nilay Patel?

  Um, so they announced a single sign on. No one's using it yet. It's in the code of the, of Apple TV right now. They, they just rolled out in the last update, but no one's using it yet. Most cable service, most cable companies, I think aside from DirecTV are like pretty hesitant about it. Um, but they made it this new app that if you download, if, you know, you've got a bunch of video service apps on your Apple TV, like watch ESPN or FX Now or HBO Go or HBO Now, all the, you know, all the video streaming apps.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Almost all of the video streaming.

• 54:01Nilay Patel?

  Well, I'll get to that. Um, they're gonna, you push the button on the Siri remote for the Apple TV.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  The TV button.

• 54:07Nilay Patel?

  The button with a picture of a TV.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Currently takes you home, but now is gonna take you to Apple's TV app.

• 54:12Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Which is not home.

• 54:14Nilay Patel?

  Not home.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  But should have been in the first place.

• 54:16Nilay Patel?

  It very much seems like what they released as an app is the thing that should be the home screen of the Apple TV.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  But they won't do it.

• 54:24Nilay Patel?

  Shows you content from around all of the services you subscribe to. Except for Netflix and except for Amazon, which isn't on the Apple TV at all. I think this is just them. They are totally limited and boxed in by a fragmented TV market. And they're just trying to mortar in the cracks with a bunch of stuff. So that when it all comes falling down and someone decides to give them the deals, they have a foundation like built in place. It's a bad metaphor, but go with me. I don't get it. I'm just gonna be honest with you. It's super messy to use. Because you open this TV app and it's like, here's a bunch of stuff you can watch.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 55:01Nilay Patel?

  You click on one of those shows, it takes you out of the TV app and into another app. And then if you push menu in that app, you get dropped into that app's interface.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:10Nilay Patel?

  If you push the TV button to go back to the TV app, you don't go back to where you were. You go back to the top of the TV app.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  How do you get to the home screen?

• 55:18Nilay Patel?

  You push the TV button again.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  What?

• 55:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So if you're in a TV app and you push TV button-

• 55:23Speaker 01

  And if you double push the TV button-

• 55:25Nilay Patel?

  It takes you to home screen.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  No, no, no. If you double press the TV button, it takes you to the multitasking interface.

• 55:29Nilay Patel?

  You gotta be kidding me.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  I'm totally-

• 55:30Nilay Patel?

  What happens if you triple press-

• 55:32Speaker 01

  You can quit apps.

• 55:33Nilay Patel?

  Does it go 3D? I don't know, man. It's, I will say, I get what they're doing. They're slow rolling this industry.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:41Nilay Patel?

  The TV industry is slow and panicky and worried and protective. And Apple's just slowly building this product. But the thing that makes it go, which is-

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Deals.

• 55:53Nilay Patel?

  Deals.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Money.

• 55:54Nilay Patel?

  Money.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  It makes it, yeah.

• 55:56Nilay Patel?

  Is, it, it's not there. So what they've done is they say, okay, here's a streaming plat product. Like a box, make apps for it. And then they're slowly but surely abstracting away those apps. So first they built Siri Search and everybody loves Siri Search. Netflix isn't Siri Search because Siri Search doesn't collect any data, right?

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:16Nilay Patel?

  Now they're building this screen. It's like, here's some stuff you might like.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:20Nilay Patel?

  Here's what you've been watching. Here's the next episode. All the other TV apps are like fine to be in there.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:26Nilay Patel?

  Netflix doesn't give a shit.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:29Nilay Patel?

  Cause everyone goes to Netflix and Netflix already has all this viewer data in the world. They don't want to share it. Netflix isn't in there. Amazon doesn't want Apple's box to succeed. They want to sell you Fire TV sticks.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  So they don't even go on the box?

• 56:41Nilay Patel?

  They're not even on the box. And when you ask Apple, why isn't Amazon here? They, they basically subtweet Amazon and they say things like, "Well, it's an open app store."

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:49Nilay Patel?

  Huh.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  So I'm gonna make a metaphor here. And it's deeply wrong. And everyone's gonna say, oh, no, that's-

• 56:59Nilay Patel?

  They announced very proudly their number of apps for the Apple TV today.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Eight thousand?

• 57:02Nilay Patel?

  Eight thou- it's a drop in the bucket.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:05Nilay Patel?

  It's, it's, it's, and it's, I don't know if you've used Apple-

• 57:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, but Minecraft is coming. That'll be a thing.

• 57:09Nilay Patel?

  My, whatever. I just think, everybody knows this about me, I think the TV is, it is the thing that the tech industry cannot solve.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 57:19Nilay Patel?

  And nothing about this product, it is more solutions, but they're like little tiny turns of the screw solutions. And they're not, it doesn't matter.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  So I'm gonna say a thing, I'm gonna make this metaphor, and you're both gonna get real mad at me and say this metaphor doesn't line up. A does not match C, and D does not match E, and you know, it's not, it's not accurate at all. But, how does it feel to deal with a crappy industry and then accept a compromised solution at a high level? It's exactly right. Congratulations, Apple, you just moto rocker'd yourself.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  They, like, this is the, this is the software equivalent of that crappy iTunes moto rocker phone, only Apple made it itself on its own hardware. Like, they just...

• 58:06Nilay Patel?

  It's a bunch of hacks.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  They ha- yeah, it's a bunch of hacks, it's a bunch of like, bad hacks that, I mean, I'll try it, I'll use it, but I have zero faith that it's gonna be any good.

• 58:14Nilay Patel?

  Basically what it is, is, you know those sites, like canistreamit.com?

• 58:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 58:19Nilay Patel?

  It's that, expressed through Siri in a new app. They have not gotten to the point where you open the thing, you, you take an Apple TV out of the box, you set it up, it says, are you, do you have a cable subscription? And you say yes, and it says, enter your Comcast credentials, and it downloads a bunch of apps that work with Comcast. They can't get there, because Comcast, and basically every other cable company, doesn't want them to get there, because Comcast would rather you buy an X1 box and do all that shit on X1.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Well, and that's to say nothing of doing, like, the thing that, like, uh, my wife and I, she, she like has this random app that she uses to just track the frickin' TV shows that we're watching. Like, I, I just, I need a, a central guide that says, like, oh, we, we followed that you have watched these four shows on these, across these six different apps. And, we're just gonna keep a list for you, so that you can watch the next one, and not, you won't have to worry about what app it's in.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you know, you know who you actually need to get that sort of intelligence? The answer is Google. Because, guys, listen, I've been using the Google Pixel, and anybody who doesn't follow me on Twitter should really jump on Twitter and check it out, because I just took a photo of a rainy... Manhattan Street in New York, and that is literally, hands down, I'm channeling a bit of Donald Trump here, the best, the best mobile photo I've ever taken. Okay, so.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, but dude, like, like, Google failed at Android TV. They basically will just tell you that straight out if you like, talk to them about it. The Chromecast has worked, except that there, like, the Google Home app, which is what now the Chromecast app is, in terms of like, that dream of applying like, artificial machine learning intelligence to like, actual, like, real things I want to do, they're nowhere near that yet.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  Well, maybe that part of Google, because that's the other thing. Google does some things amazingly well, and then Google does some things amazingly terribly. But what I will say, the reason I talked about the pixel is it's got me using more Google services. So I am now intimately familiar with every last detail of Google Photos, just because the pixel got me into it. And then I also got into Google Play Music more. And I will tell you, Google Play Music, I just told you, I liked dance and electronic music. I picked a few of my favorite artists, and it's digging up these people who are like, right next to my favorite artists.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  No, no, someone paid Vlad to troll me with Google Play Music. We, we always talk about Google Play Music on this thing, and I've always defended it, but on my way home from Apple, Android Auto, the Spotify app on Android Auto is a garbage fire, so I said, okay, screw this, I'm gonna go to Google Play Music. And I went to Google Play Music's Indie Playlist, they're like, default indie playlist, which is the only one they'd show me, I was like, playlist for driving, like, well, I'm driving, yes, indie, sure. So I was playing it. First song, Radiohead, you know, they're there. Really good, I love that song, love Radiohead. Neela hates it because it's wrong. Sounds like cats dying.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  And then, this is the next things that Google Play Music thought they wanted on their indie playlist in 2016. Ready. I'm just, I'm just gonna say the one that has made me, I'm canceling my Google Play Music subscription. You ready? Ready. Hootie and the Blowfish. They just went straight to Hootie.

• 1:01:36Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, let me finish this TV thing. This podcast is way over. We gotta end it. I think someone is gonna get there on TV.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  No, no one is ever gonna get there. It's always gonna be terrible.

• 1:01:45Nilay Patel?

  Here's my crazy prediction. I think it's just gonna be Netflix. I think Netflix is just gonna, they're just gonna own that whole market. People are gonna, they're gonna steal Game of Thrones. They're gonna steal Westworld and they're gonna watch Netflix.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  I mean, 18, we, we actually need to get into AT&T and Tupperware.

• 1:02:00Nilay Patel?

  Can we do this next week?

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  My theory is.

• 1:02:02Nilay Patel?

  I don't have the rage in me.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Nobody wants anybody else to win. So anybody that gets too powerful loses the deals. So Apple is too powerful to get the deals. It's not that they suck at negotiating. It's that they, they're afraid of them. And like if Netflix, anybody that gets powerful enough to solve it will not get it because nobody wants it solved.

• 1:02:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:02:26Nilay Patel?

  And you, you can definitely see, you can look at the Apple TV and what they did today and just see where they hit the brick wall and had to stop.

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  Okay, guys, you know what? I will tell you this much. Uh, this is my, as a non habitual TV viewer perception. I, I saw the tiny little glimmer of potential. If they actually made this into a really smart TV listings or TV guide, right? Where you're looking at your TV listings and you can like literally jump into shows and then jump out. And it just kind of intuitive and logical.

• 1:02:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but that's not how it works. Cause you jump into an app. You jump into an app. This is what I'm telling you. You don't jump into the show. It opens another app and then you're not.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  Exactly. And, and, and that's, that's where it becomes disjointed. And what I'm saying is it needs to be seamless. It needs to be jumping in and out and it needs to be a unified experience. And Apple is one of those companies that I used to think, this is, this is the difference today. I used to think was capable of doing that. The really crazy thing for me this week, and somebody mentioned this on Twitter. I'm stealing their great idea. Is, um, actually Verge comments, not even Twitter, much better. Verge comments. He said, this must be the first time in like seven years where there isn't a single Apple product that I want to buy. And I think that person is right. I don't want an Apple Watch. I'm not sure I want one of these new MacBook Pros. I definitely don't give a damn about an Apple TV. And like what, what has Apple really got left now?

• 1:03:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, they've got a bunch of great hardware and millions of satisfied customers and like, I don't know, the GDP of Australia in the bank. They'll be fine. But. You just see where they're hitting the wall and it's, they'll have to get through it. Okay, that's the show. I gotta wrap up. I want to thank MasterClass again sponsoring today's episode of The Verge. MasterClass makes the world's greatest courses by bringing you the world's greatest instructors. Aaron Sorkin, teaching MasterClass in screenwriting, contains 35 lessons, six hours of video, over six hours of video, interactive assignments. You learn about the craft of screenwriting, you write your own screenplays. Aaron talks about the rules of storytelling, dialogue, character development, and what makes a script actually sell. You can go watch exclusive clip of Aaron Sorkin discussing how he writes dialogue. Just go to masterclass.com/theverge. There's also a whole bunch of other stuff

• 1:04:30Nilay Patel?

  to listen to. You can listen to What's Tech with Chris Plant. You can listen to Lauren Good's Too Embarrassed to Ask. You can listen to Peter Kafka's Recode Media. You can listen to Kieran Swisher's Recode Decode. And you can listen to me and Walt Mossberg on Control Alt Delete. All that is available on iTunes. Go to iTunes.com/verge. Look at it all. Read it all. Do that. You can talk to us on at Reckless on Twitter, Dieter's at Backlon, Vlad, you're at Vlad Savov. Am I correct? Yes. That's it.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  And our glorious producer is at Andrew Moreno with a U.

• 1:05:00Nilay Patel?

  With a U. Talk to Andrew. He's great. I want to just throw it out there again. We're in a very echoey room. We've probably talked to each other. Sorry about the sound quality if there's sound quality problems. We're back next week. Verge is relaunching on Tuesday. New design, new strut in our step. I know, a whole bunch of new stuff. Yeah. It's gonna be great. Check it out. Tuesday, November 1, a new Verge. Check it. It's gonna be amazing. I'm so excited about it. And Vlad, we're gonna have to have you on the show some more, buddy. For sure. That's it. Rock and roll.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  Paul.

• 1:05:27Nilay Patel?

  Paul.