Meta’s Quest 3 revealed and a WWDC preview

The Verge's David Pierce, Alex Cranz, and Adi Robertson discuss Meta's new Quest 3 VR headset that was announced ahead of Apple's WWDC event, which is widely believed to showcase an Apple headset. Deputy editor Dan Seifert joins the show to discuss the rest of the WWDC rumors and theories. Further reading: Meta announces its Quest 3 VR headset, which will cost $499.99 The biggest announcements from Meta's Quest Gaming Showcase Apple’s mixed reality headset: all the reports about the rumored AR / VR headset Apple’s VR headset might run tweaked versions of iPad apps WWDC 2023: what to expect at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference Apple might announce ‘several’ Macs at WWDC The Motorola Razr Plus' new cover screen is a big deal Amazon Echo Pop review: Alexa for less Hot foldable summer is here, and there are good reasons to get excited Range Rover’s next luxury add-on: A car seat that vibrates to music The ultimate “what is a photo?” gadget. Lisa's Final Act: how Apple invented its future by burying its past Kid Cop Returns (Again and Again) Email us [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:23David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of companies front-running other companies' announcements before the second company has a very large event. I'm your friend David Pierce. Alex Cranz is here.

• 1:33Alex Cranz?

  I'm your friend who also has an AR headset they really want to talk to you about this week.

• 1:38David Pierce?

  Just everyone who has an AR headset, tell us about it right now. If you've ever even thought about it, now is the time. Addie Robertson's here. Hi. Neelai is out forever. And no, he'll be back next week. He's on vacation doing God only knows what. He's mostly still in Slack, so I don't think he's actually on any kind of vacation.

• 1:55Alex Cranz?

  I was like, he's just sitting on vacation slacking all of us, but knowing that like, he can ignore the slacks afterwards.

• 2:00David Pierce?

  It's honestly kind of the best vacation. It's just like a no responsibilities work week. Where like, I can do work if I feel like it, and I can yell at everyone in Slack if I want to, but I don't have to do anything. Like, that's vacation right there, as far as I'm concerned.

• 2:12Alex Cranz?

  The goal.

• 2:14David Pierce?

  All right, we have a lot to get to this week. It's WWDC next week. We're gonna talk a bunch about that. There's a lot of stuff coming. But first, we should talk about the front run to end all front runs, which was Meta announcing the Quest 3 VR headset. This is just like transparently Meta saying like, please, Apple's about to launch a headset. We beg you, do not forget that we also make headsets. Buy our headsets. We love you. Mark Zuckerberg.

• 2:38Speaker 04

  Oh, absolutely.

• 2:39David Pierce?

  Addie, like, what's going on here? Tell us about this thing.

• 2:42Speaker 04

  So, yeah, the Quest 3, which was very widely rumored. It's not like this is some shock. Everybody's known it's been coming for a long time. But there was one lone hands-on with it last week. And then now we've gotten a full announce. Its deal is that it is slimmer and lighter than the Quest 2, the way that the Quest 2 was slimmer and lighter than the Quest. There are color pass-through cameras, so it's got these three things that look kind of like these little pills on the front of it. And they are dual-camera arrays. And then there's a depth sensor, which was supposed to be on the Meta Quest Pro but got dropped. And so that gives it the sort of quasi-augmented reality capabilities that the Quest Pro has, but it's much cheaper. It is $499.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  And then they're also gonna keep the Quest 2 around, but they're gonna drop the price point back down to what it was before, which is $299.

• 3:36David Pierce?

  The pricing of the Quest never stops confusing me. And on the one hand, like, the Quest 3, $499.99 is both a lot and a little in the scheme of VR headsets. The old one is getting a big software update they talked about and is going down in price. The Pro exists. I think they've sold zero of them, as far as I can tell. But like, this thing fits into kind of an awkward space? Like, the vibe I got, this is basically just a teaser.

• 4:05Speaker 04

  I don't think it does.

• 4:06David Pierce?

  Does it? Is it, this works for you, Alex?

• 4:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, cuz the original, I mean, I don't necessarily think it's the best idea, but the original, like, the Quest 2, what was so compelling was, everybody really liked it, and it was cheap. It was $300. And so you're like, oh, I wanna spend $300 to like, try out really good

• 4:23Alex Cranz?

  VR, that sounds great and I don't have to like put a bunch of crap in my house to do it. And so that made sense. Then everybody got really pissed when they increased the price last year. I know they've dropped the price again and I think the the the higher storage one is actually now cheaper than it was when it initially launched. But it's like, it sounds like the Quest 2 is still, this is still their beginners. You just want to get a taste and then, okay, you want full color pass through, but without the garbage that is the Quest Pro. Now you can get it for like a hundred, $200 more. Like, it makes a little sense. Everything about this makes sense, right? Like, it makes sense that the one hands on went to Mark Gurman,

• 5:05Alex Cranz?

  who is a very well-known reporter on like things happening at Apple. So of course, that's who they go to to front run Apple, like could not have made it any clearer that that's what they were doing by going to Gurman. Like, everything about this makes sense, but also presupposes that we all care enough about full color pass-through VR to want to spend $500.

• 5:29Speaker 04

  This is the question, is that the other problem is that anytime you add more cameras to a thing, you make that thing heavier. And I'm kind of annoyed by that. It could turn out this this thing is great, but I would actually just prefer a headset that has very rudimentary pass-through but is lighter to a thing that is trying to implement this use case that maybe someone could do well. The Quest Pro did not do well. I still do not see a really compelling option for like a really compelling reason why I should want it. I'm gonna be annoyed if there's like a better version of this headset that I could have gotten for cheaper, that it's just saddled with this quasi augmented reality.

• 6:06David Pierce?

  Right. So that's where I land when I say this is confusing to me is the the Quest 2 still seems like it is, it's going to be a very good option for most people, right? And Meta just had this big Quest Gaming Showcase. A lot of that stuff is coming to the Quest 2. It just sort of keeps being a better thing, right? That's great. But the the Quest 3, and again, this is just a teaser. It's launching in the fall. We'll see more. This was clearly like, they made this video in like an hour and a half in order to front run Apple is like pretty clearly what happened. So we don't know everything. But to me, it's exactly what you're saying, Addy. It's like the Quest 2, little lighter, little more powerful. Those are all good things. But then the big new thing is this pass through. And A, I'm suspicious that this pass through is going to be any good, based on what we've seen from the Quest Pro.

• 6:50David Pierce?

  And B, there's really no evidence anywhere yet of like a useful app for this. All the stuff they show is just like, look at this nifty thing you can put on your table. And it's like, we're still in the like, see the IKEA sofa in your living room before you buy it phase of all of this stuff. And to me, that's just like, that's nothing. And so I'm kind of of the mind that like, where is the thing that's going to make me spend 200 extra dollars on this? Because I just, I don't necessarily buy that it's pass through.

• 7:21Speaker 04

  And every time I say I don't like some feature on a VR headset, somebody's like, this is the exact thing I needed. I love this. I fully accept that. That's great. Like, as someone who does like this thing mostly for gaming, though, and who does general purpose computing, I feel like Meta has not made a very good pitch for pass through to me.

• 7:39David Pierce?

  What would that pitch look like? Like, in your, in your wildest dreams? This is the part I have trouble with, is I'm not even sure what I want from this. Short of some of the like, truly amazing, like, probably still 10 years away, incredible epic AR experiences, like, what is, what does good even look like here?

• 7:55Speaker 04

  I don't think full color pass through can be good. Because full color pass through means that, okay, now I'm going to be able to wear this around my house doing other things, but I'm still going to look like a jackass. I think my entire career is a testament to the fact that I don't care about that. But I think that all of the compelling uses I've seen for augmented reality so far are things that happen outside my house. They're things that are smartphone-esque. And I think that is hard to pull off here. Like, I think home AR, so far, I haven't heard a lot of really great takes on it. Like, I want to be able to look at a sign that's in a language I don't speak and see that sign translated, things like that. That's cool. Real-life Google Maps. I know there are a lot of people who like the idea that,

• 8:38Speaker 04

  you know, you could use this instead of a big monitor or a big screen. I don't think the tech is there yet. So that's basically all I got.

• 8:45David Pierce?

  Yeah, I really loathe this road that we're going down where everybody is like, "Oh, use it to get a bunch of computer monitors and you can read books with your AR headset." And I'm like, "Have you seen like the resolution of a piece of paper?" Like, it's very, it's very good. And it turns out that that's nice to read on. And if you want it to be like blurry and bad and give you a headache after 15 minutes, like by all means, read in a headset. But that, that to me is so far away from being an actual use case for most things. It's just mind blowing to me.

• 9:18Alex Cranz?

  I figured it out. Okay, you're gonna put it on and you're gonna go in the kitchen and then it's gonna give you recipes that float in front of you.

• 9:25David Pierce?

  That's honestly a very good idea.

• 9:27Speaker 04

  So I tried that when the Oppo glasses came out. I think that was actually a good option.

• 9:34Alex Cranz?

  I love that you already tried it.

• 9:36Speaker 04

  You're right. That is, that reminds me, cooking is one of the rare use cases where I think this could actually be good because you're like, it's like being a surgeon, you want your hands free. I still don't know if it's worth this.

• 9:46Alex Cranz?

  I don't know if I would want to wear this to cook. I like cooking. I would love to be able to not have to like wipe my hands off and go look at my iPad. But I also would not like, there just feels like there's so much potential for failure there. I don't trust the cameras.

• 10:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, one of the things I've been hearing, I've been talking to analysts and like developers about this. And the big thing they point out is the problem is that pass through has a really bad fail state. Like if your AR glasses go dead and they're just glasses that have a projector, then you have no glasses. If this goes dark, then you're blind.

• 10:21David Pierce?

  Oh, that's such a good point.

• 10:23Speaker 04

  Like, that's part of the reason why you can't really use it outside very well. Because if, say, it freezes up for a second and you're crossing the street, is the example that I heard, then wow, you are going to die.

• 10:34David Pierce?

  It's like the Mitch Hedberg joke about like when the escalator dies, it just becomes stairs.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, escalator not temporarily stairs.

• 10:40David Pierce?

  Right. This is not temporarily stairs. This is temporarily black hole. Like it's not, it's not what you're looking for. That's really interesting. But then to your point about the killer apps for this, like Meta still sees this as a gaming device, right?

• 10:52Speaker 04

  God, I hope.

• 10:53David Pierce?

  Is clearly, they did this announcement right before they did a big gaming showcase. They showed off a bunch of stuff. There's a Stranger Things VR game. There's an Assassin's Creed VR game coming that I'm very excited about.

• 11:04Speaker 04

  Which has been in the works in theory for like years at this point. I'm really curious about that one.

• 11:08David Pierce?

  Oh, really? Should I not be getting my hopes up about this? I, in the last few minutes, have really gotten my hopes up.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  They announced Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell like years ago.

• 11:16Alex Cranz?

  But isn't it also like Ubisoft, anytime someone announces anything game related, they're like, don't worry, Assassin's Creed is coming to this product.

• 11:25David Pierce?

  Assassin's Creed was on the like when Google was testing game streaming before Project, before Stadia even existed. Assassin's Creed was like, sure, play Assassin's Creed on your Chromebook over the internet.

• 11:34Speaker 04

  You go for it.

• 11:34David Pierce?

  Here you go. Knock yourself out. That said, I still want one. Addy, was there anything in this showcase that jumped out at you? Like, are we, are we moving ahead with metaverse games in any kind of cool, exciting ways?

• 11:46Speaker 04

  So with the full caveat that I haven't, I've mostly looked at Jay's very good announcements post, there's stuff that could be cool. And also Power Wash Simulator is kind of neat.

• 11:56David Pierce?

  Yes.

• 11:56Speaker 04

  In VR. I like that. There wasn't anything where I looked at and I was like, this is the most exciting thing ever. This looks fantastic. It seemed like a solid gaming showcase and Assassin's Creed could be good, but I wish we could actually see them demonstrate something.

• 12:11David Pierce?

  Yeah, the thing, Power Wash Simulator is such a good example to me because the thing that amazes me about VR and the thing that continues to give me hope about this is that it just is fun to do stuff. Like, yeah, cooking simulator is fun. There's this very dumb game Gorilla Tag where like the graphics kind of suck. The game barely works, but it's super popular and very fun. And it's like, it's just fun to do things in VR. And that's not going to be enough forever. It's probably not even enough now to really like sustain this thing as a mainstream, you know, prospect.

• 12:44Alex Cranz?

  The power washer is coming.

• 12:46David Pierce?

  It's so, these games are so fun and so stupid.

• 12:49Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I just want to do. Chores in my living room that are deeply satisfying, but not actually productive chores. I was like, yes, perfect. No notes.

• 12:58David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 12:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. Now VR is really, it's really, really good at physical game stuff. I also, I love it for shooters for that reason. I think it's really cool. I think there's a lot of great stuff you can do in VR gaming and I'm really happy that the next product we get from Meta is a gaming device. And I hope they lean into that so hard. I am not totally sure how what them leaning into it really hard looks like for me and AR, because I do not have a lot of very large, clean surfaces that I can project things onto.

• 13:25David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, if I'm Meta, like if the big goal of the company is to, you know, connect people and bring new things together and give people stuff to do, like the future looks like Roblox and Fortnite and that kind of stuff. Like they should be building towards that. And you can have a gaming machine that turns into all of the other stuff that you want over time. But like, stop trying to do all of this other weird stuff in the interim. Just like you can back from games into the metaverse. And I feel like if I'm Meta, that's clearly the way I would go because that's the thing that's working for now. Apple seems to be on the road to trying something very different. So, and that's, that's the other headset thing we should talk about here is WWDC is next week on Monday. What would we say? It's like 99% chance at this point, we're going to get a headset. I would be shocked at this point if we don't get a headset.

• 14:09Alex Cranz?

  It would be pretty weird for them to have invited the VR headset people.

• 14:13David Pierce?

  Yeah, it would be an amazing head fake. Bring a bunch of them and they're like, let's talk about CarPlay.

• 14:20Alex Cranz?

  The lies just like vibrating in the front row.

• 14:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, it would be unprecedented levels of tech company cruelty.

• 14:26David Pierce?

  It really would. But so Addie, you, you've been following this thing forever. You've been talking to folks this week about how folks are feeling about the headset. Like, what's your level of interest and excitement and curiosity about what else is going on here?

• 14:39Speaker 04

  I don't know how to deal with the cognitive dissonance of everyone being incredibly excited by this headset and all of the people in an industry that I've followed for a very long time being extremely optimistic about it. And then me looking at it and going, I still don't know what I want to do with this. Which maybe Apple is, it's great at being the, I now know what to do with this company, but it's hard. But yeah, to your point, yeah, a lot of people in AR, they feel like this is the point where maybe it could be cool. Maybe there's going to be a company, it is going to do a product that does actually just work. That you're going to have something where you, if you want to use your desktop with it or an app, you don't have to go through this really complicated syncing process of like downloading

• 15:21Speaker 04

  another client and setting up another account. You already have all of that. You can just drag a window from your iPhone to your headset or something that there, this company that has this really strong record with design, with making things very approachable, that it's going to be high-end, but it sounds like from all the specs we know, it's going to have just this ridiculously high-end screen to the extent that might actually manage to sell pass-through AR as something that feels kind of like looking at the real world. And so I think that all of those things do feel like they're meaningfully different from what, say, Meta is doing, just because Apple is in a position to have advantages that Meta doesn't have right now.

• 15:59David Pierce?

  Yeah, I think I've gone back and forth on how I feel about the fact that this thing is reported to cost $3,000. And I've actually come around to a place of like weird optimism about that fact, because what it means in theory is that Apple can basically afford to throw every bit of power and spec and capability that it has into it. It can use, Apple is capable of making very good screens. It's capable of making like unparalleled processors in this space. It's capable of having really great cameras, right? Like if you just spare no expense and put all of that into one thing, like you can see how a lot of the pieces might actually come together in a cool way. The downside is it's going to cost $3,000. But maybe the upside is that as a result, it can

• 16:42David Pierce?

  actually like be good. I don't know. Alex, where's your head at right now? What are you thinking about?

• 16:46Alex Cranz?

  I think that this is like a turning point for AR/VR regardless, like however, either way this comes out, right? If this comes out and everybody's like, wow, this screen is really good. It turns out when you don't put a garbage screen in these things, it's an incredible experience and it makes everything better. And that could be really extraordinary, right? And that could put more investment into better displays, because the displays on every single headset out there right now is hot, hot garbage, even the really expensive ones.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  I don't think that's universally true, but for the, they're like very high-end specialized thing.

• 17:19Alex Cranz?

  Like Varjo.

• 17:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, Varjo is good. But if you're just talking about stuff that you're probably going to buy off the shelf as a consumer, a lot of it's not great.

• 17:27Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, and so I think like the opportunity to show that and prove that actually displays do make these, that could be really, really cool. But also, the other side of this is, if that's not enough, then VR is kind of dead and Apple looks really stupid, is kind of where I'm sitting with it. Like, because everybody, so many people, I mean, Addie, correct me if I'm wrong, but so many people are like, well, it's Apple. Apple doesn't come into these things without knowing what to do. Apple is really good at making up use cases for products when other people have struggled at it. But even Apple, like, all the reports we've gotten about this product so far have been like, even Apple is worried about what the use cases are. It feels a lot like the watch, where the watch came out and it took them a couple of years to figure it out.

• 18:10Alex Cranz?

  And like, you can't, they can't afford to do that with VR, because at least with, you know, watches, other people had figured stuff out. There was enthusiasm behind these products. With VR, it's not quite the same.

• 18:21Speaker 04

  So I'm actually really curious what they do with the VR side of the spectrum, because if they made just a really good VR headset with good VR controllers, then people have figured out some compelling things to do, which are games. If you put Beat Saber on this, then, okay, it's not $3,000 worth of a thing, but it is, you get to pick it up day one and there's something fun to do on it. I don't know how Apple's going to control these things. That is my biggest open question. If it is just hand-tracking, then that automatically locks out the vast majority of things that people have discovered are fun in VR headsets.

• 18:54Alex Cranz?

  I'm just thinking about playing Beat Saber with my hands and anyone walking in on that.

• 19:00David Pierce?

  I really appreciate the extent to which your life in VR is governed by, like, what if someone opens the door into my living room while I'm playing VR?

• 19:09Alex Cranz?

  Because one time I was playing Beat Saber and really working up a sweat, and I had the window open, and on a ground-floor apartment, everybody saw.

• 19:19David Pierce?

  Now, see, I'm with Addie. You just have to, you just have to lean into the just pure chaos that is this. Like, Mark Zuckerberg, when he posted about this this morning, there's like, a thing sort of buried in, like, a six-slide-long thing that he posted on Instagram, that's just him, like, shadowboxing with the new headset on. And he looks stupid, because you have to look stupid in this thing. And I genuinely believe that the only way forward is just not to care. It's just like, this thing is just a shame-defeating device, and it's going to be healthy for all of us in that sense.

• 19:49Alex Cranz?

  But I think that's like a hard sell for the vast majority of the human population.

• 19:53Speaker 04

  Apple's gonna resurrect the iPod headphones ad from 2007 or whatever, and they will finally make these things cool. I think that is genuinely what a lot of people are really hoping is that finally, okay, well, everything Apple does, someday you're gonna look cool. Like, did you look objectively really terrible in AirPods? Yes, they look dumb.

• 20:14David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 20:14Speaker 04

  But now we all have to accept that sometimes you'll look dumb because they're good.

• 20:20David Pierce?

  Yeah, I really think that is the thing people are most looking to Apple to do here. Like, the tech is one thing, and I think bigger than just the like, how do you make one of these things good is the question of like, what do I do with this? And I think there are a lot of people who are gonna be watching on Monday saying like, what is the killer app that Apple identifies? My overwhelming theory is that it's FaceTime, that I think Apple is going to spend a tremendous amount of time talking about FaceTime, because like, good video chats is just like a thing a headset can do very well now, and that Apple is going to talk a lot about. But I totally agree. I think the single most valuable thing Apple could and will try to do for this industry is make it less embarrassing to be seen in a headset.

• 21:04David Pierce?

  I don't know if that's possible. Like, some of the rumors that have been out there are like, the thing where it's gonna have an outward-facing display that shows your face.

• 21:11Speaker 04

  It's gonna have your eyes on the front of it, yeah.

• 21:13David Pierce?

  That is the most dystopian thing I can possibly imagine.

• 21:16Speaker 04

  I am thrilled. I'm so excited.

• 21:20Alex Cranz?

  The way you just lit up, Addie, just thinking about it.

• 21:23David Pierce?

  I cannot imagine a worse idea. Like, truly, I would rather paint my own eyes onto the other side of it.

• 21:30Alex Cranz?

  But what if it's cool?

• 21:31Speaker 04

  It's like something from like a Terry Gilliam film or something.

• 21:34David Pierce?

  It's impossible for it to be cool. Alex is the atheist.

• 21:37Alex Cranz?

  What if you're there, you play in Beat Saber with your hands, not controllers, and your eyes just staring vacantly out through the little external display?

• 21:47David Pierce?

  Just twitching back and forth all the time.

• 21:49Alex Cranz?

  And somehow, Apple has made that cool.

• 21:52Speaker 04

  Eventually you could put on little fake glasses. You could put a little flair on them. Could do so many things with them. Which brings me to my actual other question, which is, you mentioned FaceTime. What does that look like? Do you have like a emoji that is representing you and because it can track your face, you're doing FaceTime? Because it's clearly not an, on, just a clear video of your face. There's not a camera that can take a full video of your face.

• 22:16David Pierce?

  You don't want just like a super zoomed in, just like this, this frame of your eyes.

• 22:19Speaker 04

  Your eyes, like, it's gonna be really interesting to contrast the response to that, to the almost universal derision of Meta's avatars.

• 22:28David Pierce?

  Yeah, I don't know. I feel like, have you guys actually used emoji? Like, emoji never appear in my, like, actual day to day life. But maybe some people use them. I don't know.

• 22:37Alex Cranz?

  I made a emoji of, remember Creepy Sonic? I love Creepy Sonic. Creepy original, when they made the Sonic movie, when they first came out with the trailer, Sonic was creepy. And I immediately made a emoji version of him. And I used it for ages until like, my mom's best friend in their seventies messaged me something and then she was like, why is your emoji a little blue man? And I was like, oh, I should probably. So now it's me with a cowboy hat.

• 23:03David Pierce?

  Why am I being haunted by this thing that you sent me?

• 23:05Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, but it's like, I don't know. I, I, I use it with a lot of people who aren't like always online, were not always in this space. And they all use it just so earnestly and so delightfully that I'm like, oh, that's kind of charming. And I could totally see like, that friend of my mom's who thought I was messaging her from a little blue man, being like, oh, it's a delight. Look at your little cartoon you with a cowboy hat on. You're wearing your little $3,000 headset. Me too. Like, I could see that happening.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  Which is gonna be great until you have to tell someone that like, their dog died and you have to do it as a cartoon face.

• 23:39David Pierce?

  Just creepy Sonic sadly telling you your dog is dead.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  Like, you, basically you have creepy Sonic telling you your dog is dead, or you do, the thing that Meta's been trying to work on for a while, which is to create these hyper realistic avatars, that then you map your expressions onto and it just, it just looks like a recreation of you.

• 23:56Alex Cranz?

  So it's like the Final Fantasy movie telling you your dog is dead?

• 24:00Speaker 04

  Yes. I mean, ideally without that part, without the uncanny valley part, which is the big risk. So, yeah, I just, I think the, how do you tell someone that their beloved pet is dead? Is like a difficult test for VR FaceTime.

• 24:14Alex Cranz?

  Can we make that a, like a law? Like Addie's dead, beloved dead pet law?

• 24:21Speaker 04

  If that's how I get my name to attach to a law, sure. It must be able to adequately say this without me going, oh, that's weird. I mean, yeah, you have to be able to say a serious thing over mass communication without it coming off as deeply inappropriate. Yeah. And sometimes people will still mess it up.

• 24:36David Pierce?

  I love that. Yeah, I think the other thing, and we should, we should switch gears here in a minute, but I think the other thing I'm trying to figure out, and Addie, having used all of these headsets, I'm curious what you're thinking about on this front too, is like, the question to me is what happens when you turn it on, right? Like, I think it's, there's a pretty good chance that Apple is going to have made good hardware, right? Like, all the pieces are there. It's been a long time. I think there's a pretty good chance that this thing is going to be like a nice device. I have no idea what the software is going to look like. Like, everything Apple has built is basically just like different sized screens on which you run apps. And this thing, which presumably it sounds like is going to be called XR OS, which is an odd name, but there we go.

• 25:17David Pierce?

  The naming people on this thing have not done a great job. If it's really the Reality Pro and it runs XR OS, like, we blew it, y'all. But anyway, this question of like, what happens when I put it on my face? Uh, and this is sort of true of all AR things. Like, what is it supposed to show me? How does the, how does it boot? Where does it go? Like, what is the right answer here? You've used all these things. Is like the Meta Home the best thing we've done so far?

• 25:43Speaker 04

  The big question to me is whether you have to sync it with something.

• 25:46David Pierce?

  Oh, interesting.

• 25:47Speaker 04

  Huge numbers of headsets right now, either there's no other option, or it's the best option, is you install a phone app. And the phone app handles stuff like logging into an account, and then it switches you over to the headset and you boot up and you see something like Home. So I'm really curious what kind of dependencies it's going to have to other products and particularly other Apple products. And then, yeah, I, I mean, there's the option that's Home, like, an app screen Home is the most attractive thing to me. There are people who have tried to do these sort of skeuomorphic, you feel like you're in a real place, like your own little home. I feel like no one's quite pulled that off, but I don't know, maybe Apple has something else.

• 26:28David Pierce?

  You're cool if it just boots into what looks like a really big, like, iPad Home screen? It's just like you're, you're inside of your iPad?

• 26:35Speaker 04

  This is what I'm used to doing with the with the Quest. Yeah, basically. I mean, technically, my the Quest has like a little home screen, but it's a row of icons to me.

• 26:43Alex Cranz?

  What would you want it to be otherwise? Like a house?

• 26:47David Pierce?

  I don't know. I just this is why this is such an interesting question to me, right? Is I think the thing I believe strongly is that if the best we can do is basically port iPad apps over so that they sort of appear in a window next to your face, that is failure and we have ruined it. I think there's a decent chance that's what it's going to be at first, but like, God help us if that's the best we ever figure out how to do, because that's just Google Glass again.

• 27:13Alex Cranz?

  What was the HoloLens UI like? I like, because I remember for me, HoloLens always feels like the North Star for user interface in AR. It feels like they solved a lot of the problems and a lot of the issues.

• 27:26David Pierce?

  Somebody at Microsoft is like fist pumping aggressively hearing you say that.

• 27:30Alex Cranz?

  You guys did it. I mean, you didn't do it in that HoloLens never really left like development and being sold to the military, but you did it. You figured out like how to make the stuff work, but I genuinely can't remember what the startup situation was like.

• 27:43David Pierce?

  The HoloLens is a lot of like kind of floating elements in front of you in the world. It's it's like it just kind of it just like decorates your space with some stuff, which I think works more or less okay.

• 27:54Alex Cranz?

  I mean, that might would make sense for something like this.

• 27:56Speaker 04

  I realize what the third option is. It's the fake watch. And I think that's what HoloLens ended up doing eventually, which is the you lift your wrist and contextually, because there's cameras and they can tell that your wrist is there, they open up a thing that looks like a little fancy display with icons.

• 28:10David Pierce?

  That's not bad.

• 28:11Alex Cranz?

  That's cool. I want that. I just think that's neat. Like, it's just like, if I'm going to be wearing it on my head, I want something different than what if I strapped a giant iPad to my face?

• 28:21David Pierce?

  I just feel like that's what it's going to be.

• 28:23Alex Cranz?

  That's what a lot of the reports have said.

• 28:25David Pierce?

  Yeah. And to some extent, that's fine for the first one, right? Like, it's it's a nice piece of hardware. It will run apps. It'll do the pass through video. You'll be able to like throw a big Netflix screen up here. Like, I was thinking this morning about the the thing Mark Zuckerberg said at at, I think it was back when it was called Facebook Connect a bunch of years ago, about like the North Star of this is you can just project a television onto your wall and you just have like a virtual TV that sits there. I kind of think that is the vibe that we're going to get from the first run of Apple's headset that is just like, I just want to watch Netflix and just like Netflix.

• 28:59Speaker 04

  So question for this is, how do you end up, how do you watch Netflix with like your roommate or your kid? Because you're both watching different Netflix's. Do you have a way to sync them up? Like, I think that Apple has to be just normal enough to recognize that people are maybe going to want to watch things with other people and that they're going to want to come up with a situation that will let them do this.

• 29:20David Pierce?

  You buy a headset precisely so you never have to speak to your children again. Like, that's, that's just what it is.

• 29:24Alex Cranz?

  They can't admit that. No, but they can't, because a friend, a friend of mine this morning sent me a photo, and she's, she's like babysitting her two nephews, and she's got two sons. And she sends me a picture, and it's all four boys in her kitchen, all on their own iPads, all with their own headphones in, all doing their own thing. And I was like, that is totally foreign to me. Like, one, nothing like that before breakfast. But two, like, usually the TV would be on, and we'd all be watching Arthur, or whatever cartoon was on, or news if my mom vetoed us. And they don't do that as often anymore, right? Like, a lot of people don't do that. They, they go and they watch their own things. The kid, everybody sits down for family time, and it's, we're physically in the same room as the family time. I don't want to watch The Little Mermaid movie.

• 30:08Alex Cranz?

  You watch that, and I'm gonna go watch Succession with my headphones on.

• 30:12Speaker 04

  Okay, maybe I should be more clear in that I don't know about kids. I do definitely watch Netflix with my husband.

• 30:17Alex Cranz?

  Okay. This isn't for you.

• 30:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, a lot of people have like, people that they love that they want to share experiences with.

• 30:25Alex Cranz?

  We're done with that. We've moved beyond it.

• 30:27David Pierce?

  People had a good, long run.

• 30:28Speaker 04

  But even if we're done with it, have you ever watched, like, a tech company keynote? They posit all kinds of social uses for things that make me feel like some kind of horrible shut-in. Everything they announce is like, so, you know when you have your 30 friends over for a potluck? Like, they have to find some way to make that play.

• 30:45David Pierce?

  Yeah. Yeah, or like when they, when they do the iPad AR stuff, and they're like, you know how you and your friends gather around a table and play Dungeons and Dragons through your iPads? And it's like, yes, me and my friends, we do that for sure.

• 30:55Alex Cranz?

  All the time, 100% of the time. Only thing we do. Yeah, that's, that is fair. I guess that, that plays into, to what they're gonna do with FaceTime, too, right? Like, it's that same, it's that same situation of how do we make this social without being weird and creepy? And hopefully, Apple figured that out. Right, guys?

• 31:15David Pierce?

  We'll see. All right, we're, we need to switch gears and take a break. But before we go, you each have to give me one prediction about something that's gonna happen with the headset on Monday. Ideally, something that has not been reported or talked about. I'll go first. What do you guys think? I think there are gonna be colors. I think this thing is gonna come in like a wide, maybe not that wide, but in a variety of like, cool, interesting colors. There might be a purple. Like, it's gonna be very important to Apple that this thing is like, nice to look at and wear. And so they're gonna do a lot of the same stuff they did with the watch and try to make a case that this is like, a lovely fashion object. And it won't work, but they're gonna try. That's, that's my theory. Addie, what's yours?

• 31:52Speaker 04

  I think my theory is very similar to yours, but which is that they will have faces, the way that they have for Apple Watch, but it will literally be on your face. And that will be what the front screen is for. And if you are out in full AR mode, then it will be your face and maybe you can, I don't know, wear funny glasses. Otherwise, it's off to signal that you are dead to the world, but you can put something that looks really cool on it.

• 32:15David Pierce?

  That's a good idea. Alex, what you got?

• 32:17Alex Cranz?

  The controller will be the iPhone. I think somebody already reported this, but I still think it's true.

• 32:21David Pierce?

  Like, you're gonna hold it in your hand?

• 32:23Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. You will play Beat Saber with your iPhone. Which means we'll probably at some point get a little MagSafe strap for your iPhone.

• 32:31David Pierce?

  I'm gonna have my iPad in one hand, my iPhone in the other, and I'm just gonna be crushing Beat Saber. It's gonna be unbelievable.

• 32:37Alex Cranz?

  Flinging things into the TV at all times.

• 32:40Speaker 04

  Can't wait till I punch a wall with my phone.

• 32:43David Pierce?

  It's gonna be great. All right, we need to take a break. Addie, thank you. I suspect we will be regrouping a week from now to talk about all this stuff and all the things we got wrong. But thank you, and we'll see you then, and we will be right back.

• 32:56Speaker 04

  Okay.

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• 34:26David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Dan Seifert's here. Hi, Dan.

• 34:29Speaker 05

  Hello.

• 34:29David Pierce?

  We have a lot to talk about. I went through and tried to make a list of all of the rumors and reporting that there have been for WWDC, and it's a lot. Do you guys want to do software first or Macs first? Because those feel like kind of the two big categories here.

• 34:44Speaker 05

  Those are the two big categories? That's what's been rumored for WWDC?

• 34:47David Pierce?

  Well, we already talked about the big category. You're coming in for the scraps here, Dan. I hate to break that one to you. But let's do Macs first, because I think this is not normally a super hardware-y event. Normally, we'll get the occasional thing. We got an M2 MacBook Air last year.

• 35:03Speaker 05

  Right.

• 35:04Alex Cranz?

  That's where they announced a HomePod.

• 35:05David Pierce?

  Yeah, like I said, normally not a hardware-y event. I really, I will just say, nothing would make me happier than if Apple spent like two hours telling us about a headset and then Tim Cook is like, and also a HomePod, and then just leaves. Like, that's what the HomePod deserves, as far as I'm concerned.

• 35:20Alex Cranz?

  Fingers crossed.

• 35:22David Pierce?

  But there are a bunch of slightly conflicting rumors about what's coming. High-end Macs, low-end Macs. Dan, do you have a good grasp on the situation here?

• 35:31Speaker 05

  Well, I think we're in a weird position this year because normally by June, Apple has already announced new Macs.

• 35:38David Pierce?

  Well, that's true. There's usually that March event, right?

• 35:40Speaker 05

  Right. We didn't have a spring event. We had this weird announcement in January for the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, which were in the Mac Mini and then new MacBook Pros. Then we didn't have anything happen in the spring and here we are in June, it's WWDC. And the rumors have been for a long time that Apple has been working on a 15-inch MacBook Air, that it also has been working on an M3 chip because the M2 chip is now a year old. And now, most recently, the rumors are that an updated Mac Studio with M2 Max and M2 Ultra chips, Ultra being the newest one that hasn't yet been announced, may be announced as well. What's weirdly missing from all this is a Mac Pro.

• 36:23David Pierce?

  Yeah, which, how, let's see, it's been a year and change since they said that's for another day about the Mac Pro?

• 36:30Alex Cranz?

  I think they're kind of screwed on the Mac Pro.

• 36:32David Pierce?

  Why?

• 36:32Alex Cranz?

  Because they want to announce it with the fanciest processors, right? But the fanciest processors always come second. They always announce the M2, then the M2 Max, the M1, the M1 Max.

• 36:44Speaker 05

  And they took a long time to get these M2 Max Pro versions out, right? Like, the M2 was last WWDC, it debuted with the MacBook Air. And then it was until January that we got the M2 Pro and M2 Max. And now we're here a year later expecting possibly to get an M2 Ultra. So it is taking them a long time to get these, like, iterations of the M2 base chip out. And the way that the pace of their development goes is like, the M3 is, if you read the tea leaves and believe the rumors, right around the corner.

• 37:14Alex Cranz?

  So they set themselves up because now if they release the M2 Ultra with a Mac Pro, okay, cool. Oh, now you're just going to announce the M3 in six months? Why should I, like, why should I get it? And then also, oh, you're going to announce it first with the Studio, which in many respects is kind of the pro. Like, it's very, very good. I've got one, I podcast on it right now. It's wonderful. There's stuff that professionals certainly need, right? Better in outs, like, stuff like that.

• 37:42Speaker 05

  Expandability, yep.

• 37:44Alex Cranz?

  But is that going to be enough?

• 37:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't know. Like if they if they come out with an M2 Ultra next week and stick it in the on a refreshed Mac Studio, it is always open question of like, what is there for the Mac Pro to to have, right? Or like, is there like, what's above Ultra, right? And I think that's what you're driving at, right, Alex?

• 38:02Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 38:02Speaker 05

  And I think the one thing about the Mac Pro that you kind of alluded to is that is different from the Mac Studio is expandability. And nobody has really even like, none of the rumors, none of the reporting has really kind of alluded to how Apple might address that in the M architecture world where RAM is like basically all on the same die. They don't support third-party GPUs, so you're not sticking an AMD GPU in it. Like, there aren't expansion cards for audio drivers or, you know, whatever professionals stick in a Mac Pro. Like, none of that exists, and there hasn't been any reporting around it. So like, it's very unclear.

• 38:41Alex Cranz?

  The solution is just Thunderbolt, right? Like, the last time they did the Mac Pro, there was some pretty cool stuff there, even if it was super expensive and the majority of people didn't have any use for it. It was it was still cool. You you could run a lot of GP. I believe you could run a lot of GPUs at like, very high bandwidth.

• 38:58Speaker 05

  You could run GPUs. They had accelerator cards.

• 39:00Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 05

  You could add more Thunderbolt ports. So like, you could expand it a lot.

• 39:06Alex Cranz?

  And in this case, it's like, well, their solution right now for expandability is Thunderbolt.

• 39:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:11Alex Cranz?

  And you don't need a tower for that because of Thunderbolt's just a little USB-C style plug. So where do you go? And if you don't need the GPUs, and if this other stuff, they're so reluctant to work with other people, the whole point of expandability is that you can work with other products. You you don't have to rely entirely on one company. And that's kind of the antithesis of what Apple's computer philosophy is at this point. So

• 39:37Speaker 05

  Right.

• 39:38Alex Cranz?

  How does that work? And I think this is a can they're going to kick down the road for a very long time, until they then invite a bunch of Apple bloggers.

• 39:46Speaker 05

  Yet another day.

• 39:47Alex Cranz?

  To show off and be like, we really care about the Pro community. And look at this new one that nobody else can see yet. It'll come out in six years.

• 39:55David Pierce?

  Yeah, you basically only have to do that once every five years, it seems, and people will get on board. But I think, I think you're exactly right, because to me, the thing about the Pro was always that they could get away with it, because the Pro would just continue being a very good computer for a very long time, in part because it was expandable.

• 40:12Speaker 05

  Well, you know, they had that whole 2013 model.

• 40:15David Pierce?

  Well, sure.

• 40:16Alex Cranz?

  I love the trash can.

• 40:17David Pierce?

  Except when Apple ruined it on purpose for some reason. But like, the towers lasted a long time, because you could, you could add stuff, they were expandable, you could, like, as long as the processor was enough, you could add everything else that you needed.

• 40:29Speaker 05

  And I believe that, like, even for the 2019 model, which is the most recent one that has the cheese grater, front end and stuff like that, the M-series chips now are probably outpacing the Intel Xeons that are in there. But you, because of that expandability, if you needed a lot of GPU grunt, you can still beat the M, the best M2 Max chip on GPU horsepower in a Mac Pro by just sticking more cards in there and running them together and things like that. And so like, it has still got an edge over, even though the processor is probably not as good, it certainly is using more power off the wall and all those things. The RAM's not as fast, whatever it might be.

• 41:10Speaker 05

  But for those very specific use cases, yeah, to your point, David, like, it's still relevant and fast and powerful.

• 41:16Alex Cranz?

  Have we heard anything from, from Apple, from, from rumor sites, about like, modularity in the processors for the M-series?

• 41:25Speaker 05

  Because of the way, my understanding at least, because of the way the M-processors are more than just-

• 41:31Alex Cranz?

  They're like soldered on.

• 41:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's not just the processor, right? It's the whole system. And, and like, unified memory is really kind of like the thing that nobody knows how Apple is going to address for something like a Mac Pro, where you could have terabytes of RAM.

• 41:46Alex Cranz?

  What if the Mac Pro ends up being like you just buy additional Mac Studio boards? And just plug in board after board? Then they make a ton of money, but also theoretically that makes a really super fast.

• 42:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, that would be very cool. That would be the ultimate dream of modularity.

• 42:05Alex Cranz?

  $20,000 base model price.

• 42:07Speaker 05

  I have no idea what kind of interface would allow for that kind of bandwidth.

• 42:12Alex Cranz?

  They'd have, they'd have to build it, right?

• 42:13Speaker 05

  Right.

• 42:14Alex Cranz?

  Like, they'd have to do it all themselves.

• 42:15Speaker 05

  Well, so that's what they did with the previous Ultra, the M1 Ultra that's in the, the current Mac Studio. It is two M1 Max chips with a special interconnect between them, talking to them.

• 42:26Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 42:26Speaker 05

  That is all on like the board level, though. That is not like a modular thing that you can pull apart. So it would be an interesting thing. But again, I think to what everyone here is saying is that it's kind of a little bit of like a pipe dream wish casting for the, the, uh, the Mac Pro because there just hasn't been any evidence in terms of like what they're going to do with it. The only thing we have to work on is John Turnus saying a year ago that the Mac Pro is a story for another day.

• 42:51David Pierce?

  Well, it also makes me wonder if part of what Apple is stalling for here is to own even more of the ecosystem. Like, I don't know that Apple wants to be a company that like, you know, sells RAM on its own separately, but like.

• 43:05Speaker 05

  I mean, it would love to mark it up.

• 43:07David Pierce?

  It sure would. Yeah. But like, does Apple want to be a GPU company that starts to put some of that stuff in? Like, do they, is the ultimate goal here to give you that extensibility and modularity, but it's all Apple products all the way down? That to me feels like, at least as far as like, Apple considers itself as a company, kind of the most on-brand path forward. That's a hell of a lot of work and involves getting into a lot of businesses Apple has not traditionally been in. But like, they got a big team with a lot of track record building really great chips now. Like, I would not be shocked if they're like, here are all these extra pieces, but we sell all of them and they all cost $8,000.

• 43:44Speaker 05

  I just wonder if this delay with the Mac Pro just kind of speaks to how small of a business it actually is for Apple. It's clear that like the M series chips are not either Apple's not able to produce them as fast as it wants to or develop them as fast as it wants to. And so it's putting all of the the weight of its development stuff into the computers that people are actually buying. Like it's putting, it puts the M2 first in a MacBook Air. It's the most popular laptop in the world. The M3 is probably going to show up in a MacBook Air, again, the most popular laptop in the world. And then it will trickle down the line. It'll get to the MacBook Pros, which are the next line, and then it will make it to the studio. And then if there's enough left in the supply chain, maybe one day for those four people that want a Mac Pro.

• 44:29Alex Cranz?

  Well, I mean, that's kind of, that's what, that's what Intel and AMD do, right? Like, they typically, their, their releases are typically like the, I think it's usually the desktop gaming GPUs are announced first. And that's because that's where a really big market for them is.

• 44:43Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 44:44Alex Cranz?

  And they've, they've switched this around. Sometimes they, they do do their, their super low energy processors first.

• 44:50Speaker 05

  Right.

• 44:50Alex Cranz?

  Because laptops and, and they want to sell a lot of laptops. But they do think a lot about that market and like, where's our biggest market? Let's focus there first. So I, I don't think it was ever confusing that Apple was like, yeah, we're going to do our cheapest, fastest, easiest produced thing.

• 45:04Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 45:05Alex Cranz?

  And our cheapest, most popular device.

• 45:08Speaker 05

  Sure. It's just we are now about to be on the cusp of a third generation of these chips and still nothing at that Mac Pro level. So I just wonder how, like, like you said, Alex, is it just going to keep getting kicked down the, down the road? Because the priorities are always going to go towards making sure they are satisfying demand for the things that the vast majority of people are buying.

• 45:31Alex Cranz?

  We will see a second generation of the mixed reality headset. Before we see a Mac Pro, I'm just, I am happy to put money on that right now.

• 45:42David Pierce?

  Oof, there are a bunch of video editors who just got real sad listening to that.

• 45:44Alex Cranz?

  I'm sorry, guys, I'm so sorry.

• 45:46David Pierce?

  But I do think the other part of this, and then we should get back to the stuff that's actually real and gonna launch. Sorry, Mac Pro. The, the Studio, at least from what I've heard anecdotally, for most people was a pretty clean replacement and in many cases, improvement on the Mac Pro. It's stupid powerful, it's much smaller, it's much easier to like

• 46:07Speaker 05

  It's cheaper.

• 46:08David Pierce?

  Run and manage, it's a lot cheaper. And it's like, the, the Studio plus Studio Display thing seems to have made a lot of really high-end needy Apple users really, really happy.

• 46:17Alex Cranz?

  And it's, it's fast. I remember talking with Chris Person, who's been on the show before, friend of The Verge, and he's a video editor. And I was like, yeah, I got a Mac Studio. And I was kind of like, ah, because I'm talking to you and you're a video editor and you know what you're talking about. So you probably think this is dumb. And he's like, no, I just got one. It's the most incredible thing in the world. I can do everything so much faster than I could do with any home-built computer. This has changed my entire workflow. It's, it's, really is, the hype cannot even begin to compare. And I was like, well, you're not a dude prone to hyperbole. And that sounded really hyperbolic, so holy crap. And that's what I've heard over and over and over again from other people, too. It's just like, no, the thing just flies. And it does what they need so well.

• 46:59Alex Cranz?

  And, and yeah, you've got Thunderbolt for when you need to, when you need that like grunt work, I gotta just move files and stuff like that.

• 47:07Speaker 05

  I, I will say, if, if they are going to bump the chips on the Studio, which it seems like by all accounts, the rumors are pointing towards, there's no real design changes or anything like that. It will be a little disappointing if they don't address some of the complaints, Ben, with the Studio. There's been a lot of user complaints about the fan noises. Alex, I don't know if that's been an issue for you, but a lot of very particular people don't like it.

• 47:29Alex Cranz?

  I'm not doing a bunch of grunt work.

• 47:31David Pierce?

  Wait, they don't like that there's too much of it, or they don't like the like specific sound of the fan?

• 47:35Speaker 05

  Apparently, it sits at a low RPM of like 2,000 RPM constantly. It does not shut off. And so like, that's really weird for the M-series MacBook Pros, which almost never turn their fans on. The Mac Studio constantly has its fan on. And some people in quiet environments, maybe they're particular about the sound of it or whatever, don't like it.

• 47:55Alex Cranz?

  Hold on, hold on.

• 47:57Alex Cranz?

  No, nothing.

• 47:59Speaker 05

  Alex's hearing is too damaged. And then I think, you know, things like the HDMI port, if I'm not mistaken, is 2.0 and so 2.1, stuff like that, where like they could upgrade it and make it better. But yeah, it seems like to, you know, what you were saying, Alex, is like, there really isn't much to do to the Mac Studio to make it better, other than bring it up to the next generation, make it even more powerful than it already is.

• 48:21Alex Cranz?

  Give me two HDMI ports.

• 48:24David Pierce?

  No.

• 48:24Alex Cranz?

  Because I'm tired of having to use a weird Thunderbolt.

• 48:27David Pierce?

  If I know one thing about Apple, it's that giving you more ports is not what what Apple is interested in.

• 48:31Speaker 05

  They did put a lot on the Studio, to be fair.

• 48:33David Pierce?

  That is true.

• 48:35Alex Cranz?

  It's got an SD card slot, so like.

• 48:36David Pierce?

  Listen, we'll take what we can get. But I think that the 15 inch Air, I think, to me, is fascinating because I think back to last year and the M2 Air comes out, they do kind of a like gentle redesign of it that I still don't love. I still think the wedge is like one of the greatest.

• 48:51Speaker 05

  I think it was a big redesign. I mean, that was a pretty significant redesign.

• 48:54David Pierce?

  Yes, in as much as you can redesign a 13 inch laptop that still looks like a 13 inch laptop. You know what I mean? It's like, we're not sort of reinventing the wheel here, but it did change, what, like a 11 year old idea about how the Air works? So like, I'll give you that. It was a big change.

• 49:10Speaker 05

  It went from a wedge to a square.

• 49:11David Pierce?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. But the story of the M2, but really the story of that laptop and what you found when you reviewed it, Dan, is that the M2 was not such a meaningful upgrade over the M1 as to make it like a must buy. And I think I came out of that basically telling everybody over the last 12 months to buy an M1 MacBook Air because I like the shape of it better.

• 49:33Alex Cranz?

  But it had a bigger battery.

• 49:34Speaker 05

  So the M2 Air came with a lot of quality of life improvements, bigger screen, better speakers, you know, that had MagSafe charging, other things that like better camera, things that like you used or experienced, interact with daily and make it better. But in terms of performance, you're right, David. It was like a modest bump in performance and depending on which spec level you got, there was the whole controversy around the SSD being slower and things like that. Probably for most people buying a base level MacBook Air, they would never notice and not really matter. But you can get a lot of that battery life and performance out of the M1. And, you know, we've seen over the past year or so, those are constantly going for like $800 brand new, which is a smoking deal.

• 50:13Speaker 05

  And, and I agree, I would totally recommend if someone is like, I want a good Mac for the least amount of money, then like absolutely M1 Aero all the way. But it wasn't that huge generational leap that we got going from Intel to the M1 chip at all. And I don't think we can, we are ever really going to see that again unless they go to a different architecture beyond, right? Like that, that was the big jump and then everything else is going to be iterative.

• 50:35Alex Cranz?

  But we could see a really big battery life jump with a 15 inch MacBook Air.

• 50:40David Pierce?

  So that's what I was going to say is I think the smart thing that Apple is doing this year is actually making a change that is going to feel like a bigger change to people. Because it's going to have, it's just going to have more space for battery. I assume the battery life on this thing is going to be ridiculous.

• 50:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know anyone who's complaining about the M1 or M2 battery.

• 50:58David Pierce?

  It still feels like magic. Honestly, the thing where I can just sit on a plane all the way across the country and my battery is still at like 65% is just like, it's, I'm two years into having this computer and it still feels like magic. How long it lasts.

• 51:10Alex Cranz?

  I want it to be more absurd than that, though. I want you to be able to go like, oh yeah, I went three days without looking for my charger because I have a Mac, a 15 inch MacBook.

• 51:18David Pierce?

  I mean, it might happen.

• 51:19Alex Cranz?

  Like if that doesn't happen, that I'll be disappointed.

• 51:22Speaker 05

  I think that the 15 inch MacBook Air will be transformative, but not because of the battery, but just because it has a bigger screen and people love bigger screens. And they will always go for bigger screens. And then, so like, if you look at Apple's laptops for, I don't know, ever, the 13 inch one was the accessible one. And then if you wanted any bigger screen, you are spending 2,000 plus dollars, many times a thousand dollars more. If you want to go from a 13.5 inch M2 MacBook Air to a 16 inch MacBook Pro is a thousand dollar jump.

• 51:51David Pierce?

  And for most people, the rest of that difference is all stuff you don't care about.

• 51:55Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 51:55David Pierce?

  Everything else is stuff you don't care about. Yeah.

• 51:57Speaker 05

  So there's a way that Apple can screw this up and they screwed it up with the iPhone 14 plus by pricing a 15 inch MacBook Air too close to $2,000. Because if you think about like the 13 inch MacBook Air starts at $1,200 now. I think if they price the 15 inch model in that $1,500 range, I think it'll be gangbusters and people will go nuts for it. If they're pricing it at 1,800 to $2,000, it's the iPhone 14 plus all over again, where it is just too close to the price of the pro models and people will just ignore it and either go cheap because they're on a budget or go up because they want something better. And so like, Apple could screw this up. I'm not like, like, like, I think that they do have the potential to do a really awesome job with it, but like, they screwed it up with the 14 plus. It's possible they could do it here.

• 52:41Alex Cranz?

  Does it need to be cheaper than the MacBook Pro?

• 52:45Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 52:45Alex Cranz?

  Either, either size?

• 52:47Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 52:47Alex Cranz?

  So it needs to be cheaper than the 13 inch?

• 52:49Speaker 05

  Well, so like the 13 inch MacBook Pro is, is that weird curve ball that ruins everyone's predictions and models. I don't think it has to be cheaper than that. I think it has to be cheaper than the 14 inch MacBook Pro.

• 52:59Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 52:59Speaker 05

  But it has to be significantly cheaper than the 14 inch MacBook Pro, which a 14 inch MacBook Pro list price starts at $2,000. You can find them all over the place for $1,800 and that will offer more power because it's going to be an M2 Pro chip. It's going to have that mini LED screen. It's going to have ports and stuff like that. There's going to be a lot of reasons for people to, to buy that one instead of a 15 inch MacBook Air. But if all they want is a bigger screen and really a MacBook Air is the computer for them, then a 15 inch MacBook Air priced correctly would be like gangbusters. Like if you look at like what people buy in Windows laptops.

• 53:32Alex Cranz?

  So what you want to happen is a 15 inch MacBook Air priced at like $1,500, 16 gigabytes of RAM standard.

• 53:41Speaker 05

  I don't even think they need to do that. Like they, they won't. I mean, it's Apple. They're not going to do. They're going to do eight gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage at 1,500 bucks. And you know what? It's going to be really popular if they do it at 1,500. If they do it at 17, 18, 19, 2,000, like too much.

• 53:57Alex Cranz?

  Hey, if you do a $1,700 device with eight gigabytes of RAM, like I think you'll lose everybody.

• 54:03David Pierce?

  Oh no, I completely disagree. Well, that's true, but not because of the RAM. I, I think it's, that's purely a price thing. I think eight gigs of RAM is more than enough for most people. It's just like, if you can afford 16, get 16 at all times. Yeah. Get as much as you possibly can afford, but, but yeah, I, I. Totally agree. Like if they can get this thing at like $13.99 or $14.99, it's going to be a monster success. But then anything more than that, and you have to do this thing that you have to do way too often with Apple now. Like the iPad is the worst offender of this, right? Where it's like, everything you do is like, well, for $100, I could just get this one. And then suddenly you're buying the 12.9 inch iPad Pro.

• 54:38Speaker 05

  Well, they, they put that 64 gig base forage in, and now I need to jump 150 bucks. And like, oh, I wanted cellular.

• 54:46David Pierce?

  Yeah, I just wanted an iPad mini.

• 54:47Speaker 05

  It's like optioning a luxury car. It just keeps going up and up.

• 54:50David Pierce?

  That's exactly right. Which, to be clear, Apple is doing extremely on purpose and is very good at. But, uh, but yeah, I agree. I think the iPhone 14 plus is very much like the problem child of this strategy, and it'll be interesting to see if Apple gets away with it.

• 55:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:05David Pierce?

  Let's talk about software. So there's a lot of rumors out there. iOS 17 seems like it's going to be the most interesting one, just because it usually is. It seems like, I don't know what y'all's feeling has been so far, but it seems like because the headset is such a big deal, and because we're going to get these devices, there's going to be kind of less wacky funky new software stuff than usual. Like a lot of the reporting has been that it's some sort of quality of life improvements, couple of new apps that we can talk about. There's some big stuff coming next year because of regulatory stuff with, you know, sideloading and app stores and all that stuff, but that might get pushed off to next year. But the, the biggest things I've seen so far this year are things like, well, actually here, I made a list of all the things that are reported to come, becoming an iOS 17. Do you want to hear the list?

• 55:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, let's hear it.

• 55:50Alex Cranz?

  I want it.

• 55:51David Pierce?

  Here's the list.

• 55:52Alex Cranz?

  Go.

• 55:52David Pierce?

  Improvements to Control Center, whatever that means. Improvements to the Wallet app, which thank God. Uh, and also Location Services, which is an interesting one. Uh, Apple's done a bunch of interesting things with like Find My and the AirTag stuff and all that. So there's apparently more coming in that realm. More interactive widgets, so that you can actually like do something on a widget without just tapping it to open the app. More and better stuff to do in the Dynamic Island. Improvements to the Always On Display. AirPlay upgrades, so you could in theory send stuff from your phone to a TV or device, even if you don't own it, which I think would be very cool. Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, who we should say is basically responsible for the vast majority of the good reporting about what's going on at Apple in the world. So, good job,

• 56:36David Pierce?

  Mark. What he said is basically, Apple has been talking to like hotels about how to enable AirPlay so that I can send stuff from my phone to my hotel TV, which would be awesome.

• 56:44Speaker 05

  You don't travel with an Apple TV in your suitcase?

• 56:47David Pierce?

  I travel with a Roku for exactly this reason, and I hate it the most. And I would love to not have to do that anymore. But then-

• 56:53Alex Cranz?

  It's not gonna work, though.

• 56:54David Pierce?

  The biggest thing, or at least what I think is the biggest thing, is that Apple's apparently working on a way so that when you dock your phone, when it's off and horizontal, so it's like put down in landscape mode, it'll turn into essentially a smart display. That'll be sort of the always on display, it'll show information, I don't know what else, photos, whatever. And that it's a precursor to like what Apple wants to do with smart home displays. But it's basically, it's like what we've seen with the Pixel tablet and the Echo devices and the Nest stuff. It's a sort of ambient display that just shows you information.

• 57:24Alex Cranz?

  Perfect. I love that.

• 57:25Speaker 05

  Which I think, I think it makes a lot more sense on an iPad, but sure. They're gonna do it on the iPhone first.

• 57:30Alex Cranz?

  Can we go back to the hotel thing, though? Because that means that the hotel Wi-Fi has to not suck. And I can't really see like Hilton and Marriott and everybody being like, oh, man, we have to go finally make this not be garbage. Just the hottest garbage on the planet.

• 57:46Speaker 05

  But what if it could make a direct Wi-Fi ad hoc connection from your device?

• 57:50David Pierce?

  Which I would assume that that's where it'll actually land.

• 57:53Alex Cranz?

  Do you think Hilton and Marriott are going to pay?

• 57:56Speaker 05

  You know what I think Hilton and Marriott are gonna do? They're gonna fill their rooms with those telly TVs, because they can get them for free, and then you're gonna have to look at ads the whole time.

• 58:04Alex Cranz?

  You already have to do that. I have to tell you, turn on the TV in a hotel, and it's like, do you want to hear all about our great restaurant options?

• 58:10David Pierce?

  Guys, it's okay. I bring my telly TV with me to hotels, so it's no problem.

• 58:15Alex Cranz?

  Just under your arm?

• 58:15David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's fine. But again, like, the sum of all of that stuff is like, fine, right? It's like, good new things. But nothing in there feels like a sort of big explosive new idea about iOS. And maybe that's just where we are.

• 58:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's like what I was 17 and it's like, you know, they're going to talk about iOS. They have to talk about iOS because it is like their bread and butter. Now it is the majority of the company. And at the same time, they have the Facebook problem where they can't change too much because they will disrupt however many billions of existing users. And we're ironically 10 years out from iOS seven when they really last blew it all up. And then that didn't go so well.

• 58:58Alex Cranz?

  Well, they also a couple of years ago famously slowed down on on the stuff they rolled out for each of these updates because they were cramming so much stuff in that it was a big buggy garbage mess. And so they're like, oh, maybe that's a bad tack. So I think we're still seeing that on on all of these products where it's like, sometimes we're going to do really cool stuff and sometimes we're not because it needs to work.

• 59:24David Pierce?

  And and you can see where Apple's kind of weird energy goes instead, like because they can't blow up iOS because it would make a lot of people incredibly angry. Instead, they're out here being like, what if we just took over all the software in your car? And apparently there's going to be some more CarPlay stuff coming this year that presumably automakers will not be interested in because they've spent the last year being not interested in what Apple did last year.

• 59:46Alex Cranz?

  We're going to make Neel I review whatever it is.

• 59:49Speaker 05

  Review the slideshow because that's all it ever ends up being.

• 59:52David Pierce?

  Yeah, Neel, I look at this picture. Tell us what you think. Yeah, but I think to me, the the smart display thing could be cool. There's apparently going to be a journaling app that I think could be nifty. There's going to do some stuff with the health app, but I don't know, Dan, is there anything in these rumors that like excites you about what's coming in iOS?

• 1:00:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, you know, it'd be nice for them to do more with the dynamic island. The rumors, the future rumors for the rest of the year are that the dynamic island will be on the entire line of iPhones in the fall. So if they are, you know, bringing more in more features to it, they really haven't done too much with it since it came out on the 14 Pro, there's room to grow there. So like, it'd be interesting to see how they do that there. I like the idea of the the ambient lock screen display, but I, like I said, I want that on an iPad more than I want it on my phone.

• 1:00:38David Pierce?

  It's weird in general that the always on display stuff has not come to the iPad. It's such a natural thing for it.

• 1:00:44Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, but like if you have it charged, I would assume this is only going to work if it's charging. Right? Like if it's on a MagSafe dock or whatever, and you got it rotated horizontally.

• 1:00:53Alex Cranz?

  But it's ugly on a dock. Because you have to, you have to do it horizontally and then the charger's sticking out the butt.

• 1:00:59Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, on an iPhone, you could put it on a MagSafe puck and turn it horizontally and there's nothing sticking out the side of it, right?

• 1:01:05Alex Cranz?

  Exactly, but you can't, you can't do that on an iPad. That's why, that's what I'm saying is like, that's why it's not on the iPad is because the iPad will be aesthetically ugly.

• 1:01:14David Pierce?

  Listen, listen, Apple, if that's your reason, I urge you to take a look at the Magic Mouse and how that thing charges. And you have lost all leg to stand on about how things look when they are plugged in.

• 1:01:25Alex Cranz?

  Different teams, different teams. That was hardware, this is software.

• 1:01:30Speaker 05

  What's, what's interesting to me about this software story, at least so far from the rumors, is, uh, we haven't talked about WatchOS. I think we are expecting big changes to WatchOS, which is a long overdue. But as you mentioned earlier, David, there's not a lot rumored coming for macOS and there's not a lot rumored coming for iPadOS.

• 1:01:45David Pierce?

  Yeah, we've heard almost nothing. Mac, iPad and TVOS, there's been almost no reporting at all so far.

• 1:01:52Alex Cranz?

  TVOS could be so much better.

• 1:01:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:55Alex Cranz?

  The fact that they, they haven't done any attempt to make live, non-Apple TV Plus, uh, content readily available, like you see on Android and some of the other products.

• 1:02:05David Pierce?

  Alex, if you're about to go on a fast TV rant, we're just ending the podcast. The podcast is over. It's just, I can-

• 1:02:11Alex Cranz?

  Dan, did you see how David clocked me?

• 1:02:15David Pierce?

  As soon as you said the word live TV, I was like, oh no, we have to-

• 1:02:17Alex Cranz?

  He was like, oh, here it's coming.

• 1:02:19Speaker 05

  Alex is trying to fast move over here.

• 1:02:20David Pierce?

  Let's just start the ads coming in here. But wait, Dan, Dan, we cut you off. What were you saying?

• 1:02:24Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, so, you know, the iPad, I think there's a lot of work that can be done. Obviously Stage Manager's still a mess. They kind of biffed it last year with their launches. And it does, still doesn't have features that the iPhone has. Like we talked about, always on display is not there. Other like widget-y features, stuff like that, still aren't on the iPad. But it doesn't seem like, it will get the new apps, right? So this journaling app will be available on all three platforms. And, you know, maybe a health app will be on the iPad, which would be a nice addition because it's weirdly not there now. But like beyond that, there hasn't been any rumors or any reporting in terms of like them rethinking Stage Manager or coming out with new ideas or software for the iPad, which is a little bit of a bummer. And then, like you were saying, the Mac, like, ah. What are they gonna call it is the big question.

• 1:03:08David Pierce?

  Right. Yeah, like what we joke is Craig Federighi gonna make is now like the most interesting thing about the Mac every year.

• 1:03:14Speaker 05

  So excited. But watch OS 10 rumored to be a big, pretty big redesign, maybe the biggest redesign since the watch came out.

• 1:03:21David Pierce?

  Yeah, I haven't read as much about the watch. What's the theory about what's coming with the watch?

• 1:03:24Speaker 05

  So the big theory with that that has been rumored is that we are getting a take on widgets for the watch. Like the watch has complications now, but they're pretty static. They don't update very often, things like that. So the idea is that there will be new widget interfaces that update more frequently or more customizable, which would be great. Maybe a rethinking of the honeycomb, whatever they call that, the app launcher thing.

• 1:03:47David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:48Speaker 05

  Which is kind of a disaster and always has been. A refresh of the user interface of the watch, which we haven't seen. It's basically been the same thing since 2015 with really minor iterations since then. So it's long overdue for it. It's a little interesting for them to do it this year if they are launching a new platform that's going to get all the attention. But, you know, whatever, if it's happening, I'll take it.

• 1:04:09David Pierce?

  So is it kind of like the, there's that Siri face that is just kind of a scrollable set of things? Is it, is it kind of a play on that that we might be getting?

• 1:04:16Speaker 05

  It could be, but I think that if that would work a lot better as a like module on a different watch face. And like, so like a module that like updates based on context and things like that. So right now, if you mess around with focus modes on your iPhone, you can tell it when I'm changing focus modes to change my watch face to whatever I set. Just like you can change your wallpaper on your, your iPhone and your home screen. What if you took it a little bit further and like used a little bit more context with where you are, what you're doing and things like that. And the watch can be a little bit more adaptive. That would be nice. It'd be cool. It's kind of probably a nerdy level thing because you're gonna have to like tweak it and tinker with it and stuff like that, but I'm into it.

• 1:04:55David Pierce?

  One thing I've heard, I've been talking to a bunch of developers this week about just like what they want from Apple. And for the most part, it's pretty straightforward. Like I've had a bunch of people say, we want Swift UI to be better so we can better build cross-platform apps. But the number of people who have brought up the watch to me has been really interesting because on the one hand, the watch is kind of better and more mature than ever, but also too. Your point, it is the same damn thing it has been since 2015. And especially now that we have the Ultra and these things have more performance and they have more battery.

• 1:05:23Speaker 05

  More screen than ever.

• 1:05:25David Pierce?

  Yeah, developers are just like, give us more to do. Like, they're so hamstrung.

• 1:05:28Speaker 05

  The Ultra has this huge screen and it uses the exact same interface as the rest of the watches. So like, it doesn't even take advantage of the fact that it's got this big screen now.

• 1:05:35David Pierce?

  Right, and Apple has always really aggressively limited the stuff you can do on those devices because it's so worried about battery life and performance. But now, as those become less of a worry, there are a lot of people who are like, "Apple, loosen the reins a bit. Let us do more stuff on the watch." And I, like, I'm hopeful that that's gonna be one of the things that starts to happen. Because the Ultra in particular is so much more powerful than it is allowed to be by the way WatchOS works right now. It's crazy.

• 1:06:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, let us do something with that button.

• 1:06:02David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03Speaker 05

  It's got an extra button, he can barely do anything with it.

• 1:06:05David Pierce?

  It's exactly right. Anything else? Any other rumors? We should take a break here in a sec, but have I missed anything? What are we, what else are we expecting? Alex, do you want to talk about Fast TV? I feel bad that I cut you off talking about Fast TV.

• 1:06:15Alex Cranz?

  No, I'm fine. I'm fine. They're not gonna do anything with it, and so why even get my hopes up?

• 1:06:20Speaker 05

  I wonder how much of these things are gonna be in the keynote and how much is just gonna be relegated to developer sessions or press releases or things like that.

• 1:06:29Alex Cranz?

  I mean, that's what they've done with tvOS the last couple of years, is...

• 1:06:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, they don't even mention it onstage, poor tvOS.

• 1:06:35David Pierce?

  The, like, bento box slides they show at the end of everything are gonna be, I suspect, like, particularly full of stuff this year.

• 1:06:42Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, that they didn't, they didn't mention because they've got to spend all this time on a new platform and new device. And I expect this to be like a two-hour keynote, and even then, how are they gonna touch everything?

• 1:06:53David Pierce?

  Yeah. Dan, you, Nilay, and I are gonna be there, so everyone, please start praying for us now. It's gonna be a long, long, long day.

• 1:06:59Speaker 05

  Pray for our bladders.

• 1:07:00David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:01Alex Cranz?

  Have fun.

• 1:07:02David Pierce?

  All right, we need to take one more break, and then we're gonna come back and do a lightning round, and then get out of here. We'll be right back.

• 1:07:13Speaker 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 wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash Apple Watch Series 12.

• 1:07:42Speaker 07

  Support for the show comes from CoreWeave. Everywhere you look, AI is expanding what we thought was possible. And at the center of it all is CoreWeave. Medical research and diagnosis, education, complex visual effects for movies, science and technology breakthroughs. CoreWeave powers AI pioneers around the world with purpose-built tech, building what's never been built before. CoreWeave is the essential cloud for AI. Ready for anything, ready for AI. To learn more about how CoreWeave powers the world's best AI, go to coreweave.com/readyforanything.

• 1:08:25David Pierce?

  We're back. I just looked at what Alex picked for the lightning round, and I just want to apologize to everybody in advance. Alex, you don't get to go first. Aww. Dan, you go first. What's your lightning round pick?

• 1:08:36Speaker 05

  So my lightning round pick is the Amazon Echo Pop, which Jen reviewed this week. It is Amazon's cheapest Echo speaker now. It's 40 bucks. It comes in pretty colors. It's very cool. And it also tries to upsell you on alarm sounds when you say, "Set an alarm." It is the most bonkers thing ever, and it's just like, it blows my mind. I have so many questions. So if you are familiar with Alexa, and you've used Echoes, you've probably gotten used to Alexa saying to you, "By the way, do you want to do this, this, this, and this?" Every single time you ask it a command. And no, you don't. You never do. You never, ever do. You just want it to turn the lights off. Jen asked it to set an alarm while she was testing this, and it said...

• 1:09:20Speaker 05

  By the way, do you want to buy a louder alarm sound after setting an alarm? And I just was like, the user experience of that is just so mind-blowingly awful and like cynical that I just like, I couldn't believe it.

• 1:09:35David Pierce?

  That's really like down the middle of like the sci-fi dystopias about all of this stuff is it's just like, you watch Blade Runner and it's like, what if everything was just ads? And it's like, that's the, everybody watched these movies and was like, oh, what a good product idea. And it's like, no, you missed the whole point of all of that.

• 1:09:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, this is why it's $40, right?

• 1:09:52David Pierce?

  Yeah. See, the thing about Amazon and I, is that like, there are times when I don't mind that shtick. Like the, the special offers thing on the Kindle where it's like, when you turn it off, it'll, it'll show you ads for things you should buy. I actually don't mind that at all, and that's fine.

• 1:10:08Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09David Pierce?

  But things like this are just gross and hostile and like should not be allowed in a product.

• 1:10:15Speaker 05

  Because of the voice assistant is like actively trying to engage you. It's what makes it worse. With the Kindle, it's like you're turning it off, you put it down, you walk away, you don't look at it again, right? So like, you don't even have to interact with it. The, the voice assistant calls to you, it speaks to you and continues speaking to you. And you just want to go off and do something else. Or you want to go to bed because you set an alarm to wake up at six in the morning. It's just so bad.

• 1:10:39David Pierce?

  And it's like, is, is the next step of this that it's like, okay, for free, I'll wake you up somewhere between 5:30 and seven. But if you pay me $9 a month, I'll wake you up on time. Like, how, are we actually far away from it?

• 1:10:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, precise alarm is an in-app purchase. You only get fuzzy alarms.

• 1:10:54Alex Cranz?

  It's cable company, right? Like, it's like when you call your cable company to cancel your cable. And they're like, but what if for a hundred dollars more, we give you Showtime and Cinemax? And you're like, that's not what, no, just do what I asked.

• 1:11:08David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:08Alex Cranz?

  Like, sometimes I just want you to do the thing. Can I talk about my, my?

• 1:11:12David Pierce?

  No. Yes, fine. You go second. So that way I can go last and we can cut you off when this gets horrible. Again, I'm sorry to everyone in advance for what's about to happen on the podcast. Alex, what's, what do you got?

• 1:11:23Alex Cranz?

  Okay, so, so there was a company a few years ago that was trying to like make video games more immersive. And their idea was like, what if we put speakers in the seats? What if we, what if we surrounded you with speakers and stuff? So you would really feel it when you get fragged.

• 1:11:41David Pierce?

  I will just point out that like Disney World has been doing this for decades. If you go to the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids exhibit, like that's just, this is what that is.

• 1:11:49Alex Cranz?

  Movie theaters have been doing it for decades. Like it's a very common thing, but they're like, but what if we did it in your home? Wouldn't that be cool?

• 1:11:56David Pierce?

  And everybody said, no.

• 1:11:57Alex Cranz?

  And everybody said, no. And they still needed to make money. So apparently they had some friends over at Land Rover and Land Rover was like, yes. What if we put speakers in the seats of our cars? So that you could really feel the music. I think we all know where my head is going, but I'm trying to keep things PG rated. I promised David I would keep it PG rated.

• 1:12:20Speaker 05

  I don't think this is as wild as you're making it sound of. Simply because massage seats have existed in luxury cars for a long time.

• 1:12:28Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, that's true. But I just, you know, it's like, it's music. And it's in your car. You're just, yeah, I want to listen to some Hoppin' Tombs.

• 1:12:41Speaker 05

  Here's, here's a pitch for you. Maybe they feel like if the speakers are in the seats and you're feeling the music or whatever, you don't have to turn it up as loud. So if you've got kids sleeping in the back, you can still experience the music as a driver without turning up the volume too loud.

• 1:12:56David Pierce?

  No, what this is, is you pull up to a red light, you find just the right beats per minute, and you for sure miss the green light. Like, you know, you know what I mean? Like you, you do not know when the light changes.

• 1:13:05Alex Cranz?

  A hundred percent. This is just, this is giving you a distraction when you're waiting in line at McDonald's for your chicken nuggets.

• 1:13:13David Pierce?

  Yeah, those chicken nuggets are never, ever coming out to you. Don't worry about it.

• 1:13:16Alex Cranz?

  But if they do, they're going to taste great.

• 1:13:20David Pierce?

  Dan, I appreciate your optimism here. I really do.

• 1:13:22Speaker 05

  I tried, I tried.

• 1:13:24David Pierce?

  Car companies continuing to flail to find things to charge you money for is my favorite story in the tech industry right now. It's, it's delightful.

• 1:13:31Speaker 05

  I hope there's a subscription for this, by the way. I hope the hardware is there and then they're like, oh, but you have to pay us $12.99 a month to use the vibrating seats.

• 1:13:38David Pierce?

  And if you stop paying, it'll vibrate like offbeat and horribly and it'll just ruin your entire experience.

• 1:13:43Alex Cranz?

  As you drive down the road.

• 1:13:45Speaker 05

  It'll be, by the way, did you know that you could pay for your seat to vibrate with the music?

• 1:13:51David Pierce?

  Ah, God. So mine is a very new phone, the Motorola Razr Plus, which is the latest in Motorola's reboot of the flip phone. This one feels like much closer to getting it right. The big new thing is it has instead of a teeny tiny little stripe of a screen on the outside. It has, what is it Dan, like 3.6 inches of screen on the outside?

• 1:14:14Speaker 05

  It's like a whole phone on the outside.

• 1:14:15David Pierce?

  It literally, it's like, yeah, it's just like a little phone.

• 1:14:17Alex Cranz?

  It's a thousand dollars.

• 1:14:21Speaker 05

  I mean, what phone isn't a thousand dollars?

• 1:14:23Alex Cranz?

  I thought they were like 1500.

• 1:14:25Speaker 05

  Well, the, these flip styles that go normal size to small are about a thousand bucks.

• 1:14:30David Pierce?

  Right. Yeah. The Galaxy Z Flip, I think it's the same price.

• 1:14:32Alex Cranz?

  But they usually don't look this cool.

• 1:14:34Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, I mean, they're, they're, well, they, they look cool and they get like compact. They're not like the product of.

• 1:14:40Alex Cranz?

  But they don't look this cool.

• 1:14:42Speaker 05

  This looks cool because like David said, there's a, a whole phone on the outside of it.

• 1:14:46David Pierce?

  Yeah. And to me, it's like, the thing that this solves for me is the number of times that I'm like, I just need to respond with an emoji to this text message. But if I open my phone, I will then open Instagram and I will be using my phone for 45 minutes. Like this neatly solves that very specific problem for me in a way that makes me very happy.

• 1:15:04Speaker 05

  Does it? What if you just open Instagram on the outside?

• 1:15:08Alex Cranz?

  No, because it's too tiny.

• 1:15:09Speaker 05

  I think you can.

• 1:15:10Alex Cranz?

  It's too tiny. You'll get annoyed.

• 1:15:11Speaker 05

  I don't know. You go look at Allison's article. She's got a whole maps on there and it's got a keyboard.

• 1:15:17Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, but what if she has to do anything down where the camera bump is? That's just a black hole.

• 1:15:23Speaker 05

  They built games that like use the camera bump. You, you like make the little marble go into the camera bump.

• 1:15:29Alex Cranz?

  Go into shady places.

• 1:15:30Speaker 05

  I think this is cool. I agree with David. I think that this is finally the flip that actually looks good.

• 1:15:35David Pierce?

  Yeah. You're probably right that this solves none of my like existential problems about using phones. But in the sense that like, I want a phone that is small and folds out to be big, but is useful in both ways. Like, good job Motorola. You, you got it right.

• 1:15:47Speaker 05

  So Allison. Had a piece this week before this announcement talking about it's gonna be hot foldable summer. This is like the first wave. We're still waiting for the Pixel Fold to come out after its announcement. Samsung's rumored to be announcing stuff in June or July, I think. But the way that she described the style of phones, specifically the flip style, is like a combination of a smartwatch and a normal cellphone. And then this outside display lets you do all the things that you might do on a smartwatch. Reply to messages, look at directions, control music, maybe smart home stuff or whatever. And this is looks like definitely much more usable, especially than like Samsung's tiny little strip of a display that's very limited in what it will show.

• 1:16:26David Pierce?

  Yeah, flip phones. Give them to me, all of them. I love them all. All right, we need to get out of here. Thank you both. This was, this is very fun. We're gonna have oh so much more WWDC stuff. There's just, we'd like, the headset is our life for the foreseeable future. So if you don't care about headsets, I'm so very sorry. Lots of good stuff on The Verge this week. We had our Lisa documentary that everybody should watch about the Apple Lisa. We talked a bunch about that on the Wednesday show, but the documentary is amazing. It's like the best half hour you'll spend this week. Next time you're waiting for your chicken nuggets, watch the documentary. It's excellent. We also, our features team ran a thing about a kid who kept impersonating cops in Chicago and kept getting away with it. It's deeply weird and excellent.

• 1:17:05Alex Cranz?

  So good.

• 1:17:05David Pierce?

  Lots of good reviews and stuff on this, on the site this week. It was a really good week. Like, the thing that happens before WWDC is everybody just tries to like dump all their news because then Apple kind of eats the news cycle for two weeks. So there's all kinds of stuff going on. It was very good. The one last thing I want to point everybody to is this device made by a designer called Paragrafica, which is just an AI camera. I can't believe none of us picked this as our.

• 1:17:30Alex Cranz?

  It was my pick until I remembered Range Rover. I'm sorry.

• 1:17:33David Pierce?

  This, we're just gonna call this a bonus lightning round item before we go here. So this thing, it's, it's a camera, but when you press the shutter, instead of actually taking a picture, it collects a bunch of data about the location, the current, you know, weather conditions, what it's looking at, all this kind of stuff. Feeds all of that to an image generator and then spits back an AI-generated image theoretically of the thing that you were just looking at.

• 1:17:56Alex Cranz?

  Is it a camera, David?

• 1:17:58David Pierce?

  What's a photo, you guys? This is like, it's, it's honestly, it's so good that Neelai is not here because this would have been the entire show. We would have spent two hours just debating this thing.

• 1:18:08Speaker 05

  I don't want to disparage the designer that made this because I think it's super creative and very interesting. I just, the concept of it makes me very sad.

• 1:18:15David Pierce?

  I will say, they would agree. They meant this as like an art project to start conversations, not like the gadget of the future. So I think, in that sense, I think it's totally fascinating. But yeah, I think it's very possible to like viscerally hate this thing and be totally correct and valid in your take on it.

• 1:18:31Speaker 05

  What is reality?

• 1:18:33David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:33Alex Cranz?

  I hate it and I love it at the same time. Like, I'm truly torn by it.

• 1:18:37David Pierce?

  Yeah, I think it's fascinating. But there's a, there's a thing, we'll put the link in the show notes. There's actually a site you can go to and you just sort of like Mad Libs your way through some of the information that it needs and then it spits back an image to you. It's like,

• 1:18:48Alex Cranz?

  It's cool.

• 1:18:49David Pierce?

  The weirdest, trippiest thing of all time. It's very fun. I highly suggest everybody, everybody do it.

• 1:18:54Alex Cranz?

  Are they real photos? Let us know.

• 1:18:56David Pierce?

  Yeah, who knows? If you get a good one of us, let us know.

• 1:19:02David Pierce?

  Please feed us all image generators and let us know how it goes. Anyway, we, we're gonna be back on Wednesday. We have a bunch of post WWDC stuff planned. It's all gonna be very fun. Uh, we have some cool collab-y stuff going on with some friends that we've been working on. That's gonna be really great. We'll be back here for the show next week. Once we've digested, it's gonna be very fun. Lot of Apple stuff going on. Uh, if you have questions, call the hotline. We're, we're gonna try to answer as many questions as you can. 866-VERGE11. If you have Apple questions now or after the keynote, let us know. Dan, Neil and I will be there live. It's gonna be really fun. We will see you all in Cupertino next week. Uh, that's it. That's Vergecast. Rock and roll.

• 1:19:42Speaker 08

  And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email at [email protected]. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Moreno. Our editorial director is Brooke Minter. That's it. We'll see you next week.

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