The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► I can't believe it took this long to get you on my show. I was on like two years ago

00:00:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I I just feel like you should be back more often though, you know, yeah, you know we started doing a

00:00:12 ◼   ► Interview episodes of the first chance we can trade back and forth because we're doing we're doing second episodes every week now, you know

00:00:19 ◼   ► I you know, I'm game for that

00:00:22 ◼   ► We should do it. I think two years ago we

00:00:26 ◼   ► It was the height of the headphone jack debate and we made people wait

00:00:30 ◼   ► Over an hour before we actually addressed it which I thought was very clever on both of our parts. I

00:00:37 ◼   ► Am

00:00:43 ◼   ► Still exhausted. I find that this this

00:00:46 ◼   ► I

00:00:48 ◼   ► Always say like this for me is like for an accountant. This is like April 15th

00:00:53 ◼   ► You know, this is this to me is super exhausting

00:00:57 ◼   ► And you know, even though I put my watch review up

00:01:01 ◼   ► Wednesday it's and now we're recording on Friday. I still feel like punch-drunk. I am

00:01:08 ◼   ► it and I counted and I'm not trying to brag it it I'm just saying like

00:01:13 ◼   ► It's it's a big number

00:01:16 ◼   ► from

00:01:18 ◼   ► the event until

00:01:21 ◼   ► Wednesday at one when I finally put my watch review up I wrote

00:01:24 ◼   ► 12,200 words in three articles on during fireball. That's crazy

00:01:30 ◼   ► It's more than you're doing lately. You're all podcast now. I

00:01:34 ◼   ► Back, so did you did I didn't even?

00:01:38 ◼   ► This is how exhausted and behind I am I thoroughly read your iPhone X s review

00:01:46 ◼   ► I didn't even check the verges iPhone

00:01:49 ◼   ► Or our series for watch review. Did you write that or did somebody else Dieter did that one?

00:01:53 ◼   ► See that's that's where I need I need like a staff. I

00:01:56 ◼   ► Encourage everyone to find a partner like Dieter to work with it's the most rewarding working relationship

00:02:05 ◼   ► I've ever had and so yeah go find that guy. Don't find Dieter stay the hell away from him

00:02:09 ◼   ► But you know for us it's a little different because we have to make videos - right so this week this week for me is

00:02:17 ◼   ► is, hey, I don't know if this happens to you,

00:02:22 ◼   ► after the event itself, I have to go back

00:02:25 ◼   ► and watch the video.

00:02:26 ◼   ► Like I have to watch the live stream

00:02:28 ◼   ► just to remember everything that happened.

00:02:30 ◼   ► 'Cause we're live vlogging and then we're like,

00:02:32 ◼   ► I saw you in the hands-on area and everyone should know this,

00:02:35 ◼   ► John saw me taking photos in the hands-on area

00:02:37 ◼   ► and he just goes, I'm so happy

00:02:39 ◼   ► I don't have to do that shit.

00:02:40 ◼   ► So like, we're like in pure panic mode at the event

00:02:44 ◼   ► and we come out of it and I always have to,

00:02:46 ◼   ► That night, I always sit down and watch the live stream

00:02:50 ◼   ► to remember what the hell happened.

00:02:52 ◼   ► So that's like step one.

00:02:54 ◼   ► And then we get back, you know, we've got the devices.

00:02:57 ◼   ► Our video was made by eight people.

00:03:00 ◼   ► Like I counted it like 2 a.m. on Monday night,

00:03:04 ◼   ► you know, we published at 6 a.m. Tuesday.

00:03:06 ◼   ► There were eight people in the Verge office,

00:03:08 ◼   ► like cranking away in this video.

00:03:10 ◼   ► And then hilariously on the other side of the office,

00:03:12 ◼   ► our science team was watching the Elon Musk's

00:03:15 ◼   ► I'm gonna send artists to Mars, or artists to the moon.

00:03:18 ◼   ► So it was like a totally crazy night in the Verge office.

00:03:21 ◼   ► So we, the whole Verge calls it iPhone week.

00:03:25 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right?

00:03:26 ◼   ► Here's iPhone week, it's gonna happen,

00:03:27 ◼   ► it's gonna be this big thing.

00:03:29 ◼   ► We have a new executive producer, she's great,

00:03:31 ◼   ► her name is Nori, she runs our video team.

00:03:33 ◼   ► She came to one of our shoots just 'cause she wanted to like

00:03:35 ◼   ► hear what, see what all the hype was about.

00:03:38 ◼   ► And now we're like kinda good at it.

00:03:39 ◼   ► She's like, this seems pretty calm.

00:03:40 ◼   ► And we're like, no, this is still as crazy as ever.

00:03:43 ◼   ► We're just good at it.

00:03:45 ◼   ► Um, but I'm, I am like very lucky to work at a place where like so many

00:03:52 ◼   ► people are involved in the production of the thing that we do, um, it's,

00:03:56 ◼   ► it's just from Mark every year.

00:03:57 ◼   ► This is just a remarkable week for us because we, everything

00:04:01 ◼   ► that we can do, we do, right.

00:04:03 ◼   ► We take photos, we make videos, we do an Instagram thing.

00:04:07 ◼   ► We have a pot, like all of the things, all of the tools that the verge has,

00:04:12 ◼   ► We like throw at this project and them and then I don't know if this is like for you, but you think it would be over

00:04:17 ◼   ► Like you publish the thing

00:04:20 ◼   ► You know throw the bomb over your shoulder and walk away

00:04:22 ◼   ► But that's what it feels like when I hit the button you hit the button. It's like do you have that moment?

00:04:28 ◼   ► I don't did you hit the embargo? I have this one moment of

00:04:31 ◼   ► Panic when like the thing goes up at 6 a.m. And then you know Twitter's like a little slow

00:04:36 ◼   ► So I don't see everybody else's I'm like, oh I fucked that up

00:04:40 ◼   ► Like I got there I'd like I go and then like the wall she channel goes up or something, right?

00:04:44 ◼   ► so I have that moment of panic, but then I have a whole day of

00:04:48 ◼   ► People reacting and like talking to me about the review and asking questions. So that's another whole day of

00:04:53 ◼   ► Work and like really enjoyable work like that's what you live for, right? I

00:04:58 ◼   ► Completely agree, but it is completely why I had to pull two consecutive all-nighters

00:05:06 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm terrible at deadlines. I almost hit so

00:05:10 ◼   ► And I and this is exactly what this podcast is for. I love this inside baseball. So the embargo dates were

00:05:17 ◼   ► Tuesday morning 6 a.m. Eastern Time

00:05:21 ◼   ► for the iPhone 10s and then Wednesday 6 a.m. For the series for Apple watch and

00:05:29 ◼   ► I'm

00:05:31 ◼   ► Writing my iPhone review and it's I got it. It's like I feel it the words are coming out of my fingers really well

00:05:38 ◼   ► but I literally was up all night and

00:05:40 ◼   ► I dosed the caffeine just right, you know, like I wasn't like super jittery, you know

00:05:47 ◼   ► But I got it and I think I published at like 7 a.m. I mean it for and for me that's really close

00:05:54 ◼   ► oh, no, I didn't hit at 7 a.m. Because I

00:05:58 ◼   ► The inside story the way behind the scenes story is I I felt so good the night before

00:06:04 ◼   ► About where I already was and I knew I was gonna get up at 6

00:06:10 ◼   ► Whether I was gonna get any sleep or not. I was gonna get up at 6 to publish if I was done and so

00:06:14 ◼   ► usually

00:06:17 ◼   ► My wife Amy takes our son to school and I said, you know what? I'll be up

00:06:21 ◼   ► I will take him to school tomorrow. So I was like you can sleep in I got it and

00:06:26 ◼   ► It came time to take him to school and I was in I was editing it was like final editing

00:06:31 ◼   ► But I wasn't done yet. And I was like, ah, geez. I was like we're gonna speed walk to school today

00:06:35 ◼   ► So I took him to school. So I published around eight. That's right

00:06:39 ◼   ► I would have probably published around seven but I it wound up being a little after eight because I took my son to school

00:06:45 ◼   ► yeah, and then I had that day of

00:06:48 ◼   ► I

00:06:50 ◼   ► Read your review. I read Joanna's I read a couple others. I read panzerino, you know it

00:06:55 ◼   ► There's still some I have so many open tabs from reviews to read. I still want to see what other people have to say

00:07:02 ◼   ► But I'm taking feedback

00:07:05 ◼   ► From people all day

00:07:07 ◼   ► but meanwhile

00:07:08 ◼   ► I know that I've got this 6 a.m.

00:07:10 ◼   ► deadline the next day for the watch and then eventually I go to sleep and I wake up around like 6 p.m. And

00:07:17 ◼   ► It's like I got to get going on the watch thing. But in the meantime, I'm

00:07:22 ◼   ► Still taking feedback from the iPhone review and and again, like you said it is fantastic. It is exactly

00:07:29 ◼   ► Why I do this it is it is it is both the hardest

00:07:34 ◼   ► I work all year and by far and away the most rewarding. The only thing that compares is when I do my live

00:07:39 ◼   ► show at the WWDC in terms of being

00:07:43 ◼   ► Rewarding and feeling like hey, I'm okay at what I do. Yeah. No, I'm completely with you that and and for me it's like

00:07:51 ◼   ► Both positive and like I want to hear I'm I'm very interested what people think I got wrong, right?

00:07:57 ◼   ► I like me too. That's exactly why I have you on the show

00:08:00 ◼   ► Because I thought I felt like our reviews were quite different in terms of the camera and that is exactly you know

00:08:08 ◼   ► Like that is exactly I don't want you to tell me what I got right? You don't even have the phone yet

00:08:12 ◼   ► I want to know like what I got wrong and I want to know what questions you still have that are unanswered

00:08:17 ◼   ► You know and and that's what it's fascinating

00:08:21 ◼   ► You know and people ask such great questions and it's like oh that is a great question

00:08:24 ◼   ► Let me tell you and then meanwhile it's like 11 p.m. And I haven't really started my watch review yet, and I'm like, oh

00:08:31 ◼   ► I've started doing this very coy thing

00:08:38 ◼   ► Which I you know, I used to be a lawyer so I believe it's firmly within the letter of the law

00:08:43 ◼   ► I don't know if it's within the spirit of the law, but you're not supposed to tell people that you have devices under embargo, right?

00:08:49 ◼   ► Yeah, that well, it's like the rule. All right

00:08:52 ◼   ► Right, right. My doorman actually saw the max in my hand my apartment building. He's like that's the man I was like shit

00:09:00 ◼   ► Can't it's a huge phone. They can't get away with it. Um, but I've started tweeting

00:09:05 ◼   ► What questions do you have like early in the process like the day of the event?

00:09:09 ◼   ► Just so I know because people ask questions. I would never think of and to me that's where you like really find

00:09:17 ◼   ► Angles in so like one of these days one of these companies they're gonna be like, dude

00:09:22 ◼   ► You're just giving it away that you have it, but I'm like no, but it doesn't say it's just I'm just well

00:09:27 ◼   ► I'm just idly wondering what questions you have. So we'll see. We'll see if I get ding for that

00:09:31 ◼   ► but to me that if what I'm doing in a review is

00:09:34 ◼   ► Answering as many questions as possible then I'm then I'm succeeding you

00:09:39 ◼   ► You got that. I got the

00:09:42 ◼   ► the gold 10 s the gold tennis

00:09:46 ◼   ► Max and I got the gold series for a watch. Did you get the same ones?

00:09:51 ◼   ► I got the gold again Dieter has the watch but did he get the gold one? I believe so, right?

00:09:58 ◼   ► Well the thing about getting the gold ones is there's no way to hide that

00:10:02 ◼   ► You know, I mean like you could put it in a case and then people couldn't tell but even you know

00:10:07 ◼   ► If you don't put it in the case, there's no way that you can use it

00:10:10 ◼   ► So the letter of the NDA is that you're not supposed to let anybody know other than like people you work with and people in your immediate family, but it you know, I don't see how they can teachers a space gray. Got that wrong.

00:10:25 ◼   ► Huh?

00:10:26 ◼   ► And it's still it's like, how am I supposed to wear this watch? And if somebody really notices

00:10:33 ◼   ► that I'm wearing the gold series for a watch, I mean, I can't hide it. You can't even put the

00:10:37 ◼   ► watch in a case. If you know what you're looking for, it's it's immediately obvious that I'm

00:10:42 ◼   ► wearing this gold series for watch. Yeah. And it's not like we don't run in circles,

00:10:47 ◼   ► or knows what we do. Right. So, well, there's a little bit of like, I'm gonna trust my friends,

00:10:53 ◼   ► Like they're gonna see this phone and they're just gonna help me keep the secret. Yeah

00:10:58 ◼   ► So I have an inside baseball question for you sir, okay in your watch review, yes you say you had it before the event

00:11:09 ◼   ► Was now no that's true. No, that's not

00:11:12 ◼   ► That's a mistake if I said that what does the actual review say?

00:11:19 ◼   ► It says you... Absolutely not true.

00:11:20 ◼   ► Let me go find a review now.

00:11:23 ◼   ► Here we go.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Live live doxing.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Talk show.

00:11:27 ◼   ► Oh, here we go.

00:11:30 ◼   ► You wrote, "Which brings me to the most striking new hardware in the series for the display.

00:11:35 ◼   ► I cheated a bit when I wrote the following bit in my thoughts and observations piece regarding

00:11:40 ◼   ► last week's event because I'd been wearing this review unit for several days already."

00:11:44 ◼   ► Right.

00:11:45 ◼   ► That meant that all I meant by that.

00:11:46 ◼   ► I didn't mean that I'd been wearing it before the event. I meant that I didn't publish my thoughts

00:11:51 ◼   ► and observations on the event thing until Friday. It was like, Oh, see, okay. I do. So that's a good

00:11:58 ◼   ► call that I'm maybe that sentence was a little unclear, but I absolutely. I have never ever

00:12:05 ◼   ► gotten anything before an event. I don't I don't think anybody has. I don't think even Walt, you

00:12:11 ◼   ► know, if anybody would have ever gotten anything before an event, it would have been Walt, but I

00:12:15 ◼   ► I don't think anybody has I'll say I did a hundred episodes of a podcast with Walt. I never got him to admit shit

00:12:20 ◼   ► Yeah, you're way closer to him than me but I've asked him questions like that and he's very very secret

00:12:28 ◼   ► No, Peter and I both read that line and we're like no

00:12:32 ◼   ► No, I will I will try to clarify that after this after we record but that's fine. You should own it man

00:12:40 ◼   ► Keep keep the ambiguity in there. It's it's your brand

00:12:42 ◼   ► end. I have a great, great story about having pre-release hardware. I forget what year it

00:12:53 ◼   ► was. But it was maybe around 2013, 2014, and I got ahead and it was an iPad event in California.

00:13:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:13:04 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:13:05 ◼   ► - Maybe 2012, I don't know.

00:13:07 ◼   ► And I'm flying on Southwest back home to Philly.

00:13:12 ◼   ► And I don't even know why,

00:13:14 ◼   ► but to me, this is all the more amazing

00:13:16 ◼   ► because Southwest, you don't get assigned seats

00:13:20 ◼   ► on the plane.

00:13:21 ◼   ► You first run, you pick an open seat

00:13:24 ◼   ► and you just sit wherever you want.

00:13:25 ◼   ► And there's a little bit of status involved

00:13:27 ◼   ► where you can like pay extra to get on first

00:13:30 ◼   ► so you can be more likely to get a good seat, whatever.

00:13:33 ◼   ► And I go on and I got, to me,

00:13:37 ◼   ► one of the best seats on the plane is in the exit row.

00:13:40 ◼   ► There's one of the exit row sides,

00:13:42 ◼   ► how only has two seats.

00:13:44 ◼   ► And I get one of those seats

00:13:46 ◼   ► and it has extra room in front of you.

00:13:48 ◼   ► It's like Southwest version of first class.

00:13:51 ◼   ► And I get this seat.

00:13:52 ◼   ► And then a nice young woman sits next to me

00:13:58 ◼   ► and I take out this new iPad.

00:14:03 ◼   ► And immediately she says to me,

00:14:06 ◼   ► holy shit, that's the new iPad.

00:14:10 ◼   ► And I'm like,

00:14:10 ◼   ► and I'm like, what do I do?

00:14:13 ◼   ► And it ends up, it's Ashley Nelson Hornstein.

00:14:16 ◼   ► And she's a great speaker.

00:14:18 ◼   ► I'll put this in the show notes.

00:14:20 ◼   ► But at the time she worked for Apple.

00:14:23 ◼   ► - Oh no.

00:14:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, she worked for Apple.

00:14:26 ◼   ► And well, it turned out great because she worked for Apple.

00:14:29 ◼   ► So she knew to keep her mouth shut.

00:14:30 ◼   ► And I was like, oh, I'm John Gruber.

00:14:32 ◼   ► She's like, "Holy shit, you're John Gruber."

00:14:33 ◼   ► And we had the most amazing three-hour-long conversation

00:14:36 ◼   ► like nerding out on a plane.

00:14:38 ◼   ► And in fact, she had never seen the iPhone.

00:14:40 ◼   ► She worked on something else at the time

00:14:41 ◼   ► while she was at Apple, so she hadn't seen it.

00:14:43 ◼   ► But because she worked at Apple,

00:14:45 ◼   ► I was just totally like, "Here, take it.

00:14:47 ◼   ► "Play around with it."

00:14:48 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:14:49 ◼   ► And we had the most amazing conversation

00:14:52 ◼   ► for like three hours on this flight.

00:14:54 ◼   ► And it was amazing.

00:14:55 ◼   ► But I had this moment of panic when she first said that.

00:14:59 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh shit, what do I do?"

00:15:01 ◼   ► - That's always my fear, you know,

00:15:03 ◼   ► 'cause we, I'm sure you feel this too.

00:15:05 ◼   ► There's the event and you get the phone

00:15:09 ◼   ► and then you have to go home.

00:15:11 ◼   ► - Right.

00:15:12 ◼   ► - And the first thing I wanna do

00:15:13 ◼   ► is put my SIM card in the phone.

00:15:14 ◼   ► - Right. - Right?

00:15:15 ◼   ► Like, without, I wanna start using this thing,

00:15:17 ◼   ► I wanna understand it, but I can't use it on a plane.

00:15:22 ◼   ► Like, I feel very nervous about it.

00:15:25 ◼   ► And I certainly cannot open my laptop

00:15:28 ◼   ► and write iPhone 10s review and start typing away

00:15:32 ◼   ► with somebody sitting next to me.

00:15:33 ◼   ► So there's this block of five and a half hours

00:15:36 ◼   ► flying from San Francisco to New York

00:15:40 ◼   ► where I'm just playing with the thing

00:15:41 ◼   ► and desperately trying to remember everything that happened

00:15:44 ◼   ► on the bad wifi.

00:15:45 ◼   ► And I'm always like, I should just sleep.

00:15:48 ◼   ► What am I doing?

00:15:49 ◼   ► This is a useless time.

00:15:50 ◼   ► But I can never help it and I always display with it.

00:15:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, so, and there was one time too,

00:15:56 ◼   ► I forget when, what year it was,

00:15:58 ◼   ► But it was one year or two where it obviously wasn't one of the S years.

00:16:02 ◼   ► Might've been like the iPhone four. I don't know. Well,

00:16:07 ◼   ► cause I didn't get it. No, I didn't get a review. I wasn't on a review thing.

00:16:12 ◼   ► So probably it was like the iPhone five.

00:16:14 ◼   ► And I got on a plane and I had it out and like the flight attendant was like,

00:16:19 ◼   ► Oh my God, is that the new iPhone? And I just was like, uh, yeah.

00:16:22 ◼   ► And I just like put it back in my pocket and I was like, yeah.

00:16:25 ◼   ► And I was thinking like you, I was like,

00:16:27 ◼   ► I guess I'll just start playing with this when I get home.

00:16:30 ◼   ► 'Cause I just worried that somebody, you know what I mean?

00:16:33 ◼   ► And I just worried that if I said yeah and I kept it out,

00:16:36 ◼   ► somebody's gonna snap a picture

00:16:38 ◼   ► and put it on Instagram or something.

00:16:40 ◼   ► And like, dude, this guy next to me

00:16:42 ◼   ► has an iPhone 5 already.

00:16:43 ◼   ► And it's like, I don't need that.

00:16:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I got really lucky this year

00:16:48 ◼   ► because the two phones were identical for most part.

00:16:51 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:16:52 ◼   ► So in years past, I land in New York

00:16:57 ◼   ► and the video team and the photography team

00:16:59 ◼   ► want the phone right away, right?

00:17:02 ◼   ► Like those B-roll shots don't come out of nowhere.

00:17:04 ◼   ► They take hours and hours and hours.

00:17:05 ◼   ► Like if you watch our video this year,

00:17:08 ◼   ► there's all these like beautiful shots

00:17:10 ◼   ► of it floating through space.

00:17:12 ◼   ► Hopefully we took some behind the scenes photos of this.

00:17:16 ◼   ► That iPhone is mounted on like a robot arm

00:17:19 ◼   ► that's like slowly tracking through a room

00:17:21 ◼   ► with the camera following it.

00:17:23 ◼   ► That took a long time to set up,

00:17:25 ◼   ► and that's time I don't get to use the phone.

00:17:27 ◼   ► So this year I was like, yeah,

00:17:28 ◼   ► you can take this little one, whatever,

00:17:30 ◼   ► we'll battery test it later, have at it.

00:17:33 ◼   ► There's nothing I'm gonna miss if I don't have that phone,

00:17:36 ◼   ► apart from the screen size,

00:17:37 ◼   ► but I know the screen size is a little one.

00:17:40 ◼   ► In years past, it's literally war,

00:17:43 ◼   ► where I'm like, guys, I need to review the phone.

00:17:46 ◼   ► And they're like, yeah, but we need to do,

00:17:48 ◼   ► and we're constantly negotiating that time,

00:17:51 ◼   ► And then I'm always worried like it's my phone.

00:17:54 ◼   ► Like I put my SIM card in it, I log into my,

00:17:55 ◼   ► I do all the things and I'm always like

00:17:58 ◼   ► in the middle of one of these shots,

00:17:59 ◼   ► I'm gonna get a notification that's like

00:18:02 ◼   ► the verge of shutting down, you know,

00:18:03 ◼   ► like something horrible will happen.

00:18:05 ◼   ► - Right.

00:18:05 ◼   ► - But this year it was,

00:18:08 ◼   ► I fully support two identical phones

00:18:11 ◼   ► with different screen sizes

00:18:12 ◼   ► 'cause it made it much easier this year to get photos.

00:18:15 ◼   ► - Fundamentally, that is absolutely true.

00:18:18 ◼   ► And I think it's one of the,

00:18:20 ◼   ► I think it's one of the best things about this cycle of iPhone and I hope they keep

00:18:25 ◼   ► it going forward is that it and I emphasize it as much as I could in my review that it

00:18:31 ◼   ► really is like choosing between a medium and large cup of the same coffee it is you know

00:18:37 ◼   ► you do get more battery life there are more it's it's you know the the screen has the

00:18:43 ◼   ► same resolution pixels per inch so you do get more pixels on the larger phone you know

00:18:49 ◼   ► And so in terms of quote unquote, they're the same phone, but different sizes, it's

00:18:53 ◼   ► not the same screen scaled up, you do get more information, you know, more pixels, which

00:18:57 ◼   ► is I think is the right way to do it. But I think people fundamentally understand that.

00:19:01 ◼   ► And it's a, to me, a much easier decision. It is Do you want a bigger phone or a smaller

00:19:06 ◼   ► phone? And that's it is because you get literally the exact same camera. And I thought that

00:19:10 ◼   ► in the past three, four years, the the subtle camera advantages of the plus phones were

00:19:18 ◼   ► were very hard to make a recommendation regarding, you know, that they've always had like, like

00:19:26 ◼   ► optical image stabilization advantages, you know, like, there was one year where only

00:19:31 ◼   ► the plus had any optical image stabilization, and then the next year, the smaller one had

00:19:36 ◼   ► it, but only for stills and not for video, but the plus had it for video, you know, there

00:19:40 ◼   ► were always these subtle technical advantages to the plus size phone that made it really

00:19:45 ◼   ► hard to make a sort of recommendation other than your preference for size. Whereas this

00:19:50 ◼   ► year it is just two, two phones that are exactly the same in two sizes.

00:19:55 ◼   ► And I'm good. I gotta tell you, I'm going back and forth almost day by day on which

00:19:59 ◼   ► which size I prefer. And I've been using the max and I'm like used to it and I hold the

00:20:04 ◼   ► little one I'm like, pretty small. But I think to me, if the max had picture in picture video,

00:20:12 ◼   ► Yeah, man, that would that would sell it would just absolutely

00:20:16 ◼   ► sell like, yeah, you know, I saw the the Jets Browns game last

00:20:20 ◼   ► night, like got interesting. The Browns won a game. It's amazing.

00:20:24 ◼   ► Open the frigid like the whole as like, I want to check this

00:20:27 ◼   ► out. So like, figure it out how to watch watching football on a

00:20:30 ◼   ► phone is like, impossible. Like the NFL app last night told me

00:20:33 ◼   ► that if I was using my cell network, I could watch it. But

00:20:37 ◼   ► if I wanted to watch it on Wi Fi, I had to log into my cable

00:20:40 ◼   ► provider, which makes zero fucking sense. But anyways, like

00:20:44 ◼   ► figure on Verizon. Are you on Verizon? I'm an AT&T. I thought

00:20:48 ◼   ► Verizon had like exclusive NFL rights, but maybe the NFL took

00:20:51 ◼   ► those away this year. Ah, okay. So look, watching the NFL is like

00:20:55 ◼   ► super complicated. Yeah, I here's my recommendation to

00:20:57 ◼   ► everyone. Buy it, buy some TV package, like whatever one you

00:21:01 ◼   ► want. Know in your heart that you spent some money on TV and

00:21:04 ◼   ► then watch whatever pirate stream you want, because they

00:21:08 ◼   ► They won't sell it to you.

00:21:09 ◼   ► So just morally clear your mind and then go forward.

00:21:13 ◼   ► Anyway, so I'm on Twitter hearing this game's crazy.

00:21:18 ◼   ► So I go and open the app, I watch the thing,

00:21:20 ◼   ► and I'm like, wait, I wanna see

00:21:21 ◼   ► what people are tweeting about.

00:21:23 ◼   ► So you gotta like, and the screen is big enough

00:21:26 ◼   ► to support picture in picture.

00:21:27 ◼   ► And that's literally the one thing I want from this phone.

00:21:31 ◼   ► Just do it the way the iPad does it

00:21:33 ◼   ► and let me watch two things at once.

00:21:35 ◼   ► And then there will be no, literally no competition.

00:21:38 ◼   ► - And you know that technically the phone could do it

00:21:41 ◼   ► without breaking a sweat.

00:21:43 ◼   ► I mean, 'cause the, you know, if the iPad can do it

00:21:47 ◼   ► and the iPad is still the best iPad you can buy today

00:21:50 ◼   ► still has the old A10 processor.

00:21:53 ◼   ► I guess it's an A10X, I don't know,

00:21:55 ◼   ► but it's, you know, two generations behind the A12.

00:21:58 ◼   ► The A12, like I use the analogy in my review

00:22:01 ◼   ► that it deals with things like, you know,

00:22:04 ◼   ► things like this, like Neo in the matrix dodging bullets.

00:22:07 ◼   ► You know, it is like, it is like no sweat,

00:22:10 ◼   ► like no sweat could this phone, you know,

00:22:12 ◼   ► this phone could probably do like three or four picture

00:22:14 ◼   ► in picture HD streams, no problem.

00:22:17 ◼   ► - I mean, the Apple TV can do it, right?

00:22:20 ◼   ► If you open the ESPN app, you can get four HD streams going

00:22:24 ◼   ► and that thing is nowhere near as powerful as the top.

00:22:27 ◼   ► - Right, so yeah, and that's a perfect example.

00:22:29 ◼   ► Like watching live sports while you want to check up

00:22:31 ◼   ► on Twitter is exactly a perfect example

00:22:35 ◼   ► of why you might want picture-in-picture.

00:22:38 ◼   ► - It's also why Twitter keeps trying

00:22:39 ◼   ► to be a sports video provider.

00:22:42 ◼   ► It's not a good strategy for them,

00:22:44 ◼   ► but you see why they keep wandering towards it,

00:22:46 ◼   ► 'cause they know it's a compelling use case.

00:22:48 ◼   ► But yeah, if it had the picture-in-picture video,

00:22:53 ◼   ► to me, it would be absolutely no,

00:22:55 ◼   ► you should buy the Max,

00:22:56 ◼   ► I've been getting 12 to 14 hours of battery life

00:22:59 ◼   ► This thing and I'm not a casual or own use right? So like the advantages are big, you know, there's some size stuff like

00:23:05 ◼   ► I put it in my review, you know the old plus funds

00:23:09 ◼   ► They had those big bezels so to reach the top was actually not as much of a reach and now it's a really big reach

00:23:16 ◼   ► For me, so yeah, there's some like handling considerations

00:23:19 ◼   ► But if you could if this could just be your computer in that way, it would be no contest to me. I

00:23:25 ◼   ► Do you find and it's the weirdest thing and I touched on this in my review and then I kind of

00:23:30 ◼   ► Because it's so nonsensical that I didn't want to go into detail on it

00:23:36 ◼   ► But it's the weirdest thing to me

00:23:38 ◼   ► Is that even though it if you actually look at the technical specs of like an iPhone 8 plus and the iPhone 10s max?

00:23:46 ◼   ► The max is like ever so slightly smaller

00:23:49 ◼   ► It is like a millimeter narrower and in terms of side to side

00:23:54 ◼   ► But it feels smaller in hand like like way more than you would think from one millimeter difference

00:24:01 ◼   ► It actually to me feels it is way closer

00:24:04 ◼   ► This is what I wrote is that it's a way closer call for me than than ever before

00:24:08 ◼   ► I've never really used a plus full-time

00:24:10 ◼   ► but the the tennis max feels

00:24:14 ◼   ► Somehow feels smaller. I don't know if that's just because it doesn't have the forehead and chin

00:24:18 ◼   ► It's like an optical illusion, but it feels better in hand. I

00:24:24 ◼   ► I would chalk that up to optimal.

00:24:25 ◼   ► Like we, you know, we measure it, we put them.

00:24:28 ◼   ► To me, I think it's, the screen is so good

00:24:31 ◼   ► that when you're holding it, you just feel like you're,

00:24:34 ◼   ► you feel like what, how they want you to feel,

00:24:35 ◼   ► which is you're holding a giant screen, right?

00:24:37 ◼   ► And there's nothing around it.

00:24:39 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:24:40 ◼   ► - You know, it's also the same basic size as the Note.

00:24:43 ◼   ► It's the same basic size as the Pixel 2.

00:24:46 ◼   ► They're all big.

00:24:47 ◼   ► Like there's no, you know, when I flip the Max over,

00:24:51 ◼   ► I'm like, yeah, this looks virtually the same

00:24:54 ◼   ► as the old plus phones.

00:24:56 ◼   ► I think that having the camera bump be vertical

00:24:59 ◼   ► instead of horizontal really helps it

00:25:01 ◼   ► in that optical illusion way.

00:25:04 ◼   ► It's like thinning, it's like a thinning stripe.

00:25:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:25:09 ◼   ► - But yeah, I mean, I have big hands

00:25:11 ◼   ► and I'm like, yeah, this phone's pretty big.

00:25:13 ◼   ► That's what I'm saying, day by day,

00:25:14 ◼   ► I keep going back and forth,

00:25:15 ◼   ► but I end up working on my phone almost all day long.

00:25:20 ◼   ► All day long like my job is sometimes I like fear that the only thing I make at the verge is meetings, you know

00:25:27 ◼   ► I'm like so I'm like I spent and I try not to take my laptop like I want to be engaged

00:25:31 ◼   ► I want to pay attention. I want to be like a helpful boss like that sort of dude

00:25:34 ◼   ► and so I only take my phone so I use my phone all day long and

00:25:39 ◼   ► to me it's like

00:25:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I want to watch things on this thing

00:25:44 ◼   ► I want to like see more rows of the spreadsheet or whatever like

00:25:48 ◼   ► That's the argument to me is like this is the phone you can work on all day. It's not the argument is less

00:25:53 ◼   ► like

00:25:55 ◼   ► You're gonna get a great video experience, right?

00:25:57 ◼   ► Like I'm still a purist like I want to watch videos on big screen

00:26:01 ◼   ► But the argument to me is as a primary computer you want a bigger screen? Yeah, I

00:26:06 ◼   ► bought the

00:26:08 ◼   ► And it is such an amazing cheat to be able to have the phone

00:26:14 ◼   ► Both phones for a couple of days before the pre-ordering goes live

00:26:17 ◼   ► And you know what, you know, we don't have to return these review units right away

00:26:22 ◼   ► So if I didn't pre-order right at 3 a.m. Eastern when the thing goes live

00:26:27 ◼   ► It's not like I don't have the new phone already. I already have the review unit

00:26:31 ◼   ► But I ordered for me personally that the regular tennis I did not get the max but it was a close call

00:26:39 ◼   ► I just I just like the smaller size better and it's yeah, it's a good fit for my eyes

00:26:44 ◼   ► But it is a way it's it in so many ways it's such a tougher call than any previous year

00:26:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean I I talked to one of my friends into a max and I talked another one of my friends out of a max

00:26:57 ◼   ► And the arguments were exactly the same right? Like I was like, it's really big but the battery is pretty good

00:27:05 ◼   ► But it's really big and one friend was like wow, man

00:27:08 ◼   ► Gotta get the max then and the other friend was like, ah, it's huge. Like it was was the same

00:27:13 ◼   ► So I think that's good

00:27:14 ◼   ► I agree with you that the the difference on the plus camera was never enough to sell the size, right?

00:27:20 ◼   ► Right, it was tempting open and it was always an irritant like like like a piece of sand caught in my eye

00:27:26 ◼   ► You know, I mean like that. I knew that I was getting a slightly lesser camera

00:27:30 ◼   ► But it wasn't enough to motivate me to do it. Do you take a lot of video on your phone?

00:27:34 ◼   ► I don't but I'm I'm trying to now and and it I realized that I've been for some

00:27:42 ◼   ► Inexplicable reasons stingy about shooting video on like family vacations, etc

00:27:49 ◼   ► You know the just the typical things that you do not like work related not stuff. I meant to mean to show but that

00:27:55 ◼   ► And it's funny because

00:27:59 ◼   ► like so my son is

00:28:02 ◼   ► 14 he's in ninth grade and in the early years of his life. It was sort of the

00:28:08 ◼   ► The flip era, you know where we had like these these little dedicated video cameras that were so small

00:28:15 ◼   ► And I shot more video then because I had a flip then I do now with an iPhone even though the iPhone is like

00:28:23 ◼   ► Ten times a hundred times better technically. Yeah, and it there's a certain aspect of me

00:28:29 ◼   ► that stingy about shooting video. And so like last year, I

00:28:32 ◼   ► had the 200 I bought the 256 gigabyte iPhone 10. And I

00:28:37 ◼   ► checked before ordering like, hey, which one should I buy 256

00:28:40 ◼   ► or 512. And my phone was only like 140 150 gigabytes. So I had

00:28:46 ◼   ► tons of space left. It's not like it's not like I'm running

00:28:50 ◼   ► out of space and can't shoot the video. But so I'm trying to I'm

00:28:55 ◼   ► trying to shoot more video, but I don't shoot a lot. There's

00:28:58 ◼   ► There's like a part of me that is like trained to think,

00:29:00 ◼   ► hey, video will suck up all your storage.

00:29:02 ◼   ► - So I'm with you, I don't shoot nearly enough.

00:29:05 ◼   ► I'm not worried about storage.

00:29:08 ◼   ► I can't figure it out.

00:29:09 ◼   ► My kid is five months old.

00:29:13 ◼   ► Her name is Max, by the way.

00:29:14 ◼   ► I'm literally never gonna forget Apple for this.

00:29:17 ◼   ► And what I've noticed is my instincts are photography.

00:29:24 ◼   ► I take photos of her, I edit photos,

00:29:26 ◼   ► And I take hundreds of photos.

00:29:28 ◼   ► Like if I was worried about storage,

00:29:31 ◼   ► I would be screwing myself,

00:29:31 ◼   ► 'cause I can't stop taking photos of her.

00:29:34 ◼   ► And my wife takes videos of her.

00:29:36 ◼   ► She has an iPhone 10.

00:29:37 ◼   ► And I just like, it never really clicked

00:29:40 ◼   ► that we think differently.

00:29:42 ◼   ► And now I realize my wife takes video by default.

00:29:45 ◼   ► That's actually the first thing she goes to do.

00:29:47 ◼   ► So like we were on vacation,

00:29:50 ◼   ► and like she turns on her camera

00:29:52 ◼   ► and like takes a long video of wherever we are

00:29:54 ◼   ► and like sends it to her mom, right?

00:29:55 ◼   ► And I watch, I'm like, why would you do that?

00:29:59 ◼   ► But it's just like a difference in preference,

00:30:01 ◼   ► but it's amazing to me that some people's default

00:30:05 ◼   ► is I'm gonna shoot video.

00:30:07 ◼   ► And then I look back, I'm like,

00:30:10 ◼   ► the gigabytes of media we've collected

00:30:12 ◼   ► of this small human being,

00:30:14 ◼   ► and I love the photos I've taken.

00:30:16 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, I should take way more video.

00:30:18 ◼   ► And the only thing that bridges the gap

00:30:20 ◼   ► is like, they're all live photos.

00:30:21 ◼   ► So I get a little bit of it,

00:30:23 ◼   ► But I'm like, I'm actively trying to train myself to take

00:30:26 ◼   ► more video. I am exactly better. I'm exactly in the same boat.

00:30:31 ◼   ► And the difference to me is that when when Jonas when my son was

00:30:35 ◼   ► five months old, I had this flip camera that only took video,

00:30:39 ◼   ► right? Yeah. And so there was nothing else to do other than to

00:30:43 ◼   ► take video. And so that's why I had more video. And I'm exactly

00:30:47 ◼   ► like you. I have. I still take every week I take tons and tons

00:30:51 ◼   ► still photos, but my instincts always are to take still photos, not video. And, and

00:30:56 ◼   ► the other thing I do, and maybe I it sounds to me like you and I think exactly like is

00:31:00 ◼   ► when I do take video. I'm, I there, the clips are way too short. Yes, absolutely. It's like

00:31:06 ◼   ► I'm holding my breath. And it's like, as long as I can hold my breath, that's how long the

00:31:10 ◼   ► clip is. Whereas I think my wife is the same way. If my wife takes a video, she just lets

00:31:15 ◼   ► it run, which is the way you suppose you should shoot video, just let it run, you know, get

00:31:19 ◼   ► lots of b-roll.

00:31:20 ◼   ► Dude, I work with video professionals.

00:31:22 ◼   ► I should know this.

00:31:23 ◼   ► They're always doing it.

00:31:24 ◼   ► And yet, all my video clips are like 10 seconds long.

00:31:27 ◼   ► Mine are all 9, 10, or 11 seconds long.

00:31:30 ◼   ► I'm like, "No one wants to watch this."

00:31:32 ◼   ► And I'm like, "My mom can't consume enough video of the kid."

00:31:36 ◼   ► So Becky's sending her like 15-minute adventures.

00:31:39 ◼   ► I'm like, "What are we doing?"

00:31:41 ◼   ► And if you have iCloud, it all goes…whatever.

00:31:45 ◼   ► I'm trying to be better, and I'm going to get there.

00:31:48 ◼   ► You and I can go on this journey together.

00:31:50 ◼   ► You know what's interesting is,

00:31:52 ◼   ► I know a bunch of YouTubers,

00:31:54 ◼   ► and one of the questions I got,

00:31:56 ◼   ► which it's really hard for me to figure out the answer to,

00:32:01 ◼   ► is the stabilization, the video stabilization

00:32:03 ◼   ► the iPhone does often competes with the gimbals,

00:32:07 ◼   ► like the Osmos. - Yes, yes.

00:32:10 ◼   ► - And that to me is like,

00:32:12 ◼   ► my favorite thing about covering technology

00:32:15 ◼   ► and what The Verge does in particular,

00:32:17 ◼   ► And I think you actually wrote this line today about the democratization of image capture.

00:32:22 ◼   ► That is, to me, that's the heart of The Verge, right? Like, we make tools, people use the tools,

00:32:29 ◼   ► tools create culture, next generation of tools reflects that culture. It's so interesting to

00:32:34 ◼   ► me that we are now at the place where teenagers are asking me about image stabilization inside

00:32:40 ◼   ► of like the world's most advanced smartphone camera, because it's competing with their

00:32:44 ◼   ► incredibly advanced gimbal and there you can see it in some of these videos it's

00:32:48 ◼   ► like I'm not enough an expert to like really explain it to people but basically

00:32:53 ◼   ► the gimbal tries to stabilize the camera by moving it ever so slightly and that

00:32:57 ◼   ► competes with the cameras inbuilt stabilization and so the video jitters

00:33:01 ◼   ► that's like is Apple gonna is Apple gonna implement that setting right like

00:33:07 ◼   ► that's a for Apple like a philosophical kind of question like are you gonna

00:33:11 ◼   ► Enable people to turn off some of your features that helps most of the world because youtubers exist

00:33:17 ◼   ► Yeah, and I asked I couldn't answer that question at all. I actually spoke to someone at Apple and and the iPhone 10s is

00:33:26 ◼   ► They actually did take that into consideration and while there's no setting it is it should be better

00:33:33 ◼   ► That that the 10 in particular really had some problems

00:33:39 ◼   ► exactly what you said when you put it on the gimbal and the gimbal is supposed to do the you know, the

00:33:43 ◼   ► Steady cam style stabilization the 10s is supposedly better, you know, it's specifically for that use case

00:33:50 ◼   ► I don't know though that it's ideal and they don't have a setting to actually just turn it off and let the gimbal do all

00:33:56 ◼   ► The stabilization but yeah, it's a perfect example of a deep philosophical question for Apple

00:34:02 ◼   ► but it's also I think a perfect example of

00:34:07 ◼   ► Just like the world we live in now where?

00:34:09 ◼   ► You know when whoever's designing the image sensor in the software stack you would never imagine them having to solve the problem of

00:34:17 ◼   ► Thousands hundreds of thousands of people are gonna mount our phone on a gimbal

00:34:22 ◼   ► Yeah, and that will not only just to make video but because that is their career

00:34:27 ◼   ► Yeah, right and like I love that that that's like the thing

00:34:30 ◼   ► That's what makes like writing about texting for me is

00:34:35 ◼   ► It's it's an emergent behavior. It's a new kind of problem. It's all happening in a loop

00:34:40 ◼   ► Like that's the stuff that makes me the most excited. All right, let me take a break here and thank her my first sponsor

00:34:44 ◼   ► It's a hello pillow H u l l o have you ever tried a buckwheat pillow?

00:34:51 ◼   ► Probably not if you don't have a hello pillow already, but they're totally different than the fluffy

00:34:56 ◼   ► Soft pillows that most of us are used to it's very similar to a bean bank

00:35:02 ◼   ► Which if you if if you're only thinking about traditional bed pillows, you're gonna think well, that's weird

00:35:08 ◼   ► I don't want to sleep on a beanbag, but it's really really great. It supports your head and neck

00:35:13 ◼   ► Exactly the way you want to and unlike traditional pillows which collapse them to the weight of your head

00:35:19 ◼   ► Hello

00:35:22 ◼   ► Shapes to the shape of your head. It is a very different experience and it buckwheat

00:35:27 ◼   ► Phil helps the pillow stay cool and dry

00:35:32 ◼   ► All night long so you never have to do the thing like you wake up like 4 in the morning and you flip your pillow

00:35:37 ◼   ► Over because your pillows all hot you never have to do that with a hello pillow

00:35:40 ◼   ► It's really a totally different experience and I've we've had them for years

00:35:47 ◼   ► My wife can barely sleep without one like she's on the fence of like literally taking it with her when we travel

00:35:55 ◼   ► Like that is how much she loves it. I like it. It is really great and it's so different the other thing, too

00:36:02 ◼   ► is with a hello pillow like if you're like a two pillow sleeper like with a

00:36:08 ◼   ► hollow pillow you don't need to do that anymore because it has the same effect

00:36:11 ◼   ► just sort of built in to sort of prop your head up a little bit it really is

00:36:15 ◼   ► amazing it is totally different and they just have it's it's just really high

00:36:22 ◼   ► quality it's you can open it up you can zip it and you can put take some of it

00:36:28 ◼   ► out if it if you feel like it's a little bit too big you just take it out it's

00:36:31 ◼   ► just like a, you just take some of the buckwheat out, you can put more in whatever you want

00:36:36 ◼   ► to do. It's very, very easy to adjust if you want a little bit bigger, a little bit smaller.

00:36:43 ◼   ► And here's the thing. It's very, very different from what we're used to here in North America.

00:36:48 ◼   ► But people have been sleeping on buckwheat pillows for centuries. They've been using

00:36:51 ◼   ► Japan extensively and remain extremely popular there to to to to this day. So it's it's just

00:36:59 ◼   ► sort of like bringing something that they've used in Japan and in Asia over here. It's

00:37:05 ◼   ► really just great. Now, just like everything else, you can't try it. It's an internet pillow,

00:37:10 ◼   ► right? So you can't like sit there and try it before you buy it. You have to buy it first.

00:37:15 ◼   ► But they know that so you can sleep on it for up to 60 nights. And if it's not for you,

00:37:20 ◼   ► you just send it back and they'll give you a full refund. No questions asked. It's so

00:37:24 ◼   ► you can't lose. So if you're vaguely curious about it, just buy it, try it, you don't like it,

00:37:29 ◼   ► send it back, you get your money back. So here's what you do to get one. Go to HelloPillow,

00:37:34 ◼   ► H-U-L-O-O, pillow.com/talkshow. And if you try more than one pillow, if you get two or more,

00:37:45 ◼   ► you'll get a discount of up to 20 bucks per pillow depending on the size you buy.

00:37:49 ◼   ► Fast free shipping on every order and 1% of all of their profits are donated to the Nature

00:37:56 ◼   ► Conservancy. So go to HelloPillow.com/talkshow. Remember that code talk show when you check out.

00:38:02 ◼   ► And if you get more than one, you'll save up to up to 20 bucks per pillow.

00:38:06 ◼   ► My thanks to Hello for sponsoring the show.

00:38:09 ◼   ► Hello. Hello. What a great name. I love that. I love that.

00:38:14 ◼   ► That's good. All right, let's talk about this. This camera

00:38:23 ◼   ► because we're not gonna make people wait an hour. No, let's

00:38:26 ◼   ► not make them wait an hour. We've only made them wait 40

00:38:27 ◼   ► minutes. I and I'll tell you what, I have a pixel but I have

00:38:34 ◼   ► the pixel one. I I'm on like an every other year and I want to

00:38:38 ◼   ► get the pixel three. I'm looking forward to it. But I skipped the

00:38:41 ◼   ► Pixel 2, but I feel like I'm on the wrong schedule because I feel like in hindsight,

00:38:46 ◼   ► the Pixel 2 is clearly way more interesting than the Pixel 1 was, especially in terms

00:38:53 ◼   ► of the camera.

00:38:54 ◼   ► Yes, absolutely agreed. You know, Pixel 1 did a lot of the same tricks. It was just

00:39:00 ◼   ► a less inspired device and I feel like Google really understood what they wanted to do with

00:39:08 ◼   ► Pixel 2 and they did it. No one bought it. Like, you know, my review is like the

00:39:13 ◼   ► Pixel 2 is better. It's like the hard caveat is the real competition is the

00:39:19 ◼   ► Galaxy S9, right? Like that is Apple's truest competitor. And some people buy

00:39:25 ◼   ► the Pixel. I think for the Verge audience, they know the Pixel exists. A lot of them

00:39:32 ◼   ► have it. So it's the one we address. But it's funny to me, Google has done all of

00:39:37 ◼   ► this work to make such a compelling device, and they just can't seem to turn the corner with it.

00:39:43 ◼   ► Yeah, that's to me is is and you're right that the verge audience in particular probably has the

00:39:49 ◼   ► highest concentration of pixel awareness. I got the stats. We have the highest concentration of

00:39:56 ◼   ► pixel ownership, I think probably Yeah, I'm not surprised. And it is a great phone. And I've

00:40:02 ◼   ► described it as an iPhone style phone for people who want to use Android and

00:40:10 ◼   ► are primarily interested in Google's services you know the integration of

00:40:15 ◼   ► things like Google Photos and you know just everything that Google does if

00:40:20 ◼   ► you're in the Google ecosystem for Gmail and and Google Photos and everything

00:40:26 ◼   ► else that they do you know calendar and and everything else and I don't even

00:40:30 ◼   ► mean that to imply that it's a copy of the iPhone, I just feel like it's just very obviously,

00:40:36 ◼   ► an iPhone style phone in a way that it you know that that most Android phones aren't to me most

00:40:46 ◼   ► Android phones are Samsung style phones. You know, and and with in terms of just the way,

00:40:52 ◼   ► just the way that they deal with the displays, you know, that these displays on you know,

00:40:56 ◼   ► if you spend a lot of money on any of these phones, you're getting a great display.

00:41:00 ◼   ► But the Android ones sort of, I don't know, Vegas it up, you know, it's, it's right. Yeah.

00:41:07 ◼   ► There's like, if you I don't know if you ever use a Samsung phone for any period of time,

00:41:12 ◼   ► there's, if you're like a huge nerd, there is something extremely delightful about the fact

00:41:20 ◼   ► that it just supports everything. If you're like, Oh, I've encountered an LCD monitor in the wild,

00:41:26 ◼   ► Like I'll just plug my phone into it and it becomes like a computer

00:41:29 ◼   ► Right, or like, you know, I have this like LG OLED TV and it has some insane

00:41:35 ◼   ► screen mirroring standard and the s9 just like supports it like

00:41:40 ◼   ► There's something great about that right? Like it just does everything does it do everything? Well, does that stuff work consistently?

00:41:48 ◼   ► No, but is it enormously fun to tinker with like yes, like if you're if you're that kind of person

00:41:55 ◼   ► It just rewards you for being like well what the hell else can this thing do and the answer is like honestly

00:42:01 ◼   ► Whatever you want, right like so I appreciate that. I think you know Samsung

00:42:05 ◼   ► they're trying to have a

00:42:07 ◼   ► Identity as a software maker that identity is hopelessly confused where I would go with you is

00:42:14 ◼   ► The pixel is spiritually like the the iPhone

00:42:19 ◼   ► Yes

00:42:19 ◼   ► And I think people listening this podcast would like understand that like it it's what Google wants. It's Google's vision of the phone

00:42:26 ◼   ► It's integrated. There's no rough edges or or loose ends

00:42:30 ◼   ► Like it's an integrated device they built to their specifications to run their software

00:42:36 ◼   ► but just in terms of the display and and the camera, you know, which are

00:42:40 ◼   ► It some ways different but you know

00:42:43 ◼   ► You often look at your photos and videos that you shoot with the camera on the display of the device itself

00:42:49 ◼   ► But just the amount of processing and amount of sort of punching up and the amount of you know

00:42:54 ◼   ► Like you and I were talking behind the scenes before we published our reviews about the amount of smoothing that's done

00:42:59 ◼   ► Yeah, the the pixel again spiritually is along the lines of the iPhone where it's trying to be

00:43:05 ◼   ► Natural whereas the Samsung style which a lot of amps

00:43:12 ◼   ► Other Android phones sort of follow is sort of to you know, just punch here just punch here than reality

00:43:19 ◼   ► You know, yeah, you know, I so here's my I said this to you this is a conspiracy theory

00:43:26 ◼   ► that I have.

00:43:28 ◼   ► And I've thought about it a lot.

00:43:29 ◼   ► And so it's a little bit more refined than the version I told you sort of behind the

00:43:34 ◼   ► scenes but I think people prefer Samsung photos and a lot of a lot of cases because they're

00:43:42 ◼   ► looking at them on small screens.

00:43:44 ◼   ► They're not.

00:43:46 ◼   ► They're not looking at them with a high degree of scrutiny.

00:43:48 ◼   ► just looking at them on their smartphone screen, and particularly on a Samsung smartphone screen,

00:43:53 ◼   ► you are rewarded by punchy colors.

00:43:57 ◼   ► They make those look great.

00:43:59 ◼   ► And if you take a photo of yourself or your friend and the camera just happens to smooth

00:44:04 ◼   ► out any imperfection in your skin or your face, are you unhappy?

00:44:09 ◼   ► No?

00:44:10 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:44:13 ◼   ► I think there's a huge break between being accurate and what people prefer.

00:44:19 ◼   ► And I think Samsung has sold out completely on let's make what people prefer.

00:44:24 ◼   ► We, and Samsung is a TV maker, right?

00:44:27 ◼   ► Like they put the TVs in Best Buy and they crank the brightness all the way up and

00:44:30 ◼   ► they sell a shitload of TVs.

00:44:31 ◼   ► So like, what do their phones look like?

00:44:33 ◼   ► Their phones are cranked up, super punchy, super saturated.

00:44:36 ◼   ► Um, they're phantasmagoric in colors.

00:44:40 ◼   ► Uh, and what are their photos look like?

00:44:42 ◼   ► The colors are really bright. The skin tones are all smoothed out

00:44:45 ◼   ► so I think you can sell out and make things people prefer and I

00:44:50 ◼   ► Their photos like in the end. That's valid right like

00:44:54 ◼   ► Great make the thing people like yeah, it's it's all subjective in the end

00:44:58 ◼   ► But I think Apple and Google are there they want to be honest brokers of photography

00:45:03 ◼   ► they want to say this is true and if you want to go into Photoshop or Lightroom or whatever and

00:45:10 ◼   ► Edit this photo you can get to where Samsung is but we're gonna start you at reality, right? And I I just think that pull of

00:45:17 ◼   ► Instagram and Facebook and social sharing people are never gonna edit their photos

00:45:23 ◼   ► So there's this poll to say well, we'll just pre-edit them for you

00:45:26 ◼   ► And when people see the photo on Instagram, they'll say what camera is that?

00:45:29 ◼   ► You'll say that's nine and be beautiful. They'll think I'll she get an s92 and like I think that cycle is playing out a little bit

00:45:35 ◼   ► I don't know that

00:45:37 ◼   ► Anyone will ever do as much as Samsung does but I I just kind of feel it

00:45:41 ◼   ► So that's like my conspiracy theory. It's like Apple's feeling that pull Google's feeling that pull a little bit to

00:45:46 ◼   ► Make the photos better for sharing because they know people aren't gonna edit and they're only in the same on small screens

00:45:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I I see that and again

00:45:54 ◼   ► I I err on the Apple slash Google side of things like I want my I want my photos to be

00:46:00 ◼   ► More natural and if I want to punch them up, I'll punch them up, but I'm not even

00:46:05 ◼   ► Well, I am passing judgment, but I'm not saying it is I'm not saying it is like bad on one side good on the other

00:46:12 ◼   ► it is two versions of good and and I and I think you're right that there definitely are some people and I think the big

00:46:20 ◼   ► difference is

00:46:22 ◼   ► It is taking into account the the knowledge that people

00:46:27 ◼   ► Look at most of their photos only on the phone itself. They'll keep it. They'll see like I love this photo. This is great

00:46:34 ◼   ► I'm gonna heart it. I'm gonna send it. I'm gonna post it to Instagram or share it on Facebook or whatever, but it's

00:46:41 ◼   ► It's all on the phone

00:46:42 ◼   ► No

00:46:43 ◼   ► and even the people they share it with are most likely to only look at it on the phone and

00:46:48 ◼   ► That's different when you've got all of these megapixels and it could be so big and still look good

00:46:54 ◼   ► But you're only looking at it, you know and even on a 6.5 inch diagonal

00:46:59 ◼   ► You know iPhone X s max it that's still very very small for a photograph

00:47:05 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think that that that's the reality right now

00:47:10 ◼   ► I'm with you like again, my instinct is to take photos and to be very critical of photos and

00:47:15 ◼   ► One of the best things I invested in the last year after the kid was born. I signed up for

00:47:20 ◼   ► Lightroom CC which to me has it's taken the place of what the old iPhoto used to do for me in a digital camera

00:47:28 ◼   ► Hmm, right. So like now I have a bunch of cameras like real cameras. I take a million photos that go into Lightroom

00:47:34 ◼   ► And it it feels I have that feeling of when I first got I photo and I had a digital camera where I was like

00:47:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I want to like monkey with photos all day long

00:47:43 ◼   ► Photos on the Mac the Apple photos on the Mac does not make me feel that way. Yeah at all, right

00:47:49 ◼   ► It's like this is kind of messy and slow and weird Lightroom is great. It sinks everywhere

00:47:53 ◼   ► so I'm that guy right like I want to go play with my photos and edit my photos and thinking about my photos and

00:48:00 ◼   ► Look at them on my 27 inch Mac and like print a book out of them and do all that stuff

00:48:04 ◼   ► But I don't I don't think most people are that person and so I try to keep that in mind

00:48:09 ◼   ► Is you like examine the phone? I will say this I?

00:48:13 ◼   ► actually mean to write about this on during fireball not just talk about it on the

00:48:18 ◼   ► On the podcast because it's so good and and I'm with you on that like for editing photos and manipulating them photos

00:48:25 ◼   ► It doesn't really do it for me

00:48:28 ◼   ► But and I used to be a Lightroom guy and I still have it but I haven't used it in a while

00:48:33 ◼   ► Like I love Lightroom. I think I think Lightroom is is

00:48:36 ◼   ► Arguably the best thing Adobe has ever done. I think it's a fantastic app. I love it

00:48:43 ◼   ► But I've kind of got sucked into photos in just just for the simplicity of the sinking and I yeah

00:48:50 ◼   ► I want to say this that for all of the knocks that Apple has gotten over the years for being quote-unquote bad at services

00:48:57 ◼   ► I've I've photos I cloud photo syncing has gotten

00:49:02 ◼   ► phenomenally good

00:49:04 ◼   ► Like and and I noticed it this week in particular

00:49:07 ◼   ► because I'm shooting photos with the

00:49:12 ◼   ► Two new phones at least at first just to dump, you know, see very, you know

00:49:17 ◼   ► To do the verification of are these cameras really exactly the same

00:49:20 ◼   ► And I quickly determined yes everything Apple says about these two cameras these two phones having the same camera is definitely true

00:49:29 ◼   ► but even so I shot tons and tons of side-by-side photos with

00:49:34 ◼   ► the iPhone X s and my old iPhone 10 to see what the year-over-year differences and

00:49:39 ◼   ► then I'd want to look at them on one of my Mac's to see them big and

00:49:44 ◼   ► The syncing it has gotten so good. It is absolutely ridiculous including and I really want to thank Apple for this is and and

00:49:52 ◼   ► that they've really improved the

00:49:56 ◼   ► The sort of status message when you go to the photos tab like on your phone and it tells you like, okay

00:50:03 ◼   ► you've got 20 photos that are waiting to upload but

00:50:09 ◼   ► It's paused to save battery life. Would you like to unpause and you can hit the button?

00:50:13 ◼   ► But like in terms of telling you exactly where you are

00:50:17 ◼   ► You know like this device is 20 photos behind has 20 new photos that haven't been uploaded yet. It is exactly right

00:50:24 ◼   ► Whereas when when the iCloud photo?

00:50:27 ◼   ► thing first shipped it

00:50:30 ◼   ► It was indeterminate and and you'd look at one like if you had two phones side by side one would say I had like, you know

00:50:37 ◼   ► 18,537 photos and videos and the other one would say you have 18,541 and it's like well,

00:50:45 ◼   ► why are they not the same? Why? What are the four photos? There's four and it's like you'd

00:50:49 ◼   ► look and they're not the most recent ones and it's like, oh my god, what the hell is

00:50:53 ◼   ► missing? How can I make one catch up to the other? Not only is it way more in sync in

00:50:59 ◼   ► terms of having the exact same number of photos and videos and telling you exactly how number

00:51:03 ◼   ► when they're not in sync, it tells you and I just want to,

00:51:07 ◼   ► whoever at Apple has been working on that,

00:51:09 ◼   ► I want to say thank you because it made this week

00:51:13 ◼   ► way, way easier for me.

00:51:15 ◼   ► - You know, it's funny 'cause that's such a concession

00:51:17 ◼   ► to the reality of like wireless networks.

00:51:20 ◼   ► Like, you know, when they designed it,

00:51:22 ◼   ► they're like, no one should ever know.

00:51:24 ◼   ► Like, it'll just be perfect.

00:51:25 ◼   ► And then the reality is like, it's never gonna be perfect.

00:51:28 ◼   ► You just tell people and they're like,

00:51:30 ◼   ► you know, on a whiteboard somewhere, they're like,

00:51:31 ◼   ► okay, when the 5g iPhone comes out, and the networking is

00:51:34 ◼   ► perfect, we're gonna take this indicator away, because then

00:51:37 ◼   ► it'll be perfect. So we should talk about the actual camera

00:51:41 ◼   ► because I you and I have like slightly different takes on it.

00:51:44 ◼   ► And well, hold on a second. Let me let me let me drop in another

00:51:47 ◼   ► sponsor read because that's a great it's a great point. We're

00:51:50 ◼   ► going to talk about camera right after this. But let me tell you

00:51:52 ◼   ► about this great company trace Pontus. Trace Pontus is they

00:51:59 ◼   ► They sell freshly roasted gourmet coffee and it's shipped directly to you.

00:52:03 ◼   ► And one of the great things about this coffee is its single origin.

00:52:08 ◼   ► You've heard of that before.

00:52:09 ◼   ► But it's really just one level higher.

00:52:11 ◼   ► It is actually from a single family farm.

00:52:15 ◼   ► This family has been selling and growing coffee for generations.

00:52:20 ◼   ► But until recently, they have only been selling it within Brazil where they make it.

00:52:25 ◼   ► and they've only recently started selling it around the world. It's from the race family

00:52:31 ◼   ► farm in the town of Tres Pontas in Brazil. That's why they call it Tres Pontas coffee.

00:52:38 ◼   ► And here's the deal. You don't have to choose between like a gazillion different kinds of

00:52:43 ◼   ► coffee. They just sell one bean. It is the same bean. They grow it all over the farm

00:52:48 ◼   ► and all you have to choose is your roast profile, light roast, medium roast, dark roast and

00:52:54 ◼   ► French roast. Now me, I'm not a dark or French roast or French

00:52:57 ◼   ► roast is effectively like extra dark. That that's I've never

00:53:01 ◼   ► preferred that. I like the medium. And I'm always on the

00:53:05 ◼   ► fence because I got this subscription, I get the light to

00:53:08 ◼   ► sometimes I like the light. I like the medium, I'm on the

00:53:11 ◼   ► fence between those two. But you can try all of them, you can get

00:53:15 ◼   ► just buy all four and see which one you like best. Or if you

00:53:18 ◼   ► know that you don't like extra dark, don't even bother with the

00:53:20 ◼   ► French or if you know you like dark roast, you know, get the

00:53:23 ◼   ► dark in the French. It is really great coffee. And it is so fresh. That is the thing is and

00:53:32 ◼   ► I emphasize this every time I do the sponsor read for Tracepontus that coffee is like a

00:53:37 ◼   ► perishable item. It's not quite as sensitive as like a, you know, like a piece of fruit

00:53:42 ◼   ► or something like that. But it's close. It is like that like roasted coffee goes bad

00:53:47 ◼   ► quickly where bad quote unquote bad isn't like awful. It's not ruined if you've got like,

00:53:53 ◼   ► you know, six week old coffee. It's not like you know, it's undrinkable, but it really makes a

00:53:58 ◼   ► difference when it's fresh. And here's the deal. Trace Ponte's when you order it, they ship it

00:54:04 ◼   ► themselves. They don't put their coffee in like a warehouse and then you order it and then the stuff

00:54:08 ◼   ► that's been sitting on the shelves forever gets shipped to you. They are shipping you coffee that

00:54:13 ◼   ► has just been roasted, and then they ship it right to you.

00:54:18 ◼   ► It's really good stuff.

00:54:19 ◼   ► I keep getting feedback from readers on Twitter and stuff like that.

00:54:22 ◼   ► They're like, "Hey, I signed up.

00:54:23 ◼   ► I got this Tres Pontas really, really good coffee."

00:54:26 ◼   ► It's really, really good.

00:54:29 ◼   ► So here's the deal.

00:54:30 ◼   ► You can go to trespontas.com, T-R-E-S-P-O-N-T-A-S.com/coffee, and you can find out more about their coffee,

00:54:39 ◼   ► you can order it from them right there. Or you can just go to Amazon and search for trace Pontas,

00:54:46 ◼   ► and you can buy it from Amazon. They encourage you to do it. They love it when you buy from Amazon.

00:54:50 ◼   ► But when you buy from Amazon, it's just the storefront. It still ships from trace Pontas.

00:54:55 ◼   ► It's not coming from like an Amazon warehouse where the coffee is sitting on the shelves for

00:54:58 ◼   ► weeks and weeks. So do that to try it, see if you like it. And if you do, then you can sign up for

00:55:04 ◼   ► a coffee subscription and you can get fresh beans sent to you on a regular schedule, up to you. Do

00:55:12 ◼   ► you want it every week? You want it every two weeks? You want it every four weeks? It's your

00:55:15 ◼   ► choice. But then you don't even have to worry. You never have to do anything. And it's just,

00:55:19 ◼   ► you know, ding dong, you know, there's, there's your coffee and you never have to shop for coffee

00:55:24 ◼   ► again. You just always have fresh coffee in the house or in your office or wherever you want to

00:55:28 ◼   ► buy it. And when you do sign up for a subscription, you save 10% off what you pay when you buy it.

00:55:34 ◼   ► it, you know, just buy a bag. And listeners of this show can get an extra 10% off by using

00:55:40 ◼   ► the code the talk show, all one word the talk show at checkout when you buy a coffee subscription.

00:55:46 ◼   ► And that means you'll save 20% off every bag in perpetuity using this code. So enter that

00:55:53 ◼   ► code at checkout the talk show at tracepontas.com slash coffee, and you'll save a lot of money.

00:56:00 ◼   ► And it's good coffee.

00:56:01 ◼   ► So my thanks to them.

00:56:05 ◼   ► All right, let's talk about this camera.

00:56:07 ◼   ► We promised we were going to talk about the camera at the last break.

00:56:10 ◼   ► We're doing great.

00:56:12 ◼   ► Okay, do you want me to start?

00:56:17 ◼   ► Mm hmm.

00:56:19 ◼   ► All right.

00:56:20 ◼   ► I do.

00:56:21 ◼   ► Here's, here's my read.

00:56:24 ◼   ► So like we were saying, Apple and Google are kind of doing similar things.

00:56:28 ◼   ► Google's riff is a little bit different. So Google pulls together for underexposed images,

00:56:35 ◼   ► merges them into an HDR photo. They I think you had in your iPhone review that they do

00:56:41 ◼   ► it in the cloud. That's not that's they actually do they do it on the phone at caption. Well,

00:56:45 ◼   ► so here's where I screwed up in my review. And I since edited it, you probably read it

00:56:49 ◼   ► right away. I was talking about Google as the maker of Android, and Android wide, the

00:56:57 ◼   ► Android ecosystem's way of doing camera processing,

00:57:01 ◼   ► not the Pixel in particular.

00:57:03 ◼   ► And that's a complete injustice to the Pixel.

00:57:05 ◼   ► So I since edited the article to specifically mention

00:57:08 ◼   ► that the Pixel is an exception

00:57:10 ◼   ► and that the Pixel does stuff on camera.

00:57:12 ◼   ► - So Google Photos, yeah, its input is JPEG images

00:57:16 ◼   ► from every phone in the world

00:57:17 ◼   ► and Google Photos is Google Photos stuff.

00:57:18 ◼   ► The Pixel has its own custom coprocessor

00:57:22 ◼   ► that Google built, whatever, Pixel Visual Core,

00:57:25 ◼   ► it's like a whole thing.

00:57:26 ◼   ► But philosophically very similar to Apple's doing.

00:57:28 ◼   ► They take a bunch of photos and merge them together at capture in the camera.

00:57:32 ◼   ► Apple takes one overexposed image.

00:57:34 ◼   ► And I think this is the heart of where I see the differences in the cameras.

00:57:40 ◼   ► That overexposed image gives them gives Apple a ton of shadow detail.

00:57:46 ◼   ► And so they merge that shadow detail back in to my eye.

00:57:49 ◼   ► And I just want to stress, A, I told everybody this phone is great and you'll be happy if

00:57:53 ◼   ► you buy it.

00:57:54 ◼   ► B, I said it's better iPhone camera

00:57:56 ◼   ► than any other iPhone camera.

00:57:57 ◼   ► So me being like, it's not quite as good as a Pixel,

00:58:00 ◼   ► is one, totally subjective,

00:58:02 ◼   ► and B, does not mean that I think it's a bad phone.

00:58:04 ◼   ► People tend to overread my reviews in that way.

00:58:06 ◼   ► - I bet everybody overreads everybody's reviews.

00:58:08 ◼   ► - Right, so just like, this is a very narrow criticism.

00:58:12 ◼   ► I think the way Apple adds shadow detail back to the photo,

00:58:18 ◼   ► to my eye, flattens the photo in a weird way.

00:58:22 ◼   ► In a weird way where it just reduces the overall contrast of the photo

00:58:27 ◼   ► It makes the dark areas and the light areas have the same tone

00:58:31 ◼   ► It just kind of muddies the photo it reduces what you might call like the drama of the photo and then

00:58:38 ◼   ► Into this I don't know for sure

00:58:41 ◼   ► But we we looked it up the you noted in your view the image sensor is 32% bigger in the tennis

00:58:48 ◼   ► The only image sensor on the market that matches Apple specs is a Samsung sensor

00:58:53 ◼   ► So I think they switched from Sony Samsung and that that brought along some of the color differences that Samsung picks up

00:59:00 ◼   ► I didn't want to speculate on that but I did some research while writing my review and so I didn't put it in and and as

00:59:05 ◼   ► We record. I don't know. I were recording it in mid-afternoon Eastern Time on Friday

00:59:11 ◼   ► I fix it probably has their teardown up already because I know they always they fool they'd literally fly to Australia

00:59:18 ◼   ► to get the phone early. So I don't know. But I so you know,

00:59:22 ◼   ► so the iFixit teardown is up and the sensor isn't labeled. So we may never know.

00:59:26 ◼   ► Well, we may never know. I suspect you're right, though, that it is I did some research and I do

00:59:30 ◼   ► suspect it's that Samsung sensor that you're talking about. Yeah. So that's the change the

00:59:35 ◼   ► sensor. So I think that that that's some of the color difference. But then Apple does pretty

00:59:41 ◼   ► aggressive noise reduction. And so what you end up with is a photo that in the fine details,

00:59:47 ◼   ► is smoothed out in a way that, again, we've had this whole conversation like, my instinct is to

00:59:53 ◼   ► be a photographer and then to edit. And so I would like the camera to have as much detail as possible.

00:59:59 ◼   ► And then I will monkey with the color and the contrast, that stuff. But if you give me detail,

01:00:04 ◼   ► I can't, what I can't do is add detail to a photo. So those are my two criticisms of the phone. Like

01:00:10 ◼   ► that's where I think, compared to the Pixel as a photographer, as somebody who thinks that way

01:00:15 ◼   ► first the pixel preserves that detail and it doesn't flatten that image in that way and I

01:00:22 ◼   ► completely understand what other people would prefer the iPhone photo but to me it's that loss

01:00:28 ◼   ► of detail is the thing that that always takes it down a notch yeah to and and to me and it's

01:00:33 ◼   ► exactly why I wanted to to have you on the show this week is that you're fundamentally your sort

01:00:39 ◼   ► of benchmark for the XS camera is the Pixel 2 and which is fair and interesting because

01:00:48 ◼   ► the Pixel 2 is like 11 months old and there's a Pixel 3 coming out in a couple of weeks

01:00:54 ◼   ► at the very least.

01:00:55 ◼   ► You know, soon.

01:00:56 ◼   ► Yeah, so there's an event they've already you know, it's like it's gonna happen.

01:01:02 ◼   ► It's already leaked as all Google things do.

01:01:05 ◼   ► know and my comparison is sort of within the you're gonna get it iPhone anyway

01:01:10 ◼   ► ecosystem what is the year-over-year difference between the 10 and the 10 s

01:01:15 ◼   ► you know and and that's you know I think they're both interesting comparisons to

01:01:23 ◼   ► me and from my testing from the 10 to 10 s the difference is staggering I'm

01:01:29 ◼   ► I'm honestly, I really, I hope it came across in my review.

01:01:33 ◼   ► I'm literally flabbergasted that this is a one year

01:01:38 ◼   ► difference in the camera.

01:01:39 ◼   ► And I really do think that is the single,

01:01:41 ◼   ► in the entire what now 11 year history of the iPhone.

01:01:45 ◼   ► I think it's the single greatest year over year increase

01:01:47 ◼   ► in camera quality.

01:01:49 ◼   ► - I think the five to the six was huge.

01:01:51 ◼   ► I don't remember it exactly, but I remember the six was like,

01:01:54 ◼   ► oh, this is a real camera now.

01:01:55 ◼   ► - Well, it's, you know, and it's debatable, I guess.

01:01:58 ◼   ► And I know that going to dual lenses was a big deal

01:02:01 ◼   ► because all of a sudden you can get a two,

01:02:03 ◼   ► quote unquote, 2X zoom and you're not doing any optical

01:02:06 ◼   ► or digital zoom at all, it's literally optical.

01:02:10 ◼   ► I'm biased, I've always been biased

01:02:16 ◼   ► towards low light photography.

01:02:18 ◼   ► And in terms of low light photography,

01:02:22 ◼   ► I'll go to the mat and say this is the greatest

01:02:25 ◼   ► year over year upgrade that we'll ever see.

01:02:27 ◼   ► 32% increase in sensor size is just flabbergasting. It is absolutely, you know,

01:02:33 ◼   ► of anything, you know, like, you know, like they say, like, the CPU is 15% faster, and the GPU is

01:02:40 ◼   ► 50% faster and 50% faster is great for year over year. But like, GPUs and CPUs getting faster is

01:02:49 ◼   ► just like a thing that happens in the computer industry, whereas increasing the size of the

01:02:54 ◼   ► sensor on a camera by 32% is is is not like a Moore's law thing it's actual physical thing

01:03:02 ◼   ► where this thing in a device that is extremely sensitive to you know it think about how how small

01:03:10 ◼   ► these cameras are compared to quote unquote real cameras a 32% increase in sensor size is just

01:03:16 ◼   ► flabbergasting and it really shows in the low light uh output yeah you know we were so again

01:03:23 ◼   ► You know, I have this like army of people helping me make the review and so

01:03:27 ◼   ► The number of people who saw these side-by-side photos our video team

01:03:31 ◼   ► James our creative director who I mean James is a pro photographer

01:03:36 ◼   ► He was the the the photographer

01:03:39 ◼   ► I'm like the pro windsurfing tour in Hawaii for like a decade right like dude has been a pro photographer for 30 plus years

01:03:46 ◼   ► So like we're all like art. I mean, this is like the most fun part of the week, right?

01:03:51 ◼   ► We got the new iPhone we're gonna take a thousand photos and then we're all gonna argue about them

01:03:55 ◼   ► Yeah, that's like what I live for right and every single person was like the 10s makes the 10 look horrible

01:04:03 ◼   ► Yeah, and the 10 isn't bad. It's just next to the 10s. It looks bad

01:04:08 ◼   ► So I I spent I took all of these side-by-side photos

01:04:11 ◼   ► I mean hundreds of photos over the last week and I published a thing on Flickr just before we started

01:04:17 ◼   ► You know, I published like the two dozen or so of the the best example some of them, you know

01:04:22 ◼   ► Not really showing a big difference between the two cameras because they were well lit in well-lit situations around that different

01:04:27 ◼   ► but I spent the week in

01:04:29 ◼   ► photos for Mac looking at these side-by-side photos and I

01:04:35 ◼   ► Didn't really have like a scientific method of like always shoot with the old

01:04:41 ◼   ► iPhone 10 first then shoot with the 10s it would be like whichever one was already out and in my hand I'd shoot first

01:04:47 ◼   ► and then put it in my pocket, take the other one out

01:04:49 ◼   ► and try to frame the same photo.

01:04:50 ◼   ► And I had the little info window up,

01:04:54 ◼   ► which will tell you which one is which.

01:04:56 ◼   ► I very quickly no longer need it,

01:04:59 ◼   ► especially in low light.

01:05:01 ◼   ► In the low light ones, I didn't even need to look

01:05:03 ◼   ► which one was 10 and which was 10S.

01:05:05 ◼   ► I instantly was like, oh, this is 10.

01:05:07 ◼   ► And then I'd look at the info window,

01:05:08 ◼   ► but yep, that's the 10.

01:05:10 ◼   ► This is the 10S, yep, that's the 10S.

01:05:12 ◼   ► I didn't need to double check.

01:05:14 ◼   ► It was that clear.

01:05:16 ◼   ► And if you the the amount of smoothing the 10 does through noise reduction is

01:05:21 ◼   ► Wild like you mean the tenant get in there and look no the 10 Oh compared to the tenant

01:05:27 ◼   ► Less. Oh, I see 10. Yeah, the 10 is like

01:05:30 ◼   ► Actually more aggressive with the noise reduction right desperate trying to compensate for the noise that's coming off the sensor, right? Yep, exactly

01:05:38 ◼   ► so

01:05:40 ◼   ► Again, I think it's a it's a great camera. Like it's the best iPhone camera that they've ever made

01:05:45 ◼   ► To me, it really just comes back to

01:05:48 ◼   ► kind of this core question of

01:05:51 ◼   ► what do you want the photo to look like?

01:05:53 ◼   ► Right, like do you want a great starting point

01:05:55 ◼   ► and you're gonna edit or do you want something

01:05:57 ◼   ► that is ready to share right away

01:06:00 ◼   ► or do you want something that's gonna hold up

01:06:03 ◼   ► on a big screen, right, or as a print?

01:06:07 ◼   ► I think most people are like living on Instagram, right?

01:06:11 ◼   ► And that to me lets them get away with some stuff

01:06:15 ◼   ► But there's just a part of me,

01:06:17 ◼   ► you know, you said it's an 11 month old camera,

01:06:20 ◼   ► the Pixel 2.

01:06:21 ◼   ► There's a part of me that says,

01:06:24 ◼   ► you guys know that's the benchmark, right?

01:06:26 ◼   ► The whole sort of tech press has been saying

01:06:29 ◼   ► the Pixel 2 is the best camera for a year.

01:06:31 ◼   ► It's not just the Verge, like,

01:06:34 ◼   ► Marques Brownlee, who's a great reviewer,

01:06:36 ◼   ► has been saying it.

01:06:37 ◼   ► He actually said it in his review of the XS2.

01:06:38 ◼   ► It's the number two camera behind the Pixel 2.

01:06:40 ◼   ► Said the same thing.

01:06:41 ◼   ► Joanna's been saying it at the Journal.

01:06:44 ◼   ► So you know that's the benchmark.

01:06:46 ◼   ► And Apple will never tell you this.

01:06:49 ◼   ► You can ask them any which way from Sunday.

01:06:51 ◼   ► You can say, "Which metrics did you wanna beat

01:06:53 ◼   ► "the Pixel 2 on?"

01:06:54 ◼   ► And they're like, "No, we just wanna make the great camera."

01:06:56 ◼   ► But I would love to know,

01:06:59 ◼   ► where do they think they're better than the Pixel?

01:07:00 ◼   ► Where do they think they're worse?

01:07:01 ◼   ► And where does Smart HDR is a new technology

01:07:05 ◼   ► with a new sensor go next?

01:07:08 ◼   ► Because I think that this is a new starting place for them.

01:07:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, totally.

01:07:12 ◼   ► - Instead of a refinement of what they'd been doing

01:07:14 ◼   ► years with the 789 or 7810. Well, and it's such an interesting contrast because it is

01:07:21 ◼   ► sort of a luxury for Google that they don't have to make the pixel in the quantities that

01:07:29 ◼   ► Apple has to make the iPhone and I'm not trying to excuse it, you know, but it's different,

01:07:35 ◼   ► you know, Apple is going to going to sell, you know, 40 million of these things in the

01:07:40 ◼   ► first quarter. And Google is not going to sell 40 million pixel threes.

01:07:45 ◼   ► Yeah, there's like 12 of them. All right. And it's, you know, but that means though, that I and I

01:07:53 ◼   ► really, I guess I am trying to excuse that Apple has to source a camera system, an entire hardware

01:07:59 ◼   ► camera system that they can make. I guess I mean, what, probably over 100 million in the next 12

01:08:06 ◼   ► months literally over 100 million of them in the next 12 months counting that's 10 are right they've

01:08:11 ◼   ► gotten the same right 10 are right so well let's count the 10 are right so probably like 150 million

01:08:17 ◼   ► i don't know but you know easily way over 100 million of these camera systems for the wide angle

01:08:22 ◼   ► lens and it's the wide angle lens that's the most interesting to me because the telequote unquote

01:08:27 ◼   ► telephoto lens is pretty much the same as last year's it's slightly better um but it's technically

01:08:33 ◼   ► roughly the same. It's the wide angle lens that gets this new

01:08:36 ◼   ► bigger sensor and has a different lens element. And it's

01:08:41 ◼   ► exactly supposedly going to be exactly the same in the 10 r. So

01:08:45 ◼   ► they have to source these and and I feel like it's a luxury

01:08:49 ◼   ► for Google with the pixels where they can source. You know, they

01:08:52 ◼   ► can make cameras that they don't have to make 100 million of, you

01:08:55 ◼   ► know,

01:08:56 ◼   ► yeah, I mean, the pixel two uses a pretty standard Sony sensor,

01:09:00 ◼   ► Like it's a good sensor, right? But it's I don't think it was meaningfully different than the Sony sensors Apple was using and Sony

01:09:06 ◼   ► You know, I said to Vlad one of our

01:09:10 ◼   ► editors who folk who is in love with cameras and

01:09:13 ◼   ► Hey, does this mean like Sony imaging is like

01:09:17 ◼   ► If they have switched to Samsung this means Sony imaging is like gonna fall apart because that happens like, you know

01:09:23 ◼   ► Apple switched to Intel modems and Qualcomm falls apart, right?

01:09:27 ◼   ► And he's like no dude, like every phone in China uses a Sony sensor, right? So like

01:09:32 ◼   ► Even at Apple scale, they're just like a little blip for this company

01:09:35 ◼   ► So I I don't know if I agree on the like it's easier for Google

01:09:39 ◼   ► Like there's a lot of things that are easier for Google because it don't make as many phones

01:09:44 ◼   ► But I think here this is what they're doing is a software thing. Yeah, maybe I don't know

01:09:49 ◼   ► I could be wrong, you know

01:09:52 ◼   ► But I do think it's interesting that exactly like you said so many people who I respect

01:09:57 ◼   ► You know you off the top of my head you you know the birds Joanna

01:10:01 ◼   ► Marquez Brownlee are all saying the same thing and and saying that the you know, year-old pixel 2 is still ahead

01:10:09 ◼   ► That's interesting to me and it makes me like I said at the outset of the show

01:10:14 ◼   ► I wish I had a pixel 2 instead of a pixel 1 and

01:10:17 ◼   ► The pixel 3 is coming out and we'll just I'm sure Google will happily tip you right right. I want to get on that train

01:10:24 ◼   ► They're gonna try to convince you more than anybody. Well, let me ask you this so

01:10:28 ◼   ► What are the pixel twos capabilities with video so still aside

01:10:34 ◼   ► Let's just concede for the moment that you think you know

01:10:37 ◼   ► Or let's just say you think still image wise the pixel 2 does a better job than the iPhone X s what about video? I

01:10:43 ◼   ► Think that's the iPhone is it is ahead there right for a couple of reasons

01:10:47 ◼   ► Wannick it can I'm pretty sure the pixel can't do 4k 60. Let me double check that I

01:10:53 ◼   ► Don't think it can either and I know that the I've the iPhone X s is doing amazing things with

01:11:01 ◼   ► photo with video that is shot at either 30 30 or 24 frames per second where it's shooting and

01:11:09 ◼   ► It's like I have notes on this but my notes were so sort of sketchy and you and I were actually in the same briefing together

01:11:15 ◼   ► When we were talking to the camera team

01:11:17 ◼   ► But Apple is is doing this crazy thing where if you're shooting at 30 frames per second or 24

01:11:25 ◼   ► But you know 30 is the the the default. They're actually shooting an entire

01:11:31 ◼   ► extra frame of video in between frames of video to do

01:11:37 ◼   ► dynamic range compensation

01:11:39 ◼   ► Yeah, and and reduce noise so it

01:11:41 ◼   ► It's you're shooting 30 frames per second video and in the mean in in the meantime in between frames

01:11:48 ◼   ► The iPhone is taking an extra frame just to make the frames that it's keeping better. Yes

01:11:53 ◼   ► I think that stabilizations incredible. Yeah, so I looked at the pixel can only do 4k at 30

01:11:59 ◼   ► So I always want to shoot either at 24 or 60

01:12:03 ◼   ► So that I've owned just like immediately wins like yeah, it's shooting in the formats

01:12:08 ◼   ► I wanted to shoot in and then the thing you're talking about between the optical stabilizer and some of the

01:12:14 ◼   ► Interframe stabilization they're doing it just looks better. Yeah, and then on top of that

01:12:19 ◼   ► Our audio engineer was super impressed with the fact that the tennis

01:12:24 ◼   ► records

01:12:26 ◼   ► Stereo audio. Yes, and you can sort of hear it on the you know, the wide stereo speakers

01:12:32 ◼   ► But it actually is stereo audio

01:12:34 ◼   ► Which virtually no other phone can do especially a phone at Apple scale. Yeah, it's it's absolutely staggering what they're doing with video and

01:12:43 ◼   ► It's funny like you and I you know

01:12:47 ◼   ► they they had us grouped in groups of three and

01:12:51 ◼   ► we recycled around and talked to a bunch of people behind the scenes after the event in these briefings him and you and I were

01:12:57 ◼   ► in this group and

01:12:58 ◼   ► And we got to talk to two people from the camera team, one, one guy who was sort of

01:13:03 ◼   ► on the hardware side, and one on the software side. And, you know, we got all this great

01:13:06 ◼   ► information. And it was really interesting. And you particularly asked some great questions.

01:13:11 ◼   ► And I've, you know, I was like, Oh, that's interesting. And we got these great answers.

01:13:14 ◼   ► And then we're like, on the way out the door, because they're like, you got to go on, you

01:13:17 ◼   ► know, you got to go on. And the guy just says to his own, by the way, low light video is

01:13:21 ◼   ► amazing. Right? It's like, be sure to test that. And it was like, what, wait, what? And

01:13:28 ◼   ► And then I shot some I've got two examples on my this Flickr page I just linked to that

01:13:33 ◼   ► are just staggering, like just literally not just like, Oh, this is okay.

01:13:38 ◼   ► And this is better.

01:13:39 ◼   ► But like literally, the iPhone 10 footage is like borderline unusable.

01:13:46 ◼   ► And the iPhone 10 s footage on video in low light is actually pretty good.

01:13:51 ◼   ► Like one is a fountain in a park here in Philadelphia.

01:13:54 ◼   ► was I shot in this great restaurant that my family loves here in Philly called Double

01:14:00 ◼   ► Knot. But it's super dark. I mean, it is like crazy dark. It is like I feel like I'm blind.

01:14:07 ◼   ► Like I feel like I can't even get to my table. It's so dark. And I shot this footage of my

01:14:11 ◼   ► son and it's like the footage from my iPhone 10 is exactly what I expected to get from

01:14:16 ◼   ► a cell phone camera shooting video in this really dark room. It is like unusable. And

01:14:20 ◼   ► And then I shot footage with the 10S and it is like,

01:14:23 ◼   ► this is actually pretty good.

01:14:24 ◼   ► This is brighter than real life.

01:14:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's my, Matt Buchanan,

01:14:30 ◼   ► who is now the executive editor at Eater,

01:14:33 ◼   ► and he sits just, you know,

01:14:35 ◼   ► 100 yards away from me in the office.

01:14:38 ◼   ► - I didn't know anything he was there.

01:14:39 ◼   ► I love Matt Buchanan.

01:14:40 ◼   ► I didn't know he was at Eater.

01:14:41 ◼   ► - He was my, like, when I was at Engadget

01:14:43 ◼   ► and I was like baby blogger, he was like my rival at Gizmodo.

01:14:47 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:14:48 ◼   ► - They used to want to be smarter than Matt all the time.

01:14:49 ◼   ► And he wrote this headline that I think about every day because it was such a, he was just

01:14:56 ◼   ► smarter than me faster.

01:14:57 ◼   ► And that probably bothers you as much as it bothers me.

01:15:00 ◼   ► But ISO is the new megapixel, right?

01:15:03 ◼   ► And what he meant was low light performance.

01:15:07 ◼   ► And this is years ago.

01:15:08 ◼   ► This is like 2009 or something he wrote this.

01:15:11 ◼   ► And I think about it all the time.

01:15:12 ◼   ► That's what you want.

01:15:13 ◼   ► You want great low light performance.

01:15:15 ◼   ► And then you can almost excuse anything else.

01:15:18 ◼   ► Because that's where you are, you don't have a lighting rig with you or whatever, and you're

01:15:23 ◼   ► often in a weird situation.

01:15:24 ◼   ► And if you can get the light out of the scene, you're way ahead.

01:15:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I remember, and it's one of those things that I don't know what the turning point was,

01:15:33 ◼   ► but I remember, let's just say like eight years ago, I don't know, I was totally on

01:15:40 ◼   ► the side of every couple of weeks, I'm posting something along the lines of, "Let's stop

01:15:48 ◼   ► measuring our cameras by megapixel. This is absolutely, you know, yes, more megapixels

01:15:54 ◼   ► in general are better. But given all of the other factors, like the fact that sensors

01:15:59 ◼   ► can't get bigger, and that we're making cameras smaller and smaller, etc, etc. megapixels

01:16:05 ◼   ► is the worst way to measure cameras that you can, you know, you're way better off at the

01:16:09 ◼   ► same sensor size with bigger pixels and fewer of them than more pixels that are smaller.

01:16:16 ◼   ► And I remember, you know, harping about it. And then I realized with this phone, writing

01:16:22 ◼   ► this review, where where the megapixel count is exactly the same as the iPhone 10. And

01:16:27 ◼   ► it's 32% bigger, that it I haven't made this argument in a while. It's like people have

01:16:32 ◼   ► sort of they have like it like we like you people like me and you have finally like gotten

01:16:38 ◼   ► it through to everybody to stop measuring cameras by megapixel 12 megapixels is plenty.

01:16:44 ◼   ► It is way more than enough for almost everything.

01:16:47 ◼   ► And sure, 20 years from now, I'm sure we'll look back

01:16:50 ◼   ► and laugh at 12 megapixel cameras.

01:16:52 ◼   ► We'll be like, "Oh my God, that's ridiculous."

01:16:54 ◼   ► But for the meantime, given all of the other constraints

01:16:57 ◼   ► and all of the other advantages,

01:16:59 ◼   ► it's so much better to have bigger pixels.

01:17:02 ◼   ► And then like you said, like with Matt Buchanan saying,

01:17:05 ◼   ► to be able to go to higher ISO

01:17:06 ◼   ► and not have crazy amounts of noise in the image.

01:17:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, you see it all over the industry too.

01:17:13 ◼   ► Like, DJI just put out new Mavics, and one has a smaller sensor and a big like a bigger

01:17:19 ◼   ► zoom lens, you know, it has a bigger sensor, like, the market is now sophisticated enough

01:17:24 ◼   ► that it's applying sort of the right sensor to the right moment.

01:17:28 ◼   ► And that used to just be an arms race.

01:17:31 ◼   ► Right.

01:17:32 ◼   ► And you know, let's face it.

01:17:33 ◼   ► I mean, I mean, this is a statement of the obvious, but it I think it deserves to be

01:17:38 ◼   ► to be called out like 99% of the photos, maybe even more, maybe even more than 99%.

01:17:43 ◼   ► I'm almost sure it's got to be more than 99% of the photos that people take with their

01:17:49 ◼   ► cell phone camera are handheld with no physical stabilization, not even like just resting

01:17:55 ◼   ► it not even put aside tripods, but not even like putting it on a table or something to

01:18:01 ◼   ► stabilize it.

01:18:02 ◼   ► is handheld and so anything you can do to get slower or faster shutter speeds with a

01:18:10 ◼   ► proper exposure is is a win yeah you know i actually had never really thought about

01:18:15 ◼   ► it that way like we're there the real race is how much like you captured a fast shutter

01:18:22 ◼   ► speed to compensate for for handheld shake right how would you put that in a spec how

01:18:27 ◼   ► How can we make that an arms race?

01:18:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

01:18:30 ◼   ► - If we make that a number and say it's better

01:18:33 ◼   ► when this number is higher, Samsung will figure it out.

01:18:36 ◼   ► - Right. - That's how they think.

01:18:38 ◼   ► We just need to beat that number.

01:18:39 ◼   ► - Well, and the other factor that figures into that too

01:18:42 ◼   ► is that you don't see the difference

01:18:47 ◼   ► between a faster exposure, a shorter,

01:18:51 ◼   ► being able to shoot at, let's say, in really low light

01:18:55 ◼   ► and get a 1/30th of a second

01:18:57 ◼   ► instead of like 1/15th of a second exposure,

01:19:00 ◼   ► you don't even see it on the screen on the phone

01:19:02 ◼   ► because like maybe if you're trying to hold your hand still

01:19:05 ◼   ► and you take it, but the amount of blur that you get

01:19:09 ◼   ► from your hand moving in that 1/15th of a second

01:19:11 ◼   ► doesn't even show up on the screen.

01:19:13 ◼   ► It only shows up when you do put it on like a bigger screen

01:19:16 ◼   ► like your Mac or something like that.

01:19:17 ◼   ► So you don't even know that you should retake the photo

01:19:20 ◼   ► because it's a little blurry

01:19:21 ◼   ► because it doesn't show up on the tiny little

01:19:24 ◼   ► quote-unquote tiny little 6.5 inch screen, right?

01:19:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's the heart of it, right?

01:19:31 ◼   ► Like to me, the heart of it is,

01:19:34 ◼   ► what do I take pictures of the most?

01:19:36 ◼   ► It's my kid.

01:19:37 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:19:38 ◼   ► - And I want those photos to last.

01:19:41 ◼   ► I wanna look at those photos 20 years from now

01:19:44 ◼   ► and show them to her and be like,

01:19:45 ◼   ► look at how insane your hair was, right?

01:19:48 ◼   ► And that means I need definition in her hair.

01:19:51 ◼   ► Like that's pretty basic.

01:19:52 ◼   ► And to me, the argument for the Pixel is,

01:19:57 ◼   ► I feel more confident in any situation

01:20:00 ◼   ► that it will get that detail out of the photo.

01:20:02 ◼   ► Right?

01:20:03 ◼   ► And is that a great argument?

01:20:05 ◼   ► Is that the argument that's gonna win

01:20:07 ◼   ► everyone's decision-making process?

01:20:09 ◼   ► No.

01:20:09 ◼   ► Do I carry an iPhone as my primary phone?

01:20:12 ◼   ► Sure as hell do.

01:20:13 ◼   ► Would I prefer to have a more privacy-focused phone

01:20:19 ◼   ► that doesn't, you know,

01:20:20 ◼   ► Do I prefer Apple's app model and sandbox?

01:20:23 ◼   ► Yeah, all those things, that's why I have an iPhone.

01:20:25 ◼   ► But man, do I wish I had that Pixel camera?

01:20:29 ◼   ► Do I wish I could push a button

01:20:30 ◼   ► and get it to act more like the Pixel?

01:20:32 ◼   ► I absolutely do.

01:20:34 ◼   ► - All right, let me take one last break here

01:20:36 ◼   ► and thank our third and final sponsor.

01:20:37 ◼   ► It is this scrappy young company, I never heard of him.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Squarespace.

01:20:41 ◼   ► Look, Squarespace, you've probably,

01:20:49 ◼   ► whoever's listening to this,

01:20:49 ◼   ► never heard of them but they're they have an amazing service is absolutely

01:20:53 ◼   ► flabbergasting you go there let's say you need a website you go to Squarespace

01:20:56 ◼   ► and you can do everything there you can get your domain name you can pick a

01:21:01 ◼   ► template they have tons of templates it is amazing how many templates you can

01:21:05 ◼   ► start from to get an amazing looking website you can customize it every pixel

01:21:10 ◼   ► of the entire website you can you can customize to the utmost degree they host

01:21:17 ◼   ► the website. They are the CMS. So like if you want to have like a blog or you want to host a podcast

01:21:22 ◼   ► or something like that, you do it all through Squarespace, they have a great user interface

01:21:26 ◼   ► for this stuff. Absolutely great. They do their own analytics. So you want to see who's coming

01:21:31 ◼   ► to your website, how many people are looking at your website, all of the analytics are there. And

01:21:35 ◼   ► it's so well designed is the best analytics interface I've ever seen. All of it at one place,

01:21:43 ◼   ► everything from design to hosting to serving the site to the analytics to even doing the e-commerce if you want to have a

01:21:50 ◼   ► store if you need like to sell stuff and doing all of the secure stuff to do the

01:21:56 ◼   ► Online credit card processing etc. Do it right and do it secure it they host they do it all it is absolutely fabulous

01:22:04 ◼   ► And they have absolutely truly award-winning technical support 24 hours a day. You can get them on the phone right away and

01:22:12 ◼   ► and if you do have questions they'll tell you what to do it is absolutely

01:22:18 ◼   ► amazing so the next time you or anybody you know who comes to you because you're

01:22:22 ◼   ► a nerd and they come to you like hey I need a website what should I do send

01:22:26 ◼   ► them to Squarespace and if you go to squarespace.com/talk show squarespace.com/talk show

01:22:33 ◼   ► when you decide to pay use that code talk show and you will save 10% off your

01:22:40 ◼   ► first purchase. And that includes you can pay for a year in advance. So you can save

01:22:45 ◼   ► 10% on an entire year by using that code talk show at Squarespace.com/talk show. I do think

01:22:54 ◼   ► that, you know, so going back to the camera, I the camera to me defines the iPhone 10 s

01:22:59 ◼   ► in terms of where it is versus the competition and on the Android side of the fence and where

01:23:05 ◼   ► it is versus previous iPhones. It's to me and that I literally wrote my entire review

01:23:12 ◼   ► about the camera. I didn't even mention anything else.

01:23:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, like, we're talking about how fast how much faster the processor is. Yeah.

01:23:20 ◼   ► You know, Apple put Lisa Jackson on stage on a keynote, like we want these products

01:23:23 ◼   ► to last for a long time. And sort of a question I asked him every year is, well, hey, the

01:23:29 ◼   ► GPU in the A11 was 30% faster than the GPU in the A10.

01:23:33 ◼   ► Like, does that max out?

01:23:36 ◼   ► You run that thing red hot all the time?

01:23:38 ◼   ► No, no.

01:23:39 ◼   ► I think of that as headroom.

01:23:40 ◼   ► They're building these processors to last for a long time.

01:23:45 ◼   ► And they're able to put iOS 12 on five-year-old devices

01:23:49 ◼   ► and make them perform better.

01:23:51 ◼   ► So that, like, just the amount of credit Apple gets for that

01:23:56 ◼   ► I think is out of whack.

01:23:57 ◼   ► Like that's one of the best things they do.

01:24:00 ◼   ► And their lead in smartphone processors

01:24:04 ◼   ► is so out of control that we,

01:24:06 ◼   ► I don't think we stopped to like consider it enough, right?

01:24:09 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:24:10 ◼   ► - So it's, are you gonna notice a difference between,

01:24:13 ◼   ► did you notice that 10S,

01:24:15 ◼   ► outside of like an AR demo that uses neural engine,

01:24:18 ◼   ► did you notice it's much faster than the 10?

01:24:20 ◼   ► - Nope.

01:24:21 ◼   ► - Right, it's like the 10 is great.

01:24:23 ◼   ► - Nope.

01:24:24 ◼   ► - So what is the true,

01:24:25 ◼   ► - And--

01:24:26 ◼   ► - Did you notice it has gigabit LTE?

01:24:28 ◼   ► - No, 'cause I did some speed tests

01:24:31 ◼   ► and apparently there is no gigabit LTE,

01:24:33 ◼   ► or at least on Verizon here in Philadelphia.

01:24:35 ◼   ► So I don't know where I have to go to try it.

01:24:37 ◼   ► But 'cause I asked-- - It's one city

01:24:38 ◼   ► with two levels.

01:24:39 ◼   ► - I asked 'cause one of the, it's so minor

01:24:42 ◼   ► and I don't mind, but the one thing,

01:24:45 ◼   ► one of the things that I dislike about the XS

01:24:47 ◼   ► compared to the X is that the antenna bands

01:24:51 ◼   ► on the stainless steel frame are asymmetrical.

01:24:54 ◼   ► Whereas the 10 was perfectly symmetrical.

01:24:57 ◼   ► And it really, the part that really bothers me

01:24:59 ◼   ► aren't the antenna lines, it's the speaker grills

01:25:01 ◼   ► on the bottom of the phone where there's only three holes

01:25:04 ◼   ► on the left and six holes on the right

01:25:06 ◼   ► as opposed to six and six like it was before.

01:25:09 ◼   ► And it's because there's no room for the extra holes

01:25:12 ◼   ► because of the new speaker line, or antenna line.

01:25:17 ◼   ► And I asked, and I thought maybe that was about

01:25:19 ◼   ► the dual SIM thing, that they had to have different antennas

01:25:22 ◼   ► for the two SIMs, but they said no,

01:25:23 ◼   ► It was all about this thing about the,

01:25:25 ◼   ► it's the gigabit LTE.

01:25:27 ◼   ► So that's great.

01:25:29 ◼   ► I would love to have gigabit LTE.

01:25:30 ◼   ► Verizon, please roll it out in Philadelphia,

01:25:32 ◼   ► but apparently it's not here yet

01:25:33 ◼   ► because I didn't get any better LTE per,

01:25:36 ◼   ► and Verizon is very good in Philadelphia.

01:25:39 ◼   ► I get very good LTE service,

01:25:41 ◼   ► but it's not better than the iPhone 10.

01:25:43 ◼   ► - This is totally tangential,

01:25:46 ◼   ► but there's just like growing like discontent

01:25:50 ◼   ► in sort of the wireless policy world

01:25:53 ◼   ► that there are actually no good maps of coverage

01:25:56 ◼   ► in the United States.

01:25:57 ◼   ► - I believe that.

01:25:58 ◼   ► - Everyone is lying.

01:25:59 ◼   ► So policymakers can't be like,

01:26:02 ◼   ► "Hey, we need to spend more money in Kansas

01:26:05 ◼   ► "to put more coverage here."

01:26:06 ◼   ► - Right.

01:26:07 ◼   ► - Because they don't actually know.

01:26:08 ◼   ► I just Googled, "Where is gigabit LTE?"

01:26:12 ◼   ► And no one knows.

01:26:14 ◼   ► - I did the same thing.

01:26:16 ◼   ► I did a speed test to see if it was here, and it wasn't.

01:26:19 ◼   ► And I was like, "Well, is there anywhere nearby

01:26:20 ◼   ► "where I can test it?"

01:26:21 ◼   ► And it was like, there's like nothing that nobody knows.

01:26:24 ◼   ► It's all, you know.

01:26:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it's that stuff.

01:26:26 ◼   ► Like these are incremental.

01:26:29 ◼   ► The phone will last longer.

01:26:30 ◼   ► Five years from now, maybe Verizon will have

01:26:32 ◼   ► Gamepad LTE and Philly and your phone will be better.

01:26:33 ◼   ► But compared to the X, it's the same.

01:26:35 ◼   ► And like, so yeah, it's down to that camera.

01:26:39 ◼   ► Did you notice that photos taken on the camera

01:26:42 ◼   ► have 60% greater dynamic range on the XS screen?

01:26:46 ◼   ► - No.

01:26:47 ◼   ► - Like people ask me about it, I'm like, I don't,

01:26:48 ◼   ► like I'm a picky asshole with this shit.

01:26:51 ◼   ► - I can't see it.

01:26:52 ◼   ► - I don't see that either.

01:26:54 ◼   ► Well, and it brings me to, to me,

01:26:58 ◼   ► the elephant in the room of this whole thing

01:27:01 ◼   ► is the iPhone XR.

01:27:03 ◼   ► And I, you know, they don't, Apple,

01:27:07 ◼   ► in my personal experience,

01:27:10 ◼   ► Apple never seeds review units

01:27:14 ◼   ► more than like 10 days before they ship.

01:27:16 ◼   ► That's just everything I've ever gotten from them is always,

01:27:19 ◼   ► I've never gotten anything further in advance.

01:27:21 ◼   ► So for example, famously last year,

01:27:24 ◼   ► when the flagship one, the iPhone X,

01:27:27 ◼   ► was the one that was delayed

01:27:29 ◼   ► and wasn't going to ship immediately

01:27:31 ◼   ► after the event in September,

01:27:33 ◼   ► everybody, we got the iPhone 8s to review

01:27:35 ◼   ► and everybody was like, "What?

01:27:36 ◼   ► "I don't want the iPhone 8, I want the iPhone 10.

01:27:39 ◼   ► "I'm so excited for the 10.

01:27:40 ◼   ► "Why are you giving me this thing

01:27:42 ◼   ► "that I'm not excited about?"

01:27:44 ◼   ► To my knowledge, and I'd be shocked

01:27:49 ◼   ► if anybody has one, nobody has an iPhone XR review unit,

01:27:52 ◼   ► and the reviews, I'm guessing, will happen

01:27:54 ◼   ► exactly on the same schedule.

01:27:56 ◼   ► I'm guessing we'll get them,

01:28:00 ◼   ► I think it ships on the 26th and pre-orders

01:28:02 ◼   ► of the 19th in October, so I'm guessing that anybody

01:28:07 ◼   ► who gets an iPhone XR review unit will get it

01:28:10 ◼   ► sometime early in the week of the night,

01:28:12 ◼   ► that the Friday ends on the 19th, so probably like,

01:28:15 ◼   ► I don't know, Monday or Tuesday of that week

01:28:17 ◼   ► will get review units. And the embargo will be three or four days before they ship on

01:28:23 ◼   ► the 26th. Because that's just their schedule is almost in stone. Yeah. But so all that

01:28:30 ◼   ► said, my experience with the iPhone 10 r is at the event in the hands on area afterwards.

01:28:37 ◼   ► And then in a in a brief, brief, you know, off the record briefing afterwards, I got

01:28:42 ◼   ► to play with one backstage or behind the scenes.

01:28:46 ◼   ► I haven't seen one since

01:28:49 ◼   ► and I didn't get a lot of side-by-side time,

01:28:51 ◼   ► but I have to say from my eyes,

01:28:53 ◼   ► and my eyes, I'm 45, my eyes are declining,

01:28:57 ◼   ► I don't really see the difference

01:28:58 ◼   ► between the two displays side-by-side.

01:29:00 ◼   ► They both look great to me.

01:29:02 ◼   ► I know that with darks, I can see it

01:29:04 ◼   ► like you're watching a video or something with dark stuff.

01:29:07 ◼   ► I can see the OLED advantages when it's dark,

01:29:10 ◼   ► but when the screen is like lit up

01:29:11 ◼   ► and you're just like looking at mail, I don't the 10 hour screen looks fantastic to me.

01:29:16 ◼   ► And like, I did a thing where I like held them side by side and just looked at the home

01:29:20 ◼   ► screen and like look at all the icon colors and the 10 R looks fabulous. I mean, I know

01:29:25 ◼   ► it's a lesser screen, but it's a really good screen. And it's 250 bucks less. Yeah, I think

01:29:31 ◼   ► lesser is a really interesting frame for that. Right? Like it LCDs are way better on some

01:29:37 ◼   ► Metrics than OLED right and OLED is way better on some metrics than other so for years

01:29:42 ◼   ► I would publish iPhone reviews of the LCD models of the 8 plus or the 7 or whatever

01:29:48 ◼   ► And I would say the iPhone has the best display in the market

01:29:51 ◼   ► Right, right and all the Android fanboys in the world would like scream at me that like

01:29:56 ◼   ► Samsung's OLEDs if you look at them long enough or so bright, they'll like burn your eyes out back yourself

01:30:04 ◼   ► - That's true, and like the black,

01:30:05 ◼   ► you know, like all that stuff is true.

01:30:07 ◼   ► But Apple has always had,

01:30:08 ◼   ► their LCDs have always been the most accurate.

01:30:11 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:30:12 ◼   ► - They've always been the most pleasing to look at.

01:30:13 ◼   ► They do the best sort of aliasing tricks that anybody does.

01:30:17 ◼   ► And so if you remember last year with the 10,

01:30:20 ◼   ► the question was, can Apple make an OLED

01:30:22 ◼   ► that looks as good as their LCD,

01:30:24 ◼   ► that isn't as crazy with colors and saturation?

01:30:26 ◼   ► I think they accomplished it.

01:30:29 ◼   ► So lesser is like a really interesting,

01:30:32 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:30:32 ◼   ► like they're obviously different right but

01:30:36 ◼   ► The real questions are I know what Apple is doing because it's a smart thing to do

01:30:42 ◼   ► Is they're putting all of their best stuff into the OLED

01:30:45 ◼   ► So, you know the Razer phone has like a hundred and twenty Hertz refresh LCD the iPhone 10 R does not right

01:30:52 ◼   ► Yeah, what do I want that do I love promotion on the iPad? Yeah, can the LCD do it, right?

01:30:58 ◼   ► Is there LCD technology in this world that can do it? Yes. Is it in the 10 R? No

01:31:02 ◼   ► So it's like an interesting spec comparison like where are they trying to land this screen?

01:31:07 ◼   ► And how does it really work in comparison to the OLED?

01:31:11 ◼   ► Side by side that hands-on. There's no way I can tell the difference. The one thing I got was I

01:31:17 ◼   ► Brought a macro lens to the event

01:31:20 ◼   ► And I took a bunch of super close-up photos of the notch and the curved corners because I heard Phil Schiller say we're doing really

01:31:27 ◼   ► Advanced anti aliasing to make these corners work and I thought what does that mean?

01:31:31 ◼   ► And they are the you know, if you look at the iPhone 10 notch, that's a totally smooth

01:31:38 ◼   ► curve of pixels. The 10 are is a there's like a there's like a gradient curve going on there.

01:31:46 ◼   ► It's super interesting to me. I'm very curious how that works. Yeah, I am too. And, you know,

01:31:52 ◼   ► and it's, you know, we can't go on at length about it, because we haven't had the 10 are

01:31:56 ◼   ► to test, but the basic thing that I'm hearing from a lot of people who read Daring Fireball

01:32:01 ◼   ► and is, "Hey, I don't really use the 2x camera on my plus that much, and so I'm kind of leaning

01:32:10 ◼   ► towards just getting the 10R, and am I missing anything? Like, it seems like it's just as

01:32:16 ◼   ► good and $250 less."

01:32:18 ◼   ► I think they're going to sell a billion of these phones.

01:32:21 ◼   ► Absolutely. I really, really do. I honestly think that the premium you pay for the XS

01:32:28 ◼   ► versus the XR is really fundamentally just about the second camera lens, which is, you

01:32:34 ◼   ► know, if you use it, it's significant, and that it's just slightly nicer. You know,

01:32:39 ◼   ► stainless steel is nicer than aluminum. OLED is nicer than LCD overall, but it's just

01:32:45 ◼   ► a little nicer. And if you really think that the XR is nice enough, then you're just

01:32:51 ◼   ► Honestly, you're not missing anything. You're not missing anything. Apple isn't holding

01:32:56 ◼   ► anything back. They want you to buy it if you want it. It's still a $750 phone to start.

01:33:01 ◼   ► It's not, you know, but I really do feel like from the Twitter and email feedback I've gotten

01:33:07 ◼   ► from readers that they're like, "What am I missing?" And it's like, you're missing nothing.

01:33:12 ◼   ► Just go get pre-order the 10R as soon as they start taking pre-orders because you've got

01:33:17 ◼   ► the right thing going on.

01:33:18 ◼   ► You know, there's like the sort of like Verge alumni mafia in the world now like, you know, Joanna wrote used to be reviewer at the word

01:33:25 ◼   ► She's at the journal Lauren good is it wired and like all of us landed in the same place which made me laugh

01:33:30 ◼   ► Which was this phone is great

01:33:33 ◼   ► But wait for us to review the 10 are and then we'll tell you what to do, right?

01:33:37 ◼   ► And that wasn't like a yeah, it wasn't court

01:33:39 ◼   ► It was just like very funny because I know how everyone thinks and we all obviously work together. So

01:33:46 ◼   ► It was just really funny because you know the point of a review for us. I don't know if it's the point for you

01:33:51 ◼   ► You know what daring fireball does is different but the point for me and for Joanna and for Lauren and other people run

01:34:00 ◼   ► These big consumer pubs is to help people make purchase decisions

01:34:03 ◼   ► Yes to help people spend money and so for us all of us landed in the same place

01:34:09 ◼   ► Which was we cannot at this moment help you make this purchase decision because we don't have all the information

01:34:15 ◼   ► And it's I think that that's not bad for Apple. It means we're gonna my iPhones, but it does mean

01:34:21 ◼   ► The 10 are reviews are gonna be the scrutiny of that phone

01:34:27 ◼   ► I think will be hired in the scrutiny of the tennis I do too and I it's an interesting flip year-over-year

01:34:32 ◼   ► because

01:34:34 ◼   ► Last year when the 10 first came out and the iPhone 8 and 8 plus were great phones and if there had been no iPhone 10

01:34:41 ◼   ► Last year it they would have been fine

01:34:43 ◼   ► there would have been definitely some some

01:34:46 ◼   ► Legitimate criticism about the fact that if there were no iPhone 10 a year ago

01:34:52 ◼   ► There would have been some legit criticism that I've Apple is behind the curve on getting these edge-to-edge displays

01:34:58 ◼   ► You know that the the chin and forehead look, you know, they're they're you know behind they're they're clearly behind

01:35:05 ◼   ► it's better not to have big chins and foreheads and

01:35:09 ◼   ► The iPhone 8 and 8 plus still had the traditional big chin and forehead that would have been legit

01:35:14 ◼   ► But otherwise they were totally credible, you know

01:35:17 ◼   ► 2017 phones

01:35:20 ◼   ► But given that the 10 existed there was just this huge chasm in quality and interest and and you know

01:35:28 ◼   ► Between the iPhone 8 and 8 plus which were good phones, you know, they're fine

01:35:33 ◼   ► But the 10 was better in so many ways and just look better in so many ways and was better

01:35:38 ◼   ► Whereas this year it is the complete opposite where the that I again not in hand yet

01:35:45 ◼   ► So let's wait and see but to me

01:35:47 ◼   ► The 10r is the new iPhone. It is the one that more people are going to buy the one that more people should buy and

01:35:55 ◼   ► The the 10s is just sort of like a trim level that you're paying two hundred and fifty dollars for

01:36:01 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, it's like

01:36:04 ◼   ► What's the new product? Yeah fundamentally

01:36:08 ◼   ► I'm very what do you make of them not selling the 10 anymore? Well, I think it's I think it's very obvious

01:36:14 ◼   ► It doesn't fit in a product line and I think it's exactly like

01:36:18 ◼   ► The the fact that when the original iPhone was replaced by the 3g that they just dumped the original it was it was

01:36:26 ◼   ► You know almost like they shipped a prototype, you know, right? Yeah, and

01:36:30 ◼   ► They did the same thing with the iPhone 5 right where so we had the iPhone 5 and then when they came out with the 5s

01:36:38 ◼   ► they dumped the five and had the 5C which was the phone with the the the

01:36:45 ◼   ► fives internals but a different case and it was because that case was very

01:36:49 ◼   ► expensive to make you know like the the chamfered edges along the iPhone 5 and

01:36:55 ◼   ► 5s and the SE it was not cheap to make and you know the plastic of the 5c was

01:37:01 ◼   ► cheaper to make I think that's exactly what's going on with the iPhone 10 and

01:37:05 ◼   ► And if you think about it, it doesn't fit. Like if given the

01:37:08 ◼   ► existence of the 10 are in the 10 s, if they did keep the iPhone

01:37:13 ◼   ► 10 around and sold just you know, like 128 gigabyte version

01:37:17 ◼   ► of it, where does it fit in a product line because the camera

01:37:19 ◼   ► is so much worse, right? The the 10 are at $750 is absolutely a

01:37:25 ◼   ► better phone than than the year old iPhone 10.

01:37:28 ◼   ► Wow, that's a big call. Well, I guess absolutely, maybe not

01:37:33 ◼   ► quite clear because the iPhone 10 does have the dual camera system, but the wide angle

01:37:37 ◼   ► lens is so much better in the 10 R and I to me that outweighs the advantages of the iPhone

01:37:42 ◼   ► 10 OLED versus the 10 hours LCD. It's it would make for a very confusing product line if

01:37:48 ◼   ► they still sold even just one one model of the iPhone 10. It just doesn't fit. I think

01:37:54 ◼   ► the way to look at it is the 10 R has replaced the 10. Right? Yes, exactly. And it's overall

01:37:59 ◼   ► think overall it is better it you know that the the

01:38:03 ◼   ► computational photography stuff that they get from this neural

01:38:05 ◼   ► engine and and the bigger sensor I would I would rather have a

01:38:09 ◼   ► 10 r than the 10 even though I don't I don't like the size the

01:38:12 ◼   ► only thing I don't like about the 10 r is I think 6.1 is too

01:38:15 ◼   ► big as the one and only size.

01:38:16 ◼   ► The one of the biggest piece you know, one of the biggest pieces

01:38:21 ◼   ► of feedback, like after the event, not for us, but for like

01:38:24 ◼   ► Apple was people on the verge staff and people out in the world

01:38:28 ◼   ► being like, I just want a small phone. I just want that iPhone SE size with a full,

01:38:33 ◼   ► like an edge-to-edge display. And where I've landed is, it's the same thing as the photo stuff.

01:38:40 ◼   ► There's what you think you want, and then there's what you prefer. And it just feels like everyone

01:38:46 ◼   ► in the world has the data to say, actually, no one buys the small phone. Well, but on the other hand,

01:38:53 ◼   ► we do know that the iPhone SE was actually more popular than Apple expected, and they were

01:38:57 ◼   ► actually it was sold out weeks in advance for a lot longer you know when it first came out so

01:39:03 ◼   ► was that because of the price or was it because of the size you know who knows but i i think that

01:39:07 ◼   ► there's enough i i feel like we're never going to see an iphone as small as the se again but i my

01:39:13 ◼   ► secret hope and i have absolutely no inside juice on this at all and and the rumors probably won't

01:39:18 ◼   ► crank up until like january or so if it's true but the way that last year we only got one size

01:39:25 ◼   ► of the iPhone 10. This is it one and only because they were like pushing the envelope. This is the

01:39:29 ◼   ► one size we're going to make. And now this year, we've got two, we've got that one and a bigger

01:39:33 ◼   ► one. My secret hope is that next year, there's a successor to the 10 are that smaller, interesting

01:39:41 ◼   ► and it would be and also smaller than the iPhone 10 s you know what I mean the 5.8 in size it would

01:39:49 ◼   ► You know, I mean like so so the smallest would be in in in my dream world next year

01:39:54 ◼   ► The smallest new iphone would be the the 10r

01:39:58 ◼   ► Then that they they would

01:40:00 ◼   ► Call like the 6.1

01:40:02 ◼   ► You know what? I mean these names these names are getting away from them so fast. Oh, it's impossible to talk about I

01:40:09 ◼   ► I I think

01:40:12 ◼   ► I off the top of my head. I've been trying to do it right this whole episode

01:40:16 ◼   ► I think that I've said 10 every time I haven't said actually I've probably said X ago. I don't know but

01:40:21 ◼   ► Everyone's gonna call the XR I can get away with tennis for some reason. Yeah, I don't know why but

01:40:27 ◼   ► XR just sounds cool. Well, I'll tell you this and we I know we got to wrap up. Yeah

01:40:32 ◼   ► as a writer I

01:40:35 ◼   ► Have to think of it as X because I'm typing an X and my brain I've I'm not gonna go on a rant about Roman numerals

01:40:42 ◼   ► but I fucking hate Roman numerals and

01:40:45 ◼   ► I really hate Roman numerals and I was so excited. I've said this I have said this on the show a couple of times

01:40:51 ◼   ► But I was so excited. I know you're a football fan, too

01:40:54 ◼   ► I was so excited for Super Bowl 50 when the NFL switched to 5-0

01:40:58 ◼   ► Instead of using Roman numerals and I thought this is such a great out for them

01:41:02 ◼   ► Here it is. It's 50 and now they'll just use regular numbers and then when they went back to Roman numerals for 51

01:41:09 ◼   ► I like lost my mind. I'm like, oh my god you had your out

01:41:14 ◼   ► Nobody likes this. This isn't classy. It's just confusing. Nobody knows. Yeah, I I

01:41:19 ◼   ► But when I'm writing so here's the thing just a little bit of inside baseball like when I'm writing

01:41:25 ◼   ► I have to think of it as X so and when I'm writing I'm thinking of it as the XS and the XR cuz that's

01:41:30 ◼   ► what I'm typing but I get my A's and ands wrong if I don't use the iPhone if I say faster than a

01:41:37 ◼   ► XS but that's wrong

01:41:41 ◼   ► Or than an XS right I would write an XS, but I have to write a

01:41:47 ◼   ► XS because it's really tennis and so you want a instead of an and so like it was like this little nitpick and

01:41:54 ◼   ► You know it literally eight in the morning after pulling an all-nighter

01:41:57 ◼   ► I've got I always print my article if it's a long article

01:42:00 ◼   ► I always print put it on paper and take a red pen to it and I've got like

01:42:04 ◼   ► hundred little eggs and hands

01:42:07 ◼   ► That are so inconsistent. Oh, I they have to switch next year. There's no there's no way they're sticking with Roman numerals. They can't

01:42:16 ◼   ► Wait, it's over the NFL or no Apple Apple

01:42:19 ◼   ► NFL's a lost cause if the NFL didn't take that a Super Bowl 50 as their chance to change

01:42:25 ◼   ► They're never going to I mean their next chance to do it is like Super Bowl 100 and we're gonna be dead. Yeah

01:42:30 ◼   ► Roman numerals famously a number of our system that did not have the concept of zero

01:42:36 ◼   ► So really the best choice that you want.

01:42:39 ◼   ► I think Apple's brand is iPhone 10.

01:42:43 ◼   ► I think they're going to stick with it and drive us insane.

01:42:46 ◼   ► Because iPhone 10 is what they mean when they mean an edge

01:42:51 ◼   ► to edge screen with a notch.

01:42:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:42:52 ◼   ► But then where do they go?

01:42:53 ◼   ► You know, like, they can't.

01:42:56 ◼   ► What are they going to do?

01:42:57 ◼   ► Pick new letters?

01:42:57 ◼   ► Why not?

01:42:59 ◼   ► There's just 24 left.

01:43:02 ◼   ► I see that iPhone X or iPhone K or whatever.

01:43:05 ◼   ► - Right, or like I wrote in my article,

01:43:07 ◼   ► like iPhone XX, you know, the iPhone 10X.

01:43:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:43:11 ◼   ► With two Xs, like it would be insane.

01:43:14 ◼   ► But at this point, I wouldn't be shocked if they did it.

01:43:17 ◼   ► So it looks like iPhone XX,

01:43:19 ◼   ► and you're supposed to say 10X.

01:43:21 ◼   ► It would be crazy.

01:43:23 ◼   ► - I mean, it has already happened to me

01:43:24 ◼   ► that I've been talking about my kid and said Max,

01:43:26 ◼   ► and somebody has thought about the phone.

01:43:28 ◼   ► Like, it's just like a personal affront to me,

01:43:32 ◼   ► but we'll get through it.

01:43:34 ◼   ► All right, I'm gonna call that a wrap.

01:43:36 ◼   ► This has been a great show.

01:43:38 ◼   ► I mean, thank you.

01:43:39 ◼   ► It's so good to have you back on the show,

01:43:41 ◼   ► and it was so good to have this conversation.

01:43:43 ◼   ► I mean, thank our sponsors.

01:43:44 ◼   ► Let me think about this.

01:43:45 ◼   ► We had Squarespace, where you go to make a website.

01:43:48 ◼   ► We had Hello Pillow, where you can get a buckwheat pillow.

01:43:51 ◼   ► And last but not least, we had Tres Pontas,

01:43:55 ◼   ► where you can get some delicious coffee.

01:43:57 ◼   ► So my thanks to them.

01:43:58 ◼   ► My thanks to you, Nilay.

01:43:59 ◼   ► Everybody can follow you on Twitter as reckless.

01:44:03 ◼   ► - Yeah. - R-E-C-K-L-E-S-S,

01:44:06 ◼   ► great Twitter account.

01:44:07 ◼   ► You and I always have some good back and forth there.

01:44:09 ◼   ► And of course, you and all of your excellent colleagues

01:44:13 ◼   ► at The Verge.

01:44:15 ◼   ► - Thank you so much.

01:44:15 ◼   ► By the way, if you wanna see some good Twitter,

01:44:18 ◼   ► John and I had a great conversation

01:44:19 ◼   ► about the iPhone 3GS keynote a few days ago.

01:44:22 ◼   ► - That was-- - iPhone 3GS, not 3GS, 3G.

01:44:24 ◼   ► - Right, yes. - Go watch that.

01:44:25 ◼   ► It's incredible.

01:44:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know what, that's funny.

01:44:27 ◼   ► It's funny you bring that up.

01:44:28 ◼   ► And it was lost in the shuffle of me

01:44:31 ◼   ► trying to get these reviews together.

01:44:33 ◼   ► but you brought this up on Twitter.

01:44:34 ◼   ► That is such a great thing.

01:44:35 ◼   ► You mentioned this and I'll put it in the show notes.

01:44:39 ◼   ► It's stunning.

01:44:41 ◼   ► You brought it up as sort of like the canonical,

01:44:45 ◼   ► not canonical, but like an unheralded Steve Jobs keynote.

01:44:51 ◼   ► - It's totally underrated.

01:44:53 ◼   ► Like it's so remarkably efficient

01:44:57 ◼   ► and it still seems like just looking back,

01:45:00 ◼   ► like the App Store, 3g like just like bangs through it. It's

01:45:05 ◼   ► incredible.

01:45:06 ◼   ► So the gist of it and you're right, I kind of had forgotten

01:45:09 ◼   ► it and I was there in the room for it. So everybody remembers

01:45:13 ◼   ► the original iPhone keynote. It's like the what it is. I've

01:45:16 ◼   ► always said and I think I expect to finish my career and still

01:45:21 ◼   ► say that the Apple keynote was the original iPhone keynote

01:45:27 ◼   ► because everything you'd want, just a flabbergasting,

01:45:32 ◼   ► everything you could dream of, it really is,

01:45:35 ◼   ► it's not just an iPod with a cell phone,

01:45:37 ◼   ► it is literally a new computing platform.

01:45:39 ◼   ► It's OS X running on a cell phone

01:45:42 ◼   ► and has this wonderful new interface and blah, blah, blah.

01:45:45 ◼   ► And it was all secret, nothing had leaked.

01:45:48 ◼   ► Other than the vague rumor that Apple was quote unquote,

01:45:51 ◼   ► going to announce a phone,

01:45:52 ◼   ► that was the only thing that leaked

01:45:53 ◼   ► was that they might really be announcing a phone

01:45:55 ◼   ► at Macworld.

01:45:56 ◼   ► It was the keynote because what it looked like is hardware.

01:45:59 ◼   ► What it looked like it's software had all been kept under wraps.

01:46:03 ◼   ► So in terms of actually having a humongous surprise, it was it.

01:46:07 ◼   ► But then a year and a half later when the 3G came out, it is totally forgotten.

01:46:15 ◼   ► It was 20 minutes at the end of the WWDC keynote.

01:46:21 ◼   ► So they didn't even hold an event for it.

01:46:23 ◼   ► It was just 20 minutes at the end of the WWDC keynote,

01:46:27 ◼   ► Apple, Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone 3G,

01:46:31 ◼   ► and it was, it really was the iPhone that exploded.

01:46:35 ◼   ► Like the original iPhone, very few of them were sold.

01:46:38 ◼   ► I think they only sold like six million of them.

01:46:41 ◼   ► You know, they probably sold more than that

01:46:43 ◼   ► in the first 15 seconds of the pre-order a week ago.

01:46:46 ◼   ► The 3G keynote, I'll put it in the show notes,

01:46:52 ◼   ► you've gotta watch it.

01:46:52 ◼   ► It is 20 minutes long and it was in the middle of a WWDC and like you said it is incredibly efficient. It is

01:46:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean he's like you're all the problem like he says like

01:47:03 ◼   ► 56% of people think the iPhone is too expensive. Well problem solved like starting price 199 like

01:47:09 ◼   ► 80% of people are used exchange. So we had an enterprise support like he's like here are all the problems

01:47:15 ◼   ► I solved him get out of here by an iPhone. See you later edges

01:47:19 ◼   ► Edges too slow. Here's 3g and like you said like you called this out you called this out on Twitter like to show how much

01:47:25 ◼   ► Faster it was he actually just stood aside quietly and let web pages load

01:47:30 ◼   ► One minute is waiting for the New York Times homepage to load on an edge network

01:47:48 ◼   ► Unlike anything anyone would do today it is nobody but Steve Jobs could pull it off

01:47:52 ◼   ► It really is it so the better keynote obviously the better announcement is the original one

01:47:57 ◼   ► But in terms of like a performance like and what Steve Jobs could do on stage that nobody else ever could do

01:48:04 ◼   ► It's it's a better example. It's actually a better jobs performance. Yeah, I mean no one else is making people wait a minute

01:48:13 ◼   ► it. And everybody clapped. Everybody was like, everybody was like clapping like thank you

01:48:19 ◼   ► for making me watch that. And by the way, the 3g phone took 21 seconds. It was still

01:48:25 ◼   ► an eternity. And he's like, look at how much faster. Well, that's funny, too. And I did

01:48:30 ◼   ► notice that and I it's one of those things. I don't know if I've ever written about it

01:48:33 ◼   ► or not, but it is funny, because then he even compared it to Wi Fi and Wi Fi was 18 seconds.

01:48:39 ◼   ► It's you know like the the truth of it is is that web pages are

01:48:43 ◼   ► Computationally very expensive to render and so like ten years ago

01:48:49 ◼   ► It it yes

01:48:51 ◼   ► It was very slow on edge, but actually most of the time you spent that your phone spent rendering the page was actually like

01:48:58 ◼   ► HTML being rendered through the CPU to figure out where everything goes like we take it for granted now that our phones can like you

01:49:05 ◼   ► Know reload a web page and have it come up in like two or three seconds

01:49:07 ◼   ► But most of that now is isn't even just networking advantages. It's the fact that the CPU so much faster

01:49:13 ◼   ► Yeah, it's I mean, you just got to watch this thing like it is so good. It is just virtual. It's virtuoso

01:49:20 ◼   ► It really is. I'm so glad you remembered to call that out because it really was and it was a great Twitter conversation

01:49:25 ◼   ► Well, I was looking at I was looking at I thought I was just like looking at iPhone prices to see you know

01:49:30 ◼   ► Cuz the the 10s max max that's like $1,400. Yeah 14. I was like looking at the chart. I was like

01:49:37 ◼   ► 199

01:49:39 ◼   ► And like the carrier deals are actually far worse, yeah, yeah, it's like a totally different situation and

01:49:47 ◼   ► But like you put up the slide. It's like 199. I was like that slide is long gone like we're never seeing that again

01:49:55 ◼   ► Can I tell you one more behind-the-scenes tidbit from the event last week was I?

01:49:59 ◼   ► was I was

01:50:02 ◼   ► Sitting next to a friend of the show and oftentimes guest Dan Fromer from recode and we were towards the back

01:50:09 ◼   ► we were in the center but towards the back and there were a lot of

01:50:12 ◼   ► Press people from Asia around us and I think they were mostly from China. I mean, I honestly don't know but

01:50:18 ◼   ► And there was a weird thing going on at first where

01:50:24 ◼   ► It I would say for the first 30 minutes of the Apple event where Apple had provided

01:50:31 ◼   ► Asian language

01:50:32 ◼   ► Press I don't know if this is new or if they've done it before but like earpieces where they could get like a real-time

01:50:37 ◼   ► Translation but they were turned up way too loud

01:50:40 ◼   ► and

01:50:41 ◼   ► so a lot of these a lot of the people had taken them out of their ears and we're just sort of holding them because

01:50:46 ◼   ► It was so loud that they didn't but that meant that like I could hear this sort of muffled

01:50:51 ◼   ► I thought that it was at first

01:50:54 ◼   ► I thought it was people like listening to something on their phone with the speaker on and I was like, this is incredibly rude

01:51:00 ◼   ► Why are you doing this? I'm hearing but it was these earpieces and then Apple

01:51:04 ◼   ► I guess realized that it was too loud and turned it down and but you know about halfway through

01:51:08 ◼   ► Or maybe like 30 minutes through it

01:51:10 ◼   ► Stopped being a problem, but I was surrounded, you know

01:51:13 ◼   ► There were but I because of that I realized I was there was a lot of Asian language press around us when they announced the prices

01:51:18 ◼   ► Of the iPhone X s in the event

01:51:21 ◼   ► They there were gasps

01:51:24 ◼   ► like

01:51:25 ◼   ► Because I guess that there were rumors there were so many rumors that the iPhone 10s

01:51:30 ◼   ► Pricing last year was a one-off, you know that this was an anomaly to you know that they've you know shipped this

01:51:38 ◼   ► Quote-unquote phone from the future, you know

01:51:40 ◼   ► But that it would go back to where it used to be where the high-end phone started like seven hundred dollars or something like that

01:51:46 ◼   ► When they announced that these phones started at nine ninety nine and that the tennis max started at eleven hundred dollars

01:51:53 ◼   ► There were gasps. I mean just outright like shock it was

01:51:57 ◼   ► It was the sort of gasp that you would expect if Phil Schiller had said and the default wallpaper is a nudie picture

01:52:05 ◼   ► Oh it was it but it was only because they were like the two rows behind me were just filled with

01:52:14 ◼   ► I think Chinese but and and I it it just was so clear to me that they had bought hook line and sinker into the

01:52:22 ◼   ► argument that that the phone prices were gonna go back down this year and they did not

01:52:26 ◼   ► Well also doing you can get a kick-ass phone in China for like 400 bucks

01:52:32 ◼   ► Right. So like him it's way we actually sent on

01:52:36 ◼   ► Ben Popper, he now works for DJI, but we sent him when he was a reporter for us. We sent him to China

01:52:42 ◼   ► to go report on DJI as it happens and

01:52:48 ◼   ► He texted me from like a store in Shenzhen. He was like, what phone do you want?

01:52:53 ◼   ► He's like this dude is gonna be a phone like do you want an iPhone body running Android?

01:52:58 ◼   ► you want this weird ass copy of iOS like

01:53:00 ◼   ► that market is like

01:53:03 ◼   ► It's incredible. So I think that those price are really high and I think I know that's a whole other conversation

01:53:09 ◼   ► Well, and then the other thing I know we got to wrap up

01:53:11 ◼   ► But the other thing too though

01:53:12 ◼   ► Is that the way that Apple staged the show watch first then the 10s and then the 10r?

01:53:18 ◼   ► so instead of doing the best or better and then best they went best and then

01:53:23 ◼   ► But it makes sense given how good the 10r is that they you know, they can just say has the same grade a12

01:53:29 ◼   ► We already told you about same great wide-angle camera bubble. Yeah, it makes sense and

01:53:33 ◼   ► It is back in line with what people expect from iPhone pricing for a brand new generation

01:53:39 ◼   ► But so that the the the gasps at the 10s pricing I think were

01:53:44 ◼   ► Exacerbated or lessened after the 10r pricing was unveiled half an hour later. Yeah. Yeah

01:53:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a good setup, right? Yeah. All right, so we're gonna have to do this again when the 10r comes out

01:53:57 ◼   ► I think is the end of this conversation. Yeah

01:53:59 ◼   ► Definitely. That's what I say. All right. Thank you. Neelay. I really appreciate it and

01:54:03 ◼   ► Have a good weekend. Thanks, man. Love you. No, sure. All right