Passkeys might really kill passwords

23:17Like I now have two factor codes in my 1Password. I have my passkeys in my 1Password. And I would think that raises the stakes pretty dramatically for 1Password that now if something bad happens to my 1Password stuff, not only is someone going to get control of my passwords, they're going to get control of everything. And like one piece of security advice that I've heard from people over and over and over is don't store everything in one place because you should assume everything is insecure and essentially like don't let the two sides of the coin talk to each other. And you're kind of saying the opposite, which is like, put everything in this one place because it's simpler and better.

23:54And I certainly agree that it's simpler, but like, does it change the way you have to think about even the security of 1Password itself? That's a really interesting question. I actually don't think it does because our whole thing from the beginning has been that we take your security and privacy really seriously. Everything is end-to-end encrypted. Like, 1Password has no access to anyone's actual credentials. And I don't necessarily see a password as being any different from a passkey from like the one password perspective. It's ultimately just a credential material of some sort that we're storing and we're going to protect the same way that we would credit card data or social security numbers or like whatever data you want to store with us.

24:36Right. I try my best instead of saying password manager to say credential manager or something along those lines, because it is so much more than passwords and has been for a really long time. And so I actually don't think it changes our security model that much. We're always looking to upgrade that and what can we do to improve, which is where obviously using a passkey to sign into 1Password comes in. Right now we have that password and secret key sort of model. We have SSO support if you're a business customer. But for the most part, it's kind of that two-factor. The secret key is sort of a device key.

25:08And so we're always looking for ways to upgrade that, which is why we've been exploring passkey login, which would be really incredible to add to 1Password. Yeah. Why does that feel like the right way to do the sort of master login? I think part of what I'm getting at here is I think what we're boiling down to is there being one sort of crucial login, right? Whether it's the passcode on my phone or my master password for 1Password, like there is going to be one thing I have to know. And that is the thing that opens up everything else. And I think with phones, one reason people are nervous is like the Wall Street Journal did a bunch of really good reporting about people having their phones stolen and their passcodes read.

25:46And that becomes even scarier in this world where my passkeys also live on my phone, because now all you need to know is the four digits I use to log into my phone, and you can have everything. and with something like 1Password now it's like I don't I literally don't know any of my passwords except my 1Password password anymore which I think in a lot of ways is the intended behavior and that makes sense to me I don't reuse that password anywhere I don't even have that password written down anywhere it's just it's the 1Password I have memorized but now you're trying to even replace that why yeah so the good news is like in 1Password's case in particular so I'll speak really just about that but you have this password and you have this secret key and so even in just the state of the world right now with 1Password.

26:27If someone were to get your master password, that really long one, the one that you have to remember, they actually still can't get into your 1Password account unless they also steal a device that you have 1Password on already, which is really great, right? That's a good starting point. But now what if we also make it even harder for someone to steal that password because it's not a password, right? It's not even something you know. Now, yes, that passkey does have to then live somewhere, right? So it has to live in your platform account or in a YubiKey or something along those lines. So there is kind of this like vicious cycle of where does the final pass key live?

27:03And I don't know that that's like a perfectly solved problem right now, but still a way better experience than right now. So we're working through it. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, it is just really interesting. I think you're exactly right that at some point there is the one thing and the question of what the one thing should be, I don't know that we know yet. I don't know that we've answered it. And I think the idea of it being a hardware thing that lives on my key ring makes a lot of sense, but has downsides. There's like the perfect version of it would be like it lives in a safe somewhere far away where no one can get to it.

27:33But that obviously is a disastrous user experience. But also somehow you can get to it. Right. Exactly. I can teleport into it when necessary, but that's it. Yeah. I don't. Do you have any sense of what the best available version of that is? Is it your phone at the moment? Like the device you have? Yeah, I think the current state of that is, you know, we recommend that your passkey for one password lives in whatever your platform account is or YubiKey, right? In your iCloud or Google, we typically recommend that you have a backup because obviously if you lose it, it's just kind of a pain, to be honest, to recover if you kind of lose that master one.

28:07So we recommend you have some backups. And so that's kind of the state of the world right now. I think in an ideal world, it's something much more about your real life identity, like your human identity that can identify you to a computer. Right. And like none of that stuff is real yet, but there's a lot of really exciting things that people think about in the future and are working on of ways to kind of like tie those things together. But in a way that also still is like privacy preserving in some way. Right. It still protects your identity online, but it makes a stronger sense of who you actually are on the Internet.

28:40And how broad can passkeys be in that sense? I mean, you mentioned wanting to log people in quicker and making the case that they're more likely to complete transactions that way, right? I just think about the number of carts I have left unpurchased because typing in my address and credit card number is really annoying. Like, much less setting up an account. Even the guest flow is a giant pain. Can passkeys be a store of information beyond passwords in that sense? Is that even a thing people are thinking about? It definitely is. it's not really inherent in passkeys themselves, but there's a lot of sort of like additional like wallet type of technology or other types of technology that people are talking about and working on that is kind of like that, where it's more about other information that's being stored.

29:22It's almost like that password manager experience, right? Where you can store your address and your credit card information to autofill because no one likes that. I don't want to have to make an account. I want to be able to check out as a guest, but I don't want to type all that information. So there is a lot of work to be done on like doing that in a more like cryptographics secure way like passkeys, but the technology as it exists today doesn't really support that just yet. It's really exciting, though. It is really exciting. I mean, and that's the kind of thing, if it goes from I have to type in all of this information about me on the internet over and over ad nauseum to I have a secure version of all the relevant information about me, and I can just dole it out in secure ways whenever I need it.

30:00Like, that's just a better internet. That's how this should all work. That's the dream. Yes. And it does seem like increasingly, the companies who are storing things like my home address and my credit card information and my password don't want that anymore because it's a security risk. Like I can't imagine if I'm Best Buy or Home Depot, I want any of the risk that comes with that anymore. So I would think both of these businesses would be psyched to figure out how to make this stuff work, right? Yeah, I think that's the same way that companies would want to get rid of passwords or any really like PII they're storing, right?

30:32If they can offload any of that risk and not have a giant database table full of something that people are looking for, you know, I think that's obviously a win, right? And so I think pass keys solve that security benefit, the sort of compliance regulations around like there's a lot of good reasons. And I think it's the companies who are excited to make a like user and security improvement. Like those are the companies that I'm seeing like most excited about pass keys. So if you fast forward, I don't know, two, five, 10 years, however long it takes for passkeys to become like truly mainstream.

31:07Is there any case left for either having a password that I type into a website or the flip side having like the login with Google, login with Apple stuff? Like as passkeys get really good, does everything else disappear or do those things kind of have their place too? Yeah, I think passwords are never really gonna fully go away, but I would hope that maybe like 90 % of passwords can go away, especially for the types of apps that we as people just like use every day, right? Our banks, our Netflix, our online shopping, like those types of things I think are kind of perfect use cases for passkeys.

31:49I think there's a lot of good uses for more like social login, like a login with Google or something like that, because maybe they need access to your email. You're sharing other types of information that you get from having that connection. And then there'll probably always be some apps that just use passwords and maybe it's a password and a pass key as a second factor of authentication or something like that. But I would hope that, you know, for most of the things you're using every day, we could get to a point where pass keys are working for those types of apps. All right, we got to take a break and then we're going to talk about wearables.

32:20We'll be right back.

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33:39When you're a small business owner, your business is on your mind 24-7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. LinkedIn's new features can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. Either post your job for free or pay to promote. Promoted jobs get three times more qualified applicants.

34:15At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of SMBs using LinkedIn say that it helps them find high quality candidates. Find out why more than two and a half million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash track. That's linkedin.com slash track to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Support for this show comes from LinkedIn, When you're a small business owner, your business is on your mind 24-7.

34:55So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. LinkedIn's new features can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. either post your job for free or pay to promote. Promoted jobs get three times more qualified applicants. At the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates.

35:30And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of SMBs using LinkedIn say that it helps them find high quality candidates. Find out why more than two and a half million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash track. That's linkedin.com slash track to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

36:01Welcome back. Over the last couple of years, it feels like the wearable industry has boomed. You have the Apple Watch and the Pixel Watch and the Galaxy Watch all getting pretty popular and pretty good. But it also feels like the wearable industry has kind of died. I don't know. It just feels like a few years ago, there was all this energy to bring tech to our bodies and give us stuff to hold and wear and clip on that would do all kinds of computer-y things on our bodies in simpler ways. And now there's just smartwatches. And they're basically all just health devices. And that's just what there is now.

36:34So is this just the way it goes from now on? Is this what the wearables industry has become and will be forever? To help me figure it out, I grabbed Vsong, who is the Verge's wearables reviewer, and the person wearing the most gadgets at any given time that I have ever met in my entire life. Fisang, welcome back. Hi. How many wearables do you have on you right now? Four. What are they? Are you allowed to talk about all four of them? Yes. I have the Wythings ScanWatch Lite. Okay. I have the Apple Watch Ultra 2, the Oura Ring Gen 3, and the Eevee Ring. Okay. Two smart watches, two smart rings. Pure redundancy.

37:09So many things counting your step and giving you dubious information about your sleep. Yeah, yeah. It's what we like to call a control device. So I actually use the Oura Ring to test all sleep tracking just because they're like, oh, we're a sleep tracker. They're pretty accurate for certain metrics. So I have that, and my bed also tracks sleeping. So there's just a lot of control devices to control for accuracy. So do you wake up in the morning and get like six different scores on how you slept? Yes, I do. That sounds awful. One score stresses me out. I get like six different scores. And then while I'm brushing my teeth, I compare all of them and I go, oh, you're not accurate or that sort of stuff.

37:49So, yeah, that's the behind the scenes of wearables testing. That's good stuff. I gave up on sleep tracking like the third day that I woke up feeling like crap and it was like, congratulations on hitting your sleep goal. It's like, I don't know if I did or didn't, but screw you. To be fair, like a lot of sleep tracking is kind of dubious in terms of accuracy. It's not, you know, when you usually take a grain of salt, take two with sleep tracking. So that's just how it is. Yeah. Okay. But I want to talk about like the state of wearables because I feel like there's been a bunch of news about wearables in the last few weeks.

38:20There was a bunch of stuff at CES. We're in kind of a weird place right now. And I have a bunch of theories about this, but let's start with Fossil because I feel Fossil as a company was trying to do something different and interesting and had a really sort of cool idea about what smartwatches could be. So, you know, it's really sad that Fossil is now a Fossil. But like, I didn't make that joke in the actual headlines. So I had to do it elsewhere because everyone else was making that joke at me. But so Fossil basically kept Wear OS afloat, like almost by itself, because Fossil is not just Fossil.

38:57it's diesel, it's Skoggen, it's all these other sub-brands. And for the longest time, if you bought a Wear OS watch, it was a fossil. So they kind of kept Google going through all of that time. And so for them to actually just like call it quits to completely exit the smart watch industry, that's really big. It's kind of just, wow. It says a lot about where smart watches are at this point in time in that it's like, you know, there used to be this notion that Apple was its closed garden and Apple was the main smartwatch of choice for iOS users. But it's sort of happening in the Wear OS space now, too, for Android, because it used to be that, you know, Android was the wild west of smartwatches, kind of like phones.

39:40Right. But now it's Google and Samsung, also kind of like phones. So that's just kind of where we are. And fossil leaving kind of cements that. And I'm actually pretty sad about it. I am too because it seems like – and I'm realizing now how long ago this was. But if you go back to like 2017 maybe, 2016, 17, there was this idea that all watches or at least many watches of many different styles, many different price points, whatever, were going to become some kind of smart. There was going to be this whole interesting spectrum where I remember I went to – I think it's called Baselworld, this like very fancy watch show in Switzerland one year.

40:17And it was like the year everybody was into smartwatches. So I was at Wired at the time. And I'm sitting down with all these people as they're explaining like the beautiful history behind this$12 ,000 watch. And then they'd be like, and also Bluetooth wired. I was like, all right, cool. But I liked that idea. And it was like Withings was doing cool stuff with that, this kind of like hybrid smartwatch idea where it looked like a watch. It looked like a piece of jewelry, but also still had some tech in it. And it feels like everything on that spectrum that isn't an Apple Watch or something that looks like an Apple Watch is just gone.

40:47Like we've just given up on that idea almost entirely. It is really weird because for right now, in the last couple of years, actually, smartwatches have just like slowly consumed everything. Like where has the budget fitness tracker gone? China. That's it. Like that's where most of them are at the moment. And it used to be that Fitbit had its own. Fitbit was the word that everyone used. Even though it was a brand, they used it to mean fitness tracker. It was Kleenex. Like in a really real way, it was Kleenex. That's what Fitbit was. And now where's Fitbit? James Park has left. Very suddenly during CES, I like woke up and I was like, are you kidding me?

41:22I met CES, please. Are you kidding me right now? But yeah, so that's kind of where Fitbit is. And it is really just the Apple Watch, the Galaxy Watch or the Pixel Watch at this moment in time. And that's really sad. But to your point, Fossil really embodied that idea of we're going to have so many different smartwatches in so many different form factors and so many different like styles there was the Kate Spade watch there was the they bought Misfit for a while it used to be Misfit right they had so many cool ideas they did and like the the touch bezel that Samsung basically managed to actually execute and all of that stuff but there used to be a joke I would tell my editors it's like it's a trade show I'm gonna go to Fossil but and I did this at Gizmodo a few times I was like I'm not gonna cover every single watch that they release because there's gonna be 20 of them I'm just going to take a picture and say, look at all the freaking smartwatches that Fossil has brought.

42:13And they would come to each trade show with, I want to say, like 20 to 30 different watches. And I'd be in a room and I'd be like, OK, what's new about this watch? This watch is that watch, but Armani. Right. This watch is that watch, but Diesel. And, you know, that kind of gets to the problem of the Fossil watches as well. Diagnose that for me because I think you could make the case that that is actually like an awesome outcome, right? Like nobody's mad that there are lots of different brands of t-shirt that are all t-shirts. Like that's how it should work. It's fashion. It lets you make choices.

42:42And we were in this moment where technology was just going to be sort of integrated into that. And I liked the idea of having a watch that seemed like a watch, but would also buzz when I got a phone call and count my steps. Like that to me was almost everything I wanted from a smartwatch. And that has died. And what I can't tell is which of the many things that went wrong are the real problem. Like I think there's a thing where Google neglected Wear OS for a really long time and sort of hung Fossil and a bunch of other companies out to dry. There's a thing where maybe people just didn't want those things.

43:12And maybe I'm wrong in the people who wanted any kind of technology on their wrist wanted all the technology on their wrist. So the Apple Watch and the Pixel Watch became the thing. I don't know. What's your read of like why that all fell apart? It's a lot of those things in small increments. So it is like a fact that Fossil invested so much into the Google system. And then, you know, a couple years back, Google took about$40 million worth of Fossil R &D and brought it over into Google. So that was kind of one of the first big signals that Google was going to start taking wearables seriously again.

43:44But, you know, it kind of gutted Fossil a little bit. And then another problem with Fossil is that the price for the price that you were getting their watches, you got a software that was kind of not so great. It was very like jittery. Things would work and then they wouldn't and more often they wouldn't. The battery life was eh. So you were just getting a better experience on other smartwatches but paying a similar price. So what you really were paying for was the style and the fashion and the fact that it didn't look like this giant slab of phone on your wrist, right? You were paying for a watch that looked like a watch.

44:21And then I think another aspect of it is that the people who are going to go for something like Withings and the hybrids is that they are people who are not going to be buying on an upgrade cycle very frequently. True. You don't buy a nice watch intending to replace it in two years. Exactly. And the battery lasts a long time. Like this has been lasting me for, I want to say, two weeks. Yeah, that's awesome. Like I haven't charged it since I've loaded it up. And that is what a lot of people want, but those people aren't the ones going out, buying and upgrading every single year. Right. So that's not making the company a lot of money.

44:53So it's one of those paradoxes where planned obsolescence is a shittier product, but it makes the company a lot more money. So that's kind of the conflict that you have there. And I just think the other issue with Wear OS 3 and that transition is that Google clearly put Samsung first because everything comes to a Samsung watch first. Right. And then it'll come to Google. And then everybody who isn't Samsung or Google kind of gets the short end of the stick. Mobvoi was the other really well-known Wear OS watch alternative, and they didn't get Wear OS 3 upgrade until, I want to say December, like this past December.

45:33It was a thing where Mobvoi users were like, hey, you told us that if we were going to buy this particular TicWatch with the 4100 chip, we were going to get Wear OS 3. And basically, they waited until December. That's when the rollout happened. And Wear OS 4 is already here. So now they're just like a generation behind. They're barely catching up. And they don't even have Google Assistant on their wrist. And Fossil did have Google Assistant, but they also had to wait a really long time to get that rollout out. So I can understand where, from Fossil's perspective, they were just like, okay, we didn't even know Wear OS 3 was happening until you announced it.

46:11Right. What the hell? Yeah. So, you know, I had a sense something was not kosher because Fossil had a very, very regular update cadence and they missed it. Like 2023 was when the Gen 7, if it was going to come out, was going to come out nothing. And they really were the one company you could rely on to keep caring about this for a long time. Every single year. So CES is up and down with wearables. But every single year it would be I would reach out to Fossil and be like, hey, guys, what you got going? And they're like, hey, here's what we got going. and this year I reached out and they're like we're not going to be at CES and I was like excuse me hold up do you see what like so many just alarm bells were going off and I think I reached out to them end of November early December and we were talking for a while and it wasn't until after CES even that they got back to me and they're like hey we out so yeah yeah so that makes me sad I have to say and the other part that makes me sad is I think we like skipped past the fitness band thing way too quickly.

47:12This is a thing you and I have talked about before, and I still believe this very strongly, that the original Jawbone Up was a perfect gadget, and there should be more of them. And I don't want to watch, but I want something on my wrist that tracks basic things. What it seems to be is that instead of bands, rings are going to be that thing. It seems like the big bet now is that if we're going to do a non-screen, long-lasting, simple kind of wearable, everybody seems to think rings are the thing. I mean, rings are big this year. At CES, there were more rings than I could count. I would be like, I've seen all the rings.

47:46And then I'd turn and I'd be like, nope, there's more rings. And like from names that I had never heard of before. So I was like, oh. Is it just because Aura worked? Like Aura has been in this for a few years. The product seems to do really well. I feel like the like viral marketing for Aura is very good because you watch a podcast or you see somebody on TV and it's like a tech CEO in a vest and there's like a one in two chance they have an Aura ring on. And it's not just the tech people. It's the celebrities. Jennifer Aniston has an aura ring. A bunch of sports stars have it. There was a period of time where I think Kim Kardashian and Gwyneth Paltrow maybe were having a sleep competition with their auras.

48:20And these people have millions of followers on Instagram. And they were just like, haha, beat you in my Instagram stories. So aura really had this like Prince Harry has an aura ring. So they had a lot of buzz in that respect. But they weren't the only smart ring around. They just kind of RIP Motive that was a smart ring had two. There was the Motive and the Motive Ring two, and they just kind of like killed them, so to speak. And it was actually really quiet in the smart ring space for several years, and that's because smart rings compared to fitness bands have a lot of technological challenges because they're so small.

48:56They're just so entirely small. But I think we're starting to figure that out, and then there are some health advantages to a smart ring. compared to a fitness band that really make them good for sleep tracking. And part of that is just literally where it's placed on your body. Yeah. So actually, your wrist is terrible for most metrics. I just learned this recently that they're like, oh, let's put all this stuff on your wrist, even though your wrist is the worst. Yeah. So like the way these sensors work is that they're shining light into your skin and it's reflecting off of your blood. And so that's how they read your heart rate.

49:29It's a proxy for your pulse blood, yada, yada, yada. I've written about it a ton. Just read my stuff. But the problem is that you have so many tendons. There's so much movement in your wrist that there's so much signal to noise that it's very difficult to get an accurate read. Which is why if you have a wrist-based wearable and you're like, hmm, this sounds wrong, that plays into it. But the underside of your finger is a lot more ideal. There's a lot less noise. The skin on your palm, no matter how much melanin you have, the skin on your palm is a lot lighter. Sure. So it kind of removes your skin color a little bit as a barrier to accuracy.

50:05So there's just a lot of reasons. It's a lot more comfortable to wear. You wear rings anyway. And when you're going to bed, you're not. I have had a lot of watches that are gigantic from Carmen. But, you know, in the middle of the night, I'll wake up and I'll rip it off because it's uncomfortable. So sleep tracking has gotten a lot of popularity in the last few years. This is the ideal form factor for it. So that's kind of why. I agree with that. I will say the thing that I've had trouble with with rings and the Aura in particular is one that I would say like every three months I'm like I'm going to become an Aura person again.

50:38And I pull the one out of my drawer. I charge it. I put it on. I like it for the step tracking. I like it because the battery doesn't die all the time. I'm like forever being driven crazy because my Apple Watch battery seems to always be dying. No matter what is happening, it's always dying. And the Aura Ring is like a sort of light tracker in a way that I really like. I cannot type with that thing on comfortably. Really? And part of it is probably just that I'm not used to it yet in the same way that like when I started wearing a wedding ring, it took me a while to get used to it. Now I don't even notice it on my finger.

51:04But like it's a pretty chunky thing. I mean – And it bangs around on the palm rest of my computer. Like I grant that I'm not used to wearing chunky rings and lots of people are used to wearing chunky rings. But it was harder for me to get used to having on my body than I expected it to be actually. Well, yeah. Like if you're in fashion, you definitely have a statement ring, right? This is not statement ring size. But it is chunky. Like I have several rings on my finger right now and like the normal not smart rings are much thinner. It actually kind of looks funny when you get it. It's like that's what a smart ring is.

51:36I mean, it's like you're wearing four rings and two of them look like brass knuckles. Yeah, that's basically what it is. And a lot of that is the tech. Yeah. There's just like it's a miracle that they can make it this small. It's actually a miracle that this particular version of the Oura Ring is completely round. That was a huge engineering challenge for that. It had a little flat tire for a long time. Yeah, the flat tire is where they put the battery because when you have a flexible battery, it's very difficult to make it round. So there's just all these like technical challenges that come with smart rings that make them big because I'm like, this is pretty good if you think about what a smart ring is.

52:10And I always get our readers and some people in my DMs just like, I'm not getting it until it's as thin as a regular ring. It's like, okay, you'll be waiting for a while. You'll be waiting for a very long time. So but then in that case, I understand why these things would exist, right? Like the size of Aura's market makes sense to me. There are people who want the things that it offers. What I can't figure out is why somebody like Samsung would make this. Because especially the thing we've learned over the last bunch of years is that like A, you're right, ecosystem is important. But B, the market even for a smartwatch is significantly smaller than the market for a smartphone, at least right now.

52:48And then to take away all the computer stuff, even on a smartwatch, and say, okay, this thing is just basically a lightweight tracker, it just feels like that just seems like a thing that cannot possibly apply to as many people as a company like Samsung is trying to reach. But maybe I'm underestimating how many people want that thing. So what I will say, and I think a lot of our readers who have Oura rings will kind of back me up, is that it's not a good primary tracker. It's a very good secondary tracker. Okay. But having a very good secondary tracker necessitates that you have a primary tracker.

53:20Right. You've already like we're way down the funnel of people who care about this stuff at that point. But it is a thing where it's like if I care about sleep tracking, which an increasing number of people do, and especially if you're an athlete and you care about recovery tracking. Fair. Like this is a very small subsect of people, but it is a very passionate subsect of people. Then a ring that is something that you can have on all the time is not like held to the same battery constraints as a smartwatch. Then it kind of becomes like a nice secondary. And like I know I'm crazy because I have four wearables on right now.

53:55I think you're the average user. Yeah, I'm totally the average user. But basically, you know, I will say that I definitely am like, oh, yeah, if I have an Aura ring and an Apple Watch, that is the perfect health tracking kind of combo. But you have to care about health tracking, which I think the thing that makes wearables, like this subsect of wearables the hardest, is that fitness and health is a very, very hard habit to develop. Well, and this is kind of where I've landed with smartwatches, right? I think it's definitely true that the most useful thing the Apple Watch does for the most people is the health and fitness stuff.

54:31I totally buy that. I still think that's only one slice of the pie of, like, reasons to buy an Apple Watch. And there are lots of them. Right? And I think Apple used to think the get notifications on your wrist slice was the biggest. It's not. The health and fitness one is clearly the biggest. But it's still, I mean, I'm making up the numbers, but that's 40 % of the thing. That leaves 50 other things that comprise the other 60%. And as we get to these other things, we're just pulling all of that away. And so what I keep trying to figure out is like, is Samsung going to try and figure out how to put like a microphone and speaker into the Galaxy Ring 2 so that I can talk to my assistant through it?

55:11Or are we just gonna get to the point where this stuff matters enough to enough people that it's a real business? I think it's gonna be probably the latter just because my family's full of doctors and my grandpa was like Mr. Doctor in our family. He was the most esteemed one and he would always tell us that your health is the most valuable thing you have. If you don't have health, your life kind of is, it's not what it could be. It's one of those things that I think the longer that we live, the more technology advances, the more that we know about our health. Like, I think that's going to kind of impress upon people that I want to live longer.

55:45I want to see my kids. I want to be able to, you know, do things with them. That's going to become more important to people. And the thing that really stymies that is that health is not built in spurts. It's not in New Year's resolutions. It's in tiny things that you do every day. And that's very, very, very difficult for most people to make that behavioral change. It's the number one thing that I think stands in the way of wearable adoption and battery life. those two things. So, you know, it's just, I really do think the health aspect is big there, but I don't think that Samsung would be smart to put microphones into the Galaxy Ring.

56:18I really don't. I think the smartest thing it could do is to bundle it with the Galaxy Watch so that you're not buying it separately, you're buying it for a discounted price, and then you have the whole picture of the Samsung health experience, and then you're just in their ecosystem. I really think it's an ecosystem play where you get an accessory for your accessory to your phone. And I think if they're smart, they'll do it that way where you're just like, oh, are you going to upgrade to the Samsung Galaxy 7? Free Galaxy Ring for you. Right. And then, you know, you do that at first and then people get on different upgrade cycles and then they buy in.

56:53And that's my insidious capitalism plan for - It tracks. No, it does. It does kind of make sense. And it also gets you to the point where now you're literally wearing something from that company 24 hours a day. And I think it should be really scary for Aura. Aura Unprompted sent me a statement when the Galaxy Ring was unveiled. Oh, that's never a good sign. Did it say we're not scared? Yes. Everything's fine? They said, we're not scared. We have hundreds of patents. We are the leader. This is validation in this space. And I'm like, yes, but also you should be scared because you charge a$6 monthly subscription on top of a$300 ring, Samsung can go, oh, we don't need a subscription for you.

57:34Right. Yeah, here, have some rings. Have some rings. Have it with our watch that also doesn't come with rings. We've also spent two years beefing up our sleep tracking features. So, yeah. Yeah. So, I think Aura's, I don't think they have to worry now, but they should be a little concerned is what I think. Yeah. Yeah, that seems right. It has a lot of the vibes of like when Slack took out that full page ad, when Microsoft Teams came out being like, everything's fine. We think our product is terrific. And that went super great for Slack. Last thing, then we got to go. Should I just give up on my idea and dream of the like wearable computer as a thing?

58:11Like ever since the beginning of the Apple Watch, I have loved the thesis of the Apple Watch originally, which was basically like we want to build a new, simpler, lower touch, more personal device for you to use instead of pulling out your phone all the time. And I think if I were to get real galaxy brand about all of this, it's like you come back to all this AI stuff that's happening and the stuff we're doing with voice and with transcription, and you can get to the point where like, okay, maybe actually talking to my wrist is going to quickly become a thing I can do and it will be good. And at the same time, all of these products are running away from that stuff and toward health and fitness.

58:49And so one of two things is either going to happen. It's either going to come back around or it's just these are just going to be health and fitness devices and we're either going to have to invent something new or the phone is going to continue to be the computer. Which one do you think it is? I think in the short term, the latter, but in the long term, the former. So you think we might come back around? I think we are going to come back around and you can see it with AR glasses. They are real. I just don't necessarily think it's going to be your wrist. I think it's going to be your eyes. That's yeah.

59:14So like it's just Ray-Ban meta glasses are like that. It's pretty wild. You put them on and it's like, oh, I kind of get it now. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like, I get it. Once they figure out how to do actual AR and not mixed reality, that's going to be a lot. But the thing is, when you wear something on your body, that's health. Right. That requires the FDA to get involved. Like, we've been talking about smart contacts for a long time. There's various prototypes in that. But when you are shining light into your eye that way, that's a, are you going to burn your retinas off? The whole thing. We don't know, right?

59:44We don't know. So that's why that's my theory is that why in the last versions of iOS and WatchOS, they included vision health for children because children's vision health. If you mess up your health as a child, you can't really get into a vision pro, can you? Man, speaking of ruthless capitalism, like we're going to we're going to save children's eyesight so they can use our headsets. But actually, I really do think that's it. But I really do think that's part of the thing because, you know, smart glasses leave out a lot of people who don't have like, you know, normal vision, including myself with my terrible astigmatism.

1:00:18But I really do think that we're going to go all the way around. It's just that we're in the very baby ages of wearables. It might feel like we've gotten really advanced, but we are super early on. The tech is not there yet. It's not miniature enough yet, as we saw with the Vision Pro. It's here to sell you on a future. And that's what smartwatches are here. the Ray-Ban metaglasses. That's what they're here. Like the Oura Ring. These are all selling you on a future that hasn't arrived yet because technologically it's not possible yet. And like, are we going to get non-invasive blood glucose monitoring?

1:00:47Someday. But they've been working on it since 1975. Like, I should do not. They've been working on it since 1975. It's going to take a long time. There's a lot of advances that have happened in the background. And I talked to all these vendors and it's really cool what they're doing. They got to deal with the FDA clearance process. And that will take anywhere between two to four years, depending on how much money and testing capabilities they have and the mountain of paperwork that they want to do. They have to do it in a medical facility. They have to have the security protocols in place. It's a lot of work.

1:01:17So, yeah, now wellness, future health. That's kind of the tradeoff that they're making. Okay. And then long future, David gets his wrist computer. Long future, David gets his face computer, his wrist computer, his finger computer, on the computer. You will be a computer. This is all I've ever wanted, V. Thank you. All right, we got to go. V, thank you as always. All right, we got to take one more break and then we're going to get to the Verticast hotline. We'll be right back.

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1:05:15All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE11 and the email is vergecast at theverge.com. We love all your questions. We try to answer at least one on the show every week. Please keep calling, keep emailing. I love hearing from you. This week, we have a question about the Vision Pro. If you're tired of hearing about the Vision Pro and Apple and headsets and the whole thing, I'm really sorry, but it's what everyone keeps asking about. This question comes from John. Hello, Vergecast team. I'm John in West Lafayette, Indiana. Apple priced the first Vision Pro at$3 ,500.

1:05:48Forgetting Apple's high profit margins for the moment, what would the price need to be for your review to say, we don't yet know how much consumers will use this, but the price is attractive. $1 ,500? $2 ,000? Optional follow-up question. Today, Apple sells iPad models from$329 to$1099. In two or three years, what will be the right price range for two or three Apple Vision models? Thanks, everyone. Love the show. Okay, I picked this question not because I have a crystal clear answer, but largely because I really want to know what you all think. As you've heard on this show, I have spent a lot of time yelling about how expensive the Vision Pro is.

1:06:30I think the phrase all caps$3 ,500 is like going to be written at the top of my obituary at this point. But I think this is a really interesting and complicated question. And I before I give my answer, I do want to know what you think. So call 866-VERGE11, vergecast at theverge.com. Tell me what price feels like the tipping point where this goes from sort of neat thing that exists, but doesn't make sense for most people to thing you would consider buying for real and telling other people to buy. And if you already bought a Vision Pro, I'm curious how much more you would pay. So think about that in both directions and let me know.

1:07:05I have two answers. I think the consumer price to make regular people buy this thing in huge numbers is$999. I think we're a long way away from that. But I think when you can get a $1 ,000 version of this, that is basically a very good iPad. It's a good entertainment device. it's a thing you don't have to use all the time to feel like you got your money's worth that's a nice price for that it's right in that high-end ipad range it's what you'd pay for a really good computer monitor it's about the price of a macbook air it just feels like that is kind of the top line buy this device it'll be cool and fun you'll love it in my dreams we're more in like the$599,$699 kind of game console price.

1:07:50But I think Apple is Apple and at$999, this thing would do just as well. But also at$1999,$1 ,999, I think the Vision Pro as it exists now becomes an order of magnitude more compelling. At that point, you're in nice MacBook Pro range. And it's very much still a pro device for pro people who want to use it for pro things. But even still, it becomes hugely more palatable. I mean, think of all the people who spent$1 ,600 on a studio display or are happy to upgrade their own PC for$1 ,000 just to get a little more performance and a little more memory and all that kind of stuff. Those are the sorts of people who I think a$2 ,000 price tag feels right.

1:08:37This is a great television. You could honestly at$2 ,000 say, this is the best TV, it's cool to wear, you'll love it, but it's a television and it'll still be compelling to a lot of people at$2 ,000. $3 ,500, you're just out of that range, at least for me. And I would guess that long-term, based on what I've seen so far and the way people are talking about it and the way even Apple talks about the Vision Pro, I think this thing will end up covering that gamut. I think this lands kind of in MacBook range where you can spend$1 ,000 for the cheapest one. And I think the cheapest one ends up basically just being a screen with apps.

1:09:12It's an iPad on your face in a very real way. And I think for$1 ,000, that's going to be compelling to a lot of people. Over and over, the thing that I'm hearing is that people like this most as an entertainment device. It's a way to sit on the couch or lie in bed and watch something. That's what people buy an iPad for. And I think you can get to a point where if you're Apple and you can sell basically an iPad, but it's cooler to use, you don't have to hold it in your hands, which is actually valuable for a lot of things. And it has all this kind of gaming and productivity upside. I think you can sell the base thing for$1 ,000.

1:09:45And then for more stuff, more power, more productivity tools, more ability to like do cool stuff. I don't know what they would add into these other things other than just better specs. That's how you get up to two grand. So that's my theory is that this thing wants to land basically on the whole spectrum between one and$2 ,000. And when it gets there, that becomes pretty powerful. I think it's going to take a while to get there. I don't think Apple is charging$3 ,500 for this because it is like a massively greedy company. I think this is a very, very, very, very expensive thing to make. And it's going to take a long time before they can sell it to you for one or even$2 ,000.

1:10:22But when they do, I will stop yelling about how expensive it is. And I'm very much looking forward to that day. But again, tell me what you think. Email us, vergecasttotheverge.com. Call the hotline 866-VERGE11. I want to know how you feel about the Vision Pro price. Would you have paid more than you did? Are you waiting for it to be a certain price? Are you like, David, you're insane. I'm only buying this thing if it's 99 bucks. Tell me everything. I desperately want to know. Hit us up. All right, that is it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to everybody who was on the show. And as always, thank you so much for listening.

1:10:51There's lots more from our conversation at theverge.com. We have now posts on the site with all of our show notes for every episode. So if you want to know more about everything that we did, go check it out. Also, like I mentioned at the top, we are now on The Verge's YouTube channel with all of our full episodes. So go like, subscribe, smash all the buttons, say mean things about us in the comments. Hit us up. We love hearing from you. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Poore. The Verge Cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neelai, Alex, and I will be back on Friday to talk about all of the Super Bowl streaming mishaps, more headsets, trillion-dollar AI ideas, and lots more.

1:11:28We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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