The orange iPhone stole the show

32:13And in some ways, Apple is making that process cleaner. It's saying we're going to give you options that are optimized and are going to make more sense so that you can do these things that are destructive and they're going to make your image worse. but in a way that we are going to take slightly better care of you for. And I think that's something. I don't know how much that is, but it feels like something. And it gives you the little buttons at the bottom of the screen that makes it simple. It's like 1x, 2x, you know, 4x. We understand that. I can push a button that says 2x rather than, yeah, pinch and zoom to something between 2 and 3 that's going to look kind of crappy for no good reason.

32:55It hurts every time. I know. I sit there and cringe when there are like eight lenses in your pocket. But the reality is like it's better than just a free-for-all of digital Zoom, I think. Yeah. And if they would just call it like camera simulators, it would be fine, right? Because that's essentially what it is, right? You're doing presets. And those presets are designed to simulate the experience of certain kinds of camera. That I think is great. I have no problem with that. And lots of camera apps do that and do it well and are like, oh, we're going to do XYZ filter to make it look like a film camera.

33:32I have no problem with that. Just don't say your three lenses are eight lenses because they're not. Like that's it. That's my only grape. I can look at the phone and see how many lenses there are. We don't need to do any more work than that. As someone who carried around a big, heavy, actual zoom lens with a lot of actual focal lengths, yeah, I take issue with that. Yeah. uh that said i do think there's a strong chance this camera is going to be very good um it has a bunch of new you know it does it does pro res raw it does log 2 it does gen lock it's got the simultaneous front and back recording which i think is very cool uh like this continues to be a camera phone in a very real way for apple and i think that makes a lot of sense what i wonder particularly about with the pro and pro max this year is how sort of far that still goes right like it's it's it is better there's no question it is better but the biggest problem that i think people have had with apple cameras especially for the last one or two revs of the iPhone is like Apple's ideas about what makes good photos.

34:44And I think it's so much about the imaging pipeline that Apple has decided. And this thing where they're like, we're going to crush all of the dynamic range and make sure there's no shadows and make sure every photo is usable. That like this idea that people have that their phone photos are getting worse is not about the hardware. It's about Apple's ideas about what your photos are supposed to look like. And even just looking at the sample photos and stuff here, it's like, maybe we're just pointing even better hardware at that exact same problem. I just don't know. Yeah, I have a lot of conflicting feelings about it because, yeah, we've all seen the over HDR look, the crunchiness.

35:19I talked to Mark Lavoie a couple weeks ago, kind of about that problem with phone cameras in general. And he pointed out, you know, that their job is to make the photo readable on screens of different sizes in different lighting conditions and you know I think I think we know that I'm like yeah that's why everything in the foreground looks brightened and because Apple can't be in trouble when your relative was like in the shadows in this photo. Does it make for a camera that people actively like is another thing. Apple is still, they've got the photographic styles and they've sort of gone, here, it's your problem now where you dial in kind of how you like skin tones.

36:15Do you like contrast? Do you like you know an actual hdr in your photos and i don't think they've solved anything it's there if you know how to go change those things and what they mean and there's a subset of users that will do that right like you can buy the pro max all the way up to i think it's two grand with a with two terabytes of storage and the people who are going to buy that phone are the people who are going to go in and dial this stuff in in a way that works. And I think I've long been a proponent that Apple should give people more control of their devices. And so like, yeah, that's great.

36:52I'm into that. I really, really wonder in these particular cases, if Apple is going to give people more sort of front and center ways to make things look just better. Right. Because I think like your point and marks about like it is there to prevent you from taking bad photos is a good and honorable goal but that's not the same thing as taking good photos and i think these phones are designed and they cost like they are for people who want to take good photos and video and i don't know like as as you review these things whenever you get to i'm i'm very curious how you feel about the actual stuff that's coming out of the camera because that's ultimately like there are better cameras than ever, but Apple still has to make a lot of decisions about them.

37:40Yeah. Yeah. Having feelings about phone cameras is, is my jam. So we do here. Yeah. All right. Well, I, I should let you go here, but do you, do you have a bet on there's four models here? Do you think there's one that is going to be the like sneaky runaway success hit of the line coming out? I think there's going to be a lot of orange iPhone 17 pros on the street. I think it's going to... I think so too. Yeah. It's a real vibrant color. It looks nice. I think it's going to be a hit. And it screams, I have the new one in a way that is very hard to do with an iPhone. Exactly. Yeah. I like it. That's a good take.

38:19All right. We need to take a break. Allison, you I'm sure have more stuff to do. So thank you for coming to do this with us. Thank you. All right. We'll be right back. Amazon has everything for everyone on your list. Like your teenage son, who won't give up the peach fuzz currently posing as a mustache on his upper lip. Get him an electric razor. Amazon has early holiday deals on gifts everyone wants. Like the latest kitchen gadgets and toys. And some they don't even know they need. Like that razor. Grab him a mirror, too. So he can see how pretty he is without that dirt on his lip.

38:59All right, we're back. V song is here. Hi, V. Hello. How are you feeling? Let's just talk about like your mental state for a minute here. It's that's my mental state. That's how it is. Yeah. Yeah. How so this is the first iPhone event I have not been at in a while. How does this compare? You've been doing this for a while. What were your vibes compared to recent ones? It's a little weird to be honest. In some sense, it's like, oh, business as usual. And in another sense, I just felt like there was some tension in the air just of like what is on deck, what's happening. And I think we all had a sense that the air was coming.

39:40We knew that watches were coming. I think everyone was pretty clear that AirPods were coming. But like when you walk out of it, usually there's like one or two things that you're like, oh, this is the stuff. And it's now it's like skinny phone and orange, which I must say, I'm an orange hater. I like I orange is on my shit list. And I looked at that orange phone and I went, oh, that's a good orange. I'm tempted. Do I want an orange phone? Am I going to have an orange existential crisis? I mean, I have an existential crisis every week, but this is my existential crisis. Do I want an orange phone?

40:12I don't know. I don't know. I kind of want an orange phone. I do feel like the internet has spent the entirety of today, by and large, coming around to the orange phone. I feel like we first saw the orange phone and everybody went like, absolutely not. No, thank you. And one by one, everyone I saw in Blue Sky was like, maybe I like the orange phone. I will say like the weeks that came out, especially I think I saw one earlier today and I was like, is that orange or is that doo-doo brown? Like a doo-doo brown orange. Because if it's a doo-doo brown orange, we are going to have to doo-doo that over.

40:45But it is, I will say it's not a sherbet orange. Like Charles Pulliam Moore asked me this. He went, is it spice or is it sherbet? It is spice. It is like a pumpkin spice, autumn vibes, but bright. And it's just like a quintessential deep orange. And like I said, I am an orange hater. I'm Miss Purple. I am The Verge's foremost expert on good shades of purple. And I was like, do I want an orange phone? Do I want an orange? That's something I'm going to be asking myself for the next few days. It is the most important question facing us in America right now, I would say. But I want to talk to you about AirPods and I want to talk to you about watches.

41:27And we have four products to cover and I have them in the order in which I find them interesting, which is maybe not the order that is going to make sense, but this is just the order we're going to do it. Which I think means we need to start with the AirPods first. Because I think to me, the AirPods Pro 3 were like the single most straightforward slam dunk great new product at this event. I would agree with you. They just are good. It's just chef's kiss, like, you know, Optimizer issue one, which I'm just going to plug here. There you go. But in that, I basically was like, I think Apple just needs to give the people what they want in general.

42:07And I was speaking specifically to the watches. But I think the AirPods 3 is just what people want. It's just, you know, genuinely good. I've spent some time with the product. I got to test out the ANC. I got to tell you, I was very impressed by the ANC. Like, I'm wearing the AirPods 2, so I'm not wearing the 3 right now. Gross. But yesterday is news. But I got to say, I was in that little room where you have the hands on. You know, David, it echoes. The music is playing. People are talking. It's loud. You know, they were doing demos on that floor. I put them in my ear holes and everything's quiet and I can just hear the dulcet sounds of the F1 soundtrack because that is the playlist that they had us listen to.

42:59Of course. But that's pretty impressive because I would actually I would compare an Apple hands on room to like a pretty busy train station. Right. It's like there's there's a lot of sort of hustle and bustle. There's no like specific loud noise, which is actually in many cases easier to cancel. It's like the reason they're good on planes is because it's just one noise the whole time. But this is just kind of stuff happening. So to be able to do that on a pair of a very small headphones and be like in an environment like that is really impressive. And I think the pros have been impressive for a while at that, in part just because they have that seal in your ears.

43:38Yeah. But like the ANC here, they said like the world's best ANC over and over to the point where it's like, I kind of think you're lying. Right. But maybe there's something to this. I think there's something to it, especially in this particular form factor. Like, of course, I think it's going to be really hard to be over your cans. And obviously, I have some at home. I'm going to see how they compare to my Sony Alphabet Soup XM4. I just know the last three. But I would say that I did notice a difference. Because I use these AirPod Pro 2s quite frequently. And I did notice a difference. And I think it really has to do with the fact that they've improved the fit.

44:15which my conspiracy theory is, yeah, you know, partly they talked a lot about design at this event. And you always know that it's going to be kind of like a interesting event when design is like the thesis that they're they're coming to it with it. But you know, they're like, oh, it fits in your ear more ergonomically. And when you do hold the three versus the two in your hand, you can see that there have been like changes to the shape. But my my pet theory is that when you add heart rate sensors to an earbud, you need to nail the fit. If the fit isn't absolutely perfect, that particular sensor is useless to you.

44:55So I think it's like a confluence of things. You want to have the best ANC, but also having a really secure fit in order to get heart rate, that's just going to make the seal better regardless. And then on top of that, there's five sizes of tips now um mine were medium so it's just fine straight out of the case but you know i was i was quite impressed it's actually the the set of hardware things they did here is pretty impressive right so in addition right there's the there's the heart rate sensor um it's i think a slightly lighter whole thing when you include the the headphones and the case the whole package is slightly lighter uh it's ip57 dust sweat resistance which is like to be clear is not the same as my headphones are waterproof like like please dear sweet jesus do not think your headphones are waterproof but this is better and this is the first time apple has given these things a real proper they will withstand this stuff rating uh that that i feel comfortable and good with so that's exciting better battery life more ear tips um like you said the the heart rate sensor it'll do live translations like this this is a lot of hardware stuff to do in headphones this is not just like we improved the software and it'll connect more cleanly to your mac so that it'll ring every time you get a phone call on all of your computers now this is like real genuine hardware stuff inside of these which is awesome it's very substantial and you know um i think like like i was mentioning with the fit kind of playing into the um anc some of it is also just kind of, I think there's the most thesis in this device across all of the ones that were released today, because on the one hand, you know, we're slowly like getting baby sprinkles of AI in there with the translation.

46:44And that is the thing that we've been seeing across the board from other companies, but it's most natural, I think. It's one thing to translate a phone call on a phone and yay, Gemini, yay, all of the whatever live translation for phone calls. But it's very natural to have it in your AirPods when you're going about. It kind of just makes sense to have it built into the actual buds themselves. And then just I, as someone who works out, was kind of like, oh, my God, you're allowing standalone workouts with the AirPods alone. You don't need an Apple Watch anymore. You can just do 50 types of workouts.

47:24And it's quite extensive. I did get a demo of this, of the heart rate sensor and how the standalone workout session is going to go. And I was like, oh, this is huge for people with wrist tattoos. Because I consistently hear from people who are like, I don't want to wear a chest strap. I don't want to. My Apple Watch doesn't really do heart rate well because I have a whole sleeve. There's just a tattoo there. Well, you don't need to worry about it anymore. You can just have it in your ears and use that to track. Or, you know, I have friends who do boxing. They can't wear a watch while they box, but they want the heart rate stuff.

48:00So you could just do it that way. It's kind of having a new modality that's open to you for heart rate tracking. And, you know, it's actually better, in my opinion, than the Powerbeats Pro 2, which introduced this. And so, you know, there was kind of a sense that the heart rate tracking was coming. But it's better because it's going to work in tandem with your Apple Watch. So you can have multiple streams of data. With the Powerbeats Pro 2, it's always going to defer to your Apple Watch. This will go, hmm, so you have a stream of heart rate data from your earbuds. Oh, you have a stream of heart rate data from your wrist.

48:42Which one is more accurate right now? Which one is giving you the better signal? and it'll switch between those. Which is like an incredibly Apple-y way of thinking about things, right? Like if you want to describe the thing that Apple tends to be better at than anybody else, it is precisely that thing. And half of that thing is making you buy more devices that do largely redundant things. But the other half is like actually making the sum greater or actually making the whole greater than the sum of its parts. And that is meaningful. And I think that's very cool. So I think to me, yeah, the AirPods Pro 3 are like if you're in the market for AirPods, these sound like they're gonna kick ass it's probably overkill if you're not really like an exercise person but to me honestly for the ip57 alone it as someone who has had weather and laundry ruin multiple pairs of airpods over the years like that alone is a huge upgrade for me i mean that's a huge thing for me too as someone who's been caught in downpours while running so it's i've i've wrecked earbuds that way so it is a pretty it's a pretty i don't know i think it's surprisingly like the sleeper hit in my opinion uh as far as utility goes as far as it like should i upgrade i i mean of course i'm gonna test them and i'm gonna live with them and tell you everything that is great and not great about it but if you're a day one i don't give a crap what reviewers think this is the thing that i think makes most sense on paper to upgrade to Totally.

50:08So, okay, let's talk about the watches, which I would argue are substantially less straightforward. And what I realized to me is I actually think the watches are most interesting, like directly in order from cheapest to most expensive, which is not how I have felt about the Apple Watch before. Ordinarily, I would have said like the middle one, the sort of vanilla Apple Watch is the one. The SE is the one if and only if you just can't afford it. Like understand, but like if you can, If there's any way at all to get the regular watch, get the watch. And then the Ultra is if you're like a lunatic in several ways.

50:42But I don't feel that way anymore. Now, I want to start with the Watch SE3, which I think might now be the correct Apple Watch for most people. Let me just run you through some of the specs here that I think are like big, giant, huge upgrades. $249, lovely price. Faster processor, longer battery life, stronger glass. It has an always on display, which is one of the like main things a watch should do is tell you the time all the time. It has 5G. It has better battery, not great battery, but it has better battery. It has more of the gesture stuff that the other watches have had. It's missing some of the like really high end fitness health stuff.

51:21But if you can do without that and what you want is just like a smartwatch for other smartwatch things. This feels like the biggest upgrade by a mile in this line. 100 % I was sitting there going like, am I most excited about the SE3? That was not on my bingo card. And to be quite honest, I am most excited about the SE3 because it is the most substantial of the updates. And it's a confusing move in some respects because now the gap between the SE and the series, it's razor thin. It's basically health. Health is the big differentiator between the two. I would say health and battery life. But one of the things that's not coming to the SE3 is the high blood pressure feature that's currently going through FDA clearance.

52:10I think they're pretty confident that they will get that clearance soon. Yeah, there was a footnote, I think, that said by the end of this month, they expect the hypertension stuff to be FDA approved. So, like, who knows, but that's that. Who knows, but they seem pretty confident. And if we look at Apple's track history or track record, it's a lot better than Withings. it's a lot better than that one uh so you know it's kind of one of those things where i sat there and i was like okay you know uh one one of the things that the se3 is getting is also a speaker that was a thing that was gatekept to the uh flagship last year uh it truly is what are you missing you're missing blood oxygen you're missing ekgs you're missing um that uh high high blood pressure thing but you're getting sleep apnea you're getting the sleep score uh and and the reason why you're not getting the high blood pressure thing is because it does not have the most up-to-date uh optical heart rate sensor which you know it's it's good enough uh you don't get the 24 hour battery life which we have to talk about uh the significance of it being 24 for the series 11 but um it is getting fast charging for the first time and i have talked to dozens bazillions i many many apple watch users i have talked to them and they either fall into the category of like well it's no garmin it's not lasting forever or the very like well you just charge it when you shower what's the big deal yo um and you know 15 minutes on the charger is supposedly going to get you eight hours ish of battery life so so as long as you shower every eight hours you should be fine you should be fine so i actually let's talk about battery life and And this is a good segue into the Series 11 because I think that the single most important spec of the Apple Watch right now is battery life in terms of like, A, your ongoing enjoyment of the product, B, the set of things that you can do with it.

54:13Especially, I think I'm more and more converted to cellular Apple Watch all the time. I don't own a cellular watch right now, but I am confident the next one I buy will be a cellular one because there's just a set of things that suddenly become possible. But that also is going to destroy battery life. So we're at this place now where like the SE3 says 18 hours of battery. And that just isn't enough because what that means is it is going to die before I can charge it. It just does. Here's the thing. Apple always says 18, but they're the opposite of Samsung where I have like yelled at Samsung many years in a row by them overestimating or overpromising on the battery life of their watches and them fall.

54:53I admit I'm a power user, but them falling short of the promises and me being like, yo, that's dumb. And Apple has always under-promised and over-delivered with battery life. That is true. It depends year to year. So it's not always going to be better or whatever, depending on what features they're offering and what's running in the background, what the software is. but I have routinely gotten better than 18 hours of battery life for many many years now to the point where I'm like they say 18 but that is such a conservative estimate I think that's true now that I think about it I and I do think to your point I think I think the fast charging thing is probably the bigger deal because if it was true that I could charge zero to a hundred or close to it in the time that it takes me to like shower and get ready in the morning charging stops being a problem.

55:45Like now I have infinite battery life, right? Like, yeah, I take it off when I take my clothes off and I put it on when I put my clothes on. And that is the end. We've done it. And you should you should be airing out your wrists. I'm very, very passionate about airing out your wrist because of that. Again, I'm the crazy wearable lady. So I was gonna say this feels like a you problem to to some extent, but to some extent, but you really do need to air out your wrists because the skin gets weird if you don't watch, which is currently dead. I'm taking off right now just to air out my wrists while we're doing this.

56:14Thank you. Your skin will thank you for that. But to that point, you know, for them, this is 10 years of them never budging beyond the 18-hour estimate, even though I have routinely gotten more than 18 hours for several years, especially after they introduced the improved low battery power mode. So for them to say it's 24, I'm sitting here just like, are we getting 24 or are we getting 36? Of course, it always depends on your usage. It depends on how much extra you can get out of a low power battery mode. But I'm saying I think them moving from 18 to 24, they do not do that unless they are very confident and they are very conservative.

57:02So for them to say 24, to me, as having tested everything since the, I don't even remember, but it's like a small number, like the Apple Watch Series 2, at least, having lived with every iteration of the Apple Watch since then, that is big to me. Particularly me, I was just like, 24 hours? Oh, my God, they've moved the number up. Oh, my God, that never happens. So, you know, I was sitting there just like exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. That's actually a big thing. And it's the number one thing that readers are in my comments about just being like, battery life is my number one thing.

57:43And it plays into sleep tracking because you cannot have 18 hours and sleep track effectively. And sleep tracking is something that people really want. You know, Apple has always been a little bit behind on sleep tracking compared to the market because of the battery life issue. So for them to really do that and on top of that go, we have a sleep score for you now, that is sort of... I gotta say that those are just like how the AirPods and the heart rate sensor, you know, those things work synergistically. Having long battery life, having sleep score, these are things that enable each other. Yeah.

58:23And you continue to convince me that sleep tracking is a huge thing because I think, and this gets us to the ultra a little bit, like one of the things that puts all of these devices that we're talking about here together is that Apple is really like pretty aggressively pivoting into being a health tech company in a way that I am perpetually surprised by. Like all of the sort of everyday normal person features stay the same year to year. And then they give you more health stuff. Like that's what's happening on these devices. And it's fascinating. And I continue to think like, I think I believe Tim Cook when he says it is like a thing he cares about as a person.

59:04I have a lot of thoughts about what Tim Cook cares about as a person right now, but we'll come back to those another time. but I think it is fascinating that that is a thing that Apple has identified as like meaningful to its business also and I think to your point I do think sleep track and especially the sleep score thing strikes me as a huge opportunity there to like get right and do in a like big mainstream way listen uh I come from a family of doctors and one of the things that they always told me is that the number one possession you have the thing that will influence your life more is your health.

59:40If you have bad health. That's such a parent thing to say. It is, but also it's a parent thing to say, but this was mostly my grandpa who was like a big famous doctor in this one city in Korea. And he was just like, if you do not have your health, you do not have a good life. And that was very dramatic. That's like a very, you have to think about it in a very old, dramatic Korean grandpa way where he's like, Victoria, if you do not have your health, you do not have life. uh so but he's true he's completely correct in the sense that this is the thing that got the apple watch to be a thing because you know if we go back in apple watch history they thought it was going to be fashion and lol i'm too poor to ever have an hermes um apple watch even though they're very pretty they're very nice but and still exist which is a thing i didn't realize until literally today when they said hermes on stage yeah yeah but you know it didn't really kick off until EKGs came out and then everyone's like oh my god this is going to save your grandma's life and now what do they do every single year uh and I think I said it in the live blog I was like cue the annual the apple watch will save your life real and and it's and it's very compelling because you have real life people and they find different ones every year it's not the same person every year different people who are like this thing saved my life because it pointed out a thing and you know I think that's we watch and we go like well yeah okay you're giving me health anxiety, but at the same time, it's a very compelling marketing proposition.

1:01:07And the thing that I get asked a lot by my friends, family, people I know is what do I buy my mom or my dad? They recently had a health crisis. And so what do I do? And what they are doing is they're basically positioning the SE3 as kind of like the core smartwatch experience. It's something that It gives you a taste and it's very expansive. But we're going to keep the health to the series. So the series is now your overall health watch. And then, you know, the Ultra 3 is for us lunatics out here doing fitness stuff, basically. So, you know, if you think about it from that lens, the updates make sense.

1:01:47I kind of wish they made it clearer in their messaging because you kind of have to just like sit there and turn into the meme of the lady doing the math floating around. her and just going like what what is happening here with these updates uh but i think that's the key differentiator going forward um between the series and the sc is like how much do you care about your health right how how much do you like nobody wants to die right like we all want health insurance because we want to live and we want to live well and we want to live healthy so i don't think tim cook is wrong even though you know swole tim cook so he obviously cares about all of that.

1:02:25But I genuinely think that people will do anything to live a healthy life because it means they get to live longer. It means they get to spend more time with the people they love. So tapping into that and saying, this is an essential device for you to live a long, happy life. Ka-ching, ka-ching, baby. That's monetization for you. It's true. It is tough to argue with the theory there. But I like that differentiation of like, Like there's the smartwatch, which is the SE3. There is the health watch, I guess, which is the Series 11. And then there's the lunatic watch, which is the Ultra 3. And I mean lunatic as a compliment, to be clear.

1:03:02All of you lunatics who are hearing this being like, I'm normal and I wear it. Please know that I hear you and I love you. Nothing about the Ultra 3 seemed super duper exciting to me. It's got like a little bigger screen. The OLED's a little better, a little longer battery life. The things you would hope would get a little better rev to rev, but nothing that feels like it's going to sort of meaningfully change your experience with this watch. I think that is 100 % true for non-lunatics. Because, you know, they say the largest display ever. Well, I held the Ultra 2 and the 3 side by side. And I think Vergecast listeners know, because I've been screaming this all summer, I have garbage eyeballs.

1:03:44My eyes are not great. Right. So take that with a grain of salt, knowing that my eyeballs, not the best eyeballs on Earth, held them side by side. And I went, I guess the bezel's a little thinner. I guess it's slightly. Sure. I mean, this is where we're at now. Yeah, this is where we're at. Yeah. But for the lunatics out there, the thing is SOS satellite communication. Sure. That's going to be the thing, because if you're a through hiker, if you're someone who has a Garmin in reach, Or you want to be able to, I don't know, you've fallen down a ravine and your phone went flying and you're just like, ah, crapamola.

1:04:22I don't want to die. And I really, save me. Someone, oh, no, you have SOS. Satellite SOS. And it includes texting, includes location sharing. And it also includes just sending messages in areas where you have absolutely no signal whatsoever. However, for me, my initial thing was like, well, they had that on the iPhone. What's the benefit of having that on a watch? And so then I was thinking of the scenario where I fell off a cliff and I'm like, oh, God, there goes my phone. I guess it's still on me. Huzzah. Sure. But also, you know, one of the things I was thinking about was like, well, on the Ultra, the battery life lasts a pretty good dang long time.

1:05:07So you have options, I guess. but you know it is an important thing it's the heart rate thing all over again right like it's it's a case where there just is no downside to having more versions of the feature at your disposal yeah and you know um a lot of through hikers like our very own good mitchell clark may he hike in perpetuity but when he went on his absolutely lunatic quest to go to the pacific crest trail um i had dude i don't know how you did that love you mitchell but couldn't be me um that's lunatic stuff it really is like this is who that appeals to right because they those people have garment and reaches they have subscriptions for the garment and reach and that's basically there to go like oh i'm in tyaskan maryland where my my spouses in-laws are from and there's only one tree where if you stand a certain way you get a bar of signal you know like for people who are in those areas who spend a lot of time in those areas who maybe don't want to have their phone on them or even their phone isn't really doing it for them you know you just have another option uh i think it's a good thing in terms of if you're paranoid about that or if you just want to check in on on these uh hiking trips or whatnot uh but the other thing is, you know, it's a watch.

1:06:27People who love the Ultras love the Ultras. When we were in the arena, you know, when the Ultra came out, I heard people around me go, yes! And I was, what is this visceral love for the Ultra? It does have its people, for sure. Like, it has its people, and for those people, I think that's who the satellite SOS is for. And you don't pay a subscription for two years with that. And, you know, that's, you, I mean, one should hope if one is buying a$800 watch for the satellite SOS and trying to get rid of some of the other equipment and maybe like streamlining it into like minimal devices, one would hope that you don't have to pay an extra subscription for the SOS communication.

1:07:11I think Apple can spot you for that one. I just want to say, by the way, that ever since you said it's different people in every video when they talk about the people whose lives are saved, I can't stop thinking about if there's one person who's just like, you know, Richard just like keeps falling down mountains and just like sends Tim Cook an email every year and is like, buddy, you did it again. I'm still here. I got the SOS this time. We're cool. And he's like, my friends found me because of this new feature. And he's just like, Tim Cook is just like, stop sending this guy Apple watches. Like he's out there.

1:07:41And if it is you who keeps trying to die, but being saved by your Apple watch, I would like to hear from you. I also would love, I would love to interview you. We would love to do a special Tuesday episode and dissect your life. V and I will come fall off cliffs with you anytime. You can go fall off cliffs. I have no desire to fall off. I've got training to do. I had a charley horse the other day from rolling over in my bed, so I'm aging, and I can't take these risks of falling off cliffs. But I would love to interview you about falling off a cliff. There we go. I love this for us. All right. We've got to take a break, V.

1:08:16Eve, I'm sure, got more things to write about watches. But we got more to talk about. I only have two wrists, and there are three watches. I know, who's them to do? Can you do one as like an ankle monitor situation at some point? Many people have suggested this to me, which I don't know how that makes me feel. I think you string them all together and wear them like a choker around your neck. V, thank you. Yeah, as always. We'll be right back. Morning, Zoe. Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage? I want to be in a T-Mobile commercial like you. Teach me, Sildana. I couldn't possibly.

1:08:48At T-Mobile, get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system. Impressive. Let me try. At T-Mobile, you can save up to 20 % versus the other big guys. You heard them. T-Mobile is the best place to get the new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible trade-in in any condition. Check them out to see how much you can save versus the other big guys at T-Mobile.com slash switch. All right, we're back. one more thing to talk about and jake castronakis it's you hi jake hey it's good to see you they let you back in they did miracle of miracles uh it's possible this is the last verge cast i will ever get to do but they let me do one more i'm excited you're here you had a new experience for you you've been at the verge uh for 650 years you you joined uh in in the the renaissance period if I remember correctly.

1:09:40Technology was very different back then. It was very different. But if I'm not mistaken, this is the first time you have been to Cupertino for an iPhone launch, right? This is my first time at Apple Park. Yes, certainly my first iPhone hardware event. And it was a new experience for me. It's very different watching it remotely, seeing all the photos, reading the live blogs, and actually being here, seeing the scenery, being in the space. It's Apple really, you know, you kind of look at it from afar and you go, oh, they really like put a lot of polish on this place. And then you get there and you're like, whew, that was a lot of work went into this thing.

1:10:20What stood out? Like it's been a long, crazy day. What are some of the like wildest moments of the day for you? Well, okay. If I can just talk about the space, because I think this is something that obviously most people don't see. They shoot their videos around campus. And having been on their campus for the first time, I really understand why. Like, it is a sculpted, carefully crafted park. And the park in the name, I think, externally as an observer has always felt, I don't know, a little pretentious. And now being there, I'm like, nope, there's like rolling hills. There's a ton of trees, there's grass, like, it really does feel like a park.

1:10:59And there just happens to be a weird spaceship in the middle. so perhaps it is a little bit pretentious to build that for yourself but it really is a very lovely remarkable space and you understand why they're like of course we're going to show this thing off like of course we're gonna dot ourselves around this campus for these videos and you know the theater that they bring you into is just it's gargantuan it's like um i don't know brutalist isn't quite right because it has obviously soft edges everywhere, but it's just, you know, towering walls. Um, you know, these immense views of the sky, it's very striking.

1:11:37Um, and I think a lot of the hyping up of this space that they did, you know, it doesn't necessarily come across in the photos and videos. And then when you're there in the space, uh, you understand why they put so much energy into telling people about this place. It really is very impressive. And, you know, the iPhones, that's what we're here for. But as somebody who hadn't seen the location before, really, really fascinating to get to go there. Yeah. It's one of the things I really like about going to WWDC every year is that it is full of people who have never been to Apple Park before. And I think, A, there is something about Apple as a company that like people are attached to in a way that is very unusual.

1:12:26But there is something about that place. Like you and I have been to a lot of corporate offices and most of them are corporate offices. And I think the only two places I've ever been that felt sort of meaningfully different were when I lived in Oakland, my landlord happened to be a Pixar animator. And so he just took my wife and I on a tour of the Pixar offices. And that was like, that's a place that is also sort of like famously special and people do like super elaborate decorations of their offices so that they look like movie sets. That was very cool. And then for me, the first time I went down the stairs at the Steve Jobs Theater and you're up in this huge sort of open waiting room that's like all glass all the way around.

1:13:10And then you start to go down the stairs and the stairs are like basically carved out of marble as you go all the way. And it's just like, Like there's something genuinely sort of special about it. And that is like, it doesn't make me like the iPhones more, but it's like, God, they did a good job. I mean, there's something like religious isn't the right word. But when you're looking up at that big staircase from down below, it's just this thing that towers above you and you feel your scale within it. And I don't even mean to say that it gave me these feelings about Apple, but they clearly designed it to have an effect on you.

1:13:48and it's a remarkable piece of architecture when you're standing inside of it. Yeah, like shouts to the architects is really what it is. They spent a lot of money and did a very good job. It also, from what I can tell, seems like an awful place to work because you're like, I have a meeting over there, and it's a three-quarter of a mile walk. That's a different problem. There's lots of golf carts. I was scoping out whether they had Apple bikes. I think they do. They appear to be single speed. So there's a – tell me if I'm wrong. I might be mixing up single speed and fixie, but there's a chain um but it's one chain i don't think there are gears they're like this kind of soft gray silver um they look they look nice they look nice gears are are too much visible work do you know what i mean there was no chance there were going to be gears on those no i never honestly it's surprising they're not fixie bikes now that yeah i'm honestly i'm stunned these things aren't like there isn't like a hot market for these like if you're a true apple fan you've got a lifted apple bike when i was living in silicon valley you used to see the google bikes all over the place people would steal them off of google's campus and ride them to caltrain or whatever i don't think i've ever seen an apple bike in in the wild so if if you've seen one send us pictures vergecastatheverge.com i want to see all of your apple bike spottings but i suspect there are large security guards who will do crimes to you if you do that oh yeah yeah yeah um so we've already talked about the phones we've already talked about the airpods we already talked the watches what i want to do with you is kind of cover off all the other stuff because it at an event like this there's always a lot of other stuff um and the thing that jumped out to me the most and i'm curious just to get your thoughts on this this felt like a very accessory heavy iPhone event in a way that they typically aren't.

1:15:37They talked a bunch about a case. There was a lot of noise about a crossbody strap that everybody had a lot of feelings about. There was just a thing where we're going to launch a bunch of devices, but then we're going to do kind of a lifestyle brandy thing around them. And I know you got to see some of the devices. I don't know how many of the accessories were out there, but what do you make of this push towards all of the stuff that you can sort of attach to your devices right next to the devices themselves okay people are so hyped for this crossbody strap and it is it is not for me i am not the demographic i don't know who the demographic is but they're out there i've seen them um i just think the idea that you're gonna buy a phone and just proudly display it like pretty loosely on your body is just lunacy.

1:16:26Like don't, don't do that. I think it's, it's bizarre. You're just like, I don't want to know too much about this phone. It's just going to be floating around while I'm not using it. I might hear it vibrate. I might, I don't know. I'll find it eventually. It feels like you just like let it float off. I, it's not for me. Um, but there's, people are very excited. I don't know why. I think maybe it's because a new category for Apple, even though there's a trillion of these things in existence. I think all their new cases have little lanyard straps now because they know that this is a thing. They know people want to wear them this way.

1:17:03Do they, though? Like, is there actual evidence that this is a real thing that exists? I've seen them around. I've seen them around New York. I can't quite tell if it's a Taurus thing or a Gen Z thing. I don't want to date myself here, but I suspect there is a specific demographic and it's just like it's not men in their 30s, which like, I don't know. I like the pocket. The pocket still works for me. Yeah, sure. I'm doing fine. But to your point about this being an accessories-heavy event, I do think it's interesting for us as phone reviewers, and I think for folks who are listening who are probably big fans of technology, the accessories always feel like a little bit of an afterthought.

1:17:53And I think it is probably worth realizing that these purchases go hand in hand for everybody. And if the accessories don't work, the device doesn't necessarily work for you. And I don't think, like, if you go out in public, you're rarely going to see an iPhone without a case on it. You don't see AirTags without things wrapped around them, right? So Apple, I think, is necessarily seeing, okay, we need to pair these two things. And yeah, they had a lot of different options here. Obviously, the big one was the return of the woven cases. This comes two years after the disaster of fine woven. They look very similar.

1:18:35This new one's called tech woven, but they say it is much better. they did not have them out in the demo area though so i i think that was intentional they probably knew people were going to immediately try to rub some keys against them to see what happens yeah i'm imagining every single reporter like ran out grabbed the sharpest thing that they had oh yeah like i'm gonna go find that case i mean as soon as i got my hands on an iphone air i i like squeezed a little i'm like i gotta see this bends like i don't want it there's there's handlers there you know you can't too much but uh i i was you know in my in my limited testing i did not you know no flex yet uh we'll we'll see what journalism usually that's that's when you got to be like oh no look somebody's stealing a macbook and then just like snap the phone and run away i you know i thought maybe not on my first visit to their headquarters i didn't want to get escorted out by security but um you know i gave a little flex for for journalism i give a little flex and what did you think we we spent a bunch of time with alison talking about the the iphone air but uh you're the only other person i know who has touched the thing what do you make what do you make of it it's striking it's striking how thin it is it really is it's it's a lovely piece of hardware it is i'm i'm a small phone guy as much as is possible these days which is usually like the 6.1 inch area this is 6.3 inches definitely feels a little bit bigger but i think because it's so thin you can get away with it a little bit more it's not necessarily as big on your person uh they let me sneak into my pocket it it like fits in the pocket um it feels light it's nice it's it's it's a striking piece of hardware and i suspect that a lot of people you see this in a showroom and you're like hmm sounds pretty nice looking yeah can i tell you the funniest picture that i saw on our website today uh which i believe is courtesy of you uh is the very thin iphone air with a big fat old battery case just stuck to the back okay i'm i don't even necessarily like want to talk about it as it relates to iphone air people freaking love apple's battery packs the old one was enormous and chunky and the ugliest thing on earth people love that thing you see them everywhere it's the the battery packs and the the MagSafe wallets that just are like, you know, the, whatever, you can have two credit cards on it.

1:21:00I see those everywhere. So it kind of surprises me that they're not bringing this back for the other phones. Again, people really like this thing. So it's just for the iPhone air, which I have questions. I have questions if that means they have battery life concerns about the phone itself, or if they just know that people like these and maybe this will help drive iPhone air sales because people go, oh, I want to pair these two things. When you pair them together, it does sort of make you go, oh, why did I get the iPhone Air? Because if you have battery problems with the iPhone Air, maybe you should have just gotten a bigger iPhone in the first place and now you have a bigger thing altogether.

1:21:39If you're buying your phone for the battery life, don't buy the iPhone Air. I will say the iPhone Air plus the battery pack. The battery pack is a lot, a lot thinner than the old one. It is thicker than the iPhone Air still. So ever so slightly thicker. So you're basically doubling the thickness of the iPhone Air, which I'll say still doesn't feel terrible, right? That together feels like a reasonably sized phone, but it's bigger than other iPhones. So it's - But it's in two pieces and more expensive. Yeah, it's in two pieces. You can lose one of them. You've made a deconstructed iPhone 17 Pro with worse features.

1:22:18Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, if you're just going out to the store, you leave your battery pack behind. If you're going for your entire day, you know, you get a double iPhone. Sure. I love this for you. This is the optimism we come here for. This is what you're going to see everywhere starting 2026. I mean, you're probably right about that. um when you were in the room i assume it was like so just for folks who haven't been there you you leave the steve jobs theater and right behind it is this like big open airy hands-on area and i have to assume that it was like 75 percent people clamoring to get to the iphone air 25 everything else it it was i it felt to me like an even split between the the iphone air and the orange iPhone Pro.

1:23:09Oh, fascinating. At the iPhone Pro table, all the other colors, who cares? White? What is this? Gotta get that orange one. There are lines for the orange one. I had to elbow my way in to get the orange one. That's what people want to see, which I think it could just be for this crowd, it is the most new-looking iPhone Pro. But yeah, people, it's an interesting one for Apple. They don't usually go that bold, that bright. But yeah, you get out there and people are, it's packed. It's like a mad rush to get out there. And Apple has, I don't know, dozens and dozens of demo stations. It's sort of this weird freeform thing where they've got representatives standing by to demo the phones.

1:23:55Nobody really wants them to demo the phones. And so everybody's grabbing the phones. there's you know i think there's uh written journalists who uh are trying to get photos really fast and impressions really fast so that they can go back and and write stuff on their laptops there's tiktokers who are recording video there's people with full camera setups on tripods so it's it's just a complete rush a complete madhouse in there and apple is doing their best to to keep order uh as everybody kind of scrambles and bounces between the new devices interesting that the orange one was such a big hit and this this is now three for three of verge guests on this podcast who are into the orange iphone which i would say was pretty controversial on the internet i want to say i i said it was very popular oh well only two for three okay it's i'm not an orange guy in general it's there is like a little not an autumn coppery something to it's a little bold for me i don't know if i would if i would do the orange it is a weird color It's like right in time for Halloween or pumpkin spice season or something.

1:25:02I do appreciate the swing that it is, right? Like it is. I think Apple has been guiltier than almost anybody of doing incredibly boring colors where it's like, look, we made a blue iPad mini that is like essentially not blue. Like this isn't even a color. What are we doing here? You can't tell. Yeah. No. And so to actually come out and be like, and there was actually a bunch of this. There's some of this with the tech woven cases. There's some of this with the crossbody strap. There's some of this, there's just real like showy energy in some of these devices in a way that I actually really appreciate.

1:25:40Not all of it is for me, but like I appreciate the loudness of it. There's not a lot of that in tech right now. I think that's sort of the story here too, right? Not everybody upgrades their phone on a regular cadence. They wait until it dies. And this year in a lot of ways was designed to say, hey, in case you haven't been paying attention, a lot has changed, right? Year over year, maybe not so much. If you're going back a few years, okay, now there's a brand new design in the Pro, right? There's a whole new airline. Do you need two cameras? Who cares? No, oh, one camera is actually four cameras.

1:26:17What, like, it's, everything is new and different. There's this new accessory options, lots of new colors, everything has a new name. So yeah, I think you're right. Like, this is a year about being kind of flashy. And I think that's very much by design to show like, hey, there's been a generational shift. Even if it wasn't necessarily these phones, and you could, maybe you could make the argument that it's these phones. I think they're saying, cumulatively, a lot has changed since the last time we changed up our designs. And that's very true. Because it's been since I think 2019 when we got this basically same design on the iPhone 11 Pro.

1:26:51Yeah, I and we have been hearing from a lot of folks, I think for our audience in particular, at least the 13 seems to be the sweet spot where there are there were a lot of 13 owners looking at this event being like, is am I finally going to pull the trigger here? which feels about right right like it's it's now four generations ago which is i think a reasonable amount of time for a phone to last now uh and if you're coming from the 13 like a lot of stuff is going to be a lot better and also it's going to be orange right like yeah and that counts for something and i think you're like and it's gonna you're gonna wear it you know with a weird sash across your body like it's your phone is gonna feel like you bought a new thing And I think you're right.

1:27:35That's hard to come by in a lot of ways right now. And finding even simple ways to get that done is pretty interesting. Speaking of things that are going to change everybody's phones a lot, not a lot of software talk today. So we have all these other companies that are basically just like getting on stage and saying, here is our phone. It does AI. That is its whole purpose. It's a brick for AI. I think Apple probably said AI a couple of times, but these are not AI devices. They didn't talk about Siri. They didn't talk about Apple intelligence. It was just a completely different way of talking about smartphones than we've seen recently.

1:28:11Was that weird in the room? Yeah, that's so funny. You're completely like the Pixel 10. They held up the same phone, like the exact same thing and said now with more AI. Yeah. the iphones yeah it's like there's maybe some small software tricks to work with what they've already got or some of the tweaks they're making right you know i think if you look at the watches okay there's some where the airpods yeah they have some some software to to work that's very yeah the live translation and stuff that that counts as ai that's but i i do think you're right like there's not any exclusive certainly ai features which which is what you would expect to be the big deal, at least flagship ones beyond that sort of, you know, live translate stuff.

1:28:55The one place I did clock some changes is maybe in the front facing camera, right? There's a whole bunch of software stuff going on to work with that new center stage camera where it keeps changing shape around you. It's fascinating. As far as I can tell, there just isn't an option to shoot with the entire sensor, right? You have to shoot with it in its wide or portrait setup or doing one of its wacky things. You can control it manually, but it really is designed as a set it and forget it thing, which is interesting, right? That's working on how the hardware works. But other than that, I agree with you.

1:29:33I don't think it's a big software year. I think if you look at a lot of Apple's changes, not just to the iPhone line, but to the MacBooks, to watches in recent years, their big advantage is hardware, right? It's silicon, it's sensors. They're so far ahead of the game in most places. They're able to, you know, they introduced a new chip for several of their networking things. They updated their modem six months after their last modem, right? No one else is doing this. I don't know. I don't know if they need their own modem. Maybe they do. We'll find out. But that's where their focus really seems to be.

1:30:13It's getting these edges with hardware and i suspect they'll have a software story again soon but you know i think they were probably hoping it was going to be ai stuff and and we know how that went yeah and then then they thought it was going to be liquid glass and uh boy have i been using those betas for a while and boy do i still hate liquid glass is there it sure is yeah i think that's about the best you can say for it. And I think, again, like if I were to be the most glass half empty about all of this that I could be, you could paint a real story about a lot of what Apple is doing here that is very like lipstick on a pig, right?

1:30:57That they're like, well, we don't have any actually new product ideas. We're just going to make it all look different. And that is very un-Apply, right? I think the thing that Apple has done so successfully for so long is that it has had better product vision than any of its competitors. And so everybody was like, oh, here's a box for playing music on, right? Like Apple was the one that understood what that is supposed to look like and how that's supposed to work. What's so fascinating about Apple right now is that what it is really good at is exactly what you're saying. It is able to just out execute at like a very like infrastructural level, all of its competitors.

1:31:36Like it's, it's chips are just so much better than everybody else's that the rest of it almost doesn't matter. Its products are going to be better because it has that. And now it's, it's, it's spreading that out into like, you're talking about some of the neural engine stuff and some of the networking chips. And they're just like really ready to take a knife to Qualcomm with all of the modem stuff as quickly as possible. And it is like, that is now Apple's edge. It's not like the people in the design studio with the blonde wood tables that everybody talked about for forever. And these like hushed reverent tones.

1:32:10that's not their advantage anymore their advantage is like the deeply unsexy computer stuff and it's fascinating i think you can look at this as a good thing or a bad thing right does apple have a grand vision for how to change smartphones to make them work better for us it does not seem that way right i don't think they have been building toward that over the past few years to be fair i don't know that anybody does but i certainly don't think there's evidence that Apple does. No, no, I agree with you. It might not be there. This may just be what the product is. Are they able to iterate every year through hardware to make it a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better?

1:32:53And are they able to do that better than most other companies because of their iron grip on their hardware supply chain and their deep engineering team? Absolutely. And that's what we saw again. It's like little tweaks everywhere. right we're going to upgrade some of the cameras we're going to add a bunch of flashy if confusing new camera features i think i agree with all that and it actually leads me to the last question that i have for you which is that you are kind of famously uh an android guy in a in a world full of iphone people uh that's actually statistically not true at all but uh it it it often feels that way at least among the verge yeah in the group chats is is there anything here that tempts you back to the the iphone side of things it's we've seen kind of the the swings from these companies now are you are you tempted towards an iphone i mean the big thing for me is cameras right i i i'm going to go more or less where the best camera system is and i i honestly for the past few years i feel like it's been a wash right went to the pixels a while ago and i think you could i think by the time that you're pixel peeping to be like well white balance.

1:34:04All right. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a matter of taste as much as anything for a while now. Absolutely. Yeah. The cameras are getting better, right? The new telephoto, you know, we've only seen demo shots. Of course, they look gorgeous. That's how it always is. Yeah. But I'm intrigued. They say the sensor's a lot bigger. They are doing a bunch of, you know, normal zooming enhancement instead of AI zoom enhancement. and hopefully it looks good and is real. So, you know, I think some of the others are maybe not moving as fast in that department. The front-facing camera thing is weird and trippy, but I'm interested.

1:34:48You know, it's a big new sensor. You know, the redesign is nice. It looks nice. I don't think, like, that's necessarily the reason to buy it. but if you've got an old phone you know that's that's uh certainly a telling point that things have changed i think for somebody on android somebody who's been on pixel you know it's these iterative upgrades right it's the same story do i love the camera control button do i love how works with the new camera features maybe maybe we'll see it doesn't sound like you're tempted towards an iPhone. That was like a very nice way of saying, nah, I'm good. I, listen, I don't think we have enough time for this, but I, I've got like an hour long thing about notification management on iPhones.

1:35:35Oh boy. Oh boy. It's not, it's not good. Jake, if it wasn't 1103 PM where I am, I would sign up for that right now. But luckily you and I have a lot of podcasts to host for this fall. So we're, we're going to have some time to do this. All right. For now, you need to go. I need to go. I'm very glad you got to go to Cupertino this is a fun thing, you and I have been on opposite sides of this where you've been like telling me what to do as I run around Cupertino a million times, so it was fun to get to watch you do the chaos all on your own oh yeah, I have so much more sympathy for you now I'm sorry for everything I've ever said it's a weird day and you're always like what are they doing and the answer is they're just sort of wandering aimlessly around Apple Park trying to figure out where they are, yeah exactly it's a life All right, Jake, thank you as always.

1:36:24Good to see you, bye. Later. All right, that's it for the show today. Thank you to everybody who came on with me. It's pure chaos being in Cupertino for one of these events. So please know it's a heroic effort to be on the Vergecast on Apple Day. And as always, thank you for listening and watching. We're gonna talk a lot more about Apple in the next couple of weeks. We're gonna test these devices. We're gonna see what happens when people start to buy these devices. Our new and old devices are gonna get a bunch of new software. Liquid glass, I think, is gonna kind of blow some people's minds, both in good and bad ways.

1:36:53So we have a lot of Apple stuff to talk about. And if you have questions or thoughts or spectacular ways you want us to destroy iPhone Airs, please tell us. Call the hotline 866-VERGE-11. Send us an email, vergecast at theverge.com. Send us everything. We're gonna do a lot of Apple stuff for the next couple of weeks. So buckle up, it's gonna be fun. Until then, we should get out of here. This show is produced by Travis Larchuk, Eric Gomez, and Brandon Kiefer. Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Like I said, we'll be back on Friday Jake and I are going to talk more Apple.

1:37:23I have a bunch of just thoroughly hot takes that I have been desperate to say out loud. So I'm going to potentially get myself canceled live on The Vergecast on Friday. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

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