MacBook Neo, iPhone 17e, and iPad Air: The Vergecast Livestream

Summary

The Vergecast Livestream: MacBook Neo, iPhone 17e, and iPad Air

Date: March 4, 2026
Hosts: David Pierce & Nilay Patel

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Overview

In this special live-streamed episode of The Vergecast, David Pierce and Nilay Patel dive straight from Apple’s latest "Apple Experience" into the studio to break down the flood of new device announcements. The conversation centers on the new MacBook Neo—the most disruptive reveal in a surprisingly informal event—and also covers the updated iPhone 17e, iPad Air, and Studio Display XR. The hosts weigh the impact of Apple's moves, debate trade-offs, and offer instant reactions to the most meaningful hardware changes in years.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Inside the Apple 'Experience' Event

Timestamps: [03:42–05:54]

• Apple deliberately labeled the gathering an "Apple Experience" instead of a regular event, with parallel sessions in New York, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
• The event was unusually casual and focused on hands-on time with new products, especially the new MacBook Neo.
• Attendees were ushered into a room with a giant swirling Apple logo TV before moving to spacious demo areas—including a “coffee shop” where press could work.

Notable Quote:
“No, like if this was just the iPad and the 17e and a new MacBook Pro with a chip bump, I would have gotten it. But this is like an entirely new piece of hardware, the MacBook Neo. And it was super casual.”
— Nilay Patel [05:49]

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2. MacBook Neo: Apple’s Affordable Laptop for the Masses

Timestamps: [05:59–25:33]

a. Context and Strategy

• Priced at $599 ($499 for education), the Neo targets the education market and users who might otherwise buy Chromebooks.
• Key aim: “Make a laptop it could sell for $599 … the education market was a big deal.”
  — David Pierce [07:00]

b. Specs & Trade-Offs

• A18 Pro chip (not an M-series): Chosen for economies of scale.
• 8GB RAM / 256GB storage: Cut from the 16GB/512GB baseline in higher-end models.
• Mechanical trackpad: Physical click; notably cheaper and less "Apple-y."
• Two USB-C ports—one fast, one slower; no MagSafe or Thunderbolt.
• Thicker, smaller, but dense and tank-like build.
• Speakers: Side-firing with “Dolby Atmos”—but hosts say sound is “bad.”
• No SD card slot; headphone jack oddly positioned at front for “school splitters.”
• Colors: Fun but washed-out, not as bold as iPhones.

Notable Quotes:
“It’s a MacBook. It’s $600. … We all have feelings about eight gigs of RAM, I’m sure, but most people don’t even know that they should have feelings about eight gigs of RAM.”
— Nilay Patel [08:54]

“My disappointment, such as it is … I wanted it to be a little bit smaller. … There was a size … that I think just lends itself to being a really compact computer. … It’s not a new ultra portable, it’s a cheaper MacBook Air.”
— Nilay Patel [14:12, 14:41]

c. Positioning & Naming

• Neo is intentionally named to signal a “clean start” and slot below the Air, just as with iPads.
• The Neo is not for upgraders—“Fisher Price, my first MacBook.”

Font Critique:
“Boy, do I have feelings about how they're typesetting the words MacBook Neo. … It’s like your dumb friend. I don’t know how to describe this.”
— Nilay Patel [25:40]

d. Debated: 8GB RAM—Okay or a Bottleneck?

• Nilay and David debate (again!) the adequacy of 8GB RAM—contextualized by the use case (school, web, basic tasks) and expected performance limitations (“choke on that RAM” if you push it).

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3. Studio Display XR: Peak Apple Overengineering

Timestamps: [29:34–36:58]

• $3,300, microLED, local-dimming, “reference quality” color—next-level display tech for print designers, architects, and ~display snobs~.
• Regular Studio Display remains overpriced for what it is; new XR is “gorgeous” but “you should overpay for displays, they last forever.”
• Nilay’s ambition: rationalize cost as a “decade-long investment” in quality of life.
• Comparison to Vision Pro pricing for contextual sticker shock.

Standout Moment:
“I stood there with Phil Schiller … I said, well, I’m going to buy this. And he goes, yeah. And I said, I don’t need it. And he goes, I don’t either. And then we both looked at it and agreed that we were gonna buy them.”
— Nilay Patel [29:49]

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4. iPhone 17e: A Study in Compromise

Timestamps: [39:44–50:53]

• New mid-tier iPhone at $600, but met with “shrugs”—the least buzz-worthy of the event.
• Key trade-offs: 60Hz refresh OLED (not LCD—corrected live), only one rear camera, A19 chip, less vibrant color options.
• Discussion on how most people no longer upgrade often but should “overspend on the phone you’re going to keep for years.”
• Live-corrected confusion about the display (“LCD-gate”); Nilay’s flub becomes a running bit.
• No strong recommendation over the mainline iPhone 17, especially given user longevity expectations and the superiority of that model.

Quote:
“For $600. Here is the trade off of this. It’s not the camera. … it is a 60 Hz LCD. That’s bad.”
— Nilay Patel [41:34]
*(Corrected later to 60Hz OLED, but the point about the experience stands.)

“For me it’s like I have an easier time telling somebody to buy a MacBook Neo over an Air than I do telling you to buy a 17e over a 17.”
— David Pierce [49:40]

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5. iPad Air: Iteration Not Revolution

Timestamps: [53:55–59:58]

• New iPad Air gets another chip bump, but little changes otherwise—could swap old version in for demo and “no one would notice.”
• Critique: the base iPad is getting left behind technologically, so the value proposition is slipping for budget buyers.
• Discussion about long lifespan of iPads (“decade devices”), the need for future-proofing, especially with gaming and new Apple Arcade titles.
• Short rave about cellular iPads and Apple’s C1X modem—potentially outstripping Qualcomm and advancing iPad’s lifespan and utility.

Notable Insight:
“If you have kids, you buy them an iPad … You will quickly run into the fact that the base iPad cannot play Dreamlight Valley.”
— Nilay Patel [56:02]

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6. Recurring Themes & Fun Moments

• Live corrections: Nilay’s mistaken LCD/OLED assessment for the iPhone 17e becomes a running bit; chat keeps them honest.
• Color Disappointment: Both hosts bemoan Apple’s fear of bold hues on Macs/iPads despite iPhone successes and user love.
• Tiny laptops lost: Mourning the absence of truly compact MacBooks—both hosts pine for an 11–12-inch class machine with modern hardware.
• Meta moment: Discussing the difficulty of reporting live, “figuring it out in real time,” and occasionally relying on presentations over hard specs.
• Personality Tests: “$3,500: Would you buy a Studio Display or a Vision Pro?” [42:04]
• Taylor Swift’s phone: She still uses an iPhone 13! (“Call me, we can go to the Verizon store together.” — David [50:20])

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Segment Highlights With Timestamps

| Segment | Timestamps | Key Points | |----------------------------------|---------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Apple “Experience” Event | 03:42–05:54 | Unorthodox, “not an event,” hands-on focus, relaxed format | | MacBook Neo Deep Dive | 05:59–25:33 | Specs, education targeting, trade-offs, naming, 8GB RAM debate | | Studio Display XR | 29:34–36:58 | Stunning quality, overengineering, price vs. longevity, who actually needs it | | Neo as Road Computer | 36:58–39:44 | Not small enough for travel warriors, nostalgia for subnotebooks | | iPhone 17e Reactions | 39:44–50:53 | Lukewarm response, 60Hz OLED, one camera, why 17 > 17e, value for yearly device | | iPad Air, Modems, Longevity | 53:55–59:58 | Incremental update, base iPad lagging, Apple’s modem strategy, cellular iPads are best version | | Wrapping Up, Live Corrections | 59:58–62:57 | LCD-gate, value of good screens/phones, tease for next episode’s “gadget joy,” banter, sign-off |

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Memorable Quotes

• “I was imagining it’s more durable and I think it’s also more repairable … kids are gonna beat it up.”
  — Nilay Patel [14:12]

• “You should overpay for displays because you spend so much of your life looking at them and they last forever.”
  — Nilay Patel [35:41]

• “My 2014 Nikon D7500 … the single greatest hands on camera ever made.”
  — Nilay Patel (on being the first to upload iPhone 17e photos) [41:00]

• “If you think $6 wine tastes good. Hell yeah.”
  — David Pierce [36:07]

• “I'm actually discontinuing the iPhone 17 decades. We don't talk about this.”
  — Nilay Patel, on the LCD/OLED flub [61:26]

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Summary & Takeaways

• MacBook Neo is Apple’s genuine shot at regaining a foothold in education and the sub-$600 market, with clever cost-cutting and a “first MacBook” ethos, though it’s more cost-reduced Air than true subnotebook.
• iPhone 17e is a “cheaper” iPhone, but its trade-offs (particularly refresh rate, camera count) make the standard 17 more appealing for long-term buyers.
• Studio Display XR is aspirational Apple at its best (and most expensive)—best for those who value uncompromising screens.
• iPad Air iterates forward, but the base iPad is aging out; if you want longevity (or your kids love Apple Arcade), spring for the Air.
• Recurring theme: In an era when people (even Taylor Swift!) are holding onto devices longer, investing in the upgrade—be it on display or phone—makes increasing sense.

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For Next Time:

• Nilay teases his “gadget-related joy” for the Friday show
• “We’re going back to Apple to yell about OLEDs.”

Signature sign-off:
“Rock and roll.” — Nilay Patel [62:52]

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For fans and newcomers alike, this episode delivers a dense, yet lively digest of one of Apple’s most consequential product pushes in years—with all the insight, skepticism, and honest debate that makes Vergecast a must-listen for tech followers.

Transcript

[David Pierce]

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[Nilay Patel]

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[David Pierce]

Your plans refined. Run a smoother business when you're all aligned. Do that with Acrobat learn [e-mail] do that with Acrobat hey, it's your friend David Pierce here. What you're about to hear is a live stream that Nilai and I did together. We we came running back from this week's Apple event to talk about all the stuff that has just come out and sort through all of our feelings. One thing you're going to hear as we start talking about it, especially as we get to the iPhone 17e, is that Neil. I was told when he was getting a demo that that the screen is an lcd. Actually it's an OLED which we figure out in real time and Nilai feels appropriately bad for. It's horrible, but I just wanted you to know right up top that he's wrong and it's an oled.

[Nilay Patel]

Horrible.

[David Pierce]

Let's get into It. Welcome to the Vergecast flagship podcast of tiny computers.

[Nilay Patel]

That's pretty good.

[David Pierce]

Tiny, er, computers.

[Nilay Patel]

One centimeter.

[David Pierce]

Gently tinier. I'm your friend David Pierce. We're in the studio. Neil Aptel is here.

[Nilay Patel]

What's up?

[David Pierce]

We are full morning show is what I would say is our.

[Nilay Patel]

I have been given little pieces of paper and a pen to write on with. I'm very excited about all of this. I don't have a laptop.

[David Pierce]

We're going to do. I'm going to do this while we. And say we're going to go to break like a lot while we're sitting here. This is going to be great. I'm very excited about it. So two things we should say right up front. We've just been wanting to do more live stuff recently. This is like a thing we've talked a lot about. As you can see by the fact that this is 11 minutes late. We're still learning how all of this works. But we're here, we're live. It's like we also. I love an emergency podcast. Like we make a lot of jokes about the idea of emergency podcasts, but when it's just like there's a thing that happened and we should talk about it, it's fun to be able to just like spin this up and start hanging out.

[Nilay Patel]

Also, Dave and I went to an event together, which is rare lately.

[David Pierce]

We were in a room together.

[Nilay Patel]

We were in a room together. We saw the stuff together and we're like, we should just go back and do it right now. Why wait a day and be in different cities? So here we are.

[David Pierce]

Can you describe this event that we just went to particularly? What I want you to do is Describe the first 10 minutes of programming at this event. Yeah, it was a very strange morning.

[Nilay Patel]

Uh, it was a strange morning. I want to be very clear with everyone. Apple did not call this an Apple event. They called it an Apple experience. And there were three simultaneous experiences you could have depending on where you were in the world. So there's one here in New York City. There is one, I believe in Singapore or Hong Kong.

[David Pierce]

There was Hong Kong, yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

Um, I don't know what happened around the world. Here in New York. We went to Apple, rented a large event space. It was beautiful, full of press and creators, the usual suspects, a lot of old friends. And then we were ushered like around the corner in this warehousey event space to a room with just a giant TV in it. Like a 200 some inch TV.

[David Pierce]

Like huge empty space.

[Nilay Patel]

A huge empty space. Giant space. And Just a TV doing the swirling like glassy Apple logo animations.

[David Pierce]

Kind of like ominous in a way. It's just like come stand and look at this.

[Nilay Patel]

It's not an event, it's experience. So then Apple's Trudy Mueller got on stage. He's a longtime PR person there, one of our favorites. She said welcome and then she introduced John Ternus who is in charge of hardware at Apple, long rumored to be the next CEO of Apple. So this is fascinating. And he came on and said, look at all the stuff we announced for last week's got a special one for you, the MacBook Neo. And then they ran a quick video and then that was it. And then he was like, great, you can go look at this stuff. And we all ran around the huge TV into a beautiful hands on area with lots of space. And my favorite, there was like a coffee shop at the back of all this that they had made where we could sit down and actually work. Because usually that's not the case at these events. Yeah, I'm like in the corner like with a laptop open, propped up in my hand, trying to get a photo on the Internet. This is of no interest to the audience. I just want you to know. Usually it's chaos to get those first photos out. And this was great. So just a really strange one because it was very focused on just getting to this stuff, including an entirely new MacBook which is not the way they normally announce new hardware. No, like if this was just the iPad and the 17e and a new MacBook Pro with a chip bump, I would have gotten it. But this is like an entirely new piece of hardware, the MacBook Neo. And it was super casual.

[David Pierce]

Yeah. So let's actually start with this. So the announcements that they talked about were the 17e, the iPad Air, the new MacBooks with M5 chips, the new Studio Display and Studio Display XR, all of which were around and we could touch them. And it was the first like hands on experience anybody had had with them. And then the Neo. And I would say even before all anybody cared about was the Neo. Right. Like this thing has been rumored for a while. The name came out, I think either yesterday or the day before. It was like this was clearly coming. And there was a minute during that presentation I was like, oh my God, they're not going to announce a new product at all. Because he said like Ternus is up there and he says something to the effect of, you know, this is our lineup of products. And he shows the, the thing behind him with all of Them lined up and I was like, oh, my God, this is. This is just it. And then they dropped the Neo. But clearly this. This is the only one. Like, I can tell you the story of everything but the studio display by saying, new chips, the end. And we can come to those. But the. The Neo is clearly the thing.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah.

[David Pierce]

And my sense of this is Apple desperately wanted to make a laptop it could sell for $599, $4.99 for education. Yes. Which I think, I think you could make the case. That's actually the price. Right. Like, this is. I go back to, like, when I was a kid, there were. There were old, like, emacs. Yeah. All over my classrooms.

[Nilay Patel]

And they looked like teeth at the top.

[David Pierce]

Yes. And this is, like, this was a key thing for Apple for a long time. The education market was a big deal.

[Nilay Patel]

The Apple ii. Yeah. Apple has a Chromebook problem in schools

[David Pierce]

and has for 15 years.

[Nilay Patel]

Ages. Yeah.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

So, you know, every elementary school gives out a Chromebook to people. Their answer to this was the iPad for a long time. I think that answer is running into challenges because the Chromebook market is so huge that a lot of the apps that the schools want to use are just web apps.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

And I don't know if you've ever tried to use a web app on an iPad, David.

[David Pierce]

Once or twice.

[Nilay Patel]

That's not going to happen for you.

[David Pierce]

Well, I can do it now by downloading a different browser and then desperately trying to make that work.

[Nilay Patel]

So I think they have like a real, like, okay, you want a cheap machine that can run Chrome and GarageBand and all the other stuff that might be interesting in an educational context. Here you go. And it is 8 gigs of Ram and it has an iPhone chip in it. And it has a mechanical touchpad, which is. Dave. And I just spent a while just physically pushing a touchpad in.

[David Pierce]

So you walk up to these. They have these big tables with all the different devices that you can try. And I walked right up to one of the laptops and start messing with it, doing the thing that we always do. And there's like an Apple minder standing there looking over my shoulder to make sure we don't steal the laptop. And I'm playing with the thing, spinning it around, looking at the thing, and I press the button and just came out of my mind or I came out of my body. It was just like, oh, my God, it clicks. And the guy just started laughing. He's like, yeah, it clicks. Exciting.

[Nilay Patel]

It's. It's.

[David Pierce]

Sure.

[Nilay Patel]

It's different. It's exciting in the sense that it's different. It's not what you expect, but, like, yeah, they've just made a bunch of compromises to make a cheap laptop. I suspect they're going to sell millions of them to people because it is an Apple. It's a MacBook. It's. It's 600 bucks. Yeah. And we all have feelings about eight gigs of RAM, I'm sure, but most people don't even know that they should have feelings about eight gigs of RAM. And it's $600 and you just, like, buy it.

[David Pierce]

This is. This is outrageous. You are on. You have lit me on fire over and over on this podcast for saying 8 gigs of Ram it's not enough. I am on record over and over and over saying 8 gigs of Ram is fine, and all you have done is mock me for it.

[Nilay Patel]

It's not.

[David Pierce]

You get to sit here and be like, eight gigs of RAM is. No, no, no.

[Nilay Patel]

Well, look, it's here in so early 2026. I can't, in good conscious tell people to spend money on ram, because I'm like, here's what I need you to do. I need you to sell your children, take out a mortgage in your house, and buy another eight gigs of ram. Like, I. You know, there was a time when I'm like, the only upgrade you should do on a computer is buy more ram.

[David Pierce]

Yes.

[Nilay Patel]

Now I feel like I'm asking people to make a meaningful sacrifice in their lives to get another 8 gigs of RAM. So things change. But it's not enough.

[David Pierce]

Right?

[Nilay Patel]

It's not enough, especially for a computer that I guarantee you will primarily be used to download Chrome and then keep 5,000 Chrome tabs open at all times. I know.

[David Pierce]

That's. I mean, and that's the thing that is so good about a Chromebook, right? Is a Chromebook is the only thing that runs Chrome well. And has been for a long time.

[Nilay Patel]

Look, I have a Mac studio. It runs Chrome fine.

[David Pierce]

No, it doesn't.

[Nilay Patel]

It just.

[David Pierce]

It just has enough horsepower that it can pull it off. Do you know, like, nothing runs Chrome efficiently other than a Chromebook, and that is the secret success of a Chromebook. Like, one very fun conspiracy theory is that Google is just sandbagging Chrome on every other platform in order to.

[Nilay Patel]

We're doing this live, so the 8 gigs of ram argument is fully in the chat.

[David Pierce]

Good.

[Nilay Patel]

I want more people agree with you than not.

[David Pierce]

Yeah. And now you're joining my side, which is just outrageous.

[Nilay Patel]

I'm not joining your Side, I'm just acknowledging the reality of the world in which we live.

[David Pierce]

Fair. Okay, so I'm, I'm actually with you. I think this thing is going to be hugely successful for a bunch of reasons I actually kind of didn't expect even as they were announcing this thing. But let me just walk through. I have, I have my papers.

[Nilay Patel]

I'm taking notes on the same paper that you're reading from.

[David Pierce]

I'm just going to walk you through a bunch of the trade offs that Apple made here because I think the choices you make when you want to get from a 1099 computer to a 599 computer are really fascinating. So the most obvious one immediately is just the storage and memory specs, right? Instead of starting at 512 gigs of RAM and I believe 6. Or sorry, instead of starting at 512 gigs of storage and 16 gigs of RAM, it's 256 and 8. Uh, so meaningful. Downgrade. Uh, I get a check from Neli for that one. Um, you get a magic keyboard that I would say. Did you type on the thing at all?

[Nilay Patel]

I didn't spend any time.

[David Pierce]

It felt fine. It's like Apple keyboards are Apple keyboards at this point. They're all pretty good. Um, you don't get the, the haptic trackpad. You get the thing that actually clicks, which I assume is a noticeably cheaper piece of equipment than the thing that they're trying to do with the MacBook Airs. Um, it has two USB C ports, one seemingly very fast and one much slower, which is interesting. There's been some, some specs running around that they're actually very different USB C ports. There's no MagSafe.

[Nilay Patel]

It has, there's no Thunderbolt.

[David Pierce]

There's no Thunderbolt. It has two side speakers. So when I first saw it, like,

[Nilay Patel]

by the way, MagSafe in this context means the power connector, not the, not the phone MagSafe.

[David Pierce]

Right. I mean, listen, give it a minute. And Apple, we'll call it Apple tv. Do you know what I mean? Like, but the, there are two sort of slits on either side, kind of like level with the trackpad that are speakers that are side firing. And in, in that, that room we were in, it's very hard to tell what it sounds like, but.

[Nilay Patel]

No, I know what it sounds like. It sounds bad. Yeah, I, when John Ternus looked me in the eyes and said it supports Dolby Atmos, I thought to myself, john, you're in line to be the CEO of one of the richest companies in the world. Don't Start by lying in this way.

[David Pierce]

They're supporting Dolby Atmos in there.

[Nilay Patel]

It was weird that I interrupted the entire event and addressed him by name.

[David Pierce]

Nei walked up and said, take Dolby Atmos out of your mouth.

[Nilay Patel]

They're fine. They're going to be fine for what they are. But they are side firing speakers that will, when you add the unbelievable amount of Atmos music processing to them, will sound even tinnier than ever, I guarantee it.

[David Pierce]

Which I think is a small bummer because I actually think, as laptops go, MacBook speakers are pretty good. Like the MacBook Pro speakers in particular are pretty good. The air is like fine, but so it has the speakers. I thought they were SD card slots at first. There's also a headphone jack near the front, which I hate.

[Nilay Patel]

It's an odd place for it, but

[David Pierce]

I get it because don't like it. Not a fan. Why do you? Why would. Why?

[Nilay Patel]

Because in schools you gotta plug in like the weird splitters and stuff. You need space.

[David Pierce]

I guess that's true. That kind of makes sense. But yeah, so it's up towards the front. That's weird. The thing weighs about the same as the MacBook Air, but is a little thicker and a little smaller. So it's smaller in the depth and width dimension, but a little thicker. And it feels. I don't know if you pick the thing up. It is like it's a dense. It's a tank little thing. Like you sort of want to swing it at somebody. Like it is. It is a real school. Yeah. I wonder if they did go out of their way to make it more durable. They didn't really talk about that.

[Nilay Patel]

They didn't. I'm imagining it's more durable and I think it's also more repairable. Like just the way we didn't get a lot of big lecture about unibody construction. All this, like, stuff I imagine this thing is made for. For a context where kids are gonna beat it up.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

And that's fine. My disappointment, such as it is, it's not a huge disappointment, is I wanted it to be a little bit smaller. When they announced that it was 13 inches, I kind of went, oh, no.

[David Pierce]

You want like the old 12 inch MacBook or.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah, or the old 12 inch PowerBook.

[David Pierce]

Oh, yeah, right.

[Nilay Patel]

Like there was a size. There's one tick smaller of size that I think just lends itself to being a really compact computer. Really great for travel. It's like the old sub note book class that used to exist. It's kind of Gone. Now I had a 12 inch PowerBook. I had that 11 inch MacBook. I love that size of computer. It's just gone. And I was sort of hoping we would see a return, but it's 13 inches. It is basically the size of a MacBook Air. The way to think about this is that it's not a new ultra portable, It's a cheaper MacBook Air. Right.

[David Pierce]

Which I think is really interesting because the, the comparison a lot of people have made is to the Ibook, which was a, like last generation swing at this same kind of thing. Like, how do we make something that is geared more towards young people is a little more fun. Like, it wasn't sort of a power book. It was. It was a different kind of device, but that one was bigger, it was more colorful, and it was very specifically in a lot of ways designed to do this particular job. Right. Whereas this just feels like it is in almost every meaningful way a cheaper MacBook. Like it is not a different device for a different kind of person.

[Nilay Patel]

One thing, one compromise you haven't talked about is the fact that it has a A19 in it.

[David Pierce]

A18 Pro.

[Nilay Patel]

A18 Pro. Sorry, a18 Pro. So the iPhone 17e has a19 in it. It's weird that it's a different chip in the. It is weird than the iPhone A18 Pro chip in it instead of an M series chip.

[David Pierce]

Yes.

[Nilay Patel]

And the word on the street is that when they were designing the A18 Pro, they knew they were going to put it in a MacBook.

[David Pierce]

Oh, really?

[Nilay Patel]

This is the word. This is a very sketchy rumor. But like, you know, Apple likes to be like, we integrated up all the plans from the very beginning, so it's unclear what the true performance compromise here is going to be. But that is the main compromise. And my sense of it is you get so much more scale making iPhone chips that you can bring that cost down compared to any M series chip.

[David Pierce]

Yeah, I think that's probably right. And that is one enormous way to save money is to just coast on smartphone scale for anything. I have a hard time imagining that for most people this will be underpowered in any meaningful way. Like if you put those two things next to each other. Right. The. Like, it has a smartphone chip and it has 8 gigs of RAM. Which of those is more likely to cause users problems? Like, I would sort of say neither, but my guess would be it's the 8 gigs of Ram is more likely to be a problem than like the raw horsepower of the A18 Pro.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah, but my sense of it is that Apple's sort of mobile chips in iPhones and iPads have been limited by their OS more than their capability for a long time.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

And so when, you know, the M1 was not a huge leap forward from any of the A series chips that we were seeing at that time. I'm still using an M1 Pro laptop. It's fine. I use it every single day. Still one of the greatest laptops ever bought. So I suspect, you know, A18 is way ahead of that M1 Pro. I think it's going to be fine in this context. I think it's going to choke on that ram.

[David Pierce]

Yeah, that could be.

[Nilay Patel]

And Apple made a bunch of promises about all the things it could do. Right. It can do whatever Apple intelligence it can do. They showed it running GarageBand. They showed it editing photos like you're going to hit the RAM way fast. And then because it's unified memory, if you play a game, you're going to hit that RAM real fast. I'm unclear how fast the storage is. So if you end up in swap, which is a real problem on 8 gig Macs, a lot of times they can cover it because their storage is fast.

[David Pierce]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

But if you end up on swap, in swap on 8 gigs of RAM with slow storage on a computer like this, am I really. We're going to see. We have to review the computer, but that's the sort of trade off that I think they're making.

[David Pierce]

Yeah, this is going to be a fun one because what we normally do with MacBooks is like the benchmarks get predictably better and sort of a set of new things becomes better to do on your MacBook. This one is going to be a real test in the opposite direction. Right. Like what, what starts to fall apart as you lose this processing power is a very fun, bizarre question to try and figure out in the year 2026. The other thing that has come up a bunch to your point about the M1 is that up until very recently you could just go to Walmart and buy an M1 MacBook Air for this price or very close to it. And there are a lot of people, including in our slack, running around being like, that's still the better deal. You should just buy an old MacBook Air. Old refurbished MacBook Airs are not hard to find. You can get them pretty cheap. Maybe that's the better deal. Do you buy that argument?

[Nilay Patel]

I. I think it just depends on who you are.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

But yeah, I probably buy that argument.

[David Pierce]

Yeah. I think to me the, the thing that this has going for it is the colors. Like if we're just being honest, right. Like the, the thing that this has that no other MacBook will sell you is the fun colors, which I was, I confess, slightly underwhelmed by.

[Nilay Patel]

They're. They're very pale.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

In the citrus. The yellow. Like a. A pale yellow that looks a wee. Let's call it stained.

[David Pierce]

Yeah. It just. It's one of those things that like the, the I have this blue iPhone 16 that I love. The orange iPhone 17 Pro was like hugely popular. People really liked it. And you just can't figure out why Apple refuses to properly bring that to its other devices. Right. It keeps doing with the iPads, these really pale. I gotta tell you, Dan, light colors. What?

[Nilay Patel]

The people in the chat love the colors.

[David Pierce]

Listen, the people in the chat should see them in person. I love the colors too. And I think I'm, I'm a fan in general of the existence of these colors. Right. But it's like you have the opportunity to either like be bold and vibrant, which keeps working for Apple. This is the thing. Every time Apple like really pushes on color, people love it. They sold an orange iPhone and people went nuts for it sitting right here. Yeah. And they just, for some reason with the iPads and with the Macs just refuse to kind of go all the way down that road, which I find odd. But I still think tons of people are going to like this thing.

[Nilay Patel]

I'm very curious to see how many of the other ones they sell. Once you see it in person, you're like, that's neat.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

And then you will probably buy indigo or silver. Like that's the way it's.

[David Pierce]

And there's just a couple of other. Like they said that they color matched the keyboards and it's possible that we were in this very specifically lit room. That makes it very hard to tell anything. This is one of the strange things about any Apple event is they light it so intensely and so aggressively that it gets very hard to see certain things. Right. Like, oh, you look pretty good on the webcam because it is professionally lit by a large team of people whose job that day it was to make sure you look good.

[Nilay Patel]

Fifteen years into running the Verge, no other company has figured out that people with cameras like well lit rooms.

[David Pierce]

Everybody.

[Nilay Patel]

Other companies events are like the whole room is pink and it's like, well, that is no fun at all.

[David Pierce]

Yeah. They're like, welcome to our cave. Would you like a hands on? And it's like, I can't see Apple.

[Nilay Patel]

Like it's true. It's a very well lit room. They understand who the audience in those rooms are. But it's hard to see anything for real.

[David Pierce]

Yes.

[Nilay Patel]

In that specific way.

[David Pierce]

Yes. Yeah. But. So they said they color matched the but. And you can even see in the pictures Antonio took for the site that it's, it's even paler still than the colors where it's like, I look at this keyboard and it's like color match the whole thing. Like, do the whole job. And I'm into it. I will buy the hell out of a purple laptop. Like, are you kidding me? Sell me a purple laptop and I will buy it. But like light sort. It's like they sat it next to a paint can and it's like, that's the colors.

[Nilay Patel]

A lot of questions about the name here I'm seeing fly through the chat.

[David Pierce]

I asked this before we started because I'm genuinely torn on Nio. I, I honestly thought it was a code name. I didn't think there was any chance this thing would be launched as the Neo.

[Nilay Patel]

I, I think they have, they, they've got it right with iPad, iPad Air, iPad Pro.

[David Pierce]

I think that's right. Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

And they. I, I think iPad Air is still somewhat meaningless, but they've managed it. I think in that product line, you buy an iPad for your kids, most everybody should buy an iPad air. And then there's like iPad sickos who are like, I don't have a computer anymore. I use an iPad. I don't know what they're doing. Right. And like, that's all.

[David Pierce]

Look at all this processing power I can't take advantage of.

[Nilay Patel]

Exactly. Real estate professionals everywhere. Like, I have a 12.9-inch iPad Pro. We're going to look at Matterport together on it. Like, whatever's happening there is happening there. But that makes sense because that market is segmented. The problem with the Mac line is the MacBook Air is the only computer most people should buy. The MacBook Pro is very well defined and there's not any space left on the bottom right.

[David Pierce]

Well, because Apple, for what many, many years now, has very deliberately not occupied that space.

[Nilay Patel]

Well, they've not occupied that space. But the Air was supposed to be like the sub notebook. Right. It was supposed to be thinner and lighter. And the problem is that it's the default. So I think if you brought back the MacBook, you would confuse everyone into thinking that it was like the default MacBook and. And no one would buy it.

[David Pierce]

Sure.

[Nilay Patel]

And what you're trying to do is you're Trying to sell a $500 computer to the education market or kids or whoever. And so you need to do it the same way as the iPad, where the base model iPad. Everyone understands this device is for Disney plus, right?

[David Pierce]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

This is the cheap one. Buying this one. This is the cheap one. And I think there's just too much history there. I think they wanted, literally, I think it's called Neo because they wanted a clean start with the, this product instead of ever being like, do you start with the MacBook? Because the reality is, and it has been for over a decade now, everyone starts with the MacBook Air.

[David Pierce]

Right. Well. And the 12 inch MacBook was decidedly not an entry level machine. Wasn't it more expensive than the Air? Yeah, yeah. So like they, they lost that thread a lot.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah. And that computer just like, didn't. It didn't work. It didn't work.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

There was a time when they made. No, even the black and white plastic MacBook Pros, I believe were. No, they were just MacBooks.

[David Pierce]

That's. I think that's right.

[Nilay Patel]

And those are great. But like, the error was meant. The cost of the error, the additional price premium was to make it smaller in that time has come to an end.

[David Pierce]

Yeah, I, I think the Neo thing is particularly interesting to me because it is like, and Ternus said this in introducing the thing, like, they are very clear that this is for people who have not previously owned a MacBook. This is not. If you own an Air and next time you upgrade, they are not interested in you saying, oh, should I buy this or should I buy the Neo? Like, this is, this is Fisher price, my first MacBook. You know what I mean? Like, and clearly that's what Apple needs. Right? Like, this is. We're seeing Apple do a lot more price point chasing than it has in the past. Like, you can sort of see this company being like, we need to sell things at this price, this price and this price, which is not normally how it is operated. They've just been like, here's a thing we made. It costs what it costs. Screw you, it's $3,500. Enjoy. But I think if you're gonna do that, the name, like the name Neo does make sense to me. I still don't know that it's a great name, but I see the thesis behind it.

[Nilay Patel]

Did you see a thought?

[David Pierce]

No. What?

[Nilay Patel]

Boy, do I have feelings about how they're typesetting the words MacBook Neo.

[David Pierce]

Wait, hold on now I have to look.

[Nilay Patel]

It's like a chunky lowercase. I don't know, man. It's. It. It's like your dumb friend. I don't know how to describe this.

[David Pierce]

What?

[Nilay Patel]

See what I'm saying?

[David Pierce]

Are they trying to do a matrixy thing? I mean, you gotta do like it says hello Neo.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah, obviously they're, They're.

[David Pierce]

Does anybody get.

[Nilay Patel]

If you.

[David Pierce]

Okay, if you are a child in school who might buy this to go to eighth grade, do you have any idea what the matrix is?

[Nilay Patel]

Well, no one can be told that the Beatrice is.

[David Pierce]

Then it would be. It would be too late.

[Nilay Patel]

You have to look at citrus yourself.

[David Pierce]

I don't know about citrus.

[Nilay Patel]

I'm just saying it's a font.

[David Pierce]

It sure is a font.

[Nilay Patel]

They made some choices with the font. Fox Creative.

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[Nilay Patel]

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[David Pierce]

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[Nilay Patel]

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[Nilay Patel]

We should talk about the rest of it because the only thing worth talking about, really this nonsense MacBook is the studio display. XDR.

[David Pierce]

Yes.

[Nilay Patel]

Which I'm going to buy. Yeah. I don't know why it's wrong.

[David Pierce]

$3,300.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah.

[David Pierce]

Almost the price of a Vision Pro.

[Nilay Patel]

I stood there with Phil Schiller. He was standing by the studio displays and I said, well, I'm going to buy this. And he goes, yeah. And I said, I don't need it. And he goes, I don't either. And then we both looked at it and agreed that we were gonna buy them.

[David Pierce]

I mean, it is, it is gorgeous.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah.

[David Pierce]

Like I am not as, you know, well, a display guy particularly, but like even standing there. So they had, I think they had a row of four of them and it was, it was an XDR and then two regular studio displays in the middle and then another XDR and you just look at em next to each other and you can see the difference like between a terrific display and something even better. Like you can see it with the

[Nilay Patel]

studio display, which I believe is still 1599.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

Right. They've left it alone. That panel is effectively from 2012. 2011, 2012 era panel. It's the same LG 5K panel. I am sure that over the past 12 years the colors are a little more saturated than. Right. Like they've made it a little bit better. But from everything I understand you're still looking at the same fundamental edge lit LG5K panel from 2011, 2012 IMAX. And I still have an old ass imac sitting on the floor of my office staring at me, dead to the world. The hard drive clicks when you plug it in. And every time I think I should buy a new 5K monitor, that thing is like, no, your destiny is repurposing this display. And it sits there. And I don't buy any monitor.

[David Pierce]

Yes.

[Nilay Patel]

Because I cannot bring myself to buy the same panel that's literally sitting on the ground that if I just had a little more liquid courage flowing through these veins, I would extract and turn into a real monitor.

[David Pierce]

You've been threatening this for, like, years.

[Nilay Patel]

I'm one of these. I've done so much stupider stuff, and I still haven't done this. Anyhow, that's one thing that's. And I think the studio display is just a mess for that. The XDR is very expensive. $3,300. But it is, right? It is local dimming, backlight, micro led. It looks beautiful. The colors are vibrant. It's only an eighth of an inch thicker than the studio display. Like, that is a remarkable packaging job. And if you believe that you're gonna have a monitor for a long time, you can maybe you can liquid courage your way into buying that one. Do you know what I mean?

[David Pierce]

Yeah, well, it was very funny because I was getting a demo of it and they're talking about, you know, who is this person? Who is this for? Who is the. The kind of core use case for this? And one of the things they talked about is like, print designers, people who are like, you know, they have to. They have to lay out the magazine and make. And I was like, well, there aren't any of those anymore. So, like, what else you got? And then they're going through, you know, architects and people who make billboards. And, like, this is a sort of like, reference display for a lot of people. Right? So it's very important that it is accurate. And they have the Adobe RGB color suite. Like, it is clearly aimed at a specific kind of person, not just somebody who wants a really great monitor. Which I think is frankly what the studio display was. Do you know what I mean? It's like the studio display initially was like, very good computer monitor with shitty webcam. Was like. That was the story of the studio splay. This feels like it is actually, like, pointed more directly at a set of people with a set of professional needs. You are not one of those People.

[Nilay Patel]

No, no, no, no.

[David Pierce]

You just want really good monitoring.

[Nilay Patel]

I can leave extremely brutal comments on David's Google Docs trash. I almost like any display that exists,

[David Pierce]

including your flip phone.

[Nilay Patel]

This is bad. Yeah.

[David Pierce]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

So, yeah, I don't need it. But again, the regular studio display is so overpriced for the thing that it is. And I know Apple sells them a lot. I get notes from our listeners and our readers apologizing for buying the studio display. In like a weird turn of events because I reviewed the first one, I gave it a miserable score because the webcam was so bad and so overpriced. And so people send me notes and they're like, I just need you to know that I had no choice but to buy a studio display because it looks so nice next to my Mac. And the weird BenQ thing does not.

[David Pierce]

Yeah, the odd thing I bought on Amazon for a third of the price. It's the same panel.

[Nilay Patel]

You can buy reject. You can buy monitors made of reject LG panels now 5K 27 inch monitors for $500. And they are. I guarantee they're not nearly as good.

[David Pierce]

I'm gonna do that.

[Nilay Patel]

I guarantee you that their colors are going to be all kinds of crazy. I guarantee you their reject panel, like something's going to be wrong with them. But you can just go on Amazon and buy a 27 inch 5K display with effectively that same LG panel in it for $500. And Apple's like, what if. Sixteen hundred dollars. So that thing is just like a. It's occupying a different space. I think the XDR for the audience that it has is. I mean, it's just the step up. And then because it's modular, I am going to personally convince myself that I will have it for a decade or more and then be like, it's just $300 a year and that it's paid

[David Pierce]

for for a dollar a day, you too can have one of these.

[Nilay Patel]

That's right. It's like every single day I'm gonna not go to Starbucks and I'm gonna look at my extravagant monitor that can be calibrated for use by medical professionals. And I'm gonna open Slack and it's gonna be awesome.

[David Pierce]

But you're gonna open like, the blacks in the Slack theme are gonna be so sick.

[Nilay Patel]

I'm I to buy this thing. I'm super going to buy this thing.

[David Pierce]

Yes. I mean, I do think it's. It was just very funny to see this next to the MacBook Neo, which is because this is pure Apple just being like, we, we put all of the technology into this thing, here's what it costs. And Apple is actually making an argument that $3,200 is extraordinarily expensive for a computer monitor, but next to a lot of the stuff that other people you buy and use. Like, you talk all the time about this TV thing that you judge where, like, the reference monitor costs a million dollars. Yeah, $3,200 in this kind of professional setting is not that absurd a cost.

[Nilay Patel]

My belief, and no one agrees with me anymore, is that it's just true. It's just no one agrees with me, is that you should overpay for displays because you spend so much of your life looking at them and they last forever. And not in the context of phones, because everyone gets a new phone every two years or whatever. But like anything that's just going to be in your house for a long time, the premium on this is beautiful is worth it. David's like, I bought a $12 TV that has ads on it. Like, I don't.

[David Pierce]

I couldn't even tell you the brand of my monitor. No. I feel the same way about screens that I feel about wine, which is like, you should never develop a taste for the good stuff because it's just a waste of money. If you think $6 wine tastes good. Hell yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

Live your life is like an AI slop rendering that's appeared in my brain of you just chugging the Franzia out of the bag in college. Like, I know this happened to you and moved on.

[David Pierce]

It was. It was Trader Joe's Two Buck Chuck.

[Nilay Patel]

Sure.

[David Pierce]

And yes, when I.

[Nilay Patel]

This is how old I am. I just want to say this. It's a studio display under here. I'm going to tell you a story about Franzia. When I was in college, the bag was. It was silver foil. Now they're plastic and they look gross. But when I was in college, the Franzia came in a silver foil bag and you would pull it out of the box, and my friends and I would call it space wine. And then we would just walk down the street chugging the space wine. Anyway, I think you should buy a $3,300 monitor.

[David Pierce]

I love this. I love this for you. So wait, one, back to the MacBook Neo for one second. One thing that has come up a bunch in the chat is a thing that you were talking about, which is people who have more powerful desktop machines wanting basically a rode computer. Yeah. Which is a very funny use case because Apple makes one of those. And it has been Desperate to convince you that the iPad is your rode computer. That the correct way to live your life is Mac Studio and iPad. That is. That is the future Apple wants you to believe in.

[Nilay Patel]

Right. And that's when if you have like a. If you have like an Apple marketing job where you spend half your day like making assets and the other half of the day presenting assets. Right? Yeah. That's what you do.

[David Pierce]

But you're are very. You're a Mac Studio guy, right. That's like your main machine. You're very compelled by the idea of being a Mac Studio MacBook Neo guy.

[Nilay Patel]

If it was smaller when I thought this thing would be about the size. I keep calling it a plain computer. That MacBook. That 12 inch MacBook with a single USB C port. The 11 inch MacBook Air was it 11 inch. That one. The 12 inch PowerBook. I used these computers on planes primarily and they were terrific on planes because the seatback is small. You don't want to lug around on the stuff. I traveled with those computers almost exclusively and whatever trade off I would make at now I have a slow computer or wherever I've arrived. It's totally worth it for the space saving. This is like again this was the subnet category. You know we it like live in New York. Like we are on trains all the time. Like having the small computer really really played. I don't think the Neo is small enough. I think that's.

[David Pierce]

That's probably right.

[Nilay Patel]

Like it doesn't. There's just not a part of this from like I should just get an error like that. But what I Wonder is like M1 error is still gonna do the job.

[David Pierce]

I'm not sure small enough exists. Right. I think this has been the problem as you get to like 10 inches and you start to make a bunch of other really ugly sacrifices. Like you get a smaller keyboard which causes all kinds of problems.

[Nilay Patel]

It's right between 11 and 12.

[David Pierce]

I think that's probably right. I mean I will say the closest I've seen to it was that 12 inch MacBook which again had a series of other problems like a disastrously bad keyboard.

[Nilay Patel]

Bad keyboard size wise miserable intel processor.

[David Pierce]

Like if you could just put a good computer inside of that shell I'd buy the hell out of it. Like the size of that thing was right in a lot of ways.

[Nilay Patel]

Someone helped me repurpose the guts of my imac so I can use the display and then I will dig out. It's actually the one I have is Dieter sold it to me.

[David Pierce]

Nice.

[Nilay Patel]

It Was Dieter's and he sold it to me and I still have it. So if anyone wants to put an iPhone in my 12 inch MacBook which at the time had an intel i7 like mobile i7 in it, it's horrible processor.

[David Pierce]

A lot of weird decisions from that era of Apple. All right, we should all talk about the iPhone.

[Nilay Patel]

Do you want to talk about Franzius?

[David Pierce]

Very telling, by the way, that the iPhone is the third product we're talking. No, wait, yeah, the third product.

[Nilay Patel]

And I'll give you two pieces of supporting evidence for the fact that it's the third product. One, we all rush into the hands on area and everyone stops and it's like organized in stages. So it's like the MacBook Neo, the iPad, the studio displays and the iPhones. And I was assigned go get the hands on of the iPhone, Antonio and Owen or you got to get the MacBook Neo. And then David is like, I'm the editor at large. I'll just wander around making small talk.

[David Pierce]

That's right.

[Nilay Patel]

Whatever it is that you do also did the magic.

[David Pierce]

No, no, no, that's precisely correct.

[Nilay Patel]

So I run to the iPhone because you know, your job here is to run. There's a real thing when you're at the live event and I was the only person there for 10 minutes. Seriously, I just hung out with all the people I met, the product managers. I took photos of all the colors. I just was there, stick by myself for a while and I.

[David Pierce]

They're like, you know, we sell a lot of these, right?

[Nilay Patel]

I rush to get the photos up and I come back, I loop around, look at all this stuff. I come back to the site, I look at the iPhone. 17e hands on. 0 comments.

[David Pierce]

Oh, brutal. I mean the.

[Nilay Patel]

I still look, the old man still got it. I had those photos up before anybody else.

[David Pierce]

With your 35 year old DSLR?

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah, with my 2014 Nikon D7500, the 40 millimeter macro. The single greatest hands on camera ever made. True. But no one cared, I think is what I'm trying to say here.

[David Pierce]

Yeah, I mean I don't, I forget what your headline was, but it was something to the effect of like, yep, here it is.

[Nilay Patel]

That was actually the first draft.

[David Pierce]

Yeah, I mean, I think, I don't know, Apple, Apple seems to be on the same grind with the 17e that it is with the MacBook Neo, which is like how do we make the right set of trade offs to sell cheaper phones? It used to be smaller phones.

[Nilay Patel]

So this tradeoff, this trade off is Almost verging on unacceptable for me. For $600. Here is the trade off of this. It's not the camera. It's not whatever else it is. A 60 Hz LCD.

[David Pierce]

That's bad.

[Nilay Patel]

It's bad. And I'm so not used to shooting LCDs anymore.

[David Pierce]

That's another thing that's great about the studio display, by the way. 120 hertz.

[Nilay Patel]

See, I think you should spend $3,300 on a display.

[David Pierce]

Okay, Can I offer you a studio display or a Vision Pro?

[Nilay Patel]

This is like, you know how bad

[David Pierce]

that makes the Vision Pro?

[Nilay Patel]

That's a personality test. You have $3,500. Is it going to be a studio display or Vision Pro?

[David Pierce]

There are like a souped up Mac studio.

[Nilay Patel]

I know there's one right answer and there's a group of suckers and you can just sort them out and be like, you're on the one ship that's going to the special planet and you're the future of humanity.

[David Pierce]

Yeah, that's about right.

[Nilay Patel]

I'm just saying. Anyway, six year, it's lcd. So I'm not used to shooting LCD because almost all the phones we shoot are OLEDs. So I'm taking photos. I'm realizing that it's banding because I'm shooting faster than 60 hertz. It's just like I felt like I was going back in time. Like this is a problem that I don't have anymore because there aren't 60Hz LCDs around that are like you're often shooting. So that is the compromise of this thing. They compromise the display. They are calling it a Super Retina xDR display, which 100% means LCD. 60 Hz. Everything else is fine. Everything else is iPhone. Yeah, it's an A19. It's a 48 megapixel fusion sensor on the back. Apple loves to just sort of like say camera words as loudly as they can to make you not question if those words mean the things they're supposed to mean. So that you can crop that 48 megapixel sensor down to optical quality to assume.

[David Pierce]

Nope, it's one camera.

[Nilay Patel]

And I.

[David Pierce]

It's still just the one camera.

[Nilay Patel]

It's like you're just cropping the sensor. What does optical quality mean? Also because the optical quality of the 40 megapixel sensor by default is doubled up.24 megapixel photo. So anyway, this is just a lot like. But we'll test it. But all that's like very familiar. Now the trade off here at $600, which in Android World will definitely get you an oled is a 60 Hz LCD.

[David Pierce]

Yeah, well, and I think the way people buy phones is just not the way people buy MacBooks. Right. Or laptops or any really any other device. Like, I think you're in this position now where people are holding onto their phones longer and longer.

[Nilay Patel]

The chat is extremely. Telling me it's oled. I asked them very directly if this thing was an OLED or an lcd and they made the noise at me that said lcd.

[David Pierce]

I don't know. There's. There's a real debate. Bugs and stuff has. You. Has your back on it being an lcd. You. You did come out of your demo saying it was an lcd.

[Nilay Patel]

I mean, I.

[David Pierce]

So either somebody told you wrong.

[Nilay Patel]

I looked the person in the eye before I was doing the hands on and said, is this an OLED or an lcd? And they went, it's Super Retina. And they wouldn't say oled. Hold on, let me. This is.

[David Pierce]

Welcome to the portion of the Vergecast where Neli reads the fine print on the Apple website.

[Nilay Patel]

I mean, you don't see this when you don't do these lives.

[David Pierce]

I check all the time, at any rate.

[Nilay Patel]

Oh, okay. They say Apple's official page says oled. So I was misinformed at the end because I asked very specifically. In any case, the 60Hz refresh, I think it's 600, is still a problem. I'm sorry, we have to edit this when this goes out live.

[David Pierce]

It's true.

[Nilay Patel]

We're gonna censor ourselves.

[David Pierce]

It'll just be a long bleep sound as Neli reads.

[Nilay Patel]

But I really did. I looked the person who handed me the phone and said, this is oled, right? And I went

[David Pierce]

like, how dare you? Yeah, I think the. The 60 Hz thing is real. I think.

[Nilay Patel]

Oh, wait, can I. A lot of people are telling me that Liquid Retina is lcd. Can I tell you the. You're right. I know Liquid Retina is lcd. And I once in a briefing with Apple, spent a long time being like, what do you mean by liquid? What does liquid mean? And they finally caved and are like, it just means rounded corners. That's it. That's what that means.

[David Pierce]

I mean, that's the liquid glass story. Rounded corners of unknown radii that are never the same across apps. Liquid Glass. Yeah, this is what we're doing here. Great job, Apple.

[Nilay Patel]

Okay, so I don't see this on the Apple website anywhere because there's no tech specs page for this thing yet. Oh, there is. Here it is. Okay, I was wrong. It's an OLED again. I looked the person in the eye and they straightforwardly were like, fair enough.

[David Pierce]

Well still I think, I think it would be worse if it was an LCD for sure. But I remember. So when I last reviewed the iPad mini, there was this big sort of long running controversy about the jelly scrolling effect on the iPad mini which, which is like in, in part about screen refresh. And I said there. And I still feel the same way. That that is, that is again in the list of like don't ever taste good wine. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah.

[David Pierce]

And, and I, for, for somebody like you who is coming from big screen 120Hz boy do you notice, boy, do you notice the downgrade? And I think there are a lot of people who say you don't. You wouldn't see it if you hadn't sort of trained your eyes to see it. But I think increasingly as people are starting to play games more and more in particular you see it. Yeah, like it, it doesn't demo Gamester

[Nilay Patel]

and you could definitely see it.

[David Pierce]

Yeah, like I don't think it matters in the course of like scrolling TikToks on your phone. I don't think you're, you're going to see the tearing in a way that like sucks and makes you hate your phone. But you see it in games and

[Nilay Patel]

there, there are, I can see it in this.

[David Pierce]

I know you can. But most, most people who are going to buy a 17e are not coming from a pro Max. So, so that's fine. But like I do think that is a real like actual user experience sacrifice in that one particular way and that is such a core thing people do on their phones now is play games that like you, you notice. It's a, it's a big difference.

[Nilay Patel]

Now, now people are confused about whether OLED technology is also. No, I'm just wrong. I'm just like, I'll just admit it, I was somewhat misinformed of the event and I was in a rush.

[David Pierce]

Well, the good news is once we, once we hang up this live stream, we're going back.

[Nilay Patel]

We're going back.

[David Pierce]

We will ask this question, we will look more.

[Nilay Patel]

I think the text page is right. I just didn't look before we did it because I, when someone tells you, you know. Yeah, I think I was so struck by the 60 Hz refresh, which I can definitely see and I associate that with the other thing. Sure. So I apologies for thank you all for correcting me. I just think when I, when I see I. It's 660 Hz is still not okay.

[David Pierce]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

And that's like, that is the compromise of this device.

[David Pierce]

Yeah. Again, especially because you're not, most people are not paying the 600 you're trading. Like Verizon will so happily give you a new phone for any reason. You just, you just call Verizon and you say hello. And they're like, would you like a new phone? You can ha. You can just have it. So I think the idea, I don't

[Nilay Patel]

think most people are going to end up paying actually 600 cash for this.

[David Pierce]

That's what I mean.

[Nilay Patel]

They're going to get a trade in or it's going to be free or it's going to be on sale.

[David Pierce]

Right. And it's obviously different in other places around the world where people are more likely to like plunk down cash. But I also think I like the way you feel about displays is how I feel about phones. Like, I think you should overspend on your phone because it is, it is in almost every case the device you use the most that does the most things in your life. And whether screen alone is a reason to upgrade. I think I've heard from a bunch of people already who are mad at not having two cameras.

[Nilay Patel]

They put the text page up.

[David Pierce]

Thank you.

[Nilay Patel]

Now I'm being dunked on by the

[David Pierce]

video switchers owned by Travis. Like, I think when I went from the iPhone pro back to the base iPhone, I noticed losing the third camera and you really notice losing the second camera. And all the fusion sensor stuff is nonsense. It's just a camera you can crop and you will notice not having it. And so there is a real set of trade offs you have to make to do this thing that aren't going to show up in the giant credit card purchase. And so for me it's like I have an easier time telling somebody to buy a MacBook Neo over an Air than I do telling you to buy a 17e over a 17.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[David Pierce]

Especially now because the base 17 is like a terrific phone that almost everyone should buy if you want an iPhone. And that hasn't always been the case, but now it is and it is like handily worth the upgrade price over the 17e for me.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah, I think that's right. Also people hold on these phones forever.

[David Pierce]

Yeah.

[Nilay Patel]

And so it's the same argument to me with screens. Right. Like if you're gonna have this thing and you know it's four years, which is where people are stretching these phones out to. By the way, Taylor Swift has a 13. I saw a picture of her really recently. She's a 13. People have him for a long time.

[David Pierce]

Taylor, if you're listening, and I know that you are Taylor, it's a 13.

[Nilay Patel]

Pro.

[David Pierce]

It's time to upgrade. You'll like the orange one. Call me, we can talk about this. We'll go to the Verizon store together.

[Nilay Patel]

That is an episode of the Vergecast. That's the only way to dig ourselves out of this hole. My mistake here is to get Taylor on to talk about why she hasn't upgraded airflow.

[David Pierce]

I think David and Taylor go to the Verizon store is like an Emmy waiting to happen.

[Nilay Patel]

It's. It's either a greater, it's a car crash anyhow. You hold on for so long, it is actually worth the and it's worth the extra money. And I think that's why you see it's the pros that people are buying.

[David Pierce]

Yeah, right.

[Nilay Patel]

Like the volume seller in this last run I think was actually the pro. And I think people understand the trade off of I want to have this for a long time.

[David Pierce]

Yeah. Especially with, with the camera. I think in particular that it is like this is a thing worth investing in now that you are doing it less and less often all the time. Which I think is awesome.

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[David Pierce]

We should briefly talk about the iPad, which I think we have waited this long to talk about correctly and on purpose. Yeah, there's a new iPad Air the end.

[Nilay Patel]

I told David he should just do the the hands on with the iPad air that was already in his backpack and like see if anyone knows. I don't. I think it's wrong for us to do disinformation. So like we didn't but like I I'm pretty confident that if you had just been like I've had error hands on and publish it before the event.

[David Pierce]

I have a stack of iPad airs at home and I'm very excited to add the new one to it and see if I can tell the difference. Like which iPad is this that I'm getting out is an increasingly hard game to play at my house. I will say I was really hoping the announcement this week would be a big upgrade to the base iPad because that one is sort of slowly being left behind. Right? All these chip bumps, they're not like individually all that meaningful generation to generation. Especially now that Apple is revving these so fast like it used to be a couple of years between iPads, and now we've had three in two years, basically. But the chip bumps matter over time. And like you talk about how long people keep their phones, people keep their iPads for like a decade. They're one of the longest lasting devices you'll find, which is awesome. But what it does mean is that you should future proof that as much as possible. So, like, every one of these chip upgrades, I think is good news for the iPad, because when you need a new iPad because yours breaks, like, my mom is my favorite barometer of this. She uses the absolute hell out of her iPad and she will use it until the point where she comes to me and she's like, david, the Hulu app won't open anymore. And that's when it's like, all right, mom, it's, it's time to, it's time to upgrade. Like, you, you have officially lost software support. And now, now we can upgrade and we're just gonna get her the new one, right? And it's, it's gonna be fine. And with every chip bump, it's like, okay, I'm, I'm buying you another year of use on this thing that you will get out of it. On the other side, it's a bummer that the base iPad didn't get it because it just continues to be like multiple generations out of date on that. And now I have to like, for years it was like, well, an iPad is an iPad, and if mostly what you want to do is do iPad, you should just buy the iPad. And that's less and less true as the era gets further away from it.

[Nilay Patel]

Here's my 1. If you have kids, you buy them an iPad and then they discover that Apple Arcade exists and they download games from Apple Arcade. You will quickly run into the fact that the base iPad cannot play Dreamlight Valley.

[David Pierce]

What is Dreamlight Valley?

[Nilay Patel]

It's a Disney rpg. I don't know.

[David Pierce]

Well, this is good universal advice that is definitely not just specific.

[Nilay Patel]

There's a category of games that if you want to hold on the iPad for a while, probably the base iPad can play it now, the new base iPad, but the one we have cannot play Dreamlight Valley. And so you're. The iPad is content viewing device can last for a long time. If you start to play games on this thing, that's when the base model does not last as long. Are you just googling during my phone?

[David Pierce]

Well, there's a bunch of people in the chat saying, the 12th generation iPad. And I was like, oh my God, did I Miss a launch and I believe the answer is no. But there have been rumors of a 12th generation iPad coming soon. So hopefully I will be proven right and this will be fine. And like that will go back to being a good deal. But right now it's like you need the one with the horsepower because a, like you said, you can do a lot of stuff. It is a gaming machine for a lot of people. It, it is, you know, you're going to do architecture drawings with augmented reality apparently. But what you want is something that is going to last you a decade because it should. Your iPad should last you 10 years. And I think this error has a shot at that in a way that the base iPad currently does not. But like we'll run a bunch of tests. I think the one thing I am excited about with the air is so last year I reviewed the iPad Pro which had the new is it the C1X, the new wireless chip and got like astonishingly good wireless speeds like 50% to 100% faster than I was getting on other iPads just sitting next to each other. And it's like there are a million reasons that could be right that newer devices have less going on. That stuff gets old. Like you never know. But if this one can do that again, a, this is a huge win for Apple's own chips and B, I think cellular iPad is one of the great things that exists and everyone should have one. If you're going to buy an iPad, I so firmly believe you should get cellular connectivity because it a just works. If you also have an iPhone, it just, it just sort of eims between them super seamlessly. The iPad is an amazing hotspot. It's just like a forever lasting hotspot. Yeah. So it just sits in my bag and I hotspot it from it all the time. And the thing where you can just pull it out and use it anywhere, like meaningfully changes your relationship with your iPad and even little things like you know, the Kindle app will always be in sync because it can just sync when you open it up. It's like that stuff adds up. This is why I want a MacBook with a cellular connection. Like that was one thing I was hoping would be in the neo that it's not is is 5G because it. That again changes the set of things you can do with it.

[Nilay Patel]

Like I gotta do this grape surgery for my six. Yeah.

[David Pierce]

For what they're trying to do here. Cellular wouldn't make any sense. Like having a student device with cellular

[Nilay Patel]

which is really interesting. You know, Apple got in some trouble because they really had a contentious relationship with Qualcomm. Yeah, they were trying to go to intel for modems, the intel modems. They eventually bought Intel's modem business. They were underperforming, so they started throttling the Qualcomm modems they were using to make them perform as well as the intel modems, which is not good. They got in a bunch of trouble for this. And I think the C1 was like, it performed as well as the intel modems. They put it in a bunch of cheap stuff. I think the C1X, which is their modem that they're going to produce at scale, might be outperforming the Qualcomm modems. Again, it's very hard to test this stuff, but if it's outperforming the Qualcomm modems, that's a big deal because they will just put it in everything because there's no reason for them to, like, make different versions of the modem. Like, that's just scale. Just put it in everything. And they don't have to pay Qualcomm its licensing fees.

[David Pierce]

Right.

[Nilay Patel]

So if they've actually pulled it off with the C1X here, we'll see.

[David Pierce]

Yeah, that puts. It puts Apple, like, even more in control of its own destiny in Silicon Waste.

[Nilay Patel]

I'm saying we'll see because Allison is at Mobile Role of Congress in Barcelona this week where they are talking about launching 6G.

[David Pierce]

We made it so far without talking about 6G.

[Nilay Patel]

It's coming, baby.

[David Pierce]

Not ready for this. All right, that's as good a thing to end on as any. We've been here a while. You and I have to go. We have to get back. Anything else on your mind before we. We say goodbye to the chat and get out of here?

[Nilay Patel]

No, it's. I will just say this to the chat from the bottom of my heart. One of my superpowers is no one can tell when I'm embarrassed because I'm brown. The blood rushed to my face and I was embarrassed. And I've gotten myself out of a lot of trouble by just not Imperial. Like, people can't tell. I'm very embarrassed by getting that one. So I'm just admitting it to you. I usually do not get display specs wrong. Hopefully that you can trust me after all these years. We're just cutting it out of whatever is here.

[David Pierce]

I was gonna say everyone should know that Nilay gets this wrong every single time. And we just normally cut it out of the podcast.

[Nilay Patel]

There's like 13 takes of meeting this way text.

[David Pierce]

Every episode is twice as long. And then we cut out all the things.

[Nilay Patel]

The couple thousand people who have been on this live stream, they'll know that I duffed it and it'll just. It's going to disappear from the Internet now and you'll never. You'll never. You'll just be like a whisper in the wind. Kilroy was here. You know what I mean?

[David Pierce]

This is the last anyone will ever see of this episode.

[Nilay Patel]

I'm actually discontinuing the iPhone. 17 decades. We don't talk about this.

[David Pierce]

People will refer to this as LCD gate. This will be the end.

[Nilay Patel]

I'm only. I only said it because they looked me in the eyes, man.

[David Pierce]

I will say you. You came away from a demo saying that chat. And it's like, it's. It's. This is. This is what we do. We, we. We issue a correction and we move on with our lives. And your boss yells at you until you do better next time.

[Nilay Patel]

There's no one that's like, you know,

[David Pierce]

that's what the chat's here for. The chat's our boss.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah.

[David Pierce]

All right, all right. We should get out of here. Thank you to everybody who has been here watching, hanging out with the chat. We're gonna do this a lot more often. This is a very fun b. It's. It's a nice thing to do. It turns out we're in a moment where there's like, there's too much news for the amount of show that we make. So to be able to do this and then we can come back.

[Nilay Patel]

We're gonna start the Friday show. I have. It's been a heavy week of, like, politics in this world. There's a lot going on. We're starting a Friday show with me just experiencing pure gadget related joy.

[David Pierce]

Whoa. That's a good.

[Nilay Patel]

I've never been happier with a gadget in my life. And it's like a extremely stupid, extremely nili situation. I promise we're gonna start the Friday show with that and then we'll talk about other stuff.

[David Pierce]

What a good tease.

[Nilay Patel]

Yeah.

[David Pierce]

All right. Until then, thank you to everybody. Thank you to Travis and Denise and Eric and the whole team for getting all of this set up and running for us. We're gonna go back and yell at Apple about OLEDs. Nilay, say goodbye to the people.

[Nilay Patel]

Rock and roll.

[David Pierce]

The wrongs we must right.

[Nilay Patel]

The fights we must win. The future we must secure together for our nation. This is what's in front of us. This determines what's next for all of us.

[David Pierce]

We are Marines.

[Nilay Patel]

We were made for this.