 Welcome to the Verge Live for the iPhone 6 slash Apple Watch event. I'm Ross Miller. I'm Chris Sigler. And that's it for formalities. We just want to talk about Apple shit for a little bit. So let's do it. Wearables! Yes! I can't believe you just put a slap bracelet on my wrist. I warned you. I'll take it. By the way, there's nothing, I don't know why we have a slap bracelet prop because there's nothing slappy about... Correction, we have two. We do have two props. Yes, that's true. All right, let's get started. So the big thing today, of course, Apple announced the iPhone 6 as expected, the iPhone 6 Plus. It's exactly as it was leaked. Yes. They also went... 4.7 and 5.5. 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch screen. We'll get to that. The Apple Watch we'll talk about later in the show. And of course, all our friends in San Francisco will be here as soon as they're done doing all the hands-ons and they'll have the way more interesting first-hand information on this. So if you have questions, hashtag Ask Verge on Twitter, we'll be checking it. We'll be able to answer, hopefully we'll be able to answer a little bit of it. If not, San Francisco will answer it for us. And let's just kind of get into it. So you've done enough Apple events. I've done a few in my time. Let's talk about the big thing. First off, a new venue entirely. Well, old venue. Old venue is new again. This is where they introduced the original Macintosh some 25 years ago. So a little bit of nostalgia, I think. Tim Cook mentioned it first thing when they started today. And it's huge, right? The venues that they normally use, Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco primarily, isn't nearly as big as the Flint Center where they held this event today. So they obviously wanted a much larger crew on hand. They got it. They filled that theater up. And then of course, they built that enormous box right outside the trailer. Which is at U2's dressing room or at the hands-on booth? Both, hopefully. I can only imagine that Bono was getting dressed this morning amongst Apple watches. Amongst his Apple staff too. He's got a purse for each item of clothing and just fits it in. Yes, he does. Except the sunglasses. Those have never come off. Right, no. Not since after Europa. Right. Right. No, before that, I think. That was like Joshua tree era. No, no, no. I think the sunglasses turned Joshua tree. Oh, you didn't? No, I think all that you can leave behind is a confirmation. Okay. I think pop, Zoropa. Look, I'm a big U2 fan. Apparently. I like dad music sometimes. This is Zootv, by the way, for Zoropa fans. But anyway, let's talk about the phones and not U2. So the leaks were 100% spot on. Basically, yeah. This is the first complete departure in industrial design since the 4, right? If you consider the 4, the 4S, the 5, and the 5S, birds of a feather, this is the first complete departure from that. It's a rounder design. You could argue that the 4S to the 5 is slightly stretched. Obviously, the original to the 3G changed the back. But no, this is a stark departure. It's starting to look like some of the other phones we've seen out there in the world. This is a point that's been made a number of times in the past. There are only so many ways you can skin a cat. There are only so many ways you can present a glass rectangle. I think that this is one of the biggest challenges for industrial designers from here on out, which might explain why they hired Newsom, right? Very weirdly, on a Friday night, they broke that news of Andy Fair. Hey, Newsom wanted to get hired on a Friday, and by God, he got hired on a Friday. But he is a superstar designer in his own right. I think that you're probably going to see more of that, these superstar designer partnerships with smartphone makers, because again, there are only so many ways that you can make these phones look. I think that that at least partially explains why you're seeing Apple explore watches now. We're approaching this sort of steady state with the smartphone, I think, and then they're going to move into this other field. But the 6 and the 6 Plus are still very interesting devices. It amazes me how many people want a much larger iPhone. It's just not my thing, but Sam Sheffer, who is sitting just beyond the view of the camera here, is absolutely chomping at the bit for a 5.5-inch 6 Plus. I don't get it, but I'm sure, like him, there are probably millions of people... Wait, what do you use? What do you use? So, until very recently, I was using a 5S. Totally comfortable with the 4-inch size. Now I'm on a Nexus 5, which is shattered into a million pieces, slightly larger, and I'll probably be getting a Moto 6 this month, which is 5.2. Wait, a Moto 6? Or the Moto X? The Moto X. Excuse me, which is 5.2. But 5.5, I don't know, there's something... I think Nilay just made the point on Twitter a few minutes ago that it's hard to see how or why you would get an iPad Mini if you have the 6 Plus, because the display sizes are just so similar. And I do think that they're starting to really, really blend those two genres, the small tablet and the big phone. So it'll be interesting to see... I'm assuming Apple's gonna have an iPad event later this year. It'll be interesting to see what happens there. Just what becomes the iPad Mini, which is still a much different size. I mean, no one... It is, but the 5.5, I mean, looking at the pictures, I mean, you have to... I mean, I guess we have some 5.5-inch phones or thereabouts in the office that we can use as a rough comparison, but that's a big phone. Once you get to the mid-fives, that starts to feel really big in the hand. And of course, there are a couple that are 6 and beyond, which is just insane. And then you have things like the Sony Z Ultra, which is just out of control. But even if it's just down to app ecosystem, like with the iPad, you don't always get a steady cellular connection, you don't always buy it, sell it, but also there are iPad-only apps, which may change now. You also... That's a very good point. You also can't hold an iPad Mini to your face. Well, I mean, you can, but it wouldn't do you any good. Absolutely. Whereas with a 6 Plus, you're more than welcome to hold it to your face. Right. Well, what else is there? So it's a new design. It's thinner than the iPhone 5S, and I actually... I forgot how thin this thing is. I use a Mophie case because the battery life is shit on this. This feels thin to me, and now it's actually noticeably different. Well, I can't remember which OEM told me this, but several years ago, an OEM told me that they've conducted a lot of focus group testing where they've kind of discovered that the point of diminishing returns with smartphone thickness, where consumers can no longer really tell the difference nor care about the difference, is somewhere between 5 and 6 millimeters. And so I think what you're gonna see in the industry, for better or for worse, is these companies, Apple included, are going to keep pushing for that 5 to 6 millimeter thickness, and then only once they get to that point technologically will they say, okay, we're gonna stop trying to make this thing thinner and we're gonna focus on battery performance, right? Because what has always frustrated me, even going back to the 3G, 3GS, iPhone 4 days, is that instead of keeping the same thickness, which people are happy with, and just making the battery bigger or more potent, they insist on making the phone thinner and keeping battery life roughly the same. And I think we would all agree that battery performance on these phones is about somewhere between 20 and 30% shorter than it really needs to be for that sense of confidence that no matter what happens over the course of the day, you're gonna be able to make it through to the end. I've definitely had days where this happens a lot at like CES, where you get up at 5.30, 6 in the morning, you're working until 11, 10, or 10, 11 midnight at night, your phone's not gonna make it. For an average day, 9 to 5 is not a problem, but it would be nice to have a phone that just focuses on battery life, which is why I've always sort of extolled the virtues of the Max line that Motorola used to make. So we'll see, we'll see. We'll see how the battery does on these, but it sounds, I mean they even said it on stage, that the emphasis was on preserving battery performance versus the 5S, not improving it. Right, and it still needs to be better than it is, they're announcing, you're right, and we'll get to that. I do want to talk about some of the questions we're getting already, hashtag ask Verge, and I don't need to actually say that because clearly you guys know that already. A lot of things about Apple Watch we'll get to, but difference between 6 and 6 Plus. I was watching, the video feed kept coming out for me, I know the camera's different, obviously the screen size is different, what else? Battery I don't know if we have battery capacities off hand, the milliamp hours, but the 6 Plus does obviously have a larger battery, and as you mentioned the 6 Plus has optical image stabilization in the camera. The sensor is the same and they both have digital image stabilization, the 6 Plus just adds optical as well. Other phones, Android phones have had that in the past, but it'll be interesting to have that on an iPhone because of course iPhones are known for just having really good image quality so I think it's going to make a big difference for them. Other than that, I think they're pretty much the same phone as far as I can tell. It's just the size of the screen size, size in your pocket, and the price of course, is it $100 difference? $100 difference. One thing that we should talk about that, so the way they've structured it with the 6, it's a $199 to $299 jump for a 48 gigabyte increase in storage capacity, right? You go from 16 to 64, is that 48? I'm not good with numbers. That's 48. Whereas before, that would have been a 16 to 32 jump. It seems like they're finally acknowledging that flash prices are coming down. They're saying, okay, 64 is the sweet spot. I'll be honest, I'm a very cloud-centric person, but so many friends of mine and family members have said, 64 is not enough. I need more storage, either because they're taking just billions of pictures or they're downloading a ton of music or what have you. They've topped these phones out to 128, which is $399 for the 6 and $499 for the 6 Plus, I think. Right, so it now tops out at $500. Right, and they've just skipped 32 entirely, which is funny to me because I've always bought the 32 model. 32 to me is the sweet spot, and they've taken that away and said, no, now 64 is the sweet spot. 16 is the entry level. Yeah, 16 is just not enough. No, 16 is not enough. That's the point where not only can you safely assume that you're not going to be able to download any movies for flights, but it's also to the point where it's like you have to start to be careful with apps, especially if you're a gamer, right? Some of these games are one, two, three gigabytes. No, no, I didn't know. The story that I have is when we were doing, when Addy did the Bioshock for iPhone, we tried it out, I was like, all right, I'll put it on my phone, whatever. I have the phone here, and then I realized I do delete every app I had, Facebook, half my pictures, Clear Out Pocket, Spotify offline. Worth it for Bioshock. Not for iPhone. I delete that immediately, and I get this weird sense of emptiness where it's like, what did I do with all that data? Yeah, that's just all gone. But 16 just seems ridiculously small. Yeah, I think their volume seller is going to be the 64, and I think we're going to be surprised at how many 128s they sell. I don't know. Do we have numbers on which sizes do well? I have to imagine the entry level is the best seller. It's the cheapest one. I want an iPhone for the cheapest. So first of all, I don't think that we, we certainly don't have official numbers on that, but I would actually guess that the 32 is the sweet spot. Maybe I'm wrong. 32 always felt like the sweet spot to me, because it's a nice balance between cost and capacity. Right. But yeah, we're getting rid of 32 entirely. Yeah. So then of course there's the, a couple of things, so there was optical image stabilization for the iPhone 6 Plus. That's not on the iPhone 6. We talked about that. There's a one touch mode, what is it? Reachability where like, you know our phones are bigger, so we're just going to cut off half the screen, bring everything down, and if you've got to touch the top. How does that work? So it's a double tap of the home button, right? Right. And that brings the buttons within reach. Yeah, they had to do something, right? And it's a tough call, because Apple has to walk back years of saying that four inches is the sweet spot for these devices. Which, I mean, you know. They walk back and they're just not saying it, of course. Like, they're not going to follow this. No, no, no, of course. But it also means that they need to adopt solutions that feel weird or frankly a little stolen. I mean, you know, other vendors who've explored five inch plus phones have implemented one handed modes. Samsung has one. And it's just something that you have to do in order to make the phone usable at that size. But it's, you know, this is certainly true, as true now as it ever has been. Like, if you're listening to what Apple is saying, then you're not really paying attention to the direction that they're going. And I think this is a perfect example of that, right? Like, 4.7, 5.5, if you go back even two or three years, you would have said, well, there's no way they're ever going to make a phone that size. Even though the market pressure might be there, they're just philosophically, that's not where they're at. And yet here we are today, 4.7, 5.5. Right. So let's move on. Let's talk about the thing that applies to all Apple products now or will apply to all Apple products. It's kind of a good transition between this and the watch. And that's the Apple Pay, that's NFC payments. Yeah. Which... This is, I mentioned this on Twitter earlier. You know, the mobile payments thing is a great example of a technology where, you know, Apple is not quote-unquote innovating here, but they are legitimizing a space that has so far been kind of a cluster, so to speak. Yeah. Like, you know, Google Wallet hasn't been broadly accepted with US carriers because of weird business things. Well, it was Verizon was supporting the company's name, I can't remember, who used to be called ISIS and obviously changed it. SoftCard. SoftCard. Yep. So yeah, that's the other thing. SoftCard has been a very carrier-centric technology that has seen, as far as I can tell, close to zero adoption. And that's because they put their business priorities first. I mean, Tim Cook said this on stage today. He said, well, when you're talking about a technology like this, it can't be about putting these business priorities first. It has to be about putting the user experience first. Because you're just not going to get people to use this thing unless it works seamlessly and it works like cash. Well, that's the way to say it, but I'm sure there are business priorities that are at hand. And of course, the fact that if you're on Apple, you're in a huge market. You will be in a huge market. And they've got a ton of banks, obviously American Express, Visa, MasterCard. Top six banks. Yeah, MX, MasterCard, Visa. That's huge for them. I think this has a very real... I mean, considering the market buy-in that they have and the market saturation they're going to get with these devices, I think they have a very real chance of getting penetration with mobile payments in the US market that they haven't seen before. Right. And the support is amazing. You've got McDonald's. Yeah. Starbucks, I'm assuming. I don't remember if they said that or not. Yeah. Disney World, whatever. All your pharmacies. So Starbucks, funny thing about that is that it's supported, but they didn't mention it. Oh, okay. It was pictured on a slide and you'd think they would want to bring that up because Starbucks is a pretty big deal. It's huge, yeah. But yeah, they didn't mention it. Oh, wow. But yeah, today, like I mentioned, I use a Nexus 5 and I use Tap2Pay all the time. Do you really? Yes. And every single time I get a weird or sometimes a dirty look, like, what are you doing? Are you hacking my credit card machine? Yeah, and sometimes what'll happen, this happens with 7-Elevens a lot, you'll tap and it'll look like it's working and then it says denied and then you have to swipe with your card anyway. So I think that Apple adding support for that, like I said, really legitimizes that market in a way that it hasn't been before. And companies like 7-Eleven are just going to have to say, okay, we're supporting this now. Right. So is the compatibility there? If you're supporting, if you're a McDonald's and your little kiosk or whatever supports Apple payment or whatever, Apple Pay, do you need a different set of hardware or software technology to make it work with the other one? You know, I don't think they mentioned that on stage, but let's put it this way, I can't imagine that they do. Right. Because if they did, that's a no-sale, right? I mean, that's a speed bump that they would have a very hard time getting over. All right, which apparently they've found a way to do, or at least Apple has in this case. Yeah. Well, I mean, the phones themselves are just NFC, right? So it might be, who knows, it might be a software package that they deployed to the actual credit card kiosks that have NFC sensors built in. Maybe it's a firmware update, who knows. But I can't imagine that they would have deployed or developed Apple Pay with the idea that you need to put new kiosks in stores. I just can't imagine. I would hope. If they did, they would have made a big deal out of it, of course. Right. They would have announced that. Right. So, great. Actually, maybe they wouldn't have, because Apple is very good at not mentioning sad news during events. That would constitute sad news. They very, very quietly discontinued the iPod Classic. It's dead now. It's dead, officially. Wait, the Classic. Yes. Is the Nano still alive? Nano, I don't... I think the Nano is still alive. Has the Nano been dead for a while? Because it looks exactly like the watch, and that's confusing. Oh, no, no, no. That one, remember they placed it with that rectangular one. That's all they needed. They made it vertical. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one with its weird own platform or whatever. Right, right. Which looks vaguely iOS-esque, but is not. Yeah, the iPod Classic, rest in peace. It is a little funny to me that they... Yeah, we need a 40 that we can pour out. I mean, can we just get beers to pour out here in bowls? But again, they would have to be... Not beers, Ross, malt liquors. We don't have malt liquor here. Believe it or not, we have a lot of alcohol between the three floors of Vox Media in New York. We do not have malt liquor. That's unfortunate. I have asked. That is a non... That's a deal breaker. I mean, this is a device that was... Look, we've all owned an iPod Classic at one time or another. I own several going back to 2001 or whatever it was. And yeah, it had a good run. But it's just... When you think of the market power that the name iPod had, even five years ago, but certainly seven, 10 years ago, to just see that evaporate and be replaced first with iPhone and iPad and now with... They've gotten rid of the iMonitor altogether for the Apple Watch. It's just kind of striking to see that. They've essentially buried this extraordinary branding tool willfully. But that's the death of a market. They recognized it and they moved on to smartphones. So what do you do? It's on a dumbly personal note for me. The first iPod I ever got was the U2 iPod. Oh yeah. Unashamed. The black one with the red ring? Yes. Yeah, it was a good looking... Unabashedly love U2. And I had to get it and that was the first Apple product I ever had. And it had their signatures on the back, right? Laser engraved. It did. That scratched off immediately, like a month into it. And nothing said like, I am a white suburban kid in the south, I have a U2 iPod. So to see U2 again, that's just like, just stop everything. I thought that you only listened to REM. Isn't that Georgia's band? It's an Athens band, yeah. But of course they also had B-52s, they had Rock Lobster. We're not talking about this right now. The B-52s are from Georgia? Yeah, from Athens. Wow, didn't know that. Yeah, I can tell you where the love shot gets. No, but like, in the U2 thing, we should talk about Apple Watch versus what people care about. But I do want to talk about the U2 thing later because that's just me. You should deal with it. We should have a separate show devoted to U2. God, that would be the lamest show ever. But it would be just full of drunken people just chugging Guinness, covering themselves in Guinness, remembering the good old days, or remember which tour and album was the best. And anyway, let's move on. Yeah, okay, so if you're just joining us, obviously we're waiting for the San Francisco crew to do all the hands-on video, give their impressions, and then as soon as they're done with that, they're going to run out of the giant white cube. There's a camera crew waiting for them, and we're going to go live and talk to them and get more information. Until such time, though, we're going to keep answering your questions. That is hashtag Ask Verge on Twitter. And we're just kind of going down the list a little more casually than just like I'm seeing them or prodding each other for it. I mean, let's get into Apple Watch now. Yeah. Let's do that. We actually have video hands-on. John, do we have that available where we can just kind of watch that? Yeah, so we're going to watch the Apple Watch hands-on, watch it together, and we'll kind of talk about that and answer some of your questions. All right, we're at Apple's big event here. We finally know what's inside the big box. It is the Apple Watch. First thing you need to know is it won't be available until early 2015. It's going to start at $349. There's a whole bunch of features on here. The most important one for Apple is this digital crown, which we're running through demo loop here so you won't actually see it do anything. But it is a zoom and it also lets you scroll through stuff. It's the primary interface for this watch. However, it also has a touch screen. It measures two different kinds of taps. You can just tap it. But it also measures force. So if you tap it hard, they call that a force touch and that lets you bring up little activities and so on. There's another button on the side here that brings up Apple's custom messaging app so you can send little drawings to each other. You can also send your heartbeat to each other, which is pretty crazy. If you swipe up, you get these things called glances. And that's like customizable information letting you see your calendar information and so on. And then notifications pop up. You feel the taptic feedback, they call it. You just turn your wrist up, the screen turns on, and you see it. So that's a super quick look at the Apple Watch. I can actually show you this band here as well. We can remove it here. I'm not used to how this band works. There we go. I'm kind of clumsy. On the back, you can see there's these sensors here, so measuring your heart rate and so on. There's a close look at the digital crown on the side. These straps actually slide right out. They click in and out, which lets you customize. They've got a whole bunch of different watch straps. It comes in two different sizes. And it also comes in lots of different varieties. There's a solid gold one. There's a sports one. And then there's the standard one. So there you go. That's just a very super quick look of the Apple Watch on a demo loop. Okay. That is the Apple Watch. That is the big change. This is obviously what they thought was the biggest event since 2010's iPad, since 2007's iPhone. This is a landmark moment for them. We should actually take a moment to recognize that this was, Neelai mentioned this in the live blog, this was sort of Tim Cook. The moment that he said, one more thing, was the moment that he completed his takeover of Apple, right? Yes. This is now his company, first use of one more thing since Steve Jobs died, and a very deserving use of one more thing, I think. Was this actually Tim Cook's first time saying one more thing? Or did he say it as he took over the interim CEO position? That's a good question. But I can't remember Tim Cook saying one more thing before. I can't remember. But anyway, that's another topic for another time. We should talk about the Watch. I think that their master stroke here, many things unpack, but I think the master stroke is releasing it in two sizes. I really do. Do we know what sizes are though? I don't think we have, the dimensions might be up on Apple's side, I'm not sure. But just the fact that they are acknowledging that watches are not a one size fits all proposition is huge. One of the biggest complaints we've seen with the Android Wear devices so far is that the single size of these devices is too big for a lot of wrists. And so having a smaller size, I think, is going to just instantly sell significantly more watches than they'd be able to with a single size. Of course, when you add in all the finished combinations and the strap combinations, it makes it a very personal device. And I think you said there's three different buckets they're putting into the Apple Watch, the Apple Watch Sport, and then- The Apple Watch Edition. Is it just called that? I thought that was a typo. It's the Apple Watch Edition, which is just gold. It should be called Apple Watch Edition Apple Watch. It's the Apple Watch Edition of the Apple Watch. But anyway- And I'm very curious how much that one costs, because you're buying basically an 18 carat gold watch. These things last two years. Won't be cheap. Yeah. We'll get back into it. We'll argue ourselves about that a little bit. But I believe we have Dieter Bohn. Dieter Bohn, are you ready? Is Dieter with us? I'm ready. How's it going? Hey, how are you? Hey, how's it going, guys? Good, good. So tell us about your experience there today. What's the mood like? I got to say the mood is pretty emollient. This is the biggest Apple event I've ever been to. There's just a ton of people. The keynote itself was very well run. In fact, it was quite hectic. There were definitely a bunch of Apple fans in the audience. I assume a bunch of special guests and employees, so there were lots and lots of cheering. And then of course this giant white building behind me where they're holding the actual hands-on area is also pretty well controlled. So I actually got a chance to hold the two iPhones and play around with one of the mini editions of the Apple Watch. So in general, everybody here seems pretty pleased. We'll see what happens when we walk away from the Apple event and have had a few days to think about it. But everybody on site seems pretty pumped by what they're seeing. So let's talk about the... We were actually talking about the watch in general. What was your impression? You had the hands-on for us. What is your takeaway from it? So my takeaway is actually that it's kind of like a lot of other Apple products in that it's simultaneously amazing and kind of boring. Now part of that is that we've already seen a bunch of other smart watches. We've seen Android Wear and we've seen the ideas that they have. But if you were to ask me to tick off all the ideas that we would see in an Apple Watch, they pretty much hit all of them. I suppose the most interesting part of it is this idea of this glance, I think it's called, where you can get extra random information, which is sort of like a weird version of Google Now, I guess. But we'll have to see. Actually they only had demo units that we could actually touch and then the actual working units were on the Apple employee wrists. But overall the hardware is... It's nice. It's not stunningly beautiful. I personally think the Moto 360 is better looking. But it's a watch and so other people might prefer what Apple has made. It is nondescript. It's very well done. It's very pretty. It looks very good. But it's certainly, I guess, inoffensive. It looks great. It's very well made. It's very well designed. But it doesn't make a very bold statement as far as I'm concerned. And is this digital crown easy to use or what's that like? So the bad news is I haven't actually been able to interact with software using the digital crown. I've seen people interact with it and it seems very fast and fluid. On the unit that I played with, which was, you know, like it was running through a demo loop, I got to feel the physicality of it. And the thing that's really surprising about the crown is that there's almost no resistance to it. There's no like clicking. It doesn't push back when you turn it. It doesn't spin like completely freely, but it spins pretty easily. And so it felt a little bit weird. But that said, I imagine that when you're actually using it to scroll through lists or to zoom, it'll feel much more natural. Is it something like, do you think it's too sensitive where like I would accidentally bump into this? Like if I was like walking across like a wall? I don't think so. It's small enough and it's inset on the side of the watch enough that it's pretty unlikely that you're going to accidentally spin it by bumping into something. And I also don't think that it's likely you're going to accidentally press it and go home when you don't need to. So let's talk about the iPhones for a second. Of course, there are two sizes, the 4.7 and the 5.5. Tell me about those sizes. Does the 5.5 feel really big? What's the hardware like? So both the hardware, they're both amazing. They're both just super thin and way lighter than I expected. Everybody wants to know about the 5.5, so yeah, it's big. But what's interesting about it is it's very tall. The bezels on the left and the right are relatively thin. And so when you hold it in your hand and it's got that aspect ratio, it feels like actually holdable in your hand. But once you want to like start doing stuff, you're going to need two hands. But it doesn't feel nearly as wide as say like a Galaxy Note. I guess I'd put it in like the Nexus 5 range in terms of width. So it's much better to hold in your hand than I expected. And then the best part of it is you turn it sideways and it turns into, I think I called it an iPad mini mini, so you actually get more stuff on the UI. The other thing about the hardware that's really neat is the glass, I don't know if it curves, but it catches the light and it feels a little bit different than previous iPhones. It feels a little bit more organic. And I don't know quite what to attribute that to if they put something subtle on the finish on the glass, if it's this new type of resistant glass that they didn't really give a brand name to or what. But it looks much different in person, a little bit glossier and a little bit less cold than I expected than previous models. Which you know, you got to say you look at the iPhone 5S, it's got some pretty sharp lines on it. And there's not a sharp line to be found on these phones. Now I want to quickly go back to watch because we're getting a lot of questions from readers right now. One of the things that are asking a lot about is one, left-handed use because of where like the digital little crown is. Number two, the battery life. Can you talk about any of that stuff? Well I'll answer the second question first. I wish I could talk about the battery life, but the closest thing we have is very subtle hints that were maybe dropped during the keynote about how easy it is to charge and it's so easy to charge every night. So unless I missed it because I was live blogging, I didn't hear real battery life numbers. And as near as I can tell, this is probably going to be charged every day. The models are very small and so if they've managed to light up that panel and have some sort of battery revolution, I feel like they would have told us. Since they didn't, I'm guessing that you'll be lucky to get a day out of this. I'm assuming that. I don't think Apple would release a product that you couldn't do that on. And what was the first question? Left-handed use. Left-handed use, yeah I don't know. I mean it's a crown and I had it on my left wrist and I bent my hand around and I wasn't worried that I was going to be hitting it. If you're a left-hander and you want to put it on your right wrist, you'll need to do what all left-handers deal with, which is occlude the watch face and reach around to get it. But maybe they'll make a left-handed version, but from what I saw, it didn't look all that painful to use on your right wrist. It's pretty rare for Apple to announce a device like this this far in advance. Of course they did it with the Mac Pro, they did it with the original iPhone, so it does happen but it's fairly rare. What do you think about this strategy of announcing the iPhone 6, which is going to be available next week, and then at the same time announcing the Apple Watch that is coming out at some point in early 2015? Do you think that was a wise move or no? Oh, I think it was a totally wise move. I mean what does Apple have to lose by announcing this early? Unless they don't hit their release date, it's not like they're cannibalizing any current Apple products except maybe a Nano, but I don't think so because this thing works with an iPhone. They might manage to hold off people from buying Android Wear devices in the meantime, which is a win for Apple. I don't really see what they lose here other than not having the, oh my God, I can buy it right now moment. Other than that, they're going to have time for people to make apps for this thing. They're going to have time to nail the battery life, if that's actually a question on this. We don't know. I don't see, other than missing the Christmas season, what hurts them there. I think that it's going to be just fine. Let me ask you guys a question actually. There's the Apple Watch, there's the Apple Watch Sport, there's the Apple Watch Edition. I heard you guys talking about this beforehand. Then there's just a whole slew of different strap options. I, in the room with all the different variants of all these different watches and then the two size options as well, had an actually tough time making sure I caught everything and telling them apart. I think this thing is going to be so customizable that although you'll be able to tell an Apple Watch from a mile away, I don't think very many people are all going to have the exact same thing on their wrist. What's your take on all the different variants that you guys saw from your end? I think customizability is absolutely... I've been preaching this for as long as I can remember with smart watches and wearables in general. I think that more than any other kind of consumer electronic, it's really important that they be hyper customizable. If there's one thing that Apple did extremely right with that device today, it was make it available in two sizes. As I was mentioning before, we've heard a lot of complaints about Android Wear being too big on some wrists. I think that having those two sizes is super important. Actually let me toss it back to you. Is the small one a lot smaller than existing Android Wear devices that we've seen? Give us a sense of the relative size between the two. I haven't actually gotten a chance to look at the two of them right next to each other, but I would say that the relative size is not that different. If the big watch offers significantly better battery life, even if you've got small wrists, I think it's the way to go. In terms of comparing it to Android Wear devices, it's way smaller than a Moto 360. It's in the same way that a Pebble is smaller than a Moto 360. In terms of size, it's actually not that far off from a Pebble, but because it's so rounded and so much better made and just nicer looking, it feels like a different watch. The Pebble's got those sharp edges on the Pebble steel. It feels like a watch. It's a little bit thicker than maybe some people would like, but it's certainly not the big honking things like the Moto 360 to put on your wrist. It looks way better than say even the LG G Watch, the original square watch, which is pretty nondescript. It's not that much smaller than the G Watch from what I remember, but it feels way smaller and looks way better because of how much better designed it is. I do want to talk a little bit more about the software things. I think there's a lot of hyper-customizable we've been talking about this, but I think the thing we were harping on before the show started was this user, this UI that they have going through all these apps. To me, it still reminds me of, I hate saying this, the Juju Rev 2 where you're having these neighborhood apps and you're using the crowns, the touch screen, force touch. That part seems so unintuitive, the non-Siri aspect of this seems really bad. Dieter, how much of the interface and switching between apps did you get to see? What was your take on that? Just a bit. I will say that I agree with you that this idea of zooming out to the universe and then zooming straight into the neighborhood. By the way, shouldn't there be a range between universe and neighborhood? That's a little bit weird and then you pan around and you open the app. You've got app and then you've got these glance cards or whatever we're calling them on the bottom. Then you've got the custom app, the messaging app that you can launch from anywhere with that button on the side. Then you've got watch faces and they're customizable. I think that there's a fidgetiness to this thing that is insane. You look at an Android phone and you have to spend a half a day setting it up, moving widgets, figuring out what icons are on the home screen, what icons are in the app drawer and just messing around with it. You get an Android Wear watch and there's nothing to do. It's just there. With the iPhone, it's the exact opposite. You get an iPhone, you just have your home screen and your apps and it's very simple. You get the watch and you've got all these watch faces. Then inside the watch faces, you need to customize the watch faces. Then you have these apps and you've got to scroll around to the apps and learn how to move all that stuff. You've got a touch and then you've got a force touch, which is a weird UI thing. I don't understand why it's not just a long press. Then you've got the dial. All of that said, I don't want to prejudge and say this thing is overly complicated because I haven't actually had time to set up my own yet. It might be that it just feels natural and intuitive. Apple said that for the watch, they needed to come up with a revolutionary UI that worked for the wrist. They definitely created something different. Whether or not it will actually feel as intuitive as Apple's other products, we just won't know until we spend more time with it. That's actually something interesting I want to talk about. You mentioned the force touch. It doesn't make sense on our end, what there's going to be a long press touch, force touch, what they're saying with that. Do you feel the difference when you're trying it out, what that force touch really is? It doesn't give you the taptic feedback depending on the touch. If you just tap it harder, basically, is what it comes down to. Again, I haven't actually had a chance to use the working unit because they're holding that on Apple employees' wrists at least in the initial hands-on area. I will say actually, speaking of the vibration, they made a big deal about it being very subtle and personal to you and not really obvious. They're actually right. When other smart watches vibrate, you can hear it across the room, especially say the Pebble. This thing, it vibrates, you definitely feel it, but you can't hear it and it's not broadcasting, hey, I've got a notification, it is a very subtle thing. That's interesting and I think that's definitely something that I've noticed with the G Watch certainly is. In fact, just the other night I was in bed and the way that I knew that I had gotten a text message was because I heard the G Watch across the room, not because I heard the phone sitting next to me. That is a very real issue. Yeah. Did you have any other questions for Peter? Well, I have the most important question for Dieter, I think, the question that is on everyone's mind, which is A, are you buying next week and B, if so, the 4.7 or the 5.5? Man, it's hard. I came in here expecting 4.7, done, but now after holding the 5.5, the only question is whether or not it's too tall, it's not too wide for me to use. That double tap the touch ID button to bring down the screen is actually kind of interesting. I couldn't get it to work consistently, but it did work and then you could reach those elements wrapped so it don't support the swipe. The idea that I'll be able to turn the 5.5 into landscape and have it work like a little tiny baby miniature iPad is actually pretty compelling. I don't know, man. I'm going to need another week to think about it, but luckily, I've got till Friday to preorder, but I'm definitely getting an iPhone. I'm way too excited about Apple Pay to not get an iPhone. I know we didn't bring it up, but it's a really big deal. I have personally spent the past five years watching every single company on the planet just screw up mobile payments. Tim Cook on stage, actually, he said it best. He said that everybody's failed at mobile payments because they were worried about their own vested interests instead of worrying about the customer experience. The fact that Apple seems to be doing this securely and they seem to be doing it in such a way where they're not collecting information, I think it's going to be a really big deal. It's the thing that is going to lock me into using an iPhone for the next two years, for sure. Yeah. No, I totally agree. We actually said the same thing before we brought you on, the fact that they are identifying the business model getting in the way as being what has prevented mobile payments from taking off. I think that that really hits the nail on the head. The only question is are they going to be able to use this as a selling point for the iPhone? Will they pull people into the fold with this or is it just going to be a value add for existing iPhone subscribers? That's the question, or iPhone owners, I should say. I actually don't think that's a question at all. I think that they're going to sell iPhones no matter what. The question is are they going to be able to get all of the retailers and banks and everybody else to get behind a single standard and actually have mobile payments work and not be garbage and confusing and you never know what's going to work and what's not going to work. From that end, I'm really hopeful. Apple is literally the first company who hasn't lied to my face about mobile payments. If nothing else, I'm grateful for that. It sold me, but I'm a forward-looking nerd. I imagine once we get a year of Apple Pay under our belts and people see the experience everywhere, it's going to start selling a lot of other people. As an eternal optimist, I always say, as goes Starbucks, so goes the entire industry. They have Starbucks on board. I think that everything's looking up for Apple Pay. I agree. Dito, I think we're going to head out with you soon. Anything else you want to talk about before you go? It was a real bummer to only be able to catch half a song from YouTube, but it seemed like they were rocking. It was pretty awesome. You can go download their free album now. Yeah, there you go. Dito, thank you so much. Thanks, guys. I do want to talk about a little more of the design thing. Something I was thinking about when Dito was talking. There you go with the slap bracelet again. Thank you. Your watch was in the way. The thing I want to talk about with that is, it was going back to what the iPad looked like when it first came out, what the iPhone looked like when it first came out, which were not, especially in retrospect, they're not, I would say, great designs. The iPhone was revolutionary at the time because there was nothing else like it, but now it looks terrible. I still say, even when the iPad came out, it was just, it was ridiculed. It looked terrible. I don't know if I'd say it looked terrible. I think that at that time, the precedent that they were setting in the industry, both with the original iPhone and also with the original iPad, gave them more flexibility for putting out a design that wasn't necessarily the absolute best that that form factor could be. They were first generation products. I see where you're going with this. You want to talk Apple Watch. To an extent, I actually just want to address what people are saying. We're getting a lot of questions like, thank you for knowledge in design. I don't know if I can say that this time because I've seen first generation Apple devices before. This feels actually not bad for what it is. The functionality, the software doesn't feel there. I'm sure that's one of those things like, I want to wait for the second generation. I don't know if I can hold off financially. I'm honestly not sure if I agree. I think that the first generation Apple Watch, what we saw today looks to me very much like a generation one product. I'm sure that if you were to sit Johnny Ive down in a room and be like, look, dude, real talk, is this the product that you want? Did you have all the technology and all the capability at your fingertips to make the product that you really wanted to make? There's no way that he'd say, yes, this is exactly the product that I wanted to make. The display is square even though the UI elements that they showed on screen, many of them were obviously optimized for a round display. The watch faces that they showed, a round watch face on a square display always looks silly. One displays are definitely still in their infancy. There haven't been many of them. 360 is kind of an outlier there. We heard rumors of flexible displays and actually, apparently this display is technically flexible but it isn't curved, of course. Maybe there's some opportunity there. I think there are probably some people who are looking for a fitness wearable who are saying this isn't anything like what I want. The fact that they're targeting a sort of a vague 2015 launch and may not mention battery life during the event leads me to believe that there are still some open questions about how this battery is going to perform. Everything that we've seen with Android Wear devices suggests that there's some mismatch there. There's mismatch between the battery technology they have available, the energy density they can get out of them, and what they're trying to do with the processors in these devices. We have some things that they need to figure out there. I think that if you look at the Apple Watch in five, seven years, just like we're doing now with the iPhone, and then you look back to this first generation Apple Watch, you're going to say, it was kind of insane that we were all using that. Impressive for a Gen 1 device and don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's going to be a huge seller just like the original iPhone was, but I do think there's a lot of room for improvement. I think that Apple is obviously poised to take advantage of that. They have $150 billion in the bank. They can do pretty much whatever they want. They have the very best technology and fabrication techniques available to them. I think that they'll probably move to round at some point. They'll probably have a whole portfolio of devices. They'll have a fitness focused one, they'll have a round one, they'll have different materials, they'll go thinner, they'll put different kinds of batteries in there. It's a huge and growing space for them. Here's what I'm interested in, this is obviously not a mass produced item yet. It looks thinner than the Moto 360 as Dieter pointed out. It's about the size of a pebble. Once they figure out the battery life, we start seeing these closer production models, will this get thicker? Or are they just going ahead and saying, this is what it's going to look like without question? The straps can stay the same. This could just stick out a little bit more once they figure out what actually it takes to last a full day, for this generation at least. You're suggesting that the production watch could get thicker? I think so. Unless they didn't really mention the thickness of the watch. Not on stage, but I can't imagine that would be unprecedented for Apple to release a device that didn't look exactly like what they gave hands-ons with. There would be absolutely no precedent for that. Look, anything's possible, but I think that that would be a pretty bizarre scenario. It's also a story like they didn't come out and tell battery life. If it's not good now, what is it? Is it software? Is it just literally physical? They've effectively given themselves a solid six months to fiddle with it. I think that they can... There's probably tons of software optimization they can do. They probably have some wiggle room on chipsets. Maybe they're waiting on a new chipset or a new fabrication technique for an existing chip that will reduce power draw. Maybe they're going to say, okay, we need to be more aggressive about when and how we turn off the display when you're not using it. There are lots of things that they can do to eke out extra minutes. I'm sure that they're going to do that. I can't imagine them making a material change to the appearance of the device between now and then. I think they'll just keep... I think back to the... Remember the white iPhone 4? Right. Where they're just like, sorry guys. We done goofed. Yeah, it's no bueno. We're just going to hold it back until it's good and ready. If push came to shove, I think they'd probably do that again with the Apple Watch. Right. Although I can imagine this being the same. I could imagine being just a little bit thicker, like a millimeter, and no one's going to know because no one's doing the hands-on with a millimeter. We should have brought a ruler to this hands-on. No, no, a caliber. A caliber. We should have a caliber. Just like, okay, I'm going to need to know these numbers now. We'll check on the measurements again in six months. I do want to talk about this more. I do want to get into your own personal feeling where you put your money where your mouth is on this one. I mean, at first, we finally had the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus hands-on. I've been dying to see this. Let's check that out and we'll be right back. Here we are at Apple's big event with two really big iPhones. This is the iPhone 6, and as you probably already know by now, it comes in two sizes. This is the 4.7 inch device, and this is a 5.5 inch device. It feels pretty massive, but it doesn't feel so massive that it's completely unwieldy. It's pretty narrow, so compared to really giant Android phones, it's not too bad to hold in one hand. Now, if we compare these models to the iPhone 5S, you can see here that it is quite a bit bigger, the 4.7 is. However, it is thinner and the buttons are a little bit nicer. They've got this iPad-style button here, a nice ringer switch. On the back, the camera sticks out a little bit, but you still have the true tone flash. There's one more feature that's really worth noting on the new iPhone 6. If you double tap, you don't press, you just tap on the Touch ID home button. It pulls down the screen so that you can reach the stuff at the top. There are a lot of apps that don't support the back gesture, and so it's convenient to just be able to double tap on that thing to bring down stuff from the top of the screen so you can hit those buttons. So we've got a faster processor in here, it's the A8. It's running iOS 8, of course, with the new HealthKit app, which works with the Apple Watch. But the really exciting thing, at least with the 5.5, is you can turn it into landscape and you get some extra features. So if we jump into messages here, you can see you've got a two-tone, two-pane thing here you can look at. And then when you go into portrait, you actually get little avatars, whereas on the 4.7-inch model, when you go into messaging, you don't get those avatars. So not only do they just give you a bigger screen, they also give you more information on each screen. And then when you turn it sideways, you can see you get different interfaces there. Both of these models are available for pre-order on Friday, and they should be available for sale on September 19. The 4.7-inch starts at $199 on contract, and the larger 5.5 starts at $299 on contract, and then it goes up as you get more storage. Okay, see, look, that 5.5-inch doesn't look bad. I mean, okay. What? No, I think, look, there's a reason they're making two sizes, right? Because different people want different sizes, and they're addressing that market need, and I think that they're gonna sell a lot more iPhones because of it. Having just a 4-inch model, I think, was starting to actively hurt them when you see literally every Android, flagship Android phone on the market move between 4.7 and 5.5, and they just needed to up their game. And so I think that they're gonna sell way, way, way more devices in the next couple quarters because of this two-prong strategy. 5.5 just isn't for me. I mean, it's not fun carrying around a phone that big, and it's not fun holding a phone that big. But I will say that making it that thin, I'm sure, is gonna have an impact, too. That's good. Right, not to mention the idea, of course, is like if you can keep it in your pocket and do everything in your watch, whatever. Doesn't matter how big it is. Right. That's true, yep. So let's kind of start wrapping up. I wanted to talk about YouTube for another hour, but John is in my ear telling me not to do that. He's literally crying at the control booth. I can see him. So let's just start kind of wrapping up and talk about money where your mouth is. Obviously, we spend a lot of money. This is where we spend all our budgets, more than rent and utilities at this point. Are you gonna get the iPhone, and are you starting to think about the iWatch as well? The Apple Watch. Here's what's gonna happen. Here's how it's gonna go down. Again, this has been the case for the past two or three years now. What's gonna happen is I'm gonna tell you to your face right now that I'm not gonna get the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus. And I know you're full of shit. Yes, next Friday, at 3 a.m., I will be in line somewhere. Oh, you'll be in line. You're not gonna... No, because I'll make it past this Friday without pre-ordering, and I'll be very proud of myself. I'll be like, look, guys, I'm staying committed. I'm staying in the course. Look at that. Look at that. Tell me you don't want that. What, the big one? The 6 Plus? Either of them. Bigger than better. And look, you know what's even better than that? It's not Jimmy and Justin bantering. That's true. Which I love them both. It's just not the best of them. No, no, they weren't at their finest. That's true. And they were also... You have these two superstars, and Apple spent, what, like 10 seconds with them, and then they're done, which is kind of funny. No, look, I think that this is a great evolution for the iPhone. I think that they did a lot of things that they needed to do. Going to a bigger size, even for the small model, was important, but more importantly, just having two sizes is going to be huge for them. And the Apple Watch, I really want to reserve judgment right now. I'm not thrilled with the square. I'm not really thrilled with the ID in general, and I have a lot of questions about the UI, but it's way too early to decide if they did the right thing or not. So we'll see you early next year. And I know you've been talking about how Moto X is the best Android smartphone. I love the first Moto X, so I'm excited about this too. Would you do the Moto X plus the Moto 360 combination? Is that something you would actually consider now? That's what I intend to get this month, yeah. I think the customization is huge. Being able to make the phone truly your own instead of one of 50 million people with the gold iPhone 6 is a big deal. And they've kind of progressed the UI to the point and have stayed true enough to stock Android where it's just kind of the, in my opinion, the perfect Android package. But there are questions about that too. I think the battery life is on the short side of acceptable with that device, and it is 5.2 inches. So again, being very honest with you, I'm going to tell you right now I'm not getting an iPhone 6. Next Friday I will get an iPhone 6. I know you'll buy them all. I'm more curious which one you're going to use. And I guess looking at this behemoth of a watch right here, the Moto 360 is no big deal for you. It's not... Well, watch and phone are very different things. True, true. But if you're getting one, you're not going to get an iPhone and then the 360, or the X and then the watch. No, certainly not. And you do kind of have to commit to a platform. And actually that's something that I wish we had more time to talk about, and maybe we'll save it for another time. The fact that both Apple and Google have very much... I hate to use the term, but they've very much doubled down on platform lock-in with these wearables. They are very much all in on their... They're all in with their wearables because both Android Wear and Apple Watch are platform exclusive. So if you're spending... I mean, if you're spending, who knows what the Apple Watch Edition is going to be, $1,000? I don't know. But say you buy that, there's no way you're going to be buying a Moto X or a G3 or a GS5 or whatever. No. There's no chance. And you are locked in until you either turn that watch around or you replace it, which could be years. And even then, that's actually a good question. So that device, it's a piece of consumer technology. It's going to become obsolete in a matter of one, two, three, four years, something like that. But it's gold. So then what? I guess you melt down the gold. I don't know. Do you take it to a pawn shop? I don't know what the procedure is when you're done with an Apple Watch Edition. There's no upgrade plan except just melt the gold. Not reusable at all. Just melt the damn gold. Melt the watch. All right. Well, I'm sure we'll talk about this again because I have a strong feeling there's another Apple event next month. We hinted at Apple TV stuff. There's clearly iPad rumors I've been floating about. So we'll probably be back for that. I have to go listen to the U2 album. We need to go see if there's any other news that has happened. Is happen on theverge.com. If you want any more big analysis, editorials, smart people talking about this, that is theverge.com. We have 90, 100 people up there just writing a ton of stuff right now. Thank you all for joining us so much. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Control Room. Dieter, Neelai, Josh Lowinson, David Pierce, Jordan Opplinger from San Francisco. I'm sure I'm missing someone else. Christian. Christian Mazda. Oh my God. He's going to kill me. I said Josh Lowinson. Sam Sheffer back here. Sam Sheffer. And Chris Sterling who's already pre-ordered six. He's hacked the system. God damn him. All right. Thank you so much for joining us and stay tuned to theverge.com.
 Welcome to the Verge Live for the iPhone 6 slash Apple Watch event.
 I'm Ross Miller.
 I'm Chris Sigler.
 And that's it for formalities.
 We just want to talk about Apple shit for a little bit.
 So let's do it.
 Wearables!
 Yes!
 I can't believe you just put a slap bracelet on my wrist.
 I warned you.
 I'll take it.
 By the way, there's nothing, I don't know why we have a slap bracelet prop because there's
 nothing slappy about...
 Correction, we have two.
 We do have two props.
 Yes, that's true.
 All right, let's get started.
 So the big thing today, of course, Apple announced the iPhone 6 as expected, the iPhone 6 Plus.
 It's exactly as it was leaked.
 Yes.
 They also went...
 4.7 and 5.5.
 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch screen.
 We'll get to that.
 The Apple Watch we'll talk about later in the show.
 And of course, all our friends in San Francisco will be here as soon as they're done doing
 all the hands-ons and they'll have the way more interesting first-hand information on
 this.
 So if you have questions, hashtag Ask Verge on Twitter, we'll be checking it.
 We'll be able to answer, hopefully we'll be able to answer a little bit of it.
 If not, San Francisco will answer it for us.
 And let's just kind of get into it.
 So you've done enough Apple events.
 I've done a few in my time.
 Let's talk about the big thing.
 First off, a new venue entirely.
 Well, old venue.
 Old venue is new again.
 This is where they introduced the original Macintosh some 25 years ago.
 So a little bit of nostalgia, I think.
 Tim Cook mentioned it first thing when they started today.
 And it's huge, right?
 The venues that they normally use, Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco primarily, isn't nearly
 as big as the Flint Center where they held this event today.
 So they obviously wanted a much larger crew on hand.
 They got it.
 They filled that theater up.
 And then of course, they built that enormous box right outside the trailer.
 Which is at U2's dressing room or at the hands-on booth?
 Both, hopefully.
 I can only imagine that Bono was getting dressed this morning amongst Apple watches.
 Amongst his Apple staff too.
 He's got a purse for each item of clothing and just fits it in.
 Yes, he does.
 Except the sunglasses.
 Those have never come off.
 Right, no.
 Not since after Europa.
 Right.
 Right.
 No, before that, I think.
 That was like Joshua tree era.
 No, no, no.
 I think the sunglasses turned Joshua tree.
 Oh, you didn't?
 No, I think all that you can leave behind is a confirmation.
 Okay.
 I think pop, Zoropa.
 Look, I'm a big U2 fan.
 Apparently.
 I like dad music sometimes.
 This is Zootv, by the way, for Zoropa fans.
 But anyway, let's talk about the phones and not U2.
 So the leaks were 100% spot on.
 Basically, yeah.
 This is the first complete departure in industrial design since the 4, right?
 If you consider the 4, the 4S, the 5, and the 5S, birds of a feather, this is the first
 complete departure from that.
 It's a rounder design.
 You could argue that the 4S to the 5 is slightly stretched.
 Obviously, the original to the 3G changed the back.
 But no, this is a stark departure.
 It's starting to look like some of the other phones we've seen out there in the world.
 This is a point that's been made a number of times in the past.
 There are only so many ways you can skin a cat.
 There are only so many ways you can present a glass rectangle.
 I think that this is one of the biggest challenges for industrial designers from here on out,
 which might explain why they hired Newsom, right?
 Very weirdly, on a Friday night, they broke that news of Andy Fair.
 Hey, Newsom wanted to get hired on a Friday, and by God, he got hired on a Friday.
 But he is a superstar designer in his own right.
 I think that you're probably going to see more of that, these superstar designer partnerships
 with smartphone makers, because again, there are only so many ways that you can make these
 phones look.
 I think that that at least partially explains why you're seeing Apple explore watches now.
 We're approaching this sort of steady state with the smartphone, I think, and then they're
 going to move into this other field.
 But the 6 and the 6 Plus are still very interesting devices.
 It amazes me how many people want a much larger iPhone.
 It's just not my thing, but Sam Sheffer, who is sitting just beyond the view of the camera
 here, is absolutely chomping at the bit for a 5.5-inch 6 Plus.
 I don't get it, but I'm sure, like him, there are probably millions of people...
 Wait, what do you use?
 What do you use?
 So, until very recently, I was using a 5S.
 Totally comfortable with the 4-inch size.
 Now I'm on a Nexus 5, which is shattered into a million pieces, slightly larger, and I'll
 probably be getting a Moto 6 this month, which is 5.2.
 Wait, a Moto 6?
 Or the Moto X?
 The Moto X.
 Excuse me, which is 5.2.
 But 5.5, I don't know, there's something...
 I think Nilay just made the point on Twitter a few minutes ago that it's hard to see how
 or why you would get an iPad Mini if you have the 6 Plus, because the display sizes are
 just so similar.
 And I do think that they're starting to really, really blend those two genres, the small tablet
 and the big phone.
 So it'll be interesting to see...
 I'm assuming Apple's gonna have an iPad event later this year.
 It'll be interesting to see what happens there.
 Just what becomes the iPad Mini, which is still a much different size.
 I mean, no one...
 It is, but the 5.5, I mean, looking at the pictures, I mean, you have to...
 I mean, I guess we have some 5.5-inch phones or thereabouts in the office that we can use
 as a rough comparison, but that's a big phone.
 Once you get to the mid-fives, that starts to feel really big in the hand.
 And of course, there are a couple that are 6 and beyond, which is just insane.
 And then you have things like the Sony Z Ultra, which is just out of control.
 But even if it's just down to app ecosystem, like with the iPad, you don't always get a
 steady cellular connection, you don't always buy it, sell it, but also there are iPad-only
 apps, which may change now.
 You also...
 That's a very good point.
 You also can't hold an iPad Mini to your face.
 Well, I mean, you can, but it wouldn't do you any good.
 Absolutely.
 Whereas with a 6 Plus, you're more than welcome to hold it to your face.
 Right.
 Well, what else is there?
 So it's a new design.
 It's thinner than the iPhone 5S, and I actually...
 I forgot how thin this thing is.
 I use a Mophie case because the battery life is shit on this.
 This feels thin to me, and now it's actually noticeably different.
 Well, I can't remember which OEM told me this, but several years ago, an OEM told me that
 they've conducted a lot of focus group testing where they've kind of discovered that the
 point of diminishing returns with smartphone thickness, where consumers can no longer really
 tell the difference nor care about the difference, is somewhere between 5 and 6 millimeters.
 And so I think what you're gonna see in the industry, for better or for worse, is these
 companies, Apple included, are going to keep pushing for that 5 to 6 millimeter thickness,
 and then only once they get to that point technologically will they say, okay, we're
 gonna stop trying to make this thing thinner and we're gonna focus on battery performance,
 right?
 Because what has always frustrated me, even going back to the 3G, 3GS, iPhone 4 days,
 is that instead of keeping the same thickness, which people are happy with, and just making
 the battery bigger or more potent, they insist on making the phone thinner and keeping battery
 life roughly the same.
 And I think we would all agree that battery performance on these phones is about somewhere
 between 20 and 30% shorter than it really needs to be for that sense of confidence that
 no matter what happens over the course of the day, you're gonna be able to make it through
 to the end.
 I've definitely had days where this happens a lot at like CES, where you get up at 5.30,
 6 in the morning, you're working until 11, 10, or 10, 11 midnight at night, your phone's
 not gonna make it.
 For an average day, 9 to 5 is not a problem, but it would be nice to have a phone that
 just focuses on battery life, which is why I've always sort of extolled the virtues of
 the Max line that Motorola used to make.
 So we'll see, we'll see.
 We'll see how the battery does on these, but it sounds, I mean they even said it on stage,
 that the emphasis was on preserving battery performance versus the 5S, not improving it.
 Right, and it still needs to be better than it is, they're announcing, you're right, and
 we'll get to that.
 I do want to talk about some of the questions we're getting already, hashtag ask Verge,
 and I don't need to actually say that because clearly you guys know that already.
 A lot of things about Apple Watch we'll get to, but difference between 6 and 6 Plus.
 I was watching, the video feed kept coming out for me, I know the camera's different,
 obviously the screen size is different, what else?
 Battery I don't know if we have battery capacities off hand, the milliamp hours, but the 6 Plus
 does obviously have a larger battery, and as you mentioned the 6 Plus has optical image
 stabilization in the camera.
 The sensor is the same and they both have digital image stabilization, the 6 Plus just
 adds optical as well.
 Other phones, Android phones have had that in the past, but it'll be interesting to have
 that on an iPhone because of course iPhones are known for just having really good image
 quality so I think it's going to make a big difference for them.
 Other than that, I think they're pretty much the same phone as far as I can tell.
 It's just the size of the screen size, size in your pocket, and the price of course, is
 it $100 difference?
 $100 difference.
 One thing that we should talk about that, so the way they've structured it with the
 6, it's a $199 to $299 jump for a 48 gigabyte increase in storage capacity, right?
 You go from 16 to 64, is that 48?
 I'm not good with numbers.
 That's 48.
 Whereas before, that would have been a 16 to 32 jump.
 It seems like they're finally acknowledging that flash prices are coming down.
 They're saying, okay, 64 is the sweet spot.
 I'll be honest, I'm a very cloud-centric person, but so many friends of mine and family
 members have said, 64 is not enough.
 I need more storage, either because they're taking just billions of pictures or they're
 downloading a ton of music or what have you.
 They've topped these phones out to 128, which is $399 for the 6 and $499 for the 6 Plus,
 I think.
 Right, so it now tops out at $500.
 Right, and they've just skipped 32 entirely, which is funny to me because I've always bought
 the 32 model.
 32 to me is the sweet spot, and they've taken that away and said, no, now 64 is the sweet
 spot.
 16 is the entry level.
 Yeah, 16 is just not enough.
 No, 16 is not enough.
 That's the point where not only can you safely assume that you're not going to be able to
 download any movies for flights, but it's also to the point where it's like you have
 to start to be careful with apps, especially if you're a gamer, right?
 Some of these games are one, two, three gigabytes.
 No, no, I didn't know.
 The story that I have is when we were doing, when Addy did the Bioshock for iPhone, we
 tried it out, I was like, all right, I'll put it on my phone, whatever.
 I have the phone here, and then I realized I do delete every app I had, Facebook, half
 my pictures, Clear Out Pocket, Spotify offline.
 Worth it for Bioshock.
 Not for iPhone.
 I delete that immediately, and I get this weird sense of emptiness where it's like,
 what did I do with all that data?
 Yeah, that's just all gone.
 But 16 just seems ridiculously small.
 Yeah, I think their volume seller is going to be the 64, and I think we're going to be
 surprised at how many 128s they sell.
 I don't know.
 Do we have numbers on which sizes do well?
 I have to imagine the entry level is the best seller.
 It's the cheapest one.
 I want an iPhone for the cheapest.
 So first of all, I don't think that we, we certainly don't have official numbers on that,
 but I would actually guess that the 32 is the sweet spot.
 Maybe I'm wrong.
 32 always felt like the sweet spot to me, because it's a nice balance between cost and
 capacity.
 Right.
 But yeah, we're getting rid of 32 entirely.
 Yeah.
 So then of course there's the, a couple of things, so there was optical image stabilization
 for the iPhone 6 Plus.
 That's not on the iPhone 6.
 We talked about that.
 There's a one touch mode, what is it?
 Reachability where like, you know our phones are bigger, so we're just going to cut off
 half the screen, bring everything down, and if you've got to touch the top.
 How does that work?
 So it's a double tap of the home button, right?
 Right.
 And that brings the buttons within reach.
 Yeah, they had to do something, right?
 And it's a tough call, because Apple has to walk back years of saying that four inches
 is the sweet spot for these devices.
 Which, I mean, you know.
 They walk back and they're just not saying it, of course.
 Like, they're not going to follow this.
 No, no, no, of course.
 But it also means that they need to adopt solutions that feel weird or frankly a little
 stolen.
 I mean, you know, other vendors who've explored five inch plus phones have implemented one
 handed modes.
 Samsung has one.
 And it's just something that you have to do in order to make the phone usable at that
 size.
 But it's, you know, this is certainly true, as true now as it ever has been.
 Like, if you're listening to what Apple is saying, then you're not really paying attention
 to the direction that they're going.
 And I think this is a perfect example of that, right?
 Like, 4.7, 5.5, if you go back even two or three years, you would have said, well, there's
 no way they're ever going to make a phone that size.
 Even though the market pressure might be there, they're just philosophically, that's not where
 they're at.
 And yet here we are today, 4.7, 5.5.
 Right.
 So let's move on.
 Let's talk about the thing that applies to all Apple products now or will apply to all
 Apple products.
 It's kind of a good transition between this and the watch.
 And that's the Apple Pay, that's NFC payments.
 Yeah.
 Which...
 This is, I mentioned this on Twitter earlier.
 You know, the mobile payments thing is a great example of a technology where, you know, Apple
 is not quote-unquote innovating here, but they are legitimizing a space that has so
 far been kind of a cluster, so to speak.
 Yeah.
 Like, you know, Google Wallet hasn't been broadly accepted with US carriers because
 of weird business things.
 Well, it was Verizon was supporting the company's name, I can't remember, who used to be called
 ISIS and obviously changed it.
 SoftCard.
 SoftCard.
 Yep.
 So yeah, that's the other thing.
 SoftCard has been a very carrier-centric technology that has seen, as far as I can tell, close
 to zero adoption.
 And that's because they put their business priorities first.
 I mean, Tim Cook said this on stage today.
 He said, well, when you're talking about a technology like this, it can't be about putting
 these business priorities first.
 It has to be about putting the user experience first.
 Because you're just not going to get people to use this thing unless it works seamlessly
 and it works like cash.
 Well, that's the way to say it, but I'm sure there are business priorities that are at
 hand.
 And of course, the fact that if you're on Apple, you're in a huge market.
 You will be in a huge market.
 And they've got a ton of banks, obviously American Express, Visa, MasterCard.
 Top six banks.
 Yeah, MX, MasterCard, Visa.
 That's huge for them.
 I think this has a very real...
 I mean, considering the market buy-in that they have and the market saturation they're
 going to get with these devices, I think they have a very real chance of getting penetration
 with mobile payments in the US market that they haven't seen before.
 Right.
 And the support is amazing.
 You've got McDonald's.
 Yeah.
 Starbucks, I'm assuming.
 I don't remember if they said that or not.
 Yeah.
 Disney World, whatever.
 All your pharmacies.
 So Starbucks, funny thing about that is that it's supported, but they didn't mention it.
 Oh, okay.
 It was pictured on a slide and you'd think they would want to bring that up because Starbucks
 is a pretty big deal.
 It's huge, yeah.
 But yeah, they didn't mention it.
 Oh, wow.
 But yeah, today, like I mentioned, I use a Nexus 5 and I use Tap2Pay all the time.
 Do you really?
 Yes.
 And every single time I get a weird or sometimes a dirty look, like, what are you doing?
 Are you hacking my credit card machine?
 Yeah, and sometimes what'll happen, this happens with 7-Elevens a lot, you'll tap and it'll
 look like it's working and then it says denied and then you have to swipe with your card
 anyway.
 So I think that Apple adding support for that, like I said, really legitimizes that market
 in a way that it hasn't been before.
 And companies like 7-Eleven are just going to have to say, okay, we're supporting this
 now.
 Right.
 So is the compatibility there?
 If you're supporting, if you're a McDonald's and your little kiosk or whatever supports
 Apple payment or whatever, Apple Pay, do you need a different set of hardware or software
 technology to make it work with the other one?
 You know, I don't think they mentioned that on stage, but let's put it this way, I can't
 imagine that they do.
 Right.
 Because if they did, that's a no-sale, right?
 I mean, that's a speed bump that they would have a very hard time getting over.
 All right, which apparently they've found a way to do, or at least Apple has in this
 case.
 Yeah.
 Well, I mean, the phones themselves are just NFC, right?
 So it might be, who knows, it might be a software package that they deployed to the actual credit
 card kiosks that have NFC sensors built in.
 Maybe it's a firmware update, who knows.
 But I can't imagine that they would have deployed or developed Apple Pay with the idea that
 you need to put new kiosks in stores.
 I just can't imagine.
 I would hope.
 If they did, they would have made a big deal out of it, of course.
 Right.
 They would have announced that.
 Right.
 So, great.
 Actually, maybe they wouldn't have, because Apple is very good at not mentioning sad news
 during events.
 That would constitute sad news.
 They very, very quietly discontinued the iPod Classic.
 It's dead now.
 It's dead, officially.
 Wait, the Classic.
 Yes.
 Is the Nano still alive?
 Nano, I don't...
 I think the Nano is still alive.
 Has the Nano been dead for a while?
 Because it looks exactly like the watch, and that's confusing.
 Oh, no, no, no.
 That one, remember they placed it with that rectangular one.
 That's all they needed.
 They made it vertical.
 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 That's one with its weird own platform or whatever.
 Right, right.
 Which looks vaguely iOS-esque, but is not.
 Yeah, the iPod Classic, rest in peace.
 It is a little funny to me that they...
 Yeah, we need a 40 that we can pour out.
 I mean, can we just get beers to pour out here in bowls?
 But again, they would have to be...
 Not beers, Ross, malt liquors.
 We don't have malt liquor here.
 Believe it or not, we have a lot of alcohol between the three floors of Vox Media in New
 York.
 We do not have malt liquor.
 That's unfortunate.
 I have asked.
 That is a non...
 That's a deal breaker.
 I mean, this is a device that was...
 Look, we've all owned an iPod Classic at one time or another.
 I own several going back to 2001 or whatever it was.
 And yeah, it had a good run.
 But it's just...
 When you think of the market power that the name iPod had, even five years ago, but certainly
 seven, 10 years ago, to just see that evaporate and be replaced first with iPhone and iPad
 and now with...
 They've gotten rid of the iMonitor altogether for the Apple Watch.
 It's just kind of striking to see that.
 They've essentially buried this extraordinary branding tool willfully.
 But that's the death of a market.
 They recognized it and they moved on to smartphones.
 So what do you do?
 It's on a dumbly personal note for me.
 The first iPod I ever got was the U2 iPod.
 Oh yeah.
 Unashamed.
 The black one with the red ring?
 Yes.
 Yeah, it was a good looking...
 Unabashedly love U2.
 And I had to get it and that was the first Apple product I ever had.
 And it had their signatures on the back, right?
 Laser engraved.
 It did.
 That scratched off immediately, like a month into it.
 And nothing said like, I am a white suburban kid in the south, I have a U2 iPod.
 So to see U2 again, that's just like, just stop everything.
 I thought that you only listened to REM.
 Isn't that Georgia's band?
 It's an Athens band, yeah.
 But of course they also had B-52s, they had Rock Lobster.
 We're not talking about this right now.
 The B-52s are from Georgia?
 Yeah, from Athens.
 Wow, didn't know that.
 Yeah, I can tell you where the love shot gets.
 No, but like, in the U2 thing, we should talk about Apple Watch versus what people care
 about.
 But I do want to talk about the U2 thing later because that's just me.
 You should deal with it.
 We should have a separate show devoted to U2.
 God, that would be the lamest show ever.
 But it would be just full of drunken people just chugging Guinness, covering themselves
 in Guinness, remembering the good old days, or remember which tour and album was the best.
 And anyway, let's move on.
 Yeah, okay, so if you're just joining us, obviously we're waiting for the San Francisco
 crew to do all the hands-on video, give their impressions, and then as soon as they're done
 with that, they're going to run out of the giant white cube.
 There's a camera crew waiting for them, and we're going to go live and talk to them and
 get more information.
 Until such time, though, we're going to keep answering your questions.
 That is hashtag Ask Verge on Twitter.
 And we're just kind of going down the list a little more casually than just like I'm
 seeing them or prodding each other for it.
 I mean, let's get into Apple Watch now.
 Yeah.
 Let's do that.
 We actually have video hands-on.
 John, do we have that available where we can just kind of watch that?
 Yeah, so we're going to watch the Apple Watch hands-on, watch it together, and we'll kind
 of talk about that and answer some of your questions.
 All right, we're at Apple's big event here.
 We finally know what's inside the big box.
 It is the Apple Watch.
 First thing you need to know is it won't be available until early 2015.
 It's going to start at $349.
 There's a whole bunch of features on here.
 The most important one for Apple is this digital crown, which we're running through demo loop
 here so you won't actually see it do anything.
 But it is a zoom and it also lets you scroll through stuff.
 It's the primary interface for this watch.
 However, it also has a touch screen.
 It measures two different kinds of taps.
 You can just tap it.
 But it also measures force.
 So if you tap it hard, they call that a force touch and that lets you bring up little activities
 and so on.
 There's another button on the side here that brings up Apple's custom messaging app so
 you can send little drawings to each other.
 You can also send your heartbeat to each other, which is pretty crazy.
 If you swipe up, you get these things called glances.
 And that's like customizable information letting you see your calendar information and so on.
 And then notifications pop up.
 You feel the taptic feedback, they call it.
 You just turn your wrist up, the screen turns on, and you see it.
 So that's a super quick look at the Apple Watch.
 I can actually show you this band here as well.
 We can remove it here.
 I'm not used to how this band works.
 There we go.
 I'm kind of clumsy.
 On the back, you can see there's these sensors here, so measuring your heart rate and so
 on.
 There's a close look at the digital crown on the side.
 These straps actually slide right out.
 They click in and out, which lets you customize.
 They've got a whole bunch of different watch straps.
 It comes in two different sizes.
 And it also comes in lots of different varieties.
 There's a solid gold one.
 There's a sports one.
 And then there's the standard one.
 So there you go.
 That's just a very super quick look of the Apple Watch on a demo loop.
 Okay.
 That is the Apple Watch.
 That is the big change.
 This is obviously what they thought was the biggest event since 2010's iPad, since 2007's
 iPhone.
 This is a landmark moment for them.
 We should actually take a moment to recognize that this was, Neelai mentioned this in the
 live blog, this was sort of Tim Cook.
 The moment that he said, one more thing, was the moment that he completed his takeover
 of Apple, right?
 Yes.
 This is now his company, first use of one more thing since Steve Jobs died, and a very
 deserving use of one more thing, I think.
 Was this actually Tim Cook's first time saying one more thing?
 Or did he say it as he took over the interim CEO position?
 That's a good question.
 But I can't remember Tim Cook saying one more thing before.
 I can't remember.
 But anyway, that's another topic for another time.
 We should talk about the Watch.
 I think that their master stroke here, many things unpack, but I think the master stroke
 is releasing it in two sizes.
 I really do.
 Do we know what sizes are though?
 I don't think we have, the dimensions might be up on Apple's side, I'm not sure.
 But just the fact that they are acknowledging that watches are not a one size fits all proposition
 is huge.
 One of the biggest complaints we've seen with the Android Wear devices so far is that the
 single size of these devices is too big for a lot of wrists.
 And so having a smaller size, I think, is going to just instantly sell significantly
 more watches than they'd be able to with a single size.
 Of course, when you add in all the finished combinations and the strap combinations, it
 makes it a very personal device.
 And I think you said there's three different buckets they're putting into the Apple Watch,
 the Apple Watch Sport, and then-
 The Apple Watch Edition.
 Is it just called that?
 I thought that was a typo.
 It's the Apple Watch Edition, which is just gold.
 It should be called Apple Watch Edition Apple Watch.
 It's the Apple Watch Edition of the Apple Watch.
 But anyway-
 And I'm very curious how much that one costs, because you're buying basically an 18 carat
 gold watch.
 These things last two years.
 Won't be cheap.
 Yeah.
 We'll get back into it.
 We'll argue ourselves about that a little bit.
 But I believe we have Dieter Bohn.
 Dieter Bohn, are you ready?
 Is Dieter with us?
 I'm ready.
 How's it going?
 Hey, how are you?
 Hey, how's it going, guys?
 Good, good.
 So tell us about your experience there today.
 What's the mood like?
 I got to say the mood is pretty emollient.
 This is the biggest Apple event I've ever been to.
 There's just a ton of people.
 The keynote itself was very well run.
 In fact, it was quite hectic.
 There were definitely a bunch of Apple fans in the audience.
 I assume a bunch of special guests and employees, so there were lots and lots of cheering.
 And then of course this giant white building behind me where they're holding the actual
 hands-on area is also pretty well controlled.
 So I actually got a chance to hold the two iPhones and play around with one of the mini
 editions of the Apple Watch.
 So in general, everybody here seems pretty pleased.
 We'll see what happens when we walk away from the Apple event and have had a few days to
 think about it.
 But everybody on site seems pretty pumped by what they're seeing.
 So let's talk about the...
 We were actually talking about the watch in general.
 What was your impression?
 You had the hands-on for us.
 What is your takeaway from it?
 So my takeaway is actually that it's kind of like a lot of other Apple products in that
 it's simultaneously amazing and kind of boring.
 Now part of that is that we've already seen a bunch of other smart watches.
 We've seen Android Wear and we've seen the ideas that they have.
 But if you were to ask me to tick off all the ideas that we would see in an Apple Watch,
 they pretty much hit all of them.
 I suppose the most interesting part of it is this idea of this glance, I think it's
 called, where you can get extra random information, which is sort of like a weird version of Google
 Now, I guess.
 But we'll have to see.
 Actually they only had demo units that we could actually touch and then the actual working
 units were on the Apple employee wrists.
 But overall the hardware is...
 It's nice.
 It's not stunningly beautiful.
 I personally think the Moto 360 is better looking.
 But it's a watch and so other people might prefer what Apple has made.
 It is nondescript.
 It's very well done.
 It's very pretty.
 It looks very good.
 But it's certainly, I guess, inoffensive.
 It looks great.
 It's very well made.
 It's very well designed.
 But it doesn't make a very bold statement as far as I'm concerned.
 And is this digital crown easy to use or what's that like?
 So the bad news is I haven't actually been able to interact with software using the digital
 crown.
 I've seen people interact with it and it seems very fast and fluid.
 On the unit that I played with, which was, you know, like it was running through a demo
 loop, I got to feel the physicality of it.
 And the thing that's really surprising about the crown is that there's almost no resistance
 to it.
 There's no like clicking.
 It doesn't push back when you turn it.
 It doesn't spin like completely freely, but it spins pretty easily.
 And so it felt a little bit weird.
 But that said, I imagine that when you're actually using it to scroll through lists
 or to zoom, it'll feel much more natural.
 Is it something like, do you think it's too sensitive where like I would accidentally
 bump into this?
 Like if I was like walking across like a wall?
 I don't think so.
 It's small enough and it's inset on the side of the watch enough that it's pretty unlikely
 that you're going to accidentally spin it by bumping into something.
 And I also don't think that it's likely you're going to accidentally press it and go home
 when you don't need to.
 So let's talk about the iPhones for a second.
 Of course, there are two sizes, the 4.7 and the 5.5.
 Tell me about those sizes.
 Does the 5.5 feel really big?
 What's the hardware like?
 So both the hardware, they're both amazing.
 They're both just super thin and way lighter than I expected.
 Everybody wants to know about the 5.5, so yeah, it's big.
 But what's interesting about it is it's very tall.
 The bezels on the left and the right are relatively thin.
 And so when you hold it in your hand and it's got that aspect ratio, it feels like actually
 holdable in your hand.
 But once you want to like start doing stuff, you're going to need two hands.
 But it doesn't feel nearly as wide as say like a Galaxy Note.
 I guess I'd put it in like the Nexus 5 range in terms of width.
 So it's much better to hold in your hand than I expected.
 And then the best part of it is you turn it sideways and it turns into, I think I called
 it an iPad mini mini, so you actually get more stuff on the UI.
 The other thing about the hardware that's really neat is the glass, I don't know if
 it curves, but it catches the light and it feels a little bit different than previous
 iPhones.
 It feels a little bit more organic.
 And I don't know quite what to attribute that to if they put something subtle on the finish
 on the glass, if it's this new type of resistant glass that they didn't really give a brand
 name to or what.
 But it looks much different in person, a little bit glossier and a little bit less cold than
 I expected than previous models.
 Which you know, you got to say you look at the iPhone 5S, it's got some pretty sharp
 lines on it.
 And there's not a sharp line to be found on these phones.
 Now I want to quickly go back to watch because we're getting a lot of questions from readers
 right now.
 One of the things that are asking a lot about is one, left-handed use because of where like
 the digital little crown is.
 Number two, the battery life.
 Can you talk about any of that stuff?
 Well I'll answer the second question first.
 I wish I could talk about the battery life, but the closest thing we have is very subtle
 hints that were maybe dropped during the keynote about how easy it is to charge and it's so
 easy to charge every night.
 So unless I missed it because I was live blogging, I didn't hear real battery life numbers.
 And as near as I can tell, this is probably going to be charged every day.
 The models are very small and so if they've managed to light up that panel and have some
 sort of battery revolution, I feel like they would have told us.
 Since they didn't, I'm guessing that you'll be lucky to get a day out of this.
 I'm assuming that.
 I don't think Apple would release a product that you couldn't do that on.
 And what was the first question?
 Left-handed use.
 Left-handed use, yeah I don't know.
 I mean it's a crown and I had it on my left wrist and I bent my hand around and I wasn't
 worried that I was going to be hitting it.
 If you're a left-hander and you want to put it on your right wrist, you'll need to do
 what all left-handers deal with, which is occlude the watch face and reach around to
 get it.
 But maybe they'll make a left-handed version, but from what I saw, it didn't look all that
 painful to use on your right wrist.
 It's pretty rare for Apple to announce a device like this this far in advance.
 Of course they did it with the Mac Pro, they did it with the original iPhone, so it does
 happen but it's fairly rare.
 What do you think about this strategy of announcing the iPhone 6, which is going to be available
 next week, and then at the same time announcing the Apple Watch that is coming out at some
 point in early 2015?
 Do you think that was a wise move or no?
 Oh, I think it was a totally wise move.
 I mean what does Apple have to lose by announcing this early?
 Unless they don't hit their release date, it's not like they're cannibalizing any current
 Apple products except maybe a Nano, but I don't think so because this thing works with
 an iPhone.
 They might manage to hold off people from buying Android Wear devices in the meantime,
 which is a win for Apple.
 I don't really see what they lose here other than not having the, oh my God, I can buy
 it right now moment.
 Other than that, they're going to have time for people to make apps for this thing.
 They're going to have time to nail the battery life, if that's actually a question on this.
 We don't know.
 I don't see, other than missing the Christmas season, what hurts them there.
 I think that it's going to be just fine.
 Let me ask you guys a question actually.
 There's the Apple Watch, there's the Apple Watch Sport, there's the Apple Watch Edition.
 I heard you guys talking about this beforehand.
 Then there's just a whole slew of different strap options.
 I, in the room with all the different variants of all these different watches and then the
 two size options as well, had an actually tough time making sure I caught everything
 and telling them apart.
 I think this thing is going to be so customizable that although you'll be able to tell an Apple
 Watch from a mile away, I don't think very many people are all going to have the exact
 same thing on their wrist.
 What's your take on all the different variants that you guys saw from your end?
 I think customizability is absolutely... I've been preaching this for as long as I can remember
 with smart watches and wearables in general.
 I think that more than any other kind of consumer electronic, it's really important that they
 be hyper customizable.
 If there's one thing that Apple did extremely right with that device today, it was make
 it available in two sizes.
 As I was mentioning before, we've heard a lot of complaints about Android Wear being
 too big on some wrists.
 I think that having those two sizes is super important.
 Actually let me toss it back to you.
 Is the small one a lot smaller than existing Android Wear devices that we've seen?
 Give us a sense of the relative size between the two.
 I haven't actually gotten a chance to look at the two of them right next to each other,
 but I would say that the relative size is not that different.
 If the big watch offers significantly better battery life, even if you've got small wrists,
 I think it's the way to go.
 In terms of comparing it to Android Wear devices, it's way smaller than a Moto 360.
 It's in the same way that a Pebble is smaller than a Moto 360.
 In terms of size, it's actually not that far off from a Pebble, but because it's so rounded
 and so much better made and just nicer looking, it feels like a different watch.
 The Pebble's got those sharp edges on the Pebble steel.
 It feels like a watch.
 It's a little bit thicker than maybe some people would like, but it's certainly not
 the big honking things like the Moto 360 to put on your wrist.
 It looks way better than say even the LG G Watch, the original square watch, which is
 pretty nondescript.
 It's not that much smaller than the G Watch from what I remember, but it feels way smaller
 and looks way better because of how much better designed it is.
 I do want to talk a little bit more about the software things.
 I think there's a lot of hyper-customizable we've been talking about this, but I think
 the thing we were harping on before the show started was this user, this UI that they have
 going through all these apps.
 To me, it still reminds me of, I hate saying this, the Juju Rev 2 where you're having these
 neighborhood apps and you're using the crowns, the touch screen, force touch.
 That part seems so unintuitive, the non-Siri aspect of this seems really bad.
 Dieter, how much of the interface and switching between apps did you get to see?
 What was your take on that?
 Just a bit.
 I will say that I agree with you that this idea of zooming out to the universe and then
 zooming straight into the neighborhood.
 By the way, shouldn't there be a range between universe and neighborhood?
 That's a little bit weird and then you pan around and you open the app.
 You've got app and then you've got these glance cards or whatever we're calling them on the
 bottom.
 Then you've got the custom app, the messaging app that you can launch from anywhere with
 that button on the side.
 Then you've got watch faces and they're customizable.
 I think that there's a fidgetiness to this thing that is insane.
 You look at an Android phone and you have to spend a half a day setting it up, moving
 widgets, figuring out what icons are on the home screen, what icons are in the app drawer
 and just messing around with it.
 You get an Android Wear watch and there's nothing to do.
 It's just there.
 With the iPhone, it's the exact opposite.
 You get an iPhone, you just have your home screen and your apps and it's very simple.
 You get the watch and you've got all these watch faces.
 Then inside the watch faces, you need to customize the watch faces.
 Then you have these apps and you've got to scroll around to the apps and learn how to
 move all that stuff.
 You've got a touch and then you've got a force touch, which is a weird UI thing.
 I don't understand why it's not just a long press.
 Then you've got the dial.
 All of that said, I don't want to prejudge and say this thing is overly complicated because
 I haven't actually had time to set up my own yet.
 It might be that it just feels natural and intuitive.
 Apple said that for the watch, they needed to come up with a revolutionary UI that worked
 for the wrist.
 They definitely created something different.
 Whether or not it will actually feel as intuitive as Apple's other products, we just won't know
 until we spend more time with it.
 That's actually something interesting I want to talk about.
 You mentioned the force touch.
 It doesn't make sense on our end, what there's going to be a long press touch, force touch,
 what they're saying with that.
 Do you feel the difference when you're trying it out, what that force touch really is?
 It doesn't give you the taptic feedback depending on the touch.
 If you just tap it harder, basically, is what it comes down to.
 Again, I haven't actually had a chance to use the working unit because they're holding
 that on Apple employees' wrists at least in the initial hands-on area.
 I will say actually, speaking of the vibration, they made a big deal about it being very subtle
 and personal to you and not really obvious.
 They're actually right.
 When other smart watches vibrate, you can hear it across the room, especially say the
 Pebble.
 This thing, it vibrates, you definitely feel it, but you can't hear it and it's not broadcasting,
 hey, I've got a notification, it is a very subtle thing.
 That's interesting and I think that's definitely something that I've noticed with the G Watch
 certainly is.
 In fact, just the other night I was in bed and the way that I knew that I had gotten
 a text message was because I heard the G Watch across the room, not because I heard the phone
 sitting next to me.
 That is a very real issue.
 Yeah.
 Did you have any other questions for Peter?
 Well, I have the most important question for Dieter, I think, the question that is on everyone's
 mind, which is A, are you buying next week and B, if so, the 4.7 or the 5.5?
 Man, it's hard.
 I came in here expecting 4.7, done, but now after holding the 5.5, the only question is
 whether or not it's too tall, it's not too wide for me to use.
 That double tap the touch ID button to bring down the screen is actually kind of interesting.
 I couldn't get it to work consistently, but it did work and then you could reach those
 elements wrapped so it don't support the swipe.
 The idea that I'll be able to turn the 5.5 into landscape and have it work like a little
 tiny baby miniature iPad is actually pretty compelling.
 I don't know, man.
 I'm going to need another week to think about it, but luckily, I've got till Friday to preorder,
 but I'm definitely getting an iPhone.
 I'm way too excited about Apple Pay to not get an iPhone.
 I know we didn't bring it up, but it's a really big deal.
 I have personally spent the past five years watching every single company on the planet
 just screw up mobile payments.
 Tim Cook on stage, actually, he said it best.
 He said that everybody's failed at mobile payments because they were worried about their
 own vested interests instead of worrying about the customer experience.
 The fact that Apple seems to be doing this securely and they seem to be doing it in such
 a way where they're not collecting information, I think it's going to be a really big deal.
 It's the thing that is going to lock me into using an iPhone for the next two years, for
 sure.
 Yeah.
 No, I totally agree.
 We actually said the same thing before we brought you on, the fact that they are identifying
 the business model getting in the way as being what has prevented mobile payments from taking
 off.
 I think that that really hits the nail on the head.
 The only question is are they going to be able to use this as a selling point for the
 iPhone?
 Will they pull people into the fold with this or is it just going to be a value add for
 existing iPhone subscribers?
 That's the question, or iPhone owners, I should say.
 I actually don't think that's a question at all.
 I think that they're going to sell iPhones no matter what.
 The question is are they going to be able to get all of the retailers and banks and
 everybody else to get behind a single standard and actually have mobile payments work and
 not be garbage and confusing and you never know what's going to work and what's not going
 to work.
 From that end, I'm really hopeful.
 Apple is literally the first company who hasn't lied to my face about mobile payments.
 If nothing else, I'm grateful for that.
 It sold me, but I'm a forward-looking nerd.
 I imagine once we get a year of Apple Pay under our belts and people see the experience
 everywhere, it's going to start selling a lot of other people.
 As an eternal optimist, I always say, as goes Starbucks, so goes the entire industry.
 They have Starbucks on board.
 I think that everything's looking up for Apple Pay.
 I agree.
 Dito, I think we're going to head out with you soon.
 Anything else you want to talk about before you go?
 It was a real bummer to only be able to catch half a song from YouTube, but it seemed like
 they were rocking.
 It was pretty awesome.
 You can go download their free album now.
 Yeah, there you go.
 Dito, thank you so much.
 Thanks, guys.
 I do want to talk about a little more of the design thing.
 Something I was thinking about when Dito was talking.
 There you go with the slap bracelet again.
 Thank you.
 Your watch was in the way.
 The thing I want to talk about with that is, it was going back to what the iPad looked
 like when it first came out, what the iPhone looked like when it first came out, which
 were not, especially in retrospect, they're not, I would say, great designs.
 The iPhone was revolutionary at the time because there was nothing else like it, but now it
 looks terrible.
 I still say, even when the iPad came out, it was just, it was ridiculed.
 It looked terrible.
 I don't know if I'd say it looked terrible.
 I think that at that time, the precedent that they were setting in the industry, both with
 the original iPhone and also with the original iPad, gave them more flexibility for putting
 out a design that wasn't necessarily the absolute best that that form factor could be.
 They were first generation products.
 I see where you're going with this.
 You want to talk Apple Watch.
 To an extent, I actually just want to address what people are saying.
 We're getting a lot of questions like, thank you for knowledge in design.
 I don't know if I can say that this time because I've seen first generation Apple devices
 before.
 This feels actually not bad for what it is.
 The functionality, the software doesn't feel there.
 I'm sure that's one of those things like, I want to wait for the second generation.
 I don't know if I can hold off financially.
 I'm honestly not sure if I agree.
 I think that the first generation Apple Watch, what we saw today looks to me very much like
 a generation one product.
 I'm sure that if you were to sit Johnny Ive down in a room and be like, look, dude, real
 talk, is this the product that you want?
 Did you have all the technology and all the capability at your fingertips to make the
 product that you really wanted to make?
 There's no way that he'd say, yes, this is exactly the product that I wanted to make.
 The display is square even though the UI elements that they showed on screen, many of them were
 obviously optimized for a round display.
 The watch faces that they showed, a round watch face on a square display always looks
 silly.
 One displays are definitely still in their infancy.
 There haven't been many of them.
 360 is kind of an outlier there.
 We heard rumors of flexible displays and actually, apparently this display is technically flexible
 but it isn't curved, of course.
 Maybe there's some opportunity there.
 I think there are probably some people who are looking for a fitness wearable who are
 saying this isn't anything like what I want.
 The fact that they're targeting a sort of a vague 2015 launch and may not mention battery
 life during the event leads me to believe that there are still some open questions about
 how this battery is going to perform.
 Everything that we've seen with Android Wear devices suggests that there's some mismatch
 there.
 There's mismatch between the battery technology they have available, the energy density they
 can get out of them, and what they're trying to do with the processors in these devices.
 We have some things that they need to figure out there.
 I think that if you look at the Apple Watch in five, seven years, just like we're doing
 now with the iPhone, and then you look back to this first generation Apple Watch, you're
 going to say, it was kind of insane that we were all using that.
 Impressive for a Gen 1 device and don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's going to be a huge
 seller just like the original iPhone was, but I do think there's a lot of room for improvement.
 I think that Apple is obviously poised to take advantage of that.
 They have $150 billion in the bank.
 They can do pretty much whatever they want.
 They have the very best technology and fabrication techniques available to them.
 I think that they'll probably move to round at some point.
 They'll probably have a whole portfolio of devices.
 They'll have a fitness focused one, they'll have a round one, they'll have different materials,
 they'll go thinner, they'll put different kinds of batteries in there.
 It's a huge and growing space for them.
 Here's what I'm interested in, this is obviously not a mass produced item yet.
 It looks thinner than the Moto 360 as Dieter pointed out.
 It's about the size of a pebble.
 Once they figure out the battery life, we start seeing these closer production models,
 will this get thicker?
 Or are they just going ahead and saying, this is what it's going to look like without question?
 The straps can stay the same.
 This could just stick out a little bit more once they figure out what actually it takes
 to last a full day, for this generation at least.
 You're suggesting that the production watch could get thicker?
 I think so.
 Unless they didn't really mention the thickness of the watch.
 Not on stage, but I can't imagine that would be unprecedented for Apple to release a device
 that didn't look exactly like what they gave hands-ons with.
 There would be absolutely no precedent for that.
 Look, anything's possible, but I think that that would be a pretty bizarre scenario.
 It's also a story like they didn't come out and tell battery life.
 If it's not good now, what is it?
 Is it software?
 Is it just literally physical?
 They've effectively given themselves a solid six months to fiddle with it.
 I think that they can... There's probably tons of software optimization they can do.
 They probably have some wiggle room on chipsets.
 Maybe they're waiting on a new chipset or a new fabrication technique for an existing
 chip that will reduce power draw.
 Maybe they're going to say, okay, we need to be more aggressive about when and how we
 turn off the display when you're not using it.
 There are lots of things that they can do to eke out extra minutes.
 I'm sure that they're going to do that.
 I can't imagine them making a material change to the appearance of the device between now
 and then.
 I think they'll just keep... I think back to the... Remember the white iPhone 4?
 Right.
 Where they're just like, sorry guys.
 We done goofed.
 Yeah, it's no bueno.
 We're just going to hold it back until it's good and ready.
 If push came to shove, I think they'd probably do that again with the Apple Watch.
 Right.
 Although I can imagine this being the same.
 I could imagine being just a little bit thicker, like a millimeter, and no one's going to know
 because no one's doing the hands-on with a millimeter.
 We should have brought a ruler to this hands-on.
 No, no, a caliber.
 A caliber.
 We should have a caliber.
 Just like, okay, I'm going to need to know these numbers now.
 We'll check on the measurements again in six months.
 I do want to talk about this more.
 I do want to get into your own personal feeling where you put your money where your mouth
 is on this one.
 I mean, at first, we finally had the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus hands-on.
 I've been dying to see this.
 Let's check that out and we'll be right back.
 Here we are at Apple's big event with two really big iPhones.
 This is the iPhone 6, and as you probably already know by now, it comes in two sizes.
 This is the 4.7 inch device, and this is a 5.5 inch device.
 It feels pretty massive, but it doesn't feel so massive that it's completely unwieldy.
 It's pretty narrow, so compared to really giant Android phones, it's not too bad to
 hold in one hand.
 Now, if we compare these models to the iPhone 5S, you can see here that it is quite a bit
 bigger, the 4.7 is.
 However, it is thinner and the buttons are a little bit nicer.
 They've got this iPad-style button here, a nice ringer switch.
 On the back, the camera sticks out a little bit, but you still have the true tone flash.
 There's one more feature that's really worth noting on the new iPhone 6.
 If you double tap, you don't press, you just tap on the Touch ID home button.
 It pulls down the screen so that you can reach the stuff at the top.
 There are a lot of apps that don't support the back gesture, and so it's convenient to
 just be able to double tap on that thing to bring down stuff from the top of the screen
 so you can hit those buttons.
 So we've got a faster processor in here, it's the A8.
 It's running iOS 8, of course, with the new HealthKit app, which works with the Apple
 Watch.
 But the really exciting thing, at least with the 5.5, is you can turn it into landscape
 and you get some extra features.
 So if we jump into messages here, you can see you've got a two-tone, two-pane thing
 here you can look at.
 And then when you go into portrait, you actually get little avatars, whereas on the 4.7-inch
 model, when you go into messaging, you don't get those avatars.
 So not only do they just give you a bigger screen, they also give you more information
 on each screen.
 And then when you turn it sideways, you can see you get different interfaces there.
 Both of these models are available for pre-order on Friday, and they should be available for
 sale on September 19.
 The 4.7-inch starts at $199 on contract, and the larger 5.5 starts at $299 on contract,
 and then it goes up as you get more storage.
 Okay, see, look, that 5.5-inch doesn't look bad.
 I mean, okay.
 What?
 No, I think, look, there's a reason they're making two sizes, right?
 Because different people want different sizes, and they're addressing that market need, and
 I think that they're gonna sell a lot more iPhones because of it.
 Having just a 4-inch model, I think, was starting to actively hurt them when you see literally
 every Android, flagship Android phone on the market move between 4.7 and 5.5, and they
 just needed to up their game.
 And so I think that they're gonna sell way, way, way more devices in the next couple quarters
 because of this two-prong strategy.
 5.5 just isn't for me.
 I mean, it's not fun carrying around a phone that big, and it's not fun holding a phone
 that big.
 But I will say that making it that thin, I'm sure, is gonna have an impact, too.
 That's good.
 Right, not to mention the idea, of course, is like if you can keep it in your pocket
 and do everything in your watch, whatever.
 Doesn't matter how big it is.
 Right.
 That's true, yep.
 So let's kind of start wrapping up.
 I wanted to talk about YouTube for another hour, but John is in my ear telling me not
 to do that.
 He's literally crying at the control booth.
 I can see him.
 So let's just start kind of wrapping up and talk about money where your mouth is.
 Obviously, we spend a lot of money.
 This is where we spend all our budgets, more than rent and utilities at this point.
 Are you gonna get the iPhone, and are you starting to think about the iWatch as well?
 The Apple Watch.
 Here's what's gonna happen.
 Here's how it's gonna go down.
 Again, this has been the case for the past two or three years now.
 What's gonna happen is I'm gonna tell you to your face right now that I'm not gonna
 get the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.
 And I know you're full of shit.
 Yes, next Friday, at 3 a.m., I will be in line somewhere.
 Oh, you'll be in line.
 You're not gonna...
 No, because I'll make it past this Friday without pre-ordering, and I'll be very proud
 of myself.
 I'll be like, look, guys, I'm staying committed.
 I'm staying in the course.
 Look at that.
 Look at that.
 Tell me you don't want that.
 What, the big one?
 The 6 Plus?
 Either of them.
 Bigger than better.
 And look, you know what's even better than that?
 It's not Jimmy and Justin bantering.
 That's true.
 Which I love them both.
 It's just not the best of them.
 No, no, they weren't at their finest.
 That's true.
 And they were also...
 You have these two superstars, and Apple spent, what, like 10 seconds with them, and then
 they're done, which is kind of funny.
 No, look, I think that this is a great evolution for the iPhone.
 I think that they did a lot of things that they needed to do.
 Going to a bigger size, even for the small model, was important, but more importantly,
 just having two sizes is going to be huge for them.
 And the Apple Watch, I really want to reserve judgment right now.
 I'm not thrilled with the square.
 I'm not really thrilled with the ID in general, and I have a lot of questions about the UI,
 but it's way too early to decide if they did the right thing or not.
 So we'll see you early next year.
 And I know you've been talking about how Moto X is the best Android smartphone.
 I love the first Moto X, so I'm excited about this too.
 Would you do the Moto X plus the Moto 360 combination?
 Is that something you would actually consider now?
 That's what I intend to get this month, yeah.
 I think the customization is huge.
 Being able to make the phone truly your own instead of one of 50 million people with the
 gold iPhone 6 is a big deal.
 And they've kind of progressed the UI to the point and have stayed true enough to stock
 Android where it's just kind of the, in my opinion, the perfect Android package.
 But there are questions about that too.
 I think the battery life is on the short side of acceptable with that device, and it is
 5.2 inches.
 So again, being very honest with you, I'm going to tell you right now I'm not getting
 an iPhone 6.
 Next Friday I will get an iPhone 6.
 I know you'll buy them all.
 I'm more curious which one you're going to use.
 And I guess looking at this behemoth of a watch right here, the Moto 360 is no big deal
 for you.
 It's not...
 Well, watch and phone are very different things.
 True, true.
 But if you're getting one, you're not going to get an iPhone and then the 360, or the
 X and then the watch.
 No, certainly not.
 And you do kind of have to commit to a platform.
 And actually that's something that I wish we had more time to talk about, and maybe
 we'll save it for another time.
 The fact that both Apple and Google have very much...
 I hate to use the term, but they've very much doubled down on platform lock-in with these
 wearables.
 They are very much all in on their...
 They're all in with their wearables because both Android Wear and Apple Watch are platform
 exclusive.
 So if you're spending...
 I mean, if you're spending, who knows what the Apple Watch Edition is going to be, $1,000?
 I don't know.
 But say you buy that, there's no way you're going to be buying a Moto X or a G3 or a GS5
 or whatever.
 No.
 There's no chance.
 And you are locked in until you either turn that watch around or you replace it, which
 could be years.
 And even then, that's actually a good question.
 So that device, it's a piece of consumer technology.
 It's going to become obsolete in a matter of one, two, three, four years, something
 like that.
 But it's gold.
 So then what?
 I guess you melt down the gold.
 I don't know.
 Do you take it to a pawn shop?
 I don't know what the procedure is when you're done with an Apple Watch Edition.
 There's no upgrade plan except just melt the gold.
 Not reusable at all.
 Just melt the damn gold.
 Melt the watch.
 All right.
 Well, I'm sure we'll talk about this again because I have a strong feeling there's another
 Apple event next month.
 We hinted at Apple TV stuff.
 There's clearly iPad rumors I've been floating about.
 So we'll probably be back for that.
 I have to go listen to the U2 album.
 We need to go see if there's any other news that has happened.
 Is happen on theverge.com.
 If you want any more big analysis, editorials, smart people talking about this, that is theverge.com.
 We have 90, 100 people up there just writing a ton of stuff right now.
 Thank you all for joining us so much.
 Thank you, Chris.
 Thank you, Control Room.
 Dieter, Neelai, Josh Lowinson, David Pierce, Jordan Opplinger from San Francisco.
 I'm sure I'm missing someone else.
 Christian.
 Christian Mazda.
 Oh my God.
 He's going to kill me.
 I said Josh Lowinson.
 Sam Sheffer back here.
 Sam Sheffer.
 And Chris Sterling who's already pre-ordered six.
 He's hacked the system.
 God damn him.
 All right.
 Thank you so much for joining us and stay tuned to theverge.com.