Welcome back to Cortex. This time I talked to David Pierce, who is The Verge's editor at large. I've been following David's work for years from The Verge, when he went to Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, Wired. He's now back at The Verge again. He works on stuff that is of great interest to me, from The Vergecast and the podcast that they do over there. He's also a writer, a product reviewer, and I want to get into all of that with David today. I think it's really interesting to talk to someone who really works for the premier place in my mind for technology coverage, which is The Verge, and like looking at how he thinks about the work that he does, how it fits into the overall mission and work of a site like The Verge, and how he thinks about product reviews and the impacts that they can have on the companies. Yes, we're going to talk about the Humane AI Pin. I really hope that you enjoy this episode of State of the Workflow.
David, I want to get started by asking you, as I ask every guest on State of the Workflow, what is the most important device for you for getting your work done?
Okay. I knew you were going to ask me this, and everybody only gives you one of two answers. And I mean, the specific answer for me at this point in my life is the M4 Mac Mini that I'm using right now.
I also have a MacBook Air that I use and like a lot. I also have a phone that I use and like sometimes. But a couple of years ago, I really started to go out of my way to try and make my computer a place instead of just a device. Like I work from home. I work in the basement. I work a sort of hours-wise chaotic job. I'm in the news business. Things are always happening. Like there's never a moment where it's very easy to just be like, I am not at work anymore. And so I have tried to confine as much of my work as I can to this spot and this device.
So I leave the basement and I leave work. But what that means is that like this Mac Mini is the center of all of my computing universe at this point.
Okay. I like that. So you said like, you know, you're in the news business and it's chaotic. So something starts happening. Are you getting notifications on your phone? Like you got Slack on your phone and it's pinging you and then you will then get up, come down to the basement and boot up the Mac.
It depends. We have a big newsroom full of much smarter people than I am who are on tap for that kind of stuff. And one thing I think The Verge is good at is quickly responding to news but also routing it to the right person. So like we have people who are much more able to quickly spin up on certain kinds of news than I am. But yeah, I have Slack notifications on for more things than I'm proud of. And I think I will do a lot of slacking from my phone. Like if it's a matter of like we need to hash out how we're going to cover a story or who is the right person or what should the headline be, that I'll do sitting on the couch, two thumbs on my phone. But the minute it's like I have to write something or I have to really start doing serious research or I need to start compiling stuff together, that's a computer task. And that's usually when I like sprint down to the basement and fire up the Mac Mini.
And I assume, like, looking at my own life, it's like why I have a whole second space is that you once were doing it on a laptop and then realized you were doing it all the time, just like working all the time everywhere.
Kind of. Yeah. And I think especially, so I was on parental leave this summer and I actually found that having a laptop for doing computer tasks that wasn't attached to all of my work stuff was really valuable. So like, could I do all of this on many fewer devices? Like yes, of course, absolutely, but why, you know. So what I found is having a laptop that is the thing that goes places with me but is also the thing I can fire up when I'm like sitting at the dining room table and want to like write in my journal, that is not also the thing that has all of my work email synced to it and my Slack synced to it and whatever, was really useful. And that stuff is now being pulled back to being my work computer also as I get back to being more at work. I'm still technically part-time on parental leave. So I've been trying to keep that boundary more sort of coherent. But yeah, having a laptop that was like a personal computer and having this be my work computer has been really helpful. I have never attempted to differentiate those things before and I've done a better job of it the last few months and I've actually really liked it.
So, you are a man who does a lot of things at The Verge.
I think you wear a lot of hats at this point and so trying to just follow one workflow through with you in my preparation felt like an impossible task because I can't even imagine where your day is going.
What feels like chaos to me, so I'm glad it feels like chaos to other people.
Good. I have three areas with you that I want to look at and I want to kind of follow each one of these through. And I actually want to start with product reviews because you're the first person I've gotten to talk to on the show who reviews things in the way that you do in a kind of, I would say, traditional gadget review way, right? Where like you're writing primarily. People make video, you make video, but there's just something different about a long article that's getting written on a website like The Verge. Reviewing is not all you do at The Verge. I know you have product reviewers, but there are still items that you review. Like for example, I would guess famously, infamously, the Humane AI Pin, right? Obviously, it was a really popular review, you know, stretched far and wide. So, if we look at say that review, what led you to review that product?
It's a mix of I wanted to and also I think it fell into an interesting gap at The Verge, which is a thing we've spent a lot of time talking about, right? I think we have people who are really great, really experienced smartphone reviewers, and I was a smartphone reviewer for a long time and frankly am out of touch. Like I haven't used the last two generations of Samsung phones, which makes me officially a bad smartphone reviewer.
Yeah, you're done now. That's it.
Yeah, it's over. We have people who do great work with wearables. We have people who are great laptop reviewers. These AI gadgets are kind of a new category and just fill some sort of weird Venn diagram of space. And I find them totally fascinating, right? Like I think a belief that I have that is different from a lot of people is I think there is absolutely room in the world for new kinds of gadgets. And I think in a funny way the Meta Ray-Ban glasses have proven me right more than anything else that has come out, that there is something that changes when you change the form factor that is meaningful and relevant.
A product that they say is for AI but nobody cares about that part realistically who wears them.
No, I think fundamentally it's headphones and a camera, but it's headphones that don't look like headphones and it's a camera you don't have to hold in your hand. And I think both of those things are powerful and they change the actual nature of your experience with the device. I think that is proof of sort of a small version of a big thing that I believe, which is there's like lots of new ideas about gadgets yet to be had with those. It was just a mix of like I want to see what it is like to live with this thing and I also think I see the bigger story here, right? Because I think the thing that I've always said about product reviews and I think the thing that's hard to do well with product reviews is to tell a story, right? Like to say is this thing faster or slower? Does its battery last longer or not? Is, I think, a useful service to people, but is not, I think, the sort of best version of a product review. Many years ago when I was running the review team at Verge, the thing I would always say to people is like we should be thinking about these as like feature stories, but the main character is a gadget. And it's like what these things should be is adventure stories, right? Like I want to be out in the world with you. The thing that you, the author of this review, have that no one else has is you have this thing. You get to use it. You get to hold it. You get to live with it. And it's your job to help people understand what the world looks like through the eyes of this device. And in an AI world, like what an incredibly fun thing to try and figure out. Like it wound up being a real bummer that both the Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit R1 like really sucked because if they were good, it's a whole different universe of stuff we can talk about, right? Like what does it mean that this stuff works for me this way? And what does it mean that I'm now interacting with technology in this way? And both of these just happen to be terrible. And so it subverted a lot of that. But I really like when there's an opportunity to not just say is this thing better or worse than its competition, which again, incredibly valuable service to provide, but to say like what does it mean that this exists and what do I do with the fact that this exists? And those are the reviews that I like fight really hard to try and do.
So, this one maybe more than other reviews, I'm sure takes a lot of effort to use the product. Like, you really want to put the time in that you can to get a good result out of it, to get like a good set of ideas and to be able to tell that story. How long do you need to spend with a product before you feel like you could write a review? And also, I'm assuming sometimes you don't get the choice essentially of how much time you would get to spend with it. It's if you want to hit an embargo, you have a limited time.
Yeah. The annoying but true answer to that question is always more than you have.
But I think at this point, if you give me a week, I can pretty quickly figure it out, right? And it depends on the kind of gadget. Like frankly, at this point, like you spend three hours with the iPhone and you sort of know the story of the iPhone, right? Which I think is like the iPhone Air was such an interesting version of that this year where like you pick up the iPhone Air and it is such a visceral thing that you have reviewed the iPhone Air in four minutes, right? And it's probably correct because you understand what the trade-offs are and it either feels that way in your hand or it doesn't and that is the story. With some of these newer devices, the thing I always try and do is both like push the thing all the way to its limits, which you can do pretty quickly, right? It's like, okay, here's a list of things that it can do. I'm going to do all of them ten times and see how it goes. That's like a day of testing in many cases. You take a million pictures, you try all the stuff, run down the product spec sheet, and try all the things. The harder part is actually trying to think about the device less and just live with it. Because I think the failing of a lot of product reviews and a thing that's very hard as a product reviewer is you just don't use the products like people do, right? Where it's like, yes, you do a battery test of a phone and it's like, well, okay, sure, if I'm sitting here staring at the phone running benchmark tests for 11 straight hours, I'm going to get a lower battery life number than you do. People don't use their phones like that. And so, I always try to do the like really aggressive testing for testing's sake stuff as fast as I can and then just figure out what it looks like to live with this thing. And there's always a little bit of intentionality with it where it's like the kind of thing I would instinctively just pull out my phone to do, I have to go like, 'Oh, no.' And then put my phone away and take out this weird AI device and see what happens. But the flip side of that is I think you start to get a much cleaner sense of how these things work and what it is like to actually have them in your life in a way that I think is really valuable. So that's always the thing. And there's no maximum on the amount of time that it would be helpful to have with that stuff, which is the real challenge.
When you're actually conducting a review, where are you recording your thoughts for it?
So, I'm a person who aspires to be a good member of society. And what I actually am is just like a true lunatic about note-taking apps. And I basically spend my life flitting between different tools that all seem like they're like this close to being what I need. One thing I am is a very diligent note-taker. I think I am better than most people at like when I have a good idea, I write it down. When I have a thing I need to remember to do, I write it down. My problem is that I'm perpetually switching between apps. And so I never remember where I wrote anything down in a way that is incredibly unhelpful and unproductive. And I'm forever just like moving batches of notes from place to place. Right now, today, the answer is an app called Workflowy, which is basically an infinite outliner tool and you can focus an outline sort of at any level of the outline. And that is the one that just sort of works the way that my brain does. And having something that I can just write a million bullets and then organize them as I go is very helpful. But I've also, I use Notion sometimes, which I think is like a remarkable piece of software that I kind of hate using. I use Craft, which I think is a really lovely piece of software that is missing a bunch of really obvious features. I used Evernote for a long time. Like, I've used them all, but I am forever sort of all in on some note-taking app. And I don't take notes with all that much structure. I'm just sort of pouring stuff into a place. And that is like the thing that I have found most useful, especially as I'm testing a device. Just knowing where all of my unordered thoughts are and importantly knowing that I can put them there easily, which makes me do it more often, is way more important than having some like really helpful folder structure that I can get back to later. Like I'll worry about the structure later. I just need to get everything out of my head so that I remember it later.
And at what point do you start writing? Is there a point where you're like, I'm done testing now, I'll start writing the review, or does that differ? Oh, okay. You're like, draw a line. Now it's time to write.
I mean, it's not that clean. I do a lot of testing before I start writing, but then there's always a lot of testing to do as I'm writing. I'll sort of write myself into a thing I haven't tested, and then it's like, oh, I have to go test that and see. So, there's a lot of process, but I think no matter what I'm writing, whether it's a product review or a reported story or a narrative feature or whatever, I find it very hard to write until I know what I'm going to write. There was this guy Chris Jones who used to write for Esquire who said that his way of writing was that he didn't like to start writing until he could have sat down at a bar stool next to you and told you the story. And that's kind of how I am too. I don't like to just sit down and start until I kind of know where I'm going to end. And often I don't end where I think I'm going to end. But I think often the stuff that I, at least the first draft of the stuff that I write, I could have basically said out loud to you in some shape or form before I started writing. And so when I'm reviewing something, I try to know kind of the shape of the story at the very least and how I feel and what conclusion I'm coming to before I start writing. Otherwise, I feel like I end up like a sort of AI model that like makes a bunch of slightly wrong decisions and ends up in some completely different place that I didn't mean to be. It helps me to know where I'm going to end when I begin.
How does editing work? Are you assigned like with an editor for a story like this who's going to go through and make suggestions?
I have different editors for different kinds of stories, but I have an editor whose job is at the beginning to kind of help me shape the broad structure of the story and then at the end to do everything from like make sure I'm not missing something to making sure the sentences are good to making sure the whole thing like makes sense just as a like object. And yeah, it differs depending on the kind of story and some things require like a specific kind of expertise. So I'll have a specific editor for that. But yeah, there's almost always an editor kind of throughout the whole process, which just makes me better at everything.
Okay. Does video complicate things? So like the AI Pin had a video review as well as a written review. And I actually think that is a... I mean, you correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think that there is a Verge video review that does not have a companion written article on the website by and large. I mean, I know it can be the other way around. Sometimes there's just a written review. Do you enjoy it? Do you find it blocks you in any way? Does it open new opportunities for how you think about reviewing a product?
Video is really different and I think the thing it took me too long to realize is that good video and good writing are not the same and in fact want really different things.
A thing I really like about video reviews is just that you can do so much showing and not telling, right? And especially with new kinds of things when what I want you to understand is not just how long the battery lasts, but like what it looks like to be walking around with this thing and like how this actually fits into my life. You just communicate it differently on video than you can in other ways. Like I can actually show and not tell in so many ways. It's a really different process. And I think the way video works often is you have to write the script before you write the review just because video takes a long time to make and I can just sit with a blank Google Doc and write a review. So in a lot of ways video speeds up the process which can be tough. But one of the fun things, like I think the thing I really enjoyed about the Humane AI Pin review I got to do was you see so much of the testing in the review and in the video and like so little of that is staged or like me repeating a thing that I've done before. It was just like, okay, let's vlog my testing essentially and like let's just spend a day running around trying to use this thing and figure out where it's useful and just show people what that's like. And I think to me that's cool and exciting and useful and again I think like if you just want to know the specs of something or how it roughly stacks up to what you've had before, you're so spoiled for choice on the internet now. There are a million people doing great versions of that on every platform you can think of. The stuff comes out with the news and people spend five minutes with it and it's like, okay, I can tell you what it feels like in my hand because I've held every iPhone since the first one. I can tell you what it feels like pretty reliably, pretty quickly. The question of like, what does it mean to actually live with this thing is different. And I think I've gotten much less interested in like sitting behind a desk and telling you something on video, which is kind of what a written review is always going to feel like, right? It's me sitting there sort of explaining something to you. Whereas like video I increasingly want to feel like you're just with me. Like you're just over my shoulder as I'm using this thing and you get to experience it the same way that I did. And even if you don't see all of that and come to the same conclusion that I did, that's fine because my job is just to show you what it is like to be in the world of this thing. And that's a thing you can really only do on video. And I really enjoy it. Video is a ton of work, especially the way The Verge does it. Our video team has very high standards and I'm very bad. And so it's a lot of work, but I really enjoy it. And I think the best stuff we do, I think, is when we get to do all of that stuff together. Like really great photography, really great video, really great written reviews. Like that is the completest version of a review that we are able to do. And I really like when we get to.
Do you ever think about like the audience experience, right? Like I think there is a habit with reviews, written reviews. People just jump to the end, see the score, read the conclusion. I don't know if that exists in video the same way. I don't know if people will like jump into the end of the video. I don't know. But like I wonder if maybe they take more of the review in if it's a video than maybe if it was an article.
I think there's probably something to that. I think that's a compelling like platform case for YouTube in general, right? And it's super annoying when all you want is a piece of information, right? When it's like I just need to know how to get the tire off of my car and I have to watch an 11-minute video and actually what I'd rather do is read a paragraph of text. But the flip side, I think you're right, like your ability to sort of bring somebody on a journey with you on video is just so different. Like I just have so much more control over it as the storyteller because odds are you are going to press play and it's going to start at the beginning, right? And that comes with huge tasks for me to do. I have to be interesting the first second. I have to get you to keep watching every single time. And there's so much other stuff for you to watch that the penalty for that is super high because you can get the gist of an article in 10 seconds in the way that you can't get the gist of the video in 10 seconds. The upside of that is huge because I can do more things and I can bring you with me. But it does, I think, make the work a lot harder because I can just lose you at any moment.
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I mentioned scores. How do you feel about scoring? Have you been doing it for so long that it's not so much of a thing anymore? Or is there ever a time when you wish you didn't have to do that?
Like, oh, every time. I should say this is not the official opinion of The Verge, but it is the official opinion of many people who work at The Verge. Review scores are useful and horrible.
Right. Like I think it is important and helpful as a reviewer to be forced to come to a conclusion. I think you see so much quote-unquote criticism that has no point and arrives nowhere and just explains what a thing is and then is like, well, I leave it up to you to decide. And I think that is cowardly, frankly, as the person tasked with deciding whether or not this is good. Forcing you to put a number on it is a forcing function in a way that I think is really, really useful. I think one to ten is not a perfect system for communicating that. And the problem is I don't know that there is one, right? Like five stars is not that thing because what does four stars mean? A lot of people would say anything other than five stars means it's bad. We just don't agree on what the numbers mean, which makes the numbers pointless. I have always really liked Netflix's thing where they have the two thumbs up for love it, the one thumb up for like it, and the thumb down for didn't like it. I actually think that is the closest to like a universally understandable system that I've ever seen. And I like genuine kudos to Netflix for pulling that off. And this is the thing we struggle with all the time. Like Jake, our executive editor, he's going to get mad at me for saying this, but he has like semi-seriously advocated for having negative numbers for forever. He's like, 'What if the score went from minus ten, which is like I absolutely hate its guts, to zero, which is like perfectly neutral, all the way up to ten?'
I understand that. That seems hellish.
It's a completely unhinged idea, but you can see why it makes sense, right? Whereas like for us, it's like, okay, I think The Verge's main problem is we give too many things sevens. But the reason we give so many things sevens is because most things are fine, right? But if I give something a five on a web page where it says five means it's fine, people hear five out of ten and immediately think it's a disaster. So it's like we have this impossible translation problem that makes scores hard.
And the problem is it's what you said. It's that so many people come to the thing, they read the score, they read the conclusion, they leave.
That it's like I think if you come to the thing, you read the review, you look at the pictures, you read the score, and you read the conclusion, if you still don't know why I picked that score, I have failed as the reviewer. But if you click on the review, look at the score, decide what you think that score means, and leave, that's your problem. And at some point, I've just had to let go of that. Like if we're just going to miscommunicate, so be it. So, I think the reason we haven't gotten rid of scores is because I really do think it is useful both as a reviewer and as an audience to force the piece to decide.
Even if the decision is always and necessarily imperfect, I'm still pro scores for that reason alone because you can't sit on the fence when you have to put a score on it and that's good.
I see a lot of this discourse in video games. I'm more of a consumer of video game culture than video games themselves. Like it's just like a thing that I enjoy. And at the moment there is like a thing that seems to be going on that if something is an eight out of ten it is bad. Like is how the audience will perceive it. And I think part of the problem especially in video games is nobody reviews a two out of ten video game. And I do expect there's a similar thing in technology. Like there is just kind of no time to review stuff that is below five in the scale. Something has to be a surprise that is below five in the scale. Like I imagine there are many products that you could pick out to review that would be three out of ten. But does anyone really want to read that review of like some random piece of technology that you found on like Temu and it's like a three out of ten? Like it's just not really in service of your audience. And then it kind of this becomes the problem over time.
It feels like punching down in some ways, right? Where it's like, okay, I could find a thing that somebody made on Kickstarter that no one is going to buy and is not relevant to anybody and isn't good and I could write a thousand words about how terrible it is. I don't know that that accomplishes anything for anybody, like including our audience, which is the folks I'm actually in service to, right? Like hearing me be mad about something you would have never heard of otherwise and is actually completely irrelevant to your life doesn't really accomplish anything. Which was, to be frank, the reason it was interesting that both the Humane and the Rabbit were so bad was like it was that rare chance to be like these things are in culture, people are talking about them, they matter, they are interesting, they are relevant. Like I think Emma Roth on our team just wrote a review of Telly, the free TV with a big bar of ads at the bottom. Another good example, right, of like that's a thing that is out there and people are talking about it and people are curious about it. And it also like if it's good, it's interesting that it's good and if it's bad, it's interesting that it's bad and there's bigger reasons that it matters if this thing is good or bad. Those are the things where it's like, okay, I will take the time to write about why this sucks. And frankly, like it feels bad. I think everybody who reviewed the Humane AI Pin, which I think was run by a bunch of people who took themselves too seriously, but was like largely a company of smart people doing their best to do something really interesting and ambitious. It feels bad to be like this sucks and you're idiots. But again, at the same time, like my job is to tell the reader whether this is worth your money or not. And that was a pretty clear answer. But in many cases, it's like if the question of should you buy this or not is never going to be put in front of you or the answer is so transparently no that we don't even need to talk about it, to me, it just feels like punching down to be like look at this thing. It sucks. I just, I don't know. It feels bad. But to your point about the eight out of ten thing, I think about this with like the sort of star creep on places like Uber and stuff. Like if you're an Uber driver and you have a 4.7 star rating, which by every possible conversion you could do is excellent.
You're essentially perfect on a five-star scale.
You might get fired at 4.7 stars. Like it's in their rules that if you get below that, you might get fired.
That's ridiculous, right?
So it's like if I give you a three out of five review, which is a six out of ten, which is a 60 out of 100, which is like fine, right? Like it's fine. I am saying explicitly I think this person should be fired from their job and that's just stupid. So we've ended at this place where like it's either five or it sucks and at that point what are we accomplishing?
Yeah. It shows that the Uber five-star rating system is actually just broken. Like they need a new system, right?
Because clearly it doesn't work.
People tell you just give me five stars and it's like five stars is the default rating for an Uber driver. It's like this doesn't make any sense. And if that's the case, then what are we doing?
I've probably had like a handful of actual five-star experiences in an Uber, right? But like I'll rate everyone top. It's like you start out at five and all you have to do is something terrible like I don't know drive into a lamp post and maybe I'll knock you down to a four. Like you know, it's not really that great.
You mentioned, I mean I know we're talking about Humane, but you mentioned like the team and the people. The Humane AI Pin had an interesting effect where it was like at a time when there was conversation about reviews kind of killing products.
And I think the two most impactful pieces of journalism on this was you and Marques Brownlee's review. And Marques...
Took a lot of this, I think, because it was also a thing about a car, right? Because of the Fisker Ocean, like a similar kind of thing happened.
When you're working on a review like this and you know it's a high-stakes review and you know it's going badly, do you think about the impact that that review could have?
You can't not. I'm definitely cognizant of what it means to write this stuff and publish it to a large audience. And I think everyone should be, and anyone who says they're not is either like lying or a sociopath. You just can't let it change the work, right? The idea that reviewers kill products is ridiculous. Like bad products kill products. If I had savaged the Humane AI Pin, but everybody else had said, 'Oh my gosh, this is the greatest gadget that would have ever existed,' I would have looked like an idiot. And the AI Pin would have done fine. That thing failed because it was bad, not because I said it was bad. And it's the same with the Fisker Ocean. It's like the bad products are bad because they're bad. And it's my job to say that they're bad when they're bad.
You just try to go into it and not hold a grudge and not, you know, hold anything against it. And I think one of the interesting things about the Humane AI Pin in particular was that that company was so proud of itself and was so self-serious and was talking this incredibly high-minded game about replacing the smartphone and how it was going to be the biggest thing in the world. And it was ex-Apple people who were like clearly on this path to like, we're going to be the next. And there is such an impulse to want to like poke fun at that and knock them down a peg and sort of write the scathing takedown. And the thing I try hard not to do is write a takedown for the sake of writing a takedown. We talk about this at The Verge all the time. Like one of the great advantages that we have is that we test the products, right? Like we see the end of the story in the same way that like if you do sports journalism, the team either wins or they lose and the story has an ending. Either this thing you're trying to do worked or it didn't. And for us that's product reviews. Like I either get to say all of this high-minded stuff that they're saying, all of this ambition that they have, all of these like weird videos that they're making about how they're going to change the world. Either it did or it didn't. And at some point you have to have the courage of your convictions to just say out loud what the answer is. I know what it means. And the thing I have always tried to do is like, I was trained to say these things to people's faces. Like when I worked at The Wall Street Journal, one of The Wall Street Journal's rules is no surprises. Which means that if you're going to write an unpleasant story about a person, you have to call that person and say out loud to them every single unpleasant thing you're about to say to them.
I think that that is very good. Like it is good and it makes you do your job better because I have to, A, I have to be willing to say to you everything I'm about to say about you, and B, it means I have to be so certain and so right and so backed up and so sourced that I am willing to say all those things to you.
You have full conviction in what you're trying to get across at that point.
Right? Like if you're willing to be in an embarrassing, awkward situation in telling someone that their product is bad, you would feel very convinced that you were right in that scenario.
Right. That's right. And so I think in cases like this, and it can be a little tricky because like with certain things, like how much do you give away and when, and how much do you let companies try to like frontrun what you're going to say? And so it's, there are tricky balancing acts. But I think in general the idea of I shouldn't write anything I wouldn't say to the founders of these companies has largely steered me in the right directions and has also made me unafraid to say some pretty harsh things to people who run companies.
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So looking at your Humane review, that's more of a negative conversation, right? Like that product did not work and everything fell apart. But you every week publish a newsletter called Installer at The Verge, which is unabashed positivity up and down, left and right. It is like, here's just a bunch of stuff that I like and I would like you to know about it. That's how I think of Installer. I think it's fantastic. It's one of my favorite, if not my favorite, newsletter. It's awesome.
How much time do you spend in your week playing with new stuff? A lot. It feels immense when I just read the part that is like, 'Here are all the things I've been doing this week,' which is how you start. I don't know how you're fitting it in.
So, I mean, I'd be lying if I said part of the idea of this newsletter was not to just formalize me screwing around with new apps all day. That like now this is a thing I get to do for my job, actually for my work at this point.
I mean, to some extent it's a thing I do anyway. Like I just, I enjoy that kind of thing. To some extent it's also been a really fun thing that has forced me to do more of it. Like I'm not really by nature a gamer, you know, quote unquote. Like I play some video games, but I mostly play like the same two or three all the time. But having a thing that forces me to just go like download a bunch of new games every week from Apple Arcade and just goof around with them and see what's fun has been really fun. And it's the kind of thing that is like I could either scroll on Reddit for an hour or I could go like try out a bunch of new games. I just, I enjoy the process of trying new things. And I also think I'm an old guy now. And so like I am learning new tricks to not get set in my ways, which I think both as a person and as a journalist, getting set in your ways is death. And I'm just trying to avoid that at all costs. And so I've just developed a thing that is sort of forcing me to always get out of my comfort zone, which is really fun. And I think part of that energy is like what shows up in the newsletter and I think is a thing people really respond to, which is awesome. It is sometimes hard. There are definitely times where it's like, oh god, this is the show everybody's watching. I have to watch it so that I could write two coherent sentences about it and it's 10 hours of television and it's not always delightful, but it is a thing that I have done. But then every once in a while it's like, oh, I have to watch K-pop Demon Hunters because everybody's talking about it and I should probably say something about it in the newsletter. Turns out K-pop Demon Hunters rules. So, like I've been exposed to a lot of good stuff I wouldn't have otherwise because I feel like I need to expose myself to it. And that's been really fun. Like one thing the Installer audience is super into that I am not generally super into is like anime and manga stuff sort of in general. And I've been exposed to tons of that from emails that I've gotten from people and new things that are coming out that I want to like make sure I'm aware of. And it has just like expanded my own cultural boundaries in such cool ways. It does take a lot of time and there are times when it feels like work, but I would say much more often it is like not a hard chore to like play a fun new game or watch a new thing on Netflix to see if I like it.
What are you keeping your eye on to know what the things are that you should be looking at? Like what are your sources of helping keep your kind of finger on the pulse?
So, I'll tell you the reason I started this newsletter is because I kept looking for it and never found it. And it was just like what I want is just like a compendium of cool stuff this week that I should check out. And I was like, well, this doesn't exist. And I was like, oh, I should probably just make this. It's a mix of things. There are a lot of good people out there doing curation stuff. I find a lot of stuff from Jason Kottke. I find a lot of stuff from Andy Baio. John Gruber is perpetually linking to interesting stuff. There's like the Maria Popovas of the world. There are a million great linky newsletters. I read one called A Thing or Two all the time. There's one called Downtime that I really enjoy. Clive Thompson writes a link blog called Linkfest that I read a lot of. I do a lot of like curating curators who are already doing wonderful work and finding interesting stuff. There are a lot of little tricks like there's a website called TV Insider that does a good job of just having a calendar of here are all the TV shows coming out this week. There's a site called Real Good that does the same thing with stuff on streaming. It's just like here's all the new stuff that dropped on streaming this week. So I check that once a week to see what's coming. There's a lot of little tricks. Reddit is a useful thing. I have a multi-Reddit, which is a thing people don't know exists.
I've never heard this word.
So, a multi-Reddit, I actually don't know if this is still officially a feature that exists, but I have a bunch of them. It's basically you just combine a bunch of subreddits into a single feed. So, it's not like my Reddit homepage. I went and just added 10 subreddits or whatever to a thing that I called Installer and I just go to that multi-Reddit and it is just a running feed of just those 10 subreddits. So, I don't have to go to each individual one. And I'm just like, these are the ones that I find Installer stuff from and I load them in that way. Very helpful. I have never ever seen Reddit officially promote this feature. I'm not even sure it technically still exists, but I use it every week. So, it's great.
It's probably something part of the old Reddit. It's very Yahoo Pipes-like, this.
Exactly. I also like, again, Installer is a bad excuse to keep scrolling social media trying to find stuff. The Verge team is very good at this. Like this would be a much harder job if I wasn't in a newsroom full of people dropping links in Slack all week. There's a lot of it that I'm just stealing from other people.
I would imagine a lot of your colleagues are sending you stuff, too. It's like, David, this would be good. You should look at this.
One of my favorite things is I get like sheepish text messages from my friends who are like, I found this thing. This is awkward, but like I thought it might be cool for Installer. And like it warms my heart every single time somebody sends that. And I get more and more of those all the time.
I imagine you're also getting just pitched now.
Yes, it's a lot. And I think I would rather have more of it than less. And one great thing about running this newsletter is I bet my TestFlight is better than anyone else's. Like I think there is a good chance that I am in more cool app betas than any other single person on planet Earth. And it rules. And like it is one of the great fun things that has happened as a result of writing this newsletter is like people want to tell me about their new things. So I would certainly take that over the other way. And like I get pitched all the time anyway just by virtue of like what I do for a living. I'm sure you do too. Like it just comes with the territory. So I don't know that actually Installer has made it meaningfully worse. The biggest difference now is a thing I think is very cool is when I will link to someone and they will get like a noticeable uptick in their app downloads or whatever because I linked to them. And a fun thing about it is like it's always a mystery for them where it came from because this is like weird internet nerdery, but clicks on an email don't register as traffic coming from anywhere in most analytics systems. So I just get to send people this like magical unknowable spike of traffic sometimes, which is awesome and I love it. And it's like a thing I take very seriously is like a thing I have always said about Installer is like the goal is for people to click the links. Like if you read the newsletter and don't click any links, I have failed. The job is for you to click the links. And so the click-through rate on the newsletter is nuts. Like it's super high and it makes me so happy. It's like that's what it's there for. So I am able to send traffic to places and I think that's very cool. What it means is I get a lot of like individual app developers who are like, I have been working on this thing for two years. I love it. I can't get any word out. It's so hard to market. Can you please tell people about that? And that is a thing I want to say yes to every single time because like I want to help people who are making things, but also the responsibility is not that, right? Like I am not a list of classifieds for you to check out. Like the newsletter is my taste in a very real way and as much as I want to help people, like that remains sort of the north star. But I will say I found a bunch of things that I ended up linking to and liked from pitches, so like no complaints. But I do, I continue to feel bad for like every teenager who is like, I spent my summer making this app. I think it's so cool. I can't get anybody to download it because the App Store is a disaster. Can you help? And I'm like, no. That feels bad.
Yeah, that sucks. Do you use different tools for writing the newsletter and reviews and stuff like that? What do you use to actually do the work? I'm going to assume it's Google Docs. Maybe you will tell me I'm wrong.
I try really hard to not be precious about my writing environment. I have bonkers systems for lots of things, but my job requires that I write a lot and I have tried to be pretty loose about where I write. So like I write a lot in Google Docs. That's like how we do our editing process at The Verge. So at some point everything ends up in Google Docs. So I often will just start in Google Docs. There's also this app called Typora that is just a markdown editor that I love. It is the best copy-and-paste tool I've ever used. Like you can just take stuff from anywhere, copy it, paste it into Typora, and then paste it out somewhere else, and the formatting just always magically works. And I can't figure out why, but like everywhere else that you're like, I try to copy and paste and all the formatting breaks, put it into Typora first and then put it where it's supposed to go, and it always seems to work.
I don't understand it, but it is magical.
That's a very niche use case, but I will be downloading this app now.
It's real. Yeah. So, I use that for a lot of things. We use WordPress. I write in WordPress a lot. Yeah. Again, I try not to be particularly precious about where I write because like I know a lot of people have very specific sort of writing environments and like I write in this specific place with this specific thing. And I used to be a person who was like, I would really like to like pour a glass of red wine and write late at night. I have two kids now. My life just does not allow for that. So, it's like I need to write whenever I have 20 minutes to write and I have worked hard to be able to do that at the drop of a hat.
How does it feel writing an email newsletter compared to something that goes on the web? Are there things you like and don't like about it? I know Installer has a home on The Verge website, but it is an email newsletter essentially. So, you want people to consume it. Like obviously, you know, like an easy one is if you make an error, you can't change it when it's in someone's inbox, but like are there other things that you like and don't like about the format difference?
Yeah, if you ever want to juice engagement on your email newsletter, just make a really glaring typo like in the third paragraph and a thousand people will email you about it. It's good times.
And then send a second email that says, 'Sorry.' That is the best open rate.
Exactly. Yeah. 'I screwed up.' Like 100% open rate. It's huge. No, I think the biggest difference for me has been that you can write to a person. And it's a thing I really try to do deliberately in the newsletter is I write the word 'you' a lot in Installer because it's like it both is addressed to you, a person, and it is also intended for you, a person. And like it doesn't matter that there are lots of people reading it. Like when the thing works it should feel like it is for you. And I think that's just not an expectation you have when you land on a website. Like you go to a website being like, here's a thing that they made and I'm going to go look at it. But an email, like it should be written to you. And I think like I notice the difference in emails that feel like a person writing an email as opposed to feeling like somebody is emailing me an article. And they're just different things. The tone is different. The form of address is different. The vibe. Like if I wrote in the like paragraph length that I write Verge features at in emails to my friends, I would not have any more friends to email. And so it's just like what it should feel like to go through it in my inbox. Yeah.
Is a thing I think about a lot. And if I just wrote you 2,000 words of text, it would feel like a really long email and not like an interesting article. Which is why like there's lots of bullets and there's lots of links and we break up sections and it's like this thing should feel breezy and lively in the way that good email does and that like you can get away with. When I've gone to an article to read the article, I just come at it with different expectations.
Well, I love Installer and it was a huge influence, probably the influence on me starting a blog on my own again,
which I'm so glad you did. I love The Enthusiast.
Thank you so much. It's just, it was a reminder to me that you can publish things on the internet that are essentially just intended to be positive.
So when I went on parental leave this summer, Jay Peters on our team took over Installer for the summer and did a great job. And the main note I gave him when I was leaving was like, it is super important to me that you remember that it is okay to like things.
And that truly was the whole point of Installer. And it is like the job of that newsletter is not to have big heady thoughts about the world. It's not to comment on everything. The whole thing is explicitly built to just be like, 'Here are things that I like, and if I don't like them, I'm not going to tell you about them. They're just not going to be here.' And I think we need more of that in the world. Like, we spend a lot of time talking about why things suck. And to me, it's like, what if we just pointed at better things? I so much more enjoy championing good things than tearing down bad things. And both are good and valuable things, but I think it's easy to fall towards tearing down bad things. And I would much rather spend more of my time championing good things.
Yeah, cuz I imagine you're similar to me of like, you're going to hear me talk about the bad things. Like I will talk about them on my podcasts. I don't need to talk about them everywhere. Like you'll get it. You'll get my whole set of opinions, but I don't need to give you all of them in every place.
Right. Yeah. I think different things can be for different things. And I think that's okay. And I do occasionally like, I'll get emails from people who are like, you know, really mad about the privacy policy of something that I link to. And I think that is actually good and valuable feedback, but the response to that is I shouldn't have included it at all. Not, I have a responsibility to tell you all the reasons this sucks, right? And I like that personally a lot more where it's like actually this is all going to be votes for something and all my votes against are just not here. And I think like we all could use a break from that.
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So from the outside, it feels like your main work now is The Vergecast and associated podcasts at The Verge. At least that's how I feel like I get my main output of you is through podcasts. Like I'm sure you're doing tons of stuff behind the scenes, but I would expect The Verge audience, they're mostly interacting with David Pierce through the podcasts.
Yeah. I mean, I think that's especially been true recently, but I think it's a function of how powerful podcasts are that it feels that way, right? Like I still write a lot. I'm still all over the website, but the relationship I have with our audience and The Verge community is so much deeper and richer because people are seeing my face and hearing my voice all the time that it is like definitely I have gone from being like a writer who occasionally people hear on a podcast to being like a podcaster who sometimes writes for The Verge, which has been a really weird thing to wrap my own brain around, but it's true. It's both like it is my main job. Like when they hired me back at The Verge, I was like, 'Okay, I'm going to come. I'm going to do lots of things. I've been here a long time.' Like what is the primary thing you need me to do here? And the universal answer was the podcast. So like I take that very seriously and I do think it has become more of my job over time. Yeah.
It is very funny to me. I've had the pleasure of working with and being friends with so many writers who became podcasters or have podcasts and there seems to be a real struggle of writers accepting that they're podcasters. It's like it feels like a difficult thing. You're in a new medium now whether you like it or not.
You know, I feel like the thing is like you're on every episode of The Vergecast. You're not writing every Verge article. And so I think that in people's minds it kind of like adapts them to where they are.
Well, and it's like I'm sure you've had this experience too, but like one of the wildest things that happens to me is around like Spotify Wrapped time or in like the thing that Pocket Casts does where it'll be like here's how many hours you spent listening to this podcast and people will send us screenshots of like you listened to 110 hours of The Vergecast this year and it is like genuinely like mind-bending. Like I spent 110 hours with almost nobody in the past year. And it has taken me time to wrap my head around both how wild that is and how like huge a responsibility that is to be like, no, we're friends in a meaningful, real way. I exist in your brain as a person that you know and you spend a lot of time with and I have to take that super, super seriously. But it is nuts. Like the difference between you coming and spending like 15 minutes reading a thing that I wrote and then going on about your day versus like I'm there with you when you walk your dog every morning is like night and day different. And I'm still working on like really going with like what that feels like. But I'm sure you get the same thing when people are like, I know everything about you because I listen to your podcast. And it's like that's so cool and so weird all at the same time.
The first time that these things started happening to me, I was very taken aback by it. I couldn't get my head around it. And then over time I realized that it's actually a superpower because I can have a conversation with people that listen to my podcasts knowing that they know the things that I'm talking about. I don't need to explain it. Totally. Like you just know and like that ends up becoming a tool. Shows like ours, you know, like The Vergecast, like most like say a show like Upgrade that I do with Myke Hurley, they're essentially conversations between friends around a certain topic, but in that you're going to get us making fun of each other, talking about our lives. And I think one of the reasons that these types of shows kind of give such a connection to the listener is because typically the only time you hear those conversations, they're actually conversations you're a part of, like in your life. And so you are inviting us into your brain for a couple of hours, maybe more a week, every week. Like there's no way that doesn't alter your brain chemistry in some way.
100%. I think that's such a huge responsibility, right? And I think about all the podcasts that I used to listen to and then stop listening to. And one of the reasons you stop is that you don't feel anything progressing. You're like, 'Okay, I've heard these people say this same thing over and over and over again.' And that's like, there's a version of that that is like just friendship, right? Like you spend enough time with somebody, you've heard all their stories and you know what they're talking about. But it's like I think one of the reasons I have spent more and more of my time doing the podcast is because I think it would be really easy to spend less and less of my time doing the podcast and you settle into a rhythm and it's like it is true that one of the reasons people like The Vergecast is they just like hearing Nilay and me hang out, right? And like Nilay is one of my very closest friends. He was a groomsman in my wedding. Like, I love that man to pieces and he's super fun to hang out with because he's a doofus and a genius and like we just, we like hang out with each other and I think it's fun to watch us hang out with each other. I don't think that's enough and I never want to settle into that because I think A, that's how you hemorrhage your audience over time and I also think that's just a bad use of people's time.
So it's like for me it's like, okay, how do we keep that feeling and that vibe and do things that are bigger and more ambitious and different? And I think like, you know, everybody talks about how Reply All was the greatest podcast in the history of the internet, but I think like an underrated thing the Reply All folks did really well was that was both like unbelievably tightly produced and just felt like two people hanging out with each other making fun of each other. Peak Radiolab was like that. And there have been a few of these shows that have done a really good job of being natural and normal and human and relaxing and they didn't feel like school, but also like really gave you something. Yeah. And that's the thing I strive for that is really hard to do and is like that's the fun project that we're forever poking at is like how do I do a thing that isn't just we sit down and hang out because we're fun to hang out with, but that is much, much more than that at the same time.
I could not agree more and I can tell the work that goes on because I do the work too, right? Of like it's easy to just sit down and have a conversation about the things. The hard work is the producing beforehand and the editing afterwards. Totally. And all of that goes into making the podcast be good. You could just sit down, turn on the microphones, and you'll have a fun time. But you're right. Over time, you'll lose people. They'll lose interest. You're not really moving forward and ultimately people will just go find something else cuz you build the connection based on the fun, but there also has to be something that people take away that feels valuable at the end.
Yeah. And it's like I think all the time about like what if this is your first ever episode? And there's so many Vergecast episodes that are just utterly impenetrable to somebody who has not been listening to the show.
I've given up on that. It's like at a certain point, I can't help. I just have to hope, you know, just like you'll get at least 50% of what we're talking about and that maybe that's enough. I don't know.
Well, and it's a thing we struggle with all the time, right? Cuz it's like, okay, if I'm going to define my terms every time I use them, it's going to start to feel sort of boring and alienating to the people who have been listening,
