790: Wandering Around The Verge, with David Pierce

Hello. I've decided, I was being nice about this before, but I've decided there can only be one David, and we will fight it out over the course of this episode. I don't know what that looks like, but I'm very upset about it and it's happening.

Ooh. All right, I lose. I'm out. This is... We had a good run.

Sure. So, I should just say first that there is a not-small contingent of The Vergecast audience that absolutely hates those intros. Just hates them with a fiery passion. And so, to everyone listening to this saying, 'No, don't be nice to him about the intros,' just know that I know. And also, they're never going to stop and I'm so sorry. Um, my tech journalism story is sort of odd. Um, I basically got into it when I was in college. I really liked writing and I really liked technology and I did some writing for my school newspaper and stuff like that. But one winter break, out of the blue, I emailed David Pogue, who was at the time the New York Times tech columnist, and was basically like, 'I don't need any money. I don't need anything from you. I just... you seem like you have an interesting job. I live right down the street.' He happened to be like 15 minutes away from where I lived. 'And uh, if you ever need anything, I'm happy to help. Like if you just want somebody to get you coffee every morning and see how you work, I'd love to.' And uh, he has never told me why, but he said he got these emails all the time and for some reason responded to mine. And so I went and basically I went to his house, and I didn't realize this until much later, but he set it up as like an elaborate meet and greet where we hung out for a few minutes. We talked. Uh, he knew I was a fan, and then he had to go to tennis. So he just like built himself an out. This is like a Saturday afternoon. He went to play tennis, but on his way out he was like, 'Oh, I broke my Xbox. It doesn't work for some reason. Uh, can you fix it?' And I don't know anything about how to fix Xboxes. But I was like, 'Sure.' Uh, so while he was at tennis, I sat in his living room and fixed his Xbox. Um, and then he came back, and basically I spent the rest of winter break just like hanging out with him, doing things he needed to do, and then worked with him, let's see, off and on for a year and a half, uh, working on book stuff and column stuff and all the things he was working on at the time. And I essentially owe my entire career to him and to people he introduced me to. I met uh, Joanna Stern through him. She did a couple videos with him that are very funny and that I've promised I will never share with other people. Uh, but everybody should Google them. They're delightful. Uh, I met her through him and she hired me at The Verge. I got an internship at Wired because David Pogue vouched for me. Like he, for absolutely no reason, was kind to me and uh, kind of brought me into this world, and it has just kind of been off and running ever since.

Yeah, I've become a huge proponent of cold emails as a result. I think I write a pretty good cold email. Uh, it's also part of what I do for a living is reach out to people who don't know me and have no reason to talk to me. But uh, just that has happened to me so many times where people who had no business being kind to me or taking chances on me have. And so the advice I give to people all the time is like, all it costs you is an email. And you'd be surprised how much good can come out of it. And I've also tried to pay that forward whenever I can to people because there are a lot of people out there.

That is so upsettingly accurate that I almost don't know how to respond. It's uh, editor-at-large in many places is a relatively senior person who is not like a full-time manager in the newsroom, right? So you'll see a lot of editors-at-large who like used to be editor-in-chief or had some other big job and now want more of a sort of individual contributor job. So they'll go out and their job is in part to like be fancy and go to conferences and write big stories and that kind of thing. But you don't have a ton of sort of minute-to-minute management role inside of the newsroom.

100%. And that is, I assume, what's happening to me. Um, that six months from now someone will look at me and be like, 'You've passed your prime. It's time to go.' Uh, and that'll be that for me. But my role essentially is kind of what you said. I just sort of wander around The Verge. Um, when I came back to The Verge, which was just shy of three years ago, uh, the task given to me was basically like, 'Come play with the toys that we have,' right? The Verge is a big platform with lots of different things that we can do. We have lots of really interesting technology. We're part of this bigger company. We make videos. We make podcasts. And it was just they wanted somebody who would just come and sort of do things with the audience. Uh, I was at The Verge at the very beginning, and so like the The Verge community is my people, and uh, they were just like, 'Come do stuff.' And so a lot of that has been podcasting. A lot of that has been writing. I do some kind of management stuff inside of the newsroom, helping decide what we cover and how and what we're thinking about and all of that. But we have an amazing team who spends much more time and energy doing that than I do. Uh, and I just get to try and find places I can be useful, which is occasionally crazy-making because there are days you wake up and it's like, 'What is my job? Do I actually have a job here?' Um, but it's mostly really fun.

Oh, that's a good question. I think we're... I would say, man, I'm going to be so wrong and this is going to be so embarrassing. Somewhere in the range of like 50 people are kind of on our editorial team making stuff all the time.

Thank you. It's been really interesting. So I was there at the beginning when it was like a bunch of us in one room with absolutely no idea what we were doing, and then I left for a while and went and had a bunch of other jobs, and then came back, and the extent to which it had become a real company was so fascinating, right? Because now Vox Media is very big and owns lots of other publications. Uh, they acquired New York Magazine and that whole company. They acquired Group Nine. So I came back and like had a full day of HR orientation, whereas the first time I joined The Verge somebody was just like, 'Here's your laptop, your first story is due in 25 minutes.' And uh, it was just a sort of fascinating difference. And yet The Verge, like the thing we make, still feels very much like it did, you know, 13 years ago, and I think that's really cool.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

No kidding.

It's a pretty good app.

Yeah. You and I are both like deep productivity app nerds in our souls, and I feel a forever kinship with you because of that. Mac Whisper is fun too because it's like the only thing in my workflow is like, 'Oh, this makes my Apple silicon MacBook Pro work hard.' You know, like just browsing in a bunch of Safari tabs is like, 'I didn't need this laptop. You know, I could do this on a much cheaper machine.' But then you fire up Mac Whisper, it's like, 'Oh, this is punishing this laptop.' Transcribing with 40 cores. Let's go.

Sure. So, I would say I use almost entirely Apple gear, and I have sort of a sliding scale of satisfaction with it. So, my current gear is, uh, I'm right now on an M4 Mac mini, which I bought last fall and love to bits. Um, I have an iPhone 16, which I... I've been a Pro user forever, but I downgraded to the 16 to get the blue color. It was the best decision ever. I love this phone unlike any phone I've ever had. And it is entirely because it is blue. And I don't know what that says about me, but there it is.

Yep. Yeah. Like it's also the only phone I've had in many, many years that I don't have in a case. Like that... it just feels good to use this phone, and there's not enough of that in gadgets right now. Um, let's see. I'm a big iPad user. Um, but I'm also The Verge's designated reviewer of iPads. So, I don't have an iPad so much as I have all of the iPads. Like, I have six iPads sitting here on my desk right now, uh, for various testing reasons.

Yeah, my perspective has changed a bit actually, uh, from the most recent review that I am doing, and I'm excited to talk about it.

Um, I also have an Apple Watch, uh, Series 8, I believe. Um, it is the gadget I am most eager to replace out of everything that I have, and I would love to replace it with something that is not an Apple Watch, but here we are. Um, I have a variety of headphones around, including a pair of AirPods. Um, I have a MacBook Air M1 that is my like work-issued computer. I work from home, so I don't use it very often except when I travel. That thing probably needs an upgrade, but I think I have to break it before they'll upgrade it. So, see what happens there.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's like, 'Oh no, I spilled an entire bottle of Coca-Cola on my laptop.' It's just... I need a day to do that. You know what I mean? And it'll happen. Um, I think that's it. That's kind of... That's sort of my daily gear setup right now.

Well, the goal increasingly is to not do as much work when I'm not at my desk. I think part of the reason I really gravitated to the Mac mini, um, is I've really come to like the idea of my computer as a place, uh, more than just sort of a thing I have with me all the time. And I go back and forth. I spent a long time having a MacBook that I would dock when I would sit down and it would, you know, go into the mouse and keyboard and monitor, but then I could take it with me everywhere. But because I work at home, I don't end the workday. I don't have a shutdown ritual. I don't have a commute that I can use to sort of decompress as I get home. Uh, and the one way I have tried to combat that is like my computer lives where it lives, right? It's in the basement, which is where I get my work done. It's where I am all day. And when I leave the basement and go upstairs to be with my family, my computer and thus my work stays here. And it's not a perfect system, but it has actually, I think, been really important for me.

Yeah. And I think it really depends. I mean, for a long time, you know, when I was going into an office every day, the idea of having two different machines was so annoying that I just used my laptop for everything. And uh, there was a time in my job where I traveled a lot more for work. And so like there will probably come a time where I become a laptop person again. Uh, but for this phase, having a sort of big beautiful setup that I can then walk away from at the end of the day has been very nice.

I actually want to downgrade it. And I can't find a good way to do so. I think what I've really realized is the connectivity piece of an Apple Watch doesn't do much for me. Like getting notifications and getting phone calls and all that kind of stuff is not all that useful just because I have my phone with me all the time. And that's probably bad. I could probably stand to have my phone with me less. Um, but I just have it all the time. And so really all the watch does in most cases is it lights up two things instead of one thing. And uh, what I really want out of a smartwatch is much simpler than that, right? I want uh, music and podcasts so that I can like be out in the world and have either just be able to control them without taking my phone out of my pocket or backpack, or actually be able to do it locally on the watch. I want basic fitness stuff. Uh, for me, the sort of beginning and end of it is like step tracking, I think is really useful. All the rest of it is stuff I get really into and then stop caring about and then get really into and then stop caring about. But what the watch offers fitness-wise is way overkill for what I'm actually doing and interested in. Uh, and then I want it to tell the time and that's about it. Uh, like I'm actually... I'm sure you guys saw this, but the Pebble is coming back, and I think that is actually something I'm very excited about. I don't love the design of the Pebble, but the feature set of it, I think, is very close to what I'm looking for. Uh, it's a bunch of sort of simple controls for things that you don't want to have to pull out your phone to do. And that's kind of it. And I think I can, if I really sat here for an afternoon and mucked around in the Watch app and on the watch settings, which sounds like torture, uh, I could probably get the Apple Watch closer to that for my needs. But what I really want is just this thing but with twice the battery and like half the functionality.

That might be the answer. There's a Casio, uh, one of their G-Shocks that does that, and I really like it. I just don't like the way it looks. Um, but there are an increasing number of those very basic smartwatches out there, like the sort of hybrid smartwatch. Withings makes one that people always recommend, uh, that I should probably try again. I used a Withings watch for a while and it was pretty finicky and kind of hit or miss, and I eventually gave up on it, but uh, people like those. So, I think things like this are out there, but then the problem all those have is they don't have the sort of seamless integration into a lot of the Apple stuff that the Apple Watch does. And where I get hung up is I really like being able to do things like rewind my podcast 15 seconds or skip to the next track on Spotify from my wrist. And there's just nothing else that gets quite to that point.

Yeah, that one's actually very funny because right as the new Pebbles were coming out, that was also being announced, and it's like the next day I was like, 'Well, that's really good timing for you.' Seriously. And yeah, and I think that fight is coming in a real way for Apple on a lot of fronts. But uh, that one I think is the one that as a user I am particularly interested in is can I get some of that Apple Watch sort of simplicity and connectivity from a different watch.

There have been a couple of times in my life that I have gotten dangerously close to becoming a watch guy. And the good news is I don't have enough money to be a watch guy. So this is sort of a solved problem for me. Uh, but I had, you know, at one of my old jobs I had a boss who was in a watch club where basically the price of admission was you had to bring a fancy watch, but then you sort of traded fancy watches with all these other people who had fancy watches. And so you got to wear each other's watches and try new things. And I was like, 'That sounds like the dream. I just need a $20,000 watch. If only I had that just sitting around.'

That's exactly. Yeah.

I think the answer I would give is to be really, really ruthlessly honest about what you are actually going to do on your iPad. I have certainly been guilty in the past of a thing that I think lots of people are guilty of, is looking at all the things the iPad can do and being like, 'Oh, I'm going to do all of them. I am going to become the kind of person who takes handwritten notes in Notability, and I'm going to get really into video editing now that I can use Final Cut on the iPad. And wouldn't it be cool if I started editing all of my podcasts in Logic instead of on the computer?' And all of these different things that the iPad can do is how you lead up the road towards the iPad Pro. And the iPad Pro is amazing, and if you buy it, you will be so happy with it because it is just a fabulous piece of hardware. But I think in most people's heart of hearts, and certainly in mine, what I actually do on the iPad is like read books, watch movies, and do crossword puzzles. That is 97.5% of my iPad usage in real life. And the more I have come to understand that, the more I'm like, 'Okay, what I actually care about now is maybe I should spend more money on storage if that's a thing that I care about. Maybe I should spend more money on cellular so that I can do the stuff out of the house that I want to do, because that's actually more sort of accurate to my experience than having more processing power that I'm not making any use of.' Um, that's also... price is very important, right? I think it's easy, certainly in my case as somebody who has every single one of these sitting on my desk, to forget about the fact that these things range from $349 to like two grand. You can spend so much money on an iPad. But as soon as you understand like, 'Okay, here's a set of things I actually need to do.' And for some people, those things are intense and serious and require more hardware. And I think the change of heart that I've had reviewing this new set of iPads is I think the step from the base iPad to the Air is much easier than I expected. But I would guess that in terms of what do I actually need from my device, there's basically no one who needs an iPad Pro. If you want one and can afford it, get it. You'll love it. But hardly anyone needs one. Yeah. And then the mini, I think, is different. You're either an iPad mini person or you're not. And I feel like that is like... I would just look you in the face and be like, 'Do you like the iPad mini?' And if you say yes, get an iPad mini. And if you don't, don't.

Totally. I was listening to your recent episode with Matt Mira about all of this stuff, and I love the way he was talking about the iPad as like it is a device that asks a lot of you, and it feels amazing and it's cool and it has the magic pane of glass thing going for it, but you have to work the way the iPad does, and it actually requires a lot of you, and in turn it gives you some stuff, right? I think the pen input is really powerful. The thing where you can dock it into a keyboard and then pick it up and sit with it is really powerful. The flip side of that is you are going to have to change how you do just about everything in order to suit the way the iPad wants you to. And at least for me, that trade becomes really hard to make for things that I, A, do all day and, B, need to do for work. Uh, the idea of reinventing my workflow just to be able to use this new device at my job where I have to do things all day, uh, is just different, right? And so that has always been the hard part for me is I have really gravitated to an iPad for things like games and for things like web browsing and sort of the leisure activity comes really naturally to me on an iPad, but every time I sit down and I'm like, 'I am going to get stuff done on an iPad,' it just annoys me because it makes me change the way I do things.

So, until this week, uh, I would have told almost everybody to start with the basic iPad. And uh, I think you can step up pretty easily from there, right? The base to the Air, I think, is all about uh, what is your most intense app? Um, if you know the answer off the top of your head, there's a decent chance you need an Air. And if you don't, there's a decent chance you don't. Um, and accessories, right? The Air has access to the newest Apple Pencil and a drastically better keyboard situation than anything you'll get on the base iPad. So, if any of that stuff is important to you, easy jump to the Air. Um, but I've been reviewing the new base iPad. I have a yellow one sitting here right in front of me, and it's further behind on the performance curve than the base iPad usually is. Um, like I do a bunch of benchmarking, and benchmarking I think is only occasionally useful, but in this case has been really illuminating. Uh, and I'm sort of spoiling a review I'm about to file. Uh, but basically the single-core performance of the base iPad is very close to the single-core performance of the M3 Air, right? Like as a single-core, doing one thing at a time device, they're very close. And when it comes to multi-core CPU and GPU, the Air just absolutely destroys it. Uh, and so you get to the point where it's like, 'Okay, am I doing anything that looks like high-end gaming? Am I doing anything that looks like AI?' Even... I mean, this thing doesn't support Apple Intelligence, which I think right now is not a problem, but if you think it's going to be a problem, it just... there's your answer right there. Um, but there is a whole sort of high end of stuff you want to do on an iPad, which includes things like good handwriting apps, like apps like Notability and GoodNotes are like intense graphical apps. And for all that kind of stuff, which I think is only going to become more and more important to people's workflows, the base iPad is going to get pretty bad pretty fast. And so I think I would still tell most people to look at the base iPad first, but I think my ceiling for at what point should you jump to the Air is much lower than it has been in the past.

It does. It's so cute.

Totally agree.

I have, uh, I think it's the full base model Mac mini. It's 16 gigs of RAM, uh, 256 gigs of storage.

It's the M4. It is the cheapest M4 they would sell me, which in part was I needed a computer that day and it was just the one that they had in stock. Um, but I also think it's plenty of computer. I think I have two beliefs about RAM. Uh, and I believe them both and they are maybe somewhat contradictory. One is that I think for most people's computer uses today, 8 gigs of RAM is enough. I still believe that. Uh, thing number two is the very first thing on your new computer that you should upgrade is the RAM. It is the most performance-enhancing thing for a person buying a computer. Like more storage is great, faster chips are great. If you want your computer to just instantly feel better, it's RAM. So, I think both of those things are true. And every tech nerd I know has yelled at me that 8 gigs of RAM is not enough. And I understand that it's not enough, but it also is. And it's fine. But that said, I think we're in a spot again where as things like AI become more part of people's workflows and as things become more demanding on your local computer, which I think is really good, like we're in this push back from everything being cloud computing down to more things are happening on my machine. That makes RAM all the more important. So, I think I'm with you that the single best change Apple has made around AI is upgrading all of the RAM. Um, I probably should have gotten 24 on the Mac mini, but I also just frankly I upgrade my computer every couple of years, both for what I do for work and just because I'm a lunatic, and I didn't worry about it too much.

Yeah, completely. I think the thing that I always used to have to say to people is they're like, 'Oh, what laptop should I buy?' And I'm like, 'Okay, well, you should probably just buy the MacBook Air, but that comes with this series of other things that I have to tell you about which MacBook Air you want.' And you're right. Now, it's just like walk into the store, just yell MacBook Air out loud until somebody hands you one, and you'll be golden. Uh, which I think is awesome. And the lineup has in some ways gotten more confusing as Apple has added more and more things to it, but also you can't go wrong anymore, and I think that's pretty great.

That's fair. I mean, my sense of it is that uh, if you're a person who deals a lot in like multimedia of various kinds, you should upgrade. But I think in general, Apple is so stupid about how it prices that I almost feel bad telling people to upgrade the storage because it's like, 'Hi, I would like you to spend $200 to get $10 worth of storage, and that's somehow a good deal.' Um, but I do think you're right that that's after RAM. The other thing I tell people to get is like if you want a computer that will last longer and feel better, more storage will get there because there just is nothing more annoying than getting those messages about almost running out of storage.

512 to me would be the number that I think very few people would hit the ceiling. Uh, and like if you're a multi-terabyte person like David, I know you're an 8-tab person, which I think is madness in the best possible way. Uh, and I love this for you, but I think 512 is sort of in the 16-gigs-of-RAM thing where it would just be I wouldn't have to ask you any follow-up questions, right? Like either you already know that's not enough or you're never going to have to worry about it. And I think I love that about 16 gigs of RAM, and I agree with you about 512. It would be really nice.

Let me just... How full is it? Like what percentage of the 8 terabytes have you used?

Yeah. Even that is very impressive.