Good Pixels, better Watches, great Chromebooks
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Welcome to the verge cast the flagships podcast of AI generated wallpapers. I'm a friend, David piers, and I am currently wonnerful around my house redoing. I guess you would call my charging strategy if you hear that when you think David, who has a charging strategy, that's ridiculous.

A, I agree with you and b, you're totally wrong. So the way of set IT up is that basically, instead of just like having a charger that I use, I have a bunch of like charging stations around the house. There's one in the kitchen where a couple of things are plugged in.

There's one upstairs, we've on the basement, there's one right next to the couch. And basically the idea is like where you are most of the time, you should go to charge things. This is great now because my wife and I both have phones that use the USB c.

She's out a pixel. I'm on a iphone right now and so I get to just redo some things. Uh, the most annoying import of this process has been apple watch charges because actually I need to charge the apple watch probably more than I need to charge my phone.

But having a bunch of those like pucks sitting around this sort of stupid. So i'm really working the whole system. I've bought a bunch of those big anchor, all words that have a couple of plugs in them that look really nice, work great, cannot recommend enough.

Spending way too much time over thinking where all of your charge cables are in your house. Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up through today. We're going to talk all about google gadgets. We're gona talk about the pixel eight and pixel pro reviews that are coming out. We're going to talk about the pixel watch two, which I think is sneakily kind of fascinating and maybe very good.

And then we're going to talk about this new chrome ook plus designation that google just put out, where he thinks that can help make Better chrome box and convince ed you to be a Better, slightly more expensive chrome x. All of that is coming up in just a second. But I have this one ten foot long USB c cable somewhere.

Braid, it's awesome. IT was really unnecessarily expensive. But IT makes IT so that you can sit anywhere on the couch in charge of phone.

It's the dream exit. I don't know where IT it's anymore, so i'm going to go find IT. Wish me luck.

This is the word cast. We will be right back. Support for the show comes from crucial moments of pocket for the capital. We've all had turning points in our lives where the decisions we make end up having lasting consequences. No one knows this Better than the founders of some of today's most influential conference possible moments. Lets listen ers in on the maker break events that defined major companies like dropbox, youtube, Robin od and more told by the founders these selves. Tune to season two of crucible moments today you can listen a crucible moment stop com, or where are you?

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Welcome back. Great news. I found the cable. All my stuff is going to be so charged. I really, by the way, cannot recommend enough having one wildly long charging cable.

It's the kind of thing that just like mix a bunch of things in life easier when you're traveling or sitting on the culture, whatever. We love a time for charger in this house. All right, let's get in this shop.

The first thing I wanted talk about is the pixel and pix pro googles latest phones. They came out last week. Reviews are heading. Now look on on. As far as we can tell, these phones are really about two things, the cameras and the AI.

We've been hearing about these phones for months, and I ve been wondering over the last week if that's the reason I was left. A little not disappointed, but I guess underwhelmed by the stuff google announced. If not underwhelmed, then like wheeled, you know.

But as they say, the proof is in the putting. Alison Johnson has been using and reviewing the two phones to see if all that camera N A I stuff adds up to a winner in the android world. So let's find out Allison here.

Hi elson. hello. We have the pixel and the pixelate pro. And one of the things I feel like you have to do in this process is like figure out how to explain kind of which is which and which is for what. Where have you landed? How do you sort of explain the difference of the pix ate .

and the pick pro? I think the thing I landed on like literally five minutes ago is that IT feels like with the main pixel eight, google is trying to position IT as like the mainstream phone, like the one I would recommend my mom, dad, when they're pixel seven, eight or six sale gives out in three years, whatever.

And then if you are a pixel nerd, which I love, the pixel nerds, but the, you know, their nerds, that's the April and that's where you get like, oh, the extra things and it's it's a more of a distance between the two of them. Then there's been in previous years, which I think there was a little like not everybody felt great about that sort, felt like pigs. I was missing out on a another stuff that IT proves that getting like why.

And we've both got more expensive this year. So that sort of made IT harder to swallow. But that's where of london. I think I think it's making sense as like piccoli is just kind of might be the phone for everybody.

okay. And that I mean, that's that's a lot a bit like what samsung has been doing with the s and the ultra, like it's kind and in same place, I would say. And I think that works.

Like the alternative would be like the iphone where there are four models. And I feel like I have no idea how to explain the people, which I have shown by. So the idea of like there is one that is one Price and then for like a few hundred dollars more and a whole bunch of extra you get this other one yeah the .

nore me phone yeah IT works, I think so. Okay, so we got that. We should just .

talk about the camera first because that's the thing, right? I feel like the two stories of this phone are camera and A I, and there's kind of an overlapping the diagram there. I have a lot of specific questions. We give me just some overall impressions of the pixel aid and pro cameras.

So, so weird. You have to kind of think of IT as like a three part thing because there's the hardware, which there been some upgrades on both models to. The hardware is like a new main camera sensor, new lands lakes, some little upgrades here. And there are nothing earth shattering, but there's that there's all the software soft at the camera APP itself does. And then there's the things in google photos, which is the whole pandora's .

box of what is a photo. We'll do that last. I do want to talk about that and are very clear like how all of that actually works in practice.

But I agree that, that is kind of a separate things. Let's go back to that. Just the actual photos coming out of the camera. What have you seen so far?

It's very pixel to me. I think it's kind of settled into this like you sometimes get like a cool tone in your photos. I feel like that was more pronounced in like previous years on the pixel, and I still see some of that creep in on some of my shots.

But overall, i'm just like happy with the skin tones can kind of x sometimes, but like there's sort of of like outliers, but I think i'm just overall happy with that. And if when IT fails, IT kind of does so in a predictable way. It's not kind of just like thrown a purple shade into a sunset like other phone will do yeah kind of reliable. It's occasionally like very good and most of the time it's like just pretty good at everything OK.

if I remember ing this rate, the big spec difference between the eight and the eight pro is the telephoto camera, right? yeah. Have you have you noticed the difference? Like when you're using the a do you find yourself being like, oh, wish I had the proof for this so I could use .

the the zoo a little bit yeah and that's the thing with the was like an iphone fifteen and the fifteen pro max, like a five time telephoto zoom, which is what is on the eight pro in the iphone fifteen pro max is like IT feels like a real zoom lands. You can actually get like quite a bit closer to something. You can do a real kind of like compression shot.

My husband was running in a race like for fusees five k this weekend. You can get that like cool shot of like the starting line and adventure people in the foreground. You just can't do that with three times lines or no telephoto and gesture what you get on the pixel late.

You do get that like two times lossless crops zum on bullshit dom, and that was introduced last year. It's good most of the time I have like notes on IT, but that is one thing that is like I think a lot of people would appreciate having that. And you just kind of have to make a call whether you gone to shout out quite a bit more money, Carry around a bigger phone or just sort of sell offer you get yeah.

that seems sort of silly to say that the difference between like two and three x and five x is so big but IT really is like IT goes from i'm taking the photo slightly closer to i'm actually taking a different looking photo yeah which is a bigger deal that I think i've given a like I in the iphone cycle this year got a 4 pro instead of 4 pro max and just noodling around with other people's I kind of regret IT。 I don't want the bigger screen Normally and this is why like I just wish for more feature period in general because I want the smaller screen, but all the camera stuff and you just kind of can't have that in life right now.

Why can't we have IT?

All right. I just want all the things you but in general, you think that we've set into kind of knowing what a pixel is like. I feel like at this point, if you show me a photo, I can tell you ten times at a ten, whether is a Samson photo or an apple photo. And I feel like pixel has been kind of increasingly that way too. Do you think it's as distinct a vive as samsung and apple are at this point?

I think so. I think it's like it's inoffensive. That's kind of how I would describe that samsung has a look, iphone kind of has a luck and pixel sort of somewhere in the middle and occasionally, like kind goes off in one direction or another. And I annoying with portrait mode. I really want that to be Better like next time it's like it's fine, it's inoffensive.

We've been no, tell me more because I so the single biggest technology change for me that happened with having a kid this year is that all I care that is portrait de like, yeah, all I do, I just run around shooting a portrait. Yeah, so is IT not it's not.

It's okay. I mean, you have a wide portrait shot and then you can do the two x on either of the phones. And the two times portrait mode just doesn't look very good.

I am not really sure what it's doing. IT looks kind of currency and that's like I like that little bit of extra each when you're taking the porter. O so the White shot still kind of have that like cardboard cut outlook where your subject is like super and focus and everything else is super. Not you know it's just full.

There's no like great.

They'll do that sometimes. I've taken some really lovely porter photos with that and they tend to not be the the two times lands OK. Yeah, it's not my absolute favorite. Think I could be Better, but it's it's not terrible OK enough.

What about the pro controls on the on the problem? You actually get some of that manual controls in the camera. APP have you enjoyed having that?

Yeah i'm not one like like when you're chasing a taller around, i'm not one to get in there and be like let me dial up. I so you know I tend to like just trust the phone camera to do this thing. But going in there, you actually get you can turn on like picture and a picture like focusing and you can turn IT, which has focus picking attached.

IT actually makes the mro mode like worth anything, because you can actually see if you are pictures and focus, which is cool world. Yeah, you can see like what part of your subject is actually in focus. So was a vision that I would actually use mode now.

But it's nice. The controller are nice. It's cool having IT there.

It's not it's not in your way. If you don't want IT, it's not going to hurt you. Yes, I appreciate IT.

Yeah, okay, I am glad hear that. alright. So about the A I, the two things in google photos, and you should tell me if there are more that I should be interested in.

But the two that I have found myself obsessively wondering how you have found them, are best take, which is the one that takes a bunch of photos and then lets you sort of pick and choose the part of each photo that you like best to combine them on to one photo. And then the magic editor, which lets you, like, move, suffer around to frame the shot Better. Let's just start with best take, because we spent like, dear, got like two hours on the verge cast last week talking about this.

How is IT been so far? Would you make of IT? Is IT? Is IT like as cool a feature enough to, like, change the world to make us all terrified about. The truth of photography forever.

It's somewhere in there. Yes, I don't I don't know how afraid we should be of IT. It's like occasionally really good what it's supposed to do, especially when there's really good lighting like the demo we did at the google event.

It's like a horn movie, almost where you switch the face on someone in like nothing else moves except their expression. And sometimes that looks really seamlessly, like, oh my god, this is terrifying. What does this mean? Very humanity.

Sometimes that looks pretty ad and like my tod li like suddenly ly has another ARM, but here's not like just drink like okay, well, it's not going to end society. We know and so it's like somewhere in the middle like I took some group shots with the and there's you can sort of feel like, all right, this is, this is just a tool. Someone have eyes.

H, I can change IT, this is fine. This is great. I enjoy having IT, but then you can kind of get in there and like, there's just totally change the expression on someone's face and IT sort feels like I don't think I like IT even if it's not.

I'm not like like doing an evil deed with IT. I'm just like changing the expression on my toddlers face. I still feel sort of weird about you.

I like what I know he wasn't making in that face when he was doing on exact thing. And I think we're all gonna to kind of find where we're comfortable with IT. And for me personally, I like also with magic editor. You can do some lucky stuff with that.

And like there is a picture of my son in one of his friends yeah at a baseball game and they're like hanging on the fans and I can just like cut him out and move him over so he's next to his friend. And IT looks like that's exactly how I took the photo and nothing evil has happened there. But I feel strange about IT. And I don't I don't really like IT.

Do you go and look at that photo then the next day or whatever, and feel differently about IT? Like this is one of the things I keep talking about. This is like if I do that to a photo, well, I always remember that I did that to that photo, or the, you know, the fifth time I look at that, I will have forgotten, and I is just a cool photo. But does the fact that i've done something to IT change my relationship to that photo and I feel like with best taken particular, I think I would. But it's not only here having that experience a little bit with all of this stuff.

Yeah, I think it's just still a question like how far you wanna take IT and like where your comfort level is like I have no problem like taking some minor thing out of the backside of a photo is like you take a picture and there's something like on the counter behind .

my kid sure that's garbage.

Let's pretend that was never there or yeah with best take some as I are closed you open the eyes like this is fine, but where's the line for you and where you're going to look at that photo and feel a ky about IT after you make the idea is like maybe it's a little different for everybody i'm learning for myself.

totally fair. yeah. Have you seen any sort of guard rails that google is putting on that experience? Is there a limit to what it'll let you do kind of in the name of improving your photo? Or is IT pretty much the sky is the limit inside of the tour.

put the breaks on if you try to do too much. The U I is pretty limiting. Like to start with, you basically have the opening of like you are selecting things in the scene to either like a race or you have a little magic one you can tap.

And IT was to just like change the sky or change lighting, I think so you you can't it's not like a generative, like anything you want. You want uncorking rainbows like feral in their kind of experience. So that's a good thing, I think. And it's IT limits how you approach a photo of like, okay, I know I can only do so much here. It's it's not a free for all that's there.

So when you're when you're done testing all this stuff, are these still features you think you'll use like IT in your data? Life is like a regular person. If you remember your life as a regular person before he had seven hundred phones, room at yeah is this the kind of thing that like every time you you know take a lot of family family photos, the guy this experiences over the weekend, and I was thinking about this all the time, we went to a pump match, as do in october, and IT was five adults and three kids under two years old.

So the idea of getting all of us in a photo where we're all going to be looking at the camera, smiling at once, impossible, just literally never gone to happen. And so what I have on my phone is two hundred pictures. I've just stood there for five minutes and just take pictures constantly.

And literally zero out of two hundred. Everyone is making the face you don't want to make. And I had this moment of thinking like, oh, this is what this is for. Between these two hundred photos, there is one perfect photo. And if I could make IT, I could share with my own family. And everybody go, oh, and then we are realize anything would be great but I also like, I don't know if I am going to have an access central crisis every time I open up my camera from now.

Do you really mean yeah like what do you think when you stop sort of thinking about this in like a reviewer, what does this mean for the world mindset? Just pictures of your family and life? Do you think this is the kind of thing little end up sort of in your data day workflow?

Yeah, I think I would like in those exact situations where I am always finding that situation where I look back at the photos, I talk of some particular like moment and you know if it's a tod ler in an adult, like it's hard to even with two people get like you know the right moment in the right, the expression like, oh, this photo has this and yes, is the kind of thing you find yourself wishing for.

And in testing, you just kind of want to do the most ridiculous things and break IT. So we've did like Normal faces and then silly of faces, and then you're swapping in someone's like ridiculous face when the run is making a Normal face and you're like, that's kind of weird. Didn't we be A I think in just a day to day like I am so used to taking those two hundred photos and now yeah, I think I would just have something to do with them now rather than just kind of settle on like, well, i'm going to like weird in this one and everyone else looks fine yeah .

the other AI future i'm very curious about and when I am personally investing in is the audio magic racer, which is supposed to cut out what is the background is is and just kind of all unwanted audio from the video you're taking. Is that essentially .

the yeah you just record your video like usual and then you go into the editing tools in google photos and there's a audio tab. And IT separates into some different like very basic channels that are labelled like speech and noise and wind. Super exciting.

If IT works, does IT work?

IT works. Yeah, yeah. This is another one. I'm like, I would use this all the time if this is actually on my phone.

So I recorded a little test clip just walking down on a busy street near where I live. It's like raining a little bit. There's all kinds of unwanted noise going on.

And you can hear what IT does. Let's hear the before with no touching. This is just what the phone itself picks up.

just taking a picture out for a stroll in the rain. And something I noticed is that audio magic racer really does best with consistent kind of back on noise. Something like a crowd or traffic like you're hearing right now sort of comes with me. Now it's a little bit harder to control for still IT. okay.

And here is the after with the audio gc.

just taking a picture out for a straw in the rain. And something I noticed is that audio m he does best with constant and noise, something like a crowd or traffic like you're hearing right now. Sort comes me now a little bit harder to control her, but still, I know. So first, okay.

that's really impressive. IT definitely like clips and compresses your voice a bit. But IT just, I mean, the kids I got rid of all of the background that's wild and .

you have like a degree of control over that was like turning everything all the way down. So you could leave a little bit in if you didn't want to sound. You can definitely hear those moments when it's like kind of judging and yeah trying to figure things out. But yeah it's super impressive yeah for everyone .

on the verge test had to listen to me like shout into my phone over traffic. Uh, this is can be hugo, right? Three more things that cares about the leg. The first one is the new tensor processor, which the last pixel performance was kind of at times I got high IT just wasn't the best. What is separate this time?

And I got to say IT, personally, I never had too much trouble with the last sensor, but i've seen the reports of know overheating. And I did note on this one, I was outstanding outside and like a pretty hot day and there's the screens, i'll get a little bit brighter this year like the high brightness mode on the e pro actually goes up to twenty four hundred nets, was a super bright. I saw that kick and I was like, this is great. I can read what's on my phone now. And a couple minutes in, like, four got pretty high.

and I just went back down.

H, wow. OK, yeah. Which is usually the case on iphone to not in common, but with the device kind of in that state.

I flipped into the video recording and IT gave me a little warning, like iphones too, hodes probably not going to record at the highest quality. So if that is a concern and this is IT was a warm day, but I live in seattle. I don't live in the tropics. If that's a concern for you, then I am sorry to say that I might be a bit more of the same on tensor g three.

okay. So did the problem maybe not totally solved, but in general, the pix seven, other than when I was sort of at its threshold, ld did pretty well. And I would assume the same is true this year. Like I can't imagine you're having sort of data day performance issues on this one.

Yeah no, IT handles everything fine. Nit says little education where you're really pushing IT like i'm trying to take a whole bunch of project mode shots really fast and it's just kind of like slow down .

lady but overall it's fine.

okay. Uh and .

then temperature sensor, which IT has, is that useful for anything? This is like a this strikes me so much as a thing that like google just happened to have a bunch of these lying around the factories is somewhere so they put them in. Have you found IT valuable at all to .

have in these funds? No at all. Like I have a moment where I like, ah i'm drinking this is a hot of the coffee. I'll give the phone and see what the timer dress and IT IT gives you the degrees or what ever like but there's text just that hot like, yeah alright I I knew that actually I did .

A I at work that's ai and .

I don't know and that last thing .

is battery life. How did the pixel AIDS stand up?

Yeah IT seems to be fine. I think like google very smartly doesn't make any particular claims like Better battery life or Better power efficiency. And i'm finding that both of the phones will get through of all day with very in degrees of like a comfortable percentage left at the end of the day. But yeah .

presumable, the pro does a bit Better. Just my virtue of being .

larger yeah that when you get if you're just kind of a moderate user, you can push into the next day but yeah full day abuse is just a kind of a blank get like yeah you're you'll get that okay.

that's good. So overall, that seems like there's no kind of one mind blowing earth shatt oring new thing here, which in a smart phone in twenty twenty three is not entirely unexpected. But I do think google has been on this crime of like we can do a lot of little A I things.

There's a bunch that in here where're doing the summaries of web pages in the browser with A I and a Better spam call filtering and all that kind of stuff. Does that all add up too much for you like this? Does the full sort of A I story make the pixel more compelling than what you're getting from samsung, apple, these other companies? At this point.

it's starting to and I feel like that kind of being googles pitch with the pixel for the past couple years, years, like it's it's so smart it's going to do these things for you. It's going to make your life easier. And you know the pixel six and pixel seven like the good phones.

So I don't feel like there was anything that was doing that was just really making my life easier. I think that promise is like could start to country in the fix. And some of IT depends on a distant with bard, which is going to come at some point in the future, is you go.

So take that as you will, but that could really make google assistant very useful to have be able to ask IT like questions that required checking multiple sources, looking in your email. And I think there's a lot of potential there. There's also, you get seven years of O S. Updates.

which is a big deal. This really is I remain, as we've talked about, unconvinced that google is going even going to make phones still in seven years. So who knows what? I do think that's a real promise and that's a big deal. If if that is actually true in seven years from now, your phone is still good and functional and up today, like that's huge and that's a little reason.

Yeah yes. So IT seems like there's potentially like really useful things coming to IT. The assistant voice typing is quite a bit Better in the pixel eight.

IT actually will like understand your sort of inflection and pauses and output punctuation in, rather than like an entire long string of text, which is like, godd bless my mother, but that is what I get from her every time he text me. And you kind of seem like a social past when you do that. But i'm like, I would actually maybe use voice texting on this phone, and that's not a thing I considers. So there's a lot of potential. I think there's more potential for the pixel eight in the April to be this phone of like IT actually doesn't make your life is easier, but it's gotta put your trust in google to get there .

yeah as for so many things, I just reviewed the meta quest three and it's the same thing. It's like look no wrong answers if you feel good about IT knock yourself out if you don't I totally understand but like let's i'll be clear red about what you're going and IT all means somebody is going to see a lot of what you do in your life. All.

oh yeah, yeah, you gotta good with that. No big deal. Well, I should let you go .

back to deciding which score you're going to give IT to piss off everybody on the first. But thank you, as always, really appreciate.

Yeah, thanks.

right? Let's switch gears and talk about the pixel watch too. Last year, the pixel watch had a bunch of good ideas and nice designs, but IT felt very much like a first generation product.

IT had all of the kind of stupid mistakes and weird build issues and all the stuff you do when you've never done this before. So i've been looking forward to this one. The second one ever sets, super curious what the second gen watch might fix or improve upon.

And we think after a year of doing this, Victoria song on our team has been reviewing IT, and i'm desperately curious to hear how what's going. So let's hear how it's going. Hi, hello, you are just selling me right before we started recording that the pixel two currently on the rest is not the first pixel lodge two.

My first question is going to be, is the pixel lodge two less break able than the original pixel watch? And suddenly I am nervous. Tell me what's going on?

Yeah, so day two, I was on day two with the fixed lot too. I wake up and I look down several deep scratches like all over the pixel watch at, like, you know, was dark IT was rainy. So having a hard time telling if I was a crack or scratches, I was like, oh my god, i've had this for like two days.

I'm racking my brain to be like, what did I do to do this to the watch and I couldn't remember anything. So you know, I had to go up to google and really, hey, guys not work. We need review photos.

So um can you get me a new watch? And they actually did hand deliver a new watch and they had a guy take a look at my scratched up pixel watch and we were just standing there a circle for a bit being like what could have possibly caused this? And if so, I never heard back. They said they would get back to me with, like, if there were any trace materials in the scratches that might indicate what caused the scratch. But as far as I know, I went to bed IT was fine, woke up scratches all over the place OK.

So one of two things is happening here. Either you encounter wolverine, but like tiny, tiny wolverine or two, this is a really bad sign for the pixel watch two. Because my main thing with the pixel watch one was like, they did a lot of things right, and we're just missing kind of the like fit and finish and structure of the thing that often you get rape.

But the second one, first one, you're like learning how to make these things as hard. Worker ches are hard. It's a circle.

I get all that up, but the second one is like, we had this problem with the first one, that things got scratched. This feels like a very bad sign. Does this strike you was a very bad sign.

So my mean concern is that, and I like render story a couple weeks ago, is that there is no current repair option for the pixel watch. And you know, if you drop your watching, you cracked. If you scratch your watch yourself technical that's not covered under a warranty.

I'm not gentle with these watches, just in case people that are wondering, i'm very classy. I fell down constantly. The original fix I watch, I was running once and I didn't do the class properly.

And I went flying. I almost flew into the east river and IT was fine, no scratches, and I was like skinning across asp. So I really think you have to be quite unlucky in some respects.

So you know, I want to say I had the original for a year and nothing bad happen til IT. I had the new one for two days and something bad happened to IT. So the second i've had for about five days now and nothing has happened to IT OK.

I've also been a lot more conscious of where I put IT down because that happened to me. But like i'm hesitant to say that the fix of watch is like bad for that reason. But just because of the curved display and the way that looks IT is a little more prone to IT and smart watch companies have moved on to like the Crystal or stronger materials.

So that is just like a thing to keep in mind. You just kind of have to be a little more careful with this one. I think that's the lesson island with the pixel watch too.

Let's I got the rest of this watch because I think where you and I landed last year was basically like pretty good first start. Really excited to see the second one because there were a lot of things like we're talking about that felt like a companies first wearable. The fit bit thing was still relatively knew.

The integration was kind of messy. The processor was old and not good enough. They did some monkey stuff with the treat.

So like this was going to be the one that was like, okay, if google is serious about this, going to do IT well, it's gonna start to put the pieces together. So I have a bunch of specific questions for you. But like, big picture does IT feel like a big step in that direction in this time.

yes. A the fact that is one size, usually it's like one dragani size. And the small risk among us are complaining this the opposite proper here. If you have big rist, this is going to look very small.

And in ty, aside from that and the issues with the screens that I just matched in every other way, this is a pretty sizable step forward. So that's like what stuck out to meet the most that usually the sequel isn't good. And I talk about this in my review, but we never talk about the apple watch series two, like we talk about the three.

We talk about the reason. We talk about the four, five, six, for whatever reasons. We never talk about the series two.

Samsung legitimist chipped a galaxy, watched two. I didn't even bother with two. I just went from the original to the three. So you know, generally, the second is either something that the first should have been, or it's just like the forgotten middle child of gadgets that we just don't ever talk about. And I think this is the rare equal that is definitively Better than the original, if you cavy author exceptions, which I will get IT to.

Okay, let's run down some of IT. Because I went back to review last year and pulled out some of the things you like to end dislike. And I think the one that jumped out to me the most was Better life because you had, I would say, like middling battery life, flash year, sort of a Normal use.

IT wasn't like dramatically worse than any other smart watch, but IT also wasn't particularly impressive. But then as soon as you started doing stuff, especially exercising, the battery life was kind of a mess. How is that this year?

IT is a massive improvement. So like people asking for multiday battery life, like garmin levels or like truly fitbit levels, stop. You're going to be disappointed because you still have to charge this every day, but you are gonna twenty four hours with always on display enabled.

Last year, you could get twenty four hours if you turned off wake and you turned off the L, D, and you were just like super baby. The watch being very intentional with how you're using IT. When you're using IT, you don't have to do that as much this year because one IT charges hello a faster like this morning I went on our own.

I did oh my like little exercise duty bodies whatever after a whole night charging I had about one hundred percent at like eleven eight yesterday. So i'm i'm here ten I am with fifteen percent left and here we are about hour later i'm up full. I just went about my like shower, putting on clothes, becoming a human again.

Visual and IT was done that fast charge like I think forty five minutes to an hour is what most people will need if you're not getting IT down to zero. So that's pretty great. And then just in terms of general usage, I was writing down statistics left and right just because last year was so bad that I went, I think, on a thirty minute to forty five minute run last year and IT during forty one percent, forty one percent, which is absurd, that terrible for such a short period of time.

And subsequent software updates fixed that. So that was less bad, but it's actually good now is on par with samsung in terms of battery drain now. So I went on a bunch of two mile runs.

I went on a bunch of walks with the G. P. S. enabled.

And I want to say that in general, I was not losing anything more than six to fifteen percent and that in a bunch of various like situation, sometimes when streaming music offline, sometimes I am actually using safety check while i'm doing my workout. So that's enabling cellular the entire time kind of. So you know, there is just a lot of different in areas.

I never lost more than fifteen percent in a thirty to forty five minute time period, which for most people, that's like a solid workout. That's what you're gonna a do. And I had some really active days where I was getting a bunch auto auto workout tracking, which was a big issue with last year as well.

So you don't going about my day. I never really had to worry about the the battery. And I just know everyone knows I did not use a single battery saving feature this entire week, which is good. And you .

shouldn't have to, right, like I think what you're describing to me is like what a smart watch should be basically like I should take IT off and charge IT when I shower and get ready in the morning and then I should never, ever, ever think about its battery, others SE. And that sounds like quite you're describing as basically that get charges pretty quickly so that you can shower and get ready while that charges.

And then once again, we're coming around you. I need to put a watch, children in my bathroom, and I hate this. And I still people sent me about two pictures of like, dangle apple watch church in their bathroom when I talked about this on the verge caswell back.

And I hate IT, and IT makes me so angry. And yet this is the life I have to live. But IT sounds like it's as good as IT needs to be for you to like live your life and not be annoyed by the battery. And that fears like a huge win over last year .

yeah as a huge win. And I think for the average person, it's gonna be great if you're a garden head and you're wondering whether this is gona last year of fourteen, our hike with GPS. And I don't I wouldn't I wouldn't bit all my chicken s on that. That's not like what you're not gna be happy. This is not enough of an improvement. But for the average person, but who's looking at a flagship smart watch because they want all the google services or because they want to do something other than track fitness but also track, you know, a reasonable walk every day or something like that, this is this is finally good enough.

So you venture two things in that description that were also issues that the pixel watch one had, which was the GPS, which was sort of wacky and weird on the first watch, and automatic workout tracking, which was a thing I didn't do at all. I don't think, despite the fact that this is like a thing.

fit bits pretty good at IT did a version of IT, but not what people were wanting.

okay. First 呢， again, both of those Better this year, hopefully supposedly Better this year. What have you found so far?

So the auto tracking is definitely Better. I went on several walks and you know do to doing not starting a walk on purpose and I did get notifications that were like, hey, looks like you're doing a walk. Uh, would you like to record and I was like that here we go.

great. On the other side, they also have um reminders to stop your workout. So here are the type of person that's just like you get home, you lie down on the beach and why did I exercise? This was a terrible 的 and you forget to turn off your activity。

After about five minutes, you will be like, yeah, you want to stop and you know, I did that for me like a couple of times when I was just like sitting on a park bench, taking in the sites or just forgetting to turn off my walk. IT did remind me to do that. So on that front, yes, IT is Better.

GPS is a mixed bag. I basically tested IT without my pixel phone when I want to run so that I could use the pixel watches built in GPS. IT takes a while to find a signal.

Now I ve got an ultra two on the other hand, and the ultra two will find a signal light boom done. Like I have to wait a second for IT to find a signal. This sometimes have to wait around, and I have to walk like tent feet before IT finds a signal.

Sometimes it's a little longer and living in area that's very chAllenging for GPS. I'm surrounded by water. I'm surrounded by tall buildings.

That's understandable. This is not necessarily a thing that limited to google. Bunch of summary watch companies, even those with good GPS, have this issue.

Where I live is just something that I clock. And I had a weird instance where I went on a run. The G, P, S. Map was only half right, and I said, I only did one point three miles, which is wrong. I never do just one point three miles on a run.

Two minimum is my, is my thing like I feel like I need to do two miles to feel like I got at least some sort of cardio release going on. So I had done about a two mile run feeling like really good wanting to check my start after and it's like one point three miles in the APP on my rest IT was like two point one and then I was like this this is bull hockey. So i'm trying to update IT wouldn't update twenty four hours later.

It's like you did two point one miles. So I feel like i've been gassed with GPS. I had this problem last year yeah the maps for a lot less accurate last year. So there is some mild improvement there. I just think there's something monkey going on in the back end.

And I reached to google like, what's up? Why is IT doing this on for this particular run? But I else have to mention that I went on for run total, and IT only did that for one of them.

And I went on, according to this watch, like several walks this weekend. And those were all generally pretty accurate. So just on this one run, IT had a twenty four hour milk down as to how far I actually ran. And so my stat were wrong, which if you're like me, that's unacceptable. IT drives.

if ruin your whole day.

you get no kind of for anything. So you know if that's you, you not be happy with that because there is some monkey back and going on. And you know I had that as you would fit IT over the years, often on. So that just might be a thing that they're still kind of working out.

Speaking of the fitbit, think the last year, we had a lot of questions about fit bit and pixel and whether these two companies that are now one company kind of understood how they work together. And then just before the pixel I watch two came out, fit bit launched a new fit bit. Does this ecosystem make more sense to you than a day like IT? Seems like they did a bunch of new fitbit stuff in the pixel watch to there's new sensors.

Skin temperature and stress and heart rate stress, I think, is one of the things that fit bit itself has been really, really, you know promoting and spending a lot of time talking about over the last year or so. Does the integration work Better for you like you? Do you kind of understand where pixel ends and fitbit begins now?

yes. So last year was a total scho. Like IT was three smart watches. They nerve the google smart watch in terms of fitness features and health features. And they took the the fitbit watches and went, we will take everything that mildly made you slightly smarter and take IT all away.

And so it's less of a problem this year because I think last year, by the nature of having three smart watches, IT was very confusing and there was no real honest way to differentiate them in a way that made sense. This area of the charge six, which is a fitness man, and you have the pixel watch and the delinquent between these two and what features they offer is a lot clear. And thanks, freak lord.

That IT is because when you have the pixel watch two, you're not wondering, like, well, fibs can do this. So why I can't this do that? Don't you have a fitbit integration? What's the deal? So yeah, there's there's none of that.

This year, you get all the abNormal, high, low, high rate unification. You get all the E, K, G, B notifications, both passive and spotted checks. You get the stress tracking, which they introduced with the sense to last year. You get to continue stress tracking, which is hilarious in many different ways yeah .

speaking of making you feel feelings like there's nothing quite like a notification being like are you stress when you're stressed? Like, yes, thank you, fitbit. I am stressed. Thanks so much for asking.

Fitbit actually has the best implementation of stress tracking of anybody out there. In my humble opinion, it's just a lot more thoughtful. You can tell a lot of flake thinking went into this because you are not going to get notified when .

the stress is happening.

A delay which IT comes with its own fraid off because I i'll get notifications and i'll be like what was I doing three hours ago when I was having this bodily stress response? Was I happy was I said I don't know but sometimes he is very relevant like I actually got some bad personal news um last week my grandma died and like in the moment, I was just like i'm going to shut down and compartmentalise because I have worked to do and also korea, a different time zone so i'll deal this later and then later what I actually did get to deal with IT about an hour after I had processed all the feelings that was like, hey, we found a stress response.

Would you like to lock your mood and I was like, sure, sad. So that's what IT was. But you know what I like give you a second to a kind of thing and log the mood.

And if you're in a place where you can, without your phone and write a sentence or two, there is at least a prompt there. I don't think that mood journal is a natural human impulse. So we saw this with watch O S.

Ten, where ables, like you have these abstract moods that you can log on your watch. I i'd never used IT because i'm not gonna be like in a moment where i'm stressed and like wall, this was really stressful. I should log this for posterity.

Yeah, that never did anything for me.

that never did anything. So this is actually it's not perfect. There is a delay. You have to remember how you are feeling when you are feeling and be in a position to be able to log the mood. But there is context for IT.

Okay, I like IT. Anything else about the watch that the jumps out to IT strikes me as like as as an everyday fitness tracking er IT is like only big uc much Better than last year IT seems like google kind right there now, right?

It's surprising because you know when you have the pixel phone. So just kind like, why are you making this google with this? You kind of get either making IT and they actually have a shot to be the best at something.

So I don't do I think that the pixel watch two is the best android smart watch out there right now. I am still kind of like, no, I still think samsung is slightly Better, but the gap is a lot, lot smaller. IT is a lot smaller.

They did a lot Better than I thought they were going to do. And some of that actually is because I think they were pretty unique in the safety features this year with safety check and safety signal. So I actually just use safety signal this morning because I was like on leaving the swatch at home.

But i'm going to like see how this affects my battery. Use safety signal and you I don't have an L T plan on the watch, but I was still able to notifications about where my location was to my husband while I was out there. And you know if you ever see any girl with her girlfriends and when they're leaving .

that like text me when you get home.

So that sort of like a and acknowledged that, that is a cultural thing that I have to do. And it's kind of nice that I can just at a time. And IT gives the reason why i'm setting that timer and my location. Now my husband was just like all she's just tossing something.

ignore something that happened to be I don't know that I would be particularly .

useful for that particular use case. Yeah, I do think that's cool. There is there's some walking, is there though because safety signal is basically you being able to access features without having an lte plan, but you don't need to have the lte watch.

So that is a little in elegant if you ask me. And you have to have to have a fbp premium subscription in order to have the safety signal. So it's just like kind of saving maybe ten dollars a month max in order to have the emergency features is kind of a nice option to have, but also doesn't fully make sense.

And you would think that why not just also offer that to non lte models, but it's not on the non lte models. So there's like a lot of stuff like that, small things that are just kind of like what why did you do in this way? And that leads to my other kind of quanti and question with the pixel ltc two.

Is that are we heading towards more ecosystem? Because the thing about the original pixel watch that I was just like, yes, was that I was for everyone who had A N android phone, samsung gay keeps health features. Samsung g keeps certain things to samsung phones. And that was in a thing that you had to think about with the pixel watch.

But IT is something you have to think about now with the pixel watch too, in that like, do you want this to automatically recognize that it's bad time and turn on low power mode so you get an extra at ten fifteen percent battery when you wake up in the morning, because that does say about that much cool. If you have a pixel phone, you can go into the digital wellness settings and make IT so that IT auto sinks with your watch and will automatically go into bed time mode, which the original does not do. You have to manually do IT.

And who falls asleep going must put bedtime mode into to my watch. I never did that, so that was a huge problem. I don't have to do that with this because I ve heard that to a pixel phone and still gonna to do this manually if I hear IT to a sound sung phone.

So like we're starting to have instances like that or i'm just like, hey, you guys, we're supposed to be the ecosystem like agnostic watch. And now you are kind of putting some things in there that make IT Better with pixel phones. So like it's not available now, but they were saying that I could scream your calls in a future software drop. So that is also going to be limited to pixel phones only. Unlike aha, I see we are introducing some ecosystem nonsense into the mix.

There is a lot of that this year. I think in the in the phones, too, there is a definite sense that google is getting more comfortable keeping stuff for itself. And it's like it's still probably like if you don't earn a samsung phone or a google phone, IT seems like the pixel watch is probably the more ecosystem friendly of the two if you're going to appear IT to some other android device. But IT is I agree with you, it's still a little concerning to see google sort of slowly start to close the doors and they are like.

we just mostly want to pixels. I get, if you don't, a pixel phone, especially us android, samsung files, that totally make sense. I really hate how IT seems companies are using smart washes as casuals to keep you in in an ego system.

Like, I occasionally want to switch to an android. My iphone is passing me off, but I do IT because I have an apple watch. So like that.

Very annoying to me. yeah. And I see google doing this here. And I was just sort like you guys, you I was I was routine for you to keep IT platform nos c and government is still the only truly platform notice thing.

Yeah, I agree. But I think in general, the story you're telling about the pig watch too makes me excited. I feel like I think you're right that google has a lot of incentive to keep building this thing, not least because it's meant to hell of a lot of money on fitbit.

And the fact that this is sort of systematically improving the things that weren't great, give me hope that like as IT keeps working on this stuff, I think the form factor as IT has a right. I think some of the assistant stuff, especially as they started CoOperating, the large language model stuff is going to start to be very cool. There are a lot of interesting places this could go. And I I think that gives me hope that google might actually know how to build a good smart watch over time. But I was not sure of last year.

I was not sure that either. But I really do think that if they get their shit together and they really stay on top of the fitbit integration, which it's kind of rocky at this point. Not a lot of people are loving the fit bit of free design, which I can kind of understand having played with IT for a few days more deeply.

But it's just like if you can sound out of that, if you can manage to not pass every fitbit user who's been there for the last twenty years or however off, if you can continue to innovate. And I I really do think samsung should be worried. They should start not resting on the way law because the galactic watch six was incredibly iterative.

I almost feel liberating the review. Even I was just like it's the same as last year kind of, oh my god. So by nature of being new, even if it's not perfect, it's still more exciting than the existing android options. And because it's google and because they own the software are platform, I know there is a chance to be the best which the site engine, what can you say that you GLE the best APP? So I know it's very interesting and maybe .

not even search engines, but that's a different podcast. We will come back to that. Alright, we should take a break. But the thank you as I if you figure out your tiny wolfing problem, come back on and let us know, okay, I I will thank you. We going to take a break and we're going to come back my box.

Hey, it's slim from decoder with new IP top. We spent a lot of time talking about some of the most important people in taking business about what they're putting resources to and why they think it's so critical for the future. That's why we're doing this special series diving into summer, the most unique ways companies are spending money today.

For instance, what does that mean to start buying and using A I at work? How much is that costing companies? What products are they buy? And most importantly, what are they doing with IT? And of course, podcast? Yes, the thing you listen to you right now, well, it's increasingly being produced directly by companies like venture capital firms, investment funds and a new crop of creators who one day want to be investors themselves.

And what is actually going on with these acquisitions this year, especially in the A I space, why are so many big players in tech deciding not to acquire and instead license tech and hire away cofounder? The answer, IT turns out, is a lot more complicated than that seems you'll hear all that and more this month. I'm decoder with the light presented by strike. You can listen to the coder whatever you get.

Your podcast support for this podcast comes from anthropic. You already know that A I is transforming the world around us, but lost in all the enthusiasm and is a really important question. How can A I actually work for you? And where should you even start, claude from anthropic? Maybe the answer.

Claude is the next generation, A I assistant built to help you work more efficiently without sacrificing safety or reliability. Anthropic latest model, cloud three point five, can help you organize thoughts, solve tRicky problems, analyze data and more. Whether your brain storming alone or working on a team with thousands of people, all of a prize that works for just about any use case.

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Welcome back. A couple of weeks ago, google announced a new program called chrome book plus, basically a designation for computers that meet a certain set of criteria for processors, screens, webcam, that sort of thing. And thus all in should be up to a slightly higher standard as A P.

C. As a person who loves chrome box and hasn't Frankly seen one that I actually want to buy in a few years, this makes me happy. But it's also kind of confusing.

I've sincerely never been able to tell exactly how much google cares about true box. There are hugely successful in schools, which is obviously great for google because IT gets Young users using google products, obviously a big win for the company. But is that IT? Or does google really want to compete with windows and macos and dell and hp and whoever us, and be a serious player in the P.

C market? IT onest ly feels like some days IT does and goes all in on this idea. And then IT cancels a bunch products and changes its minds like four months later.

And then four months after that decides to go all and again, I just since I don't understand anyway, monarch, a chain on our team, has been covering chromo plus over last couple of weeks and has been reviewing chrome books for years. So I brother in to help me figure out what this actually means for the future of crime box. Monica, welcome back to the cast.

Thank you very much. Thank you for allowing .

me to dragged you here to talk about chrome x, which is a thing I think I care about more than possibly any other person.

But you don't have to tell me twice I could talk for days and days about crobble this, the croma podcast.

I mean, the reason were here is because of chrome book plus.

Chrome book plus.

I feel like the chrome ook world is forever with saying in google mind between like we want to make this good and make great computers and chrome books can be competitive. We think they're laptops of the future and swinging back the other way of just like chrome books are for kids in school and they're designed to be as cheap as possible and who cares? And then they just sort of swing back and fourth tween those two, where do you feel like we've been on that pendulum for the, let's say.

like the last twelve months? Yeah so governments have been trying to make the concord premium chrome ook into a thing for like quite some time now.

a decade .

by premium. I mean, like a chromo that you could charge more than a thousand dollars for and like people would buy that in the windows laptop world. We are at a point word that is not like a super, super hide Price is certainly a lot of money, like no ones like a thousand other word.

A point where like that is a Price that like is not only reserved for two reasons of giving laptop like that is something you would pay for, maybe a delicacy s thirteen or a galaxy book like something like that, yes, but for chrome books, that is still very much like, you know, you put a crobble out the cause that much, that is not that much less than the macbook here. You know, that needs to be really well built. And if the question is like, can we convince able to pay that much for chrome book? So we have had samsung that has tried the galaxy chrome book, which was beautiful and gorgeous, had an odd screen, just honest. One of the previous computer that have ever used batteries, like four hours, was not not a good time to actually use. And to try the out book two IT was a little less still, like very red, like one of the big things about the galaxy chrome land.

As you get red one, I love the red.

love the red. Really gorgeous. Gas he came up to was like not as beautiful screen was like not as premium. But IT was a little bit less expensive that I think everyone kind of agreed was a Better way to go about. Hp has tried like a dragon fly crowd book. They started out putting out like this, gorgeous like redness of the actual H P dragon fly line, which is a very big famous business line ah like something that they were trying to push on like all this is for the sea.

They also kind ended up knocking that down to something that to the hp dragline pro is like when they put out now, which is like more of a again, more of a modest, like not quite as OLED gorgeous, beautiful but has to be keyboard is still kind of call Prices more closer to thousand dollars like they've sort of bumps down a sort of more limit range here. So you know, you see companies here and there sort of try this thing. And then I haven't really seen an example of one that has become so successful that theyve continue putting out tones and tones, more versions of IT, which is what you do see with some chrome box that do become very successful, like a chrome x spin seven, thirteen or, you know, stuff is in that here.

So do you think it's even possible? This is a thought experiment I have been through many times over the years that if you could get everything else right, like I think I think we agree that the macbook air is probably the closest to doing all of the laptop things right as anyone at this moment. If you just took a macbook here and all of the things that is, is very well, battery life and performance in the way IT looks in the keyboard, not lest of took out macos and putting chromos, could you sell that to people for a thousand dollars?

yeah. So it's tough because the number of like full function apps you can use on promos, the options you have are not as many at this point. Now there are are ways to use lots of the big windows apps, the big look, a qual premium windows apps on bos, like there are versions of like photoshop for web and like the different adobe apps office is on there in some form.

And then there are, of course, I android apps which like you know that is a whole separate conversation, like how well on chrome book or are not going ah, but like there are versions of things like spotify, there's a version of that you can use on VS slack. As far as I know there is not still of is always our to know because I and has been like coming going yes the store free girls like little I could say that today, tomorrow we could come back or O I to know you know p wa are like things that you can use. So there are options.

But IT is still a little bit more complicated. Like if you are on windows and you want to use a professional APP that level to your GPU or play a game, whatever is, you go on steam, you on the modesty story, you just download IT, and then it's there. You on chrome OS.

IT is still more complicated to figure. I OK do. I have to use this on the web.

Is the android the best of mame? There is an android, but maybe using u, there's just it's a little bit more complicated and knock as a robust of a software ecosystem. That said, there are certainly are other benefits to promos overs like something like windows raqs.

People love how quick IT is to boot. I mean, that boots like almost instantly, that's like a big drive IT background security updates. Those are like a thing that people really like.

A lot of people like to run linux on their chrome box. That is a thing you can do. The crowd that these coronal premium chrome books have sort of been targeting is a crowd of people that, you know, critics for ages and ages.

Many people associated with like this is for students. This is for, like, kids or budget shoppers. The continuation of people that the premium chrome t sort of been trying to target is people who are not students, people who are like who have some deep pockets, who are your engineers or creators or your business executives, whatever job they have.

But you prefer cmos to windows or macos because of these other benefits that IT has, but they don't want to be limited to like cheap devices in the bill for students. They want the kind of premium hardware that you know they are workers in the sea sweet are all on, think pedre be dragon flies. And they want a laptop that runs grown us, but has that same kind of, you know, really nice build.

I think you just described like the perfect second device, right? Like the thing you're scribing with is like you can do almost everything, but something that is going to be a hacking is also kind of way the ipad works. And so I think if you like, want to be the person who uses an ipad for work like you can do IT. But if you're going to do a bunch of things in these really wacky hacky ways that aren't as easy as on some other systems and if that chrome is is a hands for those, which I guess has always been the problem because it's if you want a light, thin, simple computer that boots really fast and you just like want to send a bunch emails while on a plane, that chrome book is perfect but for most people, that can't be the only computer you own .

yeah and when you get above a thousand dollars and that just starts becoming expensive for most people, yes, as a second device, and you know, I write about chrome books every time I write something like this. The common section is full of people who is like, well, actually is really easy to use boll up program. You just get on linux and do bob like, yeah, that's great but IT is like a slightly more for hick up then IT is to just doll IT on windows .

yeah if if your answer to a problem is download linux like you, you're telling on yourself in a way that I don't think you yeah .

so there is a certainly contingent. There are in my common section is for that of people who you are in that group. The question is really, how big is that group? And is that group enough to really sustain a rigorous ous ego system of these products that goes on for you years and years?

Yeah so google, I guess to it's either detriment or credit, seems committed to this idea that IT is going to figure out how to sell high and chrome box. So tell me about the chrome x plus program that was just announced.

yes. So the chrome g plus is a certification. And if you're familiar with what intel evo is, it's kind of a similar idea. Evo was previously project defined previously before that was the the ultra book label. It's kind of like companies will roll out these certifications.

They have a list of requirements that if your computer means that list of requirements, you can put that label, you can license that brand and you can put IT on your product. Know, in this case, if you're laptop qualifies for the coming plus branding, you can then put your laptop on the best by shelf that will have a big sticker that has like chrome ck plus, oh, ever is. You can have chrome ck plus in the name, you know, in the best by listing IT might say, like to use chrome ck plus. And then you know, the idea is they'll promote this chrome ck plus label. You know, these are the plus laptop.

I mean, these are the good ones. I say.

yeah. And then chrome x without label will be more likely to be purchased. That's the idea of programs like this.

which at which I think is fine. Like part of me wants to make fun of google for essentially having to come up with the label that says these are all our good computers, which implies the most of your computers are not good computers. But I also understand that there is a gigantic portion of the chrome c world that is incredibly Price sensitive and is just like, is buying these things in bulk, is buying these things for schools, like I get that what's on the list of things you have to do to be a chrome book plus computer? yes.

So compared to the l evo standard, which is this cut of thing that intel runs, or something like AMD advantage, which AMD runs for gaming stuff, IT is not a particular extensive list. So we you have to have an encore three or rising .

seven thousand processor.

specially like a quality class P C. processor. So not higher, that doesn't count. And I P S panel with at least ten N D P resolution, a ten D P webcam, a gig bites of RAM in one hundred twenty eight of storage. That is very much all we were given in terms of what the the requirements are.

That seems like, I mean, I guess maybe this is the idea, but that is like bare minimum, decent laptop spects. Anyone who is like I won a laptop that is pretty good, I would tell everyone to not get anything less than any of those like you are just sabotaging yourself if you get anything lower .

than those spects. I mean, I don't know that I think a chrome book needs to have a windows light up.

Yes.

OK chrome. But I think these are some of these to me would be okay. This is a corn cold, good chromo at you're shopping for and pretty good.

I mean, a ten p web came like, that's A G A as much spaces. Windows does the ramp similarly. But I think they are sort of been to signal like this is a chrome g that has like some pretty solid specks for the category.

Two things I notice missing in those specks. One, anything having to do with design or materials, or fit and finish or weight or whatever, no sense of like what this thing look like. You know that the other one is battery life, which I would argue for a chrome book is maybe the single most important spec that exists on a device like that. You ask them about the battery life, a mission, right? What did they tell you?

So I tried very hard to find out about this, and I was a little bit of an adventure. ah. So at the chromos plus event that we were all out where they announced IT, we were like looking at the list.

They put the list up on the big Green when they were like giving the speech, or ever immediately. Why is barry? If not another? So know, after the talk gets out, I hunt down one of the gool people, and I like kate. So why isn't why isn't there are Better little requirement? And he's like, oh, there are totally is there's definite .

Better requirement that I was like.

what's the battle life requirement? And he was like, I want to know you'll be the press lease so we wait you a couple days. Pressure, this comes out.

No bad life comment in there. I email, I email him back. I'm like, hey, so you know, you said there was a battery life requirement in the pressure lease.

There's not know, is a barrera what's gone on couple days later, to my recollection, gool gets back to me and they say the following. All chrome ooks are required to meet a ten hour battery life requirement based on internal testing standards. Well, not a new come back plus the crobble plus laptops must also adhere to this so that their claim. Now I have no idea what testing their international testing status are for that ten hour battery life requirement in the first place. So that's not really the much to me.

Can you remember the last chrome book you test to be at ten hours of battery life?

No, I there has a really been, but I don't remember.

I think it's Better. Well, to your point, I mean, some of the ones that we've liked in the past, even the high end ones have been crushed by their battery life. The galaxy chrome box are really good example of this that like beautiful machines till a lot of things, right really short battery life yeah and I mean.

it's worth noting that we you know my battery life that I get isn't only my battery life because i'm testing with my workload. Like you might get something holy different, but I don't know what good I I don't know if they're doing video play back. Like I don't know, I just don't know how there if they're doing all those things would like you turn off the wifi and you put the screen and like a hundred kits and you turn off the speakers .

and you play a local video, I social video.

that also to me is not a good reflection of how much Better you can expect. So I think my result is probably a little bit Better, but I don't claim that it's identical. What you can get.

that's fair. So one thing I thought was interesting about the way google approaching this is that if you qualify for the crumbs plus certification, not only do you get the sticker that says this is one of the good ones, you actually get some more stuff like from a software perspective, these things are going to be Better than the lower and chrome cks, right? That surprised me a little a bit.

Actually, part of the appeal of chrome OS has been that it's this like very simple straighforward thing. You can kind of log in anywhere in all of your stuff appears. But now that seems like google is starting to say like we're gna, especially with A I stuff, right? Give you more to do on these more powerful machines.

yeah. So the main thing is that there are some A I powered features which we were told are as of now going to be exclusive to chrome g plus devices. IT seems to me plausible that they will end up on all chrome books eventually.

It's like what they're doing with the pixel, like the step starts there and then kind of works its way down through .

the ecosystem just based on like how I see they do this kind of thing with android. Like I don't know that I would assume like this will never leave the plus line, but yeah, there's a magic a racer tool in google photos, there are improvements to lighting and noise cancellation in video conferences which regard a demonstration of and then there is an offline files. Same thing um which automatically doubled stuff from drive .

drive to an action that was my regions .

like I want a stuff and drive out. But sum it's it's therefore ally supposed to like save you from having to do that if you are someone who would be you going on and doing them anywhere.

It's like because google has fought against this thing for years where the perception of the chromo is still IT only works when you're online, right?

And there are a lots people who still think that great.

I know the one how I think that's like a fake fear because like my macbook is more less useless when i'm not online anymore.

like I don't IT turns out there is very little you can do without the internet, right? exactly.

But also google, I think is is smart to. And I remember they did this with dogs and stuff back in the day. They were like, no, you can do this stuff offline. Yes, your computer will be OK. So doing the outlines of makes love sense.

me, that that seems smart. Yeah, they're gonna like I generated wallpapers, which you like, types of generate paper that the, I wasn't ready at the time. There is a quote, quote, personal writing assistant.

Very curious, excited to try that out. I love to be assisted with my writing. So you I welcome that tool.

And then there's like a three months description of photoshop on the web and there's like three months of g force. Now is priority here. There's like a couple things like Better you get some free trials of some stuff.

man of stuff that's that's a pretty strong push to buy, the Better chongqing certainly is.

He will be interesting to see how long of those things are max exclusive before IT becomes less before they just sort of trickle down.

Yeah, that's very fair. So i'm curious what you think the manufacturer of chrome box are going to do because like you are saying at the beginning, all of these hopes have been burned by trying to charge a lot of money, even for a very good chromo IT. Just IT has been hard.

I've been out here banging in the drama of like a thousand dollar chrome at can actually be a really good idea. I think the pixel book is like one of the all time best laptops. I still believe that most people didn't like I I up that I am not most people in that particular way.

And so if I I don't know a sues or samsung or Linda or hp hover, I have a lot of experience not selling high and chrome books and now google actually think again, cell I N chrome ooks it's totally going to work this time. Do you think they're gona try or we're onna get a real push back to the premium in the crobble space here? Or has everybody been burnt too much by now?

From what the evidence that we have so far? And again, this is evidence highly Carried by like they you know have decided which ones they are announce on stage IT seems to like a lot of these are pretty solidly mid so far. The one that have been announced, the cheapest one I think is, is three ninety nine ninety nine, which is the aster chrome bug plus line OK.

And then a bunch of the other ones that we're announced were sort of in the like five hundred, eight hundred dollar range. So these are high and what high chrome and that they are not. They are above the like school top car tear, but these are not hp dragon and fly pro like two thousand dollar executive devices.

That does not seem to be I think. Who they are going for with this label IT, seems me they are more looking for these are like parents shopped for their kids or something and they don't necessarily know anything about specks, but they see plus and they go plus. Thank you that much. I mean, it's good. And I actually bet is similar to how when you look at like what tends to get certified as until evo, they sort of a very specifically targeted that label towards like these are the best like consumer things that you might buy rather than like worth shoving this at the enthusiasts and the the enterprise customers OK.

So that seems like what we're gonna get is likely a lot of things that are right at that minimum spec range, which, like you said for a crime book, is fine. My initial reaction soon is used that I three was be like, uh, that's not enough but for a lot of chrome work uses IT probably as so as eight eight and so is one hundred twenty eight O S like, that's a pretty good chongqing yeah.

My experience to core three often flies on promos.

I think maybe what I need to do is just let go of the idea that i'm ever gona get like the really beautiful, perfect, spectacular chrome book that I want.

There are certain ly are some you can try. They, they get pretty Pricey.

Y what's like the best one out there if I want, like america's fancy chrome.

in my opinion, which is just my opinion, is the issues. Cross C X five, flipped C X five. But that is not is actually not a super, super fancy. That is just one that I think is really good.

This thing looks nice. I just google this. I'm in this. okay?

This is really, really nice and the battery life is so good. That was my experience of that one. But in terms of like one that's actually super like in what luxury, what you want to try is the hp only dry and fly chrome book or something that in that line, drag fly pro.

I think that's like a more of consumer version of the drive like a book. But the little dragon fly windows laptop is like one of the absolute nicest computers you can buy. IT is a business laptop.

IT is like four thousand dollars. It's some crazy pray. The drive like robb is kind of the chrome b version of that. And IT is really, really nice. Yeah.

I love the drive and fly because it's another one of those like it's like black on black on black. It's super simple. IT reminds me of like the C R forty eight, the very first chrome book from a million years ago, where they just sort of made a black prototype and then shipped IT.

And I mean that like the best possible way, the dragon, I kind of reminds me of that it's just like I didn't try too heart there are just like, here's a cool. It's like a thing a spy would use in a movie. And I appreciate that it's very nice.

It's really expensive out, but feel looking for that. That's kind of the one that's currently for road.

okay. Do you think we're gonna get a good push here like chrome had this giant's Spike during the pandemic because everybody bot them for school crash back over over the last couple of years is the plus thing gonna. Do you think like do IT does IT have a real chance of convincing some more people to get chrome box?

I imagine that this year IT seems like everyone's kind of doing IT. Like acu is doing some, hp is doing some, aces doing some, whether that like pushes chromo purchases back to where they were in twenty, twenty, I think that's probably unlikely because that was a pretty specific event that pushed the sales that high.

Whether IT brings in new customers or whether IT just drives the people who would are rebuying chrome box to instead by chrome box pluses is our artery to judge at point. I wouldn't be surprised. But like somewhere in the middle there.

that's a good point. And I think google in this case is probably smart to look at that sort of four to six hundred dollar Price range and be like we can make some real noise there. Because right now, even on the windows side, I feel like I started to get really nervous recommending people computers in that Price range because i'd darted, making some sort of catastrophic sacrifice. But chrome books in most cases are like cheaper than that, like substantially cheaper than that in a lot of ways that people are buying and using in most o so google can make like the best five hundred dollar laptop and not worry about being the best thousand dollar laptop like i'll be sad, but that's probably Better for the actual future of chrome books in the long run.

Yeah and I I think IT probably will have the impact of making and easier for some people to shop without paying more than they need to is what i'm seeing right now. That to me seems like .

A A good thing. Yeah right. Like the laptop world right now is just one less up sell until you get to about eighteen hundred box and all you walk in and they just they just everything goes up one hundred dollars at a time until you're like, how do I buy a macbook pro?

Like that's not I can here for a dell X P S thirteen like what are we doing here? Yeah I am so sad that i'm not going to get the like kick s chrome book. I'm just made a google really for cancelling the pixel book.

Do you think that will ever come back based on nothing? This is based on nothing. Just make me feel Better.

no. I mean, anything possible? You there is there is always a possibility that in the infinite expanse, that is time selling that. So I don't want to say, no, what would happen if you want me to take the side of like a bit here?

No, I think that when when you look at where they went with a pixel but go and how much Better response IT seems like that god, I think if there is another pixel book, it's closer to the pixel book go, then IT is till like the funny convert thing a pix book was. But I that was a very cool product. Then at the time, I remember when I was like trying to figure out what's the best from bug like that was the obvious because there had been nothing like IT before. Yeah but that won't be the case. I think if I came out today.

yeah no, I think that's right. I hope google makes another one, but I am not holding my breath.

Make one just for you and bring that to your house.

That's all I want. If there's a prototype lying around somewhere that nobody wants anymore, i'll happily to take whatever picks a book to somewhere amount, right? I can talk you about this forever. Sometimes you're going to come back on and we're just gna talk about windows apps and the android apps and the connective phone thing and like all the ways the chromos almost gets IT right and doesn't quick out there. For now, we got to a break, mona.

Thank thank you very much. This episode is brought to you by google geri with the german I APP. You can talk live and have a real time conversation with an A I assistant.

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right? We're back. Let's get to a question from the verge. Cast hot line as we do on the show every week.

As a reminder, the hot line number is eight, six, six, verge, one one. And truly, I love all of the weird questions you've been sending us. So we be in some really fun, really wacky ones recently.

Thank you for everything you ve been calling and asking about. And if you don't anna call, you can always email us verge cast at the verge dot com. That works just as well.

Thank you again to everyone has been a while calling super fun times on the hot line. Our question today comes from Taylor a David. This is filer. I was just taking back to this um making blog posts or something that went viral in the late to thousands IT was all about how to use itunes to create custom players you know we want to forget about this but itunes had so much data baked into IT and to me feels where we could add our own data to IT. I feel like me and everybody else I knew we all raided our songs.

We had custom genres and you could tell itunes, hey, please make me a playlist with, uh, everything i've rated three stars are higher that i've not listened to in the past four months and then maybe mix in with that music that I have bought in the past two months that I have not rated yet. Um and he was just this great way to kind of control what you're listening to. And I can feel so sad that you with a most of the streaming services, like none of that control is there anymore.

And i'm just so curious if anybody in that streaming world thinks that there's an appetite for people that care about organizing their music and being kind of a music are about IT. Anyway, thank you so much. mothership. okay.

I love this question because I think Tyler, like a lot of at the verge and also all the verge cast family, were a lot of like music nerds and meditator nerds into the idea of like I would like to go in and typed in a lot of information about all of my songs so that I can do things with IT just feels right to me. I have two things to say about this. The first is just a Frankly hard truth about the way that the world works.

Most people, Tyler, do not want the thing that you described. I agree that that's unfortunate. I agree that there are lots of people out there who do want that and would like to have more controller with their music.

But we've been in this phase really for the last decade, where the idea of having your own music collection with, you know, things that you've ripped from, cds and stuff that you've downloaded and this sort of carefully created beautiful library is just a dying art. There are people out there who do IT, and there are lots of great apps out there, particularly on IOS. There's some really good local music playing apps that actually give you some of the stuff that you're talking about.

But in general, that's a dying behavior. People want these algorithms ally generated to play list. They want to use things like new music friday and release radar to discover new music.

People want to find all the stuff without all the work. And that is what i've been hearing from streaming services for years, that the idea of building a library of music is just a dying art. I think that sad.

I wonder if it'll come back around. But I think asking any of these streaming services to invest in that is just probably not onna happen, at least for the next few years, maybe that will change. Final is coming back in a big way.

This sense of ownership is coming back in a lot of ways in media, I think because things move around, a lot things come and go in the idea like I wanna have a collection that is mine, I think it's kind of coming back. So maybe to get Better. But for now, I would not hold my breath.

But I have Better news, which is that I think A I is going to go a long way towards solving part of what you're asking for. I think being able to say I have but all this data about what I like and what these songs are and stuff probably not onna happen, but the thing about a service spotify, is that IT has a ton of that meddle a about these songs. IT knows style of the songs, the style of the singing, how much katari there is, how much pn o there is, what the B.

P. M. is. And what spotify IT has been reported and revealed is working on is basically a way to use A I prompts to generate these kinds of playlists.

So you could say, I want music with, you know, this janua and this kind of singer and a twin guitar that is under four minutes and one hundred and eight beats per minute. That is also good to listen to by the pool. And I will just make you that play list.

I have no idea how good IT will be as we've seen as a lot of these chat lots. It's kind of F E in a lot of ways. And I actually just recently talked to goose of soda, who's the president is spottier y and has been working on all of this stuff for years.

He is very into the idea that A I can be a way to filter and sort and search through and discover new music. That's a big thing. Spotify is sting, and you see IT already with things like the daylit playlist, which is this sort of endlessly changing set of songs depending on what time of day is and what mood or in, and what you like to listen to at certain times.

So not only is what if I have this access to this sort of huge corpus of music, but also IT knows what you listen to and when and what you like and when you listen to an end. For me, in particular, I A spotify user for like twelve years now, and IT knows more about my music taste Frankly, than I do, especially how it's changed over time. So the idea that not only could I take all of its acknowledge about music, but all it's not about me, and put IT into this system where I can just query like play me songs that I really liked in two thousand six, like the last time I went through a break up, what's ones that I listen to, right? Like all this stuff is out there.

And finance. And one of the cool things, about a lot of the A I tools that we ve seen as when you really constrained IT down and instead of just saying all of the information in the world, you say music or movie recommendations or whatever, IT won't always be perfect. But it's much more likely to actually put you in sort of a useful, interesting place with some of these tools.

So I think that is potentially very exciting. I know IT doesn't solve your whole problem of being able to say, play me everything that i've read three stars. But maybe we get to a point. You can say, make me a player list of songs i've listen to more than twenty five times. That's a cool idea and would essentially gin up all of the things you've been obsessed over the years.

So i'm hopeful that we're actually going to get a lot of what you're talking about even though we the users are not going to have quite as much control over IT as I think you would like Tyler and I would like also we will see what sort of I launches, and I think a lot of other companies are going to follow. But um I am sort of fascinated by that. And also my interview with goose of is going to be on the verge cast sometime in the next couple of weeks and we talk about A I and play lists and lots of other stuff. So keep in I up for that.

right? That's enough for the verge cast today. Thanks to everybody who came on.

And thank you, as always, for listening. There's lots more about everything we talked about at the come. We're covering all of the pixel stuffer refuser up. The chrome ook plus stuff is up their new devices coming out lock on google and right now, so keep IT look on the first come.

And as always, if you have thoughts, feelings, questions or other wacky things you think you can do with the pixels, A I stuff, please let us know how hot line eight, six, six verge one one email verge cast at the verge that com super funny here from you all the time. Please keep IT all coming. I'm sorry, we don't answer emails in particular as quickly as we'd like to.

Sometimes it's been a busy few weeks, but we read them all, we love them all, and we're gna get back to as many views we can. Thank you, as always for email ing. This show is produced by Andrew marino and liam James. The verge cast is a verge production and part of the box media podcast network. Mei alex, I will be back on friday to talk about the quest review, all the trials going on and a whole bunch more in technical to see that rock on.

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