0:00:00Let me ask you this.
0:00:01Here's a good place to start.
0:00:01Have you ordered an iPhone 13 for yourself yet?
0:00:05- I have not.
0:00:07And the only reason I haven't ordered one for myself
0:00:10is because I, and this is the normal conundrum,
0:00:14unless I'm on it, iPhone review season comes right
0:00:17in the middle of like my busy season here at TechCrunch.
0:00:20We do a big event.
0:00:22We have a big conference.
0:00:25Normally I'm traveling.
0:00:26This year, obviously we weren't traveling.
0:00:27We did most of it virtual,
0:00:29but it's just a big undertaking, a big effort.
0:00:32And then usually, and you know,
0:00:34Apple people are normally very apologetic about this,
0:00:37but it is what it is.
0:00:38The iPhone release comes smack on top of it.
0:00:41I've been doing this for eight years and like the,
0:00:43I think all but the, or nine years,
0:00:45all but the like two or three years ago,
0:00:48something that the iPhone release basically landed
0:00:51on Disrupt Week for me.
0:00:52So it drives me insane.
0:00:54You know, I've got to like do my review.
0:00:55I always, you know, I want to do a good job,
0:00:57and I want to be thorough, but at the same time,
0:00:59I've got a lot of event stuff and planning going on.
0:01:01It's just a very hectic time for me.
0:01:03And so normally what happens is I get through
0:01:05with my review, I go right into Disrupt.
0:01:07I've got, you know, whatever crises I'm managing
0:01:09and interviews and you know, our whole show.
0:01:12And then by the end of that, I'm exhausted
0:01:14and I just chill for a couple of weeks.
0:01:16And then I'm like, oh, I got to order an iPhone.
0:01:19And so like what normally happens is I end up about three
0:01:24to four weeks behind everybody,
0:01:27which means that this year, because it was virtual,
0:01:30we finished the show and then the next day,
0:01:32I don't have to travel and I can't order a phone
0:01:35because my upgrades not up yet.
0:01:37So I got to wait until that's because it's like four weeks.
0:01:40- Right, you're stuck on the schedule
0:01:41from when you ordered before.
0:01:42- Yeah, exactly.
0:01:44So yeah, that's why I haven't ordered yet,
0:01:46but I probably will order and I'm going to get a 13 Pro,
0:01:49just a regular.
0:01:50- That's what I ordered, but mine's not here yet
0:01:53because I've lost my mojo for ordering as orders open.
0:01:58I think it was 6 a.m. Eastern time.
0:02:02I forget, maybe it was 9 a.m. Eastern
0:02:04and 6 a.m. Pacific this year.
0:02:06It's varied over the years.
0:02:08I remember for a while, there was a series,
0:02:10they coincided with when Andy Baio and friends
0:02:15were running the XOXO Conference in Portland,
0:02:19which for a few years coincided,
0:02:23it was like a Friday, Saturday, Sunday conference
0:02:25in Portland, Oregon,
0:02:26the three days after a Tuesday Apple event in California.
0:02:31And it was a great conference.
0:02:34But I was already in California for that,
0:02:38so it made no sense to go to fly to California
0:02:41from Philadelphia, fly home and then fly back to Portland.
0:02:45So I would just stay on the West Coast
0:02:47and my wife would usually come,
0:02:49I think she went every year to XOXO
0:02:50and she would just fly solo separately
0:02:52and we'd meet up in Portland, which seemed very exotic.
0:02:56We just don't live a life where,
0:02:58usually it's either me traveling solo
0:03:00or us traveling together and we just never meet
0:03:03in an exotic locale like beautiful Portland, Oregon.
0:03:07I actually, and I say that, but I actually,
0:03:09I like Portland a lot.
0:03:10It's a very fun city.
0:03:11But then in those years,
0:03:13all of the years that I remember from XOXO,
0:03:16it was a 3 a.m. Eastern, midnight Pacific opening window.
0:03:20And so midnight wasn't bad on the Pacific
0:03:23and it would be like, but we'd be like at a bar
0:03:25or something like that.
0:03:26There was a rooftop lounge the one time on top of a hotel.
0:03:30And it's all these people, everybody at once at like 11.58,
0:03:34everybody in the entire establishment takes out their phone
0:03:38and is like hitting reload on the Apple store
0:03:40trying to buy iPhones at the same time.
0:03:42Even though I wasn't with the iPhone media crowd,
0:03:47it's now XOXO, but it's like just as much, if not more so.
0:03:51- There's a big overlap there, yeah.
0:03:53- But now I'm off it, I've gotten lazy.
0:03:56And I did order on day one, but by the time I ordered,
0:03:59I was already, it was already four to six weeks backlogged
0:04:02or something like that.
0:04:03But anyway, I got the same thing.
0:04:04The regular size iPhone 13 Pro after one year
0:04:10with the non-Pro iPhone 12, which I loved
0:04:14in every single regard.
0:04:15- You're many or?
0:04:17- No, I did not buy it.
0:04:17- No, no, no, you got the Pro, okay, gotcha.
0:04:19- No, no, so for the last year,
0:04:21I had the regular iPhone 12, not Pro.
0:04:25- Right, right.
0:04:26And yeah, I remember we talked about this
0:04:27'cause of the telephoto, right?
0:04:28You weren't convinced that the telephoto was enough for you.
0:04:30- Well, it wasn't, yeah, yeah.
0:04:33And especially knowing when I ordered it a year ago,
0:04:36like it was, well, no,
0:04:37I guess it was more like October last year, right?
0:04:39Because they were late.
0:04:40But still, even at that time, mid pandemic,
0:04:45knowing that we were going,
0:04:46it was like as certain as anything in the pandemic
0:04:49has ever been and with all the uncertainty
0:04:51that winter was going to be bad.
0:04:54That, well, if ever there's going to be a year
0:04:57where I'm going to take fewer photos than ever
0:04:59and that the photos I take are not going to be shot
0:05:03at a distance, it's probably gonna be the next year.
0:05:05And I was kind of right.
0:05:06I mean, we wound up taking a few vacations this summer
0:05:08and there were definitely some times
0:05:10where I wished I had the telephoto lens,
0:05:11but anyway, I got the pro.
0:05:14- Yeah, yeah.
0:05:16Yeah, I was just curious actually
0:05:18when we were talking about it.
0:05:19So I checked my upgrade and I'm actually not eligible
0:05:22for an upgrade until like January, I think.
0:05:25So it must've been a quite a delay last year
0:05:27for me upgrading.
0:05:28I must've been running my own phone
0:05:30for quite a while after that.
0:05:31It's gonna be a while for me, but I'm not stressed.
0:05:33I mean, you can, the iPhone upgrade program,
0:05:36I believe you can pay early.
0:05:38You know, like pay to upgrade early.
0:05:39You basically pay the balance on your contract.
0:05:41And it's usually like 100, 200 bucks
0:05:43if you're a month or two out, but I'm not that stressed.
0:05:46I'll just keep running my 12 and you know,
0:05:50it's not that big of a deal, but I need that telephoto.
0:05:53So I'm gonna be going.
0:05:54- Well, and we've talked about this before,
0:05:56I think with you on the show,
0:05:57and I know you've written about it extensively
0:05:59in your reviews on TechCrunch.
0:06:00You love the telephoto lens and I know from your photos,
0:06:03you're just, you're really good at it.
0:06:05You just, your photographer's eye lends itself
0:06:10to those 50 to 80 ish millimeter equivalent focal distances.
0:06:15I'm more of a fixed wide angle lens person.
0:06:20Like I've owned a lot of standalone fixed lens cameras
0:06:24over the years.
0:06:25My Fuji X100S I think is a 35 millimeter equivalent or so,
0:06:30either that or 28.
0:06:33And my beloved Ricoh GRD from like 2007 or six or so,
0:06:38which is probably the best camera I ever owned,
0:06:41pound for pound, photo for photo,
0:06:43was a 28 millimeter fixed lens, no zoom at all.
0:06:48That's my natural eye, but I love having,
0:06:52I still love having the extra distance.
0:06:55Anyway, we can talk about the camera.
0:06:56- Yeah, it's the framing and cropping thing.
0:06:59- Yeah, the other thing I do,
0:07:00before I take the first break,
0:07:01I did one thing I wanted to mention in you saying,
0:07:04you know, that you're on the upgrade program.
0:07:07I wrote last week before the phone's got
0:07:10in the customer's hands, probably a day too late.
0:07:12I wish I'd thought about it the day before,
0:07:14but to recommend to people the device to device transfer,
0:07:19where you boot up your new phone and it's like,
0:07:23what do you wanna do?
0:07:24And Apple calls it QuickStart.
0:07:25You wanna just do the QuickStart,
0:07:26bring one of your own devices nearby.
0:07:29And if you want to, you can just bring it nearby
0:07:31and it takes the like wifi password from it.
0:07:35You just log in with your iTunes account,
0:07:37which even just getting the wifi password
0:07:40is a huge help, right?
0:07:43Because typing in an even moderately complex wifi password
0:07:48is way harder than just pointing your one camera
0:07:51at the blue, I don't know what you call that thing,
0:07:54the blue cloud.
0:07:55- Yeah, it's a fancy QR code, but yes,
0:07:58they're point cloud, right?
0:07:59- But it amuses me to no end,
0:08:02but also doesn't surprise me at all
0:08:05that Apple goes so far out of its way
0:08:07to avoid actual QR codes and makes these beautiful things.
0:08:11They do the same thing when you associate an Apple watch
0:08:14with an iPhone.
0:08:15But then if you just continue at that point,
0:08:16they give you the option.
0:08:17If you'd like to, we could just upgrade
0:08:20from your iCloud backup,
0:08:22or we could just transfer device to device.
0:08:24And I wrote a piece about the weird nature
0:08:26of being an Apple device reviewer,
0:08:30especially now in the era of like four new iPhones a year,
0:08:34sometimes five, if there's an iPhone SE model,
0:08:37plus iPads, it's like I set,
0:08:40and then I buy an iPhone for myself.
0:08:43And I ended up setting up a lot of iOS devices a year
0:08:48for somebody who's not running
0:08:50like a consumer report style lab.
0:08:52- Sure, right, right.
0:08:54Or not a developer where you're used to having
0:08:57a bed of test devices.
0:08:59- I years ago gave up on the,
0:09:01it used to be that you could do it from iCloud
0:09:04or do it from like an iTunes.
0:09:07Now iTunes is gone and you do it in a finder,
0:09:09but I'll call it an iTunes backup on your Mac,
0:09:13which if you encrypt it and put a password on your backup,
0:09:18which you can't forget, it's encrypted,
0:09:19and it's like good encryption.
0:09:21- And which you can only do
0:09:22if you back it up to your Mac, obviously.
0:09:24Or to your computer.
0:09:25- The computer backup without encryption
0:09:29doesn't have any of your passwords
0:09:30for the obvious reason that it's not encrypted.
0:09:33If you do encrypt it,
0:09:34they store all sorts of more sensitive stuff,
0:09:36like your passwords and your login state,
0:09:37and you get more, and that's why I,
0:09:41because iCloud backups are not end-to-end encrypted yet,
0:09:46maybe, who knows, that's a whole separate discussion
0:09:48we don't have time for,
0:09:49but since the current state of iCloud backup
0:09:51is that they're not end-to-end encrypted,
0:09:53they don't include anything that's sensitive, like passwords.
0:09:58So if you do the device backup to your Mac,
0:10:00you get more stuff.
0:10:02But it's a huge rigmarole to me
0:10:05compared to the device device.
0:10:07It might be faster, but now you've got like
0:10:10tens of gigabytes of space on your Mac
0:10:13taken up by these backups.
0:10:14- Oh yeah, they eat up so quick,
0:10:16especially with photos and all that.
0:10:17- Yeah, they eat up quick,
0:10:19and you have to remember to do it,
0:10:21and if you haven't backed up first,
0:10:23first you have to take a plug
0:10:24and plug it in your old iPhone and do a fresh backup
0:10:27so it's a fresh backup,
0:10:28then take it and plug it in the other thing
0:10:29and do a restore.
0:10:30And I'm sure lots of people listening still do it.
0:10:32There's a lot of people who just,
0:10:34once they have a system that works,
0:10:35they don't wanna take a chance,
0:10:36even if they know it's just,
0:10:38well, I could waste three hours trying it
0:10:42the way Gruber says I should,
0:10:43but I don't even feel like doing that,
0:10:45I'll just do it the way I know.
0:10:46- And for some people,
0:10:47the encrypted backup really matters, right?
0:10:49Like for security consciousness and protection,
0:10:52that kind of thing.
0:10:53- Right, but you don't have to do,
0:10:54the thing about the device to device
0:10:55is you don't have to do a backup at all.
0:10:57You just bring your old phone next to your new phone
0:10:59and leave 'em together,
0:11:01and for some varying amount of time,
0:11:03for me it seemed to take about 90 minutes each time.
0:11:06I know some people,
0:11:08Ben Thompson says it took eight hours
0:11:10and still failed for him overnight.
0:11:12I guess it depends how much stuff you have on your phone.
0:11:14But because it's device to device,
0:11:18you don't have to do a backup first,
0:11:19you don't have to do anything first,
0:11:20and Apple somehow makes a super secure connection
0:11:23from one iPhone to the other.
0:11:25You've already authenticated with your iCloud account,
0:11:27and so it transfers everything,
0:11:30or everything that can be done.
0:11:33There are some apps that can flag something as,
0:11:36no matter what, don't back this up.
0:11:38And that doesn't get transferred over.
0:11:41So like people who use the Google Authenticator app,
0:11:44you have to do a lot of work
0:11:46to move it to a new machine each time.
0:11:49But anyway, what I was thinking was
0:11:50that the biggest downside I can think of,
0:11:52and that I heard after I wrote about this,
0:11:55was from people in the iPhone upgrade program
0:11:57who do it by going to the retail store,
0:12:00because you come in, you wait,
0:12:03and they're like, "Okay, you're up,"
0:12:04and you go to the counter and you give them your order,
0:12:06and they're like, "Oh, here's your new iPhone,"
0:12:08and then you hand your old iPhone over,
0:12:10and you expect it to get the hell out.
0:12:12So you don't have time to do it.
0:12:16And I suspect if you do it mid-year,
0:12:18if you wait a couple months
0:12:19until there's not this big rush,
0:12:21I think that they might let you sit at the Genius counter
0:12:24for an hour or whatever and do it.
0:12:26But I think at the moment with COVID restrictions
0:12:29and with the seasonal rush of everybody getting a new iPhone,
0:12:32you can't do it.
0:12:32- Right, and you know that I believe
0:12:37that if you do the iPhone upgrade at home,
0:12:39I'm almost possible, yeah, they send you the new one,
0:12:42and you have the new one and your old one, obviously.
0:12:45That wouldn't make any sense to send your old one first.
0:12:47But yeah, you have the both in your possession,
0:12:49and you can do that at your leisure.
0:12:50But that makes sense.
0:12:51I didn't even think about the in-store situation
0:12:53not being friendly to that device-to-device transfer.
0:12:56- Yeah, and I got a lot of feedback from it.
0:12:59And I was a little wary.
0:13:00I was like, "I'm gonna tell everybody to do this,"
0:13:01'cause I've been doing this for so many devices
0:13:03for so many years.
0:13:04And what happened was a couple of years ago,
0:13:07it was, I was staying, I think I actually took,
0:13:11it was that year that I took the ride back to the city
0:13:14with you after the event,
0:13:16and you were kind enough to give me a ride
0:13:19and I was staying in San Francisco.
0:13:21And I hadn't set up my new iPhones yet,
0:13:23but I had gotten them from Apple,
0:13:25my review units after the event.
0:13:28It's like five in the afternoon.
0:13:29I had dinner plans with friends who live in San Francisco.
0:13:32I was like, "Well, I need to quick set up this new iPhone."
0:13:34And it was like, I didn't have my Mac handy, didn't have that.
0:13:37I was like, "Oh, what a pain.
0:13:39"I wish I could just put these right next to each other."
0:13:41And now you can.
0:13:44And anyway, I recommended it.
0:13:46Readers who did it overwhelmingly were like,
0:13:49"Hey, this is amazing.
0:13:50"I didn't know this worked so well."
0:13:51Or, "I tried this three years ago
0:13:53"and it didn't work that well,
0:13:54"and now it works so much better."
0:13:57- That was really my situation too,
0:13:58because I tried it the first year it was out.
0:14:01And like you, I always have to do six of them at once
0:14:05or four at once, or definitely a bunch more
0:14:08than a normal person would.
0:14:09And I experienced so many issues with it
0:14:12the first year it was out.
0:14:13It took an enormous amount of time,
0:14:15like five to six hours.
0:14:16It still didn't complete properly, et cetera.
0:14:19And it really turned me off of that option for a while.
0:14:22So ever since then, I have been using the iCloud option,
0:14:26which does require, of course,
0:14:28that you log back into all of your junk,
0:14:30because it does not copy over the password.
0:14:32It's not encrypted.
0:14:33So you lose a lot of convenience,
0:14:36and you have to go through a whole round
0:14:38of relogging for a month.
0:14:40You open new apps and you're,
0:14:42"Oh, great, I haven't logged into this thing yet."
0:14:44And you have to do that.
0:14:45So I'm gonna give it a try next time.
0:14:47I guess, oh, well, I guess when I get mine,
0:14:50when I actually run my personal, I'm gonna give it a go.
0:14:53Based off of your experience with it,
0:14:55it seems like maybe they've improved it quite a bit,
0:14:57or maybe it was just a bad experience
0:15:00because I had so many devices to do at once,
0:15:02and there's a time crunch and all that.
0:15:04- I am under the impression that they have a,
0:15:07I don't know how big the team is, probably a small team,
0:15:10because small teams are generally more effective.
0:15:13But there's a small team of people at Apple
0:15:15who work on this stuff.
0:15:17And to me, their work is unheralded.
0:15:19'Cause people, you know what I mean?
0:15:21You do it once, you forget about it.
0:15:22And the only time most people ever really think
0:15:25about the migration is if it fails in some way.
0:15:29If it just works and you pick off where you left off
0:15:32and all of your stuff is just there
0:15:34and you're logged into almost all of your apps,
0:15:36and it's like, you think, "Oh, that's cool,"
0:15:38and then you'd never think about it again.
0:15:41- It's unheralded work, but I think that they've been doing
0:15:46extremely good work year over year,
0:15:49making it better and better, more efficient,
0:15:51et cetera, et cetera.
0:15:52Let me take a break here, thank our first sponsor.
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0:17:54Now that we're like a week past dropping the reviews,
0:18:00what is your one week past review thinking of the state
0:18:04of the iPhone's 13?
0:18:05- Pretty good.
0:18:07I mean, really solid offerings across the board.
0:18:11I don't think there's a huge weak spot in this lineup.
0:18:15The unification of the camera systems is huge, right?
0:18:18That's a really big step forward.
0:18:20They've had alternating years now of the cameras being
0:18:24roughly comparable between the models in the same lineup
0:18:28and then where they have not been.
0:18:30And by far, of course, I prefer the years where you get
0:18:32to make a choice based on your size and usability
0:18:35and not have to give up camera capability, right?
0:18:39You don't wanna do that.
0:18:40It's not ideal and I'm sure it's not ideal for them as well.
0:18:43And recently that was due to the fact that the OIS module,
0:18:48the internal stabilization module was quite large
0:18:51and unable to fit in some of the models.
0:18:53And that's why the big one had it.
0:18:55And now they've managed to miniaturize that to enough
0:18:58of a degree where the 13 or 13 Pro Max,
0:19:02or 13 Pro or Pro Max, you're just making a call based on
0:19:07size and usability, which is the right thing.
0:19:10Like you want, oh, this feels good to me,
0:19:13so this is the one I'm gonna pick.
0:19:14You don't want, this feels bad to me,
0:19:17but it has the features I want, right?
0:19:19That's a nightmare scenario for any designer.
0:19:22It's like, oh, this feels bad, but I have to use it, right?
0:19:25And like that sucks.
0:19:26That's not how people who build tools
0:19:29want you to feel about those tools.
0:19:31And I think that's why it's in such a good state for me.
0:19:34Like that's the core of why it feels great right now
0:19:36is that you can make a call based on your desire
0:19:40and usability and even between the 13 and 13 Pro.
0:19:45And I, once again, I kind of focus on the cameras
0:19:47'cause that's what I think about a lot.
0:19:49But even between those two models,
0:19:51you're making less compromises than ever
0:19:53and really making a call based on a few edge features
0:19:56that may not be mainstream,
0:19:59like 120 Hertz or a few other ones,
0:20:02and you're still getting a really great wide angle camera.
0:20:05So if you're like someone who uses it as a primary camera,
0:20:08but doesn't really play around with the telephoto
0:20:10or whatever, you do have the option to just genuinely say,
0:20:14I can save money and still get a really great camera
0:20:18versus, oh, I can save money,
0:20:19but I know I'm gonna get up kind of a poorer camera out of
0:20:22this, right?
0:20:23And I think that's a really, really good solid position
0:20:26for Apple to be in.
0:20:27And I think it makes the choice
0:20:29for the consumer really great.
0:20:31And so they're gonna end up with, I think,
0:20:32a big, big sales year for these models
0:20:36because of the lack of compromises necessary.
0:20:38- Yeah, I think lack of compromise is a good summary.
0:20:42In the earlier years of iPhone,
0:20:44like the first half of the iPhone era,
0:20:46they were much more on a AB cycle,
0:20:51TikTok cycle, I guess, in the parlance, right?
0:20:53And famously, they were,
0:20:55for iPhone 4, 4S, iPhone 5, 5S, iPhone 6, 6S.
0:21:00And the iPhone 7 and sorta knocks,
0:21:05is when they first knocked off that.
0:21:06But those six years of like 4, 4S, 5, 5S, 6, 6S,
0:21:11I know lots and lots of people.
0:21:14And if you're a semi-enthusiast,
0:21:17a two-year upgrade cycle is super normal, super sensible.
0:21:21And if you're less of a enthusiast,
0:21:24going more, as many years as you can between upgrading,
0:21:27and everybody has family members who are like that.
0:21:29Like my mom just waited until the battery health was like,
0:21:33practically begging her,
0:21:36"Seriously, we're not really trying to sell you a new iPhone,
0:21:38"but this iPhone 6 is really, really,
0:21:42"the battery's not that good."
0:21:44I remember from that era,
0:21:46a lot of daring Fireball readers,
0:21:48after reviews would drop in every year,
0:21:50and a lot of them would say,
0:21:52"I'm on the S cycle.
0:21:53"I upgrade every two years, I'm on the S cycle,
0:21:55"and I could not be happier for it."
0:21:57I think the S, every year, these S phones come out,
0:22:01and so many of the reviews are like,
0:22:03"Ah, it looks just like last year's phone.
0:22:06"It's an incremental upgrade."
0:22:08And they're like, "I love the incremental upgrades,
0:22:10"because it's like they've taken,"
0:22:12and then they would name their two or three pet compromises
0:22:16from the one-year-old phone that were fixed in the S cycle.
0:22:20And they're calling this the iPhone 13,
0:22:24and I get why they don't use the S thing much anymore.
0:22:30They did it with the XS,
0:22:31which was not quite clearly the old school S upgrade,
0:22:36'cause there was also the XR, which was there with it,
0:22:39and brought the iPhone X style to a much lower price point.
0:22:44I get it for marketing reasons,
0:22:47that the S maybe signals to too many people
0:22:50that it is a minor upgrade,
0:22:52that it's like screaming minor upgrade.
0:22:54It's kind of curious they ever used it.
0:22:56But in other ways, you could think of these
0:23:00as sort of like the 12S.
0:23:02And sometimes, I guess, with the S phones,
0:23:05they were so close physically
0:23:07that you could just use the same cases
0:23:09as the year before,
0:23:10or they would tweak the cases by half of a millimeter,
0:23:15but they would still say it's compatible,
0:23:18this case is compatible with both the 5S and the 5
0:23:21when the new cases came out.
0:23:22To me, that's what the iPhone 13 is like.
0:23:26And I don't mean it to belittle it,
0:23:28I just think it is,
0:23:30key is what you just mentioned to me,
0:23:33is that if you prefer the smaller 6.1-inch size
0:23:37to the max 6.7-inch size,
0:23:40it's fantastic that you get the exact same camera system,
0:23:44and both have been upgraded with faster lenses,
0:23:48including a much faster, super ultra-wide,
0:23:51the 0.5X lens, which also shoots macro,
0:23:55and now the telephoto has gone from 2X
0:24:00at that size range to 3X,
0:24:02which is a lot more throw.
0:24:04And they're just the same,
0:24:05and all you have to do is pick which size you like better.
0:24:08And it's a little bit more than just which size
0:24:10you like better in your hand,
0:24:11because you do get super-duper more battery life
0:24:14with the Pro Max, right?
0:24:16- Right, right, not so to be overlooked, right.
0:24:18- Right, and so, let's face it,
0:24:21one of the things that's overlooked in all of this,
0:24:23to me, overlooked by a lot,
0:24:24is how many people, their iPhone is their primary computer.
0:24:29And at a consumer level,
0:24:33there's a lot of people who just don't own another computer,
0:24:36right, and maybe it's even just a price thing,
0:24:39and you're young and you're a student,
0:24:41or you're just low-income for whatever reason,
0:24:44and owning a high-end, a nice iPhone,
0:24:48that's your budget for a computer.
0:24:50But for a lot of people, it's just like their lifestyle,
0:24:53right, that they're just on their feet all day.
0:24:56We just watched the new episode of the season opener
0:24:59of "The Morning Show" with all these TV people,
0:25:02and I know there's this whole subset of,
0:25:04oh, Apple makes them put iPhones into all these shows
0:25:07on Apple TV+, but I think that's a realistic depiction
0:25:11of life as a TV executive.
0:25:13- Yeah, I think so.
0:25:14I think as a modern media executive,
0:25:16if you have an Android phone, good luck to you.
0:25:19- Right, like, Ted Lasso has a lot of iPhones in it,
0:25:21but it's not people walking around all scene, every scene,
0:25:25with their iPhone in front of them,
0:25:26whereas the media executives on the show
0:25:30have their phones in front of them all the time,
0:25:31and that's true, they do.
0:25:33And if you're that sort of person,
0:25:35getting the Macs makes sense.
0:25:36Like, if you're on your phone from your morning commute
0:25:40until you get home and have a chance to plug it in,
0:25:42it makes sense.
0:25:43- Totally.
0:25:45If you use a laptop 20% of the day or 10% of the day,
0:25:50and your phone 70% of the day,
0:25:53I mean, it makes a lot of sense to say,
0:25:55"Hey, I need a big typing surface.
0:25:57"I wanna see these emails.
0:25:59"I wanna read 'em closely,
0:26:00"and I have to say it's very, very easy
0:26:03"to pooh-pooh the larger size and go,
0:26:05"oh, you could type just as well until you get older."
0:26:08And then you're like, "Hey, you know what would be great?
0:26:11"If I could see anything, that would be awesome."
0:26:14And I think that it's obviously a big hit for those.
0:26:17If you do a bigger font, you got more screen real estate,
0:26:20that's a factor.
0:26:21- Right.
0:26:22The other thing, too, is, and I know,
0:26:26you and I commit to a little bit during the review period.
0:26:29We're not competitive with each other.
0:26:32Basically, people who've come on my show,
0:26:37like you and Joanna,
0:26:40it's like, we'll commit sometimes or ask questions
0:26:43while we're reviewing these phones.
0:26:45- Yeah, gut checks can be helpful, too.
0:26:47Make sure you're not an outlier.
0:26:48- Yeah, gut checks, right?
0:26:49But for the most part, one of my fears always
0:26:52with these reviews is that I'm gonna publish my review.
0:26:55I've had six days with this thing,
0:26:58and I've tried to devote as much time to it as I can
0:27:00and think about it from consumer's perspective
0:27:03and my audience's perspective in particular.
0:27:06Here's the thoughts.
0:27:07And then I'm worried I'm gonna look
0:27:08at everybody else's reviews,
0:27:09and they're all going to complain about X,
0:27:12or they're all gonna say--
0:27:13- That you're gonna just totally miss a huge flaw.
0:27:15- Yeah, miss a huge flaw.
0:27:17Maybe the closest to that was
0:27:19when the cellular Apple Watch came out.
0:27:21There was a weird glitch where some people were saying--
0:27:24- Right, a Wi-Fi issue.
0:27:25- Yeah.
0:27:27I had never encountered it.
0:27:29I think it was like that it would latch onto a public Wi-Fi,
0:27:32but it needed a authentication,
0:27:34but therefore because it was latched onto the Wi-Fi,
0:27:37but needed an authentication that the watch itself
0:27:39wasn't capable of prompting you for,
0:27:42like a coffee shop that says,
0:27:44"Oh, okay, it's a known network, so I'll latch onto it."
0:27:47But the coffee shop wants you to type a password
0:27:49or something like that that you can--
0:27:50- Yeah, the capture gateways that hotels use.
0:27:54- Yeah, it was something like that.
0:27:57But for the most part this year,
0:28:00I thought there was a remarkable consensus,
0:28:02which was my thrust, which was,
0:28:03"Look, they made the cameras better, a lot better,
0:28:06noticeably better in ways that real people
0:28:09will really take better photos and better videos,
0:28:13and they have significantly improved battery life
0:28:17in a very practical way."
0:28:19And better cameras and better battery life
0:28:22are literally the main things.
0:28:24I know there's the whole,
0:28:25you can't just ask people what they want
0:28:27'cause they'd say they want faster horses
0:28:29instead of knowing that they should switch to automobiles.
0:28:32But people know what they do with their iPhones,
0:28:33and people like more battery life,
0:28:36and people, everybody, almost everybody uses the camera.
0:28:40- Right.
0:28:42It's just not that, it's not rocket science, right?
0:28:46Like you go into these things going,
0:28:47"Oh, I wonder what am I gonna miss?
0:28:50What angles am I gonna get?"
0:28:51And I think sometimes people overthink it,
0:28:53and you don't need to overthink what people want
0:28:55from their smartphone in a lot of cases these days,
0:28:58because you know absolutely it is their primary camera.
0:29:01That ship sailed in like 2014 or something, right?
0:29:06So you know it's their primary camera,
0:29:08and you know that they use it a lot
0:29:10because every app statistic on the planet
0:29:12will tell you that people are using their phones
0:29:15more and more, and what is the result of that?
0:29:17Well, battery, right?
0:29:19So those two things are not for overthinkers, right?
0:29:22And I think that sometimes people get into overthinking it,
0:29:25and therefore undervalue those basics, right?
0:29:29They undervalue those simple, they're like,
0:29:31"Oh, surely it can't just be somebody buys this
0:29:34because it has 12% more battery."
0:29:36It's like, well, yeah, because it's a binary decision.
0:29:40Does it have more battery or less, right?
0:29:43Not, "Oh, does it have 17%?"
0:29:45Now I'm convinced.
0:29:47It's like, no, does it have more battery?
0:29:48Okay, I'll buy that one, right?
0:29:50Like most people are not sitting there
0:29:51looking at a chart.
0:29:53Like I put charts in my reviews time and time
0:29:55because I know some people like that, and that's great.
0:29:58And I, you know, obviously I need to do the measurements
0:30:00myself to contextualize my feelings,
0:30:03so I do the measurements.
0:30:04But most people are not.
0:30:05They're like, "Is it more about, oh, is that more battery?
0:30:07Oh, cool."
0:30:08And then when they go to order it,
0:30:09they just order the one with more battery.
0:30:10- Yeah. - And that's not,
0:30:11you know, you don't need to overthink that too much.
0:30:15- Tim Cook talks about that a lot
0:30:16when he talks about Apple Watch.
0:30:18And you know, it comes up so often
0:30:20that I know it's not a talking point
0:30:23because he's said it for years,
0:30:25but that the thing he loves most about Apple Watch
0:30:27is that he's been a fitness enthusiast
0:30:29since long before Apple Watch.
0:30:31But there were things he thought
0:30:32he was accomplishing each day
0:30:34that it turns out he wasn't until he got the numbers.
0:30:37And it's, I got some, you know,
0:30:40maybe some pushback I got last year.
0:30:42I gave a very, very positive review to the iPhone 12 mini,
0:30:46and I was very close to buying the iPhone 12 mini
0:30:50as my personal phone for the last year.
0:30:52It was the closest call I've ever had
0:30:55in all the years of multiple new iPhones
0:30:58of deciding which one to buy
0:31:00because I was so enamored with it in so many ways.
0:31:03Like, it's weight and the low amount of volume
0:31:08it takes up in a jeans pocket.
0:31:11Battery life was not the reason
0:31:13that I went with the 12 instead of the 12 mini.
0:31:16For me, it was typing.
0:31:18And even though the 12 mini is a size
0:31:21that's very comparable keyboard,
0:31:24the physical keyboard on the iPhone mini size
0:31:27is very comparable to the old iPhones of yesteryear,
0:31:32my thumbs have lost their ability to type at that speed.
0:31:36And I very specifically remember
0:31:38that it was during the six-day election of 2020,
0:31:44where it was five days from election day
0:31:49until Saturday morning when CNN
0:31:52or whoever it was the first to call it
0:31:53and said, "We're calling it.
0:31:55"Joe Biden is the winner."
0:31:57And I remember I watched an awful lot of TV
0:31:59in those five days,
0:32:02and I was using the 12 mini as my main phone,
0:32:05and I was like, "I am making so many typos,
0:32:09"and I'm trying to do all this stuff,
0:32:10"but I cannot leave the couch to get something else
0:32:13"because what if Steve Kornacki comes on
0:32:15"and tells me something about County Georgia?
0:32:19"Oh my God, I can't leave."
0:32:20So I was just on the 12 mini,
0:32:22and it was the pandemic.
0:32:24I wasn't leaving.
0:32:25I could easily plug the mini in for five minutes
0:32:28here and there while I got a beverage
0:32:30or MSNBC cut to commercial.
0:32:32And so I wasn't running out of battery.
0:32:34It was the typing of all things, the typing.
0:32:36And so I was like, "You know what?
0:32:37"I'm gonna buy a 12."
0:32:38But-- - Yeah, I mean,
0:32:41that's the same reason I didn't go with the mini.
0:32:42I love everything about it,
0:32:43but my meaty thumbs can't handle it, unfortunately.
0:32:47I wish they could.
0:32:48And it's crazy 'cause they used to be able to.
0:32:50I mean, I used to be there.
0:32:51But they used to be able to
0:32:53because we all used to type on that side screen.
0:32:55That's what's hilarious about it,
0:32:56but now we can't do it anymore.
0:32:58- Right, but all that said,
0:33:00but the battery life was a compromise.
0:33:02It was seriously, it was a bit compromised on battery life.
0:33:06And that was definitely a hit.
0:33:08And there were people who were like,
0:33:09"Yeah, you should have called out the battery life more."
0:33:11And it's like, well, to me, it was within what Apple said.
0:33:15If Apple said, I don't know what the numbers were
0:33:18for the hours, but if it said it was only 66%
0:33:22of the battery life of the 12 Pro or something like that,
0:33:25it's like, I think that was fair.
0:33:27That might be a deal breaker for you,
0:33:29only having 2/3 of the battery life.
0:33:31And so to me, that was a compromise.
0:33:34And one of the most amazing things
0:33:35about the battery life improvements
0:33:37with the iPhone 13 lineup
0:33:39is that this year's iPhone 13 mini
0:33:44gets longer battery life than last year's mid-size,
0:33:48regular-size, whatever you wanna call it, iPhone 12.
0:33:51So that to me is removing the compromise.
0:33:54And sure, the 13 mini still has the lowest battery life
0:33:58of all the iPhone 13 for the obvious reason
0:34:01that it has the smallest battery.
0:34:03But that's a huge one-year gain
0:34:07that the mini size now has a longer-lasting battery
0:34:12by every measure you can think of
0:34:14than last year's regular-sized iPhone 12.
0:34:17That's amazing.
0:34:19- Yeah, that's a huge leap in one year.
0:34:21And if you're talking about compromise or whatever,
0:34:25it does delete an enormous amount of compromise
0:34:28that those people had to make last year,
0:34:30the people choosing that phone.
0:34:31And it removes, obviously, the barrier
0:34:34for a lot of people that would have
0:34:36bought that last year, but felt like,
0:34:39ah, man, I run out of battery every day today already.
0:34:43I can't go to less, right?
0:34:47And that's a definite leap forward.
0:34:50- Yeah, so the two big compromises
0:34:54that they eliminated year over year,
0:34:57the mini no longer has bad battery life
0:34:59and now has perfectly adequate,
0:35:01by anybody's definition, battery life for the size.
0:35:04And the midsize 13 Pro has the exact same camera system
0:35:09as the Pro Max, and they made both cameras better.
0:35:15Very, very impressive to me year over year.
0:35:20I wanna keep talking about the camera stuff,
0:35:21but I'm gonna take another break here
0:35:23and thank our friends.
0:35:24Oh, man, I love Memberful.
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0:37:42The iPhone 13 camera system.
0:37:49Number one, I kinda feel, if regrets,
0:37:51I don't have many regrets with my review.
0:37:53Every year, I'm a mess.
0:37:55I never make the embargo.
0:37:56I came closer this year than I have sometimes.
0:37:59There have been times when the sun has dropped.
0:38:02- I didn't make it this year either.
0:38:03I mean, there's a reason it's not until then or after.
0:38:07Like everybody races to publish right away,
0:38:08and I get it, and I get agita over it every year as well.
0:38:12But I figure at some point,
0:38:14you gotta do the best job you can.
0:38:16- It's good to have a deadline,
0:38:18especially for me, 'cause there's no boss that I report to
0:38:21who's gonna be bugging me.
0:38:23But it's good to have that pressure.
0:38:25If you don't hit the exact embargo,
0:38:28you're not gonna be the top review
0:38:30in the tech meme leaderboard for the thing.
0:38:33But that's fine with me.
0:38:35People wait, but I wanna get it out.
0:38:38But it's harder.
0:38:40And I mentioned this, I forget if I wrote about it.
0:38:43I think I wrote about it.
0:38:43When I was talking about the fact
0:38:45that the Microsoft Surface event had,
0:38:47the event itself did not have a live audience
0:38:50for COVID reasons, but they did have hands-on area
0:38:55all with COVID protocols, but in small groups,
0:38:58but they had hands-on time for people in the press
0:39:01and in-person product briefings.
0:39:03And I miss that.
0:39:04I find in-person briefings so much more effective
0:39:08for communicating, and it's really starting to wear thin
0:39:11to me that we've had.
0:39:13And again, I don't blame Apple.
0:39:15There's no way they could have held an in-person event
0:39:17in September of any size for the iPhone,
0:39:21'cause there's no way to cut the iPhone's event size,
0:39:23the press list, down to a manageable level for COVID.
0:39:26So I'm not saying they should have.
0:39:28I'm just saying I miss it.
0:39:29But the other thing is that even that one extra day
0:39:32makes such a difference to me, right?
0:39:34So if the embargo is also on Tuesday morning
0:39:37and it's a Tuesday, if it's in-person,
0:39:39you get the product Tuesday afternoon.
0:39:42And if it's not in-person, they ship 'em,
0:39:45and at best, you get them Wednesday afternoon.
0:39:49And it's six days versus seven days.
0:39:52Well, that's 16% more time that you have with the product.
0:39:56Which is, right?
0:39:57It's not nothing.
0:39:59- Yeah, no, it's true.
0:40:00And it's a time crunch to get all the tests you want done.
0:40:04And that first day, my goal, my only goal,
0:40:08really the first day, is to unbox everything,
0:40:10take a peek at it, and immediately start all of the updates.
0:40:14And what you do is you get the sleep time back, right?
0:40:19'Cause your sleep time is spent with all of those devices
0:40:22using your Wi-Fi to slurp all of their apps down from,
0:40:25well, you know, with my method,
0:40:27slurp them down from the App Store and to start indexing.
0:40:32'Cause I don't start any battery tests
0:40:35until several days later,
0:40:36because I like to give them time to index.
0:40:39And I don't test fresh iPhones.
0:40:42I test them as people would,
0:40:45and I know you do the same,
0:40:46as people would do buy a new iPhone.
0:40:48They buy a new iPhone, they're gonna update it
0:40:50or restore it from their backup and start using it.
0:40:53Almost nobody, I would guess,
0:40:55a very small portion of the population starts fresh.
0:40:58So you need to have that same experience
0:41:00that the person buying it is gonna be
0:41:01to give it the proper evaluation.
0:41:04So you download everything and you let it start indexing.
0:41:07And I don't wanna evaluate based on the time
0:41:10while it's indexing, 'cause that's obviously awful.
0:41:12But that 12 hours is extremely helpful
0:41:15in letting it run all night and index and back up.
0:41:19And by the morning, I have semi-functioning devices
0:41:22that are indexing in the background,
0:41:23but that I can start running preliminary testing
0:41:25on my cameras and stuff.
0:41:27- And just on the cameras alone.
0:41:29So there's battery life, there's that.
0:41:30There's that you need.
0:41:31You need, like you said, it's exactly what you said.
0:41:34You need at least maybe 48 hours
0:41:36before you can say that the phone,
0:41:37even if you set it up as soon as it's in your hands,
0:41:4024, 36, 48 hours before you can start talking,
0:41:43evaluating battery life in a fair sense is true.
0:41:48And on the cameras alone, this year, testing,
0:41:51I devoted my time to the phone I was most interested in,
0:41:54the 6.1-inch midsize 13 Pro.
0:41:58All three camera lenses are new.
0:42:01The 3X lens is new with a new sensor.
0:42:04It's a new lens and a new sensor.
0:42:06The regular default 1X lens
0:42:09has an even bigger pixels on the sensor,
0:42:13and the bigger pixels on the sensor
0:42:14is one of the single biggest changes they can make
0:42:17to make it a more effective camera.
0:42:19And the 0.5X lens, which has gotten the least love
0:42:24over the years in terms of functional improvements
0:42:28on the Pros this year is a huge upgrade,
0:42:31a better sensor with autofocus now.
0:42:35You could quibble over whether it should be called
0:42:37autofocus or not, but it has a focusing system,
0:42:41which the previous ones were all fixed focus,
0:42:43more light-gathering capability,
0:42:45so it's more useful indoors, so all three lenses.
0:42:47So even if you're just talking stills
0:42:49and just regular stills,
0:42:50and not even talking portrait mode,
0:42:52you've got three lenses to evaluate and take pictures of.
0:42:55And then there's a macro mode. (laughs)
0:42:59Then there is portrait mode,
0:43:02which you can take at two different focal lengths,
0:43:05and now with video, they added an entirely new
0:43:09cinematic thing. - Yeah, it's like seven
0:43:10different cameras you have to evaluate.
0:43:11- There's no chance, and I don't do,
0:43:14sometimes in years past, a couple years ago
0:43:17when I first added night mode, I had a photo,
0:43:19actual photos in my review, much heavier than usual,
0:43:23when I went to my friend Lee's Hopsing Laundromat,
0:43:25which is a very dark, beautiful, beautiful,
0:43:29beautiful cocktail bar here in Philadelphia,
0:43:32but he was kind enough to let me come in
0:43:34while they were closed, and it was literally
0:43:37just candle lit, no electrical lighting at all.
0:43:40He just lit the candles like he would
0:43:41when they were open in the evening,
0:43:43and I took a bunch of photos and included them
0:43:47in my review to show night mode
0:43:50versus the year-over-year camera.
0:43:52So I have done that sometimes, but I just,
0:43:55you know, no surprise to anybody who's listening to my show,
0:43:59my reviews are usually less illustrated
0:44:02and more just textual.
0:44:04But I do take a lot of photos,
0:44:06even if I don't put them in a review,
0:44:07and there's just no time, there's just no possible way
0:44:10I could have done it all, so I did not shoot
0:44:12a lot of cinematic mode video before the review.
0:44:15But the one thing that I felt like I should have done more of
0:44:19and I underestimated how much I truly love it
0:44:22and feel that it truly changes and expands
0:44:26the capabilities is macro.
0:44:28The macro, it blows my mind, that's my big,
0:44:31my single biggest one-week-later regret
0:44:34is that I didn't do more macro and praise macro more.
0:44:38- Yeah, yeah, I think the macro side of it
0:44:43is truly exciting for a lot of people
0:44:46because it is more accessible than telephoto shooting.
0:44:49Telephoto shooting is a weird one
0:44:50because it's not truly not like some sort
0:44:53of 300 millimeter telephoto, this is not a sports lens,
0:44:55it's more of a portraiture lens,
0:44:57and it can be hard to decide when or when not to use it.
0:44:59But I think everybody understands the excitement
0:45:02and interesting ability that a macro,
0:45:05and it's like, oh, you could shoot things super close up,
0:45:07that's awesome, right?
0:45:08And people tend to, I think, use that kind of feature more
0:45:12because more things are closer to you, right?
0:45:14It's just one of those logical things.
0:45:16You're able to sort of shoot things
0:45:18that are right up next to you and get cool views,
0:45:20and everybody loves bugs and flowers and close-up stuff.
0:45:23And that aspect of it, I think, is undersung
0:45:27because I think a lot of people treat macro
0:45:30as a specialty type of photography,
0:45:32but the reality is it doesn't have to be,
0:45:34it's just always required specialized equipment.
0:45:37And that's been the big thing.
0:45:38Everybody would love it if the camera could shoot
0:45:42super close up and get texture and all this,
0:45:44but it requires, oh, it requires this $1,000 lens
0:45:46and expertise and you gotta hover
0:45:48and you gotta know how to focus and blah, blah, blah.
0:45:51It's just not accessible, right?
0:45:53And that's what this just changes.
0:45:54- And Austin Mann had in his excellent as usual,
0:45:59and not exotic at all, photo review on a--
0:46:04- Just like everybody, we're taking a little safari
0:46:07now and then.
0:46:07- Yeah, a safari in Tanzania.
0:46:11But he had the best thing to say about macro
0:46:15that I could think of, but that he carries a macro lens
0:46:18with him everywhere he goes 'cause he just wants
0:46:20to be able to capture that, and he's a professional
0:46:22photographer and he's super gifted and a very nice guy.
0:46:24I've met him several times.
0:46:26He's exactly like what he comes across in those videos.
0:46:29But he says, "I carry a macro lens wherever I go
0:46:32"just in case I see something that I want it."
0:46:34But it's, A, like you said, they're like $1,000
0:46:37starting point, and they're very heavy.
0:46:39They're really heavy glass.
0:46:41So the professional photographers who are like,
0:46:44"Well, I need a telephoto and I need a normal lens,
0:46:47"and of course I need a wide angle,
0:46:48"but I like to have a fisheye sometimes
0:46:49"if it needs to count as a thing."
0:46:51And oh, and a macro, and all of a sudden you've got
0:46:5325 pounds of glass that you're carrying around
0:46:55on your back everywhere you go.
0:46:57It's just not practical for consumers,
0:46:59and it's certainly not practical for in your pocket
0:47:02walking around daily carry, or even if you carry
0:47:06a backpack or a purse or something and you have room,
0:47:10it's just people don't, even if they take an extra lens,
0:47:13even if they walk around with a camera,
0:47:14they're not taking a macro lens, right?
0:47:16(laughs)
0:47:17It's too obscure.
0:47:20It is game-changing what you can get a photo of,
0:47:24and how neat it is.
0:47:26It's almost kinda nutty, right?
0:47:30That all of a sudden now it's just the thing
0:47:32that you were gonna buy anyway.
0:47:33Oh, and by the way, now you can take
0:47:35kind of extraordinary macro photography.
0:47:38And then in my review, I felt like I spent more time,
0:47:40rather than praising what you can do with it,
0:47:42complaining about the automatic camera shift
0:47:47and the weird--
0:47:48- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
0:47:50- It's sort of like--
0:47:51- Yeah, the switch between the wide
0:47:52and telephoto that happens, yeah.
0:47:54- Yeah, and I wish I had thought of this.
0:47:55My other regret for the review is that I didn't describe it
0:47:58as vertigo-inducing.
0:48:00It's sort of like a vertigo feeling when it switches.
0:48:03And I spent more time complaining about that
0:48:05than I did praising the capabilities.
0:48:08- Well, I mean, in some ways that's our job, right?
0:48:11Is to go to the max.
0:48:12And then I always view it as if you write a review
0:48:17and you're critical of a feature,
0:48:18or you point out the shortfalls
0:48:22of a particular innovation or feature or whatever.
0:48:24And people come in afterwards and you go,
0:48:26"Hey, cut it some slack.
0:48:27"It's actually pretty good."
0:48:28I think that I'm at the right point.
0:48:31You don't want people coming in and going like,
0:48:33"Oh, you over-praised this thing
0:48:37"that's clearly got massive flaws."
0:48:39I mean, obviously, I feel comfortable with most of my,
0:48:43well, hopefully all of my reviews,
0:48:45'cause I do feel that I evaluate things fairly,
0:48:48but I'm more comfortable if people come and say,
0:48:52"Hey, cut this thing some slack," and that's fine.
0:48:55Because that's your job,
0:48:56is to be relatively critical of a thing
0:48:59in an equanimitous sense.
0:49:01You wanna be critical and fair.
0:49:04I always tell my writers, "Skeptical, not cynical."
0:49:07Like, so you gotta come in and say,
0:49:09"Hey, this is great, but here's the where it falls short
0:49:14"of what its goals were."
0:49:17And that's kinda the key, 'cause I will say,
0:49:20I'm gonna be frank about the quality of this macro lens.
0:49:23There's a significant amount of aberration near the edges.
0:49:25It separates and blurs a lot near the edges of the image.
0:49:30It introduces some color and artifacting.
0:49:33And I mentioned this all in my review.
0:49:34This is not some sort of thing I'd,
0:49:35the ex post facto or whatever.
0:49:37I mentioned this in my review.
0:49:38But just to be clear,
0:49:39if you have a very high quality macro lens
0:49:44that has excellent optics and glass and is well-coated,
0:49:48and you're a skilled user of that lens,
0:49:50these are not comparable images between these two things.
0:49:54However, it adds what in photographic terms
0:49:58you would call a photographic language to your repertoire.
0:50:02It's like learning a few words of French
0:50:05and going to France.
0:50:06It's just a light years difference in experience
0:50:09from zero to one.
0:50:10Like you go to France and you know no French,
0:50:12you're gonna get roughly the same reception
0:50:14as any other traveler going to France.
0:50:16You go to France and you know a few words of French
0:50:18and you pronounce them properly.
0:50:19It's very key to say this
0:50:21because the French are very particular about the language.
0:50:23But if you do, you get a completely different reception
0:50:26from anybody from a cab driver to a server at a restaurant
0:50:31to a major theater hotel,
0:50:32or even just people that you meet.
0:50:34They appreciate and respect
0:50:38that you are trying to use their native language
0:50:41and to try to make some effort to understand their culture
0:50:44to some small degree.
0:50:45And it is a zero to one experience in travel.
0:50:48And that's what this macro lens offers people
0:50:50is a completely new language to speak
0:50:53that they would not have been able to speak otherwise.
0:50:55And it's like saying,
0:50:56"Hey, you don't know the language at all
0:50:57and you can never learn it."
0:50:58Or you've taken some language courses
0:51:01and you can order a coffee and a piece of toast
0:51:06and get a warm reception and a nice chat with somebody
0:51:11just by knowing a few words of the language.
0:51:12And that's what this does to me.
0:51:14It's not about perfection.
0:51:15It's not about best in class, or I say in class,
0:51:18but it's not about best in world experience
0:51:22with a macro lens and, "Oh man, this is perfect."
0:51:24It's you can do this now
0:51:26when you couldn't do it before at all.
0:51:28And it's not only that,
0:51:30but it's actually pretty goddamn good
0:51:32for such a small lens.
0:51:35Tiny, tiny bit of optic.
0:51:37And it's tucked away inside of an ultra wide,
0:51:40which is awesome.
0:51:41Just the amount of the feet that they pulled off here
0:51:43is really incredible.
0:51:45And it's not about perfection and image quality perfection,
0:51:47which is why you mention it, but don't dwell on it.
0:51:50But then you've got to acknowledge
0:51:52that it also makes things possible
0:51:55that weren't possible before
0:51:56for millions to hundreds of millions of people
0:52:00over the next few years,
0:52:01because the feature is not gonna go away, right?
0:52:03That they could never do before.
0:52:05And that to me is the importance.
0:52:06You have to balance those two factors.
0:52:08Hey, it's not optical perfection,
0:52:11but at the same time, it's an enabling feature
0:52:14that makes people able to do things
0:52:16they could not do before.
0:52:17And to that degree, it is like an exoskeleton
0:52:20or a superpower for a lot of people.
0:52:22And I think that part of it's cool.
0:52:24- I also found out recently that in addition,
0:52:27I've known that the French are very particular
0:52:29about the pronunciation of their language.
0:52:31I didn't realize they're so persnickety
0:52:33about their submarines as well, but.
0:52:35(laughing)
0:52:36- Yes, yes, apparently.
0:52:39- But I do, I love the analogy, I do.
0:52:42And it's like, you know, again,
0:52:43it's sort of like the thing where if you know enough
0:52:45that you can like ask for help getting on the Metro
0:52:47and going the right way to go somewhere,
0:52:50it like totally expands your trip, right?
0:52:52Because now you feel like, you know, I'm confident enough.
0:52:54I don't really, you know, I don't know it a lot,
0:52:56but I could ask somebody for help
0:52:58and get on the Metro and go elsewhere in Paris.
0:53:02It's like, instead of just staying
0:53:04within walking distance of your hotel,
0:53:06it totally expands your trip, I get it.
0:53:09And maybe a good analogy too,
0:53:10is sort of like when the iPhone first started
0:53:13getting serious about the phone
0:53:15and it wasn't just an afterthought,
0:53:16which I think was like the iPhone 4
0:53:19is like the first camera that had like auto-focus
0:53:21and like where Phil Schiller actually spent time
0:53:25in the introduction talking about camera features.
0:53:28- Right.
0:53:29- Somebody pointed out, it is hilarious,
0:53:31but with the original iPhone in 2007,
0:53:34it was like I waited in line,
0:53:36'cause you remember back then you had to wait,
0:53:37there was no way to pre-order.
0:53:38You had to like go to the Apple store and get in line.
0:53:40And I got in line and I got it in the afternoon
0:53:43and got one for the wife and we came home
0:53:45and AT&T totally took a nationwide crap out.
0:53:50- Yes.
0:53:51- But it was like, you had to,
0:53:53like the only way to get it hooked up
0:53:55is you had to open it up,
0:53:56connect it to a computer, to iTunes,
0:53:59and then iTunes would like authorize the phone
0:54:02and whatever you call it, what do you call it
0:54:04when it, the carrier, activate, activate the phone.
0:54:06- Yeah, carrier activate.
0:54:07- And AT&T took a nap, you know.
0:54:11And no, you know, we laugh, but it's like,
0:54:14it's not really like you could expect AT&T
0:54:16to have built an activation system
0:54:18that was ready for that type of volume.
0:54:22But then, you know, got it activated
0:54:24and it was so exhilarating and super exciting
0:54:26and we were actually going on a trip to the shore
0:54:30with Amy's family the next day.
0:54:33And, you know, it was great to have the phone already
0:54:35and I was excited to take it,
0:54:37but I wanted to write up my thoughts
0:54:38and I wrote my like 24 hour initial thoughts
0:54:41on the original iPhone and it holds up very well,
0:54:44except one thing that I didn't even mention
0:54:46is the word camera.
0:54:48(laughs)
0:54:48Never, I didn't even mention it.
0:54:51- Right, which today, if you wrote a review
0:54:54of the iPhone today, it didn't mention the camera,
0:54:56people would think you had lost your marble, right?
0:54:58They're like, what, is this a review or is this a joke?
0:55:02Right, like what are you talking about?
0:55:03And which is pretty remarkable.
0:55:05I mean, you expect, it's not just an expectation
0:55:08that the iPhone's camera is decent.
0:55:10The expectation is, is this the best camera
0:55:13that you can possibly buy in a non-camera device,
0:55:18let's call it that way, although, you know,
0:55:20there's arguments to be made that what is a camera?
0:55:23But is this the best camera you can buy or not?
0:55:25Like that's where we are now.
0:55:27It's not, is it decent, is it good, is it improved?
0:55:30It's literally, is this the best in the world or not?
0:55:33And the answer is usually leapfrogging from day to day.
0:55:36Now I have my own arguments as everybody does
0:55:38about other smartphone approaches and all of this stuff
0:55:41and what they choose to do and realism versus, you know,
0:55:45illustrative quality to photos and all of this stuff.
0:55:49But really it is a matter of either it is
0:55:51or it isn't the best camera in the world, period.
0:55:54And that's crazy to think about when you realize the fact
0:55:57that it does all this other stuff, right?
0:55:59Like it's a phone, it's not a camera,
0:56:01it does a bunch of other things.
0:56:03But the only conversation we're willing to have about it
0:56:06is is it the best in the world or not?
0:56:08And that's pretty remarkable a few years on.
0:56:10- And it's, the other thing with macro
0:56:13that really impresses me, and I did mention this.
0:56:16So the iPhone has long had a magnifier feature.
0:56:19There's an app and I have it set for a triple click
0:56:22on the home button where it just jumps to magnifier.
0:56:25And you can use it as like a magnifying glass as you go.
0:56:28But the magnifier only uses like the 1X lens
0:56:31and digital zoom and it's very, very shaky.
0:56:34And the thing I noticed is that if you just wanna see
0:56:37something small, too small for your aging eyes
0:56:40or even if you're young, just super small
0:56:42that you just can't see, right?
0:56:43Switching to macro mode on your phone,
0:56:45even if you don't wanna take a picture of it,
0:56:47if it's just like small print on something
0:56:49and you just wanna read it or look close at it,
0:56:51macro mode with the iPhone is way better
0:56:53than the magnifier app now.
0:56:54I can only presume that maybe one hand
0:56:57wasn't talking to the other.
0:56:58We all know how Apple is compartmentalized
0:57:00and the magnifier team probably wasn't briefed
0:57:03on the new iPhone hardware.
0:57:04And I can only presume that the magnifier
0:57:06is gonna be updated to take advantage of this.
0:57:08But like, just like imagine something silly
0:57:13like you're a parent and your kid thinks
0:57:15they might have a splinter in their finger
0:57:17and it's like, I don't know, I don't see anything,
0:57:20but it's like if you really wanna know,
0:57:21you can like use your camera in macro mode
0:57:24and you'll find it, right?
0:57:25Like you'll see it.
0:57:26It is, and it's stabilized, right?
0:57:29It's like there's, I don't know if it's the sensor shift,
0:57:31I don't know if it's digital,
0:57:32I don't know if they're doing it,
0:57:33'cause obviously it's a crop, right?
0:57:35You're getting this 1X crop,
0:57:39but from the ultra wide 0.5X sensor.
0:57:42So they have, for lack of a better word,
0:57:45slop to move it around digitally.
0:57:47- They call it overscan.
0:57:48- Overscan, right? - Yes, exactly.
0:57:50- Right, but it's way more stable than the magnifier is.
0:57:53The magnifier, you kinda have to brace yourself
0:57:54if you really wanna zoom in to the maximum degree.
0:57:57If you really just wanna like look real closely
0:57:59at a kid's finger and see if you can see a splinter in there
0:58:02it's fantastic, and like it's a super power.
0:58:06Like all of a sudden now you can like easily see
0:58:09like the details of a fingerprint and see,
0:58:11no, you don't have a splinter, go toughen up.
0:58:14Or, oh yeah, you do, here, let me see if I can get this out.
0:58:18- Yeah, it's gonna enable a lot of fun, cool stuff like that
0:58:22that is not necessarily just macro photography.
0:58:24And that's what happens every time Apple introduces
0:58:27a new piece of hardware or significantly enhances
0:58:29a previous one, is that there's tons of ways
0:58:32to take advantage of that from a developer perspective.
0:58:34We often see like game developers and people
0:58:37that make interactive experiences take advantage of sensors
0:58:41and things in unexpected ways.
0:58:43But right now what you've got is a focusing range
0:58:47from two millimeters to infinity, which is pretty awesome.
0:58:52You know, when you think about the range
0:58:54of sensing capabilities that you have,
0:58:56'cause when you just think of the iPhone
0:58:58as a bundle of sensors, it's a matter of what can it see,
0:59:01what can it not see, what information can it
0:59:04realistically interpret well, and at what resolution.
0:59:08So in other words, what can it enable, right?
0:59:10What features can it enable, what things can I do with it?
0:59:13And that's what this does, it's a platform.
0:59:16You know, every camera that Apple builds
0:59:18and puts on their devices is more than just a camera
0:59:22for taking photos, it is a platform.
0:59:24And we've seen companies like Snap and Facebook
0:59:26and other companies build out enormous businesses
0:59:30and will continue to, you know, in significant,
0:59:33to significant scale and significant size
0:59:36with the camera as a platform.
0:59:38It's not the phone that's the platform,
0:59:40the phone houses, you know, the camera
0:59:42and the software obviously has a play,
0:59:45but the camera itself is the platform.
0:59:47And that's pretty awesome.
0:59:48So anytime, you know, they add camera stuff,
0:59:51it's not just, oh, do you care about photography?
0:59:53Then this is important to talk about and analyze.
0:59:56It's, hey, you know, anybody that builds anything
1:00:00can really take advantage of these
1:00:02as a platform to build on.
1:00:04And that's what's exciting about this stuff.
1:00:06And the fact is, like, no matter how much I complain
1:00:07about the image quality of the macro, it's still really good.
1:00:10- Right.
1:00:11- Like for the size that it is,
1:00:12especially the central portion of the image,
1:00:15quite sharp, very, you know, very accurate
1:00:19in terms of, trust me, I've used a lot of macro lenses
1:00:22and some of them are quite crappy
1:00:24and they were built for cameras, you know?
1:00:26And this is the equivalent, I think,
1:00:28of a several hundred dollar macro lens.
1:00:30I really do.
1:00:31Like, you know, if you get into the 1200 to $2,000 range,
1:00:35sure, the glass starts getting really good
1:00:37and, you know, aberration calms down and all of that stuff.
1:00:41But in terms of buying one off the shelf,
1:00:43you'd have to spend several hundred dollars
1:00:44to get this kind of capability
1:00:46just for your regular four thirds camera or SLR.
1:00:49So I think it's a really, really nice,
1:00:52I hesitate to use the word
1:00:53'cause, you know, people get all irritated about it,
1:00:54but I really do think it is a nice gift, you know,
1:00:57to people on the iPhone.
1:00:58Like you buy the iPhone for all of the other reasons
1:01:01and congratulations, you got this cool shit too.
1:01:03In my mind, that's the way I look at it.
1:01:05- It's very cool to me too
1:01:06that it is a feature of all of the ultra wides.
1:01:10It's not, I think, right or no, no, I'm wrong.
1:01:13It's not, it's pro, it is pro only.
1:01:15I take it back.
1:01:16- Right. - No, it is pro only.
1:01:17- Cinematic mode is a feature of all the cameras,
1:01:19but the macro is pro only.
1:01:21- No, but that does lead me to my point.
1:01:23My point actually, it would be nice
1:01:24and I guess eventually it probably will trickle down
1:01:27because that's the way it goes,
1:01:28but it actually does lead me to my point though,
1:01:30which is that there's the battery life advantage
1:01:33to the pro models and now significant camera,
1:01:39camera differences.
1:01:42So the entire existence of the telephoto lens
1:01:44is a pro feature.
1:01:46And now the ultra wide has this macro capability.
1:01:51And to me, it is very, very nice that this,
1:01:55the extra 200 bucks or so that you pay
1:01:59to go from a 13 to a 13 pro is not just about
1:02:04the superficial bling of the shiny stainless steel
1:02:08instead of the matte aluminum.
1:02:11There was a time when they first started separating these,
1:02:14you know, to multiple new iPhones per year
1:02:17based with the same A series chip.
1:02:18So there's a certain technical underlying similarity,
1:02:21but there was a sort of, look,
1:02:23you're just paying for the bling of the steel
1:02:26and the shininess and the better textures
1:02:28and finish and OLED instead of LCD.
1:02:31To me, it is easily $200 worth of camera alone
1:02:35difference between the 13 and 13 pro.
1:02:38And it's nice for both reasons.
1:02:41If you care about having these camera features,
1:02:44it's a no brainer to spend the 200 bucks.
1:02:46And conversely, if you are, and there are,
1:02:49'cause there's a billion iPhone users,
1:02:52so there's like hundreds of millions of iPhone users
1:02:54who qualify for any description.
1:02:56But if you're one of the hundreds of millions
1:02:58of iPhone users who really doesn't care about the camera,
1:03:02you know, there's hundreds of millions of iPhone users
1:03:04who barely use the camera.
1:03:05Now you don't have to pay to it.
1:03:08You can get like the latest and greatest A15,
1:03:11all of these efficiency advantages from it.
1:03:14And you don't have to spend the extra money
1:03:16for a camera you're not gonna use.
1:03:18I think that's actually, the product strategy
1:03:25is working out to me in a way that makes decisions
1:03:29very easy for people to make.
1:03:31- Yes, this is a very well segmented lineup, right?
1:03:34And that is a boon to consumers making decisions
1:03:39based on budget.
1:03:41And it is going to, as I was mentioning before,
1:03:44I think it's going to really help sales
1:03:47because one of the traditional problems,
1:03:50and I think a lot of us were talking about this
1:03:52a few years back, is that the iPhone left
1:03:55a relatively large pricing umbrella, right?
1:03:57And that's one of the reasons why they started
1:03:59keeping old models around longer,
1:04:02is to fill, underfill that pricing umbrella.
1:04:05But what this does is it really bolsters
1:04:07their ability to offer a wall of options for people
1:04:11that leave very few openings for somebody to go like,
1:04:15"Hey, you know, I would buy that, but it's so expensive,
1:04:18"I'll just buy this Android instead."
1:04:20'Cause people do still make those kinds of decisions,
1:04:23regardless of what you want to talk about with lock-in,
1:04:25you know, they do still make those decisions.
1:04:27Less and less, you know, obviously over time,
1:04:30but I think that's still a risk.
1:04:31And so now what they're able to offer
1:04:33is a very solid wall of options
1:04:34with very little umbrella to creep under
1:04:37and very few gaps to shoot through
1:04:40because people are able to make a call and say,
1:04:41"Look, I get this amazing, you know,
1:04:44"these features that I really want,
1:04:46"and this sounds awesome.
1:04:47"I would really love to play around with feature X
1:04:49"or feature Y, and I can spend less now
1:04:52"because I don't care about feature X or feature Z."
1:04:55- To me, the big hole in the pricing,
1:04:57and I know the rumors say that this,
1:05:00what I'm about to say is coming next year, who knows?
1:05:02I don't want to spend time on rumors of iPhone 14,
1:05:05but the big hole in the lineup would be,
1:05:07I want a ginormous 6.7-inch phone,
1:05:11but I don't want to spend $1,100.
1:05:13I want to spend $600 or $700 or 800, you know.
1:05:18There is no non-pro max-sized phone,
1:05:22and supposedly that's coming next year
1:05:24at the expense of dropping the mini from the lineup,
1:05:27and there's also no mini-pro,
1:05:29but I feel like the mini-pro is even more,
1:05:33it's like a niche within a niche.
1:05:35The one that would, to me, would sell like hotcakes
1:05:38would be the giant-sized iPhone, not pro,
1:05:42but you kind of would see why they don't have it
1:05:46because if you really want that size
1:05:49and you have to start at $1,100, well, you know, there it is,
1:05:52but I can also see why they're adding it.
1:05:54I know what I was confused by.
1:05:55I knew there was one more very cool feature
1:05:58that I think they could have made pro only but didn't,
1:06:03and it's photo styles.
1:06:04That's what I was thinking of when I was thinking of macro.
1:06:07Macro is driven by hardware,
1:06:09then hardware is literally only in the pro.
1:06:12Photo styles, though, is a neat feature,
1:06:15and I've been playing with that more in the last week, too,
1:06:19and I'm curious what you think about that,
1:06:21and I'm curious what your settings are for it.
1:06:24- Yeah, so you're talking about
1:06:27why it's not available on the non-pro?
1:06:29- No, photo styles is on the non-pro.
1:06:32- Yeah, yeah. - Yeah.
1:06:33This is the feature that Apple went out of its way
1:06:37to say this is not a filter.
1:06:39What it is, I think a good layperson's description,
1:06:42and I'm sort of riffing on John Siracusa's description
1:06:44from ATP last week, but basically,
1:06:47everybody knows that the different camera makers
1:06:49have different sort of looks, right?
1:06:51There's the Apple look to photo development,
1:06:54and iPhone cameras all sort of, without any filtering,
1:06:58sort of have a certain color look,
1:07:01and Samsungs are more vibrant,
1:07:04and pixels are different in other ways.
1:07:08Like, you take the same two,
1:07:09and you can say these are, like,
1:07:10the Pixel and the iPhone are both excellent cameras,
1:07:13and the Samsung Galaxy latest is also an excellent camera,
1:07:16and set them all up in the same scene with the same sunlight,
1:07:19and you kinda get, you know, you get different greens,
1:07:21and you get different skin tones, and et cetera,
1:07:23and so forth, and it's not filters.
1:07:26It's just a way of taking, you know, the,
1:07:29the inherent, like, if you just took the RAW,
1:07:32and if you do shoot RAW using Halite or something,
1:07:34you see that the image off these sensors
1:07:36is awful and unusable and needs to be post-processed.
1:07:41- Yes, all images off of smartphones are post-processed.
1:07:44Big, big deal, right?
1:07:45There's just no way to get that kind of image
1:07:48without a lot of work behind the scenes
1:07:51to correct lens problems, right?
1:07:54To correct inherent issues in the optics,
1:07:57and then also now, especially with iPhones,
1:07:59to blend images, pixels, whatever you wanna call it,
1:08:04from several cameras and several exposures together
1:08:07to rectify problems in the sensor, right?
1:08:11So really, all this post-processing is improving the quality
1:08:15of the image by correcting issues with lens and sensor,
1:08:18right? - Yeah.
1:08:19- Like, that's really what it boils down to,
1:08:20'cause the sensor's just tiny, and so is the lens,
1:08:22and that introduces a lot of image artifacts,
1:08:25and all of the post-processing is there
1:08:27to correct those artifacts. - Right.
1:08:29- So when you do post-process, I think the,
1:08:33there's two analogies that are apt here.
1:08:36One is film, right?
1:08:38Like, what kind of film were you going to choose
1:08:39to shoot with your film camera?
1:08:41And that's really what photo styles is about,
1:08:44photographic styles.
1:08:45And then another one is sort of shooting quality,
1:08:47and that's a little bit harder, and in all reality,
1:08:51like digital cameras from Nikon and Canon
1:08:56and Minolta early on, they all had this sort of
1:08:59native approach to how they color-corrected
1:09:02and color-balanced their sensors,
1:09:05and for a while, it's a little different now,
1:09:07because I think everybody's gotten so good at it,
1:09:09but for a while, you could absolutely tell
1:09:11what kind of body you were shooting,
1:09:13just by looking at the processing, JPEG processing,
1:09:16that one camera would do or another would do.
1:09:18You could tell, like, oh, look,
1:09:19it's slightly more contrasty,
1:09:21so that's like Nikon's approach right now,
1:09:23or it's slightly punchier in saturation,
1:09:25especially in the red, so that's Canon's approach right now.
1:09:28This was a thing you could tell early on.
1:09:30Nowadays, it's much more sophisticated,
1:09:33as everybody's gotten better at this,
1:09:35but you could tell that.
1:09:36So there's kind of two things going on,
1:09:38and one, that underlying processing,
1:09:41just provides a basic image to somebody
1:09:44shooting a picture in the JPEG, is a choice.
1:09:47That's a decision that the camera teams
1:09:50at these companies make, and it is an editorial call.
1:09:54You are sort of saying,
1:09:55this is how we want our pictures to look,
1:09:57and as you said, if you shoot Halide or some other camera
1:10:00where you can pull a raw image,
1:10:03you could see what the no choices means, right?
1:10:06If you make no choices, you get this really rough image.
1:10:10So you have to make some decisions
1:10:12about the way your images look,
1:10:14and so each company, whether it be Samsung or Apple
1:10:17or Google or whoever, makes a decision
1:10:21about the way their images are going to look,
1:10:23and they make that decision based on a variety of factors,
1:10:26but the large portion of those factors
1:10:28is what do we think customers are gonna like, right?
1:10:30What do we think people are going to like,
1:10:32and how should these images look to make them the most happy
1:10:35about their pictures when they use this phone?
1:10:38And so Apple's decision making on that front
1:10:40has always been to hew towards the neutral,
1:10:44so more of a reality based take
1:10:47versus a lot of other companies that say,
1:10:49hey, we know reality exists,
1:10:51but our customers tend to like images that are punchier,
1:10:55both in saturation and in contrast.
1:10:58So you'll find the images from companies like Samsung
1:11:01or Google or other companies,
1:11:03they have made a different editorial call.
1:11:06I am not here to pass judgment
1:11:08on any of those editorial calls.
1:11:09I have my own preferences, as I'm sure other people do,
1:11:12and that's okay, but Apple's call has always been neutral,
1:11:16neutral, neutral.
1:11:17That's their rallying cry.
1:11:19They want things to look naturalistic and neutral
1:11:22as much as possible versus, say,
1:11:25pleasing on a digital screen versus pleasing in print.
1:11:28Like there's so many calls you could make, right?
1:11:31And that is, like that's a huge call they've had to make.
1:11:34And so photographic styles is their concession
1:11:38to people that do not like Apple's choices.
1:11:42And the difference between them and a filter
1:11:46is that they are applied in situ
1:11:48as the people are taking the pictures
1:11:50and woven in to the files that'll allow the phone
1:11:54to render those images,
1:11:56which means that you can alter them afterwards,
1:11:59but they are part of the processing pipeline,
1:12:02allowing you to get a natural-looking image
1:12:04according to your tastes without applying a filter
1:12:08to the already rendered pixels.
1:12:10And that creates a situation
1:12:12where you have the best possible image quality
1:12:15while adding customization.
1:12:18And this would be in film photography
1:12:20akin to choosing your own roll of film
1:12:22or style of film that you wanted.
1:12:25- What a great description.
1:12:26Right now, when you go to adjust these,
1:12:28they have a couple of presets that you can choose from.
1:12:31I think it's like rich contrast,
1:12:35contrast vibrant, warm and cool,
1:12:39and then you can take any of them.
1:12:41Like, so for example, warm,
1:12:43and there's only two settings with each one.
1:12:45One they call tone,
1:12:47which I think is mostly about contrast.
1:12:49And then there's warmth, which I think most people,
1:12:52even casual photographers kind of know it's, you know,
1:12:54to go redder and oranger and warmer or bluer and cooler.
1:12:59Like warm is zero tone, 50 warmth,
1:13:04but that's the only two factors.
1:13:06There's two factors and you can adjust them if you want.
1:13:08So you can take one of these,
1:13:10and then of course there's standard,
1:13:12which is just, this is, you know,
1:13:14the regular Apple pipeline that we've come to know
1:13:17and love or not love.
1:13:20So you can take any of these and adjust them.
1:13:22So you could take contrast,
1:13:23which I think is like negative 50 tones or a warmth.
1:13:26And I turned it up a little bit more to,
1:13:29that's the one I've been shooting with,
1:13:30where I've taken my tone to negative 65
1:13:33and my warmth is still at zero.
1:13:34I'm curious if you've adjusted yours
1:13:38or are you still shooting standard or what are you shooting?
1:13:41- Yeah, I mean, the fact is I kind of like Apple's
1:13:44general tone.
1:13:46I like the neutral tone.
1:13:47So I don't know if I'm going to do one.
1:13:49I haven't done a personal one yet, right?
1:13:52So I haven't like developed my own yet for sure.
1:13:54I've been shooting everything, mostly on neutral.
1:13:57I think that the boosted contrast,
1:13:59which I believe is vibrant.
1:14:01- Yeah, no, I think that's--
1:14:03- No, they have an increased contrast one.
1:14:05I always forget what the names are.
1:14:06- That's the one I've done.
1:14:08That's, I forget what they call it though.
1:14:11I'll reset, reset to, oh, they call it rich contrast.
1:14:14Okay.
1:14:15- Rich contrast.
1:14:15Okay, so the rich contrast one is very pleasing,
1:14:18obviously in casual, you know, look,
1:14:20but I think it blocks up the blacks a little too much, right?
1:14:25It clips a little too much of the black for my tastes.
1:14:27And I know why it's there and why I think a lot of people
1:14:30are going to use it by default,
1:14:31because that it is punchier and more contrast
1:14:34is inherently more pleasing to the human eye.
1:14:36It really is.
1:14:37And so I think that that will be a very popular setting,
1:14:40but I also like the fact that they do have
1:14:43the negative 100 to positive 100 scale there,
1:14:47because that allows people in the slider,
1:14:51because it allows people to kind of come up
1:14:53with their own style and then share it.
1:14:55You can just screenshot it and share it with somebody else.
1:14:57It'd be like, try this.
1:14:58Like, this is mine.
1:14:59You know, this is what I really like.
1:15:00And somebody's like, oh, I like that.
1:15:01And it's kind of like, you know, Lightroom's presets, right?
1:15:06And people have made entire businesses
1:15:09off of developing Lightroom presets
1:15:11that they distribute and sell to people.
1:15:14And people love them.
1:15:15You know, they give you a kind of like starting point
1:15:18or a look that you can export.
1:15:21And I think that having those numbers on there
1:15:22is really cool, because it lets people set their own,
1:15:25make their own choices, and then tell somebody,
1:15:28oh, try this one.
1:15:29The one thing I wish they had was a specific custom option,
1:15:34which they don't have right now.
1:15:35It's just cool, warm, vibrant, rich, contrast, and standard.
1:15:39They should be like a user one, you know, by default.
1:15:41- Well, you can adjust them though.
1:15:42- So right now you have to change one of them.
1:15:43- Yeah, yeah.
1:15:43- No, no, you can't change any of them.
1:15:45- Right. - Which is great,
1:15:46but you can't like sort of save one as your own
1:15:48and leave the other ones alone.
1:15:49- I can't make like a--
1:15:50- You have to pick one you don't like
1:15:52and then adjust it. - Right.
1:15:52And then you lose their standard,
1:15:55although they have a little reset button
1:15:56that you can double tap to go back.
1:15:59- It's not the end of the world.
1:16:00You can reset it.
1:16:01And I just think that if you're gonna offer
1:16:03the ability to build user settings in,
1:16:06you should add a user option,
1:16:08which I would guess would come at some point.
1:16:11It's just a matter of how long it's gonna take.
1:16:13But I think that that is the one little missing thing.
1:16:16But I love the fact that you can now,
1:16:18somebody who say comes from the Samsung world,
1:16:21like comes from an Android phone
1:16:23and really loves their take on it.
1:16:26Now you can get much closer to that
1:16:27and you don't have to do post-processing.
1:16:29- Right.
1:16:30- You can get it right in the image pipeline,
1:16:32which means that when you do export that JPEG,
1:16:34and most people don't know this,
1:16:35but anytime you share an image anywhere outside of iOS,
1:16:39it renders that image, right?
1:16:41That's what it does.
1:16:42It applies any color adjustments and things
1:16:44that you have set to it,
1:16:46and then renders it for the outside world,
1:16:48outside of Apple's ecosystem.
1:16:50And if you are able to set up something
1:16:54that feels more comfortable and pleasing to you,
1:16:56why not, right?
1:16:58Like, you know, the editorial decision is great
1:17:00and I get it.
1:17:01And I understand why Apple has leaned into that for so long,
1:17:03'cause they wanna make sure to, you know,
1:17:05kind of present as close to what they can determine
1:17:08as the truth to people for their images.
1:17:11But I don't think there's any harm in allowing people
1:17:13to develop and own their own photographic styles,
1:17:16and I'm glad it exists now.
1:17:17It's cool.
1:17:18- Yeah.
1:17:19Austin Mann's custom settings.
1:17:21Now, he admits, like, for his, like, this super review
1:17:23on the Tanzanian thing, he shoots RAW with Halide
1:17:26and then develops them and, you know,
1:17:28'cause he's a pro and he's using the iPhone
1:17:30as a pro camera.
1:17:31But he also acknowledges that as a regular person,
1:17:35sometimes he just takes his phone out and shoots something
1:17:37and he just wants it, you know, he'll just shoot JPEG.
1:17:41So his style, his custom style, if you wanted to name,
1:17:44if you could save a named Austin Mann photographic style,
1:17:48it would be negative 30 tone.
1:17:50And even though it's negative,
1:17:51that actually means a little bit more contrasty
1:17:54and plus 15 warmth.
1:17:56That's the Austin Mann style.
1:17:58And so I'm gonna switch mine to that.
1:18:00I agree you should be able to save one,
1:18:02even if it was just one spot, right?
1:18:04Like, if it was just one called custom.
1:18:06- Yeah, just one slot, right.
1:18:08And eventually it should go beyond that,
1:18:11they should be able to export them, share them.
1:18:12- Yeah, yeah, and then you could import them.
1:18:14The thing that would be cool, and I think,
1:18:16I can't help but believe, I don't wanna do it myself
1:18:18'cause I don't wanna buy these phones,
1:18:20but it'd be cool, like, let's say,
1:18:21like everybody's much anticipating
1:18:23sometime in the next few weeks,
1:18:24Google's gonna come out with the Pixel 6.
1:18:27And, you know, a lot of people love the Pixel look
1:18:31and the Pixel's, you know, almost everybody agrees
1:18:34that the very best thing about Google's Pixel phones,
1:18:37number one is that they're quote unquote pure Android,
1:18:40and number two, people love the cameras.
1:18:42They do shoot excellent, excellent phone, at least still,
1:18:46and, you know, maybe the video's been lagging
1:18:48in recent years, we'll see if they catch up.
1:18:49But anyway, let's say you love the Pixel look,
1:18:52could somebody figure out, like,
1:18:54what should you set your iPhone to
1:18:56to get a Pixel look out of your iPhone
1:18:59in terms of how it processes the sensor image?
1:19:02I think that sort of thing is,
1:19:03somebody's gotta run a, set up a website
1:19:05that publishes numbers like that.
1:19:08I think it'd be pretty cool.
1:19:09- Right, yeah.
1:19:10Four options are good, you know.
1:19:12- Yeah, and also--
1:19:13- If you're not gonna have any, go neutral.
1:19:16That's my opinion, but once you're gonna have one,
1:19:18that's great.
1:19:19- And it's, one of the other cool things about it
1:19:21is if you don't give two shits about any of this,
1:19:23and this whole last 10 minutes of the show is like,
1:19:26I don't care about that, guess what?
1:19:28You don't have to worry about it.
1:19:28It's just gonna shoot standard iPhone processing,
1:19:31which, you know, iPhone is generally pretty well regarded
1:19:34as a phone camera.
1:19:35You don't have to do a damn thing,
1:19:37and it'll never get in your way,
1:19:39and you never have to pick it, and it doesn't, you know.
1:19:41- Yeah, it's the equivalent of the,
1:19:43I'm feeling lucky button on Google.
1:19:46You know, it's just, give me some results.
1:19:49And I think it's good.
1:19:50You know, it's important to have that,
1:19:52and the fact of the matter is,
1:19:53the team has a proven track record
1:19:55of producing pretty great images,
1:19:57so by default, you're getting a great image,
1:20:00and then by not default,
1:20:02by if somebody wants to play with it or more,
1:20:04play around with it more,
1:20:05now you're offered more options
1:20:07in getting the kind of image that really appeals to you
1:20:09and makes you excited.
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1:21:38Last but not least for the show is,
1:21:42and maybe last and most interesting, cinematic mode video,
1:21:47which I told, I don't think I was dismissive
1:21:53when I called it a gift.
1:21:55My summary of it on my review was,
1:21:57look, it's a gimmick, but I don't mean that pejoratively.
1:22:00Gimmicks can be good.
1:22:02And then I saw your stuff and I saw some other stuff
1:22:07and I started thinking, hmm, maybe it's not even a gimmick.
1:22:13It is weird and it's got some technical glitches,
1:22:17but I don't know, I'm starting to think this is useful.
1:22:22And then I saw Andre Laro's short film, "Float,"
1:22:27which I linked on "Daring Fireball" last week,
1:22:30which is just a few minutes long.
1:22:33And it's his directorial debut.
1:22:36I think he was at Adobe for a while.
1:22:38He obviously knows how to shoot photos,
1:22:39but if you're listening to this,
1:22:42I hope that you saw my post on "Daring Fireball"
1:22:44and watched his movie, which he shot in cinematic mode.
1:22:49And even if you go into it thinking, okay,
1:22:53Gruber says this is a good movie to watch
1:22:55to see cinematic mode in action,
1:22:5710 seconds in, you will forget about looking for anything
1:23:02like fringes or focus lengths or anything,
1:23:05and you'll just be absorbed.
1:23:06And then a minute in, you're gonna be holding back tears
1:23:09and choking up and your heart is gonna be pounding
1:23:13in your chest and that's art, right?
1:23:15That's why you make movies.
1:23:17And then you're at the end and you're like,
1:23:19oh wait, that was, let me go back and start looking
1:23:21at the cinematic mode.
1:23:22And it's like, and then all of a sudden
1:23:23you're watching it again.
1:23:24And it's like, hey, this is no gimmick.
1:23:26This shit's for real.
1:23:28I don't know, that blew me away.
1:23:30I'm curious, and you had a whole piece,
1:23:34you had a whole feature, you had an interview
1:23:36with Kayan Drance and Johnny,
1:23:38I already know his first name, Johnny--
1:23:41- Manzari. - Manzari from Apple.
1:23:43He's a user interface designer, works on camera stuff.
1:23:47And I thought it was a terrific interview.
1:23:50- I'm curious, post-interview, what your thoughts are.
1:23:53Are pre and post-interview and what are your thoughts
1:23:57when you first saw cinematic mode
1:23:59and what are your thoughts now, one week post-review?
1:24:02- Yeah, so obviously you saw the presentation
1:24:05and I watched it, like all of us,
1:24:08and we're like, oh, look at that.
1:24:09It's like you're in the flow and trying to cover everything
1:24:13and type about it and give people observations.
1:24:16And so it's like, oh, cool, cool.
1:24:17And you just soon get to really absorb it all that deeply.
1:24:22It definitely was, their demo film cracked me up
1:24:25because it was super rack-focus heavy.
1:24:27Obviously they're showing off the feature,
1:24:29so you can't fault them for that.
1:24:30But somebody made a joke on Twitter, which I laughed about,
1:24:33and it was like, I don't know, Apple demonstrates
1:24:36how to make people sick of rack-focus or something.
1:24:38But it's, which is funny.
1:24:41But they kinda show it off, right?
1:24:43So it's a narrative told essentially all in focus changes,
1:24:47which in some ways is cool.
1:24:49And honestly, some directors work that way, right?
1:24:52Some directors work with fixed frame
1:24:55and focal plane changes, hopefully not to excess,
1:24:59but honestly as a really big pillar
1:25:02of their storytelling modes, right?
1:25:05Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg,
1:25:07there are a handful of directors
1:25:09that just use the focal plane
1:25:13in a motive, directorial, narrative driving tool.
1:25:18And all directors, for the most part,
1:25:20use it to some degree.
1:25:21Now I will say that like for a long time and for a while,
1:25:25this is sort of subtext to this whole conversation
1:25:28about adding rack-focus and synthetic bokeh
1:25:31and all of this stuff to digital camera or to an iPhone.
1:25:35When the switch to digital happened,
1:25:38one of the first things to go,
1:25:40to one of the first storytelling tools
1:25:42that everyone lost was bokeh, right?
1:25:46Was background blur, selective focus,
1:25:49whatever you wanna call it,
1:25:51slim field of focus, et cetera.
1:25:54It was one of the first tools to go
1:25:55specifically because digital cameras,
1:25:59most of the early cameras that were used by filmmakers,
1:26:04DVC cameras and those of that kind,
1:26:07they actually did not take standard lenses, right?
1:26:09They used integrated lenses.
1:26:11And I mean, especially in the indie world, right?
1:26:13Obviously there are a lot of high-end shooters
1:26:15that still had access to detachable cameras
1:26:18and all this stuff or detachable lenses.
1:26:20But a lot of the run and gun filmmakers
1:26:22and people who came up with the world,
1:26:24the Aronofskis of the world
1:26:26and people that were playing around with digital early,
1:26:29Steven Soderbergh, et cetera,
1:26:31the footage that they shot and the films that they shot
1:26:35had this sort of inherent flatness,
1:26:37both of tone and of focus because of the lens size
1:26:41and the distance away from the CCD that the lens rested,
1:26:45it inherently created this deep,
1:26:47hyper deep field of focus.
1:26:49And they utilized it as a tool, right?
1:26:50As sort of the opposite kind of tool about,
1:26:53you know, how to direct a person's eye through the frame
1:26:56without focus, like, you know,
1:26:58now they had to change their language, right?
1:27:00And learn new languages.
1:27:01And this was sort of part of the transition from film
1:27:04and shooting on film and shooting analog
1:27:08to shooting digital, right?
1:27:09Was this era where there was a lot of that going on.
1:27:12And then eventually, of course, the cameras caught up
1:27:16and that tool was added back to their tool bag.
1:27:19But what you end up with with an iPhone
1:27:21is the absolute pinnacle of that kind of camera.
1:27:25It's like to the extreme because the lens is so small
1:27:29and it's so close to the plane of the sensor
1:27:32that it inherently has an insanely deep field of focus.
1:27:37You can see this,
1:27:38like when you just shoot a regular picture,
1:27:40the reason that you can select a focus point deeper
1:27:42into the image and not with cinematic mode
1:27:45is because inherently most of the field that you see
1:27:48in your lens is in focus, almost all of it.
1:27:50And that's just part of the physics
1:27:53of the way these lenses work.
1:27:54So you've got that whole context going in
1:27:57that previously to this feature being launched,
1:28:01you have pretty much no options or alternatives
1:28:04besides trying to use the telephoto
1:28:06and shooting as close as possible, right?
1:28:08To introduce natural bokeh to the lens.
1:28:12You could use some post-processing or whatever,
1:28:15but inherently most of the films,
1:28:18if you're trying to shoot a film that were shot on iPhone,
1:28:20had inherently hyper deep focus
1:28:23because of the physics of the lens.
1:28:24So now you go and say, all right,
1:28:27like how are we gonna fix this?
1:28:29Or how are we gonna introduce the language of film
1:28:33back into the iPhone in a way that can reward people,
1:28:37both that are really good at this stuff
1:28:39and people that may not even know the language
1:28:42or how to speak the language, but want to, right?
1:28:45They know, they've grown up watching films
1:28:47and watching movies and they would love a more movie-like
1:28:50look to their images.
1:28:52They just have no idea how to get from zero to one.
1:28:54And that's the problem that they started with.
1:28:56Not, oh, we need a cinematic mode on the iPhone,
1:29:00how do we build it?
1:29:01It's how do we take that language of cinema
1:29:05that's hundreds of years old and make it accessible
1:29:09to almost anybody that was able to pick up this camera
1:29:12and spend a few minutes learning how to use this feature.
1:29:15And that I think was, you know,
1:29:17is the thing Apple does so well.
1:29:18They take a really complex, hard problem,
1:29:21and then sort of put it through the intestinal tract
1:29:23of their development process and small team's
1:29:26development process and come out the other side,
1:29:29hopefully with something that's actually useful.
1:29:32- It's sort of, and the way they've done it
1:29:34is sort of taking the weakness,
1:29:38which is that you inherently have this very deep field
1:29:43of focus with video shooting on the iPhone,
1:29:46and weakness in terms of if you want a depth of field
1:29:50bokeh effect and turning it into a strength.
1:29:53- Right, yeah.
1:29:54- By doing it all computationally,
1:29:58but having that depth there in the footage that you shot
1:30:03and using computational photography
1:30:05to artificially compute the blurring
1:30:09of either the foreground or the background.
1:30:11But because that depth of focus is there,
1:30:13you can change it all in post.
1:30:15And so if the wrong thing happens
1:30:17and you were counting on the machine language driven AI,
1:30:23to notice that your actors turn their head
1:30:28to look at another actor and wanted the focus to shift
1:30:31from the first actor to the second,
1:30:35and it didn't happen or it didn't happen
1:30:36when you wanted it to, you just tweak it in post
1:30:40and it's there and it's not, you didn't lose anything.
1:30:43- I'm very impressed by it.
1:30:45And I know it's so much, the analogies to portrait mode,
1:30:48stills and iPhone are very similar,
1:30:50whereas it has some problems getting hair
1:30:54and the edges of hair and the frame of somebody's glasses,
1:30:59if they're at, like at a 45 degree angle
1:31:03where the outer frame of the far lens of their glasses
1:31:07is not really part of their face.
1:31:09It's like the machine language is looking for a face.
1:31:12And so the glasses can sometimes get blurred out.
1:31:14It's the same exact problems,
1:31:16but that's gotten a lot better with portrait mode
1:31:19year after year, it's that typical Apple incrementalism
1:31:23where they just keep grinding away at this problem
1:31:26and they know the problems better than anybody.
1:31:30And it's, you know, the results can be really,
1:31:34really impressive though.
1:31:35I think this is really cool.
1:31:36And again, if you don't care about it,
1:31:38you don't have to shoot it.
1:31:39This one actually is a dedicated mode, unlike macro.
1:31:42So you're never gonna accidentally end up
1:31:45with the cinematic mode footage if you didn't want it,
1:31:48but even if that happens, you can just turn it off.
1:31:52You can just take the whole clip and you're like,
1:31:54ah, crap, this focus stuff is not appropriate
1:31:57for this thing I shot at all.
1:31:59You can just go in and edit it and turn off cinematic mode
1:32:02and you just get the non cinematic mode version of the video
1:32:07with everything in focus as you would expect.
1:32:10So you've lost nothing, right?
1:32:12It's not like, ah, I blew my chance at my kids' home run
1:32:16in the little league game because I was a dope shooting
1:32:19cinematic mode.
1:32:20- Yeah, trying to get this focus right, yeah.
1:32:22- Right, right. - Exactly.
1:32:23- And the kid gets to first base and he's all blurry
1:32:26and I wanted to, you know, they just turn it off.
1:32:28You can just turn it off and you're fine.
1:32:30- Every once in a while, yeah, every once in a while
1:32:32you can hit the limits of the focusing range, right?
1:32:35So like if you're shooting something extremely close
1:32:37and the thing you wanna focus on is extremely far away
1:32:40and your camera is physically very close
1:32:42to the foreground object,
1:32:43the background can still be out of focus, right?
1:32:45So it's not completely foolproof,
1:32:47but in most casual shooting situations,
1:32:50people are gonna have a ton of options
1:32:52and what to choose and what to pick from.
1:32:54And Apple did a ton of work and will continue to do more
1:32:57with sort of automatically directing it.
1:32:59It's actually crazy how much stuff is going on there
1:33:01and I think most people don't realize exactly
1:33:03how much is happening,
1:33:04especially the people who are poo pooing it
1:33:06'cause yes, the background segmentation
1:33:09still has its weaknesses and it still has a general loss
1:33:15of resolution or definition around the edges,
1:33:18as you mentioned here, especially the background is complex.
1:33:21You know, chain link fences or trees
1:33:23or whatever the case may be, right?
1:33:24Like there are instances where it just falls over
1:33:27and some people don't like it
1:33:29and some people it just, oh, it irritates me to know it.
1:33:31Great, fine, right?
1:33:33But for a lot of people,
1:33:35I think it's actually going to be really cool and fun
1:33:38in the near term and then long-term
1:33:41as it gets better and better,
1:33:43it's actually gonna become a real tool, right?
1:33:45Like there's this big phrase in Silicon Valley
1:33:48like that big changes or big inventions often begin
1:33:53being perceived as toys, right?
1:33:55Like, oh, look at this toy, right?
1:33:56And then it's like, no, it's not a toy now.
1:33:59Like there's a billion dollar business on the top of it.
1:34:02- Personal computers in general were toys.
1:34:04Then they became accepted and then the Macintosh came out
1:34:08and the graphical user interface was a toy
1:34:10because the serious ones all had a command line.
1:34:13- Yeah, exactly, exactly.
1:34:15Where's my DOS?
1:34:16Yeah, exactly, that's it.
1:34:17And I think that's what the state
1:34:19that this is in at the moment.
1:34:20It's not quite a toy.
1:34:21I mean, it's hard to call it a toy when it actually,
1:34:24I think turns out pretty great results in a lot of instances
1:34:27and there's so much computational power behind it
1:34:31but I can understand it being perceived as a gimmick or toy
1:34:35in its current state, I get that, right?
1:34:38But it's not.
1:34:40It is actually much more and it may take some time
1:34:43for it to realize that potential
1:34:45and it certainly is not perfect by any means
1:34:48but it's far more than a throwaway BS thing
1:34:51that doesn't work.
1:34:52And frankly, when I was reading some of the other reviews
1:34:55of this thing, of the feature or people that integrated
1:34:58into their reviews, my big takeaway was that everybody
1:35:01was reviewing it wrong and I don't wanna call anybody out
1:35:04individually 'cause I think people are great
1:35:06and everybody's gotta focus and everybody, you know,
1:35:08I respect people's opinions based on intelligent
1:35:10understanding and the fact of the matter is,
1:35:13it's absolutely viable to look at the results
1:35:17from shooting it in testing, very close testing
1:35:21of a particular object or trying to isolate subjects,
1:35:24trying to break down the various things that are happening
1:35:26from synthetic bokeh to gaze detection and following
1:35:30to automatic tracking to focus tracking
1:35:33which are two different things.
1:35:35It's fair to break all those down and like test each one
1:35:38of them individually but the fact of the matter is,
1:35:41there's no, unlike many other tests,
1:35:44there really is no baseline to test from.
1:35:48Like this is brand new.
1:35:50It is not what you were, it emulates other things
1:35:55but this is a brand new feature, right?
1:35:57It's a brand new thing that this bundle of things
1:36:00that they've created is brand new.
1:36:02And so I think testing it in the same kind of test bed
1:36:06or lab focused environment to try and say,
1:36:09does this thing work the way they say it does?
1:36:11Oh, look at the segmentation falls over here and there
1:36:14and it just sucks, it doesn't really work at night,
1:36:16it doesn't work this way or that way or the other thing,
1:36:19absolutely 100% valid, viable but I feel misses the point
1:36:24so badly as to actually misrepresent the feature entirely.
1:36:27You end up in a situation where though all of
1:36:31the negative bits actually end up to a larger
1:36:35negative value than the feature actually deserves, right?
1:36:39So like while acknowledging that it has flaws
1:36:41and it is by no means perfect and Apple will be the first
1:36:44to admit that if you can get them to do it on the record,
1:36:47which good luck but the team knows, right?
1:36:50Like they know that they're working towards something
1:36:53but the fact of the matter is,
1:36:54it's actually really fucking cool right now
1:36:56and it works at night, sorry, I tried it, it works fine,
1:36:59I don't know what people are doing there
1:37:00that not make it work.
1:37:01It also works in many situations where Apple says
1:37:04it should work and it does.
1:37:06If I've seen it follow the gaze of a person
1:37:09to focus on another person in the frame,
1:37:11I've seen it use overscan to track and see that a person
1:37:15is entering the frame and then switch focus
1:37:18from the person you're focused on in the frame
1:37:20to that other person automatically.
1:37:22None of this is even talking about the fact
1:37:26that you can change it afterwards if you need to
1:37:28or if it misses, which it does, right?
1:37:31But that's not even talking about,
1:37:32this is talking about the casual use of an 80 percenter,
1:37:36right, the person who grabs iPhone is like,
1:37:38oh cool, look at this new mode,
1:37:40I'm gonna play around with this
1:37:41and shoots their kids with it.
1:37:42The results that are gonna get out of it,
1:37:44sure, one in 10, two in 10, three in 10 may go like,
1:37:47oh, that was kind of funky,
1:37:48I don't know if I like that or not.
1:37:49But a lot of people are going to start shooting
1:37:53and thinking and being able to enjoy their home movies
1:37:58with the language of movies and film and cinema
1:38:02now available to them than were ever before
1:38:05because they never owned a camera with detachable lenses
1:38:09and a gimbal and a rack focusing pulley or wheel
1:38:14and all that.
1:38:16- They don't have any, they not only don't have a kit
1:38:19to do focus pulling, they don't have someone
1:38:22to be the focus puller.
1:38:24- Right. - Right.
1:38:25There's a Kubrick quote that I abuse,
1:38:27I overuse it so much, but I love it.
1:38:29And to me, it explains so many things that I care about
1:38:32and why I care about them.
1:38:33And it is, sometimes the truth of a thing
1:38:36is not in the think of it, but in the feel of it.
1:38:40And that to me is exactly what this,
1:38:42you can think about it and examine,
1:38:44oh, the hair's out of focus
1:38:47and the left frame of the eyeglasses shouldn't be blurred,
1:38:51but it is.
1:38:52And then you can watch a movie like "Float"
1:38:55and you get the feels and that's the truth of the feature.
1:38:59Anyway. - Right.
1:39:01- Let's call it a wrap.
1:39:01Matthew Panzorino, I thank you so much for your time
1:39:04and your insight.
1:39:05I can't think of anybody else
1:39:07I would rather talk iPhone camera with
1:39:08other than Johnny Manzari and Kyan Drance,
1:39:12who you got to talk to.
1:39:13So it's like I've gotten them on the show
1:39:17and it's one degree of separation.
1:39:20Let me also thank our sponsors, great sponsors this week,
1:39:23Memberful and LinkedIn and Mack Weldon, my thanks to them.
1:39:28Thanks.
1:39:30Thanks.