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477: Tails O'Clock

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 477. Today's show is brought to you by Electric and ZocDoc.

00:00:17   My name is Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell.

00:00:22   Hello, Mike Hurley.

00:00:25   Oh say can you see, Jason?

00:00:27   By the Dawn's Early Light.

00:00:29   What's a Dawn's Early Light?

00:00:32   It's... that's not what it is. A Dawn's Early Light is a smart home light.

00:00:37   The Dawn's Early Light.

00:00:38   Wow, they knew about that all the way back then?

00:00:40   In the morning. Well, I think, you know.

00:00:43   Dawn's Early! Oh!

00:00:45   You know, I'm hearing the word that doesn't exist. Donzelly?

00:00:49   D-O-N-Z-E-R-L-Y. Donzelly.

00:00:52   So, Mike, a little quick...

00:00:54   If we haven't even started the show and we're going off the rails, here it is.

00:00:58   The lyrics to The Star-Spangled Banner are about a fierce battle raging overnight

00:01:06   and in the morning as the sun starts to come up seeing that the American flag is still flying

00:01:12   over the place that was being attacked. So that's how it starts. It starts in the middle of the story.

00:01:18   Can you see by the Dawn's Early Light the flag, basically? That's what it's...

00:01:22   That's what the whole story is about.

00:01:25   About the War of 1812, I want to say? I don't know. Something like that.

00:01:28   Over the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming...

00:01:33   I don't know. It's a funny anthem to me, man. I gotta say.

00:01:36   The rockets red glare... You know, the music is just an English drinking song.

00:01:40   Most anthems are.

00:01:44   It's true. There's a lot of drinking in England.

00:01:46   We did a lot of that.

00:01:47   So, it's not surprising. And singing after drinking.

00:01:50   Why wouldn't you?

00:01:51   I have a Snow Talk question for you, Jason Snow.

00:01:53   Okay.

00:01:53   It comes from Trio, who asks, "As someone who is still using the XS,

00:01:58   I'm wondering what prompted Jason's wife to make the upgrade this year. I may also do so,

00:02:03   but I'm undecided as my XS still works reliably more or less and continues to have OS support."

00:02:09   I thought this was an interesting question. The truth is that we were on a two-year cycle

00:02:16   where I was on the two-year cycle. For a while there, what would happen is I would buy a new

00:02:21   phone. And then two years later, I got a new phone. I would give Lauren my old phone. And

00:02:26   she was fine with that. She was quite happy with that. However, I bought an iPhone mini,

00:02:30   and she was not happy with that. And then last year, I pushed back a year because the iPhone

00:02:40   mini died. And it's a four-year-old phone. It's time. So my answer is that, yeah, I could have

00:02:46   waited a year for it to not run the current OS because the iPhone X doesn't. So the XS is next.

00:02:51   So the kids have theirs. I have mine. Why would she not have hers? I felt like it was time for

00:02:58   that to happen. So now she's got, honestly, for the first time in a long time, she's got a brand

00:03:02   new phone. She deserves it. So she got a 15. We'll talk about that later.

00:03:09   Oh, okay. We'll talk about that later. If you would like to send in a question of your own,

00:03:14   please go to upgradefeedback.com where you can do so. You can send in follow-up and

00:03:19   snow talk questions there as well. And many more things. Just go to upgradefeedback.com.

00:03:23   You can send us your stuff. Jason? Yes. It is September. September is

00:03:28   Child and Cancer Awareness Month. Since 2019 at Relay FM, we have now raised, we actually have

00:03:35   now raised over $2.5 million as a community. That was what we wanted to pass this year. And we've

00:03:40   done it. So we've hit our first goal for 2023. We put a new goal in this year's campaign. Why not go

00:03:46   for half a million dollars this year? We're at $341,000 raised right now for the kids of St. Jude.

00:03:51   St. Jude will not stop their life-saving work until no child dies from cancer. With your support,

00:03:56   we'll be one step closer to that day. One cure closer, one child closer. The main thing I want

00:04:01   to let everybody know about today, Jason, is that the fifth annual podcast of home for St. Jude is

00:04:06   coming this Friday, September 22nd. It is a 12-hour event, which is unbelievable. Very excited.

00:04:15   I'm going to give you some times here. It starts at 12 p.m. Eastern time, right? So that's

00:04:24   9 Pacific. 9 Pacific and of course 11 Central. In central Memphis time where we will be. And that is

00:04:33   a different time everywhere else. I wanted to start saying times and realize that the event

00:04:40   that I have in my calendar for the podcastathon is like, it's early for when the actual event starts.

00:04:46   All right, so here we go. Hold on, let me, I can do this. I can solve this. I can make this really,

00:04:52   really helpful. It is at T colon 1695398458 colon F. You know, I thought you were going to help me.

00:05:02   I don't actually know what that means, what you just said. Did you just do one of those

00:05:05   conversations? I think that's the Unix time. I think that's the Unix time that is what you

00:05:09   insert into Discord when you want it to be a universal time that displays everywhere. So

00:05:13   here we go. 9 Pacific. 11 Central. 12 Eastern. That is 5 p.m. UTC. British summer time. That

00:05:24   would be 4 p.m. UTC or GMT. And 6 p.m. in Central European time, which is what Rome is. That's what

00:05:33   I have in my little time zone thing here. So look, we're starting at, just do the calculation

00:05:38   yourself. We're starting at 12 p.m. US Eastern time. It will run for 12 hours, which I'm sure no

00:05:43   matter where you are, you could at least catch some of the event. We're going to be broadcasting

00:05:47   live from St. Jude. So we're in the studio there. We have quite possibly the biggest production,

00:05:53   no, not quite possibly. We have the biggest production we've ever had. We're going to be

00:05:57   spending the next like three or four days getting everything set up. And we will be joined by the

00:06:02   one and only Jason Snell. Hello, Jason. Hello, Mike. Great to be here. No, wait a second. What

00:06:08   are we doing? Not yet. Yes, I'll be there. I've got flights. Yep. Kathy Campbell and I are going

00:06:14   to be flying in from the coast to lend additional bodies to the 12 hour long production. There's

00:06:21   gonna, well look, the entire event is focused around Mike versus Steven. We're gonna need

00:06:26   adjudicators, referees, and participants for these events. You know, when this was originally pitched

00:06:31   to me, I don't know if you know this, it was pitched as, oh, we would like you and Kathy to

00:06:35   come to the Podcastathon to help with some stuff. I was like, okay, that sounds great. And it was

00:06:41   very much like, we don't really know what you're going to do. You can like, you'll help with some

00:06:45   stuff. In the meetings I've had more recently, it is very clear that Kathy and I are going to be out

00:06:51   there, maybe not as long as you and Mike or you and Steven, but a long time. There are a lot of

00:06:57   things that you'll be involved in. Because we have to adjudicate or commentate about you guys.

00:07:02   You don't need to be there the whole time. Like you don't. Me and Steven are going to be there

00:07:05   for like, we're obviously there for the whole time. We'll be present in some capacity for all

00:07:09   of it. But I can assure you that the requests on you and Kathy will not be as heavy. You can hang

00:07:15   out on the set, you can hang out backstage, you know, and then we'll just shout for you like,

00:07:19   "Jason!" I'm not saying that we're doing as much as you and Steven. I'm just saying that

00:07:25   I was enjoying the fact that it was a ramp up from, "You need to participate in a brief portion

00:07:31   of the show," to being like, "Well, we're sort of just assuming that we own you for the day."

00:07:35   And I was like, "That's fine. You do own us for the day." It just was a fun progression.

00:07:39   So, well, see, you see, Jason, that is the Podcastathon planning experience. It always

00:07:44   starts out as we're going to do this. And then by the end of it, we've added 50% more runtime.

00:07:50   Way on past it. So we're going to be live for 12 hours on the 22nd of September, this coming

00:07:58   Friday at twitch.tv/relayfm. We posted about it on all of our socials, but please come in, join us.

00:08:04   We've got so much fun stuff planned. Like seriously, this is going to be an incredibly fun time. Me and

00:08:09   Steven are going to be competing in a vast variety of digital and physical challenges,

00:08:14   like from video games to... I don't even want to spoil it, but we've just got some incredible

00:08:19   stuff planned. We'll be posting some teasers of things, I'm sure, on Mastodon and Threads and

00:08:24   Instagram over the next few days, but we're going to have a great time. So go to stjude.org/relay.

00:08:29   You can donate there. You can sign up for fundraising yourself and help us meet our goals

00:08:33   for the kids of St. Jude. But don't forget to join us this Friday. That is stjude.org/relay.

00:08:39   St. Jude won't stop until no child dies from cancer. With your support, we'll be one step

00:08:43   closer to that day. One cure closer, one child closer. This month and every month,

00:08:48   let's cure childhood cancer together. Got some follow-up, Jason Snell. Some of it kind of spanning

00:08:54   back a couple of weeks because we didn't talk about any follow-up over the last couple of weeks.

00:08:58   I'll start with one of those, actually. So the UK government has had to face the facts that the

00:09:04   boffins could not solve the encryption problem they wanted to punch holes into an encryption.

00:09:09   But they brought in the boffins. They hoped they would be able to bring in the boffins.

00:09:14   Oh, but the boffins told them what they didn't want to hear, which is that they couldn't do

00:09:18   anything about it because it's math. Yeah. So effectively what's happened is the law passed,

00:09:22   right? But the government has basically conceded that the technology does not exist and they won't

00:09:29   do anything until the technology exists. So they're not going to enforce their back doors.

00:09:33   And so like the government's like, "Hey, no, we still care about this. We're not going to

00:09:38   do anything." But we all realistically know that to do what they want to do is effectively

00:09:44   impossible. This is kind of amazing because it's actually even an outcome that I don't think I

00:09:48   considered, which is what if the government just goes ahead and passes it and then just

00:09:52   tells everybody, "Never mind." This was actually something, not this exact, but this is what kind

00:09:57   of what I expected to happen. Like I said on the show that like my expectation was that they would

00:10:02   pass the law, but then realize that these tech companies will leave. And so they'll just pretend

00:10:07   like it never existed. And essentially what they did that, but they're just like, "Oh, hey, you

00:10:11   know, that technology, it will come. And when it does, oh boy, will we protect those children?"

00:10:16   There is no such thing as a technology. Which is impossible. And the same thing,

00:10:21   just to do a really short rephrase of this, the truth is the only way that you can make this work

00:10:26   is by having another key. And there has been no backdoor key, extra key, skeleton key that has not

00:10:36   leaked at some point, right? It's not safe. It doesn't matter where it is. It's not safe. It will

00:10:40   get out. The Clipper key got out. The Microsoft had that key that got out that let people spy on

00:10:48   people's email. Like the keys get out. They just do. And so there's no way this can work.

00:10:56   Like basically the way it'll work, if ever, is the way that it works right now. And how, like in the

00:11:02   US, how a lot of this stuff happens, which is there are bugs that are exploited. You know, there's

00:11:08   stuff that is cracked and security holes are used, but an actual systematic creation of a second key

00:11:16   or some other kind of backdoor. So people are saying in the chat room, like quantum computing,

00:11:19   it's like, yeah, the most likely scenario here is that in the end, the encryption that's being used

00:11:24   will be cracked by a government computer or something that is super powerful. But like,

00:11:30   basically this is all just window dressing for them to say they're doing something about

00:11:35   protecting the kids when they actually can't in this case.

00:11:39   Yeah. So I'm happy about this. It's not perfect, but this will certainly do, right? That like,

00:11:46   when I'm not going to lose iMessage and WhatsApp and all this kind of stuff. So I'll live with that.

00:11:50   Lots of people wrote in with theories and ideas for what Apple may do to make the A17 Pro a not

00:11:58   pro chip next year, you know, put the A17 in the iPhone 16. Most people mentioned a variation of

00:12:05   Apple somehow binning the graphics chip, like seditious, like they've been the chips and the

00:12:09   graphics isn't as powerful, or they removed the USB three controller as a way to bring down the

00:12:15   capability of that chip to make it work as an A17. And Eric also wrote in to say something I thought

00:12:22   was interesting that we may see the A17 first in an updated iPad or iPad mini, because that's most

00:12:28   likely the next product. Could be. I think the question, I think these are all good, kind of like

00:12:33   juicy conspiracy theories. I know Marco mentioned this on ATP last week as well, this idea, but it's

00:12:39   funny to me because it's sort of like Apple in secret has been collecting defective chips and

00:12:46   relabeling them as the A17. Nobody is aware of it. And then they unveil it. It's very conspiratorial,

00:12:53   but yet it's plausible. They could have, I mean, when talking about binning, you need a very large

00:12:57   bin for all to collect all the chips you're going to use next year. That's a very large bin. In my

00:13:03   mind, there's like a person in one of those bunny suits, right. And they find the chip and they just

00:13:07   throw it over their shoulder and it lands in a big trash can. And like, that's where the bin chips go.

00:13:12   Or it like lands on a big like conveyor belt that whisks it away to the, to the big bin.

00:13:19   There could be a furnace, but it takes a left turn and it goes into a big plastic bin. Yeah.

00:13:25   Yeah. It's like in where the arc of the covenant is in the Indiana Jones movies. It's the, uh,

00:13:30   there's just a huge warehouse full of binned chips waiting to be born.

00:13:34   I am going to start the petition right now that all iPads should have M chips.

00:13:39   There should not be A chips in iPads anymore. Oh, so I think the iPad mini should get an M3 or

00:13:43   whatever. See, I was going to say that I think the like iPad air will get possibly will get an

00:13:52   A17 pro, not an M3. So going the other way that it is, it's going to be the iPhone chip.

00:13:58   Surely they'll keep the pro chips for the iPad pros, right? They wouldn't put it in the air.

00:14:02   Well, no, not the, not the, okay. So the current air has an M2.

00:14:07   Yeah. Oh, you think you might get an A17 pro? A17 pro.

00:14:11   Yeah, but then what about stuff like stage manager? They're like only M chips.

00:14:14   Boo-hoo, I guess. I don't know. Jason, if they took away the, the, uh, if they took away

00:14:21   stage manager from the iPad air, like, I don't know what they're doing. Like the, why did they

00:14:25   add it in the first place? You know what I mean? Like we had this whole thing.

00:14:27   That's a good question. Why did they add it? So, okay. There are lots of things they can do,

00:14:32   but look, I'm just trying to explore the options here. So the other option is a lot of people are

00:14:36   like next year, then the A17 will come out and it'll just be the A17 pro, but not quite as good

00:14:41   and leftover from last year, maybe. Okay. They could also just call it the A18, right? They could

00:14:46   all just, they could also just say next year, we'll actually make two variations on this chip.

00:14:51   17 and 18, we could do that. Right. So that's also possible, but I love this idea that maybe

00:14:57   they're reserving it. And the theory that we might actually see it in an iPad also interesting,

00:15:04   right? Like what is the bifurcation between the A series and the M series? What is it, you know,

00:15:09   what does it all mean? Right. Like there are fewer, there's less of everything in the A series.

00:15:16   What is required of an iPad? And then would they make a second chip for the low-end phones?

00:15:22   My theory there, by the way, is not that they would just make a second chip for the low-end

00:15:27   phones, whether it's a binned A17 pro or not. My theory is that they would make a low-end chip that

00:15:33   would go on the low-end phones and in all their embedded devices, right? That's the Apple TV chip,

00:15:39   and it's the HomePod chip, and it's whatever, what other like the, maybe it's the studio display or

00:15:46   the next generation display that they're working on. Like that, that's where that goes, right? Is

00:15:51   that the super low-end one where it's like, we don't need to put an A17 pro in that stuff.

00:15:56   Maybe that's their idea. And that's the reason that you build a second lower-end chip. I don't

00:16:01   know. I don't know. It's fascinating. See, isn't this great? We could talk about this. We probably

00:16:05   won't every week, but we will talk about this a lot. We got so much follow-up about it. Maybe

00:16:11   this is going to keep continuing. So if you do have thoughts and concerns or theories or whatever,

00:16:16   about the A17 chips, go to upgradefeedback.com, fill out the form. Yeah. Talking about that,

00:16:22   actually like thoughts and feelings. We put the last episode up in full on YouTube, on our

00:16:28   YouTube channel. It's a full video episode of like, well, obviously we weren't together,

00:16:32   but it goes from me and you, you know, backwards and forwards, showing our video that we shoot for

00:16:38   our video clips, but in full. This is the first time we've done it this way, right? Like we had

00:16:45   the one that Apple shot for us at WWDC. But that was more of a like, you know, produced thing.

00:16:52   We didn't know if we were going to do this and we didn't mention on the last week's episode,

00:16:56   but what happened is we, we, I thought it was a big episode and we would give it a try.

00:17:01   And, um, cause we do the clips, but we do shoot the whole show. So we, we, we gave it a shot. Um,

00:17:09   and it's, uh, I think it turned out pretty well. There's a, there's a process that we're experimenting

00:17:15   with. And the idea here is there's actually a, uh, like some plugins that make it so that you can

00:17:21   kind of like auto switch to whoever is talking. And the question was like, how did it turn out?

00:17:27   And I think the answer is it turned out really well. Like I am surprised how good I was waiting.

00:17:34   I was thinking of all the ways that it could be bad and actually it turned out pretty well. Um,

00:17:38   and I know for a lot of people, the video, like it's two guys talking, it's not that exciting,

00:17:42   but I do know that a lot of people, um, what put these videos on when they're working or whatever,

00:17:49   they're at a computer. So they've got a video screen. So they had the video on. And then

00:17:52   when something's going on, that's interesting, they'll glance over and look at us. And the

00:17:55   rest of the time they're just listening. I think that's how a lot of video podcasts are consumed.

00:17:59   So, so we tried it and yeah, we definitely like to hear from people about what it is if we,

00:18:05   yeah, we'll see. Like it's, it's still an experiment phase now,

00:18:08   but, um, I was impressed at how fairly easy it was to do in the end.

00:18:14   Will Barron In the end.

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00:20:04   solo three headphones today for scheduling a meeting. Our thanks to electric for their

00:20:08   support of this show and relay FM. Rumor round up Jason Snow. Okay. Got a couple of rumors.

00:20:15   There's one that we just had to talk about today because Mark Gurman is reporting that friend of

00:20:20   the show, actual friend of the show, Tim Millet has been put in charge of the blood glucose

00:20:26   monitoring technology for an upcoming Apple watch. So we had Tim on the show a number of times,

00:20:31   Tim and Tom talking about Tom Apple silicon chips. And now this team, which is known as the

00:20:37   exploratory design group is being headed by Tim Tim Millet. Uh, it was previously led by bill

00:20:44   Afas, who unfortunately died at the end of 2022. And the team has kind of been reporting to Johnny

00:20:49   Srouji for a while. And now Tim has taken it over. I'll give a bit of additional context.

00:20:53   As a reminder, this is from Mark, Gomez report, the group working on the glucose tracker resides

00:20:57   of an Apple semiconductor organization because the system relies on an advanced chip based system.

00:21:02   It uses a range of sensors to shoot lasers into the skin and determine how much that's actually

00:21:09   in Mark's report. He wrote that down. It's unbelievable. Uh, it also uses a range of sensors

00:21:13   to shoot those lasers into the skin to determine how much glucose is present in a person's body

00:21:18   combined of an artificial intelligence algorithm. The chip can then determine a person's blood sugar.

00:21:23   Pretty wild. So it's a chip based thing, which is why Tim Millet apparently is the is a good choice

00:21:32   here because he's been on the chip team and worked a lot on the Apple silicon transition. And so,

00:21:37   which is why we talked to him. Um, and that this is a, we've talked about this before. This is a

00:21:43   huge, potentially huge thing for Apple, right? If Apple can get glucose monitoring via Apple

00:21:52   watch to work, that opens up a lot of possibility in terms of managing diabetes or, uh, suggesting

00:22:02   that people might have, you know, potential future, you know, pre-diabetes kind of conditions. And

00:22:08   like, there's just a lot going on there if they can get it to work. Even more than that, just

00:22:14   understanding how different foods affect your blood sugar is, can be helpful for everyone when

00:22:19   it comes to just like having a diet about a different or better diet. You're, you're speaking

00:22:25   like somebody who is working on an Apple marketing campaign and has been told that you can't make

00:22:32   medical claims. No, while I say I did this recently, so there's a, there's a company in the UK

00:22:37   called Zoe and they provide you this whole kit, which includes wearing one of those glucose

00:22:43   monitors for a couple of weeks. And then they can give you ideas about how different foods affect

00:22:48   your body. So like, we just did this and it's been very interesting. So, I mean, again, I don't know

00:22:54   how, uh, I can't speak to the efficacy from a health perspective for something like this,

00:22:59   but it was interesting to have this information and like, I could see that when I'd eat certain

00:23:03   food, it would make my blood sugar spike because it was like connected to an app via Bluetooth.

00:23:07   So like, there are benefits that people can have from this, even if diabetes isn't necessarily a

00:23:13   going concern in their life. Like you can still learn things about you from monitoring your blood

00:23:19   sugar. Sounds great. Well, Tim Malet, get to it. That's pretty cool though, right? This could be

00:23:24   really big. This is a big job, right? Like it seems like running this team is like, well,

00:23:29   you're about to absolutely unlock the Apple watch, right? Like if you, if they can do this,

00:23:35   we spoke about this when this rumor came out, the floodgates were opened. They will sell a

00:23:41   bajillion Apple watches if they can do this. And Ming Chi Kuo is reporting that the demand for the

00:23:47   15 pro max is far outpacing the demand for the 14 pro max. And due to this, the wait times for this

00:23:53   product are pushing pretty far out into the year. This is pretty, within a couple of hours, the pro

00:23:58   maxes were going out into November after the pre-orders opened. Kuo is saying demand for the

00:24:04   15 and 15 plus are on par with what they're replacing, but the 15 pro is a little weaker

00:24:09   year over year. The natural titanium and white titanium are the most popular finishes.

00:24:14   I guess what this is saying is that having that extra zoom was a prompt for people to get the pro

00:24:24   max instead of the pro, right? There's differentiation between those two models and where

00:24:29   somebody might've previously opted for the pro, they might have that moment where they're like,

00:24:34   "Yeah, but I really want the..." I guess I'm talking about Casey Liss here, right? He's a good example.

00:24:40   Our friend Casey, who has been a pro phone user, but bought the pro max because he really wants

00:24:46   that 5X zoom. So Ming Chi Kuo's report suggests that there are, I think unsurprisingly, a lot of

00:24:53   people who are like, "Yeah, give me the better zoom. Why would I not want the better zoom?"

00:24:59   Where they might've otherwise said, "Look, everything else being equal,

00:25:03   I don't need the bigger screen. I don't want to pay the extra. I'll just get the regular pro."

00:25:07   And then this year they're like, "No, the max has to be it because I want that fancy camera."

00:25:12   I'm also not surprised about the fact that the natural and white titanium are the most popular

00:25:18   finishes because they actually look like titanium, I guess. If you care about the fact that the

00:25:25   material has changed, the black and the blue one are not really necessarily... You can tell me,

00:25:31   but it doesn't seem like they're particularly showing off the metal.

00:25:34   No, they look a lot like... You could argue that the titanium is a neutral color,

00:25:41   that it's going to be whatever they want it to be. And so even natural titanium is

00:25:46   what you want titanium to look like, not really necessarily what it actually looks like.

00:25:50   So I think it's a style thing. Is this where I rant about the color czar again? I feel like

00:25:59   the color czar has completely lost it. I can say that... We're going to talk a little bit more

00:26:06   about last week, but I'll save it. I'll save it for a minute, but I'll just stew in the background

00:26:14   for a few minutes and we'll get there. But it doesn't surprise me that people like these because

00:26:21   it's a new metal and it doesn't surprise me because not everybody wants the dark phone or

00:26:26   the other dark phone. So that's okay. Let's talk a little bit more about last week though,

00:26:33   maybe some further reflections, but we can start with what... The colors... No, okay.

00:26:37   Well, I mean, if you want to jump right into it, you can feel free. No, no, no, no, no, no, no,

00:26:41   no, no. Let's keep it orderly here and I'll just let my color thoughts build up. What devices did

00:26:47   you order, if any? All right, as predicted earlier on. So I bought iPhone 15 Pro. Everybody,

00:26:55   I woke up, of course, as I do in the morning Pacific time and all my friends who got there

00:27:01   right like on the dot to order because Apple's trained us and they're like, "Oh, and this,

00:27:04   and there was an ordering problem and this." And now they're back ordered and all that. And I was

00:27:07   like, "Oh, geez, I guess I better go and order it now." Did not have a problem, got it shipping day,

00:27:13   even hours after it went on sale. And that's because I got the 15 Pro, which is not as popular

00:27:19   as the Pro Max. And I got it 256 and I got it in blue titanium, one of the least popular finishes,

00:27:27   I guess. And so I had no problem. It was not an issue. I ordered that and I went with the blue

00:27:33   titanium because I love my midnight MacBook Air and it's sort of in the ballpark of that.

00:27:37   And I just decided to, even though I am a big fan of the black phone and I also have the black

00:27:42   Apple Watch titanium, I decided that Apple's black phone is dark gray. It really is. And at that

00:27:49   point, like, give me the blue, the dark blue kind of thing works better for me. I like it better.

00:27:55   It was a completely like perfectly black iPhone. I might be interested, but it's not, so I'm not.

00:28:01   And then for Lauren, as mentioned earlier, I got her an iPhone 15, 128 green with the green

00:28:09   fine woven case. She was deeply unimpressed with the colors on offer, like deeply. And I actually

00:28:21   said at one point, she said, "Where are the good colors? Where are the bright colors?" And I said,

00:28:25   "You can get an iPhone 14. Jamie and Julian both have an iPhone 14. You could just get the iPhone

00:28:32   14. It comes in some nicer colors." And she's like, "No, no, I'll." And in the end, she went

00:28:38   with the green, which is more of a color than some of the other colors. How about you?

00:28:45   I ordered a, well, Steven ordered for me an iPhone 15 Pro Max, 512 gigabyte in natural titanium,

00:28:54   because I'm picking it up here. So got on and quickly got that for me. That's for launch day,

00:28:59   which is podcastathon day. So maybe we'll open our iPhones while we're live. I also ordered an

00:29:06   Apple watch ultra two, which I'm picking up on Saturday with the orange ocean band. I also got

00:29:13   the orange and beige trail loop and the blue flame Nike sport band. So I'm refreshing all my bands.

00:29:18   So they have a bit of orange in them so I can match up with the orange on the watch because

00:29:22   on the ultra two. Yeah, this is what you have to do. I also, we ordered for a DNA and iPhone

00:29:26   15 pro 256 and blue titanium, because that was what she wanted. Nice blue titanium club. Yeah.

00:29:33   I mean, yeah, she's got my phone. She and I are getting the same phone. Yeah. It looks nice,

00:29:38   but I'm all into the natural color. Mike, the people who really love you get the iPhone 15 pro

00:29:45   256. I love that. Thank you. That's a big smile on my face. Steven showed me yesterday. He got the

00:29:53   fine woven case came in. Yeah. I don't like it. It feels like it's like a texture paper. And I think,

00:30:01   honestly, I think they made a mistake. I don't think that they should have gotten rid. I don't,

00:30:06   I'm not saying they should have kept leather, but I feel like they should have gone with

00:30:13   something different. Like a kind of like maybe carbon fiber or some kind of cloth material

00:30:20   because the fine woven, I don't like it. I will, I feel like I need to spend more time with it,

00:30:25   but as a case, it honestly, to me, like I've, I've seen and experienced on like, and I've handled

00:30:32   like cardboard, like textured cardboard. That's what this feels like. Not a fan. It's interesting

00:30:38   because I have felt for a while now that that is what Apple's leather has been going toward too.

00:30:46   Huh? Okay. I've had a couple of Apple leather things where I thought, uh, this feels, I forget

00:30:52   what was the last one. It might've been a band. And I thought this actually feels less like leather

00:30:57   to me and more like bendable paper. Right. I mean, they've probably been reducing the leather,

00:31:03   like content. Yeah, maybe. But I think, I think that there's also, uh, this is adjacent to the,

00:31:09   there's no, the leathers are lost their job last week. Right. The leathers are is gone,

00:31:15   but I do think that there's a style issue here too, where they like, this is the kind of fine,

00:31:20   you know, material and they're probably consulting with people who are, uh, textile experts and

00:31:26   right materials experts to do all this stuff. And that there's a particular take they have

00:31:30   about this. Uh, and yeah, it may not work for people. I, I thought that it worked pretty well

00:31:36   as a facsimile in the watch bands, but I did not see a phone case when I was at the event.

00:31:41   I only saw the fine woven watch bands and I thought that they were okay. But part of that

00:31:46   is that they were literally in the context of what the leather bands were. They're the same designs.

00:31:51   They look exactly the same. They're just made out of a different material. Um, and maybe that

00:31:55   doesn't work for a watch case. I don't know. Or I mean, phone case. I don't use a case. So I don't

00:32:01   know, but I'm looking forward to getting Lauren's probably today. Right. Like, I mean, we were in

00:32:06   the season where everybody gets their case before they get their phone. I'm looking forward to, uh,

00:32:11   seeing what that is all about. Obviously I'm not going to worry. I'm not going to have a case on

00:32:14   my phone cause I don't like doing that. I just use a pop socket. They have a great magnetic pop socket.

00:32:19   Now that does a great job. That's what I hear. It's great. Uh, you wrote an article kind of with

00:32:24   some reactions and stuff like that to the event. Um, now that you've kind of had a little bit more

00:32:28   time for things to settle in, is there anything that you wanted to touch on? I'll talk about from,

00:32:33   uh, from the event last week that maybe we didn't cover too much or in a way that you'd like to

00:32:38   adapt now. One of the things that is funny is that when you go to the event, uh, and this happened

00:32:43   when I got back afterward, um, and talk to you is we're not in the, you know, discourse, the internet

00:32:53   discourse. We're in our own discourse. It's different. Yeah. Well, well, so there's a whole,

00:32:57   like, what did you think about other people's reactions? And it's kind of not my business

00:33:02   to have opinions about other people's reactions. It's my business to have reactions. Um, uh, so

00:33:08   really not concerned, but I'm not surprised at the reactions because these are the reactions every

00:33:14   time, which is people have an unreasonable assumption that every Apple event that doesn't

00:33:21   do something like radically different and change the world is boring. And it's unrealistic because

00:33:30   those happen so rarely, like the last big change in iPhone, like really legitimately big change in

00:33:38   iPhone was the iPhone 10, which was five years ago. Like they don't make enormous changes. And

00:33:47   while this was in terms of the sort of like super cycle of design, a pretty minor change,

00:33:52   because it's just kind of going to titanium on the pro phones. The truth is that Apple,

00:33:59   I feel like a lot of people observe an Apple event and they're basically, they want entertainment out

00:34:04   of it. They think the purpose of the event is to keep them entertained. And it's not, it's a

00:34:10   commercial for products that are being launched. It's for one of the most popular consumer products

00:34:15   in the world. One of the most profitable, certainly. And the most important product that

00:34:19   Apple makes it's their opportunity to do a commercial to promote their new version so that

00:34:26   people will run out and buy their new version. That's why it exists. And it's not Apple's job

00:34:31   to entertain the masses. It's not a TV show. It's an ad. And the ultimate goal is to just

00:34:41   get their product out there and get people talking about it. So there's a lot of commentary that's

00:34:45   like, "Oh, I found it really boring." And it's like, yeah, but that's kind of not the point.

00:34:50   Right? Like the point is not how bored were you by the ad. The point is what was in the ad and how's

00:34:57   it going to sell? I think. And so that's what I always pay attention to there. It's like,

00:35:04   I'm not, so people were like, "Oh, that environmental video wasn't that funny." And you said

00:35:10   that, right? And went on too long. And my thought was, I do agree it went on too long,

00:35:15   but I understand why they did it because it's more palatable for there to be a scripted story

00:35:23   that makes the case that Apple is the only one walking the walk when it comes to environmental

00:35:31   change in their corporate, in their tech planning and their manufacturing and all of that.

00:35:37   And if all it was was Lisa Jackson standing on the roof saying, "We're better than everyone else.

00:35:42   Unlike the competition, we're actually doing things." It's not going to come across as well.

00:35:46   So I thought it was deft in that way, even though it was not as funny as maybe it should have been

00:35:50   and also probably way too long. So anyway, that was just a thought that I had. I was not surprised

00:35:57   by it at all because it happens literally every time. I think it's funny that people think that

00:36:02   every time there's an Apple event, they're going to change the world when the truth is every time

00:36:08   there's an Apple event, people complain that it's boring. That's the truth. People complain that

00:36:14   they didn't change the world every year. That's what happens every year. So I thought it was fine.

00:36:19   I just am surprised that every year people are like, "Wow, an incremental update from Apple."

00:36:25   It's like, one, you're underselling what did get updated. The camera stuff is kind of big.

00:36:32   And two, it's an incremental update every time, every time, with very few exceptions. So I don't

00:36:39   know what they're looking for. I mean, I just, I have those moments where I'm like, you just have

00:36:43   to accept that this is how everybody is always going to respond to an Apple event, especially

00:36:48   an iPhone event is they have like a little piece of paper with a checklist on it. And the checklist

00:36:56   is one box and it's changed the world. And then every year they get up and they tear the paper

00:37:01   and they're like, "Ah, they didn't do it." And we're like, okay, I mean, yeah, I guess so. Except

00:37:08   that, you know, if you're buying a phone for the first time in four years, it's a pretty awesome

00:37:13   improvement. And that's really what they're trying to do is sell you on a phone upgrade.

00:37:18   It is interesting to me specifically when people in our industry make the case of like,

00:37:26   "Oh, it's only iterative." Like that is the thing that's so surprising to me. It's just like,

00:37:32   what were you expecting? What do you think Apple does? Or like, but like, what would you,

00:37:37   what does any large tech company do now? Like if they're not launching a brand new product that

00:37:44   didn't exist before, they're iterating each year on the existing thing, right? Like when Apple makes

00:37:51   a foldable iPhone, that will be a huge deal. But like until then, every iPhone is just going to get

00:37:56   a little bit better than the one before, which has been the way it's been maybe for the last 10 years.

00:38:02   Yeah, I think some people remember what happened 10 years ago, right? I think some people remember

00:38:06   those heady, and they were, heady early days of the smartphone era, where we had perhaps the most

00:38:11   relevant to people's lives in society and everything, tech product ever. Tech category

00:38:19   ever happened. And in those first few years, everything is cutting edge. Everything, they are

00:38:25   iterating rapidly and adding features to the software and adding features to the hardware.

00:38:29   And it was really exciting because the world was changing. We were changing from a world where no

00:38:34   smartphones were in it to a world where the smartphone is everywhere. And it's assumed that

00:38:39   if you want to park somewhere, you have to have your phone because you need to use an app to park,

00:38:43   right? Like it is, we've gone from point A to point B here. Those early days were really

00:38:47   exciting, but like they're over and they've been over for a long time now. And I get like,

00:38:53   I get it. I would love, I mean, it would be exhausting because the world would change so

00:38:57   much that we would not recognize it anymore, but sure, change the world every time, right?

00:39:02   Like they just did an event where they put in like the spatial computer VR headset thing, right?

00:39:09   And yet the very next event people are like, "Oh, boring." Like, "Okay, sure. All right, fine." You

00:39:15   can be bored. It's fine. I'm just saying, I think your expectations are unrealistic because what

00:39:20   Apple does is John Gruber wrote like 15 years ago now is iterate, they roll. That's what they do.

00:39:26   They just kind of push it forward. And it's very rare that they give it a big push. It's mostly a

00:39:30   bunch of little small pushes. And then you look up four years later and you're like, "Oh, wow,

00:39:34   this phone is like, like Lauren is going to have a very different experience with her iPhone

00:39:39   15 than with her 10S, right? It's going to be dramatically different and better because it's,

00:39:46   you know, four years later. When I was coming through customs, I was talking to the customs

00:39:49   agent. He asked me what I did. I explained what I do. And he's like, "Shall I upgrade to the iPhone 15?"

00:39:56   And I was like, "Well, what do you got now?" He's like, "I'm gonna have phone 12." I'm like, "Oh,

00:39:59   yeah, you have a great time." And he's like, "Oh, should I have to get the pro one though?" I'm like,

00:40:03   "I don't think it matters. Like, if you've got the 12 now and you go to the regular 15,

00:40:07   you're going to love it. Like, it's going to be an upgrade in every way for you."

00:40:11   Yeah. Just helping out one person at a time, Jason. You know what I mean?

00:40:15   I love it. You're bringing your knowledge to America, helping out the customs.

00:40:20   I'm importing it. I'm importing the knowledge. There was nobody in America that could have helped

00:40:23   with the answer to that question. No. I have been getting quite worked up about the GPUs that they

00:40:29   put into the A17 Pro. I'm very intrigued to see realistically what this phone can do. And I'm very

00:40:39   keen to see what the kind of gaming experience will be. I mean, I think I've been seeing some

00:40:44   headlines that Apple have been doing a bit more press about. Like, they think they have the most

00:40:48   powerful games console now with the iPhone 15 Pro. I'm not sure I believe that, but hey, we'll see.

00:40:55   But just in general, I am finding myself very, very intrigued about what this technology beefed

00:41:03   up, enhanced, and brought to the Mac is actually going to be like. I'm really, really intrigued by

00:41:11   it. Yeah. The sort of question, Zen question that I asked in my piece was, did Apple build CPU cores

00:41:23   to make the iPhone better at running console level games? Or does the iPhone run console level games

00:41:31   because Apple was set on building a better set of GPU cores? And the reason I phrase it that way

00:41:38   is because my guess is that this is more a by-product of Apple wanting to up its GPU game

00:41:49   across the board, yes, but especially on the Mac. That's my sort of gut feeling is like,

00:41:57   iPhone being a great game playing device and being able to play essentially console games

00:42:03   on your iPhone, I think is huge, right? But I wonder if it's part of a bigger picture,

00:42:09   I guess is what I'm really saying. I'm not sure if you're Apple, you say, "Boy, the iPhone,

00:42:15   its GPU just sure, it blows away all other devices in its category, but you know what it could do

00:42:22   is blow away consoles. Let's do that. Let's make a GPU for that." Or if it's a broader issue of like,

00:42:28   this is where we're lagging, especially on the Mac side, the GPU is lagging, so we need to put

00:42:34   some extra effort into the GPU side of it. I don't know, I guess we'll find out, but the potential

00:42:40   here is huge. I'm very intrigued by it. This is the thing I'm going to have my eyes on most for

00:42:50   the next Macs, like the next Pro chips. What is this going to look like? Very intrigued.

00:42:57   Anything else you wanted to touch on? You want to talk about the Kalazan?

00:43:00   One quick thing about the satellite I just wanted to mention again, I love that they keep kicking

00:43:05   the can down the road for the satellite stuff, and we just don't know what happens next year,

00:43:09   and this idea of, are they going to make people pay? What you don't want to be is in the sense of

00:43:15   like, "Oh, it'd be shame if you got trapped somewhere with your iPhone and you hadn't paid

00:43:19   us, so you better pay us." I can't see them doing that, but I think there needs to be a long-term

00:43:23   plan. They may not know, right? Because the number of people using the satellite services that have

00:43:29   access to the satellite services is going to explode now with these two new models,

00:43:33   because everybody who gets it, unless they're upgrading from last year, they're all going to

00:43:36   be new on the satellite system. Presumably, the volume is just going to go way up again.

00:43:43   Does the satellite network have the capacity to deal with that? I don't know. They may just be

00:43:52   waiting and seeing themselves, but I do wonder because they very specifically said, "Free for

00:43:57   the first two years last year," and so those phones will run out of two years next fall.

00:44:02   What happens then? We just don't know. I think that's interesting. Something to watch.

00:44:07   Then I'll get to it here, which is just like, has anybody seen the color czar?

00:44:13   Has the color czar disappeared? Is the color czar being controlled by some sort of Rasputin-like

00:44:19   figure who is opposed to color on either moral or philosophical grounds? I don't know, but we here

00:44:26   at the Upgrade program have been somewhat critical of Apple's decisions regarding color in their

00:44:32   products over the years, but honestly, this event takes the cake. I don't get it. I don't get it.

00:44:44   I don't get the four shades of gray in the pro phones only because they've worn me down about

00:44:53   pro phones always being boring in all facets, and maybe there are limitations of titanium that are

00:44:59   part of this. The regular phones, everybody can have their own opinion about color. I think they're

00:45:08   super boring. I think they're all super boring, and I don't understand why you don't give people

00:45:15   choice because I know whenever we talk about color, we hear from people who are like, "I don't

00:45:19   want a colorful product." That's what they say in that tone of voice. We're not saying you don't get

00:45:25   to have what you want. We're saying that anybody who wants a colorful product has no choice because

00:45:32   Apple refuses. They have made the most muted set of colors for these iPhones in ages. They're just

00:45:40   dull. They're very pastel. They're very Easter egg colored and the kind you don't leave in for

00:45:47   very long, so it's just a trace. The camera bump is nice, but even that is a subtle thing that is

00:45:53   best appreciated close up. I just don't get it. I don't understand how the same company that made

00:46:01   those iMacs, the M1 iMacs, made these phones. I don't understand how the company that made the

00:46:10   iPhone XR in coral, how some of the iPhone 11s and 12s and 13s and 14s made these boring colors.

00:46:25   I don't get why there are no choices. Lauren's comment was literally, "There aren't any good

00:46:31   colors." I don't disagree with that. If you like them, that's fine, but again my point is

00:46:38   if you want something bright, don't buy an iPhone 15, essentially, because you're not going to get

00:46:46   it. Even the yellow is just the faintest yellow. It gives people some choice. They shouldn't all

00:46:54   scream. They shouldn't all be muted. I really don't know what they're doing. I'm very, very

00:47:03   disappointed in the decisions that they made here. We're going to keep talking about it because it's

00:47:10   the thing that frustrates us, but I just feel like I'm losing more and more hope over time. I had

00:47:15   the hope with the iMacs. The iMacs gave me hope. Don't get me started. There are all these rumors,

00:47:23   thanks to Mark Gurman, that there are new iMacs in the pipeline fairly soon. I'm now really

00:47:29   concerned that they're going to roll it out and it's going to be like, "It comes in midnight and

00:47:34   starlight. Good luck," and that that's it. That's my concern is that whatever brief moment in the

00:47:43   sun that they had for those M1 iMacs that they're clamping down and they're going to throw it back

00:47:47   in the dungeon and say, "Nope. Back to boring." Because that's where I am. I despair now. I

00:47:57   despair for the future of colorful products from Apple. I feel like whatever moment was happening,

00:48:02   it feels like they've just decided, "Nope. Nope. Too much. Let's pull it back."

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00:49:53   their support of this show and Relay FM. It's time for the details.

00:49:58   Woo hoo hoo! Shipping edition! We have decided like what happens to the B-Tails after this season.

00:50:07   Maybe if there's more B-Tails we'll talk about them, but this is like, maybe this is the swan

00:50:11   song for the B-Tails because iOS 17, iPadOS 17, tvOS 17 and watchOS 10 are all out today.

00:50:19   I thought that we could take a look at some of our favorite features that we found.

00:50:27   Let's do it. That we have in some of them. So I want you to start actually because you publish,

00:50:31   so I say you publish your review on six colors of iPadOS and some of the overall features. Dan

00:50:39   publishes iOS 17 review and I've also put a link in the show notes to Federico's review over at

00:50:44   MacStories. Of course. There's a ton of great coverage and you can go and find them from your

00:50:48   favorite outlets. Dig in. Are we going to alternate? Is that what we're going to do?

00:50:53   Yeah, I would like you to talk about the one that you have on top because it's the iPad thing.

00:50:59   Sure. I'm just interested about this. Yeah, so the iPad got the lock screen. I mean it's very much

00:51:06   we're in this, we're in this situation where we have the iPad trailing a year behind the iPhone

00:51:14   in a lot of cases. Like a lot of iPad features are like, hey this is a thing that it finally got that

00:51:18   the iPhone didn't. And so the iPhone got last year. So lock screen. It finally came, the

00:51:27   customizable lock screen finally came to the iPad. So it's got, you know, you can put widgets on

00:51:33   there and you can actually put way more widgets than you could ever possibly put on an iPhone,

00:51:37   which is kind of funny. You can do a giant stack of widgets. They've got all the things that the

00:51:42   iPhone has where you can have it shuffle through pictures of your family or shuffle through

00:51:47   pictures of nature. And they've got this live photo feature that's really nice where they'll

00:51:52   suggest live photos to you that they've like algorithmically decided might be good. But they

00:51:57   can also take any of your live photos and they like process them to try and stabilize them and

00:52:02   have them be like in the form for the lock screen. And it's really cool. So you set a live photo as

00:52:10   your lock screen and when you lift up your iPad, open it up, whatever, the live photo animates

00:52:17   to the end of it in the lock screen and then you swipe up and then it could be your wallpaper and

00:52:22   all that. And I've had that all summer and I really like it. And yeah, the widgets are less

00:52:30   useful because lock screen widgets are less useful. And also there's the fact that, you know,

00:52:34   you're usually not dwelling on your lock screen. You're usually just flipping up and going to the

00:52:39   the regular home screen. But I really, really like the changes that they made to the lock screen.

00:52:47   They're just, it's so much more dynamic that you can shuffle between photos, that you can do all

00:52:51   those effects. It's all the stuff that the iPhone had last year and a little bit more. I really like

00:52:57   it. So this is interesting to me because we just have a different experience. I never think about

00:53:01   the lock screen of my iPad. So like I use an iPad Mini, right? Like for me, the lock screen is always

00:53:07   in my way to the thing that I want to do. So it's just maybe like, do you have your iPad like out

00:53:13   and visible a lot? Like do you see the lock screen? I don't. I usually have it. It's in a cover. But

00:53:20   what happens is when I wake it up, it animates the little lock screen and then I swipe it away. And

00:53:27   like the animation is, it's just kind of delightful. The widgets are less useful, although it does mean

00:53:32   that I can sort of do a tap for status like you can on an iPhone and tap for status and sort of

00:53:39   see what's going on. But that's not generally what I use. Life activities are there now too.

00:53:44   That's part of this. And like, again, I very rarely am seeing anything that's on my lock screen,

00:53:50   even notification center. I'm mostly just passing through on the way to the home screen, but

00:53:57   it is much more delightful. And the other thing to remember is when your iPad is unlocked and you're

00:54:03   at the home screen, if there are things you want to see like widgets or notifications, the entire

00:54:10   lock screen appears when you swipe down from the top. That's your notification center, but it's

00:54:15   also your lock screen. So all the widgets show up and everything when you swipe down. Even when

00:54:19   you're unlocked, you can see everything. Yeah. I mean, I would say I don't like the widgets on the

00:54:26   iPad that much. I like where they've done it. I like the little sidebar. It's kind of cool,

00:54:31   but it's just not incredibly useful. I mean, I think if there's an always on display on the iPad,

00:54:38   we'd be having a different conversation, I think. Sure. And I think the magnitude of how you use

00:54:45   the lock screen of your iPad versus your iPhone, it's just not at the same magnitude as the iPhone.

00:54:52   It's nice though. But I'll tell you that little effect. Apple, because the macOS stuff,

00:54:57   which we'll talk about when macOS comes out, is similar where Apple has done some real fit and

00:55:01   finish to say things like, "We have animations of things. Could we integrate those into places that

00:55:10   you see them that can provide some delight in using your device?" And the lock screen on the

00:55:16   iPad is a place that they've injected a little bit of delight. But we've spent, I will say this,

00:55:20   we have spent way more time on this compared to other features than it deserves. Fair enough.

00:55:26   So let's do that and let's go like Ram Rob in between the two of us. I love the new sticker

00:55:33   stuff. I love how you can create stickers from photos. For me, it's very good for memes between

00:55:40   friends and loved ones. Like you get a funny picture of someone, turn it into a sticker,

00:55:43   and then you can send it to them. I just think it's hilarious. I really like emoji. My top tip

00:55:49   for this, by the way, you can, I'd forgotten about this. Maybe everybody knows this, but I'd forgotten.

00:55:56   You can just, from the emoji keyboard in messages, you can just drag them out of stickers. You don't

00:56:01   need to add a sticker or anything, so it's very easy to do. I'm still super excited for this to

00:56:06   come to tap backs, like stickers as tap backs. That's coming later. We'll talk about some other

00:56:10   features that are coming later in a bit, but that's really great. So I'm a big fan of this

00:56:14   feature. I like the little effects and animations you can put on them. Yeah, it's really good.

00:56:19   Let's see. I've got, I just sent you a sticker, by the way. I hope you enjoy it. Let me take a look.

00:56:27   That's a good sticker. It's a sticker on my face. Thank you. It's a sticker reacting to,

00:56:32   it's a live sticker, right? Because it's that photographic, whatever. I don't know.

00:56:38   It's good stuff. I like it. Okay, Stage Manager. Hey, remember Stage Manager that people were just

00:56:47   disappointed with last time? Remember that? Yep. They got it right. I mean, that's the short version

00:56:54   is I used to try Stage Manager, especially on an external display, but even just on the main

00:56:59   display with a keyboard and a trackpad attached and just say, no, no, like I couldn't stay in it

00:57:05   because I would try to move things around and they wouldn't go. And I'd be like, why am I even doing

00:57:10   this? And I would bail out. I used Stage Manager last year, almost entirely for my work in the

00:57:19   sense of experiencing Stage Manager and not for my work in the sense of doing work. That makes sense.

00:57:24   Like I use Stage Manager so I could say I used Stage Manager, but that was it. And they changed

00:57:32   all sorts of things. The big things are the grid that you have to, there's an invisible grid,

00:57:38   essentially, that you can place windows on. It's so small now that basically you can put a window

00:57:46   wherever you want. There are occasions where it moves a little bit. They're mostly about alignment.

00:57:52   I actually wonder if there's a real grid there or not, or if they're doing what they are with

00:57:55   widgets on the desktop on the Mac, which is not worrying about where you put a window, unless it's

00:58:00   in proximity to another window where it sort of lines it up a little bit for you. So like what I

00:58:06   found in Stage Manager is the only time it would move my windows at all is if I had a window behind

00:58:11   and then I was putting this window kind of in front of it partly, but the top of the window was

00:58:16   almost aligned with the window right next to it. It would sort of push it up and align it.

00:58:20   But only just tiny amounts. Basically you can put it anywhere. And my big complaint about Stage

00:58:27   Manager last year was I put windows in places that the system just... I fought the system all

00:58:33   the time, right? The system has made some decisions about how I want to act. And it's like, "No,

00:58:39   you can't do that." It's like, "I want to put a window in the center and then another window

00:58:43   behind it off to the left." And they're like, "No, those windows go side by side. When there's

00:58:46   two windows, they go side by side." It's like, "I don't want that." And it wouldn't do it. And now

00:58:51   the system is like, whatever you want. You put that window over there, put this other window over

00:58:56   here. They did a really great job. Their fear, I suspect, all along was that they were afraid people

00:59:02   were going to lose windows behind other windows, but they built this adorable little system where

00:59:06   the window, the behind window sticks out the edge of the window that's covering it. It's like,

00:59:12   "I'm here. I'm still here." And if you tap or click on it, it moves back to where it was. It moves

00:59:17   ahead of the window that was covering it and then goes back exactly where it was. It doesn't move.

00:59:22   It's just peeking out to let you know that it's there, which I think is a really great idea because

00:59:28   we know that a lot of less sophisticated users, the problem with a multi-window interface is they

00:59:34   lose windows. They're covered by other windows and they don't know they're there. And that's why we

00:59:38   have Exposé and all these things to try to solve this problem. And I actually kind of wonder if

00:59:44   we're going to see this on the Mac at some point, this idea of the poke out window that's like,

00:59:49   "I'm here too. I'm here too." Just enough for you to not lose it. I think they did a great job with

00:59:55   that. And then they added shift click in so many different places now, where if you want to add an

01:00:01   item to a space from the dock, from Spotlight, pretty much anywhere, you can shift click on it

01:00:09   and it just adds it in your space, which makes managing the stages that much easier and that much

01:00:16   more natural feeling. Combine that with the ability to minimize, which sends it to the sidebar,

01:00:21   or to close it, or to go full screen. It all starts to fit together in a way that the short version

01:00:28   TLDR stage manager was incredibly frustrating and I didn't want to use it last year. And this year,

01:00:33   it absolutely works and I could spend lots of time. I could work on an iPad attached to a 27

01:00:40   inch monitor now. I could actually do it. In fact, I did it for a couple of days a few weeks ago.

01:00:46   And I couldn't do that before. I would pull my hair out. So yeah.

01:00:50   I really like contact posters. So it's the feature of basically making a contact card

01:00:56   look like a lock screen, you know, like you can make a fun image and you can put the name there

01:01:00   and stuff like that. I like that you can do it for yourself. I like that you can share it with other

01:01:05   people and people can share theirs with you. I also like that you can set contact posters for

01:01:10   people as well. Like if you've got a particularly nice photo that you enjoy of a person like most of

01:01:15   my contact images for my friends and family are photos from our wedding. Even though people would

01:01:21   like to have different images for themselves, right? So like they'll share with you. I like

01:01:25   seeing the pictures of my loved ones at our wedding. And so I most of the time will keep

01:01:30   those but I do like that people can share them and sometimes I change them over. I do like the

01:01:34   contact posters feature. It's bringing something new to contacts who could have imagined.

01:01:38   Right. And makes the somebody's calling you kind of a little just a little more delightful, right?

01:01:44   I feel like somebody went through the iOS and iPadOS interfaces and said, and there are no

01:01:50   contact posters on the iPadOS by the way, that'll be next year, right? And said, we've got all these

01:01:55   photos of people and we've got like, can we make these nicer? The contact posters are literally

01:01:59   like the lock screen taken and applied to contact posters. That's what it is. They use the same

01:02:06   technology that's in those custom lock screens. And it's such a good idea because they're like,

01:02:10   hey, what if we made this thing nicer instead of it being like, because the contact stuff comes

01:02:15   from an era, I feel like where it was like, oh boy, pictures. Wow. We can't really load those

01:02:20   pictures. There's a lot of pictures and they're big and we can't really load them. And can we do

01:02:24   it like a little square that has a person in it? And can we leave it at that? And like it was from

01:02:28   an earlier era and now we live in an era where it's like, sure, we'll have thousands and tens of

01:02:35   thousands of photos and they'll have animations in them. And we'll be able to detect the outlines

01:02:40   of them and like, yeah, we live in that era now, enrich it, make it nicer, make it more delightful

01:02:46   and they have all over the place. Let's see what else. Health app on the iPad. I know you've used

01:02:54   some of the new health features on the health app. I just really liked that the health app is

01:02:59   on the iPad so that I can take all my data about my activity and workouts and stuff like that.

01:03:04   And I've said before, I am far more likely to be using my iPad than my iPhone when I think about

01:03:10   like, oh yeah, I want to check in about that and I realized that I can't get to my own health data,

01:03:15   even though I'm wearing my Apple Watch at the time, right? Because it's just like, no, no, no,

01:03:19   that goes on your iPhone. And they built a system where you can now sync, choose to sync,

01:03:24   you have to choose and approve it to sync your health data to other devices as well. And so you

01:03:31   get these nice big, there's like a sidebar now and you get these nice big charts and graphs and stuff

01:03:36   in on the iPad, which is great. I have yet to check out the health app on the iPad. I forgot

01:03:41   that it existed, but I like that you like it. It's new. Yeah. It's new. But you, you tried some of

01:03:47   the other stuff out, right? Like they have the mood, emotion kind of tracking. Yeah. Yeah. I

01:03:53   spoke about this a bit on context. I think that it is a very good first try for this. I hope that

01:03:59   they add a bit more. Um, I think that the, the UI is really good. The reminders are really good,

01:04:06   but I think it's lacking a little bit on allowing you to add simple contacts, contexts to some of

01:04:12   the prompts. So like, you know, you say you might be stressed and you can kind of talk about what's

01:04:17   making you stressed and why it's making you feel that way. They have little buttons that you can

01:04:21   press to kind of like, Oh, I'm upset about this, but I didn't feel like there were enough,

01:04:26   enough options. Like the one that I spoke about on call Texas, I was stressed about something.

01:04:31   We have some improvement works done on the home and it wasn't going very well. And I, what I

01:04:37   wanted to say was that like, you know, you could say stressed and feeling anxious and it's like,

01:04:41   what is making you feel that way? And there was nothing for home, for example, like it was,

01:04:47   they were like very, very, like, I feel like way too specific and you could write something of your

01:04:52   own, but only after you'd chosen one of the options. And so I felt like there were barriers

01:04:57   to me being able to adequately talk about what was making me feel a certain way. So I would like to

01:05:04   see them do more in that department, uh, in the future. But like, I think as a, as a first step,

01:05:10   the mood tracking, I think it's really good. I think they've done a good job of it.

01:05:14   It's good. Um, so is it me again now? Yes. And just co-opt one standby. Standby is probably my

01:05:21   favorite feature of iOS 17. Um, I love that I can put my phone on a charger on my desk and now I can

01:05:28   get like information from it. I just think it's so cool. There are so many apps that are being

01:05:32   updated with some really nice, uh, standby widgets. And so I can get, you know, my next

01:05:38   calendar event. I can see what time is running. Um, and I can see photos from, you know, like

01:05:43   albums and stuff or yeah, like widgetsmith. I have some widgetsmith ones in there so I can get some

01:05:48   like photos running from my albums. I just think it's fantastic. Like I really, really love standby.

01:05:53   Um, and it's that alone has made me a MagSafe charging person because it's just so awesome,

01:05:59   so convenient. I'm a huge fan of it. I love it. Yeah. I think it's really good. I keep running.

01:06:05   I'm withholding judgment a little bit because it's been in the beta period and also, you know,

01:06:10   the apps that are using keep shifting and I can't decide whether that's because the apps are in beta

01:06:15   as well and they're getting updated and test flight and things like that. My frustration with it is

01:06:20   mostly been I pick widgets and I turn off all the suggestions and everything. And then I come back

01:06:25   later and the widget that I had in there is gone and it's been replaced by some random other widget.

01:06:30   Oh, that's weird. I have not had that problem. I hate it. I hate it. I don't know what's,

01:06:35   I don't know what's going on there. Yeah. There was a moment where I had a, uh, I had a time widget,

01:06:39   a clock widget, and suddenly it was, uh, it was heads or tails from Peacock from dice by Peacock.

01:06:45   And so I walked in instead of the time it said tails. Like what? Tails clock. Never know when

01:06:54   you're going to need to flip a coin and I can't. So I have to use dice by Peacock to do it. So,

01:06:59   uh, I, that is a bug that has bugged me, but I like the idea. I I'm also intrigued by the idea

01:07:05   of standby since it will do like, uh, media playback and stuff like that. Standby as a,

01:07:11   I think you could potentially use like in a car if you don't have car play. Um, if you, if you have

01:07:16   it sideways and plugged in, it doesn't actually have to use MagSafe. I don't think, I think it

01:07:20   just needs to be plugged in. You could actually have it as like a little media dashboard. I

01:07:23   believe if I'm remembering correctly from Federico's review that he tried to do this and it did not

01:07:29   work. Interesting. When in the movement it would shut off standby. Oh, the movement shuts it off.

01:07:36   That is fascinating. Well, I think that one of the, on my to-do list for Apple is I feel like,

01:07:43   I know Apple wants every car to have car play, but not every car does have car play. And of course,

01:07:48   we know the GM is not planning on having car play on any of their future electric cars. I wonder,

01:07:53   like they're, they, it feels very close to me to them having essentially like a car interface

01:07:59   on the iPhone for people who don't have a car play. Like maps already does it. Standby kind of,

01:08:06   those widgets are kind of in the ballpark as well. I just wonder if there might be a way for them to

01:08:11   do something that was either like car play or actually car play on an iPhone. Uh, if you're in

01:08:17   a car without car play, but anyway, uh, I like standby. I think it's good. I have a, I have the

01:08:21   Belkin charger, um, that also has the little AirPods charger on the bottom of it and it's

01:08:26   pretty cool. And it's pretty cute. I haven't decided where it's going to live long-term

01:08:30   right now. It's out in the, in the kitchen, um, where, which is why I've been using it

01:08:35   sort of as a clock in there. Um, I don't know about putting it on my desk or not. I might do

01:08:41   that, but, um, it's a great feature. It's a really cool use of, this is another example of Apple just

01:08:47   using all that widget technology, right? The, the, uh, they built this new generation of widgets.

01:08:52   They continue to update it. This whole OS generation has the, the interactive widgets as

01:08:57   well. And it's a great example of Apple just sort of like taking, building this one technology and

01:09:02   then exploding it into all these different places on all of its platforms. It's very good.

01:09:06   Speaking of which interactive widgets in general, I love them. I feel like this is something that

01:09:12   we're going to see a lot more of over the next couple of weeks. That on a note, actually, like

01:09:16   we're talking about a lot of things today, but over the next few weeks, there will be more third

01:09:21   party apps that are coming out. Like iOS, I don't even know if it's out at the time we're recording

01:09:25   this, but it is coming out today. Um, I think it may have started rolling out already, but

01:09:30   so we'll be covering over the next few weeks, some stuff that we like, but from an interactive widget

01:09:34   perspective, the home widget, I loved being able to turn lights on and off. Timery is fantastic.

01:09:40   Joe has just done an incredible job. Like one of my favorite things that Joe has done is the ability

01:09:45   to have like scrollable information inside of a widget. It's like, if you have a bunch of saved

01:09:51   timers, you can have a backwards and forwards button to page through all of your timers.

01:09:55   Widget Smith has just got some wild ones. Underscore has built CoverFlow as a music widget,

01:10:02   which is wild. But my favorite is you can, one of the widgets that I always really like is a

01:10:07   countdown timer. So you can have like a countdown to a certain event and you could put an image

01:10:11   behind that countdown timer. Well now with the countdown timer widget and a bunch of others,

01:10:16   you can hide information behind the widget. So I have like an image right now of last year's

01:10:20   podcast is on my home screen. And when I tap it, it slides up and I get the countdown until the

01:10:26   podcast is on and I'm going to do that for vacations too. So I can have an image of a place

01:10:30   where I'm going on holiday. I can tap it. The image of the thing slides up and it's underneath

01:10:35   underscore as you can imagine, has built some truly incredible things in Widget Smith. Um,

01:10:40   and Fantastic Al as well. I've been using that one, but I don't know if it's out yet. So I'm

01:10:45   gonna talk about it too much. So what strikes me about this, the interactive widget thing,

01:10:51   is that I feel like we are potentially entering an era where Apple is sort of saying,

01:10:59   there are lots of interactions you can do with apps that you don't need to do in the app.

01:11:04   Right. I like this. I like this idea that maybe your home screen is no longer a place where you

01:11:13   just launch apps or launch apps and look at information, but it's actually a place where you

01:11:19   do things and that the full on app for some apps, not all apps are appropriate for this,

01:11:25   but like for some apps that the full on app itself is sort of like the place you go when you really

01:11:34   have to get into it, but that you don't have to go there for a whole class of particular actions.

01:11:39   And I just, I think that's fascinating because before it was always like, like, look, you launch

01:11:45   apps and then you use the apps and then you leave the apps. And now Apple sort of saying, no,

01:11:48   you know, you have little bits of the apps that are just out here and you could, you could put,

01:11:53   you know, on a page on your iPhone home screen, you can put three widgets and swipe there and

01:11:59   then be like, okay, I'm going to tap this thing and I'm going to tap that thing. And I'm going to,

01:12:02   you know, I'm done with a task, so I'm going to tap done on reminders and then tap to a new,

01:12:09   you know, tap off or to a new thing on Timery. And then you move on and like, you never open

01:12:14   those apps, but you checked off your reminder or to do or whatever app you're using. And you also

01:12:19   changed your time tracking. Like that's an interesting shift in philosophy to say,

01:12:24   opening the apps is not the way you have to interact with them. In fact, some apps,

01:12:30   I would imagine you might, you know, it might be very rare that you need to go in because

01:12:36   the stuff you use them for is out on that top level and on a widget somewhere.

01:12:40   The fantastic L one is out and like effectively on one of the widgets, the widget type that I use,

01:12:46   they now have the ability to go like, you can skip month to month, right? So you,

01:12:50   one thing that I was going to know is what day is this date? So I could see that. So I can see that,

01:12:54   like I just tapped the word to October and see that the 27th of October is a Friday,

01:12:59   but it also shows you a preview of the events that you have on those days. So it's like,

01:13:03   that is something that I opened the app for a lot that I now don't need to open the app for.

01:13:07   So yeah, I'm really excited to see more of these roll out over the next couple of weeks,

01:13:12   but you know, I expect my home screens are going to change all over again because of interactive

01:13:17   widgets. Um, let me, let me do a couple real quick. Um, proximity sharing. I want to mention

01:13:25   because this is the other shoe dropping about Apple turning off the ability to accept an air,

01:13:31   an air drop from anyone, right? You used to be able to be, you know, and it was dangerous,

01:13:37   but you could say, Oh yes, except an air drop from anyone. And they changed it. And there was

01:13:41   all that talk about how China wanted them to change it and all of that. This is the other

01:13:45   shoe dropping there because what this is saying is if you're in a situation where there's somebody

01:13:51   who's not in your contacts, you have not approved them, but they want to share something with you

01:13:56   and you're together. What you do is you put one phone in proximity to the other. It's,

01:14:01   they're looking for your approval. This is how you have a consensual air drop. So you put them

01:14:08   together and then there's a little pulsating animation and you say, all right, now I'm going

01:14:14   to share this thing with you. And it's, I really think this is smart. This is the idea. You're not

01:14:20   in my contacts. I can't drop this to you directly, but we agree. You're going to send me that picture

01:14:26   and we essentially tap phones. And then the picture gets sent really smart. I like it a lot.

01:14:32   I think it's a good way of also taking software Chrome, even if you're in the context, taking

01:14:40   software Chrome and taking many taps out of the process. You know, if, if I take a picture and my

01:14:46   mom, you know, I'm visiting my mom and she's like, Oh, can I have that picture right now? I can do

01:14:51   that. And it just pops up with her. But if she takes a picture and wants to send it to me, it's

01:14:57   a whole thing, right? Where she texts it to me, but I really want the airdrop version and all that.

01:15:02   Well with this, you just bring your phones together and then it says, yeah, okay, I'll send

01:15:08   that. It's just, it's a really nice, it's really well done. There's maybe a little bit of a learning

01:15:13   curve, but like the idea that you use your interface is how you place your phone in the

01:15:17   real world. I like that a lot. I think that's really good. And then I want to mention your

01:15:24   favorite TVOS. My favorite. I think continuity camera support in TVOS is it points at potentially

01:15:35   future Apple products, but I think it's a game changer. The idea that you can put a camera on

01:15:41   a table or on top of your TV, like an iPhone on your table or on your top of your TV, and then

01:15:47   just sit in front of the TV and do a family chat with other people using FaceTime or whatever.

01:15:51   Like it's such a good idea. And the execution is so good. It's using your iPhone back camera

01:15:58   to do center stage and zoom in on you. I used this a few times over the summer. It's really,

01:16:06   really impressive. And what it makes me want of course, is a device where there's an integrated

01:16:12   camera or there's a little continuity camera you can leave permanently somewhere. But using your

01:16:19   iPhone works okay. I use the same Belkin adapter that I, or a little mount that I can put on top

01:16:25   of my studio display. It goes on top of my TV too. It looks so good. Sounds good. Like it's really

01:16:33   good. I have been using FaceTime, but I can't wait to use this with something like Zoom, where we do

01:16:38   a family Zoom every other week. And we do it in the living room, but we just have like an iPad or

01:16:45   a MacBook sitting on the table and the angle isn't very good. And just put it on the TV. Such a great

01:16:52   idea. So I really like how they've executed it. It looks really good. But it also makes me wonder,

01:16:59   do they have a broader strategy here down the road? Because they're building the pieces, but

01:17:04   even as it is today, you got to have an Apple TV 4K and it's got to be one of the two most

01:17:09   recent versions, I think, not the first version. So there's some limitations, but boy, it's really

01:17:14   good. I'm very impressed. I like the new auto-correct. I think it's very effective. I think

01:17:20   it's doing a really good job. I've been trying out some of the AirPods stuff. The conversational

01:17:27   awareness feature is really interesting where you can be listening to audio or something and you

01:17:33   start talking and it will leave a turn off or volume down. It will take you off of noise

01:17:38   cancellation. And I think it's really cool. The one issue I've had right now is if I'm listening

01:17:43   to something on my AirPods while I'm brushing my teeth, sometimes it activates conversational

01:17:49   awareness, which is not what I'm looking for in that moment. And I'm really intrigued about what

01:17:57   it is exactly that is making it do that. My experience with it is that when I'm walking

01:18:03   the dog, I have to give her feedback. And every time I tell something to the dog, it just drops me

01:18:08   down because it thinks, "Oh, you're having a conversation." It's like, "I'm not. It's just

01:18:14   my voice." And I'm hoping that maybe a future version of this is a little more aware of the

01:18:20   sounds. It's not just me, but that there's another voice happening, that there's interaction happening.

01:18:27   Because I heard somebody else said when they sing along with the music, it dims the music.

01:18:33   It's like, "No, no, no, no, no. Don't do that." So I turned it off. Adaptive audio is one of those

01:18:38   things. Well, adapted audio I love. That's a new feature. I'm not sure about adaptive audio yet.

01:18:46   I use that instead of transparency now, adaptive audio, because it is essentially

01:18:53   better transparency algorithm. You can hear everything that's around you,

01:18:57   and yet it's suppressing stuff that is just kind of like a broadband tone. It's just sort of like

01:19:05   always there. So it's not noise canceling. And on a plane, I'll use noise canceling. But when

01:19:09   I'm running, I use adaptive audio when I like it. Conversational awareness I turned off because I'm

01:19:15   talking to the dog when I'm walking the dog. And it worked great on an airplane when I was talking

01:19:19   to the flight attendant or talking to my family. It was great. And I could turn it on for that.

01:19:23   But mostly I'm walking the dog all the time. I'm always walking the dog, and I have to give her

01:19:29   commands. And it thinks that I'm having a conversation. Maisie doesn't talk back.

01:19:35   It's not a conversation that's been going on there. And I understand that that's hard,

01:19:40   but I just had to turn it off. But the adaptive audio, I like the...

01:19:45   Then there's the adaptive, the volume thing. The volume control.

01:19:50   The passive volume, I like that.

01:19:51   I hate it. I hate it.

01:19:53   So this is super interesting. Everyone I'm talking to about all this new AirPods stuff

01:19:56   has very different views. So for me with adaptive audio,

01:19:59   what I'm finding is when I'm out in the street, I have the feeling of noise cancellation. You

01:20:05   know you get like noise cancellation has a feeling, right? Like it has like a pressure

01:20:08   to it. I feel like that's happening more than I want. Like I'm feeling that I'm under noise

01:20:14   cancellation, even though I can hear things more, but it's doing like a little mixture of it.

01:20:18   So I'm not sold on it, but I'm still under testing for adaptive audio.

01:20:22   Like I said, I think what it's doing is it's taking like... So I live by a freeway, right?

01:20:27   So there's a little background hiss of the freeway, you know, all the time. It takes that out

01:20:31   because that's just an unchanging background sound. An unchanging kind of like air sound.

01:20:36   But if a car is coming, I can hear it crystal clear that a car is coming.

01:20:41   And I like that, right? Because that's why I'm wearing them. And that's why they were

01:20:44   in transparency mode before. So all it's doing is it's a little nicer transparency mode.

01:20:48   But I'll tell you why I don't like the personalized volume thing is I don't notice it.

01:20:54   Maybe it's working for me in certain scenarios and I'm just not noticing it. And then great,

01:20:58   that's great. But where I notice it is that I'm listening to something at a perfectly good volume

01:21:05   and then it suddenly just lowers the volume a lot. And I'm like, what are you doing? Like I'm

01:21:09   listening... It happens to me when I'm about to go out the door with the dog and I'm listening to a

01:21:13   podcast and I'm getting the leash and I'm getting ready to go. And then my podcast gets real quiet

01:21:22   and I roll my eyes and I make the podcast louder so I can hear it. And like if that's all I'm

01:21:28   noticing, I just have to turn it off because it's not working right. It's not doing it right.

01:21:32   - Anything else you wanted to talk about in iOS?

01:21:37   - Yeah. Speaking of my dog, pets are finally in photos. So it's people and pets now everywhere.

01:21:43   Instead of just pets. That was my big challenge for updating my book about the photos app.

01:21:50   Every reference to people is now people and pets, but it works and it works pretty well.

01:21:55   It's not perfect, but then the people detection isn't perfect either. But they obviously have

01:21:59   some sort of like animal algorithm for dogs and cats that try to identify them and differentiate

01:22:06   them. And it does pretty well. So I have a tortoiseshell cat who's got the sort of orange

01:22:17   and black coloring and a model sort of split face modeling kind of thing going on orange on one side,

01:22:23   black on the other. And there was a cat that we met several times in our neighborhood many years

01:22:30   ago who is the same kind of cat. And that cat showed up in the collection for my cat. And I mean,

01:22:37   you just click and you say, this is not that cat. And then they go away. I thought that was

01:22:41   interesting. Whereas a very similar cat showed up. However, I had two black cats and they are

01:22:50   black cats, right? They're slightly different, right? They're different, but it did a really

01:22:55   good job of differentiating between them. Now I suspect one of the things that their algorithm

01:23:01   is doing is looking at time, right? I suspect that part of what they're doing is saying, well,

01:23:07   these cats are not quite the same. And all of this cluster of the cat that looks kind of like this

01:23:16   is in this five-year span. And all of the cluster of the cat that looks kind of like this is in this

01:23:21   10-year span. I think these are different cats, right? I think that it's doing some of that too,

01:23:27   but it worked pretty well. I think I look through the photos and I'm like, is that

01:23:32   Tye or Rocket? And it's like, oh, that's Rocket. But I have to pause. And so the fact that Apple's

01:23:37   algorithm has done a serviceable job on taking similar looking pets and differentiating them.

01:23:44   And it is great to be able to just click on a dog and say, here are all the pictures of your dog,

01:23:50   which before you had to search for dog, and then you get your dog and other people's dogs and

01:23:54   all of that, which is less good. So a good feature, like it.

01:23:58   So there are a selection of features coming later to iOS 17, some small, some big. I feel like this

01:24:05   year there's maybe a bunch more Bigfoot features than there have been before. So I mentioned

01:24:09   sticker tapbacks. The airdrop feature where you can walk away from someone from the proximity

01:24:14   and have it complete the transfer over the internet is coming later. All of the music

01:24:19   playlist collaboration features are coming later. The PDF form detection is coming later and the

01:24:24   journaling app. It's a bunch of stuff. - Yeah. Sicker tapbacks is the one that I want

01:24:29   desperately. - Me too.

01:24:30   - Because I want to be able to do emoji tapbacks of any emoji. We'll get there.

01:24:34   - We'll get there. - We'll get there. I wonder what that

01:24:36   interface will look like, how it'll work and all of that. But I mean, we may get there pretty soon

01:24:41   because sometimes what happens if you're living the beta life, and this is why we might be doing

01:24:44   B-tails again next week. - True. Point one.

01:24:49   - You live the beta life. They put out a new beta when they ship the old one and then they do the beta, the next one, and all those features get imported that are not ready yet. That happens sometimes.

01:24:56   - I might stay on the beta train this time around, which I usually don't, but there's a bunch of stuff

01:25:01   in there that I want to try as soon as it becomes available. Can I give you some quick thoughts on

01:25:05   watchOS 10? I installed the release candidate, so I've only been using it for a few days. So

01:25:11   I think I echo what I've heard a lot of people say. I don't like that the side button,

01:25:15   what that used to do for me was show me a bunch of pinned applications that I wanted to be able to use.

01:25:22   That has gone away, that feature completely. The side button now brings up control center, which is

01:25:27   fine, but there's no way for me to get to a list of applications easily. I have five apps that

01:25:33   I would use a lot and you just can't get to them. There is still a recently used multitasking view

01:25:40   when you double tap the crown. I just want to be able to pin apps there. Just let me do that,

01:25:45   but they don't let me do that. I like the widgets a lot. I like that there's that widget that lets

01:25:51   me add some kind of app shortcuts, like complication style. I don't know why I can't

01:25:57   add more than one of those. Why can't I have two of those widgets that let me have six little

01:26:02   complications? I find that really weird. There are way too many ways to get to widgets. You can get

01:26:09   to widgets for two or three different actions on this thing and I just think it's too much.

01:26:14   It's unnecessary to me to have widgets access in so many ways. I hope that it works out in the long

01:26:22   run. I enjoy the UI of the widgets. I like the way that they look. The apps that I care most about,

01:26:30   widget wise, I do already have complications for them, so I hope that this functionality

01:26:35   gets adopted more widely. I did get on a watch app that I would not have a complication for,

01:26:42   that does have a widget and I've been using it over the last few days and it's awesome.

01:26:45   I can't talk about it yet, but I'm very happy that it's there. I think when this app becomes

01:26:49   available, people will know what I'm talking about. I don't understand why on the widget screen,

01:26:55   the date and the clock are there. Why are they there? Why are the date and clock there? I just

01:27:00   came from a watch face. I don't need another watch face and they take up too much space.

01:27:05   I could have two or three widgets immediately. Why do I need this huge date and clock? I don't

01:27:11   understand that at all. It feels like you're entering somebody else's watch face. Yes.

01:27:17   Why is this there? There's a little mini watch face and then scrollable widgets, but it's like,

01:27:21   I was just on a watch face that has the time because all the watch faces have the time and

01:27:25   the date. Every time I want to get to my widgets now, it's always two swipes. I swipe up and I have

01:27:32   to swipe up again to be able to get to anything other than the first one. I'm not sure about

01:27:39   the smart stack because it's supposed to move around to what is active. For example, right now,

01:27:46   I have a timer widget running. Now that should be on the top because that is an active thing that is

01:27:51   occurring. I find that weird, but it's not there. I really like the way it looks. I like the widgets.

01:27:59   I find the widgets helpful and useful. I like the design of widgets and it is a better way of doing

01:28:04   that. I used to be a fan of the Siri watch face and I like that. I feel really good.

01:28:11   I never remember to use the widgets on watchOS 10. I never remember. I have used them almost not

01:28:17   at all. I need to revisit them and see if I can make them more useful, but I will agree.

01:28:21   When I do use it, I just roll my eyes because I get that. I'm immediately given another time.

01:28:26   I've seen the time. I was just at the time. Why are you showing me the time again and not my widgets,

01:28:32   which is why I'm here? I don't get it. I need to try that more. Also, the apps that I use,

01:28:38   really, they need to be updated. I hope they are to do watch widgets. We'll see.

01:28:44   Will Barron I think in general, there's a lot more watch apps. I like the overall design of the new

01:28:48   watch apps. The full screen stuff. That's my favorite thing about it.

01:28:52   Will Barron Really good. Really fresh. Both this and just the general watch UI makes me really

01:28:57   look forward to getting my Ultra. I feel like notifications, for example, it feels like it

01:29:02   wants a bigger watch. The new design of the way a lot of this stuff works. I like the way that

01:29:08   the swipe typing keyboard feels more reliable. I don't know if they're using the new autocorrect

01:29:13   here with the transformer model. If they are, it would be interesting because swipe typing on

01:29:18   iOS does not use the transformer model. If you swipe type, it doesn't make those suggestions.

01:29:24   They're only if you're like typing out the letters as you go. So I would say I like watchOS 10. I

01:29:30   like the widgets and stuff, but I think there is more refinement needed on that view. And I hope

01:29:37   that I continue to see more really good updates because there's a bunch there and watch updates

01:29:43   that I've seen so far. And I hope that that continues because they're really cool. Yeah.

01:29:47   - All right. Should we finish out with a couple of Ask Upgrade questions today?

01:29:51   - Yeah, let's do it.

01:29:52   - So Corey asks, for the record, when will the Ask Upgrade lasers, which did not fire,

01:29:57   which is interesting, when will they be 100% carbon neutral?

01:30:00   - You just asked me a question about, let's go back. You asked me the question. I said,

01:30:04   yes, Mike, let's do Ask Upgrade. Now you say...

01:30:06   - Then it's time for Ask Upgrade. Corey asks, for the record, when will the Ask Upgrade lasers

01:30:12   be 100% carbon neutral? - Corey, I got bad news for you.

01:30:16   These are lasers we picked up at the Supervillain factory and they generate

01:30:22   vast amounts of carbon dioxide every time they're fired. Sorry.

01:30:27   - We put coal in and it just generates like 10 times more emissions.

01:30:32   - Yeah, no, it's very bad for the earth. But again, they're lasers. They're bad for the earth.

01:30:39   They're not good. - What are we supposed to do?

01:30:42   We have an episode every week. What are we supposed to do?

01:30:46   - Yeah, to be fair, we only fire them three times every week for the most part.

01:30:50   - This week, they went for lunch. - So I guess the answer is, maybe someday,

01:30:59   but I'm not gonna commit to 2030 for the lasers to be carbon neutral.

01:31:04   - That is very fair. - And unlike other companies,

01:31:07   we're not working toward it. It might happen sometime, but we're not actually working toward

01:31:11   it. It's just... - If the lasers become carbon neutral,

01:31:15   that was an accident. Like, they just did that. We didn't do it.

01:31:18   - Right. If we buy lasers and then somebody points out that those lasers that you bought,

01:31:23   they're actually green. First off, we prefer them in red.

01:31:27   - The lasers are red. - For strange reasons.

01:31:29   - Yeah. Interesting that I've always imagined the lasers are red. That's weird.

01:31:32   - It's a laser color. It's the color a laser is, is red, right? The green laser, I don't know.

01:31:37   That's like a lightsaber or something. It's not the same. So anyway, they're not green.

01:31:41   They're red and they murder people. We fire them. We don't kill people with them.

01:31:45   They were made to murder people. We fire them into the ground and it's fine.

01:31:50   Very few upgrade interns have been harmed by the lasers. So anyway, so maybe someday,

01:31:56   accidentally, they will be carbon neutral, but in the meantime, they are hurting the earth

01:32:01   and we're not making any progress toward our goals.

01:32:04   - And Eric asks, "Is the new iPhone 15 Pro having USB 3? Could the fastest way to transfer to your

01:32:10   new iPhone be from a backup from your Mac? Understand you would need the correct cable,

01:32:16   of course. Do you have plans for how you're going to set up your new phones on Friday?"

01:32:20   - Well, I mean, I just use the regular old transfer assistant. I think the,

01:32:29   there's a good question though. I don't know why it would be faster because you would have to go

01:32:36   from, you would have to go from your one device to the Mac and then the Mac to the other device

01:32:40   and that you're not going to get any savings there. So I think the fastest way to do it is to

01:32:44   transfer directly either via cable or via wireless and do it.

01:32:48   - I'm going to do that device to device transfer thing again, I think.

01:32:51   - Yeah.

01:32:52   - I don't remember. I think last time I had a bad time with it, but I'm just going to give that a

01:32:56   go again. I think you're always rolling the dice as to whether the transfer is going to be good or

01:33:00   not. And next week, we'll talk about whether it was good or not. If I've done it by then,

01:33:06   because we're actually going to record in person on Sunday, I'm expecting I probably

01:33:10   would have transferred my iPhone by then, but I'm not sure, but we'll see.

01:33:14   - I don't know. We're living in uncertain times right now.

01:33:18   - We sure are. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on a future episode,

01:33:22   go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send in an ask upgrade question there.

01:33:26   You can also send in your feedback and your follow-up. Don't forget stjude.org/relay.

01:33:32   Find out more about our work for St. Jude throughout all of September, which is childhood

01:33:37   cancer awareness month. You can donate, you can sign up to fundraise and join us for the podcast

01:33:41   with on on Friday, September 22nd. You can check out Jason's work at sixcolors.com. You'll find

01:33:47   lots of coverage of the new OS is there. You can hear Jason on his podcast here and on the

01:33:53   incomparable. You can listen to my shows on Relay FM and check out my work at cortexbrand.com.

01:33:58   We're on Mastodon. Jason is @jsnell on zeppelin.flights. Mike is @imike on mike.social.

01:34:04   You can also find the show on Mastodon as upgrade@relayfm.social. You'll find video clips

01:34:09   of the show there and also on our video platforms, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where we are @upgraderelay

01:34:16   on all. We're also on Threads. I am @imike. Jason is @jsnell. Thank you to our members

01:34:22   as supporters of Upgrade Plus. You can get longer ad-free versions of the show each and every week.

01:34:27   Today, I'm going to tell an Upgrade Plus, Jason, about my bananas visit trip. Like, sorry, my trip.

01:34:34   My trip here was wild and I'm going to tell Jason what happened. You can find that on Upgrade Plus.

01:34:39   Thank you to our sponsors of this week's episode, which was ZocDoc and Electric,

01:34:44   and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

01:34:48   Goodbye, Mike Early.

01:34:56   [BLANK_AUDIO]