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606: A Decade of Half-Presses

 

00:00:00   - I am back on the beach today and I'm so happy.

00:00:02   The beach in September is beautiful

00:00:04   because it's still pretty warm,

00:00:07   some of the restaurants are still open,

00:00:09   and there's no one here.

00:00:10   'Cause as soon as the school year starts,

00:00:14   everyone stops coming here.

00:00:16   It's like the workers who work locally here

00:00:19   call it Tumbleweed Tuesday, the day after Labor Day,

00:00:21   because it's just, it literally is like a light switch.

00:00:25   Like Labor Day weekend, massive, crowded, everything,

00:00:28   and then literally Tuesday,

00:00:30   just Tumbleweeds blow through the town, no one is here.

00:00:33   So it is, we're not able to spend a ton of time here

00:00:37   because we also are bound now by the mainland school year,

00:00:40   but wow, it's so nice here.

00:00:43   It's like walking through one of those

00:00:45   deserted video game levels.

00:00:46   - Fewer zombies.

00:00:47   - Yeah, well, I mean, the few people who were left,

00:00:51   we're certainly an eccentric crowd.

00:00:54   Certainly some characters walking around.

00:00:57   We don't get sent on a lot of side quests though,

00:00:59   but it is certainly some eccentrics.

00:01:04   That's part of one of the best things I love

00:01:07   about being here in this weird beach town

00:01:09   is that the people who are here for long enough,

00:01:13   I don't know if it makes you eccentric,

00:01:15   or if only eccentric people can tolerate being here

00:01:17   for that long, but whatever it is,

00:01:19   it selects for eccentricity.

00:01:22   And so everyone here is weird.

00:01:24   Like I fit in great, 'cause I'm weird too.

00:01:27   And I'm weird in different ways than some of the other ones,

00:01:29   but like everyone here is just so gloriously weird.

00:01:34   I feel so at home here.

00:01:36   Like Long Island, Long Island has its weirdos for sure,

00:01:39   but it's more like regular suburban America.

00:01:42   You don't see a lot of that coming out.

00:01:44   In the beach town, everyone lets their weirdness fly,

00:01:48   and it is just glorious to be here.

00:01:50   And you feel like the most normal person,

00:01:53   even when you are as weird as I am.

00:01:56   - Oh my.

00:01:57   Do you have your car back?

00:01:58   - Yeah, I've got it back, the issue has not recurred,

00:02:01   it's been fine.

00:02:01   I actually heard from a couple of listeners who wrote in

00:02:04   who said that they actually had similar problems

00:02:06   with like some high voltage error message

00:02:08   with their BMW iX on its first day,

00:02:11   and then they got it fixed and they never saw it again.

00:02:13   So I'm hoping that's going to happen to me.

00:02:16   Otherwise, still loving the car, it's still really great.

00:02:20   There's nothing more to report there.

00:02:21   I hope it's now gonna be just a boring car ownership story

00:02:25   for the next three years, and then I'll pick something else

00:02:28   or the same thing again, or buy this one, who knows.

00:02:30   But I look forward to going back to my car

00:02:34   not being a point of flux.

00:02:37   I've had various neck and shoulder tension issues

00:02:42   over the last couple of years,

00:02:43   working through some weird little issues.

00:02:45   During all the Caribbean drama,

00:02:47   I couldn't even turn my head all the way to one side.

00:02:50   It was really bad.

00:02:51   My whole shoulder blade was all tense,

00:02:53   and I went to a physical therapist

00:02:56   and fixed it a little bit,

00:02:57   but I had to go back the next week to fix it more.

00:03:00   And then as soon as I got the new car,

00:03:04   it was like a light switch turned off there too.

00:03:07   It's like, it was just all that stress was just melted away

00:03:11   as it just started working, and it just didn't,

00:03:14   it wasn't causing all this problem

00:03:17   and distraction in my life.

00:03:19   - Did the physical therapist tell you

00:03:20   that your neck was too smart to move?

00:03:22   (laughing)

00:03:24   - All right, before we get started, it is still September.

00:03:29   There's a week left in September,

00:03:31   and September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month,

00:03:35   which means we are still, still trying to raise money

00:03:38   for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

00:03:41   At one point, I had my little show notes up

00:03:43   or that would tell me the talking points I'm supposed to use

00:03:46   but I accidentally closed it.

00:03:47   So I'm gonna do this off the dome, as Marilyn would say.

00:03:50   - You don't need notes, you've lived it now.

00:03:52   - I've lived it, yes, that's right.

00:03:53   So speaking of, this past Friday as we record,

00:03:55   I was in Memphis at St. Jude's campus,

00:03:59   and we did 12 hours of live telethon.

00:04:04   We called the podcast-a-thon, it was myself, Mike Hurley,

00:04:06   Stephen Hackett, Jason Snell, and Kathy Campbell,

00:04:09   and we did all sorts of fun hijinks for 12 hours

00:04:12   and raised $130,000 or thereabouts

00:04:15   for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

00:04:16   So why do we do it?

00:04:17   St. Jude is, like I've said several times now,

00:04:20   a children's research hospital.

00:04:22   So some of the incredible stuff that they do

00:04:24   is not only do they treat children who are really

00:04:28   in the throes of terrible life-threatening illnesses,

00:04:31   but they also do a ton of research

00:04:33   and they try to figure out ways to make sure

00:04:36   that no child would die in the dawn of their lives

00:04:40   and in the beginning of their lives.

00:04:41   And so when I was there, I attended a couple of talks

00:04:46   from some doctors there who were just talking

00:04:50   about these absolutely phenomenal things that they're doing

00:04:53   and how they're looking at research for one type of cancer

00:04:56   and very cautiously and in a controlled way

00:04:59   applying it to different kinds of cancer

00:05:00   and finding incredible, incredible solutions

00:05:04   and fixes and whatnot.

00:05:05   The work they do there is incredible.

00:05:07   They talk about how they're doing DNA sequencing

00:05:09   in order to figure out, okay, well, we know that you have,

00:05:12   let's say not a cancer, say epilepsy.

00:05:14   We know you have epilepsy, but it could be one

00:05:17   of 50 different kinds of epilepsy.

00:05:19   But thanks to genetic sequencing, we can say, oh, no, no,

00:05:21   your particular style of epilepsy is the one, two, three,

00:05:24   four, five style and we know that this drug

00:05:27   treats that one, two, three, four, five style really well

00:05:29   and we shouldn't use this other drug

00:05:30   that treats the six, seven, eight, nine, 10 style

00:05:32   or whatever the case may be.

00:05:34   The work that St. Jude does is really incredible

00:05:36   and one of the most incredible things

00:05:37   about what St. Jude does is that they do this

00:05:39   without billing their patients or their patients' families.

00:05:43   So their perspective is, if you have a child

00:05:46   that's fighting for their lives,

00:05:48   the last thing you wanna worry about as a family

00:05:50   is anything but helping that child

00:05:53   and making that child feel better.

00:05:55   If you need help getting to Memphis,

00:05:58   they will fund the trip to Memphis.

00:06:00   If you need help staying in Memphis,

00:06:02   they will figure out a way for you to stay in Memphis,

00:06:04   either on their own campus or somewhere else.

00:06:06   If you need the patient or perhaps a sibling

00:06:10   to go to school, they have a school on campus,

00:06:13   it's just utterly incredible all the work

00:06:16   that St. Jude does in order to do everything they can

00:06:19   to stop this just terrible, terrible series of diseases

00:06:23   'cause it's not just cancer, like I said.

00:06:25   So how can you help?

00:06:26   Well, you can do a couple things.

00:06:27   You can go to stjude.org/atp, S-T-J-U-D-E.org/atp

00:06:31   and you can throw them a few bucks.

00:06:32   Now, we've done a phenomenal job this year,

00:06:35   a truly incredible job.

00:06:37   We've broken all, Relay as a whole

00:06:39   has broken all of its records.

00:06:41   As I sit here now, we're over $800,000 raised.

00:06:44   But here's the thing, St. Jude uses a lot of money

00:06:46   because all this research is expensive.

00:06:48   All the treatments are expensive.

00:06:50   And they're also trying to help fund treatments

00:06:53   going to other countries.

00:06:54   There's a program, I forget the specifics

00:06:57   off the top of my head, but they're trying to figure out

00:06:59   a way to get chemotherapy treatments into other countries.

00:07:04   This isn't just America here.

00:07:06   So you can go to stjude.org/atp

00:07:07   and you can throw them a few bucks, five bucks, 10 bucks,

00:07:09   it doesn't matter.

00:07:10   Anything you can contribute is helpful.

00:07:12   And I think that I and perhaps the three of us

00:07:15   kind of get ourselves wrapped around the axle

00:07:17   about the big donations, but truly,

00:07:19   anything you can offer is helpful.

00:07:23   I saw Ryan Richard, excuse me, Ryan Ricard earlier today

00:07:27   posted this, which I thought was great.

00:07:30   And we're gonna talk about the Marco offset in a second,

00:07:32   but Ryan said an idea for an alternative Marco offset

00:07:35   for those who didn't buy Apple stuff this year,

00:07:37   check any credit cards with cash rewards.

00:07:39   Mine had over $100 hanging around,

00:07:40   which I was happy to hand over to St. Jude.

00:07:42   This is free money that you got generally

00:07:45   for being a wealthy person, but it's no more valuable.

00:07:47   I think that's great.

00:07:49   So you could do that or you could apply the Marco offset.

00:07:51   Marco, do you know anything about the Marco offset

00:07:53   or is that just a funny coincidence?

00:07:55   - I've never heard of that before.

00:07:56   No, actually I think I'm up with where,

00:07:57   so you look at your purchases this fall

00:08:00   of your new tech devices that you might've frivolously

00:08:04   to some degree purchased.

00:08:05   Maybe you could have gone without these tech devices,

00:08:07   but you have your tech devices and you have

00:08:10   the baseline price for the device family.

00:08:12   So if it's the iPhone Pro, that's $999 or whatever.

00:08:15   And then you add up whatever you actually spent

00:08:18   at checkout or will spend over time

00:08:20   with Apple Care descriptions or whatever.

00:08:22   So it's gonna include things like sales tax,

00:08:24   storage upgrades, size upgrades, cases,

00:08:27   any kind of accessories you bought

00:08:28   when you bought your new phone or whatever.

00:08:30   Add those up, subtract the base price for the family.

00:08:33   That is your Marco offset.

00:08:34   So for a $1000 phone, it might be a few hundred bucks.

00:08:37   And that is my suggested minimum donation

00:08:41   that you consider putting into St. Jude.

00:08:44   If you can swing it, that's great.

00:08:46   If you can swing more, that's great too.

00:08:48   If you can't swing that, but you can swing 10 bucks,

00:08:50   20 bucks, good, that's great too.

00:08:51   Every little bit helps, so please.

00:08:53   And you can actually, as Casey I believe mentioned,

00:08:56   you can go to the marcooffset.com to actually

00:08:59   compute this amount based on the iPhone purchase

00:09:03   for this year.

00:09:04   But yeah, basically look at what you tack on

00:09:07   to your tech purchases as kind of extra money

00:09:10   that you don't scrutinize too much maybe.

00:09:13   And that's a pretty good barometer

00:09:14   for what you can probably afford to give if you can.

00:09:16   So help out if you can, please.

00:09:18   It helps a lot and we appreciate it.

00:09:20   - Very much so.

00:09:21   Now John, I mentioned earlier that I was recording

00:09:24   or I was doing a telethon for 12 straight hours.

00:09:27   Did you know anything about that by chance?

00:09:30   - I did, I watched almost all of it

00:09:32   and I appeared briefly for 15 minutes of those 12 hours.

00:09:36   So I was glad to contribute in my small way.

00:09:40   - Yeah, and so John and Jason did a live recording

00:09:43   of Robot or Not and I was basically--

00:09:44   - With you there in the peanut gallery.

00:09:46   - Exactly right, exactly what I was gonna say.

00:09:48   So I was the peanut gallery for that.

00:09:49   That was, I don't know, like hour eight or nine

00:09:52   or something like that.

00:09:52   It was toward the end of the broadcast,

00:09:54   I don't recall exactly when, but you can look it up

00:09:55   and you can check it out.

00:09:56   So again, I don't know if we're gonna do this again

00:09:59   next week, this might be the last time.

00:10:00   We probably will next week, maybe, actually maybe not.

00:10:03   We'll see, but one way or another, stjude.org/atp,

00:10:06   S-T-J-U-D-E.org/atp, please and thank you.

00:10:09   We truly, truly, truly, truly appreciate all the money

00:10:12   that you have sent because again,

00:10:15   most of the money that we have earned for St. Jude

00:10:18   comes from the five, 10, $15 donations.

00:10:20   So please, anything you can do, please feel free.

00:10:23   Stjude.org/atp.

00:10:25   Let's do some follow up.

00:10:26   John, you've gotten some solutions

00:10:28   to your extracting file names from photos conundrum.

00:10:32   Would you, if you don't mind, give a super duper brief recap

00:10:36   of what the issue was, please.

00:10:37   - Yep, this was from our photo workflows

00:10:39   member special episode where we all described

00:10:42   the way we deal with photos

00:10:43   and also of our photography equipment.

00:10:46   Casey's system was the weirdest,

00:10:47   but mine had one step in it that was definitely troubling

00:10:52   and problematic and it involved me taking screenshots

00:10:55   of the photos app and then OCRing text out of them

00:10:58   because photos does not provide a convenient way

00:11:00   to select a bunch of photos

00:11:01   and then just copy their file names,

00:11:04   which would be very helpful.

00:11:05   So many, many people sent me solutions.

00:11:08   As I said on the show, like, oh,

00:11:10   I think maybe it was Casey's or something,

00:11:11   why don't you just use AppleScript?

00:11:12   I'm like, yeah, that would totally work,

00:11:13   but I hate AppleScript so much, which is true, I do.

00:11:17   But one of the things that a couple of people did

00:11:19   is they said, hey, I hate AppleScript too,

00:11:21   but I asked chat GPT to write me an AppleScript.

00:11:24   And I said, you know what, that's a good idea.

00:11:26   I do hate AppleScript, but I use chat GPT all the time

00:11:28   for programming stuff, so let's give it a shot.

00:11:30   So I went and opened up my own chat GPT window

00:11:33   and asked it to write an AppleScript for me and it did.

00:11:36   And you know, the script didn't work, but you know,

00:11:38   it's chat GPT sometimes it needs a little bit of help.

00:11:40   Like it just got like one or two small things wrong

00:11:42   and I fixed them and it was fine.

00:11:43   I'm like, hey, now I have an AppleScript.

00:11:45   And of course, once I've got that AppleScript to,

00:11:48   and by the way, what I wanted the AppleScript to do

00:11:51   was get the file names of the current selection.

00:11:54   Lots of other people were saying, oh, we'll get file names

00:11:55   of all your favorites.

00:11:56   That's, you know, 50,000 photos, don't do that.

00:11:59   Or we'll get the file names of all the favorites

00:12:01   within a date range, then you have to pick a date range.

00:12:03   It's like, no, just let me just select the photos.

00:12:06   You know, whenever I'm doing my workflow in photos,

00:12:09   this, during this step, it's very easy for me

00:12:11   to simply select the favorites that I've just processed.

00:12:15   And you know, maybe worst case it's like 200 photos

00:12:17   or something, so I can just, you know,

00:12:19   click and then shift click, I've made a selection.

00:12:22   Then I run the script and it can get the file names

00:12:24   out of the thing.

00:12:25   So that's what I did, I made an AppleScript that did that.

00:12:26   And of course, once I have an AppleScript that does that,

00:12:28   you know where I'm going, straight to Perl.

00:12:30   So I wrote a Perl script that calls the AppleScript

00:12:33   using the OSA script command line thing or whatever.

00:12:36   So now, what I've written for myself is a Perl script

00:12:38   that all I have to do the next time I'm doing

00:12:40   this sort of workflow is select the photos that I want.

00:12:43   And again, listen to the episode if you want to hear

00:12:45   what I'm selecting, whatever, but select the photos

00:12:47   that I want and then run the Perl script.

00:12:49   There is no other step and when I run the Perl script,

00:12:51   it will get this file names of the ones that are selected

00:12:54   from photos using the AppleScript.

00:12:55   And then for each one of those file names,

00:12:57   it will look to see if there's a raw on my mounted SD card

00:13:01   with the raws in it.

00:13:02   And if there is a raw with that file name,

00:13:03   it will copy it and do all the things.

00:13:05   So that's gonna save me a lot of time

00:13:07   and a lot of screenshotting.

00:13:09   Now, having said that, oh, and by the way,

00:13:11   I will link in the show notes to my AppleScript.

00:13:14   It's not very exciting, it's exactly what ChatGPT

00:13:16   would give you with like one bug fixed.

00:13:18   So anyway, it's very straightforward,

00:13:20   I just really hate AppleScript and I'm glad ChatGPT

00:13:23   did it for me because I wouldn't want to have to look up

00:13:25   all that stuff because I just hate it.

00:13:27   - I really just like AppleScript.

00:13:29   I get why it's the way it is largely

00:13:31   and I do think it's potentially for the best,

00:13:34   but I also don't particularly care for it.

00:13:36   I was going to ask you, why are you printing the file names

00:13:40   or returning the file names rather than just copying them

00:13:42   to the clipboard?

00:13:43   But I didn't think that because now you have

00:13:46   something you can throw Perl at, of course,

00:13:48   that's what you're gonna do.

00:13:49   - That's right, yeah, that's why at the end of it,

00:13:50   you'll see I'm emitting the file names one per line

00:13:54   as opposed to comma separated or as JSON or whatever.

00:13:57   One per line is straightforward.

00:13:58   I promise to never have new lines in my file names, right?

00:14:01   Just, it'll be fine.

00:14:03   Yeah, yeah, I just want text output to standard out

00:14:06   and then I just feed that into Perl.

00:14:08   It's my preferred way of doing things.

00:14:11   All right, now on to all the many, many suggestions

00:14:13   people sent because so many people sent suggestions.

00:14:15   I hope an equal or greater number of people send suggestions

00:14:18   to Casey, but I don't know what Casey sees.

00:14:19   All I know is what I see and I saw a bazillion suggestions

00:14:23   for this one step in my workflow.

00:14:24   By far the most popular, which boggles my mind was,

00:14:28   hey, why don't you just export all the photos?

00:14:30   'Cause once you've exported them to the finder,

00:14:32   then you can just select them in the finder and hit copy

00:14:33   or you can do, you know, once they're files

00:14:35   in the file system, there's a million ways

00:14:36   to get the file names from them, you know what I mean?

00:14:39   Yeah, that would work, but why in the world,

00:14:42   why export photos and make it like,

00:14:45   you know, can you do it small size?

00:14:46   They won't take up a lot of room, you know,

00:14:48   but why would I make it do all that work?

00:14:49   Why is empathy for the machine?

00:14:50   Why would I make it like recompress, export,

00:14:53   make a bunch of files just so I can get the file names

00:14:55   and then delete the things at all?

00:14:56   No, no, that's, I mean, yes, that was technically,

00:15:00   that would absolutely work.

00:15:01   And some might find it preferable

00:15:03   to what I was doing with OCRing,

00:15:05   but at least when I was OCRing,

00:15:06   I was making one screenshot for dozens and dozens of photos

00:15:09   because I have a very big screen, right?

00:15:11   Actually, yeah, exporting the files.

00:15:13   Everyone suggested that.

00:15:14   I guess, I mean, I guess if you're not in a kind of like,

00:15:18   I'm gonna write an automation script mindset,

00:15:20   this is the most straightforward way to do it.

00:15:22   Hey, you want file names?

00:15:23   Make files, they've got names, boom, problem solved.

00:15:26   But no, I'm not, that's a solution I reject.

00:15:30   Some other people suggested using shortcuts,

00:15:32   which is sort of the modern,

00:15:33   sort of Apple script type equivalent.

00:15:35   We'll put a link in the show notes

00:15:36   to an example one from Josh Woodward.

00:15:38   Shortcuts can totally do all this stuff, I'm sure.

00:15:40   Shortcuts, I find, I'm even more allergic to

00:15:42   than Apple scripts because I'm a programmer

00:15:44   and at least Apple script lets me

00:15:45   sort of kind of do programming,

00:15:46   but shortcuts makes me like arrange widgets in a GUI

00:15:50   instead of programming.

00:15:51   And I'm glad that it exists

00:15:53   and I'm glad that it is very powerful.

00:15:55   It can do lots of things

00:15:56   and I'm glad a lot of people like it.

00:15:58   Not for me, but we'll put an example in there.

00:16:01   Mootly suggested a Python project,

00:16:04   which we'll link to in the show notes

00:16:06   called OS X, OS 10, whatever, OS X photos.

00:16:11   And it's a command line utility

00:16:12   that talks directly to the photos database

00:16:14   and it can do all sorts of stuff.

00:16:16   It can output stuff as CSV or JSON

00:16:20   and you can also, of course, query the SQLite database

00:16:24   that is behind photos yourself.

00:16:26   For some reason that I don't understand

00:16:28   that someone from Apple will surely write in

00:16:30   and tell us about all the tables that are interesting

00:16:32   in the SQLite database, beginning with the letter Z.

00:16:34   Is it like a core data thing or something?

00:16:36   I don't even know. - I think so, yeah.

00:16:37   - Yeah, anyway, the Z asset table has the info you want,

00:16:40   but this Python command line utility

00:16:42   will just basically bypass everything

00:16:44   and let you just query the database.

00:16:46   I don't think I actually want that

00:16:48   because I imagine the current selection

00:16:49   isn't reflected in the database,

00:16:51   but I could be wrong about that.

00:16:52   But anyway, because I want to go off of the current selection

00:16:54   as just a flexible way of saying,

00:16:56   I know which photos I'm dealing with here,

00:16:58   just let me select them in the app

00:16:59   and then run the script, right?

00:17:01   I don't know if it's convenient to get the current selection,

00:17:03   but that's another thing you could do.

00:17:05   Will LineWeber provide an example

00:17:08   of directly reading the photos database

00:17:09   if you want to see what that looks like.

00:17:10   It's just SQLite, it's just SQLite database.

00:17:12   You can just query it like the tables are wacky

00:17:15   and they begin with letter Z and the columns

00:17:17   are maybe not what you expect, but you can do it.

00:17:19   And finally, a couple of people sent Swift code

00:17:21   that uses PhotoKit.

00:17:23   We'll put a link in the show notes to one on GitHub

00:17:26   from Alex Mazinoff, _DavidSmith also provided one.

00:17:29   Yep, Apple obviously has APIs to get to the photos database.

00:17:32   That's how you can do photo pickers

00:17:34   and all sorts of other stuff that interacts with it.

00:17:36   And you can write Swift to do that.

00:17:38   So if Swift is your preferred language, like Perl is mine,

00:17:40   you can write up a Swift quote-unquote script.

00:17:44   Same thing, put a line at the top

00:17:47   that will run user bin Swift or whatever.

00:17:49   You can use Swift like that

00:17:51   and it will compile it on the fly and run your thing.

00:17:53   Same caveats about, I'm not sure you can get

00:17:56   the current selection from the photos app

00:17:57   without asking it through shortcuts or AppleScript,

00:18:00   but I could be wrong with that as well.

00:18:03   There are lots of ways to skin this cat,

00:18:05   but predictably the way I did it is with Perl

00:18:08   with the smallest amount of AppleScript possible

00:18:10   just to do the part that I didn't wanna do in Perl.

00:18:13   - With regard to your earlier half question,

00:18:16   what kind of feedback did I get?

00:18:17   I got basic, almost universally feedback

00:18:21   that what I was doing was wrong.

00:18:22   - From the internet?

00:18:23   - Yes, I know I'm shocked as well.

00:18:26   It came with various degrees of obnoxiousness/empathy.

00:18:31   I did get a couple of suggestions for minor things,

00:18:33   including I think the most actionable suggestion I got

00:18:36   was there's a couple other apps that'll do the GPS tagging

00:18:40   that I need to at least investigate

00:18:42   and see if they will better fit my workflow.

00:18:44   But for the most part, people just shook their heads

00:18:46   in mutual embarrassment on my behalf.

00:18:49   - Yeah, I thought we gave you

00:18:50   some good actionable improvements

00:18:52   that didn't really change your workflow,

00:18:53   but just ahead in this step you could do this

00:18:56   with less work or whatever during the episode.

00:18:59   But yes, obviously people are amazed

00:19:01   by the Rube Goldberg machine that you've constructed.

00:19:04   I also checked out that, I figured which one it was,

00:19:06   it was like the GPX, I should have put a link in here.

00:19:08   Someone suggested one of the tagging apps

00:19:11   that looked pretty good.

00:19:12   Basically it's just an app that you run on your phone

00:19:14   and it keeps track of your location

00:19:15   and it exports files in a format

00:19:16   that a lot of apps can read to tag your files.

00:19:19   Anything to get out of the world of proprietary,

00:19:21   like in my case, Sony apps,

00:19:23   that I think Sony recently discontinued their app anyway,

00:19:25   I don't even know if they replaced it,

00:19:26   but those apps were terrible.

00:19:29   The good thing those apps had going for them

00:19:30   is that they think they directly communicate

00:19:32   with the camera, so there's no like bringing it all

00:19:34   into the Mac and combining it or whatever,

00:19:36   but I'll gladly do that if it's something more sane.

00:19:39   So I have on my list to check out some of the apps.

00:19:41   I think I already downloaded one of them

00:19:43   to check out some of the apps

00:19:44   that can export this standardized format for GPS tagging.

00:19:46   And if I end up finding something that works

00:19:49   or if Casey does, we'll talk about it on the show, I'm sure.

00:19:51   - All right, then with regard to my question,

00:19:57   if I'm not mistaken, about, hey,

00:19:59   I kind of wish I could just always share all of my photos

00:20:02   to the shared library or at least default to that.

00:20:06   And what Apple tries to do is it tries to be smart about it.

00:20:08   And you can say, oh, when you're at home,

00:20:11   always go to the shared photo library.

00:20:13   And otherwise, if your partner or spouse

00:20:15   or what have you is nearby, I guess by way of Bluetooth,

00:20:18   then you can do shared photo library,

00:20:20   but otherwise it goes to your personal library.

00:20:22   And Alexander F wrote in to say,

00:20:25   if you select share manually in the shared library settings

00:20:28   and then just press the yellow bubble on the camera app,

00:20:30   it will remember that setting

00:20:31   and automatically always put all photos

00:20:34   in the shared library, regardless of what the smarts thinks.

00:20:37   I did this once when shared photo library came out

00:20:39   and haven't needed to touch it since.

00:20:40   That's a good tip, I didn't know that.

00:20:42   - Yeah, so there's a couple of nuances here.

00:20:43   One is like the feature that Casey was referring to,

00:20:46   like you get basically two choices of like,

00:20:48   hey, what do you want me to do

00:20:49   with respect to shared library?

00:20:50   And the choices are automatic,

00:20:52   which tries to do the smart thing and manual.

00:20:54   So Alexander's solution is first select manual.

00:20:58   And then second, in the camera app at the top,

00:21:01   there'll be this little yellow circle

00:21:02   with either like one little person's head in it

00:21:04   or two little people's heads in it.

00:21:06   Change it to two little people's head because that says,

00:21:08   hey, when you take a photo with this camera,

00:21:10   it'll go to the shared library and that's it.

00:21:13   And unlike many other settings,

00:21:16   there is nothing in the camera settings in iOS

00:21:20   that says in the section for preserving settings

00:21:23   that refers to this.

00:21:24   So if you go to settings, go to camera,

00:21:27   there's this thing of like,

00:21:28   hey, which settings do you want me to preserve

00:21:29   between launches of the camera?

00:21:31   So like you launch the camera

00:21:32   and say you change into video mode

00:21:35   and then you go to a different app.

00:21:36   When you come back to camera,

00:21:37   do you want it to still be in video mode

00:21:39   or do you just want it always to go back to camera?

00:21:41   That's an example of deciding

00:21:43   whether you want a setting to be preserved.

00:21:44   And Apple provides like a whole screen full of these.

00:21:46   You want me to preserve the style, the focus, the zoom,

00:21:50   like you can toggle these on and off.

00:21:53   And so if you've never checked that out,

00:21:55   if you're frustrated that every time you launch the camera,

00:21:57   it doesn't remember something

00:21:58   or it does remember some other thing,

00:21:59   you can change your mind about those.

00:22:01   But this shared versus non-shared thing

00:22:03   is not in that set of preferences.

00:22:05   As far as I can tell, it's just always remembered.

00:22:07   So as long as you set that setting and don't change it,

00:22:10   it will be preserved

00:22:11   and you basically have no choice about that.

00:22:13   You gotta be careful of,

00:22:14   especially if it's not your phone,

00:22:15   that someone doesn't accidentally hit that

00:22:17   and change it back to the other thing.

00:22:18   So there's some amount of vigilance required

00:22:20   to make sure you stay on sending everything to share it.

00:22:23   But this was a great tip.

00:22:24   I tried to do the same thing to my wife's camera app

00:22:26   and told her about it and said,

00:22:28   "Now everything will go into your shared library,"

00:22:30   because occasionally she sends things

00:22:31   into the regular library.

00:22:32   So set to manual, change the setting in the camera app,

00:22:37   and don't worry about the preserved settings

00:22:39   'cause it doesn't apply to this particular thing.

00:22:42   - Excellent.

00:22:43   John, can you tell me about JPEG XL in iOS 18

00:22:46   and on the iPhone 16, please?

00:22:48   - So this was a bit of a letdown.

00:22:49   We had the rumors of Apple's gonna go to JPEG XL

00:22:52   and they did add support for JPEG XL in iOS 18

00:22:56   on the iPhone 16s, pretty much only,

00:22:58   and only for their ProRAW stuff.

00:23:02   So it's not like Keek where they said,

00:23:03   "Oh, by the way, all our cameras take photos

00:23:06   in a new format by default."

00:23:07   And it's this great new format.

00:23:08   They didn't say that.

00:23:09   They didn't talk about it at all.

00:23:11   But nevertheless, in iOS 18, on iPhone 16s only, I believe,

00:23:16   because when I was on iOS 16 and my 14 Pro

00:23:18   didn't mention JPEG XL anywhere.

00:23:20   So I think it's only on the 16s.

00:23:22   It's definitely not on the 14 Pro.

00:23:23   I can tell you that.

00:23:25   If you go to the formats section of the camera preferences,

00:23:29   you will see at the top pro default,

00:23:32   and you see heaf max, ProRAW 12 megapixel,

00:23:35   ProRAW max up to 18 megapixel.

00:23:37   And then the next section is ProRAW format

00:23:40   and your choices are JPEG lossless,

00:23:42   which they now list as most compatible.

00:23:44   And then there are two JPEG XL choices,

00:23:47   lossless and lossy.

00:23:48   And again, that's only for when you're shooting in RAWs.

00:23:51   You can have a lossless RAW with JPEG XL

00:23:54   or a lossy compressed RAW with JPEG XL.

00:23:56   Here's what PetaPixel had to say about it.

00:23:59   "Apple has wrapped JPEG XL photos inside a DNG container,

00:24:02   enabling ProRAW files to retain their flexibility

00:24:04   while being significantly smaller.

00:24:06   What would typically be a 75-ish megabyte ProRAW max file

00:24:09   will be a 20 megabyte in lossy ProRAW format

00:24:11   using JPEG XL compression.

00:24:13   A lossless file is still under 50 megabytes.

00:24:15   Without compromising quality,

00:24:17   these are significant storage savings."

00:24:18   So JPEG XL is on your iPhone if you have a newish iPhone

00:24:23   and if you're shooting in RAW.

00:24:24   And if you are, you can get files that are up to

00:24:26   half the size that they used to be at about the same quality.

00:24:30   So good, thumbs up, but it is not the JPEG XL revolution

00:24:33   that we had been waiting for.

00:24:34   So I did change to JPEG XL.

00:24:37   I think I went with lossless

00:24:38   just because I'm shooting in RAW.

00:24:40   I probably just, I do it so rarely on my phone,

00:24:43   I'll just pay the full cost of the size

00:24:44   and it's still smaller than it used to be.

00:24:46   So, you know, partial thumbs up on JPEG XL.

00:24:49   Hopefully it will expand over the years.

00:24:52   - Guillermo Rambo with regard to iPhone apps

00:24:56   spying via the microphone.

00:24:58   So we mostly debunked this, but then Guillermo said,

00:25:02   "I once found a vulnerability that allowed for an app

00:25:04   to listen to the user's AirPods microphone

00:25:06   in the background without permission,

00:25:07   but in a very limited way."

00:25:08   And this has already been fixed a couple of years ago now

00:25:11   in 16.1.

00:25:12   I'd forgotten about this.

00:25:13   I read this one, it debuted.

00:25:15   In fact, I think Guy might've had me proofread this form

00:25:18   if memory serves, although I might be wrong about that.

00:25:21   But anyways, it's a fascinating write-up.

00:25:23   It's not too long, really, really interesting

00:25:25   if you're even vaguely nerdy

00:25:27   and Guy does a great job of doing the write-up.

00:25:29   So I would definitely check that out.

00:25:30   Just if you're interested in, you know,

00:25:32   I don't know, like doing this sort of work

00:25:36   in kind of, what is it, white hat?

00:25:38   I don't really love that phrasing,

00:25:40   but you know, the kind of doing things that may seem bad,

00:25:43   but for good, and that's what Guy was doing.

00:25:45   And then Guy also added, "The iPhone 16 lineup

00:25:48   and all devices based on the A18 or M4

00:25:52   have a new secure exclave, that's not enclave, but exclave,

00:25:56   that presumably makes it impossible for an exploit,

00:25:58   even with kernel-level access,

00:25:59   to disable the microphone or camera in use indicators

00:26:02   because the little orange or green dot

00:26:03   is rendered by a separate OS running in an exclave

00:26:06   directly onto the display hardware."

00:26:08   That is pretty wild.

00:26:11   And anyways, Apple calls it the secure indicator light.

00:26:14   - I recall, like, way back in the PowerBook days, maybe,

00:26:17   or maybe it was the MacBook days,

00:26:18   there was similar indicator light

00:26:19   and Apple made similar claims about how,

00:26:22   well, it's impossible to hack this light

00:26:25   'cause there's a hardware feature in the laptops

00:26:27   that basically says when the camera is active,

00:26:30   this light comes on.

00:26:30   Like, this was an example of it

00:26:31   not being software-mediated at all,

00:26:33   but it was something like,

00:26:34   hey, if the camera's on, the light's on,

00:26:35   there's no software environment,

00:26:37   software has no visibility into the light whatsoever,

00:26:39   can't turn it on, can't turn it off,

00:26:40   it's just like an electrical fact of life

00:26:43   about how we've connected the camera.

00:26:45   And even when they did that,

00:26:46   I believe someone found a way to get the camera

00:26:48   to turn on without the light going on.

00:26:49   Like, hackers are devious.

00:26:51   So this exclave is, you know, in the game of cat and mouse,

00:26:53   here's Apple's next move.

00:26:55   It's like, oh yeah?

00:26:56   Let's make it even harder for you to get this light.

00:26:58   Even if you have kernel access,

00:26:59   you still can't get it this big.

00:27:01   This is a different OS running in this secure exclave,

00:27:04   which is this other little machine that you can't get to.

00:27:06   The secure enclave is obviously where you can put secrets

00:27:08   that are hard to get to if you're running

00:27:10   on the main CPU SOC.

00:27:12   But now we have the secure exclave,

00:27:13   which is a whole other chip with a whole other OS.

00:27:15   It's even harder to get to.

00:27:17   And I'm sure that's true, but hackers are very devious.

00:27:20   So let's see how the next move goes.

00:27:21   But anyway, Apple continues to try to make it very difficult

00:27:25   to spy using its products without using the easiest method,

00:27:30   which is, of course, social engineering.

00:27:32   - Of course, the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus batteries,

00:27:38   you can remove them as you always could,

00:27:40   but in a very different way.

00:27:43   This is from MacRumors.

00:27:44   Apple has confirmed that the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus

00:27:46   have a new electrically induced battery removal process.

00:27:51   The batteries use a type of adhesive that can be loosened

00:27:53   with low voltage electrical current,

00:27:55   such as from a nine volt battery, according to Apple.

00:27:57   The battery can then be easily be removed from the devices.

00:28:00   This new process is considered to be easier

00:28:02   than the adhesive pull tabs that are found under batteries

00:28:04   in previous iPhone models.

00:28:05   And so there's, of course,

00:28:06   an iFixit teardown all about this.

00:28:08   - Yep, and they demonstrated.

00:28:10   So we talked about this, I think, before the event,

00:28:12   where there was rumors of this happening.

00:28:13   And I don't know how I pictured it working.

00:28:15   Maybe you'd short something out

00:28:18   and there'd be a puff of smoke and the battery would come out

00:28:20   or it would just pop out or whatever.

00:28:22   It is much less dramatic than that, but it is no less cool.

00:28:25   In the iFixit video, they take a little power supply

00:28:28   and they hook it up to the battery.

00:28:30   There's a little metal contact that pops out

00:28:32   for you to connect it to,

00:28:33   and then you just connect something else

00:28:34   to ground inside the thing.

00:28:36   And you put some power into it for a few seconds

00:28:39   and it basically chemically changes the adhesive

00:28:41   to make it not sticky anymore,

00:28:43   and then the battery just comes out.

00:28:44   And they explain a little bit how it works.

00:28:46   Interestingly, if you reverse the polarity,

00:28:49   where you put the plus and the minus on the opposite side,

00:28:52   it will make it restick, but not to the thing.

00:28:56   It'll restick to the battery, so don't do it that way.

00:28:58   So there are still some dangers here.

00:28:59   But another interesting thing

00:29:00   about how they installed this is once the battery is out,

00:29:05   again, you'll see it in the iFixit video

00:29:07   and the blog post that we'll also have in the show notes,

00:29:10   inside the case where the battery goes,

00:29:13   Apple has essentially carved a U-shaped channel,

00:29:17   like intentionally, roughly, like it's scuffed up.

00:29:20   Like if you use like a circular buffer on a car

00:29:23   and you did a really bad job and you left swirl marks,

00:29:25   that's what they did inside the phone.

00:29:27   They made this big, long U-shaped channel,

00:29:28   which is where the adhesive goes,

00:29:29   that's intentionally scuffed up and rough

00:29:32   to give lots of like craggly surface

00:29:33   for the adhesive to stick to,

00:29:35   which is so wild to see inside Apple's cases

00:29:37   that are usually so beautifully,

00:29:39   perfectly machined and everything's precise.

00:29:41   And here's this area that's made intentionally rough

00:29:43   and the adhesive sits directly down in that.

00:29:46   And this process is, you know, the pull tabs are cool.

00:29:48   It's like those 3M things, kind of like you pull sideways

00:29:50   and big, long, stringy, sticky things comes out

00:29:52   and then it comes out, but this is just so much more elegant.

00:29:55   You just apply the voltage

00:29:57   and then the thing isn't sticky anymore and you lift it out.

00:30:00   It's pretty cool.

00:30:01   I think this is only on the 16 and the 16 Plus

00:30:04   and not on the Pro.

00:30:05   I think the Pro still use the sticky stuff

00:30:07   because I saw a teardown of one of those things as well,

00:30:09   which is interesting.

00:30:09   But yeah, check out the whole iFixit video.

00:30:12   They seem to think that the 16 continues

00:30:15   to push the frontiers of easy repairability.

00:30:18   Again, not the 16 Pro.

00:30:19   I haven't seen the iFixit teardown of that,

00:30:20   but the 16 using the dual sided design

00:30:23   and the battery that's easy to remove

00:30:25   and the way they have the parts arranged.

00:30:26   Apple is making progress

00:30:27   in making these tiny, very delicate devices

00:30:30   that much easier and less error prone to repair.

00:30:34   - Just very quickly, one of my favorite things

00:30:35   about the iFixit teardown was at one point,

00:30:37   they said, "Oh, you know, it comes out so easily.

00:30:39   "Gravity will do it."

00:30:40   And so they turned one of them upside down,

00:30:42   applied the voltage and waited a few seconds

00:30:44   and sure enough, boop, all of a sudden the battery

00:30:46   just came tumbling out.

00:30:47   - It just falls out

00:30:48   because the adhesive is not sticky anymore.

00:30:50   It doesn't leave a residue.

00:30:51   It's pretty amazing.

00:30:52   - That's really cool.

00:30:53   We are sponsored this episode

00:30:55   by 1Password Extended Access Management.

00:30:58   So quick question.

00:30:59   Do your end users always,

00:31:01   and I mean always without exception,

00:31:03   work on company owned devices and IT approved apps?

00:31:07   Yeah, I didn't think so.

00:31:08   So next question.

00:31:09   How do you keep your company's data safe

00:31:12   when it's sitting on all those unmanaged apps and devices?

00:31:15   1Password has the answer to this question.

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00:31:28   that traditional IAM and MDM can't touch.

00:31:31   So check it out at 1Password.com/ATP.

00:31:35   That's 1Password.com/ATP.

00:31:39   Thank you so much to 1Password Extended Access Management

00:31:41   for sponsoring our show.

00:31:43   - All right, so if you wanted to get rid of those

00:31:48   annoying monthly screen recording prompts,

00:31:51   Jeff Johnson has reverse engineered a way to do it.

00:31:54   Jeff writes, Richie Adams found the file

00:31:57   where the prompt dates are stored.

00:31:58   And we'll put a link to all this

00:32:00   'cause I'm not gonna read it out now.

00:32:02   The file is protected by TCC.

00:32:04   What does that stand for, John?

00:32:05   - Trusted Computer. - Trusted Computer.

00:32:08   - This is the database that keeps permission and stuff.

00:32:10   I don't remember what it stands for.

00:32:11   - All right, no worries.

00:32:12   It's protected by TCC.

00:32:13   So to access it, you'll need to grant

00:32:14   full disk access to the terminal app.

00:32:17   In the plist file, the keys are the paths

00:32:19   or perhaps the fully qualified domain names

00:32:22   or whatever it is of the executable files

00:32:25   with screen recording permission

00:32:27   and the values are the dates.

00:32:29   To stop the prompts forever for the rest of your life,

00:32:31   anyway, set the date too far in the future.

00:32:32   For example, the year 3024 instead of 2024.

00:32:36   You'll need to do this for each app

00:32:37   and afterward log out and log in again

00:32:39   so that the replayd process recognizes the new defaults.

00:32:43   Dan solely notes my keys are not the paths of the app,

00:32:45   but there it is, the bundle identifier.

00:32:46   Couldn't think of the name there.

00:32:48   John, it looks like you have some thoughts about this,

00:32:51   which we'll get back to in just a second.

00:32:52   But then Kyle Rubenok wrote a shell script

00:32:55   that will set the dates to a year from now.

00:32:57   So you could perhaps run that on login.

00:32:59   - Although that shell script doesn't actually work

00:33:01   and I sent him a reply about that.

00:33:02   It's kind of like the chat GPT thing.

00:33:04   I think he forgot a line in there,

00:33:05   but one could write a shell script.

00:33:07   You can take a look at his and fix it

00:33:08   by adding the missing line or whatever.

00:33:10   But anyway, you might not have to do that because.

00:33:12   - Because now breaking news as of just like an hour ago

00:33:17   or something like that, there's a new app called Amnesia

00:33:19   that apparently will allow you to disable these

00:33:23   on an app by app basis.

00:33:24   - Yeah, and so it's a screen recording thing.

00:33:26   I'm living it both.

00:33:27   I saw this example here and I wanted to try it myself.

00:33:30   And I discovered that in my plist file,

00:33:32   which is I'll read the thing in case you wouldn't.

00:33:34   It's in your library directory and it's group containers,

00:33:36   group.com.apple.replayd, screencaptureapprovals.plist.

00:33:40   Again, it'll be in show notes.

00:33:41   - This sounds like an Amazon product title.

00:33:43   - Yeah, my paths were, my keys in this little,

00:33:46   you know, the name value pairs, they were the full path.

00:33:49   So it was applications/zoom.us.app/content/macos/zoom.s.

00:33:53   Like, I don't know why they were bundle paths

00:33:56   in Dan's thing, but maybe it varies on each system.

00:33:58   But anyway, the values are just dates.

00:34:00   It's a simple default command to change it.

00:34:02   So I did that for Zoom, which I had recently used

00:34:05   to share my screen and edit a complaint

00:34:07   and I set its date to 30/24.

00:34:09   So in theory, it will never complain again.

00:34:11   And having a GUI app for this is good

00:34:14   if people don't wanna mess with like command line stuff

00:34:16   or whatever.

00:34:17   But many questions are raised by this discovery, right?

00:34:22   So first of all, the whole point of this thing

00:34:24   was like, oh, what if someone's spying

00:34:26   and you wanna be reminded every once in a while

00:34:28   to know that someone's spying and yada yada.

00:34:30   Well, if you can just write a value

00:34:32   to a plist to override this,

00:34:33   anyone who's like spying on someone

00:34:36   or like abusive partner or something

00:34:37   is just gonna Google this, find this result,

00:34:40   set the dates forward to 30/24

00:34:42   and never have to worry about it again.

00:34:43   So what the hell happened to like the security benefits

00:34:46   of this feature are so easily bypassed

00:34:48   that now we're just being annoyed for no reason, right?

00:34:51   Before it's like, oh, we're being annoyed,

00:34:52   but they can't figure out a way

00:34:54   to make this more secure without annoying us

00:34:55   and they figure a month interval is good.

00:34:58   But now it's like actually there's no security benefit

00:35:00   because anyone who cares can Google this in two seconds

00:35:02   and download a GUI app

00:35:04   that will set all the things to the future.

00:35:05   So this is, I'm assuming Apple will see this

00:35:08   and then in a future update to Sequoia,

00:35:10   come up with a different, much more secure system

00:35:13   that doesn't allow you to run a single default write command

00:35:16   or download a GUI app to change this

00:35:18   and never have to worry about it again.

00:35:20   Because like, what's the point of the feature?

00:35:21   It's just annoying people for no reason at that point, right?

00:35:24   And the second thing is how has life been on Sequoia

00:35:28   with these screen recordings?

00:35:29   Well, I did use Zoom and I did share my screen

00:35:31   and it did prompt me and I'm like, ah, well, Zoom,

00:35:33   how often do I share my screen?

00:35:35   I think in the, what, week or two I've had Sequoia,

00:35:39   I've gotten prompted like four times by four different apps.

00:35:42   It just keeps catching me by surprise.

00:35:43   Just today, I used TextSniper,

00:35:45   which by the way, I still recommend.

00:35:47   And what was using TextSniper for?

00:35:48   Not to get fines out of photos.

00:35:49   You know what I was using it for?

00:35:51   A good old preview.

00:35:52   I had a PDF that had text in it

00:35:55   and I wanted to copy and paste that text out of the PDF.

00:35:58   But unfortunately, that text was tabular

00:36:01   and selecting the text in preview and hitting copy

00:36:03   and then pasting into a plain text document

00:36:05   just was just a soup, right?

00:36:07   But TextSniper actually printed it a line at a time.

00:36:10   It didn't put tabs between it or anything,

00:36:12   but at least it was like, here's the first row,

00:36:14   here's the second row, here's the third row.

00:36:16   Text selection in both web pages and PDFs

00:36:19   continues to be an unsolvable problem apparently.

00:36:21   If you ever try to select text in a complicated web page

00:36:24   and you just want the text to be pasted

00:36:25   just like it appeared in your web page,

00:36:26   but when you paste it, you see that it's out of order

00:36:29   or it's selected other where it's stuff.

00:36:31   Same thing with PDFs, at least in the preview app.

00:36:33   I can select it and I can hit copy

00:36:35   and when I hit paste, I expect it to print those lines,

00:36:38   but sometimes it just absolutely doesn't.

00:36:40   It prints a scrambled mess of the lines

00:36:41   all connected to one big long line

00:36:43   or interleave with each other or whatever.

00:36:45   But TextSniper did it

00:36:46   because TextSniper doesn't care about that stuff.

00:36:48   TextSniper just use pixels that look like text

00:36:50   and it parses them as lines of text

00:36:51   and it will print them as lines of text.

00:36:53   But of course, when I launched TextSniper,

00:36:54   it said, hey, TextSniper wants to capture your screen.

00:36:58   Do you want to allow it?

00:36:59   Allow for one month, blah, blah, blah.

00:37:00   And so this is sort of the ongoing battle

00:37:02   because every new app still prompts you

00:37:04   and then I went to the command line and the default's right

00:37:07   and said, now you're never gonna ask me again

00:37:09   until 3024 or until Sequoia 15.1

00:37:14   when Apple changes all of this.

00:37:16   So this is a disappointing stopping point,

00:37:20   I'm not gonna say conclusion,

00:37:22   in this saga of suppose it increased security

00:37:24   because now all the security,

00:37:25   not all the security benefits,

00:37:26   but most of the security benefits are out the window

00:37:28   and yet we're still continuing to be annoyed by it

00:37:30   to the point where people are writing GUI apps

00:37:33   to help people circumvent this feature of macOS.

00:37:35   This is not a good sign for Apple

00:37:37   that they have struck the right balance

00:37:38   with the features they've shipped.

00:37:40   - Yeah, it's not great.

00:37:41   And obviously, we've all been upgrading to Sequoia

00:37:45   and getting just absolutely overwhelmed with all the,

00:37:48   hey, is it okay, is it okay, is it okay, is it okay?

00:37:50   Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, oh, are we cool, are we cool?

00:37:52   It's just incessant.

00:37:54   And I don't know, perhaps I'm not having enough empathy

00:37:58   for security professionals

00:37:59   because it's just not a world I live in,

00:38:02   but I find it to be extremely off-putting and frustrating.

00:38:06   - And again, if the security benefits are non-existent,

00:38:10   if anybody who's trying to do something nefarious

00:38:12   just Googles for it

00:38:13   and gets a thing they can paste into terminal

00:38:15   and solve the problem for them,

00:38:16   like it's just, ugh, it's very frustrating.

00:38:20   - All right, but in happier news, we've all got new toys,

00:38:22   and this is a year that even John has new toys.

00:38:25   So I will preface this by saying,

00:38:28   I was in Memphis over the weekend.

00:38:30   I thought about trying to do an in-store pickup

00:38:33   or even delivery while I was there.

00:38:36   Coincidentally, some things were delivered to the hotel

00:38:39   and I don't know if it's my business to say exactly what,

00:38:41   but I know that it could have worked.

00:38:42   Maybe I should have, but I didn't have the gumption

00:38:45   to do it.

00:38:46   So anyways, so I set a in-store pickup

00:38:47   for yesterday afternoon, Sunday afternoon,

00:38:50   the day I got home.

00:38:51   - Oh, well, you did get to unbox

00:38:53   pretty much all the new products, didn't you?

00:38:54   - That's true, yes,

00:38:56   because a lot of them did show up in Memphis

00:38:58   and Jason had them.

00:39:00   So I unboxed a lot of them.

00:39:01   But anyways, this morning I went

00:39:04   and I picked up my new iPhone 16 Pro,

00:39:09   natural titanium 512, my new Apple Watch Big Boy

00:39:14   in aluminum and Erin's stuff.

00:39:17   Erin hasn't opened any of her stuff yet.

00:39:18   We've been busy.

00:39:19   I've barely gotten mine all set up,

00:39:21   which we can talk about the transfer here in a minute.

00:39:24   But, and also, if we have time for me to whine

00:39:27   about the in-store experience,

00:39:29   I'd also like to do that at some juncture.

00:39:30   But if we don't have time, that's no problem.

00:39:32   - That's part of the setup.

00:39:32   You should talk about that now.

00:39:34   - Oh, okay.

00:39:35   Let me start by saying this is the first world,

00:39:38   this is the first world problems.

00:39:39   I'm gonna try to make this quick

00:39:41   and I will move right along.

00:39:42   But I go in and of course, there's no lines anywhere.

00:39:46   And I walk up to the first person

00:39:48   that doesn't have somebody in front of them.

00:39:49   And I say, "Hey, I have a pickup to do."

00:39:50   And they say, "Okay, go over to the pickup counter desk,"

00:39:53   whatever thing, fine.

00:39:54   There's a couple of people there.

00:39:55   There are a couple of customers there and one employee.

00:39:58   And this one employee is already looking

00:40:00   ever so slightly flummoxed.

00:40:01   Here's the thing.

00:40:03   If Apple wants to do this, oh, magic happens.

00:40:07   Just magically, your products will appear

00:40:09   where you're standing.

00:40:10   And magically, you can just walk up to anyone

00:40:13   and pay for them or even scan them on your own

00:40:15   if it's something cheaper and just walk out of the store.

00:40:19   It has to work.

00:40:20   And apparently, just from overhearing the conversations

00:40:23   between the employees, the quote unquote backstage area

00:40:26   was like completely overwhelmed with shipment coming in,

00:40:29   with all these people asking for runners to bring out

00:40:32   my phones and my watches and that person's this

00:40:34   and that person's that.

00:40:36   It's just, if you're gonna do this fancy stuff,

00:40:38   it's gotta freakin' work.

00:40:40   And I was there for, I'd already paid for everything.

00:40:43   I should've just been able to swoop in and swoop out.

00:40:45   And I was there for like half an hour, 45 minutes.

00:40:47   Now, in the grand scheme of things, does that matter?

00:40:49   No.

00:40:50   But Apple is supposed to be the it just works company.

00:40:53   It's the great experience company.

00:40:56   And this was not a great experience.

00:40:57   And some woman that was standing next to me

00:40:59   was waiting for like half an hour

00:41:01   to get a screen protector installed.

00:41:03   The reason was they couldn't just get, the dude at the desk

00:41:07   couldn't get his hands on the screen protector

00:41:08   'cause it was backstage.

00:41:09   And I don't know, maybe I'm too East Coast for this,

00:41:13   but give me a fuckin' line to stand in

00:41:16   and give me, have the person that's helping me

00:41:19   run their ass to the back and go find my stuff.

00:41:22   I don't think this is that difficult.

00:41:24   Why does it have to be so synthetically fancy?

00:41:29   If you're gonna have it be fancy, make it be fancy.

00:41:32   This wasn't fancy.

00:41:33   This was the illusion of fancy.

00:41:35   And it's just infuriating.

00:41:37   Like it didn't have to be this way.

00:41:39   - Yeah, it's a system that doesn't scale very well.

00:41:41   Like it seems really great. - It's well put, well put.

00:41:43   - Like probably most of the year, probably most days,

00:41:46   most of the time, it's fine.

00:41:48   Like I still, I'm honestly like,

00:41:49   I don't love the Apple Store triage system

00:41:52   because like I don't love that you have to walk in,

00:41:55   okay, hey, hey, hey, hey, you wanna check in with me

00:41:58   right at the front door here?

00:41:59   Oh, you wanna go with that?

00:42:00   Oh, go stand over at that table over there.

00:42:02   It's like, okay, well, so there is a queue.

00:42:05   You're just, it's just confusing

00:42:07   and you can't really tell what it is.

00:42:08   And the queue is, I would say like,

00:42:13   kind of sloppily enforced enough

00:42:15   that I feel like a lot of times it is serviced out of order.

00:42:20   Because like, it's like, who's waiting at this table?

00:42:23   Oh, you gotta go see so and so in the blue shirt.

00:42:25   But oh, and then you're put into the system

00:42:27   as like a person with a red striped shirt.

00:42:30   And there could be someone else with a red striped shirt

00:42:32   get served first and like, am I standing at this table

00:42:35   or the one next to it?

00:42:36   Like, it's such a vague system that you as the customer

00:42:40   feel all the time like, have I been lost?

00:42:43   Even when you haven't been, and oftentimes you have been.

00:42:47   But even when you haven't been, you can't see that.

00:42:50   Like you have no feedback as the customer of like,

00:42:53   is the system working as intended?

00:42:55   Am I still in the queue?

00:42:56   - And neither do the employees, by the way.

00:42:58   Last time I was at the store, which was not a busy day,

00:43:01   I was sent to a table and then eventually someone came

00:43:03   to help me and they disappeared for a little bit.

00:43:05   And when they were gone, two other employees came up to me

00:43:08   and said, are you being helped?

00:43:10   I'm like, don't you know if I'm being helped?

00:43:11   Shouldn't you know whether I'm being,

00:43:13   like the whole system is you send us off

00:43:15   to these little tables to distribute this visible line

00:43:18   so we can't see the actual line.

00:43:19   But then we get serviced in order

00:43:21   and people are assigned to us.

00:43:22   You should know that somebody is already handling it.

00:43:25   If you don't know, then what is the system?

00:43:27   Do you just wander the store looking for people

00:43:29   who look lonely and say,

00:43:30   that person looks like they're not being helped.

00:43:31   Let me help them.

00:43:32   I mean, and obviously the biggest problem,

00:43:34   I mean, you're both dancing around,

00:43:36   it was lunch day for the iPhone, right?

00:43:38   - Right.

00:43:39   - Surely one of the busiest days in the Apple store

00:43:42   or involving iPhones, anything on lunch day,

00:43:44   the iPhone is going to be fraud and it exposes the weaknesses

00:43:46   of their systems because this is gonna be the most people

00:43:49   coming to the store in the shortest period of time

00:43:51   who want phones.

00:43:52   - I will say, however, that as I think I've talked about

00:43:55   in years past, I apparently, one of my many superpowers

00:43:58   is utterly ruining iPhone screens.

00:44:01   And I don't mean like shattering them,

00:44:03   although that's happened for sure.

00:44:04   - Have you scratched them already?

00:44:05   - Well.

00:44:06   - Oh no.

00:44:07   - No, no, no, I didn't.

00:44:08   No, no, no, this is, everything's fine, everything's fine.

00:44:11   I decided after much chatter from the internet

00:44:14   in my direction that I think, yep,

00:44:16   I think I'd solicited requests about what do you do

00:44:20   about screen protectors the internet came through.

00:44:22   And a lot of them said, just do the Belkin one

00:44:25   that Apple installs.

00:44:26   Do it right then and there.

00:44:27   They'll install it for you.

00:44:28   They know exactly what they're doing.

00:44:29   There won't be any bumps or anything like that.

00:44:31   There won't be any dust.

00:44:32   And you can get like free replacements.

00:44:35   I don't know if it's for life.

00:44:36   I haven't read, apparently you have to register

00:44:38   the screen protector.

00:44:39   I guess you at least get a series of free replacements

00:44:42   that apparently Apple's happy to reinstall for you

00:44:45   if need be.

00:44:46   - Do you know what the nature of the Belkin protector is?

00:44:50   Is it glass?

00:44:50   Is it plastic?

00:44:51   - I believe it is glass.

00:44:52   I don't think I, do I have the bag?

00:44:55   No, I don't think I have the bags in here

00:44:57   so I can look it up.

00:44:58   I apologize.

00:44:59   When one of you starts talking,

00:45:00   I'll look around the office

00:45:00   and make sure the bag isn't in here.

00:45:02   I believe it's glass.

00:45:03   I'm not 100% sure.

00:45:04   I didn't look closely at it.

00:45:05   But I did have them install it.

00:45:07   And do you want the good news or the bad news?

00:45:10   - Oh, no.

00:45:10   - The good news is, no, there's no real bad news.

00:45:13   The good news is it feels pretty good.

00:45:16   Like it's a little tackier.

00:45:19   That's maybe not the best word.

00:45:20   But like there's a little more friction on it

00:45:22   than I think a regular piece of glass was.

00:45:24   - Is it not as oleophobic as the screen maybe?

00:45:27   - No, I wouldn't say I think it is.

00:45:28   I think it is, but I'm not 100% sure.

00:45:31   However, you know how I always thought you were nuts, Jon,

00:45:35   and kind of still do,

00:45:37   for insisting on a bottomless iPhone case.

00:45:40   A case without a bottom so you can swipe up no problem.

00:45:42   And I always thought you were kind of nuts

00:45:43   because what is the big deal?

00:45:45   It's fine.

00:45:46   - I'm not gonna tell you you tried it.

00:45:47   - I've tried it.

00:45:48   It is unquestionably better.

00:45:50   Gosh, I've been talking a lot for having said

00:45:52   I had no opinions about this.

00:45:53   Here we are.

00:45:54   - Welcome to the show.

00:45:56   - Right, exactly.

00:45:57   Welcome, we've been here 10 years.

00:46:00   It is definitely better to have a bottomless iPhone case.

00:46:02   Full stop, not arguing that.

00:46:03   I just don't think it's as big a deal to me as it is to you.

00:46:06   Let me tell you what is not fun though.

00:46:08   When you take a phone that you do not intend

00:46:11   to have a case on it,

00:46:13   and you put an extra two to three millimeters

00:46:15   of screen on it.

00:46:16   So now I have a ledge every time I swipe up,

00:46:19   which is the screen protector.

00:46:21   Sitting here now, I hate it so much.

00:46:24   I think I'll get used to it,

00:46:26   but I hate it so much.

00:46:28   - They should round over that edge.

00:46:30   They should round over the bottom edge.

00:46:31   - I don't know.

00:46:33   Ultimately, I think it's worth it to me

00:46:35   because again, I don't,

00:46:37   well, I was gonna say I don't mistreat my phones.

00:46:38   I mean, clearly I'm doing something

00:46:40   to scratch these screens every year

00:46:41   for the last like four years.

00:46:43   So I don't think running without a screen protector

00:46:45   is the right choice for me,

00:46:46   but I kind of hate the way it feels right now.

00:46:50   - Put a case on it, put a case

00:46:51   that doesn't have a bare bottom,

00:46:52   and then you'll be hitting the gigantic bottom lip

00:46:54   of the case and you won't even feel the screen protector.

00:46:56   - And I think that may be what I end up doing,

00:46:59   but I really don't love any of the case options right now.

00:47:02   And so we'll see what happens.

00:47:04   But I did very much like, however,

00:47:06   the application process because they basically,

00:47:08   they asked me if they could unbox the phone.

00:47:10   I said, of course, thank you for asking.

00:47:11   They immediately put it in their fancy little machine

00:47:14   that lines everything up just right.

00:47:15   And then, foop, foop, foop,

00:47:16   and all of a sudden the screen protector's on.

00:47:17   And into my eyes, leaving aside

00:47:19   that there's an additional ledge

00:47:20   that I wasn't really considering,

00:47:22   to my eyes, they did an absolutely perfect job.

00:47:24   So in that sense, I'm very satisfied.

00:47:27   But yeah, I mean, I think that's,

00:47:29   with regard to the purchase experience,

00:47:31   that's all I've really got.

00:47:32   I did go back down, oh, that's the other thing.

00:47:35   I went from Pro Max to Pro.

00:47:36   Gentlemen, having a human-sized phone in my hand

00:47:41   feels so great, it's so much better.

00:47:43   I mean, well, for me,

00:47:44   I shouldn't say that the Max is bad.

00:47:46   I do a little teeny bit miss the screen real estate

00:47:50   of the Max, but oh, my word, it's so much nicer in the hand.

00:47:53   It is so much nicer in the hand.

00:47:56   I can use my phone without a popsocket.

00:48:00   Imagine that.

00:48:01   You can use a phone.

00:48:02   Did you know this, gentlemen?

00:48:03   You can actually hold a phone in one hand.

00:48:06   You can operate the entire keyboard with one hand.

00:48:09   You don't even need to have a little thing

00:48:11   poking out the back.

00:48:12   You can just hold the phone.

00:48:14   I stand by having gone the Max last year

00:48:17   for the 5X lens or camera system or what have you,

00:48:21   and I actually am very glad that I tried it.

00:48:23   I think I could do it again if we're in a situation

00:48:27   for like the 17 or something like that

00:48:28   where only the good camera's on the 17 Pro Max,

00:48:32   or you know what I mean, something along those lines.

00:48:34   But I stand by and I have now reaffirmed my commitment

00:48:39   to, oh, my, I am not a big phone person.

00:48:43   I can do it if I have to, but it's not for me.

00:48:46   - Because the thing is, even the now "small phone"

00:48:50   is a big phone, and it got bigger.

00:48:53   It got even bigger, and this is just gonna keep happening.

00:48:57   Obviously, that's the pattern of the market.

00:49:00   The market pushes phones, sizes up, people buy them,

00:49:02   and it drives the small phone people nuts

00:49:07   'cause they're like, you're going further away

00:49:09   from our needs, which is true.

00:49:11   But also, the problem is the market just keeps

00:49:13   buying bigger and bigger phones also.

00:49:15   So the small phone people are kind of being outvoted

00:49:19   by most of the buyers in the market,

00:49:21   and so this is just gonna keep happening.

00:49:24   Even a lot of Max people are switching back with this one

00:49:28   'cause they just keep making it.

00:49:29   - 'Cause the Max got bigger, too.

00:49:30   - Yes, they keep making it bigger.

00:49:32   Eventually, you're like, okay, this is actually beyond

00:49:34   what I actually want, and I actually have a story

00:49:37   with this for a little bit for later.

00:49:38   We'll get to that.

00:49:39   - All right, but so far, I think I'll wrap up,

00:49:42   even though, like I said, I'm already going longer

00:49:44   than I intended.

00:49:45   Immediate impressions, the phone transfer,

00:49:49   I did use a full bore, like $90 Apple bespoke

00:49:53   Thunderbolt cable, and it took roughly an hour,

00:49:56   and my vague recollection of last year

00:49:57   was that it took like two and a half, three hours.

00:49:59   So I do think that gets an A-plus thumbs up from me.

00:50:03   This is very not, I did not do a lot of science here,

00:50:06   to be clear, but the vibe I got

00:50:08   is that it was definitely better.

00:50:10   I failed to transfer my SIM on the first shot.

00:50:13   I mean, not from my fault, it just didn't work,

00:50:15   and then I tried it again, this is a Verizon eSIM.

00:50:17   Tried it again, and it worked no problem.

00:50:19   Other than that, I mean, everything seems nice.

00:50:23   I like the camera control.

00:50:24   I don't wanna go too far into it,

00:50:26   'cause I think you guys are gonna have

00:50:27   many more thoughts about it.

00:50:28   It does not currently feel intuitive to me,

00:50:32   but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad by any means.

00:50:35   I think I will absolutely get used to it,

00:50:37   but I have to think through, like,

00:50:39   is this a half-press, is this a half-double-press,

00:50:41   is it a full-press, is it a full-double-press?

00:50:44   It hasn't clicked, and typically, Apple stuff,

00:50:47   you don't have to think about it.

00:50:48   It just does, or it works exactly

00:50:51   the way you expect it to work.

00:50:52   And in this case, I don't think it's successful,

00:50:54   but again, I wanna repeat, I don't think

00:50:57   that that's necessarily an indictment of the camera control.

00:51:00   It's just, I gotta get used to it, that's all.

00:51:02   - We'll talk about it more in a little bit,

00:51:03   but I wanna talk about my setup process

00:51:04   that Marc can talk about, his setup process.

00:51:06   We'll do these piecemeal, piecewise,

00:51:08   old setup, and then, anyway.

00:51:10   So the setup process, you would think

00:51:13   this is such a non-issue.

00:51:14   Yours sounded like mostly a non-issue.

00:51:15   Yeah, it was annoying picking it up from the store,

00:51:17   but you used the cable to connect them,

00:51:18   'cause you had a 15 Pro to a 16 Pro,

00:51:21   and it seemed to work out.

00:51:22   And I would grade your setup experience

00:51:25   as pretty much went okay.

00:51:28   - The software setup experience,

00:51:31   I would say, is solid A-minus.

00:51:34   It took a long time.

00:51:35   I don't love that you still have to download all the apps

00:51:37   even when you're doing a phone-to-phone transfer,

00:51:39   but in the grand scheme of things, it was fine.

00:51:41   There were no major issues.

00:51:43   - So I get a new phone every two years,

00:51:44   and there are two reasons that I dread getting a new phone.

00:51:49   One of them is the setup process.

00:51:51   The other one is cases, which we'll talk about later, right?

00:51:54   And it really does deter me from getting a new phone.

00:51:57   You think I'd be excited to get a new phone, and I am,

00:51:59   but then every time I actually am getting one,

00:52:00   I'm like, oh no, my world has been thrown into turmoil,

00:52:03   because the computing device that I use probably the most

00:52:07   that's with me all the time now is going to

00:52:11   not be satisfactory for some period of time.

00:52:13   First, I have to deal with the setup process

00:52:14   where I just hope everything transfers over,

00:52:17   and I deal with all that or whatever,

00:52:18   and then the cases, which we'll talk about later, right?

00:52:20   So I think last year, if we go back to, or not last year,

00:52:24   two years ago when I got the 14 Pro,

00:52:25   I think I said that my setup process went smoothly for once.

00:52:29   My usual experience is I get a new phone,

00:52:32   and the way I order it is through the Apple Store app,

00:52:34   and I order it on my old phone, and when you order on

00:52:37   your old phone, you can say, hey, are you gonna get

00:52:39   a new phone that's gonna replace the one

00:52:41   that you're currently ordering on, and I say yes.

00:52:43   It's like the most automatic, smoothest default path,

00:52:47   which is like, new phone, replace this phone.

00:52:49   Don't change anything, don't get an unlocked phone,

00:52:52   don't do anything weird, don't change carriers,

00:52:54   it's like just the default straightforward thing.

00:52:57   And yet, pretty much every year,

00:52:59   with the possible exception of last year,

00:53:00   I don't recall exactly, I end up on the phone with Verizon.

00:53:05   On iPhone, which is not the time you wanna be

00:53:08   on the phone with Verizon. - No.

00:53:10   - Well, guess what, I ordered my new phone,

00:53:13   using that same old default method,

00:53:14   I took it out of the box, I couldn't use the wired,

00:53:17   well I decided not to use the wired thing,

00:53:18   'cause the 14 Pro has USB 2.0 speeds,

00:53:20   and Wi-Fi can beat that, I think.

00:53:23   So I'm just using plain old, you know, phone to phone,

00:53:27   wireless transfer with both phones plugged in,

00:53:29   and it starts doing the thing, you know,

00:53:32   I see a new phone, do you wanna do this,

00:53:34   connect to your other phone,

00:53:34   type in the passcode of this phone on that phone,

00:53:36   scan the fuzzy dot ball, you know,

00:53:39   like the whole process, right?

00:53:41   - All right, can I interrupt you right there,

00:53:43   does that actually, like is that like a QR code,

00:53:46   does that actually transmit data?

00:53:47   - Yeah, there's actual data in there.

00:53:49   - Okay, I can't fathom how, I believe you, okay.

00:53:52   - Yeah, it's just artfully done,

00:53:54   but yeah, it's like sort of an obscured artful

00:53:56   kind of like QR code type thing.

00:53:58   Anyway, and then they start doing their thing,

00:54:02   one thing that's always annoyed me

00:54:03   is the phone you are transferring from

00:54:05   has like a white sheet up that says, you know,

00:54:08   finish on other phone or whatever,

00:54:10   but if you try to dismiss that sheet,

00:54:12   it's like, oh, do you wanna exit the setup process?

00:54:14   It's like, no, I just don't wanna be staring

00:54:15   at this white thing,

00:54:16   and sometimes the screen won't even go to sleep,

00:54:17   but just fine, the phone is plugged in,

00:54:19   but it just seems stupid, but anyway, whatever.

00:54:21   On the new phone, it's doing stuff,

00:54:23   and it gets to a thing that says, you know,

00:54:25   whatever screen this is like activating, blah, blah, blah,

00:54:27   this may take a few minutes.

00:54:29   Well, I was on that phone for a solid hour the first time,

00:54:32   and I'm like, because I was afraid to abort it

00:54:34   and screw something up, and then I tried again,

00:54:36   and tried again, and it would be like activating,

00:54:39   this will take a few minutes, and then I resigned myself.

00:54:41   I'm like, look, it's never gonna get past the screen.

00:54:43   Like there was no skip, I'm assuming it was trying

00:54:45   to transfer, you know, my phone number, eSIM,

00:54:49   whatever thing from my 14 Pro to my 16 Pro.

00:54:52   It just wouldn't and couldn't do it,

00:54:54   and I'm going all over.

00:54:55   Like I have five bars in my house these days,

00:54:57   like they must have upgraded the coverage right here.

00:54:59   It's not even like I have bad signal anymore,

00:55:01   and they're both on Wi-Fi.

00:55:02   Like I don't know what the problem is.

00:55:04   Time to contact Verizon, which is just the most terrible

00:55:08   sort of resigned feeling of dread.

00:55:10   Like you're getting an exciting new thing,

00:55:12   and instead of setting up your exciting new thing,

00:55:14   you're going to be calling your phone carrier

00:55:16   on day one of iPhone.

00:55:18   It's just like, why is this my life?

00:55:21   - May I offer a suggestion?

00:55:23   You make merciless fun of me for trying the same thing

00:55:27   more than once or twice, expecting--

00:55:29   - I think it worked last year.

00:55:31   - I'm gonna let it go because I don't want to get

00:55:33   any of us angry at each other,

00:55:34   but I think maybe trying a different approach

00:55:36   for next year might be a good idea.

00:55:39   - Well, but what would you suggest?

00:55:40   Like what's, I mean, next year I'll use the wired one,

00:55:42   but that wasn't the problem.

00:55:43   It was the carrier activation.

00:55:44   Like that's where I'm getting it now.

00:55:45   - That's why, maybe I'm the idiot here,

00:55:48   which wouldn't be the first time,

00:55:49   but I always, or for the last several years anyway,

00:55:52   I just buy an unlocked phone.

00:55:53   I don't want Verizon to know what's coming.

00:55:55   I don't want them to think that they,

00:55:56   'cause a lot of times in the past,

00:55:58   I don't know if this is true anymore,

00:55:59   but in the past if you bought a phone

00:56:02   to replace your existing one, like you're describing,

00:56:05   I want this one to be my new phone

00:56:07   and I tell Apple that ahead of time.

00:56:08   A lot of times like AT&T and Verizon would ding you

00:56:11   like 50 bucks for the activation for reasons unknown.

00:56:14   And so I would just buy an unlocked one.

00:56:15   And then typically, again, not always,

00:56:17   but typically neither Verizon or AT&T would ding you

00:56:20   the $50 activation fee because you're just bringing

00:56:23   something new to them.

00:56:24   It's like, how do they know if you're just John Gruber

00:56:27   or Jason Snell and you're just activating somebody else's,

00:56:29   or activating--

00:56:30   - Well, I mean, but I wanted to take over

00:56:31   my other number, obviously, my old number.

00:56:33   - Well, yeah, but mine does that every time.

00:56:35   It says, oh, do you wanna take over the old phone's number?

00:56:37   - But I'm assuming they'd still charge you the fee.

00:56:38   If they're gonna charge you the fee,

00:56:39   they're gonna charge you the fee.

00:56:40   - I don't think, again, we'll see what happens.

00:56:42   I might be wrong, but in the last couple of years,

00:56:44   I don't believe that's been the case,

00:56:45   or the last several years.

00:56:46   - Anyway, yeah, I could potentially try and unlock one,

00:56:49   but I just feel like that's been trading

00:56:50   a bunch of known problems for unknown ones.

00:56:52   So anyway, I have advanced in my ability to deal with this

00:56:54   because I was like, I can't do it, I can't dial that,

00:56:57   because remember, I can't call them on my cell phone either,

00:56:59   so I'd be calling on my, quote, unquote, landline phone,

00:57:02   still wireless, whatever, on my landline phone.

00:57:04   It would be on speakerphone,

00:57:05   I'd have to hear that music over the,

00:57:07   I just, I can't do it, so I'm like, you know what?

00:57:09   This year, I'm gonna try the chat thing.

00:57:11   They always heard you towards anyway,

00:57:12   like the in-web page Verizon text chat.

00:57:16   And so I did that, and the world's friendliest person

00:57:19   telling me, oh, I hope you're having such a wonderful day.

00:57:22   Congratulations to your new phone, blah, blah, blah.

00:57:24   I'm like, please, just, I've got all the data ready to go.

00:57:29   I tell him the situation, I say I'm on the activating screen.

00:57:33   He says, could you please give me your IME ID,

00:57:36   which I already have in the clipboard, I just paste it.

00:57:38   You know, I'm going, which by the way,

00:57:40   I had to transcribe manually,

00:57:42   because when your phone is in this terrible state,

00:57:44   you just use the little I and a circle in the upper right

00:57:46   to get the IME ID, but you can't copy and paste it

00:57:49   because your phone isn't even set up,

00:57:50   so I'm transcribing that carefully.

00:57:51   Like anyway, I do all this information, and you know what?

00:57:56   It takes like three seconds

00:57:57   when someone at Verizon is doing it.

00:57:59   They're like, okay, this is your thing, confirm this,

00:58:01   do that, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.

00:58:03   And all of a sudden my phone screen says,

00:58:05   instead of saying activating, wait a few minutes,

00:58:06   it says, oh, transferring cellular service, whatever,

00:58:08   blue, blue, blue, blue, and it's done.

00:58:11   And I was like, okay, well that was, you know,

00:58:13   maybe like a half an hour on web chat

00:58:16   in the grand scheme of things.

00:58:18   You know, it's better to not have to contact them,

00:58:19   but it wasn't that bad.

00:58:21   The only weird wrinkle was, they're like, okay,

00:58:24   now call like pound, you know, 832 or whatever.

00:58:27   There's something they want you to do

00:58:28   to confirm that everything worked.

00:58:30   - What year is this?

00:58:31   - I'm pretty sure it worked,

00:58:32   because the phone is saying that it did all the things

00:58:35   and it's, you know, whatever.

00:58:36   But they're like, okay, well, and I said to them,

00:58:38   I can't dial anything right now

00:58:39   because it's doing the phone-to-phone transfer.

00:58:41   I won't have access to the dialer

00:58:42   until it finishes the phone-to-phone transfer.

00:58:44   And he says, that's okay, I'll wait.

00:58:46   I'm like, it's going to take hours.

00:58:49   And he's like, no problem, I'll just wait.

00:58:51   And then he tried to sell me insurance

00:58:53   and I said, no thanks.

00:58:53   And then I walked away from the computer

00:58:55   and I came back, you know, an hour or two later

00:58:58   and the transfer had finished

00:58:59   and the webpage had timed out.

00:59:00   So successful customer service interaction,

00:59:03   but chalk this up to another year

00:59:06   where I had to contact Verizon.

00:59:08   At least I didn't have to go on the phone with them,

00:59:09   but I had to contact Verizon to get my phone set up.

00:59:11   After I had gotten over that hurdle,

00:59:13   the phone-to-phone transfer worked the way it normally does,

00:59:15   where it forgets the test flight exists

00:59:17   and rearranges all my icons until I go back to test flight

00:59:20   and figure out where they all have to belong

00:59:21   and rearrange them manually.

00:59:23   Yes, I tried to use iPhone mirroring

00:59:24   to rearrange them with the mouse.

00:59:26   It's probably a little bit better,

00:59:29   but boy, you can really see the insanity of that system

00:59:31   when you have pixel precise control with a mouse cursor,

00:59:34   because it's such a cruel game.

00:59:36   It's like, oh, I went over the one pixel boundary

00:59:38   and now it switched to the other screen.

00:59:39   Like it's just, your meat fingers aren't in the way,

00:59:41   but now I know precisely how insane

00:59:43   the activation readings are

00:59:44   and precisely how broken it is

00:59:46   where you will drag an icon

00:59:47   and other icons will skitter out of the way

00:59:49   and leave an empty spot for your icon.

00:59:51   You will release and Springboard will say, nope,

00:59:54   and it'll just close that spot back up

00:59:56   and you'll do it 50 times.

00:59:57   Drag an icon, put it right where you want it to go.

01:00:00   Nothing else is there.

01:00:01   It is dead center on the spot.

01:00:02   Release disappears like it never existed.

01:00:05   The system's just broken, so the mouse helps a little bit,

01:00:07   but anyway, setup worked fine.

01:00:10   I managed to get through it all and there you go.

01:00:13   Marco, how was your setup process?

01:00:15   - Mine was perfectly fine. (laughs)

01:00:17   - Did you buy unlocked or did you buy as a replacement?

01:00:20   - I did the thing in the Apple Store app on the phone

01:00:22   where I say replace this phone on my plan

01:00:25   and it was simple.

01:00:26   Now granted, I use AT&T, so everything is mediocre,

01:00:31   but it worked better than yours. (laughs)

01:00:35   - Yeah, I don't know what it is.

01:00:36   I mean, I'm assuming there's some carrier servers

01:00:38   that are involved in this process

01:00:39   and the worst part is there's no way to say,

01:00:43   forget about that, I'll deal with it later.

01:00:44   Just do the rest of the setup.

01:00:45   You are stuck on that screen.

01:00:47   This is activating, this may take a few minutes

01:00:48   and as far as I know, there's no way to get past it,

01:00:50   which argues for Casey's thing of like,

01:00:51   hey, don't you just buy it unlocked

01:00:53   'cause then at least you can do the phone,

01:00:55   like the data transfer part of the setup

01:00:57   and then when you have a functioning working phone

01:01:00   that just doesn't have a phone number,

01:01:01   then try to do the eSIM transfer or whatever,

01:01:04   however you initiate that process.

01:01:06   - I mean, I will say for whatever it's worth,

01:01:09   my Apple Watch cellular transfers never work.

01:01:13   The only way I ever get the watch to work

01:01:15   is to cancel the plan from AT&T's website for the old watch

01:01:20   and then have the new watch start over again

01:01:22   and even then, usually it's like it tries to activate,

01:01:26   it fails a couple times,

01:01:27   the plan shows up in the Apple Watch cellular section

01:01:29   as not in use.

01:01:30   I gotta like reboot sometimes a couple times.

01:01:33   I gotta do some dances to get that to work.

01:01:35   - And you gotta Google to be like,

01:01:36   wait, do I unpair from the old one first

01:01:38   or do I not like this?

01:01:39   This whole, I've done it successfully,

01:01:41   I use my wife's watch several times and every time I do it,

01:01:43   I have no confidence that I'm going to be successful.

01:01:45   I have no recollection of how I did it last time

01:01:47   or why it worked and I just like cross my fingers

01:01:49   and just dive in and by the way,

01:01:52   everything on the watch takes forever.

01:01:53   I guess it's probably getting better

01:01:54   as the watches get faster.

01:01:55   - It doesn't, no. - But it takes so long

01:01:56   to do anything.

01:01:57   - No, it's not getting better.

01:01:59   But the phone transfer, by the way,

01:02:01   just before we leave this,

01:02:02   the phone transfer for me was perfectly fine.

01:02:04   Like the eSIM moved over,

01:02:05   like it activated just fine in a reasonable amount of time.

01:02:07   - Did you use a cable?

01:02:09   - Yeah, I used a cable and I used both.

01:02:11   I used two of my like fan Peltier Element fans

01:02:14   that are the active cooling MagSafe fans.

01:02:16   - I did use ice packs just in honor of Marco.

01:02:18   I used them briefly but then I got worried

01:02:20   about condensation and stopped.

01:02:21   (laughing)

01:02:23   - Very quickly with regard to the watch,

01:02:25   I had heard a story and I think this was accurate

01:02:30   at the time, that the best way to move a watch

01:02:33   is to unpair on the old phone if I remember correctly.

01:02:36   - I think it's the only way.

01:02:37   - No, it'll offer to move it for you.

01:02:39   It just doesn't usually work with cellular for some reason.

01:02:42   - Well, so that's the thing.

01:02:43   So the way it used to be years and years ago

01:02:45   was you would unpair the watch,

01:02:47   then do your phone transfer,

01:02:48   then repair the watch on the new phone.

01:02:50   This time I didn't do any of that.

01:02:53   I just waited for the phone to say,

01:02:55   hey, would you like to move the watch over?

01:02:57   And I said, yes.

01:02:58   And it worked.

01:02:59   Now I do not have cellular though.

01:03:01   I do not have cellular

01:03:02   and I do think that makes a big difference.

01:03:03   - Oh yeah, it does, very much so.

01:03:06   - It moved, no problem.

01:03:08   And then when I unboxed my Apple Watch Series 10,

01:03:10   which we'll get to later,

01:03:11   I said, hey, can you make it,

01:03:13   or I think it asked or whatever,

01:03:15   do you want this to effectively replace the old one?

01:03:17   I said, yes.

01:03:18   And it said, sure.

01:03:18   And that worked pretty much no problem.

01:03:20   So my Apple Watch transfer experience was A plus plus.

01:03:24   Like it was pretty much flawless.

01:03:26   I was stunned.

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01:05:29   All right, camera control.

01:05:35   I've used it a decent amount.

01:05:38   I think it's a good idea.

01:05:42   The actual usage of it,

01:05:44   I think they're gonna need to tweak a little bit here

01:05:46   and there with some of the timings and settings

01:05:49   and tolerances and things like that.

01:05:50   But I think overall, I like it.

01:05:52   It is extremely useful for me

01:05:53   just as a camera launch button.

01:05:55   I know a lot of people have been using the action button

01:05:57   for that over the past year.

01:05:58   - Yeah, that's what I was doing.

01:06:00   - And that's totally fine.

01:06:01   And there are some benefits and drawbacks to that.

01:06:04   I, as I mentioned in previous episodes,

01:06:06   I use the action button for flashlight,

01:06:07   which I actually use a decent amount.

01:06:10   Although I actually, I am happy to report

01:06:13   that as I progress through my denial of,

01:06:17   that I really should be wearing progressive reading glasses

01:06:20   all the time because my close up reading distance

01:06:22   is not great anymore.

01:06:24   But my distance distance viewing is fine.

01:06:28   And so what I really should be doing

01:06:30   is wearing progressive reading glasses

01:06:31   that have no correction on top

01:06:33   and reading correction on the bottom.

01:06:35   I have yet to find any that I don't hate.

01:06:37   So instead what I'm doing is mostly

01:06:39   not wearing reading glasses

01:06:40   and just holding stuff out really far to see it.

01:06:43   But occasionally the system is not sufficient for something.

01:06:48   And the phone has a magnifier feature built in.

01:06:51   It has for a very long time

01:06:53   where it just basically is like a quick little view

01:06:55   that uses the camera to show you a magnified view

01:06:57   of whatever you're looking at.

01:06:58   It's great, especially when you have

01:06:59   the modern ultra wide lenses that have autofocus

01:07:02   and so they can actually get very close

01:07:04   with macro distances to view things like, you know,

01:07:07   that tiny little print on Apple's power adapters and stuff.

01:07:11   One of the things I tried to view recently was,

01:07:14   they have the new MagSafe pucks that charge 25 watts.

01:07:17   And they look almost identical to the old ones.

01:07:20   Apparently, I heard from John Gruber actually

01:07:23   that apparently they are slightly narrower,

01:07:27   which is going to be really annoying

01:07:29   when I try to fit it into anything that's made to like,

01:07:31   you bring your MagSafe adapter into this 3D mount

01:07:33   or whatever, like that's gonna be annoying.

01:07:35   I gotta verify that.

01:07:36   - Like the radius is smaller?

01:07:38   - Yeah, like apparently the actual size of the circle

01:07:40   is slightly smaller so it's not gonna fit in, you know,

01:07:43   docks and stuff that are made to, you know,

01:07:45   build an Apple's MagSafe pucks.

01:07:47   But I gotta verify that.

01:07:48   - But I bet there's some tiny light gray text

01:07:49   on a slightly darker gray background that you could also--

01:07:51   - Right, so what I was trying to do is like,

01:07:54   okay, how do I tell, if I'm holding one of these in my hand,

01:07:57   how do I tell which one it is?

01:07:59   'Cause they now, you know, the modern MagSafe pucks now

01:08:02   with the, you know, the faster charging,

01:08:04   I believe they're 10 bucks more.

01:08:06   They're 40 bucks instead of 30 bucks.

01:08:07   And they have a different entire model number.

01:08:10   But if you're just looking at it, it's not obvious.

01:08:12   Like, and they do have a tiny little bit of text

01:08:16   printed on the metal right next to where the cable

01:08:18   goes into the metal ring.

01:08:20   And I could not see this for the life of me.

01:08:23   So anyway, all this is to say,

01:08:25   the magnifier's a good feature.

01:08:26   And what I've actually done,

01:08:27   since I have the action button as the flashlight,

01:08:29   now with iOS 18, you can replace the two circular

01:08:33   3D touch buttons on the bottom of the lock screen,

01:08:35   the ones that used to be flashlight and camera.

01:08:37   So I've actually replaced the flashlight one

01:08:40   with the magnifier.

01:08:41   I'm happy to announce I have reached that point in aging

01:08:45   where I'm going to be using the magnifier

01:08:48   frequently enough on my phone.

01:08:49   I've already, I just did this like the other day,

01:08:51   and I've already used it like three times.

01:08:53   - You can change it to triple tap too.

01:08:55   That's the one that, that's the real old person move.

01:08:56   You change magnifier to triple tap with accessibility,

01:08:58   you just tap the back of the phone three times.

01:09:00   - I don't need that yet.

01:09:02   But certainly having it on the lock screen

01:09:04   on a button I was not using anymore is very useful.

01:09:06   And then, you know, and so similarly,

01:09:08   like you can have the camera, you know,

01:09:11   if you don't want to use Apple's camera app anymore,

01:09:14   or if you only want to launch it from the camera control,

01:09:17   then you can reassign the camera circle button

01:09:20   on the lock screen too to something else.

01:09:22   This is a whole new area of customization

01:09:23   that I actually find quite nice.

01:09:25   But anyway, all that is to say, the camera control,

01:09:27   therefore being my camera launch button,

01:09:30   will free up one of those spots for me.

01:09:31   And so using it as that so far over the last couple days,

01:09:34   I have enjoyed it, it has proven useful to me.

01:09:37   The only thing is that so far I have a very,

01:09:40   I had a very hard time figuring out

01:09:43   how to navigate the little tools menu inside of it.

01:09:46   Like that-- - Yep, same.

01:09:47   - I said this before any of us had ever tried it.

01:09:49   Remember by using the demos, I'm like, that's modal.

01:09:52   How are you gonna get out of that mode?

01:09:54   And I, trying it for real life,

01:09:55   I experienced the exact same thing,

01:09:57   the exact problem I predicted.

01:09:58   I'm like, I'm having that problem.

01:09:59   I eventually figured it out, but it's not great.

01:10:02   - Yeah, I think there's gonna be

01:10:03   a quite learning curve there.

01:10:05   And I think maybe Apple could tweak some of the like,

01:10:07   you know, timings and gestures and things on that

01:10:09   to make that a little bit easier over time.

01:10:11   'Cause I have found that like the actual,

01:10:13   like the pushing of the button to open the camera

01:10:15   and to take pictures, that works great.

01:10:16   But I keep finding myself like accidentally

01:10:19   in some of the little menu modes

01:10:20   to the point where I might just turn them off.

01:10:22   And the second thing is that as soon as you start using

01:10:25   those menu modes, it, or even I think even just using it

01:10:30   for capture, like just pushing the button

01:10:32   to take the picture, it dims or hides

01:10:36   all of the camera UI on screen.

01:10:38   - Yeah, I noticed that too, which surprised me.

01:10:41   - Yeah, and it keeps it hidden for like a few seconds

01:10:43   after you hit the picture.

01:10:44   So like even if you wanna just review the picture

01:10:46   you just took, you have to like wait two or three seconds

01:10:50   for it to like fade those controls back in.

01:10:52   Like it's kind of annoying, like I see what they're going

01:10:54   for, it just becomes a camera with this control.

01:10:57   Okay, that's a nice idea, that's very precious.

01:10:59   In real life, I want those controls back immediately.

01:11:02   So like as soon as I'm done taking the picture,

01:11:04   I want those controls.

01:11:05   Or even if I'm just stuck in the weird, you know,

01:11:08   camera control menu thingy and I can't figure out

01:11:10   how to zoom back out or whatever,

01:11:12   just keep the controls on screen at all times.

01:11:15   Because yeah, it's great to have them in the camera control.

01:11:18   It's also great to have them on the screen.

01:11:20   And a lot of times you're gonna wanna switch

01:11:21   back and forth between them.

01:11:23   So that's something that like, I think until Apple

01:11:27   makes better balances and more usable defaults

01:11:31   or more usable behaviors with the camera control,

01:11:34   I don't see myself using it for any of those

01:11:36   little menu features other than just launching the camera

01:11:38   and taking a picture.

01:11:39   Like I think for those it's great, it's convenient.

01:11:41   The actual implementation of all those little menus

01:11:43   and things and the way it hides all the controls

01:11:45   in the main screen, that I think needs some iteration

01:11:48   to really be useful.

01:11:50   - All right, so here's my experience

01:11:51   with the camera control.

01:11:53   The very first thing that I discovered with my new phone

01:11:58   with the camera control is that the camera control

01:12:01   is placed exactly where I apparently grabbed my phone.

01:12:04   Exactly.

01:12:05   - I've done this a couple times.

01:12:06   - Like with it, taking it out of the box,

01:12:09   I kid you not, the phone is not even on.

01:12:11   I've just taken it out of the box.

01:12:13   I accidentally hit the camera control button

01:12:15   three times in under 20 seconds.

01:12:18   It's not even on, like the phone's not even on.

01:12:21   I'm hitting the button, which by the way--

01:12:23   - What part of your hand, are you hitting it

01:12:24   with like your like--

01:12:26   - That's apparently where I grab the phone.

01:12:27   I apparently grab it at the bottom with one,

01:12:30   you know, my thumb on like the left side

01:12:32   of where the camera control is and my other finger

01:12:34   is exactly on the camera control.

01:12:36   And it's a flush button, it doesn't even stick out.

01:12:39   I was hitting that button like crazy.

01:12:41   I'm like, okay, well, I can retrain myself,

01:12:44   but that's an unfortunate personal habit.

01:12:47   Apparently I grabbed the phone by the camera control.

01:12:50   And so I have signed up for hitting that button

01:12:53   accidentally a lot.

01:12:53   I'm getting better and unfortunately,

01:12:55   I think part of the way I'm getting better

01:12:57   is learning not to press as hard,

01:12:59   which is good in that I won't activate the flush button

01:13:02   but bad in that now I'm not gripping the phone as hard

01:13:04   when I pick it up, which I feel like

01:13:05   is just an increased drop risk, but that's a thing.

01:13:09   So setting that aside.

01:13:10   - Get that Apple care.

01:13:11   - Yeah, I do have it.

01:13:12   Using the actual camera control button,

01:13:16   I would not have predicted this based on their previews

01:13:18   in our discussion of this,

01:13:19   but because we had talked about like the whole idea

01:13:21   of them modeling it after like half press

01:13:24   on a real camera shutter button.

01:13:26   And even though that feature for half press focus

01:13:28   isn't even shipping yet,

01:13:29   the way you get into those menus

01:13:31   that Marco was talking about these little things is,

01:13:33   you essentially half press, right?

01:13:34   To get to the thing where you can change the zoom

01:13:37   and the focal depth and that whole menu system.

01:13:39   And yes, that is modal.

01:13:41   And the only way I've discovered to get out of it

01:13:42   is to touch anywhere on the screen,

01:13:44   which is a reasonable way to get out of it.

01:13:46   But I kind of wish there was a way to get out of it

01:13:48   by without taking a picture, by hitting the camera control.

01:13:51   But I think you have to actually touch the screen to say,

01:13:53   I want to get out of this mode

01:13:55   where I'm adjusting things with the camera control, right?

01:13:57   But here's the kicker.

01:13:58   This is the thing I wouldn't have predicted.

01:14:00   The half press on the camera control button

01:14:03   to activate the menus is unlike any half press

01:14:07   and any big camera that I've ever used in my entire life

01:14:10   in that it is way, way more difficult to get to it.

01:14:15   Like it is a thing that you have to train your fingers to do

01:14:21   because if you just do what you would do

01:14:23   to half press a real camera button,

01:14:25   you've pressed it all the way, that's too far.

01:14:27   So it's like, how do I half press this button?

01:14:30   And you have to press so much lighter than you think.

01:14:33   And I know there's this preference to adjust this

01:14:34   or whatever, but it's such a strange sensation.

01:14:36   You're like, am I even pressing it

01:14:39   or am I just thinking hard about pressing it

01:14:41   and it activates it?

01:14:42   You can do it, you can learn to do it,

01:14:45   but it is so much more of a precise, delicate gesture

01:14:49   than I expected it to be.

01:14:50   I fully expected, I've been half pressing shutter buttons

01:14:53   for years and years, right, decades, right?

01:14:56   I fully expected it would just be completely natural

01:14:58   for me to half press it, absolutely not.

01:15:00   It is so much more delicate than I thought it would be,

01:15:03   which I don't personally mind

01:15:04   because I think I'm never going to use those menus

01:15:06   now that I've experienced them.

01:15:07   I don't think I'm ever gonna use them to adjust anything.

01:15:10   Maybe I'll do the zoom one because it has the advantage.

01:15:12   I hate pinching to zoom.

01:15:13   It has the advantage that I can zoom

01:15:15   while having the phone in camera taking position, right,

01:15:19   in landscape mode or whatever,

01:15:20   without me having to take one of my hands off of the phone

01:15:23   and use it to pinch the screen.

01:15:25   I think zoom is the one that's most likely for me to use,

01:15:27   but in practice, I've never actually used it

01:15:30   other than when I was experimenting with it,

01:15:31   just because I hate going into that mode.

01:15:34   I can't even decide which one to keep it on.

01:15:35   I think I settled on keeping it on zoom

01:15:37   because it's the one I'm most likely to use,

01:15:39   but I would just much rather adjust those things

01:15:41   on the screen, and I'm with Marco.

01:15:42   Like, I understand how the UI goes away

01:15:44   when you do that or whatever.

01:15:45   I would just rather always see it.

01:15:47   Like, again, that should probably be a setting or whatever.

01:15:50   But, you know, for taking a photo

01:15:52   and for having it as a shutter button,

01:15:53   I've heard a lot of people complaining

01:15:54   that the positioning is bad,

01:15:55   that it should be closer to the corner,

01:15:57   and maybe that would have gotten

01:15:58   that of my accidental activation area,

01:15:59   but I'm mostly happy with the position.

01:16:01   I take pretty much all my pictures in landscape mode,

01:16:04   but occasionally in portrait,

01:16:05   and I find it works for both of them.

01:16:07   I have it launching the camera.

01:16:08   I have it launching the camera on a single press.

01:16:10   The reason I can get away with it

01:16:11   is that when I accidentally activate it,

01:16:14   it's because I'm picking up a locked phone off the table

01:16:16   or whatever, and when you hit it on a locked phone,

01:16:19   it doesn't launch the camera app.

01:16:20   It just, like, wakes it up first,

01:16:21   and you have to hit it again to launch the camera app,

01:16:24   which is a nice defense against me

01:16:25   accidentally launching the camera app.

01:16:27   I'm still accidentally hitting the button a lot,

01:16:28   but the consequences are not significant,

01:16:31   because when I'm doing that,

01:16:32   it's almost always when I'm picking up a locked phone,

01:16:34   so I don't actually find myself landing in the camera app.

01:16:37   Within, I think, maybe less than a minute

01:16:41   of my wife picking up my phone,

01:16:43   she'd accidentally taken a picture with the camera control.

01:16:46   I should have saved it.

01:16:47   It was like, iPhone unboxing day.

01:16:48   Here's our first picture of the floor.

01:16:50   It's a thing, right?

01:16:53   Again, there's a setting to make the camera control

01:16:55   require a double click to get into the camera app.

01:16:58   I don't think I need to use that yet.

01:16:59   I think I'm building my habits around it,

01:17:01   but I think the camera control

01:17:05   was maybe a little bit overly ambitious.

01:17:07   As a button, it feels good, it clicks good.

01:17:10   I like the fact that it's touch sensitive.

01:17:13   The half press I'm not sold on,

01:17:14   the menu interface I'm not sold on,

01:17:16   and the upcoming feature that we don't even have yet,

01:17:18   the half press for focus or whatever they're gonna do,

01:17:21   I don't think that's gonna make this better.

01:17:22   They're piling so much stuff onto this button.

01:17:25   This is not like a version 1.0 button.

01:17:26   This is the version 4.5 of this button already.

01:17:30   It does so much stuff.

01:17:31   It is so overloaded, it has so many capabilities.

01:17:33   And like I said, maybe it's just me,

01:17:34   but when you find one of these phones,

01:17:37   try, you can learn how to get into the menus pretty easily,

01:17:40   but it's such a strange feeling.

01:17:42   It's like, press, but don't press.

01:17:44   It's such a delicate operation.

01:17:46   It reminds me of some of the finesse moves

01:17:49   I would have to do with a thumb stick

01:17:50   in Super Monkey Ball in the GameCube.

01:17:52   Like when you just really have to learn how to like,

01:17:55   what the difference between 18 and 17 degrees on the stick is

01:17:59   as opposed to just being like,

01:18:01   jam the stick to the left, right, up, down, right?

01:18:04   So sort of delicate, like just think about pressing it

01:18:08   and then you'll get into the menus.

01:18:09   And again, it's not bad because I don't think

01:18:11   I wanna get into the menus a lot,

01:18:12   and I do know how to do it now,

01:18:14   but it is so much, I don't know how to say,

01:18:18   so much more like, I don't wanna say sophisticated.

01:18:22   It's so much less straightforward to do.

01:18:27   Like it requires more mechanical finesse

01:18:30   than I would have expected.

01:18:31   Way more mechanical finesse

01:18:32   than half pressing a shutter button.

01:18:33   And having handed my very large cameras

01:18:36   to many people over the years for them to take pictures,

01:18:38   I can tell you that the average person

01:18:40   has difficulty half pressing even a gigantic shutter button

01:18:43   that is very easy in my opinion to half press

01:18:44   'cause it has like miles of travel

01:18:46   and you'd literally push it halfway down.

01:18:48   You cannot push this button halfway down.

01:18:49   Like the travel is so short.

01:18:51   If you try to push it halfway down,

01:18:53   you will completely depress it.

01:18:54   You have to think about pressing it

01:18:56   and then you've just half pressed it.

01:18:58   - Yeah, and I think like it almost gives me

01:19:00   the feeling of like when I've designed an interface

01:19:04   in Xcode for my iPhone app

01:19:06   and I've been using the simulator for most of the design

01:19:09   and then I run it on the device for the first time

01:19:12   and I pick it up and I try to use it

01:19:14   and I instantly feel like, oh, this is all wrong.

01:19:16   Like this is either too small, too big,

01:19:18   it doesn't feel right, it doesn't work right.

01:19:19   You can tell as soon as you try to use it on the device,

01:19:21   oh, this is wrong.

01:19:23   That's kinda how I feel with the camera control.

01:19:25   Like what I was expecting

01:19:26   based on how they were describing it,

01:19:28   I was kind of expecting this to work a certain way

01:19:31   and then as soon as I get it and I try it,

01:19:32   I'm like, oh, this is wrong.

01:19:34   Like I would actually call it maybe fiddly

01:19:37   or like over sensitive and like it's not,

01:19:40   I don't think I'm lacking appropriate dexterity

01:19:43   in my index finger to be able to use it

01:19:45   and there are some case considerations

01:19:47   which we'll get to in a moment.

01:19:49   But I think like it's just very finicky to get that right

01:19:54   and what you don't want with your camera controls

01:19:58   is imprecision.

01:20:00   Like when you're using a camera,

01:20:01   usually you are adjusting--

01:20:03   - Especially if you're fumbling for it,

01:20:04   like real quick, oh, we're getting the camera out.

01:20:06   It's not the time for like a now,

01:20:07   I'm going to apply the most controlled pressure

01:20:10   I've ever applied using the tendons in my fingers.

01:20:13   - Right, and you don't wanna like accidentally

01:20:15   switch modes or overshoot the setting

01:20:18   that you were trying to adjust or whatever.

01:20:20   Like it's very sensitive and finicky in the way it operates.

01:20:25   And so again, I think it's a good idea.

01:20:28   I like how it launches the camera and then takes pictures.

01:20:32   Everything else about it, I really don't like.

01:20:35   - Yeah, let me fast forward this for Apple.

01:20:37   Apple, the solution to this, the real version 4.5 of this,

01:20:40   I mean, I don't know how many years

01:20:42   in the future this is gonna be

01:20:43   is to solve all these problems.

01:20:45   Basically, that entire side of the phone

01:20:48   needs to be a giant touch sensitive,

01:20:50   pressure sensitive clicky button.

01:20:52   Because like for example, zooming and swiping,

01:20:55   the little interface that appears is maybe a little small,

01:20:57   but the essentially track pad area, it's a small button.

01:21:01   That area of like swipe, swipe, swipe,

01:21:04   it's barely enough to cycle through,

01:21:06   to satisfactorily cycle through the menus

01:21:09   while alone being satisfactory for zoom.

01:21:11   I feel like that whole like side of the phone

01:21:16   needs to be just one complete featureless thing

01:21:18   that you can squeeze and it haptically clicks

01:21:21   and the whole thing is touch sensitive

01:21:23   and it needs to like go in more.

01:21:25   I don't know how they solve this problem,

01:21:26   but it needs, it's strange to say,

01:21:28   but I feel like the camera control is too small,

01:21:31   like for what they want it to do.

01:21:33   If you just want it to be a shutter button

01:21:34   and you can use it that way, and by the way,

01:21:35   I will say that is the big benefit of the camera control.

01:21:37   If all these things we're complaining about,

01:21:39   you can just ignore them and just say,

01:21:40   this button is just a binary button

01:21:42   and I press it all the way or not at all.

01:21:44   And it works that way.

01:21:45   I don't think you'll accidentally half press it a lot,

01:21:47   especially if you're just always saying press, press, right?

01:21:50   But if they wanna go whole hog

01:21:52   and have this be like a touch sensitive thing

01:21:53   to swipe through UIs and stuff like that,

01:21:55   they need a bigger touch area

01:21:57   and they need a way bigger button

01:21:57   and they need just that whole side

01:21:59   to just be one giant button that also happens to click.

01:22:02   And I don't know how they do that,

01:22:03   but that would be better than this tiny little thing.

01:22:07   - I'll tell you what.

01:22:08   So there are settings for camera control.

01:22:10   There are not many of them.

01:22:12   Right now there are three settings.

01:22:14   There's what app does it open,

01:22:16   launch camera with a single click or a double click,

01:22:18   which you actually might want, John,

01:22:19   if you're having a lot of accidental input.

01:22:20   - I mentioned, I don't think I need to go to the double click

01:22:23   and I also don't think I need to adjust the sensitivity.

01:22:25   Like I've tried the different settings

01:22:27   and I feel like that's not the problem.

01:22:29   - So the third setting is called,

01:22:31   for some reason it's called clean preview,

01:22:33   clean preview on or off.

01:22:35   And it says light press camera control

01:22:36   to quickly make adjustments.

01:22:37   - Oh, that leaves the menus up when you activate it.

01:22:39   Yeah, you're right, it does.

01:22:40   - Okay, well, honestly that solves one of my problems,

01:22:42   but not, okay.

01:22:43   - Yeah, that's true.

01:22:44   Actually, I agree with you that I do like

01:22:46   that it leaves all the camera controls up.

01:22:48   So yes, we have live solved one problem.

01:22:51   - We made it slightly better, all right.

01:22:52   I like it better this mode.

01:22:53   We'll see if I can actually stick with the other controls,

01:22:56   but that is good.

01:22:57   Anyway, so let's move on to talk about cases

01:23:01   and the camera control.

01:23:02   Poor peak design.

01:23:05   - Oh, no.

01:23:07   - And every other third-party case might be that true.

01:23:09   - I love this case.

01:23:11   I've been using it now for I think three phones in a row now.

01:23:15   I don't use it all year,

01:23:16   but I use it some of the year, as mentioned.

01:23:17   It is my kind of summer case.

01:23:19   It's great for if I don't wanna use leather

01:23:23   'cause it might get wet in the summer or anyway.

01:23:26   So I love the peak design case.

01:23:29   They had drama last year with the action button

01:23:31   where they didn't really know it was coming,

01:23:33   but they knew something was coming,

01:23:34   so they left a cutout.

01:23:35   And it turns out the cutout was,

01:23:37   it made it too hard to use it

01:23:39   'cause it was a deep hole and the action button's small,

01:23:42   and so it made it too hard to use.

01:23:43   So they had this whole thing where they gave free,

01:23:47   over a few months, they remade the case.

01:23:49   They gave free replacements to people

01:23:51   who bought the first one.

01:23:52   It was a whole thing.

01:23:54   I'm sure they lost a ton of money on it,

01:23:55   but they're a good company,

01:23:57   and they wanted to serve their customers well.

01:23:58   I like peak design a lot.

01:24:00   Anyway, so this year I got their case,

01:24:05   and it has a cutout not of the entire case edge,

01:24:09   but just like a camera control-shaped valley

01:24:13   with sloped sides going into it

01:24:15   from the other edges of the phone.

01:24:17   You can see it.

01:24:18   They have a 360 view on their page.

01:24:20   And I tried this on my phone immediately,

01:24:23   and within two hours, I was like,

01:24:27   this isn't gonna work, no.

01:24:29   Now there's-- - Yeah, I'm not surprised.

01:24:31   - There's two problems.

01:24:32   Number one, the deep valley it creates

01:24:35   does indeed make it difficult to use the camera control.

01:24:38   It makes it much harder to use

01:24:40   because it is not a cover,

01:24:41   but they can't just do a simple cover

01:24:43   'cause you can see the way Apple did theirs

01:24:45   with the Sapphire cover with the conductive layer.

01:24:48   You gotta make it work

01:24:49   with all the camera control sensors.

01:24:51   So instead of doing some kind of complicated button

01:24:54   that they probably didn't even know was possible

01:24:55   until Apple released their cases,

01:24:57   they just made a hole

01:24:58   with ramps going into it basically from all sides.

01:25:01   Well, those ramps also hurt my finger.

01:25:04   They form kind of a sharp edge.

01:25:07   I'm a left-hand phone user,

01:25:08   and so one of my fingers

01:25:10   is basically resting right there all the time,

01:25:14   and it's just sharp.

01:25:16   It just feels bad.

01:25:18   So I feel terrible.

01:25:20   I gotta say, Peak Design, this is also not good,

01:25:25   and I feel so bad for them

01:25:26   'cause I know they're gonna have other people

01:25:28   saying the same thing.

01:25:29   And again, two years in a row

01:25:33   to really screw Casemakers by Apple,

01:25:36   it's gotta be rough for the Casemakers

01:25:38   'cause they gotta design cases

01:25:40   with a bunch of guesses and speculation,

01:25:42   and they gotta basically follow the rumor mill

01:25:46   and get whatever info they can get

01:25:47   and just make a bunch and take a big risk.

01:25:49   Like, oh, well, we think the dimensions of the phone

01:25:51   will be this, and we think it's going to have a button here,

01:25:53   and we think that the button will work like other buttons,

01:25:55   but we don't know.

01:25:56   And so it's a big risky business to be in,

01:26:00   and I gotta say, again,

01:26:02   I'm not a fan of the Peak Design cases here,

01:26:04   and maybe they'll do another one sometime

01:26:06   that has a proper cover over it

01:26:08   that works with the weird sensors of the button,

01:26:10   and maybe that'll be better, so I'll keep that in mind.

01:26:13   But what I did was, so as soon as I used this case,

01:26:18   I thought, well, I have to go to the Apple Store.

01:26:22   (laughs)

01:26:23   This is not going to do,

01:26:26   I'm going to get one of Apple's cases today.

01:26:28   - Just very briefly, why not go caseless?

01:26:31   I'm not saying that's the right choice for anyone,

01:26:33   but that is what I plan to do with this one.

01:26:35   Why not just go caseless?

01:26:37   - Number one, I didn't buy AppleCare,

01:26:38   and I don't really want to,

01:26:39   'cause I keep saying AppleCare's my case,

01:26:41   and then I just buy cases anyway,

01:26:43   and I'm spending like hundreds of dollars

01:26:46   on AppleCare over the years never to use it,

01:26:48   so I figure, okay, if I just stop buying it now,

01:26:52   maybe if I end up having to have an expensive repair,

01:26:56   then I'll weigh that against all the savings

01:26:58   that I'll have with AppleCare over the years

01:26:59   and decide then whether to start changing my policy or not.

01:27:01   But anyway, so that's the reason.

01:27:04   And so I'm like, all right, I gotta go to the Apple Store.

01:27:07   I gotta try their cases.

01:27:09   So I went to the Apple Store,

01:27:11   and there was another reason I'll mention in a little bit,

01:27:13   but I went to the Apple Store,

01:27:14   and I immediately went over to the case wall.

01:27:18   They told me, "Oh, go stand over by so-and-so,"

01:27:20   and I'm like, "Okay,"

01:27:21   and I directly walked to the opposite direction

01:27:23   to go over to the case wall,

01:27:25   'cause I'm like, there's a huge cluster

01:27:26   of people waiting over there.

01:27:27   I know I'm not gonna be the first in line.

01:27:29   I have some time, and I did.

01:27:31   So anyway, everyone's seen these new Beats cases

01:27:36   that they have, which are basically just shiny plastic cases.

01:27:40   They are decent.

01:27:43   I would say they come in zero good colors.

01:27:47   They do feel very cheap.

01:27:49   The outside has not much grip,

01:27:51   'cause it's not like a TPU kind of plastic.

01:27:53   It's like a shiny shell kind of plastic.

01:27:56   So there's no grip to it whatsoever.

01:28:00   And I was like, "Oh, that's kinda not great."

01:28:04   I almost bought one,

01:28:06   'cause the Beats cases are very light and very thin,

01:28:09   which is nice, but it's like a peel case.

01:28:13   You can get that for cheaper in better colors

01:28:16   from other manufacturers very easily.

01:28:17   - Let me offer a differing opinion,

01:28:19   considering the Beats cases now on my phone right now.

01:28:21   - Okay, which mediocre color did you get?

01:28:24   - Gray, dark gray, whatever.

01:28:26   Yeah, the color's not great,

01:28:27   and it's got lines on the back for no reason.

01:28:30   I think the Beats case, I think the shape is nice.

01:28:35   I think it does feel more expensive

01:28:37   than your average plastic case,

01:28:38   simply because the shape is very precise and consistent,

01:28:42   like the buttons, which are just plastic or whatever.

01:28:44   The buttons are precise.

01:28:46   The edges of the case are precise.

01:28:48   It is rounded over in all of the right places.

01:28:50   It feels kind of like a giant iPhone 5C, which I liked.

01:28:53   It is shiny plastic.

01:28:57   It is not as grippy as leather case, not by far,

01:28:59   although it is grippier than I thought it would be.

01:29:01   It is probably about as grippy as Apple's clear cases are,

01:29:05   which is, again, it's not as grippy as rubber,

01:29:07   definitely not as grippy as silicone,

01:29:09   but it's grippier than I thought it would be

01:29:10   just because of the tackiness.

01:29:12   It shows fingerprints disgustingly.

01:29:15   - Oh, no.

01:29:16   - I noticed that in the store, actually.

01:29:18   That's one of the reasons I didn't buy it,

01:29:19   because I noticed that

01:29:20   when I was just handling the sample ones.

01:29:22   - Yeah, one of the great things about leather,

01:29:24   it'll absorb all the oils from my fingers.

01:29:26   - This plastic will not, it is covered with oils,

01:29:28   but I do have to say for this case,

01:29:30   and by the way, the reason I got it, of course,

01:29:32   is because it has a bare bottom, and it does.

01:29:34   Even the edge is the bare bottom.

01:29:35   I think this case is beautifully,

01:29:37   precisely shaped and formed.

01:29:39   I like everything about it,

01:29:40   except for the material that it is made out of,

01:29:42   which is a big thing for a case, right?

01:29:44   But I'm not gonna say I'm happy with my purchase,

01:29:48   because I am looking forward

01:29:50   to finding a suitable leather case

01:29:52   that I can replace it with, but I'll say this.

01:29:55   I am happier with this case than I was

01:29:57   with the Apple Clear case, which also has a bare bottom,

01:29:59   that I bought for my 14 Pro, right?

01:30:01   So I've tried the Clear cases, they're not for me.

01:30:04   This, if I had to live with this, I could tolerate it,

01:30:07   but it is nowhere near as nice as my leather one.

01:30:10   So I, you know, go to the store and check it out.

01:30:13   Marco looked at it, he thought it felt cheap.

01:30:14   I think it feels very nice and solid and precise

01:30:17   and good and grippier than I thought it would.

01:30:19   It's just not that, you know,

01:30:21   the oil situation is a problem, it's not as grippy.

01:30:23   Even the ridge around the camera,

01:30:25   I've used a lot of cases, first party and third party,

01:30:27   that have like a vertical wall around the camera mesa,

01:30:31   and the Beats case, it's almost vertical, but not quite.

01:30:35   It's got just enough of a slant to it

01:30:37   that it feels less cheap to me

01:30:39   than just like a big vertical wall

01:30:40   stuck into the back of the case.

01:30:42   I guess it does have a circle on the line

01:30:44   for MagSafe on the back for reasons that escape me,

01:30:46   because it's not a Clear case, why do you need to do that?

01:30:48   It does have a Beats logo on the side,

01:30:51   but I actually give a pretty good rating to the Beats case

01:30:56   if you can tolerate the material that's made out of,

01:30:58   which I can almost tolerate.

01:30:59   - Yeah, my plan, if I bought it, which I didn't,

01:31:02   but my plan was to take a magic eraser

01:31:04   to the Beats logo on the side and see if I can get rid of it.

01:31:06   - Nah, you don't wanna scuff it up.

01:31:07   Although, actually, by the way,

01:31:08   one tiny bit of real-time follow-up,

01:31:10   we mentioned already the camera control,

01:31:12   which we'll get to in a second on the Beats case,

01:31:13   I'm assuming, the camera control has the settings

01:31:15   for like how hard you want it to be.

01:31:17   That's the reason, I always forget where these things are.

01:31:19   That was in accessibility.

01:31:20   You know what else is in accessibility?

01:31:21   It's settings, accessibility, camera control.

01:31:25   In accessibility, under camera control,

01:31:26   there is a toggle to just turn off the camera control

01:31:29   if you just don't wanna deal with it, so that's great.

01:31:31   There's also a toggle to turn off

01:31:34   the whole light press to show adjustments.

01:31:36   If you don't want that feature at all, period,

01:31:38   you can just turn that off.

01:31:40   And there's also, finally, a toggle

01:31:41   for how quickly you have to double-press it

01:31:44   if you wanna use the double-press feature.

01:31:46   It's just got default slow and slower

01:31:48   if you can't double-press it that quickly, right?

01:31:50   So kudos to Apple for giving enough adjustability

01:31:53   to say, hey, the massive overreach that we've done

01:31:55   with this camera control, you can just turn most of that off

01:31:58   until you get it to the point where you think it is suitable.

01:32:03   I'm gonna leave everything on, but like I said,

01:32:04   I probably just won't use the adjustment feature.

01:32:08   - That's interesting, we'll play with that.

01:32:09   - But again, it's not in camera control,

01:32:10   it's in accessibility, so these settings

01:32:13   are always in weird places, and if you search

01:32:14   for camera control, you won't find it,

01:32:15   so settings, accessibility, camera control.

01:32:17   (laughing)

01:32:18   Anyway, so I ended up, for at least the moment,

01:32:22   I ended up with the Apple silicone case.

01:32:25   Which is funny, I got it in lake green,

01:32:27   which is not at all green, like it is blue.

01:32:30   It is absolutely blue, there is nothing about this.

01:32:33   - Did you take that website test?

01:32:34   - Of course I did.

01:32:35   (laughing)

01:32:36   But there's nothing about this that is green.

01:32:40   But anyway, it's a nice weird middle blue, it's not green.

01:32:45   But it's a nice color.

01:32:47   Anyway, I ended up with silicone case for now.

01:32:49   - This looks green on screen, I do not deny

01:32:52   that it may look blue. - See one in person.

01:32:53   Trust me, when you see it in person,

01:32:54   you're like, oh that's that color?

01:32:56   I had to check, I had to pull out the little drawer

01:32:58   in the Apple store that it was on and read the boxes

01:33:00   to see like, is this really that color?

01:33:02   (laughing)

01:33:03   Anyway.

01:33:04   - Just to very quickly interject here,

01:33:05   I typically do not like Apple silicone cases.

01:33:10   I feel like they're way too tacky.

01:33:13   I really just viscerally do not like them,

01:33:16   and I can't, other than the tackiness,

01:33:18   I can't really put my finger on why.

01:33:19   And I did go and look at a bunch of the ones

01:33:22   at the Apple store today while I was waiting

01:33:24   for the back room to bring me,

01:33:27   or backstage to bring me my stuff.

01:33:29   And I gotta say, I feel like if I do end up wanting a case,

01:33:33   that might be the direction I go.

01:33:34   Because it's a lot less tacky than it used to be.

01:33:37   And it feels nice.

01:33:39   Like, granted I didn't have one in hand,

01:33:41   I was just petting it on the wall of cases.

01:33:44   But it is definitely worth looking into again,

01:33:48   if you're like, if you like me,

01:33:49   wrote it off many, many years ago.

01:33:51   - Yeah, I mean I'll tell you like the,

01:33:53   the reason I always shied away from it in the past

01:33:56   was I didn't like that it was so tacky

01:33:59   that it was actually difficult

01:34:00   to get in and out of pants pockets.

01:34:03   That is still the case.

01:34:04   I think it might be a little bit less annoying,

01:34:07   but maybe I'm just giving up.

01:34:09   But it is still annoying to get in and out of pants pockets.

01:34:12   So that's, it's not like, it's not terrible,

01:34:15   but it's not graceful in that way.

01:34:17   Also, it does have a bottom lip, and it's fairly thick.

01:34:21   So like, to do edge gestures,

01:34:24   you are running into the silicone a lot.

01:34:26   So it is a very protective case,

01:34:27   in the sense that like, if you're worried about a case

01:34:30   like for actually protecting your phone

01:34:32   against drops and stuff,

01:34:32   it's probably a pretty good choice for that.

01:34:35   And the camera control implementation

01:34:38   on all of Apple's cases is just great.

01:34:41   Like, it just feels like the button got extended.

01:34:44   It is still flush with the case,

01:34:46   just like it is flush with the phone.

01:34:48   The button feels well, it feels right, it works right.

01:34:51   Like, it feels and works pretty much exactly

01:34:54   the way it does on the bare phone.

01:34:56   - Yeah, I tested the camera control with no case

01:34:58   in the beginning, just to make sure

01:35:00   I was getting the full experience.

01:35:01   And then when I put the Beats case on it, same deal.

01:35:03   They did a great job.

01:35:03   Like, it really, it really does,

01:35:05   it doesn't feel any less precise or any more difficult

01:35:08   or anything like that, and it's nice and flush.

01:35:10   They did a good job.

01:35:12   Be great if third parties could have done the same thing.

01:35:13   Although I did see one, now, as you would imagine,

01:35:16   my Instagram ads are 98% ads for iPhone cases

01:35:19   and 2% ads for Marco's car.

01:35:21   (laughing)

01:35:22   But anyway, yeah, there is one third-party case manufacturer,

01:35:26   I forget what the name is,

01:35:27   it's like SU case or something or whatever,

01:35:29   advertising the fact that they presumably will have

01:35:33   like the quartz pass-through thing or whatever.

01:35:36   Everyone else just has holes

01:35:38   or they leave out that section of the case.

01:35:40   But I feel like this is totally possible

01:35:42   for third parties to do.

01:35:43   Technologically speaking,

01:35:44   they just didn't have enough information

01:35:46   to implement it in time for launch.

01:35:48   So I'm hoping there will be third-party cases

01:35:50   that implement this.

01:35:50   But Apple's implementation is, it's really good.

01:35:53   - Yeah, and I mean, geez, I would have loved to have

01:35:57   some kind of like Apple premium fabric

01:35:59   of some kind case this year.

01:36:01   Like something that is not plastic and not silicone.

01:36:04   - Something that doesn't have a bottom lip, Apple.

01:36:06   - Yeah, I mean, and so, you know, the clear case,

01:36:08   like maybe, I might go with that in the future,

01:36:10   I don't know yet.

01:36:12   I mean, I'm gonna try the silicone case for a while,

01:36:15   but it is jeans season and it does suck

01:36:17   to get it in and out of jeans pockets.

01:36:19   And I do that many times a day.

01:36:21   So it's a little annoying.

01:36:21   - If you're gonna try the clear one, try the Beats one.

01:36:24   They are very similar in feel.

01:36:26   And I think the Beats one feels a little bit nicer.

01:36:28   - The Beats one, though, like I noticed those fingerprints

01:36:31   when I was playing within the store.

01:36:32   And I'm like, if I made it look that bad in two minutes--

01:36:34   - They're on the clear one too,

01:36:35   they're just a little bit harder to see.

01:36:37   - Well, yeah, but the silicone, you don't see it at all.

01:36:40   So I don't know.

01:36:41   I'd probably just stick with silicone for a while until,

01:36:42   I mean, maybe the bull strap one would be really good,

01:36:44   I don't know, but I don't think so.

01:36:46   - You got that, but you haven't opened it yet?

01:36:49   - I'm at the beach and it's over there in the mainland.

01:36:52   - All right, well, my case is coming on Wednesday,

01:36:54   so next episode I will be able to tell you

01:36:55   about the bull strap case.

01:36:56   But Marco's tale of the sloped pit on the Peak Design one

01:37:01   does not fill me with hope,

01:37:02   because that's exactly the design the pull strap is using.

01:37:04   We'll see how it goes.

01:37:05   - Yeah, I think this is gonna be similar to last year

01:37:08   with the action button.

01:37:09   I think this is gonna be like a lot of people realizing,

01:37:11   oh, no, I've made the wrong case decision.

01:37:14   And a lot of case makers realizing,

01:37:15   oh, no, we've made the wrong cases.

01:37:17   And I think this is gonna be a big shakeup year for that,

01:37:20   and another good year for Apple cases.

01:37:23   Cynically, you can maybe think,

01:37:24   maybe that's why they're doing it,

01:37:25   but no, I don't think that's the reason.

01:37:26   But I do wish that, and gotta give Apple credit.

01:37:30   The Beats cases are new.

01:37:31   That's something that kind of came out of nowhere.

01:37:33   The way Apple uses the Beats brand, to me,

01:37:36   is sometimes a little bit puzzling,

01:37:38   especially in recent years.

01:37:39   But hey, some good stuff comes out of it.

01:37:41   And so they did add more cases than before.

01:37:46   They took away the fine woven, okay.

01:37:49   They added the Beats ones, okay.

01:37:52   - Which has no bottom,

01:37:53   which shows they still know that's a thing.

01:37:55   - Yeah, it's fine.

01:37:58   I do wonder, are they ever gonna try

01:38:00   some kind of premium fabric again?

01:38:02   I hope they do, 'cause honestly,

01:38:04   Apple's work with fabrics and textiles in general

01:38:08   on the watch side has been great.

01:38:10   They do amazing things over there.

01:38:12   And part of the reason I like the Peak Design cases

01:38:15   is that they have the rim, the edge around the sides

01:38:20   is some kind of plastic-y, rubbery thing.

01:38:22   But then the back of the case is really nice fabric.

01:38:26   And it makes a very good feeling.

01:38:28   In fact, when I was at the Apple store checking out

01:38:32   the Apple store employee who was ringing me up,

01:38:36   I was showing her, 'cause she was asking about the cases,

01:38:38   and I was showing her the Peak Design one,

01:38:40   and I let her handle it, and she's like,

01:38:42   "Oh, this feels really nice."

01:38:44   Peak Design does very, very good fabric work.

01:38:48   So does Apple.

01:38:49   They just don't make fabric cases right now.

01:38:51   I hope that they revisit that.

01:38:53   Obviously, fine woven wasn't it.

01:38:56   But they make lots of other great fabrics

01:38:58   they have over time with the watch bands and everything,

01:39:00   so I know they can do it.

01:39:01   So hopefully over time, their case lineup

01:39:04   continues to evolve and expand.

01:39:06   Because even before the fine woven thing,

01:39:10   it was usually the case that Apple's,

01:39:12   if you wanted a nice leather case for your iPhone,

01:39:15   Apple's leather case was usually either

01:39:17   the nicest one you could get,

01:39:18   or one of the nicest ones you can get.

01:39:21   And that's why everyone bought them.

01:39:22   'Cause it's like, "Oh, well we know

01:39:23   "they're gonna do a good job.

01:39:25   "We knew it was consistent, we knew the buttons

01:39:27   "would line up, it would be good quality,

01:39:29   "it would not have weird branding or anything."

01:39:31   It would be just a good, basic leather case.

01:39:34   And yeah, sometimes the corners wouldn't wear

01:39:37   as well as you wanted them to or whatever,

01:39:38   but you get the black one and it's pretty safe,

01:39:40   and you kinda knew how to do it.

01:39:42   It was always a good, safe bet if you wanted

01:39:44   a guaranteed pretty good case that you could buy

01:39:46   on day one and be pretty sure it would be the right choice.

01:39:48   It was the Apple leather case.

01:39:49   And I feel like right now we don't have that,

01:39:52   unless you love silicone.

01:39:53   In which case, it's the Apple silicone case.

01:39:55   But then I don't know what else to say after that.

01:39:58   - Yeah, I don't know, just go caseless.

01:40:00   That's what the cool kids do.

01:40:01   - And then the phone just slides off the flat surfaces.

01:40:04   - It's not that terrible.

01:40:06   - And then your fingerprints are all over your actual phone,

01:40:08   and so are all the nicks and scrapes.

01:40:10   - I mean, the physical condition of my Pro Max,

01:40:13   leaving aside my freaking ruined screen,

01:40:16   like the back of it, the sides of it, that's all fine.

01:40:18   And I did use a case occasionally,

01:40:20   but for the most part, I didn't.

01:40:22   And physically, it's in really, really good shape.

01:40:25   It's just the screen that's adding spares.

01:40:28   - Yeah, speaking of a final thing on cases,

01:40:31   this is a good time to refresh people

01:40:34   who haven't been listening to the show for years and years.

01:40:37   I always make reference to the naked robotic core idea,

01:40:40   and for people who don't know what that is,

01:40:43   it is the idea that I think I talked about

01:40:45   back in the hypercritical days originally,

01:40:47   that you will make a product

01:40:49   that omits as much stuff as possible,

01:40:52   because someone who buys your product

01:40:53   can always add things to it,

01:40:55   but they can't take things away.

01:40:56   So for example, in the case of the iPhone,

01:40:58   you can imagine making a smartphone

01:41:02   that has a grippy rubber back on it

01:41:04   that is not as slippery as the phones that Apple makes.

01:41:07   But if you don't want a grippy rubber back,

01:41:09   and the phone comes with one,

01:41:11   and that is literally the back of the phone,

01:41:12   you can't remove that.

01:41:14   So the naked robotic core theory is,

01:41:16   ship the smallest, most minimal thing possible,

01:41:20   and then anybody who wants something can add it to it.

01:41:23   But people who want nothing

01:41:24   get the smallest, minimal product possible.

01:41:27   And it is, I don't know if Apple espouses this theory,

01:41:30   it's a thing that I came up with

01:41:31   to explain Apple's apparent design decisions on their phone,

01:41:35   and I think they continue along those lines.

01:41:37   And the specific instance with the iPhone 16 is,

01:41:40   I think Marco talked about this maybe in the past episode,

01:41:44   they're shrinking the bezels around the screen,

01:41:48   just year after year, millimeter after millimeter.

01:41:51   It's not like there was a big, giant one-inch border

01:41:53   like there was on the original iPad.

01:41:55   The border around the screen on the iPhone

01:41:57   has always been pretty small,

01:41:58   but Apple's like, "No, we need to make it smaller."

01:42:01   Because that border is a thing that if you don't want it,

01:42:05   you can't remove it from the phone.

01:42:06   You can always add a border by putting a case on it,

01:42:09   but if you get a phone and you want no border,

01:42:11   you can't have that

01:42:12   unless we ship you the naked robotic core.

01:42:13   And then it's up to you to decide.

01:42:16   If they could ship it with zero border, they would,

01:42:18   like if Samsung phone with the screen

01:42:19   goes over the edge around it or whatever.

01:42:21   They're getting real close to essentially having zero border.

01:42:24   And you can decide, is zero border what you want?

01:42:27   If not, add a case.

01:42:29   And now the screen is so close to the edge

01:42:31   that I've heard from so many people with iPhone 16s

01:42:33   that they're accidentally activating things on the screen

01:42:37   simply by the act of holding the phone,

01:42:39   because the meat of their fingers wraps around

01:42:42   and ends up touching the screen part.

01:42:45   And yes, the iPhone and iOS has all sorts of like,

01:42:48   what we would call in the iPad palm rejection,

01:42:50   but essentially touch rejection,

01:42:52   rejecting what the OS thinks is an inadvertent touch,

01:42:55   but it's not enough for some people.

01:42:56   There's still some of their touches are getting through.

01:42:58   And by the way, I think there's a fun one

01:43:00   where like if you touch the screen

01:43:03   where right by the camera control,

01:43:05   where like the little camera control controls

01:43:07   would appear on the screen.

01:43:08   If you touch the screen there

01:43:09   and then try to do anything else anywhere on the screen,

01:43:12   all your touches are ignored,

01:43:13   which I think is probably like a feature

01:43:15   having to do with people

01:43:16   trying to swipe the camera control or something,

01:43:18   or maybe it's a bug, I don't know.

01:43:19   But anyway, they've gotten so naked robotic core

01:43:23   with the 16 line,

01:43:24   that people are now having to make the choice

01:43:26   to get a case simply because

01:43:28   they cannot avoid accidental input

01:43:30   because now the screen is so close to the edge

01:43:32   they just can't avoid it entirely.

01:43:34   So that is a possible thing to think about of like,

01:43:36   am I gonna go caseless?

01:43:38   Yeah, they're giving you the most minimal,

01:43:40   you know, they're trying to get closer

01:43:41   to that naked robotic core ideal

01:43:43   that they don't know about,

01:43:44   but it's just a thing that I made up,

01:43:44   but that's what they're doing.

01:43:46   Like this is me explaining what they're actually doing.

01:43:48   And if you don't like it,

01:43:50   your choice is to put a case on it.

01:43:52   'Cause that's the only way to get your fingers

01:43:53   farther away from that screen surface.

01:43:55   - Yeah, that's part of the reason I use a case now,

01:43:56   because as I mentioned a couple episodes ago,

01:43:58   like I tried without a case,

01:43:59   I'm on the 15 Pro at the end there,

01:44:01   and I kept causing accidental input on the screen.

01:44:04   And I'm actually, honestly,

01:44:05   I'm finding that problem a little bit with the new watch too,

01:44:07   I'll get to that when we get to talk about that.

01:44:08   But like, you know, as the screens get pushed out

01:44:11   further and further to the edges, that's what happens.

01:44:13   You have less space to hold the phone with your fingers

01:44:16   without causing input.

01:44:18   And it's something that you can get used to,

01:44:20   but like, I don't know,

01:44:22   like I feel like I wasn't really asking

01:44:23   for the bezels to get narrower.

01:44:26   - It's like a robotic core.

01:44:27   It's like, hey, some people want the most minimal phone

01:44:30   and they can't get that unless we ship it.

01:44:31   You can always add a case.

01:44:33   And there, your problem is solved

01:44:34   with the people who want the most minimal.

01:44:36   Now you can argue, okay, no one wants it this minimal.

01:44:38   Like human fingers are squishy.

01:44:40   Like people's fingers are going to overlap.

01:44:42   And I also agree kind of on the 14 Pro,

01:44:45   which had pretty big bezels, right?

01:44:46   But the 14 Pro that I was using previously,

01:44:48   I was constantly finding that somehow some fleshy part

01:44:51   of my hand was touching the right edge of the screen

01:44:54   when I was in landscape mode and causing YouTube

01:44:56   to fast forward, because they added that thing

01:44:58   where if you like hold on the right edge of the video,

01:44:59   it like fast forwards or whatever.

01:45:02   And I'm like, oh, here's some accidental input

01:45:04   that I hadn't thought about before.

01:45:05   Or like just, it's, they're getting close to like,

01:45:10   you know, is this robotic core too naked?

01:45:13   Will everyone who buys this phone need a case?

01:45:17   Like, because again, the idea of naked robotic core

01:45:19   is provide the phone that is, you know,

01:45:22   naked for the people who want it

01:45:23   because they can't remove stuff from them.

01:45:25   But like at a certain point, it's like, okay,

01:45:26   but who wants this?

01:45:28   Who wants the bezels to be this small?

01:45:30   And if the bezels are going to be that small,

01:45:31   maybe the stainless steel, titanium, whatever the hell,

01:45:35   aluminum, aluminum and titanium,

01:45:36   maybe that band should be thicker.

01:45:39   At which point, like, why did you even remove the bezels?

01:45:41   And now you're just adding them back

01:45:42   by making the band thicker or whatever.

01:45:44   But it's a thing for Apple to think about.

01:45:45   And I know they're probably going to try to solve this

01:45:47   with software of like, oh, we just need to tweak

01:45:49   the touch rejection around the edges,

01:45:51   which iOS has had for ages

01:45:52   and apparently is slightly buggy with iOS 18.0.

01:45:55   But like, I'm not sure that's the solution.

01:45:57   So they may be approaching kind of like a,

01:45:59   asymptotically approaching the ideal bezel size.

01:46:02   Again, setting aside the old like phones,

01:46:04   I think Samsung made a few of these

01:46:05   and sort of other people where the screen

01:46:07   was like a waterfall and it curved over the edge.

01:46:09   So you could actually look at the side of the phone

01:46:10   and see a portion of the screen.

01:46:12   I don't think that was a great idea either

01:46:13   and I think Apple agrees there.

01:46:15   But their current screen and the current bezels

01:46:17   are really, really pushing the limit.

01:46:20   - Well, I mean, I might argue that like,

01:46:23   since most people seem, appear to use cases,

01:46:26   including, yes, we all saw the Johnny Ive picture

01:46:28   within the New York Times where there was some article

01:46:31   in New York Times that had a picture of Johnny Ive

01:46:32   at some dinner and it showed him holding up an iPhone

01:46:35   in an Apple silicone case.

01:46:37   And everyone's like, oh my God, look,

01:46:39   even Johnny Ive uses a case on his iPhone now.

01:46:41   - That's notable because I think that,

01:46:43   I think maybe Gruber even asked this at some thing

01:46:45   where they, he asked a bunch of Apple executives,

01:46:47   do you use a case on your phone?

01:46:48   - That was at the Antennagate press conference.

01:46:50   - It was, Johnny Ive wasn't on stage for that though, was he?

01:46:53   - No, I believe it was Jobs, Tim Cook, and Eddy Cue, I think?

01:46:58   - Yeah, and they were all like,

01:46:59   no, they took out their phones, they were all naked.

01:47:00   Well, guess what, Ive uses a case,

01:47:03   apparently now in his old age anyway.

01:47:04   - Yeah, anyway, but yeah, like I would argue that,

01:47:08   you know, since so many people,

01:47:11   I would assume it's probably a pretty sizable majority

01:47:16   of the iPhone user base uses a case,

01:47:18   then that is what you should be designing for.

01:47:22   Like if people are gonna use cases anyway,

01:47:25   why design for the fraction of the audience

01:47:29   who's not gonna use them?

01:47:30   You actually should optimize the phone

01:47:33   for the much more common case of case usage.

01:47:36   So it does actually make sense.

01:47:38   - Well, they kind of are,

01:47:39   like the no bezel case is designed for a case,

01:47:42   'cause if we just assume everyone

01:47:44   is gonna put a case on this,

01:47:45   then we don't wanna waste any space inside the case

01:47:47   that doesn't have the screen.

01:47:48   We'll let the case be the border,

01:47:50   and then people can decide how thick a border they want

01:47:52   by picking how thick a case they want.

01:47:53   They're arguably doing that,

01:47:55   but the fact that so many Apple executives

01:47:57   and so many people in real life

01:47:58   continue to use the phone without a case

01:48:00   shows that the caseless scenario is not zeroed out, right?

01:48:04   I mean, at the very least,

01:48:04   if Apple executives continue to insist

01:48:06   that they don't use cases on their phones,

01:48:08   at the very least, they're living the no case,

01:48:10   and so is Casey, the no case, the caseless, sorry, lifestyle.

01:48:13   - Caseless, caseless, yep.

01:48:14   - Right, so it's not like nobody, right?

01:48:17   Maybe we should talk to them about,

01:48:18   what are the percentages?

01:48:19   Is it more people than want an iPhone mini, huh, huh?

01:48:21   Anyway. (laughs)

01:48:23   - Real-time follow-up from like 20 minutes ago,

01:48:25   'cause I forgot to go look.

01:48:27   Belkin Ultra Glass 2 screen protector for iPhone 16 Pro.

01:48:31   So it is glass, as far as I can tell,

01:48:33   not only because of the name,

01:48:34   but from what I can tell based on the packaging.

01:48:36   But yeah, I'll put a link in the show notes.

01:48:38   I'll put it in Slack for you two to look at if you care.

01:48:40   But I believe it is honest to goodness glass.

01:48:43   - And it is not rounded over.

01:48:45   - No, it is not. (laughs)

01:48:47   So, but the good news is, like I believe I had said earlier,

01:48:50   allegedly, if you screw something up,

01:48:52   then you can get a new one for free

01:48:54   and have the Apple store put back on for you.

01:48:57   Anyway, yeah, the case situation, not great,

01:48:59   which is part of the reason

01:48:59   why I am going caseless, caseless again.

01:49:04   All right, do we wanna talk Apple Watch

01:49:06   or do we wanna talk AirPods first?

01:49:08   - Can we talk photo styles briefly?

01:49:10   - Oh yes, I'm sorry, I completely skipped that.

01:49:13   This, I've only played with this very briefly,

01:49:15   but I'm really digging this.

01:49:18   One of the things that I didn't talk too much about

01:49:21   during the HP Insider special

01:49:25   is I just don't really edit my pictures

01:49:29   other than doing color correction

01:49:30   in the most basic, like, silly, well, not silly,

01:49:34   but like simple color correction that I can possibly do.

01:49:36   So if I take a photo inside and everything looks blue,

01:49:39   I'll try to do color correction to make it look, you know,

01:49:41   the color it's supposed to be.

01:49:43   With these photo styles,

01:49:44   and especially since they're like a sidecar,

01:49:47   maybe that's not the right term,

01:49:48   but it's, you know, additional information

01:49:50   that's kind of, you know, attached to the photo,

01:49:53   so you can go in and revisit it later,

01:49:56   I'm really liking this.

01:49:57   And this, for me, for my simple brain,

01:50:00   this is the right amount of editing for a photo.

01:50:03   I don't want to have 85 different sliders to tweak,

01:50:06   I just wanna mouse around in that like track pad of dots

01:50:10   that they present to you,

01:50:11   so you get this like grid of dots

01:50:13   and you can like kind of swirl around in there

01:50:16   and it'll, you know, live update the photo

01:50:18   and show the results of that change.

01:50:20   And I forget exactly what you're editing,

01:50:22   I think it's tone and contrast or something like that,

01:50:24   maybe one of you know,

01:50:25   but that to me is the correct amount of editing.

01:50:28   And I've only done this like once or twice

01:50:30   'cause I've only had the phone for a few hours,

01:50:31   but I'm really digging this so far.

01:50:33   I haven't gotten to the point of setting a new default,

01:50:36   but I really, really like having this

01:50:38   as a means and mechanism to edit pictures

01:50:41   that I think just need that little extra like zhuzh.

01:50:45   - Spoilers for an upcoming episode,

01:50:46   but there is an Ask ATP that somewhere buried down

01:50:48   in our giant queue of Ask ATP that asks about photo editing

01:50:51   and I will say that this camera control,

01:50:54   the photographic styles control that he's talking about,

01:50:57   a grid of dots that lets you change things after the fact,

01:51:00   is an interesting sort of entry

01:51:02   into the photo editing UI spectrum.

01:51:07   Obviously the one end is like I never edit my photos

01:51:09   and the other end is like Lightroom, right, or whatever.

01:51:11   And somewhere in the middle is this grid thing,

01:51:13   which is nice in that like Casey doesn't even know

01:51:16   what the axes stand for, but it doesn't matter.

01:51:18   But the whole point is you put your thumb in that thing,

01:51:19   you move it around and you move it around

01:51:21   until you like how the picture looks, right?

01:51:23   I mean, that's not so many places you can move it.

01:51:26   It's like up, down, left, right.

01:51:27   I don't even know how many rows and columns there are,

01:51:28   but there's not a million of them, right?

01:51:30   And you move it until the picture looks good to you.

01:51:32   Now I will say that one of the problems

01:51:36   with systems like this is people who don't have

01:51:39   a lot of experience editing photos

01:51:42   often aren't the best judge of what looks good to them.

01:51:46   And that may sound ridiculous.

01:51:47   Like of course, everyone knows what looks good to them.

01:51:49   It's their opinion.

01:51:50   In the moment when you're editing,

01:51:52   you will stop when it looks good to you.

01:51:54   But then a year from now,

01:51:55   when you look back at the picture,

01:51:56   you may find yourself saying,

01:51:57   "Why does this picture look weird?"

01:51:59   Well, it looked good to you

01:52:00   when you were using that control at the time you did it.

01:52:02   But now looking back, it actually looks kind of odd.

01:52:05   It does help to have some understanding of what you're doing

01:52:08   to know what goals that you wanna get to.

01:52:10   It's kind of like going to the TV store,

01:52:12   as we've talked about before,

01:52:13   and saying, "That TV looks amazing."

01:52:14   Yeah, 'cause it's on vivid mode

01:52:15   where every color is oversaturated

01:52:17   and the brightness is cranked up and it looks very striking,

01:52:21   but that's not how you want your TV to look.

01:52:24   Experience editing photos will help you avoid

01:52:27   sort of the vivid valley, I guess, of like,

01:52:30   "Oh no, I moved my thumb on this control

01:52:33   "until it looked good to me,

01:52:34   "but I didn't realize that I'm making all my pictures

01:52:36   "look like Samsung photographs or everything."

01:52:37   Old style Samsung photographs where everything's all blown out

01:52:40   and every color is oversaturated

01:52:41   and everything is too contrasty or whatever.

01:52:43   Anyway, you do you, but the beauty of the photographic styles

01:52:46   is if you find out you've made a terrible mistake

01:52:48   and your taste in thumb placement

01:52:50   on that four-way controller bad,

01:52:52   you can always go change it later

01:52:53   and you can even just turn it off

01:52:54   and go back to one of the preset modes.

01:52:57   - Marco, thoughts, have you played with this any?

01:52:58   - Only a little bit, I need more time with it.

01:53:01   - So I have played with it,

01:53:02   and I decided even before I got this phone

01:53:05   that my plan was I'm going to change

01:53:07   my default photographic style,

01:53:10   because I know it's non-destructive

01:53:12   and if I end up not liking it,

01:53:13   like the default one that it comes to

01:53:14   is like called standard, right?

01:53:16   That's just like, hey, it's gonna look like iPhone pictures.

01:53:17   This year's iPhone pictures with this OS

01:53:19   and this hardware, standard, right?

01:53:22   And that's what all my previous pictures have been like,

01:53:23   obviously, and I mostly like them,

01:53:26   but I know what iPhone pictures look like,

01:53:28   the processing they do or whatever,

01:53:30   and it's not exactly to my taste.

01:53:33   I decided that my default photographic style

01:53:35   is going to be natural.

01:53:37   What is the difference between standard and natural?

01:53:41   I think they don't overboost the saturation as much.

01:53:45   Maybe there's less sharpening.

01:53:47   All I know is that it looks closer

01:53:49   to how I think I want them to look.

01:53:51   Maybe I'm wrong.

01:53:51   Maybe I'll take a year's worth of pictures in natural

01:53:54   and I'll look back at them and I'll say, you know what?

01:53:56   I wish these were all in standard.

01:53:57   Well, guess what?

01:53:57   I can go change them back to standard if I feel that way,

01:54:00   but I don't plan on using that big four-way control

01:54:02   'cause I like to edit it in photos,

01:54:03   which is maybe one step up from the four-way control.

01:54:06   It's not all the way to the Lightroom,

01:54:07   but it is, I'm familiar with the controls in photos

01:54:09   and I know how to tweak them

01:54:11   to look the way I currently like them to look,

01:54:13   although that changes over the years,

01:54:14   see our photos episode that we talked about this,

01:54:17   but I'm gonna go with natural.

01:54:18   I'm gonna go with natural as my default

01:54:19   and I'm never gonna touch it

01:54:20   and I'm gonna see how I like it.

01:54:22   - You know, did you go into settings for the camera

01:54:25   and do the photographic style setting?

01:54:28   - I did, I used the camera control to do it.

01:54:30   I set it to standard, I set it to natural rather

01:54:32   and it just stays on natural.

01:54:33   - Well, because the reason I ask is

01:54:34   when you drill into settings camera photographic styles,

01:54:37   it brings up a screen and it says photographic styles.

01:54:40   To begin, select four of your favorite photos

01:54:42   captured with this iPhone.

01:54:45   Photographic styles lets you personalize

01:54:47   how you appear in photos

01:54:48   with incredible nuance to get the look you want.

01:54:50   Now I haven't taken enough photos to do this yet,

01:54:52   so I haven't proceeded to the,

01:54:54   you know, there's a button that says get started,

01:54:55   but after I take, you know,

01:54:57   maybe a bunch of photos of the kids

01:54:59   and maybe, you know, a photo or two of Penny

01:55:01   and maybe like a landscape or something, I don't know,

01:55:03   I plan to go back in there

01:55:05   and do whatever that wizard is to see,

01:55:07   I presume it will suggest to me,

01:55:09   okay, well, based on, you know, these photos

01:55:12   or perhaps it'll give me some editing options

01:55:14   and say, okay, or maybe it'll like blindly show me,

01:55:17   here's like four of the different styles,

01:55:18   which one do you like the most?

01:55:20   And my hope, having not tried it yet,

01:55:22   is that maybe it'll point me in a direction,

01:55:24   although as you were talking, I looked,

01:55:26   I did take a picture of Penny

01:55:27   staring down a ball that she really wanted me

01:55:29   to throw to her for a natural. - Aw, why'd you throw it?

01:55:32   - Oh, I did, I did, but I was taking a picture.

01:55:34   And so anyways, the natural for this does look very good.

01:55:39   I don't know if it's my favorite,

01:55:41   but it definitely does look very, very good.

01:55:43   - Yeah, I'd never even seen that screen

01:55:45   till you mentioned I just looked at it.

01:55:46   One thing I did do, by the way,

01:55:47   just to bring it up more, the preserve settings screen,

01:55:50   you know, settings, camera, preserve settings,

01:55:53   you have to go to that and turn on the toggle switch

01:55:55   for photographic styles

01:55:56   if you want the camera app to preserve it.

01:55:58   That's what I did.

01:55:59   I turned on the preserve setting for photographic styles,

01:56:01   then back on the camera app,

01:56:02   I used the camera control to swipe over to the natural style

01:56:04   and it just stays on natural now.

01:56:06   - Wait, I'm sorry, so where's preserve settings?

01:56:08   It's in that scene, I don't see it here.

01:56:09   - It's in settings, camera, preserve settings,

01:56:12   and then scroll until you see photographic styles,

01:56:15   turn that toggle switch on and now whatever setting you set

01:56:18   in the camera app for your photographic style,

01:56:20   if you don't touch that setting again,

01:56:21   it will just stay on whatever you set it to.

01:56:24   - All right, AirPods?

01:56:25   - Yeah, I don't have any new ones,

01:56:26   so I think this is the Jon show.

01:56:28   - Well, the only new ones that exist are the AirPods 4

01:56:30   and you two are AirPods Pro users

01:56:32   'cause you like things in your ear holes.

01:56:35   But I don't, I don't like things in my ear holes,

01:56:37   so I got the AirPods 4 with ANC.

01:56:40   On the box it says AirPods 4.

01:56:42   It says AirPods 4 and then it says active noise cancellation

01:56:44   and then like the sticker on the box says AirPods 4

01:56:47   with ANC in parentheses or something.

01:56:49   Anyway, these are a different shape than the AirPods 3,

01:56:53   which is a different shape than their predecessor AirPods,

01:56:56   so it is a new shape for my ears.

01:56:58   They don't fall out of my ears.

01:57:00   They don't feel as big in my ears as the AirPods 3,

01:57:03   like they don't feel like they're pushing it out,

01:57:05   like they are physically smaller, so that makes sense.

01:57:07   They do feel like they go farther into my ears

01:57:10   for what I think are obvious reasons

01:57:12   because to get the noise cancellation

01:57:13   to work a little bit better, they want to be

01:57:14   a little bit farther into your ears.

01:57:16   Overall, I think it's an upgrade in comfort

01:57:19   over the previous one, but really it is just mildly,

01:57:23   like it feels mildly uncomfortable in a different way.

01:57:26   Not uncomfortable, but like I, the part that I feel,

01:57:29   'cause again, I wore the AirPods,

01:57:31   I've been using the AirPods 3,

01:57:31   I wear them every single day.

01:57:32   Like they're not uncomfortable, they don't hurt my ears,

01:57:34   but I can feel which part of my ear are they pressing

01:57:37   and these press a different part

01:57:38   and they go in my ear farther.

01:57:40   And for someone who doesn't like things

01:57:41   to go inside their ears, that's not great,

01:57:43   but it's still better than the ones

01:57:44   that actually go inside your ears.

01:57:46   I do really appreciate the fact

01:57:48   that the case is so much smaller.

01:57:50   I'm not sure it's back to the original AirPods 1 case size,

01:57:53   but it is so much smaller than its predecessor case,

01:57:55   massively smaller than the Pro case.

01:57:58   I wonder if the AirPods Pro 3 will do a case shrink too.

01:58:02   They did a case shrink in the straightforward way.

01:58:03   They just make there be less case around the AirPods,

01:58:06   like it is essentially thinner around it.

01:58:08   So kudos to them for making the case smaller.

01:58:11   One of the consequences of having a new case

01:58:14   is you have to learn a new way

01:58:15   to get the AirPods out of the case.

01:58:17   With every new shape of AirPods, we all have to learn,

01:58:20   when I opened this case lid,

01:58:22   how the hell do I get these things out of here?

01:58:24   And the move has been different

01:58:25   for every single kind of AirPod.

01:58:27   The Pros, the originals, the twos, the threes,

01:58:31   well, the twos were the same as the nice things.

01:58:32   Anyway, it's been different for all of them.

01:58:36   This one is same deal.

01:58:38   I could not get them out the way I get the other ones out.

01:58:40   Instead, I have to come from the side on an angle,

01:58:42   and that's how they come up.

01:58:43   It's fine, you just learn it and do it,

01:58:44   but it's weird that that's always different.

01:58:47   The sound, here's the thing about AirPods.

01:58:52   My daughter in particular, but both my kids,

01:58:56   have, you know the people who have the fingers

01:58:57   that wear the letters off the keyboards, right?

01:59:00   My kids have ears that destroy AirPods.

01:59:03   - Wow. (laughs)

01:59:04   - And the way they destroy them,

01:59:06   well, my daughter somehow is able

01:59:07   to destroy the microphones.

01:59:09   I don't know how she does this,

01:59:10   but it's a thing that happens, right?

01:59:12   We've gone through so many.

01:59:13   Under AppleCare, we just keep getting new ones,

01:59:14   and she just destroys, anyway.

01:59:16   But both my kids, the failure mode of their AirPods,

01:59:19   and they're using, I think now they're using threes,

01:59:21   the previous non-pro models,

01:59:24   is that the AirPods just lose all bass.

01:59:28   I don't know if it's a tiny speaker cone tearing,

01:59:30   so it's only the middle part of the driver

01:59:32   that's vibrating is basically becomes all treble,

01:59:34   because the part that would be bass is gone,

01:59:36   because the paper has torn or something.

01:59:39   But I think they've had three or four pairs,

01:59:42   sometimes under warranty, sometimes not,

01:59:44   that I put them in my ears and I'm like,

01:59:46   how are you listening to this?

01:59:47   It's all treble.

01:59:49   The bass is gone, don't you realize?

01:59:50   These are essentially broken.

01:59:51   And sure enough, you've taken them to the Apple Store,

01:59:53   they put them in some little test rig,

01:59:54   and they test them, and they're like,

01:59:55   oh, yep, these are totally bad.

01:59:56   They're not producing sound

01:59:57   the way they're supposed to be, right?

01:59:59   I don't know what causes that.

02:00:00   You can't see inside the AirPods, but it's a thing.

02:00:03   I don't know if my AirPods 3 that I had before

02:00:07   have this problem, or we're starting to have this problem.

02:00:10   But what I do know is that the AirPods 4

02:00:13   have so much more bass than my previous AirPods.

02:00:17   So much more bass that I went immediately

02:00:19   to try to find setting is like,

02:00:20   is there a way I can turn the bass down?

02:00:22   'Cause this is too much bass for me.

02:00:24   'Cause I'm listening to podcasts,

02:00:26   and everybody sounds like a newscaster

02:00:28   with a super deep voice.

02:00:30   So much bass!

02:00:31   And now I know, people who have AirPods Pro is like,

02:00:32   yeah, that's the right amount of bass, dummy,

02:00:34   and you've just been listening to crappy AirPods.

02:00:36   It should sound like that.

02:00:37   I wasn't used to it, but listening to music,

02:00:40   I appreciate it.

02:00:41   Listening to vocals, even with voice boost on and overcast,

02:00:44   I'm like, could you turn the bass down a little bit?

02:00:46   So I wish there was an adjustment for that,

02:00:47   but I would say this is the result of the AirPods 4

02:00:50   having superior sound quality

02:00:53   to my own personal AirPods 3,

02:00:54   which may or may not be in the process of losing bass.

02:00:56   So there is definitely that.

02:00:58   The second thing is, with the noise cancellation,

02:01:03   Apple said that their Pros are twice as good.

02:01:06   That may be underestimating it.

02:01:08   The noise cancellation doesn't cancel noise

02:01:11   so much as,

02:01:12   tamps it, like, it changes the nature of the noise.

02:01:18   So to give an example,

02:01:18   I'm very often listening to my AirPods when doing dishes,

02:01:21   and there's the running water sound, right?

02:01:23   It's kind of like white noise, kind of running water sound.

02:01:26   If I put on my gigantic Sony Airplane headphones,

02:01:28   I could just cancel out that running water sound

02:01:30   where it's just basically gone, right?

02:01:31   With the AirPods 4,

02:01:33   the running water sound is still there,

02:01:36   and it is lower volume,

02:01:37   and it is also of a different nature.

02:01:40   It is less loud and sort of less shrill,

02:01:43   if that makes sense,

02:01:44   but you can still absolutely hear it

02:01:45   to the point where I was trying to figure out,

02:01:48   am I in noise canceling?

02:01:49   And it's got, I don't know if the Pros have this too,

02:01:51   but like it cycles through the different modes

02:01:53   and there's like tones that they play.

02:01:54   Have you memorized all the tones?

02:01:56   - Yeah, I don't remember which ones are which

02:01:58   until they're presented,

02:01:59   then oftentimes I can mostly figure it out,

02:02:02   but I couldn't like demonstrate them now.

02:02:04   - Bling.

02:02:05   - Yeah, 'cause there's four settings and there's four tones.

02:02:07   There's off, which is just like don't do anything,

02:02:09   just be whatever.

02:02:10   There is transparency,

02:02:12   which is take sounds from the outside

02:02:14   and play them into my ears through the speakers.

02:02:16   - That's the bling.

02:02:17   - Yeah, there is adaptive,

02:02:19   which I have no idea, I'm gonna ask you about in a second.

02:02:22   And then there is noise canceling,

02:02:23   which is cancel as much noise as possible.

02:02:25   And very often I was like, am I in noise canceling?

02:02:28   And then I would change the mode and it would like go to off

02:02:31   and I'm like, oh yeah, I was in noise canceling

02:02:32   'cause now everything is much louder

02:02:34   and of a different nature,

02:02:35   but it is nothing like putting on like a big pair

02:02:38   of over-ear headphones that I'm sure nothing

02:02:40   like having AirPods Pro shoved into your ear hole.

02:02:42   So I appreciate the noise cancellation.

02:02:44   It is doing something, don't expect it to do

02:02:47   what like a real noise canceling headphones.

02:02:50   Like in other words, I would say these are not a replacement

02:02:53   for AirPods Pro or over-ear noise canceling on a plane.

02:02:56   They will probably help a little bit,

02:02:58   but it's like a night and day difference.

02:03:01   So I would still recommend these.

02:03:02   I still think they're worth the extra 50 bucks

02:03:03   maybe for the case with the speaker alone.

02:03:05   And I like that it's there.

02:03:07   But as you would expect from something

02:03:09   that doesn't seal your ears in any possible way,

02:03:12   there's only so much they can do.

02:03:13   Like the bottom line is sound is getting in.

02:03:14   The sound can get around the AirPods.

02:03:16   There's no seal around the thing.

02:03:18   And what I wanna ask you guys is,

02:03:20   I have no idea which one of these four modes

02:03:21   I should ever be in.

02:03:22   With the exception of being in noise canceling mode

02:03:24   when I'm home alone in the kitchen doing dishes,

02:03:26   which I feel like is safe,

02:03:28   every other context I'm like,

02:03:29   should I be in transparency?

02:03:31   Should I be in off?

02:03:33   Should I be in adaptive?

02:03:34   What the hell is adaptive?

02:03:36   So please give me some guidance.

02:03:38   Of the four modes that these things can go into,

02:03:40   when do you use each mode and why?

02:03:42   - So what I suggest is you can,

02:03:46   in the settings you can actually remove

02:03:49   some of those modes from the rotation.

02:03:52   So I remove off and I remove adaptive.

02:03:57   So my only two modes, the reason I do the sounds,

02:03:59   are transparency or noise cancellation.

02:04:02   Adaptive, that's the one where it tries

02:04:04   to use conversational awareness

02:04:06   to try to cancel noise sometimes,

02:04:09   but bring in things.

02:04:10   And I have found, I haven't tried it recently,

02:04:13   so maybe it's better now.

02:04:14   When it first came out, I tried it for a day

02:04:17   and just hated the choices it was making.

02:04:19   And so I instantly, after one day I'm like,

02:04:22   all right, I'm out.

02:04:23   So I went back to manually controlling noise cancellation

02:04:26   versus transparency.

02:04:27   - I can't tell what adaptive is trying to do,

02:04:29   'cause there's no indicator that I've found

02:04:32   in the UI and saying, is it noise canceling now?

02:04:34   Is it not doing it?

02:04:35   Is it adding transparency?

02:04:36   I turned off the conversation awareness features

02:04:38   that are like, oh, do you want me to lower the volume

02:04:40   when you start talking or someone talks to you?

02:04:42   That was just, that's not what I want anyway.

02:04:45   If you're listening to a podcast,

02:04:47   I don't want it to duck the volume.

02:04:48   I wanna pause it myself, which is what I'll do.

02:04:51   I guess that adaptive is trying to be smart,

02:04:55   but I cannot tell what it's doing.

02:04:57   It doesn't, especially because the noise canceling

02:05:00   is not so dramatic, I'm like, is it doing noise canceling?

02:05:04   Or has it decided not to?

02:05:05   And then I have to switch modes to go to either the off mode

02:05:08   or the noise canceling mode and compare it

02:05:09   to what it was in adaptive to tell if it had decided.

02:05:12   It's too much guesswork.

02:05:13   So I'm not an adaptive fan right off the bat,

02:05:17   but I keep giving it a try in indoor context

02:05:20   where I think I'm not gonna be hit by a car.

02:05:21   But anyway, so you're using, you don't even use,

02:05:25   do you use off?

02:05:26   You just use transparency or noise canceling?

02:05:27   - That's it, yeah.

02:05:28   I'm in transparency the vast majority of the time,

02:05:31   unless I happen to be either on a plane

02:05:32   or on a subway platform where it's super loud,

02:05:37   then I'll turn on noise cancellation.

02:05:38   - So walking the dog is transparency then?

02:05:40   - Always, yeah.

02:05:41   - See, I mean, I've been walking the dog

02:05:43   with essentially off because I haven't had air pods

02:05:46   with noise canceling before.

02:05:47   And if you're listening to a podcast,

02:05:48   especially with ones that don't seal your ears,

02:05:50   you can hear the outside world.

02:05:51   Like, I don't feel like I need transparency

02:05:53   to replay the outside world because, again,

02:05:55   you can just hear it with these air pods in.

02:05:57   So maybe I'll use off for dog walks, but--

02:05:59   - No, use transparency.

02:06:01   Just use transparency.

02:06:03   You can hear better.

02:06:04   Trust me, it's better.

02:06:05   Just use it. - But I don't want

02:06:06   the outside world being played at a louder volume

02:06:08   into my ears when I'm trying to listen to the podcast.

02:06:10   I can hear the outside world. - John, it's not louder.

02:06:12   - John, pump the brakes.

02:06:13   You're thinking way too hard about this.

02:06:16   Just do transparency.

02:06:18   You're so wrapped around the axle about it.

02:06:21   I promise it'll be fine.

02:06:22   - I mean, I've tried it.

02:06:23   Like, I know what it's like,

02:06:24   and it does make the outside world more prominent

02:06:27   than when it's in off mode.

02:06:30   - Well, yeah, because it's, but, so typically,

02:06:33   like back when I was using aftershocks for my dog walks

02:06:36   before AirPods Pro existed,

02:06:38   the big benefit of the bone conduction style of headphones

02:06:43   is your ears are just unblocked.

02:06:45   Like, you have no obstruction whatsoever

02:06:49   for noise coming in.

02:06:50   You're just using the bone conduction headphones

02:06:53   to add your music or podcast to it.

02:06:56   That's what transparency mode does in the AirPods Pro.

02:06:58   So, now granted, I haven't tried these AirPods yet,

02:07:01   so I don't know if transparency is as good.

02:07:04   - 'Cause they don't actually block your ear holes

02:07:05   like your Pros do. - Right.

02:07:06   But I assume it's probably close or as good,

02:07:09   and the AirPods Pro transparency is just incredible.

02:07:12   As I said, it's way better

02:07:13   than even the AirPods Max transparency.

02:07:15   I don't know why, but for whatever reason it is.

02:07:18   - Because the AirPods Max don't have the H2.

02:07:20   - Maybe, but anyway, so whatever the reason,

02:07:23   the transparency in the AirPods Pro is perfect.

02:07:27   Like, it really is like you're wearing nothing.

02:07:30   Like, if you have the AirPods in

02:07:33   and you're not playing anything and you take them out,

02:07:37   it's, the outside world is the same loudness

02:07:39   as it was when you had them in.

02:07:41   Like, it's as if you're wearing nothing

02:07:43   and then you're adding selectively to it with your podcast.

02:07:45   Like, so it is great for--

02:07:47   - Well, I mean, for these things

02:07:48   that don't seal the ear holes,

02:07:50   off is not the same as transparency to my ears.

02:07:52   - Fair, but I would experiment with it.

02:07:56   I would give transparency as much of a shot as you can.

02:07:58   - Yeah, I will try to get adaptive out of the rotation.

02:08:01   Do you happen to know where in settings that is bearing?

02:08:03   - I find it by going into the Bluetooth menu

02:08:05   and like, go to Bluetooth, go to the AirPods,

02:08:07   hit the little eye button, it's in there.

02:08:09   - Yeah, that's an annoying thing that you can't do

02:08:12   unless they're currently paired.

02:08:13   - Yeah.

02:08:14   - If they're not in your ears, like when I go to Bluetooth,

02:08:16   it just has like model number, serial number, AppleCare,

02:08:19   and forget this device.

02:08:19   - Yeah, I think they have to be connected.

02:08:21   - Yeah, all right, I'll take it.

02:08:23   Yeah, I think I've basically decided

02:08:25   that adaptive is not working for me,

02:08:26   but I'll still have to try the other ones.

02:08:28   - Yeah.

02:08:29   - One final thing on the case.

02:08:31   There is no magnetic connection

02:08:33   between the AirPods 4 case and the MagSafe Puck,

02:08:37   at least the original MagSafe Puck, which is what I have.

02:08:39   I have an original MagSafe Puck on my nightstand.

02:08:42   And that's because the new case is too small

02:08:44   to hit the magnets, right?

02:08:45   Because the case curves, right?

02:08:48   If you put it on the circuit, like oh, it fills a circle,

02:08:50   what's the problem?

02:08:50   Well, the problem is the parts that are over the magnets

02:08:53   are the curved parts, not the flat part.

02:08:55   So it does not magnetically align like the old case did

02:08:58   simply because it's smaller.

02:08:59   It still charges fine.

02:09:00   And it even makes a nice little chime, you know,

02:09:02   when you've done it.

02:09:02   - Oh, okay, so it does charge.

02:09:04   - Yeah, you just put a dead center in the thing.

02:09:06   It just doesn't like magnetically align itself

02:09:07   with the MagSafe thing 'cause it can't.

02:09:09   But it does magnetically align itself with the Apple Watch

02:09:12   charger and like in an offset,

02:09:13   like if you put it on an Apple Watch charger,

02:09:15   it snaps right to where it's supposed to go

02:09:16   and it's not centered.

02:09:18   Like where it wants to be in the Apple Watch charger

02:09:20   is like in the lower portion of it,

02:09:22   but it will snap right to it.

02:09:23   So that's just something to keep in mind.

02:09:25   I don't think it's a problem.

02:09:26   Again, I love the small case.

02:09:27   I totally endorse it.

02:09:28   But Apple has sort of outrun themselves.

02:09:30   Maybe with the new, 'cause you mentioned the new one

02:09:32   is narrower, maybe the new one does magnetically align it

02:09:36   because it's that much smaller, but I haven't tried it.

02:09:39   - All right, Apple Watch Series 10.

02:09:42   - Do you have one?

02:09:42   You have one, Casey.

02:09:43   What do you think of it?

02:09:44   - Yes.

02:09:45   So I did get one.

02:09:46   I went from the WELAD version to the manly man version,

02:09:51   which is to say, I went from small to large.

02:09:53   I'm just kidding.

02:09:54   I went from the small size to large size.

02:09:56   Now it's 42.

02:09:58   - It's 42 and 46.

02:09:59   - 46, thank you.

02:10:01   This thing compared to my Series 8 little guy,

02:10:08   it's chonky.

02:10:09   It's big.

02:10:10   Actually, I shouldn't say it's chonky

02:10:12   because it's actually very, very thin, but it's big.

02:10:15   Now, that being said,

02:10:17   it looks like a billboard on my wrist right now,

02:10:20   but I think you were right the whole time.

02:10:22   And it only lightly pains me to admit that publicly,

02:10:25   but I think I will quickly adjust to it.

02:10:27   And I don't think it's absurd.

02:10:29   Seeing it on my wrist right now,

02:10:31   I do wonder if an Ultra would have been a bridge too far.

02:10:37   I'm not sure, maybe it wouldn't be,

02:10:38   but looking at the way this is sitting on my wrist right now,

02:10:41   I feel like the Ultra might've been too much.

02:10:44   If you look at it,

02:10:46   it doesn't look that much thinner to me,

02:10:50   but it sits and feels much thinner to my eyes.

02:10:55   And I was talking to Jason about this

02:10:56   when we were in Memphis together,

02:10:58   and he pointed out to me, and I think he's exactly right,

02:11:01   the sensor plateau or mesa or whatever that's on the bottom,

02:11:05   the stuff that sits against your wrist

02:11:07   with the little LEDs that flash

02:11:10   for all the different things that it's sensing,

02:11:13   except blood ox apparently, anyways,

02:11:17   that is quite a bit thinner than it used to be.

02:11:19   And I think that makes a big difference as well.

02:11:21   I really like it so far.

02:11:23   I also liked, speaking of old men with old men problems,

02:11:26   I liked that the font appears to be noticeably bigger

02:11:29   because the screen is so much bigger, which is also nice.

02:11:33   In terms of the off-axis viewing, it's definitely better,

02:11:37   but I can't say that I'm like, "Oh!"

02:11:40   You know what I mean?

02:11:41   It's just one of those things where I think in the past,

02:11:44   I would've had to twist my wrist more

02:11:46   or just wouldn't be able to see my watch or the watch face,

02:11:50   and now I can see it at more angles,

02:11:51   but it's not the sort of thing that's striking.

02:11:54   It's just, "Oh, that's nice. It works better now."

02:11:56   - Well, if you had the large size of the previous watch,

02:12:00   I think you would've noticed both the angle

02:12:02   and the thickness because I watched a YouTube video

02:12:04   of them comparing.

02:12:05   It was the Max Tech channel.

02:12:06   They were comparing the Series 10 with the Series 9

02:12:09   of the same sort of size class.

02:12:11   And the Series 10 looked dramatically thinner.

02:12:13   Just setting aside the little blister on the bottom

02:12:15   for the sensor, just the body of it looked thinner.

02:12:18   And the same thing with the viewing angle.

02:12:19   If you take your old and your new

02:12:21   and put them on the same surface

02:12:22   and just tilt your head to go at an angle,

02:12:24   I think you'll notice a difference.

02:12:25   I have been looking for YouTube videos

02:12:27   of someone taking a magnifier to this to see if it's MLA.

02:12:31   It seems like the consensus is no.

02:12:32   No one has taken a magnifier to it,

02:12:34   but a lot of people have said, first of all,

02:12:37   a lot of people are saying that MLA

02:12:38   doesn't actually improve viewing angles

02:12:40   because it mostly just makes it brighter from the front.

02:12:42   It does make it brighter from the front,

02:12:43   but I think it also helps viewing angles,

02:12:45   if only because they're getting rid of the color tint

02:12:47   and sending light off in other directions.

02:12:49   But I'm gonna guess, I mean,

02:12:51   I'm still looking for evidence

02:12:52   that there'll be follow-up next week if I find some,

02:12:53   but I'm gonna guess that it's actually not MLA,

02:12:55   but simply just a better LTP03, whatever, OLED.

02:13:00   But still inconclusive.

02:13:01   No one on YouTube cares about this enough

02:13:03   to take a magnifier to it.

02:13:05   - So one thing I haven't tried, oh, there we go.

02:13:09   (upbeat music)

02:13:11   - What? - It's coming from the watch.

02:13:12   So I can play music, I think.

02:13:14   - I like the speaker holes on the Series X.

02:13:16   I like how instead of being a speaker slot,

02:13:18   there's these tiny little holes.

02:13:20   It looks much nicer and hopefully less likely

02:13:22   to clog with dust.

02:13:23   - Yeah, I mean, for what it's worth,

02:13:25   I was trying to play music.

02:13:26   Maybe it's not coming through because of Zoom or whatever,

02:13:28   but it plays actually surprisingly loud.

02:13:32   I mean, this is definitely audible from waist level.

02:13:36   I don't know.

02:13:37   Again, I don't know how much that's coming through.

02:13:38   - Again, testing on YouTube,

02:13:39   it seems to be about the same volume as the Ultra,

02:13:42   which was the previous speaker king,

02:13:44   and the Ultra has gigantic speaker holes

02:13:46   because it's a big, chunky watch,

02:13:47   but this one has very tiny, elegant,

02:13:49   and numerous speaker holes,

02:13:51   and apparently it gets just as loud as the Ultra.

02:13:53   - Yeah, I just tried it for the first time just now,

02:13:55   and I don't know if, like I said,

02:13:56   I don't know if it'll come through in the recording.

02:13:58   It certainly doesn't sound like it's coming through on Zoom,

02:14:00   but I mean, it's sufficient.

02:14:02   I wouldn't want to listen to music this way,

02:14:04   generally speaking, but in a pinch,

02:14:06   especially as someone who really hates silence,

02:14:08   and that's me.

02:14:10   Yeah, that's kinda nice.

02:14:11   Yeah, I mean, I like it.

02:14:12   I like it a lot so far, way too early to tell

02:14:15   'cause I did this after I did my phone upgrade,

02:14:19   and so really, really early to tell, but so far so good.

02:14:22   Did Tina get a new watch this year or no?

02:14:24   - So she didn't want one on day one.

02:14:26   I wonder if she'll change her mind

02:14:27   when she sees them in real life.

02:14:28   I did tell her that the new ones don't have blood oxygen,

02:14:30   and her current one does.

02:14:31   I don't know if she cares about that,

02:14:32   but bottom line is, no, she didn't order one.

02:14:34   We'll see how long this lasts.

02:14:36   - Yeah, yeah, so far so good.

02:14:38   I think it'll be worth revisiting this next week,

02:14:41   both this and the phones, once Erin has a chance with hers,

02:14:44   because she is much, I was gonna say much more blasé.

02:14:49   That has a negative connotation.

02:14:50   I don't mean that at all,

02:14:51   but she's kinda like, yeah, whatever, about all this.

02:14:53   Like, oh, that's nice.

02:14:54   It's new, and it has new things.

02:14:56   Cool, you know what I mean?

02:14:57   Like, it doesn't really rev her engine like it does us,

02:15:00   and so I'm curious to hear her thoughts,

02:15:01   and by next Wednesday, when we record next,

02:15:05   hopefully I'll be able to have her relay

02:15:07   some of her opinions for me,

02:15:10   and I'll see what she thinks.

02:15:12   - So I took out my Series 10,

02:15:18   and I had the natural titanium,

02:15:22   and I had a number of initial impressions.

02:15:24   Number one, the titanium feels great.

02:15:29   It is so light.

02:15:31   It feels amazing.

02:15:33   'Cause not only did they reduce the weight of the watch

02:15:37   in general, like, in all of the watches this year,

02:15:40   all the Series 10s are lighter in all the metals

02:15:42   compared to their previous version metal counterparts,

02:15:46   but, so you have the weight savings there,

02:15:48   and then they also have replaced steel with titanium,

02:15:52   so the titanium models are almost as light

02:15:54   as the aluminum models.

02:15:55   They're very, very light.

02:15:56   They feel fantastic.

02:15:59   They did get bigger, and I got the big one,

02:16:04   and I put it on my wrist, and I thought,

02:16:07   like Casey just said, it looks like a billboard

02:16:09   on my wrist. (laughs)

02:16:12   I also, it seemed, and I don't know,

02:16:14   I don't have my old one here to measure,

02:16:17   but it seemed almost like it looked like a more

02:16:22   a closer to square aspect ratio than the outgoing one.

02:16:26   - Yeah, they did make it wider.

02:16:28   They widened it more than they tallened it.

02:16:30   - Right. - Yeah, I would agree

02:16:31   with that. - And I think that actually,

02:16:32   I don't honestly like that look.

02:16:35   I think it looks even more like a billboard on your wrist.

02:16:38   - Oh, really?

02:16:39   I think I disagree.

02:16:40   I think I like it a little more squared,

02:16:41   but I mean, this is, again, initial impressions.

02:16:43   I might change my mind on that.

02:16:45   - I also found, I find that the natural color

02:16:49   on the Titanium, I expect it to be a little bit brighter.

02:16:52   It actually is like a pretty medium gray

02:16:55   to the point where I think it loses a bit of contrast.

02:16:59   Like, part of the reason why I haven't bought

02:17:01   the black watches in the past,

02:17:02   or all the various forms of black that they've been,

02:17:04   is that I actually like seeing some contrast

02:17:07   between the watch body case and the black crystal above it.

02:17:12   And when you have a black or dark gray watch,

02:17:15   you lose a lot of that contrast.

02:17:17   And so if you're going for like kind of like

02:17:18   a unified blob look, then that's what you want.

02:17:22   What I want is the contrast

02:17:23   between the case metal and the top.

02:17:24   And so I actually find I don't like

02:17:28   the natural color as much.

02:17:29   And the reason I went to the Apple store was like,

02:17:33   I thought after a half day of wearing it,

02:17:36   I think I made a mistake with the size.

02:17:41   - Oh, interesting, really.

02:17:42   - They made it, you know, one millimeter bigger, whatever.

02:17:45   Like, they made it a little bit bigger,

02:17:46   and kind of like the way some people have switched

02:17:49   from the max phone down to the pro phone,

02:17:52   Casey, you're gonna kill me.

02:17:53   I switched to the smaller one.

02:17:55   - Really, you let me out to drive.

02:17:57   - You convince Casey to get the big watch,

02:17:59   and they're like, but for me, small watch.

02:18:01   - I, yeah, like I wore it for a few hours,

02:18:04   and I'm like, I can't, like, it looked too big on me.

02:18:09   I'm here, I'll send you comparison photos in the slack.

02:18:12   - Do you have an ultra, Marco?

02:18:14   - Not with me.

02:18:15   I had an ultra, I wore it for a little while,

02:18:18   like when the first one came out.

02:18:19   - 'Cause this is very similarly sized in width and height,

02:18:22   not obviously thickness, 'cause the ultra is way thicker,

02:18:24   but in width and height, the large is actually

02:18:26   pretty close to the ultra.

02:18:27   If you can pull off the ultra, why not this one?

02:18:29   - I can pull it off, I just don't like it.

02:18:32   Like the-- - Do you like the ultra?

02:18:33   - No, that's why I don't wear the ultra.

02:18:35   - All right, yeah, that's great.

02:18:37   - No, I bought the ultra mostly as like a test device,

02:18:39   'cause the screen felt and looked so different

02:18:42   from the previous ones, 'cause it didn't have the curvature,

02:18:44   and it was so big that I felt like as a developer

02:18:47   of an app for the wash, I needed one to test,

02:18:49   and that did prove useful.

02:18:50   But yeah, so when I got this one, I'm like,

02:18:54   at the big one, they made it too big.

02:18:56   It does not fit me well.

02:18:59   Like, again, I can pull it off, but like,

02:19:02   what I was thinking was like, first of all,

02:19:04   how much of a role do I want this to play in my life?

02:19:08   Like, part of the reason to get the ultra before is

02:19:12   if you really want a computer on your wrist,

02:19:14   and you wanna use it like a computer,

02:19:16   like that's then, you want the biggest screen,

02:19:18   you want the one that can show the most text,

02:19:20   you want the most interface elements on screen at once,

02:19:22   like you want that.

02:19:23   I don't want it to play quite that big of a role

02:19:28   in my, like, in my person, like on my actual person.

02:19:32   I'm happy to take the phone out to do computing tasks.

02:19:34   I hardly ever read or write anything on the watch itself.

02:19:39   It is mostly a sensor and a brief display for me.

02:19:42   So I actually realized like,

02:19:44   I think I actually want the smaller one.

02:19:47   And also, I've started doing sleep tracking with this one.

02:19:51   I decided I wanted to start doing that.

02:19:53   And the smaller, the better, honestly,

02:19:55   when you're doing that.

02:19:55   And so the small one, I have,

02:19:58   I actually tried the gold one too.

02:20:00   So I have the 42 millimeter gold titanium,

02:20:05   which honestly is not that gold.

02:20:08   It's a very, it's the same way Apple does

02:20:10   like their pro phone colors, like it's a little gold.

02:20:14   It's gold enough to look a little bit different

02:20:16   in certain lighting.

02:20:18   Most of the time it just looks like the steel,

02:20:19   like the polished silver steel.

02:20:23   But that's fine.

02:20:23   I have it on the black sports, or the black,

02:20:26   yeah, sport band.

02:20:27   And that gold and black I think is a very nice look.

02:20:29   And I'm very pleased with it right now.

02:20:32   And it also works well on white.

02:20:34   You gotta be a little careful with some of the colors

02:20:35   if you try color straps to see if they go with the gold.

02:20:37   But black and white look great with it.

02:20:39   So I think I'm pretty well covered.

02:20:42   Even, you know, by going with the smaller watch,

02:20:44   it is even lighter than the bigger one.

02:20:47   So it is like, it feels like I'm wearing nothing.

02:20:49   Like I think the band weighs more

02:20:51   than the watch at this point.

02:20:52   So it's a very, very good overall fit for me.

02:20:57   Surprisingly so, like I really did not think

02:21:00   I'd go back to the smaller one.

02:21:01   But they pushed the big one a little bit too far.

02:21:05   And I actually did measure the two of them.

02:21:08   If you measure the aspect ratios of them,

02:21:13   the bigger one is more square than the smaller one.

02:21:17   Like it actually has a different aspect ratio.

02:21:19   And so the smaller one I think looks better on me

02:21:22   in part because it is a little bit smaller,

02:21:24   and in part because it has more rectangular shape.

02:21:27   So overall, I like the small one a lot.

02:21:31   It is not as much screen space as my big Series 8.

02:21:34   Like they didn't make that, or my big Series 9,

02:21:36   they didn't make that big of a jump.

02:21:37   But it is more, and I bumped the font size

02:21:41   up a couple of notches on it to accommodate

02:21:43   my reading glasses need that I'm not satisfying.

02:21:47   And so far, I'm liking it.

02:21:50   I like the gold for a nice change of pace,

02:21:52   even though again, it's not that gold.

02:21:53   But it's subtle enough, it's a nice change of pace.

02:21:57   Again, titanium is so nice to be back.

02:22:00   And yeah, so I'm gonna rock this look for the year

02:22:02   and see how it goes.

02:22:03   But it's been honestly very comfortable on me.

02:22:07   It's been great.

02:22:08   - You let me down.

02:22:10   I just put a link in the show notes.

02:22:12   I'll see if I can maybe get a better picture of it.

02:22:15   If, or if I put a link in Slack, excuse me,

02:22:17   I'll see if I can get a better picture for the show notes.

02:22:19   It looks a little chunkier there

02:22:21   than I feel like it's sitting when I just look down.

02:22:23   So this, again, this picture ain't great.

02:22:25   But I mean, I don't think it looks bad on me,

02:22:28   and we'll see what happens.

02:22:30   I don't personally, sitting here now,

02:22:31   I don't have any particular desire to return this

02:22:33   and get the smaller one.

02:22:35   And I think maybe part of that is driven by me

02:22:37   having kind of mentally prepped myself

02:22:39   for going ultra this year and just expecting to have,

02:22:43   you know, just an absolutely mammoth watch on my wrist.

02:22:47   And so while this is surface area mammoth,

02:22:50   or slightly mammoth, at least it's not depth mammoth.

02:22:53   And I think that helps make it feel a lot more svelte

02:22:56   than perhaps it actually is.

02:22:58   - Plus you get the bigger battery,

02:22:59   which has been a concern for you.

02:23:00   - Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly.

02:23:01   - I would say that looks big, but it doesn't look bad.

02:23:04   It does look big.

02:23:05   - Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to put it.

02:23:07   Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:23:08   - And again, smartwatch fashion is big as in.

02:23:11   People like big watches, big smartwatches these days.

02:23:14   That's why the ultra has been so popular.

02:23:16   It's not because all those people are going diving.

02:23:18   It's because they like big watches.

02:23:20   That's what's in fashion.

02:23:21   And big screens are very useful,

02:23:22   and big batteries are very useful.

02:23:24   And so there's lots of reasons

02:23:26   why people choose bigger watches,

02:23:28   even if they do look big on their wrists.

02:23:30   For me, most of those things were,

02:23:33   and for me, it's less about the superficial look.

02:23:38   It's more about just the way it fits.

02:23:40   Even just that little bit extra.

02:23:43   One of the things I've mentioned in the past is

02:23:46   if a watch is too big on my wrist,

02:23:48   I don't like if I flex my wrist up,

02:23:52   if I'm in certain exercises or something,

02:23:53   if you're doing, picture yourself doing a pushup.

02:23:56   If you're doing a pushup, your hand is bent upwards

02:23:59   compared to your wrist.

02:24:00   And you kinda just have to like,

02:24:03   when your skin crushes into the watch,

02:24:06   it's less comfortable.

02:24:08   So for me, in my general lifestyle,

02:24:12   having a slightly smaller watch is more comfortable.

02:24:14   And the outgoing models, the big one was,

02:24:18   yeah, it was bigger, but it was not that big.

02:24:20   I think this is a noticeable jump

02:24:24   in a way that I didn't expect it to be.

02:24:27   When I took a picture of it sitting on top of my Series 9,

02:24:32   and you see the size gain.

02:24:34   It is not subtle.

02:24:35   You absolutely see it.

02:24:37   The big Series 10 compared to the big Series 9,

02:24:42   it's not just imperceptibly bigger.

02:24:45   You can clearly see which one is which.

02:24:48   It is obvious, like, oh, that's the bigger one,

02:24:51   'cause it's a decent amount bigger.

02:24:52   - The big Series 10 is basically a curved Ultra.

02:24:54   Like, I think it might even be wider than the Ultra.

02:24:56   Like it is, 'cause they learned that, you know,

02:24:58   people like the big screen on the Ultra,

02:24:59   but this is not as nearly as thick as the Ultra.

02:25:02   That is the big difference in this.

02:25:03   And by the way, another change on the Series 10

02:25:05   that I saw in some videos is that

02:25:07   whatever they call the button on the side,

02:25:09   not the crown, but like the button that you press,

02:25:11   that button is way bigger now.

02:25:13   To compare it like to a Series 9 of the same Sime class,

02:25:16   and look how big that button is on a 10 versus the 9.

02:25:18   - Hmm, I don't know.

02:25:20   - Which I mean, I think is a good improvement,

02:25:21   because, like, why make it so small?

02:25:23   - I don't feel like, 'cause I'm looking at my Series 8,

02:25:27   small one, and then the Series 10 is bigger, for sure,

02:25:30   but that appears to me to be more about the upgrade

02:25:35   in size class than it is the fact that the button--

02:25:36   - Well, I mean, you're maybe not comparing

02:25:38   like to like there, but anyway,

02:25:40   put a picture of my YouTube videos.

02:25:41   But yeah, they made the button bigger,

02:25:42   which I think they should.

02:25:43   Like, there's no reason to keep it as small as, you know,

02:25:45   make the whole area where you're gonna press

02:25:47   be easier to press.

02:25:49   You know, I don't have an Apple Watch.

02:25:51   My wife has many, many Apple Watches

02:25:54   that she's handed down to the kids

02:25:55   that she's gotten new ones.

02:25:57   But I did, the other day, take out for curiosity

02:26:00   and just to see if it would still work, my Series 0.

02:26:02   My Series 0 Apple Watch, the only Apple Watch

02:26:04   I ever purchased for myself, it is a stainless steel,

02:26:07   silver stainless steel one.

02:26:09   And I wanted to know if it was dead.

02:26:11   And good news, it's not dead.

02:26:12   And I charge it up, and it still looks great

02:26:15   as long as you don't look at the screen.

02:26:16   (laughing)

02:26:17   'Cause the screen is so,

02:26:18   they were so small back on the Series 0,

02:26:20   but up until I think maybe now,

02:26:22   I think the Series 0 was the thinnest Apple Watch

02:26:24   that they had ever sold.

02:26:25   I think the 10 is probably thinner.

02:26:27   But yeah, it still looks real good.

02:26:28   It's too bad I don't like watches.

02:26:31   All right, thanks to our sponsors this episode.

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02:26:42   One of the perks of membership

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02:26:46   This is a bonus topic that we do after every episode.

02:26:48   This week's ATP Overtime is Meta kicking Apple

02:26:52   when it's down.

02:26:53   It's the way Meta has recently been engaging with Apple

02:26:57   and changing some of their own plans

02:26:58   around their mixed reality efforts

02:27:01   and kind of how that interacts with Apple

02:27:04   and the Vision Pro line.

02:27:05   That's gonna be in Overtime this episode.

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02:27:13   (upbeat music)

02:27:16   ♪ Now the show is over ♪