530: I Am Beyond Recovery

0:00:00[music]

0:00:08From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 530. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Vitally and Ladder.

0:00:16My name is Mike Hurley and I have the pleasure of being joined in person by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason.

0:00:21Hi, Mike. High five. Yeah, in person. That's right.

0:00:25That's us. We're in the pod cabin.

0:00:28We are. We're in the pod cabin. Steven Hackett has been removed.

0:00:32Bye, Steven. Yeah. And we've taken all of his stuff and we're using it to record our podcast.

0:00:38It's true. But I have a Snell Talk question for you. It comes from Benjamin, who wants to know.

0:00:43I've recently found myself suddenly sluggish in the morning instead of energized and I wonder if tea may help me.

0:00:49What advice do you have for getting into tea? Well, there's a lot.

0:00:54But what I would say is you don't have to be there. There's a deep hole you can go down.

0:00:58You don't have to go down that deep hole. You can start it simple.

0:01:01I like it with breakfast tea, which has a lot of caffeine in it. I think there's a green tea that has caffeine in it, too.

0:01:06Here's the challenge, though. It's like the like Homer Simpson said about alcohol.

0:01:10It's the cause of and solution to all of life's problems. Caffeine is like that, too.

0:01:14Yes. So the danger is if you have caffeine, too much caffeine, especially late in the day,

0:01:19you may find yourself sluggish in the morning instead of energized because you will have slept poorly.

0:01:25So keep that in mind. But I'd say I started drinking tea more regularly because I talked to a friend who actually said,

0:01:32oh, yeah, I get up at six in the morning and I go for a bike ride or a run.

0:01:36And I said, how do you do that? And he said, basically caffeine. So it helps.

0:01:42It does. So what I would say is to get into tea. The simplest thing maybe is go to your local supermarket.

0:01:50And first off, don't if you're an American, don't buy Lipton. Don't do it. But there are lots of brands that will have an English breakfast tea.

0:01:57Twining's is a good one. There are some others out there. But get get get a box of tea bags and then you boil water.

0:02:05You put the tea bag in to the boiling water in your cup or you put your tea bag into the cup and then put the boiling water into the cup.

0:02:12Don't like put the tea bag into where you boil the water. Anyway, wait three or four minutes. Take the tea bag out.

0:02:18This is important because it'll get all bitter and bad if you leave it in there.

0:02:22Don't I see TV shows where people are like drinking tea and the bag is still in there.

0:02:26I'm like, what? What are you doing? Maybe they just can't wait or it's an herbal tea and then it's OK.

0:02:31Anyway, try it. And then you can try it with milk. You can try it with sugar. You can try it with honey.

0:02:35You can try it plain, just black and see if you like it.

0:02:38I mean, that's really that's really the answer and see if the caffeine has an effect on you.

0:02:42But, you know, I I have a tea robot and loose tea and all these other things.

0:02:46It's like you don't have to. I'm I'm not a complicator. I don't want to build up walls here.

0:02:50It's really easy. Get a nice English breakfast tea in bags at the store.

0:02:56If you're in the UK, which you probably aren't, if you're asking about tea, PG Tips is fine, too.

0:03:01You could get that. Get a builder's tea. It doesn't matter. But in America, just, yeah, look for something that says English breakfast on it.

0:03:09Don't get Earl Grey. Earl Grey is not the same as English breakfast. Some people like Earl Grey.

0:03:12I love Earl Grey. I don't love it. I prefer not having the Earl Grey smell in there, but whatever. Start start it simple.

0:03:20So that's my answer, Benjamin. I recommend coffee. If you would like to send in a question for a future episode of the show.

0:03:26He didn't ask about coffee. I know he didn't, but I'm just saying what I think.

0:03:29You can go to upgradefeedback.com and send us a snow talk question.

0:03:33Now, we're in the pod cabin because we're here in Memphis, because two days ago, we were a part of the Podcastathon, both of us,

0:03:43along with Casey Liss and Kathy Campbell and of course, Stephen Hackett.

0:03:47And we raised over, I think, one hundred and thirty thousand dollars during the Podcastathon this year, which is a new record.

0:03:54So thank you so much to everybody that tuned in. It was an incredible 12 hours.

0:03:58We had a ton of fun. It was my favorite Podcastathon that we've done so far.

0:04:03Wonderful group of people, wonderful games, incredible work by everyone.

0:04:06And thank you all for watching. It's on our YouTube channel, the Relay YouTube channel.

0:04:11I've put a link in the show notes if you want to catch up on it. There's a lot of good fun there.

0:04:15But we are doing all of this because September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

0:04:19So for the sixth consecutive year, we have united the whole Relay community to support St. Jude Children's Research Hospital because they have a simple mission,

0:04:27which is to make sure that no child loses their life to cancer no matter where they live.

0:04:32And they need our help to drive the mission forward. The Podcastathon was a great success, of course, but there is still time left in September.

0:04:40And we want you all to donate because of the incredible work that St. Jude does in making sure that the children that are receiving treatment in the hospital try and live as normal life as they can.

0:04:53Like, for example, Jason, did you know that St. Jude has a school that spans preschool through 12th grade for patients who will be at St. Jude for upward of six weeks?

0:05:02No, I did not know that. I have learned a lot over the years, but I think I missed the fact that they have their own school.

0:05:08This staff that are a part of the St. Jude school includes teachers trained in English language, learner instruction, visual impairment, instructions and services, a librarian, a STEM coordinator, and there are even reading dogs who visit to read with the kids.

0:05:22So all of this really helps the children try and live as normal life as they can, which is a big thing they try and do.

0:05:29This is in the idea of providing food, providing somewhere for the families to be and to be together to try and make sure that these kids have the best recovery possible.

0:05:38You may think, oh, wait a second, I'm going to the hospital and I also have to go to school.

0:05:41Yeah, I know. But there is the whole I've been through my treatment and now I have to go back home.

0:05:46And after there's a very difficult thing, suddenly I'm also behind in school and get left behind. Like, you don't want that.

0:05:52You don't want that. Our community has shown so much generosity over the last six years.

0:05:57In fact, as we're recording this today, as we're recording a little bit early, we've actually passed the most money that we have ever raised in a campaign.

0:06:06How about that? Record breaking year.

0:06:07Record breaking year in all respects and it's not over yet.

0:06:11Please go to stjude.org/relay. You can make a donation today.

0:06:14There are some incredible rewards that you can redeem if you do so.

0:06:18Like if you really enjoyed the artwork that we were using during the podcastathon, you can have some of that for yourself in the form of stickers or wallpapers.

0:06:26If you sign up to fundraise and you can get coins and desk mats, you can find out about all of this at stjude.org/relay, where you'll also see some information about employee matching as well.

0:06:36That is S-T-J-U-D-E dot org slash relay to donate or create your campaign today.

0:06:44I thought for a second there that UK English had started pronouncing other strange, other letters differently.

0:06:49You say Z, I say Z, you say T, I say Tay.

0:06:53It makes sense. It's such Italian now.

0:06:56Taylor came, changed everything. I don't know what to tell you.

0:06:58It's interesting.

0:06:59Yeah. I have some follow up for you, Jason Snell.

0:07:01Oh, thank goodness, Mike Early.

0:07:02I wanted you to actually mention the issue that you had with the sports app that you were telling me about.

0:07:06Yeah. Apple sports. I had several people say, why are you even using Apple sports?

0:07:11It's like it's because it's from Apple and Cosette EQ told me to.

0:07:14So I was looking at some football games and realized that there's a bug where at least sometimes in some games it leaves off the last score.

0:07:23So there was a I believe Stanford beat Syracuse on Friday night with a field goal at the end of the game.

0:07:32And when I looked at the score in Apple's sports app, it had the score as final as a tie, which college football does not allow ties.

0:07:40I don't know if you know this about Americans, but we detest ties.

0:07:44Yeah. In America, you're a winner or a loser.

0:07:47That's right. Yeah, that's right. There's no in between.

0:07:50No, we all did pretty fine. It's a you're a winner or a loser.

0:07:53So college football especially, it's impossible to tie.

0:07:56So that didn't make any sense.

0:07:58And then I also noticed for several other games that if I looked at the scoring drives list for football and football support is new in Apple sports, it would leave off the most recent scoring drive or the last one in the game.

0:08:10So clearly there are some real bugs there.

0:08:13So it's great that you want to know the score.

0:08:16That said, I used it yesterday for for a few college football games, including my beloved Cal Bears, who lost tragically to Florida State, played well enough to win.

0:08:28But but they didn't.

0:08:30And that worked fine.

0:08:31And that timing was fine.

0:08:32And as we sat here, as we sat here, I used a feature of watch OS, which is that it picks up the live activities from my phone and a feature of iOS, which is that sports app now does live activities directly instead of through the TV app, which is always a bad idea.

0:08:52And I actually got a buzz on my watch telling me that Arsenal scored a goal while we were sitting here.

0:08:58So now it's thank you.

0:09:00Yes, it's this this just in at some point during Sunday's match, Arsenal led to one breaking news.

0:09:09Yes, it was.

0:09:10And then you all know how that turned out or don't care anyway.

0:09:14So I guess what I'm saying is the sports app has some things that are good about it needs more work.

0:09:19And the only thing about it that troubles me is, although it definitely feels like it's a passion project from Eddie Q and his team.

0:09:29The fact is, it's an Apple branded app from the platform owner.

0:09:33And I think it needs to be held to a higher standard and they need to put more effort into it.

0:09:38Bottom line.

0:09:38Yep.

0:09:39Apple intelligence is now in public beta, which I guess makes sense.

0:09:44They needed to do that if they will.

0:09:46So this is the idea.

0:09:47I think you I overheard somebody say to you, oh, there's no Apple intelligence.

0:09:51And you made the point of like, well, technically there is.

0:09:53That's that's the thing is.

0:09:56It's the bare minimum, right?

0:09:57This is the bare minimum, which is the day that their phones shipped that are claimed to be built from the ground up for Apple intelligence, which is not really true.

0:10:07But I mean, it's compatible with Apple intelligence, or they made sure that Apple intelligence fit within the specs of these phones, whatever it is.

0:10:14I do think they made some some changes.

0:10:16I think they probably had to really add the RAM to the 16s to make sure that they could do it on the day they shipped.

0:10:25You could be as a regular person, you could opt into the public beta of 18.1 and run Apple intelligence.

0:10:31Now there are like 80,000 asterisks there, right?

0:10:33Because there's the fact that it's not really Apple intelligence.

0:10:36It's wave one of Apple intelligence.

0:10:39And talk about this more maybe next week.

0:10:41Mark Gurman has detailed a little bit more about, you know, what happens in 18.1 and what's in 18.2 and what's in 18.3 that comes out in January and what's in 18.4 and what's in 18.5.

0:10:52And like Apple intelligence in 18.1 is not all of it.

0:10:56It's a little tiny fraction of it.

0:10:59It's essentially notification, grouping and writing tools.

0:11:03And summaries in mail.

0:11:06Yeah.

0:11:07There's not a lot more than that.

0:11:08And messages too.

0:11:09Type to Siri, clean up.

0:11:12I mean, there's...

0:11:13Is type to Siri not in 18.0?

0:11:17Yeah, because old Siri is still in 18.0.

0:11:19Yeah, the reason I know this is that it just turns out that I tap a lot at the bottom of my iPad screen and it's kicking in type to Siri and I don't want it.

0:11:26I might actually turn that off because I've had the same thing on my iPad where I keep hitting it and I reckon I'm going to be worse on my iPhone.

0:11:33And realistically, for me, currently, that is not useful because it is slower.

0:11:42And I mean, at the moment, Siri is no better, which I still maintain is a mistake from Apple to change the Siri UI in 18.1 because Siri is no better.

0:11:57Like, I tried a bunch of things and it is as inconsistent like, oh, can it remember the previous question?

0:12:06Sometimes or maybe all the time, but other times it just decides to do something else completely.

0:12:11So, but anyway, yeah, I don't know if I'm going to keep the type to Siri.

0:12:15And maybe again, like by 19, it might actually be useful to ask it questions like that, like, you know, the way in which I might ask chatgpt a question.

0:12:26That might be cool to be able to do that from anywhere on my phone.

0:12:29But I don't even know what the 18.1 integration is like yet.

0:12:33And like, if I ask that question, do I have to tap more prompts than if I just open the chatgpt app?

0:12:39Right. You know, these are the things we don't know yet because they haven't enabled that, but yeah, you can now at least get some features in the public beta.

0:12:47Right. And I think everybody anticipates that will be fairly soon in the next couple of weeks, that that will ship to everybody.

0:12:53They said October. Apple have said next month.

0:12:56Yeah. But I think Germin mentioned that it's probably sooner rather than later.

0:12:59I would expect so.

0:13:00But it's I think technically making it a public beta available now, especially since 18.1 ships, they're still going to call it beta.

0:13:07Yeah. This is the beta of the beta.

0:13:10That's right. There's betas within betas and betas within betas.

0:13:15Indeed. Apple have confirmed to TayCrunch that they are looking to support German, Italian, Korean and Portuguese for Apple intelligence in 2025.

0:13:25And they also stated to TayCrunch that they are working with China and the EU on bringing these features to these regional devices.

0:13:31I mean, those go together, right? Is there some Italian speaking colony out there somewhere?

0:13:36That's what I thought. Italian and German. I mean, I'm sure that these languages are spoken of a places, but it's not like Portuguese, for example, right?

0:13:46Where that has wide, like very wide speaking people speak Portuguese throughout.

0:13:53Especially Brazil. That's a large market that speaks Portuguese.

0:13:55But German and Italian, I don't think that they have like Portuguese where there are more people that speak Portuguese outside of Portugal than in Portugal.

0:14:06That's not happening for German or Italian.

0:14:08Exactly.

0:14:09So and again, I think some people just see this as like, oh, Apple just doesn't want to work with Europe.

0:14:18But that doesn't make any logical sense for them to be so headstrong on Apple intelligence.

0:14:24And then just be like, whatever.

0:14:27It's an important feature of these products, right?

0:14:30They want Apple intelligence to come.

0:14:32In fact, if we look at that chat GPT announcement and the idea that it is going to be open to other partners,

0:14:39that may be a little clue that they want to, that they know they need to build that stuff so that they are allowed in the EU, right?

0:14:47That they don't run afoul of the EU saying you're only preferring your own stuff.

0:14:52And that maybe that's their way to fight that, in which case it's not ready yet.

0:14:56And so they're just, yeah, I think the idea that it's a fatalistic, like the EU is never going to have Apple intelligence, that's wrong.

0:15:03Clearly, they're going to.

0:15:05And this is Apple moving down that route because it doesn't make any sense otherwise to have German and Italian in there.

0:15:10And I wanted to give a public service announcement.

0:15:12Bellatro is coming to Apple Arcade this week.

0:15:16Is it a service or is world productivity about to take a dive?

0:15:21It's about to go down big time.

0:15:22Bellatro is in the running for my game of the year right now.

0:15:26It's like maybe first or second currently.

0:15:29I've been playing it, I've played hours and hours of it on my Steam Deck, knowing that it was obvious that this would come to mobile one day because it is so perfect for that.

0:15:38On my Steam Deck, I play with the touchscreen controls.

0:15:41But interestingly, so there have been a lot of questions asked for years about are Apple actually doing anything with Arcade?

0:15:51And I think this is an example of there are still people at Apple that understand what to do with mobile gaming because they're doing something different here that I've not seen them do before.

0:16:01Bellatro will be a paid game on the App Store at the same time that Bellatro Plus is available in Apple Arcade.

0:16:09Now they've done like versions of these kinds of things over time, but this is like on the day.

0:16:15I actually think paid version is launching a couple of days later, but Apple understand the importance of getting this game.

0:16:21This game is going to be huge, like it's already big, it is going to explode.

0:16:26And if you're an Apple Arcade subscriber, you unlock everything without paying because you're a subscriber.

0:16:31And it's a $10 game to buy.

0:16:34So like, oh, there you go.

0:16:36This is a great way to at least try Apple Arcade because you'd get in for like $5 a month or whatever and play it for a couple of months.

0:16:43But yeah, this, trust me, this game is incredible.

0:16:46It's a great game.

0:16:47It is a poker game.

0:16:48You don't need to know how to play poker.

0:16:50I don't know how to play poker.

0:16:51The game does a great job of teaching you and it's incredibly well done.

0:16:56It's fantastic.

0:16:57Trust me, just go get this game.

0:16:58You're going to have a great time.

0:16:59It's really good.

0:17:01Rumor round up, Mac rumors have discovered code that references "Apple Silicon Mac Mini 5 Port"

0:17:10giving more evidence to Mark Gurman's rumor of an upcoming refresh of the Mac Mini having five USB-C ports.

0:17:15Makes sense.

0:17:16Three on the back, two on the front, we think.

0:17:19I think that that seems about right.

0:17:20That sounds likely.

0:17:22I think this thing is going to be a little Mac Studio.

0:17:24I think that's what they're building here.

0:17:25I got to be honest.

0:17:26I am, there's a little aside here.

0:17:30I'm interested in this Mac Mini.

0:17:31I'm very interested in it.

0:17:33Like you, I'm coming around to the idea that I'm not sure I actually need a Mac's chip and that the Pro chip might be fine for me.

0:17:42I think I need more than the base M4, but an M4 Pro might be enough that I don't need to hold out for an M4 Mac's studio.

0:17:50And the other thing that makes me think maybe I'll be interested in this is when I left home last week,

0:17:58I left my Mac in complete failure DFU mode.

0:18:04The mode, you know, the mode where the light on the front of the Mac blinks SOS and Morse code.

0:18:09That was the mode that I was in.

0:18:12What happened?

0:18:12Do you know?

0:18:14I, my Mac got in a state where when I tried to, I don't know what it was doing, what it was taking.

0:18:23It, when I tried to apply a software update to get on the new version, the new beta, it said, I can't personalize this for you.

0:18:33And I looked this up and it seems like this is a very bad thing because it's basically like trying to compare the cryptographic signature and failing and saying, I can't do this.

0:18:43And I, and, and it sounds like a reset was about all I could do complicated by the fact that I was running a beta, which means I couldn't just like reboot and say, install this again because I was on a beta version.

0:18:58And it was preceded by a series of very strange things where I had the thing.

0:19:02I don't know if you've ever had this, where when you reboot, it says, um, some system extensions got updated and you need to allow them and then I'll restart and then it'll be okay.

0:19:13And the system extensions were from Apple and I get allowed and rebooted and then it just comes up again and says, some system extensions need to be allowed and you need to reboot and you can say, forget it.

0:19:26But the next time you reboot, as you know, I reboot every day.

0:19:28I turn off my computer and started every day.

0:19:31It once again says, Hey, could you allow this and reboot?

0:19:33It almost sounds like you're using a hackintosh.

0:19:36It is eerily similar.

0:19:39How do I know that that extension is really from Apple?

0:19:41I can't personalize this for you.

0:19:44I can't personalize this update.

0:19:45So then I'm stuck, right?

0:19:46Cause I thought I could do an update and that might shake out this extension permission problem, but I can't do an update ever apparently because of this.

0:19:56And I tried all sorts of different pathways and in the end it seemed like putting it in restore mode.

0:20:00And to be clear, this is the mode where you have to put it, connect it to another Mac via USB-C like it's an iPhone that you're restoring.

0:20:09Oh, wow.

0:20:10You know, I haven't had that.

0:20:11I've never done it before.

0:20:13Cause this is, this is an Apple Silicon thing.

0:20:15Yes.

0:20:15Like I have not had to do anything.

0:20:17Cause it's, it's an iPad now basically.

0:20:19Cause you used to just, does it not have the recovery partition?

0:20:23It does.

0:20:23And that doesn't work.

0:20:24But that didn't work.

0:20:25Beyond recovery.

0:20:26I am beyond recovery.

0:20:27Whoa.

0:20:28Yeah.

0:20:29So anyway, I left it where my, where, where my laptop was attached to it as it's blinking SOS.

0:20:36And it claimed that it was installing a reach, a restore image on it.

0:20:41However, it, the, the, the bar had gone like 10% of the way and then just stayed there for hours.

0:20:48And you, you end up being right.

0:20:50It's that point where you're like, is it doing something and not telling me?

0:20:53Can I give up?

0:20:54Or is it not doing something?

0:20:55And if I, and if I click cancel, so what happened is I did click cancel and the progress bar jumped way forward.

0:21:04And still sat there and didn't cancel.

0:21:07So that was bad.

0:21:08So I started it again.

0:21:10I started the whole process again and I went and I left the state.

0:21:14So what I'm saying is maybe I'll get a Mac mini.

0:21:17I mean, maybe, maybe the next studio is going to get buried in the shallow grave.

0:21:21I don't know.

0:21:22Boy, I have, I have laptops.

0:21:24I can just attach to my monitor and my keyboard and continue moving on with my life.

0:21:29And maybe it's time.

0:21:31Maybe it's time.

0:21:32I don't know.

0:21:33But anyway, I'm excited about that Mac mini.

0:21:35Yeehaw.

0:21:36I say, so, uh, Emma in the discord, I think has found a similar thing and they've, they've quoted it from the Apple support forums.

0:21:45Uh, I was instructed by Apple support to have an Apple service center perform a quote revive procedure.

0:21:51I, well, you can actually do that with Apple configurator and you can do it yourself.

0:21:55And I did attempt to revive it and that failed, which meant I then needed to do a restore.

0:22:00Um, and yes, according to Emma, the only remains, the remaining solution, this isn't an Apple discussion thing.

0:22:07Was it made logic word replacement?

0:22:08Because there may be a corruption of the security firmware built into the Apple Silicon.

0:22:12I think that's what's happened.

0:22:14It's possible.

0:22:14Oh boy.

0:22:15So if that fails, I'll, I'll pursue it and we'll see what happens.

0:22:19It kind of feels like that is the thing that if something goes wrong there, it's, it's done.

0:22:24Like it, it, it, you need to start again.

0:22:27Yeah, that is going to be so low level.

0:22:30I would expect it is lower than the operating system.

0:22:33Oh, it definitely is.

0:22:35But the question is if I, if I can't even with a tether loaded up with the right thing, what happens then?

0:22:41So we'll see.

0:22:42I'll look forward to hearing more about this, but I may be living on a, on a laptop in, in the meantime and then waiting for a Mac mini perhaps.

0:22:50We'll see.

0:22:50Anyway, we'll leave this saloon in the Roundup and we go back to the Roundup.

0:22:54That was more like a, like a tumbleweed just blew through.

0:22:57Yeah.

0:22:57Okay.

0:22:58Or we, or we were going to see like the snake oil doctor or something and they're trying to bring it back.

0:23:02This was the snake that I found in my boot.

0:23:05Ming-Chi Kuo is reporting that the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and a new SE model are still in the works now expected for 2025.

0:23:11Yeah, fair enough.

0:23:12Mark Gurman is reporting that the new design of the Apple Watch Series 10 was a contributing factor to Apple delaying blood pressure monitoring for the Apple Watch.

0:23:21So they just couldn't do both things at once.

0:23:23It seems like it, it seems like maybe this is one of those scenarios where one team has one thing, another team has another thing, and whoever was doing the blood pressure couldn't get that technology small enough in time to fit inside the Series 10.

0:23:36So they're like, forget it.

0:23:37Yep.

0:23:38For the next time.

0:23:39And, and, and I can imagine that too, where it's like, we know we can make it smaller.

0:23:43Do you know you can make this work?

0:23:46And they ended up not going with that.

0:23:48And I feel like this was a year where they could, because they had other legitimately good health features this year.

0:23:54So why not just put it off, put it off.

0:23:57I told you about this.

0:23:58My phone asked if I wanted to opt in to sleep apnea detection, which I said yes to.

0:24:03And I don't know if it did that because I'm in America because I don't believe it's been approved in the UK.

0:24:08Interesting.

0:24:09So I'll let you know in a month if it worked or not.

0:24:11That's right.

0:24:12That's the feature that takes 30 days.

0:24:14And Ross Young is reporting that he expects all iPhone models will feature a ProMotion display next year.

0:24:19That would include the 17, which doesn't have it, and the rumored 17 Air or Slim or whatever you want to call it.

0:24:29I think it's about time that all of these phones get a promotion display and it would not bother me.

0:24:33And I think it would not bother most people if the 17 just had a 90 Hertz display.

0:24:38You can still make them different, but the 60 Hertz to me is rough now to look at.

0:24:41People who know about Android too, I think that a phone that costs $700 on the other side is not going to be at 60 frames.

0:24:49There are phones that cost like $300 that have 90 Hertz displays in the Android world.

0:24:54So we've more than passed that point now.

0:24:57Okay. Well, that's good news for next year.

0:25:00I wonder if they'll have colors next year.

0:25:02Like, oh, you can get the nice screen, but the colors aren't as good.

0:25:05We'll find out.

0:25:05We'll see.

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0:26:54So we have our iPhones.

0:26:56We do.

0:26:57We'll call this the iPhone 16 review, but I'll say from my perspective, this is like first impression.

0:27:06Yes, that's what it is.

0:27:06So maybe we should just call it that.

0:27:08We should just be honest about it and call it that because I'm sure you're going to write a review.

0:27:12I'm sure I will at some point.

0:27:13And I guess we can kind of give thoughts on the entire line because for those who watch the Podcastathon,

0:27:19there was a moment where you took a very large cardboard box and started just producing phones at the center for all of us.

0:27:26So you have the 16, the 16 Plus, the 16 Pro and the 16 Pro Max.

0:27:31Yes.

0:27:31I have a 16 Pro of my own.

0:27:33Right.

0:27:35Should we talk about colors to start?

0:27:37Sure.

0:27:37So I got desert titanium and I would say the way to describe this, actually in different light, this phone looks very, very different.

0:27:46So in some lighting and kind of like cooler lighting, it kind of just looks like a slightly warmer version of the natural titanium.

0:27:55But in others, I would say it's more of a rose goldy kind of look.

0:28:00So, you know, you can see we're looking at them right now and you can see it looks quite different and natural to the desert.

0:28:05Yeah, the natural is a much cooler gray back.

0:28:09But in my hotel room, they look basically the same.

0:28:12So this is I at first I was a little bit like, oh, that's quite pink, but now I've kind of gotten to it's more of like a coppery rose goldy color.

0:28:20And I'm on board of it because it's something new.

0:28:22So I like it.

0:28:23But I wouldn't say if I was just choosing again, right now I've seen them in person, I would just go for the natural.

0:28:30Go back for natural.

0:28:31I think that's a really good look.

0:28:33This is different and interesting to me.

0:28:36I like and think I can pull off a rose gold.

0:28:39I'm not sure everybody can or would want to.

0:28:42Okay, right.

0:28:43You know, because it's a it's a bit I think it is of the options, the most garish, maybe like it's doing something different.

0:28:52The black I saw on the Apple store.

0:28:55Yes, me too.

0:28:55Not impressed by that.

0:28:57I was hoping for something a little bit more.

0:29:01Slate or whatever.

0:29:01They're not calling it black, right?

0:29:02Are they?

0:29:02As you can tell anymore.

0:29:04Let me go to the dark titanium black hole.

0:29:07I actually think this one is called black titanium.

0:29:10Okay, well, it was it was I liked it, but that's always going to be my default.

0:29:15I think is the dark, the darkest phone, black, black, white, natural and desert.

0:29:20Oh, okay.

0:29:21Yeah, it was it was not, you know, jet black.

0:29:24It was it was a I was expecting something a little bit more fun like that, you know, like like it was like, did they clip?

0:29:32It was jet black, but everybody was calling it piano black, right?

0:29:36That was kind of like what they were going for.

0:29:38Yeah, and this is not that this is just a it's a very dark.

0:29:42It's the darkest of the titanium is even darker.

0:29:44But of course, you've heard the story by now.

0:29:46I'm sure the 16s are incredible.

0:29:48Yeah, the ultramarine color, which we have here.

0:29:53This might be good for the for the video viewers out there because we are in person today.

0:29:56Yes, we are.

0:29:57We kind of can't stop that.

0:29:59Assuming our video system works, which is a mystery.

0:30:02We're using what is that?

0:30:03The GoPro 360.

0:30:05Yeah, incredible.

0:30:05So this episode's in 360.

0:30:07No, it's not.

0:30:08Yeah, you can see the wall.

0:30:09Oh, wow.

0:30:11This ultramarine is stupendous.

0:30:15It is this is just an excellent color.

0:30:17And I think that Apple have really nailed the color infused glass that they've they've been working on.

0:30:23I think this looks extra special, like the deep color around the camera.

0:30:28And I actually really like the two stack camera.

0:30:31I don't like the way that cases look with this phone because it also has the weird cut out for the flash because the flash is flush on the back.

0:30:39Yeah, which I like as a look on the phone.

0:30:41But if you are a case user, I think that that kind of detracts that a little bit.

0:30:47Is it also strange to look out on the phone that like just like on the body of the phone, there's just this white circle where the flash is.

0:30:55But I think that they've done the best they could.

0:30:57And I'm happy that Apple didn't extend it to like a triangle or something.

0:31:01Oh, sure, sure.

0:31:03No, it's it's it's nice.

0:31:06The colors are beautiful and so the colors are really amazing.

0:31:09Yeah, you don't like the teal.

0:31:11I think the teal is fine.

0:31:12I just it's a color that I I'm just kind of bored by it.

0:31:15The pink and the ultramarine are so good that the teal is like kind of whatever if you want green teal is available to you.

0:31:23But the ultramarine is beautiful.

0:31:24The pink is really nice.

0:31:26And I'm not you know, pink's not my favorite since I have trouble seeing it.

0:31:29I have no trouble seeing this one, though.

0:31:31You can tell that is not gray or white.

0:31:33That is a very pink phone.

0:31:36And, you know, I like them.

0:31:38I like them attempting to take parts of it like the flash and put them flush again, because shouldn't the ultimate goal of iPhone design be no camera bump?

0:31:51Yes, that be part of the and I realize that may be unrealistic.

0:31:55I think it's impossible maybe forever, but it should be the goal, I think, to have that bump be as little as possible and as unobtrusive as possible.

0:32:06And if you can help it along the way, making it smaller, at least by moving some of it to the back, you should do that, right?

0:32:13You should do it, not make a weird triangle.

0:32:15And so they did that.

0:32:16But yeah, these are beautiful.

0:32:17It shows you the colors that Apple is capable of when it wants to do it and it feels like it's a good time to do it.

0:32:24And that blue is just I love it.

0:32:27I feel like this is a year where someone with really good taste won.

0:32:31Yeah, when the brutal doggy dog battle and was named the colors are for 2024.

0:32:40These are extra good.

0:32:42They are extra, extra good.

0:32:43Like they're undeniable in their color.

0:32:47Like if you see someone using these, you'll be like, that's the new iPhone.

0:32:52You know, like I feel like these really, really stand out.

0:32:55So I think they've done a very good job.

0:32:56Similarly, a lot of cases are really good.

0:32:58There's a yellow one, which is like you could see that thing in the dark.

0:33:01I think it's pretty incredible.

0:33:03But we I think, you know, as is the way for us, and I do think probably for the vast majority of our listeners, the majority of our time is spent thinking about the pro phones.

0:33:15Of course, they're the ones we use.

0:33:17Pro phones got a bit bigger screen size and physical size.

0:33:22What are your takeaways from that so far?

0:33:25So going from the 15 Pro to the 16 Pro, I don't feel like it feels any different in my in my hand.

0:33:32I likewise don't really feel like I'm noticing the difference in the screen size.

0:33:39So it's a very subtle thing.

0:33:40It's not going to blow anybody away.

0:33:42I like the idea that they attempted to just creep out to the closer to the edges without making the phone that much bigger.

0:33:51So that's a good start.

0:33:52We haven't talked about camera control.

0:33:53I haven't used it a lot.

0:33:54Again, this is first impressions.

0:33:56I it's funny because I saw somebody I don't even remember who it was complaining about the placement of the camera control button.

0:34:03I find that my finger goes very naturally to exactly where the camera control button is.

0:34:09And so I think that part of it is good.

0:34:13I'm unsure if, OK, I'm going to mention the touch bar here.

0:34:19Whoa, hello.

0:34:21I'm going to mention the touch bar, but don't take don't read too much into it.

0:34:24But what I will say is I'm not convinced that that UI where you double squeeze and bring up a thing that you slide and then click and then go in.

0:34:35It has a little touch bar vibe to me in the sense that I get what they're going for, but I'm not sure that's the right approach, right?

0:34:43So, yeah, we'll come back.

0:34:44I want to come back to talking about sizes.

0:34:45And let's dig into the camera control now.

0:34:48That UI is the most fiddly user interface design I've I've experienced from Apple.

0:34:54So you have to double tap it, but not tap it.

0:34:57You have to double press it, but don't click it.

0:35:00And then when you're in there, you could swipe left and right.

0:35:03And then you can like tap it again and then you can change some settings.

0:35:07And if you want to go back, you have to double press it again, but not click it.

0:35:11And then you can go back.

0:35:12It's very fiddly, but I think this is reviewer's syndrome in that we're using it a lot, right?

0:35:20Where realistically, I think most people it remembers the last set and you had it.

0:35:26Yes.

0:35:26So I think most people will have the thing that they want to do.

0:35:30I agree.

0:35:30And then change it.

0:35:31Like for me, I expect I will be leaving it on the camera selection, which is 0.5.

0:35:37It's interesting to have camera and zoom.

0:35:38They're like different, but the camera selection of 0.5 wanted.

0:35:42And I will then just swipe between those and take the picture that I want.

0:35:45Because realistically, I don't need to change exposure or photographic styles or tone that often.

0:35:53But some people that might be the thing that they want.

0:35:56They might want to just swipe through photo styles and choose one.

0:35:59The other thing I've noticed as well is when I'm doing that, I quite frequently, the way that I'm holding my phone,

0:36:04the palm on my thumb touches the display, which stops it from working.

0:36:12Because it's almost like it's trying to like, I'm interacting with the application.

0:36:17But again, the camera control button, great.

0:36:21Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely.

0:36:23I like the button and the UI.

0:36:25I think the swiping UI is not a bad idea.

0:36:27My problem with it really is I wonder if when it meets the general public, if they're going to say,

0:36:34yeah, that's not quite the interface we want.

0:36:37But I also agree with you.

0:36:38What I try to tell people about this thing is it's only as complicated as you want it to be, as you need it to be.

0:36:45If all you do is press the button and take a picture, it's fine.

0:36:49If all you do is do the halfway, that's fine.

0:36:51If all you do is the sort of swipe, that's fine.

0:36:53Like you don't have to be double tapping and moving between things and all of that, which is good because it's kind of awkward.

0:36:59I actually, so I went into accessibility and changed the amount of pressure needed for the single like tap to be the lightest.

0:37:08And I found that to be better.

0:37:09I would also like to be able to move between the settings with less movement.

0:37:14So I was just trying to take a picture of you there.

0:37:16And with my thumb, I couldn't get it to swipe between the cameras.

0:37:21For whatever reason, it just wasn't enough movement.

0:37:24So I would like also to be able to tweak that, but that's all tweakable.

0:37:27And I do think the thing that people will most likely want to use it for, which is focus, weirdly is not there.

0:37:34Although I don't know.

0:37:35I saw a story that said that they're going to do a software update down the road that is going to add the halfway to focus idea.

0:37:44Now, the question is, how does that work in a smartphone camera?

0:37:47But I think the idea is, I think the idea is that there'll be a focus mode where they will put a focus target on the screen and let you do the thing.

0:37:57Because the way it should work is like a camera.

0:37:59It should work where if I want to focus and in the end, it may just be setting where the portrait mode is, right, essentially, because you can change that setting as well.

0:38:07But if I want to take a picture of you, but I want the couch behind you to be in the picture.

0:38:13What I would do on a regular camera is I would take the crosshair in the middle and I would put it down at the couch and I go halfway and it would focus on the couch.

0:38:22They showed that in the keynote.

0:38:23And then I pick it back up and then I do it.

0:38:25So that's going to happen.

0:38:27Yeah, but it's not there yet, right?

0:38:29That's yet another feature.

0:38:31And this is one of these themes right now of Apple shipping software that doesn't do all the things they promised.

0:38:37And they're we're going to have to wait for some of this stuff.

0:38:40But I do think that that very familiar interaction, you know, I would argue maybe that's not an interaction that is necessary.

0:38:49But I can also see that if you're trying to emulate a film camera, it is going to make some people feel comfortable.

0:38:55Yeah, one thing that I'm really surprised by is you can't flip to the front facing camera using the camera control.

0:39:06Interesting, I feel like that should be in the camera selection.

0:39:09So because I can you can take pictures of it so I can flip it on the screen and I can take pictures of it.

0:39:14And but it does and I can also still do all the adjustment.

0:39:18So when you're doing your camera swipe, maybe you need to be able to swipe past to go to, I don't know, go from 0.5 and then to front face.

0:39:27I don't know how they would do that, but like I feel like I should be able to to have that control because I can do it's almost like there are two cameras in a way, which is weird.

0:39:38Like there's two distinct systems because I can do all the same adjustment on the front facing camera with the camera control.

0:39:46But I have to already be there somewhere, somehow else off the camera.

0:39:49Yeah, so I find that to be an interesting thing.

0:39:53Sure.

0:39:55In general, with the camera system, I've been happy with the images I've taken so far.

0:40:01Again, this needs a lot more testing, but I've been doing some side by sides and the quality of the forced macro mode is higher in the images that I've tested.

0:40:10But the thing for me is I need to take more pictures of people because that's where I notice the shadows the most.

0:40:15But I do feel confident that I looking at like Neil Patel's review, I may be able to have a lot more control over this with the photographic styles, which there is.

0:40:26Again, I feel like this year when it comes to the camera, Apple have kind of taken the reins off a little bit because camera control is complex.

0:40:36Photographic styles also very complex.

0:40:39They've done a good job of trying to show you things in a simple way.

0:40:44And that little tone control that they have, the little square is nice, but it's also like a slider.

0:40:49Yes, below it.

0:40:50And it's like an Apple in the camera control, they have two distinct things, one called style, one called tone.

0:40:56And you can change those with the camera control, but they're both part for the graphic styles and UI.

0:41:02And styles are the previews you can swipe through and then tone is the controls at the bottom.

0:41:07So there's a lot of complexity here.

0:41:09I think we'll see how people react to it.

0:41:12The thing that I appreciate is, okay, so you're Apple, this comes up a lot with Apple because they have so many users at so many different levels.

0:41:22And a lot of the criticism Apple receives is from expert users or advanced amateur users.

0:41:31And the problem is most of the people aren't that, right?

0:41:36That's the problem is most people aren't that and Apple struggles and they bring it on themselves, right?

0:41:44They want to be the computer for the rest of us, right?

0:41:45They want to reach the masses.

0:41:47But it is hard to make something one thing that is easy for people who want it to be easy, but offers an array of complexity for people who want it to be complex.

0:42:02It's very hard to do that.

0:42:04And what they can't do, I mean, this is like, okay, they added on the Mac in Sequoia, they added all the window management stuff, the tiling.

0:42:14And we say this when we talk about Sherlocking, it's like, well, if you want something like Moom, the Apple thing doesn't do anything like that.

0:42:21Well, of course it doesn't because Apple is trying to create something that's for kind of like a regular person who's never going to download third party software.

0:42:29Well, you see it with the camera control and you see it with the photos or the camera app in general.

0:42:36And the photos app actually is the same idea, which is they're trying to create a setup where if you just don't know anything, you can do what you need to do very easily.

0:42:48But that if you want to do a little more, it will start to unfold.

0:42:52That's really hard and it will be interesting to see about things like the photographic styles, what form they take.

0:43:01Because I think ideally, if you don't need to know about them, you don't worry about it.

0:43:07Or if you set it once to go like, I like my photos to be more colorful or whatever, you set it once and you forget it.

0:43:13And then all your photos are like that.

0:43:15Can I make a note on that?

0:43:16That's actually not the way it works this time.

0:43:19So if you set a photographic style and take a photo of it, the next time you open the camera, it goes back to the default.

0:43:26No, you have to set a default.

0:43:27You have to go into settings, app, and then camera, then there's a subsection called preserve settings.

0:43:36And in there is a toggle to turn on photographic styles and then it will retain the one you set previously.

0:43:43The default photographic style.

0:43:45No, then it will retain the one you last used.

0:43:48I thought you could set a default photographic style.

0:43:52I don't know how to do that if you can.

0:43:54All right, I'll look at it.

0:43:55The only way I could get it to do that is to go in and do the preserve settings thing.

0:43:59Yeah, so my point is, can they make it so that people are happy just clicking and shooting and make Nilay Patel happy?

0:44:08Who's somebody who has real opinions about photography.

0:44:10It's a good review. It's a really good review.

0:44:15What it seems like is that Nilay is happy because, and I think you guys on connected have talked about this a lot,

0:44:24the increasing feeling that Apple processes its photos so much because they've got a philosophy that we're going to

0:44:36re-expose everything seven times and merge them together so that you can see detail and shadows and things like that.

0:44:42But what you lose is contrast. I saw a post on Mastodon that was literally two shots of fog at sunrise in San Francisco.

0:44:54And one of them was the sun is like blown out through the fog.

0:44:57And the other one is an Apple HDR picture where you can see the individual wisps and all that.

0:45:02And they said the blown out one that came, I think, from Halide is more accurate to the experience of being there.

0:45:11And then Apple kind of because the sun is really bright and shining through and it's sort of blown out, gets that effect.

0:45:17And Apple's one, in order to try to retain all of the detail of the clouds, has made something that actually doesn't feel like the real scene.

0:45:25So if you're somebody who cares about that kind of stuff, having the ability to set up that sort of thing might take the pressure off.

0:45:34Where Apple's like, look, we have a philosophy which is capture everything. And if you don't like the fact that that delude or removes contrast,

0:45:45denudes all the contrast from your images and you're left with this kind of grayish haze, then change it.

0:45:53Right. Yeah. And it will let you. And that, philosophically, I think that's really interesting because it's basically saying,

0:45:59OK, Nilay, if our default bugs, you change it and then you'll be happy, too. But the default, I would argue,

0:46:06Apple feels the default works the best for the majority of people. If we only have one default, right?

0:46:13The default is the default. It needs to be like, do no harm and also please people who will never change any of their settings.

0:46:24How do you set that default? And I can see why that default might anger other people.

0:46:31So this is very confusing. So Zach in the Discord has shown me to a thing in the camera settings called app settings,

0:46:37photographic styles, where you can go through like a wizard and choose a style, but it doesn't have all the styles in it.

0:46:44It just has the tones. So I don't I need to dig into this more.

0:46:48But like the setting that I found, which is in camera, then preserve settings is photographic style. And if you turn that on,

0:46:55the one I've set in the camera app sticks because the ones that they're showing me here in the app settings section are just the colors,

0:47:04like amber, gold, rose, neutral, cool. But I like the vivid style. And then I've adapted that a little bit.

0:47:13OK, so quite confusing. Need to look into that. Yeah, don't understand it yet. But the one that I've chosen, it now shows up every time,

0:47:22which is the vibrant and I've adjusted a little bit. So the yeah, I think when they introduced photographic styles a few years ago,

0:47:30the first version of this, they it was a big moment because Apple was sort of saying, OK, our look isn't the only look that you could get from a photo.

0:47:41We it's so quaint now almost because we live in an era where their competitors are building a cameras where you can change everything.

0:47:50And other than editing out background items in cleanup in sixteen point one or eighteen point one, the.

0:48:01Apple and then Apple, actually, somebody at Apple made a statement about this to somebody and basically said,

0:48:06look, our philosophy is photos are of things that actually happened. And there's a lot of there's a lot more room in there, right?

0:48:14It's like because the photographic styles allow you to have it look differently,

0:48:19because we all know that there are so many different ways to capture an image and get different color and a different look and all of that.

0:48:25But it's still the image. And if that's their hill to die on, I'm OK with it.

0:48:30Right. The idea that we are not going to have a camera that detects you, you in the foreground and puts you in a field.

0:48:36Yep. We're not going to do that. And I'm OK with that.

0:48:40And I also really like now that, you know, if I'm thinking about I think this is again, the some of the confusion I'm having like.

0:48:47So I just went through the wizard and I can do is change the color and then the color.

0:48:51And it saves that as the style. But none of those are like the stuff to the left, which is colors and stuff to the right, which I think called moods.

0:48:59They got undertones and moods. But aren't they all photographic styles?

0:49:04Yeah, I guess. But in the photographic style section of the camera app, all I can change is the undertones.

0:49:10It's just confusing. But this is what I'm saying about a lot of this stuff.

0:49:13OK. I feel like this is good. They've kind of let the reins off a bit.

0:49:18But in doing that, you create a complicated scenario.

0:49:22It's chaos. And so, like, for example, what I want to be able to do, the photographic style that I've chosen is like a recipe.

0:49:28Now, in the old version, you could save that. You can't do that anymore.

0:49:32So now I've taken a screenshot of my numbers so I could change it back if I needed to.

0:49:36Yeah, because I would argue that if you create a photographic style in the camera app and say, I like this, I want all my photos to look like this.

0:49:43You should be able to tap somewhere and say, save this as mine and then ideally save this and then say, save this as make this my default.

0:49:52Yeah. And so maybe they'll get there again.

0:49:54Yeah, it does feel a little bit unfinished as well.

0:49:58Like, yeah, oh, we got to get this ready for the new iPhone. And there are maybe some pieces that are missing.

0:50:03But what I like I said, what I what I do like is that it feels like they're erring on the side of creating a basic function that everybody can use.

0:50:12And then they open the box and say, is that not good enough for you?

0:50:16OK. And then the other thing that I really appreciate about this new system is that.

0:50:24If I take a photo and I'm not happy with the coloring, I'm not happy with the the way that it's been processed.

0:50:31I can now go in back into photographic styles and see if I can fix it.

0:50:34Yeah. Where before, once that photo was processed, done.

0:50:39Yeah, the capture, the photographic style changed how the photo was captured.

0:50:45It was baked into the image.

0:50:47And then all I could do is try and quote unquote save it in that like darkroom.

0:50:51Yeah. Now I can go back in to the photo, into Apple's system, go back into photographic styles and see if I can change it.

0:50:59So I'm excited about all of this, but this leads to the complexity of it all, I think.

0:51:03Right. But I do feel like just straight out of the camera, I'm able to get closer to my desired color profile of images before I put them through an app like darkroom, which is my editing of my photo of choice.

0:51:19Yeah. If you prefer a certain style, I like warm and colorful.

0:51:23Yeah. You should be able to dial that in and have all your photos do that without any work, because that's it's my camera.

0:51:28And with this, yeah, you could all you could make the counterargument now, which is if your style is bad and you come to regret it later or somebody else goes, oh, no, no, no, no, we can't use this.

0:51:39Guess what? There's a lot of extra data in there to change it.

0:51:43Yeah. I want to talk just a little bit about the physical size of my phone, because I have jumped down one.

0:51:49Yes.

0:51:50So I did try out, I did hold the 16 Pro Max. It's real big. It's big. This is a big, big, big phone now.

0:51:59It is accentuated right now because I've been using the small one, because I picked up my 15 Pro Max today because I'm still doing all of my transfer stuff, and it feels big now because I'm getting used to the Pro again.

0:52:11But immediately when you had to be the Pro Max during the podcastathon, I was like, oh, boy.

0:52:16Yeah.

0:52:17Now, I stand by them doing this. I think make the big phone as big as you can make it because people who want that want that.

0:52:26But what I'm happy about is that the smaller phone has gone a little bit bigger over time.

0:52:30Yes, it has.

0:52:30So for me, that's good because I can maybe make that jump. And this is just an experiment.

0:52:35Like the small phone feels small to me. It feels this is a small phone and it's already changing my relationship to a little bit.

0:52:46What I've noticed with this phone is I'm kind of like throwing it around more.

0:52:50And I don't know why, but like if I'm, you know, I'd like throw it on the bed, throw it in my pocket, like it's more maneuverable.

0:52:56It feels fantastic to hold. I like that I can type with one hand really easily, but if I'm typing with two hands, I'm not tripping over myself with my thumbs.

0:53:07Like it's not big enough. So it still feels good for watching video, which was a big thing for me.

0:53:13So I can watch video and that feels good. It's definitely different.

0:53:18It feels wonderful with the camera control. I'll say that like one handed photo taking with the camera control is very doable with this phone, not so doable with this phone.

0:53:28Like if I try and hold it in one hand, I do not feel like I have a good grip on this phone with one hand.

0:53:35I'm trying to support it with my pinky finger and that I'm making it work.

0:53:39But like, I am like whole gripping this phone. And what I also know is that if I'm touching the screen, which I kind of would do to get it, that messes with the camera control a little bit because it's the phone trying to work out where are you controlling this right now.

0:53:53Exactly. So, you know, if you want the big phone, as I have wanted for many years, this is an even bigger one.

0:54:00But it just so happened that this was I'd felt myself wanting to change it up a little bit.

0:54:06And also, I'm very, very happy with this, but this feels like a the pro feels like a tiny phone to me comparatively.

0:54:12Well, it does. You adapt and change. So that's going to be the thing to watch is if you can you adapt to it?

0:54:18Because, you know, I adapted to the mini. And then when I went off the mini, I adapted to the pro and it took it took some adaptation because it's like, well, this is so big.

0:54:31But honestly, after like a week or two and I could type way more accurately on the pro than I could on the mini.

0:54:37That's that's the truth. That is the real shame of the mini was that I could never type accurately on it.

0:54:43The keyboard was just so small. But but I got used to it.

0:54:47So that's going to be the question for you is you live with this for two, three weeks and see if you can still use it.

0:54:54My setup went really well. Actually, there's something I was able to do this time that I've been able to do it for 20 years.

0:55:01So any of my friends who have been telling this piece of information to it's wrong now, maybe I was able to transfer my eSIM.

0:55:08Now, in previous years, that has not worked at all until I got home.

0:55:12Right. And my expectation was that it needed to connect to my network and couldn't do that in America, but it did it this time.

0:55:20So the question is, is it connecting to your network through a partner network in America roaming or is it connecting to your network over the Internet and getting your validation that something's changed?

0:55:30Because the last two years, that has not worked. I've tried and tried and tried.

0:55:36And then last year I did it in the airport and it worked.

0:55:40So like it just needed to be able to connect to what I seemed like to my UK network.

0:55:45But this time it's done and it's it's working. Everything's fine.

0:55:47I've been able to roam and it's working. So I'm happy about that.

0:55:51But that's new for me. The question, my setup went really well. I did the phone to phone thing, put it overnight.

0:55:58I really wished it would transfer apps, like it didn't have to then download the apps from the app store.

0:56:03But this transfer was smooth. The one question I have is, why does Apple put GarageBand on my phone?

0:56:08It wasn't there before. Why did you do that? You put it on the home screen, you created a home screen and you put GarageBand on it.

0:56:14I didn't have it installed. So like at what point, like I need to we need to speak to the European Union and I think this is unacceptable.

0:56:21And I work. I had I had I had those apps, I had pages and keynote and I do not have those on my phone.

0:56:30And they were added as well, which I I I something weird and I movie as well, which I don't have.

0:56:38And I think that's one of those weird cases where there are these apps that are system apps but aren't system apps.

0:56:46They're in the app store. And it used to be you had to claim them.

0:56:50You had to like you got a new computer and it would say you need to put in this.

0:56:53You need to claim them in the app store in order to buy them.

0:56:58But they come with a purchase of that. And I honestly. Maybe somebody could tell us.

0:57:03Maybe Luca Maestri can tell us once he's not the CFO anymore. I actually wonder if there's a very specific accounting practice going on.

0:57:11Back in the day, there were things that Apple like couldn't give you.

0:57:14Yeah, you had to pay for software updates. Yeah, right.

0:57:17And some of that was legal or accounting. Sarbanes Oxley.

0:57:20Yeah, Sarbanes Oxley, exactly. Whatever that means. I know the words. I don't know what it means.

0:57:24It's two guys. It's Sarbanes and Oxley. It's two Paul Sarbanes and I forget who Oxley was.

0:57:28Oh, is this like how, because something I've found more over the years is like.

0:57:33It's like the Smith-Hawley Tarah fact. Every lore in the UK is named after something.

0:57:37So it's like Verizon Drinko, which I hear Ben Thompson talk about on almost a weekly basis.

0:57:41Yeah, so it's a, and ZMK is pointing out the reason your apps don't transfer is that they change what you download based on what device you're on.

0:57:52I don't care. But I would also say, what about some logic to say, you know, this phone's pretty much like that phone. I'm just going to transfer it over.

0:57:59I mean, like these things are like, the way I describe a lot of this stuff is none of this stuff happens organically.

0:58:05Right. There are decisions being made. Yeah, and they could change it. They could say, you know what?

0:58:08We're going to keep compatibility on the 15 and the 14 so that when we get to the 16, those will just transfer right over.

0:58:16How different is Slack from one device to the other?

0:58:18Right. So, yeah. So anyway, I do wonder if there's an accounting issue of some sort where those things, because you had to claim them in the app store and that they used to be like sold.

0:58:27If they're accounting for them as like, when you get a phone, you get these apps in a bundle and that we charge against it and that changes.

0:58:35I don't know. It's really weird. It's like, oh, you've got a new iPhone. And on your previous iPhone, you deleted GarageBand.

0:58:44Well, here it is. You're getting a GarageBand. You just need to just get rid of that. Yeah.

0:58:49But yeah, I look forward to playing around with these more. I've already noticed as well, these phones charge faster if you plug them in.

0:58:55They do up to 45 watt charging. I plugged my phone in yesterday. It was like 20%. I was still using it. And I was like, five or 10 minutes, I have 45% battery life.

0:59:03And it's early yet. But battery life feels pretty good too. So, yeah, I'm not really making any judgment on it because I've changed phone.

0:59:11You know, I know mine's going down. I transferred here. Oh, I mean, from Pro Max to Pro.

0:59:18Oh, that's right. So you can't really say. Yeah. Well, yesterday my battery was getting killed because I was doing an update and downloading all those files and downloading every podcast and all of those things happening.

0:59:28But we'll see. The early I'd say early suggestions are good. But who knows?

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1:00:41Thanks to Vitaly for their support of this show and Relay. You also got the Apple Watch Series 10.

1:00:47I do. Are you wearing it right now? I am wearing it right now. I bought this. Oh, that's your one? This is mine. I also have a review unit, but this was my year.

1:00:56I had a 7. Wow. So I went up to the Jed Black 10. Were you wearing the 7 daily? Yes. Like you weren't wearing a review unit?

1:01:05No, I was wearing the 7. Titanium, which was a treat yourself moment from three years ago. I remember that.

1:01:11But now I'm on the 10. Early thoughts? I know when you look at it and hold it up, it doesn't seem like it's thinner, but it really is thinner.

1:01:23And the place that it is thinnest, I think, is the sensor dome doesn't stick out so far. And so the whole watch feels closer to my wrist.

1:01:34It looks nice, I think. It does. I'm very used to the Ultra, which is a big chunk. It's so huge. But I am struck by the fact that it looks like your Apple Watch is sitting on your wrist.

1:01:47Exactly. Which Apple Watches never look like that. They don't. They are perching on a dome. Yeah, like it is flat to your wrist, which is a different look.

1:01:56And I think it's much sleeker looking because of that. I agree. I agree. And the screen size, what do you think of the screen size?

1:02:02You know, it's too early for me to tell. It's definitely bigger and that's nice, but it also feels not disruptively larger as a watch.

1:02:11I would say the thing that I've really noticed is it being very close to my arm. And to the point where I was, at one point, it snuck a little bit up my arm where the digital crown was close to the bone in my wrist.

1:02:26And I tried to move the digital crown and it was like not moving very much because it was kind of pushed into my wrist a little bit. You were providing your own resistance.

1:02:34I was actually causing trouble there. So, no, that change in how it sits on my wrist is the big change. The size doesn't feel that dramatically different, although I'm sure I will appreciate the extra space on it.

1:02:48I have a real good, I think, relatable way to describe the feeling of the size difference. So, you gave me yours to try on and you have a Nike sport band.

1:03:01I have, with my Apple watch, I have a Nike sport band too. I was able to wear your Nike sport band one notch tighter than mine.

1:03:13So, you can tell the thinness difference and kind of where it's coming from. The watch to skin, like the watch attachment to the skin is closer.

1:03:22Of course, I'm comparing it to an ultra, but I don't really know how different that is realistically. But like say from this to that, I could wear the watch tighter because it's not pulling away from my wrist as much.

1:03:33So, I found that to be interesting.

1:03:35So, I got the jet black aluminum, so it's shiny. That's aluminium. It's like I forgot they did that because when I looked at this, that looks like steel to me because of how shiny it is.

1:03:50That is very impressive what they've managed there. They should make phones look like that.

1:03:55Interesting.

1:03:55And I think they're going to. Someone wrote in about this. This might actually be an Ask Upgrade. We'll get to it when we get there, but let me see actually.

1:04:03And the reason I went down from titanium is as much as I enjoyed treating myself in the series seven for titanium and it was light and it looked pretty, the truth is the price difference between titanium and aluminum to me is not so great that it justifies.

1:04:17It's too big to justify the difference in the product, I guess is what I was saying. And honestly, the jet black aluminum looks so great that I thought I'm just going to do aluminum this time.

1:04:28This question came from Matt who says, I have a theory that the jet black series 10 is a potentially hint at how the iPhone slim will look, which is rumored to be made of aluminium and how it may be finished.

1:04:38I think that is a Matt spot on.

1:04:41New process, right? So they get to drive that process out.

1:04:44That is a strange look for aluminium. Like it's good.

1:04:47And I remember we were talking about like, oh, they would go to aluminium for this incredibly expensive phone.

1:04:54Well, if you can make it look expensive, you've done 50% of which is this polishing process that they do.

1:05:00Yeah.

1:05:01Now I was, I've seen the stainless gold one.

1:05:04I'm convinced that I will be upgrading to that when I get home.

1:05:08I think that is incredibly look good looking.

1:05:10And this is like that difference for you.

1:05:12Like for me, that's worth the extra money.

1:05:14Let's yeah.

1:05:14So we're going to play people who like one Apple watch are admiring another Apple watch.

1:05:20So you have an ultra and you're admiring the series 10 in gold stainless or gold titanium, not stainless titanium.

1:05:30I will say as a series 10 owner, I got to see at the Apple store.

1:05:36We went to the Memphis, Tennessee saddle Creek, Germantown, Tennessee Apple store with Stephen Hackett driving us around Tennessee.

1:05:45Um, I saw the black series or a ultra two.

1:05:51It looks so good.

1:05:53It's incredible.

1:05:54And you know, as our, uh, our team, our baseball team, the San Francisco giants are orange and black, orange and black ultra two.

1:06:04It's so good.

1:06:05Oh, I do have an orange watch band.

1:06:08Well, let me tell you that this people who bought an Apple watch recently will have, we'll know this, the vagaries of what band you can buy with your Apple watch, especially if you want it on a certain day.

1:06:18Cause I wanted to pick it up on Saturday here.

1:06:20Yep.

1:06:20And there were a whole array of bands that I wanted that they're like, yeah, that'll be in October.

1:06:25I'm like, well, okay, I'm not doing that.

1:06:26I'll just buy this fun Nike band that I'll wear.

1:06:31And it's nice.

1:06:31But, um, anyway, the ultra two black looks so good and the orange highlights on it, I think just pop chef's kiss.

1:06:42Good.

1:06:43I didn't buy it.

1:06:44Uh, I don't, I don't want to watch that big is the bottom line, but it looks so good.

1:06:49So I love the way the gold looks.

1:06:51The, the main reason for me is I think that I think it is clear now that the ultra will not be coming along with the series, the watch series numbers, right?

1:07:05That it may be in every other year from now on, or many years.

1:07:09Well, they've changed it this year, right?

1:07:10So three years, three different, three versions in a way, because it's ultra two, but black that's new, right?

1:07:17But it doesn't have all of the new stuff.

1:07:22It doesn't have all of the new sensors.

1:07:24It doesn't.

1:07:25And I think that's going to continue.

1:07:27Yeah, no, they, they, they said, we talked about this after the event.

1:07:30Yeah.

1:07:31It, they described the ultra in not really different terms, but like, I think they, they specified the ultra is our rugged sports watch and what it's not, even though it was this, when it was introduced.

1:07:45They, it was this, but it was almost like de facto.

1:07:48It was this, which was, it was also their biggest screen and their best technology and a whole bunch of stuff.

1:07:55It was the high-end Apple watch.

1:07:57And I think what they're saying is no, no, no, it's not the high-end Apple watch.

1:08:02It might be the most expensive Apple watch, but like, it's not, it's the rugged sports watch.

1:08:07And that's why you get the ultra or because you like the look.

1:08:11I was just like, and for me, it's like, uh, I, I wanted this watch cause I wanted the battery life and I'm going to lose that, but I figure I got to, I got to lose it at some point.

1:08:21I think I want to go back to the series 10.

1:08:24I like the way it looks.

1:08:25I was making a funny face because I'm looking at the comparisons cause like, well, what, what is different?

1:08:29And it's like, you know, some of the new screen technology is different, you know, the always on is better.

1:08:35One of the, the, in the features, you know, the comparison feature breakdowns, one of the things that the Apple watch ultra two does that the Apple watch series 10 doesn't is high speed water sports.

1:08:46I'm not sure.

1:08:48Okay.

1:08:49What that means.

1:08:51And like, like, like, can you not, will it not what, what happens?

1:08:56I don't know.

1:08:57That's interesting.

1:08:58Right.

1:08:58Cause like, okay, recreational scuba.

1:09:00I get that.

1:09:01Right.

1:09:01Like it has a better depth gauge.

1:09:03Yeah.

1:09:03I understand the snorkelers watch high speed water sports.

1:09:08And why does this one do the water skiing?

1:09:12I guess I can, I can understand what I can imagine what they are, but like what in the ultra supports that better.

1:09:18Who knows?

1:09:20You know, I want to make a note about it.

1:09:22Watch faces.

1:09:22Cause this is something I learned, um, in my product briefing as well about this.

1:09:28So, um, the new always on display has improvements, including second by second update, which means that you can have a timer and look down and it will theoretically tell you the time.

1:09:44Even when like a second.

1:09:46Even when that happens to me all the time, I'm cooking and like I'm looking at my watch, but it's not on and then I get like full refresh by second.

1:09:56Yeah.

1:09:56And that's great.

1:09:57That's great.

1:09:57One second refresh rate.

1:09:58Fantastic.

1:09:59And they, they said in the keynote and look at these great faces, we had that face where the thing kind of the second hand is essentially a, like a water wave thing that kind of pops up higher, higher, higher, higher until the minute changes.

1:10:11And then we've got this other face that is, that is new, that has the ticking second hand and it, you know, it's a smooth movement.

1:10:21Until it goes to sleep, at which point it becomes a ticking second hand and it keeps ticking.

1:10:28Whereas on the old watch faces, you know, because they couldn't do always on at a second update, the second hand just vanished.

1:10:36Here's the thing.

1:10:37And it speaks to a, um, one of these things Apple doesn't want to talk about, but I think we need to talk about, which is the real skeleton in the closet of watchOS, which is the watch face, um, development and design.

1:10:53We've for, it's been 10 years, folks, the pace of Apple watch face development is poor, but poorer still is the fact that after Apple builds a face, they very rarely ever change it even to get new features.

1:11:09And if you think about that, it's kind of bananas because on iOS and macOS, generally, if there's a brand new feature to the OS, they like add support to it to like their apps and stuff.

1:11:23But if you're using and want to still use a, uh, an Apple watch face not introduced this year that has a second hand on it, when it goes into always on mode on the series 10, the second hand disappears instead of ticking.

1:11:44I don't understand how that is happening. Only the three faces they introduced this year use the always on display with the ticking second.

1:11:54It's showing, it's, it's, it suggests to me that the development of these watch faces is based on a rickety system.

1:12:01Yes, that's what I mean about the skeleton in the closet here.

1:12:04Why, why shouldn't, what is the watch looking like? So there are two watch faces for every watch face, essentially. There is the on and the always on right.

1:12:14That seems to be what they're doing, because what should happen is all of these elements should be defined and they just work within an API.

1:12:22Like, so second hand, does it tick? What watch is it on, you know, like that, that kind of thing.

1:12:28So it suggests that they have built this contraption to build watch faces that is rickety and they haven't updated it.

1:12:35And they're just, some of the older faces don't support the newer complications, but you can still use those watch faces, but they use the, they, they don't use the new.

1:12:43Yeah, exactly. My beloved, um, watch face that is my favorite is utility and I don't use it as much because it doesn't have the same complications.

1:12:54So I'm on California and I like utility better.

1:12:57Utility looks better, but it won't do the corner complications in the same way that California will.

1:13:03It will do one at the bottom instead of the two in the corners.

1:13:05And that is entirely, which makes me believe, honestly, Mike, it makes me believe that the watch faces themselves are so brittle that they can't change them to behave differently on different models.

1:13:18They have to step, like when they've done the updates, they've probably just started over.

1:13:22Yeah. Or they're like, well, no, we can't have this face beyond this model. And then this face behaves differently on this model.

1:13:29It must stay the same throughout.

1:13:31And if that, I don't know if that's the case or not.

1:13:33And somebody at Apple might say, no, no, no, no, that's not it at all.

1:13:36But here's the thing we can speculate about why it is this way, but it shouldn't be this way.

1:13:44That's the bottom line is, is you can, and I'd love to know, but it's an excuse.

1:13:50It's an excuse. And I know people will probably who are listening to this will say, oh, but it's always been like this.

1:13:55Like, yes, I know it's always been like this, but the way it is, is wrong.

1:13:58Apple introduced the ability this year on the Series 10 to have your watch tick second by second.

1:14:06What a great thing, because that's how watches work.

1:14:08You should do that. And it should do that.

1:14:10And now it's capable of doing that.

1:14:12And they have an array of watch faces with hands and only three of them do it.

1:14:17It is stupid. Like why only the new ones?

1:14:22They didn't update all the old ones.

1:14:23And like, look, I'm arguing with an imaginary Apple person now, but I'm just going to say it.

1:14:30I'm sure that if somebody who works on watch faces came and talked to me in secret, they'd be like, Jason, oh, oh, my God, you can do an explanation.

1:14:38I'm sure. But bottom line, as a user and a reviewer of the products, if you introduce a watch screen

1:14:47that can tick when it's sleeping once a second, every watch face you make that shows seconds should show seconds.

1:14:55Because that's a feature you're telling me that I have.

1:14:57But now I have to change the watch face to get that feature.

1:15:03I don't like their new watch face that has a second hand that ticks.

1:15:07I don't like it. It doesn't show numbers.

1:15:09I want my watch face to have the little numbers on it and look like my old Swiss Army watch and modular does that.

1:15:15I can coerce California to more or less do that.

1:15:17But why is it that they have all these faces that I kind of like, but I can't use because the complications aren't compatible, because it doesn't support my new watches display.

1:15:28So, whoa, get with the program, use this new one.

1:15:31Like, why is it like this?

1:15:32So I didn't know that I was coming for watch faces today, but it's one of those things that we can we can praise the hardware.

1:15:38But like, how do you build hardware like that?

1:15:40If I was I'll put it another way, if I was the person who finally got the Apple Watch after 10 years to be always on and it can tick every second, we put so much work into this, into the display controller, into the screen itself, into the battery and the and the energy consumption and the system on a chip.

1:16:00So that the so that the Apple Watch can finally tick.

1:16:03This is the thing that we've been talking about for 10 years.

1:16:05It can tick on the second.

1:16:08And then there's somebody and watch faces is like, yeah, we're not going to do that.

1:16:12We'll give you three.

1:16:13We'll give you three.

1:16:14Yeah, that's bad.

1:16:15It's bad.

1:16:16So I don't know what they're doing there, but it's they messed it up.

1:16:19It's it's a this is just fundamentally like the software is letting down the hardware, which, if I'm being honest, is the story of the last 10 years for Apple, is that their hardware game is pretty much perfect and their software game can't keep up.

1:16:34I will provide a slight balance to just, again, extol the virtues of the new photos face.

1:16:40It isn't my Apple Watch has become an instant joy machine.

1:16:44It's so good.

1:16:45I mean, this is and it's the same technology that they put two years ago into the iPhone lock screen and last year into the iPad lock screen.

1:16:52It was what they call photo shuffle on the on the lock screen.

1:16:55And you can choose these categories, which can be people, pets, places like cities and nature.

1:17:01Yeah, and you can choose, you know, I have my wife, cities and nature and every three favorite things every day.

1:17:09It seems like at some point I think it's midnight in GMT for me because it happens at like a weird time in the afternoon while I'm here, it seems to load a new set of maybe 10 images and you can tap through them or every time you raise your wrist, you see it shuffles through them.

1:17:26And the and you can also you can also select up to 25 and have a set yourself, but you can use this other mode, which I didn't even know was there in the watch app that lets you do this, I think is is the way to do it.

1:17:38So this is this is a surprise.

1:17:40Yeah, it's a surprise.

1:17:41So this is the thing that it's one of those things where there's complexity, but it's delightful.

1:17:45And and I wrote a whole piece about this, about how my wife, Lauren, didn't know that these features existed because she just uses her iPhone the way she's always used it.

1:17:55And when I said, oh, no, we can set it up so that our kids are on your lock screen and there's a new one every time.

1:18:02And that was I mean, we were in in Eugene, Oregon, when we did that and it was winter.

1:18:06So that was probably like a year and a half ago.

1:18:10And to this day, she picks up her phone in the morning, goes, oh, look at this one like it's magical.

1:18:18And it's one of those ways where Apple is trying to surface.

1:18:21We have this controversy where people are like, I want photos to be utilitarian, but it's like, but no, you want photos to be you want photos to recommend things to you.

1:18:28Right. Well, this is a great place for photos, ability to find pictures of people or pictures of interesting, you know, things, cities, nature, whatever it is, pets and automatically delight you on your wrist.

1:18:43In your case, it's great because there's a picture of it, you know, from it's gone now from like 2014 or whatever.

1:18:50And they are like this one is I don't know where that is, but they put the time behind the thing because they're doing the subject detection and you get two complications, which is not enough, but enough.

1:19:01I've got the weather and I've got the date.

1:19:04And then what I love, I love the new widgets because I get so much stuff in that little stack now.

1:19:09WatchOS 11, incredibly good, fantastic operating system.

1:19:14Vitals is great.

1:19:16I really like this system.

1:19:18I'm loving the ability for if your phone's running a live activity, it pushes you.

1:19:24I said the arsenal score button tap my watch.

1:19:27It's like it's a lot of activity.

1:19:28I care about it.

1:19:29Maybe I want it on my wrist, too.

1:19:31My only thing here, I'm going to complain about WatchOS again.

1:19:34I love having a clock with hands on my on my wrist.

1:19:40But when it goes into the stack mode, if you're using a watch with hands, it shows you a little tiny watch with hands at the top.

1:19:47And I don't think that a tiny with no numbers watch is what I want there.

1:19:55I want the time.

1:19:56I like that they have decided to be able to pick visually match them.

1:20:00Yeah, but yeah, you should be able to say thanks, but I would prefer something else.

1:20:04If you're going into that mode, I just want the digital time.

1:20:06I don't I don't want hands at that point.

1:20:09So I find myself rolling out of it.

1:20:10But like having having it there is really nice for that.

1:20:13And that's an option.

1:20:14You can turn it off.

1:20:15But I really like that about it.

1:20:16So if I was going to make one feature request for this incredible new watch face, I would like to be able to choose more choices for the Typoca 3 style.

1:20:27Because I really like the I usually use it on my main home screen, but I'm in my recording focus right now.

1:20:33So it's different.

1:20:33I use Apple's New York font for the time.

1:20:36I think it's a beautiful serif that they've made and it looks wonderful on lock screens and stuff like that.

1:20:41But that's not it doesn't I have not found any options to make changes to the new focus face.

1:20:46And I would like to be able to set it in New York because I think it looks really good.

1:20:50All right.

1:20:51And I've got one thing I want to show you just because this is my lock screen on my on my iPad.

1:20:56Yeah.

1:20:57And the thing that I didn't realize you're talking about segmenting subjects so that they can you have a person or a mountain or something like that.

1:21:04And then the time is like hiding behind it.

1:21:06Here's the thing that I didn't know, which is when I swipe down notification center on my iPad.

1:21:10Yeah, as as it fades in the time comes down right at the top.

1:21:16It's on the top and as it drops behind the mountain on my lock screen, oh, it tucks in, it tucks in behind it.

1:21:23It's almost like so you're you're there's a mountain and the sky and your lock screens time is like tucking itself in between the sky and the mountain.

1:21:34Like it's recognized those two layers.

1:21:35That's very good.

1:21:37Yeah, that's unnecessary, but it's it's amazing.

1:21:40So, yeah, good job, good job.

1:21:42And that's all based on portrait mode.

1:21:43Essentially, they have built this system in portrait mode to do subject detection.

1:21:49And then from that comes like 40 other features, including spatial photos in VisionOS2 where you can spatialize a photo.

1:21:57It's all of that using that sense.

1:21:59It's the working backwards from understanding how to do portrait mode, which again, initially was a physical thing they had to do.

1:22:06Then they built a software version of it in that way, like where it was completely fake. Right.

1:22:10And they've moved on from that.

1:22:12It's incredible that that's super good.

1:22:14And it's created my absolute favorite watch face of all time.

1:22:17Nice. This episode is brought to you by Ladder.

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1:23:54Just real quick, AirPods 4, you got a set from Apple for review.

1:23:59I did.

1:24:00And just before we started today, we both tried them on to see what we thought about the fit, the feel and the noise cancellation.

1:24:08From my perspective, the noise cancellation, pretty good, like better than I ever could have imagined you could do without a seal.

1:24:16But it reminded me of a problem that I had with the original AirPods.

1:24:20It doesn't sit in my left ear, and like I even have this AirPods Pro, so they go in, but my left ear, eventually it's going to come out.

1:24:28But as soon as I put the AirPods 4 in, you saw me, I was like, well, that doesn't feel safe at all.

1:24:33So again, I think it's a lot with these things.

1:24:35It's with all the AirPods line, really, you're going to find something that fits you.

1:24:40It's not necessarily going to be the same for everyone, but I'm now happy.

1:24:43I'm very happy that they have made a version of AirPods with noise cancellation for the people who cannot suffer with the tips and the ears.

1:24:53Yeah, I need to spend more time, I will actually use it on the plane as well and give it a try.

1:24:59That's good, because we're in Steven's studio, put it in, I couldn't hear the air conditioning.

1:25:04Yeah, it's better.

1:25:06It's not AirPods Pro, right?

1:25:08And it isn't priced that way, but they're doing some noise cancelling and you know, the fit, ideally the fit is still pretty good where it's snug enough in your ear, it's not rattling around, it's pretty close, it's making most of a seal.

1:25:20And then there is also the, you've got the transparency mode to let, which does help because it's most of a seal, then it passes through and it sounds good.

1:25:31Yeah, it's, I almost want to say like it's better than you could expect from AirPods, regular AirPods, right?

1:25:40Like it's great that they had that as a feature, especially if you prefer, strongly prefer regular AirPods.

1:25:47So maybe some more on that later on.

1:25:49Yeah, I think we'll do some follow up on it, but it's, I got them and I'm trying them and it's interesting.

1:25:57Let's finish out with some Ask Upgrade.

1:26:01Arjen asks, how useful is camera control with left handed usage?

1:26:05I'm left handed and love the action button to control the camera as it's directly under my thumb when taking the photos from my pocket.

1:26:12Is the camera control as quick and easy for point and shoot pictures?

1:26:16I think so.

1:26:17So I think what Arjen is thinking is if you hold it just in the left hand and I found in portrait mode, it's fantastic, my middle finger is right there, right over it.

1:26:27And even if in left handed mode, you could kind of do it in a different way.

1:26:31Maybe you're kind of grabbing the phone with the, you're kind of looking at the screen, you had around the screen.

1:26:37It works. Like I found it again, I'm using the Pro, I think harder on the Pro Max, but even you could grab it and use your thumb and kind of hold it up from the.

1:26:49Yeah, I think, yes, I will say we've both taken pictures of each other right now, which you can probably see in the video version.

1:26:53But yes, I think it works great left handed or right handed for usage.

1:26:58So I think so.

1:26:59I think you'll be happy either way, however you use the phone, you'll be happy with that.

1:27:03I mean, I hold my phone in my left hand.

1:27:05Do you? Have we spoke about this before?

1:27:08I don't really know what I do.

1:27:10I think I don't have a specific like a particular thing that I think I can do both.

1:27:15Tom asks, do you think Apple avoided mentioning the two sizes of the Series 10 during the event?

1:27:21Because it's confusing to say biggest screen ever and available in 42 and 46 millimeter models, especially when the Ultra is 49 millimeters, which refers to case size.

1:27:30But does everybody know that?

1:27:31This is an interesting thought to me.

1:27:33I think I'm not sure if the size difference between the two models was the reason, but I do think it's if they would have spoken about the millimeter sizes, it would have become complicated.

1:27:45And so they kind of just found the easiest way out was to say this is the biggest ever and not really talk about the sizes of them or the two of them.

1:27:53I don't think it has anything to do with the size of the Ultra.

1:27:56I don't think their worry was, oh, wait, they said forty nine, but how can it be forty nine?

1:28:01But the forty six is bigger.

1:28:03I don't think that's it for screen.

1:28:05I do think if some of the superlative claims you're making are about it being the biggest Apple Watch screen ever.

1:28:15If you mention if you talk about it like it comes in two sizes, you then have to say the biggest one is the biggest one and this one is the biggest of all the smaller ones.

1:28:26And like and I think that was a level of complexity that they didn't want.

1:28:29So I think that's probably part of the reason.

1:28:31Yeah, I still think they messed up, though.

1:28:33I agree. I think you got two phones or two watches.

1:28:36You should mention them. Deal with the complexity of it.

1:28:38Yeah, I mean, say that for our smaller model, it's also the biggest in that class. OK, it's not that it's not that hard.

1:28:45I think they I wonder what they think.

1:28:48Right. I wonder if they think it was great and they nailed it or or not, because I think this event erred too far on the side of lack of detail.

1:29:02And I know people said it was boring and all of that.

1:29:05I mean, I guess whatever, it's a commercial you're watching for two hours.

1:29:08I guess it is how exciting these like to not say you have two watches.

1:29:14Yeah. Yeah.

1:29:15It feels like you should mention that.

1:29:16Yeah. I feel like my main criticism about the event was more that it was weird and confusing than it was like boring.

1:29:24Also, I mean, the truth is for a lot of us tech people, the most boring stuff was replaying iOS and Apple intelligence because that's all just a rerun of June.

1:29:34But they have to do it right because they want to reach all the people who don't watch it would be irresponsible to do that.

1:29:40It would be. But and that and that's why a lot of the commentators who said it was boring.

1:29:44I don't give a lot of credit to because they're people who are paying attention in June.

1:29:49If a regular person thinks it's boring, OK, that's a bigger problem, but they're trying to introduce Apple intelligence.

1:29:55Still, I think ultimately, I don't think they needed to overcomplicate it in order to detail some stuff that they omitted that were strange omissions.

1:30:06Like, you know, and maybe there's some production issues with some of this stuff, too.

1:30:10I think it would have been great if they had actually said, you know, it's coming out, the OS's are coming out next Monday.

1:30:17And they didn't say that either. Right. So just some weird omissions there.

1:30:20I wonder if they could maybe add in a little more detail next time.

1:30:25Right. This is a longer question. I think it's a good one. It comes from Daniel.

1:30:29The capacitive surface on the camera control button shows that Apple is willing to place touch sensors inside side buttons on the iPhone.

1:30:36Given that, combined with the rumors about a thinner 17 air model next year and Apple's ongoing efforts to reduce the size of the notch of Dynamic Island,

1:30:46do you think it's possible Apple would remove the larger Face ID sensor array and instead put a fingerprint sensor on the iPhone side button

1:30:54to achieve ultimate edge to edge full screen glory?

1:31:00Oh, interesting. Well, what I would say is that iPhone slim air whatever is a new product and all bets are off.

1:31:13It's going to be weird.

1:31:14So if they decided that it was way better space wise to biometrically biometrically authenticate via a touch ID button on the side,

1:31:27instead of putting sensors behind the glass.

1:31:33I'm sure they waited that, you know, and decided that we don't know what they decided, but it's possible, right?

1:31:40Like, I feel like we don't know, but I'm sure they thought about that, that could we make this really edge to edge and and take the dynamic?

1:31:52Because Dynamic Island can always be there in software.

1:31:55I expect when they when they got to, we're going to make the Dynamic Island, there were two paths.

1:31:59There were, are we going to continue with Face ID or are we going to change it?

1:32:02Yeah, right. And like they decided to continue, which I think is the right move.

1:32:07I prefer face ID. I prefer touch ID on an iPad.

1:32:13Interesting. Actually, but face ID, the iPad doesn't recognize me as often.

1:32:20And then this is not an issue. I have my mini because I press the button to turn it on.

1:32:23Sure, that's fair, right? If you're using it in a keyboard, face ID is better.

1:32:27If you're using an iPad, it's just an iPad. Touch ID is better.

1:32:30Interesting. OK, I find I don't think I agree, but I can see how there are different use cases there.

1:32:36I know that for the phone, a lot of people are like wearing gloves and stuff.

1:32:39And it's really nice to, you know, not to have because you can wear the gloves that will let you run touch screen,

1:32:46but they're not going to read your fingerprint. So face ID is really nice for that.

1:32:51Other people, you know, we do have the ability to do face coverings now with with face ID.

1:32:56So there's that. It's an interesting question because I think it goes back to the fact that this product,

1:33:02if it exists, is going to be the result of lots of conversations just like this one,

1:33:07where just because we've had it before doesn't mean I mean, think about the iPhone 10, right?

1:33:13The iPhone 10, the whole conversation was. Let's do face ID instead of touch ID.

1:33:22And what does that mean? And then they put a notch on the screen and eventually it moved to being the dynamic island.

1:33:28So they're going to they're going to go through all of those things and stuff's going to get left out.

1:33:33Stuff's going to get changed. And that's all in the interest of making a very different piece of hardware.

1:33:39And this could be it or not, because because the question I think it's a absolutely legitimate question to ask.

1:33:45The question is, I'm sure they tried both things and found one of them better.

1:33:50And I don't know which one that is because the iPhone 10 was the foundation of iPhones for the future.

1:33:55Yeah, I think this slim phone could be if you can, because you can you can take the logical path.

1:34:01Well, they have to make everything thinner so they can fold it. Yes. And is that maybe the future of the iPhone?

1:34:08Right. Or at least a future. And what we learned, too, is if you can make it at scale with all these thinner accessories in it,

1:34:19thinner components that will have knock on effects where they will build all these things with the small components.

1:34:26And then in a year or two, they'll say, well, we've we've got all this skill with assembling based on these small components that we buy in huge volumes.

1:34:35So we might as well use them elsewhere and everything else starts to use them and maybe gets a little thinner and lighter themselves.

1:34:41And it keeps going. And certainly if they're going to do folding phones, having a thinner base that they can fit their content in so that they can then fold it up on another one,

1:34:52because you don't want that sandwich to be too thick. So it's a great idea.

1:34:57I don't know the answer. Right. That's that's the question is. And on top of that, too, is also the question of are there other sensors they could use behind the screen?

1:35:07Could they use a sensor behind the screen and have the dynamic? I think that the goal for face ID is to put it behind the screen.

1:35:15And I know there's been there's been talking of them trying that. Is it possible? Right.

1:35:20And what's the and what's the thickness issue? In the end, some of it may just simply be, you know, it's better to put that biometric authentication hardware behind a button that sticks out of the phone than it is to put it in.

1:35:37Right behind the screen there. But that's the question is, which one makes the thing thinner?

1:35:43I would expect touch ID makes the phone thinner. Because if you could put the camera behind the screen and you could put the biometrics in the button, you might be able to make the dynamic island be, you know, a software only feature that appears when you've got.

1:35:57Well, it would it would exist for live activities. Right. But then it would just disappear. Yeah.

1:36:03If you would like to send us in a question or you want to have any feedback or follow up about this week's episode or any episode, go to upgradefeedback.com.

1:36:11You can check out Jason's work at sixcolors.com. Here are his shows on the incomparable and here on Relay where you can hear me too.

1:36:18And check out my work at cortexbrand.com. We can find us online. Jason is at JSNEW, J S N E double L.

1:36:25I am @hymyke. You can watch clips of this show on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube where we are @upgraderelay. Thank you to our members who support us of Upgrade Plus this week.

1:36:35I want to talk about hanging out in Memphis. All right. And what that's been like over the last week or so.

1:36:40Well, it's been longer for me. Hasn't been as long for you. I've been gone for a long time, it feels like. Thank you to Squarespace, Vitaly and Lada for their support of this show.

1:36:47Don't forget to go to stjude.org/relay. This will be your penultimate warning, maybe for that. I'm not entirely sure when the campaign is closing.

1:36:56You're going to hear it at least a couple more times, maybe. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode.

1:37:01We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Stell.

1:37:05Goodbye, Mike Hurley.

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