Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hey everyone, this week we decided to share the extra content from Connected Pro with everybody.

00:00:06 ◼   ► So y'all could hear Federico and I talk about the new Vision Pro headstrap.

00:00:11 ◼   ► It's pretty interesting and we also did sort of a vibe check on where we are with the Vision Pro in general.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Connected Pro is just seven bucks a month and you get this extra content at the beginning and end of every episode and each episode is ad free.

00:00:27 ◼   ► And that seven bucks a month goes to supporting the three of us directly.

00:00:32 ◼   ► Now you also get a bunch of really cool perks from Relay, some members-only podcasts, a newsletter, some wallpapers, and access to the coolest Discord server around.

00:00:42 ◼   ► So I would invite you to check out Connected Pro. There's a link in the show notes to learn more and sign up.

00:00:48 ◼   ► And thanks for listening.

00:00:49 ◼   ► Federico, I got my first ever Apple hardware review unit.

00:00:54 ◼   ► Wait, first ever?

00:00:56 ◼   ► First, I've never gotten hardware before.

00:00:58 ◼   ► Huh.

00:00:59 ◼   ► So I get this email.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Congrats, first of all.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Yeah, it feels good.

00:01:05 ◼   ► I got this email, right, from a PR person.

00:01:08 ◼   ► It's like, hey, we're gonna send you something.

00:01:11 ◼   ► Here's some paperwork.

00:01:12 ◼   ► I'll be in touch.

00:01:13 ◼   ► I was like, cool.

00:01:13 ◼   ► It's great.

00:01:14 ◼   ► They sent me the new Vision Pro dual knit band.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Yes, same here.

00:01:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:22 ◼   ► They also sent the dual knit band.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Dual knit band.

00:01:26 ◼   ► I have to send it back in April.

00:01:28 ◼   ► That seems kind of gross.

00:01:29 ◼   ► It's like sending back used AirPods.

00:01:30 ◼   ► But we'll see.

00:01:33 ◼   ► Jason says they won't want it back.

00:01:35 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree.

00:01:37 ◼   ► I don't think they'll want it back.

00:01:39 ◼   ► But, you know, bureaucracy and all that.

00:01:41 ◼   ► You never know.

00:01:42 ◼   ► You never know.

00:01:43 ◼   ► So, I have it.

00:01:44 ◼   ► I got my Vision Pro out.

00:01:46 ◼   ► And I've been using it, as have you.

00:01:50 ◼   ► So, what are your impressions so far of the dual knit band?

00:01:55 ◼   ► I would say definitely more comfortable than any other system that I've tried.

00:02:00 ◼   ► I think that's including my very own hack from last year to sort of replicate this setup.

00:02:07 ◼   ► This one is obviously more official.

00:02:09 ◼   ► It takes a while to get used to it for very specific reasons.

00:02:13 ◼   ► I think we talked about the tungsten in like the metal reinforcements that they have in the bottom part of the band to sort of counterweight, you know, the whole thing on your head.

00:02:26 ◼   ► It is a little strange when you feel the weight in that part of the band.

00:02:33 ◼   ► You can obviously tell that there's stuff inside and that it's weighted, you know.

00:02:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:39 ◼   ► And that was a little strange at first, especially when, if you just go in and assume, oh, it's going to be as lightweight as the regular knit band.

00:02:46 ◼   ► No, this one has weights inside.

00:02:48 ◼   ► So, it's going to feel different.

00:02:50 ◼   ► I still feel some pressure on the top of my head.

00:02:56 ◼   ► I don't think the, like when I read about how this thing was designed, I assumed, oh, I'm going to feel all the weight, you know, in the, at the bottom, like just above my neck, essentially.

00:03:06 ◼   ► I assumed it's, the weight is all going to go there.

00:03:09 ◼   ► No, you still feel some weight on the very top of your head, but on balance, I think it works.

00:03:15 ◼   ► I think it felt slightly different from what I was expecting, but I think it is the most comfortable accessory I've tried to date.

00:03:25 ◼   ► And I've tried a bunch over, over the year and a half or something.

00:03:29 ◼   ► How long has the Vision Pro been now?

00:03:30 ◼   ► A year and a half?

00:03:31 ◼   ► That's longer than that now.

00:03:32 ◼   ► Longer than that, yeah.

00:03:34 ◼   ► Has been the most comfortable experience I've had to the point where I, you know, I can see wearing this thing instead of for, you know, a 30 minute burst for longer than that, for the full couple of hours that you get with a battery.

00:03:50 ◼   ► So, I would say they've done a good job, and I think at first I, I sort of overextended in the sense that I, that I adjusted the band too tight and too far up.

00:04:06 ◼   ► And so, I got the, I got the, the alert on the Vision Pro saying, no, you should move your Vision Pro down.

00:04:12 ◼   ► Same, same.

00:04:13 ◼   ► Yeah, okay, okay.

00:04:14 ◼   ► But yeah, that's, after I got that, I understood the way that it's supposed to work, and I've had a pretty pleasant experience, I would say.

00:04:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's really good.

00:04:24 ◼   ► You and I have both tried various things over time, including the, I think sort of most famously, the Solo Top, which was a 3D printed piece, and you could get another Solo Knit Band and put it over your head.

00:04:43 ◼   ► I looked at that Etsy store today, and they're taking a short break.

00:04:46 ◼   ► They, they may be done.

00:04:47 ◼   ► I don't, I don't know.

00:04:48 ◼   ► Hopefully they're okay.

00:04:50 ◼   ► But it is, it's very similar to that, but much, much nicer in the, in sort of the fit and finish, right?

00:04:58 ◼   ► You're not clipping on this 3D printed part.

00:05:01 ◼   ► And the single knob for adjustment is really cool.

00:05:04 ◼   ► We spoke about this a couple of weeks ago, where the knob has sort of two adjustments, like a crown on a traditional watch.

00:05:12 ◼   ► We can like pop it out and change the date.

00:05:14 ◼   ► And you learn kind of which one is which pretty quickly.

00:05:19 ◼   ► And I do think the Comfort, I think, is much better than the Belkin version of this.

00:05:25 ◼   ► So the Belkin version of this sort of combined Apple's two previous attempts, where it was the, the big, you know, Solo Knit around the back of your head, and then a narrower sort of strap across the top.

00:05:39 ◼   ► And for me, and I am very sensitive to, for whatever reason, to like pressure on my scalp.

00:05:44 ◼   ► It's one reason I don't like the AirPods Max, because I feel like they're, they're clamping my head.

00:05:48 ◼   ► And that sort of triggered the same reaction for me, at least, because the, that top strap was narrow.

00:05:55 ◼   ► But this thing, and then the Solo top, because it's, it's wider, it, it worked.

00:06:03 ◼   ► Now, one thing that I think is important to note is that the, the top part of the dual knit band is not as wide as the back part.

00:06:11 ◼   ► It's kind of in between the old one and the new one.

00:06:14 ◼   ► And it totally works for me.

00:06:17 ◼   ► I did have the same issue you did.

00:06:19 ◼   ► I sort of over indexed on the, oh, it's going to hang from my head as opposed to be strapped to my face and had the same thing of like, hey, move your vision pro down.

00:06:29 ◼   ► It's too high.

00:06:31 ◼   ► But once I got it dialed in, it's, it's really, really comfortable.

00:06:35 ◼   ► And I don't know about you, but the way I've sort of set mine up is I have the over the head part where I want it.

00:06:43 ◼   ► And I just loosen the back part to take it on and off.

00:06:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:47 ◼   ► That's, I do the same thing.

00:06:49 ◼   ► And we sort of knew going into this, that the top part was going to be smaller than, than the one in the back, because that's pretty much what we discovered with the Solo top last year.

00:07:00 ◼   ► That if you wanted to do the Solo top, you would have to get one size smaller than the main Solo knit band.

00:07:09 ◼   ► And this is basically Apple realizing the same thing, but making a product for it that doesn't obviously require a clip on accessory for your vision pro.

00:07:18 ◼   ► So it's essentially the same design with a much nicer experience and the, the, the weighted band in the back.

00:07:27 ◼   ► Um, the dial feels different, um, when, when you, when you, when you adjust it.

00:07:34 ◼   ► And that's because I think there's metal inside the band.

00:07:37 ◼   ► Like it's, it's, I think it's stiffer than the old one, uh, than the regular Solo one when you adjust it.

00:07:43 ◼   ► Um, and that's because it's not just essentially like fabric, but there's fabric and metal inserts inside.

00:07:49 ◼   ► So that's probably, so that's probably why, but I kind of want to see more accessories from Apple along these lines.

00:07:58 ◼   ► Like this is obviously a niche product, right?

00:08:00 ◼   ► Uh, but it's a niche product with a very passionate user base for those users who do use the vision pro on a weekly basis.

00:08:08 ◼   ► Right.

00:08:08 ◼   ► And so there's probably money to be made in that niche.

00:08:12 ◼   ► I mean, this is a $200 accessory, right?

00:08:15 ◼   ► Uh, I think it's a hundred bucks.

00:08:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:17 ◼   ► How much?

00:08:18 ◼   ► It is.

00:08:19 ◼   ► It's $99 in the U S.

00:08:20 ◼   ► Oh, 90, 99.

00:08:22 ◼   ► Okay.

00:08:22 ◼   ► So it's a hundred bucks, but people have been making all kinds of vision pro accessories, right?

00:08:26 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:08:27 ◼   ► From alternative carrying cases to stands for sort of showcasing your vision pro on a desk to attachments for charging the vision pro.

00:08:36 ◼   ► And I would love to see Apple try and monetize that space with nicer official accessories.

00:08:42 ◼   ► You know, there's always the Belkin of the world and the Spiggins of the world, but I kind of, I even, I even liked the packaging of this one.

00:08:52 ◼   ► Like it was very nicely done, very, you know, very much in modern Apple style, all paper and cardboard, but I think it was pretty cool how it was all packaged together.

00:09:03 ◼   ► So, um, I would like to see more, uh, not just one band after a year and a half.

00:09:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:10 ◼   ► I thought about that too.

00:09:11 ◼   ► And this is, this is not super insightful, but it's a thought that I had.

00:09:16 ◼   ► This is like distinctly different from Apple watch bands, Apple watch bands.

00:09:20 ◼   ► There, there is some level of comfort, right?

00:09:22 ◼   ► You might, you might find fabric more comfortable than, uh, the rubber.

00:09:27 ◼   ► You may like one thing over another, but the Apple watch band, I think the primary thing people care about is the fashion of it.

00:09:36 ◼   ► Right.

00:09:36 ◼   ► Do I like this color?

00:09:37 ◼   ► Do I like the way this, uh, wraps around my wrist?

00:09:41 ◼   ► Does it kind of fit, you know, my, my image and the vision pro, these things aren't that way.

00:09:47 ◼   ► They all look the same, right?

00:09:49 ◼   ► No one looks cool in a vision pro.

00:09:50 ◼   ► Like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

00:09:52 ◼   ► It's just true, but it is much more about comfort and how it works.

00:09:57 ◼   ► And I think people are way more sensitive to things on their face and their head than they are on their wrist.

00:10:03 ◼   ► And so I would think if I were Apple, I would like, I would be experimenting with a bunch of different types of straps and different things.

00:10:13 ◼   ► And anytime you get one that works, put it on the market and, you know, you got to explain and like storytell the differences between them.

00:10:20 ◼   ► But this thing is so personal, like how it attaches to you.

00:10:26 ◼   ► I mean, look no further than the, the array of light seals and the, you know, all sort of the, the, the front stuff they have, right.

00:10:35 ◼   ► Where you scan your face with the Apple strap and it tells you what light shield to get and what, I don't know what the other one's called a face ring or something.

00:10:41 ◼   ► Uh, those magnetic parts.

00:10:43 ◼   ► Light, light, there's the light shield and the light seal.

00:10:46 ◼   ► No.

00:10:47 ◼   ► Am I making this up?

00:10:48 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:10:49 ◼   ► I can't remember.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Apple vision pro light seal.

00:10:53 ◼   ► Let's see.

00:10:54 ◼   ► There is the light seal.

00:10:55 ◼   ► Light seal is there's a light seal for sure.

00:10:58 ◼   ► Yes.

00:10:58 ◼   ► Maybe there's no shield.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Maybe you made that up.

00:11:02 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe it's just light seal.

00:11:04 ◼   ► Maybe that's the only thing.

00:11:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:06 ◼   ► Apple vision pro light seal.

00:11:09 ◼   ► Uh, that is 200 bucks for a different one of those, but you're probably not, you're probably

00:11:13 ◼   ► not changing that, right.

00:11:15 ◼   ► Cause your, your face I think stays basically the same, but yeah, it just, it makes sense to me.

00:11:21 ◼   ► I think to continue to customize this thing to, to make it work for more people, but yeah,

00:11:27 ◼   ► this one, it's very promising.

00:11:29 ◼   ► I think they did a really good job.

00:11:30 ◼   ► Uh, the other thing this prompted me to do was install vision OS 26.

00:11:36 ◼   ► Wow.

00:11:36 ◼   ► You did, you didn't have it.

00:11:38 ◼   ► Uh, mine was running some version of vision OS two still.

00:11:43 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:11:44 ◼   ► I haven't really been using my vision pro very much.

00:11:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:47 ◼   ► Clearly.

00:11:48 ◼   ► Um, I haven't used it at all since I moved and that was this summer, but so it's all vision

00:11:54 ◼   ► OS 26, man, I forgot how long software updates take on the vision pro.

00:11:57 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, it just takes a minute.

00:11:59 ◼   ► But when it rebooted, I did the new persona and man, that has come a long way.

00:12:09 ◼   ► You know, it prompts you to do it.

00:12:11 ◼   ► Of course, I haven't done one in probably a year, but it seemed like it was much faster

00:12:15 ◼   ► to capture and to build it.

00:12:17 ◼   ► Like, you know, it tastes like, Oh, I'm processing or whatever.

00:12:20 ◼   ► Uh, it looks way better.

00:12:23 ◼   ► I will say it mangled.

00:12:24 ◼   ► I'm wearing like a flannel shirt today with a collar.

00:12:26 ◼   ► It kind of mangled that a little bit.

00:12:28 ◼   ► It looks kind of weird and flat, but if I were in a t-shirt, it would have been totally fine.

00:12:31 ◼   ► And as someone who wears glasses, I, I did not like any of the glasses options in previous

00:12:39 ◼   ► versions of the persona.

00:12:41 ◼   ► They all looked kind of like fancy, like clip on glasses without arms.

00:12:45 ◼   ► They were all sort of strange.

00:12:46 ◼   ► And that system is also way better with just a few adjustments.

00:12:51 ◼   ► I felt like my persona was wearing the glasses that I wear and, and they looked really good.

00:12:57 ◼   ► And so while I have not been on a FaceTime call yet, cause I just did this this morning,

00:13:02 ◼   ► I was really, really happy with how the persona looked.

00:13:06 ◼   ► Um, at the beginning, you know, they were, they were pretty weird.

00:13:11 ◼   ► Uh, and version two was better, but this one, I really feel like they're, they're delivering on what

00:13:16 ◼   ► they, they promised, you know, I guess now three years ago when it was introduced.

00:13:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:13:21 ◼   ► I haven't redone my persona in a while and I should probably redo it.

00:13:27 ◼   ► Um, I use the vision pro very sporadically.

00:13:30 ◼   ► Um, I think it's great for when I want to, uh, first of all, like watch a TV show or a movie

00:13:36 ◼   ► while I'm in bed and my girlfriend is sleeping and I don't want to leave the bedroom.

00:13:40 ◼   ► Like for example, last night I wanted to play some video games.

00:13:43 ◼   ► I just went into my office, uh, because it was late.

00:13:45 ◼   ► She was already sleeping.

00:13:46 ◼   ► I didn't want to bother her with the, with the lights from, uh, from the console that I've

00:13:49 ◼   ► been using.

00:13:50 ◼   ► Um, but if I, but if I'm too tired, but not tired enough to sleep, but like, yeah, I'll

00:13:56 ◼   ► fall asleep to, to, to a TV show.

00:13:58 ◼   ► Uh, just put the vision pro on.

00:14:00 ◼   ► And of course you gotta be extra careful to, you know, just the moment, just before you're

00:14:04 ◼   ► falling asleep, removing your vision pro.

00:14:06 ◼   ► I did, I did fall asleep wearing my vision pro once.

00:14:11 ◼   ► Um, it happened and it was not fun because I woke up after 30 minutes all sweating with

00:14:18 ◼   ► this thing on my face.

00:14:19 ◼   ► Uh, and it was, um, yeah, it was not a pleasant thing.

00:14:23 ◼   ► I gotta be honest.

00:14:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:25 ◼   ► Um, so you gotta, you gotta be mindful of when you're just, you know, about to doze

00:14:29 ◼   ► off, just, just remove the thing.

00:14:31 ◼   ► But that's pretty much my use of the vision pro.

00:14:34 ◼   ► I think I'm gonna give it another try with vision OS 26.

00:14:40 ◼   ► I do have vision OS 26, uh, if, if anything, because I wanted to play around with widgets

00:14:44 ◼   ► this summer, but I haven't really spent time, um, retesting vision OS, especially now that

00:14:51 ◼   ► my usage of computers is pretty equally split between Mac OS and iPad OS on a daily basis.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Uh, I work equally from my, from, from the Mac and from the iPad every day.

00:15:02 ◼   ► Um, and so given that I'm using Mac OS, uh, you know, that also works well with vision

00:15:08 ◼   ► OS, uh, unlike the iPad, which has no virtual display mode on vision.

00:15:13 ◼   ► And the iPad and vision pro just don't know about each other.

00:15:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:17 ◼   ► Well, you can airplay.

00:15:18 ◼   ► I have done that.

00:15:19 ◼   ► That's true.

00:15:20 ◼   ► It's, it's not great.

00:15:21 ◼   ► Not great.

00:15:21 ◼   ► Uh, because you don't have universal control and all that kind of stuff.

00:15:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:25 ◼   ► Um, so given that I'm pretty much equally split between my MacBook pro and the iPad pro,

00:15:29 ◼   ► I think I want to give it another try, especially with this system.

00:15:32 ◼   ► Um, my cleaning lady saw me once, uh, wearing the vision pro and, uh, almost gave her a heart

00:15:38 ◼   ► attack.

00:15:39 ◼   ► She was like, what are you doing?

00:15:40 ◼   ► I had to, I had to explain, uh, I'm not playing video games.

00:15:44 ◼   ► This is a headset.

00:15:45 ◼   ► It was a whole conversation.

00:15:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:47 ◼   ► Um, yeah.

00:15:48 ◼   ► So next time I'll, I'll try alone.

00:15:50 ◼   ► Not even when Sylvia is home because she makes fun of me when I'm wearing the vision pro.

00:15:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:55 ◼   ► Mine is, uh, in my office only kind of thing.

00:15:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:59 ◼   ► I don't, uh, when I, when I first got it, my wife said, and I quote, that thing is creepy.

00:16:05 ◼   ► Um, yeah, well, yes, I think it's the eyes.

00:16:07 ◼   ► It's the eyes, right?

00:16:09 ◼   ► No, it's the, it's the whole thing.

00:16:11 ◼   ► The whole thing.

00:16:11 ◼   ► Honestly, it's the whole thing.

00:16:13 ◼   ► You're, you're, um, you know, just wearing a huge visor on your face.

00:16:19 ◼   ► Okay.

00:16:20 ◼   ► I'm living in the future here, you know, excuse me.

00:16:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:34 ◼   ► From Relay, this is Connected, episode 576.

00:16:37 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by the excellent folks at Connected Pro.

00:16:41 ◼   ► I'm your Ricky Benchman, Federico Vittici, and it's my pleasure to introduce Stephen Hackett

00:16:46 ◼   ► to the show.

00:16:46 ◼   ► Hello, Stephen.

00:16:47 ◼   ► Hello, Federico.

00:16:49 ◼   ► Hi, how are you?

00:16:50 ◼   ► I'm good.

00:16:50 ◼   ► Uh, dad's not here.

00:16:52 ◼   ► Just me and you.

00:16:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:53 ◼   ► Well, you're also a dad.

00:16:55 ◼   ► That's true.

00:16:56 ◼   ► A dad of many, in fact, many children.

00:16:58 ◼   ► Just three.

00:16:59 ◼   ► I want to be really clear.

00:17:00 ◼   ► Just three.

00:17:01 ◼   ► That you, that you know of.

00:17:03 ◼   ► What, no, no, just three.

00:17:04 ◼   ► Don't, don't do that to me.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Mike is only dad to one, um, uh, but yes, I am once again, uh, joined by a dad on this

00:17:15 ◼   ► podcast, and, um, I think we have some follow-up about Mike, in fact.

00:17:19 ◼   ► We do.

00:17:20 ◼   ► We have quite a bit of follow-up.

00:17:21 ◼   ► This first item really sent me on a journey.

00:17:24 ◼   ► A couple of weeks ago, Mike shared that he had dropped his brand new iPhone 17 Pro.

00:17:32 ◼   ► He was out with his daughter and was doing something with, like, the stroller and just

00:17:37 ◼   ► dropped his phone, and I didn't even realize it was broke until later, which is, I think,

00:17:41 ◼   ► the funniest part of the story to me.

00:17:42 ◼   ► And it was complicated by the fact that for years now, he has gotten his phone while he's

00:17:50 ◼   ► in the U.S. because the podcast-a-thon and iPhone launch usually line up.

00:17:55 ◼   ► And it was true this year, so I had, you know, we'd done a pre-order.

00:17:59 ◼   ► He got it here in the U.S.

00:18:01 ◼   ► So for years, he's had an American phone, and that's not nearly as big of a deal as

00:18:05 ◼   ► it used to be.

00:18:06 ◼   ► I mean, back in the day, man, do you remember, it was like, oh, you have these LTE bands,

00:18:09 ◼   ► but you don't have these, and so you're going to be speed-limited, all that stuff.

00:18:12 ◼   ► That's mostly gone away, at least between the U.S. and the U.K.

00:18:17 ◼   ► So AppleCare told him, well, you're going to get a U.K. phone, which he wasn't happy about

00:18:22 ◼   ► because he's eSIM only.

00:18:24 ◼   ► The U.K. phone was going to have a SIM slot, so a smaller battery.

00:18:27 ◼   ► And I think we figured, I think, 6% less battery, if I remember correctly.

00:18:31 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:18:32 ◼   ► But then he got a fancy American phone, it turns out.

00:18:38 ◼   ► So he shared that, and we got some feedback.

00:18:40 ◼   ► We got a note from listener Hassan, who wrote in and said that he believed that Mike had

00:18:46 ◼   ► gotten a UAE phone writing in.

00:18:49 ◼   ► They are physically the same, but the connection bands the UAE ones have are similar to the U.K.

00:18:55 ◼   ► The iPhone 17 Pros sold in the UAE have millimeter wave, so they have that antenna,

00:19:01 ◼   ► but they're not supported, and they're eSIM only.

00:19:04 ◼   ► So these phones look like the American phones.

00:19:07 ◼   ► But it turns out, and I wasn't aware of this,

00:19:10 ◼   ► the iPhone country code is baked into the model number.

00:19:17 ◼   ► And so I had Mike look up his model number,

00:19:20 ◼   ► and his model number was NG74-LL-A.

00:19:26 ◼   ► And it turns out, if you have LL in there, it means it's a U.S. phone.

00:19:32 ◼   ► And sure enough, he looked on his paperwork, and the paperwork also said N-A-U-S,

00:19:38 ◼   ► so North American, United States phone.

00:19:41 ◼   ► So he does have an American phone.

00:19:43 ◼   ► But interesting, I didn't know that the company codes were baked into the model numbers.

00:19:49 ◼   ► It's pretty interesting.

00:19:50 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:19:51 ◼   ► Yeah, me neither.

00:19:52 ◼   ► So he does have an American phone, but super interesting.

00:19:56 ◼   ► It's also interesting to me that phones would have the millimeter wave hardware,

00:20:01 ◼   ► but not be supported.

00:20:02 ◼   ► Like, maybe that's coming to that market, and maybe other countries that have that.

00:20:07 ◼   ► But yeah, interesting.

00:20:09 ◼   ► Okay.

00:20:10 ◼   ► Well, that's fascinating.

00:20:12 ◼   ► Maybe we finally figured it out.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:20:15 ◼   ► Anton wrote in about the crossbody straps.

00:20:18 ◼   ► And Anton said,

00:20:19 ◼   ► Mike, be careful with using a crossbody strap and case as a crossbody bag.

00:20:24 ◼   ► My friend dropped and destroyed her iPhone when popping in out of the case to get a transit card

00:20:30 ◼   ► kept between the phone and the case.

00:20:32 ◼   ► Huh?

00:20:33 ◼   ► Well, no, don't do that.

00:20:35 ◼   ► Get a MagSafe wallet or something.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:38 ◼   ► I don't think that's the fault of the crossbody strap.

00:20:41 ◼   ► Yeah, no.

00:20:42 ◼   ► I'm sorry, but it's your friend's fault, realistically.

00:20:46 ◼   ► Justice for crossbody, you know?

00:20:49 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:20:49 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:20:50 ◼   ► Yes.

00:20:52 ◼   ► Speaking of justice, Stephen, we received, we begrudgingly received an update about your answer

00:21:05 ◼   ► to the quiz last week about the third generation iPad Pro.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Jason on the Don, on Mastodon, said, if you tap the third hyperlink for the iPad Pro 11,

00:21:16 ◼   ► it redirects to the M1 iPad Pro.

00:21:19 ◼   ► 1,000 points for Stephen, hashtag Mike was wrong, hashtag justice for Stephen, hashtag robbed,

00:21:26 ◼   ► with a link to the iPad Pro Wikipedia page.

00:21:29 ◼   ► I mean, I feel pretty good.

00:21:31 ◼   ► Yeah, but...

00:21:33 ◼   ► But it's done, you know?

00:21:34 ◼   ► It's done, it's done, you're not getting 1,000 points from Jason.

00:21:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:39 ◼   ► So there's that.

00:21:41 ◼   ► But no, I appreciate all the support I got from people.

00:21:45 ◼   ► Did you?

00:21:45 ◼   ► Did you get all the support?

00:21:47 ◼   ► It was basically just this and a couple of things in the feedback form.

00:21:51 ◼   ► Yeah, okay.

00:21:51 ◼   ► Are these people in the room with us or not?

00:21:54 ◼   ► They are.

00:21:54 ◼   ► They are.

00:21:55 ◼   ► They are.

00:21:55 ◼   ► They're personas floating above you.

00:21:57 ◼   ► We've also spoken about disappearing posts on social media.

00:22:04 ◼   ► And if you're a Threads user, you may have noticed this, a new feature called the ghost post.

00:22:09 ◼   ► It's a pretty good name.

00:22:11 ◼   ► Ghost post.

00:22:12 ◼   ► And these ghost posts disappear after 24 hours, and they have a little dotted line around them in the interface.

00:22:20 ◼   ► And I've seen a couple of them.

00:22:23 ◼   ► Most of them I've seen are just jokes about, well, screenshots exist.

00:22:27 ◼   ► Which is true, I guess.

00:22:32 ◼   ► Yeah, people are just going to take a screenshot of everything.

00:22:36 ◼   ► That is why, like, ultimately, nothing is really impermanent these days.

00:22:42 ◼   ► Like, I've always been skeptical of, like, disappearing stuff.

00:22:45 ◼   ► Because if people want to save evidence of something, whether it's Snapchat or a disappearing message on WhatsApp,

00:22:52 ◼   ► or, in this case, a disappearing message on Threads, if they really want to capture it, they'll just take a photo.

00:22:58 ◼   ► If they cannot take a screenshot, they'll take a photo.

00:23:01 ◼   ► They'll take a video.

00:23:02 ◼   ► They'll do a screen recording.

00:23:03 ◼   ► Whatever.

00:23:05 ◼   ► So, nice that they're adding this as a consumer feature.

00:23:10 ◼   ► But if you, here's my word of advice.

00:23:13 ◼   ► If you don't want to post something that's going to be on the internet forever, maybe just don't post.

00:23:20 ◼   ► There you go.

00:23:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:22 ◼   ► You know?

00:23:22 ◼   ► Never post.

00:23:24 ◼   ► Never tweet.

00:23:25 ◼   ► Man, remember when tweet used to be a verb?

00:23:27 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:23:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:29 ◼   ► It's hard to remember what website that was from now.

00:23:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

00:23:32 ◼   ► Now it's x the everything app.

00:23:35 ◼   ► Bah.

00:23:36 ◼   ► Bah.

00:23:36 ◼   ► We can't talk about this, but did you see that they ripped off Wikipedia?

00:23:40 ◼   ► Grokipedia.

00:23:42 ◼   ► Grokipedia.

00:23:43 ◼   ► I think you mean Grokipedia.

00:23:44 ◼   ► Yeah, it's so silly.

00:23:47 ◼   ► And it's, you know what's kind of heartbreaking?

00:23:51 ◼   ► That, I mean, obviously, the management, quote-unquote management of that company is what it is.

00:23:58 ◼   ► They're shipping better features on iOS now for x, the x app on iOS, than they ever did over the past decade.

00:24:08 ◼   ► And it's heartbreaking that they're doing this now.

00:24:11 ◼   ► Like, couldn't you have done these updates a decade ago when we were all using x?

00:24:16 ◼   ► They shipped this feature recently.

00:24:19 ◼   ► They used, I think, Stratechery as an example of when you tap on a post on x and it has a link to a page.

00:24:28 ◼   ► The page opens in this, like, split layout with a web view at the top, but the post on x at the bottom so that you can see what the post said while reading the article.

00:24:44 ◼   ► And it's pretty nicely done from a UI perspective.

00:24:47 ◼   ► And it's actually a feature that I hope other companies will copy.

00:24:50 ◼   ► And it's heartbreaking because they're shipping these features now.

00:24:53 ◼   ► I don't know who they have on their team, on their iOS team now.

00:24:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:57 ◼   ► Who's working for x?

00:24:58 ◼   ► But somebody is.

00:25:01 ◼   ► And, yeah, they're doing a pretty good job for the social network that I have to follow some people there because, unfortunately, those people did not transfer anywhere else.

00:25:11 ◼   ► You know, AI people and Pokemon people, mostly for me.

00:25:15 ◼   ► I know that other folks are in a similar situation with some tech journalists or sports people.

00:25:20 ◼   ► Sports, yeah.

00:25:20 ◼   ► They never moved.

00:25:22 ◼   ► They never moved to Mastodon.

00:25:23 ◼   ► They never moved to Threads.

00:25:25 ◼   ► They never moved to Blue Sky.

00:25:26 ◼   ► And so, yeah, kind of sucks, to be honest, but it is what it is.

00:25:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:25:32 ◼   ► Okay.

00:25:33 ◼   ► A little bit of follow out.

00:25:37 ◼   ► That's where we talk about other podcasts on this podcast.

00:25:41 ◼   ► Some people would call it cross promotion, but it's not that.

00:25:45 ◼   ► It's a different thing.

00:25:45 ◼   ► No, it's different.

00:25:47 ◼   ► Because Jason, because Mike is on vacation this week, I joined Jason, that's what I was trying to get to, on Upgrade on Monday, episode 587.

00:25:57 ◼   ► It's always fun to be on Upgrade.

00:25:59 ◼   ► You and I have both done it.

00:26:00 ◼   ► It's always exciting to podcast with Jason and talk about tech stuff.

00:26:05 ◼   ► We turned in a pretty long episode, but I think it's a good one.

00:26:09 ◼   ► And it was a lot of fun.

00:26:10 ◼   ► Would you say that it's a good pod?

00:26:14 ◼   ► It's a, yeah, the pod was popping off.

00:26:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:19 ◼   ► I finished listening today when I was emptying the dishwasher.

00:26:23 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:26:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:24 ◼   ► And it was an excellent episode.

00:26:27 ◼   ► Always fun to hear somebody else introduce Upgrade.

00:26:31 ◼   ► It is.

00:26:32 ◼   ► You know, because I am so accustomed to hearing Mike introduce Upgrade.

00:26:39 ◼   ► And it's always funny when Jason does it.

00:26:41 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:26:43 ◼   ► It's very funny to me.

00:26:44 ◼   ► Almost like he doesn't want to do it, but he has to do it, you know?

00:26:47 ◼   ► So can I do, like, four seconds of Inside Baseball?

00:26:51 ◼   ► Okay.

00:26:52 ◼   ► I filled in for Mike, I don't know when it was, in the past, on Upgrade.

00:27:00 ◼   ► And, like, halfway through the episode, I was very aware that Jason and I were both trying to host it.

00:27:05 ◼   ► Like, normally on a podcast, there's someone who sort of does the driving, right?

00:27:11 ◼   ► That's generally me on Connected.

00:27:14 ◼   ► It's like, hey, we're going to go to the next topic, put the ad here, or whatever.

00:27:16 ◼   ► We take turns introducing it.

00:27:19 ◼   ► But on Upgrade, it's Mike, right?

00:27:22 ◼   ► Mike does a lot of the transitions.

00:27:26 ◼   ► He does the introduction.

00:27:27 ◼   ► And I realized that I wasn't sure if I was filling in for Mike as a host or as Mike as a guest.

00:27:34 ◼   ► And so this time, before we started, I said, I am just going to play the role of the guest.

00:27:39 ◼   ► I am not going to try to host the show.

00:27:41 ◼   ► And I think it was much better for it.

00:27:43 ◼   ► Yes.

00:27:44 ◼   ► Yes.

00:27:45 ◼   ► Yes.

00:27:45 ◼   ► It's like a power struggle.

00:27:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:48 ◼   ► I enjoyed the segment on Nicest Rider because I had no idea about that whole saga.

00:27:55 ◼   ► I was vaguely familiar with Nicest Rider, but I did not hear.

00:28:01 ◼   ► I did not know the backstory that sort of happened right now.

00:28:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:05 ◼   ► Well, Upgrade is what you want to listen to for coverage of software that was launched in 1989.

00:28:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:12 ◼   ► Also appreciated Jason saying that he's never going to retire.

00:28:14 ◼   ► That is the energy that I also want to put out into the world.

00:28:18 ◼   ► Same.

00:28:18 ◼   ► I'm never going to retire, you know?

00:28:19 ◼   ► Same.

00:28:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:20 ◼   ► They're burying me with my iPad.

00:28:22 ◼   ► So, yeah.

00:28:24 ◼   ► Okay.

00:28:25 ◼   ► Speaking of things that apparently will never retire, I have a pebble.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Insert the what year it is meme.

00:28:35 ◼   ► Okay.

00:28:37 ◼   ► The pebble, the original smartwatch from 12 years ago is back.

00:28:43 ◼   ► It's back, baby.

00:28:44 ◼   ► And we talked about this before.

00:28:45 ◼   ► We did a whole miniseries about the pebble and smartwatches before the Apple Watch.

00:28:51 ◼   ► I think so.

00:28:52 ◼   ► Right around the beginning of the prompt and connected was around that era when we sort of knew that Apple was going to do a watch, but we had no idea what a watch could be.

00:29:04 ◼   ► And, yeah, we talked about all these things, including wearing the iPod Nano as a watch.

00:29:09 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:29:09 ◼   ► I did that for a minute.

00:29:11 ◼   ► I backed the original pebble and I dug up my review from 2013 on 512 pixels, which is hilarious and not very well written.

00:29:22 ◼   ► But, you know, it was 12 years ago.

00:29:24 ◼   ► I've come a long way.

00:29:25 ◼   ► It is funny that it is back.

00:29:29 ◼   ► I think it's really cool that it's back.

00:29:31 ◼   ► And we talked about this at the time.

00:29:33 ◼   ► So, Pebble got bought by Fitbit and then Fitbit got bought by Google.

00:29:38 ◼   ► It's like nesting dolls of acquisitions over there.

00:29:41 ◼   ► And some of the core original group, including Eric Megavosky.

00:29:49 ◼   ► That's not right.

00:29:52 ◼   ► But I'm going to go with it.

00:29:54 ◼   ► Let me see.

00:29:54 ◼   ► I would go with Migikovsky.

00:29:58 ◼   ► Migikovsky.

00:30:00 ◼   ► Eric.

00:30:00 ◼   ► Our friend Eric.

00:30:01 ◼   ► Eric.

00:30:01 ◼   ► Eric.

00:30:02 ◼   ► Yes.

00:30:03 ◼   ► So, the firmware was open sourced by Google.

00:30:06 ◼   ► Eric funded these first batch of watches.

00:30:10 ◼   ► And they were effectively the second generation Pebble.

00:30:13 ◼   ► So, like, my review is of the original Pebble.

00:30:16 ◼   ► There was a revision to the black and white one.

00:30:19 ◼   ► There was a color version a little bit later on.

00:30:22 ◼   ► And so, I got the $149 Pebble 2 Duo, which is basically the old Pebble 2, which, again, I never had.

00:30:31 ◼   ► So, this has a 1.26-inch black and white e-ink display, or excuse me, e-paper display.

00:30:38 ◼   ► Plastic housing.

00:30:41 ◼   ► This thing weighs nothing, dude.

00:30:42 ◼   ► It is so lightweight.

00:30:44 ◼   ► Coming from an Apple Watch Ultra, my arm was just, like, flying around.

00:30:47 ◼   ► It was crazy.

00:30:49 ◼   ► I was, like, one of those tube people, you know?

00:30:53 ◼   ► You know the tube people?

00:30:54 ◼   ► The tube people.

00:30:55 ◼   ► You and the other guy.

00:30:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:57 ◼   ► No, the tube.

00:30:58 ◼   ► Tube people.

00:30:59 ◼   ► Oh.

00:31:01 ◼   ► Did you do a dad joke?

00:31:02 ◼   ► Yes.

00:31:04 ◼   ► Okay.

00:31:04 ◼   ► I tried.

00:31:05 ◼   ► No, it was good.

00:31:06 ◼   ► What are the tube people?

00:31:08 ◼   ► You know, there's, like, a fan in the bottom of it, and they, blah, blah, blah, blah, the tube around.

00:31:13 ◼   ► Oh, the one outside the car dealership.

00:31:15 ◼   ► Yes.

00:31:16 ◼   ► Yes, okay.

00:31:17 ◼   ► Yes.

00:31:17 ◼   ► And Jason Snell owns one, or a couple of them, and he puts them on top of his house for holidays.

00:31:21 ◼   ► Yes, yes.

00:31:22 ◼   ► Which is awesome.

00:31:24 ◼   ► So, that's how my arm was.

00:31:26 ◼   ► Super lightweight.

00:31:27 ◼   ► It's got 30-day battery life, they say.

00:31:29 ◼   ► Obviously, I've had mine for four days, so I can't test that.

00:31:32 ◼   ► It does step and sleep tracking.

00:31:35 ◼   ► Both are very basic.

00:31:38 ◼   ► And the step tracking, at least sort of, like, anecdotally, but I work on a step tracking app, so I'm pretty in tune with this.

00:31:45 ◼   ► It seems not as accurate as the Apple Watch, but, hey, it's something.

00:31:49 ◼   ► Okay.

00:31:50 ◼   ► The screen, for being so small, is quite sharp, and because it's black and white, the contrast is really good.

00:31:59 ◼   ► And it does, as you get into, like, third-party apps and watch faces, you know, there's dithering to make it, you know, sort of grayscale, quote-unquote.

00:32:06 ◼   ► It's pretty cool looking.

00:32:07 ◼   ► And this one is not a touchscreen.

00:32:09 ◼   ► It just has buttons.

00:32:10 ◼   ► So, on the left side, there's a back button.

00:32:13 ◼   ► And on the right side, there's up, select, and down.

00:32:17 ◼   ► And you learn pretty quickly how to, like, zip around the interface with the buttons.

00:32:22 ◼   ► And I think maybe because the screen is so small, or maybe because it's black and white, I never felt tension of, like, wanting to tap it or wanting to scroll on the screen.

00:32:33 ◼   ► It was like, oh, yeah, this thing uses buttons.

00:32:35 ◼   ► It's totally fine.

00:32:36 ◼   ► A couple other hardware things.

00:32:39 ◼   ► The included watch band.

00:32:40 ◼   ► So, I did, mine is white.

00:32:42 ◼   ► The band is white.

00:32:44 ◼   ► It's very similar to the Apple Watch Sport Band, except the mechanism, it's a 22, I guess, 22 millimeter lug.

00:32:54 ◼   ► So, you can put a bunch of different bands on it.

00:32:56 ◼   ► It's got a little clip that goes in there pretty easy.

00:32:58 ◼   ► But, boy, that watch band just smelled like death out of the box.

00:33:01 ◼   ► I don't know why.

00:33:02 ◼   ► It's better now.

00:33:04 ◼   ► But I definitely noticed it the first couple of days.

00:33:06 ◼   ► Okay.

00:33:08 ◼   ► And the last thing hardware-wise, because really the software is what this is about.

00:33:12 ◼   ► Hardware-wise, it's faster than I expected.

00:33:14 ◼   ► I sort of assumed that it would feel slow.

00:33:17 ◼   ► Like, you push a button, and you wait a beat, and then the thing happens.

00:33:24 ◼   ► It really seems relatively responsive.

00:33:29 ◼   ► I think part of that is, because you're tapping a button, like, if you tap a screen, like, if you're in a car with a slow touch screen, you tap the screen, and it doesn't react immediately, that feels really slow, right?

00:33:41 ◼   ► Because it's, like, direct manipulation.

00:33:44 ◼   ► But I do feel like pressing a button, like, you get some sort of buffer of forgiveness in there.

00:33:51 ◼   ► Does that make any sense?

00:33:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:53 ◼   ► Yes.

00:33:54 ◼   ► So, yeah.

00:33:58 ◼   ► But I think the thing to talk about is the software.

00:34:03 ◼   ► Right.

00:34:04 ◼   ► This is what I'm curious about.

00:34:06 ◼   ► Because, I mean, like, I made fun of the looks of the watch when you sent us a picture in the group chat.

00:34:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:12 ◼   ► No, it's nerdy.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Like, it's not a handsome watch.

00:34:16 ◼   ► But people wear all kinds of watches.

00:34:20 ◼   ► Yes.

00:34:20 ◼   ► And so, you know, this is a very computer-y, very nerdy-style watch.

00:34:26 ◼   ► But what I'm interested in is, like, how does it actually work?

00:34:30 ◼   ► Like, I get how it looks.

00:34:32 ◼   ► It's plasticky and super sharp screen, very boxy look.

00:34:37 ◼   ► I get all that.

00:34:38 ◼   ► But how is it as a smartwatch?

00:34:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:43 ◼   ► In 2013, it was pretty awesome.

00:34:47 ◼   ► Because there wasn't much like it.

00:34:50 ◼   ► In 2025, we know what a smartwatch is.

00:34:54 ◼   ► And look, a lot of that, I think, is credit to the Pebble.

00:34:58 ◼   ► Like, the Pebble was, I'm going to use the phrase, ahead of its time.

00:35:03 ◼   ► Like, it got some ideas right before anyone else was in the market.

00:35:07 ◼   ► And that's really interesting.

00:35:09 ◼   ► I think it speaks to the Pebble and the team behind it.

00:35:15 ◼   ► But now, it's decade-old roots really show.

00:35:21 ◼   ► And we need to take a sidebar here and talk about the ecosystem around the Pebble.

00:35:26 ◼   ► So when the Pebble went away, a bunch of folks, like, worked to keep it alive and keep the software library going.

00:35:37 ◼   ► And basically, all of that is now sprung back to life.

00:35:41 ◼   ► And so when you're scrolling through the store, which is on a companion iPhone app, some of those things that you scroll down is like, oh, this was last updated in 2014.

00:35:54 ◼   ► And, like, say, a weather app, if that required an API and it was, like, talking to the phone and getting the data and pushing it over Bluetooth, that API access may have been turned off eight years ago, ten years ago.

00:36:08 ◼   ► And that means the app, while still in the store, is no longer functioning.

00:36:14 ◼   ► And I do think Pebble, like, this new organization, needs to do some work in cleaning some of that stuff up, reaching out to those developers if they're still around, prompting them to upgrade, or saying, hey, we're going to delist your app if, you know, if it just straight up doesn't work.

00:36:31 ◼   ► I've tried several applications that just didn't do anything because they were missing, you know, web components that are long gone.

00:36:41 ◼   ► Which is a bummer, something that you and I have talked, in particular, I've talked a lot about over the years.

00:36:45 ◼   ► It's easy to preserve hardware.

00:36:48 ◼   ► It's much harder to preserve software.

00:36:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:53 ◼   ► What do they call it?

00:36:54 ◼   ► BitRot?

00:36:55 ◼   ► BitRot.

00:36:55 ◼   ► Is that, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:36:57 ◼   ► Yeah, big time.

00:36:57 ◼   ► Big time issue on the Pebble.

00:37:02 ◼   ► But when you find something that works, and don't hear what I'm not saying.

00:37:06 ◼   ► Like, there's a lot of stuff in there.

00:37:07 ◼   ► A lot of it works.

00:37:08 ◼   ► Some of it doesn't.

00:37:09 ◼   ► But when you find something that works, it's fun.

00:37:13 ◼   ► Like, this watch, and I'm sure part of it is the novelty that I'm playing with something that I last played with 12 years ago.

00:37:20 ◼   ► But it feels nerdy in a way the Apple Watch doesn't.

00:37:24 ◼   ► Because it lacks some of that polish, which we're going to talk about in a second.

00:37:28 ◼   ► It's kind of fun.

00:37:29 ◼   ► And you can kind of build your own watch.

00:37:33 ◼   ► So a big thing with later versions of the Pebble was the timeline.

00:37:39 ◼   ► And this was a way, kind of how glances were on the first version of the Apple Watch, a way to quickly get data across a bunch of different apps.

00:37:50 ◼   ► And so, by default, the timeline on the Pebble is your calendar.

00:37:56 ◼   ► So you hit the down button, and you see your calendar, and you scroll through your day's events, which I think are super important on an Apple Watch.

00:38:04 ◼   ► It's like, any watch face I use, I want the next calendar event on my wrist.

00:38:08 ◼   ► But third-party apps, or even other first-party apps, can insert data into the timeline.

00:38:16 ◼   ► So, for instance, if you are running a timer that gets inserted into the timeline, well, now that sounds like the stack on the current Apple Watch, right?

00:38:27 ◼   ► Where you have those widgets, similar ideas.

00:38:30 ◼   ► But again, the Pebble was doing this a long time ago, and the Apple Watch is caught up.

00:38:34 ◼   ► And that part is fun.

00:38:38 ◼   ► And it is, there's a pretty wide range of software.

00:38:42 ◼   ► The range surprised me.

00:38:44 ◼   ► But really where it's fun is third-party watch faces.

00:38:49 ◼   ► I have one, and I put a picture in the Discord.

00:38:53 ◼   ► It looks like a Casio watch.

00:38:55 ◼   ► I mean, look, the IP theft is a problem.

00:38:58 ◼   ► It's wild.

00:38:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:00 ◼   ► Which is probably why Apple hasn't done it.

00:39:04 ◼   ► But also, like, you have app review.

00:39:08 ◼   ► Like, you can weed this stuff out.

00:39:10 ◼   ► All of these things are installed via a Pebble app on the phone?

00:39:14 ◼   ► Yes.

00:39:16 ◼   ► Or from the watch itself?

00:39:18 ◼   ► The watch is effectively read-only.

00:39:22 ◼   ► Okay.

00:39:23 ◼   ► The stuff is coming from the phone.

00:39:27 ◼   ► Okay.

00:39:28 ◼   ► So, for instance, the Pebble can get notifications from iOS.

00:39:31 ◼   ► And when you get a new notification, so, you know, immediately, of course, I got an iMessage as soon as I put it on.

00:39:38 ◼   ► Great.

00:39:39 ◼   ► That came through.

00:39:40 ◼   ► But then maybe half an hour later, someone came to my front door.

00:39:44 ◼   ► So, I had a notification from my doorbell camera.

00:39:47 ◼   ► And once that had happened, I could go into the iPhone app and say, oh, I actually don't want notifications from Protect, the doorbell, the camera software I use.

00:39:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:58 ◼   ► And so, you have control over what comes in and what doesn't.

00:40:02 ◼   ► But because iOS is iOS, and I have not tried this with an Android phone, so I'm sure it's different there.

00:40:10 ◼   ► But with iOS, those notifications are read-only.

00:40:14 ◼   ► So, I can't reply to an iMessage.

00:40:16 ◼   ► I can't even see who's at my doorbell because the notifications that come over are text-only.

00:40:23 ◼   ► Yeah, they don't have any sort of image preview.

00:40:26 ◼   ► Right.

00:40:26 ◼   ► You get kind of like a little box where they would be.

00:40:30 ◼   ► And that's a bummer, right?

00:40:32 ◼   ► Like, it's really helpful if your camera goes off and you take a glance like, oh, you know, my spouse is home.

00:40:37 ◼   ► Or, oh, there's six dudes with masks on.

00:40:40 ◼   ► Like, that's a different situation.

00:40:42 ◼   ► That's why you have a doorbell, you know, with a camera in it.

00:40:45 ◼   ► And so, that is a limitation of this.

00:40:49 ◼   ► And part of that, you know, not being able to push images, like, I'm not quite sure if that's an Apple issue or Pebble issue.

00:40:55 ◼   ► But Apple has been, and I think the EU is looking at this or has looked at it, of making the iPhone more interoperable with other smartwatches.

00:41:07 ◼   ► Because the Apple Watch, right, it's first party.

00:41:08 ◼   ► It's blessed in ways that these others aren't.

00:41:11 ◼   ► But if you just want to see when a message comes in, or see when, you know, your timer goes off, then it's fine.

00:41:19 ◼   ► But it's that interactivity where things begin to break down a little bit.

00:41:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:41:24 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:41:24 ◼   ► Is this going to be like a daily wear thing for you?

00:41:33 ◼   ► Is this just a novel toy to play around with?

00:41:37 ◼   ► Or do you foresee a scenario where, if iOS becomes more interoperable with third-party watches, like, could this be your daily driver in the future at some point?

00:41:47 ◼   ► I think if there was interactivity, I could see me using it for stretches of time.

00:41:52 ◼   ► Like, really, I got it because I think it was an interesting tech story.

00:41:56 ◼   ► And, like, I always sort of have, like, this, like, slush fund of, like, cool tech stuff that we could talk about or write about.

00:42:01 ◼   ► It came out of that budget.

00:42:03 ◼   ► But also, like, I wanted to, like, I think it's really cool that it's back.

00:42:07 ◼   ► And that Eric, our boy Eric, and some other people are, like, bringing this brand back to life.

00:42:14 ◼   ► And so part of it was, like, getting on board with that.

00:42:16 ◼   ► Like, I got on board with a Kickstarter 12 years ago.

00:42:19 ◼   ► It's not going to replace my Apple Watch.

00:42:22 ◼   ► And I either wear my Apple Watch or I wear, I don't have any really nice watches, but a watch, you know, a more traditional watch that, you know, may go better in different scenarios.

00:42:32 ◼   ► But I'm going to keep my eye on it.

00:42:35 ◼   ► And I do plan, I don't know when, I don't want to make any promises about a timeline, but I do want to try it with Android.

00:42:41 ◼   ► I do have an Android phone floating around to see what that interactivity is like, to see if it's better there.

00:42:49 ◼   ► But it does make me wish that iOS was more open to third-party watches.

00:42:56 ◼   ► I think it should be, right?

00:42:57 ◼   ► I don't think it should be that the Apple Watch is on its own and everything else is so much worse because of software decisions.

00:43:07 ◼   ► I just think that's an unlevel playing field that, you know, maybe Apple will have to address at some point.

00:43:15 ◼   ► So, this is going back in a drawer for now?

00:43:19 ◼   ► Yeah, probably.

00:43:22 ◼   ► It's going to hang out, you know.

00:43:23 ◼   ► It'll be something I keep my eye on, though.

00:43:27 ◼   ► How do you charge it?

00:43:28 ◼   ► Oh, it's a great question.

00:43:30 ◼   ► So, it has pogo pins on the back.

00:43:32 ◼   ► You can't feel them.

00:43:34 ◼   ► Like, they're sort of recessed into the plastic.

00:43:37 ◼   ► And this is very similar to how Fitbits and, like, my daughter has a – what's the fitness watch brand that people like?

00:43:45 ◼   ► A Garmin.

00:43:47 ◼   ► Garmin.

00:43:47 ◼   ► Okay, yeah.

00:43:49 ◼   ► Most of those watches charge with pogo pins.

00:43:52 ◼   ► And so, there's a little – it's not even a puck.

00:43:54 ◼   ► It's, like, a little clip-on thing that snaps onto those pins and has a USB-C port on the side.

00:44:00 ◼   ► So, it charges over USB-C.

00:44:01 ◼   ► And really, with, like, 30-day battery life, if that's true, then I think having, you know, having a little thing that you just have, like, in your nightstand drawer and you plug into a cable every once in a while, not a big deal at all.

00:44:16 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:44:16 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:44:18 ◼   ► I think we're going to see some – maybe not in 2025 at this point, but I think in 2026, we are going to see that interoperability with iOS and smartwatches.

00:44:28 ◼   ► The code – I think, you know, 95Mac did an article a while back that some code snippets are already surfacing in 26.1.

00:44:36 ◼   ► So, they're working on it.

00:44:38 ◼   ► I think there's a pretty good possibility that that's going to be one of the features of 27.

00:44:44 ◼   ► like iOS 27 next year is going to be more compatible with third-party smartwatches, much to the enjoyment of not just Pebble, but Meta when it comes to, you know, the Meta Ray-Bands.

00:44:55 ◼   ► And all those kinds of accessories, really, should benefit from, you know, better notification access, easier pairing, like, all those kinds of things.

00:45:04 ◼   ► Yeah, this is a product that is not for me, but it's fascinating regardless.

00:45:09 ◼   ► And, I mean, the watch face customization stuff and the copyright infringement scenario, like, it's very reminiscent of Android.

00:45:18 ◼   ► Like, I spent some time testing Wear OS on the Pixel Watch earlier this year, and it's just wild, man.

00:45:25 ◼   ► You can go to the Play Store and get yourself some watch faces that look exactly like other real products or watch faces with Disney characters, watch faces with anime characters.

00:45:34 ◼   ► Like, there's all kinds of stuff in there.

00:45:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:36 ◼   ► And Google pretty much doesn't care.

00:45:38 ◼   ► And if anybody files a complaint, I guess they'll remove the app.

00:45:41 ◼   ► You know, they'll issue a takedown on the Play Store, but otherwise you can just go in there and find thousands and thousands of watch faces that are not exactly legal, I would say.

00:45:51 ◼   ► But this sounds pretty similar.

00:45:54 ◼   ► Like, you just got a Casio watch face that it's in no way an official one, and yet.

00:45:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:02 ◼   ► It's rumor roundup time, baby.

00:46:06 ◼   ► Saddle up, partner.

00:46:08 ◼   ► Oh, dude.

00:46:11 ◼   ► Ah, it finally pays off.

00:46:13 ◼   ► Listening to Upgrade every week finally pays off.

00:46:16 ◼   ► Or I could have gone with Yeehaw, but, you know.

00:46:19 ◼   ► Both are good.

00:46:21 ◼   ► I love both of them.

00:46:22 ◼   ► No, thank you.

00:46:23 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:46:23 ◼   ► Yes.

00:46:24 ◼   ► So we have some iPad stuff to talk about from Mark Gurman.

00:46:29 ◼   ► What is he, what is the wizard predicting?

00:46:31 ◼   ► The Oracle is predicting that OLED is going to come to all the displays.

00:46:41 ◼   ► Gurman says that Apple is working on OLED versions of the iPad Mini.

00:46:44 ◼   ► My God.

00:46:45 ◼   ► I really hope so.

00:46:47 ◼   ► The iPad Air, the MacBook Pro, and the MacBook Air.

00:46:50 ◼   ► We should be expecting the MacBook Pro and the iPad Mini to get OLED next year, 2026.

00:46:56 ◼   ► The iPad Air in 2027, and the MacBook Air 2028.

00:47:00 ◼   ► So the MacBook Air is still a ways off.

00:47:03 ◼   ► I'm guessing that that MacBook Air will also introduce some kind of redesign of the MacBook Air, given that they're doing a brand new display.

00:47:10 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:47:11 ◼   ► But yeah, next year, OLED iPad Mini.

00:47:14 ◼   ► And that's not all.

00:47:16 ◼   ► Because Gurman is also saying that the iPad Mini will become water resistant, just like the iPhone.

00:47:23 ◼   ► They're doing this, Stephen, for people like you who read a Kindle while in the bathtub.

00:47:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:29 ◼   ► And sometimes watch TV on an iPad in the bathtub.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Which is the most dangerous thing I do with my technology.

00:47:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:37 ◼   ► Yes.

00:47:38 ◼   ► Yes.

00:47:39 ◼   ► So are you happy about this possibility of a water resistant OLED iPad Mini next year?

00:47:45 ◼   ► Yeah, it'd be the perfect bath pad.

00:47:48 ◼   ► I mean, it'd be so good.

00:47:50 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:47:51 ◼   ► Let's start with OLED and then we'll come back to the water resistance because I have a bigger question there.

00:47:56 ◼   ► I mean, OLED would be such a clear win on any device, right?

00:48:02 ◼   ► And we're in this kind of weird space where like the MacBook Pro, for instance, is mini LED, which is really good.

00:48:11 ◼   ► But OLED has less blooming, better black levels, uses less power.

00:48:17 ◼   ► And we see how good the iPad Pro screen is with its tandem OLED.

00:48:23 ◼   ► They did a tandem right to bring the brightness up because OLED can struggle in brightness.

00:48:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:30 ◼   ► I don't know if this would be tandem OLED.

00:48:31 ◼   ► My guess is it wouldn't be.

00:48:33 ◼   ► And maybe the Mini and the Air, the iPad on the iPad side have lower brightness.

00:48:40 ◼   ► And maybe the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air are distinguished the same way.

00:48:46 ◼   ► But really, we're at a point where these screens are basically on every other product in these categories by other companies.

00:48:56 ◼   ► I mean, you can go get a pretty inexpensive PC laptop with an OLED display.

00:49:02 ◼   ► You can go get a Samsung tablet for less money with an OLED display.

00:49:06 ◼   ► Apple has been...

00:49:08 ◼   ► I mean, even when the iPhone 10 came out and it moved to OLED, people have been doing it for years, right?

00:49:15 ◼   ► So, I think it's definitely time.

00:49:17 ◼   ► And I think it makes everything better.

00:49:19 ◼   ► I mean, even my setup with a MacBook Pro and a studio display, like if the MacBook Pro is open and the screen saver is on, it looks night and day different, man.

00:49:30 ◼   ► Like my studio display is like gray light everywhere, right?

00:49:33 ◼   ► Because it doesn't have those dimming zones.

00:49:34 ◼   ► So, I think it would be a huge win.

00:49:37 ◼   ► And I think these products would really look good with OLED.

00:49:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:40 ◼   ► For me, especially an iPad Mini with OLED, but also the MacBook Pro with OLED.

00:49:46 ◼   ► I really cannot wait.

00:49:48 ◼   ► I think that iPad...

00:49:49 ◼   ► I think next year will be interesting for me when it comes to this kind of product size.

00:49:56 ◼   ► Because we're going to have an OLED iPad Mini, but also the folding phone that, if the rumors are right, when you fold it open, it's essentially kind of an iPad Mini.

00:50:06 ◼   ► So, I'll be...

00:50:08 ◼   ► I already...

00:50:09 ◼   ► I know myself.

00:50:10 ◼   ► I know that I will be so torn between an OLED iPad Mini and using the iPhone Fold as my iPad Mini, if that makes sense.

00:50:19 ◼   ► To the point where, realistically, it all comes down to the software experience.

00:50:23 ◼   ► Like, will an iPhone Fold be able to give you the same iPad experience at a small size that a proper iPad Mini can give you, right?

00:50:35 ◼   ► That's the question.

00:50:36 ◼   ► Like, how much of a small iPad is a folding phone when it's open, right?

00:50:41 ◼   ► That's the million-dollar question right now.

00:50:43 ◼   ► But with these two products on the horizon, I know we're going to be having this conversation.

00:50:50 ◼   ► We're going to be having this exact conversation in 10 months or something, 11 months, saying, oh, boy, that folding phone, but also that iPad Mini with OLED.

00:51:00 ◼   ► I mean, it's like the iPhone 17 Pro versus the iPhone 17 Pro and the iPhone Air tension that people feel, right?

00:51:09 ◼   ► It's like, oh, gosh, I love the iPhone Air, but it just doesn't...

00:51:11 ◼   ► For some people, it doesn't work for them.

00:51:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree that there's going to be some heartache there for people.

00:51:20 ◼   ► But, like, we talked about this on Upgrade.

00:51:23 ◼   ► Apple's the only company that makes hardware for its operating systems.

00:51:27 ◼   ► And so choice is good, right?

00:51:31 ◼   ► Like, these things should all be better.

00:51:32 ◼   ► There should be better choices.

00:51:35 ◼   ► And I think, I mean, looking at this OLED report, we're talking next year for the MacBook Pro and iPad Mini.

00:51:43 ◼   ► And that MacBook Pro OLED rumor has been there for years that it would be the M6 in 2026.

00:51:50 ◼   ► I feel like that's a lock.

00:51:51 ◼   ► The iPad Air the next year in 27.

00:51:54 ◼   ► And the MacBook Air in 2028.

00:51:59 ◼   ► The regular no-adjective iPad is not listed.

00:52:03 ◼   ► And honestly, I think that's fine.

00:52:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:06 ◼   ► They could potentially make that even cheaper, which would be good.

00:52:09 ◼   ► I think the cheaper that base iPad is, the better.

00:52:13 ◼   ► And it separates it from the Air, right?

00:52:16 ◼   ► Especially right now that they all look the same.

00:52:18 ◼   ► Unless you really care about a keyboard attachment.

00:52:22 ◼   ► Like, the iPad and the iPad Air, it's like, if you're just walking in a store, it's not exactly clear what you should get.

00:52:29 ◼   ► And maybe LCD and OLED would help with that.

00:52:32 ◼   ► And plus, it'd just be really cool.

00:52:34 ◼   ► It'd be really cool to have OLED everywhere.

00:52:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:37 ◼   ► Plus, that base model iPad, I mean, is mostly used where?

00:52:42 ◼   ► Like, in schools?

00:52:43 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:52:43 ◼   ► Or handed down to young children?

00:52:46 ◼   ► You know, children don't need OLED.

00:52:49 ◼   ► No.

00:52:50 ◼   ► Arguably.

00:52:50 ◼   ► They have great eyesight.

00:52:53 ◼   ► They don't need OLED.

00:52:56 ◼   ► But, yeah, I think this is something that I keep sort of pondering over the past couple of weeks.

00:53:05 ◼   ► I think Apple is gearing up for a pretty exciting product lineup over the next couple of years in hardware.

00:53:14 ◼   ► And I think it's going to be so interesting to see if that conversation that we've had with the iPad for years would also sort of extend to other products.

00:53:27 ◼   ► We'll be saying, boy, Apple hardware really is far ahead, but the software is behind.

00:53:33 ◼   ► Like, I'm trying to imagine if that potentially becomes a problem, especially if other companies, you know, like Google, for example, or Samsung are releasing pretty decent hardware, but also they're making really strong progress in AI features on their phones.

00:53:51 ◼   ► And, you know, and people seem to like those AI features.

00:53:54 ◼   ► Like, you know, when I talk to friends and they've seen the commercials on TV for, like, the magic, what's it called?

00:54:00 ◼   ► Magic photos or something on the Pixel phones.

00:54:03 ◼   ► You know, some AI features resonate with people.

00:54:07 ◼   ► And I wonder if maybe it all comes down to whatever's going to happen with Craig Federighi taking care of AI and software at Apple.

00:54:16 ◼   ► And I think WWDC 2026 will be pretty revealing from that perspective.

00:54:22 ◼   ► But yeah, when it comes to the hardware, I mean, sign me up.

00:54:27 ◼   ► Like, I look at this list, right?

00:54:30 ◼   ► And I think, out of these products, realistically, next year, I want to get an OLED MacBook Pro.

00:54:36 ◼   ► I want to get an iPad mini.

00:54:38 ◼   ► I want to get a folding phone.

00:54:39 ◼   ► So that's a pretty good sign for Apple, I think.

00:54:44 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's not like the hardware is outrunning the software.

00:54:48 ◼   ► It's like a new complaint.

00:54:49 ◼   ► It's a new flavor of it now.

00:54:50 ◼   ► But it's not like we haven't been there for a decade.

00:54:55 ◼   ► That water resistance.

00:54:58 ◼   ► Are you really going to use an iPad mini in the bathtub?

00:55:01 ◼   ► Like, are you actually doing it now?

00:55:03 ◼   ► Was that a bit?

00:55:05 ◼   ► No, on occasion, I will watch.

00:55:07 ◼   ► I mean, usually if I'm taking a bath, I'll read on the Kindle or maybe listen to something,

00:55:13 ◼   ► just have my phone, like, on the shelf or something.

00:55:16 ◼   ► But having...

00:55:18 ◼   ► I do watch some stuff, and I have, like, this tray that goes over the bathtub.

00:55:23 ◼   ► So I set my iPad Pro on the tray.

00:55:26 ◼   ► And boy, that feels just like one second away from disaster.

00:55:32 ◼   ► Yeah, from electrocution.

00:55:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:34 ◼   ► Yeah, well...

00:55:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:35 ◼   ► I think the iPad would die before me, but it would be bad, for sure.

00:55:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:43 ◼   ► You know, I have bounced back and forth, like many people, between the iPad mini and a bigger iPad.

00:55:51 ◼   ► I had...

00:55:51 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:55:51 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:55:52 ◼   ► I had the...

00:55:53 ◼   ► When they redid the iPad mini and made it good several years ago, I got one.

00:55:57 ◼   ► I used it for years, and then some hand-me-down iPad that one of my kids was using was at the end of its life.

00:56:05 ◼   ► And so I gave that kid my iPad mini and got a refurbished 11-inch iPad Pro, which I'm still using.

00:56:11 ◼   ► And I really like the 11-inch size, but I also like the mini.

00:56:14 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:56:15 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:56:16 ◼   ► Who knows what the future me will do?

00:56:19 ◼   ► But my biggest reaction was like, huh, iPads aren't waterproof.

00:56:24 ◼   ► Like, I know that, right?

00:56:26 ◼   ► Because I'm nervous about my iPad Pro over the tub.

00:56:28 ◼   ► But at the same time, I was like, why aren't they?

00:56:32 ◼   ► Right?

00:56:32 ◼   ► They're just...

00:56:33 ◼   ► Don't hear what I'm not saying.

00:56:34 ◼   ► They're just big phones!

00:56:36 ◼   ► Like, it is not...

00:56:39 ◼   ► They're not fundamentally different than an iPhone in terms of...

00:56:43 ◼   ► You know, they're not laptops, right?

00:56:45 ◼   ► With spinning fans and air vents and stuff.

00:56:51 ◼   ► And, you know, so one of these things in the report is that Apple is working on and actually has patented vibration-based speakers for this potential iPad mini.

00:57:11 ◼   ► And so this is similar to, like, if your TV has, like, a center speaker and what it's doing is it's vibrating the screen of the TV a little bit.

00:57:21 ◼   ► And that creates the sound waves.

00:57:22 ◼   ► You can do this a couple different ways physically with, like, small electromagnetics and that sort of thing.

00:57:30 ◼   ► And that could be attached to the chassis or the display.

00:57:34 ◼   ► And so the iPad mini, you know, moves a little bit and it creates sound.

00:57:38 ◼   ► My question would be, why can't you just seal the speakers like you do on the iPhone?

00:57:42 ◼   ► Maybe that's harder with bigger speakers.

00:57:45 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:57:46 ◼   ► If you crack open an iPhone, right, there's gaskets and adhesive and all of these things.

00:57:52 ◼   ► Maybe you could put that in an iPad.

00:57:55 ◼   ► Or maybe Apple has just done a patent here just as a defensive thing, right, which they do all the time.

00:58:02 ◼   ► I think the iPad Pro in particular, it'd be a bummer to go back in sound quality.

00:58:07 ◼   ► Like, if this meant a decrease in sound quality, I wouldn't want it.

00:58:10 ◼   ► But, you know, the iPad mini, that sounds fine.

00:58:13 ◼   ► It's not as good as the Pro.

00:58:14 ◼   ► And so maybe this could just swap in.

00:58:17 ◼   ► But it's interesting.

00:58:18 ◼   ► It's super interesting.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:21 ◼   ► I have something completely different.

00:58:25 ◼   ► from this topic before we go that I kind of wanted to brainstorm in the public.

00:58:30 ◼   ► So I am getting a review unit for the iPhone 17 Pro Max tomorrow.

00:58:36 ◼   ► Ooh.

00:58:36 ◼   ► And, yeah.

00:58:38 ◼   ► So I'm going to have my own personal iPhone Air and a review unit of the 17 Pro Max.

00:58:44 ◼   ► And now, obviously, this is the classic issue of folks who don't get review units on day one for the, like, original embargo, right?

00:58:55 ◼   ► How can you write about this stuff when it's been a month and these phones have been out for a while?

00:59:00 ◼   ► And I've been in that situation before and I've always found an angle, right?

00:59:04 ◼   ► And I think I know what I'm going to write about the iPhone Air, what my angle is going to be.

00:59:08 ◼   ► But I am curious if you have any questions or any ideas for how to compare these two big phones, I would say, the Air and the Pro Max, beyond, like, the classic, oh, are you happy that you have more cameras now?

00:59:25 ◼   ► The one that I'm thinking of is, and it sounds silly, but, like, the actual feel of the product.

00:59:33 ◼   ► Sure.

00:59:33 ◼   ► Like, how does it feel to go from an iPhone Air without a case to the very different industrial look and feel of the 17 Pro Max?

00:59:41 ◼   ► And I say that, but I've never actually held one yet.

00:59:45 ◼   ► So, do you have any sort of, like, ideas for me or questions or things that, if you could, you would like to test, but you haven't because you don't have two phones?

00:59:59 ◼   ► I mean, I do have two phones.

01:00:01 ◼   ► I have the 17 Pro and the Air still.

01:00:03 ◼   ► Oh, still?

01:00:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:05 ◼   ► Okay.

01:00:05 ◼   ► The Pro is my daily.

01:00:07 ◼   ► The Air is now, like, the top of my development stack.

01:00:09 ◼   ► And you're keeping it?

01:00:10 ◼   ► Yeah, past the return window.

01:00:12 ◼   ► Okay, okay, all right.

01:00:14 ◼   ► It's the reason I haven't written an iPhone Pro review.

01:00:16 ◼   ► I wrote an iPhone Air review and just talked about, you know, what it can mean for the future, but I haven't written an iPhone Pro review because I don't know how to, I don't know how.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Like, I actually have the same problem you do.

01:00:29 ◼   ► The only thing I can think about the Pro Max in particular, someone asked me about this actually recently of, like, you know, when did you go from the Max back to the regular Pro?

01:00:37 ◼   ► I did it a couple of years ago because as these phones have gotten bigger, the Pro Max crossed some sort of line where it was too big for me because it's, what, 6.9-inch screen now on the Pro Max?

01:00:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:00:49 ◼   ► It's big.

01:00:51 ◼   ► I mean, I went and held one in my local Apple store.

01:00:54 ◼   ► It's enormous.

01:00:55 ◼   ► The iPhone Air is actually pretty perfect in terms of screen size.

01:00:59 ◼   ► I really like it, but that's not a story, right?

01:01:02 ◼   ► This is the feeling.

01:01:03 ◼   ► So, yeah, I mean, I don't know.

01:01:08 ◼   ► And you also sort of have the challenge, and Jason's talked about this, of you're writing a review weeks or months after everyone else has.

01:01:15 ◼   ► And so, you covering the thermals or the sustained performance of this or that, or, oh, the USB-C speed is this versus that.

01:01:27 ◼   ► Like, none of that's interesting because it's all been done a hundred times.

01:01:32 ◼   ► So, it's a challenge.

01:01:33 ◼   ► It's a real challenge.

01:01:35 ◼   ► But, yeah, I am curious, as someone who's been using the Air now, you've been using the Air for a month, you know, will you be swayed?

01:01:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:46 ◼   ► What would it take for you to be swayed?

01:01:48 ◼   ► And that's an interesting angle.

01:01:49 ◼   ► Like, I've been using the iPhone Air for a month, and I just got the 17 Pro Max.

01:01:52 ◼   ► Like, how do I react to that?

01:01:54 ◼   ► That is interesting.

01:01:55 ◼   ► You're probably not going to care, but I think I'm going to try some gaming tests, especially because of the sustained performance.

01:02:02 ◼   ► Sure.

01:02:04 ◼   ► That, I think, is, you know, iOS can be pretty, pretty aggressive when it comes to throttling.

01:02:10 ◼   ► Now, there's this feature called, I don't know if you ever come across it, Stephen, game mode on iOS?

01:02:18 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:02:18 ◼   ► It, like, cranks things up and...

01:02:21 ◼   ► Cranks things up.

01:02:21 ◼   ► And fun fact, for the AI app that we built for my iPad Pro review, we are using game mode to boost the performance of the local AI as much as possible.

01:02:34 ◼   ► And this is a trick that I've seen other developers of non-game apps do, just enabling game mode to make sure that, you know, you're boosting as much of the CPU and GPU as possible without necessarily throttling the device immediately.

01:02:48 ◼   ► But I think it could be interesting to set up the same emulator or the same game from the App Store on both the iPhone Air and the 17 Pro Max and seeing what happens.

01:02:56 ◼   ► If you really push things to their limits, like you can, you know, download...

01:03:01 ◼   ► There's some games that let you...

01:03:03 ◼   ► And there are ways to monitor the performance of a game running on iOS.

01:03:08 ◼   ► OTJ got me into this thing called Metal HUD, which requires a Mac and a USB-C cable.

01:03:15 ◼   ► But you're basically showing a statistics overlay on top of any game running on the Metal backend, which is super fascinating because you can see the GPU time, you can see the frame rate, like you can see all sorts of stuff.

01:03:29 ◼   ► And so that could be an interesting angle.

01:03:31 ◼   ► Most people don't really use iPhones as gaming machines.

01:03:35 ◼   ► But at the same time, more people, more gamers are using iPhones now than they were two years ago because of emulators, because of these things that have come out.

01:03:45 ◼   ► So I think there's an interesting performance angle there.

01:03:49 ◼   ► And obviously, like local AI, but these are essentially the same chips.

01:03:53 ◼   ► More RAM.

01:03:55 ◼   ► Does the 17 Pro Max have more RAM than the iPhone Air?

01:03:58 ◼   ► I think it does.

01:03:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:00 ◼   ► And the throttling, the thermals, like it all comes down to that.

01:04:03 ◼   ► So how do you...

01:04:05 ◼   ► That's, you know, running a whole bunch of things on device from games to AI and seeing what happens with the throttling.

01:04:12 ◼   ► That, I think, is interesting.

01:04:13 ◼   ► And then, of course, what you said, like, I use the Air for a month.

01:04:16 ◼   ► I actually love it.

01:04:17 ◼   ► Now I just got this.

01:04:18 ◼   ► What now?

01:04:19 ◼   ► Sort of.

01:04:21 ◼   ► I can tell you that the one thing that I know I'm going to like is the speaker system.

01:04:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:25 ◼   ► It sucks listening to podcasts or music on the air.

01:04:28 ◼   ► It's pretty bad.

01:04:29 ◼   ► It's pretty bad.

01:04:31 ◼   ► Someone in the chat room, you know, said, like, what about from like a professional tool standpoint?

01:04:37 ◼   ► And I mean, when I hear that, I think about the cameras.

01:04:40 ◼   ► I think about like Tyler Stallman's work, right?

01:04:42 ◼   ► Something else that not only has it been covered, but, you know, been covered by people who are really tuned into some of that stuff.

01:04:49 ◼   ► But yeah, the, I will say just like in my usage of the phone, the vapor chamber makes a huge difference on the 17 Pro.

01:05:01 ◼   ► My previous phone, man, it was using wired CarPlay, like the phone would stop charging because it was getting too hot.

01:05:10 ◼   ► Like, I have not seen that a single time with the new one.

01:05:14 ◼   ► You can make it feel warm.

01:05:16 ◼   ► Like if you're doing a bunch of lock screen customization or, you know, during setup and install, like you can make it warm.

01:05:22 ◼   ► But it's really nothing like the previous phones.

01:05:27 ◼   ► I think they've really nailed that.

01:05:29 ◼   ► And again, German has reported that would be on the next iPad Pro potentially, which I think makes sense.

01:05:36 ◼   ► But yeah, it's, I think a personal angle is better than a technical angle at this point in the cycle.

01:05:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:44 ◼   ► Okay.

01:05:45 ◼   ► All right.

01:05:46 ◼   ► Well, thank you for the advice.

01:05:48 ◼   ► Of course.

01:05:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:50 ◼   ► I think that does it for this week.

01:05:53 ◼   ► Thank you so much for listening.

01:05:55 ◼   ► If you want to find links to stories we spoke about, check out the, the, your podcast player.

01:06:03 ◼   ► It's like in your hand right now.

01:06:04 ◼   ► The links are in there.

01:06:05 ◼   ► They're also on the website at relay.fm slash connected slash 576.

01:06:11 ◼   ► There you can leave feedback or follow up.

01:06:14 ◼   ► We have this really simple form on the website.

01:06:16 ◼   ► You can make it anonymous.

01:06:18 ◼   ► So if you know secret things, tell us secret things and we don't even have to know who you are.

01:06:23 ◼   ► You can also become a member and get connected pro the longer ad-free version of the show each and every week.

01:06:31 ◼   ► If you want to find more of Federico, make Mac stories, your homepage and your browser.

01:06:37 ◼   ► Why not?

01:06:38 ◼   ► What are you doing?

01:06:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:38 ◼   ► Let's go do it.

01:06:39 ◼   ► Or even better, get one of those turn, you know, the browser as, as an app thing on the Mac.

01:06:47 ◼   ► And just make an app that auto launches at login with Mac stories in it.

01:06:51 ◼   ► Why not?

01:06:52 ◼   ► Yes.

01:06:53 ◼   ► Do it.

01:06:53 ◼   ► Used to be called, used to be called fluid.

01:06:55 ◼   ► Fluid.

01:06:55 ◼   ► Remember fluid?

01:06:56 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:06:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:57 ◼   ► There's a bunch of them now.

01:06:58 ◼   ► Go do that.

01:07:00 ◼   ► Mike's not here, but you can find his writing at theenthusiast.net.

01:07:05 ◼   ► You can find my writing at 512pixels.net.

01:07:09 ◼   ► Federico and Mike and I all host a bunch of other podcasts.

01:07:13 ◼   ► You can find those details on our sites.

01:07:15 ◼   ► I do want to, if I can plug this upcoming episode of Mac Power Users, we did a developer

01:07:22 ◼   ► round table.

01:07:23 ◼   ► We had Casey Liss, Charlie Chapman, and James Thompson on the program to talk about the state

01:07:29 ◼   ► of iOS and really Apple development more generally in the year 2025.

01:07:35 ◼   ► It was a lot of fun.

01:07:36 ◼   ► That'll be out Sunday morning.

01:07:39 ◼   ► What's going on over at App Stories?

01:07:40 ◼   ► Anything fun coming up?

01:07:41 ◼   ► We record episodes on Monday now for the following Monday.

01:07:50 ◼   ► So when it's Thursday, I've already forgotten what we covered.

01:07:54 ◼   ► Let me see.

01:07:56 ◼   ► On App Stories, we...

01:07:59 ◼   ► Oh, yes.

01:08:00 ◼   ► Yes.

01:08:00 ◼   ► Speaking of browsers, we did an actual deep dive into all these so-called AI browsers that

01:08:09 ◼   ► have popped up.

01:08:10 ◼   ► and we actually used them and we came up pretty unimpressed.

01:08:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:17 ◼   ► So that's going to be out on Sunday if you are a member of App Stories Plus, otherwise

01:08:22 ◼   ► on Monday.

01:08:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:23 ◼   ► It was fun, but boy, those browsers are bad.

01:08:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:29 ◼   ► They seem like a kind of a nothing burger so far.

01:08:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:33 ◼   ► Yes.

01:08:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:34 ◼   ► So Sunday, there'll be lots of things for you to listen to from both of us.

01:08:38 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:08:38 ◼   ► Thank you so much for listening.

01:08:40 ◼   ► We will be back next week.

01:08:42 ◼   ► Until then, Federico, say goodbye.

01:08:44 ◼   ► Arrivederci.

01:08:46 ◼   ► Bye, y'all.

01:08:46 ◼   ► All right.

01:08:49 ◼   ► We're going to pick a title.

01:08:50 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:08:52 ◼   ► Bath Pad.

01:08:54 ◼   ► Bath Pad.

01:08:55 ◼   ► The Discord was mad that I wrote that as I said it, but sometimes you just got to play

01:09:01 ◼   ► the game, you know?

01:09:02 ◼   ► Yes.

01:09:02 ◼   ► You have to.

01:09:03 ◼   ► A good pod.

01:09:06 ◼   ► That's good.

01:09:07 ◼   ► I like a good pod.

01:09:09 ◼   ► Let's see.

01:09:12 ◼   ► What else do we have in here?

01:09:16 ◼   ► We have Buffer of Forgiveness.

01:09:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I really like that one.

01:09:20 ◼   ► Buffer of Forgiveness.

01:09:22 ◼   ► That, I think, wins for me.

01:09:25 ◼   ► Yeah, me too. I agree.

01:09:26 ◼   ► That'll be the title. Thank you, Discord.