00:00:00 ◼ ► I gotta tell you, it was slightly refreshing not having to keep up with Twitter and the livestream, but man, screw Twitter.
00:00:09 ◼ ► Yeah, can we talk about that for a second? Like, we've always had so much fun using Twitter, basically, like, you know, live tweeting the event and seeing everyone's reactions and retweeting all the funny stuff and getting all these, like, great comments from people and tweeting out little quips, like, you know, in real time about what's happening in the event.
00:00:26 ◼ ► And, you know, Twitter, I mean, Twitter is becoming a lot less of a fun place for lots of reasons, but one of them that's more recent is the, you know, when they took away the streaming API from third-party clients a couple of months ago now, I think.
00:00:40 ◼ ► It just sucks now, like, you know, you can still do it, so you can either use Twitter's official apps, which are terrible, especially on the Mac, where there's really no good option.
00:00:49 ◼ ► By the way, I know there's some, like, you know, WebView wrappers and stuff that wrap the Twitter website. Those suck, too. Sorry to the people who work those, but just Twitter's website sucks, so, you know, you're working with crap there.
00:00:59 ◼ ► So, you know, Twitter, you know, killed its own Mac app a while back now, and so, like, and they made it so third-party apps can't use streaming anymore.
00:01:07 ◼ ► And so what that means is you can still live tweet stuff on Twitter, but you have to, like, go keep hitting refresh on the timeline, like, you know, scrolling to the top and refreshing it and waiting and then seeing tweets pouring into big chunks.
00:01:18 ◼ ► Instead of, like, you could use people to just watch it kind of flow down as people are tweeting and everything. And so it just is way more cumbersome now.
00:01:25 ◼ ► It just kind of makes it a lot less fun, and it just adds to the overall problem of just Twitter in general being a lot less fun these days.
00:01:33 ◼ ► And I also noticed, like, there was a lot less traffic, like, a lot fewer people were live tweeting it this year or making comments about it.
00:01:40 ◼ ► It just seemed kind of like a ghost town, and, like, about, I don't know, about halfway through, I just kind of, I kind of just gave up, too. Like, I just kind of stopped.
00:01:48 ◼ ► It just wasn't fun on Twitter this time. I'm not sure I'm going to do it in the future.
00:01:52 ◼ ► Yeah, I tried using TweetDeck. It was slightly better than just seeing it come in random chunks from Tweetbot, but only slightly. And the whole Compose workflow in TweetDeck is hilariously bad and is completely contrary to doing anything quickly.
00:02:10 ◼ ► And so, yeah, hot takes were just not hot this year. There were no hot takes. And that made me sad because, I mean, as much as, on the one side, I know several people at Apple.
00:02:22 ◼ ► I know they work hard on this stuff. To throw out a hot take is kind of obnoxious on my part, but it's part of the fun, man.
00:02:30 ◼ ► It's just kind of poke fun at it and have a blast just kind of making jokes, just like you said, Marco, and, you know, catching each other's jokes and playing off each other's jokes.
00:02:39 ◼ ► And I don't know, I just always enjoyed that. And it wasn't always snarky, but a lot of times it was snarky.
00:02:44 ◼ ► It's an event. You know, it's almost like our sports games. People like me who don't have much sports affinity, this is our sports game.
00:02:53 ◼ ► It's like, you know, similar to how people live, blog, and tweet, and face sports games. This is our version of that.
00:03:03 ◼ ► And this is our community getting together to have some fun and watch this event together and comment on it. And, you know, yeah, we're occasionally snarky, but it's mostly just in good fun.
00:03:12 ◼ ► And it used to be this fun event, and now it's hard to have fun when it's this white Nazi platform that keeps making its apps worse.
00:03:25 ◼ ► - I'm trying to think of if the tweet volume was down. I think it might've been. I'm comparing it to WWDC in my head. WWDC is one of the few times where very often I just can't read all the tweets because there are so many during the keynote.
00:03:38 ◼ ► And I'm usually not reading Twitter much during the keynote itself, but by the time it's over, like the Twitter API only lets you go back so far.
00:03:44 ◼ ► So even though I'm a Twitter completionist at a certain point, it's like you can't, you missed it. Like it's off the end of the thing. It's like, oh well.
00:03:51 ◼ ► But this time when I went back to read all the tweets that I was, I couldn't read Twitter during the thing. I tweeted a few times in bits and pieces, but I couldn't actually read Twitter during the thing. It was too long or whatever.
00:04:02 ◼ ► Anyway, I caught up on all the tweets that happened during the keynote. I'm already caught up on them. I read them all. They didn't go off the end.
00:04:08 ◼ ► Even tweets that started before the event began are still in my timeline. So it just seems like that in the people that I follow, there were fewer tweets during this event than in the past. Definitely fewer than WWDC and I think probably fewer than most phone events.
00:04:25 ◼ ► I have to also wonder how much of that was the fact that like every single thing leaked, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a little bit.
00:04:31 ◼ ► But still, this is the iPhone event. This is a big deal. This is not a small event that no one's watching. Even with a lot of things leaking, this is still a really big deal with tons of people.
00:04:43 ◼ ► I really don't want to start on a down note and then I brought up something that's downer. So let's talk about something that makes at least one of us happy, usually three of us. Let's talk about some follow-up.
00:04:56 ◼ ► I can't even believe we're doing a follow-up on an event thing. We normally do no follow-up on event shows.
00:05:10 ◼ ► This item is somewhat of a sound because I thought it was funny. The last show I did, I misquoted it because it's hard to do it on the fly, but I was doing a reference to the old article on The Onion where the headline is "F everything" but they don't say "F".
00:05:25 ◼ ► "F everything, we're doing five blades." The funny exaggeration of the war of adding blades to razors that later came to pass when many years later they actually did start selling razors with five blades.
00:05:37 ◼ ► So I said, "F everything, we're doing five cameras." Apparently Nokia, there's some sort of leak of a Nokia phone that actually has five cameras in the back of it, which isn't that ridiculous because there is that light field cameras that use multiple cameras.
00:05:53 ◼ ► But I don't think this is a light field camera. I think it's just literally five cameras. So it's pretty silly, but just like the razor blade thing, apparently someone is actually planning to do this because why not?
00:06:05 ◼ ► But the most important piece of follow-up, which Marco will inevitably cut because he's a mean, mean, mean man. Phil has used the word "memoji" during the keynote and he called it "memoji" and I feel completely and utterly vindicated now.
00:06:27 ◼ ► I was excited by it. At a certain point there was an opportunity to say "blowaway" like very early on. There was an opportunity to say "blowaway, rethink this is" and then it was an adjective coming and they didn't say "blowaway".
00:06:38 ◼ ► I'm like, "Oh, they finally broken the habit, but not more than like 30 seconds later blowaway." So you just can't avoid it. It's everywhere.
00:06:51 ◼ ► However, we did get a customer satisfaction instead of customer sat, which I was very pleased by.
00:06:56 ◼ ► So, see, things are already on the up and up. So, all right, we should probably just dive right in and talk about the September event.
00:07:02 ◼ ► Oh, I've left you a really clean edit point. Now you're definitely going to cut follow-up. That's terrible. Oh, man.
00:07:07 ◼ ► So, the September event has happened and we knew most of what was going to happen, which seems to be a common theme lately, which is too bad.
00:07:18 ◼ ► Well, I wouldn't necessarily say we knew most of it. I mean, we knew a lot of the stuff that was announced.
00:07:25 ◼ ► We knew a lot of the hardware basics of, you know, here's like the screen sizes of these new phones and watches that are coming out.
00:07:33 ◼ ► But we didn't know a lot of the software stuff. And I think kind of more importantly, we didn't know what wasn't going to be announced in this event.
00:07:43 ◼ ► Because there was a whole lot of stuff. I mean, like, you know, I read that comically long list last episode of like the things that we expect to happen this fall from Apple.
00:07:49 ◼ ► And, you know, they made it through maybe a quarter of it in this event. And we knew that was probably not going to happen all in one place.
00:08:01 ◼ ► But we did, though, because they found time between the last show and this show to leak more stuff.
00:08:06 ◼ ► But they put up their sitemap early, the sitemap early, and on the sitemap were links and URLs and stuff.
00:08:13 ◼ ► And from that, you could surmise that if something doesn't appear in the sitemap, it's not going to be announced.
00:08:18 ◼ ► And everyone did surmise that and said, oh, I guess no iPads today because there's no iPad.
00:08:22 ◼ ► So it confirmed the names, which we had rumored before. But now we got confirmed by all the sitemap essentially.
00:08:28 ◼ ► And we'll talk about the names a little later. But what we said last show, what the rumors were last show, those are the actual names confirmed by the sitemap.
00:08:35 ◼ ► And we knew what was going to be released. We obviously we were all expecting no Macs, but I was surprised to see no iPads because they weren't in the sitemap and they weren't in the keynote ditto for AirPods, AirPower and all sorts of other stuff.
00:08:53 ◼ ► Like, no, this is not like deep industrial espionage, like they're putting things up on the public web too soon.
00:08:59 ◼ ► And it seems dumb, but I'm sure they'll figure it out maybe next time they'll do better.
00:09:11 ◼ ► And for me to basically it was kind of disappointing to already know what was going to be announced.
00:09:16 ◼ ► And Apple itself at the top of the show said we're going to talk about two products today.
00:09:20 ◼ ► Not that we all didn't already know that from the sitemap, but they just like double confirmed it to manage expectations.
00:09:26 ◼ ► Which I thought was smart and I do wonder if they added that in because they know how much actually leaked.
00:09:30 ◼ ► So it all started, other than this web map link or whatever it is, but it really started in my mind for, I don't know, maybe half an hour, less than that.
00:09:43 ◼ ► No, it was 10 minutes before the show. Tim tweeted something very curious and everyone got really confused.
00:09:54 ◼ ► And we all were kind of cackling thinking, "Oh man, I guess he was trying to send a text message and oh, haha old people, lol."
00:10:02 ◼ ► And then the intro video happened, which was entirely about getting something to the keynote as quickly as possible.
00:10:16 ◼ ► Everyone is going to write in and tell me how wrong I am and blah blah blah blah blah, "Oh, so stupid, blah blah blah."
00:10:26 ◼ ► It was a little stupid, but it was stupid in the dad humor way that Apple stuff usually is.
00:10:32 ◼ ► So not stupid as like, "Oh groan, I never want to think about that again," like the YouTube finger touch.
00:10:39 ◼ ► But it's more like, "Oh, that was kind of a dumb, cheesy, but fun video for an intro to a corporate event."
00:10:45 ◼ ► It was fine. I thought it was kind of a funny gag that the deleted tweet was actually an intended thing here.
00:10:54 ◼ ► That to me was the best part. The actual film itself I thought was a little cheesy, but otherwise fine.
00:11:01 ◼ ► I think there was a very interesting part of it though. I'm sure we'll get to the lack of air power later,
00:11:12 ◼ ► But turns out in the video it sure looked like the lead character was saying "Hey Siri" into her AirPods.
00:11:31 ◼ ► And one of the rumored features of the new AirPod update is always listening "Hey Siri."
00:11:37 ◼ ► So it seems like they made this video with the intention of releasing these new AirPods by now,
00:11:51 ◼ ► There's only two things that I could possibly, like, rub me a little bit the wrong way about the video.
00:12:01 ◼ ► Well, the first is it didn't have anything to do with any of the stuff that was announced.
00:12:06 ◼ ► There was no throughline, there was no theme, there was no connection, it was just like,
00:12:10 ◼ ► yes, during the presentations the presenter uses a clicker, and this was a Mission Impossible thing,
00:12:15 ◼ ► but nothing on the show, nothing in the event had to do with the clicker or Mission Impossible or anything like that.
00:12:32 ◼ ► It'll come back to me at some point in the show, but anyway, I thought the, oh, here it is, I got it.
00:12:37 ◼ ► The second thing is, this, like, the videos look good, and they spend time and money on them, right?
00:12:45 ◼ ► One of the things I tweeted when I saw the intro video was, I think this is the first Apple intro video to include stunt work,
00:12:53 ◼ ► because the person, like, jumps over the railing of the stairs in one of the big Apple buildings, right,
00:12:59 ◼ ► presumably onto some kind of, you know, air mat that's off-screen or whatever, a bunch of cardboard boxes.
00:13:05 ◼ ► Stunt work! Like, I was trying to look and see, is that a stunt person or did they get the actor to actually do it?
00:13:09 ◼ ► Anyway, expensive. Done well, shot well, shot on Apple's campus, you know, just very interesting, and a lot of money is spent.
00:13:20 ◼ ► And the dad humor part of it that Marco always kind of groans at and rolls his eyes, like, oh, you know, it's not that funny, whatever.
00:13:26 ◼ ► Like, you can just see people in a room saying, what are we going to do with the intro video for this one?
00:13:29 ◼ ► It's like, what can you think of that's funny? And someone's like, I know, Tim's Clicker, and we'll do a Mission Impossible thing.
00:13:35 ◼ ► But the whole point is, there is a bunch of people gathered around to come up with an idea for an intro video that they're going to spend a ton of money on,
00:13:52 ◼ ► Is this really going to cause a problem if someone's not going to get their bonus because they spent $2 million on an intro video that wasn't that funny?
00:14:16 ◼ ► The overall theme and execution were, you know, middle of the road and just fine, and there was nothing embarrassing about it.
00:14:30 ◼ ► It has to be, like, dramatic, meaningful, connected to the thing in the show, not cost so much money that I feel like they wasted it.
00:14:52 ◼ ► It really, really was. Especially, I mean, I could see somebody being like, "Well, that's kind of..."
00:14:57 ◼ ► Insensitive isn't the word I'm looking for, but of poor taste given all the leaks that have been happening recently.
00:15:01 ◼ ► But I think leaning into it a little bit, whether that was deliberate or not, I thought it was great. I loved it.
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00:16:56 ◼ ► It wouldn't surprise me. He was a little bit dry. I thought, I heard a lot of moaning about how boring he was.
00:17:13 ◼ ► I personally think the watch was the thing I am most excited for and most impressed by.
00:17:23 ◼ ► But it seems like I'm going to have to. Especially since neither of you two numbskulls really believe in the Apple Watch anymore.
00:17:49 ◼ ► I did a little experiment earlier tonight and I took a piece of twine and wrapped it around my wrist and measured my wrist to be pretty much exactly 7 inches around.
00:18:06 ◼ ► Okay. There's going to be a lot of joke potential here and I'm just going to blow right past it.
00:18:10 ◼ ► Alright. Mine is 6.75 and that is considered pretty average and I can wear a lot of very common watch sizes very comfortably.
00:18:19 ◼ ► No way. Maybe my twine was stretched or something. I tried very hard because admittedly twine was not the best material to use but it was the first thing I had around.
00:18:45 ◼ ► And so I am really worried about how this is going to look on a watch that's 2mm bigger.
00:18:52 ◼ ► Which is kind of ridiculous because especially to an American, 2mm is effectively nothing to...
00:19:22 ◼ ► Like for me, a 2mm watch size increase, that's enough to make a difference between whether it fits my wrist or not.
00:19:38 ◼ ► The reason I bring up that my wrist is 7 inches is because if you look at the Apple Watch website,
00:19:44 ◼ ► which I should have had handy but I do not so I will stall, and just say that when you go to like buy one,
00:20:02 ◼ ► Well, and the reality is like, you're probably, so it sounds like you and I have very similar sized wrists,
00:20:07 ◼ ► and there's some variation like whether the top of your wrist is flat or not, so you can't go quite by, you know,
00:20:24 ◼ ► You know, I very well might, for my future watches, I might switch down to the new 40 size.
00:20:35 ◼ ► between different watch shapes in general. Like, you know, there's a couple of like, you know,
00:20:39 ◼ ► kind of size classes common in watches. 40 millimeter is probably the most common size class for most watches these days.
00:20:45 ◼ ► But you can't compare like, if you wear a 40 of like a round watch, maybe a 42 of a square watch might look similar, you know.
00:21:01 ◼ ► and then you wear another one with a company that uses shorter lugs, or one that has, you know,
00:21:06 ◼ ► basically a thick margin like a big wide bezel around the face, or one that has a thinner bezel around the face.
00:21:11 ◼ ► Those all will like visually read differently, and they will look different, they will land on your wrist differently.
00:21:17 ◼ ► So this is the kind of thing that I strongly suggest, you know, it's very similar to the first Apple Watch when it was first released,
00:21:24 ◼ ► because the sizes are now different. I suggest for anybody who's looking to buy one of these things,
00:21:29 ◼ ► if at all possible, if you can wait, try them on in the store first before you pick a size.
00:21:36 ◼ ► Because it's really hard to ever predict with just like doing research ahead of time, or like just seeing pictures on the internet.
00:21:43 ◼ ► It's really hard to ever predict how a watch will fit you, especially if you're kind of maybe between two sizes like we are here.
00:21:49 ◼ ► So I strongly suggest see these in person, try them on in the store before you order one.
00:22:00 ◼ ► because you won't be able to guess very accurately how well these will fit because they're now a different size.
00:22:08 ◼ ► Yeah, so the 40mm watch, Apple says the band fits 130-190mm wrists, the 44mm is for 145-220.
00:22:25 ◼ ► 7 inches is 177.8mm, so I am about 180mm, which would be at the top end of what the 40 is supposed to be able to handle,
00:22:36 ◼ ► and toward the lower end, but a little more buffer on what the 44 is supposed to be able to handle.
00:22:41 ◼ ► So the reason that I'm doubly stressing about this is that not only do I have, you know, I've always had the bigger watches,
00:22:51 ◼ ► But the good news to cut a little bit forward in the keynote is that the bigger watch band,
00:23:00 ◼ ► the existing 42mm bands will fit the 44mm watch, if I understand how things played out correctly.
00:23:13 ◼ ► But what happens if you or I, Marco, or whomever, decides to go from the big guy to the little guy?
00:23:23 ◼ ► So all of my watch bands, of which I don't have that many, I probably have four or five,
00:23:27 ◼ ► and to be honest, only a couple are Apple watch bands, the rest were like cheap Amazon knockoffs,
00:23:39 ◼ ► but I am deeply worried in the first-worldiest of first-world problems that the 40 might be the better fit for me.
00:23:56 ◼ ► It also, it is thinner, and you know, so we were speculating last week when we saw that leaked marketing image,
00:24:25 ◼ ► They didn't quote a size or a depth for that, but the images make it look like it's about the same,
00:24:31 ◼ ► so we probably don't have to worry about like, you know, cheating by putting more back there or anything like that.
00:24:35 ◼ ► So it does look like it is noticeably thinner, but it's still not a super thin watch as watches go.
00:24:43 ◼ ► But that also, again, that's gonna make it wear a little bit thicker or a little bit larger or a little bit differently
00:25:00 ◼ ► We'll all know, like roughly, people who actually have these things and will be able to actually say like,
00:25:13 ◼ ► He actually was at the hands-on area and tweeted a picture of both watches on his wrist.
00:25:25 ◼ ► it's a little bit of like an optical illusion because his arm is a little bit bigger up there.
00:25:29 ◼ ► And then the, what I believe to be the 42 millimeter in its standard position, presumably that is his actual 42 millimeter watch.
00:25:42 ◼ ► Also, like I mentioned earlier, like with certain watches, like one of my favorite brands is Nomos.
00:25:47 ◼ ► They're a pretty popular brand these days. Nomos watches, their millimeter size seems small compared to most of their watches.
00:25:55 ◼ ► Like they have a very popular line that like one of the sizes is 37 and a half millimeters.
00:26:00 ◼ ► But it has a very, very thin bezel. So it has like a very thin margin in CSS terms, basically.
00:26:06 ◼ ► And when you look at that on a wrist, even though it's 37 and a half, it looks good on wrists that,
00:26:17 ◼ ► What you're looking at really is the dial and the size of a dial with a super thin bezel looks visually like a larger watch with a regular size bezel.
00:26:26 ◼ ► That same effect looks like it's happening here, especially in Ben Muharren's tweet picture here,
00:26:31 ◼ ► where even though the watch itself, the new watch, isn't that much bigger footprint wise,
00:26:38 ◼ ► effectively it has a larger bezel because you're not seeing as much screen margin there.
00:26:43 ◼ ► Like the stuff on the screen is going all the way to the edges. So visually it's reading like a much larger watch.
00:26:48 ◼ ► So looking at this picture, I would say that is substantially bigger than the old one, at least visually.
00:26:58 ◼ ► Yeah. So the thing of it is, is that I'm, and we can maybe talk about this later, so no commentary from you guys necessary at the moment,
00:27:11 ◼ ► And if that's the case, I would really like to order in advance, but I don't want to just flush $500, which we'll also talk about in a moment.
00:27:20 ◼ ► I don't want to flush $500. So what do I do? Like, I don't want to try to do it in store on day one.
00:27:26 ◼ ► So do I, am I that guy and I order one of each and just return the one I don't like, which is really wasteful.
00:27:33 ◼ ► And I don't think it's like a kind thing to do. It's certainly allowed, but it just seems wrong to me.
00:27:43 ◼ ► And this is, again, I recognize this is the first worldiest of first world problems, but I don't know, man.
00:27:49 ◼ ► I wish there was better tools that you could like print out of a faux Apple watch, which somebody put together
00:27:55 ◼ ► when the original one came out, you know, but it would be cool if Apple did that, you know, like make a PDF that you could print,
00:28:00 ◼ ► that you could cut out really delicately and put on your wrist to see how it looks. Or somebody make that for me.
00:28:11 ◼ ► You don't need to. Why do you need to have it on day one? You didn't even need to watch.
00:28:15 ◼ ► You said I wasn't going to buy a watch and all of a sudden you need to have it on day one.
00:28:25 ◼ ► Yeah, so one of the things I put in there was a link to, was it also Ben Maharn? I don't remember.
00:28:31 ◼ ► Someone's tweet had a picture of the watches from the side showing the Series 3 and the Series 4, both in, I assume, the big size,
00:28:42 ◼ ► You know, so there is a measurable difference, although I'm still not entirely sure what Apple is measuring,
00:28:47 ◼ ► whether they're measuring the lump to the screen or they're just measuring the metal part.
00:28:56 ◼ ► Yes, they're measuring the top of the screen to the bottom of the case, not counting the lump.
00:29:04 ◼ ► So, but in the side view, again, this is like less than a millimeter difference. It's like 0.7 millimeters.
00:29:13 ◼ ► Also, take a look at this image we'll put in the show notes in this tweet with them from the side.
00:29:18 ◼ ► This is from a tweet where, let me see if I can hit the back button. Finally, we're saying that the difference is noticeable.
00:29:26 ◼ ► Like you will not be confused if you gave these two watches and said, hey, which one is thicker?
00:29:33 ◼ ► Like the picture was in a weird angle, whatever. This is not a weird angle. This is pretty much dead on sideways.
00:29:37 ◼ ► As another picture, I will also put in the show notes from Apple's website showing just the Series 3 from the side.
00:29:44 ◼ ► The trick is, and I just measured this with like Xscope, the digital crowns are basically the same size between the phones.
00:29:51 ◼ ► You know, at least in pixels in this image, right? And so the digital crown, you know, is a little bit taller than the metal part of the case in both the phones.
00:30:00 ◼ ► Well, then look how much phone there is left below the digital crown in the Series 3 versus the Series 4.
00:30:06 ◼ ► And again, look at the second picture in the show notes. There is a lot of case below the Series 3 crown.
00:30:13 ◼ ► There is substantially less case below the Series 4 crown. Is that where all .7 millimeters went away?
00:30:20 ◼ ► So it's not, I don't think the phone is as thin as I thought it was going to be, but it is definitely noticeably thinner.
00:30:26 ◼ ► You keep saying phone before anyone writes you. You keep saying phone instead of watch. I'm with you, but just definitely not.
00:30:30 ◼ ► Yes, we all know we're talking about watches. Sorry. Yeah, it's definitely noticeably thinner.
00:30:34 ◼ ► I also think maybe the lump is thinner too. If they don't give lump measurements, it's hard to tell.
00:30:39 ◼ ► But yeah, I feel like it will sit on your wrist in a different way. It remains to be seen.
00:30:46 ◼ ► Like, I'm going to have to go to the store and try it on. If I get one of these, and the prices are scaring me away,
00:30:51 ◼ ► but if I do get one of these, I would definitely have to try it on because I'm in the same situation.
00:30:55 ◼ ► I don't think I could get away with the big one. I think I might have to go on to the small one.
00:30:59 ◼ ► And also, by the way, seeing this side by side with the Series 3, I think just reinforces how incredibly ugly the Series 3 was.
00:31:07 ◼ ► I think we're going to look back on the Series 3 with its giant, thick case and its huge, ugly red dot as just a real low point of Apple design.
00:31:17 ◼ ► Well, the other thing is that, I mean, this is not a design thing. This is more of a tech thing.
00:31:21 ◼ ► But this has happened with the phones over the years. You can't go back to the one that had the little sharp-edged, square screen with huge borders around it.
00:31:31 ◼ ► It's OLED, so you can't really tell where the screen ends, but you look at them now and you're like, "What were they wasting all that space on the Series 0 through 3 watches for?"
00:31:40 ◼ ► Like, the screen is just this little postage stamp in the middle of the thing, whereas now the Series 4 is like, "Ah, finally, the screen can actually fill the face of the watch,"
00:31:48 ◼ ► instead of being this tiny square that is in the middle of the thing. That's the big difference.
00:32:01 ◼ ► Yeah, I know, but it lets them fill every nook and criss. If you don't have them, you can't bring the screen to the edges.
00:32:06 ◼ ► Otherwise, what do you do with the corners? You'd have this sharp-edged corner touching the rounded edge of your thing, and that's no good.
00:32:13 ◼ ► Yeah, a few minutes using the simulator so far, and I already immediately understand why the Apple Watch is not round,
00:32:21 ◼ ► because these rounded corners are now cutting into all my interfaces and everything looks terrible,
00:32:30 ◼ ► All right, so let's talk about some of the features. I think the most interesting feature that I heard,
00:32:40 ◼ ► other than the bigger screen and the new complications, but the thing that I perhaps expected the least was the EKG/ECG.
00:32:48 ◼ ► I guess it's the same thing, just they use a different acronym for it for whatever reason.
00:32:58 ◼ ► So it's more than just how many times your heart is pumping, but it's the way in which it's pumping, the rhythm of it.
00:33:06 ◼ ► And if I understood the keynote correctly, and I haven't had the time to go back and rewatch, there's a new sensor on the back.
00:33:14 ◼ ► So there's an electrode, or is it one or two electrodes? It doesn't really matter. Some amount of electrodes on the—
00:33:18 ◼ ► It looks like there's two on the back, and then it also uses the digital crown as a third.
00:33:23 ◼ ► That's why they had to get rid of the red dot. They would have kept it, but they needed the metal contact.
00:33:33 ◼ ► So, yeah, I think this is super cool. I, to my knowledge, don't have any heart issues of any kind, but this is still awesome.
00:33:46 ◼ ► And in fact, there was a video, which I don't—they didn't play it during the keynote, and I'll have to dig up a link to it,
00:33:52 ◼ ► but there's a video where they do kind of like a "Dear Apple" like they did last year with Kyle's the Grey.
00:34:00 ◼ ► But they talk about all these people who had random heart issues that were unexpected, and that the watch caught them.
00:34:12 ◼ ► So I think this is super cool, and what's perhaps even more interesting about it is that it's FDA approved.
00:34:19 ◼ ► As, you know, in whatever tier—and I am so far out of my comfort zone right now—but whatever tier of EKG this is,
00:34:25 ◼ ► so this is, I guess, like an EKG Lite or something like that, but the FDA has acknowledged it as the real deal.
00:34:31 ◼ ► Which makes me wonder, you know, I've heard rumblings of some insurance companies paying for Apple Watches for their subscribers
00:34:47 ◼ ► You know, this could make it even more appealing for insurance companies to perhaps fund an Apple Watch.
00:34:51 ◼ ► So maybe I should just wait on an Apple Watch to see if my sweet, sweet insurance provider that I'm paying a fortune for
00:35:03 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, I think to me, like the heart stuff on the—so, you know, last year they added the—I think it was last year when they added the
00:35:10 ◼ ► notifications for if your heart rate was too high for what you appeared to be doing, which, you know, that already helped a bunch of people.
00:35:18 ◼ ► This year they added a notification for your heart rate if it's too low for what you appear to be doing, like if it's suspiciously low.
00:35:24 ◼ ► And then, you know, this new ECG kind of sensor, that allows them to do atrial fibrillation or AFib detection.
00:35:31 ◼ ► That is—the combination of these things, this is huge, because, you know, heart problems like this, things like AFib are extremely common.
00:35:40 ◼ ► Like, lots of people have these things or might have these things or might have this happen to them.
00:35:48 ◼ ► I mean, you know, I'm, you know, I'll call Apple out on anything, you know, dumb they do or anything that's overblown.
00:36:01 ◼ ► And it does seem like, you know, the, you know, it isn't like a full-blown ECG like you could get like in a lab or not in a doctor's office, but it's something, you know.
00:36:11 ◼ ► The FDA approval appears to be a fairly, like, low-class approval by what people are saying.
00:36:24 ◼ ► They kind of blew by that quickly, but they said something in the keynote where it's only launching in the U.S. for these new heart features and launching in the rest of the world, like, you know, sometime.
00:36:33 ◼ ► They didn't give a date for the rest of the world, but they said they were working on it.
00:36:43 ◼ ► And even if it turns out to be, you know, not as amazing as, like, full-blown version of these things would be, it's still on your wrist all the time on a device that you have anyway and a device that is fairly affordable, too.
00:37:02 ◼ ► And I think this is way more significant than things like the Breathe Face or the Stand Reminders.
00:37:14 ◼ ► And the affordability and the always-on things, like, that's relative to the alternatives.
00:37:18 ◼ ► The alternatives are maybe you go to a doctor and you get this measurement done, like the real measurement done, but how often do you go to a doctor?
00:37:25 ◼ ► Or maybe you have a machine in your house, a very expensive machine in your house that you use every day.
00:37:30 ◼ ► It's still less frequent and requires more effort and is probably more expensive in the case of the big medical machine that you actually have in your house than a thing you just passively wear on your wrist.
00:37:40 ◼ ► The stories that we all hear about this are not from people who know they have terrible heart problems and are on this, you know, complicated regime involving lots of checkups and stuff, but it's people who think they're perfectly fine.
00:37:49 ◼ ► Or people who are developing heart problems, who also just happen to have an Apple Watch that's on all the time, right?
00:37:56 ◼ ► It's catching a new class of things where these people were never going to say, "You know what? I think I should go to the doctor every month from now on just to check my heart."
00:38:04 ◼ ► Because they don't know they have any problem, but they're just wearing this watch and maybe you can pick up something.
00:38:11 ◼ ► That's why they have the American Heart Association guy up there talking about stuff like, "Doctors must love this because they know how difficult it is to get people to come into the office to have enough appointments.
00:38:20 ◼ ► Maybe they can't come in because their insurance doesn't pay for enough appointments and if it was up to them, they would like to have them checked more often."
00:38:29 ◼ ► It's like if you could strap a device to them, "Oh, it's big and it's clunky and I don't want to have a medical device and I can't afford it and my insurance won't pay for it and blah, blah, blah."
00:38:37 ◼ ► The problem is of course the Apple Watch is still a multi-hundred dollar watch that only rich people are going to wear and so on and so forth.
00:38:47 ◼ ► From nobody having it to rich people having it to eventually hopefully this will be democratized over the next several years.
00:39:03 ◼ ► So, I have worn these all summer. I'm continuing to wear them now into the fall because they're just so practical.
00:39:08 ◼ ► I wore them all last summer too because what's great about these, there's nothing to make your ears super sweaty.
00:39:19 ◼ ► If you do get super sweaty or if you get rained on, it doesn't matter. They're IP55 certified water resistant so you don't have to worry about it.
00:39:29 ◼ ► But they're also very practical when you're doing pretty much anything outside like walking or jogging or whatever because you can hear the world around you.
00:39:37 ◼ ► Because the way Bone Conduction Headphones work is they don't block up your ears with some kind of thing protruding into them or some kind of big pad that sticks around them or on top of them.
00:39:46 ◼ ► These little transducers rest next to your ears and they send tiny vibrations that you can't really feel but you can hear them in your eardrums.
00:39:53 ◼ ► And so you hear the sound being picked up by your eardrums that they're making but you also hear the sound of the world around you.
00:39:59 ◼ ► So it sounds to you as if you're not really wearing headphones but you can still hear the sound that they add for podcasts or phone calls or whatever else.
00:40:07 ◼ ► So it's great when you're outside and you want to be able to hear if a car is going by or if you're doing errands around the house and you want to hear if someone's knocking on the door or something like that.
00:40:14 ◼ ► And they're also just really good Bluetooth headphones. So of course they're wireless, they have great battery life, they have great rings, they have of course built in microphone for phone calls and the quality is great.
00:40:25 ◼ ► They are effectively weightless. Like they're so small, so compact they can fit in a jeans pocket or a shorts pocket and they are basically, they're like one ounce, they basically are weightless.
00:40:35 ◼ ► If you have any trouble they have a good warranty, although I've never had any trouble with mine. So they're just a really solid buy.
00:40:40 ◼ ► So check it out today at ATP.Aftershocks.com. I like these so much I actually have two pairs of them because I wanted to have them in different places, paired to different devices.
00:40:48 ◼ ► They're just that good, I have two of them. So I strongly recommend the Trex Air. This is their flagship model, it's the one to get.
00:40:54 ◼ ► Go to ATP.Aftershocks.com and you can use code ATPBUNDLE to get $55 off a Trex Air bundle.
00:41:03 ◼ ► Once again it's ATP.Aftershocks.com, code ATPBUNDLE to get $55 off the Trex Air bundle.
00:41:13 ◼ ► Real time follow up, I just looked at Casey's picture that you sent of your Apple Watch on your wrist. You should get the small one.
00:41:24 ◼ ► Sorry, that's, you're right on the edge now and if that gets slightly larger and the screen gets at your edge it's going to look too big on you. Sorry.
00:41:33 ◼ ► What are you worried about? Like you said, you don't have one of the Darth Vader link bracelets or any of the super expensive things. You're fine.
00:41:49 ◼ ► Also, by the way, how big you wear your watch on your wrist is also a personal fashion decision.
00:42:01 ◼ ► One of the reasons I think they're probably doing this, which admittedly it is slightly disappointing that they're making it a little bit bigger because it seems like it's kind of like a loss on the miniaturization angle.
00:42:12 ◼ ► But I think one of the reasons it does make sense to have a larger high-end model because the mass market for watches is up there in like the 44, 45, 46 millimeter range.
00:42:23 ◼ ► People like really big watches. The Apple Watch actually looks kind of small to a certain pretty large market.
00:42:40 ◼ ► But I think what this is going to do is push a lot more people into the smaller one that were previously buying the big one.
00:42:47 ◼ ► Yeah, the bigger one, they made this point about both of the watches, again emphasizing the thickness. They all are bigger. You look at them, they're bigger, right?
00:42:54 ◼ ► But the volume is less than the sizes they replace. So despite the fact that they're wider, because they're thinner, they more than make up for in their thinness, the increased size.
00:43:11 ◼ ► Unfortunately, people love the 38 because to get a smartwatch of any kind, they all tend to be very large because they've got little computers in there. It's hard to make computers that small.
00:43:21 ◼ ► And the 38 was the smallest full-featured smartwatch by far. What if you have very small wrists?
00:43:27 ◼ ► Now, if you have very small wrists, you may have been pushed out of the market because you may find the 42 big.
00:43:32 ◼ ► So I still think, I mean, if we look at the phones, it took us a little while to go from one phone to two phones to eventually three phones with the whole thing.
00:43:41 ◼ ► And now we have various combinations of three phones with the 5 and the 6 size and the SE.
00:43:47 ◼ ► Now the SE is gone and we got the other three sizes, but I definitely think there's actually room for three watch sizes.
00:43:52 ◼ ► We're just not there yet because just as there was room for a bigger one, bigger than 42, there remains room for one that's smaller than 40.
00:43:59 ◼ ► Maybe even one that's smaller than 38 if they can get it down to there. Obviously battery life is an issue.
00:44:04 ◼ ► But I think the line is still maturing. This is the first new form factor, more or less, that the phone...
00:44:13 ◼ ► That the watch has ever had. I know they change thickness and they move things around and so on and so forth, but this is clearly a new form factor, a new screen, new...
00:44:23 ◼ ► It's totally new. You won't confuse it with the other ones. Give this a couple years, then I think it's time for them to introduce a third watch and rejigger the line.
00:44:34 ◼ ► Because I'm thinking of my wife who has worn all the 38s and she's going to put on a 40. She has small wrists.
00:44:40 ◼ ► I'm wondering if the 40 is going to seem a little too big. I'm sure she'll just deal with it, but it's kind of disappointing for the low end.
00:44:46 ◼ ► Yeah, agreed. Also, let's pour one out for a lot of the things that are gone as of today.
00:44:51 ◼ ► So, of course, the steel version of Watch Series 3 is gone, but that's no surprise. That happens every year.
00:44:56 ◼ ► The edition is gone. There is no more product called Apple Watch Edition, no more product made of ceramic. Of course, the gold ones were killed a while ago.
00:45:05 ◼ ► Oh, we forgot to mention, speaking of ceramic, all of the new Series 4 watches have ceramic backs.
00:45:13 ◼ ► Yeah, so they've learned from the downmarket editions that were ceramic that no one knows about except for Marco because no one else pays attention to the edition after the gold ones, right?
00:45:20 ◼ ► But they apparently made ceramic ones. They made it in white and dark gray or something, maybe?
00:45:24 ◼ ► Yeah, well, initially it was just white for Series 2 and then Series 3 it was white and kind of a medium gray that honestly I thought the medium gray looked really bad, but that's just me.
00:45:34 ◼ ► Again, this is all personal preference. But the white I thought looked nice. I actually briefly owned one. It was actually really nice in a lot of ways, but nobody bought them.
00:45:44 ◼ ► Yeah, but they were way cheaper. They were only like a couple hundred dollars more than the regular ones, right?
00:45:49 ◼ ► Yeah, the gold was starting at 10 or 15 thousand and as far as I know, zero people bought those. The ceramic started at I think 1200.
00:45:59 ◼ ► And that was right in line with if you bought the steel with the link bracelet, that was about 1000 or 1100. So to have this be 1200 or 1300, that was actually fairly reasonable.
00:46:11 ◼ ► And if you look now, what's left in the lineup now, which I'm sure I'll mention in a second, the pricing has all gone up. So the steel is now $100 more than it was last year.
00:46:27 ◼ ► Yeah, it's a little disappointing that they couldn't make those higher end things work. But can't blame them because nobody was buying them.
00:46:43 ◼ ► And it turns out, I mean, geez, I'm surprised the steel even still exists. Like you hardly ever even see the steel watch anywhere. You see tons of sport watches or I guess aluminum now they call them. They even still call them sport.
00:47:15 ◼ ► Oh no, they don't call them sport. You're right. I apologize. I was about to correct you.
00:47:20 ◼ ► Anyways, let's also pour one out for the nylon strap. Gone. No more nylon straps. They only have the sport loops now in the nylon category. Which honestly, it's fine. The sport loops are really nice. But the nylon bands were really nice and comfortable too. They just took a while to dry if they got wet.
00:47:34 ◼ ► Also the classic buckle, the original leather one, that's gone. The smaller one, the modern buckle is still there only for the small size. But the classic buckle, which was honestly very, very nice, that's gone now.
00:47:48 ◼ ► And the link bracelets are a curious thing. They, I believe you can't buy a watch with it like stock anymore. And if you look at the current collection, like the current bands, link bracelets are not there.
00:48:02 ◼ ► If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, there's a link that says, "Explore bands from previous seasons." And if you click that, you can get a couple of the old sport bands, a couple of the old Nike bands, and then the two link bracelets.
00:48:15 ◼ ► That suggests to me that if you want a link bracelet, I would act on that sooner rather than later. Because I bet those are actually being discontinued in just some kind of slow, painful way.
00:48:27 ◼ ► Yeah, so that's it. So there's fewer choices now, and they're more expensive, but they do, it appears to be pretty nice. I don't know. It is kind of annoying to see a generation upon generation change where you have less choice and it costs more.
00:48:47 ◼ ► And by the way, so last year I ordered a Series 3 Apple watch, and it ran me about $430, give or take a little bit. And it is a cellular one. The 44 millimeter non-cellular is $430. With cellular, it's $530, which, that's a lot of money. It is a lot, a lot, a lot of money.
00:49:13 ◼ ► They got rid of the one watch band that I liked. I had to look up what the heck the classic leather whatever thing is, but now scrolling through the thing, it's the one I liked.
00:49:22 ◼ ► Thanks a lot, Apple. That was just the normal leather watch strap as far as I know the watch person is concerned. Now they're all weird.
00:49:38 ◼ ► The ceramic back things though, like other than, you know, they learned how to work with ceramic by making the ceramic edition watches, so on and so forth, it serves a functional purpose, which was pointed out in the event that it's a radio transparent, more, more radio transparent than having a metal back on the thing.
00:49:52 ◼ ► So that supposedly helps with cellular reception. Of course, your big water blob wrist is right there below it, not really helping with radio signals, but stuff gets in on the side as well.
00:50:00 ◼ ► So I bet it's good for scratch resistance, I suppose, although who gets scratches on the underside of their watch. But anyway, the radio things, I was convinced that it is an improvement and hoping that it will be connected to cellular more than the other one was.
00:50:15 ◼ ► Although that, like you said on the previous show, may have a lot more to do with power saving than with radio transparency materials.
00:50:21 ◼ ► Yeah, it was really nice though. Like, like Jeff Williams actually called, I even wrote it down, he actually said on stage, it's even better for staying connected, which that sounds a lot like, yeah, you know what, the Series 3 kind of sucked at this. Now we actually can stay connected. Because the Series 3 really can stay connected.
00:50:37 ◼ ► And speaking of staying connected, in battery stuff, they, as expected, touted the battery life as being the same. Despite the fact that the volume, the interior volume of these watches are less than their predecessors, they have the same battery life. Now, presumably it's because the system on a chip takes less power, because they, did they mention that these are 7 nanometer? I assume they are. They bragged about it on the phone.
00:51:01 ◼ ► I don't know. We'll see what they are. If we have what they call S4 or something. The other interesting thing is 64-bit CPU in a watch, which is pretty amazing. But apparently, according to tweets that have been bouncing around just before the show, 64-bit with 32-bit pointers, which is pretty weird. So, strange stuff going on inside the watch there. Not that it really matters to most people, because for the most part, you know, I don't know, maybe, maybe watch app developers, it may affect them. I'm sure there'll be something about a WWDC about being careful when you port 64-bit to remember the
00:51:28 ◼ ► pointers are still 32-bit and there's some weirdness associated with that. But anyway, much more powerful. I think they were showing the power of the, probably the GPU, but anyway, showing it off with a lot of the effects that they have, like the particle effects on the heart, during the heart thing. Not that that's a complicated effect, but like they have the vapor thing and the flames. Those might just be movies, I can't really tell if they're procedural or GPU generated or just a bunch of movies. But the particles definitely weren't a movie.
00:51:56 ◼ ► Being more willing to do GPU driven effects instead of just scrolling things around makes me think that this watch is actually significantly more powerful than its predecessors. I just don't know how that balances with the "same battery life." We'll have to wait for iFixit to tear this thing apart to find out, does it actually have a smaller battery than before and they can afford it because the silicon is made in a smaller process? Or does it just plain have a bigger battery because it's a smaller battery?
00:52:24 ◼ ► Or does it just plain have a bigger battery because all the other parts are smaller and because there's more room inside there? So we need someone to crack one of these open, maybe. There you go, that's something you can do for the show, Casey. Get a watch and break it open for us. Let us know what's going on inside there.
00:52:36 ◼ ► I'll be sure to do that. A couple other quick hits on the watch. It has atrial fibrillation detection or a-fib detection. It also has fall detection, which I thought was very fascinating. So particularly if you have someone in your life that's a little bit on the older side, and if the watch notices you've done a movement that makes it think you've fallen, it will detect that. And if you don't move for a minute following that fall, it will actually phone either 911 or your designated emergency response.
00:53:05 ◼ ► I wasn't entirely clear on who the destination of the call is. But one way or another, I thought that was interesting. Also, it's worth noting that these, was it the cellular or maybe it was all Apple watches, got an additional hour of battery life on GPS, which was something that was interesting for me, although I never exercised more than about half an hour at a time.
00:53:29 ◼ ► But the aforementioned Kyle Segre, who does like 94 hour marathon races, is very excited about that. And certainly anyone who does like a lot of cycling or running would presumably be happy about that.
00:53:42 ◼ ► Obviously, there's more and better and more interesting complications. And we talked about how the bands are mostly compatible. But as a kind of summary, I'm going to quote Steve Sinofsky on Twitter, where he said, "The Apple Watch has gone from 'what is this for?' and 'there's no killer use case' to a fundamental improvement in human health and safety in daily life." Imagine that.
00:54:08 ◼ ► And I just thought that was really well put. You know, especially if you are someone who is susceptible to falling or perhaps to a heart problem, this could be a real life changer or even life saver. And that's not hyperbole. Like it really could save your life.
00:54:22 ◼ ► And that's really super awesome. And certainly I think I've been more active on account of my Apple Watch than I was in any of the time before then, including when I was a little kid. So I am super amped to get one. I haven't exactly explained this to Aaron yet, but we'll figure it out.
00:54:52 ◼ ► I have this in the house before the, I guess not before the next recording, but before the two weeks from now recording. Be that because I have walked into a store or because I have ordered it to be shipped to the home or ordered two of them to be shipped to the home, who knows. But one way or another, I will hopefully have one sooner rather than later. Marco, are you planning to buy one?
00:55:12 ◼ ► I honestly, I shouldn't because I would probably wear it like three times, but on another level I probably should because testing is pretty important and I just did a major update to my watch app. So I don't know. I probably, I'm not going to buy one immediately, but I'll probably end up with one at some point.
00:55:30 ◼ ► A couple of the quick hits before we move on from this topic, I wanted to mention, first of all, the gold stainless steel finish. I was right, Jon.
00:55:48 ◼ ► And I would totally, if I wore the Apple watch regularly, I would totally buy this because it looks like a really good update. So let's put that out there right now. Like the only reason I'm not jumping on it right now is that I don't wear my Apple watch very much. But if I did, I would jump on this, no question.
00:56:01 ◼ ► And also one thing that I'm interested about, they say they totally re-engineered the digital crown and now it has haptic feedback. Now it does appear that it still moves because they didn't say it haptics you when you click the button. Like it's not like a force crown, like a force touch. But it gives you haptic clicks when you scroll it. So that's cool. I like that a lot.
00:56:23 ◼ ► I am curious if in part of this re-engineering of it, they fixed the incredibly common issue of the crown getting sticky. This has happened to every Apple watch I have owned.
00:56:34 ◼ ► Yep, yep, yep. Where after not that much use, the crown just sticks and you're supposed to run it under water and that fixes it for a little while and then it starts sticking again a few weeks later. I really, really hope they have done something that will somehow help that, make that happen less often or fix itself or something. Just something to improve the stickiness of the crown being such a common problem. Because they said they redesigned the whole thing. So I really hope that's in there somewhere.
00:57:03 ◼ ► What I assume the haptics work with is not that it feels like there's little stops or clicks or whatever. It moves exactly like it always did except for now there's a little thing that jolts the axle of the thing at intervals.
00:57:19 ◼ ► So as soon as you rotate through a certain number of degrees, a little vibration then goes tap. It makes you feel that vibration through the crown. So it's still actually a completely smooth thing but kind of like they do with the stuff when you scroll on phones and stuff.
00:57:35 ◼ ► It's actually completely moving smoothly but putting the taps at little intervals makes it kind of feel like there's little intervals.
00:57:41 ◼ ► Real time follow up from Jason Snell who is one of the few people who has actually handled one of these. The crown really does move and it is smooth. The haptics are a bonus and apparently are optional and controlled in software.
00:57:54 ◼ ► Yeah, so I was thinking maybe I wouldn't want the haptics on. I'm kind of in the middle of the road on a lot of the haptic stuff. It seems neat sometimes but other times I know I'm moving the crown. I don't know. I'll have to try it.
00:58:05 ◼ ► Couldn't they have added this to all the watches in software? Because they all have haptic engines.
00:58:09 ◼ ► Well, that's the thing. I don't think it is actually, I'm assuming it's not using just like the same thing that vibrates the whole watch. I'm assuming there's some dedicated mechanism to just vibrate the crown when you're moving it.
00:58:21 ◼ ► It could be wrong again. We have to wait for iFixit to tear it apart but that would be the thing to check. Do you feel the shake in your wrist or do you only feel it in the finger that's turning on the crown?
00:58:29 ◼ ► The other question I had for Jason to answer is our emissary in this event that he did answer was, and maybe it's on the Apple's website too but I asked it during the keynote, do they still have the difference in glass where the stainless ones have sapphire and the aluminum ones have the whatever ion X class stuff?
00:58:48 ◼ ► The answer is yes. That difference still exists which is also kind of annoying because so many people buy the aluminum because it's cheaper but maybe the tradeoff that you want to make is not the same as the one that Apple makes. The tradeoff is that sapphire resists scratches more but is more prone to shattering and aluminum scratches more easily but bends more so it's less prone to shattering.
00:59:07 ◼ ► So it's probably the right tradeoff when it was called the Apple Watch Sport but now it's just the less expensive one that's less shiny and the more expensive one that's more shiny and with that you get this tradeoff whether you want it or not.
00:59:18 ◼ ► It's still probably the right call if they have to have fixed screens but it would be nice to see them go to some sort of compromise like they do on the phones where they have to come up with some kind of compromise between scratch resistance and shatter resistance.
00:59:30 ◼ ► With the watch they have two poles. They're not two extremes. I'm sure they're not that different from each other but they're different enough that maybe there's a happy medium there that will make everybody miserable I suppose.
00:59:41 ◼ ► That's one of the best reasons to get the steel because sapphire is really nice and to be fair there aren't a lot of watches in the world that give you a sapphire crystal for under $300. That's pretty uncommon.
00:59:55 ◼ ► They exist I think but there's not a lot of them. From a cost perspective that's totally reasonable but also they do need to still figure out some reason to charge almost twice as much for the steel.
01:00:06 ◼ ► And so that's a pretty easy differentiator for them. And honestly if I was wearing my Apple Watch regularly I would definitely get this. I would probably get the small one and I would definitely get steel.
01:00:19 ◼ ► Because there are actually downsides to this because of the cost. It is heavier. You don't feel the haptics as much. The vibration is weaker in it. But it does just look so much nicer.
01:00:33 ◼ ► If you're fine with the way the aluminum one looks fine great you can save a bunch of money. But if you're a watch nerd and you want your watch to look good to you a lot of times that requires it to be a little bit shinier than that.
01:00:46 ◼ ► And the steel really does look nice. I really do think the steel Apple Watch is just a nice design especially when impaired with a decent sport band or something. It looks really nice.
01:00:55 ◼ ► So that's what I would go for if I was getting one. It's probably the small one and almost certainly the steel.
01:01:02 ◼ ► That's why I bought the steel one for my first one. Just because it looks good. That's it. And the thing about the beauty mist they put on these things. It's making me wonder about these watches. Because looking at their product shots of the silver steel ones.
01:01:17 ◼ ► They don't look as shiny as they used to. It's weird. I know they're steel. It says it right there. It says it's steel. Their product shots it looks less shiny.
01:01:26 ◼ ► The specular highlights are fuzzed out a little bit. I want to see this in person because I have a series zero steel and I assume stainless steel is stainless steel. Shiny is shiny. Is it actually less shiny or is it just their weird product shots?
01:01:40 ◼ ► Well it can be polished differently but I think it's very unlikely that it has been. I think it's much more likely that it's just their photography style and it actually is shiny.
01:01:48 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean the pictures of people who were there at the event. I think it actually is shiny. But it's very strange. For a million reasons I need to see this in person. Not just Casey. I would encourage everybody. Don't buy it sight unseen. There's a reason they have stores. I know it's going to be crowded but just wait. You don't need to have us in day one.
01:02:06 ◼ ► Just go there when you have time. When no one else is around. If you can find a time like that. Try a bunch on. See what sizes and colors and shapes and all this stuff. See what appeals to you. There's no other way to tell. Even having owned the watch that I own there's no way I would order one of these without trying it on first. Too much has changed.
01:02:26 ◼ ► So sitting here now nothing for you then until you at least try them on? And then what do you reckon you would get with what you know today?
01:02:35 ◼ ► I would get. My current guess of what I would get is the stainless, the small size and apparently I'll be forced to take whatever the hell band it comes with.
01:02:45 ◼ ► I'm always I'm partial to the way the stainless looks on the white sport band. I think it's a really good look. It's also called the Stephen Hackett. But it's a really really good look.
01:02:56 ◼ ► Yeah. I don't know if I can pull off the white band. I was just thinking of Johnny Ive when I see that.
01:02:59 ◼ ► I just don't get what's so great about the stainless. I'm not trying to say you're wrong.
01:03:04 ◼ ► I'm not trying to say that I'm right. I've seen, presumably I've seen stainless steel watches. I've seen Johns and I've never, to my recollection I've never noticed that they look anything different.
01:03:24 ◼ ► And I guess it's you know another case of ignorance is list and it's probably for the best that I don't know because I'll save myself a pile of money but I don't know I just I've never noticed a difference.
01:03:34 ◼ ► And also the sapphire like I'm not wearing it during sporting. The only time I wear it is you know so I have this scratch resistance also appeals to me so it's a nice combination that it has the glass that I want and it also has the appearance that I want.
01:03:46 ◼ ► It just happens to be ridiculously expensive especially for someone who literally never wears a watch or literally means figuratively.
01:03:57 ◼ ► Honestly I think the watch was the more exciting part of the event than what we're going to talk about next.
01:04:01 ◼ ► Oh absolutely. I absolutely agree. I could not be more excited about this. I am I am really surprised because I did not expect that that there was going to I mean I knew there was going to be a new watch but I didn't expect it to be anything particularly you know monumental and oh man was I wrong.
01:04:17 ◼ ► Yeah this is the watch's non S year. It's first non S year. All the other watch years have been S years basically where they just take the same watch and they mess with it and change the internals and change the internals and now this is the first all new watch.
01:04:29 ◼ ► We respond to this week by Molekule. A complete reinvention of the air purifier. Molekule actually destroys air pollutants at a molecular level.
01:04:40 ◼ ► So unlike HEPA filters and other you know well known air filter technology Molekule uses photo electrochemical oxidation PECO.
01:04:48 ◼ ► This is nanotechnology that actually eliminates allergens, mold, bacteria, viruses, even airborne chemicals like VOCs which are way too small for things like HEPA filters to actually capture.
01:05:01 ◼ ► These claims have been tested and verified by third party labs including the University of Minnesota Particle Calibration Laboratory and the University of South Florida Center for Biological Defense.
01:05:15 ◼ ► They did a study of foreign allergy sufferers presented at the American College of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology and Molekule's technology provided dramatic statistically significant sustained symptom reduction within a week of use.
01:05:28 ◼ ► One customer even said she was able to breathe through her nose for the first time in 15 years.
01:05:33 ◼ ► And it's just beautiful. It has this nice white vent on top, aluminum tube down the sides.
01:05:45 ◼ ► So this is really the real deal here. It's been personally affected by people and verified by science.
01:05:54 ◼ ► I have one. I'm using it now in the fall and it's going to be really nice while all those dry leaves and all the milkweed blows around in the fall. It's going to be really nice.
01:06:26 ◼ ► There were also some other things announced. There were some iPhones. There's a new one in the middle of the other sizes and that's basically it.
01:06:45 ◼ ► They have all of which, I'm trying not to be too negative guys, but these names, these names are not working for me.
01:06:53 ◼ ► I'm not digging it. And I guarantee I'm going to say the letter X a thousand times for the next year.
01:07:00 ◼ ► And I've been pretty good about calling it an iPhone 10, but having two letters next to each other as we discussed last episode, I'm done.
01:07:22 ◼ ► Like car model years, like 500 SEL for the Mercedes. Like you can put two and three letters after you just, you know, the iPhone 10 and then series of letters.
01:07:48 ◼ ► Yeah, no, Tom Vaziri had a good tweet about this. He was asking his wife who doesn't follow tech stuff and showed her the website.
01:07:56 ◼ ► The fundamental problem with his naming is not that they're ugly or weird and we're not used to them, is that a regular person looking at these names has no idea which one is the good one.
01:08:08 ◼ ► Yeah, but still, like, I mean, S is later in the alphabet than R. I mean, the numbers, presumably the bigger number is better.
01:08:17 ◼ ► And the 10 is better than all the numbers because it's a big Roman numeral and they're just numbers and their numbers are all less than the amount 10.
01:08:26 ◼ ► But S and R, like, you know, I mean, yeah, we will talk about the R, which I think is the star of the show and they rightly put it last in the lineup.
01:08:50 ◼ ► So, like, you know, like a summary of this thing, like, okay, there's a new system on a chip like there is every year. It's still called the Bionic. Wasn't last year's called the Bionic also?
01:09:00 ◼ ► Yep, they reused it. So it's now a 7 animator, which is really impressive. That's really good. So less power usage is what this means for, you know, similar things.
01:09:08 ◼ ► And by the way, I think the reason they reuse the name is because, I mean, maybe like when they said the name and it was a repeat, it made me think maybe the people who design these chips have some influence on the naming because it shares the name because it is fundamentally very similar to the A11 from what we were told.
01:09:29 ◼ ► Same number of cores, same size cores. They swapped out the GPU for an Apple designed GPU, but it's not like where they would change the number or size of cores. That would get a new nickname.
01:09:46 ◼ ► So I'm wondering exactly how much different the actual CPU part of the A12 system on a chip is from the A11 other than being fed with 7 nanometers or whatever.
01:09:58 ◼ ► So, again, we'll have to wait for more people to crack these open and benchmark them and see what's going on. But the most exciting things that are going on in the silicon seem not to be the CPU, but the GPU and the neural whatever thing.
01:10:13 ◼ ► So, yeah, so if I can summarize what's new about this, it seems from what we know so far, and again, we haven't had hands-on time, nobody's had a long-term review, none of us actually have these, so maybe we'll find out more when they actually get in our hands.
01:10:28 ◼ ► But so far, it seems like the major differences are better speakers to make wider stereo sound, whatever that actually means in practice. It can now record stereo audio in videos, which is something that I, until that moment, never even realized that the audio in iPhone videos was mono.
01:10:51 ◼ ► And I'm like, oh, wait a minute, never thought about it for one second. So now it records stereo during video, which is nice, you know. The camera is slightly better, and it's slightly more water-resistant, and it comes in gold.
01:11:27 ◼ ► But they just said faster, like how much faster? I feel like if it was a lot faster, they would have given us a percentage or something. They didn't, though. They just said faster. And that could just be from the processor being up to 50% faster.
01:11:40 ◼ ► So it's nice in the sense that if the X was still for sale, which it isn't, which is interesting, but if the X was still for sale for like 100 bucks less, and I was choosing between the two, I'd get the better one. I'd get the XS because it is better.
01:11:57 ◼ ► But I think this is gonna be a real milestone for a lot of people like me who used to get every single phone every year.
01:12:06 ◼ ► I honestly don't think I need to get this phone. And granted, it is ridiculous to buy a new $1,000 phone or even more these days every year, but still a lot of people did it anyway.
01:12:17 ◼ ► And honestly, this is not that compelling for one-year upgrades. But again, that probably doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things because most people don't upgrade every year.
01:12:29 ◼ ► So I kind of see, like, I'm not saying Apple's doomed or anything, but just me personally as one of those jerks who buys a phone every year, I have a hard time getting excited about this one.
01:12:39 ◼ ► I think the people who buy the phone every year will mostly keep buying the phone every year, and everybody else will judge on whether it's a good phone, and it is a good phone, so I think they'll end up buying it. I think everything will be fine.
01:13:01 ◼ ► I think there's a lot of stuff left over to differentiate the S, mostly because the X was so good and had so much new stuff in it. Like, what is left? All they did is just improve everything about the previous one.
01:13:13 ◼ ► And the improvements seem pretty good in terms of S-class improvements. The only one that I'm a little shaky on is the CPU in the system on a chip.
01:13:23 ◼ ► They did brag, they did give numbers like 10x performance increase on Core ML or something in the neural engine doing trains of operations and stuff like that, and that could also be what's driving Face ID to be faster.
01:13:34 ◼ ► But they didn't do a lot of bragging about how much faster the GPU is and how much faster the CPU is. The GPU, they did one of those suspicious GPU things where they called out a few things that a GPU can do and said they're up to 50% faster, like, up to 50% faster tessellation.
01:13:50 ◼ ► Most people don't know what tessellation is, and it may be an operation this GPU does better. The key part was an Apple-designed GPU. This is Apple's first completely Apple-designed GPU on a phone, as far as I'm aware.
01:14:03 ◼ ► Out of the gate, are they the world's best GPU designer? Maybe not. I'm sure it's better than the previous GPU, but it makes me think that perhaps there are areas where the previous GPU was faster than the Apple, not tessellation, obviously, because they bragged about that one.
01:14:17 ◼ ► But what about all the other things? There were no big benchmarks lines showing the CPU and GPU. So in that respect, this phone may be less of a worthy S than previous ones.
01:14:27 ◼ ► But overall, all that matters is, is this a good phone? And the answer is yes, the X was a good phone. And this is even better than the X.
01:14:34 ◼ ► And, you know, there is, if you are someone who buys every year but also needs some compelling reason to buy every year, maybe this one is going to leave you a little bit cold, but for everybody else in the world, this is a great phone, and I think they'll do just fine with it.
01:14:48 ◼ ► And if you want to change screen size, then it's more interesting, you know, because now you have the XS Max, which is a really bad name, but we'll get used to it.
01:15:03 ◼ ► These names, I have to point this out, these names sound like Android phone names, don't they? Like, this sounds like the kind of names that we would make fun of Android people for launching like three or four years ago.
01:15:19 ◼ ► If you want to change screen sizes, though, this is interesting, because they took the iPhone X, which is big, and made it bigger for $100 more, which is actually fairly reasonable.
01:15:29 ◼ ► And so most people who are going to be single-year upgraders on this, I think the way that can be justifiable is if you're going to the big one.
01:15:38 ◼ ► That would make more sense, because it's at least a lot more different than the iPhone X was.
01:15:42 ◼ ► I don't plan to do that personally. It looks really big. But if you like really big phones, it looks pretty cool.
01:15:50 ◼ ► And interestingly, they did not do anything, pointedly almost, did not do anything to make the big one better than the less big one.
01:15:59 ◼ ► So the XS Max does not have a better camera, or better, you know, faster FaceTime, or a larger capacity memory option, or even I think it doesn't even have that much better battery capacity.
01:16:12 ◼ ► It doesn't have any particular thing to differentiate it. The XS and XS Max, it's like one has a bigger screen.
01:16:22 ◼ ► Which I think is smart, because it was always kind of annoying. It was like kind of an accident of technology, or it was annoying that the big one had the better of something.
01:16:31 ◼ ► Because it would make people, like Marco and other people, who didn't want a huge phone, but kind of wanted the best camera to be faced with this dilemma.
01:16:39 ◼ ► No more dilemma here. Like they both have the same camera, like you just pick based on size, which is the way it should be, which I think is showing the technology maturing.
01:16:46 ◼ ► But it's also showing Apple's restraint in like, how can we get people to buy the $1500 phone, like, or, you know, $1300 for the middle one almost, but $1500 for the big one.
01:16:57 ◼ ► Let's put something in the Max to differentiate it. They resisted that. I feel like the mere existence of a X-style large phone will be enough to drive people to the super expensive phone and should help their ASPs.
01:17:13 ◼ ► So they didn't feel the need to go the extra mile and say, "And also, let's put something extra special fancy in the Max."
01:17:20 ◼ ► Yeah, and I really respect that. Like that's, I totally expected, like, with the iPhone X, I had what I haven't had in years, which is I had the phone that was the size I wanted, but it was also the best phone.
01:17:34 ◼ ► And I thought that was going to end today. And it didn't. Like, the iPhone X, like if you want the XS, if you want that size phone, that is still the best.
01:17:45 ◼ ► Like, it still has all the, it's just tied now instead of being, you know, the only best one. But that's great. Like, I'm very, very happy about that.
01:17:54 ◼ ► Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I've never been a fan of the bigger phones. I don't really think they're for me. And as much as I love to poke fun at the Plus Club, like, if it works for you, it works for you.
01:18:07 ◼ ► It has never worked for me. And it's always bummed me out, especially during the era of the human-sized phones having one lens and the giant-sized phones having two lenses.
01:18:18 ◼ ► It really bummed me out that I couldn't have the cool picture stuff. And now, everyone, well, you know, everyone with an iPhone XS gets them.
01:18:28 ◼ ► And you can get a fake picture, you know, fake bokeh on the, well, doubly fake bokeh, I guess I should say, on the XR, which we'll talk about in a minute. But I am not sure what I'm going to do about the phone.
01:18:42 ◼ ► Over the last few years, I've been on the annual cycle because I'm obnoxious. And I am the world's worst human when it comes to fear of missing out, which is why I will probably end up with a phone as well.
01:18:57 ◼ ► But I have, even after the event, I don't think I've ever been, not less enthusiastic, that's overly negative, but more tepid, I guess, about getting a new phone.
01:19:09 ◼ ► And we'll see what happens. Like I said, I mean, every year I always say, "Oh, I'm not going to get it." And then I end up getting it. So I'm not going to do that again this year.
01:19:16 ◼ ► But there's nothing that I feel like I can hang my hat on yet that makes me say, "Holy hell, I must have this phone."
01:19:24 ◼ ► Now, if we get demo units or something like that, well, not we as in the three of us, but if Jason gets a demo unit and he says, "Holy smokes, the Face ID is eight times faster and it's so much better and this camera is actually better than they say,"
01:19:38 ◼ ► of course, then I would be way more excited and interested. But sitting here now, and I think, Marco, you said it best, they said it's better and stuff because it's newer and better.
01:19:50 ◼ ► There was little that I think we can hang our hat on unless you want a half terabyte model or you want two SIMs, which is not a very American thing, but I know is very big overseas.
01:20:02 ◼ ► When I was on StackTrace and talked to Guillermo Rambo about this, he was saying that in Brazil it's very, very big.
01:20:07 ◼ ► So there are definitely perks, but not necessarily for me or maybe even for most Americans. And the pricing is roughly the same, is that right? I didn't look at iPhone X pricing. Well, actually, wait, I sorted it.
01:20:22 ◼ ► Yeah, yeah, the XS I think is the same as the X was, wasn't it? And the XS Max is $100 more. One thing I actually am excited about is the Smart HDR. I'm really curious to see how well that works.
01:20:38 ◼ ► If that works well, that is a really big deal for me in my day-to-day life. I'm constantly having to do careful manual adjustment of the exposure level of photos I'm taking where there's bright light in the background or something like that.
01:20:54 ◼ ► That's a very common thing for me. So if this really does improve it as much as the keynote made it seem, that could be a really big deal. I really want that, but even that, I'm like, do I want that $1,000? Is that how much I want that? I don't know.
01:21:12 ◼ ► I really gotta play with this to see if it's any good. It's a great phone if you are in the point of your upgrade cycle where you should get a new phone, but if you're not, I don't see how this is compelling enough.
01:21:27 ◼ ► So does that dynamic HDR thing only on the XS and if it is only on the XS series, is it because they just want it to be isolated or because it requires some new hardware?
01:21:37 ◼ ► It appears from the way they were describing it. It probably is not a camera hardware thing. It might be in the sense that maybe they have to have the sensor dump a bunch of data off quickly, capture a bunch of full frames quickly, but it's probably a processor thing.
01:21:53 ◼ ► And it's probably the kind of thing that they could offer on the older phones, but they aren't for positioning and marketing reasons, or maybe it would just be a little bit slower and they don't want to make it a little bit slower. Whatever the case, it does seem like it is a software, primarily software-implemented feature.
01:22:09 ◼ ► And I think it's also going to be on the XR, because the XR really does not have a lot of differences from the XS.
01:22:18 ◼ ► I would assume it is. The adjustable portrait mode thing. It has that too. Right, but so do you think that will be on the X?
01:22:26 ◼ ► I don't think so. But you can already do it on the X with third-party apps. You just can't do it with the built-in camera app as far as I know.
01:22:37 ◼ ► Honestly, I would doubt it, just again for market segmentation and stuff like that reasons, but the image data from your X can do this too, and there's third-party apps that do it all the time. So that's not a huge deal.
01:22:51 ◼ ► For me personally, I never use portrait mode because it never looks right. Maybe this new fancy whatever is going to be more accurate.
01:23:01 ◼ ► The example pictures they gave did look good, but we've been burned on that before in the past. The example pictures always look good.
01:23:09 ◼ ► And then you get the phone and you try to get a nice blurry picture of your kid or your dog and their ear falls off. We'll see how that goes in practice.
01:23:18 ◼ ► Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. I would love to ditch my big camera, which isn't even really that big. I have a Micro Four Thirds camera, and I love that camera.
01:23:27 ◼ ► I love it, love it, love it, love it, love it. But I would love even more to be able to get reasonably similar photos out of the thing that is always on my person.
01:23:38 ◼ ► And portrait mode, when it works well, does work, to my eyes anyway, exceptionally exceptionally well.
01:23:45 ◼ ► The problem is, I could not agree with you more Marco, that the times that it works well are very few and far between, and it falls down a lot.
01:23:53 ◼ ► And hopefully it's going to get better over time, and being able to do the adjustment of the aperture after the fact is super cool.
01:24:02 ◼ ► And yes, I know that there are some apps like FOCOS that would do that already, but I don't know, it just looks super cool to just be playing with an f-stop.
01:24:09 ◼ ► And maybe that's how FOCOS works, I haven't used FOCOS in a while, but to just adjust the f-stop after the fact is so neat and so cool.
01:24:16 ◼ ► And I'd love to see that ported to older phones, although I agree with you, it probably won't be.
01:24:25 ◼ ► You're adjusting a blur effect on a masked out region of a picture, it's not quite the same thing.
01:24:28 ◼ ► But I think the HDR, if it works, is the most important feature of the camera, because if you look at pictures people take with their phones,
01:24:37 ◼ ► very often the biggest problem has to do with exposure, because they took a picture that just has too much dynamic range that the phone can't handle.
01:24:43 ◼ ► The sky is white because it's entirely blown out, or the people in the foreground that you're supposed to see their faces on, they're all entirely in shadow.
01:24:55 ◼ ► If this phone can auto-magically say, "It looks to me like you're taking a picture that has way more dynamic range than you can handle."
01:25:02 ◼ ► They already have auto HDR on the phones now, but this seems like a step up from that of figuring out how to make those pictures read.
01:25:14 ◼ ► This is what they show in the keynote, look at these amazing pictures by professional photographers.
01:25:26 ◼ ► They're just like, "Hold my phone up, take a picture." You're supposed to just not care and the phone sorts it out.
01:25:30 ◼ ► Those type of features, which are mostly software features, are where it really counts.
01:25:39 ◼ ► People will take pictures with their camera and then someone next to them will take a picture with some lesser camera.
01:26:00 ◼ ► You mentioned the camera is only slightly improved. Do you remember? This is one of the few specs that I didn't write down here.
01:26:05 ◼ ► Did they change the specifications for the camera in terms of the light gathering ability?
01:26:13 ◼ ► They said the sensor didn't change size, but the pixels are bigger. They quantify that in any way?
01:26:39 ◼ ► But each pixel is slightly larger and some people assume it means the sensor is bigger. It doesn't.
01:26:45 ◼ ► Because there's basically overhead. There's margins around pixels on sensors where you put other electronics or whatever.
01:26:52 ◼ ► And so you can make those smaller. And occasionally those are made smaller and it does mean that each pixel can gather more light.
01:27:03 ◼ ► So they said that these pixels are larger and I think it was like 1.4 nanometers versus 1.2. Something like that.
01:27:15 ◼ ► And they also said the pixels are deeper. And I don't know the details of what that means or how that works.
01:27:34 ◼ ► It does only seem to apply to the wide sensor. It is nice that all three phones get that. That's great.
01:27:40 ◼ ► Honestly, I'm a little disappointed. Now that I've had the 2x camera for the first time.
01:27:46 ◼ ► I never had the plus phones that had it. Now that I had the 2x camera for the first time for the last year.
01:27:57 ◼ ► In camera terms, that's not very far. I would love the equivalent of an 85 or something like that.
01:28:03 ◼ ► Something that is more than just the 2x. Give me a 4x or whatever. Something like that.
01:28:18 ◼ ► No. If anything, what they've shown is that it doesn't matter how big the camera is. You can make it bigger and no one cares.
01:28:22 ◼ ► So the thing I want when I'm using my phone as a camera. The thing I want most often is more zoom range.
01:28:33 ◼ ► If they did that, just optically, things like portraits would also look better. You'd have a better perspective on things like that.
01:28:39 ◼ ► And also you'd be able to reach further away things than you can get with your current one.
01:28:44 ◼ ► An 85mm or 75mm is not that zoomed in. It's not like a super zoom or anything like that.
01:28:52 ◼ ► Again, that is the one thing I really do want out of the camera that they haven't given us yet.
01:28:58 ◼ ► Besides things like, I would always love it to be lower noise, but that's never going to happen on a tiny little sense like that.
01:29:10 ◼ ► Few other minor notes. The dual SIM with the eSIM. I was excited for the idea that there wouldn't be a SIM tray, but it turns out there still is a SIM tray.
01:29:19 ◼ ► So they have an eSIM and a regular SIM and apparently in the China model they have two regular SIMs.
01:29:23 ◼ ► As I mentioned before, the 512GB size is new. There is no new USB-C charger, as in the part that plugs into the little square that plugs into the wall.
01:29:40 ◼ ► Yeah, which is disappointing because that little 5W charger is overmatched by the X and surely overmatched by the XS Max. So that's a bummer.
01:29:56 ◼ ► Overnight. That's probably their measurement. Supposedly, I don't know this for sure, but supposedly no more Lightning to headphone adapter in the box?
01:30:06 ◼ ► That's fine. The time for that has passed. Now if you don't have one of those adapters and you want to use wire headphones, I'm sure you can go buy one for $9 and fine.
01:30:17 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't know. I feel like there should be some counterbalance to that. No more Lightning to headphone adapter, but every MacBook comes with the power cord thingy now.
01:30:27 ◼ ► Yeah, and I think the gold. I usually don't like gold phones. This is the first gold phone that I think actually looks good. Not that I would buy them because it's still not to my taste, but I think it looks good.
01:30:38 ◼ ► So they were right to highlight that in the advertising. And as for purchasing, I couldn't even order the phone because even though it seems like I know exactly what I want, I am conflicted about white versus black.
01:30:51 ◼ ► I didn't like the XS white, but I had heard that this white might be different than the XS white, so now I've got to go to the store and look at that.
01:30:59 ◼ ► I've got to go to the store and look at the XS, look at the white XS and see, is it kind of that dishwater color that doesn't appeal to me in real life? Because in product shots it looks gleaming white, and I would love it if it was gleaming white, but in real life it looks like dishwater.
01:31:14 ◼ ► So the X definitely did not. The XS, maybe they made it whiter, so I have to check it out. This is all silly because it's going to be inside a case, but still I care. I've had this jet black iPhone 7 inside the case and it's probably pristine under there, I hope, that I never see.
01:31:30 ◼ ► So I'm going to get probably the 256 XS in either black or silver, depending on what the back looks like.
01:31:39 ◼ ► Also real time, or not real time, also real follow up, last episode I quickly mentioned how I was planning on buying an extra orange case right before the event because I was afraid that they would discontinue them during the event and that I'm probably going to have a phone that fits it for the next year and I wanted another one.
01:31:56 ◼ ► I did exactly that and they did discontinue it. So I stand by my awesome spare orange case strategy, which I now have sitting on my desk and I'm pretty sure, I don't know for sure yet, but I think the XS will fit it. I don't think they changed the dimensions of the camera bump or anything.
01:32:13 ◼ ► Do we know, and I don't think we do, if there's that dichotomy between the AT&T and Verizon XS's? Because in years past you kind of needed to specify up front if you're going to land on AT&T or Verizon, and this is a very American centric issue and I'm sorry, because some of the bands were a little bit different.
01:32:34 ◼ ► And I'm looking at buying a XS, like I'm walking through the process right now and it says, "Buy without a carrier, SIM free, activate with any carrier later."
01:32:44 ◼ ► That implies to me that there's one SKU for any carrier, whereas in the past there's been a SKU for AT&T and a SKU for Verizon.
01:32:54 ◼ ► And I'd be curious to hear if that's still the case, if there's different ones or not. The chat room is being a little ambiguous because I'm not sure which phrasing of the question they're answering.
01:33:09 ◼ ► Sam the Geek says that is not the case. So I'm taking that to mean you can buy whichever darn one you want this year and it doesn't really matter.
01:33:16 ◼ ► I've also heard that they all have Intel modems now, which sucks for Qualcomm, but also hopefully Intel has worked that out.
01:33:25 ◼ ► I think my X has the Intel modem and it's been fine. The first Intel modems that were in, I believe the 7, those were awful. I had tons of problems with those.
01:33:39 ◼ ► And keep in mind, as we mentioned on past shows, the rumors, I think they're still just rumors, that Apple is building a team to build its own radio chip, so it doesn't have to rely on Intel for that anymore.
01:33:48 ◼ ► So it's a giant FU to Qualcomm. Not only are we not going to buy from you anymore, we're just going to make them ourselves and Intel will be our rebound.
01:33:55 ◼ ► All right, what else about these before the XR? So Marco, you're saying sitting here today anyway, definitely no XS. I almost said XS. Definitely no XS.
01:34:06 ◼ ► She said XR like five times anyway. I'm sorry. I'm trying to be good. And I'm calling to watch the phone. We're all over the place.
01:34:12 ◼ ► Tiff is, I think Tiff's getting the XS Max because she's a Plus user, so I think she's going to get the Max. Her ship has come in.
01:34:20 ◼ ► Yeah, but I, I, ask me in a few days I guess. Probably my next show I'll be like, yeah, I got, or buy whatever show it is.
01:34:29 ◼ ► He's got three of them now. Yeah, it's going to be like, yeah, I got it anyway. Yeah, I feel like that's going to be me.
01:34:34 ◼ ► But as I sit here right now, I'm really not excited to spend $1,100 on this right now for, for what it is.
01:34:44 ◼ ► Oh, that's interesting. Well, but I usually keep my phones for testing and stuff, but maybe I, and honestly I probably don't need to do that anymore or at least as much.
01:34:53 ◼ ► Yeah, I guess that's true. That is an interesting proposition. Yeah, but even, I mean, even if I get like, you know, a few hundred dollars for it on trade in, like is it worth $700 to get these upgrades?
01:35:04 ◼ ► I, I don't think, I don't think so. I might do it anyway, but I can't say it's worth it.
01:35:10 ◼ ► Yeah, I, I feel like you spoke for me in answering that question. Again, the typical KCMOS to say, no, I'm not getting this and then fast forward 12 seconds.
01:35:19 ◼ ► Yep, I got it. But I don't know, man. Like sitting here now, I'm, I'm, I'm not sure. And I would generally, this is where I would say no, but I know myself now well enough to say I'm not sure, which means I'll probably end up doing it.
01:35:35 ◼ ► But I agree with you that it would not, it's not really worth it, but I'm an idiot and I, I spend too much money.
01:35:47 ◼ ► They're, they just announced phones and watches, but we all assume that there probably will be more products announced before the end of the year. Some of those products you may want to buy, for example, a new MacBook or a new laptop of some kind to replace your current 12 inch MacBook.
01:36:04 ◼ ► Those are probably similar price to the phone you're thinking of getting. So maybe wait until all the products have been announced and decide which do I want more, a new laptop, a new phone, a new watch, because I feel like if you're feeling, if you don't want to spend a lot of money buying all three of them before the end of the year after buying expensive cars, maybe not the most responsible thing to do.
01:36:25 ◼ ► Fair enough. I think I am pretty devoted to the watch. I will be surprised if I don't get a watch. I am again sitting here now, I'm saying no to the phone. I'll probably cave.
01:36:38 ◼ ► And then we'll see what happens with regard to computers. But we should move on and talk about the XR, which I keep, or I actually meant to say it.
01:36:50 ◼ ► God bless it. The XR, the tenor that is continually being called the XR, it was the last real announcement of the keynote. And I think it was the most interesting phone they announced today.
01:37:06 ◼ ► It is on the surface, a iPhone XS, but with an LCD screen instead of OLED. What did they call it? A super liquid screen?
01:37:20 ◼ ► They were bragging about the fact that they could bring an LCD to the edge. Remember them showing when the X came out, how they folded the OLED under to get it close to the edge.
01:37:27 ◼ ► It's a thing that every manufacturer does. It's harder to do with an LCD. So they were proud of themselves for this and then they gave it a new name.
01:37:36 ◼ ► But it's just a very nice LCD screen. People who are there say it's a very nice LCD screen. It's not as good as OLED with the deep blacks, but it's really nice.
01:37:43 ◼ ► Yep, so it gets the really nice LCD screen. It does not have a two lens camera system, although it seems to be able to fake it pretty darn well. And we can talk about that a little more in a minute.
01:37:57 ◼ ► It does not have 3D touch. Interestingly, it has haptic touch, which I guess is them trying to fake what 3D touch is without actually having 3D touch.
01:38:06 ◼ ► That I'm very curious about. Is it just that you do long presses and then it vibrates back at you?
01:38:16 ◼ ► Honestly, that's kind of interesting. We heard the supply chain rumors a few weeks back that the next iPhone wouldn't have 3D touch. That was probably rooted in this in retrospect.
01:38:29 ◼ ► The game of telephone. To be clear, the XS has plain old press really hard on your phone screen 3D touch, but the XR does not.
01:38:37 ◼ ► But this might be, maybe future phones won't have it. Because if you can get close enough with just long press sensing and then a vibrate motor, as opposed to having to measure the pressure on the whole screen.
01:38:55 ◼ ► What we always heard about the iPad, what we always heard about why it didn't have force touch, is that it's really hard to have the strain gauges or whatever it is that's measuring the deformation of the screen to measure pressure on the screen.
01:39:09 ◼ ► But you don't have to measure pressure on the screen if you're doing this through this method. You can just do it in software with long presses.
01:39:21 ◼ ► Well, first of all, does it? And second of all, maybe it does it with judging the size of the blob your finger makes on the screen.
01:39:32 ◼ ► Yeah, I guess it's a better term than the blob. But yeah, because when you're pushing hard, you're going to have a larger contact patch than when you're not.
01:39:40 ◼ ► And so maybe it does some kind of heuristic to figure that out in some way they finally figured out how to do reliably or something like that.
01:39:49 ◼ ► There you go, yeah. Yeah, use your neural whatevers on my blob to figure out what I mean.
01:39:53 ◼ ► 3D touch also, it was never that successful. It's not very widely used, at least intentionally.
01:40:05 ◼ ► But if they can manage to get kind of close to what it offered without having the force sensitivity, that's fine. That's fine for most people.
01:40:16 ◼ ► Yeah, 3D touch was an important, I think an important innovation in phone interface because it gave you another vector.
01:40:25 ◼ ► It gave you basically the equivalent of right click. You've already got all these different things that you can do.
01:40:29 ◼ ► We need some other channel. And this was the channel. The channel was pressure sensitivity.
01:40:36 ◼ ► The problem with it was that this channel required force, which is difficult for some people to do, but even people who have more than enough strength to do it, it is often awkward.
01:40:47 ◼ ► People use their phones like it is a touch interface. It is not a press interface, right?
01:40:55 ◼ ► And I've found in my experience, at least, that doing 3D touch, even when I want to do it, sometimes requires another adjustment of my hands to get enough pressure on it.
01:41:07 ◼ ► And generally just seems awkward and not in keeping with the rest of the experience of like brushing your fingers across this magical screen.
01:41:14 ◼ ► Like the way people use their phones, just watch people out and, you know, in public using their phones.
01:41:41 ◼ ► So I'm not saying that they're going to say 3D touch is a failed experiment and let's forget it because I'm not sure how this equivalent to it works.
01:41:48 ◼ ► But I think there is a need for another vector for input in addition to just touch, touch and hold and all sorts of other stuff.
01:41:55 ◼ ► But it may be that 3D touch is not ideal and that they can afford to, both, you know, monetarily and sales numbers and like functionally, they can afford to not have it because I bet so few people use, this is one of the metrics they probably made, so few people use 3D touch that the lack of it on the XR, like nobody will care about it. Almost nobody will care about it.
01:42:16 ◼ ► Yep. Agreed. It also has more battery life than the, than any of the phones, I believe. Is that right?
01:42:22 ◼ ► Yes, it has the best battery life. This is where we get to the point where we argue that the XR is the best iPhone. All right.
01:42:27 ◼ ► It's certainly an interesting dilemma because you haven't gone through all the specs, but let's just cut to the chase and say everything about it is the same except for the things we pointed out.
01:42:35 ◼ ► There's one camera, but the one camera it has is the same exact as that camera in the other phones. It is not a lesser camera. This just doesn't have the 2X camera, right?
01:42:44 ◼ ► It's got true tone. It's got the 120 hertz sensor. LCD instead of OLED, I've already covered that. Same exact processor. They didn't mention anything about it. Presumably the same clock speed, presumably the same memory.
01:42:56 ◼ ► It is the, the max, according to some tweets that I'm flying around, it has the same number of points as the max. So the size is physically in between, but it's got the same number of points as the max, according to some tweets I read, but it's 2X instead of 3X.
01:43:15 ◼ ► But still, but if it has the same, then that means you can like fit more on screen if you're okay with it being a little bit smaller. That's actually really interesting.
01:43:23 ◼ ► And it has the best battery life. Why? How could this one have the best battery life? It's got the screen that takes more energy. It's got LCD instead of OLED. And OLED, when the pixels aren't on, they don't take any power.
01:43:33 ◼ ► How could it have? What magic technology has Apple discovered to make the XR have such great battery life? They made it thicker. They made it thicker. It's the thickest one out of the new phones.
01:43:44 ◼ ► This phone has, there's a size chart up of like, see what, you know, how the battery life compares. It has better battery life than the XS Max. It has, you know, what is it? Let's see.
01:43:57 ◼ ► 16 hours of video playback versus 15, 15 hours of internet use versus 13. Like it's slightly better, but still better than the giant phone and significantly better than the XS.
01:44:08 ◼ ► So it's not, you know, specs wise, it's probably not the best phone, but I would have no problem recommending the XR to somebody who was looking at the XS but couldn't decide because like you'll get, bottom line, you'll get better battery life.
01:44:24 ◼ ► Yeah. And it's like when you look at like it costs like two thirds as much as a XS Max, you look at what you're getting from this thing. It's not bad. It's not a bad proposition. It also comes in all the best colors.
01:44:39 ◼ ► Yeah, it comes in all the colors. How many people even switch to the 2X cameras? Another stat that Apple probably has is like, even though we have this double camera system and it's great, the percentage of people that routinely switch between the zoomed in and not zoomed in camera versus the ones that just pinch in digital zoom.
01:44:53 ◼ ► Like I see that people are on their phones all the time as if they're getting closer and really they're just blowing the thing up and it's kind of pointless.
01:44:58 ◼ ► Well, to be fair, but it is smart about that it does use the 2X sensor once you get to that point.
01:45:07 ◼ ► Yeah, Apple has done the magic where they shoved all the prices up that it's now basically the old price for the best phone.
01:45:13 ◼ ► So the prices just look good in comparison, but we're living in the now and the now is the XS series and the X before it are super expensive. This one is like a return to three years ago.
01:45:23 ◼ ► These were the old prices of the best phone that you could get. And I really I can't get over the fact that it's like it's a great size with supposedly the big resolution with better battery life and with the same internal, same system on the chip and the same single camera.
01:45:40 ◼ ► Yeah, it really, you know, we were trying to figure out like in a couple of predictions episodes a few weeks back, like what are they going to do to make this phone worse so that anybody buys the XS, right?
01:45:58 ◼ ► They did a lot of things to make it just as good and some things to make it better like the colors.
01:46:02 ◼ ► Yeah, like I gotta say it's a very compelling option. I mean it isn't out yet. It's going to be like a month late, but still like that's a lot of people are going to buy that phone and I got to give Apple on one level.
01:46:16 ◼ ► I got to give them the credit of like, wow, it's really nice that the phone that, you know, as you said, like we're looking at this as like the less expensive one.
01:46:25 ◼ ► In reality, this is the price all iPhones used to be, but like until last year, this was the expensive phone price point.
01:46:34 ◼ ► But, you know, they're making quite a big statement with that. To me, the big question is like when a buyer walks into the store and sees these three options, who the hell is going to buy the XS?
01:46:48 ◼ ► Like I honestly don't like the XS I think is going to have a hard time. Like it's I guess it's the small phone now.
01:46:55 ◼ ► It's thinner and it looks a little bit shinier and I think it will be clear in person in the store that it is the higher end phone.
01:47:04 ◼ ► But as soon as people start asking questions, if you don't already know which phone you want, you're just in the Apple store and you're like, well, which one is better?
01:47:10 ◼ ► And then you start asking questions about it. So it's got the same camera, but only one, same CPU, better battery life, more, you know, it's the in-between size.
01:47:20 ◼ ► Like I'm trying to figure out like, will the 10, which one will sell more? Like are they going to sell more of the XS line or the XR line?
01:47:30 ◼ ► I suppose they'll still sell more of the XS line just because most people want the best phone, right?
01:47:39 ◼ ► No. Sometimes analysts try to derive it with like, you know, average selling price, stuff like that. You can usually have some idea from that.
01:47:47 ◼ ► But no, I'm with Casey. I think the XR is almost certain to be the biggest seller here.
01:47:53 ◼ ► Right. But the problem for this year is that there has never been a large 10 style phone and now there is and that's going to soak up a lot of, you know, a lot of the people who wanted a big phone and didn't want to buy the 8, like that market of things.
01:48:08 ◼ ► Well, that's why I think like the XS Max has a market. Like that's going to be the cutting edge people, people who want the biggest phone they can get and, you know, day one, you know, upgraders and everything.
01:48:20 ◼ ► They're going to mostly get, like I think the XS Max is going to sell to a lot of them. The XR is going to sell to pretty much everybody else. I don't know who buys the XS.
01:48:34 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, the another clever, you know, we've made a complaint about the names before, but the clever thing is putting this in the 10 family and giving it a letter R that is not clearly worse than S. It's just a different letter, right?
01:48:47 ◼ ► It's just one letter. It's almost S. That's why it's so clever. It's just one letter before S.
01:48:56 ◼ ► Not for the sake of the 10 S. I think again, it makes the 10 S look like, why am I paying so much more for that? But for the 10 R makes it look pretty good.
01:49:04 ◼ ► And there's going to be probably more 10 R's in the store because you're going to display them in a bunch of different colors where you've just got the 3D display on the 10 S.
01:49:12 ◼ ► Yeah, this is a super interesting model. And like, I really hope it does sell well because it will encourage Apple to make thicker phones that have better battery life.
01:49:22 ◼ ► Like I can imagine a certain sort of, you know, counter movement after a few months these have been on sale of like people in the know saying that the 10 S is supposedly the best phone, but the 10 R has better battery life.
01:49:37 ◼ ► So if you're a savvy consumer, you'll just get the 10 R. People are all buying the 10 R. Like we haven't seen the battery case situation yet because last year, you know, the battery case, they haven't offered a battery case for the plus size. Am I correct?
01:49:49 ◼ ► Yeah, that's right. They never have. It's, I mean, to be fair, like it's when, when as the phones are getting this big battery cases get increasingly unwieldy and people buy them anyway. Like, you know, people, people do make them, people do buy them and use them, but like,
01:50:07 ◼ ► Yeah. So the question is, will there be a battery case from Apple for the 10 R because it's the in between size because like the, you know, again, people being in the knows, like the 10 R is the one to get because it has better battery life. Like that's a thing that can, can start circulating, uh, along people who have more than enough money and would normally buy the highest end phone, but don't want the big phone.
01:50:26 ◼ ► Uh, the other wildcard for the 10 R is it may push people over the size limit because it is the in between size. You end up with the 10 S just because I like me that I wish it was the size of the seven. And I'm certainly not going to go to a 10 R despite the better battery life.
01:50:41 ◼ ► You know, if I needed it, which I really don't, but, um, you want to get the smallest good phone you can. And the 10 R is still pretty big being in between the S and the max.
01:50:51 ◼ ► Yep. Same. Completely agree. I think it's a combination of size and idiots like Marco and me who just want the best of the best of the best, sir with honors.
01:51:00 ◼ ► Uh, and the sizes are 64, 128 and 256 instead of 64, 256, 512. Uh, so there is a differentiator there. You have to do something to get the, you know, the price down. Uh, but it's, you know, I, I think the 128 for $800, this, if this was the, if we erase the 10 from existence
01:51:20 ◼ ► and they just introduced this after, uh, the seven, uh, I guess we'd all be disappointed cause it wasn't all that, but from a consumer perspective, you know, it's a great phone. Like the other compromised people pointing out, like if you know where to look is slightly less premium.
01:51:36 ◼ ► Uh, obviously in terms of bill materials, in terms of how close the screen gets to the edge of the phone, it's less close than it is on the 10. Right. And you know, it's, there's no shiny gold model. Like aluminum is not as fancy as stainless steel. It's, it's all there if you know where to look.
01:51:52 ◼ ► But I think this is going to be a very popular phone with good reason. I think it's really good.
01:51:56 ◼ ► In many ways it's a lot like the aluminum versus steel watch. Like you pay a few hundred dollars more for the nice steel, you know, and it looks shinier and has a few, you know, a few little niceties, but for the most part it's not that different.
01:52:10 ◼ ► Like this, I think it's very similar here where like almost everyone is just going to get the 10R and is going to be very happy with it.
01:52:17 ◼ ► Uh, and it does, it has wireless charging, like in case people are wondering, like it's all, all the same features that you know and love from the 10.
01:52:24 ◼ ► It's super compelling. And what was even more interesting to me was friend of the show, Steve Trout and Smith tweeted earlier that iPhone 10R is the one to watch.
01:52:34 ◼ ► It's a sizable upgrade on the iPhone 10 if you don't mind losing OLED and 3X. It looks like it's a plus layout model too, which is what we were discussing earlier.
01:52:43 ◼ ► It's a really interesting, really, really, really interesting phone and I'm, I think I'm on board with it. Like not that it's my call anyway, but I think it's a good idea for Apple to do this.
01:52:54 ◼ ► I think it moves kind of the whole stack forward, if you will. It makes everyone, it makes so many people get on the, you know, iPhone 10 train, but it's a very odd choice.
01:53:05 ◼ ► And I think they're rolling the dice a little bit because it is so friggin' good and there's so little to differentiate it from the 10S.
01:53:13 ◼ ► And I think your analogy, Marco, is really good that it's kind of like the stainless steel watch model. There's not that much, I mean I think it's, it's, it's more obvious what the differences are and I think you would absolutely agree with me there.
01:53:24 ◼ ► But, um, but it is, there's not a lot that differentiates the two. And they discontinued the 10 and the SE.
01:53:33 ◼ ► Yeah, that's, I'm kind of surprised they, they really haven't shown any desire to replace the SE with anything.
01:53:43 ◼ ► Well, and you know, I don't think they would replace the SE with another phone the same size.
01:53:46 ◼ ► You know, as much as the people who use the SE want that and I've heard from all of them on Twitter today when I said I wanted the, I wanted to drop software support for it.
01:53:55 ◼ ► They are all still responding to me. But, you know, if the reality is like I think, I think that market is just too small. Like I think not enough people want a phone of that size in this day and age anymore.
01:54:07 ◼ ► But I don't know like what, what have they replaced that with exactly? Like, I mean, now all of their current model phones are pretty damn big by comparison.
01:54:21 ◼ ► And while that is what tends to sell, it does kind of leave a hole in the market. I mean, and granted, yeah, it was a decreasingly sized hole, I guess.
01:54:31 ◼ ► But it does leave people who wanted a smaller phone with pretty much nothing. Like there are no Android phones of that size. They can't jump to Android. Like it's just, there's just nothing there.
01:54:41 ◼ ► So it is worth, you know, pouring one out for the SE people. But I do think that really, I mean, they're kind of lucky it lasted this long. And because even the SE was fairly unexpected.
01:54:52 ◼ ► Like, you know, it used to be just the 5S that you were stuck with. And so that was kind of fun. But I think, I think that train has sailed.
01:55:00 ◼ ► Yeah, that's what trains do. They sail. I think the small, I think the small phone will be back though. Because I mean, just because of the timelines, it doesn't work out. Like, so the SE is gone, right? But I think there will be at some point in the future, a new phone from Apple that is smaller in size than the X.
01:55:17 ◼ ► Just because the SE sold so well and Apple was actually public in saying the SE is selling way better than we thought it would. Right? The problem is that happened too late for them to like, oh, let's scratch all our plans and rejigger all of our phones to come out with a smaller one.
01:55:32 ◼ ► They don't have, they didn't have a plan for it. They just thought the SE is a thing, we'll do whatever. We'll sell it, make some people happy, get rid of some old parts that we have because we can still make these things. Right?
01:55:40 ◼ ► But it turned out to be a really big seller. I think it, you know, compared to what they expected, I think this has convinced Apple that there continues to be a market for a phone that's smaller than a X. And I hope it's in the pipeline now. It just, you know, it wasn't in the cards for this year and probably not even for next year.
01:55:56 ◼ ► But I look forward to a smaller, either a smaller X or a phone that slots in below the X.
01:56:05 ◼ ► I am holding my breath. I think within five years, Apple will sell a phone that is smaller than the X.
01:56:11 ◼ ► I said five years. An infinite timeline for sure. But in the next five years, Apple will sell a new phone that is smaller than the X. Width and height wise, I will take that bet. What do you want to bet? Five bucks?
01:56:22 ◼ ► No, you do, we got to do the trading places bet. A movie that you don't know because you're youngsters.
01:56:28 ◼ ► One dollar. Okay. One dollar. I will take that bet. You got to put a calendar reminder in for five years from now.
01:56:35 ◼ ► Some listener will hear this seven years from now and say, "Hey, did you ever, did you ever pay so and so that dollar?"
01:56:42 ◼ ► All right. A couple of other quick hits. AirPower. What's going on there, man? Just gone.
01:56:47 ◼ ► It's just been totally scrubbed from existence. Gone down the memory hole. What do you mean, AirPower?
01:56:53 ◼ ► They didn't because it's still on the website. They just changed it from available in 2018 to currently unavailable.
01:57:03 ◼ ► Yes, that has always been true. And I suspect may always be true. Like, oh man, what a mess.
01:57:10 ◼ ► So AirPower announced a year ago for this year, for 2018, which itself was weird to announce it for, you know, the next entire year when there was no real pressure to announce something like that.
01:57:21 ◼ ► Basically, it's a fancy Qi charging mat. And granted, it is a very fancy Qi charging mat, but still a Qi charging mat.
01:57:28 ◼ ► And now it is missing. Very conspicuously missing. When it was announced last year, they mentioned that they were going to have this new AirPods case that could charge via the wireless charging on it.
01:57:42 ◼ ► The speculation, you know, up until today was, well, they, you know, it took them a while. They appeared to be having some problem with it.
01:57:48 ◼ ► So they were going to hold back the AirPod update that had the always-on Hey Siri and the improved water resistance, I think.
01:57:54 ◼ ► They were going to hold that back and then, you know, the AirPower mat would launch at this fall event, probably, and new AirPods would launch with it and et cetera.
01:58:03 ◼ ► And even the intro video, the Mission Impossible clicker video does appear to, you know, suggest that that was intended. And that just didn't happen.
01:58:12 ◼ ► And I've heard rumblings here and there, as we all have, I think, that like AirPower is just, they were having a lot of trouble with it.
01:58:19 ◼ ► Like, they just can't get it, they can't finish it, they can't get it right. There's something wrong with whatever they're doing.
01:58:25 ◼ ► And we don't really know what's going on, but it really does raise two interesting questions of, one, why can't they get a charging mat right when you can, you know, buy more basic ones forever for like no money.
01:58:41 ◼ ► And question number two, why the heck was this preannounced a year ago? But it is really conspicuously absent now that not only did they not announce it today, and not only is it still unavailable, but they removed almost all reference to it on the website.
01:58:58 ◼ ► Yeah, the fact that it's still there at all makes me think that maybe, like, the same reason they announced it is like, you know, is it a thing that was planned, and it wasn't ready in time for the keynote, but they're probably going to say, "Do you think you'll have it ready by next year?" It's like, "Oh, by next year, sure, it'll be ready by next year. You can announce it for next year." So it's optimism.
01:59:14 ◼ ► You know, we don't know, we know it's not available now, and we know there are problems, but they told us it'd probably be ready by next year, and then it turned out to be more difficult and problematic. So, oh well. But like, yeah, just optimism. That's why it's probably still on the website. Because they haven't decided to publicly can it yet.
01:59:31 ◼ ► They may still decide to publicly can it, but obviously they haven't reached whatever is going to convince them, "Well, just forget it." They haven't got there yet.
01:59:38 ◼ ► As for the AirPods, I don't actually think the AirPod Delay is connected to the mat, just because there's no reason to delay a thing that charges wirelessly unless it only works with AirPower. I assume that the wireless AirPod case thing will work with all the other third-party chargers that people are charging their iPhone 10s on. Like, you don't need to wait for the mat for the AirPods. It would be nice. It's a nice pair, but...
02:00:02 ◼ ► I would not assume that it is a standard Qi charging case. I think it's an AirPower. Because like, the Apple Watch Series 3... It's funny. People on Twitter pointed this out earlier. When the Series 3 was announced, it's spec page says it was compatible with AirPower. The Series 3 is still for sale. It no longer says that. But anyway, Series 3, it is not Qi compatible.
02:00:26 ◼ ► So AirPower was basically starting as Qi and kind of extending it. The phone can do AirPower and Qi, but the Apple Watch Series 3 and, I assume, Series 4 were made just to do whatever the AirPower mat was going to do for them.
02:00:43 ◼ ► And I believe the AirPod case was probably the same way. And this probably isn't a huge difference. Maybe it might just be like the size of the charging coil or something like that. Or some kind of lower power version of it. Who knows what it is. But I would not assume that whatever the new AirPod case is is compatible with standard Qi chargers.
02:01:03 ◼ ► I would assume it is. Simply because there's third party things that you can strap onto your AirPod case right now. Where the coil fits within the, you know, it's on the outside instead of the inside. But the coil fits perfectly fine in there and it charges on any Qi charging mat. Like it's not...
02:01:18 ◼ ► Technologically there's no reason why it can't work with Qi chargers. And because they're all their phones do, I assume the AirPod case will too. They could still be the languages because it makes a nice pairing.
02:01:28 ◼ ► But it just seems to me that, like, I don't know, the video is very convincing because the video is so clearly says "Hey Siri" instead of double tapping. It's not like without double tapping, it's instead of double tapping. Because the double tap serves as the "Hey Siri".
02:01:44 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, suppose that, well, I don't know. It's confusing. But I continue to hold out hope. I'm going to try to continue my streak of barely correctly predicting that Apple would not change the watch straps to say that Apple's AirPod case will also be plain old Qi compatible.
02:02:10 ◼ ► No, you're going to bankrupt me. That one will just be like the watch straps where I'm not particularly certain about it, but 51% certain.
02:02:31 ◼ ► At this point, I think it shouldn't come out. Because whatever problems they were having, like maybe leave that as a third party operator. Mostly because like, here's the thing, especially especially if the AirPods only work with that mat.
02:02:45 ◼ ► That mat is not the right product. Like it's big. If you want to charge multiple products on a thing, sure, that's great. But what if you don't want to charge multiple products?
02:02:55 ◼ ► If the only place that you can inductively charge your AirPod thing is on a gigantic mat that also holds like a phone and a watch, but maybe you don't have a watch or maybe you don't have that kind of phone or whatever.
02:03:06 ◼ ► It's not a great product. I want Apple to make good quality accessories. I think Apple should make a normal sized regular Qi charging mat that's of nice quality that your phone doesn't shake off of, right?
02:03:16 ◼ ► Instead of us all going through the third party ones and trying to find the one that is the least bad, that's what Apple should make. Straightforward, just make a plain old Qi charging thing, no multi-device. Do that, do it well, graduate to the big aircraft carrier that you can put lots of stuff on.
02:03:33 ◼ ► But it seems like they can't get the aircraft carrier to work. From the pictures it looks like it's going to be slippery and your devices are going to slide off of it. It looks like just a weird white lozenge that is just too large to fit into the places in my life, at least where I would want an inductive charging mat.
02:03:47 ◼ ► So I am not enthused about AirPower and I think Apple should can that and make Wi-Fi routers.
02:03:59 ◼ ► I am not confident, but I think it will. And I am only ever so slightly leaning in that direction. I think it will and I think it will by the middle of next year. Based on zero facts, I'm just guessing. But I am not at all confident about that.
02:04:20 ◼ ► I'm going to take the slightly less confident version of what you said. I don't think it's going to come out at all, but I'm not that confident in that. So if you're like 55% confident that it's going to come out, I'm like 45% confident it's going to come out. I'm on the no side, but I'm not 100% sure of that.
02:04:40 ◼ ► And who is dying for this to come out? Is there someone who has a hole in their life that they've been reserving for this giant mat to charge? Everyone who wants an inductive charger has already bought one and it hasn't been an Apple one and they have a place in their life for it.
02:04:53 ◼ ► Is someone saying, "I'm annoyed by having these three inductive chargers and I can't wait to replace them with one big mat"? I suppose they're out there, but it's like, by waiting this long, this product is not that amazing.
02:05:05 ◼ ► Even if it does come out, it's like, "And it's finally out. Do you know anyone who has one? Does anyone care?" I'm not enthused.
02:05:14 ◼ ► It's going to be like $150. It's going to be very expensive and it's going to only work with XYZ or whatever. I don't know. I think like, you know, Rene Ritchie will have one. He'll take pictures on Instagram and they'll look great. And that'll be the only one we ever see.
02:05:33 ◼ ► Well, one last thing on charging. Also not mentioned, but supposedly from someone at the show, the XS and XR both charge faster inductively than the X, supposedly.
02:05:45 ◼ ► I didn't give a quantified thing. This was from, who was it from? I think it was from Gruber. I think Gruber said this, so I trust that he knows what he's talking about. No numbers on it, but that's something else to consider.
02:05:56 ◼ ► Oh, and speaking of details like that, a couple of people in the chat room wanted us to know that the XS also has better cell radios with whatever the gigabit, you know, whatever thing they were bragging about about the better cell bandwidth stuff. That's only on the XS, not on the XR. But again, normal people won't care because it's fine.
02:06:12 ◼ ► All right. Anything else from the keynote? I'm sure there will be more that we will talk about at some juncture, but anything else for now?
02:06:19 ◼ ► From the whole keynote? Yeah, I just wanted to clarify with you two, if you know, so they talked about HomePod and tvOS, but they didn't say anything we didn't already know, right? They were just saying, "And now these things are going to be real like on Monday or whatever the hell they're going to announce it." There was no new features announced, right?
02:06:33 ◼ ► Well, they were confirming rumors on the HomePod. They said multiple timer support, making and receiving phone calls initiated by the HomePod, searching for songs by lyrics, which I don't think was rumored by anybody, but they mentioned that as well.
02:06:47 ◼ ► Also the whole like, you know, ping my iPhone or ping my Apple devices. That's pretty cool. That's useful.
02:06:53 ◼ ► I tried to do that on my HomePod multiple times because I thought that they already had the feature. Now they announced it and I'm like, "Finally, I can stop asking my HomePod to do something and it will actually do it."
02:07:03 ◼ ► Yeah. We're going to be finding Tiff's phone a lot with the HomePod. That's really nice.
02:07:10 ◼ ► I hope it does multiple people because I rarely lose my phone in the house, but other people in this house lose their devices very often.
02:07:18 ◼ ► Yeah. I think Tiff is getting a HomePod then if it's only one person. But yeah, that to me, I'm actually more excited about the HomePod update than I think I am about the iPhone.
02:07:38 ◼ ► And then Mojave is coming out. The Mac did get mentioned, which only messed up Upgrades draft. It's coming out, I think, two weeks? Yeah, the 24th.
02:07:48 ◼ ► Yeah, not delayed until October. People were pessimistic about Mojave based on the recent betas and like, "Oh, the Mac stuff is coming in October." Mojave was like, "Nope. They're not waiting. Mojave is coming with or without Macs."
02:08:00 ◼ ► There is no relation between any recent version of macOS's release date and whether it was ready or not. They've released it no matter what. They'll release it in a horrible, buggy state and they'll just say, "All right. Well, this is .0. It's done. Good luck."
02:08:15 ◼ ► That doesn't really mean anything. I'm a little curious how that works out with any kind of Mac hardware releases. If the OS launches in two weeks, chances are either they're going to have a bunch of stuff in the OS that people like YAMO Rembo can find that point to new hardware, which they probably won't do, or the hardware is going to be delayed until a .1 update.
02:08:40 ◼ ► But that could push it well into October, maybe even November. So I don't know. I'm not feeling good right now about our chances of getting meaningful Mac hardware updates anytime soon.
02:08:51 ◼ ► I'm still optimistic. I think an October event where they ship in November is still in the cards for non-iOS things. I'm most disappointed, actually, overall, in the keynote, that there are no iPads. I want there to be new iPads that match the notchy iPads or whatever. iPads with Face ID. I want those. I don't know why they're not here. Make them here now, please.
02:09:14 ◼ ► Yeah, that was also obviously a curious omission here, but I would guess that's a plausible fall event later on to have some kind of October thing where it is iPads and Macs. That's reasonable. We hope.
02:09:28 ◼ ► Yeah, I'm optimistic for that. I'm looking forward to an October event. I was a little bit disappointed when I learned before the event that there were going to be no iPads. I didn't expect Macs. Now I'm looking forward. For a brief moment for this event, I was like, "Maybe they'll just announce everything, all those things that Marco Liz did." But that was just fantasizing.
02:09:48 ◼ ► October event I'm really looking forward to. I want to see what they're doing with the Mac, and I want my iPads.
02:09:55 ◼ ► All right, thanks to our sponsors this week, Betterment, Aftershocks, and Molekule. And we will talk to you next week.
02:10:01 ◼ ► Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin. Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
02:10:14 ◼ ► John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him. Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental. And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM. And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
02:10:38 ◼ ► So that's Casey, Liz, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T-Marco-Armin S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-S-C-Racusa. It's accidental. They didn't mean to. Accidental. Tech podcast so long.
02:11:03 ◼ ► In the show notes, it says, "Aftershow. John's special day." I would like to hear about this.
02:11:09 ◼ ► I didn't want to give it away by more precisely describing what I'm about to talk about, because it would be easy to give away. But now is the time that I need to discuss this topic. Even though we're not... the dates don't line up exactly.
02:11:23 ◼ ► Let me take you back. Picture it. Sicily, September 10th, 2008. A young boy with much more hair and fewer wrinkles decides to place an order for a Mac Pro.
02:11:44 ◼ ► Two gigabytes of RAM. Why would you get a computer with two gigabytes of RAM? This was back in the days when everyone would buy third-party RAM. NVG-4S-8-800. No Wi-Fi. Two optical drives, because why wouldn't you get two optical drives? That's awesome.
02:12:01 ◼ ► Total price. Can you guess what the total price of this thing is? I didn't list all the specs. Let me see what else we have. A hard drive was 500GB, 7200 RPM. Extended keyboard. Apple Mighty Mouse, which was the current mouse at the time. What is the total price of this Mac Pro?
02:12:27 ◼ ► $2,479. Oh my god. That's how cheap Pro Max used to be. This was a massive case that held four hard drives, had a replaceable GPU, had pretty good CPUs for the time, had a GeForce 8800GT with 512 MB of RAM. This was no slouch of a computer. Incredibly expandable. $2,400. And I also bought with it, this is where the pricing gets back to what you're going to predict, the Apple Cinema Display 23-inch, which was, guess?
02:13:02 ◼ ► And here I am today, more than 10 years later, sitting in front of that self-same 23-inch flat panel Cinema Display that I bought for $800. Looks as good as the day I got it. No dead pixels. Beautiful monitor, and my computer continues to chug along there.
02:13:19 ◼ ► It no longer has any of the original hard drives in it, although it has four hard drives in it. It has a couple sticks of the original RAM, I think, still. It does not have the original GPU. It has had multiple GPUs in it.
02:13:32 ◼ ► I just wanted to take this time, because September 10, 2008 was when it was ordered, so we just passed the 10-year anniversary. I don't know when it arrived in my house, so I had to pick the order date. My computer is 10 years old. Apple, please make me another one.
02:13:49 ◼ ► That is a special day. I am very happy for you, Jon. Can we please retire that computer now?
02:13:56 ◼ ► The price is really things, but I know it was 10 years ago, but $3,400 for a powerful, not bottom-of-the-line Mac Pro with a nice monitor, those days are gone.
02:14:09 ◼ ► Yeah, still, man, those were suction-dealing. I remember when the Mac Pro first came out, the first Intel Mac Pro. You could get one with only one processor if you wanted to really cut it down, and you could get it for as low as, I think, $1,600 was the cheapest configuration you could get.
02:14:27 ◼ ► The reasonable mid-range ones like you have, they were between $2,200 and $2,600 usually. I remember when it was a really big deal when they updated it. I think it was the 2010 model, basically with the Nehalem generation before that. That was the '09 model, and the '10.
02:14:48 ◼ ► The CPU prices went way up from Intel, and Apple passed that along and added some of their own wonderful inflation as well. So right after you bought yours is when the prices really went very high, and they continued to get even higher after that.
02:15:03 ◼ ► Yeah, and needless to say, this is the Mac that I have owned and used the longest. Well, not owned, because I still own my original Mac, but it's the Mac I've used the longest. Marco points out that it marks probably the best price performance of the Pro Macs ever had.
02:15:22 ◼ ► But also, this was the peak of the dream, and the dream for my personal dream, the dream of many people, was to buy an Apple Macintosh computer and be able to run their operating system and their software, have the computer be really nice and Apple quality, look nice, be reliable, high quality, just all the fancy Apple stuff.
02:15:44 ◼ ► And also be able to use that exact same computer to run Windows and/or Linux, including the games that are on them, and have it be a reasonable gaming PC. Believe it or not, in 2008, this was a reasonable, not the best gaming PC, not a super monster gaming PC, but you could buy one machine, and it can do all of your computer stuff if your computer stuff that you care about is Windows, Linux, and Mac.
02:16:08 ◼ ► A single machine, officially supported by Apple with Boot Camp, like this time may never come again, where there's no OS or architecture disparity, there's no situation where Apple just literally does not make a machine that would be a passable gaming PC, because even the iMac Pro is probably as close as you can come, but still, most people would say it's not a passable gaming PC, even booted into Windows.
02:16:30 ◼ ► This was. And it was expandable and flexible, like it is a time that may never come again, and it was a time that I had longed for my entire life, because I always had to have Macs, but you want to play PC games, and if you don't want to buy a second PC, there was never a way to square it, and then they went to Intel, and it was like the promise was there, and then they made the Mac Pro, these giant tower machines with tons of cooling that obviously are super reliable, because this thing is unkillable, despite being hit by the vacuum cleaner many, many times.
02:16:58 ◼ ► It's sitting down there, quiet as the day I got it, just doing its job, still running El Cap, which is the latest OS that will officially run on the thing.
02:17:08 ◼ ► I'm ready to retire, don't get me wrong, but I am extremely, and my SE30 is still my favorite Mac that I've ever had, but I am extremely proud of this machine, it is one of the best Apple purchases I've ever made, and back on the preview show, when you asked about the bang for the buck, I would have said this, but I wanted to save it for this show, this is actually the best bang for the buck I ever got out of an Apple purchase.
02:17:29 ◼ ► So I'm curious, first of all, I want to know how much you still use it, and then second of all, I'd love to hear you explain for us and the listeners, what is it like using a 10-year-old computer? What can't you do, what is totally fine, what's it like?
02:17:47 ◼ ► How often do I use it is, I use it pretty much whenever I want to do computer stuff, here's the only thing that keeps me away from it, it's not because it's old and slow, it's not because the monitor is small, this is what it is, and this may be surprising, but maybe not if you know me.
02:18:03 ◼ ► So I sleep the computer at night, I never turn this off, I check on my uptime, the only time I reboot is for OS updates, which no longer happen, right? When I go on vacation, I shut it down, I actually unplug it from the wall in case there's a lightning storm, right?
02:18:20 ◼ ► But other than that, I just leave it on, but I leave it asleep. The reason I sit down at my wife's computer, which is a 5K iMac, is not because it is a better, faster computer with a better screen. Part of it is because she has the photos library, so I have to sit there to do photos, but very often I'll use her computer to just look something up on the web.
02:18:36 ◼ ► Why will I do that? Two reasons. One, it's closer to the door to the room that the computers are in, and two, the main reason is waking my computer feels like a more significant event than waking hers. Waking my computer...
02:18:54 ◼ ► No, the fans spin up, you hear the click of whatever is clicking in there, I don't know, the optical drive, the hard drive spin up because the spinning hard drive, like, it is a thing, and it takes a little bit for the computer to be ready to do what I want, and I feel bad about doing it.
02:19:10 ◼ ► And it heats up the room because this thing is a friggin' heat exchanger, and it's great in the winter, not so good in the summer. So I will very frequently use her computer because waking her computer up, which is also on all the time, does not make any noise, nothing spins, it is fairly instantly ready for me to do something, even if I have to switch accounts because it's in one of the kids' accounts or something like that.
02:19:30 ◼ ► You know, switch to my account or whatever, it's still faster and more pleasant, and honestly, I don't want to wait for the time, and I feel guilty, and it feels kind of like Casey feels bad, but like the auto stop-start systems are constantly starting your car, it doesn't feel that good.
02:19:44 ◼ ► And so, that's part of this being a giant box with a bunch of fans, it's part of this being from the pre-SSD era, even though my main boot drive is an SSD, it has three spinning hard drives in there, which do need to spin up.
02:19:55 ◼ ► So, anyway, that's why I use it less than I would. But that said, I do all of my podcasting with this computer, anytime I need to sit down under my computer to do something serious, I did a bunch of programming recently, you know, work stuff unfortunately.
02:20:09 ◼ ► Over the weekend, over the holiday weekend, I use my computer for all of that. It is my computer, it is my preferred computer, and this is where I want to do my stuff and all my junk is there, so I do use it.
02:20:19 ◼ ► What is it like using it? Surprisingly, I think about this sometimes, like this is a 10-year-old computer that's slower than my wife's phone. Probably slower than my phone.
02:20:28 ◼ ► It doesn't feel slow. Obviously, a part of that is the SSD. Without the SSD, it would feel I wouldn't be able to use it, like I would have to have gotten it, because I can't handle it, right?
02:20:37 ◼ ► But with an SSD in here, it feels fine. Obviously, you can't do any games on it anymore, like even though it has a newer GPU in it, like modern games are not going to cut it even at this low resolution.
02:20:50 ◼ ► But browsing the web, using messages like text, like it feels fine, surprisingly fine. Maybe if I put High Sierra on it or something, or Sierra for that matter, maybe it would feel worse.
02:21:02 ◼ ► It doesn't feel fast, but it feels fine. The main things that make it feel slower are things like how long it takes to wake from sleep and hearing things spin up, and occasionally, this is an annoyance of a machine with four hard drives in it, which most Mac users no longer have to deal with.
02:21:18 ◼ ► If you come to an OpenSave dialog box and the spinning disks are spun down, sometimes it has to wait for them to spin up before it will beach ball while they spin up or something, or lag while they spin up, and it's like, "I don't want to pick anything from those drives anyway, OS. I'm going to pick it from the SSD that doesn't need to be spun up. Don't delay me."
02:21:34 ◼ ► Those are the only times where it feels like there might be a little bit of lag, but honestly, it is amazingly okay, because the things I do with it aren't that demanding. I'm not compiling software, I'm not doing audio editing, I'm not denoising audio files, I'm not compressing things in Handbrake. All those would be horrendous, but I don't do any of those things on this computer, so it's fine, surprisingly.
02:22:00 ◼ ► So it's like, "Why do you need a new computer?" It's like, "Well, again, there are reasons I use my OS computer, and I would love to not look at the 23-inch screen anymore, I would love to have retina, many reasons I want to move on, I want to buy a new computer, but this has held up amazingly well."
02:22:18 ◼ ► Me too, and I'm excited for your Mac Pro, because it's still alive, and that's shocking.
02:22:22 ◼ ► Yeah, the best thing about it, I go in there occasionally, because every once in a while it throws a dim, as in the old horse throwing a shoe, we've talked about this before, my analogy. Every once in a while the RAM does go bad.
02:22:34 ◼ ► I feel so bad, because it's like other world computing RAM for the most part, third-party ones, and I'll call them and say, "Yeah, it's me again. Can you send me more free replacement RAM for my ancient computer?"
02:22:49 ◼ ► It's like, "You still have that?" They don't say that, but I think I've gotten replacement RAM that's gone bad, put it in, then that RAM has gone bad, then I've returned that and gotten new RAM, and then pretty soon that RAM's going to go bad.
02:23:10 ◼ ► Yeah, and it's not that often, it's like once every three and a half years. It's pretty amazing, but everything else in it, it amazes me that the fans haven't died. Because fans get noisy and weird and stuff, the fans in it haven't died.
02:23:26 ◼ ► There's so much dust. The dust is part of the thing now. You see dust and you're like, "Let me wipe that dust off," and you wipe it and it doesn't move. The dust is welded to the inside of this thing. It is aging in amazing ways. The capacitors haven't died.
02:23:41 ◼ ► It's been in this terrible room here where the temperature, especially since we don't have air conditioning, during the day the temperature in this room is incredibly high and then it's freezing in the winter because we don't have the heat on high in this room.
02:23:53 ◼ ► It has been in adverse conditions, sitting under this desk for ten years, doing its job.