ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Have you guys noticed that this is the 1000 day anniversary of the Mac Pro?

00:00:05 ◼   ► Oh God, do we really have to talk about that? I'm already all fired up.

00:00:08 ◼   ► This is the longest Mac Pro has ever gone. Although, if you count the 2012 as really

00:00:14 ◼   ► just the 2010, which I would, that actually is a longer span than this. That was like

00:00:18 ◼   ► 1100. But if you count them separately the way Apple released them, this is the longest

00:00:23 ◼   ► span by a good margin.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Yay, happy birthday Mac Pro or something.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Was it you that was tweeting the other day that like,

00:00:32 ◼   ► you were talking about next spring or something

00:00:35 ◼   ► 'cause you thought they weren't gonna update the Mac Pro

00:00:36 ◼   ► until they get the Skylake-E in it?

00:00:38 ◼   ► Whatever happened to them just using the chips

00:00:41 ◼   ► that are available now?

00:00:41 ◼   ► You've given up on that now too?

00:00:43 ◼   ► - We can barely get them to use anything.

00:00:46 ◼   ► The last thing they're gonna do

00:00:47 ◼   ► is use a six month old chip.

00:00:48 ◼   ► I mean, they're gonna either wait--

00:00:49 ◼   ► - A six month old chip is practically new

00:00:51 ◼   ► in a three year old computer.

00:00:52 ◼   ► - That's true, but this is Apple we're talking about.

00:00:55 ◼   ► Apple, like, the wind could blow the wrong direction one day

00:00:57 ◼   ► "Well, better delay the Mac Pro again for another generation."

00:01:01 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:01:02 ◼   ► I don't know if my poor computer's gonna make it that long.

00:01:04 ◼   ► I don't know if I can wait until mid to late 2017.

00:01:08 ◼   ► - I mean, if I had to take a guess,

00:01:10 ◼   ► if they're truly waiting on Skylake-E

00:01:12 ◼   ► and they're gonna do an update then,

00:01:14 ◼   ► knowing Intel and also these days knowing Apple with the Mac,

00:01:18 ◼   ► I'm guessing that is not even a spring release.

00:01:20 ◼   ► I'm guessing that's June 2017.

00:01:23 ◼   ► I'm guessing that's a WVDC release.

00:01:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know, I saw that.

00:01:26 ◼   ► I was like, "Next WRC? No, Apple just released it with whatever's available now. And a new

00:01:32 ◼   ► GPU."

00:01:33 ◼   ► [Music]

00:01:34 ◼   ► So, let's dig in, starting with Zach Woldowski. Doing what Marco wants with Windows is possible.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Windows 8 and up support a deployment method called Windows To Go.

00:01:43 ◼   ► I don't care.

00:01:45 ◼   ► Moving on. iOS 10 home button behavior. This has been less of a cluster than I expected.

00:01:52 ◼   ► So it used to be that on iOS 9, you would pick up your phone and the screen would not

00:01:57 ◼   ► turn on.

00:01:59 ◼   ► And you could press the home button or the sleep/wake button, which a coworker of mine

00:02:04 ◼   ► had no idea was also a wake button.

00:02:07 ◼   ► He thought it was only a sleep button, which I thought that was kind of amusing.

00:02:09 ◼   ► Anyway, you could press either the sleep/wake button or the home button to turn the screen

00:02:13 ◼   ► on and then naturally, if you have Touch ID, particularly on, was it the 6 or the 6s that

00:02:17 ◼   ► got super fast?

00:02:18 ◼   ► 6s was, yeah.

00:02:19 ◼   ► Okay.

00:02:20 ◼   ► But the 6S, the thing that happened was the Touch ID was so darn fast that you would pick

00:02:26 ◼   ► up your phone, press the home button, and Touch ID would almost instantly authenticate

00:02:30 ◼   ► you and you would miss all your notifications.

00:02:33 ◼   ► So in iOS 10, the way Apple's fixed this is, when you pick up the phone, and this is all

00:02:38 ◼   ► with the default settings that is, it does what I believe they call "raise to wake."

00:02:41 ◼   ► And so the screen will come on and show you your notifications.

00:02:44 ◼   ► If you press the home button, then it will actually do what it used to do, which is bring

00:02:51 ◼   ► you into the home screen.

00:02:53 ◼   ► But you could just lightly press the home button and it will say on the bottom, "Press

00:02:58 ◼   ► home to unlock."

00:03:00 ◼   ► And then you can press home again to get into your phone.

00:03:02 ◼   ► It's very wonky.

00:03:03 ◼   ► I still, even a month or so in, don't particularly care for it.

00:03:08 ◼   ► And I expected the entire world to lose their crap about this.

00:03:13 ◼   ► And as it turns out, I haven't heard that much complaining,

00:03:15 ◼   ► all told, have you guys?

00:03:17 ◼   ► - Everybody who's a machine I've upgraded to iOS 10

00:03:19 ◼   ► has complained about this,

00:03:20 ◼   ► which just includes the three members of my family, but.

00:03:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:25 ◼   ► - What do you think about it, Marco?

00:03:26 ◼   ► - I mean, I haven't heard that much

00:03:28 ◼   ► because most of the complaining I heard

00:03:30 ◼   ► was earlier during the beta period,

00:03:31 ◼   ► when all the people I know all installed the beta

00:03:34 ◼   ► on their main phone against most advice.

00:03:38 ◼   ► So most of the complaining I got through back then,

00:03:40 ◼   ► for my own personal getting used to it,

00:03:43 ◼   ► it took me maybe a couple days and it was fine.

00:03:45 ◼   ► And when it first started, I thought for sure,

00:03:48 ◼   ► oh, this is gonna take me a long time to get used to

00:03:51 ◼   ► 'cause it's so different on such a common interaction

00:03:54 ◼   ► that I do constantly every day.

00:03:56 ◼   ► And it just turned out, yeah,

00:03:56 ◼   ► it was like a couple days and it was totally fine.

00:03:58 ◼   ► - Ah, I'm jealous 'cause it is still taking me a while

00:04:00 ◼   ► to get used to it.

00:04:01 ◼   ► And in fact, I was reminded by somebody earlier,

00:04:03 ◼   ► either today or yesterday, that I'm so,

00:04:06 ◼   ► it's so ingrained in me to do the swipe up to control center

00:04:10 ◼   ► hit the bottom right to get the camera from the lock screen.

00:04:12 ◼   ► And it is so much nicer in iOS 10 to swipe from right to left, but I completely forgot

00:04:17 ◼   ► that was a thing.

00:04:19 ◼   ► And so I need to also retrain myself on that one as well.

00:04:21 ◼   ► Yep, again, a few days.

00:04:23 ◼   ► So I complained about this thing on the last show.

00:04:26 ◼   ► Like I had just upgraded to iOS 10.

00:04:29 ◼   ► Was I on the beta?

00:04:30 ◼   ► I forget.

00:04:31 ◼   ► Anyway, it was an aside that I complained that this is the one thing that annoyed me

00:04:34 ◼   ► about it.

00:04:35 ◼   ► sentenced me and all of us, I guess, to a good solid week of people telling us how to fix this

00:04:42 ◼   ► which is what this actual follow-by item is about. Like, if you don't like the new behavior in iOS 10

00:04:46 ◼   ► there's a setting to change it back to the old behavior. Although interestingly, the setting by the way is in under general under

00:04:52 ◼   ► accessibility and there's a thing called home button and there's just one little switch

00:04:55 ◼   ► you can change it back to the old behavior. But if you switch it back to the old behavior the text on the screen still says

00:05:00 ◼   ► like

00:05:01 ◼   ► Press to unlock which I guess is true. It will still unlock it, but you don't have to press it anymore

00:05:06 ◼   ► That's the point. It just makes it the old style thing. Yeah, that's a little weird, but I mean it makes sense

00:05:11 ◼   ► There's all there's also a setting for raised awake - by the way

00:05:14 ◼   ► My phone doesn't have raised awake and I don't quite understand why it annoys me a little bit. It's only on the 6s

00:05:19 ◼   ► Oh, is that right? I didn't know that

00:05:20 ◼   ► Yeah

00:05:21 ◼   ► the 6s

00:05:21 ◼   ► you know you could added that low power processor to do to listen for hey see all the time and

00:05:27 ◼   ► And I think that same process is responsible

00:05:29 ◼   ► for constantly monitoring the motion to do that.

00:05:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I miss out on that.

00:05:34 ◼   ► But anyway, I changed it back just because I don't wanna

00:05:36 ◼   ► have to do like what I consider to be the extra press.

00:05:40 ◼   ► And I also configured all of my family's devices

00:05:42 ◼   ► to be like that after they complained.

00:05:44 ◼   ► And so now, you know, as far as my family is concerned,

00:05:47 ◼   ► nothing has changed about this.

00:05:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, see, I really wanna change it back,

00:05:51 ◼   ► but I'm trying to train myself

00:05:52 ◼   ► like Marco has succeeded in doing

00:05:54 ◼   ► and get myself used to it

00:05:56 ◼   ► because I really prefer to tactically deploy my home

00:06:02 ◼   ► settings tweaks when I get onto a new device that's

00:06:05 ◼   ► applicable to the Mac and to any iOS device.

00:06:08 ◼   ► So I try to be cool with the defaults, but sometimes you

00:06:13 ◼   ► just can't live with it.

00:06:15 ◼   ► But this one I'm trying to get over.

00:06:16 ◼   ► And I think I will.

00:06:17 ◼   ► It's just taken me longer than it took Marco.

00:06:19 ◼   ► Somebody asked a question, at least in the show notes

00:06:22 ◼   ► anyway, why not five-finger pinch?

00:06:24 ◼   ► So on the iPad, I believe it's optional,

00:06:26 ◼   ► it certainly used to be optional,

00:06:27 ◼   ► you can enable multitasking gestures.

00:06:30 ◼   ► And so as an example, I believe it's a four finger swipe,

00:06:33 ◼   ► will go, will swipe you between apps,

00:06:35 ◼   ► which I love and use constantly.

00:06:37 ◼   ► And I also use constantly five finger pinch on the iPad,

00:06:41 ◼   ► which is you put all five fingers on the screen,

00:06:43 ◼   ► bring them closer together,

00:06:44 ◼   ► and that will bring you back to the home screen.

00:06:46 ◼   ► Why not five finger pinch on an iPhone?

00:06:48 ◼   ► 'Cause it's just not that big, man.

00:06:50 ◼   ► I mean, that's what I would think.

00:06:51 ◼   ► - That's not what the question is about.

00:06:52 ◼   ► The question was about my last week's complaint about how I don't like hitting...

00:06:56 ◼   ► It was all about the home button.

00:06:57 ◼   ► How I don't like hitting the home button, like actually pressing a physical button when

00:07:00 ◼   ► I want to go back to the home screen, because it feels like when I'm on my iPad I'm just

00:07:03 ◼   ► like "Oh, touch the screen here, touch the screen there."

00:07:05 ◼   ► But this one thing that I want to do frequently, go back to springboard or whatever, I have

00:07:09 ◼   ► to press this physical button.

00:07:11 ◼   ► And especially if it's like the iPad is like resting on a pillow or something and the home

00:07:16 ◼   ► button could be like down in the little creases of the pillow.

00:07:19 ◼   ► It's not as nice as touching everything else.

00:07:21 ◼   ► of the questions, why not just use five finger pinch?

00:07:23 ◼   ► It gets rid of all that.

00:07:24 ◼   ► You don't touch the home button,

00:07:25 ◼   ► all your interaction is with the screen.

00:07:27 ◼   ► And I love five finger pinch,

00:07:30 ◼   ► but there has always been something stopping me

00:07:33 ◼   ► from enabling it.

00:07:34 ◼   ► In the beginning it was Fruit Ninja, obviously,

00:07:36 ◼   ► because if you wanna have Fruit Ninja on your iPad

00:07:38 ◼   ► and you wanna let your kids play it,

00:07:39 ◼   ► you cannot enable these gestures

00:07:41 ◼   ► because the kids will forever be going back

00:07:43 ◼   ► to the home screen when they're trying

00:07:44 ◼   ► to slice through watermelons or whatever.

00:07:46 ◼   ► And these days, I have Twitterrific,

00:07:49 ◼   ► My Twitter application has many gestures you can do.

00:07:52 ◼   ► One of them I think is like a two finger vertical swipe

00:07:55 ◼   ► or something to change Twitter accounts.

00:07:57 ◼   ► And when I do the five finger pinch,

00:07:59 ◼   ► it sends me back to Springboard.

00:08:00 ◼   ► But when I go back to Twitter, it's on a different account.

00:08:02 ◼   ► - Oh, weird.

00:08:03 ◼   ► - And so, you know, is it just the way

00:08:05 ◼   ► that I'm doing the gesture?

00:08:06 ◼   ► Am I tripping the two finger gesture recognizer

00:08:09 ◼   ► before I trip the OS wide five finger thing?

00:08:11 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:08:12 ◼   ► But anyway, what it boils down to is,

00:08:14 ◼   ► I still cannot get clear of applications

00:08:17 ◼   ► that I use every day that are sort of not nicely compatible

00:08:22 ◼   ► with a five finger pinch, which is not great

00:08:24 ◼   ► 'cause I really got addicted to it when I started using it

00:08:26 ◼   ► before I realized I just had to disable it

00:08:28 ◼   ► 'cause essentially my iPad was broken

00:08:30 ◼   ► for the purposes of small children playing Fruit Ninja.

00:08:32 ◼   ► And now I really haven't gone back to it.

00:08:34 ◼   ► It means I'm still stuck pressing the home button.

00:08:37 ◼   ► And what I learned from this home button behavior change

00:08:41 ◼   ► in iOS 10 is that a lot of people have ingrained habits

00:08:46 ◼   ► for like pick up your device and unlock it.

00:08:49 ◼   ► So a lot of people are complaining

00:08:50 ◼   ► about this change in behavior.

00:08:53 ◼   ► The number one tip I've seen on Twitter for iOS 10,

00:08:56 ◼   ► both directed at me and just, you know,

00:08:57 ◼   ► going crosswise to everyone else is,

00:08:59 ◼   ► "Oh, there's a setting to change it back to the old way.

00:09:00 ◼   ► Do it, do it, do it."

00:09:01 ◼   ► But if I had raised to wake,

00:09:03 ◼   ► I'm not sure I would change it

00:09:04 ◼   ► because I would try to pick up the new habit,

00:09:06 ◼   ► which is if you just wanna see stuff on the lock screen,

00:09:09 ◼   ► don't touch anything, just pick the phone up.

00:09:10 ◼   ► If that works consistently, that's better, you know,

00:09:13 ◼   ► that's better than doing it.

00:09:14 ◼   ► The reason I don't want it to do the press thing on my phone

00:09:15 ◼   ► It's like it's an extra effort. Well, this is one fewer thing that you have to do. Just pick up the phone

00:09:20 ◼   ► So, I don't know. I don't have a phone that has a feature eventually

00:09:23 ◼   ► I probably will and I might go back and give it a try. What do you mean? Probably are you moving to Android next year?

00:09:29 ◼   ► But the other thing I learned is that lots of people have strange habits related to the home button one

00:09:38 ◼   ► I didn't put this in the notes. I don't have the URL but did you guys read this story?

00:09:42 ◼   ► about

00:09:44 ◼   ► habits related to the home button in the Far East.

00:09:47 ◼   ► Oh, yes.

00:09:48 ◼   ► Where were—this was talked about somewhere.

00:09:51 ◼   ► I think Gruber had brought it up, and I'd heard it somewhere else as well.

00:09:54 ◼   ► Yeah, so this was apparently—in the Far East, like China, Japan, Indonesia, that whole

00:10:00 ◼   ► region—apparently it's very popular on iOS devices to enable the Assistive Touch

00:10:06 ◼   ► feature, which basically puts the equivalent of the home button somewhere on your screen.

00:10:11 ◼   ► I think I enabled this way back when.

00:10:12 ◼   ► I haven't enabled it in years though, but it's like if you have trouble using the home

00:10:16 ◼   ► button, they will put some always visible controls on top of the screen that will do

00:10:21 ◼   ► the same thing as the home button.

00:10:24 ◼   ► And this is apparently very popular.

00:10:26 ◼   ► Everybody does it.

00:10:29 ◼   ► And so if you go to the Far East and you see people using an iOS device and you see a bunch

00:10:33 ◼   ► of junk on their screen, I think it's like always on top, always visible.

00:10:36 ◼   ► Otherwise how would it work?

00:10:38 ◼   ► And so people are moving that stuff out of the way, like when they want to see what's

00:10:40 ◼   ► in the corner of the screen, but this UI is covering it.

00:10:43 ◼   ► They move it out of the way so they can see the other stuff.

00:10:46 ◼   ► From my perspective, they're making their phone harder

00:10:49 ◼   ► to use by putting some always visible UI on top of the screen

00:10:53 ◼   ► that the people making the applications don't

00:10:55 ◼   ► expect to be there, that they have to manage and move around.

00:10:58 ◼   ► And they're doing this because they

00:11:01 ◼   ► think that using the Home button will break it.

00:11:04 ◼   ► And this is another one of those superstition

00:11:06 ◼   ► based on real things, because I think

00:11:09 ◼   ► I think it was the iPhone 4 home button,

00:11:11 ◼   ► had some reliability problems.

00:11:13 ◼   ► - 4, 4S, and maybe 5 also.

00:11:15 ◼   ► It seemed to stop for sure

00:11:17 ◼   ► when the touch ID sensor came in the 5S.

00:11:18 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:11:19 ◼   ► Although all iPhones forever have had, you know,

00:11:23 ◼   ► some degree of failing home buttoning,

00:11:25 ◼   ► just because it's a very frequently used button

00:11:27 ◼   ► and there's some failure rate

00:11:28 ◼   ► for a certain number of clicks, right?

00:11:29 ◼   ► But the 4 is the one I remember where it was, you know,

00:11:32 ◼   ► it was way out of bounds

00:11:33 ◼   ► for what you'd expect the failure rate to be.

00:11:37 ◼   ► The story I read about this home button thing was like,

00:11:41 ◼   ► their angle was that people feel like a broken home button

00:11:45 ◼   ► hurts the resale value.

00:11:47 ◼   ► So they don't want to ever use the home button

00:11:49 ◼   ► so that when they sell it later to, you know,

00:11:52 ◼   ► trade it in for another phone or just sell it

00:11:53 ◼   ► to get money to buy another phone,

00:11:55 ◼   ► that they won't be hurting its resale value,

00:11:58 ◼   ► which is a kind of a mercenary way to think of it.

00:12:01 ◼   ► But it's also kind of like putting plastic on your couches.

00:12:04 ◼   ► And like, if no one ever uses the home button,

00:12:07 ◼   ► does it matter?

00:12:08 ◼   ► How does it hurt the resale value

00:12:10 ◼   ► if everybody who will buy and use the phone

00:12:12 ◼   ► will never use the home button

00:12:13 ◼   ► because they're all preserving it.

00:12:15 ◼   ► Just in case, you know, the Pope comes one day

00:12:17 ◼   ► and wants to use the home button.

00:12:18 ◼   ► It's like, it's never been used.

00:12:19 ◼   ► Just finally, you can take the plastic off the sofa.

00:12:22 ◼   ► Anyway, this is one article I read on the internet.

00:12:25 ◼   ► I have no idea if it's remotely accurate.

00:12:27 ◼   ► Anybody who lives in the Far East,

00:12:29 ◼   ► by all means send us an email

00:12:30 ◼   ► and let us know if this is a real thing

00:12:32 ◼   ► or if this is just one of those stories

00:12:33 ◼   ► that one reporter happened to see one thing

00:12:36 ◼   ► and now thinks the entire region does this.

00:12:39 ◼   ► - I mean, for whatever it's worth,

00:12:40 ◼   ► I've heard now, since the story's been circulating,

00:12:42 ◼   ► I've heard a lot of people who are confirming it

00:12:45 ◼   ► from their own anecdotes.

00:12:45 ◼   ► Like, oh yeah, I live in X place,

00:12:48 ◼   ► or a relative, a friend of mine lives there,

00:12:50 ◼   ► and this is totally a real thing.

00:12:52 ◼   ► - And this is also as an explanation

00:12:54 ◼   ► of why would Apple get rid of the home button

00:12:56 ◼   ► to try to encourage, try to encourage

00:13:00 ◼   ► potentially millions of people

00:13:01 ◼   ► to actually use the home button again,

00:13:03 ◼   ► because maybe they'll feel like,

00:13:04 ◼   ► well, this button doesn't move, so it won't wear out.

00:13:05 ◼   ► Now, I don't think that's gonna work,

00:13:07 ◼   ► 'cause if they have the superstition going for years,

00:13:09 ◼   ► and you know, obviously me being the unicorn that I am,

00:13:12 ◼   ► I've never had a home button fail on an iOS device.

00:13:16 ◼   ► And I don't think there are particularly bad problems

00:13:18 ◼   ► in the post-touch ID age.

00:13:20 ◼   ► You know, the iPhone 4 was definitely the bad one,

00:13:22 ◼   ► and the 4S tried to improve it, but not so great.

00:13:24 ◼   ► And like you said, with the 5R things,

00:13:26 ◼   ► I don't know anybody who's ever had a failed touch ID sensor,

00:13:28 ◼   ► but I'm sure it happens, because it is a physical button.

00:13:31 ◼   ► But anyway, I don't know if this is gonna change things,

00:13:33 ◼   ► but as people pointed out in the chat room,

00:13:35 ◼   ► Apple presumably has diagnostic information

00:13:38 ◼   ► like that little thing where you,

00:13:39 ◼   ► I forget if it's opt in or opt out,

00:13:41 ◼   ► but you can send Apple diagnostic information.

00:13:43 ◼   ► They must know how many people in what regions

00:13:46 ◼   ► are using these assistive touch features.

00:13:48 ◼   ► And they'll know based on the percentage of the population

00:13:51 ◼   ► that actually needs those features,

00:13:52 ◼   ► because they can't use the home button.

00:13:54 ◼   ► Like the numbers must scream to them.

00:13:57 ◼   ► A lot of people are using their iPhones

00:13:59 ◼   ► ways that you, Apple, probably didn't expect.

00:14:01 ◼   ► So maybe address that with your next hardware model.

00:14:04 ◼   ► And so that could be one possible thing added in support of getting rid of the button.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Obviously the reason you get rid of the physical button is just because if things don't move,

00:14:13 ◼   ► it's more reliable and it's easier to waterproof, right?

00:14:15 ◼   ► But another factor could be, oh, and by the way, maybe we can encourage those millions

00:14:19 ◼   ► of people who refuse to use the home button that maybe it's safe to use it again, or they

00:14:23 ◼   ► can just spend the rest of their time sliding always visible palettes around their screen

00:14:26 ◼   ► so they can see their content.

00:14:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I also, I still do want to point out one thing though that A) this won't solve

00:14:33 ◼   ► the problem because people will still keep doing it because of superstition as you mentioned

00:14:38 ◼   ► and B) this haptic engine now will have way more use.

00:14:42 ◼   ► So it's also full of moving parts, just differently moving parts and the Taptic Engine

00:14:48 ◼   ► in the watch dies all the time.

00:14:50 ◼   ► Now the one in the 6S seems to be okay so far, as far as I know.

00:14:53 ◼   ► I don't think we've heard anything about that.

00:14:55 ◼   ► But I wouldn't necessarily rule out

00:14:58 ◼   ► that a new Taptic Engine that is going to be used way more

00:15:03 ◼   ► will somehow fail less than a simple button.

00:15:07 ◼   ► I don't think we know that yet.

00:15:08 ◼   ► Maybe Apple knows that from their own testing, I don't know,

00:15:10 ◼   ► but I think in the real world, we have yet to see that.

00:15:13 ◼   ► - I think it stands to reason that something

00:15:15 ◼   ► that's sealed inside is better than something

00:15:17 ◼   ► that your mucky fingers are touching,

00:15:18 ◼   ► especially buttons when you press them,

00:15:20 ◼   ► you open up a little gap for all sorts of lint and crumbs

00:15:23 ◼   ► and muck and stuff to get into,

00:15:25 ◼   ► it's way easier to make an internally sealed thing.

00:15:28 ◼   ► And like, I remember the bad vibrating things in the watch,

00:15:32 ◼   ► but that sounds like an early model miniaturization problem.

00:15:36 ◼   ► And I also wonder if the Taptic Engine

00:15:38 ◼   ► feels a little bit weaker than normal,

00:15:40 ◼   ► does that, you know, do people care?

00:15:42 ◼   ► Does that hurt the resale value of your phone?

00:15:45 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:15:46 ◼   ► Anyway, like I said, one article,

00:15:49 ◼   ► I don't know if there's any truth behind this,

00:15:51 ◼   ► But in my own personal life, I have learned again when messing with the settings for iOS

00:15:57 ◼   ► 10, that people have weird ways of unlocking their devices, that you don't learn until

00:16:01 ◼   ► something changes about it and you have a discussion with it.

00:16:03 ◼   ► My wife presses the sleep/wake button and then puts her finger on the touch ID, which

00:16:09 ◼   ► doesn't make sense to me.

00:16:10 ◼   ► Like, why don't you, like, this is pre-iOS 10, right?

00:16:13 ◼   ► That's her pattern.

00:16:14 ◼   ► Picks up the device.

00:16:15 ◼   ► Yeah, same here.

00:16:16 ◼   ► Presses touch/wake and then does touch ID.

00:16:17 ◼   ► I pick the thing up, put my thumb on the Touch ID button,

00:16:21 ◼   ► press it to wake the thing up,

00:16:23 ◼   ► and just leave my thumb there to unlock it, right?

00:16:25 ◼   ► So I'm only going to one place.

00:16:27 ◼   ► I'm not going to the top and then to the bottom.

00:16:28 ◼   ► I'm just going to the very bottom.

00:16:30 ◼   ► - Well, okay, I can explain why,

00:16:32 ◼   ► well, for me anyway, why that is.

00:16:33 ◼   ► So I'll sleep wake if I want to just see notifications

00:16:37 ◼   ► and not insta-clear them.

00:16:39 ◼   ► And then if I know that I don't really give a crap

00:16:41 ◼   ► what notifications I have,

00:16:42 ◼   ► maybe I just looked at my phone 30 seconds ago,

00:16:44 ◼   ► then I'll do what you described, Jon,

00:16:46 ◼   ► just mash my finger down on the home button,

00:16:49 ◼   ► and I'll just power right through to the home screen.

00:16:51 ◼   ► But in the case that I care about notifications,

00:16:54 ◼   ► and again, like you said, pre-iOS 10,

00:16:56 ◼   ► I would use the sleep/wake button

00:16:57 ◼   ► to just turn the screen on, let me see what I'm doing.

00:17:00 ◼   ► And then if I wanna act on one,

00:17:01 ◼   ► or perhaps just use my phone,

00:17:03 ◼   ► then I will put my finger on the home button

00:17:07 ◼   ► and unlock it.

00:17:10 ◼   ► - Does this habit come from the super fast touch ID sensor,

00:17:13 ◼   ► or were you doing it before the 6S?

00:17:15 ◼   ► Ah, it's a great question.

00:17:17 ◼   ► I definitely think it was influenced

00:17:21 ◼   ► by the super fast touch ID.

00:17:22 ◼   ► I would say I don't remember doing it before the 6S.

00:17:25 ◼   ► I think I retrained myself after I got the 6S.

00:17:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe I'll change to when I have the faster sensor,

00:17:30 ◼   ► but on the 6, I don't have those problems.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Same thing, if I just wanna look what's on the screen,

00:17:34 ◼   ► I just hit it and it doesn't go fast enough,

00:17:35 ◼   ► so it's no problem.

00:17:36 ◼   ► And my son refuses to use touch ID.

00:17:38 ◼   ► He enters his code every time.

00:17:40 ◼   ► He puts his sleep, he hits a sleep wake button.

00:17:43 ◼   ► Then he wants, in iOS 10,

00:17:44 ◼   ► What he wanted to do was how do I get to the screen

00:17:46 ◼   ► that has the numbers, right?

00:17:48 ◼   ► So he gets a sleep-wake button and like,

00:17:50 ◼   ► I forget what, swipe or whatever,

00:17:51 ◼   ► to get to the number thing.

00:17:52 ◼   ► He has an iPad with touch ID, doesn't use it.

00:17:55 ◼   ► - That's crazy to me, huh?

00:17:57 ◼   ► - I think he feels like the numbers are more reliable,

00:18:00 ◼   ► like they work every time,

00:18:01 ◼   ► and that he's not pausing and waiting.

00:18:03 ◼   ► It's kind of, you know, blame my genes for this,

00:18:05 ◼   ► like that he's never waiting.

00:18:07 ◼   ► He doesn't want to be waiting for the computer.

00:18:09 ◼   ► And so putting your finger on touch ID

00:18:11 ◼   ► and waiting to see if it succeeds

00:18:12 ◼   ► and then picking up and putting it down,

00:18:14 ◼   ► It's like the numbers are deterministic.

00:18:16 ◼   ► It's gonna take the same amount of time every time.

00:18:18 ◼   ► During that time, he's always doing something.

00:18:20 ◼   ► Like he's not waiting, even though if you were

00:18:22 ◼   ► to stopwatch it, it's probably faster to do touch ID.

00:18:25 ◼   ► You know, it just feels like I'm busy.

00:18:26 ◼   ► I'm doing the thing, the unlock thing,

00:18:28 ◼   ► and it's probably more reliable for him.

00:18:30 ◼   ► He also has a slow touch ID sensor

00:18:31 ◼   ► 'cause he's got an old iPad.

00:18:33 ◼   ► - Hmm.

00:18:34 ◼   ► All right, let's see what else we got here.

00:18:37 ◼   ► Nick Guy, who is the Nick Guy on Twitter,

00:18:40 ◼   ► writes in to say, "This iPhone 7 smart battery case

00:18:43 ◼   ► is 2365 milliamp hours which is up from 1877 for the iPhone 6.

00:18:50 ◼   ► I didn't notice it looking any bigger. Like maybe it's a little bit thicker?

00:18:55 ◼   ► I have one right here comparing it to the old one just visually. It feels about the

00:19:00 ◼   ► same. The only major difference is obviously the headphone jack removal and so it switches

00:19:05 ◼   ► to the two like line shaped girls in the bottom instead of the one line and the one dot and

00:19:10 ◼   ► the giant camera cutout, those are the major ones.

00:19:14 ◼   ► Because of the aforementioned giant camera cutout,

00:19:16 ◼   ► if you have a smart battery case from the 6S,

00:19:20 ◼   ► it will not fit a 7.

00:19:21 ◼   ► - It's interesting that they made the battery case bigger

00:19:23 ◼   ► on the iPhone 7, which also has better battery life,

00:19:25 ◼   ► so more battery for everybody.

00:19:27 ◼   ► - Well, it makes it more reasonable of a thing to buy,

00:19:30 ◼   ► and it makes their price a little more reasonable.

00:19:33 ◼   ► Obviously, you can get lots of cheaper cases

00:19:34 ◼   ► for a lot less money, but to have only the 1900

00:19:38 ◼   ► or whatever it was, now to have like 2400,

00:19:40 ◼   ► like that makes it a little bit better.

00:19:41 ◼   ► 'Cause before, you know, the main complaints about it were,

00:19:44 ◼   ► it's ugly, it's ugly, it's also really ugly,

00:19:48 ◼   ► and also that's not a lot of capacity for the price.

00:19:51 ◼   ► So now, you kind of help that last one.

00:19:54 ◼   ► It's still not a great bargain, like price-wise,

00:19:57 ◼   ► if you look at other battery cases,

00:19:59 ◼   ► but as I mentioned before, like,

00:20:00 ◼   ► weird total converts in this family,

00:20:02 ◼   ► they actually work really well.

00:20:04 ◼   ► I think if you're going to use a battery case

00:20:06 ◼   ► on a regular basis, I can recommend the Apple one.

00:20:10 ◼   ► So it's nice that it has a little bit more capacity now.

00:20:13 ◼   ► And it doesn't feel like noticeably heavier.

00:20:15 ◼   ► - I think they should make one for the Plus.

00:20:17 ◼   ► - It would, I mean, obviously it would be really big

00:20:20 ◼   ► and really heavy. - Yeah.

00:20:22 ◼   ► - But it's interesting, you know, like the,

00:20:24 ◼   ► if you want the most battery life in a phone,

00:20:28 ◼   ► a regular 6S or 7 in the battery case

00:20:31 ◼   ► will last way longer than a Plus by itself.

00:20:34 ◼   ► - I know, that's why I think the Plus needs it

00:20:36 ◼   ► because I think of the Plus as like the new iPad mini, right?

00:20:40 ◼   ► Like if you put a Plus in a battery case,

00:20:43 ◼   ► then you could actually take that in a long car trip

00:20:45 ◼   ► and like play games on it and not kill it.

00:20:47 ◼   ► Like the Plus is supposed to be,

00:20:49 ◼   ► I don't mind the humongousness,

00:20:51 ◼   ► I don't mind the extra weight,

00:20:52 ◼   ► I just want as much battery life as possible.

00:20:54 ◼   ► And putting the battery case only on the smaller model

00:20:57 ◼   ► muddies the water 'cause like, well, you know,

00:20:59 ◼   ► I can imagine regular people who aren't like trying

00:21:01 ◼   ► to do the math on the milliamp hours and stuff saying,

00:21:03 ◼   ► well, which is longer?

00:21:05 ◼   ► gigantic plus or the regular 7 with a lump on its back and the regular 7 lump on its

00:21:11 ◼   ► back wins but that's not obvious.

00:21:12 ◼   ► They should make it for the plus and they should also have that lump go across the entire

00:21:16 ◼   ► back.

00:21:17 ◼   ► I can think of lots of reasons why they don't make it for the plus.

00:21:19 ◼   ► I mean, chief among them is size, obviously.

00:21:22 ◼   ► But also, I do think there's a lot fewer people who need it because the plus does have

00:21:25 ◼   ► longer battery life when the screen is on.

00:21:27 ◼   ► Not by a lot, but slightly longer battery life when the screen is on.

00:21:30 ◼   ► When the screen is off, it has substantially more battery life because, you know, things

00:21:34 ◼   ► like, if the screen is off and it's just doing things like playing music over Bluetooth or

00:21:38 ◼   ► something like that, it's going to use the same amount of power as the small phone, or

00:21:43 ◼   ► the medium phone now, the 4.7 inch version.

00:21:47 ◼   ► It only uses more power when the screen is on.

00:21:49 ◼   ► So it has a battery that is sized for the screen to be on and to roughly match or slightly

00:21:53 ◼   ► exceed the power of the smaller phone.

00:21:56 ◼   ► But if most of your usage of the phone is with the screen off, then it can last like

00:22:01 ◼   ► 50% more.

00:22:03 ◼   ► it's a huge difference in how much better it lasts that way.

00:22:06 ◼   ► So it really depends on your usage,

00:22:07 ◼   ► whether the battery case is even necessary

00:22:09 ◼   ► for the Plus for most people.

00:22:11 ◼   ► And I think enough people would fall into that usage pattern

00:22:14 ◼   ► of it's not really useful for them,

00:22:16 ◼   ► that there's a lot less demand for it,

00:22:18 ◼   ► in addition to the massive size that it would be,

00:22:21 ◼   ► and the resulting device with the battery case

00:22:24 ◼   ► would be quite ridiculous.

00:22:26 ◼   ► And there are other people who make battery cases

00:22:28 ◼   ► for the Plus, and they do look ridiculous.

00:22:31 ◼   ► So I totally get why Apple has not released theirs.

00:22:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, like I said, I'm thinking of like a kid

00:22:35 ◼   ► in the back of a car who wants to play video games

00:22:37 ◼   ► for a whole like three hour car trip

00:22:39 ◼   ► and they're just gonna be like burning the battery

00:22:41 ◼   ► the entire time.

00:22:42 ◼   ► They'd love a battery.

00:22:43 ◼   ► I mean, it's not any bigger than like a, you know,

00:22:46 ◼   ► a traditional handheld game thing.

00:22:48 ◼   ► Like they're sitting there,

00:22:49 ◼   ► if they were already, they're already accepted plus,

00:22:51 ◼   ► it's like, why not?

00:22:52 ◼   ► Why not just carry around a 12.5 inch iPad Pro

00:22:54 ◼   ► with you everywhere?

00:22:55 ◼   ► You might as well.

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00:24:38 ◼   ► - So some people have noticed that your wishes

00:24:44 ◼   ► have been granted, Jon, and the Apple leather case

00:24:47 ◼   ► now has metal buttons for the iPhone 7.

00:24:50 ◼   ► - That wasn't my wish, though.

00:24:51 ◼   ► When I was talking about my pimply iPhone 6 leather case

00:24:55 ◼   ► that looked really good right up until maybe three months ago

00:24:59 ◼   ► when it started to get all rumply for some reason.

00:25:01 ◼   ► It was in the discussion of the home button,

00:25:03 ◼   ► like how does it feel to press a button

00:25:05 ◼   ► that doesn't actually move on a small device like this?

00:25:07 ◼   ► And I was saying that on my, my rumply case,

00:25:09 ◼   ► when I press the volume buttons, like nothing moves.

00:25:12 ◼   ► Like I'm basically just applying pressure to these lumps.

00:25:14 ◼   ► And what I was saying, it was like back to the discussion,

00:25:15 ◼   ► like why, why did the volume buttons

00:25:17 ◼   ► on the iPhone 7 move at all?

00:25:18 ◼   ► If the home button doesn't move,

00:25:19 ◼   ► why did the volume buttons move?

00:25:20 ◼   ► What I was saying is that I think it would be okay

00:25:22 ◼   ► if on the iPhone 7, the volume buttons didn't move.

00:25:25 ◼   ► the sleep/wake button didn't move.

00:25:26 ◼   ► Like they were just pressure sensitive.

00:25:27 ◼   ► Because obviously I'm okay with it on my 6.

00:25:29 ◼   ► I mean, it doesn't bother me.

00:25:30 ◼   ► Not only am I okay with my 6,

00:25:31 ◼   ► I can't even feel the edges of these buttons.

00:25:33 ◼   ► They're like, they're just like

00:25:34 ◼   ► the slightly more raised pimply area.

00:25:35 ◼   ► Like they're very indistinct.

00:25:36 ◼   ► If they had sharply creased cut buttons

00:25:40 ◼   ► that just did not move and were pressure sensitive,

00:25:43 ◼   ► I think I would be okay with that.

00:25:44 ◼   ► And so would Apple because they'd be like,

00:25:45 ◼   ► "Hey, fewer moving parts, right?

00:25:47 ◼   ► Everybody loves it."

00:25:48 ◼   ► But instead what they did with the Apple leather case

00:25:50 ◼   ► for the iPhone 7 is they made it

00:25:53 ◼   ► so I don't have to deal with these rumbly things anymore.

00:25:54 ◼   ► Oh, now you've got nice metal buttons, which I think they did on the

00:25:57 ◼   ► They did on the bumper maybe or they had I think the bumper had some other kind of pass-through thing

00:26:02 ◼   ► where there was like a

00:26:04 ◼   ► Hard physical thing that when you pressed would slide down and press the button that was underneath rather than coating over with leather

00:26:10 ◼   ► But anyway, I think you're right that is that is sure to be that the new case is obviously an improvement

00:26:15 ◼   ► It's sure to feel better

00:26:16 ◼   ► it certainly looks better to have metal buttons poking out of your leather case and

00:26:20 ◼   ► I bet those won't have the same problem of getting all gross, but I still maintain

00:26:24 ◼   ► maintain that even more than the home button I think, because the home button I haven't

00:26:28 ◼   ► tried it, maybe I'll hate it, right?

00:26:30 ◼   ► But the volume and power buttons I've been using essentially non-moving volume and power

00:26:33 ◼   ► buttons for a long time now and I'm totally fine with it.

00:26:36 ◼   ► On the other hand, my phone doesn't vibrate when I press them either so that probably

00:26:39 ◼   ► helps.

00:26:40 ◼   ► So if on the fancy 10th anniversary iPhone 8 or whatever, iPhone 7s or whatever they

00:26:45 ◼   ► call it, if that has sleep/wake and volume buttons that don't move, I'm already on board

00:26:52 ◼   ► with that.

00:26:53 ◼   ► and the jury's still on 'cause I haven't tried it.

00:26:55 ◼   ► - All right.

00:26:56 ◼   ► Are the Lightning EarPods digital?

00:26:58 ◼   ► And follow on, why do we care?

00:27:01 ◼   ► - I care mostly for curiosity.

00:27:03 ◼   ► I mean, yeah, although Marco,

00:27:05 ◼   ► do you have an audio reason to care?

00:27:07 ◼   ► - Not really.

00:27:08 ◼   ► I mean, so basically through various statements

00:27:11 ◼   ► around PR representatives and various things confirmed

00:27:13 ◼   ► by various people, the original story that we had heard

00:27:17 ◼   ► and talked about on the show that Mac Ocatoro reported

00:27:20 ◼   ► like forever ago, that the iPhone 7 lightning port

00:27:23 ◼   ► was going to be special and that it was going to have

00:27:26 ◼   ► a mode where it could output analog audio over the pins

00:27:29 ◼   ► and therefore the devices plugged into it,

00:27:33 ◼   ► like the new lightning headphones and the headphone adapter

00:27:36 ◼   ► could be really, really simple.

00:27:38 ◼   ► That is apparently not the case, that apparently

00:27:40 ◼   ► all the lightning ports are treated the same.

00:27:42 ◼   ► This port is not different from the rest of them,

00:27:44 ◼   ► at least not in that way as far as we know,

00:27:46 ◼   ► and that the lightning headphones and the lightning

00:27:50 ◼   ► to headphone adapter for $9 are both full digital

00:27:54 ◼   ► lightning devices that include an audio DAC

00:27:57 ◼   ► and a little mini amp in there.

00:27:59 ◼   ► A lot of people have asked me what I think about this,

00:28:03 ◼   ► whether it's possible, whether it's good

00:28:05 ◼   ► 'cause it's so cheap, and the quick answer is,

00:28:08 ◼   ► you know, with the disclaimer that I'm not an expert

00:28:09 ◼   ► in manufacturing, little DAC amp chips are very plentiful,

00:28:14 ◼   ► very common, and very cheap.

00:28:16 ◼   ► And the one on the phone before was already not like

00:28:20 ◼   ► a $50 DAC or anything like that.

00:28:22 ◼   ► The parts in a phone, most of them are very, very cheap

00:28:25 ◼   ► parts and the little audio codec chip that was in there

00:28:30 ◼   ► is almost certainly not a very expensive part to begin with.

00:28:35 ◼   ► The one that they put in the headphone adapter,

00:28:38 ◼   ► which also must include an ADC going the other direction

00:28:41 ◼   ► because there's a microphone involved,

00:28:43 ◼   ► but the one they put in there is probably going to be

00:28:47 ◼   ► similar quality than the one they have already in the phone.

00:28:49 ◼   ► I don't expect it to be noticeably different.

00:28:52 ◼   ► I'm generally a DAC quality skeptic.

00:28:55 ◼   ► A lot of audio people think that you have to have

00:28:59 ◼   ► a really amazing, complicated, and key factor here,

00:29:03 ◼   ► expensive DAC/AMP or both

00:29:08 ◼   ► in order to have good audio performance.

00:29:10 ◼   ► And I am generally a skeptic on DACs and amps.

00:29:13 ◼   ► It is very, very rare that I ever hear

00:29:15 ◼   ► any difference whatsoever, even with very good ones

00:29:17 ◼   ► versus very crappy ones.

00:29:19 ◼   ► It is extremely rare to hear any difference whatsoever.

00:29:22 ◼   ► And on the headphones that almost everybody

00:29:24 ◼   ► is using with their iPhones,

00:29:25 ◼   ► it would be extremely difficult for anybody ever

00:29:28 ◼   ► to notice a real difference between DACs and amps.

00:29:32 ◼   ► So that being said, it is indeed totally possible

00:29:36 ◼   ► for Apple to make and sell a whole bunch

00:29:39 ◼   ► of these little crappy adapters for $9

00:29:41 ◼   ► that include a digital DAC chip in there,

00:29:44 ◼   ► especially since Apple themselves do not need

00:29:46 ◼   ► to pay the MFI licensing fee for the lightning chip

00:29:49 ◼   ► that's in there.

00:29:51 ◼   ► So that also helps a lot.

00:29:53 ◼   ► For that reason alone, I don't expect to see a lot

00:29:57 ◼   ► of third party ones that are near that price point,

00:29:59 ◼   ► but we will find out, I guess.

00:30:01 ◼   ► - So the interesting thing to me about this, technically,

00:30:04 ◼   ► is one of the potential promises of digital audio

00:30:09 ◼   ► is you can convert from digital to analog

00:30:13 ◼   ► sort of at the last second, right?

00:30:15 ◼   ► So you don't have to worry about transmitting an audio signal over a potentially long wire,

00:30:20 ◼   ► very thin wire, probably doesn't have, you know, not a particularly sturdy wire, that

00:30:25 ◼   ► could potentially fray or, you know, like everyone has had headphones where one ear

00:30:29 ◼   ► starts cutting out or like the wire starts to fray or if you have like a plug thing that

00:30:33 ◼   ► you plug things into your car with, right, those wires can wear out because they're not

00:30:37 ◼   ► super heavy duty.

00:30:38 ◼   ► And if what you're transmitting over there is analog audio as you're wearing down that

00:30:42 ◼   ► wire or something bad is happening to where it's passing close to something that's magnetic

00:30:45 ◼   ► or whatever, it can mess with your signal and start to sound worse.

00:30:50 ◼   ► So this is theoretical, right?

00:30:51 ◼   ► But it could happen.

00:30:54 ◼   ► And so it's like, oh, we'll send digital.

00:30:55 ◼   ► Digital is robust.

00:30:56 ◼   ► All we got to do is be able to distinguish between a one and a zero.

00:30:58 ◼   ► It's much easier than maintaining the fine details of frequency and amplitude of an analog

00:31:02 ◼   ► signal.

00:31:03 ◼   ► And then just the last second right before it goes into your ears, we'll convert that

00:31:06 ◼   ► with our tiny little DACs into an analog signal.

00:31:10 ◼   ► But did we say DAC is digital to analog converter?

00:31:14 ◼   ► I don't know if people know that, but that's what we're saying.

00:31:17 ◼   ► We're saying all caps DAC.

00:31:18 ◼   ► Right, and so you have to understand that in order to hear audio, you need to go from

00:31:23 ◼   ► ones and zeros into a wave, into something that a speaker can play.

00:31:28 ◼   ► And so the debate is, is the conversion from digital to analog by a digital to analog converter,

00:31:34 ◼   ► DAC or DAC, does that happen in the phone?

00:31:37 ◼   ► Does that happen after it leaves the phone?

00:31:39 ◼   ► So what's coming out of the phone through the lightning port is just ones and zeros

00:31:42 ◼   ► and then eventually gets converted and that's the crux of the conversation.

00:31:45 ◼   ► - Right, and there's lots of different ways to do that.

00:31:49 ◼   ► It is not actually a simple problem electrically to solve, to convert those ones and zeros

00:31:53 ◼   ► to the corresponding waves.

00:31:55 ◼   ► The main reality of it though is that even though there's lots of fancy DACs that can

00:32:00 ◼   ► do a more accurate job, that can measure better on official scientific measurement machinery,

00:32:05 ◼   ► The crappy, cheap, like $2 DAC amp chips all in one

00:32:10 ◼   ► do a good enough job that most people

00:32:12 ◼   ► can't hear the difference.

00:32:13 ◼   ► - And you'll find that Marco prefers

00:32:15 ◼   ► digital analog converters that have tubes in them

00:32:18 ◼   ► because it gives that nice warm, rich sound

00:32:20 ◼   ► that you don't get otherwise.

00:32:21 ◼   ► - Actually, I hate tubes.

00:32:22 ◼   ► They're a giant pain in the butt.

00:32:23 ◼   ► They pick up static, they burn out,

00:32:25 ◼   ► they're asymmetric sometimes.

00:32:27 ◼   ► Cheap tubes suck.

00:32:28 ◼   ► I'm all solid state over here.

00:32:30 ◼   ► - Just messing with you.

00:32:31 ◼   ► Anyway, continue, John.

00:32:32 ◼   ► - So the $9 adapter,

00:32:34 ◼   ► that we have learned, basically conclusively, that has a little digital analog converter in it,

00:32:39 ◼   ► like what's being sent out of the Lightning port is digital, raises the question, where is the DAC

00:32:45 ◼   ► in the wired earpods that come? It could be that the DAC is in the Lightning connector,

00:32:51 ◼   ► and it's still sending analog audio across the wire to the wired headphones. So it only gets

00:32:57 ◼   ► like seven millimeters out of the phone before it's converted by not the DAC in the phone,

00:33:03 ◼   ► but by what is presumably an even cheaper DAC that's like 7 millimeters away, and then it just sends out, you know,

00:33:08 ◼   ► or they could also be in the earphones.

00:33:09 ◼   ► I don't know where it is. Like, I really want iFixit to slice things open to see what the heck is inside them,

00:33:14 ◼   ► but it would be kind of weird to

00:33:16 ◼   ► bundle the thing with like, you know, quote-unquote "digital earpods" that merely move the DAC slightly outside the case.

00:33:23 ◼   ► Oh, yeah. No, that's that's all marketing BS.

00:33:26 ◼   ► Of course, it is very, very likely that the DAC is in the Lightning connector end of it.

00:33:31 ◼   ► that is extremely likely, just based on the way

00:33:35 ◼   ► other lightning peripherals are built,

00:33:37 ◼   ► that is very likely to be the case.

00:33:39 ◼   ► The fact is, this isn't really solving a real problem.

00:33:41 ◼   ► Just like fancy DACs and fancy amps are portable headphones

00:33:45 ◼   ► that don't need more amps than what the phone can provide,

00:33:47 ◼   ► like this is solving fake problems,

00:33:48 ◼   ► this is solving placebo problems for most people.

00:33:52 ◼   ► The fact is, you are not gonna pick up

00:33:54 ◼   ► a meaningful amount of analog noise

00:33:56 ◼   ► that will be audible in your headphones

00:33:58 ◼   ► from the six feet of cable at best

00:34:00 ◼   ► that are running from the phone to your crappy ear pods.

00:34:04 ◼   ► It is way more likely that any flaws in your sound

00:34:07 ◼   ► will be masked by how crappy those drivers are

00:34:11 ◼   ► than being audible by you.

00:34:14 ◼   ► - The practical reality of it would only be

00:34:16 ◼   ► in the failure modes for people who are like,

00:34:18 ◼   ► their pets are chewing on their wires

00:34:20 ◼   ► or they get caught in a car door or whatever,

00:34:22 ◼   ► any other sort of cable abuse.

00:34:24 ◼   ► The failure mode for analog is like staticky or whatever

00:34:28 ◼   ► and the failure mode for digital

00:34:31 ◼   ► sounds different essentially.

00:34:32 ◼   ► - Nah. - You could say that it--

00:34:34 ◼   ► - Anything that would cause noticeable degradation of sound

00:34:37 ◼   ► in the analog from cable damage

00:34:39 ◼   ► would destroy the digital signal also.

00:34:40 ◼   ► 'Cause you're talking like shorts and frays and everything,

00:34:44 ◼   ► there's no way.

00:34:45 ◼   ► - But it sounds different.

00:34:46 ◼   ► It's the difference between static,

00:34:48 ◼   ► which we all know from our childhood,

00:34:49 ◼   ► and the manufactured static that comes over

00:34:51 ◼   ► with MPEG-2 compression on television sets.

00:34:54 ◼   ► You know when you turn them on,

00:34:54 ◼   ► they have this fake MPEG of static,

00:34:56 ◼   ► but static is like the worst case scenario

00:34:58 ◼   ► for video compression algorithms, they all look stupid.

00:35:00 ◼   ► But anyway, yeah, like I can imagine

00:35:02 ◼   ► the failure modes sounding different.

00:35:05 ◼   ► One possible way they could sound different is like,

00:35:07 ◼   ► oh, if the thing is damaged enough,

00:35:09 ◼   ► the digital can't get through,

00:35:10 ◼   ► you hear nothing or it cuts out or whatever.

00:35:12 ◼   ► But I don't even know that to be the case.

00:35:13 ◼   ► But I do know that they would sound different

00:35:14 ◼   ► because analog has a different sort of degradation,

00:35:17 ◼   ► you know, anyway.

00:35:18 ◼   ► All that just means you should get your,

00:35:21 ◼   ► get a new set of headphones

00:35:22 ◼   ► 'cause if your wire is damaged, your wire is damaged.

00:35:24 ◼   ► It doesn't really make any difference,

00:35:25 ◼   ► but academically, it's interesting to me

00:35:27 ◼   ► think about this whole, because that was one of the things that did it all, the digital audio,

00:35:30 ◼   ► they didn't really push on it too much, but like the digital audio is better than analog audio and

00:35:36 ◼   ► really, like Marco said, it doesn't matter at all for these tiny light-ear pods because

00:35:41 ◼   ► the sound quality is so bad relatively speaking that all those other things are ridiculous and

00:35:46 ◼   ► don't make a big difference. But it does matter from Apple's parts perspective if they could have

00:35:52 ◼   ► it, like, I mean, I'm sure they could have. I'm interested in why they chose to go with tiny

00:35:57 ◼   ► little DACs instead of repurposing the pins. Maybe it really wasn't possible, I don't know,

00:36:00 ◼   ► but certainly if you're going to pinch pennies, you can make an even cheaper connector without

00:36:05 ◼   ► little chips in it. They could have gone that route, but they didn't. Maybe they've used up

00:36:12 ◼   ► all their pins and resistor combinations on Lightning and didn't have the ability to

00:36:16 ◼   ► repurpose it in that way. Or maybe they really are all on board with a digital thing and they

00:36:21 ◼   ► just want to say, "Nope, it's digital from now on. And even if it's digital only until it gets

00:36:25 ◼   ► yeah it's a couple of millimeters outside the phone,

00:36:27 ◼   ► then it's fine.

00:36:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean it's probably a combination of

00:36:31 ◼   ► just not having anything modified about the phone,

00:36:33 ◼   ► having it be compatible with any lightning output

00:36:36 ◼   ► on any model phone, so if you plug it into also an iPad

00:36:41 ◼   ► or maybe down the road if Macs have lightning ports,

00:36:44 ◼   ► that would be kind of cool, stuff like that.

00:36:46 ◼   ► Compatibility in that way and also I think the chip

00:36:49 ◼   ► is just so cheap that it doesn't really matter.

00:36:52 ◼   ► Like I really don't think the difference between

00:36:55 ◼   ► The basic job that all lightning peripherals have to do

00:36:57 ◼   ► to connect to lightning,

00:36:59 ◼   ► like there's already a chip in the connector to do that.

00:37:01 ◼   ► I bet the difference between that and a basic DAC amp

00:37:05 ◼   ► is really not that big.

00:37:07 ◼   ► - I bet the cost of the metal lightning connector

00:37:09 ◼   ► is more than the cost of the chip.

00:37:10 ◼   ► - Probably.

00:37:11 ◼   ► - Like from Apple's perspective,

00:37:13 ◼   ► in terms of like what it takes to manufacture it,

00:37:15 ◼   ► 'cause those little DACs,

00:37:16 ◼   ► they could probably buy them for fractions of a cent each,

00:37:18 ◼   ► but to manufacture the lightning connector

00:37:19 ◼   ► to the tolerances required for those little contacts on it,

00:37:22 ◼   ► that's probably the most expensive part

00:37:23 ◼   ► for that entire $9 connector from Apple's perspective.

00:37:27 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:37:29 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:37:30 ◼   ► Let's talk about those AirPods,

00:37:32 ◼   ► which are the wire-free version of the Lightning EarPods

00:37:37 ◼   ► that we were just discussing.

00:37:38 ◼   ► - They have wire, they just move it.

00:37:40 ◼   ► Now you have a wire to charge up the case

00:37:42 ◼   ► that the EarPods plug into,

00:37:43 ◼   ► so you have this intermediary object

00:37:45 ◼   ► that's required for use that has a wire.

00:37:47 ◼   ► - It's not a wire, it's a hole.

00:37:48 ◼   ► - Well, okay, but there's gonna be a wire involved.

00:37:51 ◼   ► See, that's the magic of Bluetooth.

00:37:53 ◼   ► just moves the wires around. Why don't you park your car? Parking in a car hole.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Good grief. Wow. All right. So regardless of whether or not they're wireless,

00:38:04 ◼   ► Captain Pedantic, the question at hand at the moment is, do they or do they not have

00:38:08 ◼   ► start, stop and skip controls? From what I've understood, they do sort of. So if

00:38:15 ◼   ► you take if you have both AirPods in your ears, and take one of them out, by

00:38:21 ◼   ► default it will pause whatever you're listening to unless it's a telephone

00:38:24 ◼   ► call I presume and and you can choose to restart that via your phone or watch or

00:38:31 ◼   ► Siri I suppose and then if you restart it with both headphones out of your I'm

00:38:36 ◼   ► sorry with one air pot out of your ear then it would convert to mono or

00:38:41 ◼   ► alternatively if you say are trying to listen to somebody who's talking to you

00:38:45 ◼   ► and you pop one out and then pop it back in then it will automatically start

00:38:48 ◼   ► playing again. But skipping and volume control, all of that is done either via Siri or via the

00:38:55 ◼   ► phone or watch, as far as I understood. Is that what you guys had as well?

00:38:58 ◼   ► Yeah, in the presentation, they didn't—all they showed was exactly what you described in the

00:39:04 ◼   ► presentation. And I was hoping in the hands-on area that I would hear more details, and when I

00:39:09 ◼   ► did, they basically echoed what Casey said, that like, that what I'm looking for is not there,

00:39:14 ◼   ► that you can do everything you said, and you can talk to Siri, and that's it.

00:39:18 ◼   ► it.

00:39:19 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to hearing stories about people who are on a bus full of other AirPods

00:39:23 ◼   ► users and I'm just hearing everybody say, "Hey Siri, skip forward.

00:39:26 ◼   ► Hey Siri, skip forward.

00:39:27 ◼   ► Hey Siri, wait, skip back."

00:39:29 ◼   ► Yeah, this is what's making, like the AirPods, I totally want to try them because it's like

00:39:33 ◼   ► that's what I've been talking about with the wireless thing.

00:39:34 ◼   ► I would love that and yet I don't, I can't get excited about them if I don't have the

00:39:38 ◼   ► ability to pause and change volume.

00:39:41 ◼   ► I don't care about skip forward and skip back.

00:39:43 ◼   ► All I care about is pause and change volume.

00:39:44 ◼   ► Pausing by taking the EarPod out, talk about a way to lose your EarPods.

00:39:48 ◼   ► don't do it. Like, I'm not gonna do that, right? Being able to tap, can you tap? I think you can

00:39:54 ◼   ► tap to pause, can you? Or can you not even do that? I think there's something like that, yeah.

00:39:58 ◼   ► I know, I thought it was strictly taking one out in order to pause. Yeah, there's not, like,

00:40:05 ◼   ► I don't know. Again, none of us have them, so we can't tell. But it's like, it's tap to talk to

00:40:08 ◼   ► Siri. It's like, I don't want to talk to Siri. I just want to pause playback and changing volume.

00:40:13 ◼   ► It happens if you're walking around and, like, you happen to come through a noisy section where

00:40:16 ◼   ► or you're closer to a road and you need to go up one notch on the volume?

00:40:20 ◼   ► I don't want to talk to Siri to do that. It's like having to

00:40:23 ◼   ► it's like having to have a conversation with somebody to try to like pick a fork

00:40:26 ◼   ► full of food up into your mouth. Like it's like just just let me do it. It's one

00:40:30 ◼   ► little click on the little thingy. I don't... tangent the volume with Siri

00:40:34 ◼   ► is the worst use of speech. Anyway, whole point is these things have accelerometers

00:40:39 ◼   ► in them and I desperately hope that

00:40:42 ◼   ► a future software update enables more useful functionality in these AirPods if what we're

00:40:49 ◼   ► all saying that we think the way these things work is the truth. Because not being able to pause or

00:40:54 ◼   ► change volume means I just won't buy these. Like, I already know before buying them at all that I'm

00:40:59 ◼   ► not going to talk to Siri to do either one of those functions ever. Well, but why couldn't you

00:41:03 ◼   ► reach into your pocket and use the physical buttons on your phone? I mean, you could easily

00:41:08 ◼   ► discover where they are and hit them. I can't go back to that. Are you kidding? Sometimes it's all

00:41:12 ◼   ► You know, sometimes it's in my back pocket.

00:41:14 ◼   ► No, like the little--

00:41:16 ◼   ► I will prefer to use the wired thing with the little clicker.

00:41:20 ◼   ► It's no way.

00:41:20 ◼   ► So this is really depressing me, because it's not like--

00:41:23 ◼   ► it's like, well, how could they do it?

00:41:25 ◼   ► They have a way to do it.

00:41:26 ◼   ► They have a thing that you can tap.

00:41:28 ◼   ► I mean, and by all means, make this the default.

00:41:30 ◼   ► Tap for Siri is the default. But then

00:41:32 ◼   ► have a setting somewhere like the iOS 10 home button that

00:41:34 ◼   ► says, actually, what tap does is pauses.

00:41:36 ◼   ► And then for volume up and down, I don't know, two taps.

00:41:39 ◼   ► I'm willing to tap the little thing in my ear

00:41:41 ◼   ► however many times you want.

00:41:42 ◼   ► Obviously it knows when I'm tapping it,

00:41:44 ◼   ► but play pause in volume, please Apple, please.

00:41:47 ◼   ► - There's, you know, in all of my searches and tests

00:41:52 ◼   ► of good Bluetooth headphones,

00:41:55 ◼   ► it is pretty much impossible to find any

00:41:58 ◼   ► that have good controls for playback and stuff like that.

00:42:03 ◼   ► They exist, but there's very few.

00:42:05 ◼   ► Because the main thing is,

00:42:07 ◼   ► in order to have like good, reachable,

00:42:09 ◼   ► you know, usable, reliable controls

00:42:11 ◼   ► for seeking and volume and everything else,

00:42:14 ◼   ► you really need physical buttons.

00:42:15 ◼   ► Like you need real physical buttons

00:42:17 ◼   ► and some kind of logical arrangement that you can feel

00:42:20 ◼   ► on the headphone when you're walking

00:42:22 ◼   ► so that you can just like hit it

00:42:23 ◼   ► and not even, you know, not have to think about it

00:42:25 ◼   ► and not miss, not have to have a weird touch gesture

00:42:28 ◼   ► or anything weird like that.

00:42:30 ◼   ► And most headphone manufacturers don't do this

00:42:33 ◼   ► because I guessed more parts to have buttons,

00:42:37 ◼   ► but also I think one of the main reasons

00:42:38 ◼   ► is that it just makes it uglier.

00:42:40 ◼   ► And manufacturers are all doing these weird,

00:42:43 ◼   ► like overly clever, overly designed things

00:42:45 ◼   ► with like touch gestures and various like tap commands

00:42:50 ◼   ► and everything, but by far the best headphones

00:42:53 ◼   ► I have to walk with and to listen to podcasts on

00:42:56 ◼   ► are these ugly, really crappy sounding Sennheiser PX210BTs

00:43:01 ◼   ► that are now discontinued, but the Sennheiser MM400

00:43:06 ◼   ► and 450 are very similar.

00:43:08 ◼   ► they have these just nice big buttons on the ear cup.

00:43:11 ◼   ► And it's great, I use those every day

00:43:13 ◼   ► when I'm walking and listening to podcasts

00:43:15 ◼   ► because it is so nice to just be able to reach up

00:43:18 ◼   ► and feel the buttons and just hit the one

00:43:21 ◼   ► and have it work every time, always hit the right one.

00:43:24 ◼   ► It is so, so nice.

00:43:26 ◼   ► And the advantage of Bluetooth is that you can do that.

00:43:28 ◼   ► If you have wired headphones, there is no protocol

00:43:31 ◼   ► that Apple defines for wired headphone makers

00:43:34 ◼   ► for them to have buttons that do anything else

00:43:36 ◼   ► besides the single clicker thing.

00:43:37 ◼   ► But Bluetooth headphones have that spec built in.

00:43:39 ◼   ► Like any Bluetooth headphone can do that.

00:43:42 ◼   ► But it requires some kind of large control

00:43:45 ◼   ► and usually ugly big buttons for it to be any good.

00:43:49 ◼   ► On AirPods there just isn't room for that.

00:43:51 ◼   ► And even if there was room for that,

00:43:53 ◼   ► there is no way Apple would release a phone

00:43:56 ◼   ► with no headphone jack and no buttons on it

00:43:58 ◼   ► and then have AirPods with this giant wall

00:44:01 ◼   ► of buttons on them, no way.

00:44:03 ◼   ► - So I'm being told via the chat that

00:44:07 ◼   ► you can in settings turn off Siri and turn on double tap to pause.

00:44:13 ◼   ► Cool.

00:44:14 ◼   ► The ADB tipster is very adamant about that that setting is there so that's nice to know.

00:44:18 ◼   ► So that puts me back on the fence about buying them.

00:44:20 ◼   ► That solves one of the reasons that you might want to…

00:44:23 ◼   ► Right.

00:44:24 ◼   ► So volume is still out there but play/pause that goes 50% of the way there because I need

00:44:29 ◼   ► to be able to do that and I don't quite… maybe I just haven't been reading enough

00:44:32 ◼   ► articles about it or maybe not enough people have AirPods yet.

00:44:34 ◼   ► No, people have them.

00:44:35 ◼   ► separating them out into a separate review. I guess I haven't read those yet.

00:44:38 ◼   ► But anyway, I'm happy to hear that. I'm back on schedule to potentially buy them

00:44:44 ◼   ► volume. I'm not quite sure how they'd implement that. Two taps? Triple tap up?

00:44:53 ◼   ► I don't quite know. I'm not sure if I can give that up. I'm gonna have to start

00:44:57 ◼   ► keeping track of how often I raise the volume. I have the little clicker on my

00:45:00 ◼   ► my Bose headphones for plane flights too, and I'm also glad that I have that

00:45:03 ◼   ► because my phone is like in my pocket or like somewhere tucked away like I can't

00:45:08 ◼   ► really get to it easily and frequently I pause it and put the volume up and

00:45:12 ◼   ► volume down over the course of the whole flight. Those seem like basic functions

00:45:16 ◼   ► to me. I wouldn't wear AirPods on a plane anyway because I don't have the noise

00:45:20 ◼   ► cancelling but yeah it's it's a problem to be solved for sure. I don't want a

00:45:26 ◼   ► wire dangling from it and like Marco said I don't want buttons they're not

00:45:29 ◼   ► gonna put buttons on it. I certainly don't want buttons on it because how

00:45:32 ◼   ► would you find them on these little tiny ear pods? I can imagine maybe squeezing

00:45:36 ◼   ► little ends, like if they were squishy. No, I mean trust me, like you

00:45:41 ◼   ► you don't want them to come up with clever gestures because they won't work.

00:45:45 ◼   ► On things that are that small, they're not gonna work reliably. It's not a gesture,

00:45:49 ◼   ► it would be a physical button, like a physical squeezy little, you know, like if

00:45:53 ◼   ► they were squishy ends. I've had little squishy ends on them, you know, little

00:45:56 ◼   ► rubberized things. Anyway, maybe that could be stop and then tap.

00:46:00 ◼   ► Anyway, well, we'll see how this goes.

00:46:02 ◼   ► - Well, but then what happens when you're in mono?

00:46:04 ◼   ► Because one of the benefits to my mind of the AirPods

00:46:08 ◼   ► is that they will gracefully switch to mono

00:46:11 ◼   ► if you so desire.

00:46:13 ◼   ► And so then how do you, which end are you squeezing?

00:46:16 ◼   ► Are you squeezing the top end of the headphone

00:46:18 ◼   ► of the mono earpiece to go up

00:46:21 ◼   ► and the bottom end to go down?

00:46:22 ◼   ► Like that's never gonna work.

00:46:23 ◼   ► The right answer to this, unfortunately for you two,

00:46:25 ◼   ► is to just use your darn watch.

00:46:27 ◼   ► But since neither of you believe in the Apple Watch,

00:46:29 ◼   ► then that doesn't really help.

00:46:31 ◼   ► - Is that any less cumbersome than the phone?

00:46:33 ◼   ► - No, actually no.

00:46:34 ◼   ► I would rather do the phone to be honest with you,

00:46:36 ◼   ► even though I do love my Apple Watch,

00:46:37 ◼   ► it would be easier to do it on the phone.

00:46:39 ◼   ► - If I could just turn the little crown

00:46:41 ◼   ► to do volume up and down.

00:46:43 ◼   ► - Well, actually I suppose my watch is actually

00:46:45 ◼   ► in low power mode for the first time possibly ever.

00:46:47 ◼   ► But in any case, if you left up

00:46:50 ◼   ► the now playing glance app thing,

00:46:54 ◼   ► I think you would be able to just raise your wrist

00:46:58 ◼   ► fumble with the crown, but I am not 100% sure about that.

00:47:02 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:47:03 ◼   ► Either way, to be honest, to me, the easiest answer is to just use the volume buttons on

00:47:07 ◼   ► your phone.

00:47:08 ◼   ► I agree with you that it is kind of weird not to have any ability to change the volume

00:47:13 ◼   ► on the device itself, since we've all been programmed to be used to being able to reach

00:47:18 ◼   ► to approximately our chin and grab the little bulbous-y part of the cord and do it there.

00:47:25 ◼   ► But I am not as bothered/offended by this as you seem to be.

00:47:32 ◼   ► There was a lot of contention both online and amongst personal friends of mine.

00:47:37 ◼   ► "Oh, this is ridiculous.

00:47:39 ◼   ► Apple is making a new standard and using their own proprietary junk, blah blah blah.

00:47:44 ◼   ► Why does Apple hate everyone?

00:47:46 ◼   ► Why does Apple hate open blah blah blah?"

00:47:49 ◼   ► So the AirPods do use regular old Bluetooth, just like everything else.

00:47:55 ◼   ► Now they do sprinkle a fair helping of special sauce on top, and hopefully Marco you can

00:48:00 ◼   ► fill in a little bit about the codecs that they're using, because some of my neckbeard

00:48:07 ◼   ► audiophile friends are very perturbed with some of the codec-related things.

00:48:11 ◼   ► But the thing that I want to make clear, which I don't think we were very clear on last episode,

00:48:17 ◼   ► is that AirPods do use Bluetooth, and I'm actually now quoting the really good Buzzfeed article

00:48:23 ◼   ► about why Apple killed the headphone jack. AirPods use Bluetooth for their connection.

00:48:27 ◼   ► Bluetooth headphones have historically suffered from a conga line of connectivity problems.

00:48:31 ◼   ► Honor is pairing, dropped connections, crappy sound. Apple's confident it solved them all

00:48:35 ◼   ► with that W1 chip. "As you can imagine, by developing our own Bluetooth chip and controlling

00:48:40 ◼   ► both ends of the pairing process, there's a lot of magic we can do," somebody named Turnus says.

00:48:45 ◼   ► "We use a Bluetooth connection, but covered in a lot of secret sauce."

00:48:48 ◼   ► And if you haven't read that article, it's not terribly long and very, very worth it.

00:48:52 ◼   ► So it is regular old Bluetooth. And apparently there's a little button on the back of the case,

00:48:57 ◼   ► a little pillbox that you can either press or hold down in order to pair the AirPods with any

00:49:03 ◼   ► traditional Bluetooth device. >> Yeah, that was totally not clear from the talk, from the

00:49:08 ◼   ► presentation, because the word Bluetooth, from my recollection, was not even spoken during the

00:49:13 ◼   ► presentation all they said is "wow wireless things and we have another one of those chips that's like

00:49:18 ◼   ► a letter in a number w1" and so it for all the world it seemed like apple was like "look bluetooth

00:49:23 ◼   ► sucks we have a better solution here it is uses these w1 chips" but very quickly after the that

00:49:29 ◼   ► we learned actually w1 is just a bluetooth chip but there is some extra stuff that apple is doing

00:49:35 ◼   ► to smooth over the parts of bluetooth that don't work but it's nice that as you said that special

00:49:41 ◼   ► sauce or whatever it is like some other protocol that they use to negotiate and sync and handshake

00:49:48 ◼   ► with their own devices.

00:49:50 ◼   ► All that just goes away if you take the AirPods and use them with other devices, they're just

00:49:53 ◼   ► plain old Bluetooth audio headphones.

00:49:56 ◼   ► You can buy AirPods in theory and use them with your Android phone or with any other

00:50:00 ◼   ► thing that supports Bluetooth.

00:50:01 ◼   ► This is my understanding of it anyway.

00:50:04 ◼   ► So how special is the W1?

00:50:07 ◼   ► Is the W1 just a really nice Bluetooth chip?

00:50:12 ◼   ► Does it have any extra hardware features or is that all in Magic software?

00:50:15 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:50:16 ◼   ► This is another one of those mysteries that Apple's not really interested in telling the

00:50:19 ◼   ► world about at this point.

00:50:20 ◼   ► Like I said, they weren't even interested in telling the world that they were using

00:50:23 ◼   ► Bluetooth.

00:50:24 ◼   ► So if they have managed to make Bluetooth, as they say, to fix all the things that bother

00:50:30 ◼   ► people about Bluetooth, that's just as good, if not better, than having to roll everything

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00:52:15 ◼   ► - Okay, so I have a handful of

00:52:20 ◼   ► super neck beard audio nerd friends

00:52:23 ◼   ► and they were really ticked off

00:52:27 ◼   ► that the headphone jack was going away

00:52:30 ◼   ► and that Bluetooth was the new thing.

00:52:32 ◼   ► mostly because they felt like they were going to have to either have a lossy encoding of

00:52:38 ◼   ► their source material, or alternatively re-encode, even if their source material was lossy in

00:52:45 ◼   ► the first place.

00:52:46 ◼   ► So to back up a half step, MP3s, most AACs if I recall correctly, and jumping whenever

00:52:53 ◼   ► you're ready if I start going off the rails here, are lossy.

00:52:57 ◼   ► Which is to say, they know what a human ear should be capable of hearing, and if there's

00:53:01 ◼   ► information that's outside the range of what a human ear should be able to hear, they'll

00:53:05 ◼   ► just drop it on the ground and just not save it, not include it in these MP3s and this

00:53:10 ◼   ► AAC files, etc. Because in theory, there's no point to having it. You can't hear it anyway.

00:53:15 ◼   ► Now, super nerds, and so as an example, if I were to download a Dave Matthews Band concert,

00:53:22 ◼   ► I know that you could do this with FISH as well, they'll often save these files as FLAC,

00:53:28 ◼   ► which I forget what that stands for. Maybe you know, Margo?

00:53:30 ◼   ► lossless audio codec I believe. There you go. That sounds perfect and you can guess

00:53:34 ◼   ► where this is going. Flak means there is no loss. Everything that the microphone or whatever

00:53:39 ◼   ► mechanism that captured the audio could hear, it gets saved the whole way through. So these

00:53:44 ◼   ► neckbeards, these audio neckbeards were complaining, "Oh, either my flaks or whatever the source

00:53:50 ◼   ► may be are going to have to be lossy encoded and that's BS. Now I'm losing things." Or if

00:53:55 ◼   ► If I start with, let's say, an MP3, most Bluetooth headsets

00:54:00 ◼   ► don't support MP3.

00:54:01 ◼   ► So then it gets re-encoded to something else, like AEC, or--

00:54:06 ◼   ► what is it that's super popular--

00:54:07 ◼   ► Aptx, which is a terrible name.

00:54:11 ◼   ► Then it's going to get re-encoded.

00:54:12 ◼   ► No matter what, it's just lost all the way down.

00:54:14 ◼   ► This is horrible.

00:54:14 ◼   ► And then tables are flipped, and everyone gets angry.

00:54:16 ◼   ► So how much of this is a regular person?

00:54:19 ◼   ► Let's leave aside audio files for a second.

00:54:21 ◼   ► How much of this is a regular person should I care about?

00:54:23 ◼   ► Because I'm assuming the answer is zero.

00:54:25 ◼   ► because that's about how much I care right now.

00:54:28 ◼   ► - So not only should you care zero,

00:54:30 ◼   ► but they should care zero as well, and here's why.

00:54:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:34 ◼   ► Bluetooth is a digital protocol,

00:54:36 ◼   ► and digital audio is kind of large.

00:54:38 ◼   ► It takes a lot of bits per second.

00:54:40 ◼   ► And so in order to improve the efficiency of Bluetooth

00:54:43 ◼   ► and save battery, 'cause the more you transmit,

00:54:44 ◼   ► the more battery you need, and to make it less skippy,

00:54:48 ◼   ► 'cause you don't wanna be maxing out

00:54:49 ◼   ► the all possible bandwidth.

00:54:51 ◼   ► You wanna send as little as possible

00:54:52 ◼   ► to minimize power usage and to maximize reliability

00:54:55 ◼   ► of the connection.

00:54:56 ◼   ► There's all these different codecs that you can use

00:54:58 ◼   ► to either lossily or losslessly compress the audio

00:55:01 ◼   ► going between your transmitting phone or whatever

00:55:04 ◼   ► and your Bluetooth headset so that way you can save bandwidth

00:55:08 ◼   ► and have a more reliable connection and better battery life.

00:55:11 ◼   ► Lossily or lossless compression really does max out

00:55:14 ◼   ► at roughly 50%.

00:55:16 ◼   ► Just by math, like it's nearly impossible

00:55:19 ◼   ► to have an average compression ratio

00:55:21 ◼   ► that's substantially different than approximately two to one

00:55:24 ◼   ► with lossless compression.

00:55:26 ◼   ► Lossy compression can go 10 to one easily,

00:55:29 ◼   ► and some of the more advanced ones can even go better.

00:55:31 ◼   ► So your friends are all upset because the idea

00:55:34 ◼   ► of lossily compressing audio is horrendous

00:55:38 ◼   ► to a lot of audio files.

00:55:40 ◼   ► In reality, it is very, very hard for most people

00:55:42 ◼   ► to tell the difference, even extremely well-trained people

00:55:46 ◼   ► who know exactly what kind of artifacts to listen for

00:55:49 ◼   ► have a very hard time often detecting the difference

00:55:52 ◼   ► between a well-encoded MP3 or a AC file

00:55:55 ◼   ► and the uncompressed version

00:55:57 ◼   ► or the losslessly compressed version.

00:55:59 ◼   ► So the question of whether lossless compression

00:56:01 ◼   ► is even necessary and detectable at all

00:56:04 ◼   ► is certainly up for debate.

00:56:05 ◼   ► I personally lean more towards the fact

00:56:07 ◼   ► that lossless is a waste of space for almost everything

00:56:11 ◼   ► and that it's not really necessary

00:56:14 ◼   ► and that most people can't hear the difference.

00:56:16 ◼   ► Anyway, in the realm of phone audio and Bluetooth,

00:56:20 ◼   ► People blamed Bluetooth headphones for sounding like crap

00:56:24 ◼   ► on these codecs that they use to compress audio.

00:56:28 ◼   ► And it is generally true that the old A2DP standard

00:56:31 ◼   ► did indeed have crappy audio quality

00:56:33 ◼   ► because it was such a primitive standard so long ago

00:56:35 ◼   ► that it had to have very simple electronics on both sides.

00:56:38 ◼   ► That one did kinda suck.

00:56:40 ◼   ► But since then, we've had a few advances.

00:56:43 ◼   ► The aptX codec that you mentioned is a big one

00:56:45 ◼   ► that it can sound very good.

00:56:47 ◼   ► Problem with aptX is that for these codecs

00:56:50 ◼   ► to be supported for playback, both the phone

00:56:53 ◼   ► and the headphones have to support them.

00:56:55 ◼   ► And there are a lot of decently high-end

00:56:58 ◼   ► and mid-range headphones that support aptX these days,

00:57:00 ◼   ► but the iPhone, as far as I know,

00:57:02 ◼   ► to the best of my knowledge, the iPhone doesn't support it.

00:57:05 ◼   ► There's licensing fees and patents and everything involved.

00:57:08 ◼   ► As far as I know, last time I checked,

00:57:11 ◼   ► it didn't support it, and that wasn't that long ago.

00:57:13 ◼   ► I'm guessing no iPhone supports aptX.

00:57:16 ◼   ► Apple does have a license to use AAC.

00:57:19 ◼   ► AAC is lossy.

00:57:21 ◼   ► You mentioned earlier it might be lossless.

00:57:22 ◼   ► Nope, you're thinking of various AAC containers

00:57:26 ◼   ► like M4A that can also contain lossless audio

00:57:29 ◼   ► like the Apple Lossless Audio codec, ALAC.

00:57:31 ◼   ► - Oh yes, that is what I'm thinking of, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:57:33 ◼   ► - Pure AAC is indeed lossy, but it's a pretty good codec.

00:57:37 ◼   ► It's similar in general genre to MP3.

00:57:41 ◼   ► It's slightly newer.

00:57:43 ◼   ► It has some advancements here and there.

00:57:45 ◼   ► So AAC is a decent codec.

00:57:48 ◼   ► And the fact is that, as I mentioned earlier

00:57:50 ◼   ► about the DACs and amps on phones,

00:57:53 ◼   ► the vast majority of Bluetooth headphones

00:57:54 ◼   ► that sound like crap, sound like crap

00:57:56 ◼   ► because of their crappy driver design and cheap components.

00:57:59 ◼   ► It's not because they really need higher fidelity

00:58:03 ◼   ► being transmitted to them from the phone

00:58:05 ◼   ► or through their codec.

00:58:07 ◼   ► That's not the problem that you need.

00:58:09 ◼   ► You can sound way, way better,

00:58:11 ◼   ► even with the most basic MP3 or the most basic AAC encoding

00:58:15 ◼   ► if you just have better headphones to begin with.

00:58:17 ◼   ► And the reason why your friends don't even need

00:58:19 ◼   ► to care about this is because if they're truly concerned

00:58:22 ◼   ► about all this crap anyway,

00:58:23 ◼   ► they probably use external DACs and amps on their phones,

00:58:26 ◼   ► which means that the phone not having a headphone jack

00:58:29 ◼   ► doesn't affect them at all,

00:58:30 ◼   ► because they were already using the lightning port

00:58:32 ◼   ► to have USB DACs and amps.

00:58:34 ◼   ► - You know that's not the case in this particular context.

00:58:38 ◼   ► I mean, I agree with you,

00:58:39 ◼   ► but these particular friends of mine,

00:58:41 ◼   ► and they're smart guys, and I really do enjoy their company,

00:58:46 ◼   ► but they are using just traditional headphone jacks

00:58:50 ◼   ► on traditional phones.

00:58:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, well then in that case, then the adapter,

00:58:54 ◼   ► the lightning to headphone adapter,

00:58:56 ◼   ► should probably be totally fine,

00:58:58 ◼   ► because then you avoid this problem entirely.

00:59:00 ◼   ► Like, you're not being forced to use Bluetooth

00:59:03 ◼   ► with the new phone.

00:59:04 ◼   ► You're just being forced to use the lightning port

00:59:06 ◼   ► or Bluetooth, and again, most high-end audio files,

00:59:09 ◼   ► or really picky audio files, have already been using USB

00:59:12 ◼   ► and portable DACs and amps in the lightning port for years.

00:59:16 ◼   ► Now, just the ones that were using the headphone jack

00:59:18 ◼   ► have to use a little $9 adapter

00:59:20 ◼   ► that is probably using the same quality DAC and amp

00:59:24 ◼   ► that was inside the phone to begin with.

00:59:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:59:26 ◼   ► So for the AAC transmission,

00:59:28 ◼   ► does it take an AAC song and just transmit it as is,

00:59:33 ◼   ► or does it have to double encode it?

00:59:35 ◼   ► Does it have to take an AAC and then encode that as AAC

00:59:38 ◼   ► and then send it?

00:59:39 ◼   ► Is it downgrading it, like I've got a 256 kilobit AAC

00:59:42 ◼   ► and then it's gotta re-encode it as 96

00:59:45 ◼   ► to send it over Bluetooth?

00:59:47 ◼   ► - So it is certainly possible for the software stack

00:59:51 ◼   ► involved there to detect whether something is AAC

00:59:56 ◼   ► and is within all the right parameters to be compatible

01:00:00 ◼   ► and to just send it without recompression.

01:00:01 ◼   ► That is possible.

01:00:03 ◼   ► But given the design of the various AV Foundation frameworks

01:00:06 ◼   ► and Core Audio and everything,

01:00:08 ◼   ► I think it's pretty unlikely that's what's happening.

01:00:10 ◼   ► It's possible, like as I said, but I think it's unlikely.

01:00:13 ◼   ► - So you don't think you could hear the difference

01:00:16 ◼   ► if you have a double encoded AAC?

01:00:18 ◼   ► 'Cause I grant that most people can't hear the difference

01:00:20 ◼   ► of a single AAC if it's at a reasonable bit rate.

01:00:22 ◼   ► But if you had a 128 and then re-encoded it again at 96,

01:00:26 ◼   ► a double encoded,

01:00:27 ◼   ► you think you can't hear any artifacts in that?

01:00:29 ◼   ► - If it's a lower bit rate,

01:00:31 ◼   ► and especially if it's as low as 96,

01:00:34 ◼   ► then you'd probably hear that.

01:00:35 ◼   ► But if it's like 128, 160, 192, like in that range,

01:00:40 ◼   ► especially the higher end of that range,

01:00:41 ◼   ► If it's like 160, I don't think you'd hear it.

01:00:43 ◼   ► - But like if you did double 160, double 128,

01:00:46 ◼   ► like take a 128 and then re-encode it again as 128,

01:00:49 ◼   ► like you're getting a loss every time, right?

01:00:52 ◼   ► - Well, not necessarily.

01:00:55 ◼   ► I mean, there are small errors introduced

01:00:59 ◼   ► in the decoding and encoding,

01:01:02 ◼   ► but the way most of these codecs work

01:01:05 ◼   ► is by discarding frequencies

01:01:07 ◼   ► that they don't think you'll hear

01:01:09 ◼   ► or reducing the precision in things

01:01:10 ◼   ► that they don't think you'll hear.

01:01:12 ◼   ► If the input audio is already lacking those frequencies

01:01:16 ◼   ► or those details, you might not actually hear it very much

01:01:19 ◼   ► to have, it's not gonna be like generational loss

01:01:22 ◼   ► of a cassette tape.

01:01:23 ◼   ► It's gonna be different errors and different imprecisions,

01:01:28 ◼   ► but I bet it will be a lot less noticeable than you think.

01:01:31 ◼   ► - I don't know, I've never actually done that experiment,

01:01:33 ◼   ► but I'm assuming that if you were just to run this

01:01:36 ◼   ► on a loop, it would be like generational loss,

01:01:38 ◼   ► to just the question of what's the slope of the line.

01:01:41 ◼   ► Does it get crappy after five re-encodes,

01:01:43 ◼   ► or does it take like 105, I don't know?

01:01:46 ◼   ► - Well sure, yeah, and here the answer is two.

01:01:49 ◼   ► So it's like, it's not, it's very unlikely,

01:01:52 ◼   ► again, it's very unlikely to be noticeable

01:01:55 ◼   ► on even really good headphones that might not be noticeable,

01:01:58 ◼   ► let alone the headphones most people are using

01:02:01 ◼   ► to listen through Bluetooth.

01:02:03 ◼   ► I mean, the realm of Bluetooth headphones is terrible.

01:02:06 ◼   ► There are very few that even have

01:02:09 ◼   ► moderately good audio quality.

01:02:12 ◼   ► And that's not because of the codecs,

01:02:13 ◼   ► it's because of the crappy drivers.

01:02:15 ◼   ► So I wouldn't hold your breath on this being

01:02:20 ◼   ► the answer to really anything.

01:02:23 ◼   ► We're already at AAC apparently.

01:02:26 ◼   ► That's good enough for the vast majority of uses here.

01:02:29 ◼   ► Most people are not gonna notice any difference

01:02:31 ◼   ► that is actually attributable to the codec itself

01:02:34 ◼   ► or any possible transmission re-encoding

01:02:36 ◼   ► might be taking place.

01:02:38 ◼   ► - I would hope that one of Apple's advantages,

01:02:39 ◼   ► maybe not in the W1, but in the W3 or whatever,

01:02:42 ◼   ► at once the minimum bandwidth requirement

01:02:45 ◼   ► goes up a little bit, would be to go end to end

01:02:48 ◼   ► and take your mastered for iTunes 256 kilobit AACs

01:02:53 ◼   ► and just send them exactly as is to your headphones.

01:02:57 ◼   ► Like, you know, if anybody could pull that off, it's them,

01:02:59 ◼   ► because they would literally control

01:03:00 ◼   ► every piece of hardware and software in that chain.

01:03:04 ◼   ► And even though it may be simpler to just,

01:03:06 ◼   ► oh, you just universally encode everything and it will be fine.

01:03:09 ◼   ► Being able to do that is something

01:03:11 ◼   ► they could tout in a presentation.

01:03:13 ◼   ► And whether or not--

01:03:15 ◼   ► they will cater to audio files a little bit.

01:03:17 ◼   ► Whether or not you would actually

01:03:19 ◼   ► hear the double encoding, especially

01:03:21 ◼   ► if they got to the point where they can handle the bandwidth

01:03:23 ◼   ► at 256, it just seems like it would be more efficient

01:03:26 ◼   ► to not have to encode, to just send it as is,

01:03:29 ◼   ► if they know it's AAC already.

01:03:30 ◼   ► And like you said, it fits within whatever

01:03:32 ◼   ► the bandwidth constraints are.

01:03:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, sure, I mean, it's, you know,

01:03:36 ◼   ► Bandwidth Trans also, like, AAC has a lot

01:03:38 ◼   ► of optional features, you know, just like all

01:03:40 ◼   ► the crappy video codec complexity that's out there.

01:03:42 ◼   ► Like, there's all these optional features

01:03:43 ◼   ► and like, kind of out of spec things

01:03:45 ◼   ► you might get in a bit stream.

01:03:46 ◼   ► So there is also a good technical reason

01:03:49 ◼   ► why they would want to just always transcode

01:03:52 ◼   ► what they receive into a certain profile

01:03:54 ◼   ► that they know they support on the other end.

01:03:57 ◼   ► But, and also, you know, I think, again,

01:03:59 ◼   ► with the design of these APIs, it would be difficult

01:04:02 ◼   ► to have a way to pass through the original like lossily encoded data before that without

01:04:10 ◼   ► decoding it first like all the way through AV player and everything like there might

01:04:14 ◼   ► be some of that involved do things like surround pass through but I doubt there's much of it

01:04:19 ◼   ► and and that would just be complexity for this very minor gain that most people wouldn't

01:04:25 ◼   ► notice all to send very, very slightly, probably imperceptibly better sound to crappy little

01:04:33 ◼   ► ear bud drivers.

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01:05:58 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:06:01 ◼   ► - All right, so apparently there's a jobs-related story

01:06:06 ◼   ► about the AirPod design philosophy.

01:06:08 ◼   ► - Steve Jobs?

01:06:10 ◼   ► - Not jobs-related, job style.

01:06:13 ◼   ► I was thinking after the presentation of the EarPods was,

01:06:16 ◼   ► if Steve Jobs had given that presentation,

01:06:19 ◼   ► one thing he liked to do

01:06:20 ◼   ► when introducing hardware products is to say something,

01:06:23 ◼   ► especially if it's like a funny or interesting anecdote

01:06:27 ◼   ► about the process of designing it,

01:06:29 ◼   ► of like, why did we decide that this product

01:06:31 ◼   ► should look like the way you see it now?

01:06:34 ◼   ► And what did we, you know, what was our thinking?

01:06:36 ◼   ► We thought of this, the obvious idea,

01:06:38 ◼   ► and why did we reject that?

01:06:39 ◼   ► Why did we go with this?

01:06:41 ◼   ► Probably the most famous one is discussions,

01:06:43 ◼   ► maybe it wasn't even in the keynote,

01:06:45 ◼   ► but subsequently about the flat panel iMac,

01:06:48 ◼   ► the one that was on the Time Magazine cover

01:06:50 ◼   ► It leaked at the little semicircle base and then the the screen and talking about you know

01:06:54 ◼   ► The obvious it was in the presentation

01:06:55 ◼   ► The obvious thing was just to take a big screen and put computers and crap on the back of it

01:06:59 ◼   ► But they didn't like that. So they rethought it, you know, anyway the earpods

01:07:02 ◼   ► the obvious story to me is

01:07:05 ◼   ► You know if you can like make up the the design thing is like

01:07:10 ◼   ► They're gonna have these things in our ears and they're not gonna have wires like that seems like that's the premise, right?

01:07:14 ◼   ► There's not gonna be wires on them at all

01:07:16 ◼   ► They're just gonna be things in the ears

01:07:18 ◼   ► The part that goes in your ear is probably gonna be the same shape that we figured out for the ear pods or whatever

01:07:22 ◼   ► But what about the rest of it?

01:07:23 ◼   ► We have to find place for a battery and for all the chips and stuff like that

01:07:25 ◼   ► What shape should these be a lot of the ones that are on the market that are similar to the air pods?

01:07:31 ◼   ► Are shaped like snails or little turds or acorns some of them some of them have sticks coming out of them, but

01:07:40 ◼   ► You can imagine if you just start with a clean slate and and say what shape should we make the little things that poking?

01:07:46 ◼   ► There's lots of possibilities because obviously the part that's not in your ear can be almost any shape

01:07:50 ◼   ► They're not gonna be that big you want it to look nice and

01:07:53 ◼   ► To be easy to grab and take in and out

01:07:57 ◼   ► And I can imagine if Steve Jobs was there he would show slides of other competitors thing that look like snails

01:08:03 ◼   ► And say but we decided not to do that

01:08:05 ◼   ► You know we thought about it and try lots of different designs

01:08:07 ◼   ► But in the end we realized the the solution was sitting there right in front of us

01:08:10 ◼   ► Just take the ear pods that we know and love snip and cut off the wires

01:08:15 ◼   ► done because conveniently the little white stem thing is a perfect place for a cylindrical battery and

01:08:20 ◼   ► Lucky Apple finally gets to make a cylindrical battery. Yes, they did for the pencil too

01:08:24 ◼   ► I don't even know if they're cylindrical in there, but hey cylinder is the shape of your traditional battery

01:08:29 ◼   ► It's got a nice handle for you to grab it

01:08:32 ◼   ► And I think there's a slightly better chance that you won't lose them when they're awkwardly shaped than if they were actually shaped like

01:08:38 ◼   ► Little snails, you know

01:08:39 ◼   ► Like the fact that it's like longer and has this protrusion coming from it, even though it might look a little bit more awkward

01:08:44 ◼   ► It's just a generally a better design, but like if you look at them they look for all the world like someone took

01:08:49 ◼   ► You know the regular wired Apple earpods and just cut the wires off of them on them and already people are selling wires that you can

01:08:57 ◼   ► Attach them so you don't lose them which is ridiculous. Although I don't understand why

01:09:00 ◼   ► The we're talking about this thing

01:09:03 ◼   ► We all saw like someone selling a sort of a clip-on wire that you attach to your air pods to keep you from losing them

01:09:09 ◼   ► But it clips on like a little cuff like that clips on it like there's little metal things on the bottom

01:09:14 ◼   ► Oh, right. They should be magnetic the little case has little magnets in it right you should make that

01:09:19 ◼   ► I don't understand. That's staring you right in the face

01:09:21 ◼   ► Maybe they can't sell those little tiny

01:09:23 ◼   ► Whatever they are those rare earth magnet things that kids swallow and they go in their intestines and have to you know anyway

01:09:29 ◼   ► Well, they also don't want to cover the mics because I thought the microphones were at the very very bottom of the little

01:09:35 ◼   ► I don't know protrusion

01:09:36 ◼   ► Yeah, you'd have to make it like hollow or do something

01:09:39 ◼   ► but it would be, anyway, if Apple made these things,

01:09:41 ◼   ► which is a ridiculous thing about it, they would do that.

01:09:43 ◼   ► But anyway, that was not discussed.

01:09:45 ◼   ► Like in the presentation,

01:09:47 ◼   ► there was no sort of job style story

01:09:49 ◼   ► about how they arrived at the design

01:09:51 ◼   ► that is essentially exactly like the AirPods

01:09:52 ◼   ► but with the wires cut off.

01:09:53 ◼   ► But I think that's really like not obvious.

01:09:56 ◼   ► If you'd asked me what shape will the Apple things be like,

01:10:00 ◼   ► I would have lots of ideas,

01:10:01 ◼   ► but it wouldn't occur to me

01:10:02 ◼   ► to just take the existing ones and cut off the wires.

01:10:04 ◼   ► But of course, after you see it, you realize,

01:10:06 ◼   ► even though it looks kind of weird,

01:10:08 ◼   ► It does have a lot of advantages.

01:10:10 ◼   ► In particular, I think having a little handle,

01:10:12 ◼   ► like having a thing to grab it by the hand,

01:10:14 ◼   ► an obvious place to grab it

01:10:15 ◼   ► so you're not grabbing a little snail that's in your ear,

01:10:17 ◼   ► you're grabbing a stick, right?

01:10:19 ◼   ► That seems like a big win to me.

01:10:20 ◼   ► And then of course the place to put the battery

01:10:22 ◼   ► is probably easier to hide a battery in a little stick

01:10:25 ◼   ► than it is to try and find a place in the snail shell

01:10:26 ◼   ► to wedge the battery.

01:10:28 ◼   ► - That does make sense.

01:10:30 ◼   ► Especially since, oh yeah, look at what we've done.

01:10:31 ◼   ► It's so perfect now we're just gonna make it perfecter.

01:10:34 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:10:36 ◼   ► Oh goodness.

01:10:37 ◼   ► All right, so let's round out by talking about the iPhone 7 Plus cameras.

01:10:43 ◼   ► And there's been a plethora of debate over what they can and cannot do.

01:10:49 ◼   ► And a mutual friend of all of ours, Matthew Panzorino, who is editor-in-chief of Tech

01:10:53 ◼   ► Runge, wrote a really fantastic review of the iPhone 7.

01:11:00 ◼   ► And you knew it was going to be good when it starts as follows.

01:11:04 ◼   ► This is the very opening.

01:11:06 ◼   ► My kid farts a lot.

01:11:07 ◼   ► Farting and eating is pretty much all he does.

01:11:10 ◼   ► And that's because he's four weeks old.

01:11:11 ◼   ► But anyway, any iPhone review that starts with a story about flatulence is good with

01:11:16 ◼   ► me.

01:11:17 ◼   ► So in this story, he tells us a little bit more about the iPhone 7 camera.

01:11:24 ◼   ► And so he says, "Every time you take a picture with the iPhone 7 Plus, both the wide-angle

01:11:29 ◼   ► and telephoto fire off.

01:11:31 ◼   ► Yes, two 12-megapixel cameras for every shot.

01:11:34 ◼   ► could be a prime driver behind the increase in the iPhone 7 plus' memory to 3 gigabytes.

01:11:40 ◼   ► Both images are needed due to an Apple technique it's calling "Fusion" internally.

01:11:43 ◼   ► Fusion takes data from both sensors and merges them into the best possible picture for any

01:11:46 ◼   ► condition.

01:11:47 ◼   ► If, for instance, there's a low-light scene that has some dark areas, the image processing

01:11:50 ◼   ► chip could choose to pick up some image data, pixels or other stuff like luminance, from

01:11:54 ◼   ► the brighter f/1.8 wide angle and mix it in with the data from the f/2.8 telephoto, creating

01:11:59 ◼   ► a composit-- I can't pronounce it.

01:12:03 ◼   ► >> That's Compasite. >> Yeah, that's it. It's actually pronounced

01:12:06 ◼   ► Bazel. On the fly without any input from the user. This is--this was debated a lot over

01:12:12 ◼   ► the last week. Do both cameras fire and do you get data from both cameras when you take

01:12:18 ◼   ► a picture? And according to Matthew Panzareno, who I trust, the answer is unequivocally yes,

01:12:23 ◼   ► both of them fire. >> Yeah, I saw there's actually a developer

01:12:25 ◼   ► document somewhere along the way where basically at the API level, you can specify like if

01:12:33 ◼   ► If you need certain low level access,

01:12:35 ◼   ► things like raw controls and things like that,

01:12:37 ◼   ► then you have to just pick one and use that one.

01:12:39 ◼   ► But the default mode appears to really be

01:12:42 ◼   ► this kind of mishmash that uses both

01:12:44 ◼   ► and tries to be intelligent about it.

01:12:45 ◼   ► So that's cool.

01:12:46 ◼   ► I worry a little bit about if there's gonna be

01:12:50 ◼   ► any kind of artifacts from that,

01:12:53 ◼   ► but I assume Apple thought of that

01:12:55 ◼   ► and worked around that in software, so we'll see.

01:12:59 ◼   ► That's pretty cool.

01:13:00 ◼   ► The other thing that we need to cover with the camera

01:13:02 ◼   ► which is kind of big, which is kind of related to this,

01:13:04 ◼   ► is that the, what they're calling the telephoto lens

01:13:08 ◼   ► is not as good in a few pretty critical ways.

01:13:12 ◼   ► You might not want the data from it necessarily.

01:13:16 ◼   ► I guess it depends on how they're combining it.

01:13:19 ◼   ► And this is, this kind of actually got me into questioning

01:13:23 ◼   ► whether I'm getting the plus or not.

01:13:24 ◼   ► So basically, we know from the keynote

01:13:28 ◼   ► that it was only f/2.8 compared to f/1.8 of the wide lens,

01:13:33 ◼   ► and that results in a lot less light coming in,

01:13:38 ◼   ► and therefore in low light,

01:13:41 ◼   ► you're gonna have a lot more noise coming from that sensor

01:13:44 ◼   ► because it's gonna have to crank up the sensitivity

01:13:46 ◼   ► to make up for the lack of light coming in.

01:13:48 ◼   ► The other problem is, kinda related to that,

01:13:50 ◼   ► which is that the telephoto lens

01:13:53 ◼   ► does not have image stabilization.

01:13:55 ◼   ► Basically, it's the difference between

01:13:57 ◼   ► what the 6 Plus and 6S Plus have had

01:14:00 ◼   ► over the 6 and 6S camera,

01:14:03 ◼   ► 'cause the Pluses have always had optical stabilization

01:14:06 ◼   ► on the main cameras, and the minuses, I guess,

01:14:09 ◼   ► have not until the 7.

01:14:11 ◼   ► And so you can see in the reviews that compare

01:14:14 ◼   ► like the 6S to the 6S Plus camera,

01:14:17 ◼   ► you can usually see in their low light photos

01:14:20 ◼   ► a pretty noticeable difference

01:14:21 ◼   ► because the image stabilizer allows the camera

01:14:24 ◼   ► to have a longer shutter speed,

01:14:26 ◼   ► as long as nobody's moving,

01:14:28 ◼   ► had to have a longer shutter speed

01:14:29 ◼   ► without the shake of your hands getting in the way

01:14:32 ◼   ► and making it blurry.

01:14:33 ◼   ► And so in low light, longer shutter speed means,

01:14:37 ◼   ► again, lower sensitivity needed,

01:14:38 ◼   ► you know, less boosting of the signal on the sensor,

01:14:42 ◼   ► and therefore less noise in the picture.

01:14:45 ◼   ► So the fact that the telephoto does not have stabilization

01:14:49 ◼   ► will generally mean that, you know,

01:14:51 ◼   ► in any kind of moderate to low light,

01:14:54 ◼   ► basically indoors, the pictures from the telephoto camera

01:14:57 ◼   ► are going to be noticeably noisier

01:14:59 ◼   ► than the ones from the wide camera.

01:15:01 ◼   ► And additionally, because of that f/2.8,

01:15:04 ◼   ► it's gonna make it even worse.

01:15:05 ◼   ► So basically, the telephoto camera

01:15:08 ◼   ► is going to be mostly an outdoor camera.

01:15:10 ◼   ► You can use it inside, but it won't be very good.

01:15:13 ◼   ► The second camera, oh, and also,

01:15:16 ◼   ► people on Reddit analyzed the exif data

01:15:20 ◼   ► from some of those Sports Illustrated sample pictures,

01:15:22 ◼   ► and they seem to conclude that the telephoto sensor

01:15:27 ◼   ► is also smaller.

01:15:29 ◼   ► There's some various conflicting reports about this

01:15:31 ◼   ► from like Apple PR statements.

01:15:32 ◼   ► So the sensor might be smaller.

01:15:35 ◼   ► If the sensor's smaller, that also means,

01:15:37 ◼   ► generally speaking, usually more noise

01:15:39 ◼   ► because the pixels are smaller and collect less light,

01:15:41 ◼   ► so again, more amplification necessary.

01:15:44 ◼   ► Anyway, so all of this, there's lots of good reasons

01:15:47 ◼   ► why these might be the case.

01:15:49 ◼   ► Space considerations, a longer lens

01:15:51 ◼   ► that involves differently shaped optics

01:15:54 ◼   ► that are probably deeper.

01:15:56 ◼   ► And these aren't like $1,000 cameras in here,

01:16:00 ◼   ► they're probably like $40 or $50 cameras,

01:16:04 ◼   ► and that adds up to the bill of materials to these things.

01:16:07 ◼   ► They're already adding a second one.

01:16:08 ◼   ► To add a second one that's even more expensive

01:16:10 ◼   ► and even larger and even more mechanically complicated

01:16:13 ◼   ► would probably have a noticeable effect on their cost

01:16:15 ◼   ► and their margins, they probably don't want.

01:16:17 ◼   ► So it's probably, I'm guessing cost is the secondary,

01:16:21 ◼   ► reason and that physical constraints are the primary reason, but whatever the reasons,

01:16:27 ◼   ► it's kind of unfortunate that the telephoto lens is just not as well specced as the wide

01:16:33 ◼   ► lens. So I'm actually, I've decided for myself that I'm probably going to do the

01:16:37 ◼   ► regular size 7 this year and not the plus.

01:16:39 ◼   ► Also the plus is giant. Here's the thing about Apple and this PR cycle. The day of,

01:16:46 ◼   ► I heard from multiple different people who were in contact with Apple PR different things,

01:16:52 ◼   ► which is not typical for Apple. Usually Apple PR has everything all, I don't want to say

01:16:56 ◼   ► specific people and specific facts. These are minor facts that don't really matter in

01:16:59 ◼   ► the grand scheme of things, but where Apple PR will tell one person one thing to a very

01:17:04 ◼   ► specific technical question and tell a different person a different thing. Like obviously Apple

01:17:08 ◼   ► PR is not a single person, so it could just be two different people. Like anyway, it seems

01:17:12 ◼   ► like their story was not exactly straight, but on the censors I have heard that Apple

01:17:16 ◼   ► is very adamant that they are exactly the same sensor.

01:17:19 ◼   ► All right, well, whatever the case,

01:17:21 ◼   ► they still have the optical disadvantages,

01:17:23 ◼   ► where it's a much smaller aperture and the lack

01:17:26 ◼   ► of image stabilization.

01:17:27 ◼   ► Yeah, the image stabilization is the obvious one.

01:17:29 ◼   ► I mean, that one, like Apple confirms, obviously,

01:17:32 ◼   ► and you can look at it in Apple's little pictures.

01:17:34 ◼   ► For the Fusion thing, last show we

01:17:36 ◼   ► were talking about whether the zooming was blending the two

01:17:40 ◼   ► picture.

01:17:40 ◼   ► Now it turns out, like, everything

01:17:42 ◼   ► is blending the two pictures.

01:17:43 ◼   ► Now, forget about the zooming.

01:17:45 ◼   ► In normal operation, everything's blending.

01:17:47 ◼   ► And like you said, we'll put the link in the show notes

01:17:49 ◼   ► to the AV Foundation documentation

01:17:52 ◼   ► for using the camera in fused mode

01:17:54 ◼   ► and how you lose all this control or whatever.

01:17:56 ◼   ► What's interesting to me is if I have one of these,

01:17:58 ◼   ► one of the first things I would do

01:17:59 ◼   ► is put my finger over one of the cameras

01:18:00 ◼   ► and take a bunch of pictures just to try to confuse the--

01:18:03 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

01:18:03 ◼   ► Or at least like a color filter or something.

01:18:05 ◼   ► Right, something that they hinted at in the thing.

01:18:08 ◼   ► They're like, oh, this-- whatever,

01:18:09 ◼   ► their image processor with billions

01:18:10 ◼   ► of calculations and every single whatever.

01:18:12 ◼   ► Yeah, because it is doing a fairly complicated task

01:18:16 ◼   ► of what I assume is trying to see

01:18:18 ◼   ► if there is anything worthwhile to combine

01:18:21 ◼   ► from the potentially blurrier,

01:18:24 ◼   ► differently zoomed in image from the other camera

01:18:27 ◼   ► to put together to make a better picture.

01:18:29 ◼   ► And so that algorithm has to be smart enough

01:18:32 ◼   ► to not make your pictures worse if it still happens

01:18:34 ◼   ► that it's just below the light threshold

01:18:37 ◼   ► of the good camera, you know,

01:18:38 ◼   ► or the wide angle camera can get enough light,

01:18:41 ◼   ► but the zoomed in one is all like noisy and gross.

01:18:43 ◼   ► I hope it will be smart enough not to make your,

01:18:45 ◼   ► what would be a perfectly good one camera picture worse

01:18:48 ◼   ► by trying to blend it.

01:18:49 ◼   ► Same thing if I cover up one of the cameras with my finger,

01:18:52 ◼   ► I would hope it would be smart enough to say,

01:18:54 ◼   ► oh, well, there's no useful data and that other thing.

01:18:56 ◼   ► So don't combine it and have it look exactly the same.

01:18:59 ◼   ► I guess if you were a developer

01:19:01 ◼   ► and you have control with these APIs to say,

01:19:03 ◼   ► I wanna either use this camera alone or this camera alone

01:19:05 ◼   ► or do the fusion, that would be fun to like, you know,

01:19:08 ◼   ► do a series of three pictures

01:19:09 ◼   ► with your finger over the thing.

01:19:11 ◼   ► Obviously the picture of the, just your finger

01:19:13 ◼   ► is gonna be all just, you know, black or pink

01:19:15 ◼   ► or whatever color it happens to be

01:19:16 ◼   ► depending on the lighting conditions of, you know,

01:19:18 ◼   ► shining through your translucent skin.

01:19:20 ◼   ► And then the other one would be clear

01:19:23 ◼   ► and then the fusion picture,

01:19:24 ◼   ► would it be the same as the single camera picture

01:19:27 ◼   ► that had a clear shot or would it be like worse?

01:19:31 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:19:32 ◼   ► Anyway, this is all going on behind the scenes.

01:19:33 ◼   ► It's all supposed to be entirely transparent.

01:19:35 ◼   ► I understand why Apple doesn't care

01:19:36 ◼   ► to explain the technical details.

01:19:38 ◼   ► If it just works, it just works and that's great,

01:19:40 ◼   ► but I am very curious about exactly what they're doing

01:19:43 ◼   ► under the covers and if, like you said, Marco,

01:19:46 ◼   ► is it gonna make your pictures better in a noticeable way?

01:19:49 ◼   ► Or will you just never know that it's happening

01:19:52 ◼   ► and you'll just have to trust that things would be worse

01:19:54 ◼   ► if it wasn't combining all these pixels?

01:19:57 ◼   ► - So Ben McCarthy has an iPhone app called Obscura

01:20:02 ◼   ► and so he knows the programmatic interfaces

01:20:05 ◼   ► to the cameras really, really well.

01:20:08 ◼   ► And he had confirmed, and I just wanted to call this out,

01:20:11 ◼   ► that in order to get manual exposure in focus,

01:20:15 ◼   ► and this is what you were alluding to earlier, Marco,

01:20:17 ◼   ► on the 7+, you cannot use the Fuse Camera mode.

01:20:22 ◼   ► You have to say either I want the telephoto or the wide one.

01:20:26 ◼   ► And so we'll put a link in the show notes to that.

01:20:29 ◼   ► The depth mapping.

01:20:31 ◼   ► Buzzfeed says, "Because both cameras in the 7+

01:20:35 ◼   ► can be run simultaneously,

01:20:36 ◼   ► it can capture nine layers of depth

01:20:38 ◼   ► from foreground to background.

01:20:39 ◼   ► I've also seen, and I don't have a link handy,

01:20:42 ◼   ► but I've seen rumors that there is an IR sensor

01:20:45 ◼   ► or something like that sitting in between the two lenses.

01:20:47 ◼   ► Did you guys see that?

01:20:48 ◼   ► - I took that out of the notes

01:20:49 ◼   ► 'cause someone was just saying,

01:20:51 ◼   ► because looking at the parts,

01:20:52 ◼   ► there's like a hole in the middle,

01:20:54 ◼   ► but I don't know if that's for an IR.

01:20:57 ◼   ► That's the question.

01:20:58 ◼   ► Where does it get the depth map from?

01:21:00 ◼   ► Last show I said,

01:21:00 ◼   ► these cameras are really close to each other.

01:21:02 ◼   ► So you can get depth from two cameras

01:21:04 ◼   ► that are separated from each other.

01:21:05 ◼   ► the more they're separated, the easier it is to get depth information out.

01:21:08 ◼   ► You could also get it with an IR spray or something, but I have a feeling if that's

01:21:13 ◼   ► what was going on, we would know about it by now.

01:21:15 ◼   ► Anyway, another one of the mysteries of Apple's magical hardware.

01:21:20 ◼   ► How are they getting the depth information?

01:21:21 ◼   ► But the nine layers says they're not getting that much depth information.

01:21:25 ◼   ► Nine layers is pretty granular for an entire scene.

01:21:27 ◼   ► I think like the, what is it, 360 had the first, what the hell was that thing called?

01:21:35 ◼   ► boy it's bad that I can't even remember the name of it.

01:21:36 ◼   ► You know what I'm talking about, right?

01:21:37 ◼   ► You stand in front of the Xbox and wave your arms around.

01:21:39 ◼   ► - The Kinect.

01:21:41 ◼   ► - Kinect, there we go, yes.

01:21:42 ◼   ► The first one of those had fairly primitive depth mapping

01:21:45 ◼   ► to figure out where everybody was in the room,

01:21:47 ◼   ► but it was way more than nine layers.

01:21:49 ◼   ► So the camera, these layers are gonna be used

01:21:53 ◼   ► for the fake depth of field effect that,

01:21:56 ◼   ► as far as I'm aware, no one has actually tried yet, right?

01:21:58 ◼   ► Even reviewers don't have this yet,

01:22:00 ◼   ► 'cause it's due later this year.

01:22:01 ◼   ► - Yeah. - So we still don't know

01:22:02 ◼   ► I don't know how that works,

01:22:03 ◼   ► but that's what the depth is for.

01:22:04 ◼   ► And nine layers is from this Buzzfeed article

01:22:08 ◼   ► I assume we confirmed from Apple,

01:22:09 ◼   ► so don't expect miracles in terms of a mapping

01:22:14 ◼   ► of what's near and what's far.

01:22:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you can kinda see that in their demo photos

01:22:20 ◼   ► that show off the FOCE effect,

01:22:23 ◼   ► that you can tell the edge detection of the subject

01:22:28 ◼   ► is kinda crude, and it's like things are blurred

01:22:31 ◼   ► that shouldn't necessarily be blurred, like depth-wise.

01:22:35 ◼   ► So what we're seeing there is probably just the effect

01:22:37 ◼   ► of the depth map being fairly imprecise.

01:22:42 ◼   ► - All right, Dan Hickson has written about RAW,

01:22:46 ◼   ► and he has pointed out to us that RAW is not a new feature

01:22:51 ◼   ► of the iPhone 7, but a new feature of iOS 10

01:22:54 ◼   ► that works with any iPhones that have 12 megapixel cameras.

01:22:58 ◼   ► So I believe that's just 6S and 7, is that correct?

01:23:01 ◼   ► - That's right, yeah, 6S and forward.

01:23:02 ◼   ► Although I think also the SE.

01:23:04 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I think you are right actually,

01:23:06 ◼   ► that's a very good point, I didn't consider that.

01:23:08 ◼   ► He says he's working on a raw camera app for iOS 10

01:23:11 ◼   ► and here's why, he and his partner

01:23:13 ◼   ► are professional photographers.

01:23:15 ◼   ► The main reason we want raw on our phones

01:23:16 ◼   ► is because Apple's noise reduction algorithm

01:23:18 ◼   ► is too aggressive, it's optimized for iPhone screens

01:23:20 ◼   ► and looks good there.

01:23:22 ◼   ► But if you zoom in on a photo that you took recently,

01:23:25 ◼   ► the edges are still milky and yucky.

01:23:27 ◼   ► I even have a friend who is also a pro photographer

01:23:29 ◼   ► has begun stockpiling iPhone 5S's because the noise reduction is less aggressive there.

01:23:34 ◼   ► And I feel like I've also seen previously mentioned Ben McCarthy say some of the same

01:23:37 ◼   ► things, that the noise reduction is really aggressive on the Apple side of things. And

01:23:45 ◼   ► so if you take the RAW image, then you can apply whatever noise reduction you want.

01:23:49 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Linode, Fracture, and igloo, and we will see

01:23:54 ◼   ► See you next week!

01:24:23 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:24:28 ◼   ► @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:24:33 ◼   ► So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:24:37 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C

01:24:42 ◼   ► U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:24:45 ◼   ► It's accidental

01:24:48 ◼   ► They didn't mean to

01:24:50 ◼   ► ♪ New accidental ♪

01:24:52 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:24:53 ◼   ► ♪ Tech podcast ♪

01:24:55 ◼   ► ♪ So long ♪

01:24:57 ◼   ► - We should perhaps talk about the ordering process

01:25:01 ◼   ► and what we ended up doing.

01:25:03 ◼   ► It sounds like, so what did you order, Marco?

01:25:06 ◼   ► I thought you were ordering a plus.

01:25:08 ◼   ► - So I did order a plus, but I decided

01:25:11 ◼   ► at the very last minute to go for jet black

01:25:13 ◼   ► because I wanted the grip.

01:25:14 ◼   ► I was kind of on the fence between regular black

01:25:16 ◼   ► and jet black, and on the plus, I really wanted extra grip

01:25:20 ◼   ► because I really wanted to use it caseless

01:25:22 ◼   ► and because just 'cause it's so big.

01:25:24 ◼   ► And as I mentioned, I had been using a plus

01:25:27 ◼   ► for like the last week or so,

01:25:29 ◼   ► just to kind of as like a sanity check

01:25:31 ◼   ► to make sure like do I really want a phone this big?

01:25:34 ◼   ► And the problem is at minute one,

01:25:38 ◼   ► the earliest and the earliest ship date anybody got

01:25:41 ◼   ► on a Jet Black Plus was September 26th.

01:25:45 ◼   ► By the time my order went through,

01:25:47 ◼   ► mine which had been quoted at that time

01:25:50 ◼   ► I was actually moved up to October 4th through 10th.

01:25:53 ◼   ► - Oh.

01:25:54 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:25:55 ◼   ► - So like, you know, I mean,

01:25:57 ◼   ► granted that's only like three weeks away or something,

01:26:00 ◼   ► but I really want this phone now,

01:26:04 ◼   ► and I really have reasons to get it now.

01:26:06 ◼   ► Like for instance, Overcast has a prominent feature

01:26:10 ◼   ► that depends on the hardware of the phone's

01:26:12 ◼   ► built-in speaker and profiling it

01:26:14 ◼   ► to minimize distortion during voice boost.

01:26:16 ◼   ► I really would like the new phone

01:26:18 ◼   ► so I can profile the speaker,

01:26:20 ◼   ► and I can get this feature out the door

01:26:22 ◼   ► so that all the people who get these phones

01:26:24 ◼   ► can have overcast sound good and correct

01:26:26 ◼   ► out of their speakers.

01:26:27 ◼   ► Plus, I just want the phone.

01:26:29 ◼   ► I'm a nerd, I'm impatient,

01:26:30 ◼   ► I wanna talk about it on this show,

01:26:32 ◼   ► I want for the various minor business purposes,

01:26:35 ◼   ► so yeah, to wait till early to mid-October

01:26:38 ◼   ► kind of would suck.

01:26:40 ◼   ► So in the meantime, I started thinking,

01:26:42 ◼   ► you know, what else could I,

01:26:44 ◼   ► maybe should I just go into the store

01:26:46 ◼   ► and try to get a reservation and everything

01:26:47 ◼   ► and try to get one in the meantime,

01:26:50 ◼   ► and then whichever one comes first,

01:26:51 ◼   ► just keep that one and cancel the other order.

01:26:54 ◼   ► And the problem is I got all this crap with AT&T

01:26:56 ◼   ► where basically Apple is not very happy

01:26:59 ◼   ► to sell you T-Mobile unlocked ones in very much quantity

01:27:02 ◼   ► because most of those are probably being resold

01:27:05 ◼   ► on the gray market.

01:27:07 ◼   ► - Wait, really?

01:27:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh yeah.

01:27:09 ◼   ► The T-Mobile stock went out way earlier.

01:27:12 ◼   ► The T-Mobile ship dates went out way further ahead

01:27:14 ◼   ► than everyone else's way faster.

01:27:15 ◼   ► - Oh, I see what you're saying.

01:27:17 ◼   ► - Okay, a little secret between us and the listeners,

01:27:20 ◼   ► which we're not going to tell anyone,

01:27:22 ◼   ► is that I might have ordered a second phone

01:27:25 ◼   ► for somebody else that lives in the house

01:27:27 ◼   ► that may not know this yet.

01:27:28 ◼   ► - Declan? - And that one,

01:27:30 ◼   ► yeah, totally.

01:27:31 ◼   ► And that one I ordered as T-Mobile

01:27:33 ◼   ► because on the off chance that I get murdered

01:27:37 ◼   ► for spending a lot of money on this phone

01:27:40 ◼   ► that wasn't really asked for,

01:27:42 ◼   ► then it would be a very easy return.

01:27:44 ◼   ► It wouldn't be set up against her,

01:27:46 ◼   ► or his, but her phone number.

01:27:49 ◼   ► And so I just got a completely vanilla T-Mobile phone,

01:27:52 ◼   ► and I don't remember what the ship date was.

01:27:54 ◼   ► To your point, it was OutAways,

01:27:56 ◼   ► but I did this like hours after waking up last Friday.

01:28:01 ◼   ► - Also, if it wasn't a plus,

01:28:03 ◼   ► then the dates were a lot closer.

01:28:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is not a plus.

01:28:06 ◼   ► And I bring all this up just to say that for one phone,

01:28:09 ◼   ► like I was, as far as Apple is concerned,

01:28:12 ◼   ► like a complete rando, and for one T-Mobile phone,

01:28:15 ◼   ► they didn't blink an eye and it was super easy.

01:28:17 ◼   ► - That's good, yeah.

01:28:18 ◼   ► Anyway, so I was living with the Plus all weekend

01:28:23 ◼   ► and I came to the conclusion that I can have a phone

01:28:27 ◼   ► that big, if it's really compelling for all the other

01:28:30 ◼   ► reasons, I can totally live with the Plus size phone.

01:28:34 ◼   ► So when I came home, I lived with it for a little bit

01:28:36 ◼   ► longer and then I switched this morning back to my 6s

01:28:40 ◼   ► just to kind of have the other side then.

01:28:42 ◼   ► And my God, I love the 6S so much more.

01:28:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:28:48 ◼   ► Like-- - Attaboy.

01:28:49 ◼   ► - The same feeling that people get

01:28:51 ◼   ► when they switch to the SE after using a 6 for a while,

01:28:55 ◼   ► they're like, "Oh my God, I can reach everything

01:28:56 ◼   ► "and it fits it on my pockets and it's so small and light."

01:28:59 ◼   ► That's the feeling I got switching

01:29:01 ◼   ► from the Plus back to the 6S.

01:29:03 ◼   ► Like it was such a big difference.

01:29:05 ◼   ► And the Plus, like, yes, the screen is way bigger

01:29:10 ◼   ► and way nicer.

01:29:11 ◼   ► The cameras, even though the telephoto camera

01:29:16 ◼   ► is not as optically high spec as the other one,

01:29:19 ◼   ► I would still love to have dual cameras

01:29:21 ◼   ► and would gladly pay $100 extra if they could be

01:29:23 ◼   ► in the same size body as the regular success.

01:29:25 ◼   ► The battery life is indeed better.

01:29:28 ◼   ► Again, not as much if you're using the screen,

01:29:30 ◼   ► but it is indeed noticeably better.

01:29:33 ◼   ► But there are still some things about it that annoy me.

01:29:36 ◼   ► I still hate that springboard rotates.

01:29:38 ◼   ► I still hate that apps have that weird half iPad view

01:29:42 ◼   ► when you accidentally rotate them,

01:29:43 ◼   ► to the point where I typically have to keep the phone

01:29:46 ◼   ► with rotation lock on,

01:29:47 ◼   ► which I never have to do with my 6S.

01:29:49 ◼   ► But on the Plus, I really just have to keep

01:29:51 ◼   ► the rotation lock on just to tolerate

01:29:53 ◼   ► all the various weird stuff that goes on.

01:29:55 ◼   ► It is really substantially larger and noticeably heavier,

01:29:58 ◼   ► to the point where it's less comfortable to use

01:30:00 ◼   ► while reading in bed, while holding it up above me.

01:30:03 ◼   ► And it does not fit in very many pockets very easily.

01:30:06 ◼   ► And also, yeah, the battery life is much longer,

01:30:10 ◼   ► but when you do wanna charge it up,

01:30:11 ◼   ► it charges a lot more slowly,

01:30:12 ◼   ► 'cause it's a bigger battery

01:30:13 ◼   ► and charges at the same milliamp hour rate.

01:30:15 ◼   ► So it charges more slowly,

01:30:17 ◼   ► the battery case not available for it,

01:30:19 ◼   ► and yeah, it's really big.

01:30:21 ◼   ► So I can totally do that, however, next year,

01:30:27 ◼   ► it's gonna be a lot smaller in all likelihood.

01:30:29 ◼   ► If all these rumors are true,

01:30:30 ◼   ► then the plus-size screen will be available

01:30:33 ◼   ► on a much smaller phone body next year.

01:30:35 ◼   ► and we can already look and see what Samsung

01:30:37 ◼   ► and everyone else does with getting rid of bezels

01:30:39 ◼   ► and maybe slightly curving the screen around

01:30:41 ◼   ► and all this other crap.

01:30:42 ◼   ► You can get a big screen in a small phone body

01:30:45 ◼   ► and that's probably what Apple's doing