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ATP

657: Ears Are Weird

 

00:00:00   John, I have to update my number.

00:00:03   It's now one.

00:00:05   How many phones you've smashed?

00:00:07   Mm-hmm.

00:00:08   Oh, no.

00:00:09   Well, at least you did it right before the new one.

00:00:11   You're so angry at these old phones.

00:00:13   Now that the new ones are out, you have to smash them.

00:00:16   Literally hours after I ordered its replacement.

00:00:19   Well, that's the time to do it.

00:00:21   For the first time ever, I missed my pocket.

00:00:25   Oh, no.

00:00:27   Now, remind me, are you a caseless, casey-less as well?

00:00:31   I mean, you're obviously not a caseless, casey-less, but do you roll with the case or no?

00:00:34   I have been going caseless for maybe, I don't know, six months, something like that.

00:00:39   You had the leather sticker thing on the back, right?

00:00:40   Oh, that's right.

00:00:41   Yes, yes, yes.

00:00:42   But that doesn't project against hitting on the corner or the front.

00:00:45   No, and this was literally like I was getting into my car in my driveway,

00:00:49   and I was wearing new shorts.

00:00:52   I'm not used to these.

00:00:53   Maybe that's the problem.

00:00:54   Who knows?

00:00:54   Who cares?

00:00:55   I put my phone down into my pocket, but it was not in my pocket, and I let go.

00:01:00   And so it fell, I don't know, my legs aren't that long, two and a half feet.

00:01:04   I don't know.

00:01:05   You were still on the ground at this point?

00:01:07   Well, yeah.

00:01:08   I was standing on the sidewalk, you know, on my driveway in front of my car.

00:01:12   I was about to get in my car.

00:01:13   I put the phone, and I dropped it from pocket height onto the concrete driveway.

00:01:20   And it didn't sound like much, but I picked it up, and it hit the back corner, and so the

00:01:26   back glass has a huge spider crack.

00:01:28   Oh, yeah.

00:01:29   Oh, that's all right.

00:01:30   The screen's okay.

00:01:31   You're fine.

00:01:32   Well, the good thing is I have AppleCare, it turns out.

00:01:34   But I am back to using the leather stick-on back again in the meantime.

00:01:39   You don't say.

00:01:41   Well, fun fact, I'm pretty damn sure we covered this on the show, but the Express replacement

00:01:46   is great, but it costs you $100.

00:01:47   Yes.

00:01:48   If you're going to get this thing fixed, I would strongly advise for you to do so at an

00:01:53   Apple store and save yourself the 100 bones.

00:01:55   Oh, I didn't do that.

00:01:56   I just ordered the $100 thing, and it's going to be here, I think, tomorrow.

00:01:59   I mean, that is certainly the easier way if you would like to set $100 aflame, but I...

00:02:05   Who's going to get a new battery then, too?

00:02:06   Right.

00:02:07   And I figure, you know, this phone, yeah, because my battery, you know, I don't baby it.

00:02:10   Like, John, I use the crap out of it, and so, you know, I think I'm somewhere in the

00:02:14   90s, but I'm still, you know, not a brand new battery.

00:02:16   And, you know, this phone is about to either be traded in, in which case it requires replacement,

00:02:23   otherwise it won't be worth anything, or it'll be like a long-term test device phone for me,

00:02:28   in which case, you know, new battery would be nice.

00:02:31   You know, so either way, it's like, all right, I'll pay the $100.

00:02:33   That's fair.

00:02:34   But it's, I, oh, I, I, I feel, I feel like I've broken the record.

00:02:40   It's almost like the very first time Overcast ever got an App Store rejection, because it

00:02:45   took, it took me like eight or nine years before I got one for Overcast.

00:02:49   Every time I was like, oh, I don't want to break the streak.

00:02:51   It wasn't that I didn't want to get rejected.

00:02:52   It was I didn't want to break the streak.

00:02:54   Now that my no phone's ever broken streak has been itself broken, maybe I'll be a little

00:03:01   less stressed about it.

00:03:01   Who knows?

00:03:02   Yeah, I hear that.

00:03:03   I mean, it sucks every time.

00:03:05   And I am not here to have an argument about whether or not AppleCare is worth it.

00:03:10   But, and I'm certainly not going to have an argument about AppleCare One or whatever it

00:03:14   is, AppleCare Plus.

00:03:15   I can never keep the name straight.

00:03:16   But anyhow.

00:03:17   AppleCare Max.

00:03:18   Yeah, right.

00:03:18   They're just going to rename it just to Max later.

00:03:20   I personally have come back around to liking having AppleCare on my phones, particularly

00:03:27   as I'm going caseless.

00:03:29   Yes, AppleCare is not a case, whatever.

00:03:31   But it gives me a lot of peace of mind that if I have an oops like that, it is, there is

00:03:36   a penalty for it to some degree.

00:03:38   It's either time, money, or both.

00:03:39   But there is a parachute there.

00:03:42   Whereas if I don't have AppleCare, I feel like, well, that's the phone now, you know, because

00:03:46   I'm not about to pay like $600 or I actually didn't get a lot cheaper than the newer ones.

00:03:50   But it's hundreds of dollars, if I remember correctly, to replace the back glass.

00:03:53   And no, thank you.

00:03:55   And I figure, you know, on like, there are certain things that I won't get AppleCare on because

00:03:59   the risk is very low.

00:04:00   So for instance, my laptops, like I don't get AppleCare on my laptops because I don't break

00:04:05   laptops.

00:04:05   Like, you know, the very first time I ever do, then I'll be upset and then I'll maybe start

00:04:10   buying it then, maybe.

00:04:11   But the math just does not work very well on that.

00:04:14   Whereas a phone that I'm, especially a phone that you tend to use without a case, you know,

00:04:19   or a fake, you know, half case like the Leatherbacks, that is a higher risk thing.

00:04:24   Depends on your drinking habits, I think.

00:04:26   What?

00:04:27   Laptops.

00:04:29   You think, oh, laptops.

00:04:30   I'm not going to miss a pocket.

00:04:31   You know what's going to hurt your laptops?

00:04:33   The thing that doesn't hurt your phone anymore.

00:04:35   Liquid.

00:04:36   I feel attacked, John.

00:04:37   That's what's going to get it.

00:04:38   I feel straight up attacked.

00:04:39   I see it all the time.

00:04:40   Watch how children use laptops.

00:04:42   They think they're waterproof.

00:04:43   They put open containers.

00:04:44   They'll put their laptops all around a table.

00:04:46   They'll all have like open top glasses of liquid.

00:04:50   They're all drinking all around their laptops because they think they're like phones.

00:04:53   They think like, oh, you know, whatever.

00:04:54   Oops, I spilled the drink on my phone, but it was fine.

00:04:56   Same thing's true of laptops, right?

00:04:58   No, not at all.

00:04:59   Absolutely not.

00:05:00   Well, and I feel like, you know, my number of laptops that I have broken is still zero.

00:05:05   You're really pushing your luck here.

00:05:07   Yeah, seriously.

00:05:08   Now, why are you putting that energy into the universe, my friend?

00:05:10   Just check where your drink is right now.

00:05:12   It's true.

00:05:13   Mine has a cap on it.

00:05:15   My laptop's on a stand.

00:05:16   Okay.

00:05:16   I'm just saying, as long as it's on a different level, a higher level.

00:05:20   Not only is it high, it's vertical, first of all.

00:05:23   And also, the lowest part of it is like an inch off the desk.

00:05:26   All right, but what about when you're like coming over on the ferry and you got your laptop

00:05:29   out and you're doing stuff?

00:05:30   Do you have a drink next to it?

00:05:31   No, because I barely have enough hands to use the laptop.

00:05:34   All right.

00:05:35   Just checking because I see a lot of very dangerous laptop use out there.

00:05:39   It's not because people are going to drop them, although sometimes they do that too.

00:05:42   Or they put them in their backpacks and then drop their backpack from a three-foot height

00:05:45   because they're kids.

00:05:45   Yeah, I've seen that.

00:05:47   I haven't done it because I realize those kind of things, but I have seen it.

00:05:53   Don't miss your backpack with a laptop.

00:05:54   Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:05:58   All right.

00:05:58   Let's move on and let's talk about how it's still September and September is Childhood Cancer

00:06:04   Awareness Month.

00:06:04   And so we are joining our friends at Relay, which is partially ourselves, to raise money

00:06:09   for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

00:06:11   You can go to stjude.org slash ATP to send them a little bit of your money because they deserve

00:06:17   it.

00:06:18   They deserve some of your money.

00:06:19   I'm going to do a couple of quick pieces of housekeeping.

00:06:21   I don't think I've mentioned yet this month that if you donate, and I think the numbers is

00:06:27   at least $60, if I recall correctly, you get some digital downloads, some wallpapers, and

00:06:32   an incredible macOS screensaver by our friend, friend of the show, James Thompson.

00:06:36   But if you spend at least $100, then that gets you stickers of all six of the podcast-a-thon

00:06:43   hosts, including yours truly.

00:06:44   These stickers were done by friend of the show, Jelly, or the art anyway, and they are really

00:06:49   incredible.

00:06:50   So it only costs you a mere $100.

00:06:52   Easy peasy.

00:06:52   And additionally, as we record this, I will be traveling to Memphis extremely soon in order

00:06:57   to participate in said podcast-a-thon, which is Friday from noon till midnight, one true

00:07:02   time zone, which is New York time.

00:07:04   I'm not interested in fighting about that either.

00:07:07   But I wanted to give a couple of pieces of feedback that we actually received to the ATP

00:07:13   feedback account.

00:07:14   They're a tiny bit long, but I think they're worth it and really, really exemplify what makes

00:07:19   St. Jude so great.

00:07:19   And this is probably going to be most of what we're going to talk about with regard to St.

00:07:22   Jude tonight.

00:07:22   So Thomas writes, prompted by your discussion on ATP about the St. Jude fundraiser, I wanted to

00:07:26   share a personal story.

00:07:27   Being a long-time listener, I remember hearing about St. Jude fundraisers for years.

00:07:30   September was mostly just another month.

00:07:32   That changed in 2022.

00:07:33   In June of that year, our one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Maureen, was diagnosed with acute myeloid

00:07:38   leukemia.

00:07:38   Our life hasn't been the same since, and September's gained a different meaning.

00:07:41   We were lucky to live close to one of the best cancer hospitals in Europe, the Princess Maximus

00:07:45   Center for Pediatric Oncology in the Netherlands.

00:07:47   Our daughter got the best possible care there.

00:07:49   St. Jude came up a number of times during our time there.

00:07:52   Let me remind you, in the Netherlands.

00:07:55   Our doctors closely collaborated with the doctors at St. Jude, providing access to cutting-edge

00:07:59   medication through shared clinical trials.

00:08:01   We witnessed the progress being made in cancer research thanks to fundraisers like yours.

00:08:05   When our daughter's leukemia unfortunately came back the following year, she got a new treatment

00:08:09   that she responded very well to.

00:08:10   It was still experimental at the time, but continued research is confirming it to be a superior treatment

00:08:14   for specific kinds of leukemia.

00:08:17   This year's September is different once again.

00:08:19   Our daughter's leukemia came back a second time.

00:08:21   Treating it a third time was unsuccessful.

00:08:23   She passed in February of this year.

00:08:25   It's our first September without her.

00:08:26   And I will just interrupt this to say that all three of us are incredibly sorry to Thomas and

00:08:31   your family.

00:08:31   That is absolutely heartbreaking.

00:08:33   And I cannot believe you spent the time to write this because that is extremely kind of

00:08:38   you.

00:08:38   And I don't know if I would have had the, I don't know if gumption's the word I'm looking

00:08:41   for, but the fortitude to do so.

00:08:43   So finishing Thomas's email is very kind email.

00:08:45   Thanks for the work you do raising money for research for childhood cancer.

00:08:48   I wish for a future where no parent has to go through.

00:08:50   We have had to experience.

00:08:51   Let us together make that a reality.

00:08:53   And let me remind you that the slogan for this year and perhaps forevermore is let's give

00:08:57   them more tomorrows.

00:08:58   And that's a great example.

00:08:59   So if you're moved by this, please feel free to honor Marine, which is spelled M-A-R-I-G-N

00:09:04   in making a donation to St. Jude.

00:09:06   Again, stjude.org slash ATP.

00:09:08   And then one more, a little bit quicker one.

00:09:10   All Purpose Guru writes,

00:09:12   I recently underwent treatment for skin cancer, melanoma, which included a year of immunotherapy

00:09:16   that required intravenous therapy every three weeks for an entire year.

00:09:18   The cost of medication for my immunotherapy was $34,000 per dose.

00:09:24   The fact that St. Jude gives away these medications to patients is not something you should ignore.

00:09:28   The medication, and I'm cutting a little bit, but the medication cost a quarter of a million

00:09:32   dollars, not counting the time and money it took to actually put it in my body.

00:09:35   The nurse would hang the packet of medication on the IV and I would look at it and think that

00:09:39   hundred milliliters of fluid costs more than my car.

00:09:41   So this is what St. Jude does, kids.

00:09:43   This is what they do.

00:09:44   They are trying to give children more tomorrows.

00:09:47   So please, stjude.org slash ATP, S-D-J-U-D-E dot org slash ATP.

00:09:51   Please feel free to send them a little bit of our money, and we need to talk about that.

00:09:56   John, you've noticed something.

00:09:58   Yeah, we did find the leaderboard that shows the comments on the St. Jude's fundraising site,

00:10:04   and we have someone who put ATP in the comment.

00:10:06   They are the new leader of all ATP-related donations.

00:10:10   Actually, they're the leader of all donations for the Relay Pledge Drive, I believe.

00:10:14   I think that's right.

00:10:15   Guillaume Morin, a name you may recognize from past years, has donated $12,718.28.

00:10:22   Heck yes.

00:10:22   Love it.

00:10:23   Firmly at the top of the leaderboard.

00:10:25   Amazing contribution.

00:10:26   You don't have to donate thousands and thousands of dollars.

00:10:28   Just give what you can, right?

00:10:30   We're honoring the people who can give these huge amounts, and that's great and everything,

00:10:34   but five bucks is just as good because it all adds up.

00:10:37   We'd rather have a thousand people give five bucks than one person give $2,000.

00:10:41   Absolutely.

00:10:42   So, again, one final time for this week anyway, stjude.org slash ATP.

00:10:46   And if Guillaume wants stickers, he should write you, right, Casey?

00:10:49   Yes, absolutely.

00:10:50   I'm pretty sure I have sent at least one batch their way, and I'm pretty sure they have gracefully

00:10:55   refused any further, but yes, absolutely.

00:10:58   They have too many stickers.

00:10:59   Yeah, right, exactly.

00:11:00   We accept your sticker refusal.

00:11:01   Yes.

00:11:02   But yeah, and I mean, please, like John said, don't feel like you have to donate $12,000 plus.

00:11:07   $5 is great.

00:11:09   Don't feel like the only ones we care about are the $12,000 ones.

00:11:12   We're watching all these donations come through, and all of them make us very, very happy.

00:11:17   All right, let's do some follow-up, and I think this might be an all-follow-up episode.

00:11:20   It's John's favorite kind of episode.

00:11:21   And let's start with we need to fire slash sack someone, and I believe that someone might

00:11:28   be John.

00:11:28   John, what happened?

00:11:29   In the last episode, I said that Stephen Hackett thought the name of what was eventually called

00:11:35   iPhone Air would actually be called iPhone Ultra.

00:11:38   Maybe it was the episode before that I said that.

00:11:39   That was not the case.

00:11:41   He said that he thinks the folding phone will be called the Ultra.

00:11:46   We'll put a link to his blog post about that at 512pixels.net.

00:11:50   We regret the error.

00:11:51   All right.

00:11:53   And then we were having a conversation about microns and micrometers and micrometers and

00:11:59   all sorts of different things.

00:12:01   And I don't know why I didn't think of this, but it was one of those times that I got myself

00:12:04   wrapped around the axle, and I didn't want to participate and say, yes, this is definitely

00:12:07   the case.

00:12:07   But someone whose name is probably John has done some research and figured out that what

00:12:13   you might call a micrometer is indeed called a micron here in the States.

00:12:17   So reading from Wikipedia, in American English, the use of micron may help differentiate the

00:12:21   unit from the micrometer, a measuring device.

00:12:24   Nope.

00:12:24   I got that wrong, didn't I?

00:12:25   A micrometer.

00:12:25   It's confusing.

00:12:26   A measuring device.

00:12:27   It's confusing.

00:12:27   A measuring device because that unit's name in American spelling is a homograph of the device's

00:12:31   name.

00:12:31   In spoken English, they are distinguished by pronunciation as the name of the measuring device is stressed

00:12:35   on the second syllable, micrometer, whereas the unit name places the stress on the first

00:12:40   syllable, micrometer.

00:12:41   But that's why no one says micrometer.

00:12:42   We said micrometer on the earlier episode.

00:12:44   All three of us couldn't remember what it was called.

00:12:46   We said micrometer, right?

00:12:47   It's micro and then meter.

00:12:47   Yeah, but we call it microns here in the US, and I think everybody else does as well.

00:12:53   All right.

00:12:55   The iPhone Air battery pack, from what we knew last week, I stand by this.

00:12:59   I think John is the one who said it, but I stand by your assertion here.

00:13:02   From what we knew last week, it was a portless battery pack, and it turns out that is incorrect.

00:13:07   Yeah, it does have a USB-C port on it.

00:13:09   And the reason I thought it was portless is because Apple is just so stingy with their

00:13:13   product photos.

00:13:13   The average eBay seller puts 10,000 pictures of the thing they're selling for five bucks,

00:13:18   but Apple's own website just refuses to show certain angles of their products.

00:13:23   And if you found the super high-res version of the slim iPhone Air battery pack and zoomed

00:13:29   way, way in, you could see that it had a USB-C port.

00:13:31   But I didn't do that, and I couldn't see one in the normal size photos, and I didn't

00:13:35   have time to pour over the spec sheet to find out that it can charge other devices

00:13:38   through the USB-C port.

00:13:39   Anyway, the iPhone Air battery pack has a USB-C port.

00:13:42   Fear not.

00:13:43   I'm still salty that that's only for the iPhone Air.

00:13:46   I understand, but I'm still salty.

00:13:48   Did you see all the YouTube videos of people putting it on sideways on other phones?

00:13:51   Because it'll charge your phone if you put it on sideways.

00:13:53   Like, the whole problem is it hits the camera bump on most other phones.

00:13:56   Although, I believe on the 16e...

00:13:58   16e.

00:13:58   Yeah.

00:13:59   The 16e, it doesn't hit the camera bump, but it sticks off the other end.

00:14:02   Incredible.

00:14:04   All right, speaking of charging and related, you're going to need a new charger to take

00:14:09   advantage of the iPhone 17 Pro's fast charging.

00:14:11   I did not know this until I was doing my research for the episode this morning, and this bummed

00:14:15   me out, too.

00:14:15   So, reading from a 9 to 5 Mac, according to Apple, the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max

00:14:22   can charge faster than previous iPhone models, up to 50% in just 20 minutes.

00:14:25   While that is true, it's thanks to a brand new USB power delivery specification, which

00:14:29   isn't widely available in the market yet.

00:14:31   In short, you'll need to buy Apple's new 40-watt dynamic power adapter if you want to

00:14:35   charge your iPhone 17 Pro or iPhone 17 Pro Max as quickly as possible, at least for now.

00:14:39   This is because Apple's charging brick is seemingly the only option on the market that supports this

00:14:43   new USB PD 3.2 AVS protocol.

00:14:46   Now, reading from The Verge, AVS, which stands for Adjustable Voltage Supply, provides granular

00:14:52   voltage options, allowing the power source to offer more precise and efficient charging

00:14:55   of devices like smartphones and laptops.

00:14:57   For obvious reasons of safety, efficiency, and longevity, the batteries in our phones

00:15:01   and laptops do not charge their maximum possible input for the entirety of the charging cycle.

00:15:05   Instead, it's regulated at predefined voltages to slow down charging as the battery fills.

00:15:09   With AVS, the power source can provide a very specific voltage that is closer to the ideal

00:15:13   needed for the device being charged, speeding up charging without overheating.

00:15:16   However, unlike a true 60-watt charger, Apple's little 40-watt GAN charger cannot maintain

00:15:21   that peak 60-watt weight rate forever.

00:15:23   Only 18 minutes as demonstrated by Privateer Bach over at the USBC Hardware subreddit.

00:15:28   That makes it suitable for fast-charging new iPhone 17 but not a MacBook Pro, which is why

00:15:32   Apple sells it as a 40-watt charger with 60 watts max and not a 60-watt charger.

00:15:37   Coming back to 9to5Mac, other fast chargers on the market, like Anker's 45-watt nanocharger,

00:15:42   will also fast-charge the iPhone 17 Pro, just not as rapidly.

00:15:45   You'll gain roughly 50% in 30 minutes rather than 20 minutes.

00:15:48   On the plus side, Anker's charger is two-thirds the cost of Apple's, and it includes a six-foot

00:15:52   USB-C cable.

00:15:53   Love to see advancements in charging tech.

00:15:55   I like this.

00:15:55   I mean, it's interesting that Apple only sells one that will do this, but I would imagine very

00:16:00   shortly you'll see tons of third-party chargers that support this.

00:16:03   Yeah, because the way USB power delivery worked before is there's certain – in fact, if you

00:16:09   read the tiny little text printed in gray-on-gray text on most USB-C charging bricks, it'll give

00:16:16   you a list of its power outputs at different voltages.

00:16:20   So it'll be like 5 volts at 2 amps, and then 9.7 volts, and it gives these steps.

00:16:28   So my understanding, I think what AVS gives you here, these new chargers, is basically a

00:16:34   lot more granular control instead of just those predefined stepped voltages.

00:16:38   And so, in theory, this is good because, as it says, like, you know, if the phone can

00:16:43   only take, you know, a certain wattage right now into the batteries, if, you know, suppose

00:16:48   the charger can only output, like, you know, 10 watts or 20 watts, and it could take 18,

00:16:55   well, too bad.

00:16:56   20 is too much, so it's going to say, all right, just give me 10 now.

00:16:58   It'll step down to that.

00:16:59   And so, like, you have these little steps.

00:17:02   You can fill in the differences, and you can get more current into it over time.

00:17:06   I believe, forgive me if I'm wrong, people who know more about this than I do, I believe

00:17:10   that's how this works and why this works.

00:17:12   It's more than that, I believe, because I think, again, I'm going, I'm shooting from the hip

00:17:16   a little bit here, but I think that the voltage levels that this supports are down to, like,

00:17:20   0.1 volts, as opposed to normal USB PD or previous USB power delivery, which was something

00:17:26   like you were saying before, like 10 volts, 20 volts, or 10, 15, 25, you know, something

00:17:29   like that.

00:17:30   This goes down to, like, goes in increments of, like, 0.1 volts or something along those lines.

00:17:34   Again, the specifics may be a little different.

00:17:36   Right.

00:17:36   The only thing I would say that is, like, you know, before everyone gets too much FOMO

00:17:40   about, you know, your existing chargers with this or all the other chargers on the market

00:17:43   so far, with the exception of, I believe, the Google Pixel recent one for the same reason,

00:17:48   keep in mind that, like, when iPhones have gotten faster charging abilities before, and

00:17:55   you actually look at, like, okay, what's the real world benefit of this?

00:17:59   It's not as much as you think most of the time because the battery still does slow down

00:18:04   as it gets towards the end.

00:18:05   Now, this will help it slow down maybe more gradually and have, you know, as we were saying,

00:18:11   like, have those more granular steps in the meantime, which will charge it faster, but it's

00:18:16   not going to be, like, twice as fast or three times as fast.

00:18:19   It's going to be, you know, as they say, like, in this example of, like, it'll go from 30 minutes

00:18:23   to 20 minutes, and that's, like, probably, that's a best case scenario, probably, if you're

00:18:27   starting the phone very low, starting at, like, you know, 10 or 20%.

00:18:29   Yeah, that's just the first half of the battery charge.

00:18:32   That's from, I'm assuming, from 0 to 50%, which is, like, the easiest part to charge, and you

00:18:36   get 10-minute savings on there.

00:18:37   When you go to the second 50% of the battery, you'll probably get even less.

00:18:40   Right, yeah, like, if you're trying to charge it from 50 to 100, that's going to be substantially

00:18:46   slower, and that's always going to be the case with lithium-ion batteries, but this kind

00:18:50   of thing, if you're frequently charging in that range, this kind of thing probably won't

00:18:55   make as big of a difference as you think.

00:18:57   It's still better.

00:18:58   Like, ideally, you know, this will be great once these are more universal, but it's not

00:19:02   necessarily, like, something to, like, oh, my God, I have to go throw out all my chargers

00:19:06   now and get new ones.

00:19:07   Yeah, I'm really debating if I want to pick one of these up, because in the living room,

00:19:11   we have, as most families, I'm sure, do, we have, like, the one USB-C cord that's connected

00:19:16   to a big, fat charger that can charge really, really fast, and that is our, like,

00:19:20   emergency, well, not that we can't use it other times, but in particular, like, emergency

00:19:24   use, oh, we're about to leave the house, no, my battery's dying, and I didn't realize it,

00:19:27   let's top up quickly, and I kind of want to get one of these for that use, even though

00:19:32   it's, I agree with everything you just said, so.

00:19:34   It's only going to be fast on the brand new phones, though.

00:19:36   Yeah, only on the 17s Pro.

00:19:38   Yeah, but, I mean, that's Aaron.

00:19:39   That's all you care about, is just that.

00:19:40   Yeah, I don't care about anyone else.

00:19:42   I mean, I mean, I do, but not as much.

00:19:43   This would also, like, to me, I think this would also be good in a travel context.

00:19:48   If you're like, oh, I just got to the hotel, we're going to leave for dinner in a half

00:19:52   hour, I got to charge up as much as I can, like, you know, that kind of thing, you know,

00:19:55   it could be useful for that as well.

00:19:56   Although, I have to say, like, the shape of this one, which is very similar to the shape

00:20:00   of, like, the two USB-C port one that comes with MacBook Airs, if you option it for the

00:20:04   $30 option or whatever it is, I don't like that shape.

00:20:07   Anchor has better shapes for things that plug into the wall.

00:20:10   Like, the Apple one looks so beautiful, and it's like a rounded top, but then it's got sharp

00:20:14   edges on the bottom, and it's just not particularly space efficient and not the shape that I usually

00:20:20   want in terms of how much room does it take up on a power strip, how well does it hold into

00:20:24   a wall socket.

00:20:24   So, I'm not a big fan of Apple's chargers, but, you know, slim pickings on the market right

00:20:28   now if you need this specific kind of charger.

00:20:31   All right, Marco, last episode, you were speculating about whether the A19 is a Bind A19 Pro, an

00:20:38   anonymous rights.

00:20:39   Regarding that speculation, I can confirm that this is not the case.

00:20:42   The two chips are designed separately.

00:20:43   They share a lot of IP, but they are two unique variants, each with their own layout and footprint.

00:20:47   This provides energy and cost savings for the non-pro phones, since they don't have all

00:20:50   the features that the pro phones do.

00:20:52   Cool.

00:20:52   Still be cool to see the die shots see exactly how different they are from each other.

00:20:56   And also, I would love to know if any of the cores are different, like probably the efficiency

00:21:01   cores are the same, or the power cores different from each other in any way besides the amount

00:21:05   of cash.

00:21:05   Still would love more details on this, but that's some clarification.

00:21:08   It's not all the same A19.

00:21:09   The A19 and A19 Pro are different.

00:21:11   All right.

00:21:13   And speaking of the A19 Pro, there are some benchmarks that have come out.

00:21:16   Single core, I'm not going to read these numbers, but suffice to say single core is about

00:21:19   8% faster than the A18 Pro.

00:21:21   Multi-core about 13% faster.

00:21:24   And metal, 40% faster.

00:21:26   Can I, maybe I'm being a dummy, but how are we getting like 10% and 15% increments on the

00:21:34   CPUs each year?

00:21:35   Well, and 3P and good architecture changes, and the metal score has got to be, like, because

00:21:40   remember, this is not like frame rating your games are going to be 40% faster.

00:21:43   It's just the metal compute score, and it's those embedded neural engines, neural accelerators

00:21:48   or whatever, like that's where they're getting the big numbers on the GPUs, because they added

00:21:52   like, I don't know what those things are, but everything they were touting is coming out

00:21:56   of the benchmarks.

00:21:57   And these are preliminary benchmarks.

00:21:58   This is from Searching Geekbench for iPhone 18,1, which, believe it or not, is the signifier

00:22:04   for the A17 Pro.

00:22:05   Don't ask.

00:22:05   Long-sorted history of numbering in the phones.

00:22:10   But yeah, these are numbers were just averaged together from all the results that were found

00:22:14   as of, like, yesterday.

00:22:15   So maybe the numbers will change a little bit as, like, the quote-unquote official ones go

00:22:19   to the site and people get their phones.

00:22:20   But yeah, pretty good.

00:22:21   8% faster in single, 13% faster in multi, and I think the metal one is all the accelerators.

00:22:26   So impressive showing.

00:22:28   Yeah, and this is probably a good indicator of roughly what to expect from the M5, if

00:22:33   I had to guess.

00:22:33   I forget, is this the M6-destined core, or is this the M5-destined core?

00:22:39   I forget if the core is lagged behind, but we'll probably find out from the scores.

00:22:43   Keep in mind that, like, this single-core score, while impressive, is not as high as the M4.

00:22:48   So I've lost track of which cores are in which things.

00:22:51   But it could be that these are the same cores that are going to be the M5.

00:22:53   We'll find out once that iPad is released, hopefully in October.

00:22:57   Yeah, should be soon.

00:22:58   Oh, and later in this marathon of follow-up, I will take both of you to task for something

00:23:04   from the previous episode.

00:23:05   So to balance that, to preemptively balance that, I have something for you two.

00:23:10   I look at this all the time when the new phones come out.

00:23:13   The A19 Pro compared to my Mac Pro.

00:23:18   Oh, no.

00:23:19   My 2019 Mac Pro.

00:23:21   My 2019 Mac Pro with a 12-core Xeon is 63% slower than the A19 Pro in single-core.

00:23:28   Okay?

00:23:30   It's been slower in single-core than the iPhone chip for years, right?

00:23:34   But just to tell you how that's going, 63% slower in single-core.

00:23:38   My Mac Pro is 1.5% slower in multi-core.

00:23:41   Oh, no!

00:23:42   My 12-core Xeon is now slower than the A19 Pro in your iPhone in multi-core.

00:23:50   Oh, my God.

00:23:51   This is incredible.

00:23:52   How much power does that Xeon consume?

00:23:54   More than the A19 Pro.

00:23:57   It's like a 2 or 300-watt CPU.

00:24:00   Now, on the upside, my metal score is almost three times as fast, and I have eight times

00:24:08   as much RAM.

00:24:08   So hang in there, Mac Pro.

00:24:12   We're still waiting for a worthy successor, but just to keep the world updated, the 2019

00:24:16   Mac Pro is now beat in single-core and multi-core by the phone.

00:24:22   Maybe I'll have to upgrade to a 28-core Xeon so I can beat it in multi-core again.

00:24:26   I'm so glad that you brought this to us and that you didn't put it in the show notes.

00:24:29   This is incredible.

00:24:31   You know, I want to repeat what Marco just pointed out very casually a moment ago.

00:24:36   This A19 Pro, I don't know what the maximum wattage it uses is, but I got to imagine it's

00:24:41   a heck of a lot less than that huge honking Xeon, or Xeon, sorry, whatever it's called.

00:24:45   So this is incredible performance, performance not only in terms of speed, but in terms of

00:24:52   energy performance.

00:24:53   I mean, for all of Apple's issues these days, their chip team, and I know they've had some

00:25:00   departures recently, but their chip team, I can't imagine they're firing on anything less

00:25:04   than every cylinder.

00:25:05   It's incredible what they're doing.

00:25:06   Oh, yeah.

00:25:07   I mean, for all the complaints we have about Apple recently, I don't think any of them are

00:25:11   about hardware.

00:25:12   The hardware is amazing.

00:25:13   Like, their hardware team, like, I don't, like, I was thinking earlier today, like, I

00:25:17   don't think it's a coincidence that, like, when people talk about, like, potential successors

00:25:23   to Tim Cook, John Ternus is often mentioned recently as, like, maybe, possibly another, like,

00:25:29   the next CEO, and he's the hardware chief.

00:25:31   I don't think that's out of the question, and I, you know, I mean, obviously, this is a very

00:25:36   different job, you know, so who knows what he would be like as a CEO, but, like, if you

00:25:40   look at where Apple is right now, their software is, eh, it's a little shaky, their design,

00:25:48   eh, a little shaky, you know, like, but, like, the hardware, rock-solid awesomeness constantly

00:25:55   coming out of the hardware team.

00:25:56   Like, it's so good across the entire lineup.

00:26:00   What other time in Apple history have you been able to point to the hardware lineup and have

00:26:05   there be, like, no duds?

00:26:07   There's nothing in the lineup that we could, that, like, if some relative came to us and

00:26:11   be like, oh, I just bought so-and-so without asking you, like, there's nothing that we'd

00:26:14   be like, oh, no, you got the wrong one.

00:26:16   Unless they bought a Mac Pro.

00:26:17   Well, yeah, but that's unlikely.

00:26:20   Which they're not going to, so it's fine.

00:26:21   Right.

00:26:22   Like, they don't know it exists.

00:26:23   The hardware lineup is just incredible, and it's, there seems to be no end in sight to its

00:26:30   awesomeness.

00:26:30   Like, it's, hardware is on a roll, a multi-year, very strong roll, and it's, they really deserve

00:26:36   to be commended.

00:26:37   Yep, very much so.

00:26:38   All right, the N1, that's N as in Nancy, 1, is in every new iPhone.

00:26:45   It was only spoken about in the event as part of the Air portion, but it's in every phone,

00:26:50   which I did not realize.

00:26:50   That's Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Thread Radio, and they're using it everywhere.

00:26:55   We are sponsored this episode by Claude.

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00:28:49   Let's talk about the iPhone's iconic plateaus.

00:28:56   By the way, before we enter the plateau, um, plateau, um, before we mount the plateau, we

00:29:01   climb up to the top of the plateau.

00:29:05   So I did want to call out, I think it's a little bit BS-y to talk about phone thickness now.

00:29:14   Now?

00:29:15   Well, yeah, but it's, it's like, I think the air really shows how ridiculous this discussion has

00:29:22   gotten when you're like, the phone is, you know, five point, whatever, 5.5 ish millimeters thick.

00:29:28   I was like, well, a lot of it is, but it is a huge part of the top that is a lot thicker

00:29:35   than that.

00:29:35   And so can you really say the phone is that thick when only a portion of it is like, like

00:29:42   when the MacBook Air was wedge shaped, no one ever said the MacBook Air is 0.2 or whatever

00:29:48   the tip of it.

00:29:49   No one ever said the MacBook Air is 0.2 inches thick.

00:29:51   Like, no, it was always like, it was explained like it's 0.2 at the thinnest point, you know,

00:29:56   and then it was, you know, 0.5 or whatever at the thickest, you know, whatever it was.

00:29:59   No one ever said like the whole thing, you know, is, or the, the MacBook Air period is

00:30:04   this thick.

00:30:04   I think it is, it is misleading and not very useful anymore to describe the thickness of

00:30:11   iPhones by their big flat part on the bottom and kind of ignore the fact that the camera

00:30:17   plateau is there for thickness consideration because it's so thick now and it's so wide.

00:30:21   It's like the top 20% of the phone.

00:30:24   That's a lot of space and it's a lot thicker than the body.

00:30:28   So I'm calling BS on any mention of like the iPhone being X millimeters thick or thin

00:30:35   without qualifications because that I think is no longer truthful.

00:30:40   I think it's fine, but your, but your, your idea of, you're mentioning the MacBook Air gives

00:30:46   me, it gives me an idea.

00:30:47   How about making the phone wedge shaped?

00:30:49   I mean, it's not room for scalps, bring back the scalped batteries.

00:30:53   Oh my God.

00:30:54   Can you imagine the case manufacturers would have a fit?

00:30:57   Cause like, imagine how much harder it is to get the right fit.

00:30:59   It would be so slippery.

00:31:00   It'd be squirting out of people's hands.

00:31:02   You know, it's probably a terrible idea, but like, you know, apparently we can't get the

00:31:09   camera bump.

00:31:09   The camera bumps are getting bigger, not smaller.

00:31:10   We've said this for years and years.

00:31:12   Every year the camera bump was like, what are they going to do about the camera bump?

00:31:14   And it was like, actually it's bigger this year.

00:31:15   It's bigger every year because people want the camera.

00:31:18   So they spend the thickness on it.

00:31:19   And, and by the way, this is a vast majority of the phone is thin.

00:31:22   I think it's fine, but whatever.

00:31:23   But you can't say the iPhone air is five millimeters thin.

00:31:26   Cause it's not.

00:31:27   People know what you mean because the vast majority of the phone is that thin.

00:31:31   I don't think someone's like, Oh, I had made a slot in my house to fit through and doesn't

00:31:35   fit.

00:31:35   No, I built it based on your thickness.

00:31:36   You told me like, anyway, but like they keep getting thicker.

00:31:40   So at a certain point, a wedge shape starts to become, or like, I mean, they kind of did

00:31:44   that with the, with the 17 pro by like having the iconic plateau, be even more plateau.

00:31:48   It's like, it's really big, right?

00:31:50   You could just keep making that bigger and bigger and shove all sorts of stuff up in there, which

00:31:53   is what this next item is about.

00:31:55   So basic Apple guy writes the iPhone air is all battery.

00:32:00   The entire brains of the phone is essentially smushed into the camera plateau.

00:32:03   I thought we knew this last week.

00:32:04   We did more or less, but here, so a couple of shows back, um, I remember, uh, saying

00:32:09   like we were looking at it all back when we were looking at like the mockup models that

00:32:13   everybody had of all these things.

00:32:14   And it's like, uh, what's going to be in the, in the, in the camera bump essentially.

00:32:20   Uh, and in particular on the air, what's going to be in the camera bump?

00:32:24   Cause it's just got the one camera in there.

00:32:26   Like what's the, why extend that lozenge and make it look like a Google pixel?

00:32:29   What's the point in doing that?

00:32:31   And now we know from the presentation, the point in doing that is they put basically all the,

00:32:34   the computer chips up there.

00:32:36   That's what's in the rest of the lodge and is the rest of the phone and leaving the big,

00:32:41   long flat body to basically just have the battery and the taptic engine in it.

00:32:44   Uh, and like the ports and some other stuff like that.

00:32:47   That is also kind of true of the 17 pro, uh, that they've shoved stuff up there because

00:32:53   you've got the three cameras and then way over on the right, you've got like the flash and

00:32:56   the lidar thing.

00:32:57   And in the middle, there's, there was speculation about them sneaking some battery up under there

00:33:01   and some other things.

00:33:02   I do want to see the, I fix it, tear down of these just to see how much, uh, how, because

00:33:07   they hollowed out the glass, uh, on the, on the air to get that in there.

00:33:10   And then of course on the pro that's not glass, it's aluminum.

00:33:12   They've also hollowed out and I would love to see exactly what they've tucked in there.

00:33:16   But, um, like I said, I think that the logic board is horizontal on the pro and then the

00:33:20   whole rest of it is battery, but how much did they hide in there?

00:33:22   So anyway, that's why this thing looks like a Google pixel.

00:33:26   I don't actually know if Google pixel also puts all their circuit boards up there.

00:33:30   Uh, but if I don't, I feel like they're missing out because it seems like it's a good

00:33:32   idea.

00:33:33   Well, there are, I mean, it's probably, I mean, obviously there's, there's considerations

00:33:36   of things like, you know, how many cameras you can fit and how deep they can be, but also

00:33:40   like heat, maybe like heat dissipation, I think could be not amazing with that kind of layout.

00:33:44   Like, I think we're going to find the 17 pro with the vapor chamber thing like that, you

00:33:49   know, that's going to spread the heat across the whole aluminum, you know, case and the whole

00:33:52   back of the phone.

00:33:53   The air is kind of the opposite.

00:33:55   Like the air does not seem to have much of a mechanism to spread the heat.

00:33:58   That's the, the, uh, the brand promise of the name air is it will thermal throttle because

00:34:03   there's no place for the heat to go.

00:34:04   It's true of the Mac book air and it's true of the iPhone air.

00:34:06   Yeah.

00:34:07   Like when they benchmark these things, like you're going to see, you know, for, even if

00:34:11   they, we talked about this last time, like, do they have the same peak clock speed, but

00:34:15   run some long running benchmark on the air and boy, is it going to throttle before the pros.

00:34:19   All right.

00:34:20   Uh, the iPhone 17 pro, uh, apparently I owe you and Marco may owe you an apology, John.

00:34:28   Both of you.

00:34:29   Yes.

00:34:29   Last episode, I could not believe it when both of you were like,

00:34:33   I didn't know this was going to be a unibody.

00:34:34   And we talked about it on the previous show.

00:34:37   And so someone actually looked up in the transcript that the, the, the word we use multiple times.

00:34:41   I literally said the word unibody at least twice.

00:34:45   And you know what, Casey, you also said the word unibody.

00:34:48   So both of you last episode were like, we never talked about this.

00:34:51   We didn't know it was going to be like this.

00:34:52   We didn't know it was going to be a unibody.

00:34:54   You did.

00:34:54   Wow.

00:34:55   Briefly.

00:34:56   I don't, I mean, I listened to the clip.

00:34:57   I am not arguing that this is incorrect.

00:35:00   I don't think I properly processed.

00:35:03   I was in Ron Burgundy mode.

00:35:04   I don't think I processed the implications of unibody, but I, so that's why it was so surprising

00:35:08   to me.

00:35:08   It was an extensive discussion and, uh, many words were spoken and, and you like, I put the

00:35:14   timestamp link to you saying it.

00:35:15   So Casey, again, I'm not arguing it.

00:35:17   It's a 100% the case.

00:35:19   I just, I totally blanked on that particular word on that, or I guess on that whole damn

00:35:24   discussion, which is on me.

00:35:26   I'm not saying it's not my fault, but, uh, yeah, I, I blanked on that.

00:35:29   All right.

00:35:30   Uh, the millimeter wave antenna is back or the window, I should say is back, uh, on the 14,

00:35:38   I think I have that right.

00:35:40   It was in the spot that the camera control, or I guess 14 and 15, it was in the spot that

00:35:44   the camera control took on the 16.

00:35:46   And so there wasn't a bespoke antenna or well, there wasn't a visibly, uh, bespoke antenna

00:35:53   anywhere on the 16 on the 17.

00:35:55   It's at the very top of the phone for American phones.

00:35:57   And I think only American phones, because I don't think any other country gets millimeter

00:36:00   wave.

00:36:00   Interesting place to put it.

00:36:02   It's dead center in the middle.

00:36:03   And what we mean by window is there's a break in the metal case, like a lozenge shape

00:36:07   break.

00:36:07   I keep saying lozenge.

00:36:08   People will tell me that's not a lozenge shape, a rounded capsule and capsule shape.

00:36:14   Uh, at the top of the phone, I believe it's made of like plastic or glass or something,

00:36:18   but it's something that's more radio transparent than aluminum.

00:36:20   Uh, and that's where they put the millimeter wave.

00:36:22   Do you remember where they put the millimeter wave antenna on the 16 pro?

00:36:25   Yeah, but the 16, I think it's just integrated with the like antennas on the rim or something,

00:36:31   or maybe it's behind the glass.

00:36:33   I'm not sure.

00:36:33   Yeah, maybe I forget.

00:36:34   But anyway, apparently that wasn't as good as it could be.

00:36:37   So the window is back and it is dead center on the top of the phone, which is kind of weird

00:36:40   looking.

00:36:41   At least it's in the middle.

00:36:42   Yeah, that's true.

00:36:43   And centered, which we'll get to in a second.

00:36:44   Yeah.

00:36:45   Um, and speaking of centering, actually, this is not the centering I was talking about, but,

00:36:48   uh, the logo placement on Apple's cases is a little wonky at first glance, but I actually

00:36:55   think I can defend it, but we can talk about it.

00:36:57   Yeah, no, it makes sense.

00:36:58   Like, so one of the, one of the rumors we were talking about was like, uh, on the pro

00:37:02   phones, which have that glass panel on the bottom, the rumor was that the Apple logo would

00:37:07   be centered in the glass panel rather than centered on the back of the phone as it had

00:37:11   been for ages.

00:37:12   Um, and then the question was, okay, but if you look at the existing clear Apple case with

00:37:17   the MagSafe ring, now the ring would cross over the Apple, like the Apple wouldn't be in

00:37:23   the center of the ring anymore because they didn't move the MagSafe ring.

00:37:25   MagSafe ring is kind of where it always was proportionally speaking, but the Apple logo

00:37:29   is lower on the phone.

00:37:30   So what are they going to do?

00:37:32   And there's all these mock-ups of like the ring wouldn't be a complete ring.

00:37:34   It would have an opening on it.

00:37:36   And like, cause you know, you've got the ring and then you've got the little vertical, like

00:37:39   notch, the vertical line below the ring.

00:37:41   So it'd be like, okay, the ring, and then there's a break in the ring.

00:37:44   And then, then there's a little notch and the Apple logo would be in that little empty

00:37:48   spot where the break in the ring is.

00:37:49   It never really looked very nice or made any sense.

00:37:52   Um, so here's what Apple actually did for their clear case for the 17 pro.

00:37:57   They do not have a clear case with a white ring on it.

00:38:00   They just white out the whole, like the whole glass panel area that the place where the glass

00:38:05   panel is on the 17 pro, the case has an opaque white thing there.

00:38:09   And the Apple logo is centered in the opaque white thing.

00:38:13   The ring is still what, you know, where it always is and is quote unquote crossing over

00:38:18   the Apple logo, but you don't see that because the whole back is white.

00:38:20   So that's what they did there.

00:38:21   But on the cases for the 17 pro that aren't clear, like the tech woven thing, the Apple

00:38:27   logo is centered within the full height of the phone, not centered within the glass panel.

00:38:31   Because when that case is on the phone, you can't even see the glass panel.

00:38:34   And it would be kind of weird, not that weird, but kind of weird to center the Apple logo

00:38:38   in a structure that you can't see on an opaque case.

00:38:41   I understand why people are like, what the what?

00:38:43   But I actually, I agree.

00:38:45   I think this makes perfect sense.

00:38:46   It makes so much more sense than those, those mock-ups with the ring with the break in it,

00:38:49   you know, and setting aside that you wouldn't have magnets where there was no ring.

00:38:53   This makes so much more sense, although it does mean that your clear case is not all that

00:38:59   clear anymore.

00:38:59   Yeah, I did.

00:39:00   I do think it's a bit of a misnomer now because it's like it's obviously like most of the actual

00:39:06   area of the case is white.

00:39:09   Yeah, it's like a clear edge case.

00:39:11   All right.

00:39:13   And speaking of cases, apparently a lot of case makers made a bet that didn't come true.

00:39:20   So Tyler Hayes writes, I did a web search for iPhone 17 Pro case and the first four out of

00:39:25   six sponsored products showed a black iPhone 17 Pro.

00:39:28   I clicked through to several online stores and found the same thing.

00:39:31   Let me just remind you, there is no black iPhone 17 Pro.

00:39:35   This is an article on PC Magazine website and the headline was, who wants to tell these case

00:39:40   makers there's no black iPhone 17 Pro?

00:39:42   There's so many pictures of black iPhone 17 Pros because they just did all their artwork

00:39:47   based on the mockups and they thought for sure, that's a safe bet.

00:39:51   Why don't we just do black?

00:39:51   We don't know what the colors are going to be, but they're sure they're going to have a black

00:39:54   one.

00:39:54   Nope.

00:39:54   All right, John, what are the actual, what are, what is the actual origin or what is your

00:40:00   head cannon for the origin of blue, white, and orange for the iPhone 17 Pro?

00:40:07   Yeah.

00:40:07   Cause those are the only three colors that comes in is whatever it is that really, really dark

00:40:11   blue, which is practically black, but not really silver, which just looked like silver

00:40:14   and then cosmic orange.

00:40:16   Um, and I saw lots of people saying these three colors remind me of something.

00:40:19   In fact, on last episode, I even said the Denver Broncos and apparently Denver Broncos have changed

00:40:23   their logo, but their logo from 1997 to 2023 was a really deep, dark blue, white, and then

00:40:30   reddish orange.

00:40:31   Um, Casey, you came up with the GameCube one here, uh, showing the, uh, the really deep blue

00:40:37   one next to the purple.

00:40:39   I think it's supposed to be the purple GameCube, although the white bounces off on this picture.

00:40:42   And then there was a silver GameCube for the silver phone.

00:40:45   And then there's an orange GameCube, sorry, a spice GameCube for the orange phone.

00:40:49   I think this is not a good color match because first of all, this image isn't very accurate.

00:40:53   And second, the purple is very different from the dark blue.

00:40:56   And I think spice is different than that orange, but okay.

00:40:58   It reminded you of that.

00:40:59   And by the way, there was a black GameCube too.

00:41:01   So it's not a perfect match.

00:41:02   Some people think it reminded them of the flight suit that Luke Skywalker wears in the

00:41:06   Star Wars trilogy because he's got an orange flight suit, right?

00:41:09   Which I guess has some dark black that could be like dark blue and there's gray stuff.

00:41:14   Okay.

00:41:14   Luke Skywalker.

00:41:15   I see that.

00:41:15   Uh, but as soon as I realized this, I feel like this is the actual answer.

00:41:20   Uh, when I saw the logo of Auburn University, which is where, uh, Tim Cook went to college,

00:41:26   uh, in 1982, graduated in 1982, their logo and colors are deep, dark blue.

00:41:32   Blue and orange.

00:41:33   And unless you think, who cares?

00:41:35   Tim Cook.

00:41:35   Fine.

00:41:35   He went there as an undergraduate.

00:41:36   You think he's going to color phones like his school?

00:41:39   I was doing some Googling for this.

00:41:40   I'm like, he's a really big Auburn fan, isn't he?

00:41:42   What can I find that will back up the idea that he's a really big Auburn fan?

00:41:45   So I did some Google searches and I came up, I don't know if this is true.

00:41:48   This is some thing from silverwavesmedia.com.

00:41:51   It sounds like a rumor, but this is what it says at that website.

00:41:54   We'll link it in the show notes.

00:41:55   Cook graduated from Auburn in 1982 and it is rumored that he paid for the whole buyout

00:42:00   of former Auburn football coach, Gus Malzahn.

00:42:03   The total buyout was over 21 million.

00:42:05   So they're saying that he, you know, paid to get rid of, uh, a football coach paid $21 million

00:42:12   for his own money.

00:42:13   That seems highly unlikely to me, but who the heck knows?

00:42:15   But anyway, what I did find is a strong evidence that he really cares about Auburn football.

00:42:21   And if these really are the Auburn colors, they do look like a very good match for the iPhones.

00:42:27   I would be hard pressed to believe that Tim has anything to do with any of these colors.

00:42:31   However, even though the university of Virginia, uh, does have very similar colors, not the

00:42:35   same, but similar.

00:42:36   Uh, I think the Auburn connection is the strongest of, of the available options that have been

00:42:40   presented, uh, and let me tell you as a very big college football fan, it is not at all

00:42:46   surprising if he really did, uh, take care of that buyout.

00:42:49   In fact, my actual alma mater, uh, Virginia Tech, we just this past week fired our head

00:42:55   football coach because he had not performed at all.

00:42:57   And he has, I think it's $6 million buyout or something like that.

00:43:01   So it's typically on the boosters on the fans to come up with that money.

00:43:06   Cause usually the university doesn't pay that.

00:43:08   I believe at tech, and this is probably true of other universities, but at tech, as far

00:43:12   as I know, the, the school pays for little to maybe even none of the football program.

00:43:16   It all comes from fans and, and people who, you know, uh, donate to their, to, to Virginia

00:43:22   Tech and so on and so forth.

00:43:23   So, um, this is a real thing and it wouldn't surprise me at all if Cook did indeed pay a $21

00:43:29   million buyout because to him, that's like chump change.

00:43:31   Uh, he should have paid to st.

00:43:33   Jude.org slash ATP, but that's neither here nor there.

00:43:35   Yeah.

00:43:36   The idea of like, like these, these ridiculous buyout contracts, like, okay, if we don't like

00:43:40   you, we have to pay $21 million to get rid of you.

00:43:44   It's a racket.

00:43:45   That's very familiar to CEOs.

00:43:46   Yeah, that's true.

00:43:47   But it's in the, in certain, uh, certain jobs, certain rare jobs, CEO, uh, head coach,

00:43:53   uh, they pay you to leave.

00:43:55   Um, and I totally believe that, uh, that Tim Cook had nothing to do with the colors in

00:43:59   the phone, but everybody who works there knows that he likes Auburn and it could be a way of

00:44:06   like, oh, if we show him this, he's definitely going to approve and, you know, kind of like

00:44:09   a wink.

00:44:10   I don't know.

00:44:11   It's kind of strange that no one asking the questions about this.

00:44:14   Not that they're probably going to say, but it is a weird lineup of colors, no black, really

00:44:17   dark blue, silver, and orange could be Luke Skywalker.

00:44:21   It could be the Denver Broncos.

00:44:22   Could be UVA.

00:44:23   Could be Auburn.

00:44:24   I mean, also, well, first of all, how much do you think we can get Tim Cook to leave

00:44:27   for?

00:44:28   Um, but, but it's also, you know, orange and blue have been a very popular color combination

00:44:37   forever.

00:44:38   So I also like it, it might just be that they, they decided these were cool colors, you

00:44:44   know, also keep in mind, like the, like the, that particular shade of orange looks so far

00:44:49   I have, you know, we don't, we don't have them yet, but it looks so far very similar

00:44:52   to the orange on the button on the Apple watch ultra, you know, they've, they've, they've

00:44:56   used, is that called international orange or something like, I believe so.

00:44:59   And like an orange has been used as an, as like an accent on electronics that Apple likes

00:45:05   for a while by companies like Sony and brawn, like that, they provide a lot of like their

00:45:08   design inspiration.

00:45:09   Um, so these are just cool colors.

00:45:12   Like I, and I think, I think you have the cause and effect backwards.

00:45:15   Like I think the reason why these colors are here is because they're cool.

00:45:19   And the reason why all these other places also use these colors is also because they're

00:45:22   cool.

00:45:22   I, I, I, I mean, like I said, I'm with you on the orange, but my thing is why is that

00:45:27   blue so dark?

00:45:27   And then I see the Auburn logo.

00:45:29   I'm like, that's why the blue is dark.

00:45:30   Because remember the whole thing on the internet, like maybe five years ago where I was like,

00:45:33   did you notice that every movie coaster uses complimentary colors of orange and teal?

00:45:37   Yeah.

00:45:37   Yeah.

00:45:37   Like they do that for a reason.

00:45:39   Right.

00:45:39   But, but like, this is not what's in the movie posters.

00:45:41   It doesn't have orange.

00:45:42   And then the darkest blue you've ever seen in your life.

00:45:44   It looks like it's a black.

00:45:45   It's, it's orange and very light blue.

00:45:47   And that's why I was thinking Denver Broncos or Virginia or whatever.

00:45:51   I mean, it could be, it also could be that like they, they knew they were not going to

00:45:54   have a black and like they decided not to have a black and they're like, okay, well,

00:45:57   they're trying to get to something dark.

00:45:58   I mean, you know, do you see that again in other Apple products?

00:46:01   You see like what they call midnight being used instead of black and you know, the

00:46:05   Mac book air, the Apple watch, um, I think some earlier, some like lower end products,

00:46:09   like some, some of the lower end phones and stuff.

00:46:11   So like you, you do see them using dark blue in place of black before.

00:46:15   So again, I think it's just, these are just cool colors and all, and everyone else is using

00:46:20   them for the same reason.

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00:48:21   All right.

00:48:23   Let's talk iPhone air.

00:48:24   We made passing reference to this a couple of minutes ago.

00:48:27   Mark Spoonhour from Tom's Guide, Lance Ulanoff from TechRadar interviews, Jaws and Ternus.

00:48:33   The first half of the interview is all I had a chance to watch.

00:48:37   And I forget which one it is, but we'll link in the show notes.

00:48:40   It was only about 15 minutes or something like that.

00:48:42   And I thought it was really good.

00:48:43   I mean, it's as with all Apple interviews, they're very polished, very well trained.

00:48:47   You don't get a whole lot out of it, except I forget exactly what time it is.

00:48:52   We'll put a timestamp link in the show notes.

00:48:55   At one point, Jaws is talking about how rugged the iPhones, but particularly the iPhone air

00:49:00   is.

00:49:00   And he has one sitting on like the side table next to him.

00:49:03   And eventually you can see him like computing it in his head.

00:49:07   He thinks, and he decides, you know what, here we go.

00:49:10   And he hurls, he, as the kids would say, he, you know, yeeted the phone right across the

00:49:16   room to Lance, who didn't even catch it.

00:49:19   And then it fell on the next side table and it was no worse for wear.

00:49:23   And Jaws literally says to them, go ahead and see if you can bend it.

00:49:26   And sure enough, these two dudes that are probably roughly our age, they try to bend it both ways

00:49:32   and couldn't do it.

00:49:32   Apparently it started to give a little bit, but then we'll go right back to the shape.

00:49:36   This was such an incredible flex.

00:49:38   And I, I loved every second of it.

00:49:41   It was so cool.

00:49:42   This is an important calculation.

00:49:44   So first, it was a quoting from the interview here.

00:49:46   What Turner said was it exceeds our internal metrics for bend strength, which Jaws added,

00:49:50   which are pretty high.

00:49:51   And then, you know, Jaws made the calculation because they're like, oh, you know, so thin,

00:49:55   is it really as rugged or whatever?

00:49:57   So he threw it to him, first of all, which is a risk because it could have broken because

00:49:59   he did not catch it.

00:50:00   He didn't throw it to him on top of my driveway.

00:50:02   It just clattered onto the side table.

00:50:04   It didn't fall that long.

00:50:05   And then they said, go ahead and try to bend it.

00:50:07   Now, here's the thing.

00:50:08   Part of the calculation on that is like, are these people going to like Jaws is like, they're

00:50:13   not going to use all their strength to bend this and break the phone in front of us.

00:50:17   Right.

00:50:17   And I believe looking at the video, they did not use all their strength to bend it and break

00:50:22   it in front of them, which we'll see when the real YouTubers with stronger forearms get a

00:50:25   hold of these things and start cracking them in half because every phone will break eventually.

00:50:29   It's not magic, right?

00:50:31   They did put a lot of pressure on it, but I don't think they used all their strength.

00:50:36   And honestly, I wouldn't have either.

00:50:38   Who wants to have a glass thing shatter in your hand?

00:50:41   They just have their bare hands on it.

00:50:42   And that's why this is such a genius move because Jaws knows that even if they're capable of breaking

00:50:48   it, they're not going to break it right here in front of it.

00:50:51   That's why he gets the big bucks, right?

00:50:54   It was a smart move and it was a calculated risk, but it worked out.

00:50:59   So, um, yeah, and it's titanium.

00:51:02   It's very well glued and screwed together.

00:51:05   Uh, the new glass is stronger than ever.

00:51:07   Uh, I don't have any problem believing that it is much sturdier than, for example, the,

00:51:11   the eminently bendable iPhone six.

00:51:13   Uh, is it more bendable than the pro?

00:51:16   Yeah, I think so.

00:51:17   So we'll find out once people get these and hook them up to scientific equipment and start

00:51:21   cracking them in half.

00:51:22   But, uh, kudos to Jaws for, uh, taking a risk and getting away with it.

00:51:26   My guess is they have done that before.

00:51:28   And like internally, like I, I, I get, I, he definitely knew that this would pass this

00:51:34   test.

00:51:34   Like he, you can tell that he has done this before, before, before that interview.

00:51:39   Yeah, I agree.

00:51:40   Apple does not take risks like that.

00:51:41   Believe me, especially, you know, Jaws has been there forever.

00:51:44   He's a pro.

00:51:45   Part, part, part of the risk is that no one is going to really like put their back into

00:51:51   it and do it because who wants to have glass shatter in your bare hands?

00:51:54   Nobody.

00:51:55   And it's, it is kind of actually hard to get leverage on it.

00:51:58   If you're not accustomed to breaking phones in half, like the YouTubers are.

00:52:00   So they just, you can see what they did.

00:52:02   They just did what everyone would do is like, just take it and, and tried to bend it.

00:52:04   And they, they're applying force, but they're not like, let me get my whole fist around it

00:52:09   and bend it over the edge of my leg.

00:52:10   You know what I mean?

00:52:11   Next year they'll have a blender on stage.

00:52:13   Like, what's that for?

00:52:13   Oh, just wait.

00:52:15   Incredible.

00:52:16   Sam Henry Gold writes, I'm guessing the iPhone Air name was last minute because there's still

00:52:22   a couple of straggler references to iPhone 17 Air on the website in alt text and some

00:52:27   regional pages.

00:52:27   A Japanese webpage also at some point mentioned an iPhone 17 plus.

00:52:31   So I don't know what's going on there.

00:52:33   Maybe somebody is asleep at the wheel.

00:52:34   I'm guessing this is not just like the name was changed last minute.

00:52:39   I'm guessing this was like somebody on the web team had the wrong name until the last

00:52:43   minute, but like the, the name of these products, like, you know, they're like printing boxes

00:52:47   and stuff like months, like this kind of stuff, like this, this is decided not at the last

00:52:52   minute.

00:52:52   Yeah.

00:52:53   Well, the thing is the, the decision is not decided at the last minute, but the information

00:52:58   is not distributed widely.

00:52:59   So once they finally said, are we doing 17 air?

00:53:01   Are we doing air?

00:53:01   And they finally said, no, we're doing just doing plain air.

00:53:03   And they started printing the boxes three weeks past, but that information was not passed on

00:53:07   to the web team.

00:53:07   So they're still writing 17 air on all their checks, you know?

00:53:10   I mean, it happened with a, I think it was lion 10.7 where they were trying to go from

00:53:16   Mac space, OS space capital letter X to just OS space capital letter X and Apple itself couldn't

00:53:24   decide.

00:53:25   So is it Mac OS 10, 10.7, or is it OS 10, 10.7?

00:53:30   And it was like 50, 50 through all the material for the life of that OS that no one could agree

00:53:35   whether it was OS 10 or Mac OS 10.

00:53:37   They eventually settled on OS 10, I believe in 10.8 more thoroughly.

00:53:41   But yeah, sometimes it's within a big organization, especially when the information is not distributed

00:53:46   that widely preliminary decisions have a way of just like having momentum.

00:53:50   And even when, you know, like in the lion case, they never decided what it was going to be.

00:53:55   But in this case, when they settled on iPhone air, not everybody got that memo fast enough.

00:54:01   Right before the, the announcement, like the show before the announcement, uh, before we

00:54:06   knew for sure all the details, but like it was, we all, we all had every detail from the

00:54:10   rumor mill.

00:54:11   John had asked me in the chat, like what would, what would make me not buy the iPhone air?

00:54:18   Cause I had said in the previous episode, I'm probably going to buy the iPhone air.

00:54:21   And I said, there's three things.

00:54:22   Number one, if it doesn't have always on screen.

00:54:26   Number two, if it doesn't have a promotion and it has both.

00:54:31   Those things.

00:54:31   Great.

00:54:31   But the number three thing I said was if the speakers suck, because I had seen like that

00:54:38   day, I had seen like some mockup from some rumor site and I saw the bottom of the phone

00:54:43   and I saw these little, like it only had a couple of holes at the bottom.

00:54:47   I'm like, huh, speakers are hard to fit in a really thin enclosure.

00:54:52   If the speakers suck in the phone, that would really be a problem for me and my usage of the

00:54:59   phone.

00:55:00   Casey, what did we learn?

00:55:01   So this is a video from Max tech who did a really good and really fast paced, you know,

00:55:06   here's something like 17 things you didn't realize about the iPhone 17.

00:55:09   And one of the first ones is there's no speaker at the bottom of the iPhone air.

00:55:13   The only speaker is the earpiece speaker that you would use when you're talking on the phone.

00:55:18   Yeah.

00:55:18   So a long time ago, you know, the originally like the only out loud volume speaker of the

00:55:25   iPhone was the big one on the bottom.

00:55:26   A long time ago, I forget exactly which phone it was.

00:55:29   They basically put a higher powered speaker as the phone earpiece speaker such that it became

00:55:36   a second one.

00:55:37   And that way, when you rotate the phone, they can say, look, we have stereo sound now because

00:55:40   it comes from the big one on the bottom.

00:55:41   And then also we just crank up the earpiece speaker enough.

00:55:45   And that's like a second speaker up top.

00:55:46   But the top speaker is not nearly as good as the bottom speaker.

00:55:49   So you're going from not only from two speakers to one speaker in the air, but if you were going

00:55:57   to pick one, you pick the worst one.

00:55:58   So I think the iPhone air is going to be a substantial degradation in both the quality and the total

00:56:09   volume output of the built in speakers.

00:56:10   And that for me sealed the deal.

00:56:13   Like, I was probably going to get the pro anyway, but I was really curious.

00:56:17   I was going to like, oh, maybe I could try the air for at first, see how I like it.

00:56:20   But no, without like top class speaker capabilities, it's not for me.

00:56:25   That's it.

00:56:26   That's what did it.

00:56:27   Is that because you're always talking loudly on speakerphone in public?

00:56:30   Yeah, I hold it like a pizza like Merlin likes.

00:56:31   No, it's because, you know, I am very frequently listening to podcasts out loud on the speaker as

00:56:39   I'm like doing stuff around the house.

00:56:41   Like set the phone down on the counter and do some stuff in the kitchen or whatever.

00:56:44   Like I very frequently listen to podcasts out of that speaker.

00:56:47   You should get some AirPods.

00:56:48   I also have AirPods, but and I have some home pods that sometimes even work.

00:56:52   The reality is I walk around and I do stuff and sometimes and I use the speaker a lot.

00:56:57   If I'm in the shower, I'll like prop it up on a shelf nearby.

00:56:59   I'll, you know, like there's I use the iPhone speaker all the time.

00:57:04   And so that's that's a deal breaker for me.

00:57:06   Yeah.

00:57:07   And those little holes at the bottom of the iPhone air.

00:57:10   Those are just for the microphone or microphones.

00:57:12   There's no speakers down there, but there is there are the microphones.

00:57:15   So, yeah, it's it's, you know, one of the other compromises of this design.

00:57:19   Not enough for speakers.

00:57:20   You're down one speaker.

00:57:22   You're at your speaker is worse.

00:57:23   It's not going to be great for all those people who want to talk loudly on speakerphone in public.

00:57:27   Yeah, and I think like the more that we look at the air, like I have tried because I do I am curious.

00:57:34   I was trying to like earlier today.

00:57:35   I was looking through all the trade in prices.

00:57:36   I'm like, I wonder if I can trade in a bunch of my old test devices and just get an air as a test device, which I might still do because I think it's I think it might be useful.

00:57:45   But I'm trying to come up with a reason to get this phone.

00:57:49   And like the more I think about it or the more we learn about it, I'm just like, oh, no, I really shouldn't get this phone.

00:57:55   And I wonder like how other people are going to react to it.

00:57:59   Like so far, you know, the tech press has all been pretty much in agreement that this thing looks and feels pretty cool, but it's not the phone you should buy.

00:58:08   And I'm trying to like, who is it for?

00:58:11   I'm having a hard time coming up with people it's for because they seem to have done a great job with like, you know, the physical design of it.

00:58:18   Like it looks really cool.

00:58:19   Everyone says it feels great.

00:58:21   But I have a feeling that effectively no one is going to buy this phone, which maybe that's OK.

00:58:28   Like, I think honestly, I would love to see Apple continue to make weird phones that take risks and optimize like really hard for certain things.

00:58:36   But if it's going to have the worst cameras and the worst battery life of any phone in their lineup, those are really huge things to most people.

00:58:47   Like most people.

00:58:47   And it's not the cheapest.

00:58:48   Yeah, it's not.

00:58:49   So it's not cheap.

00:58:50   It doesn't have good battery life.

00:58:51   It doesn't have good cameras.

00:58:53   It's not small.

00:58:55   So it doesn't like, you know, fit the small hand people like their needs.

00:58:58   It doesn't have good thermals.

00:59:00   Probably.

00:59:01   It doesn't have good speakers.

00:59:03   Probably.

00:59:03   What does it like?

00:59:06   I have a feeling it's going to maybe sell even worse than the plus did.

00:59:11   Like, I don't I'm trying to think like who's going to buy this.

00:59:14   I think it's going to be something that everyone does cool videos on and everyone knows what it looks like and, you know, it looks cool.

00:59:20   And maybe, you know, maybe you'll occasionally see like somebody who who, you know, wants to look flashy.

00:59:25   You'll occasionally see them using it.

00:59:27   But like, I don't know.

00:59:29   I think we're going to see a lot of orange phones this year.

00:59:31   And I think we're not going to see any airs in the real world.

00:59:36   Like, I'm trying I'm trying to predict, like, when's the first time I'm going to see one in the wild that's not at an Apple store?

00:59:43   I bet it's going to be a while because I've never seen a plus.

00:59:45   Granted, it's a little harder to spot those because, you know, their phones are often in cases.

00:59:49   So maybe I'm just not spotting them because because cases are covering them up.

00:59:52   But like the air, like I don't know who is buying it.

00:59:56   And we'll see.

00:59:57   Maybe I'm totally wrong here.

00:59:59   But it just seems like there's some really big tradeoffs that I don't know anyone who would accept those tradeoffs.

01:00:06   Reports from a day or two ago were that if you were to order an iPhone Air, you'd still get September 19th delivery.

01:00:13   So take for that what you will.

01:00:16   It's, you know, there's also Ming-Chi Kuo was saying, like, what he thinks that the air is not selling, blah, blah, blah.

01:00:21   But I have no faith that he has any inside line on how many phones are being sold.

01:00:24   But the one thing we can see from the outside is, you know, a few days after the phones are launched, usually you can't get day of delivery anymore.

01:00:30   And apparently, as of a day or two ago, you still could get iPhone Air day of delivery.

01:00:34   So maybe they just made a lot of them or maybe they're not selling well.

01:00:37   Yeah, you can't get it today.

01:00:39   But, you know, that's – and again, you're right.

01:00:42   Maybe they didn't make that many because maybe they did their own forecasting and they nailed it.

01:00:45   And they said, oh, actually, we don't need to make a ton.

01:00:48   And I still – again, I still think Apple – regardless of how much this actually ends up selling, I still think they should do stuff like this.

01:00:54   They should have models that aren't, like, total sales hits but just serve a certain need.

01:01:00   I think that's great.

01:01:01   You know, it goes back to kind of your halo car argument, John, of, like, you know, like, Apple should do things that push the envelope and push things forward and have specialty appeal even if they don't appeal to most people.

01:01:11   Like, most people don't buy supercars, but they exist and they're really cool and they serve other purposes in their existence and in their development.

01:01:18   And in their research and what they have trickled down technology-wise to other models and, like – so, the iPhone Air, I think there was lots of reasons to make this phone.

01:01:26   But I don't – I really don't think it's going to sell well in the U.S.

01:01:30   Now, it's possible it'll do better, like, you know, in China, you know, where dynamics are different.

01:01:35   You know, I don't really understand them that much.

01:01:36   I know, you know, the appearance and novelty looking is much more important there.

01:01:42   But even then, like, I think the orange one would probably do better.

01:01:45   But I don't know.

01:01:46   We'll see.

01:01:47   Doesn't it replace the iPhone 16 Plus?

01:01:50   Like, I know it's not a direct one-to-one replacement, but –

01:01:53   It replaced, like, price-wise, more or less, but not features-wise, obviously.

01:01:56   Well, and I thought the screen is a touch bigger than the 17 and a touch –

01:02:01   Yeah, no, the screen – the Plus was the same size as the Max, wasn't it?

01:02:03   But this is in between the Max and the Pro.

01:02:05   And, like, feature and capability-wise, it is between the base 17 and the Pro.

01:02:11   Like, it does – it is better than the base 17 in certain ways.

01:02:14   It has some of the Pro's features.

01:02:16   But the trade-offs are so big.

01:02:18   I don't think there's going to be that many people who are willing to accept those trade-offs.

01:02:21   I mostly agree with you, but to argue for the sake of arguing, I think anyone who treats their phone as a fashion item – now, to be fair, I don't really know anyone like that, but I presume the existence of what you were saying earlier.

01:02:34   I think that there are presumably people who will see this and say, oh, my God, this is incredible.

01:02:40   Even though it has not a stellar camera and even though the battery life may be trash, you know, I must have it because it just looks so cool.

01:02:47   I mean –

01:02:48   Yeah, keep in mind the pre-orders are from people like us, and we have to wait until this gets in stores where regular people can see it.

01:02:54   Regular people don't even know the new 5 phones are out.

01:02:56   You know what I mean?

01:02:57   Well, but even then, like, I think – like, you're right, Casey.

01:03:00   I think that is certainly, like, a strong motivator, but they released this phone in the same year that they made the Pros look really bold and different, too.

01:03:08   And so I think what most people want is the orange phone.

01:03:12   I think a lot of people are going to find the Pro colors ugly and even – and not be able to hide that giant plateau in the case.

01:03:17   Like, for example, I think my daughter would love the Air if it wasn't so big.

01:03:21   She's not a big phone person.

01:03:22   She's annoyed at the size of her 12.

01:03:24   She's going to be annoyed at the size of her 17, and this is even bigger.

01:03:27   But I – because I remember I was saying, like, how she doesn't like ones with lots of cameras in the back.

01:03:31   Hey, one camera on the back.

01:03:33   I think she might be turned off by the plateau or whatever, but I'll actually – I'll ask her about it because I think the fashion angle on this is basically, like –

01:03:41   I bet you'll see, like, fashion influencers having this phone because it's, like, a status symbol or whatever.

01:03:46   But I can't possibly predict the sales.

01:03:48   I thought the Plus phones would do – I didn't think they'd do great, but I thought they'd do better than they did because we don't know –

01:03:54   Obviously, only Apple knows how they actually did it.

01:03:55   But all the doom and gloom I've heard about the Plus phones is, like, they just could not get rid of these things.

01:03:59   So will this do worse than the Pluses or better?

01:04:01   I can't tell right now.

01:04:03   I wonder, too, like, you know, with the Plus – because I also, like you, I thought the Plus was going to sell very well.

01:04:08   I've said the same thing about the 15-inch MacBook Air.

01:04:12   I wonder if that's – I've never seen one of those in real life either.

01:04:15   Yeah.

01:04:16   Like, outside of an Apple store.

01:04:17   It's like, I don't – I wonder if those –

01:04:19   It's like I said last time.

01:04:19   I think Apple is too good at upselling.

01:04:21   Yeah.

01:04:21   Like, they get you in the door with one of these things, and they're just like, well, don't you want the MacBook Pro?

01:04:26   And you're like, okay, fine.

01:04:28   It used to be that you – if you wanted the biggest screen, you had to get the high-end line of product.

01:04:32   And over the last few years, they introduced the 15-inch MacBook Air, the 13-inch iPad Air, and the iPhone Plus.

01:04:39   And it seems like none of those are really setting the world on fire, even though at the time – each one of those, when it was introduced, I said, I think on this show, this is going to sell tons of – like, they're going to sell tons of these things.

01:04:50   And they probably thought the same thing, and maybe they had research showing they would.

01:04:54   But I think, John, I think you're right.

01:04:56   Like, most people who want the cheapest thing are okay with the smallest thing or even are seeking out the smallest thing.

01:05:04   And then people who are willing to be upsold for a bigger screen are probably also much of the time willing to be upsold to the better features also.

01:05:13   And so we're just not seeing this market materialize of like it's the same thing as the base model but bigger screen.

01:05:20   Like, that market seems to not exist that much.

01:05:23   Whereas that's what I think – what they're trying to do with the iPhone Air now is say, okay, it isn't just the base model but a bigger screen.

01:05:29   Or it isn't just the base model but thinner.

01:05:31   It is between the Pro and the base model in capabilities as well, which I think is very smart.

01:05:37   If they're going to have something in here, make it that smart.

01:05:39   And the fact that they went a different direction with the industrial design, it isn't just the base model with a few bonuses.

01:05:48   No, it's this cool, new, unique thing that if you want this unique industrial design of the super slim most of the way phone, you have to get this model.

01:05:58   Like, there is no other choice if this is what you want.

01:06:00   So they're making it unique.

01:06:02   They're drawing in unique buyers that will seek that out.

01:06:04   That's great.

01:06:05   I think this is a much more promising strategy overall of, like, make a mid-tier spec product with a unique design to fill that slot.

01:06:15   That's a great strategy.

01:06:17   But I think they made a few too many trade-offs with this implementation of this product, and I don't think it's going to sell well because of those trade-offs.

01:06:25   But I think the concept of having something in a slot like that is sound.

01:06:29   This just might not be, you know, that thing.

01:06:32   If you can wave a magic wand and leave all the specs and the price and everything about the iPhone Air the same but shave off the camera plateau and make it completely flush, do you think that changes the attractiveness of this phone?

01:06:44   Obviously, that's not possible, but, like, just imagine.

01:06:46   Because I wonder how much of the – because, like, I think it's going to sell based on its appearance, and I really do – for me personally, I think that camera plateau makes the whole phone ugly, and I wonder how many people are going to have a similar idea.

01:06:57   It's getting back to what you said, Marco.

01:06:58   It's like, oh, it's thin but not that thin at that part.

01:07:00   It looks ungainly and awkward.

01:07:02   I understand that's what you've got to do right now with the tech that's available.

01:07:04   You can't make a phone with these capabilities that's flat on the back, but, boy, if it was, they'll probably do it eventually.

01:07:11   If we keep doing this show long enough, eventually, technology will exist to make a compromised, thin phone that doesn't have a camera plateau, but that year is not now.

01:07:19   I think it would do a lot better if the Air was the one with the bold, cool, new colors, and the Pro still had its boring colors that it always had.

01:07:30   That, I think, like, if they flip that around, if this was both the new, thin design and also had the cool colors, then I think it would be very, very tempting to a lot more people.

01:07:43   But now it's like, oh, you made these awesome colors in the model that has the best cameras and the best battery life?

01:07:50   Yeah, I'm going to take that one.

01:07:52   Awesome color.

01:07:54   To go back a step, if you'll permit me a quick story, you know, we were doing all this home renovation, which is mostly done at this point.

01:08:04   And as part of that, we were redoing the downstairs floors, as we talked about a few weeks ago.

01:08:10   And that meant taking the oven and stove out from the little, like, nook that it's in and moving it out of the way so floors could be put in.

01:08:19   And during that process, we discovered, the people doing it, the contractors discovered, a piece of technology that I was not aware that I was missing that I guess was way under the stove.

01:08:32   I have no idea, or the oven.

01:08:33   I have no idea how it got back there.

01:08:34   I don't recall having lost it, but as we've, particularly John, established many times, my memory is trash.

01:08:39   Anyway, what I found was my original four gigabyte iPod Nano.

01:08:42   Whoa!

01:08:44   And I can tell you, this thing still boots, like, the battery is garbage, but I plugged it in.

01:08:50   I have one dock connector cable left, and I plugged it in.

01:08:52   It started right up.

01:08:54   It still has a bunch of music on it, which is questionable, even by my standards.

01:08:58   But I bring all this up because I'm holding it in my hand right now.

01:09:04   And this thing, for today, feels impossibly small and thin.

01:09:09   And this was something like 2004, 2005.

01:09:12   It doesn't really matter.

01:09:13   I don't care.

01:09:14   Which model is it?

01:09:15   The four gigabyte iPod Nano.

01:09:17   Original one?

01:09:18   I think it was the very first iPod Nano.

01:09:20   Yeah.

01:09:20   The super, the SSD.

01:09:21   Is it scratched to hell?

01:09:23   And is it?

01:09:23   Oh, God, yes.

01:09:24   The back is ruined with scratches.

01:09:26   Yep, it's the first one.

01:09:27   This thing in 2025 feels almost astonishingly thin and light and small.

01:09:35   I'm sure if we were to do this again with 2025 tech, it would in reality be so much thinner, so much smaller, etc.

01:09:40   But it still feels modern in that regard.

01:09:43   In 2004, this was impossible.

01:09:47   This could not exist with 2004's tech, or again, whatever year it may have been.

01:09:52   I saw this.

01:09:54   I don't remember how I saw this.

01:09:55   Maybe it was a TV ad.

01:09:56   Maybe it was something else, because I didn't give a crap about Apple in 2004.

01:10:00   I saw this, and I said, I must have it.

01:10:02   I must have this.

01:10:04   Because it was so impossibly thin.

01:10:07   It was so impossibly small.

01:10:09   And at the time, I still had a use for an MP3 player.

01:10:13   I adored this device.

01:10:16   And this was my very first Apple product.

01:10:17   I cannot speak highly enough about how much I wanted this for the look and feel of it alone.

01:10:22   I agree with everything you two said.

01:10:25   And I think anyone who treats their phone as much more than a toy is going to choose a different phone.

01:10:32   But there are people for whom the Air is just impossibly cool, and I must have it.

01:10:37   And that's not me.

01:10:39   I mean, as we spoke about, I ordered a 17 Pro, and I'm really looking forward to it.

01:10:44   They claim it's going to fix a lot of the problems I have with the 16 Pro.

01:10:47   But I can absolutely fathom a situation where I look at the Air and say, I don't care that it's not perfect.

01:10:56   Now, admittedly, the iPod Nano was fairly perfect in almost every way, except the smaller capacity.

01:11:01   I don't care that it's not perfect.

01:11:03   I must have it.

01:11:04   And that's exactly how I felt about this literally 20 years ago.

01:11:08   There is a lot of value to that, and that's why I still have not ruled out the idea that maybe I will get one to replace all my test devices, because their values will sum up to about its price, actually.

01:11:20   So I could do that if I want to, and now that I'm requiring iOS 18, I need a lot fewer test devices.

01:11:24   So interestingly enough, over the last couple of days, I've been doing a lot of work on my initial Overcast release for 26 had a few layout problems on when you had a very small screen and a very big font.

01:11:37   And a lot of those people are iPhone mini users.

01:11:40   So I took out and charged my trusty iPhone 13 mini test device, and I've been doing a lot of testing on the iPhone 13 mini over the last couple of days.

01:11:50   And this thing, I have it in my hand right now, it feels incredible in the hand.

01:11:55   Like, I miss, you know, I never used the 13 mini, but I did use the 12 mini for that year.

01:12:00   I love this form factor in so many ways.

01:12:05   It feels so good, because the mini is about the same weight as the iPhone Air.

01:12:12   Like, it feels really good in the hand.

01:12:14   It's light.

01:12:14   It feels like nothing.

01:12:15   And with the mini, it has two cameras.

01:12:20   It has the regular speaker on the bottom and top.

01:12:23   It really has a lot fewer trade-offs than the Air.

01:12:28   And I kind of think, like, it is possible for them to make a smaller, lighter, probably thinner phone than the main ones making some of these trade-offs.

01:12:39   But when you look at the mini, like, the mini didn't make nearly that many trade-offs.

01:12:42   The Air makes a lot more of them.

01:12:44   And I think there are a lot bigger trade-offs that are bigger to more people.

01:12:48   So I don't think it's a category that can't be filled or that, quote, nobody wants.

01:12:54   But I think if the Air is a sales bomb, people might assume nobody wants their phones to be thin and light.

01:13:02   But that is probably not in itself, in isolation, true.

01:13:05   I think they just went really extreme with this to make a statement.

01:13:09   And that does make it, you know, more noticeable.

01:13:12   It makes it more of a bombshell.

01:13:14   But, like, Samsung released their super-thin phone recently, which admittedly is not as thin as this and doesn't look as cool as this.

01:13:20   But it's still, like, Samsung released their, I think it's the Galaxy Edge.

01:13:22   People talked about it for, like, 30 minutes, and it was gone.

01:13:25   No one cares.

01:13:27   No one bought it.

01:13:28   You don't hear about it at all.

01:13:30   I think that might happen with the iPhone Air.

01:13:33   Like, it'll last a little longer because they did a better job of it, and it's Apple, not Samsung.

01:13:36   But I think they just took too many trade-offs, and I don't think it's going to land well.

01:13:44   Well, we'll see.

01:13:44   I'm really excited to have one of these in hand.

01:13:46   I have it on pretty good authority that we will be able to check these out during the podcast-a-thon, again, on Friday on YouTube.

01:13:53   And so I am really curious to see what I think of it in hand.

01:13:58   I can't imagine wanting this over the iPhone 17 Pro because the cameras are that important to me.

01:14:04   Not even, you know, additionally, the thermals, the battery life, etc.

01:14:07   But there is a lot to be said that's positive about the Air, even though, again, I've said it.

01:14:13   A couple times.

01:14:14   I don't particularly disagree with anything you two have said.

01:14:16   But I can fathom away where one would want it.

01:14:19   Coming back around to Max Tech from, like, three hours ago.

01:14:22   Yeah, sorry.

01:14:23   No, I was right there with you.

01:14:26   The gap between the dynamic island and the top of the screen is larger on the Air than it is on any other dynamic island phone, which is very, very interesting.

01:14:34   And I don't recall if it was Max or maybe this was John theorizing that this might be due to the front cameras need to be inside the camera bump.

01:14:43   So maybe that's why they had to move it down a bit.

01:14:45   It has another compromise in the design because I'm pretty sure, yeah, that they do need to, like, the front-facing camera needs, you know, it's the front-facing camera is thick.

01:14:53   It needs to be somewhere.

01:14:54   And where does it go?

01:14:56   It's going to go into the bump.

01:14:57   But if you look at the back of the iPhone Air, the camera bump is – it's concentricity.

01:15:03   The camera bump is moved down like there's a margin around it because it would look weird if the camera bump was slammed up against the top of the phone.

01:15:11   But if it was slammed up against the top of the phone, the dynamic island could be in the same place it is on all the other phones.

01:15:16   But they didn't want to do that.

01:15:16   So I feel like the dynamic island position and how much it interferes with the stuff on your screen is ever so slightly by a millimeter or two compromised by the need for the back of the phone to look the way it does.

01:15:27   Moving along, the USB-C port – this is what I was alluding to earlier – the USB-C port is not vertically centered.

01:15:34   This is one of those things like the FedEx logo that I really wish I never saw because now I cannot unsee it.

01:15:39   A lot of thin Android phones have this same problem because the problem is the thickness of the OLED screens.

01:15:44   Like you can only make the OLED screens so thin and if your total thickness is – you know, the USB-C port isn't changing thickness.

01:15:50   It is what it is.

01:15:50   And the screen thickness is as thin as we could possibly make it.

01:15:53   And you want the overall thickness to be 5.6 millimeters.

01:15:56   Guess what?

01:15:56   Port can't be in the middle.

01:15:58   And when I saw the Android phones, I was like, oh, that's terrible.

01:16:00   Do you think Apple would ever do something like that?

01:16:02   Apparently, they have no choice with current technology.

01:16:05   Haven't they done this once before?

01:16:06   Wasn't there another iPhone where the port was not centered?

01:16:09   I don't remember.

01:16:10   Was there one with asymmetrical holes on the bottom maybe for the speaker things?

01:16:15   Or maybe – I think I know what you're talking about.

01:16:17   I think there might have been one of them where like the screw holes weren't aligned with the port or something like that.

01:16:21   But anyway, it's a little bit more obvious here because the phone itself is so thin.

01:16:26   In Apple's photography, they have so many like reflections of whatever like the – I don't know if these like 3D renders with like an environment map or something or if it's a real phone.

01:16:33   But anyway, it's hard to see.

01:16:34   But in person, it should be pretty obvious.

01:16:37   All right.

01:16:38   There is no cinematic mode for video on the air, which is – isn't that the thing where you can adjust the focal point after the fact?

01:16:47   I was trying to look up to refresh my memory about how it works.

01:16:50   Yeah, that's what it is.

01:16:51   I'm like, but why would they not have that on the air?

01:16:54   I found this TechCrunch article from 2021 about how Apple built the iPhone 13 cinematic mode that had some info in there.

01:17:00   But yeah, it's not on the air.

01:17:03   And this apparently includes the front camera.

01:17:07   Apparently, you can do cinematic video on the front camera on the other phones but not on the air, even though the front camera on the air is the same as on all the other phones.

01:17:15   So I'm not quite sure why – I think it's not on the back because I think it might use LiDAR.

01:17:20   And for this next item here, the air does not have a LiDAR scanner on the back of it.

01:17:24   I know people are all broken up about that.

01:17:25   But like I'm not sure how it gets the depth information to let you change the focal point.

01:17:30   But it would make sense to me that a single camera, no LiDAR phone might not be able to do cinematic video with the back camera.

01:17:36   But learning that you can do cinematic video from the front camera and that the air doesn't have that, even though it has the same camera, another weird compromise.

01:17:43   And I guess that's it, right?

01:17:46   Oh, no.

01:17:47   The new selfie camera also has a 24-megapixel sensor in all the phones, right?

01:17:51   Not just the air.

01:17:52   Question mark.

01:17:53   Question mark.

01:17:54   Does it have a 24-megapixel?

01:17:55   This was from Max Tech.

01:17:56   I don't know where this information came from.

01:17:57   And the idea is that, as they showed, it's a square sensor and they crop it to be either a landscape slice out of the square sensor or a portrait slice out of the square sensor.

01:18:07   And the idea is that the sensor itself, if you were to take the full square, like all the pixels, that that's 24-megapixels, allowing any of the sensor crops to be 18-megapixels.

01:18:16   That makes sense to me, but I don't have confirmation for it.

01:18:19   So that's a question mark.

01:18:20   But what this makes me think, if it's true, is I would love to see a full 24-megapixel square picture from that front camera.

01:18:26   Yeah, that'd be great.

01:18:27   And my guess is that you won't get that from the built-in camera app, but that maybe, like, apps that access the raw camera hardware, like, you know, like Halide and stuff like that, maybe they'll be able to do it.

01:18:37   If the sensor really is 24-megapixels.

01:18:40   Again, I don't have this confirmed.

01:18:41   That's why I'd put a question mark on it.

01:18:42   All right.

01:18:43   The iPhone Air and the iPhone 17 non-pro are limited to USB 2 speeds.

01:18:50   Reading from MacRumors, the new iPhone 17 limited to USB 2 transfer speeds.

01:18:55   USB 3 continues to be a pro-only feature.

01:18:57   USB 2 supports transfer speeds of up to 480 megabits per second.

01:19:01   The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max support transfer speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second, which is about 20 times faster.

01:19:08   I want to point out that USB 2.0 was introduced in April of the year 2000.

01:19:14   Incredible.

01:19:16   It is a 25-year-old data speed.

01:19:21   Now, you might as well just think of that as a charging port and not a data port.

01:19:25   And many people are super angry about this.

01:19:27   I'm not particularly angry about it because I think most people do treat it as a charging point.

01:19:31   But at a certain point, it starts to become embarrassing.

01:19:33   And I think we have passed that point.

01:19:35   25 years after the advent of USB 2.0, the $1,000, you know, if configured with more storage, iPhone 17 should not transfer data at USB 2.0 speeds through a wired connection.

01:19:47   I do wonder, like, you know, so one of the main differences between USB 2.0 and 3.0 is that USB 3.0 adds more pins.

01:19:55   Like, that's one of the ways they're able to get more data transfer is they add more pins to the connector.

01:20:00   And that's also why, like, USB 3.0 cables are typically a little bit thicker and less flexible than USB 2.0 cables.

01:20:07   And, again, that's also why, like, charging cables tend to usually only support USB 2.0 speeds.

01:20:14   And that's because they have fewer wires in them, which makes them cheaper and longer and more flexible more easily.

01:20:20   Which is usually when people are charging their stuff, that's all they care about anyway.

01:20:23   It's like, yeah, give me a nice long flexible cable and make it cheap.

01:20:27   But USB 3.0, more pins, more wires in the cable, so it's, you know, more complicated and more costly.

01:20:33   I wonder what it is about adding that to the phone.

01:20:38   Like, is it a matter of, like, the pins in the port, you know, is that too expensive?

01:20:43   Or is it about, like, the bandwidth on the chip for the USB 3.0 controller?

01:20:47   Like, is that a bigger deal?

01:20:49   Oh, I'd be shocked if it's the controller.

01:20:52   I think the A19 probably has the controller.

01:20:55   And if it doesn't have the controller, shame on Apple, because, like, again, most people use it for charging.

01:20:59   But, like, at a certain point, the Pro features need to trickle down.

01:21:03   And it doesn't need to be, like, oh, it needs to be Thunderbolt 5 speeds or whatever.

01:21:07   There's a wide gap between USB 2.0 and Thunderbolt 5.

01:21:12   Find somewhere in the middle that you can do economically.

01:21:15   This, you know, we'll check in next year.

01:21:17   Like, I'm not really broken up about this, but it is kind of ridiculous.

01:21:21   And the reasoning for it, it just seems like one of those things that Apple doesn't, it's kind of like, why didn't the non-pro phones have promotion for so long?

01:21:27   Even though, like, every phone in the Android world has been over 60 hertz for ages.

01:21:31   Sometimes it just takes Apple a long time.

01:21:34   And anyway, I think they're overdoing this one.

01:21:36   I wonder, too, like, I mean, I don't think anybody would care but me on this one.

01:21:40   But, like, okay, if USB 3.0 having all these extra wires makes it so much less adopted in so many ways still all this time later, what if we had, like, a USB 2.5 standard?

01:21:51   Oh, gosh.

01:21:52   That's what we need, more USB standards.

01:21:53   Right.

01:21:54   But, like, what if it only used the same number of wires as USB 2.0 but just, you know, clocked the data lines faster or something?

01:22:01   Like, I don't know enough about the physical side of it.

01:22:03   I don't think the standards are going to reach back to, like, we need to find a way to jam more data over charging cables.

01:22:08   I'm not sure that's an area of interest for them.

01:22:10   But, like, you know, like, you can imagine, like, you know, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, it's, what, about 20 times difference in speed?

01:22:17   What if you could get a USB 2.5 that was, like, five or ten times faster and used all the old cables and used the thin, flexible, cheap ones?

01:22:26   Like, that actually might be pretty compelling for a lot of use cases.

01:22:28   No one's going to do it, but I think it could be cool.

01:22:31   All right.

01:22:33   Let's talk about iPhone screens.

01:22:35   It seems that every new iPhone screen has the exact same specifications other than size and resolution.

01:22:41   Difficult to tell from the presentation because they emphasize certain features on certain things.

01:22:45   But if you go to Apple's very handy apple.com slash iPhone slash compare page and bring up the Pro or Pro Max, the Air, and the Plane 17 and go down the screen specs, everything except the resolution is the same.

01:22:57   Contrast ratio.

01:22:57   Contrast ratio, true tone, the how many, that's a max brightness, the peak brightness, the, like, it's all the minimum brightness.

01:23:04   They're, they're all the specs are exactly the same, which is pretty rare.

01:23:08   So let's celebrate that they all have really good screens now.

01:23:10   Yeah, this is great.

01:23:11   It's like, there's now like a new minimum Apple screen.

01:23:15   Well, I guess the E still won't have it probably.

01:23:17   But like, you know, all of the mainline iPhones now have, they all have promotion.

01:23:22   They all are always on.

01:23:24   You know, it's been a while now.

01:23:26   They're all OLED.

01:23:26   Like, you know, now they, they've just all are the good screen.

01:23:30   That's a great place to be.

01:23:31   And one of them is not like, oh, this one gets better peak brightness or it's better outdoors.

01:23:34   They just all have the same specs.

01:23:35   Right.

01:23:36   Although I'm guessing the overall heat dissipation performance of the Pro line.

01:23:41   For how long?

01:23:42   Yeah.

01:23:42   If you actually want your screen to stay bright for more than a few seconds outside, you're probably going to want the Pro.

01:23:47   All right.

01:23:48   And the iPhone 17 models include a toggle to disable screen flickering due to PWM.

01:23:55   Reading from Mac Rumors, the iPhone 17 models include an accessibility setting to disable pulse width modulation or PWM, according to information found in the iOS 26 release candidate.

01:24:04   There will be a toggle located in the display and text size section of the accessibility settings on the iPhone 17 labeled display pulse smoothing.

01:24:11   Users will be able to turn PWM on or turn it off.

01:24:14   Here's the description of the setting.

01:24:16   Disables pulse width modulation to provide a different way to dim the OLED display, which can create a smoother display output at low brightness levels.

01:24:23   Disabling PWM may affect low brightness display performance under certain conditions.

01:24:26   We've confirmed that the PWM toggle is available on the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, 17 Pro Max.

01:24:32   It is also likely available on the iPhone Air.

01:24:34   Reading from a different page, at 9to5Mac, pulse width modulation is a tactic that displays used to produce lower brightness levels.

01:24:43   The screen rapidly switches the pixels on and off in a way that most users can't discern.

01:24:47   For some people, however, PWM might result in a screen flickering effect that can cause eye strain and even severe headaches.

01:24:52   You can see the PWM sensitive subreddit, which has 16,000 weekly visitors.

01:24:58   I've got a lot of questions about this when I got my OLED iPad because they're like, how can you watch anything on that?

01:25:03   Because the OLED iPad uses, you know, the whatever, PWM, like basically just turning the screen on and off real fast instead of like putting the pixels on a lower brightness.

01:25:12   They're like, you know, they're at a fixed brightness, but they just go on, off, on, off really, really fast.

01:25:16   And they're like, oh, I can't stand that.

01:25:18   It looks weird to me.

01:25:19   It flickers.

01:25:20   It gives me headaches.

01:25:20   It says this, does that witness the, the subreddit with all these people talking about it.

01:25:24   My personal experience has been that I can't see the flickering and it doesn't bother me, but it, I'm fully willing to believe that other people can see it.

01:25:33   And it does bother them, especially young people.

01:25:34   Because one of the things, uh, good things about getting older is your, as your sense is dull, fewer things are annoying.

01:25:39   Although the young people themselves become annoying as you get older.

01:25:43   So yeah, but this, but I'm actually kind of surprised that Apple rolled out this feature because even though some people are clearly sensitive to this, it seemed like, well, Apple's just going to ignore them forever.

01:25:53   But no, they provided an option for it, which is great.

01:25:56   Um, and I'm not, I don't know what the, the downsides of it.

01:25:59   Maybe like the, there's an energy trade-off.

01:26:01   I think it's like, it's, it's, uh, you can use lower power if you use PWM than if you don't.

01:26:06   And again, maybe it like really dim brightnesses and it won't look quite right.

01:26:09   Uh, but kudos to Apple for adding this option.

01:26:11   If you're one of those people who can't stand that OLED flickering, why doesn't everybody else see it?

01:26:15   Try out this option in accessibility.

01:26:16   I guess I, I guess we all have iOS 26 on our, oh, I do anyway.

01:26:19   And I assume you do the release version.

01:26:21   So I should check up that option is actually there.

01:26:23   Cause when I put this in the notes, it was from the RC, but, uh, no, but it says it's only on the 17 line of hardware.

01:26:28   Oh, that's right.

01:26:29   It's not.

01:26:29   Yeah.

01:26:29   I can't use it.

01:26:30   Okay.

01:26:30   All right.

01:26:31   Well, we'll find out when you guys get your new phones.

01:26:33   Yeah.

01:26:33   This is interesting too.

01:26:34   Like, you know, if, if you, if you can see PWM flickers, I feel sorry for you because so many of the things in the modern world use PWM to control brightness.

01:26:44   Like that's, that's what they complained about on the subreddit.

01:26:46   I'm sure, you know, not only, you know, device screens, but also any dimmable LED bulb, like almost all, not all of them, but most dimmable LEDs use PWM to achieve their dimming.

01:26:57   I didn't know that.

01:26:58   I can see that when, when you get credit quality ones,

01:27:00   I can see it and it annoys me.

01:27:02   Yeah.

01:27:02   It's, and you know, and if you have any kind of cheap, uh, LED lighting that is, you know, especially stuff like Christmas lights or like party lights, um, or a lot of car aftermarket headlights.

01:27:13   Um, if they are super cheap, they will use halfway rectification of the AC supply to get DC power for the light.

01:27:21   And what that means, they'll just shove it through a diode, which means it flickers.

01:27:24   I believe that makes it flicker 30 times a second instead of 60.

01:27:27   Which is very visible.

01:27:28   Yeah.

01:27:29   And that, that's why like, especially you might not see it in the center of your vision, but you might notice if it's like at the periphery of your vision, you might notice a bit of a flickering of cheap LED party and Christmas lights.

01:27:39   Uh, or it seems like it's flickering only when you move your head or something, you can start to see a little bit of it there.

01:27:44   And if you get good LED Christmas lights, they'll be full wave rectified at least, um, or they'll just do some kind of other DC conversion.

01:27:52   I don't know.

01:27:52   I don't know the details of how those work, but you can spend a few extra cents of components and you can get, you know, both of the AC waves peaking the signal or whatever.

01:28:01   And, you know, you can double the refresh rate to 60 Hertz, or you can have some fancier system that actually just, you know, lowers the voltage or something.

01:28:09   But so much of the world now is now I wonder my theory on, you know, what Apple's option here says disabling PWM may affect low brightness display performance under certain conditions.

01:28:20   My theory, maybe what, what they mean by that is like, if the display can say, all right, you have, you know, RGB values, zero through 255 for each of the, and it's probably a higher bit rate panel than that, but we'll just say that for now.

01:28:35   Um, for each pixel, you have these, you know, zero, zero to 255 values for the color channels.

01:28:40   Maybe the way they're achieving this is just compressing those down to the lower range.

01:28:44   And so, so the display still thinks it is performing at its full voltage and brightness and everything, but it's just being fed darker pixel values by the OS because the way OLEDs work, they won't use more power that way.

01:28:57   If you just compress those values down, eventually you'll get compressed low enough that like, you're not really getting a lot of distinction between the colors maybe, or maybe you'll see banding, um, like in gradients because you don't have enough like pixel precision, you know, in those ranges.

01:29:13   Maybe that would be how performance is, uh, you know, affected, but I don't know if this, I think this is, this is a great option to have.

01:29:20   We'll see what the trade-offs are, but this is, this is very good for people who need it.

01:29:25   All right, let's talk Apple watch.

01:29:27   The Apple watch ultra satellite data features require a cell plan, which we talked about last episode.

01:29:33   And Jason was in the chat and had the same theory that a friend of the show, Greg Pierce wrote in about, which is the most likely reason to require a cell plan for satellite features is that they don't want those features used any more than absolutely required.

01:29:45   A device without a cell plan might be trying to leverage that network as a primary means for texting, et cetera.

01:29:49   Yeah, makes sense.

01:29:51   And also there are some cell plans that come with satellite stuff, uh, not, this is relevant to the iPhone, but, uh, I was surprised to learn that you can buy a cell plan that, uh, you pay a little bit extra and you get satellite service for that as well.

01:30:02   But yeah, they just want to use it as fallback.

01:30:03   There's not enough satellite bandwidth or availability for everybody to be using it if they don't want to pay for cellular.

01:30:09   There is a post on Reddit, which is very interesting.

01:30:15   That seems to think that the 24 hour battery claim up from 18 is not really any different.

01:30:21   So reading from Reddit, the extra six hours that Apple claims is just Apple finally including sleep tracking in the test, but sleep tracking barely sips power.

01:30:29   And previous Apple watches have already been able to easily surpass their 18 hour claims and go through a night of sleep tracking on top.

01:30:35   In the low power mode test, the difference is just two hours with 38 hours versus 36, a measly 5% difference.

01:30:41   But Apple also lowered the active usage assumptions for the new model.

01:30:44   Fewer checks, fewer notifications, less app time, not really an upgrade, just a shift in methodology.

01:30:49   I bet this is right.

01:30:52   And that makes me feel kind of gross.

01:30:55   Yeah.

01:30:55   Like it, this, I wrote down, like there's the three things I wanted to complain about with Apple's marketing of these.

01:31:00   As I mentioned earlier, the, the thinness of iPhones and then having these massive camera plateaus.

01:31:05   This is the second one.

01:31:07   It does like, it seems like this is probably accurate.

01:31:11   Like I can't find anything that refutes it.

01:31:13   It seems like this is probably right.

01:31:14   That like when I said last time, like the big difference with the series 11 is this extra six hours of battery life from 18 to 24 hours.

01:31:21   That sounds like a big difference.

01:31:23   That's how Apple sold it.

01:31:24   But it does seem like they just changed the way they're testing it to include six hours of sleep.

01:31:29   It looks like actually there is not a significant difference in battery life from the series 10 and the series 11.

01:31:36   Maybe there's a small one, but there's not, it isn't that big the way that made it seem.

01:31:40   And that really the primary or only difference between the series 10 and 11 is changing the cell radio to be 5G capable.

01:31:50   I can't see anything else that actually was changed in the series 11.

01:31:54   Yeah.

01:31:55   When they tear these things down, we'll have to see if the capacity of the battery changed at all, because if the battery is a little bit bigger, that could account for a real difference.

01:32:03   Even if all the other components are the same, because we know the SOC is the same.

01:32:06   We can assume maybe the screen is the same.

01:32:07   The 5G radio, maybe that's a little bit more efficient, but like, yeah, they have a regular test and a low power test.

01:32:13   And in the low power test, there was this 5% difference.

01:32:15   But then if you look at the methodology, it's like that they, they have a test, like, you know, what, what do we do in our test?

01:32:21   And it's like, well, every X minutes we do Y activity this number of times.

01:32:24   And they reduce the number of things they do during the test.

01:32:27   So yeah, they're, I mean, I, it's not like you can never change the methodology methodology.

01:32:31   Your test should change over time, but when they do change the methodology, it's hard to do an apples to apples comparison.

01:32:37   And, and yeah, the sleep tracking thing by tacking those hours and it seems kind of misleading.

01:32:41   So, I mean, the thing about this is they'll, it's probably not going to be a lot of outcry because anyone who gets a new watch replacing an old watch, the battery iron, the old watch was probably cruddy.

01:32:51   And so, wow, this new watch has such an amazing battery life.

01:32:53   Yeah, it's just got a new battery.

01:32:54   If you had bought a new version of your old watch, it would probably have the similar effect.

01:32:58   All right, then friend of the show, dear friend of the show, David Smith writes, something I found kind of surprising about the ultra three is that the quoted battery life for outdoor workouts and low power and reduced heart rate readings is identical to the ultra two at 35 hours.

01:33:09   Similarly in normal use with low power mode enabled, they both get the same 72 hours.

01:33:13   You get a few more hours in other types, but the most demanding situations where you're trying to maximize the battery, it isn't better.

01:33:19   Where we do get improvements, they are around 17%.

01:33:23   And there's a link to the Apple watch battery page, which you can see in the show notes.

01:33:28   So the ultra three is a little bit bigger than the ultra two.

01:33:31   At least the screen is a little bit bigger.

01:33:32   I don't know if the watch body is any bigger, but again, if it's the, if, if the screen is similar and power consumption and the SOC is the same and the battery is the same size, it's not shocking that it might get basically the same battery life as the predecessor.

01:33:45   Yeah.

01:33:45   It seems like, you know, the more we learn about these new Apple watch models, the more it seems like, oh, there's a lot less different about the battery life than, than the presentation made it seem.

01:33:55   And there's other, you know, like the ultra has the satellite connectivity.

01:33:57   That's great.

01:33:58   Like that's a, that's a nice upgrade for the ultra.

01:33:59   And then, and it does have a different screen than its predecessor.

01:34:02   Yes.

01:34:03   Yeah.

01:34:03   And so like those, and, and the, the series 11 does also have the better, um, ion X glass on the, on the front, on the aluminum models.

01:34:11   So like, that's, that's a small upgrade.

01:34:13   Like it's stronger glass.

01:34:14   Okay.

01:34:14   Stronger glass on the aluminums and 5g on the cellulars.

01:34:18   Okay.

01:34:18   Like that's something, but that's not much.

01:34:21   Um, I heard, I forget, forgive me, podcast world out there.

01:34:25   I forget where I heard it.

01:34:26   I think it might've been the verge cast last week.

01:34:28   Somebody was saying on a podcast that like they should just move the Apple watch to a two or three year cycle the way they do AirPods.

01:34:37   And you can even cycle it, have like, you know, like the, the SE one year, have the series the next year, have the ultra the next year.

01:34:43   And then, you know, cycle them.

01:34:44   I think there was dithering here then.

01:34:45   Oh, it was.

01:34:46   Okay.

01:34:46   Yeah.

01:34:46   Thank you.

01:34:46   Yeah.

01:34:47   And I think, I think that makes a lot of sense because they're basically kind of doing that anyway.

01:34:52   Like the Apple watch hardly changes at all for three year intervals.

01:34:57   They are already using the same SoC for three years now for a couple of, a couple of spans now, say the SoC last three years, most of the core features last three years, the screen generally comes close or, you know, maybe it's slightly offset, but basically last three years.

01:35:12   Like, I think they're, they just don't have that much to show each year for the watch.

01:35:17   And maybe it would be better to make a bigger splash every two or three years with like putting all these updates together and having, okay, every two or three years, there's the new SoC and a bigger, brighter screen.

01:35:29   And, you know, some other health capability, if you lump those all together, that I think that would actually be better than having these watch updates every year that barely touch anything and seem like they're not really doing anything.

01:35:41   Because over time, the Apple watch does get significantly better, but increasingly, like the updates seem like nothing.

01:35:49   Like each, each individual update seems like almost nothing.

01:35:52   That would make it more interesting for us to talk about, but I feel like for, from a sales and consumer perspective, it's better just to bump the number by one each year, even if you change literally nothing about them, because that makes people think that it's, I'm going to get the latest and greatest phone and not the one with that at the same number as I saw two years ago.

01:36:08   So yeah, I definitely, I mean, when Dithering mentioned it, like it totally, from our perspective, commenting on Apple, that would be way better, but I don't know.

01:36:16   I don't know if that's better for selling more watches.

01:36:18   Well, but you know, that's how they do AirPods and it works great.

01:36:21   AirPods are a great business, possibly even bigger than the Apple watch.

01:36:24   I mean, does it work great?

01:36:25   Maybe they'll start bumping the number of AirPods every single year to get people.

01:36:28   Oh, it's just the AirPod twos again.

01:36:29   Like they had the AirPod two and then the AirPod two, uh, revision or whatever, like, I wonder if they regret that.

01:36:36   I wonder if they think we should have called that one, the AirPod three and then called this one, the four.

01:36:39   Uh, but you know, I don't know, like this, they presumably they, they know what sells better, but, uh, yeah, from, from a commentary perspective, it would be much better to save up more of these changes.

01:36:48   Let's talk AirPods since you just brought it up.

01:36:51   Uh, the AirPods and ear shapes.

01:36:54   Uh, there's a post from Tyrael who writes a quick note from your resident auditory neuroscientist.

01:37:01   Human ear canals wander in every which direction.

01:37:03   First time I used an otoscope to look at an eardrum, I was amazed at how different the human ear canal directions and shapes were even within a single patient.

01:37:10   The typical clinical equipment will have something between 10 and 16 different disposable tips, tip shapes and sizes.

01:37:17   So more tips for AirPods Pro is a good idea.

01:37:19   In my opinion.

01:37:19   Ears are weird.

01:37:21   Good talk.

01:37:24   I mean, you're not wrong, but good talk.

01:37:26   All right.

01:37:27   And the AirPods Pro 3 2X noise cancellation reduction, whatever you want to call it.

01:37:32   Steven Klink writes, Apple's AirPods product page in footnote one lists the tests that they are using to determine the 2X better noise canceling on the AirPods Pro 3.

01:37:41   IEC 60268-24 is an international test standard for headphones and earphones.

01:37:46   For ANC, the test measures how much sound from the outside environment gets reduced once the headphones electronics are turned on in decibels.

01:37:51   So while the logarithmic nature of decibels means human perception doesn't have an intuitive understanding of the 2X better reduction, it at least isn't a Bezos stat.

01:38:00   All right.

01:38:00   The new AirPods Pro case is not actually smaller.

01:38:04   In fact, according to Mac rumors, it is actually bigger, which I did not expect.

01:38:08   Yeah, a little bit taller and a little bit wider.

01:38:11   I guess they put more battery in there.

01:38:13   It's kind of disappointing that it didn't get smaller because it's just so huge.

01:38:16   But I guess they're just they're just weirdly shaped, especially with the tips and everything.

01:38:19   It's there.

01:38:20   They take up a lot of space and they're awkward.

01:38:23   And I guess they have bigger battery.

01:38:25   I would assume they have bigger batteries than the the 4 because isn't the battery in the Pro?

01:38:30   Isn't it like a coin battery inside the fat part?

01:38:32   Or maybe it's like that in the 4s as well now.

01:38:34   Oh, I honestly don't know.

01:38:35   But anyway, it's a big honking case and it is not getting smaller, apparently.

01:38:40   Yeah, that's too bad.

01:38:41   Like it does for whatever it's worth like the the reviews so far of the AirPods Pro 3.

01:38:46   Everybody loves them.

01:38:48   Oh, my God.

01:38:48   They sound like they're amazing.

01:38:49   I can't wait to get mine.

01:38:51   Same.

01:38:51   I'm so excited.

01:38:52   They did this.

01:38:53   So Apple should have done this, but probably didn't.

01:38:56   You know, the ear shape things or whatever.

01:38:58   These are the first ones that actually stay in Marquez Brownlee's ears.

01:39:01   Yes.

01:39:02   It's a smart idea to like, can we just can we make sure they stay in his ears this time?

01:39:06   Because that's the thing about ears are weird, right?

01:39:08   So every year, like some people like, oh, it doesn't doesn't feel good in my ear.

01:39:12   It doesn't stay in my ear.

01:39:13   And they change them.

01:39:14   And maybe for some people, the old ones were good and the new ones are bad or vice versa.

01:39:19   So you never know what you're going to get.

01:39:20   But Marquez has been on a streak of just not having them stay in his ears when he like jumps

01:39:25   up and down.

01:39:25   These are the first one that stay in.

01:39:26   That's not the only reason he likes them.

01:39:28   He raves about all the other features of them as well.

01:39:30   And we'll talk about them when you two get yours as well.

01:39:32   But that sure doesn't hurt that they stay in your ear, right?

01:39:36   Well, I mean, that's number one.

01:39:37   It doesn't like this is why I was so frustrated when the original AirPods just didn't fit in

01:39:42   my ears.

01:39:42   Like number one with headphones is like, can you wear them like that?

01:39:46   And it does if you can't wear them, if they're not if they either don't stay in your ears or

01:39:50   they hurt or they're not comfortable or whatever it is, if they if they don't fit you, it doesn't

01:39:55   matter how good they are in other ways.

01:39:56   Like you can't use them.

01:39:57   And so like that is number one.

01:40:01   Yeah, that makes sense.

01:40:02   They would they would want to improve that because that would that will improve or that

01:40:05   will increase how many customers they can get for this product.

01:40:07   And that's great.

01:40:08   Yeah, the reviews are impressed by that 2x better noise cancellation, which apparently is not

01:40:12   a BS stat, but a real standard test that does measure how much sound from outside gets in.

01:40:17   And it apparently is 2x better.

01:40:19   So there you go.

01:40:19   I should also note with regard to the AirPods Pro case, allegedly, according to Mac Rumors,

01:40:23   it is a touch lighter, which is interesting.

01:40:26   All right.

01:40:27   The new generation of ultra wideband technology or so they said it is apparently now.

01:40:32   called the John Sirkiss, I'm sorry, the U2 chip.

01:40:35   And you can see that on the AirPods compare page, which we will put a link to in the show

01:40:40   notes.

01:40:40   Yeah, I think I spent at least a year calling this next generation ultra wideband chip or

01:40:44   second generation ultra wideband chip.

01:40:46   But I guess the lawyers got the clearances and now it is just the U2 following on the U1

01:40:51   chip, which was its predecessor.

01:40:52   And then live translation.

01:40:55   It apparently runs on the iPhone, not on the AirPods, which is what you would expect.

01:41:00   This is according to MKBHD.

01:41:02   You have to download each language, but it does work offline, which is good news.

01:41:06   The point is whether we always know it's going to run the iPhone.

01:41:09   This is like it runs on device.

01:41:10   So like when when the phone is doing translation, is the phone doing the translation using like

01:41:14   local models on the phone or is it sending out network requests?

01:41:17   Now, that's what he said in the video.

01:41:18   He basically said you have to download each language and it works offline.

01:41:21   Those are both true.

01:41:22   But I still had a question was like, OK, you download the languages and it works offline.

01:41:26   But does it always use local models on your phone?

01:41:30   Or if you have a network connection, does it go out to the server?

01:41:34   So I was trying to figure out the answer to this question before the show on because I

01:41:38   have iOS 26 on my phone now.

01:41:39   And if I if you go to your AirPods, you will see a thing that says translation and the parentheses

01:41:44   beta and that has a languages sub item.

01:41:47   When you go into the languages sub item, you'll see the list of languages.

01:41:50   And then there's some gray on gray text at the bottom that says download languages to translate

01:41:54   when offline.

01:41:54   You can choose to always translate offline in settings and settings is a link.

01:41:58   You click the settings link and it takes you to the settings for the translate app, like

01:42:04   the just the plain old translate Apple translate app.

01:42:06   And in the translate app settings, there is a setting called on device mode, which is off

01:42:11   by default.

01:42:11   And the text under that one says always translate offline using downloaded languages.

01:42:16   Offline translation may not be as accurate as online translation.

01:42:20   Siri and Safari will always process translations online.

01:42:23   So I can't figure out if this means that if you don't have on device mode turned on, that

01:42:28   it will always go to the server.

01:42:30   I mean, it's clearly they're saying that the server side translation is better than on device,

01:42:34   which makes sense that, you know, there's more computing power, blah, blah, blah on the

01:42:36   server.

01:42:38   So I haven't tested this yet.

01:42:40   I'm going to try it out.

01:42:41   I don't actually, I don't know.

01:42:41   Can I try it out?

01:42:42   Yeah, I can.

01:42:42   I have AirPods for support it.

01:42:44   So I just got someone to speak a foreign language to me and I'll try it out maybe for the next

01:42:47   show.

01:42:48   But anyway, it does have a mode where it works offline, but it seems to me based on the

01:42:52   sequence of wandering through settings that you will get better quality if you have a network

01:42:57   connection.

01:42:57   That I did not know.

01:42:59   And then finally, AirPods live translation is blocked for EU users with EU Apple accounts.

01:43:05   Reading from Mac rumors, Apple says on its feature availability webpage that Apple intelligence

01:43:09   live translation with AirPods won't be available if both the user is physically in the EU and

01:43:14   their Apple account region is in the EU.

01:43:15   Apple doesn't give a reason for the restriction, but legal and regulatory pressures seem the most

01:43:19   plausible culprits.

01:43:20   In particular, the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act and the General Data Protection Regulation

01:43:24   or GDPR both impose strict requirements for how speech and translation services are offered.

01:43:29   Regulators may want to study how live translation works and how that impacts privacy, consent,

01:43:33   data flows, and user rights.

01:43:34   Apple will also want to ensure its system fully complies with these rules before enabling the

01:43:38   feature across EU accounts.

01:43:39   Yeah.

01:43:40   So that's the theory that there is actually existing EU regulations on translation.

01:43:44   It's not a DMA thing.

01:43:46   It's not a, hey, we can't put this in the EU because otherwise we'd have to let every third

01:43:49   party app be it like, but because Apple didn't say we don't actually know the answer, but

01:43:53   bummer for people in the EU that they can't use this.

01:43:55   Although my understanding is that everyone in the EU speaks 20 languages anyway, and they

01:43:59   won't need this app.

01:43:59   All right.

01:44:01   That's an all follow-up episode.

01:44:03   Thank you.

01:44:04   As per tradition.

01:44:05   Thank you to our sponsors who sponsored this amazing amount of follow-up.

01:44:08   That would be Squarespace and Anthropic for Claude.

01:44:13   And thank you to our listeners who support us directly.

01:44:15   You can join us at ATV.FM slash join.

01:44:18   One of the perks of membership is ATP Overtime, our weekly bonus topic.

01:44:23   This week on Overtime, we're going to be talking about this cool new product announcement that

01:44:26   came out called Alter Ego and thought-to-text translation.

01:44:30   This is a device that reads your thoughts and transforms them into text, allegedly.

01:44:35   We're going to talk about that in Overtime.

01:44:37   Thank you for listening, everybody.

01:44:38   And we'll talk to you next week.

01:44:46   And if you're into Mastodon, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y.

01:44:55   And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.

01:45:08   And if you're into Mastodon, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.

01:45:18   So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-

01:45:48   this has to do with your long struggle with the new apple care thing no because you stopped that

01:45:54   you said you were done no it's different so all right what's going on i think we've all

01:45:58   had this issue at one point or another it's when you get a red badge on the settings app

01:46:05   on one of your apple devices we've all been there and sometimes that badge is legitimate

01:46:11   hey there's a new os update oh you need to sign back into your apple id for some stupid reason

01:46:16   that you're never going to be able to figure out yep um but sometimes what happens is you get a red

01:46:21   dot on your settings app icon and you go into settings and there's nothing there and the

01:46:28   received wisdom from people who've been through this many times over is like well sometimes you

01:46:32   got to look for it sometimes you don't realize that you might have to go into your apple id

01:46:35   and then you'll see something there that's something you have to do maybe you have to go into the apple

01:46:40   wallet settings maybe there's something in there maybe there's some marketing thing where they wanted

01:46:43   to watch the f1 movie and somewhere buried in settings even though there's not going to be a

01:46:47   red badge in settings you just have to show a screen somewhere in settings and that will satisfy settings

01:46:54   and it'll make the badge go away but if you're a programmer what you're thinking is they just got

01:46:59   their state unsynchronized and now this is never going to go away because something that was supposed

01:47:03   to be incremented and decremented just got incremented and then something crashed or never decremented

01:47:07   and it's never going to go away because it's just like it's like delta rot right and there's nothing

01:47:12   you can do to fix it and i've been through this many times i'm sure you two have had the red dot many

01:47:17   times as well but i had recently had my worst bout of red dot syndrome on apple devices that lasted like

01:47:23   the last two weeks it started i think on my phone and i got the red dot and i even posted a mask and i was

01:47:30   like does anyone have any ideas here's all the things i tried i tried apple id i tried the wallet i tried

01:47:34   settings i tried accessibility i tried you know i tried sub items in my apple id like i tried to list

01:47:40   all the things i tried does anyone have any new place where they can go to try to get rid of the

01:47:44   badge or new thing that they can do uh i didn't get any good responses for that but the thing is it started

01:47:50   to spread so then i started to see it on my mac like what the hell so i go into mac settings and again

01:47:55   oh and software update of course software update you always check first no software updates no anything

01:48:01   and so now i'm trying to get rid of my mac then it spreads to my ipad like it's the red dot is slowly

01:48:06   appearing a number one inside a red badge on the settings app icon on my mac on my ipad and on my

01:48:13   iphone i was like well i mean worst case scenario when i do the os 26 updates it'll probably fix it

01:48:20   but i didn't i was kind of at my wits end because normally when this comes out i eventually find

01:48:25   what screen i have to display to make it go away and this time i could not do it so i want to put

01:48:31   this segment here first of all just to let people know this is a thing that happens on apple devices

01:48:36   sometimes not just settings but sometimes an app will get a badge and there is no way to make it go

01:48:42   away and you don't know why it's there i get asked this question by family members why is there

01:48:47   a badge on this app i got sometimes i can tell them the answers because you have a software update

01:48:51   but sometimes i have to tell them after extensive uh exploration that's a bug no there's nothing you

01:48:58   can do about it and they are more bothered by this than i would imagine people would think they would

01:49:02   be because it's like of all the things that can bother you it's like but i don't want that red badge

01:49:05   to be there and you're like okay well but i just turn off badges can i just turn off badges i go to

01:49:09   the notification setting and say i just don't want to see any badges i'm just turn off badges

01:49:13   entirely well guess which app you can't turn off badges on settings cool you cannot turn off badges

01:49:20   notifications at least as of ios 18 i didn't check 26 so i this is this is the psa to say this is a

01:49:28   thing that happens again as a programmer i can imagine a million scenarios that would cause this to exist

01:49:34   and as a user there is sometimes literally nothing you can do about it to fix it now the bright side of

01:49:40   the story is even before i started out doing the 26 os updates first the badge went away on my mac

01:49:46   why did it go away no idea i didn't reboot i didn't install a software update i didn't discover

01:49:52   a screen and settings to make it go away i just came back to my mac one day and the badge was gone

01:49:58   and then it went away on ios before i did the os update i was like huh the badge has been there for a

01:50:04   week and a half it's gone now i have no idea why it's still there on my ipad as we record the show

01:50:10   but i'm hoping if i just wait it out it will go away uh but yeah red dot syndrome i feel like there

01:50:16   should be a dedicated team at apple to sort of uh spread the discipline throughout the organization

01:50:21   to say if you badge your app icon there should be some kind of sanity check on app launch like if

01:50:26   something force quits the app and launches it again to say hey let me just sanity check do i think there

01:50:32   should be any badges on this which means they would probably have to use a different system for badging

01:50:36   other than just like writing something to their uh you know user defaults or whatever but yeah this

01:50:41   is a thing and it usually goes away quickly but sometimes it's really bad so watch out be careful

01:50:47   out there red dot syndrome could come for you have you ever had one that you couldn't go away and do

01:50:54   either two of you have a secret location that you go to to clear the badge no no this doesn't happen

01:51:00   to me very often and usually it just kind of sorts itself after a while or maybe a reboot at worst

01:51:05   all right yeah that's the thing are you able to just say ah don't worry about it i'll just ignore

01:51:09   it like some people i'm not able to ignore obviously but it's a case he sounds like you'd be like oh

01:51:14   there's a badge i can't make it go away i'm sure it'll go away eventually you just don't think about

01:51:17   it anymore well i always have badgers on my phone on settings no but like okay but you know just for

01:51:23   instance like on my home screen right now the phone app has a 19 badge uh instagram has one and

01:51:30   messages has five all right well if i go to the next page i got the nest app that has six i don't

01:51:35   know what the heck those are probably spam promos from nest or whatever like i there's just at this

01:51:39   point like everything has a badge all the time everyone's so you know it's a combination of like

01:51:44   every app and company is so incredibly desperate and thirsty for every possible amount of everything

01:51:51   from you that they're going to spam the crap out of every possible notification and inbox and thing

01:51:55   they have so that's number one then so you know that's probably the nest bullshit there

01:52:00   number two i tend to not check things that frequently in certain areas voicemails and instagram messages

01:52:07   clearly and other areas like text messages i sometimes will use the unread status as a like i have to get

01:52:14   to this later kind of thing which i know is not what i'm supposed to do but everyone does it okay so

01:52:18   anyway um that's why those stick around for a while and therefore um badges on my stuff are not

01:52:24   particularly unusual you can just turn off the badges like on your phone app unlike the settings

01:52:28   app you can just decide not to show badges on the phone app you can solve that problem there i just

01:52:32   looked at my home screen and i have no badges on it so i'm i'm i do not want badges to unless they're

01:52:37   like i want them to be there to tell me like for example messages i want it to be badged when i have a

01:52:41   message like so i do want to see it but i don't routinely leave tons of unread messages and i know what

01:52:47   you're talking about like they added the feature a couple of os's ago to market as unread which is useful

01:52:51   which i also occasionally do but that's to get my attention so i don't forget about that message but

01:52:56   there shouldn't be a very high number there but the settings thing really annoys me and yes i did

01:53:00   check under warranty as well i've spent i've been spending a lot of time in the warranty thing with

01:53:04   my apple care one battle so yeah i don't know where the badge came from and i don't know why i

01:53:10   couldn't defeat it but i'm glad that it is departing me uh even again even before i did the os update i

01:53:16   haven't updated my ipad yet it is the last one with a badge on it so maybe you want to do that 26 update

01:53:20   i'll let you know if the badge goes away

01:53:21   you