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john is still coughing that's remarkable maybe i mean it's not a particularly good start to a show but john is indeed still coughing yeah
You know what? It's September, which means it's Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, which means we got to talk about St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. And we don't just have to talk about it. We want to talk about it because, hey, here's the thing. For the fifth year in a row, Relay is coming together with ATP, although, I mean, there's perhaps a distinction without a difference.
Is that the turn of phrase I'm looking for? Anyway, we're all coming together to raise money for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital since 2019. The community has raised over $2.2 million. And actually, oh, breaking news. Oh, it's actually over $3 million, which is incredible. $3 million in the last five years. That's so incredibly cool. And that's thanks in no small part to all of you.
So, hey, here's the thing. What's St. Jude Children's Research Hospital? Well, guess what? They are a hospital that does research, but they also treat kids. And St. Jude is really incredible because they don't charge their patient families for anything. The idea is...
If you're in a position where your child is fighting for their lives, then the last thing you need to worry about is, hey, how am I going to fund that fight? And so it is an opportunity for all of us, all of you that are listening and the three of us, to be a hero for someone. And you can be a hero for five bucks. You can be a hero by sending five bucks to St. Jude at stjude.org.
And that can make you a hero for somebody. That five bucks can buy something for somebody, be that treatment, be that some healthy thing to eat or whatever the case may be. It makes a difference. So the other great thing about St. Jude is that they try to do the best they can to make as good a time as they can for their patients and their families. So St.
Jude has actually got their own school, the St. Jude Imagine Academy, which is apparently sponsored by Chili's. It's their own school that spans from preschool through 12th grade for patients who will be at St. Jude for upwards of six weeks. And the staff has trainers trained in English language learner instruction, visual impairment instruction services, a librarian, a STEM coordinator.
They even have reading dogs who visit to read with the kids. I don't know how that works, but it sounds awesome.
Reading? Do the dogs read?
I don't know. Maybe they do. St. Jude has some really advanced medical practices. You never know.
They do amazing work there.
They really do. So, hey, the Academy helps patients keep up with their schoolwork back home while they're undergoing treatment, but also gives patients whatever they need at that moment. And you know what? If a patient isn't feeling great, then maybe they don't want to do math that day or whatever the case may be.
And maybe the teachers will say, all right, we'll skip math for today and we'll do something different. Or maybe we'll do math in a different way. We'll play Uno or something like that. And so they have kindergarten and high school graduation ceremonies. And if you want to see what those look like, you can actually go to a web search for St.
Jude High School graduation for a video of this year's graduating class, which is super cool. So, hey, you know, not only all that is amazing, but we are spending literally the entire episode talking about rampant consumerism. And Marco has come up with the patented and trademarked and copyrighted Marco Offset. Nice. In order to help offset our rampant consumerism.
So, Marco, can you describe the Marco Offset, please?
I sure can. It is not patented or copyrighted or trademarked. I think the only thing that possibly could be is trademarked because I don't believe in patents and copyright doesn't apply here. But I'm not even going to trademark it because it is an idea that I think should spread and I don't need to have my name be the only name ever attached to it because here's what you do.
You take your rampant consumerism that you are about to use or have already used to place orders for all these new tech products that have just come out or are about to come out, and you look at the base price of those products. So the new iPhone, say it's $999. Is that the – I don't even remember. Is it?
I think that's right. For the Pro, yes, I believe that's right.
So iPhone Pro 999. So what you do is you say, all right, well, I got an iPhone Pro. I got the bigger storage option. I got the AppleCare. I got a case. I got to pay sales tax. Whatever additional money you're paying out the door above that 999 base price of the actual product, say it's a couple hundred bucks, that becomes your suggested minimum donation to St.
Jude because that's like the add-on money that you are kind of just tossing on at the end there. The theory is you can probably afford something like that if you're fortunate enough to be buying this kind of gear in the first place most of the time.
So if that's you, if you can afford it, that is my suggested minimum donation is that incremental offset above the base price of the product or products that you are buying. If you truly can't afford it, that's cool. We understand. Donate a dollar if you can afford that. Any amount helps. But if you can afford more, we encourage it.
Yes. And speaking of affording more, we have some more breaking updates. Victor Lung has decided to one-up even packet collision with a $10,001 donation. We're playing Price is Right rules right now, which is excellent. I put Victor's stickers in the mail just a couple hours ago. And then Guillaume Morel, I hope I got that right.
I butchered it last year, so hopefully I'm making progress in a good way. They donated $13,141.59. I have no earthly idea what the significance is of the 314159. As soon as I said it out loud, I got it. Oh, see? That's movie magic right there. You got there. So anyway, we got there a little later, but better late than never. Um, so yeah, so thank you so much to them.
Um, I've been in communications with Guillaume and they said, no, I'm good on stickers because you sent a bunch last year. So thank you. Um, and then just briefly, there have been two anonymous donations each with, this is not a joke. $100,000 each. Now, that is phenomenal. And almost no one has the kind of money to be able to donate that incredible amount, let alone two almost nobodies.
But here we are. Just to be clear, though, John pointed out that we should... talk or make clear that while if they are interested in stickers, please reach out, that does not mean that you have to donate $100,001 to get a sticker. The limbo bar, if you will, is currently at $13,141.60. That is your bare minimum for stickers at this time. So
All that being said, all of that is a tremendous amount of money. If you can just give five bucks, give five bucks. It really does help. I know it probably doesn't sound like it when we're talking about $13,000, but truly, even five bucks helps. Please go to stjude.org slash ATP, S-T-J-U-D-E dot org slash ATP, and send a few bucks their way. They really do deserve it. And I'm actually going to St.
Jude next week in order to participate in the podcast-a-thon, which we will talk about on next week's show. All right, gentlemen. The rules of engagement for this are no follow-up, no soup for you, John. So we are going to dive straight into the September 24, 2024 Apple event.
And as always, I'm going to start to go chronologically, and we will immediately get sidetracked and go somewhere different. But we're going to start by saying there was a really good and really cute, very accessibility-heavy introduction video, which I liked. I thought it was very good.
Then Tim spoke briefly about Apple intelligence, and then we dove right into Apple Watch Series 10 with Jeff Williams. And it's got a new, well, all right, here's the thing. Let me stop myself. I told myself I was going to ask each of you for opening statements, and I didn't ask you nor myself for an opening statement. I would like to interrupt myself and give an opening statement.
I didn't know what to make of this event because I felt like it was twice as long as it should have been. Nothing really knocked my socks off, and I just left it saying, huh. But immediately I thought to myself, that doesn't make for a fun podcast to listen to.
So I'm going to do my darnedest to try to look at the positive side of things because me just sitting here moaning about not being impressed by everything is not very fun. And there were some impressive things in here. But I definitely felt like this one dragged on in a way that Apple events almost never do, save game demos. And I just wasn't like...
yes, by the end of it, which is very unusual for me. So let's start with Marco and then John. If you have an opening statement, forgive me for almost railroading all of us. Do you have an opening statement, Marco?
In terms of, you know, we'll get into each of the products individually. I think overall, this event focused a lot more on software capabilities than hardware capabilities. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make for, you know, a different tone of the event compared to, I think, what a lot of people expect or hope from an iPhone slash Apple Watch, whatever launch event is.
The reality is this is the, what, 18th iPhone or something? There have been so many iPhones. It is such a mature product. The annual incremental updates are not that big anymore in terms of interesting, showy new features or hardware changes. It's not that much every year. It's incremental in the hardware market.
What we tend to see, though, is interesting stuff in kind of software capabilities, backing services, things like that. And this year, the story is obviously all about AI-based features. And Apple intelligence in particular is what Apple is trying to push. And it's not just them. Obviously, the whole industry is pushing it right now with a lot of good reason.
There is a lot of excitement there and a lot of advancement there. But what Apple is doing here is... communicating to the world, look at us, we have AI too. And to most of us who watch Apple very closely, we know the asterisks on that. Like number one, we know that it's not really out yet. And even when it quote comes out in a month, it'll be
in beta and limited and only a subset of the features like we know all those asterisks we also know almost that entire story because they showed it all to us in june but the iphone event is for the entire world it's for world media it's for people who don't care about anything else all year from apple except the iphone and the iphone event It's for mainstream people to hear about this stuff.
And it also serves as a, you know, even for people who pay attention to the WWDC keynote, it's kind of a reminder like, hey, remember that thing we showed you three months ago? Well, now it's about to come out. So it's kind of a way to like refresh the excitement, even for people who pay attention back then.
So in a large way, this event is not incredibly targeted at people who follow Apple regularly like us. It is really a very mainstream event, and it's made to promote the new iPhone to the world. And usually in the iPhone event, what we see largely is –
trying to associate the new software features of the iOS update for that year with the new hardware to get people excited about the new hardware, even though many of those things are software features that aren't necessarily exclusive to the new hardware. So overall, I see why people were a little bit meh about the announcements at this event.
I actually, to me, you know, so the event went Apple Watch, then AirPods, then phones. And I think that's also the order of how interesting they are. In descending order, though. Like, I think the Apple Watch, to me, I think had possibly the most substantial update. And then I think the AirPods were in the middle, and maybe the phone is the least substantial. But...
Overall, the story here is really about Apple intelligence and software features, and the hardware is very incremental on the phone. I would say it's more than incremental on the watch, but on the phone, it's pretty incremental. So we'll get to those details, but... I am fine with how this went. I wish the phone would have been a little bit more new.
And I actually even considered skipping the phone this year. But it should be the first time ever, honestly. So I see why people are a little disappointed by that.
have a little bit uh different perspective on this uh event this year for whatever reason i mean maybe i've been like this for years and i would have the the same stance no matter what happened but like let me uh give you some framing here um as people who listen to this uh show know i like uh desktop macs with big gpus in them um i like uh sedans with stick shifts
Neither one of those things are particularly popular or in fashion, and they haven't been for a long time. Mac desktops with big GPUs, that is, not regular personal computer desktops. And so why do I see an event like this? I can understand why some people won't be like, ho-hum, whatever, especially if you, you know, repetition of stuff that we already know because we write WWC and everything.
But the way I look at it is... Every single year, Apple comes out with a new phone and they try to make it better than the previous phone in a bunch of interesting ways. They try to learn from mistakes from past phones. They try out new ideas. And then if those ideas don't work, they try something else a few years later. They try to improve on it in every possible way.
Can we make it more water resistant? Can we make the battery life better? Can we make it lighter? Can we make it a little bit bigger? Maybe we should make a smaller one. Every year, they are working on that product. And this year is no different.
I think this is actually a fairly significant year for the hardware itself, just looking at it, that it has at least one very big different thing than it had before, and they changed all the other stuff.
And I would say as someone who is out there not being catered to by the people who are making new automobiles or new desktop Macs, that you should appreciate the fact that every single year, the product you want and that we all like to use is getting better. We're not out there going, gee, I wonder if they'll ever update the product that I care about. Right?
Will they ever make another one of those? If they do make another one of those, will they make it worse or will they make it better? Every single year, Apple, A, puts out an iPhone that's usually pretty good, and B, tries to make it better than the last one and usually succeeds in some small way.
And that may seem boring until you are a devoted customer of a product that isn't getting that kind of attention. Like, say, stick shift four-door sedans with enough headroom for me. Right? Right. And you would kill for them to every year just make a better version of that or try a different idea, right? And you look back and you don't appreciate it.
Remember every year they'd come up with a new Honda Accord and I would either like it or I would not like it. And maybe the styling would be to my taste or not taste. But I said, well, if I don't like this generation, wait till next year. There'll be another one. They get another crack at it or whatever. And then that stopped happening.
And suddenly all those years where it's like, oh, it's just another Accord. All they did is like the same as the previous Accord, but they changed it a little bit. Oh, it's got different headlights. Who cares, right? Yeah.
You will come to appreciate that if someday Apple moves on from the phone and is just too busy selling, I don't know, the successor to the Vision Pro or something like that, right? And I know it's kind of silly because it's like, well, it's the smartphone. It's the most popular consumer product in the history of the planet, right? It's not like it's going to go away or whatever.
But another way to look at it, another perspective. I'm not saying people's opinions on it are wrong or their feelings on it are wrong. But another perspective is, hey, if you're interested in phones at all, isn't it kind of nice that they keep making new ones that are a little bit better? Especially if, like me, you don't get a new one every single year.
so that you can just kind of wait and see it's like oh do you like this phone does it appeal to you do you not like the colors do you want to wait and see on that whole capture button thing or whatever wait till next year you know what next year there's gonna be another thing that is a smartphone that's called an iphone that caters to people who like iphones and they'll try something different with that one and then again and then again and then again and i just want to sit here and appreciate that because that isn't always the case uh and i happens that i do like phones and i do appreciate the fact that
They make a new one every year. And by the way, this is my year to get a new phone. So I was excited by the fact that they're going to make a new phone for me to buy. And I'm going to have a new shiny thing. And it will be an upgrade over my iPhone 14 because I've waited two years. So yeah, I didn't like...
that's that's why i come away from these events like i don't expect to be blown away i don't expect to be like the vision pro intro i just wanted to see and honestly like listen to past episodes we knew almost everything that was going to be in this thing it's like it's not even surprises but it's like but yeah but now you get to actually buy them now you actually get to see how apple presents them see all their their nice product photography on their website and hear all the stuff about it or whatever
The final thing I'll say is that I agree with the people who said this presentation was weird and that Apple decided to try something different this year and really, really, really shy away from talking about anything that has a number associated with it. Not entirely. They did talk about, oh, the CPU is X percent faster. We'll talk about it when we get to the individual products.
They normally are more spec heavy than they have been. And it's not because they had anything to hide or there's anything shameful. They were just like... I remember when the watch section was done and we were wondering, so are there two sizes or one? It's not a secret. They're not hiding it. And it's not like, oh, we don't want to be too techy. Don't tell them there are two sizes.
There was a distinct lack of... And I don't know if that's good or bad. It was just weird for us because we're making a show where we're going to tell you about all the technical details. So we have to look them up. And it's like, couldn't you just told us? Right. But it's an interesting strategy, as Marco said, as the event, the one event that most people in the world watch.
This is Apple's opportunity to talk to the whole world. And maybe they just thought they were boring people with a bunch of stuff that's interesting to us, but not relevant to them. even the fact that there are two Apple Watch Series 10 sizes. People don't care about that. They'll just go in the store. They'll see there's two of them. They'll pick the one they want.
It's not important enough to even include in the presentation. I thought that was weird. I don't like it personally, but maybe it turns out to be the best way to communicate to the rest of the world. We'll see.
And so we saw that accessibility and other intro video. We saw Tim talking about Apple Intelligence and we get to Jeff Williams and the new Apple Watch Series 10 design. And I am on a every two year plan for watches. This is my year. We talked about this in the last couple of episodes. And going into this event, I thought I was going to get an Ultra 3.
And we're going to talk a little bit more about that. But I watched the unveiling of the brand new design of the Apple Watch Series 10 that looked... like a thinner version of the existing Apple Watch, which is fine.
The Apple Watch really makes the 911 look radical from generation to generation.
And once again, the rumor mill about watch redesigns, it once again proves to be mostly wrong.
Well, no, but they got this one right. Everyone said that the 10 was not going to be a big redesign. It was going to look like the existing series.
Yeah, but only recently, like only a couple months ago, they were saying it was going to have a whole new band attachment mechanism with magnetic bands and like all these, they're going to change the size more.
Yeah, that was more like more than six months ago. Like the rumors solidified about halfway through the year that this is what we were going to be getting.
Although the rumors also said that both sizes would be getting substantially bigger, and that's also not true. But both sizes did get bigger, just not substantially. Yeah, by like one millimeter. They were saying they were going to get rid of the small size. It turns out the watch rumor mill is, I think, the least reliable part of the Apple product rumor mill.
And the pattern continued into this year as well.
I think it was pretty good because within several months of the event, we knew it wasn't going to be a radical redesign. We knew they would have bigger screens that went farther to the edge, and we knew they'd be bigger than their predecessors. Yes, they got the details and the magnitude wrong, but we knew all of that. So when you're waiting to see this, here's the all-new design.
I'm like, wait a second, did they get it wrong? And then they started showing the new design. I'm like, no, they got it right. It just looks the same as the other ones.
So yeah, so it's basically the same as the other ones, but thinner. And as much as I'm kind of grumbling and snarking, genuinely thinner sounds great to me because the current Apple Watch is a little bit chonky. And I love the idea of having something thinner, which flies directly in the face of the whole intention of getting an Apple Watch Ultra 3. Because that thing is chunkier still.
But in any case, it is thinner. It is a little bit bigger. It's 30% bigger than the Series 6. And they said at one point that you can even see an additional line of text and messages and news of all things, which I was like... Sure, guys, whatever. Has a slightly wider aspect ratio. And then they explained that it's the first ever wide angle OLED that Apple at least is releasing.
And it's 40% brighter when viewed at an angle. And this is one of those things to try to look on the bright side. Hey, that's a good pun. To look on the bright side, this is one of those things that I think is Apple at its finest, where they take a thing that is not great, but not an actual paper cut, and just make it better.
Because, yeah, off-axis viewing of the current Apple Watch is not stellar, but it's never been to the point that I was like, oh, this sucks. But I tell you what, I'm pretty excited that my next Apple Watch, because guess what, it's not going to be an Ultra 3, that my next Apple Watch is going to be 40% brighter when viewed at an angle. I'm here for that, and that's pretty great.
So screen tech wise, obviously, we've had the rumors for years that Apple was trying to make micro LED, micro OLED displays for the watch, which is instead of having the organic light emitting diode type things, it's more like individual light up.
leds in there anyway um it's very difficult to do that uh we thought hey you're gonna if you're gonna do this weird screen technology start with a really small screen like the watch apple was developing this technology itself with like funding research into this display technology itself and then a year or two ago apple said ah never mind we're not doing that anymore they came up with nothing they stopped that pursuit they said we were unsuccessful
And then after that, all the rumors for the watch have switched and said, well, it's not going to be a micro OLED anymore. It's going to be plain old OLED. And that's, of course, what we got. Now, so what is it about this OLED that gives the better viewing angle? Apple didn't say...
But the only technologies that I'm aware of that can give you a wider viewing angle on OLED are either QD OLED, which we talked about ages ago when we were talking about televisions, which is you don't have a white subpixel, you don't have a polarizing layer, the color is closer to the surface of the screen, and the viewing angles are better.
It's why the viewing angle of a QD OLED television is better than an OLED one. You get less color shift, you get better brightness, yada yada, right? And the other technology, which is the most likely one, is micro lens arrays, which is what LG uses because they don't have QD OLEDs.
which is you put a bunch of little tiny lenses on top of your existing regular WRGB OLED, and that increases the viewing angle. And when I say a bunch of lenses, I mean a bunch of lenses, as in each individual pixel, like subpixel, the red, green, and blue subpixels, have hundreds of lenses in front of them. When we say micro lens array, we mean micro lens.
We don't need one lens for each pixel, one lens for each subpixel, hundreds for each subpixel. And this technology is what LG uses on their high-end televisions and has for a couple years now. And guess what?
It increases the viewing angle because the light that's coming out of the pixels and going through all the polarizers or whatever hits that micro lens array and shoots off in all sorts of directions instead of just mostly going straight. And I think LG might be the supplier for these things.
Anyway, as soon as someone gets one of these watches, someone who's a display technology expert will put it under one of those little microscope magnifier things. You can tell when you have an MLA OLED. You can actually see the little micro lenses when you zoom in on one pixel.
And if so, that will be super interesting because the only places I've heard of micro lens arrays being used are on television sets.
and so now they're going to be used it's on your tv and also on the tiniest screen on your wrist the one on your watch um and the great thing about mla is it's essentially a passive technology you just put those lenses on there and you get more brightness and better viewing angles for the same power output so again ideal for the watch not as cool as micro oled but you know that didn't work out so if you're waiting for micro oled we're going to be waiting a while longer
For what it's worth, Quinn Nelson did a really good video on his reactions to the Apple event and spent a not insignificant amount of time on this and specifically theorized the exact same thing that you're saying, John.
Did he have it confirmed or no?
No, I don't believe it was confirmed. I think it was all suspicion, but like you're saying, but you two landed on the same conclusion, which is that this is LG tech. I believe Quinn said that it's LG that's providing the displays for the Apple Watch. I can't tell you if that's right or wrong, but I'm inclined to believe Quinn said
And so anyways, he was theorizing that because LG is using it on their TVs, it's probably the same basic technology here on the Apple Watch.
Yeah, and by the way, the MLA, as I described, it's a pretty good technology. If you can't do QD OLED, just adding one more layer to your display, it makes them much better. So when Apple eventually gets OLEDs into their MacBook Pros or whatever, I know they're doing the tandem OLEDs on the M4 iPad Pro and everything, but I do wonder...
If we might see some MLA tech coming to MacBooks in 2026 or 2027.
In any case, so yeah, we've got this better screen. The cases are up to 10% less weight. It's 10% thinner than the Series 9. And then I believe it was Marco got a wish that you had been looking for. It is polished titanium that replaces stainless steel. Because Marco, you were a big fan of the titanium watch in the past, right? Or am I making this up?
I was. No, this is like my wish list for this Apple Watch included, please bring back titanium. Now, the way they did it was not quite what I was imagining, but I will happily take it. So what they've done is they've replaced stainless steel with titanium that has a polished finish, not a brushed finish.
So the old one had a brush finish that would form linear reflections because it was brushed in a line. This one appears to be just polished the same way that the stainless steel has been polished. So it's like a shiny chrome-like look on the outside. I actually prefer the old one, I think. I haven't seen this one in person yet. I prefer the look of the old one, I think.
But the main advantage of titanium, as we see in the phones, is it's much lighter than stainless steel for the same type of product. So, this gets it a lot closer to the wonderful lightness of the aluminum models than it used to be. Again, I think I would prefer a more, like, you know, brushed kind of finish, but hey, I'll take this. This is good. And this is also, like...
They've also added a bunch of new colors as part of their new kind of metals refresh here. On the aluminum side, they added a jet black, which looks a lot like the iPhone 7 jet black, according to pictures I've seen. Again, I haven't seen any of these in person yet, so we'll see how they look in person.
But that's interesting to have a shiny jet black in the aluminum side for the very first time, because in the past, you'd have to go to steel to get shiny black. So that should be really cool. Rose gold and silver there in the aluminum. And then the titanium, they have an interesting color set in titanium. They have gold, cool. Slate, which is basically space gray.
They've been making space grays since the beginning of time. And they've been in many different grays, but it's basically very dark gray. Then they have natural titanium in most of the models, but then the Hermes model has a exclusive silver color. Now, I am very curious to see those two in person, because how different is natural from silver? Is natural just a little shade darker, maybe?
Like, that's what I would expect, because I think that is the, quote, natural color of titanium, so... We'll see what that means in practice. But either way, I am very happy to see Titanium is back in the regular series Apple Watch. That is great news to me. I have already ordered one in Titanium, and I'm looking forward to getting it for many reasons.
But that alone, just bringing back Titanium is a big deal. That being said, there was there was there were a couple of things about the display before we leave that that I thought were interesting. So, of course, as John mentioned, the wide angle viewing angle, I think that that actually will matter a lot on the watch.
But also the display now updates once a second when it's in like the the always on sleeping mode. It used to be once a minute. So now it's once a second. So now they've actually updated a lot of the watch faces to have like a ticking seconds hand like quartz watches do, which is interesting.
And they have a couple of designs like they showed off, but that should overall make the sleep mode like a little bit nicer. That's kind of the theme of this display update is sleep. you know, the wider angle makes it a little bit nicer. The once every second updating a little bit nicer, the slightly bigger screen, a little bit nicer, like all those things just make the watch a little bit nicer.
And so I'm, I think this is actually a substantial update to the watch. Even the 10% thinner, that is something that you will see and feel more than you might think from just hearing the number 10%. It doesn't seem like it's that big of a deal, but you notice with that kind of stuff. Also, they all weigh less than the outgoing models. So you also will notice that.
I believe they said aluminum is about 10% weight loss and titanium is 20% less than the steel it's replacing. So those are substantial savings. Again, like last year, and we'll get to this, but last year we were all very happy about a roughly 10% weight reduction on the iPhone. I think it was even less than that. But you notice that. And so on the watch, I think we will notice these changes.
These will be, I think, very nice to have. And that's kind of the theme of most of the Apple Watch update, the Series 9 to 10 update at least. Most of the update seems to be a pretty nice-sized collection of...
reasonably minor individual things that i think will all add up to a very nice overall update to the watch um one other thing i wanted to call out because i don't i don't think you have it on your list here oh you do never mind you have a bolded later um you can now play music and podcasts directly through the speaker on the watch
I am really genuinely very excited for this. I don't think this is something I will find myself doing often, but there's definitely been a handful of times that I've wanted to do this and I've been irrationally grumbly about the fact that I couldn't. So this is very exciting for me.
Do you hate your battery, Casey?
Yeah, well, apparently I do.
Yeah, I mean, and to be clear, like, this will destroy, like, it destroys the battery on the phone. Like, playing out the built-in speaker for sustained amounts of time is a substantial battery cost.
So, you know, don't buy this expecting to do this on a regular basis, but it is nice that you can do it sometimes instead of having to pair AirPods to it just to hear, like, you know, if you, like, you know, are just trying to listen to a podcast as you walk around or something. So that's nice. That's a pretty substantial fix.
Um, also other things about it, like the, you know, they have a, uh, a quote larger and more efficient charging coil and that makes it the fastest charging Apple watch ever. That's also very interesting. Again, as, as people move more into using these as sleep devices that you're wearing most of the day, charging speed matters a lot. Uh, so that's also a great thing.
Um, so this all, this all sounds really good so far. I was very excited to get this update to the watch. Um,
Even the Series 10 also gets the water depth gauge and the water temperature sensor, which were previously exclusive to the Ultra, which I think means that the Ultra, I think the only significant sensor difference that the Ultra has over the Series 10 now is the Ultra has the dual frequency GPS and Series 10 appears not to.
oh yeah i forgot about that as far as as far as i can think i don't think there's many other gains the ultra has now besides like the more rugged physical design um but you know so so if you were getting the ultra for for a lot of reasons people would were getting the ultra before i think they can now get a series 10 and and be very happy with it yeah so before the event did you think that you were in the market for a watch at this event did you expect to be buying one
I wasn't sure. I mean, most of the Apple Watch updates are very minor. And if you look at the Series 9 compared to the Series 6, say, or the Series 5, it's substantially better. If you compare, very much like I was saying with the iPhone earlier, but the iPhone being largely incremental every year,
If you compare the Apple Watch this year, like the Series 9 compared to the Series 8 is not a significant update, like at all. If you replace my Series 9 with a Series 8, I don't know if I would ever notice the difference until I tried to double tap and realized it was even less reliable than usual. Yeah.
But that would be a hard thing to notice, whereas if you replaced a Series 7 with a Series 10, you will notice the difference immediately and vice versa. If you replace it the other direction, you will definitely notice that difference. So they do make big changes over time. This is bigger than I expected.
Besides, the only thing that would be bigger than this would be like a major physical redesign, which I think this is a moderate physical redesign. It's not nothing. It's not everything. I'm actually glad I can still use all my bands. And, in fact, they even tweaked some of the bands.
So, of course, you have the standard new colors for the silicone bands and new colors for all the bands that have colors. But they even have new finishes for the steel bands. So now this is a little tricky. You could be forgiven for assuming that the new standard series Milanese loop and link bracelet are now made of titanium. They're not.
Those are still made of steel, but they are made to match the titanium colors of the Series 10 watch. So they're now made in slate, gold, and I guess natural, most of them. So if you get a Series 10 watch and you want the Milanese loop or the Apple Link bracelet, both of which are great bands in different ways, you can get those now that match the titanium finishes of the Series 10, which is nice.
And then the Ultra... didn't get a new watch at all but it did get new color a new black color finally and it has a bunch of cool new bands there as well including its own Milanese loop with that cool big latch thing I'm actually really curious to see that in person I I think that actually might be a fun band to have on the regular Series 9, but it might be a little too chunky. We'll see.
Series 10, I mean. But anyway, it looks like overall, this is actually a really big update for the series. The series line of watches, it's a really big update for the bands, and it's not an update for the Ultra or the SE. But, I mean, it's a pretty good update. I will say, though, not updating the Ultra...
Only two years into it is surprising to me because as far as I can tell, just like from looking around the world and hearing people who like Apple products, it seems like it's pretty popular. Like I see a lot of Ultras out in the world, a lot. Like on non-nerds and on people who I know are not doing ultra sports or ultra activities. They're not even living an ultra lifestyle.
They're just people who like the way it looks or who want the battery life or whatever. The ultra is very popular, it seems. So it is kind of odd not to update it to like the new, you know, the S10 SIP and some of the new features that the Series 10 has. It is kind of weird. I wonder what the story there is.
Like, do they, is it kind of like the Mac Pro and Mac Studio where they're like, eh, we can skip a generation. We don't sell that many of these. Like, I don't know. Again, I see a lot of them out there. So who knows? I don't know what happened there. We'll see what kind of update cycle the Ultra gets, but it is odd to skip one so soon.
The S10 is another place where the lack of numbers kind of hurt us, because they're like, oh, it's got an S10 SIP, blah, blah, blah, and they said a bunch of stuff about it, but it's like, okay, so is this the S9 rebadged? Is this actually a new thing? I think the S9 had a shrink, but I think the S9 went to, like, 4 nanometers. Is the S10 3 nanometers? Like, they didn't really...
talk about it in enough of a way to say whether this is going to be significant and it's a factor because you're what you're really wondering is like how what are they done with battery life like does the series 10 does the big series 10 have ultra like battery life i doubt it it's so much thinner it probably doesn't but then again the ultra doesn't have an s10 in it so maybe the s10 sips more power and you know so then apple's claims about the battery life i think were not
radically different than the Series 9. So we'll see, but Apple tends not to say much, if anything, about the little processors in their watches to the point where, as we've pointed out in a couple past years, they've incremented the number without actually really changing the chip in any significant way, and I can't really tell if that happened this year.
that's that's what people really care about with these things like there's the physical appearance and marco covered all that stuff and i think it actually is better this year i'm i personally like shinier better than matte finish and hey they're all shiny now and assuming the finish is adorable that's great um but aside from that you know they're all one millimeter bigger than they were before they're shiny they look nice the screen goes closer to the edge and also has the battery life right that's what people care about is it comfortable does it look nice is it fashionable and does it last all day and
I'm assuming this will strike as good a balance as the 9 did, maybe even better. But the fact that Apple didn't really brag about it, like, this is going to last you so much longer than the Series 9, I feel like they're just probably, like, maintaining. And it's probably good enough, but...
This is not it's not like the ultra where I think that's one of the reasons why you see a lot of people who have the ultra. They hear from their friends who got one. This is so much unlike the non ultra watch, because if I miss charging it for a day, it's not the end of the world. And that is not something that happens with any of the regular watches. Nope. So we'll we'll we'll see. All right.
And, you know, and obviously that's a side effect of it being chunkier. Hey, there's room for a bigger battery. But they went the opposite direction when they made it thinner. So. We'll see how it turns out. And for the one millimeter size difference, like I know that doesn't sound like it's a lot, but with these little watches on people's wrists, a small change can actually look significant.
That's why I'm kind of happy that it's thinner, because maybe that'll make up for it being bigger. Underscore put a little diagram of trying to show the size comparisons of like older Apple watches. And if you take a really old, like the 38 millimeter series one watch, that entire watch will basically fit inside the screen of a 42 millimeter series 10.
So we've come a long way from that very, very, very tiny Series 1 watch, just a minuscule thing with terrible battery life. Now that whole watch fits inside the screen area of these new ones. So I think they're going in the right direction.
It's obvious that people kind of like phones, and like Marco said last episode, people like bigger screens on their watches, and Apple is obliging, not just with bigger screens, but also they made the watch bigger, but then within the size of watch, push that screen as far to the edges as you possibly can.
You know, when I watched this event, like I'd said earlier, you know, I thought I was getting an Ultra 3, mostly because I'm just so sick and tired of worrying about battery life. And then somebody, and I believe it was Marco, although every time I say that it ends up being John, but I'm pretty sure this time it was Marco, said to me, you know, what you could do is just get the bigger watch again.
And that would probably give you more than enough buffer to stop stressing about battery life all the time. Because I don't necessarily begrudge I don't begrudge putting the watch on the charger every night. I would love to do sleep tracking, but I mean, whatever. It's not a big deal to me. And I'm perfectly happy charging every night.
What, what chaps my bottom is that with my current series eight, two years on, I'm not making it to nighttime unless I top it up at some point during the day.
I think you just got unlucky with your battery, which happens. Not every battery is the same, but we get a lot of people writing in saying that they don't have this problem with their watch. Normally, you get two kinds of feedback. One is like, yes, this happens to me too. My Series 8 also doesn't last through the day, but we didn't get any of those.
I don't think we've got all people saying I've got a watch and it lasts me through the day all the time. My wife, she's grand. She's got a Series 9, but she had a Series 8.
for a year and it it was fine by the end of the year uh maybe either you just got unlucky or maybe you have like some runway process that's killing your battery because every once in a while my wife will say oh today my watch battery ran down i don't understand why but then it goes back to normal and i never hear about it again so i think you just might have lost the battery lottery on that particular watch
It very well could be. I did look at the battery health and it was reasonable. I forget exactly what the number was. I want to say it was like upper 80%. I will say that I typically do a 30 to 45 minute workout. And by that, I mean like the watch is in workout mode for 30 to 45 minutes at least every day. And so I don't know if that makes a difference. But nevertheless, I am hopeful that...
The Series 10, what with it being a two-year newer battery, a brand-new battery, will make a big difference. And so what I've done is I have pre-ordered a very unremarkable Wi-Fi-only Series 10 big-size Apple Watch for myself and basically the same thing for Erin except small size because that's what she prefers.
And I'm hopeful that that will be at least good enough for a year, preferably for two years, because I generally – I don't think we've ever gone less than two years – On an Apple Watch upgrade, but maybe I'm wrong. And so that's what I've ordered. And I really set out to order an Ultra 3, but there wasn't one.
And then Marco was in the back of my head, you know, just saying the big one will be enough. The big one will be enough. The big one will be enough. And I think, Marco, I hope and I think you're probably going to be right that I think that will be the difference I need.
Yeah. Look, I'm not going to toot my own horn unnecessarily. No, I'm definitely right about this. The big regular series watch is the watch that I think is right for you. For reference, my Series 9, one-year-old, heavy use, wear it almost every day. I worked out today for a little over an hour in workout mode. It is now almost 9 p.m., and it's still a 65% battery.
Oh, God, that's bananas. That's absolutely bananas.
And I use Always On. I'm using it all day, and I don't charge it at all during the day. So, yeah, I mean, the battery life on the big one is fine. And for whatever reason, I did wear the smaller one for a few years there in the middle, and I always thought that was bad.
decent battery life but it wasn't amazing especially after the watch was more than a couple years old you know you would start to notice it would have trouble getting through the day if you were doing workouts that's not the case with the big one now and there's different workout modes too like if you are say you know running outside so it's using the gps and if you're especially a playing music while running you know playing music on the watch while running with gps and workout mode that's going to be probably the worst case scenario for battery life
Even that, the big one, is fine. Like, you know, the big regular series watch, I can do an outdoor run for an hour, listening to a podcast over AirPods the entire time with the watch, maybe even using cellular during some of that time, and it will still get through that day. It is fine. Like, I will go to bed and it will not be in low power mode. So...
If your wrist supports it, I would strongly recommend getting the larger regular series watch for most people. Again, if you are okay with the size, fashion-wise, and I think most people can pull it off, honestly. You have to be pretty petite and also care about that kind of thing to not be able to pull off the middle-sized Apple Watch, which is what this is.
and for most people, that's not going to be a concern. Most adults can easily pull off the big one, especially because large smartwatches are in style.
Even on people whose wrists are otherwise fairly small relative to the average adult, say, the bigger watch, even the Ultra, most people can wear whatever size they want, and no one bats an eye at how it looks or whether it, quote, fits them or not. You can wear whatever size watch you want. Fashion is all over the place on that, and big smartwatches are very much in fashion.
All right. This is probably in no small part my fault because this was a big watch year for me, but we have got to hurry it up a little bit. So I'm going to try to speed run the rest. We skipped some health stuff. So there's sleep apnea detection, which is extremely cool. I don't personally suffer from this yet, as far as I know. How would you know? But how would I know?
And I feel like almost everyone I know seems to have sleep apnea these days. So this is very cool. It is not cleared-
And by the way, the way it reportedly does it is based on like the movement of your wrists and not by, say, measuring your blood oxygen, which is good because.
Yeah, because the blood oxygen sensor has been turned off. As far as we know, it is physically there, but it is disabled because of patent disputes.
Disabled only for U.S. customers. If you're in Canada or any place else in the world, you get blood oxygen measurement, but not inside the U.S. Yep.
This has not been cleared from the FDA or equivalent organizations in other countries, but they expect clearance very soon and availability in 150 plus countries or regions this month, allegedly.
Talking about the sleep apnea thing, right?
For the sleep apnea thing. Then, yeah, like you said, no blood oxygen measurement in the side of the U.S., which is a bummer. We talked about size differences. $400 or $500. You can already preorder it. It'll be available on September 20th.
um we already talked about the ultra 2 so let's move on to airpods 4 with kate bergeron uh this has the h2 chip a new acoustic architecture the smallest case ever and optionally which this was not made clear or i missed it during the presentation Optionally, you can get noise cancellation on the non-pro AirPods for the first time ever.
Oh, no. This is... Oh, my God. I loved this naming clumsiness. So here's what it is. So this is actually two different products. There's AirPods 4, and they introduced another version of AirPods 4, and they didn't announce the name until the end. And during the entire introduction of that part, they kept calling them these AirPods.
So the introduction line was, for those looking for even more performance in this style of AirPods. And the entire rest of that section, she kept saying these AirPods, you know, these AirPods have, you know, these AirPods have this, these AirPods have that. The Apple Watch case charging compatibility in case speaker in this charging case for these AirPods.
And then eventually they unveiled the name as AirPods 4 with active noise cancellation. which is one of those two Thunderbolt ports kind of names. So I would suggest, since the actual name is so comically clumsy, we should call them what they called them, these AirPods. So we have AirPods 4, these AirPods, and AirPods Pro and AirPods Max.
So here's the question. Is the hardware different in the noise-canceling version and the non-noise-canceling version?
Well, so we at least know the case is different. This charging case... Mm-hmm.
But I'm saying the things that go in your ears, are they different?
Noise cancellation requires more microphones typically than just like one for receiving phone calls. So my guess is they probably have additional microphones. But I don't think we know that yet.
Don't you think the regular ones have multiple microphones for just like voice isolation and the other voice features? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, either way, like microphones aren't expensive. Like this is not like what I'm saying is like economically, it might make more sense for Apple to make one AirPods for a piece of hardware.
Like why make two different ones where even if one of them had to have more microphones, why don't we just put the more microphones in all of them? It's simpler. It simplifies everything, inventory, everything. And that this is purely like a software interlock where when you pay them $50 more, they enable the noise canceling features. Obviously, you know, I fix it.
We'll tear these things down and let us know. But I have to say, this weird thing of like AirPods 4, there's the regular one and the one that costs $50 more that has more features, right? And yes, they give you a better case with it and everything, which is more sort of like market segmentation.
But this smells so much like, you know, when they say like, this is one computer and if you pay more money, you can get, you know, more RAM in it or whatever. I don't know if these pieces of hardware are different. And in the end, it doesn't really matter because I don't think it's going to be particularly easy to buy an AirPods 4 and hack it to enable the noise canceling.
But if the hardware really is identical, that will be something. Because then it's like... Like, why are you... It's not like the cheap one is, like, $99, right? The cheap one is still $130, and the expensive one is $180. And, like, I don't quite understand.
And especially since they're... Like, the case feature, like, having a speaker that, like, you know, so you can find your case when you lose it, like... that should kind of be an $130 one too, because that's a useful feature. That's not like a pro feature. That's I lost my case feature. Whereas noise canceling, I can see.
But anyway, we'll see when somebody cracks these things open, if they can slice it open and find out like, Is there any hardware difference whatsoever between them? Because if there's not, this will be another strange hardware, I think, from Apple, kind of like the 12 gigabytes of RAM and the 8 gigabyte iPad Pro.
But anyway, speaking of me with stick shift sedans and... Hold on, real-time follow-up real quick.
The technical specs for the AirPods 4... The size and weight for the earbuds themselves are not distinguished. The weight is the same for both flavors of AirPod. However, as Marco, I think, had mentioned, the case is, what is this, like two and a half grams heavier for the AirPod?
Yeah, because it's got the speaker in it.
Right, exactly.
And the Apple Watch charging coil.
But the earbuds themselves, the dimensions are allegedly identical.
Yeah, I don't think it tells anything because these things are so lightweight that even if the hardware was different, who's to say it wouldn't weigh the same? We'll find out when they tear them down. Yeah, we'll see.
I mean, the processor in them is just branded H2, like every other H2 AirPods. We don't really know... Is the H2 the CPU, or is there a difference? Is the H2 just the Bluetooth? Who knows? And then we also don't know, is there more than one kind of H2? Maybe they're binned. Maybe it's two little tiny cores, and some of them only have one core active. Who knows? They could be higher clock speed.
In the features that are in these AirPods, these features have... More computational load to do some of those features. Things like ANC to begin with, obviously transparency mode, they have adaptive audio, they have conversation awareness. They have most of the core audio processing features of the AirPods Pro. So
That's going to be substantially more processing needs than the standard AirPods 4 that don't have any of those. But what gets me, the standard AirPods 4 does have voice isolation on phone calls. So that's also kind of one of those features. So... I don't know. It could be as simple as a different case and a couple of software-enabled features. Who knows?
But regardless, they now have, you know, most of the features available in the AirPods Pro are now available in, quote, this open-ear design.
yeah as i as i was saying this is i like the my sedans of my desktop max with big gpus i also like the airpods that don't go in your ear holes and generally those that design does not get the fancy features it's been two generations of airpods pro getting all their fancy features and their transparency mode and all this other stuff and the plain old airpods that i like eh
No, you don't get that stuff. And so I'm excited this year that they brought most of those features to the ones that don't go in your ear. Now, granted, the fact that they don't go in my ear means the noise canceling is not going to be as good for obvious physical reasons. They're not literally sealing my ear hole, right?
And Apple itself says that the AirPods Pro have, quote, two times better noise canceling. And I believe it. Like, I get it. But I just don't like things in my ear holes. So I think it's great that I get all these features that I've been hearing about. Everybody rave about on the AirPods that they like. And I'm going to get them in the kind that I like.
Now, the possible downside is they did subtly change the shape of these AirPods. Uh, they've done it, what, there's been three different shapes. There's the original AirPod shape, there's the one that I have now, which is AirPods 3 or whatever, and then there's these new ones.
And every time they change the shape, there's a possibility that the thing that used to fit in your ear nice and comfy is not going to. The main hope I have is that the AirPods 3 have always felt a little...
big in my ears compared to their predecessors not uncomfortable and i'm fine with them or whatever but they always feel a little bit big and these look like they might be a little bit slimmer so i'm hoping these will be even more comfortable the one thing we didn't get is that the pros still have is a little slidey volume thing still a pro only feature oh because because you do have the the squeeze the stem to play pause thing right but not the volume thing that's right the volume thing is very difficult to trigger
Yeah, market segmentation, whatever. But I'm excited about these. I've already pre-ordered them. Wait, did you get AirPods 4 or these AirPods? I'm getting AirPods 4. Again, when you go to buy it, it says, what do you want to buy? You say, I want to buy AirPods 4. And then it's just like when you're configuring RAM. It's like, do you want the one with the 10-core CPU or the 12-core CPU?
That's what you're picking. The only difference is the options say AirPods 4, AirPods 4 with noise canceling at $50, right? That's how the checkout process works. So it is very kind of like, these are the AirPods 4 and there's a $50 more expensive version that has a bunch of new features. And like, even if the noise canceling stinks and doesn't work and isn't useful at all, I'm just happy to have
new AirPods with, you know, all the features that you expect, a new thing to have. The sound is a little bit better. Obviously, they'll have fresh batteries. The case will have a little beepy thing in it.
The one thing I'm worried about the case a little bit is that they changed the Bluetooth pairing button from being a physical button to being a capacitive button, which obviously makes it more durable, simpler to manufacture, yada. I understand why they did it, but...
you know some when when your airpods are being ornery there's something about having a physical button that you can hold down to let you know i'm really holding down the button for the required three seconds or whatever to go into pairing mode and now i'm just going to be putting my fingers vaguely somewhere on the smooth front surface of the thing and hoping i'm hitting the capacitive section
To go back a quick step, I completely meant to mention earlier in the Apple Watch segment that they made a point of saying that they are preferring or they're prioritizing non-air shipping. And I really want to know, did they already send a whole batch of watches with a boat a month and a half ago? I think yes.
I think that's how they do things generally.
No, no. But I mean, look at iPhones, for example. As far as I knew, anytime I've paid attention, those things fly oftentimes directly from China to your house. Obviously, they're hub and spoking their way from across the planet. But my point is, it's not like the beginning of the trip is noted as Louisville, Kentucky or something or wherever UPS's headquarters is. That is UPS or FedEx in Memphis.
It starts in Shenzhen or whatever, and then you watch these things march across the planet and they go to Anchorage and they go to somewhere else and so on and so forth. I can't help but wonder, did they ship a whole buttload of these via a ship over a month or two ago to get them ready for release this coming Friday? I really am curious.
I mean, now that they have the pizza boxes to update them, maybe that's part of the reason why they did that, honestly.
It could be.
And also, if they can get that far ahead of the game, like there's a reason that Apple keeps saying, and this product is carbon neutral, and they haven't really said that about the iPhone yet. I'm not sure that there are enough phones ready early enough to be put on a boat, but I can imagine there being enough AirPods ready early enough to put on boats.
Well, I was talking about the watch, though. That was when they said it was the watch.
Or the watch, even. I feel like the watch... The phone is the hardest one because they have to make the most of them, and it pushes the technology the farthest, usually. So, who knows?
Keep in mind, also, the sales cycle of these products is the whole year and possibly beyond. So even if they have a lot of air shipment for these first few weeks as they're pretty new coming out of the factory, at some point, that sales rate is going to...
you know, dip below the production rate by enough that they can start sending big batches of them by boat, and it'll be fine by the time they get here, you know? But also, one other thing on the carbon neutrality of the watch, as we went back to there anyway, I forgot to mention that one, I think, significant change this year.
So last year, they introduced the first carbon-neutral Apple Watch configuration, but it was only like you had to get, like, I think it was just the aluminum one with just certain bands. So what they said this year was now... any Apple Watch in any finish, quote, can be carbon neutral.
So it depends on what kind of band you pick, but it's new that any of the metals, like all the Apple Watches with any of the metal choices, can now be carbon neutral with certain band choices. I think that's great. They have expanded how many of their products can be carbon neutral.
And they're indicating even in the store interface when you pick out things, they're telling you which choices are carbon neutral. So again, they're pushing that goal forward. I think that's a very laudable thing that they're doing that they're actually making real progress on.
Yep, yep, very much so. So apologies for going back in time for a minute. Good news is we have a lot to talk about with regard to the AirPods Max. There are five new colors, midnight blue, purple, orange, starlight. They take USB-C. They're still 550 bucks. You can order them now. Moving on, AirPods Pro 2.
Actually, I want to say about the AirPods Max, people being disappointed in this or whatever, it's like, look, obviously their successor is not ready yet, right? So your alternative is no update or just put a USB-C port in it. And if they didn't update it, everyone would have said, they should have just at least put a USB-C port on it. Well, they did.
And if you already have one, and you don't want to buy a new one just to get the USB-C port, fine. But they should put a USB-C, while we wait for the AirPods Max 2, which presumably is going to come someday, and hopefully will be better in a bunch of ways. In the meantime, yeah, get rid of the stupid lighting port. The sooner the better. And it's not like, who's going to upgrade to these? Nobody.
They're exactly the same as the ones you have. I'm not going to tell you not to buy it, but honestly, don't buy a new thing just to change the port on the bottom. It's ridiculous. Just hold on to them until the 2 is gone.
I don't know, man.
It's not that ridiculous. For people who have never bought the AirPods Max, though, they're buying it for the very first time. Guess what? They get a USB-C port and it's better for them. So I endorse this update, even though obviously if you're waiting for the AirPods Max 2, this is not your time yet.
I mean, obviously, they really didn't have time to fix all of the AirPods Max's glaring shortcomings since it's only been out for four years.
Hey, as I was saying, sometimes if the product that you like isn't the one that gets updated every single year, you got to be patient.
So, you know, when the AirPods Max came out, pretty much everybody said, Okay, these are pretty good in certain ways. They are a little heavy and uncomfortable as a result of that. They are very expensive, and the case they came with is stupid and garbage and very inconvenient, like that weird kind of bra-shaped case. It's a bad case in so many ways. So what they've changed is...
We got new colors and a USB-C port, and we've addressed none of the major flaws of this product.
But they weren't trying to. The successor will potentially attempt to address those shortcomings, but this is not the successor. This is just that we need to get products with lightning on them out of our lineup, and so they have.
and it makes it an ever so slightly better product than the one that it replaced not enough for anyone to buy a second one but for anyone buying their first one now they don't have to deal with lightning i just they couldn't even have like given us a different case like that's one of the most egregious problems with these is that that dumb case and like after four years they couldn't even revise that even a little bit
I don't want them to waste their time building a new case in like what is probably the last year of this product's life. You know, just concentrate on the successor. Get that done as soon as you can. Hopefully it'll be next year. Oh, my God.
I mean, I don't know. I, I see both sides of this. Like I am slightly disappointed by this. We're more than slightly disappointed by this update, but I was never in the market for these anyway. Um, but it's better to have something than nothing, I guess.
So yeah, like I said, for the people who are buying their first one, just get that lightning thing out of there. Like they need to do it with the magic mouse. They need to do it with all the keyboards and just like they need to eventually get to that stuff.
think the fear is that and this is a very founded fear based on apple's history the fear is that this is going to be it for the next four years like that they they touched it and it's like all right we touched it it's it's updated new banner and then that's it no that's not this is this is clearly a sort of like try to stem some of the pain while we work on the successor right or they just can the whole product line but i think there's going to be a successor and
Again, think about the Mac Pro people. Think about how long we wait for things to happen. You just got to chill. You just got to be patient. You just got to believe. I think this is literally the Unix touch command. Like, all right, we touched it. Now it counts. Even the HomePod. Those people are like, are they ever going to change the HomePod? The big HomePod? Is it ever going to get better?
It looks like they're discontinuing it. And then what happened? they did come out with another big home pod after it was dead.
But it was also a lot better. It still had a long way to go. But the second one was significantly updated.
What I'm saying is you never give up hope. They waited so long that the product was dead. You couldn't buy a big home pod. You're like, this is it. It's over. There's never going to be another one. And then there was another one.
Oh, my God. But the AirPods Max are a better product that's more successful than the Home. But anyway, if I was an AirPods Max fan and I was waiting for this update, I'd be pretty mad. And, John, I think you're optimistic. You can make a bet. Add it to your calendar. I don't think there's a chance in hell the AirPods Max get another update at least for two years.
I don't think I would bet two years, but I would bet five.
You know, like I can tell it's not a high priority product, but it seems like they still are going to make another one, but I would not bet on two years.
Three? You want to go three? It's a little harder on me, but I think I'll go three. All right, let's do it. Three years. I'll take that bet. I'm saying not before three years from now. You're saying before three years from now that we'll get an update.
Three is, like, I would have been more comfortable with four or five, but I'll do three because it's more interesting. Yeah, because it's a bit of a risk for both of us, I think. Yeah, exactly.
God willing, I'll see you all on September 11th, 2027. All right, AirPods Pro 2, short, short version. No updates. Well, no hardware updates. No hardware updates. Big, big software updates. We're going to... Skip the first one. I'm going to come back to that. But they said that they're working with prevention awareness and assistance. We're going to skip prevention just for a moment.
For awareness, they're doing a hearing test that has been, quote unquote, clinically validated. It takes about five minutes. Basically, you just tap the screen when you hear things, and it makes a personal audio profile we think.
think we're pretty sure that's right yeah so here's the thing we've talked about this on the show many times in past years where there are third-party apps on the app store you can see them listed in the health app that you can download that will do this they will give you a hearing test and then they will create an audio profile based on how well you can hear
certain frequencies in the headphones you're using at the time you do the audio test. And then it lets you save that audiogram to your phone. And then you can say, hey, phone, from now on, when I'm using these headphones, apply this essentially equalizer setting to all audio that comes out of my phone so that my stupid ears can hear it better. the best way possible.
So if your left ear has a real hard time hearing like 10 kilohertz, it will boost 10 kilohertz to your left ear only when using these headphones with your phone when playing any audio. I did this back on the show, whatever it was, a year or two ago.
I made an audiogram for myself with some third-party app that was terrible, and I installed it on my phone, and I've been using it ever since when I listen on my AirPods. Using that audiogram profile for every piece of audio I listen to, I recommend it. But the one thing that I hated was what third-party app should I get? And I have to say they were all terrible.
Some of them were weird and scammy and had some other thing they were going on. The other ones, the UI was terrible. So thank goodness.
apple is saying forget about the third-party apps this is part of the phone now part of the os if you buy airpods pro 2 or whatever and you have a phone you will be able to just do this on the phone with what has to be a better interface than these third-party things i think this is great i think every single person who has airpods pro 2 and a phone and the new os and everything should do this it's real quick to do and what you get and don't do it like when you have a cold like i do now because you're hearing me all messed up
When you're healthy and your ears are working at their optimum quality and you have a quiet moment somewhere with no background noise, do the five-minute test, save the audiogram, and I think it just syncs it with all your health data, and then apply the audiogram and all the audio coming out of your phone will sound better. Highly endorsed.
Yeah, this is awesome. For them to be leaning into hearing health and to be taking advantage of the AirPods Pro's amazing abilities here, this is a very big deal for a lot of people.
And it gets better because the prevention awareness assistance. So there's going to be clinical grade over-the-air hearing aid update this fall. Over-the-counter, thank you. No, I think you're right. Over-the-counter and over-the-air because it's going to be a software update. We're both right. Hooray. Por que no los dos. Anyway, this fall in 100 or more countries and regions.
So you take that hearing test we just talked about and it boosts the specific sounds you need in real time. and they expect to receive that clearance soon. So let me repeat that. You can basically use these as hearing aids starting this fall.
And I don't know, luckily, I don't have to know yet much about this, but my very limited understanding about hearing aids is that they are all impossibly expensive, or at least here in America, impossibly expensive. A lot of them, if not almost all of them, are rather trash, and it's just not very fun to get yourself a set of hearing aids. And now...
You can just go to Best Buy or Walmart or the Apple Store, or not now, I should say, but soon, and pick up a set of AirPods Pro 2, do the compulsory software-related things like the hearing test, and then you have clinical-grade, over-the-counter hearing aids in your ears this fall. That is unreal, and I very, very much applaud Apple for doing this. This is extremely cool.
And to be clear, the hearing test thing, there's two sides of that. When they do that, they're measuring how well each of your ears hears different frequencies. And they do two things with that. One, they can change the audio that you're playing, your podcast, your music, whatever, the audio playing from your phone.
They modify that audio with an equalizer to make it sound more like it's supposed to. But the second thing is, with the hearing aid mode, sound coming in from the outside world hits the microphones on your AirPods and then gets replayed inside your ear, also applying that audiogram in sort of hearing aid mode.
And in terms of like this versus like quote unquote real hearing aids, obviously one advantage that real hearing aids have is they're very often much smaller and more discreet than AirPods. But of course, the main advantage that AirPods have is... people might already own them, right?
Or if you're worried about having a hearing aid or you're like nervous about it or embarrassed or whatever, just try the feature. There's like the barrier to entry of like, am I the type of person who needs to go and get a hearing aid? A lot of people don't want to go over that barrier. But am I the type of person who either already owns or can buy AirPods at the Apple Store?
Yeah, much lower barrier. You don't buy that and say like, oh, I'm buying a hearing aid. And then once people start using them, But if they find that it is useful and people say, you know, we love that you love your new hearing aid, dad, but you're always wearing your AirPods. It looks kind of weird.
Why didn't you just get a quote unquote real hearing aid for 10 times the price that is much, much smaller and that won't fall out of your ears as easily and the charge lasts longer and yada, yada, yada. And so I feel like this is a great example of Apple sort of.
lowering the barrier to entry, getting people over the hump to do a thing that they wouldn't have otherwise done, even if it turns out that AirPods are not sufficient for their needs or eventually become insufficient for their needs or are not as good as a real thing or whatever, just because it starts them down the path. Just like the sleep apnea stuff and all those other things of like...
it's not as good as going to a doctor. It's not as good as getting a sleep test or whatever, but people who are like afraid to find out or don't want to sleep in a weird place or do a sleep test or trial or whatever, but they do own a watch and they will say, okay, I'm going to wear my watch when I sleep just to see. And what does it say?
What it basically says is maybe sleep apnea, talk to your doctor, right? And that is the first step to getting them over the hump to saying like people wondering, is there something wrong or whatever? Maybe this will give them a little push to say, oh, actually, the watch totally says that it's sensing sleep apnea. Is it right? Is it wrong? Go to your doctor and find out.
Versus I'm just going to sit here and fret. Do I have sleep apnea? I don't know. I don't want to find out. I don't want to have a CPAP, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is one of the great strengths of Apple Health stuff.
Not that it solves all your problems, but that it lowers the barrier to entry for people who are afraid of health stuff, whether it's afraid of getting into exercise, afraid of asking if they need a hearing aid, afraid of going to the doctor and asking about sleep apnea.
You just buy your bunch of Apple stuff and it will sort of nudge you in that direction with small, vague pieces of information to sort of push you along the path.
Yeah. And to be clear, like if any of you out there are hearing this and you're like, well, it probably doesn't work that well. If you've never heard transparency mode on AirPods Pro. It is way better than you think it can be. Even if you've heard transparency mode or pass-through mode on other noise-canceling headphones, trust me, so have I. Go read all the reviews.
Everyone agrees the AirPods Pro transparency mode is way better than every other pair of headphones on the market, including, yes, the brand new, you know, whatever new Sony XM series is out that year. Yes, even better than that. Even better than the AirPods Max when they were new, let alone now. The transparency pass-through mode on AirPods Pro is remarkably good. It is stunningly good.
So they can do things like this. They can have really interesting and useful and amazing audio features for people's regular hearing that are built upon transparency mode and the amazing thing they've built there. And this is just one of the many things, you know, I've mentioned in the past how I now I'm now using AirPods Pro 2 as my hearing protection when I go to concerts because it works.
And this is another feature they talked about is hearing protection.
This is now this is the prevention of prevention, awareness and assistance. And so, yeah, there's now a hearing protection mode or otherwise known as the Marco mode.
Yeah, exactly. And so I actually, we'll talk about in the after show, I went to a concert this past weekend and I wore the same AirPods Pro in the same part of the audience in the same venue that I was in a year ago. And a year ago, that was the first time I tried them as hearing protection in a concert. And I gave a whole report on the show about how it worked pretty well.
It worked better than any, quote, concert earplugs that I had available and that I had tried. Way better than all those. And it was pretty great. The only problem I had noted last fall when I went to the Phish concert was that...
if I would like turn my head a little bit, like side to side, sometimes they would kind of get unbalanced because like I wasn't, I was no longer like aligned perfectly with the PA speakers, like evenly on both sides. You know, like if I, if I'm like looking to the left or right, um, and it would kind of like make the sound kind of unbalanced and wacky. And it was like a little bit imperfect. Um,
This past weekend with the iOS 18 and whatever latest versions of AirPods firmware there are, this past weekend it was flawless. It was just perfect. There was no imbalance. There was no pumping effects. You get compressor pumping effects if you're in audio terms. None of that. It was just perfect. It sounded exact. And at one point I was like, the guitar sounds a little bit low in the mix.
I wonder if that's the processing. And I took them out to see what it sounded like without them. And first of all, it blew my ears off. It was so loud. But I also noticed like, no, the mix is the same. Like it wasn't messing with the mix. It was just making everything evenly quieter. And all I was doing – this was not any new feature that they're about to add.
This is the feature that's already there. It's just transparency mode with what is currently called reduced loud sounds, which I believe is on by default now. So they already, in the last year, have made massive strides before this new hearing protection version even launches. And so to have that now on by default and available in all listening modes – That's incredible.
And all of the idea of using AirPods Pro as hearing aids, that's not only incredible for so many reasons, but also that's totally plausible as a thing that they could be very good at within the range of what they can correct for. They can't correct above a certain level of decibel needs or whatever, and that's fine. There's obviously, quote, real hearing aids for that.
But this is going to be great for a lot of people. The only thing I would request, if they're going to lean more into this, which I love that they are, building on what John was saying earlier...
wearing airpods pro when you're trying to like talk to people people don't know that you can hear them and it's it's not like this is just something that people are going to figure out next year next year or in six months like we've had airpods for a while now society has not accepted the idea that you can just talk to people wearing headphones because you on the outside you can't tell whether they can hear you or not see also the vision pro weird i think like you can't tell if they can hear you or not so you kind of are hesitant to talk to people with headphones in
And I, as an AirPods user, will frequently – will almost always take them out when talking to people because, again, like even though my podcast is paused or whatever, they don't know that. So if they want to have AirPods Pro be able to take more of these roles – the smaller and more discreet they can become, the better.
And this doesn't necessarily mean they have to be, you know, super tiny in your ears with the thing that loops behind you, like the way many hearing aids are designed. But even just something as simple as if they were available in something closer to skin tones rather than bright white, like even just, heck, even just give us a black version, but just like something other than bright white.
Cause that's one thing when I'm wearing them at a concert, I'm very aware that like, this is very visible, right?
like this like i would i would love to have those be a little more discreet skin tones would be perfect if not you know just something a little bit darker maybe um and certainly if they can investigate maybe a stickless design uh for this kind of use that would also be interesting um that obviously starts you start changing the product a little you know in pretty big ways once you do that but we know it's possible because literally everyone else does it that way
So there are different suggestions I would make in terms of the physical design and colors to lean into this kind of feature set.
Beats has stickless, basically stickless ones. Don't they use the H2 in Beats as well? And they also come in black.
Literally every other competitor, everything is stickless except the AirPods. I was going to say Beats isn't a competitor. It's also Apple. Well, but they let Beats explore different designs and different features and everything. But yeah, so overall, yeah, a discrete design would be great in the future, or at least different color choices.
But overall, what an amazing feature set for the AirPods Pro 2. They were already incredible headphones. They've already replaced all of my portable headphone uses, yes, including on planes. They've replaced every other time I use headphones that's not at my desk. They're just so incredibly good. And this now expands their use even more, makes them even better. I am so happy to see this.
I would never have guessed that Apple would do this. I would have thought that Apple would not want to get into another medical area that might require certain approvals or things. But nope, they did it. And I'm super happy they did it.
Yep, couldn't agree more. This stuff is all very, very good. And proud isn't the word I'm looking for, but I can't think of a better word. I'm really proud of Apple, even though I have no relationship with them, really. But I'm proud of Apple for doing these things because they're not easy. And in a lot of ways, they're not terribly glamorous, but they're important.
And you don't often see a big, huge company do things that are important unless they're pretty much entirely self-serving. And yeah, there's some self-serving aspects to this. But this just seems like the right thing to do. And you don't see that a lot from big companies these days. So I'm here for it. I really dig it. We are sponsored this week by Tailscale.
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Thank you to Tailscale for sponsoring this week. All right, 90 minutes in. Let's talk iPhones. Good grief. Honestly, I don't think we're going to have trouble. I don't think there's that much to talk about. Yeah, well, I think you're mostly right, but we'll see what happens. I told you that I didn't want to be old man shouts at clouds, so I'm going to take the happy spin on the iPhone 16.
Those colors look so good, and I am so impressed by them.
And what is the unhappy spin? I love this phone.
No, the unhappy spin is me pissing and moaning about how I don't have it on the iPhone 16 Pro. That's the unhappy version. Oh, I see. The happy version, though, is these things look so damn good, and I am very jealous because I'm going to end up with an iPhone 16 Pro. But this year, and I'm not the first person to say this, this year more than any other year, I have been...
extremely tempted by the iPhone 16. And honestly, and I think Quinn made this point in his video as well, this is a really strong year for the iPhone 16 non-pro. It's really, really an impressive year for it. And if you were ever wondering if you really needed to go pro, and if you have a little more self-awareness than I do, because I will...
Always and forever by the pro because I'm a fancy lad. This is genuinely such a good year for the iPhone 16. And gosh knows these colors are so good. They're so good. I'm so jealous of these colors because they're so great.
I wish they had done the backs like the iMac backs. You know what I mean? Like have the sides be the same, but have the backs be richer. But yeah, I mean, my main complaint about the colors, I mean, despite the fact that I think the black and the white look really good, the black and the white take two slots that could have been other interesting colors. You know what I mean?
Like where's the yellow? Where's the purple? Where's the red? Yeah, that's true. But still, pretty good year for colors. I mean, all these colors leaked, obviously, although this is one of those cases where Apple's product photography of the colors looks better than the leaked shots of someone just taking a picture of them or whatever.
But probably the truth will be somewhere in between when you actually go to the store and look at these. But yeah, there's not an ugly color in the bunch, that's for sure. But the most important thing about these phones physically-wise is, and I know we talked about this, the vertical cameras, right?
So they're aligned for better spatial audio or whatever, or better spatial video and spatial photos.
but realigning them in that way minimizes the camera mesa in a way that we haven't seen in years because when they were in an angle it was always like there's a square mesa and it's got a bunch of crap on it and it's a smaller square than the pro square but it's still a square and now we've gone back and now it's like hey you know the phone that doesn't have as much camera stuff it's
That has a capsule. Back in – what was the last one they did? Like the XR maybe or the – which I don't remember which – or maybe the XS was the last one. They've used this arrangement before. And granted, the cameras are still really big. But because they're just vertical, they're so skinny. The Mesa is so skinny compared to what it used to be.
And it makes what is a smaller and lighter phone that only has two cameras – get the advantage of only having two cameras, which is you don't have as much camera stuff bulging out of the back of the thing.
And then, obviously, as we'll get to in a little bit, the other side of all this is this is a year when the non-Pro phone doesn't get last year's processor, doesn't get denied the cool new feature. Like, if you were ever thinking of buying a new phone and you don't typically buy the Pro phones... The 16 is a good year to buy because you get the current SOC, more or less.
We'll talk about it in a little bit. You get the fancy new feature, which is the camera control button. We'll talk about it in a little bit. And you get a bunch of nice colors. I'm a big fan of the 16. I'm not going to buy one.
Big fan, though. Same. Absolutely same. I would rock the snot out of the ultramarine phone. I think Aaron would adore the pink phone there. And the other colors, teal is also very good. The white is very white and the black is very black. But the three colorful colors, and I agree with what you said earlier, John, about, you know, it's too bad there's not like a yellow or something.
These colors are so good. I'm so, so into these colors. So very much so. But anyways, moving on. They say that it's got a 50% tougher than first generation ceramic shield. So I believe that's the front glass, right, that they're talking about.
yeah but this is another one of the like the first generation streaming show wasn't like 10 years ago yeah i don't know which that's i said a lot of things they would say like second generation and i'm like what generation were they on before right is it has it been second generation for five years um anyway yeah they usually they will usually compare it to much longer than one year ago it'll usually be at least two years ago and possibly more because it makes the comparisons all sound better
We'll find out in case he gets one because the same ceramic shield is on the Pro, so you can compare the scratches.
Yeah, right, exactly. 6.1, 6.7 inches for the 7.7 inches for the iPhone 16 Plus. It now gets the action button that the Pros had last year. It gets the fancy new camera control button. I'd like to come back to that in a minute, please. Yes. It's got the vertically stacked lenses like we discussed. It's got the same chip, basically. It's the A18, and we later found out.
Not the same chip. Not the same chip.
So we found out later that there's an A18 Pro, so there is a difference, but it's largely the same.
But it doesn't get last year's chip. That's the important thing. Right. And that's... I mean, we've had years where the non-Pro phone gets last year's chip, and we've had years where it gets the same chip, and we've had years where it gets almost the same chip. And this is an almost the same chip year, as we'll get to when we get to the Pro phone. But the point is, it's not...
the a17 or the a16 or any other like it's not a chip that you've seen before it is a new chip tailored for this phone and that's exactly what you want
yep uh and so i don't think we need to go into the specifics about the chip because we'll probably end up covering them in the pro phone but suffice to say it's almost the same um there's improved cooling in both non-pro and pro and so i guess this was john maybe maybe it was me somebody put in here this is directly directly from the so they said stuff new they said new cooling stuff about both phones this is a quote from the event video
We updated the main logic board, centralizing the chip placement and optimizing the surrounding architecture. We also added a thermal substructure to dissipate heat made from 100% recycled aluminum. As a result, the iPhone 16 delivers up to 30% higher sustained performance for gaming. I'm here for this. This is excellent.
I mean, basically just sounds like they did a better heat sink than they had done previously. And they have a measurement to say, what does it do? We get better sustained performance for gaming. Thumbs up. And then again, the non-pro phone is not known for overheating, but the fact that they did something to improve it and have some measurement on it is good. So it's interesting.
So on the pro phone, they expanded a little bit on this, which might be related. On the pro phone section, they said that they, quote, maximized thermal capacity with a new aluminum frame with a, quote, graphite-clad aluminum substructure that provides up to 20% improvement in sustained performance on the 16 Pro. So it sounds like at least – in both phones, they talked about thermals.
And in both phones, the euphemism they used was improvement in sustained performance. But what that really means is heat dissipation. That's what that means, cooling. And so whether this base 16 has the graphite-clad aluminum substructure, we don't know that. No, it doesn't. They would have said it. Probably, yeah.
But either way, the thermals are better in both phones, and that's good because on the 15 Pro at least, I don't know about the regular 15, but on the 15 Pro, thermals took a pretty big step back. So this is good to see.
We had Craig come back out and do a reintroduction of Apple intelligence, which does look good in theory, but none of it's coming.
Just a rehash of WWDC, which I, again, I think they had to do because the people who are watching this did not watch WWDC, you know, for the most part. Yeah.
But, and this is like, look, Siri looks good in presentations too.
Like, we have no idea how this is going to be yet. Right. But still, they still got to get the word out. Here's a bunch of stuff that we're promising and we'll all see how it turns out. But it is important to get that word out because this is their chance to talk to the world about this stuff that we all know about, but they don't.
One quick note from the Apple intelligence section for those of us who still have young children of which that's just me on the program. I did think it was funny that they did the Australian cattle dog as the, what kind of breed is this? And that is, I think, or may have been construed as a subtle bluey nod, which I'm very much here for. So that made me have a good laugh.
But anyways, then we move on to the camera and let's talk camera control. So this is a Sapphire crystal where there's many different things that you're doing with this one camera control. And again,
Before we get to the things, I've seen a lot of reports of people who were there at the event and they got to hold the phones and use the camera control, which is what we had been calling in the months prior to this event, the capture button. But Apple's calling it the camera control. Talking about whether this thing moves in or not when you press it. I've seen people saying, oh, it does move in.
I've seen people say it doesn't move in, but it tricks you into thinking it does. I've heard people say it's just force-sensitive. And it amazes me that... I guess maybe you didn't get enough hands-on time, but no one just did a close-up and said... Because if it moves, you'll be able to see it. Even if it moves a millimeter... you'll be able to see it move that millimeter when you press it.
So I do not know the answer to this question of whether it moves or not, which I think is a testament. Nilay Patel said specifically that it definitely moves. But is he right? Well, yeah, they showed it.
I mean, if it moves and there's also haptic feedback, that is an interesting combination that I don't think Apple has ever done before because they either do haptic feedback and it doesn't move or just it moves and that's all there is to it, right? And so this is going to presumably give...
haptic feedback when it's partially through its actual travel to indicate like a a half press or will it push back against you as in like force feedback kind of to make it feel the the half press thing and everyone kept comparing it to you know real cameras with their half press or whatever
As far as any camera that I've ever used, any quote-unquote real camera with the half-button press or whatever, I don't think there's any magic in them. It's just literally a mechanical button with a spring underneath it that has a lot of travel, and you push it halfway through the travel.
And it's a very natural thing to do, but at least I haven't owned a camera that has tried to do that with the help of haptics or whatever. So I'm very curious to try this button because... you know, it's the big deal. This is the big feature on this phone. I think this is much more significant than the action button, which was simply just another button that you can press.
This is another button that you can press that's very big, that's also touch sensitive, that has haptic feedback.
Yeah, and I think that, so the camera control, and that's literally like, they kept calling it Camera Control or The Camera Control. It seems like this is a kind of loosey-goosey name, whether it includes the or not, whether you're supposed to capitalize it. But yeah, it's The Camera Control. Anyway, it's better than these AirPods. At least it has a name.
Anyway, so this button, I think this is great. I think this is... What's interesting is that if you look at the rest of the phone's updates, they're mostly, again, software and incremental improvements. The camera control is the update for the iPhone 16 series.
And the action button. Because remember, it got both in one update. Last time, you didn't have anything. This time, it gets the action button and also the capture button or the camera control thing. So this is just a great year for the 16. They look great. They rearranged the cameras. They got all the features. They have a good SOC tailored to it. Good year.
That's true, yeah. Sorry, I jumped ahead to the Pro. But yeah, because they both have the camera control, which is great. And it looks like... So what's interesting about the camera control is that it has all these different modes. It isn't just another action button. It has much more input potential than that. So it has...
It has the concept of like a light press because it looks like it's kind of like a touch ID button where it has that metal ring around the end. And so it can sense when you're just touching it. They also said that it appears to use optical sensing from below to see like where your finger is on it and maybe how much contact it's making, like how hard you're pressing.
So what you have is you have soft touch gestures. And you have a push in gesture and you also have swipe gestures. And so what they've done with this is all sorts of of fun new controls that I think will actually be somewhat intuitive. So one that we skipped over is visual intelligence, where it's like it's like the humane pin thing of like, what am I looking at? You know, what is this?
Do something with it. And that is you just hold it down. And that actually makes sense because visual intelligence is like Siri in a way, and it's below the Siri button. And it's like, okay, you hold down the sleep-wake button for Siri, and now you hold down the button below it for visual Siri. I think that actually makes sense.
And then, of course, the camera, click to launch, click again to capture. While you're in the camera mode, you can use the swipey gestures and the light touches to control different camera settings, zoom, stuff like that. That, I think, is going to be pretty great. We will talk about case implications in overtime today. Yeah, that's going to be rough.
But other than that, we'll get to that in overtime. But I think this is going to be a fun new input. I don't think it's going to be like... I absolutely must have this right now because all of those functions are available in the UI on the screen. But it will be easier and better in certain ways.
One way, for instance, that it will be better, besides the fact that you don't have to reach that button at certain angles and stuff, one angle you don't have to reach it in is if you're trying to use the back camera to take a picture of yourself. You don't have to reach your finger around and guess or try to hit the volume button where you're reaching your hand around in a weird way.
It will make that a lot easier.
Oh, that's a really good point.
Yeah, and there's a whole bunch of context like that where the camera control, I think, will just make life a little bit nicer in a lot of different occasions. So I think it's going to be a really big deal. And again, it's on both iPhones. I think it's going to be a really big deal. The only thing that I've seen some people say, like, is this going to be the future of input for all apps?
not for the foreseeable future because while there is an API for it, which I think is great to have a day one API for third party camera apps to have all those same controls, that's great. Problem is that API only works if the app is in the foreground and running an AV capture session, which means only camera apps basically while the camera is open are going to be able to use it. So like,
I couldn't, for instance, use it to offer, say, a speed control for Overcast. I can't. It will not work for that because I don't have an active capture session.
Well, you could do a thing where you open a session somewhere off in the background, like they used to play Silence to get access to APIs, and then you get rejected by AppReview. Yeah.
Also, I don't think that works in the background. But yeah, that would definitely get rejected. So Apple has restricted the use of that to only apps that are performing capture in the foreground. So I don't expect to see most apps use that for anything, really, because you kind of can't. But...
Even if it's only ever used in camera apps, even if you only ever use it in Apple's built-in camera app, I think that's going to be really great. And again, it's not going to be massively life-changing, but it's going to be a nice quality of life improvement. So that, I think, is the feature for this year's iPhones.
Besides Apple intelligence, we'll see how that works, when it actually comes out, how good it is. But for right now, the camera control is the feature this year.
And it's on both the regular and the pro. I do worry a little bit about how much stuff they put into the camera control because I can kind of imagine a regular person getting into one of those modes where they're swiping through like exposure and zoom and stuff and not understanding where they are and they just want to take a picture. So one of the things I'm going to test when I get it is like,
can you get yourself accidentally into one of those things where you're messing with controls when really you just wanted to take a picture and then get out of it by essentially saying i'm just going to press this button real hard and i wanted to take a picture now and i hope it will i hope it'll say like all right forget about all those menus forget about you changing your depth of field or zoom or exposure you press real hard i just stop everything and say that means take picture so take a picture um because honestly they added so much to this to this one button all
like on day one, that I worry that it might be too much, especially if it's possible to get it into a mode or whatever. But we'll all try it when we get them and see how it is.
There's a pretty good series of short videos on Apple's website for the iPhone 16. I don't think I can link specifically this section, but they have... What effectively amounts to a tutorial, which is four like very, very brief videos that are like three or four seconds each that show how it works. And it does make sense having never used it. And I think I'll adjust fairly quickly.
But I agree with what you're saying. Also, if you look at the keynote at 58 minutes and about 18 seconds on the YouTube version of the keynote, they show that cutaway we were talking about earlier. And to my eyes, they are very clearly showing this thing depressing a little bit. So I do think it moves, as Marco had said.
I thought the same thing until I saw 50% of the reviewers who held them in their hands saying, well, the button doesn't actually move.
Well, I mean, we'll see, but I'm fairly confident. So anyway, so yeah, so I am super excited about the camera control. I think it's going to be really great. Is it the sort of thing where I must have this and, you know, any other iPhone that's ever existed is trash? No, of course not. But I think it does look really slick. And
I love, like Marco said, that there is what appears to be pretty robust APIs for third-party use available day one. I'm very excited about that. And I think the only other thing with the 16 non-pro is that they've announced that there is now 25-watt MagSafe charging with an updated charger. Qi 2 can do, I think, 15 watts, if I'm not mistaken.
And their bespoke MagSafe chargers can now do 25 watts with these new phones if you also get a brand new MagSafe charger, which is pretty slick. That's pretty cool.
Didn't they also update the cameras as well?
Yes, pretty substantially, actually.
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I totally skipped over that.
Yeah, the non-pro iPhone 16 now has 48 megapixels on the main sensor. It's not the same camera. It's not the same lenses or sensor as the pro. Is it the same as the 15 pro, though? That's what wasn't clear to me.
no the pixels are not as big and the the lens is 26 millimeter versus 24 so it's not it is does not have the same specs as the 15 pro or the 16 pro 1x camera but anyway it's a step up from the 15 for sure yeah so yeah they're doing they they brought the pixel binning trick where you know they the 12 megapixel sensor becomes 48 if you ignore color divisions and temporarily figure stuff out like so it it it they brought over that
trick to increase resolution and the process that goes with that they also a bigger jump should be the new ultra wide now has variable focus macro capability larger aperture bigger pixels so the ultra wide has taken a significant step up for the non-pro phone and that and the new arrangement of the sensors now allows it to take spatial video and interestingly both phones now get the ability to capture spatial photos which
which for some reason the 15 could not do, the 15 Pro could not do spatial photos. It could only do spatial video. Now both of these can do spatial photos as well. Oh, one other thing. When we were still in the 16 section, they briefly talked about emergency SOS and all the satellite features. They talked about how they are expanding the satellite capability to more countries.
They have just totally not mentioned SOS pricing over time. I believe, aren't we now to the point, aren't we now at the two-year mark?
Or is it just one year? I think they extended it. Didn't we have a follow-up item a while ago where it's like, oh, they extended the free thing to be even longer?
like they're just pushing it off yeah i think i think the answer is for most of this stuff they're probably just never going to charge because as we talked about last time like if somebody's like stuck in a mountain and dies because they didn't buy their iCloud plus whatever for satellite connectivity like that's not good and apple knows that and so it seems like they're probably just never going to charge for this but they haven't had the you know the the the data or whatever to be able to commit to that yet
So we'll see how that goes. But anyway, yeah, Emergency SOS and Find My is expanding in its coverage area.
Great. Yep, that is good. All right, iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max. This was Greg Joswiak at night for whatever reason. It suddenly became nighttime when we did this section. 6.3 and 6.9 inches. Nice. The smallest bezel ever, or some people like to pronounce it bezel.
I love, by the way, the way that Jaws phrased this. He said, you know, even larger screens, quote, we did this while minimizing product growth. Right. That's his euphemism for the phone. We didn't make the phones bigger. Well, rather we did. We minimized how much bigger they got. So now we've learned like, you know, over time, we occasionally pick up little Apple-isms.
You know, every company has corporate speak and custom corporate vocabulary that drives outside people nuts when they hear it. And, you know, we hear a couple, like sometimes they'll leak out into public space. You know, we could tell that obviously around the forestall era, using the term blow away as an adjective would seem to be one of the still happening.
That's one of those things that infected the company back then and still going. So, you know, you hear about you hear certain, you know, certain apple isms will occasionally leak out. And now we know minimizing product growth, which is not about sales of a product, which sounds like a bad thing.
No, it's minimizing product growth, which is minimizing the amount that we make the iPhone bigger, which we've tried to fit this bigger screen in.
So thanks, Jaws. That's a fun one. They took the previous phone and they made...
tiny bit bigger screen and then shrunk all the phone in around it they minimized in beginning there use that one apple uh and so like i mean i i don't actually want the pro phone to get any bigger the non max pro phone to get any bigger i was kind of annoyed when i think my current one my 14 pro was bigger than the previous pro phone that it replaced by a little bit
If this continues, we get a carflation situation where you wake up one day and your non-Max Pro phone is like 17 inches or something. Like, we need to draw the line somewhere. But the increase is very, very tiny.
Well, I think we are already seeing phoneflation over the last few years. If you look at the size of the current, quote, normal-sized phone, which is, I mean, now that there's no more mini, I guess, these are the smallest phones Apple's making. The size of the, quote, small phone in Apple's lineup is probably the size of the iPhone 6 Plus, if I had to guess, right?
I mean, somebody will do the math on that. We're getting close. It's certainly heavier and thicker. It's much heavier. Phoneflation and sizing has already been happening. This is not a new thing, and it isn't a question of whether it's happening. It's absolutely happening.
I know. They've done it for, what, five years now, at least, with the regular-sized phone. They've been slowly, slowly creeping up. I guess since the 7 is when it really started, right? The 6 and the 7, that was like, okay, this is the size of the phone. And then they said, you know what? From now on, every year, they're just going to get a little bit bigger. And they do it by such a tiny amount.
You're like, ah! I can tolerate it. I remember going from the 7 to whatever I replaced it with. Maybe it was the 10 or whatever. It's like, okay, well, the 7 was kind of small now that I look at it. So it can get a little bit bigger. And then the next one I got was a little bit bigger too. I'm like, do they have to make it bigger again? I guess it's okay. And now I'm like, all right, please.
You got to lay off a little bit. So we'll see when the phone arrives. I absorbed the size difference in the 14 Pro and I've essentially accepted it. Um, maybe I'll accept this change too. It is a smaller difference, but I'll have both phones for some period of time so I can hold them up to each other and see what the difference is.
I do think this may be pushing up against the limit, but what am I going to do? There's no mini for me to buy and I wouldn't want to buy it anyway. And I... As much as I love the 16, that 5X camera is getting me on the Pro. If you're wondering, why are you buying the Pro? Do you really need that Pro processor or whatever? We'll talk about that in a minute. No, probably not.
But I do really want those three cameras because I use my phone as a camera a lot and I've been coveting that 5X and this is the year. But we should talk about the weight. Poor Marco. He's lifting all these weights. He's working out. But the extra grams they added on these phones, I don't know if he's going to be able to take it.
Remember how nice it was last year, one year ago, when the 15 Pro came out and it had saved some weight? And we were all talking about how nice those phones felt compared to the bricks of the previous ones. We've now lost about half that gain. Well, it's like dieting. A lot of the weight comes back. That's literally what happens.
So here's the numbers on the things. The 14 Pro was 206 grams. 15 Pro, 188. Look at that. What a great diet. 206 to 188. 16 Pro, 199. So it's not pushing back into the 200s. It's not as heavy as the 14 Pro was, but it has gained some back. More than half. The 14 Pro Max was 240. The 15 Pro Max was 221. 16 Pro Max, 227. Barely moved. I think the Pro Max did a good job maintaining.
But yeah, the regular Pro. And I do wonder where that weight has gone. I don't think it's that graphite sheet that's really making the difference, right? But, you know, bigger battery. That's another thing like Apple is another weird thing about like with Apple's lack of numbers and stuff.
I think based on seeing the insides of these phones and all the rumors that these all these phones, all the 16, 16, they all have a slightly bigger battery, although 16 Pro Max is up for grabs based on the rumors that we talked about ages ago. Right. But Apple didn't really brag about the battery life.
If you look on their site, they'll say, yeah, you get an extra two hours of video time and so on and so forth. But in the presentation, there was no graphs, no numbers, not even a Bezos chart saying best. They did say the Pro Max is best battery life ever or whatever.
But like I'm holding out hope that part of the weight and size gain on the 16 Pro that I'm going to buy is the bigger battery because the like the logic board thing and everything else in there is shrinking over time to make more and more room for For larger now, mostly L-shaped batteries. So I'm hoping that's a benefit. And I'm kind of surprised Apple didn't really.
Well, they did say the batteries are both larger. They just didn't say how much larger. Right. They just didn't say capacity-wise. The iPhone 16 is 170 grams. So again, 16 Pro, $199. Plain old 16, $170. If you want a light phone, get the one that has one fewer camera and is smaller and is made of aluminum.
And much better colors. This is still made of titanium. Grade 5 titanium, which, John, tell me, grade 5 must mean it's like one of the best grades, right?
Is 5 the top grade? Is 5 the highest number? Dr. Drang tooted with a list of 37 grades of titanium.
and i don't think it's i don't think there's an order like two is better than than one you know like i don't think they get better as the number goes up you can look at it yourself it's basically just like how much nickel how much you know aluminum how much like just it's basically just what are the allies what are the combinations of materials i don't know how they come up with these things but anyway there's at least 37 of them if you want to see and then you find out what grade five is six percent aluminum four percent van diem
good to know uh with regard to cooling quote iphone 16 pro maximizes thermal capacity with a new machined chassis made of 100 recycled aluminum which is bonded to the titanium frame using solid state diffusion it's combined with a graphite clad aluminum substructure creating an innovative architecture that enables up to 20 improvement in sustained performance sign me up i mean marco just read that earlier but you can read it again that's fine
Hey, graphite sheet. Hey, every year they said it's going to happen. No vapor chamber yet, but this was the year. Graphite sheet, improved cooling. They're doing something. Like I said, they did something on the 16, and they did something even more on the 16 Pro. We'll see how it works out, but it's good to see them addressing this year over year. Every year they're making a new phone.
They're trying to make it a little bit better, addressing the flaws in their previous model. Thumbs up.
Colors, black, white, neutral, and, drumroll please, desert titanium.
Rumors even nailed the name. I got to give props on that because it's so hard to get these names because it's marketing, you know, like the supply chain doesn't need to know the name. But I guess it gets printed on the packaging at some point. So, yeah, they nailed it. Desert Titanium is the brown.
And I have to say, looking at both Apple's product shots and all the videos of the hands-on area, it does not look brown. So that spy shot we have where it looked like brown, brown, brown, obviously different lighting colors look different or whatever. Desert Titanium, like all the pro phones, looks so pale. that you were like, is that the white one? Is that the gray one?
Like, you have to look at the rim around, like, the edge of the phone or the little circles around the cameras to even tell that it's supposed to be the brown one. They all look white, except for the black one.
Yep. Yeah, it's, you know, gray, gray, more gray, less gray, and brown. But anyways... Let's talk about the A18 Pro, which is the chip for the iPhone 16 Pro. This is a 20% faster GPU than the A17 Pro. It's two times faster at ray tracing than the A17 Pro. The CPU broadly is 15% faster and uses 20% less power than the A17 Pro. It has larger caches versus the A18 non-pro.
It has programmable ML accelerators, which is very fancy. Advanced media features, a new video encoder, and an image signal processor.
Yeah, so at this point in the presentation, the question everybody had, and I had as well, was even though they're listing all this stuff, I'm like, well, wait a second. So we got two new chips this year, A18 and A18 Pro, neither one of which has been in a phone before. All built on, you know, TSMC's...
and 3e process the question was especially when they said like you know six core gpu versus five core gpu or whatever are the a18 pros uh
just versions of the a18 where all the parts work and i think eventually in the presentation apple made it clear that is not the case they obviously share a ton but a the a18 is not just a a18 pro with parts that don't work as far as anyone has been able to tell now maybe when they cut these things open we'll see i guess it's conceivable they could be but there's so there are enough differences that i think that can't possibly be true
Well, so they said that the A18 Pro has larger caches. So I don't know what the structure is. Like, is the cache like a separate layer?
Well, that's not the thing that puts it over the edge. So here, let me list the differences. What does the A18 Pro have over the A18? On the CPU side, it's got, yes, larger caches. And there you can go, okay, well, maybe they're just like some of the cache RAM is turned off or whatever. Probably not the way it does because the quote unquote, you know, SRAM that's on the SoCs is very expensive and-
complicated and that's not the they usually don't disable portions of but whatever next generation ml accelerators we talked about this before these are instructions like arm instructions for doing media type things that they're saying are only on the a18 pro
instructions the ability to execute instructions the execution units for them the ability to decode and execute those instructions is not a thing that you tend to like oh it didn't there's some part of this cpu didn't work so we'll just disable those instructions like it's not a separate unit this is part of the cpu this makes me think
The CPU cores are literally different between the A18 Pro and A18. Now, again, you could have them just disabled in software, you know, in like firmware or whatever, just like blow some fuses or whatever. That is technically possible. I'm not saying it's technically impossible, but I don't think it's anything that Apple has ever done.
And then the GPU, which is what was making people suspect things, 6-core instead of 5-core. Oh, it's easy just when one of the GPU cores is bad or whatever. But then we get to this whole section, which is ProRes video encoding, new image signal processor, and USB 3. That's a lot of chip real estate to be shipping in the A18 just turned off. Because the A18 has none of those things, right?
You know, and because they're Pro features. if this is really the same chip with huge sections of it turned off and special features that disable parts of the SRAM caches on the chip and also disable the ML acceleration instructions, even though they work perfectly fine because I don't think that's the type of thing where you get bad yields and you get them turned off, right?
I think these are two different.
chips that because of all this stuff there if it was just one or two of these things you could think about it because there's so much these are two different chips we'll find out when someone gets them slices off the top and looks at a picture of them you'll be able to see because this is stuff you can see like the pro res video encoder the image signal processor and the usb3 thing you'll be able to see where they are that's enough real estate where you'll be able to say
are these blocks on the a18 or are they only on the a18 pro either way well you know we'll find out but i have to say like the differentiation of like what makes us a pro chip versus non-pro chip i think they did it exactly right because if you look at these features and you're like i don't care about any of these that shows that you don't care about the pro features pro is like a lot of them using it as a video camera pro is video the faster speeds yes it's a shame that the 16 still has incredibly slow speeds or whatever hopefully that will come to the 16 eventually but like
They put pro features on here. And yes, if you want the fastest game performance, you have to get the pro phone, yada, yada. What else is new, right? By the way, we didn't talk about this before, but...
one dis continue one continuing disappointing status quo is that the non-pro phone still does not have promotion which is probably already criminal and will get increasingly so as time moves on i know regular people don't care about 60 hertz versus 120 hertz but eventually you just have to give it to them because it's this it's like the baseline it's table stakes it's an 800 phone with a 60 hertz screen
That's bad. ProRes video encoding? Nobody cares if that's missing. The faster USB speeds, people are not copying huge video files via wire to SSDs off of their plain old iPhone 16s. That's what a pro phone is for. And kudos to Apple. Like,
that they're pro and non-pro phones you look at them and like they're exactly the same except for this one has three cameras why would i ever get a pro one and they give you a bunch of reasons and if those reasons don't appeal to you it's because you're not in the market for a pro phone so i think they managed to differentiate it despite the fact that the camera control and the action button are not exclusive to the pro phone the hardware features with the exception of that third camera are not exclusive to the pro phone and yet the pro phone still looks very much like a pro thing
Let's talk photography. There's a 48 megapixel fusion camera at f1.78. It's a second gen.
So what's interesting about this lens and everything, it sounds like the sensor and the optics are the same as the 15 Pro. No, no, the sensor is not the same. Well, with one exception, with the readout speed. So they call it a second-gen quad-pixel sensor. It sounds like the main and possibly only difference is faster readout, which has benefits, but it's the same pixel size.
It's the same aperture. And as the 15 Pro and the 14 Pro... Same lens, it seems. And so just the sensor, the 15 Pro added the quad pixel binning thing over the 14 Pro. And now the 16 Pro is making faster readouts on that. So this is a good camera, but we're really not seeing massive year-over-year camera differences anymore the way we used to.
The 14 Pro also had the binning, pixel binning.
oh it did okay then then we're seeing even less difference so the 2x readout is significant though like the 2x readout is basically that's that's a new sensor you know and you may think well is why does the readout is part of the sensor how fast can you get the data off that it's all big one of course big sandwich thing and that makes a big difference because a lot of the features that are upgrades this year like to be able to do 4k 120 and everything is because of the faster readout or even just something as simple as when you take a raw how long is it before you can use your
phone to take another picture you have to wait for the readout to go by they don't have huge buffers like they do on big fancy cameras for you to be able to lean on the button and get you know 30 frames per second or you know 100 frames per second or whatever in raws uh on the phones when you take a raw it's like it thinks about it for half a second or whatever two times faster readout is a big improvement to the ability to take a raw and then quickly take another raw so additionally the ultra wide is now also 48 megapixel which is a new development is it not
Yes. So that is brand new. The ultra wide has a substantial upgrade in its quality and sensor. It is not the same like, you know, giant sensor and big optics as the 1X camera. It never has been and probably never can be because of things like physics. But it is a substantial upgrade, which should be good, especially for things like spatial video capture, which uses both of those sensors.
So it should be pretty good for that.
Indeed. So there's also the 5X telephoto is still 12 megapixels. But guess what, baby? It's on the regular size phone now, which means as far as I'm concerned, unless something weird happens in the next two days before I do a preorder, I'm coming back, baby. I'm going back to the regular size phone. No more huge phone for me.
I am so surprised to hear that.
Yeah, I know. I mean, I honestly, I was thinking about it. I feel like I could do big phone again, but the thing that drives me nuts about this phone, which I love the screen real estate. I really do. Once I committed to the absolutely preposterous pop socket lifestyle, that it got fairly comfortable to hold.
The problem though, is that for my hands, I can't go all the way across the phone and use it one handed. And I use my phone one handed forever. fairly frequently. And so that's what drove me nuts about it. And if I had bigger hands, I would perhaps stick with the big phone.
But yeah, I'm going to be going back to the regular size this year because the whole reason I went to the big one was for the 5X, which was exclusive to it in the 15. But now in the 16, you can get the Tetra Prism in both phones. So I will be going back, crawling back to the regular size phone. Anyways, later this year, it'll be updated with a two-phase shutter. Marco, what the hell does that mean?
I don't know.
John, what the hell does that mean?
I think this is an instance where there's just like a software thing that wasn't ready, like so much of iOS 18 software features. I think that what they're trying to say is like the... using the shutter button to press and then press like that. So it's not like, obviously the camera control can do that, but it's a question of is there software support for it?
And I do wonder if it's a situation where they didn't get the software ready enough unless they didn't want to release it in a state where there could potentially be accidental input or it wasn't clear where the half press was or whatever. Again, I'm not sure how that's going to work.
It's tricky for some people even with big camera buttons that have relatively huge amounts of travel and the amount of travel that the camera control seems to have is,
much much smaller than the amount of travel the giant shutter button on a real camera has so maybe they're still working on that but yeah add that to the giant pile of things that are not ready on day one launch of this phone software wise indeed
You can change the photographic styles after capture, which is a new development. And I think that's mostly software, but nevertheless, it's a new thing.
It's a little bit of a little bit of hardware thing, too, because like the photographic styles is essentially like filters or whatever. And if you used to be able to pick them and you'd apply them when you took the picture. So if you chose like a black and white style and you took a picture, you got a black and white picture. Right.
uh and if you change your mind later and said oh i shouldn't have taken that picture in black and white tough luck that was applied when you took the picture it threw away all the color information now what they're doing is kind of like what you can do when you take a raw where it just saves the sensor data and you can have different interpretations of it right but raws are huge right so what they're doing is they'll let you take the picture pick a photographic style but after you take the shot you can pick a different photographic style
Or remove the photographic style entirely or whatever. And the way they're doing this, they have vague descriptions of, like, how could they possibly be doing this if they're not capturing raw? Like, how are they getting back sensor information that they've already made a decision about?
My vague understanding from seeing people who have talked to Apple about this is they are essentially storing...
more layers of information essentially like tone maps of like okay well here's the picture here's the thing that we captured sort of the baseline picture you know hick or whatever here are five other things we measured this part of tonality or like the things that the filters are going to affect they save them as separate maps probably also massively compressed
And so then later, they can apply the filters by taking the original photo and one or more of those sort of tone maps that they captured, combining them, you know, decompressing them into the full array of pixels, running the filter over them, recompressing the output and saving that or something like that. And so it is kind of like... It's not compressed raw, which is another thing.
You just take a raw, but compress it, right? This is kind of like lossy compressed raw with more layers saved during capture so that you can apply more interesting filters after the fact. It's a hell of a long way to go for a feature that I've never found appealing in any way whatsoever.
But maybe regular people love to apply these filters to their pictures, and now it doesn't force you to, and I'm glad, it doesn't force you to decide up front what filter you're going to apply and then regret it later when you say, why do all the pictures from this year look like crayons?
And it's because, oh, that was the time that I decided to pick a photographic style and apply it to every single picture I took for a year, and it was a terrible mistake. I bet a lot of people feel that way about a lot of their early Instagram pictures, right? You know me. It's one of the reasons I love Apple photos. Save the original picture and then edit to your heart's content.
But there's got to always be a button that says revert to original. Do not destroy the original. It's like your negatives, right? Edit, modify, filter, crop, do whatever you want non-destructively. Kind of like Aperture used to back in the day. And so that's what they're doing here.
They're giving you increased non-destructive editing abilities without requiring you to save gigantic raw photos every single time.
Yeah, this is great. There's a few reasons why raw files are so much bigger than JPEGs or HEX, and now I guess JPEG XLs. Part of it is that it's saving a larger range of possible values compared to a JPEG, which is limited to a certain visible range or whatever. So part of it is we're storing more precision, more depth.
But a big part of why RAWs are so big is that they are literally uncompressed. So they are, in some cases, totally uncompressed. In some cases, losslessly compressed, which is not that compressed. There's a lot of...
I think middle ground that, that we're exploring now as an industry in terms of like, let's compress the image perceptually the way JPEG historically has done, like, you know, perceptual image compression. So it is lossy compression, but just at a very high, you know, bit rate, so to speak. Uh, so we're not losing too much that people would actually notice, uh,
but still try to save more range of values and like less processed values. So that way we can do things like this. And so what seems to be the case is whatever we're doing with the photographic styles, they are storing more data like that so that you can do these things after the fact.
And that is a great direction for photography to go because raw files are, are great for what they are really for, which is not your phone, right? and not most people using them. It's for certain professional contexts. They're great for that. But for most people, something that has lossy compression, but that can store more ranges of values is potentially very useful.
This is all very good. And by the way, this section was presented by Della Huff, who I feel like I had recognized from somewhere. I couldn't figure out where it was. And like two years ago on Analog, we had solicited good Instagram follows, and she was one of the people that somebody had recommended.
And sure enough, I've been following her on Instagram for years, had no idea that she was this person at Apple. So that's super cool. We'll put a link in the show notes. Really great Instagram follow.
um so anyway so uh with regard to photos you made brief mention of it a minute ago marco uh iphone 16 pro supports jpeg excel um all of this is reading from mac rumors now the iphone 16 pro models will support the jpeg excel file format according to code found on ios 18 apple did not mention jpeg excel support during the event on monday but this feature was rumored ahead of the of the launch it appears that the pro models will support capturing images in jpeg excel
So this is MacRumor saying, we see the code. It's in iOS 18. It's definitely coming. No mention from Apple. None whatsoever. When they rolled out Heek, they made kind of a big deal about it and talked about it and said this is going to be a better image format and our photos are going to take it by default or whatever. And JPEG XL absolutely did not get that treatment.
We will find out if there's JPEG XL anywhere in these phones. Even if the code is in iOS 18, will it appear in the UI? Will it be turned on by default? Will it be anything at all?
uh the jpeg xl hype was uh high in my heart and uh it did not get fulfilled in this event which is a bummer but hey you never know like again this was a weird event maybe it's just too techy for them to mention uh maybe uh in today's apple wouldn't have mentioned the heek thing either so that's one of the things i'll be checking for as ios 18 rolls out and as ios 18.1 and 0.2 and so on and so forth i'm looking for the jpeg xl sweetness but right now it's not looking great indeed
For video, there's 4K at 120 frames per second with HDR, which they're calling cinematic slow motion, which had a very cheesy but kind of funny little advertisement in the middle of this 90-minute advertisement. And you can also adjust the playback speed after capture, which is pretty neat. With regard to audio, there are four studio-quality, quote-unquote, microphones with a lower noise floor.
You can now also, for the first time, do spatial audio capture during video recording. You can do audio mix in voice memos. I believe that's the right marketing term. Let's say if you had musical talent, which I don't, and you hummed a rhythm or a beat or something like that,
Um, you could then put a second track on top of it and then you could like sing the lyrics and you can separate the two of them and it'll play back your, you know, your, your rhythm as you're singing the lyrics, but you can separate them so that you can hear only the lyrics. And I don't know, I don't know anything about creating music, but this looked super cool to me.
Yeah, this looks amazing. Can we edit our podcasts and voice memos now? Yeah, probably.
No, but if we all had very different talents than what we actually have, it could be pretty useful to us. No, this is all... This looks great. A lot of musicians do use this for this kind of purpose. So this is... It's great. It's amazing they can do it.
And I'm glad they're working on improving things like the microphone array and different ML processes and stuff because that can often filter down to features or benefits that everyone can use, even if they aren't songwriters or movie makers or whatever else.
Didn't they make a dedicated app exactly for this for musicians?
What is it called?
Music memos or music notes?
Something like that. I don't know if it's still active.
I have this vague memory. It's not. I wonder if this is just like, well, we're going to can that app, but just grab that code and throw it into voice memos.
Basically, yeah. Because I think they realized that everyone was using voice memos for this anyway.
A handful of quick hits before we round everything out. $1,000 for the 128-gig Pro, $1,200 for the, I think it's 256-gig Pro Max, if I'm not mistaken. Pre-orders are this coming Friday. Pick up on the following Friday.
I kind of wish that they took the non-Max Pro up from 128. I know they're trying to draw a distinction and get you to pay for the storage. I get it, but, like, come on. Anyway, I... Not that 128 is that bad, and it's not as bad as it is on a Max. I just, like, this is another one of those things where they're just riding it out. It's like, we love the distinction. Pro Max starts at 256.
The plain old Pro, because it's not Max, it starts at 128. Makes perfect sense to me. Love that money. Okay, I think it's been like five years of this, four years of this. It's time to maybe bump that.
Yeah. The iPhone 16 models, all the iPhone 16 models are equipped with 8 gigs of RAM for Apple intelligence.
Not that you would know by listening to Apple, but just FYI.
Indeed. Then I had a small victory dance just for me. The millimeter wave 5G is still limited to the U.S. iPhone 16 models, but it's still there. There was rumbling and rumors that they were going to kill it in the iPhone 16, but oh, no.
it's still there so reading from mac rumors all four iphone 16 models offer millimeter wave 5g in the u.s but other countries are still limited to sub 6 gigahertz 5g apple hasn't rolled out millimeter wave 5g in other countries because other countries largely have yet to widely adopt the faster speeds there are millimeter wave networks in countries like australia china and japan but it is not a standard that has been fully embraced in australia for example millimeter wave is only available in select areas of major cities like melbourne melbourne and sydney
For me, my beloved, don't call it a park bench, picnic table is right near a millimeter wave tower. And I actually went there today, although I didn't use my millimeter wave iPhone 15 on it. But nevertheless, it is incredibly fast. I mean, I can pull like two and a half gigabits per second down to my cellular telephone, which is absolutely bananas. So I'm glad it's still there.
All the iPhone 16 models sold outside of the United States still have a physical SIM card tray. I don't think that's terribly surprising, but it's a thing. American iPhone 16s do not have a SIM card, just like the 15s didn't. All of the iPhone 16 models support Wi-Fi 7, which will be excellent in three or four years when we all start getting Wi-Fi 7 routers and access points.
And I just want to say, like, to reiterate my point from the opening statement, oh, so they're slightly improving the microphones on these phones, and oh, they get the new version of Wi-Fi, and oh, the processor is a little bit better, and the screens are a little bit bigger.
Like, don't take this for granted, that they make a new one of these phones every year, and they always try to make it a little bit better. And that sounds boring to you and still it stops happening. And you're looking at AirPods, you know, Macs, and you're wondering if they're ever going to get updated or you're waiting for the next Mac Pro. I appreciate it.
I appreciate it even more if you wait four or five years between phones because the advances accumulate. And then when you get this phone, you're like, wow, this microphone is way better than it was five phones ago or whatever. Wi-Fi 7. And Apple's not on top of these things. Everybody else in the industry is already on Wi-Fi 7. But in Apple land...
They take their time and you are only going to get that update if they update the product. Right. So, yes, they're kind of late to Wi-Fi 7. But if there's no new insert product name here, you're not getting Wi-Fi 7 no matter what. So consider yourself lucky.
Yep. The iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max have the same feature set, excepting the display size and battery, which is exactly what I love to see. One of my favorite things, no joke, one of my favorite things is when there's parity between the two devices to the degree that there can be. And this year there is.
And like we had talked about earlier, there's also to the degree that there can be parity between the 16 and 16 Pro, which mostly amounts to chips and buttons. There is mostly parity to the degree that we would expect. So I'm really genuinely happy about that.
And then finally, iOS 16, Mac OS 15, iPad OS 18, and other updates will all be released on September 16th, four days before the new hardware's here.
Look at that. Mac OS getting released at the same time as the other OSs. Hasn't happened in so long. Nice to see the whole family coming together. All the new OSs are going to release at the same time. They did it through the magic of dropping features and pushing them to the point once.
But it is a almost Christmas miracle. So look at that. And with that, I think we're good, right?
You want to talk about any orders or are we just going to plow right through?
Oh, sure. Sorry. So obviously none of us have ordered anything yet because as we record, we're two days ahead of time.
But we should all have our orders already ready in the store app, so we should know what we're getting.
For me, I'm going to be doing a natural titanium half terabyte iPhone 16 Pro, not Max. And I haven't actually figured out what we're going to do for Erin, but probably the same thing, maybe a 256 version for her. And that's going to be our order. Marco, what are you guys doing?
I'm going to get the white one, the 256, and Tiff looked at the upgrades and was like, I don't need one.
Good for her. Even with the camera stuff, I'm actually surprised by that.
Well, because she's already on the 15 Pro Max, so she already has the 5X camera. The other cameras didn't change enough for her to care, and...
I was mostly thinking of the camera control.
I did not phrase that well. I described it to her, and she's like, eh, I don't care. Maybe she'll see mine and get envious at some point, but I think she honestly just doesn't care. Again, this is a... If you have...
fairly recent iPhone this is not like a a blow away update sorry like this it's again it's a nice incremental update and as John was saying like over time incremental updates do add up and it does become great but if you have if you have like a 14 or a 15 Pro and and you're looking at the 16 Pro, it's not that different.
From the 15 Pro, it's almost not different at all, with the exception of the camera control. The 14 Pro, at least you get the USB-C and the lighter weight-ish, and two generations of improvements in certain areas. So the 14 Pro to the 16 Pro, it's a better upgrade. If you have a 15 Pro, the only reason we're doing this is because we're idiots and podcasters. We shouldn't be doing this.
I even almost skipped this year.
I'm doing it like those people who aren't allowed to buy individual stocks, so they have to get their investments on a regimented plan that's scheduled years ahead of time that says, on these dates, I'm going to buy this much stock. Every two years, I get a phone. That's how it happens. And so, yeah, I'm not choosing based on the phone.
Although, I have to say, like I said before, having a product that gets attention every single year and gets improvements every single year gives you the luxury, like I used to be able to do with Honda Accords, to sit back and say, oh, here's the new X. Here's the new iPhone.
do i do i like it this year i'll wait till next year because you know what there'll be another one next year every year when they come out they're a little bit better and you could look at them and you could say am i feeling like i feel like i want one now do i want one now because there's something particularly appealing to me do i want now because my current phone feels old the luxury of a product that gets better every single year without fail and is always good means you can just sit back like tiff and say do i think i'm gonna get one this year
I'll wait until next year because there will be a next year, unlike, you know, the HomePod or the Mac Pro.
And the AirPods Max. Keep in mind also, like, you know, the next year we have those rumors of the iPhone Slim, which, you know, even if that might not be what everybody chooses, that's certainly going to be an interesting new thing to shake things up. So, like, that's something that's in the next year. And also, like... This year is the year of Apple intelligence.
That's great, but the beginning of the year of Apple intelligence is not going to actually be there. And Apple intelligence is being gradually started over the course of a large chunk of the year.
We'll be lucky if it's all rolled out by the end of the year. Right. Not by the end of 2024, but by the end of the iPhone year. Like next September, we should check and say, has everything that Apple talked about with Apple intelligence actually been released yet?
Right exactly like I so if you're thinking like I've got to jump right now to get Apple intelligence like I would say you don't and you might want to wait until like if Apple intelligence is your main driver for upgrading you might want to wait till next year because most of this year most of those features probably won't be available.
And even if they are, they're still going to be in a fairly beta-like status for most of the year. And most of the excitement of Apple Intelligence is going to be, first of all, if it works, it's going to develop over time. This is going to be like a multi-year ramp-up. It's not going to all come in the next few months.
So, honestly, I think this is a nice incremental upgrade, and if you want a new phone, get it. But if you're saying, I've got to get a new phone for Apple Intelligence, like... You don't need to rush on that.
Yep, agreed. And John, this is your year, baby. So what are you doing? Are you getting a Pro Max?
No. I ordered AirPods, as I said. I pre-ordered the AirPods. I was excited to do that, although their engraving feature was broken for like the first 10 minutes, frustrating me. But I pre-ordered my AirPods with noise canceling. And then for my phone, you know, I'm doing what I always do. I looked at the other stuff. I actually even considered the white one.
As we'll talk about in overtime, the case situation is dire.
Not good.
We'll talk about it in overtime. But, you know, I did what I usually do because in the end I decided this is what I want. For reasons that I've stated before that probably aren't important to other people who are important to me, I get the black phone. And it's not because I like the color black so much. I think the white one looks nicer. It's because I actually use my phone to watch video a lot.
And I want the surround to be black. I don't want white distracting me from the display in any way. And maybe you don't care about that. But there's a reason televisions tend not to be white when you buy them. And I don't want my phone to be white either. I want it to be all black. And I have the bare bottom if I can. Again, it's the overtime.
And I don't want the bare bottom to be white sticking out of my case. So anyway, I'm getting the black 16 Pro non-Macs. I actually bumped the storage this year. I've been 256 for a long time. I do not fill 256, but just like a month or two ago, I did have to delete a bunch of stuff because I was pressing up against 256. I'm like, now it's time.
So not only did they get me on one storage upgrade bump of, you know, 128 to 256, they're getting me on two. I'm buying it with 512, which pains me. It hurts me. It hurts me. It hurts my wallet. But I think it's time for me to finally do that. So anyway, that's it. That's the phone I'm getting. I'm excited.
All right. Thanks to our sponsor this week, Tailscale. Thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join us at atb.fm slash join. And this week, our overtime, which is our member-only exclusive bonus topic that we do every week for members, as mentioned, is about the iPhone 16 series case situation.
and uh there's there's some some interesting issues there to talk about so we'll be talking about that in overtime you can join to listen to hbfm join thanks everybody and we'll talk to you next week so
Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin. Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental. John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him. Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental. And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM. And if you're into mastodon, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
So that's K-C-L-I-S-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-A-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-A-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-A-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-A-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-A-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-A-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-A-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-A-N-T-M-A
As discussed in last week's After Show, where I was talking about some issues I was having with the Rivian and the even greater issues I was having getting it serviced, I mentioned that part of the reason I needed a car to go a long distance with fast charging is that I was going to a Goose concert. This is a jam band and kind of very similar to Phish in certain ways.
It's definitely the same genre as Phish, but of course they are their own band with their own identity and their own style. But certainly the closest analog I would say is it's closest to Phish from what people would know. Anyway, so I was going to a concert upstate and hundreds of miles away, so it was a lot of driving.
And I do want to talk about the concert, and then I'll talk about how I got there. So anyway, because this was the first time I had seen Goose in concert, I used the AirPods Pro as my earplugs, as I mentioned earlier. They did a fantastic job. Again, even better than last year. No artifacting, no imbalances whatsoever. A flawless job. I was very happy using AirPods Pro as my concert earplugs.
I really could not tell I was wearing them most of the time. It just sounded like it was a reasonable volume. It was great. I will say Goose as a band puts on a very good show. And if you are into seeing jam band concerts, I would say definitely go see Goose if you get a chance to. It is a little bit more, I'd say a little more mainstream compatible than Phish. Yeah. Not a lot more, mind you.
It's still a jam band. But they don't go quite as far off the deep end for quite as long as Phish tends to do. So it's a great show. First of all, just on a personal level, for a long time, I felt like Phish is my only band. And what the heck is going to happen to my enjoyment of music when that band inevitably ends at some point in the future? And I'm very heartened to see that there's more.
Goose is now in that same genre doing a great job as well. And so it's great to see there's more bands making the kind of music that I like. So anyway, great show. They had especially an amazing and quite intense light show. My favorite thing, I strongly suggest one of the reasons to go Seagoose, in addition to the very good music, they are a really visually interesting band.
Yeah.
He's also a very good guitar player. He's very good in the jams. I didn't hear a single missed note the entire time. It was quite good. Next to the lead singer is this guy, Peter Ansbach. I don't know most of the names, but I know Peter Ansbach because I follow him on Instagram. He looks like a cartoon character, like a happy cartoon character.
If you see pictures of the band, the one who looks like a happy cartoon character, that's Peter. He is, like, the nicest guy in the world, and he's always smiling. Because he seems like a genuinely, like, just smiley, happy, positive person. Like, he's a super nice guy. And so, you have, you know, the lead singer, like, you know, looking all cool.
Then you have Peter looking like a cartoon smiling character, like, playing keyboards on the side. Then, in the back, you have two drummers. One of them is the regular kind of drummer. The other one is an accessories kind of drummer. He has tambourines, shakers, and my favorite, a gong. I love a band with a gong. That's always a good thing. Then you have the bass player.
The bass player looks like...
cop from an 80s movie with like a long mullet and those big sunglasses and he stays like perfectly stoic and still and emotionless the and he's a good bass player like he's playing very well but like you have the entire rest of the band is these like characters and like right behind the bass player is the drummer he they just replaced their drummer a few months ago he's a new drummer to the band he is working his butt off and
So the entire time you're seeing this amazing new drummer who is just in constant motion, like he gets really physically into it. And to be a rock drummer, it's hard enough. To be a jam band drummer, you're doing that for 25 minutes straight. Like, without a break. Like, you're doing that for a long time.
So, like, you have this drummer who is just working his butt off, like, really physical, just banging around for 25 minutes straight. And all around him is, like, rainbow lights and smoke effects and, like, all... Like, there's just...
chaos going on back there and in front of it is this bass player who looks like a cop just staring at you like it's just totally still as all this chaos happens behind him it is an amazing thing to see so anyway it was a very very good show strongly recommend going to see Goose and Conch if you get a chance All right. So how I got there.
So I mentioned, you know, I my Rivian had problems with fast charging on the highway. Like I couldn't reliably fast charge without like rebooting the car and waiting and it kept throwing errors and have problems. And I believe the two of you and certainly people in the chat and listeners suggested, why don't I just rent a car for the trip?
And so I decided, you know what, since the Rivian was being unreliable, I thought that's a good idea. I'm going on a long trip. I'll just rent something. How bad could it be?
Oh, gosh, here we go.
So I rented, you know, I went to our local enterprise branch. And of course, on the website, they list, they have all these like fun sedans and everything. And of course, then you get there and they have two SUVs and nothing else. It's like, Okay. I wish they would stop doing that. It's literally false advertising.
Anyway, I'm not super happy with Enterprise Rent-A-Car right now, because what they rented me with the advertisement of all these sedans they didn't have and all these other fun cars they didn't actually have, and I get there and they have two SUVs. One of them was a Jeep Wagoneer, which is A bus.
I'm pretty sure that the bus that brought my kid to school on the beach was smaller than that vehicle. It's a very large vehicle and I didn't want to pay that kind of premium. So they offered me for the sedan rate that I actually reserved. They offered me the smaller SUV, which was a few years old Ford Escape plug-in hybrid. This was my first time using a plug-in hybrid.
Yeah, it's not the right scenario for it, though.
I don't think a few years old Ford Escape is really a good standard bearer for the current state of the technology.
Well, not only that, but the plug-in hybrid is not great for doing a multi-hundred mile... It's fine if you have one of the modern ones, but... Well, but even still, the plug-in portion of it, the battery electric portion of it, will be dead within 30 miles anyway, and you're not likely to find a charging spot.
Not with the new ones I was describing last time. Modern hybrid systems, you just drive, and it's fine, and there's nothing for you to worry about, and they don't work like the things you were describing. Anyway, that's not what he rented, unfortunately. Yeah.
Yeah, I rented the Ford Escape. Now, it was pretty old. It had like 37,000 miles, which I think is the highest I've ever seen on a rental car, not counting things like U-Hauls, which are always miserable, but just regular rental car places. So it has 36,000 miles. It's like falling apart. There's like padding is falling off of things.
There's like different trim pieces that are just like kind of loose. It's not in good shape. It smells like a stale car. It's not a great car. But it seemed to drive fine when I drove back to my house the night before I left and was going to leave early in the morning. Okay. So I'm playing around with the plug-in hybrid part. I even charge it up in my house because I have the connector.
I'm like, great. I charge it up and see how it goes. And I brought the family out for pizza that night. So I got a chance to drive it around town. And I decided to use only electric mode driving around town. And it was, like, decent.
I was like, okay, it's not as good as an EV overall, but for those brief times you're driving around town before it runs out of battery, it's actually a decent option. The way I would describe it, this is not a perfect analogy, forgive me, but the way I would describe it is, like, it's almost like the way, like, a bike with training wheels is
gives you the idea that you are riding a bike and you're like, you're kind of, but like a bike with training wheels is really not almost anything like riding a bike. Whereas like these days, a lot of kids learn on what's called a balance bike, which is basically a bike with no pedals. Because we've kind of figured, and this is how my kid learned as well.
We've kind of figured out that the hard part of riding a bike is not the pedals. It's the balancing. It's like figuring out how to balance with the inertia and the tipping over and the turning and things like that. And so a bike with training wheels teaches you to pedal but doesn't teach you anything about the balance.
A balanced bike teaches you the hard part, the balancing and the turning and everything. And you can figure out the pedals afterwards when you use a regular bike. Um, so we've kind of learned that's kind of a better way to teach most kids. Uh, anyway, to me, like the, the plug in hybrid is like the training wheels bike of EVs.
Like it gives you the idea that it's, it's just like an EV most of the time, right? It's like, no. but it's better than nothing.
Like it's better than... Well, but in what ways is it not though? Because I mean, granted, I don't have near the experience with EVs that you have, but Aaron, I don't know if we even talked about this on the show. I think I mentioned it briefly.
We breezed over it so fast and I want to revisit it.
Yeah, so we don't have the time to do the long and drawn-out version of the story. But suffice to say, we got Erin a 2024 XC90, a plug-in hybrid XC90. So they call it an XC90 Recharge. And basically, the theory goes that it has roughly 30 to 35 miles range on pure electricity. And 90, 95% of the driving that she does is around town. And in a day, she'll typically go 20%.
20 miles maybe and so hopefully that means we can barely ever use gasoline and on occasions when we're going on a long trip like if we were going to see a concert a few hours away then it's basically just a gasoline car all over again and we don't just we just ignore the battery entirely and we've had this car since mid-july it is as i sit here right now mid-september and it has over a half a tank of gas in it we've never filled it in it's been two months and
And we've gone from here to Charlottesville twice. So it's worked out extremely well for us. I think the only difference to my eyes between the XC90 when it's not running the gasoline and a pure EV is that it's not as fast when you're not allowing the gasoline engine to kick in. Like a pure EV, it's a rocket ship fast always, even crappy ones.
Like my parents' Chevy Bolt, which is a piece of trash. It's a delightful piece of trash, but it's a piece of trash. That thing is reasonably quick because it's pure electric all the time. The Volvo, if you give it too much juice, unless you're in pure electricity mode... it will kick on the gasoline engine, and then it is actually properly fast. But without that, it's not very quick.
If I run on pure electricity and I floor it, it takes a minute to get out of its own way. And so that is different than a pure BEV, a pure battery electric vehicle. But in every other way, it doesn't shift. It's quiet as hell. In every other way, it seems to me pretty much identical. The only difference is the lack of a trillion torques from zero RPM.
I would say it's so that's you're right that like when when you are in the electric only range of a plug in hybrid, it is in the ballpark. Certainly, like you're right. It is usually the electric motors are not very strong. So you do have that problem of like it doesn't have the power of an EV. It doesn't have the torque of an EV.
other minor things that I think make a big difference to EV drivers so for instance like you know it will usually try to mimic the same way the gas engine would drive so you have things like very strong creep like when you lift off the gas pedal and it just starts going you can turn that off in errands but I take your point oh okay the Ford Escape like it had I mean granted you know I'm used to driving electric recently so I'm not that used to it but like
You took your foot off the gas, and it would go five miles an hour immediately. I was like, whoa, hold on. I didn't say go. It was the fastest creep I've ever seen in a vehicle, whether it was in gas or electric mode. And also, you then have all of the complexity and size and weight of all of those systems. Yeah.
that's true so it's again like if you if your option for your needs is either gas or plug-in hybrid go plug-in hybrid like it's definitely better than better than pure gas but don't tell yourself that like all right i'm done with the ev transition now like no like you're you have a you have a halfway point there and it's a it's a decent halfway point for a lot of people but it's not the same as a full ev and you're not getting all the benefits of an ev
Yeah, very quickly to hijack your story. I think if we were to buy two new cars tomorrow, I think I would buy her exact same car again. And I would like to talk to you guys more about it another time. But I think for me, I should get the battery electric vehicle because I almost never leave the greater Richmond area in my car. And so...
I think for us, for our family, it works super well to have this halfway step, to your point, in the family hauler. But for the other car, it absolutely should not be what I have. I love my car, but it should not be. I should not have a gasoline-powered three-pedal Golf R. What I should have is some sort of battery electric small car, maybe even a Chevy Bolt for that matter.
You should probably just have an e-bike, but...
Well, the roads around me don't lend themselves to bicycles, but in terms of distance, we do agree with each other.
Yeah. Anyway, overall, I was actually fairly impressed with this kind of stinky Ford Escape. Like, this is not a high-end vehicle, but I was kind of impressed overall with the driving until I was driving through Brooklyn, and I was stopped at a traffic light, and the car just kind of dies.
i'm like um that's did i do something wrong here is this well this is no different than the rivian then welcome to auto stop start well one great advantage of the ford escape plug-in hybrid i don't know if this is true of all plug-in hybrids there is no auto stop start because it just uses electric at low speeds so you don't have that effect at all and and there's not even a button to turn it on or off like you just what effect the gasoline engine will still turn itself off will it not
Well, it will when it's not being used, but it's not like auto stop start where most cars that you stop at a traffic light and then the engine just kind of stops.
No, no. These days, auto stop start turns it off not just when you're at a traffic light, but whenever the heck it feels like it.
because like you don't have to be stopped you could just be driving and it will just turn itself off and say you don't need this gas engine right now really what you you need to try you need to drive things other than hondas because i have never had that experience this is what the modern hybrid systems do they don't need like i said the modern hybrid systems use the use the gasoline engine to charge the battery and they use the battery to drive the car unless you need more power than that in which case you dip far enough into the pedal and it fires up the gas engine but if you
Lift off the gas pedal and you're driving and it's like, oh, now you don't need the gas engine anymore. I'm going to turn that off for you. You're basically driving an EV that has like a little bit of a that has not a little bit, but it has assist from the gas engine.
But most of the time, the gasoline engine is just running as a generator to charge your battery so you continue to drive it as an EV. And in that situation, you don't have to be at a stoplight for the gasoline engine to turn off.
Well, and kind of, I mean, I didn't know most of that for regular hybrids, but I think the, my ideal setup, because like Casey, you're right that like around town being all electric and then just using gas on long trips is kind of the best of both worlds. Because, you know, I didn't have to think about charging at all.
It's also the worst of both worlds, as you noted, because you have both things in your car that you need to maintain, deal with.
Right. But, you know, TIFF has the BMW i3 with the range extender. And the way that works, which I think is the same way the Chevy Volt worked, is it is always driven by the electric motors. There is no direct connection between the gas motor and the electric motors, not even if you floor it, not even for extra power. The gas motor can never drive the wheels.
It is only a generator to boost the range. So the way the i3 works is you're using all electric until you hit about 20% battery. then it will turn on the gas engine and just kind of keep it there. Like it will generate enough to keep it at 20% until it runs out of gas. And it only has like a one and a half gallon gas tank.
It's like a motorcycle engine, but it's using it as a generator to just give you more range when you get to the bottom of your electric range. And that's, that's all, you know, it has like a hundred miles of range before it even gets there. So you have a decent sized battery and then you have like 80 miles worth of range extension from using a gas generator from one and a half gallons of gas.
I think my ideal setup for like a long range road car, if you didn't go all E.V., would be just do that, but instead of having a 1.5-gallon tank, have, like, a 5-gallon tank. Then you could go 300 miles easily, 400 miles, at least. And then you could, on a long trip, you could just stop and get 5 gallons of gas and keep going for another few hundred miles like that.
I'm sure there's good reasons why no one ever made that, but I don't know those reasons because I think that sounds amazing. And it's literally exactly what the i3 and the Chevy Volt were, just with bigger gas tanks. But I'm sure there's probably reasons. Anyway... So, this car stalls, and everything's dead. And it's like, it won't turn back on. It's throwing errors on the screen.
It shows a little orange wrench.
Oh, oh, it's properly dead.
And I'm like, oh, no. This is not good. I'm going to a trip for a concert that is tonight. Like, I have to make it there, but let me just, you know... Turn it off, turn it on again. Eventually, after like 15 seconds of messing with it, I finally just got it to turn on. And I was like, okay, I'm going to try to keep going. Let's hope for the best.
Well, a short time later, while driving on the West Side Highway in Manhattan, it dies again. And I slowly drift over, try to get to the shoulder. I have just enough power to get over to the right lane and block an entrance ramp.
Oh, no.
So now I'm dead again and I'm blocking an entrance ramp to the West Side Highway.
Oh, no. No, no, no, no.
You should hear the horns that result from this.
Oh, no.
This is not good. It takes me a... You know, I turn on the flashers. I'm trying to... And just... I'm like, all right, well, I know I got it going last time. After a few seconds, just try to turn it off, turn it back on again. Eventually, after maybe 30 seconds, I eventually got it going again. So, you know, everyone's honking behind me. I'm like waving. So, you know. So, I... I keep going.
Eventually, you know, I'm going upstate, taking a highway off-ramp to go – I'm sorry.
Wait. You didn't drive immediately to the nearest Enterprise at this juncture? That would be a two-hour detour.
Right. And, like, I have a concert to go to that night. So I'm like, look, I can – there's Enterprises upstate. Like, if the worst case, like – I'm going to make this concert. Worst case, like maybe tomorrow on the way back, I can get a different car if I really have to, you know, by going to some local location. But like I'm not going to miss the concert. So I keep going.
I didn't end up having to replace the car on the trip because there was just never a time where it was that urgent because I was able to get it going every time. But over the course of this trip, it stalled about 12 times like this. Oh, my word. Usually at least while it was stopped, like at a light or something. And I tried – and here, of course, I'm a nerd.
So I'm like, I wonder if I – because you can pick – because it's a plug-in hybrid, it has all these different modes. You can have auto or you can have only use the battery mode, don't use the battery mode, and you can have make the engine run constantly to charge the battery mode.
Yeah.
Yep, yep, yep. So, of course, I tried all those different modes, trying to figure out, okay, well, is it... Maybe it's misreading the battery voltage, so I'll keep the battery at a high charge level using the generate option. Maybe it's, like, you know, dying in the switchover, so I'll make it never use the battery, and that didn't work.
I'm like, maybe I'll make it always use the battery, and then alternate between, like, always using it until it's down, then make it charge itself all the way back up. And then, like, I tried all these, because I was in this car for, like... I don't know, seven, eight, nine hours during this trip. It was a long time. So I was like, I had a lot of time to play with the different modes.
None of them made any difference whatsoever. It just kept dying. So I did make the trip. It was fine. Eventually, I was, you know, in some pretty bad situations with this dying in the middle of busy highways and New York City and stuff. But, you know, it was...
I did eventually make it back with all the – including it even stalled literally the traffic light right before reentering the Enterprise location to drop it off. It stalled there.
You should have just gotten out of the car, walked up, left it there on the road, walked up to the counter and said, your car is there. I said, why did you leave it there? He says, well, ask the car. Yeah.
I told them – I expressed to them my dissatisfaction with the situation. They were apologetic.
they didn't give me a discount or anything i but i'm like look you i'm like just take this car off the road like just you have to take like you know i wasn't going to make a huge deal out of it because i don't want them to think i was making a big deal just to get like a discount or something but i'm like you got to take this car off the road like this is unsafe so anyway um the idea that renting a car might be more reliable than my broken rivian uh nope wasn't
This still might have been more reliable, but remember, I was suggested that you rent a Honda. I hope when you were stalled on the side of the West Side Highway, you saw the ghost of my head floating through your mind going, Honda, Honda, not Ford, Honda. There's a difference.
Oh my God, John, there exist other automobiles than Hondas that also work.
Just saying, I drove my 10-year-old Honda today and it got there and back without any problem.
Yes, I've driven a lot of 10-year-old cars that are not Hondas that get there and back.
Your cars don't last that long. The pebbles kill them.
God help me, John. I don't know how we've lasted 10 years. The Pebbles are Vanos.
The avenging god of Vanos.
It wasn't just the Vanos. There was the water pump. There was the drive train. There were lots of different things that almost killed that car. Thank you very much.
The timing belt guides, right? I know.
Right, exactly. Anyways, no, there exist cars other than Honda.
Timing chain guides, sorry.
Whatever. There exist cars other than Honda. I swear to you, they do. They work. They really do. Not Fords, but they do work. Not Rivians. Not Volvos with pebbles. Mm-hmm. That's right. Well, again, the pebble doesn't matter if the serpentine belt ain't spinning.
I was going to say, yeah, if your engine's not running all the time, you're just lugging that thing around. Yeah, exactly. And someday when you need it, I hope it actually starts.
Me too. Well, I'm glad the concert was good, even if the travel was a bit disastrous there and back.
Mm-hmm.