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The Talk Show

323: ‘Skeptical Not Cynical’, With Matthew Panzarino

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► Let me ask you this.

00:00:01 ◼   ► Here's a good place to start.

00:00:01 ◼   ► Have you ordered an iPhone 13 for yourself yet?

00:00:05 ◼   ► - I have not.

00:00:07 ◼   ► And the only reason I haven't ordered one for myself

00:00:10 ◼   ► is because I, and this is the normal conundrum,

00:00:14 ◼   ► unless I'm on it, iPhone review season comes right

00:00:17 ◼   ► in the middle of like my busy season here at TechCrunch.

00:00:20 ◼   ► We do a big event.

00:00:22 ◼   ► We have a big conference.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Normally I'm traveling.

00:00:26 ◼   ► This year, obviously we weren't traveling.

00:00:27 ◼   ► We did most of it virtual,

00:00:29 ◼   ► but it's just a big undertaking, a big effort.

00:00:32 ◼   ► And then usually, and you know,

00:00:34 ◼   ► Apple people are normally very apologetic about this,

00:00:37 ◼   ► but it is what it is.

00:00:38 ◼   ► The iPhone release comes smack on top of it.

00:00:41 ◼   ► I've been doing this for eight years and like the,

00:00:43 ◼   ► I think all but the, or nine years,

00:00:45 ◼   ► all but the like two or three years ago,

00:00:48 ◼   ► something that the iPhone release basically landed

00:00:51 ◼   ► on Disrupt Week for me.

00:00:52 ◼   ► So it drives me insane.

00:00:54 ◼   ► You know, I've got to like do my review.

00:00:55 ◼   ► I always, you know, I want to do a good job,

00:00:57 ◼   ► and I want to be thorough, but at the same time,

00:00:59 ◼   ► I've got a lot of event stuff and planning going on.

00:01:01 ◼   ► It's just a very hectic time for me.

00:01:03 ◼   ► And so normally what happens is I get through

00:01:05 ◼   ► with my review, I go right into Disrupt.

00:01:07 ◼   ► I've got, you know, whatever crises I'm managing

00:01:09 ◼   ► and interviews and you know, our whole show.

00:01:12 ◼   ► And then by the end of that, I'm exhausted

00:01:14 ◼   ► and I just chill for a couple of weeks.

00:01:16 ◼   ► And then I'm like, oh, I got to order an iPhone.

00:01:19 ◼   ► And so like what normally happens is I end up about three

00:01:24 ◼   ► to four weeks behind everybody,

00:01:27 ◼   ► which means that this year, because it was virtual,

00:01:30 ◼   ► we finished the show and then the next day,

00:01:32 ◼   ► I don't have to travel and I can't order a phone

00:01:35 ◼   ► because my upgrades not up yet.

00:01:37 ◼   ► So I got to wait until that's because it's like four weeks.

00:01:40 ◼   ► - Right, you're stuck on the schedule

00:01:41 ◼   ► from when you ordered before.

00:01:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:01:44 ◼   ► So yeah, that's why I haven't ordered yet,

00:01:46 ◼   ► but I probably will order and I'm going to get a 13 Pro,

00:01:49 ◼   ► just a regular.

00:01:50 ◼   ► - That's what I ordered, but mine's not here yet

00:01:53 ◼   ► because I've lost my mojo for ordering as orders open.

00:01:58 ◼   ► I think it was 6 a.m. Eastern time.

00:02:02 ◼   ► I forget, maybe it was 9 a.m. Eastern

00:02:04 ◼   ► and 6 a.m. Pacific this year.

00:02:06 ◼   ► It's varied over the years.

00:02:08 ◼   ► I remember for a while, there was a series,

00:02:10 ◼   ► they coincided with when Andy Baio and friends

00:02:15 ◼   ► were running the XOXO Conference in Portland,

00:02:19 ◼   ► which for a few years coincided,

00:02:23 ◼   ► it was like a Friday, Saturday, Sunday conference

00:02:25 ◼   ► in Portland, Oregon,

00:02:26 ◼   ► the three days after a Tuesday Apple event in California.

00:02:31 ◼   ► And it was a great conference.

00:02:34 ◼   ► But I was already in California for that,

00:02:38 ◼   ► so it made no sense to go to fly to California

00:02:41 ◼   ► from Philadelphia, fly home and then fly back to Portland.

00:02:45 ◼   ► So I would just stay on the West Coast

00:02:47 ◼   ► and my wife would usually come,

00:02:49 ◼   ► I think she went every year to XOXO

00:02:50 ◼   ► and she would just fly solo separately

00:02:52 ◼   ► and we'd meet up in Portland, which seemed very exotic.

00:02:56 ◼   ► We just don't live a life where,

00:02:58 ◼   ► usually it's either me traveling solo

00:03:00 ◼   ► or us traveling together and we just never meet

00:03:03 ◼   ► in an exotic locale like beautiful Portland, Oregon.

00:03:07 ◼   ► I actually, and I say that, but I actually,

00:03:09 ◼   ► I like Portland a lot.

00:03:10 ◼   ► It's a very fun city.

00:03:11 ◼   ► But then in those years,

00:03:13 ◼   ► all of the years that I remember from XOXO,

00:03:16 ◼   ► it was a 3 a.m. Eastern, midnight Pacific opening window.

00:03:20 ◼   ► And so midnight wasn't bad on the Pacific

00:03:23 ◼   ► and it would be like, but we'd be like at a bar

00:03:25 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:03:26 ◼   ► There was a rooftop lounge the one time on top of a hotel.

00:03:30 ◼   ► And it's all these people, everybody at once at like 11.58,

00:03:34 ◼   ► everybody in the entire establishment takes out their phone

00:03:38 ◼   ► and is like hitting reload on the Apple store

00:03:40 ◼   ► trying to buy iPhones at the same time.

00:03:42 ◼   ► Even though I wasn't with the iPhone media crowd,

00:03:47 ◼   ► it's now XOXO, but it's like just as much, if not more so.

00:03:51 ◼   ► - There's a big overlap there, yeah.

00:03:53 ◼   ► - But now I'm off it, I've gotten lazy.

00:03:56 ◼   ► And I did order on day one, but by the time I ordered,

00:03:59 ◼   ► I was already, it was already four to six weeks backlogged

00:04:02 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:04:03 ◼   ► But anyway, I got the same thing.

00:04:04 ◼   ► The regular size iPhone 13 Pro after one year

00:04:10 ◼   ► with the non-Pro iPhone 12, which I loved

00:04:14 ◼   ► in every single regard.

00:04:15 ◼   ► - You're many or?

00:04:17 ◼   ► - No, I did not buy it.

00:04:17 ◼   ► - No, no, no, you got the Pro, okay, gotcha.

00:04:19 ◼   ► - No, no, so for the last year,

00:04:21 ◼   ► I had the regular iPhone 12, not Pro.

00:04:25 ◼   ► - Right, right.

00:04:26 ◼   ► And yeah, I remember we talked about this

00:04:27 ◼   ► 'cause of the telephoto, right?

00:04:28 ◼   ► You weren't convinced that the telephoto was enough for you.

00:04:30 ◼   ► - Well, it wasn't, yeah, yeah.

00:04:33 ◼   ► And especially knowing when I ordered it a year ago,

00:04:36 ◼   ► like it was, well, no,

00:04:37 ◼   ► I guess it was more like October last year, right?

00:04:39 ◼   ► Because they were late.

00:04:40 ◼   ► But still, even at that time, mid pandemic,

00:04:45 ◼   ► knowing that we were going,

00:04:46 ◼   ► it was like as certain as anything in the pandemic

00:04:49 ◼   ► has ever been and with all the uncertainty

00:04:51 ◼   ► that winter was going to be bad.

00:04:54 ◼   ► That, well, if ever there's going to be a year

00:04:57 ◼   ► where I'm going to take fewer photos than ever

00:04:59 ◼   ► and that the photos I take are not going to be shot

00:05:03 ◼   ► at a distance, it's probably gonna be the next year.

00:05:05 ◼   ► And I was kind of right.

00:05:06 ◼   ► I mean, we wound up taking a few vacations this summer

00:05:08 ◼   ► and there were definitely some times

00:05:10 ◼   ► where I wished I had the telephoto lens,

00:05:11 ◼   ► but anyway, I got the pro.

00:05:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:05:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I was just curious actually

00:05:18 ◼   ► when we were talking about it.

00:05:19 ◼   ► So I checked my upgrade and I'm actually not eligible

00:05:22 ◼   ► for an upgrade until like January, I think.

00:05:25 ◼   ► So it must've been a quite a delay last year

00:05:27 ◼   ► for me upgrading.

00:05:28 ◼   ► I must've been running my own phone

00:05:30 ◼   ► for quite a while after that.

00:05:31 ◼   ► It's gonna be a while for me, but I'm not stressed.

00:05:33 ◼   ► I mean, you can, the iPhone upgrade program,

00:05:36 ◼   ► I believe you can pay early.

00:05:38 ◼   ► You know, like pay to upgrade early.

00:05:39 ◼   ► You basically pay the balance on your contract.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And it's usually like 100, 200 bucks

00:05:43 ◼   ► if you're a month or two out, but I'm not that stressed.

00:05:46 ◼   ► I'll just keep running my 12 and you know,

00:05:50 ◼   ► it's not that big of a deal, but I need that telephoto.

00:05:53 ◼   ► So I'm gonna be going.

00:05:54 ◼   ► - Well, and we've talked about this before,

00:05:56 ◼   ► I think with you on the show,

00:05:57 ◼   ► and I know you've written about it extensively

00:05:59 ◼   ► in your reviews on TechCrunch.

00:06:00 ◼   ► You love the telephoto lens and I know from your photos,

00:06:03 ◼   ► you're just, you're really good at it.

00:06:05 ◼   ► You just, your photographer's eye lends itself

00:06:10 ◼   ► to those 50 to 80 ish millimeter equivalent focal distances.

00:06:15 ◼   ► I'm more of a fixed wide angle lens person.

00:06:20 ◼   ► Like I've owned a lot of standalone fixed lens cameras

00:06:24 ◼   ► over the years.

00:06:25 ◼   ► My Fuji X100S I think is a 35 millimeter equivalent or so,

00:06:30 ◼   ► either that or 28.

00:06:33 ◼   ► And my beloved Ricoh GRD from like 2007 or six or so,

00:06:38 ◼   ► which is probably the best camera I ever owned,

00:06:41 ◼   ► pound for pound, photo for photo,

00:06:43 ◼   ► was a 28 millimeter fixed lens, no zoom at all.

00:06:48 ◼   ► That's my natural eye, but I love having,

00:06:52 ◼   ► I still love having the extra distance.

00:06:55 ◼   ► Anyway, we can talk about the camera.

00:06:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's the framing and cropping thing.

00:06:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, the other thing I do,

00:07:00 ◼   ► before I take the first break,

00:07:01 ◼   ► I did one thing I wanted to mention in you saying,

00:07:04 ◼   ► you know, that you're on the upgrade program.

00:07:07 ◼   ► I wrote last week before the phone's got

00:07:10 ◼   ► in the customer's hands, probably a day too late.

00:07:12 ◼   ► I wish I'd thought about it the day before,

00:07:14 ◼   ► but to recommend to people the device to device transfer,

00:07:19 ◼   ► where you boot up your new phone and it's like,

00:07:23 ◼   ► what do you wanna do?

00:07:24 ◼   ► And Apple calls it QuickStart.

00:07:25 ◼   ► You wanna just do the QuickStart,

00:07:26 ◼   ► bring one of your own devices nearby.

00:07:29 ◼   ► And if you want to, you can just bring it nearby

00:07:31 ◼   ► and it takes the like wifi password from it.

00:07:35 ◼   ► You just log in with your iTunes account,

00:07:37 ◼   ► which even just getting the wifi password

00:07:40 ◼   ► is a huge help, right?

00:07:43 ◼   ► Because typing in an even moderately complex wifi password

00:07:48 ◼   ► is way harder than just pointing your one camera

00:07:51 ◼   ► at the blue, I don't know what you call that thing,

00:07:54 ◼   ► the blue cloud.

00:07:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a fancy QR code, but yes,

00:07:58 ◼   ► they're point cloud, right?

00:07:59 ◼   ► - But it amuses me to no end,

00:08:02 ◼   ► but also doesn't surprise me at all

00:08:05 ◼   ► that Apple goes so far out of its way

00:08:07 ◼   ► to avoid actual QR codes and makes these beautiful things.

00:08:11 ◼   ► They do the same thing when you associate an Apple watch

00:08:14 ◼   ► with an iPhone.

00:08:15 ◼   ► But then if you just continue at that point,

00:08:16 ◼   ► they give you the option.

00:08:17 ◼   ► If you'd like to, we could just upgrade

00:08:20 ◼   ► from your iCloud backup,

00:08:22 ◼   ► or we could just transfer device to device.

00:08:24 ◼   ► And I wrote a piece about the weird nature

00:08:26 ◼   ► of being an Apple device reviewer,

00:08:30 ◼   ► especially now in the era of like four new iPhones a year,

00:08:34 ◼   ► sometimes five, if there's an iPhone SE model,

00:08:37 ◼   ► plus iPads, it's like I set,

00:08:40 ◼   ► and then I buy an iPhone for myself.

00:08:43 ◼   ► And I ended up setting up a lot of iOS devices a year

00:08:48 ◼   ► for somebody who's not running

00:08:50 ◼   ► like a consumer report style lab.

00:08:52 ◼   ► - Sure, right, right.

00:08:54 ◼   ► Or not a developer where you're used to having

00:08:57 ◼   ► a bed of test devices.

00:08:59 ◼   ► - I years ago gave up on the,

00:09:01 ◼   ► it used to be that you could do it from iCloud

00:09:04 ◼   ► or do it from like an iTunes.

00:09:07 ◼   ► Now iTunes is gone and you do it in a finder,

00:09:09 ◼   ► but I'll call it an iTunes backup on your Mac,

00:09:13 ◼   ► which if you encrypt it and put a password on your backup,

00:09:18 ◼   ► which you can't forget, it's encrypted,

00:09:19 ◼   ► and it's like good encryption.

00:09:21 ◼   ► - And which you can only do

00:09:22 ◼   ► if you back it up to your Mac, obviously.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Or to your computer.

00:09:25 ◼   ► - The computer backup without encryption

00:09:29 ◼   ► doesn't have any of your passwords

00:09:30 ◼   ► for the obvious reason that it's not encrypted.

00:09:33 ◼   ► If you do encrypt it,

00:09:34 ◼   ► they store all sorts of more sensitive stuff,

00:09:36 ◼   ► like your passwords and your login state,

00:09:37 ◼   ► and you get more, and that's why I,

00:09:41 ◼   ► because iCloud backups are not end-to-end encrypted yet,

00:09:46 ◼   ► maybe, who knows, that's a whole separate discussion

00:09:48 ◼   ► we don't have time for,

00:09:49 ◼   ► but since the current state of iCloud backup

00:09:51 ◼   ► is that they're not end-to-end encrypted,

00:09:53 ◼   ► they don't include anything that's sensitive, like passwords.

00:09:58 ◼   ► So if you do the device backup to your Mac,

00:10:00 ◼   ► you get more stuff.

00:10:02 ◼   ► But it's a huge rigmarole to me

00:10:05 ◼   ► compared to the device device.

00:10:07 ◼   ► It might be faster, but now you've got like

00:10:10 ◼   ► tens of gigabytes of space on your Mac

00:10:13 ◼   ► taken up by these backups.

00:10:14 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, they eat up so quick,

00:10:16 ◼   ► especially with photos and all that.

00:10:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, they eat up quick,

00:10:19 ◼   ► and you have to remember to do it,

00:10:21 ◼   ► and if you haven't backed up first,

00:10:23 ◼   ► first you have to take a plug

00:10:24 ◼   ► and plug it in your old iPhone and do a fresh backup

00:10:27 ◼   ► so it's a fresh backup,

00:10:28 ◼   ► then take it and plug it in the other thing

00:10:29 ◼   ► and do a restore.

00:10:30 ◼   ► And I'm sure lots of people listening still do it.

00:10:32 ◼   ► There's a lot of people who just,

00:10:34 ◼   ► once they have a system that works,

00:10:35 ◼   ► they don't wanna take a chance,

00:10:36 ◼   ► even if they know it's just,

00:10:38 ◼   ► well, I could waste three hours trying it

00:10:42 ◼   ► the way Gruber says I should,

00:10:43 ◼   ► but I don't even feel like doing that,

00:10:45 ◼   ► I'll just do it the way I know.

00:10:46 ◼   ► - And for some people,

00:10:47 ◼   ► the encrypted backup really matters, right?

00:10:49 ◼   ► Like for security consciousness and protection,

00:10:52 ◼   ► that kind of thing.

00:10:53 ◼   ► - Right, but you don't have to do,

00:10:54 ◼   ► the thing about the device to device

00:10:55 ◼   ► is you don't have to do a backup at all.

00:10:57 ◼   ► You just bring your old phone next to your new phone

00:10:59 ◼   ► and leave 'em together,

00:11:01 ◼   ► and for some varying amount of time,

00:11:03 ◼   ► for me it seemed to take about 90 minutes each time.

00:11:06 ◼   ► I know some people,

00:11:08 ◼   ► Ben Thompson says it took eight hours

00:11:10 ◼   ► and still failed for him overnight.

00:11:12 ◼   ► I guess it depends how much stuff you have on your phone.

00:11:14 ◼   ► But because it's device to device,

00:11:18 ◼   ► you don't have to do a backup first,

00:11:19 ◼   ► you don't have to do anything first,

00:11:20 ◼   ► and Apple somehow makes a super secure connection

00:11:23 ◼   ► from one iPhone to the other.

00:11:25 ◼   ► You've already authenticated with your iCloud account,

00:11:27 ◼   ► and so it transfers everything,

00:11:30 ◼   ► or everything that can be done.

00:11:33 ◼   ► There are some apps that can flag something as,

00:11:36 ◼   ► no matter what, don't back this up.

00:11:38 ◼   ► And that doesn't get transferred over.

00:11:41 ◼   ► So like people who use the Google Authenticator app,

00:11:44 ◼   ► you have to do a lot of work

00:11:46 ◼   ► to move it to a new machine each time.

00:11:49 ◼   ► But anyway, what I was thinking was

00:11:50 ◼   ► that the biggest downside I can think of,

00:11:52 ◼   ► and that I heard after I wrote about this,

00:11:55 ◼   ► was from people in the iPhone upgrade program

00:11:57 ◼   ► who do it by going to the retail store,

00:12:00 ◼   ► because you come in, you wait,

00:12:03 ◼   ► and they're like, "Okay, you're up,"

00:12:04 ◼   ► and you go to the counter and you give them your order,

00:12:06 ◼   ► and they're like, "Oh, here's your new iPhone,"

00:12:08 ◼   ► and then you hand your old iPhone over,

00:12:10 ◼   ► and you expect it to get the hell out.

00:12:12 ◼   ► So you don't have time to do it.

00:12:16 ◼   ► And I suspect if you do it mid-year,

00:12:18 ◼   ► if you wait a couple months

00:12:19 ◼   ► until there's not this big rush,

00:12:21 ◼   ► I think that they might let you sit at the Genius counter

00:12:24 ◼   ► for an hour or whatever and do it.

00:12:26 ◼   ► But I think at the moment with COVID restrictions

00:12:29 ◼   ► and with the seasonal rush of everybody getting a new iPhone,

00:12:32 ◼   ► you can't do it.

00:12:32 ◼   ► - Right, and you know that I believe

00:12:37 ◼   ► that if you do the iPhone upgrade at home,

00:12:39 ◼   ► I'm almost possible, yeah, they send you the new one,

00:12:42 ◼   ► and you have the new one and your old one, obviously.

00:12:45 ◼   ► That wouldn't make any sense to send your old one first.

00:12:47 ◼   ► But yeah, you have the both in your possession,

00:12:49 ◼   ► and you can do that at your leisure.

00:12:50 ◼   ► But that makes sense.

00:12:51 ◼   ► I didn't even think about the in-store situation

00:12:53 ◼   ► not being friendly to that device-to-device transfer.

00:12:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I got a lot of feedback from it.

00:12:59 ◼   ► And I was a little wary.

00:13:00 ◼   ► I was like, "I'm gonna tell everybody to do this,"

00:13:01 ◼   ► 'cause I've been doing this for so many devices

00:13:03 ◼   ► for so many years.

00:13:04 ◼   ► And what happened was a couple of years ago,

00:13:07 ◼   ► it was, I was staying, I think I actually took,

00:13:11 ◼   ► it was that year that I took the ride back to the city

00:13:14 ◼   ► with you after the event,

00:13:16 ◼   ► and you were kind enough to give me a ride

00:13:19 ◼   ► and I was staying in San Francisco.

00:13:21 ◼   ► And I hadn't set up my new iPhones yet,

00:13:23 ◼   ► but I had gotten them from Apple,

00:13:25 ◼   ► my review units after the event.

00:13:28 ◼   ► It's like five in the afternoon.

00:13:29 ◼   ► I had dinner plans with friends who live in San Francisco.

00:13:32 ◼   ► I was like, "Well, I need to quick set up this new iPhone."

00:13:34 ◼   ► And it was like, I didn't have my Mac handy, didn't have that.

00:13:37 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, what a pain.

00:13:39 ◼   ► "I wish I could just put these right next to each other."

00:13:41 ◼   ► And now you can.

00:13:44 ◼   ► And anyway, I recommended it.

00:13:46 ◼   ► Readers who did it overwhelmingly were like,

00:13:49 ◼   ► "Hey, this is amazing.

00:13:50 ◼   ► "I didn't know this worked so well."

00:13:51 ◼   ► Or, "I tried this three years ago

00:13:53 ◼   ► "and it didn't work that well,

00:13:54 ◼   ► "and now it works so much better."

00:13:57 ◼   ► - That was really my situation too,

00:13:58 ◼   ► because I tried it the first year it was out.

00:14:01 ◼   ► And like you, I always have to do six of them at once

00:14:05 ◼   ► or four at once, or definitely a bunch more

00:14:08 ◼   ► than a normal person would.

00:14:09 ◼   ► And I experienced so many issues with it

00:14:12 ◼   ► the first year it was out.

00:14:13 ◼   ► It took an enormous amount of time,

00:14:15 ◼   ► like five to six hours.

00:14:16 ◼   ► It still didn't complete properly, et cetera.

00:14:19 ◼   ► And it really turned me off of that option for a while.

00:14:22 ◼   ► So ever since then, I have been using the iCloud option,

00:14:26 ◼   ► which does require, of course,

00:14:28 ◼   ► that you log back into all of your junk,

00:14:30 ◼   ► because it does not copy over the password.

00:14:32 ◼   ► It's not encrypted.

00:14:33 ◼   ► So you lose a lot of convenience,

00:14:36 ◼   ► and you have to go through a whole round

00:14:38 ◼   ► of relogging for a month.

00:14:40 ◼   ► You open new apps and you're,

00:14:42 ◼   ► "Oh, great, I haven't logged into this thing yet."

00:14:44 ◼   ► And you have to do that.

00:14:45 ◼   ► So I'm gonna give it a try next time.

00:14:47 ◼   ► I guess, oh, well, I guess when I get mine,

00:14:50 ◼   ► when I actually run my personal, I'm gonna give it a go.

00:14:53 ◼   ► Based off of your experience with it,

00:14:55 ◼   ► it seems like maybe they've improved it quite a bit,

00:14:57 ◼   ► or maybe it was just a bad experience

00:15:00 ◼   ► because I had so many devices to do at once,

00:15:02 ◼   ► and there's a time crunch and all that.

00:15:04 ◼   ► - I am under the impression that they have a,

00:15:07 ◼   ► I don't know how big the team is, probably a small team,

00:15:10 ◼   ► because small teams are generally more effective.

00:15:13 ◼   ► But there's a small team of people at Apple

00:15:15 ◼   ► who work on this stuff.

00:15:17 ◼   ► And to me, their work is unheralded.

00:15:19 ◼   ► 'Cause people, you know what I mean?

00:15:21 ◼   ► You do it once, you forget about it.

00:15:22 ◼   ► And the only time most people ever really think

00:15:25 ◼   ► about the migration is if it fails in some way.

00:15:29 ◼   ► If it just works and you pick off where you left off

00:15:32 ◼   ► and all of your stuff is just there

00:15:34 ◼   ► and you're logged into almost all of your apps,

00:15:36 ◼   ► and it's like, you think, "Oh, that's cool,"

00:15:38 ◼   ► and then you'd never think about it again.

00:15:41 ◼   ► - It's unheralded work, but I think that they've been doing

00:15:46 ◼   ► extremely good work year over year,

00:15:49 ◼   ► making it better and better, more efficient,

00:15:51 ◼   ► et cetera, et cetera.

00:15:52 ◼   ► Let me take a break here, thank our first sponsor.

00:15:55 ◼   ► Look, you listening, you're a busy guy, probably,

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00:17:54 ◼   ► Now that we're like a week past dropping the reviews,

00:18:00 ◼   ► what is your one week past review thinking of the state

00:18:04 ◼   ► of the iPhone's 13?

00:18:05 ◼   ► - Pretty good.

00:18:07 ◼   ► I mean, really solid offerings across the board.

00:18:11 ◼   ► I don't think there's a huge weak spot in this lineup.

00:18:15 ◼   ► The unification of the camera systems is huge, right?

00:18:18 ◼   ► That's a really big step forward.

00:18:20 ◼   ► They've had alternating years now of the cameras being

00:18:24 ◼   ► roughly comparable between the models in the same lineup

00:18:28 ◼   ► and then where they have not been.

00:18:30 ◼   ► And by far, of course, I prefer the years where you get

00:18:32 ◼   ► to make a choice based on your size and usability

00:18:35 ◼   ► and not have to give up camera capability, right?

00:18:39 ◼   ► You don't wanna do that.

00:18:40 ◼   ► It's not ideal and I'm sure it's not ideal for them as well.

00:18:43 ◼   ► And recently that was due to the fact that the OIS module,

00:18:48 ◼   ► the internal stabilization module was quite large

00:18:51 ◼   ► and unable to fit in some of the models.

00:18:53 ◼   ► And that's why the big one had it.

00:18:55 ◼   ► And now they've managed to miniaturize that to enough

00:18:58 ◼   ► of a degree where the 13 or 13 Pro Max,

00:19:02 ◼   ► or 13 Pro or Pro Max, you're just making a call based on

00:19:07 ◼   ► size and usability, which is the right thing.

00:19:10 ◼   ► Like you want, oh, this feels good to me,

00:19:13 ◼   ► so this is the one I'm gonna pick.

00:19:14 ◼   ► You don't want, this feels bad to me,

00:19:17 ◼   ► but it has the features I want, right?

00:19:19 ◼   ► That's a nightmare scenario for any designer.

00:19:22 ◼   ► It's like, oh, this feels bad, but I have to use it, right?

00:19:25 ◼   ► And like that sucks.

00:19:26 ◼   ► That's not how people who build tools

00:19:29 ◼   ► want you to feel about those tools.

00:19:31 ◼   ► And I think that's why it's in such a good state for me.

00:19:34 ◼   ► Like that's the core of why it feels great right now

00:19:36 ◼   ► is that you can make a call based on your desire

00:19:40 ◼   ► and usability and even between the 13 and 13 Pro.

00:19:45 ◼   ► And I, once again, I kind of focus on the cameras

00:19:47 ◼   ► 'cause that's what I think about a lot.

00:19:49 ◼   ► But even between those two models,

00:19:51 ◼   ► you're making less compromises than ever

00:19:53 ◼   ► and really making a call based on a few edge features

00:19:56 ◼   ► that may not be mainstream,

00:19:59 ◼   ► like 120 Hertz or a few other ones,

00:20:02 ◼   ► and you're still getting a really great wide angle camera.

00:20:05 ◼   ► So if you're like someone who uses it as a primary camera,

00:20:08 ◼   ► but doesn't really play around with the telephoto

00:20:10 ◼   ► or whatever, you do have the option to just genuinely say,

00:20:14 ◼   ► I can save money and still get a really great camera

00:20:18 ◼   ► versus, oh, I can save money,

00:20:19 ◼   ► but I know I'm gonna get up kind of a poorer camera out of

00:20:22 ◼   ► this, right?

00:20:23 ◼   ► And I think that's a really, really good solid position

00:20:26 ◼   ► for Apple to be in.

00:20:27 ◼   ► And I think it makes the choice

00:20:29 ◼   ► for the consumer really great.

00:20:31 ◼   ► And so they're gonna end up with, I think,

00:20:32 ◼   ► a big, big sales year for these models

00:20:36 ◼   ► because of the lack of compromises necessary.

00:20:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think lack of compromise is a good summary.

00:20:42 ◼   ► In the earlier years of iPhone,

00:20:44 ◼   ► like the first half of the iPhone era,

00:20:46 ◼   ► they were much more on a AB cycle,

00:20:51 ◼   ► TikTok cycle, I guess, in the parlance, right?

00:20:53 ◼   ► And famously, they were,

00:20:55 ◼   ► for iPhone 4, 4S, iPhone 5, 5S, iPhone 6, 6S.

00:21:00 ◼   ► And the iPhone 7 and sorta knocks,

00:21:05 ◼   ► is when they first knocked off that.

00:21:06 ◼   ► But those six years of like 4, 4S, 5, 5S, 6, 6S,

00:21:11 ◼   ► I know lots and lots of people.

00:21:14 ◼   ► And if you're a semi-enthusiast,

00:21:17 ◼   ► a two-year upgrade cycle is super normal, super sensible.

00:21:21 ◼   ► And if you're less of a enthusiast,

00:21:24 ◼   ► going more, as many years as you can between upgrading,

00:21:27 ◼   ► and everybody has family members who are like that.

00:21:29 ◼   ► Like my mom just waited until the battery health was like,

00:21:33 ◼   ► practically begging her,

00:21:36 ◼   ► "Seriously, we're not really trying to sell you a new iPhone,

00:21:38 ◼   ► "but this iPhone 6 is really, really,

00:21:42 ◼   ► "the battery's not that good."

00:21:44 ◼   ► I remember from that era,

00:21:46 ◼   ► a lot of daring Fireball readers,

00:21:48 ◼   ► after reviews would drop in every year,

00:21:50 ◼   ► and a lot of them would say,

00:21:52 ◼   ► "I'm on the S cycle.

00:21:53 ◼   ► "I upgrade every two years, I'm on the S cycle,

00:21:55 ◼   ► "and I could not be happier for it."

00:21:57 ◼   ► I think the S, every year, these S phones come out,

00:22:01 ◼   ► and so many of the reviews are like,

00:22:03 ◼   ► "Ah, it looks just like last year's phone.

00:22:06 ◼   ► "It's an incremental upgrade."

00:22:08 ◼   ► And they're like, "I love the incremental upgrades,

00:22:10 ◼   ► "because it's like they've taken,"

00:22:12 ◼   ► and then they would name their two or three pet compromises

00:22:16 ◼   ► from the one-year-old phone that were fixed in the S cycle.

00:22:20 ◼   ► And they're calling this the iPhone 13,

00:22:24 ◼   ► and I get why they don't use the S thing much anymore.

00:22:30 ◼   ► They did it with the XS,

00:22:31 ◼   ► which was not quite clearly the old school S upgrade,

00:22:36 ◼   ► 'cause there was also the XR, which was there with it,

00:22:39 ◼   ► and brought the iPhone X style to a much lower price point.

00:22:44 ◼   ► I get it for marketing reasons,

00:22:47 ◼   ► that the S maybe signals to too many people

00:22:50 ◼   ► that it is a minor upgrade,

00:22:52 ◼   ► that it's like screaming minor upgrade.

00:22:54 ◼   ► It's kind of curious they ever used it.

00:22:56 ◼   ► But in other ways, you could think of these

00:23:00 ◼   ► as sort of like the 12S.

00:23:02 ◼   ► And sometimes, I guess, with the S phones,

00:23:05 ◼   ► they were so close physically

00:23:07 ◼   ► that you could just use the same cases

00:23:09 ◼   ► as the year before,

00:23:10 ◼   ► or they would tweak the cases by half of a millimeter,

00:23:15 ◼   ► but they would still say it's compatible,

00:23:18 ◼   ► this case is compatible with both the 5S and the 5

00:23:21 ◼   ► when the new cases came out.

00:23:22 ◼   ► To me, that's what the iPhone 13 is like.

00:23:26 ◼   ► And I don't mean it to belittle it,

00:23:28 ◼   ► I just think it is,

00:23:30 ◼   ► key is what you just mentioned to me,

00:23:33 ◼   ► is that if you prefer the smaller 6.1-inch size

00:23:37 ◼   ► to the max 6.7-inch size,

00:23:40 ◼   ► it's fantastic that you get the exact same camera system,

00:23:44 ◼   ► and both have been upgraded with faster lenses,

00:23:48 ◼   ► including a much faster, super ultra-wide,

00:23:51 ◼   ► the 0.5X lens, which also shoots macro,

00:23:55 ◼   ► and now the telephoto has gone from 2X

00:24:00 ◼   ► at that size range to 3X,

00:24:02 ◼   ► which is a lot more throw.

00:24:04 ◼   ► And they're just the same,

00:24:05 ◼   ► and all you have to do is pick which size you like better.

00:24:08 ◼   ► And it's a little bit more than just which size

00:24:10 ◼   ► you like better in your hand,

00:24:11 ◼   ► because you do get super-duper more battery life

00:24:14 ◼   ► with the Pro Max, right?

00:24:16 ◼   ► - Right, right, not so to be overlooked, right.

00:24:18 ◼   ► - Right, and so, let's face it,

00:24:21 ◼   ► one of the things that's overlooked in all of this,

00:24:23 ◼   ► to me, overlooked by a lot,

00:24:24 ◼   ► is how many people, their iPhone is their primary computer.

00:24:29 ◼   ► And at a consumer level,

00:24:33 ◼   ► there's a lot of people who just don't own another computer,

00:24:36 ◼   ► right, and maybe it's even just a price thing,

00:24:39 ◼   ► and you're young and you're a student,

00:24:41 ◼   ► or you're just low-income for whatever reason,

00:24:44 ◼   ► and owning a high-end, a nice iPhone,

00:24:48 ◼   ► that's your budget for a computer.

00:24:50 ◼   ► But for a lot of people, it's just like their lifestyle,

00:24:53 ◼   ► right, that they're just on their feet all day.

00:24:56 ◼   ► We just watched the new episode of the season opener

00:24:59 ◼   ► of "The Morning Show" with all these TV people,

00:25:02 ◼   ► and I know there's this whole subset of,

00:25:04 ◼   ► oh, Apple makes them put iPhones into all these shows

00:25:07 ◼   ► on Apple TV+, but I think that's a realistic depiction

00:25:11 ◼   ► of life as a TV executive.

00:25:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so.

00:25:14 ◼   ► I think as a modern media executive,

00:25:16 ◼   ► if you have an Android phone, good luck to you.

00:25:19 ◼   ► - Right, like, Ted Lasso has a lot of iPhones in it,

00:25:21 ◼   ► but it's not people walking around all scene, every scene,

00:25:25 ◼   ► with their iPhone in front of them,

00:25:26 ◼   ► whereas the media executives on the show

00:25:30 ◼   ► have their phones in front of them all the time,

00:25:31 ◼   ► and that's true, they do.

00:25:33 ◼   ► And if you're that sort of person,

00:25:35 ◼   ► getting the Macs makes sense.

00:25:36 ◼   ► Like, if you're on your phone from your morning commute

00:25:40 ◼   ► until you get home and have a chance to plug it in,

00:25:42 ◼   ► it makes sense.

00:25:43 ◼   ► - Totally.

00:25:45 ◼   ► If you use a laptop 20% of the day or 10% of the day,

00:25:50 ◼   ► and your phone 70% of the day,

00:25:53 ◼   ► I mean, it makes a lot of sense to say,

00:25:55 ◼   ► "Hey, I need a big typing surface.

00:25:57 ◼   ► "I wanna see these emails.

00:25:59 ◼   ► "I wanna read 'em closely,

00:26:00 ◼   ► "and I have to say it's very, very easy

00:26:03 ◼   ► "to pooh-pooh the larger size and go,

00:26:05 ◼   ► "oh, you could type just as well until you get older."

00:26:08 ◼   ► And then you're like, "Hey, you know what would be great?

00:26:11 ◼   ► "If I could see anything, that would be awesome."

00:26:14 ◼   ► And I think that it's obviously a big hit for those.

00:26:17 ◼   ► If you do a bigger font, you got more screen real estate,

00:26:20 ◼   ► that's a factor.

00:26:21 ◼   ► - Right.

00:26:22 ◼   ► The other thing, too, is, and I know,

00:26:26 ◼   ► you and I commit to a little bit during the review period.

00:26:29 ◼   ► We're not competitive with each other.

00:26:32 ◼   ► Basically, people who've come on my show,

00:26:37 ◼   ► like you and Joanna,

00:26:40 ◼   ► it's like, we'll commit sometimes or ask questions

00:26:43 ◼   ► while we're reviewing these phones.

00:26:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, gut checks can be helpful, too.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Make sure you're not an outlier.

00:26:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, gut checks, right?

00:26:49 ◼   ► But for the most part, one of my fears always

00:26:52 ◼   ► with these reviews is that I'm gonna publish my review.

00:26:55 ◼   ► I've had six days with this thing,

00:26:58 ◼   ► and I've tried to devote as much time to it as I can

00:27:00 ◼   ► and think about it from consumer's perspective

00:27:03 ◼   ► and my audience's perspective in particular.

00:27:06 ◼   ► Here's the thoughts.

00:27:07 ◼   ► And then I'm worried I'm gonna look

00:27:08 ◼   ► at everybody else's reviews,

00:27:09 ◼   ► and they're all going to complain about X,

00:27:12 ◼   ► or they're all gonna say--

00:27:13 ◼   ► - That you're gonna just totally miss a huge flaw.

00:27:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, miss a huge flaw.

00:27:17 ◼   ► Maybe the closest to that was

00:27:19 ◼   ► when the cellular Apple Watch came out.

00:27:21 ◼   ► There was a weird glitch where some people were saying--

00:27:24 ◼   ► - Right, a Wi-Fi issue.

00:27:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:27:27 ◼   ► I had never encountered it.

00:27:29 ◼   ► I think it was like that it would latch onto a public Wi-Fi,

00:27:32 ◼   ► but it needed a authentication,

00:27:34 ◼   ► but therefore because it was latched onto the Wi-Fi,

00:27:37 ◼   ► but needed an authentication that the watch itself

00:27:39 ◼   ► wasn't capable of prompting you for,

00:27:42 ◼   ► like a coffee shop that says,

00:27:44 ◼   ► "Oh, okay, it's a known network, so I'll latch onto it."

00:27:47 ◼   ► But the coffee shop wants you to type a password

00:27:49 ◼   ► or something like that that you can--

00:27:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, the capture gateways that hotels use.

00:27:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was something like that.

00:27:57 ◼   ► But for the most part this year,

00:28:00 ◼   ► I thought there was a remarkable consensus,

00:28:02 ◼   ► which was my thrust, which was,

00:28:03 ◼   ► "Look, they made the cameras better, a lot better,

00:28:06 ◼   ► noticeably better in ways that real people

00:28:09 ◼   ► will really take better photos and better videos,

00:28:13 ◼   ► and they have significantly improved battery life

00:28:17 ◼   ► in a very practical way."

00:28:19 ◼   ► And better cameras and better battery life

00:28:22 ◼   ► are literally the main things.

00:28:24 ◼   ► I know there's the whole,

00:28:25 ◼   ► you can't just ask people what they want

00:28:27 ◼   ► 'cause they'd say they want faster horses

00:28:29 ◼   ► instead of knowing that they should switch to automobiles.

00:28:32 ◼   ► But people know what they do with their iPhones,

00:28:33 ◼   ► and people like more battery life,

00:28:36 ◼   ► and people, everybody, almost everybody uses the camera.

00:28:40 ◼   ► - Right.

00:28:42 ◼   ► It's just not that, it's not rocket science, right?

00:28:46 ◼   ► Like you go into these things going,

00:28:47 ◼   ► "Oh, I wonder what am I gonna miss?

00:28:50 ◼   ► What angles am I gonna get?"

00:28:51 ◼   ► And I think sometimes people overthink it,

00:28:53 ◼   ► and you don't need to overthink what people want

00:28:55 ◼   ► from their smartphone in a lot of cases these days,

00:28:58 ◼   ► because you know absolutely it is their primary camera.

00:29:01 ◼   ► That ship sailed in like 2014 or something, right?

00:29:06 ◼   ► So you know it's their primary camera,

00:29:08 ◼   ► and you know that they use it a lot

00:29:10 ◼   ► because every app statistic on the planet

00:29:12 ◼   ► will tell you that people are using their phones

00:29:15 ◼   ► more and more, and what is the result of that?

00:29:17 ◼   ► Well, battery, right?

00:29:19 ◼   ► So those two things are not for overthinkers, right?

00:29:22 ◼   ► And I think that sometimes people get into overthinking it,

00:29:25 ◼   ► and therefore undervalue those basics, right?

00:29:29 ◼   ► They undervalue those simple, they're like,

00:29:31 ◼   ► "Oh, surely it can't just be somebody buys this

00:29:34 ◼   ► because it has 12% more battery."

00:29:36 ◼   ► It's like, well, yeah, because it's a binary decision.

00:29:40 ◼   ► Does it have more battery or less, right?

00:29:43 ◼   ► Not, "Oh, does it have 17%?"

00:29:45 ◼   ► Now I'm convinced.

00:29:47 ◼   ► It's like, no, does it have more battery?

00:29:48 ◼   ► Okay, I'll buy that one, right?

00:29:50 ◼   ► Like most people are not sitting there

00:29:51 ◼   ► looking at a chart.

00:29:53 ◼   ► Like I put charts in my reviews time and time

00:29:55 ◼   ► because I know some people like that, and that's great.

00:29:58 ◼   ► And I, you know, obviously I need to do the measurements

00:30:00 ◼   ► myself to contextualize my feelings,

00:30:03 ◼   ► so I do the measurements.

00:30:04 ◼   ► But most people are not.

00:30:05 ◼   ► They're like, "Is it more about, oh, is that more battery?

00:30:07 ◼   ► Oh, cool."

00:30:08 ◼   ► And then when they go to order it,

00:30:09 ◼   ► they just order the one with more battery.

00:30:10 ◼   ► - Yeah. - And that's not,

00:30:11 ◼   ► you know, you don't need to overthink that too much.

00:30:15 ◼   ► - Tim Cook talks about that a lot

00:30:16 ◼   ► when he talks about Apple Watch.

00:30:18 ◼   ► And you know, it comes up so often

00:30:20 ◼   ► that I know it's not a talking point

00:30:23 ◼   ► because he's said it for years,

00:30:25 ◼   ► but that the thing he loves most about Apple Watch

00:30:27 ◼   ► is that he's been a fitness enthusiast

00:30:29 ◼   ► since long before Apple Watch.

00:30:31 ◼   ► But there were things he thought

00:30:32 ◼   ► he was accomplishing each day

00:30:34 ◼   ► that it turns out he wasn't until he got the numbers.

00:30:37 ◼   ► And it's, I got some, you know,

00:30:40 ◼   ► maybe some pushback I got last year.

00:30:42 ◼   ► I gave a very, very positive review to the iPhone 12 mini,

00:30:46 ◼   ► and I was very close to buying the iPhone 12 mini

00:30:50 ◼   ► as my personal phone for the last year.

00:30:52 ◼   ► It was the closest call I've ever had

00:30:55 ◼   ► in all the years of multiple new iPhones

00:30:58 ◼   ► of deciding which one to buy

00:31:00 ◼   ► because I was so enamored with it in so many ways.

00:31:03 ◼   ► Like, it's weight and the low amount of volume

00:31:08 ◼   ► it takes up in a jeans pocket.

00:31:11 ◼   ► Battery life was not the reason

00:31:13 ◼   ► that I went with the 12 instead of the 12 mini.

00:31:16 ◼   ► For me, it was typing.

00:31:18 ◼   ► And even though the 12 mini is a size

00:31:21 ◼   ► that's very comparable keyboard,

00:31:24 ◼   ► the physical keyboard on the iPhone mini size

00:31:27 ◼   ► is very comparable to the old iPhones of yesteryear,

00:31:32 ◼   ► my thumbs have lost their ability to type at that speed.

00:31:36 ◼   ► And I very specifically remember

00:31:38 ◼   ► that it was during the six-day election of 2020,

00:31:44 ◼   ► where it was five days from election day

00:31:49 ◼   ► until Saturday morning when CNN

00:31:52 ◼   ► or whoever it was the first to call it

00:31:53 ◼   ► and said, "We're calling it.

00:31:55 ◼   ► "Joe Biden is the winner."

00:31:57 ◼   ► And I remember I watched an awful lot of TV

00:31:59 ◼   ► in those five days,

00:32:02 ◼   ► and I was using the 12 mini as my main phone,

00:32:05 ◼   ► and I was like, "I am making so many typos,

00:32:09 ◼   ► "and I'm trying to do all this stuff,

00:32:10 ◼   ► "but I cannot leave the couch to get something else

00:32:13 ◼   ► "because what if Steve Kornacki comes on

00:32:15 ◼   ► "and tells me something about County Georgia?

00:32:19 ◼   ► "Oh my God, I can't leave."

00:32:20 ◼   ► So I was just on the 12 mini,

00:32:22 ◼   ► and it was the pandemic.

00:32:24 ◼   ► I wasn't leaving.

00:32:25 ◼   ► I could easily plug the mini in for five minutes

00:32:28 ◼   ► here and there while I got a beverage

00:32:30 ◼   ► or MSNBC cut to commercial.

00:32:32 ◼   ► And so I wasn't running out of battery.

00:32:34 ◼   ► It was the typing of all things, the typing.

00:32:36 ◼   ► And so I was like, "You know what?

00:32:37 ◼   ► "I'm gonna buy a 12."

00:32:38 ◼   ► But-- - Yeah, I mean,

00:32:41 ◼   ► that's the same reason I didn't go with the mini.

00:32:42 ◼   ► I love everything about it,

00:32:43 ◼   ► but my meaty thumbs can't handle it, unfortunately.

00:32:47 ◼   ► I wish they could.

00:32:48 ◼   ► And it's crazy 'cause they used to be able to.

00:32:50 ◼   ► I mean, I used to be there.

00:32:51 ◼   ► But they used to be able to

00:32:53 ◼   ► because we all used to type on that side screen.

00:32:55 ◼   ► That's what's hilarious about it,

00:32:56 ◼   ► but now we can't do it anymore.

00:32:58 ◼   ► - Right, but all that said,

00:33:00 ◼   ► but the battery life was a compromise.

00:33:02 ◼   ► It was seriously, it was a bit compromised on battery life.

00:33:06 ◼   ► And that was definitely a hit.

00:33:08 ◼   ► And there were people who were like,

00:33:09 ◼   ► "Yeah, you should have called out the battery life more."

00:33:11 ◼   ► And it's like, well, to me, it was within what Apple said.

00:33:15 ◼   ► If Apple said, I don't know what the numbers were

00:33:18 ◼   ► for the hours, but if it said it was only 66%

00:33:22 ◼   ► of the battery life of the 12 Pro or something like that,

00:33:25 ◼   ► it's like, I think that was fair.

00:33:27 ◼   ► That might be a deal breaker for you,

00:33:29 ◼   ► only having 2/3 of the battery life.

00:33:31 ◼   ► And so to me, that was a compromise.

00:33:34 ◼   ► And one of the most amazing things

00:33:35 ◼   ► about the battery life improvements

00:33:37 ◼   ► with the iPhone 13 lineup

00:33:39 ◼   ► is that this year's iPhone 13 mini

00:33:44 ◼   ► gets longer battery life than last year's mid-size,

00:33:48 ◼   ► regular-size, whatever you wanna call it, iPhone 12.

00:33:51 ◼   ► So that to me is removing the compromise.

00:33:54 ◼   ► And sure, the 13 mini still has the lowest battery life

00:33:58 ◼   ► of all the iPhone 13 for the obvious reason

00:34:01 ◼   ► that it has the smallest battery.

00:34:03 ◼   ► But that's a huge one-year gain

00:34:07 ◼   ► that the mini size now has a longer-lasting battery

00:34:12 ◼   ► by every measure you can think of

00:34:14 ◼   ► than last year's regular-sized iPhone 12.

00:34:17 ◼   ► That's amazing.

00:34:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a huge leap in one year.

00:34:21 ◼   ► And if you're talking about compromise or whatever,

00:34:25 ◼   ► it does delete an enormous amount of compromise

00:34:28 ◼   ► that those people had to make last year,

00:34:30 ◼   ► the people choosing that phone.

00:34:31 ◼   ► And it removes, obviously, the barrier

00:34:34 ◼   ► for a lot of people that would have

00:34:36 ◼   ► bought that last year, but felt like,

00:34:39 ◼   ► ah, man, I run out of battery every day today already.

00:34:43 ◼   ► I can't go to less, right?

00:34:47 ◼   ► And that's a definite leap forward.

00:34:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, so the two big compromises

00:34:54 ◼   ► that they eliminated year over year,

00:34:57 ◼   ► the mini no longer has bad battery life

00:34:59 ◼   ► and now has perfectly adequate,

00:35:01 ◼   ► by anybody's definition, battery life for the size.

00:35:04 ◼   ► And the midsize 13 Pro has the exact same camera system

00:35:09 ◼   ► as the Pro Max, and they made both cameras better.

00:35:15 ◼   ► Very, very impressive to me year over year.

00:35:20 ◼   ► I wanna keep talking about the camera stuff,

00:35:21 ◼   ► but I'm gonna take another break here

00:35:23 ◼   ► and thank our friends.

00:35:24 ◼   ► Oh, man, I love Memberful.

00:35:28 ◼   ► Memberful is how you can monetize your passion

00:35:31 ◼   ► with memberships.

00:35:32 ◼   ► Memberful allows you to build a sustainable,

00:35:35 ◼   ► recurring revenue.

00:35:37 ◼   ► It is the easiest way to sell memberships to your audience,

00:35:40 ◼   ► and it is used by some of the biggest creators on the web.

00:35:42 ◼   ► It is used by many of my personal favorite sites,

00:35:46 ◼   ► including those from my friends,

00:35:47 ◼   ► like Jason Snell at Six Colors.

00:35:49 ◼   ► I'm a member of more Memberful sites

00:35:53 ◼   ► than I can count on, definitely on one hand.

00:35:56 ◼   ► One of the best things is that they never put their brand

00:35:58 ◼   ► in front of yours.

00:36:00 ◼   ► So once you're a member at Six Colors, let's just say,

00:36:03 ◼   ► you're never reminded that you're going through Memberful.

00:36:06 ◼   ► It always just feels like you're going right through

00:36:08 ◼   ► to Six Colors, and you just never have to worry about it.

00:36:12 ◼   ► And it couldn't be better.

00:36:13 ◼   ► If you are the creator, though, what a great advantage

00:36:16 ◼   ► to you that you can have a partner like this

00:36:18 ◼   ► who takes care of all the hard stuff,

00:36:20 ◼   ► all of this infrastructure,

00:36:22 ◼   ► and also doesn't dilute your own brand at all

00:36:26 ◼   ► or get in the way of your direct communication

00:36:30 ◼   ► with your audience.

00:36:31 ◼   ► You have full control and ownership of your audience,

00:36:34 ◼   ► your brand, and your membership with Memberful.

00:36:36 ◼   ► If you ever do wanna leave for whatever reason,

00:36:39 ◼   ► you just take your whole audience with you.

00:36:41 ◼   ► There's no lock-in, and it's not like,

00:36:43 ◼   ► "Ugh, I wanna leave Memberful, but I can't get out."

00:36:46 ◼   ► No, they'll let you out.

00:36:47 ◼   ► That's how confident they are that you won't,

00:36:49 ◼   ► because it's such a great product and a great service.

00:36:52 ◼   ► And you can get started for free.

00:36:54 ◼   ► Try it out with no credit card required.

00:36:58 ◼   ► It is just a great system.

00:36:59 ◼   ► I am so happy to be a member of so many Memberful sites.

00:37:04 ◼   ► And again, they handle all the hard stuff,

00:37:07 ◼   ► the credit card stuff, the credit card expiration stuff,

00:37:11 ◼   ► which is like a mess, right?

00:37:12 ◼   ► It's like somebody subscribes in June,

00:37:15 ◼   ► and then their card expires in January,

00:37:17 ◼   ► and then their renewal comes up.

00:37:18 ◼   ► Memberful handles all of that stuff.

00:37:21 ◼   ► Where do you go to find out more

00:37:23 ◼   ► if you wanna get started and monetize your passion?

00:37:27 ◼   ► Go to Memberful, M-E-M-B-E-R, Memberful, F-U-L,

00:37:32 ◼   ► dot com slash talk show.

00:37:34 ◼   ► That's Memberful dot com slash talk show.

00:37:37 ◼   ► My thanks to Memberful for their continuing support

00:37:42 ◼   ► of the talk show.

00:37:42 ◼   ► The iPhone 13 camera system.

00:37:49 ◼   ► Number one, I kinda feel, if regrets,

00:37:51 ◼   ► I don't have many regrets with my review.

00:37:53 ◼   ► Every year, I'm a mess.

00:37:55 ◼   ► I never make the embargo.

00:37:56 ◼   ► I came closer this year than I have sometimes.

00:37:59 ◼   ► There have been times when the sun has dropped.

00:38:02 ◼   ► - I didn't make it this year either.

00:38:03 ◼   ► I mean, there's a reason it's not until then or after.

00:38:07 ◼   ► Like everybody races to publish right away,

00:38:08 ◼   ► and I get it, and I get agita over it every year as well.

00:38:12 ◼   ► But I figure at some point,

00:38:14 ◼   ► you gotta do the best job you can.

00:38:16 ◼   ► - It's good to have a deadline,

00:38:18 ◼   ► especially for me, 'cause there's no boss that I report to

00:38:21 ◼   ► who's gonna be bugging me.

00:38:23 ◼   ► But it's good to have that pressure.

00:38:25 ◼   ► If you don't hit the exact embargo,

00:38:28 ◼   ► you're not gonna be the top review

00:38:30 ◼   ► in the tech meme leaderboard for the thing.

00:38:33 ◼   ► But that's fine with me.

00:38:35 ◼   ► People wait, but I wanna get it out.

00:38:38 ◼   ► But it's harder.

00:38:40 ◼   ► And I mentioned this, I forget if I wrote about it.

00:38:43 ◼   ► I think I wrote about it.

00:38:43 ◼   ► When I was talking about the fact

00:38:45 ◼   ► that the Microsoft Surface event had,

00:38:47 ◼   ► the event itself did not have a live audience

00:38:50 ◼   ► for COVID reasons, but they did have hands-on area

00:38:55 ◼   ► all with COVID protocols, but in small groups,

00:38:58 ◼   ► but they had hands-on time for people in the press

00:39:01 ◼   ► and in-person product briefings.

00:39:03 ◼   ► And I miss that.

00:39:04 ◼   ► I find in-person briefings so much more effective

00:39:08 ◼   ► for communicating, and it's really starting to wear thin

00:39:11 ◼   ► to me that we've had.

00:39:13 ◼   ► And again, I don't blame Apple.

00:39:15 ◼   ► There's no way they could have held an in-person event

00:39:17 ◼   ► in September of any size for the iPhone,

00:39:21 ◼   ► 'cause there's no way to cut the iPhone's event size,

00:39:23 ◼   ► the press list, down to a manageable level for COVID.

00:39:26 ◼   ► So I'm not saying they should have.

00:39:28 ◼   ► I'm just saying I miss it.

00:39:29 ◼   ► But the other thing is that even that one extra day

00:39:32 ◼   ► makes such a difference to me, right?

00:39:34 ◼   ► So if the embargo is also on Tuesday morning

00:39:37 ◼   ► and it's a Tuesday, if it's in-person,

00:39:39 ◼   ► you get the product Tuesday afternoon.

00:39:42 ◼   ► And if it's not in-person, they ship 'em,

00:39:45 ◼   ► and at best, you get them Wednesday afternoon.

00:39:49 ◼   ► And it's six days versus seven days.

00:39:52 ◼   ► Well, that's 16% more time that you have with the product.

00:39:56 ◼   ► Which is, right?

00:39:57 ◼   ► It's not nothing.

00:39:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, it's true.

00:40:00 ◼   ► And it's a time crunch to get all the tests you want done.

00:40:04 ◼   ► And that first day, my goal, my only goal,

00:40:08 ◼   ► really the first day, is to unbox everything,

00:40:10 ◼   ► take a peek at it, and immediately start all of the updates.

00:40:14 ◼   ► And what you do is you get the sleep time back, right?

00:40:19 ◼   ► 'Cause your sleep time is spent with all of those devices

00:40:22 ◼   ► using your Wi-Fi to slurp all of their apps down from,

00:40:25 ◼   ► well, you know, with my method,

00:40:27 ◼   ► slurp them down from the App Store and to start indexing.

00:40:32 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't start any battery tests

00:40:35 ◼   ► until several days later,

00:40:36 ◼   ► because I like to give them time to index.

00:40:39 ◼   ► And I don't test fresh iPhones.

00:40:42 ◼   ► I test them as people would,

00:40:45 ◼   ► and I know you do the same,

00:40:46 ◼   ► as people would do buy a new iPhone.

00:40:48 ◼   ► They buy a new iPhone, they're gonna update it

00:40:50 ◼   ► or restore it from their backup and start using it.

00:40:53 ◼   ► Almost nobody, I would guess,

00:40:55 ◼   ► a very small portion of the population starts fresh.

00:40:58 ◼   ► So you need to have that same experience

00:41:00 ◼   ► that the person buying it is gonna be

00:41:01 ◼   ► to give it the proper evaluation.

00:41:04 ◼   ► So you download everything and you let it start indexing.

00:41:07 ◼   ► And I don't wanna evaluate based on the time

00:41:10 ◼   ► while it's indexing, 'cause that's obviously awful.

00:41:12 ◼   ► But that 12 hours is extremely helpful

00:41:15 ◼   ► in letting it run all night and index and back up.

00:41:19 ◼   ► And by the morning, I have semi-functioning devices

00:41:22 ◼   ► that are indexing in the background,

00:41:23 ◼   ► but that I can start running preliminary testing

00:41:25 ◼   ► on my cameras and stuff.

00:41:27 ◼   ► - And just on the cameras alone.

00:41:29 ◼   ► So there's battery life, there's that.

00:41:30 ◼   ► There's that you need.

00:41:31 ◼   ► You need, like you said, it's exactly what you said.

00:41:34 ◼   ► You need at least maybe 48 hours

00:41:36 ◼   ► before you can say that the phone,

00:41:37 ◼   ► even if you set it up as soon as it's in your hands,

00:41:40 ◼   ► 24, 36, 48 hours before you can start talking,

00:41:43 ◼   ► evaluating battery life in a fair sense is true.

00:41:48 ◼   ► And on the cameras alone, this year, testing,

00:41:51 ◼   ► I devoted my time to the phone I was most interested in,

00:41:54 ◼   ► the 6.1-inch midsize 13 Pro.

00:41:58 ◼   ► All three camera lenses are new.

00:42:01 ◼   ► The 3X lens is new with a new sensor.

00:42:04 ◼   ► It's a new lens and a new sensor.

00:42:06 ◼   ► The regular default 1X lens

00:42:09 ◼   ► has an even bigger pixels on the sensor,

00:42:13 ◼   ► and the bigger pixels on the sensor

00:42:14 ◼   ► is one of the single biggest changes they can make

00:42:17 ◼   ► to make it a more effective camera.

00:42:19 ◼   ► And the 0.5X lens, which has gotten the least love

00:42:24 ◼   ► over the years in terms of functional improvements

00:42:28 ◼   ► on the Pros this year is a huge upgrade,

00:42:31 ◼   ► a better sensor with autofocus now.

00:42:35 ◼   ► You could quibble over whether it should be called

00:42:37 ◼   ► autofocus or not, but it has a focusing system,

00:42:41 ◼   ► which the previous ones were all fixed focus,

00:42:43 ◼   ► more light-gathering capability,

00:42:45 ◼   ► so it's more useful indoors, so all three lenses.

00:42:47 ◼   ► So even if you're just talking stills

00:42:49 ◼   ► and just regular stills,

00:42:50 ◼   ► and not even talking portrait mode,

00:42:52 ◼   ► you've got three lenses to evaluate and take pictures of.

00:42:55 ◼   ► And then there's a macro mode. (laughs)

00:42:59 ◼   ► Then there is portrait mode,

00:43:02 ◼   ► which you can take at two different focal lengths,

00:43:05 ◼   ► and now with video, they added an entirely new

00:43:09 ◼   ► cinematic thing. - Yeah, it's like seven

00:43:10 ◼   ► different cameras you have to evaluate.

00:43:11 ◼   ► - There's no chance, and I don't do,

00:43:14 ◼   ► sometimes in years past, a couple years ago

00:43:17 ◼   ► when I first added night mode, I had a photo,

00:43:19 ◼   ► actual photos in my review, much heavier than usual,

00:43:23 ◼   ► when I went to my friend Lee's Hopsing Laundromat,

00:43:25 ◼   ► which is a very dark, beautiful, beautiful,

00:43:29 ◼   ► beautiful cocktail bar here in Philadelphia,

00:43:32 ◼   ► but he was kind enough to let me come in

00:43:34 ◼   ► while they were closed, and it was literally

00:43:37 ◼   ► just candle lit, no electrical lighting at all.

00:43:40 ◼   ► He just lit the candles like he would

00:43:41 ◼   ► when they were open in the evening,

00:43:43 ◼   ► and I took a bunch of photos and included them

00:43:47 ◼   ► in my review to show night mode

00:43:50 ◼   ► versus the year-over-year camera.

00:43:52 ◼   ► So I have done that sometimes, but I just,

00:43:55 ◼   ► you know, no surprise to anybody who's listening to my show,

00:43:59 ◼   ► my reviews are usually less illustrated

00:44:02 ◼   ► and more just textual.

00:44:04 ◼   ► But I do take a lot of photos,

00:44:06 ◼   ► even if I don't put them in a review,

00:44:07 ◼   ► and there's just no time, there's just no possible way

00:44:10 ◼   ► I could have done it all, so I did not shoot

00:44:12 ◼   ► a lot of cinematic mode video before the review.

00:44:15 ◼   ► But the one thing that I felt like I should have done more of

00:44:19 ◼   ► and I underestimated how much I truly love it

00:44:22 ◼   ► and feel that it truly changes and expands

00:44:26 ◼   ► the capabilities is macro.

00:44:28 ◼   ► The macro, it blows my mind, that's my big,

00:44:31 ◼   ► my single biggest one-week-later regret

00:44:34 ◼   ► is that I didn't do more macro and praise macro more.

00:44:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I think the macro side of it

00:44:43 ◼   ► is truly exciting for a lot of people

00:44:46 ◼   ► because it is more accessible than telephoto shooting.

00:44:49 ◼   ► Telephoto shooting is a weird one

00:44:50 ◼   ► because it's not truly not like some sort

00:44:53 ◼   ► of 300 millimeter telephoto, this is not a sports lens,

00:44:55 ◼   ► it's more of a portraiture lens,

00:44:57 ◼   ► and it can be hard to decide when or when not to use it.

00:44:59 ◼   ► But I think everybody understands the excitement

00:45:02 ◼   ► and interesting ability that a macro,

00:45:05 ◼   ► and it's like, oh, you could shoot things super close up,

00:45:07 ◼   ► that's awesome, right?

00:45:08 ◼   ► And people tend to, I think, use that kind of feature more

00:45:12 ◼   ► because more things are closer to you, right?

00:45:14 ◼   ► It's just one of those logical things.

00:45:16 ◼   ► You're able to sort of shoot things

00:45:18 ◼   ► that are right up next to you and get cool views,

00:45:20 ◼   ► and everybody loves bugs and flowers and close-up stuff.

00:45:23 ◼   ► And that aspect of it, I think, is undersung

00:45:27 ◼   ► because I think a lot of people treat macro

00:45:30 ◼   ► as a specialty type of photography,

00:45:32 ◼   ► but the reality is it doesn't have to be,

00:45:34 ◼   ► it's just always required specialized equipment.

00:45:37 ◼   ► And that's been the big thing.

00:45:38 ◼   ► Everybody would love it if the camera could shoot

00:45:42 ◼   ► super close up and get texture and all this,

00:45:44 ◼   ► but it requires, oh, it requires this $1,000 lens

00:45:46 ◼   ► and expertise and you gotta hover

00:45:48 ◼   ► and you gotta know how to focus and blah, blah, blah.

00:45:51 ◼   ► It's just not accessible, right?

00:45:53 ◼   ► And that's what this just changes.

00:45:54 ◼   ► - And Austin Mann had in his excellent as usual,

00:45:59 ◼   ► and not exotic at all, photo review on a--

00:46:04 ◼   ► - Just like everybody, we're taking a little safari

00:46:07 ◼   ► now and then.

00:46:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, a safari in Tanzania.

00:46:11 ◼   ► But he had the best thing to say about macro

00:46:15 ◼   ► that I could think of, but that he carries a macro lens

00:46:18 ◼   ► with him everywhere he goes 'cause he just wants

00:46:20 ◼   ► to be able to capture that, and he's a professional

00:46:22 ◼   ► photographer and he's super gifted and a very nice guy.

00:46:24 ◼   ► I've met him several times.

00:46:26 ◼   ► He's exactly like what he comes across in those videos.

00:46:29 ◼   ► But he says, "I carry a macro lens wherever I go

00:46:32 ◼   ► "just in case I see something that I want it."

00:46:34 ◼   ► But it's, A, like you said, they're like $1,000

00:46:37 ◼   ► starting point, and they're very heavy.

00:46:39 ◼   ► They're really heavy glass.

00:46:41 ◼   ► So the professional photographers who are like,

00:46:44 ◼   ► "Well, I need a telephoto and I need a normal lens,

00:46:47 ◼   ► "and of course I need a wide angle,

00:46:48 ◼   ► "but I like to have a fisheye sometimes

00:46:49 ◼   ► "if it needs to count as a thing."

00:46:51 ◼   ► And oh, and a macro, and all of a sudden you've got

00:46:53 ◼   ► 25 pounds of glass that you're carrying around

00:46:55 ◼   ► on your back everywhere you go.

00:46:57 ◼   ► It's just not practical for consumers,

00:46:59 ◼   ► and it's certainly not practical for in your pocket

00:47:02 ◼   ► walking around daily carry, or even if you carry

00:47:06 ◼   ► a backpack or a purse or something and you have room,

00:47:10 ◼   ► it's just people don't, even if they take an extra lens,

00:47:13 ◼   ► even if they walk around with a camera,

00:47:14 ◼   ► they're not taking a macro lens, right?

00:47:16 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:47:17 ◼   ► It's too obscure.

00:47:20 ◼   ► It is game-changing what you can get a photo of,

00:47:24 ◼   ► and how neat it is.

00:47:26 ◼   ► It's almost kinda nutty, right?

00:47:30 ◼   ► That all of a sudden now it's just the thing

00:47:32 ◼   ► that you were gonna buy anyway.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Oh, and by the way, now you can take

00:47:35 ◼   ► kind of extraordinary macro photography.

00:47:38 ◼   ► And then in my review, I felt like I spent more time,

00:47:40 ◼   ► rather than praising what you can do with it,

00:47:42 ◼   ► complaining about the automatic camera shift

00:47:47 ◼   ► and the weird--

00:47:48 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

00:47:50 ◼   ► - It's sort of like--

00:47:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, the switch between the wide

00:47:52 ◼   ► and telephoto that happens, yeah.

00:47:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I wish I had thought of this.

00:47:55 ◼   ► My other regret for the review is that I didn't describe it

00:47:58 ◼   ► as vertigo-inducing.

00:48:00 ◼   ► It's sort of like a vertigo feeling when it switches.

00:48:03 ◼   ► And I spent more time complaining about that

00:48:05 ◼   ► than I did praising the capabilities.

00:48:08 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, in some ways that's our job, right?

00:48:11 ◼   ► Is to go to the max.

00:48:12 ◼   ► And then I always view it as if you write a review

00:48:17 ◼   ► and you're critical of a feature,

00:48:18 ◼   ► or you point out the shortfalls

00:48:22 ◼   ► of a particular innovation or feature or whatever.

00:48:24 ◼   ► And people come in afterwards and you go,

00:48:26 ◼   ► "Hey, cut it some slack.

00:48:27 ◼   ► "It's actually pretty good."

00:48:28 ◼   ► I think that I'm at the right point.

00:48:31 ◼   ► You don't want people coming in and going like,

00:48:33 ◼   ► "Oh, you over-praised this thing

00:48:37 ◼   ► "that's clearly got massive flaws."

00:48:39 ◼   ► I mean, obviously, I feel comfortable with most of my,

00:48:43 ◼   ► well, hopefully all of my reviews,

00:48:45 ◼   ► 'cause I do feel that I evaluate things fairly,

00:48:48 ◼   ► but I'm more comfortable if people come and say,

00:48:52 ◼   ► "Hey, cut this thing some slack," and that's fine.

00:48:55 ◼   ► Because that's your job,

00:48:56 ◼   ► is to be relatively critical of a thing

00:48:59 ◼   ► in an equanimitous sense.

00:49:01 ◼   ► You wanna be critical and fair.

00:49:04 ◼   ► I always tell my writers, "Skeptical, not cynical."

00:49:07 ◼   ► Like, so you gotta come in and say,

00:49:09 ◼   ► "Hey, this is great, but here's the where it falls short

00:49:14 ◼   ► "of what its goals were."

00:49:17 ◼   ► And that's kinda the key, 'cause I will say,

00:49:20 ◼   ► I'm gonna be frank about the quality of this macro lens.

00:49:23 ◼   ► There's a significant amount of aberration near the edges.

00:49:25 ◼   ► It separates and blurs a lot near the edges of the image.

00:49:30 ◼   ► It introduces some color and artifacting.

00:49:33 ◼   ► And I mentioned this all in my review.

00:49:34 ◼   ► This is not some sort of thing I'd,

00:49:35 ◼   ► the ex post facto or whatever.

00:49:37 ◼   ► I mentioned this in my review.

00:49:38 ◼   ► But just to be clear,

00:49:39 ◼   ► if you have a very high quality macro lens

00:49:44 ◼   ► that has excellent optics and glass and is well-coated,

00:49:48 ◼   ► and you're a skilled user of that lens,

00:49:50 ◼   ► these are not comparable images between these two things.

00:49:54 ◼   ► However, it adds what in photographic terms

00:49:58 ◼   ► you would call a photographic language to your repertoire.

00:50:02 ◼   ► It's like learning a few words of French

00:50:05 ◼   ► and going to France.

00:50:06 ◼   ► It's just a light years difference in experience

00:50:09 ◼   ► from zero to one.

00:50:10 ◼   ► Like you go to France and you know no French,

00:50:12 ◼   ► you're gonna get roughly the same reception

00:50:14 ◼   ► as any other traveler going to France.

00:50:16 ◼   ► You go to France and you know a few words of French

00:50:18 ◼   ► and you pronounce them properly.

00:50:19 ◼   ► It's very key to say this

00:50:21 ◼   ► because the French are very particular about the language.

00:50:23 ◼   ► But if you do, you get a completely different reception

00:50:26 ◼   ► from anybody from a cab driver to a server at a restaurant

00:50:31 ◼   ► to a major theater hotel,

00:50:32 ◼   ► or even just people that you meet.

00:50:34 ◼   ► They appreciate and respect

00:50:38 ◼   ► that you are trying to use their native language

00:50:41 ◼   ► and to try to make some effort to understand their culture

00:50:44 ◼   ► to some small degree.

00:50:45 ◼   ► And it is a zero to one experience in travel.

00:50:48 ◼   ► And that's what this macro lens offers people

00:50:50 ◼   ► is a completely new language to speak

00:50:53 ◼   ► that they would not have been able to speak otherwise.

00:50:55 ◼   ► And it's like saying,

00:50:56 ◼   ► "Hey, you don't know the language at all

00:50:57 ◼   ► and you can never learn it."

00:50:58 ◼   ► Or you've taken some language courses

00:51:01 ◼   ► and you can order a coffee and a piece of toast

00:51:06 ◼   ► and get a warm reception and a nice chat with somebody

00:51:11 ◼   ► just by knowing a few words of the language.

00:51:12 ◼   ► And that's what this does to me.

00:51:14 ◼   ► It's not about perfection.

00:51:15 ◼   ► It's not about best in class, or I say in class,

00:51:18 ◼   ► but it's not about best in world experience

00:51:22 ◼   ► with a macro lens and, "Oh man, this is perfect."

00:51:24 ◼   ► It's you can do this now

00:51:26 ◼   ► when you couldn't do it before at all.

00:51:28 ◼   ► And it's not only that,

00:51:30 ◼   ► but it's actually pretty goddamn good

00:51:32 ◼   ► for such a small lens.

00:51:35 ◼   ► Tiny, tiny bit of optic.

00:51:37 ◼   ► And it's tucked away inside of an ultra wide,

00:51:40 ◼   ► which is awesome.

00:51:41 ◼   ► Just the amount of the feet that they pulled off here

00:51:43 ◼   ► is really incredible.

00:51:45 ◼   ► And it's not about perfection and image quality perfection,

00:51:47 ◼   ► which is why you mention it, but don't dwell on it.

00:51:50 ◼   ► But then you've got to acknowledge

00:51:52 ◼   ► that it also makes things possible

00:51:55 ◼   ► that weren't possible before

00:51:56 ◼   ► for millions to hundreds of millions of people

00:52:00 ◼   ► over the next few years,

00:52:01 ◼   ► because the feature is not gonna go away, right?

00:52:03 ◼   ► That they could never do before.

00:52:05 ◼   ► And that to me is the importance.

00:52:06 ◼   ► You have to balance those two factors.

00:52:08 ◼   ► Hey, it's not optical perfection,

00:52:11 ◼   ► but at the same time, it's an enabling feature

00:52:14 ◼   ► that makes people able to do things

00:52:16 ◼   ► they could not do before.

00:52:17 ◼   ► And to that degree, it is like an exoskeleton

00:52:20 ◼   ► or a superpower for a lot of people.

00:52:22 ◼   ► And I think that part of it's cool.

00:52:24 ◼   ► - I also found out recently that in addition,

00:52:27 ◼   ► I've known that the French are very particular

00:52:29 ◼   ► about the pronunciation of their language.

00:52:31 ◼   ► I didn't realize they're so persnickety

00:52:33 ◼   ► about their submarines as well, but.

00:52:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:52:36 ◼   ► - Yes, yes, apparently.

00:52:39 ◼   ► - But I do, I love the analogy, I do.

00:52:42 ◼   ► And it's like, you know, again,

00:52:43 ◼   ► it's sort of like the thing where if you know enough

00:52:45 ◼   ► that you can like ask for help getting on the Metro

00:52:47 ◼   ► and going the right way to go somewhere,

00:52:50 ◼   ► it like totally expands your trip, right?

00:52:52 ◼   ► Because now you feel like, you know, I'm confident enough.

00:52:54 ◼   ► I don't really, you know, I don't know it a lot,

00:52:56 ◼   ► but I could ask somebody for help

00:52:58 ◼   ► and get on the Metro and go elsewhere in Paris.

00:53:02 ◼   ► It's like, instead of just staying

00:53:04 ◼   ► within walking distance of your hotel,

00:53:06 ◼   ► it totally expands your trip, I get it.

00:53:09 ◼   ► And maybe a good analogy too,

00:53:10 ◼   ► is sort of like when the iPhone first started

00:53:13 ◼   ► getting serious about the phone

00:53:15 ◼   ► and it wasn't just an afterthought,

00:53:16 ◼   ► which I think was like the iPhone 4

00:53:19 ◼   ► is like the first camera that had like auto-focus

00:53:21 ◼   ► and like where Phil Schiller actually spent time

00:53:25 ◼   ► in the introduction talking about camera features.

00:53:28 ◼   ► - Right.

00:53:29 ◼   ► - Somebody pointed out, it is hilarious,

00:53:31 ◼   ► but with the original iPhone in 2007,

00:53:34 ◼   ► it was like I waited in line,

00:53:36 ◼   ► 'cause you remember back then you had to wait,

00:53:37 ◼   ► there was no way to pre-order.

00:53:38 ◼   ► You had to like go to the Apple store and get in line.

00:53:40 ◼   ► And I got in line and I got it in the afternoon

00:53:43 ◼   ► and got one for the wife and we came home

00:53:45 ◼   ► and AT&T totally took a nationwide crap out.

00:53:50 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:53:51 ◼   ► - But it was like, you had to,

00:53:53 ◼   ► like the only way to get it hooked up

00:53:55 ◼   ► is you had to open it up,

00:53:56 ◼   ► connect it to a computer, to iTunes,

00:53:59 ◼   ► and then iTunes would like authorize the phone

00:54:02 ◼   ► and whatever you call it, what do you call it

00:54:04 ◼   ► when it, the carrier, activate, activate the phone.

00:54:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, carrier activate.

00:54:07 ◼   ► - And AT&T took a nap, you know.

00:54:11 ◼   ► And no, you know, we laugh, but it's like,

00:54:14 ◼   ► it's not really like you could expect AT&T

00:54:16 ◼   ► to have built an activation system

00:54:18 ◼   ► that was ready for that type of volume.

00:54:22 ◼   ► But then, you know, got it activated

00:54:24 ◼   ► and it was so exhilarating and super exciting

00:54:26 ◼   ► and we were actually going on a trip to the shore

00:54:30 ◼   ► with Amy's family the next day.

00:54:33 ◼   ► And, you know, it was great to have the phone already

00:54:35 ◼   ► and I was excited to take it,

00:54:37 ◼   ► but I wanted to write up my thoughts

00:54:38 ◼   ► and I wrote my like 24 hour initial thoughts

00:54:41 ◼   ► on the original iPhone and it holds up very well,

00:54:44 ◼   ► except one thing that I didn't even mention

00:54:46 ◼   ► is the word camera.

00:54:48 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:54:48 ◼   ► Never, I didn't even mention it.

00:54:51 ◼   ► - Right, which today, if you wrote a review

00:54:54 ◼   ► of the iPhone today, it didn't mention the camera,

00:54:56 ◼   ► people would think you had lost your marble, right?

00:54:58 ◼   ► They're like, what, is this a review or is this a joke?

00:55:02 ◼   ► Right, like what are you talking about?

00:55:03 ◼   ► And which is pretty remarkable.

00:55:05 ◼   ► I mean, you expect, it's not just an expectation

00:55:08 ◼   ► that the iPhone's camera is decent.

00:55:10 ◼   ► The expectation is, is this the best camera

00:55:13 ◼   ► that you can possibly buy in a non-camera device,

00:55:18 ◼   ► let's call it that way, although, you know,

00:55:20 ◼   ► there's arguments to be made that what is a camera?

00:55:23 ◼   ► But is this the best camera you can buy or not?

00:55:25 ◼   ► Like that's where we are now.

00:55:27 ◼   ► It's not, is it decent, is it good, is it improved?

00:55:30 ◼   ► It's literally, is this the best in the world or not?

00:55:33 ◼   ► And the answer is usually leapfrogging from day to day.

00:55:36 ◼   ► Now I have my own arguments as everybody does

00:55:38 ◼   ► about other smartphone approaches and all of this stuff

00:55:41 ◼   ► and what they choose to do and realism versus, you know,

00:55:45 ◼   ► illustrative quality to photos and all of this stuff.

00:55:49 ◼   ► But really it is a matter of either it is

00:55:51 ◼   ► or it isn't the best camera in the world, period.

00:55:54 ◼   ► And that's crazy to think about when you realize the fact

00:55:57 ◼   ► that it does all this other stuff, right?

00:55:59 ◼   ► Like it's a phone, it's not a camera,

00:56:01 ◼   ► it does a bunch of other things.

00:56:03 ◼   ► But the only conversation we're willing to have about it

00:56:06 ◼   ► is is it the best in the world or not?

00:56:08 ◼   ► And that's pretty remarkable a few years on.

00:56:10 ◼   ► - And it's, the other thing with macro

00:56:13 ◼   ► that really impresses me, and I did mention this.

00:56:16 ◼   ► So the iPhone has long had a magnifier feature.

00:56:19 ◼   ► There's an app and I have it set for a triple click

00:56:22 ◼   ► on the home button where it just jumps to magnifier.

00:56:25 ◼   ► And you can use it as like a magnifying glass as you go.

00:56:28 ◼   ► But the magnifier only uses like the 1X lens

00:56:31 ◼   ► and digital zoom and it's very, very shaky.

00:56:34 ◼   ► And the thing I noticed is that if you just wanna see

00:56:37 ◼   ► something small, too small for your aging eyes

00:56:40 ◼   ► or even if you're young, just super small

00:56:42 ◼   ► that you just can't see, right?

00:56:43 ◼   ► Switching to macro mode on your phone,

00:56:45 ◼   ► even if you don't wanna take a picture of it,

00:56:47 ◼   ► if it's just like small print on something

00:56:49 ◼   ► and you just wanna read it or look close at it,

00:56:51 ◼   ► macro mode with the iPhone is way better

00:56:53 ◼   ► than the magnifier app now.

00:56:54 ◼   ► I can only presume that maybe one hand

00:56:57 ◼   ► wasn't talking to the other.

00:56:58 ◼   ► We all know how Apple is compartmentalized

00:57:00 ◼   ► and the magnifier team probably wasn't briefed

00:57:03 ◼   ► on the new iPhone hardware.

00:57:04 ◼   ► And I can only presume that the magnifier

00:57:06 ◼   ► is gonna be updated to take advantage of this.

00:57:08 ◼   ► But like, just like imagine something silly

00:57:13 ◼   ► like you're a parent and your kid thinks

00:57:15 ◼   ► they might have a splinter in their finger

00:57:17 ◼   ► and it's like, I don't know, I don't see anything,

00:57:20 ◼   ► but it's like if you really wanna know,

00:57:21 ◼   ► you can like use your camera in macro mode

00:57:24 ◼   ► and you'll find it, right?

00:57:25 ◼   ► Like you'll see it.

00:57:26 ◼   ► It is, and it's stabilized, right?

00:57:29 ◼   ► It's like there's, I don't know if it's the sensor shift,

00:57:31 ◼   ► I don't know if it's digital,

00:57:32 ◼   ► I don't know if they're doing it,

00:57:33 ◼   ► 'cause obviously it's a crop, right?

00:57:35 ◼   ► You're getting this 1X crop,

00:57:39 ◼   ► but from the ultra wide 0.5X sensor.

00:57:42 ◼   ► So they have, for lack of a better word,

00:57:45 ◼   ► slop to move it around digitally.

00:57:47 ◼   ► - They call it overscan.

00:57:48 ◼   ► - Overscan, right? - Yes, exactly.

00:57:50 ◼   ► - Right, but it's way more stable than the magnifier is.

00:57:53 ◼   ► The magnifier, you kinda have to brace yourself

00:57:54 ◼   ► if you really wanna zoom in to the maximum degree.

00:57:57 ◼   ► If you really just wanna like look real closely

00:57:59 ◼   ► at a kid's finger and see if you can see a splinter in there

00:58:02 ◼   ► it's fantastic, and like it's a super power.

00:58:06 ◼   ► Like all of a sudden now you can like easily see

00:58:09 ◼   ► like the details of a fingerprint and see,

00:58:11 ◼   ► no, you don't have a splinter, go toughen up.

00:58:14 ◼   ► Or, oh yeah, you do, here, let me see if I can get this out.

00:58:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's gonna enable a lot of fun, cool stuff like that

00:58:22 ◼   ► that is not necessarily just macro photography.

00:58:24 ◼   ► And that's what happens every time Apple introduces

00:58:27 ◼   ► a new piece of hardware or significantly enhances

00:58:29 ◼   ► a previous one, is that there's tons of ways

00:58:32 ◼   ► to take advantage of that from a developer perspective.

00:58:34 ◼   ► We often see like game developers and people

00:58:37 ◼   ► that make interactive experiences take advantage of sensors

00:58:41 ◼   ► and things in unexpected ways.

00:58:43 ◼   ► But right now what you've got is a focusing range

00:58:47 ◼   ► from two millimeters to infinity, which is pretty awesome.

00:58:52 ◼   ► You know, when you think about the range

00:58:54 ◼   ► of sensing capabilities that you have,

00:58:56 ◼   ► 'cause when you just think of the iPhone

00:58:58 ◼   ► as a bundle of sensors, it's a matter of what can it see,

00:59:01 ◼   ► what can it not see, what information can it

00:59:04 ◼   ► realistically interpret well, and at what resolution.

00:59:08 ◼   ► So in other words, what can it enable, right?

00:59:10 ◼   ► What features can it enable, what things can I do with it?

00:59:13 ◼   ► And that's what this does, it's a platform.

00:59:16 ◼   ► You know, every camera that Apple builds

00:59:18 ◼   ► and puts on their devices is more than just a camera

00:59:22 ◼   ► for taking photos, it is a platform.

00:59:24 ◼   ► And we've seen companies like Snap and Facebook

00:59:26 ◼   ► and other companies build out enormous businesses

00:59:30 ◼   ► and will continue to, you know, in significant,

00:59:33 ◼   ► to significant scale and significant size

00:59:36 ◼   ► with the camera as a platform.

00:59:38 ◼   ► It's not the phone that's the platform,

00:59:40 ◼   ► the phone houses, you know, the camera

00:59:42 ◼   ► and the software obviously has a play,

00:59:45 ◼   ► but the camera itself is the platform.

00:59:47 ◼   ► And that's pretty awesome.

00:59:48 ◼   ► So anytime, you know, they add camera stuff,

00:59:51 ◼   ► it's not just, oh, do you care about photography?

00:59:53 ◼   ► Then this is important to talk about and analyze.

00:59:56 ◼   ► It's, hey, you know, anybody that builds anything

01:00:00 ◼   ► can really take advantage of these

01:00:02 ◼   ► as a platform to build on.

01:00:04 ◼   ► And that's what's exciting about this stuff.

01:00:06 ◼   ► And the fact is, like, no matter how much I complain

01:00:07 ◼   ► about the image quality of the macro, it's still really good.

01:00:10 ◼   ► - Right.

01:00:11 ◼   ► - Like for the size that it is,

01:00:12 ◼   ► especially the central portion of the image,

01:00:15 ◼   ► quite sharp, very, you know, very accurate

01:00:19 ◼   ► in terms of, trust me, I've used a lot of macro lenses

01:00:22 ◼   ► and some of them are quite crappy

01:00:24 ◼   ► and they were built for cameras, you know?

01:00:26 ◼   ► And this is the equivalent, I think,

01:00:28 ◼   ► of a several hundred dollar macro lens.

01:00:30 ◼   ► I really do.

01:00:31 ◼   ► Like, you know, if you get into the 1200 to $2,000 range,

01:00:35 ◼   ► sure, the glass starts getting really good

01:00:37 ◼   ► and, you know, aberration calms down and all of that stuff.

01:00:41 ◼   ► But in terms of buying one off the shelf,

01:00:43 ◼   ► you'd have to spend several hundred dollars

01:00:44 ◼   ► to get this kind of capability

01:00:46 ◼   ► just for your regular four thirds camera or SLR.

01:00:49 ◼   ► So I think it's a really, really nice,

01:00:52 ◼   ► I hesitate to use the word

01:00:53 ◼   ► 'cause, you know, people get all irritated about it,

01:00:54 ◼   ► but I really do think it is a nice gift, you know,

01:00:57 ◼   ► to people on the iPhone.

01:00:58 ◼   ► Like you buy the iPhone for all of the other reasons

01:01:01 ◼   ► and congratulations, you got this cool shit too.

01:01:03 ◼   ► In my mind, that's the way I look at it.

01:01:05 ◼   ► - It's very cool to me too

01:01:06 ◼   ► that it is a feature of all of the ultra wides.

01:01:10 ◼   ► It's not, I think, right or no, no, I'm wrong.

01:01:13 ◼   ► It's not, it's pro, it is pro only.

01:01:15 ◼   ► I take it back.

01:01:16 ◼   ► - Right. - No, it is pro only.

01:01:17 ◼   ► - Cinematic mode is a feature of all the cameras,

01:01:19 ◼   ► but the macro is pro only.

01:01:21 ◼   ► - No, but that does lead me to my point.

01:01:23 ◼   ► My point actually, it would be nice

01:01:24 ◼   ► and I guess eventually it probably will trickle down

01:01:27 ◼   ► because that's the way it goes,

01:01:28 ◼   ► but it actually does lead me to my point though,

01:01:30 ◼   ► which is that there's the battery life advantage

01:01:33 ◼   ► to the pro models and now significant camera,

01:01:39 ◼   ► camera differences.

01:01:42 ◼   ► So the entire existence of the telephoto lens

01:01:44 ◼   ► is a pro feature.

01:01:46 ◼   ► And now the ultra wide has this macro capability.

01:01:51 ◼   ► And to me, it is very, very nice that this,

01:01:55 ◼   ► the extra 200 bucks or so that you pay

01:01:59 ◼   ► to go from a 13 to a 13 pro is not just about

01:02:04 ◼   ► the superficial bling of the shiny stainless steel

01:02:08 ◼   ► instead of the matte aluminum.

01:02:11 ◼   ► There was a time when they first started separating these,

01:02:14 ◼   ► you know, to multiple new iPhones per year

01:02:17 ◼   ► based with the same A series chip.

01:02:18 ◼   ► So there's a certain technical underlying similarity,

01:02:21 ◼   ► but there was a sort of, look,

01:02:23 ◼   ► you're just paying for the bling of the steel

01:02:26 ◼   ► and the shininess and the better textures

01:02:28 ◼   ► and finish and OLED instead of LCD.

01:02:31 ◼   ► To me, it is easily $200 worth of camera alone

01:02:35 ◼   ► difference between the 13 and 13 pro.

01:02:38 ◼   ► And it's nice for both reasons.

01:02:41 ◼   ► If you care about having these camera features,

01:02:44 ◼   ► it's a no brainer to spend the 200 bucks.

01:02:46 ◼   ► And conversely, if you are, and there are,

01:02:49 ◼   ► 'cause there's a billion iPhone users,

01:02:52 ◼   ► so there's like hundreds of millions of iPhone users

01:02:54 ◼   ► who qualify for any description.

01:02:56 ◼   ► But if you're one of the hundreds of millions

01:02:58 ◼   ► of iPhone users who really doesn't care about the camera,

01:03:02 ◼   ► you know, there's hundreds of millions of iPhone users

01:03:04 ◼   ► who barely use the camera.

01:03:05 ◼   ► Now you don't have to pay to it.

01:03:08 ◼   ► You can get like the latest and greatest A15,

01:03:11 ◼   ► all of these efficiency advantages from it.

01:03:14 ◼   ► And you don't have to spend the extra money

01:03:16 ◼   ► for a camera you're not gonna use.

01:03:18 ◼   ► I think that's actually, the product strategy

01:03:25 ◼   ► is working out to me in a way that makes decisions

01:03:29 ◼   ► very easy for people to make.

01:03:31 ◼   ► - Yes, this is a very well segmented lineup, right?

01:03:34 ◼   ► And that is a boon to consumers making decisions

01:03:39 ◼   ► based on budget.

01:03:41 ◼   ► And it is going to, as I was mentioning before,

01:03:44 ◼   ► I think it's going to really help sales

01:03:47 ◼   ► because one of the traditional problems,

01:03:50 ◼   ► and I think a lot of us were talking about this

01:03:52 ◼   ► a few years back, is that the iPhone left

01:03:55 ◼   ► a relatively large pricing umbrella, right?

01:03:57 ◼   ► And that's one of the reasons why they started

01:03:59 ◼   ► keeping old models around longer,

01:04:02 ◼   ► is to fill, underfill that pricing umbrella.

01:04:05 ◼   ► But what this does is it really bolsters

01:04:07 ◼   ► their ability to offer a wall of options for people

01:04:11 ◼   ► that leave very few openings for somebody to go like,

01:04:15 ◼   ► "Hey, you know, I would buy that, but it's so expensive,

01:04:18 ◼   ► "I'll just buy this Android instead."

01:04:20 ◼   ► 'Cause people do still make those kinds of decisions,

01:04:23 ◼   ► regardless of what you want to talk about with lock-in,

01:04:25 ◼   ► you know, they do still make those decisions.

01:04:27 ◼   ► Less and less, you know, obviously over time,

01:04:30 ◼   ► but I think that's still a risk.

01:04:31 ◼   ► And so now what they're able to offer

01:04:33 ◼   ► is a very solid wall of options

01:04:34 ◼   ► with very little umbrella to creep under

01:04:37 ◼   ► and very few gaps to shoot through

01:04:40 ◼   ► because people are able to make a call and say,

01:04:41 ◼   ► "Look, I get this amazing, you know,

01:04:44 ◼   ► "these features that I really want,

01:04:46 ◼   ► "and this sounds awesome.

01:04:47 ◼   ► "I would really love to play around with feature X

01:04:49 ◼   ► "or feature Y, and I can spend less now

01:04:52 ◼   ► "because I don't care about feature X or feature Z."

01:04:55 ◼   ► - To me, the big hole in the pricing,

01:04:57 ◼   ► and I know the rumors say that this,

01:05:00 ◼   ► what I'm about to say is coming next year, who knows?

01:05:02 ◼   ► I don't want to spend time on rumors of iPhone 14,

01:05:05 ◼   ► but the big hole in the lineup would be,

01:05:07 ◼   ► I want a ginormous 6.7-inch phone,

01:05:11 ◼   ► but I don't want to spend $1,100.

01:05:13 ◼   ► I want to spend $600 or $700 or 800, you know.

01:05:18 ◼   ► There is no non-pro max-sized phone,

01:05:22 ◼   ► and supposedly that's coming next year

01:05:24 ◼   ► at the expense of dropping the mini from the lineup,

01:05:27 ◼   ► and there's also no mini-pro,

01:05:29 ◼   ► but I feel like the mini-pro is even more,

01:05:33 ◼   ► it's like a niche within a niche.

01:05:35 ◼   ► The one that would, to me, would sell like hotcakes

01:05:38 ◼   ► would be the giant-sized iPhone, not pro,

01:05:42 ◼   ► but you kind of would see why they don't have it

01:05:46 ◼   ► because if you really want that size

01:05:49 ◼   ► and you have to start at $1,100, well, you know, there it is,

01:05:52 ◼   ► but I can also see why they're adding it.

01:05:54 ◼   ► I know what I was confused by.

01:05:55 ◼   ► I knew there was one more very cool feature

01:05:58 ◼   ► that I think they could have made pro only but didn't,

01:06:03 ◼   ► and it's photo styles.

01:06:04 ◼   ► That's what I was thinking of when I was thinking of macro.

01:06:07 ◼   ► Macro is driven by hardware,

01:06:09 ◼   ► then hardware is literally only in the pro.

01:06:12 ◼   ► Photo styles, though, is a neat feature,

01:06:15 ◼   ► and I've been playing with that more in the last week, too,

01:06:19 ◼   ► and I'm curious what you think about that,

01:06:21 ◼   ► and I'm curious what your settings are for it.

01:06:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, so you're talking about

01:06:27 ◼   ► why it's not available on the non-pro?

01:06:29 ◼   ► - No, photo styles is on the non-pro.

01:06:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah.

01:06:33 ◼   ► This is the feature that Apple went out of its way

01:06:37 ◼   ► to say this is not a filter.

01:06:39 ◼   ► What it is, I think a good layperson's description,

01:06:42 ◼   ► and I'm sort of riffing on John Siracusa's description

01:06:44 ◼   ► from ATP last week, but basically,

01:06:47 ◼   ► everybody knows that the different camera makers

01:06:49 ◼   ► have different sort of looks, right?

01:06:51 ◼   ► There's the Apple look to photo development,

01:06:54 ◼   ► and iPhone cameras all sort of, without any filtering,

01:06:58 ◼   ► sort of have a certain color look,

01:07:01 ◼   ► and Samsungs are more vibrant,

01:07:04 ◼   ► and pixels are different in other ways.

01:07:08 ◼   ► Like, you take the same two,

01:07:09 ◼   ► and you can say these are, like,

01:07:10 ◼   ► the Pixel and the iPhone are both excellent cameras,

01:07:13 ◼   ► and the Samsung Galaxy latest is also an excellent camera,

01:07:16 ◼   ► and set them all up in the same scene with the same sunlight,

01:07:19 ◼   ► and you kinda get, you know, you get different greens,

01:07:21 ◼   ► and you get different skin tones, and et cetera,

01:07:23 ◼   ► and so forth, and it's not filters.

01:07:26 ◼   ► It's just a way of taking, you know, the,

01:07:29 ◼   ► the inherent, like, if you just took the RAW,

01:07:32 ◼   ► and if you do shoot RAW using Halite or something,

01:07:34 ◼   ► you see that the image off these sensors

01:07:36 ◼   ► is awful and unusable and needs to be post-processed.

01:07:41 ◼   ► - Yes, all images off of smartphones are post-processed.

01:07:44 ◼   ► Big, big deal, right?

01:07:45 ◼   ► There's just no way to get that kind of image

01:07:48 ◼   ► without a lot of work behind the scenes

01:07:51 ◼   ► to correct lens problems, right?

01:07:54 ◼   ► To correct inherent issues in the optics,

01:07:57 ◼   ► and then also now, especially with iPhones,

01:07:59 ◼   ► to blend images, pixels, whatever you wanna call it,

01:08:04 ◼   ► from several cameras and several exposures together

01:08:07 ◼   ► to rectify problems in the sensor, right?

01:08:11 ◼   ► So really, all this post-processing is improving the quality

01:08:15 ◼   ► of the image by correcting issues with lens and sensor,

01:08:18 ◼   ► right? - Yeah.

01:08:19 ◼   ► - Like, that's really what it boils down to,

01:08:20 ◼   ► 'cause the sensor's just tiny, and so is the lens,

01:08:22 ◼   ► and that introduces a lot of image artifacts,

01:08:25 ◼   ► and all of the post-processing is there

01:08:27 ◼   ► to correct those artifacts. - Right.

01:08:29 ◼   ► - So when you do post-process, I think the,

01:08:33 ◼   ► there's two analogies that are apt here.

01:08:36 ◼   ► One is film, right?

01:08:38 ◼   ► Like, what kind of film were you going to choose

01:08:39 ◼   ► to shoot with your film camera?

01:08:41 ◼   ► And that's really what photo styles is about,

01:08:44 ◼   ► photographic styles.

01:08:45 ◼   ► And then another one is sort of shooting quality,

01:08:47 ◼   ► and that's a little bit harder, and in all reality,

01:08:51 ◼   ► like digital cameras from Nikon and Canon

01:08:56 ◼   ► and Minolta early on, they all had this sort of

01:08:59 ◼   ► native approach to how they color-corrected

01:09:02 ◼   ► and color-balanced their sensors,

01:09:05 ◼   ► and for a while, it's a little different now,

01:09:07 ◼   ► because I think everybody's gotten so good at it,

01:09:09 ◼   ► but for a while, you could absolutely tell

01:09:11 ◼   ► what kind of body you were shooting,

01:09:13 ◼   ► just by looking at the processing, JPEG processing,

01:09:16 ◼   ► that one camera would do or another would do.

01:09:18 ◼   ► You could tell, like, oh, look,

01:09:19 ◼   ► it's slightly more contrasty,

01:09:21 ◼   ► so that's like Nikon's approach right now,

01:09:23 ◼   ► or it's slightly punchier in saturation,

01:09:25 ◼   ► especially in the red, so that's Canon's approach right now.

01:09:28 ◼   ► This was a thing you could tell early on.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Nowadays, it's much more sophisticated,

01:09:33 ◼   ► as everybody's gotten better at this,

01:09:35 ◼   ► but you could tell that.

01:09:36 ◼   ► So there's kind of two things going on,

01:09:38 ◼   ► and one, that underlying processing,

01:09:41 ◼   ► just provides a basic image to somebody

01:09:44 ◼   ► shooting a picture in the JPEG, is a choice.

01:09:47 ◼   ► That's a decision that the camera teams

01:09:50 ◼   ► at these companies make, and it is an editorial call.

01:09:54 ◼   ► You are sort of saying,

01:09:55 ◼   ► this is how we want our pictures to look,

01:09:57 ◼   ► and as you said, if you shoot Halide or some other camera

01:10:00 ◼   ► where you can pull a raw image,

01:10:03 ◼   ► you could see what the no choices means, right?

01:10:06 ◼   ► If you make no choices, you get this really rough image.

01:10:10 ◼   ► So you have to make some decisions

01:10:12 ◼   ► about the way your images look,

01:10:14 ◼   ► and so each company, whether it be Samsung or Apple

01:10:17 ◼   ► or Google or whoever, makes a decision

01:10:21 ◼   ► about the way their images are going to look,

01:10:23 ◼   ► and they make that decision based on a variety of factors,

01:10:26 ◼   ► but the large portion of those factors

01:10:28 ◼   ► is what do we think customers are gonna like, right?

01:10:30 ◼   ► What do we think people are going to like,

01:10:32 ◼   ► and how should these images look to make them the most happy

01:10:35 ◼   ► about their pictures when they use this phone?

01:10:38 ◼   ► And so Apple's decision making on that front

01:10:40 ◼   ► has always been to hew towards the neutral,

01:10:44 ◼   ► so more of a reality based take

01:10:47 ◼   ► versus a lot of other companies that say,

01:10:49 ◼   ► hey, we know reality exists,

01:10:51 ◼   ► but our customers tend to like images that are punchier,

01:10:55 ◼   ► both in saturation and in contrast.

01:10:58 ◼   ► So you'll find the images from companies like Samsung

01:11:01 ◼   ► or Google or other companies,

01:11:03 ◼   ► they have made a different editorial call.

01:11:06 ◼   ► I am not here to pass judgment

01:11:08 ◼   ► on any of those editorial calls.

01:11:09 ◼   ► I have my own preferences, as I'm sure other people do,

01:11:12 ◼   ► and that's okay, but Apple's call has always been neutral,

01:11:16 ◼   ► neutral, neutral.

01:11:17 ◼   ► That's their rallying cry.

01:11:19 ◼   ► They want things to look naturalistic and neutral

01:11:22 ◼   ► as much as possible versus, say,

01:11:25 ◼   ► pleasing on a digital screen versus pleasing in print.

01:11:28 ◼   ► Like there's so many calls you could make, right?

01:11:31 ◼   ► And that is, like that's a huge call they've had to make.

01:11:34 ◼   ► And so photographic styles is their concession

01:11:38 ◼   ► to people that do not like Apple's choices.

01:11:42 ◼   ► And the difference between them and a filter

01:11:46 ◼   ► is that they are applied in situ

01:11:48 ◼   ► as the people are taking the pictures

01:11:50 ◼   ► and woven in to the files that'll allow the phone

01:11:54 ◼   ► to render those images,

01:11:56 ◼   ► which means that you can alter them afterwards,

01:11:59 ◼   ► but they are part of the processing pipeline,

01:12:02 ◼   ► allowing you to get a natural-looking image

01:12:04 ◼   ► according to your tastes without applying a filter

01:12:08 ◼   ► to the already rendered pixels.

01:12:10 ◼   ► And that creates a situation

01:12:12 ◼   ► where you have the best possible image quality

01:12:15 ◼   ► while adding customization.

01:12:18 ◼   ► And this would be in film photography

01:12:20 ◼   ► akin to choosing your own roll of film

01:12:22 ◼   ► or style of film that you wanted.

01:12:25 ◼   ► - What a great description.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Right now, when you go to adjust these,

01:12:28 ◼   ► they have a couple of presets that you can choose from.

01:12:31 ◼   ► I think it's like rich contrast,

01:12:35 ◼   ► contrast vibrant, warm and cool,

01:12:39 ◼   ► and then you can take any of them.

01:12:41 ◼   ► Like, so for example, warm,

01:12:43 ◼   ► and there's only two settings with each one.

01:12:45 ◼   ► One they call tone,

01:12:47 ◼   ► which I think is mostly about contrast.

01:12:49 ◼   ► And then there's warmth, which I think most people,

01:12:52 ◼   ► even casual photographers kind of know it's, you know,

01:12:54 ◼   ► to go redder and oranger and warmer or bluer and cooler.

01:12:59 ◼   ► Like warm is zero tone, 50 warmth,

01:13:04 ◼   ► but that's the only two factors.

01:13:06 ◼   ► There's two factors and you can adjust them if you want.

01:13:08 ◼   ► So you can take one of these,

01:13:10 ◼   ► and then of course there's standard,

01:13:12 ◼   ► which is just, this is, you know,

01:13:14 ◼   ► the regular Apple pipeline that we've come to know

01:13:17 ◼   ► and love or not love.

01:13:20 ◼   ► So you can take any of these and adjust them.

01:13:22 ◼   ► So you could take contrast,

01:13:23 ◼   ► which I think is like negative 50 tones or a warmth.

01:13:26 ◼   ► And I turned it up a little bit more to,

01:13:29 ◼   ► that's the one I've been shooting with,

01:13:30 ◼   ► where I've taken my tone to negative 65

01:13:33 ◼   ► and my warmth is still at zero.

01:13:34 ◼   ► I'm curious if you've adjusted yours

01:13:38 ◼   ► or are you still shooting standard or what are you shooting?

01:13:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, the fact is I kind of like Apple's

01:13:44 ◼   ► general tone.

01:13:46 ◼   ► I like the neutral tone.

01:13:47 ◼   ► So I don't know if I'm going to do one.

01:13:49 ◼   ► I haven't done a personal one yet, right?

01:13:52 ◼   ► So I haven't like developed my own yet for sure.

01:13:54 ◼   ► I've been shooting everything, mostly on neutral.

01:13:57 ◼   ► I think that the boosted contrast,

01:13:59 ◼   ► which I believe is vibrant.

01:14:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I think that's--

01:14:03 ◼   ► - No, they have an increased contrast one.

01:14:05 ◼   ► I always forget what the names are.

01:14:06 ◼   ► - That's the one I've done.

01:14:08 ◼   ► That's, I forget what they call it though.

01:14:11 ◼   ► I'll reset, reset to, oh, they call it rich contrast.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Okay.

01:14:15 ◼   ► - Rich contrast.

01:14:15 ◼   ► Okay, so the rich contrast one is very pleasing,

01:14:18 ◼   ► obviously in casual, you know, look,

01:14:20 ◼   ► but I think it blocks up the blacks a little too much, right?

01:14:25 ◼   ► It clips a little too much of the black for my tastes.

01:14:27 ◼   ► And I know why it's there and why I think a lot of people

01:14:30 ◼   ► are going to use it by default,

01:14:31 ◼   ► because that it is punchier and more contrast

01:14:34 ◼   ► is inherently more pleasing to the human eye.

01:14:36 ◼   ► It really is.

01:14:37 ◼   ► And so I think that that will be a very popular setting,

01:14:40 ◼   ► but I also like the fact that they do have

01:14:43 ◼   ► the negative 100 to positive 100 scale there,

01:14:47 ◼   ► because that allows people in the slider,

01:14:51 ◼   ► because it allows people to kind of come up

01:14:53 ◼   ► with their own style and then share it.

01:14:55 ◼   ► You can just screenshot it and share it with somebody else.

01:14:57 ◼   ► It'd be like, try this.

01:14:58 ◼   ► Like, this is mine.

01:14:59 ◼   ► You know, this is what I really like.

01:15:00 ◼   ► And somebody's like, oh, I like that.

01:15:01 ◼   ► And it's kind of like, you know, Lightroom's presets, right?

01:15:06 ◼   ► And people have made entire businesses

01:15:09 ◼   ► off of developing Lightroom presets

01:15:11 ◼   ► that they distribute and sell to people.

01:15:14 ◼   ► And people love them.

01:15:15 ◼   ► You know, they give you a kind of like starting point

01:15:18 ◼   ► or a look that you can export.

01:15:21 ◼   ► And I think that having those numbers on there

01:15:22 ◼   ► is really cool, because it lets people set their own,

01:15:25 ◼   ► make their own choices, and then tell somebody,

01:15:28 ◼   ► oh, try this one.

01:15:29 ◼   ► The one thing I wish they had was a specific custom option,

01:15:34 ◼   ► which they don't have right now.

01:15:35 ◼   ► It's just cool, warm, vibrant, rich, contrast, and standard.

01:15:39 ◼   ► They should be like a user one, you know, by default.

01:15:41 ◼   ► - Well, you can adjust them though.

01:15:42 ◼   ► - So right now you have to change one of them.

01:15:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:15:43 ◼   ► - No, no, you can't change any of them.

01:15:45 ◼   ► - Right. - Which is great,

01:15:46 ◼   ► but you can't like sort of save one as your own

01:15:48 ◼   ► and leave the other ones alone.

01:15:49 ◼   ► - I can't make like a--

01:15:50 ◼   ► - You have to pick one you don't like

01:15:52 ◼   ► and then adjust it. - Right.

01:15:52 ◼   ► And then you lose their standard,

01:15:55 ◼   ► although they have a little reset button

01:15:56 ◼   ► that you can double tap to go back.

01:15:59 ◼   ► - It's not the end of the world.

01:16:00 ◼   ► You can reset it.

01:16:01 ◼   ► And I just think that if you're gonna offer

01:16:03 ◼   ► the ability to build user settings in,

01:16:06 ◼   ► you should add a user option,

01:16:08 ◼   ► which I would guess would come at some point.

01:16:11 ◼   ► It's just a matter of how long it's gonna take.

01:16:13 ◼   ► But I think that that is the one little missing thing.

01:16:16 ◼   ► But I love the fact that you can now,

01:16:18 ◼   ► somebody who say comes from the Samsung world,

01:16:21 ◼   ► like comes from an Android phone

01:16:23 ◼   ► and really loves their take on it.

01:16:26 ◼   ► Now you can get much closer to that

01:16:27 ◼   ► and you don't have to do post-processing.

01:16:29 ◼   ► - Right.

01:16:30 ◼   ► - You can get it right in the image pipeline,

01:16:32 ◼   ► which means that when you do export that JPEG,

01:16:34 ◼   ► and most people don't know this,

01:16:35 ◼   ► but anytime you share an image anywhere outside of iOS,

01:16:39 ◼   ► it renders that image, right?

01:16:41 ◼   ► That's what it does.

01:16:42 ◼   ► It applies any color adjustments and things

01:16:44 ◼   ► that you have set to it,

01:16:46 ◼   ► and then renders it for the outside world,

01:16:48 ◼   ► outside of Apple's ecosystem.

01:16:50 ◼   ► And if you are able to set up something

01:16:54 ◼   ► that feels more comfortable and pleasing to you,

01:16:56 ◼   ► why not, right?

01:16:58 ◼   ► Like, you know, the editorial decision is great

01:17:00 ◼   ► and I get it.

01:17:01 ◼   ► And I understand why Apple has leaned into that for so long,

01:17:03 ◼   ► 'cause they wanna make sure to, you know,

01:17:05 ◼   ► kind of present as close to what they can determine

01:17:08 ◼   ► as the truth to people for their images.

01:17:11 ◼   ► But I don't think there's any harm in allowing people

01:17:13 ◼   ► to develop and own their own photographic styles,

01:17:16 ◼   ► and I'm glad it exists now.

01:17:17 ◼   ► It's cool.

01:17:18 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Austin Mann's custom settings.

01:17:21 ◼   ► Now, he admits, like, for his, like, this super review

01:17:23 ◼   ► on the Tanzanian thing, he shoots RAW with Halide

01:17:26 ◼   ► and then develops them and, you know,

01:17:28 ◼   ► 'cause he's a pro and he's using the iPhone

01:17:30 ◼   ► as a pro camera.

01:17:31 ◼   ► But he also acknowledges that as a regular person,

01:17:35 ◼   ► sometimes he just takes his phone out and shoots something

01:17:37 ◼   ► and he just wants it, you know, he'll just shoot JPEG.

01:17:41 ◼   ► So his style, his custom style, if you wanted to name,

01:17:44 ◼   ► if you could save a named Austin Mann photographic style,

01:17:48 ◼   ► it would be negative 30 tone.

01:17:50 ◼   ► And even though it's negative,

01:17:51 ◼   ► that actually means a little bit more contrasty

01:17:54 ◼   ► and plus 15 warmth.

01:17:56 ◼   ► That's the Austin Mann style.

01:17:58 ◼   ► And so I'm gonna switch mine to that.

01:18:00 ◼   ► I agree you should be able to save one,

01:18:02 ◼   ► even if it was just one spot, right?

01:18:04 ◼   ► Like, if it was just one called custom.

01:18:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, just one slot, right.

01:18:08 ◼   ► And eventually it should go beyond that,

01:18:11 ◼   ► they should be able to export them, share them.

01:18:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, and then you could import them.

01:18:14 ◼   ► The thing that would be cool, and I think,

01:18:16 ◼   ► I can't help but believe, I don't wanna do it myself

01:18:18 ◼   ► 'cause I don't wanna buy these phones,

01:18:20 ◼   ► but it'd be cool, like, let's say,

01:18:21 ◼   ► like everybody's much anticipating

01:18:23 ◼   ► sometime in the next few weeks,

01:18:24 ◼   ► Google's gonna come out with the Pixel 6.

01:18:27 ◼   ► And, you know, a lot of people love the Pixel look

01:18:31 ◼   ► and the Pixel's, you know, almost everybody agrees

01:18:34 ◼   ► that the very best thing about Google's Pixel phones,

01:18:37 ◼   ► number one is that they're quote unquote pure Android,

01:18:40 ◼   ► and number two, people love the cameras.

01:18:42 ◼   ► They do shoot excellent, excellent phone, at least still,

01:18:46 ◼   ► and, you know, maybe the video's been lagging

01:18:48 ◼   ► in recent years, we'll see if they catch up.

01:18:49 ◼   ► But anyway, let's say you love the Pixel look,

01:18:52 ◼   ► could somebody figure out, like,

01:18:54 ◼   ► what should you set your iPhone to

01:18:56 ◼   ► to get a Pixel look out of your iPhone

01:18:59 ◼   ► in terms of how it processes the sensor image?

01:19:02 ◼   ► I think that sort of thing is,

01:19:03 ◼   ► somebody's gotta run a, set up a website

01:19:05 ◼   ► that publishes numbers like that.

01:19:08 ◼   ► I think it'd be pretty cool.

01:19:09 ◼   ► - Right, yeah.

01:19:10 ◼   ► Four options are good, you know.

01:19:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, and also--

01:19:13 ◼   ► - If you're not gonna have any, go neutral.

01:19:16 ◼   ► That's my opinion, but once you're gonna have one,

01:19:18 ◼   ► that's great.

01:19:19 ◼   ► - And it's, one of the other cool things about it

01:19:21 ◼   ► is if you don't give two shits about any of this,

01:19:23 ◼   ► and this whole last 10 minutes of the show is like,

01:19:26 ◼   ► I don't care about that, guess what?

01:19:28 ◼   ► You don't have to worry about it.

01:19:28 ◼   ► It's just gonna shoot standard iPhone processing,

01:19:31 ◼   ► which, you know, iPhone is generally pretty well regarded

01:19:34 ◼   ► as a phone camera.

01:19:35 ◼   ► You don't have to do a damn thing,

01:19:37 ◼   ► and it'll never get in your way,

01:19:39 ◼   ► and you never have to pick it, and it doesn't, you know.

01:19:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's the equivalent of the,

01:19:43 ◼   ► I'm feeling lucky button on Google.

01:19:46 ◼   ► You know, it's just, give me some results.

01:19:49 ◼   ► And I think it's good.

01:19:50 ◼   ► You know, it's important to have that,

01:19:52 ◼   ► and the fact of the matter is,

01:19:53 ◼   ► the team has a proven track record

01:19:55 ◼   ► of producing pretty great images,

01:19:57 ◼   ► so by default, you're getting a great image,

01:20:00 ◼   ► and then by not default,

01:20:02 ◼   ► by if somebody wants to play with it or more,

01:20:04 ◼   ► play around with it more,

01:20:05 ◼   ► now you're offered more options

01:20:07 ◼   ► in getting the kind of image that really appeals to you

01:20:09 ◼   ► and makes you excited.

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01:21:38 ◼   ► Last but not least for the show is,

01:21:42 ◼   ► and maybe last and most interesting, cinematic mode video,

01:21:47 ◼   ► which I told, I don't think I was dismissive

01:21:53 ◼   ► when I called it a gift.

01:21:55 ◼   ► My summary of it on my review was,

01:21:57 ◼   ► look, it's a gimmick, but I don't mean that pejoratively.

01:22:00 ◼   ► Gimmicks can be good.

01:22:02 ◼   ► And then I saw your stuff and I saw some other stuff

01:22:07 ◼   ► and I started thinking, hmm, maybe it's not even a gimmick.

01:22:13 ◼   ► It is weird and it's got some technical glitches,

01:22:17 ◼   ► but I don't know, I'm starting to think this is useful.

01:22:22 ◼   ► And then I saw Andre Laro's short film, "Float,"

01:22:27 ◼   ► which I linked on "Daring Fireball" last week,

01:22:30 ◼   ► which is just a few minutes long.

01:22:33 ◼   ► And it's his directorial debut.

01:22:36 ◼   ► I think he was at Adobe for a while.

01:22:38 ◼   ► He obviously knows how to shoot photos,

01:22:39 ◼   ► but if you're listening to this,

01:22:42 ◼   ► I hope that you saw my post on "Daring Fireball"

01:22:44 ◼   ► and watched his movie, which he shot in cinematic mode.

01:22:49 ◼   ► And even if you go into it thinking, okay,

01:22:53 ◼   ► Gruber says this is a good movie to watch

01:22:55 ◼   ► to see cinematic mode in action,

01:22:57 ◼   ► 10 seconds in, you will forget about looking for anything

01:23:02 ◼   ► like fringes or focus lengths or anything,

01:23:05 ◼   ► and you'll just be absorbed.

01:23:06 ◼   ► And then a minute in, you're gonna be holding back tears

01:23:09 ◼   ► and choking up and your heart is gonna be pounding

01:23:13 ◼   ► in your chest and that's art, right?

01:23:15 ◼   ► That's why you make movies.

01:23:17 ◼   ► And then you're at the end and you're like,

01:23:19 ◼   ► oh wait, that was, let me go back and start looking

01:23:21 ◼   ► at the cinematic mode.

01:23:22 ◼   ► And it's like, and then all of a sudden

01:23:23 ◼   ► you're watching it again.

01:23:24 ◼   ► And it's like, hey, this is no gimmick.

01:23:26 ◼   ► This shit's for real.

01:23:28 ◼   ► I don't know, that blew me away.

01:23:30 ◼   ► I'm curious, and you had a whole piece,

01:23:34 ◼   ► you had a whole feature, you had an interview

01:23:36 ◼   ► with Kayan Drance and Johnny,

01:23:38 ◼   ► I already know his first name, Johnny--

01:23:41 ◼   ► - Manzari. - Manzari from Apple.

01:23:43 ◼   ► He's a user interface designer, works on camera stuff.

01:23:47 ◼   ► And I thought it was a terrific interview.

01:23:50 ◼   ► - I'm curious, post-interview, what your thoughts are.

01:23:53 ◼   ► Are pre and post-interview and what are your thoughts

01:23:57 ◼   ► when you first saw cinematic mode

01:23:59 ◼   ► and what are your thoughts now, one week post-review?

01:24:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, so obviously you saw the presentation

01:24:05 ◼   ► and I watched it, like all of us,

01:24:08 ◼   ► and we're like, oh, look at that.

01:24:09 ◼   ► It's like you're in the flow and trying to cover everything

01:24:13 ◼   ► and type about it and give people observations.

01:24:16 ◼   ► And so it's like, oh, cool, cool.

01:24:17 ◼   ► And you just soon get to really absorb it all that deeply.

01:24:22 ◼   ► It definitely was, their demo film cracked me up

01:24:25 ◼   ► because it was super rack-focus heavy.

01:24:27 ◼   ► Obviously they're showing off the feature,

01:24:29 ◼   ► so you can't fault them for that.

01:24:30 ◼   ► But somebody made a joke on Twitter, which I laughed about,

01:24:33 ◼   ► and it was like, I don't know, Apple demonstrates

01:24:36 ◼   ► how to make people sick of rack-focus or something.

01:24:38 ◼   ► But it's, which is funny.

01:24:41 ◼   ► But they kinda show it off, right?

01:24:43 ◼   ► So it's a narrative told essentially all in focus changes,

01:24:47 ◼   ► which in some ways is cool.

01:24:49 ◼   ► And honestly, some directors work that way, right?

01:24:52 ◼   ► Some directors work with fixed frame

01:24:55 ◼   ► and focal plane changes, hopefully not to excess,

01:24:59 ◼   ► but honestly as a really big pillar

01:25:02 ◼   ► of their storytelling modes, right?

01:25:05 ◼   ► Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg,

01:25:07 ◼   ► there are a handful of directors

01:25:09 ◼   ► that just use the focal plane

01:25:13 ◼   ► in a motive, directorial, narrative driving tool.

01:25:18 ◼   ► And all directors, for the most part,

01:25:20 ◼   ► use it to some degree.

01:25:21 ◼   ► Now I will say that like for a long time and for a while,

01:25:25 ◼   ► this is sort of subtext to this whole conversation

01:25:28 ◼   ► about adding rack-focus and synthetic bokeh

01:25:31 ◼   ► and all of this stuff to digital camera or to an iPhone.

01:25:35 ◼   ► When the switch to digital happened,

01:25:38 ◼   ► one of the first things to go,

01:25:40 ◼   ► to one of the first storytelling tools

01:25:42 ◼   ► that everyone lost was bokeh, right?

01:25:46 ◼   ► Was background blur, selective focus,

01:25:49 ◼   ► whatever you wanna call it,

01:25:51 ◼   ► slim field of focus, et cetera.

01:25:54 ◼   ► It was one of the first tools to go

01:25:55 ◼   ► specifically because digital cameras,

01:25:59 ◼   ► most of the early cameras that were used by filmmakers,

01:26:04 ◼   ► DVC cameras and those of that kind,

01:26:07 ◼   ► they actually did not take standard lenses, right?

01:26:09 ◼   ► They used integrated lenses.

01:26:11 ◼   ► And I mean, especially in the indie world, right?

01:26:13 ◼   ► Obviously there are a lot of high-end shooters

01:26:15 ◼   ► that still had access to detachable cameras

01:26:18 ◼   ► and all this stuff or detachable lenses.

01:26:20 ◼   ► But a lot of the run and gun filmmakers

01:26:22 ◼   ► and people who came up with the world,

01:26:24 ◼   ► the Aronofskis of the world

01:26:26 ◼   ► and people that were playing around with digital early,

01:26:29 ◼   ► Steven Soderbergh, et cetera,

01:26:31 ◼   ► the footage that they shot and the films that they shot

01:26:35 ◼   ► had this sort of inherent flatness,

01:26:37 ◼   ► both of tone and of focus because of the lens size

01:26:41 ◼   ► and the distance away from the CCD that the lens rested,

01:26:45 ◼   ► it inherently created this deep,

01:26:47 ◼   ► hyper deep field of focus.

01:26:49 ◼   ► And they utilized it as a tool, right?

01:26:50 ◼   ► As sort of the opposite kind of tool about,

01:26:53 ◼   ► you know, how to direct a person's eye through the frame

01:26:56 ◼   ► without focus, like, you know,

01:26:58 ◼   ► now they had to change their language, right?

01:27:00 ◼   ► And learn new languages.

01:27:01 ◼   ► And this was sort of part of the transition from film

01:27:04 ◼   ► and shooting on film and shooting analog

01:27:08 ◼   ► to shooting digital, right?

01:27:09 ◼   ► Was this era where there was a lot of that going on.

01:27:12 ◼   ► And then eventually, of course, the cameras caught up

01:27:16 ◼   ► and that tool was added back to their tool bag.

01:27:19 ◼   ► But what you end up with with an iPhone

01:27:21 ◼   ► is the absolute pinnacle of that kind of camera.

01:27:25 ◼   ► It's like to the extreme because the lens is so small

01:27:29 ◼   ► and it's so close to the plane of the sensor

01:27:32 ◼   ► that it inherently has an insanely deep field of focus.

01:27:37 ◼   ► You can see this,

01:27:38 ◼   ► like when you just shoot a regular picture,

01:27:40 ◼   ► the reason that you can select a focus point deeper

01:27:42 ◼   ► into the image and not with cinematic mode

01:27:45 ◼   ► is because inherently most of the field that you see

01:27:48 ◼   ► in your lens is in focus, almost all of it.

01:27:50 ◼   ► And that's just part of the physics

01:27:53 ◼   ► of the way these lenses work.

01:27:54 ◼   ► So you've got that whole context going in

01:27:57 ◼   ► that previously to this feature being launched,

01:28:01 ◼   ► you have pretty much no options or alternatives

01:28:04 ◼   ► besides trying to use the telephoto

01:28:06 ◼   ► and shooting as close as possible, right?

01:28:08 ◼   ► To introduce natural bokeh to the lens.

01:28:12 ◼   ► You could use some post-processing or whatever,

01:28:15 ◼   ► but inherently most of the films,

01:28:18 ◼   ► if you're trying to shoot a film that were shot on iPhone,

01:28:20 ◼   ► had inherently hyper deep focus

01:28:23 ◼   ► because of the physics of the lens.

01:28:24 ◼   ► So now you go and say, all right,

01:28:27 ◼   ► like how are we gonna fix this?

01:28:29 ◼   ► Or how are we gonna introduce the language of film

01:28:33 ◼   ► back into the iPhone in a way that can reward people,

01:28:37 ◼   ► both that are really good at this stuff

01:28:39 ◼   ► and people that may not even know the language

01:28:42 ◼   ► or how to speak the language, but want to, right?

01:28:45 ◼   ► They know, they've grown up watching films

01:28:47 ◼   ► and watching movies and they would love a more movie-like

01:28:50 ◼   ► look to their images.

01:28:52 ◼   ► They just have no idea how to get from zero to one.

01:28:54 ◼   ► And that's the problem that they started with.

01:28:56 ◼   ► Not, oh, we need a cinematic mode on the iPhone,

01:29:00 ◼   ► how do we build it?

01:29:01 ◼   ► It's how do we take that language of cinema

01:29:05 ◼   ► that's hundreds of years old and make it accessible

01:29:09 ◼   ► to almost anybody that was able to pick up this camera

01:29:12 ◼   ► and spend a few minutes learning how to use this feature.

01:29:15 ◼   ► And that I think was, you know,

01:29:17 ◼   ► is the thing Apple does so well.

01:29:18 ◼   ► They take a really complex, hard problem,

01:29:21 ◼   ► and then sort of put it through the intestinal tract

01:29:23 ◼   ► of their development process and small team's

01:29:26 ◼   ► development process and come out the other side,

01:29:29 ◼   ► hopefully with something that's actually useful.

01:29:32 ◼   ► - It's sort of, and the way they've done it

01:29:34 ◼   ► is sort of taking the weakness,

01:29:38 ◼   ► which is that you inherently have this very deep field

01:29:43 ◼   ► of focus with video shooting on the iPhone,

01:29:46 ◼   ► and weakness in terms of if you want a depth of field

01:29:50 ◼   ► bokeh effect and turning it into a strength.

01:29:53 ◼   ► - Right, yeah.

01:29:54 ◼   ► - By doing it all computationally,

01:29:58 ◼   ► but having that depth there in the footage that you shot

01:30:03 ◼   ► and using computational photography

01:30:05 ◼   ► to artificially compute the blurring

01:30:09 ◼   ► of either the foreground or the background.

01:30:11 ◼   ► But because that depth of focus is there,

01:30:13 ◼   ► you can change it all in post.

01:30:15 ◼   ► And so if the wrong thing happens

01:30:17 ◼   ► and you were counting on the machine language driven AI,

01:30:23 ◼   ► to notice that your actors turn their head

01:30:28 ◼   ► to look at another actor and wanted the focus to shift

01:30:31 ◼   ► from the first actor to the second,

01:30:35 ◼   ► and it didn't happen or it didn't happen

01:30:36 ◼   ► when you wanted it to, you just tweak it in post

01:30:40 ◼   ► and it's there and it's not, you didn't lose anything.

01:30:43 ◼   ► - I'm very impressed by it.

01:30:45 ◼   ► And I know it's so much, the analogies to portrait mode,

01:30:48 ◼   ► stills and iPhone are very similar,

01:30:50 ◼   ► whereas it has some problems getting hair

01:30:54 ◼   ► and the edges of hair and the frame of somebody's glasses,

01:30:59 ◼   ► if they're at, like at a 45 degree angle

01:31:03 ◼   ► where the outer frame of the far lens of their glasses

01:31:07 ◼   ► is not really part of their face.

01:31:09 ◼   ► It's like the machine language is looking for a face.

01:31:12 ◼   ► And so the glasses can sometimes get blurred out.

01:31:14 ◼   ► It's the same exact problems,

01:31:16 ◼   ► but that's gotten a lot better with portrait mode

01:31:19 ◼   ► year after year, it's that typical Apple incrementalism

01:31:23 ◼   ► where they just keep grinding away at this problem

01:31:26 ◼   ► and they know the problems better than anybody.

01:31:30 ◼   ► And it's, you know, the results can be really,

01:31:34 ◼   ► really impressive though.

01:31:35 ◼   ► I think this is really cool.

01:31:36 ◼   ► And again, if you don't care about it,

01:31:38 ◼   ► you don't have to shoot it.

01:31:39 ◼   ► This one actually is a dedicated mode, unlike macro.

01:31:42 ◼   ► So you're never gonna accidentally end up

01:31:45 ◼   ► with the cinematic mode footage if you didn't want it,

01:31:48 ◼   ► but even if that happens, you can just turn it off.

01:31:52 ◼   ► You can just take the whole clip and you're like,

01:31:54 ◼   ► ah, crap, this focus stuff is not appropriate

01:31:57 ◼   ► for this thing I shot at all.

01:31:59 ◼   ► You can just go in and edit it and turn off cinematic mode

01:32:02 ◼   ► and you just get the non cinematic mode version of the video

01:32:07 ◼   ► with everything in focus as you would expect.

01:32:10 ◼   ► So you've lost nothing, right?

01:32:12 ◼   ► It's not like, ah, I blew my chance at my kids' home run

01:32:16 ◼   ► in the little league game because I was a dope shooting

01:32:19 ◼   ► cinematic mode.

01:32:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, trying to get this focus right, yeah.

01:32:22 ◼   ► - Right, right. - Exactly.

01:32:23 ◼   ► - And the kid gets to first base and he's all blurry

01:32:26 ◼   ► and I wanted to, you know, they just turn it off.

01:32:28 ◼   ► You can just turn it off and you're fine.

01:32:30 ◼   ► - Every once in a while, yeah, every once in a while

01:32:32 ◼   ► you can hit the limits of the focusing range, right?

01:32:35 ◼   ► So like if you're shooting something extremely close

01:32:37 ◼   ► and the thing you wanna focus on is extremely far away

01:32:40 ◼   ► and your camera is physically very close

01:32:42 ◼   ► to the foreground object,

01:32:43 ◼   ► the background can still be out of focus, right?

01:32:45 ◼   ► So it's not completely foolproof,

01:32:47 ◼   ► but in most casual shooting situations,

01:32:50 ◼   ► people are gonna have a ton of options

01:32:52 ◼   ► and what to choose and what to pick from.

01:32:54 ◼   ► And Apple did a ton of work and will continue to do more

01:32:57 ◼   ► with sort of automatically directing it.

01:32:59 ◼   ► It's actually crazy how much stuff is going on there

01:33:01 ◼   ► and I think most people don't realize exactly

01:33:03 ◼   ► how much is happening,

01:33:04 ◼   ► especially the people who are poo pooing it

01:33:06 ◼   ► 'cause yes, the background segmentation

01:33:09 ◼   ► still has its weaknesses and it still has a general loss

01:33:15 ◼   ► of resolution or definition around the edges,

01:33:18 ◼   ► as you mentioned here, especially the background is complex.

01:33:21 ◼   ► You know, chain link fences or trees

01:33:23 ◼   ► or whatever the case may be, right?

01:33:24 ◼   ► Like there are instances where it just falls over

01:33:27 ◼   ► and some people don't like it

01:33:29 ◼   ► and some people it just, oh, it irritates me to know it.

01:33:31 ◼   ► Great, fine, right?

01:33:33 ◼   ► But for a lot of people,

01:33:35 ◼   ► I think it's actually going to be really cool and fun

01:33:38 ◼   ► in the near term and then long-term

01:33:41 ◼   ► as it gets better and better,

01:33:43 ◼   ► it's actually gonna become a real tool, right?

01:33:45 ◼   ► Like there's this big phrase in Silicon Valley

01:33:48 ◼   ► like that big changes or big inventions often begin

01:33:53 ◼   ► being perceived as toys, right?

01:33:55 ◼   ► Like, oh, look at this toy, right?

01:33:56 ◼   ► And then it's like, no, it's not a toy now.

01:33:59 ◼   ► Like there's a billion dollar business on the top of it.

01:34:02 ◼   ► - Personal computers in general were toys.

01:34:04 ◼   ► Then they became accepted and then the Macintosh came out

01:34:08 ◼   ► and the graphical user interface was a toy

01:34:10 ◼   ► because the serious ones all had a command line.

01:34:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly, exactly.

01:34:15 ◼   ► Where's my DOS?

01:34:16 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly, that's it.

01:34:17 ◼   ► And I think that's what the state

01:34:19 ◼   ► that this is in at the moment.

01:34:20 ◼   ► It's not quite a toy.

01:34:21 ◼   ► I mean, it's hard to call it a toy when it actually,

01:34:24 ◼   ► I think turns out pretty great results in a lot of instances

01:34:27 ◼   ► and there's so much computational power behind it

01:34:31 ◼   ► but I can understand it being perceived as a gimmick or toy

01:34:35 ◼   ► in its current state, I get that, right?

01:34:38 ◼   ► But it's not.

01:34:40 ◼   ► It is actually much more and it may take some time

01:34:43 ◼   ► for it to realize that potential

01:34:45 ◼   ► and it certainly is not perfect by any means

01:34:48 ◼   ► but it's far more than a throwaway BS thing

01:34:51 ◼   ► that doesn't work.

01:34:52 ◼   ► And frankly, when I was reading some of the other reviews

01:34:55 ◼   ► of this thing, of the feature or people that integrated

01:34:58 ◼   ► into their reviews, my big takeaway was that everybody

01:35:01 ◼   ► was reviewing it wrong and I don't wanna call anybody out

01:35:04 ◼   ► individually 'cause I think people are great

01:35:06 ◼   ► and everybody's gotta focus and everybody, you know,

01:35:08 ◼   ► I respect people's opinions based on intelligent

01:35:10 ◼   ► understanding and the fact of the matter is,

01:35:13 ◼   ► it's absolutely viable to look at the results

01:35:17 ◼   ► from shooting it in testing, very close testing

01:35:21 ◼   ► of a particular object or trying to isolate subjects,

01:35:24 ◼   ► trying to break down the various things that are happening

01:35:26 ◼   ► from synthetic bokeh to gaze detection and following

01:35:30 ◼   ► to automatic tracking to focus tracking

01:35:33 ◼   ► which are two different things.

01:35:35 ◼   ► It's fair to break all those down and like test each one

01:35:38 ◼   ► of them individually but the fact of the matter is,

01:35:41 ◼   ► there's no, unlike many other tests,

01:35:44 ◼   ► there really is no baseline to test from.

01:35:48 ◼   ► Like this is brand new.

01:35:50 ◼   ► It is not what you were, it emulates other things

01:35:55 ◼   ► but this is a brand new feature, right?

01:35:57 ◼   ► It's a brand new thing that this bundle of things

01:36:00 ◼   ► that they've created is brand new.

01:36:02 ◼   ► And so I think testing it in the same kind of test bed

01:36:06 ◼   ► or lab focused environment to try and say,

01:36:09 ◼   ► does this thing work the way they say it does?

01:36:11 ◼   ► Oh, look at the segmentation falls over here and there

01:36:14 ◼   ► and it just sucks, it doesn't really work at night,

01:36:16 ◼   ► it doesn't work this way or that way or the other thing,

01:36:19 ◼   ► absolutely 100% valid, viable but I feel misses the point

01:36:24 ◼   ► so badly as to actually misrepresent the feature entirely.

01:36:27 ◼   ► You end up in a situation where though all of

01:36:31 ◼   ► the negative bits actually end up to a larger

01:36:35 ◼   ► negative value than the feature actually deserves, right?

01:36:39 ◼   ► So like while acknowledging that it has flaws

01:36:41 ◼   ► and it is by no means perfect and Apple will be the first

01:36:44 ◼   ► to admit that if you can get them to do it on the record,

01:36:47 ◼   ► which good luck but the team knows, right?

01:36:50 ◼   ► Like they know that they're working towards something

01:36:53 ◼   ► but the fact of the matter is,

01:36:54 ◼   ► it's actually really fucking cool right now

01:36:56 ◼   ► and it works at night, sorry, I tried it, it works fine,

01:36:59 ◼   ► I don't know what people are doing there

01:37:00 ◼   ► that not make it work.

01:37:01 ◼   ► It also works in many situations where Apple says

01:37:04 ◼   ► it should work and it does.

01:37:06 ◼   ► If I've seen it follow the gaze of a person

01:37:09 ◼   ► to focus on another person in the frame,

01:37:11 ◼   ► I've seen it use overscan to track and see that a person

01:37:15 ◼   ► is entering the frame and then switch focus

01:37:18 ◼   ► from the person you're focused on in the frame

01:37:20 ◼   ► to that other person automatically.

01:37:22 ◼   ► None of this is even talking about the fact

01:37:26 ◼   ► that you can change it afterwards if you need to

01:37:28 ◼   ► or if it misses, which it does, right?

01:37:31 ◼   ► But that's not even talking about,

01:37:32 ◼   ► this is talking about the casual use of an 80 percenter,

01:37:36 ◼   ► right, the person who grabs iPhone is like,

01:37:38 ◼   ► oh cool, look at this new mode,

01:37:40 ◼   ► I'm gonna play around with this

01:37:41 ◼   ► and shoots their kids with it.

01:37:42 ◼   ► The results that are gonna get out of it,

01:37:44 ◼   ► sure, one in 10, two in 10, three in 10 may go like,

01:37:47 ◼   ► oh, that was kind of funky,

01:37:48 ◼   ► I don't know if I like that or not.

01:37:49 ◼   ► But a lot of people are going to start shooting

01:37:53 ◼   ► and thinking and being able to enjoy their home movies

01:37:58 ◼   ► with the language of movies and film and cinema

01:38:02 ◼   ► now available to them than were ever before

01:38:05 ◼   ► because they never owned a camera with detachable lenses

01:38:09 ◼   ► and a gimbal and a rack focusing pulley or wheel

01:38:14 ◼   ► and all that.

01:38:16 ◼   ► - They don't have any, they not only don't have a kit

01:38:19 ◼   ► to do focus pulling, they don't have someone

01:38:22 ◼   ► to be the focus puller.

01:38:24 ◼   ► - Right. - Right.

01:38:25 ◼   ► There's a Kubrick quote that I abuse,

01:38:27 ◼   ► I overuse it so much, but I love it.

01:38:29 ◼   ► And to me, it explains so many things that I care about

01:38:32 ◼   ► and why I care about them.

01:38:33 ◼   ► And it is, sometimes the truth of a thing

01:38:36 ◼   ► is not in the think of it, but in the feel of it.

01:38:40 ◼   ► And that to me is exactly what this,

01:38:42 ◼   ► you can think about it and examine,

01:38:44 ◼   ► oh, the hair's out of focus

01:38:47 ◼   ► and the left frame of the eyeglasses shouldn't be blurred,

01:38:51 ◼   ► but it is.

01:38:52 ◼   ► And then you can watch a movie like "Float"

01:38:55 ◼   ► and you get the feels and that's the truth of the feature.

01:38:59 ◼   ► Anyway. - Right.

01:39:01 ◼   ► - Let's call it a wrap.

01:39:01 ◼   ► Matthew Panzorino, I thank you so much for your time

01:39:04 ◼   ► and your insight.

01:39:05 ◼   ► I can't think of anybody else

01:39:07 ◼   ► I would rather talk iPhone camera with

01:39:08 ◼   ► other than Johnny Manzari and Kyan Drance,

01:39:12 ◼   ► who you got to talk to.

01:39:13 ◼   ► So it's like I've gotten them on the show

01:39:17 ◼   ► and it's one degree of separation.

01:39:20 ◼   ► Let me also thank our sponsors, great sponsors this week,

01:39:23 ◼   ► Memberful and LinkedIn and Mack Weldon, my thanks to them.

01:39:28 ◼   ► Thanks.

01:39:30 ◼   ► Thanks.