The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► I did the thing where I think maybe, possibly, I was the only iPhone 15 reviewer who didn't

00:00:06 ◼   ► post a single photograph with my review.

00:00:10 ◼   ► The classic John.

00:00:12 ◼   ► I went all in on, I am not going to have time for this.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Part of it though, because it's a rush, right?

00:00:19 ◼   ► The embargo was Tuesday.

00:00:21 ◼   ► I didn't get to set up the phones until Thursday, right?

00:00:26 ◼   ► So we were out in California, Tuesday event.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Wednesday was travel for me.

00:00:31 ◼   ► And I don't want to...

00:00:34 ◼   ► It's like, in past years I've set up a dummy phone, meaning I'm not transferring all my

00:00:38 ◼   ► shit over to it.

00:00:39 ◼   ► It's like, I can't afford...

00:00:41 ◼   ► Just to get it live to mess with it.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Right.

00:00:44 ◼   ► But I can't afford to move my SIM card over and maybe botch it on a day when I'm flying

00:00:48 ◼   ► across the country.

00:00:50 ◼   ► And what am I going to do?

00:00:51 ◼   ► Take pictures in the airport?

00:00:52 ◼   ► I guess you could.

00:00:53 ◼   ► A more talented photographer than me can get beautiful photographs at SFO, but I did not.

00:00:59 ◼   ► So it's a short period of time.

00:01:01 ◼   ► I figure, hey, I know you're going to Disneyland again.

00:01:04 ◼   ► So I'm like, well, Matthew is going to cover the photography part.

00:01:06 ◼   ► We'll let him do it.

00:01:11 ◼   ► I did take hundreds, maybe a thousand photos.

00:01:16 ◼   ► I don't know about a thousand, but hundreds of photos, lots of videos.

00:01:21 ◼   ► I actually captured at one of our parks here in Philly, there was a skater meetup.

00:01:28 ◼   ► In theory, I could have put together...

00:01:31 ◼   ► Somebody who is a talented video editor could maybe put together a pretty cool skateboard

00:01:36 ◼   ► video.

00:01:37 ◼   ► And so I did test it and I'm like, damn, this camera is good, but I did not publish any.

00:01:45 ◼   ► The skateboard...

00:01:46 ◼   ► Skate skating is great for iPhone photography.

00:01:48 ◼   ► I did that the first year they did slow-mo.

00:01:50 ◼   ► I went up to the skate park.

00:01:51 ◼   ► That was fun.

00:01:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:53 ◼   ► I took lots of slow-mo.

00:01:54 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:01:55 ◼   ► I went in order in my review.

00:01:57 ◼   ► I guess we have lots of talk about it because I haven't podcasted all month.

00:02:00 ◼   ► We could talk about the event, talk about the iPhones, talk about the watches.

00:02:04 ◼   ► And then the other thing is we've waited so long to record.

00:02:07 ◼   ► We could talk about the fact that the phones have actually started shipping to real people

00:02:11 ◼   ► yesterday.

00:02:12 ◼   ► Right.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:14 ◼   ► So there's lots to cover.

00:02:16 ◼   ► I'll just start with this.

00:02:17 ◼   ► What is your high level takeaway?

00:02:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:21 ◼   ► So I think I felt pretty good about the event.

00:02:24 ◼   ► It's a high level takeaway, one sentence on each of those components.

00:02:28 ◼   ► I felt that the event was solid, but it definitely showed off how distanced the expectation of

00:02:35 ◼   ► the events from media is from what they actually deliver now.

00:02:41 ◼   ► Even more than in recent years.

00:02:43 ◼   ► But I thought it was well executed and overall there were no major complaints that I had

00:02:47 ◼   ► about how they went about it beyond the high level like, "Hey, maybe this thing is different."

00:02:52 ◼   ► The second thing is the phones are great, really solid, high level of deliverables across

00:02:59 ◼   ► all of the major categories.

00:03:02 ◼   ► The watches are pretty much exactly as expected, but really no surprises there much at all.

00:03:09 ◼   ► And not even surprises, but no real like, "You're not going to buy this watch, I don't

00:03:15 ◼   ► think, or should you if you bought last year's watch at all?"

00:03:19 ◼   ► And then what was the last one?

00:03:21 ◼   ► What was the...

00:03:22 ◼   ► Well, they've actually started shipping to customers.

00:03:25 ◼   ► Oh yeah, and shipping.

00:03:26 ◼   ► Yeah, it looks like shipping times were pretty much as expected.

00:03:29 ◼   ► The high end ones slipped a bit, but still relatively available.

00:03:32 ◼   ► I know a lot of people got walk-ins on day one and yeah.

00:03:35 ◼   ► So I think it was pretty positive.

00:03:37 ◼   ► I ordered and I just wanted to check it out.

00:03:41 ◼   ► So for my personal phone, which we can say what we ordered, I bought the black iPhone

00:03:49 ◼   ► 15 Pro, not Max, even though my heart even just saying it hurts a little bit because

00:03:55 ◼   ► of the 5X.

00:03:57 ◼   ► Hurts a little.

00:03:58 ◼   ► And when I ordered, I did not wake up at 8 AM.

00:04:01 ◼   ► I was exhausted.

00:04:02 ◼   ► I think it was 8 AM Eastern when the...

00:04:04 ◼   ► Yeah, it was like 8 AM Eastern, 5 AM Pacific for you poor souls out there.

00:04:08 ◼   ► I woke up a little later than that and by that time I could not get delivery yesterday,

00:04:13 ◼   ► but I could get in-store pickup.

00:04:15 ◼   ► Amy wanted the white Pro Max and by, I don't know, 1030 in the morning or so it was already

00:04:24 ◼   ► like a late October delivery.

00:04:26 ◼   ► So the...

00:04:27 ◼   ► As has been reported elsewhere, the Pro Maxes are backed up first.

00:04:31 ◼   ► I guess it has something to do with the camera and Ming-Chi Kuo said that there's something

00:04:37 ◼   ► something with the component supplier for the Tetra Prism or something.

00:04:41 ◼   ► I mean, unless the demand is extremely tilted towards the Pro Max mix.

00:04:46 ◼   ► I mean, we know that's sort of the most popular one, but unless it's extremely tilted toward

00:04:52 ◼   ► that, it makes more sense that it's held up by the one component that's unique, which

00:04:57 ◼   ► is the Tetra Prism 5X camera.

00:04:59 ◼   ► But it's not bad.

00:05:00 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:05:01 ◼   ► And your first instinct in years past might have been, "Oh, it's chips."

00:05:04 ◼   ► Chips are always the hardest, yield is always the hardest, but like the display yield is

00:05:08 ◼   ► no joke, the Tetra Prism has to be like the biggest limiting factor, just given that they

00:05:13 ◼   ► only make these for Apple, right?

00:05:15 ◼   ► They're not making screens for Tetra Prisms for anybody else, they're making them only

00:05:19 ◼   ► for Apple.

00:05:20 ◼   ► Right.

00:05:21 ◼   ► One of the cool things about the event is the mix.

00:05:22 ◼   ► I do enjoy it.

00:05:24 ◼   ► And most of my friends at the event are people like you and Nilay and Joanna and people in

00:05:28 ◼   ► the media side.

00:05:30 ◼   ► But the analyst side is always good to talk to because they know things other people don't

00:05:37 ◼   ► and talking to a couple of the analysts like Ben Bajaren and a couple other people.

00:05:43 ◼   ► The fear over how many three nanometer A17 Pro chips TSMC can produce throughout the

00:05:49 ◼   ► course of the year is very real, right?

00:05:52 ◼   ► Right.

00:05:53 ◼   ► They're skating on the edge.

00:05:55 ◼   ► And one of my takeaways on that is, and there are, I don't even know if they're rumors,

00:06:01 ◼   ► I almost think that we almost can say for fact that the A16 last year was originally

00:06:08 ◼   ► going to be on three nanometer, right?

00:06:11 ◼   ► Like TSMC's three nanometers slipped by, I don't know, 18 months or something like

00:06:17 ◼   ► that.

00:06:18 ◼   ► You know, and the lead time on this, I mean, who knows where on Johnny Suruji's team,

00:06:22 ◼   ► if there are, I would assume they're already working on things like the A20.

00:06:26 ◼   ► Somebody's in there working years ahead.

00:06:28 ◼   ► Charting that out, yeah.

00:06:29 ◼   ► Right.

00:06:30 ◼   ► I can't help but think as we go into this era where some of the phones are called Pro

00:06:35 ◼   ► and some of them aren't, even though they get the new integer, right?

00:06:38 ◼   ► There are iPhone 15s and they are new and they offer some really cool features, but

00:06:42 ◼   ► as they segment the difference between Pro and non-Pro more, I can't help but think

00:06:47 ◼   ► that this three nanometer production issue is one of the reasons why last year, even

00:06:52 ◼   ► though the A16 was still five nanometer, they're like, let's split it on the chip too.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Because I don't think...

00:06:59 ◼   ► Specifically, it's wafer production, I think, that is really limited there.

00:07:02 ◼   ► Yes.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Because there's only so many people that can make them.

00:07:04 ◼   ► There's only so many that can be produced every year and that's it.

00:07:08 ◼   ► That's all you have, right?

00:07:09 ◼   ► And you have to kind of like figure out your mix.

00:07:11 ◼   ► Right.

00:07:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:13 ◼   ► Which is why they probably could have charged a lot more for the bigger ones.

00:07:14 ◼   ► Right.

00:07:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:16 ◼   ► Which is an interesting way of charging more that they just took away the 128 gigabyte

00:07:21 ◼   ► Pro Max.

00:07:22 ◼   ► But basically, I talked to a couple of people last week at the event and they were like,

00:07:26 ◼   ► if they use three nanometer, if they had like A17 and A17 Pro this year chips, an A17 maybe

00:07:32 ◼   ► without the USB-C3 controller or whatever else, I would assume, I think there's a lot

00:07:37 ◼   ► of silicon in the A17 Pro for the pro photography features, right?

00:07:41 ◼   ► With the ProRes and stuff like that.

00:07:44 ◼   ► Take that off.

00:07:45 ◼   ► But there's no way they could get all of the three nanometer wafers that they would need

00:07:50 ◼   ► if all of the A15s were on it.

00:07:53 ◼   ► It's just a statement of fact.

00:07:55 ◼   ► There's just not enough wafers in the world.

00:07:57 ◼   ► So I think that's interesting.

00:07:59 ◼   ► I thought the other thing with the event is as we settle into this new era of new style

00:08:04 ◼   ► events where they're not performed on stage.

00:08:07 ◼   ► I thought I didn't think of this last year, but I thought this year I was like, you know

00:08:11 ◼   ► what this is like?

00:08:12 ◼   ► It is like we're attending a movie premiere and we're just in the media.

00:08:17 ◼   ► And it's a big movie, right?

00:08:19 ◼   ► This isn't like we're at Sundance and we're watching some indie production.

00:08:23 ◼   ► This is James Cameron, the avatar blockbuster that's expected to.

00:08:27 ◼   ► Right, right.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:29 ◼   ► It's like reviewing Star Wars.

00:08:31 ◼   ► I've done the Star Wars movie reviews before you go to the premiere and then you ostensibly

00:08:35 ◼   ► write a review.

00:08:37 ◼   ► Those are their own beast.

00:08:38 ◼   ► It's not like reviewing a Sundance indie.

00:08:41 ◼   ► This is like high grade explosive, big time production thing.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Yep.

00:08:47 ◼   ► This is what I tried to get this into my review.

00:08:48 ◼   ► I hope I did, but I do.

00:08:50 ◼   ► It's just palpable.

00:08:51 ◼   ► And I think it's right.

00:08:53 ◼   ► I think if I worked at Apple and got to put my two cents into this, is this the right

00:08:58 ◼   ► way for Apple as a company to prioritize its products?

00:09:02 ◼   ► I would say yes, even though my most beloved product is the Mac, I think it's right.

00:09:08 ◼   ► It is so obvious that the iPhone is the number one product at Apple and that they do not

00:09:15 ◼   ► take for granted that it is the success that it is in any way.

00:09:20 ◼   ► They are the opposite.

00:09:22 ◼   ► There's the fable of the golden goose and I guess in the fable they take advantage of

00:09:27 ◼   ► it and the goose dies, I guess in most tellings of the story.

00:09:30 ◼   ► Apple is like, has like a full time veterinarian staff around this goose.

00:09:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:40 ◼   ► This goose is being foie gras to an inch of its life.

00:09:44 ◼   ► It's got like an Apple watch around its neck so that they could monitor all of its vitals,

00:09:50 ◼   ► but they aren't taking advantage.

00:09:52 ◼   ► They aren't taking for granted one iota of the iPhone's success in the world and they

00:09:58 ◼   ► are just peddled to the metal on pushing it forward as fast as they can year over year.

00:10:06 ◼   ► Well, it is their highest publicity event is there by far and away.

00:10:12 ◼   ► I just think that so many people in our universe, the nerd universe, it just doesn't register

00:10:17 ◼   ► with them how much awareness there is in the real world of people that, Hey, new iPhones

00:10:22 ◼   ► are coming out and they only know like three things, very high level things like, Oh, a

00:10:27 ◼   ► bigger zoom and it's made of titanium or something now, which is like in a meteor because that's

00:10:31 ◼   ► what I saw in the commercial.

00:10:32 ◼   ► That awareness alone, just that is amazing for a cell phone.

00:10:36 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:10:38 ◼   ► I mean, I think the, the brand awareness compare between that and like whatever the latest

00:10:43 ◼   ► pixel is a pixel seven or whatever would be, it would be an insurmountable gap of customer

00:10:49 ◼   ► awareness, right?

00:10:52 ◼   ► Pretty much everybody with access to any sort of internet or TV is going to know period

00:10:57 ◼   ► that the iPhone is coming out and probably at least one, if not a couple of their high

00:11:02 ◼   ► level selling points.

00:11:04 ◼   ► And that's, that's like the efficacy is on the level of the Superbowl.

00:11:08 ◼   ► And in fact, as you've mentioned before, they actually get more viewers to the Superbowl

00:11:12 ◼   ► over in the aggregate because it's a global event and the Superbowl is by and large a

00:11:17 ◼   ► U S based event and Apple does refer to it as their Superbowl internally.

00:11:21 ◼   ► You and I both heard executives refer to it that way.

00:11:24 ◼   ► So they're very cognizant of that fact that this is their, their Mount Olympus of events

00:11:30 ◼   ► and certainly a focused on the iPhone.

00:11:32 ◼   ► I think in that way, when you look at it, the character of the event in that way, it

00:11:36 ◼   ► makes a lot of sense exactly the, why they do it and the reasons they do it.

00:11:40 ◼   ► I, I, I have waffled back and forth on the alignment issue, right?

00:11:45 ◼   ► Because I think that every time these events happen and you get complaints about like,

00:11:49 ◼   ► Oh, no big new thing or whatever's an innovation that isn't dead.

00:11:54 ◼   ► And Oh, this is just an iPhone again.

00:11:56 ◼   ► And it looks the same as last year.

00:11:58 ◼   ► All of those little things are echoes really of an underlying thing, which is that the

00:12:03 ◼   ► way Apple talks about the iPhone is very much geared towards the world with a capital W

00:12:10 ◼   ► and it is a marketing event, right?

00:12:12 ◼   ► At its core, it's a marketing event for Apple.

00:12:14 ◼   ► This is not an introduction of technology.

00:12:17 ◼   ► Apple has positioned it that way in the past.

00:12:21 ◼   ► That's where they anchored it.

00:12:22 ◼   ► Hey, we're here to tell you about all the wonderful new technology that we have invented

00:12:27 ◼   ► or created for you in the past year or two years.

00:12:31 ◼   ► It's still in very much is that way underneath.

00:12:33 ◼   ► If you dig in, there's plenty of meat here.

00:12:35 ◼   ► I mean the, the zoom lenses and the processor, et cetera, et cetera.

00:12:39 ◼   ► There's a lot of work here, right?

00:12:41 ◼   ► However, for the general public, I think the messaging is very much just, look, there's

00:12:47 ◼   ► new iPhones.

00:12:48 ◼   ► You should buy a new iPhone and the press and media that cover it or, and I extend this

00:12:53 ◼   ► out to the long tail of enthusiasts across social media platforms and YouTube, et cetera,

00:12:59 ◼   ► who pay attention to this stuff closely and are sort of expecting it to deliver them content

00:13:04 ◼   ► that they can create or use to create and talk about.

00:13:07 ◼   ► I think that when you focus on that, there is a misalignment between those two worlds

00:13:12 ◼   ► that causes this sort of like, Oh yeah, but like it doesn't hover, right?

00:13:18 ◼   ► It doesn't, it doesn't fire lasers from the camera to like disintegrate my enemies.

00:13:23 ◼   ► Like where is the big new thing that I can kind of focus on and write about and talk

00:13:28 ◼   ► about it debate or whatever.

00:13:30 ◼   ► I don't think that alignment is ever going to go away as especially as long as Apple

00:13:33 ◼   ► keeps up this Super Bowl esque atmosphere to their events.

00:13:36 ◼   ► I thought one of the most telling aspects of just how mainstream the interest is in

00:13:43 ◼   ► this was my wife is a big Howard Stern fan and she was listening to the Howard Stern

00:13:49 ◼   ► show.

00:13:50 ◼   ► I don't know, sometime later in the week it was after I got home.

00:13:54 ◼   ► I don't know what day the she often doesn't listen.

00:13:55 ◼   ► Same day, but they were talking about the fact that they all watched the event and they

00:14:00 ◼   ► were making fun of it.

00:14:01 ◼   ► Like how stupid is this?

00:14:04 ◼   ► That there's a two hour event just for a new cell phone.

00:14:06 ◼   ► This is the dumbest thing in the world.

00:14:08 ◼   ► And they were acknowledging, but we all watched it.

00:14:11 ◼   ► And they're like, yeah, how stupid are we?

00:14:14 ◼   ► And it was so funny.

00:14:15 ◼   ► They were, and they were talking about the segment with Kyan Drance and that's why

00:14:18 ◼   ► Amy called me and she's like, Oh my God.

00:14:19 ◼   ► Cause we know her.

00:14:20 ◼   ► I, I, I, I know her husband, Matt.

00:14:23 ◼   ► And it's just weird when somebody, you know, somewhat socially is being talked about on

00:14:27 ◼   ► the Howard Stern show, but they didn't even remember her.

00:14:30 ◼   ► They didn't remember her name.

00:14:31 ◼   ► They called her Apple lady.

00:14:34 ◼   ► And they're like, I'm sure Kyan got a kick out of that.

00:14:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:37 ◼   ► But they're like, I think it was the Howard.

00:14:38 ◼   ► It was like Apple lady's telling me about how many nits the phone has.

00:14:41 ◼   ► So what's a nit?

00:14:42 ◼   ► Who the hell knows what a nit is?

00:14:44 ◼   ► What am I supposed to do?

00:14:45 ◼   ► All I know is that phone looks cool.

00:14:48 ◼   ► But that's yeah.

00:14:49 ◼   ► And that's the alignment issue, right?

00:14:50 ◼   ► Like a nerd is going to care about the nits.

00:14:53 ◼   ► Somebody invited nerd.

00:14:54 ◼   ► I'm being very generous with that term.

00:14:56 ◼   ► Like people who care about advancement said technology or will this demonstrably improve

00:15:00 ◼   ► by workflow or, or will it be better for me?

00:15:03 ◼   ► Like people that care about this stuff.

00:15:04 ◼   ► Like they're like, tell me the nits.

00:15:06 ◼   ► Right.

00:15:07 ◼   ► And everybody else is like, the hell is a bit.

00:15:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:10 ◼   ► But we've, we have, you're right though.

00:15:11 ◼   ► I think you've put your finger on it though.

00:15:13 ◼   ► And as much as there are, so there are complaints from people like the Howard Stern show that

00:15:16 ◼   ► there's too much technical jargon, right?

00:15:18 ◼   ► On the other hand, we are, we are very far removed.

00:15:22 ◼   ► It's not just the difference between a live stage presentation and a totally prerecorded

00:15:27 ◼   ► thing, but we are quite a way removed from some of those photography segments that Phil

00:15:32 ◼   ► Schiller always emceed, where they would go deep into the weeds on focus pixels, right?

00:15:39 ◼   ► And they would like commission these fancy 3D vector drawings, like of tilting the sensor

00:15:45 ◼   ► in three dimensions so that you can see how the light rays hit these focus pixels.

00:15:51 ◼   ► Like Schiller as an optics professor giving like optics 101 presentation on digital sensor,

00:15:59 ◼   ► you know?

00:16:00 ◼   ► And I've always loved that stuff because the camera is so interesting to me and I know

00:16:03 ◼   ► that Schiller loves that stuff too.

00:16:05 ◼   ► And his enthusiasm was palpable in those segments, but there's, it's just no way today they're

00:16:10 ◼   ► going to have jaws up there for 10 minutes talking about focus pixels.

00:16:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:15 ◼   ► I mean, I think it's great in a way because it's sort of like the people that cared and

00:16:21 ◼   ► nerded out about this stuff got away with talking about it way longer than they should

00:16:25 ◼   ► have over the years.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Right?

00:16:27 ◼   ► Like Schiller would have still been talking about it, right?

00:16:29 ◼   ► Like if they let him, they still have a whole segment on it because I know I talked to him

00:16:32 ◼   ► at the event and he was like super stoked with the cameras and all of that stuff.

00:16:36 ◼   ► He would still be up there talking about it.

00:16:38 ◼   ► And I think that's good.

00:16:39 ◼   ► It shows that there are people inside that like really care about these details and all

00:16:43 ◼   ► of that stuff.

00:16:44 ◼   ► But yeah, once again, the alignment, they're definitely have twisted the dial away and

00:16:48 ◼   ► towards the broader and yet they're still in an awkward spot, right?

00:16:52 ◼   ► They're still in an uncanny valley between the people that care about the underlying

00:16:56 ◼   ► technologies and the people that care about the application.

00:16:58 ◼   ► So yeah.

00:16:59 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break here and thank our first sponsor.

00:17:01 ◼   ► It is our very good friends at Squarespace.

00:17:05 ◼   ► Go to squarespace.com/talkshow.

00:17:07 ◼   ► That's the magic URL squarespace.com/talkshow.

00:17:11 ◼   ► And at that URL, you will save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using

00:17:17 ◼   ► that code talk show.

00:17:19 ◼   ► You know what Squarespace is.

00:17:20 ◼   ► It is the all in one website platform for entrepreneurs or anybody who wants to build

00:17:26 ◼   ► their own website, their own presence on the web to stand out and succeed online.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Whether you are just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it easy

00:17:36 ◼   ► to create a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell anything from products

00:17:42 ◼   ► to content to your time.

00:17:45 ◼   ► If you're like a consultant or something like that, all in one place, all on your terms.

00:17:51 ◼   ► It's just a great product.

00:17:52 ◼   ► Speaking of photography, if you're like a budding professional photographer and you

00:17:57 ◼   ► want to set up a portfolio site, they have templates set up just for that purpose at

00:18:02 ◼   ► Squarespace.

00:18:04 ◼   ► Beautiful presentation and carousels and stuff like that.

00:18:06 ◼   ► Fancy ways of flipping between images right there on Squarespace itself.

00:18:11 ◼   ► Host all the photos, high resolution and no coding required.

00:18:17 ◼   ► If you don't know the difference between HTML and CSS, you're fine.

00:18:20 ◼   ► It is all WYSIWYG.

00:18:21 ◼   ► They have a brand new engine that's better than ever before with the WYSIWYG stuff.

00:18:26 ◼   ► It's just a terrific place.

00:18:27 ◼   ► It is the first place I recommend people go.

00:18:29 ◼   ► It's the first place you should recommend the people in need of a new website in your

00:18:33 ◼   ► life go.

00:18:35 ◼   ► That URL again, squarespace.com/talkshow.

00:18:40 ◼   ► And that gets you 10% off your first purchase.

00:18:43 ◼   ► My thanks to Squarespace.

00:18:47 ◼   ► I guess we should move on though.

00:18:48 ◼   ► It's good to be back.

00:18:49 ◼   ► It does feel normal again.

00:18:51 ◼   ► It is super useful to talk to people off the record again in a way that just…

00:18:57 ◼   ► You can say off the record on a WebEx call or a phone call.

00:19:02 ◼   ► It's not the same.

00:19:04 ◼   ► There's an inherent trust.

00:19:06 ◼   ► And not like I got or you got or we were together for some of the stuff.

00:19:10 ◼   ► It's not like we got any kind of deep dark secrets that, "Oh boy, what we heard off

00:19:14 ◼   ► the record."

00:19:15 ◼   ► But…

00:19:16 ◼   ► Jared: Off the record.

00:19:17 ◼   ► We hate these phones and we think they're terrible.

00:19:19 ◼   ► But titanium gives me a rash.

00:19:24 ◼   ► Nothing like that.

00:19:25 ◼   ► But it's just good to be back.

00:19:28 ◼   ► Boy though, it is like after the event, that hands-on area, my God, it is such a scrum.

00:19:34 ◼   ► It is just unfathomable.

00:19:36 ◼   ► I took a video that I posted on threads that people seem to like showing like the…

00:19:42 ◼   ► I wouldn't call it pandemonium, but it is very difficult to get hands-on.

00:19:49 ◼   ► More difficult than ever before to get hands-on with the products after the event in the hands-on

00:19:54 ◼   ► area just because everybody wants it.

00:19:58 ◼   ► Everybody's on deadline.

00:19:59 ◼   ► All the people shooting video want space.

00:20:02 ◼   ► The video people want space between the camera and the product to get the good shots and

00:20:08 ◼   ► that there's no space to be had.

00:20:10 ◼   ► So for me, who's not on deadline and not shooting video, I enjoy watching it just as

00:20:15 ◼   ► like another spectacle after the show itself.

00:20:18 ◼   ► Jared - Yeah, no, it is.

00:20:20 ◼   ► It's interesting.

00:20:21 ◼   ► I mill around a little bit.

00:20:22 ◼   ► If I can edge in anywhere, I will, but I don't force myself or weight in any of the lines

00:20:26 ◼   ► because they kind of like set them up in little stations and then lines form behind those

00:20:30 ◼   ► stations where they have people kind of demonstrating the phones for you or watches or whatever.

00:20:36 ◼   ► And I just kind of like walk around and kind of observe the crowd and the patterns and

00:20:41 ◼   ► like listen to what other people are saying and then kind of observe, as you said, the

00:20:45 ◼   ► spectacle of it.

00:20:46 ◼   ► Like Tim will come out and a bunch of people will mill, just you'll see this mass of people

00:20:50 ◼   ► just descend on Tim and of course they'll have some sort of like relatively lightly

00:20:55 ◼   ► orchestrated.

00:20:56 ◼   ► Tim meets a really important guest, a VIP guest, and they sort of like talk about the

00:21:00 ◼   ► phones like Tim's never seen them before.

00:21:02 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Look, this thing, oh wow, we made this?

00:21:06 ◼   ► This is amazing."

00:21:07 ◼   ► I love all of that.

00:21:08 ◼   ► That's fun.

00:21:09 ◼   ► But yeah, and then honestly what I do is I talk to other media people who are in the

00:21:12 ◼   ► same boat as you or I where like maybe a part of their team is on deadline getting the video

00:21:17 ◼   ► and audio and whatever they need to get their quick hits out.

00:21:21 ◼   ► But then we are sort of standing back, like I'll often see Nilay there or you or Joanna

00:21:26 ◼   ► and we'll talk a little bit about kind of what we thought.

00:21:29 ◼   ► And then Apple folks and just a lot of the senior people are there.

00:21:32 ◼   ► And so mill around and say hi.

00:21:34 ◼   ► And like that's the reason I still was happy to go to these things and not say like, "Hey,

00:21:39 ◼   ► ship me a video."

00:21:40 ◼   ► Besides the briefing part of it, which is like, "Hey, you get to go and ask some focus

00:21:44 ◼   ► questions of senior people about these devices."

00:21:47 ◼   ► The bigger part of it for me was like there's always serendipity in those rooms, which do

00:21:53 ◼   ► still make it a hot ticket.

00:21:55 ◼   ► It's certainly their size of these events has expanded, the amount of people they invite

00:21:59 ◼   ► to them and the breadth of folks that they invite to them, which is great.

00:22:04 ◼   ► They invite YouTubers and social media personalities and fashion people because they have so many

00:22:09 ◼   ► different audiences to address.

00:22:11 ◼   ► And all of that's great.

00:22:12 ◼   ► I think it's, I have no problem with any of it.

00:22:15 ◼   ► It's definitely a lot different, obviously, than you or I were attending events 10 years

00:22:18 ◼   ► ago or plus when you knew all the players because it was all the nerds covering chips

00:22:23 ◼   ► and hardware and all that.

00:22:24 ◼   ► But you talk to them and you just kind of get the vibe.

00:22:26 ◼   ► That's why I think it's still worth it to go to those things.

00:22:28 ◼   ► It's fun.

00:22:29 ◼   ► It's always interesting to see what Apple after the event wants to prioritize in terms

00:22:35 ◼   ► of what subjects they give briefings on.

00:22:38 ◼   ► Some years they'll do briefings on the silicon.

00:22:43 ◼   ► I did not get an off-the-record briefing on the A17 Pro silicon this year.

00:22:48 ◼   ► It was way more camera specific this year.

00:22:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:52 ◼   ► Well, to be specific for those people who don't get briefings, which is I think almost

00:22:55 ◼   ► everybody, a lot of people.

00:22:57 ◼   ► The way that they normally would do it is when you talk about a focus briefing, this

00:23:01 ◼   ► is not that they won't talk about it to us or answer questions about the A17, which

00:23:06 ◼   ► they do, obviously.

00:23:07 ◼   ► They'll have a briefing about the phone or the whole lineup.

00:23:11 ◼   ► You can ask any questions you want.

00:23:13 ◼   ► They'll give you whatever answers.

00:23:14 ◼   ► They definitely often phone a friend.

00:23:17 ◼   ► They're well-briefed.

00:23:18 ◼   ► These people are generally not comms reps.

00:23:21 ◼   ► They will be in the room with the MarCom people, but these are generally engineers

00:23:26 ◼   ► who worked in the product or PMs who led iPhone this year or whatever.

00:23:32 ◼   ► Those folks are incredibly well-informed and well-prepared.

00:23:34 ◼   ► However, now and then, you and I obviously make a game of it.

00:23:39 ◼   ► Sometimes we'll ask questions where they don't know the answer.

00:23:41 ◼   ► They will jot it down.

00:23:43 ◼   ► The MarCom person in the room will jot it down and be like, "We'll get back to you

00:23:46 ◼   ► with that."

00:23:47 ◼   ► Oftentimes, they have the answer before the briefing is over because they'll be texting

00:23:51 ◼   ► engineers or people on the teams or they'll have it very soon thereafter.

00:23:56 ◼   ► That part of it is fun.

00:23:57 ◼   ► But the focus briefing around like, "We're only here to talk about the A17 Pro today.

00:24:04 ◼   ► If you want to talk about the camera or the charging port or anything else, talk to somebody

00:24:07 ◼   ► else.

00:24:08 ◼   ► We're just here to talk about the chip."

00:24:09 ◼   ► They didn't do one of those this year, which was interesting because I had kind of assumed

00:24:13 ◼   ► that they would, given how much focus there was in the GPU and all of that and how impressive

00:24:18 ◼   ► it looks to be, by the way, judging from early, early reviews.

00:24:21 ◼   ► So, yeah, definitely, and it was very GPU optimized and my read between the lines on

00:24:28 ◼   ► that is that that's really going to come into play when this A17 Pro generation of

00:24:37 ◼   ► silicon turns into the M3 series.

00:24:41 ◼   ► Because it's the GPU where the M1 and M2 at the high end, at the professional end,

00:24:47 ◼   ► are still behind the state of the art in performance.

00:24:51 ◼   ► Perhaps probably not, I think, performance per watt, but they're so far behind in sheer

00:24:57 ◼   ► performance compared to the high end of high end of Nvidia and even AMD video cards, which

00:25:04 ◼   ► again, that saying even AMD really shows how they're behind in this area.

00:25:10 ◼   ► And it's a good place for Apple to be, right?

00:25:12 ◼   ► Like the two, like in my review, I mentioned that the two areas where Apple is behind the

00:25:16 ◼   ► state of the art is they're behind on GPU sheer performance.

00:25:20 ◼   ► And they made a very, very conspicuous emphasis on that aspect of the A17 Pro.

00:25:27 ◼   ► And they are and might be for a very long time to come still behind on photography,

00:25:33 ◼   ► not compared to other phones, but when you compare them to just $2,000 cameras, period.

00:25:40 ◼   ► You know, because of the...

00:25:41 ◼   ► - Which is like insane, right?

00:25:43 ◼   ► That's their benchmark now, right?

00:25:45 ◼   ► It's no longer like, "Oh, we made an incremental improvement over like last year's Pixel phone,"

00:25:50 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:25:51 ◼   ► And I think that's great.

00:25:52 ◼   ► It's a great place for them to be.

00:25:54 ◼   ► It's a very...

00:25:55 ◼   ► I know for sure you and I have talked to Phil over the years and I know for sure that's

00:25:59 ◼   ► where he wanted to be, right?

00:26:01 ◼   ► He's like...

00:26:02 ◼   ► Because they were very proud when they became the world's most used camera, period, you

00:26:06 ◼   ► know, which they've been for a while or where the iPhone has been for a while, I should

00:26:09 ◼   ► say.

00:26:10 ◼   ► But they...

00:26:11 ◼   ► I do not think they'll be satisfied until they're like essentially the best camera you

00:26:14 ◼   ► can buy for any consumer level of money, right?

00:26:17 ◼   ► I don't know about the pro level, but like as a consumer, you couldn't buy a better camera

00:26:23 ◼   ► and I think that's where they wanna be eventually.

00:26:25 ◼   ► - I will put a link in the show notes.

00:26:27 ◼   ► I just looked it up the other day 'cause it came up on, I think, this is the problem.

00:26:31 ◼   ► I don't remember now if it's Mastodon or Threads or when I...

00:26:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:26:36 ◼   ► All your different silos.

00:26:39 ◼   ► - I have one foot toes dipped in Mastodon, another in Threads and I've got a third foot

00:26:47 ◼   ► dipped in, still checking in on Twitter.

00:26:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, you gotta be trilingual to get anything done.

00:26:53 ◼   ► - But somebody brought it up and the first time I had Schiller on stage at my talk show

00:26:57 ◼   ► when it was a complete surprise to the audience, it's still like my favorite segment of all

00:27:03 ◼   ► of those on-stage interviews I've done was I asked him about...

00:27:07 ◼   ► And this is like 2014, I think, maybe 2014 or 2015, maybe 2014, but a decade ago, effectively.

00:27:14 ◼   ► I know photography is important with the iPhone, but do you consider Apple to be one of the

00:27:19 ◼   ► leading camera companies, period, in the world?

00:27:22 ◼   ► And his answer was the.

00:27:24 ◼   ► And I just love that.

00:27:26 ◼   ► I just love that instantly.

00:27:28 ◼   ► And it was a jovial interview, but he got like dead serious when he said it, like that

00:27:32 ◼   ► a decade ago, Phil Schiller, his vision of Apple was the singular leading camera company

00:27:40 ◼   ► in the world.

00:27:41 ◼   ► And I remember when it came out and people were like, "Oh, this is a joke."

00:27:45 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't know, it was like the iPhone 5S or something like that, which was a good

00:27:48 ◼   ► cell phone camera, but it's just been a remarkable decade for iPhone photography.

00:27:54 ◼   ► And you know.

00:27:55 ◼   ► - Well, he saw the next two generations, right?

00:27:58 ◼   ► They were probably already working on telephoto at that point and all that.

00:28:01 ◼   ► And he saw where it was headed.

00:28:02 ◼   ► But also, I think at that point, he could make the statement in the present as this

00:28:07 ◼   ► is the camera people use the most.

00:28:09 ◼   ► That's why we're the leading camera company.

00:28:11 ◼   ► But you could tell, we know, you and I both know that what he really meant by it was that

00:28:17 ◼   ► we will eventually be like the best camera you could possibly have as a casual camera

00:28:21 ◼   ► and then eventually maybe even higher.

00:28:23 ◼   ► - Right.

00:28:24 ◼   ► The thing that I don't think was as clear outside Apple or the other leading edge technology

00:28:29 ◼   ► companies on the computational photography front a decade ago.

00:28:32 ◼   ► The thing that was obvious to everybody is that there's no way cell phones are ever going

00:28:36 ◼   ► to catch up optically.

00:28:38 ◼   ► There's just no way.

00:28:40 ◼   ► We know how light capture works.

00:28:41 ◼   ► - Physics works a certain way.

00:28:42 ◼   ► - Right.

00:28:43 ◼   ► And sensor size matters.

00:28:45 ◼   ► And in the real standalone camera world, people have these serious, photographers have these

00:28:50 ◼   ► serious debates about the difference between 35 millimeter full quote unquote full-size

00:28:55 ◼   ► sensors and the four-third sensor, which the four-third sensor is smaller than a 35 millimeter,

00:29:03 ◼   ► but it is, I don't know, it's like 20 times bigger than a camera sensor.

00:29:06 ◼   ► I mean, it's so much bigger.

00:29:10 ◼   ► And the lens size alone.

00:29:12 ◼   ► I mean, you don't have to even know jack squat about photography except to know that if you

00:29:17 ◼   ► go and look at a camera camera, even if it's a consumer type model, the lens is this big

00:29:24 ◼   ► ping pong ball size of glass.

00:29:27 ◼   ► And that's, I'm talking consumer.

00:29:29 ◼   ► And then everybody knows professional photographers, like let's talk the 5X, like 120 millimeter

00:29:35 ◼   ► lens that you would put on a interchangeable camera system is a big, big piece of glass.

00:29:42 ◼   ► It's a big piece of glass on the front and it sticks out from the camera and an impossible

00:29:47 ◼   ► amount.

00:29:48 ◼   ► You'd have to stack 20 iPhones on top of each other to get that sort of down.

00:29:54 ◼   ► Right.

00:29:55 ◼   ► So how in the world is that ever going to happen?

00:29:57 ◼   ► And what Schiller knew a decade ago that we couldn't know is where computational photography

00:30:01 ◼   ► was going and what sort of things they were already working towards to route around that.

00:30:07 ◼   ► And we see.

00:30:08 ◼   ► And the reason like, and it's so funny because like the, the doing of it is hard, but when

00:30:13 ◼   ► you actually just lay out the rough kind of idea, it seems very straightforward, actually.

00:30:19 ◼   ► It's like, Oh, Hey, we're going to make up for the inability to gather light, to gather

00:30:24 ◼   ► more light that we would be able to from a bigger lens.

00:30:26 ◼   ► We're going to use the processor to do more of this work.

00:30:31 ◼   ► And people are like, Oh, why, you know, why do you think that'll make a difference?

00:30:34 ◼   ► And you're like, well, because traditionally camera processors have been these very low

00:30:38 ◼   ► powered things that just sort of are there to package the image, do some color correction

00:30:43 ◼   ► and package the image because those things, those ICs have been part of camera pipeline

00:30:51 ◼   ► since the first digital cameras, right?

00:30:53 ◼   ► Like Canon, Nikon come out with their cameras and Hey, we need something because the raw

00:30:58 ◼   ► image, back then it was CCD for the most part.

00:31:02 ◼   ► The raw image from CCDs was so noisy and funky.

00:31:05 ◼   ► Hey, let's do some noise correction and let's package this as a JPEG and we need a chip

00:31:09 ◼   ► in there to get it done.

00:31:10 ◼   ► Right.

00:31:11 ◼   ► Right.

00:31:12 ◼   ► And then the computer sort of like brought the main line CPU game into this thing until

00:31:19 ◼   ► phones started taking pictures, right?

00:31:21 ◼   ► Because it's like, Hey, these things have a CPU, a true CPU in them, and we're going

00:31:25 ◼   ► to put them into the image path and see what they could do.

00:31:28 ◼   ► Now, of course, there are dedicated components of the SOC that are still dedicated to camera

00:31:34 ◼   ► work, but the overhead of a lot of computational photography is handled by just a raw power

00:31:39 ◼   ► of silicon that Apple has kind of brought to bear.

00:31:42 ◼   ► And so the what people didn't know aspect of it was not just that the CPU was going

00:31:47 ◼   ► to come into play, but that their power per watt of the CPU was going to get so good that

00:31:52 ◼   ► you could do enormously complex real time processing on photos without just demolishing

00:32:00 ◼   ► your battery, right?

00:32:01 ◼   ► Taking five pictures and your camera's dead.

00:32:03 ◼   ► Right.

00:32:04 ◼   ► Right.

00:32:05 ◼   ► And the other thing that ties in addition to the CPU is the neural engine, right?

00:32:09 ◼   ► And the machine learning, which manifests itself in a very big way this year, with the

00:32:14 ◼   ► auto detection of human faces, dog faces and cat faces, and just instantaneous, seamless,

00:32:23 ◼   ► you know, I want to explain this to my readers and listeners here.

00:32:29 ◼   ► And yet still using the phone, I it, it's so automatic.

00:32:35 ◼   ► It's like, Oh, I forgot it's doing it.

00:32:37 ◼   ► It doesn't matter what you do.

00:32:38 ◼   ► You just move the viewfinder around and it just keeps track of all these human faces.

00:32:44 ◼   ► And there were questions from other media people, people, I forget who it was an interesting

00:32:50 ◼   ► thing.

00:32:51 ◼   ► Somebody was asking, well, what about rabbits?

00:32:53 ◼   ► And they're like, well, we didn't train it on machine learning of rabbits, but they're

00:32:55 ◼   ► like, isn't a rabbit close?

00:32:57 ◼   ► Is it maybe close enough to a cat?

00:32:59 ◼   ► And they're like, you, they couldn't get the Apple person to say they wanted them to

00:33:04 ◼   ► say, well, if it's a cat, if it's a rabbit that that particularly looks cat-like maybe

00:33:10 ◼   ► no, the Apple wasn't going to say it.

00:33:12 ◼   ► They were just going to say, we've trained it on dogs, cats, and humans, but that who

00:33:15 ◼   ► knows where else that machine learning pipeline comes in, but you don't notice because you're

00:33:20 ◼   ► not touching buttons.

00:33:22 ◼   ► You're not saying do it.

00:33:23 ◼   ► And it spins for a second and processes what's in the viewfinder.

00:33:27 ◼   ► It's just, as you wave the viewfinder around the world surrounding you, it's just using

00:33:33 ◼   ► machine learning to pick up these things.

00:33:36 ◼   ► And that's a very difficult thing for the traditional camera companies to compete with.

00:33:43 ◼   ► Because it's not like they can just say, okay, we're going to buy the, the stronger, the

00:33:48 ◼   ► most powerful processor from, you know, Snapdragon line up and shove it in a Canon camera.

00:33:53 ◼   ► Right.

00:33:54 ◼   ► And I'm not saying, obviously the camera companies have come a long way and they're doing good

00:33:57 ◼   ► work, but having expertise from a completely different profession that you bring to the

00:34:01 ◼   ► table, a completely different profession and melding those two together.

00:34:06 ◼   ► And that's what's happening here.

00:34:07 ◼   ► Right.

00:34:08 ◼   ► Like the world of machine learning and processor design and all of that melded with the world

00:34:13 ◼   ► of optical design and cameras.

00:34:15 ◼   ► And it sort of goes back to the old adage, like who can get better at what faster.

00:34:19 ◼   ► Right.

00:34:20 ◼   ► And while we have our answer.

00:34:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:22 ◼   ► I bought, I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about it, but last winter, I think

00:34:26 ◼   ► it was in January or so I bought a Rico GR three acts, which, and I did 15 years ago.

00:34:32 ◼   ► I had the original Rico GR three.

00:34:35 ◼   ► This is a very small pocket size camera camera.

00:34:41 ◼   ► I love my old Rico.

00:34:42 ◼   ► I love my new Rico three acts.

00:34:45 ◼   ► It's small black.

00:34:46 ◼   ► It has a fixed prime lens that is a 40 millimeter equivalent.

00:34:51 ◼   ► So it's not really very wide.

00:34:53 ◼   ► It's close to normal.

00:34:54 ◼   ► I really like it and I love the images I get from it.

00:34:57 ◼   ► I'm very glad I bought it, but man, it is so dumb.

00:35:02 ◼   ► I don't know how else to say it.

00:35:04 ◼   ► And Rico's software is generally well regarded by other reviewers.

00:35:09 ◼   ► I like it.

00:35:10 ◼   ► I think compared to other cameras.

00:35:12 ◼   ► And when I think back to like using other camera cameras I've had over the years, like

00:35:16 ◼   ► the auto focus is good and things are smart, but compared to my iPhone, it's just dumb

00:35:21 ◼   ► as a brick in terms of like in a, in a field of multiple people, like a crowd of people

00:35:27 ◼   ► at a party.

00:35:28 ◼   ► Like I took it to a someone's birthday party and, and the choices it makes on which face

00:35:33 ◼   ► to focus on are dumb.

00:35:35 ◼   ► And it's like, yeah, it using cameras like that, you need to be a photographer and it's

00:35:41 ◼   ► nice and I can do things on the Rico that the touch screen, it doesn't have a viewfinder,

00:35:46 ◼   ► which is an interesting design decision about the Ricos.

00:35:49 ◼   ► But it, for my, the way my eyes work at my age now and with the problems I've had, I

00:35:55 ◼   ► actually don't want a viewfinder even though I know why serious photographers do.

00:35:58 ◼   ► So I like just using the touch screen for it, but you can touch and you can tap on a

00:36:03 ◼   ► person when it guesses the wrong person to auto focus on, tap on the other person and

00:36:08 ◼   ► then it'll stick on that person as you move around.

00:36:10 ◼   ► So it, but you, I need to be the photographer who's making these choices.

00:36:14 ◼   ► It's what really jumped out buying a new well-regarded standalone camera this year is how many decisions

00:36:23 ◼   ► the iPhone makes automatically that are, that are what I want it to do just without, without

00:36:29 ◼   ► me doing anything.

00:36:30 ◼   ► It's like, huh, every single time I pointed at a crowd of people at a party, the iPhone

00:36:34 ◼   ► picks the right face to focus on.

00:36:36 ◼   ► Totally.

00:36:37 ◼   ► And you know, it, it's a weird situation because I think in the past when you bought

00:36:41 ◼   ► a new camera and you got a new feature, the feature was very overtly like better and new

00:36:47 ◼   ► and clever or enabled some thing that you couldn't do before.

00:36:52 ◼   ► And I think that behavior, that user behavior became very normalized.

00:36:56 ◼   ► So like in the camera, when I used to sell cameras and consumer electronics and like

00:37:01 ◼   ► in that game, you very quickly were like, you realized that a lot of people made their

00:37:06 ◼   ► buying decisions on a number go up, right?

00:37:09 ◼   ► Like big number number go up.

00:37:11 ◼   ► I'm going to buy this new camera.

00:37:12 ◼   ► It's got a big, bigger number on the box.

00:37:14 ◼   ► And that was in, you know, it's very heavily like the retail boxes for like a Pentax digital

00:37:19 ◼   ► camera or a Canon digital camera.

00:37:22 ◼   ► Just they had a larger megapixel number on the box and people are like, Oh, what about

00:37:25 ◼   ► that one?

00:37:26 ◼   ► Right.

00:37:27 ◼   ► And then at some point you started having to tell them, Hey, you know, above 10 megapixels

00:37:31 ◼   ► to 12 megapixels, it's mostly BS because you know, you're getting more pixels, but it's

00:37:37 ◼   ► actually noisier and you're going to get a better image from this because the sensor's

00:37:40 ◼   ► larger, blah, blah, blah.

00:37:41 ◼   ► Right.

00:37:42 ◼   ► That's the education part of it.

00:37:43 ◼   ► If you were like actually a good sales or nice salesman, an honest one, otherwise you

00:37:48 ◼   ► sell the bigger one because it's the new one and you get more commission.

00:37:50 ◼   ► Right.

00:37:51 ◼   ► It's more expensive.

00:37:52 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:37:53 ◼   ► You get a big from the company too, because like, can is like, Oh, here's our new camera.

00:37:57 ◼   ► We'll give you 20 bucks every time you sell one of these.

00:37:59 ◼   ► And you're like, okay, well that's the one I'm selling.

00:38:01 ◼   ► I don't care how good it is.

00:38:02 ◼   ► Let me sell you.

00:38:03 ◼   ► Let me sell you a Canon branded shoulder strap as well.

00:38:06 ◼   ► That's it.

00:38:07 ◼   ► That's it.

00:38:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:09 ◼   ► The more accessories you sell, that's where the profit is.

00:38:10 ◼   ► So you sell on cameras like 13 to 17% and then the accessories were like 39% profit.

00:38:14 ◼   ► Right.

00:38:15 ◼   ► So it's like very easy.

00:38:17 ◼   ► You got into that world and it was very difficult when the transitioning time came to like,

00:38:22 ◼   ► Hey, we've sort of maxed out the amount of pixels we need and we really need to focus

00:38:27 ◼   ► on like the deliverables here, like the light gathering and all of that stuff.

00:38:31 ◼   ► The conversation got more complex.

00:38:33 ◼   ► Right.

00:38:34 ◼   ► I think Apple's in that place where if you take it traditionally, if you had a photographer

00:38:38 ◼   ► who was very serious about their craft in the digital world, I'm talking about, I straddled

00:38:43 ◼   ► the gap between film and digital.

00:38:45 ◼   ► So I shot my first weddings on film and then shot someone digital after that.

00:38:49 ◼   ► And the digital conversation really came down to like, Hey, I'm serious about my craft.

00:38:56 ◼   ► I'm not shooting JPEG anyway.

00:38:58 ◼   ► Like I'll shoot raw or raw plus JPEG, right?

00:39:01 ◼   ► Just to have a JPEG as culling material, because back then even photography tools like eventually

00:39:07 ◼   ► light room or the tools that came before it or aperture or whatever, it took a hell of

00:39:12 ◼   ► a long time for them to even display a raw image.

00:39:15 ◼   ► People forget, like if you were culling your images, taking a batch of say 700 images you

00:39:20 ◼   ► shot at a wedding and trying to win those down to the good ones, it would take you hours

00:39:24 ◼   ► just to go through them because of the processing power and like displaying them.

00:39:28 ◼   ► So you shot raw plus JPEG at the time and use the JPEGs to cull them.

00:39:33 ◼   ► But if you were serious, you were shooting raw.

00:39:36 ◼   ► And when you shot the raw image, you had more raw material to work from.

00:39:40 ◼   ► Obviously you could choose what band of the exposure you wanted.

00:39:44 ◼   ► You got a little bit more data.

00:39:45 ◼   ► You would generally underexpose them slightly so that you, you got your, your shadow detail

00:39:50 ◼   ► because you could always, or your highlight detail.

00:39:52 ◼   ► So you could always bring back your shadow detail or, or share or scare it, scare it

00:39:55 ◼   ► a bit, make it a little bit more moody, but you wanted that highlight detail.

00:39:59 ◼   ► You didn't want to lose it.

00:40:00 ◼   ► Right?

00:40:01 ◼   ► So these days you take an iPhone, if you shoot raw, you had better really care because the

00:40:09 ◼   ► fact is, is that the raw images from the iPhone actually looked demonstrably worse for the

00:40:14 ◼   ► most part.

00:40:15 ◼   ► And you've got to do a lot of work and I'm not saying it's not a great workflow and there

00:40:18 ◼   ► are wonderful tools out there now that allow you to do great things with raw, but even

00:40:22 ◼   ► those tools are doing a hell of a lot for you to like make that raw image look anywhere

00:40:29 ◼   ► near as good as frankly, the JPEG does coming out of the camera.

00:40:32 ◼   ► And like the raw image offers you more information.

00:40:34 ◼   ► And for those who want to print larger sizes or get really specific about exposure, it's

00:40:40 ◼   ► still there.

00:40:41 ◼   ► And Apple clearly cares about it because they've invented new raw formats and new pipelines

00:40:45 ◼   ► for raw images and new ways to deal with those.

00:40:49 ◼   ► And they genuinely clearly care.

00:40:51 ◼   ► However, for 98% of people, even encroaching a good chunk of the people who really care

00:40:57 ◼   ► about pictures, like a URI or even above us who like still print a lot and maybe even

00:41:03 ◼   ► display their photos, you got to really care to shoot in raw because the computational

00:41:08 ◼   ► pipeline is so good.

00:41:10 ◼   ► And when you take a raw image and compare it against like the JPEG or HEAC image that

00:41:15 ◼   ► comes out of the camera pipeline now, you're like, holy crap, like this raw image looks

00:41:19 ◼   ► terrible.

00:41:20 ◼   ► And you realize how much work is being put into making it look pretty amazing.

00:41:26 ◼   ► And their choices are pretty solid.

00:41:28 ◼   ► They're pretty sound.

00:41:30 ◼   ► What did you shoot on your Disneyland trip?

00:41:31 ◼   ► Did you shoot pro raw?

00:41:33 ◼   ► No.

00:41:34 ◼   ► Well, yes, some right.

00:41:36 ◼   ► I definitely wanted to take some so that I could compare them and see how the comparison

00:41:41 ◼   ► was.

00:41:42 ◼   ► The out of camera raw stuff looks really good because Apple does a lot of work now because

00:41:47 ◼   ► I think the original raw pipeline that they had before pro raw was very, very, very raw.

00:41:53 ◼   ► Like you ton of noise, especially in low light and all this stuff.

00:41:56 ◼   ► It was what they have created a new raw format for that reason.

00:41:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:00 ◼   ► I remember when they first year they offered raw, I forget how many years ago it was, but

00:42:03 ◼   ► I shot a couple side by sides or maybe I forget if you let you shoot JPEG plus raw, but the

00:42:09 ◼   ► comparison was shocking, but it was almost like a photography lesson.

00:42:14 ◼   ► Like this literally is all we're doing for you, right?

00:42:17 ◼   ► This is literally the raw sensor image.

00:42:20 ◼   ► This is what we're, this is the garbage we're starting with.

00:42:25 ◼   ► And this is what normal people who don't even know what raw is when they just poke at the

00:42:29 ◼   ► shutter button on their iPhone.

00:42:31 ◼   ► We're giving them this from that.

00:42:32 ◼   ► And it's like, wow, that is, yeah, it's like showing somebody a tree that fell in the forest

00:42:37 ◼   ► and then showing them a glossy dining room table.

00:42:40 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:42:41 ◼   ► Right.

00:42:42 ◼   ► Right.

00:42:43 ◼   ► Right.

00:42:44 ◼   ► And then you have this log with bugs crawling all over it and bark to be stripped.

00:42:52 ◼   ► And here's, you know, a $5,000 finely crafted dining room table.

00:42:55 ◼   ► Yes, exactly.

00:42:56 ◼   ► Uh huh.

00:42:57 ◼   ► And you wrote about this better than I did.

00:42:58 ◼   ► I actually had to issue a correction to my review because I, I, I botched it.

00:43:02 ◼   ► I should have known better that, that it's from effectively from 1.0 to 1.9, you always

00:43:10 ◼   ► get 2.4 megapixel JPEGs in the default mode.

00:43:15 ◼   ► And then once you go to 2.0, then you're getting an exact center, 12 megapixel image off the

00:43:23 ◼   ► sensor.

00:43:24 ◼   ► And that's why 2.0 is still a separate button in the interface, right?

00:43:29 ◼   ► That's why the button for one X is the one that now toggles between 24, 28, 35 equivalents,

00:43:37 ◼   ► which is 1.0, 1.2, 1.5.

00:43:41 ◼   ► But that feature you wrote about it so well, I, it even more clouds like, yes, just read

00:43:47 ◼   ► these three paragraphs in Matthew's review and it'll explain this to you, but it's so

00:43:52 ◼   ► misunderstood.

00:43:53 ◼   ► It is not a digital crop.

00:43:55 ◼   ► So when you're, when you're shooting 35 millimeter, quote unquote, 35 millimeter at 1.5 X in the

00:44:01 ◼   ► iPhone 15 pro you're not getting a center crop from the 24 millimeter thing.

00:44:07 ◼   ► They're still using the whole 48 megapixel sensor for the quad pixels for one way of

00:44:14 ◼   ► imaging for light.

00:44:15 ◼   ► And then they're using a crop.

00:44:18 ◼   ► You've got the exact size to get the 35 millimeter framing and it's a legit 24 megapixel image.

00:44:25 ◼   ► It, yeah, I mean the, the raw images tell the tale, right?

00:44:28 ◼   ► So if you look at the raw images, the raw crop for the 24 millimeter, the base, which

00:44:35 ◼   ► we consider to be the base one X, this is your standard lens.

00:44:39 ◼   ► It's 48 megapixels, right?

00:44:41 ◼   ► That's how many, that's how much information is getting delivered to you, which is effectively

00:44:45 ◼   ► all of it, right?

00:44:47 ◼   ► It's like, Hey, this is your one X, one X means something in nomenclature.

00:44:52 ◼   ► And that nomenclature is one to one, right?

00:44:55 ◼   ► It's like you're getting the whole sensor in joy.

00:44:58 ◼   ► And now obviously we know that it's taking that frame and combining it with a cropped

00:45:06 ◼   ► or lower pixel, not cropped, excuse me, I should banish the word, but a lower pixel

00:45:11 ◼   ► count, combining the quad pixels for light gathering purposes, along with other exposures

00:45:18 ◼   ► and smashing them into one exposure for you every time you pop the shutter button to give

00:45:23 ◼   ► you a JPEG.

00:45:24 ◼   ► But in raw format, you could see, Hey, it's, it's taking 48 megapixels and then it goes

00:45:29 ◼   ► down to 35 and then 24 and 35 megapixels and then 24 megapixels delivering you basically

00:45:35 ◼   ► like the raw amount of pixels that that focal length can cover, you know, with its image

00:45:42 ◼   ► square or image rectangle.

00:45:43 ◼   ► That's it.

00:45:44 ◼   ► Right.

00:45:45 ◼   ► And you mentioned it, I mentioned it.

00:45:47 ◼   ► I'm not sure where I'm going to, I'm still haven't settled on where my default

00:45:51 ◼   ► is going to be.

00:45:52 ◼   ► I wrote my review, I might set it to 35 and I still think I might change that actually

00:45:57 ◼   ► this weekend after we record, I've been rocking the 1.2, the 28 millimeter as my default,

00:46:04 ◼   ► but I I'm like you, I think 24 I'm glad it's there.

00:46:07 ◼   ► And I understand why the lens goes that wide, but as the main thing I'm shooting all the

00:46:12 ◼   ► time, it's too wide, right?

00:46:14 ◼   ► There's a bit of a fish eye aspect to going that wide and it makes scenes look a little

00:46:24 ◼   ► unnatural to my eye as a photographer.

00:46:26 ◼   ► Right.

00:46:27 ◼   ► Like, and I know that famously 50 millimeters is considered normal, the equivalent that's,

00:46:32 ◼   ► that's the nifty 50, you know, and it's really bang for the buck, the best camera

00:46:36 ◼   ► lens anybody could ever buy back in the day.

00:46:39 ◼   ► The advice was, and I still think it was great.

00:46:42 ◼   ► Still is great advice if you're getting serious and getting like a DSLR, just get,

00:46:47 ◼   ► get the cheap consumer 50 millimeter lens, put it on the camera and don't take that

00:46:52 ◼   ► lens off for months.

00:46:54 ◼   ► Just shoot everything with it and zoom with your feet, zoom with your feet and learn everything

00:46:58 ◼   ► you can about shooting at this normal perspective, which they call it normal because it's the

00:47:03 ◼   ► best simulation of what we see with our eyes.

00:47:06 ◼   ► It doesn't seem zoomed in or telephoto and it's not wide.

00:47:11 ◼   ► Everything all the way to 24 is really pretty wide to me.

00:47:14 ◼   ► So I love this and I love that I'm not sacrificing image quality.

00:47:18 ◼   ► To me, 35 is almost the start of the normal range.

00:47:23 ◼   ► In my opinion, I know 50 is supposed to be specific, but to me at 35, I look at an image

00:47:30 ◼   ► of like a room or like an outdoor scene and it doesn't look to me fish eyed at all.

00:47:37 ◼   ► I know it is a little compared to 50 and I have that Riko that shoots at 40, which is

00:47:41 ◼   ► a little bit closer to normal.

00:47:43 ◼   ► But to me, that is a magic range of just photos that just look as natural as you can possibly

00:47:51 ◼   ► imagine them looking.

00:47:53 ◼   ► I love it.

00:47:54 ◼   ► And effectively what Apple's done is everybody knows digital zoom is bad.

00:47:59 ◼   ► Optical zoom is good, right?

00:48:00 ◼   ► Optical means it's real and digital means it's interpolated in some way.

00:48:04 ◼   ► And yes, it might be better to digitally zoom in than to not get the image at all.

00:48:10 ◼   ► I mean, everybody's done this at school events when you're the parent halfway back the auditorium

00:48:15 ◼   ► and you got to zoom in somehow to pick out your kid on stage.

00:48:19 ◼   ► But effectively with computational photography, they're using computational photography to

00:48:23 ◼   ► get effectively optical zoom from 1.0 to 1.5, which is unbelievable because that is the,

00:48:32 ◼   ► to me, it is a super useful range.

00:48:35 ◼   ► It doesn't sound like a lot.

00:48:37 ◼   ► Oh, it's just from 1.0 to 1.5.

00:48:39 ◼   ► But that's the main range people shoot most pictures at.

00:48:43 ◼   ► And they've effectively not faked it, but digitized, computerized optical zoom in that

00:48:51 ◼   ► super useful common area, which is just a remarkable achievement.

00:48:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it is, and it's such a clever way to do it too that the whole reason I shot RAW

00:49:04 ◼   ► when I was playing around with those zoom levels is because I was like, "Wait a minute,

00:49:08 ◼   ► how are they doing this?"

00:49:09 ◼   ► Right.

00:49:10 ◼   ► And like, wait, somebody in the briefing was like, "It's not digital zoom."

00:49:14 ◼   ► And I wrote that in my notes and I'm like, "Wait a minute, why?

00:49:17 ◼   ► Why isn't it?

00:49:18 ◼   ► How?"

00:49:19 ◼   ► And it's just clever and it's obviously a byproduct.

00:49:22 ◼   ► They could do it this year because they introduced the 48 megapixel last year and they were like,

00:49:27 ◼   ► "Hey, we are confident now in our ability to use this, the full 48 megapixels to get

00:49:32 ◼   ► you an image."

00:49:33 ◼   ► And they came up with this enhanced version of their image pipeline to allow to sandwich

00:49:36 ◼   ► these images together.

00:49:37 ◼   ► And it's like, it's super awesome when they're able to deliver kind of like more consumer

00:49:44 ◼   ► choice with essentially zero compromise in this way, because it's always going to be

00:49:49 ◼   ► 24 megapixels or above, right?

00:49:51 ◼   ► Like that's the whole reason that they could do it.

00:49:53 ◼   ► And like that, the 2X to me is because of the crop nature of the 2X, because it is a

00:49:59 ◼   ► crop, it's a 12 megapixel image.

00:50:02 ◼   ► I think it makes it a far less appealing lens for me in general, but like the ability for

00:50:07 ◼   ► them to deliver all of these optical choices down below, nobody was asking for that.

00:50:12 ◼   ► No.

00:50:13 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:50:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:15 ◼   ► Nobody was like, "Apple, you must find a way to deliver me any one of these three lenses

00:50:22 ◼   ► at perfect quality with no rasterization, no interpolation, and because I'm a photographer

00:50:28 ◼   ► and I care," right?

00:50:29 ◼   ► Like, when I say nobody, I meant like the vast majority of people.

00:50:32 ◼   ► Maybe photographers were like, "Wouldn't it be cool if like blah, blah, blah, with no expectations

00:50:37 ◼   ► that they would deliver this," right?

00:50:39 ◼   ► Like there's no way anybody in advance was saying like, "Oh man, a photographer nerd's

00:50:43 ◼   ► dream would be able to default to 24 or 35 and like their personal preference without

00:50:49 ◼   ► having to compromise anything."

00:50:52 ◼   ► Because we did not expect them to prioritize that necessarily.

00:50:55 ◼   ► No matter how nerdy Apple's got on cameras over the years, this is a true like camera

00:50:59 ◼   ► nerd feature, like a photographer's feature.

00:51:03 ◼   ► And the vast majority of people may never take advantage of it.

00:51:05 ◼   ► They'll probably just hit the one and take a picture at 24.

00:51:08 ◼   ► That's great.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Like for them to do this, it just, it's a dedication, right, to like the, what they

00:51:14 ◼   ► view as making this as like a real camera.

00:51:18 ◼   ► You talk about it having seven lenses right now, even if you argue that it's five lenses

00:51:23 ◼   ► because the macro obviously is the ultra wide and the 2X is not a "real" lens, right?

00:51:30 ◼   ► I think that if five lenses in a single device, all of those offering optical quality is pretty

00:51:38 ◼   ► cool.

00:51:39 ◼   ► That's pretty cool.

00:51:40 ◼   ► And I think that's a hundred percent just cool as a camera person, as a photography

00:51:45 ◼   ► person.

00:51:46 ◼   ► They take that seriously.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:48 ◼   ► If you just shoot 1.0, because that's the default, and then you're in photos afterwards

00:51:53 ◼   ► and you're looking at it and you're like, "There's some stuff at the edge of the

00:51:56 ◼   ► frame that I would like to crop out the edge of a sign or somebody's shoulder is over

00:52:02 ◼   ► on the right edge of the frame.

00:52:04 ◼   ► It would like to crop that out."

00:52:05 ◼   ► And you just crop out just a little bit.

00:52:08 ◼   ► You're still getting a very high quality image, right?

00:52:11 ◼   ► You're going down from 24 megapixels.

00:52:13 ◼   ► Let's say you crop it to like, I don't know, 19 megapixels or something like that.

00:52:18 ◼   ► That's plenty of pixels, right?

00:52:19 ◼   ► And that cropping in post is there's so much to work with.

00:52:23 ◼   ► There has been with these 12 megapixel images that iPhones have shot for years or any high

00:52:29 ◼   ► end phone camera, right?

00:52:31 ◼   ► That's one of the nice things about 12 megapixel images is you can crop afterwards and still

00:52:36 ◼   ► have a very nice overall resolution to the image.

00:52:41 ◼   ► But the fact that if you know this in advance and you notice the obstruction in the viewfinder

00:52:46 ◼   ► before you shoot that you can tap one button and get it optically, it's just amazing.

00:52:52 ◼   ► One thing I saw, and I wanted to test like, "All right, I think I understand how this

00:52:56 ◼   ► works.

00:52:57 ◼   ► I believe them and Apple doesn't usually bullshit or never bullshits about the camera

00:53:01 ◼   ► stuff."

00:53:02 ◼   ► But let me see an example.

00:53:03 ◼   ► One of the things I took when I was out and about, this is what I usually do is I walk

00:53:07 ◼   ► around the city with the two new pro cameras.

00:53:10 ◼   ► Well, if there's a camera difference, otherwise I'll just have one.

00:53:14 ◼   ► But because there was a 5X and a 3X this year, two pro cameras and my last year's 14 Pro

00:53:21 ◼   ► for comparison.

00:53:22 ◼   ► So it gets very confusing to me very quickly.

00:53:26 ◼   ► So I wrote my review.

00:53:27 ◼   ► I put different textured cases on all the phones so that I could feel them apart in

00:53:31 ◼   ► hand.

00:53:32 ◼   ► So I have a picture of a food cart here in Philadelphia out in front of our city hall.

00:53:36 ◼   ► It's a typical aluminum food cart that at the end of the day, whoever runs the food

00:53:42 ◼   ► cart hooks up to his car and tows away.

00:53:45 ◼   ► It made out of aluminum.

00:53:46 ◼   ► You know the look I'm looking at.

00:53:48 ◼   ► But on the side, there's like a vent and it's like the exhaust for the grill inside

00:53:54 ◼   ► the little food cart.

00:53:55 ◼   ► And it's like a rectangular vent, like a mesh.

00:54:01 ◼   ► And from the distance I shot, because I wasn't trying to get real close to it.

00:54:05 ◼   ► I was shooting the scene of the people lining up to order food.

00:54:09 ◼   ► On the 12 megapixel image from last year's 14 Pro, the mesh of this grill was just gray.

00:54:16 ◼   ► It just was no detail.

00:54:18 ◼   ► And with the exacts from this, my feet on the same spot with the 15 Pro, if I wanted

00:54:24 ◼   ► to zoom in, I could see the exact texture of this grill.

00:54:27 ◼   ► And I was like, this is totally legit.

00:54:30 ◼   ► There's no way that any kind of interpolation could ever get that detail out of a 12 megapixel

00:54:37 ◼   ► image.

00:54:38 ◼   ► So like, how often does that matter where you capture an image and you turns out like

00:54:42 ◼   ► Zapruder style that there's some kind of detail in the frame that you really like,

00:54:48 ◼   ► "Oh my God, was there somebody famous in this restaurant behind you?

00:54:51 ◼   ► Look at this.

00:54:52 ◼   ► Is that the person?"

00:54:53 ◼   ► That image quality is there.

00:54:55 ◼   ► It is not a 12 megapixel image that is fakie faked up to 24.

00:55:00 ◼   ► That is like 1.5x better quality.

00:55:04 ◼   ► I know you think out there, wait, isn't 24 double 12 megapixels?

00:55:09 ◼   ► No, because you're multiplying in two dimensions.

00:55:12 ◼   ► It's like each dimension is sort of one and a half and then you multiply and you get 24.

00:55:16 ◼   ► But it's still, it's more detail and it is legit.

00:55:22 ◼   ► Let me take a break and then we'll come back and talk about the bane of my existence,

00:55:27 ◼   ► that damn 5x zoom.

00:55:28 ◼   ► Let me tell you about Memberful.

00:55:31 ◼   ► Memberful, if you are a creator, they are the place to go to create a membership system

00:55:39 ◼   ► for your show, your website, whatever it is you do.

00:55:44 ◼   ► If you want to run a membership system, Memberful is a company that runs a service.

00:55:49 ◼   ► This is all they do.

00:55:50 ◼   ► You always have full control and ownership of your audience, your brand.

00:55:55 ◼   ► It's not putting Memberful first and you become your listeners, readers, whatever they are,

00:56:02 ◼   ► become Memberful users and you're just one sub-brand there.

00:56:05 ◼   ► It's your brand.

00:56:06 ◼   ► You own it, you own the membership list.

00:56:07 ◼   ► If you ever want to move somewhere else, you can take the list with you.

00:56:11 ◼   ► It fades into the background so your business, your brand is front and center.

00:56:16 ◼   ► And they seamlessly integrate with the tools you already use, including MailChimp, WordPress,

00:56:23 ◼   ► Stripe, Discord and more.

00:56:25 ◼   ► These are your accounts.

00:56:26 ◼   ► They just plug into them.

00:56:27 ◼   ► So you want to run like a Discord server for your members where only the paying members

00:56:32 ◼   ► get in.

00:56:33 ◼   ► They've got the integration all hooked up automatically.

00:56:35 ◼   ► So it's not something you have to code up or anything like that.

00:56:38 ◼   ► You just get it.

00:56:40 ◼   ► If you're looking to add membership to your existing business, you want a solution that

00:56:43 ◼   ► works with your existing technology.

00:56:45 ◼   ► So you can launch a new revenue stream without rebuilding your entire tech stack.

00:56:50 ◼   ► They have everything you need to run a membership program.

00:56:52 ◼   ► It's easy to use checkout with Apple Pay support and easy to use member portal so that people

00:56:57 ◼   ► can update their email address or something like that.

00:56:59 ◼   ► Or if they forget their password, it's all built in so that they can go to the portal

00:57:04 ◼   ► and get that.

00:57:05 ◼   ► They get transaction emails with the receipts, everything you'd want.

00:57:09 ◼   ► And you, as the creator, you get a member management dashboard so you can focus on what

00:57:13 ◼   ► you do best.

00:57:14 ◼   ► You can see all your members and somebody, you know, you want to see something about

00:57:17 ◼   ► somebody's membership.

00:57:18 ◼   ► You get a great dashboard interface to it.

00:57:21 ◼   ► They give you analytics with an easy to use in-depth view of what's working, what's

00:57:25 ◼   ► not, where you should double down, everything you could possibly want.

00:57:29 ◼   ► And including things like creating member only podcasts and stuff like that using your

00:57:33 ◼   ► existing podcast hosting.

00:57:35 ◼   ► So you can start earning more revenue right there with your podcast.

00:57:39 ◼   ► It's a great service.

00:57:40 ◼   ► I've signed up for more memberful things than I can count on one hand.

00:57:43 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure it's just a great service.

00:57:46 ◼   ► Where do you go to find out more?

00:57:48 ◼   ► You go to memberful.com/talkshow.

00:57:54 ◼   ► Memberful.com/talkshow.

00:57:57 ◼   ► Go there now.

00:57:58 ◼   ► Sign up and use that URL and you'll know you came from here.

00:58:02 ◼   ► What's your take on the 5X lens on the Pro Max?

00:58:05 ◼   ► Okay, so I love it.

00:58:08 ◼   ► It's my favorite.

00:58:10 ◼   ► It's my baby.

00:58:11 ◼   ► I'm probably going to end up shooting 70% of my images with this lens over the next

00:58:16 ◼   ► year.

00:58:17 ◼   ► I know that because I shot 60% of my images with the 3X lens over the past year.

00:58:25 ◼   ► Obviously, you can go into Photos app and you can filter by lenses.

00:58:29 ◼   ► So I did a little bit of that work a couple of years ago when I started reviewing the

00:58:33 ◼   ► telephotos and I wanted to see exactly how bad my telephoto addiction was and it turns

00:58:40 ◼   ► out that I'm just that kind of person.

00:58:42 ◼   ► Now I know a lot of people aren't.

00:58:43 ◼   ► So I'm not prescribing it or saying anybody else will be this way.

00:58:47 ◼   ► I have a special sort of illness that sort of makes me love that kind of work.

00:58:55 ◼   ► So the reason that telephoto for me is so fun and so good when it's good, when it's

00:58:59 ◼   ► a good one, is that I'm a huge margins guy.

00:59:04 ◼   ► So margins, watching your margins is like a photography term.

00:59:07 ◼   ► It used to be used a lot in the old days.

00:59:09 ◼   ► I don't think as much anymore for digital photography reasons, but watching your margins

00:59:14 ◼   ► was really important on film because if you wanted to use the entire frame and print the

00:59:19 ◼   ► entire frame, you had to watch your edges of your frame in the viewfinder.

00:59:25 ◼   ► This is why one-to-one viewfinders are so critically important to film photography and

00:59:29 ◼   ► why prism style viewfinders were generally accepted to be the best by professionals.

00:59:34 ◼   ► That's why SLRs came into existence.

00:59:37 ◼   ► Because when you look through the lens, you want to make sure that at the edges of your

00:59:40 ◼   ► frame all the way around, there's nothing intruding.

00:59:42 ◼   ► No weird branches coming in, no things poking on the edge or somebody isn't running off

00:59:47 ◼   ► of the edge of the frame because it leads the eye out of the frame instead of keeping

00:59:52 ◼   ► it in the frame, especially for things like portraits, right?

00:59:55 ◼   ► Which portrait photography or wedding photography, any of that.

00:59:57 ◼   ► You want to watch the edges, right?

00:59:58 ◼   ► You got to watch your edges.

00:59:59 ◼   ► That's what margins mean.

01:00:01 ◼   ► And so like the ability to watch your margins became much less of a problem with digital

01:00:07 ◼   ► because people forget this, but with film, cropping your photos was hard.

01:00:11 ◼   ► It was tough.

01:00:12 ◼   ► You had to tell the person processing, especially for pro photographers who like doing a bunch

01:00:18 ◼   ► of photos, you had to tell your processor, "Hey, on frame, this frame," because you had

01:00:23 ◼   ► to get them printed first, really, before you saw anything.

01:00:26 ◼   ► And then you would say, "Hey, on frame three or frame 25 here, can you crop this for me?"

01:00:32 ◼   ► And they put the negative back in the machine, go into their software.

01:00:38 ◼   ► This is way farther down the line than the old, I'm not talking like back when you had

01:00:43 ◼   ► an enlarger and you had to crank a wheel, right?

01:00:46 ◼   ► Which I did that too, right?

01:00:48 ◼   ► That was my era as well.

01:00:49 ◼   ► But even when processing machines got better, they had to go in and manually tap, tap, tap

01:00:56 ◼   ► on the zoom and then print it out.

01:00:57 ◼   ► "Oh, I don't like that.

01:00:58 ◼   ► It's a little too far.

01:00:59 ◼   ► Okay, let me do it back."

01:01:00 ◼   ► And they would print.

01:01:01 ◼   ► They would print several dollars later, whatever, you got yourself a crop that you were satisfied

01:01:05 ◼   ► with.

01:01:06 ◼   ► And then the person was like, "Oh, I'd love this in a 60 by 20."

01:01:09 ◼   ► And you're like, "I had to crop this 50% because the margins, it's going to look terrible at

01:01:13 ◼   ► 60 by 20."

01:01:14 ◼   ► And so I think there's a take it for granted thing about the margins for people.

01:01:19 ◼   ► But for me personally, being able to isolate subjects or choose the framing of subjects,

01:01:26 ◼   ► for me, is very potent.

01:01:28 ◼   ► It fits with my style of photography.

01:01:30 ◼   ► I like to be able to have what I want in the image and not have what I don't want in the

01:01:35 ◼   ► image right out of the frame or out of the camera, right?

01:01:38 ◼   ► Rather than cropping later or messing around with it later.

01:01:41 ◼   ► And so for a photographer like me, for a person like me, this lens is a dream come true because

01:01:49 ◼   ► it delivers optical quality 12 megapixel images.

01:01:52 ◼   ► This is not digital cropping.

01:01:54 ◼   ► Once again, it uses the exact 12 megapixels at the "center" of the sensor or whatever.

01:02:01 ◼   ► It passes light through the lens and then through a prism and then projects it onto

01:02:07 ◼   ► the 12 megapixels at the center of the frame.

01:02:10 ◼   ► It does its normal thing where it takes several frames and passes it through the image pipeline,

01:02:14 ◼   ► of course.

01:02:15 ◼   ► But it starts with that native sort of raw pixels that you can use to capture your image.

01:02:22 ◼   ► And my overall results from it have been so incredibly impressive over this initial testing

01:02:29 ◼   ► period.

01:02:30 ◼   ► It absolutely blew me away because when Apple first introduced the 2x, it was very much

01:02:36 ◼   ► just like, "I'm glad this is here, but I regret how bad it is."

01:02:43 ◼   ► Right?

01:02:44 ◼   ► Like, "I'm glad this exists, but it's rough."

01:02:46 ◼   ► You know?

01:02:47 ◼   ► Because...

01:02:48 ◼   ► And you're talking about when 2x was a separate lens.

01:02:51 ◼   ► Correct.

01:02:52 ◼   ► Correct.

01:02:53 ◼   ► Yes.

01:02:54 ◼   ► When they first introduced the 2x.

01:02:55 ◼   ► The separate lens 2x was like, "Hey, we have great optics, but we know the sensor's not

01:02:59 ◼   ► really up to the task and our computational skills are not up to the task yet, but we

01:03:03 ◼   ► want people to have this option."

01:03:06 ◼   ► And I think that the camera team was proud of their work at the time, and it was certainly

01:03:10 ◼   ► an achievement engineering-wise to squeeze that lens and all of its optics in.

01:03:14 ◼   ► But I think what they ended up realizing is that if we ever want to go beyond that, we

01:03:18 ◼   ► have to do something different, which is where the Tetra Prism design came in.

01:03:22 ◼   ► Yep.

01:03:23 ◼   ► I have to say shooting with it, it's...

01:03:26 ◼   ► Number one, and I put this in my review, I did the...

01:03:30 ◼   ► I set up the smart groups in photos to count my lens usage over the last year, and if you

01:03:34 ◼   ► read my review, you saw I actually used my 3x lens very little.

01:03:39 ◼   ► It was like 170 out of 2800 photos.

01:03:42 ◼   ► So under 10% of my photos are taken with the 3x lens.

01:03:47 ◼   ► It's just, that's the way I shoot, and that's why I'm getting the phone that's

01:03:51 ◼   ► the physical size I like.

01:03:53 ◼   ► I'm not going for 5x.

01:03:55 ◼   ► And I don't regret it.

01:03:56 ◼   ► I really don't.

01:03:57 ◼   ► But it does hurt me a little because what I've seen shooting 5x is like, I can't

01:04:04 ◼   ► believe this is in my pocket.

01:04:07 ◼   ► Because I know how physically large and heavy 120-millimeter equivalent lenses are.

01:04:15 ◼   ► And like I told you, all of the camera cameras I've ever bought in my life, I have never,

01:04:23 ◼   ► because I'm a pro-Sumer and maybe leaning heavily towards the Sumer part and like street

01:04:30 ◼   ► photography type things, and never did like amateur portrait photography, I would never

01:04:35 ◼   ► in a million years volunteer to shoot somebody's wedding, even if it was sort of a low-key

01:04:40 ◼   ► wedding affair.

01:04:41 ◼   ► I'm just not good at that.

01:04:42 ◼   ► I'm not good at that type of photography.

01:04:44 ◼   ► So all the camera cameras I've ever bought, all I ever, the only lenses I've ever bought

01:04:49 ◼   ► for my Canon SLRs were primes, and I never bought one longer than 50.

01:04:54 ◼   ► I never even bought like an 85.

01:04:56 ◼   ► I've hovered over the purchase button on an 85 many times, but I'm like, "No, I

01:05:02 ◼   ► don't want it.

01:05:03 ◼   ► I don't need another camera."

01:05:04 ◼   ► But I've always had like 28s, 35s, and 50-millimeter primes.

01:05:09 ◼   ► And I did splurge, I bought long ago, I've got Canon's incredibly heavy, and what a

01:05:15 ◼   ► waste of money from my skills, their F1.2 50-millimeter LEDs, which is, I swear to God,

01:05:23 ◼   ► it weighs like 3,000 pounds.

01:05:24 ◼   ► Even though it's a very small LED.

01:05:25 ◼   ► Yeah, it's enormous.

01:05:26 ◼   ► But the glass is like insane on it.

01:05:29 ◼   ► Right.

01:05:30 ◼   ► And you could get their F1.4 for like 300 bucks.

01:05:33 ◼   ► It's such a waste of money.

01:05:34 ◼   ► But I had to have it.

01:05:35 ◼   ► I had to have it.

01:05:37 ◼   ► But I've never had more throw in a camera than 50 millimeters.

01:05:41 ◼   ► I've shot with the 3X, and that 3X is a 77 equivalent.

01:05:45 ◼   ► And it's just not that much more than 50.

01:05:48 ◼   ► I get it.

01:05:49 ◼   ► But I did shoot 170 real images, not like counting test images that I shot while reviewing

01:05:54 ◼   ► the cameras last year with the 3X.

01:05:57 ◼   ► But 5X is a different game.

01:05:59 ◼   ► It is.

01:06:00 ◼   ► I've just never had a camera like that.

01:06:02 ◼   ► And it's like I'm shooting pictures of random people on the sidewalk like a paparazzi.

01:06:07 ◼   ► And it's like, "Oh my God."

01:06:10 ◼   ► This person has no idea I'm shooting a photo because I'm so far away from them.

01:06:14 ◼   ► But I'm getting like a really clear picture of this person all the way halfway down the

01:06:18 ◼   ► block.

01:06:19 ◼   ► It is such an amount of throw.

01:06:21 ◼   ► And the quality is just…

01:06:23 ◼   ► There is no…

01:06:24 ◼   ► I don't know that it's better.

01:06:26 ◼   ► I don't think it's better image quality-wise than the 3X camera.

01:06:31 ◼   ► But it certainly to my eyes seems on par, which is amazing because it's a lot more

01:06:37 ◼   ► pro.

01:06:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:06:39 ◼   ► You're talking about like comparing the 5X and the iPhone 15 Pro Max to the 3X.

01:06:49 ◼   ► Or the 15 Pro 3X, right?

01:06:53 ◼   ► You know what?

01:06:54 ◼   ► I actually ran relatively few comparisons between the 15 Pro 3X and the 5X.

01:06:59 ◼   ► Maybe I should have run more.

01:07:00 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:07:01 ◼   ► Maybe that's…

01:07:02 ◼   ► You can only test so much, right?

01:07:03 ◼   ► You only have so many days to do it.

01:07:04 ◼   ► But I did run tests between the iPhone 14 Pro 3X and the iPhone 15 Pro Max 5X, right?

01:07:13 ◼   ► Like I did…

01:07:14 ◼   ► I ran those tests against one another.

01:07:16 ◼   ► And it's hard to tell why it's better.

01:07:19 ◼   ► I feel it's better, right?

01:07:20 ◼   ► It could be.

01:07:21 ◼   ► I feel it actually compare…

01:07:22 ◼   ► It's okay, right?

01:07:23 ◼   ► It compares relatively well.

01:07:25 ◼   ► The 3X is actually not bad at all, right?

01:07:28 ◼   ► It's not bad…

01:07:29 ◼   ► Way better than the original 2X, right?

01:07:31 ◼   ► But I actually think that it's hard to differentiate.

01:07:35 ◼   ► The one thing I haven't done, and I'll just be completely honest with anybody listening

01:07:38 ◼   ► to this, is like I absolutely have not tested, so cannot definitively say I shot a raw image,

01:07:44 ◼   ► right?

01:07:45 ◼   ► A raw, a pro raw image with both of those and then edited them and then determined which

01:07:50 ◼   ► one I like better, right?

01:07:52 ◼   ► However, the HEIC…

01:07:54 ◼   ► What do they call it?

01:07:55 ◼   ► Hike?

01:07:56 ◼   ► I never heard them pronounce it.

01:07:57 ◼   ► Hike?

01:07:58 ◼   ► No.

01:07:59 ◼   ► Do they call it hike?

01:08:00 ◼   ► I think.

01:08:01 ◼   ► I don't think they pronounce it, but I've always said H-E-I-C.

01:08:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I've always said H-E-I-C too, and I think it was a total non sequitur when you

01:08:07 ◼   ► and I were in a briefing and somebody pronounced it and we're like, "Wait, that's how

01:08:11 ◼   ► you say it?"

01:08:12 ◼   ► It would be like if you're talking to someone in the U.S. Justice Department and they started

01:08:16 ◼   ► talking about the Phibbe and you're like, "The Phibbe?

01:08:18 ◼   ► What the hell are you talking about?"

01:08:19 ◼   ► And you're like, "Oh, the FBI?"

01:08:21 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

01:08:22 ◼   ► And you're like, "You call it the Phibbe?"

01:08:24 ◼   ► What?

01:08:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they call it Hike, right?

01:08:27 ◼   ► It was Hike.

01:08:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:29 ◼   ► I can't recall, but yeah.

01:08:30 ◼   ► So, long story short, if you compare a Hike between those two, I definitely like the 15

01:08:36 ◼   ► Pro Max better.

01:08:38 ◼   ► However, it's really hard to tell whether that's the image processing pipeline or

01:08:42 ◼   ► not.

01:08:43 ◼   ► The Smart HDR Pro is so much better.

01:08:46 ◼   ► Fine detail at the edges, like backlit situations, high contrast situations.

01:08:51 ◼   ► It just absolutely crushes it.

01:08:53 ◼   ► It's so much better.

01:08:54 ◼   ► So, it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between is this a processing deal or not.

01:08:58 ◼   ► The only way to do that is to run ROS, so I can't say.

01:09:01 ◼   ► However, if you have a 3X now, you're going to love the 5X because it's just more telephoto,

01:09:09 ◼   ► more choice in framing, and you're not losing any quality.

01:09:12 ◼   ► It's not like it's like, "Hey, congratulations.

01:09:14 ◼   ► You got a 5X, but you got to take the hit on image quality."

01:09:18 ◼   ► That's just part of the game.

01:09:20 ◼   ► I think people would have been not impressed by, but accepting of that.

01:09:24 ◼   ► "Oh, it's 5X, but maybe the image quality is a little iffy."

01:09:28 ◼   ► But in my opinion, it is very, very…

01:09:32 ◼   ► I'm very comfortable saying it is absolutely as good and honestly personally comfortable

01:09:37 ◼   ► to some degree saying it's better because of the fact that it's like a percentage thing.

01:09:42 ◼   ► You are optically utilizing a certain percentage of the sensor, and the more telephoto that

01:09:48 ◼   ► you have reaching out and pulling in, you're going to get every element of your image,

01:09:55 ◼   ► if it's an eyeball or a tree bark patch or whatever, is taking up more pixels.

01:10:01 ◼   ► So it's going to give you more fine detail.

01:10:02 ◼   ► Let's…

01:10:03 ◼   ► Like a scenario where you can't move your feet to get a better image.

01:10:07 ◼   ► You're the parent and you're at a little league game and you've got a seat in the

01:10:11 ◼   ► stands and your kid is up at the plate and you can't move, right?

01:10:18 ◼   ► Or you could, but they're going to say something to you for coming onto the field.

01:10:21 ◼   ► So you frame it.

01:10:23 ◼   ► We've all done it.

01:10:25 ◼   ► I've shot pictures like this with older iPhones where if the iPhone is the camera you have

01:10:29 ◼   ► with it, you just zoom in to where you want to zoom in.

01:10:31 ◼   ► And if it's digital zoom to some lesser range, you still get a usable image, but you

01:10:39 ◼   ► can see it.

01:10:40 ◼   ► I think almost everybody, when you look at it on your Mac or even an iPad where you've

01:10:46 ◼   ► blown it up to at least 11 inches, you can see the sort of smudginess of digital zoom.

01:10:53 ◼   ► To some degree.

01:10:55 ◼   ► It's, in some ways, it's just shocking to me.

01:10:59 ◼   ► Honestly, a week and a half later, it is just sort of shocking that I'm not seeing that

01:11:03 ◼   ► from these images.

01:11:04 ◼   ► I know I shot them with a phone and I know the subject was so far away from me and I'm

01:11:10 ◼   ► not seeing…

01:11:11 ◼   ► I'm seeing detail.

01:11:12 ◼   ► It's like…

01:11:13 ◼   ► That's a binary thing, right?

01:11:15 ◼   ► Like you're getting images you wouldn't have gotten before at that quality.

01:11:21 ◼   ► Period.

01:11:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:23 ◼   ► It's a binary thing.

01:11:24 ◼   ► And you mentioned it.

01:11:25 ◼   ► They definitely mentioned the technical specs.

01:11:28 ◼   ► It's the first camera lens in any iPhone with an optical image stabilization that moves

01:11:34 ◼   ► in three dimensions instead of just two.

01:11:38 ◼   ► I don't know why that's impressive.

01:11:40 ◼   ► It sounds…

01:11:41 ◼   ► It must be.

01:11:42 ◼   ► Third dimension is interesting.

01:11:43 ◼   ► There's obviously not a lot of room inside an iPhone to move in any dimension, but it

01:11:50 ◼   ► must be doing something because that's one of the downsides of longer lenses is they

01:11:58 ◼   ► let in less light.

01:12:00 ◼   ► This lens is always open at f/2.8, which is pretty good for a long lens, but it's not

01:12:06 ◼   ► that…

01:12:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:08 ◼   ► I was super impressed.

01:12:09 ◼   ► I expected it to be much smaller, to be honest.

01:12:10 ◼   ► And that's the prism design kind of at work because it's basically taking that same

01:12:14 ◼   ► image square and like balancing it so it doesn't have to pass it through additional lens elements

01:12:19 ◼   ► on its way down, reducing the amount of light that hits it.

01:12:22 ◼   ► But back in the day, if you had a 120mm f/2.8 lens, even a big one, a big fat lens, super

01:12:31 ◼   ► heavy and you're shooting on 35mm film, in the days before optical image stabilization,

01:12:37 ◼   ► you couldn't shoot scenes at night with that lens.

01:12:39 ◼   ► You just handheld.

01:12:40 ◼   ► I mean, you could like put it on a tripod and do a long exposure, which would get you

01:12:45 ◼   ► a great image, but it's long exposures leaving the camera open literally for maybe like a

01:12:50 ◼   ► second or something like that.

01:12:52 ◼   ► You can't do that handheld, right?

01:12:55 ◼   ► So, you know, in your Disneyland pictures, you guys were obviously out at night and there's…

01:13:01 ◼   ► it's tough lighting scenarios, right?

01:13:03 ◼   ► Because it is dark because it's night, but there's all sorts of fancy colorful lights

01:13:08 ◼   ► because you're at Disneyland.

01:13:10 ◼   ► And you would just think intuitively, "Well, these pictures are going to be blurry."

01:13:14 ◼   ► And they're not, they're sharp, right?

01:13:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:17 ◼   ► And like, you know, obviously when I was mobile, most of my reviewing of the images, my looking

01:13:23 ◼   ► at the images was done on my phones.

01:13:26 ◼   ► And okay, it's a small screen, even if you zoom in or whatever.

01:13:29 ◼   ► But once I got home and I was able to like look at them in photos on my Mac and I opened

01:13:35 ◼   ► them up and started looking at them, it was just honestly boggling, like how good they

01:13:41 ◼   ► were.

01:13:42 ◼   ► Like I included one image in my review of a nighttime shot of a neon sign taken at like

01:13:49 ◼   ► 24 millimeters and then another one shot at 5x.

01:13:54 ◼   ► And the difference, I mean, the detail that was pulled out in that 5x shot, I literally

01:14:01 ◼   ► was, I was shocked, like shocked at it.

01:14:05 ◼   ► Not in some sort of metaphorical like, "Oh, I was shocked.

01:14:08 ◼   ► It was good."

01:14:09 ◼   ► I was literally shocked.

01:14:10 ◼   ► I was like, "What?"

01:14:11 ◼   ► Like, "No way."

01:14:12 ◼   ► Right?

01:14:13 ◼   ► Like, "No way."

01:14:14 ◼   ► And like I included a link in my piece to a DNG because I really felt I wanted to make

01:14:20 ◼   ► sure that people knew that like I wasn't just messing around or like exaggerating for the

01:14:25 ◼   ► sake of like making a point in my review.

01:14:28 ◼   ► Like here's a raw image.

01:14:29 ◼   ► Go look at this thing.

01:14:30 ◼   ► Like this is super impressive and it is.

01:14:34 ◼   ► It's really incredible the amount of detail.

01:14:36 ◼   ► And this is a low light scenario, handheld at night where you do not expect a telephoto.

01:14:44 ◼   ► Pete: But you've also got these bright neon beams.

01:14:47 ◼   ► I mean, no, it's not really neon anymore, but it's like Flo's Diner from Cars, I

01:14:51 ◼   ► think, right?

01:14:52 ◼   ► And it's like, so it's just sort of trying to, it's Disney's take on a 1950s style

01:14:57 ◼   ► diner with these neon colorful lights.

01:15:00 ◼   ► And the thing is, when you, your image, it's a great, it is a great example because you

01:15:05 ◼   ► zoom in and in addition to the light not blowing out the image, right, you get the color from

01:15:11 ◼   ► the lights.

01:15:12 ◼   ► Like an older camera, that area, I think would have gone white if the rest of the image was

01:15:20 ◼   ► exposed properly because it couldn't have the dynamic range to capture any of the detail

01:15:25 ◼   ► that is dark and looks like night while still showing these bright glowing lights.

01:15:31 ◼   ► You get the color of the lights and then within the actual signage, there's like dirt and

01:15:38 ◼   ► schmutz stuff that…

01:15:39 ◼   ► Jared: Plant debris.

01:15:40 ◼   ► Pete; Plant debris.

01:15:41 ◼   ► And you can see it.

01:15:43 ◼   ► It's like, how do you, how is that, how is it capturing that when it's right next

01:15:47 ◼   ► to this bright glowing light, which should, in my mind, blow that out.

01:15:52 ◼   ► It's like when you talk about going all the way back to 1977, all of the talk about

01:15:57 ◼   ► the Star Wars movies, the lightsabers have always been a nightmare because it's…

01:16:01 ◼   ► Jared; Yes.

01:16:02 ◼   ► Pete; And it's like, the whole reason Luke's lightsaber is green in Return of the Jedi,

01:16:07 ◼   ► instead of blue, it was like, up until that point, good guys had blue and bad guys had

01:16:13 ◼   ► red and then they realized a blue lightsaber because they wanted to show him outdoors in

01:16:18 ◼   ► the desert scene with Jabba the Hutt and they're like, "Shit, you can't see the lightsaber!"

01:16:25 ◼   ► And they're like, "Well, what if we make it green?"

01:16:26 ◼   ► And they're like, "Okay."

01:16:27 ◼   ► But like, lightsabers have always been difficult in that way, right?

01:16:30 ◼   ► And those neon beams at the diner at Disneyland are like lightsabers, effectively, right?

01:16:35 ◼   ► And it's like, if it's tough for ILM to fake it, how is a real camera capturing this?

01:16:40 ◼   ► Jared; Yeah, yeah.

01:16:41 ◼   ► And like, I saw a lot of those image processing improvements this year too.

01:16:46 ◼   ► Red is still an issue.

01:16:47 ◼   ► Pete; Yeah.

01:16:48 ◼   ► Jared; Red is still an issue, just to be straightforward, because, you know, what I'm talking about

01:16:52 ◼   ► red, I'm talking about like, hyper-saturated red, big red lights or bathed in red light

01:16:57 ◼   ► because of the…

01:16:58 ◼   ► Pete; Red flowers, red flowers have always been a great test.

01:17:02 ◼   ► Jared; Right, right.

01:17:03 ◼   ► And that's because of the nature of CCDs, right?

01:17:06 ◼   ► They just have an imbalance of pixels that capture red light.

01:17:11 ◼   ► So you end up kind of having a problem representing other colors within a flooded red spectrum.

01:17:17 ◼   ► Red flowers, bathed in red light, etc.

01:17:20 ◼   ► However, better this year than most.

01:17:23 ◼   ► And like, the level of detail on the 5X was just in the realm of disbelief for me.

01:17:33 ◼   ► And it wasn't so much that it was like, I don't think that anything, this could ever

01:17:38 ◼   ► look any good at the zoom level, because the 3X is pretty good, right?

01:17:41 ◼   ► It's not bad.

01:17:43 ◼   ► But like, the combination of fine detail, image processing, pipeline improvements, and

01:17:50 ◼   ► the fact that this prism design, I very, very much expected, just to be honest, I very much

01:17:56 ◼   ► expected the prism to be really good at making the zoom happen, but bad at overall image

01:18:03 ◼   ► quality.

01:18:04 ◼   ► I expected aberration, I expected some softness, I definitely expected some blooming, because

01:18:11 ◼   ► prisms are hard.

01:18:12 ◼   ► I mean, you're bouncing light from mirror to mirror, from pane to pane through these

01:18:17 ◼   ► or passing it through them, to be more accurate.

01:18:19 ◼   ► And it's hard to keep those aligned, and then to correct the normal optical flaws that

01:18:25 ◼   ► happen anytime you pass through anything, right?

01:18:28 ◼   ► Any medium.

01:18:29 ◼   ► And Apple does a lot with their lenses already, right?

01:18:32 ◼   ► Because you can see it.

01:18:33 ◼   ► If you take a raw image and then look at their process when you're like, "Oh, wow, they're

01:18:36 ◼   ► fixing a lot of this stuff," right?

01:18:37 ◼   ► And so I fully expected that prism to deliver okay results, and for the sake of more zoom.

01:18:45 ◼   ► But instead what they delivered is like a really viable photography tool.

01:18:51 ◼   ► This isn't just a zoom, right?

01:18:53 ◼   ► It's like a tool, a whole photography tool that opened up, and I think people are going

01:18:57 ◼   ► to really love it.

01:18:58 ◼   ► I have already seen it, as people started getting their phones delivered, a lot of photographers

01:19:04 ◼   ► that I follow and love, they're like, "Oh my God, I love this thing.

01:19:07 ◼   ► It's really good."

01:19:08 ◼   ► Darrell Bock And then the two aspects of stabilization

01:19:11 ◼   ► is one, if you're shooting still photos with a long lens and a maximum aperture of only

01:19:18 ◼   ► f/2.8, getting a sharp image is very difficult.

01:19:23 ◼   ► And this camera absolutely succeeds.

01:19:25 ◼   ► Just point, shoot, and you get sharp images.

01:19:28 ◼   ► You don't have to realize how much technical work is going.

01:19:31 ◼   ► But then the other thing is video.

01:19:33 ◼   ► And I don't think, from what I shot, I don't think you can shoot 5x video while you are

01:19:43 ◼   ► walking.

01:19:45 ◼   ► But if you stand still, you capture great video, including of people in motion, and

01:19:52 ◼   ► you can move a little.

01:19:53 ◼   ► You just can't sort of like chase somebody down the street or walk after somebody.

01:19:58 ◼   ► It's too much.

01:19:59 ◼   ► It's just, it's not, it's just a neat…

01:20:01 ◼   ► Jared Breshears Right, even the 3D, which 3D by the way means

01:20:04 ◼   ► that lateral movement, forward and back, now has at least some stabilization added to it.

01:20:10 ◼   ► But there's not enough throw inside there.

01:20:12 ◼   ► It would have to be like, the camera chamber would have to be like five inches across.

01:20:16 ◼   ► Right?

01:20:17 ◼   ► Darrell Bock Right.

01:20:18 ◼   ► But what you can do definitely, and I did it like when I was shooting the skateboarders,

01:20:21 ◼   ► is you can pan with 5x video.

01:20:25 ◼   ► That sounds like, well, of course you should be able to pan and get a smooth image that

01:20:29 ◼   ► isn't making people feel like it's jittery, like you're riding on a roller coaster or

01:20:33 ◼   ► something.

01:20:34 ◼   ► But that's, that just wasn't possible before with a video camera.

01:20:38 ◼   ► If you took a camera and zoomed to an equivalent of 120 millimeters and panned by hand without

01:20:44 ◼   ► having it on the tripod, it would…

01:20:45 ◼   ► Jared Breshears Yeah, good luck.

01:20:46 ◼   ► Darrell Bock Yeah, it would just be all jitter.

01:20:48 ◼   ► It is remarkable how easy they make it look to shoot 5x video of somebody, some subject,

01:20:56 ◼   ► your kid running from second to third base and you're just panning across and you get

01:21:00 ◼   ► a smooth video.

01:21:03 ◼   ► It is, it's really, really cool.

01:21:05 ◼   ► Jared Breshears It's not just smooth.

01:21:06 ◼   ► It's like unbelievably good.

01:21:08 ◼   ► Like it's really, really, surreally smooth.

01:21:11 ◼   ► I had a, I think I've included it in some of my video review component in my video review,

01:21:16 ◼   ► but I had an out of body experience, to be honest, shooting some video on Casey Jr.'s

01:21:24 ◼   ► train ride, right?

01:21:25 ◼   ► Casey Jr. train ride at Disneyland is set to circle, it circles around the Storybook

01:21:33 ◼   ► Land canal boats and the Storybook Land canal boats, for those who have never done it, you

01:21:37 ◼   ► just sit on this little boat and you kind of ride in this river around these miniature

01:21:42 ◼   ► scenes that are built like in miniature of like Arendelle, the castle from Frozen, the

01:21:49 ◼   ► castle from Aladdin, various scenes, pastoral scenes from these movies.

01:21:54 ◼   ► And the train is sort of elevated above that and kind of goes around it.

01:21:58 ◼   ► And I shot some video of the, of the scenes, like one shot especially of the castle, the

01:22:04 ◼   ► Arendelle castle.

01:22:05 ◼   ► And this is like kind of like a rattly movie train, you know, where it's kind of clicking,

01:22:10 ◼   ► clacking and going up and forth and jerking me back and forth.

01:22:14 ◼   ► And I just shot some video handheld over my shoulder of the castle and sort of tried to

01:22:18 ◼   ► keep it in frame as we moved.

01:22:20 ◼   ► It looks like a drone shot.

01:22:22 ◼   ► I mean, it's so smooth.

01:22:25 ◼   ► It looks like somebody who's shooting a $10,000 stabilized drone of a full-size castle,

01:22:31 ◼   ► right, from like a mile away or whatever.

01:22:34 ◼   ► I know obviously some of its perspective, but it was so cool.

01:22:39 ◼   ► I was like, "Wow!"

01:22:40 ◼   ► I know the shot you're talking about because I saw it and I was like, "This is, it's

01:22:44 ◼   ► just, it doesn't seem possible.

01:22:45 ◼   ► It really doesn't.

01:22:46 ◼   ► It's so, and it just is point and shoot, but it's, and in video in particular, it

01:22:51 ◼   ► is so super useful to people to be able to shoot at a long distance like that because

01:22:56 ◼   ► you can crop video, but how many consumers do you know who even know where to go to crop

01:23:01 ◼   ► video?

01:23:02 ◼   ► You don't.

01:23:03 ◼   ► And, and, and cropping video is so much harder processing intensive wise, et cetera.

01:23:08 ◼   ► You need a beefy machine to do that and all that.

01:23:10 ◼   ► It's so much harder.

01:23:11 ◼   ► Right.

01:23:12 ◼   ► People just don't like what, what people capture in the frame in their videos is what

01:23:16 ◼   ► they're going to keep for the rest of their lives and their photo library.

01:23:20 ◼   ► And so being able to shoot useful, smooth, zoomed in video like that of anything that

01:23:27 ◼   ► you would want that sort of throw to capture in frame is honestly, I, it's like, there's

01:23:36 ◼   ► a part of writing.

01:23:37 ◼   ► It is a life changing thing.

01:23:38 ◼   ► And I think when people hear life changing, they think like, "Oh, you cured somebody

01:23:42 ◼   ► of a disease or whatever."

01:23:44 ◼   ► Like life changing can be in, there are different grades of life changing.

01:23:48 ◼   ► Right.

01:23:49 ◼   ► And I think that if you look at like the traditional video, so I used to this way back in the day,

01:23:55 ◼   ► I used to do VHS transfers and 16 millimeter transfers of video and film to DVD at the

01:24:03 ◼   ► time.

01:24:04 ◼   ► Right?

01:24:05 ◼   ► So you would take these tapes that people brought in.

01:24:06 ◼   ► My grandpa had all these reels of 60 millimeter or my dad had all of these VHS tapes that

01:24:11 ◼   ► he took of us and we don't have VHS player or ours broke and we want to watch them on

01:24:17 ◼   ► DVD.

01:24:18 ◼   ► And so he would digitize them and transfer them through a box to a DVD and burn them

01:24:22 ◼   ► onto a DVD.

01:24:23 ◼   ► And I can tell you, I have viewed thousands of thousands of hours of zoomed in shaky as

01:24:30 ◼   ► hell video, right?

01:24:31 ◼   ► Like, like, "Oh, the kids on stage, I'm shooting from the back of the auditorium because

01:24:37 ◼   ► I don't want to block anybody's view or whatever."

01:24:40 ◼   ► And it's like this rattly shaky video.

01:24:42 ◼   ► Right.

01:24:43 ◼   ► And when you did those transfers, you probably had to watch them the whole time, right?

01:24:46 ◼   ► Because it's sort of like,

01:24:47 ◼   ► I did.

01:24:48 ◼   ► I've seen the things my eyes have seen, Jon.

01:24:50 ◼   ► Let's just say not everybody's VHS tapes are family vacations.

01:24:55 ◼   ► Let me just put it that way.

01:24:59 ◼   ► But yes, I did have to watch them all.

01:25:01 ◼   ► I saw a lot of it, right?

01:25:02 ◼   ► I saw a lot.

01:25:03 ◼   ► I actually really cool.

01:25:04 ◼   ► I kind of got to see tons of 60 millimeter video of Disneyland in the 50s and 60s and

01:25:09 ◼   ► all that stuff.

01:25:10 ◼   ► But whatever the zooms were, they were largely useless.

01:25:13 ◼   ► It was fun that they existed and it's like, "Oh, look at Uncle Jon is making a face on

01:25:18 ◼   ► the ride or on the balcony and we've zoomed in on him and there he is dancing."

01:25:22 ◼   ► But you can't see his face, really.

01:25:24 ◼   ► It's all blurry.

01:25:25 ◼   ► It's shaky as hell.

01:25:26 ◼   ► And like this is like, hey, for the first time ever, that zoom picture where you would

01:25:32 ◼   ► normally digitally zoom or hope as much as possible that you were capturing at least

01:25:36 ◼   ► something that was a memory is now a viable, crisp image.

01:25:42 ◼   ► And I think that's great.

01:25:43 ◼   ► That's a wonderful thing to have.

01:25:46 ◼   ► One of the little features, I didn't mention it in my review, hope to put it in a follow-up,

01:25:49 ◼   ► but did you notice this?

01:25:51 ◼   ► Like, if you do digitally zoom, now this was for both pro cameras this year, 15 Pro and

01:25:56 ◼   ► the Pro Max.

01:25:57 ◼   ► So on the 3X and the 5X, if you zoom past 8.0, which is digital zoom even on that 5X,

01:26:06 ◼   ► but with the 5X, you could get to 8 and still have reasonable image quality, you get a mini

01:26:12 ◼   ► map up in the corner showing you the full frame.

01:26:17 ◼   ► And because it's hard to explain, like, did you notice the feature?

01:26:21 ◼   ► It if you zoom in…

01:26:22 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I did use it somewhat because I had noticed it in one of their feature,

01:26:28 ◼   ► like I quickly scroll the feature set page on Apple.com.

01:26:34 ◼   ► They're like, "Hey, here's all the cool new features," whatever.

01:26:36 ◼   ► And I had noticed it in there somewhere, and so I wanted to try it out.

01:26:39 ◼   ► So I tried it out a couple of times, and it basically gives you a video game…

01:26:42 ◼   ► I think mini map is the right word.

01:26:43 ◼   ► Like it gives you a video game mini map of your whole frame.

01:26:47 ◼   ► And I'm guessing it takes it… like if I had to guess, it would be like at the 1X

01:26:52 ◼   ► level or maybe 2X level, depending on how much you've zoomed, and it gives you that

01:26:56 ◼   ► map at the corner.

01:26:57 ◼   ► So it presents a small picture in picture in the corner with a yellow box that shows

01:27:03 ◼   ► you your current frame, like in the larger window.

01:27:07 ◼   ► And so you're able to zoom way out to 25X and then still move around inside that frame

01:27:13 ◼   ► with some idea of where you're headed.

01:27:14 ◼   ► Because previously it's like turning on a light switch with a broomstick, trying to

01:27:18 ◼   ► like find the thing and where is this?

01:27:21 ◼   ► So it gives you a map of where you're headed to shoot the thing you want to shoot.

01:27:24 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

01:27:25 ◼   ► I'll just keep going back to my Little League perspective, and it's like you're looking

01:27:30 ◼   ► to zoom in optically on a kid wearing a batting helmet, but you're zoomed in at like 10

01:27:36 ◼   ► or 15X or something, and you see a tree and you're like, "I didn't even know there

01:27:39 ◼   ► was a tree.

01:27:40 ◼   ► Where the hell am I?"

01:27:41 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:27:44 ◼   ► You just start waving the phone around in front of your eyes to sort of get it.

01:27:49 ◼   ► And it's like the mini map is a super cool feature.

01:27:51 ◼   ► I think that the full frame of the mini map is just the full frame of the 3X or 5X camera

01:27:57 ◼   ► though, which I think, because I think the 1X would be too big of a mini map.

01:28:02 ◼   ► Yeah, too big of a map.

01:28:03 ◼   ► I think you're right.

01:28:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I didn't figure it out exactly.

01:28:06 ◼   ► But it's a very cool feature.

01:28:09 ◼   ► I don't know, and Apple even off the record never ever ever explains stuff like this,

01:28:14 ◼   ► but it's like that's only in these 15 pros.

01:28:19 ◼   ► Is it really an image pipeline feature that's enabling that, or could they in theory have

01:28:27 ◼   ► backported it to the 14 Pro when it upgrades to iOS 17?

01:28:31 ◼   ► I don't know, but you don't get it with a 14 Pro.

01:28:33 ◼   ► I mean, it may be an image processing kind of overhead thing, but yeah.

01:28:38 ◼   ► Sometimes it's like these features come to these cameras and they're like, "Hey,

01:28:41 ◼   ► we consider this to be a part of the camera," the tree is saying.

01:28:44 ◼   ► They leave it at that.

01:28:45 ◼   ► And yeah, as you said, even the people we've asked are always like, "Ah, I don't know."

01:28:49 ◼   ► Because you have to find the specific person who's in the performance team who handles

01:28:53 ◼   ► these things that says like, "Oh yeah, this can support it," and they'll never say,

01:28:57 ◼   ► really.

01:28:58 ◼   ► So, it's hard to say.

01:28:59 ◼   ► All right, moving on from the camera, the big change, I put it first, was the switch

01:29:03 ◼   ► to titanium.

01:29:05 ◼   ► I could not be happier about this.

01:29:09 ◼   ► I love the way it feels.

01:29:10 ◼   ► I much prefer the way it looks, and the weight reduction is just phenomenal.

01:29:17 ◼   ► So, the weight reduction is so significant and so meaningful to me that even if I didn't

01:29:23 ◼   ► like the way it looked, I would still give it a thumbs up as the change.

01:29:29 ◼   ► I know they weren't going to do it, but it's like, "Damn it, I've wished for years that

01:29:35 ◼   ► they..."

01:29:36 ◼   ► And I understand why they didn't.

01:29:37 ◼   ► I would have rather had all of the iPhone Pros of the last few years with aluminum frames

01:29:43 ◼   ► than stainless steel for the weight reduction, even if it meant they looked plain because

01:29:48 ◼   ► aluminum is not a fancy-looking finish.

01:29:51 ◼   ► But I do like the way titanium looks.

01:29:53 ◼   ► I love the weight reduction, and I think it feels great.

01:29:56 ◼   ► I think this fingerprint thing is a non-issue.

01:30:00 ◼   ► Yes, you can see fingerprints when your hands are greasy, but it wipes out.

01:30:06 ◼   ► Whatever this PVD coating they're using on the titanium, it clearly has some kind of

01:30:09 ◼   ► oleophobic quality to it.

01:30:11 ◼   ► The fingerprints clean right off just putting it in your pants pocket.

01:30:16 ◼   ► Jared Polin Yeah, most people are going to put a damn case

01:30:19 ◼   ► on it anyway.

01:30:20 ◼   ► I always get it from different people because it's like, "Look, dude.

01:30:22 ◼   ► Congratulations that you run it without a case."

01:30:25 ◼   ► But the vast majority of people are not going to do that.

01:30:27 ◼   ► But yeah, the natural titanium doesn't really fingerprint that much, so I guess if you're

01:30:31 ◼   ► really obsessed, you're going to get the normal oil smudges on it, but it doesn't really show

01:30:35 ◼   ► it in high relief, but the other coatings tend to show it better.

01:30:39 ◼   ► I don't really care that much about it.

01:30:42 ◼   ► I really can't bring myself to care that much about it because yeah, fingers have oil on

01:30:47 ◼   ► them, and frankly, everybody's fingers have a different amount of oil on them, right?

01:30:50 ◼   ► So yeah, stuff fingerprints, like who cares?

01:30:54 ◼   ► [laughs]

01:30:55 ◼   ► Pete: Do you appreciate the weight difference?

01:30:56 ◼   ► I mean, it seems like everybody.

01:30:57 ◼   ► Jared Polin Yeah, the weight difference thing, I think

01:30:59 ◼   ► is, it absolutely is legit.

01:31:02 ◼   ► I mean, I know you and I both read that post by Dr. Drang where he attributes some of the

01:31:07 ◼   ► feel of the weight to distribution, right?

01:31:10 ◼   ► Because look here, the pivot point of the weight is lower.

01:31:14 ◼   ► The internal frame is aluminum and the external frame is titanium, both lighter weight materials

01:31:19 ◼   ► than steel.

01:31:20 ◼   ► I think all of that is obviously taken into account.

01:31:24 ◼   ► It's not that much on the raw like weight reduction front in terms of grams, but it

01:31:30 ◼   ► feels a lot better to hold.

01:31:32 ◼   ► The larger phones in the past, it was such a hard choice to go with the larger phone

01:31:37 ◼   ► because of the more zoom because it was so heavy and so hard to do a one-handed operation

01:31:42 ◼   ► with, but I've been loving it.

01:31:44 ◼   ► I think it is definitely materially, in a way that you can feel, lighter and easier

01:31:50 ◼   ► to hold.

01:31:51 ◼   ► Pete: Yeah.

01:31:52 ◼   ► And I mentioned it in my review and I think it's one of my favorite parts of it.

01:31:56 ◼   ► I tend to use my phone without a case the overwhelming amount of time.

01:32:00 ◼   ► I get it though, 90% of people, although not 90% of my readers.

01:32:04 ◼   ► I did a poll on Twitter and it was like a surprising number of my readers are like us

01:32:08 ◼   ► and go caseless, but I guess that's why they read Daring Firewall.

01:32:12 ◼   ► They appreciate nice things and are willing to gamble on the dropability.

01:32:17 ◼   ► But the best part about this titanium weight reduction is for the overwhelming majority

01:32:21 ◼   ► of people who we all know are going to put their new phone in a case and not take it

01:32:24 ◼   ► out until they resell it and trade it in, they get the weight reduction.

01:32:28 ◼   ► So it's a fantastic benefit even for people who aren't going to see or touch the titanium

01:32:34 ◼   ► because they have their phone in a case, they get a lighter phone.

01:32:37 ◼   ► I love it.

01:32:38 ◼   ► I can't wait.

01:32:39 ◼   ► I'm so glad that they're done with steel.

01:32:41 ◼   ► I can't see any reason to go back.

01:32:42 ◼   ► I will say this though since we're recording after the phones have shipped to people, I've

01:32:47 ◼   ► had two friends so far who both profess that they don't like the way it looks and feel

01:32:53 ◼   ► that it doesn't look anywhere near as premium.

01:32:56 ◼   ► They two people who both loved the polished mirrored finish of stainless steel and feel

01:33:03 ◼   ► that the more industrial look of titanium is a downgrade visually.

01:33:09 ◼   ► So it's like, and I was like, ah, interesting.

01:33:12 ◼   ► Two people in one day who got their phones on day one both said the same thing to me

01:33:17 ◼   ► and I thought, huh, that's why Apple is with shipping polished stainless steel.

01:33:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I honestly, yeah, it's exactly.

01:33:23 ◼   ► I think that the jewel like nature of the polished steel sort of telegraph that you

01:33:28 ◼   ► had a higher grade device.

01:33:30 ◼   ► Ironically, I think that titanium feels more pro, you know, I do too.

01:33:35 ◼   ► Pro devices historically have been brushed steel powder coated treated surfaces because

01:33:41 ◼   ► they're meant to be durable and industrial, not beautiful and jewel like.

01:33:47 ◼   ► So the pro phones of the past, in my opinion, the ID ran much more towards the premium end

01:33:54 ◼   ► of the spectrum than the pro end of the spectrum.

01:33:58 ◼   ► So both higher grade, both you could telegraph this idea of something more, something higher,

01:34:03 ◼   ► something better, something worth more.

01:34:06 ◼   ► But premium is a significantly different vibe.

01:34:09 ◼   ► Premium slash luxury, right, is a significantly different vibe than pro titanium feels more

01:34:14 ◼   ► pro to me, but far less premium or luxury, even though the materials are harder to work

01:34:19 ◼   ► with and maybe even more expensive, etc.

01:34:22 ◼   ► The look and feel of it feels more pro than premium.

01:34:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree.

01:34:27 ◼   ► I like it.

01:34:28 ◼   ► I don't know what else they have up their sleeve for the future.

01:34:31 ◼   ► These are obviously the first titanium phones Apple has made, but they've been playing with

01:34:36 ◼   ► titanium for years with Apple Watch, including my, I don't have it on my wrist right now,

01:34:41 ◼   ► I'm wearing a review unit, but my series seven black titanium, I forget if they called it

01:34:47 ◼   ► black or graphite or whatever, but I don't know how close, how much more mirrored they

01:34:52 ◼   ► could get it if they wanted to.

01:34:53 ◼   ► I think the white one, which I haven't seen in person since the event, but because the,

01:34:58 ◼   ► I think I have the same color review units as you.

01:35:00 ◼   ► I have a natural titanium pro max and a blue pro.

01:35:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:35:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:35:06 ◼   ► Those are the ones I ended up with.

01:35:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:35:08 ◼   ► And I have, I got my black pro personal one that I bought yesterday, so I've seen that

01:35:13 ◼   ► one again.

01:35:14 ◼   ► I have, as I recall from the hands-on area that the white one is shiniest.

01:35:19 ◼   ► That's sort of the difference.

01:35:20 ◼   ► Like what's the brighter color of titanium.

01:35:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:35:24 ◼   ► But it's still curious to me because the back of that phone, they call it white, but it's

01:35:27 ◼   ► not white.

01:35:28 ◼   ► It's sort of off white.

01:35:30 ◼   ► That's, that's the curious thing to me.

01:35:32 ◼   ► I can see why they went with both natural and white and the natural, especially since

01:35:37 ◼   ► they're just making the fact that it's titanium, the first marketing campaign.

01:35:44 ◼   ► There's a billboard around the corner from me and the only word on the billboard is titanium

01:35:49 ◼   ► iPhone 15 pro.

01:35:50 ◼   ► The commercials I'm seeing on football games are all about titanium and titanium, titanium,

01:35:56 ◼   ► titanium.

01:35:57 ◼   ► I don't blame them.

01:35:58 ◼   ► It's great.

01:35:59 ◼   ► And also no other phone maker out there is making phones out of titanium yet if they

01:36:04 ◼   ► ever will again.

01:36:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:36:06 ◼   ► I mean, the titanium thing is so interesting to me because titanium as a material retains

01:36:11 ◼   ► a lot more heat than aluminum, which is, you know, why they did this.

01:36:15 ◼   ► They came up with this whole interesting like bonding process where they keep the interior

01:36:21 ◼   ► frame of the phone aluminum so that it wicks heat quickly transfers heat away from the

01:36:26 ◼   ► CPU, GPU, et cetera, and out towards the edges of the phone.

01:36:30 ◼   ► But I'm sure you've noticed the phone is significantly hotter than the 14 pro.

01:36:35 ◼   ► In my opinion, I haven't run thermal tests.

01:36:37 ◼   ► I think some folks, some reviewers have and noticed that it ran significantly hotter,

01:36:41 ◼   ► especially when charging or like gaming.

01:36:44 ◼   ► I don't think it's a factor at lie.

01:36:46 ◼   ► I think it's probably going to be one of those things that becomes a mini meme for reviewers

01:36:51 ◼   ► over the next few weeks because for the long tail of reviewers, because it's hot, man.

01:36:57 ◼   ► Like it does get hot to the touch, not in a way that I ever found to be uncomfortable

01:37:01 ◼   ► or anything like that.

01:37:03 ◼   ► But my wife had even noticed.

01:37:04 ◼   ► She's like, oh wow, this is warmer.

01:37:06 ◼   ► Like this feels quite a bit warmer.

01:37:08 ◼   ► And I think that's the titanium has a lot to do with that.

01:37:11 ◼   ► It holds heat more than aluminum.

01:37:13 ◼   ► If it's wicking heat away from the GPU, it's going to hit that titanium material and stay

01:37:18 ◼   ► longer and like chill out there more.

01:37:21 ◼   ► So the rim is going to be hotter when you're either gaming hardcore or charging it with

01:37:25 ◼   ► a fast charger with a high wattage charger.

01:37:28 ◼   ► But the fact is, is like once again, almost a non issue for me, as long as it doesn't

01:37:33 ◼   ► affect overall performance, which that's a factor, but it's not a really effective for

01:37:37 ◼   ► me because everybody runs cases.

01:37:39 ◼   ► So who cares?

01:37:41 ◼   ► That's that's the way I look at it.

01:37:43 ◼   ► One question I asked and I was wasn't expecting an answer, but it's, I effectively got the

01:37:48 ◼   ► answer was, cause it, when I pose this, you'll see, ah, yeah, that seems like the type of

01:37:53 ◼   ► question they wouldn't comment on, but I sort of got an answer, which was with this aluminum

01:37:57 ◼   ► interior titanium exterior, was it a cost thing?

01:38:02 ◼   ► Cause titanium is expensive and it's cheaper to use aluminum where you can inside where

01:38:05 ◼   ► it's not exposed or was it really an engineering thing and a heat thing.

01:38:08 ◼   ► And they're like, it's an engineering thing.

01:38:10 ◼   ► Like it was a, like the idea of using titanium in all the parts where there's actually aluminum

01:38:16 ◼   ► inside wasn't feasible engineering wise.

01:38:18 ◼   ► Like it wasn't about cost or structure or anything.

01:38:22 ◼   ► It's the heat dissipation issue was the singular reason for it has nothing to do with the weight.

01:38:27 ◼   ► It's nice that some of it's aluminum because that makes it even lighter than it would be

01:38:31 ◼   ► if it was more, more titanium, but it's the heat dissipation thing.

01:38:37 ◼   ► And again, a lot of times they don't want to talk about engineering problems like that,

01:38:40 ◼   ► but they kind of talked about it in the keynote, which I guess is why they were willing to

01:38:44 ◼   ► reiterate it to me off the record that it was, it's a heat problem and a long, long standing

01:38:49 ◼   ► problem that they were trying to solve.

01:38:51 ◼   ► Oh, heath, heath.

01:38:54 ◼   ► That's what it was.

01:38:55 ◼   ► It totally just jumped in my head.

01:38:57 ◼   ► HEIF.

01:38:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:38:59 ◼   ► That's that.

01:39:00 ◼   ► Isn't that the video format?

01:39:01 ◼   ► Right?

01:39:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:04 ◼   ► That was w but that's how they pronounced it.

01:39:05 ◼   ► I don't think they pronounced it heat for the yes.

01:39:06 ◼   ► For the images, but we were talking about video, right?

01:39:09 ◼   ► So yeah.

01:39:10 ◼   ► Heath.

01:39:11 ◼   ► I remember now I was like, they said he if I said, I'm sorry, what?

01:39:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:15 ◼   ► Like I was like, is that a, I thought it was like a person's name, like Keith, Keith Richards.

01:39:18 ◼   ► Who's he?

01:39:19 ◼   ► Who's he?

01:39:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:21 ◼   ► Sorry for the call back, but it just jumped into my head.

01:39:23 ◼   ► You are right though.

01:39:24 ◼   ► It was heath.

01:39:25 ◼   ► I don't know who he is, but let me see here.

01:39:32 ◼   ► What else?

01:39:33 ◼   ► I phones pro you gotta, you gotta roll with it.

01:39:36 ◼   ► All right.

01:39:37 ◼   ► I will say this on the battery front.

01:39:38 ◼   ► A couple of people commented.

01:39:39 ◼   ► I didn't write about battery life in my review and it's something I do.

01:39:43 ◼   ► I think I skip it most years because I with only like five days of testing, I don't feel

01:39:50 ◼   ► like anything I can say about the battery life is useful because with five days of testing,

01:39:54 ◼   ► I've spent the entire time using the phones in unnatural ways because I'm shooting way

01:40:00 ◼   ► more photos and videos than I would on any normal day.

01:40:04 ◼   ► And it's impossible even with multiple phones.

01:40:08 ◼   ► Like I have, they, as my reviewer kit bag had all four phones, 15, 15 plus 15 pro 15

01:40:14 ◼   ► pro max.

01:40:15 ◼   ► I can't pretend to use one of them, quote unquote normally while using another one to

01:40:22 ◼   ► stress test the camera because number one, I can only have my SIM card in one or my SIM

01:40:28 ◼   ► eSIM active in one.

01:40:30 ◼   ► And it's like, well, I am getting notifications on that phone and I'm doing things on it.

01:40:35 ◼   ► I can't say that this other phone is being used normally, so I can't make judgments.

01:40:39 ◼   ► All I can do is comment on the battery life I got while stress testing the phones, which

01:40:45 ◼   ► was in line with previous years of iPhones.

01:40:48 ◼   ► Like got me through the day.

01:40:50 ◼   ► Yes, my battery was way lower than it is with my 14 pro on a normal day by five o'clock

01:40:57 ◼   ► because I've been shooting video and using it.

01:40:59 ◼   ► The screens been on all time.

01:41:01 ◼   ► Like I can look at my, what do you, what do they call it?

01:41:05 ◼   ► Screen time stats.

01:41:06 ◼   ► It's like my screen time stats look like I caught a case of iPhone addiction a week

01:41:10 ◼   ► ago.

01:41:11 ◼   ► Right.

01:41:12 ◼   ► Right.

01:41:13 ◼   ► So yeah, your screen time is up 92% was I think my notification.

01:41:18 ◼   ► Right.

01:41:19 ◼   ► So I just, it's not worth commenting on battery life.

01:41:22 ◼   ► Not because I don't think it's an important issue.

01:41:23 ◼   ► Of course it is.

01:41:24 ◼   ► I think I would notice if battery life were worse if it were dying by two or three in

01:41:31 ◼   ► the afternoon while stress testing it, I'd be like, well, this is unusual.

01:41:34 ◼   ► I don't remember ever doing this with a review, but the, the reviewers perspective

01:41:39 ◼   ► in a five day period is just totally unnatural.

01:41:42 ◼   ► You know, you obviously take going to Disneyland, even when you're not reviewing a phone is

01:41:48 ◼   ► an unusual situation.

01:41:51 ◼   ► It's a repeatable aggressive scenario, right?

01:41:55 ◼   ► Like that's the, that's one of the reasons I love the Disneyland thing is I agree with

01:41:58 ◼   ► you like, look, there's a bunch of factors with battery life.

01:42:01 ◼   ► That's why I don't like put precise times or like do battery comparison charts for my

01:42:07 ◼   ► particular review.

01:42:08 ◼   ► Not and nothing against the people that run like a video test and just verify cause you

01:42:13 ◼   ► should trust, but verify any stats that a company gives you about how their device performs.

01:42:19 ◼   ► Apple tends to be pretty careful about their tests.

01:42:22 ◼   ► So if you run a rough test, that's very similar to what they put on the website, you should

01:42:27 ◼   ► get something in that range.

01:42:28 ◼   ► And I think reviewers have gotten that, but I, I tried like, yes, if even if it was a

01:42:34 ◼   ► phone I'd had for six months and I went to Disneyland with it, that thing is going to

01:42:37 ◼   ► get the absolute junk used out of it during that day.

01:42:41 ◼   ► And as reviewing a phone is no exception.

01:42:42 ◼   ► And in fact, it's like, it's exacerbated.

01:42:45 ◼   ► So I give people a rough idea of like, Hey, I charged, I took it off the charger at like

01:42:49 ◼   ► 7 30 AM and I had to charge it by about five 30 PM or whatever it was.

01:42:54 ◼   ► And I take what I normally do is just take a screenshot in the morning and then I take

01:42:56 ◼   ► a screenshot at 1% like when my battery's about to go dead and I'm going to plug in

01:43:00 ◼   ► a portable charger or plug it in.

01:43:03 ◼   ► And then just give people that rough idea so that they can see like, Hey, if you're

01:43:07 ◼   ► using your phone like mad at Disneyland, this is the rough thing you're going to get.

01:43:11 ◼   ► But there's additional factors, which I try to mention and stuff, which is that these

01:43:15 ◼   ► are brand new devices that are still indexing, right?

01:43:19 ◼   ► Like I can't index them fast enough, right?

01:43:21 ◼   ► I can't let them sit for three days.

01:43:22 ◼   ► No, I have to start using it.

01:43:24 ◼   ► I can't let them sit by cloud and yeah, index them and like all of that stuff.

01:43:27 ◼   ► And you got to start using them.

01:43:28 ◼   ► So there's mitigating factors.

01:43:30 ◼   ► So I actually feel okay with that when I talk about battery life in my review, which is

01:43:35 ◼   ► that rough idea number that I just said, because in my mind, that's conservative, they'll

01:43:39 ◼   ► probably get more, right?

01:43:41 ◼   ► Like they will probably get more than that.

01:43:42 ◼   ► I'm fine being conservative.

01:43:44 ◼   ► I don't want to be overly optimistic.

01:43:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:43:47 ◼   ► All right.

01:43:48 ◼   ► Let me take a break here.

01:43:49 ◼   ► Thank our third and final sponsor of the day fuel for my end of this podcast trade coffee.

01:43:54 ◼   ► Trade coffee connects people to the best roasters in the country so that you can discover great

01:44:00 ◼   ► coffee to brew at home with 450 over 450 coffees, everything from dark roasts, espresso blends,

01:44:10 ◼   ► rare roasts, you name it.

01:44:13 ◼   ► Trade guarantees that you will find something new to love.

01:44:16 ◼   ► If you're not sure where to start with craft coffee, they guide you through the process

01:44:22 ◼   ► at the beginning, ask you some questions about the sort of things you like and they get you

01:44:26 ◼   ► started.

01:44:27 ◼   ► And then when you get your coffee, it's a subscription service gets delivered to your

01:44:31 ◼   ► home.

01:44:32 ◼   ► When you start getting your coffee, you then answered, did you like it?

01:44:36 ◼   ► Give it a thumbs up.

01:44:37 ◼   ► Was this not really to your liking?

01:44:39 ◼   ► Give it a thumbs down.

01:44:40 ◼   ► And they use those like sort of, Hey, I like this one.

01:44:43 ◼   ► Oh, I didn't like that one.

01:44:45 ◼   ► And sort of tailor what they deliver to you in the future.

01:44:48 ◼   ► I've been subscribed to trade coffee for like well over a year at this point.

01:44:52 ◼   ► I don't give them any feedback anymore.

01:44:54 ◼   ► I just take the coffee they shipped to me and it's just delicious week after week after

01:44:58 ◼   ► week.

01:44:59 ◼   ► You get to set the schedule you want.

01:45:01 ◼   ► You want like one bag of coffee every two weeks.

01:45:04 ◼   ► That's what I'm on because I'm the only coffee drinker in the house.

01:45:07 ◼   ► You want one every week.

01:45:09 ◼   ► You want one every three weeks, something like that.

01:45:11 ◼   ► You just get to set it a super easy webpage where you log in.

01:45:15 ◼   ► You're going on vacation.

01:45:17 ◼   ► You can just pause your delivery for a while, set a thing like that.

01:45:21 ◼   ► You have complete control over that stuff.

01:45:23 ◼   ► But the main thing is it is great coffee from dozens, dozens of independent roasters all

01:45:30 ◼   ► over America delivered fresh to your home.

01:45:34 ◼   ► It's always delivered, shipped within 48 hours of being roasted.

01:45:38 ◼   ► Within 48 hours of being roasted, it's in the bag, it's sealed, it's in a box, it's

01:45:41 ◼   ► mailed to you.

01:45:42 ◼   ► You get it within days of being roasted and it is just, it's just terrific coffee and

01:45:48 ◼   ► you don't have to do anything.

01:45:49 ◼   ► It's just magic.

01:45:50 ◼   ► Ding dong.

01:45:51 ◼   ► The post office comes and delivers fresh coffee to you on a regular basis.

01:45:54 ◼   ► It couldn't be better.

01:45:56 ◼   ► Upgrade your morning routine with better coffee.

01:45:58 ◼   ► Right now, Trade is offering listeners of the talk show a free bag of coffee with any

01:46:02 ◼   ► subscription.

01:46:03 ◼   ► Just go to www.drinktrade.com/the-talk-show.

01:46:08 ◼   ► That's www.drinktrade.com/the-talk-show with the "the" for a free bag of coffee with

01:46:15 ◼   ► any subscription purchase.

01:46:17 ◼   ► www.drinktrade.com/the-talk-show.

01:46:23 ◼   ► What else is there?

01:46:24 ◼   ► USB-C. I don't have much to say about it.

01:46:25 ◼   ► I'm glad.

01:46:26 ◼   ► It seems like there's not much controversy.

01:46:28 ◼   ► Seems like it's just sort of, yeah, okay, new adapter.

01:46:31 ◼   ► I think the main point, you mentioned it in your review, it's certainly, because me

01:46:35 ◼   ► and my wife are the only ones here and we both bought new phones, it won't be a problem

01:46:38 ◼   ► for us, but the main problem people are going to run into is like, oh, I mean, who doesn't

01:46:43 ◼   ► have like a charging cable in the kitchen or something like that?

01:46:47 ◼   ► Well, now you need two.

01:46:49 ◼   ► If you're, unless every single member of your household is upgraded to the new phones this

01:46:53 ◼   ► year.

01:46:54 ◼   ► And anybody out there with kids and stuff like that, now you've got to have two cables.

01:46:58 ◼   ► Or if you've got like a charging cable in your car, I don't know, then you're going

01:47:03 ◼   ► to want that.

01:47:04 ◼   ► Right.

01:47:05 ◼   ► So is this a reason to put, replace those cables sitting around with MagSafe pucks?

01:47:10 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:47:11 ◼   ► But for the, even with MagSafe at like an Apple branded one that charges at 15 watts,

01:47:16 ◼   ► you can charge close to twice the speed with a cable connection.

01:47:22 ◼   ► And those sort of like, oh, I'm like ready to go out the door to run errands or go to

01:47:28 ◼   ► work or something and my phone needs to charge.

01:47:30 ◼   ► Like a lot of the times when it, anything other than charging overnight, you kind of

01:47:34 ◼   ► want it to go as fast as possible.

01:47:37 ◼   ► That's a pain, but you know, it is what it is.

01:47:39 ◼   ► And I guess the downside, the biggest downside is that lightning and USB look so similar

01:47:44 ◼   ► at a glance that it's, it's easy to absentmindedly try to stab the wrong cable into the bottom

01:47:50 ◼   ► of your phone.

01:47:51 ◼   ► Yes.

01:47:52 ◼   ► Which, yeah.

01:47:53 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:47:54 ◼   ► I guess like the multi-cable family has always been a thing.

01:48:00 ◼   ► I just think that iPhones have been like the constant for the past 10 years.

01:48:03 ◼   ► Right?

01:48:04 ◼   ► Like it's always like, oh, I got to charge in a battery pack.

01:48:06 ◼   ► Oh, dang, this is an old one.

01:48:07 ◼   ► It takes micro USB.

01:48:08 ◼   ► Like my, my charging station in my office, which is, I wish there was something better

01:48:12 ◼   ► out there.

01:48:13 ◼   ► Nobody's really made any one, anything that's worth anything, but like the, the idea that,

01:48:19 ◼   ► you know, you're going to have multiple different battery packs and charges and things is not

01:48:23 ◼   ► foreign to me.

01:48:25 ◼   ► And I think probably to most people, I don't think anybody was like, oh, we're a one cable

01:48:29 ◼   ► household and gosh, these iPhones are just outliers.

01:48:32 ◼   ► I think high, like high range early adopters maybe have been that way for a bit because

01:48:38 ◼   ► they're like have been converting themselves aggressively over to USB-C. But the fact is

01:48:42 ◼   ► it's like the vast majority of cheap battery packs that are offered on the market or use

01:48:46 ◼   ► USB like micro USB to charge and have for years.

01:48:50 ◼   ► And so you have always been like a multifamily household.

01:48:53 ◼   ► I just think now it's like that association of, oh, there's a white cable hanging out

01:48:58 ◼   ► of a charger or a wall.

01:49:00 ◼   ► That's lightning.

01:49:01 ◼   ► I'm going to plug this thing into my phone and it's just led to some annoyance so far,

01:49:05 ◼   ► but you know, it is what it is.

01:49:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:49:08 ◼   ► One thing I've done for years personally, although I guess now I don't really need

01:49:11 ◼   ► lightning in my bag or I guess I'll keep one because I have a lightning Apple battery

01:49:16 ◼   ► pack, but I've always only used Apple's lightning cables, which are white.

01:49:21 ◼   ► And then when I buy my own USB-C cables, I never buy white.

01:49:24 ◼   ► I just buy them in black or gray or something like that.

01:49:27 ◼   ► And so if I see a white cable, if I see a white cable, I know it's lightning.

01:49:31 ◼   ► And if I see a black cable, I know it's not lightning, probably USB-C or something else,

01:49:36 ◼   ► but not that big a deal.

01:49:38 ◼   ► Action button.

01:49:39 ◼   ► I'm a big fan.

01:49:40 ◼   ► I've been playing with it.

01:49:41 ◼   ► I think it's because if all you want is to mute, I think it's actually better than

01:49:45 ◼   ► the old mute switch, or at least it's a, it's a wash.

01:49:49 ◼   ► It's not worse.

01:49:50 ◼   ► If all you want is a button above the volume buttons that toggles the silent mode, you've

01:49:54 ◼   ► still got it.

01:49:56 ◼   ► It takes enough of a long press that I don't think it's possible to do it accidentally,

01:50:00 ◼   ► but it works fast enough where it never feels like, come on, come on, come on.

01:50:03 ◼   ► I'm pressing this switch.

01:50:04 ◼   ► It's fast.

01:50:05 ◼   ► I love the options.

01:50:07 ◼   ► The shortcut stuff has been fun to play with.

01:50:09 ◼   ► I've got this shortcut I wrote, which I'm really loving.

01:50:12 ◼   ► It sounds super nerdy, but in practice, it's really working well, where I kind of want

01:50:16 ◼   ► it to be like a magic, sometimes do the mute and sometimes just, I just want to jump into

01:50:20 ◼   ► the camera really quickly.

01:50:22 ◼   ► And so I've got, I'm using the device orientation.

01:50:25 ◼   ► So if it's face down, it's mute switch and anything else, it jumps me to the camera.

01:50:34 ◼   ► And it just works like magic.

01:50:36 ◼   ► So every time I'm looking at it, I just take it out and it'll jump me to the camera.

01:50:41 ◼   ► And if I really want to just toggle the mute switch, I just make sure it's face down

01:50:45 ◼   ► or upside down, which is the pocket, like portrait mode upside down.

01:50:50 ◼   ► It seemingly, and some people I've tweeted that out or posted on Daring Fireball, they're

01:50:56 ◼   ► like, "Why doesn't it work like that by default?"

01:50:58 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Oh no, that'd be terrible by default."

01:51:01 ◼   ► Like normal people don't want to, Apple can't ship it like that to 200 million customers.

01:51:06 ◼   ► It depends.

01:51:07 ◼   ► It depends.