00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 530. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Vitally and Ladder.
00:00:16 ◼ ► My name is Mike Hurley and I have the pleasure of being joined in person by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason.
00:00:32 ◼ ► Bye, Steven. Yeah. And we've taken all of his stuff and we're using it to record our podcast.
00:00:38 ◼ ► It's true. But I have a Snell Talk question for you. It comes from Benjamin, who wants to know.
00:00:43 ◼ ► I've recently found myself suddenly sluggish in the morning instead of energized and I wonder if tea may help me.
00:00:54 ◼ ► But what I would say is you don't have to be there. There's a deep hole you can go down.
00:01:01 ◼ ► I like it with breakfast tea, which has a lot of caffeine in it. I think there's a green tea that has caffeine in it, too.
00:01:14 ◼ ► Yes. So the danger is if you have caffeine, too much caffeine, especially late in the day,
00:01:19 ◼ ► you may find yourself sluggish in the morning instead of energized because you will have slept poorly.
00:01:25 ◼ ► So keep that in mind. But I'd say I started drinking tea more regularly because I talked to a friend who actually said,
00:01:42 ◼ ► It does. So what I would say is to get into tea. The simplest thing maybe is go to your local supermarket.
00:01:50 ◼ ► And first off, don't if you're an American, don't buy Lipton. Don't do it. But there are lots of brands that will have an English breakfast tea.
00:01:57 ◼ ► Twining's is a good one. There are some others out there. But get get get a box of tea bags and then you boil water.
00:02:05 ◼ ► You put the tea bag in to the boiling water in your cup or you put your tea bag into the cup and then put the boiling water into the cup.
00:02:12 ◼ ► Don't like put the tea bag into where you boil the water. Anyway, wait three or four minutes. Take the tea bag out.
00:02:26 ◼ ► I'm like, what? What are you doing? Maybe they just can't wait or it's an herbal tea and then it's OK.
00:02:31 ◼ ► Anyway, try it. And then you can try it with milk. You can try it with sugar. You can try it with honey.
00:02:38 ◼ ► I mean, that's really that's really the answer and see if the caffeine has an effect on you.
00:02:46 ◼ ► It's like you don't have to. I'm I'm not a complicator. I don't want to build up walls here.
00:02:56 ◼ ► If you're in the UK, which you probably aren't, if you're asking about tea, PG Tips is fine, too.
00:03:01 ◼ ► You could get that. Get a builder's tea. It doesn't matter. But in America, just, yeah, look for something that says English breakfast on it.
00:03:09 ◼ ► Don't get Earl Grey. Earl Grey is not the same as English breakfast. Some people like Earl Grey.
00:03:12 ◼ ► I love Earl Grey. I don't love it. I prefer not having the Earl Grey smell in there, but whatever. Start start it simple.
00:03:20 ◼ ► So that's my answer, Benjamin. I recommend coffee. If you would like to send in a question for a future episode of the show.
00:03:33 ◼ ► Now, we're in the pod cabin because we're here in Memphis, because two days ago, we were a part of the Podcastathon, both of us,
00:03:47 ◼ ► And we raised over, I think, one hundred and thirty thousand dollars during the Podcastathon this year, which is a new record.
00:04:06 ◼ ► And thank you all for watching. It's on our YouTube channel, the Relay YouTube channel.
00:04:11 ◼ ► I've put a link in the show notes if you want to catch up on it. There's a lot of good fun there.
00:04:19 ◼ ► So for the sixth consecutive year, we have united the whole Relay community to support St. Jude Children's Research Hospital because they have a simple mission,
00:04:27 ◼ ► which is to make sure that no child loses their life to cancer no matter where they live.
00:04:32 ◼ ► And they need our help to drive the mission forward. The Podcastathon was a great success, of course, but there is still time left in September.
00:04:40 ◼ ► And we want you all to donate because of the incredible work that St. Jude does in making sure that the children that are receiving treatment in the hospital try and live as normal life as they can.
00:04:53 ◼ ► Like, for example, Jason, did you know that St. Jude has a school that spans preschool through 12th grade for patients who will be at St. Jude for upward of six weeks?
00:05:02 ◼ ► No, I did not know that. I have learned a lot over the years, but I think I missed the fact that they have their own school.
00:05:08 ◼ ► This staff that are a part of the St. Jude school includes teachers trained in English language, learner instruction, visual impairment, instructions and services, a librarian, a STEM coordinator, and there are even reading dogs who visit to read with the kids.
00:05:22 ◼ ► So all of this really helps the children try and live as normal life as they can, which is a big thing they try and do.
00:05:29 ◼ ► This is in the idea of providing food, providing somewhere for the families to be and to be together to try and make sure that these kids have the best recovery possible.
00:05:38 ◼ ► You may think, oh, wait a second, I'm going to the hospital and I also have to go to school.
00:05:41 ◼ ► Yeah, I know. But there is the whole I've been through my treatment and now I have to go back home.
00:05:46 ◼ ► And after there's a very difficult thing, suddenly I'm also behind in school and get left behind. Like, you don't want that.
00:05:52 ◼ ► You don't want that. Our community has shown so much generosity over the last six years.
00:05:57 ◼ ► In fact, as we're recording this today, as we're recording a little bit early, we've actually passed the most money that we have ever raised in a campaign.
00:06:18 ◼ ► Like if you really enjoyed the artwork that we were using during the podcastathon, you can have some of that for yourself in the form of stickers or wallpapers.
00:06:26 ◼ ► If you sign up to fundraise and you can get coins and desk mats, you can find out about all of this at stjude.org/relay, where you'll also see some information about employee matching as well.
00:06:44 ◼ ► I thought for a second there that UK English had started pronouncing other strange, other letters differently.
00:07:02 ◼ ► I wanted you to actually mention the issue that you had with the sports app that you were telling me about.
00:07:14 ◼ ► So I was looking at some football games and realized that there's a bug where at least sometimes in some games it leaves off the last score.
00:07:23 ◼ ► So there was a I believe Stanford beat Syracuse on Friday night with a field goal at the end of the game.
00:07:32 ◼ ► And when I looked at the score in Apple's sports app, it had the score as final as a tie, which college football does not allow ties.
00:07:58 ◼ ► And then I also noticed for several other games that if I looked at the scoring drives list for football and football support is new in Apple sports, it would leave off the most recent scoring drive or the last one in the game.
00:08:16 ◼ ► That said, I used it yesterday for for a few college football games, including my beloved Cal Bears, who lost tragically to Florida State, played well enough to win.
00:08:32 ◼ ► And as we sat here, as we sat here, I used a feature of watch OS, which is that it picks up the live activities from my phone and a feature of iOS, which is that sports app now does live activities directly instead of through the TV app, which is always a bad idea.
00:08:52 ◼ ► And I actually got a buzz on my watch telling me that Arsenal scored a goal while we were sitting here.
00:09:00 ◼ ► Yes, it's this this just in at some point during Sunday's match, Arsenal led to one breaking news.
00:09:14 ◼ ► So I guess what I'm saying is the sports app has some things that are good about it needs more work.
00:09:19 ◼ ► And the only thing about it that troubles me is, although it definitely feels like it's a passion project from Eddie Q and his team.
00:09:33 ◼ ► And I think it needs to be held to a higher standard and they need to put more effort into it.
00:09:57 ◼ ► This is the bare minimum, which is the day that their phones shipped that are claimed to be built from the ground up for Apple intelligence, which is not really true.
00:10:07 ◼ ► But I mean, it's compatible with Apple intelligence, or they made sure that Apple intelligence fit within the specs of these phones, whatever it is.
00:10:16 ◼ ► I think they probably had to really add the RAM to the 16s to make sure that they could do it on the day they shipped.
00:10:25 ◼ ► You could be as a regular person, you could opt into the public beta of 18.1 and run Apple intelligence.
00:10:41 ◼ ► Mark Gurman has detailed a little bit more about, you know, what happens in 18.1 and what's in 18.2 and what's in 18.3 that comes out in January and what's in 18.4 and what's in 18.5.
00:11:19 ◼ ► Yeah, the reason I know this is that it just turns out that I tap a lot at the bottom of my iPad screen and it's kicking in type to Siri and I don't want it.
00:11:26 ◼ ► I might actually turn that off because I've had the same thing on my iPad where I keep hitting it and I reckon I'm going to be worse on my iPhone.
00:11:42 ◼ ► And I mean, at the moment, Siri is no better, which I still maintain is a mistake from Apple to change the Siri UI in 18.1 because Siri is no better.
00:11:57 ◼ ► Like, I tried a bunch of things and it is as inconsistent like, oh, can it remember the previous question?
00:12:06 ◼ ► Sometimes or maybe all the time, but other times it just decides to do something else completely.
00:12:15 ◼ ► And maybe again, like by 19, it might actually be useful to ask it questions like that, like, you know, the way in which I might ask chatgpt a question.
00:12:33 ◼ ► And like, if I ask that question, do I have to tap more prompts than if I just open the chatgpt app?
00:12:39 ◼ ► Right. You know, these are the things we don't know yet because they haven't enabled that, but yeah, you can now at least get some features in the public beta.
00:12:47 ◼ ► Right. And I think everybody anticipates that will be fairly soon in the next couple of weeks, that that will ship to everybody.
00:13:00 ◼ ► But it's I think technically making it a public beta available now, especially since 18.1 ships, they're still going to call it beta.
00:13:15 ◼ ► Indeed. Apple have confirmed to TayCrunch that they are looking to support German, Italian, Korean and Portuguese for Apple intelligence in 2025.
00:13:25 ◼ ► And they also stated to TayCrunch that they are working with China and the EU on bringing these features to these regional devices.
00:13:31 ◼ ► I mean, those go together, right? Is there some Italian speaking colony out there somewhere?
00:13:36 ◼ ► That's what I thought. Italian and German. I mean, I'm sure that these languages are spoken of a places, but it's not like Portuguese, for example, right?
00:13:55 ◼ ► But German and Italian, I don't think that they have like Portuguese where there are more people that speak Portuguese outside of Portugal than in Portugal.
00:14:09 ◼ ► So and again, I think some people just see this as like, oh, Apple just doesn't want to work with Europe.
00:14:18 ◼ ► But that doesn't make any logical sense for them to be so headstrong on Apple intelligence.
00:14:32 ◼ ► In fact, if we look at that chat GPT announcement and the idea that it is going to be open to other partners,
00:14:39 ◼ ► that may be a little clue that they want to, that they know they need to build that stuff so that they are allowed in the EU, right?
00:14:56 ◼ ► And so they're just, yeah, I think the idea that it's a fatalistic, like the EU is never going to have Apple intelligence, that's wrong.
00:15:05 ◼ ► And this is Apple moving down that route because it doesn't make any sense otherwise to have German and Italian in there.
00:15:29 ◼ ► I've been playing it, I've played hours and hours of it on my Steam Deck, knowing that it was obvious that this would come to mobile one day because it is so perfect for that.
00:15:41 ◼ ► But interestingly, so there have been a lot of questions asked for years about are Apple actually doing anything with Arcade?
00:15:51 ◼ ► And I think this is an example of there are still people at Apple that understand what to do with mobile gaming because they're doing something different here that I've not seen them do before.
00:16:01 ◼ ► Bellatro will be a paid game on the App Store at the same time that Bellatro Plus is available in Apple Arcade.
00:16:09 ◼ ► Now they've done like versions of these kinds of things over time, but this is like on the day.
00:16:15 ◼ ► I actually think paid version is launching a couple of days later, but Apple understand the importance of getting this game.
00:16:26 ◼ ► And if you're an Apple Arcade subscriber, you unlock everything without paying because you're a subscriber.
00:16:36 ◼ ► This is a great way to at least try Apple Arcade because you'd get in for like $5 a month or whatever and play it for a couple of months.
00:17:01 ◼ ► Rumor round up, Mac rumors have discovered code that references "Apple Silicon Mac Mini 5 Port"
00:17:10 ◼ ► giving more evidence to Mark Gurman's rumor of an upcoming refresh of the Mac Mini having five USB-C ports.
00:17:33 ◼ ► Like you, I'm coming around to the idea that I'm not sure I actually need a Mac's chip and that the Pro chip might be fine for me.
00:17:42 ◼ ► I think I need more than the base M4, but an M4 Pro might be enough that I don't need to hold out for an M4 Mac's studio.
00:17:50 ◼ ► And the other thing that makes me think maybe I'll be interested in this is when I left home last week,
00:18:04 ◼ ► The mode, you know, the mode where the light on the front of the Mac blinks SOS and Morse code.
00:18:14 ◼ ► I, my Mac got in a state where when I tried to, I don't know what it was doing, what it was taking.
00:18:23 ◼ ► It, when I tried to apply a software update to get on the new version, the new beta, it said, I can't personalize this for you.
00:18:33 ◼ ► And I looked this up and it seems like this is a very bad thing because it's basically like trying to compare the cryptographic signature and failing and saying, I can't do this.
00:18:43 ◼ ► And I, and, and it sounds like a reset was about all I could do complicated by the fact that I was running a beta, which means I couldn't just like reboot and say, install this again because I was on a beta version.
00:19:02 ◼ ► I don't know if you've ever had this, where when you reboot, it says, um, some system extensions got updated and you need to allow them and then I'll restart and then it'll be okay.
00:19:13 ◼ ► And the system extensions were from Apple and I get allowed and rebooted and then it just comes up again and says, some system extensions need to be allowed and you need to reboot and you can say, forget it.
00:19:46 ◼ ► Cause I thought I could do an update and that might shake out this extension permission problem, but I can't do an update ever apparently because of this.
00:19:56 ◼ ► And I tried all sorts of different pathways and in the end it seemed like putting it in restore mode.
00:20:00 ◼ ► And to be clear, this is the mode where you have to put it, connect it to another Mac via USB-C like it's an iPhone that you're restoring.
00:20:29 ◼ ► So anyway, I left it where my, where, where my laptop was attached to it as it's blinking SOS.
00:20:41 ◼ ► However, it, the, the, the bar had gone like 10% of the way and then just stayed there for hours.
00:20:55 ◼ ► And if I, and if I click cancel, so what happened is I did click cancel and the progress bar jumped way forward.
00:21:36 ◼ ► I say, so, uh, Emma in the discord, I think has found a similar thing and they've, they've quoted it from the Apple support forums.
00:21:45 ◼ ► Uh, I was instructed by Apple support to have an Apple service center perform a quote revive procedure.
00:21:55 ◼ ► And I did attempt to revive it and that failed, which meant I then needed to do a restore.
00:22:00 ◼ ► Um, and yes, according to Emma, the only remains, the remaining solution, this isn't an Apple discussion thing.
00:22:08 ◼ ► Because there may be a corruption of the security firmware built into the Apple Silicon.
00:22:19 ◼ ► It kind of feels like that is the thing that if something goes wrong there, it's, it's done.
00:22:35 ◼ ► But the question is if I, if I can't even with a tether loaded up with the right thing, what happens then?
00:22:42 ◼ ► I'll look forward to hearing more about this, but I may be living on a, on a laptop in, in the meantime and then waiting for a Mac mini perhaps.
00:22:58 ◼ ► Or we, or we were going to see like the snake oil doctor or something and they're trying to bring it back.
00:23:05 ◼ ► Ming-Chi Kuo is reporting that the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and a new SE model are still in the works now expected for 2025.
00:23:12 ◼ ► Mark Gurman is reporting that the new design of the Apple Watch Series 10 was a contributing factor to Apple delaying blood pressure monitoring for the Apple Watch.
00:23:23 ◼ ► It seems like it, it seems like maybe this is one of those scenarios where one team has one thing, another team has another thing, and whoever was doing the blood pressure couldn't get that technology small enough in time to fit inside the Series 10.
00:23:48 ◼ ► And I feel like this was a year where they could, because they had other legitimately good health features this year.
00:24:03 ◼ ► And I don't know if it did that because I'm in America because I don't believe it's been approved in the UK.
00:24:14 ◼ ► And Ross Young is reporting that he expects all iPhone models will feature a ProMotion display next year.
00:24:19 ◼ ► That would include the 17, which doesn't have it, and the rumored 17 Air or Slim or whatever you want to call it.
00:24:29 ◼ ► I think it's about time that all of these phones get a promotion display and it would not bother me.
00:24:41 ◼ ► People who know about Android too, I think that a phone that costs $700 on the other side is not going to be at 60 frames.
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00:26:57 ◼ ► We'll call this the iPhone 16 review, but I'll say from my perspective, this is like first impression.
00:27:08 ◼ ► We should just be honest about it and call it that because I'm sure you're going to write a review.
00:27:13 ◼ ► And I guess we can kind of give thoughts on the entire line because for those who watch the Podcastathon,
00:27:19 ◼ ► there was a moment where you took a very large cardboard box and started just producing phones at the center for all of us.
00:27:37 ◼ ► So I got desert titanium and I would say the way to describe this, actually in different light, this phone looks very, very different.
00:27:46 ◼ ► So in some lighting and kind of like cooler lighting, it kind of just looks like a slightly warmer version of the natural titanium.
00:28:00 ◼ ► So, you know, you can see we're looking at them right now and you can see it looks quite different and natural to the desert.
00:28:12 ◼ ► So this is I at first I was a little bit like, oh, that's quite pink, but now I've kind of gotten to it's more of like a coppery rose goldy color.
00:28:23 ◼ ► But I wouldn't say if I was just choosing again, right now I've seen them in person, I would just go for the natural.
00:28:43 ◼ ► You know, because it's a it's a bit I think it is of the options, the most garish, maybe like it's doing something different.
00:29:24 ◼ ► It was it was a I was expecting something a little bit more fun like that, you know, like like it was like, did they clip?
00:29:53 ◼ ► This might be good for the for the video viewers out there because we are in person today.
00:30:17 ◼ ► And I think that Apple have really nailed the color infused glass that they've they've been working on.
00:30:31 ◼ ► I don't like the way that cases look with this phone because it also has the weird cut out for the flash because the flash is flush on the back.
00:30:47 ◼ ► Is it also strange to look out on the phone that like just like on the body of the phone, there's just this white circle where the flash is.
00:31:15 ◼ ► The pink and the ultramarine are so good that the teal is like kind of whatever if you want green teal is available to you.
00:31:38 ◼ ► I like them attempting to take parts of it like the flash and put them flush again, because shouldn't the ultimate goal of iPhone design be no camera bump?
00:31:55 ◼ ► I think it's impossible maybe forever, but it should be the goal, I think, to have that bump be as little as possible and as unobtrusive as possible.
00:32:06 ◼ ► And if you can help it along the way, making it smaller, at least by moving some of it to the back, you should do that, right?
00:32:17 ◼ ► It shows you the colors that Apple is capable of when it wants to do it and it feels like it's a good time to do it.
00:33:03 ◼ ► But we I think, you know, as is the way for us, and I do think probably for the vast majority of our listeners, the majority of our time is spent thinking about the pro phones.
00:33:25 ◼ ► So going from the 15 Pro to the 16 Pro, I don't feel like it feels any different in my in my hand.
00:33:42 ◼ ► I like the idea that they attempted to just creep out to the closer to the edges without making the phone that much bigger.
00:33:56 ◼ ► I it's funny because I saw somebody I don't even remember who it was complaining about the placement of the camera control button.
00:34:03 ◼ ► I find that my finger goes very naturally to exactly where the camera control button is.
00:34:24 ◼ ► But what I will say is I'm not convinced that that UI where you double squeeze and bring up a thing that you slide and then click and then go in.
00:34:35 ◼ ► It has a little touch bar vibe to me in the sense that I get what they're going for, but I'm not sure that's the right approach, right?
00:35:12 ◼ ► It's very fiddly, but I think this is reviewer's syndrome in that we're using it a lot, right?
00:35:45 ◼ ► Because realistically, I don't need to change exposure or photographic styles or tone that often.
00:35:59 ◼ ► The other thing I've noticed as well is when I'm doing that, I quite frequently, the way that I'm holding my phone,
00:36:27 ◼ ► My problem with it really is I wonder if when it meets the general public, if they're going to say,
00:36:38 ◼ ► What I try to tell people about this thing is it's only as complicated as you want it to be, as you need it to be.
00:36:53 ◼ ► Like you don't have to be double tapping and moving between things and all of that, which is good because it's kind of awkward.
00:36:59 ◼ ► I actually, so I went into accessibility and changed the amount of pressure needed for the single like tap to be the lightest.
00:37:27 ◼ ► And I do think the thing that people will most likely want to use it for, which is focus, weirdly is not there.
00:37:35 ◼ ► I saw a story that said that they're going to do a software update down the road that is going to add the halfway to focus idea.
00:37:47 ◼ ► But I think the idea is, I think the idea is that there'll be a focus mode where they will put a focus target on the screen and let you do the thing.
00:37:59 ◼ ► It should work where if I want to focus and in the end, it may just be setting where the portrait mode is, right, essentially, because you can change that setting as well.
00:38:07 ◼ ► But if I want to take a picture of you, but I want the couch behind you to be in the picture.
00:38:13 ◼ ► What I would do on a regular camera is I would take the crosshair in the middle and I would put it down at the couch and I go halfway and it would focus on the couch.
00:38:31 ◼ ► And this is one of these themes right now of Apple shipping software that doesn't do all the things they promised.
00:38:40 ◼ ► But I do think that that very familiar interaction, you know, I would argue maybe that's not an interaction that is necessary.
00:38:49 ◼ ► But I can also see that if you're trying to emulate a film camera, it is going to make some people feel comfortable.
00:38:55 ◼ ► Yeah, one thing that I'm really surprised by is you can't flip to the front facing camera using the camera control.
00:39:09 ◼ ► So because I can you can take pictures of it so I can flip it on the screen and I can take pictures of it.
00:39:18 ◼ ► So when you're doing your camera swipe, maybe you need to be able to swipe past to go to, I don't know, go from 0.5 and then to front face.
00:39:27 ◼ ► I don't know how they would do that, but like I feel like I should be able to to have that control because I can do it's almost like there are two cameras in a way, which is weird.
00:39:38 ◼ ► Like there's two distinct systems because I can do all the same adjustment on the front facing camera with the camera control.
00:40:01 ◼ ► Again, this needs a lot more testing, but I've been doing some side by sides and the quality of the forced macro mode is higher in the images that I've tested.
00:40:10 ◼ ► But the thing for me is I need to take more pictures of people because that's where I notice the shadows the most.
00:40:15 ◼ ► But I do feel confident that I looking at like Neil Patel's review, I may be able to have a lot more control over this with the photographic styles, which there is.
00:40:26 ◼ ► Again, I feel like this year when it comes to the camera, Apple have kind of taken the reins off a little bit because camera control is complex.
00:40:44 ◼ ► And that little tone control that they have, the little square is nice, but it's also like a slider.
00:40:50 ◼ ► And it's like an Apple in the camera control, they have two distinct things, one called style, one called tone.
00:40:56 ◼ ► And you can change those with the camera control, but they're both part for the graphic styles and UI.
00:41:02 ◼ ► And styles are the previews you can swipe through and then tone is the controls at the bottom.
00:41:12 ◼ ► The thing that I appreciate is, okay, so you're Apple, this comes up a lot with Apple because they have so many users at so many different levels.
00:41:22 ◼ ► And a lot of the criticism Apple receives is from expert users or advanced amateur users.
00:41:36 ◼ ► That's the problem is most people aren't that and Apple struggles and they bring it on themselves, right?
00:41:47 ◼ ► But it is hard to make something one thing that is easy for people who want it to be easy, but offers an array of complexity for people who want it to be complex.
00:42:04 ◼ ► And what they can't do, I mean, this is like, okay, they added on the Mac in Sequoia, they added all the window management stuff, the tiling.
00:42:14 ◼ ► And we say this when we talk about Sherlocking, it's like, well, if you want something like Moom, the Apple thing doesn't do anything like that.
00:42:21 ◼ ► Well, of course it doesn't because Apple is trying to create something that's for kind of like a regular person who's never going to download third party software.
00:42:29 ◼ ► Well, you see it with the camera control and you see it with the photos or the camera app in general.
00:42:36 ◼ ► And the photos app actually is the same idea, which is they're trying to create a setup where if you just don't know anything, you can do what you need to do very easily.
00:42:52 ◼ ► That's really hard and it will be interesting to see about things like the photographic styles, what form they take.
00:43:01 ◼ ► Because I think ideally, if you don't need to know about them, you don't worry about it.
00:43:07 ◼ ► Or if you set it once to go like, I like my photos to be more colorful or whatever, you set it once and you forget it.
00:43:19 ◼ ► So if you set a photographic style and take a photo of it, the next time you open the camera, it goes back to the default.
00:43:27 ◼ ► You have to go into settings, app, and then camera, then there's a subsection called preserve settings.
00:43:36 ◼ ► And in there is a toggle to turn on photographic styles and then it will retain the one you set previously.
00:43:59 ◼ ► Yeah, so my point is, can they make it so that people are happy just clicking and shooting and make Nilay Patel happy?
00:44:15 ◼ ► What it seems like is that Nilay is happy because, and I think you guys on connected have talked about this a lot,
00:44:24 ◼ ► the increasing feeling that Apple processes its photos so much because they've got a philosophy that we're going to
00:44:36 ◼ ► re-expose everything seven times and merge them together so that you can see detail and shadows and things like that.
00:44:42 ◼ ► But what you lose is contrast. I saw a post on Mastodon that was literally two shots of fog at sunrise in San Francisco.
00:44:57 ◼ ► And the other one is an Apple HDR picture where you can see the individual wisps and all that.
00:45:02 ◼ ► And they said the blown out one that came, I think, from Halide is more accurate to the experience of being there.
00:45:11 ◼ ► And then Apple kind of because the sun is really bright and shining through and it's sort of blown out, gets that effect.
00:45:17 ◼ ► And Apple's one, in order to try to retain all of the detail of the clouds, has made something that actually doesn't feel like the real scene.
00:45:25 ◼ ► So if you're somebody who cares about that kind of stuff, having the ability to set up that sort of thing might take the pressure off.
00:45:34 ◼ ► Where Apple's like, look, we have a philosophy which is capture everything. And if you don't like the fact that that delude or removes contrast,
00:45:45 ◼ ► denudes all the contrast from your images and you're left with this kind of grayish haze, then change it.
00:45:53 ◼ ► Right. Yeah. And it will let you. And that, philosophically, I think that's really interesting because it's basically saying,
00:45:59 ◼ ► OK, Nilay, if our default bugs, you change it and then you'll be happy, too. But the default, I would argue,
00:46:06 ◼ ► Apple feels the default works the best for the majority of people. If we only have one default, right?
00:46:13 ◼ ► The default is the default. It needs to be like, do no harm and also please people who will never change any of their settings.
00:46:31 ◼ ► So this is very confusing. So Zach in the Discord has shown me to a thing in the camera settings called app settings,
00:46:37 ◼ ► photographic styles, where you can go through like a wizard and choose a style, but it doesn't have all the styles in it.
00:46:48 ◼ ► But like the setting that I found, which is in camera, then preserve settings is photographic style. And if you turn that on,
00:46:55 ◼ ► the one I've set in the camera app sticks because the ones that they're showing me here in the app settings section are just the colors,
00:47:04 ◼ ► like amber, gold, rose, neutral, cool. But I like the vivid style. And then I've adapted that a little bit.
00:47:13 ◼ ► OK, so quite confusing. Need to look into that. Yeah, don't understand it yet. But the one that I've chosen, it now shows up every time,
00:47:22 ◼ ► which is the vibrant and I've adjusted a little bit. So the yeah, I think when they introduced photographic styles a few years ago,
00:47:30 ◼ ► the first version of this, they it was a big moment because Apple was sort of saying, OK, our look isn't the only look that you could get from a photo.
00:47:41 ◼ ► We it's so quaint now almost because we live in an era where their competitors are building a cameras where you can change everything.
00:47:50 ◼ ► And other than editing out background items in cleanup in sixteen point one or eighteen point one, the.
00:48:01 ◼ ► Apple and then Apple, actually, somebody at Apple made a statement about this to somebody and basically said,
00:48:06 ◼ ► look, our philosophy is photos are of things that actually happened. And there's a lot of there's a lot more room in there, right?
00:48:19 ◼ ► because we all know that there are so many different ways to capture an image and get different color and a different look and all of that.
00:48:30 ◼ ► Right. The idea that we are not going to have a camera that detects you, you in the foreground and puts you in a field.
00:48:40 ◼ ► And I also really like now that, you know, if I'm thinking about I think this is again, the some of the confusion I'm having like.
00:48:51 ◼ ► And it saves that as the style. But none of those are like the stuff to the left, which is colors and stuff to the right, which I think called moods.
00:49:04 ◼ ► Yeah, I guess. But in the photographic style section of the camera app, all I can change is the undertones.
00:49:22 ◼ ► It's chaos. And so, like, for example, what I want to be able to do, the photographic style that I've chosen is like a recipe.
00:49:36 ◼ ► Yeah, because I would argue that if you create a photographic style in the camera app and say, I like this, I want all my photos to look like this.
00:49:43 ◼ ► You should be able to tap somewhere and say, save this as mine and then ideally save this and then say, save this as make this my default.
00:49:58 ◼ ► Like, yeah, oh, we got to get this ready for the new iPhone. And there are maybe some pieces that are missing.
00:50:03 ◼ ► But what I like I said, what I what I do like is that it feels like they're erring on the side of creating a basic function that everybody can use.
00:50:24 ◼ ► If I take a photo and I'm not happy with the coloring, I'm not happy with the the way that it's been processed.
00:50:51 ◼ ► Yeah. Now I can go back in to the photo, into Apple's system, go back into photographic styles and see if I can change it.
00:51:03 ◼ ► Right. But I do feel like just straight out of the camera, I'm able to get closer to my desired color profile of images before I put them through an app like darkroom, which is my editing of my photo of choice.
00:51:23 ◼ ► Yeah. You should be able to dial that in and have all your photos do that without any work, because that's it's my camera.
00:51:28 ◼ ► And with this, yeah, you could all you could make the counterargument now, which is if your style is bad and you come to regret it later or somebody else goes, oh, no, no, no, no, we can't use this.
00:51:43 ◼ ► Yeah. I want to talk just a little bit about the physical size of my phone, because I have jumped down one.
00:51:50 ◼ ► So I did try out, I did hold the 16 Pro Max. It's real big. It's big. This is a big, big, big phone now.
00:51:59 ◼ ► It is accentuated right now because I've been using the small one, because I picked up my 15 Pro Max today because I'm still doing all of my transfer stuff, and it feels big now because I'm getting used to the Pro again.
00:52:11 ◼ ► But immediately when you had to be the Pro Max during the podcastathon, I was like, oh, boy.
00:52:17 ◼ ► Now, I stand by them doing this. I think make the big phone as big as you can make it because people who want that want that.
00:52:26 ◼ ► But what I'm happy about is that the smaller phone has gone a little bit bigger over time.
00:52:30 ◼ ► So for me, that's good because I can maybe make that jump. And this is just an experiment.
00:52:35 ◼ ► Like the small phone feels small to me. It feels this is a small phone and it's already changing my relationship to a little bit.
00:52:50 ◼ ► And I don't know why, but like if I'm, you know, I'd like throw it on the bed, throw it in my pocket, like it's more maneuverable.
00:52:56 ◼ ► It feels fantastic to hold. I like that I can type with one hand really easily, but if I'm typing with two hands, I'm not tripping over myself with my thumbs.
00:53:07 ◼ ► Like it's not big enough. So it still feels good for watching video, which was a big thing for me.
00:53:18 ◼ ► It feels wonderful with the camera control. I'll say that like one handed photo taking with the camera control is very doable with this phone, not so doable with this phone.
00:53:28 ◼ ► Like if I try and hold it in one hand, I do not feel like I have a good grip on this phone with one hand.
00:53:39 ◼ ► But like, I am like whole gripping this phone. And what I also know is that if I'm touching the screen, which I kind of would do to get it, that messes with the camera control a little bit because it's the phone trying to work out where are you controlling this right now.
00:53:53 ◼ ► Exactly. So, you know, if you want the big phone, as I have wanted for many years, this is an even bigger one.
00:54:00 ◼ ► But it just so happened that this was I'd felt myself wanting to change it up a little bit.
00:54:06 ◼ ► And also, I'm very, very happy with this, but this feels like a the pro feels like a tiny phone to me comparatively.
00:54:12 ◼ ► Well, it does. You adapt and change. So that's going to be the thing to watch is if you can you adapt to it?
00:54:18 ◼ ► Because, you know, I adapted to the mini. And then when I went off the mini, I adapted to the pro and it took it took some adaptation because it's like, well, this is so big.
00:54:31 ◼ ► But honestly, after like a week or two and I could type way more accurately on the pro than I could on the mini.
00:54:37 ◼ ► That's that's the truth. That is the real shame of the mini was that I could never type accurately on it.
00:54:47 ◼ ► So that's going to be the question for you is you live with this for two, three weeks and see if you can still use it.
00:54:54 ◼ ► My setup went really well. Actually, there's something I was able to do this time that I've been able to do it for 20 years.
00:55:01 ◼ ► So any of my friends who have been telling this piece of information to it's wrong now, maybe I was able to transfer my eSIM.
00:55:12 ◼ ► Right. And my expectation was that it needed to connect to my network and couldn't do that in America, but it did it this time.
00:55:20 ◼ ► So the question is, is it connecting to your network through a partner network in America roaming or is it connecting to your network over the Internet and getting your validation that something's changed?
00:55:51 ◼ ► But that's new for me. The question, my setup went really well. I did the phone to phone thing, put it overnight.
00:55:58 ◼ ► I really wished it would transfer apps, like it didn't have to then download the apps from the app store.
00:56:03 ◼ ► But this transfer was smooth. The one question I have is, why does Apple put GarageBand on my phone?
00:56:08 ◼ ► It wasn't there before. Why did you do that? You put it on the home screen, you created a home screen and you put GarageBand on it.
00:56:14 ◼ ► I didn't have it installed. So like at what point, like I need to we need to speak to the European Union and I think this is unacceptable.
00:56:21 ◼ ► And I work. I had I had I had those apps, I had pages and keynote and I do not have those on my phone.
00:56:30 ◼ ► And they were added as well, which I I I something weird and I movie as well, which I don't have.
00:56:38 ◼ ► And I think that's one of those weird cases where there are these apps that are system apps but aren't system apps.
00:57:03 ◼ ► Maybe Luca Maestri can tell us once he's not the CFO anymore. I actually wonder if there's a very specific accounting practice going on.
00:57:20 ◼ ► Yeah, Sarbanes Oxley, exactly. Whatever that means. I know the words. I don't know what it means.
00:57:24 ◼ ► It's two guys. It's Sarbanes and Oxley. It's two Paul Sarbanes and I forget who Oxley was.
00:57:37 ◼ ► So it's like Verizon Drinko, which I hear Ben Thompson talk about on almost a weekly basis.
00:57:41 ◼ ► Yeah, so it's a, and ZMK is pointing out the reason your apps don't transfer is that they change what you download based on what device you're on.
00:57:52 ◼ ► I don't care. But I would also say, what about some logic to say, you know, this phone's pretty much like that phone. I'm just going to transfer it over.
00:57:59 ◼ ► I mean, like these things are like, the way I describe a lot of this stuff is none of this stuff happens organically.
00:58:05 ◼ ► Right. There are decisions being made. Yeah, and they could change it. They could say, you know what?
00:58:08 ◼ ► We're going to keep compatibility on the 15 and the 14 so that when we get to the 16, those will just transfer right over.
00:58:18 ◼ ► Right. So, yeah. So anyway, I do wonder if there's an accounting issue of some sort where those things, because you had to claim them in the app store and that they used to be like sold.
00:58:27 ◼ ► If they're accounting for them as like, when you get a phone, you get these apps in a bundle and that we charge against it and that changes.
00:58:35 ◼ ► I don't know. It's really weird. It's like, oh, you've got a new iPhone. And on your previous iPhone, you deleted GarageBand.
00:58:44 ◼ ► Well, here it is. You're getting a GarageBand. You just need to just get rid of that. Yeah.
00:58:49 ◼ ► But yeah, I look forward to playing around with these more. I've already noticed as well, these phones charge faster if you plug them in.
00:58:55 ◼ ► They do up to 45 watt charging. I plugged my phone in yesterday. It was like 20%. I was still using it. And I was like, five or 10 minutes, I have 45% battery life.
00:59:03 ◼ ► And it's early yet. But battery life feels pretty good too. So, yeah, I'm not really making any judgment on it because I've changed phone.
00:59:11 ◼ ► You know, I know mine's going down. I transferred here. Oh, I mean, from Pro Max to Pro.
00:59:18 ◼ ► Oh, that's right. So you can't really say. Yeah. Well, yesterday my battery was getting killed because I was doing an update and downloading all those files and downloading every podcast and all of those things happening.
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01:00:41 ◼ ► Thanks to Vitaly for their support of this show and Relay. You also got the Apple Watch Series 10.
01:00:47 ◼ ► I do. Are you wearing it right now? I am wearing it right now. I bought this. Oh, that's your one? This is mine. I also have a review unit, but this was my year.
01:00:56 ◼ ► I had a 7. Wow. So I went up to the Jed Black 10. Were you wearing the 7 daily? Yes. Like you weren't wearing a review unit?
01:01:05 ◼ ► No, I was wearing the 7. Titanium, which was a treat yourself moment from three years ago. I remember that.
01:01:11 ◼ ► But now I'm on the 10. Early thoughts? I know when you look at it and hold it up, it doesn't seem like it's thinner, but it really is thinner.
01:01:23 ◼ ► And the place that it is thinnest, I think, is the sensor dome doesn't stick out so far. And so the whole watch feels closer to my wrist.
01:01:34 ◼ ► It looks nice, I think. It does. I'm very used to the Ultra, which is a big chunk. It's so huge. But I am struck by the fact that it looks like your Apple Watch is sitting on your wrist.
01:01:47 ◼ ► Exactly. Which Apple Watches never look like that. They don't. They are perching on a dome. Yeah, like it is flat to your wrist, which is a different look.
01:01:56 ◼ ► And I think it's much sleeker looking because of that. I agree. I agree. And the screen size, what do you think of the screen size?
01:02:02 ◼ ► You know, it's too early for me to tell. It's definitely bigger and that's nice, but it also feels not disruptively larger as a watch.
01:02:11 ◼ ► I would say the thing that I've really noticed is it being very close to my arm. And to the point where I was, at one point, it snuck a little bit up my arm where the digital crown was close to the bone in my wrist.
01:02:26 ◼ ► And I tried to move the digital crown and it was like not moving very much because it was kind of pushed into my wrist a little bit. You were providing your own resistance.
01:02:34 ◼ ► I was actually causing trouble there. So, no, that change in how it sits on my wrist is the big change. The size doesn't feel that dramatically different, although I'm sure I will appreciate the extra space on it.
01:02:48 ◼ ► I have a real good, I think, relatable way to describe the feeling of the size difference. So, you gave me yours to try on and you have a Nike sport band.
01:03:01 ◼ ► I have, with my Apple watch, I have a Nike sport band too. I was able to wear your Nike sport band one notch tighter than mine.
01:03:13 ◼ ► So, you can tell the thinness difference and kind of where it's coming from. The watch to skin, like the watch attachment to the skin is closer.
01:03:22 ◼ ► Of course, I'm comparing it to an ultra, but I don't really know how different that is realistically. But like say from this to that, I could wear the watch tighter because it's not pulling away from my wrist as much.
01:03:35 ◼ ► So, I got the jet black aluminum, so it's shiny. That's aluminium. It's like I forgot they did that because when I looked at this, that looks like steel to me because of how shiny it is.
01:03:50 ◼ ► That is very impressive what they've managed there. They should make phones look like that.
01:03:55 ◼ ► And I think they're going to. Someone wrote in about this. This might actually be an Ask Upgrade. We'll get to it when we get there, but let me see actually.
01:04:03 ◼ ► And the reason I went down from titanium is as much as I enjoyed treating myself in the series seven for titanium and it was light and it looked pretty, the truth is the price difference between titanium and aluminum to me is not so great that it justifies.
01:04:17 ◼ ► It's too big to justify the difference in the product, I guess is what I was saying. And honestly, the jet black aluminum looks so great that I thought I'm just going to do aluminum this time.
01:04:28 ◼ ► This question came from Matt who says, I have a theory that the jet black series 10 is a potentially hint at how the iPhone slim will look, which is rumored to be made of aluminium and how it may be finished.
01:04:47 ◼ ► And I remember we were talking about like, oh, they would go to aluminium for this incredibly expensive phone.
01:04:54 ◼ ► Well, if you can make it look expensive, you've done 50% of which is this polishing process that they do.
01:05:14 ◼ ► So we're going to play people who like one Apple watch are admiring another Apple watch.
01:05:20 ◼ ► So you have an ultra and you're admiring the series 10 in gold stainless or gold titanium, not stainless titanium.
01:05:36 ◼ ► We went to the Memphis, Tennessee saddle Creek, Germantown, Tennessee Apple store with Stephen Hackett driving us around Tennessee.
01:05:54 ◼ ► And you know, as our, uh, our team, our baseball team, the San Francisco giants are orange and black, orange and black ultra two.
01:06:08 ◼ ► Well, let me tell you that this people who bought an Apple watch recently will have, we'll know this, the vagaries of what band you can buy with your Apple watch, especially if you want it on a certain day.
01:06:20 ◼ ► And there were a whole array of bands that I wanted that they're like, yeah, that'll be in October.
01:06:31 ◼ ► But, um, anyway, the ultra two black looks so good and the orange highlights on it, I think just pop chef's kiss.
01:06:51 ◼ ► The, the main reason for me is I think that I think it is clear now that the ultra will not be coming along with the series, the watch series numbers, right?
01:07:10 ◼ ► So three years, three different, three versions in a way, because it's ultra two, but black that's new, right?
01:07:31 ◼ ► It, they described the ultra in not really different terms, but like, I think they, they specified the ultra is our rugged sports watch and what it's not, even though it was this, when it was introduced.
01:07:48 ◼ ► It was this, which was, it was also their biggest screen and their best technology and a whole bunch of stuff.
01:08:02 ◼ ► It might be the most expensive Apple watch, but like, it's not, it's the rugged sports watch.
01:08:11 ◼ ► I was just like, and for me, it's like, uh, I, I wanted this watch cause I wanted the battery life and I'm going to lose that, but I figure I got to, I got to lose it at some point.
01:08:25 ◼ ► I was making a funny face because I'm looking at the comparisons cause like, well, what, what is different?
01:08:29 ◼ ► And it's like, you know, some of the new screen technology is different, you know, the always on is better.
01:08:35 ◼ ► One of the, the, in the features, you know, the comparison feature breakdowns, one of the things that the Apple watch ultra two does that the Apple watch series 10 doesn't is high speed water sports.
01:09:12 ◼ ► I guess I can, I can understand what I can imagine what they are, but like what in the ultra supports that better.
01:09:28 ◼ ► So, um, the new always on display has improvements, including second by second update, which means that you can have a timer and look down and it will theoretically tell you the time.
01:09:46 ◼ ► Even when that happens to me all the time, I'm cooking and like I'm looking at my watch, but it's not on and then I get like full refresh by second.
01:09:59 ◼ ► And they, they said in the keynote and look at these great faces, we had that face where the thing kind of the second hand is essentially a, like a water wave thing that kind of pops up higher, higher, higher, higher until the minute changes.
01:10:11 ◼ ► And then we've got this other face that is, that is new, that has the ticking second hand and it, you know, it's a smooth movement.
01:10:21 ◼ ► Until it goes to sleep, at which point it becomes a ticking second hand and it keeps ticking.
01:10:28 ◼ ► Whereas on the old watch faces, you know, because they couldn't do always on at a second update, the second hand just vanished.
01:10:37 ◼ ► And it speaks to a, um, one of these things Apple doesn't want to talk about, but I think we need to talk about, which is the real skeleton in the closet of watchOS, which is the watch face, um, development and design.
01:10:53 ◼ ► We've for, it's been 10 years, folks, the pace of Apple watch face development is poor, but poorer still is the fact that after Apple builds a face, they very rarely ever change it even to get new features.
01:11:09 ◼ ► And if you think about that, it's kind of bananas because on iOS and macOS, generally, if there's a brand new feature to the OS, they like add support to it to like their apps and stuff.
01:11:23 ◼ ► But if you're using and want to still use a, uh, an Apple watch face not introduced this year that has a second hand on it, when it goes into always on mode on the series 10, the second hand disappears instead of ticking.
01:11:44 ◼ ► I don't understand how that is happening. Only the three faces they introduced this year use the always on display with the ticking second.
01:11:54 ◼ ► It's showing, it's, it's, it suggests to me that the development of these watch faces is based on a rickety system.
01:12:04 ◼ ► Why, why shouldn't, what is the watch looking like? So there are two watch faces for every watch face, essentially. There is the on and the always on right.
01:12:14 ◼ ► That seems to be what they're doing, because what should happen is all of these elements should be defined and they just work within an API.
01:12:22 ◼ ► Like, so second hand, does it tick? What watch is it on, you know, like that, that kind of thing.
01:12:28 ◼ ► So it suggests that they have built this contraption to build watch faces that is rickety and they haven't updated it.
01:12:35 ◼ ► And they're just, some of the older faces don't support the newer complications, but you can still use those watch faces, but they use the, they, they don't use the new.
01:12:43 ◼ ► Yeah, exactly. My beloved, um, watch face that is my favorite is utility and I don't use it as much because it doesn't have the same complications.
01:12:57 ◼ ► Utility looks better, but it won't do the corner complications in the same way that California will.
01:13:05 ◼ ► And that is entirely, which makes me believe, honestly, Mike, it makes me believe that the watch faces themselves are so brittle that they can't change them to behave differently on different models.
01:13:18 ◼ ► They have to step, like when they've done the updates, they've probably just started over.
01:13:22 ◼ ► Yeah. Or they're like, well, no, we can't have this face beyond this model. And then this face behaves differently on this model.
01:13:36 ◼ ► But here's the thing we can speculate about why it is this way, but it shouldn't be this way.
01:13:50 ◼ ► It's an excuse. And I know people will probably who are listening to this will say, oh, but it's always been like this.
01:13:58 ◼ ► Apple introduced the ability this year on the Series 10 to have your watch tick second by second.
01:14:23 ◼ ► And like, look, I'm arguing with an imaginary Apple person now, but I'm just going to say it.
01:14:30 ◼ ► I'm sure that if somebody who works on watch faces came and talked to me in secret, they'd be like, Jason, oh, oh, my God, you can do an explanation.
01:14:38 ◼ ► I'm sure. But bottom line, as a user and a reviewer of the products, if you introduce a watch screen
01:14:47 ◼ ► that can tick when it's sleeping once a second, every watch face you make that shows seconds should show seconds.
01:15:09 ◼ ► I want my watch face to have the little numbers on it and look like my old Swiss Army watch and modular does that.
01:15:17 ◼ ► But why is it that they have all these faces that I kind of like, but I can't use because the complications aren't compatible, because it doesn't support my new watches display.
01:15:32 ◼ ► So I didn't know that I was coming for watch faces today, but it's one of those things that we can we can praise the hardware.
01:15:40 ◼ ► If I was I'll put it another way, if I was the person who finally got the Apple Watch after 10 years to be always on and it can tick every second, we put so much work into this, into the display controller, into the screen itself, into the battery and the and the energy consumption and the system on a chip.
01:16:19 ◼ ► It's it's a this is just fundamentally like the software is letting down the hardware, which, if I'm being honest, is the story of the last 10 years for Apple, is that their hardware game is pretty much perfect and their software game can't keep up.
01:16:34 ◼ ► I will provide a slight balance to just, again, extol the virtues of the new photos face.
01:16:45 ◼ ► I mean, this is and it's the same technology that they put two years ago into the iPhone lock screen and last year into the iPad lock screen.
01:16:55 ◼ ► And you can choose these categories, which can be people, pets, places like cities and nature.
01:17:01 ◼ ► Yeah, and you can choose, you know, I have my wife, cities and nature and every three favorite things every day.
01:17:09 ◼ ► It seems like at some point I think it's midnight in GMT for me because it happens at like a weird time in the afternoon while I'm here, it seems to load a new set of maybe 10 images and you can tap through them or every time you raise your wrist, you see it shuffles through them.
01:17:26 ◼ ► And the and you can also you can also select up to 25 and have a set yourself, but you can use this other mode, which I didn't even know was there in the watch app that lets you do this, I think is is the way to do it.
01:17:41 ◼ ► So this is the thing that it's one of those things where there's complexity, but it's delightful.
01:17:45 ◼ ► And and I wrote a whole piece about this, about how my wife, Lauren, didn't know that these features existed because she just uses her iPhone the way she's always used it.
01:17:55 ◼ ► And when I said, oh, no, we can set it up so that our kids are on your lock screen and there's a new one every time.
01:18:10 ◼ ► And to this day, she picks up her phone in the morning, goes, oh, look at this one like it's magical.
01:18:21 ◼ ► We have this controversy where people are like, I want photos to be utilitarian, but it's like, but no, you want photos to be you want photos to recommend things to you.
01:18:28 ◼ ► Right. Well, this is a great place for photos, ability to find pictures of people or pictures of interesting, you know, things, cities, nature, whatever it is, pets and automatically delight you on your wrist.
01:18:43 ◼ ► In your case, it's great because there's a picture of it, you know, from it's gone now from like 2014 or whatever.
01:18:50 ◼ ► And they are like this one is I don't know where that is, but they put the time behind the thing because they're doing the subject detection and you get two complications, which is not enough, but enough.
01:19:04 ◼ ► And then what I love, I love the new widgets because I get so much stuff in that little stack now.
01:19:40 ◼ ► But when it goes into the stack mode, if you're using a watch with hands, it shows you a little tiny watch with hands at the top.
01:20:16 ◼ ► So if I was going to make one feature request for this incredible new watch face, I would like to be able to choose more choices for the Typoca 3 style.
01:20:27 ◼ ► Because I really like the I usually use it on my main home screen, but I'm in my recording focus right now.
01:20:36 ◼ ► I think it's a beautiful serif that they've made and it looks wonderful on lock screens and stuff like that.
01:20:41 ◼ ► But that's not it doesn't I have not found any options to make changes to the new focus face.
01:20:46 ◼ ► And I would like to be able to set it in New York because I think it looks really good.
01:20:51 ◼ ► And I've got one thing I want to show you just because this is my lock screen on my on my iPad.
01:20:57 ◼ ► And the thing that I didn't realize you're talking about segmenting subjects so that they can you have a person or a mountain or something like that.
01:21:06 ◼ ► Here's the thing that I didn't know, which is when I swipe down notification center on my iPad.
01:21:16 ◼ ► It's on the top and as it drops behind the mountain on my lock screen, oh, it tucks in, it tucks in behind it.
01:21:23 ◼ ► It's almost like so you're you're there's a mountain and the sky and your lock screens time is like tucking itself in between the sky and the mountain.
01:21:49 ◼ ► And then from that comes like 40 other features, including spatial photos in VisionOS2 where you can spatialize a photo.
01:21:59 ◼ ► It's the working backwards from understanding how to do portrait mode, which again, initially was a physical thing they had to do.
01:22:06 ◼ ► Then they built a software version of it in that way, like where it was completely fake. Right.
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01:24:00 ◼ ► And just before we started today, we both tried them on to see what we thought about the fit, the feel and the noise cancellation.
01:24:08 ◼ ► From my perspective, the noise cancellation, pretty good, like better than I ever could have imagined you could do without a seal.
01:24:20 ◼ ► It doesn't sit in my left ear, and like I even have this AirPods Pro, so they go in, but my left ear, eventually it's going to come out.
01:24:28 ◼ ► But as soon as I put the AirPods 4 in, you saw me, I was like, well, that doesn't feel safe at all.
01:24:43 ◼ ► I'm very happy that they have made a version of AirPods with noise cancellation for the people who cannot suffer with the tips and the ears.
01:24:53 ◼ ► Yeah, I need to spend more time, I will actually use it on the plane as well and give it a try.
01:24:59 ◼ ► That's good, because we're in Steven's studio, put it in, I couldn't hear the air conditioning.
01:25:08 ◼ ► And it isn't priced that way, but they're doing some noise cancelling and you know, the fit, ideally the fit is still pretty good where it's snug enough in your ear, it's not rattling around, it's pretty close, it's making most of a seal.
01:25:20 ◼ ► And then there is also the, you've got the transparency mode to let, which does help because it's most of a seal, then it passes through and it sounds good.
01:25:31 ◼ ► Yeah, it's, I almost want to say like it's better than you could expect from AirPods, regular AirPods, right?
01:25:40 ◼ ► Like it's great that they had that as a feature, especially if you prefer, strongly prefer regular AirPods.
01:25:49 ◼ ► Yeah, I think we'll do some follow up on it, but it's, I got them and I'm trying them and it's interesting.
01:26:05 ◼ ► I'm left handed and love the action button to control the camera as it's directly under my thumb when taking the photos from my pocket.
01:26:17 ◼ ► So I think what Arjen is thinking is if you hold it just in the left hand and I found in portrait mode, it's fantastic, my middle finger is right there, right over it.
01:26:31 ◼ ► Maybe you're kind of grabbing the phone with the, you're kind of looking at the screen, you had around the screen.
01:26:37 ◼ ► It works. Like I found it again, I'm using the Pro, I think harder on the Pro Max, but even you could grab it and use your thumb and kind of hold it up from the.
01:26:49 ◼ ► Yeah, I think, yes, I will say we've both taken pictures of each other right now, which you can probably see in the video version.
01:26:59 ◼ ► I think you'll be happy either way, however you use the phone, you'll be happy with that.
01:27:15 ◼ ► Tom asks, do you think Apple avoided mentioning the two sizes of the Series 10 during the event?
01:27:21 ◼ ► Because it's confusing to say biggest screen ever and available in 42 and 46 millimeter models, especially when the Ultra is 49 millimeters, which refers to case size.
01:27:33 ◼ ► I think I'm not sure if the size difference between the two models was the reason, but I do think it's if they would have spoken about the millimeter sizes, it would have become complicated.
01:27:45 ◼ ► And so they kind of just found the easiest way out was to say this is the biggest ever and not really talk about the sizes of them or the two of them.
01:27:56 ◼ ► I don't think their worry was, oh, wait, they said forty nine, but how can it be forty nine?
01:28:05 ◼ ► I do think if some of the superlative claims you're making are about it being the biggest Apple Watch screen ever.
01:28:15 ◼ ► If you mention if you talk about it like it comes in two sizes, you then have to say the biggest one is the biggest one and this one is the biggest of all the smaller ones.
01:28:38 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, say that for our smaller model, it's also the biggest in that class. OK, it's not that it's not that hard.
01:28:48 ◼ ► Right. I wonder if they think it was great and they nailed it or or not, because I think this event erred too far on the side of lack of detail.
01:29:16 ◼ ► Yeah. I feel like my main criticism about the event was more that it was weird and confusing than it was like boring.
01:29:24 ◼ ► Also, I mean, the truth is for a lot of us tech people, the most boring stuff was replaying iOS and Apple intelligence because that's all just a rerun of June.
01:29:34 ◼ ► But they have to do it right because they want to reach all the people who don't watch it would be irresponsible to do that.
01:29:40 ◼ ► It would be. But and that and that's why a lot of the commentators who said it was boring.
01:29:44 ◼ ► I don't give a lot of credit to because they're people who are paying attention in June.
01:29:49 ◼ ► If a regular person thinks it's boring, OK, that's a bigger problem, but they're trying to introduce Apple intelligence.
01:29:55 ◼ ► Still, I think ultimately, I don't think they needed to overcomplicate it in order to detail some stuff that they omitted that were strange omissions.
01:30:10 ◼ ► I think it would have been great if they had actually said, you know, it's coming out, the OS's are coming out next Monday.
01:30:29 ◼ ► The capacitive surface on the camera control button shows that Apple is willing to place touch sensors inside side buttons on the iPhone.
01:30:36 ◼ ► Given that, combined with the rumors about a thinner 17 air model next year and Apple's ongoing efforts to reduce the size of the notch of Dynamic Island,
01:30:46 ◼ ► do you think it's possible Apple would remove the larger Face ID sensor array and instead put a fingerprint sensor on the iPhone side button
01:31:00 ◼ ► Oh, interesting. Well, what I would say is that iPhone slim air whatever is a new product and all bets are off.
01:31:14 ◼ ► So if they decided that it was way better space wise to biometrically biometrically authenticate via a touch ID button on the side,
01:31:33 ◼ ► I'm sure they waited that, you know, and decided that we don't know what they decided, but it's possible, right?
01:31:40 ◼ ► Like, I feel like we don't know, but I'm sure they thought about that, that could we make this really edge to edge and and take the dynamic?
01:31:55 ◼ ► I expect when they when they got to, we're going to make the Dynamic Island, there were two paths.
01:32:20 ◼ ► And then this is not an issue. I have my mini because I press the button to turn it on.
01:32:30 ◼ ► Interesting. OK, I find I don't think I agree, but I can see how there are different use cases there.
01:32:39 ◼ ► And it's really nice to, you know, not to have because you can wear the gloves that will let you run touch screen,
01:32:51 ◼ ► Other people, you know, we do have the ability to do face coverings now with with face ID.
01:32:56 ◼ ► So there's that. It's an interesting question because I think it goes back to the fact that this product,
01:33:07 ◼ ► where just because we've had it before doesn't mean I mean, think about the iPhone 10, right?
01:33:22 ◼ ► And what does that mean? And then they put a notch on the screen and eventually it moved to being the dynamic island.
01:33:28 ◼ ► So they're going to they're going to go through all of those things and stuff's going to get left out.
01:33:33 ◼ ► Stuff's going to get changed. And that's all in the interest of making a very different piece of hardware.
01:33:39 ◼ ► And this could be it or not, because because the question I think it's a absolutely legitimate question to ask.
01:33:50 ◼ ► And I don't know which one that is because the iPhone 10 was the foundation of iPhones for the future.
01:33:55 ◼ ► Yeah, I think this slim phone could be if you can, because you can you can take the logical path.
01:34:01 ◼ ► Well, they have to make everything thinner so they can fold it. Yes. And is that maybe the future of the iPhone?
01:34:08 ◼ ► Right. Or at least a future. And what we learned, too, is if you can make it at scale with all these thinner accessories in it,
01:34:19 ◼ ► thinner components that will have knock on effects where they will build all these things with the small components.
01:34:26 ◼ ► And then in a year or two, they'll say, well, we've we've got all this skill with assembling based on these small components that we buy in huge volumes.
01:34:35 ◼ ► So we might as well use them elsewhere and everything else starts to use them and maybe gets a little thinner and lighter themselves.
01:34:41 ◼ ► And it keeps going. And certainly if they're going to do folding phones, having a thinner base that they can fit their content in so that they can then fold it up on another one,
01:34:57 ◼ ► I don't know the answer. Right. That's that's the question is. And on top of that, too, is also the question of are there other sensors they could use behind the screen?
01:35:07 ◼ ► Could they use a sensor behind the screen and have the dynamic? I think that the goal for face ID is to put it behind the screen.
01:35:15 ◼ ► And I know there's been there's been talking of them trying that. Is it possible? Right.
01:35:20 ◼ ► And what's the and what's the thickness issue? In the end, some of it may just simply be, you know, it's better to put that biometric authentication hardware behind a button that sticks out of the phone than it is to put it in.
01:35:37 ◼ ► Right behind the screen there. But that's the question is, which one makes the thing thinner?
01:35:43 ◼ ► I would expect touch ID makes the phone thinner. Because if you could put the camera behind the screen and you could put the biometrics in the button, you might be able to make the dynamic island be, you know, a software only feature that appears when you've got.
01:35:57 ◼ ► Well, it would it would exist for live activities. Right. But then it would just disappear. Yeah.
01:36:03 ◼ ► If you would like to send us in a question or you want to have any feedback or follow up about this week's episode or any episode, go to upgradefeedback.com.
01:36:11 ◼ ► You can check out Jason's work at sixcolors.com. Here are his shows on the incomparable and here on Relay where you can hear me too.
01:36:18 ◼ ► And check out my work at cortexbrand.com. We can find us online. Jason is at JSNEW, J S N E double L.
01:36:25 ◼ ► I am @hymyke. You can watch clips of this show on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube where we are @upgraderelay. Thank you to our members who support us of Upgrade Plus this week.
01:36:35 ◼ ► I want to talk about hanging out in Memphis. All right. And what that's been like over the last week or so.
01:36:40 ◼ ► Well, it's been longer for me. Hasn't been as long for you. I've been gone for a long time, it feels like. Thank you to Squarespace, Vitaly and Lada for their support of this show.
01:36:47 ◼ ► Don't forget to go to stjude.org/relay. This will be your penultimate warning, maybe for that. I'm not entirely sure when the campaign is closing.