[cheerful electronic music] From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 530. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Vitalee, and Ladder. My name is Mike Hurley, and I have the pleasure of being joined in person by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. Hi, five. Yeah, in person. That's right. That's us. We're in the pod cabin. We're in the pod cabin. Stephen Hackett has been removed. Bye, Stephen. Yeah. And we've taken all of his stuff, and we're using it to record our podcast. It's true. But I have a snow talk question for you. It comes from Benjamin, who wants to know, "I've recently found myself suddenly sluggish in the morning instead of energized, and I wonder if tea may help me. What advice do you have for getting into tea?" Well, there's a lot, but what I would say is there's a deep hole you can go down, you don't have to go down that deep hole. You can start it simple. I like it with breakfast tea, which has a lot of caffeine, and I think there's a green tea that has caffeine in it too. Here's the challenge, though. It's like Homer Simpson said about alcohol. It's the cause of and solution to all of life's problems. Caffeine is like that, too. So the danger is if you have caffeine, too much caffeine, especially late in the day, you may find yourself sluggish in the morning instead of energized because you will have slept poorly. So keep that in mind, but I'd say I started drinking tea more regularly because I talked to a friend who actually said, "Oh, yeah, I get up at six in the morning and I go for a bike ride or a run," and I said, "How do you do that?" And he said, "Basically caffeine." So it helps, it does. So what I would say is to get into tea, the simplest thing maybe is go to your local supermarket, and first of all, if you're an American, don't buy a Lipton, don't do it. But there are lots of brands that will have an English breakfast tea, Twinings is a good one. There are some others out there. But get a box of tea bags, and then you boil water, 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. Don't put the tea bag in to where you boil the water. Anyway, wait three or four minutes, take the tea bag out. This is important because it'll get all bitter and bad if you leave it in there. I see TV shows where people are like drinking tea, and the bag is still in there. I'm like, "What? What are you doing?" Maybe they just can't wait. Or if it's an herbal tea, and then it's okay. Anyway, try it, and then you can try it with milk, you can try it with sugar, you can try it with honey, you can try it plain, just black. And see if you like it. I mean, that's really the answer and see if the caffeine has an effect on you. But I have a tea roba and a loose tea, and all these other things, it's like you don't have to... I'm not a complicator, I don't want to build up walls here, it's really easy. Put a nice English breakfast tea in bags at the store. If you're in the UK, which you probably aren't, if you're asking about tea, PG tips is fine too. You could get a builder's tea, it doesn't matter, but in America, just yeah. Look for something that says English breakfast on it. Don't get Earl Grey, Earl Grey is not the same as English breakfast. Some people like Earl Grey, I don't love Earl Grey. I don't love it. I prefer not having the Earl Grey smell in there, but whatever, start it simple. 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, you didn't ask about coffee. I know you didn't, but I'm just saying what I think. You can go to UpgradeFeedback.com and send us a snow talk question. Now we're in the pod cabin because we're here in Memphis, because two days ago, we were a part of the podcast on both of us, along with Casey List and Kathy Campbell and of course Stephen Hackett, and we raised over, I think, $130,000 during the podcast on this year, which is a new record. So thank you so much to everybody that tuned in. It was an incredible 12 hours. We had a ton of fun. It was my favorite podcast on that we've done so far, wonderful group of people, wonderful games, incredible work by everyone. Thank you all for watching. It's on our YouTube channel, the Relay YouTube channel. 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. But we are doing all of this because September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. 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, which is to make sure that no child loses their life to cancer no matter where they live and they need our help to drive the mission forward. The podcast at home was a great success, of course, but there is still time left in September 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. Like for example, Jason, did you know that St. Jude has a school? It spans preschool through 12th grade for patients who will be at St. Jude for upwards of six weeks. 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. 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. So all of this really helps the children try and live as normal life as they can, which is a big thing that I try and do. This is 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. Yeah, you may think, oh, wait a second, I'm going to the hospital and I also have to go to school. Yeah, I know, but there is the whole, I've been through my treatment and now I have to go back home. 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. You don't want that. Our community has shown so much generosity over the last six years. 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 erased in a campaign. How about that, record-breaking year, record-breaking year and it's not over, month is not over. Please go to stu.org/relay. You can make a donation today. There are some incredible rewards that you can redeem if you do so, 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 if you sign up to fundraise and you can get coins and desk mats. You can find out about all of this stu.org/relay, where you'll also see some information about employee matching as well. That is ststjudie.org/relay to donate or create your campaign today. I thought for a second there that UK English had started pronouncing other strange, other letters differently. You say D, I say Z. You say T. I say T. I say T. It makes sense. It's such Italian now. Taylor came, changed everything. I don't know what to tell you. It's interesting. Yeah. I have some follow-up for you, Jason Snow. Oh, thank goodness, Mike Hurley. Would you two actually mention the issue that you had with the sports app that you were telling me about? Yeah. Apple Sports. I had several people say, "Why are you even using Apple Sports?" It's because it's from Apple and because Eddie Q told me to. 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. There was a, I believe, Stanford beat Syracuse on Friday night with a field goal at the end of the game. 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. I don't know if you know this about Americans, but we detest ties. Yeah. In America, you're for a win or a loser. That's right. Yeah. That's right. There's no in-between. No, we all did pretty fine. It's you're a winner or a loser. So college football, especially, it's impossible to tie. So that didn't make any sense. 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. So clearly there are some real bugs there. So it's great that you want to know the score. That said, I used it yesterday for a few college football games, including my beloved cow bears who lost tragically to Florida State, played well enough to win, but they didn't. And that worked fine. And that timing was fine. And as we sat here, as we sat here, I used a feature of WatchOS, 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. And I actually got a buzz on my watch telling me that Arsenal scored a goal while we were sitting here. So now it's, thank you. Yes. It's this, this just in at some point during Sunday's match, Arsenal led to one breaking news. Yes, it was. And then you all know how that turned out or don't care anyway. So I guess what I'm saying is the Sports app has some things that are good about it needs more work. And the only thing about it that troubles me is, although it definitely feels like it's a passion project from Eddy Q and his team, the fact is, it's an Apple branded app from the platform owner. And I think it needs to be held to a higher standard and they need to put more effort into it. Bottom line. Yep. Apple intelligence is now in public beta, which guess makes sense. They needed to do that if they will. So this is the idea. You, I overheard somebody say to you, oh, it is not up intelligence and you made the point of like, well, technically there is that's, that's the thing is it's the bare minimum, right? Yeah. 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, 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. I do think they made some, some changes. I think they probably had to, to really add the ram to the, to the 16s to make sure that they could do it. On the day they shipped, you could be as a regular person. You could opt into the public beta of 18, one and run Apple intelligence. Now there are like 80,000 asterisks there, right? Because there's the fact that it's not really Apple intelligence. It's wave one of Apple intelligence and talk about this more maybe next week. Mark Gurman has detailed a little bit more about, you know, what happens in 18, one and what's in 18, two and what's in 18, three that comes out in January and what's in 18, four and what's in 18, five and like Apple intelligence in the, in 18, one is not all of it. It's a little tiny fraction of it. It's essentially notification grouping and writing tools and summaries in mail. Yeah. But there's not a lot more than that messages to type, type to Siri, clean up. I mean, there's type to Siri and not in 18, oh, yeah, because old Siri is still in 18. Oh, yeah. The reason I know this is that, 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. I might actually turn that off because I have the same thing when on my iPad where I keep hitting it and I reckon I'm going to be worse on my iPhone. I'm realistically, for me, currently, that is not useful because it is slower and I mean, at the moment, Siri is no better, which I still maintain as a mistake from Apple to change the Siri UI in 18, one because Siri is no better, it is no better. I have tried a bunch of things and it is as inconsistent, like, oh, yes, can it remember the previous question sometimes or maybe all the time, but other times it just decides to do something else completely. But anyway, yeah, I don't know if I'm going to keep the type to Siri 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 chat TPT a question, that might be cool to be able to do that from anywhere on my phone, but I don't even know what the 18, one integration is like yet. And like, if I ask that question, do I have to tap more prompts than if I just opened the chat TPT app? Right. You know, these are the things we don't know yet because they haven't enabled that. Exactly. But yeah, you can now at least get some features in the public. Right. And I think everybody anticipates that we'll be fairly soon in the next couple of weeks that that will ship to everybody. They said October. Yes. Apple have said next month. Yeah. But there, I think Herman mentioned that it's probably sooner rather than later. I would expect some. But it's, it's, I think technically making it a public beta available now, especially since when 18, one ships, they're still going to call it beta. Yeah, this is the beta at the beta. Yeah. That's right. It's a there's, there's betas within betas and betas within betas. Day, day. Apple have confirmed to take crunch that they are looking to support German, Italian, Korean and Portuguese for Apple intelligence in 2025. And they also stay to take crunch that they are working with China and the EU on bringing these features to these regional and all devices. I mean, let's go together, right? Is there some Italian speaking colony out there somewhere? That's what I thought. Right. Like 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, where that has wide, like very wide speaking, people speak Portuguese for throughout. Especially Brazil. That's a large market that speaks Portuguese. But German and Italian, I don't think that they have like a mark that they don't have like Portuguese, where there are more people that speak Portuguese outside of Portugal. Right. That in Portugal, that's not happening for German or Italian. Exactly. And again, this is, I think some people just see this as like, oh, Apple just does, doesn't want to work of Europe. But that doesn't make any logical sense for them to be so headstrong and Apple intelligence and then just be like, whatever. It's an important feature of these products, right? They want Apple intelligence to come. In fact, if we look at that chat GPT announcement and the idea that it is going to be open to other partners, that may be a little clue that they want to, that they know they need to build that stuff so that they're allowed in the EU, right? That they don't run afoul of the EU saying you're, you're only preferring your own stuff. And that maybe that's their way to fight that, in which case, it's not ready yet. 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, that's wrong. Clearly they're going to. And this is Apple moving down that route, because it doesn't make any sense otherwise to have German and Italian in there. And I wanted to give a public service announcement. Bellotro is coming to Apple Arcade this week. Is it a service or is world productivity about to take a dive to go down big time? Bellotro is in the running for my game of the year right now. It's like maybe first or second currently, I've been playing it, I've played hours and hours of it on my Steam Deck, knowing that it would, it was obvious that this would come to mobile one day because it is so perfect for that. On my Steam Deck, I play with touch, the touch screen controls, but interestingly. So this is, there have been a lot of questions asked for years about our Apple actually doing anything with Arcade. 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. Bellotro will be a paid game on the app store at the same time that Bellotro plus is available in Apple Arcade. Now they've done like versions of these kinds of things over time, but this is like a on the day. I actually think paid version is launching a couple of days later, but Apple understand the importance of getting this game. This game is going to be huge, like it's already big, it is going to explode. And if you're an Apple Arcade subscriber, you unlock everything without paying because you're a subscriber. And it's a $10 game to buy. So like... Oh, there you go. It's just a great way to at least try Apple Arcade because you'd get in for like what are $5 a month or whatever and play it for a couple of months. But yeah, this, trust me, this game is incredible. It's a great game. It is a poker game. You don't need to know how to play poker. I don't know how to play poker. The game does a great job of teaching you and it's incredibly well done. It's fantastic. Trust me. Just go get this game. You're going to have a great time. It's really good. Rumor Roundup. Yee-haw. Mac Rumors have discovered code that references quote Apple Silicon Mac mini paren five pore paren, giving more evidence to Mark Gorman's rumor of an upcoming refresh of the Mac mini having five USB-C ports. Makes sense. Three on the back, two on the front, we think. I think that that seems about right. Sounds, sounds likely. I think this thing is going to be a little Mac studio. I think that's what the building you. I've got to be honest, I am, there's a little aside here, I'm interested in this Mac mini. I'm very interested in it, like you, I'm not, I'm, I'm coming around to the idea that I'm not sure I actually need a max chip and that the pro chip might be fine for me. 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 Mac studio. And the other thing that makes me think maybe I'll be interested in this is when I left home last week, I left my Mac in, in complete failure, DFU mode, the mode, you know, the mode where the, the light on the front of the Mac blinks SOS and Morse code, that was the mode that I was in. Oh, what? Do you know? I, my Mac got in a state where, when I, when I tried to, tried to, I don't know what it was doing, what it was taking, um, it, when I tried to apply a software update to get on the new version, the new beta, it, uh, said, I can't personalize this for you. 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. 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. And it was preceded by a series of very strange things where I had the thing, 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. 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, but the next time you reboot, as you know, I reboot every day, I turn off my computer and start it every day. It once again says, Hey, could you allow this and reboot? It most sounds like you're using a hackintosh. It is really similar. How do I know that that extension's really from Apple? I can't personalize this for you. I can't personalize this update. So then I'm stuck, right? 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 and I tried all sorts of different pathways. And in the end, it seemed like putting it in restore mode and to be clear, this is the mode where you have to put it connected to another Mac via USB C, like it's an iPhone that you're restoring. Oh, wow. You know, I haven't had that. I've never done it before because this is this is an Apple Silicon thing. Yes. Like I have not. Yeah. Has to do anything because it's an iPad now, basically, because you used to just does it not have the recovery partition? It does. And that doesn't work beyond recovery beyond recovery. Whoa. Yeah. Anyway, I left it where my where my laptop was attached to it as it's blinking SOS. And it claimed that it was installing a rich restore image on it. However, the bar had gone like 10% of the way and then just stayed there for hours. And you, you're end up in, right? It's that point where you're like, is it doing something and not telling me? Can I give up or is it not doing something? And if I click cancel, so what happened is I did click cancel. And the progress bar jumped way forward and still sat there and didn't cancel. So that was bad. So I started it again. I started the whole process again and I went and I left the state. So what I'm saying is maybe I'll get a Mac mini, maybe, maybe the Mac studio is going to get buried in the shallow grave. I don't know. Boy. I have laptops. I can just attach to my monitor and my keyboard and continue moving on with my life. And maybe it's time. Maybe it's time. I don't know. But anyway, I'm excited about that Mac mini, yee-haw, I say. So Emma in the discord, I think has found a similar thing. And they've quoted it from the Apple support forums. I was instructed by Apple support to have an Apple service sent to perform a quote revive procedure. I, well, you can actually do that with Apple configurator and you can do it yourself. And I did attempt to revive it and that failed, which meant I then needed to do a restore. And yes, according to Emma, the only remaining, the remaining solution, this is an Apple discussion thing. Was it made logic reward replacement? Because there may be a corruption of the security firmware built into the Apple Silicon. I think that's what's happened. It's possible. Oh boy. So if that fails, I'll pursue it and we'll see what happens. This kind of feels like that is the thing that if something goes wrong there, it's done. You need to stop again. Because that is going to be so low level, I would expect it is lower than your brand system. Oh, it definitely is, but the question is if I can't even with a tether loaded up with the right thing, what happens then? So we'll see. I'll look forward to hearing more about this, but I may be living on a laptop in the meantime and then waiting for a Mac mini, perhaps. We'll see. Anyway, we'll leave this alone in the round up and we go back to the round up. Okay. It's more like a tumbleweed. Just blew through. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Well, we were going to see like the snake oil doctor or something. Yeah. They're trying to bring a Mac back. This was the snake that I found in my boot. Ming Chi Quo is reporting that the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and a new SE model are still in the works now expected for 2025. Yeah. Fair enough. Mark Gomez 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. So they just couldn't do both things at once? 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. So I forget it. Yep. Good. Next time. And I can imagine that too. They can make it smaller. And I feel like this was a year where they could because they had other legitimately good health features this year. Yeah. So why not just put it off? I told you about this. My phone asked if I wanted to opt in to the sleep apnea detection, which I said yes to. 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. Interesting. So I'll let you know in a month. That's right. That's the feature that takes 30 days. Yep. And Ross Young is reporting that he expects all iPhone models will feature a promotion display next year. That would include the 17, which doesn't have it, and the rumored 17-air or slim. I think it's about time that all of these phones get a promotion just like, and it would not bother me. And I think it would not bother most people if the 17 just had a 90 Hertz display. Right. You can still make them different. The 60 Hertz, to me, is rough now to look at. 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. There are phones that cost like $300 out of 90 Hertz displays in the Android world. So we've more than passed that at that point now. Okay. Well, that's good news for next year. I wonder if they'll have colors next year, like, "Oh, you can get the nice screen, but the colors aren't as good." We're fine. We'll see. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. It's the only one platform for you to build a website of your own for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just getting started or managing a growing brand, you can stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell your products, services, or the content you create, because Squarespace has everything you need all in one place, all in your terms. You can start a completely personalized website with their brand new guided design system. It's called Squarespace Blueprint. It's that you choose from professionally curated layout and styling options to build a unique online presence from the ground up tailored to your brand and business optimized for every device, and easily launch your website and get discovered fast if integrated, optimized SEO tools so you show up more often to more people growing the way that you want to. You can also integrate flexible payments to make check out seamless for your customers with simple but powerful payment tools. You can accept credit cards, PayPal and Apple Pay, and in eligible countries offer customers the option to buy now and pay later if after pay and clear pay. It's not just physical goods, you can also sell digital goods, Squarespace has the tools you need to sell content on your site by adding a paywall to select content or courses. You can even sell files that your customers can download like PDFs, music, or ebooks. Take yourself right now to squarespace.com and sign up for a free trial. You can build your entire site during this free trial and see how easy it is to use. You may even see, and I'm sure you will, why I've been a happy Squarespace customer for 15 years because they make their sites so incredibly easy to build and customize. Then when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/upgrade and you will get 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com/upgrade when you decide to sign up and you'll get 10% of your first purchase and show you support for this show. Thanks to Squarespace for the support of this show and all of Relay. So we have our iPhones. We do. We'll call this the iPhone 16 review, but I'll say from my perspective, this is like first impressions. Yes, that's what it means. So maybe we should just call it that. Okay. We should just be honest about it and call it that because I'm sure you're going to write a review. I'm sure I will at some point. And I guess we can kind of give thoughts on the entire line because for those who watch the podcast, there was a moment where you took a very large cardboard box and started just producing phones like at the center for all of us. So you have the 16, the 16 plus, the 16 pro and the 16 pro max. Yes. I have a 16 pro of my own. Right. Should you talk about colors to start? Sure. So I got desert titanium and I would say the way to describe this, actually in different light, this phone looks very, very different. So in some lighting, in kind of like cooler lighting, it kind of just looks like a slightly warmer version of the natural titanium. But in others, I would say it's more of a rose goldy kind of look. 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, to the natural is a much cooler gray back. But in my hotel room, they look basically the same. 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 and I'm on the board of it because it's something new. So I like it. 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. Go back for natural. I think that's a really good look. This is different and interesting to me. I like and think I can pull off a rose gold. I'm not sure everybody can or would want to. Okay. Right. It's a, it's a bit, I think it is of the options, the most garish maybe, like it's doing something different. The black I saw on the Apple store, not impressed by that. I was hoping for something a little bit late or whatever. They're not calling it black. Right. Are they? Is it? Who can tell anymore? Let me go to the dark titanium black hole. I think you think this one is called black titanium. Okay. Well, it was, it was, I liked it. But that's always going to be my default, I think, is the dark. Yeah. It was the darkest phone black titanium. Black, white, natural and desert. Oh, okay. Yeah. It was, it was not, you know, jet black. It was, it was a, I think I was expecting something a little bit more fun like that, you know? Yeah. Like, like, it was, like, did they clip? It was jet black, but everybody was calling it piano black, right? Right. Because that was kind of like what they were going for. Yeah. And this is not that. This is just a, it's a very dark, it's the darkest of the titaniums, even dark. But of course you've heard the story and it by now, I'm sure the, the, the 16s are incredible. Yeah. The ultra marine color, which we have here, uh, this might be good for the, for the video of viewers out there. Cause we are in person today. Yes, we are. We kind of can't, uh, stop that. Assuming our video system works, which is a mystery we're using. What is that? The GoPro 360. Yeah. Incredible. So this episode's in three, six. No, it's not. Yeah, you can see the wall. Wow. Wow. So this is a, this is just an excellent color and I think the apple have really nailed the color infused glass that they've, they've been working on it. I think this looks extra special, uh, like the deep color around the camera. And I actually really liked the two stack camera. Um, I don't like the way that cases look with this phone because it also has the weird cut out for the flash. For the flash. Cause the flash is flush on the back. Yeah. Cause a look on the phone, but if you are a case user, I think that's a weird, that kind of detracts that a little bit is also strange to look out on the phone. They're like just like on the body of the phone. There's just this white circle where the flash is, but I think that they've done the best they could. And I'm happy that apple didn't extend it to like a triangle or something. Oh, sure. I said it in there. Sure. No, it's, it's, uh, it's nice. The colors are beautiful and so the colors are really amazing. Yep. You don't like the teal. I think the teal is fine. I just, it's a color that I, I, I'm just kind of bored by it. The pink and the ultra marine are so good that the teal is like kind of whatever. If you want green, a teal is available to you, but the ultra marine is beautiful. The pink is really nice and I'm not, you know, pink's not my favorite since I have trouble seeing it. I had no trouble seeing this one though. You could tell that is not great or white. That is a very pink phone. Um, you know, I like them, 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? Yes. Shouldn't that be part of the, and I realize that may be unrealistic. I think it's impossible. Maybe forever. Yeah. But it should be the goal, I think, to have that bump be as little as possible and as unobtrusive as possible. 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? You should do that and not make a weird triangle. And so they did that. But yeah, these are beautiful. 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. And that blue is just, I love it. I feel like this is a year where someone would really good taste one. Yeah, when the brutal doggy dog battle and was named to the colors are for 2024. These are extra good, they are extra, extra good, like they're undeniable in their color. Like if you see someone using these, you'll be like, that's the new iPhone. You know, like I feel like these really, really stand out. So I think they've done a very good job. Similarly, a lot of cases are really good. There's a yellow one, which is like, you can see that thing in the dark, I think. Like, it's pretty incredible. 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. Of course. The other ones we use, pro phones got a bit bigger screen size and physical size. What are your takeaways from that so far? So going from the 15 pro to the 16 pro, I don't feel like it feels any different. In my hand, I likewise don't really feel like I'm noticing the difference in the screen size. So it's a very subtle thing. It's not going to blow anybody away. I like the idea that they attempted to just creep out to the closer to the edges without making the phone that much bigger. So that's a good start. We haven't talked about camera control. I haven't used it a lot again. This is first impressions. And it's funny because I saw somebody, I don't even remember who it was, complaining about the placement of the camera control button. I find that my finger goes very naturally to exactly where the camera control button is. And so I think that part of it is good. I'm unsure if, okay, I'm going to mention the touch bar here. Whoa, hello. I'm going to mention the touch bar, but don't take, don't read too much into it. 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 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. So yeah, we'll come back. I want to come back to talking about sizes and maybe let's dig into the camera control now. That UI is the most fiddly user interface design I've experienced from Apple. So you have to double tap it, but not tap it. You have to double press it, but don't click it. And then when you're in there, you could swipe left and right. And then you can like tap it again and then you can change some settings. And if you want to go back, you have to double press it again, but not click it and then you can go back is very fiddly, but I think this is review of syndrome in that we're using it a lot. Right. So basically, I think most people, it remembers the last set and you had it on. Yes. So I think most people will have the thing that they want to do. I agree. And then change it. Like for me, I expect I will be leaving it on the camera selection, which is 0.5. It's interesting. They have camera and zoom. They're like different, but the camera selection of 0.5 wanted. And I will then just swipe between those and take picture that I want because realistically, I don't need to change exposure or photographic styles or tone that often, but some people, that might be the thing that they want. They might want to just swipe through photo styles and choose one. Sure. 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, the palm on my thumb touches the display, which stops it from working because it's almost like it's trying to like, I'm interacting with the application, but again, the camera control button. Great. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I like the button and the UI. I think the swiping UI is not a bad idea. My problem with it really is I wonder if when it meets the general public, if they're going to say, yeah, that's not quite the interface we want, but I also agree with you. I want to 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. All you do is press the button and take a picture. It's fine. If all you do is do the halfway or that's fine, if all you do is the sort of swipe, that's fine. 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. I actually, so I went into accessibility and changed the amount of pressure needed for the single like tab to be the lightest and I found that to be better. I would also like to be able to move between the sentence with less movement. So I was just trying to take a picture of you there and with my thumb, I couldn't get it to swipe between the cameras, whatever reason it just wasn't enough movement. So I would like also to be able to tweak that, but that's all tweakable. And I do think the thing that people will most likely want to use it for, which is focus, weirdly is not there. Although I don't know. 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. Now, the question is, how does that work in a smartphone camera? 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 because the way it should work is like a camera. 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. But if I want to take a picture of you, but I want the couch behind you to be in the picture, 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'd go halfway and it would focus on the couch and then I'd pick it back up and then I'd do it. So that's going to happen. But it's not there yet. No. That's yet another feature. And this is one of these themes right now of Apple shipping software that doesn't do all the things they promised and we're going to have to wait for some of this stuff. But I do think that that very familiar interaction, I would argue maybe that's not an interaction that is necessary, but I can also see that if you're trying to emulate a film camera, it is going to make some people feel comfortable. Yeah. One thing that I'm really surprised by is you can't flip to the front-facing camera using the camera control. Interesting. I feel like that should be in the camera selection because you can take pictures of it so I can flip it on the screen and I can take pictures of it, and I can also still do all the adjustment with it. So when you're doing your camera swipe, maybe you need to be able to swipe past. To go from 0.5 and then to front-facing, I don't know how they would do that. I feel like I should be able to have that control because it's almost like there are two cameras in a way, which is weird. Like there's two distinct systems because I can do all of the same adjustment on the front-facing camera with the camera control. But I have to already be there somewhere, somehow. Yeah, I find that to be an interesting thing. In general with the camera system, I've been happy with the images I've taken so far. Again, this needs a lot more testing. But I've been doing some side-by-sides and the quality of the Force macro mode is higher in the images that I've tested. But the thing for me is I need to take more pictures of people because that's where I noticed the shadows the most, but I do feel confident that I look in it like the Neelite Patel's review. I may be able to have a lot more control over this with the photographic styles, which there is, 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. Photographic styles also very complex. They've done a good job of trying to show you things in a simple way, and that little tone control that they have to the square is nice, but it's also like a slider below it. Below it. And it's like an Apple in the camera control. They have two distinct things, one called style, one called tone, right? And you can change those with the camera control. But they're both for the graphic styles of UI and styles of the previews you can swipe through and then tone is the controls of the bottom. So there's a lot of complexity here. I think we'll see how people react to it. The thing that I appreciate is, okay, so your Apple, this comes up a lot with Apple because they have so many users at so many different levels. And a lot of the criticism Apple receives is from expert users or advanced amateur users. And the problem is most of the people aren't that, right? That's the problem is most people aren't that. And Apple struggles and they bring it on themselves, right? They want to be the computer for the rest of us, right? They want to reach the masses. 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. It's very hard to do that. 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. And we say this when we talk about Sherlocking is like, well, if you want something like Moom, you know, this, the Apple thing doesn't do anything like that. Well, of course it doesn't because Apple's trying to create something that's for kind of like a regular person who's never going to download third party software. Well, you see it with the camera control and you see it with the photos that are the camera app in general, 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, but that if you want to do a little more, it will start to unfold. That's really hard. And it will be interesting to see about things like the photographic styles, what form they take because I think ideally, if you don't need to know about them, you don't worry about it. Or if you said it wants to go like, I like my photos to be more colorful or whatever, you said it once and you forget it. And then all your photos are like that. And I'm making a note on that. That's actually not the way it works this time. So if you set a photographic style and take a photo with it, the next time you open the camera, it goes back to the default. You have to set a default. You have to go into settings app and then camera camera, then there's a there's a subsection called preserve settings and in there is a toggle to turn on photographic styles. And then it will retain the one you set previously. Just fault photographic style. There isn't a. No, then it will retain the one you lost used. Oh, I thought you could set a default photographic style. I don't know how to do that, if you can. All right. I'll look at it. I could get it to do that. Is to go in and do the preserve sentence thing. Yeah. So my point is, can they make it so that people are happy just clicking and shooting and make Niele Patel happy, who's somebody who has real opinions about photography. It's a good review. I what it seems like is that Niele is happy because and I think, you know, you guys aren't connected to talked about this a lot, the increasing feeling that Apple processes its photos so much because they've got a they've got a philosophy that we're going to, you know, re expose everything seven times and merge them together so that you can see detail and shadows and things like that. But what you lose is contrast that you somebody I saw a post on Mastodon that was I think I was masted on that was literally two shots of fog at sunrise in San Francisco. And one of them was the sun is like blown out through the fog and the other one is an Apple HDR picture where you can see the individual wisps and all that. And they said the blown out one that came, I think, from halide is more accurate to the experience of being there and then Apple kind of because the sun is really bright and shining through and it's sort of blown out gets that effect. 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. 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 where Apple's like, look, we have a philosophy which is capture everything. And if you don't like the fact that that dilute or removes contrast and needs all the contrast from your images and you're left with this kind of grayish haze, then change it. Right? Yeah. And it will let you and that philosophically, I think that's really interesting because it's basically saying, okay, Niele, if our default bugs you change it and then you'll be happy too, but the default, I would argue Apple feels the default works the best for the majority of people. If we only have one default, right, 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. How do you set that default? And I can see why that default might anger other people. So this is very confusing. So Zach in the discord has shown me to a thing in the camera settings called app settings photographic styles, where you can go through like a wizard and choose a style, but it doesn't have all the styles in it. It just has the tones. So I don't, I need to dig into this more, but like the setting that I've found, which is in camera, then preserve settings, this photographic style. And if you turn that on, the one I've set in the camera app stick because the ones that they're showing me here in the app setting section are just the colors, like amber, gold, rose, new tool, but I like the vivid style and then I've adapted that a little bit. Okay. 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, which is the vibrant, actually and I've adjusted it a little bit. So the, yeah, I think when they introduce photographic style. I think when I first started to look at different styles a few years ago, the first version of this, they, it was a big moment because Apple was sort of saying, okay, our look isn't the only look that you could get from a photo. It's so quaint now almost because we live in an era where their competitors are building AI cameras, where you can change everything. And other than editing out background items in cleanup in 16.1, or 18.1, the Apple and then Apple, actually somebody at Apple made a statement about this to somebody and basically said, 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? It's like it, because the photographic styles allow you to have it look differently because we all know that there are so many different ways to capture an image and get a different color and a different look and all of that, but it's still the image. And if that's their hill to die on, I'm okay with it, right? The idea that we're not going to have a camera that detects you in the foreground and puts you in a field. Yep. We're not going to do that. And I'm okay with that. And I also really like now that, you know, if I'm thinking about, I think this is again, some of the confusion I'm having, like, so I just went through the wizard and I can do a change to the color and then adapt the color and it saves that as the style. But none of those are the ones you want. There's stuff to the left, which is colors and stuff to the right, which I think is called moods. They've got undertones and moods. But aren't they all photographic styles? Yeah, I guess. But in the photographic styles section of the camera app, all I can change is the undertones. This is confused. But this is what I'm saying about a lot of this stuff. I feel like this is good. They've kind of let the reins off a bit. In doing that, you create a complicated scenario. That'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. Now, in the old version, you could save that. Right. You can't do that anymore. So now I've taken a screenshot of my numbers so I can change back if I needed to. 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. You should be able to tap somewhere and say, save this. That's mine. And then ideally, save this and then say, make this my default. Yeah. And maybe they'll get there. Again, it does feel a little bit unfinished as well. Like, oh, we got to get this ready for the new iPhone and there are maybe some pieces that are missing. But like I said, what I do like is that it feels like they're erring on the side of creating a basic function that everybody can use. And then they open the box and say, is that not good enough for you? Okay. And then the other thing that I really appreciate about this new system is that if I take a photo and I'm not happy with the coloring, I'm not happy with the way that it's been processed, I can now go in back into photographic styles and see if I can fix it. Yeah. We were before. Once our photo was processed, done. Yeah, the capture, the photographic style changed how the photo was captured. It was baked into the image. Yes. And then all I could do is try and quote, unquote, save it in that like dark room. Yeah. Now I can go back in to the photo, into Apple system, go back into photographic styles and see if I can change it. So I'm excited about all of this, but it leads to the complexity of it, all I think. Right. But I do feel like to 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 dark room, which is my photo choice. Yeah. If you prefer a certain style, like warm and colorful, 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. And with this, yeah, you could all, you could make the counter argument now, which is if your style is bad and you come to regret it later or somebody else goes, Oh, no, no, no, we can't use this. Guess what? There's a lot of extra data in there and you can change it. Yeah. Yeah. I want to talk just a little bit about the physical size of my phone because I have jumped down one. Yes. So you did get you, I did try out that I did hold the 16 Pro Max is a bit real big is big. This is a big, big, big, big phone. Yeah, 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, but the immediately when you had to be the Pro Max during the podcast, I was like, Oh boy, yeah. 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. What I'm happy about is that the smaller phone is going a little bit bigger over time. Yes. So for me, that's good because I can maybe make that jump. And this is just an experiment like the small phone feels small to me. It feels this is a, this is a small phone and it, it's already changing my relationship to a little bit. What I've noticed of this phone is I'm kind of like throwing it around more and I don't know why, but like if I'm, you know, I'd like thrown out in the bed, throw out in my pocket, it's more maneuverable. It feels fantastic to hold. I like that I can type with one hand really easily, but I'm typing with two hands and I'm tripping over myself with my thumbs, like it's, it's not big enough. So it still feels good for watching video, which was a big thing for me. So I can watch video and if that feels good, it's definitely different. 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, 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. I'm trying to support with my pinky finger and that I'm making it work, but like I am like a whore gripping this phone. And what I also know is that if I'm touching the screen, which I kind of will do to get it that messes with the camera control a little bit because it's the phone trying to work out where you control this right now. So you know, if you want the big phone, as I have wanted for many years, this isn't even bigger one, but it just so happened that this was, I felt myself wanting to change it up a little bit. And I was saying, I'm very, very happy with this, but this feels like a, the pro feels like a tiny phone tonight comparatively. 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 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, whoa, this is so big, but honestly, after like a week or two, and I could type way more accurately on the pro than I could on the mini. That's the truth. The real shame of the mini was that I could never type accurately on it with the keyboard was just so small, but, but I got used to it. So that's going to be the question for you is you live with us for two, three weeks and see if you can still use it. My setup went really well. Mm hmm. Actually, did something I was able to do this time that I've been able to do it for many years. So any of my friends who I've been telling this piece of information to it's wrong. Now maybe I was able to transfer my use them. Now in previous years, that has not worked at all until I got home, 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. 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 way? Something's changed. But something changed between the, because the last two years that has not worked, I've tried and tried and tried and then last year, I did it in the airport and it worked. So like it just needed to be able to connect to what I seemed like to my UK network, but this time it's done and it's working. Everything's fine. I've been able to roam and it's working. So I'm happy about that, but that's new for me. The question, my setup went really well. I did the fun, the fun thing, put it overnight. I really wished it would transfer apps like it didn't have to then download the apps from the app store. Right. So it was smooth. The one question I have is, why does Apple put GarageBand on my phone? It wasn't there before. I had the same thing. Why do you do that? You put it on the home screen, you created a home screen and you put GarageBand on it. I didn't have it installed. So like at what point, like I need, we need to speak to the European Union, I think. And I work. This is on example. And I work. I had that too. I had pages. I have those apps. I had pages and keynote and I do not have those on my phone and they were added as well, which I, something weird and I movie as well, which I don't have. And I think that's one of those weird cases where there are these apps that are system apps but aren't system apps, they're in the app store and it used to be you had to claim them. You had to like, you got a new computer and it would say you need to put in this, you need to claim them in the app store in order to, you need to buy them, but they come with the purchase of that. And I, I honestly, maybe somebody could tell us, maybe Luca Maestry can tell us once he's not the CFO anymore. I actually wonder if there's a very specific accounting practice going on. Back in the day, there were things that Apple like couldn't give you. Yeah, you had to pay for software updates. Yeah. Right. And some of that was legal or accounting. Yeah, Sarbanes Oxley. Yes. Sarbanes Oxley. Exactly. Whatever that means. I know the words. I don't know what it means. It's two guys. It's two Paul Sarbanes and I forget who Oxley was. It's like how, because I, something I've found more over the years is like, it's like the Smith Holy Terra. Every law in the UK is named after something. So it's like Verizon Drinko, which I hear Ben Thompson talk about on a mostly weekly basis. So, yeah. So it's a, um, and ZMK is pointing out the reason, the reason your apps don't transfer is that they change what you download based on what you're, what device you're on. I don't care. But I would also say what about some logic to say, you know, this, this phone's pretty much like that phone. I mean, like these things are like, uh, the way I describe a lot of this stuff is none of this stuff happens organically. Right. There are decisions being made. Yeah. And they could change it. They could say, you know what, we're going to, uh, keep compatibility on the 15 and the 14 so that when we get to the 16, those will just transfer right over. How different is slack from one of us to the other? Right. So, yes. So anyway, um, 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, 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, I don't know, it, it's really weird. Yes. Like, oh, you got a new iPhone and on your previous iPhone, you deleted GarageBand. Well, here it is. You're getting a GarageBand. Enjoy it. You just need to just get rid of that. Yeah. Yeah. I look forward to playing around with these more. You know, it's as well, these phones charge faster if you plug them in, they do up to 45 watt charging. Yep. I plugged my phone in yesterday. It was like 20%. I was still using it. And I have like five or 10 minutes. I have 45% battery life. 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. You know, like I know mine's going down. Oh, yes, Jay. So, when I, I transferred here. Oh, I mean, like, Steven's and it just maxed the product. Oh, that's right. So, you can't really say. Yeah. I was getting killed because I was doing an update and downloading all those files and downloading every podcast and all of those things happening. But we'll see the early, I'd say early suggestions are good, but who knows? This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Vitalee. Vitalee is bringing in a new era for customer service productivity with their all in one platform. Vitalee's collaborative workspace combines your customer data with all the capabilities that you expect from today's project management and work platforms. With Vitalee, you can measure the effectiveness of OKRs and operational strategies on customer outcomes at scale, thanks to their goals feature. Goals allows you to track the progress of your accounts against target metrics, meaning you can standardize goal setting across the board, so you know exactly how effective your processes truly are. And best of all, it's designed for today's customer success team. That is why Vitalee operates of unparalleled efficiency, improves net revenue retention, and delivers best in class customer experiences. Vitalee is offering a free pair of AirPods Pro for every upgrade listener who books a qualified meeting, so if you're a customer success decision maker, schedule your call today by visiting vitalee.io/upgrade, that is vitalee.io/upgrade for a free pair of AirPods Pro when you schedule a qualified meeting, thanks to Vitalee for their support of this show and relay. You also got the Apple Watch Series 10. 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. I had a seven. Wow. So I went up to the J-10 wearing the seven daily, like you weren't wearing a review unit. No, I was wearing the seven titanium, which was a treat yourself moment from three years ago. I actually remember that. 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. And the place that it is the most, I think, is the sensor dome doesn't stick out so far. And so the whole watch feels closer to my wrist. It looks nice, I think. It does. I'm very used to the Ultra, which is a big chunk of it. It's so huge. But I am struck by the fact that it looks like your Apple watch is sitting on your wrist. 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 that I think is much sleeker looking. I agree. Because of that. I agree. And the screen size, what do you think of the screen size? 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. 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's stuck a little bit up my arm where the digital crown was close to the bone in my wrist. 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. I was actually causing trouble there. So no, that change in how it sits on my wrist is a big change. The size doesn't feel that dramatically different, although, you know, I'm sure I will appreciate that extra, the extra space on it. 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 Sportband. I have, with my Apple Watch, I have a Nike Sportband 2. I was able to wear your Nike Sportband one notch tighter than mine. Interesting. So you can tell the thickness difference. Yeah. And kind of where it's coming from. Interesting. The watch to skin, like the watch attachment to the skin is closer. 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, like I could wear the watch tighter because it's not pulling away from my wrist as much. So I found that to be interesting. Right. So it's, I got the jet black aluminum. So it's shiny. That's aluminium. Yes. That's just, I knew that 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. Right. That is very impressive what they've managed there. They should make phones look like that. Interesting. And I think they're gone, huh? Right. Someone wrote in about this. This might actually be an ask upgrade, we'll get to them over there, but let me see actually. And the reason I went down from titanium is as much as I enjoyed treating myself and the Series 7 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 the, 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. 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 aluminum and how it may be finished. I think that is a matte spot on. New process, right? That is strange. That is a strange look for aluminum. Like it's good. And this was, I mean, we were talking about like, oh, they would go to aluminum for this incredibly expensive phone or if you can make it look expensive. You've done 50% which is this polishing process that they do. Yeah. Now, I've seen the stainless gold one. I'm convinced that I will be upgrading to that when I get home. I think that is incredibly good looking and this is like that difference for you. For me, that's worth the extra money. Let's, yeah. So we're going to play people who like one Apple watch are admiring another Apple watch. So you have an ultra and you're admiring the Series 10 in gold stainless or gold titanium. Yeah, not stainless gold titanium. I will say as a Series 10 owner, I got to see at the Apple store. We went to the Memphis, Tennessee, Saddle Creek, the Germantown, Tennessee Apple store with Stephen Hackett driving us around Tennessee. I saw the black series or a ultra two. It looks so good. It's incredible. And, you know, as our team, our baseball team, the San Francisco Giants are orange and black. Orange and black. We just get an orange watch band. It's so good. Oh, I do have an orange watch band. We're an orange watch band. Well, let me tell you that this people who bought an Apple watch recently will have will know this. It's a series of what band you can buy with your Apple watch, especially if you want it on a certain day because I wanted to pick it up on Saturday here. And there were a whole array of bands that I wanted that they're like, yeah, that'll be in October. I'm like, well, okay, I'm not doing that. I'll just buy this fun Nike band that I'll wear and it's nice. But anyway, the ultra two black looks so good. And the orange highlights on it, I think just pop. It is chef's kiss. Good. I didn't buy it. I don't. I don't want to watch that big is the bottom line, but it looks so good. So I love the way the gold looks. 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? That it may be in every other year from now on or many years. Well, they've changed it this year, right? So three years, three different, three versions in a way because it's ultra two, but black. That's new. Right. But it doesn't have all of the new stuff, it doesn't have all of the new senses. It doesn't. And I think that's going to continue. Yeah. No, they said, we talked about this after the event. They described the ultra in not really different terms, but like, I think they specified the ultra is our rugged sports watch. And what it's not, even though it was this when it was introduced, it was this, but it was almost like de facto it was this, which was it was also their biggest screen and their best technology and a whole bunch of stuff. It was the high end Apple watch. And I think what they're saying is, no, no, no, it's not the high end Apple watch. It might be the most expensive Apple watch, but like it's not. It's the rugged sports watch. And that's why you get the ultra or because you like the look, it's just like, and for me, it's like, I wanted this watch because 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. I think I want to go back to the series 10. I like the way it looks. I was making a funny face because I'm looking at the comparisons because like, well, what is different? And it's like, you know, some of the new screen technology is different. You know, the always on is better one of the in the features, you know, the comparison feature breakdowns. One of the things that the Apple watch ultra two does that the app watch series 10 doesn't is high speed water sports. I'm not sure what that means and like, like, like, can you not? Will it not? What? What happens? I don't know. That's interesting, right? Because like, okay, recreational scuba. I get that, right? It has a better depth gauge. Yeah. I understand that. The snorkelers watch. What is high speed water sports and why does this one do the water skiing? I guess I can understand what I can imagine what they are. But like, what in the ultra supports that better? Who knows? You know, I want to make a note about it. Watch faces. Because this is something I learned in my product briefing as well about this. So 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 even when like a second, even when it's down, because that happens to me all the time. I'm cooking and like, I'm looking at my watch, but it's not on. Yeah. And then I get like full. So we can refresh. Yeah. It can refresh by second. Right. One second refresh rate. Fantastic. And they said in the keynote, and look at these great faces, we have 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. 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 until it goes to sleep, at which point it becomes a ticking second hand and it keeps ticking. Whereas on the old watch faces, you know, because they couldn't do always on at a second update, the second hand just vanished. Here's the thing. And it speaks to a, 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 watch OS, which is the watch faced development and design. We've, for, it's been 10 years, folks, the pace of Apple watch face development is poor, but poor still is the fact that after Apple builds a face, they very rarely ever change it even to get new features. And if you think about that, it's kind of bananas because on iOS and Mac OS, generally, if there's a brand new feature to the OS, they like add support to it to like their apps and stuff. But if you're using and want to still use a, 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, 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. It's showing. It's, it suggests to me that the development of these watch faces is based on a rickety system. Yes. Because that's what I mean about the skeleton in the closet here is why, why, why shouldn't what is the watch looking like it? So there are two watch faces for every watch face, essentially, there is the on and the always on. Yeah. Right. So what should happen is all of these elements should be defined and they just work within an API. Like, so second hand, does it tick? What watches it on? Right. You know, like that, that kind of thing. So it suggests that they have built this contraption to build watch faces that is rickety and they have an updated it and they're just, some of the older faces don't support the newer complications exactly, but you can still use those watch faces. Right. But they use the, they, they don't use the new. Yeah. And my beloved watch face that is, that is my favorite is utility and I don't use it as much because it doesn't have the same complications. So I'm on California and I like utility better. Utility looks better, but it won't do the corner complications in the same way that California will. It will do one at the bottom instead of the two corners. 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. They have to step, like when they've done the updates, they've probably just started over. Yeah. Right. Or, or they're like, well, no, we can't have this face beyond this model. And then this face behaves differently on this model. It must stay the same throughout. And if that, I don't know if that's the case or not in somebody Apple might say, no, no, no, no, no, that's not it at all. But here's the thing. We can speculate about why it is this way, but it shouldn't be this way. That's the bottom line is is you can, and I'd love to know, but it's an excuse. 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. Like, yes, I know it's always been like this, but the way it is is wrong. Apple introduced the ability this year on the series 10 to have your watch tick second by second. That's a great thing. Because that's how watches work. You should do that. And it should do that. And now it's capable of doing that. And they have an array of watch faces with hands. And only three of them do it. It is stupid. A three. Like why only the new ones, they didn't update all the old ones and like, look, I'm arguing with an imaginary Apple person now, but I'm just going to say it. I'm sure that if somebody who works on watch faces came and talked to me in secret, they be like Jason. Oh, oh my God. You can give me a great explanation. I don't understand it. I'm sure. But bottom line as a user and a reviewer of the products, if you introduce a watch screen that can tick when it's sleeping once a second, every watch face you make that shows seconds should show seconds. Because that's a feature you're telling me that I have. But now I have to change the watch face to get that feature. I don't like their new watch face that it has a second hand that ticks. I don't like it. It doesn't show numbers. I want my watch face to have the little numbers on it and look like my old Swiss army watch and modular does that. I can coerce California to more or less do that. 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. Whoa, get with the program. Use this new one. Why is it like this? 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. But like, how do you build hardware like that? 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 much. So that the so that the Apple Watch can finally tick. This is the thing that we've been talking about for 10 years. It can tick on the second. And then there's somebody in watch faces is like, yeah, we're not going to do that. We'll give you three. We'll give you three. Yeah, that's bad. It's bad. So I don't know what they're doing there, but it's they messed it up. 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. I will provide a slight balance to just again, extol the virtues of the new photos face. It isn't it. My Apple Watch has become an instant joy machine. It's so good. 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, what they call photo shuffle on the lock screen where you can choose these categories, people, pets, places, like cities and nature. Yeah. And you can choose, you know, I have my wife cities and nature and every three favorite things. Every day, 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. 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, because this is the thing. This is a surprise. It's a good surprise. So this is the thing that it's one of those things where there's complexity, but it's delightful. 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. 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. And that was, I mean, we were in in Eugene, Oregon when we did that and it was winter. So that was probably like a year and a half ago. And to this day, she picks up her phone in the morning and goes, Oh, look at this one. Like it's magical. And it's one of those ways where Apple is trying to surface, 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 to photos to recommend things to you, 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 in your case. It's great. There's this a picture of it, you know, from, oh, it's gone now from like 2014 or whatever. And they, or like this one is, I don't know where that is, but they put the time behind the thing. Right. Because they're doing the subject detection. And you get two complications, which is not enough, but enough. I've got the weather and I've got the date. And then what I love, I love the new widgets because I get so much stuff in that little stack now. I'm not sure it's 11, incredibly good, fantastic operating system, vitals is great. I really like this system. I'm loving the ability for, if your phone's running a live activity, it pushes you. I said the RCN score, but tap my watch. It's like, it's a live activity. I care about it. Maybe I want it on my wrist too. My only thing here, I'm going to complain about watch OS again. I love having a clock with hands on my wrist, 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. And I don't think that a tiny with no numbers watch is what I want there. I want the time. It's complicated. I like that they have decided to be able to pick visually match them. Yeah. But yeah, you should be able to say. I'd like to be able to pick. Thanks, but I would prefer something else. If you're going into that mode, I just want the digital time. I don't want hands at that point. So I find myself rolling out of it, but having it there is really nice for that. That's an option. You can turn it off, but I really like that about it. 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 typography style. Because I really like the, I usually use it on my main home screen, but I'm in my recording focus right now. So it's different. It's Apple's New York font for the time. I think it's a beautiful serif that they've made and it looks wonderful on lock screens and stuff like that, but that's not, I have not found any options to make changes to the new photos face. And I would like to be able to set it in New York because I think it looks really good. All right. And I've got one thing I want to show you just because so this is my lock screen on my iPad. And the thing that I didn't realize, we're talking about segmenting subjects so that they can, you have a person or a mountain or something like that. And then the time is like hiding behind it. Here's the thing that I didn't know, which is when I swipe down notification center on my iPad, as it fades in, the time comes down right at the top. It's on the top and as it drops behind the mountain on my lock screen, it tucks in. It tucks in behind it. It's almost like, so you're, you're, there's a mountain in the sky and your lock screen's time is like tucking itself in between the sky and the mountain, like it's, it's recognized those two layers. That's very good. Yeah, that's unnecessary, but it's fantastic. It's amazing. So yeah. You love it. You love to see it. Good job. And that's all based on portrait mode. Essentially, they have built this system in portrait mode to do subject detection. And then from that comes like 40 other features, including spatial photos in vision of us too, where you can spatialize a photo. It's all of that. It's, it's the working backwards from understanding how to do portrait mode, right? Which again, initially was a physical thing they had to do. Then they built a software version of it in that way, like where it was completely fake, right? And they've moved it on from that. It's incredible. That's super good. And it's created my absolute favorite watch face of all time. Nice. This episode is brought to you by ladder. Let's be real. We all have a tendency to put some things off until the last minute, whether it's going to the DMV, arranging a dental checkup, getting to that next home improvement project. I have a stack of things in the house, just like these, this is my home improvement stack. And eventually I'll get to those boxes. These things, they're not massively important. You know what I'm talking about. Most of the time this stuff works out, but there is something in your life that you cannot afford to wait on. And that is setting up term coverage life insurance. You've probably seen life insurance commercials on TV and thought, yeah, I'll look into it later. But this really isn't something you should wait on. Use life insurance through ladder today. Ladder is 100% digital. No doctors, no needles, no paperwork when you apply for $3 million in coverage or less. Just answer a few questions about your health in an application. Ladder's customers rate them 4.8 out of 5 stars on trust pilot. And they made Forbes best life insurance list of 2021. You just need a few minutes and a phone or laptop to apply. Ladder's smart algorithms work in real time, so you'll find out if you're instantly approved. There are no hidden fees and you can cancel at any time, and you'll get a full refund if you change your mind in the first 30 days. Ladder's policies are insured by issue by insurers with long proven histories of paying claims. They're rated A and A plus by AMBEST. And since life insurance costs more as you age, now's the time to cross it off your list. So go to ladderlife.com today to see if you're instantly approved. This is L-A-D-D-E-R Life.com/upgrade ladderlife.com/upgrade thanks to ladder for their support of this show and relay. Just real quick, AirPods 4, you got set from Apple for review. I did. 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. From my perspective, the noise cancellation, pretty good, like better than I ever could have imagined you could do about a seal, but it reminded me of a problem that I had with the original AirPods, it doesn't sit in my left ear. Like I even had this AirPods Pro, so they go in, but my left ear eventually is going to come out. But as soon as I put the AirPods 4 in, you saw me, I was like, "Well, that doesn't feel safe at all." So again, I think it's a lot with these things. With all the AirPods line, really, you're going to find something that fits you. It's not necessarily going to be the same for everyone, but I'm now happy. 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. Yeah. Yeah. I need to spend more time. I will actually use it on the plane as well and try. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Because we're in studio, put it in. I couldn't hear the air conditioning. Yeah. It's pretty good. It's better. It's not AirPods Pro, right? And it isn't priced that way. But they're doing some noise canceling 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. 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. Yeah. It's, it's, I almost want to say like it's better than you could expect from AirPods, regular AirPods, right? It's great that they have that as a feature, especially if you prefer, strongly prefer regular AirPods. So maybe some more on that later on. Yeah. I wanted to talk to you. We'll do some follow-up on it. It's cool. But it's, it's a god. I'm, I'm trying them and I'm, it's, it's interesting. Let's finish out with some ask upgrades. Arjun asks, how useful is camera control with left-handed usage? 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 is the camera control as quick and easy for point and shoot pictures. I think so. So I think what Arjun is thinking is if you hold it just in the left hand and I found in portrait mode, it's fantastic. My, my middle finger is right there, right over it. And even if in left-handed mode, you could kind of do it in a, in a different way. Maybe you're kind of grabbing the phone with the, with the, you're kind of looking at the screen, you had around the screen. It works. Like I, I found it again, I'm using the pro, I think harder on the pro max, but even you could kind of grab it and use your thumb and kind of hold it up from the, 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. But yes, I think it works great, left-handed or right-handed for, for usage. So I think so. I think you'll be happy either way. However you use the phone, you'll be happy with that. I mean, I hold my phone in my left hand. Do you? Have we spoke about it? It's only where I am. I don't really know what I do. I think I don't have a specific, like a particular thing that I think I can do both. Tom asks, do you think Apple avoided mentioning the two sizes of the series 10 during the event, because it's confusing to say biggest screen ever and available in 42 and 46 millimetre models, especially when the ultra is 49 millimetres, which refers to case size. But does everybody know that? This is an interesting thought to me. 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 millimetre sizes, it would have become complicated. 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 that they put them. I don't think it has anything to do with the size of the ultra. I don't think their worry was, oh, wait, they said 49, but how can it be 49, but the 46 is bigger? They don't think that's it for screen. I do think if some of the superlative claims you're making are about it being the biggest Apple watch screen ever, 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 and like, and I think that was a level of complexity that they didn't want. So I think that's probably part of the reason. Yeah. I still think they messed up though. Hey, I think you got two phones or two watches you should mention them deal with the complexity of it. Yeah. Say, I mean, say that for our smaller model, it's also the biggest in that class. Yeah. Okay. It's not that it's not that hard. I think they I wonder what they think, right? I wonder if they think it was great and they nailed it or or not because I think this event aired too far on the side of lack of detail. And I know people said it was boring and all of that. I mean, I guess whatever it's a commercial, you're watching for two hours, I guess it is. I'm not sure how exciting these do not say you have two watches. Yeah. Yeah. It feels like you should mention that. Yeah. I feel like my main criticism about the event was more that it was weird and confusing than it was like boring. 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 from June, but they have to do it, right? Because they want to reach all the people who don't watch it would be irresponsible to not do that. It would be. But and that and that's why a lot of the commentators who said it was boring, I don't give a lot of credit to because they're people who are paying attention in June. Yeah. If a regular person thinks it's boring, okay, that's a bigger problem, but they're trying to introduce Apple intelligence. 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 like, you know, and maybe there's some production issues with some of this stuff too. 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 and they didn't say that either, right? So just some weird omissions there. I wonder if they could maybe add in a little more detail next time. All right. This is a longer question. I think it's a good one. It comes from Daniel. The capacitive surface on the camera control button shows that Apple is willing to place touch sensors inside side buttons on the iPhone. 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, 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 to achieve ultimate edge to edge full screen glory. Oh, interesting. Well, what I would say is that iPhone slim air, whatever is a new product and all bets are off. It's going to be weird. So if they decided that it was way better, space wise to biometrically authenticate via a touch ID button on the side, instead of putting sensors behind the glass, I'm sure they waited that, you know, and decided that we don't know what they decided, but it's possible, right? 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 take the dynamic, the dynamic always be there in software. I expect when they, when they got to, we're going to make the dynamic island, there were two paths. There were, are we going to continue with face ID or we're going to change it? Yeah. Right. And like they decided to continue, which I think is the right move. Mm hmm. I prefer face ID. Same. Yeah. I prefer touch ID on an iPad, interestingly, but face ID, the iPad doesn't, the iPad doesn't recognize me as often. And then this is not an issue I have in my mini because I pressed the button to turn it on. Sure. That's fair. Right. If you're using it in a keyboard, face ID is better. If you're using an iPad, it's just an iPad. Touch ID is better. Interesting. Okay. I find, I don't think I agree, but I can see how there are different use cases there. I know that for the phone, a lot of people are like wearing gloves and stuff and it's really nice to even, you know, not to have, because you can wear the gloves that will let you run touch screen, but they're not going to read your fingerprint. So face ID is really nice for that. Other people, you know, we do have the ability to do face coverings now with, with face ID. So there's that. It's an interesting question because I think it goes back to the fact that this product if it exists is going to be the result of lots of conversations just like this one where just because we've had it before doesn't mean, I mean, think about the iPhone 10, right? The iPhone 10, the whole conversation was, let's do face ID instead of touch ID. And what does that mean? And they put a notch on the screen and eventually it moved to being the dynamic island. So they're going to, they're going to go through all of those things and stuff's going to get left out, stuff's going to get changed. And that's all in the interest of making a very different piece of hardware. This could be it or, or not, because, because the question, I think it's a absolutely legitimate question to ask. The question is, I'm sure they tried both things and found one of them better. And I don't know which one that is because the phone 10 was the foundation of iPhones for the future. Yeah. I think this slim phone could be if you can, because you can, you can take the logical path of, well, they have to make everything thinner so they can fold it. Yes. And is that maybe the future of the iPhone? Right. Or at least a future. A future of the iPhone. And what we learn too is if you can make it at scale with all these thinner accessories in it, thinner components, that will have knock on effects where they will build all these things with the small components. And then in a year or two, they'll say, well, we've got all this skill with assembling based on these small components that we buy in huge volumes. So we might as well use them elsewhere. And everything else starts to use them and maybe gets a little thinner and lighter themselves. And like, 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, you know, fold it up on another one because you don't want that sandwich to be too thick. So it's a great idea. I don't know the answer, right? 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? Could they use a sensor behind the screen that doesn't have the dynamic eye length? I think that the goal of the faith ID is to put it behind the screen. And I know there's been, there's been talking of them trying that. Is it possible? Right. And what's the, and what's the thickness issue? In the end, some of them 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, right behind the screen there. But that's the question is, which one makes the thing thinner? I would expect touch-eyed day makes the phone better. 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 this. Well, it would, it would exist for lie activities, right? Yeah. But then it would just disappear. Yeah. 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. You can check out Jason's work at sixcolors.com, here he shows on the incomparable and here on Relay, where you can hear me too and check out my work Cortexbrand.com. We can find us online. Jason is @jsonow, J-S-N-E-W-L. I am @hamike, I am Y-K-E. You can watch clips of this show on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube where we are at Upgrade Relay. Thank you to our members, the supports of Upgrade Plus this week. I want to talk about hanging out in Memphis. All right. Well, that's been like over the last week or so. Well, it's been longer for me. It has been as long for you. No. It's been gone for a long time. It feels like. By the way, I'm Ladder for the support of this show. Don't forget to go to stu.org/relay, this will be your penultimate warning maybe for that online. I'm not entirely sure when the camera is closing. You're going to hear it at least a couple more times, maybe. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Goodbye, Mike Early. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
Jason and Myke share their first thoughts about the iPhone 16 Pro and Apple Watch Series 10, live and in person!
