Episdeo 983: xOS 26.5 is now available, Apple Watch rumors

0:00No one goes to Hank's for his spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately, though, the shop's been quiet. So Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks Copilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs and help him see if he can afford it. Copilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the $1 slice work. Now Hank's has a line out the door. Hank makes the pizza. Copilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at m365copilot.com slash work.

0:30Unscripted, unfiltered, unafraid. Welcome to the Macro Podcast. My name is Michael Simon, and I am joined by Jason Cross. Good morning. And our producer, Roman Loyola. Ahoy there. This is episode number 983. And today we're going to mostly talk about Apple Watch. I don't know how we're going to fill up an hour, but we'll try. I know.

1:00It's never been a problem before. We've got WWDC coming. We'll talk about watchOS, rumors about the Series 12, I guess. I don't even know if there are any, but we'll talk about that new fit that air thing and the kind of screenless health band revolution that's happening. And, you know, whatever else we can do to fill up a half hour. But, you know, Apple Watch is, that's kind of why we want to talk about it. Because Apple Watch is like Apple's most like unexciting, stagnant, quietly doing not much,

1:34but still selling quite a bit every quarter. So we'll talk about all that. Yeah. We'll also talk about iOS 26.5 that came out this week. And then this week, I'm going to have a history and we'll close with our comment corner. Speaking of comments, you can contact us through Blue Sky Facebook threads. Search for Macworld. Look for the Blue Mouse logo. Send us an email to podcast at macworld.com. Comment under a video, a story. No, well, you can't do that yet. But a video, a post, you know, just get us your thoughts and we'll talk about them on a future show.

2:09Okay. So this week, so we're recording this on Tuesday, May 12th. So yesterday, Apple dropped its latest round of iPadOS, MacOS, iOS, everything else, OS 26.5, which it's probably, right, Jason, it's probably the last one we get. I say definitely the last one we get before iOS 27 is, or the 27 updates are revealed. All the previous years, there's a .6 in like late June or July.

2:44Right. And it's bug fixes and stuff. In fact, they usually don't even, the normal cadence is you get, you get the update goes out to everyone, and then the beta for the next one starts the next day or a day later. But at this time of year, it doesn't. The beta, we're not going to get to 26.6 beta until after WWDC. The pub, oh. The beta at all. Like the developer beta or anything, like that's not out, and it probably won't be out until after WWDC. So you're talking about 26.6?

3:15Six, yeah. Won't be out until, okay. The beta won't even be out. Right, right, right. Like the beta normally would start right now, and it's not. Right, or sometime this week. Yeah, I looked it up. So a year ago, we got, a year ago today, not yesterday, we got 18.5 Mac OS 15.5. That was back when Apple was still doing their screwy numbering system. Right. So like they're right on schedule with these releases. And then there was a .6 in, is it late June? Yeah, yeah, June. Or something. It didn't come out until like June 29th.

3:46So yeah, it was, it's a while. But that's usually the last regular one, and it's like bug fixes and stuff. Yeah, there was nothing in it. And then you're right, the next one, which would be .7, didn't come out until September when iOS 26 came out. Yeah, and that's all security and bug fixes and stuff. And sometimes they have to release one to support some new accessory. Yeah, so like this is the last one of note. Like we'll write about them.

4:17Yeah, this is the last one of many features. They're going to be pretty boring. Yeah, yeah. And it was a pretty good one. We got RCS encryption, finally. It's been, what, two years since we've been waiting for. So they came out with that. I don't have it in front of me, but RCS came out a couple of years ago. 16, iOS 16, 17, I don't remember. But it was a little while ago, and it was notably missing any form of encryption. And people kind of called out Apple on that, and they're like,

4:47well, listen, that's not our fault. Like we'll do it when they do it. So they worked with the standards people in Google. Yeah, the problem is it wasn't part of the standard, and there was encryption between Android phones. There was encryption. But that was an extension Google wrote that just worked on, you know. Pixel phones, basically. Or anybody using the Google chat app. It was app-based, right? So, yeah, Apple's line was always, well, as soon as they build encryption into the RCS standard,

5:22and it's standardized, you know, and not just their extension. And so they've been working with the, whatever the body is, the RCS standard. They've been doing that. And it's finally, it's a beta. It requires carrier support in most of the U.S. Most of the main U.S. carriers support it. And like all the big three, but most of the MVAs. Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile. I think it's still in beta for them, too, but they are. It's in beta for everyone.

5:52Actively working on it, yeah. Yeah, it's a beta for everyone. It's parentheses beta in your OS.

6:01Some of the small MVNOs may not support it. Right. And internationally, it's spotty, the carrier. So it'll be rolling out more over time. Right. Yeah, probably by the end of this year, maybe September, like it'll be out of beta and it'll be just something that we just do. And it's, you know, it's a pretty big deal forever before this, you know, the green bubbles and the blue bubbles. But more importantly, it was less secure when you talk to Android people where,

6:34you know, you saw that green bubble. You didn't have all that cool message stuff, but you also, it also meant like those messages could be intercepted, which, you know, maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but they're not inherently secure. Now they are, or they will be, which is, you know, it's a big deal. Like I message, you know, it kind of isn't what it was in the sense that it used to be the thing that you can do the tap backs and get the typing indicators. And like, you can do all that now. And on top of all that, it's secure when you're talking to Android people,

7:05it's still green. And, you know, they still point out that, hey, you're not talking to an Apple person, but it's pretty much on the same level, which is, which is, which is great. Yeah. Most of the iMessage stuff has to do with other more advanced things like sending, you know, voice memos and replying in threads and all those other kinds of things. There's less the basic stuff. The erase message thing. That's an iMessage thing, right? That's only iMessage, yeah.

7:36Or iEditing, like, right, you can only edit iPhone to iPhone, I think, when you go in there and like fix a typo or something, I'm pretty sure. Yep. Also scheduling messages is iMessage only. Yeah. So there's still some cool stuff, but, you know, it's good. Like sometimes Apple's forced to do this stuff, and this is one of the better ones that they've been forced. Yeah. Can you imagine just being stuck on regular SMS with its short limits and especially trying to send a photo, that was the worst, is because certain carriers had really small limits for how big an image file could be,

8:11and you would get this really garbage little video that's like you couldn't see anything. Right. You couldn't make out anything. It's just blocks of blurriness. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a lot better now. Yeah.

8:24Also new, there's a new wallpaper, which normally like, so around this time every year, Apple comes out with their pride rainbow wallpaper, which is nice. But this year's wallpaper is really cool. It's super customizable, and it kind of like animates and moves. And, you know, it's one of those things that you should try, check it out. You don't have to be like in two rainbow colors. Like there's all different colors that you can combine and stuff. Yeah. It's nice. If you do the little thing where you swipe to get different tones and stuff like that,

8:55it cycles through different color gradient things and stuff, so you can get cool, cool effects. And it's one of the, like, it's like kind of like a dynamic thing, where as you move your phone, like it moves, and it's really nice. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. What else? Those are the two main things. The other big one is suggested places in maps. Oh, right. Jason's going to go off on a tangent for a couple minutes. No, we already did this one. But suggested places in maps, which has been, Google Maps has done this forever.

9:28You just sort of based on your history and your search history and stuff like that, it just suggests locations to you and time of day and stuff. And some of those suggested places will be ads. They're starting ads in maps. So some of those and some of your search results will be ads. We don't know what those look like yet. Right. They're accepting ads, ad orders from people, but they haven't rolled out. They're probably not going to roll out until probably, you probably won't see them in your maps until like June or July. Yeah. So we don't know what they look like.

10:00Probably similar to the app store where they'll be like slightly shaded and have a little tiny ad thing next to them. So, yeah, since they appear as pins on your map, we don't know how the pin will look different. On Google Maps, they use a square block instead of the round ones for ads. And then when you tap on it, there's that tiny little sponsored text. And it'll be something like that. It'll have some different pin and it'll let you know it's an ad. Yeah, I mean, Apple's been kind of quiet about that.

10:30They did announce it. They did talk about it in a like an overall press release. But, you know, they're not going to kind of spotlight. I don't think most people are going to care or really even notice or really even like it'll just be there one day and it'll be like they were always there. Like it's not. We're so used to seeing ads in everything we view. It is. It's when they first announced this and it'll pop up. But the first time you open maps after you update to 26.5, a little card will pop up telling you, hey, there's going to be ads.

11:03Right. But they don't know what they look like.

11:07The when they announced this, people online were like, well, I guess I'll use Google Maps then. I'm like, Google Maps full of ads. Like, what are you talking about? Yeah, they're already full of ads. So or maybe the idea was like, hey, if I'm going to see ads anyways, I might as well use what I think is a better mapping. Yeah. I mean, Apple Maps has come a long way. I use it almost exclusively over Google. In fact, I think the layout is a little better. The whatever the drawing of the maps is way better.

11:40But like, you know, it was a punchline about 10 years ago, but it's it's it's definitely definitely here in the U.S. It's really good. Yeah. Yeah. On the phone. If I'm looking up something on a web browser on my computer, I usually ask go to Google Maps. I don't think there is Apple Maps on the web. It's not as robust. Yeah. But I use the Mac app. It's it's it's pretty good. But yeah, more of that, I'm on my iPhone anyway.

12:12So, yeah. And a couple other things like easier pairing when hooking your magic accessories up to an iPhone or iPad. There's some improvements for switching from iPhone to Android, but or vice versa. But those are the three main things. It's a pretty good update as far as late cycle iOS updates go. And, you know, of course, also like a couple dozen security things and bug fixes and a lot and 52 security updates.

12:45Yeah. I wonder there's been a lot lately. Do you think Apple is using that? So there's been a lot of talk about how people are using AI to spot these bugs and get them out quicker because AI can do things that humans can't. When it comes to like navigating large rows of text. And do you think they're Apple's using AI at all to kind of spot? They definitely are. They definitely are. There's so Anthropic, the people who make Claude, they have their next. They have different tiers of the thing.

13:16They have Sonnet, which is like the little super small fast AI. There's Opus, which is their main one. And like you log into the web and you're chatting and that one's Opus and stuff. And there's one above that. The highest tier one is something called Mythos. It has not been released. Because it is apparently so good at reading and analyzing code and everything that it can find all these security bugs that have been around for a long time. And have been missed by security researchers and programmers and everything for, in some cases, a really long time.

13:52And so they have a thing called Project Glasswing, where they're working together with a handful of companies, Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Apple, Microsoft, etc. People who make the big operating systems, Linux Foundation, and people who make networking gears and everything. To give them access to Mythos and a whole bunch of millions of dollars for the free tokens to use it and stuff. To find and fix security flaws before they release anything this powerful.

14:23Because compared to what's out there now, the cloud programming stuff that's out there now, it is apparently on a completely different level. Like the benchmarks and stuff, it gets way, way better. And especially at kind of looking at large, big groups of code and how code interacts with each other. And to find bugs and flaws and security things and stuff like that. So Apple's one of the Project Glasswing companies. I don't know if these particular updates are because of that.

14:57But they're certainly the last, I don't know, three or four iOS releases have had a lot of security updates. Like a lot.

15:07It's pretty wild. It's wild. They're finding bugs and code that were like 20 years old and have been missed all this time. Yeah, yeah. It's crazy how like the iOS 26 has been out for seven months or whatever. And that's built on, you know, a prior thing. And there's still like probably countless bugs in it still. Like you're never going to, there's never going to be a perfect operating system or app. It's huge. It's hard to, it's kind of hard to understand just how big iOS is, like in terms of how much code there is.

15:42Because there's also all these frameworks for developers to use and everything. And iOS kind of includes a certain set of apps. Like you can remove them and everything, but they come built in with the operating system. And so they have that, they have their own web browser rendering technology and stuff. So that's WebKit. They have to update and everything. That's, yeah, it's a lot. Yeah. So yeah, go get that if you haven't already. Tomorrow morning is knocking.

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16:46Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Six all new drinks are here. Try them all now at McDonald's. Refreshers contain caffeine. Along with the updates, watchOS 26. You see, Roman, this is my transition that I learned from you. WatchOS 26.5 also came out this week. It includes two specific, very specific bug fixes just for Apple Watch people that, I mean, hold on, I've got to get the article.

17:19The first one is an issue where messages on Apple Watch may use SMS instead of iMessage when paired with a dual SIM iPhone. That's oddly specific. And the other one is an issue where the workout audio alerts could fail to play if an iPhone was not nearby. So if you've experienced either one of those, this update will fix it along with the security stuff, along with the new wallpaper. It's not as cool on Apple Watch, but it's still nice. Yeah, it's a watch face on Apple Watch.

17:50Yeah, it's just a customizable watch face. And bug fixes, other bug fixes, I assume. Oh, yeah. The RCS stuff, you know, all the other same stuff. So, yeah, that's probably the last Apple Watch update until WWDC where we'll get a look at WatchOS 27. I assume we'll start. Well, I already started. We'll start with WatchOS.

18:21So there's like not really much in the way of rumors because there's probably not really much in the way of an update. Like, it'll be much like WatchOS 26, which is much like WatchOS, what was it, 12 or 11, whatever we had before. Right. Like, it's been a while since there was an update to the Apple Watch that was exciting or even interesting. Yeah, the hardware isn't really expected to get much.

18:52Sort of every year we hear like, hey, next year they're going to really change the Apple Watch. They're not going to change the actual way it looks and stuff. And then that year comes along and they go, oh, no, it's not happening this year. Maybe next year. And so they're the same every year.

19:08I don't think WatchOS itself is meant to have a whole lot of changes, just some tweaks to the UI and stuff like some little things. Because the bigger change is for Apple Watch people is going to be on the iOS side because Apple's Health app is supposed to get pretty significant updates.

19:30And that's all fed from the sensors in your Apple Watch and everything. But it's not really WatchOS, it's just that's on the iPhone side. Like WatchKit or whatever it is, it's gathering all that data. Yeah, and HealthKit and the health app and all that stuff is supposed to get some pretty big updates. So it's like, it's an update for Apple Watch users, but it's not really WatchOS getting better. It's all on the iPhone. I kind of, you know, we watch the WatchOS section and I kind of think like, like last year, I think it was last year we got that workout buddy.

20:05And I was just thinking like, no one's going to use this. Like, there's just no one, maybe not no one, but very few people. It's on by default. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's on by default and all it is, is when you start certain workouts, an AI voice says like, great job working out for the third time this week. Right. You know, you've closed your ring every day for the last 30 days or something. Right. You know, and it's like, okay, that's glad you spent time on that.

20:38I don't care. Like, I don't. Right. And I don't, I honestly don't know what. So, all right. Apple intelligence, the workout buddy thing, isn't really Apple intelligence, but Apple intelligence on the watch could be, I mean, it is, it's kind of, I guess it's AI based. Yeah. But like the whole Apple intelligence thing and the new Siri, like, I wonder where or if the Apple watch kind of fits into that. Because that's the thing that's, you know, we've seen these AI pins and pendants and like the Apple watch is the thing that's always with you if you remember to put it on, which I often don't.

21:17But if you do remember, that's the quickest and easiest way to access Siri if you don't have AirPods and it could be like the tool that gets people to use AI or Apple intelligence, you know, throughout the day. More so than even than an iPhone, that's, that's usually in your pocket or a bag or something. Yeah. If there's a problem with, with using Siri on your Apple watch, it's that anything, the reply, see my, my, um, if there's a problem, it's that it always then wants to show you something on your iPhone.

21:56Right. Or it wants to tell you a reply that your little watch is going to be like yelling out loud to you while you're on the bus. Like you still need an output that isn't the watch. Right. Um, I think what, if there's any Apple intelligence angle, it's that the health app is going to get over. They're going to move more rapidly to change the health app, to, to lean into this new age of like AI coaching and AI health, uh, and fitness stuff that everybody else is doing.

22:28Um, and there are Apple's pretty far behind on it. Like the health app and the fitness app, really the fitness app is mostly like, I mean, it track it's, you can see your tracked workouts there, but it's, it's videos. It's, it's fitness plus. Too bad fitness plus. Yeah. Yeah. But the fitness app on your like, all it is, is just like a log of your stuff you've recorded. It's, it doesn't do any. And then the health app doesn't really, it's not proactively sort of saying, well, you got a really good night's sleep.

22:59You should do this. Or it's not, it's behind the rest of the industry on like AI health coaching stuff. So I think that's where Apple intelligence and Apple watch are going to fit in, but it's not going to be something necessarily you do. On your little watch screen. It's going to be like, you wear your watch and then you do this on your phone.

23:19Yeah. Um, do you think, do you think the series of the new series is supposed to come out? Finally, I like, we'd be, we'd be shocked if it didn't. Will the, will the Siri that's, that's on our iPhone be the same on the watch? Because right now it's not like it could do things that like the phone could do things that the watch can't. It, it, it, it, it's not as smart. It's not as aware. Right. Will, is, is, is, is it going to be homogenized across all of the devices or will the chip and

23:52the RAM and the, the, the, the, the fact that the watch isn't as powerful as the phone come into play? Do you think there it's, it'll be interesting because the new Siri, it's too big for to run all entirely on your device. Like a lot of stuff you might ask it to do, it's going to be cloud powered. And, and certainly your watch could do that as long as it's got a network connection. But just like your phone, there needs to be some tiny bit of the model that says, oh, this

24:25is a, they're just asking to start a timer. Like I don't need to hit the cloud for that. So you need to have something smart enough to parse what you just asked and say, oh, I can handle that on device and do something simple. And Apple watch especially needs that because if it's a device where, Hey, I left my phone at home and I went for a run, you know, it's, it's more likely to just be offline than your, your iPhone is. Even though it has, it has, you could get a cellular connection.

24:55You can buy the cellular version. I wonder how many of those Apple set, like the percentage is probably 20 to 80% if, if even that high, you know, most people are getting the wifi one and are probably, yeah, most people probably get the wifi one. I think a lot of people who get the cellular one don't then go pay for a cellular plan. So it's not like on, they just got the, the, the best model or whatever, or they got an ultra, which always has it.

25:23So yeah, it's like, it's, it's more likely that your watch will be offline. So it's going to have to have some little AI model that does things like start timers and set alarms or reminders or whatever, the things that can do on your watch. I use it for reminders all the time. I use it for the, the reminder I use it for is my shopping list. But I remember something all the time, like while I'm in the kitchen and I just talk to my wrist and I use it for timers when I'm cooking because it's handy to have it on my wrist. And they made that new gesture where you just, you, you turn your watch out and back

25:58again. You don't have to touch anything to stop a timer. Right. And when my hands are messy with food and I got a knife in my hand, all that other stuff, I can just stop the timer that way. So I think all those things will still work, but I don't think it's gonna, the real question is, like you said, like the real smart intelligence stuff, is it going to use your phone's internet connection to contact the cloud and do the cloud Siri stuff? The really smart stuff.

26:28Could, is there enough space? It could. Is there enough space on Apple Watch to download? I feel like, doesn't it have like a 32 or 64 gigabyte hard drive on that thing? Like I think they could probably put that stuff. I just don't know if they, if they, if they would, and then it would still be, you know, only based on the latest download. Well, the new Siri, the new Siri, like the new Siri will have obviously plenty of on-device stuff, but, but also stuff in the cloud that's hundreds of gigabytes.

26:58Like it's, it's not even, and it's RAM requirement. It needs to keep stuff in RAM to, to process all this stuff. So, and that's the real crunch for Apple Watches. It has very little memory. Right. So it, yeah, it's not a, I don't think it's a matter of necessarily is it storage? I just don't think it has the processing power or the RAM to do fancy AI, LLM stuff on its own. And, and all the stuff Apple's building, AirPods with cameras and pendants and stuff like that,

27:31they're meant to just send data to your iPhone and your iPhone handles it. It's either on-device or contacts the cloud, you know, Apple's private cloud compute, whatever. So I would think Apple's moving the Apple Watch to be the same way. Right. It's just going to be like, it's like a Bluetooth speaker for your phone using Siri. Right. Yeah. I mean, there's probably like health AI. So like right now, like Apple intelligence is completely absent or mostly absent from the Apple Watch,

28:04but it appears as though this next round of updates to 27 updates will be heavily into, I know it's been like Apple 10 has been for two years now, but this is the one where they're really going to integrate everything into Apple and challenges. We've got the new Siri, all these, every, all the devices. Now I think there's a RAM except for like one or like one or two. So like they all can run it. And like, this is the one where all these features are going to start to integrate.

28:35Maybe the watch is just like health and fitness. Like they cut out all the other stuff and they just kind of focus on like what writing tools is for email. Health something will be for Apple Watch and they can really kind of dive into that. Yeah, but even that I don't think will run on the watch. Right. That all runs on your phone. Yeah. Right. It's those models are too big. It's too much battery drain. Why would they even do that? It's just going to send all the sensor data to your phone.

29:06Your phone will process all that. Okay. Are we expecting anything new design-wise? I don't think so. That's fine. You said it earlier. It's like we were saying, like, you know, it's everybody's, we're kind of stuck in this. I think it needs it. I mean, it doesn't need it.

29:26Let me put it another way. I think I want it. I'm tired of the same old Apple Watch. I want them to do something new and exciting. But they're the only game in town. They've got no incentive to innovate. Yeah. No, there is that. They're just crushing everybody. Yeah. And there's not even really, like, a close competitor when it comes to that, like a higher-end smartwatch. Like, there's nothing out there. I know Google makes one and Samsung makes one. But, in fact, what other people are leaning into now are these screenless watches.

30:04Yeah. You tested. Not even watches. Yeah. These fitness bands. Or not even a watch. Right. It's a band. You use the whoop. Whoop. Is that what it is? Right? Whoop. Yeah. Yep. And for people who are seeing, it's this thing. Oh, yeah. So Jason's showing it. It's a fabric-y band. Showing it now. And if you are on the video, it has a little, you know. It looks like a bracelet. Like a. Yep. It's just a fabric-y band with a little snap. There's no LED screen. There's no LED indicator on it.

30:35It's just like a bracelet. It's literally a, it's literally a fabric-y band you wear on your wrist. And Google's just announced their Fitbit Ace Air. Something like that. Fitbit Air, yeah. Fitbit Air. Which, yeah. The Google Fitbit Air, which is very similar. It's actually very much like this, except narrower even. But it's just a fabric-y band that you wear. And I find it, I think what's happening here is Apple fell behind on AI health stuff.

31:11Like what Whoop does and the Fitbit Air and all these other things do, and there's third-party apps for Apple Watch that do this, is they take all that sensor data from, you know, the band. And they process it in the cloud almost exclusively. But then they, and they give you health insights. They say, oh, your heart rate variability is low today. You didn't recover. You didn't get very good sleep. You should take it easy today. Is it, you know, is it like instant, or do they kind of collect it and then deliver it like in the morning and night and afternoons at certain times of the day?

31:47No, it's, so the way Whoop works, anyway, the Fitbit one's not out yet. The way the Whoop one works is the device sends its data to your phone over Bluetooth every couple of minutes. Oh, okay. It's basically buffering up some, and it sends it every couple of minutes. That all gets sent to the cloud and processed, and it comes back. So if you finish a workout, it's like 10, 15 seconds before that workout.

32:18It'll just say like processing, and then it'll update. So it's just, it's fully, the Whoop thing, it requires a subscription. There's no offline anything, and it does it all in the cloud. But you can, it's never, the data is never more than like 30 minutes old, like at most. It's probably 30 seconds old. Like it's all, it's all processed in the cloud, but it's continuous. What if you, if you run out, if you go in for a run or whatever, and you don't have your phone with you,

32:48is there any feedback whatsoever on the device, or are you just, you're, it's just collecting data, but you don't know it's doing anything? Nothing. Nothing. So not even like a haptic thing. It doesn't have a, nothing. There, there is a haptic vibration thing, but it's not part of any kind of workout. Okay. Uh, situation. It like, you can, you can in the app, like set an alarm to wake you up. Okay. I think they use it as part of sleep, but it doesn't, it has no speaker and it has no microphone and it has no screen and has no, any of these.

33:18So it'll vibrate on your wrist. I think it buzzes when it's about out of battery or something, you know, I don't remember, but it's really just meant to be a dumb thing that you put on and you wear 24 seven all the time. And that's part of the magic of how it works is that you're just never taking it off. Yeah. It's waterproof and all that I assume. Yeah. And even the charger is a thing that slides on the top. Oh. And it's a, it's like a little battery pack. Let me grab it real quick. I got it. Okay. Um, I remember back in the video before Apple watch, I used to have the, uh, I think Nike

33:56and I know, I know it was Nike. I think it was called fuel, fuel band or something. And it did have like a, like a dot matrix screen, but it sounds very similar to this type of thing. So, so this is the battery pack. So this is how you charge, you charge the battery pack. You literally, you really slide that on and it takes about an hour. And then you just slide it off. And it's, so it's this, and this, this has a USB-C, you charge this separately. So you literally never have to take this thing off. You could never take it off.

34:27It, the battery lasts, they say up to 10 days. I've never gotten that, but a week. Yeah. And then you, once a week you put this bulky thing on there for an hour and then you take it off. You can, you could never take it off. You could wear it in the shower and swim with it and whatever. And you get a lot of the same metrics that you get from Apple Watch.

34:47Yeah. You get everything. They do make a version that has the, the ECG you like to hold the side or something. Um, this isn't that version. Um, but other than that, like, yeah, it gives you the same, it's, it's heart rate and motion sensing and, and like, like altimeter and stuff like that, like all that stuff. I don't know if it does altimeter, it presents the data totally differently than Apple Watch does like, and, and stuff.

35:18And there's no, like I said, there's no screen or anything, but I think this is a deliberate effort from all, all the competitors, because like we said, nobody's close to Apple Watch. Like nobody, the other smartwatches are failing. Like they're just, they just don't sell numbers at all. Samsung, Google, Google has their own watch. Then they called it Fitbit. Then they did, you know, they're all over the place with this. So they've kind of given up and said, why don't we, instead of competing with Apple Watch,

35:49let's just make some, have your watch, an Apple Watch, or you could have a dumb watch and have all your fitness stuff through this band. And this band, if we take off the screen and all that other stuff, it can be super light and super comfortable, way easier to sleep with. That's one of the benefits of these things. They're so light. They're way easier to sleep with. The battery life lasts a really, really long time. And then just wear whatever watch you want to tell the time. Right. Or wear an Apple Watch if you want notifications and talking to Siri and all that other stuff.

36:21So having these, like, I don't want to call them dumb fitness bands because they're not dumb. Right. But they have no screen, no speakers. Yeah. Screenless, speakerless, mic-less. Just, it's just a fitness band. And then all the advancements are essentially cloud processing of your fitness data and how it presents those things to you. And Google's changing their, they're taking over the Fitbit app and changing the app to Google Health. Which, yeah.

36:52That hasn't happened yet. It's happening later this month, but it'll be an update to the Fitbit app. So it's like, they're getting rid of the Google Fit app and changing Fitbit to Google Health. And it's like this whole thing. It's the typical Google, every year we kill product and launch a new one and combine a product. It's somewhat similar, but a little bit different, yeah. Yeah, exactly. The Fitbit AirCore is $100 or $99. The Whoop thing that you use is significantly more expensive in the sense that you don't pay for the hardware, but you pay for a subscription for X number of years.

37:31And then you keep paying for as long as you keep the device. Do I have that right?

37:38Yeah. So the way it works is, the way the Google one works is, it's $100 for the band, but the band doesn't do very much unless you also subscribe to Google Health Plus, which is $10 a month. Right. That'll give you all the cloud processing of all your data and everything. Without that, I think it basically gives you steps and your heart rate. It doesn't give you health insights. So you're paying $10 a month subscription. Whoop has a $10 or $15 a month subscription.

38:08I think it's $15 a month. But when you buy the band, you get a year free. Okay. Or another way to think of that is, if you buy a year worth of the service, you get the band free. Because that's basically what it costs, right? And then, so starting in year two, you have to pay monthly for the service. Because it's all cloud. All these fitness bands, they're fully cloud processing. They don't want to waste any battery life. And it lets them update frequently.

38:38Their update on the, just in the cloud instantly. Right.

38:44I don't know. I don't know how to ask this, but would you, which would you, I don't even know how to ask the question. Because, I mean, $100, if you just want relatively simple, I can't find, like, what it does exactly. But is it, I guess, is the Whoop band, does it do things categorically different than the Fitbit, where you would recommend people buy this Whoop one because it's more advanced and does things differently? Like, did they just get, did they just get, like, stomped by the Fitbit error?

39:21Like, their whole business model, was it just. Oh, it's, it's hard to know because the Google one's not out yet. Right. Like, they announced it, but nobody has it. Nobody's tried it. They haven't updated the app yet to the new app and stuff. All that stuff's coming later this month. They seem very similar in what they do. They basically both sort of, they have different UI and everything, but they seem to do, operate on the same principle of, we're going to measure basically your, how well you slept, which the Apple Watch can do,

39:59but the way it does sleep data, it doesn't kind of, they kind of give you a sleep score now, but, like, we're going to look at heart rate variability, how long you slept, how well you slept, all that stuff, to see how well you recovered, and then we're going to look at how much strain you put on yourself through working out, walking, running, going for a run, whatever it is, and we're going to, you know, put those two ends together, you know, to say, like, this is a day you should take it easy, this is a great day to go work out, and then they provide extra AI layers on top of that, like,

40:32would you like me to, you know, come up with a workout routine for you, you know, and stuff like that, you know, or whatever it is, or make suggestions about these sorts of things. And then you can put in health goals, like, I want to lose five pounds, I want to train for a marathon, whatever it is you want to do, and then it will adjust its recommendations to go for that.

40:59The part of this nobody's done is the sort of food part. Like, there's a lot of calorie tracking apps that are separate and stuff, but that's what all these health things really need, is they really need to know what you eat and drink, and then if they can put all that together, they can really get you in shape. It seems as though Whoop is kind of primed for someone else to take over them, like Garmin, or they could have a hard time competing at the $99 price point

41:32that Google's offering that doesn't require a subscription. They're going to have a tough time. So I wonder... Yeah, they may have to change their financial approach, because right now you can get them in a Best Buy or something. You can just go into a big box store and buy one for $300, and it's the whole first year of subscription-free. They may have to do a version where the hardware is dirt cheap, but you start paying, you get one month free, and then you start paying right away.

42:02Yeah, they could do something like that. Do you think Apple would go this route ever? There's been talk that they were. So they reorganized the fitness, the health and the fitness apps. We're part of a reorg, and they're under an EQ now or something like that. And there was a quote in a Garmin piece or something like that about how he thinks they need to move faster to compete with some of these new products like Whoop.

42:33That was one of the ones that they called out of like, hey, they're doing all this really new stuff that's giving people better insights, and we're stuck in the past. And Apple has been working on a really big, really involved health AI coach. And apparently, according to the rumors, they've pared that down some so they can get out simpler stuff faster. So I'm expecting some sorts of health updates.

43:05The Apple Watch section of the WWDC keynote is going to be focused on some of these new health updates. And I think Apple's itching to have another subscription service. They want a Health Plus service, right? And what they have now is not going to cut it. I think they want to combine that and Fitness Plus. But people don't want to pay for workout videos. Anyone who wants to, they've already got that. They need to do more.

43:36Would they come out with a screenless watch? Is screenless the future of fitness stuff? I think it's the future for everyone who's not Apple. Apple already sells so many Apple Watches that their route to killing the screenless devices is, oh, we can do all that too. Then the only thing they've got over them is battery life, which, God bless it, everyone's had better battery life than Apple all along anyway.

44:07But if it can finally do all of that stuff really well, then they can kill these fitness bands. But they're already the number one watch in the world. Everybody buys this watch. Yeah, I mean, it's a smart idea for Google. You know, they own Fitbit now. Obviously, they bought them a few years ago. And it's funny. Like, this is kind of like back to like the Fitbit basics. If you remember, that early band was just a band with a couple of lights. And people bought it because at the time, there was no real like easy way to measure steps and stuff

44:37without putting on like a pedometer or something. And it was a novel, cool thing. And then that evolved into screens and notifications and everything else. And as you said, like Apple came along and blew everybody out of the water.

44:51You know, Fitbit tried to keep up and they just couldn't Google, same thing. And this, you know, there's a lot of people who- And then there's the ring. What's the ring? Uria? Aura or something. O-U-R-A, right? Yeah, yeah. I don't know how to bet. That's the other one that's just, you know, I don't think Apple's going to make a ring. But I think from the app side, they sell you on a monthly service. There's a lot of cloud processing. They do a whole lot of like AI health stuff. Yeah. Especially based upon, again, this concept of like,

45:22how long are you resting and recovering? And then how much activity are you doing? And Apple's like, close your rings, stand up 10 times a day and stuff. And it's, they've got to get past that. And, you know, most people that I know that buy an Apple Watch, the reason why they buy it is for the health stuff. So I'll talk to them about my parents again. Like my mom bought one last year because her doctor was concerned about AFib. So the doctor said, hey, go get yourself an Apple Watch

45:55and put it on and it'll tell you. Like it'll give you a warning if it's acting up. And that's what you did. And I think a lot of people are doing that. I don't even know if the screen, like I guess it's nice to look at. So that whoop thing, that doesn't even have the time on it. There's nothing on it. There is no display of any kind. Okay. So yeah, I think I would. There's not even, there's a tiny LED light in the corner under the side that is for, that is, exists to light up when your battery is low.

46:25Okay. Yeah. I think most people would still want at least to see a watch face and to wear a watch than a fitness band. I think the idea of these fitness bands is you have your watch, Apple Watch, regular watch, have a watch, and then just get all your fitness stuff with this other thing. Right. All right. So yeah, I think Apple will keep making watches. I don't think they're going to make a ring. I don't think they're going to make a fitness band. I think they're going to make AirPods and a pendant and stuff like that.

46:59But I think Apple Watch will continue to be a watch. But I do think there's going to be a big evolution of all the health integration with Apple Watch. They're going to change it a lot from what the health app is today or the fitness app. Who knows where it's going to live? Yeah. Well, stay tuned because in less than a month, we'll get at least a look at the first part of that stuff. I'm sure the health app will be a major part of WWDC and the AI stuff and whatever else they got. Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great

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48:30All right, Roman. I have written down iTunes stuff and for the life of me, I have no idea what that means.

48:40So, this is about, so it's Apple history. And it just so happened that around this time over the years, various iTunes store stuff happened. So, instead of calling them out one by one in this segment, we thought we would put them together in one segment. Oh, right. I remember now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, the first is, the iTunes store opened on April 28th, 2003.

49:13So, 23 years ago. I'll put out these dates and then we'll just talk about them afterwards. Yeah. Also, please continue to try to do the math off the top of the years. Yeah.

49:25And then about two years later on May 9th, 2005, so 21 years ago, the iTunes store started offering music videos as album bonus content. Then the third date is that three years after that, on May 1st, 2008, the iTunes store started to sell movies. So, the movies would come out the same time as, on iTunes,

49:56the same time as, like, the DVD would come out. Yeah. So, so, so, so, some three hallmark dates of the iTunes store. It's funny to think about the iTunes store because I guess I don't really think of the iTunes store now. I think of Apple Music. Right. And Apple TV. Yeah. Right. It's not even really a thing. It's kind of a, like, it morphed into, you know, by the time the iTunes store,

50:27like, was closed, so to speak, it was so big. And there was so much going on. Like, you, like, it makes more sense to break it into music and into TV and into movies so you can, you know, because you, you're not looking for movies and TV. You're looking for one or the other. So, it makes sense to have it. And I think podcasts were in there, too, for a while. Like, it was just too much. So, you know, it definitely makes, makes sense, makes more sense now. But back in 03, when that music store opened,

50:59like, in my life, that was a big freaking deal because I had, I don't know, thousands of CDs that I would rip, you know, the Rip Mix Burn campaign, the iPod, the Fireware. Like, you know, we all did that. And iTunes store, you know, and I had, I used Napster and LimeWire and all that stuff, too. But this was like, you press a button and the song's there. It's high quality. It was incredible. If you, like, the people that. Yeah, it had all the proper metadata, like, all those times you would Napster something and it didn't have the track number or it had weird stuff

51:29in the album name and you had to go grab them all and fix it. Yeah.

51:35Yeah, it was, you paid for it instead of it being free, but it was reasonable and it was, you know, it wasn't like more expensive than a CD and it was just as good. It was just as good as ripping your CD. And you could buy a song if you didn't want the whole record. And if you didn't want the whole thing, buy a song. Yep. You know, like, I tell my son, it's like I was born in the Stone Age. Like, you know, I'm like when, like when I was growing up, like we had tapes and CDs and you know, if I had the Apple Music subscription

52:05when I was 14, I can't even imagine how much money I would have saved. Like, it's incredible how this has all advanced. My son was born in 20, 2011 and he doesn't know a world.