Episode 992: iOS 27 and macOS 27 first impressions

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0:30Welcome to the Macro Podcast. My name is Michael Simon, and I am joined by my colleague, Jason Cross. Good morning. And our producer, Roman Loyola. Ahoy there. This is episode number 992. I changed that, right? Yeah, okay. And today, we're going to talk about iOS 27. Well, all the 27s, but it'll be dominated by iOS 27.

1:03The public bid is they landed last week. So we're going to talk about our experiences with it, what we like, what we don't like, what we want, what we don't want, what works, what doesn't work. You know, all the stuff that we'll get into. Should you install it? Right. Should you install it? So a little bit of advice in there, too, as well. And, yeah, that we'll do this week on Apple History and 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.

1:33Send us an email to podcast.macworld.com. Send us a personal email. Comment under a video. Comment under a post. Get us your thoughts, and we will talk about them on a future show. But first, so before the iOS 27 stuff, this broke like an hour ago or two hours ago or something. It's, what is it? So it's 115 on the East Coast. So, yeah, like two hours ago, Mark Ehrman of Bloomberg reported that Apple is going to launch a new hardware upgrade program next week that covers, like, everything it sells. Macs, iPads, Apple Watches, and, of course, iPods.

2:08I think it's just those four things. I don't think it's any, I don't think it's, like, AirPods or anything like that. Yeah, I wonder. And at the price level that they're at, I don't think it is. I don't, because if you look at what's exempted, anyway, we'll get into it. Yeah, right. So, as Jason just said, like, so you're going to basically be able to buy, so the current iPhone upgrade program allows you to get an iPhone 17 or an iPhone 17 Pro, pay for it for 24 months. So, at the 12 months of payments, you can upgrade to a new one if you want, or you can pay it out.

2:40That's basically coming to everything else. So, according to the report, you'll be able to get an iPad, for example, for 24 months, a Mac for 36 months.

2:53Wait, iPads are 36. iPads and Macs are 36. Oh, iPad was 36, too? Oh, they both were. Yeah, and then iPhone and Apple Watch is 24 months. So, iPhone and Apple Watch are 24 months. So, he doesn't quite get into specifics. Presumably, you'll be able to upgrade after, like, half of those payments. So, I assume 18 for the Mac and iPad and 12 for the iPhone and Apple Watch. It's 12 now for the iPhone, but that's all we have to do. Yeah, but that program, the iPhone upgrade program is a little different. You pay the full price of the phone.

3:23And this is more like the leasing programs that the U.S. carriers have, where at the end of 24 months, you don't own the phone. You can pay it out to own it, or you can return it to Apple, or you can keep paying your monthly thing and get a new one, get the newest model or whatever. So, yeah, I don't know if they're going to have the upgrade in the after 12 months thing, but when your term is up, you can just keep paying.

3:54It's called the upgrade program. Yeah, because when your term is up, you just keep subscribing. So, you're saying that, let's say a MacBook costs $3,000. Right. We'll say $3,600, so the math is easy. Okay. So, instead of paying $100 a month, it's going to be like $60 a month or whatever. Right. And you'll pay a certain percentage of it within three years. And then at the end of that three-year cycle, you'll say, okay, I want a new one or I want to keep this one.

4:28Yeah. Kind of like a, more like a car lease. Very much like a car lease. In fact, I think Germain even says that in his article. But, yeah, the idea with these upgrade programs is that instead of, like, let's take, let's say you're buying a $1,200 iPhone Pro Max or something, right? So, that would be $50 a month on one of these, like, no interest lease sort of things. But that's just a no interest purchase.

4:59And what they would, what the old program was, is you'd pay $50 a month, but after 12 months, you could upgrade it to a new one and start a new 24-month cycle. Right. You know, this is more like after you just, you, it's not going to be $50 a month. It's going to be, well, they estimate it's going to have a $600 resale value or whatever at the end. So, instead, you're going to end up paying $25 or $30 a month instead of $50. Beyond. And then after, and then after 24 months, you're going to, they'll say, well, you can, you can pay us $300 and own it.

5:31You can send it back to us, or you can just keep paying your $25 a month and get this new phone, you know. Which is, we'll just. Yeah, I mean, so that's the appeal of, like, an automobile lease and that. Yeah. You might want to keep the car if you really, really like it after three years. But, you know, the value is depreciated. There's a payment involved, right? You can buy it out of the lease. But the lease payments are a lot less than the purchase payments would be. Right. If you were financing to purchase it. This is kind of the same thing.

6:02It will replace the iPhone upgrade program, though. They're going to get rid of that. Right. They already have in, like, the UK, right? And it's, but it's in a few other countries. It's in, like, US, Canada. Yeah. It's definitely in the US because they've had it for a while. And so the iPhone upgrade program is basically you buy an iPhone or you choose an iPhone. You choose AppleCare to go with it. Well, you don't choose it, but you have to get AppleCare to go with it because Apple is taking your device back for the most part. At the 12 payments, you can send it back to Apple and they'll send you a new one and you'll just start playing whatever that one is.

6:37It could be less, it could be more, it could be the same, you know, but this, so this is, I, I, I was, I, I misunderstood it. So this is a completely different situation. It's a different setup. Yeah. So it kind of. We don't know all the details, though. Right. Like, we don't, we don't have, like, how much, what are the payments actually going to be? What are all the fine print? What does it cost to buy it at the end of your term? Like, whatever. But we do know it's, it's iPhones and Apple Watches and Macs and iPads, which is more things.

7:08Yeah. So entry-level devices aren't included, German reports. So the MacBook Neo iPhone 16, he doesn't mention the 17E, which. Right. Is not included in the iPhone upgrade program, I checked. So we don't know about that. I bet it is included. The Apple Watch SE. Yeah. Yeah. So this is supposed to launch July 31st. We've heard rumors about this for a long time. Oh, wait. Is it? It's kind of. That's what, that's what. I thought it said. I thought it said the 28th. Or they're going to announce it on the 28th.

7:39Yeah. Okay. Fine. German says that the service is planned to launch July 28th. It's, it's, it comes on the heels of a massive price increase across basically everything except iPhones and Apple Watches. And, you know, I think it's going to make it a lot friendlier for people to get in the door for, particularly when it comes to Macs. Cause some of those are, you know, those Mac pros like four or $5,000. So yeah. Yeah. It's two or three for like a, just a decent. For a base model.

8:09Like, like base model plus a little extra storage or whatever is still like crazy expensive. So, yeah. So, you know, we'll see, um, they're going to be using Klarna, which is the, that by now pay later service. I found that to be a little strange that they're not using their own, like, I guess it'll be built into the Apple card, but they can't limit it to the Apple cards. They want people to use it if they don't want to, you know, sign up for a new credit card. So it's going to be through that other service.

8:40There's a whole bunch of hoops you have to jump through in order to provide what is essentially a loan to people, like as a financial services company that Apple doesn't want to do, which is why they don't bankroll their own credit card. Right. It was Goldman Sachs. And now, wait, who is it now? Did they, did they change it? Chase. I think they, if they didn't, they will. I think Chase did. Yeah.

9:01So they don't, Apple really doesn't want to be a bank at all and they need a bank for this and Klarna basically is. So it's a financial services lending Swedish company, something. And they must be thrilled because like, this is a huge boon for. Their stock shot up 11% or something, which is pretty big. Apples, apples did it move because, you know, is this going to really sell a lot more devices? I don't know. I do know that this fall is looking like an expensive fall.

9:32It's going to be, iPhones are probably going to go up in price. The cheapest, the, the entry, the regular models aren't going to be on sale at all. So it's just going to be pros and they're going to be launching like the ultra, you know, so this is going to be like a real expensive fall. So I think this is going to, they're going to come out with, and you can get it for just $80 a month. That's the thing, especially with the, with the folding iPhone, like it's that teaser rate, which is, it's not really a teaser rate, but you know, you don't realize that it's

10:03not yours. And if you do want to own it, you know, I, I've leased, I've, I've, I've leased cars for, I don't know, 25 years, whatever it is. And people always say to me, like, well, you like, like, it's like, it's not your car. I'm like, well, I mean, okay, I guess. But I also don't have to deal with for it to be, I'm not paying a full price for what it is. I don't have to deal with like all the maintenance and the headaches and things that, that, that, that go along with that. So yeah, like there are benefits to leasing. The obvious downgrade is that you're paying Apple forever if you, if you don't choose to

10:35buy it and it's not yours. And if it doesn't come with AppleCare, I assume you'll be able to add it on, but if it doesn't and you break it, you're responsible for, right? It's just like, if you crash your car, like, like, like, like, you know, Honda's not And that is, that's the other gotcha is that German says it's doesn't come with AppleCare Plus and that, so that, and the cheap models aren't, and it's because the cheap models aren't like the entry-level iPad and stuff aren't included. I think that's also why you're not seeing any like accessories. There's no AirPods or anything like that. And there's nothing like Vision Pro where they don't have a regular upgrade cadence that

11:10they know in two years, three years, whenever there's gonna be a new model for you, whatever. Vision Pro is an interesting one. I wonder if, if, if not this, this time, if they edit down the line, once it becomes like a viable thing that people want. Yeah. It has to become something that it, where people are gonna know that in two years or three years or whatever, there's a new one. There's, there's a new model. It's probably two models newer, but you know, so when they get into a cadence with that kind of thing and they may never because they keep changing what it's going to be.

11:42Every, every time you turn around, it's like, no, it's going to be glasses now. No, it's not going to be VR. It's going to be smart glasses and then VR and then no way we're putting cameras in the, in to AirPods instead. Like, I don't know. Yeah. So it's kind of every product that they have like regular yearly upgrades for that cost at least four or $500, right? Right. More than $500. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of like their, it's like, it's like a thousand dollars because the Neo starts at six and seven and that's not included.

12:12Yeah. So yeah. Like, but a 17e presumably is, so that's probably the cheapest thing or an iPad air. Like those are, I tell you what, this will be another show, but that iPad air is, is so not worth buying for $800 or whatever. No, not now. It used to be the sweet spot, but yeah, I was the one like, oh yeah, don't, don't get a base model, get an iPad. All right. We're, we're way off course here, but I don't, I don't hate this, this, this move. Like, you know, if you want a new MacBook and it's a little out of your price range and

12:46I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with, with what Apple's doing here. No, it's an option. It's good to get it from Apple directly. Cause this kind of stuff has been off offered through carriers, but just for iPhones, but then you're locked to a carrier and all this, you know. Um, so I think it's a good idea. I don't think it's bad, but of course we got to see in a week, we'll come back and we'll see what the actual prices look like. Right. And go, oh, well. Yeah. The devil will be in the, the, the, the proof of the, whatever, whatever that saying is,

13:20is in, is in the details. Devil's in the details. Devil's in the details. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast. That's indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

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14:21Have your human visit. PerfectBistro.com If you choose to participate in the upgrade program, you know what, Roman, I'm going to blame you for this terrible transition. I actually wrote this down. I don't like it. Roman's over there not saying or doing anything. Mike's like, I'm going to blame you for this. That's what I'm here for. I always try to think about what Roman would, how Roman would get from one section to the next. Oh, wait. You're blaming imaginary mental Roman? I am. I'm blaming Roman for getting into my head.

14:54So what I wrote was, if you're going to be participating in the upgrade program, you'll be getting devices that will soon have OS 27, which is fine, but it just didn't seem natural as I started reading it. Roman would have done it with his natural cadence and it would have sounded organic and spontaneous and mine just sounded scripted and I didn't like it. So Roman, this is your fault.

15:19However, what I said is true. You'll be getting Mac OS 27, iPad OS 27 on all these devices. If they're not installed already, they'll obviously be ready to upgrade to it. And you can test all that stuff out. Now, well, you could have before. I don't, let's talk a bit about the beta program. I hate that Apple allows everyone to sign up for the developer beta and the public beta. Like it should be restricted to, it should be restricted to developers.

15:49It, well, it kind of is, but like, how are you going to prove you're a developer, right? Right. Like you're. Well, do you use that to pay? It used to be a hundred dollars to be in the developer program. No matter what you did with it. Yeah, right now the, it's free to be in the developer program and it's a hundred dollars when you want to publish it. Right. Right. Which makes a lot of sense and it's very fair, but it also means that it's very, very easy to be in the developer beta as literally anybody. It's almost as easy as it is to just go to the public beta sign up site and sign up.

16:24It's, it's, it's hardly, it's like one other little form you have to fill out. Right. It says like, I promise I will not violate the developer terms checkbox, you know. And if you ever signed up for a developer account, it's in your beta settings. Like you'll see public beta developer beta and you just click the one you want. You just click the one you want. I think Apple should restrict developer betas to people who pay the $99 because they're the one who's publishing an app and they're the ones who need it. That's what I think. They used to. Anyway, you can get the public beta or the developer beta now.

16:58And I hadn't installed the developer beta and I just did it like literally yesterday. I installed the public beta. So I guess I got three Jason. Is that developer? Because I know a new one came out yesterday. The fourth beta just came out yesterday. But that's not the public beta. All right. When the public beta came out last week, it was the same build as developer beta three, which was about a week older at the time.

17:29So developer beta four came out yesterday and we'll probably get put that same build to get pushed out to the public people today. So you'll probably get public update. So we're on beta four. They no longer call them separate numbers. They never say this is public beta two. They have the same build number and all that stuff. They just pushed out to a different group of people. So we're on beta four. You probably have beta three. I do. Unless you go, if you refresh your phone right now, it would probably tell you there's one available, I bet. It's not a bad idea, even if you have access to developer beta, if you're not a developer,

18:02to kind of wait till this time. Yeah. Because the first couple of betas are usually pretty rough. Yeah. I got to tell you, I'm pretty impressed with this one. I forgot that I updated to iOS 27 this morning when I woke up. I was like, wait, what the hell is this? I was looking at the weather a little bit differently. I'm like, wait, what happened to the weather? Like, oh, I upgraded. It's really stable and it feels completely and totally rock solid. It is. You will, over the days, you will start to notice little things here and there.

18:33Like, and not a big deal things. I haven't run into any showstoppers. We always say, and I recommend this, if you need your phone for something critically important, like this is how I get two-factor authentications on my work. Which I do. Or this is my car key and whatever. Then maybe have another device handy that has that on it. Or install it on another device. Like, if it's your only device and it's mission critical for your life, maybe don't.

19:06But that said, I have because I've got other phones. I don't have another phone and I did it. And it's been all my authenticators and my phone key for my car and all that stuff has been working just fine. I want to ask, since you've got like half a day with it, you're fresh with new with it. Do you immediately notice, other than like the big Siri change or something, do you immediately notice like, wow, this is faster or wow, this is whatever?

19:38Not really. It's not buggy. I mean, I have the Air. So it was pretty fast to begin with. I'm curious to see how the battery, let me see. So right now I have about 60%. That's about the same. Is it still indexing? It's still indexing, yeah. Okay. So I'll have to check that once that's done. That could be a few days. Keep it plugged in a lot. Yeah, it says optimizing surgery. Like plugged in. Yeah. I have to.

20:08So the Air, you know, when I use it, not a lot, a lot, but when I use it, like I'll have to pop it on a charger at some point for 10 minutes just to get through the day. Okay. As far as the speed, I never had a problem with the speed of the Air. I mean, it has the A19 Pro and all that. You know, it's fast. This doesn't feel any less. The one thing I did notice, so you start the thing up and you get that liquid glass slider to start.

20:40Yeah. How transparent do you want? Yeah. I wanted it to be more transparent than I'm able to go. Like the first, the very first liquid glass implementation was almost like a window. And now it's like a little bit of a dirty window. Like I wish they would go further and make it more transparent. But the slider was cool. It's a good idea because some people would just throw it all the way to the right and they don't want it at all. Like that's neat. Right.

21:11Almost totally. It's really opaque. You can go. Yeah. Yeah. Which is good. I think that's a good change. At some point, I'm sure they'll go back to liquid glass or everybody. But for now, it's fine. I don't really notice a speed or anything optimized. But again, I have a brand new phones or close to brand new. Yeah. So. I noticed even on a new phone, I noticed certain things just popping up faster. Like certain times you launch an app. Like you look for, you know, you pop open photos and you open a gallery or something.

21:46Like some of these things just like snap. They weren't ever slow. But you just notice a little more immediacy, like that feel of immediacy. It definitely doesn't feel like a beta. Like you don't. Not in the slightest. Yeah. Like I said, I forget. You don't get those. Yeah.

22:04There's just a bunch of little UI things that I appreciate.

22:09There's like, like I said, they, they, they said that here's the 500 big old slide of like 500 little improvements, you know, and stuff like that. But you still, you notice those more than you notice any big major thing. Like as you use it, you're like, you'll, you'll be in some menu and like, oh, they put that there. That's nice. You know. Right. Or like you, you were just able to open your settings and see that your phone is indexing. They change the verbiage to optimizing whatever. But like that used to be a real pain to see if that's happening right now they just like, oh, pop open settings.

22:45It's right there. And they let people.

22:49My son has a baseball game later today and it's supposed to rain here while it is raining. So like I checked the weather out this morning and it's really nice. Like there's all these new little doodads and precipitation by hour that you can look at. And there's like a little highlights thing at the top. It's, it's, it's good. Like it seems to be, they're, they're doing all the dark sky stuff, I guess, or a little more of the dark sky stuff. Most of that stuff was in the old one, but you had to dig in to like get to it. Yeah, right. And now they, they surfaced into this nice little like swipey, you swipe between these nice charts.

23:22They made it look good. Yeah, there's some stuff like that. There's some nice little things, like little tweaks in Apple music and things like that. You know. I literally just got a notification that my son's game was canceled. That's, that's hilarious. Like as I was. Because I was saying that I came up. Yeah. But yeah, so I, I liked that. Um, I signed up for, for the new Siri. Um, I, I, I had to seek it out. Maybe I missed it, Jason. Oh, right. You don't ask me. Like it didn't ask if I want to sign up for the new Siri in the, the swipey things at the beginning.

23:55And, um, so I had to go to the settings. Yeah, I don't think it does. Join, join the, I, I, maybe cause it's beta, but so I had to join the waitlist. The waitlist literally took like five minutes. Like it was almost instantaneous that I got, I got the notification. Yeah. It was very fast. Almost to the point where it's like, why bother having one? But I guess when there's 10 million people requesting, it's different. Yeah. When it's, when they, when this launches on September, whatever, there's going to be a

24:25lot of people. Um, so yeah, I got it quickly. How much have you tried it? Yeah. I, I, so I did, I did one thing and I, let me tell you, it's pretty damn cool. So I literally asked, um, what's my son's baseball schedule this week? Now I don't have anything set up, nothing like I have, it's not in your calendar, not in my calendar. So they use this, this app called game changer and it collects all the teams that he's ever been on and his messages and stuff.

24:57But I wanted to see if it could do understand anything. And it took about 20 seconds. And this is the message I got back. I took a screenshot cause I was so impressed. I couldn't find any upcoming baseball games on your calendar. However, based on your recent messages, it looks like you may have games scheduled in Trumbull and Milford this week to make up for recent cancellations. Okay. That is 100% accurate. Not texts, but that's what, that's within that game changer app. It hasn't, I, I didn't text any. There's, there's no messaging in your messages app.

25:30Nothing. Does it, does it, does that reply from Siri when you expand it? Does it have links to where it got the data? Cause usually if it's referring to a message or something, it'll have, you can tap and jump to that message. I didn't do that. I just, I just read it. You can open, you can open the Siri app and that's the other thing. Open the Siri app and you get all these history on all these. Oh, Hey, there it is. One of the things I appreciate kind of most is. All right, wait, hold on. Wait, wait, wait, wait, before we, before we go with, so it says I found recent conversations

26:02about your son's baseball schedule. Okay. Makeup games. You mentioned needing to travel to Trumbull and Milford this week to get games in before the season ends. Weather delays. There was rain expected on Tuesday and Wednesday, which might affect the schedule. Recent play. Gabe pitched well recently throwing 24 pitches over two innings before a rain delay on Saturday. That's insane. Was that from your, how the hell does it know that? Was that from your messages app or emails? Oh, wait, it says messages. Oh, I do. Oh, it is messages. Okay. So, so it, so I must've told somebody that.

26:33It, yeah, so it'll look at your messages and email to get that stuff and get the content. That is crazy. So if it was all stuck within that app, then it wouldn't be able to do it now, but there are frameworks for that app developer, if they want Siri to be able to, to troll those sort of schedule and maps and stuff, they can update their app and they can put in the hooks to allow that to happen. But I don't think anybody's really done that yet.

27:03That's super impressive. Even, even just, that's a lot of inferring and figuring out like what I'm talking about. It's not like I typed, I am going to Milford. Like it understood so much context there and broken apart amongst replies and various people. That is incredibly impressive. And if you were going to find it, what a pain in the butt to go like, well, who did I text and scroll back and whatever. It's, it's super, super handy.

27:35Yeah. Um, yeah, so that was, that was, I, I thought it was getting it through. I guess I did mention that I'm going to, you know what, it was probably, um, I arranged a ride with one of the other, um, kids, dads. I bet it took from that and, and inferred that I'm going to Trumbull. And the reason why it was because of a rain delay and it's going to rain. But anyway, um, super impressive. And it only took like literally like 15 to 20 seconds, maybe not even that long. It was very fast. Yeah. The later betas have sped up a lot.

28:06If you, uh, if you use Siri for any smart home stuff, I don't know if you use it to turn on lights or set timers or anything like that. Yeah. I have all that stuff. Yeah. That, that has gotten much faster. The early betas were annoyingly slow at that. And the, on kind of the latest beta, it's pretty, it's pretty much like instant, like it used to be. So some other, you, something you, some other stuff you should try is try some of the visual intelligence stuff, try Siri in the camera app and try to go beyond saying like, what

28:42is this? You, you can do that. You find a weird spider and go like, what is this? Or whatever, you know, that, that they've been able to do that before. You can still do that, but try to have it do something with what you're taking a picture of, like, you know, like, uh, if you take a picture of, uh, if there's a flower in your backyard or something and, and you take a picture of, instead of just going like, what is this? Try taking a picture and saying something like, what time of year do these bloom where I live? Okay.

29:12You know, uh, you know, uh, you know, try, ask, try to ask it stuff that requires it, not just knowing what it is, but looking up information about it and using information, things like where you live and stuff like that. Do you have surprised how clever it is about like incorporating all those things? If you ask it, do you have to take the photo first or can I just like pointed at something and ask and it like, no, you've got to hit the shutter. You got to like before you have to hit the shutter. It's not like a live camera window thing. I bet that's coming, but yeah, I would assume.

29:43And I also got to try all that, um, that photo, like the cleanup and the reframe stuff. Um, I haven't, I haven't played around with that. I'm curious to see. That's kind of neat, but I, I kind of, to me, it feels like a toy. It's like a cool toy, but it's a toy. So I got to try out the AirPods custom, custom equalizer stuff, which I, I, does that work with, what do I have? I think I have, I, yeah, I have, I have, I have the pro too. So it'll, it'll allow me to work with that.

30:13Yeah. Yep. Um, yeah, I mean, that is, that's one of those things that's, it's great to have people I've been asking forever. It's not surprising. It works like it's a parametric EQ works. How are we? He works. It's, it's, it's, you. Make the bass or the treble. Yeah. It's just, you didn't have it. You couldn't do it before. You just couldn't do it before. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, the, the, my, my suggestion with Siri is like, like the one that you asked, try to ask it things that aren't just like, I'm so used to giving it a prompt.

30:46That's almost like a computer program. Like I have to think, how do I format my question to get the one piece of data that I want? Yeah, right. And now you can just like, accept that it will understand context or that you don't have to specifically name specific stuff. You can, you know, and that's just, you know, that's pretty impressive. I just want to bring up real quick that, so that thing I was talking about before with the baseball stuff, I, I asked about my son's baseball game. So it also knew, like it figured out pretty quickly, maybe it knew already who my son was

31:20and what applies to him. Cause I don't have like, I just have, you know, my son's name is Gabriel. I just have Gabe in my contact. I don't say like my son. So it knew who I was talking about. Ask it. Just say, who's my son? And just see what it says. All right.

31:39And see if it knows that way.

31:44Wait, hold on. I'm going to do this before you continue. Yeah. I'm going to let you. Who is my son? All right. It's thinking. I liked a little, the little Orby thing, the little animation. So this is funny. It says I couldn't find a relationship for a son in your contact card. If you'd like, you can create one in a contacts app. Okay. Yet when I asked it about my son's baseball game, it totally knew who I was talking about. Well, it could also just be like, do you have, do you have other family members with

32:15baseball games or other baseball games you're referring to? I don't, but I feel like that's the only baseball game. And you could have said my daughter's baseball game and it would have gotten the same thing. Right. Like that's the only baseball games it's talking about. Yeah. I think for most relationships, it looks at the relationship field in contacts. Yeah. Yeah. But, um, uh, it doesn't infer from, but maybe it infers from messages if you're asking other things as well.

32:45Yeah. And like particular familiarity and yeah. Yeah.

32:50Yeah. Anyway, it's, it's, it does a lot of cool stuff. It's quite impressive. Yeah. You'll find a lot of things where you're just like, really, it couldn't do that or whatever. There's, there's, there's frustrating limitations, but also coming from the old Siri, you're like, oh, wow. Wow. I'll actually use this. This is good. That's the biggest hurdle for me is I'm so trained not to use it. Is that now I gotta, like when I need to like, like this, I mean, I knew the answer to this question, but normally I would go into my son's schedule and look at the thing.

33:24And I wouldn't even consider asking Siri because it would have no idea. Right. So now I have to retrain my work self process self to say like, you know what? I have a digital assistant on this device. That's going to actually be able to get this answer. And I have to remember to ask it. I was walking, uh, I was out walking the dog and I saw on the back of somebody's car, I saw a thing that was written out in the, you know, the NATO phonetic alphabet, you know, alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, tango, like all those things.

33:58It was a phrase written out in that. And I didn't understand what it was. So I just told Siri, I'm not, I'm not going to say it all here because it ends up being a curse thing. So, but I'm going to, I just said, Siri, I was, I saw on the back of the car, this, what could that be referring to? And it said, Oh, that's the NATO phonetic alphabet for these letters, which, which I thought it would get that, but it said for these, for these letters. And that's a cultural reference to this.

34:28It's often used, you know, to mean this other thing, you know, that's cool. Like if you said, whiskey, tango, Foxtrot, that would be, Oh, it's the NATO phonetic alphabet for, for WTF, which culturally means what the, you know, it was like that. And it, but it got all that. And I'm good. That's cool. Can you imagine trying to ask Siri that before, like at all, like getting anything. It was something I found on the internet. Exactly. And it would not be relevant.

34:59It would be totally wrong anyway. So yeah. I'm going to use that for the next vanity plate that I see that I don't understand and see if it, and see if I can, can, can get it. Or you can take a picture. Like you could see one in a picture and go like, what's this, what's this license plate mean? Right. And, and you'll get something and it's the fact that you would get something and you wouldn't get something before is really cool. And it, it requires if you're like us and have been using Siri for like a decade plus

35:30now, you have to retrain yourself to go like, oh, it's actually useful and could tell me things now. Yeah. I wonder how Apple is going to bridge that because like I said, like I wasn't prompted to sign up for the new Siri. If I was a casual iPhone user, I would just assume it was already on my phone, but it's not because it's going to be beta. And there's also a wait list. And then once you do get it, you like, you have to remember to, to use it. It's going to be interesting. My assumption is that they'll pop up some sort of card or something like that.

36:04Yeah. They're going to have for, you know, telling people and there'll be ads and there'll be ads. Well, there were ads last time and they didn't do anything. There'll be ads for the iPhone 18 pro, but there'll be ads like highlighting this new Siri and it'll do all this cool stuff. Yeah, but we did that already and it didn't, it didn't do any of the stuff that, that was in the ads. Right. That was all coming soon and it didn't do it. But I just mean in terms of, like trust that it'll work this time. I just mean in terms of getting, uh, you know, hundreds of millions, hundreds of millions

36:36of people to know that they can ask, actually start talking to Siri in a reasonable way. Yeah. Uh, what do you think about the voice? Um, I, so I don't really care what Siri sounds like. I generally have it on, on silent, but for whatever reason in my car, I swear to you, it's different. Every single time I ask a question, I get a different voice. Sometimes it's like, yeah, like my car play is like, it's always a female voice.

37:10Okay. Sometimes there's like a, like an affect. Sometimes she's totally disinterested in what I have to say and she's almost bothered that I'm asking questions. It's, it's, it's funny. Like every time it's like a little bit different and I'm not, I'm not angry at it. It's fine. But I always wonder like, all right, is she like, like what, what, what, what kind of like, um, mildly irritated voice am I going to get in my car today? Cause she's never happy that I'm talking to her.

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38:42Roman, what's your experiences with, you've been using macOS 27 beta. Do you recommend people installing it? How about that? We'll start there. It's kind of similar to Jason's advice. If you don't, you know, if you can afford the higher risk of a system crash or something, which I have not experienced. I should be clear about that. But it is beta software, and that risk is there. But it's been pretty stable. I've been using the Siri chatbot a lot. Trying to compare it, like, the results with ChatGPT and Claude.

39:15But it's not as good as those two, but certain questions it does better than others. You know, it's a work in progress. What I love about it is that Siri on your, like you said, it's not as good as Gemini or Claude or whatever, or ChatGPT. It's surprisingly good. But that it has access to all your stuff, like Mike said. It's going to search your messages and stuff like that, and you don't have to go opt into that or install some program

39:45and then turn on a bunch of permissions and all this other stuff. Like, it just does that. I have to say my favorite feature is kind of a silly one. And it's with, you can now do screen recordings with audio. Oh. So when you do command, is it command shift five? When you were able to do a screen recording, before you couldn't do audio, now you can, there's an option to record the system audio at the same time. Why did I think that was in there before?

40:17I don't use that a lot. Because it should have been. It should have been. It should have been. Because it should have been, yeah. And I had, like, done workarounds for it before. You know, for us at work, it's very helpful. Yeah. I don't know how helpful it is in general usage, but the stupid thing is it's, like, my favorite feature because it's, like, something I've always wanted. But, um, so I just wrote an article last week. My, my Mac OS Tahoe experience has been horrendous. Is, like, do you find it to be more snappy, responsive,

40:50you know, visually homogenous, whatever you, whatever words you want to use there? Um, so there is, like, an option to modify the, um, opacity of the, of the glass effect. So you can, you can adjust that. So, um, but, like, I haven't noticed any performance difference, uh, for me. So it was, it was fine for you before. Yeah.

41:21Tahoe was fine for me before. I'd had, didn't, never had the issues that you had with the, uh, indexing and stuff like that. Golden Gate's been pretty stable in terms of that. I hate that I have to say Golden Gate every time I reference this. You can just say Mac OS 27. You can say Mac OS 27. Um, the, I've noticed two things in particular about Mac OS 27. But besides just, like, the, all the obvious, like you said, there's a slider, whatever. But I wasn't having problems before. But the two things I noticed was, or noticed, appreciate, is, one, that Siri app that's

41:56on there, that is cloud-synced with your phone and all that other stuff. So it is kind of like if you install the ChatGPT or Gemini app on all your devices, they have a Mac app and stuff. So you've got, I've got a Mac app that's all my, like, Siri history and includes my iPhone Siri history and includes all the responses with photos or whatever I've done or sent and stuff. So I've started asking Siri something on my phone at some point. And a couple days later, wanted to go back and sit and get more information or ask it

42:28something else. And I can pull that up on my Mac in the Siri app and just continue. And I find that to be actually very useful. Yeah. Especially since Siri does a really good job now. I went, you could never do this before, but you can do things like upload documents to it and stuff and say, you know. Like analyze this. Yeah. Yeah. Or find me this. Or you can upload. Here's a, here's a neat trick you can do with all these LLMs. Upload a, the PDF of the manual for some appliance or whatever you have.

43:01And then just ask it how to fix the problem you're having. That's awesome. Or what this error code means or something. Those things are such a pain to navigate sometimes. They're a pain to navigate. You're like, error code E22. What is that? Just, just toss it, your PDF. Like, I actually had that. When you do that, it remembers and you can answer, you can reference it like weeks later and it'll know because it saves it. Oh, I don't know because it won't necessarily automatically jump back to some previous conversation. Okay. But you can open that conversation.

43:32Right, right. And ask and it will continue where you were. Okay. I've done that before. That's another just good Siri question. I had some error code on one of my appliances and I just said, hey, Siri, I have a Bosch 800 dishwasher and it's doing this. What does that mean? And then it just looks, it just looks up on the internet and gave me the answer. Old Siri would have gone, I found some information on the web and then give me like four links that have nothing to do with it. I just got a real answer, you know, just like in words.

44:06Anyways, the second thing that macOS is doing really well now is it has had for years real problems with SMB shares, with network shared drives, like keeping connections, dropping connections, not working right. You got to restart it. You have to restart SMB, whatever. It's been very solid on Golden Gate. Can you tell all the people who don't know what SMB is, what that means? I forget what it stands for. Oh, you don't know. Because I don't know either.

44:37I forget what the acronym is, but it is a decades old. Server message block. Okay. Yeah. It's a decades old protocol for sharing network drives between computers and devices. And it's gone through several updates. They're on SMB 4, 3.1 or some protocol change or whatever. But it's just how if you wanted to access a folder on your PC or on your NAS drive or

45:12something like that, you would share it with SMB, right? And that's how you mount network drives on devices like your Mac or your PC. And I have a NAS, and it was sometimes a pain, or I want to grab something from my Windows computer, and it was such a pain to connect. Sometimes it wouldn't find it. I'm like, no, this is the right address. What are you doing? I'm like, you know, or I had it open, and because I closed my Mac and now I opened it again, it won't find it, and I have to refresh it, or I have to disconnect and reconnect, or

45:45I have to restart my whole Mac. Golden Gate's just been really solid. It's been really good with shared folders, and it's been such a relief because I was, I can't tell you how many years I kept thinking I had something set up wrong. Do you have any insights as to how that got fixed? No, I think it's just one of the slide of 500 things that they're like, we're fixing all this garbage that you guys have been complaining about forever. I think it's on there, but I've noticed it.

46:16It's been working a lot better for me, and I've been a lot happier with it.

46:22So that, and just the idea that as a built-in default, you can do this with other LLMs, but as a built-in default, there's this shared Siri history. You can open an app, and it's all your Siri requests from your phone. And that's on all your devices, Apple Watch 2, right? Yeah, it's clouded, it's cloud-synced, you know? Yeah. So it's everywhere. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty neat. I just used it for that one thing. Jason asked me, like, how did it know that question that I asked? And I was like, well, I don't know. He's like, oh, no, we'll go into the app. So, you know, you open the app, and everything's there.

46:52Well, in my case, one thing was there. But it was, you know, I was able to see, like, how it reasoned, and what it was, I wonder how many people are going to be able to, like, know that's there. Like, this is another thing. Like, that's not something that we've been trained to do with Siri. Once we ask it something, and we end the conversation, it's gone into the ether. Now there's a record of it. Siri used to be able to do things like show you particular photos or something like that within, like, very narrow constraints, like, show me pictures of this person, but you

47:23had to have that person, like, marked or whatever. I, the other day, I asked it, show me all, I take a lot of screenshots, so it's a problem. So I just said, hey, show me all my, all my photos from the last week, excluding screenshots and videos. And it was just like, here you go. Boop. And there's a link you can click to show, like, all 36 photos or whatever. And I was like, that's exactly, thanks, that's exactly, I could do this some other way. I could do this a little slower way, opening photos and doing whatever, but this was easy.

47:58We should collect fun Siri tricks. And then when this goes wide in September, just be like, here's all the, here's all the cool things you should try doing with Siri. Yeah, let's do it. Because there's a lot of stuff. Roman, take a note of it. Because like you said, you have to train yourself to like, you, you've trained yourself over all these years to not even bother trying with Siri for, with all these things. It's like, no, no, you can do that now. Fun Siri tricks used to be like knock, knock jokes. Now it's going to be like actual stuff that you're going to want to use.

48:30Actual, useful. Yeah. Um, yeah, so you can try out public beta, um, two, probably one or two, and it'll be available in what, about less than two months. Jeez. We're ready almost to end of, end of July. So, uh, uh, it's moving right along. Okay. Roman.

48:52This week in Apple history. I, I, I, I, I have app store written down, but that was last week. So I, I, this is a surprise to me, so I don't remember what it is. So, uh, on this week in Apple history on July 21st, 1999, 1999. So 27 years ago, Apple released the iBook at Macworld Expo in New York. Yeah. Um, that was a year after the iMac. Well, that was a year after the iMac.

49:22Yes. So iMac became very popular. So Apple said, Hey, we should come out with a laptop that looks like the iMac. And that's, that was the iBook. It was awesome. It was awesome. It was also kind of soundly made fun of, cause it looked, people said it looked like a compact, like a ladies compact, like, cause it's very rounded or clamshell. Like it had all those things. That was the first one with built-in wifi though, right? Right. Airport. Yeah. Yeah.

49:52They called it the card. There was a little card or something that you had to put, you had to put in it. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. So there was a card slot underneath the keyboard. So you had to remove the keyboard and you would put the card slot in. Uh, those, that was also the time when you could actually upgrade the RAM on the, uh, iBook because they, they, they used RAM slots and not built in RAM. And so you could upgrade to RAM. I don't remember if Apple officially, if clamshell was an official name or if that was kind of

50:24just like, uh, I don't think that wasn't, I don't think it was addressed as clamshell by Apple. Everyone else kind of called it a clamshell. Yeah. I mean, it kind of looked like a clam. That was just it. Like clamshells, what they called anything that folded this way before this, but this one actually looked like a clam. Like, cause it was all rounded and stuff. And it had a rounded shape. I remember, and I can't remember, I couldn't find it. Like, um, some reviewer, reviewer called it a, uh, Fisher price laptop.

50:56Yeah. It was because it looked like a toy. Yeah, it did. But, um, just real quick, the specs, 300 megahertz power, PCG three, 32 megabytes of RAM, megabytes of RAM, uh, 3.2 gigabyte hard drive and 12 inch, um, LCD screen at a cost. Anyone remember? Cause I was wrong. $29.99. No, you're $29.99. Are you nuts? No, I'm making it up. Well, I have it. I have it written down, so I'll guess $15.99.

51:28That's a good guess, Roman. Yeah. I thought it was $12.99. It was $15.99. Okay. So more than the iMac, the desktop iMac. Well, yeah. Yeah. It's got a battery and all that stuff. Sure, sure. I mean, but $15.99 is a lot for, as you say, a play school. Laptop. It wasn't like a professional thing you could bring to the office. It was a toy. It looked like a toy, but it set the stage for all of this, you know? Well, they still had power books, you know?

52:00Right. Yeah, of course. They were, they were, they were more expensive. This was like, yeah, but that was your office professional Mac, right? This was their consumer. Yeah. This was the famous four square grid of, you know. Yeah. Those were, I don't remember for sure, but I think they were like $22.99 and up. Like they were expensive power books. Yeah. Yeah. And then two years later, the iBook evolved into a more traditional look and it was white. Yeah. I had one of those. I never had the, the, the green one or whatever.

52:31I did have the, the, the white boxy one, the G4. Yeah. It was a G4. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, yeah, so that was 27 years ago. I never actually put my hands on that particular machine. I wasn't at a Mac publication. I was at a, I was at a startup at the time. So I, I didn't, I didn't actually use this particular laptop. Uh, we, we learned before the show that, that Roman got a dragon tattoo. I had to assume it was around this time that he was at a startup.

53:03So, yeah, no, I did not. I took the dragon tattoo seven years. No.

53:16Uh, eight years before. So, yeah. So, yeah. So, uh, 27 years ago, that would have been during the first sort of dot com bubble of startups is what you're talking about. Yeah. Because it was 1999. And there used to be a Mac world expo show in New York during the summer. There was no WWDC show at the time. Right. Um, it was like a developer convention. Yeah. Apple didn't even really go in it.

53:47And at least not the way they do it now. Um, yeah, I went to that New York show a few times. It was, it was cool. You know, Steve jobs did his keynote and they would announce something new. And the, the, uh, power Mac G4 cube was announced there. The, the 17 inch iMac G4 was announced there. It was a big show until, you know, they just pulled out all that, um, completely. It's funny to think how beholden Apple used to be to these, uh, trade shows. Well, our trade show.

54:18Yeah. That they, they, they, they were like four of them throughout the year. Yeah. And they had to never, ever go to CES. Right. Never. Right. They were never going to see it. Yeah. Well, yeah, they would never be officially at CES. And, you know, not just like the, the, the cadence, but having to show up to these shows three or four times a year with something because everybody expected them to come out. It wasn't always, you know, the, the, the new iBook, but they had to have something to, to people to see and to touch.

54:50And Steve Jobs basically was just like, you know what? We're not like, no more. We can't do this anymore. Like it's just the, the pace of it is just too much. So, yeah. So that, the iBook, if you are interested in more information, the iBook, we have our original review posted to the website. We'll have a link in the show notes. And it was written by David Pogue. Yeah. Yeah.

55:13Who at the time was a columnist for Macworld. And before he, before he hit it big, he would write regularly for Macworld and he wrote the iBook review. So. So you can buy a used one on, on eBay for like 500 bucks. I'm just, I'm looking at it now. Non-operational, I would assume. Uh, I don't know. I mean, 500, that seems like a lot. Well, it's, it's a, it's a piece of history, Roman. Yeah. For something when it's that old, it's like, that's a lot for a non-operational one and

55:45it's dirt cheap for one that works. Right. Do you say, I don't, they don't really say they don't work. I assume they work. I mean, they're going to run the airport card. Yeah. This one, this one I'm looking at has, okay. It has a, wait, maybe not. I'm looking at the, the power supply, which was that funky little circular thing. Um, has two, two, two mice. I don't, I guess a game with, did it come with the mouse, Roman? Do you have any idea? I don't remember if it came with the mouse. And it looks like hell, but it doesn't say it doesn't work.

56:17Oh no. I, there's a picture of it with, with, with it on. It's running, um, looks like some early version of OS 10. So, so it does work. But you said it does. It was, uh, it looks like hell. So, well, it's all discolored and the screen, like the, the, there's like splintering around the Apple logo for the, um, underneath the screen, but you know, it works. It's funny to look at these things. Now this thing looks like it's ancient, but at the time, it is 27 years is a really long time, especially a park.

56:49Here's one for 500 bucks. So yeah, there are people, I don't know if they're buying them, but people are selling them. I'm the same guy who buys his clothes on slick deals.

57:02Well, that's a throwback to last week's episode. Yes. You guessed it. Uh, speaking of, uh, all right, that was a bad segue. I was just saying, no, let's move on to the comic corner. I was trying to create a segue to comic corner for that, from that, but nope. I'll take, I'll take responsibility for that. That's that Mike's in my head now. Mike is speaking of my game because of me.

57:31Uh, so we got a couple of very long emails from a couple of podcast listeners. So we're going to, I'm not going to read the whole emails. I'll just, uh, pull out some, uh, points from those emails and respond to them. Uh, David H wrote an email and he said that I am not running any of the betas. I, and I am hoping Apple has fixed some of the things I feel are worthy of fixing and made some changes to unify the UIs between the OSes, especially since Apple has promoted

58:01a new OS as mostly correcting issues. I, I'm not sure that the unification of some of the UI elements is there. There are a little bit of smaller fixes, but yeah, uh, David had some examples in his, in his particular email. And as far as I know, some of those issues that he pointed out are still there. I don't know if they're ever going to be fixed. And I think a lot of it has to do with Apple's approach towards the, while they want to unify

58:34the OSes, they also have unique approach. They, they, they also believe that certain, that, you know, certain elements of iOS and Mac OS have different approaches. If that makes sense. Right. They need to, they need to look and work differently. Yeah. Right. So. Well, can you, can you, can you read off some of them? Like what is he specifically? Yeah. All right. So for example, um, in the maps app for the Mac, adding a con adding to contacts is in

59:08the three dot icon while on an iPhone, you need to use the share sheet. Oh yeah. Okay. I get, I get it. Yeah. I, I don't disagree that Apple is fundamentally sees those menus as different on a Mac and different on the, on the iPhone and has to do with like proximity to your finger and how you're interacting with it. And, but I also understand what he's saying in that if you use one device and you have an expectation of a, of a certain menu to do something and then on the other device is

59:39different. Like I, I get the complaint. Yeah. Yeah. And, and as far as like, no, that's still that way. Like it's still the three dot menu. Right. And the, even though maps is updated and there's some changes and stuff, um, there's no like three dot menu when you open a location on an iPhone. All there is is the share sheet and you know, the score list of thing. So yeah, some of those things, I don't think that they're, yeah, I think, I don't think

1:00:10all those things are touched up and unified. I do think they've touched up and added a lot of nice little details in a lot of places. Like when you're using find my and you look at a person that used to be just very basic and now they have things underneath, like how far away they are by car, you know, like add to contacts or, or call this person or whatever. Like they get a better tab. Like when you look at those things like on a Mac or stuff. So they've just little, little touch-ups to the interfaces that I appreciate, but I think some of this, the specific things brought up about how the inconsistencies of the different

1:00:45operating systems, I don't, I don't think are significantly different in OS 27. Sorry, David. Hey, Jason's right. The, uh, the Feynman app is, is pretty cool. Yeah. It's just like a little thing. It's a little, the card has a couple, a little more information on it. That looks nice. Yeah. You know, you'll discover a lot of those things as you go through little things that aren't major changes. They're not going to make a commercial about or anything, but you're like, Oh, that's nice. There's a lot of, Oh, that's nice.

1:01:15Like throughout the operating systems. Right. But I think that most of the things that David talked about in his email are still going to be that way. Yeah. Uh, George H wrote a long email. Uh, George is a semi-retired professional engineer. He has a long history with the Mac and Apple, and he had a bunch of comments about Apple software that he wanted to get off his chest. Um, like I said, he, his email was a pretty lengthy and we don't have time to cover everything,

1:01:49but here's some, um, I guess highlights or I guess stuff that I decided to pull out of his email. Um, so one of the things he wrote is, yeah, he, one of the things he wrote is there is no joy in the music app. Just let me play my own stuff, make it easy to buy my own stuff, not rent it. Uh, I pulled out that particular comment because I kind of agree with him, but it's me for me, it's more about the UI than it is about, uh, the content.

1:02:24I don't, I have tried to do, to stay devoted to Apple music and not use Spotify, but Spotify just has a better UI. I'm completely the opposite. I think the Apple music UI is fantastic. I love it. And, uh, and iOS 27, it's, it's, it's really nice. Um, I, I do subscribe to Apple music, but I feel like, like you can still buy songs.

1:02:54And you can still, you can, yes, it's hard to default. Yeah. It's so if you don't subscribe, so I, I don't, I don't, I don't remember what it looks like when, when you don't subscribe, like it's always pushing like that, the subscription stuff in your face. It doesn't just default to your library and go to iTunes. Like it's still telling you to subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. It is hard to like browse for and find and purchase tracks that you want to purchase. Um, it really is geared as a streaming app and that's, I understand there are a lot

1:03:29of people who are, especially of sort of like George's age, who's like, remembers ripping CDs and all that other stuff. And they kind of want the app to better suit that they're, that that's how they want to do their music stuff. But I hate to tell you that the world's moved on. Like that's like, like streaming one, like it's, it, we can argue about whether it's better or whatever, but, but the people clearly preferred it. Yeah. Like when Spotify and stuff like that started to take off, like after, and, and it, it killed

1:04:05the pirate apps, first of all, but then it, because the experience was better, but it also killed all those stores, like purchasing music just went like this, it just nose dived and they really had to buy beats and turn beats music into Apple music. And I agree that it could do better, some better stuff with the interface, especially around getting to your playlists and stuff. Some of that stuff, I agree with you, Roman, it's, it's better on Spotify, but ever since they got it so you could swipe your, the, like the album art, the main picture to change

1:04:37tracks, like you couldn't do that for ages and you could do that on Spotify. And I would just, I would go like, I would try all the time and go like, oh shoot, I have to hit this stupid little button. They fixed it. Yeah. I'm more or less happy now. Another comment George had was what the hell is this liquid glass? He wrote the A-S-S in capital letters. My Mac studio is running Sonoma because I'm afraid to do any upgrades. Sonoma? Isn't that like, wasn't there Sequoia and then Tom?

1:05:09Yeah. He, he, he's, he's a couple generations back. Yeah. Um, and then George wrote my iPhone 13 mini, I mean, that'd be upgraded for the same reasons. George, you got to enter this a little bit later than what is six years ago, five years ago, four years ago, five years ago. And finally he wrote Apple intelligence. All I ever asked for was better voice recognition and stop the autocorrect. Well, you're getting that. Mac OS and iOS. So yeah, we, we kind of talked about that.

1:05:40The autocorrect. I'm not sure. I haven't, um, I haven't done enough typing on my iPhone. So I don't know if it's better, but the, uh, the dictation certainly is, um, I want to know how to be, how do I become semi-retired George? Can you send an email to Roman telling me, cause I want that. I, I, I want to be, I want to work a little bit, but not as much as I do now.

1:06:05I do want to mention one thing from, uh, David's email. He mentioned, um, I hope this changed. I was 27 currently when you connect your iPhone to charge the dynamic Island enlarges to show a large image of the battery without the charging lightning bolt. And you have to wait several seconds until the Island goes away to check the persistent battery icon in the upper right corner to see if it's really charging or not. I just want to show you like here, I'm just going to go ahead and plug this right in. So you can see how it has changed.

1:06:36So if, ah, so it's charging. Yes. And now the dynamic Island expands, it says charging and it shows the battery with the icon with the percent. And then when it goes away, you can still see the little persistent charge icon. So it is a clear charging indicator and not just pops up the battery. Although I always thought, well, if it pops up the battery thing, it's charging. Like it doesn't say charging, but like you plugged in a charger and the battery thing popped

1:07:08up. That's isn't that your indication? I do. I'm the same. Doesn't it also show the lightning bolt in the battery icon? That's the thing. That's what I always look for. I mean, if it's not charging, that thing doesn't pop up. And if that thing pops up, it is charging. But regardless, I wanted to show that, yes, it has changed into an actual message that says charging and shows you the battery percent before it fades away. So it is a little more clear that you plugged into something that's actually charging it.

1:07:42I guess if you plug into a computer or something where it may not charge and it's just data, but I don't know. Does that happen? I don't know.

1:07:50It's something he specifically mentioned that I was able to test out and show. So there you go. And there's your reason to upgrade them. iOS 27. Yeah. That one thing. They changed the charging animation for you. So that does it for comment corner.

1:08:07That does it for this episode of the Macro Podcast, episode 991. It's screwed up again. Wait, now it is 92, isn't it? 92. 92. We got eight more left, Roman. That's like two months. We need to figure out what we're doing for that show. We need to get on top. Sooner than later, yeah. Thank you, Jason. Thank you. And thank you, Roman and Roman's dragon tattoo. Assuming it's sentient after 40 years.

1:08:38And thanks to you, the audience, for tuning in. What are we going to do next week? Where are we? Maybe like some iPhone stuff. We'll figure it out. We can start talking about getting closer. Yeah. Maybe we'll do like a preview of the preview show. Because there's been some rumors lately about the folding phone and stuff like that. We'll see. Where am I? You can subscribe to the Macworld Podcast and a podcast app on Spotify, YouTube, at the Macworld Podcast channel, or through any other podcast app.

1:09:10Comments or questions? Contact us through Blue Sky Facebook thread. Search for Macworld. Look for the Blue Mouse logo. Send an email to podcast.macworld.com. Comment under a video or a post. Send us a personal email and we will talk about it on a future show. Wait. Hold on. Oh, yeah. No. That's right. And you can join us next week where I don't know what we're going to talk about.

1:09:43Maybe iPhones. Maybe not. Maybe the iPhone upgrade program. We'll talk about the latest in the world about it. See, Jason's better at it than I am. All we know is we're talking about the latest in the world about it. And next week is Roman's last week before he goes on vacation. So we will also talk about that because he's taking a cool trip. All right. See y'all next week.

1:10:25So I have a recording now. So, yeah, I have a tattoo on my right shoulder, but I got it. Yeah, but I got it when I was 19. Okay. What is it? So that's 37 years ago. It's a dragon. And so it's 37 years ago before, you know, during the time when tattoos were only for bikers and longshoremen and stuff. My sister. Were you a biker or a longshoreman?

1:10:56No, I just neither. Oh, I wanted to be a biker, but I took motorcycle riding classes and realized that, yeah, motorcycle wasn't not for me. So this is a fascinating look into Roman's history. But my point is my tattoo now is all kind of, you know, it's 37 years old, so it's all blurry. And it looks like a 37-year-old tattoo. It's just like, oh, you need to get tattoos when you're 60.

1:11:27Is it big? Like how big is it? No, it's about the size of my palm. Okay. It's not that big. What did the dragon signify? You just liked it? I just liked it, yeah. You don't seem like a dragon fantasy guy anymore.

1:11:43No, I'm not a dragon. I'm not a fantasy guy. I do like dragons, but I'm not a... I was never into like D&D or Game of Thrones or anything like that, so... I'm not giving up. I am selling the building.

1:12:00The final season of FX's The Bear. The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either going to be okay... No, stop! Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned, but we have each other.

1:12:18FX's The Bear, the final season. All episodes now streaming on Disney+. We are outmanned and we are outmanned and we are outmanned.