Episode 995: Folding phones and the iPhone Ultra

Welcome and introductions

0:00This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. Unscripted, unfiltered, unafraid.

0:37Welcome to the Macro Podcast. My name is Michael Simon, and I am joined by senior editor Jason Cross. Good morning. And our special guest producer this week, Adam Patrick Murray. You know he's important because he has three names. I don't think I've ever... Just like a serial killer. He's referred to you as just Adam Murray. It's always... Is that like a thing you've done your whole life? No, no. Actually, it's a really stupid story.

1:09When I was doing freelance video and photography work, I had to create a website for myself, and there were two other Adam Murrays that kind of dominated SEO. It was a politician and a soccer player, and I was like, okay, well, I guess I'll just go by my full name. And so I just started going by my full name. There you go. And here we are now. Here we are. You know he's important because Michael is important, and he has two first names. But Adam has three first names.

1:39And three first names beats two first names. My middle name is John, but I don't know. I have the most basic, simplest name. My parents went in the baby name book and said, one, two, check, check. That is, for our age, just about the most popular names. Yeah. Well, I got to say, I am not a great fill-in for Roman. Roman is an amazing producer, but I will try my best to be here and be unscripted and unfiltered because I'm a recovering Apple diehard fan.

2:13It's true. I can vouch for that. But we'll get into all that later. Adam, Patrick, Murray, thank you for joining us. Roman is, I believe, if my timing is correct, he just saw the eclipse in Iceland, which I hope it was everything he hoped it would be. I mean, he had probably changed his life, but we don't know yet. So I guess we'll have to hear next week. He could have been transported to another dimension. Who knows? Oh, is that how that works? Wow. I think so.

2:43I'm sure I've seen a movie somewhere about that.

2:47I mean, Elixir looked happy. The pictures he's been sharing have been super fun. And so, you know, good for him. Yeah. As we record this, it might even still be covering a little bit. It's like still kind of going on right around where he is in Iceland. Yeah, the total eclipse was like 5.50-ish, I think, in his time, which is like 1.50 or 12.50-ish my time.

3:169.50. 20 minutes ago. West Coast. Yeah. Yeah, so recently. But yeah, I'm interested to see.

Episode 995 and folding phones

3:22Anyway, we're already completely and totally off the rails. This is episode number 995. And today, we're not going to talk about the eclipse in Iceland. We're going to talk about folding phones. If you listen to this show or read Macworld or any Apple website, you know that in a couple of weeks, we're going to get the first folding iPhone, probably called the iPhone Ultra. That'll happen at the iPhone event in September. This is Apple's first folding phone, but it's not the industry's first folding phone.

3:54And Adam is here, Adam Patrick Murray is here, because he's actually something of a folding phone enthusiast. He uses the Samsung Z Galaxy 8 or 7 or something phone. No. So, oh, he's not. No? Look at him. He's not anymore. No. So my notes have failed me. Wow. Wrong. No, I had to look it up because I had forgotten that, Mike, you and I, we saw the very first folding phone

4:25at Mobile World Congress 2019. I thought it was 2018. It was behind, like, a glass thing. Like, we couldn't touch them or anything. Well, there's the Samsung one. Yeah, the Samsung one was behind this huge glass cube. And, like, you could kind of look at it. But, yeah. No, we saw the Huawei one. And then there was that other company that's just a footnote in history. Do you remember the official first one that launched? Yeah. The Royal Flex. Oh, yes. There it is. The Royal Flex. Yeah. That thing was, ooh. We should look up where that company is now.

4:55But, yeah. And the Huawei one, yeah, unfortunately, a footnote in history. But we all, I mean, come on. We knew Samsung was going to be the biggest player in it anyway. Yeah. Sure. We didn't really get to test it. I got my, I mean, so I was interested. Like, I am somebody who always likes the biggest phone that I can get. Like, I need as much screen real estate as I can. I have big pockets. Back in high school, I was a Genco guy. So, you know, I could just fit as big a thing as I wanted in there. And, yeah, I always liked the allure of having the ability to have a huge screen at any time I wanted.

5:32So are you running, are you rocking a folding phone now? Or? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, what was it? The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 was my first one that I daily drove. So that was the last one to be real tall and thin. All right. I don't want to cut you off. But hold this for the next discussion. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I've got to get through this intro. We're going to be here for two hours. Oh, we're still introing. Oh, man. I'm sorry. I thought you were segwaying, you know? No, no, no. Not yet. Not yet. Okay.

6:03All right. So hold all that stuff. We'll talk to Adam about his folding phone, of which is not the Galaxy Z Fold 8 or whatever it is. We'll talk about Apple's version. We'll talk about the rumors. We'll talk about the price, whether or not Jason's going to buy one, and whatever else comes up. And then we'll do this week in Apple History, and we will close, as always, with our comment corner, which we remembered to do this time. Speaking of that, you know, there's a shocking lack of Roman comments from you listeners.

6:35If anyone's listening, we're going to extend it. We were supposed to have, like, a whole comment corner devoted to just Roman comments about Roman. We didn't get a single one. Nobody said anything. Okay. Well, hold on. I'll send one in, because, listen, I love Roman. I get to see him every week, like, usually when I come into the office, he's one of the only people there, and I always flip on the lights, because he doesn't, he didn't flip on the lights. That's a very Roman thing to do.

7:06That's a very Roman thing. Just to deal with whatever's there. Yeah. And I say, Roman Loyola, and he slowly turns around, and he's like, Adam Patrick Murray. We have the same interaction every time. I love working with Roman, but I got to say, I found the Macworld podcast around, must have been, like, 2017, 2018, when I first became an Apple diehard, and I used to love when Roman would come on, and he would come on specifically for the Macworld Pundit Showdown.

7:37And, like, I always just thought, dude, Roman was the coolest dude just walking in there. He's chill, he doesn't talk too much, but when he does say something, it's impactful, and he's funny, like, and I was just, I was glad to be able to now work with him. So, you know, that's not, I'm not ragging on him or anything, I don't know if you're asking for people to roast him. Well, no, I mean, listen, that's my Roman comment. I just, I just wanted one. We just want to talk about him when he's not here. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. But I'm going to extend it to when he is here, because I'm upset with all you listeners.

8:08There's no one sending anything. I'll hear a couple more Roman comments. I am a huge fan of the beard. I'm really sad that he shaved it, because I'm really digging the beard. Yeah, yeah, so hopefully he brings it back. Also, I will say, I mean, this is not putting him on blast or anything, but, you know, he has pretty thick glasses. And back when we used to do video more often together, we had to work really hard to make sure that the reflection wasn't in his glasses. Yeah, well, he shook at that a little bit. He does. Well, usually what happens is, like, the front lens, the front of the lens is what is getting the reflection.

8:43His is so curved on the inside that the reflection is actually happening on the inside. Yeah. And, yeah, so, you know, I'm a video professional. I've been for a long time, and I love lighting stuff. But, yeah, Roman trying to get that right light. That's why I did so much work for where he podcast. That's why you have to turn on the lights when you come in. That's why he's in the dark all the time. You broke him. Now he's afraid to have the lights on anywhere. No, I love working with Roman. Yeah, yeah. We all do.

9:13Wow, you just say that so dismissively. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all do. We all do. We all do. But we want people to write in and complain about it. I'm trying to move the show along, Adam. Okay, okay. All right, move on. So, yeah, send your Roman comments to us. You can find us through Blue Sky Facebook threads. Search for Macworld. Look for the Blue Mouse logo. Send an email to podcast.macworld.com. Send us a person email. Comment under a video. Comment under a post.

9:41Anything that has to do with Roman, good or bad. I don't, it's fine. We just, we want to have a comment corner dedicated to Roman that isn't just from Adam, Patrick. So, send us your comments. We'll see you next time.

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The 20th anniversary iPhone rumors

10:56Okay. Before the folding stuff, Adam, we're just going to, Jason, I'm going to talk a little bit about, not this year's phone, but next year's phone. So, next year is the 20th anniversary of the iPhone. Right. And 10 years ago. Hold on. You guys are already looking that far? You haven't even seen the new stuff and you're like, oh, I can't wait to see what's coming next. Apple rumors go out like three, four years. Yeah, yeah. Really? That's still happening? Oh, man. We don't care about this one. We always care about the next one.

11:25So, 10 years ago. All the rumors for next month started at this time last year. Yeah, right. That's when we started talking about folding phones and so on. So, yeah, next year's the 20th anniversary. In 2017, which is the 10th anniversary, we got the iPhone X. And so, we've been hearing for a while that for the 20th anniversary, Apple was going to do something similar in the sense that it's going to dramatically redesign its existing phone with this edge-to-edge glass design and curved bezel-less edges and maybe a small little face ID camera hole or none at all.

12:03And, you know, it was getting somewhat interesting. And then Monday, this analyst from Jeffries, hold on, let me look to some of if I get this right. Yeah. He cut Apple, his stock recommendation, to basically sell. Like, it's not worth holding anymore or it's not worth buying anymore because Apple had apparently canceled the entire iPhone 20 project, which was somewhat shocking.

12:35Right, because we had heard a lot about it. Right, the 20th anniversary special edition. Yeah, so next year's phone, he was saying that it's not happening. Apple, they tried to make it. They couldn't do it under the price that they wanted. It was too expensive. They couldn't get the yield they wanted from manufacturing because it was too technical and blah, blah, blah. And their stock dropped quite a bit as a result. And then- Now, that I need to put context in because this is the thing that bothers me so much. Okay, sure, go. They go, there's a report or news or something happens and then they go like, and Apple's stock is down 2% after that, right?

13:13And then it's like, what you look at the rest of the stock market, the whole market, especially tech stocks, were all down yesterday. It's not like this one guy's report trashed Apple's stock. It's just Apple's stock going down happened after this guy's report happened. But all the other tech stocks went down, was it two days ago when this came out? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like, it's not like he's changed his recommendation from a buy to a hold or a hold to a sell or something.

13:43And then Apple's stock went down 2%. It's just Apple's stock went down 2% Monday, just like NVIDIA's stock went down 2% and Intel's stock went down 2%. Everybody's stock went down 2% in the tech sector.

13:58Yeah, I agree. And maybe it was unrelated, but he's a fairly well-known analyst who was picked up all over the place and by financial people, not just us. And, you know. Only financial people, yeah. I had to assume that it had some effect on the stock, but regardless, we're not a stock, I'm not a stock expert by any stretch and I have no idea. But regardless, the report was out there. And then a few hours later, Mark Gurman, who is not a financial analyst, but he is an Apple plugged in leaker, published a report that said,

14:37no, the 20th anniversary iPhone is happening and maybe it shifted from its original plan years ago, but it's where there's still going to be the all glass thing and it's still happening. And, you know. Right. It's rare that that kind of stuff happens in the rumor sphere. Like we get wrong rumors all the time and they just kind of float off and we never hear from them again. Yes, Adam. I got a question down here in front. Adam, Patrick Murray from PC World. No, the question I have is when, because I, sorry, I should preface this.

15:12I'm not as locked in the Apple ecosystem anymore. When does the new CEO take charge? No, September 1st. September 1st. Yeah. Of this year. A couple weeks. This year. Yeah, a couple weeks. Okay, so this upcoming iPhone launch will be the first products like launched under his reign. Yeah, this new. Obviously not developed under his reign, but. Yeah, the new folding and the iPhone 18 Pro, all the stuff being announced next month. He's going to, this, the big of Apple event, probably second week of September is going to be the first one that he's like the main guy hosting.

15:44We won't, we probably won't see Tim Cook at all. Like, so maybe a little message from him saying thank you. I don't know. But like. I mean, he did that at WWDC. He might not be part of the presentation. He might not be a part of it at all. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, but then even next year's thing has been in development long enough that this isn't the brainchild of the new guy either, right? Like, or. No. If you want to assign anything to this guy, he was the VP of hardware engineering. So he's, he has been like the champion of certain specific products before.

16:18The iPhone Air was a good example of a product that people claim was kind of his baby from the get-go. And this upcoming folding iPhone was also something that he was very deeply involved with in his role as a VP of hardware engineering. Okay. Well, but I just wonder if you have this whole anniversary thing is, I mean, it's somewhat coinciding also with him taking reins, you know, maybe that would be a time to be like, Hey, you know what, we're going to pull out all the stops and, and try to make a splash,

16:50especially because like Tim Cook has not been known to be somebody who has had a lot of successful new product launches under his belt, right? Yeah. That's the, that's one of those things where he's not known for that, but he absolutely has. Like. We can't. We can talk about that all the time. We don't. All right. I'm going to, I'm going to tease Adam. You can tune in. So August 25th, we're going to do a whole Tim Cook show, what he's done, what good stuff,

17:20bad stuff, his whole legacy. So if you want to know his impact on Apple, which is sizable and the products he helped develop and launch. Yeah. Listen, listen to that. Cause we, I'm already, we're 20 minutes in and I'm nowhere near the main segment. Okay. All right. All right. Yeah. Rumors. Yeah. So Jason, it seemed as though German's report was fed to him by an Apple person, pretty high up that said, Hey, we don't want this news out there. I don't, it just seemed to me it was awfully targeted because German, he, I mean, he obviously

17:56has extremely high level. So he's rarely wrong. He rarely publishes like superfluous nonsense that we get from other rumor people. Like he is keyed in and he knows the timing of when to release this stuff. He's definitely the most plugged in of the sort of Apple rumor leaks people. Not everything comes to pass, but that's not really because he's wrong. It's because things, plans change more than it is anything else.

18:26Um, so yeah, and I don't know who his source is, like how high up his sources, but it's clear that like the, the financial analysts said that they were speaking to and got this information from the supply chain, people within the Apple supply chain. And it's clear that whoever German's sources are, they're within Apple or they're close to Apple. They're like, you know, they're, they're not four steps removed in a display manufacturer they are Cupertino involved, Apple or Apple adjacent people or contractors.

19:03They're people who know, right?

19:06For sure. Yeah. And you know, I just wonder if, you know, so German has a bit of an ego and there are times when he'll tweet something or he'll report something that basically says like, Hey, I know what I'm talking about. You all are wrong and just wait and see. This seems like a little bit more from, you know, like Apple basically said here, let me feed you this report. And just cause his, when German talks, it carries some, some weight, some gravitas, if you will, you know, more so sometimes than even these, these, these, these analysts.

19:40Yeah. I don't know. It's, it's weird because it, it could be that it was fed or it could be that like, I mean, this is information German has posted before. That's what was interesting about this financial analyst report is that it was contrary to German's and German writes for Bloomberg, which is also a business publication for business people. So it might be more of the sense that, Hey, if this Jeffries, this analyst for Jeffries is

20:12writing something that's affecting Apple stock or it's changing a buy rating, you know, for, you know, investment firm, because, uh, according to them, it's going to be, Apple's not going to have the ability to sell more expensive products if this fancier iPhone doesn't come out, if it's just the standard, they're not going to have that impetus to get people to buy a more expensive product. And then it might just be that like, it's more, it's not that he got another new leak. It's more like, he's like, no, this guy's information is just wrong.

20:45And I feel like I need to correct it because I also work for a business publication where people are taking information about buy ratings for stocks and this is incorrect. Right. So, okay. I, it could, it could be that like, we're never going to know cause he's never, he's, he's very careful not to like say or do anything that lets you know who his sources might be. Sure, yeah, sure. Yeah. I'm sure he's very much hated by Apple executives. Well, maybe not, maybe not.

21:16Who leak all his stuff, their stuff. Like maybe they, maybe, you know, Apple knows at this point that anything that it does is going to be leaked. There's no more surprises. I can't, it just can't, they're too big. Their supply chain is too vast. Their, their company is, is, is too massive. But they work really, really hard not to have that happen. And they extremely punish like employees who leak things and suppliers and the contracts that they have are extremely tight about secrecy.

21:46And so it still happens because they're like the biggest tech company in the world. And of course it's good, but they really, really try not to let this happen. They do, which makes me believe that German is friendly with someone who is looking the other way. Do you think they're feeding him? Do you think Apple intentionally feeds him? I can't, I can't imagine that they're not. I can't imagine. I would say it actually happens way more than people realize. Like, I mean, cause we, we have it on, on the PC side as well. Like, you know, I mean, they're always testing the waters, putting some information out there

22:20just to see what the audience is going to react to. So I've, I've, I've heard of plenty of instances where, you know, it's, it's not maybe intentionally manufactured, but maybe just, oh, Hey, you know what we have, we're, we're infighting between these two teams and we want to go this way and with a product and they want to go this way with a product. Why don't we just kind of like test the waters and throw something out there and get some information. So like, I, I, you know, I think it's pretty natural part of the business process. Yeah. And Apple is so intrinsically culturally tied with rumors.

22:51I don't think it hurts their sales of anything. It helps their sales, you know, as, yeah, I don't think regular, regular people, I don't think, uh, are dialed in on the rumors at all. Like, like your average everyday person with an iPhone has absolutely no idea what all these like leaks, rumors are about. I still get people asking me when the new iPhone's coming out every, all the time, constantly. It's September. It's always September for like 15 years. Or somebody will buy one now.

23:21You know, and then be like, Oh, there's a new one. Why did nobody tell me? Right. Yeah. So yeah, I don't think people are that dialed in. If I can ask for a quick, what do you guys want from an anniversary phone? Like what, what do you think would make a big enough splash to be the 20th anniversary of the iPhone, the phone that changed the course of history? Well, so that with the iPhone 10, first of all, they skipped nine so that they could call it the 10. They released the eight, which was a regular iPhone, the eight, the eight plus and the 10 at the same time.

23:52But the 10 was the one that was like, they said, this is, this is going to set up what an iPhone is for the next decade. Right. Which is, which we're now at the end of. And it was not just a redesign. It was a suite of technologies that kind of every iPhone has. They got rid of the home button and made it an all display front. They added, and they got rid of touch ID because they got rid of the phone home button and added face ID. They got, this is the first one with an OLED display. It was the, uh, it was a camera change too.

24:25I'm trying to remember what the camera change was. Um, it wasn't, it wasn't massive, but yeah. Yeah. I don't think it was a huge change, but yeah, it was, there was definitely a wireless charging. That was the other thing. It was the first with wireless charging. Yeah. The eight had that too, but yeah. Yeah. But that year that was the, so that, and they were like, these are the things that like every iPhone after that was going to be like that. And with the exception of the SEs just hanging on and using like old designs for a while, that was true. I don't know if the same as can be true of a iPhone, a 20th anniversary iPhone, but that's

25:02what I would like to see. I would like to see it not just be like, oh, they made it. So the edges all curve down. So it kind of looks like it's all screen. Like, is every iPhone going to be like that from now on? Are they going to do like, I just want to see some new technology. These that we can say, oh, these are what iPhones are going to be like for the next 10 years. It's going to be an evolution of this, but it's like, this is the thing. So I hope for something more than just like, people are calling it like quad edge, curved

25:33edges or something. Cause it just, the edges will curve down on all sides. I mean, okay, that's nice. That's neat. But is that iPhone, the iPhone design language for the next 10 years? So I want to see them do stuff with like, how, how, how do the cameras change on the back? Maybe they make them all flush. Maybe they start putting everything in a horizontal bar instead of that big square circle. Maybe there are, maybe they will go to no more dynamic island, no more cutout.

26:05It's all just a, you know, whether there's a punch hole, there's nothing there. There's, they're just not going to make that an interface element with a big space. They're going to do some under display stuff, but whatever it is, I just want to see something that is not just this phone is fancy, but like, this is the future of iPhones in general.

26:26Yeah, I agree. It doesn't sound like that's what this is. Yeah. I don't know that it could be cause they keep pushing things so far. Right. Like what, what is left to, why wouldn't they save, why wouldn't they save the folding stuff? Yeah, that, that's a good, I mean, that seems like a big anniversary. Exactly. Yeah. That's a good point. Let's just, let's just use that as a, as a Romans transition into the folding phone section segment. But, um, I, I absolutely agree. This is the future that Jason just described in the sense that it's a different, the gestures

27:00are going to be different. Navigation is going to be different. The, obviously the look and the feel and the whole functionality of the device. When the iPhone 10 arrived, it was a complete change overhaul to iOS and the iPhone. You got gesture, navigation, the home button went away. Everything changed. They had to change how multitasking worked cause you didn't like double tap the home button. Like the, the taking away the home button changed the way you used it. Right. They had the little notch. We started to see notches and everything. Notch was all anyone could talk about.

27:31Like it were massive changes, right? Yeah. And they didn't do like that virtual home button. They, they, yeah. So I, you know, much like Apple changed the, the, the, the interface and the whole kind of design language of iOS, the, the folding phone. We, we don't know yet what iOS, what the folding version of iOS 27 is going to look like, but we assume it's going to be functionally different. We didn't know going into the iPhone 10 either because so Samsung and others, they like that,

28:06you know, all glass front was a thing on Android phones for a while. What they had was a virtual home button. It was a little button that you pressed at the bottom of the screen. Apple didn't do that. They created that bar and you had to swipe and this and that. I have to assume the home button is going to do more than just give us the iPad interface and say, here you go. It's on a phone now. Like it's, they mean the folding iPhone, the iPhone or whatever. Yeah. I, I have to assume the, the, the, they, they've thought about how, cause it's, yes, it opens

28:41up to a tablet size, but you're going to be using it this way and this way you're opening you're closing it. Like it's gotta be different than just as an outside screen. And that, yeah, the aspect ratios are all different. Like they're not, when it's closed, it is a squatter wider thing than, than typical, than a typical iPhone. So the outside screen is not gonna be shaped like a normal iPhone. And then when, of course, when you open it up, it's horizontal, it's that horizontal aspect ratio is not quite the same. It's just turning an iPad mini on its side. It's a little different.

29:12So they're, they're already doing a lot of work on their apps to make them these reactive apps that just scale right to like different sizes. They've been doing that for years because, um, you can run your apps like iPad apps on a Mac, right. And so they, to make things fit and everything. Um, so there, that there's been a lot of work like frameworks and stuff like that to make this happen. They've been pushing developers to use it, but what about like just core interface things?

29:47Like, what about the standard, how you operate? It's going to look familiar. It has to work with all your existing apps, like whether they have bars on the side or something, they, they're not, they're not just going to be like all new apps. Everybody has to make completely new apps. Can I ask for a quick, how, how different are the underpinnings between iOS and iPadOS? I'm sorry, iPhone, whatever the naming convention is. Yeah. Could you have that, the iPhone on the outer screen? And then when you open it up, you get the iPad version of stuff.

30:22Yeah. I mean, as far as like they're, when they get updated, they get updated together. You know, like they're, they're, they're built on the same foundation, right? In my mind, functionally, when I sit down to use an iPad, I approach it differently than when I use my phone. And I think opening up the phone doesn't just automatically say, oh, now you're using a tablet. I think there needs to be some kind of a transition between those two, those two, um, it's not just an interface, but just like, like, like, like, like the way you approach using it at

30:55a low level, iOS and iPadOS are very, very similar. And then like, like you said, they get updated at the same time and everything, but they do have different interface conventions and features and the apps are not identical. There are iPad apps that are not iPhone apps and vice versa. And there are features of, and, and frameworks and stuff available to iPad apps that are not available on the, uh, on the iPhone that are not available on the iPad and vice versa because

31:25of some of the multitasking and the way things work and stuff like that. There's no split screen multitasking or anything like that on the iPhone. Right. That's the biggest thing. Yeah. Um, which, yeah, I mean, for like, for me, when I, when I think about how I use my phone and have, have used folding phones.

Daily driving a folding phone

31:41So which, which one do you have? I don't think we ever answered that question. Sorry. Yeah. So I started on the Z Fold 3. That was 2021. I think when that got released, uh, I can talk about the, like certain things I liked and didn't like about that. But then, uh, I quickly moved off, not quickly, but after that I had the OnePlus open. So that was OnePlus's folding phone is the only folding phone they're probably ever going to make. And, uh, and I, I, I love that phone. The, like really the only reason why I moved off that one is because it was just starting to get worn down and like slower, uh, performance wise and stuff.

32:14But recently, uh, Motorola sent over the, the, the Moto fold. No, what is it? The Razor fold, uh, I think that's their, their naming convention. So yeah, I've, I've been on three generations now of daily folding phones and yeah, like the, the way I, there are certain things that I use. You know, in the folding nature of it in like different kinds of ways. And like, I'm actually kind of a little bit of a skeptic when it comes to the more fatter squatter ones that have, have been released before. And I was surprised when iPhone was going to go that way, except for the whole idea that

32:49if iPhone was maybe going to try to bridge that gap between the iPad and say, Hey, you know what, when you open it up, you're going to expect a completely different experience. Cause I mean that, that is as, as, as a Android fan and a Apple hater myself, I will say like, I can, I can already say right now, whatever Apple comes up with in terms of software features and the experience is probably going to leapfrog whatever Android has right now. And like, that is kind of one of the biggest downsides is that there are still pains, even all these years later, there's still pains of, uh, Android apps trying to adapt to a wider

33:24display. Uh, especially if you already have one open, it'll scale differently than if like, like if I launch an app on the outside screen and then open it up, it'll act react different than if I open it up and launch the app from there. Like YouTube is, is one of the ones that it'll, it'll actually change the layout of certain things. And so like, I expect Apple to, to do way better about that stuff. Yeah. I feel like there'll be a consistency. Um, there may be, there may be things where

33:55it's, they enable feature enable developers to put features in for the folding phone that like, you know, all your existing apps will work, but app developers can update their apps and add these special features that have something to do when it's open or about the transition from opening to folding or any of this other stuff. What we don't know, we, we just don't, we have so much information about the hardware from leaks. We have no information about the software. So is it going to, they added like windowed multitasking to iPads and stuff. Is

34:29it going to have any multitasking at all? Like there's none on, it must, it must at the very least. Wait, iPhone still doesn't have multitasking? Not in the sense that you can put apps side by side. You can quickly switch between them, but no. That's what you said all the time, even on the outer screen. That's crazy. Yeah. None. There's no, there's no like show two apps at the same time. You do. It's, it's like top and bottom, right? Adam. Yeah. For the outer screen, it's top and bottom. But one of the reasons why I love this size rather than, than, I mean, once again, I haven't used the shorter, fatter one that has been

35:04out before and what the iPhone fold is supposed to be. Um, but that's one of my favorite things is that when you open it up, then you literally get the same phone width and size on two screens. So like, it's almost like you get two phones smashed together. And like, especially now that fantasy football is coming, like that's my, one of my number one use cases is having, uh, my fantasy, uh, YouTube fantasy app open on one side and then ESPN rankings and cheat sheets and all that kind of stuff on the other to like, like, you know, quickly make changes

35:35and things like that. So it's like, can you run simultaneously on the inside? Uh, it depends on the, the OS. So the, the, what, what Motorola is running here is closer to stock Android than, than Samsung or even one plus. Uh, and so I don't know about Samsung cause I haven't used the Samsung since that one, but the, on the one plus and on this one, you could do up to three at a time. So it's not all shown at the same time. I mean, you can stack it in different ways, but usually it's more like, like all three of them are there, but you only see

36:07two at a time and you can kind of shift between the two. Okay. So yeah. Now my, I imagine like on the iPad, there's a five different ways to multitask. There's slide over, you can do full windows, you can do split side by side, you can move the split. So it's two thirds of one third and all this, you know, I don't expect, I mean, that sounds more like what I don't expect Apple to do any of that, but I do expect that at the very least they'll have it so that when you open it up, you can run a left and right apps, like two separate

36:38apps. And from an interface point of view, that's table stakes at this point. Yeah. That's like the base. If they don't, then they've messed up. I really don't think they're going to go too much fancier than that. Just from an interface point of view, like just from a sitting there and fiddling around with how you divide up your thing and multitask. I think they want to keep it really, really simple. So they'll make it either one big app or you can run like two and that way it may be really easy to like have a gesture where you're deciding what do I launch on which side instead of like dragging around bars for how it's divided

37:12up and stuff like that. So, but there's got to be something like there's none now. There's none. I'll be massively disappointed if they release a folding iPhone and there's no way to run two apps at the same time. That would be an absolute deal breaker. If you open it up and it's just a bigger version of the app that you had open on the outside, that would be insane. Adam, quick question. When you run two on the front screen, right? And then you open it up, what happens?

37:45Oh, that's a good question. I mean, I can try it now. I actually, usually if I'm running two, it's because I'm copying and pasting something. Like I have some information in the top one and then I'm like texting with somebody. Uh, so usually it's just like a quick thing. And then on the inside, it's more like a deeper kind of like a research thing or, or something like that. So, I mean, I guess I can do it right now just, uh, just to see. Uh, I will say that, that usually Android is actually pretty good about that because the other folding options are like the, like the, the flips, right? Yeah. And my wife swears by those because she's a small

38:19phone lover. She loves her phones to be small. And so she does so much of her daily phone on that outer half size. Yeah. And like, like the, the way that it reacts to being so small is sometimes is like a little wonky, but for the most part she can do almost everything that she wants to on that outer screen. And then if she wants something bigger than she flips it open, uh, which I mean, I would love to see what iPhone does on that front too. There's been rumors they're working on that and it'd be a couple of years behind the, the big one. Uh, okay. Yeah. So I'm going to do

38:55two apps here. So I'm not going to show my screen just, just in case it's sensitive material, but yeah, I've got, yeah, one on the top, one on the bottom and then I open up. Oh, and then it just goes side by side. Okay. Okay. Okay. So it opens those two side by side. All right. Which would make sense. How often Adam, how like, I don't know, percentage or whatever. How often do you use the, how do you, how often do you open it to do like normal quick? Like I'll, like all throughout the day, I'll open up my iPhone. I'll click on it for two seconds and I'll put it back in my, my, my, my pocket. Like how often do you think you use the full opened version

39:32of that phone? I've tried to do the math because it's actually pretty like, I don't know, common for me to, to know the times that I'm going to be doing it. Uh, those can kind of get messed up around fantasy time. Like I said, like sometimes if I'm, I'm deep into fantasy football stuff like that can mess with it, but usually it's mostly on the weekends. Like when I have a little bit more lounge time and either I want to watch YouTube big or, you know, like consume something like my daily use, like it, like cash through the court. Yeah. Through

40:06the course of a, of a weekday, very minimal. I would say I'm like probably 90% on the outer screen, but on the weekend it's probably like 50, 50. I, I, I like, like for me, it's more of a consumption thing to have the bigger screen except for fantasy football stuff. Uh, and other like work related tests, like sometimes I'll have slack on one side and like I'm filling something out and YouTube studio or something. So like, yeah, it's, it's, you know, usually pretty standard like that. Do you, do you have a tablet or did you ever have a tablet and it's replaced? I have,

40:39yeah, I have had tablets. Uh, like, so yeah, I mean, um, who's a Lenovo sent me at one of their gaming ones recently. So yeah, but I, yeah, the tablet form factor just does nothing for me right now. Like actually if I had a tablet that folded down maybe, uh, but like I can do pretty much everything I want to do on this one that the, the, the bigger tablet, yeah, doesn't really, that doesn't really do anything for me except also I should say I don't use the pen stuff. I don't like

41:11do a lot of illustrations or anything like that. The, the moto one does, uh, Motorola did send over a pen, but I, I don't know if I've ever used it. Uh, so that's another thing that we don't know. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of Android phones that have a stylus of some kind, um, never been an iPhone that supported Apple pencil. And certainly it's too big to sort of dock with an iPhone or charge or anything. So I really wonder like, would it support Apple pencil? And then if so, is it an issue that

41:44like, how do you charge the right now you charge an Apple pencil by like magnetically sticking on your iPad and it charges, they still make a USB one, but this isn't really gonna, this phone isn't expected to be able to charge an Apple pencil. So would there be Apple pencil support? And if there was, I think it'd be cool if there was, but then you've got this whole, like I bought an Apple pencil for my folding iPhone. How do I charge it? Kind of like customer experience. They have to worry about customers who aren't necessarily dialed in with that. Right. Yeah. Like, so Motorola gets around

42:18it. They have almost like a little charging case that you just like springs in and out of. And then the case itself just has USB-C that you charge. And I realized it's actually dead cause I've never used it. Yeah. And Apple never does any of that with their, with their pencils. I don't imagine they're going to make a new Apple pencil just for this. It might make a little charging thing you can stick it on. Like a little holster. Yeah. Like a little charging thing so that if you don't have an iPad to snap it onto. We, we haven't heard anything about even whether it will support Apple.

42:50Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Let alone a new model or some way to dock it. Like it might not. We don't know. Yeah. No, it very, well my, I would imagine I'm, I feel like it won't or we would. Yeah, I do too. Honestly. I kind of also think, I also think it's the, the difference for what I know of people using the Apple pencil for like illustrators or people that do a lot of writing. I, man, I just, I can't imagine it would, it would translate well to a phone. I mean, maybe, maybe some quick doodling

43:21or note taking kind of stuff, but also that, that inner screen that that's the real big question, right? Is that like the, the Android manufacturers have done a lot of work on that inner screen, but at the end of the day, I still think Apple's going to have some of the same downfalls of this is not glass. Like people are going to, you know, you, you're probably going to be able to scratch the crap out of that thing pretty easily. Uh, I can't really be like, uh, unless they have some sort of crazy new patented technology that had nobody has access to like, like having access to

43:52like a lot of pen work in there who, yeah, I feel like they, they, like they're walking into a minefield with that one. Yeah. There's certainly that's, what's been the holdup. Like they've, this is the fifth or sixth year in a row that we've heard the Apple, the folding iPhones coming next year. And this time it's actually going to happen. Like it's actually going to happen guys. We have enough like hard information and real leaks and stuff. It would be shocking if it didn't come. Yeah. If it didn't come out.

44:23But, um, that, that's been a big part of the holdup is that Apple's been unhappy with the durability of the inside screens with making the crease disappear with figuring out how the hinges stand so long. Uh, and so they've been working on it since I think we started hearing about the folding iPhone in 2018, 2019. Right. So they, they must have reached a point where they finally feel happy with the quality of that inside screen. I mean, it's definitely gotten

44:55better, but yeah, you, you, you take your fingernail hard enough to it and yeah, it's going to be an

The screen crease and durability

45:00issue. Like, I mean, I want to, to the, to the crease thing, I, I get the, I still get that all the time. Whenever I show somebody my phone, there's like, Oh, I can see that crease. Uh, and it's exactly like when the notch came out. Like, I think it's going to be one of those things where like people are going to have real strong reacts. Oh, I can see that notch. All I'm doing is just staring at it. I was one of those people too. Like, so I'm throwing myself under the bus. And then six months later, you don't care. Nobody sees it. Nobody cares about it. It's just

45:30in, in the background. Same thing for me on the crease. Like, yes, they've diminished the crease. Uh, but even when the crease was at its worst at the Z fold three time, like after months of use, I just never thought about it. I never cared. Like the only time I would ever really notice it was like in certain lighting, if it caught the light, just right, I can kind of see the crease in the. So you don't feel it under your finger when you go across the two screens. Uh, I, I do. I mean, once again, it's been minimized in, in future durations, but also I'm not moving my finger that much across the screen. Like, like, and even when I do it, just,

46:05I'm just using it. I don't know. Like not, not every time I'm just like, Ooh, shuddering, like, Oh my God, I can't, can't believe I feel the crease clutching. Yeah. So I, I imagine when it is released, there's going to be months of YouTubers being like, look at this crease. This is so stupid. So the thing about, I, I totally get what you're saying, but a couple of things. One, Apple embraced the notch 100%. Like it made it part of the character of the phone. Uh, silhouettes of the iPhone 10 showed the notch. Like it completely embraced it and made it a thing.

46:38Like, listen, we're proud of this because we, it's a uniform glass thing above. The crease is a defect. I don't care how much you say it doesn't matter. It's a, it's a defect. It's not supposed to be there. We're like, Oh, maybe, maybe, maybe they'll have some sort of like liquid glass feature where just the water flows into the crease and they're like, I'm sure there'll be some sorry. Hold on. No, no, no. Mike, here we go. They'll call it the dynamic river.

47:10All right. Oh, check, check out this dynamic river. We're going to have the animation flow through the crease. It's going to be amazing. Even the, even the dynamic island, like, like they embrace that. Like this is a future where we're taking the screen cut out that everybody hates and we're making it a, an important artistic design element of your phone. It cannot do that with the crease. If it's there, right. It's a, I'd like to see them try. It's a flaw. I mean, I like, I, I, I would love to see them try because like, if there's anybody who's going to be able to put a, you know, a, a dog of a,

47:46or a bag of dog poo and, and sell it as a marketing trick, it's going to be them. So they'll come up with a new name for it. Yeah. I'm calling it dynamic river. That's yeah. Trademark right here. I said it first, but no, I mean, is it a defect or is it just, I mean, I don't, they've been trying to minimize it all this time. So yeah, but it's also just, it's, it's what the material is. Like, so like, I don't think it's a defect. It's just what the material is. So like, I understand what you're saying. I'm using the word defect in the sense that people are going to touch it and it's, it's not, it's not supposed

48:20to be there. It's an, it's a, it's an element that takes you out of the, the beauty of the device. Once you use it, I think all that will wash away once you use it. Maybe so. Like, yeah. So I think everybody's worrying about it right now. Yeah. That's not, but also, I mean, like I do hope, I do hope that they have figured out some way to push that technology forward because then even the Android people are going to benefit afterward as well. So like, I, like it, like, please, please, you know, I mean, Samsung makes the display. We know that almost certain with

48:55certainty, almost certainty that, that the display will be sourced from Samsung's manufacturing, but Apple comes up with the coding and all that, you know, whatever. Yeah. They have different glass suppliers. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. I mean, like, unfortunately I think it's just inherent to the design. Like I, will we ever, will we ever have folding phones that aren't going to have the issue of it being a little bit more malleable than true glass? I don't know, but Apple has to know people are going to criticize it. If there is any crease, that's the number one thing people are

49:30going to criticize. Of course. Yep. But like I said, with the notch, people criticize it and then they just, they stop criticizing. Yeah. But again, like that, they embrace that. I don't know how you embrace a crease. We'll see. We'll see if my Apple's marketing can do it, but I don't know how. Well, and the, the other one too, that is weird for me is that once again, I haven't used any of the more squatter ones, but I'm really surprised they're going that way. Cause one of the things I actually did like about the Z fold three, uh, and it was the last one to do it is that it had a really tall, awkward aspect ratio on the outside, which was not great for scaling. And like,

50:04like ultimately it was not my favorite, but it was one of the easiest one handed phones that I've had because two things, number one, because it was so thin and tall number two, because it was so thick cause you actually had more to grip onto the same thing with the one plus open the, the huge camera bump that it had actually was a nice little spot to put your finger kind of like those pop sockets to like hold it up. You know what I mean? So like, like, like this, the, this new moto fold or whatever is a razor fold, uh, it, it kind of has that same thing where it's just, you know,

50:37kind of a little bit of a, a, a bump, you know, here. So like my, my finger does have somewhere to, to naturally rest, but I actually like the fact that these folding phones are actually thicker. I, I miss, I miss phones being thick. We don't have to have thin phones, you know, anymore because you get, you get a better grip on it, uh, especially something, you know, so large. So the, um, the iPhone air, which is thinner even, but also has a less flat sides, more rounded sides.

51:08I found interesting enough that that was easier to grip because once you get past a certain thinness and you don't have flat sides, it kind of digs into your hand, but it becomes, you know, it fits into all the little grooves of your hand and stuff like that. So I, I'm normally with you, Adam, that I find like, give me more to hold onto, but I found the iPhone air because of its weight and thinness actually very easy to use one handed compared to like an iPhone max or something.

51:39Well, I will say that that's one, one advantage this, the, the razor fold has over the one plus is that the one plus had a very flat face with like harsh edges. This one, like I'm not going to be able to show it on camera, but if, if you look up reviews of it, this one does have glass that kind of curves down. It's a little less pronounced on this inner hinge area, but the top right side and the bottom side have definitely have a little bit more roundedness to them. So, right.

52:07The Samsung just came out with a folding phone that is pretty much the same aspect ratio as what Apple's expected to do that sort of passport size. It's the really first one that's really, really close to it. The pixel is pretty close too, but yeah. Yeah. This, this, this one's almost identical. Yeah. Based on what we've read. And it, and it was interesting to see sort of the YouTubers takes on it when it could, cause that's Apple, uh, Samsung's MO is to copy Apple before Apple. Like as soon as all the rumors

52:38say Apple's doing something, they rush out that exact thing. Um, and it was interesting to see them do a take on it cause they were like, I wasn't when, when it came out that this is the way Apple's going. I thought, uh, but now I'm using it on this Samsung one and I'm like, Oh, this is really actually a great aspect ratio. It's just really nice. I haven't used one, but that seems to be the, the universal reaction to this Samsung one is, Oh, this aspect ratio really is great. So I have to imagine that after false starts with the folding phone

53:12for like eight years now, Apple has tried, they famously actually developed multiple versions of any product and try them out and pick the winner, right. To go with, they try them out in the R and D and never announced them. Um, so I have to assume they tried the more traditional things. They tried a tall narrow, they tried vertical, they tried all these things. And this is like the one that felt right or worked great with their software ideas or something. Um, I

53:45look at it and I feel like I don't want to put that in my pocket. It shows squat and wide and fat. I'm like, eh. Right. I don't know. Yeah. Something about like, maybe, maybe I'm just too used to thinking of this as a phone, like no normal phone aspect ratio that then becomes two phones that like, I can't, me personally, I can't imagine like a, just a squat wider version of that. Yeah. I mean, but like I knew people who were loved that the surface duo or whatever when Microsoft made the passport style thing, like they swore by it cause it, so I don't

54:19know, like I'm definitely, you know, I, I, you gotta wait to see till you, till you try it kind of thing. But I'm like, if that's what Apple's going for, then yeah, there's, I'm sure there's a reason for it. So I'm willing to try, but it's expected to start at around 2000 or more. And that's like, boy, it's twice the price of an iPhone. I'm, I, is it going to be that much better than just the iPhone 18 pro? Am I, is it going to have the cool camera things the iPhone 18 pro has? You know, I know it only has going to have the two lenses,

54:51is it going to have the new, the new better sensor and variable aperture stuff? Is it going to do any of that? Is it, you know, I, I'm wondering how much I'm going to have to give up. And then also what am I going to gain if I don't know what their software is doing? Cause if it's just big iPhone and you can run two apps side by side, that is just not worth two grand to me. Like I have a hard time going, yeah, I want to pay two grand for that. I mean, I'll tell you as somebody who is a big camera guy, I mean, I used to

55:23review smartphone cameras back in the day. Like I, that was my, the biggest downside of switching to a folding phone is that, yeah, it never has the nicest, never has the nicest leading edge camera. Like the one plus the, uh, the one plus fold, uh, that was like, or one plus open, I'm sorry. Uh, that one, the reason, one of the reasons why I switched to that one is because the camera in there actually was really good for the time. It wasn't leading, but it got caught up to the other flagships and then like it was awesome. But yeah, there's a, there's always that concession. And the, the other thing too, is the, the,

55:58the camera bumps depending on the placement can really mess up sitting on a table like that. The Samsung ones, because they're up in the corner, like that table wobble drives you nuts. Luckily the one plus and the, the, the razor one, they're both centered enough that they don't have that wobble. But I like, I, I guess I haven't seen the, the, the Apple one, but there, the, the cameras are bump is going to be in the corner, right? It's like a, like a half oval or something from what we've seen. Yeah. So the, the iPhones are now going with a whole raised plateau and cameras on the side

56:33and even the cameras stick up a little bit from that, but it, it reduces that thing, that issue. Oh, okay. Yeah. Cause that, that's that like, forget the crease. That's the thing that would drive people crazy if there's a wobble like it is on Samsung. But I feel like the, the folding phone, it is going to go back to the, it's not a bar all the way across. It's supposed to be like an oval with two things. And, but I don't know if that's the front and the displays under it and the, or is that behind it? I'm not quite sure why the, the, all the renders we see, it does like, so Apple introduced this

57:10plateau last year on the pros and the air, not the 17. And now this year it seems as though it's like half of a plateau and I don't quite understand why they don't just go across and keep the thing. I think it has to do with when you open it, do you want a bar going all the way across the middle of the back of your phone? You know, like that kind of a, like you open it and you've got a bar halfway across top of your phone. Whereas the oval, it's more like how an iPad just has a little camera bump, right? Okay. That's a good call.

57:40So I think it's kind of like, maybe it's that, but yeah, it's, it's definitely gonna have a wobble. I hate that. I hate that. I don't know this little squat folded thing. When I put it on my car's phone charger, is it gonna fit? Like now it's wide and short. Like, you know, we don't even know if it has MagSafe. No, right? Like there was reports that it didn't have MagSafe. There was some reports earlier on. We don't know for sure. What an ecosystem of that. Well, it's expected to have wireless charging, but not necessarily MagSafe.

58:13But the magnet thing, yeah. Yeah, the magnet thing. That would be crazy. Like wireless charging, I don't miss. Yes. As we try to wrap this up because it's over an hour. Okay. So you got yours as a, as a review unit, right? Yeah. Would you spend 1900 bucks on it? Uh, not a launch. No. Uh, the, the, I mean, I don't, I can't speak to this on the Apple side. Maybe you guys can answer it better than me, but one of the great things on the Android side is that things get discounted pretty quickly. So like that one plus the, the one plus

58:45open, like there was some deals like nine months, a year later where it was down to like 800, 900 bucks, you know, like, like never on the Apple side, only like Verizon, you sign up for three years and you get this plan. Okay. Yeah. Cause like you, you can, you can get really good deals on older generations of folding phones, which is personally what I would do if I was like in the market of that stuff. But yeah, like buying a new, I don't think I would like, what's the price

59:16you'd be willing to pay the most you'd be willing to pay for, I mean, like, I mean the, the top tier flagship ones for anybody, like they're all pushing like 12, $1,300, right? Other than that. Yeah. The best, even the best. Well, the fold, the, the foldings are like two, but, but the, yeah, I just mean like regular, regular phones. Yeah. So like, I mean, I would probably pay like 200 over that. Okay. You know, see, that's how, that's where I am. Like whatever

59:47the Apple's folding phone is, I would pay probably a two or $300 premium over their flagship non-folding phone. Like assuming it's also got a lot of other flagship features and it's not going to be priced that way. It's going to be priced like eight or $900 more. So I wonder if like at one point Apple was looking at 1499 and with all the supply chain stuff and the design stuff and the hinge and the, and it just kept pushing up and up and up. I wouldn't be surprised

1:00:18if this phone starts at 2299, quite frankly, with the issues that they're having with just sourcing RAM and everything else. Right. It starts at one terabyte and it's 2300 bucks. It could be. We'll see. Yeah. I don't know. I I'm, I'm, I'm with, I'm, I'm in that. I'm, I'm like usually when Apple has something new coming out, I know I'm going to get it. If, if not for my job, then because it's something that I want, I don't, I don't know. I honestly

1:00:48don't know if I'm going to be, be as impressed by this whole concept of a folding Apple phone where I'm saying, all right, I'll, I'll give you 60 or 80 bucks a month. I worry very much that we're about to get into a vision pro situation where it's like, you look at some of the software stuff they're doing. You're like, that's kind of neat, but that doesn't really help me. Like I'm not faster, better, easier, whatever with that. It's super expensive. And then the next thing you know, it doesn't get, there's never a newer version or

1:01:20more price, better priced version. It's two years later and they're still doing the software updates that work on it, but it's not, there's no third version of an iPhone ultra. There's not a new one every year, a new folding iPhone every year. So yeah, I, I, I worry that they really have to make the case that from a usability standpoint, you're going to be able to do stuff with this. That you just can do with your iPhone. That's not just big iPhone. Right. Two apps side by side.

1:01:52That's going to have to do something cool. Yeah. It's also, I mean, it's bad timing, right? Like we're seeing like, I mean, the same thing happened with the steam machine, right? Like the whole idea is going to be an easy living room gaming experience. It was going to come in somewhere around 700, $800 like the other consoles. And then it comes out at, you know, over a thousand dollars and people are just like, okay, well, you know, but it's a circumstance of the time. So like, I, I, like I, this is definitely not going to help whatever the folding phone is

1:02:22at all. So yeah, it's a, it is the timing. They waited all this time, got everything right or at least as right as they could. And then this, this whole memory supply crunch happens. And yeah, listen, it's Apple. They'll sell a bunch at the beginning. It'll sell out all that stuff. But the question is what happens a month and a half later when they are in stock? Are people actually, are people still buying them in March, April next year? Right. And so we'll see.

1:02:56Oh, speaking of vision pro Jason, uh, Apple's going to start broadcasting baseball games in that. And yeah, you want me to talk because yeah, could you? Cause I definitely want to, I need to figure out a way to, to, to, to do that anyway. Yeah. I digress. You'll need to, uh, if you, if you're, uh, farsighted, if you're nearsighted, no farsighted, if you're farsighted and you need glasses to read up close, you'll need to get glasses inserts. I'm the opposite. So I think, I think it would work.

1:03:27Okay. Yeah. If you, if you can, if you normally take your glasses off to read a book or something like that, um, then I think you can use it without, uh, just fine. So I will, I will box it up and I'll reset it and box it up and send it to you. Like that's like my, yeah. I don't think the, the folding phone is going to be a vision pro situation. Like I don't think it's going to be that bad. No, I, I just, I mean like in a wider sense of like, they're not going to make one next year. That's even better. And then the year after that, it's even better and, and a better

1:04:00price. And I mean, it's iPhone and it's the coolest iPhone. So it's definitely going to sell better than vision pro ever did. But I just wonder if it's kind of, they need to sell millions for it to be successful as iPhone. Yeah. You know, a couple hundred thousand ain't going to do it.

1:04:17Yeah. All right. Yeah. Uh, well, thank you for your thoughts, Adam. This was, uh, this was, this was really helpful. In fact, let's book a date after this thing comes out and Jason reviews it. Let's, let's, you're welcome on again. So we can talk about our thoughts and, and, and, you know, figure out where this whole thing lands. It is an exciting time, regardless of how expensive and,

This week in Apple history

1:04:39and, and how many questions we have. It is the first major change to iPhone in like, you know, since the 10, nine years. Yeah. Yeah. And as much as I like to joke that, Oh, Hey, welcome to 10 years ago, Apple people. Uh, the, the knockoff effect will be that whatever, whatever Apple does will force the Android manufacturers to push forward as well. So like everyone, everyone benefits. Competition is good. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a leapfrog kind of thing. So, yeah. And it'll be instantly the best selling single iPhone, a single folding

1:05:13phone model for sure. Yeah. It'll outsell everybody's folding. Yeah. But that doesn't mean anything if it doesn't push the thing forward. And you know, the, the, as we were saying, like, do we need this at all? But we'll find out in a couple of weeks. We're like a month away.

1:05:30This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result, less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify.

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1:06:34I did a terrible job. Look, my notes literally just list the product. So I have to, I had to do this on the fly. So, uh, uh, I don't, I don't, I didn't even put down the date.

1:06:47All right. So, so, so the product is, is the, um, the, the Paramag G4 mirrored drive door design mirrored, yeah, mirrored drive door design. So that one was the one, it was, it was, it was very, it was very, uh, silver and the, the CD drive in the front was, was a mirror, like literally a mirror below that. It had a, a four USB slots that like kind of look like a, like little teardrops.

1:07:19This is, this product has lost to me on, in Apple history. This is, so the reason why I picked this one is because for one, I, I, I, it was hard to come up with August ones for two. This was the last Paramag G4 that was made because the Paramag G5 came out, um, two years later. It has mirror drives. And those four USB ports at the bottom, those, they weren't just on the front. They were recessed at an angle, almost like a guitar jack plug or something. I never realized those were USB

1:07:53ports. Maybe they're not. Maybe, maybe those are vents. Yeah. They look like vents. I didn't know I can get in touch with you said USB. Yeah. Hey Roman, please tell us those USB ports. I don't think those are USB ports, dude. I don't think so. They look like vents. Not even vents. Just some sort of like little flourish or something. I don't see anybody plugging in. Oh, I see a replacement front panel. I don't, yeah. I don't think these are USB ports. That's fine. Yeah. I think that's just vents because they have a, they had this whole through airflow thing. That

1:08:27was in Apple's. It was really pretty though. Yeah. That was, I remember in that era of Apple cases where they were like rounded like that. It was a standard PC case, a big, tall, you know, four liter or whatever, five liter PC case. But it was like, it had these rounded corners and you could use the tops as handles and it had that, to open it, there was just a ring. You popped up and the whole door came down. Whereas every consumer Windows PC, you were like unscrewing four screws with a screwdriver. They were, they weren't even doing thumb screws. They

1:09:00were doing like screwdriver things. It was like this pain in the butt. And I remember PC fans buying these cases, like used cases from broken D4s and you'd have to cut the back to make your motherboard fit. But they would, they were putting in, uh, PC motherboards into these just cause it was like a really great case, had really great airflow and everything was quiet. Dude. And anything with transparent or translucent plastic, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a Y2K, uh, kid. So, so you both are correct.

1:09:37Those are ventilation holes in the front. And apparently it had some issues with cooling because I guess, I guess the, the chip got, got, got super hot. Oh yeah. Those G4 chips got real hot. Yeah. So interesting postscript to this. Um, two years later, the G5 came out, the Intel G5 and the, they put this model back on sale, a single 1.25 gigahertz, uh, power PC G4 model back on sale because these users needed Mac OS nine and the new Intel machines only ran OS 10. So this, uh, uh, uh, two

1:10:14years later or, or a year later, um, instead of being discontinued, they, they released it at somewhat discounted price and specs specifically for that crowd. And as I, as I, as I read, I did do some research. The, um, because the G5 supply was like instantly wiped out because people were so excited about it. Um, this had like a short lived little spike in popularity and then, you know, died off. So, well, the, the G5 was my era. That's when I, when I first got into, to max. So,

1:10:48right. Yeah. And the G5 wasn't an Intel chip. It was, it was still a power PC, power PC, still an IBM power receiver. It was the first dual core one, I think. Um, Oh, when did the, when, when, when, when was Intel? Then the next one? Oh, wait, oh nine. Oh, good question. It had to have been to 08, I think. Yeah. Hold on. But, uh, yeah. Mac pro. They just called it Mac pro. Yeah. Yeah. They switched from power Mac to Mac pro nomenclature. Yep. Oh, oh six.

1:11:20Oh, okay. That was a couple of years off. Oh, so, so then, so then the first G5, was power PC, but regardless, it was still stuck around. It was way better. Because that was OS 10 only. And this was OS, not could run OS nine. Um, I like handles on my PCs. I do too. Like I miss, I miss these days. My first Mac was a, was a G4. It wasn't this model. It was the graphite, the graphite model, but I had no use for this kind of computing power. Certainly not back then, but I just liked it. You know, you can get them relatively cheap. If you waited a year,

1:11:55you know, it was different. Apple was different back then. If you go into Comp USA, they, they would discount stuff and you know, it's, it's not that way anymore. Now you're spending seven grand for a Mac studio and that you'll like it or not. But back then you could buy high hand machines. And I, you know, I had fun pretending like I was a pro, you know, you could open it up and RAM and take around. It was, it was, yeah, it was a novel concept. I learned a lot about computers in general from that, from my first G4. It was, it was just,

1:12:25it's different now. It's different, different times, different, different, different ways of approaching computing. Yeah. Interesting point in history. Yeah. Um, it'll be better next week. People when Roman's back, we miss you. We can't do too good a job. Yeah. Job security for Roman. That's right. We're tanking it to keep him around. Um, so that is this week in Apple history. And now for another

Comment corner

1:12:53botched segment, here comes comment quarter. We have comments this time. We have comments, but I didn't. It's not about Roman. Jason, you can start because I didn't read yours. Okay. Uh, we have a couple, we had a couple from email. Um, Carlos Sola, uh, sent an email and said, I've noticed on the show, you've mentioned a couple of times that you can't develop apps on an iPad. That's not quite right. The Swift playgrounds app lets you create apps and share them on the app store.

1:13:24And that is true. That is, they added a few years ago, that Swift playgrounds thing, like a, a really simple, like publish this to the app store thing. It is really basic compared to using Xcode. Um, you can't make widgets. There's, there's a lot of other limitations that you can't do. You have to program in Swift instead of some other things. Um, I, you're not going to be able to use any kind of third-party engine like Godot or something like that, or which have all these marketplaces of like

1:13:57artwork and interface elements and stuff that you could use. Yeah. So, but it is true that there is a way to, to make an app and put it on the app store just with an iPad. You don't need a Mac. It's, it's, it's, it's very strange to me that Apple sells like a $2,000 iPad with an M5 processor and an OLED screen and a keyboard. And it's really, really good. Yeah. And you can't run Xcode. They are software. It seems really weird to me. Yeah. It's bizarre. Yeah. I feel like you need, I feel like

1:14:30there should be Xcode on the iPad. Yeah, of course. Like there's gotta be developers, tons of them that use iPads and they have to go to their Mac unless you, you know, I'm, I'm looking to Swift playground. I don't know anything about coding, but I assume that's playgrounds is like root, like rudimentary stuff. Right. That's what I was just going to say. It's to teach you coding. Yeah. Uh, the very first lessons are for a, basically anyone like 12 and up to learn how coding works, to learn how it's specifically in the Swift language. But, um, it's actually pretty fun. You should download it and just mess around

1:15:04because it's kind of neat, but you like basically play a game by writing code. It's fun. If you're a real developer, like that's not good enough. Right. Yeah. You can, I mean, the more advanced levels of that, you can make a real app, but it's, it's a pretty basic real app and there are features that you're not going to be able to use, like making widgets and stuff like that. You're no, no major app developers going to use like Swift playgrounds, even if they wrote it right in Swift, they're going to use Xcode. There's no way. Yeah. It's just, it's just so, it's so bizarre that. Yeah. All right. Next, next, uh, comment before we spend

1:15:41all day on one comment. Um, Doug, this is related. Doug sent in an email. He's got two things, but the first is it's interesting that the seven inch home hub, uh, is supposed to recognize and adapt to faces when Apple still refuses to allow multiple accounts on iPads. Do you think this will be specific to the home hub OS thing, or do you think Apple will roll out multiple accounts to iPad OS as well? Um, I will say, I don't think the home hub, which is by all means using this new

1:16:15operating system they're developing that, you know, it's not going to be like logging out and logging in. It is going to be like, stay logged in and it just shows each individual user, their own custom interface and access to their content. Um, you, you're not, supposedly there's no app store. You're not downloading and running apps tied to your account and all that stuff. Uh, but the iPad that is, they're able to do that now if they want to, of course the iPad, the iPad, it's on tvOS. I mean,

1:16:49it's, it's, of course they could do it. Yeah. Uh, what I mean is, uh, it's, it's there already. They just hide it. Oh, um, of course it's for the education stuff. If you have an education or business account that is uses Apple's device management software, then you can set, uh, it to have multiple different people log in a shared, what they call a shared iPad. And that person logs in, they only have access to their account and information. And of course you on the management

1:17:19software side get to decide what did they allowed to install and all the other typical device management stuff for businesses or for education. So it's there, but for regular consumers, Apple just chooses not to let, allow you to have multiple accounts on an iPad. Um, it would be, and it would be a trivial thing for them to change. It would be, it would be able to do it in a month with the, with iPads costing quite a bit now, it would be a perfect time to roll that out.

1:17:50Like an iPad air used to be something like 599 for an iPad. You said, okay, well, that's not bad. Now it's, it's $650. Uh, I would, uh, 750, sorry. Um, they should absolutely add for families, for kids. We've been saying that forever. Um, they would rather, but they would rather it to them. It's like an iPhone. It's, it's a person's device. This is their device. Right. And I feel like that's terrible, but you know, but they're not going to change that. Cause if they, if they

1:18:21were, they would have think cause they can, cause it's already there. The second thing Doug said was regarding. So wait, wait, stop before we could pause for a second. Cause on a Mac, a Mac is a personal device and that has users. Is that just because of like business and admins and IT and stuff? Uh, and that also just goes back to an old thing where like a home computer back before everyone had a laptop, you had a home computer. You didn't have a home computer for every person in your house. You had one shared home computer that goes way back, right? That goes way back

1:18:54before, you know, laptops were 90% of the market. Sure. So that's why, I mean, Macs are meant to run on a home computer that Pete, different people in your home share. And that's, so it's a legacy of that. If, if they started with personal devices that cost a thousand dollars, like personal portable devices, maybe they wouldn't have me. That's a good point. So, so yeah, so I think that's that. But, uh, his next question was regarding Apple home, the answer to 90% of the home automation

1:19:25problems discussed, we were talking about issues with matter and buying different things that support different stuff and ring doesn't support this and whatever. He says, regarding Apple home, the answer to 90% of the home automation problems is as discussed is home assistant. Um, home assistant is neat, but it is not a solution to these problems. Home assistant is a, uh, open source application that runs on any permanently connected, always on computer in

1:19:58your home. You can run it on a, they've got windows, they've got Mac. I think they've got Linux. They have little versions. You run on your, a raspberry PI that you stick on your home network. There's versions you can install in a container on your NAS box. But what they do is they connect to all your different home devices, whether they support Alexa or Google assistant or home kit or like ring and all the other things. And it combines them all together and makes them accessible to whatever, uh, interface you're using, whether that's Alexa or Google assistant or,

1:20:32or whatever. And it's really cool, but it's not for regular average everyday people. You need hardware connected to your network that is on all the time. You need to configure it in certain ways. You need to add devices to it. Was it like a, like a GitHub thing where like someone just developed this thing and, and it's been an open source, like group for a project. It might exist on GitHub, but there's a home, you go to, I think it's homeassistant.com or something like that. And there's downloads and

1:21:04stuff like that there. But it is, it is a way to bring all your different home ecosystem stuff together, but it's, it's not basic. Like it's not for people who are afraid of a command line. Like this is, you know, requires some configuration. So yeah, home assistant's great. It's cool, but it requires an always on PC on your network. So that's, that's not going to fix the problem for people. Yeah. And most people aren't going to bother, you know, um, I just pulled up a quick, quick Reddit

1:21:36thread and it looks like it takes some doing to get everything. Yeah. It takes a little bit of configuration. You need a thing, you need something on your, they sell a box that is kind of a raspberry pie. It's not, but similar that is already set up and it's installed and it's ready to go. But even then you got to do a little configuring. You've got to add your different smart home things to it first before it's available and all your stuff. So I like home assistant, but it's for tinkerers. Those are two comments. Uh, send, send an email, um, podcast at macworld.com. If you have,

1:22:12this is really an hour and a half, Adam, this is correct. Yeah. I mean, I can keep going. You want to keep talking? This is 24 minutes longer, which is, how long is full nerd Adam? Three hours? No, we try to keep it too. We try to keep it to two. Yeah. This is, I, I'm, I, we apologize. This is way longer than we're supposed to go. Why, why people are complaining that you go too short, but the host does. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, no, I, I mean, I, I love talking. I've got two podcasts that I host, so I love talking every week.

1:22:44Uh, but what's the other one? Full nerd. And what's the second one? Uh, the full nerd where we discuss, uh, DIY desktop PC topics. Uh, yeah. And then expedition handheld, which where, where I cover handheld gaming devices, retro, new x86 emulation stuff. Uh, I got this new Embernic RG SP, which is pretty much a carbon copy of the Game Boy Advance. That's like the 3DS, right? Our Advance. No, this is a Game Boy Advance SP. Yeah. So essentially it's just a new emulation focus.

1:23:17Yeah. I love it. So I love handheld gaming stuff. Uh, anyone can go listen to those hours next week. Much shorter. I promise. Roman will be back to move things along. Um, but thank you, um, Adam, Patrick Murray for joining us. Yeah, of course. No, long time fan of the Macworld podcast. I can't believe the one day I got to be on it. Like literally. No, no, I literally, I, I, I knew of the Macworld podcast long before I ever worked here. So very, very honored to be on.

1:23:48Well, thank you. That does it for this episode of the Macworld podcast, episode number 995. Thank you, Jason. Thank you. Thank you, Adam. Yep. Patrick Murray. Yep. Do your, do your, uh, parents call you Adam Patrick Murray? No. Does your, does your, does your wife or, or fiance, or I forget if you're married yet. I am married. Uh, no, they just call me Adam. Um, yeah, actually quite often people see the three names and they just call me Patrick.

1:24:18So I will respond to Patrick as well because yeah, people just like glance at it and they just call me Patrick and I'm like, okay, I understand what happened. So, uh, I will, well, thanks. Uh, and you can subscribe to the Macro pocket. You know what? Forget it. It's too long. You know how to subscribe. You know how to send us comments, send us comments about Roman next week. We're going to talk about, um, uh, no, no, not Tim cook. I don't know what we're talking about next week. We'll, we'll, we'll find out what we get. You'll have to subscribe and find out. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, see you then.

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