Episode 999: iPhone Duo, iPhone 18 Pro, and more

Welcome to the Macro Podcast

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1:05Unscripted, unfiltered, unafraid, welcome 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. Oh, hi there. Roman, do we have a drumroll? Like, can you do that? Well, add it in post. That's weird. It was in here. I don't see it anymore. Well, insert drumroll, because...

1:35That's weird. There used to be a drumroll in here. Now there's not. I don't know what happened. All right. So, anyways. Well, this is episode number 999.

1:48Which means... Ah, well, that's close. I mean, it's not really a joke. Oh, wait. Here it is. All right, wait. Hold on. Wait, wait. This is episode number 999. That was exciting, Roman. We didn't plan any of this. They changed the UI of our software, so that's why I couldn't find it. Anyways, I found it. Well, save that for next week, because next week is our thousandth episode. And we have some fun stuff planned. But today is Apple Event Recap Day.

2:20Talk about the keynote. Today's Thursday when we're recording this, so the keynote was yesterday. We'll talk about the keynote, what was released, all this stuff. And if we have time, which we probably won't, but if we do, we'll do this week in Apple History, and we'll close with our common corner. So, forget the kind of stuff I'll leave for the end. Let's just get into it, because this is probably going to be pretty long.

The Apple Event and iPhone Duo

2:41Yesterday, as I just said, was Apple's Surprise and Shine iPhone event. And, you know, I wrote a couple of things down as I was watching it. And it was the first Apple event in a long time that made me want to buy something I didn't need.

3:00Okay. So, there was a bunch of cool things that the iPhone Duo, now we know it's called the iPhone Duo. Like a bunch of cool little software things. But that transition, when it opens, that just totally grabbed me. Like, if it was a live event, that would be like the crowd would go, and then they would do it again. Like, Roman, you remember back in the day when you used to sit in a crowd. Like, there were some things that Steve Jobs would do, and it didn't get – it wasn't applause. It was just like a – like, almost like this, like, stunned gasp silence that you knew, like, this was something super cool.

3:35It's this thing where it – as you open it from the outside to the inside, the – it shows what's on the inside right display. Right. But it, like, blurs it. But it blurs and shifts it so that it almost looks like the front is transparent and you're seeing the inside display. Right. Like, like, it's a window. Yeah, like, it's a window to see it. Like, you're opening a window open, and you see – it's so damn cool. It's very subtle.

4:06No, I don't want to say it's subtle. It's very precise. Like, it's very – it requires a lot of very finesse, like, tweaking to get it to look just right. And it has – it's just the coolest little effect. I know I'm going to be – I'm – the first day, I'm going to just, like, want to see that 100 times. Right. And then after a week, I'm going to ignore it. It's going to be the coolest thing that I'm going to get – But that's what's great about it is that it's – like, so I'm writing a thing for tomorrow, I hope.

4:38And I compared it to when Steve Jobs unveiled the original iPhone, and he did the swipe to unlock thing. And it got a similar reaction, like, like, like the crowd gasped. And he even, like, he locked the phone, and he did it again. Because we had never seen anything quite – we had seen touchscreens. We had seen smartphones. We had never seen anything quite like that before. And like you said, Jason, the first time you got it, you did it. Oh, look, this is so cool. And then after a couple of weeks, it didn't matter. But that's what's great about it is that it kind of disappears and blends in, and you don't notice it, but it's there.

5:11And it draws you in. Yeah, it's just a really cool transition. Yeah. And, you know, you wrote a while back how the first – we didn't know what it was called at the time, but the iPhone Duo needed to be more than just a folding phone. And we talked about it last week, too. Like, what are they going to do? And, man, they really nailed it. Like, it isn't just a folding phone. That's where I might disagree with you. It is kind of what I – they did a couple of little things.

5:43They're hinting at, and I feel like maybe the next generation or two of software, they'll do even more. But for the most part, what it is is it's a small iPhone on the outside, and it's a big iPhone on the inside that has two – and it's split-screen multitasking, which we all called table stakes. Like, that's obviously what they have to do. It's – that's – you know. Yep. With all the usual Apple refinement to it and everything, and that's what they did well, they did a couple of neat things with sort of FaceTime and everything,

6:15where they actually make use of the external display and with some features that work differently when it's, like, partially folded, things like that. Those are some of the things where I think they're really kind of getting at making use of it more than just saying, like, well, it's one iPhone on the outside, and when you open it, it's two iPhones together on the inside, like, which is kind of what it is. What I didn't realize, and I don't know if many people realize, is that the ratio from the outside to the inside is a perfect, like, symmetrical cut.

6:48So that's why that transition works so well, because the inside display matches the outside display. And so you can only run two apps – they did. They mentioned 1 to 1.4 or something, right? Yeah, it's 1.4 to 1, which is not a ratio. So you see it's not 3x2, it's not 4x3, it's in between those. It's like a weird ratio. But Duo makes sense. When it's closed, it looks like a D, right? It does, yeah. And it's got two screens, and the middle screen is exactly twice the outside screen,

7:20and you can run two apps at once. Like, there's a lot of Duo stuff there, right? Right, two apps at once. Because we did say last week, like, it has to do at least that. At least, yeah. And, you know, you're going to probably run two apps together most of the time, unless you're watching a video or something. And the way they did the double app thing, like, you can save a combination. Like, if you have Safari and a Word document, or if you have, I don't know, YouTube and some game you like to play.

7:51Whatever it is, things that you're going to commonly use together, you can pair those so you can quickly bring them up. You don't have to go through all the swiping and the tapping again. Right. And they made that pretty easy. And I think it's smart. People noted you can't resize the split like you can on an iPad. I think that makes total sense here, because you do not want to, iPhone apps are not made to be resized in that way. It's already going to be kind of an issue to get things to fit.

8:23I've seen some coverage about what happens when, they only showed their own apps that have all been updated for this. So, I've seen some coverage about, like, what happens with an app that isn't updated, you know, how does that work and all. Yeah, I'm sure there'll be some growing pains there, and there'll be some apps that just don't work. But, yeah, Apple's apps looks really slick. They showed some games and stuff. Like, the thing where you put it in, like, a sitting mode, and the controls on the bottom, or little keyboards on the bottom.

8:54And, like, just super cool stuff that, you know, really makes me want to go and see it, at the very least. And there hasn't been an Apple product in a while. Maybe Vision Pro. But that was more of, like, well, maybe I'm a little curious. This one, like, if it was at the Apple store today, I would have gotten this morning to look at it. Because, like, I want to see. I want to hold it. I want to use it. I want to try it. Yeah. To me, the stuff, I mean, obviously there's utility in running two apps at once.

9:28We've all been there. We all know that. But some of the stuff they did with the camera stuff is where I feel like they also made some headway. And, like, we're going to do something with the fact that this has two screens, the fact that it can be folded and stuff. So there's that mode, I forget what they called it, but where if you fold it halfway up and set it down, it's like taking a timer shot.

9:58But instead of waiting for a timer, it just uses AI to say, like, is everybody posing? You know? Right. And then it takes the shot, you know? And that stuff is not on other iPhones. That's just a duo thing. They had the kid mode, which I think is great. They show some peanut stuff on the outside screen so that your kid will look at the phone when you're taking a picture. Like, for parents who have kids of a certain age, that's, like, cute, simple. Like, what a simple little thing that anybody could have done by now.

10:31But Apple's like, hey, we have the peanut slices. Let's just, all we got to do is throw a little animation out there. Yeah. And it's like those little clever things. Like, being thoughtful about the marriage between software and hardware is what we all wanted or hoped they would do with the folding phone. And, you know, like I said, they totally nailed it. Like, the controls are pushed off to the right on the front screen because, you know, it's easier. The dock is on the side.

11:01The little status bar is moved. Like, they really considered how people will use this thing. Whereas in other folding phones, it's really just Android. And they put it on a bigger screen and they put it on a smaller screen and that's it. Yeah, and that's kind of, like, working their way around that weird aspect ratio. Yeah. I kind of wonder if, with the dock on the side, if you looked at the home screen or the controls on the side, if you put those controls or the dock underneath, would that be the same aspect ratio as a normal iPhone screen?

11:37So, in other words, like, am I getting just the same content window dimensions that I would get on a normal iPhone? Because if so, then that solves a lot of app compatibility problems. People have to move their UIs, but they don't have to go, oh, well, we can't, we're not showing everything we need to show. Right. And it's a problem. Yeah, I got to assume Apple's thought about that and consider it. I would hope. Yeah. Because you don't want to buy a $2,000. So, yeah, so it costs $2,000.

12:08It's actually a little less than I thought. I thought it was going to be, like, $2299 or something.

12:14You know, it's got pretty good specs. Only a dual camera, which, you know, is okay. It's basically an iPhone 17 camera system. It's fine. It has an A20 Pro processor, probably 12 gigs of RAM. We don't know that yet. Obviously, the two screens. The coolest thing or the most interesting thing about the camera, the selfie camera, the front has a little circle for a cutout. The inside one is under the display.

12:46For the first time in an Apple product, the whole camera, the whole thing is on the display. And if you look, like, I've seen some of the videos of people trying it out, like, you can see the little pixels, and it's a little bit visible. Yeah. All the under-display cameras on every phone is, depending on what you show, kind of visible because there's a hole there. But we don't know what the resolution of that camera is. Yeah, it's interesting. It could be, like, five megapixels. We don't know. The external one is 12, which is less than the 18 that you see on other things.

13:20All our iPhones, yeah. Yeah, it's probably not that new square sensor because it's meant to be held either way. But I don't know what's going on with that. I do like that they now have a thing where – here's another example of them thinking through the Duo thing with the camera more than anywhere else. Take a selfie with the good camera, the wide camera. And you see people do that, but you can't see yourself. But if you open it up, then you've got the, quote, rear camera and the outside screen facing you, and they just let you use the facing you camera as screen as your viewfinder so you can line yourself up.

14:00Like, yeah, that makes sense. They have had – they have on all the iPhones, FaceTime Duo, where you can show to the person you're calling, you can show both your selfie camera and what you're looking at. Right, yeah, right. So this has that, but it can also mirror your caller's image to the outside display, meaning that you can actually point it at another person. At the same time, yeah. And they can both see who you're calling, and the person you're calling can see both of you because of Duo FaceTime.

14:34I'm like, well, that's great. I don't know how many times I've been on a FaceTime call, and I've had to squish it next to my wife and, like, awkwardly try and hold the thing. It'd be so much more useful just to hold it between us. Yeah, like, they just – they thought about how people are going to use the device, iPhone users and iPad users, and how – because it also has Apple Pencil support. Not yet. It's coming later. But you will be able to use Apple Pencil. So, like, they really thought of it as its own device, not just an iPhone and iPad smashed together, and here you go.

15:12I'm actually kind of low-key excited about the standby thing. Yeah. Because I think standby mode on iPhones is really cool, but I never use it because it has to be charging and sideways at the same time. Right. So, my iPhone never goes into standby mode, and I would need, like, a special dock to, like, wirelessly charge it, but have it sideways. All my docks, or you put it vertical, like, it would be awkward.

15:42But this, when you just tent it over, it goes into standby mode. And doesn't have to be charging. And doesn't have to be charging. Right. I think that's just how I'm going to leave it on my desk all the time. Yeah, sure. It's cool. It's the right size. It looks cool. It gives me – surfaces the information I want. Like, that's desk mode for this thing. Yeah, it's cool, man. Yeah. Battery life seems to be a pretty good processor. Really good. It seems to be pretty good. Yeah. Like, we haven't tested any of this stuff. But, yeah, it looks like they say, like, 40-something hours when using the outside display and, like, doing something between, like, you know.

16:19So, it should last the whole day, no problem. When using the inside display, which is the – The bigger one. The big thing. Yeah. It should last somewhere between an iPhone 17 and an iPhone 17 Pro. Like, that's where the battery life falls. That's pretty great. That's a lot. Yeah, because no one's going to be using it for 10 hours, yeah. Yeah, you're not all the time on the big screen, right? So, this is – it is absolutely not anywhere near, like, the iPhone Air situation.

16:53Right. Like, I'm looking at their figures and going, I have zero doubt that I'm going to be able to go all day without having to plug it in. Yeah, for sure. Unless I play games on it all day. Yeah.

17:06Do you want one? I don't – I can't afford it. I want to use it before I would make that decision. It's definitely the kind of thing I would go to the Apple store and poke around with it a lot before I decided. But $2,000 is MacBook money, man. That's a lot of money. If you do the Apple lease thing, it's like $50 a month. If you trade something in, it's less. Sure. My problem with it – so, I did the – I checked out the lease.

17:38I have the Air. So, if I trade in the Air and I buy the Duo on a 24-month Apple upgrade lease thing, it's like $33 a month, which is very manageable. But my biggest problem with it – and this is an Apple's issue because, like, there's no way around it – is that it's about 11.5 millimeters thick when folded. Yeah. And I – after using the Air for a year. I don't know if I can go back to – yeah. I don't know if I would enjoy it.

18:11Plus, it's pretty heavy. It's about 235 grams, I think. And that's a chunky, heavy thing in my pocket. And I don't know if I want that. It really comes down to how often are you going to have that thing open. Right. Like, I can also see it – they didn't really cover a lot of this, but it is much like the iPad mini, kind of the perfect e-book size.

18:42Yeah. Yeah. You know? Like, when it's open in, like, a book, like, you can see them flipping pages. Like, it is – we're not even – like, I would turn it vertically. Like, it's like the size of a paperback. Yeah. Vertical, right? Like, it's just the right size for reading a page at a time. Or a comic book or something like that. I feel like it's, like, a really great phone for – like, at the gym, it would be closed. It would be in my pocket. I would occasionally grab it to swipe to the next song I'm listening to while I'm doing certain things.

19:17But then when I get on the bike to do my cardio and I want to watch a show, which I do a lot, you know? I just watch a show on my phone when I'm on it. Then I've got a nice bigger screen I can just prop up on the – like, there's a lot of things I can see where this would be better. But twice the price better? I ain't made of money. Yeah. I mean, it's not cheap. It's also – it's not outrageous compared to other folding phones. Like, Samsung's version of this is, I think, $1,900.

19:47Like, it's in the range of what other companies charge for this. But, yes, it's not cheap. And I also – like, I still – I'm in the old school where I hold the phone up to talk to. And it looks like it might be a little uncomfortable. Maybe not. I don't know. It might not be. The width of it's weird. I have big hands. I feel like it's going to be better for me than for some people. I feel like – I tried – I have a mini, and I held it, like, you know, the portrait way as if – about the thick of – it's a little bit – the mini's still a little bit wider.

20:23But it's – you know, it's not comfortable, but it can be done. Like, I can hold it. And it's more of a two-handed device than any iPhone Apple's ever made because – well, I guess the Max is pretty much a two-handed device at this point. But, yeah, like, opening and closing it, like, you're going to naturally use it with two hands, which is another thing I don't love. So I think I'm going to stick with – I'm going to stick with the Air. I'll absolutely get the Air 2 next year if it's – if it has the upgrades that we've heard.

20:58If it has longer battery life and a second camera, it'll be a really, really cool phone. Even though now it's $10.99, the Apple raised the prices of everything yesterday. Oh. The – everything went up $100. So that includes the iPhone 17. At least $100. Well, all right. Right. Every entry-level iPhone went up $100. Jason said it. Some of the higher storage amounts went up, like, $300. $300. If you have the iPhone 18 Pros, Pro and Pro Max, they start $100 more.

21:31It's $100 more for the 256 or 512. But the one terabyte is, for some reason, $300 more? Yeah. Oh, what? And the two terabytes, $500 more, I think. Well, they didn't have a two terabyte before.

21:46Oh. They didn't for the Max or the Pro? Maybe on the Max. Maybe not on the Pro. Maybe only on the Max. I can't remember. Yeah. But whatever. I think the terabyte's new. The 17e is the one that hurts the most because that was – like the MacBook Neo, like that – when you raise everything by $100, if it's $1,000, that's 10%. If it's $600, then we're talking about 20%, so – Yeah. Or close to it. Yeah. It's – this RAM stuff is just – it's just a killer. And we talked about it last week.

22:17I don't think it's going to change – it's not going to get any better for a while. It's going to be a while. I do not – regardless of the quality of any of these products, it's really hard to recommend spending this kind of money. I don't fault anybody for saying, like, I don't need it. And you're like, you're right. You don't. Probably you don't. Like it's easy to think had this not happened that the iPhone Duo would have been like $1799. And at that point, it's like, well, maybe, you know, or maybe even $1499.

22:49Who the hell knows? Because Apple was going down with its prices. It was on a trajectory where it was – Yeah. Value. The latest rumor was that they were always targeting kind of $1999 because they didn't want – just like the iPhone X, that $999, they don't want to go to $2,000 above that number.

23:08And it was – with all the RAM stuff, it was looking like they were going to have to charge like $2199 for it. And they're eating the cost just to get it back to $1999. So it's probably going to be $1999 anyway. And the volumes they're selling are going to be so small on this. I don't know about that. It'll sell out. It'll sell out for sure. But that's just because they're not making them. So it's got 100 parts just in the hinge. Like there's not – manufacturing is slow.

23:40Right, yeah. So the hinges – first of all, it's IP68. Which is impressive. Yeah, that was great. No other folding phone – well, I can't say that for sure. But I know the Samsung ones don't have IP68. In fact, they're like IP64 or something. They're like 48 or something. The dust is the worst. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The first number. And like there's been YouTube videos where people take them and they pour a bunch of dirt on them and you can hear like the crunch. So, yeah, Apple fixed all that stuff. And there's like a – so the crease.

24:12There is a crease. Sure. You can see it. And from what people who have tested it say, you can feel it a little bit. But Apple has taken, you know, some pretty extreme steps to minimize it as much as they possibly can. There's a nano – it's almost like a matte screen. Yeah, it is a matte screen. Because they use this nano – this nano texture thing that we've seen that has been available on products for a while for an extra fee. And that's what's applied to the screen.

24:42There's like a layer of this nano texture glass on top of the other stuff, the layers of the screen. Yeah, well, there's a bunch of layers on the screen. Yeah. And they're doing some stuff to make the adhesives for the layers slide like they're adhesives, but they have some gives so that the layers, as you fold it, they slide against each other. And that prevents the screens from getting that like wobbly warping that you see on some phones and stuff. Yeah. To stay flat. I mean, they really went through a lot.

25:13Yeah. You can see that there's a lot of engineering that went into like making this.

25:19Arguably, we'll see when we get it and use it for hours and hours, but like the best folding, like the terms of all the problems that folding have. They didn't solve them, but they got closer than anybody else to solving all these issues. And, you know, we'll see if that holds up after a few months because these creases do get worse because you're doing this all the time. You know, it's a natural thing. But, you know, Apple seems pretty confident that it at least has reduced and minimized the effect that the folding has on the glass.

25:58I found that interesting when Ternus unveiled. So it was a one more thing. Yeah. We thought. But when he unveiled it, he said that Apple is, he said, we believe this is the future of folding phones. He didn't say the future of iPhones. So like the iPhone 10 or unlike the iPhone 10, rather, like that was clear that this was the direction. I think the iPhone Duo is going to be an extra higher end phone for a while. Like it's not, we're not going to get rid of the candy bar phones and the regular, the 17, the 17 plus, the E, the 17 pro.

26:35Like those are going to be around for years, maybe forever. Just like in the Android market, it's a, it's a, it's a premium segment of the market. That's specific to one thing, but it hasn't taken over. They've had them for years and they haven't taken over in any way. Um, so it's still the, the everyday quote flagship phones are standard candy bar phones, like the regular. So it's going to be that way. Yeah. Um, so I got an email this morning from, uh, you guys know her, uh, uh, or maybe him.

27:13I'm actually not sure. Uh, Robin, uh, Barnard, she, she, or he, they, um, they contact us often about the show of comments and stuff. And so, so, so they wrote, uh, about the idea that it's designed for people who are right-handed and I am right-handed. So that's not something that I consider when I look at a product to buy. Yeah. But like, I guess there's some truth to that because it does like this side is, is flat and this side is rounded.

27:46At least the, the close part, when you open it, it's, it's obviously symmetrical. Right. The screen still has on the front. Yeah. Isn't. Yeah. So if you're left-handed, you're, if you're holding it left-handed. The dock and everything's on the wrong side for you is the thing. Yeah. Right. And the controls. I wonder if in software you can move it to the other side, but then it's different because the curves on, on the one side. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm sure you can't. Uh, uh, I'd be shocked if you could also that where the camera, the selfie camera is, is all about the corner. So now it's, you know, right.

28:18Um, so it has to be there. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's going to be on the right. I, that's true. It's also true that like, I don't know, like books are right. Yeah. I was going to ask that. Do they make left-handed books? They, they don't. Um, and, and books in like Japan go the other way. They all go the, the seams, the bindings on the right. And you flip it from what would be for us, the last page to the front page. Like that's the normal, even though you're reading left to right, you, the pages advance that way.

28:48Like, yes, it's true. It's, it, it's some of the, like the interface elements are not geared toward left-handedness. The buttons, that's always like that. Like if you're left-handed today, an iPhone, like the volume buttons are where your thumb are and the side buttons over on the side. It's weird. Right, right, right, right. Speaking of buttons, it has no action button. So with that. Yeah. They put a camera button, but no action button. I mean, I don't know. Do I care? I've never touched the action button.

29:20It's still, it's still a mute switch on my phone. Yeah, I don't use it a lot. I mean, that, that, that's not a thing that I'm. There's no mute switch for you is what I'm saying. Like. Oh, I hear what you're saying. Right? There's nothing. There's no switch. I gotta do it in the control center. Yeah, yeah. That's true. That's a good point. Um. Yeah, what else is it missing? It does have MagSafe, which we had thought. There were rumors that it didn't, but it does. Um. Fast charging stuff. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Stereo speakers. It's, you know.

29:51Quad stereo. So that like, like some of the iPads. Like the iPads. Rotate it, you still get the proper stereo. Oh, touch ID. That's the thing. I knew, I forgot to write it. I, I, I, I don't want to forget to talk about that.

30:05Yeah. Touch ID is, we expected that and it's. Back when, back when I, before the iPhone had face ID and we all had to touch ID with the home button. Touch ID was the most annoying thing in the winter. Cause I, I live on the East coast and it gets cold. And I do, I do wear gloves occasionally. And when I had to unlock my phone, like it would, you know, you're taking it off with your thing and then putting it back on cause it's cold. And, you know, then you get those touch, those touch sensitive gloves, but that doesn't work with touch ID, but it does work.

30:37Yeah. So it's, it's, it's not the greatest for a very small part of the year. I'll be, I'll be honest in the small part of the world too, you know, but it's a thing. So you can unlock it with your Apple watch as you can with, with other stuff, but that also, and you've got to buy something else to do that. And I understand why face ID is not in it. It probably would have upped the cost and changed the whole way they had to design it because there's inside and outside and it has to be in both places and blah, blah, blah. Yeah.

31:08I don't think they could do that. I do feel like that's a bit of a downgrade from what we've known for the last nine years of. Oh, I agree. Yeah. Yeah. Like it was expected and, but also, yeah, it's going to be a frustrating, I mean, and there's also just like your hands are dirty or wet or messy or cooking, whatever. There's, there's a lot of times when touch ID never worked right. And, and in the power button, I feel like it's, it's even worse than it was when it was the home button because it's that skinny little thing and you got to get it right.

31:43Yep. So, yeah, that's not, that's not great. The, the, the action button, I guess, uh, Jason brings up a good point. Like I don't have a mute switch, even though I, I never changed it, but now it's good. Yeah. Uh, you know, the camera, the camera is fine. It's good, but you're not getting the high end stuff. You're paying $2,000 for a phone and you're getting a $600 camera, you know, it's, it's basically the iPhone 17s camera. Yeah. Yeah. But, which isn't bad, but you know, right.

32:14They're all good cameras. Apple makes good cameras, but it's not the best camera that, that inside FaceTime camera might not be great. Right. I don't care. I, I, I, I still, I still kind of want one. I just want to, I want to use, I just really want to use one for a while. I mean, obviously if it was the same price as other iPhones, I would take more of a chance on. Yeah. If it was like $12.99, I'd order it tomorrow. Yeah. Right. But, you know, I ain't made of money. I'm getting my house painted. I got no money.

32:44Uh, I'm probably not going to buy one even on the Apple upgrade program. But I really, really curious to try it, especially for a while, especially trying mixing apps that haven't been updated with apps that have and all those kinds of things. There's, there's, there's a lot of questions I have. Blowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them. That's bull spend and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions. I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow.

33:17Yeah, it, it wasn't. Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. It's football season, and you can now get almost anything you need for game day delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a running back delivered, but you can get baby back ribs delivered. A strong defense? No. A strong deodorant? Yes.

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34:03Roman, what's, you're a, you're a Mac first guy. I'm like, I know you have an iPhone, but you kind of look at things from the, from the Mac laptop perspective. But what were your initial reactions to the, to the iPhone duo? I thought the presentation was interesting because Ternus kept framing the duo as a hub. Yeah, everything, everything was a hub. Like, that's how he started the show. Before he got to the, the duo, the iPhone is like your AI hub.

34:35Right. But he did say like, and like the, the fold is like the ultimate hub. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Cause you want a bigger screen for that hub.

Initial reactions to the Duo

34:43Right. So I don't know if that's foreshadowing anything. I think it most certainly is, but yeah. Yeah. It certainly is. It'll be interesting to find that out. In terms of the product itself, I think it looks really cool. I'm kind of like you, Mike. It's like, I want to buy it, but I don't need it because it just feels like I'd be buying a product that's nicely engineered and designed and made. And I'd be like, Oh, this is so nice. Right. But I've said before, it's a two camera phone, the three, if you count the front facing camera.

35:15Right. And that's the, that's the killer for me. I'm not, I can't, I want that third, third camera. So I'm not going to, I'm not going to buy it. Also, I would want the one terabyte version and that's 2599. Yeah. And I think I'll go buy a four MacBook Neos for that price. My, my first car was like half the cost of that, but you can't put your car in your pocket, but yeah, you didn't see my first car just to carry it a little further.

35:53And I think this is what Mike was alluding to. I wrote an article about how the whole UI of the iPhone duo, maybe that bodes well for the touchscreen MacBook. And I don't want to get into the deep into the whole touchscreen MacBook thing. Cause that we didn't, that wasn't on the show. This is all, this wasn't in the event. We're not going to talk about that, but if it's, hopefully it means good things for Mac OS on the touchscreen MacBook. Yeah. So that's, that's what I'm kind of hoping. Yeah. I was impressed.

36:23So I, I started this by saying like, I wanted to buy something that I didn't need. That, that, that's been Apple's thing for a while. Like they sell you like their, their sales, even cheap, cheap jobs with a salesman, a salesman when the iMac G4 came out, like no one needed it, but we wanted it. It's been a long time since I felt that way. And this isn't a knock on Tim Cook or Apple or anything, you know, we get into these, these ruts, so to speak, that that's not the right word, but I'm not going to look for

36:54the right one right now. But, you know, like Apple goes through the motions, like here's the iPhone 16, here's the iPhone 17, here's the iPhone 18. They're all great products. They're all worthy of buying. And if you want to upgrade fine, there hasn't been a product in a long time, probably since the iPhone 10, maybe the Apple watch. Oh no, the Apple watch was before the iPhone 10, probably since the iPhone 10 that I really said, like, I don't need that. I don't really need to spend that kind of money, but I, but I really want it. And, and the duo, like the way they engineered it, the way they built it, the way they made

37:26the software and the hardware kind of, kind of seamlessly work and coexist. Like it really felt like, like old Apple is, is, is back.

Unimpressed by the iPhone 18 Pro

37:36Yeah.

Unimpressed by the iPhone 18 Pro

37:37Uh, I feel like I got the exact opposite feeling about the iPhone 18 pro. I was, um, no about the 18 pro one of the things I, I was excited to see that it has the a 20 pro in the folding in the, uh, duo like expected, but it's the full a 20, like there's no reduced cores or anything like that. Unlike they did with the air. I was expecting it to be a cutback version. It just doesn't have as good a cooling. So like that sustained performance isn't as good, but it's still going to perform like

38:06better than a 17 pro. That's, that was better than I thought. But then when we got to the 18 pro, which they did first, I was just like, oh, it's faster and has a better camera. Like we're, we're still doing faster and has a better camera. Like that's, that's the worst years for any iPhone is when it's like faster and has a better camera. It was, it felt like it, like an S and S release. The people who are new to Apple, like back in the early days of the iPhone, they would have a new model and then an S version, which was just, you know, a little faster and maybe

38:38a new feature or two and, and, and a better camera. And, you know, that's, that's really what this is. And, you know, the iPhone 17 pro and pro they're fantastic phones and they got a redesign last year, but this year is, if you have one of those, there's very little reason to upgrade. The, the eight 20 is impressive in that, like how much faster it is, but it's already like the 17 pro is already so flipping fast, more battery life.

39:11Everybody likes more battery life, but already like killer battery life on the 17 pro. So, you know, and, and then I was really mad about the, the camera stuff because variable aperture is cool, but you can only like pick between four apertures. And then they had all these pro settings in the camera app. And other than the aperture change, all of those pro settings could be on other iPhones. Right. Like a histogram has nothing to do with the, your eight 20 pro and all that other stuff.

39:41Neither does white balance or anything. Are we sure? I'm a, are you sure those, the, the pro camera features aren't coming to iOS 20. Yeah. I went, I went looking and they do say they, they, they don't literally say this is only for the blah, blah, blah, but they, they list them only as features for the eight 20 pro in the spec sheets, they say pro camera and they don't say it on the, like a 17 pro. And there's usually a footnote or something that says something is coming to other things.

40:14So they have in the past given us a release, like iPhone 27.3 in March or something. And they bring back, back, backfill stuff. They did that with like visual intelligence, bringing it to older, to an older model that can run it. But yeah, I was really mad that they locked all of these other pro camera features to just this new phone. And I'm like, uh, you know, other camera apps have this, like, I'm just mad. I'm just, so I was very unimpressed by the 18 pro not because I think it's a bad phone,

40:47just because it just felt, it felt like we, another S release thing where it's just like, now we put all our attention on the duo and this is just more speed that you don't need. I'm looking at, um, so in the iOS 27 release candidate that came out yesterday, there's camera app customization. Yes. So you can bring more stuff, but I guess all the other stuff isn't part of that flashlight photo. Yeah. It doesn't look like the other stuff. Yeah. That's just choosing which UI elements you want on the top so that you can like, I always

41:22access this and then you can put it there, but it's not, it doesn't have white balance focus. Uh, what is the other one? Histogram. Histogram. There's another one, uh, shutter speed. All like all, all these existing iPhones could have that. They could have those features. So I'm, I'm upset they didn't do that. It's one of those, like, we're going to lock this new hardware. There to sell the new hardware.

41:49Yeah. Many robber chair, shutter, shutter, shutter speed controls, um, live, live histogram. Um, white balance. Yeah. That's, I didn't realize that actually. I thought, well, obviously the aperture stuff I knew, but I figured the other stuff was coming to, um, the 17 pro, which can obviously handle it. And I don't think the aperture thing is going to be as useful for as many people as, as most people think having a new sensor that that's better low light and stuff like that, that that's always, everybody likes that, but just the ability to stop down the aperture to a

42:25smaller aperture. That's, that is a really pro feature. I'll give them that. And I'm really, I'm really glad it's not just on the pro max. I'm glad it's on the regular pro. Cause I don't like having to buy the big old camera, the big old phone. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, I was, so I was kind of disappointed in the 18 pros for those reasons. Yeah. I mean, it's what we thought, but I don't disagree. It's, um, they're, they're a hundred dollars more as Jason just said, they start at a hundred dollars more. Um, they go up from there and, um, yeah, if you have a 17 pro is really, there's no reason

43:02to upgrade and there's no reason why you can't get some of these upgrades, um, in your, in your phone. They talked about a lot of AI features, um, but their AI features that is basically a recap of WWDC, their AI features that the 17 pro has like the, the new expressive voice for Siri and stuff like that. It's like, yeah, it's cool, but that's not an 18 pro feature. That's just a new Siri feature. So you've got double the, they doubled the neuro engine course. Where's my cool thing that requires twice as much AI juice.

43:33There really kind of isn't one. So, yeah, yeah, there weren't, I thought there would be something Apple, well, we'll talk about the Apple watchers in a second because there are some really cool AI stuff going on. Yeah, that I'm really, but yeah, but there's nothing, um, yeah, there was really nothing. I thought something with Siri AI or something with Apple intelligence would be tied to, um, the new phones because of the chip. I mean, it's a, it's a hell of a chip. The A20 pro, like from, from what I, from what we hear from Apple and from what

44:04the rumors going around the net, the speeds are insane. Um, it, it, it has, you know, just, just like tons of, uh, performance and efficiency and everything else, but yeah, nothing really that couldn't be done on some other, on some other phone.

Colors and naming conventions

44:22So, uh, what do you think of the colors? You like burgundy? Anybody? I don't like it better. I don't hate it, but I don't like it better than cosmic orange. Yeah. The orange was cool. Cosmic orange was so cool. Um, shout out to, uh, Felipe Esposito who wrote an article for us about six months ago and nailed, nailed them. Like the color of colors were, were, were spot on silver, black. Well, we, we had written, um, dark gray, but it's, it's, it's, that's black, light blue, which is glacier. So how does Apple decide what, yeah.

44:53How does Apple decide what gets like a clever name and what doesn't it's glacier and burgundy? Like what? So they all get, they all get everything, but everything gets a clever name. What does it? Burgundy's not burgundy's a, but burgundy's a color, but, but, but that's, that's not the, if you looked at the color on, you know, like a, uh, what's the color database that everybody uses? Pantone. Pantone. Like that's not the burgundy Pantone color. Like they just. But it's still a color. Yeah.

45:23Like you were saying for a while that they would call it wine or Merlot or something. And yeah, just another Merlot is a color too. It's a, that's a Pantone color. Um, Roman, is he correct? Is that true? Feels like he's mocking me. It is. Burgundy to me feels like a last minute name change. Maybe. Well, so do the other ones. They changed starlight and midnight to something else. Well, starlight's a little different, uh, because so starlight had like a goldish hue.

45:53Yeah. Now it's, um, light, night sky. No, no, that's the blue one. Not night sky. It's the other sky.

46:02What is it called? It's, it's the, uh, it's the duo colors. Night sky is the, um, is the dark blue and, oh, come on, Apple. Tell me what the color. I got to go to 700 pages to get to the tech specs. I swear to God. They, they, they redesigned their, their website every single day. So I can't find that. Well, while you say that, while you look that up, I'll pontificate on color names. So like, cause glacier or cause glacier and burgundy aren't the same class name.

46:35Hey, you just got back to Iceland. Is it is that's, that's like a, that's like a call out. Well, the other thing I wanted to say was glaciers are white and brown. So if you look at the glacier, they're white and they're white cause they're frozen water and it's brown cause they got dirt all over them.

46:52But, uh, yeah, but, but yeah, in other words, they just don't sound like the same kind of name. Do you know what I mean? And like glacier has a different, uh, invokes different imagery and, uh, a reaction than the word burgundy does. Burgundy just sounds plain. It sounds blah. That's why I think it was a last minute name change. It almost to me feels like they were going to go with dark cherry because dark cherry invokes cosmic orange in terms of that whole, I'm getting way too much into this whole, but it invokes

47:28the same kind of reaction and feeling, but it's almost like they didn't want to justify whoever leaked that name. Oh, I changed it to burgundy. Well, that's what cosmic orange was is to, uh, the color that it was is tangerine, but they gave it a marketing name. Like, so if you look at any of the actual colors that Apple uses, they give them a marketing name. That is something similar. So, but if you looked up Pantone, look up Pantone's Merlot and burgundy, I just did. They are so close.

47:58Merlot is actually closer to what the iPhone is, I think, but without holding an iPhone in my hand, I can't tell you. Um, but neither one are exactly what the iPhone is. It's a marketing name. They, and, and Apple always does this. They never give it the name that it is in any paint database or Pantone or anything like that. It's just, you know, and everybody does this. Um, star white, by the way, is the color of the, um, of the, uh, the duo.

48:30I'm sorry. Duo. Fumbling, fumbling all my words here. Yeah. I, I, um, the, hold on. Okay. Black, right. Black is black. Silver is silver. They could have called it star white. Why don't they call that star white? Cause it's, it's, I guess it's not, it's silver glacier and burgundy. I don't know. It just seems to me that, um, they're, they're, their colors are somewhat random. The naming of the colors is something. It's, it's just the marketing department.

49:01They, they're in charge. I like, I like the, like they're all nice. I like the, the, the black's nice. Um, if I was getting one, I'd probably get the, uh, the blue one. It's, it's, it's nice. I, I think I have, I don't even know what the hell air I have. Cause they were, they're all so close. I think I have the blue one, but I, I honestly don't know. But, um, yeah. Um, so speaking of wanting, you said, uh, they've made you want something you don't need. Yes. And I, and I, given the price and given like, you know, all the issues you said, like,

49:36it's a big, heavy, thick thing to put in your pocket. I'm not sure I feel that way about the duo yet.

Audio intelligence on the Apple Watch

49:41I want to really use it, but I did feel that way about the new Apple watch. Yeah. I was expecting, oh, they've got some new health sensors, you know, to, we, we, we read the rumors about, they'll check your heart rate more often. I'm like, I have a series 10. I didn't buy the series 11 cause the series 11 is like series 10 part two. It's like, it's not different. And I was expecting to just not need it because I don't need it to check my heart rate. Like they said 60 times more often, but once an hour when I'm not working out and then continuously

50:13what I'm working out is fine. I don't care.

50:18But, but then, but then they have new series stuff. Yeah. And they have what they call audio intelligence and I want that. It's cool. Yeah. It's cool. That was really cool. Totally agree. There are two features. One is you double tap the crown and it takes the last 15 seconds of speech that was sent around you and it just shows that text to you on your watch.

50:46And then you can save it to the Siri app or you can continue to ask Siri about it or something like that. But it's all very private. It never saves an actual auto recording anywhere. You can never get at it. It's just the text. It just does like a live text to speech kind of thing. It's just the last 15 seconds. Of course you can turn it off and it, it doesn't even save that unless you save it to the Siri app. And then the Siri app is end to end encrypted. So like Apple can't even get at that. And it never identifies a speaker.

51:17It never says like, it sounds like this person and identifies. It's just literally the text of what was said, but that solves so many like arguments and what did they just say things and stuff like that. I feel like I could use this all the time. I want this on my phone. Like, can my phone do this? I bet my phone could do this. I would set it to my action button and I would do this constantly. So I think if you have the watch, it'll also be on the phone. I think if I, if I understand that correctly.

51:48The way it works is the watch shows you the text. It doesn't go anywhere, but then if you save it to Siri, it's in the Siri app. Okay. Okay. And which is everywhere. It's, it's cloud everywhere, but that's not the same as me not having my watch. Just like I want to tap my action button on my phone and get the last 15 seconds of what was said. I totally want that. Please. That'd be so cool. Um, and then the other feature is one where it listens to an entire conversation, like

52:20a longer conversation and gives you a series summary of it. Yeah. Um, which another, just like how many times have I forgotten what they said about this or that one detail? Like, did they say we have to do this by that date or whatever? Totally. All these things. It's like anytime I'm talking to any, uh, service person who comes by to do something or I just, Oh, I kind of want it for my phone conversations. Like, can I get a summary of my phone conversations the same way? Like it, I know it doesn't work that way, but I want it.

52:53I love those features so bad.

52:57Yeah. And I think you're doing the right thing on the privacy angle too. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Like you don't want, like people are already on social media saying, Oh, this is really creepy and it has a tendency to be that, but it's, it's, it's, it's Apple has done it the best possible way. And, um, it's like the way when they were describing it, I was like, it's like a, it's like an undo button for your life. Like, I, I, I've, I've never even considered that my Apple watch could do something like that all throughout the day. Cause like, like, like, like you, like everybody, like I miss, I miss stuff all the time and

53:33to be able to press my watch and see what I hear or read what someone just said is just like, that is the, like the wildest, most creative feature I could ever think. It's like what we thought those humane, that humane pin was going to be. Right. But it wasn't like, this is what we want AI to be like something like that's so useful. Yeah. It's so simple. Don't be recording everybody. Right. But let me, but at the same time, just let me like go, like, what did they just say?

54:06Like you can do that without actually recording people, which is what they've done. And that's what I want. I actually thought, uh, we talked about this a lot, like years ago when we were talking about smart glasses and stuff, I said, you know what? It'd be a great feature. You're the feature I want with my smart glasses is to say rewind and have my smart glasses show me the last things I, the last 20 seconds of what I looked at. Just keep a buffer running of my life just so I can just see, don't let me save that.

54:37Don't let me record and, you know, video or whatever of people. Just let me back up a second. Just access it when I, when you're right on the time. Only immediately, only, only by backing up and replaying it just now, but not being able to save it or save that buffer or backup or be recording people or whatever. Yeah. And you know, 15 seconds is longer than we think. Like that's like a perfect amount of time because I realize it in three seconds, I'll

55:08hit the watch for two seconds and then I still got 10 more seconds to see what I missed. The example they were giving is somebody, uh, well, like a waitress coming by and blazing through the specials real fast. And I'm like, but that is about how long that's that, that wasn't even 10, that wasn't even 15 seconds, but like, that's about how long it is. It's, it's long enough for somebody to, and that's such a perfect example because it's such a dumb society thing, but you get embarrassed when they say it, when you don't hear it or

55:39you don't remember, like, I don't ask, like, what was that second special again? Because I feel like, well, I probably should have listened the first time and she's going to be like, well, what's wrong with you? I just said that. So now I can just look at my watch and be like, all right, I'll, I'll, I'll have this sounded. Yeah, you're, they, they didn't, they didn't do the awkward thing where the, the waitress is sitting there watching you stare at your watch and read it. Like that's, that's, that's not the best example necessarily. Um, but I can just see myself double tapping that crown and then quickly hitting the save to Siri button just so I could just go look later, just go back on my iPhone or whatever

56:13and just look at the text. And I can definitely see myself using that thing where it summarizes a conversation, like a lot. I don't know how accurate, there's a lot that hinges on how accurate it is and does it really get the most important stuff and a lot, but just in terms of making a useful feature, having a microphone on my wrist that is always listening, but not recording. Right. Is so cool.

56:43I want to know if they can understand my son because I can't half the time and I'm always asking him, like, what'd you say? Like, like, I'm curious to see if, if, if the, my watch is, well, I don't have it, but if I get the new one, if it's, is it smart enough to, to like, understand like, like, like, like Jen, whatever the hell he is, he's for Jen Z or like, like, like they all mumble